Of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays, fifteen include queens. Essays span Shakespeare’s career and cover a range of famous and lesser-known queens, from the furious Margaret of Anjou in the Henry VI plays to the quietly powerful Hermione in The Winter’s Tale;

1. Introduction.- I. General Studies.- 2. Stagecraft and Statecraft: Queenship and Theatricality on the Shakespearean Stage.- 3. Shakespeare's Queens and Collective Forces: Facing Aristocracy, Dealing with Crowds.- II. Queenship & Sovereignty.- 4. "I trust I may not trust thee": Queens and Royal Women's Visions of the World in King John.-  5. Cordelia, Foreign Queenship, and the Commonweal.- 6. "Tremble at patience": Constant Queens and Female Solidarity in The Two Noble Kinsmen and The Winter's Tale.- III. Queenship & Motherhood.- 7. "...to beare the name of a queene": Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, and Lady Macbeth: Queens and Motherhood.- 8. Womb Rhetoric: The Martial Maternity of Volumnia, Tamora, and Elizabeth I.- 9. "Good queen, my lord, good queen": Royal Mothers in Shakespeare's Plays.- IV. Queenship & Rhetoric.- 10. Margaret of Anjou and the Rhetoric of Sovereign Violence.- 11. "I can no longer hold me patient!": Margaret, Anger, and Political Voice in Richard III.- 12. Shakespeare's Cleopatra as Metatheatrical Monarch.- V. Absent/Missing Queens.- 13. "Nothing Hath Begot My Something Grief": Invisible Queenship in Shakespeare's Second Tetralogy.- 14. The Queen's Two Bodies in The Winter's Tale.- 15. The Political Aesthetics of Anne Boleyn's Queenship in Henry VIII, or All is True.- 16. The Fortification and Containment of Queen Elizabeth I's Rhetoric and Performance in Shakespeare and Fletcher's Henry VIII.- VI. Staging Queens & Contemporary Politics.- 17. The Princess' Political Mission in Love Labour's Lost: The Embassy to get Aquitaine and "all that is" Navarre's.- 18. Katherine of Aragon, Protestant Purity, and the Anxieties of Cultural Mixing in Shakespeare and Fletcher’s King Henry VIII.- 19. “The Ambition in my Love”: The Theatre of Courtly Conduct in All’s Well That Ends Well.- VII. Queenship & Intertextuality.- 20. As Wise as She is Beautiful: Reconciling Shakespeare’s Fairy Queen and Spenser’s Faerie Queene.- 21.  The Princess of France: Difference and Dif(fé)rance in Love’s Labour’s Lost.- 22. “A gap in nature”: Re-writing Cleopatra Through Antony and Cleopatra’s Cosmology.- 23. En un infierno los dos: Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn in Shakespeare & Fletcher’s Henry VIII and Calderón’s La cisma de Inglaterra.- VIII. Performing Queenship.- 24. Margaret of Anjou: Shakespeare's Adapted Heroine.- 25. The Bard, the Bride, and the Muse Bemused: Katherine de Valois on Film in Shakespeare’s Henry V.- 26. The “squeaking Cleopatra boy”: Performance of the Queen’s Two Bodies on the Early Modern Stage.

Of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays, fifteen include queens. This collection gives these characters their due as powerful early modern women and agents of change, bringing together new perspectives from scholars of literature, history, theater, and the fine arts. Essays span Shakespeare’s career and cover a range of famous and lesser-known queens, from the furious Margaret of Anjou in the Henry VI plays to the quietly powerful Hermione in The Winter’s Tale; from vengeful Tamora in Titus Andronicus to Lady Macbeth. Early chapters situate readers in the critical concerns underpinning any discussion of Shakespeare and queenship: the ambiguous figure of Elizabeth I, and the knotty issue of gender presentation. The focus then moves to analysis of issues such as motherhood, intertextuality, and contemporary political contexts; close readings of individual plays; and investigations of rhetoric and theatricality. Featuring twenty-five chapters witha rich variety of themes and methodologies, this handbook is an invaluable reference for students and scholars, and a unique addition to the fields of Shakespeare and queenship studies.

“This is a timely and fascinating collection of essays, bringing together the work of full professors and independent scholars who have built careers in feminist historicist criticism, and their junior colleagues taking prior scholarship in new directions. The medieval notion of the monarch’s two bodies – the body natural and the body politic – comes in for particularly productive exploration, as does the performative act of ‘queening’ undertaken by boy actors on the early modern stage. Many essays challenge and build upon prior criticism to reframe and re-examine Shakespeare’s queens, often in light of their historical-political contexts. The essays are well-grouped; one can easily read standalone essays, groups of essays, or the entire book. It is well suited for both scholars and upper-division/graduate-level courses. Finally, given the focus on women in power in contemporary politics, this collection reminds us anew of the continued relevance of Shakespeare’s plays for our own era, our own issues, our own women who would be ‘queens,’ and rule.” (Regina Buccola, Chair of Humanities and Professor of Literature and Languages, Roosevelt University, USA) “This collection provides fresh insights into the historical, political, and theatrical contexts of Shakespeare’s representations of royal queens and seeks to investigate new intersections among gender, performance, and power.  The complex nature of sovereignty and its response to societal pressures frequently necessitated a range of nuanced responses from queens.  Queenly influence could remain ambiguous at best but female collaboration could function, paradoxically, to move patriarchal figures into more considerate responses to female influence. The staging of maternity in terms of its impact upon the early modern political state and the manner in which language empowers women with authority also receive attention.  The collection offers an engaging close study of Shakespeare’s queens thathighlights not only the evolving representations of the power and status of queenship but also the ways in which Shakespeare’s dramatic art matured.” (Debra Barrett-Graves, Professor Emerita, California State University, East Bay, USA)    

Provides a comprehensive reference for scholars and students of early modern history, performance, literature, and gender Covers the spectrum of fictional and historical queens present in Shakespeare’s plays Analyzes issues of motherhood, contemporary politics, performance, intertextuality, and gender Winner of the 2020 Royal Studies Journal book prize

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