[In the following essay, Cox analyzes the representation of female characters in the Henry VI plays, particularly Joan and Margaret.]

In the Henry VI tetralogy, Shakespeare complicates conventional representations of gender identity by means of ambiguously constructed female characters.¹ Joan of Arc and Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, for example, are shown to exhibit many characteristics of the conventional virago types, while Elizabeth provides contrast in her rather bland and perhaps inadvertent acquiescence, as does Anne, so easily is she seduced. And, evolving over the course of the tetralogy, Queen Margaret especially complicates conventional gender identities throughout her various social, political, and economic confrontations. The female characters, Joan and Margaret in particular, supply the tetralogy with culturally and theoretically profound treatments of gender issues that may be explored in relation to literary and theological conventions. In particular, these two female figures exhibit characteristics germane to Renaissance appropriations of early Christian and medieval antifeminist commonplaces of valorization and denigration, the distinction between them rendered ambiguous by the subtle incorporation of competing motifs. In my analysis to follow, I shall explicate the polysemous gender constructions in the Henry VI tetralogy in connection with literary-theological traditions. Ultimately, I hope to demonstrate that Shakespeare's radical departure from the limitations of gender and gender stereotypes leads him to favor more ambiguous—and, perhaps, ultimately ambivalent—constructions.

I.

A brief overview of relevant literary-theological gender labels, categories, and identities will be helpful in situating Shakespeare's work. Despite the institutional religious turmoil affecting England throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many of the basic symbols and metaphors of Christian tradition remain unchanged in themselves, though necessarily recontextualized because of historical transition. These include a wide range of attributes and characteristics owing far more to popular perception and cultural myths than to the tenets set forth by the early Christian and medieval writings as they were received, and indeed the status of woman in Shakespeare's England owes much to popular interpretations of both Christian and secular intellectual traditions.

One avenue of exploration that can illuminate gender conflation in Shakespeare's work is the influence of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. In the Tractatus ad laudem gloriosae Virginis, St. Bernard refers to those women who have chosen a life of virginity as exiles: “in exsilio filios Evae” [sons of Eve in exile].² The description is curious owing to its confusion of gender labels—for, as current representatives of Eve's legacy and lineage, women would presumably be given the label “filiae,” daughters, rather than “filii,” sons—but this discrepancy may be partly explained by the relative availability of labels in connection with gender identity. By the twelfth century, when Bernard is writing his famous treatise, women are still associated with, and thus bearing the misogynistic brunt of, Eve's perceived legacy of sin. Indeed, even in the fifth century an association set forth in St. Jerome's oft-cited Epistola ad Eustochium—“Mors per Evam: vita per Mariam” (Death through Eve, life through Mary)—effectively conflates women and carnal sin, fueling the negative perceptions of Woman throughout the early Christian and medieval eras.³ The embodiment of carnal concupiscence and subversive disobedience, or at least the potential thereof, women are therefore regarded with mistrust and apprehension: filiae Evae, the daughters of Eve.

Identifying “good” women—who acquiesce to patristic standards of virginity and gender appropriate behavior—in laudatory terms, while still acknowledging their essential relationship to Eve's legacy, then, is accomplished by way of Bernard's filii Evae label. But while the women remain Evae, of Eve, suggests that they have somehow transcended her shameful legacy of sin, albeit cryptically, through their identification as sons, filii. In this regard Bernard's formulation echoes Jerome's (if not his wording per se, then certainly his ideology), itself drawn off the writings of St. Paul. In Book III of his Commentariorum in epistolam ad Ephesios, Jerome makes clear that in his ideal world, the only good woman is not even a woman at all, but an honorary man:

Quandiu mulier partui servit et liberis, hanc habet ad virum differentiam, quam corpus ad animam. Sin autem Christo magis voluerit servire quam saeculo, mulier esse cessabit, et dicetur vir.⁴

[As long as woman is for birth and children, she has difference from man, as body from soul. But if she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be woman and will be called man.]

