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Elizabeth Rex
Based on the original stage production at the Stratford Festival of Canada, directed by Martha Henry.In this daring and original production of Timothy Findley's Governor-General Award-winning play, William Shakespeare and the formidable Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, are brought together in a remarkable encounter on the night of April 22, 1616.
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First published December 31, 2000
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About the author
Timothy Findley
57 books356 followersTimothy Irving Frederick Findley was a Canadian novelist and playwright. He was also informally known by the nickname Tiff or Tiffy, an acronym of his initials.
One of three sons, Findley was born in Toronto, Ontario, to Allan Gilmour Findley, a stockbroker, and his wife, the former Margaret Maude Bull. His paternal grandfather was president of Massey-Harris, the farm-machinery company. He was raised in the upper class Rosedale district of the city, attending boarding school at St. Andrew's College (although leaving during grade 10 for health reasons). He pursued a career in the arts, studying dance and acting, and had significant success as an actor before turning to writing. He was part of the original Stratford Festival company in the 1950s, acting alongside Alec Guinness, and appeared in the first production of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker at the Edinburgh Festival. He also played Peter Pupkin in Sunshine Sketches, the CBC Television adaptation of Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.
Though Findley had declared his homosexuality as a teenager, he married actress/photographer Janet Reid in 1959, but the union lasted only three months and was dissolved by divorce or annulment two years later. Eventually he became the domestic partner of writer Bill Whitehead, whom he met in 1962. Findley and Whitehead also collaborated on several documentary projects in the 1970s, including the television miniseries The National Dream and Dieppe 1942.
Through Wilder, Findley became a close friend of actress Ruth Gordon, whose work as a screenwriter and playwright inspired Findley to consider writing as well. After Findley published his first short story in the Tamarack Review, Gordon encouraged him to pursue writing more actively, and he eventually left acting in the 1960s.
Findley's first two novels, The Last of the Crazy People (1967) and The Butterfly Plague (1969), were originally published in Britain and the United States after having been rejected by Canadian publishers. Findley's third novel, The Wars, was published to great acclaim in 1977 and went on to win the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction. It was adapted for film in 1981.
Timothy Findley received a Governor General's Award, the Canadian Authors Association Award, an ACTRA Award, the Order of Ontario, the Ontario Trillium Award, and in 1985 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. He was a founding member and chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, and a president of the Canadian chapter of PEN International.
His writing was typical of the Southern Ontario Gothic style — Findley, in fact, first invented its name — and was heavily influenced by Jungian psychology. Mental illness, gender and sexuality were frequent recurring themes in his work. His characters often carried dark personal secrets, and were often conflicted — sometimes to the point of psychosis — by these burdens.
He publicly mentioned his homosexuality, passingly and perhaps for the first time, on a broadcast of the programme The Shulman File in the 1970s, taking flabbergasted host Morton Shulman completely by surprise.
Findley and Whitehead resided at Stone Orchard, a farm near Cannington, Ontario, and in the south of France. In 1996, Findley was honoured by the French government, who declared him a Chevalier de l'Ordre des arts et des lettres.
Findley was also the author of several dramas for television and stage. Elizabeth Rex, his most successful play, premiered at the Stratford Festival of Canada to rave reviews and won a Governor General's award. His 1993 play The Stillborn Lover was adapted by Shaftesbury Films into the television film External Affairs, which aired on CBC Television in 1999. Shadows, first performed in 2001, was his last completed work. Findley was also an active mentor to a number of young Canadian writers, including Marnie Woodrow and Elizabeth Ruth.
One of three sons, Findley was born in Toronto, Ontario, to Allan Gilmour Findley, a stockbroker, and his wife, the former Margaret Maude Bull. His paternal grandfather was president of Massey-Harris, the farm-machinery company. He was raised in the upper class Rosedale district of the city, attending boarding school at St. Andrew's College (although leaving during grade 10 for health reasons). He pursued a career in the arts, studying dance and acting, and had significant success as an actor before turning to writing. He was part of the original Stratford Festival company in the 1950s, acting alongside Alec Guinness, and appeared in the first production of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker at the Edinburgh Festival. He also played Peter Pupkin in Sunshine Sketches, the CBC Television adaptation of Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.
