johnc.53397
  Junior Member

This exchange is a conflation of several quotes associated with Elizabeth I. The first was indeed by Don Bernardino de Mendoza, Spanish ambassador to her court from 1578 to 1584. On the subject of a pretender to the Portuguese throne whom Elizabeth was supporting against Philip II, Don Bernardino de Mendoza told her, "Your Majesty will not hear words, so we must come to the cannon, and see if you will hear them," to which the Queen quietly replied, that if he used threats of that kind, she would fling him into a dungeon. Mendoza responded that he was not threatening, but giving her his master's message: "You must do as you please, but if you make me prisoner, God has given me a sovereign who, even if I were merely his subject instead of his ambassador, would come and fetch me out."

The next part came much later in Elizabeth's life, just before her death, in fact. Elizabeth was sitting, morosely, on the floor of a chamber in Richmond Palace, and Sir Robert Cecil, the son of this film's "wise Burghley," was attempting to persuade her to retire, telling her, "Your Majesty must go to bed." Elizabeth snapped at him, "Little man, little man, 'must' is not a word to use to princes. Your father, were he here, durst never speak to me so; ah, but ye know that I must die, and it makes you presumptuous." (Robert Cecil was, in fact, dwarfish in stature, and a hunchback to boot.) Eventually Lord Howard convinced her to go to bed, where she died some days later. more »