England's Elizabeth: an afterlife in fame and fantasy, by Michael Dobson and Nicola J Watson

From Good Queen Bess to 'Blackadder'

What makes Elizabeth I so perennially fascinating? 24 March 2003 will be the 400th anniversary of her death, but we still know, or think we know, more about her than any other monarch until recent times. She was lavishly praised in poetry and paint in her lifetime, and English culture has remained fixated on her.

In 1590 the ambitious Edmund Spenser published the first part of his narrative poem, The Faerie Queene. The dedication identifies his fictional Gloriana, supreme ruler of most of the universe, with Elizabeth. But he invites her "in mirrors more than one herself to see", to find herself reflected also in the pure, fierce Belphoebe or the husband-seeking woman knight Britomart – a discriminating Bridget Jones in chainmail knickers.

Spenser's celebrations went unrewarded. His irritation emerged in the second part, in less loveable avatars like the castrating bitch, Radigund. The strands of fear, desire and disgust that thread through later Elizabeth stories were inscribed at the start by one of her contemporaries.

Michael Dobson and Nicola J Watson's book offers no redefinition of the real Elizabeth Tudor, though their scholarly passion pays tribute to the gap where she might be. Instead, they trace "the history of English-speaking culture's forever-mutating investment" in the queen. As she grew up, Elizabeth created herself as street and court theatre. Her long, eventful life opens itself to multiple narratives: of a vulnerable 14-year-old, quick-witted prisoner, manipulative lover, indomitable politician, beef-eating Aunt Dahlia of the Shires, and venomous crone.

Her successor James VI's popularity lasted about a fortnight. By then his accent and the vulpine favourites who followed from Scotland, or attached themselves in London, generated a nostalgia for the old Queen that has never faded. Soon, dramatists and historians made their England around her: her Armada speech, the Accession ring that married her as virgin to her country, her resolute Protestantism. By the 18th century, novelists had found a softer version, torn between love and duty. Victorian painters and writers loathed her as unwomanly. She recovered with cross-dressing and sexual ambiguity: Elizabeth in Bloomsbury.

The funniest chapter is on Elizabeth, Shakespeare and our national project to link the two, not necessarily in sexual intercourse (though that has been attempted), but as mother and father of our heritage. The offspring varies, from matching teaspoons in the National Portrait Gallery shop to the RSC. Reconstructions continue, with Judi Dench's genial tartar in Shakespeare in Love, and Miranda Richardson's killer flirt in Blackadder. The pictures wonderfully illustrate her incarnations. England's Elizabeth dazzles, leaving an enigma who always eludes the stories and images that try to catch her.