Tudors!A resource for teachers

Tudors! A resource for teachers Welsh National Opera 2

Killing Cousins is an interactive activity for a class of children and their teachers and classroom assistants. It isn’t a ‘performance’ to watch – it’s an exciting and entertaining adventure to be involved in.

This means that all the adults in the space we are using will also be involved in the process and there won’t be room for observers or audience. After the event there will be plenty of opportunity for the participants to share their adventure with other children, staff and parents.

Neither staff nor children need to have any special skills or experience at drama, music or singing. These will always be welcomed but are absolutely not a pre-requisite. We cannot overemphasise that there will be no performance to any outside audience and no embarrassment involved.

To help this project to be as absorbing and focussed as it needs to be to capture the imaginations of the children, can you make sure that the children and their teacher and assistants are uninterrupted during the running of the project.

This would mean no assemblies, please, for the class on those days and no staff or children called out for special lessons or duties. Can you also make sure that there are no visitors on those days or staff walking in and out of the spaces we are using.

The methodology used owes much to the work of two pioneers of drama and role play, Dorothy Heathcote MBE and Dr Sue Jennings, as well as the methodology of Alive and Kicking Theatre Company Leeds. aliveandkickingtheatrecompany.co.uk

Killing CousinsA pArticipAtory historicAl And musicAl Adventure for yeAr 5/6 primAry schools

Image © National Portrait Gallery, London

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There is no preparation other than as outlined below.

The Tudor MonarchsCan you check that the class have a simple overview of who the Tudor Kings and Queens were and what happened to them. If you have time you could also look at the basic religious differences and the arguments about who should be on the throne. The project will focus on Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots.

Christopher (Kit) Marlowe and William ShakespeareEveryone knows about William Shakespeare. You couldn’t get to year five without hearing his name and knowing he’s a famous playwright. They might even know something about him or one or two of his plays.

But they probably won’t know anything about Christopher Marlowe. Could you ensure the class know the basics about him, perhaps mention Dr Faustus and the ideas of summoning and necromancy - it’s quite exciting after all. And do tell them about how Christopher Marlowe died, a young man of 29 with a dagger in his eye – and how he might have been a spy!

Henry Percy, The Wizard EarlQuite a lot of people have heard about Doctor Dee, especially since there was that opera written by Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorrillaz and, of course there’s a lot about him in The Terrifying Tudors by Terry Deary. But there was another Tudor magician, a friend of Kit Marlowe, called Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, otherwise known as The Wizard Earl. The class just need to know that he existed and have some idea of how much the Elizabethans, and indeed Queen Elizabeth herself, were so into magic.They should also know how Henry Percy spent the rest of his life under suspicion for being a Catholic and, after the Gunpowder Plot, was imprisoned in The Tower where he spent 17 years of his life, only released shortly before his death.

The Babington PlotCan you tell the children the story of the Babington Plot and explain the background to it. A summary of the Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots conflict is included with this document, as well as an outline of the Babington Plot and a guide to where to look on the web for suitable resources.

Planning and evaluationsThere will be a twilight meeting with the teachers involved near to the first day of the project. It is important that the actual teacher and assistants of the class involved be at this meeting. We will evaluate with teachers after the project.

Preparation

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Day 1Classroom and a large uncluttered space such as a school hall. Because of the music and drama involved, echoing gyms should be avoided.

We will start in the morning with the class in their classroom and move to a hall after about 50 minutes. The class will return to their classroom after lunch and, after a while, move to the hall.

Day 2We will be at the stately home for half a day.

Between Day 1 and Day 2There will be tasks given to the class and their teacher and assistants at the end of Day 1, to be completed before Day 2. Details of these will be given at the twilight meeting. The tasks will take a couple of hours, so we ask that the teacher ensures, in advance, that there will be enough time for this.

Space for companyWe would like to have a changing room we can use as a base, close to the hall.

AssemblyAs already mentioned we request that assembly does not take place on the morning of our visits or, at least, that it does not take place in the hall or space we are using and that it does not involve the class taking part in the project.

