All the Queen's Men (30 page)

Go, and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me, where all past years are,

Or who cleft the Devil's foot.
¹¹

Michael Drayton was another poet of some standing in the last years of the sixteenth century; his patron was Mary, Countess of Pembroke and Sir Philip Sidney's sister. Drayton's verse, ‘Nor night doth hinder day, nor day the night doth wrong. The summer not too short, the winter not too long',
¹²
displays all the bright imagery and deft rhythm to be found centuries later in the works of Laurie Lee, another poet possessing a great love of landscape.

Writing poetry, like writing plays, was a classless activity. While Donne's father had been an ironmonger, Francis Bacon came from an altogether different social strata, yet he too had studied law and, with Donne and Sir Henry Wooton, engaged in poetry contests based on the relative values of Court, city and country, a familiar theme of the day. Sir Philip Sidney, a prominent member of the Queen's Court, also acquired a formidable reputation as a ‘serious sonneteer', producing such creations as ‘Thou my mind aspire to higher things', together with longer works, such as the prose romance
Arcadia
. Sidney's virtues had been evident from an early age: ‘Nights and days in ceaseless and related studies, he worked upon the anvil of wit, reason and memory . . .'
¹³
noted an approving observer of a young Sidney. He was the apple of his father's eye, Sir Henry Sidney, the Queen's one-time Deputy in Ireland, who urged Philip's younger brother Robert to ‘imitate his virtues, exercises and actions, he is a rare ornament of his age, the very formula of all well disposed young gentlemen of our court . . . in truth I speak it without flattery to him or myself he hath the most virtues that I ever found in any man'.
¹⁴
Sidney followed his father to Court and into the service of the Queen but was bitterly disappointed by Elizabeth's manner towards him, feeling that he had not been granted the recognition he deserved. Just as the early twentieth-century war poet, Wilfred Owen, he was destined to die disillusioned amid the mud of Flanders and, like Rupert Brooke and Keats, was cut down in his poetic prime.

The work of most of the Elizabethan poets pales into insignificance when compared to Shakespeare's sonnets, such as the celebrated
Sonnet Number 18
:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Scholars have agonized endlessly as to the identity of the ‘Dark Lady' in these sonnets. Was it Mary Fitton, mistress of William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke and godson of the Queen? It has been claimed that the initials ‘W.H.' in the dedication contained in the first folio of Shakespeare's plays published in 1623 refers to William Herbert. Like so many issues concerning Shakespeare, these claims remain tantalizingly unsubstantiated and it is incredible that so much is known about Shakespeare's work yet the man still remains shrouded in mystery. Today an impressive statue of Shakespeare by Sheemakers stands in the front hall at Wilton House near Salisbury, the home of the present Earl of Pembroke. The statue is a copy of William Kent's sculpture of Shakespeare which is to be found in Westminster Abbey.

Shakespeare alone had the ability to transform a stage open to the sky without the advantage of props, lighting or the special effects of twentieth-century theatre, using purely the power of words to effortlessly transport his audiences to Agincourt, Elsinore or the River Nile. He had an uncanny ability to convince the spectators that the callow young man on the stage really was Juliet, Cleopatra or Viola. Shakespeare held an audience spellbound in the reign of Elizabeth I and can do the same 400 years later, not merely in London but anywhere in the world from New York to Tokyo, translating easily into any language. None of his fellow Elizabethan playwrights possessed his enduring genius, that universal, timeless appeal.

The great prose writers who lived through Elizabeth's reign should not be ignored; for example, William Camden's magnificent
Britannia
and
Annals
are sweeping surveys of the period giving a detailed personal insight into both Elizabeth's reign and her kingdom. John Stow's chronicles, particularly his authoritative portrayal of London, a city in which he lived for more than eighty years, minutely examine virtually every nook and cranny of Elizabeth's capital as it appeared towards the end of the sixteenth century. At this time Richard Hakluyt was writing one of England's first outstanding travel books; his marvellous
Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation
used the first-hand accounts of those who travelled to the furthest corners of the globe and returned to recount their experiences. Francis Bacon is one of many men alleged to have written everything attributed to William Shakespeare, some scholars finding it difficult to accept that a mere grammar school boy, who had not been to university, could possibly have produced works of such expertise. Much of Bacon's elegant prose was created in the time of James I, but he did pen his stylish ‘Essays' in the last few years of Elizabeth's reign, composing with polished wit and a persuasive term of phrase. Bacon died in bizarre circumstances in 1626 when, conducting a scientific experiment involving the freezing of a chicken, he contracted a fatal chill and became terminally ill.

