No English sovereign was so popular or so praised. The great writers
and the great men of that day vied with each other in their
compliments to Elizabeth's beauty, wisdom, and wit. She lived in an
atmosphere of splendor, of pleasure, and of adulation. Her reign was
full of pageants, progresses, or journeys made with great pomp and
splendor, and feasts, like those which Scott describes in his
delightful novel, "Kenilworth."
Spenser composed his poem, the "Faerie Queen," as he said, to extol
"the glorious person of our sovereign Queen." Shakespeare is reported
to have written the "Merry Wives of Windsor" for her amusement, and in
his "Midsummer Night's Dream" he addresses her as the "fair vestal in
the West." The translators of the Bible spoke of her as "that bright
Occidental Star," and the common people loved to sing and shout the
praises of their "good Queen Bess." After her death at Richmond, when
her body was being conveyed down the Thames to Westminster, one
extravagant eulogist declared that the very fishes that followed the
funeral barge "wept out their eyes and swam blind after!"