Learned Queen: The Image of Elizabeth I in Politics and Poetry (Queenship and Power)

LEARNED QUEEN

QUEENSHIP AND POWER Series Editors: Carole Levin and Charles Beem This series brings together monographs and edited volumes from scholars specializing in gender analysis, women’s studies, literary interpretation, and cultural, political, constitutional, and diplomatic history. It aims to broaden our understanding of the strategies that queens—both consorts and regnants, as well as female regents— pursued in order to wield political power within the structures of male- dominant societies. In addition to works describing European queenship, it also includes books on queenship as it appeared in other parts of the world, such as East Asia, SubSaharan Africa, and Islamic civilization. Editorial Board Linda Darling, University of Arizona (Ottoman Empire) Theresa Earenfight, Seattle University (Spain) Dorothy Ko, Barnard College (China) Nancy Kollman, Stanford University (Russia) John Thornton, Boston University (Africa and the Atlantic World) John Watkins (France and Italy) Published by Palgrave Macmillan The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History By Charles Beem Elizabeth of York By Arlene Naylor Okerlund Learned Queen: The Image of Elizabeth I in Politics and Poetry By Linda Shenk The Face of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I (forthcoming) By Anna Riehl Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (forthcoming) By Anna Whitelock and Alice Hunt Renaissance Queens of France (forthcoming) By Glenn Richardson

LEARNED QUEEN THE IMAGE OF ELIZABETH I IN POLITICS AND POETRY Linda Shenk

LEARNED QUEEN

Copyright © Linda Shenk, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–61562–5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: January 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

Dedicated to my family David, Aidan, Ailís, Ginny, and Steve and in memory of my father, Bill

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CONTENTS

List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1 2

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1

Queen Solomon: Elizabeth I in Christian Prayers and Meditations (1569)

21

A Wise Elizabeth and Her Devoted Diplomats: Sidney’s The Lady of May and Anglo-Dutch Relations

55

Queen of the Word: Elizabeth, Divine Wisdom, and Apocalyptic Discourse in the 1580s

89

4 Philosopher- Queen: Elizabeth’s Transcendent Wisdom in the 1590s 5

ix xi

A Loving Scholar of His Queen’s Wisdom: The Earl of Essex, Anglo-French Affairs, and Of Love and Self-Love (1595)

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159

Afterword: Elizabeth, Shakespeare, and the Concord of Folly

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Notes Bibliography Index

199 237 253

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FIGURES

Cover art The Siena “Sieve” Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I 1.1 1.2 3.1

Queen Elizabeth I, frontispiece of Christian Prayers and Meditations in English[,] French, Italian, Spanish, Greeke, and Latine (1569); STC 6428 Title page of the 1568 Bishops’ Bible (The holie Bible); STC 2099 Title page of John Dee’s General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (1577); STC 6459

25 30 111

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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whole community of gracious people has assisted me as I worked on this book, and I write these acknowledgments with delight to express my thanks for their invaluable contributions. To John Watkins and Carole Levin go my most profound expressions of gratitude. Back in my earliest days as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, John encouraged me to pursue my initial hunches about Elizabeth I as a learned queen. With his particular flair for knowing just what questions to ask, he inspired and challenged me to follow unexpected paths in my research—paths that always led to deeper connections. He supervised my dissertation (from which this project developed) and has continued to offer boundless intellectual insight and enthusiasm. Of equal importance in my personal and professional life, Carole has been the kind of mentor that every young academic dreams of encountering. Her helpful feedback, intellectual passion, and friendship have been among the elements most formative in my growth as a scholar. It is not an overstatement to say that I would never have written this book without John’s and Carole’s guidance, wisdom, and wonderful good humor. I am also deeply grateful to the colleagues who have read and commented on drafts of various chapters (and there have been many drafts): Julie Eckerle, Susan Felch, Karolyn Kinane, Marcela Kostihová, Roger Kuin, Laura Mielke, W. Brown Patterson, Donald Stump, Alzada Tipton, Dometa Wiegand, Laura Winkiel, and Jennifer Young. In addition, I have greatly benefited from the careful and insightful assistance of the general editors of this series, Charles Beem and Carole Levin; the editors at Palgrave, Chris Chappell and Samantha Hasey; and my outside reader, Kirilka (Katy) Stavreva. I cannot thank these

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individuals enough. Despite their busy schedules, they have given generously of their time and expertise to provide perceptive and detailed advice that has been instrumental in shaping my thinking. Any flaws in my argument, of course, remain solely my own. Fellow scholars have been magnanimous with their scholarship. I wish to thank Elizabeth Evenden, Janel Mueller, Lee Piepho, Aysha Pollnitz, and Joshua Scodel for sharing their forthcoming studies in manuscript. Susan Benner, John Hagge, Nicole Kouros, Sarah- Grace Heller, and Madeleine Henry have graciously helped me with their expertise in foreign languages. My work is richer because of their contributions. I wish to express heartfelt appreciation to two of my closest colleague-friends. Julie Eckerle and Marcela Kostihová who have given me love and support since before this book began. We three have researched and parented together in ways that have made for delightful conversations that range from sippy cups to the sublime. My sincere thanks go to my colleagues and mentors at Iowa State University: Susan Carlson, Jean Goodwin, Carl Herndl, Charlie Kostelnick, Neil Nakadate, Donna Niday, Lee Poague, Connie Post, Diane Price Herndl, Dave Roberts, Dometa Wiegand, and Susan Yager. They make coming to work joyful; they share their experience and wisdom freely; and they have helped me navigate my years at Iowa State as I sought to balance book, teaching, and family. I am grateful to have such a supportive and caring professional home. I also wish to thank a number of editors who have granted permission for me to include material that I have published previously. The University of Nebraska Press has granted permission to print “Queen Solomon: An International Elizabeth in 1569,” which initially appeared in different form in Queens and Power in Medieval and Early Modern England (and which now appears as part of chapter one). Early Modern Literary Studies has given permission to print the material that I included in my article “ ‘To Love and Be Wise’: the Earl of Essex, Humanist Court Culture, and England’s Learned Queen.” This research served as the kernel for chapter five. Several institutions have provided much-appreciated financial support that has been instrumental in giving me the time and resources to complete this book. During the early stages of my research, a University of Minnesota dissertation fellowship and a P.E.O. Scholar Award enabled me to work intensely on this

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project. Iowa State has been particularly generous as well. The Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities has awarded me two summer fellowships; the Parks Library purchases a subscription to Early English Books Online to facilitate my research and teaching (my sincere thanks to librarian Dan Coffey for his support in this process); and an Iowa State Subvention Grant has been crucial not only in paying for such publication-related costs as permissions for images but also in allowing me to bring a research assistant and a copy editor onto my “team.” My research assistant, Scott Nystrom, has been a godsend. With Herculean patience and a careful eye, he proofread my quotations and citations for accuracy, and any errors that slipped in arose after these items passed through his hands. Dave Roberts has been another godsend. Because he maintains an intense schedule of administrative work, teaching, and baseball, I was stunned (he would say “flabbergasted”) when he offered to serve as my copy editor. Not only did his editorial scalpel make my sentences more elegant, but his infamous collegial levity and matchless good humor transformed the final, most solitary months of the project into a delightful game of wit. As a copy editor, Dave Roberts was often humorously blunt in his comments, sometimes claiming that I had produced a sentence that was so ugly it would scare a bulldog off a meat truck. He would have had many more opportunities to snipe at my prose had it not been for my other wonderful—and first—copy editor: my mom, Ginny. With care and skill that verge on heroism, my mother has read, reread, and copy edited this book from its beginnings as a dissertation to its final drafts. This book, and my life in general, is richer because of her love and care, and I cannot adequately express how important she has been in my life. I dedicate this book to her and the gang of other most-important people in my life: my husband, David, and my children, Aidan and Ailís. They have loved me even when I was preoccupied and grouchy; they have shared in my triumphs and disappointments; and most importantly, they continually remind me of the pure joy that comes from such simple pleasures as evening walks in the rain, camping trips, and storytime at the library. I have been blessed by many wonderful people in my life and will be forever grateful for the role each has played in helping me reach this special milestone.

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INTRODUCTION

It is your shame, (I speake to you all, you yong Ientlemen of England) that one mayd should go beyond you all, in excellencie of learnyng, and knowledge of diuers tonges. Pointe forth six of the best giuen Ientlemen of this Court, and all they together, shew not so much good will, spend not so much tyme, bestow not so many houres, dayly orderly, & constantly, for the increase of learning & knowledge, as doth the Queenes Maiestie her selfe. —Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster, H1r

W

ith effusive approbation, Roger Ascham lauds Queen Elizabeth I as a paragon of learning—a royal “mayd” whose work ethic and exceptional skill in languages should prompt all “Ientlemen of England” to emulate her. In part, one could argue that Ascham’s praise stemmed largely from self-interest. He had been, after all, one of the queen’s tutors, and he was currently serving as her Latin secretary. As Learned Queen will demonstrate, however, Ascham was among countless individuals who would extol Elizabeth as a queen of superlative wisdom. The glimpses he provides of her engaged in study suggest why this royal image became so popular. Elizabeth and her subjects would evoke her learning in order to assert and bolster her royal authority in ecclesiastical affairs as well as international relations. Ascham alludes to these connotations as early as the preface in The Scholemaster. He tells of an evening when he and the queen withdrew to her private rooms to read Greek, specifically “that noble Oration of Demosthenes against AEschines, for his false dealing in his Ambassage to king Philip of Macedonie.”1 In this oration, Demosthenes explores the consequences to the commonwealth if ambassadors are not chosen with sufficient care. Thus, by using this reference, Ascham links Elizabeth’s erudition to international politics by suggesting her crucial role in the selection of emissaries during this increasingly diplomacy-driven period. Then, directly

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after the passage quoted at the beginning of this Introduction, he elaborates on her knowledge of foreign languages and relates her proficiency to ecclesiastical affairs. Ascham explains: “Yea I beleue, that beside her perfit readines, in Latin, Italian, French, & Spanish, she readeth here now at Windsore more Greeke euery day, than some Prebendarie of this Chirch doth read Latin in a whole weeke.”2 With this reference to her Greek, Ascham places Elizabeth’s learning above that possessed by some of her own ecclesiastical figures. They read Latin, but Elizabeth, as a model Protestant ruler, can read the New Testament in its original Greek. Even as Ascham commends Elizabeth’s private virtues as an industrious, Christian queen, he associates her learning with the distinctly public realms of ecclesiastical authority and foreign affairs. In the chapters that follow, I will demonstrate that these elements lie at the heart of Elizabeth’s image as a Christian, learned prince—one of the most celebrated personae in early modern politics. Learned Queen is the first book-length study to examine Elizabeth I in this highly political role. Indeed, Elizabeth was truly a learned queen, though perhaps not as exceptional as Ascham proclaims. She translated devotional and classical texts, delivered Latin orations while visiting her universities, wrote poetry, charmed (and skewered) foreign ambassadors with her knowledge of many languages, and is credited with composing prayers in no fewer than five foreign languages. Modern scholars have long extolled Elizabeth for her wisdom and have similarly recognized the importance that early modern thinkers placed on the Christian, learned prince as an enlightened figure who honors the wisdom of counselors.3 When examining the queen’s learning, scholars have focused primarily on the practical applications of her education, including her knowledge of languages, her use of rhetorical devices in speeches, and her ability to employ such humanist vocabularies as the rhetoric of counsel. These studies have revealed the calculated ways that Elizabeth translated her learning into political power, and they have expanded our understanding of the queen as an intellectual. Surprisingly, however, only sporadic attention has been devoted to Elizabeth’s actual demonstrations of erudition—or, in some cases, ones publicly attributed to her. The silence that has surrounded these articulations stems primarily from issues of access and issues of authorship. Many readers no longer study multiple foreign languages, and English

Introduction

3

translations of Elizabeth’s foreign language works have become available only recently with the publication of Elizabeth I: Collected Works as well as both volumes of Elizabeth I: Translations.4 But, as these collections make clear, determining what belongs in Elizabeth’s canon of erudite displays presents its own set of problems. Except for a few cases, such as her translation of Boethius (of which an autograph copy is extant), we have no proof that the queen actually composed or spoke most of the words attributed to her. Such uncertainty makes studying Elizabeth’s intellectual activity problematic, yet there are other ways to examine these articulations. Rather than speculate on the queen’s actual erudition, Learned Queen investigates Elizabeth’s political image that is created in some of her most public displays of learning. In other words, this study focuses on the motivations for presenting her publicly as the author or speaker—motivations that will move far beyond the armchair in Elizabeth’s private quarters. They will lead not only to the realms of ecclesiastical and international politics but also, as will be discussed later in this Introduction, to poetry written by famous court figures such as Sir Philip Sidney and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. These men used their literary skills to articulate love for their queen while pursuing a passionate commitment to England’s participation in pan-European affairs. Their work will reveal how poetry is an ideal venue for wooing a learned queen to pursue and lead an international agenda. These claims concerning Elizabeth’s erudition may seem rather sweeping, especially because, at first glance, her public displays of learning seem to be neither politically crucial nor internationally glamorous. They include prayers, Latin orations to academic institutions, and translations of devotional and classical texts—works that do not have the immediately recognizable political relevance of her speeches to Parliament, the pageantry of her coronation procession, or the rousing rhetoric of her speech at Tilbury. As Steven W. May aptly observes, Elizabeth’s prayers “rank among the least promising genres with modern readers.”5 May’s comment could be applied to most of Elizabeth’s displays of erudition because they generally fall into one of two categories: either they are explicitly devotional or they were produced in a university setting. The former group includes the prayer books attributed to Elizabeth (1563, 1569, 1578), her repeatedly published translation of Marguerite de Navarre’s Le Miroir de l’âme pécheresse, the devotional stanzas in French (ca. 1590), and her translation of

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Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. The university group includes her 1564 Latin oration to the University of Cambridge and her 1566 and 1592 orations to the University of Oxford. When these texts are examined within their original political contexts, however, they reveal something far more nuanced and expansive than mere reflections of personal piety or skillful erudition. In fact, the very characteristics that make these works seem less appealing—their religious nature, their composition in foreign languages, and their university setting—are actually what make them so remarkable. In her demonstrations of erudition, Elizabeth addresses the international community, her court, and sometimes her nation, often about the single most important topic in domestic and international affairs: religion. Significantly, she articulates ideas in these situations that resonate with (or hint at) current political issues but do not actually authorize or solidify any specific course of action. In fact, Elizabeth is typically speaking in venues that are steeped in politics, but not necessarily at moments when policy has been, or even can be, formalized. In a sense, she occupies a position not unlike a diplomat even though she herself never left England to engage in any diplomatic mission abroad. Her displays in foreign languages, though, when situated within the domestic and international discourse of the time, reveal at least the image of Elizabeth asserting a presence in the diplomatic arena. Elizabeth’s persona as a Christian, multilingual queen allows her—and her subjects—to do what was almost unthinkable in this period: present an unmarried queen as a capable leader, not only of a strong nation but also of global Protestantism. As a learned queen, she is both individually powerful and, it should be noted, also surrounded by a collective of advisors, clerics, and judges. This combination of queen and counselor, often termed a “mixed monarchy,” was well suited to elements central to the humanist tradition of the learned prince. The following brief sketch of this tradition will lay the foundation for demonstrating how Elizabeth’s learned persona became an ideal royal image for asserting her presence in national and international politics.

The Humanist Tradition of the Christian, Learned Prince Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a series of civic philosophers advocated that education for both the prince

Introduction

5

and the royal counselors played a key role in fostering enlightened governance. Tapping into this period’s “humanist” interest in classical texts and languages, these thinkers were part of an entire movement that produced new work in education, literature, politics, and religion.6 They modeled their image of the ideal monarch on such classical figures as Plato’s philosopher-king and Cicero’s virtuous orator, as well as on fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury tracts about educating the ruling class. Education was particularly important for the prince, these men claimed, because it instilled rational stability, moral virtue, and a respect for the wisdom of others (i.e., counselors).7 Although much political thought in this period was dedicated to republican principles, an emphasis on the Christian, learned prince presented a political model that could support what Patrick Collinson has called a “monarchical republic.”8 In this form of republic, advisors play crucial roles by surrounding and guiding the monarch, but as Peter Lake has noted, existing scholarship on the Elizabethan monarchical republic has remained too focused on the secular.9 An attention to the tradition of the Christian, learned prince within this political model reveals a set of relationships that give primacy to counselors within a monarchical, and religious, form of government. Deeply influenced by this tradition, all three of Henry VIII’s children—Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth—were educated under the tutelage of some of the most respected humanist scholars in Tudor England.10 For both Edward and Elizabeth, the image of a learned prince would become a key facet of royal image-making, and it is no wonder. Edward’s supporters repeatedly showcased this boy-king’s learning to counter the anxieties of minority rule, as well as to justify the Protestant reforms that the Edwardian government instituted. But Edward was a boy: theoretically, he would grow up to become a mature king. When Elizabeth ascended the throne as an unmarried queen, her sovereignty presented an even greater challenge because of the belief that a woman would always remain victim to the weaknesses of her sex. Ever a worry that a queen could threaten the nation’s stability, it was particularly urgent that a female monarch be well-educated. She especially needed the stabilizing and moralizing forces of education. According to centuries of misogynist thought, women were considered to be intellectually deficient, morally frail, and tyrannically whimsical. Ascham was working to disassociate his queen

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from these stereotypes by emphasizing her industry, her orderliness, and her piety when he wrote The Scholemaster in 1563. He was one of many early apologists who defended Elizabeth’s sovereignty by highlighting her learning.11 John Aylmer, for example, employed this strategy in the first year of her reign when he published a response to John Knox’s The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. Adopting the voice of God, Aylmer validated Elizabeth’s fitness to rule: [C]an not I make a woman to be a good ruler ouer you, and a mete minister for me? VVhat vnlykelihod se you in hir? are your eyes so dulle? or your myndes so malycious? that you can not or wyll not see those Iewelles, wherwith I haue decked hir? is that rare learning, that singulare modestie, that heauenly clemencie, that christiane constancie, that loue of religion, that excellent wysdom with many more of my graces, nothing in your sight?”12

Aylmer’s praise of Elizabeth as a learned queen, like Ascham’s, was important in reinforcing her individual right to rule. Significantly, Aylmer used Elizabeth’s learning to characterize her Christian virtues as chaste, clement, and constant—all attributes designed to counter the stereotypes of a tyrannical, whimsical queen. It is this emphasis on virtue that helped Elizabeth and her subjects reconfigure the highly masculine tradition of the learned prince and civically active intellectual into a queenly version of these roles. Elizabeth’s gender, as A. N. McLaren has aptly demonstrated, is central to the political models evoked throughout her reign,13 and her learned persona is no different. For Elizabeth, the tradition of the Christian, learned prince empowered her to fashion herself (and in turn to be fashioned into) a competent, yet unmarried, queen. In this way, showcasing her learned status stems from the same impulse that underwrites her persona as a virgin queen: both of these roles buttressed her personal sovereignty as a queen ruling alone. Her learned status adds an international component to her image as a virgin queen because she expresses her erudition in foreign languages and typically in contexts steeped in pan-European religious politics. Consequently, studying her learned persona not only reveals how the queen’s personal representation could serve as an appropriate front image for both national and international agenda, but it also adds a complementary persona to her famous and well-studied representation as a virgin queen.

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The Political Strength of a Virgin, Learned Queen In fact, Elizabeth’s status as a learned queen preceded—and was even used to introduce—her famous image as a virgin monarch. She was first publicly praised as a virgin queen at Norwich in 1578. What has not been acknowledged is that this persona was built on her status as a learned ruler. In a moment that encapsulates this connection, the writers at Norwich praised Elizabeth in Latin verses as an “Innuba Pallas,” an emphatically unmarried goddess of wisdom, whose virtuous (and Protestant) radiance dispels the dark clouds of Catholicism: Innuba Pallas adest, splende Phoebe, redi. Hasta minux procul est, non Gorgonis ora videbis, Pallas inermis adest, splendide Phoebe, redi. ..... Haec pepulit tetri tenebras noctemque papismi, Et liquidum retulit relligione diem. ..... Sic age, sol nebulas lumine pelle tuo. Splendide Phoebe redi, cur te sub nube recondis? Innuba Pallas adest, splendide Phoebe redi. Vnspoused Pallas present is, ô Phoebus bright retire. The threatning speare is floong farre off, doubt not grim Gorgons ire: Vnarmed Pallas present is, ô Phoebus bright retire. ..... She, only she, the darkenesse draue of Poprye quite away: And, by Religion, hath restord the bright and lightsome day. ..... Do thou the like, and by thy light driue euery cloude away. In shadowing cloudes why art thou closd? ô Phoebus bright, retyre: Vnspoused Pallas present is: ô Phoebus bright retyre.14

Conjoining Elizabeth’s virgin image with her learned, Protestant persona occurred throughout the speeches and entertainments prepared for this royal progress. She was celebrated as a queen who possessed the wisdom of Pallas, studied such classical writers as Plato, and embodied a Protestant approach to Christ’s advice to be wise as the serpent, meek as the dove.15 On an even larger scale, the writers of these festivities acknowledged Elizabeth’s educated status by repeatedly addressing her in classical languages. For her sixday visit, they prepared five Latin orations, three verse addresses

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in Latin (such as the one praising her as an “Innuba Pallas”), and one poem in Greek. This number of presentations in erudite languages is astonishing and rivaled only by the events prepared for the queen’s three progresses to the universities. Emphasis on Elizabeth as a learned queen would be quite expected for a university progress, but its presence within the civic context at Norwich may, at first glance, seem puzzling. Its purpose becomes clear when we trace the deepseated tradition of celebrating Elizabeth as a learned queen. This persona was often evoked, as was the case at Norwich, to encourage her to serve as a champion of pan-European Protestantism—a role she could best fulfill in 1578 by remaining unmarried. Praising Elizabeth as a virgin, learned queen was a way to celebrate the possibilities of what she could do as a queen ruling in her own right without disparaging a potential marriage. For example, many of those individuals present at Norwich in 1578 wanted her to intervene in the Low Countries rather than cement a relationship with the politically unpredictable (and Catholic) Duke of Anjou. Thomas Churchyard, one of the main writers for the festivities, had served in the Low Countries, and the city of Norwich itself had a substantial number of Dutch-Protestant exiles living there. The minister of the Dutch congregation himself addressed Elizabeth with an oration in Latin. Extolling her as the powerful queen who could be addressed frequently in this lingua franca, he showcased how Elizabeth was already an international queen able to represent and assert Protestant piety, national strength, and international leadership. Thus, by implication, she need not change her marital status. By examining which individuals praised Elizabeth as a learned queen the most, a trend emerges. A substantial number of the writers who appropriated the queen’s learned persona into their works were court figures deeply committed to establishing England’s role as a formidable power in Europe, and often with a specific interest in pan-European Protestantism. At the heart of this enterprise was the courtly circle surrounding Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester—a circle widely known for its imperial interests, its transnational alliances, and its poetry.

Praising a Learned Queen: The Leicester Circle and Poetry The Leicester circle included such political and poetic luminaries as Sidney, Essex, Edward Dyer, Christopher Hatton, John Dee,

Introduction

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Daniel Rogers, Edmund Spenser, Walter Ralegh (at times), and Francis Bacon. Other writers often associated with this circle were Paulus Melissus, Jan van der Noot, Janus Dousa, Giordano Bruno, Thomas Blenerhasset, Maurice Kyffin, and William Shakespeare. These individuals specifically acknowledged Elizabeth as a wise, educated monarch and sometimes as a queen of divine wisdom. What is more, most of these men presented their praise in poetry. In some instances, such as Sidney’s The Lady of May, Elizabeth is overtly celebrated for her wisdom, and in this case, the panegyric takes part in the same political context that informs her status as an “Innuba Pallas” at Norwich. In other literary works within this trend, the praise for Elizabeth as a learned queen is more covert. For instance, in Essex and Bacon’s Accession Day entertainment Of Love and Self-Love (1595), this royal image surfaces only when one recognizes that the device is shot through with references to Elizabeth’s two most recent demonstrations of learning: her 1592 Latin oration delivered at the University of Oxford and her 1593 translation of Boethius. These allusions reveal how Essex’s pose as a lover is steeped in the international and religious politics associated with Elizabeth’s learned persona. The device never acknowledges Elizabeth’s demonstrations of erudition overtly, but studying it alongside its political context reveals a highly complex network of references all subtly interwoven and recognizable only to those who know the Books of Learning as well as the Books of Real-World Politics. It is within these two types of “learned” texts that I will juxtapose a few of Elizabeth’s most public demonstrations of learning with several key poetic representations produced by—and for— members of the Leicester circle. I will construct the “humanist” contexts of sorts, not by reading the primary texts alongside those typically associated with the humanist tradition, but rather alongside the contemporary political texts circulating in the precise periods when these works were produced. The texts include diplomatic correspondence, influential political and ecclesiastical texts, biblical commentaries, and poetry.

A Kind of Learning Outside the Institutions of a “Humanist” Education Focusing on actual political documents to examine the use and implications of Elizabeth’s learned persona contrasts with the

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expected approach—analyzing the image of her learning within the civic humanist tradition that celebrated the learned prince. Learned Queen is not a book about the humanist tradition per se. Many of the references to belles lettres in the texts studied in this book lead to classical and biblical works, yet these references are often nested within specific nods to current political documents. Recognizing the allusions only to the former set of texts provides an insufficient view of the wit that the queen and the men poetically praising her erudition were displaying. These texts, and the nature of the layered allusions, make sense in light of the political aspirations of the men writing the poetry. For these men who were seeking high-ranking political appointments, extensive book learning was not enough; they needed also to emphasize a more exclusive education that demonstrated access to knowledge circulating only in the most influential circles of high politics. They needed to be able to show that they had the connections necessary to procure and use inside information as well as to demonstrate their finesse in handling this information with a decorum that hints at a political position but does not make any specific promises. To circulate in the realms of high-stakes diplomacy and political appointment entailed playing a highly allusive, intellectual game that was as charming as it was exclusive. The ideal education for the most powerful political figures, therefore, should parade its privileged status; it cannot be gained through the institutionalized regimens of formal education for which early modern humanists were so famous. Rather, the men who praised Elizabeth in highly coded poetry sought to distinguish their learning from the standard curriculum. Their works are suffused with erudition; thus, this choice is not anti-intellectual but rather resembles what Warren Boutcher associates with an élite education: With the advent of the printed templates of humanist pedagogy and the formalization of school and university arts education came a new definition of the élite “individual.” This was the persona whose compellingly informal, free-ranging, occasion-specific mode of appropriation of classical wisdom aimed to define itself against and above the systems, types and routines of institutionalized arts pedagogy.16

Boutcher focuses on the individualized instruction that took place in households as a way the nobility separated their education from

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that achieved in institutional settings. Significantly, he comments on the aristocratic practice of sending sons abroad on a grand tour as part of this personalized curriculum, and my approach carries this idea into the real world of political affairs. Just as the printing press fostered a return to manuscript culture at court, the humanist focus on greater access to education prompted the highest cadre of individuals to establish their intellectual credentials as achieved through texts and events unavailable to the individual who followed a more traditional academic path. This highly tailored, exclusive, and pragmatically political education (grounded in the most important texts of contemporary politics) befits both the nation’s élite politicians and, of course, the queen herself. In a very famous instance, Elizabeth touts the superiority of her real-world education when she verbally trounces the Polish ambassador in 1597. With breathtaking dexterity, Elizabeth belittles both the ambassador and his monarch when she quips: [Q]uod cum Rex sit Iuuenis, et non tam Iure sanguinis, quam Iure electionis; ac nouiter electus, non tam perfecte; Inteligat rationem tractandi istiusmodi negotia Cum aliis Principibus; quam vel Maiores illius nobiscum obseruarunt, Vel fortasse obseruabunt alij qui locum eius posthac tenebunt. / Quod ad te attinet, tu mihi videris libros multos perlegisse; libros tamen Principum ne attigisse, sed prorsus ignorare, quid inter reges conueniat. / [T]hat seeing your king is a young man and newly chosen, not so fully by right of blood as by right of election, that he doth not so perfectly know the course of managing affairs of this nature with other princes as his elders have observed with us, or perhaps others will observe which shall succeed him in his place thereafter. And as concerning yourself, you seem to have read many books, but the books of princes you have not so much as touched, but show yourself utterly ignorant what is convenient between kings.17

After mocking the ambassador’s book learning as useless, Elizabeth goes on to school him regarding the true law of nature and the laws of nations. Her education in the “libros . . . Principum,” literally the “books of the Prince,” offers lessons he cannot possibly glean from the standard curriculum—and lessons his new monarch has not yet learned either. Elizabeth possesses an education neither of these inexperienced upstarts could achieve without her years of political “study” in office. Elizabeth’s court figures were also aware of the power of this type of education. In the Accession Day device that Essex

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produced with Bacon, the character of the Statesman outlines a similar approach to a politician’s education, which includes the texts of real politics: let the instructions to employed men, the relations of ambassadors, the treaties between princes, and actions of the present time, be the books he reads: let the orations of wise princes or experimented counsellors in council or parliament, and the final sentences of grave and learned judges in weighty and doubtful causes, be the lectures he frequents.18

Mentioning the standard academic fare of books and lectures, the Statesman expands this curriculum to include up-to-the-minute texts (related to both national and international politics) that were not part of a formal, university education. Significantly, he lists “the orations of wise princes” among these texts. However, it will be his lack of awareness of exactly what Elizabeth said in her most recent Latin oration at the University of Oxford that will expose just how little this character knows about current politics. Essex’s pose as a lover in the device reminds Elizabeth that he was present at her speech, that he recognized her silent use of St. Paul’s rhetoric of love, and that he adoringly allows her wisdom to shape his own. In this entertainment, many of the references to real politics and to learning are submerged. That is part of the game: if one is truly an élite individual, one recognizes the references and acknowledges them by responding with one’s own witty play on this knowledge. What one does not do is to parade learning in such common, institutionalized ways as using sententiae. Such obvious display of learning misses the point entirely. Much like diplomacy, this decidedly intellectual, often extremely poetic, game is high-stakes and very playful. Both pursuits mix the charming, the learned, and the crucially political. Learned Queen, in part, suggests why so many of Elizabeth’s internationally ambitious subjects began writing poetry in the 1570s— the era when England’s role in pan-European politics began to gather momentum.19 This trend cannot be fully understood without attention to Elizabeth’s own displays of learning, even as her learning is better understood when placed alongside the poetry. In its methodology, therefore, Learned Queen purposefully juxtaposes politics, learning, and the decidedly poetic enterprise of diplomacy.

Introduction

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Such juxtaposition underwrites the portrait of Elizabeth chosen for the cover of this book: the Siena “Sieve” portrait, which presents Elizabeth as a virgin, learned queen. Perceiving the scope of allusions that underwrite this representation requires linking Elizabeth’s own words as a learned queen to the royal images created by some of her most geopolitically savvy individuals. A brief analysis of this portrait reveals startling connections that integrate queen, nation, Church, empire, and art.

The Siena “Sieve” Portrait: The Triumph of a Virgin, Learned Queen Decked with pearls (denoting chastity) and holding a sieve, Elizabeth visually dominates the painting. Whereas the entire image intertwines her learned persona with her virginity, the sieve itself integrates these ideas in a complex manner. Its connotations radiate outward to embrace the central themes of the portrait. On the most overt level, the sieve conjures up both the figure of Tuccia (the Vestal Virgin who proved her virginity by carrying water in a sieve) and, as Karen Green has noted, the virtue of prudence.20 This one symbol simultaneously acknowledges Elizabeth as the virgin queen and imbues her with the good judgment essential for political leadership.21 The sieve, as an object designed to separate the desirable from the undesirable, is therefore a fitting symbol for prudence, which entails the ability to discern. The Italian motto on the sieve that Elizabeth holds in the portrait solidifies this connection. As Roy C. Strong points out, the motto reads (in Italian): “A terra il ben mal dimora insella,” which translates literally as “The good falls to the ground while the bad remains in the saddle.”22 Whereas the virgin Tuccia carried water in her sieve, the Italian motto on the portrait (as well as the use of the sieve in emblems of this period) suggests that Elizabeth uses her sieve to sift seeds.23 The notion of Elizabeth as a sower evokes ecclesiastical and monarchical resonances when we examine this image alongside the queen’s most recent demonstration of erudition: the foreign language prayers attributed to her in Christian Prayers and Meditations (1569). In one of the prayers (significantly, in Italian, just like the mottos on the portrait), Elizabeth represents herself as a godly gardener, and she uses this image as one of many in the collection to assert religious imperialism. In this particular prayer,

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she vows that she is committed to “spiantando ogni maluagio seme d’empietà, spargere, seminare, e radicare il tuo santo Euangelio in tutti i cuori, aggrandendo per tutto questo regno tuo terreno, quel celeste di Giesu Cristo / uprooting every wicked seed of impiety, to spread, plant, and root Thy holy Gospel in every heart, increasing throughout this Thy earthly kingdom, that heavenly one of Jesus Christ.”24 The queen will separate the bad seeds from the good in her garden, which encompasses far more than just England. She promises to increase the congregation of the truly faithful throughout the earth, and indeed, her use of Italian—the vernacular language of Catholic Italy—underscores the extent of her vow to convert even Catholics to the fold of God’s “true” Church. The presence of the sieve in the portrait echoes with these expressions of royal, imperial, and prudent judgment. As I will discuss in chapter one, Elizabeth’s international, religious leadership in Christian Prayers is further underscored through numerous references to her as a new Solomon, the Old Testament monarch who received wisdom directly from God. This royal image may also pertain to the sieve in the portrait. When Solomon asks God for wisdom in 1 Kings 3:9, he requests this knowledge so that he may discern between good and evil. In Christian Prayers, Elizabeth refers to this same passage several times as part of her own association with the internationally powerful Solomon. Scholars such as Strong, Heather Campbell, Susan Doran, and Frances A. Yates have commented on the pervasive international theme present in this portrait and have specifically associated it with Christopher Hatton (who is depicted in the portrait) and with John Dee.25 The potential allusion to Solomon provides a tangible link between Hatton and Dee’s imperial interests and Elizabeth’s international persona. Strong has described how both Dee and Hatton were campaigning for an imperial agenda when this portrait was prepared in the early 1580s. As part of this interest, Dee had dedicated the first book of his General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation to Hatton. When Dee outlines his full project in the text, he claims that, in the fourth volume, he will examine the imperial successes of two monarchs: Solomon and Elizabeth.26 The title page of Memorials even presents Elizabeth as an imperial queen with the rays of light from the Tetragammon shining out above her. Thus, Dee had already explicitly linked Elizabeth with her Protestant, imperial piety—and with Solomon.

Introduction

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Elizabeth exudes ecclesiastical, monarchical, and imperial strength in the Siena “Sieve” portrait. This cluster of characteristics, in turn, dovetails her interest in national security with the imperial agenda that Hatton and Dee espouse. Such a fusion is further supported by the fact that Hatton appears in the arcade behind Elizabeth’s left shoulder, and on his false hanging sleeve is depicted his emblem, the hind. The emblem both identifies him and, I believe, alludes to the ship that Francis Drake rechristened The Golden Hind (in honor of Hatton) during Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe (1577–1580). Drake’s voyage was extremely lucrative, and its success advertised the potential for England to use imperial expansion as the way to fund the military efforts necessary to secure England against Spain’s mounting threat.27 Thus, supporting such imperial enterprises was crucial to maintaining Elizabeth’s priority of national defense and her interest in avoiding open conflict with Spain. In this way, Elizabeth’s learned persona becomes an image wherein queen and court figure can claim at least the semblance of a common ground that is beneficial to both sides. What emerges from juxtaposing Elizabeth’s demonstrations of erudition with her court figure’s royal representations is a methodology for studying Elizabethan political culture that is slightly different from that typically adopted in monographs on the queen. In overall structure, Learned Queen telescopes between the queen’s self-image and ones that her subjects constructed. Such a structure keeps Elizabeth at the center of political discourse, yet moves the scholarly camera (of sorts) from a position that examines Elizabeth’s personal use of her learned persona to one that shows how her subjects evoked her learning for their own agenda. This methodology underlies the sequence of the five chapters in Learned Queen.

The Sequence of Chapters Chapter one examines one of Elizabeth’s most public—and most internationally focused—demonstrations of erudition: the seventeen foreign language prayers attributed to her and published in Christian Prayers and Meditations (1569). These prayers create a highly complex ecclesiastical image of Elizabeth by presenting her as a royal “householder” over her National Church, as well as an international Queen Solomon. Exposing these connections not only explains why the Siena “Sieve” portrait may contain allusions

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to these prayers, but it also integrates key themes that the rest of Learned Queen will explore: national unity, ecclesiastical polity, and international strength. Published during the years of political crisis after the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots became England’s prisoner, Christian Prayers presents Elizabeth as a Solomon who, within her person, fosters and enacts the unity of her nation and then uses that strength to proclaim her and her government’s worthiness to lead all of Europe’s “true” Church. In this way, her role as a devout, learned queen synthesizes her individual authority as a monarch with the authority of her collective of advisors, judges, and clergy. This royal image marshals the strengths of a true monarchical republic. Such an image situates the queen within a network of wise counselors even as it presents her as the pious, international, and virgin queen who could symbolize England as a national and international power. Chapter two shifts perspectives to examine how the Leicester circle drew upon this image of Elizabeth as a learned, unmarried, and international queen when urging her to assert leadership in pan-European Protestantism. This chapter examines Sidney’s The Lady of May as part of the trend that integrates Elizabeth’s international demonstrations of learning with Anglo-Dutch relations—relations conducted, significantly, through diplomatic correspondence and poetry. Throughout the 1570s, several key figures involved in Anglo-Dutch affairs used Neo-Latin verse to praise Elizabeth as a virtuously radiant, learned queen. These men used their poetry to encourage her to provide assistance to, and even assert sovereignty over, the Protestant Dutch States. When Sidney celebrates Elizabeth as an unmarried, wise queen, he demonstrates his familiarity with these “books” of current politics—the same books that underwrite her representation as an “Innuba Pallas” at Norwich only a few months later. Reading Sidney’s The Lady of May alongside the poetry and diplomatic correspondence associated with Anglo-Dutch relations, chapter two shows how Sidney’s entertainment plays an integral role in his diplomatic interests. The Lady of May reveals Sidney as the true diplomat—charming, familiar with the most recent events, and able to package serious politics within light amusement. Using poetic diplomacy, he encourages England’s learned queen to cast her imperial beams of peace on other nations. Sidney writes a text suffused with international religious politics, yet he uses outwardly secular images. Once we recognize the texts

Introduction

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that he references, however, the association with pan-European religious politics becomes quite clear. Chapter three revisits Elizabeth’s role as a champion of pan-European Protestantism, but now views it in light of the apocalyptic fervor that was escalating in the 1580s. Modern scholars typically focus on the crown’s interest in dispelling apocalyptic fear and divisiveness, and rightly so. Two poets who wrote for the Leicester circle in the 1580s— Thomas Blenerhasset and Maurice Kyffin—took Elizabeth’s learned persona as a queen of God’s Word (i.e., the Bible) and used it to place her at the center of a unifying and optimistic apocalyptic discourse. Chapter three shows how Blenerhasset, in his A Reuelation of the True Minerua (1582), and Kyffin, in his The Blessednes of Brytaine (1587 and 1588), focus not on apocalyptic destruction but rather on Elizabeth’s role in ushering in a millennial age of global peace. On the surface, these two relatively unknown writers (in current scholarship but not, I propose, in Elizabethan England) seem to present conventional, royal panegyric. Their texts, however, are quite complex. They speak an apocalyptic, transnational language to an élite inner circle familiar with certain religious and political texts, even as they provide rousing, patriotic language to the general reader. Chapter three’s discussion of how Blenerhasset and Kyffin integrate biblical exegesis, national unity, chivalry, and devotion provides a crucial backdrop for understanding the rise of some of Elizabeth’s most famous images, such as those of Gloriana and Cynthia, in the 1590s. They also set the stage for understanding why Elizabeth herself will align her own wisdom with transcendent philosophy and love in the late 1580s and early 1590s. Her choices have roots in the apocalyptic fervor of the 1580s. Blenerhasset and Kyffin submerge a millennial discourse under an emphatic call to unify England in preparation for war. International tensions were escalating, and within this context, Elizabeth, other monarchs, and key political figures across Europe began to draw upon philosophy as a way to bring about stability in a world increasingly torn apart by confessional warfare. Chapter four examines Elizabeth’s use of her public displays of erudition to represent herself as a true philosopher-queen who possesses knowledge of the Bible as part of her wide-ranging intellectual repertoire. Elizabeth’s expansive spiritual position facilitates her ecclesiastical role as queen over a national church that does not need to follow continental models. Her policy is also designed to serve as a foundation for maintaining amicable relations with Catholic

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countries—particularly with France. Elizabeth’s two most public demonstrations of erudition in this period occur on either side of the most important international event for England in the early 1590s: the French King Henri IV’s conversion to Catholicism. This chapter examines Elizabeth’s 1592 Latin oration that she delivered at the University of Oxford before Henri’s conversion, as well as the translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy that she completed not long after the event. Through these articulations, Elizabeth assumes a transcendent, ecclesiastical position that arises out of her signature royal image as a Queen of Love. Certainly, Elizabeth long employed the rhetoric of devotion and love in her speeches. In these two displays of learning, she creates a language that is highly personal, appropriate for a queen, and cleverly transformative of the philosophical trends immediately current in European politics. Using this language of love, she enfolds the nation and its Church into an image centered on her person. Her rhetoric, which is infused with divinity and international resonances, gives her a direct presence in a space that integrates domestic with foreign religious politics. Her strategies suggest how the rise of the “Anglican Church” is intimately bound up with creating the kind of stable international alliances that could maintain a tense, but sufficiently equal, balance of power in Europe, particularly as England’s relationship with France hung in the balance. Chapter five demonstrates how Essex and Bacon not only paid careful attention to Elizabeth’s recent demonstrations of erudition but also recognized that Elizabeth was using these works and their rhetoric of love to respond primarily to Anglo-French relations. For Elizabeth’s Accession Day in 1595, Essex and Bacon produced the entertainment Of Love and Self-Love—a device filled with more references to Elizabeth’s learning than any other poetic text I have examined from the reign. By echoing Elizabeth’s 1592 oration at Oxford and her 1593 translation of Boethius throughout the entertainment, Bacon and Essex depict the earl as a loving pupil of his queen’s wisdom. Essex’s pose of love is far more than courtly adoration; it stems from his current interests in urging the queen to return to her more open stance with Henri. In 1595, relations were rapidly cooling, and Henri seemed ready to ally directly with Spain—an act that Elizabeth and her government had worked for years to prevent. Essex used this crisis, and in turn Of Love and Self-Love, to showcase his own élite education under the tutelage of his wise queen. He claims that this education positions him to

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become the kind of internationally savvy, devoted principal secretary that Elizabeth needed most during this international crisis. Reading this entertainment following a study of Elizabeth’s 1592 Oxford oration and 1593 translation of Boethius reveals the complexity of Bacon and Essex’s use of these works, as well as the strongly international politics that underwrite their allusions. Similar to Blenerhasset and Kyffin, these two more famous men put exclusive wisdom in plain view, but accessible only to those who have “learned” the right political lessons—in this case, ones that Elizabeth taught. This chapter reads Of Love and Self-Love as a highly allusive poetic game geared to stratify its courtly audience in terms of its degree of dedication to Elizabeth specifically as a learned, international queen. The studies conducted in the main chapters of this book cover events that typically occurred in the shadow of crisis and war. The Afterword takes a brief glance at a merrier facet of Elizabeth’s learned persona and picks up on her and her poets’ use of 1 Corinthians. Chapters three, four, and five examine Elizabeth’s learned persona and 1 Corinthians in relation to love, but the Afterword analyzes a few references that evoke St. Paul’s emphasis on divine folly. The Afterword begins with an entertainment performed perhaps only weeks after Essex and Bacon’s Accession Day device: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I demonstrate how Shakespeare not only evokes the same biblical passage that has echoed through the last three chapters of this book but also how he—like Elizabeth and Essex—now situates the queen’s Christian persona in a secular world. This secularized use underscores Elizabeth’s transcendence above religious strife. The connection provides the context for the final glimpse of the queen in this book: the moment when Elizabeth aligns herself with the simplicity of folly in her 1601 speech to Parliament. Learned Queen ends with the queen herself and shows how she uses the language of folly to claim that she has always operated outside the polarizing rhetoric of religion in a space that is not just religious but truly divine. She claims that her wisdom has been right all along.

Placing Court and Queen in the International Arena By adopting a more panoramic perspective, Learned Queen suggests that current scholarship’s binary approach to describing

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Elizabethan political power does not sufficiently place the queen and her court on the transnational stage and within the context of pan-European Protestantism.28 On one hand, a significant number of scholars have traced the nuances of Elizabeth’s personal image-making and have thus constructed a more queen-centered image of political power.29 On the other hand, most recent work on Elizabethan political culture has emphasized the network of court figures that surrounded Elizabeth and shaped her agency.30 By situating Elizabethan high politics within pan-European Protestant and humanist culture, Learned Queen exposes a tense fluidity between England’s monarchical and conciliar ideologies to present a deeply competitive—but ultimately interdependent—queen and court.31 Elizabeth’s geopolitically ambitious subjects needed a strong royal image to bolster their own imperial, Protestant agenda, even as Elizabeth herself relied on their diplomatic agency to strengthen her position. Such an arena, more than almost any other, requires a symbiotic relationship between monarch and royal representatives—particularly in a regime where the queen is unmarried and neither travels abroad nor is able to lead troops directly into battle. This view does not seek to minimize or try to revise the significant differences between Elizabeth and her core advisors; they often did operate at cross-purposes. However, Learned Queen focuses on representations of Elizabeth that put a public face on the relationship between queen and statesmen, an image that was most powerful when it exuded unity and strength. Learned Queen places images of Elizabeth’s court within the infinite variety of a diplomacy-driven world. In subject matter and in methodology, this book is steeped in the very political processes that underscored these internationally expansive, yet unstable, years at the end of the sixteenth century. Learned Queen reveals that Elizabeth’s learned persona is not confined to the royal library or chapel. Instead, it leads with striking clarity to the transnational political arena, to the rise of England’s national church within a pan-European landscape, and to the passionate bravado of Elizabethan court poetry. It takes us to some of the most well-traveled and exciting areas of political and poetic culture. Through this book, I hope to ignite interest in this rich, yet vastly underexplored, facet of Elizabethan royal image-making.

CHAPTER 1

QUEEN SOLOMON: ELIZABETH I IN CHRISTIAN PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS (1569)

I

n 1569, Elizabeth I assumed the role of a pious, learned queen in her most sustained demonstration of erudite piety printed during her reign. She is presented as the author of seventeen foreign language prayers that conclude Christian Prayers and Meditations in English[,] French, Italian, Spanish, Greeke, and Latine—a lengthy prayer book published by the famous Protestant printer and propagandist John Day.1 The prayers alone are remarkable; composed in the key European languages (French, Spanish, Italian), the biblical language of Greek, and the international lingua franca, Latin, they present Elizabeth as a multilingual, Christian queen who speaks to the international community. What is equally remarkable is how Day’s prayer book as a whole imbues Elizabeth with a powerful, yet quiet, ecclesiastical presence guiding her National Church. Highly clever and richly layered, the image of Elizabeth in Christian Prayers demonstrates how ecclesiastical, monarchical, and international politics coalesce in Elizabeth’s learned persona. We have no autograph copy of these prayers to prove Elizabeth’s authorship, and indeed, I am not convinced that Elizabeth composed them herself.2 What these prayers and the apparatus of other prayers in the text do provide, however, is an important political image of Elizabeth, one that the queen clearly accepted.3 Her royal coat of arms appears on the inside of both covers, and she was given a presentation copy, which is housed in the Lambeth Palace Library. It is no wonder that she would have endorsed her depiction in this text; its representation of her as a Christian, learned queen was shrewdly tailored

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to address her—and her nation’s—urgent political circumstances in the late 1560s. 4 In 1568, England made a dramatic entrance into the international limelight by detaining Mary Queen of Scots and placing her, essentially, under house arrest. This risky political move threatened to polarize both England and all of Europe along religious lines, even as Mary’s perceived failure at female rule threatened Elizabeth’s own sovereignty. Mary’s Protestant counselors had justified rebellion by exploiting the stereotypes that women were emotionally unstable, intellectually deficient, and morally corrupt. Their claims were so persuasive that Mary was led into confinement amidst shouts of “Burn the whore!”5 Now that England had the Scottish queen (and claimant to the English throne) under its control, the overall balance of religious power in Europe seemed to have reached a tipping point. The establishment of a Protestant regency in Scotland gave England a dependent ally, and this new situation positioned England to become a leading force in pan-European Protestantism. Concurrently, Mary’s presence in England rallied Catholics domestically and across Europe to consider joining forces in retaliation. Thus, England faced the dual threats of foreign invasion and a Catholic uprising at home. At a crossroads, England prepared both for war and for international predominance. Writing in this highly volatile climate, Elizabeth’s chief advisor, William Cecil, devised a comprehensive plan for securing England’s political future. In A Necessary Consideration of the Perilous State of this Tyme, he identifies the interrelated political contexts that, I will claim, inform the characteristics of Elizabeth’s learned persona examined in this chapter. Cecil explains that the nation must foster religious unity internally, increase military preparedness, cultivate international Protestant alliances, and, most crucially, ensure the “suerty” of Elizabeth’s “royall person” for the “Maynten[a]nce of this ancient English Monarchy from alteration or utter desolution.”6 He uses this schema to propose a bond of association in which the nation’s highest-ranking subjects would formally swear to defend the queen and the nation’s Protestant religion against Catholic menace. Significantly, Cecil provides a plan that preserves England’s national security by establishing a whole series of relations—international, domestic, religious— that tie together queen, people, and the pan-European Protestant community.

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This chapter’s central argument is that Elizabeth’s persona as a Christian, learned queen in Day’s prayer book demonstrates and even participates in this multifaceted project that telescopes between forging domestic and international relations. In fact, such a connection between Cecil’s plan and Day’s text is even more feasible because of the well-studied connections between Cecil and Day themselves.7 What makes the strategies in Christian Prayers especially clever is that this fluidity occurs most pointedly through Elizabeth’s representation as a new Solomon. From the title page and frontispiece to the climactic section of her foreign language prayers, she is subtly associated with this Old Testament king. Given wisdom directly by God, Solomon was a just judge, prudent king, sage author of scripture, and ecclesiastical figure who built the House of Solomon, God’s Temple. Solomon’s accomplishments, in turn, prompted foreign dignitaries and rulers such as the Queen of Sheba to travel great distances to learn from him and to marvel at his governance.8 When depicted as Solomon in Christian Prayers, Elizabeth balances these ecclesiastical and international authorities and, in fact, fuses them. She becomes a pious householder who, with a strong and unified group of individuals assisting her, leads her nation’s House of Solomon in prayer even as she asserts her fitness to lead all of God’s House, the panEuropean Protestant Church. With an ecclesiastical presence that spans domestic and international politics, Elizabeth enters the devotional life of her people, asserts pious superiority over Catholic nations, and extends a hand of fellowship to Protestant allies. The representation of Elizabeth as a Queen Solomon in Christian Prayers is actually part of a trend. To provide a sketch of this trend, I will give brief attention to two other texts that also feature Elizabeth as a pious, learned queen: James Cancellar’s new edition of Elizabeth’s translation of Marguerite de Navarre’s Le Miroir de l’âme pécheresse (now popularly called Elizabeth’s Glass)9 and Dutch Protestant Jan van der Noot’s French and English translations of his Het theatre. Van der Noot dedicated both works to Elizabeth, whom he considered the rightful champion of God’s pan-European Church. (Significantly, it was Day who published the French translation.10) Because Christian Prayers offers the most sustained and complex image of Elizabeth as a learned queen, it will be the focus of this chapter, but I will give occasional nods to Cancellar’s and van der Noot’s contemporaneous works.

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In all of these texts, Elizabeth’s ecclesiastical presence expands far beyond her official role as Supreme Governor of the Church. She enters the household prayers of her nation even as she projects transnational Protestant leadership. In this wide range of venues, she asserts authority by creating relations between constituencies—between herself and her people, between her advisors and her throne, between her nation and the European community of nations. A political strategy such as this operates in the shadowy realms that exist outside policy. It carves out a place for an expansively powerful Queen Solomon within the infinite variety of a queen’s own version of diplomacy.

Praying in the House of Queen Solomon Elizabeth’s image as a Queen Solomon in Christian Prayers begins with the frontispiece (figure 1.1). The illustration presents, in miniature, the overlapping layers of the queen’s ecclesiastical image as England’s Royal Householder and a Solomon of God’s “true” Church. With clever subtlety, its elements unfold in a fashion that the more a reader knows and the longer a reader examines the image, the more the connotations move among and even integrate Elizabeth’s personal piety, her leadership in lay devotional practice, and her potential for international recognition. At its most immediate level, the image depicts Elizabeth engaged in solitary prayer with a scriptural passage in Latin underneath—a combination that suggests the queen’s personal piety as well as her learning. To those who can read Latin, the words in the scriptural passage underscore the tone of intimacy and the focus on God. The passage is 2 Chronicles 6:14: “Domine Deus Israel, non est similis tui Deus in caelo & in terra qui pacta custodis & misericordiam cum seruis tuis, qui ambulant coram te in toto corde suo,” which in the 1568 Bishops’ Bible reads: “O Lorde God of Israel, there is no god like thee in heauen and earth, which kepest couenaunt & shewest mercie vnto thy seruauntes that walke before thee with al their heartes.”11 This image of Elizabeth kneeling in prayer and meditating on the passage from 2 Chronicles suggests that the queen has committed her life to God, whose constancy and kindness is known to all of his faithful servants. Elizabeth’s personal piety, however, assumes pointedly regal connotations with the images of the sword and book as well as the presence of her imperial crown resting on the priedieu.12 These

Figure 1.1 Queen Elizabeth I, frontispiece of Christian Prayers and Meditations in English[,] French, Italian, Spanish, Greeke, and Latine (1569); STC 6428.

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royal trappings emphasize Elizabeth’s authority as a theocratic ruler—a notion bolstered by the biblical context of the passage. These words begin Solomon’s prayer before the masses when he dedicated the Temple, an event that could be considered his greatest moment as a religious leader. In 2 Chronicles 6:12, “the king stoode before the aulter of the Lorde in the presence of all the congregation of Israel, and stretched out his handes.” He then knelt and began the prayer that opens with the passage included on the frontispiece beneath the image of Elizabeth. When Elizabeth is associated with these words, however, she is not depicted before assembled congregations. Unlike Solomon in his preacher-like role before the Temple, Elizabeth appears at prayer in a more private space. Not only does this setting befit her gender but it also creates a specific connection between Solomon’s description of the Temple in 2 Chronicles and Elizabeth’s overall role in Day’s Christian Prayers. In 2 Chronicles, Solomon does not refer to the Temple as a temple—he refers to it as a house. He asks God to “let thyne eyes be open towarde this house day & night, ouer this place whereof thou hast sayde that thou wouldest put thy name there, to hearken vnto the prayer whiche thy seruaunt prayeth in this place” (2 Chron. 6:20).13 Only educated and biblically well-read readers would detect the connection to Solomon and to the notion of Solomon’s Temple as a “house.” Readers who do make the association would see that this context matches Elizabeth’s presentation as a pious householder in the prayer book that follows.14 Readers literate only in the vernacular would miss the connection to Solomon but would still likely recognize Elizabeth’s role as a householder because of where this image appears: the frontispiece faces the page that begins a whole series of prayers written to be said by individuals in their devotions. Quite literally, Elizabeth is depicted leading her nation in prayer just as a householder leads domestic devotions. Reformists considered the household to be the key educational unit for deepening personal piety and for fostering a sense of community in a newly Protestantized nation.15 Private prayer books played a central role in how the pious householder facilitated domestic religious observances. In fact, it is most fitting that the frontispiece depicts Elizabeth using the prayer book.16 The juxtaposition of this image and the first page of prayers encourages lay readers to emulate their praying queen. Essentially, the text of the prayer book itself enacts this

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relationship of England’s devout subjects praying with their Royal Householder in the House of a Queen Solomon. This sense of Elizabeth as a queen praying with her subjects is strengthened later in the section of vernacular devotions when one of her own prayers appears without any royal fanfare. The prayers in this part of the text are for lay worshippers to say at various moments in the day, such as upon rising and upon going to bed, or on occasions such as offering thanksgiving, dealing with sickness, expressing love for neighbors, or seeking protection for the nation. In the section of prayers to be said during times of illness, one of Elizabeth’s own pieces appears—one that was originally published in her Latin prayer book, Precationes priuatae. Regiae E. R. (1563). Now provided in English, this prayer is clearly written with Elizabeth as the speaker, yet the heading for the prayer does not draw attention to its royal author. It simply reads: “In time of sicknes” (K2v). Elizabeth’s voice comes in quietly, thus diminishing the distinction between her voice and those of the surrounding prayers. This harmony between queen and subjects emphasizes the compatibility of Elizabeth’s devotional practices with those of her lay readers. Such unity, in turn, is reinforced by an alteration of the wording of the prayer. In the Latin original of 1563, Elizabeth makes a solitary plea for her continued good health on behalf of the nation. In the 1569 translation, a completely new sentence has her people join in the request: “Wherfore as well I as thy people committed vnto me, bowing the knees of our hartes before thy maiestie, do humbly besech thee most gratious Sauiour, in thy iudgement to remember thy mercy” (L1r) and save her from dangerous illness. Like a household engaged in prayer, Elizabeth and those subjects “committed vnto” her are described as on their knees together. Elizabeth’s representation as a householder in Christian Prayers adds a whole new facet to her position as Supreme Governor of the Church because of the functions that the householder and a book of private prayers occupied in relation to the established church. As Susan M. Felch has noted, “These private prayer books were intended for use in households rather than in the church” and “while they might echo language from the Book of Common Prayer, [they] were distinct from public worship and were not meant to be used either in conjunction, or in competition, with it.”17 Elizabeth’s role as householder becomes an extension of her ecclesiastical presence, one that complements her

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status as Supreme Governor by inserting her into the devotional life of her nation. As a householder, Elizabeth can invite compliance and unity through a personal relationship rather than through impersonal proclamation. In a sense, such a strategy is similar to the tactics of the diplomat who, as will be discussed in later chapters, fosters relations through personable exchange and, as with all relationships, establishes this bond by building on common ground. The vernacular prayers in Day’s collection are central to this sense of establishing a common ground. In nearly all cases, Elizabeth did not write these pieces, but authorship is not the issue. This apparatus of prayers, which comprises nearly two-thirds of the volume, creates a specific—and decidedly invitational—image of Elizabeth as a Royal Householder. These private devotions are part of a long-standing and ecumenical tradition of prayer that existed long before the Reformation. In this way, they are not original to Day’s prayer book or the other text published the same year that also contains many of these prayers (Henry Bull’s Christian prayers and holy meditations18). Rather, as Helen C. White explains, a majority of these devotions came from such prayer books as Juan Luis Vives’ famous Preces et Meditationes Diurnae and Desiderius Erasmus’ Precationes aliquot.19 These texts, in turn, were drawing upon the even older traditions of the religious primer (which, in turn, was the printed version of the Books of Hours) as well as the prayer miscellany. White describes Day’s Christian Prayers as a text that borrowed “a number of Primer elements such as the Seven Penitential Psalms and the litany and suffrages, with, of course, the appropriate modifications and substitutions. All in all, it was a Protestant book, but strikingly reminiscent in its pattern and even its actual material of the traditional primer.”20 In drawing so heavily from established devotional traditions, Day and Bull were creating highly familiar and nostalgic texts that not only would have been familiar to Catholic and Protestant lay worshipers alike but that also participate in an ecumenical tradition of devotion. In fact, the next edition of Day’s prayer book, A Booke of Christian Prayers (published by Day’s son Richard in 1578), contains the following inscription on the title page: “collected out of the auncient writers, and best learned in our tyme, worthy to be read with an earnest mynde of all Christians.”21 By implication, when Elizabeth is depicted using a prayer book containing these pieces, she invites all her subjects to pray alongside her in an

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ecumenical practice that is doctrinally inclusive. It is a practice that stresses unity-in-piety. Day’s 1569 collection is also engaged in another practice related to tradition. Numerous texts in this period presented England’s current ecclesiastical practice as part of a long religious heritage. The Elizabethan Church wanted to show that it was not “new” at all, but instead had deep roots in centuries of tradition. This campaign was particularly dear to the Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker. He commissioned Day and John Foxe to produce a dual language edition of the Gospels that provided the text in Anglo-Saxon on one side of the page and in contemporary English from the Bishops’ Bible on the other.22 This work, published in 1571, was dedicated to Elizabeth. She is connected to the established church again the following year in Parker’s own De Antiqvitate Britannicae, which also situated the current National Church within a British history that extended back to antiquity. In one of the copies of De Antiqvitate, Elizabeth is shown in a manner strikingly parallel to her representation on the title page of the 1568 Bishops’ Bible: she is depicted above a caption containing a scriptural passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, provided in Latin (see figure 1.2 for the title page from the Bishops’ Bible).23 The selection of this passage (Rom. 1:16), especially in Latin, is particularly strategic. The passage itself emphasizes the primacy of the Gospel, which aligns Elizabeth with the Protestant adherence to sola scriptura. On the title page of the Bishops’ Bible, the caption reads: “Non me pudet Euangelij Christi. Virtus enim Dei est ad salutem Omni credenti,” which in the English text of Romans from this edition reads: “For I am not ashamed of the Gospell of Christ, because it is the power of God vnto saluation to all that beleue.” By providing the passage in Latin at the beginning of an English translation, Elizabeth articulates her support of the Gospel within the tradition of the Bible in Latin even as Latin itself showcases her learning. Because this passage is included on such title pages as the Bishops’ Bible and De Antiqvitate Britannicae, it also uses Elizabeth’s learned persona to blend the old and the new. A similar blending underlies Cancellar’s contemporary edition of Elizabeth’s Glass. In this text (published sometime between 1568 and 1570), Cancellar includes Elizabeth’s translation and then appends an alphabet of meditations that follow the letters ELIZABETH REGINA. He balances an image of Elizabeth as a

Figure 1.2 Title page of the 1568 Bishops’ Bible (The holie Bible); STC 2099.

