Elizabeth I in Her Own Words

AMANDA CAPERN

UNIVERSITY OF HULL

Elizabeth I: Collected Works. 2000. Ed. Leah S. Marcus, Jane Mueller and Mary Beth Rose. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 446 pp. ISBN 0-226-50464-6. $40.00/Ł25.00.

Elizabeth I : Collected Works is an invaluable and overdue work of reference for the reign of this long-lived and enigmatic monarch. Surprisingly, no other volume to date has attempted a compendium of all of Elizabeth's public speeches, her private poems and prayers. A fair number of her speeches and poems and a few of her letters are mounted on the Web at www.luminarium.org/renlit/elizabib.htm. However, in print we rely on old editions such as Leicester Bradner's The Poems of Elizabeth I (1964) and contemporary publications such as the many reprints of her 'Golden Speech' of 1601. Carmen Sylva's Letters and Poems of Queen Elizabeth (1920) has remained an important source, along with several editions of her correspondence such as John Bruce's 1849 edition of her correspondence with James VI of Scotland and G. B. Harrison's The Letters of Queen Elizabeth (1968).
Marcus, Mueller and Rose have divided Elizabeth's works chronologically (1533-58, 1558-72, 1572-87, 1587-1603) with thematic subdivisions. They explain that they rejected the idea of strict chronological ordering of their documents in favour of allowing the reader to concentrate to some extent on different genres. This was a sensible decision. Elizabeth's style is markedly different across genres – her speeches are polished, measured and rhetorical; her letters usually very direct. A researcher concerned only with Elizabeth's poems or her prayers can follow the particular genre through the volume easily, but at the same time the decision to break the documents chronologically allows for some historical analysis of her reign. There is a very helpful research aid in the form of a descriptive list of all items included at the back of the volume.
The publication of Elizabeth I : Collected Works is a timely reminder of how Elizabeth's vast reputation is built on cultural memory rather than extant historical sources. Just as her reputation as a visual icon seems vastly larger than the small number of official portraits that were painted of her, so her reputation as scholar and orator seems vastly greater than the documentary evidence assembled here. The editors have included all speeches, poems and prayers and they number only 24 speeches, 15 poems and 39 prayers. What is striking is that, like her portraits, just a small number of memorable speeches seem responsible for her reputation. Their collection in one place for the first time enables some reconsideration of Elizabeth's public persona and private meditations.
Immediately striking is Elizabeth's sense of the ordained nature of her position from 1558 onwards. '[T]he burden that is fallen upon me maketh me amazed; and yet, considering I am God's creature, I will thereto yield'. This sense of an office and a duty divinely received pervades all of Elizabeth's written words, no matter what her task or perceived audience. Elizabeth's belief, from the very beginning of her reign, that she was 'but one body naturally considered, though by His permission a body politic' ensured that she never questioned her position as monarch because to do so would be to question God's authority. The idea of the King's Two Bodies gave total legitimacy to her position and her 'Golden Speech' of 1601 summed up her understanding of several decades of monarchical rule: 'I was never so much enticed with the glorious name of a king…as delighted that God hath made me His instrument to maintain His truth and glory, and to defend this kingdom'.
The idea of the King's Two Bodies was a masculinist one per se and so Elizabeth never doubted her identity as 'prince' and 'king'. This is revealed throughout her speeches, prayers and letters, whether she referred to herself as prince or king to flag her political authority and gain obedience or to express her humility as 'God's creature'. When she wrote in prayer 'O king may I Thy handmaid…be readied by Thy grace in all things to proclaim Thy glory and to acknowledge Thy supreme authority' she juxtaposed her secondary place in the hierarchy with total belief that her subjects had been committed to her princely care. Their subjection in the hierarchy was as total as her own and thus her role as 'prince' was reflective of that of Christ, effectively ungendering her as a woman and regendering her as a man. She begged God to give her understanding of 'His Law' because he had 'constituted me prince of Thy people and of Thy mercy alone hast made me sit on the throne of my father'. Thus, Elizabeth became the patriarchal 'handmaid' and the prince who had to be obeyed. In another prayer the terminology brought her even closer to God as 'Thy daughter, sister of Jesus Christ'. This is a particularly striking passage given that most other women's prayers described themselves in relation to Christ as 'wife'. Elizabeth even had a strong notion that because of the role thrust upon her by God she had in some sense been physically ungendered – in other prayers she thanked God for giving her '[learning] which is highly esteemed because unusual in my sex' and a nature that was not 'weak, timid and delicate, as are all women' but instead 'vigorous, brave and strong'.
