SOURCE: "Roaring Girls and Silent Women: The Politics of Androgyny on the Jacobean Stage," in Women in Theater, edited by James Redmond, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 59-73.

In the following excerpt, Helms argues that, in the context of public concern about gender roles, the cross-dressing Moll in The Roaring Girl challenges gender hierarchy.

When, in 1566, Elizabeth vetoed a petition that she marry, she implied that her right to remain single ultimately depended on her willingness to resist not only political pressure but physical force: 'Though I be a woman, yet I have as good a courage, answerable to my place, as ever my father had. I am your annointed Queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything.' When she addressed her troops at Tilbury twenty-two years later, she presented herself as the leader of warriors, implying that of the queen's two bodies, the immortal...