Queen Elizabeth is more than just a Queen, she was a writer!
Queen Elizabeth I is recognized for her impact during a period which is named after her. What many people fail to realize is that Queen Elizabeth wrote some poetry too. She is not often thought of as a prolific writer of the period, but she did contribute some poems during a time in which men like Shakespeare and Spenser were consider the height of English drama and writing. I thought about this blog post for a while after hearing Dr. Sparazza's talk on women who wrote around the same time as Shakespeare. When she asked if anyone could name a women writer of the time, I couldn't think of any until after I left. I thought that Queen Elizabeth had to have written something.
I searched the Poetry Foundation's website and found that Queen Elizabeth very much impacted literature during this time. The Poetry Foundation claims, "Critics have traced her role as subject of or inspiration for such works as Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590-1596), William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600), and some Petrarchan sonnets." She may have been the subject of works, but she also did write some works of her own. According to the Poetry Foundations website, she wrote 8 poems, many speeches, letters, and possibly some prose. I think bringing Elizabeth into the conversation about women writers during Shakespeare's time is very important.
Elizabeth also was highly educated. The Poetry Foundation claims, "Her education provided perhaps the one constant in her early life. Princess Elizabeth was one of the few Englishwomen to benefit from humanist support for the education of females: she received a complete education in Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and rhetoric from the prominent humanists John Cheke, William Grindal, and Roger Ascham; Ascham applied to her his program of double translation from Latin or Greek to English and back again." ELizabeth would have been afforded many things that common women of the time would not have been, but she was keenly aware how much value education had. Another feat that Elizabeth was dedicated to was translating classic works into English. She copied down many works and often gave them as gifts to fiends and family. Here are a few of the texts she translated: Psalm 13, mediations of Margaret of Navarre, A Godly Meditation of the Christian Soul, Petrarch's "Trionfo dell' Eternita" (Triumph of Eternity), the second chorus of Seneca's Hercules Oetaeus, lines 1 to 178 of Horace's Ars Poetica, and Plutarch's "On Curiosity." This list is by no means complete, but it shows how prolific of a writer Queen Elizabeth was.
I write this blog post as a discussion to what Dr. Sparazza was asking. I also write it because I didn't think about answering the question she asked until after I left the Shakespeare's birthday event. I think it is important to give Queen Elizabeth her due as a writer. Some her poems can be found here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/queen-elizabeth-i#tab-poems
All information in this post was obtained from: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/queen-elizabeth-i
I searched the Poetry Foundation's website and found that Queen Elizabeth very much impacted literature during this time. The Poetry Foundation claims, "Critics have traced her role as subject of or inspiration for such works as Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590-1596), William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600), and some Petrarchan sonnets." She may have been the subject of works, but she also did write some works of her own. According to the Poetry Foundations website, she wrote 8 poems, many speeches, letters, and possibly some prose. I think bringing Elizabeth into the conversation about women writers during Shakespeare's time is very important.
Elizabeth also was highly educated. The Poetry Foundation claims, "Her education provided perhaps the one constant in her early life. Princess Elizabeth was one of the few Englishwomen to benefit from humanist support for the education of females: she received a complete education in Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and rhetoric from the prominent humanists John Cheke, William Grindal, and Roger Ascham; Ascham applied to her his program of double translation from Latin or Greek to English and back again." ELizabeth would have been afforded many things that common women of the time would not have been, but she was keenly aware how much value education had. Another feat that Elizabeth was dedicated to was translating classic works into English. She copied down many works and often gave them as gifts to fiends and family. Here are a few of the texts she translated: Psalm 13, mediations of Margaret of Navarre, A Godly Meditation of the Christian Soul, Petrarch's "Trionfo dell' Eternita" (Triumph of Eternity), the second chorus of Seneca's Hercules Oetaeus, lines 1 to 178 of Horace's Ars Poetica, and Plutarch's "On Curiosity." This list is by no means complete, but it shows how prolific of a writer Queen Elizabeth was.
I write this blog post as a discussion to what Dr. Sparazza was asking. I also write it because I didn't think about answering the question she asked until after I left the Shakespeare's birthday event. I think it is important to give Queen Elizabeth her due as a writer. Some her poems can be found here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/queen-elizabeth-i#tab-poems
All information in this post was obtained from: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/queen-elizabeth-i
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