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learned, pious queen with devotions for her subjects to use in emulating her piety. As a way to represent Elizabeth as a moral guide for her subjects, Cancellar prefaces these devotions with a page that visually intertwines her virtue and legitimate monarchical authority. Above Elizabeth’s coat of arms, the caption emphasizes that she is the daughter of Henry VIII, and underneath her coat of arms appears the motto, “Embrace Vertue.”24 This call to virtue, in turn, rests above a table of moral dicta. These maxims follow the letters in Elizabeth’s name, and they serve as an abstract of virtues to prepare for the devotions to come. Elizabeth is, quite literally, depicted as the mirror of virtue for her subjects. Her coat of arms even resembles a mirror, thus symbolizing her presence.25 Elizabeth becomes a moral focal point for her subjects as they pray through her name and under her name (because the initials E.R. appear at the top of every page). In these devotions, Cancellar is also tapping into the long and doctrinally inclusive tradition of private prayer, and even his personal situation provides this same sense of religious openness. Cancellar had been the chaplain for Elizabeth’s Catholic predecessor, Queen Mary. During Elizabeth’s reign, he sought political patronage from such individuals as Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. In fact, Cancellar produced an alphabet of prayers for Leicester in 1564 titled, The Alphabet of Prayers, very fruitefull to be exercised and vsed of euerye Christian Man. As the text’s subtitle suggests, these devotions are also part of the ecumenical tradition of private prayer.26 Adopting the same technique for Elizabeth a few years later, Cancellar represents Elizabeth as a figure who leads all of her Christian nation in prayer. These meditations are appropriate to appear after the text of her Glass: Cancellar creates a concluding apparatus that makes the queen a “glass” of virtue her subjects should reflect in their own practices. The visual emphasis on Elizabeth as a virtuous queen is even more evident because the alphabet of devotions appears directly after a full page of scriptural passages that, Cancellar claims, Elizabeth herself inserted in the text. These passages from Ecclesiasticus chapters 7 and 25 contrast the virtues of a good woman with the ills that arise from a wicked woman. The last of the four passages encourages fidelity to a good woman: “Yet depart not from a discreete and good Woman, that is fallen to thee for thy portion in the feare of the Lord, for the gift of hir honestie is aboue golde.”27 This passage equates faithfulness to the

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virtuous woman with following God’s providence. Subsequently, once the reader turns the page to see Elizabeth’s coat of arms under the phrase “Embrace Vertue,” it becomes clear that Elizabeth is the virtuous woman. Cancellar does not connect Elizabeth with Solomon in this text, but his choice to juxtapose these prayers linked to Elizabeth with her translation of Marguerite’s devotional work balances domestic with international religious participation. In fact, the comparison between the virtuous and wicked women may suggest another internationally focused contrast—between Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots.

A Queen Solomon Superior in Virtue: Hints of an International Context In the years right after Mary’s detainment, Elizabeth and her supporters were working hard to emphasize that Elizabeth was not another Mary. This distinction was important because Mary’s eventual overthrow and her subsequent flight across the English border seemed to substantiate anxieties regarding female rule in general. The representations of Elizabeth in both Cancellar’s edition and in Christian Prayers participate in the effort to contrast Mary and Elizabeth. Unlike Mary, Elizabeth is a virtuous queen who quietly prays with her subjects; she does not tyrannically or passionately pursue her own whims. Unlike Mary, Elizabeth does not exhibit the weaknesses of her sex. In fact, Elizabeth may have used erudition to separate herself from a seemingly erratic Mary when Elizabeth translated Seneca’s Epistle 107 in 1567—a classical text that outlines the central Stoic premise that one must confront adversity with rational resolve.28 In Christian Prayers, Elizabeth’s religious virtue is the overarching image. Her foreign language prayers serve to depict her as the biblically focused and specifically Protestant queen whose moral erudition insinuates superiority over the lusty Mary. Throughout the foreign language prayers, Elizabeth’s pious virtue echoes in her claims of a daughterly bond with God.29 As God’s daughter, she possesses wholesome virtue that, by implication, distances her from the alleged source of Mary’s downfall: the lusts of the flesh. This emphasis begins in the second royal prayer—written, significantly, in Mary’s first language of French: “Que selon mon corps & mon ame tu sois mon protecteur, me fortifiant

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contre toutes les tentations du diable, & de la chair. / As for my body and my soul, mayst Thou be my Protector, strengthening me against all the temptations of the devil and of the flesh” (Hh2v; p. 130; p. 145). In the second Italian prayer, Elizabeth asks that the divine image within her be kept “pura & sincera d’ogni affetto carnale / pure and untainted by any carnal affection” (Ll4v; p. 140; p. 153). Free from physical temptations, she removes herself from the weaknesses associated with her gender as well as, more specifically, the weakness of lust that allegedly made Mary an accomplice in the murder of her second husband, Henry (formerly Lord Darnley), father of James VI. Mary’s marriage to James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell (suspected of being Henry’s assailant), was a mainstay of Elizabeth’s claim of superiority over the Scottish queen. To underscore this contrast between the virtuous Elizabeth and the lusty Mary, England had worked with the Scottish regency to capitalize on Mary’s reputation as concupiscent. The Scottish government provided “evidence” that cemented this image when it brought forth the Casket Letters. These eight letters, written in French and allegedly in Mary’s own hand, included brazen statements of immodest affections. Casket Letter II was particularly damning. In it, Mary gushes forth what the English commissioners described in their report as her “inordinate love” for Bothwell.30 Not only did the letter’s content sully Mary’s character by “proving” her lust, but its rambling style and disjointed structure also confirmed the stereotype that a woman’s rhetoric is as unbridled as her passion. These charges, in turn, were used to suggest her incompetence to rule. As her recent biographer Retha M. Warnicke has pointed out, Mary was brought down through “her sexuality and her literacy.”31 In contrast, Elizabeth’s royal virtue was bolstered through a careful construction of her literacy, which was made more potent and less personal because it was carefully tied to God and the words of other pious individuals. Throughout Christian Prayers, Elizabeth’s wisdom is connected closely to the Bible—a strategy that works well with her gender and her Protestantism. The two sections that precede Elizabeth’s prayers in foreign languages showcase this focus. The first of the two sections is, essentially, a biblical commonplace book containing “sentences” taken from scripture (in English) that address various princely topics (Aa1r– Gg3r). The first category includes passages to examine “the kingdome of God, and how all kinges ought to seeke his glory” (Aa1r).

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The next category gathers together scripture regarding “Promises, admonitions and counsels to good kinges, with examples of their good successe” (Cc1v). Such words as “ought,” “counsels,” and “admonitions” in these headings suggest that the entries are presented as a counsel for princes akin to the popular texts that offered a “mirror for magistrates.”32 In Christian Prayers, Elizabeth is now portrayed as the recipient of biblical advice. Significantly, this biblical wisdom prefaces the last image of Elizabeth as a learned queen that readers literate only in English would be able to access. The final English text in Day’s volume is a slightly modified version of Solomon’s prayer from the apocryphal Book of Wisdom. This prayer is Solomon’s petition to God for divine wisdom, and, in Day, it has been modified to make Elizabeth the speaker (Gg3v–4v). Through Solomon’s words, the reader first hears Elizabeth express intellectual weakness, claiming to God that she is “to weake for the vnderstandyng of thy iudgementes and lawes” (Gg4r). Then, she asks God to let Divine Wisdom descend from heaven “that she may be with me, and labour with me, that I may know what is acceptable in thy sight: for she knoweth and vnderstandeth all thinges, and she shall lead me soberly in my workes, and preserue me in her power” (Gg4r). It is here in Solomon’s prayer for wisdom that Elizabeth’s role as Solomon becomes overt for her lay worshippers who know only the vernacular. Building on biblical wisdom and drawing from Solomon’s words, Elizabeth receives wisdom directly from God rather than through earthly pursuits. Those readers of Day’s prayer book who are unable to read the foreign language prayers that follow will have encountered their learned queen in a framework that is as traditional as it is accessible: she is a queen of the mind, not of the flesh. Equally important for these readers, Elizabeth is their gentle householder and biblically focused queen. The way Solomon’s prayer makes Elizabeth the speaker encourages this image of gentleness through its few, but significant, omissions. Elizabeth’s version omits Solomon’s articulation of anointed royal power (Ws 9:7) and his authority as the builder of the Temple (9:8).33 These omissions match the way the frontispiece creates Elizabeth as a Solomon—by backing away from her absolute royal authority and her work as a national ecclesiastical figure. Elizabeth may be her nation’s householder who leads her subjects in ecumenical prayer, but she is not the builder of that house, nor is the house associated

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with a certain “brand” of Christianity. Readers who can read the foreign language prayers will see a very different Queen Solomon and a much broader depiction of Elizabeth’s monarchical authority. They will find a much more aggressively political and international queen who is no longer the quiet, single voice of a Solomon. Now, they will find a Queen Solomon with a powerful group of counselors, judges, and clerics joining her in this image. In the foreign language prayers, this full Elizabethan government becomes more Protestant, more transnational, and much more collective.

A Protestant Solomon in Parliamentary Robes Most of the foreign language prayers portray Elizabeth as asserting her sovereignty with governors beside her, thus making more of a corporate Solomon. Elizabeth becomes a Solomon in parliamentary robes. Many prominent Elizabethan civic philosophers justified Elizabeth’s female sovereignty by representing her monarchy as a mixed constitution—a notion that modern historians in the tradition of Patrick Collinson now term a “monarchical republic.”34 Key Elizabethan figures such as John Aylmer, Thomas Smith, and Laurence Humphrey repeatedly emphasized that Elizabeth did not reign alone but rather with the assistance of Parliament, the Privy Council, clerics, nobility, and judges. For example, Aylmer describes Elizabeth as a “mixte ruler” and not “a mere monark” in An Harborovve for Faithfvll and Trevve Svbiectes, agaynst the late blowne Blaste, concerninge the Gouernment of VVemen.35 Elizabeth’s image as a Solomon in Christian Prayers adds what Peter Lake sees as a crucial element missing from the notion of a monarchical republic: religion.36 Although Elizabeth leads imperially from within a collective of guiding individuals, she demonstrates appropriate feminine compliance to God’s direction. In the text, she emerges not as a King Solomon but as a Queen Solomon. Fusing a mixed monarchy and religion is especially crucial in situating England and its queen within a pan-European Protestant context. For men such as Aylmer and Day, interest in preserving England as a Protestant nation is at the heart of defending Elizabeth’s right to rule. In Christian Prayers, Elizabeth assumes a pointed, often strident, Protestant position. In the preface to the French prayers, she articulates the distinctly Protestant notion of Christ as

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mediator: “[T]u nous as donné ton filz vnique, & bien aymé, pour mediateur & aduocat entre toy & nous / Thou hast given Thy only and wellbeloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as a Mediator and Advocate between Thee and us” (Hh1v; p. 130; p. 144). References to Christ as mediator continue to echo throughout these prayers (e.g., Ii1v, p. 132, p. 146; Nn2v, p. 142, p. 156; and Oo1r, p. 143, p. 157). Whereas these descriptions align Elizabeth with Protestantism, the foreign language prayers include another strategy that is more pointed: many of the prayers begin with a short scriptural passage in the vernacular that serves as a model for the meditation that follows. This format is used specifically for the prayers in Spanish and Italian. Because these languages are spoken in primarily Catholic nations, the use of the vernacular, as opposed to Latin, carries an especial charge. Elizabeth is out to reform these nations, and perhaps her right to do so as a champion of God’s “true” Church is further strengthened by two particular passages that are written by or modeled after Solomon.37 The more significant of these two Solomonic passages prefaces the second Spanish prayer. The verse is from 1 Kings, where Solomon asks God to grant him wise judgment. Creating a connection between her words and those of Solomon, Elizabeth then echoes this petition in her accompanying prayer: [P]ara que yo tu sierua tenga coraçon entendido que pueda discernir entre lo bueno y lo malo: y desta manera sea en este tu Reyno administrada iusticia / I, Thy maidservant, may have a wise heart that can discern between the good and the bad. And in this manner may justice be administered in this Thy kingdom. (Nn2r–v; p. 142; p. 156)

Coupling a scriptural verse with a prayer not only roots Elizabeth’s wisdom in the Protestant practice of sola scriptura but also demonstrates that she shares this religious custom with her Protestant believers. In fact, this very technique harkens back to the format used earlier in the meditations for the lay worshipper. Significantly, though, in the French prayer when Elizabeth herself is depicted speaking this same passage about discerning between good and evil, she is not the sole Solomon: [T]u donneras à ta seruante & à tes seruiteurs vn coeur entendu pour iuger ton peuple, & pour discerner le bien d’entre le mal, à fin que nous ne soyons point inutiles, ou mesme pernicieux en vne vocation si sainte. Donne nous aussi des Conseillers prudens sages & vertueux, chassant loing de nous,

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tous ambitieux, malins, cauteleux, & hypocrites. Donne des Iuges, hommes veritables haissans auarice, & fuyans l’acception des personnes, à fin que mon peuple soit gouuerné en toute equité & droiture, les bons soustenus en leur Iustice & innocence, les iniques punis & chastiez / Thou wilt give to Thy maidservant and to Thy menservants an understanding heart to judge Thy people and to distinguish good from evil, so that we may not be unprofitable or, worse, pernicious in a vocation so holy as this. Give us also prudent, wise, and virtuous councillors, driving far from us all ambitious, malignant, wily, and hypocritical ones. Give us for judges true men who hate greediness and who shun acceptation of persons, so that my people may be governed in all equity and righteousness, the virtuous sustained in their justice and innocence, the wicked punished and chastised. (Ii2v–3r; pp. 132–33; p. 147)

Unlike Solomon, who alone obtained God’s ability to judge, Elizabeth incorporates “seruiteurs / menservants” in her echo of 1 Kings 3:9. Her request for others to gain divine perspective eliminates her exclusive access to divine wisdom even as the similar construction of “seruante / maidservant” and “menservants” minimizes her elevated status as queen. In addition, the passage shifts to passive voice (beginning with soit gouuerné) after Elizabeth asks for virtuous judges. This change in voice creates a more expansive governing structure that leaves the ruling relationship between queen and counselors somewhat open. Elizabeth includes her monarchical authority with “mon peuple / my people,” but the combination of the passive voice and the opening reference to her judges implies that they will rule collaboratively. When the issue of actual governance and judges arises in the second Spanish prayer, Elizabeth references Solomon’s ability to judge between good and evil and again extends the rights of governance far beyond her person. Conjuring the image of a mixed monarchy here strengthens the implication that England’s crown is truly a collective enterprise—an approach that, as Dale Hoak and Jonathan McMahon have argued, has its roots in England’s imperial agenda. As early as Edward VI’s reign, Sir Thomas Smith, Cecil, and others sought to justify the union of the Scottish and English crowns by describing England as a mixed monarchy.38 It is particularly appropriate that Elizabeth’s participation in a mixed constitution would also surface in Christian Prayers—a text with strong international and imperial resonances.

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This sense of a large English collective of judges may also reflect England’s recent leadership in conducting proceedings to investigate Mary’s involvement in King Henry’s murder. These proceedings, begun in October 1568, placed Elizabeth and her commissioners in the role of judge. The crown handled this position very circumspectly because calling the situation a “trial” would open the possibility that Mary, a divinely anointed monarch, was subject to earthly strictures. In the initial instructions to her commissioners, Elizabeth avoids the word “judge,” describing her function as “Umpire and principal Arbitrer.” She loses some of her squeamishness over what to call her authority, however, when Mary and her commissioners stop cooperating in December. Elizabeth then threatens them with the reminder of “our Judgement.”39 When the Elizabethan regime sought to highlight its superiority over the Scottish queen as well as to assert a pan-European imperial agenda in 1569, this image, now with a Solomonic cachet, was evoked once again. Day’s prayer book overall may actually suggest a co-production between queen and counselors such as Cecil. Wallace MacCaffrey has described how Elizabeth and her statesmen worked harmoniously during this period, and, according to Stephen Alford, Cecil was depicting an image of the Elizabethan polity in 1569 that Alford calls “Elizabeth’s imperial queenship-in-parliament.” 40 Day’s volume may further confirm this agenda and functional harmony: the critical circumstances of 1568–1570 generated an atmosphere in which queen and counselors found it mutually expedient to find common ground. In addition to the potential international context, the strategy of bolstering Elizabeth’s monarchical strength by situating her within a harmonious governing collective also addresses anxieties regarding female rule. Such concern seems to underwrite one particular prayer included within the collection of lay prayers provided in English earlier in the volume. That prayer was originally published as one of Elizabeth’s Latin prayers in her 1563 Precationes, but the English translation in 1569 significantly alters the key section where Elizabeth asserts her sovereignty as Solomon. In Precationes, Elizabeth had used her most explicit self-comparison to Solomon to assert an aggressively absolutist rejection of her need for any earthly guidance (such as counsel). In the climactic moment, Elizabeth declared: [D]enique quod vni tibi acceptum esse nouerim, id sine vllo personarum aut rerum mundanarum respectu suscipere, exequi, perficere velim,

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audeam, atque possim / And besides, that I may know what is acceptable to Thee alone, vouchsafe that I wish, dare, and can perform it without paying respect to any earthly persons or things. (E7v–8r; pp. 122–23; p. 143)

When included in Christian Prayers, this passage has been dramatically softened. The translation in 1569 erases the rejection of advice: “finally without regard of persons, w tout accompt of worldly respectes take in hand, execute, and performe that which I shall know to please thee alone” (p3v–4r). The 1569 version obscures Elizabeth’s agency. By placing the “I” toward the end of the sentence and by applying “earthly” only to “respects,” it delays acknowledging the queen as the subject. Conversely, in the Latin, the nominative case makes Elizabeth’s agency clear with each verb. The Latin also allows for the possibility that “earthly” modifies both “persons and things / personarum aut rerum mundanarum.” Elizabeth’s Solomonic image in Christian Prayers places the queen within the appropriately guiding “earthly persons and things” that are more befitting the queen of a mixed monarchy. The notion of balancing a monarchical with a conciliar image is further emphasized in the final French prayer. It portrays England’s governing collective as unified in conducting the business of the realm with God in its midst: Nous ton humble seruante & tes seruiteurs estans icy assemblez en ta presence, pour traiter & aduiser aux affaires qui concernent la vocation sainte à laquelle tu nous as appellez par ta grace / [W]e Thy humble maidservant and Thy menservants, being assembled here in Thy presence to treat and advise about the business which concerns the holy vocation to which Thou hast called us by Thy grace. (Kk4r; p. 136; p. 150)

This prayer maintains that queen and counselors are unified not only in godliness but also in political purpose. The sense of gathering is made poignantly immediate by the use of the present participle (estans icy assemblez), which gives the impression that these words are being spoken during a conciliar session. It soon becomes evident that the prayer occurs at the beginning of a session when Elizabeth layers in the future and subjunctive tenses: “Nous puissions auec prudence & sagesse traiter les choses qui maintenant seront proposées. / [W]e may with prudence and wisdom treat of the things that now will be propounded” (Kk4v; p. 137; p. 151), and then “D’auantage que tu tienne tellement la main à toutes

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nos deliberations. / Furthermore, keep Thou Thy hand in all our deliberations” (Ll1r; p. 137; p. 151). This dynamic image intensifies the concept of England as a corporate sovereignty that functions as nimbly as it does harmoniously—an image that transforms the vulnerability of having an unmarried queen on the throne into an opportunity for projecting the monarchical strength of queenin-parliament. What makes the image of Elizabeth in Christian Prayers so complex, however, is that this “quasi-republican” notion rests with, and is supported by, a strong ecclesiastical framework. This political model, which is associated with civic humanism, becomes synthesized with the politics of religion. In this fluid combination, Day’s prayer book telescopes between positions that are queen-centered and those that are counselor-driven—a duality that Elizabeth’s learned persona distinctly facilitates in placing her as a strong front image for her nation and its Church. Such bravado regarding the cohesive unity within England’s governing conglomerate is directly connected to the existing international instability. England needed to project an image of itself as politically and religiously unified. The reality was far less rosy. This disparity emphasizes Day’s propagandistic motives even as it underscores the need for the symbiotic relationship between strong queen and powerful counsel that the text depicts. While Day and others were presenting this façade of religious, powerful unity, Elizabeth and her counselors were concerned about the double threat of international invasion and domestic uprising. Tensions within England were building as Mary’s arrest rallied Catholic support from the northern earls (a support that would escalate into rebellion in November 1569). Also participating in this strained climate, the new Spanish ambassador Guerau de Spes was plotting against the regime with some of these nobles as well as other international figures—so much so that the crown was becoming suspicious of conspiratorial activity. As de Spes complained to the Spanish King Philip on 2 April 1569, the crown demanded that all letters leaving the country must first “pass through Cecil’s hands.”41 On 23 May, de Spes commented on England’s anxiety that Spain would declare war, 42 and indeed, Cecil will portray England as vulnerable in A Necessary Consideration (written just weeks later). Cecil warns grimly that England “so standeth alone upon the gard of it self, as never it did at any tyme before by ye memory of any recordes or storyes.”43 As a remedy for this isolation, England will work to solidify its

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Protestant alliances in 1569 and, thus, increasingly will identify itself in Protestant opposition to the Scottish queen and her allies. Very much in keeping with the image of a Protestant Elizabeth in the foreign language prayers, the English regime begins to assert a definitively Protestant identity.44 England backed this Protestant assertion not only with words but also with money. The nation increasingly offered financial assistance to struggling Protestant powers, such as those in the Low Countries as well as the Huguenots in France. Within this political context regarding England and the Low Countries, Henry Killigrew wrote Cecil from Hamburg in May 1569 to suggest that “If the Quenes Majestie agree to send Mony, I thinke the League will follow.” He then affirmed Elizabeth’s international image of strength: “the Quynes Majeste be more feared and honored this Day of all Contrys, what Religion soever they be of, then ever any of her Majestie’s Predecessors before her was.”45 England was less financially strained partly because its coffers, unlike those of many other countries, had not been depleted from warfare. For England, its peace reflected both its wealth and its superiority as a well-governed nation. It is this semblance of peace that underwrites the international power Elizabeth asserts as a wise Queen Solomon in her foreign language prayers within Christian Prayers.

A Queen Solomon of International Stature Elizabeth’s foreign language prayers repeatedly bolster Elizabeth’s and England’s political strength by emphasizing England as a haven of peace in the midst of a Europe plunged into turmoil. England’s serenity becomes the platform on which Elizabeth will base her virtuous right to uphold and propagate God’s “true” religion throughout her own nation and the international community. Significantly, though, Elizabeth’s assertions of religious leadership vary in intensity and intent depending on the language in which she is praying. Jennifer Clement as well as editors Marcus and Mueller have noted the correspondence between the language of the prayer and its presentation of Elizabeth’s religious image. 46 In her French prayers, the queen presents herself as God’s chosen champion of a reformed Church; in the Italian prayers, she makes blatantly antipapal comments; and in the biblical language of Greek, she articulates her views with an epic

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heroism that, I would add, also unleashes her most anti- Catholic vehemence. Indeed, the diverse tones in these prayers may suggest that different writers composed them under Elizabeth’s name, but even with this possibility, the styles consistently differ in ways that reflect England’s current political relationships with various European constituencies. In terms of her image, Elizabeth emerges not simply as a multilingual monarch but rather as a multilingual monarch who participates directly in the diplomatic discourse her nation conducts (or opts not to conduct) with other nations. She chastises enemies, invites potential allies, and leads willing supporters. In the Italian and Spanish prayers, Elizabeth presents an aggressively Protestant agenda full of religious imperialism. Grounding her pious authority in the Gospel, she pledges to eradicate evil and to counter Satan’s plots. In the second Italian prayer, she vows this commitment: spiantando ogni maluagio seme d’empietà, spargere, seminare, & radicare il tuo santo Euangelio in tutti i cuori, aggrandendo per tutto questo regno tuo terreno, quel celeste di Giesu Cristo / uprooting every wicked seed of impiety, to spread, plant, and root Thy holy Gospel in every heart, increasing throughout this Thy earthly kingdom, that heavenly one of Jesus Christ. (Mm1r–v; p. 140; p. 154)

As discussed in the Introduction, Elizabeth depicts herself in this prayer as an imperial, godly gardener. She extends her religious authority beyond England’s shores to encompass the entire earthly kingdom, and significantly, as a good Protestant queen, she does this by sowing the seeds of the Word. In keeping with the principle of grounding her position in the Gospel, Elizabeth echoes Romans 1:16 in her first Spanish prayer, stating why her enemies hate her: Tenian me vn tal odio, porque yo ponia en ti solo toda mi esperança, porque yo no me auergonçaua del Euangelio de tu amantissimo Hijo: mas antes me honraua del, como aquella que tenia por cierto el Euangelio ser potentia tuya para dar salud à todos los que creen. / They hate me so because I put all my hope in Thee alone, because I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Thy most loving Son; much rather, I have been honored as one who surely holds the Gospel to be Thy power for giving salvation to all those who believe. (Mm4r; p. 142; p. 155)

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Similar to Elizabeth’s association with this scriptural passage on the title pages of the contemporary Bishops’ Bible and Parker’s De Antiquitate Britannicae, this choice depicts her as an individual who, appropriately for a Protestant queen, puts her focus on sola scriptura even as she asserts the ecclesiastical role of a figure who assists God in giving salvation to all those who believe. She is a leader of the international, universal Church. The appearance of Romans 1:16 here and on the title page of the Bishops’ Bible also lends further support to Elizabeth Evenden’s suggestion that Archbishop Parker may have intended the queen to consider this edition of the Bible and Christian Prayers as companion texts. 47 Elizabeth certainly projects the image of a religious leader with a clear Protestant mission justified by her biblically centered wisdom. In her Spanish and Italian prayers, she comes across quite pointedly as an imperial Queen of the Word who is bent on ridding Europe of popery. Unlike her aggressive stance when praying in the languages of predominantly Catholic nations, Elizabeth’s tone in the Latin prayers is much more conciliatory, even passive, with a greater focus on peace and an awareness of her own nation’s vulnerability. In the first Latin piece, she mentions enemies of God but does not assume a role in stamping them out: “Dissipentur hostes tui qui bella volunt: qui adorant sculptilia pudefiant & conuertantur. / Let enemies who want war with Thee be scattered; let those who adore idols be ashamed and convert” (Oo2r; p. 144; p. 158). Elizabeth draws upon the subjunctive (pudefiant) and the passive voice (Dissipentur and conuertantur) to deflect focus away from her role as an agent of religious change. Catholics will convert because of their own embarrassment, and in turn, God’s enemies will “be scattered” by an unspecified force. These prayers, written in the cosmopolitan language of Latin (also the language of the Catholic Church) have a more unifying tone that seeks quiet conversion and indirect diffusion of tension. This tactic is typically associated with Elizabeth’s personal approach to many domestic, religious situations in which she sought outward conformity but wished to avoid confrontation. In two other Latin prayers, Elizabeth employs passive voice again when she mentions potential domestic uprising and the threat of foreign attack. For example, in the final Latin prayer, she expresses trust that God will, if necessary, take her away to keep her safe from foes: “cum ab omnibus clandestinis infidiis, tum etiam a

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domesticis exterisq[ue], hostibus eripiar / I may be snatched away from all secretly faithless persons as well as from domestic and foreign enemies” (Pp2r; p. 146; p. 160).48 In the second Latin prayer, Elizabeth emphasizes her passivity and now links it to her role as a queen of peace who is surrounded by a Europe in turmoil: Conserua porro tua bonitate mihi partam pacem, & ab omni belli impetu assere patriam & regnum, potissimum ab intestines & domesticis tumultibus, quibus bona iam orbis Christiani pars quatitur, immunes nos prolege. / Preserve henceforth by Thy goodness my share of peace, and free the country and kingdom most especially from all assault of war; keep us exempt from the internal and domestic tumults by which a good part of the Christian world is now disturbed. (Pp1r; p. 146; p. 160)

Certainly, England is not entirely a quiet nation free from all internal unrest. In these Latin prayers, as in the vernacular pieces earlier in Christian Prayers, however, England is presented as superior in the relatively serene unity that has flourished under its learned and pious queen of peace.49

A Protestant Champion for the Nations Elizabeth’s claims of peaceful superiority support the compassionate and inviting tone of her French prayers, in which she addresses the strife in France and the Low Countries. These prayers connect Elizabeth’s tranquil, divinely endorsed governance with her ability to exercise and extend her compassionate rule to other nations. She can offer a haven of peace, unlike neighboring countries. She asks God: [E]stans les autres Royaumes en horribles confusions, & que tu m’as enuoyé les entrailles de ton filz Iesus Christ, pour leur donner refuge en leurs oppressions: fay moy la grace d’estre vraye nourrissiere & tutrice des tiens selon la parolle de ton Prophete Isaye, pour auoir vne vraye compassion tant de ceux qui sont icy, que de tous autres / [O]ther kingdoms being in horrible confusion—and that Thou hast sent to me the bowels of Thy Son Jesus Christ to give them refuge in their afflictions, give me the grace to be a true nourisher and nurse of Thy people according to the word of Thy prophet Isaiah, to have true compassion, as much on those who are here as on all others. (Kk1v; p. 135; p. 149)

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Ordained by God to give refuge to others, Elizabeth seeks to be an empathetic protectress (tutrice) to all of God’s people: she is a “vraye nourrissiere” as well as a queen who has “vraye compassion.” Within this overarching tone of tender support, her assertion of a transnational authority comes in quietly with the phrase “de tous autres / on all others.” This notion matches the care that England has already been demonstrating to support the French Huguenots in their efforts to resist their nation’s Catholic monarchy—aid that involved providing the refuge mentioned in Elizabeth’s prayer. In this meditation, she extends a hand of gentle assistance even as she reminds readers of her superiority as a learned, pacific queen.50 Elizabeth as a voice of virtue comes through most strongly in the French prayers within Christian Prayers. Not only does she emphasize her wish to remain impervious to the lusts of the flesh, but she also articulates a penitential recognition of her sinfulness in tones similar to those in her Glass (recently reissued by Cancellar). This personal opening to the French prayers, and indeed to the foreign language prayers overall, soon takes on an international dimension that will become quite aggressive in the later Spanish, Italian, and Greek prayers. The French prayers, however, are focused on alliance-building. Elizabeth resembles a more traditional, peaceweaving queen who reaches out to foster common ground through methods appropriate for both her gender and her recurring depiction as a householder. Elizabeth’s first explicitly international reference in her foreign language prayers is, as quoted earlier, her claim to be a “vraye nourrissiere & tutrice” of her nation and all others. Extending a hand of alliance to French Protestants, her gesture is even more clearly rooted in an Anglo-Huguenot context once we examine what immediately precedes the reference. Just before Elizabeth asserts this transnational assistance, her prayer breaks off to include a metrical adaptation of Psalm 101—an adaptation originally written by the famous French reformist poet Clément Marot. The text does not acknowledge Marot as the adaptor; however, French Protestants as well as those individuals who support Anglo-Huguenot cooperation would have recognized this text because it appears in the Geneva Psalter (1562), to which Marot was a major contributor.51 Not only was this Psalter a key text in French Protestant worship, but also—in keeping with Elizabeth’s role as a royal householder in Day’s volume—the Psalter played a major role in household worship.

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Marot’s words serve several important functions for Elizabeth’s prayers in French. First, they associate her with ideas but in words not her own, which is an appropriate venue for presenting her most assertive position as a transnational figure. Second, they associate her with pious virtue even as they conflate the language of the household with that of the nation. Key sections of Marot’s adaption read: Tenir ie veux la voye non nuisible,

I will not walk my path amiss.

Quand viendras-tu me rendre Roy paisible? When wilt Thou make me king of peace? D’vn coeur tout pur conduiray ma maison, Auec raison.

I’ll rule my house with heart all pure, With reason sure. ...

... Tout coeur ayant pensée desloyale,

Every heart with thought disloyal

Deslogera hors de ma cour Royale:

Will I dislodge from my court royal;

Et le nuisant n’y sera bien venu.

The bad will find no welcome here,

Non pas cognu.

And no good cheer. ...

... Ains du pays chasseray de bonne heure,

In good time I’ll banish from this place

Tous les meschans, tant qu’vn seul n’y

All wicked ones, keeping none of such race;

demeure, Peur du Seigneur nettoyer la Cité, D’iniquité.

Fear of the Lord will cleanse the city From iniquity. (Ii3v; pp. 133–34; pp. 147–48)

Marot’s sequence of images from the household to the court to the city traces an ever-widening jurisdiction that resonates with Elizabeth’s integrated roles as householder, queen, and Supreme Governor. Overall, the language of banishment and threat that rings through this metrical Psalm works well with another image soon to emerge in the prayers. Elizabeth will become a champion of international Protestantism. In fact, her

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transnational leadership as an ecclesiastical figure is an extension of her role as householder through both the language and the genre of Marot’s metrical Psalm. The presence of Marot’s Psalms in the Geneva Psalter indicates that they were part of the worship that was taking place in the substantial number of Huguenot congregations then in England. In addition, the Psalter as a genre supports Elizabeth’s image as a householder because of the tradition of Psalm-singing in homes.52 The title page to an English Psalter published, appropriately enough, by Day in 1567 demonstrates the use of these Psalms in both church and household devotions. The descriptive phrase on the title page of this famous text (the Sternhold-Hopkins Psalter) reads: “Newly set forth and allowed to be song in all Churches, of all the people together, before & after morning & euenyng prayer: as also before and after the Sermon, and moreouer in priuate houses, for their godly solace and comfort” (emphasis added in bold).53 Marot’s Psalm spans Protestant practice from the English household to the French congregation in its text and tradition. As a result, it creates a seamless transition of Elizabeth’s ecclesiastical presence from the householder Queen Solomon to the international Queen Solomon—all in a way that affiliates her with Huguenot France. This textual nod to Huguenot France complements the more overtly political acts that England engaged in to give (often furtive) support both to the Huguenots and to Protestant forces in the Low Countries. As Spanish ambassador Guzmán de Silva observed with frustration in July 1568, England was turning a blind eye to the transport of weapons and funds from England to the Low Countries.54 In October 1568, de Spes already suspected that Elizabeth was building a Protestant powerbase abroad by giving money to the Protestant William of Orange and preparing to do the same for the Huguenot Prince of Condé.55 In fact, Cecil, Day, and the Dutch refugee van der Noot may have chosen to flatter Elizabeth for her learning late in October 1568 as part of their campaign to urge her to continue this flow of funds.56 Dedicating to Elizabeth the French edition of Het theatre (Le Theatre), van der Noot proclaims her right to assert pan-European Protestant leadership. Using the same cluster of characteristics that underwrite Elizabeth’s imperial image in Day’s Christian Prayers, he praises her as a pious, highly learned, and multilingual queen. Early in the dedication, he indicates that Elizabeth’s knowledge of many

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languages enables her to conduct negotiations with foreign ambassadors directly: Non point d’autant qu’en doctrine, science, conseil, iugement, faconde & eloquence, sont en Grec, Latin, Tuscan, Aleman, François, ou en vostre Anglois naturel, & autres langages vous surpasiez (grand miracle) Non seulement vn Demostenes ou vn Ciceron, ainçou [?] Mercure mesme (Dieu d’eloquence) Comme il appert, quand auec vne belle grace de parler, & d’vne façon de voix benigne, Vous-mesmes donnés tres-apte & prudente response a tous Embassadeurs, de quelque part qu’ilz vienent, en leur propre langage. / Nor in respecte of youre learning, knowledge, counsell, iudgement, and eloquence, as well in the Greeke, Latine, Italian, Frenche, Dutch, as in your owne natural English, and other languages, wherin your grace may be resembled not onely to Tullie, and Demosthenes, but to Mercurie, the God of eloquence, as is apparent by youre Maiesties most apte and wise aunswers giuen in your own person to al Embassadours, and to euery of them in their owne naturall language with a singular dexteritie and princely maiestie, & with maruellous swetenesse of tong.57

A few pages later, van der Noot tells Elizabeth that he and all of “true” Christian Europe look to her to lead the Church because God vous particulierement choysir pour garde, defendant son Eglise. Parsant vous di-ie, & à bon droit (comme aussi tous Princes fideles & vrays Chrestiens par toute L’Europe vous appellent / chose your maiestie, especially to be his champion to defend his beloued church. And in this respect, (like as all faithfull and true Christian princes throughout all Europe do esteem and repute you) do I also.58

Elizabeth not only is God’s chosen leader but also is called upon by all true Christian princes of Europe to assume her rightful place at the helm of the transnational Protestant Church.59 Van der Noot uses Elizabeth’s learning to support her imperial, Solomonic leadership, and, more significantly, he uses this image to depict her governing as a single ruler, alone at the helm of the nation.60 The final moments of the foreign language prayers in Christian Prayers also present Elizabeth as a queen reigning alone over her loving and obedient people. Her position earlier within a corporate image of Solomon (that included her counseling subjects) has now been replaced by her singular voice of monarchical authority. In the final prayer, which is in the biblical language of

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Greek, Elizabeth’s Protestant voice booms religious imperialism. She vows θρησκείαν σπίζειν θελοθρησκείαν, δεισιδαιµοναν καθ′ θελοργαν φανίζειν, λατρείαν γκεντρίζειν, εδωλολατρείαν κατασκόπτειν προσέτι τος χθρος τ!ς θεοσεβεας πολύειν, κα τος µ$ µισο%ντας, κα ντιχρίστους, κα παπιφίλους, κα 'θεους, κα πάντας, τος σου κα )µου παρακοόυντας / to protect freely

willed religion, to destroy superstitious fear by working freely to promote divine service, and to spy out the worship of idols; further, to gain release from the enemies of religion as well as those who hate me—Antichrists, Pope lovers, atheists, and all persons who fail to obey Thee and me. (Qq1v; p. 149; p. 163)61

Elizabeth emerges as the true defender of the Protestant religion, and her threats are intensely anti- Catholic in the way she equates Catholics with atheists and Antichrists. In fact, the notion of the Antichrist has apocalyptic undertones—a notion that this moment shares with van der Noot’s Het theatre as well as other texts produced in this period, such as John Bale’s The Image of both Churches reissued with a new preface in 1570.62 Overall, though, Elizabeth’s image in Christian Prayers is not apocalyptic, but her articulation of this strident authority in the biblical language of Greek is significant, even as she bolsters her own divinely endorsed position by linking obedience to God with obedience to her. The elevating language of obedience has significant echoes from the two preceding prayers, both of which are in Greek— prayers that present England as rallying behind its learned teacher-queen in loving obedience. In fact, the first Greek prayer is actually written in the voice of Elizabeth’s subjects and is the only foreign language prayer not written from her perspective. These subjects are portrayed as praying to God on behalf of Elizabeth, offering as their first supplication their request that their queen receive divine wisdom (an allusion to Solomon). They ask God to κα ψυχ+ν υτ!ς φώτιζε τ- υγ- τ!ς πειράτου σοφίας σ!ς, .ς κα ληθε/ θρησκε0 κα ε1σεβεί0 δι2 3λον βίον τ4 3νομά σον δοξάζ7, κα 8μ9ς τ4ν λα4ν υτ- 1ποτασσόμενον πιστ:ς καθ; 8μέραν ποιμαίνουσα διατελ! / [I]llumine her soul with the light of

Thine unbounded wisdom, that she may honor Thy name through

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Learned Queen her whole life with true service and piety, and that day by day she may continue faithfully to teach us, the people who are subject to her. (Pp3r; p. 147; p. 161)

Elizabeth becomes a Solomon not only because she has received God’s wisdom directly, but also because she, as a true religious leader, is then to use that wisdom to educate her subjects. As a divinely wise queen, she becomes fit to instruct her subjects in their own religious beliefs, thus fusing her imperial persona with her depiction as a royal householder earlier in the collection. This empowered position, however, does come with the stipulation that Elizabeth will retain providential status only as long as she follows God’s will: µιµνήσκουσα ιε =υκ υτ- τ+ν ρχ+ν α1τοκράτειραν ε>ναι, λλ? @ς διαδόχω A µ9λλον διακόνB τ+ν πιµέλειαν 3λης πολητείας παρά σου παντοκράτορος δοθε/σαν, φ′ Cτε κα σε σέβειν εληκριν:ς, κα τ:ν γαθ:ν 1περασπίζειν, κακούς τε κα νόµους τιµορε/ν / remembering always that the sovereign rule

is not hers, but that governance of the whole kingdom has been given to her as heir to the kingdom, or rather as servant, by Thee as sovereign, on condition that she revere Thee absolutely, defend the virtuous, and seek vengeance on the wicked and the lawless. (Pp3r; p. 147; p. 161)

In keeping with A. N. McLaren’s discussion of such providential rhetoric used elsewhere to limit Elizabeth’s authority,63 so, too, does this prayer as said by her people enact a similar restriction by making her godliness the condition for both her authority and their obedience. The biblical Solomon received divine wisdom with no stipulations; he even spent the last part of his reign still in power yet indulging in concupiscence.64 Elizabeth, too, will enjoy the obedience of her subjects, but they emphasize that they will lovingly follow her only as long as she abides by divine wisdom. In these final Greek prayers, the unified nation of believers replaces the collective of counseling subjects as the power behind Elizabeth’s strong monarchic image. As Cecil emphasizes in A Necessary Consideration, England must bolster its image of national unity even as it needs to come together through sworn fealty to the queen. In the Greek prayers, the image of Elizabeth praying with and beside her subjects, from the frontispiece, returns. Still

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England’s Solomon, she echoes the request of her people that God give her divine wisdom. Κα µ+ν πειδη ο1δεµα φρόνησις δία παρ′ µο% οEσα τυγγάνει, φ′ F πεποιθ%ια τοιαύτην ρχ+ν καν:ς θύνουσα διατελο/µι, τ!ς συνέσεως κα σοφίας το% άγίου πνεύµατος τ4 στ!θος µ4ν )µπλυθε / And since there is no private wisdom in me, trusting

in which I might continue to govern well in such a realm, fill my breast with the intelligence and wisdom of the Holy Spirit. (Pp4v; p. 148; p. 162)

Through the juxtaposition of these final devotions with their similar language of obedience and divine wisdom, England and Elizabeth fuse under Elizabeth’s royal image. Elizabeth then leads the nation in religious unity by grounding this harmony in her person—on the condition that she follow God’s path. She asks God to Κα φώτιζε ώς ν τG φώτι σου τηλαυγε/ =ρ:σα φ:ς, γινώσκω ν τ- γ- τ8ν =δόν σον, Κα τ+ν γν+ν ληθ! τε θρησκεαν σ+ν υτ+ δι; 3λου βίου σπάζωμαι, Κα τG 1ποτασσομένB μο λαG παραδιδ:, @ς πάντες τ4 3νομα σ4ν σεμνότατον μι9 φων-, Κα Καρδι:ν =μονοία 1μν:μεν / [P]ut forth Thy light so that by seeing

light in Thy far-shining light I may know Thy way upon the earth, and through all of life may welcome Thy holy and true worship and convey this to the people who are my subjects so that we all with one voice and in harmony of hearts may hymn Thy most holy name. (Pp4v; p. 148; p. 162; emphasis added)

Her claim of compliance to God’s direction and the harmony it creates echo back to the caption from 2 Chronicles on the frontispiece. This caption describes all God’s people as “seruis tuis, qui ambulant coram te in toto corde suo / servants who walk before God with all their hearts.” These last Greek prayers, which work to showcase Elizabeth’s symbiotic relationship with her people, now make unified England the powerbase that supports her—a position of national religious unity that prepares for Elizabeth’s strong pronouncement of religious imperialism in the concluding prayer. Here, Elizabeth assumes a monarchical image that trumpets her and her people’s fitness to lead the transnational Protestant Church—a claim built on her pious wisdom. What began as Elizabeth’s subjects being invited to pray in the House

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of their Queen Solomon now becomes an invitation to all of the “true” House of God. The strands of Elizabeth’s Solomonic ecclesiastical and monarchical presence come together in these final, climactic moments. Using Elizabeth’s learned persona to fuse national and international religious politics was a shrewd strategy in 1569. As this internationally precarious period stabilizes, however, Elizabeth’s learned persona will shift as well. In fact, when Day’s son Richard publishes the bulk of this prayer book again in 1578 (under the title A Booke of Christian Prayers), Elizabeth’s central role as a new Solomon is almost completely removed. Although the frontispiece retains its image of her as a householder at prayer and with the verse from 2 Chronicles underneath, her foreign language prayers are gone, and Solomon’s prayer for wisdom that had been modified to make Elizabeth the speaker is now provided in the third person. In addition, the final prayer of the volume puts all the emphasis on Elizabeth’s counselors and their wisdom—not on Elizabeth’s learned perspective. The new prayer in this 1578 collection asks God to “Blesse thou the wisedome and pollicy of her counsayle to the strengthening of the same thy Church: the tranquilitie of our Queene, and Country: inspire the Ministers of thy blessed Gospell, with thy holy spirite, that they may be sauery salt to season, and bright lights to the way of saluation.”65 This shift away from Elizabeth’s wisdom to focus on that of her counselors creates a much more conciliar-focused image of Elizabethan politics that no longer incorporates an imperial queen. Within this context, it is fitting that a facsimile of one of this text’s prayers—a prayer to be said in thanks of good advisors— serves as the frontispiece for the recent collection, The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson (2007).66 Indeed, the prayer for counselors from Richard Day’s A Booke of Christian Prayers is a perfect choice for this collection of essays. This 1578 prayer book, when it does acknowledge politics, places the emphasis on the network of advisors surrounding Elizabeth. Such an approach precisely matches the recent scholarship inspired by Collinson’s work. However, John Day’s Christian Prayers depicts more of an interdependent relationship between queen and counselors in 1569 when Cecil and others sought to send out the alarm of international crisis. The year 1578 brought a very different set of circumstances, particularly in the second half of the year when the marriage negotiations

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with the French, Catholic Duke of Anjou resumed. The decision to remove Elizabeth’s more stridently Protestant foreign language prayers from A Booke of Christian Prayers may be attributed in part to Cecil’s (now Lord Burghley’s) increasing willingness to consider Elizabeth’s marriage to Anjou as the year progressed. In the late 1570s, the interest in showcasing Elizabeth’s learned persona will center more on the Walsingham-Leicester-Sidney circle, who will urge Elizabeth to take up her imperial mantle and support the Dutch Protestants. These court figures most committed to assisting the Protestant States will go the route established in 1569 by Elizabeth’s imperial, Protestant image as a new Solomon in Christian Prayers and as a multilingual learned queen praised by van der Noot. The next chapter of Learned Queen will demonstrate how the 1570s witnessed a new manifestation of Elizabeth’s imperial learned persona that was linked specifically to Anglo-Dutch relations. In the 1570s, Elizabeth will no longer be the learned queen at prayer but rather the celestial, wise mistress whose radiant wisdom and virgin purity will inspire a whole series of Dutch-supporting diplomats to write verses to her in foreign languages. These men will use poetry specifically to praise her as the rightful (and unmarried) leader of the pan-European Protestant community. Celebrating Elizabeth’s learned persona now becomes a pointedly diplomatic and poetic enterprise. This context, as examined in chapter two, sheds new light on Sidney’s royal entertainment, The Lady of May. By praising his queen’s radiant wisdom, Sidney will urge Elizabeth both to support the Protestant princes in the Low Countries and to appoint him and Leicester as her royal representatives abroad to fulfill this Protestant imperial agenda. Sidney will use entertainment to place the courtly diplomat on his knees in reverent prayer—to his wise, virtuous queen. He will show how poetic practice is diplomatic practice in the delicate operations that seek to woo a pacific queen into transnational military intervention.

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CHAPTER 2

A WISE ELIZABETH AND HER DEVOTED DIPLOMATS: SIDNEY’S THE LADY OF MAY AND ANGLO-DUTCH RELATIONS

I

n the late 1570s, Sir Philip Sidney wrote The Lady of May to entertain Elizabeth during her visit to Wanstead, his uncle’s estate. At the center of this whimsical device is Sidney’s representation of Elizabeth as a superlatively wise queen: she is a “proba dominus doctor” [right learned lord] whose “mind is such, as wisest minds appal.”1 Not just idle panegyric, Sidney’s praise of Elizabeth is crucial to the action of the play. At the climactic moment, the queen must demonstrate her astute perspective by choosing between two suitors eager to marry the Lady of May. At first glance, Elizabeth’s decision in a fictional courtship dispute hardly seems to merit much attention. However, when the Lady of May cryptically states, “in judging me, you judge more than me in it” (30.12), she suggests that the decision does indeed have deeper implications. Literary scholars have mined Sidney’s text for clues as to what this “more than me in it” might be, and they have similarly speculated as to whether the queen demonstrated the wisdom Sidney intended.2 Scholars reach different conclusions regarding these issues, but they tend to agree that Sidney wrote the device with an international political agenda in mind. They assign the entertainment either to 1578, when Sidney was urging Elizabeth to intervene in the Low Countries, or to 1579, during her marriage negotiations with the French Duke of Anjou.3 Despite the agreement that Sidney is responding to an international situation, earlier studies have not examined the entertainment within the period’s

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diplomatic relations, nor have they devoted serious attention to Sidney’s representation of Elizabeth. This chapter will situate The Lady of May within contemporary diplomatic correspondence and the tradition of invoking Elizabeth’s learned persona in foreign affairs. In doing so, it will provide three key insights: (1) it will present evidence to support dating the play to 1578; (2) it will reveal additional material for “solving” the riddle of the allegory; and (3) on a deeper level, it will harmonize Sidney’s poetic and diplomatic practices. Learning, literature, and diplomacy were related enterprises for Sidney. To borrow a pun from Roger Kuin, Sidney was part of a diplomatic and poetic community that recognized the fundamental unity of litterae: epistolary letters (in this case, diplomatic correspondence), belles lettres (beautiful and ambitious writings such as literature), and the Republic of Letters (international intellectual culture).4 These three elements often converged on the image of Elizabeth when the Dutch Protestant States wanted England to provide troops, send money, or have Elizabeth assume sovereignty over the provinces. During the 1570s when this campaign was particularly urgent, prominent figures in the Anglo-Dutch diplomatic circle wrote poetry, often in Latin, that praised Elizabeth as a learned queen. As Jan van Dorsten describes it, they sought “to win a learned Queen by poetic force.”5 These men included Janus Dousa ( Jan van der Does), Lucas de Heere, Paulus Melissus (Paul Schede), and Daniel Rogers. Their diplomatic-poetic strategy arose out of the popularity of using Elizabeth’s learned persona to present her as a transnational Protestant queen—a movement employed, as discussed in the previous chapter, by such Dutch Protestants as Jan van der Noot in the late 1560s. This trend, which had gathered particular momentum in the late 1560s, flowered in distinctly poetic form during the 1570s. Sidney’s The Lady of May is part of this trend. When Sidney writes his device for Elizabeth, he demonstrates just how intimately he knows the discourse of current international affairs. His work resonates deeply with the issues and images present in the period’s diplomatic correspondence as well as in its diplomatic-poetic exchange. As discussed in the Introduction, he is demonstrating the kind of élite knowledge found only in the most current texts of high politics. In fact, Sidney will pointedly mock institutionalized learning by including the embarrassingly pedantic schoolmaster Rombus in the device. Furthermore, by

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using pleasing poetry to showcase his access to exclusive knowledge, Sidney demonstrates that he is not only fit for continued diplomatic service but also truly gifted in the diplomatic arts. As Torquato Tasso will emphasize in 1580, a diplomat is a “mediateur d’Amour” who, like an angel, seeks to reconcile princes and nations through love.6 Sidney’s poetic wit shows his ability to create a charming political turn that can engage the current international situation with a playfulness that bodes well for dispelling tension and facilitating cooperation among constituencies. He even invites Elizabeth herself to mediate in love (when she is asked to choose between the two suitors)—a moment when she joins him in the art of diplomacy while still remaining the primum mobile of the device. Once we situate Sidney and his queen in a political arena that spans court and Continent, Sidney’s The Lady of May shows how poetry, foreign relations, and Elizabeth’s learned persona can be part of a common political agenda.7

An Overview of “The Lady of May” As Elizabeth and her party walk through the grove at Wanstead, the queen is stopped by a mother figure who, prompted by Elizabeth’s wisdom and virtue, entreats her to settle a dispute. The mother is greatly distressed because her daughter is being courted by two ardent wooers: Therion, an aggressive forester, and Espilus, a shepherd of inferior intellect but superior poetic skill—both of whom wish to marry the woman’s daughter, the Lady of May. The situation has reached such violent intensity that the two suitors and their supporters have entered into a “bloody controversy” (21.22–23). The mother beseeches Elizabeth to calm this fray and select the suitor who most deserves her daughter. After giving the queen a written supplication for assistance, the mother exits just as the controversy she mentioned begins to become audible: Herewith, the woman suitor being gone, there was heard in the woods a confused noise, and forthwith there came out six shepherds, with as many fosters, haling and pulling to whether side they should draw the Lady of May, who seemed to incline neither to the one nor other side. Among them was Master Rombus, a schoolmaster of the village thereby, who, being fully persuaded of his own learned wisdom, came thither with his authority to part their fray; where for an answer he received many unlearned blows. But the Queen coming to the place, where she was seen of them,

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Learned Queen though they knew not her estate, yet something there was which made them startle aside and gaze upon her. (22.15–24)

Significantly, Elizabeth’s presence immediately instills a calm that an aspiring arbiter, the ridiculous schoolmaster Rombus, had been unable to effect. Full of bumbling bombast, Rombus at once draws attention to the contrast between his inability as a learned figure to create peace and Elizabeth’s radiance of divine virtue that is successful. He proclaims, “Yet hath not the pulchritude of my virtues protected me from the contaminating hands of these plebeians; for coming, solummodo, to have parted their sanguinolent fray, they yielded me no more reverence than if I had been some Pecorius Asinus” (23.18–21). Garbling even his self-description as an ass (it should read pecus asininus), Rombus confirms his pedantic foolishness.8 Elizabeth goes to the scene of this scuffle in order to decide “whether the many deserts and many faults of Therion, or the very small deserts and no faults of Espilus be to be preferred” (25.11–13). A singing contest between Espilus and Therion ensues, as well as a bit more squabbling among the supporters of the candidates. Rombus, puffed up with overconfidence in his learning, nearly performs Elizabeth’s office of announcing the most worthy suitor. He is stopped only when the Lady of May scolds him and emphasizes that the decision rests solely with Elizabeth and her superior wisdom. Eventually, Elizabeth declares her judgment: she picks the meek shepherd Espilus. As the victor, Espilus sings a brief song celebrating his success, which is followed by Therion’s song of concession. Then, all characters— save Rombus (who does not have any lines at this time)—concur and exit. Of the two authoritative texts, the one that was printed with the 1598 Arcadia (98) ends the entertainment here. In the other version, which is located in the Helmingham Hall manuscript (Hm), Rombus delivers a final speech in which he describes Master Robert (Sidney’s uncle, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester) as Elizabeth’s faithful, Catholic, and intellectually limited subject. Rombus describes Leicester using “Papistian beads” (31:31) as he says his pater noster daily both to God and to the queen. Rombus gives the queen this Catholic rosary of sorts (which is actually an agate necklace), acknowledges her wisdom, and then exits, thus ending the piece.

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Echoes from Diplomatic Correspondence that Date the Performance to 1578 An echo between Rombus’ final speech and a letter that Leicester wrote to Christopher Hatton in July 1578 provides the first textual support for dating the entertainment to that year. Marie Axton made this connection when she noticed that Leicester’s letter contains the conceit of the Catholic earl at his beads saying his Aves, as well as an echo of Therion’s description as a character of “many faults.” In the letter to Hatton, Leicester expresses his alarm that Elizabeth paid a surprise visit to Wanstead in his absence. Bemoaning that his estate was unprepared for such a visit, he writes: I feare, that litell likyng to it she had before will thorowe to, to many more faultes, breede her lesse love hereafter . . . Butt god grante, I maye heare, that her ma[jes]tie doth both well rest and fynde all thinges ells there to her good contentment; and that the goodman Robert, she last hard of there were founde at his beades, with all his Aves in his sollytarye walke.9

Not only does the letter contain echoes of The Lady of May, but Leicester’s reference to the “goodman Robert, she last hard of there” indicates that Elizabeth had already witnessed this depiction of Leicester when she was last at Wanstead, which would have been two months earlier (May 1578). Despite these tantalizing echoes, some scholars have hesitated to date Sidney’s device to 1578 because the allusions in Leicester’s letter pertain to Rombus’ epilogue, which is found in only one of the authoritative versions of the entertainment.10 Diplomatic correspondence from the spring of 1578 exposes numerous additional connections to the device that inform moments found in both Hm and 98 as well as Sidney’s choices in representing the two suitors. These associations suggest the identities of the historical figures shadowed in the allegory, particularly Therion and Espilus. Because Elizabeth chooses between these two characters, identifying them lies at the heart of answering the crucial question: Did Elizabeth choose the suitor Sidney intended? According to inferences from diplomatic correspondence, she did not. Sidney expected her to pick Therion, although (I propose) for reasons different than those typically put forward. Most

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scholars speculate that Therion is a stand-in for Sidney or Leicester because this forester, like both of these men, seeks active intervention in the Low Countries.11 Certain parallels between ideas mentioned in the diplomatic correspondence, however, suggest that Therion represents Prince Johann Casimir and perhaps his closest advisor, Peter Beutterich, as well. Casimir was one of the most prominent military leaders in the Low Countries, and Beutterich had the reputation of being a hotheaded figure who repeatedly urged Casimir to undertake military action. In the spring of 1578, Casimir was being playfully described as Elizabeth’s hunter—so much so that Sir Thomas Wilson sent him a gift of greyhounds that spring. On 25 April 1578, Casimir writes Wilson to express his thanks, and he acknowledges the hunting metaphor: “I thank you for the greyhounds you have sent me, which are very acceptable, although just now to show the Queen my desire to serve her, I have undertaken to hunt other game than deer or hares.”12 Casimir is described as Elizabeth’s hunter because he was currently mustering troops with funds that Elizabeth had sent him. She had already dispatched 20,000l., and, as Casimir notes after he describes himself as hunting other game for the queen, she has promised to send another installment of the same amount. He refers to this next installment and Beutterich’s key participation in the plan when he writes: I hear from Beutrich that you are so well disposed towards me as to give me good hope that now you see upon what I am about to embark for the service of her Majesty, you will do me all the good offices I can desire of you. And as the first step to a good issue depends on the muster, it is necessary that there should be no default, and that her Majesty should furnish the other 20,000l. as Mr. Rogers has promised on her part. If there is any default I can assure that all that is hoped from my coming will vanish in smoke to the confusion of all employed in it.13

Casimir’s urgent tone in this letter suggests a degree of apprehension regarding whether or not Elizabeth would uphold her promise. Casimir was justified in his concern: Elizabeth’s decision to send funds of any amount had been a momentous event. After months, if not years, of stalling over plans to give tangible support to the Dutch, Elizabeth had finally committed to a plan. She was using Casimir’s forces as her indirect way of helping the Protestant Dutch States resist Don John’s Spanish armies. The plan was not

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ideal. Sidney, Leicester, and the States themselves had hoped she would actually send English troops, but at least she was finally doing something. When writing The Lady of May in late April or early May, Sidney had every indication that Elizabeth was going to support Casimir and Beutterich. During this progress, and specifically from Wanstead, Elizabeth had sent two significant letters regarding these funds. She sent instructions to her diplomat William Davison detailing how to disperse the money once it arrived, and she also sent a letter to Casimir himself to assure him of her continued support. In French, Elizabeth writes to Casimir: Et affin qu’entendiés qu’avons ung tel soing de vous et de vos actions, qu’appertient à nostre honneur, et vos vertus méritent, avons desjà donné ordre pour les vingt mil livres que demandez vous estre fournies sur la place monstre, tellement que rien vous manquera en cest endroict mesmes au temps préfix et ordonné, vous asseurant au reste que ne vous abandonnerons jamais, ains assisterons et ayderons de tous nos faveurs et moyens de temps à aultre, si vivement et de si bonne sorte qu’en recevrez de nos déportements que tout contentement / And that you may know our care for you, we have ordered that the 20,000l. for which you ask shall be furnished to you at the place of muster; assuring you that we will never desert you, but aid you with all our favours and resources in such sort that you shall be fully contented.14

In the original French, the crown’s praise and support of Casimir is even more fulsome than suggested in the translation from the Calendar of State Papers. Rather than simply noting Elizabeth’s “care” for the duke, the original French emphasizes that Elizabeth has such care for Casimir because of his actions [de vos actions] and his virtues [vos vertus méritent]. In addition, the notion that the queen will aid [ayderons] Casimir is underscored with the idea that she will assist [assisterons] him as well. With Elizabeth’s promise of support for “her hunter” coming at this precise moment, it is perfectly natural that Sidney set up the device with the expectation that Elizabeth would choose his hunter, Therion. Sidney is allowing Elizabeth to confirm publicly a choice that she has, essentially, already made. Indeed, this rationale helps explain why, as Stephen Orgel has famously noted, the song to be sung by the victorious suitor at the end of the device begins with a reference to Sylvanus—a god of the forest— which makes most sense if sung by the forester Therion. The song

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of concession, conversely, begins with a reference to Pan and is appropriate for the shepherd Espilus.15 Not only did Sidney expect Elizabeth to pick Therion, but he also presented an image of this forester that matched concerns expressed in the diplomatic correspondence regarding Elizabeth’s support for Casimir. In late April, when Sidney was probably putting the finishing touches on the device, anxiety at court still ran high for fear that Elizabeth might back out of her promise to send the next installment of funds. The suggested remedy to this situation has an interesting parallel with Sidney’s representation of Therion as an aggressive hunter who has many faults and has even raged at the Lady of May. In part, Therion’s aggression may allude to Beutterich’s reputation as being quick-tempered, even as it also reflects discussion in the diplomatic correspondence that focuses on getting Elizabeth to support Casimir. On 27 April, Elizabeth’s principal secretary Sir Francis Walsingham wrote a letter to Daniel Rogers, the English diplomat currently with the Dutch leader, in which he suggests that Casimir’s cause has a greater chance of securing support from Elizabeth if she sees that he is making progress: “Some certain news of his [Casimir’s] forwardness in this expedition is daily looked for at your hands, with such other circumstances as belong to the whole cause and may be understood in these quarters. The sooner and more fully you advertise the better welcome your letters will be.”16 Highlighting Casmir’s progress in military preparation would be useful in nudging the queen to fulfill her assurance of support, and indeed, Casimir needed the promised 20,000l., as was made clear by his pointed emphases to Elizabeth and Walsingham in late April.17 Casimir’s financial dependence might also be a subtext when Therion claims, “Bound but to you, no wealth but you I would” (26.16). By representing Therion as financially needy and devotedly assertive, Sidney is using his poetry to enact the very kind of allusive work discussed in contemporary diplomatic correspondence. His poetic device is doing more than merely mirroring current political issues; it is directly participating in the diplomatic agenda by providing yet another venue in which to frame Casimir and his camp as assertive, poised to be aggressive, and ready to do Elizabeth’s bidding. In this way, Sidney’s poetic work supports his diplomatic interests. In fact, the crossover between poetry and diplomacy goes in both directions. On 16 May, only days after the performance of

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The Lady of May, Walsingham writes a letter to Davison, who was currently with the Protestant Dutch leader William of Orange. Walsingham’s language resonates directly with Sidney’s device— echoes that suggest the connection between the courtship trial and the situation in the Netherlands. Using the image of a controversy and the notion of Elizabeth as arbitrator, both of which are found in the entertainment, Walsingham emphasizes the terms of Elizabeth’s loan to Casimir—terms that were currently causing much tension. Elizabeth’s financial support to Casimir was to be delivered to the Duke through William of Orange’s court; however, William and the States were not to be given any of the funds. Tensions over this situation were growing daily in mid-May, and Walsingham felt the need to reiterate the terms of Elizabeth’s loan. In language reminiscent of Sidney’s device, Walsingham tells Davison: Sir, Her Majesties plesure is that you shoold have a pryncypall care that no parte of the monney presently sent be detayned by the States, but the whole or the juste valewe sent to Cullen [Cologne]. And for any controversye that may ryse betwen the States and the seyd Duke abowt the seyd somme, you shall move them to refer the same to Her Majesties decysyon as an indyfferent arbitrator betwen them bothe, but in any case to sende the money.18

Walsingham had just witnessed Sidney depicting this situation as a controversy that, in turn, portrayed Elizabeth as the impartial judge. In fact, Walsingham uses language that more closely resembles the way Sidney frames Elizabeth’s role in The Lady of May while actually remaining silent on the fact that Elizabeth had just muddied the political waters a bit by picking Espilus—the character that I believe may refer to William of Orange and possibly his supporters as well. Elizabeth’s decision to assist William only by sending money to Casimir emphasizes the difference between the two men in terms of their political approach to combating Spanish aggression. This difference suggests that the figure behind Sidney’s rich, docile, and poetically eloquent shepherd Espilus may be William of Orange. Though I have found no direct echoes in the diplomatic correspondence that tie Espilus explicitly to Orange and his court, some allusive parallels exist. I will discuss the link between Orange’s court and poetry later in this chapter, but several of Espilus’ main

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characteristics correlate to William’s situation. First, Espilus is a rich shepherd (25.3, 26.7–12). Not only was William wealthy himself but also his powerbase in the Netherlands was the northern provinces, which had garnered substantial wealth through the wool and weaving industry. Second, unlike the volatile Therion, Espilus is mild-mannered (25.6–9). This contrast is mirrored in the political strategies that distinguish Casimir from Orange. Whereas Casimir is more of a warmonger, Orange seeks to solidify the Low Countries’ position against Spain primarily through defense and diplomacy. For example, when providing an assessment of the States’ situation to Burghley on 29 April, Mr. Fenton writes that the States “have referred the administration of the whole war to the Prince of Orange; who having reduced it to a war defensive seeks chiefly to fortify his towns and prepare the inhabitants to defend with their bodies the country by which they live.”19 William’s more defensive strategy versus Casimir and Beutterich’s greater interest in offensive military action often led to conflict and disagreement between these two groups. Walsingham, Sidney, Leicester, and England’s diplomats in the Netherlands tended to prefer working with William rather than Casimir, and they had much deeper allegiances and philosophical affiliations with the Orangist court. As part of Sidney’s demonstration of friendship and support for William and his supporters, Sidney presents the gentle, poetry-writing shepherd in The Lady of May as a rather positive character. I think we, as scholars, have been too swift in dismissing Espilus because of his mild manners. Sidney might have preferred this shepherd who probably represented Dutch individuals deeply important to the Leicester circle. Walsingham infers such preference when he expresses to Davison that he would rather not be associated with the decision to support Casimir. On 16 May, the same day he described Elizabeth as an indifferent judge, he asked that Davison “make no mentyon of the joynyng of the ynglyshe bandes unto Cassemire as an advyce growing from me.”20 Regardless of preference, however, Walsingham, Sidney, and other English supporters of the States were desperate to see Elizabeth help the Low Countries in some capacity, even if, as historian Charles Wilson has phrased it, Casimir was a bit of “a basement bargain.”21 Supporting him was cheaper financially: it was a strategy that cut political corners and allowed Elizabeth to give token support to the Netherlands without putting herself in direct confrontation with Spain. Although the plan was not ideal

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for the Leicester circle, at least it offered some help to the Dutch States. In light of the historical context, Sidney probably did expect Elizabeth to choose Therion; however, if William of Orange is shadowed in Espilus (as I propose is the case), then either way the queen chose, she was still supporting the Low Countries. She may not have fully recognized the allegory at play in Sidney’s device, and we will never know the accuracy of her political perception. Sidney withholds Elizabeth’s rationale for picking Espilus when he claims, “what words, what reasons she used for it, this paper, which carrieth so base names, is not worthy to contain” (30:14–15). Although it would be fascinating to know if Elizabeth read the clues correctly, in a sense her choice is somewhat immaterial. Derek B. Alwes makes the claim of irrelevance when he discusses this entertainment, maintaining that Sidney inscribes failure in the text.22 But attention to the echoes between Sidney’s text and diplomatic correspondence suggests instead that success is inscribed. Elizabeth is wise either way she chooses. The notion that success is inscribed in the entertainment is crucial to understanding Sidney’s and Leicester’s ambitions not simply as court figures but also as men seeking international appointment. Sidney’s approach in The Lady of May establishes more of a cooperative than subversive or competitive relationship with Elizabeth. Sidney scholars have long focused on his failure to gain recognition from Elizabeth, and indeed, he did not reap the rewards he deserved. Portraying Sidney as criticizing the queen so early in what promised to be a long political career, however, does not sufficiently take into account his interest in diplomatic service or the nature of the relationship between monarch and highranking ambassador. Precisely during this period of spring 1578, Sidney and Leicester were working hard to convince Elizabeth to appoint them to the upcoming mission to the Low Countries. They were likely, even specifically-requested, candidates. Late that April, Casimir had written to Sidney expressing that “I have begged her to appoint some gentleman to be attached to me to assist me in her name at all deliberations. I have desired that this should be yourself.”23 Then, only three days before the royal visit, Walsingham noted that Leicester, too, was striving “greatly to be employed in this journey, and is not without hope to obtain it.”24 To showcase their fitness for this appointment, they sought to demonstrate

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both a willingness to support Elizabeth’s judgment and an ability to respond to up-to-the-minute diplomatic activity with tact and wit. Early modern diplomats operated in a highly volatile and unstable world, and the difficulty of maintaining fidelity to the monarch’s will in this environment was exacerbated by the fact that correspondence routinely took days (or even weeks) to reach its destination. In many cases, the instructions were based on a foreign situation that had already changed by the time its messenger arrived. This kind of situation became even more complicated in the late 1570s when talk of a pan-European Protestant League necessitated dialogues among multiple nations. Too many political leaders, however, were unwilling to adopt the more ecumenical priorities that men such as Sidney and his fellow Philippists espoused.25 As a result, the European political landscape was becoming increasingly polarized along religious lines, which intensified the instability in such places as the Low Countries. The Duke of Anjou capitalized on this situation when he reinserted himself into the political landscape to vie with England to become William of Orange’s closest ally. During this period of high instability and yet infinite transnational possibilities, Sidney and Leicester were well positioned at the center of Anglo-Dutch alliance-making. To assure not only their appointment to a Dutch mission but also their ultimate ability to implement their international interests, they needed Elizabeth’s backing even as they needed much of Europe to view her as a powerful monarch. The strength of her monarchical image was crucial to giving Sidney and Leicester the international influence they sought. In light of this situation, constructing an entertainment that projects a discernibly competitive relationship would have been counterproductive. Such an approach would erode the trust and interdependence that serve as the foundation for the roi- envoi relationship. In a transnational landscape, the more hierarchical relationships of domestic court politics do not apply. Particularly within the emerging interest in a pan-European community, the horizons for monarch and royal representative are vast, and neither can accomplish anything alone—especially when the ruler is an unmarried queen who will never, quite understandably, leave her realm. Elizabeth may have chosen Espilus out of a failure to read the allegory “correctly,” but it is not in Sidney’s best interest to expose her misjudgment or even to set her up for public failure. Degrading

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Elizabeth would hardly have showcased Sidney’s fitness to serve her as a diplomat abroad. If anything, the most successful diplomat balances shrewd insight with delightful charm and can broach uncomfortable political situations with grace and a light touch— skills that would keep open the lines of communication between nations. Guzmán de Silva, the Spanish ambassador to England in the early 1560s, is a perfect example. Personable, witty, and urbane, de Silva was able to finesse potentially tense situations to a degree that his successor, Guerau de Spes, could not. De Spes was much less able to hide his temper and partisanship, failures that contributed largely to the sharp decline in Anglo-Spanish relations in the late 1560s. Not even de Silva, however, would receive the level of public praise that Sidney would. The diplomatic correspondence is full of praise for Sidney’s charm, and, most famously, Alberico Gentili extolled Sidney as the model ambassador when he dedicated De Legationibus Libri Tres to Sidney in 1585.26 Sidney knew how to be pleasing and delightful even in complicated and highstakes political situations. It seems quite unlikely that he would have wanted to appear combative or overtly critical when writing The Lady of May, particularly so early in his career. When Sidney writes this device, he produces a charming, witty entertainment that transforms the current situation with the Low Countries into a merry measure. By making political discourse enchanting and playful, he displays qualities of a good diplomat. Ultimately, of course, Sidney will not get the full employment he seeks, and in part, it is because his transnational vision is far larger than Elizabeth (and Burghley, for that matter) will ever comfortably embrace. In fact, Kuin recently showed the extent to which Sidney thought not just transnationally, but globally.27 If he wanted to make progress with Elizabeth, Sidney would have to devise ways to show that his agenda and hers share common ground that does not compromise her priorities. To achieve this subtle, diplomatic persuasion, Sidney constructs his strategy in the tradition of other diplomats who, appropriately enough, used the allusive delicacy of poetry to woo Elizabeth into the international arena through her learned persona. In The Lady of May, Sidney praises Elizabeth in ways that show how she can operate as a transnationally active sovereign without sacrificing her agenda as a pacific monarch. He taps into the poetic tradition that urges her international participation in the Netherlands as a wise, radiant queen of peace.

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A Queen of Wisdom Who Casts Radiant Beams of Peace Across the Nations In The Lady of May, Sidney couples his praise of Elizabeth’s superlative wisdom with exultations that she is a radiantly beautiful queen of virtue. Such panegyric seems patently conventional, but examining its connections and specific presentation in the device reveals that Sidney is continuing to tap into the poetic tradition used in Anglo-Dutch diplomatic circles. These men repeatedly lauded Elizabeth as a wise and radiant figure who, simply by casting her beams of peace across the nations, exerted imperial sovereignty. As such, she need never resort to expansionistic aggression. To demonstrate how Sidney’s strategy dovetails with this tradition, I will first discuss Sidney’s specific representation of Elizabeth as a wise queen and then show its connections to the Dutch poetic trend. The opening sequence of the entertainment immediately establishes Elizabeth as a queen of wisdom, divine virtue, and benign power. The mother of the Lady of May gives the queen a written supplication that foregrounds this triad. The plea follows a quatrain-couplet-quatrain-couplet structure in which each of the two quatrains builds to an emphasis on Elizabeth’s wisdom through praise of her beauty and power. Each ensuing couplet contrasts the greatness of Elizabeth with the wretched state of the mother. The supplication reads: To one whose state is raised over all, Whose face doth oft the bravest sort enchant, Whose mind is such, as wisest minds appal, Who in one self these diverse gifts can plant: How dare I, wretch, seek there my woes to rest, Where ears be burnt, eyes dazzled, hearts oppressed? Your state is great, your greatness is our shield, Your face hurts oft, but still it doth delight, Your mind is wise, your wisdom makes you mild; Such planted gifts enrich even beggars’ sight: So dare I, wretch, my bashful fear subdue, And feed mine ears, mine eyes, mine heart in you. (22.3–14)

With Elizabeth’s wisdom framed in radiant, enchanting beauty, her greatness is steeped in the Neoplatonic tradition of the celestial mistress—a figure whose divine virtue emanates as radiance.

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Elizabeth’s wisdom arises out of infused, divine virtue rather than book learning. This distinction is significant because, although the queen has not yet encountered Rombus in the device, Sidney is already working to establish her as a figure who possesses a perspective far superior to the earthly pedantry of the pompous schoolmaster. In fact, Sidney emphasizes that Elizabeth’s transcendent wisdom trumps the wisdom and power of all others, for her mind “is such, as wisest minds appal.” Sidney gives Elizabeth a wise supremacy that confirms her power even as it requires no action on her part. Her wisdom and its dazzling, radiant virtue effect this subordination naturally. Recognizing that Sidney imbued Elizabeth with authority that requires no royal initiative is fundamental to understanding why the characteristic of wisdom is so useful for him to evoke in urging the queen to pursue foreign intervention, particularly military intervention. Elizabeth had resisted sending troops to the Low Countries precisely because she did not want to confront Spain and run the risk that this powerful nation might turn its forces against England. Conversely, Elizabeth’s counselors had argued that allowing the Protestant States to succumb to Spanish control would give Spain a foothold strong enough to compromise England’s own national security. Getting the queen to adopt a more militarily assertive agenda, however, was not easy. Individuals like Sidney needed to find a way to preserve Elizabeth’s ethos as a pacific queen while still creating a place for them to adopt assertive, even military, initiatives. Praising Elizabeth’s wisdom facilitates a persona that conflates these somewhat contradictory positions. It conjures up her role as a transnational queen while placing that image within learning’s traditional focus on the arts of peace (as discussed in chapter one). In the second quatrain of the mother’s supplication, Sidney begins a series of references to Elizabeth as a wise and royal protector. He begins the second quatrain with the notion that Elizabeth’s “greatness is our shield” (22.9), thus underscoring Elizabeth’s role as defender rather than aggressor. The two couplets emphasize specifically that she is the protector of a wretched and oppressed mother and daughter. In using this figure of helpless women, Sidney creates an image reminiscent of the iconography used by Dutch writers to depict their people’s plight, particularly when seeking help from abroad. As Anne Hecox Bozzay has observed, these Dutchmen typically painted

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a dramatic verbal picture to depict foreign assistance as a heroic enterprise of apocalyptic proportions—a combination, I will argue in the next chapter, that will align Elizabeth’s learning with divine wisdom and apocalyptic battle in the 1580s.28 These Dutch writers often used the common visual representation of the States as a maiden in a walled garden or, as pictured by Edmund Spenser and George Gascoigne, a woman in distress.29 By centering the dramatic action around a besieged young lady in the groves of Wanstead, Sidney stages a metaphorical image of the Low Countries and colors it with the pathos of wretchedness. In turn, he justifies Elizabeth’s role as protector by showcasing her mild wisdom, which allows the queen to subdue the aggressive and the wise without being violent herself.30 Indeed, Sidney confirms the strength of Elizabeth’s mild wisdom in the next piece of action, when she instantly calms the entire group of battling figures merely by arriving on the scene. At first, the reason for her efficacy is not recognized: “yet something there was which made them startle aside and gaze upon her” (22.23–24). Elizabeth possesses a mystical “something” that dissipates the tension, and her power will get increasingly reconnected to the notions of wisdom and radiant virtue that were showcased in the supplication. Sidney begins this process when he has Lalus, an old shepherd, step forward as the first character to address the queen in this new scene. Lalus begins by acknowledging Elizabeth’s role as a peaceful queen and then connects this idea to her intellect: “May it please your benignity to give a little superfluous intelligence to that which, with the opening of my mouth, my tongue and teeth shall deliver unto you” (22.27–29). Not only does he state that this act will merely tap into Elizabeth’s superfluous intelligence (not even her true reserves of intellectual energy) but also, like the second quatrain in the supplication just presented, he associates her wisdom with mildness. Elizabeth is “your benignity.” The term “benignity” conveys mildness as well as the queen’s superior power over the schoolmaster Rombus. Lalus introduces him in a pseudo-royal fashion as “his clerkship” but then undercuts this authority by pointing out that “for all his loquence our young men were nothing duteous” (23.3–4). Degrading Rombus as ineffectual continues in Sidney’s track of including action that confirms the praise expressed in the opening supplication. Significantly, it is this bookish Rombus who verbalizes that Elizabeth’s efficacious presence stems from innate radiance,

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claiming “Now thunderthumping Jove transfund his dotes into your excellent formosity, which have with your resplendent beams thus segregated the enmity of these rural animals” (23.10–12). Elizabeth’s transcendent, inexplicable “something” fosters peace and is linked pointedly to her wisdom. Early in this scene, Sidney takes several passes over the same territory of royal praise: Elizabeth is wise, radiantly virtuous, and benignly powerful. He is cleverly echoing the very representation of Elizabeth that Dutch Protestants had been using to urge her participation in the Protestant States. But the key underlying factor—which is why wisdom as a characteristic is so useful—is that it allows Elizabeth to have a more passive, transnational image that remains distanced from imperialistic greed. As Paul Franssen notes, the Dutch poets’ praise for Elizabeth was not so much geared to serving “the interests of an aggressively expansionist government; rather, it is an argument that could be used to persuade Elizabeth of the need for intervention in a quarrel that was not really hers.”31 In the Dutch poetry, Elizabeth’s natural, imperial status is presented as stemming from her role as defender of a good cause, a good people, and sometimes by inference, a safe England. As discussed in chapter one, Dutch Protestant exile van der Noot was an early leader in this trend of praising Elizabeth as a multilingual Protestant queen when, in 1568 and 1569, he celebrated the protection she had given to Europe’s Protestant congregations. When the Dutch diplomat-poets similarly lauded Elizabeth as a wise queen in their poetry (often in Latin, but sometimes in French or Dutch), they downplayed the religious component and gave her a radiant wisdom that shone across national boundaries. She was a queen in their transnational Republic of Letters. Janus Dousa, a key ambassador sent to urge Elizabeth to intervene in the Netherlands, was one of the first poet-diplomats to employ these themes in verse. In 1572, during the precise period of his most intense diplomatic activity, he wrote a series of Neo-Latin poems in praise of Elizabeth as a nymph-queen. He exclaimed that Elizabeth had been taught by the Muses and that her radiant light shone across both the Continent and the rest of the known world. His speaker addresses Elizabeth in Latin, which tacitly acknowledges her abilities as a learned queen: NYMPHA, tuis non digna modò regnare BRITANNIS, Verùm etiam EVROPAE iura dare atque ASIAE.

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Dousa addresses Elizabeth as “nymph” (and Sidney’s Rombus will begin his epilogue also by describing Elizabeth as a nymph) and then indicates that she is worthy to “iura dare / give laws” to other nations. By calling her a nymph, Dousa associates Elizabeth with a less overtly royal position at the same time that he conjures up her imperial agency. (He will change this tactic later in the poem when he indicates that she “reges / reigns.”) Picking up on the notion of Elizabeth’s virtuous and pointedly imperial radiance, Dousa’s speaker continues his description: Omnem aeui famam superabis, lampade claram Praelucens proauis postgenitisque simul. Nec modò te Patriae tellus, gentesque propinquae, Sed colet occasus vltimus atque Oriens. You shall excel all the fame of your age, with a clear light Outshining the ancestors and future generations alike. And not only your own country, and neighbouring peoples, But also the extreme West and East will worship you.33

Referring to her “lampade claram / clear light” and her “caeleste iubar / heavenly radiance,” Dousa links Elizabeth with the suffused virtue of divinity. It is this radiance that extends its beams across the globe—evidence of far-reaching respect that simply happens, without Elizabeth asserting any imperial sovereignty herself. It is merely the effect of her incredible virtue. She is the divine mistress who remains stationary, receiving the unsolicited admiration and worship of foreign peoples. When Dousa does link the languages of imperialism and queenship, he continues to distance Elizabeth from an image of aggressive empire-building. He grounds her sovereignty first within a solely English context and within the context of peace. Then he slips in the notion that other peoples will join her empire. He proclaims that Longam in pace reges gentem feliciter Anglam, Adiectura nouos imperio populos.

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In a long period of peace you shall happily rule over the English people, And add new peoples to your empire.34

By emphasizing that the new people will be added to Elizabeth’s empire during a period of peace, Dousa intimates that she fulfills her imperial destiny through virtue rather than conquest, and he extends this scenario into the indefinite future with his use of the subjunctive. Dousa’s strategy of situating Elizabeth’s imperial image within the trio of wisdom, virtue, and divine radiance is one he adopts elsewhere in his poetry throughout the rest of the 1570s. For example, he celebrates the queen in his Nova Poemata as “Principis Augustae; cui ut est nil, sic nihil unquam / Aut fuit, aut alia posthac aetate futurum est / Doctrina, eloquio, forma & pietate secundum [that Augustan sovereign who does not have, has never had and will never have her equal in learning, eloquence, beauty and piety.”35 This overt focus on Elizabeth’s piety was employed earlier in the 1570s, when the Protestant Dutch were working to ally themselves with England and, more specifically, to urge Elizabeth to accept the sovereignty of the States. Lucas de Heere showcased Elizabeth’s religious virtue in the numerous epigrams he dedicated to her while living as a Dutch exile in London from 1567, when he fled Alva’s Reign of Terror, until the Pacification of Ghent in 1576. De Heere praises Elizabeth as “De vertu, de savoir, et beauté non pareille” [without parallel in virtue, knowledge, and beauty].36 His poetry also emphasizes another significant element that arises repeatedly in representations of Elizabeth as a learned queen: her virginity. He often likens her to chaste and politically assertive biblical women, such as when he lauds her as “Ame sainte, Esprit vif, corps chaste [—beau* . . . ..*] et non pareille. [Holy soul, lively spirit, chaste body without equal, / Second Hester, Judith, Susanne, O great miracle!]”37 As a virgin queen, Elizabeth becomes an appropriate figure for these men to use the biblically tinged language of courtly love to emphasize their willingness to serve her. The German poetdiplomat Paulus Melissus demonstrates precisely this wish to serve the goddess Elizabeth in the Latin epigram he wrote to her in 1577: Ipsum me Genio dedico Diva tuo; Germanumque hominem Franca[m]que propagine cretum

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Learned Queen Regia me dedo sub juga servitii. Myself I offer, goddess, to your genius. Known as a German man of Frankish stock, I place myself beneath your royal yoke.38

Not only does Melissus draw attention to his foreign status, which suggests Elizabeth’s imperial sovereignty, but he also uses “juga” to denote his yoke of service. This word plays in several registers simultaneously because it has multiple references: a yoke used for oxen or cattle, a bond of love, and a yoke of slavery. As I will discuss shortly, Melissus will emphasize the word’s connection to slavery in the lines that follow this declaration of fidelity, but both subservience and loving devotion are present in this image. What makes Melissus’ poem especially fitting to be examined alongside Sidney’s The Lady of May is that the queen is thought to have acknowledged Melissus’ poetic profession of servitude by writing a Latin epigram to him in response. Even if she did not write this poem herself, as Lee Piepho suspects, the poem’s attribution to her still associates these verses with Elizabeth’s image.39 James E. Phillips has noted that although Elizabeth’s interest in Melissus may have been prompted by “genuine admiration of his art, it is also probable that it sprang in part from a political desire to be as ingratiating as possible to an illustrious subject and diplomatic agent of the German Protestant princes whom she was then seeking to unite with England in a league against the Catholic powers.”40 Phillips looks at the probable timing of the two epigrams and puts forth the possibility that Sidney carried Melissus’ epigram to Elizabeth when he returned to London from Heidelberg on 10 June 1577 and that Rogers took the royal poetic reply when he left London for Germany a few weeks later. 41 Significantly, both of these English diplomats were key participants, often working together, in the formation of a pan-European Protestant League and thus directly involved in the same political enterprise these poets were acknowledging in their praise of the learned Elizabeth. As further support that witnessing this poetic exchange influenced Sidney’s and Rogers’ royal tactics, Rogers himself flatters Elizabeth as a learned queen by sending her a Latin epigram in late March 1578. He includes the poem in his letter to Thomas Wilson, telling him to show it to the queen if he “did thinck it could doo good.”42 The subtext for the poem is clearly to enlist Elizabeth’s

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support for Casimir as a way to assist the Low Countries, for as Rogers mentions in his letter, he has arrived in the region “at a desperat season.”43 In the poem, Rogers creates a militarily powerful Casimir—an image much in keeping with the urging that Walsingham will suggest a month later in his letter dated 27 April (discussed earlier in this chapter). In this Latin epigram, Rogers extols the duke when he writes: Bis juvêre tui pressos, Cazimire, leones, Bisque comes signis Mars fuit ipse tuis. Tum via vi patuit: tibi nam quae impervia tanto Qui comitem raptas in sacra bella Deum? Mox diraeque pyrae, virusque recessit inerme, Imperio miro, Dux Cazimire, tuo. Twice, Cazimir, you aided your overpowered lions, And twice Mars himself was a comrade in your cohorts. Then the way lay open to force: for what is impervious to such a one as you Who carries off God as a comrade in sacred wars? Soon the horrible pyres and the poison retreated defenseless From your marvelous power, Duke Cazimir.

Then he ends the epigram with a witty play on the “mir” in Casimir’s name: Palma triplex celso te jure sacrabit Olympo, Ac Mire-mirus, non Quasi-mirus, eris. A triple palm will sanctify you by right on high Olympus, And you will be, not quasi-marvelous, but remarkably marvelous.44

What makes this example so striking is not only its potential affiliation with the poetic exchange between Elizabeth and Melissus and its chronological proximity to Sidney’s entertainment, but also that Rogers is flattering Elizabeth’s learning as part of his strategy to secure her intervention in the Netherlands. Unlike Melissus, Dousa, or de Heere, Rogers shares a native language with Elizabeth; therefore, his communication in Latin stresses even more his decision to praise her as an erudite queen who, like him, speaks the cosmopolitan language of Latin. In addition, his choice of Latin and poetry itself also conjures up the approach his fellow Dutch-supporting diplomats have been using for years as

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a way to celebrate Elizabeth’s imperial leadership in continental Protestant politics. Another Latin poem written by Rogers to Elizabeth forms an added potential subtext to The Lady of May. In this piece, Rogers repeatedly emphasizes Elizabeth’s power as a queen of peace. He evokes the trope that associates peace with learning, using this stance to distance Elizabeth from military aggression. He claims that he, like Elizabeth, has kept out of the worldly fray. Through the representation of a contemplative poet, his speaker claims: Antetulj semper Musas, mea gaudia, Martj: Pierij mistes, a cultor amansque chorj: Otia quoque meis fluerent iucunda Camoenis, Abstinuj dubij litibus usque forj. Always I loved above Mars my joys and delights, the Muses: Priest of Pieria still: worshipper, lover of song: So that the hours of my leisure might flow with poetry ever, Far have I kept away all the world’s dubious strife. (Lines 1–4)

Then, three lines later: Magna tuo fueras uatj, Dea, bella fugando, Bella fuga haec etiam maxima semper eris. Goddess, when you kept away strife [bella] you were great to your poet, Drive away also this fight [bella], still be the greatest and best. (Lines 9–10)45

Ever traveling to the Continent on diplomatic missions, Rogers hardly kept aloof from strife. In fact, stationed with the military leader Casimir, Rogers was the high-profile English diplomat most closely associated with war. Rogers’ repetition of “bella,” as well as this term’s primary meaning of “war,” suggests to me that Rogers is referring specifically to warfare and not simply to “strife” as is translated above. We have no evident date for this poem, and Kuin and Prescott suggest that Rogers may have written it to ask Elizabeth to intervene in a duel.46 By placing this poem alongside Rogers’ familiarity with the pan-European poetic phenomenon (he certainly is mentioned repeatedly in poems by its key writers), I conclude that Rogers was using this poem, as his Dutch and German colleagues had done with their poetry, to urge Elizabeth to intervene in international conflict. In this regard,

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Rogers employs a strategy perfectly suited to Elizabeth’s known pacific interests: he emphasizes her past virtue of peacekeeping and suggests that she can help her own contemplative, equally peace-loving subject follow her example. Rogers’ persona as a contemplative poet lovingly calling upon his learned queen resonates not only with the poetry written by pan-European Protestant supporters but also with Sidney’s The Lady of May itself. Sidney gives Espilus’ supporter Dorcas a speech that ends with a lengthy description of the pastoral lifestyle that he and Espilus represent. In this speech, Dorcas first describes the shepherds out with their lambs and living in virtuous, quiet obedience. Then he notes that forlorn courtiers have come into the serene, pastoral groves to bewail the extreme effects that their courtly mistress has had upon them: O sweet honey milken lambs, and is there any so flinty a heart, that can find about him to speak against them, that have the charge of so good souls as you be, among whom there is no envy, but all obedience; where it is lawful for a man to be good if he list, and hath no outward cause to withdraw him from it; where the eye may be busied in considering the works of nature, and the heart quietly rejoiced in the honest using them? If contemplation, as clerks say, be the most excellent, which is so fit a life for a templer as this is, which is neither subject to violent oppression, nor servile flattery? How many courtiers, think you, I have heard under our field in bushes make their woeful complaints, some of the greatness of their mistress’ estate, which dazzled their eyes and yet burned their hearts; some of the extremity of her beauty mixed with extreme cruelty; some of her too much wit, which made all their loving labours folly? O how often have I heard one name sound in many mouths, making our vales witnesses of their doleful agonies! (28.9–24)

Sidney’s use of the contemplative, pastoral world rings with echoes of the poetry surrounding pan-European Protestant politics. It is fitting for poetry to be connected with Espilus because it was William of Orange, rather than Casimir, who was a lynchpin in the formation of a Protestant League and whose supporters were, as Hecox Bozzay observes, “extraordinary writers.”47 In addition, the genre of pastoral poetry was also a mainstay in the Dutch Protestant tradition, as Sidney’s poem “On Ister Bank” aptly demonstrates. 48 Indeed, Espilus himself is linked with poetry, as when

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the Lady of May says that Espilus writes verses for her (25.9–10). Through this gentle poetry-writing shepherd, Sidney conjures the Orangist court and also evokes the poetry some of its core diplomats were producing. The presence of lamenting courtiers in Espilus’ poetic, pastoral groves makes the direct connection between the transnational Protestant-poetic scene and Elizabeth herself. These courtiers are complaining about their mistress in language that somewhat resembles the mother’s formal supplication at the opening of the device—but with more grumbling tones. Indeed, Elizabeth must have been aware of the frustrations she had inflicted upon her interventionist court figures. Such complaining articulated here served to remind her of the power she had over her subjects in resisting their interests. In addition, Sidney might be giving a knowing wink to his fellow Dutch-supporting compatriots with the notion that this mistress has “made all their loving labours folly” (28.22–23). These men had worked and negotiated tirelessly to bring about even a modicum of English support for the Netherlands, only to have Elizabeth stymie the process. In fact, Fenton, when assessing the situation in the Low Countries at the end of April 1578, expresses distinctly royal mistress-focused frustration. He notes that the States have been driven into negotiations with Anjou because England’s disposition to provide assistance has been too “cold and slow.”49 Fenton is clearly out to attribute the problem to his female monarch who, as all women were thought to, suffers from the dominance of the humors that make her constitution too sluggish. But Sidney’s reference to folly in this passage may not have fully negative connotations. As will be discussed in the Afterword, the idea of folly will become associated with Elizabeth as a peacekeeper, especially beginning in the late 1580s. Sidney’s nod to folly here may actually house an element of praise for Elizabeth as a pacific queen. In mid-May, though, Elizabeth seemed finally on the brink of action, and Sidney’s praise of Elizabeth’s wisdom in a courtship debate asks her to support one of two figures associated with the States. By allowing the outcome to focus on Elizabeth’s decision, he also places the queen squarely at the center of the transnational situation. This representation, however, is a far, far cry from the reality in mid-May, as Sidney and everyone else would have known. The States were not currently looking to Elizabeth’s wisdom with lovingly patient eyes. Because of Elizabeth’s endless delaying,

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William of Orange had opened negotiations with Anjou, who had been advertising his own ability to provide the military assistance that was not forthcoming from England. This development terrified the English. Anjou’s past history of changing sides and the uncertainty regarding how much his brother and mother were behind his moves made him the loose cannon in international politics. In mid-May, England was working to stop Orange from forming this alliance by agreeing to send the 20,000l. to Casimir— funds that, England stipulated, required the Low Countries to forbear making any agreements without Elizabeth’s consent. In this way, Elizabeth is hardly at the center of a devoted, political world. She is on the verge of being swept to the margins—replaced by Anjou, the man she will soon woo away from William of Orange with overtures of love. These nuptial negotiations begin to stir in June, but in mid-May, Sidney, Leicester, Walsingham, and their fellow Dutch-supporters are more focused on Anjou’s relationship with the States than with the queen. They see the present moment as critical in urging Elizabeth to remain on her promised trajectory of lending even a small amount of assistance to the Low Countries. This assistance, in turn, creates the opportunity for their participation. Though Elizabeth was not going to send troops in addition to the 20,000l., she was going to send a few high-profile representatives to work with Casmir and Orange. Hoping to be selected for this mission, Sidney places Elizabeth at the epicenter of a fictional world completely devoted to her wise judgment. At the same time, he implies that he and Leicester are lovingly faithful. As her ideal ambassadors, they will adoringly uphold Elizabeth’s wisdom.

Leicester and Sidney: Faithful, Pliable Diplomats In making his bid to represent Elizabeth abroad, Sidney demonstrates that he is particularly aware of concerns regarding diplomatic service. He acknowledges not only the anxieties that surround diplomats in general but also specific issues that have arisen with Elizabeth’s current representatives in the Netherlands and from his own past actions as her ambassador. Analyzing Rombus’ epilogue within these contexts reveals how Sidney employs the languages of love, intellectual subordination, and even Catholicism to construct a self-representation that is finely tuned to the precise requirements of Anglo-Dutch exchange in

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May 1578. He also emphasizes his understanding that the relationship between monarch and diplomat is fundamentally steeped in matters regarding wisdom. For the diplomat, it is a delicate dance of supportive assertion and intellectual subordination—a combination distinctly suited to poetry. In the epilogue, Sidney places all focus on Leicester, leaving himself in the background. Rombus’ speech provides a lengthy description of Leicester as an honest, pointedly local, intellectually limited, and strangely Catholic devotee to Elizabeth. The schoolmaster proclaims: [I]n this our city we have a certain neighbour, they call him Master Robert of Wanstead. He is counted an honest man, and one that loves us doctified men pro vita; and when he comes to his ædicle he distributes oves, boves et pecora campi largely among the populorum. But so stays the case, that he is foully commaculated with the papistical enormity, O heu Aedipus Aecastor. The bonus vir is a huge catholicam, wherewith my conscience being replenished, could no longer refrain it from you, proba dominus doctor, probo inveni. I have found unum par, a pair, papisticorum bedorus, of Papistian beads, cum quis, with the which, omnium dierum, every day, next after his pater noster he semper suits “and Elizabeth”, as many lines as there be beads on this string. (31.22–34)

At the heart of this passage is the perplexing and humorously absurd notion that Leicester is Catholic. Although aligning Leicester with Catholicism back in the early 1560s would have been plausible, making this connection in the late 1570s would have prompted more than a few chuckles among the spectators. Leicester’s well-established identity as an internationally prominent Protestant figure hardly fits the image of the earl using his “Papistian beads.” Of course, Leicester is engaging in iconoclastic devotion to Elizabeth, which makes it both more comical and more appropriate. In keeping with the image of the diplomat as an individual who mediates through love, Leicester’s unshakable devotion to a divine Elizabeth associates him with diplomatic appointment as well. Scholar Daniel Ménager provides an extensive study of the early modern association between diplomats and angels (perhaps appropriately, angels are God’s mediators). In fact, this notion of mediators for the divine is even more apt because Leicester is represented as Catholic—a religion, as Ménager notes, particularly

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interested in multiplying the number of intermediaries between God and humanity.50 So within one image, Sidney ties the earl exclusively to his divine queen even as he distances his uncle from the larger Protestant agenda that prompted their interest in serving on the upcoming mission. In fact, Sidney rather emphatically makes Leicester a solely local figure rather than a cosmopolitan one. In Rombus’ epilogue, the earl is “Master Robert of Wanstead” who hands out foodstuffs, which is a metaphor for patronage. Certainly, Leicester’s forms of patronage were far more weighty than this activity, and they extended well beyond the environs of Wanstead.51 Earlier in the entertainment, Leicester is depicted in similarly local terms, such as when the Lady of May says “he is but our neighbour” (24.19). Sidney seeks to diminish his uncle’s transnational political stature even as he works to distance Leicester from his affiliation with Protestant circles. Sidney takes the internationally renowned Leicester and portrays him in homespun, English terms. Sidney focuses his uncle’s credentials solely on Elizabeth and local (therefore minor) authority. Although Sidney’s portrayal of Leicester as papistically devoted to Elizabeth is a bit tongue-in- cheek, it does have an additional and quite serious political purpose. As political documents from May 1578 suggest, the individuals Elizabeth intends to send on the mission may face extreme circumstances that require complete dedication to her above all other affiliations, including religious beliefs. According to Burghley’s memo regarding Elizabeth’s plan for this mission, the queen intends “to sende over unto the States personnages of quallitie and sufficiencie” who will first try to dissuade the States “from furder dealeinge with Monsieur [the Duke of Anjou] and to assure them of presente assistance bothe of men and money in case Monsieur, uppon refusall of his offer, would joyne his forces with Don John againste them.”52 Realizing that the States may not believe England’s sincerity, Burghley then makes a rather startling assertion: that these individuals might need to remain in the Netherlands as hostages. He says that it might be meete that the sayde personnages (in case the States cannot be otherwise satisfied) shall offer to remaine hostages for the performaunce of such assistaunce as shalbe by them demaunded and yealded unto by Here Majestie. And for theire assurance it shalbe requisite that a convenient number of men be out of hande put in a

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Learned Queen readines and sente to the seaside to be transported over, if the case shall soe require.53

Burghley acknowledges, however, that even this drastic measure may not be sufficient. In that case, these same people will need to negotiate with the Spanish Don John: And to th’end nothinge be lefte undonne that may impeach Monsrs side intention, it shalbe meete that the said personnages should also repaire to Don Johen [sic] to conferre with him upon the matter, with whome it shalbe expedient to deale roundlie and substaunciallie to reduce him to yeald to a pacification, layinge before hime the perils that are lykelie to ensue.54

Because whoever is sent on this mission may end up negotiating with both the Protestant William and the Catholic Don John, Sidney might be constructing a substantially flexible persona that would allow him to show his and Leicester’s adaptability should they be the ones sent to handle these delicate affairs. In fact, Sidney’s strategy matches precisely what Elizabeth ends up doing. When she sends two envoys in June 1578 on a mission a bit modified from the plan that was brewing in mid-May, she sends the Protestant Walsingham with the quietly Catholic-leaning William Brooke, Lord Cobham. As hopefuls for this mission, though, Sidney and Leicester were up against more than potentially fluid religious politics. They were also dealing with rumors regarding the ultimate allegiance of one of their colleagues currently with William of Orange. Elizabeth was already wary of how persuasive William of Orange could be and how much this Protestant leader had garnered the respect of many of her courtiers—including, so the rumor went, her own diplomat to Orange: Davison himself. In the first week of May 1578, Walsingham had written Davison twice with warnings about his appearance of supporting Orange and Protestant practices to an extent that compromised his fidelity to Elizabeth. It is almost certain that Elizabeth had heard rumors about Davison acting more like Orange’s advocate than her own. As Walsingham indicates, word had been spreading: Certain speeches have lately been uttered much to your disadvantage, as that you suffer her Majesty to be evil spoken of in your hearing without standing to the defence of her honour as the place

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you hold requires; . . . and lastly that you deal rather as an agent for the Prince than for her Majesty.55

Walsingham implies that he does not believe these rumors, but this experienced counselor is aware of how much a diplomat’s reputation rests on his image of fidelity. As scholars on diplomacy from Garrett Mattingly to Jessica Wolfe have noted, ambassadors were stereotypically portrayed as dishonest. With such a reputation haunting him, the ambassador counteracts these accusations with expressions of loyalty and moral rectitude. It is no surprise that early modern writers on diplomacy devoted most of their commentary to the ambassador’s moral virtues.56 As a courtier in the circle most interested in Anglo-Dutch relations, Sidney would have been aware of these rumors about Davison’s fidelity, and such charges would have conjured up his past experience with Elizabeth over a similar issue. After his 1577 embassy, Elizabeth had felt that he, too, had been operating in collusion with foreign princes (Orange, in particular). As Sidney passed through Brussels on his return to England after this mission, he was instructed by either Leicester or the queen (more likely the former) to stand in for his uncle at the baptism of William of Orange’s infant daughter. This event led Sidney and William to begin outlining plans for a Protestant League. To this effect, William wrote to Elizabeth on 2 June 1577, expressing his interest in supporting her and indicating that he had “asked Mr Sidney, ambassador of your Majesty to the emperor, to do us the honour of declaring more particularly; the details of the agreement he proposed.”57 Although he alludes to Sidney’s diplomatic role as ambassador “to the emperor” (and therefore not authorized to serve in the current situation), he indicates that he and Sidney had established such good relations that they had begun to sketch an “agreement” that involved a Protestant alliance between England and William of Orange’s supporters. Elizabeth was not pleased with Sidney’s independent actions and sent Rogers to conclude the negotiations Sidney had started. In her letter to Rogers outlining instructions for the embassy, Elizabeth mentions Sidney’s father to emphasize that she viewed Sidney’s actions as duplicitous: “For we could not like that any foreign prince should enter into any such secret combination with our President of Wales or Deputy of Ireland or any other governor under us, which might any way estrange him from th’obedience he

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oweth us.”58 Elizabeth implies that Sidney was engaging in underhanded negotiations with foreign powers, and she claims that his actions separate him from appropriate obedience to her royal will. Her notion of estrangement is particularly interesting because it suggests his actions are “foreign” in nature rather than an appropriately “English” allegiance to her. It is likely that Rogers would have shown Sidney Elizabeth’s letter or at least described its contents: not only were Rogers and Sidney diplomats together in 1577 when they both traveled to Frankfurt (and perhaps brought back Melissus’ epigram to Elizabeth) but they continued to remain close associates. Rogers even sent Sidney a poetic New Year’s gift in 1579.59 In light of his own personal experience and the current rumors regarding Davison, Sidney would have known that, more than anything else, he and Leicester needed to project the image of unshakable fidelity that could transcend even Protestant affiliations. If they were to stand in for Elizabeth abroad, they needed to present a more loyal persona. The image of Leicester in solitary prayer dedicated to God and Elizabeth asserts an exclusive adoration that equates the earl’s royal fidelity with religious zeal. Actually, Leicester’s ridiculously Catholic devotional practices would be completely useless for a statesman to whom Protestant Europe looks for support. Thus, his prayer signifies a devotion to Elizabeth that directly counters his known personal and religious interests. He is ready to be her instrument in a political mission that might involve negotiating with Spain.

Diplomacy and Loving Bondage Sidney underscores Leicester’s devotion to the queen when, according to Rombus’ description, the earl knows only the position of slave. When Rombus gives Elizabeth the agate necklace at the very end of the device, he claims that Leicester will never try to reclaim it because the courtier “hath deponded all his juriousdiction” of civil law out of the “nine hundredth paragroper of the 7. ii. code in the great Turk Justinian’s library,” and that herein “it is forfeited tibi dominorum domina: accipe therefore, for he will never be so audacious to reclamat it again, being iure gentiorum thus manumissed” (31.34–32.5, sic). According to Rombus, the only text of civil law that Leicester knows is Justinian’s Codex, Lib. VII. Tit.ii, which is De testamentaria manumissione [Concerning the testimony by slaves].60 The

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mention of the Justinian Code in Rombus’ epilogue may be referring to Elizabeth’s own demonstration of erudition as a philosopherqueen. In 1564, she had delivered a Latin oration at the end of her progress to the University of Cambridge. Leicester was one of the nobles in attendance who urged Elizabeth to address her audience in Latin. In her speech, she claims to quote Demosthenes to support the idea that the words of princes have the force of law: Quod ad propagationem attinet, verba superiorum. (vt inquit Demostenes) pro librijs sunt inferiorum, et vim legis exemplar principis habet. / Regarding what pertains to propagation [of learning], the words of superiors, as Demosthenes said, are as the books of their inferiors, and the example of a prince has the force of law.61

First, Elizabeth’s emphasis on the legal force of her words may echo in Leicester’s limited legal knowledge in the epilogue. Second, although Elizabeth claims to be quoting from Demosthenes, I have argued elsewhere that she is instead echoing the famous maxim from the Justinianic corpus regarding law: Quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem [What has pleased the prince has the force of law].62 If indeed she is referring to this maxim, then the tie to Leicester’s wisdom being limited to Justinian’s Codex, Lib. VII. Tit.ii is even stronger. Whether there is a precise connection or not, Sidney is certainly drawing upon what Richard Helgerson has noted as the frequent patterning of English law after Roman doctrine in this period; references to the Justinianic corpus were often employed to justify the monarch’s absolute, legal authority.63 If Sidney does refer to Elizabeth’s Cambridge oration, then this submission is colored with a notion related to wisdom—that Elizabeth is Leicester’s schoolmistress and a successful teacher who has instilled obedient knowledge in her student. If the echo is not present, then Sidney is still portraying Leicester as engaged in loving and legal bondage to his queen. Significantly, this notion of serving Elizabeth in loving bondage was also evoked in the period’s Anglo-Dutch exchange—even in the epigrams that Elizabeth and the Dutch-supporting Melissus had recently exchanged. As discussed earlier, Melissus presents himself under the royal yoke, and immediately after this moment, he portrays himself as Elizabeth’s devoted slave: Vtere me servo domina; ingenuoque ministro Sis hera, qui laudes incinat usque tuas.

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Learned Queen Eccui libertas tanti sit, ut esse recuset Tantae patronae nobile mancipium? Make me your bondsman, lady, and be mistress To a freeborn slave who ever sings your praises. Could freedom be of such great worth to any That he’d refuse such patron’s noble chains?64

Like Sidney’s image of Leicester, Melissus participates joyfully in his slavery. The possibility that Sidney was knowingly echoing Melissus’ epigram is especially strong since Sidney himself may have carried Melissus’ poem to Elizabeth on his return from Heidelberg. In turn, Sidney may be giving a nod to Elizabeth’s own erudite reply to Melissus—the epigram she is attributed to have written in response. In this poem, Elizabeth refers to Melissus’ claims of enslavement and emphasizes that she, as an enlightened queen, does not hold her poets in bondage. She uplifts Melissus from his abject state by asking him: At quae tanta movet te causa, quis impetus urget, Ex homine ingenuo servus ut esse vellis? Haud nostrum est arctis vates includere septis, Aut vel tantillum deminuisse caput. Tu potius liber fieres, laxante patrona Vincula, si famula conditione fores. But what cause moves you so, what urge impels you, That you, a free man, wish to be a slave? ‘Tis not our custom poets to mure up, Or cause them suffer the least loss of rights. Rather you would be freed, your patroness Loosing the bonds that held you as a servant.65

Not only does she release Melissus, but she also tells him that she does not confine poets—possibly a light allusion to Plato, who exiled poets from his republic. If this allusion is present, then she emphasizes her superiority over Plato’s enlightened philosopher-king. Rombus himself has tinges of this concept of the philosopherking, and it is most fitting that, throughout the entertainment, he repeatedly claims authority because of his learning. At the beginning of the device, he arrived on the scene because he felt that his learned authority could dispel the violence. His role as a parody of

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the learned prince is evident even in his title, “his clerkship” (23.4). Most significantly, he threatens to usurp Elizabeth’s office of naming the victorious suitor in the climactic moment. The Lady of May steps in and chastises him with “No, no, your ordinary brains shall not deal in that matter” (30.4–5). At this instant that requires wise judgment, the Lady stops Rombus by disparaging his intellectual capacity. Certainly in the fiction of the entertainment, Rombus is unaware of the arrangement to have Elizabeth make the decision, but he does try to assert his own learned authority. As Alwes has noted, Sidney uses Rombus to deflect anxieties regarding his own audacity.66 In light of all Sidney’s references to diplomatic correspondence, however, Rombus also shows just how superior Sidney and Elizabeth are because they are well-versed in the discourse of real politics. Conversely, Rombus parades the regimen he has received from the traditional schoolroom—a regimen that he now perpetuates as a schoolmaster. Unlike Rombus with his “common” education, Sidney and Elizabeth possess exclusive knowledge steeped in the rhetoric current in the transnational Republic of Letters. They operate above the tedious maxim.67 In light of this hierarchy of learning, it is fitting that Rombus speaks the concluding words of loving submission and ties these ideas most pointedly to the diplomatic Leicester. This gesture concedes to Elizabeth the final and clearly transcendent wisdom in the device. Rombus joins “Master Robert” in the pose of adoration. Sidney’s emphasis on the adoring ambassador who possesses a pliable mind will arise again a few years later in Astrophil and Stella. In sonnet 107, Sidney has Astrophil lovingly relinquish his intellect to Stella, telling her And on my thoughts give thy Lieftenancy To this great cause, which needs both use and art, And as a Queene, who from her presence sends Whom she imployes, dismisse from thee my wit, Till it have wrought what thy owne will attends. (Lines 7–11)68

Giving Stella license to “dismisse from thee my wit” and asking for her lieutenancy over his thoughts, Astrophil surrenders his intellectual faculties to Stella’s complete direction and claims that every shred of wit he does possess is dedicated solely to recreating his mistress-queen’s will. In The Lady of May, Sidney has been exploring this same paradigm within the courtly rhetoric of Anglo-Dutch diplomacy. This context, in turn, begins to open up

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new avenues for considering the overlapping methodologies that unite Sidney’s diplomatic and poetic vocations. Like all political genres, the poetic rhetoric that praised Elizabeth as a learned, transnational queen in the 1570s will shift as the political climate changes. In the next chapter, I will show how, in the 1580s, writers associated with Sidney, Leicester, and now Essex continued to praise Elizabeth as an imperial learned queen, but with a new twist: the representation of Elizabeth and her nation engaged in apocalyptic battle. The 1580s represent a critical shift in England’s foreign policy. As the nation moves inevitably toward military conflict, the Leicester circle moves toward its desired goal: English sovereignty and military intervention in the Low Countries. In the 1580s, these devoted diplomats will style themselves increasingly as swashbuckling knights, and, in the literary representations associated with this circle, England’s philosopher-queen will exude the divine, Protestant wisdom that helps justify her chivalric subjects brandishing God’s sword.

CHAPTER 3

QUEEN OF THE WORD: ELIZABETH, DIVINE WISDOM, AND APOCALYPTIC DISCOURSE IN THE 1580S

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hen Sir Philip Sidney and his colleagues in Anglo-Dutch relations used poetry to praise Elizabeth as a nymph and celestial goddess in the 1570s (chapter two), they infused secular images with religious significance in order to encourage royal support for the Protestant States. These delightful texts laud Elizabeth as a radiant queen whose bright beams and keen wisdom could easily translate into international leadership and assistance, if she would so choose. In the 1580s, however, Elizabeth’s options for international intervention were fast diminishing. As war between England and Spain became inevitable, the watchword in foreign affairs shifted from assistance to defense. The political climate of escalating violence fueled apocalyptic fear and fervor throughout England, and the religious grumblings of the 1570s now turned into strident anger. In response, several writers in the 1580s, most of whom were associated with the interventionist Leicester circle, infused Elizabeth’s learned persona with apocalyptic references as a way to make her the focal point for national religious unity and military strength. These writers used the most public facet of her learning—her image as a pious Queen of God’s Word (i.e., the Gospel)—to channel the period’s eschatological rhetoric into a queen-centered discourse. Scholars typically separate Elizabeth’s royal image from apocalyptic resonances, and rightly so. The queen pointedly distanced herself from such divisive rhetoric that, frankly, was often used to pressure her and her clergy to institute stronger religious reforms. The most famous apocalyptic rhetoric that was associated with

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the queen typically arose either in early Elizabethan texts (particularly those by John Foxe, John Bale, and even John Aylmer) or in texts produced after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, such as James Aske’s Elizabetha Trivmphans and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Qveene. Indeed, Foxe, Bale, and Spenser have dominated the critical landscape.1 In this chapter, I will focus on works that add two more voices to the study of apocalyptic nationalism—voices that enfold Elizabeth into a militaristic yet millennial apocalyptic framework that was quite useful for the crown in the crisis-ridden 1580s. These two texts, both produced for the Leicester circle in this decade, are Thomas Blenerhasset’s A Reuelation of the True Minerua (1582) and Maurice Kyffin’s The Blessednes of Brytaine (1587 and an expanded edition in 1588).2 Examining these works will provide an important window into how some writers in this period deftly integrated nationalist apocalyptic rhetoric, royal authority, poetry, chivalry, and an international agenda. What is more, they synthesized all these elements specifically into Elizabeth’s individual image through her learned persona. In part, this chapter takes the image of Elizabeth as an imperial and transcendent monarch—which Frances A. Yates has made famous in her study of Elizabeth as Astraea—but addresses this role through a Christian, humanist lens.3 Both Blenerhasset and Kyffin create a highly complex network of submerged biblical and political allusions. They imbue the queen with millennial authority as a Bride of Christ, figure of Divine Wisdom, apocalyptic symbol of Christ’s presence in the Gospel, or, most poetically, God’s “Rosa Electa”4—sometimes shifting among several of these roles within the course of a single text. Through these abstract personae, Elizabeth’s ecclesiastical role as a learned queen expands dramatically. She is now depicted alongside armed angels and her nation’s beloved knights. Thus guarded, this divine and wise Elizabeth leads her elect nation into a millennial age. First, her forces will overthrow the papal Antichrist, and then, as somewhat of a Last Reforming Empress, she will spread prosperity and God’s Word to all nations. In general, scholars have not devoted significant attention to either Blenerhasset’s Reuelation or Kyffin’s Blessednes. In the case of Reuelation, scholars emphasize how Blenerhasset overtly echoes Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calender as well as the Kenilworth entertainments performed for Elizabeth in 1575—two significant

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poetic events steeped in pan-European religious politics.5 On the other hand, Kyffin’s Blessednes has received virtually no attention. As William H. Sherman has noted, “Maurice Kyffin is not a household name—not even among Elizabethan literary historians.”6 Blenerhasset and Kyffin bridge the worlds of military service, non-courtly status, and poetry. These two writers were military men, devoting years abroad to the martial agenda espoused by the Leicester circle. Blenerhasset spent the late 1570s in Thomas Leighton’s forces and dedicated his narrative to Cecilia Knollys Leighton, Leicester’s sister-in-law. Kyffin dedicated his two editions of Blessednes to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. The first text garnered such approval from the crown that the expanded section of the 1588 edition was prefaced by Elizabeth’s coat of arms. These publications subsequently earned Kyffin political preferment. Beginning in 1588, he was appointed to a series of high-ranking military posts in the Low Countries and France, and in 1595, he contributed to the ecclesiastical unity of Britain by translating John Jewel’s Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (1562) into Welsh.7 These men, unlike Sidney and Essex, occupy a space outside the inner circles of power. Most significantly, they (especially Kyffin) use their works to acknowledge not merely a courtly audience but an entire nation of readers. They create highly complex texts that appear conventionally patriotic from one angle but highly religious and apocalyptic (though still patriotic) from another—depending on the background the reader brings to the piece. Blenerhasset’s text requires particular knowledge of the Bible as well as a specific brand of millennial thought that was current in the Leicester circle. Kyffin fills his literary effort with allusions to scripture, contemporary political works, apocalyptic studies, and natural philosophy (particularly as found in works associated with his mentor and lifelong friend John Dee). To uncover the complexity of these fascinating texts, this chapter will trace their webs of allusion to demonstrate how they speak a complex, heteroglossic language. Such language rouses some to piety, some to patriotic support for the military, some to the potential harmony between queen-centrism and imperial power, and some to admiration for poetry’s unique ability to speak to the full range of the nation’s readers. Blenerhasset’s and Kyffin’s strategies provide insight not only into Elizabeth’s political and ecclesiastical image in the apocalyptic 1580s but also into other strands that surface in the 1590s. Most notably, their works reveal approaches that inform many of

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Elizabeth’s most incandescent and seemingly secular poetic personae in the 1590s: the Fairy Queen, Cynthia, Belphoebe, and William Shakespeare’s maidenly moon, as well as the image of Elizabeth as a learned queen in Francis Bacon and Essex’s Of Love and Self-Love. Significantly, I will address the last two of these texts in chapter five and the Afterword. In addition, Blenerhasset’s and Kyffin’s texts lay the groundwork for examining Elizabeth’s own demonstrations of erudition in the early 1590s (as I will discuss in chapter four). They show how the queen was not simply reacting to language that arose in the 1580s but was actually transforming it to support her persona as a more transcendently philosophic Queen of Love. Blenerhasset’s and Kyffin’s texts essentially set the stage for the rest of Learned Queen.

Blenerhasset’s A Reuelation of the True Minerua Perhaps no other literary work published in England focuses so overtly on Elizabeth’s learned persona as does Blenerhasset’s Reuelation. As the title intimates, Blenerhasset fuses a set of classical allusions with sustained use of the Bible, often the Book of Revelation. In this work, Elizabeth becomes not just England’s goddess of wisdom but rather a divine and global figure of powerful religious consequence. Through a myriad of emblematic images, Blenerhasset aligns her with the Bride of Christ, the figure of Divine Wisdom from Proverbs, and the apocalyptic power of the Gospel, as well as England’s beloved and brave “Bess.” Most of these personae are situated within a sophisticated set of biblical allusions that, once the poetic-apocalyptic code is cracked, reveal Blenerhasset’s representation of Elizabeth as a divinely wise queen whom God has elected to usher in the millennial age. Because Blenerhasset’s Reuelation is rarely studied, and because it moves through an almost dizzying array of images, a description of the text is in order. The narrative begins in the heavens atop Mount Olympus, where Pallas (the goddess of earthly wisdom) petitions the gods to find a mortal worthy of becoming her sister, the new Minerva. Typically, Pallas and Minerva refer to the same figure; however, Blenerhasset uses Pallas to refer to earthly wisdom and Minerva to represent heavenly wisdom (**r). Through this differentiation, he creates the foundation for his subtle but pervasive image of Elizabeth as an apocalyptic figure of both God’s Word and Wisdom.

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After the gods agree to seek a new Minerva, an oracle confirms that an individual worthy of this honor dwells on an earthly island, “euen in a place of blisse” (A3v). Right before Mercury is dispatched to find this new Minerva, the gods witness another prophetic moment when a vision appears on Neptune’s crown. The vision first presents Elizabeth as an imperial queen with a globe under her feet. Then, it shifts to a pastoral scene where the shepherd Pan pipes and three shepherds sing of their experiences, one from idyllic England and the others from the war-torn continent.8 When Mercury returns to report his successful visit with Elizabeth, the entire heavenly realm rejoices by entering into an epithalamic sequence to build her a crown—a scene overtly modeled after Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender. Because Elizabeth is to be the new goddess of sacred wisdom, it would seem fitting that the gods would choose a religious setting for the coronation. Instead, they descend while she, her entourage, and a host of international dignitaries watch a tilt. Though impressive, this scenario—reminiscent of Accession Day with all its chivalric adrenaline—is not the climax of the poem. In the final sequence, a radiant angel descends from heaven and asks the Nine Muses to render tribute to Elizabeth. What follows is a chain of concentrated poetic experimentation, with each Muse delivering a poem in a different metrical form. After these accolades, Blenerhasset provides another set of verses to emphasize his own role as Elizabeth’s “pilgrim” who uses poetry to magnify her fame.

