"A Mirror for Magistrates" and the Politics of the English Reformation

Perhaps no other work of secular poetry was as widely read as the historical verse tragedy collection "A Mirror for Magistrates". This work shows that modern critics have misconstrued the purpose of the tragic verse narratives of the Mirror, approaching them as uncontroversial meditations on abstract political and philosophical doctrines.

As Protestants suffering from the traumatic collapse of King Edward VI's 'godly' rule (1547-1553) and from the current policies of Mary's government, the Mirror authors radically reshaped their poem's historical sources in order to craft emotionally moving narratives designed to provide models for interpreting the political failures of Edward VI's reign and to offer urgent warnings to Marian magistrates. Lucas' study also reveals how, in later poems, the Mirror authors issued oblique appeals to Queen Elizabeth's officers, boldly demanding that they allow the realm of 'the literary' to stand as an unfettered discursive arena of public controversy. Lucas thus provides a provocative new approach to this seminal but long-misunderstood collection, one that restores the Mirror to its rightful place as one of the greatest works of sixteenth-century English political literature.