’twas observable yt ye quene waxed uncontent;
and in time labor’d grandiose speeche out of
ye mouth of Lady Alice, who manifestly did mightily
pride herself thereon, did quite exhauste ye quene’s
endurance, who listened till ye gaudy speeche was
done, then lifted up her brows, and with vaste irony,
mincing saith ’O shit!’ Whereat they alle
did laffe, but not ye Lady Alice, yt olde foolish
bitche.
Now was Sr. Walter minded of a tale he once did
hear ye ingenious Margrette of Navarre relate, about
a maid, which being like to suffer rape by an olde
archbishoppe, did smartly contrive a device to save
her maidenhedde, and said to him, First, my lord,
I prithee, take out thy holy tool and piss before
me; which doing, lo his member felle, and would not
rise again.
The historical consistency of 1601 indicates that
Twain must have given the subject considerable thought.
The author was careful to speak only of men who conceivably
might have been in the Virgin Queen’s closet
and engaged in discourse with her.
At this time (1601) Queen Elizabeth was 68 years old.
She speaks of having talked to “old Rabelais”
in her youth. This might have been possible
as Rabelais died in 1552, when the Queen was 19 years
old.
Among those in the party were Shakespeare, at that
time 37 years old; Ben Jonson, 27; and Sir Walter
Raleigh, 49. Beaumont at the time was 17, not
16. He was admitted as a member of the Inner
Temple in 1600, and his first translations, those
from Ovid, were first published in 1602. Therefore,
if one were holding strictly to the year date, neither
by age nor by fame would Beaumont have been eligible
to attend such a gathering of august personages in
the year 1601; but the point is unimportant.
In the Conversation Shakespeare speaks of Montaigne’s
Essays. These were first published in 1580 and
successive editions were issued in the years following,
the third volume being published in 1588. “In
England Montaigne was early popular. It was
long supposed that the autograph of Shakespeare in
a copy of Florio’s translation showed his study
of the Essays. The autograph has been disputed,
but divers passages, and especially one in The Tempest,
show that at first or second hand the poet was acquainted
with the essayist.” (Encyclopedia Brittanica.)
The company at the Queen’s fireside discoursed
of Lilly (or Lyly), English dramatist and novelist
of the Elizabethan era, whose novel, Euphues, published
in two parts, ‘Euphues’, or the ‘Anatomy
of Wit’ (1579) and ‘Euphues and His England’
(1580) was a literary sensation. It is said to
have influenced literary style for more than a quarter
of a century, and traces of its influence are found
in Shakespeare. (Columbia Encyclopedia).
