Shakespeare’s Foreign Queens

Description

This book examines Shakespeare’s depiction of foreign queens as he uses them to reveal and embody tensions within early modern English politics. Linking early modern and contemporary political theory and concerns through the concepts of fragmented identity, hospitality, citizenship, and banishment, Sandra Logan takes up a set of questions not widely addressed by scholars of early modern queenship. How does Shakespeare’s representation of these queens challenge the opposition between friend and enemy that ostensibly defines the context of the political? And how do these queens expose the abusive potential of the sovereign? Focusing on Katherine of Aragon in Henry VIII, Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, Tamora in Titus Andronicus, and Margaret in the first history tetralogy, Logan considers them as means for exploring conditions of vulnerability, alienation, and exclusion common to subjects of every social position, exposing the sovereign himself as the true enemy of the state. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii Introduction: Foreign Queens, Abusive Sovereignty, and Political Theory in the Past and the Present (Sandra Logan)....Pages 1-59 Katherine of Aragon’s Fragmented Identity in Henry VIII (Sandra Logan)....Pages 61-109 The Friend, the Enemy, the Wife, and the Guest: Conditional and Unconditional Hospitality in The Winter’s Tale (Sandra Logan)....Pages 111-157 Strange Bedfellows: Friend, Enemy, and the Commonweal in Titus Andronicus (Sandra Logan)....Pages 159-208 Margaret and the Ban: Resistances to Sovereign Authority in Henry VI 1, 2, & 3 and Richard III (Sandra Logan)....Pages 209-260 Back Matter ....Pages 261-279