Milli mála - 2015, Side 181
INGIBJÖRG ÁGÚSTSDÓTTIR
Milli mála 7/2015
186
keep her love?” Indeed, his words when telling Elizabeth about the
execution sum up very well the things that went wrong – and were
not done properly – at Mary’s execution: that she was denied her
priest, denied her rosary and had to endure two strokes of the axe
(Guy 2004: 8; Fraser 2002 [1969]: 671).
As all of the above details demonstrate, Elizabeth I presents a
fairly balanced view of Mary and her last days and avoids romanticiz-
ing and glorifying the whole affair, quite unlike many previous por-
trayals. This is clearly no stereotypical representation of the Scottish
queen. As suggested by Marian biographers such as Fraser and Guy,
Mary Stuart must have cut a pitiful figure at the end of her life, having
been confined in various cold and damp English country houses for
years, unable to get proper exercise or air, denied the people and the
company she would have wanted the most: her own son and her
most trusted advisors and friends (Guy 2004: 445-447, 453-454, 456,
487; Fraser 2002 [1969]: 596-597, 610, 633). All this deprivation and
suffering is made clear in Flynn’s portrayal of Mary in Elizabeth I. Fur-
thermore, Mary’s death was quite simply brutal, bloody and shocking,
as any death on the scaffold would have been, and the series conveys
this fact very well to the viewer. As one reviewer notes, the “brutality
of the age is well documented” (Stanley 2006: n.p.).
As can be seen therefore, Elizabeth I affords more space to the
story of Mary Stuart than most other dramatisations of Elizabeth’s life,
while also depicting in a convincing manner the frustration, bitterness
and suffering that marked Mary’s last days. Nevertheless, Mary is made
out to be a schemer and plotter like in Elizabeth R and Elizabeth: The
Golden Age. When Elizabeth remarks rather nastily to Leicester that
Mary has grown fat during her imprisonment for lack of anything else
to do but eat and sleep, he adds: “And plot, your Majesty.” Other
scenes and conversations foreground the view of Mary as inferior and
marginal, a failure as a queen and a footnote to the history of Eng-
land’s greatness. In an early scene with her suitor the Duke of Anjou,
Elizabeth dismisses Mary as a nonentity: “Queen of France, Queen of
Scotland, and now, she is nothing.” In a later scene, Elizabeth worries
over the problem of Mary Queen of Scots and Leicester asks “Mary of
Scots? Or Marie of France? Or Marie of whoever will have her?” Thus
Mary is dismissed as a pathetic beggar for favour and shelter abroad.