No Crooked Leg, No Bleared Eye-seke
Queen Elizabeth I
COOPERMAN 2014
BACKGROUND
Queen Mary I
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.
COOPERMAN 2014
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
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
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
THEME
The theme of the poem deals with suspicion and its
potential to pollute a mind into an ugly state.
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SYMBOLISM & SYNECDOCHE
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.
COOPERMAN 2014
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
POETIC DEVICES
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.
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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
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