Despite being cast as the ultimate courtier, Elizabeth did not trust Philip Sydney because he was too well-connected, too independent-minded, and too fervently Protestant.

7:31to win glory for himself. Yeah. >> And this is because Elizabeth hates war. She's very cautious. She's very skeptical. She's very pragmatic. and she has no wish whatsoever to get locked into an open fight with Spain which is the absolute not just the European but the global superpower. But I think there's an additional more personal reason why Sydney's ambition up until this point to win glory on the

7:57battlefield has been frustrated is because actually although Sydney is cast as the ultimate courtier at um at the court of Elizabeth I doesn't really trust him. >> Right. >> I think that she finds him maybe too well-connected. Yeah. Yeah. >> Kind of too independent-minded, too, fiery Protestant. And it may be that she just thinks he's a little bit too much. He's a little bit Yeah. over the top,

8:28which to, you know, to a degree he is, I think. >> Well, he has behaved in an not exactly insolent, but a very forward way, hasn't he? Because when she wanted to marry that bloke, the um the Duke of Enju, we talked about him in the last episode. So, he had bandandy legs. She called him her frog. He was the brother, wasn't he, of the is he the brother of the king of

8:45France. Have I got that right? >> Yeah. Of Henry III. Yeah. >> And Philip Sydney had actually written her a letter and said like this is a very bad idea. I don't think you should do this. All of this kind of thing. I mean that's great. That's takes a lot of guts, but it might be seen as insubordinate. >> Well, I think it's definitely seen as insubordinate by Elizabeth. I mean, she

9:03she is absolutely furious. And there's a sense in which um his presence at that tournament in 1581 had been forced on Sydney by the queen as a kind of humiliation because the French emissaries that he mentions um in the in the sonnet you know from from that sweet enemy France had actually these are emissaries who've been sent by so in a sense the fact that Sydney is

9:26having to entertain them with his nightly proess um you know [laughter] this is Elizabeth rubbing his nose in the fact that she's going to marry on you if she wants and there's nothing that he can do about it. >> And there's also been some tennis bad behavior, hasn't there? [laughter] >> Yes. >> Yeah. So, talk us through this tennis business. >> So, I think what this displays is the