`` For when I am in the presence of either Father or Mother , whether I speak , keep silence , sit , stand or go , eat , drink , be merry or sad , be sewing , playing , dancing , or doing anything else , I must do it as it were in such weight , measure and number , even so perfectly as God made the world ; or else I am so sharply taunted , so cruelly threatened , yes presently sometimes with pinches , nips and bobs and other ways ... that I think myself in hell '' . The visiting scholar Roger Ascham , who found her reading Plato , she told : `` For when I am in the presence of either Father or Mother , whether I speak , keep silence , sit , stand or go , eat , drink , be merry or sad , be sewing , playing , dancing , or doing anything else , I must do it as it were in such weight , measure and number , even so perfectly as God made the world ; or else I am so sharply taunted , so cruelly threatened , yes presently sometimes with pinches , nips and bobs and other ways ... that I think myself in hell . ''