Introduction

Abstract

Though Anne Bradstreet was not born until almost a decade after the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, the tremendous impact of having a queen on the throne of England for much of the latter part of the sixteenth century was such that it was part of women’s cultural memory. Yet, Elizabeth was not the only significant queen in the early modern period; there were a number of others, queen régnants, queen consorts, and queen mothers, who are well worth studying. Moreover, the impact of female rule also meant that the ways in which queens were depicted in literature changed in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. And these queens were so powerful in their representation that they continued to be depicted and discussed centuries after their deaths, even to this day.

Now say, have women worth? or have they none?

Or had they some, but with our Queen is’t gone?

Nay Masculines, you have thus taxt us long,

But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong.

Let such as say our sex is void of Reason,

Know tis a slander now, but once was treason.¹