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Insights
A Study Guide to the Utah Shakespeare Festival
Mary
Stuart

The articles in this study guide are not meant to mirror or interpret any productions at the Utah Shakespeare
Festival. They are meant, instead, to be an educational jumping-off point to understanding and enjoying the plays (in
any production at any theatre) a bit more thoroughly. Therefore the stories of the plays and the
interpretative articles (and even characters, at times) may differ dramatically from what is ultimately produced
on the Festival’s stages.
Insights is published by the Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 West Center Street; Cedar City, UT 84720. Bruce C.
Lee, communications director and editor; Phil Hermansen, art director.
Copyright © 2011, Utah Shakespeare Festival. Please feel free to download and print Insights, as long as you do not
remove any identifying mark of the Utah Shakespeare Festival.
For more information about Festival education programs:
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Mary Stuart
Contents
Information on the Play
Synopsis 4
Characters 5
Peter Oswald: Artist, Scientist, Translator 5
Life with Friedrich Schiller 7
Scholarly Articles on the Play
The Sins of Her Father 9
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Synopsis: Mary Stuart
Mary Stuart is imprisoned in England—nominally for the murder of her husband, Darnley, but
actually because she has pushed her claim to the throne of England currently held by her cousin,
Queen Elizabeth I. Even though Elizabeth ordered Mary’s imprisonment eighteen years ago, she
hesitates over signing her death sentence. She realizes that even though Mary, a Catholic, is a threat
to her Protestant throne, it may be even more dangerous to execute her, because of Mary’s many
friends and allies in Scotland and France. Mary, of course, hopes for a reprieve.
Mary soon learns that Mortimer, the nephew of one of her guardians, has converted to
Catholicism and is secretly working with her French friends for her release. This is a dangerous situation
for Mortimer, but may be Mary’s only hope to avoid the scaffold.
During all this, some of Elizabeth’s advisors are divided on how to deal with Mary. Lord
Burleigh, the high treasurer, tells Mary the execution should be carried out; the Earl of Shrewsbury
feels that the law has not been fairly applied; and the Earl of Leicester, who secretly supports Mary
and has joined with Mortimer, says the sentence should stand, but that there is no need for her
to die immediately. But, this is only some of the intrigue. Queen Elizabeth, herself, has also been
scheming to somehow have Mary executed or murdered without the blame falling on her.
In an effort to help Mary meet with the Queen, Leicester arranges for Elizabeth to “unknowingly”
walk by Fotheringhay Park when Mary happens to be walking there also. Finally, the two come
face to face for the first time. Initially Mary is restrained, but as the encounter progresses she grows
fierce and acrimonious, saying that Elizabeth has defiled the throne of England. Elizabeth and her
lords retreat without reply. Mary’s nurse, Hanna Kennedy, scolds her, but Mary is exhilarated by her
own performance.
To complicate matters further, Leicester is afraid his duplicitous support of Mary is about to be
discovered. To reestablish his own reputation, he has Mortimer seized as a traitor. To avoid incriminating
Mary, Mortimer kills himself in the arms of the guards.
Leicester, to even further move suspicion away from himself, declares that Mary should die. He
is sorely surprised, however, when Elizabeth instructs him to carry out the execution—to clear away
any lingering doubts concerning his allegiance.
A mob is in the street clamoring for the execution of Mary Stuart. Burleigh and William
Davison, the secretary of state, bring Elizabeth the death warrant to sign, but she is still apprehensive.
She considers the pressures on her from her people to execute Mary and from France, Spain,
and the Pope, to spare her life. She decides she can only be free when Mary is dead and signs the
warrant. She returns the death warrant to Davison, but is purposely ambiguous about whether he
is to hold the document or to have the execution carried out. Burleigh takes the warrant from him,
with plans to carry it out.
Mary, upon hearing of the impending execution, receives communion, makes her final requests,
and scornfully takes leave of Leicester.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, awaits news, exalting that Mary will soon be dead. Once the execution
is completed, Mary transfers the burden of responsibility to Burleigh and Davison. She banishes
Burleigh from her presence for not conferring with her about it, and she has Davison sent to the
Tower. Leicester has secretly left for France.
In short, Elizabeth is victorious and secure, but now utterly alone.
