The sonnet has this title in one of the manuscripts in which it appears.

speak of; censure

Note how every fourth line (the end of each stanza) mocks the idea of eternal love (only the nymph is immortal; the shepherd not).

This nymph is quite rational about love - she is rejecting the shepherd's love, recognizing how transitory it is and how nothing lasts forever.

ending

dress/bouquets

a bold and brazen heart

This is a response poem to Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and, similarly, is in iambic tetrameter. It is made up of six four-lined stanzas or quatrains, where each iamb regularly alternates between stressed and unstressed syllables.

It was a speech that was expected to be addressing some pricing concerns, based on the recent economic issues facing the country. Surprisingly, Elizabeth revealed that it would be her final Parliament and turned the mode of the speech to addressing the love and respect she had for the country, her position, and the Members themselves. The Golden Speech has been taken to mark a symbolic end of Elizabeth's reign, one which is widely considered one of the Golden Eras of England's history. Elizabeth died 16 months later in March 1603 and was succeeded by her first cousin twice removed, James I.

The heading, present in a 17th century manuscript, identifies the occasion of this poem as the breaking off of marriage negotiations between Elizabeth and the French duke of Anjou, in 1582.

The poem concerns Mary, Queen of Scots, who in 1568 sought refuge in England from her rebellious subjects.

Delivered by Elizabeth on August 9, to the land forces assembled at Tilbury (in Essex) to repel the anticipated invasion of the Spanish Armada, a fleet of warships sent by Philip II (widower of Mary I). The Armada was defeated at sea and never reached England, a miraculous deliverance and sign of God's special favor to Elizabeth and England in the general view at the time.

The execution, six days earlier, of James' mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. In the aftermath of the Babington plot, Elizabeth decided to have Mary tried and convicted of treason--legally an outrageous charge, since she was not a subject of England. Mary was sentenced to death, and Elizabeth, after much vacillation, signed the warrant for her execution. Once the sentence had been carried out, however, the queen went to great lengths to exculpate herself, even in her own mind, from responsibility for her cousin's death.

fellow ruler

Paulet was the keeper of Mary, Queen of Scots. In 1586, a number of her supporters plotted to murder Elizabeth and place Mary on the throne. The plot was discovered, and the plotters were executed in September. Mary, who had been complicit with them, was placed under stricter confinement, and then tried for treason. Elizabeth's letter to Paulet circulated widely in manuscript: to her contemporaries, it was evidently the single best known of the queen's letters.

Because Mary and Darnley had been estranged, there were immediately rumors that she had been complicit in his murder.

Written after news reached Elizabeth of the murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, the arrogant and erratic Scottish nobleman whom Mary had ill-advisedly married in 1565.

The birth of a son--James--to Mary, Queen of Scots, imparted a new urgency to the concern about Elizabeth's unmarried state. Mary was Elizabeth's second cousin and, in the absence of any child of Elizabeth's own, had a strong claim to be her heir; Mary's male child would have an even stronger one. On November 5, a delegation of sixty members of the Lords and Commons met with Elizabeth, to urge her to marry and also to establish formally the line of succession. After the meeting, a member of the delegation wrote down Elizabeth's impromptu response.

By Richard Mulcaster (1520-1611) who became a well-known authority on the education of children. Elizabeth had succeed to the throne upon the death of Mary I on November 17, 1558, but her coronation did not take place until January 15, 1559. By long-established custom, the ceremonies began the day before the coronation itself, with the ruler being documented across the city in procession from the Tower of London to Westminster.

her head covering and auburn wig came off in the executioner's hand

No kidding...

This means he missed the first time ("two strokes")

Elizabeth never granted Mary an audience; two days after arriving in England, she was conducted to Carlisle Castle, where her 19 years of English captivity began.

Crossing the Solway Firth in a fishing boat, Mary and 20 supporters landed in Cumberland port of Workington on May 16, 1568.

Mary escaped from captivity on May 2, 1568.

Unhappy about the elevation of Bothwell to the position of Mary's consort (she had married him three months after Darnley's murder, in which he was well known to have been the principal conspirator), the nobles brought an army against the royal couple in June 1567. With their own forces melting away, Bothwell escaped and Mary surrendered herself to the nobles.

The servant was David Rizzio, Mary's secretary and confidant. At the time of his murder, Mary was six months pregnant with her only child, the future King James VI. She omits the fact that Darnley was involved in the murder.

