Bright Cynthia comes to hunt and revel here (Thomas of Woodstock, IV.2.2069)
Abstract
The various aspects of the myth of Diana the Huntress are normatively described by mythographers in their dictionaries or by emblematists; typically, she is the goddess of chastity as one can understand from the set phrase: “as chaste as Diana”. Once included in a dramatic text however, the myth of Diana can turn out to be only a mask under the cover of which bloody deeds may be perpetrated. Thus, in addition to appearing on stage as a revengeful huntress in the anonymous tragedy, The First Part of Richard II or Thomas of Woodstock, she also provides the perverted guise worn by the lascivious Tamora to seduce and kill her victims in Titus Andronicus. An analysis of the proper / improper reinterpretations of this classical myth within the performance text of these two tragedies allows us to draw a new portrait of the once virtuous and amiable deity that presided over amorous love sonnet sequences of the period – Delia by Samuel Daniel (1592) and Diana by Henry Constable (1594).