Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off

by Liz Lochhead

A modern classic about the bitter rivalry between Mary, Queen of Scots, and her cousin and fellow ruler, Elizabeth I of England - retold by Scotland's most popular playwright. 'Once upon a time, there were twa queens on the wan green island, and the wan green island was split inty twa kingdoms. But no equal kingdoms...' Mary and Elizabeth are two women with much in common, but more that sets them apart. Following the death of her husband, the Dauphin of France, the beautiful, and staunchly Catholic Mary Stuart has returned from France to rule Scotland, a country she neither knows nor understands. Ill-prepared to rule in her own right, Mary has failed to learn what her protestant cousin, Elizabeth Tudor, knows only too well - that a queen must rule with her head, not her heart. All too soon the stage is set for a deadly endgame in which there can only be one winner and one queen on the one green island. 'A triumph' the characterisations never slide over into caricature but are full-bodied, subtle, humorous and virile' Time Out

Genres: Plays, Drama, Scotland, Historical Fiction, Theatre, Read For School, Historical

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Liz Lochhead is a Scottish poet and dramatist, originally from Newarthill in North Lanarkshire. In the early 1970s she joined Philip Hobsbaum's writers' group, a crucible of creative activity - other members were Alasdair Gray, James Kelman, and Tom Leonard. Her plays include Blood and Ice, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (1987), Perfect Days (2000) and a highly acclaimed adaptation into Scots of Molière's Tartuffe (1985). Her adaptation of Euripides' Medea won the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award in 2001. Like her work for theatre, her poetry is alive with vigorous speech idioms; collections include True Confessions and New Clichés (1985), Bagpipe Muzak (1991) and Dreaming Frankenstein: and Collected Poems (1984). She has collaborated with Dundee singer-songwriter Michael Marra.

In January 2011 she was named as the second Scots Makar, or national poet, succeeding Edwin Morgan who had died the previous year.

Reviews

[Girl with her Head in a Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my full review: http://girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk/2...

For the 2015 Reading Challenge, one of the categories is to read a play. As it happened, I already had a copy of Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off waiting to be read but still I couldn’t help but feel that it Wasn’t Quite Right – reading a play? While at university, I have even had mini rants about reading Shakespeare – you never even get half of the point of the play until you see it. I remember as a fourteen year-old having a moment of revelation at the Globe in London when I realised that Shakespeare had jokes that made me want to laugh out loud, something which had never been clear from just reading the text. I enjoyed Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off but feel more than anything that I would just like to see it. Reading a play is like reading a business proposal for a pop-up book – half of the fun is missing and with this play, so much of the action relies on the doubling and the accents, meaning that it relied particularly on the visual.

lochhead-mary-queenOriginally staged to mark four hundred years since the execution of Mary Stuart, Lochhead is very much embracing the idea of Mary Queen of Scots in pop culture rather than making any attempt to consider the period historically. I first became a fan of Lochhead after studying Rapunzstiltskin for GCSE – this was the very first poem I ever picked for Poetry Please. I was actually in St Andrews, the town of my alma mater, when I spotted the second hand copy of the play in Barnardos book shop. Based on the annotations which made comparisons to various other plays, I could see that it had made it on to the second year drama module, which was disappointing because there had been some pretty weird stuff on that course when I had to do it and I would have preferred to have studied Lochhead.

History is fascinated by the rivalry between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. Jane Austen ranted in Love and Freindship about how loathsome Elizabeth was for having killed her cousin, my own grandmother said that she could not ‘forgive’ Elizabeth for having done so. Lochhead notes herself that she and her play’s director had both grown up with received views of Mary Queen of Scots based on the communities they grew up in. Was Mary Stuart victim or truly culpable? Did she participate in the death of Darnley? Did she plot to overthrow her cousin Elizabeth? Truly, it is small wonder that the decision to behead was such a difficult one for Good Queen Bess since it has been a PR nightmare ever since.

The play is set up with both the leading ladies reversing to play the other’s maidservant in alternating scenes – so Mary is waited on by Bessie and Elizabeth has Marian. According to the cast list, even Darnley and Leicester were played by the same actor. Lochhead notes that Mary is intended to speak in Scots with a heavy French accent – another thing lost in merely reading a play. Episodic in feel, the play tries to capture snapshots from both women’s reigns, reminiscent of the opening passage of A Tale of Two Cities – two kingdoms together but not equal with two queens at war. Elizabeth takes on the masculine role, refusing feminine desires and espousing chastity while Mary finds herself a pawn between the men around her – Darnley, Knox, Rizzio, Bothwell – and thus meets her end.