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Characters: Mary Stuart
Elizabeth: Queen of England
Mary Stuart: Queen of Scotland, a prisoner in England
Robert Dudley: Earl of Leicester
George Talbot: Earl of Shrewsbury
William Cecil: Lord Burleigh, Lord High Treasurer
Sir William Davison: Secretary of State
Sir Amias Paulet: knight, guardian of Mary
Sir Edward Mortimer: Paulet’s nephew
Count Aubespine: the French Ambassador
Count Bellievre: Envoy Extraordinary from France
O’Kelly: Mortimer’s Friend
Drugeon Drury: second guardian of Mary Stuart
Melvil: Mary Stuart’s house steward
Hannah Kennedy: Mary Stuart’s nurse
A Page
Sheriff
Peter Oswald: Artist, Scientist, Translator
By Ryan D. Paul
In the interest of full disclosure, languages have never been my strong suit. In fact, the only college
class that I took on a pass/fail basis was Spanish 101. After the first few weeks in the class, I
realized two things: first, if ever I found myself in a Spanish speaking country I could possibly locate
the library (La Biblioteca) but could not find the bathroom, and second, my GPA was under attack
by my lack of language skills. My personal failure at non-English comprehension only enhances my
respect for those insightful individuals who can not only speak another language, but rearrange the
characters so someone with my limited capacity can understand them. In other words—the translator.
Translation, like extreme paper airplane construction, is one of those mystic disciplines that
combine art and science. The translator not only has to understand the grammatical construction of
two different languages, but also has to recognize the subtle nuances that give language its meaning.
This is especially important when translating lyric, narrative or dramatic works. In our present day
lives, we often have no experience with the cultural cues that would evoke sobs of despair or guffaws
of laughter from past audiences. This season, the Utah Shakespeare Festival hopes to provoke both
those emotions as they present Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart translated from its original German
by Peter Oswald.
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Peter Oswald rose to prominence when Mark Rylance, the former artistic director of
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, saw Oswald’s version of the eighteenth century Japanese puppet
play Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards in 1996 and commissioned him to produce a play for
the Globe. The result, Augustine’s Oak, the story of St. Augustine and his 597 AD mission to reconcile
the Celtic Christians with Rome’s authority, proved underwhelming, but did not deter the
faith Rylance had in Oswald. The second play Oswald produced for the Globe hit the mark.
The Golden Ass, is a bawdy comedic tale about an “insatiably curious young man who, wishing
to turn himself into a wise owl, takes the wrong drug and finds himself transformed into an
ass.” The play, inspired by the second century Latin novel by Lucius Apuleius, became a hit with
both critics and audiences alike in the summer of 2002. Oswald’s star was on the rise; however,
theatre companies struggled with the poetic form with which he chose to write.
In a 2005 interview with London’s Guardian newspaper Oswald states: “I thought after the
success of The Golden Ass, theatres would be more interested in what I am doing. I was wrong.
I think it is partly that reading any play and knowing whether it is going to work on stage is hard
enough, but a verse play is harder still. It is another obstacle to getting a play on and it is exacerbated
because there are so few people around with the skills to read them—those skills have been
let slip.”
Verse drama is a form of dramatic expression in which the play is penned in such a way that
the lines are written in a poetic style. This tradition dates back to the ancient Greeks and went
out of style in the nineteenth century with the success of playwrights such as Ibsen and Shaw.
William Shakespeare produced his works at the height of the dramatic verse movement and, in
fact, contributed to much, if not all, of its popularity. Some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines
are written in this style. Test yourself and finish this quote: “Double double toil and trouble . . .”
So why did Oswald choose this form of what many audiences consider to be an inaccessible
way to dramatically communicate? Oswald states: “Even T.S. Eliot admitted that verse drama was
damned hard and said he thought you had to give your life to it. I do sometimes feel that there is
a deep-rooted unwillingness to really engage with it in theatre. People often seem to think that
what I am trying to do is re-create Shakespeare, which would be the worst thing imaginable. I am
not. I am trying to write contemporary plays that use iambic pentameter because to me it seems
like the most natural form to use. Its beat is the beat of a heartbeat, and at its best it stimulates the
listener’s heart. It is also free-flowing and in its metrical form it is very close to normal everyday
speech. Actors just love it.”
Imagine a playwright not only working to compose in dramatic verse, but also translating
the work of another, which of course brings us to Mary Stuart. Friedrich Schiller’s play of 1800
tells the story of Mary Queen of Scots and her rival Elizabeth of England. Although the fictional
meeting never happened, as Goethe said in anticipation of the 1800 production, “It will be good
to see those two whores alongside each other.” Oswald’s translation of Mary Stuart, written in his
characteristic style, a mixture of prose and poetry, opened in 2005 to rave reviews. It went on to
London’s West End and to Broadway where it received seven Tony Award nominations.
Peter Oswald continues to produce original works and translate the works of others. How
well does he do with Schiller’s Mary Stuart ? Find out this summer as “Heads will roll,” or as
Friedrich Schiller would say “Köpfe werden rollen.” In the interest of full disclosure, I Googled
that.
