Engendering a Nation adopts a sophisticated feminist analysis to examine the place of gender in contesting representations of nationhood in early modern England. Taking the Shakespearean history play as their point of departure, the authors argue that the change from dynastic kingdom to modern nation was integrally connected to shifts in cultural understandings of gender, and in the social roles available to men and women. The cultural centrality of Elizabethan theatre made it an important arena for staging the diverse and contradictory elements of this transition. Plays featured include: King John Henry VI, Part I Henry VI, Part II Henry, Part III Richard III Richard II Henry V Engendering a Nation makes an original and topical contribution to the study of Shakespeare’s history plays and is especially valuable to students and scholars with an interest in where feminist and historicist approaches to the Renaissance intersect. Part I: Making Gender Visible: A Re-Viewing of Shakespeare’s History Plays 1. Thoroughly Modern Henry 2. The History Play in Shakespeare’s Time 3. Feminism, Women, and the Shakespearean History Pla