The Gunpowder Plot was a failed assassination attempt against King James VI of Scotland and I of England by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby. The conspirators' aim was to blow up the House of Lords at the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, while the king and many other important members of the aristocracy and nobility were inside. The conspirator who became most closely associated with the plot in the popular imagination was Guy Fawkes, who had been assigned the task of lighting the fuse to the explosives.
In literature The young John Milton, in 1626 at the age of 17, wrote what one commentator has called a "critically vexing poem", In Quintum Novembris. The work reflects "partisan public sentiment on an English-Protestant national holiday", 5 November. In the published editions of 1645 and 1673, the poem is preceded by five epigrams on the subject of the Gunpowder Plot, apparently written by Milton in preparation for the larger work. Milton's imagination continued to be "haunted" by the Gunpowder Plot throughout his life, and critics have argued that it strongly influenced his later and more well-known poem, Paradise Lost.
William Harrison Ainsworth's 1841 historical romance Guy Fawkes; or, The Gunpowder Treason, portrays Fawkes in a generally sympathetic light, although it also embellishes the known facts for dramatic effect. Ainsworth's novel transformed Fawkes into an "acceptable fictional character", and Fawkes subsequently appeared in children's books and penny dreadfuls. One example of the latter is The Boyhood Days of Guy Fawkes, published in about 1905, which portrayed Fawkes as "essentially an action hero"..
With the phrase "A penny for the Old Guy", Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot acknowledges Fawkes (and the straw-man effigy burned every year on 5 November) in an epigraph to his 1925 poem "The Hollow Men".
The main character in the dystopian comic book series V for Vendetta (Moore/Lloyd) - which first began publication in 1982 and was completed in 1989 - wore a Guy Fawkes mask. In the comic, and in its 2005 film adaptation, "V" succeeds in blowing up the Houses of Parliament on 5 November (1997 in the comic, 2021 in the film). The film adaptation also opens with a dramatised depiction of Fawkes's arrest and execution, as the character Evey narrates the first lines of the poem of Guy Fawkes Night - which was also used in the trailer, as it was initially scheduled to debut on the November 4th, almost the precise 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot itself. (However, the film was delayed either due to post-production work, or sensitivities surrounding the then-recent and thematically resonant London tube bombing on the 7 July).
In the Doctor Who Virgin Missing Adventures novel "The Plotters", the First Doctor and his companions Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki become involved with the Gunpowder Plot when the Doctor visits to investigate, learning that the plot was aided by a member of the king's court—who intended to expose the plot and thus impose more stringent anti-Catholic measures—and a brotherhood of self-styled warlocks who hoped that they would gain power in the ensuing chaos if the plot succeeded. During their investigation, Guy Fawkes is killed before 5 November while protecting Barbara after she tells him the truth about her presence, but a member of the court who was part of the brotherhood is tried as Fawkes, thus preserving history. The Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory Williams also become involved in the Plot in the Doctor Who: The Adventure Games computer game, where the Plot was manipulated by rival aliens the Sontarans and the Rutans to recover a Rutan spaceship that had crash-landed underneath the location where Parliament would be built in the thirteenth century, as the ship contained weapons that could wipe out the Sontarans. Making contact with Fawkes and the others to confirm the plot's progress, the Doctor later manages to recover and alter one of the Rutan weapons hidden in the ship so it will instead wipe out the Rutans, then gives one weapon to each side, not telling them which is which, meaning that neither side can use them for risk of wiping out themselves. Before the TARDIS crew depart, the Doctor pays one last visit to Fawkes, and tells him that the world will remember what he did this day without revealing that he is destined to fail.
The children's novel Witch Week – the third novel of the Chrestomanci series – by Diana Wynne Jones takes place in a world very similar to our own, with the exception of the existence of magic. It takes place in a boarding school, where several students discover they're witches. Using magic is however punishable by death. In order to conceal their magic the kids get into a bunch of trouble. At their wits end, they call on extremely powerful enchanter Chrestomanci to help them out. Near the end of the story it is revealed that all of the events transpired because in their world, the Gunpowder Plot was successful. This caused their world to split off from ours, taking all the magic with it. The bombing is erased from history, thereby merging their world with ours and erasing both magic and all the troubling events that transpired.
In the Harry Potter series, Dumbledore, the school's headmaster, has a phoenix called Fawkes, named after Guy Fawkes.MuggleNet | The World's #1 Harry Potter Site – Deathly Hallows Movie, The Wizarding World, JK Rowling, and much more According to tradition, a phoenix burns when it reaches the end of its life.
In the novel Martin Chuzzlewit it is said that a member of the Chuzzlewit family was "unquestionably" involved in the Gunpowder Plot, and that Fawkes himself may indeed have been a scion of the family's "remarkable stock."
Two recent novels apply to the Gunpowder Plot the conventions of the modern Spy thriller, adapted to the 17th Century conditions. Both broadly stick to known historical facts, only slightly altering them to accommodate fictional characters, and creatively fill in many details which remain unknown in the official records of the Gunpowder Plot.
