Queen Elizabeth I Selected Works

by May, Steven W.

• ISBN13: 9780743476447
• ISBN10: 0743476441
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-01-04
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

An impeccably researched collection of the public and private writings of the great British monarchQueen Elizabeth I was one of the most charismatic of English sovereigns, and one of the most prolific. While her more famous public speeches are familiar to some, many of her private writings have never before been printed or made accessible. Now, for the first time, a generous selection of her poetry, speeches, essays, letters, prayers, and translations is being made available to a popular audience. From a poem written in charcoal on a wall at Woodstock Palace by the twenty-two-year-old imprisoned princess, to the speech the thirty-year-old queen gave in response to parliamentary pressure that she marry, to the fascinating letters sent to her emissaries as they conducted the kingdom's business, this collection of the selected writings of Elizabeth I is a privileged glimpse into the mind of one of the most compelling rulers of the Western world.Authenticity was a guiding principle in the selection of these readings. This volume grew out of the many manuscript texts of Elizabeth's works Professor Steven W. May discovered while preparing theBibliography and First-Line Index of English Verse,a twelve-year research project that took him to more than 100 manuscript archives in this country and the United Kingdom.The anthology offers a broad selection of Queen Elizabeth's works and includes the most authentic and interesting English texts that survive in her handwriting. Her written words reveal not only Elizabeth's political and psychological insight, but her literary gifts as well. The texts, presented in modern spelling and set forth in their historical context, are accompanied by extensive explanatory notes and introductory material.An impressive collection of rare documents, presented with abundant commentary and full explanatory notes, as well as an informative introduction providing helpful background on Elizabeth's life and letters.

Table of Contents

Chronology	vii
Abbreviations	ix
Introduction	xi
Editorial Procedures	xli
I Original Poems	1	(30)
II Speeches	31	(62)
III Letters	93	(152)
IV Prayers	245	(16)
V Essays	261	(6)
VI Translations	267	(62)
Wrongly Attributed Works	329	(4)
For Further Reading	333	(4)
Index	337

Excerpts

Introduction: Elizabeth's Life and Reign

Henry VIII, the second Tudor king, lacked a male heir as he approached age forty in 1531. His twenty-odd years of wedlock with Catherine of Aragon had produced only one child who survived into adolescence, his daughter Mary. When Pope Clement VII refused to dissolve Henry's marriage with Catherine, the King renounced papal authority, arranged for the annulment of his marriage by authority of the newly autonomous English Church, and married Anne Boleyn in 1533. By the Act of Supremacy (1534), Parliament proclaimed Henry the Supreme Head of the Church of England; thus, the Protestant Reformation came to England as a by-product of the King's efforts to perpetuate the Tudor dynasty. Henry was unable to hide his disappointment when Anne gave birth to their daughter Elizabeth on September 7, 1533. He could not foresee that this baby girl was destined to rule England for nearly forty-five years as a successful, indeed illustrious, queen.

Elizabeth learned early in life that her status as a potential successor to the crown could be dangerous. After her father's death in 1547, when her brother Edward came to the throne, she spent a year in the household of her stepmother, the dowager Queen Catherine Parr. Catherine's new husband, the Lord Admiral, Thomas Seymour, was handsome, dashing, and influential. His nephew, King Edward VI, was titular ruler of England under the protectorship of Seymour's brother, Edward, duke of Somerset. The teenage Princess found Thomas attractive, and his initial flirtation with her turned to open courtship when Catherine died just after childbirth in September 1548. Given Elizabeth's claim to the throne, this or any other match would have been treasonous without consent of the King and Privy Council. While Elizabeth escaped punishment, the Lord Admiral was in 1549 beheaded at his brother's command for, among other offenses, his designs on the Princess.

Elizabeth avoided any appearance of rivalry for the throne when Edward VI died in July 1553 and their half-sister, Mary, acceded as queen. But Mary reinstated Catholicism as the state religion and on July 25, 1554, married Philip II of Spain. During the preceding winter, English Protestants had launched a rebellion against the new regime. Sir Thomas Wyatt actually led troops into London in February, but his uprising was crushed. The government implicated Elizabeth in the failed coup and sent her to the Tower of London. Although once again her life was spared, she was held prisoner for more than a year, at first in the Tower and then at Woodstock Manor, Oxfordshire.

