Elizabeth JenkinsThe Life and Times ofQUEEN ELIZABETH I Elizabeth I has surely been the subject of more biographies,plays and films, both factual and romanticised, than any other British monarch,with the possible exception of her father Henry VIII. The complex personalityof the Virgin Queen makes her an endlessly puzzling and fascinating enigma. Attimes her nature was contradictory; her tempers and tantrums legendary. Yet,though her reign is one of the best documented in British history, we are stillleft with burning questions about her as a woman. Was she truly a virgin allher life? Why didn’t she marry? Why, with the exception of Leicester, did sheseem incapable of maintaining close friendships? One attempts to peel back the ever increasing layers ofsilk, satin, lace, gold thread, wigs and fantastic jewellery, which she used todivert attention from the woman within them, but the questions still remain. Elizabeth was an able ruler, with remarkable powers ofstatesmanship. Her manipulation of her all-male council, her premier minister,the redoubtable Cecil, and the ill-assorted wooers who came knocking at herdoor is extremely impressive. She was no ordinary woman of her time, herdiplomatic skills and power to dominate all who came into contact with her fromthe highest to the lowest led some historians to question her sex: at Tilburyin 1588, inspiring her troops, Camden the historian described her as having‘the countenance and pace of a soldier’. She was frequently referred to as the reincarnation of herautocratic father Henry VIII. This is the dominant impression left by ElizabethJenkins’ biography, that she was a woman not to be trifled with, whosepolitical skills and will to succeed at all costs had been learnt the hard waythrough necessity, when as a young girl she had lived under the constant threatof the headsman’s axe. Yet, paradoxically, there are also numerous contemporarydescriptions of her femininity. She was always responsive to kindness,Elizabeth Jenkins tells us, having received so little of it when young, and alwayssusceptible to flattery. This encouraged ambitious courtiers to spend lavishamounts on her entertainment, when in the summer months she ‘progressed’ fromone aristocratic estate to another. Many a family was irreparably ruined by theexpense. She could not be so easily bought. The elaborate display mounted bythe Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth in 1575 is breathtaking, if one onlycontemplates the amount of stage-management required! Elizabeth Jenkinsdescribes the water-pageant: ‘While strains of music sounded on the mere, the Lady of theLake advanced on her floating island, scintillating with lights. A mermaid drewa tail eighteen feet long through the waves beside her, and perched on the backof a gigantic dolphin, Arion prepared to address the awe-inspiring figure whosehorse was reined to a standstill above his head.’ Elizabeth’s skills of government brought peace andprosperity to Tudor England, and her qualities both as a leader and a womaninspired a golden age of music, verse and drama. In a late-flowering of theRenaissance in this country, courtiers such as Philip Sidney and Raleigh ledthe way in verse, as did the Queen herself. Spenser developed English versewith his epic tribute to Elizabeth, ‘The Faerie Queene’, whilst Shakespeare,and later Ben Jonson, enriched the public and private stage, making the Englishpre-eminent in the theatre at this time. Music, too, took the Italian model ofthe madrigal and ‘englished’ it. Native madrigalists such as Morley, Dowlandand Wilbye flourished in the years of her reign, their intricate part songsreflecting the brilliant word painting of the largely anonymous verse writers. Keyboard music was blessed by the invention of William Byrdwhose elaborate fantasias, some based on old English tunes, dominated thegenre. The Queen herself was a most accomplished player of the aptly-namedVirginals, as Elizabeth Jenkins comments: ‘When Dr. Burney examined themanuscript of her Virginal book, he was surprised at the difficulty of thepieces by Byrd, Tallis, Farnaby and Bull; no master in Europe, he said, wouldundertake to play those under a month’s practice.’ Elizabeth sacrificed a normal Tudor woman’s life – marriageand children – because of heroverriding conviction that she must serve and save her people. Time and againthroughout her reign she refers to the people as having sustained her in whatbecame increasingly a lonely and isolated life, culminating in the famous‘Golden’ speech she made to Parliament in 1601: ‘I have cause to wish nothingmore than to content the subject; and that is a duty I owe.’ In return she wasrewarded with the people’s unmitigated love: ‘Then we cried again ‘God saveYour Majesty!’ And the Queen said to us, ‘Ye may well have a greater Prince,but ye shall never have a more loving Prince.’ And so the Queen and the crowdthere, looking upon one another awhile, her majesty departed. This wrought suchan impression upon us…that all the way long we did nothing but talk what anadmirable Queen she was and how we would adventure our lives in herservice.’(Godfrey Goodman 1588) This adoration by the people had risen to a climax by theend of her reign, when she was virtually worshipped as a goddess. She became acult variously referred to in verse and song by such mythical names as‘Oriana’, ‘Diana’, ‘Cynthia’. She encouraged these images, as can be seen inthe many portraits of her (surely the most painted monarch as well as the mostwritten about!). The later portraits in particular show her in fantasticcostumes which could never have existed in fact: cloaks embroidered with eyesand ears, fine lace collars erect as peacocks’ tails, with no visible means ofsupport. The Queen variously holds a rainbow, or firmly stands on thecountry she reigns over, covering it by the shadow of her enormous farthingaledress, symbolically safe and secure. She manufactured her life, and the resultwas she became untouchable, just like a ‘goddess, excellently bright’. Shewrote a poem once reflecting on her deliberate policy of monogamy in whichthere is an echo of regret: ‘Then, lo, I did repent of that I said before,Go, go, go, seek some other where,Importune me no more.’ Was she truly regretting in those last days of isolation herlonely journey? ‘I meditate,’ she said at the end when asked how she passed hertime. Her personal sacrifice for her people’s sake however was rewarded with agentle death, ‘mildly like a lamb, easily like a ripe apple from the tree…’ Notes by David Timson Elizabeth Jenkins was educated at St Christopher’s School,Letchworth and Newnham College, Cambridge. A distinguished novelist, historianand biographer, she was awarded the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize in 1934 for hernovel Harriet, and she received the OBE in 1981. Her other publications include:Lady Caroline Lamb, Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, Six Criminal Women, TheTortoise and the Hare, Ten Fascinating Women, Elizabeth and Leicester, ThePrinces in the Tower.