he, having so much wit, had yet not enough to save his doter’s
maidenhedde sound for her marriage-bed.’ And ye quene did give ye damn’d
Sr. Walter a look yt made hym wince–for she hath not forgot he was her
own lover it yt olde day. There was silent uncomfortableness now; ’twas
not a good turn for talk to take, sith if ye queene must find offense in
a little harmless debauching, when pricks were stiff and cunts not loathe
to take ye stiffness out of them, who of this company was sinless;
behold, was not ye wife of Master Shaxpur four months gone with child
when she stood uppe before ye altar? Was not her Grace of Bilgewater
roger’d by four lords before she had a husband? Was not ye little Lady
Helen born on her mother’s wedding-day? And, beholde, were not ye Lady
Alice and ye Lady Margery there, mouthing religion, whores from ye
cradle?
In time came they to discourse of Cervantes, and of the new painter,
Rubens, that is beginning to be heard of. Fine words and dainty-wrought
phrases from the ladies now, one or two of them being, in other days,
pupils of that poor ass, Lille, himself; and I marked how that Jonson and
Shaxpur did fidget to discharge some venom of sarcasm, yet dared they not
in the presence, the queene’s grace being ye very flower of ye Euphuists
herself. But behold, these be they yt, having a specialty, and admiring
it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth essaye it, nor can
abide it in them long. Wherefore ’twas observable yt ye quene waxed
uncontent; and in time labor’d grandiose speeche out of ye mouth of Lady
Alice, who manifestly did mightily pride herself thereon, did quite
exhauste ye quene’s endurance, who listened till ye gaudy speeche was
done, then lifted up her brows, and with vaste irony, mincing saith ‘O
shit!’ Whereat they alle did laffe, but not ye Lady Alice, yt olde
foolish bitche.
Now was Sr. Walter minded of a tale he once did hear ye ingenious
Margrette of Navarre relate, about a maid, which being like to suffer
rape by an olde archbishoppe, did smartly contrive a device to save her
maidenhedde, and said to him, First, my lord, I prithee, take out thy
holy tool and piss before me; which doing, lo his member felle, and would
not rise again.
FOOTNOTES
To Frivolity
The historical consistency of 1601 indicates that Twain must have given
the subject considerable thought. The author was careful to speak only
of men who conceivably might have been in the Virgin Queen’s closet and
engaged in discourse with her.
THE CHARACTERS
At this time (1601) Queen Elizabeth was 68 years old. She speaks of
having talked to “old Rabelais” in her youth. This might have been
possible as Rabelais died in 1552, when the Queen was 19 years old.
Among those in the party were Shakespeare, at that time 37 years old; Ben
Jonson, 27; and Sir Walter Raleigh, 49. Beaumont at the time was 17, not
16. He was admitted as a member of the Inner Temple in 1600, and his
first translations, those from Ovid, were first published in 1602.
Therefore, if one were holding strictly to the year date, neither by age
nor by fame would Beaumont have been eligible to attend such a gathering
of august personages in the year 1601; but the point is unimportant.
THE ELIZABETHAN WRITERS
In the Conversation Shakespeare speaks of Montaigne’s Essays. These were
first published in 1580 and successive editions were issued in the years
following, the third volume being published in 1588. “In England
Montaigne was early popular. It was long supposed that the autograph of
Shakespeare in a copy of Florio’s translation showed his study of the
Essays. The autograph has been disputed, but divers passages, and
especially one in The Tempest, show that at first or second hand the poet
was acquainted with the essayist.” (Encyclopedia Brittanica.)
The company at the Queen’s fireside discoursed of Lilly (or Lyly),
English dramatist and novelist of the Elizabethan era, whose novel,
Euphues, published in two parts, ‘Euphues’, or the ‘Anatomy of Wit’
(1579) and ‘Euphues and His England’ (1580) was a literary sensation.