The Female Tragic Hero in English Renaissance Drama

This book constitutes a new direction for feminist studies in English Renaissance drama. While feminist scholars have long celebrated heroic females in comedies, many have overlooked female tragic heroism, reading it instead as evidence of pervasive misogyny on the part of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Displacing prevailing arguments of "victim feminism," the contributors to this volume engage a wide range of feminist theories, and argue that female protagonists in tragedies - Jocasta, Juliet, Cleopatra, Mariam, Webster's Duchess and White Devil, among others - are heroic in precisely the same ways as their more notorious masculine counterparts. Cover 1 Half-Title 2 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: Wonder Woman, or the Female Tragic Hero 12 Euripides at Gray's Inn: Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh's jocasta 43 Visible Hecubas 61 "Not Know Me Yet?": Looking at Cleopatra in Three Renaissance Tragedies 80 The Heroic Tragedy of Cleopatra, the "Prostitute Queen" 101 Female Heroism in Heywood's Tragic Farce of Adultery: A Woman Killed with Kindness 127 "As If a Man Should Spit against the Wind" 149 Queen of Apricots: The Duchess of Malfi, Hero of Desire 168 The "Morris Witch" in The Witch of Edmonton 192 Sex and the Female Tragic Hero 206 Contributors 223 Works Cited 225 Index 241 Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction....Pages 1-31 Euripides at Gray’s Inn....Pages 33-50 Visible Hecubas....Pages 51-69 “Not Know Me Yet?”....Pages 71-91 The Heroic Tragedy of Cleopatra, the “Prostitute Queen”....Pages 93-118 Female Heroism in Heywood’s Tragic Farce of Adultery....Pages 119-140 “As If a Man Should Spit against the Wind”....Pages 141-159 Queen of Apricots....Pages 161-184 The “Morris Witch” in The Witch of Edmonton....Pages 185-198 Sex and the Female Tragic Hero....Pages 199-215 Back Matter....Pages 217-242