page_title: The Princely Pleasures, at the Court at Kenilworth
section_title: Architecture and Performance
hierarchical_section_title: The Princely Pleasures, at the Court at Kenilworth / Architecture and Performance
caption_attribution_description: Preliminary sketch for a portrait of Elizabeth I
context_page_description: The Princely Pleasures, at the Court at Kenilworth by George Gascoigne, is an account of courtly entertainments held by Robert Dudley, the first Earl of Leicester upon Queen Elizabeth I’s three weeks visit to his Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire in 1575. Based on European festival book models, Gascoigne's pamphlet is an idealized version of the courtly revels occasioned to entertain the Queen during her stay at the castle from 9 July to 27 July.
context_section_description: In preparation for the Queen's visit, Dudley spent the enormous sum of £40,000 to £60,000 on building and landscaping. Alison Weir refers to the castle as "one of the wonders of the age, resorted not in Renaissance style like most Elizabethan houses, but in a medieval style in keeping with its twelfth-century structure." The revels were intended for three purposes according to Goldring: first, to rebuild Dudley's family history and change it from “the son of the disgraced Duke of Northumberland, executed for treason in 1553, [to]…. a princely descendant of King Arthur”; second, to advocate English military intervention in the Dutch revolt against Spain; and finally to propose marriage to the Queen. For the last purpose Dudley also commissioned Federico Zuccaro, the Italian Mannerist painter, to a paint himself and Elizabeth. Though the preliminary drawings exist, the original paintings, believed to be the leitmotif of the 1575 Kenilworth festivities, are not known to survive. The paintings were intended to be life-sized and full length, a format befitting “Leicester’s princely ambitions and with the ongoing effort to use visual imagery to present himself as a would-be consort for the Queen." The festivities included many spectacular events described in Langham's Letter, from fireworks devised by an Italian expert in pyrotechnics, to musicians and gardeners who make a garden overnight under the Queen's chamber window, to a country wedding feast.
caption: Federico Zucarro, Queen Elizabeth I, 1575
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