Cultural depictions of Lady Jane Grey

Lady Jane Grey Preparing for Execution, oil by George Whiting Flagg, 1835.

Royal claimant Lady Jane Grey has left an abiding impression in English literature and romance. The limited amount of material from which to construct a source-based biography of her has not stopped authors of all ages filling the gaps with the fruits of their imagination.

Pre-19th century

In Elizabethan ballads, Jane's story is a tale of innocence betrayed. In one ballad Jane, in denouncing her executioner Mary, declares "For Popery I hate as death / and Christ my saviour love." Jane is now not only an innocent but a martyr to the Protestant cause, and appears as such in Foxe's Book of Martyrs. On no certain evidence, she was also idealised in another way by Roger Ascham as noble and scholarly. But the greatest Elizabethan tribute to her came in Thomas Chaloner's Elegy, published in 1579. Here she is peerless in her learning and beauty, comparable only with Socrates for her courage and quiet resignation in the face of death. He even suggests that she was pregnant at the time of her execution, an assertion that appears nowhere else, presumably to make Mary, the great villain of the piece, appear all the more heartless.

From martyrology and poetry, Jane finally made it on to the stage in the early Jacobean period in Lady Jane by John Webster and Thomas Dekker, where she takes on the role of a tragic lover. This theme was taken up later in the century by John Banks, a Restoration playwright, in his Innocent Usurper: or, the Death of Lady Jane Grey. Here Jane is only persuaded to accept the crown after her husband, Lord Guilford Dudley, threatens to commit suicide if she does not. First performed after the Glorious Revolution, there is also a strong anti-Roman Catholic dimension to Bank's play, which presumably appealed to the audiences of the day.

Depiction of Lady Jane Grey being asked to take the throne, as imagined in the Romantic era. Engraving after Robert Smirke

More plays and poems followed in the 18th century, when a small Janeite industry began to take shape. In the early Hanoverian period she takes on the role of political heroine as well as martyr, scholar and tragic lover, putting down her Plato and taking up the crown only to save English Protestantism. The 1715 she-tragedy entitled Lady Jane Grey: A Tragedy in Five Acts, by Nicholas Rowe, emphasizes the pathos of Jane's fate. Jane's growing reputation was not just a popular phenomenon. Gilbert Burnet, Whig historian and self-publicist, described Jane, with considerable exaggeration, as 'the wonder of the age' in his History of the Reformation, a phrase subsequently taken up by Oliver Goldsmith his History of England, published in 1771. Even the sober David Hume was seduced by the tragedy of Jane and Dudley.

19th century to present

It was not until the early nineteenth century that John Lingard, a Catholic historian, ventured a word or two of counter-adulation about Jane, saying that she 'liked dresses overmuch', and reminding her promoters that she was only sixteen. However, her popularity as a subject for tragic romance increased even further in the nineteenth century, an age of mass printing, where her story appears in a variety of media, including popular magazines and children's books.

Jane was recast time and again to suit the inclinations of her audience. After the French Revolution, the evangelical movement alighted on her as a symbol, marked not for her romance but for her piety. In 1828 The Lady's Monitor declared that she inherited "every great, every good, every admirable quality, whether of mind, disposition, or person." The radical thinker and philosopher William Godwin called her "the most perfect young creature of the female sex to be found in history" in his own hagiography of Jane published under the pseudonym Theopilius Marcliffe. Mark Twain used Jane as a minor character in his 1882 novel, The Prince and the Pauper.

In painting

The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833) by French Romantic painter Paul Delaroche.

In 1833, Paul Delaroche created The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (le Supplice de Jeanne Grey), regarded as the most famous portrait of Jane, which depicts a clandestine execution in a dimly-lit room or dungeon. It is historically inaccurate in most respects and was influenced by the restoration of the French monarchy after the French Revolution. Jane is shown wearing a white garment resembling laced French undergarments, similar in colour to that worn by Marie Antoinette at her execution in 1793. Jane's actual execution took place in the open air of the Tower of London. Two years later, George Whiting Flagg chose to name his representation of a woman being blindfolded Lady Jane Grey Preparing for Execution rather than for Mary, Queen of Scots.

