Cultural depictions of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex

Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and his close relationship with Queen Elizabeth I has inspired artistic and cultural works for over four centuries. The following lists cover various media, works of high art, and recent representations in popular culture, film and fiction.

One of the best known literary works about Essex is Lytton Strachey's book Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History.

At least two fencing treatises are dedicated to Robert, Earl of Essex. They are as follows:

• Vincentio Saviolo – His Practice (1595)^[1]
• George Silver – Paradoxes of Defence (1599)^[2]

Robert Devereux's death and confession became the subject of two popular 17th-century broadside ballads, set to the English folk tunes Essex Last Goodnight and Welladay.^[3][4] Numerous ballads lamenting his death and praising his military feats were also published throughout the 17th century.^[5]

• Il Conte d'Essex (1833) by Saverio Mercadante, with libretto by Felice Romani
• Roberto Devereux (1837) by Gaetano Donizetti, with libretto by Salvadore Cammarano based mainly on François Ancelot's play Elizabeth of England
• Gloriana (1953) by Benjamin Britten, based on Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex

• In the 1956 essay Hamlet oder Hekuba: der Einbruch der Zeit in das Spiel (Hamlet or Hecuba: the Irruption of Time into the Play), the German legal theorist Carl Schmitt suggests that elements of the Essex's biography, in particular his final days and last words, were incorporated into William Shakespeare's Hamlet at both the level of dialogue and the level of characterisation. Schmitt's overall argument investigates the relationship between history and narrative generally.
• Essex is briefly alluded to in Shakespeare's Henry V at 5.0.22–34.^[6]
• Essex is said by editor David L. Stevenson to be alluded to in Much Ado About Nothing at 3.1.10–11.
• Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède, Le Comte d'Essex (1639).
• Thomas Corneille, Le Comte d'Essex (1678).
• Claude Boyer, Le Comte d'Essex, tragedie. Par Monsieur Boyer de l'Academie françoise (1678).
• John Banks, The Unhappy Favourite; Or the Earl of Essex, a Tragedy (1682).^[7]
• Jacques-François Ancelot's Elizabeth of England (1829)
• The night of Essex's execution is dramatised in the Timothy Findley play Elizabeth Rex.
• Essex is the love interest in La Reine Elizabeth, play by Émile Moreau, 1912, starring Sarah Bernhardt
• Elizabeth the Queen (1930) by Maxwell Anderson dramatises the queen's relationship with Essex, and ends with his execution.

• Lou Tellegen in Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth (1912); a French silent film featuring Sarah Bernhardt as Elizabeth.
• Errol Flynn in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939); starring Bette Davis as Elizabeth, the film is based on Anderson's play and Lytton Strachey's biographical account Elizabeth and Essex.
• Sam Reid in Anonymous (2011); a historical fiction film that posits that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of William Shakespeare's plays,^[8][9] and that both Essex and the Earl of Southampton are Elizabeth's illegitimate sons.^[10][11]

• Charlton Heston in a 1968 television adaption of Anderson's Elizabeth the Queen, for the Hallmark Hall of Fame series; Judith Anderson portrayed Elizabeth.
• Robin Ellis in the fifth and sixth episodes of the BBC series Elizabeth R (1971), starring Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth^[12]
• Hugh Dancy in Elizabeth I (2005); a 2005 Channel 4/HBO co-production starring Helen Mirren as Elizabeth^[13]
• Hans Matheson in The Virgin Queen (2005); a BBC drama series^[14]
• Joe Wredden in Elizabeth I's Secret Agents (2017); a BBC documentary mini-series

• Voiced by Rich Keeble in the video game Astrologaster.^[15]