Elizabeth became Queen of England when Mary died on November 17, 1558. The country was deeply divided along religious lines as well as being economically and militarily weak; it was thus a tempting prey for the two great Catholic powers, Spain and France. Moreover, the new Queen was the last direct heir of the Tudor dynasty (though her legitimacy was not entirely certain even by English law). For the sake of England's future it was vital that either she marry and produce an heir or designate a successor who could then be legally ratified by Parliament. The alternative was an unregulated succession; at Elizabeth's death, civil war on behalf of rival contenders for the crown would be the most likely outcome.

The members of Elizabeth's first Parliament probably felt that the succession dilemma would be resolved soon enough by an appropriate marriage. Their foremost legislation in 1559, the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, restored the Protestant state church founded by Henry VIII and maintained under Edward VI. Their religious "settlement," confirmed in 1563 by adoption of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Church doctrine, termed Elizabeth the Supreme Governor of the realm in both ecclesiastical and temporal affairs. However, her status as a Protestant queen failed to discourage Catholic suitors; indeed, the formally recognized candidate who came closest to marrying her was Francis, duke of Alençon (later, duke of Anjou) and brother to the King of France. His off-and-on courtship of the Queen, begun in 1570, concluded without success in 1582 when Elizabeth was nearly fifty.

At the beginning of her reign, however, Elizabeth had engaged in open warfare with France, both in Scotland and over the French seaport of Calais, England's last Continental holding from the Hundred Years' War. The crisis intensified when Mary Stuart, Henry VII's great-granddaughter and widow of Francis II of France, returned to her native Scotland as queen in 1561. Mary was a staunch Catholic who held a viable claim to the English throne. During the 1560s and 1570s, Elizabeth's Privy Council and Parliament exhorted her with increasing fervor to marry or name an heir, but in the first decade of her reign she rejected perhaps a dozen suitors. She undoubtedly would have married her longtime favorite, Robert Dudley, were personal preference the only criterion. But the death of Lord Robert's wife under mysterious circumstances in 1560 made any match with Elizabeth politically impossible on grounds of the scandal it would cause. She instead created Dudley earl of Leicester in 1564 and offered him as a husband of suitable rank for the Queen of Scots in an effort to secure England's northern border. But in July 1565, this rival queen married another of Elizabeth's own subjects, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, and in the following June gave birth to a male heir, the future King James VI of Scotland.

Ironically, Mary's apparent successes as queen and mother led to the most glorious triumph of Elizabeth's reign and resulted as well in a Protestant successor to her throne. Mary's indiscreet love life implicated her lover, Bothwell, in Darnley's assassination in 1567. In the wake of this crime, most of Mary's subjects turned against her. She fled to England in May 1568, where she was arrested and where she remained a prisoner until her death. For nearly twenty years Elizabeth dealt with the crisis of a rival queen on English soil whose mere existence served as a constant incitement to Elizabeth's Catholic subjects and the Catholic powers of Europe to place her on the English throne by force. During the winter of 1569-70, Elizabeth's armies quickly suppressed the "Northern Rebellion," the first uprising on Mary's behalf. Yet there followed a series of plots to assassinate Elizabeth, among them the Ridolfi plot of 1571, the Throckmorton plot of 1583, and William Parry's conspiracy in 1585. Not until the Babington plot of 1586, however, was the government able to implicate Mary directly in a scheme to kill Elizabeth. In the fall of that year, the Queen of Scots was tried and found guilty. Parliament demanded the death sentence, but Elizabeth could not bring herself to give final approval for Mary's execution. When Mary was, nevertheless, beheaded on February 8, 1587, it was by authority of a duly signed royal warrant, yet Elizabeth insisted that she never meant to dispatch the warrant, and she made Secretary William Davison the scapegoat for her rival's death.

Mary's execution brought to a head England's conflict with Spain and the papacy. England had sparred for years with its Catholic opponents: in Ireland, in the Netherlands, on the high seas, and in Spain's New World colonies. Spain might have launched an armada against England in 1587 had not Sir Francis Drake burned the shipping in Càdiz harbor that spring. The Great Armada sailed the following summer, its purpose to crush Elizabeth's regime and return England to the Catholic faith. Instead, the English navy routed this flotilla, and nearly half its ships and men never returned to Spain. The defeat of the Armada was Elizabeth's greatest victory on the international front, although hostilities with Spain continued to the end of her reign, draining the royal coffers and distracting the English from both their domestic needs and efforts to establish overseas colonies of their own.

