ABSTRACT
The expression “to singe the beard of the King of Spain” was first coined as a trope by Sir Francis Drake to describe his bellicose actions against Cádiz in 1587. It has been said that the insult was due less to the English pirateer’s arrogance than to his concession that he had not quite dealt the Spaniards a true blow. According to Garrett Mattingly, the Turkish sultan had expressed himself similarly at Lepanto: “When the Venetians sunk my ships they only singed my beard; it will grow again. But when I captured Cyprus, I cut off one of their arms.”1 While the sultan’s synecdochal comment was meant to excuse his defeat, Drake’s comparison of Philip’s hirsute Habsburg jaw to the razed port aimed for the Spanish monarch’s metaphoric demasculinization by a smooth-faced English queen. Indeed, the fiery acts behind the insult-the real assaults on the city-were famously carried out at different times by three of Elizabeth I’s controversial courtiers: Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
