This text adopts a feminist analysis to examine the place of gender in contesting representations of nationhood in early modern England. Taking the Shakespearean history play as their point fo departure, the authors argue that the change from dynastic kingdom to modern nation was integrally connected to shifts in cultural understandings of gender, and in the social roles available to men and women. The cultural centrality of the Elizabethan theatre made it an important arena for staging the diverse and contradictory elements of this transition. Plays featured include: King John; Henry VI,...