Elizabethan

The first performance of The Tempest on record was at court on All Hallows’ Day, on November 1st 1611.

Lauren Kassell reveals how the casebooks, diaries and diagrams of the late-16th-century astrologer Simon Forman provide a unique perspective on a period when the study of the stars began to embrace modern science.

Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros reveals the tragic fate of Christopher Saxton's beautiful and deeply influential sixteenth-century Atlas of the counties of England and Wales. 

Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros reveals the tragic story of torture and martyrdom which inspired Robert Persons' book De persecutione Anglicana libellus quo explicantur afflictiones in the collections of the London Library.  

Stephen Alford admires a perceptive article on Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I’s ally and consummate political fixer, by the distinguished Tudor historian Joel Hurstfield, first published in the 1956 volume of History Today.

Joel Hurstfield's pen portrait of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520-98) appeared in History Today in December 1956.

Retha Warnicke investigates one of the key questions of Tudor England.

Sexually explicit jigs were a major part of the attraction of the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration stage, as Lucie Skeaping explains. 

Sarah Gristwood on the complex issues raised by the restoration of a remarkable Tudor vision of victory over the Spanish Armada.

Ian Friel argues that popular ideas of the nature of Elizabethan seapower are distorted by concentration on big names and major events. Elizabethan England’s emergence on to the world stage owed much more to merchant ships and common seamen than we might think.

Patrick Williams provides us with the results of the latest research on the Armada

Michael Morrogh shows that Renaissance men like Sir Walter Ralegh had a decidedly darker side.

R.E. Foster emphasises the threat to Elizabeth’s regime.