My fellow queen

This letter (translated from the French) was written just after Mary, in flight from her Scottish enemies, made her fateful crossing into England. Its account of her troubles is, though not exaggerated, inevitably one-sided. In 1565, Mary's ill-advising marriage to her cousin Lord Darnley had upset the power structure of teh nation's factious and violent nobility. A group of nobles rebelled against her, let by Mary's illegitimate half-brother James Stewart, early of Moray, who had previously been her key supporter and adviser.

ie., with Darnley. He was lying ill (probably from syphilis or small pox) at Glasgow; Mary had joined him there.

I.e., medicine (or a poisoned drink). If mary wrote this sentence, it shows her complicit in the plot to murder Darnley, who was in fact strangled in 1567.

At their urging, Mary had authorized a confederacy of nobles to find a way for her to divorce Darnley.

Darnley--weak, arrogant and vicious--had many bitter enemies among the other Scottish lords.

to live again as husband and wife

lock

worked

I believe this may reference a common practice (as was done to Anne Boleyn) of distracting the condemned by asking "where is my sword?" and chopping their heads off quickly while they turned to look (rather than having them lay their head on the block).

Implicitly challenging the Catholic doctrine of the efficacy of prayers for the dead.

John de Fecknam, Queen Mary's confessor, who at her behest had tried, unsuccessfully, in Lady Jane's last days to convert her to Catholicism. A gifted and tolerant man, Feckenham was later put in charge of Mary's project of restoring the Benedictine monastery of Westminster Abbey, where he thus became the last abbot.

Here she asserts the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone (not by intersession and/or indulgences, etc. as practiced in the Catholic religion).

Lady Jane inscribed this farewell message in a prayer book, now in the British Library.

She is asking to be released from the "captivity and bondage" (literal and metaphoric) that she is undergoing in the Tower. Death is near.

refers to the earthly body

This is an introduction to her letter (below).

Also written shortly before her death.

As Foxe notes, this final sentence amounts to an admonition that Suffolk ought not renounce his Protestantism.

She is being put to death because of the actions of her father (see my note above).

Written shortly before her execution and later published in Foxe's Acts and Monuments. Lady Jane's father, the duke of Suffolk, had been pardoned by Mary I for his involvement in the attempt to put Jane on the throne following the death of Edward VI; Jane herself, though remaining in custody, also had good hopes of being pardoned. But when Suffolk joined in the insurrection of January 1554 against Mary, the queen decided that both must die. Suffolk was executed eleven days after his daughter, on February 23.

Alluding to the bitter controversy over transubstantiation: Catholic doctrine holds that although the bread and wine of the Eucharist retain their normal appearance, they are miraculously transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ; Protestants believe that the identification is symbolic rather than literal.

She condemns him for retracting his belief in Protestantism and returning to Catholicism (which was likely as a result of Mary I's restoration of the latter).

In the late 1540s, Harding had studied in Catholic Italy.

offshoot

"M.H." refers to "Master Harding--the eminent theologian Thomas Harding who was one of Lady Jane Grey's tutors. Like many other English clergymen, Harding had renounced his Protestantism after Mary I made clear her determination to restore Catholicism. Jane wrote to him from her prison in the Tower.

John Aylmer (1521-1594). As a schoolboy, he attracted the notice of Jane's father, who provided for his education at Cambridge and appointed him tutor to his daughters. In 1577, Queen Elizabeth made him bishop of London.

She has to do everything perfectly or else face corporal punishment from her parents.

walk

Truly

miss, forgo

Plato's dialogue Phaedo, which recounts the last hours of Socrates and affirms the immortality of the soul.

In 1550, as secretary of the English ambassador to the emperor Charles V. So Lady Jane was 13 at the time of this conversation.

An age old debate in pedagogy: how best to educate a child? Through compassion and love or fear of punishment?

Roger Ascham was the preeminent humanist educational theorist of the mid-16th century in England; he was most famously the Greek and Latin tutor of Elizabeth I when she was a girl and served in the courts of Edward IV, Mary I and Elizabeth I.

"My lord Howard" = William Howard, early of Warwick "my lord treasurer" = Sir William Paulet, marquis of Winchester

She argues that it is not lust that motivates the marriage...

i.e. have a baby (produce an heir)

Her "baby" is the English nation.

She is here arguing that their issue isn't with her marriage to Philip II (a Spanish prince) but with her beliefs in the "old religion" (i.e. Catholicism).

