A Step Up for Captain Raleigh
When young Walter Raleigh first came to the court of Queen Elizabeth I he had little more than his wardrobe in his favour, and he wore it wisely.
1580-1584
Queen Elizabeth I 1558-1603 to King James I 1603-1625
When young Walter Raleigh first came to the court of Queen Elizabeth I he had little more than his wardrobe in his favour, and he wore it wisely.
1580-1584
Queen Elizabeth I 1558-1603 to King James I 1603-1625
Walter Raleigh was not always popular in England, as in John Aubrey’s phrase he was ‘damnable proud’, but his gracious demeanour in the weeks preceding his execution in 1618 changed that. One of the best-loved tales of Sir Walter goes back to the early 1580s, when he was still a relative unknown at court with little more than the clothes on his back — though they were all he needed.
HE was born at Budley in this county,* of an ancient family, but decayed in estate, and he the youngest brother thereof. He was bred in Oriel College in Oxford; and thence coming to court, found some hopes of the queen’s favours reflecting upon him. This made him write in a glass window, obvious to the queen’s eye,
Fain would I climb,
yet fear I to fall.
Her majesty, either espying or being shown it, did underwrite,
If thy heart fails thee,
climb not at all.
However he at last climbed up by the stairs of his own desert.
But his introduction into the court bare an elder date from this occasion: this captain Raleigh coming out of Ireland to the English court in good habit (his clothes being then a considerable part of his estate) found the queen walking, till, meeting with a plashy place, she seemed to scruple going thereon. Presently* Raleigh cast and spread his new plush cloak on the ground; whereon the queen trod gently, rewarding him afterwards with many suits, for his so free and seasonable tender of so fair a foot cloth. Thus an advantageous admission into the first notice of a prince is more than half a degree to preferment.
* Walter Raleigh (?1554-1618) was born at Hayes Barton near Budleigh Salterton, Devon.
* ‘Presently’ here means ‘at once’. Compare William Shakespeare’s Henry V Act II Scene 3, where Gower says: “Captain Fluellen, you must come presently to the mines; the Duke of Gloucester would speak with you.”
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.