Though Findley had declared his homosexuality as a teenager, he married actress/photographer Janet Reid in 1959, but the union lasted only three months and was dissolved by divorce or annulment two years later. Eventually he became the domestic partner of writer Bill Whitehead, whom he met in 1962. Findley and Whitehead also collaborated on several documentary projects in the 1970s, including the television miniseries The National Dream and Dieppe 1942.
Through Wilder, Findley became a close friend of actress Ruth Gordon, whose work as a screenwriter and playwright inspired Findley to consider writing as well. After Findley published his first short story in the Tamarack Review, Gordon encouraged him to pursue writing more actively, and he eventually left acting in the 1960s.
Findley's first two novels, The Last of the Crazy People (1967) and The Butterfly Plague (1969), were originally published in Britain and the United States after having been rejected by Canadian publishers. Findley's third novel, The Wars, was published to great acclaim in 1977 and went on to win the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction. It was adapted for film in 1981.
Timothy Findley received a Governor General's Award, the Canadian Authors Association Award, an ACTRA Award, the Order of Ontario, the Ontario Trillium Award, and in 1985 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. He was a founding member and chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, and a president of the Canadian chapter of PEN International.
His writing was typical of the Southern Ontario Gothic style — Findley, in fact, first invented its name — and was heavily influenced by Jungian psychology. Mental illness, gender and sexuality were frequent recurring themes in his work. His characters often carried dark personal secrets, and were often conflicted — sometimes to the point of psychosis — by these burdens.
He publicly mentioned his homosexuality, passingly and perhaps for the first time, on a broadcast of the programme The Shulman File in the 1970s, taking flabbergasted host Morton Shulman completely by surprise.
Findley and Whitehead resided at Stone Orchard, a farm near Cannington, Ontario, and in the south of France. In 1996, Findley was honoured by the French government, who declared him a Chevalier de l'Ordre des arts et des lettres.
Findley was also the author of several dramas for television and stage. Elizabeth Rex, his most successful play, premiered at the Stratford Festival of Canada to rave reviews and won a Governor General's award. His 1993 play The Stillborn Lover was adapted by Shaftesbury Films into the television film External Affairs, which aired on CBC Television in 1999. Shadows, first performed in 2001, was his last completed work. Findley was also an active mentor to a number of young Canadian writers, including Marnie Woodrow and Elizabeth Ruth.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
August 23, 2018
“But inside this moment, you will always be present.”
If you enjoy reading plays, then “Elizabeth Rex” should make it onto your reading pile. This Canadian play written by the late Timothy Findley is a worthwhile read.
The premise takes its cue from a real event. On the eve of the execution of the Earl of Essex for treason, Elizabeth 1st called for a performance from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. We assume to distract her from the impending death of a man that many believe was her lover. We don’t know what Shakespeare’s company performed that night, we don’t even know if he was present, but Mr. Findley imagines a circumstance where some of the company are trapped on the palace grounds due to a curfew being enforced. The Queen spends the evening in their presence to divert her from doing what she wants to do, spare the life of the man she loves.
This play debuted at the Stratford Festival in Canada and was filmed as a movie for the CBC. I have seen that version (years ago) and liked it, but I found reading the play to be a much fuller experience. I would love to see it live one day.
Over the course of this evening the Queen, Shakespeare, and an invented character named Ned Lowenscroft (the fella who plays the leading female roles in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men) deal with issues of love, sexuality, identity, death and what it means to be a man or a woman. These are not easy subjects to address and in “Elizabeth Rex” this is not done in a heavy-handed manner, but often in a rather simple phrase or moment that can pass the casual reader by. This play does not announce with great pomp its “moments”. Rather, they just creep up on the characters (and you) and you stop and reflect, was that just significant? And in the play, as in life, who really knows the answer to that question in the immediate? At one point Elizabeth says with some resignation, and more than a little uncertainty, “So…here we are-in the moment”.
Act 2: Scene 9 of this piece is some excellent theatrical writing, and I was unexpectedly moved while reading it. As Ned and the Queen come to grips with the fates that await them (I won’t spoil what here) we see that universal human struggle of how to deal with this thing called life and all it throws at us. This play seems to say...take it, because it won’t always be there. As one character says, “To have been so alive!”
What a gift that is.
If you enjoy reading plays, then “Elizabeth Rex” should make it onto your reading pile. This Canadian play written by the late Timothy Findley is a worthwhile read.
