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Queen Elizabeth I as Oriana1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Roy C. Strong
Roy C. Strong*
Affiliation:
University of London, The Warburg Institute
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Extract

On May Day 1602 Queen Elizabeth went a-maying to Sir Richard Buckley's at Lewisham. The occasion was probably graced by a show of horsemen and the song Of Cinthia, the lyrics of which represent the quintessence of the cult of the queen in the last years of her reign:

      Lands and Seas shee rules below,
      Where things change, and ebbe and flowe,
      Spring, wax olde, and perish;
      Only Time which all doth mowe,
      Her alone doth cherish.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 6 , 1959 , pp. 251 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1959

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Footnotes

1

This article has been evoked by a B.B.C. radio talk by Miss Elizabeth Cole, in which she attempted to identify the heroine of Morley's Triumphes of Oriana as Anne of Denmark. For the main substance of this talk see the review by The Times music critic on 7 February 1958. A shorter review is in The Musical Times, April 1958, p. 198.

References

2 The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. N. E. McClure (Philadelphia, 1939), 1, 145.

3 Davison, Francis, A Poetical Rhapsody, ed. Rollins, H. E. (Cambridge, Mass., 1931), 1, 236 Google Scholar as sung ‘on Maie day last’.

4 Dekker, T., Works (London, 1873), I, 83 Google Scholar.

5 See Hawes, W., The Triumphs of Oriana (London, 1814)Google Scholar; Grove, G., Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1954), VIII, 550 Google Scholar. Earlier attempts to solve the Triumphes are in Hawkins, J., A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776), III, 405–406 Google Scholar; Burney, C., A General History of Music (London, 1789), III, 101, note (c)Google Scholar.

6 See Kerman, J., ‘Morley and “The Triumphes of Oriana”‘, Music and Letters XXXIV, 1953, 185–191 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reese, G., Music in the Renaissance (New York, 1954), pp. 426–427 Google Scholar.

7 Kerman, op. cit.

8 14. Ayres in Tabletorie to the Lute (no. xxiv).

9 Both these points were stressed by Miss Cole in her talk. On the queen's dislike of Oriana see Thomas, H., Spanish and Portuguese Romances of Chivalry (Cambridge, 1920), p. 272 Google Scholar. Both Thomas and Grove (op. cit.) state that the Triumphes did not appear until 1603.

10 Arber, E., A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of the Stationers of London (London, 1875), III, 246 Google Scholar. Arber also notes this as evidence for the holding back of the Triumphes.

11 Historical MSS. Commission, Third Report, p. 44.

12 Hawes was the first to draw attention to this passage.

13 Camden, W., The History of… Elizabeth (London, 1688), p. 122 Google Scholar.

14 Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 1568-79, II, 105.

15 Ibid., pp. 121-122.

16 A list of translations into French, Italian, and German is in Thomas, H. ,The Romance of Amadis de Gaule (London, 1912), pp. 42–47 Google Scholar; see also Thomas, , Spanish and Portuguese Romances of Chivalry, pp. 180–241 Google Scholar, and, on its influence in England and the English translations, ibid., pp. 242 ff.; on its vogue in France, Vaganay, H., Amadis en Français (Florence, 1906)Google Scholar. Some attempt to show its influence on social life and literature is made by Baret, E., De l'Amadis de Gaule et de son influence (Paris, 1853), pp. 155 Google Scholar ff.

17 Three continental antecedents for the Amadis de Gaule tilt in England may be cited here: (1) A tournament with motifs from the romance held at Binche in 1549 as part of the famous set of fêtes staged by Mary of Hungary to celebrate the meeting of Prince Philip and his father, the Emperor Charles v (C. Ruelens, Le Siège et les fêtes de Binche ﹛1543 et 1549), Mons, 1878, Societé des Bibliophiles Beiges, Publication no. 25, pp. 77 ff.). (2) A castle tourney with characters from the Amadis de Gaule staged at Fontainebleau in 1564. The cartel by Ronsard was printed in his Mascarades, which he dedicated to Elizabeth and which was very influential in England (Œuvres, ed. G. Cohen, Abbeville, 1950, n, 1000-1001; see also Médeleine, J., ‘Quelques vers de Ronsard’, Melanges offerts par ses amis et ses tleves A M. Gustave Lanson, Paris, 1922, pp. 121–127 Google Scholar). (3) Amadis de Gaule themes were used in a tournament held in Burgos in 1570 to receive Anne of Austria ( Alenda y Mira, J., Relaciones de solemnidades y fiestas públicas de España, Madrid, 1903, 1, 78 Google Scholar).

18 B. M. Egerton MS. 2804, f. 84. The transcripts in Letters of Philip Gawdy, ed. I. H. Jeayes (Roxburghe Club, 1906), p. 67 (which omits quoth) and in the Historical MSS. Commission, Seventh Report, p. 524 (which reads ath for quoth) are inaccurate

19 For example Dowland's My heart and tongue were twins at once conceived, sung at the Sudeley Castle entertainment in 1592 ( Nichols, J., The Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, London, 1823 Google Scholar, III, 138) was not published until 1612 in his A Pilgrim's Solace (no. xviii).

20 Bodleian MS. Eng. misc.d.239.

21 Ibid., fol. 2.

22 Ibid., fol. 3.

23 This was suggested by Chambers, E. K., The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford, 1923), 1, 122 Google Scholar, note 3.

24 Others probably related to this group are no. iv (John Bennet), no. v (John Hilton), no. vi (George Marson), no. viii (John Holmes), no. ix (Richard Nicolson), no. x (Thomas Tomkins), no. xi (Michael Cavendish), no. xii (William Cobbold), no. xvii (Thomas Weelkes). The verses for East's Hence stars too dim of light and John Milton's Fair Orian in the morn, both of which have no specific reference to a festival, are subscribed I. L. Could this be John Lyly?

25 Ben Jonson, ed. Herford and Simpson, VII (Oxford, 1941), 119-131.

26 Ibid., pp. 124-125.

27 Elizabeth went a-maying to Highgate in 1601 (Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, IV, 113).

28 Ben Jonson, VII, 133-144.

29 Ibid., VII, 139.

30 B.M. Harleian MS. 6855, art. 13, fol. 37v—38 written at the end of a draft of his Basilikon Doron in emblemata versum (Royal MS. 12.A.LXVI) from which it is omitted. There are lacunae in the MS. and it has been badly trimmed.

31 The First Set of Madrigals and Pastorals (no. xxi).

32 See my article ‘The Popular Celebration of the Accession Day of Queen Elizabeth I’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XXI (1958), 103.