The story behind the music

The closing chapter of Queen Elizabeth I’s life coincided with a golden age in English music and letters. Thi s was the time when William Byrd and John Dowland wrote some of their most haunting melodies, and during which William Shakespeare reached full maturity with plays like Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. Underlying this flowering of drama, poetry and songwriting was the sheer musicality of the English language in the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign, something the Queen took full advantage of in her own famously stirring speeches. English words could be married to English notes more naturally than at almost any time before or since: arguably only Gilbert and Sullivan, or more recently Britten and Auden, have come close.

Many of those who had the education and access to fine music, in other words those inside the charmed circle of Elizabeth’s court, were quick to record the course of events - or simply of their own emotions - in poetry and song, and some even used music in an attempt to influence the Queen herself. Foremost amongst these was Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, the ambitious, fiery young redhead whose bizarre and at times passionate relationship with the ageing Elizabeth ran like a smouldering fuse through the final years of her life. Essex was a larger than life figure of huge public interest. John Dowland wrote him a genuine Elizabethan theme-tune: not a stately memorial piece, the like of which commemorates many court dignitaries of the time, but, strikingly, a Galliard, the flashy jumping dance which Elizabeth loved to take part in, and, above all, to watch, when the dancer was the right kind of young nobleman.

When he felt he had something to prove, which in Essex’s case was most of the time, he had his own verses set to music and sung to Elizabeth by one of the court musicians, as the following account records

There was another time when Sir Fulke Greville eyther belike espying some wearinesse in the Queene, or perhaps with little change of the word though more in the danger some wariness towards him, and working upon the present matter had almost super-induced into favour the Earle of Southampton; which yet being timely discovered, my Lord of Essex chose to evaporate his thoughts in a Sonnet (being his common way) to be sung before the Queene, (as it was) by one Hales, in whose voyce she took some pleasure; whereof the complot, me thinkes, has as much of the Hermit as of the Poet:

And if thou shouldst by Her be now forsaken,

She made thy Heart too strong for to be shaken.

As if he had beene casting one eye back at the least to his retiredness. But all this likewise quickly vanished, and there was a good while after faire weather over-head…

When the emotional climate at court was not so kind to him, Essex liked to retire, in a sulk, to one of his country houses, like the one at Wanstead referred to in another song

Wanstead, my mistress saith this is the doom:

Thou art love's childbed, nursery and tomb.

O sweet woods! the delight of solitariness

O how much do I love your solitariness!

And even after his final fall from the Queen’s favour had led, with the horrific logic of a stage tragedy, to a futile attempted rebellion and imprisonment in the Tower of London, Essex turned once more to verse, penning dozens of penitential stanzas on this nocturnal theme:

From silent night, true register of moans,

From saddest soul consum’d with deepest sins,

From heart quite rent with sighs and heavy groans,

My wailing Muse her woeful work begins…

Some weeks later he was dead, executed for treason.

Our musical portrait of Elizabeth’s last years revolves around no less than seven pieces known to have played their part, one way or another, in the course of her relationship with Essex. My first thoughts were towards a straightforward dramatisation of their story in words and music, but as soon as I saw Susannah Waters’ witty and wonderful monologues I felt that here was a far better way of evoking this curious old woman and her world, still so fundamental to our culture but also so full of the unexpected.

Mark Levy

Her Appearance was startling

After a while the Frenchman was led along a dark passage into the privy chamber, the inner sanctum of the queen, and ‘there, seated in a low chair, by herself’, he found Elizabeth.

Her appearance was startling. She wore, not the customary English gown and kirtle, but a gauzy dressing gown of cloth of silver, unfastened in front so that ‘one could see the whole of her bosom’. Her high-piled red wig was stuck full of gold and silver spangles, and was made still higher by a crowning garland of silver cloth. Two long, fat curls hung down almost to her shoulders, ending at the high jewelled collar of her gown.

She rose and came forward to embrace him, and De Maisse noted that, although her body was still youthful and her movements graceful, her face was long and thin and ‘very aged’.... Then glancing down at her robe, she began to excuse her informal dress. ‘What will these gentlemen say to see me so attired?... De Maisse was a diplomat seasoned in years and experience, yet he found this bizarre mixture of bawdiness and coquetry disconcerting, especially as the Queen punctuated her talk by continually grabbing the open front of her gown and flapping it back and forth as if she were too hot, ‘so that all her belly could be seen.’

Elizabeth’s overabundant vitality amazed him. He had prepared himself to confront a very old woman, crotchety perhaps, but frail. Instead he found himself faced with a fidgety, restless being whose animal spirits appeared to be waxing rather than ebbing...Over the next several weeks De Maisse saw Elizabeth a number of times, and with each audience he came to appreciate her more. Her eccentricities of dress and manner continued to disconcert him. Constantly in motion, she talked constantly as well, digressing into long, musing anecdotes or memories so that the ambassador had often to bring her back to the business at hand. She repeated herself, she indulged her musing memory, yet De Maisse was astute enough not to confuse this deliberate, self-flattering self-indulgence with senility.

Her concern for her appearance was clearly obsessive. ‘When anyone speaks of her beauty she says that she was never beautiful,’ De Maisse wrote, ‘although she had that reputation thirty years ago. Nevertheless she speaks of her beauty as often as she can.’ Concern for her looks caused Elizabeth to cancel an appointment with the ambassador one day. She had made herself ready, and had already sent her coaches to fetch him and his entourage to the palace, when she thought better of it and called it off.

‘Taking a look into her mirror’, she said that she looked too ill to be presentable, and ‘was unwilling for anyone to see her in that state’.

The true test of the old queen’s acuity, of course was her ability to come to terms with affairs of state. Here, he found her to be not only shrewd, calculating and utterly statesmanlike, but minutely informed about recent events and conditions in many parts of Europe... Her arrogance about her talent for rulership was absolute.

Having been ‘intended for affairs of state, even from her cradle’, she governed with a degree of astuteness none of her present councillors could match. One afternoon she remarked ‘that she was on the edge of the grave and ought to bethink herself of death’, but then abruptly contradicted herself. ‘I think not to die so soon, Master Ambassador’, she said, ‘and am not so old as they think’.

And indeed as De Maisse watched her leave the room at the conclusion of his audience, ‘retiring half-dancing to her chamber’, he could well believe it.