MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS – Review by MaryAnn Johanson

Is the worst thing about Mary Stuart that she is a woman, or that she is a Papist? I speak of how she is seen in the eyes of the men who are doing their damnedest, in Mary Queen of Scots, to keep her from usurping Elizabeth I from the English throne in the mid 16th century. And naturally, this is a trick question: they hate and fear her for both reasons. They aren’t too crazy about Elizabeth, either, what with her also being female.

You don’t need a degree in English or Scottish history to appreciate that what looks like (and is!) pretty thrilling movie-movie internecine spycraft and occasionally outright warfare between the two thrones — Mary’s in Scotland and Elizabeth’s in England — is, in fact, the undermining of two reasonable women trying to unite their nations, their efforts thwarted by men with their own agendas and fueled by some very big, very angry misogyny. Gender is as much a tribe as religion is in the smart, sly script by House of Cards’ Beau Willimon, sometimes both at once. Continue reading…