Jerome's remark here echoes Paul's description in his own epistle to the Galations, that, in an ideal Christian environment, “non est masculus neque femina” (there is no masculine nor feminine).⁵ The challenge for Paul, Jerome, and Bernard, then, is to exclude women—the objects of flesh and corresponding revulsion owing to Eve's legacy—from patriarchal hegemony while simultaneously purporting to include all of God's creation in paradigms of God's master plan.⁶ Hence the accomplishment of the filii Evae label: it encompasses both virgo and virago overtly in their most positive patriarchal senses while never fully distancing itself from the legacy of corruption and taint derived from the Genesis narrative. The depiction of women in early Christian treatises and in the narratives of those women who exemplify desired patriarchal virtues, then, is thus never too far removed from the underlying anxiety, inconsistency, and sense of paradoxical ambivalence of their authors.

Given that the language of patristic theology is also the language of literary criticism from its early Christian origins into the early modern era (at which time “literary criticism” arguably evolves into a separate and distinct discipline unto itself),⁷ we might pause to consider the utility of the filii Evae figure in relation to the implications of gender construction and gender(ed) representations in literary works, both religious and secular. Hagiographical narratives, describing in vivid details both the chastity and martyrdom of their heroines, were widespread and popular forms of literature dating from about the fifth century a.d., when Jerome's directives for virginity as an ascetic calling achieved both currency as valorized practice and, inevitably, resistance and violence, the stuff of martyrdom and legend.⁸ Widely circulated examples include the lives of Juliana, Catherine, and Cecilia. Indeed, Chaucer provides English literature with its best known example, in the Invocatio ad Mariam of the anonymous Second Nun narrator of the Canterbury Tales, who prefaces her own hagiographical narrative of St. Cecilia with an address that is as much about her own status as her subject's, referring to herself overtly as the “unworthy sone of Eve.”⁹ (To what extent these narratives are based on actual lives is, of course, the problem of any literary work that purports to historical basis—the paradoxical genre of “historical fiction” invites us to consider that relationship, well aware that ultimately it is as a work of literature that we regard the text.)

Although the same five or six names recur frequently throughout the known hagiographic canon, the literature and popular culture of the late medieval and early modern eras did not always have to look back into the historical past, to the early Christian ascetics, for their heroines. The fifteenth-century French peasant Joan of Arc, for instance, lived a life interpreted by many as fulfilling the patristic directives of virgin martyrdom, and she therefore became a subject of popular legend.¹⁰ In conjunction with her military and political alliances, Joan's spiritual commitment—her calling on other martyred saints during her execution by fire, for instance—helped to create a contemporary legend for fifteenth century devotees, which continued to enjoy widespread appeal during the late sixteenth century, when Shakespeare is writing the first play of his Henry VI tetralogy.

We are introduced to Shakespeare's Joan in the first act of 1 Henry VI by way of the Bastard of Orleans' description, which emphasizes her “holy maid” status:

A holy maid hither with me I bring,
Which by a vision sent to her from heaven
Ordained is to raise this tedious siege,
And drive the English forth the bounds of France.

(I. ii. 51-54)

Of course, since this is an English play, written and performed for an English audience, and the character of Joan an enemy of England,¹¹ the portrait is here extended to include hints of the occult, prophecy and magic; the Bastard's references here are largely benign—i.e., “spirit of deep prophecy” (55)—but they introduce a misogynistic literary convention that had achieved particular currency during the sixteenth century, the association of supposedly “unnatural” women with witchcraft and Satan.¹² The shifting emphasis of the Bastard's speech here is typical of the character Joan's representation throughout: there is a profound and marked ambivalence regarding a woman who, while exhibiting inordinate strength and leadership—the virago/virgo topos—is simultaneously impugned with the suggestion that her works are for Satan, not God. The competing images are present throughout the play, and shift along political (i.e., English/French) lines; to Alanson, for instance, she is a “blessed saint” and “sweet virgin” (III. iii. 15, 16), to Talbot, a “damned sorceress,” the “Foul fiend of France” (III. ii. 38, 52). In this regard, Joan is the virago who transcends gender constraints to fulfill a valiant purpose—for Joan, the military leadership of her people is a cause they believe to be just—and who, as is typical of the hagiographic heroine, will be the subject of rumor, innuendo, and scheming.

