Process Conversations
   Director Lucy Smith Conroy
   Lettice and Lovage's Lettice Douffet, Patricia Hodges
by Ben Calvert, Production Dramaturg

Royal Departures
by Ben Calvert, Production Dramaturg

Peter Shaffer
A biography of the Lettice and Lovage playwright

A Recipe for Potato and Lovage Soup

A Glossary of Key Architectural Terms

Royal Departures
Mary Stuart: Queen of Scots
Charles I of England
Marie Antoinette
by Ben Calvert, Production Dramaturg

Lettice Douffet and Lotte Schoen embark on a new friendship forged through their love of larger-than-life historical figures. Here are some highlights of true royal “spunk” that Lettice and Lotte discuss in the play.

MARY STUART: QUEEN OF SCOTS
(1542-1587)

“Remember that the theatre of the world is wider than the realm of England.”
–Mary Queen of Scots

Mary Stuart was born at Linlithgow Palace on 7 December 1542, the daughter of James V of Scotland and Mary of Guise. After nineteen years of imprisonment for an alleged plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, Mary was executed by beheading. As she faced her execution, her maids undressed her. She regarded the executioners and onlookers, saying with a smile on her face that she never had such grooms to make her unready, and that she had never put her clothes off before such a company. Her jewelry was confiscated. The confidence and regal demeanor on the execution scaffold came from the surety that, among her final prized possessions only two things could never be taken from her: her royal blood and her Catholic faith. The latter posthumously caused a stir among her English Protestant captors that she would be made a Catholic martyr. Among the prayers which would be her final words, Mary saw her death as something that would stand for something larger: “I thank God that He permitted that in this hour I die for my religion.” 

Rue not my death, rejoice at my repose
It was no death to me but to my woe;
The bud was opened to let out the rose,
The chain was loosed to let the captive go.
from Decease, release by Robert Southwell, S.J.
on the death of Mary Queen of Scots

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CHARLES I OF ENGLAND
(1600-1649)

Charles I was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. He famously engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England. As he was an advocate of the Divine Right of Kings, many in England feared that he was attempting to gain absolute power. It was ultimately his clash with Oliver Cromwell (the military leader and politician) that led to his forever being remembered as the Martyr King. His final address to his onlookers repeated his case, and aided his promotion as one who died for a firm and just cause for his subjects: “If I would have given way to an arbitrary way, for to have all laws changed according to the Power of the Sword [speaking of Cromwell’s control of the military], I needed not to have come here, and therefore I tell you ... that I am the martyr of the people.”

He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe’s edge did try;
Nor call’d the gods, with vulgar spite,
To vindicate his helpless right;
But bow’d his comely head
Down, as upon a bed.
from An Horatian Ode by English poet, Andrew Marvell

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“Monsieur, I ask your pardon, I did not do it on purpose.” –Marie Antoinette’s last words to her executioner, after stepping on his foot.

MARIE ANTOINETTE
(1755-1793)

Marie Antoinette was Queen of France and Archduchess of Austria; she was the wife of Louis XVI of France and mother of the “lost dauphin” Louis XVII. The French Revolution marked the end of a royal career. To prepare her for execution, a guard cut her hair (which had been famous for lavish hairstyles) and loaded her in a cart to be paraded around the streets of Paris. As she ascended to the guillotine, the priest who accompanied her said: “This is the moment, Madame, to arm yourself with courage.” To which she replied: “Courage? The moment when my troubles are going to end is not the moment when my courage is going to fail me.”

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