Political Dreams

Religion and politics were deeply intertwined in Renaissance England. The threats to sixteenth-century Protestants in Mary I’s reign were dramatized in “dream” scenes in plays about such politically significant characters as Princess Elizabeth (the future queen) and Katherine, Dowager Duchess of Suffolk. In the seventeenth century, the struggles between Royalists who supported Charles I and Parliamentarians were described in dreams in a series of political pamphlets.

John Quarles writes in couplets about his dream of the 1649 execution of Charles I. The images at the beginning of his poem show Charles the night before his death dreaming of his wife and son while an angel prepares to replace the crown he lost on earth with a heavenly one. Opposite this, we see the stark reality of Charles about to be executed.

In his dramatization of the dangers experienced by the Protestant Princess Elizabeth in the reign of her Catholic half-sister Mary, Thomas Heywood includes “a dumb show” (a scene played silently) while Elizabeth sleeps. In the dumb show, angels stop the villain Winchester from killing the sleeping princess and place a Bible in her hands. Elizabeth wakes, as if from a dream, not knowing how the Bible materialized.

After the execution of Charles I in 1649, his son Charles sought help in Scotland to claim the throne. According to James Douglas, the young Charles dreamt he saw a spider with a crown hanging over its head and two other crowns at the end of the thread. As the spider lowered itself down the cobweb, it fell and lost everything. Despite the dire portent of this dream, Charles II was restored as king in 1660.