Fairy Tale Queens: Representations of Early Modern Queenship (34 page)

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Authors: Jo Eldridge Carney

Tags: #History, #Europe, #England/Great Britain, #Legends/Myths/Tales, #Royalty

28. Dollimore, 5. See also Duncan Salkeld, “With the benefit of theoretical hindsight, however, recent historicists regard the idea that literature should mirror a historical background of objective facts or moral truths as ideologically positioned and seriously limiting.” “New Historicism,” in 
The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism,
vol. x (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 59–70.

29. Jeanne Addison Roberts, 
The Shakespearean Wild: Geography, Genus, and Gender
 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,1991), 4.

30. Roberts, 5.

31. See chapters 7 and 8 in Maria Perry, 
The Sisters of Henry VIII
 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998). See also Erin Sadlack’s helpful discussion of Mary’s strategy of agreeing to marry Louis on the condition that she could choose her second husband; in spite of his promise, Henry saw Mary’s second marriage as an act of defiance. 
The French Queen’s
Letters: Mary Tudor Brandon and the Politics of Marriage in Sixteenth
Century Europe
 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) 
,
 2–5.

32. Richards,
Mary Tudor,
 34–40.

33. L. J. Andrew Villalon, “Putting Don Carlos Together Again,” 
Sixteenth
Century Journal
 26, no. 2 (Summer 1995), 347–65 and Henry Kamen,
Philip of Spain
 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 120.

34. For more discussion of Catherine’s various marriage proposals for Marguerite, see R. J. Knecht, 
Catherine de Medici
 (New York: Longman, 1998), 76, 108, 134–5, 139.

35. Marguerite recalled being asked whether she had willingly agreed to marry Navarre, but she saw this opportunity to speak as a mere formality: “I had no will nor choice but her [Catherine’s] own, and I begged her to keep in mind my strong Catholic faith.” In Frieda, 255.

36. Frederick Chamberlin, 
The Sayings of Queen Elizabeth
 (London: John Lane, 1923), 61.

37. See Debra Barrett-Graves, “‘Highly Touched in Honour’: Elizabeth I and the Alencon Controversy,” in 
Elizabeth I: Always Her Own Free
Woman
 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 43–60; Sheila Cavanagh, “The Bad Seed: Princess Elizabeth and the Seymour Incident,” in
Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana,
 ed. Julia M. Walker (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998) 
,
 9–29; Susan Doran, 
Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I
 (New York: Routledge, 1996) and “Why Did Elizabeth Not Marry?” in
Dissing Elizabeth
 (London: British Library, 2009), 30–59.

38. Carole Levin, 
The Heart and Stomach of a King
 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 2.

39. Ilona Bell, 
Elizabeth I: The Voice of a Monarch
 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 8.

40. Penry Williams, 
Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life and Legend
 (London: Continuum, 2011), 28.

41. Wallace MacCaffrey,
Elizabeth I
 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 172; David Loades, 
Elizabeth I
 (London: Hambledon Continnum, 2003), 331. Catherine Loomis offers one of the most extended consid-erations of Elizabeth’s use of nicknames, pointing out that “Elizabeth was not always kind when she chose ‘a by-name given in sport’ for her courtiers” “‘Little man, little man’: Early Modern Representations of Robert Cecil,” in 
Explorations in Renaissance Culture.
 Special Issue: “Scholarship on Elizabeth I,” Guest Editor Carole Levin, 37 no. 1 (2011): 137–56.

42. Robert Lacey, 
Sir Walter Ralegh
 (New York: Atheneum, 1974), 46. “Water” may also reflected Raleigh’s own pronunciation of his name. Lacey also describes the rivalry between Hatton and Raleigh that acknowledged their respective nicknames. Hatton, jealous that Raleigh was replacing him in the queen’s affections, sent her several symbolic tokens, including a golden bucket that “symbolized water and thus referred to Raleigh.” Water, Hatton wrote to Elizabeth, was an unstable element and would only produce confusion. The queen assured Hatton that he was ever her sheep and that “no 
water
 or floods should ever overthrow them.”

43. Elizabeth to Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, Lord Deputy of Ireland, December 3, 1600, in 
Elizabeth I: Collected Works,
 eds. Leah Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 399.

