Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-411) and index.
Enacting opposition: Queen Anne and the subversions of masquing -- Scripting a heroine's role: Princess Elizabeth and the politics of romance -- Writing resistance in letters: Arbella Stuart and the rhetoric of disguise and definance -- Exercising power: The Countess of Bedford as courtier, patron, and coterie poet -- Claiming patrimony and constructing a self: Anne Clifford and her diary -- Defending women's essential equality: Rachel Speght's polemics and poems -- Resisting tyrants: Elizabeth Cary's tragedy and history -- Imagining female community: Aemilia Lanyer's poems -- Revising genres and claiming the women's part: Mary Wroth's Oeuvre