"A goodly musicke in her regiment": Elizabeth, Portia, and the elusive harmony of justice.

Villeponteaux, Mary

Thomas Drant preached before Elizabeth and her court in January of 1569 (old calendar), delivering a sermon that Peter McCullough describes as a "chastisement" of the queen (92). In this sermon, Drant repeatedly compares Elizabeth unfavorably to the biblical David, bluntly asserting, among other things, that the Queen has failed to exercise justice properly and punish sinners as she should: "David destroyed all Gods enemies; her Majestie hath destroyed none of Gods enemies. David did it in the morning of his kingdome; it is now farreforth dayes since her Majestie beganne to raigne, and yet it is undone" (Klr). David, says Drant, played a song of judgment and mercy, plucking both strings and creating a harmonious kingdom as a result. "Our Prince," says Drant, "hath yet but stricken the one string and played upon mercy: but if she would now strike upon both the stringes, and let her song be of mercy, and judgment, then there would be a goodly musicke in her regiment" (K2r).

This complaint about Elizabeth's supposedly excessive clemency is not unique to Drant. In sermons, in speeches, in letters written by her councilors, the complaint is often voiced that the queen is too lenient, foolishly merciful. Yet her mercy was also celebrated and was an important part of her image, for many reasons. For one thing, queens had long been popularly imagined as merciful intercessors, a tradition suggested by the medieval adage, "If the king is law, the queen is mercy" (Parsons 147). Queen consorts often exercised their power by interceding with the king to sway him to clemency, a process familiar in the Middle Ages, but one that can also be seen in a famous sixteenth-century example: Catherine of Aragon's successful intercession with her husband, Henry VIII, on behalf of hundreds of Londoners awaiting execution in the aftermath of the Evil May Day riot of 1517. (1) Shakespeare uses this image of the queenly intercessor to depict Catherine in Henry VIII, introducing her in a scene in which she sues for mercy on behalf of the weavers who have rebelled against a decree of harsh taxation. Her first act in the play is to kneel before her husband; her first line is "Nay, we must longer kneel; I am a suitor" in response to Henry's attempt to raise her to her feet (1.2.9). Thus Elizabeth, and Mary before her, inherited a strong cultural expectation that queens should advocate clemency. Furthermore, not only queens but women in general were supposed to possess merciful dispositions; they were expected to be compassionate by nature, and early modern culture placed a high premium upon feminine "tenderness" and mercy. To quote one of the many sources that express this idea about feminine nature, the seventeenth-century Ladies Dictionary identifies "Compassion and a Merciful Disposition" as principal virtues of the female sex:

This chiefly should reign in the lovely tender breasts of the female sex, made for the seats of mercy and commiseration. They being made of the softest mould, ought to be most pliant and yielding to the impression of pity and compassion. (136)

In Christian tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary is the role model for women, and particularly for queens, since she is usually depicted as the Mother of Mercy and an advocate for sinful humanity. As Dante imagines her, she is that merciful lady whose "compassion breaks Heaven's stern decree" (12). The historical expectation that a queen consort would serve as a Marian intercessor along with the cultural expectation that women should be compassionate by nature work together to create the ideal image of the queen as wellspring of mercy. Along these lines, Helen Hackett suggests that the image of Queen Elizabeth as a merciful mother and channel of divine grace was a "safe" way of representing female power: "Mercy and grace were virtues that could comfortably be identified with a female monarch without suggesting either that she was inadequate as a ruler, or that she was unnaturally mannish" (168-9).

