Elizabeth I's Rhetorical Control of Historical Legacy in "The Doubt of Future Foes"

March, 2019

The new technology of the printing press allowed manuscripts to reach “an increasingly wide and growing audience during Elizabeth’s reign” and with greater speed as well. Because of this reality, “writers began to favor rhetorical strategies of concealment;” however, Elizabeth exploited both of these realities as part of her “political strategy,” as demonstrated by her covert circulation of her poem “The Doubt of Future Foes.”