Catherine of Aragon's Letters, English Popular Memory, and Male Authorial Fantasies

Abstract:This essay juxtaposes Catherine of Aragon's self-created reputation during the height of her influence as queen consort (1509–1525) with her representation in literary works written over fifty years after her death. I consider how Thomas Deloney's Jack of Newbury, John Fletcher and William Shakespeare's King Henry VIII, and Richard Johnson's "The Story of Ill May-Day" preserve Catherine's reputation for being Henry VIII's pious, loyal, deferential wife and an intercessor for English citizens; yet these later authors are far less faithful to Catherine's measured tone, unsubordinated syntax, and familiar diction in her writings. Catherine's fictional avatar, Queen Katherine, speaks, instead, with subordinated syntax, elaborate rhetorical figures, and aggressive language whenever she intercedes for male commoners. The resulting, somewhat contradictory, representation of Queen Katherine speaks to an implicit contract by which later authors perpetuate Catherine of Aragon's reputation for being a loyal, decorous, maternal queen consort, even as their character, Queen Katherine, engages readers and audience with sensationalist speeches that speak to rhetorical and cultural fantasies in which a queen consort moves beyond the boundaries of decorum to save vulnerable English citizens.