In the later part of Ken Follett's 2017 novel A Column of Fire, the Gunpowder Plot is made the final round in a decades-long, deadly battle of wits between Catholic conspirator Rollo Fitzgerald, hatching sophisticated dangerous conspiracies, and Ned Willard, the Royal spymaster tasked with uncovering and foiling these conspiracies (and who happens to be Fitzgerald's brother-in-law). Follett attributes to Rollo Fitzgerald the role of initiating the plot and recruiting Guy Fawkes to implement it. To Ned Willard is attributed the role of uncovering the conspiracy and averting it at the last moment. For dramatic purposes, Follett omits the historical fact that the gunpowder had undergone some deterioration and might not have exploded. As depicted in the book, it was completely combustible and the plot might well have been carried out, with drastic results for later English history, but for Willard discovering it in the very nick of time. Christie Dickason's 2005 novel The Firemaster's MistressChristie Dickason, "The Firemaster's Mistress", HarperCollins, London, 2005, focuses on Francis Quoynt, the "Firemaster" (gunpowder expert) who provided the conspirators with their multiple barrels of gunpowder. The identity of the person who actually did this remains unknown, as the Royal authorities never prosecuted him as an accomplice. Dickason provides a plausible explanation why they did not: as depicted in the book, Secretary of State Robert Cecil was aware of the plot from an early stage, recruited Quoynt as a (very reluctant) double agent, sternly instructed him to go on with producing the gunpowder and even paying his expenses – with the deliberate intention of letting the plot nearly succeed and then catching the conspirators red-handed, so as to bolster the position of the newly enthroned King James I, still widely regarded as a Scottish interloper, and of Cecil himself as the King's right-hand man. In this, Cecil proves eminently successful. However, the book posits another plot, hatched by Cecil's cousin and arch-rival Francis Bacon, who was also aware of the Gunpowder Plot. Bacon intended, after the plot had been uncovered and Royal vigilance relaxed, to assassinate King James and his son and heir Henry when they go hunting. Then, Bacon would produce a surprise Royal successor, get that successor on the throne with the help of Spanish troops smuggled into England – whereupon Bacon would emerge as the power behind the new throne. This second plot is very neatly foiled by the Firemaster Quoynt and his eponymous mistress. Since there was no conclusive evidence of Bacon's involvement, Cecil prefers to keep the whole affair secret. There is no historical evidence for any such second plot. However, both Bacon's hunger for power and his fondness for convoluted plots are well known historical facts. Though the reconstruction of the details of the Gunpowder Plot is very different in the two books, both of them attribute the writing of the Monteagle letter to the protagonist's love interest. In both books, this character is described as a staunchly Catholic woman, caught in a web of conflicting loyalties – faithful to her religion and fellow Catholics but in no way supportive of a plot to blow up Parliament and King.
In theatre By the 19th century, Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot had begun to be used as the basis for pantomimes. One early example is Harlequin and Guy Fawkes: or, the 5th of November, which was performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, on 16 November 1835. After the Plot is discovered, Fawkes changes into Harlequin and Robert Catesby, the leader of the Plot, into Pantaloon, following which "pure pantomime begins". Fawkes also features in the pantomime Guy Fawkes, or a Match for a King, written by Albert Smith and William Hale and first performed in 1855. The opening scene shows an argument between Catesby and Fawkes over the fate of Lord Monteagle, the man who raised the alarm after receiving an anonymous letter warning him not to attend Parliament on 5 November 1605. Catesby wants to save his friend Monteagle, but Fawkes, who regards him as an enemy, wants him blown up with the rest of the aristocracy. The two fight, at first with "doubtful" swords and then with bladders, before Fawkes is "done". The remainder of the pantomime consists of clowns acting out various comic scenes unrelated to the Gunpowder Plot.
The play Guido Fawkes: or, the Prophetess of Ordsall Cave was based on early episodes of the serialised version of Ainsworth's 1841 novel. Performed at the Queen's Theatre, Manchester, in June 1840, it portrayed Fawkes as a "politically motivated sympathiser with the common people's cause". Ainsworth's novel was translated to film in the 1923 production of Guy Fawkes, directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Matheson Lang as Fawkes.
In August 2005, a play called 5/11 which (slightly inaccurately) explains the social and political climate up to, and including, the attempt to blow up Parliament was launched at the Chichester Festival Theatre. Its cast included Hugh Ross as Cecil, Stephen Noonan as Catesby and Alistair McGowan as King James. It received largely positive reviews, which noted its relevance to today's society and its ability to enlighten its audience. The name "5/11" used for the Gunpowder Plot is a deliberate reference to "9/11", a common name for the September 11 attacks
The Gunpowder Plot is the central motif in the 2009 play Equivocation written by Bill Cain, which explores the dangers of telling the truth in difficult times. It considers a scenario in which the British government commissions William Shakespeare to write a definitive history of the plot in the form of a play.
In music