“In the Head of the Worthiest Women”: Amazon Queens and Performing Heroines in Jacobean Court Masques

Queen Anne of Denmark’s role - as actress and patroness - in emancipating womanliness onstage by direct performance is strictly connected to the emerging trend of fashioning masques in the early Jacobean court. My paper will focus on the connection/contamination of this dramatic phenomenon with the current imagery of acting warlike heroines, conflicting Anne’s policy for entertainments with masculine and royal anxieties