When, in the early months of Mary's reign, it became clear that she intended to marry the heir to the Spanish throne (the future Philip II, son of her cousin Charles V), discontent broke into insurrection. In late January 1554, a sizable army led by the Kentishman Sir Thomas Wyatt II began an advance on London. In the crisis, Mary went to the Guildhall and made this rousing speech to the assembled Londoners. They rallied to her side, and when Wyatt reached the city he found an unreceptive populace. The uprising collapsed, and he and other rebel leaders were executed. The version of Mary's speech given here was printed, with grudging admiration, by the Protestant martyrologist John Foxe in his Acts and Monuments.

There is, at least now, no evidence of Elizabeth's conniving with the French king. "Intelligence" = communication.

i.e. "threw down the gauntlet". The challenges by the "king's champion" (a hereditary office) was part of the coronation ritual until 1821.

The three crowns may refer to those of England, Scotland and Wales.

The coronation throne--not itself made of stone but having the Stone of Scone (taken from Scotland by Edward I in 1292) encased in its seat.

I.e., from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey

Mary's half-sister; the future Elizabeth I.

Anne of Cleves, the German noblewoman who had been Henry VIII's fifth wife, was the only one of the six still alive in 1553. Henry had the marriage annulled after seven months, but Anne had remained in England.

October 1553

Mary Tudor and Charles I were first cousins

regard

in this case, "evident" is a good translation

The stomach, like the heart, is often designated as the inward seat of thought and emotion.

again

a reference to Thomas Cromwell

After the execution of Anne Boleyn on May 19, 1536, Mary thought that she would quickly be restored to her father's favor. Henry, though, persisted in the demand that he had been making of her for several years: that she acknowledge in writing his supremacy over the English Church, as well as the invalidity of his marriage to her mother. In the weeks after Anne's beheading, Mary's continuing refusal to comply with this demand infuriated Henry to the point that he threatened her (not for the first time) with death. Finally, lambasted by Henry's secretary and principal adviser, Thomas Cromwell, who had supported her until the king's rage made him fear for his own safety, and urged to submit even by her Spanish allies, Mary yielded, signing the prescribed articles on June 15th or 22nd (a Thursday night) and writing her father this supplicatory letter (which may have been drafted by Cromwell.

Her mother was Catherine of Aragon, a Spanish Catholic princess who was the first wife of Mary's Father, Henry VIII. In his act of divorce, he founds the Anglican Church (Church of England) and subsequently marries Anne Boleyn, the mother of the future Elizabeth I.

astonished

Mary (mother of Jesus), St. John and Mary Magdalene are often pictured at the foot of Christ's cross in medieval art:

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, site of Christ's crucifixion, death and burial.

"was quick" here means "living"

The company of pilgrims

Three "Our Fathers" (on the rosary)

Interesting compromise....

Christ gives her the permission to end the Friday fast - she can each and drink as her husband does.

Christ had previously told her that keeping a strict Friday fast would allow her to have her wish to end further sexual relations with her husband.

before

In other words, "I would rather see you slain than that we should return to our uncleanliness"

know

In this context, he is asking whether she would allow someone to cut off his head rather that resume sexual relations with her "as I did sometime [in the past]"

eve

for reasons of her envy (desire for material gain) or pride, she began to brew....

rose (past tense of "rise")

lightning

...that men thought she should never have escaped or lived through....

She is violently clawing at her own skin here

She bit herself so hard is was permanently scarred.

killed herself

menacing

Eight or so months....

Another way of putting this: the confessor is a little too quick to condemn her before she has been able to explain herself so she shuts up, fearful of what more he might say to her.

In other words, she attempted to do penance on her own but still suffered because she did not confess and receive absolution from a priest.

enough

Spiritual father; i.e. a priest

"Accesses" here referring to attacks of illness in her pregnancy

Better translation: "as nature would"

"worthy"

Throughout the book, Kempe refers to herself in third person as "this creature" a standard way of saying "this person, a being created by God."

Lancelot calls for a truce.

Look at our good Gawaine....trying to help out his friend.

This isn't looking good for 'ol Guinevere....

Flattery is a heady drug...

I know he's not a rooster....but....

Two other dogs.

According to the legend, Nero not only set fire to Rome (in 64 CE) but also put many senators to death.

Hasdrubal was king of Carthage when it was destroyed by the Romans.

This is a reference to Geoffrey of Vinsauf, a famous medieval rhetorician, who wrote a lament on the death of Richard I in which he scolded Friday, the day on which the king died.

The offended cock neglected to crow so that his master, now grown to manhood, overslept, missing his ordination and losing his benefice.

