Did Queen Elizabeth I Have a Secret Violent Streak?

She Did! And Mysteriously, Shakespeare Knew All About It

In an earlier post [👉 See: Did Queen Elizabeth I Use Swear Words?], we uncovered a salty Tudor secret about Queen Elizabeth I herself.  The lady swore like a sailor.

Hamlet’s tapestry-stabbing in the Queen’s bedchamber wasn’t a flight of Shakespeare’s dramatic fancy. Somehow, the Bard knew and riffed on this real Elizabethan secret: Queen Elizabeth I stabbed her own bedchamber tapestries with a sword when she was in a rage.

But here’s an even more interesting historical fact about Queen Elizabeth: her famous Tudor temper didn’t stop at bad language. The Virgin Queen inflicted physical damage on people around her. Broken fingers. Flying slippers. A well-placed right hook. And taking the sword not just to the fight, but straight through the tapestries. A treasure trove of historical Elizabethan secrets that don’t make the history books,

Cue Hamlet?

Oh yes. And much more!

This was no gentle Good Queen Bess. This was a blaspheming, five-feet-four-inch force of nature to be reckoned with upon more than one occasion. 

Top that off with this real mystery of history:

How on earth did Shakespeare know so many precise details about Elizabeth’s violence which occurred only inside the protected world of the royal court? 

Some incidents happened when he was a ten-year-old boy living 150 miles away in Stratford-Upon-Avon and were reported only in private correspondence.

And yet, he wrote them into his plays.

Exactly.

☝🏻The Breaking of Thy Little Finger

“In faith, I’ll break thy little finger Harry,

And if thou wilt not tell me all things true.”

 Lady Percy, I Henry IV, II.iii

In January 1574, court gossip reached the Earl of Rutland from Eleanor Brydges, a maid-of-honor, that the Queen had struck Mary Shelton, a Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, and used “evil words” about her wish to marry John Scudamore, a Catholic.

Mary Queen of Scots, elite and dangerous Tudor gossip, wearing the smug expression of a woman who has already told half Europe that her cousin Elizabeth I took to stabbing the servants and breaking her ladies’ fingers.

Mary Queen of Scots, royal gossip par excellence, elaborated. In a private letter to Elizabeth, she claimed that Lady Talbot refused to serve Elizabeth because she was afraid that when Elizabeth was in a temper, she would do to her as she had done to Mary Shelton: break her little finger and blame it on a falling chandelier.  

Mary also accused her cousin of attacking another lady whose table service displeased the ill-tempered Elizabeth. According to Mary, Elizabeth “gave her a great blow with a knife upon the hand”.  The Scottish queen did not specify whether that was handle end (a smack) or pointy end (a stab).

Shakespeare seems to have taken pity on Mary Scudamore. He lent Elizabeth’s finger breaking expertise to Lady Percy as she teasingly threatens her husband Harry Percy, known as “Hotspur”, in Henry IV, Part I, a sly literary rap on the Queen’s royal knuckles.

 🥿 The Flinging of the Royal Slipper

“I do adore thy sweet grace’s slipper.”

          Don Adriano de Armado, Love’s Labour’s Lost, V.ii

In March of 1586, while all England braced for a Spanish invasion by sea, Elizabeth heard by chance from a Scottish sea captain (not her own spymaster and Secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham) that 27 Spanish galleons sat in Lisbon harbor, armed like floating fortresses. Without confirming if the rumor were true, she confronted Walsingham about this alarming oversight.

She accepted no excuses.

She removed her slipper and flung it at his face.

Watching from the safety of the sidelines, Spanish Ambassador Mendoza reported to King Philip II that such behavior “is not a very extraordinary thing for her to do, as she is constantly behaving in such a rude manner.”

Just another day of queenly violence in the Tudor court.

Shakespeare was also aware of flying royal footwear. He tucked that little secret about Elizabeth into Love’s Labour’s Lost, although there is no record of his being at court in 1586.

🥊The Cuff to the Noble Ear

“Do; cuff him soundly, but never draw thy sword.”

           Sir Toby Belch, Twelfth Night, or What You Will, III.iv

A woman in charge of a group of “wolfish earls” sometimes needs to remind them who is the boss girl.

In July 1598, at Greenwich Palace, Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, the handsome, reckless object of desire of half the women at court, [See 👉 1591: Merry Maids & the Year of Amoral Revelry] not only had the bad judgment to argue with the Queen in front of her council. He turned his back on her, and added a scornful eye-roll.

Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, Garter-decorated and catastrophically confident, forgot not only his manners but exactly who was boss in Elizabeth I’s court. To his eternal regret.

Yes, to his Queen.

Elizabeth’s indulgent patience for Essex’s youthful arrogance snapped. She stepped forward and cuffed his ear.  

Essex’s hand flew to the hilt of his sword.

Yes, to his Queen.

Only the lightning reflexes of Lord Admiral Effingham prevented bloodshed. It would not have been Elizabeth’s. Effingham swore that neither he, nor any man in King Henry VIII’s court, would swallow such an insult.   

Naturally, Shakespeare couldn’t resist. Sir Toby Belch’s line in Twelfth Night, or What You Will captures the Essex episode, ear cuff, attempted drawing of his sword, and all.

🗡️ The Sword Through the Arras

“Behind the arras, hearing something stir,

Whips out his rapier, cries ‘A rat, a rat!’

And in this brainish apprehension kills

The unseen good old man.”

            Gertrude, Hamlet, IV.i

The most iconic tapestry-stabbing in literature is Hamlet killing Polonius behind the arras (a wall hung tapestry) in Gertrude’s private bedchamber.

But the scene had a real precedent.

 In 1601, Sir John Harington, one of Elizabeth’s 100+ godchildren, inventor of the flush toilet and the man whose name a very clever author used as his pseudonym for the racy and scandalous English translation of Orlando Furioso [See 👉 Orlando Furioso's Contribution to the Corruption of Queen Elizabeth's Maids-of-Honor], revealed to Sir Hugh Portman that Queen Elizabeth was so bad tempered and that “[s]he walks much in her privy chamber and stamps her feet at ill news, and thrusts her rusty sword at times into the arras in great rage.”

Imagine being the unfortunate soul hiding behind it.

Shakespeare imagined exactly that. He immortalized Elizabeth’s private temper tantrums in her private bedchamber with uncanny accuracy when he had Hamlet stab Polonius with a sword through the arras in Gertrude’s private bedchamber.  

🔎 The Elizabethan Secrets Shakespeare Shouldn’t Have Known

And here lies the irresistible historical puzzle:

❓Some of these violent outbursts occurred when Shakespeare was a child.

❓Others happened in the queen’s private bed chamber.

❓All were known to only a handful of high-ranking courtiers and expressed only in confidential correspondence.

And yet, the Bard knew about them and embedded every one into his plays with wicked precision.

And he never saw the inside of the Tower for it.

Which leaves one unavoidable question . . .

How did Shakespeare know so much about how violent Queen Elizabeth I could be?

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