"The book can be read by historians more generally as well as scholars who specialize in dance history. They will all find an interest in the way Marie de Médicis contributed to dance history, on the one hand, and to French history, on the other. Gough succeeds in reconsidering the queen not simply as a patron of the arts but also as a cunning performer, whose intentions were at once artistic and political. Furthermore, this monograph opens the way to the reconsideration of the role and place of women’s court entertainments, as Gough suggests, in order to ‘encourage future works on the topic.’"
Samuel Cuisinier-Delorme, Université Clermont Auvergne, Renaissance Quarterly, Summer 2020
"Dancing Queen offers a new reading of the history of France at a time of enormous change. Thanks to the close reading and analysis of details that, at first, may seem to be not very significant, and thanks to a brilliant ability to connect details that may not, at first, seem linked together, Dancing Queen offers a much richer understanding of Marie’s role as queen, the difficulties she had to face, and the results she obtained through her creation of an ‘alternative center’ of power at court. Thanks to this volume, scholars will now be able to understand more clearly the social and political significance of the court ballets Marie sponsored, which will provide an additional and important source for our understanding of France in the early seventeenth century."
Elena Brizio, Georgetown University, Renaissance and Reformation
"Dancing Queen's fascinating account of how ambiguity was deliberately exploited to convey different messages to different audiences raises a question that deserves a bit more attention: how intelligible were these often subtle messages to each ballet's intended audience? There is no doubt, however, that Gough has made them substantially more intelligible to her intended audience in this scholarly, informed and illuminating book."
Julia Prest, Times Literary Supplement
"Through meticulous, wide-ranging interdisciplinary research, Melinda Gough builds a compelling case in the five chapters of this book that Marie de Médicis used to advance both her own status as queen consort of France, and the interests of the French monarchy in the fraught political period of the early 1600s."
Sarah R. Cohen, University at Albany, State University of New York, English Historical Review
"As a detailed study of a genre of performance that had a bearing on elite entertainments at the Caroline court, this book should be of contextual interest to Milton scholars, especially in its welcome understanding of the complex socio-political interactions between the various European powers."
Karen Britland, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Milton Quarterly Review
"Dancing Queen is a meticulous, richly textured work of scholarship that makes an important contribution to understandings of early modern queenship and court culture as well as to the history of court ballet. Melinda J. Gough’s discovery and attentive synthesis of previously unknown archival documents are truly meaningful and revise the standard histories of French court ballet."
Ellen R. Welch, Department of Romance Studies, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"Marie de Médicis has long been recognized as much more adept as a patron of the arts than as a political figure. Through the careful analysis of artistic materials, Melinda J. Gough convincingly dismisses this theory by addressing her role in court entertainment as vital to consolidating her husband’s reign after a long period of civil strife and a change of dynasty."
Katherine Crawford, Department of History, Vanderbilt University
