Age in Love

by Jacqueline Vanhoutte

  2. Lyly, Endymion, 5.1.73–76. Further references appear parenthetically.

  3. Betts, “Image of this Queene,” 155.

  4. Gascoigne et al., Princely Pleasures, C6r. For the performative aspects of the relationship between Elizabeth and Leicester in the entertainments, see Susan Frye, Elizabeth I, 56–96.

  5. “prick, n.,” OED online, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/151146 (accessed November 3, 2017).

  6. The other would be William Cecil, Lord Burghley. The queen came close to marrying Dudley in the early 1560s (Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, 40–72). Although he gave up hope after 1575 (Levin, Heart and Stomach, 47, 73), Leicester functioned as Elizabeth’s “surrogate husband” for the remainder of his life (Adams, “Dudley, Robert”). Leicester became Master of the Horse in 1558, member of the Order of the Garter in 1559, member of the Privy Council in 1562, Constable of Windsor Castle in 1562, Earl of Leicester in 1564, and Lord Steward in 1587.

  7. Cicero, Booke of Old Age, 12v–13r, 30r, 26v.

  8. Knox, First Blast of the Trumpet, 11.

  9. Shephard, Meanings of Manhood, 29.

  10. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 7.377. Circe represents effeminizing sensuality in early modern works; see, e.g. Britland, “Circe’s Cup”; and Kermode, Shakespeare, Spenser, 84–115. Sullivan examines the association of Circe and sleep, which signals the descent into brutishness, in Sleep, Romance.

  11. On Golding and Leicester, see Rosenberg, Leicester, 156–60.

  12. Allen, Admonition, viii.

  13. See Lake and Pincus for the regime’s attempts at mobilizing various publics, “Rethinking the Public Sphere.” Dutton points out that it is hard to “distinguish sexual discourse from that of religion and politics” in this period (Licensing, 52).

  14. Allen, Admonition, xix, vii.

  15. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 87.

  16. Briefe Discoverie, 14. On this pamphlet, see also introduction and chapter 2.

  17. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 75.

  18. For censorship “flash-points,” see Dutton, Licensing, xviii. Perry identifies the tract as a source for the emergent “cultural fantasy” of the “all-powerful royal favorite” (Literature and Favoritism, 2).

  19. Deats, “Disarming of the Knight,” 289. Pincombe describes Endymion as a “ludicrously impotent courtly lover” (Plays of John Lyly, 94).

  20. Castiglione, Courtier, 145.

  21. Halpin first proposed that Endymion refers to the Earl of Leicester in his much maligned Oberon’s Vision, 77–78. He cast Lady Douglas Sheffield as Tellus. While many of Halpin’s identifications are dubious, an aging royal favorite must needs have called Leicester to mind in the 1580s. Leicester occupied the position of leading favorite for thirty years; see Adams, Leicester and the Court, 46–67.

  22. Traditionally, Lyly’s plays were read as flattering to Elizabeth I, but recent scholars argue “apparent allusions” to the queen “are often remarkably unflattering” (Alwes, “‘I Would Faine Serve,’” 213). Maurice Hunt, for example, sees Endymion as a critical “glass” reflecting the queen’s “problematic removed virginity” (Shakespeare’s Speculative Art, 116). Lyly does consistently represent Elizabeth I as attractive, regardless of her age.

  23. Castiglione, Courtier, 335.

  24. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 114. Like Scragg, I think Lyly “remained embedded in the literary consciousness” of the 1590s and early 1600s (“Victim of Fashion,” 214).

  25. Mullaney, “Mourning and Misogyny,” 151.

  26. Montrose, Subject of Elizabeth, 213, 241.

  27. Allen, Admonition, llvii, xv–xvi, xix, xx. His portrait of Elizabeth is consistent with premodern views about sexually active older women “as possessing some secret knowledge which enabled [them] to bend others to [their] will” (Shahar, Growing Old, 80).

  28. Elizabeth thought Leicester’s conduct in the Netherlands gave “the world just cause to think that we are had in contempt by him that ought most to respect and reverence us”; “Letter to the Earl of Leicester,” April 1586, in Elizabeth I: Collected Works, 277.

