{"id":27601,"date":"2023-12-31T09:53:35","date_gmt":"2023-12-31T14:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=27601"},"modified":"2023-12-31T20:56:59","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T01:56:59","slug":"kenilworth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=27601","title":{"rendered":"Kenilworth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I just finished Kenilworth<\/em>. It’s the ninth of Sir Walter Scott’s twenty-six Waverley novels that I have read. What stands out is his treatment of Elizabeth I. Scott’s Elizabeth I must surely be one of the most terrifying characters in English literature — absolute power and the willingness to use it. I found myself often almost trembling along with her courtiers, down on their knees in terror of losing their heads.<\/p>\n

Robert Dudley, the 1st Earl of Leicester<\/a>, managed to keep his head, though he came close to losing it. It’s not a piece of English history that I am particularly interested in, but the Wikipedia article on Robert Dudley suggests that more recent scholarship sees Dudley as less a fool and toy of Elizabeth and more as one of Elizabeth’s most important advisers. Scott, it would seem, was no great fan of Dudley.<\/p>\n

Kenilworth<\/em> is set in Berkshire and Warwickshire. There are not even any Scottish characters. I’m eager to get back to Scott’s Scotland in whatever I decide to read next.<\/p>\n

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Kenilworth castle today. Source: Wikimedia Commons.<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just finished Kenilworth. It’s the ninth of Sir Walter Scott’s twenty-six Waverley novels that I have read. What stands out is his treatment of Elizabeth I. Scott’s Elizabeth I must surely be one of the most terrifying characters in English literature — absolute power and the willingness to use it. I found myself often … Continue reading “Kenilworth”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27601"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27614,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27601\/revisions\/27614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}