No Crooked Leg, No Bleared Eye-seke

1. No Crooked Leg, No Bleared Eye-seke Queen Elizabeth I Cooperman 2014

2. Background • Mary, Elizabeth’s older half-sister ascended to the throne and through the country into religious turmoil. Raised by her Catholic mother, Queen Mary was threatened by Protestant factions who wanted Elizabeth, the daughter of King Henry and Anne Boleyn, on the throne. Consequently, she imprisoned Elizabeth (age 20) in the Tower of London for one year. While incarcerated, Elizabeth secretly wrote several poems, and No Crooked Leg… is one of them. Queen Mary I Cooperman 2014

3. No Crooked Leg, No Bleared Eye-seke • No crooked leg, no bleared eye, • No part deformed out of kind, • Nor yet so ugly half can be • As in the inward suspicious mind. Cooperman 2014

4. Content/Form & Structure This poem is an epigram—a short, witty poem. The first three lines are written in trochaic tetrameter, but the last line contains nine syllables. This meter draws attention to the point the speaker makes. Cooperman 2014

5. Content, etc. • This four-line poem is built on a comparison between human appendages: leg, eye and “the inward suspicious mind.” The background of the poem presents life inn a typical Renaissance court, known for its power play, treachery, betrayal, etc. The poem simply states that no amount of deformity in any part of the human body could be compared to the treachery of suspicion that is not obvious to human eyes. Cooperman 2014

6. Theme The theme of the poem deals with suspicion and its potential to pollute a mind into an ugly state. Cooperman 2014

7. Symbolism & synecdoche • Synecdoche is used to reference a crookedleg and bleared eye,to depict two actions of the body. The leg physically moves a person and an eye views what may or may not be visible to everyone. Both are symbolic of the Queen Mary’s court assistants who, Elizabeth infers, have poisoned Mary’s mind against her. • Thus, these physical deformities are incomparable in their deformity to the guile of the human mind. Cooperman 2014

8. tone • Though the tone could have been angry or bitter, the speaker is more instructive; thus, the didactic nature of the poem shows the speaker’s negative awareness of the treachery in the court. Cooperman 2014

9. Poetic devices • Thecaesura used to separatecrooked leg, bleared eyeand the commas at the end of lines 1 and 2 reinforce the negativity of the statement. • Theenjambment in the third line draws the reader’s attention to inward suspicious mind, which is the twist of the poem. • Theirregular rhyme scheme of abcb underlies the conflict between the two comparisons. • Repetition of the word “no” reinforces the negativity of the message. • One simile is use to compare the physical deformities with the human characteristic of suspicion. Cooperman 2014

10. Diction • The simplicity and the effectiveness of the poem is in that it is a mere statement that draws inspiration from the human body, which could symbolically represent a nation or a state. • The vivid imagery accentuates the ugliness depicted in the deformity of human body and draws attention to man as the source of discord in any society. Cooperman 2014

11. Works Cited • http://aspoetryanalysis.weebly.com/index.html • http://literatureencore.net/?p=74 • https://rainbowliterature.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/no-crooked-leg-no-bleared-eye/ Cooperman 2014