Joan describes herself in language that evokes, albeit indirectly, Christian asceticism and the virago/virgo “son of Eve” topos: “Heaven and our Lady gracious hath it pleas'd / To shine on my contemptible estate” (I. ii. 74, 75); “My courage try by combat, if thou dar'st, / And thou shalt find that I exceed my sex. / Resolve on this: thou shalt be fortunate / If thou receive me for thy warlike mate” (I. ii. 89-92). And when Charles remarks, “Thou art an Amazon” (I. ii. 104), Joan quickly balances the portrait, not by denying the label (which she presumably knows is fitting), but by complementing it; “Christ's Mother helps me, else I were too weak” (I. ii. 106). Her self-described association with the Virgin confirms her virgo identity, and her calling upon the Virgin's assistance in military engagement affirms her position as virago. In addition, Joan's being stigmatized and ostracized by those around her—in particular the male adversaries who apparently fear not only defeat in battle but, more terrifyingly, defeat by a woman warrior—underscores her status as “other,” a marginalized outsider or, in the language of Bernard, an “exile.” Joan's self-imposed exile from cultural norms marks her as “other,” and this overt identification will ultimately lead to her demise.

The name associated with Joan, and in fact used by Joan herself, aptly corresponds to the ambivalence inhering in this virgo/virago portrait: “pucelle.” In boldly proclaiming victory and assigning herself credit for her deed, Joan announces to the Dauphin, Reignier, and Alanson, “Advance our waving colors on the walls, / Rescu'd is Orleance from the English! / Thus Joan de Pucelle hath perform'd her word” (I. vi. 1-3). Meaning “the maid,” both in the sense of “the virgin” and “the slut,”¹³ the “pucelle” label at once embodies the two extremes of woman's sexual identity, virgin and harlot.¹⁴ Paradoxically, Joan is at once both: virgin in her manifestations of piety and devotion to her cause (hence her “humble handmaid” self-reference [III. iii. 42]),¹⁵ and promiscuous (symbolically, at least) in her divided commitments to France, God, and the men with whom she must interact in order to fulfill her mission. Indeed, Joan's famous “circle” metaphor may be understood as an illustration of the text's own ambivalence regarding her promiscuity:

Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.

(I. ii. 133-35)

Whether Joan actually is sexually promiscuous is a matter of debate, since innuendo and rumor abound throughout the play while no concrete evidence is offered.

Joan's claim of pregnancy at the moment of her execution is similarly unresolved, complicating the character in its twofold, paradoxical insistence upon both virginity and promiscuity:

Will nothing turn your unrelenting hearts?
Then, Joan, discover thine infirmity,
That warranteth by law to be thy privilege.
I am with child, ye bloody homicides!
Murther not then the fruit within my womb,
Although ye hale me to a violent death.

(V. iv. 59-64)

The claim is further complicated in that Joan is unable or unwilling to identify the father, other than supplying a few cryptic and obviously conflicting remarks: “It was Alanson that enjoy'd my love” (73); “'Twas neither Charles nor yet the duke I nam'd, / But Reignier, King of Naples, that prevail'd” (77-78). Does Joan de Pucelle here provide, as many critics argue, confirmation of her harlotry, a fitting manifestation of her promiscuity in that she herself cannot identify the father from among the many candidates? Or, is it that Joan uses this fib as an attempt to forestall the execution, perhaps to torment and tease the executioners by forcing them to admit that the burning of an unborn child is a morally acceptable wartime practice for them? The text allows no simple answer,¹⁶ but the ambiguity of the episode aptly corresponds to the representation of Joan in the play. Joan is shown, in her own words and actions, to exhibit the positive qualities of the “son of Eve” type. Even if that portrait is compromised by the stereotypical accusations of wantonness that are necessary to construct a villain because of issues of politics and national identity for Shakespeare's audience, Joan manifests the virago/virgo topos in both its spiritual and literary senses.