Great art and literature is said to mirror the mood of a nation and, while Nicholas Hilliard, Shakespeare, Marlowe and their compatriots were active in England, the interpretation of life in Spain was altogether different. Instead of the vitality of Shakespeare and Marlowe, there was the wry, often bitter satire of Cervantes, conveyed through his account of ‘the Knight of the Doleful Countenance', Don Quixote and his faithful donkey-riding retainer, Sancho Panza. (Cervantes died on the same day as Shakespeare, 23 April 1616.) In place of the vibrant optimism displayed in the works of most Elizabethan artists, Spain had the distorted religious images of El Greco together with the sombre drama of Titian, one of the acknowledged masters of the High Renaissance.

To some extent, the creators of this period of history reflect the natures of their respective monarchs. Where Elizabeth was dazzlingly colourful in both appearance and manner, Philip of Spain was austere and remote, invariably attired entirely in black, a solitary figure living a life of privileged isolation in the private apartments of his palace, largely ignoring El Greco, who lived in Toledo; Philip favoured Titian as a painter, taking over his patronage from his father Emperor Charles V. He commissioned this Italian artist to paint a series of dramatic mythological works.

Philip had inherited an empire at its peak and he presided over its gradual decline, a process which began after the Armada's defeat in 1588. Nations normally demonstrate their greatest vitality in their period of growth, but Philip had found Spain already in full bloom, whereas Elizabeth had come to the English throne when the flowering had yet to begin. The cultural life of the respective nations tended to mirror that state of affairs in many respects.

Neither Titian nor El Greco were Spanish – Spain did produce internationally known artists such as Goya and Velazquez, but both were of a later generation. Elizabeth on the other hand fostered a sense of pride and patriotism within her nation that encouraged indigenous artists to flourish. In turn, their work fostered the country's sense of self-belief, further developing patriotic feeling. This sense of identity helped to develop artistic expression unique to Elizabeth's kingdom, thereby reducing the necessity of summoning continental genius at every conceivable opportunity.

Though it would be foolish to claim that the Queen was entirely responsible for the flowering of so much creative endeavour during her time on the English throne, nevertheless she was the ruler of the nation when it occurred. Elizabeth was herself a cultured person, and created a climate that encouraged this creative process to flourish in a manner that did not exist before or after her reign. Her father, Henry, had also been a cultured man but was quick to summon Holbein, Eworth or William Scrots from overseas to paint the major portraits of his reign rather than seeking local talent; no English writers or musicians of real note came to prominence during Henry's time on the English throne, nor was there any comparable great creative advance in the period subsequent to Elizabeth's death, though Milton was a poet of substance. True, Dryden might have been more sophisticated than Shakespeare, but he totally failed to match the latter's shimmering imagery or awesome creative power. Charles I quickly reintroduced foreign talent in the shape of the Flemish painter Van Dyck, while the architectural achievements of Inigo Jones were sadly cut short by the Civil War.

During Elizabeth's forty-five years on the throne, peaceful conditions within her kingdom combined with favourable social and economic circumstances to greatly encourage cultural advancement within the nation, particularly in the literary field. It was during the Elizabethan period that English literature can be said to have come of age and England began to establish a literary reputation to be taken seriously by continental Europe, which had hitherto regarded the Tudor kingdom as a cultural desert island. The English language had expanded enormously, from some 4,000 words during the time of Chaucer to the more than 24,000 words available to Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights and poets. They certainly made the most of the material available, putting England at last on the creative map of Europe, establishing its tradition as a literary nation. The Queen was the catalyst which enabled this to happen, besides being a consummate performer in her own right. Her address given to a potentially hostile parliamentary delegation, incensed over further Crown monopolies, at the time of her last Parliament in 1601, represented a
tour de force
which any modern actress would have been proud to deliver: ‘Though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown: that I have reigned with your loves.'
¹⁵
This poses the intriguing question – did Elizabeth also write her own material?

T
he defeat of the Spanish Armada in the summer of 1588 gave Elizabeth celebrity status among all the nations of Europe, ensuring her lasting fame for posterity. Ironically, this happy state of affairs arose largely as a result of the spectacular failure of her foreign policy leading to something she dreaded most of all – war with Spain, the greatest military power throughout the whole of the civilized world.

