To What Extent Does Blackadder Provide an Accurate Impression of Queen Elizabeth I
To What Extent Does Blackadder Provide an Accurate Impression of Queen Elizabeth’s Appearance, Character and Abilities? In this essay, I will discuss the similarities and differences of Blackadder’s portrayal of Queen Elizabeth and other sources, including my own knowledge.
Blackadder is a TV show on many different historical figures about a man called Edmund Blackadder and his dog robber, Baldrick. It has four series that cover Richard III, Elizabeth I, the Prince of Wales and World War I.
Elizabeth I was a Tudor queen who lived from 1533 to 1603. She has been portrayed differently by different people, not only by many contrasting primary sources, from the Spanish Ambassador to her school headmaster but also many secondary sources, from Michael Hirst who directed the film Elizabeth to Richard Curtis and Ben Elton who together wrote up the series of Blackadder II, which features Elizabeth.
The line of argument is how accurate Blackadder’s image of Elizabeth is compared to what she was like in real life. I will start with the program’s accuracies.
Appearance:
From what we see in Blackadder, Elizabeth wears very expensive clothes, with lots of jewelry. This is synonymous with our knowledge of how Elizabeth dressed, as we see in the eight portraits that we analyzed in class – especially the ermine portrait, in which Elizabeth is specially wearing ermine fur, a very expensive material that only the extremely rich could afford.
Despite only finding quotes from many primary and secondary sources about her hair colour, which they all claimed to be auburn or red – the same as in Blackadder – from my own knowledge, her hair curled up in a way that is similar to that of Blackadder.
She also wears very striking clothes, as we see again from the ermine portrait, with lots of dashes of white, mixed in with dazzling jewels. A fourth point is that Elizabeth is always well groomed in Blackadder and I have a quote from the Venetian Ambassador: “… she is now 23
Blackadder is a TV show on many different historical figures about a man called Edmund Blackadder and his dog robber, Baldrick. It has four series that cover Richard III, Elizabeth I, the Prince of Wales and World War I.
Elizabeth I was a Tudor queen who lived from 1533 to 1603. She has been portrayed differently by different people, not only by many contrasting primary sources, from the Spanish Ambassador to her school headmaster but also many secondary sources, from Michael Hirst who directed the film Elizabeth to Richard Curtis and Ben Elton who together wrote up the series of Blackadder II, which features Elizabeth.
The line of argument is how accurate Blackadder’s image of Elizabeth is compared to what she was like in real life. I will start with the program’s accuracies.
Appearance:
From what we see in Blackadder, Elizabeth wears very expensive clothes, with lots of jewelry. This is synonymous with our knowledge of how Elizabeth dressed, as we see in the eight portraits that we analyzed in class – especially the ermine portrait, in which Elizabeth is specially wearing ermine fur, a very expensive material that only the extremely rich could afford.
Despite only finding quotes from many primary and secondary sources about her hair colour, which they all claimed to be auburn or red – the same as in Blackadder – from my own knowledge, her hair curled up in a way that is similar to that of Blackadder.
She also wears very striking clothes, as we see again from the ermine portrait, with lots of dashes of white, mixed in with dazzling jewels. A fourth point is that Elizabeth is always well groomed in Blackadder and I have a quote from the Venetian Ambassador: “… she is now 23