Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:43:50.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Elizabeth I’s Virginity and the Body of Evidence: Jonson’s Notorious Crux

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Kaara L. Peterson
Kaara L. Peterson*
Affiliation:
Miami University of Ohio
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In a famous, frequently quoted statement, Ben Jonson claims that Queen Elizabeth I “had a membrana on her which made her uncapable of man.” This essay reinvestigates the basis for Jonson’s 400-year-old crux and, more broadly, argues for the relevance of an unexplored area of critical studies on Elizabeth: what early modern medicine and culture thought about lifelong virginity and its distinctive perils for the queen’s aging body natural. Finally, looking at the inner-circle gossip about Tudor and Stuart queens’ health and various records documenting Elizabeth’s identified illnesses, including hysterica passio, the essay uncovers how virgins’ diseases were thought to afflict Elizabeth over her reign and possibly contribute to her death.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , Fall 2015 , pp. 840 - 871
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aristoteles Masterpiece. London, 1684.Google Scholar
Astruc, Jean. A Treatise on the Diseases of Women. 3 vols. London, 1762.Google Scholar
Barrough, Philip. The Method of Physic. London, 1583.Google Scholar
Birch, Thomas. Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. 2 vols. London, 1754.Google Scholar
Boorde, Andrew. The Breviary of Health. London, 1547.Google Scholar
Bos, Gerrit. “Ibn al-Jazzār on Women’s Diseases and Their Treatment.” Medical History 37 (1993): 296–312.10.1017/S0025727300058464CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. London, 1620.Google Scholar
Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. the Marquis of Salisbury, Hatfield House, Part 1. Ed. Bird, S. R. et al. London, 1883.Google Scholar
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Elizabeth, 1581–1590. Ed. Lemon, Robert. London, 1865.Google Scholar
Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, Elizabeth, 1601–1603, with addenda 1547–1565. Ed. Green, Mary Anne Everett. London, 1870.Google Scholar
Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth, Volume 2, 1559–1560. Ed. Stevenson, Joseph. 1865. Nendeln, 1966.Google Scholar
Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, Mary, 1553–1558. Ed. Turnbull, William B.. London, 1861.Google Scholar
Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 9, 1592–1603. Ed. Brown, Horatio F.. London, 1897.Google Scholar
Calendar of State Papers, Scotland, Volume 1, 1509–1589. Ed. Thorpe, Markham John. London, 1858.Google Scholar
Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 1, 1558–1567. Ed. Hume, Martin A. S.. London, 1892.Google Scholar
Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 2, 1568–1579. Ed. Hume, Martin A. S.. London, 1894.Google Scholar
Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 3, 1580–1586. Ed. Hume, Martin A. S.. London, 1896.Google Scholar
Camden, William. Annals. London, 1630.Google Scholar
Camden, William. Annals. London, 1634.Google Scholar
Camden, William. Annals. London, 1675.Google Scholar
Carey, Robert. The Memoirs of Robert Carey. Ed. Mares, F. M.. Oxford, 1972.Google Scholar
Carroll, William C. “The Virgin Not: Language and Sexuality in Shakespeare.” Shakespeare Survey 46 (1994): 107–19.Google Scholar
Chamberlain, John. A Jacobean Letter-Writer: The Life and Times of John Chamberlain. Ed. Statham, Edward Phillips. London, 1920.Google Scholar
Chamberlayne, Thomas. The Compleat Midwife’s Practice Enlarged. London, 1659.Google Scholar
Chamberlin, Frederick. The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth. New York, 1922.Google Scholar
Clapham, John. Elizabeth of England: Certain Observations Concerning the Life and Reign of Queen Elizabeth. Ed. Read, Evelyn Plummer and Read, Conyers. Philadelphia, 1951.Google Scholar
Collection of State Papers Relating to Affairs in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth 1571–1596. Ed. Murdin, William. London, 1759.Google Scholar
Crawford, Patricia. “Attitudes towards Menstruation in Seventeenth-Century England.” Past and Present 91 (May 1981): 47–73.10.1093/past/91.1.47CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crooke, Helkiah. Microcosmographia. London, 1615.Google Scholar
Culpeper, Nicholas. A Directory for Midwives. 1651. Reprint, London, 1662.Google Scholar
Digges, Dudley. The Compleat Ambassador. London, 1655.Google Scholar
Dobson, Michael, and Watson, Nicola J.. England’s Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy. Oxford, 2002.Google Scholar
Doran, Susan. “Why Did Elizabeth Not Marry?” In Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana, ed. Walker, Julia M., 30–59. Durham, NC, 1998.Google Scholar
Elizabeth, I. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Ed. Marcus, Leah S., Mueller, Janel, and Rose, Mary Beth. Chicago, 2000.Google Scholar
