King's Head Research Articles

MONGOLS "IMAGINARY HERALDIC" IN FRENCH MEDIEVAL MINIATURES

The study of images is the path leading to an understanding of the value system of medieval man. If in the study of Christian ideas about the Mongols, historical and literary works were given some attention, then iconographic documents were often used only as illustrations to the text and were considered as something secondary. One of the poorly studied topics is the study of «imaginary heraldry», which was given to the Mongols by French miniaturists of the XIV-XV centuries. The research is based on the approach of the American art critic, M. A. Camillus, which involves the study not of what was «really», but of what was brought into the situation described by medieval scribes. The model of our analysis of the content of miniatures is based on the methodology of the German researcher Erwin Panofsky, according to which the analysis of miniatures takes place in three stages: 1) pre-iconographic description; 2) iconographic analysis; 3) iconological interpretation. Our research is based on French manuscripts containing images of the Mongols with various heraldic symbols, written evidence, numismatic and cartographic sources. During the work, it was noted that the Mongolian heraldry is presented in the format of shields and banners. Each element has its own color – red, orange, blue, yellow. The following heraldic signs were identified: a dragon, a six-pointed star, a crescent, a two-pronged tamga, a «king's head», lilies, a «star of David», various geometric shapes of figures, etc. It was also determined that the image of heraldic symbols on the miniatures carries a certain symbolism – social and ethnic. With the help of «imaginary heraldry», Christian miniaturists defined the place of the Mongols in the social stratigraphy or emphasized ethnicity.

Thematic Review of the Royal Hunt on the Sassanid Silver Plates: Emphasizing the Roundabout of the King's Head

Metalworking is among the arts that have been considered for its unique features throughout history. Perhaps one of the most important reasons for using it a lot is its stamina and more durability than other materials. Another thing to consider about this is technology and the use of metals, which Iran has a valuable background in this regard. Lorestan bronze are a prominent example of this. One of the most important periods in the use of metals is the Sassanid era, during which the period of art also flourishes. Sassanid art can be considered an important part of Iran and even the world. This art period is a bridge between pre-Islamic and post-Islamic periods in Iran. During the Sassanid Empire in Iran, many silver dishes have been made in Iran, some of which has still been remained. Many of these containers are made of precious metals to symbolize strength and credibility. One of the most important drawings used in these containers is the picture of hunting and its role and related topics. Hunting in the pre-Islamic era was one of the best works and honors of the kings, because one more thing in Sassanid art is the attempt to show the holiness and authority of the kings of this era; which has been shown in the use of designs such as the roundabout of the king's head or magnifying the king's image. In this paper, by presenting examples of silver Plates that includes the role of hunting of kings, it has been tried to introduce and examine these cases.

Early Modern Migration from the Mid-Wales County of Radnorshire to Southeastern Pennsylvania, with Special Reference to Three Meredith Families

In 1971 the Honorable Thomas M. Rees of California observed that "very little has been written of what the Welsh have contributed in all walks of life to the shaping of American history." In 1979 historian David Galenson maintained that "the issue of the composition of America's early immigrants is an impor-tant one and will continue to receive considerable attention from historians who seek to understand the social and economic history of colonial America." However, Douglas Greenburg's examination of the historiography of the middle colonies revealed that Pennsylvania, which witnessed the immigration of many early modern Welsh Quaker migrants, has not attracted as much attention from researchers as has its neighboring states.

