Time in Entertainments for Queen Elizabeth I: 1590–1602

PATRICIA HOWARD Time in Entertainments for Queen Elizabeth I: 1590-1602 On 14 January 1559, the day before her coronation, the young Queen Elizabeth (twenty-five years old) processed through London as spectator of and participant in an elaborate pageant celebrating her accession. Two of the allegorical personages in the festivities were Time and Truth, the daughter of Time, voicing their anticipation of a fortunate future and the continuance of truth. As the ceremonies drew to a close, singing children greeted the Queen: Farewell, 0 worthy Quen!?, and as our hope is sure That into Errours place thou wilt now Truth restore; So trust we that thou wilt our Soveraigne Quene endure, And loving Lady stand, from henceforth evermore. (Nichols, 1:57) The simple and irrefutable truth of wishing long life to a fair young queen gathers irony as the years of Elizabeth's reign pass. The words of the ode 'Of Cynthia' in the Earl of Cumberland's show on horseback, on May Day, 1600, express the same mood and desires as those of the children in the coronation pageant. But by now the Queen is over sixty-six years old and has less than three years to live: Landes and Seas shee rule below Where things change, and ebbe, and flowe, Spring, waxe oIde, and perish Only Time which all doth mowe Her alone doth cherish. Times yong howres attend her still, And her Eyes and Cheekes do fill, With fresh youth and beautie. (Bond, 1:414)1 The literal untruth of Elizabeth's body withstanding the ravages of time is apparent in Paul Hentzner's well-known description of her at Greenwich (1598), two years before the Earl of Cumberland's show: ... next came the Queen, in the sixty-fifth year of her age ... very majestic; her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small; her nose a little hooked; her lips VNTVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 65, NUMBER 3, SUMMER 1996 468 PATRICIA HOWARD narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar); ... she wore false hair, and that red ... Her bosom was uncovered, as all the English Ladies have till they marry ... (Nichols, 3:612)2 It at first seems that all the compliments in the late entertainments are base flattery, leaving one with the desire to applaud rather than discount the apocryphal story of the Queen on her deathbed, where she desired to put to flight the false illusion of everlasting youth and face the truth of age: ... in the melancholy ofher sicknes, she desired to see a true looking-glass, which in twenty years she had not sene, but only such a one as was made of purpose to deceive her sight; which glasse being brought her, she fell presently into exclayming against those which had so much commended here, and took it so offensively, that some which before had flattered her dourst not corne into her sight. (Nichols, 3:612)3 Yet looked at another way, the late entertainments show a complex and paradoxical relation offlattery to the truth oftime, of the imaginary shadow to the reality of physical substance, and are not merely the simplistic deception of an old woman or idle wishing that golden days remain unchanged. The entertainments presented before Elizabeth in the last twelve years of her reign create multi-layered perspectives in the eyes of the beholders: recognition of the actuality of the Queen's age and the ephemeral nature of the passing moment; pathos at the juxtaposition of fleeting time and poetic assertions of enduring glories; apprehension ofthe verities that withstand mutability. All told, there are seventeen entertainments extant for the years 15901602 . This paper, being a small part of a work in progress, looks only at portions of the 1590 Accession Day tilting, the Elvetham entertainment (1591), the Essex Accession Day tilting (1595), and the Harefield entertainment (1602). These four celebraHans occur at (or allude to) the times ofyear most frequently commemorated in all the entertainments: the height of summer, the Queen's birthday (7 September), the autunmal equinox (21 September), and Accession Day (17 November). The Accession Day tilting of 1590 marked the Queen...