BreaktimeDue to the flexible nature of the work, we request that break times be flexible for the class involved. They will not be taking a break at the usual school break time.

Risk assessmentThe children and staff will be asked to participate in a similar way to any practical, interactive drama, movement or PE lesson and the associated risks are as for those school activities.

The companyFor Killing Cousins: the project is produced by Åsa Malmsten, who will also be helping with the facilitation, and is directed by Rhian Hutchings. The facilitators are also the writer and composer of the story and music: Martin Riley and Helen Woods. They will be accompanied on Day 1 by Dyfed Wyn Evans and Dan Perkin and on Day 2 by Anitra Blaxhall, Amanda Baldwin, Chris Hodges - cello, Sarah Thornett - violin and Gillian Taylor - oboe. The set is designed by Charlotte Neville.

Space requirements

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The Hall or other spaceThe project starts in the classroom as soon as possible after registration but we ask that the hall be free at this time to enable the set to be constructed. It is very simple and will not involve the use of any stage.

ClassroomWhile this is happening the musician comes to the classroom and sets up a keyboard. The children stay at their desks and a small area is cleared at the front of the class.

When all is ready, Helen and Martin arrive and spend some time with the children and staff. During this time there will be introduction and storytelling and drama and singing and music. It will get quite noisy.

After about 50 minutes Helen and Martin and the musician move to the hall. The class wait ten minutes and then follow them down. This is the time when the class may wish to use toilet facilities as the next session will run without a break.

HallWhen the class is ready the teacher brings the children to the hall.

The facilitators will now continue the activity with the teacher and classroom assistants supporting the children and taking part.

The activity will continue up until a short time before lunch when the children will return to the classroom with their teacher. We cannot be precise but we anticipate there will be at least 20 minutes in the classroom.

We will take into account any time needed for setting up dinner tables etc. While the children are with their teacher in the classroom we will dismantle our simple set and move it out of the way of dinner tables as necessary. It will fit neatly into a corner or side of the hall or on a stage or in a cupboard.

Classroom before lunchTudor Dinner MannersThis will be a teacher led session. The class are encouraged to keep the Tudor theme going over lunch by behaving like Tudor ladies and gentlemen.A resource is provided that the teacher may use.

Lunch The class attempt some Tudor Manners.

AfternoonThe hall or other space.The project re-starts in the classroom as soon as possible after lunch. Meanwhile, in the hall, as soon as tables etc. are cleared in the hall our staff reconstruct the set.

ClassroomWhile this is happening the musician comes, once again, to the classroom and sets up the keyboard. As for the morning, the children stay at their desks and a small area is cleared at the front of the class.

When all is ready Helen and Martin arrive and spend some time with the children and staff. During this time there will be a recap of the morning’s activities and once more storytelling and drama and singing and music. It will get quite noisy again.

Again, after about 50 minutes Helen and Martin and the musician move to the hall. The class wait ten minutes and then follow them down. This is the time when the class to use toilet facilities as the next session will run without a break.

Day 1 At the school

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HallWhen the class is ready the teacher brings the children to the hall.

The facilitators will now continue the activity with the teacher and classroom assistants supporting the children and taking part.

The activity will continue up until a short time before the end of school. At the end the facilitators will leave the hall and the teacher will take the children back to their classroom.

They will have been given the task to complete by the time of the next session and can start on it immediately.

The tasks between sessionsThese will take a couple of hours minimum and time needs to be allowed for them in advance planning.

NB These tasks do not require previous preparation.

This will be a half day session, either a morning or afternoon, at a stately home as previously arranged with the school.

We ask you to be very clear with whoever is providing the transport that punctuality is of the utmost importance.

All preparations will be made by WNO and the staff of the building.

Risk assessment As for the previous day, the children and staff will be asked to participate in a similar way to any practical,

interactive music, drama, movement or PE lesson and the associated risks are as for those school activities.

