As the threat of invasion from the Spanish Armada still hung, Queen Elizabeth I attempted to rally her troops in the town of Tilbury. The Queen dispelled opposition of her position and worries about her lack of capabilities as she delivered her Tilbury Speech on August 9th, 1588. Through her use of diction, imagery, and sentence structure the Queen successfully rallies her troops to confront the encroaching enemy.
The Queen uses diction to praise and motivate her people using words like, ” faithful” and ” loving,” praising their ” loyal” and ” goodwill,” to describe her subjects; this use of diction allows her subjects to view her as a caring, kind, and kinglike leader. She also uses words like “ noble” and “ worthy” to instill a sense of duty into the people to protect and serve the kingdom, as well as promoting the importance of protecting their kingdom from the Spanish invasion.
Along with the use of diction, Queen Elizabeth I uses a mastery of sentence structure to sway the emotions of her subjects and compare her to them using “ we” and then using “ I”; this transition shows how she wants she people to see her as an Englishman, not as a distant ruler that doesn’t care about her people. She shows this in the first part of her speech by saying, “ We have been persuaded…” and later, “ I assure you I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. ” By saying this she is symbolizing how she has traveled from her throne to personally speak to her troops.
