The visual images of Queen Elizabeth I displayed in contemporary portraits and perpetuated and developed in more recent media, such as film and television, make her one of the most familiar and popular of all British monarchs.

This collection of essays examines the diversity of the queen’s extensive iconographical repertoire, focusing on both visual and textual representations of Elizabeth, not only in portraiture and literature, but also in contemporary sermons, speeches and alchemical treatises. The collection broadens current critical thinking about Elizabeth, as each of the essays contributes to the debate about the ways in which the queen’s developing iconicity was not simply a celebratory mode, but also encoded criticism of her. Each of these essays explains the ways in which the varied representations of Elizabeth reflect the political and cultural anxieties of her subjects

List of illustrations/Acknowledgements/Notes on contributors
Introduction
I A world in crisis: Elizabeth’s iconography and religious tensions
1 Elizabeth I as Deborah the Judge: exceptional women of power - Carol Blessing
2 Warlike mates? Queen Elizabeth, and Joan La Pucelle in 1 Henry VI - Ben Spiller
3 ‘Rudenesse it selfe she doth refine’: Queen Elizabeth I as Lady Alchymia - Jayne Elisabeth Archer
II Virginia and the Virgin: Elizabeth and the New World
4 Elizabeth I: size matters - Deanne Williams
5 ‘And in their midst a sun’: Petrarch’s Triumphs and the Elizabethan icon - Heather Campbell
6 ‘Nature without labor’: Virgin Queen and virgin land in Sir Walter Ralegh’s The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana - Helen J. Burgess
III The Old World and the New: classical precedents
7 The dark side of the moon: Semiramis and Titania - Lisa Hopkins
8 Evaluating virginity: A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the iconography of marriage - Annaliese Connolly
9 Cynthia waning: Cynthia’s Revels imagines the death of the queen - Matthew Steggle
IV Coda: Elizabeth’s afterlife
10 ‘Turn thy Tombe into a Throne’: Elizabeth I’s death rehearsal - Scott L. Newstok
Index