44. Pauline Croft, “Can a Bureaucrat Be a Favorite? Robert Cecil and the Strategies of Power,” in 
The World of the Favorite,
 eds. J.H. Elliott and L.W.B. Brockliss (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 56.

45. Algernon Cecil, 
A Life of Robert Cecil First Earl of Salisbury
 (London: John Murray, 1915), 24.

46. Loomis, 147.

47. P. M. Handover, 
The Second Cecil: The Rise of Power 1563–1604
 (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1959), 245.

48. See Elizabeth’s letter to Lady Norris on the death of the latter’s son, in 
Elizabeth I: Collected Works,
 389.

49. Agnes Strickland, 
The Life of Queen Elizabeth
 (London: J. M. Dent and Co., 1906), 577.

50. William Joseph Sheils, “John Whitgift,” 
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
 vol. 58 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 726.

51. Simon Adams, et. al., “Francis Walsingham,” 
Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography,
 vol. 57 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 147. According to the authors, the relationship between Elizabeth and Walsinghman “lacked the long acquaintance of the queen’s relationships with Burghley and Leicister and the emotional dependence she placed on Leicester and Hatton. Her tolerance of his constant nagging and complaining has puzzled generations of historians. On the other hand, like Burghley, Walsingham was a workaholic, whose efficiency was undoubted and whose sardonic humour mirrored her own.”

52. Stephen Budiansky, 
Her Majesty’s Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage
 (New York: Viking, 2005), 39.

53. Paul Hammer, “‘Absolute and Solemn Mistress of Her Grace?’Queen Elizabeth and Her Favorites, 1581–1592,” in 
The World of the Favorite,
eds. J. H. Elliott and L. W. B. Brockliss (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1999), 40.

54. Chris Skidmore, 
Death and the Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I and the Dark
Scandal that Rocked the Throne
 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011). Gypsies “had first arrived from the continent at the beginning of the sixteenth century... Soon they became associated in the common imagination with a wide range of every imaginable crime from selling poisons to stealing horses and kidnapping children. They were also regarded as sexually promiscuous,” 127.

55. Derek Wilson uses the nickname as the title of his biography of Robert Dudley: 
Sweet Robin: A Biography of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester: 1533–
 1588 (London: Allison and Busby, 1981).

56. Harry Morris, “Ophelia’s ‘Bonny Sweet Robin,’ 
Publication of the Modern Language Association of America
 73, no. 5 (1958), 602. Morris claims that “the name Robin was, in the sixteenth century, one of the cant terms for the male sex organ.”

57. Elizabeth Jenkins, 
Elizabeth and Leicester
 (New York: Coward-McCann, 1962), 129.

58. Stephen Greenblatt, 
Sir Walter Ralegh: The Renaissance Man and His Roles
 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), 55–56.

59. See commentary accompanying this exchange in 
Elizabeth I: Collected Works
, 307–09.

60. Peter C. Herman, “Authorship and the Royal I: King James VI and the Politics of Monarchic Verse,” 
Renaissance Quarterly
 54, no. 4 (Winter 2001), 1502–03.

61. Bell, 20–21.

62. Levin, 
The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power
 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 68–69.

63. MacCaffrey, 
Elizabeth I,
 171–72.

64. Alice Gilmore Vines, 
Neither Fire nor Steel: Sir Christopher Hatton
(Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall, 1978), 28.

65. Vines, 72.

66. Ibid., 129.

67. Ibid., 67.

68. Walter Oakeshott, 
The Queen and the Poet
 (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), 26.

69. Wallace MacCaffrey, “Christopher Hatton,” 
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
 vol. 20 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 817–23.

70. Andrew J. Hopper, “Thomas Arundell,” 
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
 vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 582–83.

71. Cited in Anne Somerset, 
Elizabeth I
 (New York: Knopf, 1992), 308.

72. Doran, “Why Did Elizabeth Not Marry?,” 49. It is also widely believed that the ballad “A Froggie Went A-Courtin” references this episode. See David Parsons, “The History of the ‘Frog’s Courtship’: A Study of Canadian Variants,” 
Canadian Journal for Traditional Music,
Vol. 18 (1990).

