SOURCE: Vanhoutte, Jacqueline. “Community, Authority and the Motherland in Sackville and Norton's Gorboduc.” Studies in English Literature 40, no. 2 (spring 2000): 227-39.

In the following essay, Vanhoutte focuses on themes of community, nationhood, and royal maternal responsibility that Sackville and Norton developed in Gorboduc to try to convince Queen Elizabeth that England's political stability required her to marry.

Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton's Gorboduc (1561-62) has elicited critical interest mainly because it is the first blank-verse tragedy in English and because it engages the politically delicate matter of the Elizabethan succession. As scholars of the play have noted, Gorboduc urges Elizabeth I to accept parliamentary advice by marrying, providing an heir, and ensuring the stability of the country.¹ I shall argue that the play renders this advice emotionally legitimate by advancing the claims of what it calls the “mother land” (V.ii.179).² In the process, Gorboduc questions dynastic notions of...