Jaime I el Conquistador: Imágenes medievales de un reinado (review)

Reviewed by: Jaime I el Conquistador: Imágenes medievales de un reinado Alexander Ibarz Serrano Coll, Marta . Jaime I el Conquistador: Imágenes medievales de un reinado. Zaragoza: Institución "Fernando el Católico" (Colección de Letras), 2009. 311 pp. ISBN 978-84-7820-946-0 This book collects in one place the identified and identifiable images of Jaume I of Catalonia-Aragon (reigned 1213-1276) and studies them as a whole. By far the most famous scion of the House of Barcelona, this king's conquest of the three kingdoms of Mallorca, Valencia and Murcia won him renown during his lifetime. His legacy as a lawgiver and his reputation as a wise ruler would seem to explain [End Page 215] why his image became so celebrated. Until now, the mythology of Jaume's imago regis has not been the object of a general study, and Serrano Coll breaks new ground by putting together this collection, arranged around themes of kingship, war, law and piety. The corpus studied, comprising more than sixty works in total, includes miniatures, coins, seals, sculptures, murals and paintings from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. The public persona of the monarch that can be rescued from this miscellany is heterogeneous, reflecting different views of kingship and changing perceptions and uses of the king's image over time. The collective memory that these images depict is necessarily a partial one, but in its partiality, Serrano patiently reveals its value. The book opens with the king's coronation in a masterpiece of Gothic illumination from 1334 (Llibre de franqueses i privilegis del regne de Mallorca, f. 113v). Serrano views the image of Jaume being crowned by angels in the iconographical tradition of a "coronación simbólica"; historians as well as art historians will doubtless find interesting what she adds to the wider discussion by drawing attention to the discrepancies and convergences between the iconographie representation and the description of the event in Desclot's and Jaume's chronicles. Ch. 2 leads us to the image most widely known, the king's head on coinage (33-40). We learn that Jaume hardly innovated, though he did substantially need to increase the pool of currency at the disposal of his rapidly expanding realms. The numismatic evidence suggests a continuity with the fashion styled in the reign of his father, Pere I (1196-1213). The anverse shows the monarch's head portrayed in the style of the conventional images used on earlier coins. The reverse of a series of cruciferous coins reveals a typological specification relative to Jaume's kingdoms: a square cross for Catalonia; a processional cross for Mallorca and Valencia, with floral patterning; and a double or patriarchal cross of Byzantine provenance for Aragon. The seals (40-57) share with the coins stylistic continuity with earlier regal iconography. On the anverse of his seals Jaume is portrayed seated on a rather ornate carved wooden throne that shows clear signs of French influence. He is holding the orbus cruciger in his left hand. In his right a sword lies across his lap, replacing the sceptre that adorned his father's seals. The reverse of the seals portrays a helmeted king on horseback in battle armour, with a lance bearing toward a Marian star. Pere I's iconography of kingship had strongly played up his papal coronation. Jaume was not crowned by the Pope because of his unwillingness to acknowledge any feudal [End Page 216] suzerain. Interestingly, the Marian star adorning his seals reflects the sense of religious devotion and mission which characterized much of Jaume's monarchy. As seals were reissued periodically to reflect the incorporation of new conquests, the stylistic evolution of Jaume's regnal iconography can be traced in some detail (41). In ch. 3 the theme is the king as legislator, and the material illustrates the enduring legacy of statehood. In a number of legal texts from the fourteenth century, the king's image is used repeatedly to show his authorship of legal statutes. As Serrano explains, Jaume's laws were regarded with reverence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and, as many historians have sensed, his reign was looked upon with such...

