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The last years of Jacobean rule coincided with the appearance of a number of Scottish soldiers at the three major Habsburg centres of power: Madrid, Brussels and the Imperial court (the last of which was still peripatetic but increasingly centred in Vienna). Recognising the geographical complexity involved in studying such individuals, the thesis seeks to contribute to the debates of historians of early modern Europe with respect to three issues: the problem of 'multiple kingdoms', the existence or otherwise of a seventeenth century 'general crisis', and the nature of political patronage at the regal court. The first chapter deals with the historical background. The remainder of the argument is divided into two sections, the first of which relates to the 1618-35 period. It covers the lives of men such as Colonel William Semple, his nephew, Hugh Semple S.J., and ambitious sojourners such as the seventh Earl of Argyll. The rise and decline of these individuals in influencing Spanish foreign policy is the subject of chapters two and three respectively. Chapter four introduces several Scottish 'military enterprisers' who rose to prominence in the service of the 'Austrian' branch of the dynasty after 1633. The second part of the thesis deals largely with the post-1635 life of one of this latter group, Walter Leslie. His significance will become obvious, yet has been ignored by previous historians. In fact, the court careers of all these individuals, elucidated here in detail for the first time, emphasise that the accession of James VI to the English throne by no means marks the end of the contribution of Scotland to continental European political and diplomatic history.

This thesis addresses fissures in language, ideology and subjectivity as they are manifested in the dramatic construction of the category of 'Woman' in four major Jacobean texts. The first section of my project deals with the way 1n which the opposition of male and female underlies the perception and construction of order at every level. In a scheme of thought characterized by the use of antithesis and analogy, the opposition of gender proves to be one of the most richly extensible. All analogies are connected by the great chain of thought which consti tutes the Great Chain of Being. Once any element 1n this scheme is undermined there is the danger (or for my purposes, the analytic advantage) that there will be something like a domino ef:ect. That is to say, relations of power become more visible at the problematic i~tersec~ion of gender. In section two, I propose a construction of tragedy rela~2d to female transgression as an alternative to the '.va'! in which feminist critics tend to equate gender with genre, dubbing comedy 'feminine' and tragedy 'masculine.' My construc~ion also counters the ~raditional notion of tragedy as a ~ixed, pr i vi leged genre category. I f',lrther examine the construc~ion of woman in tragedy through absence, silence and utterance. The final sect.ion explores the nature of the cont':'nuous process of gender di£ £erentiation which serves to produce and maintain gender categories. Gender differentiation occurs most manifestly in misogynistic discourse which I address using Lacan I s theory of the construction of the human subject. The production of misogyny in its various forms constructs the feminine as 'Other,' and 1n this its function can be seen as one of policing the boundaries 'of gender ideologies. Here I also treat the construction of masculinity against femininity since the production of the former is dependent upon the latter. The preceding analyses serve to break down unities of gender by recognizlng that discourse simultaneously constructs and disperses concepts of gender. Gender is thus crucial '=.0 the cuI tural dynamic of Renaissance drama, and in this we find authority for new direc~ions in feminis~ literary studies.

No description available.