The role of women as writers, literary and dramatic characters, and real queens in early modern Europe was central to the development of Tudor ideas about gender and women's place in society. Women and Tudor Tragedy investigates the link between gender and genre, identifying the relation between cultural history and mid-Tudor drama. This book establishes a way for reading women in early modern history, drama, and poetry by fusing discussions of gender in literature with historical analysis of tyranny and martyrdom in mid-Tudor culture. It considers the disparities between the representation of women in historical, political, and religious treatises by examining the complex portrayal of women, female speeches, and the rhetoric of good counsel. The author provides a discussion of the role of women in early English tragedies and in a variety of texts by women. Throughout the book, Allyna E. Ward asks in what ways these different ways of writing the Tudor women can help scholars better understand the place of women in English culture at the end of the sixteenth century. Furthermore, Ward traces the feminization of the rhetoric of counsel that takes place with the last Tudor monarchs as a way of accommodating female rule.

The role of women as writers, literary and dramatic characters, and real queens in early modern Europe was central to the development of Tudor ideas about gender and women's place in society. Women and Tudor Tragedy investigates the link between gender and genre, identifying the relation between cultural history and mid-Tudor drama. This book establishes a way for reading women in early modern history, drama, and poetry by fusing discussions of gender in literature with historical analysis of tyranny and martyrdom in mid-Tudor culture. It considers the disparities between the representation of women in historical, political, and religious treatises by examining the complex portrayal of women, female speeches, and the rhetoric of good counsel. The author provides a discussion of the role of women in early English tragedies and in a variety of texts by women. Throughout the book, Allyna E. Ward asks in what ways these different ways of writing the Tudor women can help scholars better understand the place of women in English culture at the end of the sixteenth-century. Furthermore, Ward traces the feminization of the rhetoric of counsel that takes place with the last Tudor monarchs as a way of accommodating female rule.

Richard Robinson's 'The Rewarde of Wickednesse' (1574) is a quasi-epic poem that imitates the de casibus form of 'A Mirror for Magistrates' and makes a clear indication of the hellish position of the damned. Robinson wrote the poem during the period when his employer, George Talbot, was appointed as the jailer over Elizabeth's cousin Mary Stuart during the period of her imprisonment at Sheffield Castle and Sheffield Manor. The poem is anti-Catholic polemic, but it is not simply an invective against Catholicism; Robinson's work condemns bad moral behaviour but in the context of the dialectical opposition between Catholicism and Protestantism; an opposition that was not clearly demarcated during this period. Robinson's poem 'The Rewarde of Wickednesse' explores the notion that sinful people on earth are influenced by a Hellish force but he emphasises the punishment for sin and makes the link between the damned and Hell. 'The Rewarde of Wickednesse', through its inclusion of different, and sometimes opposing, traditions, faiths and literary formats, reveals an Elizabethan culture rife with the apprehensions concerning salvation and damnation that define early English Protestantism Robinson stages his laments for the sinners in the space of Hell as he and the god Morpheus travel through the underworld witnessing the punishments inflicted on sinners. Allyna E Ward is Assistant Professor of English at Booth College in Winnipeg, Canada where she works on Tudor and Early Modern Literature.