Annaliese Connolly is Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at Sheffield Hallam University. Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English at Sheffield Hallam University

List of illustrations/Acknowledgements/Notes on contributors
Introduction
I A world in crisis: Elizabeth's iconography and religious tensions
1 Elizabeth I as Deborah the Judge: exceptional women of power - Carol Blessing
2 Warlike mates? Queen Elizabeth, and Joan La Pucelle in 1 Henry VI - Ben Spiller
3 'Rudenesse it selfe she doth refine': Queen Elizabeth I as Lady Alchymia - Jayne Elisabeth Archer
II Virginia and the Virgin: Elizabeth and the New World
4 Elizabeth I: size matters - Deanne Williams
5 'And in their midst a sun': Petrarch's Triumphs and the Elizabethan icon - Heather Campbell
6 'Nature without labor': Virgin Queen and virgin land in Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana - Helen J. Burgess
III The Old World and the New: classical precedents
7 The dark side of the moon: Semiramis and Titania - Lisa Hopkins
8 Evaluating virginity: A Midsummer Night's Dream and the iconography of marriage - Annaliese Connolly
9 Cynthia waning: Cynthia's Revels imagines the death of the queen - Matthew Steggle
IV Coda: Elizabeth's afterlife
10 'Turn thy Tombe into a Throne': Elizabeth I's death rehearsal - Scott L. Newstok
Index