Topical theatre and 1605–6: ‘Remember, remember the fifth of November’

Abstract

On Tuesday 5 November 1605, Guy (Guido) Fawkes was discovered in a vault beneath Westminster along with sufficient explosive materials to blow up and obliterate not only the Houses of Parliament but also a considerable amount of the surrounding area and its resident population. A narrative was subsequently uncovered of conspiratorial plotting in London inns and of the renting under false identities of rooms and houses in which to store gunpowder and other materials with which to create a terrorist explosion, and from which to dig the underground system through which to reach their target. What had been uncovered was the so-called ‘Gunpowder Plot’, a supposed conspiracy of fundamentalist Catholics to undermine the heart of government and along with it the security of the reign of the recently new King of England, James I, who had acceded to the throne from his kingdom in Scotland just two years earlier (see Figure 8). The impact of the ‘Plot’ finds direct modern parallels in an event like the London Tube bombings of 2005 which continues to circulate in both the popular press and public memory many months and even years afterwards.