In particular she interpreted the succession tract of Edmund Plowden, a Catholic supporter of the claims of Mary, Queen of Scots, and contributed to the discussion of Gorboduc, an early Elizabethan drama from the inns of court.
They worked for Tatterman Marionettes, who under William Duncan Ireland and Edward Mabley were at the Century of Progress world fair in Chicago, and toured a production of Peer Gynt, and Bil Baird.
[10] She took Part II of the Cambridge English Tripos, arranged medieval drama productions in the courtyard of The Eagle, with her future husband Richard Axton, and began research under M. C.
Axton wrote in it that "Queen Elizabeth's playwrights shared Hieronymo's assumption that the action of a play could decisively alter the course of real events".
[13] It was concerned, more precisely, with the application of the legal doctrine of the king's two bodies to the succession question in England, particularly in a covert way in dramas associated with the inns of court.
[14] On the other hand, Claire McEachern credits Axton for showing that "far from being a disinterested and general cultural commonplace, the "body politic" had quite a specific polemical life".
[16] Andrew Hadfield noted that Axton treats the theory of the doctrine put forward by Plowden as contentious at the time, rather than common ground.
He wrote: ... Dr Axton has shown that the Elizabethan theatre provided an important forum for contemporary observations on the succession-question when its discussion in parliament and pamphlet was blocked.
[18] A review by Eric Ives commended the political analysis of Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle, but regretted the absence of liaison with work of Frances Yates and Roy Strong on the "cult of Elizabeth".
[20] Gorboduc from 1561, early in the reign of Elizabeth I, also known as Ferrex and Porrex, is a tragedy about two claimants to the British throne, and is the earliest drama in the scope of Axton's work.
)[28] Michael Graves, biographer of Norton, decided that in the light of the "Journall", the succession tract aspect recedes in the face in the clear advocacy for Dudley's marriage to the Queen.