The very fact, however, that Elizabeth could challenge so great a power as Spain raised England's international prestige to its highest level since the days of Henry VIII. The last dozen years of Elizabeth's reign were also a golden age of English literature, created by such writers as Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson. But the Queen who managed England's problems during these years no doubt found the age substantially less glorious. Virulent outbreaks of plague from 1592 to 1594 were followed by several years of bad weather, poor harvests, and near famine in some parts of the country. The harmonious functioning of the central government was upset by the growing influence of Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex. By 1587 he had eclipsed Sir Walter Ralegh as the Queen's chief favorite. Elizabeth delighted in this exuberant nobleman who was less than half her age. But Essex's ambitions soon pitted him against Lord Treasurer Burghley and Burghley's son, Sir Robert Cecil; the result was years of bitter struggle for control of royal favor and national policy. The earl's miscalculated coup attempt and subsequent beheading early in 1601 cast a sombre pall over Elizabeth's final years. Festivities at court were often sparsely attended in the latter years of her reign, while even her most trusted courtiers secretly corresponded with her eagerly expectant successor, King James VI of Scotland. Elizabeth never lost the love of the majority of her subjects, however, just as her love for them was a constant theme of her public oratory from the time of her coronation. Her accession day, November 17, was celebrated spontaneously and publicly decades after her death. The transition to Stuart rule under King James took place smoothly in 1603, yet the new dynasty never produced a ruler as effective and popular as the queen it superseded.

Copyright ©2004 by Steven W. May

Chapter One: Original Poems

Poem 1

Woodstock, 1555.

From Universitätsbibliothek Basel MS L, 7-8,

the diary of Thomas Platter.

A[t] Woodstock Manor. 1555.

Oh fortune, thy wresting, wavering state

Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit,

Whose witness this present prison late

Could bear, where once was joy flown quite.

Thou caused'st the guilty to be loosed

From bands where innocents were enclosed,

And caused the guiltless to be reserved,

And freed those that death had well deserved.

But herein can be nothing wrought.

So God send to my foes as they have thought.

Finis. Elisabetha the prisoner, 1555

Commentary

Elizabeth wrote these lines in charcoal on a wall at Woodstock Palace, where she was imprisoned by Queen Mary from June 1554 until April 17, 1555. The only extant contemporary texts were transcribed by Continental visitors to the palace (see the textual notes).

Textual Notes

Platter's text has been reprinted in Clare Williams,Thomas Platter's Travels in England, 1599(London, 1937), pp. 220-21, and in Thomas Platter,Beschreibung der Reisen durch Frankreich, Spanien, England und die Niederlande 1595-1600,ed. Rut Keiser (Basel, 1968), 2:859. I am grateful to Dr. Lukas Erne for checking this transcription against the original manuscript at Basel. See G. W. Groos, ed.,The Diary of Baron Waldstein(London, 1981), pp. 117, 119, for the text copied at Woodstock by this nobleman in 1600. A third foreign visitor, Paul Hentzner, copied the poem on September 13, 1598. A corrupt version of his transcription was published inItinerarivm Germaniae, Galliae; Angliae; Italiae; Scriptum a Paulo Hentznero J C(1612), sig. S4v-T1. A mutilated version of the poem in an eighteenth-century hand is found in British Library Add. MS 4457, f. 6.

Poem 2

Woodstock, 1555. John Foxe,

Actes and Monuments (1563), sig. 2nd 4N7v.

Much suspected by me,

Nothing proved can be.

Quod Elisabeth the prisoner.

Commentary

According to Foxe, Elizabeth wrote these lines "with her diamond in a glass window" at Woodstock Palace, where, with Poem 1, they were routinely shown to visitors. Unlike Poem 1, however, this couplet was widely disseminated in England during the Queen's reign. It was printed in Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" (six editions during Elizabeth's reign, between 1563 and 1597), as well as in Holinshed'sChronicles(1587), vol. 3, sig. 5S2; in Anthony Munday'sA Watch-Woord to Englande(1584), sig. I1; and in the notes to Sir John Harington's translation ofOrlando Furioso(1591), sig. 2L2. Manuscript copies include Harington's draft of theOrlando Furioso(British Library Add. MS 18920, f. 322) and two seventeenth-century texts in NLW, Sotheby MS B2, f. 59v.

