Renaissance Forum: Volume 6, Number 2, Winter 2003: Amanda Capern

Janel Mueller and Leah S. Marcus. Eds. 2003. Elizabeth I: Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. xxxv + 174 pp. ISBN 0-226-50470-0. £31.50.

All of the written works of Elizabeth I presented in this volume – letters, prayers, poems and speeches – have been published in modern English versions in the Collected Works published by the two editors in collaboration with Mary Beth Rose (reviewed in Renaissance Forum 6.1). However, their reappearance here – either because they are autograph editions or foreign language originals – forms more than just a supplement to the Collected Works. The intention of the editors in this second volume was to open up scholarship on Elizabeth I in several ways that may be summarized as follows:
- Exact transcription of her autograph compositions opens up the possibility of analysis of Elizabeth's learning, her language skills, her piety and the potential connections between her written speech acts and her political decision-making;
- Reproduction of her foreign language works facilitates scholarly consideration of Elizabeth as a linguist and humanist scholar, as well as a subtle rhetorician in her use of different languages for particular purposes.
The volume allows scholars of Elizabeth I to see at a glance what survives in her hand. There are 48 autograph letters reproduced here, 21 of them written before she acceded the throne, indicating not only the poor survival of autograph works for such a long-lived woman but also the extent to which her written record as a monarch depends on scribal copies of her works. Crucially, however, some of her most important speeches, such as speeches to the Lords and Commons when they were pressing her to marry in the 1560s and the dissolution speech of 1567, survive in her hand and are reproduced here in exact transcription. The editors have included all of Elizabeth's corrections, giving an insight into the political strategies deployed by this queen at times of political tension.
The foreign language works offer a different sort of research opportunity and enlightenment; the foreign language works that survive include, mainly, prayers and her letters to 'Monsieur' from the time of her mid-life courtship with the Duke of Alençon. Purists may wish to use the 'Monsieur' letters in French to scrutinize the translation efforts of the editors. However, the publication of the prayers opens up a slightly more exciting research possibility – scrutiny of Elizabeth's Christian humanist scholarship and piety. The editors point out that Elizabeth and her siblings were the first royal children to receive a humanist education. This locates her amongst the first generation of women humanist scholars who, like Margaret More (Roper) and Ann Cooke, became remarkable linguists. Margaret More (Roper) is perhaps most famous for her translation of Erasmus' study of the Pater Noster (1542) and Ann Cooke for her translation of the Fouretene Sermons (1550) of the Calvinist scholar, Bernardino Ochino. In the 1540s Elizabeth did numerous translations of religious works, including French, Italian and Latin versions of Katherine Parr's Lamentation of a Sinner, a translation into English of the first chapter of Calvin's Institution de la religion Chrestienne and an English translation of Marguerite of Navarre's Miroir de l'âme pécheresse. In addition, she wrote prayers in several vernacular languages – English, French, Spanish and Italian – and two classical languages – Latin and Greek (some were published in two collections of prayers during her lifetime).
Her early Latin is indicative of the humanist education she received like the More and Cooke sisters and demonstrates her formal and disciplined use of the language, with full use of verb tenses and Ciceronian idiom. Her later Latin works, such as her three university orations (all reproduced here), are sententious in style and eloquent, with copious deployment of classical exemplars from Horace and Pindar, Homer and Cicero, all apparently from memory. The editors suggest that Elizabeth used foreign languages as a way of exploring more extreme religious positions. In French she was willing to expose 'my black and bloody sins' and in Latin she questioned God's dealings with her. Unfortunately, the only prayers to survive in Elizabeth's own hand are in her tiny girdle prayer book written between 1579 and 1582 and the only copy is a facsimile (the authors hint that they believe the original may still survive somewhere). Elizabeth's prayers comprise a large corpus of works of piety written by a 'first-person feminine subject'. As such, they are as valuable a reflection of the impact of humanist education on upper-class English women as they are a measure of the religious ideas that informed the actions of a woman who, for forty-five years, filled the role of Supreme Governor of the Calvinist Protestant Church of England.
This book will be of interest also to palaeographical scholars. Elizabeth I was taught in the new style of italics that became commonly used by women and grammar-school-educated men. Elizabeth's early italics were imitative of her tutor, Jean Bellemain, but when she became queen she retained this formal style (with decorative embellishments especially on initials) as an 'inscriptional italic' for special personal letters, bookplates and so on. For all other work she developed a rather lazy, operative 'running hand' that was a unique italic. This included features such as a sigma-shaped 's' that could only be distinguished from a 'b' by the direction in which it pointed and virtually indistinguishable combinations such as 'i' and 'e' and 'u' and 'n'. The editors warn that this has led to some irresolvable problems particularly in translating French (when is 'nous' really 'vous'?), but they point out the extreme cases. Unique to the hand of Elizabeth entirely was her use of mid-word capitalization of 'L', 'V', 'W', 'C' and 'S', which the editors suggest, not completely convincingly, may have been for emphatic function at the ends of phrases. More convincingly, the editors suggest that Elizabeth's singular and consistent replacement of 'ee' with 'i' (e.g. 'betwin' for 'between') and her occasional dropped 'h' may bring us closer to her educated spoken voice and London dialect, the former resulting in an ear for French vowels and the latter resulting in a touch of cockney.
The methodology of the editors of this volume seems pretty faultless. Contractions have been expanded but otherwise transcriptions are exact with foreign language spelling 'mistakes' corrected only by explanatory footnotes. The book is bipartite but within its two sections the works are presented chronologically, their numbering retained from the Collected Works to allow for easy cross-reference and consideration of developments in Elizabeth's authorial presence. On an aesthetic note, this is a beautiful book to handle, in good quality paper with fine cloth covers featuring Elizabeth's embellished 'E'. It usefully contains a list of errata for the Collected Works (corrected in the paperback version now) and the two together make a lovely set to own. This second volume represents an important edition for any scholar seriously interested in Elizabeth I. Her reign has too frequently been troped as a daughter's theatrical replay of her father – Henry VIII – or a hand-wringing girls' drama about the relationship of Elizabeth I to and with Mary Queen of Scots. Elizabeth I was a successful monarch because she was an intense and intellectual woman whose education enabled her to bring those attributes to bear on political life. Serious study of her written works as a prelude to careful re-consideration of the politics of her reign is overdue. The editors in their Collected Works, and now this edition of the autograph original and foreign language works, have presented us with 'immediacy of access' to the written speech acts of Elizabeth I in a chronological format that reveals Elizabeth's emotional, intellectual, religious and political development. As such they restore to us a clever, sixteenth-century queen, whose words and deeds were gendered by her female Christian humanist education. Her 'independence' and romantic appeal as a subject has always been a mirage created by modern concerns. Reading her written 'voice' should leave no doubt in the minds of researchers that Elizabeth's forceful presentation as monarch involved total subjugation as the Lord's 'handmaid'; this resulted in denial of her feminine self to become 'prince' as her omnipotent God had so clearly demonstrated was his will.

AMANDA CAPERN
UNIVERSITY OF HULL