| March 20 |  |
Editor says, what if the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the March 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
| Share this Article on: |  Facebook |  Twitter |
In 1606, five months after the Gunpowder Plot succeeded, the dramatically altered political context permitted the bard William Shakespeare to pen Henry VII, a biting anti-monarchist satire of the protaganist and his immediate successors.
The Bard writes Henry VIIWriting a century later, the play opens with a nightmarish vision of England in 1485, a country ravaged for decades by conspiracy, violence, murders, coups and countercoups. These conditions are favourable to the usurpation of the throne by the fugitive Henry Tudor, a false king favoured by luck, guile and ruthlessness.
Of course the foundation of the Tudor Monarchy was the intermarriage between the Houses of York and Lancaster, a union that might bring to an end the bloody century-long Wars of the Roses. But instead, the country had merely gained a controlling, paranoid and avaricious monarch.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Actors Source: Wikipedia Labels: William Shakespeare, Henry VII, Plays, Sonnets, Poem. Editor says, in reality Shakespeare never wrote Henry VII which is a glaring ommission in his portfolio. But in the counter-factual novel The Final Act Of Mr Shakespeare the author Robert Winder suggests ~ [London] is still reeling from the terrorist panic of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and fate soon forces him to take up his pen again. It was never possible to write about Henry VII while his granddaughter Elizabeth was Queen, but now he must. It is a perilous enterprise: King James I's spies are everywhere. In this reboot, the Plot has succeeded in some unspecified shape or form. We also explore original ideas from Thomas Penn's novel The Winter King.
~ He'd probably still get into lots of trouble, and IIRC Henry VII took the throne in 1485. Fixed - thanks. Ed
~ I think he might have been OK writing Henry VII because he had been gone for almost a century by 1606. Henry VIII, however....
~ If Black Adder has shown us nothing else, it's shown us that Henry Tudor was a real git!
~ Lots of potential for a Shakespearean portrayal of Bloody Mary, though he would have needed to watch his footing in the new Catholic England.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
