In readings of Pericles, Cimbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and TheTempest, critics focus on the romance motifs of quest and vision, andtheir emphasis on wonder, terror, and desire sets up patterns of genreexpectations. Reassuring male authority in the court which wasthreatened in the Elizabethan era, these romance plays are consideredthe sites of decreasing anxieties about female power. However,reading these plays from a cultural and religious viewpoint exposesthe comparable model of managing dominant female characters.Employing the pastoral mode by which the alienated figures live in theslow-paced world, Shakespeare presents not only chaste and obedientladies but also governing and nurturing male noble figures; aspects ofthose characters are highlighted when they are joined together in orderto establish harmony and the reformed rule at the end of each play. Infact, each of the romance plays assimilates the ideal of female rule inthe praise of grace and in the formation of transvestite mother figureswhile Shakespeare frames his characters like Thaisa, Hermione,Belarius, and Prospero. This study treats the influence of the cult of theVirgin Mary over the female characters, examines the relationship ofmother-like male characters to the political authority, and identifies theThe Cult of Elizabeth Recaptured in Shakespeare’s Romancesfactors that contribute to the symbolic representations of Elizabeth I inthe reign of James I. It concludes with these plays offering an exampleof mediating the ideological contradiction generated in the age ofElizabeth by the presence of woman on the throne of a patriarchal stateand thereby creating an alternative form of glorification of the latequeen.