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Queen Elizabeth, Spenser's Mercilla, and a Rusty Sword

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

William Nelson
William Nelson*
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

When Sir John Harington visited court in 1601, some time after the aborted putsch of the Earl of Essex, he found the Queen still terribly disturbed. She ate little, dressed carelessly, and frowned on all the ladies. Harington wrote to his friend Sir John Portman, ‘I must not say much, even by this trustie and sure messenger; but the many evil plots and designs have overcome all her Highness’ sweet temper. She walks much in her privy chamber, and stamps with her feet at ill news, and thrusts her rusty sword at times into the arras in great rage…. the dangers are over, and yet she always keeps a sword by her table.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance News , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , Summer 1965 , pp. 113 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1965

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References

1 The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington, ed. N. E. McClure (Philadelphia, 1930),P. 90. The editor dates the letter October 9, 1601. Sir John Neale (Queen Elizabeth, London, 1934, repr. 1950, p. 378) finds this date ‘incredible’ and would assign the letter to a time shortly after the Essex rising or during the difficult weeks following Essex's execution (February 25).

2 Ibid., p. 379.

3 Pharsalia I, 11. 239 ff. The translation is that of J. D. Duff.

4 Florida, III, 17, 80-1 (ed. G. F. Hildebrand).

5 Lydgate's version, EETS Ex. Ser. 77, 83, 92; p. 312,11. 11,434-11,444.

6 General Prologue, 1. 618. See Brooks Forehand, ‘Old Age and Chaucer's Reeve,' PMLA, LXIX (1954), 984-989.

7 IV, iii 373-374.

8 The Faerie Queene, 1, 4, 35; 1, 9, 29, and 36; II, 4, 44; II, 9, 13; III, 12, II ; v, 8, 29; VI, 6, 9.

9 v, iii, 169-170. Some editors emend to ‘rest,’ but the bloody sense of'rust’ is strong enough to justify the text.

10 The Faerie Queene, v, 9, 30.

11 Lines 40-42.

12 The Poems of Queen Elizabeth I, ed. Leicester Bradner (Providence, R. I., 1964), p. 4.

13 Ed. Willcock and Walker (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 247-248.

14 The Arundel Harington Manuscript of Tudor Poetry (Columbus, Ohio, 1960), II, 386, 388. I do not think that the coincidence of rusty swords in The Faerie Queene and in Elizabeth's poem can be explained by common reference to a proverbial expression. M. P. Tilley (A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1950, No. S 1051) cites the following as appearing in two seventeenth-century collections of proverbs: ‘The rusty sword and empty purse plead performance of covenants.’ Here the weapon signifies peaceful settlement but the idea of unused strength is not conveyed.

15 Lines 576, 577.

16 The Jewels and Plate of Queen Elizabeth I: The Inventory of 1574, ed. J. Collins (London, 1955), Item 1365, p. 536. I owe this reference and those cited in Note 18 to the kindness of Mrs. Susan Solberg.

17 Calendar of State Papers: Venetian (1592-1603), No. 1135. The report is that of Giovanni Carlo Scaramelli, the date February 19, 1603.

18 Roy Strong, Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (Oxford, 1963), Woodcut No. 6, Painting No. 85. The woodcut appeared in Richard Day, Christian Prayers and Meditations in English (London, 1569) and in Day's A Booke of Christian Prayers (London, 1578, and subsequent editions). The painting shows Elizabeth holding an olive branch in her right hand. The sword at her feet is a very large one; by it sits a little dog. For a suggestion linking the dog to Astraea see Frances Yates, ‘Queen Elizabeth as Astraea,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute, x (1947), 68, n. 1.

A remarkable instance of a real rusty sword with a symbolic purpose has been brought to my attention by Professor Donno. According to a news report published in the New York World-Telegram and Sun (February 23, 1965), the sword was one of the ritual objects used at an initiation ceremony of the Ku Klux Klan in Lithonia, Georgia. It was said to stand for ‘courage and willingness to fight.'