When Elizabeth inherited the English throne thirty years earlier, her kingdom enjoyed excellent diplomatic relations with Spain, traditionally one of England's staunchest allies. The two royal families had consistently intermarried, prosperous trading links existed between the two nations and England appeared relaxed about Spanish expansionist policy in the New World. However, once Elizabeth became Queen, it was not long before relationships between the countries began to deteriorate. It was almost as if both nations had simultaneously decided on a policy of embarking on a series of manoeuvres calculated to antagonize each other, a slow yet remorseless process beginning when Elizabeth had gently but firmly declined King Philip's offer of marriage, a rather half-hearted proposal representing an attempt to maintain the Catholic faith in England and isolate France. Elizabeth's swift reintroduction of Protestantism as England's official religion, and her subsequent support of factions in Scotland and France, was deemed heretical by Spain, which further aggravated the situation. Philip resolved to attack England to restore Catholicism – but only when the time was right.

By the late 1560s Elizabeth's greatest seafarers, Drake and Hawkins, had begun to undertake a series of voyages to the Caribbean, thereby challenging the domination hitherto enjoyed by the Spaniards in the New World. This process intensified throughout the next decade, culminating in Drake's circumnavigation of the globe, an enterprise which had enjoyed the Queen's fullest support and greatly outraged both King Philip and his country. By that time, a considerable number of hawks had gained seats on Elizabeth's Privy Council, men like Leicester, Hatton and Walsingham, who collectively outnumbered the ever-cautious Burghley and his supporters, and who continually encouraged the Queen to adopt a more aggressive stance.

Meanwhile, closer to home, two completely unrelated yet highly significant events occurred that were to further jeopardize the strained relationship between England and Spain. First, Mary, Queen of Scots had been deposed and forced to flee across the border into England to seek refuge from her English cousin, a disastrous mistake for Mary and a grave source of embarrassment for Elizabeth, who could not afford to have a Catholic Queen, whom some regarded as the true heir to the English throne, free to become a focus of insurrection within her kingdom. Elizabeth was left with little alternative but to imprison Mary, thereby outraging the whole of the Catholic world. The Pope firstly excommunicated Elizabeth and then urged the Spanish King to attack England as part of a Holy War to restore Catholicism, an enterprise which he promised to help finance from the Vatican.

Meanwhile, across the North Sea the Duke of Alva, Philip's Governor General in the Netherlands, then a Spanish colony, had imprisoned a group of English seamen in Antwerp and impounded their ships, an action which resulted in all trade between England and the Netherlands ceasing for almost five years. Antwerp had provided a vital commercial outlet for the London-based Company of Merchant Adventurers, exporting and selling the bulk of English woollen cloths to continental buyers, while the resultant export tax represented a major revenue for the Queen.

It was the Netherlands that was later to become the initial battleground between the armed forces of England and Spain, after the Privy Council had persuaded the Queen to give military assistance to support Dutch rebels seeking to overthrow Spanish rule in the Low Countries. The Treaty of Nonsuch, signed at the Queen's palace in Surrey during August 1585, committed Elizabeth to provide combat troops in support of the beleaguered Dutch who had recently seen Antwerp and Ghent fall to the Spanish forces subsequent to the assassination of their leader, William of Orange. By this time, Philip's nephew, the exceptionally talented Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma had taken over as the Spanish commander in the Netherlands. Elizabeth had reluctantly promised 5,000 foot soldiers supported by 1,000 cavalry under the command of Colonel ‘Black John' Norris, a seasoned veteran of the Irish wars. However, the rebels wished to have a military commander of greater status, and accordingly, the Queen's long-time favourite, the Earl of Leicester, was dispatched for overseas duty as her Lieutenant-General in the Low Countries. Leicester had not been involved in military matters for many years but it was not long before the so-called ‘glories of war' went completely to his head – basking in the adulation he received from the Dutch, Leicester allowed them to create him their Governor General. Elizabeth had previously turned down the offer of sovereignty of the Netherlands and was understandably furious when she learnt of the Earl's latest bout of self-glorification. It took the combined efforts of her entire Privy Council to calm the Queen down and persuade her not to humiliate Leicester in front of the Dutch by forcing him to renounce the honour that they had so recently bestowed upon him.