Author John Staines here argues that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers in England, Scotland, and France wrote tragedies of the Queen of Scots - royal heroine or tyrant, martyr or whore - in order to move their audiences towards political action by shaping and directing the passions generated by the spectacle of her fall. In following the retellings of her history from her lifetime through the revolutions and political experiments of the seventeenth century, this study identifies two basic literary traditions of her tragedy: one conservative, sentimental, and royalist, the other radical, skeptical, and republican. Staines provides new readings of Spenser and Milton, as well as of early modern dramatists, to compile a comprehensive study of the writings about this important historical and literary figure. He charts developments in public rhetoric and political writing from the Elizabethan period through the Restoration, using the emotional representations of the life of this tragic woman and queen to explore early modern experiments in addressing and moving a public audience. By exploring the writing and rewriting of the tragic histories of the Queen of Scots, this book reveals the importance of literature as a force in the redefinition of British political life between 1560 and 1690.

As an historical figure Mary Queen of Scots has been perpetually represented on canvas, page and stage, and has captured the British imagination since the time of her death in 1587. The 'real' Mary Stuart however has remained an enigma. Mary Queen of Scots: Romance and Nation sheds light on Mary's life by exploring four main themes: * the history of Mary's representation in Britain from the late Tudor period focusing on key periods in the formation of the British identity and closely analysing several texts against a background of the visual, musical and literary works of each period * the reasons why those representing Mary have been so conscious that her image was largely a debatable fiction * the identification of symbolic styles, using Mary to reveal the habits of representation in each historical period * The link between the image of Mary Stuart and Britain's long struggle to define itself as a single nation, focusing on the roles of gender and religion in this development.

In John Banks’s Female Tragic Heroes, Paula de Pando offers the first monograph on Restoration playwright John Banks. De Pando analyses Banks’s civic model of she-tragedy in terms of its successful adaptation of early modern literary traditions and its engagement with contemporary political and cultural debates. Using Tudor queens as tragic heroes and specifically addressing female audiences, patrons and critics, Banks made women rather than men the subject of tragedy, revolutionising drama and influencing depictions of gender, politics, and history in the long eighteenth century.