  29. Berry, Chastity and Power, 135.

  30. Martin, Constituting Old Age, 112. On the origins of the moon cult as a “private” form of adulation practiced by Sir Walter Ralegh in the 1580s, which spread to become “public” in the 1590s, see Strong, Cult of Elizabeth, 48. Berry attributes the prevalence of lunar images in part to Endymion’s influence (Chastity and Power, 134).

  31. Both Mullaney and Montrose cite Anthony Rivers, a Jesuit priest, who claimed that at the Christmas celebrations in 1600, the queen was “painted in some places near half an inch thick” (quoted in Montrose, Subject of Elizabeth, 243). Basing himself on this same evidence, Mullaney argues that the queen was “a painted image no less than the Rainbow portrait was” (“Mourning and Misogyny,” 147). As Riehl observes, however, “this story is hardly unbiased, nor is it eyewitness testimony” (Face of Queenship, 60).

  32. Montrose, Subject of Elizabeth, 230, 213.

  33. Ralegh, “Ralegh to Elizabeth,” in Elizabeth I: Collected Works, 307.

  34. See Marotti’s “Love is Not Love” for an influential statement of this position; for a critique informing my comments, see Minogue, “Woman’s Touch,” 559–61.

  35. Montrose, Subject of Elizabeth, 244; MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I, 396. Hammer reminds us that while “Elizabeth’s ageing was effectively overlooked . . . the same was not true” for the men around her; nonetheless, he attributes the continued wooing of the queen to her “splendid royal ego,” and labels the whole process “grotesque” (“Absolute and Sovereign Mistress,” 39–42). See also Guy, Elizabeth, 147.

  36. Minogue, “Woman’s Touch,” 561. Martin notes that “the abrasive judgments” of critics in this regard “betray an implicit repugnance for the aged physique” of the queen (Constituting Old Age, 52).

  37. Vaughan, Approved Directions, 29.

  38. Aging had been characterized as a cooling process since the translation of Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia in 1240 (Thane, Old Age, 52–53).

  39. Taunton, “Time’s Whirligig,” 32.

  40. De Villanova, Defence of Age, B2v, A2r, B3r. As Shahar notes, writers who discussed the problems of aging limited themselves to men, since “the emphasis was always on the physical powers, the power of doing, the power to command and to think” (Growing Old, 19).

  41. Castiglione, Courtier, 430, 346, 358. Dust notes that Endymion and The Courtier share a concern with “whether an old man can be a good lover” (“Kiss,” 88). On aging in The Courtier, see also Ricci, “Old Age,” 57–73.

  42. Strong, Cult of Elizabeth, 15, 47. Not all contemporary portraits of Elizabeth follow this pattern of rejuvenation; see, e.g., Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe, 40–41; and Riehl, Face of Queenship, 151–70.

  43. Martin, Constituting Old Age, 33.

  44. The charges of vanity occur in the earliest scholarship on Elizabethan literature; see, e.g., Halpin, Oberon’s Vision, 60. Recent historians and new historicists, eager to separate themselves from their predecessors, nevertheless depict the queen as vain. Adams finds that “Elizabeth’s notorious vanity permeated all aspects of Court life” (Leicester and the Court, 37). Guy, who aims to convey “the truth about the ageing Elizabeth,” faults William Camden for drawing “a veil over her vanity and temper tantrums” (Elizabeth, 6, 1). Montrose agrees that vanity was her salient characteristic (Subject of Elizabeth, 232). The word “vanity,” which bears distinctly feminine and derogatory connotations, casts the queen’s efforts as failures. Montrose describes de Maisse’s “perceptions of the vanity and melancholy of this personage” which in “no way negate his numerous observations of her grace, vitality, and political cunning” (233). However, de Maisse never describes the efforts of the queen as vain; instead, he bears ample testimony to their success; see below.

  45. Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe, 3. Arnold’s findings substantiate the 1593 claim of Sir John Fortescue (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) that “‘
as for her apparel, it is royal and princely, beseeming her calling, but not sumptuous nor excessive’” (1). Elizabeth’s average expenses during the last four years of her reign were a mere fraction of James’s expenses for the first five years of his: £9535 to James’s £36377 annually.

