THE PRINCE of the PURPLE THREAD

Book excerpt: Some great lives may be forgotten - others must be. ""Francis of Verulam is author of all the plays heretofore published by Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Shakespeare. Some are altered to continue the history.""(F.B.) Bigelow's play, inspired by the works of Comyns Beaumont; in particular, 'The Private Life of the Virgin Queen', uses material from the ciphers extracted by Owen, Donnelly, Dodd et al., to give a picture of the concealed prince and poet who should have been king, and the oppressive times in which he wrote, where artistic, religious, political and philosophical ideas were censored so strictly that Draconian laws were introduced to prevent the true situation being dramatically portrayed, to the extent that the lower classes were not allowed to wear aristocratic clothing, after the manner of the Roman laws concerning the Royal Purple. The would-be tyrannical nature of the Queen is eclipsed only by the Macchiavellian machinations of her chief ally, Robert Cecil.