To The Queen
"To the Queen" (or "To The Queen by the players") is a short 18 line poem praising Queen Elizabeth I attributed to William Shakespeare. It was included in 2007 by Jonathan Bate in his complete Shakespeare edition for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The poem, described by Bate as having been written on "the back of an envelope", was probably composed as an epilogue for a performance of a play in the presence of the queen. Bate believes it was created to be read after As You Like It was given at court on Shrove Tuesday in February 1599. American scholars William Ringler and Steven May discovered the poem in 1972 in the notebook of a man called Henry Stanford, who is known to have worked in the household of the Lord Chamberlain. Other scholars have since contested the attribution to Shakespeare.
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