While preachers like Drant, Edward Dering, or Richard Fletcher may not have suggested that Elizabeth was inadequate as a ruler, all claimed that her leniency was a serious flaw. Thus the queen faced a paradox: she was praised as a mild and merciful prince of peace, yet at times was severely chastised by some of her own subjects for that same mildness. The strongest objections to her clemency emerged at moments when actual rebellion or the danger of rebellion and overthrow loomed: the Northern Rebellion, for example, and the various crises surrounding Mary Stuart, including the final struggle over her execution. Drant's sermon exhorting Elizabeth to be more punitive was preached in January of 1570, when the Northern Rebellion had just occurred at the end of 1569, and the process of punishing the rebels was underway. Drant assures Queen Elizabeth that it is "both good policie and good divinitie, to punish Gods enemies, and her enemies" (J8r), though at first he names no specific enemies. After promising her repeatedly that she can be as severe as Moses, Solomon, or David, and yet still be called "a milde, and a mercifull Prince," Drant explicitly identifies the Northern rebels as the "enemies" to whom he has been referring. "Correct a wise man with a nodde, & a foole with a clobbe" (K3r) is the precept Drant cites; but he says, "If these Northern rebels had had any sober witte in their head, by this time so many noddes, and so many nots, would have stayed them ... nodding will not serve, nor becking will not serve, nor checking will not serve, therefore it must be a clobbe, or it must be an hatchet, or it must be an halter" (K3r). Drant also explicitly names Catholics as the enemies of the queen and of God: "The worst traitors to God, and most rebels to the Prince, are those Papistes" (K4r).

Yet even in times of crisis, men who complain of Elizabeth's leniency and exhort her to punish rather than pardon, as does Drant, usually take care to praise the virtue of mercy even as they warn against some particular act of the queen's clemency. Many examples of this paradox survive, such as Job Throckmorton's 1586 Parliamentary speech in which he angrily denounces Elizabeth's earlier refusal to allow proceedings against the Queen of Scots, yet says, "Oh! but mercy, you will say, is a commendable thing, and well beseeming the seat of a Prince. Very true, indeed" (Neale 111). Throckmorton goes on to declare that it is "high time for her Majesty ... to beware of lenitives and fall to corrosives" (111). But mercy is such a sacred monarchical principle that it cannot be dismissed or criticized wholesale; thus Throckmorton must agree that mercy is a commendable thing in the same breath that he decries Elizabeth's mercy toward Mary. No example of this paradox is more blunt and strange than a line found in Richard Fletcher's infamous sermon preached before the queen shortly after the execution of Mary. As he exhorts Elizabeth to arise against her enemies, God's enemies, Fletcher says, "None of your virtues are more wonderful or more gracious than your clemency. Yet arise with Moses ... and forget your lenity and mercy" (367).

In The Faerie Queene, Spenser often employs a similar strategy when treating the issue of the queen's clemency: he praises Queen Elizabeth's mercy in the abstract and, then, immediately criticizes an actual act of mercy, or depicts a punitive act as praiseworthy. There are several examples of this approach in The Faerie Queene Book II: for example, after Guyon lavishes praise on Gloriana for her "faire peace, and mercy," we see him grant mercy to Pyrochles with disastrous results (II.ii.40 and II.v). (2) But the most familiar and vivid example of this strategy occurs in Book V, in Spenser's depiction of Mercilla. Mercilla, Spenser's allegorical queen of mercy and acknowledged avatar of Queen Elizabeth, is represented as a heavenly figure, a virgin queen surrounded by angels, holding the "sacred pledge of peace and clemency," the scepter, with a rusty sword laid at her feet to indicate the peace her reign has enjoyed (V.ix.30.3). After the queen of mercy hears the many arguments against Duessa, understood to represent Mary Stuart, Mercilla's princely breast is "touched with piteous ruth"; she lets a few "perling drops" fall and then covers her face with a purple pall (V.ix.50). She appears entirely merciful, the embodiment of mercy. And yet, between the pages as it were, she has condemned Duessa and ordered her execution, an action we never witness, though it is praised in its aftermath.

Shakespeare's Portia resembles Mercilla in the sense that she, too, is a figure who simultaneously represents tender mercy and enacts harsh justice. Mercilla represents mercy iconographically; Portia represents mercy rhetorically, as her character is best remembered for her powerful speech on the virtue of mercy. Yet Portia enacts a rigorous and punitive "justice" on Shylock, who can be read as one of those "enemies" against whom Elizabeth's preachers warned: a threatening religious "other."

