Let’s take a look at a very famous speech given by Queen Elizabeth I in 1588 to the English troops at Tilbury that were assembled in preparation for an attack by the Spanish Armada. Working with older pieces such as this one sometimes seems more difficult than working with texts from the twentieth or twenty-first century, yet you may find that you read the older ones more carefully and that their riches reveal themselves more quickly than you might expect. Often the biggest challenge is understanding the tone of the piece, but if you look carefully at the speaker’s choices of words (also called diction) and how those words are arranged (called syntax), you will find plenty of clues.

It may help you to begin by picturing Queen Elizabeth as she might have been on that day in 1588. (Consider watching a reenactment of this speech; Helen Mirren’s performance of it in the 2005 miniseries Elizabeth I is especially good and easy to find online.) Tradition has it that when Queen Elizabeth, known as the Virgin Queen, gave this speech, she was dressed in armor and left her bodyguards in order to walk among her subjects. Her troops were vastly outnumbered by a Spanish Armada that was the most formidable naval force in the world, and it had been preparing to invade England for three years. England, in contrast, was in a precarious financial situation that made it impossible for its troops to go on the offensive; they had to wait for the attack. The English troops were bedraggled, underpaid, and hungry.

Speech to the Troops at Tilbury

Queen Elizabeth

Using what you learned in Chapter 1, you can begin by identifying the passage’s rhetorical situation. The speaker is the Queen of England, not—and this is important—the king. She is exhorting her troops to face the battle with courage and determination on the eve of a confrontation in which England is the underdog. We can analyze the passage through the rhetorical triangle, considering the interaction of subject, audience, and speaker. The subject is Queen Elizabeth’s support for her troops, and the audience is those soldiers gathered around to hear her. Of course, we can assume Elizabeth knew that her words would be communicated to the larger world as well.

You can also consider the ways the queen appealed to ethos, pathos, and logos. A popular queen, walking alone but with her loyal retinue nearby, her ethos as the monarch is established; nevertheless, she begins the speech humbly by stating her confidence in her subjects. She appeals to pathos in her characterization of herself as a “weak and feeble woman,” although she reassures her listeners that on the inside she is as strong as a king. Less apparent is Elizabeth’s appeal to logos; we could, however, consider her promise to repay her loyal troops with “rewards and crowns” to be a logical extension of her support for them.

You probably noticed that Elizabeth begins by speaking of herself in the first person plural. This is a convention: the “royal we,” meant to show that the ruling monarch embodies the entire nation. Even though it is conventional, you can see that it helps Elizabeth create a sense of common purpose. Interestingly, she quickly moves to the singular personal pronouns, “I” and “my,” appropriate in a speech she is making on the same ground (literally) as her audience. She starts off by acknowledging those who might warn her against walking among her soldiers, those who urge her to “take heed how we commit our selves to armed multitudes.” She asserts her independence and fortitude here, telling the troops that she considers them her “chiefest strength” and assures them that she is not that day among them for “recreation and disport.” We can imagine that Elizabeth knew the power of image and even mythmaking; there in the flesh among her soldiers, her wish to “live and die amongst you all” would inspire confidence and courage. The sentence that begins the speech creates a sense of equity between Elizabeth and her troops. The second sentence builds up to the queen’s dramatic commitment to die in the dust with her subjects.

The speech switches gears a bit in the third sentence (para. 2) with the speech’s most famous phrase: “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too. . . .” Here Elizabeth reinforces her image as the Virgin Queen. She never married, most likely for political reasons, and considered herself married to England. She reminds the assembled troops that she is the daughter of a king, however, and is, therefore, connected to the long line of royalty and the divine right of kings—the idea that royal power is bestowed by God. It is worth noting that only then, when she has characterized herself as a “weak and feeble woman,” does she mention the enemies: Spain, Parma (Italy), and Europe in general. These references may serve a few purposes. They appeal to the gallantry of the troops who would feel obligated as gentlemen to defend their queen; they may also be a way to suggest that an attack by Spain is a Catholic threat to English Protestantism. In either case, Elizabeth reassures her troops that she is with them every step of the way and that their “virtues in the field” will be rewarded.

The final part of the speech reinforces the earlier call for national unity and a reassurance that Elizabeth has the interests of her people at heart. She reminds the troops of the rewards they will receive and reaffirms her support for her lieutenant general, who serves “in [her] stead.” The last clause invokes the rule of three—“your obedience,” “your concord,” “your valour”—to predict a “famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.” Although the Armada was defeated largely by bad weather and the light English boats that were able to ride out the storms, Elizabeth’s troops were certainly strengthened by her glorious words of trust and confidence.

Let’s discuss the tone of Elizabeth’s speech, as this is a good way to begin thinking about how to write about what you’ve discovered in your close reading. We often consider tone and mood together: tone is the speaker’s attitude toward the subject as revealed by his or her choice of language, and mood is the feeling created by the work. As always, it’s important to be able to support your description of tone and mood with evidence from the text. Elizabeth’s speech at Tilbury begins with Elizabeth humbling herself to the soldiers: she drops the “royal we”; she puts her subjects before her own safety; she offers her life for her kingdom. In the second paragraph, Elizabeth makes a transition from humble (she has the body of a “weak and feeble woman”) to defiant: she dares the Europeans to invade. Finally, she makes some practical concessions, promising her troops that they will be led by her most loyal lieutenant and amply rewarded for their loyalty. We could describe the tone of her speech as humble yet inspiring and defiant.