Surviving scandal, plots, her father's ploys
And sister's doubts, young Bess won through to reign,
Discarding fears (as they were broken toys!)
Of treason, Scottish queen, the Pope and Spain.
"I have the heart and stomach of a King!",
She told her troops, defying the Armada.
Yes, martial valour is a splendid thing...
But once she met a challenge far, far harder!
For when that mouse skittered across the floor
Her "male" heart quaked as "feeble woman's" ought,
And Gloriana, though long past three score,
Flashing her smart silk stockings at the court,
Terrified (for with truth I shall not palter!)
Leapt skyward in one last tremendous Volta!
I feel sure that most Allpoetry readers will recognize the quotation from Elizabeth I''s speech to her troops at Tilbury (1588):
"I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king - and a king of England, too!"
I do not know any written source for tht incident describes in this poem - it seems to have been handed down in the Nottingham lace industry. My grandfather (born in Nottingham, the grandson of an Irish lacemaker who moved to Nottingham during the Great Famine) used to say that it is what lies behind the nursery rhyme "Pussy-cat, pussy-cat where have you been?"
For readers somewhat unfamiliar with the social history of 16th century England:
in 1597, Queen Elizabeth I granted a patent (in effect a monopoly) to a Nottingham hosier who had developed a new device for knitting silk stockings - on condition he kept her well supplied with them for life (gratis, of course!). His device was later adapted to lace-making... hence the Nottingham lace-industry.
"La Volta" (dance - not poetic device!) came to England in - I think - the 1520's - and involved the women dancers in high leaps (in which their male partners supported them). Old-fashioned people (and in particular, the clergy - but they would, wouldn't they!)considered it shocking... but it was a favourite dance of Anne Boleyn (Elizabeth's mother) - and, indeed, of Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, until he grew too fat and old to dance. Elizabeth would have danced it in her youth (I have recently seen a picture that some experts think is of Elizabeth and her favourite Robert Dudley,earl of Leicester, dancing the Volta), but by the late 1590s, the setting of this poem, it was somewhat out of fashion!
Adding your comment:
