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Sir Clyomon And Sir Clamydes: A Revaluation, Peter T. Hadorn

Quidditas

Long dismissed as an immature play with no intrinsic merit, Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes (ca. 1570-1583) quite thoroughly debates issues of contemporary political interest. This essay seeks to restore Clyomon from its undistinguished position in Renaissance studies by showing how it dramatically supports Queen Elizabeth's use of chivalry as an ideology of power and order and criticizes military adventurism. By reading this play as a political text, in this essay I employ the methodologies of New Historicism, which identifies literature as only one of many cultural discourses taking part in the negotiation of power. "Representations of the world in …