Though we do not know for certain when Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice, it probably dates from the mid-1590s, some years after the particular crises that produced the strongest calls for rigor: the Northern Rebellion (1569) and the trial of Mary Stuart (1586). One could say the same about Book V of The Faerie Queene, however: Mercilla's condemnation of Duessa was immediately recognized as an allegory of Elizabeth's condemnation of Mary when the second edition of The Faerie Queene was published in 1596, despite the fact that Mary Stuart had been executed nearly ten years earlier, in 1587. I do not suggest that we read Portia's treatment of Shylock as an allegory of some particular incident in the way that we read the trial of Duessa in The Faerie Queene. Rather, I suggest that Portia is a character who reflects certain aspects of Elizabeth's representation that were in tension. Merchant of Venice participates in the cultural construction of Elizabeth by staging a queenly figure, Portia, in whom feminine mercy and princely rigor are apparently reconciled.

During the first three acts of the play, Portia has no direct connection to the struggle between Antonio and Shylock or to the debate between justice and mercy. But even before Portia adopts the role of judge in the legal battle over the pound of flesh, Merchant invites us to see her as a prince. The contest to win her hand, for example, seems to hint at the courtships of Queen Elizabeth: Portia's suitors apparently come from around the globe and are depicted in terms of national stereotypes, which may serve to further the play's exploration of prejudice, but which may also suggest the marriage negotiations of a queen. Portia's rhetoric throughout the play is also reminiscent of a strategy that was often employed by Queen Elizabeth: the disarming claim of feminine weakness coupled with an assertion of monarchical power--a strategy, noted by various scholars, that occurs in a number of Elizabeth's speeches, none so familiar as the words with which she exhorted the troops in 1588: "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too" (326).3 Portia frequently employs a similar strategy, most obviously in her speech following Bassanio's choice of the correct casket. When he steps forward and asks her to confirm that he has indeed won her hand in marriage, Portia modestly declares herself merely "an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpracticed" (3.2.159), who will submit herself to the direction of her new husband. Yet her depiction of her own deficiencies quickly gives way to her assertion of power: "But now I was the lord / Of this fair mansion, master of my servants, / Queen o'er myself" (3.2.167-9). In making a disarming though surely insincere statement of her inadequacies and claiming that she needs to be directed by Bassanio, Portia is following a common rhetorical tactic of Elizabeth's, deploying her supposed "feminine weakness" in order to make her subsequent assertion of power more palatable to her audience. Portia has in fact declared herself a queen, though she refers to a queenship over herself, a kind of self-determination. Bassanio's response to her speech explicitly compares Portia to a prince:

   Madam, you have bereft me of all words.
   Only my blood speaks to you in my veins,
   And there is such confusion in my powers
   As, after some oration fairly spoke
   By a beloved prince, there doth appear
   Among the buzzing pleased multitude,
   Where every something, being blent together,
   Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy
   Express'd and not express'd. (3.2.175-83)

By comparing his internal "confusion" to the response of the "buzzing pleased multitude" after a prince's oration, Bassanio not only imagines Portia as a monarch but himself as her subject; thus Portia's "queenship," which in her speech seemed a personal quality, has been recast in Bassanio's speech as a public quality, in that he envisions Portia as a prince who has given a public oration to the multitude.

But when Portia dons her masculine disguise and appears as the doctor of law in a Venetian courtroom, she most fully embodies the conflicting fantasies of Elizabeth as tender, merciful queen and rigorous scourge of those whom Drant called "Gods enemies." Of course, when Portia plays a "man's part" and controls an exclusively male domain, the courtroom, we might see a reflection of Elizabeth's playing the "man's part" as monarch of a patriarchy. But Portia's words and actions suggest Queen Elizabeth's desire and ability to project a merciful image even as she simultaneously enacts a punitive justice. For the audience, Portia's is the voice of mercy, responding to the seemingly hopeless case against Antonio with the words, "Then must the Jew be merciful" (4.1.182). Her speech to Shylock, in which she supposedly attempts to persuade him ofmercy's inherent value--"The quality of mercy is not strained" (4.1.184)--is among the most famous speeches in the play. It is for this speech that Portia is best remembered, and yet it is doubtful that this is a sincere attempt to obtain Shylock's mercy for Antonio. Portia speaks of mercy as a kingly attribute that "becomes / The throned monarch better than his crown" (4.1.188-9). Mercy is "mightiest in the mightiest," she claims (188), and monarchs are most godlike when they practice it:

   His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
   The attribute to awe and majesty,
   Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
   But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
   It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
   It is an attribute to God himself;
   And earthly power doth then show likest God's
   When mercy seasons justice. (4.1.190-97)

Fully half of this famous speech is devoted to an analysis of the role of mercy in kingship. This depiction of monarchical mercy is traditional, but why should kingly mercy be the focus of Portia's speech to Shylock? This is probably not a portrayal of mercy that would appeal to the relatively powerless Shylock. But Portia's analysis of mercy as a cornerstone of monarchical power makes perfect sense in the context of Elizabeth's reign.

Of course, Shylock remains unmoved by this plea and demands the letter of the law, which Portia gives him in full by insisting that he may collect only what the letter of his bond specifies: a pound of the merchant's flesh but not one drop of "Christian blood." However, she has not finished playing on the string of judgment when she thus saves Antonio's life; she calls in the harshest of punishments against the "alien" and heretic Shylock, boldly proclaiming, "Tarry, Jew, / The law hath yet another hold on you" (4.1.346-7). A Portia who practiced what she preached only moments before would surely not prosecute a defeated Shylock in this way, but her purpose goes beyond simply saving the Christian Antonio: she also intends to destroy the Jew Shylock. Her claim that he is now vulnerable to prosecution under the law of Venice is based on his status as a foreigner who has threatened the life of a citizen. Jews were no particular threat to Elizabeth's throne, though the recent case of Roderigo Lopez may have inspired a new anti-Semitism, as some have argued. But it has also been argued that we should read Shylock as a representative of the religious other and specifically as an emblem of the Roman Catholic threat, which had been very real, not just in the Northern Rebellion and the plots involving Mary Stuart, but more recently still in the attack of the Spanish Armada. (4) And, of course, many of Elizabeth's subjects had always wanted her to do exactly what Portia does in this scene: not just stop particular instances of rebellion and treason but destroy all of "God's enemies," such as religious heretics, foreigners, and those who would conspire with a foreign nation in the overthrow of their queen.

Unlike Spenser's Mercilla, Shakespeare's Portia does not execute justice between the pages or between the acts: not only the dismantling of Shylock's claim but also the destruction of Shylock himself happen onstage. But it is interesting that the actual decisions about Shylock's life, money, and religion are put in the hands of the Duke and Antonio. The Duke spares Shylock's life but takes his money and goods, a decision that leads Shylock to cry, "Nay, take my life and all ... / You take my house when you do take the prop / That doth sustain my house" (4.1.374-6). And it is Antonio who demands that Shylock convert to Christianity under the threat of losing even more of his money and property and the Duke who adds a renewed threat of death to Antonio's demand that Shylock renounce his religion. Portia has given the Duke and Antonio the tools and the instructions to dismantle the "alien threat," but her hands, one might argue, remain clean. This distancing of Portia from the actual destruction of Shylock reflects another aspect of justice under Elizabeth: the queen's desire to be regarded as merciful and her anxiety that she will be labeled cruel. Drant in his sermon shows a clear awareness of this situation and blames Elizabeth's leniency on the fact that there are those "who tell the prince commonly, that she hath a goodly amiable name for mildnesse, and that now to draw the sword in this sort were the losse of that commendation" (J7v). Elizabeth did often remind her subjects of her many mercies, as when she voices her concern, in a speech to Parliament, that some will label her a tyrant for taking action against Mary Stuart: "I have pardoned many traitors and rebels, and besides I well remember half a score treasons which have been either covered or slightly examined or let slip and passed over, so that mine actions have not been such as should procure me the name of tyrant" (197). If Elizabeth was concerned about losing her reputation for "mildnesse," then it would have been important for writers to tread carefully when depicting any rendering of judgment by the queen. Thus Spenser's Mercilla condemns Duessa between the cantos, as it were, and, I would argue, Portia herself provides only the means by which to destroy Shylock, leaving the actual destruction to the Duke and Antonio.