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Life of Friedrich Schiller
By Christine Frezza
Friedrich Schiller holds the same high place in Germany as William Shakespeare does in England:
every city seems to have a Schiller Street or place or square—there’s even a university named after him.
Although he lived for only forty-five years, Schiller crammed so many activities and experiences into his
existence that he might be said to have lived two if not three lives simultaneously.
Although many may never have read or seen a Schiller play before, his 1785 poem, Ode to Joy,
whose lyrics are part of the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony are recognizable to most of
the Western World.
Born in southwest Germany in 1759, Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller’s first desire was to
become a minister. Instead, however, he was sent to military school at the wish of his father’s patron,
the Duke Karl Eugen. There he studied the law, and when graduated moved to Stuttgart to study medicine,
which became his first career.
Schiller found a love for Shakespeare’s vitality in describing “the passions and secret movements of
the heart in the specific expressions of the persons” (Schiller, quoted in Williams, Shakespeare on the
German Stage vol. 1, p. 4) and incorporated his natural expressions in his own dramatic writings as a
rejections of the French stiff neoclassicism which was prevalent in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
In 1780 Schiller became simultaneously a doctor in the army and began the draft of his first
play, The Robbers. Nobody at first wanted to publish it or even perform it because of its provocative
nature. So Schiller published it anonymously at his own expense in 1781, and it was performed at the
Mannheim theatre in 1782.
The play was an instant sensation, and the director offered to produce any plays Schiller might
write in the future. The Robbers’ success came from not so much from its plot (the noble brother, falsely
disinherited, becomes a self-proclaimed Robin Hood) as the realization of the hero, Karl, that crimes,
even when committed for the best of reasons, do not make one a hero: “What a fool I was to think that
I could make the world a better place with horror and to uphold the law by breaking it,” (The Robbers,
V-2). Karl then turns himself in to the law’s punishment for his crimes.
To the horror of governments, and the delight of those rejecting neoclassicism, the dominant genre
in this Age of Enlightenment, young audiences were struck by the new spirit of Romanticism and
republicanism which was overtaking the arts, spurred by the American and French revolutions: “The
play’s critique of social corruption and its affirmation of proto-revolutionary republican ideals astounded
its original audience. Schiller became an overnight sensation. Later, Schiller would be made an honorary
member of the French Republic because of this play” (Wikipedia.org).
When the duke heard of the play’s success, as well as the fact that Schiller was now taking weeklong
trips to Mannheim to work with the theatre there, he put him in jail for two weeks, forbade him to
attend any more performances of the play, and limited him to publishing only papers on medical work.
Faced with putting an end to his creative writing, Schiller quit his job and moved to Mannheim,
where he continued to write plays, novels, histories, poems, and essays. Between The Robbers and
his final complete play, William Tell, in 1804, and taken in his entirety as an author, Schiller’s output
is prodigious and varied. He wrote six prominent plays, three histories, some novels and numerous
poems, as well as editing two literary journals and co-authoring poems with Goethe and adapting some
Shakespeare’s Macbeth for production at Weimar.
Between 1784 and 1805 (the year of his death) Schiller undertook a number of nondramatic
endeavors in several German cities. While he lived in Dresden and Leipzig (during 1785) Schiller
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founded the literary journal Rheinische Thalia, the first issue of which featured Act 1 of his play,
Don Carlos, as well as initial observations on the state of art and literature in Germany, which
would be transferred to his great philosophical works, the Aesthetic Education of Man, published
in 1794, and his essay On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry in 1795.
The year 1794 was the beginning of Schiller’s close and lasting friendship with Goethe, the
foremost German poet and dramatist of the period. The two collaborated to produce works which
strengthened the practice of Weimar Classicism, which Goethe had established in the 1770s. Briefly
stated, they wished to incorporate Greek classic ideals into a new form of literature which included
the passion of German romanticism and combined these apparently disparate views into an organic
while. To this end, they formed a network of scholars and artists, published a journal the Almanach,
and co-wrote poems and a few plays.
At Weimar, Schiller and Goethe joined in mutual expressions of their admiration for
Shakespeare, though they were both turning back towards a more classic approach “In November
1797 . . . Schiller [writes] to Goethe “In the last days I have been reading the plays of Shakespeare
which deal with the War of the Roses and now that I have finished Richard III, I am filled with true
amazement. No Shakespearean play has so much reminded me of Greek tragedy” (Schiller, quoted
in Michael Billington, The German Shakespeare [The Guardian, Jan. 29, 2005).
