ABSOLUTE ELIZABETH

The sprightly child Elizabeth of the recent The Red-Haired Brat (1978) has here become a passionate but calculating young queen who will not, can not marry. She's afraid, you see, of having her head cut off like her mum or of having some man think he can rule her and her beloved realm, perhaps even come between them. So Elizabeth marries England and therefore can only engage in heavy petting with her beloved Rob Dudley--and not even that after he kills his wife in hopes of gaining the crown. She pardons him but bids him stay away because, as she is learning from the dreadful example of her cousin Marie of Scots, ""Unclean goddesses are in a fair way to be cast out. Folk do not like their heroines smirched."" For those that like warmed-over royal heroines, this is a marginally less dull dish than some.