ABSTRACT
Elizabeth I was very aware from the beginning of her reign how critical it was to her success that she control her self-presentation. Elizabeth early recognized how important it was to show herself to the court and to the English people, and she often used deliberately dramatic moments to gain the support of her councilors and her people. Her religious ceremonies while queen, such as touching for the king’s evil and washing the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday, were public ones.2 When she was under attack she wanted to be seen, not hidden away. This was a strategy she developed very early. We see this in the letter she wrote to Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, in the crisis after Thomas Seymour’s arrest in 1549, and it echoed in the way she handled herself in her sister Mary I’s reign after the Wyatt rebellion. Once queen, she regularly went throughout the kingdom on progresses, and in 1588 accepted the Earl of Leicester’s invitation to come to Tilbury despite councilors who wished her to stay safe at court. Yet we also have to take care as we discuss how Elizabeth presented herself dramatically as we do not always know how much of this presentation was actually Elizabeth’s and how much was the way sixteenth-century commentators, also well aware of the metaphors of stage and rule, in turn presented their queen; presentday historians are also quick to use this metaphor. Yet even if Holinshed and Foxe and other sixteenth-century authors, for example, made Elizabeth sound more dramatic at certain key moments than may have factually been the case, that is also significant as a view of the importance of drama to effectively rule at this time.3
