Introduction PART I: POWER AND STATUS Cultural Convergence: The Equine Connection between Muscovy and Europe; A.Kleimola The Palio Horse in Renaissance and Early Modern Italy; E.Tobey Shakespeare and the Social Devaluation of the Horse; B.Boehrer ‘Faith, Say a Man Should Steal Ye-And Feed Ye Fatter’: Equine Hunger and Theft in Woodstock; K.de Ornellas PART II: DISCIPLINE AND CONTROL Just a Bit of Control: The Historical Significance of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- Century German Bit Books; P.Cuneo Man and Horse in Harmony; E.Le Guin From Gens d’armes to Gentilshommes: Dressage, Civilité, and Ballet à Cheval; K.van Orden PART III: IDENTITY AND SELF-DEFINITION A Horse of a Different Color: Nation and Race in Early Modern Horsemanship Treatises; K.Raber Honest English Breed:’ The Thoroughbred as Cultural Metaphor; R.Nash Early Modern French Noble Identity and the Equestrian ‘Airs Above the Ground’; T.J.Tucker ‘Horses! Give me More Horses!’: White Settler Identity, Horses and the Making of Early Modern South Africa, 1655-1700; S.Swart Learning to Ride in Early Modern Britain, or, The Making of the English Hunting Seat; D.Landry

KAREN RABER is Associate Professor of English at the University of Mississippi, USA. She is author of
Dramatic Difference: Gender, Class and Genre in the Early Modern Closet Drama (Delaware 2002), and co-editor with Ivo Kamps of
Measure for Measure: Texts and Contexts (Bedfor/St. Martin’s 2004).

TREVA J. TUCKER is a doctoral candidate in History at the University of Southern California, USA. Her article,
Eminence over Efficacy: Social Status and Cavalry Service in Sixteenth-Century France appeared in the
Sixteenth Century Journal in 2001.