August 2, 2007
Elizabeth I Returns II Posted by John Steele Gordon at 09:50 AM EST I thank Alexander Burns for telling me of the forthcoming Elizabeth: The Golden Age. It looks so terrific that I will probably bestir myself sufficiently to see it in a movie theater rather than wait a few months and get the DVD. He writes, “Mr. Gordon wrote yesterday about Elizabeth I, who is ‘forever enshrined as the apotheosis of English monarchs, clear-eyed assessments be damned.’ I’m not sure what Gilbert and Sullivan would think of this, not to mention Queen Victoria herself . . .” Well, here’s what Gilbert and Sullivan thought of Elizabeth I (while making fun of the House of Lords in Iolanthe): When Britain really ruled the waves—
(In good Queen Bess’s time)
The House of Peers made no pretence
To intellectual eminence,
Or scholarship sublime;
Yet Britain won her proudest bays
In good Queen Bess’s glorious days! As far as I know, G&S never referred directly to Queen Victoria. No fools they. They were both great queens, and they both have had the ultimate in historical compliments bestowed upon them: to have their names become adjectives to denote the times in which they lived. But as for which queen better deserves to have the title of “apotheosis of English monarchs” bestowed upon her by popular (as opposed to professional historical) acclaim, I would offer this bit of evidence: Compare Elizabeth I: The Golden Age with the most recent movie about Queen Victoria, Mrs. Brown. The former is the story of a monarch as the heroic leader of her people in a time of national crisis. The latter is a quite touching story of a woman—who happened to be the Queen of England—helped out of her inconsolable grief over the death of her husband by a bumptious, pushy, often drunken servant who was hated by everyone else, from the other servants to the Prince of Wales. While a superb movie, I don’t think Mrs. Brown is the stuff of which apotheoses are made.
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