I WAS TIPPED to this by David Runciman's podcast, Past Present Future, where it was featured in a series on "great political fictions."
It's set in the last days of Mary, Queen of Scots, who is also a former Queen of France and, according to some at the time, the legitimate Queen of England. English Catholics in the 1580s had to keep their affiliation secret, but there were apparently a good many of them, and they saw Elizabeth as a usurper since (a) she was illegitimate, the daughter of an adulterous union and (b) she was a Protestant. As a precaution, therefore, Elizabeth had Mary confined in the Tower of London.
So Mary is royal, but also a prisoner, subject to constraints of many kinds. The clever thing in Schiller's play is that Elizabeth is also subject to many constraints, even though she is the most powerful person in the country. She can't just fall in love and marry, for instance, or commit herself to a lover, as Mary famously did. And all of Elizabeth's closest advisors always argue the absolute necessity of whatever policy they are pushing, that Elizabeth must do this or must do that. In one decision after another, her hands are tied.
In short, they are both queens and they are both prisoners.
That even the world's most powerful people may see their hands as tied is a striking political insight, Runciman argues, and he's got a great point. The only work by Schiller I had read before this was The Robbers, which I did not like all that much, but Mary Stuart made me curious to try more.
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