End of Day 2At the end of Day 2 there will be a further task given to the class. This is entirely voluntary and will involve some invention, storymaking and writing.

Day 2

Day 1 At the school cont.

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During the Project we explore:

singing and musicoperastorytellingrole playproblem solvingcharacter investigation and character buildingvisual and performing artscreative and persuasive writingdecoding

HistoryWe expect the class to have learned something about the political and religious conflict between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots and the problems besetting the Tudor Monarchs. They will have sung a song composed by Henry VIII, visited a Tudor Market, advised Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots and creatively and imaginatively lived through a part of history.

OperaThe class will have met musicians and opera singers and worked with them and have acquired some understanding of how arias in opera work. They will have participated in sections of two Tudor operas, Maria Stuarda and Anna Bolena.

LiteracyThey will have had a taste of Elizabethan English and met two Tudor playwrights. There are many creative music, drama and writing opportunities within the project and opportunity to develop further afterwards.

PSE/CitizenshipThe class will have examined aspects of family conflict and resolution.

We look forward to working with you and the children.

Outcomes

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Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England and Mary, Queen of Scots are cousins, both Queens, both living in the same country, and both of them wishing they weren’t.

Elizabeth is in England because she’s the Queen. Mary is here because she’s fallen out with her subjects in Scotland. They weren’t keen on her to begin with, she being a French-educated Catholic and most of her people serious Protestants and she upset them even more when she married someone they totally disrespected, (a kissing cousin) a violent bad tempered drunk called Darnley.

Then, as many believed, she had him murdered in order to marry Bothwell who was just as useless as Darnley, so the Scottish nobility locked her up and made her appoint her young son, James, King of Scotland. Then, in 1567 she escaped, went on the run and chose England to take refuge. It wasn’t a good idea.

And this is why: Queen Elizabeth is what we might call a control freak – and she needs to be. She’s a Protestant Queen just across the water from a completely Catholic Europe in a time of bloodthirsty religious warfare. Extremists on both sides are ready to fight, kill and accept martyrdom for what they believe.

The Pope has declared that Elizabeth isn’t the rightful ruler of England because Catholics don’t recognise her father, Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon so Henry’s marriage to Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, was illegal, so Elizabeth is illegitimate and has no right to the throne and the real queen should be the nearest legal heir to the throne – Mary, Queen of Scots! From what the Pope has said – it might not be sinful to kill her – perhaps even a righteous thing to do?

In that case some of Elizabeth’s Catholic subjects might think it was time to have a rebellion and put Mary on the throne, especially if they were supported by Spanish and French forces.

Phillip II of Spain had been married to Elizabeth’s half sister, the previous queen of England – often called Bloody Mary because she was the kind of Catholic Queen who believed in burning and beheading Protestants - so, he might be keen on invading England.

And so might the Catholic King of France, Henry lll who had been partially responsible for the bloodthirsty massacre of French Huguenot Protestants in Paris in 1572 along with Mary’s uncle, the Duke of Guise.

These fears of invasion and rebellion have made it difficult for Elizabeth to know what to do with Mary. She couldn’t very well have sent her back to Scotland to face her enemies and maybe get killed – she’s a cousin and a queen after all!

And she didn’t want her going abroad to get help and support and maybe come back with an army of French and Spanish. And she couldn’t let her wander about Britain attracting Catholic supporters. So – she’s locked her cousin up in various castles and manor houses and has kept a guard on her for nearly 19 years. And, in all that time she’s never spoken a word to her!

Mary, Queen of Scots hasn’t really helped herself. She’s much more passionate and impetuous than Elizabeth – some would say spoilt. She has made it clear, to anybody who would listen, that she feels she should be the queen of England and, during these 19 years there have been various schemes and plots to put her on the throne, all of them foiled by Elizabeth’s advisors.

Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotsit’s the yeAr 1586 And Queen elizAbeth i is on the throne

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One of the closest of these advisors is Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, Sir Francis Walsingham, a real spymaster with a network of secret agents all over Britain and Europe. He uses young people, often scholars and students to infiltrate groups of Catholics at home and abroad and has specialist decoders like Thomas Phelippes, who are experts in deciphering letters and forgery, and skilled craftsmen like Arthur Gregory, who can open sealed letters and repair them without detection.

Walsingham also uses Agent Provocateurs, agents who not only spy on plotters and conspirators but actually encourage them to plan assassinations and the like. Of course Walsingham knows what’s happening all the time and, when his trap has involved enough people he can arrest them. Once arrested, the conspirators might be tortured to get confessions – bearing in mind that people who are tortured will generally confess to anything.

Walsingham’s chief torturer is man called Topcliffe who specialises in the use of the rack and the thumbscrew and all the other well-known Elizabethan methods of persuasion. Finally, the condemned traitors are executed, by beheading if they’re lucky – if not, hanging drawing and quartering about which the least said the better.

During the 19 years of Mary’s captivity there have been many such conspiracies, most of them infiltrated or even encouraged by Walsingham’s spies and agent provocateurs. The most important were the Northern Uprising, The Ridolfi Plot and The Throckmorton Conspiracy. All have involved some sort of uprising and assassination of Elizabeth and then putting Mary on the throne. All have been to some extent ‘managed’ by Walsingham who may have been specially driven to weed out all these Catholic conspiracies by his memories of the Massacre of Paris where he watched the protestant Huguenots murdered by Catholic mobs encouraged by the Duke of Guise.

Certainly he was devoted to his work: he even paid his spies with his own money! By 1586, there are so many plots involving her or centred on her, that he has decided Mary would be better off dead. But how to accomplish it?

Elizabeth doesn’t want to kill her cousin and a queen. If it is considered lawful for God’s chosen monarch to be executed what might that mean for Elizabeth herself? Walsingham knows that he has to force Elizabeth’s hand. He has to make sure that there is no other choice. He needs to uncover a conspiracy to invade England and kill Elizabeth and he needs proof that Mary has been a part of it – that she intends to have her cousin Elizabeth killed.

But first there have to be laws that make sure that anyone involved, even a queen, even if all they do is encourage someone else to rebellion, can be executed. And that’s where the law and bond of ‘Association’ comes in, in which Elizabeth’s courtiers swear that they will hunt down and kill anyone who conspires in any way against the Queen and then The Act for Surety of The Queens Person, which allows for the trial of any claimant to the throne who might be involved in such a conspiracy. Well, it’s obvious whom Walsingham is aiming for.

All that is required now is to catch her at it, but Mary is being very careful. Walsingham needs to put temptation her way and keep a close eye on her so he changes her house arrest so that she is under the watchful eye of one of his friends, Sir Amias Paulet at Chartley, a moated Manor House. Now all he needs is to find a conspiracy in which to entangle her. The stage is now set for what will become known as The Babington Plot and the execution by beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots.

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Mary is imprisoned under the guard of Sir Amias Paulet. Walsingham instructs Paulet to open, read and pass to Mary unsealed any letters that she receives, and to block any potential route for secret correspondence.

In a successful attempt to entrap her, Walsingham arranges a single exception: a means for Mary’s letters to be smuggled in and out of Chartley in a beer keg. Mary is misled into thinking these secret letters are secure, while in reality they are deciphered and read by Walsingham’s agents.

In January, Anthony Babington, encouraged by Robin Poley, one of Walsingham’s Agent Provocateurs, writes to Mary about an impending plot to free her and kill Elizabeth. Mary’s reply is clearly encouraging, and sanctions Babington’s plans but part of this is forged by Phillipes, Walsingham’s agent.

Walsingham has Babington and his associates rounded up; 14 are executed in September 1586. In October, Mary is put on trial under the Act for the Surety of the Queen’s Person in front of 36 commissioners, including Walsingham.

