ABSTRACT
In a recent book on the history of chess, Marilyn Yalom links the evolving power of the queen as a game piece with the rising status of women in medieval Europe and the appearance of formidable female military and political leaders, culminating with Queen Isabel de Castilla: “it should not surprise us that the chess queen’s official transformation into the strongest piece on the board coincided with the reign of Isabella of Castile.”1 Powerful women continued to be players in the political theater of the Iberian Peninsula, but they seem to have become less visible in the centuries following the death of the Catholic queen. Even historians, until recently, have pretty much ignored the question of feminine rule in Spain-the first book in English dedicated to the Habsburg queens, for example, appeared only in 1998.2 The decline in visibility of strong women in the public sphere was no mere coincidence during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when we find a concerted attempt to promote the ideals of containment, silence, and chastity for all women-regardless of rankin conduct books, from the pulpit, and through social regulation. In addition, as several feminist historians and literary critics have argued, women in positions of power have always inspired ambivalence, suspicion, and deep anxiety. One fertile ground to explore the conflicting emotions surrounding the notion of female power is the comedia of the Golden Age.