Elizabeth as Divine Wisdom In both the opening dedicatory epistle and the postscript, Blenerhasset correlates England’s unsurpassed glory with Elizabeth’s wisdom. “How farre little Englande,” he declares, “doeth in perfecte felicitie surpasse all the large kingdomes of the worlde” because never has the sun “shined vppon any place, whose prosperitie might compare with this Ilandes: brought in deede to that worthie passe by the great good gouernment & singuler industry of the Queenes Maiesties most excellent wisdome” (*3r). Making the conventional connection between good governance and superior learning, Blenerhasset begins his text with standard, humanist articulations. Once he moves into the realm of fiction, however, he embeds a much more doctrinally aggressive image of

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Elizabeth as God’s Divine Wisdom within the classical image of her as Minerva. Blenerhasset’s references to Divine Wisdom begin early in the narrative. When Mercury tells of seeing England’s pious queen for the first time, he provides a particularly striking image: Ouer her head, angels with swordes in hande, Betwixt her eyes doth right remorse remaine, Before her face the feare of God doth stande, Salomons blisse abideth in her braine, Her eares bee stopt to matters vilde and vaine: From goodlie lips her learned tongue doth tell The way to heauen, where shee no doubt doth dwell. (B4v)

The image of Elizabeth protected by armed angels hardly seems connected to Divine Wisdom; indeed, the presence of the angels conjures up Genesis 3:24, when God stations two cherubim with swords to stand guard over the Tree of Life. But this notion of the Tree of Life becomes associated with Divine Wisdom once we remember that, in Proverbs 3:18, King Solomon indicates that Wisdom “is a tree of life to them that lay hold vpon her.”9 Blenerhasset confirms this association by including further allusions to Proverbs in this same passage. In particular, Blenerhasset emphasizes Elizabeth’s humble fear of God as well as her learned tongue that tells pious truths. As stated in Proverbs 2:4–5, an individual’s path to achieving divine knowledge begins with the fear of God. In addition, Divine Wisdom describes herself as a pious truth-speaker who calls out: “Geue eare, for I wil speake of great matters, and open my lippes to tell thynges that be ryght: For my mouth shall be talkyng of the trueth, and my lippes abhorre vngodly-nesse” (Proverbs 8:6–7). Although Blenerhasset never openly refers to Proverbs, he encourages a biblically attentive reader to have Solomon’s Proverbs in mind when he links Elizabeth to this Old Testament king’s blessedness. Through this indirect reference, Blenerhasset creates a layered image of Elizabeth that elevates her status to divine even as it situates her within a martial framework. He places Elizabeth within an image of divine swords without actually putting one in the hand of his pacific queen. In this instance, Blenerhasset includes a powerful subtext for those readers sufficiently literate in scripture to recognize his melding of Divine Wisdom with the Tree of Life. At least

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one figure in the Leicester circle—Philip Sidney—would have recognized Blenerhasset’s ingenuity. During the winter of 1579, Sidney was reading Cornelius Agrippa’s De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum et Artium, which also takes its title from Proverbs. In this text, Agrippa makes the same connection between Divine Wisdom and the Tree of Life: “You, therefore, o ye asses,” he writes: [I]f you desire to attain to this divine and true wisdom, not of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but of the tree of life, reject all human learning. Vos igitur nunc o asini . . . si divinam hanc et veram, non ligni Scientiae boni et mali, sed ligni vitae sapientiam assequi cupitis, proiectus humanis Scientis.10

Sidney, Leicester, and others in their group not only would have recognized Blenerhasset’s allusion to Divine Wisdom but also would have appreciated his reference to the Tree of Life as a way to prepare for further and more overt martial connotations. Directly after this image, Blenerhasset associates Elizabeth even more closely with combat by making her valiantly righteous: To walke in righteous wayes is her delight, From perfect path her feete doe not depart, Her steppes most straight doe shew her heauenly heart, Vnder her feete raging reuenge doth couch, At her commaunde her valure to auouche. (C1r)

This image portrays Elizabeth as divinely protected even as it presents her as strong herself. She is valorous, able to keep the force of revenge under her feet, and walks in the straight paths of virtue. This latter element houses another allusion to Proverbs: the moment when Wisdom teaches Solomon that he needs to avoid evildoers “Whose wayes are crooked” so that he can walk “in the way of such as be vertuous, and keepe the pathes of the righteous” (Proverbs 2:15, 20). Also in this same section of Proverbs, Divine Wisdom discusses the wicked woman, which would conjure up the tradition of the Whore of Babylon as an image of the corrupt Church. Such apocalyptic notions steeped in Proverbs resonated strongly in the Leicester circle in 1582. That same year, James Sanford dedicated his translation of Giacopo Brocardo’s commentary on the Book of Revelation to Leicester. In it, Stephen Bateman includes an epistle to the reader that draws heavily from

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Proverbs to articulate its apocalyptic agenda11—an approach to the eschaton that also informs Blenerhasset’s Reuelation.

A specific brand of apocalyptic thought Many interpretations of the apocalypse were circulating in late Tudor England, and those put forth by such influential writers as Bale and Foxe were particularly popular. These writers focused mostly on the suffering martyr; Blenerhasset, conversely, employs a millennial paradigm that mirrors Brocardo’s commentary on Revelations, which Sanford had just translated for Leicester. Although Bale’s and Foxe’s interpretations reached a far larger audience, the “Brocardist” approach to apocalyptic discourse seems to have become extremely popular in court circles associated with Leicester in the 1580s.12 This popularity would make sense in light of Brocardo’s nationalist, apocalyptic paradigm. Rodney L. Petersen has observed that Brocardo’s interpretation “becomes an early place for analyzing the transition of thought in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries from a transcendent apocalyptic expectation to a more political hope expressive of the new national religious orders reshaping the social and religious map of Europe.”13 In the hands of such men as Blenerhasset, Brocardo’s views were easily adapted to create a patriotic, queen-centered discourse. In fact, Brocardo himself had already expressed admiration for Elizabeth, dedicating his Libri Duo to her in 1581.14 Brocardo, following the late-twelfth-century thinker Joachim of Fiore, believed that history was divided into three ages. While Joachim associated each of these ages with a figure in the Trinity (first the Father, then the Son, then the Spirit), a tradition of thinkers revised Joachim’s Trinitarian approach and divided time into the three advents of Christ: Christ’s first coming in the flesh, His second or middle “advent” in the spirit, and then a final advent when He returns again in the flesh to judge the world.15 Brocardo thought that Martin Luther’s preaching had been a key force in ushering the world into the middle age of the Spirit.16 In this age, the Gospel gains new power, and part of this power comes from the flourishing of true preaching. Brocardo thought that the third and final age was imminent in light of such violent events as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. The third advent would begin once the pope was deposed, after which a Protestant general council at

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Venice would inaugurate the final age. These events would fulfill the millennial scenario depicted in Revelation 20, allowing the new, blessed world in Revelation 21 to begin.17 By adopting a Brocardist millennial view, Blenerhasset makes Elizabeth the outward symbol of Christ’s second advent. She is a Queen of God’s Word. Blenerhasset emphasizes Elizabeth’s association with the Gospel the first time the reader encounters her directly. When Mercury salutes the queen as the gods’ choice to become the new Minerva, Elizabeth answers with humble piety that highlights her role as a (Protestant) champion of the Gospel: I knowe no God but one And hee of heauen, who guides mee by his grace: The Heathen had their Gods which nowe bee gone, Whose Idols I by Gods spell did deface: There is one God and him I doe imbrace, No sister I [Pallas], yet what they doe intende declare, for I all goodnes will defend. (B3v)

Not only does Elizabeth carefully distance herself from pagan religious practices by professing that she believes in only one God, but she also turns this comment into a criticism of Catholic iconolatry as witchcraft with the pun on “Gods spell” [i.e., Gospel]. In addition, she feels so passionately about practicing right religion that she vows to “defend” it—a claim that opens the door for Blenerhasset’s upcoming images of millennial warfare. By trumpeting Elizabeth’s support of the Gospel, Blenerhasset begins to associate Elizabeth with the middle advent of Christ, who defends both God’s Word and true preaching against their misuse by the papacy. Blenerhasset depicts the pope railing to his bishops: “A woman doth mee and my might defie, / The Gospel nowe my mortall enemie / By meanes of her is preacht both farre and nie” (C3r). In reality, Elizabeth was reducing the freedom preachers had in the pulpit, and as a result, she was drawing fire from Puritan figures. What is crucial to Blenerhasset’s use of this Brocardist tradition is not whether his work reflects reality but rather the way it situates Elizabeth as the figure who will overthrow the papal Antichrist. Elizabeth becomes an imperial figure of God’s Wisdom who can be associated with the pan-European and military agenda espoused by the Leicester circle. Indeed, Blenerhasset’s pope instructs that the papal forces be marshaled in preparation for battle. Significantly, how this figure outlines

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the conflict mirrors the current political situation and anxieties of 1582.

Acknowledging the political context of 1582 During the period when Blenerhasset was writing this text, Elizabeth’s negotiations with the Duke of Anjou had concluded in a treaty rather than in nuptials. The Duke had been installed as the new governor in the Low Countries (over the States then in revolt against Spain). Anjou accepted this position with England’s full and public support. Although this series of events was orchestrated with the intent of stabilizing the international balance of power, these hopes did not materialize. For example, much tension had broken out in the Netherlands regarding Anjou and his train’s public practice of Catholic worship.18 In addition, Anjou’s brother, the French King Henri III, refused to send Anjou troops and then began openly negotiating with Spain. Lord Cobham, England’s diplomat to the French court, wrote to Francis Walsingham with these bad tidings from France on 12 March 1582: You will perceive by the enclosed proclamation which has been published here the king’s open demonstration to impeach any force from being levied or passing out of France without commission from him; so that Monsieur [Anjou] by these outward shows may receive small hope. His Majesty has also lately sent M. Longlée to Spain to be his agent at the Spanish Court, having recalled M. de Forquevaux his ambassador; and as I understand, has written an assurance to the Spanish king by Longlée that he is so far from liking his brother’s enterprises that he will mount on horseback to “withstand” that no aid shall pass out of this realm.19

England had been working to prevent France from taking definitive steps to ally itself with Spain. This situation, in addition to escalating tensions with Ireland and even Scotland, was helping to put the English court in an apocalyptic mood. In the section where Blenerhasset depicts the pope decrying Elizabeth, he seems aware of the situation regarding France. The pope boasts of his ability to quash the rebellious woman (Elizabeth) and her Protestant uprising, and he declares his power to dispose of countries as he pleases. Dividing the major European powers into opposing camps, the pope claims that Britain, for example, will be defeated and taken over by the Catholic powers. He exclaims: “No

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no, I will subdue them very well: / To Fraunce, to mightie Spaine, to Italie / I Britane giue, Scotlande, and Germanie” (C2v). Blenerhasset places France in the Catholic camp and even showcases this position by mentioning it first. Such a notion capitalizes on the concerns regarding France’s current overtures toward Spain. At the same time, the pope’s description of what he will do with countries once he defeats them emphasizes the consequences to the international balance of power. This shift in geopolitical implications, essentially, highlights Elizabeth’s importance as an elect figure who will save the European Protestant powers. She is truly worthy to become the world’s new Minerva, far more than just England’s pious queen. Blenerhasset’s focus on Elizabeth as the central figure for a transnational project is certainly not novel, as the material in previous chapters has emphasized. In this particular period, the Dutch Protestants continue to represent Elizabeth as the champion of the Gospel and therefore as Europe’s greatest bastion against the Catholic Church. In February 1581, for example, William of Orange uses such praise when he writes to Elizabeth: Now, although many princes have done much harm to the lordship of the Pope, everyone knows that your Majesty has as it were struck him to the heart, and shaken him more mortally than all others, not only by having banished abuses from England and planted true religion there, but also by having with all your power assisted the reception of the same in Scotland, and having given a sure refuge in your kingdom to many from all nations who were persecuted for the truth of the Gospel.20

In 1582, the Low Countries are still looking to Elizabeth and England to lead the pan-European Protestant cause, even though Anjou had become the governor of the States in January of that year. As William Herle mentions to Leicester in a letter dated 3 March 1582, the earl’s and Elizabeth’s backing were crucial to the States’ acceptance of Anjou: “It is likewise as infallible that if you had not arrived here, with the impressions that the people and States had of her Majesty’s favour and aid, and of your sincerity, he never had been received as friend, much less invested as their lord.”21 This opinion was supported by the fact that the publication of the volume detailing the festivities for Anjou was dedicated to Leicester.

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As Blenerhasset considers this international political scene in which Elizabeth and England are central to maintaining pressure against Spain, he—like many others at the time—uses an image of Elizabeth that places her above national alliances. He makes her instead a figure who asserts divine and transcendent power over all of God’s Beloved Church.

Elizabeth as the Bride of Christ: the True Church’s greatest hope against papal evil In the section that culminates with the pope raging against Elizabeth, the queen is depicted on her throne with an empty seat beside her: “On toppe whereof Minerua hath her place, / A glorious seat by which but one did sit” (C1v). In light of Blenerhasset’s frequent allusions to Revelation, the empty chair is most likely for Christ.22 Such an association implies that Elizabeth-as-Minerva symbolizes God’s true Church—an image that works in tandem with another reference to Elizabeth as the Woman Clothed with the Sun, which I will discuss shortly. The fact that the chair is empty locates Christ’s second coming in the flesh as still in the future and thus defers apocalyptic closure even as it conjures its presence. Spenser, for example, will use a similar strategy in The Faerie Qveene when he delays the wedding between Una and Redcrosse Knight at the end of Book 1. Whereas Blenerhasset cloaks his reference to the Bride of Christ within the classical image of Elizabeth as Minerva, Thomas Bentley’s The Monvment of Matrones (also published in 1582) explicitly links Elizabeth’s apocalyptic role as the Bride of Christ with her learned persona.23 Bentley’s and Blenerhasset’s works are in effect twin texts. Both involved the printer Thomas Dawson in at least part of their publication,24 and both used Elizabeth’s learned persona to place her within an apocalyptic, Protestant context. Blenerhasset praises Elizabeth through figures related to Divine Wisdom, but Bentley includes an actual product of her divine studies. Bentley republishes Cancellar’s edition of her Glass, a text that had not been printed since the last major international crisis in 1568–1570, as discussed in chapter one. Bentley also depicts Elizabeth quite overtly as the Bride of Christ who, like the wise virgins in Matthew 25, is ready for the bridegroom’s (i.e., Christ’s) return. Monvment’s title page depicts Elizabeth as the spouse from Canticles—she holds an open book, carries a menorah, and

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is praised as this spouse in the dedication.25 In the third “Lampe,” Bentley includes a section called “The Kings Heast, or Gods familiar speeche to the Qveene” where God endorses Elizabeth as Christ’s beloved spouse, and Elizabeth responds by expressing her humble pliancy to God’s divine will.26

England’s need to unify Bentley’s and Blenerhasset’s praise for Elizabeth as a learned queen served, in part, to counter the criticisms that moderate Puritans and many other English Protestants were beginning to level at her and the National Church. These individuals sought greater reform and viewed Elizabeth as having abjured her potential to lead the True Church. In their opinion, she was not the Bride of Christ. Although Puritans in the early 1580s were hardly voicing the strident defiance that surfaces in the late 1580s and early 1590s, the stirrings of this unrest are visible even in the conciliatory position of such moderate Puritans as Laurence Chaderton. In his A Frvitfvll Sermon (1584), he emphasizes his appreciation for the peace and prosperity that England has enjoyed under Elizabeth’s rule. However, when he describes the position of the Church, he makes the Church itself the Bride of Christ and implies that Elizabeth is purposefully being kept uninformed by malevolent leaders.27 More radical Puritans expressed their censure using the rhetoric from Revelation 3, which indicates how God will spit out of his mouth all lukewarm believers. Elizabeth herself will acknowledge that this rhetoric has been used to criticize her. When addressing the bishops in 1585 regarding their petition for church reform, she told how she had received a letter from beyond the sea written by one that bare her no goodwill. “Would ye know who it were?” quod she, “for I saw and read the letter, who wrote that the papists were [in] hope to prevail again in England, for that her Protestants themselves misliked her, and indeed so [they] do,” quod she, “for I have heard that some of them of late have said that I was of no religion, neither hot [nor] cold, but such a one as one day would give God the vomit.”28

With her interest in avoiding the divisive and prescriptive tendencies embedded in these apocalyptic criticisms, Elizabeth will counter this language with her authority as a queen who balances

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both biblical and philosophical studies. In fact, this larger intellectual territory will underwrite the study of her own demonstrations of learning in the next chapter. When Bentley and Blenerhasset use apocalyptic imagery to praise Elizabeth as a Bride of Christ and figure of Divine Wisdom, they are providing a response to such criticisms against the queen. These poets depict her nation lovingly supporting her. In light of the international threat facing England in the 1580s, the importance of unity must not be underestimated: religious division even in the Protestant ranks within England would weaken the domestic front. The apocalyptic fervor had reached such intensity that it could not be stifled but instead could only be redirected. Blenerhasset and Bentley (and Kyffin) will use this energy to bolster Elizabeth’s authority as a symbol of the nation itself and its pan-European Protestant potential. For Bentley, this unity will come through the act of prayer and through a lightly pan-European image of female piety. For Blenerhasset, it takes a different turn—and one much more akin to the Leicester circle’s moderate Puritan goals: praise for England’s imperial, military agenda.

Appealing to an imperial and interventionist Puritan circle The location of Blenerhasset’s first reference to Elizabeth as the Bride of Christ intimates his distinctly imperial emphasis. In the first vision of the narrative (which magically appears on Neptune’s crown), Blenerhasset conjures up the image of the Woman Clothed with the Sun as found in Revelation 12.29 This biblical figure has the moon at her feet; Blenerhasset modifies it slightly to give it a global emphasis: The seat wherein this courtly Queene did sit was Rubie rare, none seene sorfice[?] so great, a golden globe was vnder both her feete, a comely cloude did compasse all the seate, the sea in vayne the cloude and globe did beate with foming froth, about her heauenly heade Pallas persaude a posie, which shee reade. Not such a godesse againe in Asia, Europ, or Affricke, for vertue, great degree, for her magnanimitie, Nowe let Apollo giue place, let Neptune sit in the chiefe seat, sith in his sea she doth dwel, ruling a world at her wil. (A4v)

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By replacing the moon with a globe resting under Elizabeth’s feet, Blenerhasset is paving the way for a broader context that the poesie above Elizabeth’s head underscores. These verses proclaim her power not only over Europe but also over Asia and Africa; she rules “a world at her wil.” This imperial image, with its reference to “Asia, Europ, or Affricke,” fuses with an apocalyptic image that Foxe had employed in the final scene of his Christus Triumphans. Comoedia Apocalyptica when he portrays Ecclesia praying for her “sponsa” to come while the figures Europus and Africus stand with her.30 In this context, Blenerhasset’s emblematic image of Elizabeth is saturated with apocalyptic and pointedly ecclesiastical connections. Blenerhasset’s use of verse here highlights poetry’s contribution to the imperial project. This connection informs why he makes such explicit invocations of other fictional pieces written for the Leicester circle. These works—most notably Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender and the entertainments written for Elizabeth’s 1575 visit to Kenilworth—use poetry to argue for an interventionist Protestant agenda. Scholars who have discussed Reuelation have emphasized the connections to these poetic works. For example, Blenerhasset includes elements from the Kenilworth devices such as nymphs, the Ladies of the Lake, a Fairy Queen, and a figure Pelephilos (an allusion to Leicester’s chivalric persona in the tilts at Kenilworth).31 He weaves in even more substantial echoes from Shepheardes Calender, such as Reuelation’s pastoral interlude with the three shepherds and Pan, the shepherd god. In addition, the text’s epithalamic sequence of building a coronet to crown Elizabeth as Minerva (C4r–E2r) specifically mirrors the “Aprill” eclogue.32 As Josephine Waters Bennett indicates, Blenerhasset writes as if his readers will recognize the connections he is making; he is writing for an audience of insiders.33 Blenerhasset’s nods to the courtly, pastoral tradition serve to equate the idyllic peace Elizabeth has fostered in England with the larger, global peace that she will bring to the world as the instrument of the Gospel. Before this pacific era of Christ’s final advent can begin, however, the Antichrist must be defeated, and it will take the army of God to effect the destruction that prepares the way for the age of blessing.

Elizabeth’s knights Throughout the text, Blenerhasset has been surrounding Elizabeth with swords and juxtaposing her virtuous presence

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with menacing evil. In the dramatic “coronation” scene where the gods honor Elizabeth as the new Minerva, he unites these divine swords with an imperial agenda—specifically through Elizabeth’s knights. This celebration of symbolic military action demonstrates how much Blenerhasset’s apocalyptic discourse departs from the apocalyptic rhetoric made famous by Foxe and Bale. These previous reformists placed the suffering martyr at the center of their projects, indicating that the path to Christ’s final victory was through the Cross.34 Blenerhasset, Kyffin, and many other writers in the 1580s focus on the action of the Sword rather than the suffering of the Cross. For Blenerhasset, this Sword is a distinctly imperial one, and he integrates this military agenda with Elizabeth’s learned persona in the coronation scene. Elizabeth is crowned as the goddess of sacred wisdom not while she is at prayer but rather while she, her court, her loving countrymen, and a substantial international constituency watch a tilt. Presiding over this festive tournament scene, Elizabeth is depicted as the epicenter of chivalric, international, and domestic power: VVhere then this courtly maiden Queene she staide With all her traine, and manie straingers more For then there were Ambassadors great store: Whom to delight, the people did prepare Triumphes, perfourmde with courage passing rare. The court it selfe none such my selfe haue seene In Fraunce, in Spayne, nor curious Italie, [...] The Mertials and the Iudges had their place, The Harraldes prest to pen eche due desart, The Queene was come, there waited on her grace A hundred Ladies beautifull and braue, The forraine princes and her counsaile graue, When all the showe and euery thing was seene No colours cold compare with white and greene. (E2v–3v)

Not only does the presence of an international audience emphasize England’s transnational role as the host country for this event, but these individuals will now witness Elizabeth’s recognition as a global leader. Her coronation as Minerva will confirm that she indeed possesses the imperial power that has been implied. In turn, Elizabeth’s international power is an extension of her

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beloved sovereignty in domestic affairs. Blenerhasset surrounds her with counselors and masses of adoring subjects as well as with a hundred ladies-in-waiting (much like the maidens in Spenser’s “Aprill” eclogue and, later, the nymphs on Mount Acidale). The tiltyard is also filled with individuals from across the social spectrum, and they are loving, involved, and unified. Seconds before the gods descend, Elizabeth’s subjects articulate their love for her when, with one voice, they “cride God saue the Queene” (E4r). As a culminating image of domestic unity and international centrality, Blenerhasset introduces Elizabeth’s knights. These figures embody the adoration and military power that Elizabeth symbolically possesses. In a scene resembling Accession Day, these knights occupy a heroic space that is larger than life as With trompet shrille made heauen and earth to harke, Immortall gods and mortall men did marke The message which with great solemnitie, was thus declarde to all of each degree. The sheuered staues will well declare the minde Of them who heere this day will showe their might, An Earle by birth and of an noble kinde His chalenge will perfourme euen in despight Of him or them which dare withstande in fight, Therefore you Brutes which would inrich your name Cast armour one and trie the Tilte for fame. [...] The challenger proudly presumde to say That white and greene had not the brauest hewe, But that his Maistris bore the bell away: Her courtly colours were most worthie vewe Hee saide and swore, wherewith the trumpets blewe, The splents of speares which climde the cloudes aboue Did well declare the force of mightie loue. (E3r–v)

This scene has all the standard trappings of courtly chivalry. The knights, inspired by their mighty love for their sovereign lady, accomplish impressive feats to convey their fidelity. One unnamed earl is brought forward for special focus—most likely a nod to Leicester. Here on the symbolic battlefield, Elizabeth’s imperial persona as a wise, virgin queen is openly linked to national defense. When read in light of the rest of Reuelation, however, this scenario gives these knights an apocalyptic blessing. With trumpets

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making heaven and earth take note and the sound of the staves so loud it rises to the clouds, this passage does two things: it moves the focus skywards where the gods are waiting to descend, and it conveys the feeling of Christ’s final coming when He is to descend from the clouds. In fact, when the gods do part the heavens, the crowd fleetingly thinks that it is the apocalypse: “the people did suppose / Heauen was broke loose” (E4r). Blenerhasset conjures up this possibility as a way to link the moment to the earlier apocalyptic images of Elizabeth surrounded by armed, divine figures. This connection provides cosmological resonances for Elizabeth’s knights as the earthly counterparts of those swordwielding angels. Elizabeth’s knights have become God’s army. Once Blenerhasset has infused the image of the knights with divine might, he returns to Elizabeth as the force of the Gospel and imbues her with intimidating power. In the final image, Blenerhasset conflates two key apocalyptic figures: the Woman Clothed with the Sun and the unnamed figure in Revelation 19, who is depicted leading the army of God and who has arrived to make the world obey the Gospel. A radiant angel descends from heaven and tells Elizabeth: “With glory thou dost shine, so like the seemly Sunne, / Braue Besse shal be thy name when al the world is done” (F3v). Through praise of her radiance and the notion of the eschaton, Elizabeth now has elements of the dazzling Woman Clothed with the Sun even as she herself becomes a force of military power. She is “Braue Besse” as well as “mightie Minerua” (F4r). And she is now intimidating to behold: The lookers on with louing feare did shake, Her goodly grace did make the gods to quake: The Muses then and all the people said thy due desert hath thee Minerua made. (F1r)

Interestingly, Elizabeth becomes an imposing presence not by wielding a weapon, as her knights do, but rather through her “goodly grace.” One could argue that Blenerhasset has merely made Elizabeth a true manifestation of the classical Minerva, who is both goddess of wisdom and inventor of armor. His apocalyptic allusions in this final sequence, however, bring to fruition his image of Elizabeth as the Gospel/Divine Wisdom/Tree of Life/Bride of Christ. She is a divine figure surrounded by divinely blessed military forces.

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The apocalyptic poet Even as the scene in the tiltyard is exciting with its rousing chivalric bravado, it is not the climax of the poem. Appropriate for a millennial text, the poem culminates not with warfare and an eschatological end of history, but rather with an emphasis on the time of the elect that extends out into eternity. Blenerhasset ends Reuelation with the figure best suited to write of blessed immortality and its divine secrets: the poet. Like St. John who wrote the biblical Book of Revelation, the speaker in the poem (who represents Blenerhasset) is given the divine mission to write what he has witnessed. The angel who descends from heaven speaks first to Elizabeth. She then addresses this speaker and empowers him to write, when she declares: “Proceed my Muse assist thy seruaunt nowe, / Able his penne to publishe forth her praise” (F1v). After each of the Muses renders tribute to Elizabeth-as-Minerva, Blenerhasset takes center stage, essentially providing the poetic fireworks that follow the chivalric display. As Bennett has noted, Blenerhasset uses “some twenty different stanza forms” in Reuelation, but his poetic experimentation increases dramatically to become “a veritable outburst at the close. Of the various measures attempted, the figure or pattern poems are the most unusual. These (sigg. F1v–G) are the first of their kind to be printed in English.”35 Blenerhasset writes verses that resemble such shapes as a roundel and a phoenix. His postscript especially uses shaped verses to showcase his ability to magnify Elizabeth’s fame. The latter half of these verses reads as follows: Most gratious, most right renowned dame Nowe that I knowe thy due deserued fame, Euermore my Muse shall magnifie thy name: first with thy wit who can compare, thy vertuous inclination is knowne to euery nation, thy learning and thy gifts most rare make perfite declaration nature thy equall neuer yet did frame. Nowe that I knowe thy due deserued fame Euermore my Muse shall magnifie thy name Most gracious, most right renowned dame. (G1v–2r)

Blenerhasset is showcasing his own wit by ringing “changes on a three-line motif, or refrain, beginning with the lines in 1, 2, 3

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order, then introducing them in 2, 3, 1 order, and ending with the same three lines in 3, 1, 2 order.”36 In addition to the witty repetition, Blenerhasset’s visual layout of the verse lines supports his theme: the lines about Elizabeth are the shorter ones in the middle, and the lines emphasizing his craft as a poet are longer. Visually, he demonstrates how the poet magnifies the fame of his queen. Blenerhasset’s focus on the poet and the savvy reader brings full circle his strong reliance on an apocalyptic discourse. He shows how the apocalyptic poet is the one most gifted to link Elizabeth’s imperial, learned persona to a patriotic rhetoric. He places his queen at the center of a forward-looking age that will brandish God’s sword to achieve an eternity of peace.

Kyffin’s The Blessednes of Brytaine Like Blenerhasset, Kyffin uses a language full of righteous swords and royal wisdom in his portrayal of Elizabeth and an elect England. To an even greater extent than Blenerhasset, though, Kyffin endeavors to address the full nation of readers. On the surface, his text simply seems to praise Elizabeth as a learned queen beloved by her people and to call all loyal English subjects to arms. The apparent simplicity of his images and the accessibility of his language, however, make this text seem deceptively straightforward. Kyffin produces a highly intellectual work that speaks one language to the masses and yet another to an inner circle of politically and religiously informed readers, especially members of the Leicester circle. His use of scripture is highly sophisticated; he plants ideas quietly and then rewards readers who patiently wait for clues to crystallize into complex allusions.37 Such a technique allows his work to address both popular and privileged audiences. The details of Kyffin’s apocalyptic subtext are so nuanced and require such integration that most readers may not perceive the deeper framework that rests underneath his rousing and patriotic rhetoric. Kyffin’s strategies are especially appropriate for the poem’s primary function of commemorating Elizabeth’s Accession Day—a day that unites the cheering crowds and the court in expressing love for the queen. Other works produced in this period may speak of national unity, but Blessednes enacts it. In fact, in a poem that concludes the 1588 edition, the linguist John Eliot even praises Kyffin as a true national poet. He is a “Poëte digne d’vn Laurier / Poet

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worthy of a Laurel” (D4v; translation mine). In a dedicatory poem found in both editions, Kyffin is similarly praised as a poet interested in speaking to fellow English subjects. His work is described as “So fitly framd, and fraught, with tryed Truthe, / As may Reioyce, eche loyall subiects heart, / To heare, and see; which hidden had bin Ruthe” (A2v). Kyffin indeed seeks to stir the loyal hearts of his compatriots while speaking of things that have been hidden. It is no wonder he was appointed to important posts in the Low Countries, Normandy, and Ireland beginning in 1588; he demonstrated precisely the kind of knowledge and gifts the Leicester circle prized most. It is also not surprising that the crown sanctioned the 1588 edition, which shows how England’s true international strength involves rallying both the courtly and the common ranks around the symbol of the nation—its queen.

A learned and powerful queen Kyffin opens his text with the image of Elizabeth as a virgin, learned queen—a persona particularly well-suited for infusing Elizabeth’s royal image with national strength and piety. In the second stanza, he lauds Elizabeth as “A Monarch Maiden Queene” whose “Vertues of her Minde” (A3r) make her The Starre of VVomen Sex, Graue Wisdoms store: Sententious, speaking Tongs in filed phraze, Profoundly learnd, and Perfect in eche Lore, Her Fame, no Rav’ning Time shall euer Raze: Hater of Wrong, high Refuge eke for Right, Concord, and Peace, continuing by her Might. (A3v)

Much like Blenerhasset, Kyffin uses Elizabeth’s learning to portray her as a Christian prince who combines book learning with moral rectitude. Her knowledge exudes a certain gravitas; her wisdom is “Sententious”; and she capably speaks multiple languages with the filed tongue of eloquence. In turn, Elizabeth’s erudition yields the appropriate humanist outcome by cultivating virtue. She is a “Hater of Wrong” who serves as a “Refuge eke for Right, / Concord, and Peace.” When Kyffin describes Elizabeth as a refuge, he evokes England’s role as a haven for Protestant exiles, but he positions this assistance specifically within Elizabeth’s person—even more specifically as an outcome of her learning.

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When Kyffin moves into an overtly imperial portrayal of Elizabeth two stanzas later, he begins to represent her through metaphor. The more allusive nature of this device, in turn, allows the scope of her authority to expand dramatically. Kyffin now extols her: Elizabeth, Large Light of Sov’raigne Seat, VVhose Iustice, Prudence, Temprance, Fortitude, Ingrafted yong, are grown foorth spreading Great, Throughout the world, mong Nations wise & rude: No land, but laudes this right Resplendant Rose, Tutor to Frends, and Terror vnto Foes. (A3v)

Starting with the radiance of Elizabeth’s virtues, Kyffin picks up on the emphasis of her virtue through her learning from a few stanzas earlier. He uses the rhetorical figure synecdoche (referring to the whole by some of its parts) to have the cardinal virtues he lists stand for Elizabeth herself. He then moves away from her person even further by taking these virtues and, using a verb related to horticulture, likens her to a tree. Her virtues are first “Ingrafted” and then grow, overspreading the world. It is this image, not Elizabeth personally, that associates her most directly with an imperial authority that is recognized “Throughout the world.” Having established this international stature, Kyffin capitalizes on the floral imagery and evokes Elizabeth’s monarchical emblem as “this right Resplendant Rose”—a notion he solidifies when he puns on Tudor with the idea of “Tutor” in the next line. By placing the “Rose” image right after moving the queen into the international arena, Kyffin acknowledges her power both as England’s sovereign and as imperial monarch. Most significantly for Kyffin’s text, Elizabeth’s image as the Rose had already become associated with her right to exercise such Christian and expansive authority. Paulus Melissus, a prominent figure in panEuropean Protestant relations (as discussed in the last chapter), praised Elizabeth as his “Rosina.”38 Of more immediate relevance for Kyffin, John Dee had included this same image in General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation.39 Dee’s text was published for court circles less than two years before he and Kyffin began working together. On the title page of Dee’s text (see figure 3.1), Elizabeth is depicted at the helm of a ship that has Christian, imperial associations. With Christ’s monogram pictured at the top of each mast, the ship bears the inscription

Figure 3.1 Title page of John Dee’s General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (1577); STC 6459.

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“EΥPΩ∏H” (Europe), and the bull with Europa astride it is portrayed swimming alongside. As further support of Elizabeth’s Christian authority, the Tetragrammaton appears in the rays of light that emanate from the sky above the queen.40 In the upper compartment of Dee’s title page, these aspects of Elizabeth as a Christian, imperial queen coalesce in the simplicity of two symbols that link her dynastic and ecclesiastical authorities: a pair of Tudor Roses and her coat of arms (which is topped with an imperial crown). The Tudor Roses in this image (as in Kyffin’s poetry) intimate Elizabeth’s role as both queen and imperial leader of God’s True Church. The ecclesiastical resonance associated with the rose comes from Solomon’s Song of Songs where the Beloved (who is glossed as a figure of the Church) claims, “I Am the Rose of the fielde” (2:1).41 As an imperial and ecclesiastical Rose, Elizabeth becomes both a national and an international figure who, as the symbol of the True Church, can be placed within an apocalyptic scenario. In the final line of this stanza, Kyffin begins to incorporate the idea of aggression appropriate for this eschatological context when he crystallizes the themes of wisdom, imperial sovereignty, and might. He proclaims Elizabeth as “Tutor to Frends, and Terror vnto Foes” (A3v). What makes this last line such a nice encapsulation of those that precede it is how Kyffin wittily plays with the various connotations of the word “Tutor.” In addition to the pun on “Tudor” (as mentioned earlier), he conjures up the image of Elizabeth as a “tutor,” someone who shares knowledge as an educator. Such an implication works well with the image of her learning, which he emphasized at length in previous stanzas. “Tutor” also has an imperial association because its Latin equivalent is “tutela” (meaning “protector”). In fact, Elizabeth had recently been described as a tutela in the pageants prepared for Leicester and his English party in the Low Countries early in 1586. When Leicester, Sidney, and Essex rode into The Hague that year, they passed under a triumphal arch that depicted Elizabeth as a Minerva flanked by seven maidens representing the Provinces. Included on this arch were Latin verses that described Elizabeth as a pious tutela.42 This image on the arch integrates her learning with her role as the Beloved Protector of the True Church. Even more appropriately, in the document portraying Leicester’s entry, the earl is depicted approaching this particular arch. To honor Elizabeth’s power as the force behind Leicester, the Low Countries

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continue to emphasize, even in this military event, Elizabeth’s imperial role as a wise (and now armed) queen.43 Because Kyffin dedicated his text to Essex, it is likely that Essex and the rest of his circle would have recognized Kyffin’s use of the same image presented to them less than two years earlier. In Kyffin’s text, Elizabeth is not armed outright, but as the “Terror vnto Foes,” she is an intimidating presence. Significantly, Kyffin builds to this image by connecting Elizabeth with the cardinal virtues of Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude that he depicts as branching “Throughout the world, mong Nations wise & rude.” These virtues, in and of themselves, are not necessarily related to international politics; however, Kyffin’s use of them (and even the notion of them branching) may be an allusion to Dee’s well-known political text Brytannicae Reipublicae Synopsis Imperii Limites. In this work, Dee outlines strategies that branch visually on the page and are designed to make England “flourishing, / Triumphant, famous, and Blessed.”44 Although Synopsis was prepared for an exclusive political audience in 1570, it was so well known that Dee could refer to it years later and in a way that showed its continued relevance. In addition, Kyffin worked with Dee from 1578 to 1580, so it is likely that they would have discussed their beliefs, even if Kyffin never saw the manuscript firsthand. Kyffin’s Blessednes acknowledges Dee’s focus on England’s blessed state not only in the title but also in the context that surrounds Kyffin’s association between Elizabeth and the cardinal virtues. The two items that Kyffin addresses next in his poem— Elizabeth’s success in increasing the value of England’s coinage and in augmenting England’s defenses (A4r)—correspond precisely to Dee’s chart. In Synopsis, Dee divides his framework into three primary areas: “Vertue,” “Welth,” and “Strength.” The section on virtue, quite appropriately, is divided into the categories of the four cardinal virtues, with Wisdom listed first. Unfortunately, Dee’s section on Wisdom was so badly damaged that its top three tiers are illegible.45 However, its placement at the top, as well as the conventional belief that wisdom (often called prudence) is the pinnacle of all earthly virtues, most likely informs Kyffin’s lengthy praise of Elizabeth’s wisdom as the foundation for bringing England to a state of military strength. It is highly probable that Kyffin was referring to Dee’s text. First, Kyffin began his work with Dee right after Dee had completed his Memorials in 1576/77. This text, according to Sherman,

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“initiated the period of his [Dee’s] most intense historical and geographical research and his most influential participation in the government of the Elizabethan commonwealth.”46 As an extension of this work, Kyffin was helping Dee complete maps of the North Atlantic that Dee would use to convey to the crown Britain’s potential for becoming a true empire. In light of Dee’s imperial interests (and our knowledge that Kyffin and Dee remained close friends), 47 Kyffin’s acknowledgment of Dee’s works makes sense. Second, Kyffin and Dee were interested in pragmatic approaches to England’s national security. As Sherman has explained, Dee’s approach in Memorials “is not so much occult, scientific, or even political philosophy: it offers pragmatic counsel for the development of British naval power as a remedy to problems facing the Elizabethan administration in the 1570s.”48 Dee repeatedly acknowledges his interest in the pragmatic consequences of political agenda: he considers the possibility of food shortages, jobs, and social unrest—issues that directly impact the whole commonwealth.49 Kyffin’s text, with its focus on using an Accession Day piece of literature to reach and rally the nation behind Elizabeth, also demonstrates a certain pragmatism in approaching national security. Kyffin is not writing an abstract text designed to philosophize about national unity: he is working to create it by addressing even the most common readers. Also as part of this practical approach, Kyffin is exhibiting to the Leicester circle that he is well qualified for international, military appointment. His interest and ability in speaking to England’s entire nation of readers would be instrumental in garnering widespread support for the circle’s military agenda. Dee, on the other hand, wrote texts that were geared to a circle of sophisticated readers who occupied the highest ranks of Elizabethan politics. Kyffin could take some of Dee’s ideas—the need for military strength, for example—and create a text that would stir the populace and the upper crust simultaneously. Such delicate balancing is most important when including politically controversial references to the apocalypse.

An apocalyptic framework for the courtly readers: Elizabeth as the Rose of Truth Kyffin includes but submerges stirrings of apocalyptic language right after his lightly imperial description of Elizabeth as a “Tutor

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vnto Frends.” He first notes her Protestant authority as a Queen of the Gospel. She is “A pow’rfull Prop of Christes Euangell pure, / On whose Support, it rests Reposed sure” (A4r). He then moves into a strongly antipapal sequence against “Raging Rome” (B2r), where Elizabeth serves as the force of virtue. However, he does not make her a Queen of the Word, but rather he returns to the earlier floral imagery and describes her, several times, as a plant. In a portrayal reminiscent of Blenerhasset’s Elizabeth as Divine Wisdom/Tree of Life surrounded by armed angels, Kyffin uses a similar image that has even more apocalyptic associations: Our kingly Rooted Rose, fresh flowring stands; Garded by Gods great Powre, and Prouidence: Amasing much, all Traitours trembling hands, VVhich plye to pluck this Plant by violence: Yea *Truthe downe treading Treason vnto shame, [. . .] Esdras. 3.c.4. Victor suruiues, by vanquishing the same. (B2r)

Similar in strategy to Blenerhasset, Kyffin surrounds Elizabeth with violence, yet presents her as divinely protected. He picks up his metaphor of Elizabeth as the Rose from earlier, now making her an overtly holy—and decidedly imperial—plant. First, he sets up the imperial connotation by calling her “A Blessed Branch of Brutus Royall Race” (B1v). Then, he layers in an allusion to 3 Esdras (which is cited in the margin, as provided above). This reference aligns Elizabeth with the transcendent figure of Truth, who is described thus in 3 Esdras: As for the trueth it endureth, and is alway strong, it liueth, and conquereth for euermore world without ende. With her there is no exception or difference of persons, but she doeth that iust is, and refrayneth from all vniust and wicked things, & all men doe well like of her works. In the iudgement of it there is no vnrighteous thing, and she is the strength, kingdome, power, and maiestie of all ages. (3 Esdras 4:38–40)

Not only does Truth’s influence last forever but also this figure, much like Divine Wisdom, is personified as a virtuous woman. Truth’s gender is particularly significant and is even made the focus of humor in 3 Esdras. This description of Truth appears as part of a contest of wisdom that is performed for King Darius by three of his guards. When the third (and victorious) speaker

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delivers his oration that culminates in this discussion of Truth, he begins by jesting that women are stronger than men—even kings. Kyffin cleverly registers this idea of female supremacy while also associating Elizabeth with Truth herself. He combines the notion of Truth with a millennial apocalypse in the final lines of the 1587 edition when he urges his English peers to be grateful for the blessed peace and prosperity England enjoys: “And so Redound, the happiest Realme for ay, / Vnturn’d from Truth, ev’n till the Latter Day” (B4v). Kyffin fuses patriotism with a millennial mission—a fusion that places Elizabeth at the center through her interlaced personae as Divine Truth and the Sovereign Rose. At the end of the 1588 expanded edition, Kyffin taps into another element present in context from the speech about Truth in 3 Esdras. The winner of the contest is allowed to make one request of the king, and the guard who wins the contest holds Darius accountable to a promise the king had made to God: he would rebuild Jerusalem (3 Esdras 4:43–47). This chosen city conjures up not only the image of divine blessing but also the millennial idea of the New Jerusalem.50 Kyffin associates England with Jerusalem in 1588 when he concludes the “Continvation” with Psalm 147. In it, David instructs the inhabitants of this holy city to sing praises to God because he “hath blessed thy Children within thee. Hee hath made all thy Borders Peace: And with the good Nutriment of VVheate doth satisfie thee, &c. Hee hath not don thus to euery Nation els” (D4r). By ending The Blessednes of Brytaine with this same Psalm, Kyffin reinforces his notion that England is the site for God’s New Jerusalem—and that Elizabeth is God’s beloved Rose.51

Anti-prophetic apocalyptic text Although Kyffin writes a text accessible to the common reader, he submerges his millennial references, making them recognizable only to élite readers who will not misuse this more controversial rhetoric. Not only does Kyffin create a highly complex network of allusions but he also overtly discourages readers from eschatological interpretation. His blatant criticism of this type of analysis works in perfect tandem with Elizabeth’s 1589 proclamation that sought to sublimate the apocalyptic craze evident in such texts as Aske’s Elizabetha Trivmphans.52 Kyffin produces a work that contains the militaristic, imperial, and apocalyptic language so

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popular in the Leicester circle—yet he places it under the cover of seemingly anti-prophetic patriotism: The fatall yeere of fearefull Eighty Eight, Forethreatning falls of Empires, Realms, & Kings: Out-breathing Bale, to euery Earthly wight, By pestring Plagues, and Dreadfull drery things. (C3v)

With exaggerated alliteration, Kyffin creates a mocking tone that dismisses all the apocalyptic panic foretelling the end of the world, and he even references Bale (whose work on the apocalypse was well-known). Significantly, though, he prefaces these cutting remarks with three stanzas that are steeped in the tradition of prophecy. Tracing the three phases of time, Kyffin employs this prophetic topos: “Time was when Popes through-pold this Royal Ream, / Reauing eche Right, fowle Might Misruling all”; “Time is, when Iustice houlds the Regall Throne; / . . . VVe, Rul’d by Right: They, wrongd by Cruel Rage”; “Time shalbe, when our murding Malecontents, / VVhich Murmur, and Malign this shining State” (C2v– C3r; emphasis in bold added). In this period, Robert Greene will use the same type of prognosticating language in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (ca. 1589) when he depicts Roger Bacon creating the brazen head to foresee the future and, as an appropriate corollary to Kyffin’s text, to ensure England’s national defense. Greene may have borrowed this motif from Blessednes—an idea all the more possible because John Wolfe published both Blessednes and most of Greene’s works beginning in 1587. Giving his well-read readers a bit of a wink, Kyffin draws upon the tradition he outwardly disparages. Kyffin further deflates the recent vogue of apocalyptic prophesy by claiming that “Mens prophesies be vaine, / When God decreeth a Contrarie Successe: / Fraud is the frute of Mans vnstable braine / Outstrayd from Truth, in Errors wide excesse” (C3v). Kyffin emphasizes the frailty and vanity of human wisdom and specifically sets these ideas apart from God’s plan. Such contrast not only (seemingly) undercuts the validity of the recent prognostications but also lays the foundation for the climactic reference to Elizabeth. Kyffin will reward the careful reader who remembers this distinction between an earthly and a divine perspective. Recognizing it unlocks the series of references that will link love for the queen with both apocalyptic blessing and a patriotic call to military service.

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Love, apocalyptic blessedness, and war Kyffin centers the “Continvation” on love for Elizabeth and uses this idea to call for military action by integrating two related biblical passages: 1 Corinthians 2:9 and Isaiah 64:1–4. The sequence begins with the emphasis on love found in 1 Corinthians, a focus established at the outset of the “Continvation.” Kyffin extols the queen as one who “liues in loue of all” and “Who hath the harts, of her leege folk in hold” (C2r). A few stanzas later, he brings to fruition this idea of love: Adore we God who lends vs still her lyfe: Adore we her, whom God hath plas’d in Powre: Adore we him in her that Stints our Strife: Adore we Both, Respectiuelie, eche howre: The one in Heav’n Directs vs by his Grace: The other here on Earth, supplieth his place. (C2v)

A number of poetic devices interlace Elizabeth’s position with God’s. The alternating rhyme scheme with the concluding couplet enacts a juxtaposition that ends with fusion. In addition, the repetition of “Adore” emphasizes the idea of love even as the parallel construction (through the rhetorical figure anaphora) equates love for God with love for queen. The focus on God is already part of the Corinthians passage that underwrites this moment. Invoking the millennial joy that the elect will experience, St. Paul writes: “But as it is written, The eye hath not seene, and the eare hath not heard, neither haue entred into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that loue him” (1 Cor. 2:9). Kyffin takes this idea of love for God and inserts Elizabeth—a notion that makes this moment far more charged than the standard praise of Elizabeth as a divinely elected and beloved monarch. He is placing Elizabeth within an apocalyptic scenario that weaves together the entire text’s themes of Elizabeth’s wisdom, divinity, and intimidating power into a single passage that unlocks his poetic, apocalyptic code. On one level, this stanza harkens back to the opening image of Elizabeth as a Christian, learned queen from the first section of the 1587 text. Although the Corinthians moment in the “Continvation” seems solely about love, attention to the context of verse 2:9 in the epistle shows how Kyffin is still associating Elizabeth with wisdom, though now of a different—and distinctly

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divine—kind. In the beginning chapters of 1 Corinthians, St. Paul contrasts God’s knowledge with earthly learning. He tells the Corinthian congregation that the latter is nothing but vanity and foolishness (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:20)—ideas Kyffin had included when he discussed the false prognostications as “vaine” and the products of an “vnstable braine.” Through these allusions to 1 Corinthians, Kyffin implies that England has enjoyed a quasi-millennial peace because of its queen, who embodies the divine wisdom Paul celebrates. As Richard Bauckham suggests, St. Paul uses his passage to refer to the time of future blessedness that the elect will experience after the final battle but right before Christ’s final coming.53 Kyffin will use this choice, however, to make this millennial peace and love for Elizabeth the building blocks to call all of England to unite in preparation for apocalyptic warfare.

Unity of hearts and hands Kyffin draws upon the correlation between 1 Corinthians 2:9 and its reference to Isaiah 64—an Old Testament section filled with God’s violent actions to preserve His Church. When St. Paul says, “But as it is written,” he is referring to Isaiah 64:4, which reads: “For since the beginning of the world, it hath not bene heard or perceiued, neither hath any eye seene another God beside thee, which doest so much for them that put their trust in thee.” Isaiah, like Paul, stresses the rewards that God bestows on his chosen people; however, in Isaiah, the focus is not on love but on violence. The prophet asks God to cleaue the heauens in sunder and come downe, that the mountaines might melt away at thy presence, Like as at an hote fire, and [that the malicious might boile away] as the water doeth vpon the fire: whereby thy name might bee knowen among thine enemies, and that the Gentiles might tremble before thee. When thou wroughtest wonderous strange workes, wee looked not for them: thou camest downe, and the hils melted at thy presence. (64:1–3; Brackets are provided in the original.)

In the final pages of his text where he gives a lengthy description of how God has saved England, Kyffin invokes similar upheaval: A Miracle of mightie Magnitude, Don by the Dreadfull Powre of Gods Right hand:

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VVherein our Might and Meanes he did exclude, That so himself most Gloriously may stand: It is beyond the Reache of Humane thought, To think the Things be for our sakes hath wrought. By hideous stormes, their Ships constraynd to stray, Rusht some on Rocks, and some on Sholles and Sands, Betottred, torn, and Rent in Wrackt array: Much of their men, dead strowd on Shoares & Strands: Others Deuourd in Depth of Surging Seas, Both Men and Ships, the waters wrath t’appeas. (C4r–v)

Uniting the ideas of violent miracles and the unfathomable bounty of God’s rewards, Kyffin merges his allusions to 1 Corinthians and Isaiah. Even the concept of miracles is part of the exegetical tradition for the Isaiah passage. According to the gloss for the opening verses of this chapter in the 1560 Geneva Bible, Isaiah speaks these words as he “continueth his prayer, desiring God to declare his loue toward his Church by miracles, and mightie power as he did in mount Sináni.”54 Kyffin’s notions of might and miracles resonate with this gloss and, in turn, emphasize how England is God’s chosen nation. In fact, the conflict that England shall witness is, in part, proof of God’s care for England’s Church and its wise, beloved queen. By conflating 1 Corinthians with Isaiah 64, Kyffin brings together the language of God’s sword with St. Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthian congregation to unify in love. A few chapters later, the epistle uses this sense of unity to place love as one of the gifts to support the perfection of the Church. The headnote for 1 Corinthians 13 in the 1584 Bishops’ Bible emphasizes this: “Because loue is the fountaine and rule of edifying the Church, he [St. Paul] setteth forth the nature, office, and praise thereof.” Most significantly for Kyffin’s text, this exact passage had played a fundamental role in the discourse of conformity employed by John Bridges and other influential supporters of England’s National Church. In A Defence of the Government Established in the Chvrch of Englande for Ecclesiasticall Matters (1587), Bridges uses this section of scripture to support conformity to England’s Church and, more importantly, Elizabeth’s own ecclesiastical authority as the Supreme Governor over this Church. He explains that earthly governors are “mentioned in expresse termes” in St. Paul’s 1 Corinthians 12:27. Bridges then integrates this concept of governors with

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love and the perfection of ecclesiastical government when he continues: But of the excellencie of loue or charitie, aboue all the giftes and offices that he had named: and maketh this the waie to tend vnto the perfection of the church, concluding thus: And now abideth faith, hope, and loue, these three: but the cheefest of these is loue. This was the full drift of S. Paule in this place, concerning the mysticall bodie of Christe, which is his church or house, and that the building vp thereof: euen, where he speaketh of Gouernors, and of the waye tending to perfection.55

In this same way, Kyffin’s language of love for Elizabeth conjures up the queen’s divinity, wisdom, ecclesiastical authority, and status as beloved by her subjects—now all wrapped into one language that makes these resonances accessible to those readers sufficiently well-read in scripture and ecclesiastical politics. In turn, these layers of meaning, particularly in relation to the allusions to Isaiah, reach apocalyptic fruition when Kyffin ends the text with all of England taking up arms. For readers who recognize his biblical references, his agenda is clearly apocalyptic. For those who see only the notions of love and military strength, the text seems more about the patriotic unity that Accession Day celebrates—and that Kyffin’s text inspires. For these latter readers, Kyffin reaches out beyond the circle of mighty knights depicted in the 1587 edition now to include in “Continvation” the private subjects of England. In a rousing call to arms, Kyffin addresses his fellow Englishmen: VVho will not Fight against a Cruell Foe? How can we Ioyne in Iuster Cause of fight? Than to Conserue our selues from slaughtring woe, VVith Courage fierce, and forcefull Manly Might? Lands Liberties, and Liues, lye on the stake; VVhereof eche priuate person dooth partake. (D2r)

By including “eche priuate person” in his scenario, Kyffin acknowledges more than just readers in the inner circles of political power. He also does not emphasize St. Paul’s idea of the unfathomable blessings individuals will reap from God but rather the distinctly earthly benefits of preserving “Lands Liberties, and Liues.” He does not appeal to his compatriots using claims of virtue or godliness but rather their “forcefull Manly Might.” This section is a battle

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oration, not a sermon or prayer, and it is clearly addressed to the full nation because “eche priuate person” partakes of the benefits. Kyffin then calls upon all Englishmen to “Conioyne all in strength of hearts, and strong hands” (D3r), which underscores the emphasis on national unity present in St. Paul’s epistle. Kyffin addresses the full audience present on Accession Day—from the inner circle who will devise policy to the roaring crowds needed to enact it. This capability carves out a distinct place for the national poet as the figure who serves the commonwealth in a very pragmatic way. Kyffin creates a place for the Christian poet-knight who can both stir the common people and speak to the inner circles. And his language does stir the minds of the inner circles—even that of the queen herself. In the subsequent chapters of this book, 1 Corinthians 2:9 will echo in Elizabeth’s 1592 oration, in Essex’s own Accession Day praise of his beloved queen, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and in Elizabeth’s own 1601 speech to Parliament. But the transformation of Elizabeth’s divine wisdom into love, national unity, and imperial strength has its roots in the 1580s—in such quiet and unexplored realms as the texts written by two scholar-soldier-poets who wrote for the Leicester circle.

CHAPTER 4

PHILOSOPHER-QUEEN: ELIZABETH’S TRANSCENDENT WISDOM IN THE 1590S

D

uring the apocalyptic 1580s when writers hailed Elizabeth I as a Protestant Queen of God’s Word, Elizabeth herself projected a very different learned persona. In her self-depiction, gone were the swords, the high drama, and even her decidedly Protestant identity. Instead, she portrayed herself as a philosopher-queen whose broad range of studies gave her the perspective necessary to transcend myopic sectarian divisions. This transcendent wisdom would serve Elizabeth well in the 1580s and 1590s—a period when her own nation and indeed all of Europe were becoming increasingly polarized along religious lines. As a reaction against such divisiveness, Elizabeth creates a learned persona that will allow her to be associated with, but not limited to, any one sect of Christianity. She will use this transcendent position to transform the official rhetoric of national religious conformity into a language of love centered upon her person. In this way, Elizabeth’s learned demonstrations shed light on her distinctive approach to developing her own ecclesiastical image as Supreme Governor over her National Church. They also illuminate her quasi-diplomatic role in creating an expansive spiritual position that helps maintain amicable relations with Catholic countries—particularly with France. In a persona that merges domestic with international politics, the queen creates an ecclesiastical presence that urges national—but not international— religious conformity. Elizabeth’s most extensive displays of such philosophical wisdom occur in the early 1590s. Of particular importance were the Latin oration she delivered before a high-profile audience at the

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University of Oxford in 1592 and her court-acclaimed translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy in 1593, both of which this chapter will examine. Although these demonstrations are the most sustained examples, the queen actually adopted this philosophic persona in the French verses that she produced circa 1590 and, even earlier, in her speech at the close of Parliament in 1585.1 Brief attention to her Parliament speech serves as a fitting prologue to this chapter because it demonstrates how Elizabeth used her image as a philosopher-queen to address issues of religious conformity. In the speech, Elizabeth directly addresses her “lords of the clergy” and asserts her own authority in ecclesiastical affairs by claiming: “I am supposed to have many studies, but most philosophical. I must yield this to be true: that I suppose few (that be no professors) have read more. And I need not tell you that I am so simple that I understand not, nor so forgetful that I remember not. And amid my many volumes, I hope God’s Book hath not been my seldomest lectures.”2 Elizabeth includes scripture as part—but only part—of her larger intellectual work. Such emphasis on her extensive reading soon creates a sharp contrast with how she describes the schismatic clergy who throughout this session had clamored for greater reform. She mocks their overly exacting approach to the Bible: “I see many overbold with God almighty, making too many subtle scannings of His blessed will, as lawyers do with human testaments” (CW, pp. 182–83). Elizabeth implies that she is not shackled to petty detail. Furthermore, when she applies the phrase “subtle scannings” to biblical exegesis, she mixes her philosophical with her biblical studies. She had used the phrase “subtle scanning” in her translation of Seneca’s (highly Stoic) Epistle 107 that she had given to her godson John Harington in 1567.3 In 1585, Elizabeth claims that she is a queen with a larger vision—one that supports her right to dictate her nation’s ecclesiastical policies. She refuses to adopt the reforms called for and even threatens to “depose” those who fail to comply with her demands. When Elizabeth evoked her philosophical studies to call for national religious unity, she was doing nothing new. Rather, she was tapping into a well-established tradition on the Continent that had, in recent years, taken especial hold in France. Weary after decades of religious conflict in their homelands, a number of highly influential writers across Europe had used the discourse of

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philosophical transcendence. They employed this secular approach in their attempts to heal the religious fractures that had deepened in the 1580s—fractures that had widened in large part through the divisiveness of apocalyptic rhetoric. These writers, including Justus Lipsius, Michel de Montaigne, Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, and Guillaume du Vair, produced texts that urged their nations to adopt a larger vision, often by harmonizing Christian wisdom with Neostoic philosophy. This philosophical trend had become popular in France in the 1580s when religious divides proved to be insurmountable. As a result of this schism, King Henri III was assassinated in 1589, and his successor, Henri IV, was denied access to Paris until 1594. Committed to returning their nation to a stable peace, a group of Huguenots and royalist Catholics drew upon Neostoic language to rally their compatriots around Henri IV, particularly once he became king in 1589.4 These writers used Neostoicism’s focus on rational stability and extirpation of the passions to depict Henri as a selfless King of Reason who, in his self-sacrifice, could provide a model of virtue around which all his subjects could unite. The situation in France during this period is central to understanding Elizabeth’s Oxford oration and translation of Boethius because these two learned demonstrations were performed on either side of the most significant event regarding Anglo-French relations in the 1590s: Henri IV’s conversion to Catholicism. Elizabeth’s 1592 oration to Oxford occurred a year before the conversion, during a time when a French delegation was urging Elizabeth to continue sending money, men, and munitions to Henri in support of his efforts to pacify his country. Henri’s military approach to achieving peace, however, proved unsuccessful, and he converted in July 1593. In response, Elizabeth began and completed her rapid-fire translation of Boethius. Unlike the uncertainties of authorship that haunt her foreign language prayers of 1569, both of these demonstrations were the work of Elizabeth herself. We have an autograph copy of her translation of Boethius (some parts are scribal), as well as numerous transcriptions of the 1592 oration. Although some discrepancies exist among these latter manuscript copies, the texts are quite similar, thus suggesting they capture the essence of Elizabeth’s address.5 Scholars have examined Elizabeth’s translation of Boethius as a general response to Henri’s conversion6; however, no sustained analysis has been devoted to exactly how this production dovetails

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with the rhetoric being produced in contemporary Anglo-French relations. By contrast, the 1592 oration has received almost no scholarly attention whatsoever, even though its language integrates a complex response to both domestic and Anglo-French contexts. To situate both of these texts within the network of domestic and international politics, this chapter will examine them alongside Elizabeth’s letters to Henri, French works that praise Henri as a Neostoic King of Reason, and texts produced to support conformity in England, such as Richard Hooker’s Of the Lavves of Ecclesiasticall Politie.7 Ultimately, this chapter will argue that examining Elizabeth’s learned persona as a philosopher-queen in the 1590s helps to situate the Elizabethan National Church within a transnational context—a focus that has received only sporadic attention.8 Significant work has been conducted on Elizabeth’s successor, the learned King James I, and the rhetoric he used to cultivate international religious concord.9 This chapter’s focus on Elizabeth’s learned persona demonstrates the stirrings of this royal approach. Elizabeth’s strategies demonstrate how the rise of the “Anglican Church” is intimately bound up with creating the kind of stable international alliances that could maintain a tense, but sufficiently equal, balance of power in Europe. For some of her subjects (such as Hooker) but not Elizabeth herself, the importance of establishing international stability will prompt discussions to convene general councils that could establish ecumenical relations among churches—relations that could exist alongside the secular laws of nations.10 Elizabeth, however, remained focused on England and the more pragmatic issue of national security. In this way, her interest was firmly fixed on keeping France from aligning with Spain. Her 1592 oration and her translation of Boethius shed light on how Elizabeth asserted a presence in her nation’s diplomatic and ecclesiastical work. Through her learning, she sought to unify, assess relations, and urge alliances—all to secure her nation’s peace in an increasingly perilous Europe.