Oedipus, Suez, and Hungary: T. S. Eliot's Tradition and The Elder Statesman

On a scale of bangs and whimpers, S. Eliot's dramas have been regarded as inclining toward the less explosive end. From The Rock in 1934 to The Elder Statesman in 1958, Eliot's attempts to rehabilitate verse drama in English theater have been seen as brave but inherently challenged, and ultimately unavailing. There have been honorable exceptions to this critical consensus, and most recently at the Donmar Warehouse in London, a creative, theatrical effort has been made, in the form of a T. S. Eliot to refute and even replace it. (1) This festival was refreshing not least because it did not seek to justify itself with explicit reference to any historical abacus of centenaries or other anniversaries. More compelling, though, was the extent of the dramatic offerings, as the festival not only staged The Family Reunion, but also theatricalized some of Eliot's more strictly poetic works, such as The Waste Land and Four Quartets, as rehearsed readings. In its effort to promote Eliot's dramas, and others of his works, as dramatic, the festival had more history on its side than the received critical wisdom about these plays suggests. The Cocktail Party, also presented as a rehearsed reading at the Donmar, and The Confidential Clerk enjoyed some significant commercial success, as well as critical acknowledgment, when they were first produced in 1950 and 1953 respectively. There was one play, however, that garnered no such accolades at its premiere and that the Donmar's Festival did not include. (2) This play was The Elder Statesman, which nonetheless put in an isolated appearance in 2008 as a rehearsed reading at the King's Head, Islington, where it was performed by the theater group Primavera, as part of its series of Forgotten Classics. (3) Unlike the efforts at the Donmar, however, this brave attempt required the pretext of a fiftieth anniversary. As the fourth and final instance of the English drawing-room dramas that were Eliot's favored generic template, The Elder Statesman was singularly unfortunate in its timing: in 1956, just two years before its premiere, John Osborne's Look Back in Anger had opened in London, triggering a revolution in British theater that probably served to obscure retrospectively even the mixed success of Eliot's drama. (4) The elder statesmen meet the angry young men. (5) But another historical intersection will be the subject of this essay, and it is one that Robin Grove has observed independently: For the close of the 1950s, the plot could hardly be more old-fashioned. Europe may have torn itself apart, Hungary be crushed, Soviet and American empires threaten each other with destruction, Suez heap humiliation on top of dishonour, and Macmillan (1957) have come to power in a year of unprecedented industrial non-cooperation, but not a tremor from public event disturbs the protected milieux of the play. (6) Against this backdrop, of course, Look Back in Anger itself looks not just parochial but also bathetic. Whereas Grove asserts a disjunction between this context and Eliot's play, I propose a conjunction. And the pressure to do so may well derive from our recent historical vantage. As the fiftieth anniversary of Suez impinged on the public consciousness, there were articles in the news media that took this opportunity to plot the vicissitudes of the special relationship between the UK and the USA. (7) My argument about the play will be that it articulates a vision of loving inclusion that extends beyond the characters into an allegory of how European, and more widely Western culture retains its historical and transatlantic integrity, specifically after the Suez Crisis and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. This cultural tradition thus compensates for political division among those parties that share in the tradition and externalizes that division by emphasizing where this sharing ceases to apply, namely in the Second and Third Worlds. …

Byron's Manfred and the King's Head: Having Words with Bodies

Byron's Manfred was staged in a single performance of a 'rehearsed reading' at the King's Head Theatre, London in March 2007. Poised dynamically between theatrical production and closet reading, this rehearsed recitation played creatively into the critical debate about Byron's dramas as requiring one or the other mode of reproduction. This hybrid staging of Manfred also recast this theme of reproduction in the terms of incarnation and resurrection. These terms, charged here with an irony derived from Frankenstein, served to amplify within Byron's dramatic text the comic critique of the post-Waterloo resurrections of both Napoleon and the Bourbons. The thrust of this critique is that such resurrections do not derive from any intrinsic power incarnated in these political figures but rather from the rhetorical power accorded to them by an audience. Reception rather than inception is the prime mover here. The rehearsed reading went a stage further, by applying a similar critique to Manfred itself. Playing up the Orphic contours of Manfred resurrecting Astarte, the reading sought to shift the balance of poetic power from the text to the collectivity of the players and the audience. Collective, public reading contested the closet of Orphic poetry as much as it challenged the spectacle of political theatre.

