And still more on Elizabeth I...

[fajrdrako]

At some point, I promise, I'll stop talking about this show.

After we'd watched it, Beulah asked me if I thought Elizabeth Tudor was really a virgin till her death. My answer was sensible and unhelpful; incomplete, though true: I said that historians can't answer that, it would take a psychic to read her mind because the only people who knew (Elizabeth and whoever she might have been with) weren't talking.

But that's actually a dumb answer. The question (and the implied assumptions) treat sex like an either/or black and white proposition. Sex is really a continuum anywhere from a glance across a crowded room to shared orgasm however you get there, and I don't necessarily mean mutual/simultaneous orgasm either. There are lots of ways to have sex without vaginal penetration. So I would like to think that Elizabeth and Leicester (or Essex) had lots of mutually happy sex, but that she was still being legally honest in saying she was a virgin.

Sadly, though, they're not likely to show us that in a historical miniseries, even if they have no qualms about evisceration and severed heads.

Moreover, this isn't a considered or scholarly conclusion based on historical evidence. It's based on my own sense of reality and wishful thinking.

Another retrospective thought about the show is another thought of the characters I wish we'd seen, but didn't - some of them probably omitted because they related to the first twenty years of Elizabeth's reign, which were skipped entirely. John Dee, Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and his actors, Roger Ascham, the Earl of Oxford, Sir Walter Raleigh, and while I'm thinking along those lines, Francis Crawford....

Okay, I shouldn't gripe, if they're featured the stories of all those people the show would have been multiple times the length it was. (Would I mind?)

I count myself lucky I got that lovely glimpse of the young James.

The history was extraordinarily good, as far as I could see. I love the way bits of Shakespeare cropped up from time to time, like a theatrical in-joke. But they did fudge by implying that the wonderful sonnet at the end was written by Essex for Elizabeth right before his execution. I knew the poem - I memorized it years ago - it was by Chidiock Tichborne, one of the Babbington plot group. Nicely inserted, but rather jarring to see it reattributed.

I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

Comments

[acampbell.livejournal.com]

There's a new program on QE I? Where can I find it!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It was a two-part series on HBO so I couldn't get it on TV either, though one of the digital movie channels showed it. Since Sheila got that channel, I talked her into taping it - she's going to give me a DVD copy. Do you want me to tape it for you? (I can't do DVD copies. Not yet!)

It's good.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

I think the film "Elizabeth" dealt well with this issue, though of course it's only an interpretation of what might've provoked her to adopt the "Virgin Queen" persona. Essentially the identification with the virgin queen of heaven (Mary) would have been a fantastically good political move because it would deftly replace a Catholic religious symbol with a Protestant secular one, satisfying both the disenfranchized Catholics and the Protestants who could then safely agree that this was, in fact, the head of their church.

As to whether she was a technical virgin, I get the impression that to the Tudors and Elizabethans, sex was simply what you did when you got old enough to have such feelings. Though she was a princess, she had no true hope of the throne when she reached that age (and probably no certainty that she would live to marry,) I'm going to guess that she had no compunctions about taking her pleasure and comfort where she chose.

So, like you, I would assume that she did in fact have a happy sex life at least in the early years, and that her identification as "virgin" had more to do with the notion that no man would ever own her, a wise way to self-identify for a woman whose father was Henry VIII, IMO. She had to have been aware of the power men had over the women they took to their beds. And of course her sister was one of those women who allowed herself to be owned by a man, or at least her love for him, and served as an example of how Elizabeth didn't want to behave. In all, I think the idea of a kind of emotional virginity would have been a perfect mask for her to wear to build the kind of persona that allowed her to hold the throne and its power for herself.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, I like the way "Elizabeth" handled it too - the idea of the Virgin Mary being replaced by the Virgin Queen was brilliant and may well have been, in a psychological sense, historically true. What a boost for the English Protestant identity - Henry VIII could never have pulled it off, but Elizabeth could.

I agree with you about Tudors and sex, too. Given that (at least according to this show) both Essex and Leicester married when (and because) their high-born girlfriends became pregnant, it wasn't a particularly chaste court. And as the show hints, there was a degree of fooling around among the men, too.

