To the Queen

"To the Queen" (or "To The Queen by the players") is a short poem attributed to William Shakespeare. It was included in 2007 by Jonathan Bate in his complete Shakespeare edition for the Royal Shakespeare Company.



The poem, written on the back of an envelope, is thought to have been written as an epilogue for a performance of As You Like It given at court on Shrove Tuesday in February 1599. American scholars William Ringler and Steven May discovered the poem in 1972 in the notebook of a man called Henry Stanford, who is known to have worked in the household of the Lord Chamberlain.



It consists of 18 lines.