Mary Stuart’s Bouncing Head
Execution scenes reveal the links between the spectacular and the punitive (Michel Foucault), but they are difficult to stage, even more so when the topic is the decapitation of Mary Stuart, whose execution divided Catholics and Protestants, forcing playwrights to adopt several mediation strategies. Taking plays by John Pickeryng (Horestes, 1567), Jean de Montchrestien (L’Escossoise, 1604) and Charles Regnault (Marie Stuard Reyne d’Ecosse, 1638), we will see how playwrights brought this execution (and the dead queen) to life, and depicted this morbid episode despite its absence on the stage, notably through striking details, such as that of Mary Stuart’s “bouncing head.”