Poem 3

Royal Library, Windsor Castle,

holograph on the last page of text in a copy

of a French Psalter published in Paris ca. 1520.

No crooked leg, no bleared eye,

No part deformed out of kind,

Nor yet so ugly half can be

As is the inward, suspicious mind.

Your loving mistress,

Elizabeth

Commentary

Elizabeth inscribed these lines when she presented the psalter to a servant or friend at some time before November 17, 1558. Her signature establishes the approximate date, for after her name she drew a square knot with four loops. It mimics the knot that Henry VIII added to his signatures, and was the symbol Elizabeth ordinarily used as princess. She replaced the knot with the letter "R" (forRegina) upon becoming queen.

Textual Notes

The text as transcribed here is published by gracious permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The verse and signature occupy most of the bottom half of the printed page and Elizabeth made no effort to present her work as a verse stanza: the lines break at "bleared," "out," "ugly," and "inward."

Poem 4

Folger MS V.b.317, f. 20v.

The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,

And wit me warns to shun such snares as threatens

mine annoy,

For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects' faith

doth ebb,

Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom

weaved the web.

But clouds of joys untried do cloak aspiring minds,

Which turns to rain of late repent by changèd course

of winds.

The top of hope supposed, the root of rue shall be,

And fruitless all their grafted guile as shortly you

shall see.

Their dazzled eyes with pride, which great ambition

blinds

Shall be unsealed by worthy wights whose foresight falsehood finds.

The daughter of debate, that discord aye doth sow

Shall reap no gain where former rule still peace hath

taught to know.

No foreign, banished wight shall anchor in this port;

Our realm brooks no seditious sects, let them elsewhere

resort.

My rusty sword through rest shall first his edge

employ

To poll their tops who seek such change or gape for

future joy.

Commentary

The Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, had been held captive in England since 1568 when she fled Scotland after the scandal of her husband's murder. In the fall of 1569, English Catholics led by the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland attempted to

free Mary by force and overthrow the Elizabethan regime. Their uprising, termed the "Northern Rebellion," was effectively suppressed early in the new year. Elizabeth's prophetic and anxious response to this victory saw widespread circulation after Lady Willoughby copied the poem from the Queen's tablet.

Textual Notes

This poem circulated in both manuscript and print. Contemporary transcribed copies include theArundel Harington Manuscript of Tudor Poetry(f. 164v), ed. Ruth Hughey, 2 vols. (Columbus, Oh., 1960); another text from Harington family papers was published in Sir John Harington,Nugae Antiquae,ed. Henry Harington (London, 1769), 1:58-59; London, Inner Temple Petyt MS 538.10, f. 3v; L: Egerton MS 2642, f. 237v; Harleian MS 6933, f. 8; Harleian MS 7392(2), f. 27v; NLW, Ottley Papers; O: Digby MS 138, f. 159; Rawlinson Poet. MS 108, f. 44v. George Puttenham published a version of the poem inThe Arte of English Poesie(1589), sig. 2E2v. The copy text has been emended at line 6, "rain" for "rage," and line 16, "poll" for the scribe's possible spelling variant, "pul."

Poems 5a, 5b

Pierpont Morgan Library, PML 7768, first flyleaf, recto.

5a

Genus infoelix vitae

Multum vigilavi, laboravi, presto multis fui,

Stultitiam multorum perpessa sum,

Arrogantiam pertuli, Difficultates exorbui,

Vixi ad aliorum arbitrium, non ad meum.

5b

A hapless kind of life is this I wear,

Much watch I dure, and weary, toiling days,

I serve the rout, and all their follies bear,

I suffer pride, and sup full hard assays,

To others' will my life is all addressed,

And no way so as might content me best.

Commentary

Both poems were transcribed in Sir Thomas Heneage's copy of Henry Bull'sChristian Prayers and Holy Meditations(1570). As a gentleman of the Privy Chamber from the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, Heneage was an esteemed favorite whose testimony about the Queen's authorship of these poems is almost certainly reliable. The English translation (Poem 5b) is subscribed, "This above was written in a booke by the Queenes Majestie." Elizabeth apparently wrote the Latin version with its unusual cross-rhyme, then translated it into English.

Poem 6

O: Tanner MS 76, f. 94.

