The essays in this volume shed new light on Elizabeth I, exposing many of the public and private fantasies that she and her subjects used to manage their relations. Elizabeth was revered for her wisdom and reviled for her homicidal tantrums, suffered clinical symptoms of traumatic stress and put to death her cousin, Mary, and her last lover. To a core of eight essays first published in the journal
English Literary Renaissance , the editors have added five new pieces. Frank W. Brownlow investigates the intimidation by which Elizabeth and her inner circle ruled a sprawling kingdom. Barbara Freedman reads the
Document of Control
to illuminate the monarch’s authoritarian disposition and her control over disorder. Richard Burt provides an account of the further adventures of Elizabeth’s image in our own day and her treatment by the mass media. The anthology closes with Steven W. May’s updated bibliography of studies of the queen.