Elizabeth I of England, as a female monarch who did not heed counsel, particularly in the events surrounding the marriage proposal from the much younger Roman Catholic Duke of Alençon and Anjou (c 1579–1586), aroused anxiety and frustration in her Protestant male courtiers. Two of these, Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, expressed their dissatisfaction about the “courteous cruell” queen in their literary works and letters. The relationship between the two men was also complex, united as they were in politics, arguing for a strong interventionist role for England in Europe, but divided in poetics. Sidney advocated a classical model for English vernacular poetry while Spenser favoured a homegrown English strain harking back to Chaucer and Skelton. Thoroughly researched and written in an accessible style with close readings of all the major works of Sidney and Spenser that are linked to Elizabeth I, along with a look at their correspondence, this book provides a new way of interweaving the narratives of history and literature, and will be of interest to the academician and the lay reader alike in its analysis of the workings of gender, desire, politics and poetics in the reign of Elizabeth I.
