Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- 1 The rhetoric of courtship: an introduction
- 2 The semantics of courtship
- 3 Courtship at court: some pageants and entertainments at the court of Elizabeth I
- 4 ‘Courtly courtesies’: ambivalent courtships in Euphues, Euphues and his England, and the Arcadia
- 5 ‘Of Court it seemes, men Courtesie doe call’: the Amoretti, Epithalamion, and The Faerie Queene, book vi
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Prologue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Prologue
- 1 The rhetoric of courtship: an introduction
- 2 The semantics of courtship
- 3 Courtship at court: some pageants and entertainments at the court of Elizabeth I
- 4 ‘Courtly courtesies’: ambivalent courtships in Euphues, Euphues and his England, and the Arcadia
- 5 ‘Of Court it seemes, men Courtesie doe call’: the Amoretti, Epithalamion, and The Faerie Queene, book vi
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the new year of 1575-6 George Gascoigne made Queen Elizabeth a handsome gift: a lavish manuscript containing ‘The Tale of Hemetes the Heremyte’ translated into four languages, and embellished with hand-drawn emblems. At the front of the book a picture shows the kneeling poet offering his manuscript to the Queen (see illus. 1), an image which neatly figures the bid for royal favour which the gift as a whole was clearly designed to represent:
fyndyng my youth myspent, my substaûce ympayred, my credytt accrased, my tallent hydden, my follyes laughed att, my rewyne unpytted, and my trewth unemployed/ all wch extremyties as they have of long tyme astonyed myne understanding, So have they of late openly called me to gods gates and yor matye being of God, godly, and (on earth) owr god (by god) appoynted, I presume lykewyse to knock att the gates of yor gracyous goodnes/ hopyng that yor highnes will sett me on worke though yt were noone and past before I soughte service.
Elizabeth had first heard the tale of Hemetes when on progress at Woodstock the previous summer. It is an elaborate, somewhat complicated story about three lovers, each of whom, for different reasons, is barred or separated from his mistress. In the miraculous and activating presence of the Queen, however, each lover is satisfied and restored, and, in inviting Elizabeth to interpret the tale not ‘grossely and literally’ but, rather, allegorically, Gascoigne alerts her to the obvious correspondence between the happily resolved courtships of his tale on the one hand and his own act of courtship on the other.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992