Abstract

This essay explores early modern reactions to the “Jesuitess” Mary Ward’s theatrical training of English girls in her Catholic schools on the Continent. I argue that the negative response to Ward’s work from her English countrymen sprang from their fears that she was teaching girls how to insinuate themselves back into English homes and enflame others to apostasy. This rubric opens up new possibilities for reading the Jesuitess Black Queen’s Pawn in Middleton’s A Game at Chess. Her relationship with the White Queen’s Pawn (an allegory for Devotion to the Anglican Church) plays out concerns about Ward’s corruption—through theatrical training—of English virgins, English homes, and the English Church.

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