To Love and Be Wise : the Earl of Essex, Humanist Court Culture, and England\u27s Learned Queen

During two particular decades of her reign—the 1560s and the 1590s—Queen Elizabeth I strategically and publicly represented herself as a learned prince. In the 1590s alone, she staged several significant demonstrations of her erudition: she delivered a Latin oration at the University of Oxford (1592) while university officials, prominent nobles, and international dignitaries looked on; in the months after Henri IV converted to Catholicism in 1593, she translated Boethius; in 1597, she trounced the Spanish-allied Polish ambassador with a pert Latin speech; and in 1598, she translated excerpts from Horace Ars poetica and Plutarch\u27s essay De curiositate.[1] Although modern scholars have long praised Elizabeth\u27s impressive education, more attention should be devoted to the political implications of this public, royal self-image and its effect on the queen\u27s highly educated statesmen.[2] Throughout the sixteenth century, civic humanist philosophers drew upon the centuries-old association between good learning and good government to advocate different variations on a similar theme: that an ideal monarchy consisted of a learned ruler surrounded by similarly educated advisors.[3] When Elizabeth represented herself as a philosopher-prince, she portrayed herself as wise, politically potent, and morally upright—characteristics that helped to justify her personal right to rule the nation, even as an unmarried queen