Women and Tudor Tragedy: Feminizing Counsel and Representing Gender

Allyna E. Ward examines the relationship between Tudor ideologies of political engagement and its practice by real women and as imagined in neoclassical tragedy of the period. … Ward provides a wide-ranging and valuable starting point for viewing women characters in Tudor tragedies who figure as political counselors, tyrants, and martyrs.

In Women and Tudor Tragedy, Ward looks to several Tudor tragedies to demonstrate how the role of counselors in these plays can provide a means for examining how male hierarchy attempted to maintain power when Mary and Elizabeth I were on the throne. Ward historicizes the education and role of counselors in the lives and monarchies of the Tudor queens. She then discusses the role of counsel to (and counsel from) women in Tudor tragedy, with Jane Lumley’s The Tragedie of Iphigenia and George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmershe’s Jocasta. Ward examines Tudor translations and adaptations of Seneca, and looks at tyrants in Cambises, Gorboduc, Horestes, and Gismond of Salerne. Finally, the author considers Anne Dowriche’s tragic epic poem The French Historie. Ward’s focus on the role of counsel in gender dynamics provides a new perspective in an understanding of how a patriarchic society could serve their “God-ordained” rulers while maintaining a male leadership. Summing Up: Recommended. For comprehensive collections serving upper-division undergraduates and above.

This book has the potential to make a significant contribution to the study of Tudor tragedy by refocusing attention on the representation of women therein.

Ward does an excellent job of contextualizing England politically, religiously, and culturally. . . .This work’s major contribution to the study of political rhetoric and gender in early modern England is its ability to show how highly politicized the genre of tragedy became at this time in which queens were directly awarded political agency. . . .Ward presents a valuable and unique perspective on how culture under the last Tudor monarchs was shaped and the ways in which it shifted.