III.

It therefore is no mere coincidence that Margaret of Anjou enters the play just as Joan de Pucelle is exiting it. Juxtaposed with the burning of Joan is Suffolk's wooing of Margaret, ostensibly on Henry's behalf; just before the “sorceress condemn'd to burn” (V. iv. 1) is brought forth, Margaret declares her own comportment as that which “becomes a maid, / A virgin” (V. iii. 177-78). As the play prepares for Joan's departure, then, it simulataneously prepares for Margaret's entrance, making an overt substitution, as it were, of one woman for another. Indeed, it would not be reading too much into the play to suggest, perhaps, that each woman represents one manifestation of a single dramatic presence; the two complement each other and coincide in important thematic and symbolic ways. But the trajectories are reversed—while Joan's virtuous characterization rapidly deteriorates near the end of her presence in the play, Margaret's character is a monstrous conflation of misogynistic stereotypes before the character is arguably given a moral reprieve in her last scene of the final play of the tetralogy. Thus as an image of a feminine ideal in virtue, attractiveness, and decorum, Margaret initially seems to provide a nice balance to Joan's virago qualities, though this image is quickly challenged by a more duplicitous and far more complex characterization. Henry is immediately captivated by Suffolk's description of her beauty and character at the end of 1 Henry—“Her peerless feature, joined with her birth / Approves her fit for none but for a king”—which is, tellingly, elaborated upon successively to sound, ironically enough, much like the French descriptions of Joan: “Her valiant courage and undaunted spirit, / (More than in women commonly is seen)” (V. v. 68-71). Margaret's character will evolve over the course of the three remaining plays, and, like Joan, Margaret will assume the role of agitator and nemesis in the lives of those associated with the English court; her intentions are not always obvious, though her villainy is at times appalling. Still, she is neither wholly reducible to the role of “villain” nor excusable in her actions (by most moral standards)—ultimately her ambiguity prevails.

It is fitting, therefore, that Margaret's first appearance in 2 Henry VI illustrates the utmost in charm and decorum as she addresses her new husband, the King, in the presence of her ally and paramour, Suffolk—

Great King of England, and my gracious lord,
The mutual conference that my mind hath had,
By day, by night, waking and in my dreams,
In courtly company, or at my beads,
With you, mine alder-liefest sovereign,
Makes me the bolder to salute my king
With ruder terms, such as my wit affords
And overjoy of heart doth minister.

(I. i. 24-31)

—which Henry approves as “grace in speech,” language “yclad with wisdom's majesty” (32-33). Her scheming with Suffolk, their desire for power and control, their betrayal of Gloucester—all these activities characterize Margaret as relentlessly self-serving and driven. In 2 Henry VI, then, Margaret is on the surface a lady, quite feminine and decorous; but beneath this affected visage lurks the soul of a corrupted virago, characterized by a masculine drive for power that not only provides the motivation for betrayal and civil war throughout the tetralogy, but also forms the tetralogy's thematic core. Indeed, in 3 Henry VI Margaret's cruelty will show itself as appalling viciousness, most notably in the famous “molehill” scene of York's mocking and death.¹⁷ Here Margaret taunts the hapless York first with a reminder of his son's death—“Look, York, I stained this napkin with the blood / That valiant Clifford with his rapier's point / Made issue from the bosom of the boy” (I. iv. 79-81)—and then with a mockery of his own loss of power: “O, 'tis a fault too too unpardonable! / Off with the crown; and, with the crown, his head, / And whilst we breathe, take time to do him dead” (106-08).

