“Elizabeth I (The Rainbow Portrait), attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, (circa 1602), oil on canvas. *Reproduced with the permission of the Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House. Image © Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, UK/Bridgeman Images.*

From upstart dynasty to Tudors Inc.

October 19, 2022

They weren’t England’s most successful dynasty. That distinction belongs to the Plantagenets some 300 years of brilliant, beautiful, bloody backstabbers who would’ve eaten the characters on “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragon” alive.

But in many ways the Tudors are as fresh and modern as the Windsors in everything from Lucy Worsley’s “Secrets of the Six Wives” docudrama series to Broadway’s “Six” to Starz’s “Becoming Elizabeth.” And that, as a fabulous, beautifully sited new exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan demonstrates, has as much to do with their ability to market themselves as it does with the history of their dynastic ambitions and complicated relationships.

‘Reign’ and the don system

November 10, 2015

Well, things are heating up on the CW’s “Reign” now that Catherine de’ Medici, the mother-in-law from hell, is back in her son Francis II’s somewhat good graces. Meanwhile, the plot thickens across the Channel as Elizabeth I entertains Don Carlo, heir to Philip II of Spain, as a possible husband – throwing the tortured triangle of herself, her soul mate Robert Dudley and Dudley’s scheming wife Amy into sharp relief along with Elizabeth’s ambivalence toward marriage. Good stuff.

In reality, Don Carlo – the subject of an equally fanciful opera by Verdi, “Don Carlos” – was not the dashing, romantic figure of Verdi or the TV series but a deranged hunchback who may have been killed by his own father, who was in tur once Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, the husband of her sister and predecessor “Bloody Mary” Tudor. And to make things even cozier, Philip ended up marrying Elizabeth Valois, daughter of Catherine de’ Medici and BFF of her sister-in-law, and Francis’ wife, Mary, Queen of Scots. ...

Shadow in the sun: The real Elizabeth I

October 19, 2015

Goodness, I don’t know how much longer I, an Elizabeth I fan, can hang with “Reign.”

This season, The CW series about Mary, Queen of Scots has introduced another nemesis apart from her ever-hating mother-in-law, Catherind de’ Medici – Elizabeth I of England.

But portraying Elizabeth as a mean girl is so limiting – particularly when the truth is more delicious than the fiction. ...

Queen sacrifice at Renaissance High: Catherine de’ Medici, Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots ‘Reign’

October 12, 2015

One of the guiltier guilty pleasures of TV, along with the evolution of Don Johnson’s hair on “Miami Vice” reruns – Has there ever been a more beautiful man and more shades of blond? – is The CW’s “Reign,” the story of Mary, Queen of Scots played out as if an American high school were staging a Renaissance drama. There’s lots of mean girls and good-bad girls bemoaning manipulative guys whom they would seek to manipulate in turn. Everyone talks about “cahstles” and “Frahnce” in plummy Brit accents that are phonier than $3 bills – even though the series is set mostly in France and Catherine de’ Medici, Mary’s ever-hating mother-in-law, was Italian. ...

A-Rod, Ray Rice and the game of ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’

February 18, 2015

Cue Connie Francis. In this “the winter of our discontent” – the season of 90-inch snowfalls, Southern ice, broken water pipes and equally shattered hearts – the lament of the woman with the catch in her voice and a torch-song life to match would seem most appropriate.

Really, it’s as if we’re all stuck in “Dr. Zhivago” – without Omar Sharif.

In this “region of ice” – thank you, Joyce Carol Oates – everyone is sorry. Ray Rice is sorry for cold-cocking his then wife-to-be, Janay Palmer, issuing an apology almost a year to the date of his Valentine’s Day (image) Massacre. (Could the holiday of hearts have been the inspiration?)

Hot on Ra-Ri’s Achilles heels comes A-Rod and his handwritten apology for steroid abuse and – the thing that always does you in more than the transgression itself – lying about it.

And speaking of lying, opprobrium and ridicule continue to snow down on disgraced anchorman Brian Williams for aggrandizing his role in the Iraq War – although Jerry Seinfeld’s line on the SNL 40th anniversary show about Williams being part of the original “Saturday Night Live” cast was one of the subtler digs. The irony is that the talk show-minded Williams probably counted as friends many of the people now making fun at his expense. Ouch.

Let’s just say Williams should be glad that he’s not A-Rod. The disdain heaped on him by The New York Times’ columnist Tyler Kepner is typical of the way in which the once and apparently future New York Yankee is now viewed. There are two schools of thought on this. One says that justice is justice and compassion, like patience, has its limits, particularly as said limited patience is often accompanied by the sneaking suspicion that the contrite are not all that contrite but actually seeking something less noble than the epic redemption found in Joseph Conrad’s “Lord Jim,” say like a return to the Yanks or the NFL. (It reminds you of the moment in “Gone With the Wind” in which Rhett Butler tells Scarlett O’Hara that she’s like the thief who isn’t sorry for what he’s done but is awfully sorry he got caught.) ...