Elizabeth I, the Subversion of Flattery, and John Lyly's Court Plays and Entertainments [Hardcover]

Theodora Jankowski looks at both the light and the dark side of the Elizabeth character in each of John Lyly's court plays, while at the same time considering how that allegory works in terms of the various issues Lyly debates within the plays. She demonstrates how Lyly, while praising the queen and accepting her beneficence, simultaneously manages to present his audiences with thedark queen,the opposite side of the positive image of the Queen of England. As a whole, Jankowski's book offers an interesting analysis of Lyly's plays that engages with some of the newest criticism of Lyly. . . . Jankowski suggests that in Lyly's plays he does represent the positive Elizabeth, but it is impossible not to find the dark Elizabeth. For Jankowski, the positives images always carry the negative images with them. This idea by itself is thought-provoking and gives pause to all of the overtly positive images of Elizabeth that were created during her reign. --Valerie Schutte, The Medieval Review, 19.11.22