Byron's <i>Manfred</i> and the King's Head: Having Words with Bodies

Byron's <i>Manfred</i> and the King's Head: Having Words with Bodies

Foucault, Discipline andRaison d’Étatin Early Modern Europe

At certain points in his work, Michel Foucault gives the impression that disciplinary power is antithetical to sovereign power. In the confrontation between Hobbes’ Leviathan and Bentham's Panopticon, Foucault (1980:102, 121) urges eschewing the model of Leviathan and cutting off the king's head. However, in his research on “governmentality,”Foucault (1991, 2000) dispels the impression that disciplinary and sovereign power are antithetical, suggesting instead that they “can only be understood on the basis of the development of the great administrative monarchies” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Foucault 1991:102–103). In this essay I wish to sketch some of the intellectual terrain on which this art of government takes shape; namely, seventeenth century theories and practices of state absolutism. I argue that Foucault's historical research into confinement, discipline, and governmentality may be fruitfully conjoined with intellectual histories and state-building literatures to develop a fuller account of the historical emergence of the early modern states-system's distinctive political rationality—raison d'État (reason of state)—and its relation to the fashioning of subject-citizens in response to Europe's wars of religion.

The King's Head Theatre, London

The King's Head Theatre, London

Cutting off the King's Head: Foucault's Society Must Be Defended and the Problem of Sovereignty

What we need, however, is a political philosophy that isn't erected around the problem of sovereignty.... We need to cut off the King's head: in political theory that has still to be done. Michel Foucault, Truth and Power (1977) Foucault's concern with the problem of sovereignty has been known to his Anglo-American readership for some time. However, it is only with the recent translation of his oft-cited College de France lecture series Society Must Be Defended that we are in a position to engage with the full extent of Foucault's explorations in this area. In this article I argue that Society Must Be Defended is an important and sophisticated text for beginning to understand the complexity of sovereignty as an intense site of political and philosophical problems. The lectures form a timely and badly needed contribution to a resurgent but largely unsatisfactory critical-theoretical debate on sovereignty. This debate has no doubt gathered momentum in response to the violent and contentious assertions of sovereignty invoked since September 11, 2001, in the name of antiterrorism and the on Sovereignty has once again been brought to the fore as a pressing contemporary problem, given practices of exceptionalism, imperialism, and the resurgence of Carl Schmitt as the theorist of these problems posed in their starkest terms. Rather than interpret the lectures as an addition to the entire Foucault oeuvre therefore, I wish to argue that Society Must Be Defended is in its own right an extremely important text for thinking about the enduring politico-theoretical problematic of sovereignty. I will offer a reading of Society Must Be Defended that both challenges the existing readings of Foucault on the problem of sovereignty and highlights the paucity of the post-9/11 sovereignty debate. This, I hope, will help open up a more sophisticated understanding of sovereignty as a site of intense politico-theoretical problems. 9/11 and the Exception: Agamben, Schmitt, and Benjamin Before discussing Society Must Be Defended, I want to lay out the basic terms of the recent critical theoretical debate on sovereignty. Giorgio Agamben can be credited with explicitly linking the problem of sovereignty with the problem of the exception, preemptively capturing in theoretical terms much of the sovereigntist logic that is being played out in post-9/11 world politics. The exception has become an especially sharp political concept that is being used to characterize and critique the contentious political practices undertaken since 9/11 in the name of the so-called war on terror. These practices include the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the internment of foreign terrorist suspects in Belmarsh Prison in London, the extrajudicial killing of terrorists by the United States in third countries, (1) the preemptive war in Iraq, the use and sanction of torture by Western states, (2) the discriminatory treatment of Muslims, a tightening of asylum and immigration procedures in Europe. (3) ... The list goes on. In Homo Sacer, Agamben aligned the contemporary sovereignty debate across two theorists in particular: Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin. (4) Although by no means exhaustive choices, Schmitt and Benjamin have come to be considered as two of the most incisive expressions of the problem of sovereignty and sovereign exceptionalism. In Schmitt's very sharp terms, Sovereign is he who decides on the (5) For Schmitt, the very definition of sovereignty is the capacity to declare exceptions to the norm (of civil liberties, human rights, the rule of law, and so on). Agamben argues that Schmitt's uncompromisingly statist form of sovereignty is a conservative response to the apocalyptic conception of sovereign power that is posited by Benjamin. (6) In his Theses on the Philosophy of History, Benjamin argues that we have entered a period of history where the exception has become the norm, plunging us into a permanent state of exception. …