Sonetto

I grieve and dare not show my discontent;

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate;

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant

I seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate,

I am, and not; I freeze, and yet am burned,

Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,

Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,

Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done,

His too-familiar care doth make me rue it.

No means I find to rid him from my breast,

Til by the end of things it be suppressed.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,

For I am soft and made of melting snow;

Or be more cruel, Love, and so be kind,

Let me or float, or sink, be high or low,

Or let me live with some more sweet content,

Or die and so forget what love e'er meant.

Eliz. Regina.

Commentary

Three of the five manuscripts of this poem associate it with Elizabeth's parting from "Monsieur" -- Francis, duke of Anjou, her last suitor. After protracted marriage negotiations and months of courtship in London during the winter of 1581-82, Anjou left England in February without a nuptial agreement; he died in May 1584. All five texts of this poem are closely related, and all postdate the occasion for which it was written by more than thirty years. The lack of contemporary copies of this love lament casts some doubt on its authenticity, yet each of the extant manuscripts attributes it to the Queen; it is possible that this very personal composition was discovered only after her death.

Textual Notes

Water damage has largely obliterated the Ashmole MS 781 text. As transcribed by John Nichols (Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth,new ed. [London, 1823], 2:346), this version differs from the Tanner MS in only two readings: "my other" for "another" (l. 6), and "passions" for "passion" (l. 13). Among other variants from the Tanner text, the Leeds MS (L), Stowe MS (S), and NLW MS (W) record the following corrupt readings:

3 yet dare] yet I dareW

8 pursue it] pursueW

12 things] livingS

13 some] comeL; gentler] greaterS

Poem 7. Sir Walter Ralegh to the Queen and Her Answer

Wiltshire Record Office MS 865/500, f. 27.

7a. Sir Walter Ralegh to the Queen

A sonnet

Fortune hath taken thee away, my love,

My life's joy and my soul's heaven above;

Fortune hath taken thee away my princess,

My world's delight and my true fancy's mistress.

Fortune hath taken all away from me,

Fortune hath taken all by taking thee;

Dead to all joys, I only live to woe,

So Fortune now becomes my fancy's foe.

In vain mine eyes, in vain you waste your tears,

In vain my sighs, the smokes of my despairs,

In vain you search the earth and heavens above,

In vain you search, for fortune keeps my love.

Then will I leave my love in Fortune's hands,

Then will I leave my love in worthless bands,

And only love the sorrow due to me;

Sorrow, henceforth that shall my princess be,

And only joy that Fortune conquers kings,

Fortune that rules on earth and earthly things

Hath ta'en my love in spite of virtue's might:

So blind a goddess did never virtue right.

With wisdom's eyes had but blind Fortune seen,

Then had my love my love forever been;

But love, farewell, though Fortune conquer thee,

No Fortune base shall ever alter me.

7b. The Queen's answer

An answer

Ah silly pug, wert thou so sore afraid?

Mourn not, my Wat, nor be thou so dismayed;

It passeth fickle Fortune's power and skill

To force my heart to think thee any ill.

No Fortune base, thou sayest, shall alter thee;

And may so blind a wretch then conquer me?

No, no, my pug, though Fortune were not blind,

Assure thyself she could not rule my mind.

Ne chose I thee by foolish Fortune's rede,

Ne can she make me alter with such speed,

But must thou needs sour sorrow's servant be,

If that to try thy mistress jest with thee.

Fortune, I grant, sometimes doth conquer kings,

And rules and reigns on earth and earthly things,

But never think that Fortune can bear sway,

If virtue watch and will her not obey.

Pluck up thy heart, suppress thy brackish tears,

Torment thee not, but put away thy fears,

Thy love, thy joy, she loves no worthless bands,

Much less to be in reeling Fortune's hands.

Dead to all joys and living unto woe,

Slain quite by her that never gave wiseman blow,

Revive again and live without all dread,

The less afraid the better shalt thou speed.

Commentary

The text of Ralegh's poem in L: Additional MS 63742 suggests that it was circulating by 1587, just at the time that Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, eclipsed Ralegh as the Queen's leading favorite. By complaining that fortune had robbed him of Elizabeth's favor, Ralegh may have intended to remind her of her own vulnerability to a social superior, her half-sister Mary, and the verses she wrote (Poem 1) to lament her confinement at Woodstock by Mary's command. Elizabeth's response to Ralegh, however, consistently treats fortune as the blind goddess of fate, not the rival nobleman whose inroads into her favor elicited Ralegh's complaint.