Margaret, the “She-wolf of France,” as York describes her, is indeed “ill-beseeming” with regard to her sex, “like an Amazon trull” (111-14), a “tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide” (137). Margaret, then, embodies a relentless, determined cruelty devoid of any hint of compassion or remorse; any manifestation of pathos, conventionally gendered feminine, is conspicuous only by its obvious absence. There is little evidence of piety or commitment to an ascetic spiritual virgo ideal throughout parts 2 and 3, and indeed Margaret seems far removed from Joan's filii Evae topos. The “She-wolf of France” label¹⁸ evokes Joan as well; and the image of Margaret here arguably reflects upon the first play's attempt to denigrate its filius Evae, La Pucelle.

But the final play of the tetralogy, Richard III, tempers the negative image of Margaret, beginning with Gloucester's exoneration of Margaret's villainy: “I cannot blame her; by God's holy Mother, / She hath had too much wrong, and I repent / My part thereof that I have done to her” (I. iii. 305-07). Richard's swearing by “God's holy Mother” provides a thematic link to the Virgin/virgo presence, which assumes additional importance when taken in conjunction with the image of the grieving mother, the mater dolorosa, introduced with the Duchess in II. ii and expanded with Margaret's own participation in IV. iv.¹⁹ Here, in IV. iv, we find a triumvirate of grieving mothers, the most definite of which is Elizabeth, lamenting their losses; in addition, we find Margaret, fiesty and sharp-tongued, not only articulating angry criticisms in the form of prophetic curses²⁰ but also, at Elizabeth's request, instructing her protege to do so as well:

If ancient sorrow be most reverent,
Give mine the benefit of seniory,
And let my griefs frown on the upper hand.
If sorrow can admit society,
Tell over your woes again by viewing mine.

(IV. iv. 35-39)

The emphasis on child-bearing and loss in Margaret's speeches to the Duchess and Elizabeth is important here in her final scene, for it provides a connection between the various topoi associated with Margaret throughout the tetralogy; Margaret's usurpations of power and her manipulating others have been unnatural, just as it is unnatural for the mother to outlive her son. Coming as it does in a scene of spiritual reconciliation, it perhaps provides a means of exonerating Margaret for her sins. While many readers find that the Margeret offered in Richard III is hardly the same character as that inhabiting the texts of the three Henry VI plays,²¹ the apparent transformation of the character is significant in light of the tetralogy's attention to literary and theological traditions.

The final image of Margaret offers balance; there is no clear-cut, single, definitive portrait of Margaret, nor need there be. She is both masculine and feminine in her behavior and speech, or, we could argue, neither—the competing manifestations of gender exhibited in Margaret's representation effectively cancel each other out, or at least force us to acknowledge her ambiguity.²² Initally a monstrous illustration of a virago in its most unnatural and undesirable sense, she is restored to a more conventional maternal topos in her final appearance. This surprising, perhaps forced, restoration of the more palatable, conventional image likewise invites us to reflect further upon her connections to Joan, La Pucelle, whose feigned pregnancy just prior to her death also renders her final image maternal. The twofold dimension of the filius Evae presence, then, is effectively recuperated by way of an ambiguous recasting of Margaret that both reifies and betrays the originary topos.

Shakespeare's use of the filii Evae figure is, of course, complicated by the shifting relationship of religion and politics in England during the late sixteenth century. From a cultural perspective, Shakespeare's women additionally reflect a marked change in the masculine power structures that for so long had dominated English rule. The “Virgin Queen” Elizabeth obviously exhibits qualities associated with the filii Evae type, and her influence can be felt upon much of England's early modern literature,²³ in which representations of historical figures inevitably betray factual liberties for the sake of pragmatism and drama.²⁴ Contextualized by literary and theological traditions, the women inhabiting the Henry VI tetralogy offer provocative insights into a volatile and ambivalent world of ambiguity and gender: “this it is,” observes Richard, “when men are rul'd by women” (Richard III, I. i. 62).²⁵

