Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth by Anna Whitelock, Alice Hunt Page B

respect both pageant and oration again looked ahead to parliamentary concerns, for within two months, on February 9, Elizabeth would receive a Commons petition beseeching her to choose a husband for the security of the realm. 8 “The uniting of the two houses of Lancaster and York” was a riposte to, or perhaps a retraction of, the spectacle of Anglo-Iberian genealogy during Mary and Philip’s entry. That dynastic tableau had highlighted the pair’s common descent from Edward III in order to establish the Spanish prince’s claim to Englishness. 9 To the Marian pageant’s assertion of England’s historic involvement in continental Europe, the Elizabethan show opposed a strong call for disengagement. Above all, it celebrated the fact that in contrast to her half-Spanish half-sister, the new queen was English  par excellence . 10
    For all its complimentary-didactic bent, however, “The uniting” evinced the limitations of Elizabeth’s regime no less than its might. Like the alter egos of Henry VII and Henry VIII, the child impersonating the queen seems to have worn a closed imperial crown, symbol of England’s independence and sovereignty. 11 The explanatory oration credited Elizabeth with the power to heal the rift in the body politic. Yet it also unceremoniously pressured her into making a wholehearted commitment to that goal, which the queen duly did and which the pamphlet duly publicized. If four years earlier, in mounting a flattering welcome for Philip, the City had anticipated the wishes of the Catholic queen, now her Protestant heir was issued with an injunction, however obsequious.
    IV
    The use of allegory in the next tableau, “The seat of worthy governance,” served to disparage Mary’s reign by attacking its religion and morality. Here too the provisional nature of Elizabeth’s hold on power was in evidence. The throne occupied by the royal figure representing the queen was supported by Virtues that were shown suppressing their opposite Vices: “ Pure religion  did tread upon  Superstition  and  Ignorance ;  Love of subjects  did tread upon  Rebellion  and Insolence ; Wisdom  did tread upon  Folly  and Vainglory ;  Justice  did tread upon  Adulation  and Bribery .” 12 The anti-Marian drift was instantly recognized by one of the foreign spectators, the Italian Il Schifanoya. “On the other side, hinting I believe at the past,” he noted “were Ignorance ,  Superstition ,  Hypocrisy ,  Vain Glory ,  Simulation ,  Rebellion , and  Idolatry .” 13
    From Il Schifanoya’s perspective, the contrast between the Elizabethan present and the Marian past, between Protestantism and Catholicism, was expressed through a sort of visual paradiastole or rhetorical redescription, a classical figure widely distrusted in the Renaissance because of its disturbing capacity to misrepresent the true moral character of an action, a person, or a belief. The strategy common to Protestants and Catholics was to charge the other with heresy, idolatry, rebelliousness, avarice, and hypocrisy, and to cast the accusation in the form of a dramatic unmasking of the enemy by attributing to him verbal duplicity and fraud. The definition of paradiastole given by Henry Peacham in his  The Garden of Eloquence (1593; first edn. 1577) neatly exemplifies this ideological bias:
    It is when by a mannerly interpretation, we doe excuse our own vices, or other mens whom we do defend, by calling them virtues, as when we call him that is craftye, wyse: a covetous man, a good husband: murder a manly deede: deepe dissimulation, singuler wisdome: pryde cleanliness: covetousnesse, a worldly or necessarye carefulnesse: whoredome, youthful delight & dalyance: Idolatry, pure religion : glotony and dronkennesse, good fellowship: cruelty severity. This figure is used, when vices are excused. 14 (my emphasis)
    A radical Protestant divine, Peacham echoes the pageant-makers in denouncing Catholics for preaching idolatry under the guise