In her first appearance to Charles, Dauphin of France, Joan describes her vision of the Virgin Mary—and then proves herself by matching swords with the Dauphin and winning. I still had far to go in my skill with rapier and dagger, and I envied Jack’s adroit parrying. Joan speaks stirringly of glory and of defeating England, and then proceeds to save Orleans and drive her English captives across the stage. Mighty Talbot, England’s hero, can retaliate only with words, calling her a high-minded strumpet, which I thought rather a compliment. Sander Cooke, commenting on Joan of Arc (played by her friend Jack Wilson), The Secret Player, Chapter XI
The Warrior Woman archetype extends back to a time where there truly were such, both goddesses and Amazons. The Minoan goddess Britomartis, who appears as the female knight Britomart in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, began as a powerful deity, later subsumed into the Olympian pantheon as a minor figure and model for Artemis.
Warlike women appear in myth and legend and occasionally, in history. The chief examples Shakespeare offers us, not counting the warriors-of-the-tongue Kate Minola in Taming of the Shrew (who resorts to physical violence at times) and Beatrice in Measure for Measure, are found in his early Henry VI plays. Joan of Arc and Margaret of Anjou are forces to be reckoned with. Joan burns at the end of Henry VI, Part 1, but Margaret lives on until Richard III, where she appears as the widowed queen, lurking in the corridors to watch the downfall of her enemies.
Not all warrior women disguise themselves as men, but most wear some version of male apparel. As I mentioned in earlier posts, female cross-dressing asserts a manly sort of power. The notorious examples in Elizabethan England, Long Meg of Westminster and Moll Frith, carry rapiers and think nothing of taking on, and defeating, men hand-to-hand.
In Twelfth Night, Caesario, who under her male attire is actually Viola, is goaded to fight Sir Andrew Aguecheek, neither of them inclined to battle. It’s a humorous scene in which Caesario is anything but valiant. This is the only time a cross-dressed woman in any of Shakespeare’s plays is a self-admitted coward. Caesario is no Rosalind, going forth as Ganymede in As You Like It: ‘A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh, A boar-spear in my hand; and—in my heart Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will— We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside.’
Britain had its own historic warrior woman: the Iceni queen Boudica (Boadicea) who led her troops against the Roman occupying forces, pushing her way south to Londonium. The illustration for this post is her bronze statue that stands across from Big Ben on the Thames. Queen Elizabeth I was said to have dressed in armor to cheer on her troops fighting Spain (think Cate Blanchett in ‘Elizabeth: the Golden Age’).
The Warrior Woman is fearsome. Long Meg and Moll Frith had a grand time of it, but the men they faced quaked in their boots—at least when they realized what they were up against. Boudica won many battles and could have been victorious in the end if the Romans hadn’t burnt her army’s food stores and starved them out.
Instead of writing a play about her [although Boudica, by Tristan Bernays, did play at the New Globe in London in 2017], Shakespeare chose the ambiguous warrior women Joan ‘La Pucelle’ and Margaret of Anjou. We shouldn’t admire Joan; she’s an enemy to the English, calls upon devils, and names all the French nobleman who fathered the child she’s supposedly carrying. Margaret is as cruel as the fiercest man when she becomes the power-behind-the-throne of her pious husband King Henry VI. By Part 3 she’s commanding the royal troops in battle. Dramatically, these women are thrilling in their rage and defiance.
Altering the historical record, Shakespeare shows Queen Margaret taunt Richard of York and then deal him the death blow with her dagger. She revels in York’s calling her a she-wolf and, famously, saying she has a tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide. The worse his taunts, the greater her pride as a formidable enemy—just like a man. In her decline, Margaret returns from banishment to the court of Richard III (briefly the court of Edward IV) and speaks as a cursing prophetess.
These women’s escape from female role expectations serves as a theatrical commentary on the social explosion of the times. Real-life examples may have been few, but the outcry against the man-woman are fierce in sixteenth and seventeenth century England: the mere idea of women shearing their hair and defying the established order sends commentators into a frenzy.
Disguised as a male in my novel, Sander Cooke becomes a warrior woman of a more subtle variety—except of course when she plays Margaret of Anjou onstage. Her rebellion is to claim male rights and freedoms, preserving her secret woman’s heart but resisting that social role.