ABSTRACT
The traditional view of Elizabeth Tudor gives her long reign (1558-1603) the character of legend. It shows an enigmatic Virgin Queen dexterously negotiating the perilous milieu of national and international politics, adored by her peaceful people, inspiring universal wonder. This myth of Elizabeth is largely the product of her government’s effort to promote her regime. It became Elizabethan history when Camden in the Annales (1615) read her era retrospectively in terms of the myth-as if her motto semper eadem (always the same) were fact. Until recently, histories of her reign have commonly fallen in behind Camden as does the most influential biography of this century, J.E.Neale’s Queen Elizabeth (1934). Recent revisionist historians, however, have begun to query the extent of Elizabeth’s achievement and to suggest that the gap between fact and a rather modest statement of the myth may be wide. (The introduction to Haigh 1984 surveys this scholarship usefully.) Both views are relevant to Spenser studies for, although The Faerie Queene is a major expression of the Elizabeth myth, some critical assessment of her regime darkens its later books.