Elizabeth’s Latin Oration at the University of Oxford (1592) In this oration, Elizabeth addresses national religious unity and foreign relations using a highly intricate language that centers these issues on her person. Presenting herself as a Queen of

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Love, Peace, and Divine Wisdom, she spoke to an audience who would have been quick to recognize the international and ecclesiastical resonances in this self-image. Among those in attendance were the members of the French delegation sent by Henri IV; William Cecil, Lord Burghley; John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury; John Rainolds; Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex; Henry Wriostheley, Earl of Southampton; as well as top officials from the University.11 Included in this group from academia was Henry Savile, Head of Merton College. Earlier in the royal visit, he had explicitly acknowledged Elizabeth’s role in foreign affairs when he delivered an oration thanking the queen “for hir great patience in hearinge, and with a longe discourse concerninge such benefit as God, by her Highnes, had bestowed upon us, and upon many forraine nations and Princes, by hir Highnes means.”12 To such internationally focused figures as Savile, Elizabeth’s speech was important enough to include in Merton College’s Register. In this Oxford speech, Elizabeth seems to present herself more as a loving queen of compromised intellect than a monarch deftly merging foreign relations with domestic religious politics. At the opening of the oration, she claims that her care for England has compromised both her reason and her memory. She then praises the academic exercises the university has prepared for her visit and says that they are noteworthy, but not as important as love, which she values even more. In the concluding sequence, Elizabeth will diminish the importance of intellectual endeavor again when she commands her audience to cease disputing the finer points of worship and to simply follow her laws instead. This message is quite different from the one Elizabeth delivered at the University of Cambridge in 1564 when she told her audience: Semita nulla rectior, vel ad bona fortuna acquirenda, vel ad meam gratiam conciliandam, quam vt gnauiter studiis vestris (vt coepistis) operam adhibeatis, quod vt faciatis omnes vos oro obsecroque. / No path is more direct, either to gain good fortune or to procure my grace, than diligently, in your studies which you have begun, to stick to your work; and that you do this, I pray and beseech you all.13

In this speech, Elizabeth provided a classic articulation of the humanist claim that higher education will lead to royal favor and

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government service. Her 1592 oration, however, follows a very different tack by focusing on love rather than on learning. Indeed, the speech adopts an anti-intellectual vein, but the underpinnings are highly intellectual. Once exposed, they reveal how Elizabeth uses this tightly crafted oration to integrate her ecclesiastical position with Anglo-French relations.

The key to the oration: St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians The most crucial element to understanding how Elizabeth moves between these domestic and international contexts is to identify the most overt scriptural allusion in her oration. Early in the speech, Elizabeth echoes a passage from St. Paul’s 1 Corinthians when she explains that the academic events prepared for her pale in comparison to what really matters: love. In a passage worth quoting at length, she claims: Non sunt laudes eximiae et insignes, sed immeritae meae, Non doctrinarum in multis generibus indicationes, narrationes et explicationes, Non orationes multis et varijs modis eruditè et insignitèr expressae, sed aliud quiddam est multo pretiosius atque praestantius, Amor scilicet, qui nec vnquam auditus nec scriptus nec memoria hominum notus fuit, cuius exemplo parentes carent, nec inter familiares cadet, imò nec inter amantes, in quorum sortem non semper fides incidit experientia ipsa docente. Talis est iste vt nec persuasiones nec minae nec execrationes delere poterunt. / Your merits are not the exceptional and notable praises (unmerited by me) that you have given me; nor declarations, narrations, and explications in many kinds of learning; nor orations of many and various kinds eruditely and notably expressed; but another thing which is much more precious and more excellent: namely, a love that has never been heard nor written nor known in the memory of man. Of this, parents lack any example; neither does it happen among familiar friends; no, nor among lovers, in whose fate faithfulness is not always included, as experience itself teaches. It is such that neither persuasions nor threats nor curses can destroy. (ACFLO, p. 164; CW, p. 327; emphasis added)

When Elizabeth celebrates the profound love her subjects feel for her, she is borrowing from 1 Corinthians 2:9, which in the 1588 Bishops’ Bible reads: “But as it is written, The eye hath not seene, and the eare hath not heard, neither haue entred into the hart

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of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that loue him.”14 Comparing this passage with Elizabeth’s speech reveals that the queen makes a significant revision to the original passage: she makes herself, not God, the object of adoration. In much the same way that Maurice Kyffin used this passage in 1588, Elizabeth conflates love for God with love for her.15 This moment not only supports her status as a divinely anointed queen, but it also begins her strategy to place herself, quite literally, at the heart of her nation’s religious devotion. Beloved of her people, Elizabeth is the Queen of Love, and indeed, the love her subjects have for her is as elevated and rare as the divinity the scriptural passage evokes. They love her with an adoration that surpasses all other earthly relationships: between parent and child, between friends, even between lovers. Elizabeth is the object of love so constant that words (curses, threats, persuasions) cannot alter it. This idea continues to solidify her use of St. Paul because it conjures up the notion of worldly rhetoric, particularly with her inclusion of “persuasiones.” Exegetical work on 1 Corinthians had long made rhetoric the antithesis of true, God-centered wisdom. In the 1590 edition of the Geneva Bible, the note for 1 Corinthians 1:17 makes this specific connection when it glosses the “wisdome of wordes” as “painted speach,” thus acknowledging the long-standing depiction of rhetoric as cosmetics.16 Indeed, the contrast between such false kinds of wisdom and love for God lies at the heart of the opening chapters of 1 Corinthians. There, St. Paul disparages all earthly wisdom when he asks: “Where is the wise? where is the Scribe? where is the disputer of this worlde? Hath not God made the wisedome of this world foolish?” (1 Cor. 1:20). Such criticism of intellectual endeavor explains why Elizabeth begins this section of the oration by claiming that the academic entertainments the University has prepared for her—however notable—are insignificant when compared to the love her subjects have expressed. Elizabeth takes the scholarly expertise of her audience and directs its focus to royal adoration. Later in the speech, she again evokes Pauline anti-intellectualism as a way to put herself at the center of her nation’s religious policies. Elizabeth criticizes those disputers of the world by telling her audience that they should cease making independent inquiries into religious doctrine. She explains: Vt diuturna sit haec Academia, habeatur inprimis cura vt Deus colatur non more omnium opinionum, non secundum ingenia nimis inquisita et

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exquisita, sed vt lex diuina iubet et nostra praecipit. Non enim talem principem habetis quae vobis quicquam precepit quod contra conscientiam verè Christianam esse deberet. Scitote me prius morituram quam tale aliquid acturam, aut quicquam iubeam quod in sacris literis vetatur. / [T]hat this university may be long enduring, let its care be especially to worship God—not in the manner of the opinion of all nor according to over- curious and too-searching wits, but as the divine law commands and our law teaches. For indeed, you do not have a prince who teaches you anything that ought to be contrary to a true Christian conscience. Know that I would be dead before I command you to do anything that is forbidden by the Holy Scriptures. (ACFLO, p. 164; CW, p. 328)

With a light touch of rhetorical wit, Elizabeth balances “inquisita” and “exquisita” to scorn both searching in and searching out new interpretations to scripture. Essentially, she replaces an individual’s intellectual inquiry with a specific kind of religious education that all her subjects may pursue: a curriculum rooted in the harmony of her law with God’s. This act shifts appropriate religious worship from the realm of individual practice into a collective endeavor that Elizabeth herself leads. She is, essentially, presenting herself as the schoolmistress for her nation’s religious practices—a role that may subtly align her with King Solomon’s description of Divine Wisdom as “the schoolemistresse of the knowledge of God” (Ws 8:4). Thus she asserts her authority as Supreme Governor of her National Church, but in a way that makes her the Divine Educator of that Church. Elizabeth’s extensive use of scriptural allusion not only justifies her right to assume this role but it also links the nature of her teachings to a distinctly conformist “curriculum.” She emphasizes that she will not command anything forbidden in scriptures. With such a claim, she is invoking the notion of “not contrary to scripture” that was, as historian John S. Coolidge has aptly described, “the rallying cry of Conformity.”17 Alongside this highly conformist concept, Elizabeth layers in another notion that expands the presence of conformity—the idea that her curriculum does not involve anything “contra conscientiam verè Christianam / contrary to a true Christian conscience.” The addition of conscience allows for the possibility of determining doctrine outside of scripture even as it seeks to enfold the highly individualist notion of personal conscience into the jurisdiction of royal command. Norman Jones discusses how, in this precise period, the importance of

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conscience empowered the individual believer and thus posed a threat to the conformist agenda of obedience to State policies. This focus on conscience “was an important new vision shared by many Elizabethans, but it worried others, such as Hooker and Whitgift. How could obedience be maintained in a community which arrogated to the individual conscience the right to make decisions?” Jones then describes the orthodox response to this interest in conscience with words that closely resemble Elizabeth’s own approach in the oration. Jones notes that these conformist writers emphasized that “Their individual was bound in conscience to obey the laws of the community, as established by church and crown according to the laws of God.”18 When Elizabeth prohibits all individual intellectual inquiry and then provides a curriculum that has the combined force of her and God’s laws behind it, she is clearly following the same agenda her conformist clergy endorse. In the final sentences of the oration, Elizabeth brings this conformist agenda to the forefront in a manner that similarly finds its support in St. Paul and the apostolic church. As discussed in chapter three, St. Paul’s emphasis on love and unity was frequently evoked in conformist apology. At the end of her oration, Elizabeth makes it clear that she, too, employs 1 Corinthians for a similar purpose. She uses language associated with ecclesiastical hierarchy but strips out references to religion to make it about national unity overall. She ends the speech with these commands: [V]nusquisque in gradu suo superiori obediat, non praescribendo quae esse deberent, sed sequendo quod praescriptum est, hoc cogitantes, Quod si superiores agere coeperint quae non decet alium superiorem habebunt a quo regantur qui illos punire et debeat et velit. Postremò, vt sitis vnanimes, cùm intelligatis vnita robustiora, separata infirmiora, et citò in ruinam casura. / [E]ach and every person is to obey his superior in rank, not by prescribing what things ought to be, but by following what has been prescribed, bearing this in mind: that if superiors begin to do that which is unfitting, they will have another superior by whom they are ruled, who both ought and is willing to punish them. Finally, be of one mind, for you know that unity is the stronger, disunity the weaker and quick to fall into ruin. (ACFLO, p. 165; CW, p. 328)

Now revealing the conformist underpinnings of her claims, Elizabeth reverts to an overtly Whitgiftian focus on hierarchy even as she secularizes this structure by applying it to national unity. By placing these final statements right after her claims about religious

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conformity, Elizabeth implies a conflation of her personal ecclesiastical authority and the nation’s unity under the direction of an entire hierarchy of individuals. This telescoping between personal and collective sovereignty functions similarly to her strategies in Christian Prayers and Meditations, as discussed in chapter one. Just as she did in that text’s French prayer on governing the realm, Elizabeth shifts to passive voice in her 1592 oration. When describing the network of individuals who enforce her commands, she uses the passive voice with “praescriptum est / is prescribed.” Such a construction allows for an expansive group of leaders and also keeps open the source of new commands. In addition, Elizabeth’s use of the present tense, at least in this copy of the Latin original, implies that such dictates will continue to be issued. Elizabeth’s call for unity, in tandem with her use of love earlier in the oration, fits perfectly with St. Paul’s counsel to the Corinthian congregation to unify in love. He urges them to unite by focusing on the teachings of God and Christ rather than on allegiances to individual earthly teachers. He writes: “that euery one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I am of Apollo, and I am of Cephas, and I am of Christ. Is Christ diuided?” (1 Cor. 1:12–13). When Elizabeth establishes her equivalency with the divine through her echo of 1 Corinthians 2:9, she also establishes herself as the divinely wise figure through which her nation can unite. She defines her role as Supreme Governor of England’s Church by associating herself with a divinity that can set its own precepts. This strategy implies an autonomy to English Church doctrine that obviates its need to consider what Puritans suggest—or even what Continental churches practice. The extent to which the English Church should look to the Continent for its identity and practices had long been a concern. As Peter Lake has noted, Hooker was trying to sever the close links of belief and identity which, as men like Bridges and Whitgift had acknowledged, had always bound the church of England to the foreign reformed churches. If a crucial element in the ideology of “anglicanism” was the claim to have maintained a middle path between Rome and Geneva then Hooker deserves considerable credit for having been the first divine to formulate that proposition in as many words.19

Elizabeth’s articulations in this speech are moving toward a similar interest in autonomy, though one now rooted specifically in her person.

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Broader than exegesis: a philosopher-queen’s wisdom Elizabeth’s intent to become the schoolmistress who dictates her nation’s religious practices may have been evident even before the start of her oration. Her actions prior to delivering her speech exemplify her divergence from the tradition of biblical exegesis. According to one account, she “schooled Dr. John Rainolds for his obstinate preciseness, willing him to follow her laws, and not run before them.”20 In thus “schooling” Rainolds, Elizabeth assumes the role of educator that she will continue in the oration even as she adopts a very interesting tack for her scolding. She does not upbraid Rainolds for nonconformist leanings, but rather for his overly literal approach to ideas. If indeed Elizabeth did say these words to him, then she distinguishes herself from this moderate Puritan by portraying herself as a more philosophical thinker. She and her laws operate within a larger religious vision that does not become trapped in narrow “preciseness.” Of course, for all of Elizabeth’s smug criticisms against meticulous nitpicking, her oration is steeped in a careful reading of scripture, no matter how much she claims a more philosophic approach. Hooker, too, made a highly acclaimed departure from exegetical tactics in Lawes. Book 2, in particular, provides an extensive refutation of narrow scripturalism. For example, Hooker contrasts his view with the Puritans’ overly restrictive focus on scripture when he writes: “For whereas God hath left sundry kindes of lawes vnto men, and by all those lawes the actions of men are in some sort directed: they hold that one onley lawe, the scripture, must be the rule to direct in all thinges, euen so farre as to the taking vp of a rush or strawe.”21 In criticizing such strict adherence to scripture, Hooker replaces this approach with his own more philosophic manner that uses universal laws to justify the diversity of ecclesiastical practices in England’s Church and Christendom overall. Scholars such as Lake have emphasized both Hooker’s originality in his departure from biblical exegesis and Hooker’s role as a particularly visible product of the forces currently forming the “Anglican Church.”22 Elizabeth’s similar epistemological affinity with Hooker is, I suggest, also part of this “Anglican moment”—a moment that responds as much to domestic politics as it does to the pan-European state of affairs. For Elizabeth’s ecclesiastical image in 1592, the focus was distinctly on France.

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Acknowledging the current situation in France Halfway through her oration and directly after the section on love, Elizabeth implies that her abilities as a philosophical and divine thinker have benefitted her country. As a stable, enlightened monarch, she has been able to continue her nation’s long-standing peace. With this emphasis, Elizabeth gives a nod to the contrast between England and France. She reminds her listeners: Ab initio Regni mei gubernationis summa et praecipua mea sollicitudo cura et vigilia fuit, vt tam ab externis inimicis quam internis tumultibus seruaretur, vt quod diu et multis seculis floruerit, sub meis manibus non debilitaretur. / From the beginning of my reign, my greatest and special concern, care, and watchfulness has been that the realm be kept free as much from external enemies as from internal tumults, that it, long flourishing for many ages, might not be enfeebled under my hand. (ACFLO, p. 164; CW, p. 327)

In part, Elizabeth is touting her own success as a Queen of Peace, but she does not do so stridently. With her use of the perfect tense in “floruerit / flourished” (unlike the present participle in the above translation), England’s peace is something established decidedly in a lengthy past of “multis seculis / many ages.” In fact, the text of this speech as found in Merton College’s Register provides this verb in the pluperfect (“floruisset”), which intensifies the past tense.23 By emphasizing a tradition of peace, Elizabeth presents herself more as the guardian of that stability than as its creator. This choice, in turn, places greater emphasis on her nation than on her own agency—a very diplomatic strategy considering the possible subtext to this statement: unlike England, France remains embroiled in civil war. Henri, as a Huguenot, had ascended the throne of a predominantly Catholic country and had been unable to bridge his nation’s deep religious divisions. His failure was evident in that a significant number of his Catholic subjects were still refusing to accept him as king three years into his reign. At the time of Elizabeth’s oration, Henri still had not entered Paris (and would not for almost another two years), even with Elizabeth’s repeated military and financial assistance. Elizabeth had been sending a relatively steady stream of money and troops for years, largely to help Henri keep Spain at bay. Only months before Elizabeth’s progress to Oxford, however, English forces in France suffered two significant defeats—the failure of the siege

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at Rouen under Essex’s leadership and John Norris’ defeat at Craon in Brittany. For England, this latter event was especially troubling because Brittany’s geographic position was a perfect staging ground from which Spain could launch a second Armada. Circumspectly acknowledging this threat in the oration, Elizabeth stresses her priority to preserve her nation’s peace. Indeed, it was this goal that prompted her to continue sending troops to Henri even in the recent weeks leading up to this university visit. On 10 September, for example, a new wave of English soldiers was to be ready at Southampton to embark as reinforcements for the English army stationed in Brittany.24 On 30 September, only a few days after she delivered her Latin oration, Elizabeth sends a letter to Lord Henry Norris and Francis Knollys about dispatching more armed men to Brittany.25 Even if the French delegation did not know that Elizabeth was about to send more troops to France, they would have been keenly aware of Anglo-French military relations. The very day that Elizabeth was to deliver this oration, they were scheduled to leave the University to visit Rycote, the Norris family estate. With the French delegation in attendance and the court preparing to go to Rycote, even the University of Oxford sought to address issues relevant to Anglo-French relations, most notably whether or not Henri was going to convert to Catholicism to secure his throne.26 Quite aware of this concern, the University staged a disputation that was directed particularly at the French delegation both in topic and timing. On the morning of 27 September, divers Nobles and others were created Masters of Arts, and in the afternoon, the French Embassador. After which were Divinity Disputations performed in St. Mary’s Church before her Majesty; and at them were present Dr. Westphaling, Bishop of Hereford, who made an eloquent and copious Oration for the conclusion of them. One of the questions was, “Whether it be lawful to dissemble in cause of religion?”27

One of the opponents put forth this witty and playful answer: “ ‘It is lawful to dispute of religion, therefore ‘tis lawful to dissemble’: and so going on, said, ‘I myself now do that which is lawful; but I do now dissemble: ergo, it is lawful to dissemble.’ At which her Majesty and all the auditory were very merry.”28 With anxiety running high in England that the French king might need to

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“dissemble” his religion and convert, this issue was treated with a jesting tone that belied earnest concern. Despite the laughter this disputation prompted, Elizabeth was not very merry at the end of it. Apparently, she had intended to deliver her oration afterward, but Westphaling was either unwilling or unable to shorten his concluding oration even though Elizabeth requested twice that he do so. As a result, she delivered her oration “more privately the next morning sending for the Heads of Houses and other Persons.”29 Remembering that Elizabeth may have prepared her comments with the thought of speaking immediately after the disputation adds further dimension to two aspects of her oration. It gives an extra charge to her claim that she does not want disputation in theological issues even as it sets the stage for her nod to the French king, whose situation had just been the subtext of the disputation.

A French king of Stoic reason At the outset of her oration, Elizabeth tacitly acknowledges Henri IV, and she employs the language associated with urging France to unite behind him. Beginning in the 1580s and continuing into the early 1590s, Huguenots and royalist Catholics depicted Henri as a Stoic King of Reason. As Denis Crouzet notes: The struggle embarked on against the League by royalist intellectuals, for the most part Catholic members of the Parlement, is rapidly constructed on the fundamental precepts of the [neo-]Stoic philosophy, the ideology of which is the reconstruction of society, shaken by the regicide, and which can be seen as a coherent system of de-dramatisation of eschatological angst.30

In France, a whole host of texts depicted Henri, and in turn France’s possibility of civic restoration, through a Stoic lens. A text written in 1585 when Henri was still just King of Navarre serves as a brief case in point. This work, Declaration du Roy de Navarre sur les Calumnies Publiées, explicitly presented Henri as a selfless Stoic who put love of country before his own life. It depicts Henri asking King Henri III for permission to settle the country’s current turmoil not by continued large-scale violence but rather by a duel with Monsieur de Guise, one of Henri III’s military commanders.31 Inspired by Neostoic rationality, Henri stands ready to

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exercise a chivalric heroism that conflates Neostoic with Christlike values. He is, according to the text, a pure and rational individual who sacrifices personal well-being for national welfare. Elizabeth begins her oration with a modesty topos that heavily uses the language of reason and that is—as will become increasingly evident—a nod to the French king. Unlike Henri’s successful Stoic image, Elizabeth portrays herself as somewhat of a failed Stoic. Downplaying her intellectual acumen, she claims her reason has been compromised: Merita et gratitudo sic meam rationem captiuam duxerunt, vt facere cogant quae ratio ipsa negat. Curae enim Regnorum tam magna pondera habent, vt ingenium obtundere quàm memoriam acuere soleant. / Merits and gratitude have so captured my reason that they compel me to do what reason itself prohibits; for the cares of kingdoms have such great weight that they are wont rather to blunt the wit than to sharpen the memory. (ACFLO, pp. 163–64; CW, p. 327; emphasis added)

By repeating the notion of reason [rationem/ratio], Elizabeth contrasts her own rational capability with the ideal of reason, which she highlights by calling it “ratio ipsa / reason itself.” Unlike the true Stoic, in whom reason would reign supreme, her reason is captured, and Elizabeth is aware of her failure to resist going against reason’s dictates—a shortcoming quite evident to a queen who most likely translated Seneca’s Stoic Epistle 107 in 1567.32 With her characteristic panache, Elizabeth takes this notion of compromised reason, which she represents as a liability at the outset, and makes it part of her charm. She is a queen who feels emotion and is swayed by it. In fact, this emotion is even more endearing because it arises from the immense gratitude she feels toward her audience. If we temporarily ignore that Elizabeth later disparages the University’s intellectual preparations, it is significant that she uses the opening moments to express how overwhelmed she is with appreciation. She transforms her female weakness as a loving monarch into the strength of intellect-sacrificing care for her kingdom. In the middle of the oration, as has been discussed, she transforms this language of love into Pauline theology; therefore, what begins as potential shortcoming becomes the foundation for the queen’s clever modulation of failed Neostoicism into religious, even divine, superiority. In fact, her revision of the traditional

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idea that reason should always master passion stems from the primacy of the heart in biblical studies. This notion took root, as William J. Bouwsma has indicated, in late humanist thought and, appropriately enough, was supported by the writings of St. Paul.33 Elizabeth’s failed reason is integral to her use of biblical wisdom to support her agenda. What makes Elizabeth’s nods to Neostoicism and Henri in her oration all the more pointed is that she had already demonstrated a nuanced understanding of his and his supporters’ use of Stoic philosophy. When Elizabeth writes to Henri after his unsuccessful attempt to take Paris (ca. 1590), she urges him to rethink his strategy. She advises him: “C’est pour Vous pencer auec Vn memoriall de moy quant Vous vous monstreras auoir plus de besoing d’une bride que eperonne. / It is for you to reflect, with a reminder from me, how much you will show yourself in greater need of a bridle than a spur” (ACFLO, p. 94; CW, p. 363). Invoking the conventional image of reason as a bridle and passion as a spur, Elizabeth intimates that Henri appears to be inappropriately swayed by rash passion. In contrast, he should adopt a more contemplative approach and give primacy to the bridle of reason. Elizabeth is reminding him of his need to return to, yet modify, the Stoic approach that had won him such success a few years earlier when he and his supporters integrated chivalric virtue with Stoic virtue. In her letter, Elizabeth indicates that Henri’s former chivalric image as the brave figure in battle is no longer appropriate now that he is king. She advises him: “Ie Vous ConIure par tout ce qu’aimes Le mieulx que Vous Vous respectes non Comme priVe Souldait ais34 Comme Grand Prince / I conjure you by everything that you love most that you esteem yourself not as a private soldier but as a great prince.” She goes on to counsel him that, as a monarch, he should: Consideres Combien il importe a toute La Cause La Conseruation de uostre persone Vous me pardonneres a Vous dire que se qui se nommeroit Valeur en an aultre a Vous on l’imputera a temerite et fablte de tel Iugement qui soiet le plus a un grand Prince / [C]onsider how much it matters to the whole cause—the preservation of your person! You will pardon me for telling you that what is called valor in another, in you is imputed to temerity and feebleness of such judgment as should be greatest in a great prince. (ACFLO, p. 95; CW, p. 363)

Henri was indeed famous as a magnanimous soldier-prince who went into battle with his troops; in fact, he was the last French

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king to engage in this practice. Elizabeth notes that, although this tactic was once admirable, it now shows a lack of rational (and royal) judgment. Her emphasis on his need to preserve his life is precisely in keeping with Neostoic philosophy current in the late sixteenth century. According to Richard Tuck, this view focused “on the necessity for a prince to preserve himself as a head of state at all costs” even if the “rules of justice or constitutional properties had to give way.”35 Elizabeth’s advice echoes this royalist focus. She suggests that, as a king (now over all of France), Henri would better serve his people by assuming the position of the contemplative Stoic who shrewdly plans the strategy rather than by foolishly placing himself directly in harm’s way. It is also worth noting that Elizabeth is not arguing for contemplative pacifism. In a postscript, she makes it clear that she is advocating for a particular military strategy—but one that differs from Henri’s current approach. She counsels him to “rasembles ces faubousiers / assemble those outlying inhabitants together” rather than allowing “paris et Le Roi perir / Paris and the king to perish” (ACFLO, p. 95; CW, p. 364). Her advice that his military campaign should focus on the “outlying” areas, instead of just on Paris, is almost assuredly driven by self-interest. Although “faubousiers” refers to those living in the suburbs of Paris, Elizabeth may be using this Paris-centric term to allude to an outlying area of greater concern to her: Brittany. According to Charles Paget’s letter on 1 October 1590, Spanish forces under the Duke of Parma had entered that region.36 In her 1592 oration, Elizabeth lightly suggests that reason is too limited a strategy for pacifying a deeply divided nation because it cannot rally people behind a religion the way love for a monarch can. Conversely, the French strategy had been to appeal to reason. In “An Epistle to the King [Henri III]” written in 1585, the writer D. P. M. (Duplessis-Mornay) focuses on reason to encourage Henri III to convene a national council. Additionally, DuplessisMornay couples the primacy of reason with the observation that the apostolic church also convened such councils. He comments that “Dissentions in Religion molested the Primitiue Church.” In response, the Church Fathers “did therefore gather Counsayles, they called a sufficient number of people out of all places, euery one quietly propounded his opinion, in the ende opinion gaue place to knowledge, likelihoode to trueth, and Sophistrie to reason.”37 Duplessis-Mornay creates an image of serene and

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dispassionate argumentation that precludes emotion. The council participants argue “quietly,” and in this ordered exchange, reason leaves no room for “Sophistrie.” Because sophistry is typically connected to rhetoric that uses emotion and tricks to persuade, Duplessis-Mornay portrays these councils as gatherings where the serenity of reason triumphs and allows for coolheaded, ecumenical relations. It is interesting that this notion of ecumenical councils and apostolic precedent, mentioned here in a 1585 French text, will resurface in Hooker’s Lawes—a situation that will resonate with the discussion of Elizabeth’s translation of Boethius later in this chapter. In 1592 and again in 1593, Elizabeth herself adopts a very different tack. She pointedly chooses a path centered more on emotion than reason, and her entire 1592 oration is built on the foundation of love.

A diplomatic queen At the Oxford oration, Elizabeth roots her own selflessness, her nation’s unity, and her nation’s peace in love. Her modulation of Pauline notions shows how she can create language that rises above sectarian division but is also overtly Christian. Her oration is a clever demonstration that approaches national unity and conformity through personal dedication to a transcendently wise and divinely anointed queen. What is equally clever is that she expresses this position not through boasting but through gestures of modesty. By claiming she has not achieved the intellectual clarity befitting a reasoned monarch, she acknowledges the domestic strength created through religious conformity but presents it in a way that is conducive to maintaining amicable relations with France. Her expressions of modesty focus on establishing goodwill—the appropriate approach for an oration’s exordium. Elizabeth emphasizes the superiority of her strategy even as she creates common ground that does not overtly criticize Henri, his supporters, or (most immediately) the French delegation in the audience. Her nation’s unity is built upon her and her laws. The criticism of France in her comment is merely implied. By not boasting, Elizabeth raises issues without pointing a finger and, similarly, does not advocate a specific brand of Christianity. In part, this approach mirrors the attempts in France to construct a Gallican church that could be Catholic but free from Rome’s demands. Elizabeth’s speech, taken as a whole, however, does show

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she can “go one better” than the French crown. She can devise a biblically centered Christian wisdom. In doing so, she intimates her worth as Supreme Governor of her National and Independent Church as well as her Christian nation. This transcendence of a theologically profound and doctrinally expansive position also lies at the heart of Elizabeth’s next public demonstration of erudition: the translation of Boethius that she conducted just months after Henri actually did convert to Catholicism. His act temporarily destabilized Anglo-French relations even as it, on a larger scale, threatened to disrupt Europe’s balance of religious power. What would be Henri’s relations with his former Protestant allies? What would be his policy regarding Spain and papal authority? In response to this uncertainty, Elizabeth translates Boethius.

Elizabeth’s Translation of Boethius’ Consolation (1593) Elizabeth began translating Consolation of Philosophy less than three months after Henri converted to Catholicism. According to seventeenth-century historian William Camden, she turned to Boethius as a source of solace: In this her griefe shee sought comfort out of the holy Scriptures, the writings of the holy Fathers, and frequent conferences with the Archbishop, and whether out of the Phylosophers also I know not. Sure I am that at this time, shee daily turned ouer Boetius his bookes, De Consolatione, and translated them handsomely into the English tongue.38

Working with Consolation would be a logical choice in a trying political period. This text portrays the prisoner Boethius moving from despair to God-centered joy as he realizes he is not the hapless victim of Fortune in a cosmos “wheeled by rash and happing chance.”39 He learns from his loving tutor Lady Philosophy that a benevolent God guides the universe. For Elizabeth, Boethius’ path to stability in a world of flux would have been a welcome perspective, if indeed the queen felt unsettled. Whether or not Elizabeth found personal consolation in translating this text is beyond the purview of my argument, but perhaps we have been too swift in associating her only with the

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despairing prisoner Boethius. Looking closely at the resonances between this text and her other articulations in this period suggests that Elizabeth’s translation may not have been simply a reaction to grief. Instead, it could have been a much more complex response to the circumstances of 1593—circumstances that make it equally feasible that Elizabeth was working to align herself with the ideas that Lady Philosophy teaches: constancy, confidence in divine order, and love. These elements, when placed in the context of fall 1593, would associate Elizabeth with a more philosophical (rather than doctrinal) spiritual perspective that could embrace continued relations with a Catholic France even as it could express regret over Henri’s conversion. Elizabeth associates herself with these ideas but does not overtly articulate them. She completed a translation rather than an original composition. Because her relationship to the words is indirect, her intent is much more difficult to pinpoint. Thus, speculating on the political image she intended requires a different methodology. This methodology involves two key elements: (1) examining the specific nature of Elizabeth’s approach to translating, and (2) situating that translation within the framework of her other contemporary articulations linked with Anglo-French relations. Most likely, the elusive nature of Elizabeth’s intent is part of the point: she could express her thoughts without making an open commitment—a 1593 version of her famous “answer answerless” that she gave Parliament in 1586 (CW, p. 200).

The specific nature of Elizabeth’s translation During October and the first few days of November 1593, Elizabeth frequently withdrew to her rooms to translate Consolation. Although she worked in privacy, Elizabeth clearly allowed her court figures to monitor her progress. Not only did she have Thomas Windebank, a clerk of the signet, serve as her scribe but she also made it sufficiently known when she was translating so that he and at least one other individual were able to calculate the number of hours she spent on the project. 40 According to three accounts that are included with the manuscript, the queen completed the translation in an elapsed time of less than thirty hours—implausibly fast even for a well-studied Latinist, much less a queen who, the year before, professed to be forgetting her Latin.41 Regardless of their accuracy, these records evoke the image of Elizabeth working

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with sheer intensity even as their inclusion with the manuscript implies they were important to the project. Perhaps these calculations were to be included with future copies of the text—copies that notes in the manuscript suggest were planned. Even if copies of her translation never circulated, Elizabeth’s court would have been well aware of the queen’s work on this text. As will be discussed in the next chapter, at least the Earl of Essex and Francis Bacon consulted some copy of Boethius to acknowledge Elizabeth’s translation. In addition to the decidedly public and monarchical aspects of Elizabeth’s demonstration of erudition is her decision to work specifically with Consolation itself. By selecting this text, she was taking up the mantle of one of England’s greatest learned monarchs: the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great, who translated Consolation at the end of the ninth century. Elizabeth’s choice to follow in Alfred’s footsteps evokes continuity between her own position and his as leading figures in their “national” churches. Elizabeth’s connection with this Anglo-Saxon king was part of integrating the English Church and its governor into a long, national tradition—a strategy employed frequently since the 1560s, as was discussed in chapter one. Although Elizabeth and Alfred shared a common British heritage, they approached their translations quite differently. Alfred completed his translation in order to give his subjects access to Boethius’ text and, even more importantly, to his own interpretation of the work. He inserted much interpretative commentary, included numerous Anglo-Saxon references, and substantially altered the text to make it an explicitly Christian work.42 Creating more of an adaptation than a translation, Alfred was mainly interested in educating his subjects. His aims were far different from those of Boethius, who wrote a theological text with no explicit Christian affiliations and no clear public audience. Conversely, Elizabeth produces a translation that preserves the text’s aura of a contemplative, spiritual exercise that remains aloof from Christian doctrine. Aside from making a few choices that have a faintly Christian (sometimes even Reformist) cast, 43 she does not try to Christianize this work, which is, as Anna Crabbe aptly describes, “a theological treatise without specific Christian allegiance.”44 Elizabeth projects the image of a true philosopher-queen who engages directly with the text on its own terms. She produces an extremely literal translation—literal to the

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point of sheer opacity in places, as editors Joshua Scodel and Janel Mueller’s extensive apparatus of notes helps to clarify. Howard Rollin Patch describes Elizabeth’s style of translation as possessing a “ragged splendour,” and he observes, “she followed the original almost word by word, making a mistake now and then but getting the right order even if she failed to make sense.”45 Mueller and Scodel also explain that Elizabeth typically omits the subject of a sentence as well as pronouns, auxiliary verbs, and the infinitive marker “to.”46 By leaving out these elements that are useful for clarity but not essential to establish overall meaning, the queen seems more intent on working with the ideas than on achieving recognition as a writer. She focuses more on the text’s philosophical concepts than its poetic niceties. This is not to say that Elizabeth is unconcerned about artistry in her translation. The manuscript is heavily corrected, and sometimes it is Elizabeth who made the changes.47 In addition, she preserves the shifts from prose to verse in this prosimetrical text—a format that demonstrates, as I will discuss later, Boethius’ use of Menippean satire. For all the meters, Elizabeth personally transcribes her translation, whereas she dictated most of the prose sections to Windebank. Although her reason for wanting to write out the verses herself remains speculative, she establishes a close connection with these more abstract articulations as well as with the famous sequence when Lady Philosophy enters, finds Boethius wallowing in despair with the Muses, and then banishes them in order to begin his education.

In despair At the opening of Consolation, Boethius-prisoner is trapped in a self-centered, earthbound perspective that is causing him deep despair. Surrounded by the Muses from Helicon, who have taught him how to grieve, he delivers the opening verses in elegiacs. Imprisoned and condemned to die, he bewails: While guileful Fortune with vading goods did cheer, My life well nigh the doleful hour bereaved; When her false look a cloud hath changed, My wretched life, thankless abode protracts. Why me so oft, my friends, have you happy called? Who falleth down, in steady step yet never stood. (Book 1, meter 1, lines 17–22, p. 75)

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Boethius unwittingly reveals the underpinnings of a flawed perspective. He admits that, having centered his life on the transient “vading goods” of Fortune and her guileful whimsy, his steps were never steady. Completely embroiled in the temporal, he is more likely to suffer erratic mood swings, and therefore his actions are not productive. Boethius-prisoner’s dramatic lamentations initially seem quite similar to Elizabeth’s first official response to Henri’s apostasy— the letter she wrote to the king after hearing the news. Elizabeth begins the letter with grief, but her tone soon shifts to gentle rebuke in a manner that paints a very different picture of her emotional (and divine) state: Ah que douleurs, O quelz regretz, O que gemissementz Ie sentoys en mon Asme par le sonn de telles Nouuelles que Morlains m’a compté? Mon dieu est il possible que mondain respect aulcun deut effacer le terreur que la crainte Divine nous menace, pouuons nous par raison mesme attendre bonne sequele d’acte si inique Celuy qui vous ayt maintes annees conservé par sa main, pouuez vous imaginer qu’il vous permettat aller seul au plusgrand besoing? / Ah what griefs, O what regrets, O what groanings felt I in my soul at the sound of such news as Morlains [Henri’s ambassador] has told me! My God, is it possible that any worldly respect should efface the terror with which the fear of God threatens us? Can we with any reason expect a good sequel from an act so iniquitous? He who has preserved you many years by His hand— can you imagine that He would permit you to walk alone in your greatest need? (ACFLO, p. 165; CW, pp. 370–71)

Elizabeth’s opening exclamations are quite hyperbolic, but the source of her grief is her soul rather than her heart (the seat of human emotion). In this soul-grief, Elizabeth represents herself, not as overcome with emotion and thus blinded by it, but as impassioned due to her stable faith in the divine. She describes Henri’s motivation for his conversion as a failure to take a divine view. He has allowed “mondain respect / worldly respect” to stand betwixt him and his fear of God. Elizabeth punctuates the decidedly shallow aspects of this earthly consideration by contrasting it with “la crainte Divine / the fear of God,” which, according to the figure of Divine Wisdom in Proverbs 2:4–5, allows one to begin contemplating God’s knowledge. Wisdom instructs King Solomon to search for wisdom as if for treasure and “Then shalt thou vnderstand the feare of the Lord, and finde the knowledge of God” (2:5).

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Thus, Elizabeth implies that, in privileging this “mondain respect,” Henri has cut himself off from the key element that would allow him access to a divine perspective. She even emphasizes his separation from God by accusing Henri of doubting God’s providence. According to Elizabeth, he lacks the faith that is a signature element of a divinely anointed ruler. In presenting these rebukes, she hardly seems to be a monarch in emotional despair. Rather, she uses this grief to establish herself as a blessed monarch who has already achieved stability in the celestial view Lady Philosophy will teach Boethius-prisoner. Elizabeth’s intimation that she has successfully centered her life on God is not a unique instance in this period. The queen articulated this same sense of constancy-in-divinity when she addressed Parliament earlier that year. In that speech (delivered in April), she accepted the triple subsidy that would fund sending more troops to help Henri resist Spanish forces in Brittany. Elizabeth acknowledged the danger of this Spanish threat but expressed serene confidence that God would continue to stand by her and the nation. She assured her audience: “For mine own part, I protest I never feared; nor what fear was, my heart never knew. For I knew that my cause was ever just, and that standing upon a sure foundation, I should not fail, God assisting the quarrel of the righteous” (CW, p. 331). Elizabeth first separates herself from the kind of fear associated with cowardice (which is different than the fear of God), and she pointedly roots her own stability in her assurance of God’s support. This sense of constancy befits her motto “Semper eadem / Always the same,” which was inspired by Stoic philosophy, even as it may have leveled a mild criticism at Henri.48 As discussed previously in this chapter, concerns over the possibility that Henri would convert had been rising for months, and in April itself, Henri moved a step closer to conversion when he authorized a series of public debates between Protestant and Catholic theologians at Mantes.49 Elizabeth’s emphasis on her own resolve and Christian faith gives her courage and strength—characteristics, she insinuates three months later, that the French king does not possess because he has doubted God’s providence. This theme of constancy had been a mainstay in the Stoic rhetoric used to unite France behind Henri. Elizabeth may have been acknowledging this central Stoic virtue in her speech to Parliament—a speech given to address a situation made critical

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by fear that Henri would not be constant. There are possible ties among this rhetoric of constancy, Elizabeth’s speech, and her translation of Consolation. That same year, Catholic royalist Guillaume du Vair had published a patriotic text steeped in Stoic rhetoric and presented as a consolatio. This genre is well-suited to Stoic philosophy because of its movement from despair to the solace found in achieving internal stability. At the beginning of his text, du Vair describes himself as despairing while he watches his country sink into civic strife during the bloody siege of Paris. His friend, named Musaeus in the fiction, enters to find the speaker weeping for the second day in a row. Musaeus lovingly admonishes his friend, saying: [H]ier, quand je vous vins voir, je vous trouvay en mesme estat: pour le premier coup je ne fey semblant de rien; voyant aujourd’hui que vous continuez et que la tristesse vous maistrise de cette façon, je ne puis tenir que je ne vous demande ce que vous avez fait de la philosophie. Je vous cherche en vous-mesme, et ne puis croire que celui duquel j’ay receu tant de consolation, en manque tant à soy-mesme. / Yesterday when I visited you, I found you in the same case: For the first time I made no shew of any reprehension, but seeing you continue, and suffer your selfe to be ouer-runne with passion, I must needes aske you, what you haue done with your Phylosophy? I seeke you in your selfe, for I cannot beleeue, that hee, from whom I receiued so much comfort, can now bee wanting to himselfe.50

In reply, du Vair states that the current public calamity has taught him how “faibles les argumens de la philosophie à l’escole de la Fortune / sinew-lesse arguments of Phylosophy are in the Schoole of Fortune.”51 This du Vair has, similar to Boethius, traded down in his choice of schoolmistress. When confronted with true misfortune, his Philosophy seems merely academic. Over the course of this text, du Vair will employ Stoic themes to demonstrate an appropriate response to extreme circumstances such as when, in the concluding moments, the speaker Linus offers this counsel: “Fichez vous au droit et à la raison, et si la vague a à vous emporter, qu’elle vous accable le timon encore en la main. / Stand fast vpon Right and Reason, and if the Waues and Billowes must carry you away, let them ouerwhelme you with the Rudder in your hand still.”52 Linus understands the severity of the crisis and does not minimize it. He advises his listeners to face the overwhelming political tempest with Stoic rationality and resolve in a

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way that puts country rather than religion first. Indeed, the entire text emphasizes the dangers of religious extremism.53 Although du Vair does introduce Christian notions, passages such as Linus’ advice regarding the rudder—which is associated with the ship of state and with self-governance—continue to draw heavily from secular, Stoic philosophy. In her letter to Henri, Elizabeth uses her own Christian constancy to bolster her role as a divinely blessed monarch. Her language implies that Henri, in his inconstancy, fails to live up to both his image as a Stoic and his role as a king by divine right. His rudder, to borrow the image from du Vair, should be God, but Henri has let go of the tiller and allowed himself to be overwhelmed by earthly circumstances. Elizabeth insinuates that she, by contrast, has had the strength of faith to remain steadfast. She tells Henri: “Cependant Ie ne cesseray de vous mettre au premier reng de mes devotions a ce que les mains d’Esau ne gastent la benediction de Iacob. / However, I will not cease to place you in the forefront of my devotions, that the hands of Esau may not spoil the blessing of Jacob” (ACFLO, p. 165; CW, p. 371). She continues to emphasize that her faith is not shaken even as she expresses her commitment to keeping the Protestant Church strong. She does so by alluding to the biblical story of Esau and Jacob (associated with Catholicism and Protestantism, respectively). Even in his conversion, which in turn threatens her own position, Elizabeth expresses her constancy in the face of a mutable world—a notion that is at the center of Consolation.

Constancy even in change In Consolation, Lady Philosophy helps Boethius-prisoner move beyond an earthbound perspective by beginning his education with Stoic lessons (appropriately enough for Elizabeth’s political moment). Lady Philosophy praises those individuals who can remain steady in times of good fortune and bad. Elizabeth’s somewhat awkward translation describes such an individual as one who can remain “stable, defending each fortune, / His cheer unwon preserves” (Book 1, meter 4, lines 3–4, p. 87).54 Constancy unaltered by circumstances is textbook Stoicism because this school of philosophy taught that one must look outside one’s self to comprehend the order of the whole universe. It is by looking to and taking inspiration from the harmony present in Nature that

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one can find stability even in a world of flux. Lady Philosophy draws upon this central Stoic premise when she claims: That world, with stable trust, The changing seasons turns, And divers seeds still holds league: That Phoebus the ruddy day With golden car brings forth; That Moon may rule the night Which Hesperus brought; The greedy sea, her stream In certain limits kept That lawful be; not to wide world To bank her spacious bounds: All this whole mold ties In ruling earth and sea. (Book 2, meter 8, lines 1–13, p. 171)

Centering his thoughts upon the natural order, Boethius is introduced to a larger philosophical vision that sees a cosmos of opposites that nonetheless exist in balanced harmony. The individual who perceives constancy even in what seems outwardly mutable will achieve a stability fixed on eternal principles. Elizabeth may have found that aligning herself with Consolation’s focus on constancy was useful in her current situation. Ever since Henri’s conversion in July, tensions in the English court had been rising over the queen’s order to withdraw nearly all English soldiers from France. Her decision created consternation with Henri as well as with her own counselors. Many of her highest-ranking statesmen were anxious about deteriorating relations with France, knowing that withdrawing troops might drive Henri into the arms of the League, the papacy, and Spain. In the fall of 1593, Henri, important League figures, and Pope Clement VIII were actively negotiating under the peace fostered by a truce; therefore, a binding agreement between Henri and these powerful political forces was quite possible.55 It was a time when queen and Council were having trouble finding common ground amidst a highly volatile set of circumstances. On 26 August, Burghley writes John Norris (one of the few military officers still stationed in France) with evident frustration regarding Elizabeth’s vacillations. Burghley recounts that upon “reading of your letters before Her Majesty and her Council hath grown this day much diversity of opinion, Her Majesty a great while utterly misliking your longer stay there by taking of

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Paimpol.” However, “though Her Majesty held these arguments of long time, yet upon arguments made by her Council to the contrary, she changed her opinion.”56 So, all seemed settled: Norris was to remain. The next day, conversely, Burghley writes a second letter to Norris to explain that Elizabeth has now qualified her decision, adding the stipulation that Norris may remain only if certain terms are met regarding England’s claim on Paimpol.57 Burghley could well have described the ever-changing aspects of the natural world as reflecting how often his queen changed her mind. Elizabeth will admit (somewhat) to appearing inconsistent in a letter she writes to Norris on 11 December 1593. Norris had particularly borne the brunt of the queen’s shifts in military strategy in the months after Henri’s conversion. In her letter, Elizabeth acknowledges her often contradictory instructions when she writes: “you have from us variety of directions, yet must we also remember you that they have been derived from the variety of your propositions, sometimes making things desperate and at other times representing unto us the hopeful appearance with which the King and the country did feed you.”58 This letter, written only weeks after Elizabeth completed her translation of Boethius, suggests a context that would align her with Boethius-prisoner. Like him, she confronts a mutable world. Ever one to take the blame off her own shoulders, of course, Elizabeth justifies her changes of tactics by claiming they were based upon reports that are shifting themselves—and shifting radically between extremes in tone. How can she be blamed for conflicting instructions when she must base her commands on ever-changing reports? As Elizabeth retreated to her study to translate Consolation during this period of tense relations with her council, essentially all English troops except Norris’ were embarking for England. In light of this source of friction with her statesmen, Elizabeth presented herself as the reflective philosopher-monarch who centers herself in philosophical wisdom and a unifying divine love. Such a focus on love had long been Elizabeth’s signature image, and the way Consolation introduces love is useful for the queen in precisely this political climate.

Divine love that establishes peace In the verses that end Book 2 of Boethius’ text, Lady Philosophy introduces the idea of love by first constructing a Stoic framework

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and then presenting love as a force that goes beyond this reasondriven philosophy. She begins this trajectory in the verses quoted earlier where she talks about the Stoic notion of natural order. She ends this meter with love as the force that rules the cosmos and that maintains harmony at all levels of existence: from the heavens, to the nations, to the lovers joined in wedlock. Love, ruling heav’ns. Who, if the reins he slack, Whatso now by Love is linked Straight maketh war, And seeks to wrack that work Which with linked faith It, quiet motions, moved.59 He in holy peace doth hold The bounded peoples’ pact, And links sacred wedlock With chaste goodwill, Who laws, his own, to true associates gives. O happy humankind, If Love your minds— The same, that heaven doth rule, might guide. (Book 2, meter 8, lines 14–28, pp. 171 and 173)

Peace and the joy it engenders are clearly the twin themes in these famous verses; however, it is particularly pertinent for Elizabeth’s political world in 1593 that these lines portray a cosmos always ready to devolve into war if love’s “reins he slack.” On one level, the image of the reins draws attention to how these lines revise Stoicism’s emphasis on the reins of reason. On a larger level, the depiction that love harnesses potential violence is striking. The violence is specifically tied to warfare, but love keeps the destruction in check through quiet motions of such lightly religious phrases as “linked faith” and “holy peace.” Because Elizabeth typically chose to identify herself as a Queen of Love, these verses would have worked as a nice conflation of Elizabeth’s position of love and England’s current interest in maintaining harmonious relations with France. Such a possibility is quite feasible, especially since, as will be discussed in the next chapter, the Earl of Essex will allude to this same passage when he gives a nod to his wise Queen of Love in connection with Anglo-French affairs in 1595.

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This connection dovetails with Elizabeth’s overall role as a philosopher-queen: she unifies constituents through a love that transcends doctrinal differences. In this role, Elizabeth may be suggesting her willingness to keep open the channels of communication between her nation and France—continued relations that she intimates in the final sentences of her letter to Henri after his conversion: “Et ou me promettes toute amitie et fidelité, Ie confesse l’auoir cherement merité, et ne m’en penteray, pour veu que ne changies du pere / And where you promise me all friendship and fidelity, I confess I have dearly merited it, and I will not repent it, provided you do not change your Father” (ACFLO, p. 165; CW, p. 371). As the main condition for maintaining amity, Elizabeth asks that Henri not change his Father. She places primacy on a common belief in the same God—a notion shared across doctrinal boundaries. By making this stipulation after acknowledging Henri’s own professions of continued friendship, she juxtaposes positive statements about maintaining relations. Even as she insinuates a position with a much looser doctrinal basis than the rigidity of Protestant versus Catholic distinctions, Elizabeth still includes polemical statements. Her focus on the notion of changing his father acknowledges the possibility Henri might choose an earthly father, that is, the Pope. She also closes the letter with a claim that she is Henri’s “tresasseuree Soeur, si ce soit a la Vielle mode, auec la nouuelle Ie n’ay que faire. / most assured sister, if it be after the old fashion; with the new I have nothing to do” (ACFLO, p. 166; CW, p. 371). Distancing herself from his current religious affiliation, Elizabeth pulls back slightly the tentative hand of alliance she had extended earlier. This final gesture reveals the essence of Elizabeth’s political position. As a Protestant queen, she must express disapproval and even despair at Henri’s conversion in order to placate her Protestant constituents. Her lamentations at the opening of the letter fulfill this “required” criticism. But Elizabeth does not place undue focus on criticism, and her acknowledgment of friendship demonstrates her role as a pragmatic queen who is more interested in her nation’s security than in the finer points of Henri’s religious views. She is willing to continue Anglo-French relations as long as Henri does not fully capitulate to the policies of the French Catholic League (and to the interests of the unspoken foe, Spain). Such an approach mirrors the instructions Burghley prepared for the diplomat Sir

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Thomas Wilkes when Henri’s conversion seemed imminent. Burghley instructs Wilkes that, if the French king had converted by the time Wilkes meets with him, then he needed to express the queen’s grief. Burghley’s instructions, however, do not end there. He goes on to outline how to proceed with the business of maintaining alliances.60 Elizabeth’s balance of despair and conditional friendship also addresses Henri’s religious alteration while still expressing enough goodwill to assure the now- Catholic king that good relations with England were still possible. Unlike her letter, Elizabeth’s translation of Boethius (produced three months later) is not bound by the doctrinal differences the queen needed to acknowledge in her response to Henri’s conversion. Consolation moves from reason to a love that binds nations in peace. Through this trajectory, Elizabeth may have intended her court to align her with an open doctrinal position that could overlook current religious differences with France. First and foremost, Consolation emphasizes love as a pacific and unifying force that serves as the foundation for contemplating the cosmos—and its benevolent deity.

Love over reason Such unity through love is most evident in Consolation at the end of Book 2 when Lady Philosophy begins the final meter with the Stoic view of harmony in Nature before she quietly replaces Stoic reason with Love. In the final sequence of Boethius’ text, the limitations of reason enter once more but are now, as John Marenbon notes, “an exposition and critique of Stoic epistemology.”61 Reason is admirable but limited because, unlike divine understanding, it cannot fully grasp the whole of a concept: Let us, therefore, lift up ourselves into the top of His understanding: for there reason shall behold that, in itself, it cannot see: that is, how those things that have not certain and sure ends, yet shall He see them assured and a determined aforeknowledge. And that is not opinion, but an included pureness of the highest knowledge, that is shut in no limits. (Book 5, prose 5, p. 351)

The divine mind knows no bounds, and indeed, Lady Philosophy invites Boethius-prisoner to strive for this expansive perspective that still prizes reason but recognizes its shortcomings. Boethiusauthor creates a model in which the human individual must make

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the final leap up to a loving God and divine understanding through methods that transcend earthly faculties. This same passage, read in 1593 at Elizabeth’s court, might have suggested the imperfections in the Stoic philosophy evoked in France, even as it created a place where Elizabeth’s loving and overtly Christian wisdom could be seen as completing a gap in Boethius’ text. The gap emerges in the text’s silence regarding Christianity. Consolation focuses on the divine largely through Neoplatonic principles, but its closest brush with Christianity is its emphasis on God as Love.62 In this combination of love and the need to transcend earthly skills, Boethius constructs a scenario that is almost Pauline. Although Boethius does not criticize earthly wisdom (which St. Paul does), the genre Boethius uses suggests he is leaving open the possibility that the knowledge articulated in the text fails in some way. Boethius draws upon the classical genre of Menippean satire—a genre often designed to expose the limitations of knowledge through playful humor and irony. (For example, Erasmus’ famous Moriae Encomium, Praise of Folly is a Menippean satire.) As Joel C. Relihan explains, the focus on incomplete knowledge in Menippean satire often becomes evident in how these texts invite readers to fill in ideas that are left unsaid, particularly in the endings. These final sequences “tend to debunk the preceding discussions; what is advocated (typically between the lines, because the antidogmatic genre is allergic to preaching) is an antitheoretical common sense.”63 Scholars of Consolation do not agree on the extent to which Boethius was tapping into Menippean irony. Edmund Reiss, for example, sees the text as too grave to be truly Menippean, while scholars such as Ann W. Astell and Relihan see irony in Boethius’ final stance.64 Whether Boethius himself created an ending that requires the reader to supply a missing but implied Christian interpretation is not pertinent to my argument. It is clear, however, that when Essex and Bacon produce the Accession Day device Of Love and Self-Love in 1595, they will use Elizabeth’s Pauline wisdom from her 1592 oration as a perspective that completes the knowledge articulated in Consolation. In this way, her oration to Oxford and her translation of Boethius become companion texts.65 Perhaps this idea was original to Essex and Bacon, but their conflation of these two articulations allows for the possibility that they were capitalizing on an idea Elizabeth herself intended. As a Queen of Love, she bridges Christian divinity with

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Boethian expansiveness. Thus, she takes in the larger vision that Lady Philosophy describes in the final moments, even as she possesses the specifically Christian wisdom that the secular Lady Philosophy does not articulate. The sense of an openness coupled with the prescience of a loving God has an interesting resonance in 1593, particularly in the final prose section. Here, Lady Philosophy brings the language of God’s omnipresent love into direct contact with the human individual’s actions. She summarizes the role of free will within God’s benevolent foreknowledge: But, thou wouldst say, if in my power it be set, to change my purpose, I will make void providence, when perchance I shall change that she foreknew. I will answer thee: I grant that thou mayst change thy purpose, but because the ever-present truth of providence beholdeth that, either thou may do, or whether may b[e] tho[u do]st, [and] whithersoever thou turnest thee, [so]66 shalt thou never shun His divine foreknowledge, as thou canst not fly the sight of His present eye, though thou be turned, by thy free will, to sundry actions. (Book 5, prose 6, pp. 361 and 363)

When a human’s actions are examined from a divine perspective, all inconsistencies and turnings are both observed and embraced within the expansive constancy of God. The language in this passage houses a reassurance of divine presence (no matter what earthly failings an individual may make), even as it also suggests the ever-present eye of God who witnesses these vacillations. These words, read in the context of the English court in 1593, potentially evoke a willingness to consider tolerating the changing situation in France by adopting a perspective that does not view every difference as a seismic event. This position, of course, is never directed explicitly at Henri because Elizabeth is completing a translation rather than a direct articulation. Nonetheless, Consolation’s more open theological language is flexible and expansive enough to embrace the larger view that does not get bound up in divisive, sectarian language. Consolation’s philosophical stance allows for harmony without perfect synchronicity in all details—a situation that resembles Elizabeth’s request to Henri not to change his father. But it also reflects a much larger trend in transnational religious politics. Even as entrenched positions were increasingly polarizing Europe along religious lines, there was a counter movement that sought to

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establish ecumenical relations between Catholic and Protestant churches. A central agenda in this more eirenic approach was the establishment of a pan-European general council. W. Brown Patterson brings forth a key and insufficiently studied passage on this issue in Hooker’s Lawes—a passage that likens the need for general councils with the importance of the laws of nations.67 Hooker writes: Now as ther is great cause of communion, & consequently of laws for the maintainance of communion, amongst nations: So amongst nations Christian the like in regarde euen of Christianitie hath bene alwaies iudged needfull. And in this kinde of correspondence amongst nations the force of generall councels doth stand. For as one & the same law diuine, wherof in the next place we are to speake, is vnto al Christan churches a rule for the cheifest thinges, by meanes whereof they al in that respect make one Church, as hauing all but One Lord, one faith, and one baptisme.68

When Hooker advocates these councils, he is not urging complete, international religious conformity, but rather an overall agreement only on the “cheifest thinges.” In Elizabeth’s translation, Boethius’ emphasis on a divine perspective serves as a fitting voice in this movement that celebrates the fundamental forces that unite while shunning a petty obsession with differences. In fact, Elizabeth’s describing harmony as “linked faith” in the verses from the end of Book 2 resonates profoundly with such emphasis on a celestial vision dedicated to nations existing in holy peace. Making this connection between Elizabeth’s translation of Consolation and the contemporary interest in general councils does not imply that Elizabeth is calling for a general council in 1593—in fact, she will refuse Henri’s overtures for one in 1595. I suggest instead that, in translating Consolation, Elizabeth articulates a language that moves beyond and above theological boundaries, and this position leaves open the possibility for developing a language of religious concord. She becomes a Queen of Love who may be hinting that she is receptive to a conciliarist approach to international relations in order to preserve England’s security. Elizabeth, somewhat like Hooker, devotes most attention to establishing conformity in England with an awareness of panEuropean politics. The queen does not seek to foster European religious peace for its own sake, as will be the emphasis for Hooker’s former students Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer.

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In 1593 (appropriately), Sandys and Cranmer embarked on a continental tour to both Catholic and Protestant nations in order to assess interest in establishing a pan-European general council.69 Although Elizabeth is pointedly England-centric, it is interesting that both she, as England’s Supreme Governor, and men such as Hooker who articulated the vision of the Anglican Church were all adopting more philosophic approaches. They realized that international stability could be achieved primarily by finding common ground. Unlike Hooker, Elizabeth does not articulate her ideas openly but rather chooses to complete a text that shrouds her individual position. She achieves an act of erudition that—in the act of translation itself as well as her choice of text—masks her voice and keeps her position unspecified. She selects a text that speaks but does not give her voice a clear message. Elizabeth can be everywhere and yet nowhere.

In the silence of a prayer and a translation Such openness of interpretation allows the queen to prompt a response from her court without putting forth her own agenda. It lets her gauge where individuals in her court stand on the current situation by judging how they react to her work. This sense of silence inherent in Elizabeth’s act of translation is actually imbedded in Consolation itself. At the end, we do not know what Boethius-prisoner does or what he says. Relihan aptly describes the ending as a moment when “Philosophy speaks, but the prisoner does not. Their voices are not united. Whatever is in his mind is his alone, whether prayer or thought or silence. We do not hear the prisoner’s prayer; it is not submitted to or made for our approval; it is directed to the Father who sees in secret.”70 Consolation is a meditation that does not supply the answer or claim an agenda. This approach allows the text’s “truth” to be left unknown and its premises to be left unrestricted. It is rooted in God and that is all that matters—a perfect vehicle for Elizabeth to present ideas without being tied to them as her own. It is quite possible that Elizabeth translated Boethius not solely out of grief but rather to assess individual responses from her court figures and even to encourage her “audience” to apply her language of love from the 1592 oration to Consolation. In responding to these two royal demonstrations of erudition, Bacon and Essex will use

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Of Love and Self-Love to conflate Elizabeth’s Pauline language with her translation of Boethius. They will represent Elizabeth as Essex’s own transcendent Christian Queen Philosophy in their efforts to urge the queen to return to her conciliatory stance toward Anglo-French relations that she adopted in these two earlier articulations. She transcends; she unifies; and because of these strengths, she can reach across confessional lines from a position of international and ecclesiastical autonomy. In a political climate searching for a unifying vision, she claims to have achieved this perspective as England’s philosopher-queen.