Not only did Elizabeth see the horror-show that Mary's marriage turned out to be, she had the even worse horror-show of her parents' marriage to think of, which had ended with her mother's death. Then there'd the alternate horror-show of Mary's marriage to Darnley... She had very good reason not to offer any man the control over her that he would get by marrying her. And the social/political implications were bad enough already.

I thought this show was very restrained with it came to the Duc d'Anjou, who, as far as I could see, wasn't even wearing his death's-dead buttons. Are we supposed to believe, in this version, that no one even told Elizabeth about Anjou's eccentricities, let alone the more scurrilous gossip? I don't believe that Elizabeth herself, or the English court, would be naive about any proposed marriage.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I always suspected that the folks who wanted the Anjou marriage to take place might've been less than forthcoming with Elizabeth, hoping, perhaps that he'd have the sense to tone down the peculiarities long enough to get married, and of course once that's accomplished... Except, given who her father was, I don't see her sitting still for a rotten marriage, though presumably she was still young enough that her advisors might not have recognized that.

I've got a copy of this series lying around somewhere. Perhaps I'll pop it in this week and check it out. Thanks for the rec.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Though I don't have the historical references to back me up, I've always thought that Anjou was clever, and in many ways the best of his messed-up family - imaginative, creative, articulate, and tolerant. Perhaps the marriage would not have been the disaster it at first appears, who knows?

Do let me know what you think of the series, when you see it.

Are you able to watch it without thinking of Lymond from time to time?

[dargie.livejournal.com]

It would not be difficult to be a bright spot in that family, though I don't know nearly enough about them.

I shall certainly let you know what I think. meanwhile, I saw the first ep of "Elizabeth I" on Masterpiece Theatre last night, and wasn't awfully impressed. There was no energy to it, and the young man who played Dudley was more a beefy jock than... well, my idea of what Dudley should've been. There was a scene in which Elizabeth puts Norfolk firmly in his place by listing her prodigious accomplishments (by any standards, but doubly remarkable in a young woman) and it occurred to me that had Robert not been at least at a point where he could hold his own with her in many of these areas, she might well have tired of him early on. Physical attraction, particularly if it's satisfied, doesn't last.

Though I must admit that Joe Fiennes was a spectacularly attractive RD. Yum.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It would not be difficult to be a bright spot in that family

Well, true enough. A bunch of sociopaths. Mary Queen of Scots was well out of it. I wonder why that generation turned out so strange? Was it because of Catherine de Medicis? Francis II and Henri II seemed stable enough.

I saw the first ep of "Elizabeth I" on Masterpiece Theatre last night

Is that another show about Elizabeth I? Who plays her? More to the point, is it showing in Canada? I must research this.

There was no energy to it

What a pity. If ever a woman - or an age - had energy, that was it. In spades!


Joe Fiennes was a spectacularly attractive RD. Yum.

Oh, really? Sounds promising! Though I confess, though I mad over Ralph Fiennes, Joe Fiennes has yet to impress me. Maybe this will be it.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

Okay I made a mistake on the title. It's The Virgin Queen" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0481459/) (fairly apropos to this discussion, neh?) and the title role is played by a woman named "Anne-Marie Duff who is remarkably Elizabethan. Kevin McKidd plays Norfolk, and he does manage to inject some energy into the proceedings, but mostly it's a lackluster cast, IMO, which has nothing much to do except move from room to room, plotting. This does not make for compelling TV. Tom Hardy is Leicester.

Joe-as-Leicester is from "Elizabeth." If you didn't care for him there, or in "Shakespeare in Love" it's possible you're immune. I do find that big fans of his brother are left cold by Joe.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't remember Joe Fiennes in Elizabeth very well. I remember that I liked him - but obviously he didn't make quite the impression he might have. Yeah, I'm a Ralph fan, so that bears out your theory, but they're very different types.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

I also meant to say that as I was watching, it occurred to me that another reason for her very public assumption of the mantle of "Virgin Queen" was because her ministers never tired of trying to assure the succession by marrying her off to some old fart, or young pervert. *g* Some of them loathed having a queen on the throne instead of a king, and wanted her subject to a royal husband. To stand up in front of her people and declare that she would live and die a virgin for the sake of her kingdom, would have put up a more effective roadblock to the marriage crap than virtually anything else. But my sense of "virgin" is still more one of woman-not-subject-to-any-man than of intact. It seems to dovetail nicely with the idea of kingdom-not-subject-to-any-foreign-power.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a very good analogy - virginity as representational authority over the self. It has the added political virtue of being a religious virtue as well - not necessarily as image of Mary (as in Elizabeth, that's another issue) but as those strong martyred saints, many of whom had brutish pagan husbands. The 'virgin' image works for Elizabeth on all levels, and plays up female strengths.

