The Evolution of the Early Modern Amazon: From The Faerie Queene to The Amazon Queen.

Amazon warriors were a source of intense fascination and anxiety for early modern English authors and audience members alike. As masculine women who functioned outside of male control, they threatened to collapse a socially imposed gender binary and hinted at the viability of a non-patriarchal social structure. Elizabethan authors such as William Shakespeare, Philip Sidney, and Edmund Spenser registered this apprehension by writing Amazonian characters who destabilize natural social order but are ultimately defeated through either re-domestication or destruction. These solutions are always imperfect, however, and the Amazon's subversive influence persists even after the Amazon herself is gone. The only complete and effective solution is to remove the Amazon altogether, allowing her to exist in her own discrete society. Under the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a masculine woman, this solution is impossible; only during the Restoration can the Amazon be dismissed rather than eradicated. This Restoration solution is exemplified in John Weston's forgotten 1667 play The Amazon Queen , in which the Amazon, because she is dismissed from patriarchal culture, is actually praised and admired. While still not compatible with a patriarchal society, Weston's Amazons, freed from direct comparison with Queen Elizabeth, become potential sources of entertainment and laudable virtue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]