Notes

1. Whether the three Henry VI plays and Richard III actually constitute a “tetralogy” remains a matter of critical difference; the present essay accepts the position that the four are unified and united despite their respective differences and problems. Herschel Baker, in his introduction to the plays (The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974], pp. 587-93), indicates that the Henry VI plays served as a kind of warm-up for the writing of Richard III, “that great event” (p. 593); others see the earlier plays as more integral, despite their relative inferiority. For an overview of the issue, see Robert Ornstein, A Kingdom for a Stage: The Achievement of Shakespeare's History Plays (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), pp. 33-82, esp. pp. 33-35; Phyllis Rackin, “History into Tragedy: The Case of Richard III,” in Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender, ed. Shirley Nelson Garner and Madelon Sprengnether (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1996), 31-53, considers matters of genre distinction; see also Robert Weimann, Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function, ed. Robert Schwartz (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978), 73-85. All citations of Shakespeare's works will cite the Riverside edition, with locations provided in text.

2. Saint Bernard, Tractatus ad laudem gloriosae Virginis, in the Patrologia cursus completus, series latina (hereafter PL), ed. J. P. Migne (Paris: Migne, 1844-83, with reprints), vol. 182. The image occurs in other texts, most notably the Salve Regina's “exsules filii Hevae” [exiled sons of heaven] and the Prymer's “exiled sones of Eue”; texts are Salve Regina, cited by Marina Warner, Alone of All her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Knopf, 1976), p. 115, and The Prymer or Lay Folk's Prayer Book, ed. Henry Littlehales, Early English Text Society no. 105 (Oxford: EETS, 1895); Latin translations my own here and throughout. The phrase has received critical attention particularly in relation to its presence in the Prologue of Chaucer's Second Nun's Tale, to be discussed below. On Bernard's attitudes toward gender, see Caroline Walker Bynum's chapter “Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother,” in her Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1982), 110-69; for a psychoanalyticial perspective, see Julia Kristeva, Tales of Love, trans. Leon Roudiez (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1987), 151-69; and, in relation to hermeneutics, David Damrosch, “Non Alia Sed Aliter: The Hermeneutics of Gender in Bernard of Clairvaus,” in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991), 181-95.

3. Saint Jerome, Epistolae, no. 22, PL, vol. 22. Jerome's association evolves into one of the better known typological associations, exemplifying the ambivalence of the theologians in their attitude towards women. Commentary on patristic attitudes toward gender is vast; see, for instance, Margaret Miles, Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), pp. 53-77; Elizabeth A. Clark, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends (New York: Mellen, 1979); Glenda McLeod, Virtue and Venom: Catalogs of Women from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1991), pp. 42-50; Eleanor Commo McLaughlin, “Equality of Souls, Inequality of Sexes: Woman in Medieval Theology,” in Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1974), pp. 213-66; Jo Ann McNamara, “Sexual Equality and the Cult of Virginity in Early Christian Thought,” Feminist Studies, 3 (1976), 145-58; Monique Alexandre, “Early Christian Women,” in A History of Women in the West, Vol. 1: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints, ed. Pauline Schmidtt Pantel, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Belknap and Harvard Univ. Press, 1992), 409-44.

4. Saint Jerome, Commentariorum in epistolam ad Ephesios, 3.28, in PL, vol. 26.

5. Saint Paul, Galatians 3.28, in Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam Clementinam, 4th ed., ed. Alberto Colunga and Laurentio Turrado (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1965).

6. Saint Ambrose makes a similar comment in his Expositio in evangelii secundum Lucam, ed. M. Adriaen, Corpus Christianorum series latina, ed. 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1957), 10.161. On early Christian, medieval, and early modern misogyny and its theological underpinnings, particularly with regard to virginity as the ascetic ideal, see Susanna Elm, “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994); John Bugge, Virginitas: An Essay in the History of a Medieval Ideal (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), 5-29; R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991); Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 1-45.

