ABSTRACT
Earlier patterns, the patterns of the old Queen’s times, were indeed implicit in this happy event. The old Elizabeth had been the support of Europe against Hapsburg aggression, allied to Catholic reaction; her foreign alliances had been with the rebellious Netherlands and their leader and with German and French Protestants. Ideally, she had repre-
her.1 There was a certain piquancy in the fact that the young Elizabeth, unlike the old Elizabethan Virgin, was to cement these sacred policies through her marriage. The court bankrupted itself through the vast expenditure in clothes, jewellery, entertainments, and feasting for this marriage. And there was also accumulated wealth of genius and poetry available for expenditure on the shows devised for this fortunate pair. Shakespeare was still alive and in London; the Globe theatre was not yet burned down; Inigo Jones was perfecting the court masque; Francis Bacon had published The Advancement of Learning. The English Renaissance was at a high point of splendour, developing into the dawning intellectual promise of the seventeenth century.
