These are two moments of national crisis, a few months apart, in which, crucially, the monarch herself is given no voice. Munro’s writing is sharp and fearsome, barely a word wasted as time presses her characters to act before it is too late. Mary focuses on two extended conversations, that the writer imagines, taking place in those pockets of history where everything changes, barely remembered moments between great events where decisions happened that affected the course of history. Also very much in tune with recent societal shifts, Munro’s play asks if Mary was the wanton murderess of record or a multiple rape victim unable to escape her captors and the shame they heaped upon her? The compromised virtue of Mary Queen of Scots is her most renowned feature but as Josie Rourke did in her recent film, Munro looks to reposition Mary’s reputation, not perhaps absolving her completely but at least opening up sufficient doubt about the ways in which history has recorded her life and actions. The life of her cousin Mary Queen of Scots, however, is far more checkered, a tale of lust, murder and three husbands, a lured life that ended in imprisonment and execution by her English relative. Elizabeth I will forever be the Virgin Queen, aligning her chastity with the peace and success of her reign, seen as an act of great sacrifice and shrewdness in order to protect her realm from foreign invasion and the machinations of over-mighty subjects. This superbly written 90-minute drama passes in the blink of an eye but the fate of a country, a Queen and a scandal-ridden woman are brilliantly contained within.įor the women of the sixteenth-century, it is their virtue for which they are best remembered and for which history continues to judge them. Now her latest piece treads similar ground in its examination of Mary Queen of Scots and the series of fateful activities that led to her being deposed in favour of her infant son in 1567.

Rona Munro knows that all too well having penned successful historical trilogy The James Plays at the National Theatre a few years back, drawing on the real life complexities of Scottish monarchy, politics and power play in the fifteenth-century.

If the last few weeks have shown us anything, it is that all the best stories are true and you don’t need to go to the trouble of making something up to find dramatic twists and turns, larger than life characters and events so mind-boggling that they would never make convincing fiction.

Douglas henshall the small hand