Jane Grey is the only English monarch in the last 500 years for whom no proven contemporary portrait survives.^[1][2] A painting in London's National Portrait Gallery was thought to be Jane for many years, but in 1996 it was confirmed to be of Catherine Parr, Henry VIII's surviving widow with whom Jane lived for a time.^[3]

A portrait believed by some experts to be of Jane was discovered in a private home in 2005. Painted 40 to 50 years after Jane's death, the 'Streatham Portrait' (so called for the area of London in which it resided for decades) depicts a young woman dressed in a red gown, adorned with jewels and holding a prayer book.^[1] The National Portrait Gallery came under fire after it purchased the painting for a rumoured £100,000 in 2006.^[2]

In 2006, Tudor historian David Starkey's interest was piqued by a miniature portrait of a young Tudor woman he found while leafing through a book of Tudor miniatures. Owned by Yale University's Yale Center for British Art, the miniature painting's details convinced Starkey the miniature is a portrait of Lady Jane Grey painted by Levina Teerlinc, Henry VIII's court painter.^[3] Other art historians and Tudor experts disagree with his conclusions.^[4]

In literature

• Karleen Bradford's novel, The Nine Days Queen, tells the story from Jane's perspective.
• Historian and novelist Alison Weir published a novel based on Lady Jane Grey's life, Innocent Traitor, in February 2007.
• Jane Grey appeared as a character in a Doctor Who short story entitled "Nine Days Queen", written by Matthew Jones for Dr Who: Decalog 2 (1995).
• Raven Queen by Pauline Francis, in which she is the central character. This novel, aimed at readers aged 12+ was published by Usborne Books on 12 February 2007, the 453rd anniversary of her execution.
• Jane appears as a character in at least three historical novels for young women: Mary, Bloody Mary and Beware, Princess Elizabeth, both by Carolyn Meyer, and Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor by Kathryn Lasky, part of the Royal Diaries literature series.
• Lady Jane Grey appears in Timeless Love by Judith O'Brien, a novel about a teenaged girl who is taken back in time to the reign of the young King Edward VI.
• The World of Lady Jane Grey is a historical fiction book by Gladys Malvern published in 1965.
• Ann Rinaldi's book, Nine Days a Queen, is a story told from Jane's perspective about her life from birth until her execution. In this, Jane Grey was reluctant to become queen, and believed that Mary would send a pardon just before her decapitation.
• Virgin and the Crab - Sketches, Fables and Mysteries from the Early Life of John Dee and Elizabeth Tudor, a novel by Robert Parry, 2009, places Jane as a significant character in many of the early chapters.
• In Lady in Waiting, a historical fiction novel written by Susan Meissner, antiques dealer Jane Lindsey discovers a ring inscribed with the name "Jane" that she believes belonged to Lady Jane Grey. The book alternates between modern-day New York and 16th century England as it relates the similar stories of modern Jane and Lady Jane Grey (the latter told through the view of her dressmaker, Lucy Day).

In film and television

There have been three film versions of Jane's life, in which she has been played by:

• Nina Vanna in the British silent film Lady Jane Grey; Or, The Court of Intrigue (1923)
• Nova Pilbeam in Tudor Rose (1936)
• Helena Bonham Carter in Lady Jane (1986)

In versions of The Prince and the Pauper she has been played by:

• Anne Howard in The Prince and the Pauper (1937)
• Jane Asher in The Prince and the Pauper (1962), part of the American TV series Disneyland
• Nádia Lippi in O Príncipe E o Mendigo (1972), a Brazilian TV adaptation
• Felicity Dean in Crossed Swords (1977)
• Sophia Myles in the British TV drama The Prince and the Pauper (1996)
• Perdita Weeks in the British TV drama The Prince and the Pauper (2000)

Jane was also played by Sarah Frampton in the BBC TV series Elizabeth R (1971).

Jane also appears in two episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures, Lost in Time parts 1 and 2 which take place on her last day as Queen. She is played by Amber Beattie.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Higgins, Charlotte (2006-01-16). "Is this the true face of Lady Jane?". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/jan/16/arts.research. Retrieved 2008-05-11. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Reynolds, Nigel (2007-06-03). "The true beauty of Lady Jane Grey". The Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1544576/The-true-beauty-of-Lady-Jane-Grey.html. Retrieved 2008-05-11. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Fellman, Bruce (May/June 2007). "Looking for Lady Jane". Yale Alumni Magazine. Yale University. http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2007_05/ladyjane.html. Retrieved 2008-05-11. 
4. ^ Ives, Eric: Lady Jane Grey: A Tudor Mystery Wiley-Blackwell 2009 ISBN 9781405194136 pp. 15–16, 295