Carole Levin and Charles Beem This Series Brings Together Monographs
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QUEENSHIP AND POWER Series Editors: Carole Levin and Charles Beem This series brings together monographs and edited volumes from scholars specializing in gender analysis, women’s studies, literary interpretation, and cultural, political, constitu- tional, and diplomatic history. It aims to broaden our understanding of the strategies that queens—both consorts and regnants, as well as female regents—pursued in order to wield political power within the structures of male-dominant societies. In addition to works describing European queenship, it also includes books on queenship as it appeared in other parts of the world, such as East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Islamic civilization. Editorial Board Linda Darling, University of Arizona (Ottoman Empire) Theresa Earenfi ght, Seattle University (Spain) Dorothy Ko, Barnard College (China) Nancy Kollman, Stanford University (Russia) John Thornton, Boston University (Africa and the Atlantic World) John Watkins (France and Italy) Published by Palgrave Macmillan The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History By Charles Beem Elizabeth of York By Arlene Naylor Okerlund Learned Queen: The Imperial Image of Elizabeth I By Linda Shenk High and Mighty Queens of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations Edited by Carole Levin, Debra Barrett-Graves, and Jo Eldridge Carney The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe By Sharon L. Jansen The Face of Queenship: Early Modern Representations of Elizabeth I By Anna Riehl Elizabeth I: The Voice of a Monarch By Ilona Bell Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth By Anna Whitelock and Alice Hunt The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen By Catherine Loomis Queenship and Voice in Medieval Northern Europe By William Layher The Foreign Relations of Elizabeth I Edited by Charles Beem The French Queen’s Letters: Mary Tudor Brandon and the Politics of Marriage in Sixteenth-Century Europe By Erin A. Sadlack Wicked Women of Tudor England: Queens, Aristocrats, Commoners By Retha M. Warnicke A Monarchy of Letters: Royal Correspondence and English Diplomacy in the Reign of Elizabeth I By Rayne Allinson Mary I: Gender, Power, and Ceremony in the Reign of England’s First Queen By Sarah Duncan Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England By Lisa Benz St. John The Last Plantagenet Consorts: Gender, Genre, and Historiography, 1440—1627 By Kavita Mudan Finn Renaissance Queens of France (forthcoming) By Glenn Richardson T HE LAST PLANTAGENET CONSORTS G ENDER, GENRE, AND HISTORIOGRAPHY 1440–1627 K a v i t a M u d a n F i n n THE LAST PLANTAGENET CONSORTS Copyright © Kavita Mudan Finn, 2012. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-39298-4 All rights reserved. First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-35217-3 ISBN 978-0-230-39299-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230392991 Selected sections of Chapter 2 originally appeared in the article “‘So mutable is that sexe’: Queen Elizabeth Woodville in Polydore Vergil’s Anglica Historia and Sir Thomas More’s History of King Richard III,” in The Rituals and Rhetoric of Queenship: Medieval to Early Modern, ed. Louise Wilkinson and Liz Oakley-Brown (Dublin: Four Courts, 2009), 104–17. It is reproduced by kind permission of Four Courts Press. Selected sections of Chapter 6 originally appeared in the article “‘A queen in jest’: Queenship and historical subversion in Shakespeare’s 3 Henry VI and Richard III,” in Representations of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Culture, ed. Alessandra Petrina and Laura Tosi (London: Palgrave, 2011), 244–56. It is reproduced by kind permission of Palgrave Macmillan UK. The cover image of Margaret of Anjou from a 1467 Burgundian presentation copy of Georges Chastellain’s Le Temple de Bocace (BnF MS fr. 1226), fol. 7v, appears with the kind permission of the Bibliothèque nationale Français. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mudan Finn, Kavita, 1983– The last Plantagenet consorts : gender, genre, and historiography, 1440–1627 / Kavita Mudan Finn. pages cm.—(Queenship and power) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Great Britain—History—Lancaster and York, 1399–1485— Historiography. 2. Plantagenet, House of. 3. Queens—Great Britain— Biography—History and criticism. 4. English literature—Middle English, 1100–1500—History and criticism. 5. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and criticism. 6. Politics and literature—Great Britain— History—To 1500. 7. Politics and literature—Great Britain—History—16th century. 8. Great Britain—Politics and government—1399–1485. 