Ben Jonson’s and Thomas May’s “Political Ladies”: Forms of Female Political Agency

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter I
2. Table of Contents V
3. Introduction: Roman Women in Early Modern English Drama 1
4. “Rome’s Rich Ornament”: Lavinia, Commoditization, and the Senses in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus 19
5. Blending Motherhoods: Volumnia and the Representation of Maternity in William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus 39
6. “Silent, Not as a Foole”: William Shakespeare’s Roman Women and Early Modern Tropes of Feminine Silence 59
7. “Timidae obsequantur”: Mothers and Wives in Matthew Gwinne’s Nero 79
8. “Let Me Use All My Pleasures”: The Ovidian Courtship of the Emperor’s Daughter in Ben Jonson’s Poetaster 99
9. “Few Wise Women’s Honesties”: Dialoguing with Roman Women in Ben Jonson’s Roman Plays 119
10. Ben Jonson’s and Thomas May’s “Political Ladies”: Forms of Female Political Agency 141
11. Bawds, Wives, and Foreigners: The Question of Female Agency in the Roman Plays of the Fletcher Canon 165
12. “The Beauties of the Time”: Roman Women in Philip Massinger’s The Roman Actor 185
13. “Poison on, Monsters”: Female Poisoners in Early Modern Roman Tragedies 207
14. Notes on Contributors 227
15. Index 231