Collected Works.

Elizabeth I, Collected Works 

Eds. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. xxiv + 446pp. incl. 18 illus. $40. ISBN: 0-226-50464-6.

By choosing to present selections, the editors have reduced to manageable dimensions what would have been a different kind of task and one of greater magnitude. Had they attempted to include all of Elizabeth's works as well as doubtful attributions and all extant variants, the present edition, as they announce in a preface, would have run to several volumes and their stated aim of the widest possible usefulness probably would have been compromised. What we have, then, is a collection of all twenty-four speeches, a selection of letters, and all the poems and prayers, but no samplings from any of Elizabeth's translations of Plutarch, Horace, Boethius, Petratch, or Margaret of Navarre. The arrangement is both chronological and generic: Elizabeth's life is divided into four periods, and the works of each period are grouped by genre and then arranged chronologically inside each genre. The earliest section (1533-1558) contains, in three subsections, the earliest letters, poems, and prayers; the second (1558-1572) c ontains the earliest speeches together with subsequent letters, poems, and prayers; and so on for sections three (1572-1587) and four (1588-1603). Thus, works of the same genre are grouped together, while reference to works in different genres in the same historical period is facilitated. Alternate versions of several of the works are included, as are "additional documents," in some instances, which shed light on relevant persons and events. Whenever possible, manuscripts nearly contemporary with dates of composition were used. Textual notes are included together with explanatory notes, and a companion volume, Elizabeth I: Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals, is projected.

This edition enables us to grasp something earlier editions conveyed only partially: Elizabeth's consummate mastery of the arts of eloquence and politics which together shaped the ends of princely training in this unusually literary age. The letters, in particular, reveal an almost dramatic attentiveness to nuances of character and event, and a mind so finely attuned to political hazard, that almost every phrase conveys degrees of circumspectness and expediency. The strategy of grouping letters and speeches in chronologically arranged sections pays off most notably in the third section (1572-1587), which covers the years leading to the defeat of the Armada. As negotiations aimed at keeping France and Spain gridlocked in the Netherlands proceed, the queen by turns proffers and hedges the hoped for marriage with Alencon;

Leicester waxes and wanes; and complications attending the confinement of the queen of Scots, first at Sheffield and then at Tutbury, climax in the Babington conspiracy. Elizabeth stood to lose all: her religion, her crown, and the succession. Letters written during Mary Stuart's trial, to James as well as to his mother, together with speeches replying to parliament's petitions urging her execution, form a striking portrayal of this most intractable of Elizabeth's quandaries; and an extra plus is that, because James's letters to Elizabeth are included, we also catch several intimations of the mind of the first of England's Stuart kings, including early formulations of his absolutist principles.

This edition will be of interest to students of Tudor parliaments and diplomacy as well as of Elizabeth's literary endeavors and her cult of personality. But because textual matters are kept in the background, it will be of less service to those interested in technicalities of the texts' transmission. The matter of "coproduction" is raised in the editors' preface to encompass a variety of conundrums--collaboration, memorial reconstruction of the speeches, secretarial drafting of the letters--and to indicate that in some instances there is not a single text but a body of materials attesting to a process of textual evolution. A few of the local manifestations of compositional "interventions" are pointed out in the notes, but their overall dimensions are not addressed. Had they been, readers would have been greatly aided. The promised companion volume -- Autograph Compositions and Foreign Language Originals -- perhaps will help remedy omissions, at least in matters of original spelling and punctuation, the queen s revisions, and the Latin, French, Italian, and Greek originals of some of the letters and prayers. This is nonetheless a spendidly produced edition that comes as close as one could reasonably wish to encompassing in a single volume a comprehensive offering of Elizabeth's writings, and it is entirely welcome.