Enriched by such artistic and philosophical companionship and finally financially secure,
Schiller completed his great trilogy, Wallenstein, and Goethe produced it at Weimar, in 1799. In
quick succession, there followed the publication and production of Mary Stuart and The Maid of
Orleans.
His works have been translated many times, most frequently since the bicentenary of his
death in 2005. Several of them also have another life in Verdi’s operas: Luisa Miller, I Masnadieri,
Giovanni d’Arco, and Don Carlos, and at least a co-credit for Macbeth, which is largely based not
on Shakespeare’s original but on Schiller’s adaptation.
Friedrich Schiller died of tuberculosis on May 6, 1805 and is buried next to Goethe in Weimar
“guarding the ‘national’ theatre like two military heroes” (David E. John in Paul Kerry, Friedrich
Schiller: playwright, poet, historian, 181).
His lasting influence on theatre is perhaps best summed up in his own words: “The theater has
the power to punish the thousand vices which justice must patiently tolerate; the thousand virtues
which the latter must let pass without comment, on the stage are held up for general admiration.
And here, at its side, are wisdom and religion. From their pure fountain it draws its lessons and
examples, and clothes stern duty in charming and alluring robes. How it swells our soul with great
emotions, resolves, passions—what a divine ideal it sets up for us to emulate!” (Translated by John
Sigerson and John Chambless, Theatre considered as a Moral Institution, Schillerinstitute.org).
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The Sins of Her Father
By Diana Major Spencer
Like the Divine Retribution of Greek myth, Henry VIII so affronts the gods that their
vengeance pursues his heirs until the final mutual destruction of the last Tudors. Henry set the
scene for Frederich Schiller’s taut drama, Mary Stuart, through his Act of Supremacy (1534),
wherein he declared himself and his progeny supreme leaders of the church in England in perpetuity.
Henry’s older sister, Margaret, wife to Scotland’s King, disapproved. Among his children,
“Bloody” Mary remained devoutly Catholic in keeping with the heritage of her Spanish mother,
Catherine of Aragon. Between Henry’s death in 1547 and Mary Stuart’s execution in 1587, his
children and his sisters’ grandchildren swirled through a maelstrom of successional wrangling
caused less by their proportion of Tudor blood than by Henry’s restructuring of Cristendom.
To Catholics, Henry’s only sanctified wife was Catherine of Aragon; therefore, Catherine’s
daughter, “Bloody” Mary, was the only legitimate successor to the throne, followed by Mary
Stuart, the legitimate issue of Henry’s Scottish nephew, the late James V. Henry, however, declaring
daughter Mary illegitimate, specifically excluded her from succession, deeming his marriage
to Catherine “unlawful under God.” His son, Edward VI, as his short life ended, disowned both
his Catholic sister, Mary, and his Protestant sister, Elizabeth, also passing over Catholic cousin
Mary Stuart in favor of Protestant-leaning cousin, Lady Jane Grey.
“Bloody” Mary wrested the throne from Jane and reigned for five bloody years, poor Jane
among her casualties. Protestant Elizabeth became queen at Mary’s death in 1558, the same year
Mary Stuart married the Dauphin of France. Simultaneously Queen of Scotland, “legitimate”
Queen of England, and, at seventeen, Queen of France, Mary Stuart steadfastly refused to rescind
her claim to the English throne. Even so, she sought asylum in England in 1568 after being twice
widowed, forced from the Scottish throne, deprived of her infant son ( James VI), and imprisoned.
The events of Schiller’s play represent the last few days before her execution in 1587.
As the play opens, Mary Stuart, now age forty-four, is in her twentieth year of confinement in
England, still refusing to acknowledge Elizabeth’s sovereignty. Schiller introduces her through the
loyal eyes of Hanna Kennedy as guards ransack Mary’s quarters looking for evidence of “incitement
to civil war.” Then, “Enter MARY, veiled, a Crucifix in her hand,” leaving no doubt about
her religion, especially as she has asked “to be allowed the freedom to practice [her] religion but
. . . still denied the sacraments” and demanding “a priest of [her] own church.” “Can I imagine,”
she queries, “that she who has my crown and freedom, threatens my life, wants even to deny me
heaven?” (emphasis mine).
Schiller generates considerable sympathy for Mary in act 1, as she calms Hanna and explains
to Paulet (a knight entrusted with her care from 1585 until her death) the import of her just-discovered
letters to Elizabeth. She attributes this most recent assault to the ghost of her murdered
husband, for which she claims ongoing penance. Puzzlement supplants sympathy as Hanna excuses,
without denying, Mary’s horrible crimes as acts of youth, possession, passion, and her third
husband, Bothwell’s, seduction. Mortimer’s abrupt re-entry with fantasies of rescue, reinforced by
Mary’s link with Leicester, Elizabeth’s favorite, further sobers our compassion.
