It has been said “that Elizabeth never forgot the woman in the sovereign; and that with greater truth she never forget the sovereign in the woman.” Poor praise, truly! without heart, without capacity for any kindliness or womanly tenderness, she lived without a friend and died without a mourner. Courtiers grovelled in fawning servility at her feet, women feared her; but no one loved her, and even those who flattered her despised her.
Of her two celebrated favorites, Leicester and Essex, the first was perfidious and utterly worthless; the latter was too manly to bear her insolence, and for that he lost his head. He was too spirited to cringe at her footstool, and when on one occasion she angrily boxed his ear, he exclaimed, in indignation, “I would not have taken such an affront from the hands of the king, her father, and I will not accept it of a petticoat! I owe her Majesty the duty of an earl, but I will never serve her as a slave!”
But nevertheless, the petticoat would not be opposed, and Essex perished on the fatal block, even though his death wrung the small heart Elizabeth possessed with all the sorrow it was capable of feeling. She had given Essex a ring in the time of his influence, telling him, if ever he was in danger to send it to her and she would aid him. When he was sentenced to die, he sent Queen Elizabeth this ring, but it passed through the hands of a court lady whose husband was Essex’s deadly foe. The ring never reached the queen, and Essex was executed. Years after, when this countess was dying she confessed the fate of the ring to the queen. The sorrow and remorse which Elizabeth experienced on knowing that her favorite had thus appealed to her mercy, hastened her own death.
It was during the reign of Queen Elizabeth that Sir Francis Drake accomplished the journey around the world and Sir Walter Raleigh made his famous voyages. Tobacco was first introduced into England by him. An amusing story is told of the first use of the weed. He was smoking a pipe one day, when his servant came into the room bearing a tankard of ale. The simple fellow had never before witnessed the process of smoking, and supposing that the clouds of smoke issuing from his master’s lips betokened some awful accident, he flung the ale into his face and ran from the room, crying that his master was on fire and would be burned to ashes if they did not come to his aid.
Raleigh once amused the queen by making a wager with her that he could tell her the exact weight of the smoke of every pipeful of tobacco that he consumed. The wager was accepted by the queen, and Raleigh thereupon proceeded to weigh the tobacco he placed in his pipe, and, after smoking, he weighed the ashes remaining, and informed her that the difference between the two was the exact weight of the smoke. Elizabeth paid the wager, saying: “That she knew of many persons who had turned their gold into smoke, but that he was the first one who had turned smoke into gold.” The well-known gallantry of this same Raleigh in spreading his new velvet cloak over the muddy walk for his royal mistress to tread upon, not only secured him many new cloaks, but the powerful patronage of the queen.
It was to Queen Elizabeth that the poet Spenser dedicated his poetical muse, and in his “Faerie Queene” he celebrated and exalted his sovereign. But the greatest name of her reign, and the one which has shed the brightest and most lasting lustre upon the Elizabethan age, was the illustrious Shakespeare. It is stated that the “Merry Wives of Windsor” was composed by order of Queen Elizabeth, who, having been pleased with Falstaff, in the play of “Henry IV.,” desired to see more of him. It is supposed that between 1590 and 1603 Shakespeare produced the plays of “Venus and Adonis,” “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” “Love’s Labor Lost,” “Taming of the Shrew,” “Henry IV., V., VI. and VIII.,” “Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” “Hamlet,” “Richard II. and III.,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “King John,” “As You Like It,” “Merchant of Venice,” “All’s Well that Ends Well,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” and “Merry Wives of Windsor”; and before 1606: “Troilus and Cressida,” “Othello,” “Twelfth Night,” “Measure for Measure,” “Comedy of Errors,” “King Lear,” and “Macbeth.” So that nearly all of these works appeared in the reign of Elizabeth, who died in 1603.
Elizabeth’s contest against Philip II. of Spain, in assisting the Dutch in their war against Spanish tyranny, was one of the most illustrious of her foreign enterprises. In this war of liberty against despotism, Elizabeth’s bravest commanders and most accomplished courtiers distinguished themselves.
The two conflicting opinions regarding the character and reign of Elizabeth are thus ably stated by an illustrious writer: “Almost from our infancy we have a general impression that her reign is distinguished as one of the most memorable in history; and at a later period we hear of the ‘Elizabethan age’ as equally illustrious in the annals of our literature. Her wisdom, her courage, her prudence and her patriotism, her unconquerable spirit, her excellent laws and vigilant government, her successes at home and abroad, her wars and alliances with the greatest and most powerful princes of her time, the magnificent position which England maintained in her reign as the stronghold of the reformed religion, her own grandeur as the guardian of the Protestants and the arbitress of Europe, her magnanimous stand in defence of the national faith and independence when the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588; the long list of great men, warriors, statesmen, and poets, who sustained her throne, who graced her court, obeyed her slightest word, lived in her smiles and worshipped as she passed,—all these things are familiar to young people almost from the time they can remember, and they leave a strong and magnificent impression on the fancy. As we grow older and become acquainted with the particular details of history, we begin to perceive with surprise that this splendid array of great names and great achievements has another and a far different aspect. On looking nearer we behold on the throne of England a woman whose avarice and jealousy, whose envious, relentless, and malignant spirit, whose coarse manners and violent temper render her contemptible. We see England, the country of freedom, ruled as absolutely as any Turkish province by this imperious sultana and her grand vizier, Burleigh; we see human blood poured out like water on the scaffold, and persecution, torture, and even death again inflicted for the sake of religion; we see great men, whose names are the glory of their country, pining in neglect, and a base, unworthy favorite revelling in power. We read and learn these things with astonishment; we find it difficult to reconcile such apparent contradictions.”
Such are the difficulties which meet us in the study of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but a close study of the contradictions in the character of Elizabeth herself will partly solve the seeming mystery. Elizabeth possessed great and heroic traits of character, but these were joined to such a pitiably weak, jealous, and treacherous nature as to make her an anomaly in the history of the world. She lived in an illustrious age, fraught with some of the most momentous events in the annals of time; in a century star-studded with the lustrous names of genius, whose immortal fame has shed a reflex glory on her reign. Interests vital to the progress of humanity teemed and surged around her throne, and lifted her glory high on the topmost crests of the glistening waves of the on-rushing ocean of enlightened civilization and religious liberty.
Hentzner, the German traveller, who visited England in 1599, thus describes Elizabeth’s court four years previous to her death:—