9. Political poetry, English—History and criticism. 10. Historiography—Great Britain— History—16th century. 11. Queens in literature. I. Title. DA245.M83 2012 942.04092Ј5—dc23 2011050319 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: June 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 I call’d thee then vain flourish of my fortune ; I call’d thee then poor shadow, painted queen; The presentation of but what I was; The flattering index of a direful pageant; One heaved a-high, to be hurl’d down below; A mother only mock’d with two sweet babes; A dream of what thou wert, a breath, a bubble, A sign of dignity, a garish flag, To be the aim of every dangerous shot, A queen in jest, only to fill the scene. —Wi l l ia m Sha kespea re, Richard III (1597) It is not easie to write that Princes History, of whom no one thing may constantly be affirmed. Changing of Manners & Condition alters the coherence of parts, which should give an uniforme deescription. Nor is it probable that contradictories should agree to the same Person: so that nothing can shake the credit of a Narration more than if it grow unlike it selfe; when yet it may be not the Author, but the Argument caused the variation. It is unpossible to draw his Picture well who hath sev- erall countenances. —Lord Herbert of Cherbury, The Life and Raigne of Henry the Eighth (1649) This Monarch [Edward IV] was famous only for his Beauty & his Courage, of which the Picture we have here given of him, & his undaunted Behaviour in marrying one Woman while he was engaged to another, are sufficient proofs. His Wife was Elizabeth Woodville, a Widow who, poor Woman! was afterwards confined in a Convent by that Monster of Iniquity & Avarice Henry the 7th. One of Edward’s Mistresses was Jane Shore, who has had a play written about her, but it is a tragedy & therefore not worth reading. —Jane Austen, The History of England (1791) C ONTENTS A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s ix A b b r e v i a t i o n s xi Introduction: The Queen as Cipher in the Medieval Period 1 1 Narrating Queens in the Fifteenth Century 13 2 “By meane of a woman”: Changing the Subject in Polydore Vergil’s Anglica Historia and Sir Thomas More’s History of King Richard the Third 4 7 3 “The point of a very woman”: Gendering Destabilization in Edward Hall’s Union and Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles 7 5 4 Queens in the Margins: Allegorizing Anxiety in A Mirror for Magistrates 1 0 5 5 Performing Queenship in Legge’s Richardus Tertius , The True Tragedy of Richard III , and Thomas Heywood’s Edward IV 1 2 5 6 “A qu een in jest”: Queenship and Historical Subversion in Shakespeare’s First Tetralogy 145 7 “The fetters of her sex”: Voicing Queens in the Historical Poetry of Michael Drayton and Samuel Daniel 173 Notes 1 9 3 Bibliography 2 2 9 Index 2 5 5 A CKNOWLEDGMENTS t is perhaps appropriate that I first encountered the women of the Wars of the Roses in a historical novel when I was 12 years I old. Many friends, family members, teachers, and colleagues since then have indulged my fascination with this particular time period and the compelling characters moving through it, and it is these people who I wish to acknowledge here. This book grew out of my D.Phil. thesis at the University of Oxford, supervised by Anna Beer, whose support and assistance were invaluable and who helped me to guide it from ungainly beginnings to where it is today. I am also grateful to my two thesis examiners, Laurie Maguire and Alessandra Petrina, whose extensive feedback made the transition from thesis to book considerably smoother. To Carole Levin and Charles Beem, “Queenship and Power” series editors, for their infectious enthusiasm and support for this project. To Chris Chappell and Sarah Whalen at Palgrave, who answered all my questions—however inane—and to the three anonymous reviewers who provided me with so many useful suggestions, and to Lisa Kleinholz for producing a fantastic index on such short notice. I have been lucky, in my scholarly career thus far, to have had many generous and supportive academic mentors. I have already men- tioned Anna Beer and several others, but would also like to thank Heather O’Donoghue and the fellows and staff of Linacre College for intellectual, financial, and emotional support during my three years in Oxford; Bart van Es, for introducing me to Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton; Emma Smith and Laurie Maguire, whose termly play-readings opened a window into the fantastical world of obscure early modern drama and provided a much-needed respite from research fatigue; Helen Swift, for introducing me to Jean Bouchet; and the community of scholars in the English, History, and Modern Languages faculties whose seminars, lectures, and conferences gave me so many new avenues of enquiry.