On this day in history, just under three years before her execution on 19th May 1536, a pregnant Queen Anne Boleyn was enjoying the celebrations surrounding her coronation, which was scheduled to take place on 1st June 1533 at Westminster Abbey.
On 31st May 1533, her coronation procession took place, with the queen processing through the streets of London, from the Tower of London to Westminster Hall.
I wrote a detailed post about the procession back in 2013, which includes maps to show the route of the procession and also primary source descriptions of the pageants involved – click here to read that now.
Perhaps it takes an artist to see a Muse in Anne Boleyn and an Apollo in Henry? The coronation pageant theme seems to be about inspiration, fecundity, the chosen one – Anne as the hope of the future, the mother of the future? But do you wonder, as I do right now, who was this all aimed at? Who gets this stuff back then? Did there commons ‘get it’? Did ordinary catholic folk in the street have a clue what it was all supposed to mean?
OK, they got Elizabeth as the Virgin Queen. But that was to do with catholic thingy about the Virgin Mary, rather than some vague reference to muses…we know now, they didn’t then, that the original muse was a pre-Greek Great Mother Goddess in her three aspects as virgin, mother and hag, the original three-in-one who pre-figured the Trinity.
Fascinating how we use historic images, re-fashioning them for today and getting them to mean what we want them to mean. Does the audience really ‘get it’? Who is to say?