Ralegh's verse lament apparently entered widespread manuscript circulation not long after he wrote it, for a ballad of "Fortune hath taken thee awaye my love, beinge the true dittie thereof" was entered in the Stationers' Register on June 13, 1590. A two-part ballad on the subject was also entered in the Register on September 22, 1604 -- no doubt a source text for the much-altered versions of these companion poems that were published as broadside ballads in the seventeenth century. For further analysis of the textual history of both poems in print and manuscript see myElizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and Their Contexts(Columbia, Mo., 1991), pp. 319-20.

Poem 8

John Rhodes,The Countrie Mans Comfort(1637), sig. D6-6v.

8.

Two most excellent songs or Ditties, made by Queene Elizabeth, as it is credibly reported (and as it is very likely by some words in it) in the yeare 1588. When the Spaniard came to pos-sess this land and is in manner of a prayer to God.

Deliver me, O Lord my God, from all my foes that be:

And eke defend all Christian souls that put their trust

in thee.

Preserve us now and evermore from all the wicked

train,

Who long and thirst for Christians' blood and never will refrain.

Mine enemies, O Lord, be strong, and thou the same

dost know,

And that without offence in me, they seek mine

overthrow.

My hope and help in all distress hath ever been in

thee:

And thou, O Lord, of thy goodness didst still

deliver me.

Come now and end this strife likewise, the cause is

wholly thine:

Wherefore to thee myself and suit, I wholly do resign.

Commentary, Poems 8 and 9

These songs work together as a prayer to God for deliverance from the Spanish Armada and a prayer of thanksgiving after its defeat. The National Maritime Museum MS was described among the "Manuscripts of John Henry Gurney, Keswick Hall, Norfolk," before the dispersal of that collection. A version of Poem 9 was also printed in Rhodes's book, which, he claimed, was originally published in 1588. An entry forThe Countrie Mans Comfortin the Stationers' Register in that year confirms the assertion, although no copy of the first edition is known. Insofar as the National Maritime Museum manuscript supports Rhodes's attribution of Poem 9 to the Queen, there is no reason to doubt that the first hymn he attributes to her is also authentic. Use of the archaic "eke" in Poem 8, line 2, is matched, for example, by seven uses of the word in her translation of Plutarch. Her protest in lines 5-6 that her enemies have attacked her without provocation is a common theme in Elizabeth's prayers and speeches.

Both Poems 8 and 9 are indebted in their language and sentiments to the Old Testament Psalms tradition without being translations or close adaptations of any one of them. Poem 8, however, resembles Psalm 59 in its appeal to God to "deliver me from mine enemies," its insistence on the power of these "bloodie men," and on the innocence of the singer: "the mightie men are gathered against me, not for mine offense, nor for my sinne, O Lord" (Geneva Bible, 1560, p. 247). Psalm 140 likewise opens with a plea to "Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man," and emphasizes the adversary's power and cruelty. Psalm 86 begins, "Incline thine eare, O Lord, and heare me," and represents the singer as God's "servant." Verse 10 echoes line 6, "For thou art great and doest wonderous things," and the reference in verse 16 to saving "the sonne of thine handmaid" recalls Elizabeth as God's handmaid in line 2 of Poem 9.

Poem 9

National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, MS SNG/4.

A song made by her Majesty and sung before her at her coming from Whitehall to Paul's through Fleetstreet in Anno Dmi 1588. Sung in December after the scattering of the Spanish Navy.

Look and bow down thine ear, O Lord, from thy bright

sphere behold and see,

Thy handmaid and thy handiwork amongst thy priests offering to thee,

Zeal for incense reaching the skies,

Myself and scepter, sacrifice.

My soul ascend his holy place, ascribe him strength

and sing him praise,

For he refraineth princes' spirits, and hath done

wonders in my days:

He made the winds and waters rise

To scatter all mine enemies.

This Joseph's Lord and Israel's God, the fiery pillar and

day's cloud,

That saved his saints from wicked men and drenched

the honor of the proud,

And hath preserved in tender love

The spirit of his turtle dove.

Poems Possibly by Elizabeth

Possible Poem 1

Cardiff Central Library MS 3.42, p. 26.

