Historical background

In November 1558, King Philip II of Spain's second wife, Queen Mary I of England, died. They had married in July 1554, a year after Mary's accession to the English throne, but the English Parliament had refused to grant him much real power as co-monarch of England.^[2] On Mary's death he tried unsuccessfully to persuade her sister and successor, Elizabeth I, to marry him.

For many years Philip maintained peace with England, and even defended Elizabeth from the Pope's threat of excommunication. This was a measure taken to preserve a European balance of power. Ultimately, Elizabeth allied England with the Protestant rebels in the Netherlands. Further, English ships began a policy of piracy against Spanish trade and threatened to plunder the great Spanish treasure ships coming from the New World. English ships went so far as to attack a Spanish port. The last straw for Philip was the Treaty of Nonsuch signed by Elizabeth in 1585 – promising troops and supplies to the rebels. Although it can be argued this English action was the result of Philip's Treaty of Joinville with the Catholic League of France, Philip considered it an act of war by England. With the Pope's blessing, he launched the Spanish Armada to attack England, Protestantism, and Elizabeth herself. Sir Walter Raleigh, whom the Queen favoured, married Bess Throckmorton, a ward of Elizabeth's court, after learning she was carrying his child. Elizabeth I had both of them arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London, but later released them.

Dramatic licence

This representation of a historical period is heavily fictionalised for the purposes of entertainment. The film's lead Cate Blanchett was reported as saying: "It's terrifying that we are growing up with this very illiterate bunch of children, who are somehow being taught that film is fact, when in fact it's invention".^[3] Some of the simpler fictions are:

• Sir Walter Raleigh is falsely portrayed as a major figure in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the film does not credit Sir Francis Drake and other key leaders of the English fleet.
• Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, was lieutenant general at the Armada crisis, but in the film, he is not present at the Tilbury camp, his role having been given to Raleigh. The movie also does not make mention of Dudley's military campaign in the Netherlands.
• Charles Howard (then Lord Howard of Effingham, the actual commander of the English fleet), says at one point, "We're losing too many ships." In reality, not a single English ship was lost during the battle.
• The film depicts Elizabeth being advised by Dr John Dee. Historically, Dee was travelling on the European mainland throughout the period depicted and did not return until more than a year after the defeat of the Armada. Elizabeth's actual main advisor and chief minister, William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, is omitted from the film altogether.
• The portrayed Jesuit leader of the Babington Plot, Robert Reston, is completely fictional, though based on the real-life Jesuit John Ballard, who encouraged Babington to initiate the assassination attempt on Elizabeth, which would subsequently begin the chain of events leading to the Spanish invasion. However, because Ballard was depicted being executed in the previous film for participating in the Ridolfi plot, the role of Reston was created to replace him.
• In the film, Elizabeth is confronted at the altar of Old St Paul's Cathedral by Anthony Babington, who has a pistol charged with powder but no shot. The real Babington Plot was, like preceding plots against Elizabeth, discovered and thwarted by Francis Walsingham's investigative efforts while still in the planning stages, long before there was any actual attempt to kill Elizabeth.
• The film also depicts Babington (and, implicitly, the other conspirators) as having been hanged by long drop, rather than the actual, and more gruesome method of hanging, drawing and quartering.
• In 1585, Elizabeth was 52 (considered too old to bear children). The film shows various suitors being presented to the queen, with a view to marriage and children; the events presented actually took place much earlier in her reign. For instance, Erik XIV of Sweden abandoned his proposals to marry Elizabeth after his trip to England was interrupted by his father's death in 1560, when Elizabeth was 27. In fact, by 1568, Erik had been deposed from the Swedish throne and died in captivity in 1577. Likewise, marriage negotiations with Charles II, Archduke of Austria were abandoned in 1568 and in 1571, Charles married his niece Maria Anna of Bavaria, with whom he had fifteen children.
• Philip II of Spain is depicted at the time of the Armada as an old, sick man. In fact he was just five years older than Elizabeth, and his death did not occur until eight years later, in 1596.
• In 1588, Infanta Isabel of Spain is portrayed as a child. In reality, she was 21 by this time.
• William Walsingham is a completely fictitious character. The real William Walsingham was the father of Francis Walsingham.
• Mary Walsingham, Walsingham's daughter in the film, died in 1580. Frances Walsingham was the surviving daughter who married Phillip Sidney.
• The lady-in-waiting Bess Throckmorton in fact became pregnant with Walter Raleigh's child in the summer of 1591, three years after the defeat of the Armada, not immediately before. After their secret marriage was inevitably discovered, Elizabeth had them locked up in the Tower of London. While she did eventually release them both, it was not out of any sense of forgiveness as the movie depicts. She released Raleigh because one of his expeditions returned to England with a captured Spanish ship, the Madre de Dios, and his men threatened a mutiny if she did not return Raleigh to them. Bess was released because Elizabeth felt guilty after Bess's baby died of plague while she was incarcerated in the Tower.
• The affair between Raleigh and Bess is depicted as beginning when Raleigh consoles Bess after her cousin Francis is executed for his plot to assassinate Elizabeth, but that happened six years before the affair actually took place.
• Mary, Queen of Scots is depicted as having a Scottish accent, when in actuality, she had been raised at the French court from the age of five and did not return to Scotland until she was a young woman.
• The film shows Spanish envoys and other members of court wearing swords during their audiences with Elizabeth. Owing to threats of assassination, only members of the Royal Guard were permitted to carry weapons near Elizabeth while she was in court.
• The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, is portrayed as having happened very swiftly after her arrest, while she was still a young woman. In fact, Mary was held in custody at various places for 19 years before her execution in 1587, at the age of 44.
• The film depicts the battle between the English navy and the Spanish Armada as consisting of broadsides from the ships of both fleets. In fact, while the English ships were able to fire multiple times during the course of a day, the heavy Spanish guns were so difficult to reload that they were frequently only fired once. Broadsides would accompany later developments in ship design in the first half of the 17th century, the first major actions involving such technology and tactics for the English being the Anglo-Dutch Wars.
• During the film, Elizabeth spoke German to Charles II, Archduke of Austria. Although Elizabeth spoke several languages there is no evidence that she was taught or spoke German; nor is it likely that they ever met.
• There was no Spanish ambassador in Elizabeth's court in 1585, as Elizabeth had him expelled from England following the discovery of the Throckmorton plot, after Francis Throckmorton claimed under torture that his plot had been sanctioned by the Spanish.

