Book excerpt: The author of this text explores how Shakespeare, through his romances, contributed to the cultural debates over the nature of monarchy in Jacobean England. Stressing the differences between absolutist and constitutionalist principles of rule, Jordan demonstrates Shakespeare's investment in the idea that a head of state should be responsive to law and not be governed by his own unbridled will. Conflicts within royal courts which occur in the romances show wives, daughters and servants resisting tyrannical husbands, fathers, masters and monarchs by relying on the authority of conscience.