In the courtroom scene of Act IV,, even as Portia settles one conflict she instigates another by demanding from Bassanio the very ring she placed on his finger in Act III. After hearing her husband prefer his friend's life to hers--when he announces that he would sacrifice his wife in order to deliver Antonio--she tests a loyalty that is now in doubt (IV.i.282-7). Arguably she proves her new husband disloyal when, in her disguise as Balthazar, she manages to obtain the ring that he swore never to give away. Thus the final act of Merchant enacts the resolution of this second conflict. Leah Marcus has suggested that Shakespeare's comic heroines--who play masculine roles yet move toward marriage and the production of heirs--enact a fantasy about Elizabeth's ability to be "self-contained and self-perpetuating" (103). I would like to suggest that the final scene of Merchant enacts another fantasy: that of a queen who, though punitive toward an alien and religious other, is nevertheless graciously merciful to those in her personal orbit. Naturally, the courtiers of Elizabeth who advised their queen to show greater rigor never desired or expected that her rigor would be directed at them. Portia renders a harsh judgment for Shylock, but she forgives Bassanio, though she continues to remind him that she holds the power. The destruction of Shylock occurs between Portia's great speech advocating mercy and her great moment of mercy, when she forgives Bassanio in the play's final scene and even welcomes her rival Antonio into her home. Portia seems magically powerful and bountiful at the end of the play, bestowing on Lorenzo and Jessica the deed of gift from Shylock, and mysteriously in possession of news that three of Antonio's argosies have after all come safe to harbor. The final line spoken to Portia is Lorenzo's, when he exclaims that she "drops manna in the way / Of starved people" (5.1.294-5). The play's final image is of a woman almost godlike in her mercy, bounty, and grace.

The figure of Portia embodies a number of contradictions. She is a character who advocates and practices mercy yet enacts severe punishment. She is also both married and a virgin, both humble and proud, both feminine and masculine: all contradictions found in the complex representations of Queen Elizabeth. In a brief moment near the opening of Act V, Portia and Nerissa approach the house after having been on their secret mission in the courtroom of Venice. In this scene, Shakespeare repeatedly draws our attention to the moon, that emblem of inconstancy and symbol of Queen Elizabeth's chastity. The first line of this scene is Lorenzo's assertion that "the moon shines bright" (5.1.1). Ninety lines later, as Portia and Nerissa, approaching the house, spy the candle burning in the window, Nerissa says that when the moon shone brightly, they couldn't see the candle. A few minutes later Gratiano swears "by yonder moon" that he gave his ring to the judge's clerk (5.1.142). The moon shines, then it doesn't, then it does. But Portia's comment may hold the key to interpreting this inconstant moon's meaning: she brings up the myth of Endymion in her line, "The moon sleeps with Endymion / And would not be awakened" (5.1.109-10). Though there are various versions of the Endymion story, the one that comes to mind is Lyly's Endymion, a play well known to Shakespeare. Lyly directly represents and praises Queen Elizabeth as Cynthia, the moon, in this play and describes her nature as ever-changing yet constant in that change. Though the representation of Queen Elizabeth in Endymion is at times ambiguous and allows for possibilities other than praise, Endymion's great speech in celebration of his Cynthia seems wholeheartedly admiring. It is also a speech whose sense is echoed by Portia in this scene. Endymion says that his queen may be labeled wavering and inconstant by malicious men and fools but that the truth is Cynthia, the moon, displays her greatest virtue in the constancy with which she changes. She can "waxeth young again" even at the moment when she is in "the pride of her beauty and latter minute of her age" (1.1.57-9). Her perfection is that of the seasons: "Flowers in their buds are nothing worth till they be blown, nor blossoms accounted till they be ripe fruit; and shall we then say that they be changeable for that they grow from seeds to leaves, from leaves to buds, from buds to their perfection?" (1.1.45-50). This is very similar to Portia's meditation as she approaches her home and thinks about the difference the right moment makes to our understanding and valuation of things. The "crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark," if it is heard alone in the silence of the night (5.1.102-03). Therefore, "How many things by season seasoned are / To their right praise and true perfection!" (107-08). Like Elizabeth in Endymion's laudatory speech, Portia acts in accordance with what a particular situation or moment demands. In Merchant of Venice, when Portia confronts Shylock, apparently the moment is right to play the string of judgment and to punish, if she is to "destroy Gods enemies," as Thomas Drant insisted that Queen Elizabeth should do. And if the play also allows us to criticize Portia for cruelty to Shylock, that potential criticism might be offset by her powerful rhetoric extolling mercy, as well as her mercy toward those in her personal orbit. Shakespeare has constructed a queenly figure in whom the conflicting qualities of feminine compassion and masculine rigor coexist, for when Portia confronts Bassanio and Antonio, she plays the string of mercy and forgives.

