An Intimate View of Queen Elizabeth I as a Musician: New Sources in Context

The uncovering of strategies Queen Elizabeth I (1533--1603) used to display a cult of female monarchy reveals how Renaissance women in positions of power had to construct carefully images of self-representation. In an age when women were regarded as the inferior sex, Elizabeth I shrewdly exploited the functions of music in public and in private to protect her sole rulership over England. Through her own performances on the lute, Queen Elizabeth I politicized music to challenge prescribed rules of social conduct. As research by Andrew Ashbee suggests, Elizabeth I was a multi-faceted musician. Over the course of her reign, she received nineteen songbooks, one collection of virginal music, four lutes, two virginals, two cornets, one cittern, one orpharion, one viol, one sackbut, and other musical gifts. Evidence from the number of lutes and boxes of lute strings that she received or purchased suggests that Elizabeth was a practicing lutenist from at least 1551 until at least 1598. A miniature portrait of Elizabeth I, located at Berkeley Castle and painted around 1580 by Nicholas Hilliard, shows the Queen playing a lute. In 1559 and 1565, she reportedly performed on this instrument for Caspar von Breuner and Adam von Zwetkovich, two Austrian ambassadors at the English court. Critical readings of this painting and of correspondence by these foreign diplomats reveal that Elizabeth I presented her skills on the lute as part of her political agenda during her marriage negotiations with Archduke Charles of Austria. Revisiting Linda Austern's discussion of music and femininity in Renaissance thought, this paper offers a new understanding of the manipulative tactics Elizabeth employed when playing the lute in front of men. Elizabeth deliberately exploited aristocratic rules of conduct in order to place herself on an intellectual level with men. Performing music in situations typically closed to women allowed her to exhibit androgynous strengths and to use the social and political implications of music to underscore her authority in a male-dominated realm.