Absolutely Zero!: A Queen

Sunday, October 21, 2007

A Queen

Of late, I've been interested in studying English history, especially of the monarchy. Some years ago, I watched "Elizabeth" starring Cate Blanchett and became intrigued by the Virgin Queen. I wondered how accurate a portrayal could be made of a monarch more than four hundred years after her reign. I also watched "Elizabeth I" starring the amazing Helen Mirren. The two portrayals are similar and remarkably different.

Queen Elizabeth's contemporaries consistently make note of her intelligence, facility with languages, her love of arts, and her mercurial temperament. I took some time to read many of her actual speeches to Parliament, most of them concerning religion and marriage, and eventually, at the end of her reign, questions regarding her successor.

I also read some of her letters, especially the ones to her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, whom she eventually had tried and beheaded for treason, much to her agony over having ordered the murder "of a God anointed queen." But, more interesting to me were poems she wrote. They portray a woman at odds with her personal feelings and public identity. The poem below is my favorite among those of her undoubted authorship. It is presumed she wrote it after declining the marriage offer by France of the Duke of Anjou. Perhaps she did have fond feelings for him but let her heart take a back seat to her head, knowing that if she married, it would diminish her role as queen.

ON MONSIEUR'S DEPARTURE

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,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.
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 ere meant.

Elizabeth R.