Lady Jane Grey, 16th-century claimant to the English throne, has left an abiding impression in English literature and romance. The limited amount of material from which to construct a source-based biography of her has not stopped authors of all ages filling the gaps with the fruits of their imagination.
InElizabethan ballads, Jane's story is a tale of innocence betrayed. In one ballad Lady Jane, in denouncing her executioner Queen Mary I, declares "For Popery I hate as death / and Christ my saviour love." Jane is now not only an innocent but a martyr to the Protestant cause, and appears as such in Foxe's Book of Martyrs. On no certain evidence, she was also idealised in another way by Roger Ascham as noble and scholarly. But the greatest Elizabethan tribute to her came in Thomas Chaloner's Elegy, published in 1579. Here she is peerless in her learning and beauty, comparable only with Socrates for her courage and quiet resignation in the face of death. He even suggests that she was pregnant at the time of her execution, an assertion that appears nowhere else, presumably to make Mary, the great villain of the piece, appear all the more heartless.
From martyrology and poetry, Jane finally made it on to the stage in the early Jacobean period in Sir Thomas WyattbyJohn Webster and Thomas Dekker, where she takes on the role of a tragic lover. The play was probably largely based on an earlier lost play called Lady Jane. This theme was taken up later in the century by John Banks, a Restoration playwright, in his Innocent Usurper: or, the Death of Lady Jane Grey. Here Jane is only persuaded to accept the crown after her husband, Lord Guilford Dudley, threatens to commit suicide if she does not. First printed after the Glorious Revolution, there is also a strong anti-Roman Catholic dimension to Banks's play, which presumably appealed to the audiences of the day.
More plays and poems followed in the 18th century, when a small Janeite industry began to take shape. In the early Hanoverian period she takes on the role of political heroine as well as martyr, scholar and tragic lover, putting down her Plato and taking up the crown only to save English Protestantism. The 1715 she-tragedy entitled Lady Jane Grey: A Tragedy in Five Acts, by Nicholas Rowe, emphasizes the pathos of Jane's fate. Jane's growing reputation was not just a popular phenomenon. Gilbert Burnet, Whig historian and self-publicist, described Jane, with considerable exaggeration, as 'the wonder of the age' in his History of the Reformation, a phrase subsequently taken up by Oliver Goldsmith his History of England, published in 1771. Even the sober David Hume was seduced by the tragedy of Jane and Dudley.
It was not until the early nineteenth century that John Lingard, a Catholic historian, ventured a word or two of counter-adulation about Jane, saying that she 'liked dresses overmuch', and reminding her promoters that she was only sixteen. However, her popularity as a subject for tragic romance increased even further in the nineteenth century, an age of mass printing, where her story appears in a variety of media, including popular magazines and children's books. The 19th century also saw several operatic treatments of her story, including Nicola Vaccai's 1836 opera Giovanna Gray.[1]
Jane was recast time and again to suit the inclinations of her audience. After the French Revolution, the evangelical movement alighted on her as a symbol, marked not for her romance but for her piety. In 1828 The Lady's Monitor declared that she inherited "every great, every good, every admirable quality, whether of mind, disposition, or person." The radical thinker and philosopher William Godwin called her "the most perfect young creature of the female sex to be found in history" in his own hagiography of Jane published under the pseudonym Theopilius Marcliffe. Mark Twain used Jane as a minor character in his 1882 novel, The Prince and the Pauper.
