The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court by Anna Whitelock Page B

the one and other flank,
    From whence a mount of quickened snow doth glide;
    Or else the vale that bounds this milkwhite bank.
    Where Venus and her sisters hide the fount,
    Whose lovely Nectar doth all sweete surmount.

    In its suggestion of cunnilingus and its explicit sexualisation of the female body, the poem describes a means by which aspiring men might gain favour. 8 In Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, (1599) which became an instant commercial success, Venus is the sexual aggressor and it is she who dominates her lover, Adonis, and is consumed with sexual excitement. Rather than the traditional form of an aspiring youth courting his queen, Shakespeare creates a fantasy in which an older, sexually voracious Queen/Empress is forced to plead for the attentions of her younger male lover. 9

 
    Bibliography
    UNPUBLISHED SOURCES
    Manuscripts
    Archivo General de Simancas, Spain
    Estado 814, 812, 815, 949, 8340
    Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
    Fonds Français MSS 15970, Fonds Italien MS 1732
    Bodleian Library, Oxford
    Ashmole MS, Rawlinson MS, Tanner MS
    British Library, London
    Additional MSS 12506, 12507, 15914, 19401, 26056, 27401, 30078, 32379, 35183, 35324, 35830, 35831, 37749, 44839, 48018, 48023, 48027, 48049, 70093; Egerton 2124, 2806, 2836; Cotton Caligula C II; Cotton Caligula C IX; Cotton Caligula B X; Cotton Caligula D I; Cotton Caligula E V; Cotton Julius F VI; Cotton Nero B III; Cotton Faustina E I; Cotton Vespasian F XII; Cotton Vitellius C VII; Cotton Titus B II; Cotton Titus F I; Cotton Titus F III; Cotton Vitellius C VII; Cotton Galba E VI; Royal App 68; Stowe MS 143, 145, 147, 167, 555, 557; Tanner 76; Harleian MS 260, 290, 787, 1582, 5176, 6035, 6286, 6850, 6949; Lansdowne MS 29, 30, 33, 39, 41, 43, 62, 72, 102, 128, 703, 982, 1236; Sloane MS 326, 3846
    Hatfield House, Hertfordshire
    Cecil Papers
    Keele University Library, Staffordshire
    Paget Papers
    Lambeth Palace Library, London
    MS 604, 651, 664, 3197, 3199, 3201
    Longleat House, Wiltshire
    Dudley Papers
    The National Archives, London
    C 66, 115; SP 10, 12, 15, 27, 31, 46, 52, 53, 56, 63, 70, 78, 83; E 351/3145; LC 2, 4, 3, 5; KB 8/40, KB 8/55, 31/3
    National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh
    Advocates MS 1.2
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    PhD Theses
    Brogan, Stephen, ‘The Royal Touch in Early Modern England: its Changing Rationale and Practice’, Birkbeck, University of London, 2011
    Bundesen, Kristin, ‘No Other Faction but My Own: Dynastic Politics and Elizabeth I’s Carey Cousins’, University of Nottingham, 2008
    Goldsmith, H., ‘All the Queen’s Women: the Changing Place and Perception of Aristocratic Women in Elizabethan England, 1558–1620’, Northwestern University, 1987
    Merton, Charlotte, ‘The Women who Served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth: Ladies, Gentlewomen and Maids of the Privy Chamber, 1553–1603’, Cambridge University, 1992
     
    PUBLISHED SOURCES
    Primary
    Acts of the Privy Council , ed. J. R. Dasent (London, 1890–1907)
    Adams, S., ‘The Lauderdale Papers 1561–1570: the Maitland of Lethington State Papers and Leicester Correspondence’, Scottish Historical Review , 67 (1988), pp. 28–55
    Allen, William, An Admonition to the Nobility (London, 1588)
    Anon., Cabala, Sive Scrinia Sacra: Mysteries of State and Government in Letters (London, 1691)
    _______ ‘Dudley and the Catholic Conspirators of 1561, An Anonymous History from Edward VI to December 1562’, British Library MS Additional 48023, ff. 350–369v, 1563, in Religion, Politics, and Society in Sixteenth-century England , eds Ian W. Archer, Simon Adams, and George Bernard, Camden Society, 5th series, vol. 22 (Cambridge, 2003)
    Arnold, Janet, Lost from Her Majesties Back: Items of clothing and jewels lost or given away by Queen Elizabeth I between 1561 and 1585, entered in one of the day books kept for the records of the Wardrobe of the Robes (Wisbech, 1980)
    Bacon, Francis, ‘Apophthegms’, in The Works of Francis Bacon , ed. Basil Montague