ABSTRACT
When Queen Elizabeth made her famous remark, “I am Richard II, know ye not that?” she was referring not only to the parallel between Richard as a usurped monarch and the abortive attempt of Essex to unseat her in 1601, but also perhaps to the shared precariousness of the sexual identity of both monarchs: as Elizabeth crossed beyond feminine stereotypes to assume masculine forms of speech, dress, and power, so too her distant predecessor undermined the norms of masculine rule by allowing the feminine within himself to surface. Both monarchs were, in short, androgynous.1
