“On 28 April 1603, more than a month after her death, Elizabeth’s body was taken in procession to Westminster Abbey. It was an impressive occasion: the hearse was drawn by four horses hung with black velvet, and surmounted by a life-size wax effigy of the late Queen, dressed in her state robes and crown, an orb and scepter in its hands; over it was a canopy of estate supported by six earls.” – Alison Weir, The Life of Elizabeth, 1998
Our continuing demonstration of Elizabeth I of England in the Sonnets now includes the clear reference to her funeral procession in Sonnet 125:
Were’t ought to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honoring…
No, let me be obsequious in thy heart…
“Canopy – a cloth covering, carried tent-like over the head of a dignitary in a ceremonial procession … Through its relation to ‘obsequy,’ ‘funeral,’ obsequious had the specialized meaning ‘dutiful in performing funeral rites,’ and invites a reader to think of the canopy as borne in a funeral procession.” – Stephen Booth, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1977
Sonnet 125 occurs immediately before the “envoy” at the end of the long opening sequence to the so-called Fair Youth, whom we identify as Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. As noted in The Monument, there are nineteen sonnets and nineteen days from Sonnet 107 on 10 April 1603 (when Southampton was released from the Tower) to Sonnet 125 on 28 April 1603, the date of Elizabeth’s funeral (when the end of the Tudor dynasty was official) – or exactly one sonnet per day, and surely not a coincidence.
The bitterness of “Shakespeare” toward the Queen reflects Oxford’s own bitterness toward the female monarch he had served, adding to our evidence that Elizabeth is also the Dark Lady of Sonnets 127 to 152, wherein he rages at her in lines such as those at the end of Sonnet 147: “For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,/ Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.”
“If, then, we take Sonnet 125 as being the Earl of Oxford’s expression of his private feelings relative to Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, we can quite understand his not troubling to honor her with any special verses (under his own name or that of “Shakespeare”).” – John Thomas Looney, “Shakespeare” Identified, 1920
Sonnet 125
Wer’t ought to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honoring,
Or laid great bases for eternity
Which proves more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favor
Lose all and more by paying too much rent
For compound sweet; Forgoing simple savor,
Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent?
No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
And take thou my oblation poor but free,
Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,
But mutual render only me for thee.
Hence, thou suborn’d Informer, a true soul
When most impeached stands least in thy control.
(The “suborned informer” is Time itself, or the Official Record created by those in power, who are liars; and Oxford is saying: No, Time, you will not crush me, because this “monument” containing the Truth will endure and be triumphant.)
(Oxfordians have had some discussion of whether Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford was officially entitled to “bear the canopy” during Queen Elizabeth’s funeral procession. In my view, however, that discussion misses the essential point – that Oxford is using this great occasion as a clear “historical marker” within his “monument” of verse for posterity, and, too, using it as the allegorical or metaphorical basis upon which to record his true thoughts and feelings for future generations. The end of the Tudor dynasty is, in fact, the end of his story.)
The List to Date:
1 – Sonnet 76: “Ever the Same” – the Queen’s motto in English
2 – Sonnet 25: “The Marigold” – the Queen’s flower
3 – Sonnet 131: “Commanded by the Motion of Thine Eyes” – to a monarch
4 – Sonnet 1: “Beauty’s Rose” – the Queen’s dynasty of the Tudor Rose
5 – Sonnet 107: “the Mortal Moon” – Queen Elizabeth as Diana, the chaste moon goddess
6 – Sonnet 19: “The Phoenix” – the Queen’s emblem
7 – Sonnet 151: “I Rise and Fall” – the courtier as sexual slave to his Queen
8 – Sonnet 128: “Those Jacks that Nimble Leap” – recalling the Queen at her virginals
9 – Sonnet 153: “Against Strange Maladies a Sovereign Cure” – the Queen’s touch
10 – Sonnet 154: “Sleeping by a Virgin Hand Disarmed” – the Virgin Queen
11 – Sonnet 125: “Were’t Ought to Me I Bore the Canopy” – Elizabeth’s funeral
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