ABSTRACT
Ascham divides Elizabeth into two people, first, his sovereign over many other and, second, his dearest mistress above all other. The first letter that Ascham sent to Sturm on 4 April 1550 presents an earlier attempt to petition Elizabeth while ostensibly talking to a friend. As a woman, Elizabeth was excluded from what Stewart aptly calls the male-only cerebral space of amicitia. Ascham's undated Latin epistle to an obscure acquaintance, Francis Alan, which was singled out as a model of epistolary style and translated into English in Abraham Flemings Panoplie of Epistles. As Ascham's letters to Sturm demonstrate, the discourse of amicitia could be manipulated to serve self-interested goals, such as the acquisition of cultural status, in much the same way as the more explicitly economic model in his letter to Elizabeth is used to solicit material gains. Ascham's learning is commodified again later in the letter-when he refers to the time he spent with Elizabeth as her tutor.