CHAPTER 5

A LOVING SCHOLAR OF HIS QUEEN’S WISDOM: THE EARL OF ESSEX, ANGLO-FRENCH AFFAIRS, AND OF LOVE AND SELF-LOVE (1595)

F

or Elizabeth’s Accession Day in 1595, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and Francis Bacon produced the entertainment Of Love and Self-Love—a device filled with more references to Elizabeth’s demonstrations of erudition than any other poetic text I have examined from the reign. Bacon and Essex echo Elizabeth’s 1592 oration at Oxford and her 1593 translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy throughout the entertainment, and in doing so, they depict the earl as a loving pupil of his queen’s wisdom. Certainly, Essex’s signature image had always been that of a lover, but understanding how Essex and Bacon shape this role specifically through references to Elizabeth’s learning exposes Essex not as a passionate playboy but rather as a geopolitically shrewd statesman whose particular expertise is international affairs. As Paul E. J. Hammer has noted, Essex devoted massive resources in 1594 and 1595 to become England’s preeminent figure in international intelligence.1 The references to Elizabeth’s learning in Of Love and Self-Love shed light on how Essex worked to integrate his military and transnational interests with his loyalty to Elizabeth—all to demonstrate that he was the best candidate to become her next principal secretary during this period of international crisis.2 In the entertainment, Essex acknowledges the gravity of the political situation but transforms seriousness into queen-centered delight and praise. Essex remains the dashing, charismatic courtier whom Elizabeth often found so compelling, and the entire

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device exudes love for the queen, even though Elizabeth’s reaction showed displeasure. According to eyewitness Roland Whyte, she left in a huff at the end of the performance, saying “that if she had thought their had bene so moch said of her, she wold not haue bene their that Night, and soe went to Bed.”3 At first glance, Elizabeth’s complaint that all the focus was placed on her seems inconsistent with the action of the entertainment. The device portrays a Hermit, a Soldier, and a Statesman presenting arguments to the squire of Erophilus (the latter clearly representing Essex) with the hopes that Erophilus will abandon selflessly loving his sovereign mistress and instead adopt one of their vocations. Elizabeth is almost never mentioned in the whole entertainment. Exposing the references to her wisdom that pervade the device, however, confirms that Elizabeth was right: the piece is indeed all about her. In part, her negative response could suggest that Of Love and Self-Love was a failure for Essex, and perhaps it was. As a counterargument to the assumption of failure, it is worth considering that the criteria for determining success or failure might be too narrow. Essex did gain information by hearing Elizabeth’s response, specifically regarding his interest in getting the queen to adopt a more conciliatory approach to Anglo-French relations—an agenda that I will discuss shortly. It seems that Essex was quite proud of this entertainment, as Sir Henry Wotton observes in the seventeenth century. Wotton describes Essex’s writings as “beyond example, especially in his familiar Letters and things of delight at Court, when he would admit his serious habits, as may be yet seen in his Impresses and Inventions of entertainment, and above all in his darling piece of love and, self love” (emphasis added).4 Of Love and Self-Love is worthy of pride, for it is immensely clever. In it, Essex proclaims unflagging devotion to Elizabeth specifically as a learned queen, and he uses the international resonances to Anglo-French affairs associated with her Latin oration at Oxford and her translation of Boethius to present the international credentials that distinguished him from Robert Cecil, his rival for the position of chief advisor. Cecil, too, was deeply involved in international affairs but always conducted his service from within England. Essex, conversely, was the cosmopolitan candidate who possessed direct military and political experience abroad. In November of 1595, he was even answering all of Elizabeth’s foreign correspondence. Elizabeth had given him this responsibility to show her continued

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favor despite the recent scandal that had associated the earl with the treasonous text, A Conference About the Next Succession to the Crowne of Ingland. Essex and Bacon used Of Love and Self-Love to highlight Essex’s international expertise, particularly that regarding his connections with France. This affiliation was especially important at the time because France and Spain seemed ready to ally and thereby tip the balance of power decidedly against England. Essex’s combined expertise in military matters and international relations seemed especially crucial in this precise period. In 1595, substantial foreign intelligence had indicated that Spain was preparing to attack England within a year and with greater force than in 1588. Essex, the Lord Admiral, and Lord Burghley had spent the late summer and fall of 1595 bolstering England’s defenses—issuing orders to muster troops, taking stock of the conditions at key ports, and sending ordnance to strategic locations.5 The Spanish menace alone was serious, but this crisis was exacerbated by the fact that King Henri IV of France was now openly threatening to ally with Spain if he did not receive ample and immediate assistance from England. In part, this political climate resembled the tense period right after Henri’s conversion to Catholicism in 1593—another moment when France, Spain, and the papacy had the potential to join forces and create a formidable conglomerate. The situation in 1595, however, was much more serious because Henri not only possessed the potential to ally with Spain, he was also openly flaunting his interest in doing so. Elizabeth and much of her court were outraged at Henri’s bullying, but Essex, who had long sought to maintain positive Anglo-French relations, was working to keep these alliances open, sometimes issuing secret instructions without Elizabeth’s knowledge.6 When Bacon and Essex evoke Elizabeth’s recent oration at Oxford and her translation of Boethius, they praise her as the learned queen who previously used erudition as her own diplomatic response to Anglo-French relations. As discussed in chapter four, Elizabeth delivered her Oxford oration and completed her translation of Boethius during periods of high uncertainty regarding Henri and Catholicism. In both of these articulations, Elizabeth implied her superiority as a Christian queen who, unlike Henri, remains constant in her religion while retaining the obedience of her subjects. Even more importantly, she suggested her continued

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willingness to maintain relations with the French king. Essex and Bacon draw heavily from Elizabeth’s oration and from her translation as a way to encourage the queen to return to this political approach. They praise Elizabeth as a learned monarch who is distinctly gifted as a Queen of Concord. Recognizing how much this device is riddled with references to Elizabeth’s learning requires intimate familiarity with Elizabeth’s Oxford oration, her translation of Boethius, and the current state of Anglo-French relations. Studying Of Love and Self-Love within the transnational political situation of 1595 reveals how poetry remains a key genre for queen-courtier diplomatic exchange. Playfully gauging Elizabeth’s willingness to consider certain approaches to foreign relations, Essex is a true heir of the Leicester circle that made poetry a hallmark of international political activity in the court of a learned queen.

Plot and Textual Situation Of Love and Self-Love has a textual situation that brings with it what Hammer aptly calls “an embarrassment of riches.”7 Describing this situation provides the rationale for my decision as to which text to use in analyzing the entertainment. The device—or fragments of it—exists in ten different manuscripts, six of which are dated during Essex’s lifetime. These six documents portray two separate but related strands of action concerning Of Love and SelfLove. The first five documents, all relating to a common scenario, include the following: Bacon’s rough draft with two speeches and some initial notes8; a polished draft of five speeches in Bacon’s fair hand; a document in Bacon’s handwriting that provides both a letter written from the character Philautia (the goddess of Self-Love) to Elizabeth as well as some notes of commentary about the device to Essex9; a letter written in French from Philautia to Elizabeth, most likely in Edward Reynoldes’ handwriting; and Anthony Bacon’s incomplete French translation of the Hermit’s speech. The sixth manuscript depicts a different strand of action yet contains a few references that suggest its action is related to Of Love and Self-Love. This latter entertainment depicts a blind Indian boy and his attendant who travel the globe in search of the virtuous figure who will fulfill a holy oracle and give the boy sight. Not surprisingly, Elizabeth’s magical presence effects this miracle, and true to Essex’s signature focus on love, the boy turns out to be Cupid.

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When this piece containing the Indian boy and Of Love and Self-Love are examined as companion texts, they reveal how Essex used dramatic entertainment as part of a multifaceted approach to negotiating with the queen. Essex uses Of Love and Self-Love to address Anglo-French relations but adopts a more global approach in the device of the Indian boy. As Hammer has noted, the earl broadened his tactics to include but also look beyond France in precisely this period.10 The Indian boy interlude is part of this larger vision, and this device is so complex that I will address it elsewhere and will focus this chapter on Of Love and Self-Love.11 Whereas the former device is thought to have been written solely by Essex, most of the manuscripts for Of Love and Self-Love are associated with Bacon, even though some of Essex’s secretaries, such as Henry Cuffe, may have had a hand in its creation. This overall textual situation suggests that Bacon did complete the majority of the writing even as Of Love and Self-Love itself is most focused on Essex and was produced with his sponsorship. With the understanding that others in Essex’s secretariat may have been involved, I will still treat the device as essentially a co-production between its two key facilitators: Bacon and Essex. Although this chapter will shed no new light on the textual instability surrounding Of Love and Self-Love, its attention to the intricate and frequent allusions to Elizabeth’s Oxford oration and translation of Boethius supports reading the five speeches in Bacon’s fair copy as a text that represents at least a late stage in the production process as well as a text pointedly shaped with Elizabeth in mind. Of Love and Self-Love was the culmination of a series of events that had been building throughout that Accession Day in 1595. The first part of this larger sequence occurred right before the public jousts, when Elizabeth gave her glove to Essex’s squire to honor the earl as her personal champion. The next stage of the action begins when Essex makes his grand entrance onto the tiltyard wearing the queen’s glove and outfitted in the colors of a lover—white and carnation.12 After his theatrical entrance, Essex is greeted, as Whyte describes, by an old Hermitt, a Secretary of State, a braue Soldier, and an Esquier. The first presented him with a Booke of Meditations; the second with pollitical Discourses; the third with Oracions of braue fought Battles; the fourth was but his own Follower, to whom thother three imparted much of their Purpose, before his Coming in.

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Interrupting this scene of presenting books to Essex, “thordinary Post Boy of London” suddenly enters “all bemired, vpon a poore leane Jade, gallaping and blowing for Liff.” He “deliuered the Secretary a Packet of Lettres, which he presently offred my Lord of Essex.”13 Receiving urgent political correspondence on the symbolic battlefield pointedly highlights Essex’s current political centrality in national security, and indeed, this gesture most likely was staged to evoke England’s current concerns about a second Spanish Armada. The nation had already been taken by surprise a few months earlier when several Spanish ships attacked Cornwall in late July. To internationally astute spectators, the action with the postboy may also conjure up Sir Francis Drake’s surprise attack on Cadiz in 1587, when Drake invaded the port while the town’s leaders were watching a play. This potential connection draws attention not only to AngloSpanish hostilities but also to the notion that, even during this current theatrical display, Essex is still on duty. Essex’s vigilance emphasizes that the nation is essentially in a “code red” security alert. As Whyte had written to Robert Sidney ten days before Accession Day, rumors at court were circulating that “Spanish Forces landed in Brittagnie, and that Part of his [Philip’s] Nauy is come to Groine.”14 For years, England had spent massive funds to keep Brittany out of Spanish control because its proximity to England could provide Spain with a perfect staging ground to launch an invasion. The idea of Spanish forces in this region was especially unsettling. The tone of danger that the postboy stirs, however, is soon dissipated. The Squire asks Elizabeth to grant Essex a brief reprieve from his political duties so that “he may be as free as the rest, and at least whilst he is here, troubled with nothing but with care how to please and honour you.”15 This profession of devotion underscores the image of Essex as a lover—a persona that will be the centerpiece in Of Love and Self-Love to be presented later that evening. In this entertainment, the Hermit, Soldier, and Statesman who had earlier given books to Essex now return; they come representing their mistress Philautia, the goddess of Self-Love. Each of the three figures delivers an oration with the hope that Essex (aptly named Erophilus in the device) will cease serving his queen and adopt one of their professions instead. Their efforts fail. Essex will fulfill the implications in the name Erophilus (lover- of-love), for as the Squire

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proclaims in the climactic moment, Erophilus-Essex denounces these servants of self-love and will remain selflessly faithful to his sovereign-mistress.

The Keystone in the Device’s Carefully Constructed Arch When the Squire announces Erophilus-Essex’s devotion to Elizabeth in the final speech, he delivers a line that crystallizes the concept that underscores the entire entertainment: as a lover, Essex is a studious pupil of the wise Elizabeth. The Squire declares: “Therefore the hearing of her, the observing of her, the receiving instructions from her, may be to Erophilus a lecture exceeding all dead monuments of the Muses” (68). In the first half of the sentence, the Squire evokes 1 Corinthians 2:9, which in the 1588 Bishops’ Bible reads: “But as it is written, The eye hath not seene, and the eare hath not heard, neither haue entred into the hart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that loue him.”16 The allusion to 1 Corinthians echoes not only the biblical passage but also Elizabeth’s own use of it in her 1592 Oxford oration, when she told her audience that she wanted love, not learning, from her subjects. These connections make it clear that Essex’s persona as a lover in Of Love and Self-Love is far more than simple adoration; it is directly connected to scripture and to Elizabeth’s demonstrations of learning. The queen’s centrality in the Squire’s passage is also underscored by the use of epistrophe: the repetition of “her” at the end of each phrase keeps the focus on Elizabeth as Essex’s loving educator, and indeed, the second half of the sentence confirms this role. When the Squire describes Elizabeth’s instructions as surpassing the “dead monuments of the Muses,” he is alluding to the opening scene in Consolation where Lady Philosophy angrily dismisses the Muses and takes over as Boethius’ new and more able consoler-teacher. Elizabeth would almost assuredly have recognized this allusion to her translation of Consolation; in fact, she herself had written out this part of her work. This scene in her translation reads: Who, when she spied poets’ Muses standing by my bed, and to my tears inditing words, somewhat moved, inflamed with gloating eyes: “Who suffered,” quoth she, “these stage’s harlots approach

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this sick man, which not only would not ease his sorrow with no remedies, but with sweet venom nourish them? These they be, that with barren affections’ thorns destroys the full ears of reason’s fruit, and men’s minds with disease inures, not frees.”

Lady Philosophy then says, “ ‘To my Muses leave him for cure and health.’ ”17 The Squire’s description, in keeping with Boethius’ text, indicates that the Muses are not productive influences. They produce only “dead” monuments. By establishing a contrast between these Muses and Elizabeth, Bacon and Essex intimate that Elizabeth is Essex’s enlightened educator, his own Lady Philosophy. The device even takes this connection one step further. Because this allusion is linked to the Corinthians echo, the queen surpasses not only the harlotry of the Muses that allowed Boethius to wallow in despair but even the distinctly classical (pagan) figure of Boethius’ Lady Philosophy herself. Elizabeth essentially becomes a Christian Lady Philosophy who has taught Essex, in true Boethian fashion, to put all his focus on the power of divine love. This love, in turn, is equivalent to love for his queen, which the echoes to 1 Corinthians in both Elizabeth’s Oxford oration and even Kyffin’s Blessednes of Brytaine had schooled him to know.18 The Squire’s declaration at the conclusion serves as the keystone in a carefully constructed arch. Throughout the entertainment, Essex and Bacon include references to Elizabeth’s demonstrations of wisdom, and the Squire’s conflation of Boethius and Elizabeth’s oration encapsulates the synthesis out of which a majority of the device is built. What is clever about this series of references is how deftly Bacon and Essex time their hints to listen for Elizabeth’s wisdom. The clues become more pointed as the device progresses. In the Hermit’s opening speech, the allusions are covert, making them recognizable only to those who have Boethius’ Consolation readily in mind. In the Soldier’s speech that follows, there are numerous allusions to Stoicism, which (as discussed in chapter four) evoke the French texts written in praise of Henri IV. These Stoic themes are more explicit than the references to Boethius in the Hermit’s speech, but what makes these references more nuanced is that they are quietly placed within echoes of Consolation that celebrate the primacy of love. Bacon and Essex are contrasting love with Stoicism. Then, the last figure to speak, the Statesman,

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drops the most obvious hints; he explains at one point that an aspiring statesman should practice appearing as a “scholar” of his queen’s wisdom, which is what the entire device has been doing tacitly all along. This progression of clues serves as somewhat of a test. The more a court figure is devoted to the queen’s wisdom and its international contexts, the earlier and more fully this individual will recognize the allusions. Because the Statesman is the most explicit in his nods to Elizabeth’s learned persona, I will begin with his speech to help establish the evocation of Elizabeth’s wisdom as an overall strategy—a foundation on which the earlier and more subtle references are built.

The Statesman and a Political Strategy Based on the Queen’s Wisdom The Statesman is the character who articulates that honoring a prince’s wisdom is an appropriate, even shrewd, political strategy. As a self-loving and deeply prideful character, the Statesman loves to give advice on how to fashion a persona that the monarch will find favorable. As discussed in the Introduction, he advises Erophilus-Essex to pursue an exclusive “education” based on real political texts: [L]et the instructions to employed men, the relations of ambassadors, the treatises between princes, and actions of the present time, be the books he reads: let the orations of wise princes or experimented counsellors in council or parliament, and the final sentences of grave and learned judges in weighty and doubtful causes, be the lectures he frequents. (64)

The Statesman openly includes a prince’s wise oration as part of the curriculum. This notion surfaces again later in the Statesman’s speech when he catalogues personae that an aspiring individual should cultivate: [W]hen his mistress shall perceive that his endeavours are [to] become a true supporter of her, a discharge of her care, a watchman of her person, a scholar of her wisdom, an instrument of her operation, and a conduit of her virtue, this with his diligences, accesses, humility, and patience, may move her to give him further degrees and approaches to her favour. (65; emphasis added)

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Not only should a politician study his prince’s wise speeches but he should also demonstrate that he has been schooled by his prince. He is to become a pupil of her wisdom—or, more specifically, to appear to be royally tutored. Similar to the strategy that underwrites the Squire’s conflation of the Corinthians echo with the passage from Boethius, Essex and Bacon are confirming just how attentive they were to Elizabeth’s recent demonstrations of learning. They are showing off Essex’s most élite education in real-world politics: Essex has Elizabeth herself as his schoolmistress. Unlike the self-loving Statesman, however, they took their queen’s teachings, quite literally, to heart. In her Oxford oration, she said she wanted love, and Essex’s persona as an adoring Erophilus makes the earl’s identity a direct reflection of what she demanded. The Statesman pursues personal gain by serving an egocentric Philautia; Essex, by contrast, is selflessly devoted to a queen who, by implication, is a very different mistress than Philautia. Elizabeth herself is not described in any detail in Of Love and Self-Love, but the repeated comparison of the Statesman, Hermit, Soldier, and their self-loving mistress with Essex and his queen suggests that Philautia, as a sovereign of self-love, represents a kind of foil to Elizabeth. Implying that Elizabeth is not self-loving would have been an appropriate tactic in November 1595. The French ambassador Antoine de Loménie had accused Elizabeth of caring only for herself—a selfishness that had led, he claimed, to the recent loss of the strategically important French town of Cambrai.19 Although disagreements in priority or policy in diplomatic exchange were often interpreted as lack of love, this kind of language was employed with especial vigor in the late summer and early fall of 1595. In a letter that Elizabeth wrote to Henri on 4 September 1595, the queen emphasizes that she cares as much for his welfare as for her own even as she cares deeply for her subjects.20 Only one week later, she uses this same approach with the French agent La Barauderie. According to the description of that meeting, Elizabeth claimed “that she had long travailled only for others without thinking of herself.”21 Bacon and Essex’s implication that Elizabeth is not a Philautia works, in particular, to negate the recent criticisms Loménie had leveled at the queen. Bacon and Essex create an entertainment that is nonconfrontational—a choice that is in Essex’s best interest. If he wanted to gain the queen’s favor, he needed to be conciliatory, especially now.

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Less than two months before Elizabeth’s Accession Day, Loménie had ignited royal fury with his brusque demeanor and menacing message about the possibility of a Franco-Spanish alliance. On 6 October, Sir Thomas Lake outlined the situation in a letter worth quoting at length. He indicates that Loménie had dealt so plainely and roundely with the Queen and our Councell, as hath moved here great Offence. The Substance is, to let the Queen understand, that he [Henri IV] hath his Absolution, that there are deputed to him four Cardinals, to give him the Solemnity thereof; but their chief Errant to draw him to a Peace with Spaine, and unite against all that are divided from the Church. That he is assured to receive for himselfe honourable Conditions; but knowing that he shalbe sought to be divided from the Queen and the Low Countreys, desireth by her to be enabled by a common Concurrency of both their Forces, that he be not compelled to such a Peace, as willingly he wold not make, but such as may comprehend them all in such Termes, as holding always together, they might be a Ballance against the Spanish Greatness. That yf she refuse him in it, he must provide for himselfe as he may. Thes Lettres delivired with very stout Speeches, hath greatly offended the Queen, who loveth not to be terrefyed. The Gentleman is dispatched without anie Hope of obtaining Relief from hence.22

Outraged at being so bullied, Elizabeth and the Council sent Loménie back to France with curt answers that stifled both French hopes for English support and any motivation for Henri to fulfill his plan of sending a high-ranking agent back to England. As Loménie reported back to Henri (on Elizabeth’s Accession Day, ironically enough), Essex was deeply vexed by England’s unequivocal rejection of Henri’s request. Essex remained in contact with the French agent even as he continued to work on AngloFrench relations through correspondence with Henri himself and, most frequently, through Antonio Pérez, who was currently with the king. In letters to Pérez, Essex often vented his frustration with Elizabeth; however, in Of Love and Self-Love, he and Bacon choose the tactic of prescriptive praise—an especially wise strategy in light of the current political climate. Soon after Loménie’s departure in mid- October, the Elizabethan government realized that England could not afford to push Henri away so completely. In response, Elizabeth made conciliatory gestures to La Fontaine, Henri’s agent still in England. Pérez indicates that this news had

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already reached France by late November since he mentions the hope that Elizabeth is ready to consider agreeing, for example, to Henri’s request for a conference.23 Henri would have been appreciative of this turn of events, especially since his own Parlement had recently refused to grant his edicts to help him raise funds for military efforts.24 In light of this context, Essex uses Of Love and Self-Love as a strategic and early overture to encourage Elizabeth to adopt a noncommittal openness to healing England’s current relationship with France. Thus, the device was performed in this narrow window spanning a matter of weeks when tensions were still high, but Elizabeth was also realizing her need to soften her position regarding France. The Statesman character, who showcases the importance of a prince’s wisdom, is a key participant in this nonconfrontational approach. Even though this character does not have the repeated echoes of Elizabeth’s learning found in the Soldier’s and Hermit’s speeches, the Statesman possesses the most overtly political vocation but uses very neutral language. In the passage that advocates Erophilus-Essex consulting such crucial political “books” as a wise prince’s oration, he begins this list with documents related to foreign affairs: “the instructions to employed men, the relations of ambassadors, the treatises between princes, and actions of the present time.” These elements follow the chronology involved in negotiations. Neutrality is evident in the Statesman’s phrases: royal authority comes through instructions generated for envoys; ambassadors “relate” their news, which has no connotation of judgment; exchanges between princes are “treatises”—a term that focuses on communication rather than the creation of any agreement; and, finally, these texts facilitate international action that is left completely open-ended as simply “actions of the present time” (64). Even though Bacon and Essex specify no political outcome, how they thread references to Boethius into the Hermit’s speech at the opening of the device aligns Elizabeth with her previous role as an impartial queen who responds to Henri’s apostasy by translating Consolation—a spiritual text that contains no Christian references. As a peaceful, Christian queen who has not had to change religion to pacify her nation, she can remain, as before, both open to negotiations and superior to the French king in the matter of constancy. In turn, these neutral terms keep Essex from the position of pressing any particular agenda other than unwavering adoration

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for his queen. The focus on love remains so central in the piece because the Statesman, Soldier, and Hermit each ends his speech with a comparison of his vocation to that of Erophilus-Essex as a lover. These moments always encapsulate the fundamental limitation of each speaker as well as showcase Essex’s (and, by implication, Elizabeth’s) superiority. The Statesman shows that Essex demonstrates the right kind of love for a queen who specified in her Oxford oration that she wanted love, not learning. In the concluding words of his speech, the Statesman boasts that his strategies allow a counselor to show both love and learning. He ends his oration with the following: “So that I conclude I have traced him the way to that which hath been granted to some few, ‘amare et sapere’, to love and be wise” (65, sic). The Statesman takes this notion from Publilius Syrus’ famous sententia: Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur [To love and to be wise is hardly granted to the gods]. This saying was not only made famous (hence readily recognizable) by such noted humanists as Desiderius Erasmus but was also used by Bacon several times. He included it in the piece he wrote for the queen (Of Tribute: Or, Giving That Which is Due; ca. 1592) and again in the essay “On Love,” which contains the following: “therefore it was well said, that ‘it is impossible to love and to be wise’ ” (358).25 This classical, secular maxim proclaims that love and wisdom are incompatible pursuits. In keeping with the strategy of having each figure expose his limitations as a lover in the final moments, I propose that the Statesman’s boast solidifies his role as a self-loving statesman: he has failed to hear truly what Essex’s queen has articulated that she wants. The possibility that this moment reveals error rather than witty success is further conceivable if we read the entertainment depicting the Indian boy. This device, performed at some point in conjunction with Of Love and Self-Love, includes the same Latin saying but now gives its power only to Elizabeth. Significantly, the sentences right before the sententia in this entertainment associate Elizabeth with the ability to distinguish between true love and feigned affection—precisely the skill needed to recognize the Statesman’s flattery. The attendant to the once-blind Indian boy (to whom Elizabeth has just given sight), tells the queen that “Your Majesty shall obtain the curious window into hearts of which the ancients speak; thereby you shall discern protestation from fullness of heart, ceremonies and fashions from a habit of mind that can do not other, affection [affectation] from affection.”26 A few

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sentences later, the attendant says, “And to conclude, your Majesty may be invested of that which the poet saith was never granted, Amare et sapere.”27 By including this maxim again and putting it in the mouth of a character paying respectful homage to Elizabeth, Essex provides another instance where spectators can reach the “right” conclusion only by juxtaposing Of Love and Self-Love with another text. As I will discuss later, this technique lies at the core of interpreting this device, making the entertainment a bit of a test that measures the extent to which each spectator has received an exclusive education based on Elizabeth’s wise teachings. And it is the Hermit who provides the first and most subtle test of one’s access to the royal curriculum.

The Hermit: A Failed Boethius No character has speech more rife with references to Elizabeth’s wisdom than the Hermit, who is the first of Philautia’s three representatives to speak in the entertainment. Unlike the Statesman’s overt clues to listen for a wise prince’s learning, the Hermit’s lines are silently and subtly built upon an actual demonstration of that royal wisdom: Elizabeth’s translation of Boethius’ Consolation. In fact, Bacon’s drafts suggest that the Hermit and the Statesman are quite connected: Bacon initially wrote lines for the Hermit but then gave them to the Statesman. Although it was the Statesman who appeared as a scholar of the queen’s wisdom, it is the Hermit who articulates the most ideas that exemplify this strategy in action. In order for spectators to understand how Bacon and Essex are using allusions to Consolation, they must have previous familiarity with that text. The Hermit’s lines contain no mention of Boethius, which means that spectators must already know that Consolation traces Boethius-prisoner’s personal and spiritual journey from despair to love-prompted joy. They also need to know that, under Lady Philosophy’s tutelage, Boethius-prisoner learns that he must look beyond the surface of personal circumstances to consider God’s celestial perspective. Once he adopts this larger vision, he will see that the universe is ruled not by Fortune’s random indifference but rather by God’s benevolent love. Through these realizations, Boethius finds true happiness and stability. The Hermit, however much he articulates ideas from Consolation, fails to find joy. From the outset, he is described as a

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“melancholy dreaming Hermit” (61), and the descriptor of “melancholy” follows him throughout the entertainment. At first, his sad state seems appropriate for an intellectual character because such individuals were often described as contemplatively melancholy. Once we recognize that the Hermit voices many of Lady Philosophy’s tenets for embarking on a correct spiritual journey, his melancholy is no longer so fitting. It reveals that he is, essentially, a failed Boethius who can parrot Lady Philosophy’s teachings but not successfully apply them. Early in his speech, the Hermit articulates lessons that Lady Philosophy teaches Boethius-prisoner in Books 1 and 2. She centers her first lessons on Stoic philosophy, helping Boethius pull himself out of the selfish despair in which she found him wallowing with the Muses at the opening of Book 1. Stoicism’s extirpation of the passions helps Boethius-prisoner rein in his emotions. This initial step to seeing beyond his individual situation will, in turn, help him discover the freedom found in his thoughts rather than focus on any earthly circumstances of imprisonment or servility. In Book 2 of Consolation, Lady Philosophy tells her pupil about a prisoner who bit off his tongue to avoid disclosing information to a tyrant. She prefaces this exemplum with the question: “Num quidquam umquam libero imperabis animo? [Can you ever command anything to a free mind?]”28 In partial affinity with Lady Philosophy’s Stoic denunciation of egocentrism, the Hermit explains that Erophilus-Essex needs to leave turning over the book of fortune, which is but a play for children, where there be so many books of truth and knowledge better worthy the revolving, and not fix his view only upon a picture in a little table, where there be so many tables of histories, yea to life, excellent to behold and admire. Whether he believe me or no, there is no prison to the prison of thoughts, which are free under the greatest tyrants. (61)

Similar to Lady Philosophy, the Hermit lauds the freedom of the mind’s contemplations regardless of physical confinement or hostile political environment. He also associates this freedom with the strongly Stoic notion of refusing to be affected by Fortune. In these elements, the Hermit follows Lady Philosophy’s teachings rather successfully. He reveals his faulty application of these notions, however, when he associates Erophilus-Essex’s love for

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Elizabeth with a narrow-minded focus on small details that distract one from seeing the divine, universal laws that unite the cosmos. When the Hermit advises Erophilus to take in the larger vistas of history rather than confine himself to the tiny picture in the small table, he exposes his limitations not only as a Boethian student but also as a student of Elizabeth’s wisdom. Essentially, he remembers various ideas from Lady Philosophy’s teachings, but does not get them quite right. His incomplete understanding is especially evident when he uses the picture as a metaphor for Erophilus-Essex’s mistress (Elizabeth) and then suggests that this kind of love is labyrinthine: “Shall any man make his conceit as an anchor, mured up with the compass of one beauty or person, that many have the liberty of all contemplation? Shall he exchange the sweet travelling through the universal variety for one wearisome and endless round or labyrinth?” (61). Although he recalls Boethius-prisoner’s image of the destructive labyrinth, he does not remember that the prisoner uses it to refer to reason, not love. In Book 3, prose 12, Boethius-prisoner asks Lady Philosophy if she is wrapping him “in undoing labyrinth of reason, in which thou enterest in whence thou wentest out, and now goest out where thou camest in? So hast thou not thus wrapped a roundel of divine sincerity?”29 Boethius recognizes that human reason is limited and that it leads to a wandering in multiplicity. He learns that love will lead him to a divine perspective that can see unity in all things. The Hermit, conversely, is unaware that Elizabeth’s language of love from 1 Corinthians intimates her divinity, and he cannot fathom that loving her is anything but narrow contemplation. He does not understand that such love would enable him to see the “universal variety” (or “mutable variety” in Elizabeth’s translation) that Boethius-prisoner learns to associate with God (Book 3, prose 12, p. 239). In this way, when the Hermit disparages Erophilus’ love for his sovereign-mistress, he fails not only to get the referent of the labyrinth correct but also to know that loving Elizabeth is loving the divine if one is a true scholar of the queen’s wisdom. In his attempt to dissuade Erophilus-Essex from loving the divine Elizabeth, the Hermit urges the earl not to progress toward a more enlightened perspective but actually to regress to a position comparable to what Boethius-prisoner demonstrated at the beginning of Consolation. The Hermit advises

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that Erophilus-Essex should “offer his service to the Muses” (61) and write poetry. In part, this suggestion playfully reminds the audience that Essex and Bacon are using a literary device themselves. It also places the Hermit back in the opening scenario of Consolation, which depicts the prisoner writing poetry and surrounded by the Muses. Elizabeth’s translation of Consolation begins with these verses: Rhymes, that my growing study once performed; In tears, alas, compelled, woeful staves begin. My Muses torn (behold) what write I should, indite, Where true woeful verse my face with dole bedews. These, at least, no terror might constrain That, fellows to our moan, our way they should refrain. The glory once of happy, greeny youth, Now Fates of grunting age, my comfort all. Unlooked-for Age, hied by mishaps, is come, And Sorrow bids his time to add withal; Unseasoned, hoary hairs upon my head are poured, And loosèd skin in feeble body shakes. (Book 1, meter 1, lines 1–12, pp. 73 and 75)

As these lamentations emphasize, the Muses have done nothing to help Boethius-prisoner contemplate anything beyond his own despair and the earthly frailty of his aged body. Similarly, the Hermit, described as a “good old man” by the Soldier (62), is a parody of the hoary-headed Boethius-prisoner before he experienced the stabilizing force of divine love. Because the Hermit is also trapped by the limitations of earthbound reason and the earthly Muses, he does indeed live up to his description as a “Wandering Hermit” (65) who wanders not in “universal variety” but in what the Squire more accurately calls a “wilderness of variety” (66).

Essex: Successful Student of a Queen’s Wisdom Once the Hermit’s lines are read in the context of Elizabeth’s learning, the Hermit’s shortfalls are revealed even as ErophilusEssex’s devotion emerges as divinely blessed. Essex shows that he is a superior student taught by a superior, royal teacher. His love for Elizabeth bridges not only the gap between the Hermit’s and Boethius’ perspective but also the gap between Boethius’

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lessons in Platonic divine love and Elizabeth’s Christianitylinked devotion. In one swift stroke, Essex praises Elizabeth’s Christian wisdom even as he exhibits his and Bacon’s clever ability to synthesize Elizabeth’s Oxford oration with her translation of Boethius. This superiority is evident in the Squire’s final speech. The Squire indicates that his master has learned a form of wisdom from Elizabeth that fosters the same kind of serenity and constancy that Boethius learned from Lady Philosophy. The Squire expresses Erophilus-Essex’s tranquility: But give ear now to the comparison of my master’s condition, and acknowledge such a difference as is betwixt the melting hail-stone and the solid pearl. Indeed it seemeth to depend as the globe of the earth seemeth to hang in the air; but yet it is firm and stable in itself. It is like a cube or die-form, which toss it or throw it any way, it ever lighteth upon a square. Is he denied the hopes of favours to come? He can resort to the remembrance of contentments past: destiny cannot repeal that which is past. Doth he find the acknowledgment of his affection small? He may find the merit of his affection the greater: fortune cannot have power over that which is within. Nay his falls are like the falls of Anateus; they renew his strength. (66)

The Squire relates that Erophilus-Essex has found the perspective that sees beyond the whimsy of Fortune. He is now unaffected by external circumstances, even the need for royal favor and preferment. The spectators who recognize the connection to Consolation would understand precisely how the earl loves with a Boethian constancy that makes him a true fulfillment of the Statesman’s advice to be a scholar of the queen’s wisdom. Essex has followed his queen’s learning to achieve the stability and centered love that Boethius found. At the end of this passage, however, the reference to Anateus (the giant in Greek mythology who was made stronger when thrown to the ground30) roots this moment in an additional context from Consolation that makes Bacon and Essex’s nod to Elizabeth’s translation even more clever. The reference to Anateus conjures up the instance in the Consolation at the end of Book 2 when Lady Philosophy contrasts the shallow happiness of earthly fame with the true felicity that comes from a mind guided by divine love. In a scenario that resembles Anateus’, she tells Boethius-prisoner

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that misfortune and adversity can actually be beneficial. They make truly virtuous individuals stronger. For men, I suppose, more get by adverse than lucky Fortune. For she [Fortune] ever, with show of bliss, with seeming all false, deceives. And ever true she is in change, when unstable she seems: the one beguiles, the other instructs. This ties the enjoyers’ minds with show of lying good; the other looseth them with knowledge of frail felicity. This, know therefore, for windy, fleeting, and ignorant of herself; the other, sober, steady, and wise by adversity’s exercise. (Book 2, prose 8, p. 169)

This connection with the image of Erophilus-Essex as a figure who finds renewed strength in adversity presents the earl as one who loves with a stable and strong constancy, but the context of this reference to Consolation obliquely associates Elizabeth with the virtuous power of divine love. Right after telling of the potential benefits of Fortune, Lady Philosophy sings the verses about how love rules the cosmos: Love, ruling heav’ns. Who, if the reins he slack, Whatso now by Love is linked Straight maketh war, And seeks to wrack that work Which with linked faith It, quiet motions, moved. He in holy peace doth hold The bounded peoples’ pact, And links sacred wedlock With chaste goodwill, Who laws, his own, to true associates gives. O happy humankind, If Love your minds— The same, that heaven doth rule, might guide. (Book 2, meter 8, lines 14–28, pp. 171 and 173)

These lines are pivotal in Boethius-prisoner’s “education,” for it is here that he comes to understand that love, not Fortune, governs the universe. After Lady Philosophy sings this poem, he begins to experience the first stirrings of joy. As these verses indicate, humankind finds happiness when love is allowed to govern the mind. The presence of an allusion to these verses in Of Love and

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Self-Love underscores the repeated emphases on the felicity that Erophilus-Essex enjoys in loving his (divine) queen. In addition, the precise image of divine love in Lady Philosophy’s verses contains another characteristic that would have been appropriate to use in relation to Elizabeth. Divine love creates peace among nations. Essex wanted Elizabeth to send military assistance to France, but urging her to adopt this stance was much better presented under the guise of maintaining peace rather than waging even a defensive war. The association between Elizabeth and divine love in the device, buried to all but those intimately familiar with Consolation, harmonizes Elizabeth’s claims of divinity through love in her Oxford oration with her translation of Boethius. Because Elizabeth wrote out her translation of the verses herself, she was more likely to have been able to situate the reference to strength-in-adversity with this moment’s juxtaposition with divine love and, in turn, to realize just how much of this device is focused on her. Elizabeth is not mentioned outright, which makes the Squire’s line in this section seem puzzling. The Squire concludes this part of his speech by saying, “such is the excellency of her nature and of his estate” (66). Essex’s estate receives much explicit attention in this speech, but Elizabeth’s “excellency” does not. The Squire’s claim, however, does make sense once we see the many intimations of Elizabeth as a figure of divine love who fosters peace. This connection, in turn, crystallizes the significance of the Squire’s condemnation of the Soldier minutes later. The Soldier glories in times of violence and civic unrest. He is a warmonger and an earthbound thinker, which, the play insinuates, Essex and Elizabeth are not.

The Earthbound, Stoic Soldier Who Disrupts Nations The Soldier’s philosophy represents the kind of approach to foreign policy that Elizabeth refuses to adopt. The Soldier embodies the antithesis of Elizabeth’s image of divine love and international peace mentioned in the Squire’s criticism of the Hermit. Only moments after the Squire trounces the Hermit, he turns to the Soldier and exposes this character’s destructive nature: You will give laws, and advance force, and trouble nations, and remove landmarks of kingdoms, and hunt men, and pen tragedies in blood: and that which is worst of all, make all the virtues

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accessary [sic] to bloodshed. Hath the practice of force so deprived you of the use of reason, as that you will compare the interruption of society with the perfection of society, the conquest of bodies with the conquest of spirits, the terrestrial fire which destroyeth and dissolveth with the celestial fire which quickeneth and giveth life? And such is the comparison between the soldier and the lover. (67)

As an inverse reflection of Lady Philosophy’s verses on love, the Soldier does not create pacts among people; he troubles nations. He does not create order; he interrupts it. Most importantly for Elizabeth’s association with divine love, the Squire claims that the Soldier tries to compare terrestrial fire with its celestial counterpart. Celestial fire represents the Holy Spirit, which is divine love. This connotation is emphasized by the notion that it is the force that “quickeneth and giveth life.” Terrestrial fire, conversely, is love of the world: it is self-love.31 In Consolation, Lady Philosophy likens selflove to natural instinct that, unlike divine perspective, is focused on preserving one’s life in the body: “And contrariwise, desire of making our like, whereby continuance doth endure, our wills sometimes keeps us from that Nature desires. Wherefore this love of ourselves proceeds not of a creature’s notion, but of a natural intent” (Book 3, prose 11, p. 235). Erophilus-Essex pursues divine love, a love that aligns Essex with Elizabeth as queen of concord and divine love and that distances him from the enterprise of war. By implication, he is interested in fostering peace rather than in stirring up violence. Always quick to want military leadership, Essex is, at least in image here, associating himself with his queen’s pacific agenda. As added confirmation that the Soldier views the world through a temporal lens, the highest power he acknowledges is war, and he believes that a soldier’s ultimate glory occurs in death: It is the wars that are the tribunal seat, where the highest right and possessions are decided; the occupation of kings, the root of nobility, the protection of all estates. And lastly, lovers never thought their profession sufficiently graced, till they have compared it to a warfare. All that in any other profession can be wished for is but to live happily: but to be a brave commander in the field, death itself doth crown the head with glory. (63)

The Soldier’s focus on glory is about egocentric fame rather than any larger cause such as love of country, love of God, or love of

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queen. Indeed, when the Soldier mentions lovers, he describes the common trope of love as war—a notion that not only keeps love within the realm of private relationships but also presents relationships founded in opposition and conquest rather than in unselfish devotion. The Soldier’s view of love reflects his view of war: both are about domination, not adoration, and neither acknowledges any higher calling or part in a divine plan. He focuses on dead bodies rather than elevated ideals. The Soldier’s limited, military perspective is also fundamentally inconsistent with the performance context of the device itself. Of Love and Self-Love was performed on Elizabeth’s Accession Day, a day when all military exercises are demonstrations of love for the queen. Essex himself was Elizabeth’s personal champion in 1595 and therefore embodies the fusion of military might with royal adoration. As discussed in chapter three, Kyffin’s “Continvation” of The Blessednes of Brytaine, which was produced for Elizabeth’s Accession Day in 1588 and was dedicated to Essex, included this same connection between chivalric patriotism and love for queen. In addition, Kyffin’s articulation of patriotic love exemplified the tradition of using 1 Corinthians 2:9 to equate divine love with love of queen. The Soldier is out of tune with this tradition. Bacon and Essex, however, are incorporating the same elements that have been a mainstay not simply in Accession Day panegyrics but specifically in the Accession Day panegyric associated with Essex’s cosmopolitan, interventionist predecessors in the Leicester circle. What Bacon and Essex are doing in Of Love and Self-Love is clever, but hardly new. As Elizabeth’s personal champion on this Accession Day, Essex showcases his fidelity to her as his schoolmistress-sovereign of divine love. She is his queen whose wisdom far surpasses a temporal perspective and a perspective, appropriately enough, associated with Henri IV and the Neostoic thought used to rally France behind him. The earthbound reason of the Soldier is, interestingly enough, tied to ideas associated with Stoic reason. Partway through his speech, the Soldier makes his Stoic roots evident when he describes war as the culmination of the cardinal virtues, which he crowns with Neostoicism’s focal priority, constancy. Then for the dignity of military profession, is it not the truest and perfectest practice of all virtues? of wisdom, in disposing those things which are most subject to confusion and accident; of justice,

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in continual distributing rewards; of temperance, in exercising of the straitest discipline; of fortitude, in toleration of all labours and abstinence from effeminate delights; of constancy, in bearing and digesting the greatest variety of fortune. (63; emphasis added)

What colors this list with a Stoic hue is how Bacon and Essex describe constancy and make it the culminating virtue. Jacqueline Lagrée notes in her work on Neostoicism and France that constancy essentially assumed the status of a cardinal virtue with the rebirth of the Stoic movement in the late Renaissance.32 France in particular included much interest in this philosophical school of thought, for, as discussed in the last chapter, numerous writers in late sixteenth-century France depicted Henri as a Neostoic King of Reason. This image fit especially well with his long-standing reputation as a chivalric figure who makes personal sacrifices for the good of the people. For Henri’s supporters, Neostoicism was a key strategy because it located virtue outside the realm of religion—a factor that was so much Henri’s Achilles heel that he eventually converted to Catholicism in order to pacify France. Chronologically closer to Of Love and Self-Love, Guillaume du Vair had published his Traité de la Constance et Consolation és Calamitez Publiques (1594), in which he used Neostoic principles to present Henri’s self-sacrificing loyalty to his nation and, through this image of royal virtue, to provide a philosophical framework for envisioning a unified France. Although royalist and Catholic supporters such as du Vair harmonized Neostoic and Christian values for patriotic (rather than divine) purposes, Bacon and Essex keep their Soldier in the realm of secular Stoicism through their specific description of constancy. As Lagrée indicates, “Constancy is the virtue of someone who relies first and foremost on his own strengths and not on God or others.”33 Bacon and Essex further intimate the Soldier’s secular purview by aligning constancy with the ability to deal with the vagaries of Fortune—a concept that, from a Christian or even Platonic view, is short-sighted and reflects an earthly rather than a celestial perspective. It is this myopic focus on Fortune’s power, in fact, that Lady Philosophy uses to move Boethius out of his initial Stoic lesson and onto her Platonic and divine-centered curriculum. The Soldier, like the Hermit, occupies a position related to the early scenes in Consolation. Conversely, Elizabeth and her student Essex represent and acknowledge the celestial perspective of love.

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Significantly, though, the Soldier’s (and even the Hermit’s) terrestrial limitations stem from the inability to assimilate divinity, love, and peace. The nature of that divinity is not expressly linked to any particular doctrine or even to Christianity itself. This absence of theological identity operates within the same strategy that Elizabeth adopted when she chose to translate Boethius after Henri’s conversion. Her translation allowed her to suggest, without promising, that she was keeping her options open for continued Anglo-French relations, regardless of the two nations’ new religious differences. Consolation works well for this purpose because it uses pagan philosophies that leave room for a Christian reading but do not specify a certain Christian doctrine. Such strategy acknowledges Henri without using language associated with the source of the new tensions—that of religion. When Essex and Bacon locate issues regarding Henri in the intellectualphilosophical climate surrounding Elizabeth’s translation of Boethius in 1593, they are situating Anglo-French relations back in a diplomatic period of similar uncertainty but different—and less upsetting—grounds. Even more importantly, they evoke an instance when Elizabeth established her own diplomatic language to address the situation.

Scholars of Elizabeth’s Diplomatic, Boethian Strategy Elizabeth’s Boethian strategy avoids confrontation because it only implies a position. So, too, do Bacon and Essex employ a Boethian approach to Elizabeth’s wisdom overall. They, like Boethius, never once refer to Christian wisdom explicitly. Bacon and Essex utilize this technique most significantly through the Squire—the character who voices Essex’s adoration for Elizabeth. Even though it is the Squire who articulates the echo of 1 Corinthians in the final moments, he never knowingly articulates divine wisdom. The closest he comes is conjuring Plato, and even more appropriately, Plato filtered through another echo of Consolation. In his final speech of the entertainment, the Squire draws upon the Platonic distinction between shadows and reality. He denounces the Hermit’s knowledge as shallow in comparison with his master’s profound love: “Will you compare shadows with bodies, picture with life, variety of many beauties with the peerless excellency of one? the element of water with the element of fire? And such is the comparison between knowledge and love” (67). The Platonic

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allusion of the shadows and reality is followed by the contrast between a picture and life. This juxtaposition evokes the conflation of these same concepts at the opening of Book 3 in Consolation when Lady Philosophy tells the prisoner that he is not yet able to view true happiness directly. She says, “To true felicity which thy mind dreams of; whose eyes, being used to pictures, itself cannot behold” (Book 3, prose 1, p. 175). The Squire builds this dual echo of Boethius and Plato to express a gulf between knowledge and love. In Consolation, Lady Philosophy does not make this connection, although her statements about pictures and reality come right after she has sung the poem about love at the end of Book 2 (quoted earlier in this chapter). Bacon and Essex use this progression to acknowledge, I believe, Elizabeth’s use of St. Paul’s contrast between love and earthly wisdom in her Oxford oration. Erophilus-Essex, then, is associated with a love that he has learned from his Christian Queen Philosophy, but this connection is left implied rather than stated outright. The Squire does not connect his statement to a Christian articulation—the same lack of awareness he exhibited when he conflated 1 Corinthians 2:9 with the echo of Lady Philosophy banishing the Muses. As a character, he does not seem to recognize the sources of his words. He, like Shakespeare’s Bottom, who will be discussed in the Afterword, refers to wisdom (even the same 1 Cor. 2:9) without understanding its implications. In Of Love and Self-Love, the Squire’s wisdom never ventures outside a BoethianPlatonic secularized viewpoint. This perspective keeps this character’s knowledge forever inferior to Elizabeth’s divine wisdom in much the same way that Boethius-author’s Christian knowledge forever hovers above Boethius-prisoner’s secular curriculum. Elizabeth’s wisdom from 1 Corinthians is never mentioned outright in the device, but seeing its transcendent presence reveals how the whole device espouses a wisdom that allows the queen’s to surpass that of all others. Elizabeth’s superlative wisdom is even underscored by Bacon and Essex’s choice of actors. They were all university men. Whyte identifies these men in his letter: “Thold Man was he, that in Cambridg plaied Giraldy, Morley plaied the Secretary, and he that plaied Pedantiq, was the Soldior, and Toby Matthew acted the Squires Part.”34 A particularly significant choice was Toby Matthew in the role of the Squire because he would have been attuned to entertaining Elizabeth within the context of her

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position as a learned queen. Not only might he have performed in one of the plays prepared for her visit to Oxford in 1592 but he also had family connections to entertaining the queen.35 His father (of the same name) was at Cambridge when the queen visited in 1564 and probably was the person who adapted the story of Marcus Geminus into a play to be performed for her on the first evening of her visit. Matthew is a most visible reminder of the university ties linking this device to the Oxford progress, but the possibility that Cuffe was involved in writing the entertainment is another potential link. In November 1595, Cuffe was part of Essex’s secretariat, but back in 1592, he was a Regius professor of Greek at Oxford and had been involved in several events for Elizabeth’s visit that year. He delivered a Greek oration for her during her entry into the university, and he was also a respondent at a disputation on the subject “An dissentions civium sint utiles Reipublicae? [Whether differing opinions of citizens are beneficial to a commonwealth?]” This topic may have housed some reference to the civic unrest in France.36 Through these strategies, Essex and Bacon show that they are familiar with Elizabeth’s recent demonstrations of erudition in concept, in underlying technique, and in the way these two “texts” complement, even complete, each other. They give a sly wink to those spectators who understand how Elizabeth’s use of love from 1 Corinthians can make the Christian leap of love that Boethius implies but never includes at the end of Consolation. As discussed in the previous chapter, some scholars of Consolation suggest that Boethius intended his text to read as a true Menippean satire—a genre that often exposes the limitations of human wisdom. When Essex and Bacon use Elizabeth’s wisdom to expose the shortcomings of all the device’s characters, their wit operates in this same Menippean spirit. It also supports the possibility that Elizabeth herself wanted her Pauline call for love in 1592 to be a sort of Menippean “answer” hovering just outside her translation of Boethius—a text that, because of its genre, would encourage such a reading. In this case, Elizabeth would have found Boethius’ text an apt choice to showcase the superior Christian wisdom that she made a centerpiece of her ruling strategies. Her governance differed from Henri’s and his supporters’ reliance on the more earthly Stoicism. If this interpretation is correct, then Bacon and Essex are accentuating their own highly intellectual recognition of their highly intellectual queen’s subtle, learned, and deeply political choices.

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Of Love and Self-Love as a Test The spectators watching Of Love and Self-Love, just like those who attended Sir Philip Sidney’s The Lady of May (as discussed in chapter two), must be intimately familiar with certain representations of learning in order to unlock a series of key political subtexts. The approach stratifies the audience, testing which figures are most devoted to Elizabeth specifically as a learned queen. Their level of recognition not only proves the extent to which they are true followers of Elizabeth’s wisdom but also establishes who in the audience was sufficiently well-versed in the association between Elizabeth’s learned persona and an international agenda. The device, therefore, reaches its climax of strategy in the reactions that follow the performance; it is here that courtiers will reveal, perhaps unknowingly, where they fall on the spectrum of loving wisdom and of access to Elizabeth’s exclusive political lessons in her demonstrations of erudition. Whyte’s description of Elizabeth’s response suggests that Elizabeth understood the allusions when she expressed her displeasure and awareness that the whole piece was about her. She may have been working on a strategy to thaw relations with France, but she clearly did not appreciate such focused attention on her persona in relation to Anglo-French affairs. By contrast, Whyte does not seem to have such full awareness. He recounts the Squire’s final speech by listing this character’s reaction to each of the three speakers and acknowledging Elizabeth’s wisdom and divinity, but Whyte, like the Hermit, sees individual items rather than a single underlying concept. He relates: but the Esquier answered them all; and concluded with an excellent, but to plaine English, that this Knight wold neuer forsake his Mistresses Love, whose Vertue made all his Thoughts Deuine, whose Wisdom tought him all true Policy, whose Beauty and Worth, were at all Times able to make him fitt to comand Armies.37

Whyte’s description does suggest that he accurately heard the emphasis on divinity even as he also records events quite accurately. His account overall bears adequate resemblance to the Squire’s final claim: Therefore Erophilus’ resolution is fixed: he renounceth Philautia, and all her enchantments. For her [Elizabeth’s] recreation, he will

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confer with his muse: for her defence and honour, he will sacrifice his life in the wars, hoping to be embalmed in the sweet odours of her remembrance; to her service will he consecrate all his watchful endeavours; and will ever bear in his heart the picture of her beauty, in his actions of her will, and in his fortune of her grace and favour. (68)

Whyte remembers the emphasis on Elizabeth’s beauty and Essex’s willingness to go into battle on her behalf, and his references to her wisdom and divinity leave open a possibility of some recognition of the items discussed in this chapter. His sparse analysis does not flesh out these ideas, so it is difficult to tell with certainty just how much he grasped. Whyte does correctly recognize, however, that the three figures in the device are not allegorical representations of individuals at court. In his letter to Robert Sidney, he describes how some individuals at court were trying to figure out which three statesmen were shadowed in the Hermit, Soldier, and Statesman. “The World makes many vntrue Constructions of these Speaches, comparing the Hermitt and the Secretary, to two of the Lords, and the Soldier to Sir Roger Williams.”38 Such speculative interpretation by some audience members, as Hammer has observed, may have linked Burghley with the Hermit and Cecil with the Statesman. Hammer also suggests that these interpretations may reveal a gap between authorial intent and audience perception,39 and I agree, particularly after we acknowledge how the Hermit is based on Elizabeth’s translation of Boethius. Court figures in 1595 who associated Burghley with the Hermit were making this connection because the Cecils had included a hermit in an entertainment staged for Elizabeth at Theobalds.40 In trying to see Cecil in the Hermit, these spectators were aware that Of Love and Self-Love was part of Essex’s campaign to best Robert Cecil and become Burghley’s successor. They also knew that the entertainment with the hermit at Theobalds performed a few years earlier was designed to showcase Cecil’s fitness to assume his father’s mantle and serve as Elizabeth’s most trusted counselor. When Cecil chose the family estate as well as the character of a hermit, he demonstrated his own distinct approach to making his bid for leadership. He was grounding his bid in the tradition of his father’s devotion—devotion expressed solely in England, at court, and specifically at Elizabeth’s side. Burghley

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had never left England after his trip to Scotland in 1559–1560. Although Cecil and his father were deeply involved in determining foreign policy, they conducted it primarily within England. Conversely, Essex was more cosmopolitan in approach and sought to serve Elizabeth by traveling abroad, much like his predecessors in the Leicester circle. Essex’s self-representation on the symbolic battlefield and his strategy of invoking Elizabeth’s transnational image as a learned queen perfectly match his own distinctive credentials for this high office. 41 Examining the references to Elizabeth’s wisdom in Of Love and Self-Love shows that Essex’s bid for power operates more through showcasing himself than disparaging Cecil or Burghley.42 When spectators read faction into the device, they were not seeing how the device is really all about Elizabeth. It celebrates Essex’s adoration of her as a learned queen within the connection between her wisdom and foreign affairs. It was not primarily an attack on Cecil. In part, Essex’s perennial interest in showcasing himself makes Of Love and Self-Love the failure that scholars have long described it to be—a conclusion that certainly matches Elizabeth’s dismissive snub in response to it. Although the device does fail to secure Essex’s position as the next principal advisor, it might have played a role in getting Elizabeth to send an envoy to France just one month later. As this mission focused on salvaging damaged relations, Elizabeth chose Sir Henry Unton, a high-ranking ambassador who had worked closely with Essex in Rouen. In fact, Elizabeth’s irritated response to Of Love and Self-Love may have helped Essex gauge the extent of Elizabeth’s own interest in pursuing a reconciliation with Henri. Her reaction may have encouraged him to devise his own strategies for working on relations with France, as we know he did by sending secret instructions with Unton. Essex did not secure the position of principal secretary, but this one failure need not eclipse his other successes in this period. Elizabeth would continue to recognize the earl’s gifts as a more cosmopolitan political figure. That year and the next, she would honor his abilities as a military leader, and he would reap substantial, though short-lived, glory in such high-profile missions as the raid of Cadiz. In these instances, he fulfilled part of his glamorous image from Of Love and Self-Love. He was the wise and chivalric hero who defends crown and country from international threat. Essex is indeed Sidney’s heir, invoking Elizabeth’s learned persona within a love-driven, transnational discourse and with

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the recognition that he needs Elizabeth’s backing to achieve his international agenda. Essex, like Sidney, Kyffin, and Blenerhasset before him, incorporated Elizabeth into their pieces in a way that supported her agency and encouraged her support in return. In addition, these writers span a range of positions in relation to the court—from Essex’s inner-circle centrality to Blenerhasset’s and Kyffin’s places in the outer rings as affiliated with, but not of, the court. This range reveals how widely recognized was the tradition of invoking Elizabeth’s learned persona, even just within England itself. To uncover a final layer to this sequence of ever-widening circles of influence, I devote the Afterword to examining briefly two seemingly dissimilar representations of Elizabeth: William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (which was possibly performed only weeks after Of Love and Self-Love) and Elizabeth’s own 1601 speech to Parliament. In both these pieces, Elizabeth comes across as a queen of loving folly. As such, she will fulfill her role as a maker of concord—the same role that Essex was striving to encourage her to adopt in 1595.

AFTERWORD ELIZABETH, SHAKESPEARE, AND THE CONCORD OF FOLLY

I

n the last three chapters of Learned Queen, St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians has repeatedly echoed in contexts that portray Elizabeth as a queen who unifies through love. In the later years of her reign, the notions of St. Paul and love continue to resonate—but now Elizabeth becomes a pacific and wise Queen of Love through an aspect of Pauline rhetoric that this book has not yet explored: the idea that divine wisdom can manifest itself as folly. St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians: God has “made the wisedome of this worlde foolish,” and “God hath chosen the foolish things of the worlde, to confounde the wise” (1:20, 27).1 In the 1590s, Elizabeth becomes associated with the simplicity of divine folly, and with this perspective, she sees the world differently than “the wise.” She sees concord where others see only separation and thus becomes a conciliarist, imperial queen who rises above the divisive, religious rhetoric that fractures nations. This Afterword will look at two representations that align Elizabeth with the perspective of divine folly: William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Elizabeth’s last public oration, her speech at the close of Parliament in 1601. There is striking harmony between Shakespeare’s play and Elizabeth’s speech. What makes these two pieces such an appropriate finale for Learned Queen is that they both integrate Elizabeth’s wisdom from 1 Corinthians with the transcendent strategy she adopted by translating Boethius. As a queen of folly in Shakespeare’s play and in her last speech to Parliament, Elizabeth possesses a divine but not theologically identifiable allegiance—a position that seems secular and distanced from “books” until the connections with her own demonstrations of erudition are recognized. Ever a learned queen, Elizabeth becomes a Queen of Concord whose divine folly has made her a great diplomatic monarch able to keep her country safe even in a Europe full of danger.