The King's Head

The King's Head

Burke, Paine, and the Newspapers: An "Archaeology" of Political Knowledge 1789-93

The MURTHER took place at four o'clock this morning, and was conducted in the most private manner. The Guillotine was erected in ya court of the Temple--a hole was dug in it, into which the King's head fell, and his body precipitated afterward .... (This must be understood as the prevailing report of the moment. It is impossible vouch for its absolute truth.) This scene of infernal assassination, which a base and cowardly faction have now degraded human nature by executing calls for a marked execration which it is not in the power of language convey .... Almighty vengeance must be the portion of who have thus step by step arrived at this damnable crisis. To that awful moment, when the great King of Kings shall sit in tremendous judgement of men and daemons, do we consign the diabolic spirits. It will come, and in thunders speak terrors their hearts, now hardened in human iniquity. THIS DESCRIPTION OF THE FRENCH REGICIDE FIRST APPEARED IN THE St. James' Chronicle on 24th January 1793, and was copied during the next few days in a number of other pro-ministerial newspapers. Its publication was a few days after the execution of Louis Capet, and clearly uses and elaborates upon a rumor suit the political purposes of that newspaper; the French King, murdered at night, in private, the perpetrators using all the cunning of a villain in a Gothic novel keep their crime secret. The Gothic tropes are built up so that, despite the partially-admitted dubiousness of the narrative being reported, a number of eschatological prophesies are made about the results. Today we would probably respond this passage by claiming that it is journalism, as it draws conclusions from facts not yet established, and accepts rumor as fact simply because it suits a particular political agenda. Against this, intend in the following pages argue that the imagination of political action, in this case imagining the King's death, cannot be read as simply bad journalism in the early 1790s; that in fact the equivocal nature of political factuality and truth steins from the whole system of the representation of political events at this time, and that this act of creative imagining is one of the ways in which political activity could legitimately be construed during the 1790s. I hope you do not think me weak enough, wrote Burke in a letter of January 1790, to form my of what is doing here [i.e., in France] upon the representations of newspapers, much less upon of a country in which the true spirit of the several transactions cannot be known. (1) The letter was probably intended for Thomas Paine, or at least reads very like a reply a letter that Burke had received from him a few days before, in which Paine assumes of his addressee an over-reliance on the London press for knowledge of the situation in France. Paine had stated, in the English papers is either untrue or misrepresented (75). So the writers of the most famed political appropriations of the events of the French Revolution, upon which so much debate turned, did not think much of the reporting be found in newspapers. Instead, they claimed more privileged access information, Paine through his friendship with Lafayette and his late presence in France, Burke by a more general appeal men of quality, or, those who have a considerable share in the formation of public measures (79). You really shouldn't believe everything you read in the papers-hardly a surprising sentiment find in the correspondence of two men of letters and active politicians such as Burke and Paine. It is perhaps statements such as these, and also the apparent disparities throughout the eighteenth century between government policy and opinion as expressed in the newspapers, that have led certain historians claim that the influence of the press on political affairs at this time was strictly limited; that the newspapers were much more concerned with the commercial interests of their readers; that people in reality did not believe what they read, or that they did not form effective critical based on what they read; and even if they did, the executive powers worked in a rarefied world that was not influenced by, or rather did not need be particularly bothered with, the formation of outside a relatively small circle attached the court and the cabinet. …

The king's head

The composition of the battle of Til-Tuba from Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh is usually described as a relief depicting a recorded historical event. It is considered a good and solid example of the Assyrian concern with history and the Assyrian propensity for propagandistic depictions of current events. The scene, which is surely saturated in the ideology of empire, has already been discussed from that point of view. Is it true to the historical event? Is it an exaggeration? Did the Assyrians really do these things? How close or how distant is this depiction of the battle from the real historical event of war?The Assyrian method of representation is generally one that is attentive to minute details and concerned with ethnographic accuracy, even when the composition is hierarchical and representations of the body are stylised into abstract patterns. Realism is certainly a distinctive aspect of Assyrian narrative art and accurate details of dress and landscape were used to create what Roland Barthes would have called the effect of the real.

