Volu m e I - Purdue University Calumet

Unsurprisingly for a woman who functioned as the focal point for a "cult" of courtly worship,
Elizabeth was not a stranger to accusations of excessive pride. In 1590, Edmund Spenser published the first
book of The Faerie Queene, whose fourth canto shows the Redcrosse Knight's encounters in the "sinfull house
of Pride" (1.4 argument). Pride is personified as a "mayden Queen" (1.4.8) who, like Ralegh's Diana,
"shynéd in her Princely state" (1.4.10). Maidenhood and heavenly light were closely associated with both
Elizabeth and Diana, and Spenser's image of Pride surrounded by her advisors, the other six deadly sins, is a
damning parody of Elizabeth's court.
"Praised be Diana's Fair and Harmless Light" uses excessive praise of Diana-Elizabeth in a similar
condemnation of Elizabeth's pride. Some of Ralegh's lines can be construed as metaphorical representations
of Elizabeth's actual accomplishments—"that force by which she moves the floods" (l. 7), for example,
could be the navy with which she defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588—but other compliments are simply
ridiculous when offered to a mortal woman. By praising Elizabeth for something so humble and so
obviously outside of her control as the "dews" in the second line, Ralegh calls attention to the excessiveness
of the following lines and invites criticism of the queen who is so blind in her pride that she will accept this
kind of sycophantism.
The mention of dew suggests another interesting feature in Ralegh's poem; instead of confining his
praise to Diana-Elizabeth, Ralegh praises Elizabeth as the moon itself. It is not the goddess but the physical
lunar body that illuminates the night (l. 3), controls the floods (l. 7), and channels "the virtue of the stars"
(l. 15). If the poem were intended as straightforward praise of Elizabeth, this would be a poor choice
because the moon in Elizabethan literature was associated with falseness and inconstancy. Shakespeare uses
this association in Romeo and Juliet (2.2.109), when Juliet stops Romeo just short of swearing his love by
"the inconstant moon," lest his affection prove similarly inconstant.
Ralegh complained of Elizabeth's own inconstancy in 1587, during the earl of Essex's rise in the
queen's favor, in a poem that begins "Fortune hath taken away my love." "Fortune," charges Ralegh, "that
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