Robert Bolt [is] concerned fiercely with the problems of the individual and his social conscience…. [Flowering Cherry] proved to be the portrait of a failure, a study of futility, frustration, and self-deception (today a continuing theme). Jim Cherry is an insurance agent. He is also an abject failure in life, a dreamer who uses his rhapsodies and reveries as a kingdom of escape…. Throughout [the play we observe] the affinity with Death of a Salesman. [At the denouement] there is a symbolic vi...

[Vivat! Vivat Regina!] sets out to demonstrate Bolt's reasonable contention that Queen Elizabeth I gradually abandoned vivaciousness to become a marvelously skillful head of state, while her rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, turned into a richly human woman as she lost her political battle…. The character transformation works better for Elizabeth than for Mary. Although the "Virgin Queen" is predisposed toward coldness by her unhappy childhood with no mother and a father who disowned ...

[The appearance of Robert Bolt's Flowering Cherry] has raised the usual question of whether here is at last a new writer of importance. (pp. 54-5) There are overtones in Bolt's play which recall Osborne's The Entertainer…. What strikes one in the two plays is the attempt to imply something about contemporary England through a study of the middle generation…. Jim Cherry's empty job is set against the nostalgic recollection of life on the land. [The] lost middle gener...

[Another] play about Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth may not have struck anyone as an exhilarating prospect, but Mr. Bolt has succeeded in bringing off [in "Vivat! Vivat Regina!"] a double portrait that is extremely distinguished, convincing, and as brilliantly fresh as though he and we were looking at his sitters for the first time…. The curious love-hate relationship between Mary and Elizabeth is well brought out—scornful on Mary's side, half wistful on Elizabeth...