Queen Elizabeth I has a fair claim to be the best educated monarch ever to sit on the throne of England. Apart from her mastery of rhetoric — demonstrated at Tilbury — she spoke six languages and translated French and Latin texts. Furthermore, she enjoyed writing poetry: I grieve and dare not show my Discontent; I love and yet am forc’d to seem to hate; I do, yet dare not say I ever meant; I seem stark mute but Inwardly do prate.