Den Falken im Nacken Statuentypen und göttliches Königtum zur Pyramidenzeit

Article Den Falken im Nacken Statuentypen und göttliches Königtum zur Pyramidenzeit was published on January 1, 2003 in the journal Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde (volume 130, issue 1).

David Pyke (1921-2001)

David Pyke was born in 1921, the year of the discovery of insulin. He became one of the world leaders in diabetes clinical research. He was consultant physician at King's College Hospital (1959–86) and head of the Diabetic Department (1971–86). His huge study of identical twins (concordant or discordant for diabetes) was known across the globe, and provided many new insights into the cause of diabetes and its complications. He also enhanced the care of diabetic women during their pregnancies, leading to a substantial improvement in foetal survival, and he was the first to attempt immunosuppression to try and abort the onset of Type 1 diabetes, subsequently demonstrated by others, although not yet established as a safe or effective treatment. He published two books on diabetes and edited two others, became chairman of the Medical and Scientific Section of the British Diabetic Association, and presented its most prestigious Banting Memorial Lecture (1985) and the equally important Claude Bernard Lecture of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (1979). David Pyke was a most enthusiastic teacher. His registrars gained great insights from his marvellous skills in writing and speaking: indeed, his rigorous preparation before all scientific meetings was legendary, albeit painful at the time. But there was much more. In 1975, David Pyke was appointed registrar of the Royal College of Physicians (the 40th registrar since 1579) and during the next 17 years greatly influenced its place in medicine in this country. He strongly believed that the College should have an important role in bringing together basic science and clinical medicine. He recorded his views of the medical scene during those years with wit and style in the College Commentary, and the edited version (Pyke's Notes, published by RCP) survives as his monument. He never really retired. In his later years he met and undertook some research with Professor Wilhelm Feldberg who had worked on nerve transmission many years previously with Sir Henry Dale. It was Feldberg's life story, his expulsion from Berlin by Hitler in the 1930s, which led David Pyke (jointly with Jean Medawar) to write his last book, Hitler's Gift, in which he described the extraordinary events surrounding the lives of Jewish scientists who had to leave Nazi Germany. This was published only a few weeks before his death and has already left a profound impression. David Pyke's enthusiasm, energy and good humoured wit have sustained countless friends, colleagues and patients over more than half a century. He never ceased to see the light side of events (see Pyke's Notes) and until his last days retained the ability to laugh heartily (at himself, too). He will be greatly missed by all those who have known and admired him, and valued the intensity of his friendship and his tremendous loyalty.

Power and Responsibility: Should We Spare the King's Head?

Michel Foucault calls for the head of the king in political theory. In doing so he seems to sever the concept of power from its relation to human responsibility. However, for theoretical ‘monarchists’ such as Stephen Lukes, the whole point of identifying a relationship of power is to fix responsibility for its exercise. Given the contingency of political action, I agree with Foucault that it is not always possible to attribute responsibility for the effects of power to a particular agent. However, Foucault stretches the concept of power too far beyond its ethical association with human responsibility. Consequently, the idea of power becomes practically meaningless.

