In the last scene of Henry VIII , by Shakespeare and Fletcher, the baby princess Elizabeth is brought onstage for her baptism by Archbishop Cranmer. He prophecies the glories of her exemplary reign: under her benign sway, truth and peace shall flourish, and at her death, “as when/ The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,” there shall arise from her ashes an equally great successor. When Henry VIII was first staged, in 1613, that successor, James I, could have the satisfaction of knowing how right Cranmer was. The baby, of course, says nothing. Without a similar gift of reserve, it is doubtful whether the historical Elizabeth would have survived to inherit the throne.

No one in their senses would have put Elizabeth onstage in her lifetime, but only two years after her death she had been portrayed in Thomas Heywood’s two-part play If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody. This is an uncomplicated celebration of her triumphs, colored by the nostalgia for her reign that was widespread in the early Jacobean period. Elizabeth might have approved of Heywood’s play; it was propaganda, and nobody had been a more gifted manipulator of the Elizabethan mythology than the queen herself. A brilliant political tactician, she had participated in the creation of a royal iconography complete with quasi-liturgical rites and ceremonies. Gloriana, Cynthia, the Fairy Queen, a host of aliases hid an identity that, perhaps, remained unknown even to her. The letters, poems, prayers, and speeches edited