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Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to explore the interrelationship between female rule and desire in Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage and Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. This exploration takes place in the context of an increase of female rule in sixteenth century Europe and the subsequent impact upon male identity. The argument demonstrates that when confronted with female power and sexual desire, male characters react with extreme violence, enforcing an excessively masculine subjectivity and homosocial bonds.

A number of issues are explored in Marlowe's play, such as the relationship between a queen's ability to rule and to contain her sexual desire. This fear was prevalent during Elizabeth's reign and arguably; Marlowe uses Dido to consider the negative consequences of Elizabeth's sexuality. The play offers an opportunity to investigate female attempts to control reality, illegitimate desire and the threat of woman to empire.

The work takes a more specific focus with Webster's play, paying close attention to the discourses of the sexuality of widows and cosmetics to investigate male reaction to the Duchess' marriage. A concern for cosmetics was a popular theme in Renaissance literature and the work draws upon the writings of Philip Stubbes and Thomas Tuke. Overall, this section of the paper is concerned with the interrelationship between male and female identity.

The paper encompasses a number of themes, ranging from female sexual desire, the viability of female rulers, violence against women and the formation of identity.




"Dido I am, unless I be deceived":
Female Desire and Ruin in Christopher Marlowe's
Dido, Queen of
Carthage (1594) and
John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi (1613).

Grace Windsor

        The unprecedented rise of female rulers during the sixteenth century generated a need to rewrite contemporary political theory to accommodate female monarchs. In a study of works such as Thomas More's Utopia (1518), Machiavelli's Discourses (1531), and Knox's The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), Jankowski demonstrates that the prevalent attitude of the time was that women were unfit to rule, being socially constructed as subservient and overrun by passion (54-74). The necessity of marriage to produce an heir had the potential to place the nation under the leadership of a foreign prince, whilst many feared that female monarchs could use their status to serve their personal desires. This paper will explore dramatic representations of this dilemma through a study of Christopher Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage (1594) and John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi (1613). The study will involve an overview of the general perception of female rule as dramatised by Marlowe, before a consideration of Webster's incorporation of general stereotypes into his work as a means of dealing with a transgressive woman. The argument will suggest that the negative images of female identity and sexuality transmitted by these plays are created in a context of hyper-masculinity precipitated by female rule and that; ultimately, fluid female identity must be subsumed by the fixed male subject. hyper-masculinity will refer to male activities, such as the pursuit of empire, and misogynistic beliefs about the nature of women.

        Marlowe's main source was Book Four of Virgil's The Aeneid and his work inserts itself into the Renaissance reworking of the Trojan legend to represent hostility with Spain (Shepard 53-79). The play is an exploration of both gender boundaries and failed female rule, casting a female monarch as a protagonist who wishes to retain her political power and exist as a private individual. Much of the play focuses upon the emasculating effect of Dido and the threat of her excessive sexuality to empire. The first encounter between Dido and Aeneas is dominated by the queen's desire to assert her power by controlling the identity and narrative of Aeneas. This short scene helps the pattern of gender performance for the remainder of the play, as Dido is dramatised as "more dynamic and dominant, and thus more conventionally 'masculine'" whilst the Trojan leader develops as "reticent and passive and thus more conventionally 'feminine'" (Deats 168). Aeneas gives Dido the power to decide his identity when he states "Sometime I was a Trojan, mighty queen/ but Troy is not: what shall I say I am?" (II.i.75-6). Dido performs two tasks in relation to this question: she draws attention to the masculinity of the "warlike Aeneas" (II.ii.79) and casts him in the role of lover by dressing him in the robes of her husband. The creation of Aeneas's new self involves a reversal of roles: during this period, women were dependent upon their relationship with men to establish their identity yet here, Aeneas passively allows Dido to do so. She forces him to occupy a position equal to her own despite his lower social status as he "sits in Dido's place" (II.i.93), subsequently undermining his position by attacking his reduced masculinity: "What faints Aeneas to remember Troy/ in whose defence he fought so valiantly? Look up and speak" (II.i.119-20). Aeneas's submission to her authority by telling his story categorizes Dido as an emasculating presence throughout the play: Achates describes her influence as a "dalliance" that can "consume a soldier's strength" (IV.iii.34). Aeneas is unable to withstand her effeminising influence, allowing her to remove his son from the court, to destroy the oars of the fleet (IV.ii.106-9) and most significantly, to threaten her subjects with excessive violence if they do not accept her lover: "Command my guard to slay for their offence" (IV.ii.72).

