Dissing Elizabeth

"This engaging and scholarly collection has uncovered numerous hitherto neglected expressions of disrespect toward the virgin queen. . . . By documenting the surprising extent of anti-Elizabethan discourse, and showing how this was invariably focused on the queen’s gender, Dissing Elizabeth provides important new insights into the ‘shadow’ side of Elizabeth’s reign." - Philippa Berry; King’s College, University of Cambridge

"Walker’s collection of often amusing and always compelling essays adds unexpected shadows to the face of England’s Gloriana; even the queen’s admirers will welcome the chiaroscuro, the greater depth and texture of the resulting portrait." - Anne Lake Prescott, Barnard College, Columbia University

“Dissing Elizabeth looks at Elizabeth’s contemporary reputation, and finds critics among artists, poets, preachers, and collectors of commonplaces.” - Christopher Haigh, English Historical Review

“This collection of eleven essays proposes to explore ‘the dark side of the cult of Elizabeth’ and to mount a new historicist challenge to ‘the canonical secondary texts in Elizabethan studies.’ ” - Simon Adams, History Today

“This extremely valuable collection of essays speaks clearly over silences imposed by the discretion of earlier scholars, mostly male, brought up to believe that one does not speak ill of a lady. . . . [T]he essayists of Dissing Elizabeth, casting off the oppressive sort of courtesy that declares a woman fragile by treating her as if she were, show the queen in all her intelligence, toughness, and political effectiveness by pointing out just whom she angered and what they did about it. The collection is also valuable in that it deals with some less than canonical but culturally important texts, such as sermons, popular verse, and with visual representations, as well as with works by well-known authors, including that famous mixed message to a maiden ruler, Spenser’s Faerie Queene. . . . This collection will certainly enrich the study of the queen’s reputation, but it will also be of interest to students of censorship and public response to governmental efforts to control access to information and freedom of speech.” - Anne Shaver, Journal of English and Germanic Philology