While Kate Blanchette in armour and on horseback, with long red hair flowing from her wigged scalp, looking a good twenty years younger than her supposed age of 55 (which in 16th Century terms is a miracle) is visually resplendent, it captures nothing of the woman who wrote Monsieur’s Departure.

Queen Elizabeth on horseback at the

Queen Elizabeth Playing the Lute, (1576)

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly to prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned.
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

– Queen Elizabeth I

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“Monsieur” is identified in two MSS as the duke of Anjou, who withdrew from marriage negotiations in 1582, and in one MS as Robert Devereaux, earl of Essex, whose long-lived affection for Elizabeth ended in a rebellion that resulted in his execution on a warrant signed by Elizabeth. (source)