The Role of Women in Henry VI Part I (Elisabeth Waugaman)

This talk by Elisabeth Waugaman was presented on September 20, 2025, at the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship Conference in New Haven, Connecticut, which focused largely on women and the authorship question. In addition to liking, sharing, and subscribing to our YT channel (see links below), sign up for our FREE email list: https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/ Join the SOF! We have free or discounted rates for students and teachers! You can check out this 30-minute introduction to “Who Really Wrote Shakespeare?”:    • Who Really Wrote Shakespeare? Shakespeare ...   The best concise overview on the internet is our SOF “Authorship 101” page (“12 Reasons to Question Who Wrote Shakespeare”): https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.o... In “The Role of Women in 1 Henry VI: A Psychological Mirror,” Elisabeth Waugaman notes that, starting in the late 1400s, many European countries were ruled by women, including England for fifty years. Henry VI Part 1 is considered the first English history play, and many scholars think it may have been Shakespeare’s first play, though far from his best. A major character in it is Joan of Arc, whom the playwright depicts as a complex character. Is she saintly or demonic? Waugaman compared Joan of Arc in her armor to Queen Elizabeth’s appearance at Tilbury in 1588, where the monarch arrived on horseback, wearing a white gown, a steel cuirass and a plumed helmet and delivered a rousing speech urging her troops to repel the Spanish. It is known that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was with Elizabeth shortly before her appearance at Tilbury. Elisabeth Waugaman has a PhD in Medieval French Literature from Duke University. She was on the faculty at Duke and The Johns Hopkins University. She was awarded the Santos-Dumont medal by the Brazilian government for her book on Alberto-Santos Dumont, Follow Your Dreams, the Story of Alberto Santos-Dumont and was featured at the centennial celebration of Santos-Dumont’s first flight at the Smithsonian Museum of Air and Space. She is also the author of Women, Their Names, and the Stories They Tell. She has published articles in “Travel, Contact, Exchange,” The 34th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum, The American Psychoanalyst, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, The Oxfordian, and The Journal of Scientific Exploration. She has blogged for Psychology Today-on-line, Nameberry, Atlas Obscura, and The Freelance History Writer. She is on the faculty of New Directions in Writing for the Baltimore-Washington Center for Psychoanalysis.