7. Eugene Vance, Mervelous Signals: Poetics and Sign Theory in the Middle Ages (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1986), p. xi. A broad, but useful, overview of Elizabethan theology and its literary influences on Shakespeare and his contemporaries is supplied by Roland Mushat Frye, Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1963), 63-110.

8. On hagiography and its conventions, see the overview provided by Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988); see also Barbara Abou-el-Haj, The Medieval Cult of Saints: Formations and Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994), 1-60.

9. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, in The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed., ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), VIII. 62.

10. See Marina Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (New York: Knopf, 1981), for a detailed history and profile of the historical figure and her many literary and popular representations. Simon Shepherd, Amazons and Warrior Women: Varieties of Feminism in Seventeenth-Century Drama (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), notes, with regard to the term virago in the Renaissance, “Heywood explains its semantic origin: ‘All these Heroyicke Ladies are generally called Viragoes, which is derived of Masculine Spirits,’” and that Joan of Arc is listed as “ye French Virago” in Gabriel Harvey's Commonplace Book (p. 35).

11. On the historical relevance of Joan to England's sense of nationalism, see Lisa Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Sussex: Harvester, 1983), pp. 105-06 and 156-59. Issues of sexual identity in relation to the theatrical tradition of male actors' performing female roles have received productive attention in recent years; although it is beyond the scope of my discussion to address the subject, of particular relevance are Leah S. Marcus, “Shakespeare's Comic Heroines, Elizabeth I, and the Political Uses of Androgyny,” in Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives, ed. Mary Beth Rose (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1986), 135-53; Jean E. Howard, The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1994); and Jardine, 9-36.

12. On the association of women and witchcraft and its presence in 1 Henry VI, see Marilyn L. Williamson, “‘When Men Are Rul'd by Women’: Shakespeare's First Tetralogy,” Shakespeare Studies, 19 (1987), 41-59, esp. pp. 41-46.

13. Warner, Joan of Arc, notes, with regard to the disputed etymology and polysemy of “pucelle,” that the word “means ‘virgin,’ but in a special way, with distinct shades connoting youth, innocence and, paradoxically, nubility. It is the equivalent of the Hebrew almah, used of both the Virgin Mary and the dancing girls in Solomon's harem in the Bible” (p. 22). Hence Talbot's pun in 1 Henry VI: “Pucelle or pussel, Dauphin or dogfish” (I. iv. 107).

14. Sexual denigration as a means of tempering or neutralizing the effects of a dominant or at least non-passive woman is nothing new, of course, either in literature or culture; see Catherine S. Cox, “Froward Language and Wanton Play: The ‘Commoun’ Text of Henryson's Testament of Cresseid,” Studies in Scottish Literature, 29 (1996), 58-72, for an overview of fifteenth century culture and context. The implications of sexuality and gender in Shakespeare's world are given insightful treatment by Phyllis Rackin, “Foreign Country: The Place of Women and Sexuality in Shakespeare's Historical World,” in Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property, and Culture in Early Modern England, ed. Richard Burt and John Michael Archer (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1994), 68-95, esp. pp. 71-72.

15. The “handmaid” reference evokes the Virgin Mary's self-identification as ancilla in St. Luke's account of the Annunciation (1. 1-56): in response to Gabriel's “Ave gratia plena: Dominus tecum: benedicta tu in mulieribus,” Mary responds, “Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum” (“Hail [one] full of grace: the Lord with you: you are blessed among women.” “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word.”). The role of ancilla as child-bearer has its origins in the Hagar-Ismael episode of Genesis, and the term retains its connotations of surrogacy in its New Testament manifestation as phrased by the Virgin herself.