The premise takes its cue from a real event. On the eve of the execution of the Earl of Essex for treason, Elizabeth 1st called for a performance from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. We assume to distract her from the impending death of a man that many believe was her lover. We don’t know what Shakespeare’s company performed that night, we don’t even know if he was present, but Mr. Findley imagines a circumstance where some of the company are trapped on the palace grounds due to a curfew being enforced. The Queen spends the evening in their presence to divert her from doing what she wants to do, spare the life of the man she loves.
This play debuted at the Stratford Festival in Canada and was filmed as a movie for the CBC. I have seen that version (years ago) and liked it, but I found reading the play to be a much fuller experience. I would love to see it live one day.
Over the course of this evening the Queen, Shakespeare, and an invented character named Ned Lowenscroft (the fella who plays the leading female roles in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men) deal with issues of love, sexuality, identity, death and what it means to be a man or a woman. These are not easy subjects to address and in “Elizabeth Rex” this is not done in a heavy-handed manner, but often in a rather simple phrase or moment that can pass the casual reader by. This play does not announce with great pomp its “moments”. Rather, they just creep up on the characters (and you) and you stop and reflect, was that just significant? And in the play, as in life, who really knows the answer to that question in the immediate? At one point Elizabeth says with some resignation, and more than a little uncertainty, “So…here we are-in the moment”.
Act 2: Scene 9 of this piece is some excellent theatrical writing, and I was unexpectedly moved while reading it. As Ned and the Queen come to grips with the fates that await them (I won’t spoil what here) we see that universal human struggle of how to deal with this thing called life and all it throws at us. This play seems to say...take it, because it won’t always be there. As one character says, “To have been so alive!”
What a gift that is.
November 18, 2021
The conceit of this play is really quite wonderful; unfortunately, I found the execution to be a bit more wanting. The dialogue is rather stilted, and often hard to parse, and the play really doesn't get going till the end of the first act, in which Elizabeth finally makes her plea to Ned that they each teach the other how to enact their true genders. I thought it might fare better in execution on stage, but there is an amateur production on YouTube that rather proves that not to be the case (although inadequate acting might be to blame there): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY9C6...
May 3, 2015
Beautifully written. Intellectual. Relevant. Would be an ambitious undertaking for any production company.
4.5/5
4.5/5
August 23, 2008
This play uses the Chamberlain's Men, Shakespeare, and Queen Liz to study gender roles and how different people approach death and forgiveness. While it is gender that this play seems to go after the strongest, it is how these characters react to death and loss that are the most affecting. Not a perfect play by far, but it plays with some very interesting and universal ideas.
March 27, 2020
Elizabeth Rex is yet another Canadian play I am dying to see. I've read it multiple times, watched a filmed adaptation of the original staging, but I missed seeing it on-stage the one year I had a chance because it was sold out. That's the story of my theatre going life.
I have so much to say about Elizabeth Rex that I don't have any idea where to start, and today the COVID isolation seems to have drained the energy that would allow me to do so. I promise to write something more the next time I read the play. Promise. Promise, promise, promise.
I have so much to say about Elizabeth Rex that I don't have any idea where to start, and today the COVID isolation seems to have drained the energy that would allow me to do so. I promise to write something more the next time I read the play. Promise. Promise, promise, promise.
December 31, 2021
This is an interesting piece. The play imagines the events that unfolded during an actual historical event ~ the night before Queen Elizabeth had Lord Essex -her lover - executed for treason! One of the characters in the play is William Shakespeare, and it finds the Queen trying to take her mind off what is about to happen the next morning. She ends up spending the evening hanging out with the Bard & Chamberlain's Men.
Lots of interesting gender exploration here. Since only men were allowed to perform at that time, the Queen offers to teach one of the actors (who always plays women) to be a man (which she feels she must be in order to rule effectively) if he will teach her to be a woman. I'd love to see it staged someday.
Lots of interesting gender exploration here. Since only men were allowed to perform at that time, the Queen offers to teach one of the actors (who always plays women) to be a man (which she feels she must be in order to rule effectively) if he will teach her to be a woman. I'd love to see it staged someday.
September 17, 2014
4 STARS
"Based on the original stage production at the Stratford Festival of Canada, directed by Martha Henry.
In this daring and original production of Timothy Findley's Governor-General Award winning play, William Shakespeare and the formidable Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, are brought together in a remarkable encounter on the night of April 22, 1616. The night the Queen's Lover will be executed, by the Queen's decree." (From Amazon)
A fabulous drama...I hope I get to see it on stage one day.