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Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream The presence of St. Paul’s 1 Corinthians in Shakespeare’s Dream is no secret. As scholars have long noted, when Bottom the weaver wakes up from his night in the woods, he echoes 1 Corinthians 2:9.2 Full of confused wonder, Bottom tries to piece together his hazy recollections of his encounter with the Fairy Queen: I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was—and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.3

When Elizabeth echoed the same Corinthians passage in 1592, she emphasized love. Shakespeare, however, draws upon St. Paul’s notion of folly by placing these words in the mouth of the play’s clown and even emphasizing this connection through all of Bottom’s references to his status as a fool. Bottom’s garbled allusion gives him a brush with divine wisdom—a presence already embedded in his name, which echoes 1 Corinthians 2:10 in the 1557 Geneva New Testament: “the Spirite searcheth all thinges, yea, the botome of Goddes secretes.”4 Bottom does not recognize the Christian wisdom that he mangles (and even that he somewhat represents) not only because it is truly beyond his wit to report but also because he lives in preChristian Athens, a city famed for its classical learning. When Shakespeare limits Bottom’s perspective, he is, in part, drawing attention to his own authority as a non-university-educated maker of theatrical folly who does use this biblical allusion knowingly. More importantly for this study, Shakespeare is also acknowledging Elizabeth as a queen of superlative wisdom. Based on how Shakespeare evokes both 1 Corinthians and Boethius’ Consolation (as I will discuss shortly), I suggest that he was aware of Elizabeth’s Latin oration to the University of Oxford in 1592 and her translation of Boethius, as well as Essex and Bacon’s Of Love and Self-Love performed on Accession Day in 1595.5 Shakespeare evokes Elizabeth’s demonstrations of erudition using much the same strategy that Essex and Bacon employed in Of Love and Self-Love. Like Bacon and Essex, Shakespeare echoes

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both Elizabeth’s oration at Oxford and her translation of Boethius. Also like them, he places allusions to the queen’s wisdom in the mouths of characters who neither recognize the allusions they are making nor get the ideas “right.” In Dream, the most obvious character who fails to grasp the implications of his allusions is Bottom when he muddles the passage from 1 Corinthians. His lack of awareness, similar to the limited intellects of the characters in Of Love and Self-Love, becomes a fit method to praise Elizabeth. Such a strategy not only elevates her wisdom to a higher position than any knowledge Shakespeare articulates explicitly but it also directly involves his wise queen in the process of interpretation. Significantly, Bottom is not the only character in Dream who articulates wisdom beyond his intellectual capacity. Theseus does as well, and this duke’s imperfect perspective becomes evident once we recognize that his famous speech on imagination in 5.1 echoes Boethius’ Consolation. Exposing these allusions has significant implications. These echoes forge connections among Theseus’ speech and the following aspects of the play: his magnanimous reaction to the performance of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” Bottom’s wisdom from 1 Corinthians, Shakespeare’s overall use of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale (which is deeply influenced by Boethius), and the representation of Elizabeth as the untouchable imperial moon in Oberon’s speech from act 2. This constellation of ideas celebrates Elizabeth as a transcendent conciliarist—the very image that informs her role as a philosopher-queen in her own demonstrations of erudition in the 1590s. In this way, Shakespeare produces a play that honors Elizabeth’s status as a learned queen and simultaneously connects his work to the Essex circle. Dream may house the dark undertones discussed by scholars such as Louis Adrian Montrose, but the references to Elizabeth’s wisdom suggest a strong presence of a more celebratory image as well.6 References to Boethius’ Consolation are threaded throughout Dream (such as Titania’s description of the disrupted natural world in act 2); however, the central allusion to Consolation is Theseus’ speech on imagination that opens act 5. Because Theseus’ speech is so well known, I will begin with a relevant section from Consolation to show how Theseus demonstrates his limited perspective by echoing—but failing to achieve— ideas found in Boethius. In Book 5 of Consolation, Lady Philosophy talks about knowledge and the four modes of cognition: sense, imagination, reason, and understanding. When she discusses these faculties, she emphasizes that the superior

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perspective—understanding—includes and even embraces the other three modes: So man himself is beheld in divers sorts, by sense, imagination, reason, and understanding. For sense judgeth of the figure that is set in his material subject. Imagination looks upon her form, without her matter. But reason overpasseth this, and weigheth her show which remains in all things by an universal consideration. But understanding’s eye looketh higher: for, ascending to the largeness of the universality, looks upon her simple form with the pure mind’s insight. In which this is most to be considered: for the uppermost force of understanding includeth the inferior, but the lower can never rise up to the higher.7

It is understanding that can integrate physical form with the mind’s image and, in turn, place this combination in the framework of the universal. Significantly, this fusion of perspectives is what enables God to see the ultimate harmony of the entire universe. When Shakespeare has Theseus disparage the lovers’ experience in the woods, the duke delivers a speech that shows how he views the modes of cognition as separate and even competing faculties. As more of a Stoic, Theseus places most value on reason: Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. (5.1.4–17)

Theseus does prefer “cool reason,” but that alone is not the problem because, after all, reason is the highest of the three lower modes of cognition. The real flaw in his thinking is that he is not willing to accord a place for imagination and sense. Divine understanding recognizes the importance of capitalizing on all facets of cognition, and in Theseus’ speech, it is the poet who comes closest to achieving

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divine understanding. The poet merges sense and imagination even as he acknowledges both the heavenly and the earthly. This primacy of the poet is actually embedded in Lady Philosophy’s teachings in this section of Book 5: right after she explains the faculties of perception, she encapsulates her points by speaking in verse. This meter (which Elizabeth wrote out herself in her translation) includes ideas central to Theseus’ speech: imagination, writing, moving between heaven and earth, and the importance of assimilating external images with those in the mind’s eye. Lady Philosophy discusses the limitations of the purely Stoic mindset: unlike Platonism, which emphasizes encountering the divine through recollection, Stoicism emphasizes the mind as a blank slate that receives external ideas but has no preexisting recollections. Lady Philosophy questions how this Stoic kind of observation—which makes the mind “Subject to bodies’ marks, / And vain the forms, / Glasslike, of all doth make”—can possibly integrate ideas and achieve understanding. She then asks: Whence this that in our mind reigns, Knowledge of all, discerns? What power all beholds? Who the known divides? And, knowing each way, Now lifts on high the head, Then falls to lowest things (Book 5, meter 4, lines 12–21, pp. 345 and 347)

Lady Philosophy provides the answer: one needs to draw not only from Stoic, reason-driven observation but also from the imagination and sensory experience. One must move between the lowly and the lofty, between external stimuli and internal thoughts. In this way, one will be able to see unity in all things—the unity of divine understanding. Ideally, in one’s mind [A] passion doth begin, and stirs The mind’s force, while body lives, When either light the eyes doth hit, Or sound in ear doth strike. Then, stirrèd, strength of mind, What figures within it holds, Joints like, he calls, Applies them to the outward known,

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And fancies mix to forms That, hidden, rest within. (Book 5, meter 4, lines 28–37, p. 347)

Reading these verses alongside Theseus’ speech shows that he knows enough Boethius or, more accurately, enough Aristotle (who is Boethius’ source for his outline of these four faculties) to conjure up these principles found in Consolation. But because Theseus dismisses sense and imagination, he reveals that he has not achieved divine understanding. Knowing Boethius’ Consolation, just like knowing St. Paul’s 1 Corinthians, allows Shakespeare’s audience to recognize just how much both Theseus and Bottom fail to comprehend fully the sources they echo. Much like the Hermit’s references to Boethius in Essex and Bacon’s Of Love and Self-Love, Theseus gets enough right to show the allusion, but then gets enough wrong to reveal his limited perspective. The gap between a fictional speaker’s failed references and Elizabeth’s knowledgeable use of the original source allows a certain cadre of the courtly audience to recognize how Shakespeare portrays Elizabeth as the most transcendently wise figure. She alone possesses a celestial perspective, and because she possesses the faculty of understanding, she can finish the arc of the allusion and see unity between the ideas. Subsequently, Shakespeare draws attention to the fact that he knows that divine understanding allows one to see concord when he gives Theseus flickers of this ability, particularly when Theseus discusses the mechanicals’ performance of “Pyramus and Thisbe.” When Theseus reads about this entertainment, he is intrigued by its description as “ ‘very tragical mirth’ ” and both “Tedious and brief” (5.1.57, 58). These contradictions prompt him to wonder how the audience can “find the concord of this discord” (5.1.60). Although Theseus poses this idea as a question and therefore does not demonstrate this ability yet himself, he at least acknowledges the need for one to create unity from seeming contradiction. Further emphasizing the notion of harmony rather than separation, Theseus is the one who comments that the Wall no longer serves as a barrier in the fictional world of “Pyramus and Thisbe.” In response to Snout’s exit as Wall, Theseus says, “Now is the mure rased between the two neighbours” (5.1.204). This comment may evoke St. Augustine’s use of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe as the narrative that so engrossed his Licentius that his friend could not be persuaded to leave the Muses and study philosophy. Augustine likens the wall to poetry, which divides Licentius from philosophy.8

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If Shakespeare were alluding to St. Augustine, then this moment would suggest the fluidity between poetry and philosophy—an idea present in a text that his queen had already translated. The connection between concepts discussed in Boethius and Shakespeare’s own craft surfaces again only a few lines after Snout’s exit, when Theseus defends the amateur actors. He describes them as imperfect versions of professional actors: “The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them” (5.1.208–09). Here, Theseus comes close to a Boethian perspective. Not only does he acknowledge the Platonic notion of shadows (and Consolation is steeped in Platonic thoughts where it speaks of the divine) but he also gives place, now, to the complementary role that imagination can serve in perception. This change is a distinct improvement from his initial thoughts about imagination as expressed at the beginning of the scene. By including both Bottom’s and Theseus’ sketches of ideas that acknowledge Elizabeth’s superior wisdom, Shakespeare shows off his own élite, courtly “education” even as he gives Elizabeth the space to fill in the gaps he leaves for her wisdom. She is truly a figure who can see concord where others see only discord. In this way, Shakespeare completes the transcendent image of Elizabeth that has become so famous: the one in which he praises her as the “imperial votress” in act 2—a moment early in the play when Elizabeth’s divinity and femininity fuse within a secular image.9 Oberon remembers when he saw young Cupid’s fiery shaft Quench’d in the chaste beams of the watery moon; And the imperial votress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy free. (2.1.155–64)

Elizabeth is above the fray, untouched and pure; she is holy without being connected to religion; and she is a virgin. What is more, this transcendent and holy position hovers above the play far longer than this moment, and this image resonates with what Essex and Bacon depicted on Accession Day as well as Elizabeth’s own self-image as a learned queen. As a virgin and divinely wise queen, the Elizabeth of the 1590s does not get mired in petty sectarian squabbles. As a true conciliarist, she possesses the divine perspective that can see harmony where others can consider only confrontation. It is this same sense of expansiveness and international transcendence—specifically through folly—that Elizabeth herself will project in 1601.

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Elizabeth’s Speech to Parliament in 1601 When Elizabeth addresses Parliament in 1601, she gives her final recorded public address. In this speech, Elizabeth uses St. Paul’s 1 Corinthians to discredit earthly wisdom—not the academic endeavors of intellectuals as she did in 1592, but rather the standard wisdom that underwrites political decision-making. In 1601, she takes the context of St. Paul’s discussion of divine wisdom as folly and uses this perspective to separate herself from the period’s frequent tendency to use war rather than diplomacy to settle disputes. By associating herself with divine folly, she presents herself as a conciliar Queen of Peace. Elizabeth’s parliamentary speech reads like a mini history lesson that sweeps through a series of significant political events dating back more than three decades. In fact, many of the incidents she refers to are events mentioned in Learned Queen: the Spanish Armada (chapter three); the Dutch States seeking Elizabeth’s assistance in the 1570s and 1580s (chapter two); and the Northern Rebellion in 1569 and the Reign of Terror in 1567 (chapter one). Elizabeth frames her discussion of international relations by claiming that these affairs “do chiefly consist in the maintenance of war.” She depicts herself, however, as a pacific queen who never adopted this mindset of violence: I never gave just cause of war to any prince (which the subjects of other states can testify) nor had any greater ambition than to maintain my own state in security and peace without being guilty to myself of offering or intending injury to any man, though no prince have been more unthankfully requited whose intention hath been so harmless and whose actions so moderate.10

Elizabeth’s description of her role as outside the norm serves as a backdrop to her entire discussion of foreign relations and her own role as a figure of wise folly. At the center of Elizabeth’s review of Anglo-European politics is England’s relationship with Spain. The queen outlines her past attempts to negotiate with Philip II despite his attempts to provoke confrontation. She claims that her repeated willingness to deal with Philip was never politically savvy but was, in fact, the product of her simple folly: I know that some other prince that had been wise according to the manner of the world, of high conceit and apt to fish in waters

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troubled, would have cast this matter in another mold, but I proceeded thus out of simplicity, remembering who it was that said that the wisdom of the world was folly unto God, and hope in that respect that I shall not suffer the worse for it. (CW, pp. 349–50)

Elizabeth intimates that a king wiser in the world of real politics would have resorted to anger against Philip, which would have resulted in war. In part, her simplicity has allowed her to adopt a position always focused on harmony, and, significantly, this simplicity has a distinctly divine resonance because God’s wisdom often comes across as folly. Elizabeth intimates that she possesses divine wisdom, and it is this superior perspective—much like the celestial perspective that Lady Philosophy teaches Boethiusprisoner—that has placed her above the common (and earthly) leap to warfare. But this connection to divine wisdom is not the foundation for Elizabeth to assert a specifically Protestant, religious superiority over Spain. What is remarkable about Elizabeth’s use of Pauline folly is that she utilizes divine wisdom to separate herself from a religious position. She is divine but not theologically bound to any religion—a strategy that is deeply Boethian. This lack of religious language is evident in the way Elizabeth presents her examples from foreign affairs. She describes several political moments that I have tied to pan-European religious politics; however, Elizabeth pointedly omits religion. Her de-theologizing is especially evident in the political example immediately following her use of St. Paul. She refers to the period in the 1560s when the Catholic Duke of Alva (Philip’s commander in the Netherlands) implemented brutal measures to quell the Protestant rebellion against Spanish rule—acts so savage that they were referred to as the Council of Blood and the Reign of Terror. It was this bloodshed that prompted such men as Jan van der Noot and Lucas de Heere—mentioned in chapter one—to flee the Netherlands and come to England. Elizabeth describes this period, however, in distinctly secular terms: after the coming of the duke of Alva, when there was less hope of moderation than before, I still persisted in my proposition advising them to hold so good a temper in their motion as might not altogether quench that life spark of expectation that the king, by looking better into the true state of the cause, might in time grow more compassionate of their calamity. (CW, p. 350)

Elizabeth uses such neutral terms as “moderation,” “true state of the case,” and “calamity” to discuss tensions that were waged through

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Protestant- Catholic divisions. She completely glosses over the fact that this bloodshed arose out of religious differences. In fact, the Netherlands was the territory on which England, Spain, and others engaged in much tactical warfare regarding the balance of religious power in Europe. It is no wonder that the Anglo-Spanish relations in the Netherlands permeate Elizabeth’s examples in the speech. Military conflict waged through the language of religion was at the heart of political instability in and surrounding the Dutch States. When Elizabeth discusses her relationship with Philip, she again uses a secular approach. She emphasizes how her communication with him had always been focused solely on their relationship as fellow monarchs, not as figures separated by different forms of Christian worship. In talking about her refusal to accept sovereignty over the Protestant Dutch States, she explains that she turned down this offer because she did not want to usurp Philip’s authority (which is indeed what she said at the time). In her speech to Parliament, Elizabeth reiterates this position: “I was so far from forgetting that old league that had lasted long between the race of Burgundy and my progenitors and the danger that might grow to many states by giving countenance or encouragement to opposition against the prince in one, as I dissuaded them” (CW, p. 349). Elizabeth emphasizes that her first allegiance, when dealing with the situation in the Low Countries, was to Philip as a fellow monarch. Evoking the long-standing ties between Spain and England, Elizabeth claims that she tried repeatedly to maintain relations but that Philip was unwilling to be as open-minded and moderate as she was. Elizabeth focuses on politics first without embroiling it in religion. She conducts international relations in secular terms, but as her allusion to 1 Corinthians emphasizes, her perspective is not secular. It is—ultimately—divine. Such strategy reflects the kind of expansive divinity that Elizabeth herself had been presenting as a philosopher-queen since the 1580s. Now in 1601, Elizabeth uses her learning to reflect on her own history as a truly diplomatic queen who had been adopting a conciliarist approach to foreign relations for decades. Throughout her reign, she had repeatedly adopted a pacific approach that seemed foolish to the internationally ambitious figures who advocated a holy war. In this final speech, Elizabeth asserts that her divine perspective had kept her nation free from needless violence. Her wise folly turned out to be right all along.

NOTES

Introduction 1. Ascham, The Scholemaster Or plaine and perfite way of teachying children, to vnderstand, write, and speake, the Latin tong, but specially purposed for the priuate brynging vp of youth in Ientlemen and Noble mens houses . . . (London, 1570; STC 832), B2r. 2. Ibid., H1r. 3. A few essay-length studies have acknowledged Elizabeth’s learned persona as an important strategy of royal image-making. These studies include Lysbeth Benkert, “Translation as Image-Making: Elizabeth I’s Translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy,” Early Modern Literary Studies 6.3 ( January 2001): 2.1–20. http:// /extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/06-3/ benkboet.htm; Georgia E. Brown, “Translation and the definition of sovereignty: the case of Elizabeth Tudor,” in Travels and Translations in the Sixteenth Century: Selected Papers from the Second International Conference of the Tudor Symposium (2000), ed. Mike Pincombe, 88–103 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); Jennifer Clement, “The Queen’s Voice: Elizabeth I’s Christian Prayers and Meditations,” Early Modern Literary Studies 13.3 ( January 2008): 1.1–26. http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/13-3/clemquee.htm; Mary Thomas Crane, “ ‘Video et Taceo’: Elizabeth I and the Rhetoric of Counsel,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 28.1 (1988): 1–16; Janet M. Green, “Queen Elizabeth I’s Latin Reply to the Polish Ambassador,” Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (Winter 2000): 987– 1008; Constance Jordan, “States of Blindness: Doubt, Justice, and Constancy in Elizabeth I’s ‘Avec l’aveugler si estrange,’ ” in Reading Monarch’s Writing: The Poetry of Henry VIII, Mary Stuart, Elizabeth I, and James VI/I, ed. Peter C. Herman, 109–33 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002); Leah S. Marcus, “Queen Elizabeth I as Public and Private Poet: Notes towards a New Edition,” also in Reading Monarch’s Writing, 135–53; Steven W. May, “Queen Elizabeth Prays for the Living and the Dead,” in Elizabeth I and the Culture of Writing, ed. Peter Beal and Grace Ioppolo, 201–11 (London: British Library, 2007); Steven W. May and Anne Lake Prescott, “The French Verses of Elizabeth I,” English Literary Renaissance 24.1 (1994): 9–43; James E. Phillips, “Elizabeth

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I as a Latin Poet: An Epigram on Paul Melissus,” Renaissance News 16 (Winter 1963): 289–98; and Linda Shenk, “Turning Learned Authority into Royal Supremacy: Elizabeth I’s Learned Persona and Her University Orations,” in Elizabeth I: Always Her Own Free Woman, ed. Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra BarrettGraves, 78–96 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003). 4. Editors Janel Mueller and Leah S. Marcus highlight the need for their collection, Elizabeth I: Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals (henceforth ACFLO), and they emphasize their hope that it will raise awareness of—and appreciation for—Elizabeth’s skills as a multilingual queen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. xxv–xxvi. For editions that contain English translations, see Elizabeth I: Collected Works (henceforth CW ), ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Elizabeth I: Translations, 1544–1589, ed. Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598, ed. Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2009); and Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works, ed. Steven W. May (New York: Washington Square, 2004). 5. May, “Queen Elizabeth Prays for the Living and the Dead,” p. 202. 6. A few of the works that have been most influential in my research on humanism and, in many cases, its relation to early modern polity include: Stephen Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Warren Boutcher, “Humanism and Literature in Late Tudor England: Translation, the Continental Book and the Case of Montaigne’s Essais,” in Reassessing Tudor Humanism, ed. Jonathan Woolfson, 243–68 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Rebecca W. Bushnell, A Culture of Teaching: Early Modern Humanism in Theory and Practice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); Jeff Dolven, Scenes of Instruction in Renaissance Romance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth- Century Europe (London: Duckworth, 1986); John Guy, ed., The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); James Hankins, ed., Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Arthur F. Kinney, Continental Humanist Poetics: Studies in Erasmus, Castiglione, Marguerite de Navarre, Rabelais, and Cervantes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989); Kinney, Humanist Poetics: Thought, Rhetoric, and Fiction in Sixteenth- Century England

Notes

7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

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(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986); A. N. McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth, 1558–1585 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Markku Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought, 1570–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Mike Pincombe, Elizabethan Humanism: Literature and Learning in the Later Sixteenth Century (Harlow, England: Longman, 2001); and Blair Worden, The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney’s “Arcadia” and Elizabethan Politics (London: Yale University Press, 1996). See especially Desiderius Erasmus’ The Education of a Christian Prince, trans. Neil M. Cheshire and Michael J. Heath, ed. Lisa Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and Sir Thomas Elyot’s The boke named the Gouernour (London, 1531; STC 7635). Collinson, “The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 69.2 (1986–7): 394–424. Lake, “ ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’ (and the Fall of Archbishop Grindal) Revisited,” in The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson, ed. John F. McDiarmid, 129–47 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 135–37. Collinson expresses his agreement with Lake’s observation in his Afterword to the same collection (pp. 245–60; this comment appears on p. 256). At present, the politics of Elizabeth’s and Edward’s educations are starting to receive more scholarly attention. Aysha Pollnitz is currently working on a monograph that examines the politics surrounding the educations of Tudor and Stuart princes, and she includes a chapter on Elizabeth. Stephen Alford and Charles Beem include Edward VI’s educated persona as a crucial element of the young king’s royal identity. Pollnitz, Princely Education in Sixteenth- Century Britain (in progress); Alford, Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), especially chapter 2; and Beem, “ ‘Have Not Wee a Noble Kynge?’: The Minority of Edward VI,” in The Royal Minorities of Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. Charles Beem, 211–48 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 218–20. In fact, Elizabeth’s pious learning was publicly showcased even before she ascended the throne. John Bale published her translation of Marguerite de Navarre’s Le Miroir de l’âme pécheresse from Geneva in 1548. Therefore, when England and continental Europe first “heard” Elizabeth’s voice, it was the voice of a well-educated, pious princess. Bale published Elizabeth’s translation under the

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12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

Notes title A Godly Medytacyon of the Christen Sowle. Marc Shell provides Elizabeth’s text and Bale’s version of it in Elizabeth’s Glass (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1993). Aylmer, An Harborovve for Faithfvll and Trevve Svbiectes, agaynst the late blowne Blaste, concerninge the Gouernment of VVemen . . . (Strasborowe [London], 1559; STC 1006), I2r. McLaren specifically (and rightly) describes the image of the philosopher-monarch as masculine in Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I, p. 14. Two other works that provide significant studies of women and humanism are Grafton and Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, chapter 2; and Mary Ellen Lamb, “The Cooke Sisters: Attitudes toward Learned Women in the Renaissance,” in Silent But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works, ed. Margaret Patterson Hannay, 107–25 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1985). B[ernard] G[arter], The Ioyfull Receyuing of the Queenes most excellent Maiestie into hir Highnesse Citie of Norvvich . . . (London, 1578; STC 11627), G1v-2r. To honor Elizabeth, the Dutch congregation in Norwich erected a monument that contained this inscription from Matthew 10:16: “Prudens vt serpens, simplex vt columba. / Wise as the Serpent, and meeke as the Doue” (B. G., Ioyfull Receyuing, D1r, D2r). Christ speaks this line as he sends out the apostles to begin preaching. The full verse 16 reads: “Beholde, I sende you foorth, as sheepe in the middest of woolfes. Be ye therfore wyse as serpentes, and harmelesse as doues.” Matthew Parker, The holie Bible (London, 1568; STC 2099). The image of the wolves in addition to the focus on preaching gives this inscription a strongly Protestant hue, making Elizabeth the divine figure who supports her Protestant preachers. Boutcher, “Humanism and Literature in Late Tudor England,” p. 251; emphasis in the original. ACFLO, p. 168; CW, p. 333. Of Love and Self-Love in Francis Bacon: A Critical Edition of the Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers, 61–68 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 64. Recent trends in the scholarship on Sidney and Essex, for example, are greatly influenced by Paul E. J. Hammer and Alan Stewart, who foreground the intellectual and transnational priorities of these courtiers but downplay the language of love as too queen-focused (an approach typically adopted by literary scholars such as Catherine Bates, Katherine Duncan-Jones, and others). Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Stewart, Philip Sidney: A Double Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000); Bates, The Rhetoric

Notes

20.

21. 22.

23.

24. 25.

26.

27.

28.

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of Courtship in Elizabethan Language and Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). Green, “Phronesis Feminised: Prudence From Christine de Pizan to Elizabeth I,” in Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400–1800, ed. Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green, 23–38 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), p. 32. See ibid., pp. 25, 29, and 32–34. Strong, Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), p. 97. For Strong’s discussion of the Siena “Sieve” Portrait, see especially pp. 100–107. It should be noted that the three mottos in Italian are fully legible only on the Plimpton “Sieve” portrait. Strong observes that Geffrey Whitney uses the sieve as an emblem for prudent discernment (Gloriana, p. 97). This sieve, as the verses in Whitney indicate, is used for seeds, for “When graine is ripe, with siue to purge the seedes, / From chaffe, and duste, and all the other weedes” [Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes . . . (London, 1586; STC 25438), p. 68]. Christian Prayers and Meditations (London, 1569; STC 6428), Mm1r-v. This prayer is also found in ACFLO, p. 140, and the translation, CW, p. 154. Campbell, “ ‘And in their midst a sun’: Petrarch’s Triumphs and the Elizabethan Icon,” in Goddesses and Queens: The Iconography of Elizabeth I, ed. Annaliese Connolly and Lisa Hopkins, 19–33 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007); Doran, “Virginity, Divinity and Power: The Portraits of Elizabeth I,” in The Myth of Elizabeth, ed. Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman, 171–99 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 186–88; Strong, Gloriana, pp. 100–107; and Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 112–18. Dee, General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (London, 1577; STC 6459), ε4v. I am indebted to William H. Sherman’s discussion of Dee’s reference to Solomon in Memorials. See his John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), p. 155. Spain was using its colonial empire to fund its military operations, and this gathering strength was sure to be turned against England, as would be the case in 1588. See Susan Doran, Elizabeth I and Foreign Policy, 1558–1603 (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 39. John F. McDiarmid lightly suggests that the tradition of scholarship on monarchical republicanism has not yet explored the Elizabethan polity within a transnational context in his

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introduction to The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England, 1–17, p. 11. A few essays in this collection, however, are beginning to broaden the scope of England’s monarchical republic to consider an imperial agenda. These essays include Dale Hoak’s “Sir William Cecil, Sir Thomas Smith, and the Monarchical Republic of Tudor England,” pp. 37–54; and Stephen Alford’s “The Political Creed of William Cecil,” pp. 75–90. 29. A few examples of these studies include Philippa Berry, Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen (London: Routledge, 1989); Susan Frye, Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Helen Hackett, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995); and Louis Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 30. In addition to Collinson’s work, a few examples of these studies include: Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity; Guy’s collection, The Reign of Elizabeth I; McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I; and McDiarmid’s collection, Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England. 31. This paradigm is closely related to the interdisciplinary and wide-ranging work that Carole Levin provides in her “The Heart and Stomach of a King”: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). In addition, my work somewhat resembles that of Natalie Mears because it presents an image of the queen’s direct agency in the Elizabethan polity rather than a more exclusively counselor-driven model. Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

1 Queen Solomon: Elizabeth I in Christian Prayers and Meditations (1569) 1. Christian Prayers and Meditations in English[,] French, Italian, Spanish, Greeke, and Latine (London, 1569; STC 6428). This edition is sometimes incorrectly attributed to Richard Day, John’s son. Richard produced A Booke of Christian Prayers (London, 1578; STC 6429) nearly a decade later. Elizabeth’s most extended demonstration of erudition was her Precationes priuatae. Regiae E. R. (London, 1563; STC 7576.7), which included seven prayers, eight verse pastiches, and essentially a commonplace book containing 259 sententiae gathered from Christian and classical sources. 2. Editors Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose have noted that these prayers contain many of Elizabeth’s

Notes

3.

4.

5.

6.

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idiosyncrasies of composition—information that supports the possibility that Elizabeth did write these prayers. Elizabeth I: Collected Works (henceforth CW ), ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 143–44, n. 1. Jennifer Clement is the only other scholar to have published an essay-length study of these prayers, and she, too, approaches them primarily as an image of the queen. Clement, “The Queen’s Voice: Elizabeth I’s Christian Prayers and Meditations,” Early Modern Literary Studies 13.3 ( January 2008): 1.1–26. http://extra.shu.ac.uk/ emls/13-3/clemquee.htm. Steven W. May considers Elizabeth’s prayers overall as private texts that Elizabeth did not want circulated. His description of her prayers in the 1590s sheds important light on these later demonstrations. In the 1560s, however, the crown authorized the publication of Christian Prayers as well as an earlier royal prayer book Precationes priuatae—authorized texts that suggest to me that the crown wanted (at least) these prayers disseminated. See May, “Queen Elizabeth Prays for the Living and the Dead,” in Elizabeth I and the Culture of Writing, ed. Peter Beal and Grace Ioppolo, 201–11 (London: British Library, 2007). I do believe that the multilingual prayers attributed to Elizabeth that are presented in a handwritten, girdle prayer book (1578–1582) are royal prayers that were not created for the public eye. Regardless of whether or not Elizabeth composed these meditations (H. R. Woudhuysen provides evidence that she did not), I do not examine them in this book because they did not have a clear public circulation or intent. These prayers are included in both CW and Elizabeth I: Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals (henceforth ACFLO), ed. Janel Mueller and Leah S. Marcus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). They were first published in A Book of Devotions Composed by Her Majesty Elizabeth with a foreword by Reverend Canon J. P. Hodges, ed. and trans. Reverend Adam Fox (Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 1970). Woudhuysen compares Elizabeth’s handwriting with the hand of these prayers to confirm that the writing is not the queen’s. See his essay, “The Queen’s Own Hand: A Preliminary Account,” in Elizabeth I and the Culture of Writing, 1–27 (London: British Library, 2007), pp. 18–19. I describe their claims as “persuasive” because Mary’s image as passion-blind and incapable of rule had as much to do with propaganda as with actual history. For more on the manipulation of Mary’s image, see Retha M. Warnicke, Mary Queen of Scots (London: Routledge, 2006). Cecil (and Bernard Hampton), A Necessary Consideration of the Perilous State of this Tyme, Public Record Office, State Papers,

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Domestic, Elizabeth 1, 12/51, fol. 16v. I quote from the fair copy produced by Cecil’s secretary, Bernard Hampton. For an insightful discussion of this text, see Stephen Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), especially pp. 194–99. 7. For the known connection between Day and Cecil, see Elizabeth Evenden and Thomas S. Freeman, “John Foxe, John Day and the Printing of the ‘Book of Martyrs,’ ” in Lives in Print: Biography and the Book Trade from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century, ed. Robin Myers, Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote, 23–54 (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2002). 8. Christian Prayers was only one of many instances in which Elizabeth was depicted as a Solomon. In the 1560s alone, she likened herself to this king in her prayer book Precationes priuatae; she was praised as Solomon in the play Sapientia Solomonis during Princess Cecilia of Sweden’s visit in 1566; and in his A chronicle at large (1569), Richard Grafton depicted her holding Solomon’s orb in an image flanked by the figures of Solomon and David. Despite these connections, modern scholars have devoted little attention to this particular royal image, focusing instead on her other biblical roles as Susanna, Esther, Judith, David, Joshua, Hezekiah, and Deborah. Studies by Margaret Aston, Carol Blessing, Susan Doran, John N. King, A. N. McLaren, Michele Osherow, Donald Stump, and Alexandra Walsham have made rich contributions to our understanding of how these figures provided crucial providential support for Elizabeth and her subjects to defend, and sometimes limit, female rule. Aston, The King’s Bedpost: Reformation and Iconography in a Tudor Group Portrait (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Blessing, “Elizabeth I as Deborah the Judge: Exceptional Women of Power,” in Goddesses and Queens: The Iconography of Elizabeth I, ed. Annaliese Connolly and Lisa Hopkins, 19–33 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007); Doran, “Virginity, Divinity and Power: The Portraits of Elizabeth I,” in The Myth of Elizabeth, ed. Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman, 171–99 (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); King, “The Godly Woman in Elizabethan Iconography,” Renaissance Quarterly 38 (Spring 1985): 41–84; McLaren, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I: Queen and Commonwealth, 1558–1585 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Osherow, “ ‘Give Ear O’ Princes’: Deborah, Elizabeth and the Right Word,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 30.1 (2004): 111–19; Stump, “Abandoning the Old Testament: Shifting Paradigms for Elizabeth, 1578–1582,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 30.1 (2004): 89–109; and Walsham, “ ‘A Very Deborah?’ The Myth of Elizabeth I as a Providential Monarch,” in The Myth of Elizabeth, 143–68.

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207

9. Cancellar, [A godly medytacyon of the Christen sowle] [translated by Elyzabeth doughter of our late souerayne Kynge Henri the viij] (S.l: H. Denham, c. 1568; STC 17320.5). 10. Van der Noot’s original (Dutch) text is titled Het theatre oft Toonneel waer in ter eender de ongelucken ende elenden die den werelts gesinden ende boosen menschen toecomen . . . der poëteryen ende schilderen. Deur H. Ian Vander Noot. As I will discuss later, both the Dutch edition (London, 1568; STC 18601) and the French translation, Le Theatre . . . (London, 1568; STC 18603) were printed by Day. The English translation, A Theatre . . . was printed by Henry Bynneman (London, 1569; STC 18602). 11. Matthew Parker, The holie Bible . . . (London, 1568; STC 2099). All citations to biblical passages in this chapter refer to this edition, unless otherwise specified. 12. See King regarding the theocratic images of the sword and book in Tudor Royal Iconography: Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 56–57. It is also significant that the crucifix Elizabeth kept in her own private chapel is not depicted on the priedieu in the frontispiece. 13. Just in the verses leading up to this passage from the same chapter of 2 Chronicles, the Temple is referred to as a house in verses 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 18. 14. I am deeply indebted to Susan Felch for pointing out to me that Elizabeth’s depiction evokes the role of householder. 15. Mary Hampson Patterson, Domesticating the Reformation: Protestant Best Sellers, Private Devotion, and the Revolution of English Piety (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Presses, 2007), p. 34. 16. Elizabeth Evenden observes that this depiction of Elizabeth using the prayer book, which is open on the priedieu, contrasts sharply with the way Day typically portrays Tudor kings interacting with religious texts. Evenden notes that Day shows them either distributing or receiving books—an act that underscores their more supportive role in promoting published works. See her Patents, Pictures and Patronage: John Day and the Tudor Book Trade (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 114–16. I am grateful to Evenden for sharing this work with me in manuscript. 17. Felch, “A Brief History of English Private Prayer Books,” in Felch’s Elizabeth Tyrwhit’s “Morning and Evening Prayers” (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 23 and 31, respectively. 18. Bull, [Christian prayers and holy meditations] (London, 1568; STC 4028). 19. White, The Tudor Books of Private Devotion ([Madison]: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951), p. 193. 20. Ibid., p. 243.

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21. Day, R. A Booke of Christian Prayers . . . (London, 1578; STC 6429). White drew my attention to this idea (Tudor Books of Private Devotion, p. 191). 22. Foxe, The Gospels of the fower Euangelistes translated in the olde Saxons tyme out of Latin into the vulgare toung of the Saxons . . . (London, 1571; STC 2961). 23. Parker, De Antiqvitate Britannicae Ecclesiae & Priuilegiis Ecclesiae Cantuariensis (London, 1572; STC 19292). The image of Elizabeth in De Antiquitate Britannicae is found in the copy housed at the University of Cambridge Library. For a discussion of this copy and these other texts linking England’s Church with a long lineage, see Evenden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage, pp. 135–39. 24. Cancellar, [A godly medytacyon], E4v. 25. Georgia E. Brown observes that in these meditations and maxims “Elizabeth becomes an act of language that projects moral virtue”—a comment that brought to my attention how Cancellar is essentially making Elizabeth into a mirror for her people. See Brown, “Translation and the Definition of Sovereignty: The Case of Elizabeth Tudor,” in Travels and Translations in the Sixteenth Century: Selected Papers from the Second International Conference of the Tudor Symposium (2000), ed. Mike Pincombe, 88–103 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), p. 100. Likewise, Anna Riehl’s work on Elizabeth’s coat of arms as a signifier for her face informs my idea about the coat of arms as a mirror. See Riehl, The Face of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I (New York: Palgrave, forthcoming). 26. Cancellar, The Alphabet of Prayers, very fruitefull to be exercised and vsed of euerye Christian Man. Newly collected and set forth, in the yeare of our Lorde, 1564 (London, 1565; STC 4558). 27. Cancellar, [A godly medytacyon], E4r. 28. Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel explain that Elizabeth may have translated Seneca’s epistle as a response to Mary’s actions in 1567. See Mueller and Scodel, Elizabeth I: Translations, 1544–1589 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 412–13. 29. This relationship further identifies Elizabeth with Solomon because this king (like Christ) was a “son of David”—a familial image also used on the title page with its tree of Jesse extending through King David and Solomon and then leading to Christ. 30. James Anderson, Collections Relating to the History of Mary Queen of Scotland, vol. 4, part 2 (London, 1729), p. 150. 31. Warnicke, Mary Queen of Scots, pp. 176–77. 32. This tone is very different from the monarchical, assertive entries found in the commonplace book within Elizabeth’s Precationes. 33. The link between Solomon’s request and feminine weakness also arises in one of Elizabeth’s English prayers early in the text

Notes

34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41.

42.

43.

209

(a prayer originally published in Latin in Precationes). Elizabeth recalls, “the wisest king Salomon plainly confesseth him self vnable to gouerne his kingdome without thy [God’s] helpe & assistance: how much lesse shall I thy handmaide, being by kinde a weake woman, haue sufficient abilitie to rule these thy kingdomes of England and Ireland” (Christian Prayers, p2v–3r). Collinson’s essay, “The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I,” was first published in “Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 69.2 (1986–1987): 394–424. Aylmer, An Harborovve for Faithfvll and Trevve Svbiectes, agaynst the late blowne Blaste, concerninge the Gouernment of VVemen . . . (Strasborowe [London], 1559; STC 1006), H4r. Lake, “ ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’ (and the Fall of Archbishop Grindal) Revisited,” in The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England, 129–47, pp. 135–37. In the text, a third passage from Psalms 32 is attributed to Solomon. However, this psalm is actually associated with David. Hoak, “Sir William Cecil, Sir Thomas Smith, and the Monarchical Republic of Tudor England,” in The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England, 37–54. Hoak notes that he encountered this idea in McMahon’s unpublished master’s thesis, “The Humanism of Sir Thomas Smith” (College of William and Mary, 1999), chapter 1. Anderson, Collections Relating to the History, vol. 4, part 2, p. 183. MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I (London: Edward Arnold, 1993), p. 110; Alford, “The Political Creed of William Cecil,” in The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson, ed. John F. McDiarmid, 75–90 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), especially pp. 82–83. Great Britain Public Record Office, Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs, Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas, Elizabeth, 1568–79, vol. 2, ed. Martin S. Hume (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office by Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1894), p. 138. CSP Spain, p. 155. England’s concern regarding imminent war was not new in spring 1569. In December 1568, Francis Walsingham reported information that suggested not just foreign attack but specifically that France and Spain were combining forces against England. Great Britain Public Record Office, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series of the Reigns of Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, 1547–1580, vol. 1 [Searchable text edition], ed. Robert Lemon (Burlington, Ontario: TannerRitchie Publishing in collaboration with the Library and Information Services of the University of St. Andrews, 2005), p. 324. Cecil (and Hampton), A Necessary Consideration, fol. 15v.

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44. Alford, Early Elizabethan Polity, p. 190. 45. Samuel Haynes, ed., A Collection of State Papers Relating to Affairs from the Years 1542–1570 left by William Cecil Lord Burghley (London: William Bowyer, 1740), p. 516. 46. Clement, “The Queen’s Voice,” par. 16; Marcus and Mueller, ACFLO, pp. xxxi–xxxii. 47. Evenden, Patents, Pictures and Patronage, p. 107. 48. Where I have infidiis, editors Marcus and Mueller have insidiis. 49. Elizabeth adopts similar rhetoric in the document provided to her commissioners concerning the quasi-legal proceedings regarding Mary. Elizabeth couples England’s peaceful, Protestant enlightenment with its responsibility to be of international aid because of “the Dispensation of his Gospell in our Countries, and next there to indevour our self by all good Means to use this Opportunity of our peaceable Reigne, to the reliefe and ayde of our Neighbours, being destitute of Peace and afflicted with evill Warrs” (Anderson, Collections Relating to the History, p. 4). 50. The French prayer’s image of Elizabeth as a peaceful, compassionate queen echoes with a contrasting portrayal of France’s Catholic King Charles IX in A Politike discourse for appeasing of troubles in the Realme of Fraunce published in London that same year. That text repeatedly disparages Charles as a ruler who is so consumed with self-interest and lust for military glory that he fails to govern with wisdom (London, 1569; STC 11286); see especially B6r–v and B8r. Thomas Purfoot published this text, and significantly, he is the one who had published Elizabeth’s Precationes six years earlier. Purfoot, therefore, would have been distinctly aware of Elizabeth’s use of learning to bolster her sovereignty, which created an implied contrast between Charles and Elizabeth. 51. As Anne Lake Prescott has described, “Whatever the English thought of him [Marot], many must have been aware that he had contributed to one of the major texts of French Protestantism.” French Poets and the English Renaissance: Studies in Fame and Transformation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), p. 16. Prescott devotes the first chapter to Marot. 52. Some of Marot’s adaptations of the Psalms were included in Thomas Vautrollier’s collection of Psalms that included Orlando di Lasso’s music with metrical texts (in French) of several Psalms. Orlando di Lasso, Recveil dv Mellange D’Orlande de Lassvs, Contenant Plvsievrs Chansons tant en uers Latins qu’en ryme Francoyse, A quatre, & cinq parties (London, 1570; STC 15266). I am indebted to Prescott’s French Poets for drawing my attention to Vautrollier’s collection (pp. 3–4). 53. Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins, The whole booke of Psalmes, collected into Englishe Meter by Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins and others, conferred with the Hebrue, with apt Notes to sing them withall

Notes

54. 55. 56.

57.

58. 59.

60.

61.

211

(London, 1567; STC 2438). White draws attention to this title page in Tudor Books of Private Devotion, p. 44. CSP Spain, pp. 53–54. Ibid., p. 76. Day himself would have been especially keen on supporting efforts to assist the Dutch princes. As Evenden has described, Day had substantial ties to the Dutch Church in London, and his printing of van der Noot’s text is just one of a long line of publications associated with Dutch exiles living in London. See her “The Fleeing Dutchman? The Influence of Dutch Immigrants upon the Print Shop of John Day,” in John Foxe at Home and Abroad, ed. David Loades, 63–77 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). In the citations, I list first the signature from the French edition published by Day (1568, STC 18603) and then the one for English translation published by Bynneman (London, 1569: STC 18602). Van der Noot, Le Theatre, A4v–A5r; A Theatre, A4r. Van der Noot, Le Theatre, A5v–6r; A Theatre, A5r. Van der Noot also comments on the strong presence of international Protestant communities worshipping in England: “La parole de Dieu y est presabée purement en six en sept langages” (A6r). Early in 1569, the Spanish ambassador de Spes had complained about the high number of Flemish merchants who had settled in England and who were worshipping, like the French, in their own congregations (CSP Spain, p. 140). This depiction of bolstering Elizabeth’s sole sovereignty (specifically as an unmarried queen) at the hand of a Dutch Protestant will become a trend in the 1570s, as I will discuss in chapter two. We can already see this idea beginning to take form in 1569 not only in van der Noot’s text but also in such other instances as Elizabeth’s portrait with the Three Goddesses at Hampton Court (1569), which was probably painted by the Flemish painter Joris Hoefnagel. Although Roy C. Strong believes this painting “is a celebration not of a triumphant virgin queen but of a ruler who was still expected to marry” (65), my study of Flemish perspectives of Elizabeth, in the 1570s at least, suggests that these Protestant exiles typically praised Elizabeth as an unmarried queen. Her unmarried status is further emphasized in the painting because Elizabeth’s presence prompts the strongest reaction from Juno (goddess of marriage) and because the composition places Elizabeth opposite Venus (with Venus’s connection to Cupid and erotic love). For Strong’s discussion of this painting, see Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), pp. 65–69. I am indebted to John Hagge and Madeleine Henry for helping me with the Greek passages in this chapter.

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62. Bale, The Image of both Churches, after the most wonderfull and heauenly Reuelation of sainct Iohn the Euangelist . . . (London, 1570: STC 1301). 63. For McLaren’s discussion of Elizabeth and providentialism, see “Prophecy and Providentialism in the Reign of Elizabeth I,” in Prophecy: The Power of Inspired Language in History 1300–2000, ed. Bertrand Taithe and Tim Thornton, 31–50 (Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1997). 64. For the negative tradition of Solomon, see William Tate, “Solomon, Gender, and Empire in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus,” SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 37 (Spring 1997): 257–76. 65. R. Day, A Booke of Christian Prayers, Oo2v. 66. Frontispiece, The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England.

2 A Wise Elizabeth and Her Devoted Diplomats: Sidney’s The Lady of May and Anglo-Dutch Relations 1. All quotations for The Lady of May are taken from Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jan van Dorsten, 21–32 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). The citations for all passages from the device include both page and line numbers and are subsequently provided in-text. The citations for these passages are (31.30) and (22.5), respectively. Duncan-Jones and van Dorsten’s edition conflates the two authoritative manuscripts of the device: the version included with the 1598 Arcadia (98) and the one found in the Helmingham Hall manuscript (Hm). For a transcript of Hm, see Robert Kimbrough and Philip Murphy, “The Helmingham Hall Manuscript of Sidney’s The Lady of May: A Commentary and Transcription,” Renaissance Drama 1 (1968): 103–19. 2. Scholars typically propose that Elizabeth did not pick the suitor Sidney expected. For a few key texts on this issue, see Derek B. Alwes, Sons and Authors in Elizabethan England (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004), pp. 67–74; Edward Berry, “Sidney’s May Game for the Queen,” Modern Philology 86 (February 1989): 252–64; Kimbrough and Murphy, “The Helmingham Hall Manuscript”; Christopher Martin, “Impeding the Progress: Sidney’s The Lady of May,” Iowa State Journal of Research 60 (February 1986): 395–405; Louis Adrian Montrose, “Celebration and Insinuation: Sir Philip Sidney and the Motives of Elizabethan Courtship,” Renaissance Drama 8 (1977): 3–35; Stephen Orgel, The Jonsonian Masque (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 44–57. In Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet, Katherine Duncan-Jones suggests that Elizabeth chose “correctly” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 149–52. Other scholars read the text through a

Notes

3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

213

philosophical rather than political lens. Penny Pickett, in her “Sidney’s Use of Phaedrus in The Lady of May,” SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 16 (Winter 1976): 33–50, focuses on Platonic principles, and Robert E. Stillman analyzes the distinction between the notions of verba and res in his article, “Justice and the ‘Good Word’ in Sidney’s The Lady of May,” SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 24 (Winter 1984): 23–38. Alan Hager centers his analysis on Rombus in “Rhomboid Logic: Anti-Idealism and a Cure for Recusancy in Sidney’s Lady of May,” ELH 57 (1990): 485–502. Scholars who date the play to 1578 include: Alwes, Sons and Authors in Elizabethan England; Marie Axton, “The Tudor Mask and Elizabethan Court Drama,” in English Drama: Forms and Development, ed. Marie Axton and Raymond Williams, 24–47 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), especially pp. 38–41; Berry, “Sidney’s May Game for the Queen”; Hager, “Rhomboid Logic”; Montrose, “Celebration and Insinuation”; Alan Stewart, Philip Sidney: A Double Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 2000), pp. 205–06. Editor Arthur F. Kinney dates the play to 1579 in his introduction to the text in Renaissance Drama: An Anthology of Plays and Entertainments, 2nd edition (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 135–42. Catherine Bates, in addition to editors DuncanJones and van Dorsten, allows for both dates to be possible. Bates, The Rhetoric of Courtship in Elizabethan Language and Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 61–69. Kuin uses this pun in “A Civil Conversation: Letters and the Edge of Form” in which he examines a few of Sidney’s letters within the epistolary tradition. His essay appears in Textual Conversations in the Renaissance: Ethics, Authors, Technologies, ed. Zachary Lesser and Benedict Scott Robinson, 147–72 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 170–71. Jan A. van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons, and Professors: Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers, and the Leiden Humanists (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1962), p. 28. Daniel Ménager provides an extensive discussion of the association between angels and diplomats, and he takes Tasso’s dialogue Il Messagerio as the text that typifies this similarity. Diplomatie et Théologie à la Renaissance (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001), especially pp. 8–11 and 45–46. Kuin and Anne Lake Prescott, as well as Robert E. Stillman, have done particularly extensive work in situating Sidney (and Daniel Rogers) in Continental politics and poetics. Stillman’s recent book on Sidney, for example, examines the Defense with the Philippist circle of Anglo- Continental writers who espoused notions put forth by Philip Melanchthon. Kuin and Prescott, “Versifying

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8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

Connections: Daniel Rogers and the Sidneys,” Sidney Journal 18.2 (2000): 1–35. Stillman, Philip Sidney and the Poetics of Renaissance Cosmopolitanism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). In addition, I am also deeply indebted to the transnationally oriented studies done by Paul Franssen, James E. Phillips, and Lee Piepho. See Franssen, “Gloriana’s Allies: The Virgin Queen and the Low Countries,” in Queen Elizabeth I: Past and Present, ed. Christa Jansohn, 173–93 (Münster, Germany: LIT, 2004); Phillips, “Elizabeth I as a Latin Poet: An Epigram on Paul Melissus,” Renaissance News 16 (Winter 1963): 289–98; Piepho, “Paulus Melissus and Jacobus Falckenburgius: Two German Protestant Humanists at the Court of Queen Elizabeth,” Sixteenth Century Journal 38.1 (2007): 97–110; and Piepho, “Edmund Spenser and Neo-Latin Literature: An Autograph Manuscript on Petrus Lotichius and His Poetry,” Studies in Philology 100 (Spring 2003): 123–34. Editors Duncan-Jones and van Dorsten note Rombus’ many blunders in their endnotes for The Lady of May; their endnote for this particular misspeak is on p. 178. Axton, “The Tudor Mask,” p. 38. Axton dates the letter as 8 July 1578, but Edward Berry corrects the date as 9 July in “Sidney’s May Game for the Queen,” pp. 252–53, n. 4. Scholars have debated the role of this speech in the entertainment. In her introduction to the device, Duncan-Jones describes the pedant’s final speech as “chaotic and obscure” and claims that it “bears no relation to the main action” (Miscellaneous Prose, p. 18). Kinney does not include the epilogue at all in Renaissance Drama, choosing instead to follow the 98 manuscript. I concur with such scholars as Hager and Pickett who see this monologue as crucial to the piece. One item that may add an additional layer of support for Hm as a version close to the actual performance (though completed by a sloppy scribe) is H. R. Woudhuysen’s speculation that Elizabeth may have visited Helmingham Hall on her progress in August 1578 during a period that occurs only days before her visit to Norwich—an event steeped in the Anglo-Dutch politics that underlie Sidney’s entertainment. Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 1558–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 322–24. For studies arguing that Therion was the figure representing Leicester and/or Sidney, see, for example, Berry, Kimbrough and Murphy, Martin, Montrose, Orgel, Pickett, and Stillman, “Justice and the ‘Good Word.’ ” Great Britain Public Record Office, Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1577–1578, vol. 12, ed. Arthur John Butler (1901; repr., Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Klaus Reprint, 1966), p. 637.

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13. CSP Foreign 12, p. 637. 14. Baron Joseph Marie Bruno Constantin Kervyn de Lettenhove, Relations Politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre sous le Règne de Philippe II, vol. 10 (Bruxelles, 1882–1900), pp. 467–68; translation CSP Foreign 12: p. 686. There is another copy of this letter dated 16 May and sent from Greenwich (CSP Foreign 12, p. 686). Most likely, these two letters were sent to ensure that at least one copy reached Casimir. 15. Orgel, Jonsonian Masque, pp. 54–55. 16. CSP Foreign 12, p. 642. 17. For example, Casimir writes to Elizabeth and to Walsingham on 26 April to emphasize how much he relies on Elizabeth’s promised financial support. See Lettenhove 10, pp. 431–32. 18. Lettenhove 10, pp. 471–72. 19. CSP Foreign 12, p. 643. 20. Lettenhove 10, p. 474. 21. Wilson, Queen Elizabeth and the Revolt of the Netherlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 62. 22. Alwes, Sons and Authors, p. 72. 23. CSP Foreign 12, p. 638. 24. Ibid., p. 671. 25. Stillman provides an in-depth discussion of the Philippists’ commitment to ecumenical piety in Philip Sidney. For example, see pp. 17–19. 26. Gentili. De Legationibus Libri Tres [1586], 1594, trans. Gordon J. Laing, 2 vols (New York, 1924). 27. Kuin, “Sir Philip Sidney and World War Zero” (Renaissance Society of America Conference, 2008). 28. Hecox Bozzay, “Dutch Muses: The Dutch Revolt in the Elizabethan Imagination.” PhD dissertation, Washington University, 2000, chapter 2. 29. For a discussion of the Dutch frequently depicting the Estates as a maiden in a walled garden, see Andrew Sawyer, “Medium and Message. Political Prints in the Dutch Republic, 1568–1632,” in Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke, ed. Judith Pollmann and Andrew Spicer, 163–87 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), especially p. 183. For famous examples of this same iconography in English texts, see the image in George Gascoigne’s The Spoyle of Antwerpe (London, 1576; STC 11644) as well as Edmund Spenser’s description of Lady Belgia in Book 5 of The Faerie Qveene (London, 1596; STC 23082). 30. Elizabeth’s position as a pacific monarch is doubly appropriate for her as a Christian queen, as Catherine de Medici noted slyly to Sir Amyas Poulet (England’s diplomat in Paris) in May of

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31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38.

39.

40.

41. 42.

1578: “Queen Mother answered that it was the duty of all Christian princes to be inclined to peace, and she could not enough commend her Majesty’s honourable disposition. For her part, she also was a woman, and as became her sex, desired nothing more than a general quietness” (CSP Foreign 12, p. 656). Franssen, “Gloriana’s Allies,” p. 175. Quoted from ibid., pp. 176–77. I provide the citation to Franssen because I wish to cite a readily accessible source. Part of what keeps this Neo-Latin poetry so under-studied (in addition to the language barrier) is that no modern edition of this text exists. Dousa’s Nova Poemata is available in only two original copies worldwide. Quoted from Franssen, “Gloriana’s Allies,” pp. 176–77. Ibid., pp. 177–78. Dousa, Nova Poemata . . . (Leiden, 1575), sig. Ii-r; I am indebted to Chris L. Heesakkers for drawing my attention to this poem (which is also quoted in van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons, and Professors, p. 203). The translation is Heesakkers’. “ ‘To Attract the Attention of that Snobbish Queen’: Dousa’s Latin Ode to Elizabeth (1573) in its historical context,” dnbl (2001): 131–36, p. 133. http:// www.dbnl. org/tekst/ hees002toat01/ hees002toat01_001.htm. Quoted from Franssen, “Gloriana’s Allies,” p. 179; translation mine. Quoted from ibid. For an electronic copy of this text, see http:// www.dbnl.org/tekst/rade004albu01_01/rade004albu01_01_0097. htm, fol. 149r. The texts in the original Latin for both Melissus’ epigram and the epigram that Elizabeth is attributed to have written in response are from Elizabeth I: Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals (henceforth ACFLO), ed. Janel Mueller and Leah S. Marcus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 150–51. The translations come from Elizabeth I: Collected Works (henceforth CW ), ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 301–02. Piepho will be working on an article on the exchange between Melissus and Elizabeth. His work thus far suggests Melissus rather than Elizabeth wrote the epigram credited to Elizabeth (personal communication with author). Phillips, “Elizabeth I as a Latin Poet,” p. 295. Stillman suggests that Elizabeth may have chosen Sidney for this embassy in 1577 specifically because of his participation in the more ecumenical Philippist circle (those individuals who followed the ideas of Melanchthon). See Stillman, Philip Sidney, pp. 18–19. Phillips, “Elizabeth I as a Latin Poet,” p. 295. Lettenhove 10, p. 358.

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43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., pp. 358–59; I am indebted to my colleague John Hagge for his translation of Rogers’ epigram (personal communication). 45. Quoted in Kuin and Prescott, “Versifying Connections,” p. 29. Kuin and Prescott underline the parts of words that are abbreviated in the manuscript. 46. Ibid. 47. Hecox [Bozzay], “A Dutch Perspective on Sidney’s Eclogues,” Sidney Journal 17 (Fall 1999): 31–40, p. 32. 48. For commentary about Sidney’s “On Ister Bank” in relation to Dutch pastoral poetry, see Jan van Dorsten, “Recollections: Sidney’s Ister Bank Poem,” in The Anglo-Dutch Renaissance: Seven Essays, [ Jan A. van Dorsten] ed. J. van den Berg and Alastair Hamilton, 72–83 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988). 49. CSP Foreign 12, p. 644. 50. Ménager, Diplomatie et Théologie. For his first discussion of angels as God’s mediators, see pp. 3–5. For the comment on Catholicism’s multiplication of intermediaries, see p. 14. 51. For Leicester’s extensive activity as a patron, see Eleanor Rosenberg, Leicester, Patron of Letters (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955). 52. Lettenhove 10, p. 465. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid., pp. 465–66. 55. CSP Foreign 12, p. 654. On 8 May (only six days later), Davison is in trouble again with the idea that he has supported the merchant adventurers in adopting religious practices more radically Protestant than England’s current doctrine. Such affinities that an ambassador, such as Davison, might have with the Dutch only strengthens the possibility that these men could become more Orange’s agents than Elizabeth’s (CSP Foreign 12, p. 670). 56. Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (1955; repr., Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964), p. 187; and Jessica Wolfe, Humanism, Machinery, and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 92. 57. Baron Joseph Marie Bruno Constantin Kervyn de Lettenhove, Relations Politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre sous le Règne de Philippe II, vol. 9 (Bruxelles, 1882–1900), p. 522. 58. Lettenhove 9, p. 357. 59. Even if Sidney was not aware of Elizabeth’s comments, his own recent and personal situations with Casimir and with Orange might very likely complicate his claims of sole fidelity to Elizabeth. In 1577, Sidney’s mentor and friend Hugh Languet had cryptically implied that Sidney had an important princessadmirer who historians now believe was Prince Casimir’s sister,

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Notes

60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

68.

Ursula. The next year brought Sidney the prospect of marriage to Orange’s daughter. For more on these potential marriages, see Stewart, Philip Sidney, pp. 180–83, 185–87, and 192–93. Duncan-Jones and van Dorsten identified the source of this section (Miscellaneous Prose, p. 181, n. 31.34–32 sic). ACFLO, p. 124; CW, pp. 87–88. Shenk, “Turning Learned Authority into Royal Supremacy: Elizabeth I’s Learned Persona and Her University Orations,” in Elizabeth I: Always Her Own Free Woman, ed. Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett- Graves, 78–96 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p. 83. Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 65–104. ACFLO, p. 150; CW, p. 301. ACFLO, pp. 150–51; CW, p. 302. Alwes, Sons and Authors, p. 70. Sidney’s interest in parading learning that is distinct from traditional instruction adds another layer to the phenomenon that Jeff Dolven discusses regarding how poets such as Sidney and Spenser transform and criticize typical “humanist” education. For Dolven’s discussion of Rombus, for example, see Scenes of Instruction in Renaissance Romance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 99–101. Sidney, The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. William A. Ringler, Jr. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 236.

3 Queen of the Word: Elizabeth, Divine Wisdom, and Apocalyptic Discourse in the 1580s 1. Andrew Escobedo succinctly outlines significant parallels and distinctions between Foxe’s and Spenser’s (and John Dee’s) apocalyptic discourses in his Nationalism and Historical Loss in Renaissance England: Foxe, Dee, Spenser, Milton (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004). 2. Blenerhasset, A Reuelation of the true Minerua . . . (London, 1582; STC 3132); Kyffin, The Blessednes of Brytaine, or A Celebration of the Queenes Holyday . . . (London, 1587; STC 15096) and (London, 1588; STC 15097). Kyffin’s 1587 edition can be dated specifically to the second half of 1587 because, in the dedication to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, it recognizes him as Master of the Horse. Essex had been appointed to this prestigious position in June 1587. For simplicity, all citations to Blessednes will refer to the expanded 1588 edition, and all citations for this text and Reuelation will appear in-text.

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3. Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975). 4. Elizabeth is most famously depicted as the “Rosa Electa” in William Rogers’ engraving of the queen, ca. 1590–1600. 5. The main scholars who examine Blenerhasset’s work are Josephine Waters Bennett, Lily B. Campbell, Helen Hackett, and Ivan L. Schulze. See Bennett, introduction to A Revelation of the True Minerva, by Thomas Blenerhasset (New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1941); Campbell, introduction to Parts Added to “The Mirror for Magistrates,” by John Higgins and Thomas Blenerhasset (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946); Hackett, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 119–23; Schulze, “Blenerhasset’s A Revelation, Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender, and the Kenilworth Pageants,” ELH, 11:2 ( June 1944): 85–91. I am especially indebted to Susan Kendrick for bringing Blenerhasset’s work to my attention when she presented her paper, “ ‘Begot by Mars’: Elizabeth I and the Image of Chastity Militant in Thomas Blenerhasset’s ‘A Revelation of the True Minerva,’ ” at the Queen Elizabeth I Society Meeting in 2006. 6. Sherman, “Maurice Kyffin,” in Sixteenth- Century British Nondramatic Writers: Second Series, David A. Richardson, Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 136, 214–16 (Detroit, MI: Gale, 1994), p. 214. Hackett and Roy C. Strong give Kyffin glancing attention in (respectively) Virgin Mother (p. 133) and The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (1977; repr., London: Pimlico, 1999), p. 123. 7. Sherman, “Maurice Kyffin,” p. 215. 8. For more on the idea of divine secrets and prophecy in pastoral poetry (especially in England and in the Netherlands), see Jan van Dorsten, The Anglo-Dutch Renaissance: Seven Essays, [ Jan A. van Dorsten] ed. J. van den Berg and Alastair Hamilton, 72–83 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988), p. 79. 9. [Matthew Parker], The Holy Byble (London, 1578; STC 2124). All subsequent quotations from scripture for Blenerhasset’s Reuelation are provided from this edition of the Bishops’ Bible. 10. I am indebted to van Dorsten for drawing my attention to this connection in Anglo-Dutch Renaissance (p. 82). This passage in Agrippa is found in De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum et Artium (Cologne, T. Baumius, 1584, sigs. Cc5v–Cc6r; van Dorsten also mentions how often Sidney refers to Agrippa in the Defense). 11. Brocardo, Iacopo [Giacopo], The Revelation of S. Ihon reueled, Or A Paraphrase Opening by conference of time and place such things as are both necessary, and profitable for the tyme present: Written in Latine by

220

12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

Notes Iames Brocard, and Englished by Iames Sanford, Gent. (London, 1582; STC 3810), A4r. Richard Bauckham’s work on Tudor apocalyptic paradigms has prompted me to use this term “Brocardist.” Bauckham speculates, with some humor, that perhaps there was a Brocardist circle, and I suggest that this notion may have some validity. Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse: Sixteenth century apocalypticism, millennarianism and the English Reformation: from John Bale to John Foxe and Thomas Brightman (Oxford: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1978), p. 219. Petersen, Preaching in the Last Days: The Theme of “Two Witnesses” in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 163. Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, p. 218. This revision of the three “ages” was led by early-sixteenthcentury writer Francis Lambert. Brocardo, The Revelation of S. Ihon reueled, A2r. Those few who did use millennial paradigms—most notably James Sanford and Stephen Bateman—gave Elizabeth a central role in supporting the Gospel and trampling the papal Antichrist (Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, pp. 212, 218–21). For the notion of England as God’s elect nation guided by Elizabeth toward a millennial golden age, see Bernard Capp, “The Political Dimension of Apocalyptic Thought,” in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature: Patterns, Antecedents, and Repercussions, ed. C. A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich, 93–124 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), p. 95. See, for example, the letter of 3 March 1582 from William Herle to Leicester in Great Britain, Public Record Office, Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, January 1581– April 1582, ed. Arthur John Butler, vol. 15 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1907), particularly p. 515. CSP Foreign, vol. 15, p. 549. Ibid., p. 58. Ibid., p. 517. Bennett speculates that the empty chair is a reference to Anjou; Hackett observes that Reuelation’s 1582 publication date indicates that this option would have been outdated but does not surmise the intent of this detail. Bennett, introduction to A Revelation, p. viii; Hackett, Virgin Mother, p. 121. Bentley, The Monvment of Matrones: conteining seuen seuerall Lamps . . . (London, 1582; STC 1892). Dawson was completely responsible for printing Blenerhasset’s Reuelation, and he was involved in helping Henry Denham publish the last two sections of Bentley’s Monvment. See John N. King, “Thomas Bentley’s Monument of Matrons: The Earliest Anthology

Notes

25.

