George Washington University

"The Heart and Stomach of a King": Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power. by Carole
Levin
Review by: Susan Frye
Source: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 339-340
Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2871386
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 BOOK REVIEWS 339

"TheHeart and Stomachof a King": ElizabethI and the Politics of Sex

and Power. By CAROLE LEVIN. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Pp. x + 246. $14.95 paper.

Reviewed by SUSAN FRYE

"TheHeart and Stomachof a King":ElizabethI and the Politics of Sex and Power is an
important book in the ongoing revision of our picture of Queen Elizabeth I. Despite
the wealth of available material, Elizabeth, whose public, gendered expressions of
authority were interwoven with the development of both the British Empire and
English literature, remains an elusive figure. Levin recognizes in her introductory
chapter that "A central concern is how gender construction, role expectations, and
beliefs about sexuality influenced both Elizabeth's self-presentation and others' per-
ception of her" (3). In the six chapters that follow, she provides an abundance of
unusual information about this queen. Levin's work for the most part provides us
with an active if always vulnerable Elizabeth, now washing women's feet at her
Maundy service in a ritual suggesting her sanctity as monarch, now the subject of
rumors of sexual lasciviousness or physical abnormality. Levin breaks out of the usual
stale biographical packaging of Elizabeth by using traditional sources in imaginative
ways, as well as by incorporating a number of less usual texts, including the diary of
Henry Machyn, Dudley Digges's TheCompleatAmbassador: or TwoTreatiesof theintended
marriageof Qu. Elizabethof GloriousMemory,and the Calendarsof theAssizeRecordsfor
a number of counties.
In chapter 2, "Elizabeth as Sacred Monarch," Levin constructs an informative
discussion of Elizabeth's custom of touching for the king's evil, an example not only
of "kingly practices but also the practices of medieval women saints"(18), which Levin
uses as the means to address Elizabeth's attitudes toward her role as queen and her
people's degree of comfort with her gender. Chapter 3, "The Official Courtships of
the Queen," is a more familiar treatment of Elizabeth's series of decisions not to
marry. Chapter 4, "Wanton and Whore," considers her subjects' beliefs and com-
ments about Elizabeth's sexuality. Simultaneous (and contradictory) rumors of her
illegitimate children and her infertility "were one way for her people to come to
express their ambivalent feelings about her position as ruler, and also to come to
terms with it" (90). Likewise, chapter 5, "The Return of the King," which discusses
rumors of the existence of an English king, offers voluminous detail from the margins
of temporal and spiritual authority. As Levin tells us, rumors of Edward VI's survival
surfaced throughout both Mary'sand Elizabeth Tudor's reigns as a response to "fears
caused by female rule" (120).
The chapter of most immediate interest to students of Shakespeare is the sixth,
"Elizabeth as King and Queen." Unfortunately there is little new here, and in
surmising what Elizabeth or another historical figure might be thinking at given
moments in their respective narratives, Levin sometimes moves to close down possi-
bilities of interpretation instead of opening them up. This chapter argues that
Elizabeth, while situating herself rhetorically as both male and female, frequently
emphasized that she was a "powerful womanwho ruled" (127), a strategy visible in
some of Shakespeare's female characters, notably Beatrice and Olivia. Levin works
primarily from Leah Marcus's discussion in Puzzling Shakespeareof Shakespeare's
strong female characters' relations to Elizabeth's self-representation and from Jean
Howard's discussion of crossdressed characters in her article "Crossdressing, The
Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England."' Levin suggests that we
look not only at crossdressed characters but at female characters who rule as women

'Leah S. Marcus,PuzzlingShakespeare: LocalReadingandItsDiscontents(Berkeley: U of California P, 1988);

and Jean E. Howard, "Crossdressing, The Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England,"
ShakespeareQuarterly39 (1988): 418-40.

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340 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

and in this way recall Elizabeth. In doing so, however, Levin sidesteps Marcus's key
point that characters who resemble Elizabeth but who end up marrying actually limit
"the myth of Elizabeth's composite identity."2 Elsewhere in this chapter Levin sur-
renders the complexity of her argument to determine what Elizabeth was "truly"
thinking. For example, concerning Spanish Ambassador Da Silva's report to Philip II
that Elizabeth had told him she would make a good husband to the Princess Juana,
Levin asserts, "We are not meant to take this request seriously." Although the report
is "extremely interesting. . . [J]this is not to suggest that Elizabeth wished for a female
partner" (133). Later, apropos Much Ado, Levin affirms, "One can hardly believe that
Elizabeth truly wished to be a male" (138). Why not? Whether we are dealing with the
narratives that we call history or those we call drama, historical figures and literary
characters most resemble one another in that we cannot know what is in their minds
at a particular moment.
The seventh and final chapter, "Dreaming the Queen," returns to Levin's strength
as a compositor of comment and rumor in order to consider a number of Elizabeth's
subjects' dreams, especially those that involved the earl of Essex. These dreams
suggest "ways people felt about the queen at the end of her reign" (150).
My major concern about "TheHeart and Stomachof a King"is that Levin has a broad
purpose rather than a clearly argued book-length thesis. Key terms in her discussion,
including "gender construction" and "role expectations," are neither precisely de-
fined nor scrutinized. Key judgments following presentations of intriguing material
leave one wishing for more interpretation. Nevertheless, the umbrella statement with
which Levin concludes her introduction, that this study "helps us to understand the
intersection of politics with gender, of sexuality with power" (9), gives her the
opportunity to explore a variety of the major issues that surround the figure of
Elizabeth. Carole Levin's achievement lies in helping to restructure what is considered
important about Elizabeth Tudor's life and reign, and in paying attention to a
combination of ritual and rumor that enriches our sense of the alterity of early
modern England.

Literal Figures: Puritan Allegory and the Reformation Crisis in

Representation.By THOMAS H. LUXON. Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1995. Pp. xii + 256. $28.00 cloth.

Reviewed by DEBORA K. SHUGER

"What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer"-a decision
that did not, in the long run, enhance his own reputation or that of the institution he
represented. But the quotation, with which Bacon opens his essay "Of Truth," might
have been a fitting epigram for LiteralFigures,since, in its haste to formulate dazzling
and provocative theses, the book displays an imperious disregard for evidence. The
book develops two principal lines of argument: first, that Puritanism harbored "a
deeper commitment to allegory than we have hitherto supposed" and, second, that its
"allegoricalschemes of ontology" have significant bearing on "early modern concepts
of identity" (x). The first four chapters present a broad historical overview, although
one emphasizing early modern texts; the last two, which I will ignore, concern
Bunyan.
Luxon argues that orthodox Protestantism was committed to a two-world ontology
that empties out self, history, and all that lies beneath the circle of the moon into mere
figures or allegories of the world to come (29). According to Luxon, whatever counts
as figural/allegorical is, by definition, "pseudo-real," "actually inactual," and "really

2 Marcus, 102.

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