"Based on the original stage production at the Stratford Festival of Canada, directed by Martha Henry.
In this daring and original production of Timothy Findley's Governor-General Award winning play, William Shakespeare and the formidable Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, are brought together in a remarkable encounter on the night of April 22, 1616. The night the Queen's Lover will be executed, by the Queen's decree." (From Amazon)
A fabulous drama...I hope I get to see it on stage one day.
March 12, 2023
Elizabeth Rex, written by Timothy Findley, aims to question gender and sexuality among it’s characters. It is performed some time after a production of Much Ado About Nothing which was performed for Elizabeth the First. The play imagines a possible meeting between the two before the execution of the Earl of Essex, leaning on the knowledge that Shakespeare’s company did perform for her that night. The play features a fictional man, who played many of Shakespeare’s women. He and Elizabeth argue throughout, questioning why they can not accomplish what their assigned gender is expected to do.
Death is a very prevalent sub plot to this play, knowing that three of our characters are destined for death: Will(Shakespeare), Ned and the Earl of Essex. This play aims to discuss what their last moments may have been like along with the origin of Cleopatra and Atony. In Act One, we learn about our company members along with the upcoming execution. Near the end of the act, we are finally able to learn about Ned’s lover along with the continued love Elizabeth has for the man she is executing. In Act Two, Ned and Elizabeth try to teach each other how to be their assigned gender while struggling to give up the way they have always been. We end with them both seeming being able to deal with their pasts and the Earl is executed. We end the same way we started, with Will dying with this being something he wanted to remember.
If it was not obvious by the description above, this play has a lot of things happening in terms of dialogue. However, it is not one that I particularly liked due to it always feeling as though whatever the characters did had no actual consequence on their world. Even though Ned and Elizabeth are fighting to become more of themselves, there will never be any change as this play refuses to change history in any way or at least justify something that happens in history with something that occurs within this play. It just feels as though it would be a 2 hour play where they are talking about their regrets and pretty much nothing else.
This play heavily relies on some knowledge on Much Ado and it is meant to be played alongside that play. However, this play has a tough time getting off the ground. It took me till around Act One, Scene 8 to be truly interested in its plot and that was right before Act Two. My worry with this play would be that people would completely check out during scenes 1-7, enjoy scene 8, then you are already at intermission. Even if they came back, interested in the next act, I do not believe this play is good enough for me to believe that anyone would be enthralled by watching it.
Death is a very prevalent sub plot to this play, knowing that three of our characters are destined for death: Will(Shakespeare), Ned and the Earl of Essex. This play aims to discuss what their last moments may have been like along with the origin of Cleopatra and Atony. In Act One, we learn about our company members along with the upcoming execution. Near the end of the act, we are finally able to learn about Ned’s lover along with the continued love Elizabeth has for the man she is executing. In Act Two, Ned and Elizabeth try to teach each other how to be their assigned gender while struggling to give up the way they have always been. We end with them both seeming being able to deal with their pasts and the Earl is executed. We end the same way we started, with Will dying with this being something he wanted to remember.
If it was not obvious by the description above, this play has a lot of things happening in terms of dialogue. However, it is not one that I particularly liked due to it always feeling as though whatever the characters did had no actual consequence on their world. Even though Ned and Elizabeth are fighting to become more of themselves, there will never be any change as this play refuses to change history in any way or at least justify something that happens in history with something that occurs within this play. It just feels as though it would be a 2 hour play where they are talking about their regrets and pretty much nothing else.
This play heavily relies on some knowledge on Much Ado and it is meant to be played alongside that play. However, this play has a tough time getting off the ground. It took me till around Act One, Scene 8 to be truly interested in its plot and that was right before Act Two. My worry with this play would be that people would completely check out during scenes 1-7, enjoy scene 8, then you are already at intermission. Even if they came back, interested in the next act, I do not believe this play is good enough for me to believe that anyone would be enthralled by watching it.
