Elizabethan foreign policy was very much the policy of Queen Elizabeth l herself. It was not foreplanned, envisaged whole in advance. It was built up out of her responses to questions and problems posed by her relations with neighboring and, in the case of France and Spain, far more powerful countries. The responses, inspired by consistant instincts and opinions concerning her own country's true interests, grew into a coherent policy.

Elizabethan foreign policy was very much the policy of Queen Elizabeth l herself. It was not foreplanned, envisaged whole in advance. It was built up out of her responses to questions and problems posed by her relations with neighboring and, in the case of France and Spain, far more powerful countries. The responses, inspired by consistant instincts and opinions concerning her own country's true interests, grew into a coherent policy.

At her accession in 1558 Elizabeth I inherited a troublesome legacy with a long history of wars against France and Scotland. This international situation was becoming a huge financial burden on the English crown and economy. Elizabeth I and Foreign Policy describes and assesses England's foreign policy during the second half of the sixteenth century. It includes coverage of Elizabeth's relations with foreign powers, the effect of Reformation on foreign affairs, Elizabeth's successs as a stateswoman and the war with Spain.

Susan Doran describes and analyses the process of the Elizabethan Reformation, placing it in an English and a European context. She examines the religious views and policies of the Queen, the making of the 1559 settlement and the resulting reforms. The changing beliefs of the English people are discussed, and the author charts the fortunes of both Puritanism and Catholicism. Finally she looks at the strengths and weaknesses of Elizabeth I as royal governor, and of the Church of England as a whole.

An exploration of the importation of French political thought into England during the last decades of Elizabeth's reign. The French Religious Wars generated a large body of political propaganda from the Huguenots, the Politiques (a Huguenot-Catholic confederacy) and the Catholic League. Dr. Parmelee discusses how, in the last decades of the reign ofElizabeth I some 130 translated documents were imported into England, most of them - originating from the Politiques, written in support of the Protestant Henry of Navarre's accession to the French throne-advocating religious tolerance as a way to peace. She argues that while most English political thinkers did not openly embrace or articulate the absolutist ideas often expressed in these writings, they had a wide impact on political discourse in the lateElizabethan period. They were useful against foreign enemies, Catholic recusants and Presbyterians, but particularly, in a time of fear of civil war engendered by an unsettled succession, they helped to establish an intellectualclimate conducive to the later development of Stuart absolutism. Dr. Lisa Ferraro Parmelee teaches in the Department of History at Villanova University.

Reviews Shakespeare's view of masculinity through The Tempest, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and others.

This book provides a thematic survey of English foreign policy in the sixteenth century, focusing on the influence of the concept of honour, security concerns, religious ideology and commercial interests on the making of policy. It draws attention to aspects of continuity with the late-medieval past but argues, too, that the European Reformation brought new challenges which forced a rethinking of policy. Far from treating the sixteenth century as the period when England began its rise as a Great Power, the author emphasises the structural weaknesses of the English armed forces and demonstrates that dangers and insecurities did more to mould foreign policy than the energy and confidence of the Tudor rulers.