Filming locations

• Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire, England, UK (Raleigh's house exteriors)
• Brean Down, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England (Queen Elizabeth addresses her troops)
• Burghley House, Stamford, Lincolnshire, England (John Dee's house exteriors/London alley/Paris street scene)
• Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, England
• Dorney Court, Dorney, Buckinghamshire, England (Raleigh's house/Walsingham's house/chapel interiors)
• Doune Castle, Doune, Stirling, Scotland
• Eilean Donan Castle, Kyle of Lochalsh, Highland, Scotland (Fotheringay Castle exteriors)
• Ely Cathedral, Ely, Cambridgeshire, England (Whitehall Palace interior)
• Hatfield House, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England (Chartley Hall, also the interior of Walsingham's house)
• Leeds Castle, Kent, England (Chartley Hall/Windsor Castle exteriors)
• Petworth House, Petworth, West Sussex, England (Windsor Great Park)
• Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England
• St Bartholomew-the-Great, London, England (Fotheringay Castle/Chartley Hall interiors)
• St John's College, Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England (Whitehall Palace exteriors/Thames scenes)
• Wells Cathedral, Wells, Somerset, England (Whitehall Palace interiors)
• Westminster Cathedral, Westminster, London, England (Escorial Palace/Lisbon Cathedral interiors)
• Winchester Cathedral, Winchester, Hampshire, England, (St. Paul's Cathedral/The Chapel Royal interiors/gallows scene) Archived 29 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine

Track listing

Critical reception

Although Cate Blanchett's performance was highly praised, the film received generally mixed to negative reviews from US critics. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 35% of critics gave the film a positive rating, based on 167 reviews; the average rating is 5.1/10. The critics consensus reads, "This sequel is full of lavish costumes and elaborate sets, but lacks the heart and creativity of the original Elizabeth."^[20] On Metacritic, the film has an average score of 45 out of 100, based on 35 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".^[21] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, the same grade as its predecessor.^[22]

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, gave the film 1 star out of 5, remarking on the film's historical revisionism and melodrama. He writes: "Where Kapur's first Elizabeth was cool, cerebral, fascinatingly concerned with complex plotting, the new movie is pitched at the level of a Jean Plaidy romantic novel".^[23]

Roger Ebert gave the film 2½ stars out of 4, saying 'there are scenes where the costumes are so sumptuous, the sets so vast, the music so insistent, that we lose sight of the humans behind the dazzle of the production'. Ebert did, however, praise many of the actors' performances, particularly that of Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I. He said 'that Blanchett could appear in the same Toronto International Film Festival playing Elizabeth and Bob Dylan, both splendidly, is a wonder of acting'.^[24] Blanchett portrayed Bob Dylan in the film I'm Not There and was nominated for an Academy Award for her roles in both movies.

Colin Covert of the Minneapolis Star Tribune gave the film 3 stars out of 4, writing '... as a pseudo-historical fable, a romantic triangle and a blood-and-thunder melodrama, the film can't be faulted' and 'This isn't historical fabrication, it's mutilation. But for all its lapses, this is probably the liveliest, most vibrant Elizabethan production since Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet.'^[25] while Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe said, "Historians might demand a little more history from Elizabeth: The Golden Age. But soap opera loyalists could hardly ask for more soap."^[26]

Michael Gove, speaking on BBC Two's Newsnight Review, said: 'It tells the story of England's past in a way which someone who's familiar with the Whig tradition of history would find, as I did, completely sympathetic. It's amazing to see a film made now that is so patriotic ... One of the striking things about this film is that it's almost a historical anomaly. I can't think of a historical period film in which England and the English have been depicted heroically for the last forty or fifty years. You almost have to go back to Laurence Olivier's Shakespeare's Henry V in which you actually have an English king and English armies portrayed heroically'.^[27]

Box office

Elizabeth: The Golden Age grossed $6.1 million in 2,001 theatres during its opening weekend in the United States and Canada, ranking #6 at the box office.^[1] In the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland the film entered at No. 4 and earned £1.3 million ($2.7 million) on its opening weekend.^[28] As of February 2009 the worldwide total was $74.2 million, including $16.4 million in the US and Canada and $57.8 million elsewhere.^[29] In contrast, the film's predecessor, Elizabeth, grossed $30 million in the United States and Canada, and a total of $82.1 million worldwide.^[30]

Awards and nominations

The film received two Academy Award nominations, winning the Academy Award for Costume Design for Alexandra Byrne. Cate Blanchett was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film, becoming the first female actor to receive two Academy Award nominations for playing the same role.^[31]

At the 11th Pyongyang International Film Festival held in September 2008, one of the awards for special screening were conferred upon the film.