Mortimer (Paulet’s nephew), who presents himself publically as cold and aloof, reveals a
deeply passionate spirit who “left the frozen sermons of the Puritans and travelled to the land
of Italy” where he “never imagined [he] could feel so much.” “The church I was brought up in,”
he tells Mary, “hates the senses, bans the image, worships nothing but the abstract word.” Then
follows his ecstatic account of first seeing Mary’s likeness at the residence of her French uncle,
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a cardinal. “You are a Tudor,” Mortimer avers, “and the throne of England belongs to you, not to
this specious queen conceived by Henry in adultery, declared a bastard by her father.” Mortimer
describes his conversion to Catholicism as an aesthetic discovery and swears himself to Mary’s service—and
liberation. Mary Stuart suggests others he might recruit to the purpose.
Our compassion for Elizabeth is likewise ambiguous. In act 2, after Burleigh proposes the
execution of Mary to prevent more uprisings, Elizabeth seeks council from gentle Talbot, who contrasts
the queens’ respective childhoods in terms that also contrast Protestant austerity, reason and
duty against Catholic luxuriance, passion and desire: “No throne in sight for you,” Talbot comforts
her; “only your grave. God taught you harsh lessons in the Tower of London . . . You learned early
how to focus yourself, and hold true to what’s worth holding onto! No such luck for the other poor
royal girl. Shipped off to France as a child, to the gay life! Nobody around her ever sober for long
enough to teach her left from right. Addled by vice, swept downstream to destruction!” “I am not
like the Stuart,” Elizabeth confides later to Leicester, “who gave herself exactly what she wanted,
denied herself no pleasures, drunk a river of bliss! . . . [S]he declined the yoke I bowed to . . . I chose
the harder road of royal duty.”
Yet Elizabeth hesitates to act on Burleigh’s proposal to execute Mary Stuart, not willing to “tarnish”
her reputation—openly, at least. She signs Mary’s death warrant in the presence of her newest
and weakest official, Davison, but remains stubbornly vague about how he should handle it. After
Mary’s death, Elizabeth self-righteously condemns Davison to execution and Burleigh to exile,
though she was never explicit in her intent. Duplicitous Leicester slinks away to France.
The near-futile search for a persuasively straightforward human being in Schiller’s powerful
drama intensifies its emotional engagement. The honorable characters, as Schiller sees them, Paulet
and Talbot, have opportunities to violate their trust—through Burleigh and Elizabeth, respectively—and
both men, thankfully, refuse.
At the end of act 1, Burleigh challenges Paulet’s lack of attention to Elizabeth’s wishes: ”Is there
no one . . . she seems to be saying [emphasis mine], who can save me from this monstrous dilemma:
either to reign in fear forever, or to send a queen, my own cousin, to the block.” With sharper ears,
Burleigh continues, “capable of hearing unspoken orders,” Paulet could arrange for Mary to succumb
to some mysterious illness. But to his credit and the great relief of the audience, Paulet takes
a moral stand to “let no killer in here! While my household gods protect her, her life is sacred to
me—as sacred as the life of the Queen of England.” He is the last Englishman to show compassion
to Mary Stuart as she goes to the block.
Gentle Talbot voices sympathy and caution throughout. His sixteen-year tenure as Mary’s guard
is truncated, Burleigh suggests, by his compassion: “The lady was transferred from Shrewsbury into
the keeping of Sir Anias Paulet, in the hopes that—[unspoken hint to Paulet]” (act 1). Talbot pleads
for peace with both Mary and Elizabeth prior to their meeting in act 3. He cautions Elizabeth
against signing the death order. He goes to the tower to visit Mary’s secretaries, who admit to giving
false testimony against her. But too late: Burleigh has already set the execution in motion.
When the news of Mary’s death arrives, Talbot asks Elizabeth’s permission to retire. She pleads
with him to stay; he responds, “I lack the necessary flexibility . . . Live long, reign happily! Your
rival is dead. Nothing to fear now. Or respect” [emphasis mine].
Schiller portrays two powerful women, cousins, both flawed, both queens, both with understandable
claims to the crown of England, who struggle at the heart of a no-win plot of weakness,
manipulation, madness, cowardice, infidelity, avoidance, treachery, suspicion, attempted murder,
and religious conflict. At the end Elizabeth is sad and alone, childless, the sole surviving Tudor. The
sins of her father weigh mightily upon her head.
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