Power and the Politics of Penetration Ritual and the rhetoric of royalty The spectacle of eating at the Elizabethan court was fraught with symbolic meaning. As a ruler, Elizabeth used both elaborate and ultimately abstract ceremonies and rare instances of shared or communal eating as political tools. To be seen or reported sharing meals with the Queen connoted intimate access, implying alliance even when this may not necessarily have been the case. Elizabeth was capable of eating in public on

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... casion, as witness the spectacular nine-hour banqueting marathon following her coronation. However, even then not only was the guest list limited to the aristocracy (powerful in their own right) but even Il Schifanoya, the spectacularly gossipy Venetian ambassador (he for whom »banquets«, with their dangerous indulgence, constituted »levities and unusual licentiousness«), makes no mention of her actually eating, simply of her »drinking the healths« of »all« her noble servitors. 1 It is clear that the Queen quite consciously used actual shared consumption, as she did almost everything else, as a negotiating tactic -when she invited the same ambassador to eat in her Privy Chamber and discuss marriage negotiations, for example, he perceived it as an honour and was clearly disarmed by the prospect. Baron Caspar von Breuner, Imperial ambassador, describes a similar experience: She then invited me to breakfast with her, and after the meal spoke much and gaily and desired me to come on the river again in the evening. When I arrived there she invited me into her boat, made me take the helm and was altogether very talkative and merry. Everybody kept saying that such honour had never been shown to anyone but me. 2