Elizabeth's construction of herself as 'prince' seems so total at times as to preclude thinking of herself as a woman or conceptualizing herself as someone's wife. When resisting the pressure to marry, exerted many times in the early part of her reign, her constant refrain was that she would 'never in that matter conclude anything that shall be prejudicial to the realm'. Why did she regard diminution of her identity as 'prince' to be more prejudicial to the realm than the lack of a secure [male] heir? The answer to this must lie in her clear recognition that to become someone's wife was to lose purchase on the role of prince. In her first speech before parliament on 10 February 1559 she told the assembled Commons that if God intended her to stay unmarried, 'in the end this shall be for me sufficient: that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin'. Another version of this speech recounts that she held out her hand, with her coronation ring prominent, and pledged her alliance to the kingdom, her 'husband'.
Elizabeth was overtly concerned at all times with her safety after ascending the throne and regarded all successors as a potential threat. She told the Scottish ambassador, William Maitland in 1561 that if she declared Mary Queen of Scots her current rightful successor it would be like placing 'my winding sheet before my eye!' 'The like was never required of no prince' she told him dismissing his overtures. There are hints in these discussions about Mary Queen of Scots that Elizabeth may have rejected the idea of marriage because children could be as much of a threat to the security of her position as prince as any husband. 'Think you that I could love my winding-sheet?' she asked Maitland: 'Princes cannot like their own children, those that should succeed unto them'. She often reminded people who pressed her to fix or limit the succession and/or marry that this could lead to factionalism and she pointed to those factions who constantly tried to use her to overthrow Mary when her sister was on the throne. 'I am sure there was not one of them that ever was a second person, as I have been, and have tasted of the practices against my sister' she told a delegation of the lords and commons in 1566 when she was once again urged to marry. For Elizabeth, reducing the choice of 'princes' to one – herself – was the most secure option; it generated total authority without competition. 'I did send them answer by my Council I would marry, although of mine own disposition I was not inclined thereunto' she exclaimed in 1566: 'But that was not accepted nor credited, although spoken by their prince…a strange order of petitioners that…cannot be otherwise ascertained but by the prince's word, and yet will not believe it when it is spoken'.
Deployment of herself as 'woman' in words is infrequent, though if a king had two bodies this queen could have three. 'I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king' is the famous quotation from her speech at Tilbury in 1588, but other examples abound in this collection of her writings. 'It may be that you will disdain this advice as coming from the fearful heart of a woman' she told Henry IV of France in 1590, before adding 'but when you remember how many times I have not showed my breast too much afraid of pistols and swords…this thought will pass,…[and you will] [a]ttribute it…to my singular affection towards you'.
The quintessential connection between 'princehood' and ultimate political authority never escaped Elizabeth I so that her 'womanhood' was only ever used as a weapon to shed light on her role as prince. Her reminder to listeners of her womanhood was usually a prelude to saying that she had the last word on a subject. If Elizabeth I constructed herself as the 'Virgin Queen', as Roy Strong and others have argued, then she did so almost entirely through visual projections of her regal authority rather than in words. References to herself as 'prince' far outweigh references to her virginity and her deployment of her femininity is almost always a way of accenting her role as 'prince'. Sometimes this was to insist on her political authority and at other times to present herself as the servant of God. 'The weight and greatness of this matter [her marriage] might cause in me, being a woman wanting both wit and memory, some fear to speak and bashfulness besides a thing appropriate to sex' she told the Commons on 28 January 1563. But this was just a prelude to telling them that they had no authority to press her about marriage and 'the princely seat and kingly throne wherein God…hath constituted me' gave her the right to give them no answers at all. Her main body, was the 'body politic': 'As to liberties' she told parliament at its dissolution in 1567, 'who is so simple that doubts whether a prince is head of all the body may not command the feet…God forbid that your liberty should make my bondage'.
Rhetorical appeals to Elizabeth I as maternal woman either got turned around to highlight her role as prince or were rejected altogether. When the parliament of 1566 appealed to her 'motherly carefulness' in the matter of marrying and providing an heir she responded that after her death they would learn that they would 'never have any a more mother than I mean to be unto you all'. She was acutely conscious of the power of the maternal metaphor to subjugate and when she wanted to reject obligation she rejected the role of 'mother'. When James VI wrote to her in 1585 regarding the murder of the son of the Earl of Bedford to assure her of his 'honest innocence in this late mischief', he addressed her (for the first time) as 'Madame and Mother'. He signed off as 'Your most loving and devoted Brother and Son'. She replied to 'my good brother and cousin' and signed herself off as 'your most affectionate sister and cousin'. He never called her 'mother' again. Two years later he begged instead her 'princely pity' towards his mother, but made the mistake of suggesting that the authority of all princes was undermined if one 'prince' (i.e. Elizabeth) should be seen to kill another (i.e. Mary Queen of Scots). She made it clear that 'princes' should not interfere with one another's business, even when their mothers were involved: 'all men know that princes know best their own laws', she told him. '[M]isjudge not that you know not'. Her humility only returned after the execution. You do not have 'a more loving kinswoman', she told him. Only in retrospect did she portray herself as not being in full control of the final decision with regard to his mother: the execution was a 'miserable accident…far contrary to my meaning'.
