Cue for Treason

In Cue for Treason, Geoffrey Trease imbues his historical setting with social and political detail. This creates a rich backdrop that informs the circumstances and motives of the protagonists and antagonists.

In particular, the book draws on the nature of social structures and power in 16th-century England. Peter’s family are in the yeomanry, a rural middle class that grew in Elizabeth’s reign: relatively wealthy farmers who owned their own land. The yeomanry’s relative privilege meant that they were able to access education, especially the boys, and engage in wider intellectual and cultural pursuits. Peter’s experiences are revealing of this class: He attends grammar school and so, when he meets the theater troupe, he understands the dramatic genre and is able to read scripts very well.

Peter’s Coming of Age is impacted by wider social issues in Elizabeth’s reign. The yeomans’ protest that leads to Peter fleeing is in relation to enclosure, when landowners appropriated land that had traditionally been communal to enrich their own estates. Between 1530 and 1650, enclosure protest was the main cause of social revolt across England. Peter’s travels across the country with the troupe enable him to witness mass unemployment, poverty, and vagrancy. Through Peter’s eyes, Trease shows challenges of life for those without social status in this period, revealing The Impact of Social Structures on Individuals. Society was strictly hierarchical, with most power and wealth in the hands of a tiny elite. Although Elizabeth I’s reign (1558-1603) was a time of national stability and prosperity, the book shows the acute hardship of normal lives throughout human history. Peter is strongly motivated by his understanding of English history. He is aware of the relative stability of the Tudor monarchs after the Wars of the Roses in the previous century (1455-87). Elizabeth’s reign also ended a decade of successional and religious instability after the death of her father Henry VIII (1547). Trease shows that, to Peter, Elizabeth’s continuation as monarch represents peace for ordinary people.

Trease also uses the historical context of war and peace to create his book’s antagonist and sense of jeopardy. Sir Philip and his conspirators draw on the history of real attempts to kill or remove Elizabeth I. As in history, they are driven by a desire to consolidate their own power and to return England to Catholicism. The book refers to the historical Rising of the North (1569) in which Northern nobles were motivated by Catholicism and an assertion of historical feudal rights, which were increasingly challenged by Elizabeth’s Protestant Church of England, professional administration, and growing social mobility. Spanish invasion was a recurrent feature of historical conspiracies at the time, such as the Babington Plot. As the dominant Catholic power in Europe, the Spanish monarchs welcomed opportunities to add England to their empire, especially following a Papal bull in 1570 that named Elizabeth as a heretic and called for her removal. Trease uses real historical detail to create a world of intrigue and danger, incorporating the real secret service and spy network that countered these plots.

Trease draws on Elizabeth I as an iconic historical figure, especially her reputation for cleverness, fairness, self-mythologizing, and as a patron of the theatrical arts. Elizabeth’s unusual position as a female monarch in a patriarchal world supports the book’s exploration of gender discrimination at this period and becomes a point of resolution when she extends protection to Kit, another woman in a man’s world who must navigate pressure to marry.