In this thesis, I analyse four historical fiction novels as recharacterizations of Elizabeth I’s agency, to argue for the merit of fictionalized narratives of history. These narratives address the conflict between Elizabeth’s political and natural bodies, which I investigate in view of Ernst Kantorowicz’s concept of kingship, while emphasizing her learned experience and perseverance as responsible for her success. In doing so, historical fiction novels represent the motivations of the contemporary author and reader while also asserting the agency and capability of female rulers like Elizabeth, retroactively. In her own time, Elizabeth’s female body was a point of contention in patriarchal England, and early modern authors highlighted her chastity to represent the queen as beyond the rest of humanity, particularly women. In this thesis, I assess how contemporary authors respond to such history, to represent Elizabeth as a fallible woman in a novel way. Elizabeth’s fallibility in these texts represents the capabilities of women in power, credited to their female experience rather than the supernatural status or divine appointment of the early modern ruler. While there is a breadth of research available pertaining to historical depictions of Elizabeth, fewer critics focus upon contemporary accounts. Elizabeth’s legacy in film is represented in such research, but few critics have analysed her presence in historical fiction, though she is a popular heroine of the genre. This thesis examines the prioritization of Elizabeth’s female body in her youth in Robin Maxwell’s Virgin: Prelude to the Throne (2001), her experiences as an unwed queen in Alison Weir’s The Marriage Game (2014) and Susan Kay’s Legacy (1985), and her role as a mother figure in Anne Clinard-Barnhill’s Queen Elizabeth’s Daughter (2014). These authors assert Elizabeth’s agency and demonstrate the value of historical fiction as a genre, rewriting history to reflect female experience as an asset. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, authors depicted Elizabeth I as an extraordinary ruler appointed by God and an extraordinarily chaste woman. Such authors acknowledge Elizabeth’s flawed, natural body, as mortal and female, but praise her incomparable chastity as surpassing other women and ensuring a strong political body or government. While contemporary fiction authors also assess a separation between the political and private, they prioritize individual interiority and female capability as they construct Elizabeth’s navigation of a patriarchal court as a woman in power. This thesis investigates historical fiction, in four novels, as a valuable space for authors to rewrite the agency of Elizabeth I through narratives in which she demonstrates her own decision making and emotional complexity. In this thesis, I assess agency in Robin Maxwell’s Virgin: Prelude to the Throne (2001), Alison Weir’s The Marriage Game (2014), Susan Kay’s Legacy, and Anne Clinard Barnhill’s Queen Elizabeth’s Daughter (2014).

Portia serves as a complex and often underestimated character in William Shakespeare's controversial comedy The Merchant of Venice. Using the critical methodologies of New Historicism and feminism, this thesis explores Portia's representation of Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England from 1558 to 1603. Striking similarities exist between character and Queen, including physical description, suitors, marriage issues, and rhetoric. In addition, the tripartite marriage at the play's conclusion among Portia, Bassanio, and Antonio represents the relationship Elizabeth Tudor formed between her merchant class and her aristocracy. Shylock serves as a representation of a generic or perhaps Catholic threat to England during the early modern era. Moreover, by examining Portia's language in the trial scene, the play invites audiences to read her as a representative of the learned Renaissance woman, placing special emphasis on the dialectical and rhetorical elements of the language trivium in classical studies. Finally, through a close reading of the mercantile language in the text, Portia can be interpreted as the merchant of the play's title.

Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, weaves the courtier's strategy of sprezzatura throughout her public orations in order to help her identify with her audience of courtiers, scholars, and politicians. Through her use of sprezzatura, Elizabeth woos her audience and transcends the differences of opinion that lead to conflict between the Queen and her audience members. Using Kenneth Burke's theory of rhetoric as identification, this thesis employs rhetorical analysis in order to discover how Queen Elizabeth's use of sprezzatura enables her to portray herself as a humanist scholar, a political servant, and a dedicated defender of her country and thus, identify with her audience. Because these identities also have gender implications, this analysis of Elizabeth's rhetorical choices uses Judith Butler's theory of gender as performance in order to realize the ways in which Elizabeth assumes a masculine identity and also manipulates gender expectations. As Elizabeth uses sprezzatura to delight her audience, smoothing the way for her identification with their characteristics and values, she also reveals her need to transcend division and conflict through the use of her own language. In her 1564 speech at Cambridge, Elizabeth transforms the conflict surrounding her gender by acknowledging it and confronting it in a way that allows her to repudiate specific aspects of negative feminine constructions. When Parliament petitioned her once again to marry in 1576, the Queen moves the focus away from her marital status by turning the discussion into a review of her reign, so that in discussing her success so far, she changes the topic under negotiation to one that she and her audience could more easily agree on. Finally in 1586, after Parliament asked for Mary Stuart's execution, Elizabeth shifts the violence of their differences over what to do with Mary to a third party, emphasizing the dangerous divide between England and Mary's European supporters in order to represent her relationship with Parliament as a united effort to protect the country and its religion. In all three situations, Elizabeth introduces the conflict into her own language and then successfully transforms it, removing the violence.