Abstract
Both The Winter’s Tale and The Two Noble Kinsmen use female solidarity to shame men such as Leontes and Theseus into respectful action. As such, this chapter contends that queens take on a new power during Shakespeare’s later plays. It considers whether a Jacobean nostalgia for the reign of Elizabeth I enabled a reassessment of the way in which gendered power could be performed and negotiated, acknowledging the late queen’s constancy and dutiful qualities as a female monarch and how such qualities create a strong and persuasive message. The show of constancy and female solidarity, as shown by Shakespeare’s later queens, reveals the power of patience, turning passive aggression into affirmative action.
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Notes
- 1.
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, ed. John Pitcher, Arden 3rd Series (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), 3.2.27–31.
- 2.
H. Diane Russell (with Bernadine Barnes), Eva/Ave: Woman in Renaissance and Baroque Prints (New York: National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1990), 29.
- 3.
Christina León Alfar, “‘Proceed in justice’: Narratives of Marital Betrayal in The Winter’s Tale,” in Justice, Women, and Power in English Renaissance Drama, eds. Andrew Majeske and Emily Detmer-Goebel (Madison, Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009), 48–51.
- 4.
Pamela Allen Brown, Better a Shrew Than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in early Modern England (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003), 1.
- 5.
Farah Karim-Cooper, Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 199.
- 6.
P.A. Skantze, Stillness in Motion in the Seventeenth-Century Theatre (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 6.
- 7.
Stuart Clark, Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 255.
- 8.
James C. Dibdin, The Annals of the Edinburgh Stage (Edinburgh: R. Cameron, 1888), 22. As quoted in Arthur F. Kinney, Lies Like Truth: Shakespeare, Macbeth, and the Cultural Moment (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 68–69.
- 9.
Kinney, Lies Like Truth, 74.
- 10.
Kinney, Lies Like Truth, 74–75.
- 11.
Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 113.
- 12.
Mullaney, Place of the Stage, 114.
- 13.
King James VI and I, The Basilicon Doron of James VI, ed. by James Craigie (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood and Sons, 1944), 162.
- 14.
John Matusiak, James I: Scotland’s King of England (Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2015), 180.
- 15.
Mullaney, Place of the Stage, 105.
- 16.
Dympna Callaghan, “Wicked Women in Macbeth: A Study of Power, Ideology, and the Production of Motherhood,” in Reconsidering the Renaissance, ed. Mario A. Di Cesare (Binghamton, New York: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1992), 362–363.
- 17.
King James VI and I, A Satire Against Woemen, as quoted by Matusiak, James I, 203.
- 18.
Christophe de Harlay, Comte de Beaumont, French ambassador to England from April 1603 to November 1605, as quoted in Matusiak, James I, 203.
- 19.
William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. E.A.J. Honigmann, Arden 3rd Series (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), 2.1.109–113.
- 20.
Margot Heinemann, “Political Drama,” in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Dramain, eds. A. R. Braunmuller and Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003 [1990]), 188.
- 21.
Jörg Hasler, “Romance in the Theater: The Stagecraft of the ‘Statue Scene’ in The Winter’s Tale,” in Shakespeare: Man of the Theater, eds. Kenneth Muir, Jay L. Halio, and D. J. Palmer (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983), 208.
- 22.
Farah Karim-Cooper, The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage: Gesture, Touch and the Spectacle of Dismemberment (Bloomsbury: Arden, 2016), 76.
- 23.
Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 152.
- 24.
Katherine R. Kellett, “Petrarchan Desire, the Female Ghost, and The Winter’s Tale,” in Staging the Blazon in Early Modern English Theater, eds. Deborah Uman and Sara Morrison (Surrey and Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), 29.
- 25.
Graham Holderness, “The Winter’s Tale: Country into Court,” in Shakespeare: Out of Court, eds. Graham Holderness, Nick Potter, and John Turner (Hampshire: Macmillan, 1990), 219–220.
- 26.
Holderness, “The Winter’s Tale,” 211.
- 27.
Abbe Blum, “‘Strike all that look upon with mar[b]le’: Materializing Women in Shakespeare’s Plays,” in The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, eds. Anne. M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), 101.
- 28.
Blum, “Strike all,” 103.
- 29.
William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen, ed. Lois Potter, Arden 3rd Series (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), 1.1, SD.
- 30.
Alex Davis, “Living in the Past: Thebes, Periodization and Two Noble Kinsmen,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 40:1 (2010): 177.
- 31.
Madelon Lief and Nicholas F. Radel, “Linguistic Subversion and the Artifice of Rhetoric in The Two Noble Kinsmen,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 38:4 (1987): 414.
- 32.
William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen, ed. by Lois Potter (London: Arden Shakespeare, 1997), 1.
- 33.
Davis, “Living in the Past,” 175.
- 34.
Hannah Crawforth, “‘Bride-habited, but maiden-hearted’: Language and Gender in Two Noble Kinsmen,” in Women Making Shakespeare: Text, Reception and Performance, eds. Gordon McMullan, Lena Cowen Orlin and Virginia Mason Vaughan (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 27.
- 35.
Crawforth, “Bride-habited,” 32.
Bibliography
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Brown, Pamela Allen. 2003. Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Callaghan, Dympna. 1992. “Wicked Women in Macbeth: A Study of Power, Ideology, and the Production of Motherhood.” In Reconsidering the Renaissance, ed. Mario A. Di Cesare. Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies.
Clark, Stuart. 2007. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Crawforth, Hannah. 2014. “Bride-Habited, but Maiden-Hearted’: Language and Gender in Two Noble Kinsmen.” In Women Making Shakespeare: Text, Reception and Performance, ed. Gordon McMullan, Lena Cowen Orlin, and Virginia Mason Vaughan. London: Bloomsbury.
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Dibdin, James C. 1888. The Annals of the Edinburgh Stage. Edinburgh: R. Cameron.
Hasler, Jörg. 1983. “Romance in the Theater: The Stagecraft of the ‘Statue Scene’ in The Winter’s Tale.” In Shakespeare: Man of the Theater, ed. Kenneth Muir, Jay L. Halio, and D.J. Palmer. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
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———. 2016. The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage: Gesture, Touch and the Spectacle of Dismemberment. New York: Bloomsbury Arden.
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Kinney, Arthur F. 2001. Lies Like Truth: Shakespeare, Macbeth, and the Cultural Moment. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Lief, Madelon, and Nicholas F. Radel. 1987. “Linguistic Subversion and the Artifice of Rhetoric in The Two Noble Kinsmen.” Shakespeare Quarterly 38 (4): 405–425.
Matusiak, John. 2015. James I: Scotland’s King of England. Gloucestershire: The History Press.
Mullaney, Steven. 1995. The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press [orig. 1988].
Russell, H. Diane (with Bernadine Barnes). 1990. Eva/Ave: Woman in Renaissance and Baroque Prints. New York: National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Feminist Press at The City University of New York.
Shakespeare, William. 1997. The Two Noble Kinsmen. Ed. Lois Potter. Arden 3rd Series. London: Bloomsbury.
———. 2010. The Winter’s Tale. Ed. John Pitcher. Arden 3rd Series. London: Bloomsbury.
Skantze, P.A. 2003. Stillness in Motion in the Seventeenth-Century Theatre. London/New York: Routledge.
Stone, Lawrence. 1977. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800. New York: Harper and Row.
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Thomas, M.F. (2018). “Tremble at Patience”: Constant Queens and Female Solidarity in The Two Noble Kinsmen and The Winter’s Tale. In: Finn, K., Schutte, V. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Shakespeare's Queens. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74518-3_6
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