Jewish Matriarchs and the Staging of Elizabeth I in The History of Jacob and Esau

I argue that in the anonymous academic interlude The History of Jacob and Esau (1558), the character Deborah, an allusion to both the militaristic prophetess of the Book of Judges 4-5 and Rebecca's nurse of the same name in Genesis 35, functions as a figure of Queen Elizabeth I. As I show by reading the play alongside contemporary biblical commentaries, while Jacob and Esau celebrates Deborah's maternal and national puissance—and her role in Jacob's rightful "election" over his brother—the play, through this Jewish matriarch, also calls attention to the instability of typology as Christian hermeneutic.