Queenship, Power, and Elizabethan Mentalities in Shakespeare’s Histories

• Authors: Dana Percec
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper looks at the way in which the notion of queenship - in connection or in contrast with that of kingship and royalty in general - is reflected in Shakespeare’s historical tetralogies and in Henry VIII. It is argued that all royal figures, male and female, featured in these plays, are presented by Shakespeare in accordance not only with Tudor historiography, but also with Elizabeth I’s own strategies of self-representation. Thus, the major notions to be looked into are virtue, legitimacy, agency, as well as, more generally, early modern religious and political issues concerning gender relations

Keywords

EN

agency; gender relations; legitimacy; queenship; Tudor England; virtue

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Romanian Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 253-262

Dates

published

2013-03-01

online

2013-02-22

Contributors

author

Dana Percec

• West University of Timişoara

References

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• Finn, Mudan Kavita. 2012. The Last Plantagenet Consorts. Gender, Genre, and Historiography, 1440-1627. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Greenblatt, Stephen. 1996. “Invisible bullets: Renaissance authority and its subversion, Henry IV and Henry V” in Political Shakespeare. Essays in Cultural Materialism. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Eds.). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
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• Tennenhouse, Leonard. 1996. “Strategies of State and political plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VIII” in Political Shakespeare. Essays in Cultural Materialism. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Eds.). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Wegemer, Gerard. 2007. “Thomas More’s History of King Richard III: Educating citizens for self-government”. Thomas More Studies 2:38-48.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/rjes-2013-0024