February 15, 2021
I don't really read a lot of plays - prefer to see them performed - but this Findley play caught my eye due to the subject matter. On the eve of the execution of her lover, Essex, Queen Elizabeth I invites Shakespeare's players to perform. That is a true fact, but Findley has added an actor who specialized in playing the older, more substantial women in Shakespeare's plays. His character, Ned, is fictional, but presumably, there were such actors as women were not allowed on the stage. Shakespeare is present, and taking notes, as he is writing Antony and Cleopatra, basing some of the plot on the known facts for Elizabeth and Essex. Ned is dying of the 'pox' (syphilis). Elizabeth, who was traumatized by her father Henry VIII and his penchant for murdering his wives (her mother, Anne Boleyn among them), is dealing with Essex' betrayal and the fact that she has condemned him to death. Politically, she had no choice but to condemn him, but the decision had a huge personal cost to her. The play poses the conundrum that Elizabeth can teach Ned how to be a man, and Ned can teach Elizabeth how to be a woman.
I am not sure of the premise : Elizabeth was clearly working out major trauma throughout her life, so her failure to be 'womanly' seems to be a moot point. I think for a woman who was under attack from all sides, survival was the point. Having said that, it is a well-written and interesting play, sometimes funny, sometimes touching, written in Shakespearean style.
I am not sure of the premise : Elizabeth was clearly working out major trauma throughout her life, so her failure to be 'womanly' seems to be a moot point. I think for a woman who was under attack from all sides, survival was the point. Having said that, it is a well-written and interesting play, sometimes funny, sometimes touching, written in Shakespearean style.
November 24, 2025
i was supposed to read this over a year ago for my queer lit in canada course....better late than never, right? overall a very interesting concept with witty lined and committed character development! the exploration of themes such as sexual and gender identity, allusions to aids, and grielf & loss make this play inviting and emotional. i have learned over the years, though, that i'm not really the biggest fan of trading plays -- if i could see this on the stage it would be incredible. regardless, this was fun!
September 26, 2022
Excellent play! I’ve read a ton of plays for school and am a believer that plays should really be seen and not just read and this play is no exception to that. I found myself laughing out loud and i only wish to see it performed in some way one day!
Read
September 12, 2025Very much a part of that whole 1590s mythology. All kinds of secrets. All kinds of government agency. All kinds of challenges to who thinks what of whom. As ever, Shakespeare is involved, and nothing is exactly what it seems.
March 27, 2023
Not sure if it did what it aimed to but moved me nonetheless.
June 10, 2024
Very quick read and soooooo good. It felt very real. If you take gr12 English at Westmount, read this play for your isu.
June 10, 2010
This is a CBC Radio production of the play that asks the not-at-all musical question: "Does a gay guy who plays women on stage really know more about being a woman than an actual woman?" The answer, of course, is heck, no! Gay men are not transsexuals; they are men, and they understand as men. This play is actually rather a good illustration of this.
I once saw this on CBC television. Well, glimpsed actually, it was done with an all-male cast and bored me to tears. This production, directed by the distinguished Canadian actor Martha Henry, has the plus of featuring three roles for older female actors, rare indeed.
Set in a barn, the dying Shakespeare recalls another barn back in 1603 on the night between Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. A younger Shakespeare and a not-so-merry band of players spend the hours after a performance of Twelfth Night in the company of the ancient Queen Elizabeth I, awaiting the cannon-fire that will signal the execution of the Earl of Essex.
My elder daughter studied this as part of her AP Grade Twelve literature course. Times have changed. There is no way I would have been permitted to study something like this in high school. Full of death, dying, sexual innuendo and ambiguity, I wonder what a class of seventeen-year-olds was able to make of the tale, told by and about much older people who, unlike teenagers (no matter how jaded), have done much and seen more. Much of the play concerns a confrontation between Elizabeth and player-of-female-roles Ned Lowenscroft who is dying of the pox. It's a clash of arrogance against arrogance. Elizabeth believes she knows about being a man (hence "Elizabeth Rex") and Lowenscroft thinks he can instruct Elizabeth in being a woman.
It's a bit over-the-top, but that's an acting community for you. It is cleverly done and not soon forgotten.
I once saw this on CBC television. Well, glimpsed actually, it was done with an all-male cast and bored me to tears. This production, directed by the distinguished Canadian actor Martha Henry, has the plus of featuring three roles for older female actors, rare indeed.
Set in a barn, the dying Shakespeare recalls another barn back in 1603 on the night between Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. A younger Shakespeare and a not-so-merry band of players spend the hours after a performance of Twelfth Night in the company of the ancient Queen Elizabeth I, awaiting the cannon-fire that will signal the execution of the Earl of Essex.
