As part of the John Nichols project we have prepared a collection of specially-commissioned essays on the theme of the Elizabethan progresses and progress entertainments. The Progresses, Entertainments, and Pageants of Queen Elizabeth I, co-edited by Drs Jayne Archer (Aberystwyth), Elizabeth Goldring (Warwick), and Sarah Knight (Leicester), was published by OUP in 2007. It is an interdisciplinary collection, with contributions from English literature, antiquarian studies, history (local, social, and political), theatre studies, and art history.

Long-List Nominee for the 2007 William MB Berger Prize for British Art History

'This volume, a harbinger of the Nichols Project’s new edition of The Progresses, is elegantly constructed, with papers flowing chronologically from the coronation pageant of 1559 to the Earl of Newcastle’s neo-Elizabethan entertainments for Charles I in 1633 . . . All the papers have something new and interesting to say . . . Elizabeth I is the most recognizable of all English monarchs, a result of the concentrated effort to spread approved images of her round her kingdom. . . John Nichols first provided the material for the study of this phenomenon: in the Nichols Project, if we are to judge by this volume, he has found worthy heirs.'

(Jean Wilson, TLS, 18 January 2008)

'This volume is a valuable collection for both literary scholars and historians . . . It will, no doubt, become the go-to book for anyone interested in Elizabeth's progresses for years to come.'

(Paul Budra, Renaissance Quarterly, Spring 2008)

 

LIST OF CONTENTS

 

Dr Jayne Archer (Aberystwyth) and Dr Sarah Knight (Leicester):

• 'Elizabetha Triumphans'

Professor David Bergeron (Kansas):

• ‘The ‘I’ of the Beholder: Thomas Churchyard and the 1578 Norwich Pageant’

Professor Mary Hill Cole (Mary Baldwin College):

• ‘Monarchy in Motion: An Overview of the Progresses of Queen Elizabeth’

Professor Patrick Collinson (Trinity College, Cambridge):

• ‘Pulling the Strings: Religion and Politics in the Progress of 1578’

Professor Peter Davidson and Dr Jane Stevenson (Aberdeen):

• 'Elizabeth's Reception at Bisham (1592): Elite Women as Writers and Devisers'

Dr Elizabeth Goldring (Warwick):

• ‘Portraiture, Patronage, and the Progresses: Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the Kenilworth Festivities of 1575’

Dr Felicity Heal (Jesus College, Oxford):

• ‘Gift-Giving and Hospitality on the Elizabethan Progresses’

Dr Elizabeth Heale (Reading):

• 'Contesting Terms: Loyal Catholicism and Lord Montague's Entertainment at Cowdray, 1591'

Dr Gabriel Heaton (Sotheby's):

• ‘Elizabethan Entertainments in Manuscript: The Harefield Festivities (1602) and the Dynamics of Exchange’

Dr Siobhan Keenan Morley (De Montfort):

• ‘Royal Entertainments at the Universities: Playing for the Queen’

Professor James Knowles (Keele):

• ‘‘In the purest times of peerless Queen Elizabeth’: Jonson and the Politics of Caroline Nostalgia’

Dr Hester Lees-Jeffries (St Catherine's College, Cambridge):

• ‘Location as Metaphor in Elizabeth I's Coronation Entry (1559): Veritas Temporis Filia (1559)’

Professor CE McGee (Waterloo):

• ‘Mysteries, Musters, and Masque: The Import(s) of Elizabethan Civic Entertainments’

Mr Julian Pooley (Surrey History Centre):

• ‘A Pioneer of Renaissance Scholarship: John Nichols and the Progresses of Queen Elizabeth’