'What bloody man is that?': Sir Robert Carey and Shakespeare's bloody sergeant

Notes and Queries

Volumn 48, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 296-298

  Loomis, Catherine ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW ORLEANS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84864443000     PISSN: 00293970     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/nq/48.3.296     Document Type: Article

References (5)

1. Robert Carey, The Memoirs of Robert Carey, ed. F. H. Mares (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 63.
2. Earlier in his memoir, Carey claims to have sent James details of the Queen's illness, promising 'if of that sickness she should die, I would be the first man that should bring [James] news of it' (59). This was not the first time Carey had visited Scotland with momentous news. In 1587, Elizabeth sent him to deliver letters to James regarding the 'miserable accident' of Mary Stuart's execution. One letter notes: 'I have now sent this kinsman of mine whom ere now it hath pleased you to favor, to instruct you truly of that which is too irksome for my pen to tell you' (Elizabeth I to James VI, 14 February 1587, in Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose, Elizabeth I: Collected Works (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 296.
3. The True Narration of the Entertainment of his Royall Maiestie, from the lime of his departure from Edenbrough; till his receiuing at London: with all or the most speciall Occurrences (London: Thomas Creede for Thomas Millington, 1603).
4. Jonathan Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 105.
5. Frank Kermode, Introduction to Macbeth in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 1355.