26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

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of English Women’s Texts,” in Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers & Canons in England, France, & Italy, ed. Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham, 216–38 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005), p. 217. For a good overview of these specific biblical images, see John N. King, Tudor Royal Iconography: Literature and Art in an Age of Religious Crisis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 244 and his chapter 4 overall. This section begins on p. 306 in Bentley’s Monvment. Chaderton describes the Church as the spouse of Christ on p. 40, and he expresses the importance of telling Elizabeth about the sorry state of the Church (as if she is not informed) on p. 43 in A Frvitfvll Sermon . . . (London, 1584; STC 4926). Elizabeth I: Collected Works, ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 179. Hackett notes this allusion in Virgin Mother, p. 121. For an overall discussion of this image in Tudor iconography, see King, Tudor Royal Iconography, pp. 201–05. Foxe, Christus Triumphans. Comoedia Apocalyptica. 1556 (London, 1672; Wing F2038), act 5, scene 5, which begins on p. 109. I am indebted to Escobedo for drawing my attention to this scene in Foxe’s play (Nationalism and Historical Loss, pp. 91–92). George Gascoigne and Thomas Churchyard were two principal writers in the Kenilworth entertainment, and in 1577, Blenerhasset praised both of them as superlative poets. Clearly, Blenerhasset was familiar with their work. See Bennett, introduction to A Revelation, p. xiii; and Campbell, Parts Added to “The Mirror for Magistrates,” p. 364. See Bennett, introduction to A Revelation, pp. x–xi; Hackett, Virgin Mother, p. 110. Bennett, introduction to A Revelation, p. xii. Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, pp. 116–18. Bennett, introduction to A Revelation, pp. xv and xiii. Ibid., p. xv. Kyffin’s background and interest in biblical exegesis surface both in his will (he leaves five pounds to Hugh Broughton for the purpose of publishing his observations on the Bible) and in the fact that his brother was a preacher. See Kyffin’s entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 31, ed. Sidney Lee, 352–53 (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1892), p. 352. For more on Melissus’ praise of Elizabeth as Rosina, see Jan A. van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons, and Professors: Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel Rogers, and the Leiden Humanists (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1962), p. 97.

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39. Dee, General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (London, 1577; STC 6459). 40. For a good description of this title page, see Margery Corbett and Ronald Lightbrown, The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic Titlepage in England, 1550–1660 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 49–56. 41. [Matthew Parker], The Holy Bible . . . (London, 1584; STC 2141). All quotations from scripture for Kyffin’s Blessednes are provided from this edition of the Bishops’ Bible. 42. Roy C. Strong and Jan van Dorsten drew my attention to this image in their work, Leicester’s Triumph (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1964), pp. 44–45. Kyffin gets his “Tutor to Frends, and Terror vnto Foes” line, I think, from John Prime’s 1585 Accession Day sermon at Oxford. He describes the queen as “the terror of her foes, the comfort of her friends.” See his “A Sermon Briefly Comparing the Estate of King Salomon and his Subiectes togither with the condition of Queene Elizabeth and her people” (London, 1585; STC 20371), the correct signature is B5r, but the last two pages have been mislettered with A. 43. This connection with military might also resonates with her depiction on a Dutch medal in 1587. On one side, she is portrayed as enthroned over a seven-headed apocalyptic beast, while on the other side is imprinted a papal scene. Roy C. Strong, The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), p. 138, Medal 16. 44. Quoted in William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), p. 131. 45. For a sustained discussion of Dee’s Synopsis, see ibid., pp. 128–47. Sherman discusses the section on Vertue on p. 135. 46. Ibid., p. 152. 47. Kyffin even bequeaths money to Dee in his will (Sherman, “Maurice Kyffin,” p. 214). 48. Sherman, John Dee, p. 153. 49. Ibid., p. 157. 50. Petersen discusses the view of the New Jerusalem in different early modern apocalyptic philosophies in Preaching in the Last Days, p. 4. He notes that the 1560 Geneva Bible addresses Elizabeth as Zerubbabel, a figure often identified as one of the two witnesses in Revelation 11 (p. 160). 51. In addition to this more traditional apocalyptic image, Kyffin may also be referring to the plant of truth (also called the plant of righteousness) from the Book of Enoch—a connection Kyffin would have learned about secondhand from Dee rather than reading this pseudepigraphal book directly. Dee viewed himself

Notes

52.

53. 54. 55.

4

223

as a second Enoch; in fact, he began to write his own Book of Enoch in 1583—a text in which he provides the Enochian alphabet he received from the angels. Kyffin had visited Dee in June 1582—only seven months after Dee had recorded his first substantial contact with angels. The plant of truth (as described in the Book of Enoch) will, in turn, teach the elect people in the final millennial age. This section of 1 Enoch, significantly, was a key influence in Revelation 19 and the millennial chapter 20. This connection is highly speculative because neither Dee nor Kyffin would have read 1 Enoch firsthand; however, I do think further study on the relationship between Kyffin’s work and Dee’s works is merited. Both men wrestled with merging the pragmatic with the mystical, sometimes through a millennial lens. For Dee’s reference to Kyffin’s visit, see The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee, and the Catalogue of his library of Manuscripts . . ., ed. James Orchard Halliwell (London: Camden Society, 1842), p. 15. For more on Dee’s apocalyptic thought, see both Escobedo, Nationalism and Historical Loss and Nicholas H. Cluee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London: Routledge, 1988). Appropriately, Aske’s text praises Elizabeth’s learned persona and knowledge of many languages as its foundation for establishing her valor. Aske, Elizabetha Trivmphans. Conteyning The Damned practizes, that the diuelish Popes of Rome haue vsed euer sithence her Highnesse first comming to the Crowne . . . (London, 1588; STC 847), B1r. Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse, pp. 273–74. The Bible and Holy Scriptvre Conteyned in the Olde and New Testament (Geneva, 1560; STC 2093), note a. Bridges, A Defence of the Government Established in the Chvrch of Englande for Ecclesiasticall Matters . . . (London, 1587; STC 3734), p. 62. Peter Lake initially drew my attention to this section in Bridges’ text in Anglicans and Puritans?: Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), p. 120.

Philosopher-Queen: Elizabeth’s Transcendent Wisdom in the 1590s

1. Elizabeth’s French verses are included in Elizabeth I: Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals (henceforth ACFLO), ed. Janel Mueller and Leah S. Marcus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 85–94. These stanzas were not published during Elizabeth’s reign, and there is no evidence to suggest the extent of their circulation (if any). Because of their uncertain “public” focus, I do not address them in this chapter.

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2. Elizabeth I: Collected Works (henceforth CW ), ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 182. All subsequent citations to Elizabeth’s speeches, originally in English or in translation, refer to this edition and will appear in-text. 3. Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel draw attention to this echo between Elizabeth’s translation of Seneca’s epistle and her speech to Parliament in 1585. See Mueller and Scodel, Elizabeth I: Translations, 1544–1589 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), p. 409. 4. Denis Crouzet’s work on Henri and Neostoicism has been especially influential to my own. See his “Henri IV, King of Reason?” trans. Judith K. Proud, in From Valois to Bourbon: Dynasty, State and Society in Early Modern France, ed. Keith Cameron, 73–106 (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1989). 5. The copy found in Merton College’s Register is reprinted in Registrum Annalium Collegii Mertonensis 1567–1603, ed. John M. Fletcher (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 289–90. Other transcripts of the oration include MS Bodley Tanner 461, f. 171b [reprinted in Charles Plummer, ed. Elizabethan Oxford: Reprints of Rare Tracts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887), pp. 271–73]; and MS Bodley 900 (reprinted in ACFLO, pp. 163–65). Also lending credence to the relative accuracy of these versions are the echoes that exist between these copies and the most authoritative text for Francis Bacon and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex’s 1595 Accession Day device—an entertainment that, as I discuss in chapter five, is largely structured on Elizabeth’s 1592 oration to Oxford and her translation of Consolation. 6. Studies that examine Elizabeth’s translation of Boethius include Lysbeth Benkert, “Translation as Image-Making: Elizabeth I’s Translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy,” Early Modern Literary Studies 6.3 ( January 2001): 2.1–20. http://extra.shu.ac.uk/ emls/06-3/ benkboet.htm; Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel, ed. Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2009); Howard Rollin Patch, The Tradition of Boethius: A Study of His Importance in Medieval Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1935; New York: Russell & Russell, 1970), pp. 78–80; Caroline Pemberton, “Editor’s Forewords,” to Queen Elizabeth’s Englishings of Boethius, Plutarch and Horace, ed. Caroline Pemberton (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1899); Kevin Sharpe, Remapping Early Modern England: The Culture of Seventeenth- Century Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 131–32. 7. Hooker, Of the Lavves of Ecclesiasticall Politie (London, 1593; STC 13712). As further evidence of the connection between Elizabeth’s learned persona and Anglo-French affairs in this period, it is significant that she produces French verses circa 1590 and that John

Notes

8.

9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15. 16.

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Bale’s 1548 edition of her Glass is also reprinted in 1590. A Godlie Meditation of the Christian soule, concerning a loue towards God and his church . . . (London, 1590; STC 17322.5). In particular, see J. H. M. Salmon’s chapter “Gallicanism and Anglicanism in the Age of the Counter-Reformation” in his Renaissance and Revolt: Essays in the Intellectual and Social History of Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 155–88. In addition, Patrick Collinson addresses English Calvinism within an international context in the chapter titled, “England and International Calvinism, 1558–1640,” in his From Cranmer to Sancroft (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), pp. 75–100. See, for example, W. Brown Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). W. Brown Patterson’s research on Hooker overall and particularly his essay on general councils has been deeply influential in my work. See his “Hooker on Ecumenical Relations: Conciliarism in the English Reformation,” in Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community, ed. Arthur Stephen McGrade, 283–303 (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997). Two widely available texts that contain the various accounts of this royal progress are John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth . . . vol. 3 (London, 1823), pp. 144–67; and Plummer, Elizabethan Oxford, pp. 245–73. Nichols, Progresses and Public Processions, 3.154. The citations for all of Elizabeth’s foreign language articulations quoted in this chapter come from Mueller and Marcus, ACFLO. This passage appears on p. 124. As noted previously, all translations of Elizabeth’s works come from Marcus, Mueller, and Rose, CW, and the translation of this passage is found on p. 88. Subsequent citations will be provided in-text. The Holy Bible, conteyning the Olde Testament and the Newe . . . (London, 1588; STC 2149). All subsequent biblical citations refer to this edition unless otherwise specified, and they appear in-text. I initially drew attention to Elizabeth’s extensive use of Pauline references in this speech in my essay “Turning Learned Authority into Royal Supremacy: Elizabeth I’s Learned Persona and Her University Orations,” in Elizabeth I: Always Her Own Free Woman, ed. Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett- Graves, 78–96 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 87–92. See the discussion in chapter three of Kyffin’s use of 1 Corinthians 2:9 in the “Continvation” of The Blessednes of Brytaine. The Bible: that is, the Holy Scriptvres conteined in the Olde and Newe Testament . . . (London, 1590; STC 2154), 1 Corinthians 1:17, n. 21.

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17. Coolidge, The Pauline Renaissance in England: Puritanism and the Bible (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 7. 18. Jones, The English Reformation: Religion and Cultural Adaptation (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), p. 186. 19. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans?: Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (London: Unwin Hyman,1988), pp. 159–60. For a succinct description of how Hooker engages with England’s relationship with Continental churches particularly the Genevan model, see W. Brown Patterson, “Elizabethan Theological Polemics,” in A Companion to Richard Hooker, ed. Torrance Kirby, 89–119 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 112–13. 20. Nichols, Progresses and Public Processions, 3:146. 21. Hooker, Lawes, p. 98. 22. Lake, Anglicans and Puritans?, pp. 228–30. 23. Registrum Annalium Collegii Mertonensis, p. 290. 24. See Elizabeth’s letter to the Lord Lieutenant at Kent (August 1592) in Great Britain Public Record Office, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1591–1594, vol. 3 [Searchable text edition], ed. Mary Anne Everett Green (Burlington, Ontario: TannerRitchie Publishing in collaboration with the Library and Information Services of the University of St. Andrews, 2005), p. 265. 25. Ibid., p. 274. 26. As Elizabeth’s ambassador to Henri, Sir Henry Unton articulates this concern in a letter sent from France when he notes, “The Cardinall of Bourbon, the Chancellor and the three Bishopes that came to Noyon to the Kinge, wherof your Lordship was before advertised, are come to the campe, expreslie to perswade the Kinge to be instructed in their Catholicke faithe, as also to conclude a peace with his subjectes, wherof they seeme to assure the Kinge. Hee putteth them in hope that he wilbe become a Catholicke, as him selfe confesseth to me; and did were two daies together a cloacke of the order of St. Espritt,—wherat the common sorte doe greately rejoice; also he offereth them to conclude a peace with reasonable conditions, which I beleeve to be impossible.” Correspondence of Sir Henry Unton, knt., ambassador from Queen Elizabeth to Henry IV, king of France, in the years 1591 and 1592, ed. Joseph Stevenson (London: W. Nichol, 1847), p. 171. 27. Nichols, Progresses and Public Processions, 3.146. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Crouzet, “Henri IV, King of Reason?” p. 78. 31. Crouzet discusses this text in ibid., p. 86. 32. Mueller and Scodel emphasize the connection between this Stoic epistle and Elizabeth’s translation of Boethius, Translations, 1544– 1589, p. 6.

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33. Bouwsma, “Hooker in the Context of European Cultural History,” in Richard Hooker and the Construction of Christian Community, ed. Arthur Stephen McGrade, 41–57 (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997), p. 48. 34. Editors Mueller and Marcus note that “ais” must be a careless spelling of either “mais” or “ains.” Both of these words mean “but” (ACFLO, p. 95, n. 6). 35. Tuck, Philosophy and Government 1572–1651 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 56. 36. Great Britain Public Record Office, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1581–1590, vol. 2 [Searchable text edition], ed. Robert Lemon (Burlington, Ontario: TannerRitchie Publishing in collaboration with the Library and Information Services of the University of St. Andrews, 2005), p. 690. 37. D. P. M. [Duplessis-Mornay], “An Epistle to the King,” in A Declaration and Protestation, published by the King of Nauarre . . . 55–70 (London, 1585: STC 13109), p. 60. I cite from this translation published the same year as the French original to demonstrate that this text was considered important enough in England to prompt such a swift and published translation. 38. Camden, The Historie of the Life, and Reigne of the most Renowmed and Victorious Princesse Elizabeth, Late Queene of England (London, 1630), Booke 4, p. 51. 39. Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598, Book 1, prose 6, p. 109. Subsequent citations to Mueller and Scodel’s edition will be provided in-text and will refer to the modern spelling version they provide on the page facing an original spelling version. I opted to use the modern spelling because Elizabeth’s literal translation is often both opaque in meaning and heavily revised; therefore, the modern spelling version seems better suited to isolated quotations. I am grateful to editors Mueller and Scodel for sending me the electronic files of their text of Elizabeth’s translation of Boethius; in turn, I am grateful to the University of Chicago Press for sending me an advanced copy to facilitate including citations to the printed text prior to the official release of the edition. 40. Sharpe emphasizes that Windebank’s status underscores the public function of her work. See his Remapping Early Modern England, p. 131. 41. Pemberton includes transcriptions of these accounts in Queen Elizabeth’s Englishings, pp. ix–x. 42. For more on Alfred’s interpretative “translation” of Boethius, see, for example, F. Anne Payne, King Alfred & Boethius: An Analysis of the Old English Version of the “Consolation of Philosophy” (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968) and Patch, Tradition of Boethius, especially pp. 48–54.

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43. Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598, 52. 44. Crabbe, “Literary Design in the De Consolatione Philosophiae,” in Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, ed. Margaret Gibson, 237–74 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), p. 238. 45. Patch, Tradition of Boethius, pp. 79–80. 46. Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598, book 1, n. 3, p. 73. 47. Mueller and Scodel’s Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598 provides a detailed account of these corrections throughout their text of Elizabeth’s translation. It should also be noted that, although Elizabeth did acknowledge the shifts between prose and verse, she made no attempt to mimic Boethius’ metrical variety (Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598, p. 59). 48. This motto has its roots in Seneca’s Epistulae morales #120. See Mueller and Scodel, Translations, 1544–1589, pp. 410–11. 49. These debates were in addition to numerous secret negotiations with such prominent Catholic figures as Ferdinand I, grand duke of Tuscany—negotiations conducted with particular intensity February–May 1593. For more on these events, see Vincent J. Pitts, Henri IV of France: His Reign and Age (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), p. 169. 50. Du Vair, Traité de la Constance et Consolation és Calamitez Publiques, ed. Jacques Flach and F. Funck-Brentano (Paris: Léon Tenin, 1915), p. 54. I use the following English translation: A Bvckler Against Adversitie: or A Treatise of Constancie, trans. Andrevv Covrt (London, 1622: STC 7373), p. 2. I use Bvckler not only because it was published in England but also because it was published during a period not unlike du Vair’s—a period of increasing civic tension that arose because a significant population sought to thwart the power of the king. 51. Du Vair, Traité de la Constance, p. 55; Bvckler, p. 2. 52. Du Vair, Traité de la Constance, p. 238; Bvckler, p. 162. 53. For example, du Vair explicitly criticizes religious extremism in Traité de la Constance on pp. 202–03. The corresponding passage in Bvckler is on pp. 130–31. 54. Mueller and Scodel note that Elizabeth is translating the Latin “Fortunamque tuens utramque rectus,” which would be better phrased as “stoutly beholding both sorts of Fortune” (Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598, Book 1, p. 86, n. 62). 55. In exasperation, however, Henri announces in late December that he will not renew the truce. See Pitts, Henri IV of France, p. 179. 56. Great Britain Public Record Office, List and Analysis of State Papers, Foreign Series, Elizabeth I, vol. 5: July 1593–December 1594, ed. Richard Bruce Wernham (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1989), no. 266, p. 255. 57. List and Analysis, vol. 5, no. 267, p. 255.

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229

58. List and Analysis, vol. 5, no. 285, p. 267. 59. Mueller and Scodel provide the following note to help clarify the meaning of this line: wrack . . . moved. An obscure passage imitating Boethius’s elliptical phrasing. It might be construed as follows: “to ruin that work [the cosmic order], which with linked faith it [‘Whatso now by love is linked’] [has hitherto] moved [with] quiet motions.” with . . . faith “socia fide” (with mutual trust). It . . . moved Elizabeth substituted “It” for her original “With” as a reference to “Whatso now by love is linked” (line 16), thus providing a grammatical subject . . . To preserve syntactic coherence, “quiet motions” must be construed to mean “with quiet motions,” in an awkward imitation of Boethius’s ablative construction, “pulchris motibus” (Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592– 1598, pp. 172–73, n. 259). 60. The text of Sir Thomas Wilkes’ instructions (dated 14 July 1593) can be found in List and Analysis, vol. 5, no. 436, pp. 358–59. The original letter can be found in the Great Britain Public Record Office, Uncalendared State Papers Foreign of Elizabeth I, 1592–1603 (SP 78). Vol. 31 (Sussex: Harvester, 1982), fol. 248r–51v. 61. Marenbon, Boethius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 149. 62. As Edmund Reiss has observed, Boethius’ overall “conception is by and large Neoplatonic, it is also decidedly Christian inasmuch as it identifies God with Love.” See Reiss, Boethius (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982), p. 152. 63. Relihan, The Prisoner’s Philosophy: Life and Death in Boethius’s “Consolation” (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), p. 2. Consolation’s Menippean genre may also have resonances with another Menippean work produced in France to support Henri. In what Mark Greengrass describes as “the most famous political satire in the history of France,” the work Satyre Ménippée was written by a group of royalist Parisians (a manuscript circulated in March 1593) to ridicule the League’s devotion to Spain. Key League figures as well as individuals representing central League constituencies were depicted as receiving a dose of the wonderdrug Catholicon, which prompted them to tell the truth. Its characters included historical figures such as the Duke of Mayenne as well as more representative personages like the papal legate, the League zealot from Lyon, and the Spanish ambassador. Greengrass, France in the Age of Henri IV: The Struggle for Stability (London: Longman, 2nd edition, 1995), p. 86. See also Salmon, Renaissance and Revolt, pp. 84–89. 64. Astell, Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Reiss, Boethius; and Relihan, Prisoner’s Philosophy. 65. Whether or not Elizabeth wished her court to consider her translation alongside her 1592 oration to Oxford, she did call upon the

230

Notes

66.

67.

68. 69. 70.

same modulation of learning into love when Parliament granted her a triple subsidy in 1593 to send more troops to Henri. She addressed Parliament thus: I protest (whereunto many that know me can witness) that the greatest expense of my time, the labor of my studies, and the travail of my thoughts chiefly tendeth to God’s service and the government of you, to live and continue in a flourishing and happy estate. God forbid you should ever know any change thereof! Many wiser princes than myself you have had, but only one excepted, none more careful over you (whom in the duty of a child I must regard and to whom I must acknowledge myself far shallow); I may truly say none whose love and care can be greater or whose desire can be more to fathom deeper for prevention of danger to come or resisting of dangers, if attempted towards you, shall ever be found to exceed myself in love (I say) towards you and care over you. (CW, p. 331) Marcus and Scodel include parts of this text in brackets because of holes in the manuscript. They provide the following note: “b[e] tho[u do]st [and] . . . [so] The lacunae in the MS, caused by three holes in fol. 83r-v, can be conjecturally restored by reference to the source. Boethius reads ‘et an facias quove convertas . . ., divinam te praescientiam non posse vitare’ (and whether you will do so, and in what direction you will change, you cannot avoid the divine foreknowledge)” (Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598, p. 362, n. 156). Patterson, “Hooker on Ecumenical Relations.” Significantly, Patterson acknowledges the importance of the unrest in France as well as Henri’s eventual conversion as contexts for such interest in councils. Patterson also addresses another significant tradition for this language: the conciliarist language in England that was crucial in the 1530s. Hooker, Lavves, p. 77. The italicized text appears as such in the original. Patterson drew my attention to this section in his “Hooker on Ecumenical Relations.” For more on Sandys and Cranmer, see Hugh Trevor-Roper’s chapter, “Richard Hooker and the Church of England,” in his Renaissance Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 110–11. Relihan, Prisoner’s Philosophy, p. 131.

5 A Loving Scholar of His Queen’s Wisdom: The Earl of Essex, Anglo-French Affairs, and Of Love and Self-Love (1595) 1. Essex dispatched additional spies to Spain and France, doubled his personal secretariat, and created an intelligence-gathering

Notes

2.

3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

231

center in Venice. See Hammer, “The Crucible of War: English Foreign Policy, 1589–1603,” in Tudor England and its Neighbours, ed. Susan Doran and Glenn Richardson, 235–66 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 250. Hammer, Roy C. Strong, and Richard C. McCoy have commented on Essex’s interest in garnering this crucial appointment. They have noted the highly academic tone of this device as well as Essex’s contemporary interest in parading his qualifications in military and conciliar leadership. Hammer, “Upstaging the Queen: the Earl of Essex, Francis Bacon and the Accession Day Celebrations of 1595,” in The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, ed. David Bevington and Peter Holbrook, 41–66 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); for Hammer’s sustained work on Essex as an intellectual, see The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (1977; repr., London: Pimlico, 1999), p. 139; McCoy (who focuses mostly on Bacon’s credentials), The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 85–86. I am especially indebted to Hammer’s work on Essex. Passages from Whyte’s letter are from Letters and Memorials of State, vol. 1, ed. Arthur Collins (1746; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1973), p. 362. Wotton, Reliquiae Wottonianae; or, A Collection of Lives, Letters, Poems; with Characters of Sundry Personages . . ., 4th edition (1651, London, 1685), p. 174. For Essex’s memo to Elizabeth about securing England against invasion, see Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, From the Year 1581 till Her Death . . . vol. 1 (1754; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1970), pp. 292–94. See Hammer, Polarisation, p. 331. Hammer, “Upstaging the Queen,” p. 46. For a list of the extant texts as well as more discussion on the textual situation, see Peter Beal, compiler, Index of English Literary Manuscripts. vol. 1, part 1 (New York: R. R. Bowker Co, 1980), pp. 51–52. Other commentary regarding the textual situation occurs in Hammer, “Upstaging the Queen,” p. 46; James Spedding, ed., The Works of Francis Bacon, vol. 7 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862), pp. 374–92; Brian Vickers, ed., Francis Bacon: A Critical Edition of the Major Works (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 535–37. To date, no collation of the various manuscripts has been published. Although it is rare to have a major author’s rough notes of poetic works in this period, H. R. Woudhuysen comments that we have

232

Notes

9.

10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

many of Bacon’s working drafts of his philosophical and scientific writings. Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 1558–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 95. Bacon’s notes outline the conditions of performance as well as how Essex can use the device to his advantage. These comments are printed in the notes in Spedding, Works, pp. 376–77. In this rough draft (Lambeth Palace, MS 936, No. 274; BcF 309 in Beal, Index, p. 51), Bacon writes a speech for the Hermit but then, in the polished draft (Lambeth Palace, MS 933, No. 118; BcF 308 in Beal, Index, p. 51), gives most of this speech to the Statesman. Hammer, Polarisation, p. 248. Because the pageant that includes the Indian boy is a separate device or at least a separate part of the 1595 entertainment, I examine this pageant in “The Entertainment of the Indian Boy and Essex’s International Agenda in 1595,” in Essex: The Life and Times of an Elizabethan Courtier, ed. Annaliese Connolly and Lisa Hopkins (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming). Perhaps significantly for the focus on Anglo-French relations in both this essay and this current chapter, there are several texts related to the overall 1595 entertainments that are in French, such as Anthony Bacon’s incomplete translation of the Hermit’s speech as well as a speech written for Philautia (written in Edward Reynoldes’ hand). In regards to authorship, it should also be noted that a manuscript (ca. 1630) attributes the entertainment with the Hermit, Soldier, and Statesman to Henry Cuffe, one of Essex’s secretaries. George Peele in his Anglorum Feriae, Englandes Hollydayes . . . also provides a description of the action that was performed on the tiltyard. Peele describes the moment when Essex enters the field (wearing “innocent white and fair carnation”) and is greeted, in silence, by the Hermit, Soldier, and Statesman who each give him a book. The Works of George Peele, vol. 2, ed. A. H. Bullen (1888; repr., Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1966), pp. 339–55. The description of the action regarding Essex is found in lines 190–209, and the colors of his garments are described in line 191. Letters and Memorials, 1:362. Ibid., 359. All citations for Of Love and Self-Love come from Francis Bacon: A Critical Edition of the Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers, 61–68 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 61. Subsequent citations are provided in-text. The Holy Bible, conteyning the Olde Testament and the Newe . . . (London, 1588; STC 2149). Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598, ed. Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2009), Book 1, prose 1,

Notes

18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

23.

24. 25.

26. 27.

233

p. 77. Subsequent citations to Mueller and Scodel’s edition appear in-text. For a discussion of Kyffin’s use of 1 Corinthians, see chapter three. In her letter to Thomas Edmondes (her diplomat in France) on 8 October, Elizabeth describes Loménie’s visit as well as defends her actions regarding Cambrai. She acknowledges France’s requests “for the succor of Cambray” and emphasizes that her care for this situation equaled Henri’s. She claims “That next [to] himselfe, no persone is more perplexed to find the sower effects of such a Journey, by the losse of such a Place of importance” (fol. 32r). Elizabeth’s entire letter can be found on ff. 32–34. Great Britain, Public Record Office, Uncalendared State Papers Foreign of Elizabeth I, 1592–1603 (SP 78), vol. 36 (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1982). She rebukes Henri in the letter for his lack of success in such missions as that in Picardy, but later assures him that [she] “ne vous abandonnerais mais que en tout que puis avec la commodité de mon état et consideration de mon people n’aurai moins son de vôtre conservation queue de la mienne.” List and Analysis of State Papers, Foreign Series: Elizabeth I, vol. 6, ed. Richard Wernham (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1989), no. 223, p. 172. Ibid., no. 223, p. 171. Letters and Memorials of State, 1:354. In this letter, Lake indicates that perhaps the peace has already been made secretly. This will be confirmed in January 1596 by England’s ambassador to Henri, Sir Henry Unton. “Intellexi ab eodem Fontanam scripsisse de nouo spem esse renatam redeundi ad conuentus tractationem.” A Spaniard in Elizabethan England: The Correspondence of Antonio Pérez’s Exile, vol. 1, ed. Gustav Ungerer (London: Tamesis Books, 1974), p. 373. Elizabeth does not agree outright to a conference. In the instructions created for Unton’s mission to Henri, the queen claims that her refusal to send individuals for a conference was because Loménie made the dispatch of English troops a precondition for such an event (List and Analysis, vol. 6, no. 236, p. 180). See Vincent J. Pitts, Henri IV of France: His Reign and Age (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), p. 198. As another instance where different members of Essex’s secretariat might have been collaborating on (or at least discussing) this piece, this same Latin phrase occurs in the ambassador’s speech regarding the Indian boy. I am indebted to Vickers who draws attention to Bacon’s repeated use of this maxim (Francis Bacon, p. 538). Spedding, Works, 8:390. Ibid.

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28. Elizabeth obscures the meaning of this line, which she translates as: “Will you ever guide aught with free mind?” Editors Mueller and Scodel provide the original Latin and a translation of this line (Book 2, prose 6, p. 155, n. 181). 29. Editors Mueller and Scodel provide the following note for this difficult line in Elizabeth’s translation: So . . . sincerity “an mirabilem quendam divinae simplicitatis orbem complicas” (or are you folding together a wonderful circle of divine simplicity?). wrapped enfolded. roundel circle. sincerity purity, singleness (Book 3, prose 12, p. 243, n. 280). 30. Vickers notes that this story is one of the labors of Hercules in the list of notes (Francis Bacon, p. 539). 31. This connection between celestial fire and the Holy Spirit as a contrast to love of the world and violence is commonplace in devotional practice. Most notably, it is articulated in the Catholic hymn “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” used both in the sixteenth century and currently. 32. Lagrée, “Constancy and Coherence,” in Stoicism: Traditions and Transformations, ed. Steven K. Strange and Jack Zupko, 148–76 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 33. Ibid., p. 148. 34. Letters and Memorials of State, 1:362. 35. According to university records, he was performing in plays in 1592. Frederick S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (1914; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1978), p. 393. 36. John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth . . . vol. 3 (London, 1823), pp. 151 and 145, respectively. 37. Letters and Memorials of State, 1:362. 38. Ibid. 39. Hammer, “Upstaging the Queen,” pp. 54–55. 40. Elizabeth was often entertained at Theobalds, but these two visits were especially geared toward allowing Cecil to express his readiness to assume his father’s duties, many of which he was already performing unofficially. 41. James M. Sutton discusses that Cecil’s and Essex’s choices of venue in their bids for preferment contrast sharply. Materializing Space at an Early Modern Prodigy House: the Cecils at Theobalds, 1564–1607 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), p. 126. It is interesting, however, that Robert Cecil chooses literature to express his unflagging loyalty to Elizabeth in moments when his involvement in (or capacity for) international participation comes to the fore. In 1594 during his competition with Essex, he wrote the hermit’s oration for the Theobalds entertainment. In 1602, not long after he became James I’s primary contact in England, Cecil composed a few loyal verses as well. I am indebted to Joshua Eckhardt’s

Notes

235

essay, “ ‘From a Seruant of Diana’ To the Libellers of Robert Cecil: The Transmission of Songs Written for Queen Elizabeth I,” for drawing my attention to these verses. Eckhardt’s essay appears in Elizabeth I and the Culture of Writing, ed. Peter Beal and Grace Ioppolo, 115–31 (London: British Library, 2007). 42. Indeed, relations between Essex and the Cecil family were relatively civil at the time. Essex was currently working with Burghley on strengthening England’s defenses, and both Burghley and Cecil had joined with Essex in supporting Bacon’s candidacy for Solicitor General.

Afterword 1. The Holy Bible, conteyning the Olde Testament and the Newe . . . (London, 1588; STC 2149). 2. For perhaps the most famous discussion of Bottom’s echo of 1 Corinthians, see Annabel Patterson, “Bottom’s Up: Festive Theory in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”: Critical Essays, ed. Dorothea Kehler, 165–78 (New York: Garland, 1998). For attention to a larger network of allusions to Pauline texts in Dream, see Vasiliki Markidou, “ ‘How shall we find the concord of this discord?’: A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Religious Controversies of Late Sixteenth- Century England,” Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 9 (2001): 55–67. 3. Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ed. Harold F. Brooks (London: Routledge, 1979), 4.1.203–12. All subsequent citations refer to this edition, and they appear in-text. In the 1588 Bishops’ Bible, St. Paul’s 1 Corinthians reads: “But as it is written, The eye hath not seene, and the eare hath not heard, neither haue entred into the hart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that loue him.” 4. The Nevve Testament of Ovr Lord Iesus Christ (Geneva, 1557; STC 2871). 5. Shakespeare may have known about the specifics of Elizabeth’s oration from his patron Henry Wriostheley, Earl of Southampton. Southampton was present at the Oxford oration in 1592, and that same year, Shakespeare was working on Venus and Adonis for the earl. In regards to Of Love and Self-Love, Shakespeare’s company may have performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream less than two months after this Accession Day piece was presented. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed at court four times during the Christmas season of 1595–96, and Dream may have been one of the plays produced. 6. Montrose, “ ‘Shaping Fantasies’: Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture,” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ed. Richard Dutton, 101–38 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996).

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7. Elizabeth I: Translations, 1592–1598, ed. Janel Mueller and Joshua Scodel (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2009), Book 5, prose 4, pp. 341 and 343). Subsequent citations appear in-text. 8. Anna Crabbe drew my attention to St. Augustine’s use of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” and she notes that Boethius had this scenario in mind when he has Lady Philosophy banish the Muses in the first scene of Consolation. Crabbe, “Literary Design in the De Consolatione Philosophiae,” in Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, ed. Margaret Gibson, 237–74 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), pp. 251–52. This scene with the Muses may be evoked in one of Theseus’ choices for the evening’s entertainment: “ ‘The thrice three Muses mourning for the death / Of learning, late deceas’d in beggary’ ” (5.1.52–53). 9. Jennifer Clement discusses the presence of divinity in this secular image in her essay, “ ‘The Imperial Vot’ress’: Divinity, Femininity, and Elizabeth I in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Explorations in Renaissance Culture 34 (Winter 2008): 163–84. 10. Elizabeth I: Collected Works (henceforth CW ), ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 348. All subsequent citations refer to this edition, and they appear in-text.

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INDEX

Accession Day, 18, 93, 105, 108, 114, 121–2, 159, 163, 168–9, 180, 222n42. See also Of Love and Self-Love (Essex and Bacon) Agrippa, Cornelius, 95, 219n10 Alford, Stephen, 38, 200n6, 201n10, 206n6 Alfred the Great, King of England, 143, 227n42 Alphabet of Prayers, The (Cancellar), 31 Alva, Duke of, 73, 196–7 Alwes, Derek B., 65, 212n2, 213n3 angels, 57, 80, 93–4, 106–7, 115, 213n6, 217n50, 223n51 Anglican Church. See National Church, England’s Anjou, Duke of, 8, 53, 55, 66, 78–9, 81, 98–9, 220n22 Antiqvitate Britannicae, De (Parker), 29, 43 apocalyptic discourse, 17, 49, 70, 88–92, 95–8, 100–8, 112–21, 125, 218n1, 220n12,n17, 222–3n43,n50–1 Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae ( Jewel), 91 Ascham, Roger, 1–2, 5–6, 199n1–2 Aske, James, 90, 116, 223n52 Astell, Ann W., 154 Aston, Margaret, 206n8 Astrophil and Stella (Sidney), 87 Augustine, St., 194–5 Axton, Marie, 59, 213n3, 214n9 Aylmer, John, 6, 35, 90

Bacon, Anthony, 162, 232n11, 233n25, 235n42 Bacon, Francis, 9, 171, 232n9, 235n42. See also Of Love and Self-Love (Essex and Bacon) Bacon, Roger, 117 Bale, John, 49, 90, 96, 104, 117, 201–2n11, 224–5n7 Bateman, Stephen, 95, 220n17 Bates, Catherine, 202n19, 213n3 Bauckham, Richard, 119, 220n12 Beem, Charles, 201n10 Benkert, Lysbeth, 199n3, 224n6 Bennett, Josephine Waters, 103, 107, 219n5, 220n22 Bentley, Thomas, 100–2 Berry, Edward, 212n2, 213n3, 214n11 Berry, Philippa, 204n29 Beutterich, Peter, 60, 62, 64 Biblical references: Book of Enoch, 222–3n51 2 Chronicles, 24, 26, 51–2, 207n13 1 Corinthians, 19, 118–22, 128–32, 165–6, 168, 174, 180, 182–4, 189, 191, 194, 196, 198, 235n3 Ecclesiasticus, 31 3 Esdras, 115–16 Genesis, 94–5, 106, 115, 148 Isaiah, 118–21 I Kings, 14, 36–7 Matthew, 100, 202n15 Proverbs, 92, 94–5, 145 Psalms, 28, 45–7, 116, 209n37, 210n52

254

Index

Biblical references:—Continued Revelation, 92, 95–7, 100–2, 106–7, 222n50, 223n51 Romans, 29, 42–3 Song of Songs/Canticles, 100, 112 Wisdom (Book of ), 34–5 Bishops’ Bible, 24, 29–30, 43, 120, 128–9, 165 Blenerhasset, Thomas, 9, 17, 19, 90–109, 115, 188, 219n5, 220n24, 221n31 Blessednes of Brytaine, The (Kyffin), 17, 90–1, 108–22, 166, 180, 218n2, 222n41 Blessing, Carol, 206n8 Boethius. See Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius), Elizabeth’s translation of Booke of Christian Prayers, A, 28–9, 52–3, 204n1 Boutcher, Warren, 10–11, 200n6 Bouwsma, William J., 138 Bozzay, Anne Hecox, 69–70, 77 Bridges, John, 120, 132, 223n55 Brocardo, Giacopo, 95–7 Brooke, William, 82, 98 Brown, Georgia E., 199n3, 208n25 Bruno, Giordano, 9 Brytannicae Reipublicae Synopsis Imperii Limites (Dee), 113 Bull, Henry, 28 Burghley, Lord. See Cecil, William Bushnell, Rebecca W., 200n6 Camden, William, 141 Campbell, Heather, 14 Campbell, Lily B., 219n5 Cancellar, James, 23, 29–32, 45, 100, 208n25 Casimir, Johann, 60–5, 75–7, 79, 215n14,n17, 217n59 Cecil, Robert, 160–1, 186–7, 234n40–41, 235n42

Cecil, William, 22–3, 37–41, 47, 50, 52–3, 64, 67, 81–2, 127, 149–53, 161, 186–7, 206n7, 235n42 Chaderton, Laurence, 101, 221n27 Charles IX, King of France, 210n50 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 191 Christian prayers and holy meditations (Bull), 28 Christian Prayers and Meditations: authorship of, 21–2, 28 Elizabeth as royal householder in, 15, 23–8, 34, 45–7, 50–2, 207n14 Elizabeth as Solomon in, 14–16, 23–4, 26–7, 32–41, 47–53, 94–5, 130, 145, 206n8, 208n29 Elizabeth’s virtue and, 32–5, 45–6 French prayers in, 21, 32–3, 35–7, 39–41, 44–8, 132, 210n50 frontispiece for, 23–7, 34, 50–2, 203n22, 207n12,n14 Greek prayers in, 21, 41, 45, 47–52 international relations and, 14, 22, 36–53 Italian prayers in, 13, 21, 33, 36, 41–3, 45 Latin prayers in, 21, 43–4 overview of, 21–2 Protestantism and, 36–53 publication of, 205n4 Spanish prayers in, 21, 36–7, 42–3, 45 Christus Triumphans. Comoedia Apocalyptica (Foxe), 103 Churchyard, Thomas, 8, 221n31 Cicero, 5 Clement VIII, Pope, 149, 152 Clement, Jennifer, 41, 199n3, 205n3, 236n9 Cobham, Lord. See Brooke, William Collinson, Patrick, 5, 35, 52, 201n9, 204n30, 225n8 Conference About the Next Succession to the Crowne of Ingland, A, 161

Index Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius), Elizabeth’s translation of, 18, 124–6, 140–58 autograph copy of, 125 Christianity and, 143, 153–5, 170, 182–3 constancy and, 148–51, 155, 176 despair and, 141–2, 144–8 divine love and, 150–7, 177–8, 183 Fortune, 141, 145, 172, 177 Lady Philosophy, 141–2, 144, 148–51, 153, 155, 165–6, 172–4, 176–9, 183, 191, 193, 236n8 Menippean satire and, 144, 154, 184 Of Love and Self-Love (Essex and Bacon) and, 9, 158–66, 168, 170–84, 186, 224n5–6 overview of, 141–2 silence and, 157–8 specific nature of Elizabeth’s translation, 142–4 transcendent strategy and, 123, 140, 189 Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius), A Midsummer Night’s Dream and, 190–5 constancy, 6, 24, 142, 146–9, 170, 176–7, 180–1 Coolidge, John S., 130 Crabbe, Anna, 143, 236n8 Crane, Mary Thomas, 199n3 Cranmer, George, 156–7 Crouzet, Denis, 136, 224n4 Cuffe, Henry, 163, 184, 232n11 Davison, William, 61, 63–4, 82–4, 217n55 Dawson, Thomas, 100, 220n24 Day, John, 21, 23, 29, 35, 40, 47, 52, 204n1, 206n7, 207n10,n16, 211n56–57. See also Christian Prayers and Meditations Day, Richard, 28, 52, 204n1

255

De Antiqvitate Britannicae (Parker), 29, 208n23 Declaration du Roy de Navarre sur les Calumnies Publiées, 136–7 Dee, John, 8, 14–15, 91, 110–14, 203n26, 218n1, 222–3n47,n51 Defence of the Government Established in the Chvrch of Englande for Ecclesiasticall Matters, A, (Bridges), 120–1 De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum et Artium (Agrippa), 95, 219n10 De Legationibus Libri Tres (Gentili), 67 de Medici, Catherine, 79, 215–16n30 Demosthenes, 1, 48, 85 Denham, Henry, 220n24 Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex: Blessednes (Kyffin) dedicated to, 91, 113, 180, 218n2 Cecil family and, 185–6, 235n42 education of, 18–19 expertise in international affairs, 18–19, 112–13, 159–62, 180, 187, 230–1n1 in Leicester circle, 8, 162, 180 as Master of the Horse, 218n2 persona as a lover, 159–60, 164, 170–1, 175 personal secretariat of, 162–3, 184, 230n1, 232n11, 233n25 as political poet, 3, 12, 18, 151, 158, 234n41 pursuit of appointment as Elizabeth’s secretary, 18–19, 159, 186–7, 218n2 recent scholarship on, 202n19 See also Of Love and Self-Love (Essex and Bacon) Diplomacy/diplomatic practice, 1, 12, 20, 53, 57, 66–7, 80, 83, 213n6 Dolven, Jeff, 200n6, 218n67 Doran, Susan, 14, 203n27, 206n8 Dousa, Janus, 9, 56, 71–3, 75, 216n32

256

Index

Drake, Francis, 15, 164 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester, 8, 31, 53, 58–61, 64–6, 79–88, 99, 103, 105, 112 Duncan-Jones, Katherine, 202n19, 212n1–2, 213n3, 214n8,n10, 218n60 Duplessis-Mornay, Philippe, 125, 139–40 du Vair, Guillaume, 125, 147–8, 181, 228n50,n53 Dyer, Edward, 8 Eckhardt, Joshua, 234–5n41 Edmondes, Thomas, 233n19 Edward VI, 5, 37, 201n10 Eliot, John, 108–9 Elizabeth I: Collected Works, 3, 200n4 Elizabeth I, Queen of England: Anglo-Dutch relations and, 8, 16, 44, 53, 56, 60–80, 83, 85–9, 99, 112–13, 196, 198, 214n10 Anglo-French relations and, 18, 41, 44–7, 98–9, 123–8, 134–55, 158, 160–3, 168–70, 182–5, 224n7 anxieties of female rule, and, 5–6, 22, 32, 35, 206n8 apocalyptic discourse and, 17, 49, 70, 78–108, 112–21, 125, 218n1, 220n17, 222–3n43,n50–51 as Astraea, 90 as Bride of Christ, 90, 92, 100–2, 106 childhood education of, 5, 201n10 as Christian Lady Philosophy, 158, 165–6, 183 coat of arms of, 21, 31–2, 91, 112, 208n25 as daughter of God, 32 as diplomat, 4, 10, 24, 28, 42, 53–7, 67, 123, 126, 134, 140–1, 161–2, 182–4, 189, 198 divine folly and, 19, 78, 188–90, 195–8

as Divine Truth, 114–16 as Divine Wisdom, 49–51, 70, 90, 92–5, 100, 102, 106, 115, 119, 122, 127, 130, 145, 183, 197 as a failed stoic, 137, 140 frontispiece of Christian Prayers and Meditations and, 23–7, 34, 50–2, 203n22, 207n14 imperialism and, 13–16, 37–8, 42–3, 47–53, 68, 71–6, 88, 93, 97, 103–16, 122, 189 as Innuba Pallas, 7–8, 16 international stature of, 1, 4, 6, 8, 20, 24, 41–8, 56, 89–91, 97–105, 111, 195–8 as Minerva, 92–4, 97, 99–100, 103–4, 107, 112 as multilingual queen, 1–2, 4, 6, 9, 12, 18, 21, 27, 38–9, 42, 47–8, 53, 71, 142–3, 200n4 as philosopher-queen, 17, 85–8, 123–58, 191, 198, 202n13 portraits and images of, 13–16, 23–32, 203n22, 211n60, 222n43 providentialism and, 49–50, 212n63 as Queen of Concord, 162, 188 as Queen of God’s Word, 17, 43, 89, 92, 97, 115, 123 as Queen of Love, 18, 92, 127, 129, 151, 154–6, 178, 189 as Queen of Peace, 16, 44–5, 67–9, 76–7, 127, 134, 170, 178, 196, 198, 215n30 remarks to Polish ambassador, 11 as Rosa Electa, 90, 219n4 as royal householder, 15, 23–8, 34, 45–7, 50–2, 207n14 as schoolmistress/educator, 18, 49–50, 85, 112, 130, 133, 165–8, 174–6, 180–1 Siena “Sieve” portrait of, 13–16, 203n22

Index as Solomon, 14–16, 23–4, 26–7, 32–41, 47–53, 94–5, 130, 145, 206n8, 208n29 as Sovereign/Tudor Rose, 110, 112, 114–16 as Supreme Governor of the English Church, 21, 24, 27–8, 46, 120, 123, 125, 130, 132, 141, 157 transcendent wisdom of, 17, 69, 87, 123–58 as tutela, 112 as Virgin Queen, 6–8, 13–15, 73, 109, 195, 211n60 virtue of, 31–5, 45–6 visit to Norwich, 7–9, 16, 202n15, 214n10 as Woman Clothed with the Sun, 100, 102, 106 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, works of: 1564 Latin oration at the University of Cambridge, 4, 85, 127 1566 Latin oration at the University of Oxford, 4 1585 speech to Parliament, 124, 224n3 1592 Latin oration at the University of Oxford, 4, 9, 12, 18–19, 122–41, 154, 159–68, 171, 176, 187, 184, 190–1, 196, 224n5, 229n65, 235n5 1593 speech to Parliament, 146, 230n65 1601 speech to Parliament, 19, 122, 124, 146–7, 188–9, 195–8 authorship of, 3, 21, 42, 74, 125, 204–5n2,n4, 216n39, 224n5 Book of Devotions (ca. 1578), 3, 205n4 Epigram written to Paulus Melissus, 85–6 French verses (ca. 1590), 3, 124, 223n1, 224n7

257

Precationes priuatae. Regiae E. R., 3, 27, 38–9, 204n1, 205n4, 206n8, 208n32, 209n33, 210n50 translation of Le Miroir de l’âme pécheresse (Marguerite de Navarre), 3, 23, 29, 31, 45, 100, 201n11, 225n7 translation of Seneca’s Epistle 107, 32, 124, 137, 208n28, 224n3 See also Christian Prayers and Meditations See also Consolation of Philosophy (Boethius), Elizabeth’s translation of Elizabeth I: Translations (both volumes), 3, 200n4 Elizabetha Trivmphans (Aske), 90, 116, 223n52 Elizabeth’s Glass. See Le Miroir de l’âme pécheresse (Marguerite de Navarre), Elizabeth’s translation of Elyot, Thomas, 201n7 Erasmus, Desiderius, 28, 154, 171, 201n7 Escobedo, Andrew, 218n1, 221n30 Essex, Earl of. See Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex Evenden, Elizabeth, 43, 206n7, 207n16, 211n56 Faerie Qveene, The (Spenser), 90, 100, 215n29 Felch, Susan M., 27, 207n14 Fenton, Mr., 64, 78 Foxe, John, 29, 90, 96, 103–4, 218n1, 221n30 Franssen, Paul, 71, 214n7, 216n32 Freeman, Thomas S., 206n7 Frvitfvll Sermon, A (Chaderton), 101, 221n27 Frye, Susan, 204n29

258

Index

Gascoigne, George, 70, 215n29, 221n31 General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (Dee), 14, 110–14 Geneva Bible (1560), 120, 222n50 Geneva Bible (1590), 129 Geneva Psalter, 45, 47, 210n51 Gentili, Alberico, 67 Golden Hind, The (Drake), 15 Gospels of the fowr Euangelistes, The (Foxe), 29 Grafton, Anthony, 200n6, 202n13 Grafton, Richard, 206n7 Green, Janet M., 199n3 Green, Karen, 13 Greene, Robert, 117 Greengrass, Mark, 229n63 Guy, John, 200n6 Hackett, Helen, 204n29, 219n5–6, 220n22 Hager, Alan, 213n2–3, 214n10 Hagge, John, 211n61, 217n44 Hammer, Paul E. J., 159, 162–3, 186, 202n19, 231n2,n7 Hampton, Bernard, 205–6n6 Hankins, James, 200n6 Harington, John, 124 Hatton, Christopher, 8, 14–15, 59 Heere, Lucas de, 56, 73, 75, 197 Heesakkers, Chris L., 216n35 Helgerson, Richard, 85 Henri III, King of France, 98, 125, 136, 139 Henri IV, King of France (formerly King of Navarre), 18, 125, 127, 134–56, 161, 166, 168–70, 180–4, 187, 224n4, 226n26, 228n49,n55, 229n63, 230n67, 233n19–20 Henry VIII, King of England, 5, 31 Henry, King of Scotland (formerly Lord Darnley), 33, 38 Henry, Madeleine, 211n61 Hepburn, James (Earl of Bothwell), 33

Herle, William, 99, 220n18 Het theatre (van der Noot), 23, 47–9, 207n10 Hoak, Dale, 37, 204n28, 209n38 Hoefnagel, Joris, 211n60 Hooker, Richard, 126, 131–3, 140, 156–7, 225n10, 226n19 humanism, 2, 4–5, 9–11, 20, 40, 49, 90, 93, 95, 109, 127–8, 138, 171, 200n6, 218n67 Humphrey, Laurence, 35 Image of both Churches, The (Bale), 49 James I, King of England, 126, 234n41 James VI, King of Scotland, 33 Jardine, Lisa, 200n6, 202n13 Jewel, John, 91 Joachim of Fiore, 96 John, Don, 60, 81–2 Jones, Norman, 130–1 Jordan, Constance, 199n3 Justinian law, 84–5 Kendrick, Susan, 219n5 Killigrew, Henry, 41 Kimbrough, Robert, 212n2, 214n11 King, John N., 206n8, 207n12, 220–1n24,n25,n29 Kinney, Arthur F., 200n6, 213n3, 214n10 Knollys, Francis, 135 Knox, John, 6 Kuin, Roger, 56, 67, 76, 213n4,n7, 217n45 Kyffin, Maurice, 9, 17, 19, 90–2, 102, 104, 108–22, 129, 166, 180, 188, 218n2, 219n6, 221n37, 222–3n42,n47,n51 Lady of May, The (Sidney), 9, 16, 53, 55–88, 185 diplomatic service and, 79–88 Espilus in, 55, 57–9, 63–6, 77–8

Index overview of, 55–8 performance date of, 59–67 praise of Elizabeth in, 9, 55, 68–79 Rombus in, 56–9, 69–70, 62, 79–81, 84–7, 214n8 Rombus’ epilogue, 58–9, 79–85, 214n10 similarities with poetry in AngloDutch circle, 56, 69–78, 85–6 textual situation of, 58, 214n10 Therion in, 55, 57–62, 65, 214n11 Lagrée, Jacqueline, 181 Lake, Peter, 5, 35, 132–3, 223n55, 233n22 Lake, Thomas, 169, 201n9, 233n22 Lamb, Mary Ellen, 202n13 Languet, Hugh, 217n59 Leicester circle, 8–9, 16–17, 64–5, 90–1, 95–7, 102–3, 108–9, 114, 117, 122, 162, 180, 187 Leicester, Earl of. See Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester Leighton, Cecilia Knollys, 91 Leighton, Thomas, 91 Le Miroir de l’âme pécheresse (Marguerite de Navarre), Elizabeth’s translation of, 3, 23, 29, 31, 45, 100, 201n11, 225n7 Levin, Carole, 204n31 Libri Duo (Brocardo), 96 Lipsius, Justus, 125 Loménie, Antoine de, 168–9, 233n19,n23 MacCaffrey, Wallace, 38 Marcus, Leah S., 41, 199n3, 200n4, 204n2, 210n48, 225n13, 227n34, 230n66, 236n10 Marenbon, John, 153 Marguerite de Navarre, 3, 23, 32, 201n11 Markidou, Vasiliki, 235n2 Marot, Clément, 45–7, 210n51–52 Martin, Christopher, 214n11

259

Mary I, 5, 31, 210n49 Mary Queen of Scots, 5, 16, 22, 32–3, 38, 40–1, 205n5, 208n28 Matthew, Toby, 183–4 Mattingly, Garrett, 83 May, Steven W., 3, 199n3, 205n4 McCoy, Richard C., 231n2 McDiarmid, John F., 203–4n28 McLaren, A. N., 6, 50, 201n6, 202n13, 206n8 McMahon, Jonathan, 37, 209n38 Mears, Natalie, 204n31 Melanchthon, Philip, 213n7, 216n40 Melissus, Paulus, 9, 56, 73–5, 84–6, 110, 216n39, 221n38 Ménager, Daniel, 80–1, 213n6, 217n50 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (Shakespeare), 19, 122, 183, 188–95, 235n5, 236n8 monarchical republic, 5, 16, 35, 203–4n28 Montaigne, Michel de, 125 Montrose, Louis A., 204n29, 212n2, 213n3, 214n11 Monvment of Matrones, The (Bentley), 100–2, 220n24 Moriae Encomium, Praise of Folly (Erasmus), 154 Mueller, Janel, 41, 144, 200n4, 204n2, 208n28, 210n48, 224n3,n6, 225n13, 226n32, 227n34,n39, 228n54, 229n59, 230n66, 234n29, 236n10 Murphy, Philip, 212n2, 214n11 National Church, England’s, 18, 29, 101, 126, 130–3, 141, 143, 156–7 Necessary Consideration of the Perilous State of this Tyme, A (Cecil and Hampton), 22, 40, 50 Neoplatonism, 68, 154, 229n62. See also Plato and Platonism Neostoicism. See Stoicism and Neostoicism

260

Index

Norbrook, David, 201n6 Norris, Henry, 135 Norris, John, 135, 149–50 Northern Rebellion, 40, 196 Of Love and Self-Love (Essex and Bacon), 9, 18–19, 92, 122, 159–88, 190–1, 194–5, 235n5 Elizabeth’s Latin oration at the University of Oxford (1592) and, 9, 18, 127, 157–63, 165–8, 171 Elizabeth’s reaction to, 160 Elizabeth’s translation of Boethius and, 9, 18, 143, 151, 154, 157–66, 168, 170–84, 186, 224n5–6 Entertainment of the Indian boy and, 162–3, 171, 232n11, 233n25 Erophilus in, 160, 164–5, 167–8, 170–9, 183, 185 Hermit in, 160, 162–4, 166, 168, 170–5, 178, 181–2, 185–6, 194, 232n9,n11–12 Philautia in, 162, 164, 168, 172, 185, 232n11 plot and textual situation of, 162–5, 231n7 Soldier in, 160, 163–4, 166, 168, 170–1, 175, 178–81, 186, 232n11–12 Squire in, 160, 164–6, 168, 175–9, 182–6 Statesman in, 12, 160, 164, 166–72, 176, 186, 232n9, 232n11–12 as a test, 172, 185–8 Of the Lavves of Ecclesiasticall Politie (Hooker), 126, 133, 140, 156 “On Ister Bank” (Sidney), 77 Orgel, Stephen, 61, 212n2, 214n11 Osherow, Michele, 206n8 Paget, Charles, 139 Parker, Matthew, Archbishop of Canterbury, 29, 43, 202n15

Patch, Howard Rollin, 144, 224n6 Patterson, Annabel, 235n2 Patterson, W. Brown, 156, 225n10, 226n19, 230n67–68 Peele, George, 232n12 Peltonen, Markku, 201n6 Pemberton, Caroline, 224n6 Pérez, Antonio, 169–70 Petersen, Rodney L., 96, 222n50 Philip II, King of Spain, 40, 196–8 Philippists and Philippism, 66, 213n7, 214n7, 215n25, 216n40 Phillips, James E., 74, 199n3, 214n7 Pickett, Penny, 213n2, 214n10–11 Piepho, Lee, 74, 214n7, 216n39 Pincombe, Mike, 201n6 Plato and Platonism, 5, 7, 86, 176, 181–3, 193, 195, 213n2. See also Neoplatonism Pollnitz, Aysha, 201n10 prayer books, 3, 26–9. See also Christian Prayers and Meditations Precationes aliquot (Erasmus), 28 Preces et Meditationes Diurnae (Vives), 28 Prescott, Anne Lake, 76, 199n3, 210n51–52, 213n7, 217n45 Prime, John, 222n42 Purfoot, Thomas, 210n50 Rainolds, John, 127, 133 Ralegh, Walter, 9 Reign of Terror, 73, 196–7 Reiss, Edmund, 154, 229n62 Relihan, Joel C., 154, 157 Reuelation of the True Minerua, A (Blenerhasset), 17, 90, 92–108, 218n2, 219n9, 220n22,n24 Reynoldes, Edward, 162 Riehl, Anna, 208n25 Rogers, Daniel, 9, 56, 60, 62, 74–7, 83–4, 213n7, 217n44 Rogers, William, 219n4 Rose, Mary Beth, 204n2

Index Salmon, J. H. M., 225n8 Sandys, Edwin, 156–7 Sanford, James, 95, 220n17 Savile, Henry, 127 Sawyer, Andrew, 215n29 Schede, Paul. See Melissus, Paulus Scholemaster, The (Ascham), 1–2, 6 Schulze, Ivan L., 219n5 Scodel, Joshua, 144, 208n28, 224n3,n6, 226n32, 227n39, 228n47,n54, 229n59, 230n66, 234n28–29 Seneca, 32, 124, 137, 208n28, 224n3, 228n48 Sententiae, 12, 33–4, 171, 204n1 Shakespeare, William, 9, 19, 92, 122, 183, 188–95, 235n5, 236n8. See also Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (Shakespeare) Sharpe, Kevin, 224n6 Shell, Marc, 202–3n11 Shenk, Linda, 199n3, 218n62, 225n14 Shepheardes Calender, The (Spenser), 91, 93, 103, 105 Sherman, William H., 91, 113–14, 203n26 Sidney, Henry, 83–4 Sidney, Philip, 3, 8–9, 16, 53, 55–88, 89, 91, 95, 112, 185–8, 202n19, 212n2, 213n7, 214n10, 216n40, 217–18n59,n67. See also Lady of May, The (Sidney) Sidney, Robert, 164, 186 Silva, Guzmán de, 47, 67 Smith, Thomas, 35, 37 Spanish Armada (1588), 90, 135, 164, 196 Spanish Armada (threats after 1588), 135, 161, 164 Spenser, Edmund, 9, 70, 90–1, 93, 100, 103, 105, 215n29, 218n67,n1 Spes, Guerau de, 40, 47, 67, 211n59 Sternhold-Hopkins Psalter, 47 Stewart, Alan, 202n19, 213n3

261

Stillman, Robert E., 213n2, 213–14n7, 214n11, 215n25, 216n40 Stoicism and Neostoicism, 32, 124–6, 136–40, 146–54, 166, 173, 178–82, 184, 192–4, 224n4, 226n32 Strong, Roy C., 13–14, 203n22–23, 211n60, 219n6, 222n42, 231n2 Stump, Donald, 206n8 Sutton, James M., 234n41 Tasso, Torquato, 57, 213n6 Traité de la Constance et Consolation és Calamitez Publiques (du Vair), 181 Tuck, Richard, 139 University of Oxford, Elizabeth’s progress to (1592), 2, 4, 12, 18, 127, 129, 134–7, 184, 225n11 Unton, Henry, 187, 226n26, 233n22–23 van der Does, Jan. See Dousa, Janus van der Noot, Jan, 9, 23, 47–9, 53, 56, 71, 197, 207n10, 211n56,n59–60 van Dorsten, Jan, 56, 212n1, 213n3, 214n8, 216n35, 218n60, 219n8,n10, 221n38, 222n42 Vickers, Brian, 233n25, 234n30 Vives, Juan Luis, 28 Walsham, Alexandra, 206n8 Walsingham, Francis, 53, 62–5, 75, 79, 82–3, 98, 209n42, 215n17 Warnicke, Retha M., 33, 205n5 White, Helen C., 28, 208n21, 211n53 Whitgift, John, Archbishop of Canterbury, 127, 131–2, 141 Whitney, Geffrey, 203n23 Whyte, Roland, 160, 163–4, 183, 185–6 Wilkes, Thomas, 152–3, 229n60

262

Index

William of Orange, 47, 63–6, 77–9, 82–3, 99, 217–18n59 Wilson, Charles, 64 Wilson, Thomas, 60, 74 Windebank, Thomas, 142, 144, 227n40 Wolfe, Jessica, 83 Wolfe, John, 117

Worden, Blair, 201n6 Wotton, Henry, 160 Woudhuysen, H. R., 205n4, 214n10, 231–2n8 Wriostheley, Henry, Earl of Southampton, 127, 235n5 Yates, Frances A., 14, 90