Sir Walter Ralegh wrote this verse in the Queen's garden:

Fain would I climb but am afraid to fall

The Queen coming by, knowing whose inditing it was,

wrote under as followeth:

If thou art afraid climb not at all.

Commentary

In hisWorthies of England(1662), Thomas Fuller gives quite a different version of the circumstances of the exchange between Ralegh and Elizabeth as described in Cardiff MS 3.42. Ralegh, he writes,

found some hopes of the queen's favours reflecting upon him. This made him write in a glass window, obvious to the queen's eye,

"Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall."

Her majesty, either espying or being shown it, did underwrite,

"If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all."

Fuller's story is very late, but is corroborated by the Cardiff MS, an anthology of verse and prose compiled by a Thomas Powell in the 1630s. Powell places the exchange in the Queen's garden but says nothing of the substance on which Sir Walter and Elizabeth wrote these lines. Powell's account, while predating Fuller's by at least twenty years, comes more than a decade after Ralegh's death and some half century after the alleged exchange took place. The Cardiff manuscript's testimony raises the odds of this text's authenticity from improbable to merely doubtful.

Possible Poem 2

L: Harl. MS 7392 (2), f. 21v.

When I was fair and young then favour graced me,

Of many was I sought their mistress for to be,

But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore,

Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere, importune me no more.

How many weeping eyes I made to pine in woe,

How many sighing hearts, I have not skill to show;

But I the prouder grew, and still this spake therefore:

Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere, importune me no more.

Then spake fair Venus' son, that brave, victorious boy,

Saying 'You dainty dame, for that you be so coy,

I will so pull your plumes as you shall say no more:

Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere, importune me no more.'

As soon as he had said, such change grew in my breast

That neither night nor day I could take any rest;

Wherefore I did repent that I had said before:

Go, go, go, seek some otherwhere, importune me no more.

Finis ELY.

Commentary

This lyric is ascribed to the Queen as "ELY" in the Harleian MS and to "Elizabethe regina" in an unrelated text, O: Rawl. poet. MS 85, f. 1. The text in Folger MS V.a.89, p. 12, derives from a source quite similar to the Harleian version; it is, however, subscribed "l: of oxforde," presumably indicating Edward De Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford. Perhaps Oxford could have written this love lament from a woman's viewpoint, yet the attributions to Elizabeth on two lines of textual descent tip the scale in her favor. Fragmentary texts of the poem in C: MS Dd.5.75, f. 38v and Folger MS V.a.262, p. 169, are unattributed.

Possible Poem 3

C: MS Dd.5.75, ca. 1596, f. 44v.

Now leave and let me rest,

Dame pleasure, be content.

Go choose among the best,

My doting days be spent;

By sundry signs I see

Thy proffers are but vain,

And wisdom warneth me

That pleasure asketh pain,

And Nature that doth know

How time her steps doth try,

Gives place to painful woe,

And bids me learn to die.

Since all fair earthly things

Soon ripe, will soon be rot,

And all that pleasant springs,

Soon withered, soon forgot;

And youth that yields men joys

That wanton lust desires,

In age repents the toys

That reckless youth requires,

All which delights I leave

To such as folly trains

By pleasures to deceive

Till they do feel the pains.

And from vain pleasures past

I fly, and fain would know

The happy life at last

Whereto I hope to go.

For words or wise reports,

Ne yet examples gone

Gan bridle youthful sports

Till age came stealing on.

The pleasant, courtly games

That I do pleasure in,

My elder years now shames

Such folly to begin;

And all the fancies strange

That fond delight brought forth,

I do intend to change

And count them nothing worth.

For I by process worn,

Am taught to know the skill,

What might have been forborne

In my young, reckless will,

By which good proof I fleet

From will to wit again,

In hope to set my feet

In surety to remain.

Commentary

Elizabeth's claim to this poem rests solely on the subscription "Regina," to the text in L: Harl. MS 7392 (2), ff. 49v-50. Not only is this a rather corrupt text of the poem, but the original scribe attributed it to another poet, perhaps "I. M." This subscription has been rendered illegible by a second scribe, who added the ascription to Elizabeth. Another anonymous text similar to that in the Cambridge MS is found inThe Arundel Harington Manuscript of Tudor Poetry,ed. Ruth Hughey (Columbus, Oh., 1960), 1:280-81.

Copyright © 2004 by Steven W. May

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Excerpted from Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works
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