‘I have aym’d my black shafts at white markes’: Colours in The Queen of Corinth

The article offers a new angle on The Queen of Corinth (1617), a tragicomedy that Philip Massinger co-wrote with John Fletcher and Nathan Field. It discusses the way in which colours are skilfully used to sketch out the characters’ personalities, reproduce their mindset, values, gender, and social roles, and define the different agencies of men and women. This article sheds light on how the presence of colours and their interaction convey a cultural ideology and negotiate multiple meanings in terms of morality, sexual politics, gender, and justice while crystallising the sexual, social, and political anxieties of the period.