73. MacCaffrey, 210.

74. Janet Arnold,
Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d
 (Leeds, UK: Maney, 1988), 75–76.

75. 
CSP Spain,
 vol. 34, Mar 1, 1582. Item 221.

76. 
CSP Spain,
 vol. 34, Dec. 17, 1581. Item 183.

77. 
CSP Spain,
 vol. 34, Dec. 25, 1581. Item 186.

78. Hammer, 48–49.

79. 
The Letters of Queen Elizabeth,
 ed. G. B. Harrison (London: Cassell & Co., 1968), 209.

80. Paul E. J. Hammer, “Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex.” 
Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography,
 vol. 15 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 945–60.

81. William Camden,
The History of the Most Renowned Elizabeth
 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 603.

5 The Fairest of Them All: Queenship and Beauty

1. Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller: Reflections on the World of Nikolai Leskov,” in 
Illuminations,
 ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn. (New York: Schocken Books, 1968). See Elizabeth Harries on the limitations of Benjamin’s definition, 
Twice Upon A Time: Women
Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale
 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 12.

2. Giambattista Basile, “The Myrtle,” in 
The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones,
 trans. Nancy Canepa (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2007), 52–60.

3. Qtd. in Leonie Frieda, 
Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2003), 242.

4. Basile, “The Golden Trunk” in Canepa, 404–12.

5.
L & P,
 vol. 15, June 30, 1540. Item 823; also Gilbert Burnet, 
History of
 
the Reformation of the Church of England,
 vol. IV (Oxford, 1816), 427.

6. John Strype,
Ecclesiastical Memorials
 ( London: John Wyat, 1721), 453–59.

7. Sir Philp Sidney, 
The Countess of Pembroke’s
 Arcadia (New York: Penguin Classics, 1977), 159.

8. Lüthi, Max.
The Fairy Tale as Art Form and Portrait of Man,
 trans. Jon Erickson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 20.

9. For useful discussions on early modern concepts of beauty, see Anna Riehl, 
The Face of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth
I
 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Farah Karim-Cooper,
Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama
 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006); and Patricia Philippy, 
Painting
Women: Cosmetics, Canvases, and Early Modern Culture
 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

10. Sara F. Matthews Grieco, “The Body, Appearance, and Sexuality,” in 
A History of Women: Renaissance and Englightenment Paradoxes,
eds. Natalie Zemon Davis and Arlette Farge (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 58.

11. Basile, “The Two Cakes,” in 
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition,
 ed. Jack Zipes (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001), 632.

12. For example, see Agnolo Firenzuola, 
On the Beauty of Women
 (1548) 
,
trans. Konrad Eisenbichler (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992).

13. D’Aulnoy, “The Enchantments of Eloquence,” in Zipes, 550–64.

14. Nancy Canepa,
From Court to Forest: Giambattista Basile’s
 Lo Cunto de li Cunti 
and the Birth of the Literary Fairy Tale
 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1999), 219.

15. Basile, “The Three Fairies,” in Zipes, 544–50.

16. Lüthi,
The Fairy Tale as Art Form,
 34.

17. D’Aulnoy, “The White Cat,” in 
Wonder Tales: Six French Stories of Enchantmen,
 ed 
.
 Marina Warner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 19–63.

18. Straparola, “The Bear,” in Zipes, 33–38.

19. Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, “The Hind in the Woods,” in 
The Fairy Tales of Madame d’Aulnoy,
 trans. Annie Macdonell (London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1892), 347–76.

20. On Disney’s Americanization and commercialization of the German Snow White tale, see Jack Zipes, “Breaking the Disney Spell,” 
From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture,
 ed. Elizabeth Bell, et. al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 21–42.

21. “Snow White,” in 
The Classic Fairy Tales,
 ed. Maria Tatar. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999, 83–89.

22. Lüthi claims that “in many instances beauty is what sets the plot in motion...it is the instigator of the action,” 35.

23. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, 
The Madwoman in the Attic
 
(
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 36.

24. Ibid., 38.

25. Cristina Bacchilega,
Postmodern Fairy Tales
 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 33–35.

26. Wolfgang Mieder, 
Tradition and Innovation in Literature
 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987), 22.

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