Anna of Denmark and Henrietta Maria

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction

   • Susan Dunn-Hensley

   Pages 1-16

3. Anna of Denmark and Henrietta Maria: Catholic Queens in a Protestant Land

   • Susan Dunn-Hensley

   Pages 17-44

4. Witches and Queens: Queen Anna and Representations of Female Power

   • Susan Dunn-Hensley

   Pages 45-74

5. Performing Power: Gender, Authority and Catholicism in Anna’s English Masques

   • Susan Dunn-Hensley

   Pages 75-107

6. Finding Anna: Anna’s Influence on Early Jacobean Theatre and Her Legacy

   • Susan Dunn-Hensley

   Pages 109-139

7. Henrietta Maria: The Esther to Her Oppressed People

   • Susan Dunn-Hensley

   Pages 141-164

8. Envisioning a Catholic Utopia: The Faithful Shepherdess and The Shepherd’s Paradise

   • Susan Dunn-Hensley

   Pages 165-193

9. Salmacida Spolia: The Last Masque of the Caroline Period and the English Civil War

   • Susan Dunn-Hensley

   Pages 195-222

10. Back Matter

    Pages 223-230

    PDF

This book examines how early Stuart queens navigated their roles as political players and artistic patrons in a culture deeply conflicted about the legitimacy of female authority. Anna of Denmark and Henrietta Maria both employed powerful female archetypes such as Amazons and the Virgin Mary in court performances. Susan Dunn-Hensley analyzes how darker images of usurping, contaminating women, epitomized by the witch, often merged with these celebratory depictions. By tracing these competing representations through the Jacobean and Caroline periods, Dunn-Hensley peels back layers of misogyny from historical scholarship and points to rich new lines of inquiry. Few have written about Anna’s religious beliefs, and comparing her Catholicism with Henrietta Maria’s illuminates the ways in which both women were politically subversive. This book offers an important corrective to centuries of negative representation, and contributes to a fuller understanding of the role of queenship in the English Civil War and the fall of the Stuart monarchy. 

• Anna of Denmark
• Henrietta Maria
• Early Stuart England
• early Stuarts
• early Stuart Queens
• Jacobean Period
• Caroline Period
• fall of Stuart Monarchy
• Catholic queens
• early modern drama
• early modern masques

“Anna of Denmark and Henrietta Maria combines careful research and fresh, accessible prose with an original comparative approach—in positioning these two queens side by side, this study yields numerous rich insights, illuminating more than any separate study could. Susan Dunn-Hensley examines the ways in which the two queens yielded power, and contextualizes the political, religious, and cultural challenges they faced. The result is an essential remedy to powerful narratives of these women as irrational, impractical, and unruly, which have influenced even recent scholarship.” (Jo Carney, Professor of English, The College of New Jersey, USA)

• Wheaton College, Wheaton, USA

  Susan Dunn-Hensley

Susan Dunn-Hensley is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Wheaton College, USA. Her essays on queenship and the sacred feminine appear in “High and Mighty Queens” of Early Modern England (Palgrave 2003) and in Walsingham in Literature and Culture from the Middle Ages to Modernity (2010).