Fissell, Mary E. Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England. Oxford, 2004.Google Scholar
Furdell, Elizabeth Lane. The Royal Doctors 1485–1714: Medical Personnel at the Tudor and Stuart Courts. New York, 2001.Google Scholar
Green, Monica. Making Women’s Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaecology. Oxford, 2008.Google Scholar
Harris, Jonathan Gil. “All Swell That End Swell: Dropsy, Phantom Pregnancy, and the Sound of Deconception.” Renaissance Drama 35 (2006): 169–89.10.1086/rd.35.41917446CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hazard, Mary E. “The Case for ‘Case’ in Reading Elizabethan Portraits.” Mosaic 23.2 (1990): 61–88.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Elizabeth. Elizabeth the Great. New York, 1958.Google Scholar
Johnston, John. The Idea of Practical Physic. Trans. Culpeper, Nicholas. London, 1657.Google Scholar
Jonson, Ben. Ben Jonson. Ed. Herford, C. H. and Simpson, Percy. 11 vols. Oxford, 1925.Google Scholar
King, Helen. The Disease of Virgins: Green Sickness, Chlorosis, and the Problems of Puberty. London, 2003.Google Scholar
Liébault, Jean. Trois Livres appurtenant aux infirmitez et maladies des femmes. Paris, 1582.Google Scholar
Loades, David. Elizabeth I. London, 2006.Google Scholar
Loomis, Catherine. “Elizabeth Southwell’s Manuscript Account of the Death of Queen Elizabeth.” English Literary Renaissance 26.3 (1996): 482–509.10.1111/j.1475-6757.1996.tb01508.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loughlin, Marie H. Hymeneutics: Interpreting Virginity on the Early Modern Stage. Cranbury, NJ, 1997.Google Scholar
Maclean, Ian. The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life. Cambridge, 1980.10.1017/CBO9780511562471CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacLennan, Hector. “A Gynaecologist Looks at the Tudors.” Medical History 11 (1967): 66–74.10.1017/S0025727300011741CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McFarland, Ronald E. “The Rhetoric of Medicine: Lord Herbert’s and Thomas Carew’s Poems of Green-Sickness.” Journal of the History of Medicine (July 1975): 250–58.10.1093/jhmas/XXX.3.250CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montrose, Louis. The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation. Chicago, 2006.Google Scholar
Paré, Ambroise. Briefe Collection de L’administration Anatomique. Paris, 1549.Google Scholar
Paré, Ambroise. The Works of that Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey. Trans. Johnson, Thomas. London, 1634.Google Scholar
Park, Katharine. “The Life of the Corpse: Division and Dissection in Late Medieval Europe.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50 (1995): 111–32.10.1093/jhmas/50.1.111CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paster, Gail Kern. The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England. Ithaca, 1993.Google Scholar
Peterson, Kaara L. Popular Medicine, Hysterical Disease, and Social Controversy in Shakespeare’s England. Burlington, 2010.Google Scholar
Riolan, Jean. A Sure Guide, or the Best and Nearest Way to Physick and Chiyrurgery. Trans. Culpeper, Nicholas and R[and], W[illiam]. 1648. Reprint, London, 1657.Google Scholar
Rivière, Lazare. The Practice of Physic. London, 1655.Google Scholar
Sadler, John. The Sick Womans Private Looking-glasse. London, 1636.Google Scholar
Samaha, Joel. “Gleanings from Local Criminal-Court Records: Sedition amongst the ‘Inarticulate’ in Elizabethan Essex.” Journal of Social History 8.4 (Summer 1975): 61–79.10.1353/jsh/8.4.61CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schleiner, Winfried. Medical Ethics in the Renaissance. Washington, DC, 1995.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William, and Fletcher, John. The Two Noble Kinsmen. In The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Greenblatt, Stephen, Cohen, Walter, Howard, Jean E., and Maus, Katharine Eisaman, 3195–278. New York, 1997.Google Scholar
Sharp, Jane. The Midwives Book. London, 1671.Google Scholar
“Some Royal Death-Beds.” British Medical Journal 1.2578 (1910): 1303–04.10.1136/bmj.1.2578.1303CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soranus, . Soranus’ Gynecology. Trans. Temkin, Owsei. Baltimore, 1956.Google Scholar
Stallybrass, Peter. “Reading the Body and the Jacobean Theater of Consumption.” In The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, ed. Stallybrass, Peter and White, Allon, 210–20. London, 1986.Google Scholar
Strachey, Lytton. Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History. New York, 1928.Google Scholar
Traister, Barbara H. ‘“Matrix and the Pain Thereof’: A Sixteenth-Century Gynaecological Essay.” Medical History 35 (1991): 436–51.10.1017/S0025727300054193CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vicary, Thomas. Anatomie of the Bodie of Man. 1548. Reprint, London, 1888.Google Scholar
Wright, Thomas, ed. Queen Eliz and Her Times: A Series of Original Letters. 2 vols. London, 1838.Google Scholar