This dissertation analyzes the understudied dramatic genre of Elizabethan progress entertainments, the political ideologies it conveys, and especially the female alliances it enacts. Aristocrats staged these outdoor, episodic pageants on their country estates during Elizabeth I's summer "progress" visits, 1575-1602. While previous scholars generalize about the genre using only certain male-devised examples, I demonstrate that one of its defining characteristics is its inclusion of female authorship, performance, and patronage. When female devisers become increasingly central in entertainments at the end of the reign, they rework generic conventions to advocate mutually beneficial female alliances and to forthrightly celebrate single women. My study focuses on five late entertainments that feature women in prominent roles at Bisham Abbey (1592), Sudeley Castle (1592), Rycote Park (1592), Wilton estate (1599), and Harefield manor (1602). I analyze these performances, along with their afterlives in print and manuscript, in their precise historical moments to uncover the specific negotiations each enacts between aristocrats and the Queen. Writers Mary Sidney and Elizabeth Russell, patrons Alice Egerton and Margery Norreys, and young female performers such as Elizabeth Brydges used late Elizabethan progress entertainments to engage directly in debates about gender and political authority and to accomplish a wide range of goals: they lobbied for positions at court, urged the Queen to adopt certain policies, advertised their wealth and influence, and sought further power. I propose that several decades of successful female rule encouraged noblewomen to fashion themselves in the Queen's image and perform political roles. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]