        Deats has suggested that in this initial exchange Dido appears as a courtly lover, directing the action, praising Aeneas and giving him gifts (163-78). The argument that this gender reversal gives Dido power must be counteracted with both her reaction to masculinity and evidence of her reversion to female roles. Shepard contends that the narrative presents Aeneas as a diminished subject as he is interrupted by flashbacks and subsequently allows him to stress his masculinity (53-79). He maintains that Dido's attempt to use this speech to affirm her sovereignty is weakened by the display of homosocial bonds required by the narrative: Achates must finish the narrative for his leader. Dido is threatened by intense masculinity as the violent content of Aeneas's narrative causes her to seek some other "pleasant sport" (II.i.302). She places a lower class stranger as her equal and becomes mother to his child, Ascanius (II.i.98). By making Aeneas her equal, Dido encourages a masculine remaking of the world, which will displace female identity. This tone dominates the beginning of the final act, as Aeneas attempts to transforms Carthage into a new Troy: the "petty walls" of Carthage will be replaced by the new city of "Anchisaeon", named after Aeneas's father (V.i.3, 22). Dido moves between a natural and political identity, placing Aeneas in "a superior position to herself simply because of his gender" (Jankowski 134). In later scenes, her political integrity is damaged by her excessive assertions of personal desire, as his departure would be worse than the downfall of her empire: "It is Aeneas's frown that ends my days" (IV.v.120). The identity of Dido thus wavers between masculine action and female subservience to men. Her subjectivity is incomplete and fluid, coming into conflict with the fixed male self established though empire and homosocial relations. Her reign readily fits into Knox's assertions that female rule is a sin against God, "a thing most contrarious to his revealed will" and a "subversion of good order" (5). She does not appear as an absolute ruler but rather as a woman characterised by the flaws feared by Knox.

        This pattern continues in Act Three, as Dido rejects the love of her suitor, Iarbas, before submitting to the influence of Aeneas. It is ironic that she creates her rule by negating masculine desire as Aeneas instantly weakens her. Dido engages in the typically male literary activity of the blazon or a description of individual parts of the beloved. She tries to generate an ideal image of this man by fixing him in her view alone: "Tell them, none shall gaze on him but I/ lest their gross eye-beams taint my lover's cheeks" (III.i.73-4) and seeks to determine how the world perceives his objectified body: "I'll make bracelets of his golden hair/ His glistering eyes shall be my looking glass" (III.i.86-7). In a study of the influence of Petrarch's sonnets upon the Renaissance concept of female beauty, Vickers contends that Laura is "always presented as a part or as parts" (266). The reason for this fragmentation could be explained as a means of controlling a female lover who has the power to betray, as the prevention of a full self is a denial of her sway and speech. It is possible to extend this argument to explain Dido's effort to dilute the influence of Aeneas and restrict his image. Dido transfer a means of controlling women to men but the effect is limited; Laura is powerless as she is not a complete woman, whereas Dido is unable to protect her sovereignty from desire, as she would empty her treasury to repair the Trojan fleet and make Aeneas responsible for the safety of Carthage (III.i.126, 135). She repeats the pattern of the first scene by making Aeneas both her political equal and the source of reality for her: "Instead of music, I will hear him speak/ His looks shall be my only library" (III.i.89-90). Gender identity continues as fluid, as Dido is male and female, active and passive. However, Aeneas changes the quality of her speech, arguably a reversal of gender performance thus far: the male now determines and controls the female.

        Dido has remained "free from all" (III.i.153) previous suitors, but is unable to maintain this position as Aeneas changes the quality of her speech, making it treacherous to her: "O, if I speak/ I shall betray myself" (III.i.173-4). Desire directs her towards silence, the ideal female state, and reduces the certainty with she can speak: "I love thee not- and yet I hate thee not" (III.i.172-3). It has been argued that Dido's voice only becomes gendered when she speaks to Aeneas of her desire (Kinney 1-13) and it is this subject position that is the most threatening to her. A constant movement between natural and political desires forces the audience to view her "as a woman rather than a ruler" (Jankowski 134), which in turn supports the image of female rule as characterised by passion rather than reason.

