Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works
An impeccably researched collection of the public and private writings of the great British monarch
Queen Elizabeth I was one of the most charismatic of English sovereigns, and one of the most prolific. While her more famous public speeches are familiar to some, many of her private writings have never before been printed or made accessible. Now, for the first time, a generous selection of her poetry, speeches, essays, letters, prayers, and translations is being made available to a popular audience. From a poem written in charcoal on a wall at Woodstock Palace by the twenty-two-year-old imprisoned princess, to the speech the thirty-year-old queen gave in response to parliamentary pressure that she marry, to the fascinating letters sent to her emissaries as they conducted the kingdom's business, this collection of the selected writings of Elizabeth I is a privileged glimpse into the mind of one of the most compelling rulers of the Western world.
Authenticity was a guiding principle in the selection of these readings. This volume grew out of the many manuscript texts of Elizabeth's works Professor Steven W. May discovered while preparing the Bibliography and First-Line Index of English Verse, a twelve-year research project that took him to more than 100 manuscript archives in this country and the United Kingdom.
The anthology offers a broad selection of Queen Elizabeth's works and includes the most authentic and interesting English texts that survive in her handwriting. Her written words reveal not only Elizabeth's political and psychological insight, but her literary gifts as well. The texts, presented in modern spelling and set forth in their historical context, are accompanied by extensive explanatory notes and introductory material.
An impressive collection of rare documents, presented with abundant commentary and full explanatory notes, as well as an informative introduction providing helpful background on Elizabeth's life and letters.
1005726328
Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works
An impeccably researched collection of the public and private writings of the great British monarch
Queen Elizabeth I was one of the most charismatic of English sovereigns, and one of the most prolific. While her more famous public speeches are familiar to some, many of her private writings have never before been printed or made accessible. Now, for the first time, a generous selection of her poetry, speeches, essays, letters, prayers, and translations is being made available to a popular audience. From a poem written in charcoal on a wall at Woodstock Palace by the twenty-two-year-old imprisoned princess, to the speech the thirty-year-old queen gave in response to parliamentary pressure that she marry, to the fascinating letters sent to her emissaries as they conducted the kingdom's business, this collection of the selected writings of Elizabeth I is a privileged glimpse into the mind of one of the most compelling rulers of the Western world.
Authenticity was a guiding principle in the selection of these readings. This volume grew out of the many manuscript texts of Elizabeth's works Professor Steven W. May discovered while preparing the Bibliography and First-Line Index of English Verse, a twelve-year research project that took him to more than 100 manuscript archives in this country and the United Kingdom.
The anthology offers a broad selection of Queen Elizabeth's works and includes the most authentic and interesting English texts that survive in her handwriting. Her written words reveal not only Elizabeth's political and psychological insight, but her literary gifts as well. The texts, presented in modern spelling and set forth in their historical context, are accompanied by extensive explanatory notes and introductory material.
An impressive collection of rare documents, presented with abundant commentary and full explanatory notes, as well as an informative introduction providing helpful background on Elizabeth's life and letters.
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Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works

Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works

Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works

Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works

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Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780743476447
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: 01/04/2005
Series: Folger Shakespeare Library
Pages: 400
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Steven W. May is a Professor of English at Georgetown College. He is the author of, among other books, The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and Their Contexts and the editor of such works as The Poems of Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford and of Robert Devereux. His Bibliography and First-Line Index of English Verse,1559-1603 is forthcoming.

Read an Excerpt

Queen Elizabeth I

Selected Works
By Elizabeth I Queen of England

Washington Square Press

Copyright © 2005 Elizabeth I Queen of England
All right reserved.

ISBN: 0743476441

Excerpt

Chapter One: Original Poems

Poem 1
Woodstock, 1555.
From Universitatsbibliothek Basel MS L, 7-8,
the diary of Thomas Platter.

A[t] Woodstock Manor. 1555.

Oh fortune, thy wresting, wavering state
Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit,
Whose witness this present prison late
Could bear, where once was joy flown quite.
Thou caused'st the guilty to be loosed
From bands where innocents were enclosed,
And caused the guiltless to be reserved,
And freed those that death had well deserved.
But herein can be nothing wrought.
So God send to my foes as they have thought.
Finis. Elisabetha the prisoner, 1555

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

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


Poem 2
Woodstock, 1555. John Foxe,
Actes and Monuments (1563), sig. 2nd 4N7v.

Much suspected by me,
Nothing proved can be.
Quod Elisabeth the prisoner.

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


Poem 3
Royal Library, Windsor Castle,
holograph on the last page of text in a copy
of a French Psalter published in Paris ca. 1520.

No crooked leg, no bleared eye,
No part deformed out of kind,
Nor yet so ugly half can be
As is the inward, suspicious mind.
Your loving mistress,
Elizabeth

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

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


Poem 4
Folger MS V.b.317, f. 20v.