Works Cited

Danson, Lawrence. The Harmonies of The Merchant of Venice. New Haven: Yale UP, 1978. Print.

Dante. The Portable Dante. Ed. and trans. Mark Musa. New York: Penguin Books, 1995. Print.

Drant, Thomas. Two Sermons Preached. London, 1570. Early English Books Online. Web. 1 November 2010.

Duncan, Sarah. "'Most godly heart fraight with al mercie': Queens' Mercy During the Reigns of Mary I and Elizabeth I." Queens and Power in Medieval and

Early Modern England. Ed. Carole Levin and Robert Bucholz. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2009. 31-50. Print.

Fletcher, Richard. "A Sermon Preached before the Queen Immediately after the Execution of the Queen of Scots by the Dean of Peterborough." Elizabeth I and Her Age. Ed. Donald Stump and Susan M. Felch. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 361-70. Print.

Hackett, Helen. Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1995. Print.

Huneycutt, Lois L. "Intercession and the High-Medieval Queen: The Esther Topos." Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women. Ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth McLean. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1995. 126-46. Print.

Jeffery, Chris. "Is Shylock a Catholic?" Shakespeare in Southern Africa 16 (2004): 37-51. JSTOR. Web. 26 October 2010.

Ladies Dictionary. London, 1694. Early English Books Online. Web. 28 October 2010.

Lyly, John. Endymion. Ed. David Bevington. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996. Print.

Marcus, Leah S. Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its Discontents. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988. Print.

Marcus, Leah S., Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose, eds. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Chicago: U of Chicago E 2000. Print.

McCullough, Peter E. Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.

Parsons, John Carmi. "The Queen's Intercession in Thirteenth-Century England." Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women. Ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1995. 147-177. Print.

Neale, J. E. Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 1584-1601. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966. Print.

Rose, Mary Beth. "The Gendering of Authority in the Public Speeches of Elizabeth I." PMLA 115.5 (October 2000): I077-82. JSTOR. Web. 26 October 2010.

Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997. Print.

Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. Ed. A. C. Hamilton. New York: Longman, 2001. Print.

Villeponteaux, Mary. "Dangerous Judgments: Elizabethan Mercy in The Faerie Queene." Spenser Studies 25 (2010): 163-85. Print.

Watts, Cedric. "Why Is Shylock Unmusical?" Henry V, War Criminal? and Other Shakespearean Puzzles. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. 148-53. Print.

Notes

(1.) John Carmi Parsons and Lois L. Huneycutt both provide interesting analyses of the medieval queen as intercessor. See essays by Parsons and Huneycutt. In a more recent article, "'Most godly heart fraight with al mercie': Queens' Mercy During the Reigns of Mary I and Elizabeth I," Sarah Duncan comments on the way mercy was represented during the reigns of Mary I and Elizabeth I, including the impact of this traditional image of the merciful queen.

(2.) See my essay "Dangerous Judgments: Elizabethan Mercy in The Faerie Queene" for a full discussion of Spenser's treatment of Elizabeth's mercy in Book II and in the Mercilla episode.

(3.) Mary Beth Rose, in her essay "The Gendering of Authority in the Public Speeches of Elizabeth I," provides a list of scholars who have commented on this rhetorical strategy. While Rose agrees that the queen employed this technique--asserting the conventional inferiority of the female only to supersede that convention when she appropriates the power of a king--she argues that Elizabeth also claimed a specifically female authority grounded in lived experience.

(4.) See, for example, Jeffery; Danson 78-81. Danson mentions that Shylock has been read as a Puritan by many critics. For a recent example, see Watts.