Susan Felch and I are just finishing up a Norton Critical Edition that
gathers together major works witten by, for, and about Elizabeth. Most
of the items published before 1603 are, at least potentially, things
that she was familiar with. Anyone who'd like to see our table of
contentents should drop me a note off line ([log in to unmask]). The
anthology is not comprehensive, by any means, but it's large and gives
a pretty good idea of the best English work written directly for the
Queen's eyes. Called /Elizabeth I and Her Age, /it includes about 470
printed pages of such material.
As Sean Gordon indicates, however, it's hard to know which of these
works she actually took the time to read. Items directly presented to
her by court figures with access to her inner circles--Essex, Oxford,
Ralegh, Sidney, Mary Sidney, Harington, Bacon, etc--seem pretty safe
bets. Works by figures outside that sphere of familiarity--Spenser,
Chapman, Davies, Lyly, Peele, Drayton, etc.--are harder to be sure
about. The most demonstrably certain are, of course, the works she
translated (Boethius, Navarre, etc.), the civic-entry pageants, the
summer-progress entertainments, the devices for Accession Day tilts, and
the plays known to have been been performed before her (for these last,
Chambers's /Elizabethan Stage /is still the best source). For some of
the performace pieces, we even have indications of the Queen's reactions
to what she was seeing, and printed accounts often indicate precisely
which of the planned festivities she was present for and which were
cancelled or performed without her.
Donald Stump
William Oram wrote:
>Can anyone tell me where (if anywhere) I can find out what English
>authors Elizabeth I was familiar with? (To a lesser extent I'm also
>interested in what she knew of French and Italian writers.)
>Thanks,
>Bill Oram
>
>
|