Queens on Stage
Female Sovereignty, Power and Sexuality in Early Modern English Theatre

Area 10 – Scienze dell'antichità, filologico-letterarie e storico-artistiche

Queens on Stage aims to investigate the cultural and semiotic richness of early modern English female sovereignty by concentrating on both historical figures of queens and queenly characters in early modern English drama. The reasons for focussing specifically on this genre lie in the desire to offer a textually cohesive approach to the topic and in the conviction that the aesthetic nature of drama might allow for a more efficacious insight into the cultural, specific ‘formations of compromise’ implied in Renaissance social and gender relations. In all the essays herein collected the queens are shown to be palimpsests through which the constant oscillation between the two positions of ‘being subjected to’ and ‘being subject of’ is more creatively problematised, while power and sexuality emerge as markers of particular importance for delineating the interpersonal dynamics of the characters.

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