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Elizabeth and Her Court
- University of Wisconsin Press
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Elizabeth and Her Court The expression in this 1575 portrait of Queen Elizabeth well suggests the monarch who quashed 48 bills of her Parliament. Nicolo Machiavelli's II Principe ("The Prince") was mangled in translation but still had an immense effect on the Elizabethan English. It was taken as a bible of villainy. It gave the stage and popular thought in general the stereotype of the Machiavellian consummate and crafty villain, all "policy" and no heart. Queen Elizabeth had to reign and rule in an atmosphere haunted by this devious image of the prince from Machiavelli: A prince ...should seem to be all mercy, faith, integrity, humanity, and religion. And nothing is more necessary than to seem to have this last quality, for men in general judge more by the eyes than by the hands, for every one can see, but very few have to feel. Everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose themselves to the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of men, and especially of princes, from which there is no appeal, the end justifies the means. Let a prince therefore aim at conquering and maintaining the state, and the means will always be judged honorable and praised by every one, for the vulgar is always taken by appearances and the issue of the event; and the world consists only of the vulgar, and the few who are not vulgar are isolated when the many have a rallying point in the prince. Praise of Queen Elizabeth, practically a major industry in "Good Queen Bess' golden days," sounds more rhetorical than real in the style of Lyly's Euphues and His England, a work which in typically Elizabethan style shows off its rhetoric and uses as many classical allusions as it can, like raisins in a rice pudding: This queen [Mary] being deceased, Elizabeth, being of the age of twentytwo years [actually, 25], of more beauty than honor, and yet of more honor than any earthly creature, was called from a prisoner to be a prince, from the castle to the crown, from the fear of losing her head, to be supreme head. And here, ladies, it may be you will move a question, why this noble lady was either in danger of death, or cause of distress, which, had you thought to have passed in silence, I would, notwithstanding, have revealed. This lady all the time of her sister's reign was kept dose, as one that tendered not those proceedings which were contrary to her conscience, who, having divers enemies, endured many crosses, but so patiently as in her deepest sorrow she would rather sign for the liberty of the Gospel than her own freedom. Suffering her inferiors to triumph over her, her foes to threaten her, her dissembling friends to undermine her, learning in all this misery only the patience that Zeno taught Eretricus to bear and forbear, never seeking revenge, 307 [44.211.28.92] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:41 GMT) 308 Elizabethan Popular Culture but, with good Lycurgus, to lose her own eye rather than to hurt another's eye. But being now placed in the seat royal, she first of all established religion, banished popery, advanced the Word, that before was so much defaced, who having in her hand the sword to revenge, used rather bountifully to reward, being as far from rigor when she might have killed, as her enemies were from honesty when they could not, giving a general pardon when she had cause to use particular punishments, preferring the name of pity before the remembrance of perils, thinking no revenge more princely than to spare when she might spill [spoil], to stay when she might strike, to proffer to save with mercy when she might have destroyed with justice. Here is the clemency worthy commendation and admiration, nothing inferior to the gentle disposition of Aristides, who, after his exile, did not so much as note them that banished him, saying with Alexander that there can be nothing more noble than to do well to those that deserve ill. This mighty and merciful queen, having many bills of private persons that sought beforetime to betray her, burnt them all, resembling Julius Caesar, who, being presented with the like complaints of his commons, threw them into the fire, saying that he had rather not know _the names of...