The Harefield Entertainment and the Cult of Elizabeth I

Abstract

In the summer of 1602 at Harefield Elizabeth I was presented with the last great country-house Entertainment of her reign. Although it survives in fragments, it is possible to see that the Entertainment both adheres to the traditions of the court cult of the Queen and develops and adds variety to them. Pastoral is tamed into the world of Home Counties farming. The identification of the Queen with the Queen of the Fairies, instead of being that of a romantic heroine, is domesticated into the folk tradition of the fairies who reward good housewives. Other personifications of the Queen as good housewife are remarked. The entertainment has an elegiac tone, appropriate to the sense that the Queen's age must make her death increasingly possible.

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