Abstract
Beloved, virtuous, and capable queens are plentiful in early modern history and literature, but it is the figure of the wicked queen that has an especially tenacious hold on our imaginations. Nefarious female monarchs, who exploit their power, dominate the men who surround them, compete ruthlessly with other women, and relish their horrific deeds—these make for colorful narratives, and thus the evil queen type is perpetuated in popular and literary culture. While the wicked queen’s brand of evil manifests itself in various ways, a recurrent site of treachery is in her association with poison.
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Notes
For an overview of the scholarship on the literary representations, social implications, and cultural discourse surrounding poison in the early modern period, see Catherine E. Thomas, “Toxic Encounters: Poisoning in Early Modern English Literature and Culture,” Literature Compass 9.1: 48–55. For representations of poison plots involving other types of literary characters, see Katherine Armstrong, “Possets, Pills, and Poisons: Physicking the Female Body in Early Seventeenth- Century Drama,” Cahiers Elisabethains 61 (April 2010): 43–56;
Fredson Bowers, “The Audience and the Poisoners of Elizabethan Tragedy,” JEGP 36 (1937): 491–504;
Jonathan Gil Harris, Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006);
Tanya Pollard, Drugs and Theatre in Early Modern England, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005;
and Miranda Wilson, Poison’s Dark Works in Renaissance England (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2013).
A broad but useful study of specific poisons as murder weapons throughout histor y is John Emsley’s The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006).
See Ernst Breisach, Caterina Sforza, a Renaissance Virago (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1967);
Elizabeth Lev, The Tigress at Forli (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2011);
and Joyce de Vries, Caterina Sforza and the Art of Appearances (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010).
See Christopher Hibbert, The Borgias and their Enemies: 1431–1519 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008).
For less sensationalized discussion of Lucrezia, see Maria Bellonci, The Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1953);
Sarah Bradford, Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love, and Death in Renaissance Italy (New York: Penguin Books, 2005);
and Leonie Frieda, The Deadly Sisterhood: A Story of Women, Power, and Intrigue in the Italian Renaissance, 1427–1527 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2014).
Thomas Nashe, “Pierce Penniless: His Supplication to the Devil,” in The Unfortunate Traveler and Other Works (New York: Penguin Books, 1972), 83.
See Katherine Crawford, Perilous Performances: Gender and Regency in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004).
Elaine Kruse, “The Woman in Black: The Image of Catherine de Medici from Marlowe to Queen Margot,” in High and Mighty Queens of Early Modern England: Realities and Representations, ed. Carole Levin, Debra Barrett-Graves, and Jo Eldridge Carney (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 224. Also N. M. Sutherla nd, “Catherine de Med ici: The Legend of the Wicked Italian Queen,” Sixteenth Century Journal 9.2 (1978): 45–56.
See Leonie Frieda, Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France (New York: Harper, 2003), 216.
R. J. Knecht, Catherine De’Medici (London: Longman, 1998), 151.
See also Nancy Lyman Roelker, Queen of Navarre: Jeanne d ’Albret 1528–1572 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1968).
Pierre de Bourdeille and Abbé de Brantôme, The Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies, trans. A. R. Allison (New York: Liverwright, 1933), 127.
Philippe Charlier, “Fatal Alchemy: Did Gold Kill a 16th Century Courtesan and Favorite of Henri II?” British Medical Journal (2009): 339: b5311. Their conclusion: “We have identified the remains of Diane de Poitiers to a high degree of confidence. We believe that she drank gold, which is compatible with Brantôme’s report. The high concentrations of gold in her hair indicate that she could have died of chronic intoxication with gold.” For more on the life of Diane de Poitiers, see Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier, “Diane de Poitiers,” in Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England, ed., Diana Robin, Anne Larsen, and Carole Levin (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2007), 296–297.
See Richard Rex, “John Fisher,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 19 (Oxford: Oxford UP,. 2004), 685–93;
Maria Dowling, Fisher of Men: A Life of John Fisher, 1469–1535 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999); and Wilson, Poison’s Dark Works in Renaissance England, xvii–ix.
Giles Tremlett, Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen (London: Faber and Faber, 2010), 424–25.
See also Garrett Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon (Boston: Little, Brown, 1941)
and David Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (New York: Harper Collins, 2003).
Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004), 393.
Cited in Anne Somerset, Elizabeth I (New York: Knopf, 1992), 262–63
and Carolly Erickson, The First Elizabeth (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 196–97.
See James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia UP, 1997)
and Stephen Orgel, Imagining Shakespeare (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003).
For more discussion of the Amy Robsart episode, see Carole Levin, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power, 2nd ed. (Pennsylvania: U of Pennsylvania P, 2013).
Carolly Erickson. The First Elizabeth (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1983), 362–63.
Elizabeth I: Collected Works, ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago: U of Chicago, 2000): 293.
Jane Dunn, Elizabeth & Mary, Cousins, Rivals, Queens (New York: Vintage, 2003), 390.
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© 2015 Carole Levin and Christine Stewart-Nuñez
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Carney, J.E. (2015). Poisoning Queens in Early Modern Fact and Fiction. In: Levin, C., Stewart-Nuñez, C. (eds) Scholars and Poets Talk about Queens. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137534903_27
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137534903_27
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