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Evaluating and Interpreting Primary Documents In historiography, which is the study of the writing of history and the employment of historical methods, a primary source is a document, recording, artifact, fi lm, docu- mentary, newspaper, work of art or literature, or other information resource that was created at or near the time being studied. Usually the creator of that document had direct, personal knowledge of the particular past events, persons, or topics being described. Primary sources are original sources of information about the past, unlike secondary sources, which are works later historians create from a study, citation, and evaluation of primary sources. A modern study of the reign of Elizabeth I, such as the three volumes by Wallace MacCaffrey a modern biography of William Shakespeare, such as Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Green- blatt recent fi lms, such as Anonymous, Mary Queen of Scots, and All Is True and recent television programs, such as Reign and Elizabeth I with Helen Mirren may be helpful in explaining the political, religious, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of the Elizabethan and Jacobean worlds to contemporary readers and viewers. They are, however, secondary descriptions and depictions based on fi rsthand experiences and recollections recorded and preserved in the primary documents of the period. Primary documents—as illustrated by the document selections included in this collection—come in many forms and types, including letters, plays, poems, speeches, polemics, novels, offi cial reports, promotional works, and descriptive narratives of people and events. These sources were written by a particular person at a particular time in a particular place for a particular reason. Some were written with no expectation that they would ever be read by anyone other than the original recipient others were written for publication or at least with an eye to wider dis- tribution. Some were meant to inform, some to persuade, and some to entertain. Each exhibits the political, economic, and social biases of their creators, whether those attitudes were consciously or unconsciously expressed. Some are the prod- uct of poor memories, bad information, or outright deception, but all are authentic voices of someone alive at the time and all can add at least a little to the informa- tion we have of an otherwise-irrecoverable past age or person. Nonetheless, histo- rians must carefully evaluate and test all primary sources to determine how much weight and credibility each should be given. How to Read Primary Documents When evaluating a primary source, historians ask the following questions: 1. Who wrote or produced it? What is known about this person’s life or career? 2. When was the source written or produced? What date? How close or far was that date from the date of the events described?