During the presentation of evidence against her, Mary breaks down and points accusingly at Walsingham saying, ‘all of this is the work of Monsieur de Walsingham for my destruction’, to which he replies, ‘God is my witness that as a private person I have done nothing unworthy of an honest man, and as Secretary of State, nothing unbefitting my duty.’

Mary is found guilty, and the warrant for her execution is drafted, but Elizabeth hesitates to sign it, despite pressure from Walsingham. Walsingham writes to Paulet urging him to find ‘some way to shorten the life’ of Mary to relieve Elizabeth of the burden, to which Paulet replies indignantly, ‘God forbid that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot to my poor posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant.’

Walsingham makes arrangements for Mary’s execution; Elizabeth signs the warrant on 1 February 1587, and entrusts it to William Davidson who has been appointed as Junior Secretary of State in late September 1586.

Davison passes the warrant to Cecil, and a privy council convened by Cecil without Elizabeth’s knowledge agrees to carry out the sentence as soon as is practical. Within a week, Mary is beheaded.

On hearing of the execution, Elizabeth claims not to have sanctioned the action and that she had not meant Davison to part with the warrant. Davison is arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Walsingham’s share of Elizabeth’s displeasure is small because he was absent from court, at home ill, in the weeks just before and after the execution. Davison is eventually released in October 1588, on the orders of Cecil and Walsingham.

The Babington Plot

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If the class wish to keep the Elizabethan theme going through lunch they may like to consider these rules of table.

1 Make sure your hands and nails are clean. Check before you eat. You can carry your sword but don’t use it to eat with.

2 Napkins or handkerchiefs should be used but you may use the table-cloth instead. If you have neither you must be very poor! In any case, keep the table as clean as possible.

3 Keep your knife clean and sharp. Using forks is considered dodgy. Cut your meat into small pieces and don’t hack it into great gobbets. Cut your bread with your knife, and don’t tear it in great hunks. You can put pieces of bread in your soup.

4 Speak politely to the servants. Tell jokes. Make witty remarks. Invent funny little poems and tell then to the people on your table.

5 Tell your friends all the news and gossip. Only say very complimentary things about the King or Queen or you could get your hand cut off! You can say what you like about the Kings of France and Spain. They are the enemy!

6 Don’t leave your spoon in the dish when you are done. Don’t overfill the spoon and definitely don’t spill it on the table! Don’t slurp. Empty and wipe your mouth before drinking.

7 Enjoy the roast swan if there’s any on the table but if you should come across that strange white tuberous root – patata or whatever it’s called, that they say Sir Raleigh or one of his friends captured from the Spanish Pirates on their way home from the New World – eat it at your own peril! It’s related to the deadly nightshade and may be poisonous!

8 Don’t stuff your mouth, pick your teeth, make rude noises, scratch yourself, blow on your food, spit in the washing basin or across the table, spit up food into your dish, talk with your mouth full, or fall asleep at the table.

9 Don’t put your elbows on the table. Considering that the table is typically a board laid on top of trestles, this could cause an unfortunate accident.

10 Don’t throw your bones on the floor! If food is dropped on the floor pick it up but don’t eat it. Don’t stroke cats and dogs at the table.

11 Don’t lick your hands.

Lunch and Elizabethan Table Manners

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Religion in the time of The Tudorsprimaryhomeworkhelp.co.uk/tudors/religion.htm

Tudor spyingbbc.co.uk/history/british/tudors/spying_01.shtml

Christopher Marloweprimaryfacts.com/502/christopher-marlowe-facts/

The Babington Plotluminarium.org/encyclopedia/babington.htm

Henry Percywho-is-shakespeare.wikispaces.com/Henry+Percy,+Earl+of+Northumberland

supremacyandsurvival.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/wizard-earl-born-on-april-27-1564.html

Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scotshistorylearningsite.co.uk/mary_queen_of_scots.htm

historyonthenet.com/Tudors/elizabeth_mary_queen_of_scots.htm

onthetudortrail.com/Blog/2012/02/08/the-execution-of-mary-queen-of-scots/

Useful websites