Averyl Dietering and Dr. Brandie Siegfried, English Department
The object of my ORCA grant project was to show the changing views toward royalty/power, religion, and gender which occurred in English culture and literature as direct results of the reigns of Lady Jane Grey, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. I focused specifically on the accessions of these three women, since a monarch’s accession (the time after the previous monarch’s death and the new monarch’s coronation) is a critical period for establishing the monarch’s style and methods of rule. To understand the effect which these monarchs had on English literature, I researched and analyzed three seventeenth-century English plays, each of which featured a different monarch: If You Know not Me, You Know No Bodie Part I (1605), highlighting Elizabeth; The Famous History of Sir Thomas VVyat (1607), presenting Mary; and The Innocent Usurper (1694), showcasing Lady Jane Grey.
Most of the setbacks I overcame were at the beginning of my project and pertained to the breadth and depth of my research. For instance, in my proposal I mentioned using seventeenth-century plays to track the inception and development of new ideas about royalty, religion, and gender which entered into the collective English imagination. But as I continued my research in various English museums, libraries, and historical sites, I began to realize that because of the complexity and vast scope of English literature, tracking the development of these new ideas would be far outside of the capacity of my research. Another challenge I faced was the absence and/or unreliability of primary sources. In my original research proposal, I had planned to create a side-by-side comparison of the factual historical events versus the plays’ versions of historical events, and then to make note of any discrepancies between the two. I hoped that finding these discrepancies could assist me in mapping out the inception and development of new ideas. However, considering the nature of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English history, the vast majority of primary sources were too biased, unreliable, or contradictory to aid in the creation of a “factual” or “truthful” history. In fact, quite often the primary sources were just as mythical and subject to artistic license as the plays themselves.
To remedy these challenges, I narrowed my focus by concentrating more on the literary aspects within the three plays. My previous goal—to research the plays, the new ideas within them, and the new ideas’ effect on English literature and history—was not only too far-reaching, it was also a project better designed for a history paper rather than an English paper. By focusing on the plays themselves, I was able to keep my research within a manageable scope, and concentrate on the literature instead of becoming weighed down with so much historical research.
By identifying and overcoming these setbacks, I believe my project has developed into a much stronger paper than I anticipated. For instance, in analyzing the religious symbolism in If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobodie, I discovered fascinating connections between the theatrical chronology of Elizabeth’s hardships and the chronology of Christ’s Holy Week (the week of the crucifixion) in medieval Catholic English mystery plays. This comparison of Elizabeth to Christ opens up some potentially problematic, but also captivating, implications about the relationship between Protestantism and Catholicism in English literature. In Sir Thomas VVyat, I have come across religious parallelism and symbolism which hint at sympathy for Mary rather than the disdain typically offered her, and in The Innocent Usurper, I am analyzing the rhetoric of gender and family relations to better understand Lady Jane Grey’s role as a tragic heroine.
The project is nearing the final stages of completion, although there are still areas in need of additional research and development. Most importantly, I would like to further investigate the relationship between Protestantism and Catholicism on the English stage in the early seventeenth century, to ensure my interpretations of Elizabeth and Mary are as historically accurate as possible. In addition, I am also planning to do more research on the changes in English theatre from the early Jacobean era (during which If You Know Not Me and Sir Thomas VVyat were written) to the late Restoration era (during which The Innocent Usurper was published). Although the three plays are undeniably very similar, understanding the differences in genre of The Innocent Usurper is key to a proper appreciation of the play’s artistic qualities.
This project functions as my Honors Thesis, and I am currently in the middle stages of revising and editing drafts. I hope to have a final draft by the end of Fall semester and to defend my thesis in Winter semester. I was also able to use a polished draft of one of my thesis chapters as a final paper for my Field Study project (I used my ORCA Grant to fund a Field Study to England so I could have better access to primary sources, museums, libraries, and historical sites). This chapter is now accessible on an online database to other students applying to the BYU Field Studies Program, who are searching for potential field study ideas and examples of previous research. I am currently writing an abstract of a chapter of my thesis (most likely the chapter about Mary and Sir Thomas VVyat) to send to The Undergraduate Conference in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, hosted by Moravian College in Pennsylvania. I also still plan on submitting a chapter to the English Department’s undergraduate journals, Criterion and Literature and Belief. Additionally, now that I have returned from my field study to England, I plan to submit a chapter of my thesis to the BYU Field Study Program’s Inquiry Conference, and their journal, Inquiry.
In addition to acknowledging the assistance I received from my mentor, Prof. Brandie Siegfried, I would also like to thank Professors Zina Nibley Petersen and Richard Duerden for their willingness to mentor me and read and edit my drafts.