The 2nd Earl of Essex and the history players : the factional writing of John Hayward, William Shakespeare, Samuel Daniel, and George Chapman

Abstract

s last favorite and the last man she executed for treason, has been harshly treated by posterity.Given his leading role at court in what Patrick Collinson calls the "nasty nineties," Essex has taken much of the blame for the divisive factional politics of Elizabeth's final decade.However, leading recent efforts to salvage Essex's reputation, historian Paul Hammer has uncovered a sophisticated bureaucracy operated by highly educated scholars and led by an intelligent, cultivated statesman.A considerable number of high-profile literary figures, moreover, willingly engaged with this ambitiously expanding Essex faction.This thesis proposes that evidence of interference by the censor and the Privy Council, sensitive to a politicized historiography promoting the Earl's interests chiefly on London's stages, discloses the presence of a loose, autonomous federation of