Essay Questions

Define the “it” that Queen Elizabeth I refers to in “Answer to a Popish Priest, Giving Her Opinion on the Corporeal Presence".

The ‘it’ speaks of to the human body. Queen Elizabeth employs religious allusion to explicate her outlook on the physical form. She alludes the ‘last supper’ when Jesus split His figurative body and served it to the disciples. The religious allusion to the “Word” underscores Queen Elizabeth I credence about the physical body being molded by God.

Which ideology does Queen Elizabeth I depict when she writes, “I grieve and dare not show my discontent?” in "On Monsieur's Departure"?

Stoicism: Queen Elizabeth I does not portray her grief, over “Monsieur’s Departure”, in an explicit manner. She obscures her feeling such that it would be problematic to detect that she is distraught.

What is the interrelationship between “Written with a Diamond on her Window at Woodstock” and “Written in her French Psalter”?

In “Written with a Diamond on her Window at Woodstock”, Queen Elizabeth I affirms that she has misgivings that she can neither authenticate nor repudiate. Comparatively, in “Written in her French Psalter” Queen Elizabeth I proclaims, “No crooked leg, no bleared eye,/No part deformed out of kind,/Nor yet so ugly half can be/As is the inward suspicious mind.” Here, Queen Elizabeth clandestinely concedes that her reservations are horrible and unsubstantiated. Accordingly, “Written in her French Psalter” is a repudiation of “Written with a Diamond on her Window at Woodstock.”