Quote by Allison L. Steenson

“In their fragmentary and miscellaneous way, the Hawthornden manuscripts provide information about the re-shaping of a British Marian myth after 1603, a complex process that involved re-negotiating older national narratives and that drew together the factious material written in the 1580s with more sombre recollections fit for the commemoration of a national figure. In a narrower sense, Fowler's papers offer material evidence of the nature and extent of circulation of Marian 'literary curiousities' among the London Jacobean elites in the first decade of Stuart rule; the loosely defined circles within which this material can be detected include people from different backgrounds, nationalities and social extractions, as a testament to the permeability of both Marian material and early seventeenth-century literary networks. By the end of the first decade of James's English reign, when much of Fowler's material was arguably collected, Mary's problematic memory had been finally tamed and the Queen of Scots had become a figure of misfortune rather than dissent.”

Quote by Allison L. Steenson