Hi, Sean. I Googled (if you Google lions and Eiizabeth you get scads
of stuff on an African game park named Elizabeth) and something like
this is in Agnes Strickland's biography from long ago, p. 368 in the
Google-book, and with a note citing a dispatch from the French
diplomat back La Mothe Fenelon home to his king (vol 6, p. 190 of his
dispatches, which sure seems like a whole lot of dispatches. There was
a book from long ago that collected the sayings of Queen Elizabeth,
but one shouldn't trust them. Try the Calendar of State Papers? In
July 1574 Elizabeth is talking to Fenelon and says she isn't quite a
lioness but derives from a lion. Good luck tracking your lion. Anne.
On Sep 16, 2008, at 5:54 PM, Sean Gordon Henry wrote:
> I've had a very frustrating afternoon trying to pin down a quotation
> attributed to Elizabeth I in a couple of different forms, but I've
> had little luck and thought I would turn your collective learning
> and generosity to see whether anyone could help me with it. The
> quotation runs,
>
> "Although I may not be a lion [or "lioness"], I am a lion's cub, and
> inherit many of his qualities [or "and I have a lion's heart"]
> [sometimes continuing, "and as long as the King of France treats me
> gently he will find me as gentle and tractable as he can desire; but
> if he be rough, I shall take the trouble to be just as troublesome
> and offensive to him as I can"].
>
> Puttenham records an anecdote involving the queen crushing a
> crawling timeserver by comparing herself to a lion, but I can't find
> a source for the other quotation (apart from a very clear memory of
> Glenda Jackson delivering a similar line). I've been scouring EEBO
> and ransacking my copy of Neale's biography, which I had to hand,
> with no success. The internet has been singularly unhelpful as well,
> though as early modern scholars you may all be gratified to know how
> many websites devoted to self-motivation employ the Elizabeth
> quotation.
>
> Obviously not self-motivated enough,
> Sean.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Sean Henry
> Doctoral Candidate, Department of English
> The University of Western Ontario
> London, Ont., Canada
>
> "I’ve half a mind to shake myself
> Free just for once from London,
> To set my work upon the shelf
> And leave it done or undone."
>
> ("A Farm Walk," Christina Rossetti)
>
>
>
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