Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I ( 1533 – 1603 ),a daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn , and queen of England from 1558 to 1603 . She was celebrated by the greatest poets of her age, including Spenser , Ralegh , and Shakespeare , under such names as Cynthia and Gloriana (with many allusions to her semi-mythological role as Virgin Queen) and has been the subject of innumerable plays, novels, romances, and biographies. She was famed for her ready wit and for the stirring eloquence called forth in, for example, her speech at Tilbury on the approach of the Spanish Armada. She also wrote poetry, which was highly praised by her courtiers and by Puttenham , who used one of her few undisputed works (‘The doubt of future foes’, on the conspiracies of Mary Queen of Scots ) as an example of rhetoric in his Art of English Poesy. Her verses, which include a dozen or so undisputed lyrics and epigrams,...
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