The King's Head. Charles I: King and Martyr

The King's Head. Charles I: King and Martyr

'Poor Little Belgium' and Australian Popular Support for War 1914–1915

In The Man of Destiny, written in 1896, George Bernard Shaw has Napoleon proclaim, in a memorable speech, that: No Englishman is too low to have scruples: no Englishman is high enough to be free from their tyranny ... He is never at a loss for an effective moral attitude ... There is nothing so bad or good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles and cuts off his king's head on republican principles. His watchword is always puty; and he never forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the opposite side to its interest is 10st.1 After war broke out in 1914, Shaw wrote rather more cursorily: 'Our national trick of virtuous indignation is tiresome enough in peaceful party strife at home. At war it is ungallant and unpardonable'.2 On 4 August 1914 Britain declared war on Germany in response to Berlin's refusal to heed Britain's ultimatum that, unless it withdrew its demands on Belgium by midnight German time, the British would take 'all steps in their power necessary to uphold the neutrality of Belgium'.3 The British government went to war in the name of a principle. It was a principle that served them well in the absence of any further declaration of war aims until January 1918 but it was also a principle that disguised other more compelling interests to do with the maintenance of the balance of power in Europe, judged now to be essential to the continued existence of the British Empire.4 As Zara Steiner writes of the debates in the British Cabinet after 29 July: It was only after most of the waverers had reluctantly concluded that Britain had to intervene that men began to look for a pretext ... The issue of Belgium was all-important because the radical conscience needed a raison d' etre. Their followers could not be told that Britain had entered the war to uphold the balance of power ... ministers now

Hide and Seek: the Search for a Lesbian Theatre Aesthetic

Is there a specific lesbian theatre aesthetic? If so, is butch and femme at the heart of it? Or androgyny? Or the freedom-confinement dynamic? Or, on another level, distancing role from ‘essential being’, and ‘woman’ and ‘man’ as social constructs from male and female as biological entities? By focusing on a number of lesbian texts, including her own work, Nina Rapi explores both the theory and practice of an emerging aesthetic that reveals the ‘performance of being’, seeking to ‘shift the axis of categorization’, and so to create a new and exciting theatre language. Nina Rapi is a playwright and translator whose theatre work includes Ithaka (Riverside Studios, June 1989; Link Theatre, staged readings, April 1992; published in Seven Plays by Women, 1991), Critical Moments, a trilogy of shorts (Soho Poly Theatre, June 1990), Johnny Is Dead (First One Person Play Festival, Etcetera Theatre, March 1991), Dreamhouse (Oval House and Chat's Palace, April-May 1991), Dance of Guns (touring production, including King's Head and Jackson's Lane Theatres, April-May 1992), and Dangerous Oasis (Finborough, March 1993).

Richard Levin and In-Different Reading

ENRY VIII appears in a pose familiar from an earlier portrait, now at Windsor,' on a throne surmounted by the royal arms. Above the King's head is a rich canopy, and his feet rest on a glowing oriental carpet. The young Edward VI kneels beside the throne to accept the sword of state from his father. On the other side of the King, Mary Tudor and her husband, Philip of Spain, are accompanied by the god of war with sword, shield, and lance. The figure of Mars symbolizes the struggle against France, which was a consequence of Mary's Catholic alliance with Spain. Meanwhile, in front of Edward, a disproportionately large figure of Elizabeth leads Peace by the hand. Peace bears an olive branch and treads on a discarded sword, shield, and lance. She is followed by Plenty, who holds Elizabeth's train and carries a cornucopia. Roy Strong argues persuasively that The Allegory of the Tudor Succession was painted by Lucas de Heere in 1572 to celebrate the Treaty of Blois (fig. 1).2 But if the picture alludes to a specific historical moment, it does not portray one. Henry VIII wears the costume of the Windsor portrait; Mary and Philip are dressed for the 1550s; and Strong dates the painting partly on the basis of Elizabeth's surcoat, which closely resembles those worn in portraits of other court ladies in 1572-73, and was therefore evidently fashionable at that time. If Elizabeth's bodice is much the same shape as Henry VIII's doublet, and the same color, that detail adds to the political meaning of the picture, which does not, of course depend on the construction of an illusion that the spectator is witnessing a real event, or that the painting simulates a possible occasion. Henry VIII died in 1547; Mary married Philip during the year after her accession in 1553, on the death of Edward; Elizabeth became Queen in 1558. The mode of the picture is nonillusionist, too, in its mixture of historical, mythological, and allegorical figures. Mars, Peace, and Plenty are as substantial, as material, as Henry VIII and his heirs. On the other hand, they do not share the historical space of the human figures, who all belong, however severally, to the Tudor