16. On the vexing nature of the episode, see, for instance, David M. Bevington, “The Domineering Female in 1 Henry VI,” Shakespeare Studies, 2 (1966), 51-58, who argues that “Joan is herself a strumpet. Her claim of pregnancy to avoid execution (V. ii) is an outrageous travesty of the Virgin birth” (p. 52); Coppelia Kahn, Man's Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1981), critiques Bevington's argument, noting that while Bevington “appears to accept the traditional categories of male and female roles at face value,” Kahn herself sees them “as projections of male anxieties, consciously presented as such by Shakespeare” (p. 55, n. ll). Joan's claim may be understood also as a parody of the hagiographic “virgin mother” figure, in that Joan appears to insist simultaneously upon both the miraculous presence of an asexually created child and a series of quite human paternal candidates; for historical and cultural background, see Heffernan, who describes the “virgin mother” topos in relation to hagiography (231-99).

17. Irene G. Dash, Wooing, Wedding, and Power: Women in Shakespeare's Plays (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1981), argues that although York is unable to save himself, he does manage to expose Margaret's key weakness, through his “bludgeoning of Margaret for her unwomanliness” (p. 185).

18. The “She-wolf” label perhaps evokes as well the famous lupa of Dante's Inferno: “Ed una lupa, che di tutte brame / sembiava carca ne la sua magrezza, / e molte genti fe gia viver grame” (And a she-wolf, who all crawings carried in her leanness, to many people had already brought torment) (49-51), The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Vol. 1: Inferno (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1980, trans. my own). The image combines the perceived negativeness and threatening nature of the feminine with the overt attribution of bestiality or depravity to women who exhibit such aspects.

19. Madonne M. Miner, “‘Neither mother, wife, nor England's queen’: The Roles of Women in Richard III,” in The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, ed. Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz, Gayle Greene, and Carol Thomas Neely (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1980), 35-55, describes this scene as “the most moving example of women-aiding-women” in the plays (p. 47). On the mater dolorosa image in general and its implications for feminist critical theory, see Kristeva, pp. 234-63. On mothers in Shakespeare, see Jeanne Addison Roberts, “Shakespeare's Maimed Birth Rites,” in True Rites and Maimed Rites: Ritual and AntiRitual in Shakespeare and His Age, ed. Linda Woodbridge and Edward Berry (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1992), 123-44: “For all practical purposes, mature, potentially sexually active women on Shakespeare's stage are perceived as either virgins or whores; and it is the ‘whores’ who shape the future. This dilemma obviously works to create the crisis for men of the birth trauma and helps to explain the scarcity of mothers in the plays” (p. 131).

20. Howard Dobin demonstrates in Merlin's Disciples that riddles and curses articulated by witches and other conjuring figures were believed to signify political sedition; see citation and discussion in Howard, pp. 135-36.

21. Bryan Crockett, The Play of Paradox: Stage and Sermon in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), notes of this scene, “Margaret functions as a sort of Senecan Fury, howling out invectives and prophesying events that inevitably come to pass” (p. 152). Jardine observes, “the intelligent and articulate Queen Margaret, wife of Henry VI and model of female valour, becomes in the final play just such a privileged, carping voice, somewhere between witch and female prophet” (p. 117).

22. Linda Bamber, Comic Women, Tragic Men: A Study of Gender and Genre in Shakespeare (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1982), comments, “If Shakespeare is not consistently a feminist, however, he is consistently an author whose response to the feminine is central to the general significance of his work” (p. 4); see also Shari Benstock, Textualizing the Feminine: On the Limits of Genre (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1991), who critiques Derrida's and Lacan's correlations of gender and genre (3-22).

23. A brief but useful bibliographic overview is provided by Lenz, Greene, and Neely (see n. 19, above).

24. As J. P. Brockbank notes in “The Frame of Disorder—Henry VI,” rpt. in Shakespeare: The Histories: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Eugene M. Waith (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1965), 55-65, “Where narrative and play are incompatible, it may be the record and it may be the art that is defective as an image of human life, and in the plays framed from English and Roman history it is possible to trace subtle modulations of spectacle, structure and dialogue as they seek to express and elucidate the full potential of the source material” (p. 56).

25. A shorter version of this paper was presented at the annual NEMLA meeting on 20 April 1996, in Montreal, at the “Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare” session.