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Part of the book: Engaging with Troy

Edited by Francesca Rayner and Janice Valls-Russell

Transcript 27

Legenda

RenaissanceEnglishDramaFictionopen

Abstract.  Jane Lumley (1537–78), born to a Catholic aristocratic family which flourished under Queen Mary, had access to the library which had formerly belonged to Thomas Cranmer. Possessed both of political and literary connections, she made a loose translation of Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Aulis which repositioned it as a story of early modern women. Uncomfortable echoes of the execution of Lady Jane Grey (1554) — Lumley’s cousin — and of the political fall of the Earl of Arundel — her father — would have lent an incendiary edge to this play, yet it seems to have been composed for performance, and not simply for private circulation. Lumley’s Troy echoes the physical geography of Nonsuch Palace, her home, in whose banqueting hall the work may have been performed — perhaps even before Queen Elizabeth on her royal progress.

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