        The marriage of Dido and Aeneas is central to the play's depiction of corrupt female rule and its emasculating effect. Based on Deats's definition of male and female attributes (163-78), Dido appears as the active male force making Aeneas the receiver of her desire and political power. The scene, dominated by Dido's shifting subject position, takes place in a cave where Dido and Aeneas are forced to take refuge from a storm whilst hunting. She initially employs language gendered as female to express her desire for Aeneas, which fails to serve her purpose: "And yet I'll speak,- and yet I'll hold my peace" (III.iv.27). Dido is moving between an enclosed political identity and a desire to submit to sexuality. It is her natural, female body which briefly emerges as triumphant as she tells Aeneas that his "golden crown might balance my content" and that "the Carthage queen dies for him" (III.iv.37, 40). This discourse is immediately displaced by one of power and domination as Dido renames her lover following his vow "never to like or love any but her" (III.iv.51). She again gives him the name of her husband and interrupts patrilineal inheritance: "Sichaeus, not Aeneas, be thou called/ The king of Carthage, not Anchises's son" (III.iv.59-60). She gives him a new identity and attempts to rewrite history, acting as a male director of reality. Dido elevates Aeneas to king, offering him Carthage instead of Italy, whilst returning herself to the role of wife through her dead husband's jewels: "This wedding ring/ wherewith my husband woo'd me yet a maid" (III.iv.62-3). This usage of jewels as a gift imitates the opening scene of homosexual desire between Jupiter and Ganymede, framing the relationship of Dido and Aeneas as illegitimate and potentially destructive. Jupiter gives his male lover the marriage jewels of his wife, allowing him to "control proud Fate and cut the thread of time" (I.i.29). Both Dido and Jupiter are depicted as sovereign rulers destabilised by sexuality who allow their lovers to act as superior rulers. Dido's role as queen allows her to pursue sexual desire and in turn, sexuality displaces her political power. Unlike Queen Elizabeth, she is unable to unite both her natural and political identities, creating a void in her subjectivity that will enable Aeneas's masculine identity to emerge as superior in later scenes. At the beginning of her rule, Elizabeth firmly established her central meaning: "Here lies interred Elizabeth/ A Virgin pure until her death" (Marcus 60). Dido fails to exert such control over her identity; even in her final assertion of self-"Dido I am, unless I be deceived" (V.i.264)- she chooses neither a political nor private role, wishing to exist as both. Virgil writes of the marriage that "henceforth Dido cared no more for appearances or her good name... she called it a marriage: she used this word to screen her sin" (IV.63-5). Marlowe explores this attitude and its consequences for the remainder of the play, presenting a conservative critique of a female ruler using public means to further personal desire.

        The final exchange between Dido and Aeneas focuses upon the attempts of the queen to force her lover to stay with her. Dido occupies a range of subject positions in this scene, beginning with that of ruler. She acknowledges the threats she risked for his love: "How did Carthage rebel, Iarbas storm/ and all the world calls me a second Helen/ For being entangled in a stranger's looks?" (V.i.143-5). Dido is unable to unite her private and political bodies, cataloguing the consequences of her lust for her nation. The departure of Aeneas forces her to shift to a private identity, as she would elevate her sister to the status of queen and live a private life with him if he returned (V.i.197-8). Dido is reduced to "idle fantasies" (V.i.262) by her unfulfilled desire and her suicide interrupts the self-construction of Aeneas. The continuance of her own identity, both political and natural is based upon the fixing of Aeneas's subjectivity: she will make "Aeneas famous throughout the world/ for perjury and the slaughter of a queen" (V.i.293-4). At death, Dido does not adapt a clear gender identity. In a study of death and suicide in classical tragedy, Loraux has demonstrated that male suicide was typically a public matter of protecting honour, whilst female suicide was enacted in private as a response to this (7-30). Women die offstage in the marriage chamber as wives attesting to their place in society as loyal, yet here, Dido dies in public for love. She is both masculine and feminine, a leader seeking to preserve her honour and a wife lamenting the departure of her husband. The play concludes with the deaths of Dido, Iarbas and Anna, three figures who renounce their autonomy and identity in favour of lust. The play closes with an image of destructive desire that has remained central to Marlowe's vision of female rule throughout. Dido emerges as an inefficient ruler, overrun with passion and acting as an emasculating force. The play is a conservative critique of female rule and an affirmation of the Elizabethan social structure, enforcing the belief that women were be ruled by men and could not exist as individuals. It has been argued, "repressing the feminine becomes the occasion" of the masculinity of Aeneas and his soldiers (Shepard 68). Female identity is subsumed within an ideology of excessive masculinity, a theme predominate in Webster's play to which this study will now turn.

