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Queen Elizabeth I

No Crooked Leg, No Bleared Eye-seke

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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.

BACKGROUND

Queen Mary I

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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.

No Crooked Leg, No Bleared Eye-seke

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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.

Content/Form & Structure

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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.

CONTENT, ETC.

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

THEME

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Synecdoche is used to reference a crooked leg 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.

SYMBOLISM & SYNECDOCHE

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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.

TONE

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The caesura used to separate crooked leg, bleared eye and the commas at the end of lines 1 and 2 reinforce the negativity of the statement.

The enjambment in the third line draws the reader’s attention to inward suspicious mind, which is the twist of the poem.

The irregular 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.

POETIC DEVICES

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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.

DICTION

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http://aspoetryanalysis.weebly.com/index.html

http://literatureencore.net/?p=74

https://rainbowliterature.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/no-crooked-leg-no-bleared-eye/

WORKS CITED