To the Queen
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"To the Queen" (or "To The Queen by the players") is a short 18 line poem praising
Queen Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". El ...
attributed to
William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
. It was included in 2007 by
Jonathan Bate Sir Andrew Jonathan Bate, CBE, FBA, FRSL (born 26 June 1958), is a British academic, biographer, critic, broadcaster, poet, playwright, novelist and scholar. He specialises in Shakespeare, Romanticism and Ecocriticism. He is Foundation Profes ...
in his complete Shakespeare edition for the
Royal Shakespeare Company The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and produces around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, St ...
. The poem, described by Bate as having been written on "the back of an envelope", was probably composed as an
epilogue An epilogue or epilog (from Greek ἐπίλογος ''epílogos'', "conclusion" from ἐπί ''epi'', "in addition" and λόγος ''logos'', "word") is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature, usually used to bring closure to the w ...
for a performance of a play in the presence of the queen. Bate believes it was created to be read after ''
As You Like It ''As You Like It'' is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio in 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has b ...
'' was given at court on
Shrove Tuesday Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent), observed in many Christian countries through participating in confession and absolution, the ritual burning of the previous year's Holy Week palms, finalizing one's Lenten s ...
in February 1599. American scholars William Ringler and Steven May discovered the poem in 1972 in the notebook of a man called Henry Stanford, who is known to have worked in the household of the
Lord Chamberlain The Lord Chamberlain of the Household is the most senior officer of the Royal Household of the United Kingdom, supervising the departments which support and provide advice to the Sovereign of the United Kingdom while also acting as the main cha ...
. Other scholars have since contested the attribution to Shakespeare.


Text

The complete poem goes as follows:


Attribution

The attribution was first made—tentatively—to Shakespeare by Ringler and May, and was accepted in 2005 by
James S. Shapiro James S. Shapiro (born 1955) is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specializes in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period. Shapiro has served on the faculty at Columbia University since 1985, teaching Shakes ...
, who suggested that it might have been written as an epilogue for a court performance of ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a comedy written by William Shakespeare 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One subplot involves a conflict amon ...
''. He argued that the metre corresponded to Oberon's closing lines and the known published epilogue, spoken by Puck. Juliet Dusinberre later argued that it was more likely to have been used for ''
As You Like It ''As You Like It'' is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio in 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has b ...
'', because it linked with themes in the play. She also suggested that it referred to a sundial in
Richmond Palace Richmond Palace was a royal residence on the River Thames in England which stood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Situated in what was then rural Surrey, it lay upstream and on the opposite bank from the Palace of Westminster, which w ...
, where she thinks the play may have been performed. Bate accepted this view and stated that he was "99% certain" that it was by Shakespeare. However, other scholars disagree. In 2009 Michael Hattaway argued that poem is more likely to be by
Ben Jonson Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
, stating that,
The
trochaic tetrameter Trochaic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line of four trochaic feet. The etymology of the word Trochaic is the Greek word ''trokhaios'', from the verb ''trecho'', which means "I run". In classical metre, a trochee is a foot consis ...
s used by Jonson, for example, in the songs from Lord Haddington's wedding masque, performed at court on Shrove Tuesday in 1608, and the satyr songs in his 1611 '' Masque of Oberon'' are very close in style to the dial poem and have roughly the same proportion of feminine endings.Michael Hattaway, ''Dating As You Like It, Epilogues and Prayers, and the Problems of "As the Dial Hand Tells O'er"'', ''Shakespeare Quarterly'', Volume 60, Number 2, Summer 2009, pp. 159–160.
He says that Shakespeare and Thomas Dekker are also possible authors. Helen Hackett argued in 2011 that Dekker was the most likely author,
Dekker emerges as the strongest contender, for reasons including his recurrent preoccupation with dials and temporal cycles, his extensive composition of royal panegyric, the strong similarities between the Dial Hand poem and the epilogue to his ''Old Fortunatus'' (also performed at court in 1599), and a verbal echo of the Dial Hand poem in his ''Whore of Babylon'' (1605).Helen Hackett, "As The Diall Hand Tells Ore’: The Case for Dekker, Not Shakespeare, As Author", ''Review of English Studies'', 2011
Hackett states that, unlike Shakespeare, Dekker regularly wrote complimentary verse about Elizabeth and suggests that the poem was intended to be spoken at the end of his play ''
The Shoemaker's Holiday ''The Shoemaker's Holiday or the Gentle Craft'' is an Elizabethan play written by Thomas Dekker. The play was first performed in 1599 by the Admiral's Men, and it falls into the subgenre of city comedy. The story features three subplots: an ...
''.


See also

* Shakespeare Apocrypha * Richmond, London – Royal Palace


References

{{Authority control Poetry by William Shakespeare Shakespeare apocrypha