Zwischen Historia und Fabula. Maria Stuart als gespenstische Schwellenfigur in Andreas Gryphius’ Carolus Stuardus

This article seeks to contextualize a comment by the author Gryphius on the appearance of Mary Stuart in his tragedy Carolus Stuardus (1657/1663). To explain her entry, Gryphius lectures on the historical sources from Buchanan to Camden for the portrayal of Mary Stuart as the sufferer of a trial of injustice. In contrast, there is the literary history of reception, which Gryphius doesn’t mention. Here, after her death, for example in Joost van den Vondel's drama Maria Stuart (1646), Mary Stuart is staged primarily as a Christian Catholic martyr. Gryphius, in turn, according to the central thesis of this article, transforms her Christian martyrdom into a political one by staging Mary as a spirit of the dead. As a dramatic example, Mary thus lends her (ghostly) voice to the historical injustice of the English regicide.