Guest Author - Karyn Johnson

Queen Elizabeth I, or "Good Queen Bess," may have gone down in history as one of the greatest monarchs ever to rule England, but what many people may not know about her is that she was a talented speech writer and poet. In fact, she was so talented, that some academics who question the authorship of Shakespeare's plays have speculated that she may have written some of them. There isn't really any evidence to back up this claim, but nonetheless, Elizabeth I deserves some respect as a writer in her own right.

One of her most famous works is the Speech to the Troops at Tilbury, delivered as her troops awaited the Spanish Armada in 1588, where Elizabeth admitted that she had "the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but…the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too." This speech is particularly notable because her men went on to crush the Armada, which was a great victory for Elizabeth and a defining moment in her reign.

Of course, Elizabeth is known as "The Virgin Queen," since she never married. During her reign, Parliament urged her to take on a husband. She famously gave a speech in 1559, a year after she took the throne, in which she said, "And in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin."

Perhaps Elizabeth's most famous speech was her Golden Speech of 1601, her farewell to Parliament before her death two years later. The words of this speech were reprinted repeatedly until the eighteenth century, whenever England was in danger, to rally and inspire the people. There are several surviving versions of this speech, but the most popular version has Elizabeth telling her Parliament: "And, though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my Crown, that I have reigned with your loves. This makes me that I do not so much rejoice that God hath made me to be a Queen, as to be a Queen over so thankful a people."

Elizabeth's talent with speech writing is proven, but her poetry is lesser known. During her reign, she wrote a poem entitled The Doubt of Future Foes, in which she ruminates on all the various threats to her beloved England: "No foreign banished wight shall anchor in this port;/ Our realm brooks not seditious sects, let them elsewhere resort./ My rusty sword through rest shall first his edge employ/ To poll their tops that seek such change or gape for future joy." Her poem affirms her power and willingness to act against England's aggressors.

Her body of work also includes other poems, letters and prayers. Elizabeth I also translated verses, such as The Mirror of a Sinful Soul and The Thirteenth Psalm of David.

Elizabeth I may have gone down in history as the usher of England's Golden Age, but it is through her writing that we get to understand her struggle between her own passions and needs as a woman and the more important needs of her people. In Elizabeth's own words, she tells us of her role as God's representative on Earth and what it means to her, to England and to her people. Her writing is a vital and important part of the English Renaissance literary canon. How appropriate that she ruled during one of the greatest periods of English literature.