'Jerusalem thou dydst promyse to buylde up': kingship, counsel and early Elizabethan drama

Historians of counsel have mostly shied away from early Elizabethan drama, while literary critics have not fully taken on board the recent advances in the historiography. This chapter makes a case for a more holistic, interdisciplinary approach to both counsel and the drama. It argues that early Elizabethan plays, both elite and popular, constituted an important form of counsel to the monarch and the ruling classes. An overview of how the plays engaged with counsel is followed by a fresh contextual reading of a popular biblical interlude, Kyng Daryus (1565), which is demonstrated to have formed an integral part of the godly campaign for further reformation. Appearing at the height of the Vestiarian Controversy, Kyng Daryus is shown to invoke the promised restoration of the Jerusalem Temple to promote the ideal of godly counsel, effectively mobilising the wider public in its defence.