        Foucault has argued that power and sex exist in a negative relationship with each other as power constructs discourses and prohibitions to limit sexuality (81-92). In Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, (1613) Ferdinand and Bosola, his spy, construct two discourses, the excessive sexuality of widows and the ability of women to deceive through cosmetics, as measures to encompass the threatening sexuality of the Duchess. Both discourses can be defined as misogynistic, or a set of images that lead to the death of a female transgressor (Callaghan 123-32). Unlike Dido, the Duchess shares her power with her brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, both of whom seek to guarantee the legitimacy of their bloodline by negating the natural body of their sister. Their discourses participate in the control of the audiences' interpretation of the Duchess, reducing the validity of her marriage to a mere fulfilment of lust. The image of the widow is deployed by Ferdinand early in the play as he contends, "they are most luxurious/ will marry twice" (I.iii.7). He describes a second marriage through an image of disorder in nature: "like the irregular crab/ which though it goes backward, thinks it goes right" (I.iii.28-9). Linking female desire with irregular occurrences in nature also appears in Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam (c.1613), when Constabarus describes the natural laws and boundaries his wife, Salome, disturbs by seeking divorce: "Let fishes graze, beasts swim and birds descend/ Let fire burn downwards whilst the earth aspires" (I.vii.425-6). In both instances, female desire, either sexual or political, becomes transgressive and abnormal, aligned with a monstrous natural world. Ferdinand fears the knowledge his sister has of sexual desire from her previous marriage (I.iii.3) and reminds her that she is not a private individual: "Your darkest actions, nay, your privat'st thoughts/ will come to light" (I.iii.24-5). The Duchess herself acknowledges this complex interaction between private and public that demands she rejects the sexual in favour of the political: "The misery of us that are born great! We are forced to woo, because none dare woo us" (I.iii.144-5). The origin of Ferdinand's wish to prevent his sister's marriage is based upon the fear of the intense sexuality of widows and their status in society. Widows were inferior to men but superior to married women and a widow's sexual knowledge could enable her to judge her new husband (Jankoskwi 163-182). Marriage was not an ideal means to remove this anomalous figure as a man could be moved "into a bed vacated by another man's death," provoking a confrontation with mortality (Jankoskwi 168).

        The Duchess ignores her brother's warnings, deriving pleasure from her role in social exchange (Enterline 242-304). Like a diamond which gains its value from being "passed through most jewellers hands" (I.iii.8), the Duchess seeks to become an agent of her own desire in a secret marriage ceremony to Antonio, refusing both the power of her brothers and the church: "How can the church bind faster?" (I.iii.190). The duration of the play explores the consequences of the Duchess's attempts to use her political authority to serve her personal desires and to reshape her world according to the individualism she embodies. The action of the play shifts to the birth of the Duchess's first child, introducing a second discourse of power into the text.

        Bosola's tirade against cosmetics and monstrous bodies serves as a framework of interpretation for the birth of the Duchess's child. His views cast the pregnancy of the Duchess in a negative light, drawing attention to the corruption of her bloodline and to a female body that changes uncontrollably. Bosola attacks an old woman whom he believes has come from painting her "scurvy face-physic" to disguise the "the deep ruts and foul sloughs" of her complexion (II.i.21-22). The activity of face painting is linked to witchcraft, a marginalised female role and he makes women monstrous through the ingredients of cosmetics: "the fat of serpents, spawn of snakes, Jews' spittle and their young children's ordure" (II.i.33). Cosmetics allow women to conceal a "rotten and dead body" in "rich tissue" (II.i.52-3) and it is this ability to hide their true natures which is at the heart of Bosola's argument. This concept features in Jonson's Epicoene, specifically in the character, Mistress Otter. Her body is reassembled each morning and is owned by different parts of London: "All her teeth were made in Blackfriars, both/ her eyebrows in the Strand" (III.ii.109-10). Cosmetics are integrated into the fluid performance of femininity, "where femininity is a state of achievement and ascription, not a fact of biology or gender" (Craik 90). Female identity is based upon styling the body; in contrast to a male body defined by the actions it performs (Craik 90-117). During the early modern period, several pamphlets and conduct books warned against the dangers of face painting and the associated artificiality of women. In The Anatomy of Abuses (1538) Philip Stubbes condemned women who tried to improve upon their natural beauty, for such a woman "hath corrupted and defaced (like a filthy strumpet or brothel) the workmanship of God in her" (Aughterson 75). Women surpassed the ability of the chameleon or Proteus to alter their forms, thus making them both unnatural and fluid. Like Bosola, Stubbes is concerned by the disruption of markers of identity by cosmetics and apparel: "One can scarcely know who is a noble woman, who is an honourable or worshipful woman, from them of the meaner sort" (Aughterson 76). Cosmetics allow women to adapt any identity that they wish, placing a multiple body in opposition to the fixed masculine self.

