Tudor temper tantrums and their crucial consequences were evident to me early in life as I observed the grave of Henry VIII’s first rejected queen, Katherine of Aragon, on regular visits to Peterborough Cathedral during my school days in the city.

She was installed in her final resting place in the cathedral’s north aisle in 1536, two years after Henry divorced her, following her death at nearby Kimbolton Castle.

The interment was in the capable hands of sextant Robert Scarlett, a man long known as Old Scarlett owing to the remarkable fact that he lived and worked until he was 98.

His portrait occupies a prominent position above the main doors in the cathedral’s lovely west front.

Beside it is a poem celebrating his long life. It begins: “You see old Scarlett’s picture stand on hie/But at your feete here doth his body lie.”

Later it records: “Second to none for strength and sturdye limm,/A Scarebabe mighty voice with visage grim./He had interd two Queenes within this place.”

Two queens? Indeed so, for that “sturdye limm” also wielded the spade that dug the grave in the south choir aisle for Mary Queen of Scots following her execution in February 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle, 12 miles west of Peterborough. Old Scarlett was in his nineties by then.

On the orders of Elizabeth I – who was not, of course, present – she went to her grave with great solemnity, but was not destined to remain in it for long.

In 1612, when her son James I was nine years into his reign, her remains were removed to Westminster Abbey.

They now reside in a magnificent marble tomb in the south aisle of the Lady Chapel which features a white marble effigy, sculpted by William and Cornelius Cure, under an elaborate canopy. The Cures show her in a close-fitting coif, a laced ruff and a long mantle fastened by a brooch.

A long Latin inscription supplies details of her demise.

It reads in part: “After she had been detained in custody for more or less 20 years, and had courageously and vigorously (but vainly) fought against the obloquies of her foes, the mistrust of the faint-hearted and the crafty devices of her mortal enemies, she was at last struck down by the axe (an unheard-of precedent, outrageous to royalty)”.

“[To] all who witnessed her unhappy murder . . . she piously, patiently and courageously submitted her royal neck to the accursed axe.”

Much of what is here described forms the subject matter of Friedrich Schiller’s wonderful play Mary Stuart, of which a superb revival is currently being given, in a new adaptation by Robert Icke, at London’s Duke of York’s Theatre.

Performances of this Almeida Theatre production continue there until March 31 (0844 8717615), after which it is touring to Bath’s Theatre Royal (April 4-14) and the Arts Theatre Cambridge (April 23-28).

Being familiar with the play only as the source for Donizetti’s opera Maria Stuarda, I seized the opportunity to see it and felt richly rewarded through doing so.

The great central scene of the play (as of the opera) is an emotionally (and politically) fraught encounter at Fotheringay between Mary and Elizabeth who in real life, of course, never met even once. In death, they are destined to be forever together, ironically, since Elizabeth rests in the opposite aisle to Mary in Henry VII’s chapel at the abbey.

The meeting develops into a real catfight, which in the opera, with all the composer’s characteristic vocal embellishments, sometimes sounds slightly absurd. Not so here in brilliantly controlled work by Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams.

As has been widely reported, the two actors take turns in the roles, deciding who is who with a toss of a coin at the start of the performance, This neatly reflects what might seem the arbitrary nature of political rule.

On the night I saw the play, Ms Stevenson ‘won’ the toss, immediately receiving the bowed deference of Elizabeth’s besuited courtiers (this is a modern dress production) while Ms Williams was off to the lonely life of Fotheringhay.

As political drama, with much scheming and double-crossing, this is as gripping as it gets (and I include the RSC’s take on Wolf Hall). Go see.