Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Tilbury speechless?


This painting on wood in a church is of Elizabeth at Tilbury. Underneath the painting is printed a version of the following speech that another person recorded in a sermon of 1612:

  • Come on now my companions at armes, and fellow Souldiers, in the field, now for the Lord, for your Queene, and for the kingdome[.] [Flor what are these proud Philistines, that they should revile the Hoast of the living God? I have been your Prince in peace, so will I be in warre[;] neither will I bid you goe and fight, but come and let us fight the battell of the Lord[.] [Tlhe enemie perhaps may challenge my sexe for that I am a woman, so may I likewise charge their mould for that they are but men, whose breath is in their nostrels, and if God doe not charge England with the sinnes of England, little doe I feare their force.... Si deus nobiscum quis contra nos?
Compare this version of the speech she gave with that in Early Modern England and in Sources and Debates. The one in the text, dates from 1623 and is first printed in 1654.

See also: S. Frye, “The myth of Elizabeth at Tilbury,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 23, 1 (1992) [use of Tilbury Speech by the English (in word and image) ever since it “appeared” in 1623]; J.M. Green, “‘I my self’: Queen Elizabeth I's oration at Tilbury Camp,” Sixteenth Century Journal 28 (1997) [re-asserts that the traditionally accepted text is genuine]

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