Elizabeth I : Collected Works represents a huge editing achievement. The editors have resisted using older printed sources as their starting point and have returned to manuscript sources, rigorously trawling them for Elizabeth's hand and translating and transcribing them afresh. They have attempted to present the earliest manuscript available, but to avoid problems of omitting speeches and poems that are best known in other variants, they have sometimes presented several versions of the same document. This is particularly interesting in the case of speeches that Elizabeth herself altered for public consumption and poems that circulated privately. What is 'said' by the sources changes shape as it would in a game of Whispers. For example, there are two versions of Elizabeth's answer to a parliamentary delegation in 1566 pressing for her marriage. The editors have printed a fragment of her first draft in which she accused the delegation of 'a traitorous trick'. They also print the speech as it was remembered by one of the MPs and her language was clearly toned down in the delivery. Poem 10 – When I was Fair and Young – presents an example of two versions of the same poem; in this case both versions are presented because the editors are keen to make an attribution to Elizabeth when it has previously been questioned.
The only reservation I have is that while all of Elizabeth's surviving speeches, prayers and poems are pulled together here, the 103 letters included do not form a balanced representation of her epistolary works (as literary artefacts) nor do they adequately cover the political issues of her reign. The editors have understandably omitted letters relating to very routine matters of state, pointing out that Elizabeth's official correspondence would run to several volumes. However, they have made some editorial choices that suggest a particular focus on the questions of marriage and succession so that this volume, at least as far as letters are concerned, begins to look like an anthology rather than a Collected Works.
This can be seen if comparisons are made with Harrison's 1968 edition of Elizabeth's letters. What we find is that the editors of this new edition have been forced by an editorial policy of not including any sources dating from after Elizabeth's death to leave out letters that would be of interest to some researchers. Letters found in Harrison are absent in this new volume having the effect of leaving some of the political events of Elizabeth's reign in the shadows. For example, compared with Harrison, there are few letters here that throw light on the rebellion of the northern earls in 1569. However, by their own admission, Marcus, Mueller and Rose break this editorial policy to include letters to James VI and to Sir Francis Walsingham found in posthumous sources. The letters to James VI are from Bruce's 1849 edition of Elizabeth and James's correspondence and the letters to Francis Walsingham are from a seventeenth-century manuscript of Dudley Digges's Compleat Ambassadour. These two exceptions to editorial policy have the effect of throwing brighter light on Elizabeth's courtship with the Duke of Anjou and Elizabeth's relationship with James VI (very generally as well as specifically during the Armada crisis) than on other matters.
Compared also with Harrison, this new collection of letters includes a very small number from the final fifteen years of her reign – the Harrison volume comprises 74 letters 1588-1603, the Marcus, Mueller and Rose volume just 24 for the same period. The recipients are much the same in both volumes – James VI, Charles Blount, Henry IV, the Earl of Essex – so that the omissions have less impact here than in other places. However, it might have been useful if the Introduction to this volume had contained slightly more direction to the reader and explicit advice about the impact of the editor's policy decisions with regard to the selection of letters.
Marcus, Mueller and Rose have chosen to omit letters of doubtful and potentially apocryphal status in their collected works of this enigmatic queen. Sadly this includes Elizabeth's wonderful letter threatening to defrock the Bishop of Ely. What an omission to be regretted! Elizabeth undoubtedly had this sort of way with bishops, as the ghost of Archbishop Grindal would gladly testify. A speech included in this volume reveals to us that when the most earnestly reforming bishops told Elizabeth how many parishes there were in England, she bellowed at them: 'Jesus! Thirteen thousand!' before proceeding to tell them that they could not possibly hope to fill that many parishes with godly, learned ministers and should concentrate, therefore, on the 'sober' and the 'wise'. David Starkey is, perhaps, right to remind us recently that one of the main keys to understanding Elizabeth I lies in recognizing her emulation of the model of kingship provided by Henry VIII. Her Collected Works tell us that when speaking to parliament in 1566, she said 'though I be a woman, yet I have as good a courage as ever my father had'. Here again she deployed her womanhood only to highlight her performance of the role of 'prince' and 'king'. On the evidence provided in this volume it is worth speculatively suggesting that Elizabeth I played the role of Henry VIII better than he played it himself.