        The views of Stubbes were amplified in Thomas Tuke's A Discourse against Painting and Tincturing of Women (1616), which argues that cosmetics were "brought into use by the devil... therwith to transform humane creatures of faire, making them ugly, enormious and abominable" (Tuke 8). For Tuke, the source of this disgust for face-painting lies both in its function and the ingredients, as the mercury based cosmetics caused gradual decomposition of the skin, graphically described in the tract: "women who often paint themselves with it, though they be very young, they presently turne old with withered and wrinkled faces like an Ape... it drieth up and consumeth the flesh" leading to "a stinking breath" and "corruption of the teeth" (Tuke 8).Finke argues that this passage draws a comparison between women and a decaying corpse, whilst highlighting the ultimate result of a woman's desire to appear as an ideal portrait in daily life (356-70). Bosola is similarly disgusted by face painting, preferring to "eat a dead pigeon/ taken from the soles of the feet of one sick of the plague/ than kiss one of you fasting" (II.i.34-6). Finke suggests that Bosola's attack on women is part of "a fear and hostility that results from man's awareness of his own carnality" (359). Both widows and cosmetics force male characters to recognise the image of themselves reflected through women and to confront death. Femininity must be constructed as weak to enable certain masculine structures to exist and disguise masculine vulnerability (Finke 356-70). The Duchess's secret marriage and pregnancy compounds the masculine drive to fix the image of women, as she seeks sexual fulfilment and produces her own heirs.

        >The views of Stubbes, Tuke and others regarding the female use of cosmetics to alter their bodies help to illuminate Bosola's subsequent description of the Duchess's pregnant body. She "is sick a-days, she pukes, her stomach seethes/ the fins of her eyes look most teeming blue" (II.i.59-60). The Duchess describes herself as "so troubled with the mother" (II.i.108), or the effects of pregnancy, suggesting a lack of bodily control. Callaghan links Bosola's disgust with this pregnancy to a general fear of female desire in this period. Female desire was viewed as abnormal and deviant, existing as the "motivation for change, upheaval, disruption and crucially, for female transgression" (Callaghan 140). Pregnancy thus becomes the marker of an unnatural desire and is in conflict with the normal body of men (Callaghan 140-7). Bosola uses apricots to test the Duchess, forcing her to ingest dirt, as the fruit was ripened in "horse dung" (II.i.131), thus blurring the boundary between animal and human, social and natural. The monstrous and bestial nature of the pregnancy is proven to Bosola by the Duchess's disregard for this fact and her greedy consumption of the fruit. He sees not the prospect of life but only "the young springal cutting a caper in her belly" (II.i.142). Like Dido, the Duchess does not attempt to conceal the intrusion of the private upon her public self, wearing only a loose fitted garment to hide her body. By allowing her natural body to change and increase, she "forces consideration of herself as a natural woman rather than a ruler, and foregrounds her body natural at the expense of her body political" (Jankowski 176). It is this neglect of her public self which later enables Ferdinand's revenge.

        The birth of this child affords the audience an opportunity to see Ferdinand's true opinion of his sister. In a dialogue with the Cardinal, Ferdinand reacts with extreme disgust and promises of violence.The Duchess has become a "notorious strumpet" (III.v.3), a "sister damned" (III.v.2). The main object of Ferdinand's rage is the complete destruction of his sister's corrupt body, revealing a desire to fragment her physical self and thus eradicate the memory of her. He attacks individual aspects of her body that have betrayed him: her "bleeding heart" which is a fickle lover and her "infected blood" that has removed the purity of the family bloodline (III.v.15, 26). He ends his outrage with an image of absolute destruction of the Duchess and her family: "Dip the sheets they lie in in pitch or sulphur/ wrap them in't and then light them with a match" (III.v.70-1). As mentioned above, it has been argued that Petrarch tried to reduce the impact of his beloved by presenting her in incomplete pieces and here, Ferdinand strives for a similar effect, "painting woman as a lifeless, dismembered object" (Finke 364). By penetrating and disrupting her body, Ferdinand can fix her subjectivity in a negative image that justifies his violence. The necessity to mark the female body as an exercise of male power was remarked upon by Jane Anger in Her Protection for Women (1589), when she wrote "if we hide our breasts it must be with leather: for no cloth can keep their long nails out of our bosoms" (6). In each case, the female body is objectified and vulnerable to external forces.

