Introduction: Foreign Queens, Abusive Sovereignty, and Political Theory in the Past and the Present

Abstract

Focusing on Shakespeare’s depiction of foreign queens, this book considers how their presence, conditions, and experiences in his plays make visible the abusive potential of sovereign will above law. Each of the four main chapters focuses upon one queen—Katherine of Aragon in Henry VIII, Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, Tamora in Titus Andronicus, and Margaret in the first history tetralogy. These queens reveal tensions within early modern English politics, particularly those associated with the ‘sovereign decision’ and the putative antinomy between friend and enemy as the basis of the concept of the political. The project as a whole links early modern and contemporary political theory and concerns through four key concepts—fragmented identity, hospitality, citizenship, and banishment—which point toward Shakespeare’s interest in questions of sovereignty, subjection, and active political engagement. It does not focus on gender per se, but on the vulnerability of foreign queens, as a cypher for all subjects, to the destabilizing, deleterious conjunction of personal and political agendas and judgments enacted through embodied sovereignty.