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Jane Shore and the Politics of Cursing
- SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 43, Number 1, Winter 2003
- pp. 1-17
- 10.1353/sel.2003.0011
- Article
- Additional Information
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Thomas Churchyard's contribution to the 1563 edition of The Mirror for Magistrates, "Shore's wife," one of the first literary treatments of Jane Shore's role in pre-Tudor English affairs, is notable for its political exploitation of one of several of Edward IV's concubines. Narrating her fall from politically influential mistress of a king to an impoverished, friendless woman, Churchyard's Shore bitterly curses Richard III, whom she regards as the cause of her suffering. Engaging in the historiographical hazing of one of England's most unpopular monarchs, Churchyard's tragic heroine is subversive, if not treasonous, in her stance against Richard III.