  46. Strong’s expression, cited by Montrose, Subject of Elizabeth, 222.

  47. “Queen Elizabeth’s First Reply to the Parliamentary Petitions,” November 12, 1586, in Elizabeth I: The Collected Works, 186.

  48. Elizabeth I, “Queen Elizabeth to Monsieur, May 14, 1582”; “Queen Elizabeth to James VI of Scotland, circa June or July 1585”; and “Queen Elizabeth to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, July 1597,” in Elizabeth I: The Collected Works, 251, 262, 386.

  49. Montrose, Subject of Elizabeth, 244. He takes the quotation from Devereux, Lives and Letters of the Devereux, 2:131, who cites Ralegh’s History of the World (1614) as the source. The anecdote is reproduced in Hyde, “Difference and Disparity.” Both sources were written after the occurrence of the incident they describe.

  50. “Letter Exchange between Sir Robert Cecil and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex,” in Elizabeth I: The Collected Works, 335.

  51. I phrase myself cautiously because immediate reactions are irretrievable. What I am talking about are eyewitness accounts, as provided by letters, journals, and other documents, written in the aftermath of an actual encounter with the queen (like the journal of de Maisse, discussed below).

  52. Harington, Nugae Antique, 2:215–17.

  53. Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney, August 30, 1600, in Letters, 529–30.

  54. Montrose acknowledges the highly “subjective” nature of his collection of “slanderous, flattering, or merely curious anecdotes,” which he justifies by reference to his interest in “perceptions and ideological appropriations of the Queen” (Subject of Elizabeth, 247). Fair enough, except that most works he cites in support of his claim that Elizabeth had become an object of contempt during her own lifetime were written after she died. Compare Bishop Goodman’s sense in the 1650s that in the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign “the people were very generally weary of an old woman’s government” (quoted in Court of King James I, 1.97) to the French Ambassador’s sense in 1597 that “her government is fairly pleasing to the people, who show that they love her, but it is little pleasing to the great men and nobles; and if by chance she should die, it is certain that the English would never again submit to the rule of a woman” (De Maisse, Journal, 11–12). De Maisse mentions the queen’s gender as a source of resentment but not her age (although he does discuss her age in other contexts; see below).

  55. Harington, Nugae Antique, 1:317.

  56. Platter, Travels, 192. See also Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe, 11–12; and Guy, Elizabeth, 363, for other such testimonials from foreign visitors.

  57. Richards, “Love and a Female Monarch,” 158.

  58. Harington, Nugae Antique, 1:362, 1:360, 1:167.

  59. Simon Forman’s dream testifies in similar fashion to the lasting allure of this “little elderly woman” capable of “talking and reasoning of many matters” (quoted in Montrose, “Shaping Fantasies,” 32). Levin points out that the queen’s attractiveness stems from her power in the Forman dream; clearly, the aphrodisiacal aspects of power need not benefit men only (Dreaming, 151). See also Hackett, “Dream-Visions,” 45–66.

  60. Montrose, Subject of Elizabeth, 232.

  61. Martin, Constituting Old Age, 48–49.

  62. De Maisse, Journal, 37.

  63. Riehl, Face of Queenship, 46–47, 75–77.

  64. De Maisse, Journal, 110, 38, 60–61, 82.

  65. Machiavelli, Prince, 71.

  66. De Maisse, Journal, 27.

  67. Marlowe, “Elegia XIII,” Poems, 59–60, ll.42–43.

  68. “An Epilogue by Shakespeare?,” in Riverside Shakespeare, ll.8–15.

  69. Davison, Davison’s Poems, 254. The queen’s “agelessness” became a “persistent theme of late panegyric” (Hackett, “Dream-Visions,” 64).

  70. Ralegh, “Nature that Washt Her Hands in Milke,” Poems, 112, ll.32–34. The concern with aging in Ralegh’s poetry may respond to “the spectacle of an aging monarch” (Martin, Constituting Old Age, 107).