This is about the myth rather than the facts and that is where the fun comes – it is not about the original story but what the story handed down has meant in our culture. The playground rhymes, the chants, the puns – the death of one woman four hundred and some years ago has meant a great deal down the centuries. It is her descendants who sit on our throne now, not those of Elizabeth so for all that she got her head chopped off, she has finished ahead somewhat on points. And now that I have finished this, I feel an urge to go to the theatre.

[Zoe de Wit · Rating 3 out of 5]

week 5 reading for scot lit, another play! this one i read alongside the recording of the play and found that to be very helpful, especially during the scots parts! a good play and justice for queen mary she was just a girl 🎀

[Alexandru-David Gogu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aye, I canny read this book's accent. It was good book all throughout, however - a powerful feminist message about power relations is weaved into the the plot and even the dramatic techniques the play employs.

[Jessie Betts · Rating 3 out of 5]

probably a 2.5 for me but i'm in a kind mood today

[Elle Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do I get a Glaswegian raven

[Hameedat · Rating 3 out of 5]

for Scot lit 🙃

[Demi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the story of Queen Mary of Scots and Queen Elizabeth the 1st. It’s one of my favourite parts of history. This was a very quirky rendition of the story. I loved the Scottish dialect. I think my family might be worried about me now though since I’ve spent the last few hours reading aloud in a Scottish accent!!!!

[Elisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

what the f did i just read

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely brilliant play by the Scottish playwright Liz Lochhead. One of the things I found most striking about this play is the doubling of characters, and the quick transitions between monarchs and servants--in the scenes where Mary is queen Elizabeth plays her servant Bessie, and when Elizabeth is queen Mary plays the servant Marian. Corbie facilitates the transitions between the scenes (though she loses control of the plot toward the end of the play) altering the actors from monarchs to servants and back again. This suggests a mirroring of the changing landscape of monarchical authority through the Tudor and Stuart periods.
The big caveat to this play is that if you do not understand Scots this play will be very difficult to read (large sections are written in a dialect that is basically a form of Scots, but with most of the non-English vocabulary toned down).
https://youtu.be/ETi-RprPUso

[ML Character · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a college student at the Edinburgh Fringe I saw a Liz Lochhead Medea in which Medea was Scottish and I was still so new to theatre (compared to now at least) I tended to just love things. Well, not entirely true. On the next trip there was a Spanish production of the Barbarian something or other (Chronicles?) and we alllll walked out of it. But anyway-- I was excited to find another Lochhead play in a charity shop and now I've finally read it- and the Scots brogue is still great, and there is smart and interesting casting/role play, and interesting staging ideas in here. And I may even have learned a few more details about the life of Mary Queen of Scots. Actually, I'm talking myself into giving it one more star. It's fine- it might even be nice. It's also sort of... arcane? Sort of, well, yeah and so what, I guess.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this quite hard to read sometimes because of the local dialect but it was very good.

[Jack Sprat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evocative, heart-breaking in places.

[Keerthi Vasishta · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is funny and intriguing, though unless familiar with Scottish history, dialect and an appreciation of the politics of the region, it might be almost impossible to get through it.

[Robbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for First Year.

[Roberta Suárez]

noentendí perdón

[Joyce Meijs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book, loved the accents. Quite some humor is used, paints quite an unfavorable picture for most characters. Yet this is the charm of the play.

[Ella Bonelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I studied history

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for college. Fun and creative take on history/myth.

[Alexandra]

I'm really bad at reading Scots... DNF.

[sacha · Rating 4 out of 5]

when i did scottish history at uni last year mary and the stewarts was probably my favourite bit. this is a very different telling of those events. in some ways i think it was more accessible than old history textbooks but other times it took me a while to try and work out the scots, something i'm usually fine at given i'm surrounded by it/use some of the words myself. i liked the last scene where all the characters were brought into a modern playground setting. i think this play humanises mary and elizabeth, giving them dialogue and actions that help you understand things a little better.

i have no idea how to tag this

[Candy Wood]

Like Howard Brenton's Anne Boleyn play, this one (written much earlier) encourages viewing characters from English and Scottish history in a 21st-century light. Now I would like to see it performed--the Scots spelling of much of the dialogue sometimes makes for puzzling reading, and it's hard to visualize the shifts where the actor playing a queen becomes a commoner (and back). Interesting take on the relationship between the two queens, Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, and what they have meant in England and Scotland ever since.

[Kaysy Ostrom · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with most plays, reading it just does not do it justice. I found it fascinating though at times difficult because I'm neither familiar with Scottish history nor Scots speak. However, I thought it was well written and a brilliant concept. I'd love to see it live!

[Flora · Rating 2 out of 5]

probably one that will get better after it’s explained in the scot lit lectures but i really just didn’t get the point