is also debatable. If the Casket Letters are the work of
her detractors, then by the manipulation of the queen’s
voice, a level of ironic fi ctitiousness is introduced. If
they are Mary’s private refl ections, does she consciously
adopt a literary persona, or are the sonnets personal,
and never intended to be read by the public?
In the sonnets, Mary asserts herself as a constant
lover, who is ardent, truthful, and passionate. An
important consideration is Mary’s continual adaptation
and reversal of conventional gender roles as found in
ITALIAN (PETRARCHAN) SONNETs. In this light, critics have
fruitfully explored the tensions between Mary’s poetry
and her role as queen of Scotland. Every poem is also
political; as the publication of the Casket Letters clearly
showed, the queen could not afford the luxury of pri-
vate self-referential speech.
FURTHER READING
Bell, Robin, ed. and trans. Bittersweet Within My Heart: The
Collected Poems of Mary, Queen of Scots. London: Pavilion,
1992.
Dunnigan, Sarah M. Eros and Poetry at the Court of Mary
Queen of Scots and James VI. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2002.
Herman, Peter C., ed. Reading Monarch’s Writing: The Poetry
of Henry VIII, Mary Stuart, Elizabeth I, and James VI/I.
Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, 2002.
Sebastiaan Verweij
Casket Letters: Sonnet 1 (“O goddis haue of me
compassioun,” “O Dieux ayez de moy compas-
sion”) MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS (before 1568) The
fi rst poem in the Casket Letters SONNET SEQUENCE, “O
goddis haue of me compassioun,” has as its theme
“constancie.” Reversing conventional gender roles, the
female speaker casts herself as desiring subject (rather
than the object of desire) and lists the various sacrifi ces
she is prepared to make to win her love: “she will give
up her funds, reconcile with her enemies, put aside
fame and morality, and she will renounce the world”
(ll. 9–12). The poem culminates in the ultimate sacri-
fi ce: “I will die to let him forwart alone” (l. 13). This
image is a standard convention: In countless sonnets,
innumerable lovers die metaphorical deaths at the
hands of their uncaring paramours. Typically, how-
ever, as the speaker is male, this death also metaphori-
cally refers to the shortening of their lives through
ejaculation. Mary’s continued gender role reversal
implies a sexual attraction to her beloved, considered
atypical for a woman.
See also MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS; SONNET.
Sebastiaan VerweijCasket Letters: Sonnet 2 (“In his hands and in
his full power,” “Entre ses mains & en son
plein”)^ MARY, QUEEN^ OF SCOTS^ (before 1568) As
in the sonnet preceding this one, Mary aims to per-
suade Bothwell of her constancy and her “faythfulnes.”
She does so in seemingly contradictory rhetorical
terms, offering to utterly subject herself to his will, but
also promising to actively intervene to prove her worth:
“In his handis and in his full power, / I put my sonne,
my honour, and my lyif, / My contry, my subiects, my
soule al subdewit” (ll. 1–3). The speaker is prepared to
surrender everything—son, queenship, and soul—to
her beloved, a seemingly passive action. This is at odds
with both the historical MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, and
the constructed one. In the SONNETs, Mary assumes the
active male role of seducer, a role reversal alluded to in
the fi nal quatrain: “That he sall know my constancie
without fi ction, / Not by my weping, or faynit [feigned]
obedience, / Als others haue done: but by vther experi-
ence” (ll. 12–14). Not employing conventional female
wiles—“weping,” “obedience”—she suggestively offers
“vther experience,” a term that implies sexuality. After
promising Bothwell the world, Mary sets herself up as
sexual creature, in need of his attention, and with a
clear-cut plan to get what she wants.
Sebastiaan VerweijCasket Letters: Sonnet 3 (“And now she begins
to see,” “Et maintenant elle commence à voir”)
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS (before 1568) The third
SONNET of the Casket Letters creates a love triangle by
introducing an unnamed “sche” who lacks all of Mary’s
positive qualities but receives all of the beloved’s atten-
tion. This woman is Lady Jean Gordon, Bothwell’s wife.
Jean, who “wald fayne deceiue my loue” (l. 4), is an
example of all that MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, disdains.CASKET LETTERS: SONNET 3 105