Though marriage might have brought her the advantage of having an heir, from her point of view there was nothing particularly wrong with James of Scotland, and she would have seen the various childbirth problems of her sister Mary. Not to mention the many women who miscarried, or died in childbirth, or had other monumental problems Elizabeth was better off without.

Another problem was that any man with the power and rank to marry her also had the power and rank to fight her for the position to rule.

Altogether, I think Elizabeth was incredibly clever in the way she handled her position, with commoners, nobles and council alike.

But I'd like to think she found some happiness with Leicester. I liked the way the Helen Mirren series handled it, where the relationship evolved into a trust friendship.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

It would've been a nightmare to give up her autonomy and put England under the thumb of a foreign ruler and then not be able to produce an heir. Even her own mother produced only one living female child. Admittedly Henry didn't give her a lot of opportunity, but still.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Yes. All in all, the dangers of being single (and childless) were far less than the dangers of any alternative - not just to Elizabeth herself, but for England. I think the resistance to a husband of lesser birth than her own became a rather useful excuse: there were no Englishmen of her rank, and no one really wanted a foreigner. Meanwhile she was able to build a mystique that worked for her.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

I would like to think that Elizabeth and Leicester (or Essex) had lots of mutually happy sex

Have you seen the picture of them (I'm reasonably sure it's Leicester) dancing La Volta?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't think so - is it online somewhere?

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

Not sure; I've only ever seen it in books. The striking thing is that there aren't all that many dances where one figure actually requires the man to cop a feel of his partner.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I must do some browsing (either online or at the library) since I'm now curious and want to see the picture.

Heck, I want to read a bio of Elizabeth and/or Essex and/or Leicester. I have in the past read at least two biographies of Elizabeth, but that was long ago and far away.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

It's basically like the dance in the latest "Harry Potter" film, but the man lifts the woman on his forearm having passed his hand between her legs.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Cool!

[chazzbanner.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think she was a technical virgin all her life, and that earlier ages didn't find that impossible - there were plenty of people who vowed celibacy for one reason or other and carried through with it. To me, there is a whole web of things having to do with her childhood and adolescence that made sex a very scary thing for her.. no, I'm not a Freudian, really, but the absolute power that her father had over his bedmates could have scared any sensitive child! She did talk over and over again about not wanting men to have power over her. And possibly she had a fear of childbirth, since key women in her childhood died that way, too.

I've heard it put this way: that her private fears and her public policy meshed. It was easier to avoid marriage with her own nobility, or foreign royalty, if part of her didn't want to marry at all.

I remember reading one historian who said he was satisfied of her virginity because of the behavior of the courtiers, each of whom basically insisted on knowing if his rival(s) 'got to first base' because he hadn't, and he might be in trouble if the other guy did. LOL Well he didn't say it quite that way, but it was persuasive when I read it. Very much like a bunch of overgrown, hotheaded boys would act.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

there were plenty of people who vowed celibacy for one reason or other and carried through with it.

Well, of course. I didn't mean to discount that! Whatever happened (or didn't happen), it's very clear that Elizabeth was determined to keep her personal autonomy and no degree of sexual temptation (or profound love) would change that. And it put her in a difficult position.

At the same time, she seems to have had the passionate, life-embracing temperament that was typical of the Tudors, and the strain is visible even after four centuries. Mixed feelings? Frustration? Anger that it wasn't easier to be a Queen and have a love life at the same time?

Very much like a bunch of overgrown, hotheaded boys would act.

I'm sure there was a lot of jealousy - sexual and otherwise.

I suspect also that Elizabeth knew she couldn't trust anyone fully - husband or lover or anyone else.