The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,
And wit me warns to shun such snares as threatens
mine annoy,
For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects' faith
doth ebb,
Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom
weaved the web.
But clouds of joys untried do cloak aspiring minds,
Which turns to rain of late repent by changed course
of winds.
The top of hope supposed, the root of rue shall be,
And fruitless all their grafted guile as shortly you
shall see.
Their dazzled eyes with pride, which great ambition
blinds
Shall be unsealed by worthy wights whose foresight falsehood finds.
The daughter of debate, that discord aye doth sow
Shall reap no gain where former rule still peace hath
taught to know.
No foreign, banished wight shall anchor in this port;
Our realm brooks no seditious sects, let them elsewhere
resort.
My rusty sword through rest shall first his edge
employ
To poll their tops who seek such change or gape for
future joy.

Commentary
The Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, had been held captive in England since 1568 when she fled Scotland after the scandal of her husband's murder. In the fall of 1569, English Catholics led by the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland attempted to free Mary by force and overthrow the Elizabethan regime. Their uprising, termed the "Northern Rebellion," was effectively suppressed early in the new year. Elizabeth's prophetic and anxious response to this victory saw widespread circulation after Lady Willoughby copied the poem from the Queen's tablet.

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


Poems 5a, 5b
Pierpont Morgan Library, PML 7768, first flyleaf, recto.

5a

Genus infoelix vitae
Multum vigilavi, laboravi, presto multis fui,
Stultitiam multorum perpessa sum,
Arrogantiam pertuli, Difficultates exorbui,
Vixi ad aliorum arbitrium, non ad meum.

5b
A hapless kind of life is this I wear,
Much watch I dure, and weary, toiling days,
I serve the rout, and all their follies bear,
I suffer pride, and sup full hard assays,
To others' will my life is all addressed,
And no way so as might content me best.

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


Poem 6
O: Tanner MS 76, f. 94.

Sonetto

I grieve and dare not show my discontent;
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate;
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant
I seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate,
I am, and not; I freeze, and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done,
His too-familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Til by the end of things it be suppressed.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, Love, and so be kind,
Let me or float, or sink, be high or low,
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love e'er meant.
Eliz. Regina.


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

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

3 yet dare] yet I dare W
8 pursue it] pursue W
12 things] living S
13 some] come L; gentler] greater S


Poem 7. Sir Walter Ralegh to the Queen and Her Answer
Wiltshire Record Office MS 865/500, f. 27.


7a. Sir Walter Ralegh to the Queen

A sonnet

Fortune hath taken thee away, my love,
My life's joy and my soul's heaven above;
Fortune hath taken thee away my princess,
My world's delight and my true fancy's mistress.

Fortune hath taken all away from me,
Fortune hath taken all by taking thee;
Dead to all joys, I only live to woe,
So Fortune now becomes my fancy's foe.

In vain mine eyes, in vain you waste your tears,
In vain my sighs, the smokes of my despairs,
In vain you search the earth and heavens above,
In vain you search, for fortune keeps my love.

Then will I leave my love in Fortune's hands,
Then will I leave my love in worthless bands,
And only love the sorrow due to me;
Sorrow, henceforth that shall my princess be,

And only joy that Fortune conquers kings,
Fortune that rules on earth and earthly things
Hath ta'en my love in spite of virtue's might:
So blind a goddess did never virtue right.

With wisdom's eyes had but blind Fortune seen,
Then had my love my love forever been;
But love, farewell, though Fortune conquer thee,
No Fortune base shall ever alter me.

7b. The Queen's answer

An answer

Ah silly pug, wert thou so sore afraid?
Mourn not, my Wat, nor be thou so dismayed;
It passeth fickle Fortune's power and skill
To force my heart to think thee any ill.

No Fortune base, thou sayest, shall alter thee;
And may so blind a wretch then conquer me?
No, no, my pug, though Fortune were not blind,
Assure thyself she could not rule my mind.

Ne chose I thee by foolish Fortune's rede,
Ne can she make me alter with such speed,
But must thou needs sour sorrow's servant be,
If that to try thy mistress jest with thee.

Fortune, I grant, sometimes doth conquer kings,
And rules and reigns on earth and earthly things,
But never think that Fortune can bear sway,
If virtue watch and will her not obey.

Pluck up thy heart, suppress thy brackish tears,
Torment thee not, but put away thy fears,
Thy love, thy joy, she loves no worthless bands,
Much less to be in reeling Fortune's hands.

Dead to all joys and living unto woe,
Slain quite by her that never gave wiseman blow,
Revive again and live without all dread,
The less afraid the better shalt thou speed.

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

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

Poem 8
John Rhodes, The Countrie Mans Comfort (1637), sig. D6-6v.

8.

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

Deliver me, O Lord my God, from all my foes that be:
And eke defend all Christian souls that put their trust
in thee.
Preserve us now and evermore from all the wicked
train,
Who long and thirst for Christians' blood and never will refrain.

Mine enemies, O Lord, be strong, and thou the same
dost know,
And that without offence in me, they seek mine
overthrow.



Continues...


Excerpted from Queen Elizabeth I by Elizabeth I Queen of England Copyright © 2005 by Elizabeth I Queen of England. Excerpted by permission.
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