        Ferdinand believes that power must dominate sexuality and there a number of ways to interpret his rage. Firstly, the Duchess has interfered with familial inheritance, tainting her blood with that of a lower class man. In a later scene, Ferdinand acknowledges the reduced exchange value of his sister as her pure body was worth more than a soul (IV.i.122). Jardine has argued that the central concern of Webster is to detail the conflict between personal affection and inheritance emerging in the early modern period (63-103). As a widow, the Duchess possessed a separate identity to her family that determined her sexual independence but this freedom is quickly subsumed within male desires to protect lineage. A second, perhaps more interesting interpretation, draws attention to the inextricable link between the identities of the Duchess and Ferdinand. This link is suggested by Ferdinand's description of his sister as a hyena (II.i.39), his later self- imaging as a wolf (V.ii.10-21) and finally, the revelation that they were twins following her death (IV.ii.248). Enterline suggests that the Duchess acts as a mirror for her brother and her maternal body disrupts his self-construction (242-304). She "disturbs her brother's visual and verbal orders, alienating him from the truth of his body" (Enterline 242). The constantly fluxing pregnant body interrupts the fixity of the male body, ensuring that the Duchess is no longer a mirror for her brother. The Duchess's identity is made complex, as her actions as constantly refracted through the male actors around her. She is neither political nor natural, a ruler nor a woman and it has been suggested that her story only matters because of the impact upon her brothers (Enterline 242-304). Later in the play, the death of the Duchess will become the impetus for Ferdinand's madness. Removing the object that is a sign of his own identity separates Ferdinand from his previous self-construction. This is a clear example of feminist arguments that while men have the Phallus, women are the Phallus, signifying "the Phallus through being its other, its absence, its lack, the dialectical confirmation of its identity" (Butler 56). The Duchess served as the other against which Ferdinand defined himself and her absence removes the grounds of his identity. The play posits an definite link between male and female identity, threatened not only by the attempts of the female to exist separately from the male but also by male desires to fix the female in a single role.

        Butler has written, "the cultural matrix through which gender identity has become intelligible requires that certain kinds of 'identities' cannot 'exist'" (23-4). Knox argued that a female ruler would not be able to control her "appetites... will...desires" (8). Marlowe and Webster explore these concepts as each work presents a new model of female identity and sexual independence, which must be destroyed because it cannot be incorporated into existing social structures. In each

case, the sexual fulfilment and new self-image created by female political figures is displaced by excessive masculinities responding to that power.



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To cite this article:

          Windsor, Grace. "'Dido I am, unless I be deceived': Female Desire and
                 Ruin in Christopher Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage (1594) and
                 John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi."  Luminarium.
                 23 Nov 2006. [Date you accessed this article].
                 <http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/marlowebster.htm>






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Queen Mary I
Queen Elizabeth I


Renaissance English Writers
Bishop John Fisher
William Tyndale
Sir Thomas More
John Heywood
Thomas Sackville
John Bale
Nicholas Udall
John Skelton
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Henry Howard
Hugh Latimer
Thomas Cranmer
Roger Ascham
Sir Thomas Hoby
John Foxe
George Gascoigne
John Lyly
Thomas Nashe
Sir Philip Sidney
Edmund Spenser
Richard Hooker
Robert Southwell
Robert Greene
George Peele
Thomas Kyd
Edward de Vere
Christopher Marlowe
Anthony Munday
Sir Walter Ralegh
Thomas Hariot
Thomas Campion
Mary Sidney Herbert
Sir John Davies
Samuel Daniel
Michael Drayton
Fulke Greville
Emilia Lanyer
William Shakespeare


Persons of Interest
Visit Encyclopedia


Historical Events
Field of the Cloth of Gold, 1520
Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536
The Babington Plot, 1586
The Spanish Armada, 1588


Elizabethan Theatre
See section
English Renaissance Drama


Images of London:
London in the time of Henry VII. MS. Roy. 16 F. ii.
London, 1510, the earliest view in print
Map of England from Saxton's Descriptio Angliae, 1579
Location Map of Elizabethan London
Plan of the Bankside, Southwark, in Shakespeare's time
Detail of Norden's Map of the Bankside, 1593
Bull and Bear Baiting Rings from the Agas Map (1569-1590, pub. 1631)
Sketch of the Swan Theatre, c. 1596
Westminster in the Seventeenth Century, by Hollar
Visscher's Panoramic View of London, 1616. COLOR



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