[msilverstar]

Fun topic! I find it perfectly logical (if sad) to assume that she never had much physical sexual contact with anyone. For all those reasons listed above.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Sad indeed. I'd like to think she was clever enough to find a way - despite, or even because of, the risks. But I agree that the powers against it were compelling.

Not the least point being that she couldn't afford the true vulnerability that love would bring her.

[chazzbanner.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot to mention the other side of Elizabeth's past. Her mother was called the French whore, and I think Elizabeth was watched very closely to see if she would be like her. Becuase of this I can't see her having casual sex as a young princess - she was still looked at as the bastard of the French whore. From all I've read, this was a psychc wound - she never talked about her mother, but had her picture in her private cabinet, and gave favors to her maternal relatives.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I think if my father had beheaded my mother for adultery, it would be a psychic wound, too. You make a good point. The whole issue of sexuality was a significant social point not just between Elizabeth and her God, but Elizabeth and the people. I don't think she would be dishonest with either. But where's the line between public and private life?

[dargie.livejournal.com]

Veering off here for a minute, what think you of the notion -- if you are familiar with it -- that Anne Boleyn was the substitute victim for Henry's divine king?

If you're not familiar, this is a belief that because the Spirit of God enters a king, he becomes, essentially, a life-giver to his people. It's therefore critical that the king remain healthy and vital, which generally came to revolve around the idea that he is capable of providing heirs to the throne. In some times and places, a king who was weakening, would be put to death, allowing the spirit to enter a strong new body. In some places this occurred every seven years. In others, a substitute king could be offered as a sacrifice in the place of the real king.

Margaret Murray, in her book "The Divine King in England" discusses the working of this belief within England, and suggests that Anne was one of those substitutes who went willingly to her death to preserve Henry's rule. It's a fascinating book, and discusses how pervasive the old religion was within England. Out of print, though.

Katherine Kurz wrote a novel on this subject, entitled "Lammas Night" and it's excellent. Also oop. Not to be confused with Mysti Lackey's "Lammas Night"

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I've come across similar theories, not so much in English history but in Mediterranean and ancient history. I'd like to read the Murray book - another task for Interlibrary Loan.

Without knowing the evidence and arguments she puts forth, my first reaction is to think it sounds anachronistic to apply it as a significant strain of thought in the Tudor period - but in every period, up to and including the present, there are so many strains of thought, it'd hard to tell from a distance what's significant. I'd love to know what Murray's sources were. Without having researched it specifically, my opinion is that the old religion was not particuarly pervasive in England of the time - existing still in folklore and colouring their thought, but not an important factor in their world-view.

But Murray may know all sorts of evidence that I don't.

Does Murray think that Henry VIII was consciously and deliberately playing on these symbols, or that he was influenced by the "Old Religion" himself?

[dargie.livejournal.com]

I don't really recall as much about Henry's involvement in the whole situation as I do about the conjectures about Anne, and her family. I have read in other sources, though I don't recall which, that the Boleyns were an hereditary witch family.

Either way, I found Murray's ideas interesting and often compelling, but then it's an idea I'm very taken with and that does make a difference to how receptive we are to any argument.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I have read in other sources, though I don't recall which, that the Boleyns were an hereditary witch family.

She was accused of witchcraft - wasn't that one of the capital charges against her? And she had that extra finger. It could well be that her family was suspected of the same crimes, since they were implicated in the charges against her - and don't I have a memory of something incestuous in the story? In any case, I am far from an expert in Henry or Anne Boleyn and I'm curious about all of it.

The place I have mostly come across English 'Old Religion' theories is in relation to Robin Hood, and I'm suspicious of the idea in that case, mostly because they seem to involve badly researched, badly understood history. I'm not saying that is likely the case with the Murray book.

I do find that historian tend to forget, confuse, or underestimate the importance of bloodlines, particuarly through the female line.

[dargie.livejournal.com]

She was accused of incest with her brother, George, IIRC.

While you're looking into the Murray, do take a look at "From Ritual to Romance" by Weston. It's another study of mystery cults. Fascinating.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

George? That sounds right.

My library does have "From Ritual to Romance", so I ordered it. Thanks for the reference.