  71. Spenser, Amoretti, 67.5; Poetry, 614. See also Ralegh’s “Ocean to Cynthia,” which dwells on its speaker’s “vain thought” (129). The lover who loves in vain derives from the Petrarchan tradition. George Gascoigne was another poet who assumed the pose of the aging lover; see Laam, “Aging the Lover.”

  72. For these rumors, see Levin, Heart and Stomach, 71–90; and Robert Shephard, “Sexual Rumours,” 101–22.

  73. Allen, Admonition, xviii–xix.

  74. Adams, “Dudley, Robert.”

  75. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 193; Haynes and Murdin, “Confession of Arthur Guntor,” 365. On Leicester vs. Hatton and Ralegh, see, e.g., Montrose, Subject of Elizabeth, 203; and Perry, Literature and Favoritism, 31. According to Perry, a distinctive contribution of Leicester’s Commonwealth is the representation of Leicester as an upstart. In fact, the charge haunted Leicester from the onset of his career; see Vanhoutte, “Itinerarium.”

  76. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 80. The Duke of Norfolk made a similar observation earlier in the reign (MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I, 92).

  77. Elizabeth to the Earl of Leicester, April 1586, in Elizabeth I: The Collected Works, 277.

  78. Hatton’s correspondence routinely refers to these nicknames. For example, Walsingham wrote to Hatton that the queen “feareth greatly her Mutton, lest he should take some harm amongst those disordered people” (April 23, 1579, in Harris, Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton, 115).

  79. Notably, Burghley’s personal relationship with the queen “was based upon trustworthiness and length of service” rather than “elaborate romantic courtesies” (Hammer, “Absolute and Sovereign Mistress,” 42).

  80. Elizabeth I to Lord Burghley, received May 8, 1583, in Wright, Queen Elizabeth and Her Times, 2:201.

  81. Castiglione, Courtier, 165.

  82. Quoted in Shephard, “Sexual Rumours,” 104.

  83. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, 51.

  84. L’Aubespine-Chateauneuf, “Ambassade,” 79. Translation mine.

  85. Peck, introduction to News, 142. See also chapter 3.

  86. One sympathetic contemporary describes Leicester’s “aged bodie” at this time (“Dead Mans Right,” A3r).

  87. Holinshed, Chronicles, 1426. The work’s pro-Leicestrian tendencies are evident in its inclusion of a long treatise “of the earles of Leicester by succession” (1419). See also News.

  88. “Epitaphium,” Leicester’s Commonwealth, 292.

  89. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, 51–52. The Latin phrase translates as “I came, I saw, I went back.”

  90. On this tract’s depiction of Leicester as “some sort of sex addict or monster,” see also Lake, “From Leicester his Commonwealth,” 143; and Perry, Literature and Favoritism, 27.

  91. Sidney, “Defense of Leicester,” 262.

  92. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 89.

  93. Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, 58.

  94. Leicester to Elizabeth I, January 16, 1570, Calendar of State Papers, 198–99. On the badge’s ubiquity, see also the introduction. The badge featured prominently in various entries into Dutch cities; see, e.g., Delineatio Pompae Triumphalis (1586).

  95. Nichols, Progresses, 1:527.

  96. In the Letter purportedly written by Robert Laneham describing the entertainments, initially suppressed but reprinted in 1585. See also Stephen Dickey, “Shakespeare’s Mastiff Comedy,” 278.

  97. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 72–73, 193.

  98. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 25.

  99. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 100, 193.

  100. On the tract’s popularity, see Peck, introduction to Leicester’s Commonwealth, 46–51.

  101. Lake, Bad Queen Bess?, 127.

  102. Leicester’s Commonwealth, 187.
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  103. Harington, Tract on the Succession, 44.

  104. Sidney, “Defense of Leicester,” 256.

  105. “Letter of Estate,” 24.

  106. Discours de la Vie Abominable, front matter. The accompanying poem identifies Leicester as the infamous bear, noted for his ferocity, his tyranny, and his luxury.

  107. Camden, Annales, 3.288. According to Adams, Camden derived these materials from Leicester’s Commonwealth (Leicester and the Court, 53–56).

  108. Dickey discusses the hierarchical nature of bearbaitings as well as their noisiness (“Shakespeare’s Mastiff Comedy,” 263).