A majority of the critics who have written about Coello’s El conde de Sex have expressed surprise at the play’s depiction of Elizabeth I, holding it to be a sympathetic portrayal that eschews the prejudices concerning the English queen held by seventeenth-century Spaniards. Mackenzie reads the character as praiseworthy even. This essay builds upon María Cristina Quintero’s reading of the play and supports her contention that, contrary to this majority view, El conde does partake of many of th...