Supposed author of a bestiary, a book of moralized zoology describing both natural and supernatural animals (including mermaids).

When will they ever let this Eve-eating-the-apple-incident go?

These three thinkers were all concerned with the interrelationship between people's freewill and God's foreknowledge.

Sinon, who persuaded the Trojans to take the Greeks' wooden horse into their city--with, of course, the result that the city was destroyed.

Reference to Ganelon who betrayed Roland to the Saracens (in the medieval French epic The Song of Roland)

Reference to Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus.

Romances of Lancelot were popular during this time (as we well know :)

The rhetorical time yields May 3.

Here "avisioun" (vision) refers to a divinely inspired dream as opposed to "sweene" or "dreem" which are more common.

See: Genesis 39-41.

See: Genesis 37.

See: Daniel 7.

Macrobius wrote a famous commentary on Cicero's account in De Republica of the dream of Scipio Africanus Minor; the commentary came to be regarded as a standard authority on dream lore.

Saint Kenelm succeeded his father as king of Mercia at the age of seven but was slain by his aunt (in 821).

"I kid you not...."

The tell-tale heart...

"just murdered"

Another dead body (we had three in the last tale)...

How do you interpret the difference between "luck" and "good fortune" here (as the author clearly sees these as two different concepts)?

The Cato was a poplar medieval schoolbook for teaching Latin; it is a collection of proverbial wisdom written by Dionysus Cato.

These, and the herbs mentioned in the next lines, were all common medieval medicines used as cathartics.

A fever or shivering pain you will suffer.

I.e. when "humors" (bodily fluids) are too abundant in a person. Pertelote's diagnosis is based on the familiar concept that an excess of one of the bodily humors in a person affected his or her temperament.

Who doesn't like a feel good story?

The knight here is responding the "The Monk's Tale" - a series of brief tragedies, the common theme of which was reversal of fortune (the fall of famous rulers).

In other words, the priest that accompanies the Prioress (or nun).

The host objects...

He's a little upset at the suggestion that his ballocks should become a relic...after being eaten, digested, and come out the other end as a "hog's fat turd." Fair enough.

St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, was reputed to have found the cross on which Christ was crucified.

Again, so visual.

underwear

Is the pardoner being purposefully ironic here? Or do you read him as ignorant to his own sinfulness?

Why do you suppose he has focused on these sins in particular? If we think of the seven deadly sins, he's left off sloth, envy and pride...

Avicenna, an 11th century Arabic philosopher, wrote the Canon of Medicine that is referred to here.

a weasel-like animal

The third fellow has his own plans....

Wasn't someone in class looking for more death in this reading? Wish granted?

Trying to cut the other "comrade" out of his share...this won't end well.

India

pledged their honor

Good luck on that.

An abbey in Gloucestershire supposed to possess some of Christ's blood.

This is a reference to the first four of the Ten Commandments, which specify duties humankind owes to God.

i.e. gambling.

Here the Pardoner is making a joke about the illegal custom of adulterating fine wines of Bordeaux with strong Spanish wine.

This is incredibly viceral. Oh, Chaucer.

Still referring to St. Paul here....

White and red wine.

The Roman Stoic philosopher.

For the story of St. John the Baptist, see Mark 6:17-29.

This refers to the biblical story of Lot#Lot_and_his_daughters) and his incest with two of his daughters.

Tear apart (a reference to oaths sworn by parts of His body, such as "God's bones!" or "God's teeth!")

Note that the following will be in the genre of "exemplum" or "example" which is a brief tale/anecdote meant to teach a moral lesson.

He just sort of tossed this one in randomly....

Savage.

In other words, his preaching and condemnation may make people turn away from sin but that's just a happy side effect...

Greed is the root of all evil.

in order words, "make trouble for us"

This refers to marks, a form of money; it would have been the equivalent of 16,000 pence or roughly 1,300 shillings (about half what an attorney would make but about 15x what an average priest would make). For more information on medieval wages.

"by bull" = by papal "bull" or decree (i.e. with the authority of the Roman Catholic church)

This term means "to confess"

pennies, groats, coins.

i.e. the truth of her infidelity

Here the pardoner is speaking about the holy power of relics, claiming they have the ability to heal the sick.

wisdom; sagacity

Those who are content and at peace should be seen as "rich" in spirit.

A Roman historian)

i.e. by the branches of a man's family tree.

How do you interpret this line?

"bittern" = heron. A booming sound, in this case.