Elizabeth the Queen

Elizabeth the Queen (1930), a drama by Maxwell Anderson. [Guild Theatre, 147 perf.] The aging Queen Elizabeth (Lynn Fontanne) has fallen in love with her young, handsome courtier Robert Devereaux (Alfred Lunt), the Earl of Essex. While he is away on an Irish campaign, Sir Walter Raleigh (Percy Waram) and Lord Cecil (Arthur Hughes) conspire to make the Queen doubt not merely his love but his loyalty as well. To test Essex, the Queen orders him to disband his army. He does, after which Elizabeth has him arrested and sentenced to death. She calls him to her, hoping he will plead for mercy and forgiveness, thereby allowing their romance to resume. But the proud, stubborn Essex refuses and is sent to his death. Alone, Elizabeth laments that she is old and only Essex's love could have given her a breath of youth. Brooks Atkinson hailed the Theatre Guild production of the blank‐verse tragedy as “magnificent drama. It is a searching portrayal of character, freely imaginative in its use of history, clearly thought out and conveyed in dialogue of notable beauty.” The play was revived successfully in 1961 with Eva Le Gallienne and in 1966 with Judith Anderson, and a well‐received mounting by Washington's Folger Theatre in 2003 demonstrated that the script's potency has not waned.