Cultural depictions of Lady Jane Grey

The limited amount of material from which to construct a source-based biography of her has not stopped authors of all ages filling the gaps with the fruits of their imagination.

In one ballad Lady Jane, in denouncing her executioner Queen Mary I, declares "For Popery I hate as death / and Christ my saviour love."

This theme was taken up later in the century by John Banks, a Restoration playwright, in his Innocent Usurper: or, the Death of Lady Jane Grey.

It was not until the early nineteenth century that John Lingard, a Catholic historian, ventured a word or two of counter-adulation about Jane, saying that she 'liked dresses overmuch', and reminding her promoters that she was only sixteen.

The radical thinker and philosopher William Godwin called her "the most perfect young creature of the female sex to be found in history" in his own hagiography of Jane published under the pseudonym Theopilius Marcliffe.

Painted 40 to 50 years after Jane's death, the "Streatham portrait" (so called after the area of London in which it resided for decades) depicts a young woman dressed in a red gown, adorned with jewels and holding a prayer book.

[2] Historian and Tudor specialist David Starkey is sceptical, "It's an appallingly bad picture and there's absolutely no reason to suppose it's got anything to do with Lady Jane Grey.

Jane is shown wearing a white garment resembling laced French undergarments, similar in colour to that worn by Marie Antoinette at her execution in 1793.

Two years later, George Whiting Flagg chose to name his representation of a woman being blindfolded Lady Jane Grey Preparing for Execution rather than after Mary, Queen of Scots.

Giovanna Gray, a tragic opera (tragedia lirica) in three acts based on Jane Grey's last days, was composed by Nicola Vaccai, with a libretto by Carlo Pepoli.

In reporting the poor reviews received by Giovanna Gray, the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris expressed astonishment that such an interesting and tragic subject had not been set by a composer capable of making it a dramatic success and suggested Meyerbeer, Rossini, or Halévy as possibilities.

[9] Timoteo Pasini's version, Giovanna Grey, set to a libretto by Giovanni Pennacchi, had a "triumphant" premiere at the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara in 1853 with Luigia Abbadia in the title role.

She is portrayed by Emily Bader in the 2024 Amazon Prime Video series My Lady Jane, based on the historical fantasy novel of the same name by Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows.