A warning to England: Monstrous births, teratology and feminine power in Elizabethan broadside ballads

Abstract

This article examines Elizabethan broadside ballads depicting ‘monstrous’ birth defects as expressions of societal unease concerning the rule of women in late sixteenth-century England. It deals particularly with a surge in these publications during the early reign of Elizabeth I. These one-page reports interpreted the birth defects as reflecting God’s disapproval of both individual and collective sins, and the authors urged the populace to repent. The essay explores the concept of the ‘prodigious’ monster in Renaissance thought, especially as a reflection of the feminine imagination, and its use in religious propaganda as a visible expression of divine wrath. Noting several parallels between the twentieth-century depictions of monstrous femininity and the treatment of birth in 1970s ‘body horror’ films such as The Brood (Cronenberg, Montréal 1979), the essay argues that the focus on birth in these ballads is reflective of tensions between the strict gender roles in wider society and questions of Elizabeth’s succession in sixteenth-century England.