Literature often holds a mirror to the social, political and economic milieu in which it was created; this could not be truer in Elizabethan times. A virgin Queen redefined the role of courtier, amorous intent must be merged with political advice, and this climate provided much fodder for poets, writers and playwrights alike. Elizabeth initially struggled to prove her legitimacy as Queen due to her sex, religion and parents, however through a series of calculated speeches, Elizabeth populized the medieval theory of the king's two bodies, constructing an image of herself, exploiting femininity, and simultaneously exerting power reserved for a male monarch. Elizabeth's use of language to describe herself resonates with the way gender, power and sexuality were used in the literature of the time. Marie Axton equates this resurgence of the theory of the king's two bodies as "an attempt to deal with paradox" . Presenting similar paradoxes in The Old Arcadia, Phillip Sidney not only weaves a subtle yet extravagant tapestry of blatant flattery and cautionary advice, but also literalises the "heart and stomach of a king" in the cross dressing Cleophila. In his letter preceding The Old Arcadia Sidney is quick to dismiss his pastoral romance as an "idle work". Such a comment invites the reader to look past this initial reflection. In a highly artificial tableau, his mirror offers a distorted manifestation of Elizabethan court and the Queen herself, one angle presenting a warped realm, the other a cautionary tale to his dismissive monarch. .
The body politic is a concept born in a platonic world of ideals, eternal and a paradigm of political leadership, magnanimity, entirely separate from the body natural, this division enabled Elizabeth to disassociate her role as Queen from her inferior female body. John Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women likened the political state to the human body.