Jane Grey is the only English monarch in the last 500 years of whom no proven contemporary portrait survives.[2][3] A painting in London's National Portrait Gallery was thought to be Jane for many years, but in 1996 it was confirmed to be of Catherine Parr.[4] A portrait believed by some experts to be of Jane was discovered in a private home in 2005. Painted 40 to 50 years after Jane's death, the "Streatham portrait" (so called after the area of London in which it resided for decades) depicts a young woman dressed in a red gown, adorned with jewels and holding a prayer book.[2] Historian and Tudor specialist David Starkey is sceptical, "It's an appallingly bad picture and there's absolutely no reason to suppose it's got anything to do with Lady Jane Grey."[5] Another portrait, a miniature, was shown to the news media in 2007 by Starkey who stated that he was "90 per cent certain" that it is of Lady Jane Grey.[6] This painting had been discovered at the Yale Center for British Art in the United States of America.[7]
In 1833, Paul Delaroche created The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (le Supplice de Jeanne Grey), regarded as the most famous portrait of Jane, which depicts a clandestine execution in a dimly-lit room or dungeon. It is historically inaccurate in most respects and was influenced by the restoration of the French monarchy after the French Revolution. Jane is shown wearing a white garment resembling laced French undergarments, similar in colour to that worn by Marie Antoinette at her execution in 1793. Jane's actual execution took place in the open air of the Tower of London. Two years later, George Whiting Flagg chose to name his representation of a woman being blindfolded Lady Jane Grey Preparing for Execution rather than after Mary, Queen of Scots.
Giovanna Gray, a tragic opera (tragedia lirica) in three acts based on Jane Grey's last days, was composed by Nicola Vaccai, with a librettobyCarlo Pepoli. The opera premiered on 23 February 1836 at La Scala, Milan, with Maria Malibran in the title role. It was a failure at its premiere, and the work never entered the repertoire.
In reporting the poor reviews received by Giovanna Gray, the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris expressed astonishment that such an interesting and tragic subject had not been set by a composer capable of making it a dramatic success and suggested Meyerbeer, Rossini, or Halévy as possibilities.[8]
Several minor composers did subsequently attempt operas about Jane Grey but with little success.
Antonio D'Antoni composed a version in 1848 for the opera house in Trieste, but it was never performed.[9]
Timoteo Pasini's version, Giovanna Grey, set to a libretto by Giovanni Pennacchi, had a "triumphant" premiere at the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara in 1853 with Luigia Abbadia in the title role.[10] It was performed again in Jesi at the Teatro Pergolesi the following year, but did not remain in the repertoire.
Giuseppe Menghetti re-used Pepoli's libretto for his Giovanna Gray, which premiered in Trieste during the carnival season of 1859.[11][12]
Henri Büsser's Jane Grey premiered in 1891 and was soon forgotten.[9]
Arnold Rosner tackled the subject with The Chronicle of Nine, composed in 1984 to a libretto based on the stage play The Chronicle of Queen JanebyFlorence Stevenson. Excerpts of Rosner's work have been recorded.[13] Its premiere was presented in Boston by Odyssey Opera and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose. (Feb. 1, 2020). A complete recording of this production was released by BMOP Sound in 2021.
There have been three film versions of Jane's life, in which she has been played by:
In adaptations of The Prince and the Pauper she has been played by:
Jane was also played by Sarah Frampton in the BBC TV series Elizabeth R (1971).
In the BBC Radio 4 radio play The Nine Days QueenbyAmanda Whittington, the adult Jane was played by Loo Brealey and the child Jane by Agnes Bateman.
Jane also appears in two episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures, Lost in Time parts 1 and 2 which take place on her last day as queen. She is played by Amber Beattie.
Jane was played by Bella Ramsey in Starz’s Becoming Elizabeth in 2022. She is portrayed by Emily BaderinAmazon Prime Video series My Lady Jane, based on the historical fantasy novel of the same name by Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows.
Lady Jane Grey appears as a main character in Rosamund Gravelle's debut play Three Queens,[14][15] and first played by Martha Crow. Set in 1554 the play is about a fictional encounter between Queen Mary I of England, Lady Jane Grey and Princess Elizabeth Tudor, brought together by their cousin, Cardinal Reginald Pole, the night before Lady Jane Grey is due to be executed.
Sue Parrill and William B. Robison, The Tudors on Film and Television (McFarland, 2013). ISBN 978-0786458912.
