Queen Elizabeth I's Latin Reply to the Polish Ambassador
On 25 July 1597, a Polish ambassador, Paul Dzialynski, chastised Queen Elizabeth I publicly for interfering with his country's shipping trade with Spain. The furious Queen replied at once in extemporaneous Latin, a stunning rhetorical feat which delighted her countrymen and renewed the populari...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, Inc.
2000
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| In: |
The sixteenth century journal
Year: 2000, Volume: 31, Issue: 4, Pages: 987-1008 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | On 25 July 1597, a Polish ambassador, Paul Dzialynski, chastised Queen Elizabeth I publicly for interfering with his country's shipping trade with Spain. The furious Queen replied at once in extemporaneous Latin, a stunning rhetorical feat which delighted her countrymen and renewed the popularity of the aging queen. With great rhetorical skill, Elizabeth used a characteristic arrangement, the balancing of antitheses, together with sentence variety, irony, wordplay, and even some Latin rhyme. This brilliant epideictic oration, though short, demonstrates her acute historical and political memory, her definitions of "the law of nature" and "books of princes," and her perception of her royal power, and it demonstrates that at age sixty-three the queen's intellectual faculties were far from impaired. As a tour de force, this Latin oration can be ranked with Elizabeth's better-known English oration at Tilbury Camp in 1588. |
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| ISSN: | 2326-0726 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The sixteenth century journal
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/2671184 |