My elder daughter studied this as part of her AP Grade Twelve literature course. Times have changed. There is no way I would have been permitted to study something like this in high school. Full of death, dying, sexual innuendo and ambiguity, I wonder what a class of seventeen-year-olds was able to make of the tale, told by and about much older people who, unlike teenagers (no matter how jaded), have done much and seen more. Much of the play concerns a confrontation between Elizabeth and player-of-female-roles Ned Lowenscroft who is dying of the pox. It's a clash of arrogance against arrogance. Elizabeth believes she knows about being a man (hence "Elizabeth Rex") and Lowenscroft thinks he can instruct Elizabeth in being a woman.
It's a bit over-the-top, but that's an acting community for you. It is cleverly done and not soon forgotten.
May 9, 2013
A well-written, emotional play about Elizabeth I wanting to be entertained (read: distracted) by Shakespeare's acting troupe on the eve of the Earl of Essex's beheading.
I read it because I'm working at Bard this summer and it's one of the plays that we're putting on. I think it has a lovely contrast between the character Ned, who is the leading lady actor in Shakespeare's plays and therefore knows how to act more feminine, and Queen Elizabeth I, who is a monarch and needs to take on the roles of a king and therefore acts more masculine. The two try to teach each other to feel more in line with their sexes as they face some life-changing events.
It's a nice look into the feelings behind Elizabeth I's choices, especially since the Earl of Essex was considered one of her favourites and a potential suitor (if not an actual lover). But she has one backbone considering she executes him for treason.
The only thing I didn't like is the presumption that Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex really did do the boom-diggity as that is not fact, nor that Shakespeare was super in love with Southampton as that hasn't be proven either. I guess if you're taking the lives of people and making them into fictional versions, then I guess you're allowed artistic licence to do that. Either way, it`s canon in Findley's head, but it's not in mine.
I read it because I'm working at Bard this summer and it's one of the plays that we're putting on. I think it has a lovely contrast between the character Ned, who is the leading lady actor in Shakespeare's plays and therefore knows how to act more feminine, and Queen Elizabeth I, who is a monarch and needs to take on the roles of a king and therefore acts more masculine. The two try to teach each other to feel more in line with their sexes as they face some life-changing events.
It's a nice look into the feelings behind Elizabeth I's choices, especially since the Earl of Essex was considered one of her favourites and a potential suitor (if not an actual lover). But she has one backbone considering she executes him for treason.
The only thing I didn't like is the presumption that Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex really did do the boom-diggity as that is not fact, nor that Shakespeare was super in love with Southampton as that hasn't be proven either. I guess if you're taking the lives of people and making them into fictional versions, then I guess you're allowed artistic licence to do that. Either way, it`s canon in Findley's head, but it's not in mine.
February 10, 2012
Another Canadian play analysing Shakespeare. I swear that as a nation we Canadians are just obsessed with the bard, and when we write plays about him, they always end up sweet valentines like Goodnight Desdemona. But this one is particularly sentimental, a play about a heartbroken Elizabeth the First and a dying 'boy' player that takes place within the mind of William Shakespeare himself.
I'm spending a huge amount of time rereading this play because of my drama course, and I can honestly say that it stands up to rereads, which is fortunate for me. I recommend it to anyone who also has the unique Canadian Shakespeare fixation.
I'm spending a huge amount of time rereading this play because of my drama course, and I can honestly say that it stands up to rereads, which is fortunate for me. I recommend it to anyone who also has the unique Canadian Shakespeare fixation.
April 19, 2012
Amazing play. His use of prose is hard to beat. I would say he might be the only author who could get away with so beautifully twining different Shakespeare quotes and exerts together to really drive home the impact of the story of Elizabeth I and his fictional character of Ned. It moved me to tears by the end.
November 20, 2025
Such a rich text and comical tragic characters abound. Some say that it does not find ground until the end of the first act but then we would miss the playbof relationships and the impending climax would not be hit well. First class.
October 20, 2013
If you love Elizabeth, if you love Shakespeare, if you love GREAT theatre, if you love those stories and plays that touch the soul, teach the heart, and stir the mind....Read it. You won't be sorry. (and the DVD of the stage play is Breathtaking!)
December 2, 2009
Really fantastic play; I wish I could have seen it performed.
May 2, 2012
Shakespeare and his actors spend the night with Elizabeth the night before Essex is beheaded. Well written, great language, but I wasn't moved enough to really care.
Want to read
August 6, 2014Saw the play at a local Shakespeare Festival- outstanding! Looking forward to reading the play.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews