The Politics of Early Modern

Women's Writing

Danielle Clarke
Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library
THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN
WOMEN'S WRITING
 LONGMAN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE L1BRARY

('~neral Editors:

Charlotu Brmver Hertford College, Oxford and}f. 11. Kubk University 01' Stirling

Publishtd 1itles:
'tbe Fabliau in Eng1ish
]oIm Hines
Engli.sh Medieval Mystks: Games of Faith
Mariml Glasscoe
Tbe Clas.~ical Legacy in Renaissance Poetry
Robin &uxT~Y
English and ltalian Literature fi·om Dante to Shakc-.spc::are: A Study of Source,
Allalogue and Divergence
Rubin KrrIrpa1riclr.
Shakespeare's Alternative Tales
f.ealt Scragg
Tbe Gawain-Poet
A.J Pu.ttn
DOIUle's Rdigious Writing: A Discourse of Fcigned Devotion
p. M. Oliver
Images of Faith in English Uterature 700··1500: An Inttoouction
Dte/.!Yas
Courtliness and Literature in Medieval England
Dauid Bumky
Wyatt. SUlT(')' and Early Tudor foetry
EIV..aJJeth. Hta14
A New Introduction to Chaucer
DmkBrm;er
Marveß: The Writer iD fllblic Lire
Anna6d PaJlerSllTl
Shakespeare's Sannets and Nanat.ive Pt.M:nli
A. D: COl/sins
Tbc Metaph)'bical Poets
DlWid &id
Thc Spirit oE Mcdieval English PopuJar R.oma.oce
HdiMJ by Ad l'uJuI. arul]Q1l6 Gilbm
Women an<! Dramatic Production IS5(}..·1700
Alir01lFWili!J
 THE POLITICS OF
EARLY MODERN
WOMEN'S WRITING

DANIELLE CLARKE
First published 2001 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2013 by Routledge

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-30909-8 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clarke, Danielle, 1966-
The politics of early modern women 's writing/Danielle Clarke.
p. em. - (Longman medieval and Renaissance library)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0- 582- 30909-3 (pbk.)
I. English literature- Early modern, 1500- 1700- History and criticism.
2. Women and literature- G reat Britain- History- 16th century. 3. Women and
literature-Great Britain- History- 17th ce ntury. 4. English literature-Women
authors-History and criticism. 5. Feminism and literature-Great Britain- History.
6. Politics and literature- Great Britain-History . 7. Sex role in literature. I. Title.
II. Series.

PR11 3.C57 200 1

820.9'9287'09031 - dc2 l 00- 046140

Typeset by 35 in ll / l 3pt Baskerville MT

Für my parents
Alan Leünard C1arke (1928-1974)
and
Sy1via Sidney Clarke
This page intentionally left blank
 CONTENTS

Priface and Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. ix

A Note on Texts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. xii

Introduction ................................................. 1

Chapter 1. Wornen, Language and Rhetoric. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 17

Education and literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 19
Speaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 24
Reading .................................................... 32
Writing ..................................................... 38

Chapter 2. The Renaissance Debate about Wornen ............. 49

J ane Anger and the inversion of tradition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 53
Swetnam the woman-hater arraigned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 58

Chapter 3. Drama and the Gendered Political Subject . . . . . . . . .. 80

Translating politics ............................................ 83
Death, sex and politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 88
Tragedy and the politics of marriage ............................. 95
Comedy and the playing of politics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 106

Chapter 4. Writing the Divine: Faith and Poetry ............... 123

Voicing God in the Psalms of David ............................ 127
Poetic visions and dream poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 147
Aemilia Lanyer and the revision of biblical history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 157
Anne Dowriche and political agency ............................ 162
Elegies, epitaphs and the poetry of mourning ..................... 166

Vll
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Chapter 5. Poetry, Politics and Gender ........................ 187

Isabella Whitney: wit, prodigality and the city. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 192
Petrarchanism, politics and the feminine ......................... 203
Lady Mary Wroth and the dynamics of disclosure ................. 213

Chapter 6. Wornen Reading and Writing Rornance ........... 232

Barclay's Argenis and gendered translation ........................ 235
The Countesse qf Mountgomeries Urania (1621) ........................ 239
Reforming devotion: courtly religion and the translation of
discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 252

Epilogue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 265
Select bibliograpfD!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 267
Index . ................................................. 283

Vlll
 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book was originally intended to be a comprehensive survey ofwomen's

writings in the Renaissance and their relationship to their context. As re-
search progressed, however, it quickly became clear that the proliferation of
materials, criticism and editions would render such an ambitious enterprise
impossible. The selection of texts, authors and genres covered here is at best
a compromise between conflicting impulses. On the one hand, the need to
cover the main writers studied in colleges and universities, but on the other,
adesire to broaden the scope of what may reasonably be considered to
constitute the 'Renaissance' from the point of view of women writers. For
this reason, many readers will find that authors that they consider to be
canonical or central are given rather less space than they deserve. One
good reason for restricting the coverage of, for example, Aemilia Lanyer, is
that she is amply written of elsewhere in a range of impressive and accessible
books and articles. Having said this, I have given considerable space to
canonical writers whom I felt needed to be placed more securely in context,
such as Isabella Whitney, Mary Sidney and Lady Mary Wroth. In addition,
I have attempted to integrate discussions of marginal writers into the main-
stream in order to avoid, to a degree, the tendency to concentrate upon
women authors who already have an entry point to the canon contingent
upon their social status or family connections, which effectively reinvents
the male canon from a different perspective. One other major criterion
governing inclusion and exclusion has been accessibility. Great strides have
been made on the level of the availability of texts, particularly through the
medium of the World Wide Web, with Renaissance Women Online and
the Perdita Project being the most impressive examples. Sites like these are
pushing at the boundaries not only of the canon as we have traditionaHy
understood it, but at editorial and bibliographical conventions, enabling us
to view print and manuscript alongside one another, to annotate fuHy and
to understand better the relationships between textual versions. Having said
this, my experience is that the average student's initial access to material
like this is extremely limited, being based upon what is included in antho-
logies and presented to hirn or her by teachers and lecturers. I hope that my
mode of organisation might suggest new and interesting ways of presenting

IX
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

what is ultimately difficult material to students. The other concept of access-

ibility that has determined my choice of texts is more complex. A book on
early modern women writers and politics might be expected to concentrate
quite heavily on devotional writings, particularly prose, but I felt strongly
that many of the available texts, while undoubtedly more obviously 'political'
than some of the texts discussed here, were extremely difficult to approach
for a student beginning work in this field: they are often translations, and
they are mostly heavily theological in nature. Without putting in place
suggestions, theoretical and historical, for how they might be read, such
texts can seem flat, slavish and dull. For students accustomed to expecting
the heights of Shakespeare or Donne when they encounter the early modern
period, such materials can seem intractable and may ultimately reinforce
the notion that women's writing in the Renaissance is somehow inferior. I
have excluded them, with great reluctance, on the grounds that the mater-
ial I have covered should provide suggestions and frameworks through
which to approach this more difficult material: I rely, of course, on the
inventiveness, wit and dedication of the teachers and scholars who have
introduced women writers of the Renaissance to institutions across the
world in such a way as to make their presence an indisputable part of our
experience of the early modern period. I am grateful to them too, for
creating areadership for this book.
The Politics if Ear!J Modem WomenJs Writing had its origins in a doctoral
thesis, although it departs significantly from it. I am grateful to David
Norbrook, Ros Ballaster and Lorna Hutson for their comments and con-
tinued encouragement. Parts of this book have been published in various
forms elsewhere, and I am grateful to the following for permission to repro-
du ce material in whole or part: parts of Chapter 3 originally appeared in
'The politics of translation and gender in the Countess of Pembroke's Antonie',
Translation and Literature, Volume 6 Part 2 (1997): 149-66 (Edinburgh Uni-
versity Press) and in '''This domestical kingdome or monarchy": Cary's
Mariam and resistance to patriarchal government', Medieval and Renaissance
Drama in England 10 (1998): 179-200, edited by John Pitcher (Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press); part of Chapter 4 in '''Lover's Songs Shall
Turne to Holy Psalmes": Mary Sidney and the transformation ofPetrarch',
Modem Language Review 92 (1997): 282-94 (Modern Humanities Research
Association) and various ideas can be found in Three Renaissance Women Poets:
Isabella J1!hitnryJ Mary Sidnry, Aemilia Lanyer (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000).
Audiences in Oxford, Dublin, Norwich and Belfast have provided useful
critiques and welcome encouragement: I am particularly grateful to me m-
bers of Early Modern Forum Ireland and the Perdita Project, under the
auspices of Women, Text and History. My colleagues in the Combined
Department of English at UCD have provided the most congenial and

x
 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

co-operative of environments in which to teach and research, and I thank

them warmly and collectively. Certain individuals, in UCD and else-
where, have supported me and this project even in our darkest hours: Paul
Beglan, Ron Callan, Andrew Carpenter, Neil Cartlidge,Janet Clare, Mary
Clayton, Catriona Clutterbuck, Kate Collins, Lucy Collins, Marie-Louise
Coolahan, Maire Doyle, Noel Doyle, Anne Fogarty,JeffHoldridge,James
Horden, Declan Kiberd, Anne Macdona, Jim Mays, Chris Murray, Franc
Myles, Cliona 6 Gallch6ir, Catherine Pratt, Diane Purkiss, Tony Roche,
Philippa Semper, Pauline Slattery, Maria Stuart, Mickey Sweeney, Moynagh
and Ellie Sullivan. Special thanks are due to library staffs in UCD, Trinity
College Dublin, the British Library, the Inner Temple Library and the
Bodleian Library. My students, particularly those in UCD, have had a
profound influence on this book. Not only have they been unfailingly sup-
portive and interested, they have also taught me a great deal about the
writers I have included. In particular, I have learned much from Peter
Culhane, Emer McManus, Maria Murphy and Stephen O'Neill. Elizabeth
Clarke has been an excellent and kind critic, and has contributed much to
the arguments and ideas articulated here: I am particularly grateful for her
careful reading of the introduction. Elizabeth Macfarlane remains my best
and most critical reader and I cannot thank her enough for her tireless
supply of ideas, references, books, emails and conversations. Finally, I owe
my largest debt to R6isin, without whose love, support and encouragement
this book would never have been written.

Xl
 A NOTE ON TEXTS

The author has quoted, where possible, from original sources and docu-
ments, normalising i/j and u/w. Spelling has been left unchanged where
orthography is the topic discussed. Some texts are quoted from modernised
editions where access to the originals would prove difficult for the student.

Xll
 INTRODUCTION

This book explores relationships between writing and gender in the early
modern period through a focus upon various genres deployed by women
writers in the years 1558-1640. As an explanation or description, this might
seem fairly simple: an aesthetic form (writing), a category of writer (women)
and a delimited time period (the Renaissance). But these terms are neither
disinterested nor disconnected and it is my concern to scrutinise these rela-
tionships with due attention to historical contexts, particularly regarding the
social, political and cultural agency of women. The 'politics' in the tide of
the book refers to what we might be able to discern ofthese writers' engage-
ment, through literary me ans, with matters of state, culture, religion and
subjecthood, to our own politics as readers of these writers, and to the
processes of political signification in which women's texts participate, whether
consciously or not. The book argues that the very category of 'women' we
invoke when interpreting a long-neglected body of writing, and its accom-
panying ideological assumptions, often serves to obscure ways in which
women writers of the period perceived and expressed political ideas in the
broadest sense. Rather than focussing solely upon content, relating either to
private life or the public sphere, I have tried to concentrate upon the ways
in which politics might be encoded in generic choices, forms of circulation
and exchange, and modes of articulation.
The field of early modern women's writing has a his tory and a well-
defined if contested politics. Many of the writers considered in this book
are not recent arrivals or belated additions to a long-established canon of
Renaissance literature. They were often known by their contemporaries, as
the examples of the Countess of Pembroke, Lady Mary Wroth and figures
like Anne Lok demonstrate. Their work, although marked by their gender
in indelible ways, was not always purely and simply received through the
framework of sex, but through other forms of cultural signification, such
as theology, court politics or social dass. Some of these writers were also
known to the great Victorian and Edwardian collectors and editors, like
Alexander Grosart, Greg and A.C. Dunstan, whose own ambivalence
towards the creative work of women was often implicit in their critical
assessments, themselves driven by specifically post-Romantic notions of the

1
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

author, aesthetic values and selfhood. 1 When women scholars in the 1970s
started to seek an answer to Joan Kelly's famous question, 'Did women
have a Renaissance?', it was largely to Victorian editions, and more import-
antly, late nineteenth-century intellectual systems of classification that they
turned in the first instance. Under the lens of a feminism which perceived
patriarchy as a monolith, it was hardly surprising that these scholars con-
cluded that these women writers had largely been neglected, obscured or
patronised. To a degree, indeed they had, but the Victorian model of
woman as a hapless victim of a purely self-serving patriarchy tended to be
projected onto texts which frequently barely engaged with gender as such.
These early feminists too had a powerful politics which led to them to
emphasise the undoubtedly negative effects of patriarchy in the early modern
period rather than the extent to which women colluded with patriarchy,
but also derived their power and influence from it. Without institutional
sites from which to challenge patriarchy all women were to so me extent
implicated in its demands and assumptions; we should be wary of confusing
possession of the female sex with the anachronistic ownership of selfhood,
autonomy or a feminist agenda. In the search for a radical gender politics
other kinds of politics were often sidelined: it is salutory to recall that a
woman engaged in politics is frequently neither feminist nor radical in any
liberal-left sense. This does not mean that she is not political, as the example
of Margaret Thatcher clearly illustrates. Neither, of course, does 'politics'
necessarily imply her visible centrality to the state or body politic. 2
This book aims to explore a politics which might go beyond a gynocritical
feminism, while recognising the importance and necessity of debating ques-
tions relating to women's subjectivity, lack of status under the law and
exclusion from education. I also freely acknowledge the degree to which my
own work has been enabled and inspired by the very group of critics that
I seem to be challenging. In asense, my arguments here attempt to rejoin
Renaissance women to the literary mainstream by reading them in their
historical context, but without erasing the extent to which their choices -
literary, generic and political- were determined by their culture's assump-
tions about their capacities - assumptions that they often shared, upheld
and passed on to their own children: in a profound sense, the replication of
patriarchy was part of their social and political function. Defence of the
status quo is still a politics, however discomfiting we as modern readers may
find it. I hope that by restoring so me degree of agency to women's political
engagements in the period it might be possible to return to questions of
subjecthood, authorship and gender in a more informed way. Given that
this book departs in several ways from other textbooks in the field, it seems
crucial to set out here so me of its underlying assumptions and the concepts
upon which it is based.

2
 I NTRODUCTION

The organising principle of this book is the category of 'wo man writer',
but it will quickly become obvious that this apparently transparent concept
carries with it both methodological problems and ideological baggage. The
field which has come to be known as 'women's writing' underlies this book,
both in concept and execution, but it is a term which needs to be used with
some care. Women writers in the early modern period are a minority
group, especiaHy in the case of printed texts, and some caution needs to be
exercised when assuming some kind of commonality on the sole basis of
sex, not least because the foregrounding of sex as an organisation al prin-
ciple for women writers might have negative effects as weH as positive. In
other words, there is a danger that women's writings are received in terms
of an already constructed idea of what they might do, or that their work will
be read in accordance with prescriptive writings of the period, or indeed
modern feminist expectations. If early modern prescriptions regarding
women's capacities and roles had been taken at their word, we would have
no literary output at aH from women. In addition, the notion of a commonal-
ity among women that might transcend other kinds of differences pre-
supposes a society considerably less hierarchised than that of early modern
England, together with a female population which is educated, literate and
adept at organisation and communication. There is little evidence that
early modern women writers perceived or claimed any common identity as
writers and surprisingly little acknowledgement on the part of individual
writers that they had read one another's work. Where we do find such
connections being made they often need to be understood in different terms.
Aemilia Lanyer's engagement with the Countess of Pembroke, for example,
is a self-authorising gesture which primarily focusses upon Mary Sidney's
piety, virtue and learning. The unique and exceptional example of the
Sidney family demonstrates less a community of women writers than a fam-
ilial and political identity asserted through the medium of literary endeav-
our. Exchanges between writers do occur, but I would argue that they are
most often in the first instance based upon theological, political and familial
aHiances, and only secondarily upon the sex of the writers. What women
writers did share, broadly, was a sense of their social positioning in relation
to men, and the common aspects of their work are largely a consequence of
shared material conditions and assumptions about their social roles relative
to men.
The notion of the woman writer as adefinition that might determine
interpretation depends upon a highly developed concept of authorship where
the author figure is the autonomous origin of a given text. However, the
kinds of texts that women write in the Renaissance, as weH as early modern
culture more generaHy, require us to modifY some of our modern assumptions
regarding the author. In many instances, authorship cannot be conclusively

3
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITlNG

established and these raise so me troubling questions for criticism and inter-
pretation. 3 The modern idea of the author is contradicted by the variety
and fluidity of writing practices in the Renaissance, including anonymous
publication, copying and alteration, collaborative and coterie authorship.
Lady Anne Southwell's commonplace book, for example, contains a number
of texts and fragments compiled from other writers, but arranged in specific
and meaningful ways: does the arrangement of others' texts make her an
author, a high-class copier or a plagiarist?4 Such questions are even more
vexed in aperiod without a developed sense of textual ownership (a fac-
tor that Foucault cites as a key element in the foundation of the modern
'author-function') and which sees literary indebtedness as a major determin-
ant ofliterary value. 5 IfLady Anne Southwell writes out Ralegh's poem 'The
Lie' with unique versions oflines 31-4, 37-40, 43-6, and places her own
signature at the bottom, what are we to conclude?6 Is it still Ralegh's poem,
or is it Southwell's? Or does this particular form of textual exchange suggest
that such questions are anachronistic? The case of the pamphlets exchanged
in response to Swetnam's Araignment qf Lewd) !dZe, Fraward and Uncanstant
Warnen (1615) is an extreme example of this. What we see here are texts
circulated under women's names which lack any corroborating evidence
that might enable us to claim them unproblematically as women's texts.
The assumption that their conte nt and argument, being pro-woman, clinches
the authorship argument is problematic, and presupposes that women writers
can be defined to some extent by the content of the texts they write, and
thus that author and text are coterminous. The idea of the author that is
implicitly engaged in these discussions is far removed from what we know
of the plurality of authorship more gene rally in the early modern period.
The assumption that the only resource that women have to draw on as
writers is their private, domestic selves is distinctly post-Romantic, and tends
to limit the scope of what women may write about. Within this construc-
tion, analysis of Mary Sidney's Psalmes, for example, becomes restricted in
many instances to those Psalms which explicitly engage 'female' imagery
and women's concerns, without attending to the question of how far these
can be said to be conscious authorial choices and suggests that 'gender' is a
category consciously brought to the work. In other words, when reading the
work of these writers, we need to attend to the ways in which they deploy
particular discourses - political, religious, literary - as much as we do to the
connection between the writer and the work. In this book, I have tried to
elucidate the contexts and circumstances in which women's texts circulated,
and thus to shift the axis of emphasis from the relationship between author
and text to that between text and readership, text and context.
The establishment and documentation of the biographical subject has
been a central preoccupation of criticism on early modern writers and the

4
 I NTRODUCTION

dominant critical voices in the field are broadly biographicalor at least

author-based in emphasis, although recent work is modifYing this. 7 There is
some force behind feminist arguments, usually articulated in opposition to a
New Historicism emphasis upon the place of gender within figurations of
power, which advocate the need to establish, research and document indi-
vidual female subjects before moving on to modes of interpretation that
threaten to erase them. However, this presupposes, once again, that the
kind of subject we are seeking parallels a post-Enlightenment subject which
can function as a point of origin both for text and interpretation and that
biographical data can usefully helP to interpret texts. To reject biographical
information out of hand would be folly, for at the very least it enables us to
establish social, intellectual and educational contexts for the texts we are
attempting to read. However, some caution is needed; there is a difference
between using biography as a critical tool and elevating it into an interpret-
ive principle. One danger is that because of women's exclusion from the
public sphere in any formal, institutional sense, 'biography' tends to consist
of raw data relating to a woman's familial status. In many cases, this is
vitally important, enabling us to situate her in relation to political networks
and intellectual groupings usually mediated through her father or husband(s).
On the other hand, ifbiography becomes the interpretive principle governing
the text's meanings rather than a resource which can open up those mean-
ings, it does often te nd to relegate a woman's concerns to the private sphere,
leading to interpretations which suggest that literary texts are little more than
inscriptions of private lives. The evidence, on the whole, seems to hint at
the contrary proposition: women's writings appear oddly impersonal to us,
addressing wider concerns, generically and politically, through languages and
ideologies that are the common currency of subjectivity in the period. Even
where connections can be traced between biography and text, it would be
misleading and reductive to confine readings in this way. Elizabeth Cary's
play, The Tragedie qfMariam, for example, clearly derives from her own mar-
ital unhappiness, but the end result is a complex meditation upon the rights
of the female subject presented through an analysis of marriage, the institu-
tion which inscribes the parameters of the female subject most forcefully.
The biographical question is even more acute for writers for whom little
documentation exists; not only does this emphasis tend to privilege writers
from the nobility, it can also flatten the complexity of texts, collapsing the
personal and textual into a single category. Isabella Whitney is a good
example of this, as is 'The Memorandum of Martha Moulsworth', pre-
sented in arecent edition as 'A Renaissance Woman's Autobiographical
Poem'.8 In both cases, biographical readings depend primarily upon the
'facts' about the writer's life presented within the poetic framework, which
suggests the elision of text and writer and fails to recognise the constructedness

5
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

of poetic and literary voices. The editors' assessment of Moulsworth's text

encapsulates the kind of prioritisation of the self as autonomous subject that
I see as symptomatic of many modern readings of Renaissance women: 'as
one of the few early modern texts in which a woman speaks for and of
herself, the poem would be of interest even if it possessed little poetic
merit'.9 As with other forms of writing broadly classified as 'autobiogra-
phical' it quickly becomes clear that the terms deployed by Moulsworth
are quite different from modern understandings of autobiography, and the
editors' own commentary strongly suggests this. 10 The poem is only 'per-
sonal' in the sense that it details the key events in one woman's life, but the
terms in which it does so are highly structured and concern social and
marital status rather than the inner life in any modern sense: the 'self' is
continually expressed via the communallanguage of the Bible. This does not
prevent the poem from being moving, but it is clear that selfhood is expressed
through external patterns and events, notably through Moulsworth's social
positioning as defined by her father, her three husbands and her widowhood.
As Evans and Wiedemann note, there is no mention of her mother (19),
and the only female figure which with she identifies is her biblica1 name-
sake, Martha, who enables her to assert her virtue through the upholding of
her proper role as housewife which she presents as her highest aspiration: 'I
had my will in house, in purse in Store/ what wou1d a women old or yong
have more?' (67-8). The precedent of Martha also provides an example
upon which Moulsworth wishes to model her spiritual life by contrast to
the biblical Martha's poor housewifery: 'God gyve me grace my Inward
house to dight/ that he with me may supp, & stay all night' (19-20). The
'Memorandum' is a kind of summing up, a review of the events of her life
on her birthday, each couplet of the poem corresponding to one year of
her life and using various devices of paralle1ism and numerological signific-
ance. ll In the light ofthe poem's expressed concern with the passing oftime,
it also seems to function as apreparation for death, 'How ffew, how many
warnings itt will give/ he only knowes in whome we are, & live' (9-10).
Just as Mou1sworth's external life is measured out according to her mar-
riages (with dates of betrothal and duration), her inner life is parcelled out
according to theological states:

In camal! state rif sin original!

I did nott stqy one whole day natural!
The seale rif grace in Sacramental! water
So soone had 1, so soone become the daughter
01 earthly parents, & rif heavenlie ffather
Some christen late Jor state, the wiser rather.
(11-16)

6
 I NTRODUCTION

The concern with social status is presented through Moulsworth's detailing

of the education and pedigrees of her father and husbands, suggesting the
degree to which her own identity is mediated through theirs; her father 'was
a Man of spottles frame/ of gentle Birth' (21-2) and her last husband was
from a noble family (59-60). Her defence of her learning of Latin seems
more indebted to the praise of her father's learning and a justification for
his unusual educational practice than it does a genuine call to arms for
women's education: 'Beyond my sex & kind/ he did with learning Lattin
decke mind [sic]/ And whie nott so? The muses fremalls are/ and therfore
ofUs fremales take some care' (29-32). Any claim to a right to education is
ofrset by its inappropriateness to her future status, not only has she forgotten
her Latin 'fror want of use, I longe agoe itt lost' (38), but this comment is
accompanied by a marginal note which states drily 'Lattin is not the most
marketable mariadge mettall'. This seems to ally Moulsworth with humanist
educators who did not doubt the capacity of women to learn Latin, but saw
it as fundamentally incompatible with their future social roles, rather than
making her 'one ofthe earliest English advocates oftruly equal education' (xi).
This book tries to unsettle the assumption that a female subject is either
stable or recoverable in the early modern period by approaching women's
writings through the framework of genre and by attending to the specific
modes ofliterary production with which they were engaged. In other words,
I have tried to read texts within the frameworks they themselves provide
through choices of register, genre, timing, form of circulation and type of
articulation, rather than seeing them as shedding light upon a pre-existing
subject or author figure. Generic organisation has its limitations, not least
that early modern categories of genre do not map cleanly onto modern
ones - genre in any case is notoriously fluid and unstable. Some of the
categories deployed he re cannot claim generic status, amounting only to a
series of similarities in form and content. For example, the pamphlets on
the 'woman debate' are all pro se works, and all deal with the topic of the
status of women. Some of the ways in which I have grouped material would
be almost unrecognisable to an early modern reader: an obvious example
of this is the division made he re between sacred and secular poetry. When
Renaissance commentators considered the types of writing constituted by
the term 'poetry' they reached few clear conclusions. 'Poesie' denoted a
qualitative judgement, rather than purely formal properties. Beyond agree-
ment on the form and subject matter of epic poetry, other types of poem
are placed variously according to which author is consulted. The basis upon
which I have based this inevitably arbitrary distinction has to do with the
source texts and materials imitated, as well as with orientation and func-
tion. Even so, some texts might easily fit into either category, given the
ubiquity of religious discourse in this period. In some cases, the form of a

7
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

text in these terms is at odds with its function, giving rise to the fertile
hybridisations so typical of the early modern period. A good example of the
permeability of these distinctions is Aemilia Lanyer's poem 'A Description
of Cooke-ham', the coda to her volume Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611).
This poem is usually considered important because of its generic innova-
tion, its potential (although not certain) claim to be the 'first' country-house
poem in English. As such, it has taken on iconic status, because it serves as
a clear illustration of the patriarchal bias ofliterary history, but ironically its
entry to the canon is dependent upon the very text,Jonson's 'To Penshurst',
that it is said to predate. It is most usually read through the framework
provided by Jonson's poem: this is fruitful, but more because of the differ-
ences between the two poems than the similarities. Where Jonson's poem
is mostly secular and classical in concept, Lanyer's is heavily marked by
the potential social levelling provided by a stress upon female spiritual
equality. Both poems invest heavily in the mythologisation of place, but
Lanyer's presents Cookham through biblical parallels more than classical
ones; indeed, the Ovidian model of Philomela gives way to alandscape
overlaid with biblical language and allusion:

In these sweet woods how qften did you walke,

With Christ and his Apostles there to talke;
Placing his holy Writ in some faire tree,
To meditate what you therein did see:
With Moyses you did mount his holy Hill,
To know his pleasure, and performe his Will. 12

Both poems are indebted to a tradition of pastoral in their representation

of place, but interpret this tradition in quite different ways. Lanyer's poem
is a religious text which uses a secular frame, thus demonstrating that the
sacred/ secular distinction is not clear-cut.
Genre is not the only aspect that requires consideration when interpret-
ing these texts. Just as important are the type ofliterary production and the
chosen mode of articulation. One long-held critical axiom in this field has
been that print publication was somehow 'off-limits' for women. To an
extent this is true, but to claim that this is based purely upon gender would
be misleading. Manuscript circulation remained a powerful means of dis-
seminating texts throughout the early modern period, and this is especially
true for members of the elite for whom the uncontrolled access by the
'common sort' of readers implicit in the print medium was feit to augur an
unacceptable class contamination. For women, this stigma was exacerbated
by the notion that to put out a text in print was to engage in unlimited
circulation, often equated with illicit sexual contact. Despite these powerful

8
 INTRODUCTION

disincentives, however, many women did use print, for a variety of reasons.
Sometimes, motivation seems to have been financial, as in the case of
Isabella Whitney, but this is difficult to prove. For some writers, paradoxic-
aIly, print was used as a means of enhancing reputation or social position,
as with Whitney, Lanyer and Wroth; the fact that such attempts frequently
backfired may suggest a degree of naivety on the part of women writers, or
that their novelty status was readily exploited by the print market. How-
ever, the case of Wroth's condemnation for venturing into print is the
exception rather than the rule, and has to do with a number of specific
factors, induding her choice of genre, her exposure of her friends, family
and former associates in print, and her already dubious reputation. The
majority of printed works by women are theological in nature, a category
that ranges from books of mother's advice to translations of texts on the
nature of the sacrament to partisan devotional poetry. What this suggests is
that there needed to be a strong motivation, either personal or ideological,
for a text to reach print, as the example of the Countess of Pembroke's
translation of Garnier's Tragedie qf Antonie and De Mornay's Discourse qf Lift
and Death in 1592 demonstrates. This was the only text authored by the
Countess to be printed, and the lack of prefatory material together with the
prominent display of her name on the title-page implies that its publication
was no accident. The fact that the Countess ofPembroke herselfhad overseen
the passage of so me of her brother's writings from manuscript to print
implies that she was fully conscious of the processes in which she was
involved. It may weIl be the case that the 'primary' text in this pairing is
in fact the strongly Calvinist translation of De Mornay, who was one of
Sir Philip Sidney's dose friends among the intellectuals of the Huguenot
community in France, and the text had in fact been begun by Sir Philip
Sidney hirns elf. The Countess's completion and publication of the text
might be seen as the continuation and fulfilment of Sidney's ideological and
political legacy and hence in some sense a political, rather than a purely
literary act. Other writers were circulated in print for their market value as
curiosities, or more frequently by husbands wishing to demonstrate their
wives' exemplary status, usually after their deaths. The majority of printed
poetic texts derive from devotional sources and emerge from networks of
people committed to particular theological positions, such as Anne Lok's
involvement with the exiled Genevan community or Elizabeth Colville's
connection to the Presbyterians.
Print should not be over-emphasised as a form of publication, however.
For many writers in the period, manuscript circulation was the primary
form of publication, enabling texts to be exchanged between networks and
coteries of readers, often organised around kinship networks. In this way,
texts were exposed to readers who then engaged in a variety of processes

9
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

of exchange: copying, alteration, replies. Manuscript material, however,

has quite a different character to print and requires us to revise many of
our assumptions about texts and authors, as the example of Lady Anne
Southwell's commonplace book demonstrates. Although the commonplace
book is tided The workes qf the Lady Ann Sothwell, the texts included frequendy
fail to make clear distinctions between Lady Southwell's own work and that
of others, suggesting the permeability of textual ownership and that the
borrowing of others' works carried litde or no negative charge. It is a
'collection of poems, letters, aphorisms, inventories, a mini-bestiary, scrip-
tural commentary, and receipts' .13 In a context like this, the notion of an
author in the modern sense cannot be sustained. Despite the material pre-
sentation of the text, mediated by Southwell's husband's anthologisation,
or gathering, it is clear that Lady Anne Southwell had a clear sense of her-
self as the originator of these heterogeneous texts, and made a distinction
between 'everyday' materials and her devotional poetry, including her
meditations upon the decalogue. Yet this sense of Southwell as an author is
provided precisely by paying dose attention to her textual habits and prac-
tices. Given the layering contingent upon the presentation of her texts, it is
difficult to claim the kind of authorial relationship to text that we have
become accustomed to: there is no autograph text over which Southwell
exercised total control. However, it is clear both from the extant state of her
manuscripts, and her writings themselves, that she viewed herself as an
author, although in a distinctly premodern sense. While the material in the
commonplace book is interspersed with other kinds of texts, the material
found in the Lansdowne manuscript bears the marks of a deliberately
prepared text with a specific audience in mind. The relationship between
the two might be envisaged (simplistically) as that between a working
copy and a final draft. The working copy (commonplace book) shows the
evidence of an author at work, trying out words, phrases and ideas, whereas
the Lansdowne manuscript has a more obviously 'finished' quality, with
emendations and improvements added in the editing process. There is no
fair copy, but the dedicatory poem to the king which opens the Lansdowne
manuscript suggests a writer who had thought carefully about her reader-
ship and how to express her literary ambitions: 'Darest thou my muse
present thy Battlike winge,l before the eyes of Brittanes mighty kinge.l
... You lines, excuse my boldnes in this matter / & tell the truth, my hart's
to bigg to flatter' (1-2; 11-12). Here, Southwell's sense ofher text rather
than her self as constituting authorship is crucia1 to understanding her rela-
tionship to what she writes. In Precept 4, after reflecting on the nature of
creation, Southwell turns to her own act of creation: writing itself She
writes:

10
 I NTRODUCTION

for mee, I write but to my selj & mee

what gods good grace doth in my soule imprint
I bought it not for pelj, none buyes if thee
nor will I lett it at soe base a rent
as wealth or fame, which is but drosse & vapor
& scarce deserves the blotting if a paper.
(289-94)

This reads as a complex statement on the nature of writing and its circula-
tion, but the key point is that Southwell writes 'to my self & mee' of what
God's grace bequeaths her: her role as author is predicated upon her rela-
tionship with God, and specifically with grace. Yet in her insistence that she
will not sell God's grace cheap she effectively elevates her work above the
earthly preoccupations with 'wealth or farne'. She insists that poetry should
be a pure, uplifting medium, not pulled down by 'amorous Idiotts' (30 I) to
be 'the packhorse of theyr passion' (302). Southwell's notion of authorship
is expressed assertively, but it is also a plural and fluid concept.
The distinction we habitually draw between readers and writers starts
to break down in the context of manuscript texts, for each activity is con-
tingent upon the other: a text is copied (a reading process), assimilated
or altered, and then imitated (a writing process). The notion of 'text' also
undergoes significant modification in the manuscript context. In the first
instance, clear distinctions between texts are not always maintained, so that
it is not always obvious what type of interpretive framework the reader is to
employ, what constitutes the integrity of a given text, or how the parts
might relate to the whole. For example, Southwell's commonplace book
contains extended poetic meditations on the ten commandments, but they
are not placed in continuous sequence, and at times break down into linked,
but seemingly discrete adages on various subjects. Is this then a single
linked text, or several separate ones? The same question might reasonably
be asked of the Sidney Psalter, which consists, simplistically stated, of a
sequence of poems authored by two separate authors, Sir Philip Sidney and
the Countess of Pembroke. Aside from the question of whether the Psalter
(in any version) should be considered as a sequence of individual, separate
poems, or as one long poem broken down into constituent parts, the Sidney
Psalter cannot unproblematically be assigned to one author or the other, for
the express reason that the Countess of Pembroke revised Sidney's versions
(in some cases heavily) in order to produce an overall thematic and stylistic
unity for the text. Even this notion presupposes (as most of Sidney's editors
have done) that Philip Sidney was the post-Romantic embodiment of author-
ship, working alone, drawing upon his inner self, rather than the nodal

11
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

point at which various texts, discourses and interests came together to be

worked out in literary form.
The final notion that requires some revision in the context of manuscript
culture is that of text itself. The common practice of revision, realised in
manuscript texts, renders the notion of a single text with its own authority
rather problematic. The Countess of Pembroke, for example, often revised
her text, and then reverted to the original phrasing at a later stage. The
fourteen extant manuscripts of the Sidney Psalter can be grouped, but
nevertheless vary in several respects: which one of these texts is the 'real' or
'original' one? Even if we could decide such an issue, does the secondary
status of a later copy necessarily diminish the importance of the relationship
that a given reader or readers may have had with that text? All such
questions presuppose an idea of text as a stable point of origin, where
temporal primacy equates with textual authority. These issues are not solely
the province of manuscript texts, however, although they are most obvious
there. It is impossible for us to re cover at this remove the precise processes
that an autograph manuscript may have gone through in its passage to
print. We are conscious, due to the detailed work done on canonical authors,
that at each stage, other agents were involved who may have altered, con-
sciously or not, the author's words, hence destabilising the notion of singular
intentional authorship still further. Some women's texts carry the traces of
manuscript production, like Whitney's compilations, which ape the form
of the manuscript miscellany in printed form.
Many of the texts discussed in this book are not what a modern reader
would consider to be 'original' works, and this concept of what literary
production is has often been replicated in critical ac counts of early modern
women's writing. On the one hand, various texts are hailed as significant
for being the first this or that by a woman in a particular genre, as Goldberg
rather dismissively notes, commenting on Lewalski's Writing Warnen in Jacabean
England: 'Many of these "firsts" are fudged in their qualifications - what
does "substantial" or "original" mean? What is the value of a name? Why
privilege print over manuscripts? Why ignore continental precedents?'14 His
focus on Lewalski is unfair, as this is a common thread in much criticism
on the period, and was intended, I think, as a way of creating authority
and respectability for a group of texts that often sat uneasily with what we
already knew of a Renaissance increasingly represented by the exceptional
texts of Shakespeare, against whom, because of canonical pressures, these
writers are rather unfairly measured. On the other hand, such assessments,
however politically weH motivated, often miss the point regarding the nature
of women's writing in the period. Many feminist ac counts are caught in
a methodological eleft stick, by wanting to assert, simultaneously, the sim-
ilarity of these texts to canonical writers, and their gendered difference.

12
 INTRODUCTION

Like most writers in the period, women conform largely to the literary
values and modes of articulation found in their culture, a culture which
prized imitation of authoritative models highly, saw 'originality' in vari-
ations worked upon familiar texts, and did not view translation as a limited
or slavish activity. In seeking to establish women's texts as valid objects of
enquiry, criticism has often failed to recognise the extent to which they are
indebted to the mainstream assumptions of literary culture more generally
in this period. A good example of this tendency is the attitude taken to
translations by women. As modern Anglo-American culture becomes ever
more monolingual and dependent upon notions of literary value based on
ideas of originality, translation becomes extremely difficult to read. One
major form of literary production engaged in by women writers in the
Renaissance is translation (in a more or less narrow sense), a fact which has
been recognised by critics, but inadequately dealt with. Where it is noted, it
tends to be with regret, and the reasons tend to be attributed to the fact that
early modern culture somehow 'exduded' women from original writing,
that women lacked the necessary models to engage in writing 'oftheir own',
or that translation somehow offsets the opprobrium attaching to women's
writing by being, in some sense, not a literary activity at all.
Translation was an activity that lay at the heart of the Renaissance
educational programme, and in its extended forms underlay its most valued
modes ofliterary production. The practice oftranslation can only be thought
of as 'safe' for women if its functions are reduced to a slavish relationship of
translator/reader to the text, where he/she merely passively subordinates
him/herself to the original author and his messages. While it may be the
case that male writers devalue women's reading by directing them towards
an 'inferior' form of writing, it is equally the case that the 'permission' for
women to read translations opens up several areas of agency, as Suzanne
Trill has argued: 'Translation ... is not simply a passive reflection of a
previous text, but a form of writing which, by establishing it within a new
context, makes a daim about the status of the translated text.'15 Transla-
tion, however, covers a very wide range of writings, even within the works
of a single author. Mary Sidney, for example, uses dose inter-lingual transla-
tion as her medium in translating Petrarch and Garnier, but broadens her
scope in the Psalm paraphrase, deploying a form of intra-lingual translation
that amounts to imitation. In both cases, what modern sensibilities might
view as lack of originality and constraint prove to be fertile ground for
generic innovation (introduction of the form of doset drama, blending of
sacred and secular poetic models) and stylistic and lexical invention. If
women's writings in the Renaissance are largely derivative, then they con-
form absolutely to what their culture valued in art and writing, 'Poesie an
art not only of making, but also of imitation', referring both to the imitation

13
 THE POLITICS OF EARlY MODERN WOMEN'S WRlTING

16
of nature and to the imitation of authoritative predecessors. We need to
attend carefully to these kinds of value-systems and how they intersect with
our own if we are to avoid relegating women writers to a literary and
political backwater.
Recent work in the field of early modern literature has placed heavy
emphasis upon the political meanings of texts, located variously in generic
choice, the timing of publication, the manipulation of sources and models,
dedications and patronage networks. 17 The term 'politics' in such analyses
has a variety of not always well-defined meanings including attention paid
to questions of authority, subjecthood and representation as weIl as the
more traditional topics of political history. Despite the widening of the net
of what might be meant by 'politics', this has rarely included the question
of women or women writers as political agents, although abrief survey of
women's writing would suggest an involvement in matters which could be
considered political, even in the traditional sense. One example would be
Diana Primrose's panegyric poem on Elizabeth I, A Chaine qf Pearle, pub-
lished in 1630. This poem needs to be considered in the context ofa variety
of critiques of the court, its Catholicism, feminocentrism, and extravagance
from a number of quarters, particularly Puritan~ Primrose (which is pos-
sibly a pseudonym) is more subtle than many of these openly xenophobie
and misogynist attacks, relying upon the use of recent history in the form of
Elizabethan nostalgia to draw implicit comparisons between past glory and
present decay and corruption, a tried and tested technique for political
critique. 18 The poem seems designed to criticise Charles I by implication,
with the inference that he has deviated from the model of good government
laid down by Elizabeth 1. 1t draws heavily on Camden's Annals qf Qyeen
Elizabeth, translated from Latin in 1625, and uses the rhetoric of praise in
such a way that a topical sub text can be discerned, The poem is strongly
anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish, and Primrose's stress upon Elizabeth 1's
establishment of Protestant religion is undoubtedly designed to glance at
Charles 1's apparent toleration of Catholics

Shee swaid the Scepter with a Ladies hand,

Not urging any Romist in the Land,
By sharpe Edicts the Temple to .frequent,
Or to partake the hob Sacrament. 19

Other examples could be added, such as Anne Cooke Bacon's translation

in 1562 of John Jewel's Apologia ecclesiae anglicanae, a text authorised at the
highest levels of government, 20
Most of the texts discussed in this book, however, are not political in this
directly engaged sense, but address a range of questions and issues relevant

14
 I NTRODUCTION

to the functioning of society, both directly and indirectly. The ways in

which they do so are the subject of the more detailed analyses in each
chapter. Chapter 1 deals with how girls and women learned to read and
write, and the ways in which their usage of language was represented in
early modern culture as a whole. Chapter 2 builds on these foundations
to suggest that the texts of the 'woman debate' are implicated in a politics
that goes beyond either pro- or anti-feminist arguments. Chapter 3 turns to
drama and argues that women used 'doset' dramas to deal with questions
of authority, subjecthood and dynastie responsibility. Chapter 4 looks at a
selection of devotional texts in the context of various sectarian and partisan
positions, as weH as examining the effect that rhetorical interpretations of
the Bible had upon women's writing. Chapter 5 turns to more secular
poetry, considering how women adapted inherited discourses and posi-
tions to their own concerns, both public and private. Chapter 6 examines
romance, focussing on Wroth's manipulation ofthe form, and exploring the
political meanings of the interest of Henrietta Maria's court in romance
and related forms. The Epilogue attempts to draw together the different
threads running through the book and to suggest future directions for work
and research on early modern women writers.

Notes

2 See Margaret Ezell, Writing Women's Literary History (Baltirnore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1993) andJonathan Goldberg, Desiring Women Writ-
ing: English Renaissance Examples (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997),
3-15.

2 These, and other questions, are debated in Lorna Hutson (ed.), Feminism and
Renaissance Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Joan Kelly's essay
is included in this volume.

3 Jonathan Goldberg has written provocatively on questions of attribution and

gender, see Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modem Sexualities (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1992),81-101, and Desiring Women Writing, 144-63. On the
gendering of authorship in the period as a whole, see Wendy Wall, Ihe Imprint
rif Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1993) andJeffMasten, Textuallntercourse: Collaboration, Author-
ship and Sexualities in Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997).

4 Ihe Southwell-Sibthorpe Commonplace Book, ed. Jean Kiene, C.S.C. (Tempe, AZ:
Renaissance English Text Society, 1997).

lS
 THE rOllTleS OF EARlY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

5 Michel Foucault, 'What is an Author?', in Modem Criticism and Theory: AReader,

ed. David Lodge (London: Longman, 1988), 197-210.
6 Southwel!-Sibthorpe, 2-4, and commentary, 188.
7 See, for example, Barbara K. Lewalski, Writing Women in Jacobean England
(Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
8 ~ Name Was Martha': A Renaissance Woman's Autobiographical Poem, ed. with
commentary by Robert C. Evans and Barbara Wiedemann (West Cornwall,
CT: Locust HilI Press, 1993).
9 Ibid., 13.
10 Ibid., 13-33. The editors' careful and balanced analysis is occasionally at
odds with the claims that they make for the poem.
11 Ibid.
12 The Poems if Aemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, ed. Susanne Woods (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 81-6.
13 Southwell-Sibthorpe, xi.
14 Desiring Women Writing, 6.
15 Suzanne Trill, 'Sixteenth-century women's writing: Mary Sidney's Psalmes
and the "femininity" of translation', in Writing and the English Renaissance, ed.
William Zunder and Suzanne Trill (London: Longman, 1996), 140-58, 143.
16 George Puttenham, The Arte if English Poesie, ed. Gladys Doidge Willcock and
Alice Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), 3.
17 A representative sampie of the kind of work I am referring to can be found in
the essays in Culture and Politics in Earfy Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and
Peter Lake (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1994).
18 See A.H. Tricomi, 'Philip, Earl of Pembroke, and the analogical way of
reading political tragedy', Journal if English and Germanic Philology 85 (1986):
332-45; David Womersley, 'Sir Henry Savile's translation ofTacitu~ and the
political interpretation of Elizabethan texts', Review if English Studies, n.s. 42
(1991): 313-42, and Anne Barton, 'Harking back to Elizabeth: BenJonson
and Caroline nostalgia', English Literary History 48 (1981): 706-31.
19 Diana Primrose, A Chaine if Pearle, or A Memorial! if . .. Qyeene Elizabeth (1630),
sig. Bv.
20 See Alan Stewart, 'The voices of Anne Cooke, Lady Anne and Lady Bacon',
in 'This Double Voice': Gendered Writing in Earfy Modem England, ed. Danielle
Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000): 88-102.

16
 CHAPTER ONE

W omen, Language and Rhetoric

In any period language is a powerful signifier of position and status, as well

as being the system through which relationships of power are produced and
maintained. In most societies, in most historical periods, one of the primary
axes around which such power relationships are organised is that of gender.
As Susan Gal suggests, 'verbal interaction ... is often the site of struggle
about gender definitions and power; it concerns who can speak where
about what'.1 This formulation posits two levels of linguistic significance:
what is said, and how what is said signifies at a social and cultural level.
These are not readily separable, and rather than attempting to disentangle
the realiry of women's speech from its representation, this chapter seeks to
uncover what is symbolised by women's language in the early modern
period. For us, the process of reconstructing the past means that there is
only ever a representation of language, and no authentic original to which we
can return. All accounts are mediated accounts, even at the most obvious
level of the transcription of speech - a translation, and thus a transforma-
tion, from the oral to the written.
Despite two decades of work on gender in early modern criticism and
historiography, little is known about the relationship of women to language,
or the place occupied by gender in the complex linguistic alignments found
in the period. Few of the linguists who have delineated and described early
modern English have paid more than passing attention to women's lan-
guage, despite the centrality of debates on the topic at all cultural levels.
Manfred Gärlach, for instance, devotes a short paragraph to the issue in his
Introduction to Ear!J Modem English, citing two examples which display negat-
ive constructions of female speech which in fact act metonymically for
other linguistic concerns: they are not in any sense clear or unproblematic
examples of how women spoke. 2 This chapter aims to uncover the contexts

17
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

in which women's words were produced, circulated and understood in the

early modern period, and the social and cultural 'rules' to which they were
subject: it cannot daim to provide evidence of how actual historical women
spoke or read. We can reasonably assurne that the wide range of prescrip-
tions circulating in both high and popular culture regarding when, how and
to whom women should speak are, to so me extent, reactive rather than
descriptive. But such discourses about language do have cultural power,
serving to frame and contextualise what women actually said in crucial
ways. Any attempt to think about women's language in the Renaissance has
to be understood within the framework of the gendering of language more
generally in this period: for example, the alignment of hierarchies of linguistic
value with gender, such that Latin is revered for its 'masculine' qualities of
order and logic over the relative chaos of English, while French and Italian
are condemned for their feminine qualities when contrasted to the 'virile'
virtues of English. 3 The gendering of language and the language of gender
are mutually reinforcing.
The evidence is partial and fragmentary, skewed by the fact of its pre-
servation, namely, by its written form. The fact of writing marks the surviv-
ing re cord as belonging to a particular social category - the nobility, upper
gentry or 'middle dass' - even if a text can be attributed unproblematically
to a female hand. 4 The written re cord is not only haphazardly preserved,
but the available documents represent less than complete inscriptions of
women's voices. Versions of the female voice may be mediated by male
'authors' at a number of levels. The surviving traces of women's voices
are multiply mediated, filtered through frameworks and generic demands
laid down by men, whether the resulting representations are positive or
negative. Female voices may be unconsciously made to conform to cultural
norms, edited or erased, incorporated into other frameworks, anthologised
or appropriated. Prescriptive literature mainly characterises women's speech
as licentious, uncontrolled and threatening, for reasons which often go bey-
ond their ostensible constraining purpose: often such texts are responses to
the power of female speech to destabilise established power structures and
social hierarchies. Most frequently, such texts illustrate one aspect of early
modern society's concern with linguistic facility as a marker of power and
social status, requiring the devaluation and inefficacy of female eloquence
for the patriarchal system of power distribution to be maintained. The
dose, but arbitrary, connection between masculinity and valid public speech
or writing me ans that it can be difficult to uncover female voices which
could be said to be authentic or autonomous. Even in the hypothetical
instance of finding an unmediated female voice, it can be difficult to untangle
the specifically gendered elements ofher words from other variables, or from
the discursive constructions in which her utterance makes her a participant.

18
 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

There is little consensus as to whether women share distinct speech

habits, and how this might relate to other kinds of variables. Deborah
Cameron has suggested two main motives for the study of sex difference in
language. The 'positive' is 'the quest for an authentic female language', and
the 'negative' is the desire 'to identify the sexual power dynamic in lan-
guage use, the conventions and behaviours through which speech reflects
and perpetuates gender inequality.,5 Cameron suggests, however, that the
identification of a sex-specific usage or register can work to reify women's
exclusion from socially or politically powerful forms of speech, and that we
also need to look at 'what significant social uses are made of [sex differences
in language], or more accurately of discourse about them' (39). It is ne ces-
sary therefore to look closely at the contexts in which women's speech is
represented, and the relationship between style, register and situation; 'the
determining factor might be who is being spoken to rather than who is
speaking' (41). The sections which follow attempt to uncover the conditions,
both material and ideological, surrounding when, where and how Renais-
sance women could speak, read and write.

Education and literacy

Education in the early modern period did not embrace or advance the
democratising principles or the meritocratic ideal that we might see as its
primary rationale. Rather, it reinforced existing social distinctions, largely
due to the specifically goal-orientated nature of educational philosophy.
Based on classical principles, mixed with compulsory religious instruction,
education was causally linked to virtue and morality, while being carefully
tailored to the individual's future social role. The system occasionally pro-
duced a wordsmith of genius but on the whole education was repetitive,
unimaginative and based upon rote learning, and concentrated upon lan-
guage as a system to be mastered, rather than as a medium for knowledge. 6
Far from being the arena where self-fashioning through linguistic manip-
ulation was encouraged, in general early modern schooling inculcated
social values, acculturated the individual, and provided the learning deemed
appropriate to the social status already held by the pupil.
Schooling proceeded in clearly defined stages, although these were not
strictly tied to age. The child, usually aged 5 or 6, began by learning letters
by rote, orally from the 'hornbook' (a hand-held piece of horn with the
alphabet inscribed on it). Once these had been mastered, the child moved
on to basic words, and was considered literate once he could deal with
the primer and the catechism. It was quite possible to pass as functionally

19
 THE POLlTIes OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

literate on the basis of what had been memorised, and many children
would have remained at school only until they had maste red basic reading.
Next came writing, learned by the pupil tracing over his letters until he
knew them fully. In so me cases these elementary skills were supplemented
by basic arithmetic, generally orientated towards keeping accounts. All three
skills were functional, a useful preparation for the pupil's future life in trade,
service or agriculture. For those who remained at school (moving from the
'petty' school to the grammar school), or were tutored at horne, the educa-
tional programme moved on from basic competence in the vernacular to
the learning of Latin gramm ar. Pupils were taught to construe Latin sen-
tences, to translate accurately to and from Latin, and then progressed to
stylistic analysis of Latin texts. The flagship humanist schools also taught
Greek, and occasionally Hebrew. 7
The Renaissance school curriculum has four key elements: (1) it is pro-
grammatic; (2) it is explicitly functional, tied to social status and future
occupation; (3) it is alm ost exclusively confined to boys, especially at the
more advanced stages; (4-) it is not confined to institutional sites of learning.
The debate about the training of girls shares the principle that '[e] arly
modern education was ... directly vocational' and was an 'education for
society'.8 For women and the lower orders, this function-driven principle
generally had what we could consider negative effects, precisely because
education's role was to reinforce and reproduce the social order, 'not to
disturb social relations and hierarchies, but to maintain them,.9 Although
there was a debate about women's education, the humanists' sense of its
scope was limited by a prior construction of women's social role, which
education was explicitly designed to reinforce. Their learning, where advoc-
ated, was directed towards the fulfilment of their role, framed by marital
duty, household economy, and the bringing up of children. As AJ. Fleteher
aptly terms it, women's education was 'a discourse of containment'.l0 A
small proportion of girls attended the petty schools until they could read,
but many would have learned basic reading skills at horne, or in service.
Reading was important, because it enabled a woman to fulfill her maternal
duty, as Dorothy Leigh noted in The Mothers Blessing (1621):

The sixt reason is ... in some sort to command you, that all your children,
be they Males or Females, may in their youth learn to reade the Bible in
their own Mother tongue; for I know, it is a great help to true godlinesse. 11

At lower levels of society, evidence suggests that few girls learned to write. 12
Banbury Grammar School's 1594- statutes, for example, stated that girls were
not to stay 'above the age of nine nor longer than they may learn to read
English'.13 The expectation that a woman's calling was marriage, motherhood

20
 WOMEN. LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

and the household was reflected directly in her schooling: basic reading,
usually with a religious focus, possibly so me writing, needlework and know-
ledge of household management, as Lady Grace Mildmay's account of her
teacher and education demonstrates:

When she did see me idly disposed, she would set me to cipher with my
pen, and to cast up and prove great sums and accounts, and sometirnes set
me to write a supposed letter to this or that body concerning such and
such things, and other times set me to read Dr Turner's Herbal, and in
Bartholomew Vigo, and other times set me to sing psalms, and sometimes
set me to do some curious work (for she was an excellent workwoman in
all kinds of needle work, and most curiously she would perform it).11

Even highly born women followed this basic model, with variations: women's
education was not programmatic, and often reflected the interests of their
families more than any cultural norm.
A sense of anxiety and qualification underlies most writing on women's
education, as their writers struggle to reconcile paradoxical impulses: on the
one hand, the notion that learning will enable women to counteract their
essentially wayward natures and contribute to the virtuous upbringing of
children; on the other, the danger that education will undermine the strict
separation of roles upon which early modern society was based. 15 Much of
the advice on female education is directed to male heads of household, who
were responsible for the virtue of their dependants: a wayward, disobedient
or outspoken daughter or wife reflected poorly upon male authority. The
argument for education is that limited exposure to models of virtue and
good behaviour will reinforce social constraints requiring obedience and
sexual fidelity and thereby perpetuate the patriarchal system, ensuring the
proper transfer of property between generations. The virtuous education of
children, and daughters in particular, reflects the qualities of the father,
hence setting up the dass/ gender system in terms of replication, rather than
mobility:

unwise Fathers, who beyng more daintye, and effeminate in followyng their
pleasures, then wise and diligent in seekyng the profite of their Daughters,
doe give them, so sone, as they have any understandyng in readyng, or
spellyng, to cone and learne by hart bookes, ballades, Songes, sonettes,
and Ditties of daliance excityng their memories thereby.16

Thomas Salter suggests girls read 'examples and lives of godly and vertuous
Ladies ... out of the holy Scripture, and other histories both auncient and
of late dayes' which will 'as a spurre ... pricke and incite their hartes, to
follow vertue, and have vice in horror and disdaine' (45). Not only is there

21
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

a elose connection between the substance of women's reading and chastity,

Salter also argues that female erudition is a threat to order, because one of
the ends oflearning is 'profitte', 'that is not to bee looked for, at the handes
of her that is geven us for a companion' (46). Education is acceptable if the
women defers to male authority, and if it is directed to virtuous and reli-
gious ends. Katherine Stubbes exemplifies Salter's ideas of the proper uses
of learning, and is presented by her husband as exceptional:

[yJou could seldome or never have found her without a Bible, or some
other good booke in her hands. And when she was not reading, she would
spend the time in conferring, talking and reasoning with her husband of
the worde of God, and of Religion: asking him: what is the sence of this
place, and what is the sence of that? Howe expounde you this place, and
howe expounde you that? 17

Similar attitudes can be found in humanist texts which advocate female

learning, but while they broaden the scope of what may be learned, the
underlying ideologies are very similar. Vives' Instruction if a Christian Woman
(1530), for example, sees education as a tool for curbing the natural excesses
of women, and inelining them towards morality and virtue, 'she that hath
lerned in bookes to caste this and such other thinges, and hath furnyshed
and fenced her mynde with holy counsayles, shal never fynd to do any
vylany'.18 Vives applies the same logic as Thomas Salter, but to the opposite
end: the underlying notion of woman is the same. His advocacy of learning
for women necessitates an anxious heaping up of elassical precedents which
reinforce the link between intellectual accomplishment and chastity. Female
erudition does not bring autonomy; it is a tool which reinforces cultural
prescriptions. Many of Vives' examples present his learned 'maydes' as the
copies or images of their fathers and husbands. Hortentia 'did so resemble
her fathers eloquence'; Paula, Seneca's wife, 'enfourmed with the doctrine
of her husband, folowed also her husband in conditions' (38). His examples
embody Renaissance marital ideals: 'none ... better loved their husbandes,
none that more lawely did obey them' (39).
These prescriptions are important, and should not be underplayed. Neither
should the extent to which women themselves participated in them and
perpetuated them. It is not that women were systematically exeluded from
humanist learning or rhetorical training, but that they were barred from the
explicit ends to which they were directed. For women, it was deemed to
have no function, and to lead only to social and moral dis order: 'As for
eloquence, I have no great care, nor a woman nedeth it not' (40). The
humanist programme of education was designed to produce men trained in
virtue and eloquence who could use their linguistic skills in the service of

22
 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

the state: one of its primary goals was the creation of men who could write
and persuade. Such functions were not extended to women, and most
accounts assurne that women were necessarify 'barred from a place in the
humanist regimes of copy'.19 However, as Goldberg points out, such an
education 'could be extended, even beyond the institutional sites meant to
regulate it'. 20 Women readers and writers could, and did, adopt and adapt
the mainstream habits of literacy current in their world.
How much effect the texts of writers like Vives, Salter and Mulcaster
actually had on the setting of a practical educational agenda for women is
debatable; in comparison to similar texts aimed at men, very little space is
given to the method or content of the pedagogical programme. There were
few institutional sites where women's education took place, and none where
their leaming might have a practical application. Rhetorical and human-
istic education were exchanges transacted in the all-male worlds of school,
university, court and public service. As Alan Stewart explains

the achievement of humanism lies precisely in the social relations that it

facilitates, maintains and transforms. Evidently these social relations do not
readily include women (although, on occasion, they are required to). They
are essentially relations between men. 21

Stewart's parenthetical qualification is important, because it suggests that

the system of social exchange also functions via women, while apparently
repudiating them. It is not that women are incapable of forging such 'social
relations', but that they signify movements of power, not power itself. 22
As Grafton and Jardine have pointed out, humanistic leaming was little
more than 'the male equivalent of fine needlepoint or musical skill', except
that male accomplishment reinforced and produced power, whereas female
accomplishment (ofwhich leaming was one aspect) did the opposite. 23 This
is ref1ected in the discourses about women's leaming in the Renaissance,
where the precepts and principles found in texts advocating women's edu-
cation produce women as an audience in need of education, but underline
the limitations of its application. The notion of a supplemental educational
programme differentiated on the basis of sex creates an arena of eloquence
and action troped and symbolised as masculine. Even the most 'liberal' of
the Tudor commentators offers a distinctly 'domesticated' version of what
Women should leam, barring them from the logical extension of their skills
into the public sphere:

is not a young gentlewoman, thinke you, thoroughly furnished, which can

reade plainly and distinctly, write faire and swiftly, sing cleare and sweetly,
play wel and finely, understand and speake the learned languages, and

23
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

those toungues also which the time most embraseth, with some Logicall
helpe to chop, and some Rhetoricke to brave. 24

The extension of elements of humanist education to women threatens to

reveal the arbitrariness of the link between its particular skills and public
service, and highlights the socially destabilising possibility that women might
be the intellectual match of men; hence its uses and applications require
careful patrolling.
Such patrolling drew heavily upon society's notions ofwhat women should
do, and it is nowhere more apparent (or effective) than in the area of
literacy. Even if we take into ac count that the standard form of measure-
me nt (the ability to sign one's name) cannot make any useful differentiation
between reading and writing ability, and is based upon a sampie ofheads of
household, and thus inevitably leads to an underestimate of female literacy,
the fact remains that numbers of literate women in early modern England
remained extremely low until the late seventeenth century. The figures
point to levels of around 10 per cent, placing women at the same standard
of literacy as the lowest orders o( society.25 The majority of women who
could write were clustered at the top end of society, or lived in London,
where the ability to write might have been a skill which enhanced employ-
me nt prospects. The inability to write did not imply that an individual
could not read. Literacy is not a monolithic concept, and it is not always
detectable, particularly in a group who were placed at a remove from
institutional power. 26 Although reading and writing were skills without which
an individual could survive, and even thrive, women's exclusion from them
tells us something important about the place of women within the forms of
cultural exchange allied to, and facilitated by, writing.

Speaking

Little is known about how women spoke in the Renaissance, but we know a
good deal about what was thought about women speaking. A range of sources
suggest that 'nothing ... doth so commend, avaunce, set forthe, adourne,
decke, trim, and garnish a maid, as silence'. Many examples of women's
speech, even as a linguistic phenomenon, are negatively valued, and posited
as falling outside humanistic ideals of eloquence. Richard Stanyhurst cites
women's speech as an example of the 'degeneration' of English in the face
of the corrupting inf1uence of Irish:

the women have in their English tongue an harrish [harsh] and broade
kynd of pronunciation, with utteryng their words so peevishly and faindy as

24
 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

though they were halfe sicke, and ready to call for a possette ... most
commonly in words, of two sillables, they give the last the accent ...
which doubtlesse doth disbeautifie their English above measure. 27

This example relies upon women's apparent proximity to the vernacular,

but it is a representative anecdote which mediates the complexity of lin-
guistic relationships in Ireland to an English readership: it tells us little
about women's speech per se. As Mendelson and Crawford note, '[w]omen's
speech is hidden from us not only because it was liable to be negatively
constructed by men, but because it was highly contextualized by women
themselves'.28 Speech filtered through the written re cord tends to be either
exceptional, providing only an inverted example of normative practice, or
to be interpellated into other arguments and positions. The specific link
between female speech and disorder is connected to ideas about the rela-
tionships between language and order more generally in the period, where
not only was the English language itself undergoing a complex process of
standardisation and regulation, but questions regarding the etiquette of
speech were also indicative of relative social positions within a community
or hierarchy.
The tongue was seen as a troublesome organ in the Renaissance: unruly,
disorderly, and likely to cause harm. George Webbe's Araignement qf an unrury
Tongue (1619) describes the tongue as 'but a little member, yet a great stirrer in
mortal affaires', and as 'a necessarie good, but an Unrury evill, very profit-
able, but exceeding hurtfull'.29 Although the threatening nature ofthe tongue
was not exclusive to women, it was represented in gendered terms, which
both reflected and constructed the relationship between women and speech.
Despite the general nature of his topic, Webbe continually creates align-
ments between speech and the sex of the speaker. Addressing Sir Gabriel
Douse and his wife Jane, he writes

And what fitter Patronage could it find then your two names? both which,
for the Tongue, the one in witty speech, the other in discreet silence, not
my self alone, but divers others also have held in admiration.
(sigs A2v-A3r)

The equation of the tongue's negative effects with the female speaker has
two main aspects. First, 'the first corrupting instrument was the tongue',
specifically Eve's tongue. Second, the oft-rehearsed homology of tongue ('a
little member') and the penis whereby the woman who speaks is symbolically
male, or 'a phallic woman', and thus a threat to the alignment of categories
(natural and social) which guarantee patriarchal power. 30 The transgressive
tongue, whoever it belongs to, is troped as feminine: 'there is no such
common a whore as is the tong . .. It hath the very attire of an Harlot.'31 An

25
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

example of this homology at a crucial site of sexual differentiation comes

from a midwifery manual, which advised that

the Navell must be tyed longer, or shorter, aeeording to the differenee of

the sexe, allowing more measure to the males: beeause this length doth
make their tongue, and privie members the longer: whereby they may both
speake the plainer, and be more servieeable to Ladies ... [TJhe Gossips
eommonly say merrily to the Midwife; if it be a boy, Make him good measure;
but if it be a wen eh, Tje it short. 32

The mapping of social categories relating to speech onto the genitalia, or

vice versa, had the effect of naturalising cultural norms so that they could
be repeated and circulated with further justification.
The unruliness often associated with women's speech is twofold; it is
either attributed to nature, or to ignorance. The identification of unauthor-
ised female speech with unlicensed female sexuality derives from the identi-
fication of orderly speech with possession of the male sexualorgan, so that
female speech indicates a syrnbolic usurpation of the male organ, placing
her not as the passive possession of her husband, but as an active sexual
agent in her own right. This notion underlies all the injunctions about the
need for female obedience and silence, which stand in metonyrnically for all
other female virtues. These injunctions are found in a range of texts and
artefacts, from ballads and proverbs, to sermons, epic poems and conduct
books. Henry Smith's statement is typical:

the ornament of a woman is silen ce ... As the Eccho answereth but one
word for manie which are spoken to her; so a maides answere should be
a word, as though she sold her breath. The eye and the speach are the
mindes Glasses.:13

But the injunction to silence was not taken literally, even among pre-
scriptivists. Silence represents deference and temperance in speech in male
company; in other words, a form of speech which preserves the hierarchy
of the sexes and does not challenge male authority. Katherine Stubbes, for
example, conformed to ideals of temperance in speech but it is clear that she
did not remain silent: 'there was never one filthy, uncleane, undecent, or
unseemly word heard to come forth of her mouth'. 34 The Protestant ideal
of marriage, based on mutual companionship, required female speech for the
affirmation of affection and obedience, but it also had to be kept within
'proper' bounds, unthreatening to the male's role as law-giver and decision-
maker. William Gouge tackles this difficulty, not by advocating silence,
but by placing curbs on speech: 'As by gesture, so by speech also, must a

26
 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

wives reverence be manifested ... in his presence her words must be few,
reverend and meeke'. 35 Citing the standard biblical authority for female
silence (I Tim. 2:12 and I Cor. 14:35), Gouge continues:

The reason before mentioned for silence, on the one side implieth a
reverend subjection, as on the other side too much speech implieth an
usurpation of authoritie.
Object. Then belike a wife must always be mute before her husband.
Answ. No such matter: for silence in that place is not opposed to speech,
as if she should not speake at all, but to loquacitie, to talkativenesse, to
overmuch tatling: her husbands presence must somewhat restraine her
tongue, and so will her verie silence testifie areverend respect.
(ll6-l7)

Here silence suggests 'stubbornnesse of heart', and speech is required for

the expression of deference. Other conduct books and manuals of marital
advice require modest, deferential speech on the part of women; or, a form
of speaking that denies its own agency, talking which is reactive, not active.
The other main argument used to discredit women's speech was their
linguistic unruliness, their inability to conform to the rule-bound notions of
good speech and pronunciation associated with mainstream rhetorical edu-
cation as Mistress Gallipot's garbled attempt to read out loud in The Roaring
Girl indicates:

'Oh sweet creature-' (a sweet beginning) 'pardon my long absence, for

thou shalt shortly be possessed with my presence; though Demophon was
false to Phyllis, I will be to thee as Pan-da-rus- was to Cres-sida;36

Valorised speech is masculine speech, not only in relation to the sex of the
body which utters it, but in relation to the discourse which is produced.
Ascham stresses that speech should be in 'a voice, not softe, weake, piping,
womannishe, but audible, stronge, and manlike'; good style should be manly
and muscular, not inclined to 'effeminate' and verbose Ciceronianism. 37
The ideological basis of this gendering of linguistic standards and categories
can be seen in books of language instruction directed at women. Gestures of
inclusion are not necessarily what they seem, although that is not to say that
some women ventured beyond the prescribed boundaries; this is clear from
the engagement with rhetorical techniques found in texts authored by women
in this period. In Puttenham's Arte qf English Poesie, for example, women are
interpellated as readers at various points - writing of hipallage, he says it is
'pleasanter to beare in memory: specially for our Ladies and pretie mis-
tresses in Court, for whose learning I write'.38 Virtually all Puttenham's
apostrophes to female readers occur in Book III, 'Of Ornament', which

27
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

suggests their supplemental status, and they are confined to what Bailey
terms 'economically frivolous uses oflanguage'.39 Poetic activity consists of
games and puzzles, or the creation of verse for 'private recreation'. Ana-
grams, for example, are 'a meete study for Ladies, neither bringing them
any great gayne nor any great losse unlesse it be of idle time,.40 In other
words, female linguistic activity is marked by the performance of its own
redundancy, and different standards are to be applied to women's words.
Puttenharn frequently identifies women with negative qualities of poetry,
and they function as the parameter against which value can be measured:

so as every surplusage or preposterous placing or undue iteration or darke

word, or doubtfull speach are not so narrowly to be looked upon in a large
poeme, nor specially in the pretie Poesies and devises of Ladies, and
Gentlewomen makers, whom we would not have too precise Poets least
with their shrewd wits, when they were maried they might become a little
too phantasticall wives.
(249)

Puttenham's placing of women poets within his ac count 'Of the vices and
deformities in speach and writing' is significant, because at the same time as
he suggests women as poets and users of language, he posits them as the
negative norm against which good practice should be defined. His licensing
of women's use of the preposterous (the inversion of proper order) places
their linguistic usage on the margin, and as insignificant. Just as poetry is
only ornamental to women, so women are little more than ornament in
Puttenham's text.
Similar patterns are found in other texts dealing with language. Peter
Erondell's 1605 French teaching text The French Garden, for example, presents
itself as a book of instruction for women, but in so doing constructs women
as linguistically naive, removed from the public sphere of language, and
hence in need of regulation, both in the sense of being taught rules, and of
being subjected to cultural rules:

Ladies have long'd to match old Holliband,

1hat thry with men might parZe out their parte:
1heir wittes are rare, and thry have tongues at hand,
01 Nature fill, their onely want is Arte:1 !
The gesture of inclusion inaugurates separate linguistic universes, divided
into 'Nature' and 'Arte', and proposes that female 'Nature' is in need of
the regulation and circumscription promised by masculine 'Arte'. Like many
texts of this kind, The French Garden goes on to create a sexualised spectacle
of the woman and her tongue, and by proffering a distinctly female linguistic

28
 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

universe ensures her continued exclusion from mainstream language. 42 Sim-

ilarly, Sir John Harington's anecdote suggests female ignorance of what is
said, indicating her exclusion from the male linguistic universe:

the Ladie bad her Gentlewoman aske, which of the Wingfields it was; he
told her Jaques Wingfield: the modest gentlewoman, that was not so weil
seene in the French, to know that ]aques, was but James in English, was so
bashfoole, that to mend the matter (as she thought) she brought her Ladie
word, not without blushing, that it was M. Privie Wingfield. 13

The lady's misprision depends not only upon the lady's ignorance ofFrench,
but also upon her alienation from the written word. To her, the French
name Jacques' is identical to the English word Jakes' (privy), and her error
depends upon the fact that she hears a homophone, while the words are
distinguished clearly by their orthography. Like many other women in early
modern culture, the lady repeats what she hears without understanding,
much to the amusement of her interlocutors. 44 Her 'Ladie word' is intended
as a polite euphemism, but presents her to us as ignorant and foolish, and
as possessing competence only in the vernacular.
The association of women with the vernacular has a long history, and
derived from Cicero's De Oratore: 'it is easier for women to keep the old
pronunciation unspoiled, as they do not converse with a number of people
and so always retain the accents they heard first'.45 The link between women
and the purity of the spoken vernacular presupposes their linguistic exclu-
sion from the public world, i.e. their confinement to a single linguistic code.
This compounds women's exclusion from the exercise of rhetoric, just as it
did for the lower ranks of male speakers. Because women taught children to
speak, their proximity to the vernacular was of crucial importance for the
preservation of linguistic identity. Sir Thomas Elyot stressed that a child's
governess should be chosen because

they speke none englisshe but thatl whiche is cleane I politel perfectly I
and articulately pronouncedl omittinge no lettre or sillable as folisshe
women often times do of a wantonnessl wherby diverse noble menl and
gentilmennes chyldren (as I do at this daye knowe) have attained corrupte
and foule pronuntiation. 16

When the vernacular begins to have a status of its own, and becomes
subject to linguistic regulation, women are posited as potential polluters of
its purity; their confinement to the vernacular and alienation from Latinate
rules is the source of possible corruption. The connection between women
and the vernacular seems to have reinforced women's exclusion from the
humanist republic of letters and the functions this implied. This might seem

29
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

puzzling in the light of the appearance of an increased number of linguistic

texts (grammars, dictionaries, etc.) directed specifically to women. In much
the same way that the partial extension of a humanist education to girls
served to reinforce its unique functions for men, so the identification of
women as an audience for texts which provide regulation to the vernacular
could be seen as a subjection to male rules of a linguistic register partially
troped as female. It is because women are exduded from the institutional
sites for the teaching of rhetoric that they can be produced as the target
audience for such texts; it is a way of bringing them within male jurisdic-
tion, and compounding their exdusion from this sphere. As Juliet Fleming
suggests, female speech functions symbolically to provide the ground and
justification for the process of standardisation. 47
None of these representations bring us very dose to how women spoke,
although they do provide useful evidence of the situational dynamics
of women's speech. Douglas Bruster, using drama as the raw data, has
attempted to quantify the features of what he terms the 'speech genres'
of women's language. 48 There are two key difficulties with this: first, we
cannot ass urne that drama is any doser to the actuality of speech in the
period than any other form; second, the assumption that we might be able
to define a single women's speech genre, undifferentiated by dass or region,
is dearly difficult in aperiod where 'English' has yet to establish a stable
spoken standard. What he uncovers is pretty much what we might expect,
given that his subjects are representations of women produced by and for
men, and within the prevailing assumptions structuring the reception of
women's speech in the period:

female characters less frequently initiate dialogue, and ... less frequently
engage in certain kinds of powerful speech activities like descriptio; that
they are more likely ... to employ pathopoeic utterances ... traditionally
connected with weakness; that they remain on the whole more reluctant
to swear ... that they enjoy less metrical freedom than male characters;
and ... that they usually speak less than their male counterparts of equal
social status.
(239)

We could add further features: women's social affectation in speech and

accent; the sexualising ofwomen's speech; the persistent breach of decorum;
and code-switching according to social context. These features tie into women
users of the vernacular being in need of regulation, and as symbolising its
less acceptable aspects.Jonson's Mistress Otter in Epicoene is a city woman, she
is a social dimber, anxious to advance her bumbling husband up the ranks.
Her pretension is demonstrated through her vocabulary, and her speech
dramatises the indecorousness of her flaunting of proper social hierarchy:

30
 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

True- Wit. By your leave, faire mistris OTTER, I'll be bold to enter these
gentlemen in your acquaintance.
Mrs Otter. It shall not be obnoxious, or difficill, Sir.'19

Mrs Otter displays a marked contrast between the language she uses to berate
her husband, and the polite affeetation with which she addresses her guests:

By that light, I'll ha' you chain'd up, with your bul-dogs, and beare-dogges,
if you be not civill the sooner. I'll send you to the kennell, i'faith. You were
best baite me with your bull, beare, and horse?
(3.1.2-5)

The satirising of affected women's speech is a recurrent feature of city

comedy, and of Jonson's plays in particular. Girtred in Eastward Hoe, who
prodaims 'I must be a Lady ... my mother must call me Medam', dem on-
strates the pretension to an accent that she thinks denotes higher social
status: 'Most aedefying Tailer!' Then, addressing Sir Touchstone (but for
the benefit of her audience): 'Boddy a truth, Chittizens, Chittizens. Sweet
Knight, as soone as ever wee are married, take mee to thy mercie out of this
miserable Chittie. ,50
A consistent feature of representations of women's speech is sexualisation,
an aspect of which the speakers themselves are often unaware. The repres-
entation of women's speech in male-authored texts tends to reinforce the
dose relationship between words and assertive sexuality, and it is often
displayed for the amusement of the knowing male viewer or reader. The
speaker's words are subject to interpretations which she cannot control,
placing her language at the opposite end of the scale from the assertion of
agency and the formation of identity often attributed to male speech. These
tendencies are widespread, but they are particularly marked in dramatic
scenes of linguistic instruction, where the collocation of female linguistic
ignorance, a licensed male teacher, and the foregrounding of the female
tongue, produce a potent instance of female speech as inherently sexually
troubling. The language scene in Shakespeare's Merry Wives qfWindsor involves
the Welsh schoolmaster Sir Hugh Evans taking the hapless Will through his
Latin grammar, while Mistress Quickly comments. She is the agent of the
derogation of Latin into a vernacular of great virtuosity, but scant linguistic
order. 51 She understands neither the Latin, nor the grammatical terms which
are used, and 'translates' the sounds she hears into the dosest English
equivalents she can find, aseries of puns and misprisions which place her
language as being laced with sexual meanings and transgressive significations.
She hears 'nouns' as a debasement of'God's wounds', and mishears William's
responses; pulcher is heard as 'polecat' (a slang word for prostitutes), and Sir
Hugh's Welsh accent allows for a multi-layered catachresis:

31
 THE POllTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Evans. Leave your prabbles, 'oman, - What is the focative case, William?
Will. 0 - vocativo, O.
Evans. Remember, William: focative is caret.
Qyick. And that's a good root. 52
Mistress Quickly is presented as liable to take anything she does not under-
stand in its sexual sense: caret is heard as 'carrot', a slang term for penis.
Further punning places Mistress Quicklyon the outside of this incompetent
Latin lesson, because she sees only one level of meaning (the sound of the
words), whereas the audience must find at least two for the humour to
work. Quickly hears 'genitive case' as a corruption of 'genitals' combined
with 'case' (a slang term for the pudenda), giving Mistress Quickly an occa-
sion for a lesson ofher own to William: 'Vengeance ofGinny's case; fie on
her! Never name her, child, if she be a whore' (4.l.53-4). The language
lesson is converted from one kind of making a man (by his virtuosity in
Latin) to another (sexual initiation), a conversion which is enacted through
Mistress Quickly's 'declining' of Latin into the language of women.
These images conform to the ideals laid down in prescriptive liter-
ature for women's speech, but they are very different from the evidence
uncovered by historians. Women do not seem to have adhered to the
norms prescribed for them, either in remaining silent, or in terms of restraint.
Elizabeth I was apparently not averse to a 'good, mouth-filling oath,.53
Women's speech was highly context-specific. London women, for example,
had a battery of insults, mostly sexual in nature, to hurI at their neighbours,
but they adhered more closely to socially defined norms in formal contexts
like court proceedings. 54 Speech within all-female context is usually negat-
ively portrayed by men, because it represented a freedom from restraint,
and freedom from regulation. It is quite possible that similar linguistic
hierarchies were replicated in situations where women had power over
their social inferiors, such as children and servants. Women's speech was
clearly a contentious issue in early modern England, but it is certainly the
case that there is a significant gap between prescription and practice; the
uncontrolled (or uncontrollable) female tongue rarely signifies purely as
itself. More often, speech provides a convenient and powerful metonymy
for other kinds of transgression, social, sexual or moral.

Reading

Although the proportion of women able to read was undoubtedly lower

than that of men, there were social pressures which encouraged women's
reading, particularly the reformers' insistence that all should have access

32
 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

to the word of God, and that spiritual guidance should start as early as
possible. Like education generally, women's reading was acceptable if it
remained within culturally defined limits. It was not possible to patrol a skill
often exercised in private, or in all-female company; as Cressy points out,
literacy 'could lead to depravity as weIl as to godliness, to dissipation as weIl
as to practical improvement'.55 Authors, printers and booksellers quickly
responded to the emergence of a specifically female readership - recaIl that
London's urban population contained a far higher proportion of literate
women than other areas of the country - but we should be cautious about
how we interpret 'books for women'.56 Like other gender-specific gestures,
it often functioned as a limited opening up of access, and tended to work to
delimit what women should read, to direct them away from the higher-status
male texts, troped as 'books for men' in comparison. Too often, 'a woman's
book' equals triviality or marginality, its readership's exclusion from main-
stream humanist dis course (as in the case of translations from the classics),
or an author's desperate hope to capture as many corners of the market as
possible. 57 Prescriptive writings on the topic of women's reading generally
concern themselves with what and how women should read, rather than
whether they should read. Reading was advocated where it led to virtue,
morality or spiritual instruction, and women were encouraged to read the
Bible, especially the Psalms, sermons, and ac counts of exemplary women,
such as those found in Foxe's Book qfMartyrs. Their ability to interpret such
texts, and to engage with theological controversies, was assumed to be
limited by their innate intellectual weakness, and by the impropriety of a
woman arrogating such authority. The underlying thinking determining
what women should read was that they lacked the interpretive skills to
make distinctions and discriminations, and that they were excessively literal
readers who would 'translate' the substance of texts directly into their lives.
Such a hermeneutic made a clear differentiation between the rhetorically
trained reader, and the rest, including women and the lower orders, and it
lies behind attempts to regulate what women should and should not read.
For some commentators, women's reading amounted to a form of con-
trol. While reading was thought to have a causal relationship to morality
and civic virtue, for women it was seen as an occupation akin to spinning
and needlework which kept them from idleness and vice. 58 Daniel Touteville
suggests that Julius Agricola had trained noble Britons in the liberal sci-
ences so that they would not challenge his power, and uses this as his model
for encouraging women to read:

Now I see no hinderance why they should not produce the same effect in
them, which they doe in us, their bodies consisting of the same matter, and
J9
their mindes coming out of the same molde.

33
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Women's exclusion from humanist training led them towards popular, ver-
nacular works, much to the consternatlOn . 0 f some commentators. 60 Desenp-
.
tions ofwomen's reading in the early modern period do not always replicate
ideological injunctions, but they do te nd to be framed within them. As
Jacqueline Pearson has pointed out, women tended not to re cord 'recre-
ational' reading 'because they had absorbed the conservative anxiety
about it'.6! This tendency is also found in humanists' accounts, because they
often used the reading of women as a yards tick with which to measure the
advance of Protestantism. Udall, for example, observed that

1t is now no news in England to see young damsels in noble houses and in

the Courts of Princes instead of cards and other instruments of idle trifling
to have continually in their hands either Psalms, Homilies and other
devout meditations ... 1t is now no news at all to see Queens and Ladies
of most high estate and progeny instead of courtly dalliance to embrace
vertuous exercises of reading and writing. G2

Women's ac counts of their reading suggest that it consists solely of holy,

virtuous books, perhaps because the reason that reading was recorded at
all was connected to spiritual self-scrutiny. Lady Grace Mildmay suggests
that the Bible should be read continually, 'until we have gone through the
whole book of God from the first of Genesis unto the last of the Revelation,
and then begin again, and so over and over without weariness'.63 Such
rereading demonstrates one difference between early modern reading
practices and our own: the text was to be engaged with, argued over, and
reftected upon, not read and cast aside. 64 Lady Margaret Roby's Diary
records the spiritual orientation of her reading, as weH as the co-existence
of reading for herself, and being read to: 'Mr Roby rede to me a Sarmon of
Udale'; '[a]fter privatt praers I reed of the bible'; 'before diner I praied
and read of the bible'.65 Women's recorded reading also extends to non-
religious but improving books. Lady Mildmay suggests that suitable books
include Foxe's Acts and Monuments, and 'the chronicles of the land': in both
cases, reading will inculcate obedience and faith, 'whereby we may be
instructed to imitate and to follow the examples of true and faithful
subjects'.66
These ac counts have avested interest in self-presentation, and women
undoubtedly read less worthy and improving texts. Plays provide satir-
ical representations of women reading morally dubious material; Lady
Politic Would-Bee in Volpone mentions Plato, Petrarch, Tasso, Ariosto, Dante,
Montaigne and Aretino, 'a desperate wit ... /Onely, his pictures are a litde
obscene,.67 Jonson's joke turns on the inappropriateness of such authors for
a woman reader, and the comedy of her ignorant assumption that a writer

34
 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

such as Aretino is 'improving'. The erotic spectacle of a woman unwittingly

reading a sexually explicit text occurs frequently in the dedications of books
to women, part of the interpretive 'gap' often assumed to separate the
women reader from the meanings of the text she reads. Wye Saltonstall
presents his translation of Ovid's Heraides (1636) in terms of a two-way
reflection of textual heroines and readers, where the reader is to be ab-
sorbed into the rhetoric and ideologies of the male-authored text. He stresses
the epistles' status as exemplary texts - they consist of classical heroines
bewailing their sexual betrayal by their lovers, and hence their loss of self.
The encounter of text and reader is figured in courtly and erotic terms,
such that the end result is the presentation of an eroticised female reader for
the pleasure and amusement of the male reader. He writes

Ladies and Gentlewomen, since this book of Ovids, which most Gentlemen
could re ade before in Latine, is for your sakes come forth in English, it
doth at first addresse it seIfe a Suiter, to wooe your acceptance, that it may
kisse your hands, and afterward have the lines thereof in reading sweetned
by the odour ofyour breath, while the dead letters form'd into words by
your divided lips, may receive new life by your passionate expression, and
the words marryed in that Ruby-coloured Temple, may thus happily
united, multiply your contentment. 6H

The Petrarchan idiom is used strategically, but with the expectation that
these women will capitulate to the advances of the 'Suiter', an acquiescence
they will signal by their repetition of the text's words, 'Let English Gentle-
women as kind appeare/ To Ovid, as the Roman Ladies were' (sig. A5v).
His reference suggests the titillating spectacle of English women being
seduced by Ovid, just as the notably less virtuous Roman women were. His
readers are led to believe that they are encountering exemplary models of
virtue, while the male reader takes a voyeuristic pleasure in their repetition
of the words of an 'obscene' and unsuitable poet. 69
For the classically trained humanist reader, reading was an interpret-
ive struggle with an authoritative text, not simply a matter of gathering
information; the form of the text was just as important as its content. Reading
also involved the preparation of precepts and methods for action, whether
direct, or indirect in the form of speaking or writing. 70 Given that the avowed
end of such reading was off-limits to women, it stands to reason that it had
quite different functions for them: although there is evidence that similar
methods were deployed. Most of the available evidence relates to women
who could write, but these were not alone in having access to the written
word: there are plenty of examples of women listening to books being read,
even if they could read themselves. One function of reading for women was
to fasten ideas and information in their memories, which were assumed to

35
 TH E POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITI NG

be defective in comparison to those ofmen. The Countess ofSuffolk's virtue

was closely identified with her memory:

Begin a Religious Ode of Mr. Herberts, whieh she had read, and she would
ordinarily repeat the rest without stieking and missing; nay searee eould
you begin any verse in the Bible to whieh she would not presently adde
the latter end, as to the Psalms of David. 71

The fact of memorisation, though, was one means by which the text could
be considered and dwelt upon; it was not simply mimicry and repetition.
During her imprisonment, Elizabeth I wrote an inscription on her copy of
St Paul's Epistles (the copy is now in the Bodleian), which indicates the
degree to which the text was internalized, and could function as a constant
source of meditation and comfort:

I walk many time into the pie asant fields of the holy seriptures, where I
pluek up the goodly green herbs of sentenees by pruning: eat them by
reading, ehew them by using and lay them up at length in the high seat of
memory by gathering them together: that so having tasted thy sweetness I
may the less pereeive the bitterness of this miserable life. 72

Memorising, then, is not the passive or mechanical activity that we often

think it is; rather, it was a way of storing up precepts and ideas for future
use, either for spiritual development, advancement, or comfort. Although
women were not gene rally expected to turn their reading to active use in
the public world, they were encouraged to apply the ideas they had en-
countered to their own lives and souls: this too constitutes a form of textual
engagement and discrimination, a 'process of self-creation through read-
ing'.73 Although women were supposed to submit to male guidance, many
of them undertook the processes of interpretation and application on their
own initiative. Lady Margaret Hoby used what she had read to meditate,
and Isaac Basire suggests to Frances Corbet that her reading will have a
directly spiritual function. Sending her books in August 1636, he advises

they are choice books, all three; and so they light on devout hands they are
full off good inspiration. I have prayed God to sanctify the use off them to
your soule: you must not for fashion saecke but read them with a full
purpose off heart to frame you life by their godly directions: and therefore
you must not deeme it enough to reade them onee over only, but onee or
twice over yeerely, till you have turned them into your ordinary praetise. 74

One main way that Renaissance readers made use of what they read,
and engaged actively with texts, was through the practice of annotation - in

36
 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

the margins ofbooks, in copybooks, using words, pointers, asterisks. 75 Using

the Folger library's collection of Shakespeare first folios as her sampie,
Hackel estimates that one-third of these books were annotated by women;
numerous commonplace books belonging to women have also been found
(150). This suggests that some women encountered texts in similar ways to
men, but for different ends, directed towards 'action' in the household, as
hostesses and companions, as mothers guiding their children's spiritual
welfare, and for their own entertainment and spiritual well-being. 76 Judging
from accounts of women's reading, the practice of annotation was wide-
spread and, among those who could write, an accepted aspect of the read-
ing process. Lady Margaret Hoby's Diary gives details of how this worked.
On 15 August 1599, she 'writ the most part of an examination or trial
of a Christian, framed by Mr Rhodes', which prompted her to prayer. On
7 September she records annotating her copy of the Bib1e with notes that
she had taken on a 1ecture the previous evening. 77 This suggests an active
engagement with the text, which Lady Hoby sifted and selected, and then
placed in her Bible so that she could compare interpretations of particular
passages. The Countess of Suffolk also was an inveterate annotator, and the
mention of this fact in her funeral encomium suggests that no taint of
transgressing boundaries attached to it:

Her Phancy was most Divine, and although she fed it very much with
Humane Authors, delighting in Wit, that was Pure, and filled with ingenious
and artificiall conceit, Poetry especially, in the apprehension of which she
was very Dexterous, and would ever set a Mark upon such expressions as
were most emphaticall and quaint, many times adding a Grace by her
particular interpretation, even beyond the intention of the Author, but with
exceeding fitness and significancy; 7B

This describes a sophisticated reader, not the blank slate suggested by

many Renaissance writers, areader who uses the techniques of the trained
humanist reader, but to the ends of personal profit and edification, not for
display in the public world. Further evidence of women's 'active' reading
can, of course, be found in their writings, where texts are adapted to
new purposes and, often, made to speak, in mediated ways, to the public
world.
In a textualised culture like that of the Renaissance, still making the
transition from orality to literacy, reading is not in any sense a homogen-
eous or easily definable phenomenon. The term 'read' itself is not exclus-
ively tied to the interpretation of the written word, as Spenser's usage of it
indicates. Those who could not read print or script had contact with the
written through aural contact; those who could read might range from

37
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

those 'that can read a,b,c' to the extensive cross-referencing and interpretation
undertaken by a Harvey or a Jonson. 79 Reading could be collective or
80
private, undertaken in the solitude of the doset or in more public places.
Book availability varied widely, according to individual wealth, and the
aspiring reader's distance from London. It was necessarily a variable and
plural skill, which meant vastly different things to different people. It also
could not be readily controlled, a fear expressed by those opposed to the
translation of the Bible into the vernacular. The evidence seems to suggest
that for many of the women in this book, reading was a precious skill,
which provided them with a degree of intellectual freedom and access to
ideas, and that while they were careful of their reputations, this was actively
pursued rather than passively accepted.

Writing

Richard Mulcaster observed that '[tJo learne to read is very common,

where convenientnes doth serve, and writing is not refused, where oportunitie
will yeild it'.81 Not only were women taught to write far less frequently than
men, they were also taught to write differently. The act of writing was
differentiated on gen der lines, in terms of the hands used, and in terms
of the features, functions and substance of what was written. Margaret
Willoughby, for example, was taught to write a different hand from her
brother Francis, in addition to the other distinctions between their edu-
cations. 82 Handwriting was a marker of social status and intellectual attain-
ment in early modern England, and served to differentiate individuals'
competence in literacy. As Keith Thomas has pointed out, the profusion
of types of script (various written hands, black-Ietter and roman typefaces)
means that mastery in one does not imply mastery in another. 83 Contem-
poraries observed a variety of writing practices which distinguished women
from men. Sir Thomas More reports the reaction of the Bishop of Exeter to
his daughter's writing in Latin: 'when he perceaved it by the salutacion to
be a womans, he beganne more greedily to read it, noveltie inviting hirn
thereunto'.84 More common was the identification of certain hands, among
the elite at least, with women. Ironically it was the italic hand which was
deemed more suitable for women to learn; it was also the hand of status
among humanists and indicated a high level of literacy.85
Women's writing is more often presented as the disorderly chaos against
which the purity of style and presentation advocated by humanist educators
is defined. Erasmus, in his dialogue on handwriting, suggests the 'proper'
arrangement of words on the page:

38
 WOMEN. LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

Ursus. Next they discussed the linear arrangement, by which the words
should run between parallel lines so that the writing is not scattered about
like the Sybil's leaves and the letters, to quote a joke of Plautus, do not
'clamber over each other'. Nothing is uglier than this unevenness.
Leo. Yet this is just how my wife writes!8G

Exclusion from mainstream learning often resulted in poor execution and

penmanship even among literate women. John Winthrop noted his wife's
'scribbling hand, the mean congruity, the false orthography and broken
sentences'; he forgave her because he loved her, but also because he viewed
this level ofverbal realisation as nothing more than a 'technical skill,.87 This
was a common assumption during the Renaissance, as William Kempe
suggested: 'Which expressing and skill of the hand, belongeth properly to
the Arte of Painting, and not unto Grammar, so that the best Grammarian
is not alwayes the fairest penman.,S8 Such a position had important implica-
tions for the question of women as writers, for it enabled the teaching of
writing as a skill which paralleled more traditional female occupations like
needlework or drawing:

if any Art be commendable in a woman, (I speake not of their ordinary

workes wrought with the needle, wherein they excell) it is this of Writing;
whereby they, commonly not having the best memories (especially
concerning matters of moment) may commit many worthy and excellent
things to Writing, which may occasionally minster unto them matter of
much solace. B9

Rather than writing being part of the process of textual engagement, for
those women who learned it, the act of penning words was frequently
constructed as a virtuous occupation, calling forth the same sorts of notions
about innate female idleness and poor memory that we encountered earlier.
In this scenario, writing becomes a craft, the shaping of letters an end in
itself, and not an inflected engagement with the text. While women's access
to writing, as evinced by the various manuals which address them, is at
some level an attempt at circumscription, the process of learning to write
was similar for women and men; it is the application of the skill which differs.
The function of writing for women is precisely not the productive encounter
of the humanist. The female copyist should

write down with her fingers anything the tutor may dictate ... Whilst we
are writing, the mind is diverted from the thought of frivolous or improper
objects. The lines which are just before the pupil for imitation should
contain some weighty little opinion which it will be helpful to learn
thoroughly, for by frequently writing out such, they will necessarily be
fixed in the mind. 90

39
 THE POLITleS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRlTlNG

Goldberg's sophisticated analysis of the meanings of the 'woman's hand' in

early modern England suggests that writing is framed in such a way as to
produce a particular kind of subject; rather than being an assertion of agency,
it entails a form of submission - at least, that is writing's ideological claim.
Like education more generally, instruction in writing amounts to a form of
social 'placing', not just by the social identity of the hand, but also through
the process of copy, or what he calls 'the coincidence of subjection with
subject-formation in the hand' (139). Rather than alte ring structures of
power, the regime of writing aims to reproduce them, just as women them-
selves are to reproduce the ideologies ofthe texts they are set to copy (141).
However, for many writing women of the period, their exposure to
these regulatory functions was extremely limited, to the point where it is
gI
extremely difficult to identifY the features or qualities of a female hand.
The fact of remaining outside the kinds of institutions which ushered in
linguistic standardisation means that in autograph material by women
we can discern a number of linguistic differences from the standard. How
far these are specifically gendered differences is debatable in the absence of
detailed comparative work: those writing in script in any case tended to
retain far more orthographic and lexical variation, as a glance at the letters
of King J ames I indicates. One useful example of the variations between a
man's writing and a woman's can be found in the letters of Lady Brilliana
Harley, famous for her spirited defence of her Herefordshire family seat in
the Civil War. Her spelling habits are unusual to say the least, and indicate
a more direct transcription from speech than would be found in the emer-
ging standard of the period, as this (randomly chosen) passage indicates:

All my frute disches are brocken; thearefore, good Ned, if theare be any
shuch blwe and white disches as I use to have for frute, bye me some; they
are not purslane, nor they are not of the ordinary mettell of blwe and
white disches ... I see your sister has a new hude; it semes shee lost hers
and durst not tell, and so, as I gees, rwit to you for one, which I will pay
you fOr. 92

The distinctive features ofLady Harley's writing are unusually clear, due to
the existence of transcripts of several letters to her son Ned which were
dictated. In the absence of the originals, we cannot compare the hands, but
it is clear that her secretary (probably her younger son) was taught to write
in a mann er which was much closer to the standard, nearer to the written
word than the spoken; in addition, his transcription uses the standard con-
tractions of the period, indicating a practised writer:

I believe it was yor comfort, when you were sicke, that you expected health
from yo' God; and in yo' health, that you have that blessing from Hirn,

40
 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

with adesire to spinne forth yd health in t service of yo' God, weh is

perfeet freedome.
(48)

The following letter, again in her own hand, suggests the relationship between
selfhood and the wielding of the pen which the handwriting manuals intended
to displace: 'now, I thanke God, I have more liberty, in which I have this
contentment, that I can tell my minde to you with my owne penn' (50).
Lady Harley was a well-read woman (her letters mention Calvin, Seneca
and Eusebius, among others) for whom writing had aseries of clearly defined
functions. First, as for many women, they substituted for personal contacts
with family and friends, they were a me ans of connection to the world:
'sence I can not speake with you, nor see you so omen as I desire, I am
willing to make make [sic] theas paper mesengers my depuety' (11). For
her, writing still carries the traces of the spoken and is what she calls
'a paper conversing' (11). But this extends to considerable political and
spiritual engagement, whereby her role as Edward's mother grants her the
authority to give him guidance in matters educational and religious; through-
out, she seems to assurne that in the matters which concern her she can
deal with her husband and her son on equal terms, despite her lack of
formal education. Although early modern writers tended to punctuate much
more lightly than we are accustomed to, the letters of the highly educated
Arbella Stuart are virtually free of any pointing at al1. 93 Elizabeth I, despite
having had a rigorous humanist education, also spelled much as she spoke,
asJohn Bruce notes. 94 Far more work needs to be done in this area before
secure conclusions can be reached, but there do seem to be a number of
identifiable variations in written language which are at least partially attrib-
utable to the social constructions of gender in the period and its effects.
Like other linguistic and educational discourses in the period, writing
as it pertained to women was often intended as a form of containment, a
containment reinforced by its overtly sexualised representation within both
popular and elite culture. As Goldberg notes, writing scenes (visual and
dramatic) hint at 'the disempowerment that goes hand in hand with the
claims of an empowering literacy'. 95 One such scene comes from Dekker
and Webster's 1607 play, Westward-Hoe. Mistress Honysuckle coyly suggests
that her friend Mistress Tenterhook might learn to write, and it is immedi-
ately apparent that the scene of teaching is aspace of personal freedom, not
because of the liberatory potential of writing, but because of the sexual
possibilities offered by contact with a man other than their husbands: 'see
how demurely he will beare himselfe before our husbands, and how iocond
when their backes are turn'd'.96 Under the guise of a scene of copying, the
women and their teacher 'copy' one another in the act of deceiving husbands.

41
 THE POLlTlCS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRlTlNG

The pen-master's exchanges are laced with innuendo, which reinforce

the link between writing (rather than copying) and masculinity, 'we that
edifie in private, and traffick by whole sale, must be up with the lark,
because ... wee are to shuffie up many matters in a forenoone ... so I may
but pIe ase al those that come under my fingers' (95). The hapless husband
asks 'And how does my wife profit under you sir? hope you to do any good
upon her'; to which the writing master responds 'I am in great hope shee
shal fructrty' (96). Their minute discussion ofhow she holds the 'pen' provides
the occasion for a running double entendre, culminating in an aural joke
which links together the fashioning of letters with the idea of female deceit:

Hony. And how her v.

lust. Y ou, sir. She fetches up you best of all: her single you she can fashion
two or three waies: but her double you, is as I would wish it. (97)

The humour depends primarily upon the unprecedented access which the
schoolmaster has to the young dissatisfied wife, but it is mediated through
her apparent desire to write, which is in fact adesire to deceive; like the
dangers attributed to women's speech and women's education, learning
to write represents the usurpation of a function troped, however jokingly
here, as male, as the 'pen' substitutes for 'penis' in talk, and gives way to the
penis under the guise of the language lesson: 'have you a new pen for
mee Maister, for by my truly, my old one is stark naught, and wil cast no
inck' (97).
This writing scene finds echoes in numerous other dramatic scenes where
unmarried or unrelated members of opposite sexes are left alone together
under the guise of instruction, but this scene's incorporation of writing itself
as agendered medium which creates (or reflects) hierarchies of power is
significant. 97 It is extremely difficult to determine the extent to which women
were affected as writers by the various representations which worked to
contain their ambitions and engagements with the public sphere, but the
fact that these social constraints existed inevitably means that some care is
needed when dealing with texts by women. We have already seen that
women themselves often reinforce and uphold cultural prescriptions, so that
the notion of an unmediated female voice in the Renaissance cannot be
taken for gran ted, as the writers discussed in Chapter 2 demonstrate. At the
same time, there are voices, modes and hands which are closely identified
with women which certainly gave so me women scope to explore a range of
ideas and ideological commitments by side-stepping some ofthe contradict-
ory messages received from culture more generally. Women use a medium
which is only ever partially their own, but frequently use it to assert the
value of their role in society.

42
 WOMEN, lANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

Notes

2 Susan Ga1, 'Between speech and silence: the prob1ematics of research on

1anguage and gen der' , in Gender at the Crossroads qf Knowledge: Feminist Anthropo-
lOg)! in the Postmodern Era, ed. M. di Leonardo (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia
Press, 1991), 175-203, p. 176.

2 Manfred Görlach, Introduction to Ear?Ji Modem English (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1991), 24.

3 See Doug1as Bruster, '''In a woman's key": Women's speech and women's
1anguage in Renaissance drama', Exemplaria 4 (1992): 235-66, 259; and Patricia
Parker, 'Virile style', in Premodem Sexualities, ed. L. Fradenburg and C. Freccero
(New York: Routledge, 1996), 201-22.

4 On questions of attribution and gender, see Jonathan Goldberg, Sodometries:

Renaissance Texts, Modem Sexualities (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992),
81-101, and Jonathan Goldberg, Desiring Women Writing: English Renaissance
Examples (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 135-63.
5 Deborah Cameron, Feminism and Linguistic 1heory, 2nd edn (Basingstoke:
Macmil1an, 1992), 37.

6 See Richard A. Lanham, 1he Motives qf Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renais-
sance (New Haven: Ya1e University Press, 1976), ch. I.

7 For more on the Renaissance curriculum, see T.W. Ba1dwin, William Shakspere's
Small Latine and Lesse Greeke, 2 vo1s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1944).
8 Rosemary O'Day, Education and Society 1500-1800: 1he Social Foundations qf
Education in Ear?Ji Modem Britain (London: Longman, 1982), 179.
9 Jonathan Goldberg, Writing Matter: From the Hands qf the English Renaissance
(Stanford: Stanford U niversity Press, 1990), 141.

10 AJ. Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500-1800 (New Haven:
Ya1e University Press, 1995),375.

11 In Suzanne Trill, Kate Chedgzoy and Me1anie Osborne, eds. Lay by rour
Needles Ladies, Take the Pen: Writing Women in England, 1500-1700 (London:
Arnold, 1997), 109.
12 See David Cressy, Literary and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and
Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 118-41;
R. Houston, 'Literacy and society in the west, 1500-1850', Social History 8
(1983): 269-93, 272.
13 Dorothy Gardiner, English Girlhood at Schaol: A Stu4J qfWomen's Education through
Twelve Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1929), 200.

43
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

14 Autobiography. In Randall Martin (ed.), Women Writers in Renaissance England

(London: Longrnan, 1997),215-16.
15 These contradictory impulses are analysed by Linda Pollock, "'Teach her to
live under obedience": The making of wornen in the upper ranks of early
modern England', Continuiry and Change 4 (1989): 231-58.
16 Thornas Salter, A Mirrhor mete fir all motkers, Matrones, and Maidens, intituled the
Mirrhor of Modestie (1579), in Lay by rour Needles, 45.
17 Philip Stubbes, A Christal Glasse, fir Christian Women (1591), in Lay by rour
Needles, 58.
18 Trans. Richard Hyrde. In Classics in the Education of Girls and Women, ed.
Shirley N. Kersey (Metchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1981), 37.
19 Goldberg, Desiring Women Writing, 76.
20 Goldberg, Writing Matter, 27.
21 Alan Stewart, Close Readers: Humanism and Sodomy in Earf)! Modem England
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), xx.
22 See Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Earf)! Modem England,
1550-1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), ch. 7; and Barbara J. Harris,
'Wornen and politics in early Tudor England', Historical Journal 33 (1990):
259-81 on the contribution of wornen to politics via the creation of social
networks, patronage relations and gift-giving.
23 Antony Grafton, LisaJardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the
Liberal Arts in Fifleenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (London: Duckworth, 1986),
57.
24 Richard Mulcaster, Positions (1581), in Kersey, Classics,65.
25 Cressy, Literacy, 42-61 and 119.
26 See Keith Thornas, 'The rneaning of literacy in Early Modern England', in
1he Written Word: Literacy in Transition, ed. Gerd Baumann (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1986), 97-131 on the various possible types of literacy.
27 Frorn A Treatise Containing a Plain and Perfict Description 0/ Ireland (1577), in
Görlach, Introduction, 383.
28 Women in Earf)! Modem England, 212-13.
29 George Webbe (1619), 2,3.
30 For the 'phallic wornan' see Mary Jacobus, Reading Woman: Essays in Feminist
Criticism (New York: Colurnbia University Press, 1986), 110-36. On the
gendering of the tongue see Patricia Parker, 'On the tongue: cross gendering,
efferninacy, and the art of words', Sryle 23 (1989): 445-65, and Carla
Mazzio,'Sins of the tongue', in 1he Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporealiry in Earf)!

44
 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

Modem Europe, ed. D. Hillman and C. Mazzio (New York: Routledge, 1997),
53-79.
31 Webbe (1619),30.
32 Jacques Guillemeau, Child-birth, or, the happy delivery o/women (1612), quoted in
Mazzio, 'Sins', 59-60.
33 Henry Smith, A Preparative to Mariage (1591), 38-9.
34 In Lay by rour Needles, 58.
35 01 Domesticall Duties, in Lay by rour Needles, 116.
36 Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, Ihe Roaring Girl, 2nd edn, ed.
Elizabeth Cook (London: A. & C. Black, 1997), 3.2.52-5.
37 Roger Ascham, Ihe Scholemaster, in English Works, ed. W.A. Wright (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904), 194; and Patricia Parker, 'Virile
Style', 201-22.
38 George Puttenharn, Ihe Arte 0/ English Poesie, ed. G.D. Willcock and A. Walker
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), 173.
39 R.W. Bailey, Images 0/English (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 1991),
253.
40 Puttenharn, English Poesie, 108.
41 Peter Erondel1, 'In commendation of Mounsieur Erondel, and his Garden', Ihe
French Garden (1605), sig. A6r.
42 See Juliet Fleming, 'Ihe French Garden: an introduction to women's French',
English Literary History 56 (1989): 19-51.
43 From Ihe Metamorphosis 0/ AJax (1595). Cited in Charles Barber, Early Modem
English (London: Andre Deutsch, 1976), 156.
44 See for example, BenJonson, Epicoene, or the Silent Woman, in Volpone and Other
Plays, ed. Loma Hutson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998), 2.2.64-73.
45 Cicero, De Oratore, vol. 2, trans. H. Rackham (London: Heinemann Ltd,
1942), Book 3. xii. 45-6.
46 1531. Quoted in Bailey, Images 0/ English, 252.
47 Juliet Fleming, 'Dictionary English and the female tongue', in Privileging Gen-
der in Early Modem England, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies XXIII, ed.
Jean R. Brink (Kirksville, 1993): 175-204.
48 Bruster, 'In a woman's key', 238.
49 BenJonson, Epicoene, 3.2.1-3.
50 Ben Jonson, Eastward Hoe, in Ben ]onson, vol. 4, ed. C.H. Herford and Percy
Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 1.2.4-5; 56; 121-3.

45
 THE POLITICS OF EARlY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

51 This scene is discussed by Patricia Parker, Shakespeare ]rom the Margins: Language,
Culture, Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 116f.
52 The Merry Wives of Windsor, ed. HJ. Oliver, Arden Shakespeare (London:
Methuen, 1971), 4.1.1 7-24; 42-6.
53 Geoffrey Hughes, Swearing: A Social History ofFoul Language, Oaths and Profani!J in
English (Oxford Blackwell, 1991), 101.
54 See Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modem
Lmdon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), chs 2 and 3,
55 Cressy, Literary, 8.
56 See Louis B. Wright, 'The reading of Renaissance English wornen', Studies
in Philology 28 (1931): 671-88, and Suzanne Hull, Chaste, Silent and Obedient:
English Booksfor Women 1474-1640 (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1982).
57 See also Loma Hutson, The Usurer's Daughter: Male Friendship and Fictions of
Women in Sixteenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 1994),89.
58 See Vives (c.1526), dedication of Erasrnus, Devout Treatise upon the Pater Noster,
trans. Margaret Roper, sig. A4: 'Redyng and stydyeing of bokes so occupieth
the rnynde that it can have no leyser to muse or delyte in other fanstasies
whan in all handy werkes that rnen saye be more mete for a wornan the body
rnay be busy in one place and the rnynde walkyng in another while they syt
sowing and spinnying with their fyngers rnay caste and cornpasse rnany
pevysshe fantasyes in their rnyndes.'
59 Daniel Touteville, Asylum Veneris, Or a Sanctuaryfor Ladies (1616),90.
60 See eh. 6, 232-5 for exarnples and further discussion.
61 Jacqueline Pearson, 'Wornen reading, reading wornen', in Women and Literature
in Britain 1500-1700, ed. Helen Wilcox (Carnbridge: Carnbridge University
Press, 1997), 80-99, 83.
62 Paraphrases of the New Testament. Quoted in Maria Perry, Elizabeth I: The Word of
a Prince: A Lift]rom Contemporary Documents (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1990), 46.
63 Autobiography, in Martin, Women Writers, 211; see also 220.
64 See Frances Teague, :Judith Shakespeare reading', Shakespeare Qyarterly 47
(1996): 361-73.
65 In Lay by rour Needles, 69,70,71.
66 In Martin, Women Writers, 211,212.
67 In Volpone and Other Plays, 3.4.96-7.
68 Wye Saltonstall, trans. Ovid's Heroicall Epistles (1636), sig. A4 r •
69 For a fuller account ofthe Heroides and gender, see Danielle Clarke, "'Forrn'd
into words by your divided lips": wornen, rhetoric and the Ovidian tradition',

46
 WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC

in 'Ihis Double Voice': Gendered Writing in Ear/y Modem England, ed, D. Clarke
and E. Clarke (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 61-87.
70 Victoria Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence and Skepticism in the Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1985), 39f
71 Edward Rainbowe, A Sermon Preached at Walden in Essex (1649), 13.
72 Quoted in Perry, Elizabeth I, 102.
73 Patricia Parker and David Quint (eds), Literary Iheory/Renaissance Texts (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1986), 3.
74 W. Darnell (ed.), Ihe Correspondence of Isaac Basire, D,D, (1839), 2l.
75 Heidi Hackel, 'The "great variety" of readers', in A Companion to Shakespeare,
ed. David Scott Kastan (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999): 139-57, 149.
76 Kevin Sharpe draws quite different conclusions; see his Reading Revolutions: Ihe
Politics of Reading in Ear/y Modem England (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2000), 297.
77 In Martin, Women Writers, 194.
78 Rainbowe, A Sermon, 12.
79 Rachel Speght, 'To the reader' in Ihe Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght, ed.
Barbara K. Lewalski (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996),47.
80 See Hackei, '''Great V ariety" " 147.
81 Positions. In Kersey, Classics, 61-2.
82 Alice Friedman, 'The inftuence of humanism on the education of girls and
boys in Tudor England', History ofEducation Qyarter/y 30 (1985): 57-70,65.
83 Keith Thomas, 'Meaning of literacy', 99-100.
84 From Ihe Lift and Death of Sir Ihomas More. In Kersey, Classics, 49.
85 See Goldberg, Writing Matter, 1-2; 138.
86 From De reeta Graeci et Latini sermonis pronunciatione, in A. Osley (sei. and trans.),
Scribes and Sourees: Handbook of the Chancery Hand in the Sixteenth Century (London:
Faber and Faber, 1980), 33.
87 In Thomas, 'Meaning ofLiteracy', 117.
88 Ihe Education of Children in Leaming (1588), in Robert Pepper (ed.), Four Tudor
Books on Education (Gainsville: Scho1ars' Facsimi1es and Reprints, 1966), 226.
89 Martin Billings1ey, Ihe Pens Excellencie (1618), quoted in Go1dberg, Writing
Matter, 139.
90 Vives, De Ratione Studii Puerilis, quoted in Go1dberg, Writing Matter, 145.
91 See Go1dberg, Desiring Women, 144-63.

47
 THE rOllTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

92 Letters qf the Lady Brilliana Harlry, ed. Thomas Lewis (London: Camden Society,
1854), no. 58, 76.
93 See 17ze Letters qf Lady Arbella Stuart, ed. SaraJayne Steen (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1994).
94 John Bruce (ed.), 17ze Letters qf Qyeen Elizabeth and King James VI qf Scotland
(London: Camden Society, 1849), no. 46.
95 Go1dberg, Writing Matter, 142.
96 In A Newe Booke qfCopies 1574, ed. Berthold Wolpe (London: Oxford University
Press, 1962), Appendix, 95.
97 See, for example, Middleton and Dekker, 17ze Roaring Girl, 4.1.

48
 CHAPTER TWO

'I wrote this booke with my hand, but not

with my heart': The Renaissance Debate
about W omen 1

This chapter looks at interventions produced by fictional or real women in

what was known as the querelle des femmes. This was an ongoing debate on
the nature of women, centred upon the question of their innate immorality
versus their natural morality being made in the image of God. Attached to
this central question were a range of ideologies, discourses popular, elite
and scientific, and textual sources and authorities which together give us a
good insight into what we might call the discourse about women, meaning a
set of conventionaHy agreed and authoritative ideas which in theory deter-
mined woman's place, role and behaviour. The debate consists of aseries
of pro-feminist and anti-feminist texts, mostly arguing about the same key
passages in authoritative texts, classical and scriptural. However, like those
educational tracts which argue that learning should be extended to girls (an
argument which is itself caught up in the terms of the woman debate)
gestures of indusion are not necessarily what they seem at first sight. As the
writers considered in this chapter demonstrate, even the most basic assump-
tions need to be questioned and examined when approaching women in
early modern culture, induding those surrounding authorship, voice and
intentionality .
Although the so-called woman debate is only one of the genres appropri-
ated by women in the early modern period, it is one which has taken on a
particular valency for scholars of Renaissance women's writing. As we will
see, the terms and conditions of these appropriations are fraught with diffi-
culties; difficulties which go to the heart of the competing desires and ideo-
logies structuring this field. It would suit modern feminist expectations very
weH to be able to find in the texts circulated under the pseudonyms jane
Anger', 'Constantia Munda' and 'Ester Sowernam' an emerging femin-
ist sensibility, a self-identification with women as a dass distinct in certain

49
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

particulars from men, or a definitive female voice. However, the terms and
conditions which produce this sub-genre and the discursive structures within
which the resulting texts circulate trouble any attempt to see these writers,
together with the one text unequivocally identified by a female authorial
signature, as originating an ongoing, if ruptured, historicallinearity between
ourselves and these apparent forebears. Even if we were to accept such a
feminist teleology, we would be left with some deeply troubling questions -
not least, why is it that the same kinds of questions are still being asked four
centuries later?
It is the apparent parallelism irnplied by my last question which leads
to, at worst, misreadings, and at best, reductive interpretations. Because of
the outwardly recognisable form of the woman debate texts, and our
over-familiarity with their arguments, we are inclined to see them more in
terms of sameness than difference. 2 The first issue to consider in an attempt
to defamiliarise the texts of the woman debate is broadly a generic one.
Since the appearance of Linda Woodbridge's comprehensive survey it has
become axiomatic to reiterate the highly formal, stylised and rhetoricised
nature of the querelle des fimmes, from its scholastic inception through to its
early modern manifestations. The pro et contra nature of the argument is
evident in the genre's almost tedious dependence upon a set of more or less
recognisable exempla and topoi, and its patterns of response and defence. Its
less frequently marked tendency to be authored by young men interested in
a ludic textuality directed for the most part to other men, often in the
context of all-male institutions, in particular the Inns of Court, points away
from these being 'women's' texts. Arguably, as with other early modern
textual forms ostensibly interested in 'women', such codified attention rein-
forces women's exclusion from the field which it is these texts' discursive
function to demarcate. 3 This context enables us to reconsider the purported
'feminism' of the pro-woman texts. The formal aspects of the debate me an
that an identification between an author and the views expressed is not
straightforward; pro-woman arguments are produced from within a binary
opposition (rhetorical and conceptual) which has as its foundation the
anatomisation of women into two mutually exclusive categories, good and
bad, neither of which has any connection with the involvement of women
themselves as agents of their own morality. Similarly, it cannot be assumed
that such texts (on either 'side' of the argument) inscribe a monolithic
patriarchy which the entry of women as posited 'authors' attempts to dis-
place. 4 It is tempting to over-estimate the irnportance of authorship in
relation to aseries of texts which, by and large, cross and recross familiar
territory, but the strongly intertextual nature of the genre raises questions
about the degree to which any particular version or variant of the traditions
can be said to be the individual intellectual property of a given writer. 5

so
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

The question of authorship is most troubling in relation to those querelle

des fimmes texts circulated under female signatures which are patently and
exuberantly pseudonymous. With the exception of Joseph Swetnam and
Rachel Speght, none of the 'authors' under discussion he re have been
found to have an existence beyond their textual traces, and in the case of
Swetnam this amounts to little more than the fact that he authored another
text. 6 Given the nature of the exchanges typical of the debate, it is quite
possible that a male writer may have adopted a female authorial persona,
and entered the argument through the device of prosopopoeia. In the
absence of compelling evidence establishing authorial identities (of which
gender identity is only one aspect), we are left with difficult interpretive
choices. One option is to try to establish the gender of the writer by an exam-
ination of internal evidence. However, in this very specific instance, it
would be dangerous to equate a pro-woman stance with a female author, or
to assurne that a female author would not or could not write a misogynist
text; this would ignore the conventions and literary habits of the genre. It
also flattens out the inconsistencies and various concerns of the genre by
reducing its meaning to the single axis of gender rather than considering
in addition questions of dass, form, and rhetoric. Two recent editors of
selected texts from the 'woman debate' suggest that doubts about the author-
ship of these texts can be explained away by 'misogyny' and that 'probabil-
ity strongly supports our contention that these writers were indeed women,
as they daimed'. 7 This suggests a problematic notion of female authorship;
namely a high degree of homology between author and text, where this
highly formalised genre suggests the opposite. A construct created from the
internal dynamics of the text is then imposed upon it, producing an ana-
chronistic feminist sensibility; as Purkiss has argued, most critics 'read
the speaking voice of the pamphlets as a representation of a female figure
whose tangibility can be established by re course to the texts'.8 However, it
is more difficult than we think to uncouple the text from the assumed
gender of its author, and it is dearly the case that many of these texts were
intended to be read as if they had been written by women - this is not neces-
sarily a liberatory strategy, as we will see. Henderson and McManus argue
that in the J acobean period 'there was simply no reason why men should
choose to write defenses under female names', but this ignores some of
the salient features of the woman debate, particularly in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. 9 One reason why men may have turned into
authorial cross-dressers was the long-standing nature of the debate and the
repetitive nature of its arguments; to introduce a female persona was at
least novel, and may have been rather a titillating novelty at that, given the
kinds of proscriptions and constructions surrounding female speech, and the
fact that each of these female personas usurps certain social and political

51
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

functions more usually the preserve of men, such as the law.!O As Purkiss
argues, the female personae are to so me extent produced by the traditional
postures of the woman debate, and that their names 'attach the speaking
voices ofthe pamphlets firmly to particular debating roles';!! ifwe can find
a woman in the text, she is very much interpellated into the subject positions
laid down by early modern society, rather than being the gender-conscious,
autonomous point of origin that critics have frequently assumed her to be.
The querelle des .femmes as a formal controversy ranged across a variety of
forms and genres: other texts discussed in this book have important links to
the woman debate.!2 The group of texts discussed he re share a number of
features. They mostly address a London-based audience, and betray anxi-
eties about gender which may be related to the energy and anarchy of an
emergent urban culture: in such settings, issues about social order are very
much to the fore, and one way to tackle these is to redact them (or project
them) onto one particular category which can stand in metonymically for a
host of social ills. The arguments proposed on both sides illustrate that the
debate has drifted froin its formal scholastic origins, and it becomes more
strongly rooted in the contemporary and popular, in dass questions, and
issues of social mixing and lack of distinction. There are many connections
to other generic forms and cultural concerns; Swetnam's concern with women
spending what men earn has dear analogies with the satirical portraits
of city women found in, among others, Ben Jonson's comedies.!3 These
are essentially popular texts, drawing upon the pamphlet and the ballad,
designed to provoke and amuse. The use of women as respondents in this
context starts to look slightly different: rather than being the legitimately
outraged woman of virtue, many of these writers are presented through
strategies which display various stereotypical women as if they are real,
authentie women. Whether actually authored by women or not, it is still the
case that the authorial personas in these texts conform to a textual game
akin to the various ritual forms of disorder that enabled a strongly
hierarchised society to function.!4 Such elements operate in various ways,
induding the powerfully invective rhetoric deployed by many of the writers
(a significant exception is Rachel Speght) which raises the spectre of the
shrewish woman. The appropriation of various rhetorical strategies and
methods of argument usually reserved for men suggests a viciously comic
catachresis at work as much as it does an assertion of the intellectual equal-
ity of warnen, and the spectacle of a man being tried in a court by a female
judge and jury suggests the kinds of inversions of order associated with
rituals such as the charivari. While these texts tell us a good deal about
constructions of gender in early seventeenth-century London, how much
they can tell us about the individuals who produced them must remain
in doubt. They do suggest ways in which we might need to rethink so me

52
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

of our assumptions about authorship and its intersections with gender in

order to place these writings fully within their contexts. As Beilin argues,
'[e] ach of these works attempted something stylistically and formally new
for the woman writer, although they did not represent the birth of a feminist
consciousness'.15

Jane Anger and the inversion of tradition

The polemical pamphlet ]ane Anger her Protection Jor Women was published in
1589 in London, seemingly in response to an anti-woman text which is now
lost.1 6 Like other texts with female signatures it is a response to an attack
which is posited as having an independent existence. This absent text is
referred to at various points in the Protection Jor Women, but in each case
these writers construct an idea of female authorship as reactive, as a process
of creating a voice out of the spaces and elisions of the male text and
misogyny. At one level, the Protection confirms the idea of female authorship
embodied in the figure of Echo; derivative, secondary, but also bringing a
crucial and subversive difference to what was originally uttered. Even in the
absence of the text to which it responds, it is clear that the Protection works
mainly within the confines of the conventions of the woman debate, but like
many predecessors (on both sides) 'she' inverts and reverses the terms of
many of the detractor's arguments. 17 Yet certain features of the pamphlet
mean that a Protection moves the argument on from the stagnation of most
Elizabethan contributions. 18 The text is highly self-conscious regarding the
genre to which it belongs; it attempts to draw in a specifically female audi-
ence, who are imagined as engaging with its arguments; and it reverses the
convention whereby women are treated as an undifferentiated category,
whereas men are not.
The title-page of the Protection makes no claim to female authorship,
suggesting only that the pamphlet is to be read as being in a female voice,
and that it is addressed to women of all classes. That the text's investment
in collapsing difference in regard to men is parallel to that allegedly found
in the attack on women to which it responds suggests that it is part of a
literary game or jest, rather than an overly serious engagement with moral
and social questions. Given the text's overall interest in tropes ofinversion, it
is possible to see it as a variant on the conventions of the form, but a vari-
ant which attempts to insert the female point of view, whether this is to be
read as authentie or not. There are several points at which the authorial voice
breaks off to pull in the female audience, and the first person plural is used
consistently to perpetuate the illusion of female solidarity in the face of male

53
 THE POLlTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

attack. The framework set up by the author also needs to be considered,

as 'her' stance of gender solidarity attempts to provide a warning to women,
and suggests aseries of strategies with which to counter male assaults upon
feminine honour, chastity and reputation. 19 As a consequence, the pamphlet
does not mount a serious or far-reaching challenge to Elizabethan notions
of female virtue, rather it argues for judgement to be equitably applied,
and for each sex to take full responsibility for their weaknesses. 20
The version of authorship which the Protection sets up unsetdes too straight-
forward an equation between the writer's sex and the gendering of voice
within a narrative. Even if jane Anger' is actually a woman, it remains the
case that 'her' pamphlet is presented to the reader through an ideological
matrix which bears the marks of the genre within which 'she' writes; the
stance of outraged modesty and diluted responsibility for the resultant text
are powerful features of woman debate texts which we know to have been
authored by men, young men often moving into print for the first time. The
name jane Anger' is undoubtedly a personification, fitting in a text which
deploys both allegory and animal fables. It quite appropriately sets up female
anger at mistreatment by men as justified, while adhering to the prevalent
model that women are merely inferior copies or versions of men, as jane'
modifies 'Anger', setting it up as the female form of this humour. This
stance is underlined by the assertion that 'it was Anger that did write it' (sig.
A2r), suggesting both an abstraction from a person with a 'real' identity,
and that the text might be reduced to the emotion which produced it. This
sense of a female voice being over-identified with the body that it inhabits
(the idea that women were overly subject to their humours) may be a
stance of modesty on the part of a writer who wished to put some distance
between text and author, but also suggests notions of illogicality and irra-
tionality which are almost inextricably linked to Renaissance constructions
of women, and to female intellectual capacity in particular:

Gentlewomen, though it is to be feared that YOUf setled wits wil adviseclly

condemne that, which my cholloricke vaine hath rashly set downe, and so
perchance, Anger shal reape anger for not agreeing with diseased persons.
(sig. A2r)

The stance of 'Anger' also offsets the text's tendency to fall into the brand
of rhetorical excess that it condemns (possibly also a motivation for the use
of a female voice), an excess which is also presented as being c1ass-inftected.
Anger's address to 'Gendewomen' pre-empts their discomfort, taking refuge
in measured language, apology, and an appeal to the law. By contrast, the
dedication 'To all Women in generall' (a category into which 'Gende-
women' are clearly not deemed to fall) is much more vehement in tone, and
calls for solidarity:

54
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

Fie on the falshoode of men, whose minds goe oft a madding, & whose
tongues can not so soone bee wagging, but straight they fal a railing. Was
there ever any so abused, so slaundered, so railed upon, or so wickedly
handeled undeservedly, as are we women?
(sig. A2v)

It seems ironic that women are asked to join with the text in tones and
terms which elsewhere are specifically and negatively associated with miso-
gynist invective.
The Protection attacks the genre to which it belongs as much as it does the
grounds and effects of misogyny; the first half of the pamphlet is given over
to an engagement with men's motivations for writing in what is presented
as a devalued and outmoded form, before turning to a more conventional
kind of defence, deploying exempla and authorities (sig. B4v). The attack on
women is presented as being a rhetorical game, with a veiled attack on the
deceptions of Ciceronian rhetoric:

their mindes are so caried away with the manner, as no care at aH is had
of the matter: they run so into Rethorick, as often times they overrun the
boundes of their own wits, and goe they knowe not whether.
(sig. Blr)

It is also the last resort of failed invention, 'there remaines one help, which is,
to write of us women' (sig. BI r), which re-evaluates the genre as discredited
- an interesting move in a text which purports to be by a woman, as it sug-
gests the devalued and outmoded nature of the form within which 'she'
writes. There is a repeated sense of weariness, and self-consciousness with
the form, which highlights and valorises the innovative twist added by the
deployment of a female voice. Anger cites the expectation that women
could not, and would not, respond ('they think we wil not write to reproove
their lying lips' (B Ir)), which has permitted men to run to excess in their
formal appraisals of women - a central tenet of the Protection is that men
need women in order to keep them in check, and to confront reality rather
than indulging their fantasies and prejudices. Stylistic critique is the point of
entry for Anger's engagement with the text to which 'she' is responding:

because as weH women as men are desirous of novelties, I willinglie read

over: neither did the ending thereof lesse please me then the beginning, for
I was so carried away with the conceit of the Gent. as that I was quite out
of the booke before I thought I had bene in the middest thereof: So pithie
were his sentences, so pure his wordes, and so pleasing his stile.
(Blv)

55
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRlTING

Style he re is seen as a deception, a code against which women have no

defence, a screen which conceals the true matter of what are termed 'the
innumerable number of bookes to that purpose' (sig. BI v).
The main stylistic and argumentative technique used by Anger is that of
inversion, turning received wisdom around and providing explanations for
why women are stereotyped in those ways exemplified by the pamphlet to
which 'she' responds. Innate female superiority is contrasted with cultural
inferiority, primarily by homogenising men into a single category in much
the same way that misogyny conventionally does to women. In the process,
conventional ideas of women are often reinforced and maintained, but
revalued:

The greatest fault that doth remaine in us women is, that we are too
credulous, for could we ftatter as they can dissemble, and use our wittes
well, as they can their tongues ill, then never would any of them complaine
of surfeiting.
(sig. B2v)

Conventional hierarchies are playfully inverted, for example, in the instance

of women's essential moral superiority, where Anger argues that men were
given authority over women in order to prevent them from pride:

they [the gods] bestowed the supremacy over us to man, that of that
Cockscombe he might onely boast, and therfore for Gods sake let them
keepe it.
(sig. B2v)

It is female virtue which attracts men to women but men's nature leads
them to corrupt and exploit such goodness for their own ends. Anger inverts
the terms of misogynistic rhetoric, and turns their words to witty advantage:

Our good toward them is the destruction of our selves, we being wel
formed, are by them fouly deformed: of our true meaning they make
mockes, rewarding our loving follies with disdainful ftoutes: we are the
griefe of man, in that wee take all the griefe from man: we languish when
they laugh, we lie sighing when they sit singing, and sit sobbing when they
lie slugging and sleeping.
(sig. B3r)

Acknowledging the rhetorical roots of the woman debate, Anger takes con-
ventional Latin tags and proverbial sayings and reinterprets them to women's
advantage, for example, the phrase aut amat, aut odit, non est in tertio,2! rather
than being read as indicating women's tendency to run to extremes is

56
 TH E RENAl SSANCE OEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

viewed in relation to a powerful morality: 'shee loveth justice and hateth

iniquitie: she loveth trueth and true dealing, and hateth lies and falshood:
she loveth man for his vertues, & hateth hirn for his vices' (sig. B3r). The
conventional vocabulary of the debate is playfully turned on its head:
'Wee are contrary to men, because they are contrarie to that which is good'
(B3r); 'our behaviours alter daily, because men vertues decay hourely'
(B3r-v). Rather than challenging the stereotypes of femininity found within
the woman debate, Anger suggests explanations for women's behaviour,
diverting the blame towards men and male assumptions. The same balan-
cing strategy is used in relation to the usual exempla - the immorality of
Clytemnestra, Ariadne and Jezebel is freely admitted, but countered with
'shal not Nero with others innumerable, & therefore unnameable joine
handes with them and lead the daunce?' (sig. B3v). In the process, the
category of women is subjected to a pluralisation which shifts the ground
from conftict between the sexes to a question of morality and virtue which
may apply to either sex: 'Euthydomus made sixe kinde of women, and I will
approove that there are so many of men: which be, poore and rich, bad
and good, foule and faire' (sig. B4r). The argument is that in their relations
with women, men are the authors of their own misfortune, that they con-
struct women in such a way as to bring about their own destruction: 'Every
honest man ought to shun that which detracteth both health and safety
from his owne person, and strive to bridle his slanderous tongue' (sig. B4v).
An extension to the logic of inversion is found at the point at which
a Protection moves from direct engagement with its antecedent text to con-
siderations of female virtue. The author's ruse is that the 'greedye grazer'
who wrote the tract is set on a purely personal argument, 'which nothing
belongeth to our matter' (sig. Clr). Instead, 'she' moves on to a much more
conventional consideration of 'howe and in what, they that are our worst
enemies, are both inferiour unto us, & most beholden unto our kindenes'
(sig. Clr). This marks a movement into parody, and it is a parody of a
misogynist position which derives its power precisely from the subversion
of that position that comes with a posited change of authorial sex. Many
elements of this inversion are standard, and will be seen to recur in other
pro-woman tracts. For example, the re-reading of the creation of man and
woman, where much is made of the fact that man was created 'of drosse
and filthy clay' (sig. C Ir), and that woman was created second in order to
complete and perfeet God's first creation. Through a mixture of various
sources and authorities (classical, biblical, proverbial, anecdotal, experiential)
Anger realigns the relationships between men and women and their relat-
ive moral status. Women's virtue derives primarily from their fulfilment of
the proper roles allotted to them; their fidelity, their faith, constancy and
house-keeping abilities. The equality of the sexes before God is asserted:

57
 THE rOLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

But least some shuld snarle on me, barking out this reason: that none is
good but God, and therfore women are ill, I must yeeld that in that respect
we are il, & affirm that men are no better, seeing we are so necessarie unto
them.
(Clv)

A further inversion of conventional wisdom on the respective roles of

the sexes concerns the question of male and female speech. This is closely
connected to another strand running through the generic reworking of the
'woman debate' form found in a Protection. As weil as propounding pro-
woman arguments, Anger's pamphlet also masquerades as a form of advice
for women, in particular on how they may protect themselves not only from
men's opinions of them, but also from male advances (again, this could be
part of a specifically male fantasy about the availability of urban women,
such as that found inJonson's Epicoene, 2.1). Like Isabeila Whitney's 'Admoni-
tion', much of this advice consists of suspicion about men's motives, and
distrust of their speech, as the dedication to the 'Gentlewomen of England'
suggests: 'committing your protection, and my selfe, to the protection of
your selves' (sig. A2r). The 'protection' envisaged involves alerting women
to the dangers posed by men's deceit, and enabling them to pre-empt the
destruction oftheir honour and reputation. The injunction to distrust men's
words is also applied to the texts of the woman debate itself, '[s]o pithie
were his sentences, so pure his wordes, and so pleasing his stile' (sig. BI v).
The failings of men are presented as being primarily verbal: 'he hath mis-
placed and mistaken certaine wordes' (ibid.). The Protection is fuil of wa,rn-
ings, often framed like proverbs (and sometimes based on them), regarding
the falsity of men's speech: 'mens fair wordes do worke great wo, unlesse
they be suspected'; 'false are their lips, besmer'd with flatterie' (sig. Blv,
B2r). Once more, this is an inversion of the traditional hierarchy, where it
is women's speech which is subjected to intense scrutiny, but it also forces
us to examine the status of the Protection itself; if speech and rhetoric are to
be mistrusted, how far can we take the text at its word?22 Rather than being
a serious attempt to rework relations between the sexes, at times a Protection
reads more like a parody of the genre it purports to follow, aimed at the
entertainment of both men and women.

Swetnarn the wornan-hater arraigned

Joseph Swetnam's The Araignment rif 1.ewd, ldle, Froward and Unconstant Women
(1615) might have retained its status as a minor, somewhat incoherent and
mostly conventional contribution to the woman debate, were it not for its

58
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

popularity (ten editions by 1637 23 ) and the fact that something in it provoked
aseries of responses circulated under female signatures and an anonymous
play. Certainly, its literary reputation has not been high in the opinions
of critics examining the peculiar literary phenomenon that surrounds
Swetnam: some of this may be attributed to their desire to refute his miso-
gyny through exposing the weakness of his style, method and rhetoric - a
technique also used by his contemporary detractors. But The Araignment does
not differ hugely from many other anti-woman texts: it is repetitive, cer-
tainly; bombastic, definitely; derivative and heavily based upon the bringing
together of exempla, often without order, or without sensing the contradic-
tions produced by this. Like many other woman debate texts Swetnam's is
an amalgam of sources, deploying authorities from the Bible, the classics
and proverbial wisdom, many of which are selectively used, or deliberately
misunderstood in order to create an argument which is consistent, even if it
is not coherent. The Araignment vents a powerful cultural fear of women, and
of men's desire for them, presented repeatedly as debilitating, sinful and
contrary to financial and personal probity. Fundamental to this piece of
invective is a particularly Protestant mistrust of surfaces, and of words, but
without the complex morality that Puritan divines, for example, tried to
inculcate in the minds of readers of marriage manuals and courtesy books.
It is not just that women emblematise deceit and hypocrisy, but that men
are frequently misled by their senses, and by implication, their sexual de-
sires: 'in the choise of thy wife, thou must not trust thy owne eyes, for they
will deceive thee, and be the cause of thy woe' (p. 45). There is no remedy
to the woman question in Swetnam other than abstinence and the retreat
into all-male company.
It is this all-male context which provides the clue to Swetnam's particu-
lar interpretation of the woman debate; The Araignment is designed to func-
tion as a warning to men, and its extreme tone may be a consequence of
the age-group to which the text is addressed; it is directed to a group of
young men prior to marriage. It is a 'bachelor' text which uses extreme
warnings to help young sexually active men avoid the temptations and
dangers (to finances, honour, happiness, morality) that women pose. It is as
if male sexual intemperance and proneness to lust have to be projected onto
women in order for the proper estate of marriage to be reached; if men are
not caught in the traps laid for them by female beauty, greed, deceit, then
they may learn to make a good marriage (p. 47f). Yet it is also framed in
such a way as to involve women, and to circumscribe any possible objec-
tions that they may have. Despite Swetnam's exclusive concentration on
advice to men, his address 'to the common sort ofWOMEN' (sig. A2r) does
suggest that they might read what is to follow, and that they should accept
its premises and conclusions without question or debate. In effect, the text

59
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

creates an unbridgeable rupture between men and women, and reinforces

notions of sexual difference by collapsing them simply into men = good/
women = bad. The Araignment circulates images and examples of immoral
and unruly women for the amusement of men, on the utopian assumption
that aseparation of spheres is possible and desirable. However, the text is
full of contradictions, which collectively threaten to turn The Araignment into
a carnivalesque parody, unable to sustain a coherent argument, and hence
to sustain the separatist logic which informs it. In much the same way that
the tide-page promises a 'pro' argument to match its 'contra' ('With a
Commendation of wise, vertuous and honest women'), many places in the text
cite precedents which omit crucial contexts (as Rachel Speght points out
with almost scientific precision), or examples are used in contrary ways.
Furthermore, given the legal terminology which frames Swetnam's tract,
The Araignment conceptualises a 'defence' which it fails to deliver, possibly in
order to invite the responses which duly followed. The terms in which
Swetnam presents his text suggest (and may even recall) those deployed by
jane Anger', drawing heavily on bodily somatics to explain its genesis in
order to place some distance between teller and tale, and to permit the kind
of bombastic exaggeration which by this time appears to typify the genre:

Musing with my selfe being idle, and having litde ease to passe the time
withal; and I being in a great choller against some women, I me an more
then one.
(sig. A2r)

Throughout the text, statements are made which render Swetnam's pro-
nouncements ironic; for example that on the tide-page addressing the text
'to the common sort of WOMEN' - not, as it would appear, a dass state-
ment as such, but rather a way of suggesting that alt women conform to the
stereotypes set out in the main body of the text.
Underlying the text's misogynist jokes is excess of various kinds - in
particular, of style. Adjectives and dauses are piled up, and the same
examples are obsessively reworked. However, this excess of style points to
the possibility that Swetnam's text may be a parody of the misogynist position,
and to the problematic notions which accompany male excess in speech.
For a text which attacks women, The Araignment expresses considerable une ase
about its status, both inviting and repelling criticism and response:

I know I shall be bitten by many, because I touch many ... whatsoever

you thinke privately, I wish you to conceale it with silence, lest in starting
up to find fault, you prove yourselves guilty of these monstrous accusations,
which are here following against some women.
(sig. A2v)

60
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

Paradoxically, the speaker's fear is that he will be branded with the name of
a scold, namely that his identity will merge and become indistinguishable
from that which he seeks to repudiate: 'it is a great discredite for a man to
be accounted for a scold, for scolding is the maner of shrowes' (sig. A3r).
Those branded as scolds were almost exclusively women in the early mod-
ern period, so Swetnam's anxiety points to a fear of annihilation, because
'the threatened category it invokes - woman - has been culturally defined
as the space of abjection'. 24 It also testifies to the threat to order and patri-
archy posed by the notion that sexual difference may indeed be arbitrary
and mutable, as Renaissance comprehension of reproductive biology sug-
gests, thus requiring powerful social and cultural imperatives to keep people
in their place. 25 This anxiety expresses itself most obviously in the area of
words and language, Swetnam casting doubt on his linguistic ruliness
(a point not missed by his respondents) and thereby falling into the very
rhetorical excess which Anger saw as one of the defining features of the
misogyny of the woman debate. As Parker, among others, has pointed out,
the implicit threat of linguistic copia is the loss of linguistic control, which
is frequently equated in the gender ideologies of early modern England with
a troubling effeminisation. 26 Swetnam often refers to the division between
tongue and heart in his attempt to dissociate hirnself from the sentiments of
the text, but this could equally be read as an attempt to offset the troubling
effeminacy that might be attributed to his lack of verbal mastery: 'I confesse
that my tongue hath gone beyond my wits' (sig. A3v). In his anxiety to
define proper manliness against the depredations of women, Swetnam runs
the risk of not only abnegating his proper responsibilities as a man and
potential husband, but also of symbolising the very lack of verbal restraint
that forms such a major element of his attack on women.
It is significant that many of Swetnam's respondents concentrate on his
style and method, rather than attacking the bases of his argument. It is
strongly implied that Swetnam's technique is not only insulting to women,
illogical and uninformed, but that it undoes any credit he might have, and
thus his words carry no weight. Esther Sowernam's Ester hath hang'd Haman
(1617) is one of three responses to 7he Araignment. The text is framed within
the structure of Swetnam's, echoing it, but also overturning it. 'Ester' dis-
places Joseph', and 'Sowemam' ironically opposes 'Swe[e]tnam' - as his
text turns out to be sour rather than sweet, so it is implied 'her' text will be
sweet rather than sour. The biblical model she adopts is not only a staple in
the catalogue of good women found in the woman debate (again, using the
device of prosopopoeia), but an entirely fitting one for the task that Sowernam
has set 'herself' .27 The biblical Esther protected her people from their
enemy Haman, and had hirn hanged; she also conceals her J ewishness from
her enemies in order to infiltrate them more effectively (Esther 2: 10, RSV).

61
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

In this context, such a reference raises questions about the status of the
author; clearly the signature is pseudonymous, but it strongly suggests a
deliberate concealment of identity, both personal and gendered. Although
this may be attributed to the opprobrium associated with women venturing
into print, it is just as likely that such an authorial position enables the text
to suggest that it speaks for 'everywoman', and perpetuates the pattern of
conflict between the sexes set up in Swetnam's text.
The dedicatory epistle identifies an exclusively female audience, but many
of the terms of address imply an audience of young apprentices and lawyers
from the Inns of Court; Sowernam refers to 'this last Michaelmas Terme'
and reapplies 'Right Honourable, Right Worshipfull' to women (sig. A2r-v),
suggesting a certain investment in the circulation of unruly but amusing
tropes offemininity.28 The epistle is directed to women, but the body of the
text is aimed at men, echoing Swetnam's structure, and despite being a
defence of women, the framework perpetuates the same economy of dis-
play and transgression. The position adopted by the speaker defending the
female sex and putting right a book seen as 'scandalous and blasphemous'
(A2r) is presented in broadly legal terms, and echoes the lengths to which
London women were prepared to go in order to maintain their honour and
good name. 29 The text itself is full of parodie elements which suggest that
its functions go beyond the authentie defence of women; for example, the
direction of the text to a marginal all-female audience presented as being
outside the authority of men; the figuration of the text as an all-female
space viewed by a collective male readership allies it closely with other
types of text which specularise unruly and uncontrolled women as negative
examples for other women, and amusing warnings for men, young men in
particular. In the case of both Sowernam and Swetnam two different
readerships are envisaged, each of which has a distinct relationship to the
text. 30
The legal framework used by Sowernam continues the terms laid down
by Swetnam hirnself, as he is attacked for his illogicality and lack of rhetor-
ical order. The writerly position is defined according to stylistic mores troped
as masculine: 'he raileth without cause, I defend upon direct proofe' (sig.
A3v).31 Rather than the grounds being unpicked and destabilised, the terms
are simply inverted:

He saith, wornen are the worst of all Creatures, I proove thern blessed
above all Creatures: He writeth, that rnen should abhorre thern for their
bad eonditions: I prove that rnen should honour thern for their best
dispositions. He saith, wornen are the eauses of rnens overthrow, I prove,
if there be any offenee in a wornen [sie], rnen were the beginners.
(sig. A3v)

62
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

Like Swetnam's text, it is directed to 'gallant youths' and 'worthy young

youths' in order to give advice about women, despite its contrary orientation.
It upholds the central social institution of marriage through its defence, but
traverses the same territory as Swetnam by concentrating upon the trans-
ition of young men from adolescence to manhood:

When you have past your minority, or served your Apprenticeships under
the government of others, when you begin the world for your selves, the
chiefest thing you looke for is a good Wife.
(sig. A3v-A4r)

Under the cover of the arraignment of Swetnam and defending women,

Sowernam's text strongly advocates marriage as weIl as calling upon notions
of male honour to support 'her' pro-woman stance: 'what more man-like
defence, then to defend the just reputation of a woman' (sig. A4r).
The body ofSowernam's text critiques Swetnam's style and logic, thereby
proving the false grounds upon which he makes his arguments; as such it
falls more squarely within the traditions of the woman debate than either
Swetnam hirnself, or Jane Anger. One ofthe key elements in the argument
is the fact of the author's posited sex, presented he re in terms designed both
to authenticate the speaker and 'her' narrative, and to conform to conte m-
porary constructions of femininity:

Some will perhaps say, I am a woman and therefore write more for
women then they doe deserve: To whom I answere, if they misdoubt of
what I speake, let them impeach my credit in any one particular: In that
which I write.
(A4r)

The reader's attention is drawn to, and immediately directed away from,
the speaker's sex, only to be redirected to the text itself, a strategy which
undoes Swetnam's underlying assumption that alt women are bad, and that
their discourse is beguiling and false. In order for Sowernam's approach to
convince, the connection between the sex of the speaker and 'her' narrative
needs to be simultaneously asserted and denied, and its origins reattributed:

If in this answere I doe use more vehement speeches then may seeme to
correspond the naturall disposition of a W oman; yet all judicious Readers
shall confesse that I use more mildnesse then the cause I have in hand
provoketh me unto.
(sig. Br)

Sowernam's technique combines outdoing Swetnam, for example, in dis-

play of conspicuous learning, and discrediting his character and style, in

63
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRlTING

particular stressing his incontinence in speech. 'She' cites Homer's Thersites,

drawing the parallel that 'his disposition was so precipitate, hee could not
hold his tongue' (Bv); in addition, Thersites was ugly, bald, bow-legged, and
oflow birth. 32 Effectively, Sowernam inverts the terms not only ofSwetnam's
text, but also of prevailing gender ideologies, where Swetnam is positioned
as a man who degenerates from the proper qualities of manhood, and
becomes a parody of feminine vices as defined by his own text. The proof of
illogicality is central to this process and Sowernam's application of the
syllogism 'proves' how irrational and ignorant Swetnam's pronouncements
are:

Marke a ridiculous jeast in this: Spending and consuming of that which

Man painfully getteth, is by this Authour the use for which Women were
made. And yet (saith hee in the Argument) most of them degenerate from
the use they were framed unto. W oman was made to spend and consume
at the first: But women doe degenerate from this use, Ergo, Midasse doth
contradict hirnselfe.
(Bv-B2r)

Deftly, 'she' applies his own illogic to Swetnam hirnself, using the time-
honoured technique of parallelism: 'Woman was made of a crooked rib, so
she is crooked of conditions. Joseph Swetnam was made as from Adam of
day and dust, so he is of a durty and muddy disposition' (sig. B2r).
Much of Ester hath hang'd Haman conforms quite dosely to the conven-
tions of the pro-woman debate: arguing that Eve's creation after Adam
argues her perfection (B3r); that God ordained marriage as the highest
estate for man; that Eve was deceived by 'a Serpent of the masculine
gender' (sig. B4r); and that Adam was the more responsible for the fall (sig.
B4v).33 Sowernam cites the fact that God's judgement permitted wo man to
provide the salvation for the fall through motherhood, so that 'her fruit
should revenge her wrong' (sig. Cv). Much of the defence relies upon the
inaccuracy of Swetnam's assertions, and his misreadings of scripture, thus
turning the defence into a kind of ritual shaming of Swetnam himself,
which relies heavily upon the notion that Swetnam's opening sentence ('a
woman was made to be a helper unto man, & so they are indeed: for she
helpeth to spend and consume that which man painefully getteth' (Br)) in
effect is the argument and that the text is an unwieldy and hence effeminising
amplification of it. 34 A range of historical, dassical and biblical heroines are
presented to prove the worth ofwomen, but the main plank in Sowernam's
argument in favour of women is precisely the one upon which Swetnam's
attack on women is based; namely the lengths to which men go in order to
woo and win women: 'Sutors doe ever in their suites confesse a more

64
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

worthinesse in the persons to whom they sue' (D3v). This turns Swetnam's
position on its head, for he argues that men's wooing of women derives
from a problematic lust/ desire, excited by the falsity, hypocrisy and materi-
alistic greed of women themselves. Instead of women destroying the credit
and reputation of men, for Sowernam, the acquisition of a wife adds to
male honour, and marks their entry into civil and moral society:

Plato sayth, that Honestie is of that worthinesse, that men are greatly
enflamed with the love of it; and as they doe admire it, so they studie how
to obtaine it; it is apparant, yong men which are unmarried, and called
batchelers, they may have a disposition, or may serve an apprentiship to
honesty, but they are never free-men, nor ever called honest men, till they
be married: for that is the portion which they get by their wives.
(sig. D4r)

By a deft turn of logic, Sowernam overturns Swetnam's invective, so that

his condemnations become indicative of essential female virtue: 'the worthi-
nesse of the person doth make the sinne more markeable' (sig. D4v). This
also enables the conventional recitation of the sexual double standard, where
if a man gets a woman pregnant 'no matter is make of it, but as a trick
of youth', yet for the woman 'she is disparaged and uterly undone by it'
(sig. D4v).
The final part of the text, following the relatively formal defence of
women, is a mock-trial of Joseph Swetnam, which inverts hierarchies of
order and authority to provide a public condemnation and humiliation
of hirn at the hands of women. This notion of misrule hints at the kinds
of ritual inversions of order used frequently in the early modern period as
means of upholding and ensuring social and cultural norms. At the same
time, however, it is a subversion of this pattern, choosing to deploy a mock-
institution al power to attack hirn, rather than the more usual methods of
public display and violence: 'wee would not answere hirn either with Achilles
fist, or Stafford-law; neither plucke hirn in pieces as the Thracian women
did Orpheus, for his intemperate rayling against women' (sig. E2r). The
trial framework permits areversal of authority, so that a fictional 'Swetnam'
is made subject to a posited female authority. After the indictment is read to
hirn, Swetnam pleads not guilty, and is symbolically silenced by his own
complicity:

being asked how hee would be tryed, he stood mute, for Conscience did so
confront hirn, that he knew upon tryall there was no way but one:
whereupon hee thought it much better to put hirnselfe upon our mercy,
then to hazard the tryall of his owne Jurie.
(sig. E3v)

6S
 THE rOLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Hence Swetnam's behaviour proves the power of Sowernam's argument,

just as his text had attempted to pre-empt those women who might object
to his accusations.
The trial framework enables areiteration of Sowernam's arguments, but
in a context which parallels but does not precisely replicote that in the
preceding text. The mock-trial marks a transition to a more formal, if
parodic legalistic rhetoric, and moves the notion of a 'defence' into an insti-
tutional and dialectic context. One motivating argument for the defence
is that women have been slandered and 'extreamely wronged in publike
view' (sig. E4v) precisely because of the popularity of Swetnam's pamphlet,
and because 'if we should let it so passe, our silence might implead us for
guiltie' (sig. E4v). The method is to examine the charges made by Swetnam;
to undermine his authority by looking at what other 'authors of more
import' have to say about women (sig. E4v); and to accuse hirn of plagiar-
ism. In short, his position is to be undone by dissecting the form and content
of his book, and by undoing his personal credit and authority. Much of the
substance of the argument is standard woman debate material, like the
notion that women learned bad ways from imitating their masters, or that
if men are so easily overwhelmed by women, then morality cannot have
that strong a hold on them (sig. F2r):

Are external & dumbe shews such potent baites, nets, lures, charmes, to
bring men to ruine? ... are men so idle, vaine, and weake, as you seeme to
make them?
(sig. F2v)

The argument more or less inverts the terms set out by Swetnam, substitut-
ing one term for the other, asserting that it is male culture which shapes
female nature, and that the female disposition is formed by the ways in
which men use (or misuse) their authority over women. This is not ques-
tioned by Sowernam, for example, where Swetnam advises against marry-
ing a widow because she is 'framed to the conditions of another man, and
can hardly be altered' (46), Sowernam counters with 'Thou must unlearne
her, Ergo, what fault shee hath, shee learned, her corruptnes commeth not
from her own disposition, but from her Husbands destruction' (sig. G2r).
The final stage ofthe indictment deploys that part ofjudicial rhetoric which
concerns itself with the destruction of character, placed here within the
context of a formal oration. 35 He is ritually shamed as a foo1 ('as for women,
they laugh that men have no more able a champion' (sig. G2r)), and for the
ineffectiveness of his arguments. Furthermore, his masculinity is impugned,
for by his complaints about women he reveals his own shortcomings and
raises the spectre of effeminacy, as he is unable to govern women:

66
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

It is a shame for a man to complaine of a froward woman, in many

respects all concerning himselfe. It is a shame he hath no more
government over the weaker vessell ... It is a shame for a man to
publish and proclaime houshold secrets.
(sig. G2r-v)

Finally, the respective authority of Swetnam's and Sowernam's speech is

established. Sowernam pre-empts the accusation of 'her' narrative implicit
in The Araignment by acknowledging it, and redirecting it: 'I have taxed you
with bitter speaches; you will (perhaps) say I am a rayling scold' (sig. G4r).
Sowernam's authority is ultimately drawn from her style and method, and,
by implication, the notion that it is Swetnam who is the true scold:

In this objection, Joseph Swetnam, I will te ach you both wit and honestie:
The difference betwixt a railing scold, and an honest accuser, is this, the
first rageth upon passionate furie, without bringing cause or proofe, the
other bringeth direct proofe for what she alleageth: you charge women
with clamorous words, and bring no proofe; I charge you with blasphemie,
with impudence, scurilitie, foollery, and the like. I shew just and direct
proofe for what I say; it is not my desire to speake so much, it is your
desert to provoke me upon just cause so farre ... the report of the truth is
never to be blamed, the deserver of such areport, deserveth the shame.
(sig. G4r)

The bridling of intemperate speech is the corners tone of one of the

other responses to Swetnam, the only one we can confidently attribute to a
female author, Rachel Speght's A Mouzellfor Melastomus (1617). Her text
posits Swetnam as a dog which requires muzzling, but also as a b1asphemer
and an illiterate. Speght's response shifts the ground slightly, as it answers
Swetnam very seriously, point by point, using biblical citation to authorise
the text. The biblical text on the tide-page goes to the heart of Speght's
enterprise, and its sermon-like form: 'Answer a foo1e according to his
foolishnesse, lest he bee wise in his owne conceit' (tide-page). A Mouzell flr
Melastomus is quite different from the other texts in the Jacobean woman
debate in that it approaches the question of female virtue from an entirely
serious perspective; there is none of the jesting or parody which character-
ise the other texts; nor does it convey the playfu1 specularisation found in
Swetnam's display of bad women or Sowernam's images of good women.
Speght reveals more concern with the authority of her own writing style,
which may be one reason why she relies heavily upon scriptural citation
and impressive command of grammar and rhetoric. Woodbridge suggests
that Speght has somehow missed Swetnam's joke, that she is unfamiliar
with the rules and conventions that govern the genre. 36 This may be true,

67
 THE POLlTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

but it does not necessarily undermine or detract from the effectiveness and
intellectual force of Speght's response; her stance of virtuous, patient dis-
section is a highly effective way of disproving Swetnam's arguments. Like
Anger and Sowernam, Speght cites the danger that women's silence may be
taken as acquiescence as one motivation for her writing, along with the fear
that Swetnam's 'Diabolicall infamies' might be viewed as 'infallible truthS'.37
It is dear from Speght's text that she had received a good education for
a woman of her dass. The grounds from which she argues are illogicality,
the abuse of rhetoric and a failure to observe grammatical decorum - and
these areas also pose difficulties for Speght as she tries to carve out a
virtuous speaking position for herself. U nlike the subversive play of Sowernam
or Munda's The Worming rif a mad Dogge, Speght adheres to and defends
the hierarchies which she is attacking, resulting in a text which has caused
feminist readers some unease, as they see one dis course (feminism) being
compromised or 'hobbled' by another (religion).38 Yet for Speght the form
of the text reveals much about both its substance and the character of its
author, enabling her, in turn, to manipulate style to protect her own virtue:
in this sense her response is rhetorically mainstream. Part of her authorial
power derives from the deployment of an academic discourse by a woman,
where it is implied that Swetnam can be outdone intellectually even though
Speght is female. This is a less obvious variant on the 'taming and shaming'
method used by Sowernam; logic and grammar are used not so much to
authorise Speght, but to embarrass Swetnam:

In which excrement of your roaving cogitations you have used such

irregularities touching concordance, and observed so disordered a methode,
as I doubt not to tel you, that a very Accidence Schollar would have quite
put you downe in both.
(7)

The muzzle which should be applied to Swetnam is not a literal one comic-
ally imposed upon hirn in a public place, rather it is the muzzle which
derives from morality, decency and a proper spiritual understanding:

Good had it beene for you to have put on that Muzzell, which Saint James
would have all Christians to weare; Speake not evill one of another.
(8)

Such an insight allies Speght's text more dosely with the conduct manuals
and marriage guides written by Protestant divines than with the anarchic
perspective on social order found in the other texts of the women debate,
both in style and substance. 39 Its concerns are spiritual and intellectual, and

68
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

distinct from parody or the tried and trusted conventions of the genre;
although Speght's ostensible topic is the virtue and spiritual equality of
women, her essential argument concerns Swetnam's blasphemous ignorance
and the damaging effect that this might have on the 'Vulgar sort' (8), his
'dishonoring of God by palpable blasphemy, wresting and perverting everie
place of Scripture' (8). Behind the championing of women against defamation
by men, Speght advances a reformist agenda, based upon educational superi-
ority and concerns about the spiritual health ofthe ignorant. Swetnam's true
crime is against God, not against women. Once again, we find that women
as autonomous subjects within the text have a tendency to disappear into
the interstices created by the competing social and cultural discourses struc-
turing the concept of 'woman' in early modern culture more generally.
Although Speght's process and method mark her out as unusual, because
of her command of scripture, her use of logic and her careful dissection of
argument (how far this adds to Speght's credit, given the dubious nature of
Swetnam's text, is open to question), much of what she says is indebted to
one particular branch of the woman debate; namely, the serious theological
debate. Many of the arguments she rehearses are familiar, although not
within the generic and popular traditions deployed by the other protagon-
ists discussed in this chapter. Through dose and careful readings of scrip-
ture, Speght argues that woman completed the creation, because man was
'as an unperfect building afore woman was made' (12); like many of her
contemporaries, while asserting women's spiritual equality, she accepts
and upholds their natural and social inferiority, thereby going some way
towards exonerating women from blame for the fact that Satan approached
Eve first '[1] ike as a Cristall glasse sooner receives a cracke than a strong
stone pot' (14). Within this phrase lies Speght's understanding of the Bible
and its construction of sex roles; woman is a 'glasse' because she reflects
both man and God; man is a 'stone pot' because he is made from the earth
and has a higher authority. Through the citation of scripture Speght demon-
strates that Adam was the willing perpetrator of his own fall, and that his
sin had more serious consequences than Eve's, 'for the sinne of man the
whole earth was cursed' (14-15). Once again, woman's essential weakness
and inferiority is the key to her virtue and spiritual power. Like Sowernam,
Speght notes that woman was ordained to bear the saviour of mankind,
and that Christ's power and love is extended to women just as it is to men
(16). Her techniques of argument are varied, but hinge upon particular
points of biblical interpretation; sometimes supplying other texts for com-
parison; sometimes completing averse that Swetnam twists to his own
advantage, and occasionally arguing that it is necessary to interpret the
Bible metaphorically, rather than literally. Her answer to Swetnam's fourth
objection refers to Solomon's 'enigmaticall Sentence' (17) and she turns to

69
 THE POllTICS OF EARlY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

biographical explanations in order to place it in context. Speght considers

his statement that he has not found one good woman in a thousand through
the analysis of grammatical person:

Hee saith not, that among a thousand women never any man found one
worthy of commendation, but speakes in the first person singularly, I have
not flund, meaning in his owne experience: for this assertion is to be holden
apart of the confession of his former follies, and no otherwise.
(17)

Speght both outmanoeuvres Swetnam, and asserts her own virtuous pre-
occupation with the text of the Bible.
It is also possible to read Speght's text as a more deliberate and self-
conscious engagement with the woman debate, partly because many of its
standard moves, tropes and conventions are overturned or ignored. Specific-
ally, she rejects the polarisation of women into either good or bad which
the genre conventionaHy demands. Here these categories describe a univer-
sal spiritual division, applicable to both men and women: 'I say not, all
women are vertuous, for then they should be more excellent then men ...
if women were not sinfull, then should they not need a Saviour' (24-5). She
also, reads the Bible fuHy and comprehensively, using her authoritative
examples with care and precision, attributing them, so that the reader may
engage in the debate. Unlike Swetnam, Sowernam and others, she cites
almost exclusively scriptural material, not running together statements
and sayings from various periods and cultures without comment, which she
characterises as 'your mingle mangle invective against Women' (7). In short,
Speght attempts to pI ace misogyny in some kind of historical and cultural
perspective, reading it as inconsistent and plural, even on the evidence she
draws from the Bible, and thus reorienting the terms of the traditional pro et
contra stance. This position can be clearly seen in her interest in, and treat-
ment of, the conditions surrounding marriage, and her attempt to reconcile
the notion of male and female spiritual equality with the doctrine of female
subjection to male authority. Female spiritual equality is used here, impli-
citly, to counter some conventional tenets of the anti-wo man stance. For
example, the argument that God created male and female, and that their
function is to praise God, draws men and women together in a common
purpose: 'meaning, by a Metonimie, earth, all creatures that live on the
earth, ofwhat nation or Sex soever' (18). Woman's excellency is proved by
the matter from which she is made, 'from his side, neare his heart, to be his
equall' (18) and by the fact that 'Man was the onely object, which she did
resemble' (19). The final argument concerns the reason that woman was
made, 'to glorifie God, and to be a collaterall companion for man to glorifie
God' (19). This extends to the necessity of woman both uttering praises to

70
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

God, and giving 'good councell unto her husband, the which hee must not
despise' (19, emphasis added). Various biblical precedents are adduced where
wives have given good advice. Speght notes carefully that the Bible states
that woman is to be a 'helper' to man, each according to their strength and
capacity, thus the husband should take on the greater part of the burden.
The husband's position as 'the Womans Head' (23) is not licence for the abuse
of authority, but is compared to the place of the head in ordering the body,
'so the Husband must protect and defend his Wife from injuries' (23). A
careful, and perhaps unsustainable, distinction is made by Speght between
the husband's responsibilities towards his wife 'as the weaker vessell' (24)
and derogation from this role into 'thinking themselves Lords and Rulers'
(24); if the husband's command runs contrary to God's word, his wife is to
view hirn as a tempter (24).
The second part of Speght's pamphlet marks a change of direction, as
she concentrates specifically on the analysis of Swetnam's text, critiquing
particular passages. Certaine Qyaeres to the bayter if Women continues the stance
of Speght apologising for her ignorance in such a way as to suggest the depth
ofSwetnam's foolishness, but also asserts that any faults found in her text are
the consequence ofhis 'promiscuous mingle mangle' (31); Speght claims that

a crooked pot-lid weIl enough fits a wrie-neckt pot, an unfashioned shooe a

mis-shapen foote, and an illiterate answere an unlearned irreligious
provocation.
(31)

The text picks out a number of inconsistencies, illogicalities and grammat-

ical solecisms, bouncing them back to Swetnam for his attention. 40 The
method, by and large, involves returning to the sources or examples that
Swetnam has used, and demonstrating how he has misread and misinter-
preted them for his own purposes. Speght distinguishes, for example,
between David's 'love' for women and his 'lust' (35). Frequently Speght
advances readings of the Bible which demonstrate that she understood it
rhetorically and poetically, seeing it as being composed of figures of speech,
and that, therefore, it cannot always be read purely literally:

In saying ... that Jobs wift counselled her husband to curse God, you misconster
the Text; for the true construction thereof will shew it to bee a Sarcasmus or
lronicall speech and not an instigation to blasphemie.
(31)

Speght's text, taken as a whole, is certainly intellectually impressive; she

answers Swetnam's assertions point by point, in the process storing up her
own writerly credit by a justified display of her wide-ranging and rhetorical

71
 THE POllTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

knowledge ofthe Bible, as Munda's assessment attests. 42 It is difficult to ascer-

tain how effective her departure from the 'rules' of the genre could have been;
but if the marginalia to her text is anything to go by, her words as they
circulated were marked indelibly by her gender, and she was seen as a comic
interlocutor, to be insulted and joked about. 43 At the same time, Munda's
possibly fictional account of the author's anger at the responses suggests
that some of Speght's careful reasoning, or the fact that she responded at
all, may have hit the mark: 'I heare you foame at mouth and groule against
the Author with another head like the tripie dog of hell' (sig. Dv).
Ofthe three direct responses to Swetnam's text, Constantia Munda's The
Worming qf a mad Dogge (161 7) has been most sceptically received in terms
of its claims to female authorship. One reason for this is the assumption
that ostensibly female authorship sits oddly with the acute consciousness of
print demonstrated by Munda; however, this engagement with the market-
place of print is not only used strategically in the text, but, as we have seen,
was a key element in the woman debate itself. 44 Munda's text is tonally
distinct from either Speght or Sowernam, using word-play, tags and Latinate
borrowings, but many of 'her' key arguments are standard; in other areas,
she brings new material to bear, in particular the use of maternity as grounds
for argument, her engagement with class, and her attack on Swetnam's
mismanagement of his own text and speech.
The Worming qf a mad Dogge clearly continues the language of insult inaug-
urated by both Sowernam and Speght, positing Swetnam as a dog (both
literally and metaphorically) who needs to be treated for his ills, and using
the classical precedent of Cerberus who traditionally guarded the gates of
hell. Munda's text deploys an allegorical framework, from the pseudonym
and dedicatee onwards, which allows it to be framed by a fictive relation-
ship between the author and 'her' mother, which works to establish the
writer's credit and to pinpoint Swetnam's disrespect for his own mother. In
line with this, The Worming qf a mad Dogge is presented as requital for a filial
debt, which additionally asserts the writer as both virtuous and educated,
despite the often vituperative tone of the pamphlet. There is a degree of
discomfort about Munda's reiteration of an argument that has gone before,
especially in the light of 'her' repeated attacks on Swetnam's conventionality
and tendency to plagiarism:
yet here what I wrote
Might seme to stop the curs wide throat,
Untill the haltar came, since which I ceast
To prosecute what I intended, lest
I should be censur'd that I undertooke
A worke that's done already:
(sig. A3v)

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 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

Much of the argument, substantive and stylistic, turns on the question of

dass, and in particular the dass difference between 'A Ladies daughter'
(A3v) and the insult Swetnam pro duces by circulating blasphemous images
of women for the consumption of the common people. Swetnam's text is
represented here by the language of contamination, behind which lies a
barely concealed fear of dass contagion, particularly within the medium of
print:

Patcht out of English writers that combines

7heir highest reach of emulation but to please
7he giddy-headed vulgar: whose disease
Like to a swelling dropsie, thirsts to drinke
And swill the puddIes of this nasty sinke:
(A4r-v)

The very availability of his text renders it more dangerous, as its intended
readers lack the discrimination to see it for what it is: 'Like nibling fish they
swallow bait and hookel To their destruction, when they not descry I Your
base and most unreverent blasphemy' (A4v). Not only does Swetnam's text
insult women, it also degrades the medium of print, as it is turned from
being the 'store-house of famous wits, the treasure of Divine literature' to
'[t]he nursery and hospitall of every spurious and penurious brat' (B2r).
While Munda tries to mount a counter-attack, inevitably the form of 'her'
text colludes with the medium that she aims to discredit, as does her own
idiom on occasion. The point is made via an equation of Swetnam's text with
the circulation ofbad women to be viewed by all and sundry, and Munda's
own counter-image participates in a parallel textualisation of women:

W oman the second edition of the Epitome of the whole world, the second
Tome of that goodly volume compiled by the great God of heaven and
earth is most shamefully blurd, and derogatively rased by scribling penns
of savage & uncought monsters.
(B2v)

This recogmtlOn of the basic similarity in method between attack and

defence might be viewed as undermining the power of Munda's refuta-
tion; alternative1y, it can be read as a witty acknowledgement of the print
conventions of the genre.
Munda's rejection of Swetnam's assertions is founded upon counter-
attack, arguing for the innate virtue of women, in order to provide positive
counter-examples to be circulated to readers to encourage them to virtue.
Women are 'Natures best ornament' (A4v) , and Munda condemns the
collapse of dass distinctions which is an integral element of misogyny:

73
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

And hurle without regard your venom'd darts

Of scandalous reviling, at the hearts
Of alt our female sexe promiscuous1y,
Of commons, gentry, and nobility?
(31)

Like other defence texts, Munda rejects the collapse of all women into a
single moral category, and resists the temptation to use the same strategy
with men (Cr); but 'she' does use the argument ofwomen's unique function
as mothers to discredit Swetnam's arguments (A4v) while carefully (although
not overtly) suggesting that women have less authority than men: 'Tis a
poore atchievement to overcome a woman' (Cv).
Like the other defenders ofwomen, Munda's strategy is to discredit both
Swetnam's style and method, and his character. The main method is to
characterise his style as ladung dass, and as dangerously effeminate and
uncontrolled. In addition, Swetnam's text is given an exaggerated power to
affect opinion, 'teaching the worser sort that are more prone to luxurie, a
compendious way to learne to be sinfull' (B3r). Throughout, Swetnam is
associated with a form of low discourse, one advanced more for profit than
for the furthering of morality and virtue. His text is compared to merchand-
ise, and false wares at that, 'like the Italian Mountebanks' (B2r), a point
which is dosely connected to Munda's understanding of how he represents
women. She suggests that the lack of value attributed in his text to women
can be traced to his circulation of them 'in the publique Piatza' (B2r) and to
his inability to distinguish between surface and true value: 'so to detract
from vertue and honesty, as though their essence were onely in outward
appearance of goodnesse' (B2v). Behind such critiques, of course, lie con-
ventionally conservative notions regarding the proper 'place' of women;
here, ultimately as mothers upholding virtue and chastity. This could reftect
a male attempt at containment, or a female recognition of the need to
accept the limited powers afforded to them. Munda argues for the control
of men's speech, as 'she' critiques Swetnam for his slander of women:

These wide open-dores, these unwalled townes, these rudderlesse

shippes ... doe not consider that the tongue being a very httle member
should never goe out of that small ivory gate, in which, ... divine
wisedome and nature together hath enclosed, it signifying that a man
should give him selfe eyther to vertuous speech, or prudent silence, and not
let tongue and penne runne up and downe like a weaponed madde-man,
to strike and wound any without partiahty.
(B3v-B4r)

Female silence, by contrast, although enforced by modesty, is indicative of

women's innate virtue, but in the face of onslaughts like Swetnam's is a

74
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

'great ... fault and folly' (B4r). Like other 'female' defenders ofwomen, the
attack on vu"tue provides the justification for the female speech that Swetnam
tries to contain. Like city women whose reputations were called into ques-
tion by the accusations of their neighbours, these 'women' seek to defend
their sex in general from harm to its honour and credit:

oral speech could have far-reaching echoes. What people said was
accepted, too, as a measure of character ... Words ... were crucially
linked with reputation; and the concept of reputation held considerable
sway both legally and sociaIly.16

The apparent authority conferred on words in print, and the display of

learning in support (however spurious) must have meant that the sense of
damage to female honour was increased; hence Munda and her contempor-
aries engage in a print equivalent of defending themselves from defamation
which tends towards a reinforcement of traditional moral values, rather
than their modification, because of the terms in which the attack itself has
been framed.
A standard technique in such defences is to attack the reputation of the
accuser, often bouncing the charges made back upon hirn. In the case of
Swetnam, as we have seen, the charges are largely concerned with a failure
to regulate and control speech, a curiously powerful attack when made by a
woman upon a man, precisely because in doing so she attributes to hirn the
denigrated social and cultural position most often allotted to women. This
adds to the prevalent sense of literary transvestism which hovers over these
texts, precisely because of the reinposition of rigid sex roles upon a situation
where these threatened to become fluid or merely conventiona1. 47 This
reassertion is the ultirnate function and effect of these pamphlets, and the
end to which the 'authentie' female voice is deployed. Like other pamphlet-
eers responding to Swetnam, Munda denotes Swetnam's punishment using
terms usually associated with women (Speght's rhetorically styled attack
upon his unwieldy language is just a more educated version of this). 'She'
calls hirn 'a hare-braind scold' (Cv), 'a masculine scold' (E2v), a term which
conflates his verbal misrule, his intellectual vacancy, and his propensity for
slandering the innocent because of his own bad experiences:

a private abuse of your owne familiar doxies should not breake out into
open slanders of the religious matron with the prostitute strumpet; of the
nobly descended Ladies, as the obscure base vermine that have bitten you;
of the chaste and modest virgins, as weIl as the dissolute and impudent
harlot.
(C2r)

7S
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Once again, we find here Munda's disdain for Swetnam expressed as a fear
of social confusion and contamination, a feature which is quite distinct from
the other pamphlets' more straightforward rejection of the conftation of
women into a single immoral category. Furthermore, Swetnam's credit is
undone by Munda's sarcastic assumption that he will not understand a
verse from Cicero, unless translated, a strategie manoeuvre which further
suggests that Swetnam, and his text, are removed from the sources of learn-
ing and virtue. In line with Munda's characterisation of Swetnam as a
scold, 'she' also suggests that his misogyny derives from a deep anxiety
about his own masculinity:

Yet it may be you have a further drift, to make the world beleeve you
have an extraordinary gift of continencie; soothing your selfe with this
supposition, that this open reviling is some token and evidence you never
were affected with delicate and effeminate sensualitie.
(C4r)

Swetnam is additionally accused of plagiarism, contradiction, stylistic infeli-

city, drunkenness and blasphemy. In its linguistic exuberance, 'DIe Worming
qf a mad Dogge is less a defence of women than a concerted ad hominem
attack upon Swetnam, mainly for the reason that Munda is anxious to
avoid the very charges she directs at Swetnam from rebounding upon 'her'
text.
The writers in this chapter write within a long-established tradition,
but bring new features to conventional subject-matter. One of these is the
extension of a rhetorical position into a characterological manifestation of
that position. This extended use of prosopopoeia has many causes, but it
makes dear the folly of making a dose identification between author and
text, or inferring an author figure from often mischievous textual signs. The
circulation of female speaking figures in print as objects of comedy and
satire does not necessarily undermine the force of their arguments, but it
does suggest that contexts - historieal, generic and material - need to be
taken into account. These polemies seem less concerned with 'women' as
a category than with the complex figurations surrounding gen der in the
urban, socially mobile setting, of which 'uppity' women are often read as a
sign or symptom. These texts alert us to the fact that 'women' is not a
coherent, consistent or stable category in the early modern period, and that
figuration and representation does not always add up to subjectivity. In
many ways, such representations may serve to circumscribe and contain a
female agency which dearly has the power to threaten and alarm.

76
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE AB OUT WOMEN

Notes

2 Joseph Swetnam, 1he Araignment of Lewd, !dIe, Froward and Unconstant Women
(1615), sig. A3r.
2 This is the centra1 tenet of Diane Purkiss's incisive essay on the area. See
Diane Purkiss, 'Material girls: the seventeenth-century woman debate', in
Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss (eds), Women, Texts and Histories 1575-1760
(London: Routledge, 1992), 69-101.
3 Linda Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of
Womankind, 1540-1620 (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984), eh. 1. See Purkiss,
'Material girls', 77-8 and Loma Hutson, 1he Usurer's Daughter: Male Friendship
and Fictions of Femininiry in Sixteenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 1994)
on the functions of the female-orientated or coded text.
4 See Purkiss, 'Material girls', 71-2. Recent historical work challenges the
acceptance of 'patriarchy' as in any sense a homogeneous cultural system; see
Anthony J. Fleteher, 'Men's dilemma: the future of patriarchy in England
1560-1660', Transactions of the Royal Historical Sociery 4, 6th series (1994): 61-81,
and Elizabeth A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modem England: Honour, Sex and
Marriage (London: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999).
5 The classic account is Michel Foucault, 'What is an author?', in Modem Criti-
cism and 1heory: AReader, ed. David Lodge (London: Longman, 1988), 197-
210.
6 Swetnam, 1he schoole of the noble and worthy science of difence (1617).
7 Katherine Henderson and Barbara McManus (eds), HalfHumankind: Contexts
and Texts ofthe ControverDJ about Women in England, 1540-1640 (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1985), 21.
8 Purkiss, 'Material girls', 70.
9 Henderson and McManus, HalfHumankind, 21.
10 See the discussion in eh. 1 above.
11 Purkiss, 'Material girls', 84.
12 See, for examp1e, the discussion ofLanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, 157-62.
13 See Karen Newman, Fashioning Femininiry and English Renaissance Drama (Chicago:
U niversity of Chicago Press, 1991), eh. 8.
14 See Purkiss, 'Material girls' for a fuller discussion of this question.
15 E1aine Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1987), 248.

77
 THE POLlTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

16 Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance, 63, notes that there is a lost
work reeorded in the Stationer's Register entitled Boke his Surf~t in love (1588),
to whieh Anger's subtitle may make referenee ('To defend them against the
seanda10us reportes of a 1ate Surfeiting Lover').
17 I have p1aeed the authoria1 pronoun in seare quotes to indieate the possibility
that this may be a eonseious eonstruetion of a female subjeet.
18 See Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance, eh. 3.
19 Cf. Isabel1a Whitney's poem, An Admonition, diseussed in eh. 4.
20 See Beilin, Redeeming Eve, 251.
21 'Either she loves or she hates; there is no third way.'
22 On women's speech, see eh. 1, 24-32.
23 Henderson and MeManus, HalfHumankind, 16.
24 Lynda Boose, 'Seo1ding brides and bridling seo1ds: taming the woman's
unru1y member', Shakespeare Qyarterry 42 (1991): 179-213, 191 n.30.
25 See Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender ]rom the Creeks to Freud
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990) and Linda Polloek, ' "Teach
her to live under obedienee": the making of women in the upper ranks of
early modern England', Continuiry and Change 4 (1989): 231-58.
26 Patrieia Parker, 'Virile style', in Louise Fradenburg and Carla Freeeero (eds),
Premodem Sexualities (New York: Routledge, 1996), 201-22.
27 See Aemilia Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex]udt1!Orum, in 1he Poems qfAemilia Lanyer, ed.
Suzanne Woods, Women Writers in Eng1ish 1350-1850 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993), 1505-12.
28 See Purkiss, 'Material girls', 85-9.
29 Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Earry Modem London,
Oxford Studies in Soeia1 History (Oxford: C1arendon Press, 1996).
30 See Megan Matehinske, Writing, Gender and State in Earry Modem England: Identiry
Formation and the Female Subject (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),
86-7.
31 Ibid., 87.
32 See Homer, Iliad, trans. E.V. Rieu (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1950),45.
33 See N.H. Keeb1e, ed., 1he Culturalldentiry qf Seventeenth-Century Women: AReader
(London: Routledge, 1994), for sourees.
34 On representations ofJaeobean women as eonsumers, see Newman, Fashioning
Femininiry, eh. 8.
35 See Riehard A. Lanham, A Handlist qf Rhetorical Terms, 2nd edn (Berkeley:
University of Ca1ifornia Press, 1991), 171-4.

78
 THE RENAISSANCE DEBATE ABOUT WOMEN

36 Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance, 89.

37 1he Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght, ed. B. Lewalski, Women Writers in
English 1350-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996),3.
38 See Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance, 90; Henderson and
McManus, Half Humankind, 16-17.
39 See Arm Rosalind J ones, 'Counterattacks on "the Bayter of Women": three
pamphleteers of the early Seventeenth Century', in 1he Renaissance English-
woman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, ed. Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty S.
Travitsky (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992): 45-62, 51.
40 Lewalski includes in her Appendix a contemporary reader's responses to
Speght's text, which she suggests (91) may be Swetnam himself, suggesting
that he rose to her challenge that 'hee mcry answer flr himselje' (33).
41 Sarcasmus is in fact the term used by Puttenharn for exacerbatio. Lanham, Handlist,
135.
42 1he Worming of a mad Dogge (1617), sig. Dr.
43 Polemics and Poems, 95-106.
44 See also Purkiss, 'Material girls', 90 on this point, and her refutation.
45 See also sig. C2r.
46 Gowing, Domestic Dangers, 111.
47 See the pamphlets Hic Mulier (1620) and Haec Vir (1620), both in Henderson
and McManus, HalfHumankind; on the arbitrariness of sex roles see Pollock,
'''Teach her to live"'.

79
 CHAPTER THREE

Drama and the Gendered Political Subject

The place of women within the Renaissance theatre has been extensively
debated in recent years: audiences, the figuration of the feminine, the role
of theatre in producing (and subverting) gender ideologies, the effect of all-
male players (unique to England) are all now standard features of critical
accounts of Renaissance drama. By the same token, under the influence
of feminist modes of enquiry, dramas authored by women have been
uncovered, edited and interpreted. Nevertheless, these texts te nd to remain
in the 'background', often subordinated to canonical texts which seem to
'speak' to a modern sensibility more readily. This chapter suggests that
drama by Renaissance women is best understood in relation to significant and
politically engaged sub-genres - 'doset' drama and pastoral tragi-comedy;
and that its functions, specifically its gendered interventions, should be read
not solely through the framework of the 'personal', nor as thinly veiled auto-
biography, but in relation to the rf{ects of familial alliances. 1 Shakespeare
and others are frequently read politically; they are rarely read through bio-
graphy (a source of deep frustration to much of the 'Shakespeare Industry'),
partly because of the nature of the genre. Drama is self-evidently perflrmative,
whether we come to it as readers or as audiences. Its modes are rhetorical
in the widest sense: linguistic play and manipulation; gesture; movement;
intonation and positioning. The written trace of the dramatic artefact remains
self-consciously performative whether actually performed or not. The plays
discussed he re reveal an investment in textual and cultural polyvocality:
they are translations, or texts deeply indebted to precursors.
The first difficulty when dealing with women's drama is that it cannot be
allied with the familiar context of the 'stage-play' world: it was not written
to be publidy performed. This incontrovertible historical fact has led to
women's drama occupying a largely 'domestic' and 'private' critical space,

80
 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED POLlTICAL SUBJECT

bolstered by the fact of women's exclusion from the stage. But Renaissance
plays ranged from street theatre, to the Globe and Swan, to a variety of
'private' settings (Inns of Court, universities, the court, great houses). Much
of the corpus is not immediately recognisable to us as drama: pageants, so-
called 'academic' plays (often in Latin or Greek), masques and tableaux.
Those forms of drama based upon a heavily rhetorical style, classical allu-
sion and moral didacticism to the exclusion of types based upon gesture
and acting style tended to belong to the social elite, and such plays were
generally performed in locations that, by contrast with the openness of the
public theatre, might be defined as 'private'. But the 'private' does not
necessarily mean either domestic or apolitical, as recent analyses of such
plays as AMidsummer Night's Dream, or Milton's Comus, or Stuart masques
indicate. Such plays are often more overtly political than their public stage
counterparts, partly because they were not subject to the censoring hand of
the Master of the Revels. 2 A 1574 Act of the Common Council of London,
the express aim of which was to regulate public theatre, reinforces this point:

this Acte ... shall not extend to anie plaies, Enterludes, Cornodies,
Tragidies, or shewes to be played or shewed in the pryvate hous, dwellinge,
or lodginge of anie nobleman, Citizen, or gentleman, which shall or will
then have the same thear so played or shewed in his presence for the
festyvitie of anie marriage, Assemblye of ffrendes, or otherlyke cawse.:1

The point about 'closet' or private drama is not that it is private (irrespect-
ive of its mode of publication), but that it is a form used by the social elite
to debate and advance their own concerns, and to cement political and
ideological alliances within self-selecting groups.
Rather than women's plays being limited arenas for self-expression, we can
view them as forms of political and familial self-fashioning exercised within
the available sphere for female political agency. Plays and translations like
Lady Jane Lumley's Iphigeneia (c. 1553), the Countess of Pembroke's Antonie
(1592), and Elizabeth Cary's Mariam (pub. 1613) are allied to the humanist
dialogue, and the pro et contra form of rhetorical argument. In these plays,
female agency can be explored because of their non-performance; drama on
the page, or performed in 'private', destabilises the relationship between the
body and language whereby women's speech is seen as a usurpation of
male authority.4 Each play explores the grounds and conditions ofwomen's
speech, and the circumstances in which specific moral positions and dilemmas
require the relationship between gender and language to be renegoti-
ated. In each of the tragedies explored in this chapter, the female body is
seen as a crucial and symbolically resonant site, traversed by conflicting
private and public ethical dilemmas, which are finally resolved through the

81
 THE POLITICS OF EARlY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

absenting of the woman's body and her redaction into historical myth. I
will argue that Lady Lumley, the Countess of Pembroke and Elizabeth
Cary adapt existing generic forms and historical narratives via translation
and imitation in order to mark and interrogate female political agency.
Speaking through inherited traditions of historiographical writing, they
destabilise the assumption that women were exeluded from politics and
underline a central contradiction in patriarchal ideology by calling attention
to the role of women and the feminine in the formation of power relations
and the extent to which political order is founded upon the containment of
women. All three interrogate the publiclprivate boundary, exploring the
relationships between the politics of the family and those of the state in
order to assert that women's agency does not exist in a 'separate sphere',
but that female power is central to the operations of politics and ideology.
Closet drama was viewed in a contradictory way in late Elizabethan and
early Jacobean England. On the one hand, this form of coterie writing could
be seen to be free from the taints of display and dissimulation so controver-
sially applied to stage plays, and to be an extension of the dialogue form,
which provided instructive precepts and examples. 5 Stephen Gosson, for
example, elaims that in his play on John the Baptist, George Buchanan
'penned these bookes in numbers with interloquutions dialoguewise, as Plalo
and Tullie did their Philosophie, to be reade, not played'.6 Gosson suggests
that reading plays is acceptable, and politically instructive:

whatsoever such Playes as conteine good matter are set out in print, may
be read with profite, but cannot be playd, without a manifest breach of
Gods commaundement. Let the Author of the playe of playes & pastimes,
take heede how he reade ye action, pronuntiation, agility of body are ye
good gifts of God. Ergo plaies consisting of these cannot be evill.
(E6r-v)

Gosson insists that profit might be derived from the reading of plays: the
form of eloset drama explicitly conforms to this injunction, being uncon-
cerned with dramatic display except as a trope to indicate dissolute indul-
genee. 7 On the other hand, eloset drama was politically contentious because
of its interest in tyranny, monarchy and the rights of the subject. 8 The
narrative of Antony and Cleopatra in particular came to be seen as contro-
versial; Fulke Greville, famously, reported the destruction of his own play
on the subject:

Lastly, concerning the Tragedies themselves; they were in their first

creation three; Whereof Antonie and Cleopatra, according to their irregular
passions, in forsaking Empire to follow sensuality, were sacrificed to the

82
 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED POLITICAL SUBJECT

fire. The executioner, the author himselfe ... Many members in that
creature (by the opinion of those few eyes, which saw it) having some
childish wantonnesse in them, apt enough to be construed, or strained
to a personating of vices in the present Governors, and government. 9

Greville imagined that his drama might be read as an oblique comment

upon Elizabethan government, but does not hint he re at a direct corres-
pondence of characters and persons. The genre of doset drama, with its
indebtedness to dassical traditions, and its embeddedness in questions of
morality and political ethics, cannot simply be equated with an unrecon-
structed notion of the 'domestic'.

Translating politics

The texts produced by Lady Lumley, the Countess of Pembroke and Eliza-
beth Cary are not political in a direct or overt sense - they are not calls to
action; they illustrate responses and reinterpretations of political beliefs and
ideals, positions which are not simply personal, but derive from their famil-
ial and cultural milieux. Female agency in these tragedies is a matter of
negotiation, aseries of attempts to balance out women's importance to the
functioning of the social and political order, without exceeding the cultural
regulations which permitted women their place within that order. The
three plays under discussion here (Lumley's translation ofEuripides' Iphigeneia
(c. 1553); Mary Sidney's translation of Garnier's The Tragedie rf Antonie
(1592); and Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedie rf Mariam, The Faire Qy,eene rf]ewry
(pub. 1613)) share a number of characteristics, despite spanning more than
half a century. First, they are all doset dramas based doselyon dassical
models, Seneca and Euripides in particular. Second, each of them confronts
the conflict between competing imperatives as they arise specifically for the
married woman, or the about-to-be-married woman: as we shall see, this
might partly be understood as a conflict between irreconcilable dynastic
demands (public and familial). Third, all three foreground the suffering
female body (as a discursive construction, not as a physical entity or pres-
ence) as a figuration or condition of achanging political order. Finally,
these tragedies demonstrate the ways in which women must finally be repu-
diated from the political order that they guarantee, as they are absented
through death, and their historical power resides in their status as excep-
tional exempla. Although only one heroine is actually a suicide (Cleopatra),
all three deaths are, in different ways, self-willed, allowing the transformation
of the central character from oppressed victim to meaningful and re sonant

83
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

martyr, through the opening up of the dead or dying female body to public
spectacle and moral scrutiny.
Lady Jane Lumley's translation of Euripides' Iphigeneia at Aulis is found in
a unique manuscript, also containing translations of Isocrates, and two
Latin letters to Lumley's father, Henry Fitzaian, Lord Arundel. Lady
Lumley's interest in Creek is unusual, not just for a wo man, and allies her
with the highly born ofboth sexes. As Purkiss suggests, Lumley's fine human-
ist education reflected the political desires and ambitions of her father, and
her translation of Iphigeneia can be read as articulating the kinds of conflicts
between private conscience and public responsibility that many of those in
her immediate circle had experienced. 10 The context of the manuscript
(especially the Latin epistles) reveals the young Lady Lumley, recently mar-
ried, reaffirming her ties to her father from the new position of altered
allegiance that came with marriage. In a way, her choice of Euripides
confronts this also; as Nicole Loraux suggests, Iphigeneia's death in the play
functions as a marriage in reverse, where the young woman is directed back
towards the father, not towards her husband. 11 This is not to argue that her
translation can be read purely biographically; it should be read in the light
of the particular moral, political and literary concerns which characterised
the highly unstable period between 1547 and 1558.
There is evidence that Lumley worked with Erasmus' Latin version of
the text. 12 As NorIand notes, Erasmus expended 'much scholarly effort' on
Seneca and Euripides; his translation of Iphigeneia was published in 1506,
and was reprinted 22 times between 1506 and 1567. The play was 'among
the best-known ofEuripides' works in the sixteenth century', and was valued
for its moral instruction and use of sententiae. 13 Lumley's father and hus-
band both owned unusually extensive libraries, and had wide-ranging clas-
sical and humanist interests; Lord Lumley was also a translator of Erasmus
and his version of The Institution qf a Christian Prince was completed in 1550.
While there is no clear evidence that Lady Lumley's text was a com-
panion piece, the two works do share so me basic concerns, in particular, the
notion that a ruler should not govern through self-interest. These questions
are explored in Iphigeneia via the body of a woman balanced on the cusp
between marriage and death. While the play focusses on whether or not
Iphigeneia should be sacrificed to Artemis in order to liberate the Creek
fleet from the literal and metaphorical inertia visited upon them by the
gods, this is a moral question which fundamentally concerns male honour
and bonds between men, and women's role in symbolising, but not enact-
ing, such power relations.
The political implications of sacrifice in Creek tragedy are weIl known,
and Foley argues that such scenarios gene rally involve a 'cultural crisis',
where a young person (generally, but not always, female) is voluntarily

84
 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED POLITICAL SUBJECT

saerifieed 'to save family or city or nation in a situation of soeial enSlS

(usually war)'. 14 Lumley's translation might also tie into a moment of either
soeial or eultural erisis, or both. The play ean be dated to the mid-1550s,
and was eompleted in the early years of Lumley's marriage. 15 This was a
period of religious upheaval and dynastie uneertainty, as Edward VI's pro-
teetors battled with the eompeting demands of upholding Protestantism,
and the eompelling dynastie argument that the seeurity of the English throne
best lay in the figure of Edward's sister Mary. Having been part of Lady
Jane Grey's council, Arundel gave his whole-hearted support to Mary upon
her aeeession, henee within Lumley's own family, a ehoiee had been made
between blood allegianee and the publie good, with all of the moral grey
areas that this entailed. Lady Jane Grey was 'saerifieed' (eventually literally,
as her exeeution elevated her to the status of a martyr figure) not for
ideologieal reasons, but dynastie ones, although the Arundels, despite the
eomplieation of their blood ties to Jane, as Catholies, may have seen the
two as inextrieably linked. It is hard for a modern reader to see Arundel
as anything but deeply self-serving, but Iphigeneia is not a straightforward
eneoding of politieal allegianees. Lady Lumley, by ehoosing this play,
provides an authoritative rationale for eontemporary events, and eon-
fronts a model whieh allows saerifiee to ennoble and elevate by eventually
exonerating those in power from the eonsequenees of their arguments. As
Rabinowitz suggests, Euripides gives Iphigeneia an illusory ehoiee whieh
forees Iphigeneia to take responsibility for Agamemnon's moral dilemma,
by taking his ehoiee apparently 'for herself': 'Euripides gives Iphigeneia
(and the audienee) the illusion of her individuality, but the only aetion she
ean perform as a subjeet is that ofsubmission.'16 And, as a eonsequenee, the
play neatly eneapsulates women's paradoxieal position as politieally and
dynastieally eentral, but fundamentally and ideologieally alienated from the
power that they wield.
The play's events are a trial of male honour, explored through the eom-
peting moral demands of nation and family. Agamemnon's indeeision, and
vaeillating orders with regard to the gods' demand for a blood saerifiee,
reveal him, in his brother Menelaus' eyes at least, as unfit for leadership,
and prone to ineonstaney: 'Suerlye you ehaunge your minde oftentimes, for
sometime you thinke one thinge, and by and by ageyne you are in a nother
minde.'17 This effeminising uneertainty is born of Agamemnon's ineompat-
ible desire to save his daughter, and to uphold the honour of the Greeks by
going to war with the Trojans. At the eentre of the publie eonfliet there is a
private matter - Helen's defeetion to the arms of Paris, a dynastie and
national insult. In the same way, Iphigeneia's saerifiee involves the subordina-
tion of aetual dynastie interest (the produetion of heirs) to symbolie dyn-
astie honour and the replaeement of a sexually reprobate national symbol

8S
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

(Helen) by a sexually purified figure who can exemplif)r the virtue and
honour of Greece. In order to resolve these competing demands and to
reinstate the honour of Agamemnon and Greece, as weIl as placing the
bond between brothers in its proper, pre-eminent position, Iphigeneia must
ofTer herself willingly, putting the concerns of her father and the nation in
place of her self. Both of the scenarios around which the play is structured
involve a conftict between marriage and war / death, such that marriage is a
symbolic death, and death is a symbolic marriage, each representing a
change in status for the young virgin, and the movement into womanhood:
Iphigeneia must leave her father. When Iphigeneia is brought to Aulis on
the pretext that she is to marry Achilles, words re sonate doubly: she thinks
they refer to marriage, Agamemnon knows that they signal death:

Iph. But what meanethe this father that you do lament so?
Aga. I have good cause to morne: for after this daye I shall not see you
ageine of a greate while.
Iph. I do not understande, 0 father, what you mene by this.
(394-7)

The sacrifice which was traditionally a prelude to marriage quickly embraces

it, as Iphigeneia's body is substituted for the domestic animal who symbol-
ised oblation to the gods; the virginal body is to be sacrificially opened
by the cutting of the throat, which will turn her into a sign, rather than
a wife. 18
Although the resolution of the moral dilemma is never really in doubt, its
working out does engage with women's ability to persuade. In the opening
passages of the play, the debate is enacted via the sending and receiving of
letters, a process of exchange between men (despite the intended recipi-
ent of one of Agamemnon's letters, no letter actually reaches female
hands) which is later rendered literal; the epistolary 'subject' is Iphigeneia's
death, and finally she becomes the subject to be exchanged, the literal body
over which conftict is worked out, and which enables the Trojan war. 19
Clytemnestra represents one axis of this conflict, defending familial interest
and adhering to the fundamental illegality of a parent killing his child.
Female speech in this play is decorous, but knowing; whenever either his
wife or his daughter gets too dose to the truth, Agamemnon resorts to
patriarchal dictums about feminine propriety: 'Leave to enquier of suche
thinges, for it is not lawfull that women shulde knowe them' (422-3). While
Clytemnestra has the power to persuade, she cannot convince at the point
at which the sacrifice is revealed to her, i.e. when it becomes a public,
political matter, rather than a private, familial one. She implores AchilIes
to help:

86
 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED rOLITICAL SUBJECT

Besides this yf you do not helpe us, we can bi no meanes avoide this
mischefe: for I alone beinge a woman can not perswade Agamemnon.
(559-61)

Despite the fact that she does not possess force of argument, she is able to
persuade through pathos, as Achilies' response indicates: 'I am wonderfullie
moved withe your pitious complainte' (565-6). Clytemnestra argues strongly
for the dynastie principle, which is the area where she may exercise power.
The sacrifice, rather than the marriage, of Iphigeneia, not only entails her
death, but her removal from the maternal to the paternal, and the loss of
Clytemnestra's agency - signified by the fact that the 'truth' is deliberately
kept from her. Her threat to Agamemnon is precisely that of bringing his
public persona into question by his actions towards his family: 'also you
shall purehase your selfe the name of a cruell tyrante' (685-6). Her function
is to mediate the publiclprivate boundary, without actually exercising the
politica1. Similarly, although the fate of Greece depends upon Iphigeneia,
it does not depend upon her to make the crucial decision; her role is
to symbolise aversion of Greek heroism - and it is also very much
Agamemnon's sacrifice, as he loses his beloved daughter - which adum-
brates the kleos or glory that will be displayed in war. 20 In order to exonerate
Agamemnon from the charge of violating dynastie order, Iphigeneia's sacri-
fice must ultimately be self-willed. Her death permits a degree of political
agency, but an agency which Iphigeneia can embody, but not exercise:

Consider I praie you mother, for what a lawfull cause I shalbe slaine.
Dothe not bothe the destruction of Troie, and also the welthe of grece,
whiche is the mooste frutefull countrie of the worlde hange upon my
deathe? ... I shall not onlie remedie all thes thinges withe my deathe:
but also get a glorious renowne to the grecians for ever ... I was not
borne for your sake onEe, but rather for the commodite of my countrie.
(801-10)

The glory of marriage to Achilies is replaced by marriage to Greece, and

her honour and farne is framed in masculine terms: 'withe my deathe I
shall purehase unto them a glorious victorie' (894-5). Her sacrifice takes
place (off-stage) in an all-male company, unlike the marriage rite which it
replaces. It is narrated to Clytemnestra by the Nuntius in terms which
coalesce the various strands of the sacrifice; Iphigeneia affirms her willing-
ness and the purpose of her death. The miraculous appearance of the white
hart (signifying purity?) in Iphigeneia's stead, 'she vanisshed sodenlye awaye'
(1.940), and the virgin's bloodless translation to the gods, gives a distinctly
Christological cast to the text, allying the heroine with a type of martyrdom.

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At this moment, the absence ofthe body marks Iphigeneia's transition from
daughter to sign. The price of political power is death, and it is in death
that Iphigeneia becomes politically re sonant, as Rabinowitz points out:
'Euripides ... grants her this stereotypically masculine and public farne
without disturbing her femininity, by moving the private goals to a new
register ... she achieves farne - that is, male success - by self-sacrifice, by
submitting herself to her superior and opposite.'21 The translation provides
us with one example of an authoritative model for female political agency,
one given credibility by influential humanists, who were engaged in trying
to find adequate, but unthreatening models of virtue for wives, widows and
maids.

Death, sex and politics

By virtue of appearing in print the Countess of Pembroke's Antonie is dir-

ected towards the public world. Mary Sidney's Tragedie qf Antonie (1592), a
translation ofRobert Garnier's play Mare Antoine, is a Senecan doset drama,
and displays the usual features of this type of drama: observance of the
unities, the use of the nuntius, few characters, dramatic irony, and long,
rhetorically sophisticated dedamatory speeches. The choice of a play which
dealt with Roman history, and of a narrative located at the point of trans-
ition from republic to monarchy, could not be seen in the 1590s as anything
other than political. Roman his tory was the main body of material available
for the discussion ofpolitical morality, and it was used to support contradict-
ory viewpoints throughout the 1590s. 22 As Smuts argues, Roman history
bequeathed a 'more sophisticated and critical political language', heavily
influenced by T acitus, to the Elizabethans, which enabled complex connec-
tions to be made. 23 Roman histories became increasingly popular, as the
availability of English translations testifies, and provided aseries of pre-
cedents which could be appropriated for contemporary purposes, and fur-
nished authoritative lessons for the present. 24
The combination of a form which could be seen as virtuous (at least in
comparison with the public stage) but carried with it a tradition of political
application and critique undoubtedly influenced the Countess ofPembroke's
decision to translate this play, if her commitment to the Protestant cause
and her opposition, however veiled, to Elizabeth's policies in the 1590s is
taken into account. 25 Garnier had adapted the Senecan model to point out
the relevance of dassical ideas to events in France in the 1570s: in particu-
lar, the French religious wars and questions about the nature and duties
of kingship. 26 The precedent of Garnier indicated the potential affinity

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between Stoic ideals and the Calvinist tenet of predestination, emphasised

by the pairing of Sidney's Antonie with her translation of Philippe Duplessis-
Mornay's Discourse rf Life and Death in the 1592 edition. 27 Garnier's play
rewrites the figure of Cleopatra: she is not the voluptuous temptress of
exotic sexuality depicted by Plutarch (and later by Shakespeare), but a
heroic figure of repentant virtue who exercises a political choice in line with
her moral conscience, rather than erotic desire. In her insistent fidelity to
Antony, Cleopatra's death can, like Iphigeneia's, be viewed as a kind of
substitute marriage presided over by death: 'Die Cleopatra then, no longer
stay/From Ant0l!J, who thee at Styx attends:/ Go joyne thy Ghost with his,
and sob no more/ Without his love within these tombes enclos'd.,28
The play focusses on the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, and the attend-
ant political issues, which shifts attention from Cleopatra's temptation of
Antony to her death which Plutarch claims to be an act of nobility:
'Caesar ... wondred at her noble minde and corage.,29 Other Roman his-
torians attest to Cleopatra's death as her finest hour. 30 Although Cleopatra's
death is conventionally represented as a moment of redemptive nobility, it
hovers between resistance and capitulation, because as Cleopatra refuses
to be displayed in Caesar's triumph, she becomes something other than
an Egyptian woman. Velleius Paterclus reports that she was 'free from all
womanish feare', and Shakespeare represents her as embracing 'the high
Roman fashion'.31 While denying Octavius Caesar his spectacle, the death
of Cleopatra seals his political ascendancy, and the transition from republic
to empire: as an oppositional figure who is finally tamed and silenced by
enacting her past sins upon herself, Cleopatra's death is far more symbolic-
ally powerful than Antony's botched suicide, signalling the extent of his
effeminisation, and his inability to be a good Roman. Her death might be
understood as a kind of inverted martyrdom which expiates her past life,
and absents her troublesome and tempting body.
Rather than concentrating on Cleopatra's death as a moment oftheatric-
ality, Antonie represents it as resistance to Caesar, to tyranny, and to norm-
ative constructions of the political woman. Her final act, unlike her ability
to manipulate Antony through erotic power, demands that she be absented
from the text, and from political power. At the moment that Cleopatra's
actions become non-transgressive in relation to constructions of gender, her
political agency is (almost) expended. This absenting is a political act, as
Cleopatra chooses her own death in preference to subjection and display at
the hands of Caesar, and visits the punishment for political and sexual
power upon herself. She effectively removes herself from the patriarchal
structures which simultaneously depend upon, and repress, female mediation
and succession, but is reconstructed as an ambiguous sign of the dangers of
female power and of the extent of Caesar's tyranny.

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The Senecan form lent itself to the discussion of broad political issues,
and the treatment of Cleopatra in Antonie is no exception. In the course of
her decision to commit suicide, arguments are advanced which advocate
both resistance and obedience to Caesar. Eras exclaims 'Come of so many
Kings, want you the hart/ Bravely, stoutly, this tempest to resist?' (423-4),
calling upon Cleopatra's masculine qualities in persuading her to action,
and invoking her political power as mediated though her femininity as a
way of retaining Egypt's political integrity:

Cl. My ev'lls are wholy unsupportable

No humain force can them withstand, but death,
Eras. To hirn that strives nought is impossible.
Cl. In striving lyes no hope of my mishapps.
Eras. All things do yeelde to force of lovely face.
Cl. My face too lovely caus'd my wretched case.
My face hath so entrap'd, to cast us downe,
That for his conquest Ccesar may it thanke,
Causing that Antonie one army lost,
The other wholy did to Ccesar yeld.
(425-34)

Cleopatra refuses Eras's suggested course of action, but her reference to the
flight at Actium signals that her sexuality has previously constituted political
power, and the play proposes a different kind of agency: passive resistance,
not allowing her femininity to be used to political ends. Antonie suggests that
female political power is always mediated, either by sexuality, whereby it
becomes transgressive, or by death, whereby it becomes a sign which enacts
its own erasure. Cleopatra's refusal to challenge Caesar's supremacy by the
exploitation of her sexual power is in direct contrast to other accounts,
where it is Caesar's virtue which resists Cleopatra's wiles.
The political is closely interwoven with the erotic and familial, so that
Cleopatra's political position is never pure or free from conditions and
restraints. Whereas Antony's marriage to Octavia, Caesar's sister, is the
expression of a political alliance which ties him to nothing but the alliance,
Cleopatra's 'marriage' to Antony produces a crisis of conscience regarding
where her responsibilities truly lie. Her political power is mediated through
her sexual, private relationships: the two cannot be separated, even if her
sexuality is presented, as it is in Antonie, as virtuous. In Sidney's translation,
Cleopatra's sexuality is contained and atoned for through her fidelity, but
her gen der remains troubling in relation to the exercise of political power.
Diomede, for example, advocates a course of action based upon Cleopatra's
past history, where erotic power is used for political gain:

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 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED POllTICAL SUBJECT

What doth that beautie, rarest guijl if heav'n,

Wonder if earth? Alas! what do those eies?
And that sweete voice alt Asia understoode,
And sunbumt Africke wide in deserts spred?
1s their force dead? have th'!J no further power?
Can not by thern Octavius be surpriz'd?
(697-702)

Here Cleopatra's responsibility is to protect Egypt and her subjects by any

means, and the only political means available is her sexuality, the exercise
of agency through the private sphere. Cleopatra's stance of grief is clearly
oppositional in Diomede's assessment, resisting the conflation of the sexual
and political which constructs female political power as sexuaily trangressive,
because it can only be mediated through women's relationships to men,
and articulated through the erotic. Cleopatra's decision to commit suicide
thus becomes a refusal to function as a sexual sign which mediates power,
and an assertion of her own subjecthood. Diomede says 'if hir teares/She
would convert into her loving charmes,lTo make a conquest of the con-
queror,l(As weil she might, would she hir force imploie)/She should us
safetie from these ills proeure' (735-9), thus presenting her grief as a retreat
from political responsibility and as a refusal to exercise power through her
sexuality.
The competing claims on Cleopatra are explored differently by Charmian
and Eras, as they seek to persuade Cleopatra to take up a stance of active,
rather than passive, resistance, presented as a choice between employing,
or withdrawing, sexuality from the public sphere. Charmian's rhetoric
opens up Cleopatra's dilemma, as she opposes fidelity to Antony with
allegiance to Egypt, which is nevertheless linked with Cleopatra's familial
responsibilities:

Ch. Live for your sonnes. Cl. Nay for their father die.
Ch. Hardharted mother! Cl. Wife, kindhearted, 1.
Ch. Then will you them deprive of royall right?
Cl. Do I deprive them? no, it's dest'nies might.
(555-8)

The conflict of roles is clear, alongside a telling slippage from the 'private'
world of husband and sons, to the public one of 'royall right'. Cleopatra
eschews political responsibility framed in terms of public agency, seeing the
loss ofher royalline as the work of'dest'nies might'. This contrasts with her
position earlier in this scene, where she attributes her (and Antony's) down-
fall to her own shortcomings:

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Er. Are you therefore cause of his overthrow?

Cl. I am sole cause: I did it, only 1.
Er. Feare of a woman troubled so his sprite?
Cl. Fire of his love was by my feare enfiam'd.
Er. And should he then to warre have led a Queene?
Cl. Alas! this was not his offence, but mine.
(447-52)

The contrasting positions outlined by Eras and Cleopatra are underlined by

the use of word-play, and the parallel between 'Feare of a woman' and 'Fire
of his love' serves to highlight, via paronomasia, the view of Antony as
effeminised (and of Cleopatra as without fault) and the view of hirn as over-
taken by passion caused by Cleopatra (where she is responsible). Cleopatra
goes on to regret the error at Actium: '0 that I had beleev'd! now, now
of Rome/ All the great Empire at our beck should bende' (457-8), and
attributes the loss of this power to her inability to observe the distinction
between the private and the political: 'so was my soule possest,! ... with
burning jealousie:/ Fearing least in my absence Antony/ Should leaving me
retake Octavia' (463-6). Suicide becomes a way of side-stepping these dis-
continuities, as it represents a form of withdrawal from competing claims, an
act which is open to interpretation, but does not demand the foregrounding
of sexuality as a means to the exercise of political power.
While it is primarily through the exploration of Cleopatra's death that
political issues are refracted, both the sources and the play reveal a pre-
occupation with the work of gender in politics, using the story as an exem-
plification of the dangers of excess and sensuality in government. In classical
histories (Plutarch, Appian, Lucan) Antony's downfall is constructed as a
shift from masculine virtue to effeminate sensuality. In Antonie it is not the
case that Cleopatra is unproblematically demonised as the cause of Antony's
fall; rather, there seem to be competing voices in the text which present
Cleopatra as a more ambiguous figure - perhaps enabling a reading of the
play which relates to anxieties about female government. Antony repeatedly
blames Cleopatra for distracting hirn from the exercise of politics:

For love rf her, in her allurements caught,

Abandon'd liJe, I honor have despisde,
Disdain'd my jreends, and rf the state?Je Rome
Despoilde the Empire rf her best attire,
Contemn'd that power that made me so muchflar'd,
A slave become unto her fleble face.
(11-16)

Femininity is appropriated by Caesar and Agrippa in order to justifY Antony's

exclusion from the exercise of power, and to present his political position as

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 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED POLITICAL SUBJECT

inimical: 'Voluptuous care of fond and foolish love,! Have justly wrought
his wrack' (1397-8), and 'his owne pride the cause,! And unchast love of
this Aegiptian' (1693-4). This posits female power as sexualised, threatening
and transgressive, and female sexual power as shattering the proper exer-
cise of politics: as in Shakespeare's version of the story, Antony's descent
from Hercules is reorientated to provide a paradigm of the neglect of war
through the story of Hercules and Omphale (1220-3).32 The attribution of
the fall of the Roman republic to pernicious female inftuence is astapie of
classical accounts, and opponents of Cleopatra in Antonie attempt to present
her political power and ambition in sexualised terms. Antony presents his
defamation of Cleopatra's character in ways which introduce her gender as
being per se morally aberrant: he says that she is '[t]oo much enftam'd with
greatnes, evermore/Gaping for our great Empires government' (884-5),
where the implications of the word 'gaping' are sexual, imaging an idea of
openness and display.
This view is also opposed by the text, where the transgressive nature of
female rule is offset by adherence to the demands of conscience: Cleopatra's
early life is atoned for by her virtuous death, and the contradictions and
paradoxes attendant upon female rule are exposed. In the first instance,
Antony is not just emasculated and humiliated by Cleopatra (as he sees it),
but by Caesar, who is projected by Antony as a womanish coward motiv-
ated by raw ambition:

A man, a woman both in might and minde,

In Mars his schole who neuer lesson leam'd,
Should me repulse, chase, ouerthrow, destroy,
Me qf such fime, bring to so low an ebbe?
(1060-3)

Cleopatra's role in Antony's fall is distanced by the choruses which emphas-

ise fate and fortune, and by the fact that Antony falls because of his own
susceptibility to women, not due to any attempt on Cleopatra's part to win
hirn over. The power relations which posit Antony as weak, rather than
Cleopatra as irresistible, differ markedly from the accounts of Plutarch,
Appian, Lucan and others where Cleopatra's exploitation of her sexuality
for political ends is stressed. Her death also enacts a transition from volup-
tuous sexuality to virtuous heroism. The fact that Cleopatra's gender is used
by Caesar and Antony as a metonym for the decay of Roman republican-
ism demonstrates the problematics of female political agency: Cleopatra
cannot be female and political without undoing her gender identity, without
becoming either masculine, or a whore. By its resistance to the sexualisation
of Cleopatra's political power through the concentration on the act of sui-
cide, Sidney's Antonie does present an alternative to this mode1. 33

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 TH E POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITI NG

Antanie advocates passive resistance to tyranny and state oppression, re-

jecting an expedient accommodation between conquered and conqueror,
such as that suggested by Charmian, where Antony would be commemor-
ated by a mausoleum, and rapprochement could be reached with Caesar:

Hanar his memory: with doubled eare

Breed and bring up the ehildren qfyou both
In C;:esars graee: who as a noble Prinee
Will leave them Lords qf this most glorious realme.
(615-18)

Capitulation is rejected, and Caesar's tyranny is highlighted by Cleopatra

and Antony's mistrust ofhis motives: 'Bloud and alliance nothing do prevaile/
To coole the thirst of hote ambitious brests' (10 10-11). The chorus es in
Antanie, as is conventional, contain much of the explicit discussion of polit-
ical issues, and it is he re that the stance of passive resistance is most clearly
advocated:

"but ifforce must us iriforee

"needes a yoke to undergo,
"under flraine yoke to go,
"still it proves a bondage worse,
"and doubled subjection
"see we shall, and fiele, and know
"subject to astranger growne.
(802-8)

Despite this stance of opposition, the chorus to Act 2 goes on to endorse the
trust in God and time to inflict revenge explored by Protestant contro-
versialists of the sixteenth century: 'Every thing Time overthrowes,lnought
to end doth steadfast staie' (824-5).34 Refuge is sought in a larger, more
universal subjection to death and time, and death is posited as the ultimate
liberation from worldly suffering:

Death rather healthfull sueeour gives,

Death rather alt mishapps relieves
That lifi upon us throweth:
And ever to us doth unclose
The dore whereby ]rom eurelesse woes
Our weary soule out goeth.
(1256-61)

The stress upon the liberating potential of death serves to repoliticise

Cleopatra's suicide as a moment of self-empowerment rather than subjection
to other powers, as the Chorus to Act 3 makes clear (1292-7). Cleopatra's

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 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED POLITICAL SUBJECT

body becomes something which is acted upon, rather than acting, In a

paradigm of self-consumption which serves to undermine the dynamic of
power envisaged by Caesar, where Cleopatra will be made subject to his
(and the Romans') controlling gaze, and forced to function as a sign of
political power over which she has no control. Her suicide hovers uncer-
tainly on the cusp between activity and passivity, and her death is envisaged
as a political martyrdom, but, equally importantly, as an event whose mean-
ings are controlled and patrolled by Cleopatra, and left deliberately obscure
to the 'public' reader - especially in Antonie where her death is not described
and is withdrawn from textual display.
Antonie, by recuperating and reinterpreting meanings from its precursors,
manages to address a number of issues which were topical in the l590s. It
cannot be said to endorse a position which has a specific analogue in Eliza-
beth's government, but it does raise issues about the nature of rule, the fear
of tyranny, and the place of femininity in the public sphere. The rewriting
of Cleopatra as a type of virtuous resistance foregrounds the problematics
of the female subject as a political agent, as ruler and subject, by enabling
her to take control ofthe meanings ofher own death. Its 'messages' regard-
ing female power and the troping of gender in politics are ambiguous, but
Antonie does open up the possibility of a virtuous female intervention which
does not presuppose bringing sexuality into play, and addresses the contra-
dictory position of woman within politics in such a way as to disclose the
paradoxes inherent in both female regiment and female subjection.

Tragedy and the politics of marriage

The Tragedie qfMariam, the Faire Qyeene qf]ewry, published in 1613, utilises the
narrative of Antony and Cleopatra and the transition from republic to
monarchy as a liminal, but crucial, element in the exploration of its main
themes. Mariam is informed by events in Rome as the ascendancy of Caesar
Augustus fuels the expectation of Herod's death, and it returns repeatedly
to Cleopatra as a foil representing feminine vice in order to highlight
Mariam's continency and virtue. Antony resurfaces at numerous points in
the play to exemplify tensions between the private and the political, and as
the archetype of the dangers of the incursion of the erotic into the public
sphere. Cary's Mariam addresses many of the same issues and problems as
Sidney's Antonie, but focusses more closely on the intersection of family and
politics within marriage. 35 That Herod is a king and Mariam a queen
makes the exploration of tyranny within marriage a paradigm for relations
between ruler and ruled which might pertain outside the marital relationship.

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

This possibility is underlined by the text's critique and destabilisation of

marriage, and its questioning of women's place as subjects within them.
Through a complex discussion of divorce and legitimacy, Mariam raises the
question of the subject's right to resist and the nature of female subjecthood,
while drawing attention to the tendency of male supremacy to fear and
hence police the thing which it depends upon for its perpetuation and
legitimacy: female sexuality. As in Antonie, the female subject's resistance in
the political sphere demands her absence from politics through death, and
her transrnutation into an unstable sign representative of the transgressions
of tyrannical government.
While Mariam has usually been read in the light of its concern with
marriage, the play points to an interest in its dissolution: no marriage
depicted in the play is entirely free from doubts about legitimacy. As
Weller and Ferguson note, it is 'a play explicitly concerned with the legitimacy
of divorce'.36 Discussions of divorce are continually interlaced with ideals of
marriage in Protestant conduct books, where divorce is only permissible on
the grounds of adultery, a 'divorce from the bond of marriage' or deser-
tion. 37 Divorce frequently functions as an image of the dissolution of polit-
ical and religious bonds of allegiance, and as an act which represents the
breakdown of social and political order. In Mariam marital dissolution raises
questions of conscience and duty, allegiance and disobedience in ways which
foreground the idea of the marital oath as binding, and the circumstances
under which this oath might be broken. 38 At a political level, Mariam's
concern with vows and oaths in relation to fidelity (sexual and political)
seems to be bound up with an unstable and contradictory discussion of the
rights of the subject, and the limitations of sovereignty.
The issue of divorce is directly addressed through the figure of Salome,
where it is closely related to desire, political ambition, and the breaking of
the marriage oath. Salome's statement supporting divorce as initiated by
the female partner forms what has been read as an unequivocally proto-
feminist moment:

lf he to me did beare as Eamest hate,

As I to him, fir him there were an ease,
A separating bill might free his Jate:
From such a yoke that did so much displease.
Why should such priviledge to man be given?
Or given to them, why bard from women then?
Are men then we in greater grace with Heaven?
Or cannot women hate as well as men?
Ile be the custome-breaker: and beginne
To shew my Sexe the wery to freedomes doore.
(1.4.41-50)

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 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED rOLITICAL SUBJECT

Salome's desire to marry the Arabian prince Silleus is obstructed by her

extant marriage to Constabarus, who, unlike her former husband,Josephus,
is still alive:

Eut naw ill Fated Salome, t1!Y tangue

Ta Constabarus by it se!fo is tide:
And now except I doe the Ebrew wrong
I cannot be the faire Arabian Eride.
(1.4.17-20)

While Salome provides a clear challenge to ideologies which maintain

that the marital bond is indissoluble, except on the grounds of death, adul-
tery or desertion, her position is untenable within seventeenth-century
understandings of divorce, as well as within Judaic law based upon
Deuteronomy 24:1-2. 39 That Salome's wish to remarry on the grounds of
political ambition is predicated on her sexual incontinence undermines
her position, unlike Herod's presumed death which frees Mariam from
her bonds of allegiance without sexual taint. In the terms available in
early modern England, there cou1d be no justification for Salome's posi-
tion, and Cary seems to include it not in order to outline an ideal of
freedom for women, but to set up a contrast whereby Mariam's resist-
an ce to her husband can take place on different, and more obviously sanc-
tioned territory: her separation is based upon conscience not desire, a
refusal to obey an adulterer whose position as ruler and husband is not
legitimate.
Criticism of Mariam has assumed that its heroine is unequivocally vir-
tuous and chaste, and that the play is an expose of a male tendency to
represent femininity as threatening. Yet the evidence of the play pro-
poses Mariam's position as more precarious than this. It is clear from the
'Argument' that Herod's position as ruler is unstable and open to challenge
(pp. 101-2), and that his legitimacy is entirely founded upon Mariam's
line of descent. Alexandra calls hirn 'Base Edomite the damned Esaus heire'
(1.2.6), raising an issue which has a fundamental bearing upon Mariam's
status in the play, and on Herod's mistreatment of her:

I know by fits, he shewd some signes qf love,

And yet not love, but raging lunacie:
And this his hate to thee may justfy prave,
That sure he hates Hercanus familie.
Ji1!ho knawes ij he unconstant wavering Lord,
His love to Doris had renew'd againe?
(1.2.45-50/0

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 THE POLlTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Alexandra uses the threat of Herod's return to his previous wife, Doris, as a
way of persuading Mariam to appropriate pleasure at his demise, but
Mariam's status as a second wife enables her sexual reputation to be ques-
tioned - at least within aJacobean understanding of divorce. In asserting
the legitimacy of her own sons Mariam raises the spectre of bastardy which
is later assumed to hang over them:

He not a whit his first borne sonne esteem'd,

Because as welt as his he was not mine:
A{y children onely fir his owne he deem'd,
These boyes that did descend flom royal! line.
(1.2.57-60/ 1

Mariam's role is to seeure Herod's legitimacy and to guarantee the succes-

sion by ensuring the paternity of Herod's children; her status and power
therefore depend upon her chastity. Alexandra, Doris and Salome all chal-
lenge Mariam's position, on differing grounds and for their own political
ends. Doris seeks to undermine Mariam's virtue in order to reinstate her
son Antipater as the rightful heir, resorting to poison, intrigue and slander,
and calling the validity of Herod's second marriage into question: 'Your
soule is blacke and spotted, full of sinne: / You in adultry liv' d nine yeare
together,l And heav'n will never let adultry in' (4.8.51-3). Doris argues that
her marriage to Herod remains legitimate, and that the reasons for its
dissolution conform to none of the accepted grounds for divorce within
English law. She is, she says, 'Herods lawfull wife' (4.8.60), and asks:

VVhat did he hate me fir: fir simple truth?

For bringing beautious babes fir love to him:
For riches: noble birth, or tender youth,
Or fir no staine did Doris honour dim?
(4.8.67-70)

Doris has fulfilled the functions of marriage as detailed in Protestant man-

uals: the procreation of children, chastity and mutual comfort.
Divorce (i.e. a releasing ofboth parties from the marital obligation, leav-
ing them as free agents) was extremely rare: both Henry VIII's 'divorce'
from Catherine of Aragon and that of Frances Howard from the 3rd Earl
of Essex were annulments, whereby the original marriage was deemed not
to have been legitimate. The Jacobean debate focusses on the legality of
remarriage and whether the parties in a second marriage are adulterous or
not: the guilty party was not usually permitted to remarry.42 The grounds

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for divorce were adultery or desertion, and only the more progressive
reformers argued for the acceptability of cruelty and apostasy. Adultery is
seen as an acceptable ground for dissolution when this is initiated by the
innocent party by all writers on the basis that it constitutes a denial of the
primary intents of marriage: the union of man and wife, and the mainten-
ance of chastity. As Raynolds argues, 'they two should bee as one person'
until parted by death. 43 On these terms, Herod's marriage to Mariam can-
not be legitimate, and her virtue is therefore open to doubt.
Mariam's position is suspect, despite her chastity, enabling her legitim-
acy (and that of Herod and her children) to be questioned, resulting in
Herod's obsessive 'policing' of her sexual activity; it is as much the suspi-
cion of adultery as adultery itself which threatens to undermine Herod's
power. This is connected to Herod's dependence upon Mariam as the
guarantor of his rule and image - the requirement that she be chaste is
linked to both aspects. Herod's need to secure his regiment through the
begetting of legitimate heirs means that female adultery (or a suspicion of
adultery) immediately calls paternity into question. Herod's concern over
Mariam's sexual status is linked to this question of legitimacy, yet his
dependence on her for confirrnation of his position immediately calls his
autonomy into question, and enables Mariam to destabilise it. The issue of
adultery, real and suspected, is a central preoccupation of Cary's play. It is
not only a question of extra-marital sexual activity, but of political resist-
ance. The idea of transferring allegiance, sexual, emotional or political, is
one which is frequently troped as an adulterous act: Catholics, for example,
were often represented as fornicating with the 'whore ofBabylon'. It is dear
that Mariam is sexually chaste, but the play is ambiguous about her polit-
ical fidelity. Political treachery is conflated with sexual treachery, because
in the paradigms of power explored by Mariam the two function as discon-
tinuous mirror images: Salome's statement that 'Mariam hopes to have
another King' (1.3.3) conjoins sexual and political ambition in order to
propose Mariam as doubly transgressive. Herod's accusations of adultery are
less to do with actual sexual profligacy than with a perceived challenge
to his authority, intricately traced through the normative ideologies which
posit women's speech as sexually suspect, and their bodies as failing to dis-
dose unequivocal meaning.
Herod's assumption that Mariam's 'discontent' (4.3.8) derives from a
sexual misdemeanour highlights his lack oflegitimacy as a ruler, and reveals
Mariam's ability to destabilise his position. Herod's apparent inability to
order and control Mariam calls his authority as a governor into ques-
tion. As Heale says, if a man cannot control his household, 'how can he
be thought fit to manage the affaires of a common wealth?'44 Pheroras, for

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITlNG

example, represents Herod's passion for Mariam as antithetical to political

judgement:

Oh, could not he be skilfull Judge in love,

That doted so upon his Mariams face?
He, fir his passion, Doris did remove.
(2.1.29-31)

Herod's mistreatment of Mariam allies hirn with tyrannical rule, as he

deprives her of liberty, assurnes her guilt, and fails to correct her with
kindness. 45 Excessive jealousy also posits the husbandl governor as unfit to
rule, as it prornotes dis order and fear in the family I state, and destabilises
the integrity of the subject. 46 Within a model of marriage which proposes
husband and wife as a single unit, '[m]y best, and deerest halfe' (4.3.2),
cruelty towards the wife constitutes a kind of civil disorder, and images the
governor's suppression of the rights of the subject.
That Herod is a usurper, not by conquest, but by marriage, complicates
the right of the subject to resist tyrannical government. Mariam's resist-
ance to Herod is sanctioned on two grounds: Herod's usurpation, and his
tyranny. Mariam's problem is that she occupies no stable position outside
marriage from which to challenge authority, and that any challenge exerted
within marriage undermines her virtue. 47 Such achallenge would undermine
the patriarchal foundation of the institution which permits her a degree
of political agency. She is suspended between two forms of allegiance: polit-
ical and marital. Mariam deploys passive resistance entailing breaking the
marital bond by withdrawing from sexual relations, and uses a retreat into
silen ce as a way of challenging Herod's supremacy, both by destabilising his
identity, and by allowing herself to circulate as a sign of Herod's cruelty
and tyranny. When Mariam swears to forsake Herod's bed, she represents
her act of resistance as a breaking of allegiance, replacing adherence to the
vows of marriage with vows of her own which mark her transition from
being subject to Herod to being a subjed in her own right:

Mar. I will not to his love be reconcilde,

With s01emne vowes I have forsworne his Bed.
Sohem. But you must break those vowes.
Mar. Ile rather breake
The heart of Mariam.
(3.3.15-19)

Herod later refers to this as being 'yOUf breach of vow' (4.4.26), seeing it
not only as a denial of sexual rights, but as an undermining of his authority

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as a husband and a governor. Mariam's repudiation of sexual relations

amounts to a nullification of the bonds and obligations of marriage, and a
dissolution of the union which subordinates female identity to male. 48
Mariam also challenges the ideology laid down for wifely behaviour.
Notably, she refuses to use her sexual power over Herod to improve her
own situation:

I know I could inchaine him with a smile:

And lead him captive with a gentle word,
I scome my looke should ever man beguile,
Or other speech, then meaning to ajford.
(3.3.46-9)

There are several issues here: Mariam's pride in the power of her beauty;
her refusal to dissemble in speech; and her rejection of the means of reform-
ing an obstinate or cruel husband advocated in conduct manuals, using
submission, modesty and gentle persuasion:

albeit they be cancred of nature, yll in conversation, worse in condition,

base of lynage, deformed of personage, and unadvised in worde, and
deede: yet being our chosen husbands, we may not, nor can we forgo
them, or chaunge with our neighbours ... but seeke gendy to redresse
them, indevor to please them, and labour to love them, to whome we
have wholy given oure bodies, oure goodes, our lyves, and libertie. 19

Mariam refuses to deceive, to tell Herod what he wants to hear, and places
her own conscience and integrity above obedience: 'If reason move him,
then of dutie she is bound to obey, if otherwise, it is hir part to dissemble
the matter.'50 By reminding hirn of the murder of her grandfather and
brother, and thus of his illegitimacy as a ruler, Mariam transgresses two
central tenets of marriage ideology: the necessity of obedience, and the
requirement that women curb and control their speech, both elements that
pertain to political control in the form of obedience to the sovereign and
the punishment of slander. The use of speech (or silence) which fails to
confirm the husband's supremacy is a subversion of authority. Mariam's
challenge to Herod's authority undermines his speech, 'Wilt thou beleeve
no oathes to cleere thy Lord? I How oft have I with execration sworne'
(4.3.31-2); 'I will not speake, unles to be beleev'd' (4.3.52). Mariam's refusal
to dissemble ('I cannot frame disguise, nor ever taught/My face a looke
dissenting from my thought' (4.3.58-9)) demonstrates her resistance to doc-
trines that demand that her conscience be submitted to patriarchal author-
ity.5! Mariam's unwillingness to project the image of herself that Herod

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

requires to stabilise his own identity as husband and ruler ('smile my dear-
est Mariam, doe but smile' (4.3.56)) constitutes her downfall, and in turn
implies that her heart and mind are not to be controlled by Herod to secure
his own political position.
Mariam's resistance to the erasure ofher identity is explored through her
relations hip to Herod, because his dependence upon her as an 'other' which
fastens his image enables Mariam to fragment it. This exploration is linked
to an inversion of gender and power hierarchies, so that Herod's sub-
ject position becomes progressively more decentred and more uncertain,
revealed in the contrast between Sohemus' statement that 'Twere death, a
word of Herods to neglect' (3.3.82), and Herod's vacillating commands for
Mariam's death, 'countermaund her death' (4.7.112), 'Oh that I could that
sentence now controule' (5.1. 74). Herod's tenuous position is expressed by
archetypal images of tyranny: unstable, multiple, and unable to form an
identity which does not depend upon the destruction of all that appears
threatening. As Rebecca Bushnell argues, these characteristics serve to ally
the tyrant with the feminine, a male self which is threatened by what it
cannot control and thus loses its unity and power. 52 Herod's double depend-
ency upon Mariam (political legitimacy and passion) means that she can
'undo' him precisely by throwing the lines offiliation between political power
and gender hierarchy into confusion. The destabilisation of Herod's sover-
eignty is indicated by the instability of Herod's language:

Nay, she shall die. Die quoth you, that she shall:
But jar the meanes. The meanes! Me thinks tis hard
To finde a meanes to murther her withall,
TherifOre I am resolv'd she shall be spar'd.
(4.7.1-4)

Here nothing is 'resolv'd', and Herod's speech becomes impotent through

his inability to translate word into deed, and his failure to escape from the
paradox of his simultaneous dependence on, and abjection of, the feminine.
Like Mariam, whose insistence upon integrity rather than outward con-
formity hastens her downfall ('my selfe against my selfe conspirde' (4.8.9)),
Herod's need to fix his position through the control ofMariam proves to be
his undoing ('Herods wretched selfe hath Herod crost' (5.1,132)). Herod is
suspicious of any deviation: when Mariam is represented as 'ranging' or
'wandring' it is from Herod's 'place' for her that she wanders, from his
attempts to fix her as the guarantor of his identity, Herod's remorse at
Mariam's death uses an image which draws together these conflicts, and
acknowledges the oscillation between self-destruction and destruction of the
other which constitutes the tragedy:

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 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED POLITICAL SUßJECT

I had but one inestimable Jewell,

Tet one I had no monarch had the like,
And therrfore mcry I curse my selje as cruell:
Twas broken by a blowe my seife did strike.
I gaz'd thereon and never thought me biest,
Eut when on it my daz/ed eye might rest:
A pretious Mirror made by wonderous art,
I prizd it ten times dearer then my Crowne,
And laide it up fast flulded in my heart:
Tet I in suddaine choler cast it downe.
And pasht it all to peeces: twas no fle,
That robd me qf it;
(5.1.119-30)

The idea of Mariam as the 'Mirror' for Herod's identity suggests another
level at which Mariam resists contemporary ideologies of marriage. The
mirror image is used in conduct books to signify the wife's role in confirm-
ing her husband's identity, reftecting back to hirn an image of hirnself,
enacting a process of sameness, rather than difference: 'a glasse that reftecteth
and returneth upon a man his owne image ... an other selfe, hirn selfe
before himselfe'.53 Rather than returning Herod's image without alteration
and erasing her self, Mariam posits the marital relationship as grounded in
difference, by refusing Herod obedience and allegiance. On his return from
Rome, Herod chides Mariam for her dress:

Thou doest the difference certainly forget

Twixt Duskey habits, and a time so cleare.
Mar. My Lord, I suit my garment to my minde,
And there no cheerfull colours can I finde.
(4.3.3-6)

Mariam contravenes the dictate that a wife should echo the mood of her
husband, 'whose face must be hir daylie looking glasse, wherein she ought
to be alwaies prying, to see when he is merie, when sad, when content, and
when discontent, wherto she must alwayes frame hir owne countenance,.54
Her refusal to conform in speech or appearance dissolves Herod's unity of
identity, and undoes the dynamic of power which stabilises his position,
revealing that his dependence upon Mariam makes hirn vulnerable to her
refusal of allegiance. Mariam claims that

no adversarie ftom without

Could Herods love ftom Mariam have retirde,
Or ftom his heart have thrust my semblance out.
(4.8.10-12)

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 THE POllTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

The use of the word 'semblance' to describe the position she occupies for
Herod suggests that as a subject, Mariam remains in excess of the image
which Herod has created for her, and that her position cannot be fully
represented within a structure which depends upon the erasure of women
for its perpetuation. The COllapse of sameness into difference has further
reaching consequences. Herod fragments into irreconcilable positions as his
roles as king and husband drift apart, a fissure which proves fatal because of
their theoretical contiguity. Simultaneously convinced of Mariam's guilt
and her innocence, her wickedness and her beauty, his self-destruction is
projected back onto Mariam's body, in an attempt to fix her image perman-
endy. The self-image which Mariam returns to Herod reveals hirn as incap-
able of rule, and guilty of tyrannical jealousy: 'There is a Looking Glasse for
thee ... to see thy selfe in, and to shew thee what thou art.'55 Mariam both
emblematises and resists Herod's tyranny, precisely by revealing it. Herod's
attempts to determine Mariam's guilt are characterised by his own incon-
sistency, and by multiple interpretations of the surface that is presented to
hirn. Herod's error is that he reads surface as discontinuous with meaning,
whereas Mariam's beauty images her virtue, not her sinfulness: 'If faire she
be, she is as chaste as faire' (4.8.58), she says.
The model of reading practised by Herod indicates that sexual power is
confiated with desire for political power, and that the predominant para-
digms cannot conceive of a female political agency which does not call
sexual reputation into question:

My wisedome long agoe a wandring fill,

Thy face incountring it, my wit did fitter,
And made me fir delight my fteedome se
Give me my heart false creature, tis a wrong,
My guiltles heart should now with thine be slaine:
Thou hadst no right to locke it up so long,
And with usurpers name I Mariam staine.
(4.4.66-72)

The 'fault' is transposed onto Mariam, who makes Herod subject to her
beauty ('fetter', 'freedome seIl'), and is represented as guilty of a political
subversion of order, as she 'usurp[s]' his political and emotional autonomy.
Herod demands that Mariam conform to his desired image of her: 'let your
looke declare a milder thought' (4.3.66), yet reads the outward image he
has requested as a sign of her deceit and guilt, 'painted Divill' (4.4.17), 'A
beautious body hides a loathsome soule' (4.4.20), 'Foule pith contain'd in
the fairest rinde' (4.4.31), 'Hell it selfe lies hid/ Beneath thy heavenly show'
(4.4.45-6). These disjunctions set up a division between what seems, and

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what is, yet the fixity and logic of this opposition is questioned by Mariam's
refusal to dissemble, to concern herself more with reputation than with
conscience. While Herod declares '[yJet never wert thou chast' (4.4.46),56
Mariam asserts that 'I knew me chaste' (4.8.37), but Herod is content with
the appearance of chastity, 'I'm glad that she for innocent is knowne' (4.7.56,
emphasis added), indicating that his concern is with the construction and
projection of his own identity as imaged by Mariam, and as it will be read
by others, rather than with his wife as a subject in her own right.
In resolving these contradictions, Herod constructs Mariam so as to ally
the narrative of her death with hagiography. When Salome suggests various
methods by which Herod might kill Mariam, he counters:

let her be beheaded. Her. 7hat were well,

7hinke you that swords are miracles like you:
Her skinne will ev'ry Curtlax edge rqell.
(4.7.5-7)

This idea of Mariam as resisting the conventional methods of death allies

her representation with the miraculous happenings found in saints' lives
and martyrologies: this is confirmed by the reports of Mariam's death, and
Herod's reaction to them. The account of Mariam's death given by the
Nuntio represents her as a martyr figure, and Herod's reaction marks her
translation into a sign which represents his tyranny, where his cruelty is
enacted on her body. Through Mariam's death, Herod achieves the fixity
of meaning which he desired (her return to the ideal wife, who cannot
answer back), but she unmakes his identity. As Beilin has noted, Mariam is
transformed into a Christ-like figure, passively resisting taunts and cruelty,
and in being forced to submit to Herod's authority she manages to embody
opposition to it. 57 The vocabulary which is used allies her more closely with
the political sphere than at any other point in the play: she is the 'stately
Mariam not debas'd by feare' (5.1.26), 'noble Mariam' (5.1.46), 'princely
daughter' (5.1.49). The fact that Herod is responsible for her death ('My
word though not my sword made Mariam bleed' (5.1.189)) erases his legitim-
acy and the very thing upon which his supremacy was based:

VVhy graspe not each qfyou a sword in hand,

To ayme at me your cruell Soveraignes head.
Oh when you thinke qfHerod as your King,
And owner qfthe pride qfPalestine:
7his act to your remembrance likewise bring,
Tis I have overthrowne your royall line.
(5.1.173-8)

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Mariam's passive resistance to Herod's usurpation of the rights of the mar-

ried subject leads in a direct symbolic line to active resistance by his citizens
in the public sphere.
In each of these doset dramas, tragic conventions are adapted to address
the place of wornen in the political order. In each case, female position and
power is seen to depend largely upon her role as someone who can symbol-
ise and redirect power but·not actively embody it herself. The power held
by Iphigeneia, Cleopatra (to a lesser extent) and Mariam is that gran ted to
them by the patriarchal system and ironically it gives them a limited power
to question or overturn its values. It is notable that in each case, the asser-
tion of female political and moral power in the long term hinges firstly upon
their roles as ernbodiments of national or state values, and secondly upon
the absenting of the sexual body, leaving a symbolic woman in its stead.

Comedy and the playing of politics

Dramatic interventions later in the period move from tragedies concen-

trated on the (absent) body to comedies interested in the gendering of love.
These plays reveal a less obviously politically engaged concern with gender,
a shift which has more to do with generic demands than it does with a
changed cultural milieu; nevertheless, Mary Wroth's play demonstrates
a preoccupation with marriage, relations between the sexes and familial
politics, but these derive from a distinct writing position; it draws upon the
familial context for its genesis, using allegory and personation to rnake the
transition from the purely personal to the culturally and politically reson-
ant. Like the tragedies discussed above, this play might be called 'coterie'
writing, dynamically engaged with a familial cirde which provides it with
an interpretive community, and a critical and intellectual context.
Lady Mary Wroth's Love's Victory, written for the entertainment of her
family and friends in the early l620s, is a play marked by generic and
generational confticts. Despite its dose association with the Sidney family,
and the possible encoding of members of the family within the play, Love's
Victory reveals a surprising lack of affinity with the work of her distinguished
aunt, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. Rather than looking back to
her female literary forebears, Wroth splices together several generic forms
in order to create a coHective act of homage to the literary activities of the
Sidney family, Sir Philip Sidney in particular, and hence to produce a text
composed of subtle dynastic references which may weH be a way of assert-
ing her affinity (familial and cultural) with the Sidney family at a point in
her life where she required their support and protection, financial and

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 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED POLITICAL SUBJECT

emotional, due to being left heavily indebted by the death of her husband
and having borne two illegitimate children fathered by her cousin, William
Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Although the use of pastoral and Petrarchan
motifs imparts a lightness of touch to the play, and its investment in familial
allegory creates a sense of inwardness and intimacy, its overall themes and
ideas reveal similarities to the other plays we have discussed. Love's Victory is
a play about love, but its use of the triumphal structure turns love from
pleasure to tyranny, from harmony to familial, dass and inter-generational
conflict and back again. In true pastoral tragi-comic tradition, the play ends
with the resolution of conflict through marriage, for some of the characters
at least, but in the course of working out this resolution, the plot makes
dose alliances between marriage and death, suggesting their reversibility,
uses the idea of female martyrdom and farne, and questions the gendering
of particular positions within the dynamics of love.
Love's Victory is a generic hybrid which alludes subtly to a number of
conventional motifs structuring wooing and courtship. The play gestures
towards pastoral, alluding to Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia (and Wroth's own
romance, Urania) and possibly his Laqy qf May, but unlike these pastorals,
Wroth's seems to make no representative daim; her shepherds and shep-
herdesses do not 'insinuate and glaunce at greater matters' of state or pol-
iticS. 58 Rather pastoral provides a secure generic frame for her mixing of
forms, and bequeaths a model for the interlocking conflicts between the
characters; pastoral he re is initially a unifying device, which creates a logic
for the convention of disparate persons in a single place, a crucial feature of
pastoral, according to Paul Alpers:

Pastoral poems make explicit the dependence of their conventions on the

idea of coming together. Pastoral convenings are characteristically
occasions for songs and colloquies that express and thereby seek to redress
separation, absence, or loss.59

In Love's Victory, pastoral reveals its lack of rootedness, its tendency to mut-
ate into other forms. It must be recalled that the text from which most
versions of English Renaissance pastoral were descended, Virgil's Eclogues
(only a distant echo in Wroth's play) , was written in dialogue. 60 This,
together with the conventional stasis of the form, allies its features dosely
with those of doset drama, although it is, superficially at least, less rule-
bound and freer in its adaptation of traditions.
As the title implies, Love's Victory is based on the struggle between the
gods oflove (Cupid and Venus) and mortals for supremacy. Each character
in the play at some level is to learn subjection to the power of Love through
suffering, thwarted desire and rejection. As such, the play owes something

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

to the precursor of Petrarch, most notably his sequence of linked poems, I

Trionji, part ofwhich had been translated by Wroth's aunt, the Countess of
Pembroke. 61 In addition, the play dramatises the conflict between sexual
love and chaste (or virginal) love through the structural devices of the
goddess Venus, and the shepherdess Silvesta, who has, having been dis-
appointed in love, devoted her life to Diana. Besides the play's occasional
gesture towards pastoral tradition (most usually references to sheep are
transitional devices), the play interpolates a number of other discourses and
precedents. The genre within which Wroth writes is necessarily a hybrid, its
comic elements (games, riddles, satires on bad poetry) eventually tending
towards hyperbolic tragedy, averted by the gods at the last minute. The use
of a death-trick which finally organises desire into its proper place and
hierarchy, permitting the 'correct' alliance between the various characters,
is a recurrent feature of tragi-comedy, for example in Shakespeare's Measure
Jor Measure and in 1he Winter's Tale. The death-trick is also related to the
triumphal structure in that it functions as the ultimate love-test, pitting its
protagonists against the social conventions which provide the implied back-
drop to the play. Love's Victory's interest in questions relating not only to the
right orientation of love, but also to the grounds and conditions of its
expression, leads Wroth, again gesturing towards both the work of the
Sidney circle and her own deployment of Petrarchan dynamics in her son-
net sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, towards the conventional paradoxes
and oxymorons of Petrarchanism. 62 It is primarily the male characters who
deploy this curiously indirect form of expression for love, for they are shown
to be more able to express their desire, albeit subject to certain conditions
of discretion and privacy. The play's hero Philisses frequently presents him-
self as the archetypallover, unable to free himself from the tyranny oflove,
frustrated in his desires, consumed by the self-consciousness that love brings. 63
He describes love as 'a paine which yett doth pleasure bring', refers to
'Musella's faire, though cruell, brest' and adapts the Petrarchan blazon to
the pastoral setting, asserting Musella's unattainability and the inflammat-
ory effect that this has on desire:

Noe beauty is that shines nott in her face,

Wlzose whitnes whitest lillies doth excell,
Match'd with a rosie moming to compell
All harts to serve her; yett doth she afftct
Butt on[y vertu, nor will quite neglect
Those who doe serve her in an honest fashion,
Wlzich, sure, doth more increase then decrease passion. ü1

Rather than having her female characters attempt the problematic task of
finding a subject position within Petrarchanism, Wroth seems to allot this

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particular dis course to men, but not without humour, nor without demon-
strating her skill at imitation, a possibility provided by the fact of drama's
multi-vocal form.
Direcdy expressed or articulated desire in this play is frowned upon,
irrespective of the gender position of the speaker, one of the many features
which suggest that LoveJs Victory should be read as a specific generic expres-
sion of Wroth's recurrent literary concerns. 65 One of the key issues he re is
the sincerity of love and the negative obstades to the socially sanctioned
expression of that love, acknowledged within a community of relatives and
friends; with the notable exception of Venus and Cupid, whose spoiling
provides a form of safeguard that might otherwise be ladung for romantic
forms of love which are of necessity secret, not openly acknowledged and
therefore untested. The play's endorsement of cultural norms relating to the
impropriety of women as active wooers might initially suggest that we are
on familiar ground. Dalina, described from the outset as 'a fickle lady',
exhibits characteristics which make her the definitively unconstant charac-
ter. 66 Her lack of constancy suggests her unwillingness to sub mit to the rule
of the gods in love, but also provides a negative benchmark against which
we are to measure all the other characters, both male and female, as weIl as
marking one extreme on the scale of love, where chaste Silvesta marks the
other: the ideal, Wroth suggests, lies somewhere between the two. Dalina's
first line in the play raises questions over her character (much as her name
hints at 'dalliance'): as the shepherds gather she says 'The sun growes hott,
'twere best wee did retire' , suggesting her vanity, as she wishes not to burn
her skin in the sun. 67 Her assertion later that 'wee now too silent ar' (2.1)
marks her as a dubious character, and the consonance between her riddle
in Act 2 and what we know of her character leads us to accept the other
riddles as both proleptic and credible:

Th!)' that cannott stedy bee

To themselves, the like must see.
Fickle people, ficklY chuse,
SlightlY like, and soe rifUse.
(2.193-6)

Other characters in the play appear to endorse the orthodox position on

wooing wornen; Lissius, whose fidelity to Simeana is tested in the play, finds
his pursuit of love blocked precisely because he is unsure of his beloved's
motives (and she of his), a situation compounded by his expectation that
women should not express their love overdy: 'Is this for a mayd/To follow
and to haunt mee thus? ... / a woman woo? The most unfitting'st, shamfull'st
thing to doe' (3.288-92). This position is echoed by Silvesta, who has

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foresworn her interest in the efficacy of love: 'a woman to make love is ill'
(3.79). Lissius, however, is the main character who must be taught subjec-
tion to love, and his misogynistic pragmatism regarding love is less an
endorsement of the status quo than a sign of his lack of understanding of
love. He argues that 'wee showld women love butt as owr sheep' (2.67),
paralleling Rustic's comic anti-blaz:,on in the previous act (1.335f), a stance
which prompts Musella to note his arrogance: 'you thes words may rue;lI
hope to love to see you waile, and weepe/ And deeme your greife farr
sweeter then your sleep' (2.72-4).
Although this cultural embargo on women giving expression directly to
love is raised at various points throughout Love's Victory (and it is the primary
device enabling plot development), the endorsement of strategies of indirec-
tion is found both in male and female lovers. Neither discretion, nor con-
stancy are seen here as concepts which are exclusively gendered as female;
rather they are the necessary consequence of an aristocratic system of mar-
ital exchange which fails to take account of love, subordinating affection to
dynastic interest. These effects are seen to be equally painful for men as for
women, even though the terms of their misery differ. Any love relationship
founded upon an inequality of affection between the two parties is doomed
to failure, as the narrative of the Forester, lamenting his doomed love for
Silvesta, illustrates. Mter her love for Philisses is rejected, Silvesta takes a
strict vow of chastity, abandoning the pleasures of Venus for the service of
Diana. In the process, she is required to reject the advances of the devoted
and love-10m Forester, thus doomed to faithful but unrequited love, which
he attributes not to Silvesta, but to the actions of Philisses, 'That curst
Philisses hath mee quite undunn' (1.208). The unfulfilled relationship ofthe
Forester and Silvesta demonstrates the non-viability more generally in Love's
Victory of liaisons which are not based upon mutual consent. In another
redaction of classical myth, Wroth interprets their relationship, appro-
priately enough, through the precedent of the Actaeon-Diana myth. The
Forester asserts that all he wants is a look, a glimpse of his beloved: 'then I
might have her somtimes beheld,l But now am bar'd' (1.259-60). His sight
is viewed as intrusive, as the scopic imposition of will, which brings with it
the threat of dissolution - here metaphorical rather than literal:
give mee butt this leaue
To doe as birds, and trees, and beasts may doe;
Doe nott, 0, doe nott mee qf sight bereave,
For without you I see nott ...
Yett, though you chaste must bee, I may desire
To haue your sight, and this the strictest band
Cannott rifuse, and butt this I require.
(2.29-32; 36-8)

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Silvesta urges hirn to place his affections elsewhere, 'some other chusel
Whose state, or fortune need nott you refuse' (2.51-2). Various other un-
equal, unconsenting relationships fail in the play, for reasons of social
inequality, or because love is not mutual (Climeana and Lissius; Phillis
and Philisses; Rustic and Musella). Ideal love here is chaste and constant,
mutual and based upon social equality.
Discretion and secrecy are recurrent preconditions for the expression of
love for all the virtuous characters; only Rustic, Dalina, and the Forester
are direct and open about their love. In all other cases, the expression of
love is contingent upon audience, and subject to various strategies of indir-
ection. The uncertain skill of reading the signs of love and divining their
subject is one aspect which tests the sincerity of love, and the lover's mas-
tery of its codes. While true love, for various reasons, cannot be spoken in
Love's Victory, neither can it remain hidden; the 'game' in the play consists in
trying to unpick the true relationships from the false, a process heavily
dependent upon hints, signs and double meanings. Philisses, for example,
suggests, but only in the context where his love for Musella has been mutu-
ally acknowledged, that the signs of true love cannot be concealed:

Non can have powre against a powifull love;

Nor keepe the blood butt in the cheeks 'twill move.
Butt nott fir fiare, or care itt ther doth show,
Butt kind desire makes you blushing know
7hat joye takes place, in your face doth dime
With leaping hart like lamkins in the prime.
(4.129-34)

Both men and women in the play use strategies of indirection to express
their love, but the terms differ according to the sex of the speaker. Male
characters rely heavily upon soliloquy (generally not used by female char-
acters) and the bonds of male friendship. By these means, given that the
soliloquies are often overheard, male desire and its objects are given condi-
tional expression. Musella learns of Philisses' love for her because she eaves-
drops on his self-revelation of suffering in love, a revelation which he makes
in the mistaken understanding that he is unobserved:

No Echo shrill shall your deere secrets utter,

Or wrongyour silence with a blabbing tongue.
Nor will your springs against your privatt mutter,
Or think that counsell keeping is a wrong;
7hen since woods, springs, Echoes, and all are true,
A1Y long hid love, Fle teil, shew, write in you.
(4.13-18)

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

This is of course a romance, and a pastoral, convention, but it serves to

reinforce the sincerity of Philisses' love and to suggest its inward, authentie
nature, but its circulation marks the transition from bondage to the abstract
deity of love to human mutuality. Throughout the play, virtuous love is
unspoken, to be discerned through asides, signs, riddles, hints, forms of
indirection which suggest love and desire without compromising the con-
stancy or virtue of its agents. From the opening scene Philisses vows to
conceal his love, partly because his beloved is betrothed to another, but
equally out of respect for male friendship, as he believes that Musella loves
Lissius, 'in secrett will my passions hide,l Till time or fortune, doth my fear
decide' (1.71-2). The emphasis in Love's Victory on a non-gendered stand-
ard of discretion in fact enables women to participate in the games of
love on almost equal terms; significantly, all the characters, in the end, are
empowered to follow their own wills, overcoming various obstades, indud-
ing misunderstanding, confusion, and parental opposition. Furthermore,
the stress on non-disdosure is inversely related to the sincerity and authen-
ticity of the individual's love, giving rise to a sense of interiority that might
otherwise be lacking in the schematic plotting of Love's Victory. In the open-
ing act, for example, Lacon proposes that each character should tell of their
fortunes in love, a plan which does not pie ase Musella: 'And soe discourse
the secretts ofthe mind./ I like nott this, thus sport may crosses find' (1.305-
6), precisely because she fears that the truth will out, thus compromising her
social reputation. Philisses suggests that discretion is the absolute test of love,
because it enables the fear and suffering which is so integral to the Petrarchan
hermeneutic:

Butt 0, same bee, and wowld itt nott disclose;

Thry silent love, and loving .feare. Ah, those
Deserve most pitty, favour and reguard;
rett, ar thry answer'd butt with scome's reward,
This thryr miifortune.
(2.103-7)

Love, in this guise, has a curiously levelling effect; the stratification that it
sets up is between those who truly love, and those who do not, rather than
between men and women; the feminisation of the male lover is a necessary
prerequisite to the mutual bonds of love.
Although the goal of love, and the play's ideal, consists of the combina-
tion of love and reason, the world of Love's Victory, like that of pastoral in
general, is striated by hierarchical distinctions. These distinctions are vari-
ous, concerning love, dass, generation and poetic ability. They reinforce
the bonds of a self-selecting group, tied together by familial relationship,

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 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED POLlTICAL SUBJECT

shared discourses and friendship, by the rejection of what lies outside it.
The codes used by lovers in the play are very much shared codes; discretion
can be maintained because all the characters involved in the discourses of
love can decode its signs in similar terms. Musella, for example, confides
her love for Philisses to Silvesta

[he] thinks I haue Lissius made

Master qf my 4fections, which hath stOJ'd
Him euer yett ftom letting mee itt know
By words, although hee hides itt nott ftom showe.
(3.73-6)

As Helen Hackett notes, like Wroth's romance Urania, Love's Victory rep-
resents the dynamics of a self-selecting coteLe, who provide the play with
both its characters and its audience. 68 This stress upon coterie is easily
reconciled with Wroth's generic choice to deploy pastoral, but also, as a
writer, gives her the opportunity to assert her own membership of the
coterie, based upon the Sidney family, but placed in a nostalgie Arcadian
past, before the death of Sir Philip Sidney (Philisses). By re-presenting vari-
ous members of the Sidney family to themselves, and working in various
puns and plays upon her own married name, Wroth underlines her own
dynastie identification with the Sidneys, displaced through codes of love
and poetic imitations - the play frequently echoes not only Wroth's own
writing (itself refracting the work of her father and unde), but also that of
Sir Philip Sidney hirnself. Rather than viewing the play monolithically as a
drama of private family relationships, it can be read as evidence of Lady
Mary Wroth's attempt to refashion herselfthrough the authoritative literary
models that she had dose at hand.
Like much Renaissance pastoral, the Arcadian idyll of equality soon
turns out to be based upon various social, cultural and moral distinc-
tions between the characters. This is set up from the beginning of the play,
with the hierarchy among the gods, where Venus instructs Cupid to carry
out her will, and the subtext of competition between Venus and Diana.
Both chastity and true love confer status, despite the deference to a higher
power inherent in both. Competition among characters for their chosen love
objects is usually resolved by recourse to hierarchy; the Forester is unable to
woo Silvesta not only because of her vow of chastity, but also because he is
socially inferior to her; Dalina fails to win her jolly youths' (3.141) because
she is deficient in the chaste constancy which is the rationale of love in the
play. Climeana cannot gain Lissius' love because he is not her first choice,
but also because he is of higher social status, as Simeana points out in no
uncertain terms:

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Which is your due? What pitry's due to you?

Dreame you qf hope? 0, you to high aspire.
1hink you to gain hy kindling an old fire?
(3.218-20)

Rustie is unfit for Musella on various grounds; he is not a true lover, he is

socially inferior, and he is evidently excluded from the eoterie diseourse
which struetures the play and the course of the love relationships in it, as his
unwittingly parodie blazon eomparing Musella to his beasts demonstrates
(l.335f). He is unable to participate in the riddling and gaming which is
eentral to the veiled revelation of genuine, as opposed to false, love:

T ruly, I can nott ridle, l' was nott taught

1hese tricks qf witt; my thoughts ne're higher wrought
1han how to marck a heast, or drive a cowe
To fied, or els with art to hold a plowe.
(4.391-4)

Rustic is resolutely excluded from the eoterie and its eodes, rendering hirn
finally unfit to marry Musella, despite her mother's attempt to impose her
will due to dynastie imperatives. In this instance, the generational hier-
arehy has to be overturned in favour of emotional autonomy and finaneial
motives must be subordinated to love. In addition, patriarehal wishes and
traditional ideas of duty are questioned, despite Musella's mother's attempt
to eontinue to respeet them, '[she] did vowe and grieve she eould nott
mend my statel Agreed on by my father's will whieh bearsl Sway in her
brest, and duty in mee' (5.12-14). The dynastie imperative to safeguard
property is foreed to yield to desire.
This prineiple forms the erux of the play, as its eentral eharaeters prove
themselves willing to die rather than to be parted. Aet 5 opens with Musella's
eomplaint against the enforeement of dynastie marriage, as opposed to a
mutual love relationship eontraeted between the parties themselves. The
eonfliet between marriage for love and marriage for property is a reeurrent
and much-eommented-upon feature of Wroth's output; not only is there a
biographieal undertow to her writing, but the debate she raises here was
eonsidered in a wide range of writings in the early seventeenth eentury - it
is also, by and large, an aristoeratie dilemma. The generational eonfliet
over marriage is eoterminous with the masque-like framework of the play,
where love is to triumph over death, ehastity and expedieney. Musella sets
out the eause of her misery:

And yett my true love crost,

Neglected JOr hace gaine, and all worthe lost

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 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED POllTICAL SUBJECT

For riches? Then 'tis time flr good to 4J,

Mlhen wealth must wed us to all misery.
(5.3-6)

The difficulty is that Musella is bound by vow to Rustic, and she cannot
marry for love without the consent of her mother, or without being released
from her betrothal by Rustic himself. These are the marriage vows known
as de futura, a contract to be fulfilled at a later date by public marriage;
arguably, Musella's pledge to Philisses (and his to her) constitute vows
de praesenti. Musella's bond with Rustic can only be broken by death, or by
rene ging on the terms of the contract, rather like the situation in Shake-
speare's Measure.for Measure. Act 5 is full of double meanings and proleptic
hints as the tragic conclusion is placed within a comic generic framework.
Simeana, for example, counsels Musella that 'you shalbee bIest' (5.19), point-
ing towards the eventual reconciliation of the conflict between obedience to
parents and dynastie impulses and obedience to love. Rather than attribut-
ing her misery to her mother, Musella locates the source of her misery in
the 'fatali sisters' (5.31): 'By your decree to bee beestowde? And bowl To
bace unworthy riches?' (5.32-3). It is Musella who is at the centre ofWroth's
expose of the conflict of early modern discourses regarding love and mar-
riage, as illustrated by Philisses' response to her announcement that she is to
marry Rustic:

Butt will you marry? Or showe love to mee,

Or her obay, and make mee wreched bee?
(5.47-8)

His profession of love and sympathy for Musella quickly marks him out as
the ideal marriage partner, suggestively hinting at the 'one flesh' model of
marriage, where two persons effectively become one:

rou weepe nott that itt wounds nott haples mee

Nor sigh butt in mee all those sorrows bee.
rou never crie butt groans most truly show
From deepest qf my hart I fiele your woe.
(5.57-60)

Two main issues are woven together in the course of resolving the con-
flict and producing the 'right' ordering of marital relationships, based
upon love, and not coincidentally, ensuring that the unions bring together
persons of similar social status. One key issue is chastity and fidelity to one's
word; the second is the complex set of relationships between love, death
and sacrifice, an area that reveals similarities with the tragedies we looked

l1S
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

at earlier in the chapter. True faith and loyalty are seen to reside beyond
the confines of legality, and once again, speech is at issue:

I wowld I could deny the words I spake,

When I did Rustick's mariage offir take,
Hopeles qfyou, I gave my ill consent,
And wee contracted were which I repent.
The time now curse, my toungue wish out which gave
Mee to that clowne with whom I wed my grave.
(5.69-74)

Marriage is repeatedly equated with death, Musella's wedding to Rustic

entailing the death of love, and the loss of self. By contrast, Philisses and
Musella's death-pact is presented as an indissoluble union, a sacrifice to
love and constancy, and a symbolic act, as Philisses suggests: 'Dy? Noe, wee
goe for ever more to live,! And to owr loves a sacrifies to give' (5.107-8).
Their oblation and submission to the god of love seals their fate, particu-
larly through the aid and intervention of Silvesta. Like Lumley's Iphigeneia,
death rites and marriage rites are conflated: Climeana, together with the
other characters, believes that the lovers go to the temple to 'offer theyr last
rights of maiden thoughtl To your chaste Mistress' (5.182-3). Death substi-
tutes far marriage, which it closely resembles, but the rites which precede it
are transformed into the dedication oflove through death at the Temple of
Venus; nuptial rites turn into funereal rites. The preparation for marriage
ironically entails the devotion of Musella and Philisses' hearts to the god of
love, a form of Petrarchan metaphor which is to have a concrete manifesta-
tion, a self-sacrifice which is a marriage:

Now my Musella, and in death butt mine,

Take this last jamell in which glorys shine.
Love butt to you could never bee soe true,
And death then /yJe I chuse since 'tis Jor you;
(5.226-9)

Silvesta's intervention, bringing the potion 'to wed you to your grave' (5.245),
is crucial, because it sets her up as willing to sacrifice herself literally for
love, thereby stressing the fact that she has already metaphorically and
symbolically given up herself to Diana for love:

And dyingJor them, I dy happy/y.

Who would outlive them? Who would dyingfly,
That heere beheld love and love's tragidy?
(5.257-9)

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 DRAMA AN D TH E GEN DE RED POLITICAL SUB) ECT

In both cases, love entails a kind of metaphorical death, an abjection of self

to another. For Silvesta, this enables her transition to a symbolic martyr
figure, willing to sacrifice herself, and her life, in the service of Diana and
chaste love, as the Forester's dream vision of her indicates:

My thought I sawe Silvesta's faire hands ty'de

Fast to a stake wher fire bumt in all pride,
To kis with heat those most unmached limms,
Wher vertue with her shape like habitts trims
Her se!! with her. While she, alas, faire she,
Should to those flames a sacred ofering bee.
(5.411-16)

Echoing Spenser's description of Amoret in the Faerie Qyeene, the Forester

sees Silvesta in the terms bequeathed by Petrarchanism, but Silvesta's 'mar-
tyrdom' is to chastity, not to love, and subsequently alludes to Petrarch's
less known work, I TrionJi, as she proceeds through the various stages out-
lined in his poetic sequence, moving beyond the 'triumph' achieved by the
other characters. Silvesta's decision to abandon love parallels the triumph
of Chastity over Love; her willingness to die to help Musella and Philisses
echoes that of Death over Chastity; her altruism suggests the triumph of
Farne over Death, and finally, her response to the priests' sentence of death
suggests the final triumph, that of Eternity:

'Tis justice, thus, by death a-new I live;

A1Y name by this will win etemity,
For noe true hart willlett my meritt 4Y.
(5.440-2)

The death-trick, besides affirming the depth and the discretion ofMusella
and Philisses' love, is also a clever ruse to enable Musella to be released
from her nuptial contract to Rustic, a way of enabling the truth of her
feelings to be told without calling her reputation or chastity into question.
Once again, double meanings lurk for those who are aware of the signific-
ance of Silvesta's substitution of death by the knife for death by sleeping
draught. Simeana outlines the narrative of their love, and Rustic's response
is 'Nay, if she lov'd an other, farwell, she;l I'me glad she by her death hath
made me free' (5.364-5), 'I'me free, I care nott' (5.368), to which Silvesta
replies, sotto voce 'The like is she then now' (ibid.). By announcing his freedom
to marry as he wishes, Rustic, unaware of the true situation, frees Musella
from her dynastie obligation, leaving her free to capitulate to love, as he
reiterates in the final scene, fittingly just prior to the revelation that the
happy couple are in fact alive: 'She lov'd Philisses, therfor she is free./Were

117
 TH E POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITI NG

she alive, she were her owne to chuse,lThus heer to her all daime I doe
refuse' (5.480-2). This statement presages aseries of resolutions, according
to the generic demands ofpastoral tragi-comedy, where harmony is restored
and conflict resolved through the marriage of compatible and socially
matched partners. Rustic marries Dalina, Lissius Simeana, and, of course,
Philisses weds Musella. Even Silvesta and the Forester reach some kind of
bond (as suggested by the compatibility oftheir names) where her chastity is
respected, but he gains her pity.
This chapter has attempted to show that women's drama in the Renais-
sance might be read in new and more obviously political ways. It is dear
that each of these writers, in different ways, begins from a situation which
would have paralleled her own experience, but draws upon generic and
familial precedents to push the representation of the political woman bey-
ond the dichotomies of virtue and vice. Despite differences of timing, dass,
genre and allegiance, these dramas are strikingly similar both in the scen-
arios they depict and the condusions they seem to draw. Collectively they
suggest, unlike modern analyses of the lot of the Renaissance woman,
that there was a pay-off from patriarchy, however circumscribed it might
be by the social and economic necessity of remaining within the system.
Through fictive and historical scenarios, they demonstrate quite clearly that
a form of political agency was available to the female subject in early
modern England, and that it offered important moral and political lessons
to readers, male and female.

Notes

2 These arguments have been put adeptly by Diane Purkiss (ed.), Ihree Tragedies
by Renaissance Women (Harmondsworth: Penguin,1998), xi-xliii.
2 Ibid., xviii.
3 Quoted in E. Chambers, Ihe Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1923), IV, 276.
4 See eh. 1, 25-6 for a full diseussion of this point.
5 For a summary of the eontroversy over the popular stage, see Jean Howard,
Ihe Stage and Social Struggle in Earty Modem England (London: Routledge, 1994),
ehs 1-3.

6 Stephen Gosson, Playes Corifuted infive Actions (1582), sig. E5v.

7 EIizabethan aeeounts of Antony frequently refer to his interest in stage pIays.
Gosson himself notes that Antony 'gave him seIfe daily to behoIding PIayes,

118
 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED rOLITICAL SUBJECT

for which hee grewe into contempte among all his friendes, and is noted of
infamy by Herodian', sig. E7v.
8 See A.M. Witherspoon, The Influence qf Robert Garnier on Elizabethan Drama (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1924),4-8 and 42-7; GillianJondorf, Robert
Garnier and the Themes qf Political Tragedy in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1969), passim; H.B. Charlton, The Senecan Tradi-
tion in Renaissance Tragedy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1921),
clxxx-clxxxi; M. McDiarmid, 'The influence of Robert Garnier on some
Elizabethan tragedies', Etudes Anglaises Xl (1958): 289-302;]. Lever, The Tragedy
qf State: A Study qf]acobean Drama (London: Methuen, 1971, repr. 1987), 3, 7
and 60-1; F. Levy, 'Hayward, Daniel, and the beginnings of politic his tory in
England', Huntington Library Qyarter[y 50 (1987): 1-34, 13.
9 Sir Fulke Greville's Lift qf Sir Philip Sidnry, introduced by Nowell Smith (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1907), 155-6.
10 Purkiss, Three Tragedies, xv.
11 Nicole Loraux, Tragic Ways qf Killing a Woman, trans. Anthony Forster (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 37.
12 Elaine Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers qf the English Renaissance (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1987), 154-5.
13 Howard Norland, Drama in Ear[y Tudor Britain 1485-1558 (Lincoln: University
of N ebraska Press, 1995), 86.
14 Helene Foley, Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1985), 21,65.
15 Purkiss, Three Tragedies, p. 168. Purkiss also argues for a date of 'no later than
1553' (xxv).
16 Nancy Rabinowitz, Anxiery Veiled: Euripides and the TrajJic in Women (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1993), 40.
17 Purkiss, Three Tragedies, ed. 190-2. All sub se quent references are to this edi-
tion, and included within the text.
18 For parallels between marriage and death, see Loraux, Tragic Wtrys, ch. 2.
19 See Rabinowitz, Anxiery Veiled,42.
20 Ibid., 696-708.
21 Rabinowitz, Anxiery Veiled, 48.
22 See Terence Spencer, 'Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Romans', Shakespeare
Survry 10 (1957): 27-38; Paul Cantor, Shakespeare's Rome: Republic and Empire
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976); G. Hunter, 'A Roman thought:
Renaissance attitudes to history exemplified in Shakespeare and Jonson', in
Brian S. Lee (ed.), An English Miscellany Presented to Ws. Mackie (London:

119
 THE rOLlTles OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Oxford University Press, 1977),93-118; Robert Miola, Shakespeare's Rome (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Rebecca Bushnell, Tragedies of
1jrants: Political 77IOUght and Iheater in the English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1990), 143-4; and Malcolm Smuts, 'Court-centred politics
and the uses of Roman historians, c. 1590-1630', in Culture and Politics in Early
Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1994), 21-43.
23 Smuts, 'Court-centred politics', 23.
24 For a useful handlist of translations of Roman histories in this period, see
Hunter, 'A Roman thought', 116-17 and Henry Lathrop, Translationsftom the
Classics into Englishftom Caxton to Chapman, 1477-1620 (New York: Octagon
Books, 1967).
25 See Robert Adams, 'Despotism, censorship, and mirrors of power politics in
late Elizabethan times', Sixteenth Century Journal 10 (1979): 5-16, 7 where he
claims that in the 1590s the political concerns of the Countess of Pembroke's
circle were the dangers of tyranny and anarchy, even though these were not
explicitly stated. See also ch. 4, 136-9.
26 See Jondorf, Robert Garnier, 5, 21 and 34-6, where she suggests a parallel
between Antony and Henri IH.
27 See Jondorf, Robert Garnier, 10.
28 Antonie, 1905-8. All quotations from Sidney's Antonie will be taken from the
1595 text reprinted in Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of
Shakespeare, vol. V (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964). The 1595 text
has been checked against the 1592 edition, and no substantive variants have
been found: the changes mostly concern the incidence of final -e, and minor
variations in punctuation.
29 Bullough, Narrative, V, 317.
30 See R. Reynoldes, A Chronicle of all the noble Emperours of the Romanes (1571),
fl7v-18r.
31 Velleius Paterculus His Romaine Historie: In two Bookes, trans. Robert le Grys
(1632), 309.

32 See Antorry and Cleopatra, ed. David Bevington, New Cambridge Shakespeare
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 2.5.18-23.
33 Ania Loomba, Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1992) claims that '[Shakespeare's] Cleopatra ftuctuates between establishing
her emotional and her political spaces: a vacillation without end for she
cannot simultaneously occupy both' (128).
34 Quentin Skinner, Ihe Foundations ofModern PoliticalIhought. 2 vols (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1978), vol. 2: Part 3.

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 DRAMA AND THE GENDERED POllTICAL SUBJECT

35 See Mary Beth Rose, Ihe Expense rf Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance
Drama (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), chs 3 and 4 for an account
of the politics of the family as represented in J acobean drama.
36 Barry Weller and Margaret Ferguson (eds), Ihe Tragedy rf Mariam Ihe Fair
Qyeen rfJewry with Ihe Lady Falkland: Her Lift (Berkeley: University ofCa1ifornia
Press, 1994),30.
37 William Hea1e, An Apologiejor Women (Oxford, 1609), 33.
38 See Laurie Shannon, 'Ihe Tragedie rf Mariam: Cary's critique of the terms of
founding socia1 discourses' , English Literary Renaissance 24 (1994): 135-53.
39 See Roderick Phil1ips, Putting Asunder: A history rf divorce in Western society (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), chs 2 and 3, and Lawrence Stone,
Road to Divorce: England 1530-1987 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
40 On the conventional representation of tyranny in the Renaissance, see Bushnell,
Tragedies rfTyrants; W. Armstrong, 'The Elizabethan conception ofthe tyrant',
Review rf English Studies 22 (1946): 161-81; and Robert Mio1a, 'Julius Caesar
and the tyrannicide debate', Renaissance Qyarter{y 38 (1985): 271-89.
41 See 4.8.91-100.
42 See Stone, Road to Divorce, 301-5 and Phillips, Putting Asunder, ch. 3.
43 J ohn Rayno1ds, A Difence rf the Judgement rf the RifiJrmed Churches (1609), 1;
Wil1iam Gouge, 01 Domesticall Duties, Eight Treatises (1634), 204.
44 Hea1e, Apologie, 17.
45 William Whately, A Bride-Bush: Or, A Direetionjor Married Persons (1619), 113.
46 See Hea1e, Apologie, 33-4.
47 Catherine Belsey, Ihe Subjeet rfTragedy: Identity and Diffirence in Renaissance Drama
(London: Routledge & Kegan Pau1, 1985), discusses the instability of the
female subject position, see 149-60.
48 See Whately, Bride-Bush, 25, and William Perkins, Christian oeconomie, trans.
Thomas Picke ring (London, 1609), 111, where sexual relations are 'indeed an
essentiall dutie of mariage'.
49 Edmund Tilney, Ihe Flower qf Friendship: A Renaissance Dialogue Contesting Mar-
riage, ed. Va1erie Wayne (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 133.
50 Tilney, Flower, 135.
51 See, for examp1e, Gouge, 01 Domesticall Duties, 308: 'Though the husband
sinne in restraining his wife, yet shee in that restraint may obey, and that in the
Lord: because the Lord who hath commanded her to be subject in every thing,
hath no where warranted her not to be a subject in this particu1ar ... The
condition betwixt husbands and wives in this case, is not un1ike the case
betwixt other superiours in authority, and their inferiours in subjection.'

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRlTING

52 Bushnell, Tragedies qf Ijrants, 9-23.

53 John King, Vitis Palatina (1614), 11.
54 Tilney, Flower, 138.
55 Thomas Gataker, A Good Wije Gods Gifl: and, A Wije Indeed. Two Marriage
Sermons (London, 1623), 13.
56 Purkiss's edition omits the word 'never' here, whieh lS m the 1613 text,
1.1468.
57 Beilin, Redeeming Eve, 171-2.
58 George Puttenham, The Arte qf English Poesie, ed. Gladys Doidge Willeoek and
Aliee Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), 38.
59 Pau1 Alpers, What Is Pastoral? (Chieago: University of Chieago Press, 1996),
81.
60 Ibid., 70.
61 See eh. 5, 208-12.
62 See the diseusssion in eh. 5, 213-26.
63 The linking of Philisses and Petrarchan love is not surprising if we aeeept the
argument that he is at some level a representation of Sir Philip Sidney.
64 Larfy Mary Wroth's Lave's Victory: The Penshurst Manuscript, ed. Michael G. Brennan
(London: Roxburghe Club, 1988), 2.94, 1.164.
65 See eh. 6.
66 Lave's Victory, 'List of Charaeters', 33.
67 Ibid., 1.281.
68 Helen Haekett, 'Courtly writing by women', in Helen Wileox, ed. Wornen and
Literature in Britain 1500-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996):
169-89, 184.

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 CHAPTER FOUR

Writing the Divine: Faith and Poetry

Religious devotion was a key element of women's lives in the early modern
period. l In our post-Christian era it can be difficult to appreciate the extent
to which questions of religion, worship and doctrine underlie the most
personal and intimate emotional and psychological transactions shadowed
in texts and documents connected with Renaissance women. As Donald
Davie has pointed out in relation to the Countess of Pembroke's metrical
Psalm paraphrase:

The Countess's poem is a work of literary art, but only in the second
place; in the first place it is a work of devotion. To think that its devotional
dimension detracts from its status as art is to devalue everything, including
art. 2

Whatever the aesthetic value of many of the poetic texts discussed in this
chapter, the fact remains that for their authors they were in the first
instance acts of devotion. The dis course of religion, irrespective of its par-
ticular ideological or doctrinal stamp, structured the lives of most women in
far-reaching ways. Religion was the master-discourse which defined social
place and familial duty, as weH as authorising and legitimating the pattern
ofwomen's (and men's) lives, where one's lot was marriage and the bearing
and raising of children. It was the most authoritative ideology reinforcing
the notion of women's inherent inferiority, but by the same token the Bible
was also the text from which women and men argued for distinct but equal
roles. Although some women were at pains to point out the inconsistencies
of Christian teachings, or the gulf which frequently opened up between
theory and practice, ideal and reality, particularly when it came to relations
between the sexes, the vast majority took the Christian religion, and the

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Bible, as an incontrovertible authority which assigned them their place and,

paradoxically, their power. Even those who questioned matters of doc-
trine or application rarely questioned the fundamentallegitimacy of God's
authority, electing instead to adhere to tried and tested methods of theolo-
gical debate on what had become by the late sixteenth century standard
doctrinal questions - for example, the much contested issue of the degree of
Eve's responsibility for the fall, the number and nature of the sacraments,
and whether or not it was acceptable to depose an apostate ruler. 3
It was not only the outward parameters of women's lives that were
defined by religious ideas and those biblical principles which were reflected
in the legal code, but, just as importantly, their inner lives. 'Personal'
morality and spirituality were heavily influenced by religious imagery and
vocabulary, out of which the 'self' as an entity was constructed. Equally
importantly religion bequeathed a language or lexicon of images, power
struggles and dramatic situations which worked upon individual imagina-
tions in powerful and emotionally charged ways. It is important to note that
the effects of religion were not exclusively negative for women in the early
modern period; on the contrary, as the writings of these poets show, its
constraints and contradictions often produced rich and inventive creat-
ive responses, as women asserted their own views and ideas through the
framework of the biblical text, often substituting its divine authority for the
secular, temporal and legal restrietions which were part of their everyday
lives. As Patricia Crawford comments: '[women] were neither passive nor
oppressed victims, but rather human agents, making their his tory within a
social structure which was not oftheir making'.4 Hiving off 'spiritual' or reli-
gious poetry as aseparate generic undertaking in early modern England is
inevitably a falsification, precisely because it is a discourse which is inextric-
ably tied to virtually all forms of expression, personal, politicalor moral. This
is as true for male writers as it is for female writers, although, as we will
see, their relationship to the authority and language of religious discourse
differs considerably.
Given the fact that the Bible was readily available in English in this
period, and the Protestant emphasis upon access to the word of God in the
vernacular was realised within the church liturgy itself, it seems legitimate
to ask what the function of religious verse might have been." Unlike the
canonical male poets of the period, such as Donne or Herbert, we have no
framework, either personal or professional, upon which to draw when try-
ing to explain why such a range of women - royal, noble, gentry - chose to
commit their particular visions of faith (from Presbyterian through to Cath-
olic) to paper and, in some cases, to print. Like Donne or Herbert, it is clear
from these writers that the stylistic and thematic stuff of which their texts
are made is the word of God itself. The scriptures are not simply the me ans

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 WRITING THE DIVINE: FAITH AND rOETRY

through which God is apprehended and true faith communicated, but the
substance of faith itself. In the Protestant tradition, the explication and
spinning out of the ambiguities, solecisms and contradictions of the 'huge
bran-tub' of texts and histories constituted a confrontation with God
himself. 6 One effect of the Protestant emphasis upon the importance of the
scripture in the vernacular, coupled with newly rhetorical modes of inter-
pretation, was the cross-fertilisation of sacred and secular forms, resulting in
an energetic hybridity in contemporary verse. 7 From being the outlawed and
immoral medium decried by Gosson, Stubbes and their Puritan contem-
poraries, poetry became a valid medium with the power to move readers
not only to morality (as in the traditional Horatian teachl delight para-
digm) but also to nudge them closer to the contemplation of God, as both
Herbert and Donne recognized: 'Who sayes that fictions onely and false
hairl Become a verse?'s Some ofthe functions ofreligious verse were more
prosaic: many rhymed versions, particularly of biblical or liturgical texts,
were partially designed with a mnemonic function in mind, a feature of
particular importance for the large number of people who were technic-
ally illiterate, but nevertheless craved access to the word of God. 9 In addi-
tion, the fusion of sacred and secular forms was deemed to have a more
popular, evangelising purpose, as Miles Coverdale recognised:

Yee wolde God that oure carters & plowrnen other thynge to whistle upon,
save Psalmes, hymnes, and soch godly songes as David is occupied withall.
And yf women syttinge at theyr rockes, or spynnynge at the wheles, had
none other songes to passe theyr tyme withall ... they shulde be better
occupied, then with hey nony nony, hey troly loly, & soch lyke fantasies.!O

Some of the material written by women in this period falls broadly into the
category of this popularising impulse, but the fact of the author's gender
introduces a key difference in relation to both source and audience, pre-
cisely because of the complex negotiation of authority that is involved for a
woman who speaks of spiritual matters.
For so me writers, the deployment of poetry was integrally linked to the
devotional project, particularly given the increasing perception in the
Renaissance period that the Bible could be viewed through the twin frame-
works of poetics and rhetoric. ll Because the Bible was increasingly valued
as a poetic text as well as a text (or series of texts) carrying divine authority,
there was an available authority for poetry which might absolve it of its
more dubious secular, amorous and courtly connotations. 12 In addition, the
major injunction regarding spiritual development and self-examination was
to dwell upon the word of God, to meditate upon it, and to have it always
in mind. If one bears in mind that the writing of poetry was an analytical,
interpretative and rhetorically self-conscious process, then the writing of

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

divine poetry can be viewed as something other than an attempt at commun-

ication and an effort to forge connections between like-minded readers -
although, as we will see, there is also a strongly factional or partisan ele-
ment to much of the poetry considered here. Clearly much of the poetry
authored by women in this period was motivated by adesire to take the
injunction to meditate continually upon the word a stage further by turning
such thinking into an artefact with an independent existence: in this way, it
might be seen as conforming neatly to prescriptions regarding proper fem-
inine behaviour, and to be self-justifying because it fulfilled the imperative
to communicate faith. What we see when we read these texts is the public
display of piety and devotion, aseries of 'self-fashionings' through a dis-
course permitted to women and pre-existing stereotypes and conventions,
but often revealing a strong political and ideological edge, or aseries of
theological allegiances made possible by the writer's social status, or exhib-
ited through generic and stylistic alliances.
The fact that many of these texts had their origins in what we might
inaccurately call 'private' meditation should not blind us to the specific uses
that women went on to make of them. In a sense, meditation was not a
private matter, but the means through which the individual negotiated
her relationship not only to the text in front of her and the faith that it
represented, but also to the wider world. The act of devotion as evinced
by reading and writing was one which led to the formulation of morality,
ethics, selfhood and authority; as such, it was part of a lifelong process, of
which most of these texts represent only a momentary if significant snap-
shot. Some of these texts betray such origins in their formal and material
aspects: the numerous versions and revisions ofMary Sidney's Psalm para-
phrases suggest that she viewed her undertaking as a process, rather than
progress towards any finally finished form. 13 The use of versification as an
aid to meditation can be found in many female-authored texts, such as
Lady Anne Southwell's series of expansions upon some of the ten com-
mandments and her observation that 'rime! ... is a help to memorye' .14
Several of these texts are found in manuscript, suggesting not so much
privacy, but process and collectivity; namely, that texts may have been
circulated and shared among a group of like-minded readers (and
writers).15 The processes and paratexts by which these poems cross the
permeable boundary between public and private worlds are often revealing:
specific conditions and discourses help to usher these writings from manu-
script to print, from writer to reader. A variety ofjustifications are used, from
apologetic stances of modesty to fiery defences of the necessity of truth,
but we should be wary of taking these entirely at their word. Similarly, some
writers move into the public domain through others' auspices, willingly or
otherwise. Some of the writers considered he re were brought into print

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because of their status as exemplary women whose virtue and piety were to
serve as models for other women to follow, or because their husbands
presented their work to a wider audience for emulation, usually after the
writer's death. 16 Various justificatory topoi recur in order to negotiate the
movement of the virtuous woman into the somewhat dubious medium of
print, in particular: the writer's exceptional godliness which is seen to demon-
strate the power of God's grace; that someone else published the work
without the author's knowledge; or that the work represents a valuable
contribution to a doctrinal controversy or debate. By the same token, despite
the wide ideological and temporal range of women's devotional poetry in
the Renaissance, certain themes, key texts and ideas characterise this form
of writing, albeit in a variety of stylistic forms: it is around these that this
chapter is structured.

, My tongue the pen to paynt his praises forth':

Voicing God in the Psalms of David 17

Ifthe Bible constitutes the Renaissance's 'master-discourse', then the Psalms

represent the fuHest manifestation of the qualities that early modern readers
prized in the Bible as a whole, as Martin Luther's comment illustrates:
'a litde Bible, for in it all things that are contained in the whole Bible ...
are condensed into a most beautiful manual'. 18 Calvin referred to the
book of Psalms as 'the Anatomy of all the partes of the Soule' and John
Donne argued that 'Davids history [doth] concerne and embrace all'.19 To an
extent, this perception depended upon the recognition of the Psalter's
poetic and rhetorical qualities every bit as much as it did upon its moral
and prophetie qualities, for it was the fact that these meditations could be
read metaphoricaHy and allegorically which gave them wide application.
Anne Lok and Mary Sidney, Countess ofPembroke, to differing degrees, rep-
resent the dual aspect of the Psalms as they were read in the sixteenth cen-
tury, as both political and poetic texts. At the forefront of arguments for the
Psalms to be interpreted through the frameworks of poetics and rhetoric
was Mary Sidney's brother, Philip, whose statement may stand in for many
other similar pronouncements:

may I not presume a little further ... and say that the holy David's Psalms
are a divine poem? ... for what else is the awaking his musical instruments,
the often and free changing of persons, his notable prosopopoeias, when he
maketh you, as it were, see God coming in His majesty, his telling of the
beasts' joyfulness and hills leaping, but a heavenly poesy.20

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 THE POLlTlCS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Poetic analysis of this kind was not incompatible with the political meanings
of the Psalter, nor the Bible more gene rally; indeed, it was inextricably
linked to it, since both methods of interpretation relied heavily upon the
primacy ofthe Word. Alongside statements like William Tyndale's that 'the
scripture useth proverbs, similitudes, riddles, or allegories, as all other
speeches do ... as in the English we borrow words and sentences of one
thinge, and apply them unto another, and give them new significations'
went an increasing emphasis upon the specifically aesthetic qualities of scrip-
ture, upon a text which was eloquent in itself. 2! This context has an import-
ant bearing upon the work that both Anne Lok and Mary Sidney chose to
undertake; rather than being a form of slavish imitation, their attempts to
put the Psalms into verse paraphrase had an authoritative history, but also
represented an aspiration to the very highest form of literary imitation, as
Hill's comment suggests: 'It is difficult to find a notable poet from Wyatt to
Milton who did not try his [sic] hand at aversion of the Psalms.,22
The idea that the Psalms were a microcosm of faith, despair and all
spiritual states in between was quickly expanded to include not only private
meditations, but also a whole series of moral and political dilemmas as
sixteenth-century reformers perceived them. Their function as a source of
spiritual comfort for the affiicted and oppressed enabled relatively easy
translation from the private to the public, where political meanings are
largely a matter of context and interpretation. The singing of Psalms as a
part of public worship became strongly identified with Protestants, particu-
larly of the more radical kind, such as the Genevan exiles and the French
Huguenots ~ important influences on Anne Lok and the Countess of
Pembroke. A text which narrated aseries of conflicts between the godly (the
Israelites) and their enemies (the Philistines) and which shows God uplifting
the faithful and taking revenge on the ungodly was easily adapted as an
analogy for religious conflict in early modern Europe. 23 For most early
modern readers, the political resonances of the Psalms were inescapable,
both through association and application; they scarcely needed to be spelled
out, although the glosses and headnotes to the Geneva Bible certainly went
some way towards suggesting the place of the Psalter not only in personal
meditation, but its universal application to kings and paupers alike. The
Geneva Bible, and related sources (such as Calvin's sermons and comment-
aries, or Beze's interpretations) certainly identified a strongly Protestant
theology within the Psalter, exacerbated by the political situation of the
Genevan exiles, in particular, which led them to suggest that reigning mon-
archs might be deposed in certain circumstances, namely if they were apos-
tate. Such resistance theories remained a corollary of readings of the Psalter
weIl into the seventeenth century, although the object of such analyses
moved from England (Queen Mary I) to the continent (Henry IV ofFrance,

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in particular).24 As Christopher Hill notes, '[t]here are few ideas in whose

support a biblical text cannot be found', which makes the Bible a particu-
larly powerful text in a society which is questioning old orthodoxies and
formulating new forms of authority.25 Psalm interpretations, so often seen
in the Renaissance as the epitome of Protestant thinking, were at the centre
of this process of reinterpretation and reapplication, aspects which are
reflected in women's responses and reactions to the text.
There were other reasons why women seem to have been particularly
drawn to the Psalms. Not only were the Psalms thought to be applicable to
the spiritual state of every believer, 'indifferently untoo all men, of what
estate, degree, sex, age, or calling so ever', but they self-evidently deployed
a narrative voice which was open to appropriation by the specific indi-
vidual who pronounced or articulated them. 26 Voice was understood to be
unmarked in the Psalter, at least at the point at which a specific reader or
believer engaged in a relationship with the text: 'whosoever take this booke
in his hande, he reputeth & thinketh all the wordes he readeth ... to be as
his very own wordes spoken in his owne person'.27 As Donald Davie points
out, modern sensibilities predispose us to individualise, and that we tend to
view 'the "I" of the Psalmist to me an "I" as peculiar unrepeatable indi-
vidual; not "I" as representative human being'.28 The text of the Psalms
was peculiarly open-ended, enabling women to encounter and rework it
because they were implicitly part of its mode of articulation and because
poetic paraphrase could easily be seen as only partially their own work. 29
The Psalms are written in several voices: God's, David's (and the other
writers of Psalms), the translators', and finally the individual speaker's, not
to mention the pIe thora of commentaries, sermons and meditation already
in existence. No one of these could be said to have ultimate authority over
the rest; indeed, the meaning and power of the Psalter lies in its mul-
tiple voices. Even if a woman writer or reader were engaging purely and
simply with a vernacular version of the Psalms, she would of necessity be
interpellated into a number of complex linguistic, political and intellectual
systems that in turn communicated her position and allegiances to others,
whether she were actively conscious of this or not. I will argue that both
Mary Sidney and Anne Lok were deeply conscious of the political import
and impact of their work, and that their acute consciousness of their
readerships, together with the authority that derived from their familial
contexts, served to produce not only works of some literary importance, but
poetry with powerful, if subtle, political messages.
Anne Lok's authorship of the sonnet sequence that is appended to her
translation ofthe Sermons ofJohn Calvin (1560) is by no means certain. 30
1t is clear that she was the compiler of this heterogeneous volume, which
innovates significantly in its crossing of generic boundaries, and adds the

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

voice of an exiled middle-class woman to the highly politicised arena of

religious controversy and Psalm paraphraseY Lok's was a voice circulated
in print, with the clear intention that it should be heard and noted beyond
the self-selecting, pious Genevan community that the volume represents to
areadership at 'horne' in England. Rosalind Smith argues convincingly
that Lok's text has a clear political purpose in mind, namely 'the promotion
of Calvinist religious policy in the early Elizabethan state'. 32 A number of
features and circumstances contribute to this message, including its timing
Uust two years after Elizabeth I's accession); its dedication to Katherine,
Duchess of Suffolk, a radical Protestant who fled when Mary I came to the
throne;33 its deliberate decision to translate Calvin, present in Geneva at
the same time as Anne Lok; and the addition of a sonnet sequence based
on Psalm 51. These last two factors are perhaps the most important for
our purposes, and they set up clear lines of connection between Lok, the
Protestant tradition, and a subtle form of admonition through panegyric
which was later reflected in Mary Sidney's work on the Psalms. The
volume exhibits a clear and consistent purpose, using first-person meditation
coupled with analysis of the meanings of Hezekiah's sickness to suggest that
Elizabeth's reign should move from the 'sickness' ofMary's Catholic regime
to a virtuous and godly regiment. 34 This transition is primarily accom-
plished in the text through the medium of the meditation on Psalm 51, a
Psalm that traditionally represented atonement for sin and re affirmation of
the true faith in adversity.
Both David and Hezekiah are treated in Lok's prose text as 'admonitory
models of princeliness' which by implication require Elizabeth I to look to
them as exemplars. Indeed David, along with other biblical models, had
been both suggested to Elizabeth land embraced by her as a way of
boosting her somewhat dubious authority and affirming her commitment to
the Protestant faith - however, this was not as Calvinist as Lok and her
circle would have wished, a fact that is evident from Elizabeth's dismissal of
Lok's second husband, the radical preacher Edward Dering. 35 The bulk of
the text consists of Lok's translation, from the French, of Calvin's sermons
on Isaiah 38, presented to the reader, through a powerful but common
spiritual metaphor, as the 'receipte God the heavenly Physitian hath taught'
which 'can no Philospher, no Infidele, no Papist minister,.36 The presenta-
tion of Calvin's sermons on a text viewed as a 'remedye' for sin, as weIl as a
description of the disease of sin in the context of Elizabeth's recent accession
would have carried a sharp edge, particularly given Lok's deliberate choice
of a text specifically relating to monarchy and the connections between
the ruler's morality and virtue and that of the state that he or she sym-
bolised and embodied. 37 Such subtle prompts to interpretation and applica-
tion are also present in Lok's choice of a verse paraphrase of Psalm 51,

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 WRITING THE DIVINE: FAITH AND rOETRY

especially when hybridised with the Petrarchan sonnet form, a combina-

tion of discourses already established not only by Wyatt's Psalm para-
phrases, but also through Lok's own paratext for her translation, where she
describes Ezechias' sickness in distincdy Petrarchan terms, 'nowe fresing,
now fryeng, nowe spechelesse, nowe crying OUt'.38 Smith suggests that such
images reflect the anxiety surrounding the monarch's body after the instabil-
ity of the Edward and Mary years, but one might add to this the specific
anxieties attendant upon the body of an unmarried queen who, like the
precedents of David and Hezekiah, had much to fear politically from
romantic entanglements. The centrality of the body to both Petrarchanism
and Psalm 51, and that Psalm's transition from atonement to fidelity and
praise hints that Elizabeth should direct her interests towards godly govern-
ment, rather than towards satisfying popular and political demands that she
marry as soon as possible. 39 Although conventionally the Psalm's confes-
sional nature (David's atonement after committing adultery with Bathsheba)
has been read metaphorically to refer to England's own 'adultery' with
Roman Catholicism, its message can also be read as a warning to Elizabeth
regarding her future conduct.
The choice of Psalm 51 as the basis for Lok's paraphrase was freighted
with political and religious resonance, and thus is an apt text for a young
queen charged with bringing order and godliness after aperiod of extrem-
ism and instability. The Psalm was also specifically seen as a prayer for
the Church. While the Psalms in general were closely linked to radical
Protestantism, Psalm 51, originally one of the seven penitential Psalms,
had particularly powerful associations for the Genevan exiles. 40 They found
in the Psalm a useful affirmation of their own theological beliefs; both the
Geneva Bible and Theodore de Beze's commentary noted that it encom-
passed two main tenets of belief:
there are joyned in the Psalm also two principal! pointes of true religion:
the one, of Original! sinne, the other of the abuse of sacrifices, as though
the purgation of sinne consisted in that outwarde ceremony.l1

Besides its theological significance, its other meanings were more a question
of context and association. The Psalm was heavily identified with Protestant
martyrs under Mary I, as it was usually used as a form of confession on
the scaffold, where an insistence upon citing it in English was interpreted
as demonstrating allegiance to the reformed cause; Lady Jane Grey, for
example, was reported to have done so. Several of the martyrdoms recorded
by Foxe feature Psalm 51 spoken in the vernacular. 42 Lok's version particip-
ates, albeit subtly, in this tradition of application and meditation.
The sonnet sequence A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner is separately intro-
duced to the reader, but its connection with Calvin's work is carefully

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 TH E POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITI NG

asserted, 'it weil agreeth with the same argument'.43 Its provenance is not
made clear, being concealed under the disclaimer that it 'was delivered me
by my frend',44 but its basis in the twin authorities of the biblical text and
Calvin's sermons is echoed in the structure ofthe poetic sequence. A Medita-
tion consists of twenty-six fourteen-line sonnets, divided into a 'preface,
expressing the passioned minde of the penitent sinner' (sig. Aa2r), five son-
nets in length, and the meditation 'upon the 51. Psalme' (sig. Aa3r) which
runs to nineteen sonnets, each broadly based upon one verse of the biblical
text. 45 Each poem functions as meditation/ commentary on the biblical text
in question, thus working to re-engage the reader with the meanings and
applications of the scripture. The purpose is undoubtedly evangelising and
affirmatory, cementing the bonds between believers of a similar stamp on
the one hand, and using a primarily secular poetic form to communicate
both faith and theology on the other. This aspect of Lok's work ailies it
closely with the attempts of reformers to 'convert' profane or secular forms
to godly and moral ends, and this is underlined by the fact that the main
body of the text, the meditation on Psalm 51, refers the reader continually
to the text itselfprinted section by seetion in the margins. In this way, Lok's
sonnets represent a careful negotiation and appropriation of biblical au-
thority; the assertion of the poems' basis in the scripture parallels the way in
which printed sermons frequently draw their legitimation from their sources
in the scripture and justify speech by sending the reader back to the word of
God. Here Lok seems to appropriate these functions to herself, but without
ever quite asserting herself overtly as an interpreter of God's word.
A Meditation blends together several different discourses, but every one
that it draws upon is one which has been identified in Psalm 51 by author-
itative commentators; it is at once a confession, a complaint, a poem of
exile, and a prayer for mercy. Lok's version uses a highly intimate and
personalised dis course for religion that merges two powerful languages of
selfhood - spirituality and Petrarchanism. The presentation of the speaker's
guilt at the neglect of God and the health of the soul is framed within poetic
interpretations of the biblical text, the Psalms in particular, so that the
sonnets alm ost seem to be a logical extension of the language of Psalm 51
itself, deploying its familiar tropes and figures, and drawing on the conven-
tional imagery of the Psalter more generally: 'My Lord whos wrath is sharper
than the knife,l And deper woundes than dobleedged sworde' (sig. Aa2r).
The poems of 'The preface' express and explore the speaker's need for
God's grace, ultimately delivered via the biblical and divine authority of
Psalm 51 itself, and stress the sinner's helplessness: 'Yet blinde, alass, I
groape about for grace' (sig. Aa2r). The theological underpinnings of Lok's
specific take upon Psalm 51 are made manifest in these 'framing' poems, in
particular, the doctrine of predestination:

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o rifused wight,
1hat heares not the Jorsaken sinners voice.
1hy reprobate and Joreordeined sprite,
For damned vessell of his heavie wrath ...
. . . 01 his swete promises can claime no part:
Eut thee, caytij, deserved curse doeth draw
To hell, by justice, Jor qffinded law.
(sig. Aa2v)

The speaker here is not the individualised, personalised voice advancing its
own concerns as critics like Margaret Hannay have implied; rather it is a
generalised, communal voice which communicates universal concerns to a
community of believers in adversity, thus echoing closely the text being
imitated. The words chosen in 'The preface' reflect and concretise the
process (both personal, and for the exiles, national) of opening up the soul
to receive God's grace through the penitence and contrition which will be
delivered through meditating on the Psalms.
It is this process of meditation that is enacted in A Meditation if a penitent
sinner. Here each sonnet is keyed to a particular phrase or verse in the
biblical version of the Psalm, and the body of each poem amounts to a
dilation upon its meaning, interpretation and application to apparently
individual circumstances. However, it is clear, partly because of their basis
in the biblical text, that the '1' of the speaker is an '1' designed to be
inhabited by each reader and each believer. At one level, this is a pecu-
liarly coercive strategy; the reader is implicitly forced into the sonnets'
particular theology, but it also makes the individual part of a wider com-
munity of believers ~ the act of reading enacts the functions of identi-
fication and solidarity of purpose so often attributed to the Psalms by the
reformers. The ideas and themes adhere closely to the concerns and condi-
tions of the Genevan exiles, but read contextually carry a powerful political
charge:

Have mercy, God,Jor tlry great mercies sake,

o God: 11?JI God, unto my shame Isay,
El!Jnge fled from thee, so as I dred to take
17zy name in wretched mouth, and fiale to pray
Or aske the mercy that I have abusde.
(sig. Aa3v)

These lines not only refer to the penitent sinner, but also to the true be-
liever exiled because of false religion, and the oppression contingent upon
such opposition. Poetic influences are frequent, although not specifically

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traceable; many ofLok's images are amplifications or applications ofbiblical

ones, which both deepen meaning and are singularly apt in the context of
her sequence; she writes of sin plunging the sinner into 'sea of depe despeire'
(sig. Aa3v); 'sinnes' neatly balance 'mercies' so that there is constant inter-
play between voices in the text; the presence of God's word in the margin
emphasises the derivation of Lok's authority. If the speaker has power and
credibility, it is God's mercy, grace, and above all, his word which is the
source.
The body and its repellent nature is a constant metaphor in Lok's
sequence, expanded considerably from its presence in Psalm 51; it is clearly
interpreted as original sin requiring to be cleansed by the water and bap-
tism and by God's mercy: 'Thou madest me cleane: but I am foule againe.l
Yet washe me Lord againe, and washe me more' (sig. Aa4r). The sinful body
signifies a variety of things; not only a sense of individualised shame and self-
loathing in the face of God, but also a way of indicating the relationships
between the private body and the public commonwealth - the original
speaker in this Psalm is of course King David, publicly atoning for his sins.
The implication in the Geneva Bible is clear, and there is no reason why
Lok should have held a contrary view: 'He prayeth for the whole Church,
because through his sinne it was in danger of Gods judgement. ,46 The
intersection between the private and the public is clearly delineated by Lok,
especially when her version is compared with the biblical sources: the notion,
for example, that 'my sinne is ever before me' (sig. Aa4r - margin) leads the
speaker logically to a consideration of the outer manifestation of sin, and
the dangers of public infamy: 'What ever way I gaze about for grace,! My
filth and fault are ever in my face' (ibid.), resulting in the need to bare the
secrets of the he art before God and consequently, in the narration, before
the world: 'My cruell conscience with sharpned knife/Doth splat my ripped
hert, and layes abrode/The lothsome secretes of my filthy life,! And spredes
them forth before the face of God' (ibid.). The desperate pleas for mercy,
however, are predicated upon the promise, and the desire, to profess God's
power, hence placing the speaker in a position where authority derives from
experience, and ultimately from God hirnself. The emphasis is repeatedly
on the speaker as a representative of universal experience, which often
means that this most introspective of Psalms has a curiously impersonal
tone, the point being that the worse the sinner, the greater the quality of
God's mercy, and that sin, and conversely divine mercy, applies to all, from
prince to pauper. Having said this, there is a repeated stress upon introspec-
tion and spiritual self-examination, which produces a discourse of selfhood,
even if it fails to produce anything that modern readers might recognise as
individuality - a further parallel with Petrarchanism: 47

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 WRITING THE DIVINE: FAITH AND POETRY

This secrete wisedom hast thou graunted me,

To se my sinnes, and whence my sinnes do growe:
This hidden knowledge have I leamd qf thee,
To ]eIe my sinnes, and howe my sinnes do Jlowe
With such excesse.
(sig. Aa5r)

Rather more obviously than Mary Sidney's version of this Psalm, Lok's
imitation asserts her theological and ideological position. 48 The biblical text
is seen in strongly typological terms, as commenting upon and prefiguring
the state of the Church in present times - a common parallelism drawn by
sixteenth-century commentators. For example, here, the hyssop brought to
cleanse the disease of the sinner does not only travel between literal and
figurative senses, it is also interpreted as an Old Testament prefiguring of
the salvation brought to sinners by Christ, '[f]oreshewing figure ofthy grace
behight, /With death and bloodshed of thine only sonne,lThe swete hysope,
cleanse me defyled wyght' (sig. Aa5v). Similarly the coming of God's mercy
is articulated in distinctly reformist terms: 'thy mercy shall/Sounde in my
hart the gospell of thy grace' (ibid.). This is the key to the speaker's author-
ity, whether the voice is realised by a male or a female speaker, namely
David's promise to demonstrate God's mercy and justice in his gratitude to
hirn which provides an imperative to sing his praises: 'So, Lord, my joying
tong shal talke thy praise' (sig. Aa 7r); 'loose my speche, and make me call to
thee' (ibid.).
Mary Sidney's version of Psalm 51 provides a telling contrast to Lok's
and illustrates the differences between them, despite broadly sharing an
ideological and theological position. 49 Like Lok, Sidney's Psalm paraphrase
is indebted to the endeavours of the Genevan exiles and to the cross-
fertilisation of poetry and theology, but her version demonstrates a more
developed poetic skill and a deeper sense of the relationships between form
and content. Much of her rhetorical word-play is typically Sidneian:

o lord, whose grace no limitts comprehend;

sweet lord, whose mercies standfrom measure free;
to mee that grace, to mee that mercie send,
and wipe 0 lord my sinnes from sinnfull mee
o clense, 0 wash, my fowle iniquitie:
clense still my spotts, still wash awaie my staynings,
till staines and spotts in mee leave noe remaynings ..)(}

While the text is orientated towards the spiritual significance of poetic medi-
tation on the Psalms, and to achieving a deeper intimacy with the verbal

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 TH E POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITI NG

surface of the text, it is immediately clear that the Countess of Pembroke is

engaged in something quite different to Lok's work. Rather than divine
material being poured into a poetic mould, here the key factor is the dynamic
but integral relationship between form and content. Verbal patterning pro-
vides a key to meaning, a means of entering the spirit of the text more fully,
and a way of presenting the Psalter along the lines of its original concep-
tion, namely as interrelated parts of a plural whole which articulate a vari-
ety of states of mind within an overall concept of the relationship between
the fallen and the godly. This is a different kind of project, no less serious or
committed theologically and politically, but concerned with different me ans
and methods of communicating the essential spirit of the divine text, as
John Donne acknowledged: 'They tell us why, and teach us how to sing';
'The organ, where thou art the harmony'.51
Although the underlying intentions behind each poetic paraphrase are
comparable, the resulting texts are quite different. This can be seen quite
clearly in each woman's response to Psalm 51.15, 'Open thou my lippes, 0
Lord, and my mouth shall shewe foorth thy praise' (Geneva). Lok echoes
the biblical text quite closely, but interprets it to mean that the voice should
be used to call upon God's grace: 'loose my speche, and make me call to
theel Lord open thou my lippes to shewe my case' (sig. Aa7r). Mary Sidney's
version, however, brings a very different understanding of the relationship
of the speaker to God's word:

Unlock my lipps, shut up with sinnful! shame:

then shal! my mouth 8 lord tfry honor sing.
JOr bleeding fiel! JOr thy alters flame,
to gaine tfry grace what bootes it me to bring?
(43-6)

This version of authorship, inspired by God's grace, but a sacrifice to be

given back to God, is much closer to that embraced by, in particular,
George Herbert's metaphysical poetry than it is to Lok's versification of
the biblical text, which falls more obviously into the proselytising tradition
of the Psalm versification by two other Genevan exiles, Stern hold and
Hopkins. 52 The factors determining these fundamental differences are gen-
erational, educational, situational, despite the common thread that paraphras-
ing the Psalms was an acceptable and desirable activity for a pious and
devout woman to undertake. Donne's lines, with their contrast between 'offi-
cial' versions and courtly ones designed for private circulation, can stand
in for a multitude of commentary: 'So well attired abroad, so ill at horne,!
So well in chambers, in thy church so ill' ('Upon the translation', 38-9).
While Mary Sidney's undertaking is heavily indebted to the spirit and
the letter embraced by the Genevan exiles, the interpretive context for her

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verse paraphrase of Psalms 44 to 150, completing the work begun by her

brother Sir Philip Sidney, could scarcely be more different. Context, both
textual and general, is crucial for understanding what the Countess of
Pembroke was trying to achieve, for the nature of her literary endeavour
means that it cannot be seen straightforwardly as an autonomous artefact.
Although it might be classified, not entirely inaccurately, as translation,
such a designation fails to give a proper sense of the kind of text the Sidney
Psalter iso In all sorts of ways, it confounds our post-Romantic categories
which prove very difficult to suspend when analysing and evaluating the
literary work of the past. In the first instance, the work is not a single text,
but several. The 1599 Penshurst manuscript (beautifully copied by the
writing master John Davies of Hereford to be presented to Elizabeth I) is
usually taken by editors as the copy-text and is only one of fourteen manu-
scripts related to one another and to several key manuscripts that are now
lost in various complex ways.53 This text can be taken in a sense as a 'final'
version, but the Sidney Psalms continued to be transcribed and circulated
after this date and it is likely that many of Mary Sidney's contemporaries
would have encountered 'the Sidney Psalms' in versions which varied to a
lesser or greater extent from that advanced by William A. Ringler,Jr as the
text. Errors and variants were not only introduced by scribes and copyists,
but were an integral part of the process of paraphrase itself, as the partial
transcript of the Countess of Pembroke's lost working copy illustrates: she
frequently altered words and phrasing over aperiod time only to return to
her original idea at a later stage. 54 Far from making the Countess an 'invet-
erate tinkerer' or proving that 'the Countess herself seems to have been
congenitally incapable of leaving a poem alone long enough to produce a
definitive copy', such textual complexity indicates how inadequate our models
of authorship, textuality and literary production are for the early modern
period. 55 It is undoubtedly the case that Mary Sidney viewed her work as a
poetic as weIl as a devotional duty, and that, as Gary Waller has argued, 'in
asense, the countess had no "final" version of the work'.56
Second, the various poems in the Sidney Psalter, each using a different
metrical pattern, cannot be said to be either straightforward translations
nor original works. These poems are not translations taken directly from a
single source text in a foreign language but autonomous poems constructed
from a range of sources and intertexts: the Genevan Bible, the Book of
Common Prayer, the Marot-Beze metrical Psalter, Calvin's commentaries,
to name but a few. In addition, the Countess of Pembroke drew heavily
upon the precedent and example of her brother, whose work she presented
herself as completing: 'Yet here behold, (oh wert thou to behold!)/ this
finish't now, thy matchlesse Muse begunne,l the rest but peec't, as left by
thee undone'.57 Both aspects have been considered as faintly troubling by

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feminist critics, often working within anachronistic notions of authorship

and textual circulation. In the case of translation, it must be rem em bered
that not only was translation itself a highly valued literary mode central to
humanist educational models, but the text which Mary Sidney was 'trans-
lating', or paraphrasing, itself was not in any real sense a singular or homo-
geneous text, as Davie points out: 'There is no "real" or pristine Psalter that
we can hope to hack our way back tO.'58 To view the text as somehow
'inferior' because of its mode of production is to miss two key points: first,
that the Psalter itself is not a monolith; and second that translation is not so
much an act of submission to a 'master-text', but a creative engagement with
it. The extent to which Mary Sidney's work can be read through the frame-
work of gender is debatable, often because of the nature of the text she is
working with; in this context, all translations are inferior because they are
fallible, human versions of the divine text. 59 Rather than being a case of 'her
sex modified what she would do; her woman's training what she could do',
the Psalmes represent an aspiration to the highest forms ofliterary imitation. 60
Mary Sidney's familial and kinship networks helped to turn her under-
taking into a deeply political act. Rather than indicating a dependency
contingent upon her sex, such relationships formed the matrix through
which the Countess of Pembroke could write, and from which her work
gained its meaning and significance; not so much working on the 'margins
of dis course ,, I would suggest, but utilising her unique position at their very
centre. 61 She had a number of authoritative precedents upon which she
could draw, aside from the religious and political imperatives discussed
above. 62 Or, to be more precise, the Countess of Pembroke's familial con-
nections and allegiances led in a direct line to the paraphrase of the Psalter
being a political act, even if this is rarely overt; as Hannay suggests '[tJhe
countess did not need to add a political cast to her original'.63 Even in terms
ofMary Sidney's available circle of readers and use of source materials, her
immediate milieu provided aseries of influential political connections, in
most cases strongly associated with a theological position filtered through
the Dudley-Sidney alliance. 64 This group of 'insider readers' helps to account
for the nature of Mary Sidney's paraphrases - they presuppose not only
an intimate knowledge of the text which is being varied and played upon,
but also implicitly ass urne areadership for whom the Psalter repres-
ented an 'intensely partisan' text, denoting clear political and devotional
allegiances. 65 For example, the French Marot-Beze Psalter was not only
important because of the precedent it set for stanzaic and metrical experi-
mentation, but because of the Sidney family's contacts with French Protes-
tants; the Geneva Bible was printed by Rowland Hall, the recipient of
the Earl of Leicester's patronage, as was Arthur Golding, the translator of
Calvin's Psalm versions and commentaries, dedicated to Leicester (Mary

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Sidney's unde). Another of Mary Sidney's Dudley undes, the Earl of

Huntingdon, had met Theodore de Beze during the reign of Mary I, and
both Leicester and Huntingdon knew Anthony Gilbie; Beze's Latin text
was dedicated to Huntingdon and Gilbie's translation to his wife, Katherine. 55
Furthermore, there were precedents dose at hand pointing to the political
uses of the Psalm texts, above and beyond their generalised use, to allude
to the conflict between Catholics and Protestants, and increasingly that
between radical Protestants who supported military intervention on the con-
tinent to uphold the faith and those happy to tread a via media. 57 Her
family cirde was strongly committed to the military support of continental
Protestants: the three great Protestant earls Leicester, Huntingdon and
Warwick were her undes; her brother Philip had extensive contacts with
Huguenot radicals and intellectuals and died for the Protestant cause in
the Netherlands; her younger brother Robert was Governor-General of
Flushing. Both of her Dudley undes, John and Robert, had written Psalm
paraphrases while imprisoned in connection with their father's attempt to put
Lady Jane Grey on the throne. 58 Her father, Sir Henry Sidney, had cited
Psalm 114 (In exitu Israel) on his departure from Ireland, thereby identify-
ing himselfwith the godly, as Elizabeth's Lord Deputy, and linking his Irish
Catholic subjects as 'Philistines'.59
The most important immediate influence on the Countess ofPembroke's
Psalm paraphrase was her brother Philip, without whom the poems would
almost certainly not exist. Her multiple dependency on this multi-talented
and charismatic courtier-poet has caused some une ase among feminist critics,
anxious that Mary Sidney's writing career could only commence with the
obligations bequeathed by his premature death. However, this 'depend-
ency' needs to be viewed in the context not only of social values in early
modern England, but of the wider cultural re action to Sir Philip Sidney.
Virtually every poet aspiring to recognition or favour was to invoke the
precedent of Philip Sidney for many years after his death; the doser the
acquaintance daimed the more credit the poet had. 70 For Mary Sidney to
'depend' on his authority, both poetic and political, was part of the cultural
mainstream as well as her familial duty. Edmund Spenser, for example,
illustrates, perhaps grudgingly, the Countess's pre-eminent authority in carry-
ing out Sir Philip Sidney's legacy in The Ruines qf Time (1591): 'Then will
I sing, but who can better sing,! Than thine owne sister, peerles 1adie
bright,! Which to thee sings with deep harts sorrowing, /Sorrowing tem-
pered with deare delight.'71 Not only was he her much-loved elder brother,
but by the time she started to write and to publish, the Countess ofPembroke
was one of the few adult members of the old Dudley-Sidney alliance. She
seems to have viewed her role as the control of Philip's image and literary
output, and reminding a wider intellectual cirde of his legacy - areminder

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

that reached as far as Elizabeth I herself on occasions. 72 The Countess of

Pembroke certainly chooses to represent herself to her readership as the
guardian of Philip's legacy, and to underplay her own contributions to the
project of the Sidney Psalter, a stance that nevertheless carries with it
an implicit claim to literary and political agency, as the complexities of
her dedicatory poem to the Psalmes iHustrates. 73 'To the AngeH spirit of. ..
Sir Phillip Sidney' is both dedicatory poem and elegy, and thus inevitably
places heavy emphasis upon the degree to which the Psalter was Sidney's
inspiration and, indirectly, his work:

Ta thee pure sprite, to thee alone's addres't

this coupled worke, by double int'rest thine:
First rais'de by tfry blest hand, and what is mine
inspird by thee, thy secrett power imprest.
(1-4)

The sense ofinadequacy or incompletion suggested by Mary Sidney's choice

of words and self-conscious stance of humility ('half maim'd peece' (18))
contrasts markedly with the boldness of some of her claims elsewhere in this
text and in 'Even now that Care'.74 While she does not exactly assert herself as
Philip's equal, she suggests her adequacy to a task represented as the high-
est form of poetic endeavour; her humble downplaying of her part is fitting
in a poem which has as its express aim the acknowledgement of Philip's
inspiration, but it sits rather oddly with the woman who revises not only her
work with something approaching boldness, but also ventures to 'improve'
upon her brother's work, or at least to make it cohere with her own:

these wo unding !Jnes of smart

sadd Characters indeed of simple love
not Art nor skill which abler wits doe prave,
Of my full soule receive the meanest part.
(81-4)

These poems belong to particular genres and have specific purposes - it is

misIeading to read them as in any sense personal statements of emotion.
Although the Countess of Pembroke's loyalty to her brother was a key
factor in prompting her to write publicly, his death also created an oppor-
tunity (and a responsibility) for her, an opening for her to write devotional
poetry. It is important to realise that her primary concern seems to have
been that control of his texts and his image remained within the family,
so rather than her roIe being that of dependence and humility, it is
just as likely that it is one of appropriation and assertion of ownership. In
death, then, the figure of Sir Philip Sidney becomes not just a mourned

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elder brather and poetic forebear, but a manipulable fiction, which Mary
Sidney can adapt to her own ends, and subject to her contral, just as she is
be holden to his influence and memory.
Just as the political meanings of the Sidney circle were a matter of coded
knowledge and contextual information, so too to a degree their poetic value
rested upon an implicit comparison not only with other Psalm paraphrases
and translations, but also with a range of poetry both sacred and secular. 75
Not only does the Countess of Pembroke appear 'in a devotional sense' to
have 'meditated on the text before her' in relation to its 'underlying meaning',
but this pracess of reflection was also stylistic and poetic. 76 There has per-
haps been too much emphasis on her undertaking as a kind of poetic
apprenticeship, leading to an implication that she did not quite know what
she was doing, or that her work amounts to little more than 'poetical
experiments,.77 Such assessments trip quite readily off the pens of feminist
critics, whereas those interested in form or metrical innovation acknow-
ledge the poetic qualities of her work. Donald Davie, a poet himself, for
example, claims that her version of Psalm 139 'is surely the most splendid
Englishing ... of these verses'; Barbara K. Lewalski's assessment that the
Sidney Psalter presents the Psalms 'for the first and only time in the period
as good English poems' should not be taken lightly, given her extensive
study of the influence of the Bible on the canonical poets of the Renais-
sance. 78 One reason why critics have often missed the stylistic virtuosity
of the Sidney Psalms is due to the wide range of influences which feed
into them, and the close relationships between poetry and the divine in
the period generally, but particularly in relation to the Psalms, often con-
sidered to be poems in their own right. It therefore seems entirely fitting
that Mary Sidney found parallels between the sacred and the secular which
prompted her to recall the lyrics of Wyatt (himself an early translator of
the Psalms), when paraphrasing Psalm 57, while adhering to her sources.
She writes

A{y hart prepar'd prepared is my hart

to spread tl[y praise
with tuned laies:
wake my tongue, my lute awake,
thou my harp the consort make,
my se!! will beare apart.
(31-6)

Her sources carry much the same idea, 'Awake my glory, awake lute and
harpe' (BCP 57.9) and 'Awake my joy, awake I say,l my Lute, my Harpe,
and strang', but Mary Sidney fuses these with a striking courtly image
which opens up aseries of variations on the futility of speech in the face of

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79
thwarted love, effectively a secular variation on the theme of praise. In
effect, the joyous consolation of the Psalm demands to be read against the
corrupt, courdy, existential despair of Wyatt's 'My lute awake'. This small
example illustrates an important truth about these complex and often elu-
sive poems: namely that the communication of the 'sense' of the Psalms is
only part of the enterprise - any reader in the second half of the sixteenth
century could find a reasonably readable and tolerably accurate translation
of the Psalms. What that reader could not find readily, however, was an
English text of the Psalms which communicated anything about them other
than their meaning. The attempt to make the Psalms communicate at all
levels in English was at the forefront of Sir Philip Sidney's, and then Mary
Sidney's, mind, as they wrestled with new coinages, rhetorical techniques
and metrical patterns in order to carry across the Psalms' extraordinary
force as poetry, as doctrine, comfort and instruction:

Heroical magnanimity, exquisite justice, grave moderation, exact wisdom,

reprentance unfeigned, unwearied patience, the mysteries 6f God, the
sufferings of Christ, the terrors of wrath, the comforts of grace, the works
of Providence over this world, and the promised joys of that world which
is to come. BO

Another strand in this kind of thinking is the interest in demonstrating the

power and range of the English language, a project expressed by Sir Philip
Sidney in his Difence qf Poetry, but continued and encapsulated in the
attempt to make the divine text of the Psalms both eloquent and effective in
English, much as Marot and Beze had made the Psalms into flexible and
powerful poems in French.
The precise impact of these Psalm versions on their contemporary readers
is difficult to recreate, primarily because the text to which they refer and
from which they derive was part of the mentallandscape of Renaissance
readers. The weighing of the poetic and devotional value of poetic Psalm
paraphrases, whoever produced them, depended upon the recognition of
their difference from the established versions of this well-known and much-
loved text, which was frequendy read, and heard at every church service as
part of the liturgy. Although some parts and habits of diction in the Sidney
Psalter prove difficult for us to follow or comprehend, often it is the source
text which will illuminate meaning. For contemporary readers, the habit of
comparison would have been ingrained, virtually unconscious, and their
reading pleasure would have resided in the surprises wrought by seeing the
text anew, and measuring the distances and differences between the famil-
iar versions and these, which aimed to re-engage the reader and make them
new. That such habits were practised is clear from John Donne's poem

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praising the Psalmes, from Mary Sidney's own sense oftheir differences from
their predecessors and from Samuel Woodforde's comments (and absence
of comment) on his transcription of the Sidney Psalter. Donne, for examp1e,
demonstrates typically Renaissance habits of comparison, and a sense of the
power of imitation, as his poem compares the Sidney psa1ms to the spirit of
God, to David's words and finally to other versions. 81 Mary Sidney herself
draws a similar parallel in 'Even Now that Care':

Wherein yet well wee thought the Psalmist King

Now English denizend, though Hebrue borne,
woold to thy musicke undispleased sing,
Oft having worse, without repining worne.
(29-32)

Woodforde's comments are confined to questions oftranscription, feet, rhyme

and metrics, which infers that the source text was well known, and the poems'
variations upon it were understood as an entirely 1egitimate undertaking.
Some ofthe Countess ofPembroke's sty1istic and poetic imitation derives
from an attempt to make the Eng1ish poems represent the patterns and
nuances of Hebrew more precisely. Alongside the growing perception that
the Bible was a text which used rhetorical devices and poetic techniques,
commentators became more interested in the stricdy formal qua1ities of
scripture, as Sir Philip Sidney's statement acknow1edges:

the name of Psalms will speak for me, which being interpreted, is nothing
but songs; then that it is fully written in metre, as alliearned Hebricians
agree, although the rules be not yet fully found. 82

Many readers became interested in the metrical qua1ities of the Psalms,

in particular because it was aperiod of attempting to codify English
metre, and Googe (1563), Northbrooke (1577), Thomas Lodge (1579) and
Puttenham (1589) recognised this fact:

the Hebrues & Chaldees ... did not only use ametrieall Poesie, but also
with the same a maner of rime, as hath bene of late observed by learned
menY3

Linguistic ignorance mosdy prevented a full understanding of Hebraic

metre, but readers did know that it was based upon quantitative princip1es
(based on syllabies, rather than stresses), which may explain Mary Sidney's
attempt to imitate classica1 quantitative metres (Pss 120-127). Some of the
basic conventions of Hebrew verse were understood, and worked into the

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Psalm versifications. 84 One of the most prominent of these is the division of

each Hebrew verse into two parts, the second ofwhich usually recapitulates
(hut doesn't repeat) the first. The Sidneys' attempts to reproduce this fea-
ture of the Hebrew often results in what modern readers might consider
to be lacklustre repetition of tired topoi, but use of synonymity goes to the
heart of the Psalter, whether viewed as aseries of separate prayers, or as
a unified design. Repetitious variations can be found throughout, and are
often intensified or highlighted by Mary Sidney's use of rhetorical figures
of repetition: chiasmus; antimetabole; ploce; polyptoton to name but a few.
Patterns of inversion are also frequently found, for example 'my filthie fault,
my faultie filthines' (51: 9); 'Fountaine of pitty now with pitty flow' (56: 1);
'hide me, hive me, as thyne owne' (57: 4).
The overall aim of the metrical Psalter was to imitate the variety and
richness of the Psalter itself and to demonstrate that both the English lan-
guage and English versification had the suppleness and subtlety to cope
with this most demanding text. It is an attempt to create an English met-
rical Psalter of elegance and eloquence, not purely for theological enlighten-
ment, but to carry the humanistic emphasis upon twinning docere with delectare
to its logical conclusion. It is this dualistic impulse that enables Mary Sidney
to combine discourses which, to the modern mind, might seem incompat-
ible or incongruous. Petrarch, for example, had argued for the elose rela-
tionship between poetry and religion when he wrote that '[p] oetry is very
far from being opposed to theology. Does that surprise you? One may
almost say that theology is actually poetry, poetry concerning God.'85 This
enables, for example, a courtly cast to be added to the Psalms, which
derives not only from the Sidneys' court connections, but from their poetic
predecessors and influences. Such references are simply one manifestation
of making the Psalms speak anew and making them answer to contem-
porary concerns. 86 They range from the apt introduction of a lexical
item, which progressively envisages the relationship between God and the
believer to parallel that between a lord and his retainer or servant, to longer
passages which may hint at the need for the application of faith based upon
the pared-down principles of the Psalter to be applied at court. Often these
added allusions enable Mary Sidney to bring female experience to bear,
for example in Psalm 45, a marriage song or epithalamion, the queen is
described as being attended by 'hir maides of honor' (54); in Psalm 50 the
word of God becomes a 'pursevant' (3); God inhabits 'Courtes' (84: 3) and
his servant is a 'houshold-man' (84: 18); the service of the faithful is likened
to the relationship of obligation obtaining between servant and master, 'lift
I my earthy seeing.l right as a waiters eye on a gracefull master is holden:/
as the look of waitresse fix'd on a lady lieth' (123: 2-4). These examples
could be multiplied, but the point is that Mary Sidney uses such detailed

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touches in order to try to find a concrete framework through which the

reader might apprehend the divine, even within the confines of the divine
text itself. 87 She recognises quite clearly that these are the kinds of moves
the Psalter itself makes; in other words, her versions comprehend that scrip-
ture itself is rooted in a historical context, and that a historicised approach
is needed in order to communicate the underlying meanings of the text.
Asking far God's grace or mercy is akin to a courtier seeking the favour of
his monarch:

Moses erst and Aron soe,

(there did high in Priesthood goe)
Samuelt soe unto him crying,
gott their sutes without denying.
(99: 17-20)

On other occasions, courtly language and imagery is used in more extended

ways. For example, in Psalm 104 it is used to pay a subtle and indirect
compliment to the monarch. The Psalm is a song of thanksgiving for the
creation of the world and God's government of it through his providence,
but Mary Sidney's vocabulary suggests a link between this form of govern-
me nt and earthly government:

ß lord, ß god qf might,

to thee, to thee, alt roialt pompes belonge,
clothed art thou in state and glory bright:
fir what is eIs this Eye-delighting light;
but unto thee a garment wide and long?
the vauted heaven but a Curtaine right,
a Canopy, thou over thee hast hunge?
(2-8)

Besides being an accessible metaphor for the notoriously inexpressible rela-

tionship between human and divine, Mary Sidney's use of the courtly some-
times veers towards the negative, far example in Psalm 55. This Psalm is
David's petition to God to relieve his suffering at the hands of his enemy
Saul, but he extols the grace of God with arrogance, because he assumes
that it has already been granted to him. As a consequence, the images of
majesty are here used negatively, to suggest that the trappings of monarchy
are nothing without divine authority - a somewhat pointed comment given
the Sidney family's history of opposing royal religious policies. It doesn't go
quite as far as making a pro-resistance argument - as we have seen, the
Sidney Psalter didn't need to make its political statements overt - but it is
certainly admonitory in the proper tradition ofpanegyric poetry. Her words

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 THE POLITleS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

betray the distrust of the image common among radical Protestants like
Mary Sidney, as it is suggested that there is fatal breach between surface
and meaning: 88

These walk their cittie walles both night and dG)',

oppressions, tumults, guiles qf ev'ry kind
are burgesses and dwell the midle neere,
about their streetes his masking robes doth weare
Mischeif cloth'd in deceit, with treason lin'd,
where onlJ hee, hee onlJ beares the sWG)'.
(25-30)

Overall, the image points to courtly display leading to spiritual neglect,

which applies not only to Saul's corrupt city, but also potentially to Elizabeth
1's court also.
Other kinds of images and discourses are added, often those which draw
upon ideas or metaphors which are inherent in the Psalms, or are suggested
by one or other of Mary Sidney's sources. For example, she often adds
more precise legalistic vocabulary where this is foreshadowed in her intertexts,
or where this is suggested by the heavy stress in the Psalms on rights, land,
and inheritance, for example Psalm 60's use ofthe terms 'perch and pole'.89
Elsewhere the notion of justice is taken further , and applied directly to the
responsibilities of rulers to uphold the law and not to consider themselves
above the law. Justice is seen as something which should not be com-
promised because of power or status, and as a primary means by which
rulers demonstrate their adherence, or otherwise, to God's laws:

Teach the kings sonne, who king hym self shalbe,

tfry judgmentes lord, tfry justice make frym leam:
to rufe tfry Realme as justice shall decree,
and poore mens right in judgment to discem.
(72: 1-4)

The notion that monarchs should be the embodiment of God's law on

earth, and that their authority derives only from hirn, to be wrested away if
breached or abused, was very much a tenet of faith to radical continental
Protestants, and to the earlier generation of Protestant thinkers that were
part of Mary Sidney's intellectual and familial context. In the case of the
opening lines of her paraphrase of Psalm 82, we can see the validity of the
earlier argument that political statements were more often than not left
unspoken, to be assumed by areadership thoroughly familiar with the
sources from which they derived:

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 WRITING THE DIVINE: FAITH AND POETRY

VVhere poore men plead at Princes barre,

who gods (as gods vicegerents) ar:
the god qf gods hath his tribunal! pight,
adjudging right
both to the judg, and judged wight.
(1-5)

The rest ofthe Psalm stresses the monarch's duties as God's deputy, but left
unsaid is the marginal interpretation of this Psalm found in the Geneva
Bible, one of Mary Sidney's key sources: 'The Prophet sheweth that if
princes and judges do not their duetie, God, whose autoritie is above them,
wil take vengeance on them.' The addition of details and metaphors to the
text, for example, the use of classical allusions,90 references to music, a
degree of self-referentiality about the process of dwelling upon God's
word, enrich the already powerfullanguage of the Psalter. Forexample, in
Psalm 143, a prayer for 'the remission of sinnes', the speaker meditates
upon God's grace and creations: 'all deedes with comfort waighing,l that
thy handwrityng hold' (25-6). This is a strong metaphor created out of the
relative conventionality of 'I meditate in all thy workes,yea, 1 do meditate in
the workes of thine hands' (Geneva 143: 5); unusually she images God's
deeds as his 'writing', perhaps because it was suggested by the 'hand writ-
ing' before her in the shape of the Psalter.
Mary Sidney's Psalm paraphrase is a variegated and complex text which
has much to teach us about Renaissance notions of authorship and female
agency. While her primary motivation was poetic, this was intimately linked
to aseries of allegiances, familial and political. It would be misleading to
regard it primarily as a 'feminine' text, but it alerts us to the fact that we
may have to look beyond our usual assumptions and expectations if we are
to be able to decode the complex relationships between women, writing
and politics in this period.

'Imaginarie in manner':
Poetic visions and dream poetry91

The availability and authority of the Bible was, without doubt, the most
influential of the factors which led women to write devotional poetry in the
early modern period, not least because most of the women who did so had
a strong Protestant commitment. As we have seen, the biblical text lay at
the heart of poetic attempts to express the divine, irrespective of the sex of
the writer, and echoes and refractions of it are threaded through the majority
of texts of this period, both pro se and verse, and from various genres.

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Virtually all literary forms and genres could be identified in some guise
within the Bible, and in a situation where sound authorisation was needed
served for some women as a useful pretext for experimentation or movement
beyond the established norms for literary intervention. A good example of
such innovation within accepted parameters is the adaptation of the dream
vision to the end of expounding particular theological positions, emotional
states or idealised relationships. Three women used the device of dream
poetry in the early modern period: Elizabeth Colville, Lady Culross, Aemilia
Lanyer and Rachel Speght. The uses to which this ancient literary form is
put by women writers vary considerably, but they each draw upon its key
features for their own ends.
Dream visions have a long history, being found in the Bible (in particular
the prophetie dreams ofDaniel, and the proleptic dreams ofPontius Pilate's
wife), in classical texts, and being widely used by medieval writers, including
Dante, Petrareh, Chaucer and Langland. Complex classifications of types
of dreams had been made by Macrobius and others, and were widely
applied in both popular and elite circles. 92 Once again, what seems to us to
be not far removed from superstition could be analysed and held in esteem
alongside religious orthodoxy; dreams were widely understood to be proph-
etie, to bring warnings and to bridge one world and another. As the work
of numerous scholars has shown, dreams in the Renaissance (as now) served
to mediate or contain complex social hierarchies, fantasies and desires. 93
Dreams were a highly adaptable and flexible medium, especially for writing
that was struggling with questions of authority, language and propriety,
as the precedent of Chaucer clearly demonstrates. The dream vision in
essence carries its own authority - the medium itself brings a degree of
legitimacy to what it contains, whether it is based upon genuine experience
or not. The content of the dream is open to interpretation, in fact invites
interpretation, setting up a viable relationship between author, text and
reader which is not necessarily predicated upon the personal credit either of
speaker or author. However conventional the dream poem turns out to be,
it frees the speaker from certain kinds of constraints, permitting her to
range across a spectrum of ideas without any overwhelming requirement
that they be logically connected. Furthermore, it is a primary medium for
expressing the transmission of authority from one figure to another, usually
enabling the dreamer to wake up and continue the work embodied in the
central figure in the dream vision. The dreamer is generally placed margin-
ally to the substance of the dream, so that the narrative is both distanced
and multiply framed: in asense, the dream vision is a medium of transla-
tion, as the speaker/dreamer merely mediates words apparently on behalf
of somebody else. Clearly, the dream itself is a transitional concept, hover-
ing between worlds: between life and death, light and darkness, speech and

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silence. For early modern readers and writers, too, sleep was a particularly
powerful metaphor, a living image ofthe death to come, a homology for an
event which was both feared and desired. All of these elements made the
dream vision a particularly powerful and useful vehicle for women writers
in early modern England.
Elizabeth Colville, Lady Culross's A Godlie Dreame, Compiled ... at the
request rif a Friend (earlier published in a Scots version, in 1603) was printed
in Edinburgh in 1606, ostensib1y to provide support and encouragement to
the Presbyterian community to which she seems to have belonged. She was
revered by her fellow believers as being

Famous for her piety as for her Dream anent her spiritual condition, which
she put in verse, and was by another published ... unwearied in religious
exercises. 9'f

This implies that Co1ville's dream was renowned among her friends, and
this kind oflegitimation ofher pious status may have encouraged her to put
it into verse (she was said to 'delite in poesie') and then to print it: her
dream is real, not simp1y a device. The poem is interesting in the first
instance because it provides us with an examp1e of a text designed to reach
a relatively confined readership (this text states that it was undertaken at the
request of her '.feindes') in 'Scotish Meter' which was then reprinted pre-
sumably in order to reach a wider English-speaking audience. The Scots
text may have been designed to coincide with King James's movement to
London and a general sense of uncertainty about which theological direc-
tion the new monarch might take.
Neither text comes with any prefatory materials, apologies or dedications.
The absence of paratexts may be a consequence of the circumstances of
publication, but it is relatively rare to find a female-authored printed text
which makes no attempt to approach the questions of authority or potential
breach of decorum. Here it seems that it is the dream itself which confers
authority; because Elizabeth Colville is already 'chosen' as the recipient
of the vision she is marked by virtue and godliness. As with many other
authors of devotional poetry, this proves to be a usefully liberatory strategy,
as Elaine Beilin has remarked:

Colville does not hesitate to establish her persona at the center of the
poem, whether as poet, Christian pilgrim, recipient of God's grace,
exemplum, or teacher.
(107)

The poem proceeds in clearly marked stages: from spiritual despair and
abandonment, to comfort and guidance, ending with the exhortation to

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

fellow sinners to have faith. The poem opens with a standard feature of the
dream vision, namely the speaker's sorrow and mourning: 'Upon ane day
as I did mo urne full sore,!With sundrie things quhairwith my saull was
greefit.'95 The dreamer figure is alone, in despair, and cannot see any pos-
sibility of comfort. The voice of the speaker is not obviously gendered and,
like that of the Psalmist, enables the reader to appropriate it for him or
herself. The situation of the grieving, sinful speaker at the beginning of
Ane Godlie Dreame often recalls that of the speakers in the Psalms, and much
of Colville's language and imagery directly derives from the Bible:

I loathit my Iyfi, I could not eit nor drink,

I micht not speik nor luik to nane that leijit [lived},
Bot musit [mused} alone and divers things did think.
(sig. A2r)

The style is often alliterative, and the poet embraces the contemptu mundi
convention, in order to more fully accentuate the power and consolation of
the vision ofheaven revealed to her by her guide. She criticises 'this fals and
Iron age' (sig. A2r), characterised by its decline into vice and the rule of
Satan. In this way, the poem draws upon biblical models of despair such as
Lamentations and the Psalms and appropriates the authoritative stance of
their speakers, where the medium and the message justify the articulation of
ideas. 96 The poem also adopts an allegorical framework which is simuItan-
eously a kind of psychomachia. Using these devices, Colville advances the
distinctly sectarian nature of her vision of God, sin and heaven - sectarian
in the sense that its function is to affirm and confirm the values and ideals
of an often beleaguered community by the seal of approval conferred by
the granting of a divine vision to one of its speakers. Colville's eyes are
firmly fixed upon the life to come, and consequently the poem consistently
rejects the things of the world or any notion of worldly comfort: 'Nathing in
earth my sorrow could asswage,!I felt my sin maist stranglie to incres' (sig.
A2r). The idealised vision of heaven is a powerfully feit critique of the he re
and now and the dangerous distractions of the world: 'All merynes did
aggravate my paine,! And earthlie joyes did still incres my wo:' (sig. A2r).
Throughout the Dreame several different voices are intercut and inter-
woven, producing aseries of frames for the narration of the representation
of heaven shown to the speaker by the Christ figure; none of them could
be said to be a 'personal' voice, rather each one adopts a conventional
stance designed to mediate the central vision of the poem. The voice cries
from the wilderness, seeking comfort and consolation from an apparently
absent God: 'Mak haist 0 Lord, thy promeis to fulfill,l Mak haist to end
our painefull pilgramage' (sig. A2v). Once again, the form and content

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 WRITI NG TH E DIVI N E: FAITH AN 0 rOETRY

of Colville's complaint to God echoes the Psalms, but adds a distinctly

reformed insistence upon the necessity of God's mercy and divine grace:

wee cloggit [cloggedJ ar with sin,

In filthie vyce our sensles saules ar drownit:
Thocht wee resolve wee nevir can begin,
To mend our fyfis, bot sin dois still abound
OJihen will thou cum? quhen shall t~ trumpet sound?
OJihen shall wee sie that grit and glorious doye
o save us Lord, out of this pit prrifOund,
And reif us from this loathsum lump of cloy.
(sig. A3r)

The poem is full of biblical images and metaphors, deftly worked into the
substance of the text. The prayer for a sign of mercy, for relief from the
besieged state, is answered by the advent of a God-sent vision. Astate of
spiritual turmoil gives way to one of spiritual calm, and a prayer expressing
adesire for death and for union with Christ: 'I loath to live, I wishe desolvit
to be' (sig. A3r). It is the loss and negation of self which permits the expres-
sion of the spiritual voice, as the speaker becomes a privileged witness
whose role it is to mediate the truth of what she has been permitted to see.
The speaker sleeps and dreams, and in the midst of the dream an angel
appears, 'bricht with visage schyning deir,! With luifing luiks and with ane
smyling cheir' (sig. A3v), fulfilling the convention of the benign guide figure
who transfers insight and wisdom for the dreamer to disseminate beyond
the confines of the dream itself.
The divine figure conjured up by Colville is a composite one, repres-
ented primarily through snippets of biblical quotation, both Old and New
Testament: 'I am the way, I am the treuth and lyfe,! I am thy spous that
brings thee store of grace' (sig. A4r). In this way, Colville can voice the
divine without apology, as she engages in a process of what Jonathan
Goldberg has called the 'unmarking of ownership of voice', and dissolves
the boundary between speaker and object of devotion. 97 Despite the stance
of modesty and contrition expressed in the early part of the poem, the
dreamer needs to be taught a lesson of humility, in much the same way as
Chaucer's dream figures are. The lesson is that the kingdom of heaven
must be earned: 'That pIe asant place most purchaist be with paine,! The
way is strait, and thou hes far to go' (sig. A4r). This marks the transition of
the dream vision into an allegorical journey, in which the composite Christ
figure is the guide, requiring compiete faith from his charge if the journey is
to be compieted. Colville's imagery is powerful and effective, and remodulates
the language of the Psalter:

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 TH E POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITI NG

Sumtyme wee clam on craigie Montanes hie,

And sumtymes slaid on uglie brayes of sand:
They war sa stay that wonder was to sie,
Bot quhen I flirit hee held mee be the hand.
Throw thick and thin, throw sea and eik be land,
Throw greit deserts wee wanderit on our wqy:
(sig. A4v)

Pain and suffering are the me ans by which heaven is to be gained, along
with true faith, trust and God's grace. In conventional allegorical guise, the
kingdom of heaven is imaged as a castle full of light, glimpsed at a distance,
while appearing to be deceptively elose. The illusion of proximity is part of
the allegory, as the dreamer abruptly decides that she can reach the heav-
enly city without the guidance of Christ: 'I ran befoir, and socht not his
convoy,l Nor speirit [asked] the way, because I thocht I kend it' (sig. Bv).
This moment of pride is punished with an uncompromising vision of hell,
from which the believer can only be saved by faith in God, and by dwelling
on the pledge that Christ has made to sinners through his sacrifice, 'Curage
said hee, have I not bocht thee deir' (sig. B2v). The dreamer has to pass
through hell as a test of true faith in order to enter heaven. At this point,
the dreamer awakes, and the speaker's transformation into authoritative
preacher is complete. The poem is presented very much as an aide-memoire
which may inspire and instruct others: 'This is ane dreame and yit I thocht
it best/ To wryte the same, and keip it still in mynde' (sig. B3r). The final
section is an exhortation for believers to prepare constantly for death, stressing
the need for spiritual strength, steadfastness and vigilance. Faith in God will
smite all dangers and unbelievers, and the preparation of the godly soul for
the life to come is presented in militaristic terms, as a fight between good
and evil.
The functions of the dream poem in Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex
Judaeorum (1611) could not be more different. 'The Authors Dreame to the
Ladie Marie, the Countesse of Dowager of Pembrooke' is one of the dedicat-
ory poems which prefaces Lanyer's poetic revision of the crucifixion, and
like the others forges and envisages an equality of status between women of
different elasses predicated on the purity of their spirituality and faith.
Lanyer's use of the dream has a number of distinctive functions; in particu-
lar, the forging of an authoritative relationship with a highly respected
woman writer, known for her spiritual poetry. The device of the dream
enables Lanyer to create a elose relations hip between the two women with-
out causing offence, but nevertheless permits her to elevate herself, and her
poetic legitimacy, through this imaginary connection. In other words, the
dream vision and its traditions are manipulated to provide both social and

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spiritual authority for Lanyer. What is conferred on the speaker in 'The

Authors Dreame' is not only the authority to speak, but authorship itself. By
the deployment of the dream vision, Lanyer produces a model of author-
ship for herself
The poem, in quatrains, combines a classical and a Christian framework,
as the speaker asks the graces to direct her to a woman chosen by wisdom.
'The Authors Dreame' opens with the actual vision, a representation of a
wise woman, surrounded by the nine muses, with the three graces standing
around her: 'They stood, but she was set in Honors chaire.'98 Many of the
standard conventions are observed, for example, the idea of the dreamer
being transported by the sound ofheavenly music (10-11), and the appear-
ance of a guiding figure, he re Morpheus, the god of sleep and dreams, who
prolongs the vision into a dream whose significance must be explained
within the framework of the dream itself: 'wil'd me not from Slumbers
bowre to go,l Till I the summe of all did understand' (19-20). Everything
that the speaker sees in the dream lies beyond her normal experience, so
that she is literally transported to greater understanding. The Countess of
Pembroke is placed at the centre of the heavens, where everything reveres
and worships her. Dictina, for example, comes to hunt, but Farne directs
her attention to the lady, 'wondring who it was that in so grave,/ Yet
gallant fashion did her beauty staine' (51-2). The various nymphs and
goddesses (they are all female) compete with one another to honour the
lady, in a fashion not unlike the jostling for power, favour and position
often found at court:

Come, come, sweet Maie, and fill their laps with jloures,
And I will give a greater light than she:
So all these Ladies Javours shall be ours,
None shall be more esteem'd than we shall be.
(69-72)

Through this imaginary medium, Lanyer seems to be able to negotiate and

project her own desires and social anxieties. In judging the relative merits of
art and nature, the goddesses decide, in true Renaissance fashion, that
'T'would be offensive either to displace' (88), and Lanyer envisages an ideal
harmony, based upon the lack of hierarchy:

But here in equall sov'raigntie to live,

Equall in state, equall in dignitie,
That unto others they might comfort give,
Rejoycing all with their sweet unitie.
(93-6)

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 THE rOLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

This notion of equality within hierarchy is crucial not only to the representa-
tion of Lanyer's literary 'relationship' with the Countess of Pembroke, but
also to the underlying premise of her poem. 99 The centrepiece of the poem
is naturally the encounter (however multiply framed) between the dreamer
and the Countess of Pembroke herself, strongly associated throughout with
the muses. The nymphs and followers sing her Psalm versions, her 'rare
sweet songs' (117), which ensure her eternal farne and transfix the dreamer:
'I in sleep the heavenli'st musicke hard,l That ever earthly eares did
entertaine' (129-30). Morpheus keeps her asleep until she has learned the
lady's name, and numerous other details about her. Lanyer presents Mary
Sidney to the reader first as a writer, and only then as Sidney's sister -
unlike many elegists and eulogists, Lanyer claims Mary Sidney's superioriry to
her brother: 'farre before him is to be esteemd/ For virtue, wisedome,
learning, dignity' (151-2). Slumber tells of her farne, virtue and learning -
in effect Lanyer diverts her praise of Pembroke through a third party. The
poem ends with a meditation on sleep, its similarity to death, and its fickle,
changeable nature. The final stanzas find the dreamer stepping outside her
poem, but echoing and repeating the structures and tropes set up within it,
as she presents her poem as a gift brought to honour the Countess of
Pembroke, with appropriate humility and praise, although she is now to
grace the work rather than being the subject of it, having given way to a
higher authority, namely Christ:

And Madame, ifyou will vouchsafe that grace,

To grace those jlowres that springs ]rom virtues ground;
Ihough your faire mind on worthier workes is plac'd,
On workes that are more deepe, and more profound;
(213-16)

Rachel Speght's Mortalities Memorandum (1621) also praises and commem-

orates an individual, but turns it into an occasion for a larger meditation on
death and the life to come. While more theologically moderate than Colville,
Speght's poem nevertheless participates in a similar set of prevalent ideas
regarding the nature of death, the necessity of constant preparedness and
the importance of the afterlife. These were widespread cultural concerns in
aperiod with extremely high mortality rates, especially among women who
could not avoid the fact that they were in constant danger. Such ideas are
part of a formalised dis course about death, heavily codified into what was
termed the ars moriendi, or the art of dying, Texts belonging to this tradition
exhorted believers to prepare for a 'good' death: noble, stoic, dignified and
pious. 100 Although neither Colville nor Speght are strictly speaking writing
in the ars moriendi tradition proper, they both draw upon ideas and concepts

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that can be found in these texts. Speght's poem is essentially a memorial to

her mother, but it is an occasional poem, in that the passing of her mother
leads Speght to meditate upon death and its significance. The chiasmus or
reversal contained in the tide-page's epigraph neady sums up Speght's
underlying project: 'Live to die, for die thou must,l Die to live, amongst
the just'. The book is directed to Speght's godmother, an act which under-
lines its spiritual nature, and Speght's justification for publishing the work is
pardy its private nature, which guarantees its authority, although interest-
ingly she does present its publication in the passive voice, as if it had
nothing to do with her: 'These premises have caused the Printing presse to
expresse the subsequent Memorandum qfMortalitie.'IOI Her intention is broadly
educational, wishing to help her readers 'to marke and provide for their
latter end' (45). The preface sets up a complex relationship between this
text and Speght's previous work, A Mouzell JOr Melastomus, suggesting that
this 'virtuous' work is an attempt to circulate Speght's good reputation,
and to offset the potential damage that may have been done by her being
drawn into a debate characterised by its vitriolic nature and propensity for
innuendo. 102 This position is later reinforced by the fact that the dream's
narrator passes by a 'full fed beast' (241) in the course of her 'Dreame' who
is clearly Swetnam hirnself, and mentions the various other pamphlets
issued attacking hirn.
Like Lanyer's dream poem, 'The Dreame' functions as a kind of preface
to what appears at first to be the 'main' text; however, they are more
usefully understood as companion pieces, as 'The Dreame' represents a
negotiation of voice and authority which enables the more scholarly and
theological Mortalities Memorandum able to work. As is traditional, Speght's
dream takes place just before dawn, and the dream is presented as an
intruder to her rest: 'My mentall quiet sleepe did interdict,l By entertaining
a nocturnall guest' (15-16). The elevated nature of the dream that is to
follow, and its special status, results in Speght's deployment of a humility
topos, which has the effect of elevating her subject-matter (18). Like Lanyer,
her description of the dream landscape suggests a kind of locus amoenus,
fitting to the revelations that are to come. Adapting the almost inevitably
allegorical framework of dream poetry, Speght conjures up a figure called
'1hought' who asks why the dreamer is 'as one disconsolate' (28), thus enab-
ling Speght subdy to manipulate her own self-presentation. Like Colville,
the dreamer is desolate and miserable, and like the other dream poems
Speght intercuts several different voices, including a fictional voice that
belongs to her own 'character' within the poem: this is quite different from
her strategies of (non) self-presentation in A Mouzell. What she re counts is a
thinly veiled allegory of a spiritual journey, with a far-off 'Haven' and of
indeterminate duration (31: 34). The progression that the speaker undergoes

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

works as apreparation for her poem on the meanings of death which

follows, but it also functions as an allegory of the education of the female
subject, as her 'griefe ... is called Ignorance' (43) which allies her more closely
with the beasts than with humanity. Here there are echoes not only of
her own earlier text, but also of Renaissance commonplaces regarding the
necessity ofreason and the importance ofknowledge to morality and virtue,
arguments frequently mobilised to discredit women. Ignorance here is pre-
sented as a bar to morality, and knowledge as necessary to self-scrutiny and
reformation:

I finde asore, but can no salve provide;

I hungry am, yet cannot seeke Jor Joode;
Because I know not what is bad or good.
(53-5)

Slowly but surely a succession of personified figures direct the dreamer

towards virtue and knowledge (Experience, Age, Knowledge, Erudition,
Industry). Like many similar poems, the allegory demands opposition and
antithesis to be convincing, and the 'Disswasion' attempts to thwart the
speaker's progression towards virtue: the pro et contra nature of these argu-
ments may owe something to Speght's earlier engagement with the conven-
tions of the querelle des femmes. Notably, most of these hindrances are ones
often associated with femininity:

... dulnesse, and nry memo ries d'!ftct;

1he dijficultie qf attaining lore,
My time, and sex, with man;y others more.
(106-8)

The contrary argument contributes to the legitirnisation of female learning,

because 'Desire' asserts that 'These oppositions come not from above' (116),
and 'Industrie' suggests that all obstacles can be overcome with hard work
and application, wittily altering Virgil's little tag from amor vincit omnia to
labor vincet omnia (124).
The prirnary motive in the poem is the defence of women's intellectual
capacity, a topic that Speght had already broached in A Mouzell fir Melastomus.
The argument is essentially that women are created from the same basic
elements as men: 'from the soule three faculties arise,l The mind, the will,
the power' (129-30). Since these are God-given, Speght argues, then women
have a right, a duty even, to acquire knowledge. The poem cites a number
of precedents and authorities, both biblical and classical - Cleopbulina,
Demophila, Telesilla - to prove the argument via the notion that God's

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 WRITING THE DIVINE: FAITH AND POETRY

creation is perfect, hence '[a]ll parts and faculties were made for use' (135).
Speght's ability to unearth usefu1 intellectual antecedents to lend gravitas to
her case foregrounds the functions of the dream poetry, enabling her to
claim authority for her writing activity without directly doing so (these
learned women are paraded before the reader by an allegorical persona,
Desire), but also indirectly permits her to assert her right to write through
the display ofher learning. Knowledge is presented as the crucial determin-
ant ofhumanity, the means by which man can carry God's image: 'Without
it he is but a humane shape,! Worse then the Devill' (206-7). Like most
of Speght's more controversial pronouncements, these ideas are securely
backed by biblical citation, and knowledge is asserted as being required by
God for the achievement of virtue: 'Without it who can vertue estimate?'
(220). Finally, having been given insight and wisdom by the various alleg-
orical figures she has encountered, Speght meets Death, hence facilitating
the transition to the partner poem, Mortalities Memorandum, and enabling the
reintroduction of the memento mori theme:

I saw a fierce insatiable foe,

Depopulating Countries, sparing none;
Without respect qf age, sex, or degree,
It did devoure, and could not daunted be.
(267-70)

Death slays her mother within the dream, at which point the dreamer
awakes to find that her mother indeed is dead, thus also retrospectively
establishing the truth of everything else which happens within the con-
fines of the dream. 103 The dream poem thus becomes the means by which
authority can be arrogated by women and manipulated to enable them to
address questions of status, education and spirituality.

Aemilia Lanyer and the reVISIon of

biblical history

The idea of the dream and its radical, displacing potential, lies at the very
heart of Aemilia Lanyer's biblical poem Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611),
a text which to an extent unsettles (but also aspires to) the model of virtu-
ous authorship so strongly suggested by Mary Sidney's project. Central to
Lanyer's feminocentric re-reading of the Bible is the recounting and amp1i-
fication of the dream of Pontius Pilate's wife, Procula, mentioned only in
the margins of the Gospel of St Matthew:

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

his wife se nt unto hirn, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just
man: for I have suffered rnany things this day in a drearn because of hirn.
(27: 19 AV)

For Lanyer this precedent forms the basis of a powerful argument; namely
that the persecution and crucifixion should be read in moral and gendered
terms. Where Pilate and Herod and their cohorts judge and persecute,
Lanyer suggests that women have a natural, innate sympathy with suffer-
ing, and therefore have a spiritual proximity to Christ which is ladung in
men. Lanyer's narration ofthe death ofChrist is framed by this perspective,
so that the reader is left in little doubt as to the interpretation that should be
taken from the poem:

o noble Govemour, make thou yet a pause,

Doe not in innocent blood imbrue thy hands;
But heare the words qf tfry most wortfry wije,
Who sends to thee, to beg her Saviours lije.101

Unlike Mary Sidney, Lanyer re-reads the biblical text in terms which
enable her to negotiate both authorial and social authority, particularly in
relation to what she assurnes is a shared identification with Christ irrespect-
ive of individual dass position. While this is not an argument that necessar-
ily unsettles prevailing constructions of femininity, it does attempt to overturn
the negative valuations placed upon them. Lanyer derives female spiritual
authority from the fact that it lies outside institutional power, presented
he re as overwhelmingly corrupt and pitiless.
Lanyer's Salve Deus RexJudaeorum (1611), is both heterogeneous and organ-
ised around a single agenda: heterogeneous in its deployment of multiple
models and modes of address, but single-minded in its advocacy of the
virtue of women. Themes and images are echoed across and within the
various component parts: dedicatory encomia, the Passion narrative, an
apology for Eve and 'The Description of Cooke-ham'. Each represents a
different negotiation of the poet's virtue, her sense of female spirituality,
and the exemplification of this in the world by her patron Margaret Clifford,
Countess of Cumberland, the living emblem of Christian piety. In present-
ing her patrons as the living exemplars of Christ, Lanyer immediately sig-
nals her interest in questions of representation and textualisation, and in the
conundrum of how to write the divine. As Diane Purkiss suggests, Salve Deus
is 'a poem about difficulties of interpretation', particularly where interpreta-
tion has been obscured or complicated by assumptions about women's
nature. I05 The text's interest in the promotion of female virtue and the
advocacy of a non-hierarchical community of 'good women' has led to the

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virtual canonisation of Lanyer as an early feminist. 106 Critics allude to its

'remarkable feminism' without investigating the terms in which this might
be articulated by a woman poet in early modern England. 107 First, a revi-
sion of biblical tradition, particularly in relation to the question of Eve's
culpability, is not necessarily the subversive gesture that it might appear to
be. This issue had been extensively debated by male commentators and
theologians as part of the querelle des Jemmes, 108 and the poem participates
in the notion that one woman can stand for all women. Lanyer's revision
was not unprecedented; she clearly draws upon the theological arguments
advanced by Cornelius Agrippa in A treatise qf the Nobilitie and Excellencie qf
Womanf9;nde (translated by David Clapam, 1542).109 Her poem does not
disrupt prevailing Renaissance models of female virtue, rather it pleads for
a proper acceptance of them. Her ideal models are chaste, pious and dedic-
ated to the reading of spiritually instructive texts. Although the notion of
obedience is lacking in Lanyer's poem, there is an overwhelming sense of
obligation in the text, particularly in relation to ideas of social hierarchy.110
Female subjecthood is inextricably linked to notions of female virtue that
contemporary commentators would not have found disquieting. The femin-
ism of Salve Deus does not address questions such as power, nor does it really
analyse patriarchy; rather, it is a poem which is interested in creating a
means whereby women can have access to Christ, through identification
with a suffering, weakened and largely silent Christ. It is possible that Lanyer's
feminism is not primarily concerned with women as a category or group,
rather that identification with Christ reverses the social hierarchies from
which Lanyer feels herself to be excluded. In other words, her rewriting of
biblical tradition is an act of self-fashioning as weIl as one of gen der solidar-
ity and sincere devotion, as the repositioning of women in relation to the
Christian heritage is a way for her to negotiate access to her projected
patrons in terms which not only Batter them, but provide a rationale for
that access.
This is not to deny that Lanyer is a careful and sensitive reader of texts
and a consummate manipulator of images. 'Salve Deus' is, effectively, a
long meditation on the Bible, to the point where Lanyer 'speaks' through
the re arrangement of her sources. She draws attention to revisions of the
model of fallen women and virtuous men, by amplifying the gaps and
omissions in the biblical text; however, everything that Lanyer advocates
can be found in the scriptures. Indeed, this, perhaps, constitutes her most
powerful argument; not that biblical authority has to be undermined, rather
that interpretative traditions need to be less selective in relation to their
sources, as Lewalski suggests: 'her feminist perceptions can be rendered
only in terms of the discourse of Scripture, but they force a radical imaginat-
ive rewriting of its patriarchal norms to place women at the center'. 111

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRlTING

Hence the central placing of the prophetic dream of Pilate's wife, Procula,
the precedent of the Queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon (prefiguring the
relationship between Christ and the Church) and the stress laid upon Christ's
proximity to and sympathy with women serve as exempla to counter the
Augustinian tradition of seeing women as inherently fallen. Each of these
exempla reveals virtue to be a natural quality of women, and emphasises that
their power to speak derives from their ability to prophesy - in other words,
their agency is presented in a way which suggests that their morality and
eloquence comes directly from God's grace. Lanyer's own agency as a poet
derives from the same source, in a deft marshalling of conventional assump-
tions about women's speech and spirituality in order to allow her to speak.
While she utilises conventional humility topoi, Lanyer merges her identifica-
tion with 'the voices which have been suppressed' in the New Testament
with her strategy of textualisation, turning her 'booke' into the mediating
figure of Christ, and thereby placing herself as a kind of literary Virgin
Mary ushering forth the text, which is Christ. Lanyer certainly deploys a
'subversive hermeneutic method', ll2 but it is directed to her own authorial
presentation and social ambition, rather than to the possibility of a utopian
community of women per se.
The poem's consistently feminised representation of Christ is a notable
feature of 'Salve Deus'. The first key aspect of Lanyer's depiction of Christ
is her angling of the contexts surrounding his trial and persecution in the
Gospels. Throughout the poem, she stresses male guilt and complicity and
female innocence, suggesting that women have an innate sympathy with
the oppressed, and that they possess a unique understanding that Christ is
the Son of God. Thus women are seen be closer to Christ in terms of status,
and in terms of morality, as they bear out Christian principles of mercy,
justice and compassion in relation to Christ hirnself. This essential connec-
tion between women and Christian belief is underlined by the structural
aspects of Salve Deus, particularly the framing of the narrative of the Passion
by addresses to the Countess of Cumberland, who is thus seen as the living
embodiment of both Christ and the women who surround him. This col-
lapse of historical time reinforces the relevance of the Christian story, and
inaugurates Lanyer as the writer of a new feminocentric gospel. The second
aspect of Lanyer's depiction of Christ is his multiple representation as a
figure immediately appealing to women. Using biblical precedents of Christ
as lover and bridegroom (Song of Songs, Revelation), Lanyer reworks the
metaphor of marriage to denote a spiritual union between her patrons and
Christ. Christ is portrayed through frameworks which serve to feminise
hirn, turning him into a spectacle, often eroticised, for women to gaze upon,
using the model of the Petrarchan blazon:

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His jf!)lnts dis-jf!)lnted, and his legges hang downe,

His alabaster breast, his bloody side,
His members torne, and on his head a Crowne
Of sharpest 17zorns, to satigie fir pride:
Anguish and Paine doe alt his Sences drowne,
While thry his ho[y garments do divide:
His bowells drie, his heart fult fraught with griqe,
Crying to him that yeelds him no reliqe.
(1161-8)

As Randall Martin suggests, Lanyer creates an androgynous Christ, whom

it is legitimate for women to desire, so that in looking at Christ, Lanyer's
female readers look at themselves. ll3 This is linked to the poem's concep-
tualisation as a mirror which replaces the self normally reflected in a mirror
with a picture of Christ, where the implication is that Christ is the self
for these women, and reflects their selves back to them. As Wendy Wall
argues, 'Her work is figured almost obsessively as an interactive mirroring
of female virtues, a redemptive textual space in which women might find
the image of themselves and other devout women, and in which they, by
looking, might purify their sight.'114 'Salve Deus' repeatedly displays the
physical suffering of Christ, and stresses his 'feminine' virtues of humility,
patience and mercy: Lanyer's Christ is largely a passive Christ subject to
aggressive male institutional power.
There has been an increasing consensus that Salve Deus is not purely and
simply a religious poem, and that its radical revision of scripture might in
fact be a strategy which enables Lanyer to address and negotiate questions
of social power and hierarchy. This perception arose from the apparently
contradictory social and religious impulses of the poem. As Judith Scherer
Herz notes, 'the margins crowded with noble readers, take up almost as
much space as the text itself'. 115 However, the division between the text and
dedicatory poems cannot ultimately be sustained because Lanyer sets up
correspondences between them which militate against their separation. The
patrons are integral to the poem because they are its interpretive com-
munity. Rather than simply flattering her dedicatees, Lanyer seems to be
manipulating them in order to create a spiritual equality, contrasting with
the intense sense of social hierarchy which emerges from the text. Hence
she appeals to a uniting, but hypothetical, category of 'women' - not be-
cause of sexual solidarity, but as a way of articulating her self. By placing
herself as the guardian of Christ, presenting him to her readers, she hints at
a position of social superiority, based on virtue rather than birth; in 'To the
Ladie Anne, Countesse of Dorcet' she suggests that the hereditary principle
is open to abuse, and that social hierarchy is at odds with scriptural precedent:

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 THE rOLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

'Was it not Virtue that distinguisht all? / All sprang but from one woman
and one man' (34-5). Throughout Salve Deus, the low birth of Christ is
emphasised and worldly riches are rejected; hence, the embracing of Chris-
tian virtue functions as a form of social advancement for Lanyer, as she
imagines the inversion of social hierarchies through the love of Christ, As
Lisa Schnell argues, 'the conventionally humble declaration of unworthi-
ness becomes, paradoxically, a claim to spiritual and epistemological super-
iority over the woman she would have as her patron'. l!6 So, while Lanyer
re-reads scriptural authority and tradition from a distinctively female point
of view, the status of her feminism needs to be carefully considered, as it is
shot through with class considerations and complicated by the attempt of
the poet to articulate her self in the context of a social dependence,

Anne Dowriche and political agency

Anne Dowriche's The French Historie (London, 1589) also adopts the frame-
work of the dream vision to present her 'lamentable Discourse' of the
persecutions suffered by French Protestants at the hands of Henry, Duke of
Guise. This text, as Randall Martin has pointed out, is 'anything but a
neutral account', but many English readers would have shared Dowriche's
distincdy partisan view of these events, suggesting that like many other texts
considered in this chapter her wark served to ce me nt ties between members
of a particular community with specific views. l17 Generically, The French
Historie is heterogeneous, blending together several different forms: martyr-
ology, chronicle, narrative poem, political argument. Its purpose is self-
evidendy to uphold the righteous Protestant faith through the citation of
recent his tory, as the biblical citation on the tide-page indicates: 'All that
will live godlie in Jesus Christ, shall suffer persecution' (1 Tim. 3:2). The
poem is effectively a versification of Book IO of Jean de Serres' The Three
parts if Commentaries containing the whole and perflct discourse if the Civil Wars if
France, translated into English by Thomas Tymme in 1574. However, as
Martin notes, the book that Dowriche used for her poem was actually
written by Fran<;ois Hotman. ll8 The point of her undertaking is, by her own
admission, not stylistic but informative; she suggests that although the
matter is worthy and instructive, the manner is 'base & scarce worth the
seeing'.ll9 Her use of alternating lines of six and seven feet and rhyming
couplets might make one inclined to agree with her own modest opinion of
her work were it not far the fact that it is well suited to the bald narration
of facts that her purpose and subject-matter requires. The almost laconic
manner of delivery actually intensifies the horrors that the poem relates,

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 WRITING THE DIVINE: FAITH AND POETRY

and allies the text with narratives like Foxe's Book rf Martyrs which presented
the acts of the faithful in as plain and simple manner as possible. Both
Elaine Beilin and Randall Martin praise Dowriche's style: '[she] produces a
clear, vigorous story enlivened by impassioned speeches'.120
The point of the text is the advancement of Dowriche's own strongly
held reformed faith through the authority bestowed by persecution, and the
re affirmation of the principles for which her protagonists died. As Beilin
asserts, her 'pose throughout is merely as a conduit for the godly matter of
- D ownc
h er source.' PI . h e ' s conventlOna
. I stance 0 f apoIogy screens t h '
e sen-
ousness and ambition of her work. She writes in the dedication to her
brother, Pearse Edgecombe, 'ifyou finde anie thing that fits not your liking,
remember I pray, that it is a womans doing' (sig. A2v). Like Elizabeth
Colville, Dowriche uses her writing as a way of forging community bonds,
and of spreading the message of godliness and righteousness: 'Depart not
from the living Lord, delight to read his word;! Delaie no time, for he doth
still defend us with the sword' (sig. A3r). The avowed purpose of the work is
to exhort godly minds to godliness through contemplation and admiration
of the sufferings of persecuted Protestants presented to them in the text.
Like many radical Protestants, Dowriche exhibits a deep distrust of elo-
quence and rhetoric, seeing it as the manifestation of the deceptions of the
devil. She defends her own usage of verse (admittedly mostly plain and
direct in style) by suggesting that her content will go some way towards
restoring the credit of poetry, which she regards as having been 'defaced'
'by wanton vanities' (sig. A4r). The main events narrated in the poem (the
'winning of St.James his Streete' (f.4v); the 'Matirdome of Annas Burgeus';
and the 'bloodie marriage' of Margaret) are introduced to the reader via a
series of narrative frames. The poet presents herself as being struck by a
vision: alone in a wood, the speaker comes across an exiled Frenchman
lamenting, and notes 'I got aside to he are his dolefull tale' (f.lr). His com-
plaint is full of ubi sunt motifs bewailing the passing of the glories of France,
a lament which sets up the interpretative framework for the events that
follow. He points to a radical disorder contingent upon the ignoring and
suppression of true religion: the wars between prince and people, the per-
secution of religion, the necessity of exile. A direct parallel is drawn between
the godly French exiles and the people of Judaea and their banishment to
Egypt, the first of many such typological comparisons found in The French
Historie. 122 By contrast with France ('thou a cruell nursse to Gods elect hast
been' (f2r)), England is represented as a save haven, a harbour of true
civility, 'A Nurse to Gods affiicted flock' (f2v), '0 happie England, thou
from God above art bIest,! Which hast the truth established with peace and
perfect rest' (f2v). The inference that England is by contrast a true and
godly nation is made implicitly throughout Dowriche's narration.

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

The poetic narrative is voiced by the French exile, so that the poet is
positioned as a marginal ob server of her own text. Beilin argues that this
stance reflects Dowriche's 'poetic self-repression' and it may appear that
this device is intended to put some distance between Dowriche and her
poetic creation, despite the fact that her 'ownership' of this reworked text is
made quite clear elsewhere. 123 Martin suggests that

Dowriche's adoption of a male persona may be intended to veil her

gender, just as the disclosure of her male source-writer in her Epistle to the
Reader may serve to extenuate her act of independent creativity.121

However, as he goes on to argue, such complex narrative devices are quite

common in historical writing in the Renaissance, particularly early writing,
where conventional historical discourses have yet to be securely estab-
lished. Her choice of method may also owe something to the purpose of The
French Historie, namely a defiant defence of godliness and the right to resist
ungodly, tyrannical or apostate rulers; like the Geneva Bible, much of this
advice is placed in the marginalia, but it is repeatedly asserted that princes
have been corrupted 'by lying Parasites' (f.6r). As Martin notes, Dowriche's
highly conventional stance of modesty is 'swept aside ... by the poem's
elaborate fictive reconstructions and conspicuous artistry'.125 Martin also
suggests that Dowriche may have been familiar with 'humanist models of
historical writing', although he does not specify what these might be; how-
ever, her adoption of a combination of the narration of fact, interest in
character and the use ofparallels and precedents (particularly biblical ones)
does hint at some familiarity with dominant historical modes. 126 So too does
the underlying assumption in Dowriche's work that historical events (how-
ever recent) might have contemporary application, be didactic in character,
and provide valuable examples for readers to emulate. All of these elements
can be seen clearly in the specific cast of her representation of the various
bloody events in France during the mid-sixteenth century.
One continuous thread in the poem is the need for political acumen on
the part of the believers, twinned with the representation of the Catholics
in Machiavellian terms; in other words, their moral and theological case is
so weak that they have to resort to the methods of the devil in order to
overcome the godly. The various events are seen as the working out of
Satan's will (thus avoiding the potentially awkward position of overtly criti-
cising a monarch) who sets former friends and allies against one another,
and creates a well-oiled rumour machine: 'And when in fields they joine
their joyfull Psalmes to sing,! Wee must give out that they conspire which
waie to kill the King' (f.4r). Psalm-singing is repeatedly presented by Dowriche
as a key activity of the reformers, confirming that, as Hannay argues, public

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Psalm-singing served to identifY the singers as 'partisan' Protestants. 127 This

goes hand in hand with a repeated emphasis upon the word as the means of
salvation, and as the tenet of faith distinguishing Protestant righteousness
from Catholic superstition. Divine providence also has its part to play at
various points, for example, when the mob descends in StJames Street in
Paris, 'So God now made a waie a passage strange to give,! By opening of
a mightie doore the weaker to releeve' (f.5r). Each narrative contributes to
the overall sense of Dowriche's didactic interest in the portrayal of martyr-
dom - almost a kind of parallel to Foxe's Book qf Marryrs for the French
Huguenots, a book that she undoubtedly knew. The poem, at times, echoes
the radical Protestant distrust of derical hierarchy, in terms reminiscent of
Spenser's Shepheardes Calender: 'These men in office put, not time could idle
spend,! But hard against these seely sheepe their wolvish wits do bend'
(f.6r). The notion of martyrdom is strongly tied to a Protestant view of
death, where it is the life to come, the life in God, which counts, 'We feare
not of this death, we know that al must die,! Yea hapie are those sillie
soules whom thus the Lord doth trie' (f. 7v). Similarly, martyrdom is the test
of true faith: 'But yet of this be sure, the blood that thou doost wringl From
us unjustlie, is the seed whereby the Church doth spring' (f.7r).
The 'Martirdome of Annas Burgeus' deploys one man's virtue and faith
to highlight the faults and deceptions of the ruling hierarchy, and to suggest
the legitimacy of toppling reigning monarchs in circumstances where true
faith is repressed. The Protestants' ultimate justification lies in God's word,
and in various kinds of apparently divine intervention, 'the word is all our
staie, and Author of our faith' (f.gv). Burgeus speaks against the king in the
senate, prophesying the coming of true faith to France: 'Now is the Angell
co me with open booke in hand,! Which long ere this was sealed dose from
us & eke our land' (f.llr). The authority for his challenge comes from
Christ, but quickly turns into a thinly veiled threat: 'if he doo not spare a
King; ö King take heed' (f.11 r); 'if Truth do conquere Kings; if T ruth
do conquere al' (f.ll v). Burgeus advises the king not to offend God or
divine truth, 'Corrupted men shall fade, the reprobates shall die' (f.12r).
Inevitably, the royal reaction is ho stile - which, in the hermeneutic of faith
structuring this text, is affirmation of the truth of what has been said -
and Burgeus is imprisoned and tried. In the course of his trial, Burgeus
gives what amounts to a profession of faith - again, confirming the generic
indebtedness to martyr narratives - all backed up with marginal biblical
citations. Catholicism is rejected and the doctrine of grace upheld. Burgeus's
appeal to Christ immediately suggests a parallel in their trial, faith and
persecution, to the extent that the death sentence is pronounced by 'Pilates
brother' (f.1 3v). Further connections with the martyrs, especially of the
early Church are made, as Burgeus refuses the last rites ('This Popish sinfull

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 THE POLITICS OF EARlY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

oyle I gladlie here doo leave' (f.13v)) and then accepts his martyrdom 'meeklie
kneeling downe with holie Stephen did praie' (f.14r). Although the most
effective and dramatic writing is found in the final part of The French Historie,
as both Martin and Beilin have noted, Burgeus's trial and martyrdom con-
stitutes the moral and emotional centre of the poem. 128 The remainder of
the poem is concerned, often in strong and inftammatory language, with
the consequences of the martyrdom of Burgeus, the 'Protestant hero'.129 Its
irredeemably evil nature is evinced in the deeline of the king and court into
intrigue, disorder and murderous plotting against the Huguenots, culminat-
ing in the blood-curdling account of the St Bartholomew massacre, The
Protestants are deceived by Charles IX's apparent attempts to appease
them, and by his false 'conversion' to their cause. Thus they are seen to
be respecters of proper godly rule; when the king suddenly switches his
allegiance under pressure from the Guise faction, the Huguenots are col-
lectively martyred.
The French Historie is a text which is explicitly concerned with the relation-
ship between politics and religion, in particular the connection between
monarchy and apostasy. Like many other texts in this chapter, in itself it
has little to say about gender politics per se and does not significantly fore-
ground women. However, in its adherence to a martryrological mode of
historical narration and its advocacy of a elear doctrinal position whatever
the consequences in the public sphere, it does demonstrate that women, like
men, at times used literary material to advance ideological positions,

Elegies, epitaphs and the poetry of mourning

Elegaic writing is well represented among women's writing in the Renais-

sance period, to the extent that it threatens to become an all-inelusive
category. If elegy is defined broadly as being the poetry of loss, then a case
could be made for the inelusion of a broad and diverse body of materials,
For instance, a poem like Aemilia Lanyer's 'A Description of Cooke-ham',
with its evocation of past pleasure and harmony and lament for lost social
delights, might fall quite neatly into 'the experience of loss and the search
for consolation'.13o By the same token, the poem ineluded under the pseud-
onym of the Countess of Pembroke in Spenser's Astrophel has a strong elaim
to the elegaic label. Elegy is by its nature plural and hybrid. The fact that
it was originally defined by the use of a specific metre in the elassical tradi-
tion means that its later elose association with particular types of subject-
matter is at best a tenuous and loose arrangement. For many Renaissance
writers this produces a profoundly creative hybridity between the various

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aspects of the form; poems of erotic loss and longing could be adapted in
interesting ways to verses of remembrance and commemoration. Perhaps
the easiest way of keeping these two strands in elegaic poetry notionally
separate is to follow two kinds of division. The first is that based upon
subject-matter. Puttenharn, for example, distinguishes between the treat-
ment of 'the perplexities of love in a certain pitious verse called Elegie' and
elegies for the dead, which are essentially poems too long to be epitaphs: 131

They be ignorant of poesie that call such long tales by the name of
Epitaphes, they might better call them Elegies, as I said before, and then
ought neither to be engraven nor hanged up in tables. 132

The second is that based upon metre. Inevitably, there is so me degree of

crossover between these two categories.
The vast majority of the poems treated in this section deal with loss and
mourning through death; a poem like Lady Anne Southwell's 'Elegie
written ... to the Countesse ofLondon Derrye. Supposeinge hir to be dead
by hir longe silence' is an elegy ofloss and absence, but it seeks no consola-
tion, neither is it particularly religious. 133 The questions of definition and
classification are complex - 'The Dolefull Lay of Clorinda', for example,
does seek Christian consolation for the death of a loved one, but it does so
through a pastoral framework. These generic confusions are, however, highly
significant. Elegies, epitaphs and poems of mourning are adaptable forms,
but they are also culturally mainstream forms, using a universal experi-
ence and trying to find appropriate modes of articulation. The act of co m-
memoration, whether verbal or not, is an obligation upon the mourner,
and reinforces his or her connection to the person mourned and to the
society of which they were apart. Paradoxically the recalling of a loved
one, especially if this was a husband or a brother, could provide an occa-
sion for the female speaker to suggest her own agency, which almost invari-
ably was asserted, exercised and expressed through a patriarchal framework.
For women, this can also constitute a useful means of negotiating the peril-
ous but permeable boundary between public and private. The stance of
grief was a well-established basis for public speech (Ovid's speakers in the
Heroides, the sister ofTibullus in Amores), whether constructed or genuine. In
addition, elegies enabled women to reiterate the social bonds which gave
them their status, and ultimatelY their authority. The mourner's stance
frequendy facilitates the speaker's movement into new and challenging
areas, because of the authority which comes with this status, and because
of the injunction to remain true to the dead person's memory.
An extremely good example of the kinds of adaptations and interven-
tions that could be made within the elegaic tradition is the dedicatory poem

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addressed to Sir Philip Sidney prefaced to the Sidney Psalmes. Much of the
critical commentary on this moving and complex poem concentrates upon
its personal nature, and its mediation of the influence of Sir Philip Sidney,
and only slowly has its subtle political charge been noted. 134 As Beilin
says 'its emotional energy should not obscure its essential elegiac and self-
dedicatory purposes'. I35 The poem might be read as a very self-conscious
attempt to mediate the figure of Sir Philip Sidney, not only to arrogate his
undoubted poetic and political authority to herself, but also to keep him
and all he stood for in the public domain - in this case, in the royal
memory. The poem should properly be seen in the context of its companion
poem, 'Even Now that Care', which precedes it in the Penshurst manu-
script, which fulfils the public, formal function of mourning (or threnos); this
poem, by contrast, falls into the category of goos, or the informal lament
of the bereaved. 136 The poem also represents a triumphant example of
the attempt to allay 'the difficulty in identifying with predominantly male
symbols of consolation [which] greatly complicates the woman's work of
mourning'.137 For Mary Sidney, the identification with a male figure ac tu-
ally constitutes the act of mourning. Elizabeth I, the envisaged audience for
the poem, would have been quite well aware of Sir Philip Sidney's political
allegiances, and what he had co me to symbolise to the radical Protestant
faction. Furthermore, he had publicly opposed her proposed marriage to
the Duke of Alenc;:on because of his Catholicism, and had died in defence of
the Protestant cause.
Rather than the poem being an elegy in the strict sense, it works just
as much as Mary Sidney's rededication of the finished text to her brother.
Inevitably in such a circumstance, questions of authorship, textual owner-
ship and the nature of the resulting text are open to debate. The elegy is
very carefully balanced:

First rais'de by t1!Y bIest hand, and what is mine

inspird by thee, thy secrett power imprest.
So dar'd my Muse with thine it se1ft combine,
as mortall stziffe with that which is divine,
17zy lightning beames give lustre to the rest, 1311

While Mary Sidney fulsomely acknowledges the inspiration and example of

her brother, she does subtly assert herself as an author aspiring to write
poetry in the highest form; Philip is not only her muse, her muse combines
with his. The stance of humility is strategic, as Fisken has noted, but it is
also necessary in the face of the material that both Sidneys have dared to
transform. 139 For example, the notion that God's word remains unchanged
by its reworking provides a useful stance of modesty ('his owne transform' d/

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in substance no, but superficiall tirel by thee put on', (8-10). 'To the AngeH
spirit' also treads the line between self-assertion and self-denial that we have
noted before, where it becomes clear that while Sir Philip's death is deeply
regretted, it is precisely this event that occasions the elegy - not only in the
obvious sense, but in the sense of the Countess of Pembroke being 1ed to
write at all. As weH as presenting the Psalter 'but peec't' (24) the poem also
uses many of the more conventional topoi of elegaic poetry. The dead per-
son's character is praised, it is implied that the loss is irreparable, that the
subject's best deeds were yet to come, and the speaker's grief is said to be
inexpressible: 'Love which hath never done,! Nor can enough in world of
words unfold' (27-8). The use of the inexpressibility topos he re is particularly
revealing:

Howe workes my hart, my sences striken dumbe?

that wouLd thee more, then euer hart couLd showe,
and all tao short who knewe thee best doth knowe
17zere Liues no witt that may thy praise become.
(46-9)

This is a standard stance, but it is used rather differently here. Firstly, the
assertion that '[t]here lives no witt that may thy praise become' alerts us to
the appropriative, assertive function of this elegy. Mary Sidney uses elegy as
a medium to emphasise her proximity to, and ownership of, Sir Philip
Sidney's legacy, political and poetic - 'who knewe thee best'. It is also made
clear here that she is to remain in control of this legacy, and that it is not
to pass to any of the aspiring hopefuls waiting to fill Sidney's shoes, both
at Wilton and beyond. Finally, the implication is that as chief mourner,
Mary Sidney herself is the 'witt' who might most closely approximate to
Sidney's praise. In asense, this elegy/dedication is merely a prelude to the
real elegy, which is the work of the Psalter itself. It might seem entirely
fitting that Sidney's final monument should be his own work, but Mary
Sidney, however humble and modest, is at pains to assert the role that she
has played in its production, and the final stanzas of the eIe gy are distinctly
ambiguous regarding their referent. Are 'theise dearest offrings of my hart'
(78) or 'these wounding lynes of smart' (81) or 'sadd Characters ... of
simple love' (82) the poem itself, or the co-authored verses which it prefaces?
Having gone to some lengths to assert Sir Philip Sidney's 'real' (because
spiritual) ownership of the Sidney Psalter earlier in the poem ('this coupled
worke, by double int'rest thine' (2); 'this half maim'd peece' (18)), the
Psalter is finaHy claimed by the Countess of Pembroke as in some sense
her own, as she offers it to her brother: 'Recieve theise Hymnes, theise
obsequies receive' (85). The bestowing of this gift finally demarcates the

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boundary between the living and dead: in asense, it is through the pro-
cess and articulation of mourning itself that Mary Sidney can envisage
her own authorship, however mediated through other voices - God's, her
sourees', her brother's.
There are many examples of poems with primarily elegaic or commem-
orative functions opening out to include other genres, issues and ideas.
Rachel Speght's poem, Mortalities Memorandum, written ostensibly to mourn
her mother's death, uses this occasion as apretext to consider female virtue.
The elegy turns away from the specific memorialisation of Speght's mother
and embraces a long meditation on the meanings of death, and of necessity,
life. Death is placed within a huge are embracing creation, sin, redemption
and death; in other words, one specific death is extrapolated into the larger
scheme of things, implicitly providing consolation through answers to what
Sacks calls 'elegaic questioning' .140 Yet these answers to inferred questions
also permit Speght to consider matters not necessarily thought of as suitable
concerns for elegy. Rather than concentrating on the meanings of death
and the Christian consolation that may be found, Speght provides a his tor-
ical and theological disquisition on death, beginning with how it came into
the world. Death is removed from its local, personal significance, and placed
in the universal context, in such a way as to suggest that all Christians need
to be constantly prepared for death, and conscious of it. Death here is
broken down through logical divisions into several different types: the first
type is the death ofthe soul ('Death in sinne' (32); 'Death to sinne' (43) and
'Death by sinne' (49)); the second is the separation of body and soul from
God and the final, universal death is the death of the body, or 'Corp'rall
Death' (61). Much of Speght's thinking on death is fairly conventional, and
echoes much contemporary writing, both in terms of content and metaphor:

7his is that Death, which leades the soule to l1ft,

7his is that Jriend, which ftees us ftom our paine,
7his is the Portal! rif true Paradise,
7hrough wh ich we passe etemal! l1ft to gaine;
7his is the leader unto Joy or woe,
7his is the dore, through which alt men must goe.
(73-8)

Like many other writers, Speght stresses the power of Christ and of redemp-
tion, but highlights the role of woman in bringing this about (79-80).
Her literary framework is largely biblical, and this is also the primary
source from which she derives her poetic authority, not only citing and
adapting parts of the Bible, but also echoing and imitating it in her own
poetic diction. The central premise, that death should be welcomed, is

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supported by arguing its universality, as Speght provides examples both

from the Bible and from classical writings of cultures which actively wel-
come death as a liberation from earthly cares and troubles, and sees the life
to come as promising a certainty and a permanence which mortal life is
wanting:

Earths chiifest joyes are vaine, and transitorie.

Unconstant, fading, fickte, and unsure,
But heavens pleasures permanent endure.
(160-2)

Life is 'a mappe of miserie' (317), and there is a constantly stressed need to
meditate upon death, because of its unexpected nature. The key thing he re
is that Speght's poem itself enacts the process of reflection that it advocates,
so that the reader is manipulated into contemplating death under the guise
of a conventional elegy. The stress on the universality of death is by no
means unusual in literature of this type, but Speght interprets this in quite
specific ways. For exampIe, death is presented as a leveller of social distinc-
tions, a fact which is conventional enough in itself, but demands to be
understood in the context of death as a means of salvation leading to the
non-hierarchical equa1ity of sin and redemption:

The second motive mooving thought cifDeath,

Is the impartialitie cif it,
Respecting neither persons, age, or sexe,
By bribes sinister it doth none acquit;
(475-8)

Speght argues that '[pJremeditation is the best defencel Against this foe,
which will with none dispence' (641-2); her poem is a key part of this
'[pJremeditation' (641).
Much of the elegaic writing produced by women in this period is rather
more conventional in form, conte nt and function, but nevertheless provides
an important ligature between familial, friendship and kinship circles and
the public acknowledgement of the power and the importance of these.
Such funerary verse turns up in a range of 10cations, and it is 1argely
context that dictates its precise meanings and functions. Funerary verse can
also be notoriously difficult to attribute securely. Because of its essentially
formal and pub1ic nature, it cannot be read straightforwardly as inscrib-
ing the 'personal' feelings of a given individual towards another, rather it
reflects more comp1ex perceptions of social and ideo10gical roIes. A puzzling
but useful illustration of this point is Elizabeth Cary's epitaph on George

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. There is some doubt regarding her author-

ship of the epitaph, given that it appears in several manuscripts but is only
actually attributed to Cary once.!4! Its generally laudatory tone appears to
fit uneasily with other details regarding the connections between Elizabeth
Cary and her husband and the Villiers family. On the one hand Buckingham
had been the patron of Elizabeth Cary's husband, Henry, and probably
played a role in his short-lived appointment as Lord Deputy of Ireland.
Mter Cary's public conversion to Catholicism in 1625 or 1626 and her
estrangement from her husband, both Buckingham and the Duchess of
Buckingham appear to have intervened to secure some financial support
from Falkland. Against these factors suggesting a positive relationship
between Cary and the powerful Buckingham faction is the text entitled The
History qf the Lift, Reign and Death qf Edward II, printed in 1680 but said to
have been written in or around 1627. The attribution of Edward to Cary is
problematic and remains unresolved, but if it is hers, then its reworking
of the Edward II and Gaveston story to address questions of favourites,
usurpation of king1y authority and misappropriation of power and money
reflects critically upon the role of Buckingham at court.!42 In addition, the
Countess of Denbigh (Buckingham's sister) was a dose friend of Cary's,
but she was the person who conveyed the fact of Cary's conversion to
Catholicism to her brother, and in turn to King Charles 1. In the light
of these conflicting circumstances, Cary's epitaph on Buckingham can no
longer be read straightforwardly:

Reader, stand still and see, loe here I am,

Who was rif late the mighty Buckingham;
God gave to me my being and my breath;
T wo Kings their javours, and a slave my death;
Now flr my Fame Ichallenge, and not crave
That thou beleeve two Kings, bifOre one slave. I 13

The notion that the poem represents in any sense a personal point of view
is undermined by the epitaph's use of prosopopoeia (a common element
in funerary verse) and by the fact of the existence of several other versions
of it.
Other epitaphs and elegies written by women demonstrate similar diffi-
culties of interpretation, whether the poems themselves are apparently 'per-
sonal' or not. It is important to acknowledge the adherence to conventions
found in such writing, and that public acts of mourning do not necessarily
inscribe 'personal' feelings in straightforward ways. The work of Lady Anne
Southwell, for example, frequently deploys elegy and epitaph as a frame-
work for confronting a variety of topics and ideas, at times recirculating the

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words of others and sometimes producing her own. 144 Her two poems
addressed to the Countess of Londonderry, Cassandra Ridgeway, apply
the elegaic conventions, but in vastly different ways. The first poem, 'An
Elegie ... to the Countesse of London Derrye' is a playful reworking of the
ideas of love and loss commonly found in elegaic verse, as she mocks the
conventions by interpreting them to apply to silence; the poem quickly
becomes a paean to the pleasures of friendship. Throughout the tropes of
elegy are deployed, but to the end of reftecting upon what knowledge death
might bring, 'tell what yow know, whether th' Saynts adoration? / will
stoope, to thinke on dusty procreation'.145 Her imagined death is a complex
conceit, enabling aseries of almost metaphysical reftections upon death and
absence, and upon the self-consuming absence that writing itself inaugurates:

But stay my wandringe thoughts? <a>'las <whether> wade I?

In speakeinge to a dead, a senceless Lady
Yow Incke, and paper, be hir passeinge bell,
7he Sexton to hir knell, be <Answer'd well,> Anne Southwell.
(117-20)

The playful, exploratory tone of the 'Elegie' contrasts sharply with the
poem that follows it, an epitaph upon the same woman. The very specula-
tions on the stars and the heavens which have been sceptically treated in
the 'Elegie' are ratified in the 'Epitaph', as Southwell's lack ofknowledge of
her friend's death suggests to her that her other speculations may be mis-
conceived. This epitaph is a slight departure from the norm; it does not
commemorate the life of the person who has died, recording key facts and
major virtues, but instead calls attention to the speaker's grief, shock and
surpnse:

Now let my pen bee choakt with galt.

since I have writt Propheticalt.
... I knew not, that her soule was fledd
Till that the mourneinge rif hir Earle
did vindicate, this deare lost pearle.
(1-2; 6-8)

The 'Epitaph' actually shies away from the usual memorialising functions,
preferring instead to occupy the stance of grief: 'I'le prayse noe more, hir
bIest condicion,l but follow hir, with expedition' (15-16).
The 'Epitaph's' informal intimacy, which shrinks from the normal func-
tions of funerary verse contrasts sharply with Southwell's more formal ele-
gies and epitaphs, such as that on the King of Bohemia or the King of
Sweden, or even that upon her brother. It would appear that the terms in

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 THE POLlTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

which a woman might be elegised contrast to those used for men, where
public acts and offices can be described and the lost connection lamented.
His virtues are celebrated, as well as his social and marital status:

Behould a Captaine, whose last Gloriouse lfight

Was to Subdue, the Prince qf endless night
And in this conflict, he such honor wonn
As ffrom a Servant he became a sonn
At jive times jive yeeres he exchanged the lijfe
And went as bridgegroomes use to meete a wift.116

Alongside this relatively conventional memorialisation Southwell introduces

a more self-reftexive mode, dwelling not only on the meanings of death, but
upon the act of elegising itself. The traditional terms of elegy are inverted, so
that the elegy becomes a means to approach the living, rather than the dead:

o lett those teares his reverend Parents shedd

Bee tum'd aChristoll Tombe and o're him laide
That <beinge> transparant, every 0Ie may see
The truest Mapp, qf mans Jfelicitie
So will the fond world leave this foolish trick
OJ writeinge Epitqffs upon the dead
But rather write thern one the Qyick.
(15-21)

Like her epitaph on the Countess of Somerset, he re Southwell wheels away

from the particular to the general, pursuing aseries of meditations on life
and death itself, seeing death not as a form of finality, but as a temporary
breach, 'Trust mee good ffriends he is not dead but gone' (26).
It is important to recognise the conditions of production and circulation
for these elegies and epitaphs; while they broadly adhere to convention,
they also subvert it, and one reason for this may be the fact that they are
not directed towards the usual public context for funerary verse. Rather,
they are directed inwards, to Lady Anne Southwell's own meditations on
the nature of death and loss, enabling her to broaden the scope of what
elegy might consist of: it is not that this is private verse, but that it is verse
without the usual highly public context. This aspect of her work is in stark
contrast to one other major body of funerary verse by a woman in the early
modern period. The cyde of elegies and epitaphs produced by Lady Eliza-
beth Russell, previously married to Sir Thomas Hoby, represent a singular
achievement by an early modern writer. Undoubtedly her writing is pro-
duced, almost literally, by aseries of deaths (two husbands, two daughters,
a son and a much-admired brother-in-law), but allied with her other writings

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 WRITING THE OIVINE: FAlTH ANO POETRY

it becomes clear that her poetry has a clear purpose, which is both per-
sonal and more public. Unlike Southwell, Russell engages directly with the
absence of death, with the emptiness of the tomb which her writing will
adom; it is as if words fill aspace which otherwise would remain blank, as
if the flood of words is a doomed attempt to stave off loss and absence by
providing a structure in which to put longing: John was his name, (ah, was)
wretch must I say/ Lord Russell once, now my tear-thirstie clay.,147 Put
another way, the repeated iteration in these poems of Lady Russell's lost
connections cumulatively remakes and sustains aseries of familial identities
without which her selfhood would be in jeopardy, both literally and meta-
phorically. Louise Schleiner suggests that Lady Russell's deployment of this
form of writing is a consequence of her own restricted choices, arguing that
writing on the tombs of noblemen was 'the only semipublic space she could
get' (30). However, this ignores the fact that the noblemen she commemor-
ates are closely tied to her by marriage and kinship, that they are highly
placed within political and courtly circles, and that she takes on the task of
representing them to posterity, and in terms which specifically reflect her
own highly intellectual, humanist, reformist background and education. 148
This leamed background, with its strong commitment to the teaching of
the 'humane' languages (Greek and Latin) may account for Lady Russell's
decision to write some of the publicly displayed epitaphs in Greek and
Latin, precisely because such a gesture reflected the interests of the persons
memorialised, and because of the authoritative status conferred on the
subjects by the use of Greek or Latin. It seems unlikely, given the intellec-
tual circles embraced by the Cookes, Hobys and Russells, that the use of
Latin was 'partial protection against male opprobrium to remove one's
writings from the ken of the less educated'.149
Like many other elegies and epitaphs, the departed's image is manip-
ulated and utilised in death, in order to ensure its irnmortality, and the
continuation of the beloved's work, or faith, after death. Unsurprisingly,
these poems are largely unmarked by a consciousness of gender, although
they do take account of status - after all, it is this that gives the speaker
authority to speak. Many of the epitaphs, fittingly enough, reiterate the
importance of faith, while also stressing the nexus of qualities that made up
the ideal courtier:

Qyippe decor!,] vultus, linguae, moresque probati,

Tum doctrina perit, sed viget alma fides. 1:;0

Many of the epitaphs written in Greek and Latin take the opportunity
of mouming to imitate, albeit briefly and tersely, classical habits of
memorialisation, as is evident in 'Carmina aerumnosae matris in superstites

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

filias' (Schleiner, 48). Here the piety and learning of the surviving women,
Russell herself and her daughters, is presented as a testament to John Russell's
intellectual ideals and piety, reflecting the argument that the learning
of noble daughters, in particular, was held to reflect positively upon the
authority figure who had bestowed it upon them: 'Praesignem literis, turn
pietate patrem.l Haeredi Comitis quin vos succrescite, talil Ortu qui nituit
sed bonitate magis' (Distinguished in letters as in piery, yourJather. I Reirs qf an earl,
grow up indeed ~ ]rom such a springingl Start you haue thriued) (Schleiner, 48~9).
Lady Elizabeth Russell's longer elegies embrace a similar conception of
the functions of memorial verse. The English verses on the Hoby tombs, for
example, celebrate Philip and Thomas (Elizabeth's husband) in terms of
their public lives and diplomatic exploits. Philip is 'A Courtier passing, and
a courteous Knight,l Zealous to God, whose Gospell he profest' (Schleiner,
205); Thomas is 'Firme in Gods Truth, gentle and faithfull Friend,l WeIl
learned and languaged, Nature beside' (ibid.). The elegy also emphasises
Lady Elizabeth Russell's fulfilment of wifely duty, of which her elegising is
a crucial part, keeping her grief and her husband's memory in a creative
tension for all time:

In Forraine Land opprest with heapes qf Griif,

From parte qf which, when she discharged was
By fall qf Teares, that faitlifull Wives do shed;
The Corps, with Honour, brought she to this Place,
PeifOrming here all due unto the dead,
That done, this noble Tombe she caused to make.
(ibid., 205)

The poem itself is a central part of what is 'due', 'A Memory left he re for
Vertues sake' to enact their immortality: 'Thus live they dead, and we learn
weIl thereby,l That yee, and wee, and all the World must dye' (ibid., 206).
The form appears at first to constitute a kind of self-erasure, as RusseIl's self
and stance are subordinated to the act of memory; however, the poem just
quoted is the first of several on the Bisharn tombs, and it is followed by
one to Thomas, one to Philip and one to her daughters, Elizabeth and
Anne. Rather than being erased, Lady Russell is in fact the pivotal figure,
the thread connecting these figures who are apparently more important
than she iso Her poem to her husband, Thomas, while decorous, is not as
restrained as much funerary verse, concentrating upon the 'one flesh' trope
and the degree to which his death deprives her not only of love and co m-
panionship, but also of status and a sense of selfhood: 'Cur ego sum viduo
sola relicta thoro?' (JiVhy am I lift alone to a widow's bed?) (Schleiner, 206). The
claim of spiritual equality is forceful and can be read as much as a source of
strength and power as it can as a feeble enslavement: 'Corpus erat duplex,

176
 WRITING THE DIVINE: FAITH AND POETRY

spiritus unus erat' (The body was twifold, the spirit one) (ibid., 206-7). In the
midst of Lady Russell's memorial of her husband she asserts herself as his
living embodiment, presenting herself as a body without a soul: 'I wander
about a hapless wife, a hapless mother,l I weep for you, my own body,
husband seized from me' (ibid., 207).
Her elegy on her brother-in-law, Philip Hoby, is appropriately formal,
indicating that her relations hip to hirn is one of kinship, but not blood. The
poem is a literal paying of tribute, iterating her dependency upon him, but
also a compensation for loss as she asserts their essential unity. Just as the
two brothers shared 'one mind, one understanding' (208) so by extension is
she connected to them both: 'Both sister and wife, I have planned one tomb
for you/ In common - and for me, when my fates strike' (208). The poem
may represent, in addition to mourning, areassertion of Lady Russell's
high status and powerful connections at a time when these would have been
crucially important to her. The imagery of unity, the joining of two separ-
ate bodies in God, is a recurrent one in these poems, as is clear from the
poem on the death ofRussell's two daughters, given particular force by the
trope of maternity:

There was one mother, onefather, one deathfor two,

And here a single stone conceals two bodies.
Together in one tomb, thus I your mother wanted you,
VVhom 1, withJoy and crying, carried in one womb.
(209)

Devotional poetry by women covers an enormous range of genres, tradi-

tions and moods, and there is much material to be studied. What emerges
overall is the high level of emotional engagement with what was essentially
aseries of ideas and beliefs which were at the heart of the structures of early
modern thought. Far from being apoliticalor purely personal in their
articulations of belief, these women writers are often strongly motivated by
the desire to advance one doctrinal position over another. Often because of
their roles as exceptional women, many of these writers present themselves
as focal points of belief for their communities, using their female status to
add to the authority of faith. The theological 'messages' of these texts are
often subtle and oblique, but they draw heavily upon aseries of key ideas
about the relationships between poetry and the divine. We cannot expect to
find overt politics in these texts any more than we might look for them in
Donne or Herbert. The poetic expression of devotional feeling hovers
strangelyon a number ofboundaries: neither entirely public nor completely
private; encompassing both an individual and a universal voice and lan-
guage; drawing upon both sacred and secular models. Through careful

177
 THE rOLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

manipulation of poetic models for expression and literary authority,

Renaissance women poets express the complexities of their relationship to
the world around them - and indeed, the world to come.

Notes

2 See Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modem England
1550-1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) and Patricia Crawford, Women
and Religion in England, 1500-1720 (London: Routledge, 1993).
2 Donald Davie (ed.), Ihe Psalms in English (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
3 See Ihe Polemics and Poems of Rachel Speght, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 13-19.
4 Crawford, Women and Religion, I.
5 It is important to note that the Bible with which most readers would have
been familiar, until weIl into the 1630s, would have been the Geneva Bible,
rather than the so-called Authorised Version (or King James Bible). The
Geneva Bib1e was the first to use chapter and verse divisions, to be printed
in Roman type, and to be produced in cheap, portable editions. Its headnotes
and commentaries reflected the ideologica1 position of its exiled translators
and compilers. For details on the Renaissance Bible, see Debora Shuger, Ihe
Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, Subjectivity, The New Historicism: Studies
in Cultural Poetics, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, no. 29 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1994).
6 Christopher HilI, Ihe English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (London:
Allen Lane, 1993),5, and ch. 14 for its literary influence more generally.
7 See, for example, the discussion of Anne Lok and Mary Sidney, below, and
Elizabeth Heale, UJatt, Surrry and Early Tudor Poetry, Longman Medieva1 and
Renaissance Library (London: Longman, 1998), ch. 5.
8 George Herbert, Jordan (I),' 1-2, in Ihe Works of George Herbert, ed.
F.E. Hutchinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), 56.
9 See David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and
Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
10 Miles Coverdale, Preface to Goostly psalmes (c. 1535), in Robin A. Leaver,
'Goostly psalmes and spiritual! songes': English and Dutch Metrical Psalms from Coverdale
to Utenhove, 1535-1566 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), Appendix H, 286.
11 See Sir Philip Sidney, Ihe Dqence of Poesy in Sir Philip Sidnry, ed. Katherine
Duncan:Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 104, and for the
background Israel Baroway, 'The Bible as poetry in the English Renaissance:
an introduction', Journal of English and Germanic Philology 32 (1933): 447-80.

178
 WRITING THE DIVINE: FAITH AND POETRY

12 The best account of these relationships is stili Barbara K. Lewalski, Protestant

Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1979).
13 See Danielle Clarke (ed.), Ihree Renaissance Women Poets (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 2001), 'Introduction' , xvii-xxii.
14 In Ihe Southwell-Sibthorpe Commonplace Book, ed. Jean Kiene. Medieval and
Renaissance Texts & Studies, vol. 147 (Tempe, AZ: Renaissance English
Text Society, 1997), 44-93 and 152, 295-6. For a fuller discussion, see
'Introduction', 4, 10-11.
15 Useful accounts of these relationship include Arthur F. Marotti, Manuscript,
Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995),
48-61, and Wendy Wall, Ihe Imprint qfGender: Authorship and Publication in the
English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).
16 See for example, Thomas Bentley's compilation Ihe Monument qf Matrones:
conteining seven severall Lamps qf Virginitie (London, 1582).
17 Mary Sidney (Herbert) Countess of Pembroke, Ps. 45, 3, in Ihe Collected
Works qf Mary Sidnry Herbert, Countess qf Pembroke, ed. Margaret P. Hannay,
Noel J. Kinnamon, and Michael G. Brennan, vol. 11, Ihe Psalmes qf David
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 38.
18 A Manual qf the Book qfPsalms, trans. Henry Cole, quoted in Lewalski, Protestant
Poetics, 42.
19 Both quoted in Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, 43.
20 Philip Sidney, Dl!ftnce, 104.
21 William Tyndale, 'Obedience of a Christian Man (1536), quoted in Baroway,
'Bible as poetry', 457. On the inftuence of the Bible on English literature, see
Hili, English Bible, ch. 14 and David Norton (ed.) A History qf the Bible as
Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
22 Hili, English Bible, 358.
23 See the discussion of Dowriche's Ihe French Historie on pp. 162-6 above.
24 On resistance theories, as used by both Catholics and Protestants, see Quentin
Skinner, Ihe Foundations qf Modem Political Ihought, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1978).
25 Hili, English Bible, 5.
26 Ihe Psalmes qfDavid and Others: With M. John Calvins Commentaries, trans. Arthur
Golding (n.p.:1571), sig. *iir.
27 Athanasius, quoted in Margaret P. Hannay, Philip's Phoenix: Mary Sidnry,
Countess qfPembroke (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 96.
28 Davie, Psalms, xlv.

179
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

29 See Mary Sidney's attention to this question, as evineed in her paraphrase of

Psalm 68, 1ater revised to make it more orthodox in its treatment of gender
relations, as the eommentary in Mary Sidney, Collected Works suggests, 2: 450.
For the details see C1arke, Renaissance Women Poets, 319-21.
30 For more on the attribution question, see Rosalind Smith, '''In a mirrour
clere": Protestantism and polities in Anne Lok's Miserere mei Deus,' in 'This
Double Voice': Gendered Writing in Ear!J Modem England, ed. Danielle C1arke and
E1izabeth C1arke (Basingstoke: Maemillan, 2000), 41-60.
31 Smith, 'Protestantism and polities', 41.
32 Ibid., 42.
33 See Aemilia Lanyer, The Poems rf Aemilia Lanyer, ed. Susanne Woods (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 19-30.
34 Smith, 'Protestantism and polities' uses eontextua1 evidenee to support Lok's
authorship, 44-6.
35 On the religious typo1ogy used in eonneetion with Elizabeth I, see John N.
King, 'Queen Elizabeth I: representations of the Virgin Queen', Renaissance
Qyarter!J 43 (1990): 30-74; and Susan Frye, Elizabeth I: The CompetitionJor
Representation (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), eh. 1.
36 A[nneJ L[okJ, trans. Sermons rf]ohn Calvin, upon the songe that Ezechias made qfter
he had bene sicke (London, 1560), sig. A3r, A3v.
37 Ibid., sig. A3v. Margaret P. Hannay, '''Wisdome the Wordes": Psalm trans-
lation and E1izabethan women's spirituality', Religion and Literature 23 (1991):
65-82, 75 makes a similar point.
38 Ibid., sig. A6v.
39 Smith, 'Protestantism and polities'. 45-6. See also Caro1e Levin, The Heart
and Stomach rf a King: Elizabeth land the Politics rf Sex and Power (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsy1vania Press, 1994), eh. 2.
40 Hannay, 'Psalm translation', 75.
41 The Psalmes rf David, tru!J opened and explaned by paraphrasis, trans. Anthony
Gilbie (1581), quoted in Mary Sidney, Collected Works, 2: 368.
42 SeeJohn Foxe, The Book rf Marryrs, ed. G.A. Williamson (London: Seeker &
Warburg, 1965), 197,272,276,329.
43 Lok, Sermons, sig. Aav.
44 Ibid. See Smith, 'Protestantism and po1ities', 42-4.
45 This is true both of the Geneva version and the Authorised Version, but Lok
seems to have used Coverda1e's translation.
46 The Bible and Ho!J Scriptures (Geneva, 1560), gloss, Ps. 51.18p, f.221v.

180
 WRITING THE DIVINE: FAITH AND POETRY

47 See eh. 5, 203-5.

48 See Hannay, 'Psalm translation' and Clarke, Renaissance Women Poets, 62-3
and 311-12.
49 These differenees are diseussed at length by Hannay, 'Psalm Translation'.
50 Clarke, Renaissance Women Poets, 62-3, 1-7.
51 J ohn Donne, 'Upon the translation of the Psalms by Sir Philip Sidney,
and the Countes of Pembroke his sister', in John Donne: Ihe Complete English
Poems, ed. AJ. Smith. Penguin English Poets, ed. Christopher Rieks
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, reprinted 1983), 22, 16.
52 See Helen Wileox, '''Whom the Lord with love affeeteth": gender and the
religious poet, 1590-1633,' in C1arke and C1arke (eds), 'Ihis Double Voice',
185-207.
53 See Mary Sidney, Collected Works, 2:308-57 for deseriptions of the various
manuseripts and their relationship to eaeh other; Clarke, Renaissance Women
Poets uses the manuseript designated as Ring1er B (Ms Rawl. Poet. 25, Bodleian
Library) as the eopy-text.
54 See Clarke, Renaissance Women Poets, whieh includes many of these variants;
or for the full transeription of all variants, Mary Sidney, Collected Works,
vol. 2.
55 William A. Ringler, Jr, Ihe Poems of Sir Philip Sidnry (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1962), 502; Coburn Freer, Music flr a King: George Herbert's Style and the
Metrical Psalms (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), 74.
56 Gary F. Waller, 'The Countess of Pembroke and gendered reading', in Ihe
Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, ed. Anne M.
Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky (Amherst: University of Massaehusetts
Press, 1990), 327-45, 338.
57 'To thee pure sprite', in C1arke, Renaissance Women Poets, 22-5.
58 Davie, Psalms, xvi.
59 See Suzanne Trill, 'Sixteenth-eentury women's writing: Mary Sidney's Psalmes
and the "femininity" of translation', in Writing and the English Renaissance, ed.
William Zunder and Suzanne Tril1 (London: Longman, 1996), 140-58.
60 E1aine Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (Prineeton:
Prineeton University Press, 1987), 127.
61 Hannay, Philip's Phoenix, 88.
62 See above, 123-9.
63 Hannay, Philip's Phoenix, 96.
64 Ibid., 3-14.

181
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

65 Ibid., 96.
66 Ibid., 86-8.
67 See for an example of Mary Sidney's use of the model of Israelites and
Philistines, her dedicatory poem to Elizabeth I, 'Even Now that Care', 65-
72 in Clarke, Renaissance Women Poets.
68 Margaret P. Hannay, '''Princes you as men must dy": Genevan advice to
monarchs in the Psalmes of Mary Sidney', English Literary Renaissance 19 (1989):
22-41,27-8.
69 Hannay, Philip's Phoenix, 98.
70 This process is still highly current when Ben Jonson writes 'To Penshurst',
pub. 1616.
71 In The rale Edition rif the Shorter Poems rif Edmund Spenser, ed. William A. Oram
et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 316-19.
72 See 'Even Now that Care' and 'A Dialogue' and the headnotes in Clarke,
Renaissance Women Poets, 303; 358.
73 In Clarke, Renaissance Women Poets, 50-3; this poem is also discussed below
under 'Elegies and Epitaphs', 168-70.
74 See, for example, 'Even Now' and its veiled hints to Elizabeth that she has
betrayed Sir Philip Sidney's memory, and its implicit claim of equality: 'And
I the Cloth in both our names present,l A liverie robe to bee bestowed by
thee' (33-4).
75 On these connections, see Gary F. Waller, "'This Matching of Contraries" :
Calvinism and courtly philosophy in the Sidney Psalms', English Studies 55
(1974): 22-31, and his English Poetry rif the Sixteenth Century (London: Longman,
1986), 160-3.
76 j.C.A. Rathmell (ed.), The Psalms rif Sir Philip Sidnry and the Countess rif Pembroke
(New York: Anchor Books, 1963), 'Introduction', xx.

77 Waller, English Poetry, 161.

78 Davie, Psalms, xlv; Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, 241.

79 The whole booke rifpsalmes collected into English meter ly Thomas Stemhold,]. Hopkins
and others (Geneva, 1569), 57.10; Sir Thomas Ji1(yatt: The Complete Poems, ed.
R.A. Rebholz (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), 144-45.

80 Richard Hooker, The Laws rif Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V, ch. 37, in Works, ed.
J ohn Keble, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), 2.159.

81 Donne, 'Upon the ... Psalms', in Complete English Poems, 332-4.

82 Sidney, Deftnce, 104.

182
 WRITING THE DIVINE: FAITH AND rOETRY

83 George Puttenham, The Arte rf English Poesie, ed. Gladys Doidge Willcock and
Alice Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), 10.
84 Theodore Steinberg, 'The Sidneys and the Psalms', Studies in Philolog)! 92
(1995): 1-17, gives a full account.

85 Petrarch, 'On the Nature ofPoetry', quoted in Baroway, 'The Bible', 456.

86 On the tradition of courtly application of the Psalms, see Davie, Psalms, xlix.

87 See also, for example, 65: 7-10; 74: 96; 84: 3; 84: 39; 89: 16,41-2; 96: 16-
18; 135: 4; 143: 6, etc.

88 The idea of a division between words and meanings is found through the
Sidney Psalter, e.g. 68: 11; 78: 57; 139: 12-14; 145: 31f.
89 Ringler B, in Clarke, Renaissance Women Poets, 23 and n., and 58: 1-3; 9-10;
89: 78.
90 See, for example 48: 20; 55: 71-2; 67: 30; 68: 46; 72: 29; 78: 74,153; 85: 17;
104: 65-7; 106: 58.
91 Speght, Mortalities Memorandum (1621) m Speght, Polemics and Poems, ed.
Lewalski, title-page.
92 C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance
Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964, repr. 1985), 63-6
provides a clear account.
93 See, for example, Louis Montrose, '''Shaping Fantasies": figurations of gender
and power in Elizabethan Culture', in Representing the English Renaissance, ed.
Stephen Greenblatt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 31-64;
Christopher Pelling, 'Modern fantasy and ancient dreams', in Writing and
Fantasy, ed. Ceri Sullivan and Barbara White. Crosscurrents (London:
Longman, 1999), 15-32; and Diane Purkiss, cOld wives' tales retold: the
mutations ofthe Fairy Queen,' in Clarke and Clarke (eds), 'This Double Voice,'
103-22.
94 Alexander Hume andJohn Livingston, quoted in Beilin, Redeeming Eve, 107.
95 Ane Godlie Dreame Compylit in Scottish Meter be M.M. (Edinburgh, 1603),
sig. A2r.
96 The term 'Iamentacion' is used to describe the complaint of the speaker, sig.
A2v.
97 Jonathan Goldberg, Desiring Women Writing: English Renaissance Examples
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 131.

98 Lanyer, 'The Authors Dreame', in Poems, 21-31, 8.

99 See below, 157-62.

183
 THE POllTICS OF EARlY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

100 See Mary Ellen Lamb, Gender and Authorship in the Sidnry Circle (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 115-41 and Nancy Lee Beaty, 7he
Creift qf Dying: A Stu4J in the Literary Tradition qf the Ars Moriendi in England, Yale
Studies in English, 175 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970).
101 Speght, Polemics and Poems, 45.
102 See eh. 2, above, and Diane Purkiss, 'Material girls: the seventeenth-century
woman debate', in Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss (eds), Women, Texts and
Histories 1575-1760 (London: Routledge, 1992),69-101, esp. 92-5.
103 Mortalities Memorandum is discussed in the section on 'Elegies and Epitaphs',
170-1.
104 Lanyer, 'Salve Deus', Poems, 749-52.
105 Diane Purkiss (ed.), Renaissance Women: 7he Plays qf Elizabeth Cary, 7he Poems qf
Aemilia Lanyer (London: Picke ring and Chatto, 1994), xxx.
106 See Beilin, Redeeming Eve, 177-207; Barbara K. Lewalski, Writing Women in
Jacobean England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 213-
41; and Goldberg, Desiring Women Writing, 16-41 for a critique.
107 Esther Gilman Richey, '''To Undoe the Booke": Cornelius Agrippa, Aemilia
Lanyer and the subversion of Pauline authority', English Literary Renaissance
27 (1997), 108.
108 Ibid., 106-28.
109 Ibid., 109-12.
110 See Tina Krontiris, Oppositional Voices: Women as Writers and Translators qfLiter-
ature in the English Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1992), 106.
111 Lewalski, Writing Women, 219.
112 Richey, '''To Undoe the Booke''', 120, 107.
113 Randall Martin (ed.), Women Writers in Renaissance England (London: Longman,
1997), 364.
114 Wall, ImprintqfGender, 322.
115 Judith Scherer Herz, 'Aemilia Lanyer and the pathos ofliterary history', in
Claude Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (eds), Representing Women in Renais-
sance England (Columbia: University ofMissouri Press, 1997), 121-35, 129.
116 Lisa Schnell, 'Breaking "the rule of Cortezia": Aemilia Lanyer's dedications
to Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum', Journal qf Medieval and Early Modem Studies 27
(1997): 77-101,92.
117 Martin, Women Writers, 337.

118 Ibid., 337.

184
 WRITING THE DIVINE: FAITH AND POETRY

119 Anne Dowriche, Ihe French Historie (London, 1589), sig. A2r.
120 See Martin, Women Writers, 337 and Beilin, Redeeming Eve, 106.
121 Beilin, Redeeming Eve, 10 l.
122 See for example, Ihe French Historie, f.5r-v, f.29r-v.
123 Beilin, Redeeming Eve, 103.
124 Martin, Women Writers, 337-8.
125 Ibid., 338.
126 Ibid., 338.
127 Sidney, Collected Works, 2: 5.
128 Beilin, Redeeming Eve, 105-6.
129 Ibid., 105.
130 Peter Sacks, Ihe English Elegy: Studies in the Genre ftom Spenser to Yeats (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), l.
131 Puttenham, Arte, 25.
132 Ibid., 57.
133 See eh. 5.
134 For example, Wall, Imprint qf Gender, 313-17; Lamb, Gender and Authorship,
116-18.
135 Redeeming Eve, 148.
136 Sacks, English Elegy, 34-5.
137 Ibid., 13.
138 In Clarke, Renaissance Women, 3-7.
139 Beth Wynne Fisken, '''To the Angell Spirit ... ": Mary Sidney's entry into
the "World ofWords", in Ihe Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing
the Canon, ed. Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky (Amherst: Univer-
sity ofMassachusetts Press, 1990),263-75,267.
140 English Elegy, 22.
141 See Diane Purkiss (ed.), Renaissance Women, xlv, n.58.
142 A full and clear account of the authorship question can be found in Purkiss,
Renaissance Women, xxi-xxviii.
143 BL Egerton MS 2725, f.60.
144 See 'Introduction' for a fuller discussion of Southwell and the methodolo-
gical issues raised by her work.

185
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

145 Southwell-Sibthorpe, 26, 63-4.

146 'you Gyannts, or Hyennas that doe dwell', Southwell-Sibthorpe, 95, 3-8.
147 Louise Schleiner, Tudor and Stuart Women Writers (Bloornington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1994), 50.
148 Elizabeth Russell was one of the Cooke sisters, celebrated for their classical
learning. See, for a fuller account, Mary Ellen Larnb, 'The Cooke sisters:
attitudes toward learned wornen in the Renaissance', in Margaret P. Hannay,
Silent Eut for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Reli-
gious Works (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1985), 107-25.
149 Schleiner, Women Writers, 31.
150 Ibid., 48 'Truly elegance, looks, language and just characterl Perish, then
teachings too; but nurturing faith grows green'.

186
 CHAPTER FIVE

Poetry, Politics and Gender

Although it is not an uncontroversial assertion, England's belated Renais-

sance is often equated with a phenomenon termed 'the emergence of the
individual'. Evidence to support this rather vague notion is corralled from
drama, with its stress upon identity and language, from the effects of the
Protestant Reformation (because of its decentring of authority) and from
the age's cultural artefacts, poetry in particular. It can be argued that
Renaissance poetry provides a unique insight into subjectivity, because of
its deliberate and self-conscious traversing of the border between culture
and self, and its implicit assumption that subjectivity is in fact produced
through these oscillating encounters between a self and a cultural idea of
a self. Such tensions emerge from much of the lyric poetry of the period.
Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence Astrophil to Stella, for example, exhibits
an anxious incompatibility between the Petrarchan conventions that give its
eponymous hero his power and eloquence and a barely veiled sense on the
part of the speaker that he remains in excess of the discourse that creates
hirn. Shakespeare also hints that a self might lurk beyond the limits of what
language and ideology permits to be expressed, and that this self might be
uniquely suggested by the form of poetry itself:

Nay, ifyou read this fine, remember not,

The hand that writ it, fir 1 love you so,
That 1 in your sweet thoughts would be firgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
o if (1 say) you looke upon this verse,
When 1 (perhaps) compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poore name reherse, I

187
 THE rOLlTlCS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Most of the major lyric poets push at the edges of what can be expressed,
often, paradoxically, by deploying age-old topoi: those of inexpressibility
and outdoing. 2 The negative statement that something may not be said or
expressed, when placed alongside some of the most virtuoso linguistic per-
formances that the English language has to offer, should give us pause.
What it suggests is a moment of transition between one set of discourses
and another, statements which gesture at a structure waiting to be filled,
often because this entity has been 'produced' by other forces, social, polit-
ical or economic. For example, it could be argued that profound economic
changes in the Tudor period resulted in a nascent individualist capitalism,
but one which cultural expressions of social order could not yet accom-
modate. To put this slightly differently, gestures of linguistic or expressive
impotence suggest the structure of a self, the outline of a language of sub-
jectivity making the transition from one set of assumptions to another. If
Shakespeare, Sidney and Donne gesture towards a language of individual-
ism, then they do so in self-selected forms (the privately circulated, inward-
looking world of lyric poetry, presumably chosen specifically for its already
established language of selfhood and individuality) and in terms which erode
their claims by their very repetition and iterability. In other words, notions
of self are partially linguistic, but their circulation as cultural currency is
entirely dependent upon a shared ideological and discursive code.
A self is not an autonomous, independent, transcendent element definit-
ive of an individual - our modern notions of individuality and selfhood are
the combined product of ideology, social structures, political creeds and
identity - but rather the interactive product of numerous forces. This aspect
needs to be borne in mind when reading the poetry of early modern women,
because, like their male contemporaries, they often articulate a cultural
position and their relationship to it as much as they produce purely indi-
vidualised responses. One key difficulty is the fact that subsequent history
has built upon later versions of Renaissance male subjectivity as underlying
modern notions of the self. This is a complex matter, much larger than
there is space for here, involving questions of literary value, tradition and
canonicity, but it is important to consider the fact that the version of subject-
ivity exhibited by women's poetry - which to modern feminist sensibilities
seems unduly constrained and submissive - is first historically speaking the
more dominant and representative one for the early modern period (notions
of authority, conformity, patriarchalism), and second looks limited and
narrow to us because we are now so cut off from its structuring assump-
tions, having built our modern notions of self and sensibility upon entirely
different foundations. One such assumption is the notion that a self is neces-
sarily, definitively an interiorised property, or that the inner life should
be seen as closer to the essence of a person than his or her publicly

188
 rOETRY, rOLITICS AND GEN DER

acknowledged relationships with others. Definitions and ideas of the indi-

vidual change throughout history and throughout cultures, having a range
of differing relationships between the entity we caH 'society' and the single
persons which constitute it. In many instances, rather than being the auto-
nomous point of origin, the individual is seen as being produced by the social
order to which he/she ultimately belongs. In this instance, ideas of subject-
ivity or individuality are not assertions of independent agency, but ways
of maintaining the social fabric and local order. Despite the liberal-left
orientation of most feminist thinking, at least as it affects historical literary
criticism, it is crucial to recall that a critical or literary text which upholds
or reinforces the status quo still represents a political position and the exercise
of political agency.
Renaissance poetry by women differs from that of men in several key
ways, aH of which are related to the forms and functions of early modern
poetry. Poetry in the Renaissance period, whether circulated in print or
manuscript, was perceived broadly to be functional. In addition to the
conventional 'teach and delight' paradigm which structured the reception
of otherwise potentially frivolous poetic texts in didactic and moral terms,
poetry from the Tudor period onwards had a range of social, political
and cultural functions. Deriving broadly from the renewal of courtly culture
and the functions of rhetoric in advancing the individual as codified in
Castiglione's The Boke qfthe Courtier (1561), poetry came to be seen by the
early E1izabethan period as an essential aspect of a young man's armoury of
achievements, enabling hirn to display his skill in linguistic manipulation
as weH as his ability to flatter his monarch and persuade others of the vir-
tues of his character. In other words, a standard rhetorical education and
classical learning was adapted to practical and political purposes, not so
much because it could be seen to be in any sense 'relevant' or vocational,
but because it became a required badge of entry to a particular social
and political elite. Crucial to this enterprise was the cultivation of a feigned
sincerity, or what Castiglione termed spre;::;::atura, described memorably
by Richard A. Lanham as 'the style which is looked through rather than
noticed'.3 These highly public functions, conjoined with the stress upon
rhetorical skill and mastery of the classics, were also part of an attempt to
head off a perception that poetry might potentially involve an effeminising
immersion in the troubling disorder ofwords and language. 4 In other words,
the potentially effeminate world of poetry was diverted into the public
sphere, by definition masculine. These gendered figurations of the field of
poetry and its meanings left women with a somewhat contradictory poetic
legacy, beyond the highly relevant fact of their status as objects within
poetry, where they were often posited as its audience, its readership, its
interpretive community (a situation which was exacerbated by the reign of

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 THE rOLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Elizabeth I), yet were often expected to receive its messages passively. The
notion of women as audience, especially for courtly poetry, is distinct from
the figuration of the negative aspects of poetic style as feminine, although
sometimes these accounts do also suggest certain assumptions about women
as readers, or even, as writers:

Others there are that have no composition at all, but a kind of tuneing and
riming fall in what they write. It runs and slides, and onely makes asound.
W omens- Poets they are call' d, as you have womens- T aylors ... Y ou may
sound these wits and find the depth of them with YOUf middle finger. They
are Cream-bowle or but puddle deepe. 5

Jonson's statement here is not so far removed from Puttenham's comments

linking femininity and the abuse of poetic ornament, and the link to tailors
is meant to be understood pejoratively (vanity and sex). However, as with
many such comments it has more to do with the status of poetry as a
virtuous and masculine pursuit, requiring skill and intellectual prowess,
than it does with actual women either as readers or authors of poetry.
Nevertheless, such contexts do give us some sense of the perceived (non)
relationship between women and poetry, and the kinds of assumptions
which might structure their entry to this field.
It is also the case that with many Renaissance poets, women, either
fictive or real, are a necessary precondition for the writing and reception
of poetry. Not only are fictive women frequently the poetically produced
object in relation to which the poet attempts to articulate his self, his art
and his poetic power, but femininity features prominently as a trope for
power, creativity.6 Equally important for more humbly-born poets was the
need to attract patronage in an increasingly small market, leading male
writers to engage directly with the representation of women in their verse as
a self-interested act. Quite frequently male poets address the virtues and
intellectual accomplishments of the wives of great patrons, suggesting their
pivotal role in mediating power relationships between men. 7 Like their
fictive counterparts, these women are presented partially as the precondi-
tion for aseries of exchanges between men through the medium of print or
manuscript. The circulation of images of women is not simply a matter of
display but a question of reinforcing hierarchies and women's own actual
exclusion from 'the exercise of power. Even with a figure like Elizabeth I
who wielded actual power, the circulation of her image is frequently at base
concerned with the negotiation ofmen's relationships to one another, where
the degree of proximity and intimacy indicates their position within the
political hierarchy and was intended to be noted by rivals and enemies;
hence the very fact that Elizabeth I replies to Sir Walter Ralegh's aggressive

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 POETRY, POLlTICS AND GENDER

poem bewailing his newly marginal position signals his continuing central-
ity to the queen and court power, rather more than it does Elizabeth's
personal feelings. 8 When Elizabeth I herself intervenes in these processes of
poetic exchange, it might be argued that while her relationship to the image
created undoubtedly differs from that of her male courtiers, its functions as
an image defining male positions and power is much the same.
Given the degree to which the feminine and the female subject position
are already discursively constructed by male writers in the early modern
period, it stands to reason that women's entry to this mode of writing
implicates them in a complex dynamic of inclusion and exclusion. This
dynamic also extends beyond the actual subject-matter of poetry to its
composition and circulation, as Wendy Wall points out, '[hJow could a
woman become an author if she was the "other" against whom "authors"
differentiated themselves?,g The forms of display and impersonation used
by male authors and the literary marketplace meant that it was almost
impossible for an actual female historical agent to adopt the position scrip ted
for her without alteration - even if she were simply to ventriloquise male
discourse, her position as 'author' would remain anomalous and her status
would me an that 'her' words would signify differently. !O This is particularly
true for a form like lyric poetry where there is a need for some degree of
overlap (however illusory) between the speaker and what she or he speaks,
but not for the degree of subordination of self to voice that may be found in
other types of writing. What this clearly illustrates is the asymmetry of male
and female subject positions - whereas a male author can move relatively
easily into the female voice, the same cannot be said of a female author,
who may ventriloquise the male voice, but not properly possess that voice
which is in some sense her 'own'. For areal woman to adopt the posited
subjectivity found in male-authored discourse is to compromise her social
standing, and hence her power in crucial and often irredeemable ways, as
Lady Mary Wroth found out to her cost when Lord Edward Denny vilified
her in terms which imply that her writings are pathological and that they
derive from a gender disturbance:

Hennophradite in show, in deed a monster

As ry thy words and works all men may conster
Thy wrathjull spite conceived an /dell book
Brought Jorth a Joole which like the damme doth look. 11

The impossibility of a wo man moving directly into male-authored dis-

course (whether male-voiced or female-voiced) is closely related to one other
key aspect of women's poetry in the early modern period. Because of the
dynamics of literary circulation and evaluation, and the ways in which these

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

are articulated through discourses of gender, it is virtually impossible for a

woman's poetry to replicate the exchange-value which attaches to poetry by
men. Ofnecessity the circulation ofwomen's poetry in the public sphere is
always conditional; like women's education its functions te nd towards rein-
forcing the status quo rather than challenging it. Such texts run a double
risk; either they are indelibly marked by their gender, as 'women's poetry'
as opposed to the unmodified but implicitly male 'poetry', or the link
between agent and artefact is threatened with erasure, often by women
authors themselves. The lack of direct access to a publicly acknowledged
exchange-value may explain a tendency towards circulation (even if this
was a deliberately created illusion) within the private or familial sphere, for
this is where women and the feminine held a high exchange-value, even
if our sense of it as purely private may often be anachronistic. All of the
poets discussed in this chapter, in differing ways, are acutely conscious of
the implications and effects of publication and of ideas of value, literary
and moral. Many of them are engaged in overt attempts to maximise the
exchange-value of their poetry, using a wide range of strategies: imitation,
dependence upon a powerful relative or associate, didacticism, political
conformity, the advancement of a distinct moral agenda.

Isabella Whitney: wit, prodigality and the city

Isabella Whitney is the first Elizabethan woman to produce a substan-

tial body of original poetry. Even more unusually, her verse confines
itself almost exclusively to non-religious subjects. Furthermore, despite her
assured place in histories of women's writing, and latterly in such canon-
defining texts as the Norton Anthology qf English Literature, Whitney's work has
been relatively neglected. 12 However, her writing, chosen generic forms and
mode of circulation have a great deal to teach us about the gendering of
literary relationships in early modern England, as weIl as challenging some
of our dearly held assumptions about what writing by women might actu-
ally articulate or represent. The reasons for this relative critical neglect,
certainly in comparison with quasi-canonical women writers like Aemilia
Lanyer, Mary Sidney or Lady Mary Wroth, are instructive. 13 Unlike these
more highly placed women, there is little documentation confirming the
details ofWhitney's life: most ofwhat we know about her has been inferred
from her self-referential comments in her poetry or from filling in the
blanks from the details of her brother's life (the well-known emblem writer,
Geoffrey Whitney). Despite the precariousness of these biographical 'facts',
critics have nevertheless attempted to read Whitney's writings in relation to

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 POETRY. POLITICS AND GEN DER

her life, rather than recognising her repeated engagement with a range of
well-established poetic scenarios. The tendency to construct the '1' of the
poetry as a reliable narrator is a feature of criticism on early modern women,
but it obscures the complex relationship that women poets have to poetic
voice. Whitney, for example, draws upon her primary models - Ovid's
Heroides and the complaint poem - in order to work aseries of variations
upon voice which amount to an extended exercise in prosopopoeia. These
variations also enable her to imagine and envisage herself as having a place
within the social and civic order which she critiques throughout her two
collections of poetry for its selfish, amoral mercantilism. In 'A carefull
complaynt', for example, Whitney deploys the figure of Dido as a way of
increasing the power of her misery to affect the reader and to increase the
poetry's value by giving it a didactic and admonitory edge; the identification
is not so much to do with Whitney's personal sense of connection with Virgil's
Dido, but concerns her attempts to produce credit for herself and her
poetry through the deployment of authority. In this way, Whitney attempts
to maximise the exchange-value of the poetry that she writes and circulates.
Other reasons contributing to a relative lack of criticism on Whitney
may be the fact of the absence of a major male figure (or text) who can
frame and contextualise her entry into the poetic sphere; unlike Lanyer
(Jonson), Wroth (Robert Sidney) or the Countess of Pembroke (Sir Philip
Sidney) Whitney cannot be neatly partnered by a canonical male writer
working in roughly similar forms who will bestow authority upon her by
association and bring her into the canonical ambit. This demonstrates the
fact that while Whitney is definitely a metropolitan poet, she is far removed
from the courtly circles with which most female poets using secular forms
are associated, even if ignominiously, as is the case with Lanyer and Wroth. 14
Neither are her models and contemporaries those who have passed into
subsequent literary his tory as typifying the English Renaissance and the
reinvigoration of native poetry. Whitney's writing is heavily indebted to
what she had to hand to read, and represents one of the earliest phases of
the integration of classicalliterature and stories into popular and vernacular
culture. Her stylistic connections, although not her allusions and images,
are solidly based in the popular ballad tradition so derided by comment-
ators such as Sidney who could see no value in their apparently crude
deployment of both ideas and words. Yet this proximity to what we cannot
avoid terming 'low' culture allows Whitney to cultivate a certain authen-
ticity in the subjects she treats, but also pointedly to overturn existing
hierarchies of order and value, something that she also does with her
own self-presentation in the poems. Rather than the relatively middle-class
countrywoman that Whitney seems to have been in life, her poetic persona
is a humbly born Londoner with nothing to sell but her service. Whitney

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

draws heavily upon dassical models, not those taken directly from Latin
writers, from which her education would almost certainly have debarred
her, but from those texts starting to make an impact upon the bookselling
market in London in the 1560s and 1570s. For a writer like Whitney the
recently available translations from Latin authors, Ovid in particu1ar, would
have formed her sense of the dassics, along with collections of adages,
apothegms and sayings drawn from a wide range of texts, usually arranged
under a1phabetical headings, like Erasmus' influential Adages, translated by
Nicholas Udall in 1564, or Richard Taverner's The Garden rfTll(ysdom contf!Yning
pleasantflowres. One ofher main literary models is Ovid's Heroides which had
been translated by George Turberville in 1567 and frequently reprinted
thereafter. Most of these translations themselves are aimed at readers more
or less Whitney's dass equal - recently 1iterate, arriviste urbanite, socially
ambitious - but assumed by and 1arge to be male. As such, many of them
effect a transition between an elite, humanistic dassical culture and already
extant vernacular and popular tradition - many of the poetic texts, for
example, use the fourteener, also aballad measure, are presented with
the aid of woodcuts and interpret their subjects as exemplifying a highly
relevant middle-dass mora1ity. Whitney's poetry itself exhibits the traces of
these precursors, drawing upon the recently accessib1e new learning, but
also placing this within a longer and unbroken tradition within English,
100king to Chaucer and Gower for her portrayals of Dido, for examp1e, as
weIl as using translations of Virgil and Ovid,
In many ways, what makes Whitney unique is precisely her position on
the cusp between various literary systems, the fact that she represents a
moment of transition which predates the elite reinvigoration of native forms
represented most forcibly by Sir Philip Sidney. However, these complex
circumstances also need to be understood in order to comprehend what
Whitney may have been trying to achieve by the writing and publication
of her poetry, Both of her volumes are heterogeneous in conception and
arrangement. The first, The Copy rf a letter (1567), is aseries of complaint
poems offering advice to women regarding male infidelity, but specifically
the risk they run of abandonment and the ruin of their reputations (and
thus their future marriage prospects). Like A Sweet Nosgay (1573) The Copy
incorporates a variety of poems in different forms, not all of them authored
by Whitney herself, but by as yet unidentified men who attempt to respond
to her accusations of sexual treachery. A Sweet Nosgay, for example, takes as
its starting point and justification Whitney's selection and versification of
Hugh Plat's collection of aphorisms, The Floures rf Philosophie, published in
1572. Plat was to become better known for his books on househo1d economy,
but Whitney takes his textual model and makes it her own, following hirn
even to the extent of appending aseries of apparently unrelated poems to a

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 POETRY, POLITICS AND GEN DER

series of grouped or themed sententiae. In the case of both texts, however,

what we find before us both materially and textually is a print version of the
verse miscellany, made so popular by the example of Richard Tottel's
miscellany of poetry, translations and versifications which included texts
previously only circulated in manuscript such as Wyatt and the Earl of
Surrey. Whitney's texts amount to what Wendy Wall has termed 'literary
pseudomorphs' or 'published forms that replicated the characteristics of
manuscript works'.15 Whitney's texts, like many others in the 1560s and
1570s, look and function like manuscript texts, but circulate within the
literary marketplace of print; in other words, they set up the illusion of a
controlled readership (all ofWhitney's correspondents in A Sweet Nosgay are
presented as being known to her through prior acquaintance or kinship ties)
despite the fact that the text is technically available to anyone who can read
(and pay for it). The illusion of non-commercial exchange fostered by the
appearance ofWhitney's texts as quasi-manuscripts is integral to the mean-
ings and principles that she attempts to advance through the texts she
authors and compiles, as A Sweet Nosgay in particular is presented as a kind
of requital for past debts (favours, kindnesses) which establishes Whitney's
own moral and financial creditworthiness. 16 Her poetry is self-evidently
caught up in the dynamics of textual, social and, to a degree, sexual ex-
change and the use ofthe device ofmanuscript-type exchange is one way to
reflect this and possibly deflects anxieties about Whitney herself being traded
as a literary commodity by shifting the emphasis from her text to her
service, her skill and her ability to function virtuously in the exchange
system structuring early modern London.
The Copy if a letter presents itself quite obviously, from the tide-page
onwards, as a text (or more properly, aseries of texts) which deploys the
epistolary mode. Not only are we to encounter the copy of the 'yonge
Gentilwoman['s]' letter, but also a reply 'sent by a Bacheler, (a most faithfull
Lover) to an unconstant and faithles Mayden'.17 This representation of the
volume's contents as in some sense paired epistles is in fact misleading - the
volume contains two poems by Whitney and two male-authored poems
which are loosely linked to the rest of the book - but it creates a telling
interpretive frame for the poems. The generic model which such labelling
suggests is the verse epistle, specifically in the form established and author-
ised by Ovid's Epistolae Heroidum, or Heroides, recently translated into English
by George Turbervile. 18 This series of epistles voiced by various women
plucked from the margins and interstices of Greek and Roman mythology
demonstrates the problematics of the female voice, as weIl as the terms
within which a woman might articulate her self. In most cases, Ovid's hero-
ines' authority to speak is contingent upon a stance of grief, often expressed
very conventionally, which in turn hinges on the breaking of an oath or

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRlTING

promise by a beloved male. 19 Thus, the epistles may seem to represent one
place where patriarchal rights and traditions are questioned, or even over-
turned. To an extent this is true - certainly Whitney enforces the obliga-
tions and responsibilities connected with the legal contract implied by
betrothal - but the terms in which Ovid (and later imitators) do so are
implicitly male terms, an interested version of how women might function
within the patriarchal system. The scenarios that Ovid depicts, and that
Whitney to an extent follows, reinforce the dependence of the female on the
male term, and emphasise an economy where her speech is produced (and
justified) by his absence. lt is an exception, a calling to account, which
reveals a good deal about the place of women within a male economy of
reproductive and literary exchange.
Whitney adheres quite dosely to the models far speech set out in Ovid's
Heroides, but preserves his emphasis upon and interest in questions of legal-
ity, often erased or ignored by his English translators. 20 Because of the
uncertain status of the speaker, it is difficult to determine the precise rela-
tionship between truth and fiction in 'To her unconstant Lover', as the
printer's verses to the reader indicate: 'this Treatise is,l both false and also
true'.21 lt seems likely that RichardJones here alludes to the status of poetry
itself as conceptually fictive, but also containing a higher 'truth' rather than
the specific suggestion that Whitney writes of her own experience - this
mayaIso be implied, but as a me ans of giving her poetic voice pathos and
authority, rather than presenting the poems as ways of mediating a per-
sonal grief or wrong. lfthe poems authored by 'W.G.' and 'R.W.' are not
read as being autobiographical (they are often not read at all by critics),
then it makes little logical sense to confine such an approach to female-
voiced poetic narratives. 22 'To her unconstant Lover' presents the female
dilemma in individualised terms, and is followed by 'The admonition' which
applies the specific moral to a wider female audience, assumed to be of the
same dass and status as Whitney's invented speaker. Whitney's poem 'To
her unconstant Lover' effects a kind of reversal of the economy of exchange
obtaining between men, as her beloved is shamed by being displayed in
print for the scrutiny and disapproval of an audience of women. At this
level, the fact of female authorship might be said to introduce a crucial
difference. Whereas Ovid and his male imitators display the bereft and
grieving woman as having lost her connection to the world, literally having
lost her self, as a way of reinforcing the necessity of dependence upon the
male term, Whitney overturns this model. lt is not that her dependence
upon her husband-to-be is any less in material terms, but that she binds
hirn into aseries of relationships of reciprocity, honour and obligation. To
some extent, he is also put on displayas a warning to other men, as his
honour is destroyed and he is subjected to public humiliation, for which the

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medium of print is required. Paradoxically, Whitney's poem stresses the

fact that making a good marriage to a worthy wife reftects positively upon a
man's honour and reputation, as Elizabeth Foyster has suggested. 23
'To her unconstant Lover' is laced with irony in its recounting of the
consequences - for both parties - of betrayal:

rou know I alwayes wisht you wel

So wyll I during Iyfi:
Eut sith you shal a Husband be
God send you a good wyfi.
(sig. A2r)

The irnplication is that the speaker in fact is the good wife that he requires
to raise his reputation, where his treachery undermines his honour and his
credit - a process in which Whitney's poem plays no small part. In asserting
her own virtue and constancy, the speaker also destabilises prevalent notions
of female behaviour by presenting fidelity as a norm only disrupted by male
misdemeanour. The speaker presents herself as one '[w]hose constantnesse
had never quaildl if you had not begonne' (A2r) and berates the lover with
the loss of his reputation that follows upon his breach of promise:

So shall the promises be kept,

that you so firmly made:
Now chuse whether ye wyll be true,
or be qf SLNONS trade.
(Ä2v)

The mention of Sinon marks the poem's transition into Heroidean mode,
as Whitney reworks aseries of precedents taken from Ovid's epistles -
Aeneas, Theseus,Jason. These parallels not only elevate the speaker's experi-
ence and authorise her narrative by association, but they suggest that such
behaviour brings lasting damage to reputations, deftly demonstrated here
by Whitney's apt use of the rhetorical device of correctio:

For th'!)l, Jor their unfoitlifulnes,

did get perpetuall Fame:
Fame? Wherfore dyd I terme it so?
I should have cald it shame.
(A3v)

Classical heroes are unceremoniously changed into negative exempla, while

the speaker hopes for the inverse process for the husband-to-be that she
addresses, although not without a dose of well-directed sarcasm:

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 THE rOLlTIes OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

For she that shal so happy be,

of thee to be eleet:
I wish her vertues to be such,
she nede not be suspect,
(A4r)

Whitney cleverly insinuates her speaker's virtues, and those of women in

general, by outlining her vision of the ideal wife for her ex-lover, again
citing various Ovidian precedents: Helen, Lucrece, Penelope. The aban-
doned woman's powerless position is turned to good account as Whitney's
sympathetic narrator notes that there is no redress for her: in effect the
poem functions to augment the speaker's exchange-value by positing her as
both virtuous and innocent, but most importantly of all as an example for
maids and young women.
'The admonition' provides the moral of this part of the volume. Address-
ing 'all yong Gentilwomen' and 'al other Maids being in Love' (A5v), this
poem inverts many of the tropes and conventions underlying male percep-
tions of women, by countering one Ovidian discourse with another. Where
'unconstant Lover' hinges on broadly Heroidean dynamics, 'The admoni-
tion' turns the tricks and deceptions of Ovid's Art qf Love inside out but also
acknowledges female desire. In addition, her attempt to advise highlights
the relative lack of useful wisdom directed at women in love in comparison
with the weight of information telling men how they may entrap a woman.
The poem amounts to an unpicking of the arts used by men to deceive
to the end that young women might be better able to judge the genuine
from the deceitful; that they might enter properly into the moral exchanges
necessary to the attainment of a good and honourable marriage. In effect,
Whitney's advice is intended to help young lower-class women maximise
their exchange-value by recognising that they themselves have personal
credit to lose, or increase. Male speech is he re posited as double, deceiving,
by contrast with the male personas' presentation of women's promises later
on in the volume: 'Beware of fayre and painted talke,! beware of flattering
tonges' (A6r). Like parts of'To her unconstant Lover', he re Whitney's main
focus is the framework and fulfilment of promises, both in a moral and a
legal sense, demonstrated again by her recourse to examples drawn from
Ovid's Heroides who find themselves distraught and destitute because they
believed men's promises: Oenone, Demophoon.
The poems authored by men included in 7he Copy qf a letter are not, I
think, simply 'printer's makeweights' designed to make up the volume on
the basis that they share subject matter; all the poems use the same rhyme
scheme and metrical pattern. Rather, they direct attention to the question of
promises, especially as these relate to betrothai and their une qual application

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 POETRY, POllTICS AND GEN DER

to the sexes. Where the female speaker is resigned, even forgiving, and
determined to warn her peers of danger, the male speakers resort to cultur-
ally sanctioned misogynist stereotypes. This suggests the need for a woman
to maintain her personal store of credit by maintaining her relationship
with a man, and the necessity of asserting her own innocence, as it is he
who has broken the promise. For males in this situation, the stakes are
rather different: but they concern the fear and danger of ridicule - hence
the ho stile aggression - rather than the threat of lost reputation. However,
like the female speaker, the underlying principle being illustrated is 'try
before you trust' - a proverb that recurs throughout Whitney's work. All of
the poems deal with the disillusion which follows the recognition of decep-
tion, but attempt to elevate this into a moral principle rather than a purely
personal experience. 'W.G.', for example, turns his deception into a general
moral lament on the corruptions and deceptions of the world:

Can they that sit in haury Heavens

such covert gilt abyde?
Or ar they parcial now deernst thou?
is Justice throwne a syde?
(B2v)

Like the female-voiced poems, W.G. uses the medium of print as a form
of dishonour, exposing the addressee's misdeeds to public scrutiny and
judgement - just as by extension her poem potentially applies to an men,
so his may implicate an women. Unlike the feckless fiance, however, the
woman is to be judged, not permitted to circulate once more in the marital
marketplace:

And thy seife such domb, shalt geve,

as gilry shalt thou finde:
Therfore relent, and once agayne,
thy grudging conscience minde.
(B3r)

'R.W.'s poem replicates the structural relationship of the female-voiced

poems, providing a more general warning to bolster the preceding poem's
specific appeal to the reader, claiming that the text aims to provide 'a
sufficient warnyng for an Y ongmen to beware the fained Fidelytie of
unconstant Maydens' (Br). The poem is conventionally misogynistic, as the
speaker regrets lending his heart to one who was so careless of it, making
central negative use of the metaphor of usury to underscore that he has
gained nothing from his act. Once again, the language oflove quickly elides
with the language of moral and then financial credit:

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

A{y Debtor hath deceyved mee

Jor she is ]rom mee fled:
And I am li!ft among the Bryers
to bryng a Foole to Bed.
(*Cv)

These metaphors suggest more than the possibility that sexual and marital
relationships were viewed at least to some extent as economic arrangements
- they also bear out what many of the pro-woman texts suggest, that the
obtaining of a good spouse immeasurably improves the individual's social
status and credit within the neighbourhood where she or he lives. 24 How-
ever, this speaker argues that the potential gains are far outweighed by the
probable risks, as he suggests that men are unlikely to get a good return on
their investment:

Frequent not Womens company

but see thou ]rom them swarve
For thy Rewarde shall be but smal,
what ever thou deserve.
(*C3r)

Given the inequality of status and reputation attaching to each gen der role
in early modern England, it would seem that his rather cynical assessment
came dose to the truth.
Friendship, reciprocity and social relationships displace the attention to
gender relationships for the most part in A Sweet Nosgay. The entire volume,
consisting of poems, verse epistles and aphorisms, is structured around the
principle of requiting debts incurred against future demands for aid or
assistance. These 'debts' are not necessarily purely and simply financial, but
indicate deeper bonds of obligation to friends, kin and family. The notion
of the collection as a kind of remedy against harm is implicit in the structur-
ing principle of the nosegay - both a gathering of chosen texts or sayings
and a posy of aromatic herbs thought to ward off plague and infection. 25
The volume is implicated throughout in processes of exchange, moral and
financial, in which Whitney's own fictive character is fundamentally at
issue. She is presented as in need of support and assistance which she is
currently unable to reciprocate save through professions of good faith in the
future. Hence, her credit, in the sense of being trustworthy and virtuous
enough to repay the 'debts' incurred, is at issue throughout. This also
applies to her use of Plat's text, presented he re as a garden from which the
discerning reader may select whatever is of use to hirn/her. This notion is
replicated in Whitney's versification and organisation of Plat's sayings into
thematic groups, presented as an interpretive selection designed to advise

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 POETRY, POLITICS AND GENDER

the reader on topics such as friendship, the law, money and slander. Thus A
Sweet Nosgay participates in at least one central aspect of the humanist sc hol-
arly tradition, albeit in the vemacular, namely, the commonplace book,
which in many respects A Sweet Nosgay closely resembles. It is only because
of this fluid and flexible understanding of literary ownership that Whitney
has anything at all to offer her dedicatee, George Mainwaring:

not havyng of mine owne to discharg that I go about (like to that poore
Fellow which wente into an others ground for his water) did step into an
others garden for these Flowers: which I beseech you (as DARIUS did,) to
accepte: and though they be of anothers growing, yet considering they be
of my owne gathering and makeing up: respect my labour and regard my
good wil, and not onely receave them, but vouchsave to be a protecter of
them from the spightfu1. 2G

The key element that Whitney presents here is her labour which is the key to
her retention ofher place within an uncertain and rapidly changing society.
A Sweet Nosgay is fundamentally concemed with questions of place, order
and social change. It is also very much a London-based volume, despite its
author's probable Cheshire origins. The suggestions of ill health and pesti-
lence found in the opening poems are significant in this regard, hinting not
only at a common (and justified) perception that London's crowded and
insanitary conditions caused disease to spread rapidly, but also at social and
moral contagion. At the time that Whitney was writing, London was in the
process of radical and rapid change. Not only had it grown enormously, it
was also witnessing the establishment of trade as the primary source of its
wealth, and a consequent alteration from the older feudal hierarchy to a
capitalist individualism where each person was only as valuable as the
market for their services. Lawrence Manley has written extensivelyon
the cultural and ideological changes at work in early Tudor London and
the kinds of anxieties these provoked, often resulting in a kind of complaint
poem presented by an outsider who has found the city a cruel, merciless
and unprofitable place. 27 There are clear affinities with Whitney's volume,
where the major theme is that of the plight of the landless labourer whose
skills are not required in London's rapacious mercantilism. 'The Auctor to
the Reader' opens with a phrase which draws upon a much longer tradition
of satire and critique: 'This Harvest tyme, I Harvesdesse,l and servicelesse
also:/ And subject unto sicknesse, that/ abrode I could not go' (A5v). Sug-
gested here is the stock figure of the moral ploughman, ironically con-
verted into the landless labourer, whose enforced idleness is the occasion for
the poems, epistles and pleas for support which follow. Most of these are
addressed to family members, particularly Whitney's brothers and sister, and
suggest strongly, as Loma Hutson has noted, that these epistolary exchanges

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in print ape lost familial relationships of reciprocity far which the city
provides no adequate substitute. 28 The device of enclosing the text's own
interpretive community within its confines is possibly a gesture, but it cre-
ates the illusion of the letters being circulated to a closely knit group of
readers tied to the writer by kinship, and hence offsets the medium of print
by suggesting that the author circulates her words in a controlled manner -
an illusion sustained by Whitney's habit (not uncommon at this period) of
referring to her printed texts in terms increasingly confined to manuscript
texts, such as 'scroule' ('A modest meane', Dr). This device also enables
Whitney to cover topics which are of direct relevance to her, to create the
illusion ofproximity and self-revelation. For example, this medium makes it
possible for her to lament her loss of position and to offer advice within the
proper epistolary tradition, as she does, for example, to her two younger
servant sisters. Such proffering of advice also demonstrates that Whitney is
fulfilling her proper social role and storing up future credit. In 'A modest
meane for Maides' Whitney shares her insights on the running of a house-
hold, but also reveals a touching interest in her sisters' spiritual welfare ,
beseeching them to be mindful of God at all times - this may have had as
much to do with the frequent sexual exploitation of young female servants
away from horne and family as it does with faith. 29
Running through all of the 'familier Episdes and friendly Letters' is a
recurrent concern with the ideally reciprocal relationships between the indi-
vidual and society, and the ways in which fortune, circumstance and social
change disrupt this ideal harmony. The WrLL and Testament is the most
innovative of Whitney's poems, as it draws together several traditions, but
reapplies them. The poem uses the mock-testament, with its deployment of
the figure of the fool and its undermining of an authority which is revealed
not to be an authority. Lorna Hutson suggests that mock-testament enables
'the ironie revelation of fraudulent ideas', leaving 'the effigies of impotent,
authority-claiming discourses' .30 Whitney points to London's commercial
power, its financial rapaciousness, and its lack of charity, and by seeming to
praise its prosperity criticises the difficulties which accompany its growth, in
particular changes in social structure and hierarchy. The city is imaginat-
ively turned into Whitney's 'possession' which is hers to bequeath, pointing to
the gap between London's abundant wealth and those who are permitted
to possess it. The sense of London as a 'closed shop' is compounded by the
fact that the city is recipient, bequest and executor, and the final 'joke' is
that Whitney leaves the city nothing that is not there already, thus inverting
the trope of generosity structuring the idea of the will. As Hutson writes,
'London ... is fondly characterized as the heartless friend, whose economy
belies the rules of reciprocity and kinship distance, since all here, even
neighbours, live amidst an abundance of goods and services that must be

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openly and immediately transacted fOr.'31 Whitney's material dispossession

is balanced by an act of poetic possession, whereby she claims London as
her property to bequeath, a gesture which simultaneously asserts the acts of
writing and publication as economically valuable. 32 Here, as elsewhere in
the volume, poetry is seen as a commodity, to be exchanged among friends
in order to produce, as Hutson argues, personal credit, a strategy which is
reinforced here by Whitney's chosen form. 33 The will is a legal document
which substitutes for the processes of exchange engaged in by a living
person, a form of writing which organises the disposal of material goods.
Although innovative, Whitney's is not an isolated text; its themes are
widely found in writings of the Tudor period, when writers frequently
addressed the question of rapid social and economic changes and the dis-
ruptions to order and ideology that these brought about. 34 Manley argues
that writers of Tudor complaint often focussed on London as a target for
their critique (75), because of its connection with 'ruthlessly anti-social and
amoral commerce' (75), and that the literary techniques involved were the
catalogue or list, and 'tropes of inversion' (75-7). Both elements are clearly
present in Whitney's poem. Her 'list' represents order and disorder, centre
and periphery, and thus draws attention to the crumbling of older cat-
egories and hierarchies - hence her allusion to the debtors' prison (l.165f)
represents the underside of the commercial abundance described elsewhere
in the poem. Her listing of places, persons, professions and commodities
reinforces a sense of chaos and disorder, and she swings from area to area,
and trade to trade without any apparent sense of connection: in fact, the
only connecting thread is Whitney's self-representation in terms of exclu-
sion from the abundance that she describes. The poem is a unique and
original contribution, blending the social, satirical and topographical to
present a lively portrait of the complexities of London in the 1570s.

Petrarchanism, politics and the feminine

The varying uses made of Petrarchan poetics in the early modern period
form one of the most powerful discourses of Renaissance literature. It is
important to recognise that the tropes and conventions of Petrarch's ver-
nacular poetry, the Rime in particular, but also I TrionJi, had undergone
significant transformation and modification by the time that most of the
women in this chapter encountered them - except for rare instances, their
knowledge of Petrarchanism was drawn from a naturalised tradition, exem-
plified by Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and a host of followers from Daniel to
Barnfield. Furthermore, the uses and meanings of Petrarchan poetics had

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRlTING

strayed some distance from their origins. The power structures implicit in
Petrarchanism's complex relationships between subject and object, joined
to notions of desire, loss and absence, had long been associated with courtly
politics in England, where its adaptability and flexibility had accommod-
ated the complex erotic politics obtaining at the court of Henry VIII. The
political applications of Petrarchan poetics became even more pronounced
when Elizabeth I ascended to the throne, as numerous critics have argued.
Petrarchanism came to signify and mediate complex and contested power
relationships between the unmarried monarch and her male courtiers.
Petrarchan poetics fortuitously enabled praise without presumption (for the
most part) and permitted the acknowledgement of the queen's sex without
immediately embroiling the speaker in a condemnation of female inferior-
ity. As well as producing female eulogy, Petrarchanism was also deployed as
a dis course which reasserted male control over the image of a powerful
female who had power of life and death over them. The dynamics of
Petrarchan poetry are such that the male poet/ desiring subject manipulates
and controls the woman that he produces and creates as either silent or
speaking only in his own terms. Any response on her part is usually con-
tained within the dynamics of the poetic sequence, as reported or indirect
speech which creates the illusion of independent, autonomous capitulation
(or refusal) to the lover's desire. The very structure ofPetrarchanism, partly
because of Petrarch's own interest in securing literary immortality through
the praise of Laura, created a dynamic which concretised the male as loving
subject and the female as the uncomprehending recipient or object of that
desire. 35 If a woman was to be a desiring subject in these poems it was very
much on male terms, as a voice produced by the poet for his own gratifica-
tion and consumption, rather than as a female voice able to speak desire (or
its refusal) for herself.
Given the self-consuming and self-enclosed nature of much Petrarchan
poetry, where external objects and discourses are incorporated to the end of
anchoring and authorising male subjectivity, it may seem odd to find women
writers engaging with this particular poetic discourse. However, there is
widespread evidence of women's knowledge of Petrarchan conventions
and ideas, and their deployment of them in other media - pageants and
entertainments, tapestry, embroidery and domestic interior decoration, for
example. The difficulty apparently attaching to their entry into Petrarchan
discourse may have more to do with the specifically poetic lyric expression
and its strong associations with the display of rhetorical skill for courtly
consumption than it does with the nature of Petrarchanism itself. In other
words, it may be the medium itself, together with its public and political
functions, which creates a barrier for women who deploy the Petrarchan
idiom in their verse. Having noted this, Petrarchan motifs are a common

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feature of women's poetry in this period - given their infiltration into

virtuaHy aH areas of cultural life, this was scarcely avoidable. Nor, as we
have seen, did they necessarily contradict more obviously virtuous or moral
aspects of poetry: Petrarchanism proved to be an extraordinarily flexible
and durable language of love, longing and desire which could be adapted
to virtuaHy any scenario from the obscene to the divine. 36 But like the use
of the Ovidian model of the Heroides, Petrarchanism necessitated a direct
confrontation with the question of how voice was gendered and the ways
in which women could negotiate and appropriate the existing models for
female articulation.
The consequences of the deployment of the Petrarchan voice, and the
ways in which it might be manipulated are weH illustrated by Elizabeth I's
use of this discourse. The political applications of Petrarchanism to the
power wielded by a female monarch have been weH documented in recent
years, but the significance and complexity of Elizabeth's own interventions
are less weH known, and less frequently read from within this politicisation
of Petrarchanism. 37 Elizabeth had, as a young woman, translated abrief
excerpt from Petrarch's Triumph qf Etemiry, a prescient expression of the
need to base faith and identity in God rather than men, as weH as a telling
moment of consciousness ab out Elizabeth's own dynastie destiny and the
need created for other forms of memorialisation by her lack of an heir.
Although the translation was most likely an exercise for one of her tutors, it
nevertheless attests to the centrality of Petrarchan discourse within Tudor
culture - and not necessarily the more familiar traditions bequeathed by
the Rime. 38 The poem's deployment of the first person creates the impres-
sion of authenticity, of a personal voice, but the subject-matter seems par-
ticularly appropriate for a female monarch-in-waiting, isolated and uncertain
of her future. Although Laura speaks in the poem from the position of
experience and wisdom, her words are poignantly appropriate to the situ-
ation of Elizabeth: 'But now I know / How erst the fickle world abused
me,l Eke what I am and was.,39 Unwittingly prophetie, this translation
deploys a key element in later panegyric on Elizabeth I, one used to elevate
her (as was Laura) above the common run of humanity. By finding eternity
in mutability, Laura, like Elizabeth, is made part of the divine and natural
order and her (their) immortality is assured:
!f none qf alt these things do stand in stG)!
That heaven turns and guides, what end at last
Shalt joltow qf their ever tuming swG)!?
While deeper yet my searching mind I cast,
A world alt new even then it seemed me
In neuer changing and euer living age.
(Poems, 17-22)

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

The relations hip between time, mutability and fortune is an important

aspect of Petrarchan discourse about Elizabeth I, where the idea of Eliza-
beth's susceptibility to fortune and mortality is one means of critiquing her,
but he re it is a means to eternity: 'But time shall die, and place be changed
withal,l And years shall bear no rule on mortal farne' (Poems, 77-8). Her voice
here, however mediated, suggests a resistance to these realities and a sense
of a belief in her divinely appointed status which is also borne out, although
more playfully, in her other poetic entanglements with Petrarchan discourse.
Elizabeth's usage of the Petrarchan mode is both intensely personal and
deeply political - it is no accident that the extant poems in this category
appear to be closely linked to attempts to contain and control favourites or
suitors who threaten the queen's royal autonomy. Her deployment of the
Petrarchan mode appears not to be a movement into intimacy, but is a
means of using accepted conventions to put courtly presumptions in their
place. Given the delicacy of the queen's position as the recipient of male
attention which hovered uncertainly upon the cusp between ambition and
desire, it is not surprising to find Elizabeth investing heavily in Petrarchan
paradoxes, oxymorons, disguises and obfuscations, as she does, for example,
in her poem 'On Monsieur's Departure,.40 This poem acts simultaneously
as mask and revelation, as the '1' persona exposes her self-contradictory
feelings towards an unidentified 'other', who may be either her rejected
suitor, Anjou, or her last favourite, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. The
fact that these two men to whom Elizabeth had radically different relation-
ships dose to either end of her reign can both be posited as the possible
object in this poem suggests very forcibly the elusive nature of its rhetoric.
In the absence of secure dating, it is impossible to rule out other candidates.
In either case Elizabeth uses the stock dynamics of Petrarchan verse to
redaim a degree of autonomy where the contradictory emotions expressed
are brought back within her own domain. The inward movement of the
poem can be read not only (potentially) as the logical outcome of the
rhetoric of love deployed here, but as an expression of subjectivity worked
out against an external other such as we might find in Spenser or Sidney. In
many ways, it is a deeply conventional, if polished, expression of Elizabethan
Petrarchanism:

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am flrced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not scry lever meant,
I seem stark mute but inward?J do prate.
I am and not, I Jreeze and yet am bumed,
Since Jrom myselj another selj I tumed.
(1-6)

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 POETRY, POLITICS AND GENDER

But one key difference, despite the usual paradoxes and oxymorons, is the
self-evident occupation of the 'I' persona defined in relation to a male
beloved ('No me ans I find to rid hirn from my breast' (11), emphasis added)
who is passively evoked and left beyond the confines of the poem. It is as if
Elizabeth recIaims her subjectivity by the deliberate marginalisation of her
beloved. There is also a subtle separation of self and emotion here, which
may be interpreted as a kind of distancing: 'My care is like my shadow in
the sun,! Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,! Stands and lies by me,
doth what I have done' (7-9). The apparent solipsism and self-absorption of
this poem is to some extent a rhetorical trick, a by-product of the mode
deployed, but it has the strange effect of rendering apparent intimacy very
impersonal, turning the poem's surface into something inscrutable and closed
to interpretation. In other words, this apparently 'personal' poem works
within its chosen conventions as a form of concealment, not disclosure.
Queen Elizabeth's reply to Sir Walter Ralegh's scarcely concealed com-
plaint about his lack of reward, favour and advancement appears to be
much more light-hearted and more open than 'On Monsieur's Departure'.
But here there is no real need for concealment, for the queen, in her
Petrarchan persona, rebukes her correspondent and wittily deploys his own
idiom to reveal his presumptuous folly and to put hirn back in his place,
demonstrating in the process that she too can play the courtly game rep-
resented by Petrarchanism. Here, the queen asserts that she controls the
application and interpretation of this discourse, and that she is not to be the
passive, manipulated recipient of male attempts at power. Ralegh's poem
deliberately conflates the language oflove and the language of court power,
and by complaining bitterly of the queen's rejection of hirn presumes that
her love is his property and that his complaint is legitimate. 41 His response
to the withdrawal of favour is particularly vicious and aggressive, taking the
notion of fortune to its logical conclusion:

I joy in this that fortune conquers kinges

fortune that rules on earth and earthly thinges
hath taken my love in spight of Cupids might
so blinde a dame did never cupid right." 2

Elizabeth's response ironically turns the notion of fortune's power over her
on its head, as she argues that even a force as strong as fortune cannot turn
her against Ralegh ('Wat'): 'it passeth fickle fortunes powere and skilll to
force my harte to thinke thee any ill'. 43 Elizabeth switches deftly between
speaking as a woman/Petrarchan mistress and as a monarch as she swiftly
reinstates the proper hierarchy pertaining to queen and subject: 'No for-
tune base thou saiest shall alter thee,! and may so blinde a Witche so

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 TH E POLITICS OF EARLY MODE RN WOMEN'S WRITI NG

conquere me? / No no my pugg, thoughe fortune were not blinde,! assure

thy self she could not rule my mynde' (5-8). The poem amounts to a
complex and careful evasion of Ralegh's attempts to use the gendered
power relations of Petrarchanism as a means of control, with Elizabeth I
powerfully asserting the validity of her judgement and her virtue.
As the example of Elizabeth I elearly demonstrates, the literary pre-
cedent of Petrarch does not necessarily lead women writers into the posi-
tion of non-identity or suppressed subjectivity that male versions of the
idiom might imply. Many women adopt strategies which enable them to use
this most central of cultural discourses to their own advantage. Foremost
among such strategies is the actual choice of text. We have already seen
that Elizabeth I chose (or had chosen for her) one of Petrarch's visionary
sequence of poems, I Triorifi, aseries of virtues overcome by superior
virtues and culminating in the immortalising of Laura, Petrarch's beloved
and the inspiration for much ofhis vernacular poetry. Rather than confront-
ing the question of desire, these linked poems exhort the poet/reader to
reject the transitory pleasures of earthly love in favour of eternal life. It is
not surprising, therefore, to find that this particular text was weIl known and
widely read by women in the Renaissance. 44 In addition to Elizabeth I, we
find several women writers actively engaging with I T riorifi, among them the
Countess ofPembroke and the less weIl-known translator Anna Hume, who
corresponded with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. Because of its associations
both with female monarchs and courtly entertainments, I Triorifi was a text
which carried a good deal of contextual political meaning, and it is the elose
association between Elizabeth I and The Triumph qf Death that Mary Sidney
exploits in her intense and syntactically complex translation which in its
balancing of praise and blame, epideictic and critique fulfils many of the tradi-
tional functions of panegyric verse. 45 Although the Countess of Pembroke's
translation cannot be securely dated, it was almost certainly undertaken
in the years following the death not only of Sir Philip Sidney, but also of
the countess's parents and younger brother. In the absence of evidence to
corroborate that she actively chose this particular Triumph to translate in
preference to any other, it would be stretching a point to argue that the
translated text is exelusively or even primarily to do with the countess's
personal mourning. It is undoubtedly a poem about mourning, but it is also
concerned with the symbolic and moral meanings of death, the dangers of
earthly love, a transition from one rhetoric to another, and with the role of
the poet. Like the epitaphs and elegies that we looked at in the previous
chapter, to confine the translation's meanings purely to the personal is to
mistake the nature of the text and to restrict its potential political significance.
Mary Sidney may have translated more than one of Petrarch's I Triorifi,
but it is surely significant that it is in this series of texts that Petrarch's

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beloved Laura is given a voice for the first and only time. 46 The Triorifi had
also been widely associated with queenly iconography, particularly after the
demise of Elizabeth's final marriage negotiations with Alen<;on. The fact
that Petrarch's sequence of poems had been mined for images to represent
the Virgin Queen meant that by the time of Sidney's translation in the
1590s some details in the poem would have triggered paralleis with the
queen among the poem's group of courdy readers - the poem was sent
by Sir John Harington to Lucy, Countess of Bedford in 1600. Laura is
described in the original Italian and in the Countess of Pembroke's English
version in terms of her beauty, eloquence and chastity, but in the latter in
conventional terms which were a centra1 part of the cultura1 currency of
Elizabeth's representation - to some extent, precise sources for these details
are beside the point, or at least tell us litde about their actual function.
Their presence in Petrarch's poem and Sidr.ey's translation reinforces the
politica1 cast of the text through association and the accretion of meanings.
For examp1e, the 'snowy Ermiline' recurs in the famous 'Ermine' portrait,
and the poem uses contrasts between black and white, Elizabeth's co1ours. 47
Laura has 'amber-tresses' (1.114) and wears pearls (H.8) as did Elizabeth in
many of her portraits. 48 In addition, the treatment of the death of a figure
multiply identified with Elizabeth as the 1590s neared their end, when she
was notoriously touchy on the topic of her death and adamant about her
refusal to name a successor, means that certain aspects of the poem reson-
ate quite differendy in their new Elizabethan context. Laura reftects on her
own death that 'This charge of woe on others will recoyle,l I know, whose
safetie on my life depends' (1.52-3). The parallel to E1izabeth is clear, and
subtly underlined by the Countess of Pembroke's own intervention in the
translation, as she replaces Petrarch's singular with the plural 'others'.
In the course of translating the Triumph if Death into English and using
the Italian terza rime in English - a difficult rhyme scheme to reproduce -
the Countess of Pembroke inevitably incorporated into her phrasing echoes
of other texts that she was familiar with; in particular, various texts and
contexts connected with her Psalm paraphrase. 49 These references, how-
ever, add up to a 'po1itics of intertextuality' as the translation becomes, by
association, tied to a network of texts and writers who represent a particular
political and theological position. 50 The echoes and interventions may seem
minor, but they add up to a translation which has a point to make for those
equipped and able to perceive it. The Countess of Pembroke's intertextual
references build upon the existing Protestant and po1itical associations of
the text, using phrases and words from Sir Philip Sidney's poetry, Calvin's
Psalm commentary, the Geneva Bible and poets from the Sidney circle.
These texts tend to be connected with the Dudley-Sidney alliance and its
support for radical Protestantism and their redeployment he re in the context

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRlTING

of a poem which enacts a transition from earthly to heavenly praise sug-

gests a certain une ase with both royal representation and regal policy. An
example of the rewriting of the surface of Petrarch's text in such a way as
to link royal iconography to subtle political comment can be found in the
second section of the poem, where there is a notable echo of the Psalms:

I not denye (quath she) but that the crasse

Preceeding death, extreemelie martireth,
And more the fiare if that etemall lasse.
But when the panting saule in Gad takes breath;
And wearie heart ajficteth heavenlie rest,
An unrepented syghe, not els, is death.
(II.46-51)

The 'crosse' clearly links Laura's death into the Christian tradition, but this
is compounded by her choice of the verb 'martireth' (a rare usage) which
hints that death is merely apreparation for what lies beyond and that a
degree of earthly suffering is necessary to gain the joys of heaven. The
phrase 'panting soule' is added by the Countess of Pembroke to the text
and obviously recalls Psalm 42. 51 The word 'panting' is frequently used to
describe the desire for God and for death in most English Psalm vers ions
and explained as such in the various Calvinist commentaries the countess
would have had to hand. In effect, the translation, by allusion, Calvinised
Petrarch, thus potentially suggesting the text as a kind of memento mari,
which, given its connections with the representation of Elizabeth and the
monarch's age, would have amounted to a pointed political comment -
namely that the queen should get her theological house in order because
death could come at any time.
The Countess of Pembroke's usage of this particular text from the
Petrarchan canon is important for reasons that go beyond veiled critique of
the queen and the prevalent iconography used to depict her. In a number
of ways, Mary Sidney had already found her poetic authority in the project
of the Psalm paraphrase, and the echoing of aspects of that text here sug-
gests that she saw some kind of affinity between the two undertakings. 52
A further parallel can be found in the fact that both texts, provisionally,
provide authorisation for virtuous female speech - not, as some critics
suggest, an oppressive model for women writers, but one to which they
aspired. It was also an ideal of eloquence for men. The Countess of
Pembroke's re-reading of Petrarch's poem as a treatise upon death which
parallels thought within the Protestant tradition facilitates her entry into a
discourse assumed to create difficulties for female authorship. Using the
models for female speech on triumphal subjects found in the Psalms (and

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commentaries) Mary Sidney subtly introduces the category of gender into

her translation, negotiating the difficulties of her own subject position,
and rejecting the objectification of the beloved which is a convention in
Petrarchan poetry.53 The use ofthe 'I' pronoun in Petrarch's (and Petrarchan)
poetry raises complex questions about identity and identification, and these
complexities are made more difficult when the text is in translation where
the relationship between the '1' of the text and the 'I' of author and trans-
lation becomes very contorted. Many critics have identified the 'I' of the
countess with that of Laura, on the basis that they are both female and both
speak in the shadow of an authoritative male poet, but the 'I' of the text
also refers to the poet figure. 54 It is difficult to determine whether the
Countess of Pembroke is claiming Petrarch's articulation of poetic subject-
ivity or evading the question by accepting the ventriloquism which is impli-
cit within the translation process. In either case, however, Mary Sidney
engages in what Goldberg terms the 'unmarking of ownership of voice',
which effectively elides the crucial Petrarchan distinction between subject
and object (because neither position is singly or unproblematically occupied
by the speaker) and disables the dynamics of objectification conventionally
found in Petrarchan poetics. 55 The choice of the Triumph ifDeath plays some
part in this process, as it is here that Laura's voice is represented for the
only time and she articulates her own desire and the necessity of its subjuga-
tion. There is a repeated emphasis upon the virtue and validity of female
speech. Laura, far example, defeats her enemies using 'wise speache' (I.9)
and is mourned by her women thus, 'Never lyke witt, shall we from woman
heare,l And voice, repleate with Angell-lyke delight' (I. 149-50). The poem
also attributes meaning to silence, as it is Laura's refusal to enter the poet-
figure's fantasy that indicates her moral superiority over hirn and enables
her to encourage hirn to a higher level of insight. In this poem, Laura acts
as a useful model for a woman writer - her speech is powerful, virtuous and
free from any suggestion of illicit sexuality.56
The various interventions in the 'cult of Elizabeth' mark attempts on the
part of the artist or writer to assert a measure of agency and control, attempts
from which Elizabeth herself could not remain entirely immune. The com-
petition for representation involves complex power relationships not just
between queen and subject, but among subjects and within various cultural
systems - of which gender is but one. One of the most central discourses
mediating and constructing these power relationships was Petrarchanism,
where the difficult implications of the gender relationships between monarch
and subject could to an extent be contained, as Elizabeth positioned herself
(or was positioned) as the distant beloved with the fate of her suitors in her
power. Yet with some exceptions, Petrarchan poetics tended to inscribe the
male subject position, with the posited beloved being subject to the poet's

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control and manipulation, hence rendering the written object disempowered.

However, Mary Sidney's intervention goes some way to redaiming this
position because in this text Laura does answer back, resisting the poet's
erroneous construction of her, and is presented as a morally instructive
figure. This might be seen as a covert plea for a movement to a new
iconography for the queen as the old Petrarchan certainties became less
and less appropriate to the queen's age and responsibilities. Although Sir
Philip Sidney's dose identification with Petrarchanism may have played a
role in leading the Countess of Pembroke towards this text, the evidence
also points to its potential for political criticism and its affinity with a Prot-
estant interpretation of death and eternity.
Far from embroiling the women writers who deployed them in contro-
versy and damage to their reputations, Petrarchan poetics seem to have
been infinitely adaptable to particular circumstances. It should be remem-
bered that Petrarch's Canzoniere, as opposed to the wide range of poems
descended from them, were concerned with notions of virtue and divinity
as well as with desire and erotic longing. Particularly with translations,
women often seem to have interpreted Petrarchan poetry in terms of the
representation of female virtue, rather than viewing it as concerned with
desire, hence some switching or unfixing of the subject position is often at
work. Significantly, however, most of these translations or dose imitations
were circulated in manuscript - less, I think, because of concerns about
reputation, but because the translation of lyric poetry, particularly secular
poetry, was very much an upper-dass, court-identified activity and there-
fore largely in opposition to the world of print. A good example of 'virtuous
Petrarchanism' is the recently discovered translations of Bess Carey.57 Like
the work of Elizabeth I, these translations of Canzoniere 146 and 215 appear
to have been undertaken as part of Elizabeth Carey's education, directed
by her tutor Henry Stanford. 58 This means that one stage in the writing
process does not lie precisely within Carey's control, and as Katherine
Duncan:Jones comments, Stanford probably thought these sonnets particu-
larly suitable for his pupil: 'Stanford probably felt that they were doubly
appropriate in functioning also as mirrors or self-portraits of their young
translator.'59 This is not a trivial or unimportant matter, however, because
it suggests the complexities attendant upon emergent ideas of textual owner-
ship in this period, which in turn has a bearing upon the degree to which
gender can be read into texts. Equally, there is no real reason to suggest
that Carey would have done anything other than accept the representations
of female selfhood she found before her in Petrarch's poems - for her to be
a 'resisting reader' or to 'rewrite the Renaissance' there would have to be
concepts of authorship and ownership that could allow her to think of
Petrarch as a 'male' author and herself as a 'female' author. In addition, the

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mirroring of the self to be found in the text suggests a poetic process not
that far removed from humanist interventions, whereby engagement with
the text (whether reading, translation or imitation) irnplied the articulation
of subjectivity in relation to that text. Duncan:Jones suggests, appositely,
that Carey seems to have been rather more interested in the Anglicisation
of Petrarch's writings than in the complexities and subtleties of his poetics,
and that she interpreted the poems through the lens of her Protestant
faith. 60 Rather than either accepting or rejecting the erotic dynamics of
Petrarchanism, Bess Carey counters the tradition with interpretations which
alter the terms of Petrarch's poetry - not only does she undertake her
translation in a spirit of naturalisation (both of style and content), but she
reads her texts in accordance with her status, contingent upon, but not
identical with her sex. Laura, in Carey's rendition of sonnet 180, is made to
represent Bess as 'the perfect aristocratic bride'.61 Like other women writers
and translators we have looked at, he re the display of female learning can
be seen to have cultural currency and an exchange-value, in much the same
way as it does for men; however, it is the end to which such learning is
generally directed that marks the key difference between the writing of the
two sexes. In other words, it is a question of function rather than form.

Lady Mary Wroth and the dynamics of disclosure

The precise functions ofthe poetic writings ofLady Mary Wroth are obscure
and open to interpretation, but they clearly do not fall into the category
of 'virtuous rewritings' - at least not in the sense suggested by Carey's dir-
ected translations. Wroth's poetic writings are certainly revisionary in as far
as she exposes and reveals a problematic intersection between the models
she selects to imitate and her positioning within those models as poet and
speaker, but the degree to which they are consciously feminist in any mod-
ern sense must remain open to question. Wroth was deeply conscious of
the social status (and its fragility) bequeathed to her as a consequence of
her sex, mainly because she had been on the receiving end of so me of its
less appealing aspects, but her concern in her writing remains with the
romance questions of ideal and real, love, fidelity, betrayal, despair. In
short, with all of the questions that are raised by the body of Sir Philip
Sidney's work, but with some telling differences of stress and emphasis
contingent not only on the writer's sex, but on historical period, court
culture and social position. Wroth is rightly viewed by most critics as a
belated Sidneian imitator, whose diction and generic choices are ineluct-
ably the product of her familial environment. Many of the same critics find

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Wroth's stylistic dependency rather troubling (if useful canon-fodder), pre-

cisely because literary dependency has been too easily elided with the social
position of women at this time. In her redeployment of Sidneian tropes and
conventions (for which she had an available male model in her father
Robert) Wroth is not so much capitulating to her male relatives, but cap-
italising upon them and their heritage - like her aunt, the Countess of
Pembroke, Wroth was highly conscious of the 'draw' of the Sidney name,
even in 1621, and it is interesting to note that the Countesse qf Mountgomeries
Urania was entered into the Stationers' Register in July 1621 shordy after
the Countess of Pembroke's death in late May of the same year. Given the
authoritative precedents within her own family, it is possible that Mary
Wroth thought that her Sidney heritage would offset any opprobrium
attaching either to her own person or to the matters and persons treated in
her text. 62 It is also possib1e that she expected her readers not to make direct
and personalised connections between her fiction and the facts of her life, in
the same way that the Sidney writings she would have been familiar with use
the device of the persona and the distinction between art and life in complex
and often contradictory ways.Just as no serious reader ofSidney's Astrophil and
Stella would unproblematically conflate the man and his poetic counterpart,
even if the text would permit it, similarly the fact that we know more than
is usual of Mary Wroth's eventfullife should not tempt us into viewing her
writings as litde more than a biographical palimpsest - she deals playfully
and intelligendy with the publiclprivate boundary and is acutely conscious
of the liberty and limitations that the poetic medium brings. If anything, she
is trying to conceal her life/ self in literary puzzles and generic games.
The question of the poetic persona or voicing has a bearing on all aspects
of Wroth's wide-ranging poetic writings. Wroth uses a variety of speakers,
many of whom echo and refract aspects of her own experience, drawing
upon a variety of poetic models - the complaint, the sonnet sequence,
pastorals, dialogues, Heroidian verse, and so on - making Wroth the most
virtuoso of Renaissance women poets, only paralleled in formal range by
her au nt. As the work of J eff Masten has conclusively demonstrated, and
the contexts surrounding the publication of Wroth's work render indisput-
able, questions relating to textuality and circulation are crucial to the ways
in which we might interpret Wroth's poetic writings. 63 Although Masten
demonstrates convincingly that Wroth's sonnets must be read in relation to
the bibliographical evidence relating to their publication and circulation
(both in manuscript and print), he infers that the sonnet sequence's speaker
can be unproblematically identified with Pamphilia, and, by extension,
with a shadowy Wroth figure that Pamphilia is assumed to represent. 64 To
a degree, without this assumption, the encoded anxieties about exposure
and circulation make litde sense unless they are assumed to be a property

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of women writers in general. Underlying much of this commentary is an

attempt to determine the intentionality of the print version of Urania,
reflecting a deeply held modern notion about the apparent incompatibility
of women and print, or the over-identification between gendered sphere and
types of publication. 65 Many Renaissance writers circulated their work both
in print and in manuscript and the boundary between the two is fluid and
permeable. The notion that Wroth's reputation was at stake is based upon
a range of contemporary comments, particularly from John Chamberlain
and Edward, Lord Denny. These interventions need to be read carefully:
do they use Wroth's sex as a convenient target because of fears of damage
to their own reputations or those of their friends, or is it her sex which is the
issue taut court?
In the absence of conclusive supporting evidence, questions surrounding
the publication of the Urania must remain speculative, although the text's
preoccupation with the consequences ~ emotional, interpretive and per-
sonal ~ of writing and its circulation suggest that if the publication of the
Urania was willed, Wroth was well aware of the conditions which might
affect its reception. 66 However, one key fact needs to be considered when
reading 'Pamphilia to Amphilanthus', which is that the sonnet sequence,
along with alt ofWroth's poems, is designed to be read within the interpret-
ive contexts, characterological and otherwise, created for it by the Urania
itself. Unlike Sidney's Astrophil to Stelta, Wroth's sequence is not designed to
be free-standing, or at least not in its printed version: it may not even be a
consciously conceived sequence of sonnets, but rather a collection of loosely
grouped poems which could easily be fitted under Wroth's invented
'Pamphilia' persona for the purposes ofher romance. 67 It is directed by one
character with a predetermined personality to another, in order to con-
vey an awkward combination of revelation and concealment of feeling. In
effect, the conventions of the sonnet sequence, like many poetic exchanges
in the Urania, substitute for silence, for adesire which cannot be articulated
within the codes bequeathed by the romance genre, as well as by Wroth's
wryly observed perception throughout the romance that achaste and virtu-
ous heroine cannot be seen to chase her man. Jeff Masten's arguments are
meticulous and partially convincing but at tirnes the larger picture remains
out of focus. He writes

[tJhe sonnets stage a movement which is relentlessly private, withdrawing

into an interiorized space; they foreground a refusal to speak in the public,
exhibitionist voice of traditional Petrarchan discourse; in the context of the
published portion of Urania they articulate a women's resolute constancy,
self-sovereignty, and unwillingness to circulate among men; they gesture
68
toward a subject under self-contro1.

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

My questions would be 'why are they publicly circulated' and 'what is the
relationship (or lack of it) between the speaker of the sonnets and Wroth as
a writer?' Why is a withdrawal from circulation predicated on the speaker's
gender?69 We should not ass urne them to be continuous, nor should we
automatically read Wroth's heroine as a cultural symptom just because she
happens to be the only evidence to hand. 70
Masten's argument suggests that Wroth's poetry is essentially private
poetry which fails to circulate (and therefore to signify?) despite its publica-
tion and that the blank spaces of subjectivity in the poems represent a
particular cultural moment, 'clear[ing] aspace for a nascent subject without
articulating what it is that fills that emergent private space'.71 He hints that
Petrarchan discourse presents particular difficulties for fimale subjectivity,
rather than difficulties for subjectivity per se. The conflictual aspect of Pamphilia
to Amphilanthus would appear to be the tension between convention and
individuality, and the negotiation of the relationship between speaker and
voice. While it does not diminish Wroth's undertaking in confronting rela-
tionships between gender, circulation and interpretation, it is worth raising
the degree to which Urania (and hence the sonnet sequence) is an entirely
serious text. Like its immediate predecessor, the Arcadia, Wroth's romance is
full of wit and comedy, including the depiction of her heroine Pamphilia,
with her ludicrous adherence to the uncaring and careless Amphilanthus.
She is a stock romance figure, with all of the mock-exaggeration that this
suggests. In places, Urania falls into the parody of the very conventions
that support it and structure it, and this extends, I believe, to the sonnet
sequence authored by Pamphilia. It is not that it is to be dismissed, but rather
that its conventions are to be seen as empty, outmoded and ripe for out-
troping. Paradoxically, it is also an entirely appropriate part of Pamphilia's
armoury as a lover who cannot articulate either her desire, or its object,
directly. This, just as much as the inexpressible nature of female subject-
ivity, may explain the sonnet sequence's frequent 'withdrawal into an
interiorized corporeal space' and its apparent juxtaposition of private and
public resulting in a rejection of 'the rhetorical trappings and metaphorical
suites of male Petrarchan discourse'.72 Notions of the falsity of Petrarchan
convention can be found in al1 but the most pedestrian ofRenaissance sonnet
sequences and surely cannot be claimed as a purely female phenomenon:

Wroth transfonns seemingly ungendered signs into markers of her gender-

difference from the tradition in/ against which she writes; moreover, in
each case she displaces public, male exhibition with a discourse seeking to
register a private authenticity of feeling. 73

What needs to be considered is the context within which the sonnets are
created and to what end they are revealed to the reader.

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 POETRY, POLITICS AND GEN DER

The sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus is found in two versions,

one in manuscript and the more familiar sequentially numbered text found
at the end of Urania, separately paginated. There are some differences
between the two texts which suggests that Wroth undertook so me deliberate
alterations in preparing the sonnet sequence for publication. 74 In other words,
the poems, however 'personal' in origin, were fashioned into a co her-
ent sequence which Wroth deemed decorous and fitting for her heroine
Pamphilia. Hence, the progression from manuscript to print itself is indicat-
ive of the relationships between Wroth and her text, and between voice
and text, which are neither simple nor unidirectional. The invented per-
sona or mask of Pamphilia - herself heavily invested in strategies of indirec-
tion, textual playfulness and concealment - has a connection to Wroth's
own life that is by no me ans clear, as the biographical is simultaneously
asserted and denied. The origin and purpose of the sonnet sequence is
explained in Urania, or at least given a fictional rationale; there is no reason
to think that the series of sonnets shown to Amphilanthus by Pamphilia in
Book II differs from that revealed to the reader at the end of the romance,
but it is important to recognise that the sonnet sequence predates the ex-
plained functions provided in Urania. 75 At the very least, the scene in Book II
of Urania imposes a degree of coherence upon the disparate groups of poems
which predate the sonnet sequence; in effect, this scene constructs a fiction
of authorship which is then given actual articulation and realisation in
the shape of the sonnet sequence at the end of the text. But the key factor
is that Wroth, as author, creales a fiction of authorship for her invented
character, rather than for herself. And if we follow Michel Foucault's pro-
position that texts in some sense demand authors, then the loosely ordered
sequence(s) of poems found in the Folger manuscript necessitate the con-
struction of an author figure who can unifY them and render them orderly
and coherent. 76 It does not follow that the author figure is identical to the
writer of the text.
Pamphilia is the author figure, whose concerns, interests and difficulties
have been used, rightly, by critics to explicate the notable features of the
sequence - its concern with light and dark, its failure to name its object of
desire, its evasion of the conventional Petrarchan blazon. Where such read-
ings have missed the mark, however, is in their equation of Pamphilia and
Wroth. The sequence's speaker is a persona constructed by Pamphilia who
is herself a fictional character. In the same way that the sonnets seem to
gesture at the outlines of a selflacking subjectivity, so too the text as a whole
gestures towards an author figure who remains irritatingly non-specific.
The failure of the sonnet sequence to disclose either the speaker or her
object of desire is perfectly explicable within the context of the romance -
the reader knows more than enough about the two parties, and the displayed

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

text is intended to coinmunicate Pamphilia's desire without actually seem-

ing to do so.
Pamphilia as an object is remarkably absent from the sonnet sequence, but
just because we cannot find there the images and representations of feminin-
ity to which we have become accustomed does not mean, as Masten implies,
that female subjectivity cannot be written or circulated. For Pamphilia, her
self and its associated desires dearly exist, but the strategy most likely to
'succeed' in her tricky negotiations to win over Amphilanthus is one which
encourages hirn to take the initiative and to act out Pamphilia's desire in
acceding to her will. Unfortunately, Pamphilia's strategy of indirection is
unsuccessful - a fact which has a bearing on the reader's understanding of
Amphilanthus' character. At the same time, the suggestion ofthe outlines of
an unfulfilled desire permits Pamphilia to sustain her constancy and reputa-
tion, not least by the illusion that the sonnet sequence is only shown to
Amphilanthus. These contextual factors need to be taken into account when
trying to decipher or comprehend the slippery surface of Wroth's poems.
Feminist critics have correctly identified the key features of Pamphilia
to Amphilanthus. Its conventions derive in a more or less direct line from
the English Petrarchan tradition typified by the work of Wroth's unde,
Sir Philip Sidney, but with some key deviations which have usually been
attributed to the necessary difference introduced by the speaker's gender
and the author's biography. The sequence tends to dwell upon loss and
longing, with a particular investment in the language of night and day,
dark and light, used to image the speaker's despair and powerlessness. To
suggest that this amounts to the silencing of the female speaker is misleading,
however, for what is consistently articulated, both overtly and covertly,
is the in ability to speak desire directly, or to address the beloved. The
sequence avoids any mention, punning or otherwise, of the object of affec-
tion, although, as we have already noted, the referent is abundantly dear
within the interpretive context that Wroth provides. At the same time as the
speaker avoids the objectification of the beloved, it is also true that she
avoids providing any objectification ofher self, preferring to redirect expres-
sion through aseries of veiling and contradictory metaphors. The paradox,
for example, deployed in order to be rejected by the English Petrarchans,
takes on new significance in this interpretive context. Rather than being an
empty convention (though, of course, it is that too) it represents graphically
the speaker's dilemma and the pain of the absence of love:

Can pleasing sight, miifOrtune ever bring?

Can firme desire a painifull torment try?
Can winning l!Yes prave to the hart a sting?
Or can sweet lips in treason hidden ly?77

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 POETRY, POLITICS AND GEN DER

Rather than the objectification of body parts, here we find the translation of
conventions into abstractions, in particular, a love conducted through the
slippery language of looks and glances which constantly threaten miscon-
struction or adescent into oblivion: 'The Sun most pleasing blinds the
strongest eyel If too much look'd on, breaking the sights string' (P5, 5-6).
In Pamphilia to Amphilanthus Cupid is not a cunning co-conspirator, but a
ho stile embodiment of the paradoxes and trials of love, as his blindness
encapsulates the arbitrary hopelessness of the speaker's thwarted desire
(P50). The withdrawal of words from circulation is only partly an attempt
on the part of the speaker to have her cake and eat it, it is also framed very
much within romance conventions for lovers (male and female), and repres-
ents despair as much as it does the apparent paradox of female authorship:

7he barck my booke shall bee

Wher day[y I will wright
7his tale qf haples mee
True slave to fortunes spight;
(P7,33-6)

Paradox, taken to logical extremes, becomes meaningless, and Wroth seems

quite conscious of the absurdities of her chosen discourse. For example, she
undermines the apparent purpose of the poems using contradiction, again
suggesting the futility of her undertaking: 'I seeke for some smale ease
by lines, which boughtl Increase the paine; griefe is nott cur'd by art.'
(P9, 3-4).
The audience suggested for the poems creates the impression of a text
which is constantly consuming itself, redacting all of its conflicts into an
unstable self which cannot reconcile (or contain) all of these contrary
impulses. The very images and ideas which are intended to bring relief
or comfort constantly fail the speaker - far from subverting desire into
culturally acceptable constancy, the only discourse that does not alter or
metamorphose is undirected desire itself:

Cloy'd with the torments qf a tedious night

I wishfor day; which come, I hopefor joy:
When cross I finde new tortures to destroy
A{y woe-kil'd hart, first hurt by mischitfs might.
(Pl3, 1-4)

While these nihilistic and destructive expressions are often attributed to

(variously) Wroth's thwarted love or the lack of a female subjectivity at this
period, such self-consumption and such frustration with the capacity of
language to convey thought and feeling is also a feature of male-authored

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

sonnet sequences of this period. The difficulty is that the collectivity of the
linguistic medium, together with the universalising tendencies of convention,
cannot take account of the specifically individualistic, even egotistic, feelings
of the thwarted lover. This tension is a commonplace oflove poetry, and it
can produce a seemingly endless attempt to delineate a specific space for
the speaker that can never quite be filled; the absence of an unarticulated
part of the self is as much a feature of Wroth's poetry as is the absence (or
indifference, which amounts to much the same thing) of her beloved. This
crisis of subjectivity is encapsulated in the speaker's consistently contradict-
ory desires and impulses, 'From contraries I seeke to runn Ay mee;! Butt
contraries I can nott shunn Ay mee;' (P14, 9-10).
The self which is delineated in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus is gestured at
rather than captured and is produced by conventional discourses and Wroth's
ability to open up the fissures within what she has inherited. While the
speaker often presents herself in rather aggrandising tones as a martyr to
love (P15) there is also some resistance to passivity, attempts to master the
self, to reorder its contradictions: 'Am I thus conquer'd? have I lost the
powers/ That to withstand, whichjoy's to ruin mee?/ Must I bee still while
itt my strength devowres/ And captive leads mee prisoner, bound, unfree?'
(P16, 1-4). The 'self' always appears as supplemental, not coterminous with
inherited discourses, as the frequent deployment of the opposition between
inside and outside suggests ('painted outsids which foule inward bee' (P17,
4)). These various elements can be seen in Sonnet 21 (P24), 'When last I
saw thee, I did nott thee see'. The sonnet opens with a convention which is
then undermined, suggesting that what is posited as 'other' (the beloved)
actually exists in the realm of the self: 'Itt was thine Image, which in my
thought lay/ Soe lively figur'd' (2-3). The standard Petrarchan paradox of
absence/presence is undone as the external beloved is brought into the
inner space, where, incidentally, the image can be controlled and manip-
ulated as a means to enhance, not undermine, the speaker's reputation,
'Soe lively figur'd, as noe times delay/ Could suffer mee in hart to parted bee;'
(3-4). Sleep is welcomed because it prevents any interruption to constancy:

... sleepe soe Javourable is to mee,

As nott to lett tlry lov'd remembrance stray,
Least that I waking might have cause to say
Ther was one minute flund to flrgett thee;
(5-8)

Not only is the dream image a way of maintaining constancy and control, it
also permits the poet to reflect upon the problematics of her medium and
its lack of capacity to express her feelings - in many ways a useful veil or

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 POETRY, POLITICS AND GENDER

screen for her reputation as desire is endlessly directed inwards out of sight
and beyond articulation.
Despite the various strategies of concealment in the sequence, neverthe-
less the speaker's dilemma is forcefully communicated to the reader through
the rejection of the falsity and hypocrisy of standard Petrarchan images.
Pamphilia and Amphilanthus returns frequently to the image of the eye as the
embodiment of the secret language of looks, glances and desires which
forms the speaker's self-selected mode of communication, the 'spies/ Ofmy
desires' (P62, 2-3). The expression of desire, though, is a precarious matter
which frequently threatens self-betrayal: 'Take heed mine eyes, how you
your lookes doe cast/ Least they beetray my harts most secrett thought'
(P39, 1-2). The implied separation between the speaker and her eyes, indic-
ated by the pronoun shifts, suggests a careful but unsustainable opposition
between the self and the discourse it utters; by splitting off a notional hidden
self from the one that others construct, Wroth creates a compensatory fiction:

Ihen looke, and looke with joye flr conquest wunn

01 those that search'd your hurt in double kinde;
Soe you kept safe, lett thern themselves looke blinde
Watch, gaze, and marke till they to madnes runn.
(P39, 9-12)

The risk here is the fragmentation, and ultimately the loss of the self,
which can only be sustained through the constructed persona that provides
the origin of the sequence. However, the figuration of the withdrawal of
love into an unfathomable interior space brings the speaker right back to
the standard conceits of Petrarchanism. In Sonnet 36 (P4l) the speaker is
asserted as a loving subject, but in a way which displaces her agency: 'How
weH poore hart thou wittnes canst I love,! How oft my griefe hath made
thee shed forth teares/ Drops of thy deerest blood' (P4l, 1-3). The heart
becomes the writing subject, behind which must lie an invisible agent, and
the use of the passive voice contributes further to this displacement. Rather
than the subject being banished beyond the contours of verbalisation, it is
seen to exist in the gap between excessive speech and silence:

Yett is itt sqyd that sure love can nott bee

JiIlher soe small showe rif passion is descrid,
JiIlhen thy chiqe paine is that I must itt hide
From all save only one who showld itt see.
For know more passion in my hart doth move
Ihen in a million that make show rif love.
(P41,9-14)

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

The surface is difficult to decode because of the shifting referents of the

pronouns: the 'thy' is presumably the he art, so that the dialogue of love
becomes a constant internal battle between competing social and emotional
imperatives. Nevertheless, by indirection, the speaker's passion finds condi-
tional expression in conventional Petrarchan terms: this is not so much
concealment as generic and discursive encoding. Rather than Pamphilia
not being able to utter her love or selfhood through the supposedly mascu-
line discourse of Petrarchanism, it seems to entrap her, repeatedly returning
just at the point at which she threatens to escape it.
Like various moments in Urania as a whole, the repeated suggestion of
withdrawal is a specific strategy, designed to be seen and read. One aspect
of this is clearly the masking effect of the layered use of a fictive persona
with a less than transparent relationship to the author figure, itself a con-
vention of Petrarchan lyric poetry. As with many other works in this vein,
Pamphilia to Amphilanthus consistendy conveys its key effects through modula-
tions worked upon the tropes of Petrarchanism, of which the withdrawal
from public life and activity is but one:

T11hat pleasure can a bannish'd creature have

In alt the pastimes that invented arr
By witt or leaming, absence making warr
Against alt peace that mcry abiding crave;
(P44,1-4)

The articulation of feeling in terms of inwardness, hiddenness and conceal-

me nt is not so much a struggle with the terms of speech or subjectivity, but
a convention of secular lyric which has particular power and valency for a
female speaker. In short, it is a question of reception, which Wroth, inter-
estingly, anticipates and works into her writings. Arguably, this struggle
with the terms in which female subjectivity can be expressed is coterminous
with the existence of that subjectivity, however illusory it may ultimately be.
What the poems say at the denotative level is frequendy at odds with what
they signify or symbolise - one reason why paradox is so important to this
particular form of lyric expression. At the point that the speaker most
clearly signals her withdrawal from circulation she also most emphatically
asserts herself as a loving subject whose passion marks her constancy as
a servant of love: 'Butt silendy I beare my greatest lossl Who's us'd to
sorrow, griefe will nott destroy' (P45, 3-4). But of course, the self-conscious
allusion to writing, however negatively expressed, only draws attention to
the text's written status and asserts that it demands to be read in the context
of a tradition which it attempts to outdo:

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 POETRY. POllTICS AND GEN DER

Nor can I as those pleasant witts injl!Ji

A1Y owne fram'd words, which I account the dross
01 purer thoughts, or recken them as moss
While thry (witt siek) them selves to breath impll!Ji.
(P45,5-8)

The opposition here, as so often, is between empty phrase-making and

sincerity of expression, but the verse also veers between inarticulacy and a
bewildering verbal excess which demands an outlet. This is not a conceal-
me nt or denial of speech or selfhood, but an attempt to recover it from
dilution and over-familiarity.
The contradictions in the sonnets, and the overwhelming sense of suffoca-
tion and enclosure, can be clearly seen in many of Wroth's poems, '0 in
how strang a cage ame I kept in?' (P66, 11), both in syntactical contortion
and in the choice of imagery, 'In this strang labourinth how shall I turne?'
(P77, 1). Sustained analysis of virtually any poem yields similar results.
'When I beeheld the Image of my deere' (P98), for example, illustrates the
kinds of contradictions and discontinuities I have suggested above. Here,
the speaker is distanced from her beloved, mediating her responses through
his 'Image'. Even though it is an image, paradoxical tensions in relation to
it quickly emerge: 'Fear, and desire did inwardly contend;/ Feare to bee
mark'd, desire to drawe still neere' (3-4). The hiddenness ofthese feelings is
belied by their display but they hold one another in check through the
abstract struggle between them. Subtly, the speaker hints at an earlier prox-
imity or intimacy, 'desire to drawe still neere' which has been overcome by
the threat of display, the 'feare to bee mark'd'. This opposition forms the
interpretive crux of the poem, as the remainder is an attempt to find a
form of expression which cannot be 'mark'd'. One strategy by which this
is achieved is through the fragmentation of the speaker's self, a kind of
abstracted, inwardly directed psychological bla;;.on: 'And in my soule a speritt
wowld apeer,! Which boldnes waranted, and did pretend/ To bee my
genius' (5-7). It is unclear quite what distinction is being drawn between
'soule' and 'speritt', and this 'genius' is an illusion, but all of them distance
agency from the speaker. The role of 'genius' as 'the arch-priest of the
Court ofLove' (Roberts, n., 1. 7) also suggests the speaker's scepticism towards
the conventional expressions of love, and the self is represented as the cen-
sor of amatory action: 'I durst nott lend/ My eyes in trust wher others
seemed soe cleere' (7-8). The vague but powerful 'danger' that pervades
the poem is not identified as an external agent as it is in a poem like Wyatt's
'They flee from me', but a threat which is posed to the self from within,
'Then did I search from whence this danger rose,! If such unworthynes in
mee did rest' (9-10), which presupposes a self as a point of origin, however

223
 THE POLlTlCS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRlTING

diffuse it may be in its articulation. The poem as a whole enacts a dynamic

typical ofWroth's sonnets, namely an internalisation of an external 'Image'
so that it displaces the self to which it is opposed and becomes an internal
property: 'Yett in my hart unseene of jealous eye/ The truer Image shall in
triumph lye' (13-14). In effect it is an act of possession, the aggressive
action of a self which consumes and appropriates its others. This is a con-
cealment which draws attention to itself, a process of withdrawal which is
designed to be seen and circulated.
Although Wroth's sonnet sequence has been to the fore in critics' assess-
ments of her work, parcly because it affords a unique opportunity to attempt
comparative study of male and female responses to Petrarchan discourse,
there is much to be learned from her refraction of many of the same
themes and ideas in the poems which are dispersed throughout the body
of the Urania. These poems range more broadly across a variety of
forms and themes, but share certain characteristics with the sonnet
sequence, which of course too is in a sense a Urania poem. The poems
interspersed with the pro se narrative owe their structural model to Sidney's
Arcadia, and like them represent a form of poetic competition between the
speakers which simultaneously displays the author's skill and the recurrent
concerns of the characters. In one sense, they act as a unifying thematic
device. Yet they also enable aseries of explorations of mode, theme and
voice, through a range of different personas who have a more tenuous
connection with the author figure than Pamphilia herself does. In ways
which parallel the sonnet sequence, we find Wroth writing both against and
within prevalent poetic traditions, particularly Sidneian ones. The opening
poem in Urania, for example, writes in the spaces of Sir Philip Sidney's
roman ce , by giving a voice to a character whose presence in the Arcadia is
minimal, but thereby acknowledging her generic and stylistic debt while
arguably making a claim to authority. Significancly, Urania's role as the
embodiment of Sidneian echo is soon sidelined within Wroth's romance
itself. 78 If there can be said to be a distinccly feminine sensibility in early
modern women's poetry, it is in Wroth's poems that one might identify it,
precisely because what she does he re is to create a fictional community
of lovers and poets, male and female, who share a common class and cul-
ture, and a common experience of love and marriage which shapes their
assumptions. While the various scenarios in the romance differ in the
arrangement of their details, the structuring events and ideas are the same:
constancy is a sign of true love, marriage rarely delivers happiness, the true
lover is destined to be thwarted. However, it would be misleading to see the
various voices woven into the narrative as denoting a harmonious commun-
ity of selfless women. By adopting Sir Philip Sidney's model of the poetic
competition, Wroth strongly implies that her community of women are

224
 POETRY. POLITICS AND GEN DER

deeply competitive, and that it is as much the continual scrutiny of their

peers as it is the censure of husbands, lovers or fathers, that maintains the
social values and morals which structure their experience. In other words,
Wroth's texts reveal the extent to which women themselves collude in and
manipulate the system which grants them their power.
The series of experiments in voice which characterise the Urania poems
mean that it is apparent that the combinations of egoism, suffering and
withdrawal that we found in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus cannot be asserted as
an exclusively female property. The particular discourse oflove that Wroth
deploys, whether voiced by men or women, seems to suggest that it is the
condition of love itself, conducted in the highly charged and stylised context
of the courtly romance, that produces qualities too readily assigned by
critics to the 'femininity' of author/persona. The poem written by Dorolindus
gives some indication of this; he is crossed in love and retires to an isolated
mound to lament his love out of the hearing of others. He too is a slave to
love, 'a vassall to his might' (U9, 3) and not in control of his own destiny, 'a
poore subject to curst changings spite' (4). His thoughts and desires are
directed inwards, into the void marked 'solitarines' (1) and his love (subject
and object) is sealed up and hidden from view:

A Love, which living, Lives as dead to me,

As hol) reLiques which in boxes be,
PLac'd in a ehest, that overthrowes TI?)! joy,
Shut up in change, which more then pLagues destroy.
(7-10)

Using paradox his words run back and forth between literal and figurative
signification. Love undoes the self while presupposing a self to be undone.
Again and again in these poems signs of love stand in for love itself and are
subject to erasure and misconstruction, disappearing into textualised spaces
where they cannot be recovered:

Once sacrific'd, but ashes can remaine,

Which in an Ivory box of truth inclose
7he Innocenry whence my ruines flowes,
Accept them as thine, 'tis achast Loves gaine.
(UJ 5, 17-20)

The tension between singularity and collectivity in the expression of love is

given particular edge by Wroth's textual games with ideas of circulation.
Some poems are uttered in solitude, some to an audience; some are pre-
sen ted as autonomous compositions, others as songs recalled, performed or

225
 THE rOLlTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

repeated. 79 If these poems are eoneerned with subjeetivity, it is far from

being straightforwardly gendered, nor is it selfhood in a purely individual-
ised sense. In this light, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus is less about a erisis of
female subjeetivity than it is an assertion of its fietional author's allegianee
to the codes of love whieh strueture the rest of the romanee.
The enaetment of a withdrawal from eireulation whieh is an assertion of
loyalty, eonstaney and love, together with a self-conscious engagement with
literary traditions that have positioned women in partieular ways, is a reeur-
rent feature of those Urania poems voieed by women. Here, however, as
is fitting for the representation of a variety of speakers, the poems do not
adhere so single-mindedly to one diseourse as they had in Pamphilia to
Amphilanthus. The poems here are frequently substitutes for more intimate
(and thus ineriminating) poems of unrequited or soeially unsanetioned love
- in effeet they are palimpsests for a more untrammelled form of expression
towards whieh they gesture every bit as mueh as they suggest a form of
selfhood whieh has yet to find artieulation. For example, the Queen of
Hungary, Melasinda, writes a poem to eommemorate the burning of a
letter from her suitor, and he re it is his words whieh are taken out of
eirculation and she who is the guardian of their memory, 'Yet shall your
memory out-drive/ These paines wherein I mourne' (U21, 20-1). By burn-
ing the letter and retaining the ashes, Melasinda remains true to a purer
love, not only purged by fire, but immune to the misconstruetions and
eontaminations of others:

rau reliques qfpure love

Ta sacred keepe with me remoove,
Purg'd by this jire ftom harme, and jealous feare,
Ta live with me both chaste and cleare:
(22-5)

In effeet, the queen makes Ollorandus her own, eollapsing the distinetion of
self and other upon whieh unfu1filled love depends. 80
Wroth's poetry is diffieult either to summarise or to plaee. It is clearly the
product of Wroth's own milieu, but it stands apart from the mainstream of
the Sidneian tradition. This is not just a matter of belatedness, nor purely
and simply one of gender, but rather the result of a unique eombination of
eireumstanees. The poems' emphasis upon seereey and eoneealment are
intended to refteet the eoneerns and interests of their fietional speakers, but
they are also indebted to the uniquely complex eonditions in whieh Wroth
herself wrote and interpreted the diseourses that she had inherited. Women
writers' eneounters with Petrarehan traditions refteet a degree of anxiety
regarding the oecupation of a speaking position whieh is culturally eoded as

226
 POETRY, POLITICS AND GEN DER

male, but their attempts to negotiate their way through a highly conventional
discourse which appears to make individualistic claims are also consonant
with the struggles with predecessors which mark the work of male writers.

Notes

Shakespeare, The Sonnets, ed. H.E. Rollins, 2 vols (Philadelphia:J.B. Lippincott

& Co., 1944), 1.186.
2 These terms are used and explained by Ernst CUftius, European Literature
and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series XXXVI
(Princeton: Prineeton University Press, 1953, 1983), 159-62, 162-5.
3 Riehard A. Lanham, Motives rif Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 1.
4 See eh. 1, 23-4.
5 Ben Jonson, Timber, or Discoveries, in J.E. Spingarn (ed.), Critical Essays rif the
Seventeenth Century, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 1:21. See also
eh. 1,27-8, on Puttenham's equation ofwomen and poetic ornament.
6 See Katherine Eisaman Maus, 'A womb of his own: male Renaissance poets
in the female body', in Sexuality and Gender in Ear[y Modem Europe: Institutions,
Texts, Images, ed.James Grantharn Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993), 266-88.
7 This discussion draws loosely on Eve Sedgwiek's coneept of 'homosociality'
advaneed in her book, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
8 The Penguin Book rif Renaissance Verse 1509-1659, seleeted and introduced by
David Norbrook, edited by H.R. Woudhuysen (London: Allen Lane, 1992),
100-1.
9 Wendy Wall, The Imprint rifGender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renais-
sance (Ithaea: Cornell University Press, 1993), 282.
10 For a fuller discussion of this point see my 'Introduetion' and '''Formd into
words by YOUf divided lips": women, rhetoric and the Ovidian tradition' both
in 'This Double Voice': Gendered Writing in Ear[y Modem England, ed. Danielle
Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 1-15,61-87.
11 'To Pamphilia from the father-in-law of Seralius', in The Poems rif Lady Mary
Wroth, ed. Josephine A. Roberts (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1983),32, 1-4.
12 The Norton Anthology rif Literature by Women, ed. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan
Gubar, 2nd edn (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996),34-40.

227
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

13 There are, of course, exceptions: Paul A. Marquis, 'Oppositional ideologies of

gender in Isabella Whitney's Copy rf a Letter', Modem Language Review 90 (1995):
314-24; Ilona Bell, 'Women in the lyric dialogue of courtship: Whitney's
Admonition to al yong Gentilwomen and Donne's 'The Legacie', in Representing
Women in Renaissance England, ed. Claude Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth
(Co1umbia: University ofMissouri Press, 1997), 76-92 and Patricia Phillippy,
'The maid's lawfu11iberty: service, the househo1d, and "Mother B" in Isabella
Whitney's A Sweet Nosgay', Modem Philology 95 (1997-8): 439-62.
14 Lanyer's rise to prominenee, of course, was as the missing candidate for
Shakespeare's 'dark lady', a process discussed by Loma Hutson, 'Why the
1ady's eyes are nothing 1ike the sun', in Women, Texts and Histories 1575-1760,
ed. Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss (London: Roudedge, 1992), 13-38.
15 Wall, Imprint rfGender, 231.
16 See Loma Hutson, The Usurer's Daughter: Male Friendship and Fictions rfWoman in
Sixteenth-Century England (London: Roudedge, 1994).
17 I[sabella]. W[hitney]., The Copy rf a letter, lately written in meeter, by a yonge
Gentilwoman: to her unconstant Lover (London, 1567), tide-page. For a reeent
edition, see Danielle Clarke (ed.), Three Renaissance Women Poets: Isabella Whitnry,
Mary Sidnry, Aemilia Lanyer (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001).
18 See C1arke, "'Formd into words" " 61-87.
19 See Loma Hutson, 'The "double voiee" ofRenaissanee equity and the literary
voiees of women', in 'This Double Voice', ed. Clarke and C1arke, 142-63.
20 See C1arke, "'Formd into words" '.
21 The Copy, Av.
22 Marquis, 'Oppositiona1 ideologies' is one of the few erities who treats A Copy
rf a letter as a volume.
23 Elizabeth A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modem England: Honour, Sex and Marriage
(London: Addion Wes1ey Longman, 1999), 58-67.
24 See eh. 2 for more on this point.
25 Her tide may have eome fromJohn Symon's A pleasant posie, or sweete nosegay rf
fragrant smellyngfiowers: gatheredfrom the Bible (1572).
26 A Sweet Nosgay (London, 1573), A4v.
27 Lawrenee Manley, Literature and Culture in Early Modem London (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995),63-103, 125-67.
28 The Usurer's Daughter, 122-4.
29 See Sara Mendelson and Patrieia Crawford, Women in Early Modem England,
1550-1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 92-108 and Phillippy, 'The
maid's lawfulliberty', 453.

228
 POETRY, POllTICS AND GEN DER

30 Loma Hutson, 7homas Nashe in Context (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 128.
31 7he Usurer's Daughter, 127.
32 See Wall, 7he Imprint ifGender, 301.
33 7he Usurer's Daughter, 122-5.
34 Manley, Literature and Culture, Part 1, ch. 2.
35 See John Freccero, 'The fig tree and the laurel: Petrarch's poetics', in Literary
7heory / Renaissance Texts, ed. Patricia Parker and David Quint (Baitimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986),20-32.
36 See for example, Thomas Nashe's 'Choise of Valentines' andJohn Donne's
Holy Sonnets. On the former, see Danielle Clarke, 'Writing sexual fantasy in
the English Renaissance: potency, power and poetry' in Writing and Fantasy,
ed. Ceri Sullivan and Barbara White (London: Longman, 1999), 109-21.
37 See, for example, Arthur F. Marotti, "'Love is not love": Elizabethan sonnet
sequences and the social order', English Literary History 49 (1982): 396-428;
Susan Frye, Eli::;abeth I: 7he Competition fir Representation (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Carole Levin, 7he Heart and Stomach
if a King: Eli::;abeth land the Politics if Sex and Power (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsy1vania Press, 1994); Philippa Berry, 01 Chastity and Power: Eli::;abethan
Literature and the Unmarried Qyeen (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984).
38 This suggestion is made by Leicester Bradner (ed.), 7he Poems ifQyeen Eli::;abeth I
(Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1964), xiv.
39 Bradner (ed.), Poems, 14,5-7.
40 In 7he Norton Anthology, 28.
41 See on these kinds of conflations Catherine Bates, 7he Rhetoric if Courtship in
Elizabethan Language and Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992).
42 Sir Walter Ralegh, '[Fortune hath taken the away my love]', 5-8 in 7he
Penguin Book if Renaissance Verse, 100-1.
43 '[Ah silly pugge wert thou so sore afraid]', in ibid., 101, 3-4.
44 For more details see Danielle Clarke, '''Lover's songs shall turne to holy
Psalmes": Mary Sidney and the transformation of Petrarch', Modem Language
Review 92 (1997): 282-94, 283-4.
45 For a fuller discussion of panegyric in relation to E1izabeth I, see Helen
Hackett, Virgin Mother, Maiden Qyeen: Eli::;abeth land the Cult if the Virgin Mary
(London: Macmillan, 1995).
46 Margaret P. Hannay, Philip's Phoenix: Mary Sidnry, Countess if Pembroke (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 107.

229
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

47 Mary Sidney, Countess ofPembroke (trans), 1he Triumph ofDeath, in Danielle

Clarke (ed.), 1hree Renaissance Women Poets: Isabella Whitnry, Mary Sidnry and
Aemilia Lanyer (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000), 1.30-1, I.l66-7.
48 See Roy Strong, Gloriana: 1he Portraits of Elizabeth I (New York: Thames &
Hudson, 1987), 131-3.
49 See eh. 4, 49-50.
50 On eehoes of Spenser, see Clarke, '''Lover's songs"', 287-8.
51 'As the hart braieth for the rivers of water, so panteth my soule after thee,
o God' (Geneva).
52 The fact that 1he Triumph of Death is aeeompanied by versions of Psalms 51,
104 and 137 in the Petyt manuseript supports this point.
53 See Clarke, "'Lover's songs" " 290-1.
54 Some ofthese questions are addressed at greater length by Jonathan Goldberg
in 'The Countess of Pembroke's literal translation' in his Desiring Women Writ-
ing: English Renaissance Examples (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997),
114-31.
55 Ibid., 131.
56 Hannay, Philip's Phoenix, 109.
57 Texts, biography and eontext ean be found in Katherine Dunean:Jones, 'Bess
Carey's Petrareh: newly diseovered Elizabethan sonnets', Review of English
Studies, n.s. 50 (1999): 304-19.
58 Ibid., 311-12.
59 Ibid., 312.
60 Ibid., 313-14.
61 Ibid., 314.
62 See eh. 6, 239-52.
63 Jeff Masten, '''Shall I turne blabb?": eireulation, gender and subjeetivity in
Mary Wroth's Sonnets', in Reading Mary Wroth: Representing Alternatives in Early
Modem England, ed. NaomiJ. Miller and Gary Waller (Knoxville: University
of Tennessee Press, 1991), 67-87. For the reeeption of Wroth's Urania, in
partieular, see Roberts (ed.), Poems, 3-41.
64 Masten, 'Mary Wroth's Sonnets', 69.

65 Margaret Ezell, Writing Women's Literary History (Baltimore, MD:Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1993) and Goldberg, Desiring Women Writing, 3-15.

66 See eh. 6 for a fuller elaboration of this argument.

230
 POETRY, POLITICS AND GEN DER

67 For the material apsects ofthis argument, see Masten, 'Mary Wroth's sonnets',
69.
68 Ibid., 69.
69 This is a question that Masten comes elose to answering at the end of his
essay, ibid., 84-5.
70 See NaomiJ. Miller, Changing the Subject: Mary Wroth and Figurations qfGender in
Early Modem England (Lexington: University Press ofKentucky, 1996), 31f. for
an extremely well-argued example of this position. Unlike most critics, Miller
does not automatically assume that Wroth's sex must mean that she is pass-
ive within the discourse of Petrarchanism.
71 Masten, 'Mary Wroth's sonnets', 81.
72 Ibid., 73, emphasis added.
73 Ibid., 72.
74 Roberts (ed.), Poems, 62-5 details these alterations.
75 See ch. 6.
76 Michel Foucault, 'What is an author?', in Modem Criticism and 17zeory: AReader,
ed. David Lodge (London: Longman, 1988), 197-210.
77 Roberts (ed.), Poems, P5, 1-4.
78 Ibid., U1. All subsequent references are to this edition. On this poem, see
Maureen Quilligan, 'The constant subject: instability and authority in Wroth's
Urania poems', in Elizabeth D. Harvey and Katharine Eisaman Maus (eds),
Soliciting Interpretation: Literary 17zeory and Seventeenth-Century English Poetry (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990), 307-35.
79 E.g. U2, U4, U14, U18, etc.
80 For more on the Urania poems and their contexts, see eh. 6, and Clarke,
"'Formd into words" in '17zis Double Voice', 81-5.

231
 CHAPTER SIX

'Arnorous Bookes, Vaine Stories':

1
Wornen Reading and Writing Rornance

Romance is one of the most visible literary forms associated with a female
readership in the Renaissance. While it does not constitute the largest cat-
egory of books directed towards a female readership in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, romance elicits a disproportionately large body of
commentary by male writers uneasy about its inftuence upon women. It is
assumed that women readers are exduded from the dynamic of reading
which transforms romance from escapist sensuality to an exemplification
of moral precepts. 2 This chapter will argue that this process of exdusion
can be located in the interpretative practices associated with romance read-
ing, and in its dependence upon gendered tropes which posit the woman
reader as continuous with the text by looking at the work of gender in
translations ofJohn Barday's Argenis, and by examining Lady Mary Wroth's
problematisation of this division of the romance readership in the Urania.
The chapter then discusses the political functions of romances and courtly
texts directed towards women in the court of Queen Henrietta Maria.
I suggest that romance in the early seventeenth century is a politicised
form, but that in these manifestations it is largely conservative and allied
by its enemies with a corrupt, courtly effeminacy, which the positing of
women readers as a target audience did little to dispel. As a result, romance
reading and writing by women in the Jacobean and Caroline periods man-
ages to be seen simultaneously as dangerously immoral, and as politically
significant.
The earliest condemnations of romance came from the pens of sixteenth-
century humanists, concerned with reintegrating the classics into vernacular
culture. While writers such as Vives, Thomas More, Richard Hyrde and
Thomas Elyot advocated education for a restricted dass of women, they
were careful to impose constraints upon what women could and should

232
 WOMEN READING AND \\RITING ROMANCE

read. 3 They also exercised contn lls on /iOcR wamen should read: they were
to submit to male authority in interpretation, and to be guided by a male
tutor or mentor in their choice of texts. This marks adeparture from the
norms of reading advocated by humani.st writers for men, where reading
has elose affinities with writing and interpretation. 4 Woman's partial entry
to this model is contingent not only on her submission to male control of
what she reads, but on her submission to the matter and authority of the
chosen text. The category of romance in this period is heterogeneous and
plural; the types of romances discussed in this chapter are quite different
from the largely popular forms rejected by the humanists, even if the struc-
turing hermeneutic is broadly similar. The narratives discussed here are
self-evidently and self-consciously courtly both in origin and orientation, an
elitism marked consistently by the notion that interpretation is dualistic,
and requires a good deal of extra-textual knowledge on the part of the
reader. The censure of women reading romance is elosely connected to this
binary hermeneutic. As women are expected to imbibe, or digest their
reading material without question, such that they internalise the models of
devout, chaste women they discover in their reading, it is implied that the
reading of roman ces will result in the direct translation of the morals of
these texts into women's lives. In 1632, Wye Saltonstall's characterisation of
the maiden describes how she

re ades now loves historyes as Amadis de Gaule and the Arcadia, & in them
courts the shaddow oflove till she know the substance ... To conclude
shee's a fading flower, her wedding night withers her, when she rises
againe with an innocent blush and ne'er greeves for her losses. 5

The woman reader becomes the text she reads, and the reading of ro-
mances is a prelude to embracing the immorality which they supposedly
promote. The woman reader is given no position of alterity, no subject
position from which to read in terms of a discontinuity between herself and
the text. The 'ultimate priority of the reader' is notably lacking in such
depictions of the sexualised nature of women's reading.
Annabel Patterson has referred to a new 'sub-genre' of prose narratives
in the seventeenth century which use 'fictionality as a means of mediating
historical fact'. 6 This reorientation of romance away from the cultivation of
pleasure towards a serious concern with the public world is as much con-
cerned with re-readings of Elizabethan romance as it is with the genesis of
new forms, and builds upon the traditions of interpretation spearheaded by
Spenser's Faene Qy,eene and Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, both texts widely read
by women. This habit of finding moral value in otherwise vilified texts has
a long genealogy, reaching back as far (at least) as Sir Philip Sidney's

233
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

comments on Amadis de Gaule in A Difence qf Paetry and Elizabethan commen-

tators saw Sidney's Arcadia in moral and political terms. 7 Fulke Greville, for
example, writes of Sidney's intent (in the New Arcadia)

to turn the barren Philosophy precepts into pregnant Images of life; and in
them, first on the Monarch's part, lively to represent the growth, state, and
declination of Princes, change of Government, and lawes: vicissitudes of
sedition, faction, succession, confederacies, plantations, with all other
errors, or alterations in publique affaires. 8

Such readings ally political romance with the masculine sphere of govern-
me nt rather than with a more traditional readership of women, as envis-
aged by the Old Arcadia. Correspondingly, the processes of interpretation
associated with this 'new' form of romance work to exclude the female
readership from the sphere of politics by proposing a revised form of the old
teachl delight paradigm, dependent upon the reader's access (or lack of it)
to politics and the courtly world.
The politicisation of romance depends upon interpretative strategies which
announce that the text 'says' something other than what it appears to say; a
reading which creates a ligature between romance and politics is predicated
upon the idea that the text is incomplete and demands to be supplemented
by extra-textual knowledge. Topicality, whether defined as the one-to-one
correspondence between fictional characters and historically real person-
ages, or as more abstract 'application', is understood by me ans of a rela-
tionship between text and context, which is not necessarily inherent to the
text, but is often signalled by events within it, or by the apparatuses which
present it. It is possible that by the 1620s, the employment of the romance
form per se hinted at the possibility of a reading whose meaning lay beyond
the confines of the text in the form of a key or clavis, whether this was
actualised (as in the translations of the Argenis in 1626 and 1628, and in
James Howell's Dadana's Graue) or located in the readership in the form of
insider knowledge, education or intertextuality.9 In the instance where a
key is provided to the text it would seem that there is a clear-cut subtext
which makes sense of the surface of the text, but even where a one-to-one
relationship between text and meaning is posited by means of a clavis or
key, this does not per se decode the surface. It may be that the clavis merely
serves to restrict access to the subtext by providing an interpretation that
gestures at closure. Knowing who is meant in a text does not automaticaIly
lead the reader to the 'right' reading, as the personages represented often in
turn denote concepts or ideas. It is aIl very weIl knowing that Philisides in
the Arcadia is a representation of Philip Sidney, but it teIls the uninitiated
reader little about what Philisides/Philip Sidney actually signifies. !O While

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 WOMEN READING AND WRITlNG ROMANCE

the reader becomes the interpreter, or translator of the meanings of the

text, the ability to reach the subtext becomes a matter of extra-textual
knowledge or experience. This is particularly the case with the political
romances of the Jacobean and Caroline period, which are mostly closely
associated with court culture, where the ability to recognise the codes being
used depends upon a prior allegiance to particular political positions - or at
least, an acquaintance with them. This notion of an elite, initiated reader-
ship does not take account of the 'old' types of romance reading, as escape,
wantonness and indulgence of fantasy. Given the continued popularity of
romance in the period from 1603 to 1640, there is no reason to suspect that
the reading of these texts was completely overturned by the example of
politicised interpretations of the Arcadia or the Faerie OJteene. 11 There appears
to be a deeply divided readership, consisting of insiders, who recognise the
codes of the text, and outsiders, who, as Crewe says, probably do not
recognise that a code is being used, let alone have the information needed
to decipher it. 12 This readership would have been fractured in a variety
of ways: in terms of status, education, proximity to (or distance from) the
court, and, as I shall argue here, gender.

Unlocking the cabinet of romance:

Barclay' s Arsenis and gendered translation

Seventeenth-century interpretations ofJohn Barclay's romance Argenis, pub-

lished in Latin in 1621, and translated into English four times in twenty
years, are agreed upon its political nature. 13 Barclay's text incorporates
elements of romance, allegory and history to create a narrative which is
partially based upon the fictional encoding of the events of the reign of
Henri IV of France, but it cannot be reduced to a straightforward equation
of historical fact and fiction. James I liked it sufficiently to order a transla-
tion to be made, and engaged Ben Jonson to undertake the project. 14 His
translation of 1623 appears to have been lost in the fire which destroyed
Jonson's library.15 Robert Le Grys' 1628 translation is presented as being
made expressly at the re quest of Charles I, and is dedicated to him. The
Argenis contains many of the conventions of romance - cross-dressed heroes
and heroines, rivalry between men over women, lost children, battles, and
power struggles. The roman ce and political aspects are fused together so
that while identifications can be made between the text and its subtextual
history, the Argenis always exceeds such readings: it is this indeterminacy
which enables the Argenis to carry 'application' to Jacobean politics in the
early 1620s, and to Caroline politics in 1628 and 1636.

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 THE POLITICS OF EARlY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

There is also evidence of an alternative reading couched in the traditions

of romance as diversion or entertainment. Such readings are acknowledged,
certainly by Le Grys, who takes pains to orientate his text away from the
usual romance audience:

To give what contentment I am able, to the commendable curiosity of

such, as out of a Work of such a raised conceit and stile, are desirous to
draw what profitable knowledge they possibly may, not slighdy passing it
over as an idle Romance, in which there were no other fruit conteined, but
fantasticall tales, fit onely to put away the tediousnes of a Winter evening. 1G

That the text might be misread as merely 'fantasticall' is part of Barclay's

(and Le Grys') method of indirection, commenting upon rulers and rule
by means of application, while mixing in purely fictional characters who
cannot be clearly identified. The duality of romance reading is exploited
to turn the text into an interpretative game, or even, competition, where
Barclay's own intentions cannot be discerned. Given this duality, which, as
Caroline Lucas has no ted, is often orientated around a gender opposition,
we might expect to find the Argenis cited regularly as read by women. 17 The
available evidence indicates that this was not generally the case. Henrietta
Maria's confessor, for example, assumed that the queen's reading of the
Argenis would conform to the stereotype of women reading romance, by
classifying it (for a female audience) as the equivalent of the Amadis qf Gaule:

Besides the Queens confessor and other priests will not endure that she or
they should read Barclaies Arginis, Amadis de Gaule, or any such like
bookes but only St Katherine's life, St Brigetts prophecy or other such like
holy tales of that stile, and of the tales of devils and their apparitions to
some of their owne friends even at the Queenes Table; yea to make the
good Princesse apprehende this soe much that when she danceth which
she doth most graciously that there [as I have heard one say] is a devil
in her heale. 18

As the confessor condemns the reading of romances, he utilises the for-

mulations of women's reading advanced by the humanists: because of the
woman's relation to the text, she must read matter that will incite her to
virtue rather than to vice. Despite such injunctions specifically against the
reading of the Argenis, and more generally against the reading of romances,
however instructive, some women did read the text. Lady Anne Clifford at
least wanted to be represented as having read it, since it is depicted in 'The
Great Picture' at Appleby Castle, andJudith Man, who was attached to the
household ofThomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, translated a shortened
version of the text. 19 In addition, Ben Jonson's translation of the text was

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 WOMEN READI NG AN 0 WRlTl NG ROMANCE

envisaged as having a (courtly) female audience in one of the manuscripts of

'An Execration Upon Vulcan': 'three bookes not amissei Reveald (if so me
can judge) of Argenis,l for our owne Ladyes'.20
The male translators (Robert Le Grys and Kingsmill Long) show an
acute awareness of the interpretative conundrums posed by the Argenis, as
well as its political relationship to a localised contemporary context. The
usefulness of the text to both J ames I and Charles I is not difficult to
discern. In Book I, Chapter 18, 'A Discourse ofthe severall sorts ofGovern-
ment', Dunalbius assesses the effectiveness of various forms of government
- elective monarchy, hereditary monarchy and divine right, concluding
that 'a people which is accustomed by Law to make their King, will oft
presume unjustly to depose hirn; nor need I search old histories', alluding
to the regicide of Henri IV. 21 The passage citing reasons for popular dis-
content (foreign intervention; rising taxes and levies; imminent ruin and
destruction; corruption in the Church (pp. 75-6)) could have had application
in 1628 and in 1636. Nicopompus, the court poet, self-consciously portrays
his own methods in the text, revealing that the ability to read the narrative
depends upon anterior knowledge:

I will compile some stately Fable, in manner of a History: in it will I fold

up strange events; and mingle together Armes, Marriages, Bloodshed,
Mirth, with many and various successes ... because I seeme to tell them
Tales, I shall have them all: they will love my Booke above any Stage-play,
or spectacle on the Theater. So first, bringing them in love with the potion,
I will after put in wholsome hearbes ... Besides, I will have heere and
there imaginary names, to signifie severall vices and vertu es; so that he
may be as much deceived, that would draw all in my writing, as he that
would nothing, to the truth of any late or present passage of State.
(Long, 109)

Despite the attempt to deceive, the poet assurnes that his readers will make
connections between the text and its contemporary context, and by his
disclaimer draws attention to the possible referentiality of his text. 22
Judith Man's version of the Argenis is in marked contrast to Long's and
Le Grys' translation. In the first instance, she translates, not from Barclay's
Latin text, but from a French version written by Nicholas Coeffeteau, Bishop
of Marseille, in 1628. 23 Coeffeteau may have wished to distance hirnself
from Barclay's political and religious ideas because of the text's representa-
tion of recent French history, but his choice of text seems to be motivated
by his association with the projects of Jean-Pierre Camus to reorientate
romance towards a moral and spiritual end. 24 Judith Man's interest in the text
is presented in terms which recall the conventional topoi of prefatory material
authored by women: she presents her reading and her text as being born of

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

constraints, 'my humor inclining to Melancholy, induces me sometimes, to

seeke in my Closet for some diversion'; as undertaken for the purpose of
self-improvement 'so as I might make my selfe, so much the more perfect,
in the French tongue'; as forced into publication, 'I have beene in a manner
forc'd ... to expose it to the publike view'; and as done out of obedi-
ence rather than from adesire to speak, 'women (for the most part) are
unacquainted with the studie of Sciences; and by that meanes, may sooner
erre'.25 The text is dedicated to Anne Wentworth, the eldest daughter of
the Earl of Strafford. Man's dedicatory episde implies thatJudith Man was
part of the Strafford household: 'I had the honour to bee admitted into
the House of my Lord raur Father, where my Parents did introduce me'
(sig. A2v).26 Man identifies the character of Argenis with her dedicatee:

And I have thought, reading this Histary, that I have seene raur true
portraiture in the person of this Faire Lady. For, making a Parallell of this
Princesse with raur Hanaur I finde rau very suteable.
(sig. A3r-v)

Man's text represents Argenis not so much as the ideal of the French state,
as in the other versions, but as the ideal of womanhood: constant, chaste,
virtuous. Anne Wentworth exceeds the model of Argenis in virtue, 'as touch-
ing Vertue whereof rau are a Patterne, rau excell Her, being Vertue it selfe'
(sig. A3v), especially as she is a Protestant, not a Catholic, and thus has
knowledge of the 'True GOD'. Man expresses the wish that Anne Wentworth
will find her own Poliarchus in marriage, indicating that the text is read in
terms of its relevance to private concerns, rather than engaging in the
complex interpretative manoeuvres which characterise other translators'
readings of the text.
The text that Man chooses to translate itself rewrites the narrative, so
that it is only residually ab out politics and far more concerned with mar-
riage and the love between Argenis and Poliarchus. It would be misleading
to say that Man's translation is entirely apolitical: in one of her few inter-
polations she calls attention to the fact that 'there is more prickles then Roses
found in Royalty. This Histary is a lively portraiture therof, and causes us to
see rem ar kable examples in it' (2). The rest of the narrative does call atten-
tion to the dangers of rebellion and insurrection, and of the weakness of the
crown caused by expenditure on foreign policy, but only by way of illumin-
ating the main narrative, the story of male rivalry for the hand of Argenis.
It is possible that this 'epitome' could be seen as less politically dangerous
than Barclay's full text in 1640, given its insistence that the monarch must
rule with the consent of Parliament, and its repeated stress on the need to
suppress rebels and factions. The suggestion that Man is deliberately avoiding

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 WOMEN READING AND WRITING ROMANCE

the text's possible 'application' can only remain speculative. Man's address
'T0 the Courteous Reader' provides, as already stated, many of the conven-
tional justifications used by women to defend their entry into print. But
unlike other such defences, Man allies herself with a specifically female
tradition of authors and translators of romance in order to authorise her
own engagement with this dubious form:

it is not without example, and could produce thee many of my sexe, who
have traced me the way, witnesse the translation into French of Sir Philip
Sidnrys Arcadia, the New Amarantha, and the Urania, with many others.
(sig. A7r)

While she does not mention an English precedent, such as Margaret Tyler's
translation of The mirrour qf princely deedes and knighthood (1578), she is iden-
tifying herself with a network of female translators of romance. 27 The
translation itself is exceedingly literal, although accurate, and Man retains
the simplicity of style of her source text. There is little that she adds or
subtracts, and only minute changes are made: this again serves to distance
her from the dynamics of humanist translation, where translation is an
authorial rite of passage, and a form of imitation whereby the translator
'competes' with the source text for mastery, and tries to exceed the original
text/ author in style and expression.
Judith Man's translation demonstrates the model of the woman reader's
continuity with the texts she reads, and the images generated of women
reading certainly imply the relation of reader to text that I have outlined.
However, they are images cultivated for presentation to public view, and in
view of the predominant ideals for women in the Renaissance, it is not
surprising that they support, rather than subvert, cultural norms. However,
not all women conform to this model of reading and writing, and Lady
Mary Wroth is the major example of a woman writer who intervenes in the
genre of romance. Her Urania displays a concern with issues of reading and
writing, not, I would argue, in the context of providing positive role models
as Man does, but, in the tradition of Barclay's Argenis, in order to explore
and problematise the reception and interpretation of her own text.

'Which is Truth, and Which My Story':

The Countesse 0J Mountgomeries Urania (1621 )28

Since the appearance ofJosephine Roberts's edition ofLady Mary Wroth's

poems in 1983, most readings have seen Wroth's work as a biographical

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 THE POLlTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

encoding, or as being primarily concerned with the emergence and forma-

timl of the female subject. The models applied to women's reading of
romance in the Renaissance are replicated in critics' interpretations of
the Uranza where, it is assumed, Wroth conflates her own life with her
romance.~9 These readings give a useful starting point for Wroth's highly
complex text, but as feminist critics have searched for the beginnings of a
female consciousness they have tended to lose sight of the different postures
used within the text to comment upon, and enact, the role of reading,
writing and interpretation in the discovery of the 'truth', and the ways
in which the text's praxis repudiates the binarism often produced in the
attempt to locate 'topicality'. The text's own practices reveal that there is no
real possibility of a straightforward reduction of surface to meaning, as the
Urania's concern with the material practices of reading, writing and inter-
pretation displays and rehearses gaps and discontinuities in the encoding
and decoding of meaning. It is true to say that Wroth drew upon personal
experience in writing Urania, but critics have ignored the fact that as she
rewrites the romance genre, she also represents her own life, providing a
virtuous rationale for the loving female subject, resisting the causallink be-
tween speech/writing and sexual impropriety, and refusing to allow women's
words to circulate exclusively as sexual markers within her text. U nlike
Edward Denny, who attacks a text which reputedly represents the sexual
impropriety of one of the women of his own family by vilifYing the reputa-
tion of its writer in specifically sexual terms, Wroth's heroines' engagement
with the public/private boundary (which is, in any case, mutable and flexible)
functions paradoxically to inscribe female desire for constancy and to enact
a withdrawal of women's texts from circulation precisely by putting them
on displayas private texts, designed to be read by a self-selecting reader-
ship, and not understood by a wider audience. 30
The reception history ofLady Mary Wroth's prose romance, 77ze Countesse
qf Mountgomeries Urania (1621) is well known to scholars of early modern
women's writing. 31 In the year of its publication, Edward Denny, Baron
of Waltham, whose daughter Honora had married James Hay in 1607,
protested that an episode in Book IV of the Urania slandered him and his
son-in-Iaw. Other contemporary commentators affirmed the relationships
between characters and events depicted in the text and the lives of real
persons connected with the court ofJames 1. 32 Such evidence, together with
a letter of 1640 from George Manners, the Earl of Rutland, to Wroth
requesting a key to the text, seems to indicate that the Urania was construed
by some of its readers to be a roman aclif.33 The Urania's preoccupation with
unhappy marriages, and extra-marital love has certain affinities with what
we know of Wroth's own life - in particular, her affair with her cousin,
William Herbert, Earl ofPembroke, and her fall from Queen Anne's favour. 34

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 WOMEN READING AND WRITING ROMANCE

However, even a text like the Argenis which appears to posit a one-to-one
correspondence between fiction and history unsetdes such connections as it
attempts to obfuscate intentionality and elosure. A similar investment in
indeterminacy, alongside a foregrounding ofthe dynamics ofinterpretation,
is found in the Urania, but for very different reasons, as Wroth's text chal-
lenges the assumption that women are exeluded from the complexities of
romance reading and writing.
The Urania is preoccupied with issues of reading, writing and interpreta-
tion. The constant stress on the need for secrecy and discretion in matters
of love (which is frequendy extra-marital), necessitates Wroth's charac-
ters communicating with one another using the staples of romance: letters,
poems, stories, sonnets engraved in the bark of trees. Writing in the Urania
often constitutes the betrayal of private knowledge: when Pamphilia's love
for Amphilanthus is discovered to her jealous riyal, Antissia, she asks 'Hath
my speech at any time betray'd mee?' (78) Instances of poems falling into
the wrong hands and of their messages being erroneously decoded are
frequent. Reading is a process conditioned at every stage by considerations
of gender and the relationship of the reader to the social context in which
he or she reads. These misreadings sometimes get elose to the 'truth', in spite
of the writer's efforts to conceal her or his message. Dolorindus' adulterous
love for Selinea, the wife of Redulus, is discovered by poems falling into the
wrong hands, and by the wronged husband's jealousy which leads hirn to
interpret the poems in a way which ironically gets at the truth (157~8). The
daughter of Sirelius similarly is betrayed by the letters in her cabinet, which
are found by her husband:

Her Cabinets hee brake open, threatned her servants to make them
confesse; letters he found, but only such as between friends might passe in
complement, yet they appeared to jealousie to be amorous.
(439)

An ambiguous language of courdy compliment is decoded by a particular

kind of reader; her husband misreads the language and assurnes her guilt ~
female authorship is here direcdy linked with sexual impropriety.
Because of this anxiety about the misapplication of texts, characters in
the Urania are usually careful to establish the credentials of the audiencesl
readers for their poems and stories. When questing princes meet unidenti-
fied knights and ladies, they ask to hear the cause of their sorrows. The
speakers ensure that they are initiated into the codes oflove. Leonius demon-
strates the need to establish his audience as an initiated one when he says
that otherwise his 'reader' 'will no more esteeme of it, then of an old tale'
(405). The emphasis upon establishing readerships by their understanding

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 THE POLITICS OF EARlY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

of certain codes indicates that Wroth's text addresses itself, in the first
instance, to a coterie readership, to those who already know the secrets
which are encoded in the text, for whom narrative pleasure resides in
identifications which mark them as being part of a privileged community
of readers, and in the playful strategies of indeterminacy used in the
Urania. The text uses methods which are signalled as encodings, for example,
when Pamphilia withdraws into her garden to be alone with her thoughts,
she gathers flowers which begin with the letters of her beloved's name
(75). What is not revealed to the reader is which kind of relationship is
being signalled here - intertextual or intratextual - whether the name is
'Amphilanthus' or 'William', which results in a potential division in the
readership between those who recognise this code within a code, and have
the knowledge to unpick it, and those who read it entirely within the
dynamics set up by the Urania itself. Wroth's text moves in and out oftopical-
ity and autobiographical reference, and there appears to be a simultaneous
embracing of, and resistance to, the notion of narratives' application. By
using various strategies to undermine the linkage of teller and tale, the
potential relation to 'truth' is more strongly underlined, as the text swings
between truth and fiction in such a way as to invert and disrupt the decod-
ing process. What is on display is not so much Wroth's life and acquaint-
ances, but the fact of their privacy, the protection of their identities. Rather
than revealing secrets, the Urania underlines their retention, most notably
the identity of Amphilanthus. While various narrators in the Urania strongly
deny that their stories inscribe personal experience, it becomes clear that
such referentiality is there for those interpretatively equipped to discern it,
but that a simple transparency can never be assumed.
An instructive instance of a complex triangular relationship between
author, text and reader is one of several self-reflexive moments in the nar-
rative: that where Pamphilia herself is reading a romance. The text describes

a booke shee had with her, wherin she read a while, the subject was Love,
and the story she then was reading, the affection of a Lady to a brave
Gentleman, who equally loved, but being a man, it was necessary for him
to exceede a woman in all things, so much as inconstancie was found fit
for him to excell her in, hee left her for a new.
(264)

This book partially encodes Pamphilia's situation, much as the Urania shows
some affinities with Wroth's own life (both love an inconstant man, who is
also a cousin), but Pamphilia breaks off the reading process, throws the
book away, and declares 'how doth all storyes, and every writer use thee
[Love] at their pleasure, apparrelling thee according to their various fancies?

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 WOMEN READING AND WRITING ROMANCE

canst thou suffer thy selfe to be thus put in cloathes, nay raggs instead of
vertuous habits?' (264). She asks Love to treat her differently from the
model outlined in both Pamphilia's and Wroth's romance, 'punish such
Traytors, and cherrish mee thy loyall subject' (264). Pamphilia disrupts a
simple identification of self and text by pointing out the discontinuity be-
tween the narrative, which accepts male inconstancy as axiomatic, and her
own desire: the romance emphatically does not inscribe her desire for con-
stancy, although it does predict her destiny. It reveals gaps between the
ideal and the real (which isn't real here because it's a fiction within a fiction)
and between the text and the female subject, as the romance fails to repres-
ent Pamphilia's desire. Rather like Wroth herself, Pamphilia then goes on
to 'rewrite' the romance so that it takes account of her desire. She places
her hand on her heart as she paces up and down in the wood:

to feele if there were but the motion left in the place of that shee had so
freely given, which she found, and as great, and brave an one in the stead
of it ... ever seeing his love, and her's as perfectly, and curiously twined, as
Ivye, which growne into the wall it ascends, cannot but by breaking, and
so killing that part, be sever'd.
(264)

The implication is that romance as a genre is unable to take account of female

desire for an active constancy, and Pamphilia resists the reading oflove that
this text-within-a-text offers her. By interleaving two kinds of referentiality,
and rewriting/rereading the model of female desire offered by romance,
Wroth represents what modern criticism might call a 'resisting reader'.
For uninitiated readers the operations of secrecy and indeterminacy in
the Urania point to the need for certain types of knowledge in order to read
the text, and reach its subtext, but provide no clear method by which this
may be done. Frequently, the secrets which would enable the conclusion of
the romance are signalled, but not revealed, or deferred into textual con-
structs which are themselves encodings -letters, poems, ciphers. The nymph
Allarina, for example, loves a man for five years, but due to the constraints
placed on the expression of desire by women, she can only hint at whom
she loves. He fails to read the signs, and marries another (182, sig. Aa3v).
The hero, Amphilanthus, similarly fails to read the embedded meaning of
the words that Pamphilia communicates to hirn. While he is the ideal (and
intended reader) of her poems, 'being in her owne hand unto hirn' (266),
Amphilanthus misreads them at the crucial moment when Pamphilia has
invited hirn into her private space, her cabinet:

He told her, that for any other, they might speake for their excellencies,
yet in comparison of her excelling vertu es, they were but shadowes to set

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 THE POLITICS OF EARlY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

the others forth withall, and yet the best he had seene made by a woman:
but one thing (said he) I must find fault with, that you counterfeit loving so
well, as if you were a lover, and as we are, yet you are free; pitie it is you
suffer not, that can faigne so we.
(266)

Pamphilia's poetry is clearly identified with her self: when she hands over
her poems to Amphilanthus, she 'blushing told him, she was ashamed, so
much of her folly should present her seife unto his eyes' (266, emphasis added).
This is a clear indication that Amphilanthus is to read the poems as a
transparent expression of her feelings. He reads the poems in accordance
with his own hermeneutic, where the dis course of love is artificial and false,
and can be feigned, much as male language is seen to be destabilised by
inconstancy: 'mens words are onely breath, their oathes winde, and vowes
water' (190). These poems are concealed from the reader at this point in the
narrative, but Amphilanthus, as he reads the poems as fiction or pretence,
misses the fact that they actuaily represent Pamphilia's true feelings. He
inverts her identity as he takes her outward expression to represent her
inner subjectivity, unlike (female) readers of Pamphilia's poems. Pamphilia
has to redirect his reading, by recourse to a coy assertion of her status as a
lover, but not of the identity of her beloved: 'She smild, and blusht, and
softly said (fearing that he or her selfe should heare her say so much) Alas
my Lord, you are deceived in this for I doe love' (266).
The continual division of the readership, the dependence of interpreta-
tion upon extra-textual knowledge, and the complex oscillation between
revelation and concealment all point to the existence of a coterie readership
for the Urania which has a different relationship to the text than the wider
reading public, and to the fact that women are adept decoders of texts. This
multiplicity in the reading of romance is hardly exclusive to Wroth's text, as
we have seen, and had a powerful tradition within her immediate family.
Sidney's Arcadia gestures at a restricted, female audience by the act of ded-
ication to the Countess ofPembroke (and by granting ownership ofthe text
to her), and infers an esoteric readership on the grounds of the text 'being
but a trille, and that triflingly handled'.35 The Urania also signals an ideal
reader in its tide, The Countesse qf Mountgomeries Urania, and this has usually
been read as an appropriation of the authority of Philip Sidney's much
praised text, but it also serves to ally the Urania with a similar kind of
hermeneutic practice, and a parallel readership - within the Sidney family.
Susan Herbert (Vere), Countess of Montgomery, was married to Wroth's
cousin Philip, the younger brother of the Earl of Pembroke. Her friendship
with Wroth would have been reinforced by her marriage (much as net-
works of readers in the Urania are linked both by blood ties and friendships),

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 WOMEN READING AND WRITING ROMANCE

and she would have been in a good position to identify the members of the
Sidney family depicted in Wroth's romance, as weIl as the topical allusions
to characters and events at the courts ofKingJames and Queen Anne. The
privileging of the Countess of Montgomery as areader is consonant with
the perceived readership of romance, especially as Susan Herbert, often
in conjunction with her husband, was a frequent patron of published
romance in the years preceding 1621. The year before the publication of
Wroth's romance, 1620, John Pyper dedicated the first part of Honore
d'Urfe's Astrea to Susan and Philip Herbert - again, Astrea was an influen-
tial roman ce and its dedication to the earl and countess indicates that they
were interested in the form. The choice of the Countess of Montgomery as
the 'owner' of Wroth's text plays a role in the identification of a particular
group of readers for the text - not only those connected with the Sidney /
Herbert families, but possibly also areadership which had a sophisticated
acquaintance with the codes and conventions of romance, weIl able to see
the mirroring of their own reading practice in the Urania. 36
Wroth chose to write in a genre which was powerfully gendered in the
discourses of early modern England. 37 Her Sidney blood meant that she
also 'inherited' (in a double sense) the powerful model of Sir Philip Sidney's
Arcadia in a way that cannot be true of any other writer in the period. The
Urania opens with a scene that writes in the spaces of the New Arcadia,
describing a character who is only noted for her absence in Sidney's text. 3B
She is the conventional heroine of pastoral romance, complete with sheep
and sorrow, and radical uncertainty about her own identity. The informa-
tion that her birth did not fit her to be a shepherd comes as no surprise -
without these slippages between inside and outside there would be no
narrative and no romance, yet for Urania, it immediately posits a subject-
ivity in process, suspended between what she was and what she might
become, a quest for identity in her own right: 'My ambition then went no
higher than this estate, now flies it to a knowledge; then was I contented,
now perplexed' (1). The inscription of a poem, which is itself concerned
with subjectivity, temporarily fills the space between these two parameters
of Urania's identity:

Unseene, unknowne, I here alone complaine

To Rocks, to Hills, to Meadowes, and to Springs,
Which can no helpe retume to ease my paine,
But back my sorrowes the sad Eccho brings.
(U1: 1-4)

By the uttering of a complaint, Urania attempts to fill the space left by the
undoing of her identity, but finds herself confronting the emptiness of her

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

own voice as it is returned to her, reduced, like Echo, to nothing but

speech. As Quilligan has pointed out, this poem constitutes agendered
intervention in the tradition of echo poems and Petrarchan discourse, as
Urania does not lament the loss of a male lover (as romance heroines
usually do in the opening pages), but the loss of herself. 39
As an opening gesture, the representation of Urania raises issues which
predominate in the body of the Urania, while reorienting the conventions of
romance in general, and Sidneian romance in particular. Wroth's text dis-
plays some self-consciousness about the representation of gender within
romance, both rewriting particular scenarios, and subtly altering textual
strategies. The Arcadia is continually present in the Urania, and at times
there are clear correspondences. Mter her recognition that desire is incom-
patible with her womanly virtue, '[aJm I the first unfortunate Woman
that bashfulnesse hath undone?' (75), Pamphilia has recourse to another
encoded form to give vent to her emotions. She takes a knife and carves a
sonnet into the bark of a tree, recalling Pamela's poem in the Old Arcadia,
one ofseveral echoes by Wroth ofher uncle's romance. 40 Pamela's poem is
a profession of love, identifying her lover, and asserting her own identity in
relation to hirn:

But Pamela had much more pleasure to walk under those trees, making
in their barks pretty knots which tied together the names of Musidorus
and Pamela, sometimes intermixedly changing them to Pamedorus and
Musimela ... And to one tree, ... she entrusted the treasure of her
thoughts in these verses:'"

Pamela's poem is couched in mutuality, compounded by Musidorus' read-

ing, which leads hirn to join her profession of affection: 'and made the trees
as weIl bear the badges of his passions, as this song engraved in them did
testify:' (OA, 199). By contrast, Pamphilia's poem is not a medium to gain
Amphilanthus' love, but an expression of her own misery: she inscribes
the problem of the desiring female subject onto the tree, unable to bridge
the gap between desire and subjectivity. Her heart is engraved with her
beloved's name, thus making her heart not her own, and she writes a
poem which conceals its referent, which is concealed by writing itself. The
act of engraving her desire over-writes and obliterates her identity, at the
same time as it asserts her as a writingl desiring subject:

Beare part with me most straight and pleasant Tree,

And imitate the Torments qf my smart
Which cruell Love doth send into my heart,
Keepe in tfry skin this testament qf me:

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 WOMEN READING AND WRITING ROMANCE

Which Love ingraven hath with miserie,

Cutting with griife the unresisting part,
Which would with pleasure soone haue leamd loves art,
But wounds still curelesse, must my rulers bee.
(U5: 1-8)

The poem can only 'imitate' her misery, not represent it, and the writer is
Love; Pamphilia inscribes what Love writes for her. This sonnet has no
audience, except far the tree, and whereas Pamela's sonnet is a medium for
communication, Pamphilia's is a self-referential lament which aims not to
reveal her love or her lover, and the lines unmake her as a subject: 'I1
Unpitied and unthought on, wounded crie: / Then out-live me, and testifie
my woes' (U5: 12-14).
A reluctance to speak or to repeat their narratives in a public context
characterises all Wroth's heroines. This is pardy to do with discretion and
keeping female desire from public expression, but also with the tensions
regarding circulation and interpretation that occur throughout Urania. 42 It
is the anti-heroes who speak freely, often to comic effect. Antissia's speech
and poetry are characterised as being too free and open. When Pamphilia
and Antissia are reconciled, they each compose a poem. Antissia's poem is
unfinished, and Pamphilia comments that

Assuredly more there was of this Song, or else she had with her unframed
and unfashioned thoughts, as unfashionably framd these lines.
(122)

Antissia's willingness to speak and betray her feelings is repeatedly set against
Pamphilia's ability to remain silent and private, or to express herself in
riddles. Antissia 'could least keepe silence, but began discourse, and still
continued so ... taking most ofher judging sences from her' (266). Pamphilia
withdraws from public displays of feeling: 'the Queene her selfe be holding
them, while her heart was as true a patient, as any of theirs, but must not
shew it' (221). The refusal to speak is related to fears of misinterpretation
and application. Pastora, for example, who is married but loves another, is
unwilling to divulge her story, but eventually Steriamus manages to elicit it
from her:

This Steriamus got knowledge of by peeces from her who would not
complaine, nor tell the story her selfe for feare of misconstruction of the
hearers, least the relation so rare should have been taken for an Allegory,
and not a story wherein her vertue should be painted, and not found:
(360)

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 THE POllTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

This fear of lives and reputations being put on display leads Wroth's hero-
ines to adopt indeterminacy and indirection in their narratives, and Pastora's
fear for her reputation encapsulates a central problem in the Urania, that of
expressing desire without calling virtue into question. Yet this is the point;
the refusal to speak openly asserts female speech as virtuous, rather than
automatically associating it with sexuallooseness.
Wroth's romance deploys strategies of indirection which attempt to cir-
cumvent the problematics of a female writing, especially the paradox of a
woman using the discourses of romantic love, which traditionally inscribe
and objectify her without granting any autonomy to the female voice.
Pamphilia's attempts to avoid application involve the destabilisation of the
'I' persona, such that the relationships, set up by many critics, between the
narrator, Pamphilia and Wroth herself are contradicted by the ambiguities
in the text, just as the scattering of Wroth's own story among numerous
female characters (Bellamira, Veralinda, Lindamira, Pamphilia) disrupts a
straightforward reduction to biography. Each of the Urania's heroines uses
different methods of creating a fissure between themselves and their stories.
Pamphilia, for example, refuses to tell her own story, but invents a fictional
narrative when pressed by Dorolina: 'she gain'd so much, as Pamphilia sate
downe and told her this tale, faigning it to be written in a French Story'
(423). The narrative of Lindamira shares certain similarities with Wroth's
own life, and is interpreted by Dorolina within Wroth's fiction to be in
some sense Pamphilia's own. This is a distancing technique, which leaves
the reader puzzling out the connections between the story and Pamphilia,
rather than necessarily assuming an application to Wroth's own life. 43
Pamphilia's description of Lindamira's story, like much of Urania, is char-
acterised by unstable pronouns, and a certain doubleness of articulation,
so that the language can be seen to refer to the fictional heroine's reluct-
ance to speak of her own situation, as weIl as the author's concerns about
self-revelation, at the same time as allowing such details to be written in
another's voice. For example, Dorilena starts by asking Pamphilia to recite
some of her verse, hoping that it would 'take her this way something from
her continuall passions' (423), but Pamphilia refuses, claiming that 'she was
growne weary of rime' (423). Pamphilia asserts a connection between her
own experience and that of the heroine whose tale she teIls, 'because I lik' d
it, or rather found her estate so neere agree with mine, I put into Sonnets'
(425). These are embedded within the narrative so that Lindamira's story,
retold by Pamphilia, reflects the pattern of the Urania itself, both being
constructed of a narrative, followed by a poetic sequence. That Dorilena
reads the story ofLindamira as referring to Pamphilia is quite clear: 'Dorilena
admired these Sonnets, and the story, which shee thought was some thing
more exactly related then a fixion, yet her discretion taught her to be no

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 WOMEN READING AND WRITING ROMANCE

Inquisitor' (429). Like other female readers and audiences in the Urania,
Dorilena exercises her discretion so that secrets are not betrayed. This
incident demonstrates the problems of the writing female subject, who cannot
express herself other than by indirection, by an act of self-ventriloquisation,
speaking in another's voice, and disrupting the relation between self and
text, as weIl as emblematising Wroth's own authorial dilemma.
There are various strategies by which the separation of teller and tale is
effected: the use of a third-person narrative, changing names in a story to
disguise their identities, adapting stories to new purposes. But perhaps the
most powerful example of this split female self, which has to go beyond
itself in order to speak (whereby expression is separated from the self), is the
use of the figure of Echo. 44 This is an extreme form of the process by which
the female voice grounded in the self becomes 'other' in performance,
much as the various feigned stories in the Urania ensure the transformation
of the speaker into another identity. Having found one form of expression
inadequate (reading a roman ce fails to provide relief), Pamphilia wanders
in a wood where she has no audience:

Soft said she, shall I turne blabb? no Echo, excuse me ... thy vast, and
hollow seIfe shall not be first, where fondest hopes must rest of secresie in
thee, who to each noise doth yeeld an equall grace. As none but we doe
truely love, so none but our owne hearts shall know we love.
(264)

While her stress on the exclusivity of her love leads her to reject speech
(precisely because the echo cannot discriminate), Wroth's narrative reveals
a split between Pamphilia's words and her self, a refusal to allow this 'other'
which is aversion of her own voice to speak her beloved's name: 'thy pro ud
youth must not be named by any but my selfe, none being able to name
hirn else' (264). In the act of naming hirn (to herself), Pamphilia is repres-
ented as losing her subjecthood: 'he not here, am I alive? no, my life is with
hirn, a poore weake shadow of my selfe remaines, but I am other where'
(265). Such fragmentation of the self enables the heroines to speak without
disclosing secrets, as they speak in another's voice, and their words are both
their own and not their own. By making the narrative of the self's other
available, the 'true' self is kept out of circulation, is not opened up to
interpretation. This is compounded by the text's use of the exchange of
secrets between women as a device, where an interpretative community of
readers (in the broadest sense) is united by ties of affection, blood and a
common discourse about love and its woes, so that (adapting a common
romance topos of friendship, male or female) the members of this commun-
ity function as aseries of selves, between whom secrets can be exchanged

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 THE POllTICS OF EARlY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

without danger. Pamphilia's confidante Urania, for example, has been ex-
cluded from the knowledge of who Pamphilia loves, and represents herself
as an alternative to Pamphilia, so that she will speak to Urania as if she is
speaking with her self, thereby protecting her secret: 'speak then, and as to
your selfe if you will not trust mee, and I will but by chance over-heare you,
I am sure you cannot affect impossibilities' (398). This division of the self
within individual characters and across the text is connected with the repres-
entation of the female subject in the text as a whole, where it is continually
measured against a male other, who often remains unattainable (Myra, for
example, dies without being able to complete her lover's name (504)). This
structure of searching for the other half which will complete the self is
characteristic of romance in general, but the investment of Wroth's text in
gender means that it carries a rather different resonance, whereby the
conceit ofthe beloved as the lover's self is substituted for, or becomes, what
constitutes female subjectivity.
Female subjectivity is continually directed inwards, and out of sight, where
it is beyond interpretation and not open to scrutiny. Pamphilia, whose
discretion and ability to keep secrets is repeatedly stressed, exemplifies this
inward movement, whereby the space of female subjectivity is given para-
meters, but is never revealed to the reader in any other terms than absence,
over-writing or inversion. When secretly lamenting for Amphilanthus, she
places willow branches upon her head (indicating that she is a lover):

but remembring her selfe, she quickly threw them off, vowing how ever her
chance was, not to carry the tokens of her losse openlyon her browes, but
rather weare them privately in her heart.
(76)

Here what Pamphilia carries in her heart is not grief, but a sign which
represents grief, much as other heroines in the romance depict their own
interiority by me ans of writing which is kept or performed inside an enclosed
space: a cabinet, a garden, an um. This displacement of the subject by
a textualisation that only partially represents the self is part of Wroth's
complex engagement with the gendering of romance. It becomes clear in
the Urania that there is no autonomous language for female desire which
does not call virtue into question, and thus the delineated space of subject-
ivity is over-written by a palimpsest, which is occasionally disrupted by
what lies beneath. Attempts are made to accommodate female subjectivity
within the available discourses - Petrarchanism, romance - so that the self
is never revealed, but always re-encoded in the form of a text (poem, letter,
glance, narrative) which demands interpretation. By placing women's words
beyond interpretation and concealing them in a variety of ways, Wroth

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 WOMEN READING AND WRITING ROMANCE

effectively takes them out of circulation, or at least limits the extent to

which they are opened up to scrutiny both within and outside the romance,
thereby disrupting the sexualisation of women's speech and writing.
The Urania's engagement with issues of reading and topicality results in a
repeatedly rehearsed withdrawal of writing and narrative from circulation,
a restriction of its audience, and a refusal to speak except under duress or in
carefully encoded forms. 45 Pamphilia herself sees her poetry as undermin-
ing her discretion: 'my owne hands to witnesse against me, unblushingly
showing my idlenesses to mee' (52) and commits her poetry to 'buriall' (52).
These poems are not revealed to other readers in the romance, nor are they
shown to the text's reader. It is later revealed that she has bumed them, 'all
shee had saved from the fire' (266), allying her act of destruction with a
recurrent topos of the text. Melasinda, Queen of Hungary, bums a letter
from her suitor, Ollorandus, and preserves the ashes in her cabinet (227).
She thus obliterates the identity ofher lover, but preserves his memory in a
form which closes off interpretation from all but herseH; and fixes her love,
saving it from criticism: 'These Reliques of a blessed hand,lJoyned with
mutuall holy band/of love and deare desire' (U21). As truth is located in
the private contents of boxes and cabinets, and the texts they contain, the
act of buming writing effectively erases the point of interpretative closure
which might be found if the cabinets could be unlocked, and their con-
tents opened up to readerly scrutiny. The cabinet as a metaphor is highly
mobile in Wroth's text, so that the heart/sonnet/miniature is seen as being
enclosed in the cabinet itself. Pamphilia keeps the contents of this private
space (her heart, and her cabinet) secret and 'lockt up her losse, in stead of
opening her blessing' (204). The content ofthe cabinet is female subjectivity
which cannot gain full, unmediated expression, but can only express itself
in terms of negativity (what remains hidden) or in deeply encoded forms
(sonnets, pictures). While holding out the promise of closure, the contents of
the opened cabinet imply deferral. This idea of the cabinet as the location
of female subjectivity is made by the narrator, when describing Pamphilia's
desire to withdraw from company. Urania hopes to lift Pamphilia's spirits
with entertainments:

but shee was deceiv'd, for Pamphilia was in company, and alone much one,
shee could bee in greatest assemblies as private with her owne thoughts, as
if in her Cabinet, and there have as much discourse with her imagination
and cruell memory, as if in the presence.
(391)

As the retreat of Pamphilia into her cabinet shows, it is a place where

women/words can withdraw from circulation and prevent their movement

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

among men. The cabinet marks the boundaries of public and private, and
their violation. Liana reports that

When I had endured a little space (like a Cabinet so fild with treasure, as
though not it selfe, yet the lock or hinges cannot containe it, but breake
open): so did the lock of my speech flie abroad, to discover the treasure
of my truth, and the infinitenesse of his falshood.
(211 )

This appears to be adescription of the way in which female speech breaks

free from the constraints imposed upon it, but it asserts the cabinet (female
subjectivity) as the place where Liana herself has control over knowledge.
Notably, this cabinet is not unlocked from the outside within the dynamic
of male power (as Amphilanthus intrudes upon Pamphilia's cabinet, unin-
vited), but from the inside. The 'treasure' is not the possession of chastity
by a man, but Liana's constancy, which she protests in the face of threats
and accusations. The location of female sexuality in this private, textualised
space leaves her reputation open to interpretation.
Wroth's rereading and rewriting of the romance disrupts the genre in a
number of ways. Not only does she write the Urania, she represents women
within her text as readers and writers who deviate markedly from the
models of women's reading advanced by male commentators. Rather than
showing women's desire for the resolution and closure of marriage, in Urania
female desire is overturned and written away from its normative concep-
tualisation as disruptive and threatening, as the heroines express their
yearning for a constant and virtuous desire. Instead of conforming to the
dualistic model of romance reading, Wroth appropriates the indeterminacy
and playfulness of political romance in order simultaneously to conceal and
reveal women's words, and to assert them as virtuous, rather than as signs
of sexual excess. In this way, Wroth's text constitutes a highly complex
and sophisticated engagement with the multifarious traditions of romance,
and a ringing endorsement of the specmcity, difficulty and multiplicity of
women's reading and writing.

Reforming devotion: courtly religion and

the translation of discourse

In the Caroline court, romance continued to hold a position as a privileged,

yet playful form, which engaged both centrally and peripherally with polit-
ics. Like its early predecessors, romance also tended to migrate across

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 WOMEN READING AND WRITING ROMANCE

generic divisions, appearing in mutated form in a variety of courtly dis-

courses: masque, drama, prose, poetry. However, its ideological affiliations
started to alter, particularly in the wake of the introduction of French
courtly forms to English culturallife. WhereJacobean romance had engaged
fully with the dichotomies of interpretation which enabled a political sub-
text to coexist with an escapist interpretation, Caroline romance begins
to move into new territory, where it is not what the text sqys that signifies
politicaHy, but the fact of the text's circulation and association with what
was sometimes viewed as an increasingly Frenchified, corrupt and Catholic
group at court, symbolised by Queen Henrietta Maria herself. However
much the roman ces (broadly understood) of the Caroline court themselves
insisted upon the moral project of turning frivolous forms to virtuous ends,
the fact remained that for many observers, the ends held out for admiration
were themselves indicative of the inversion of proper order. 46
The process of cultural translation encouraged by Henrietta Maria, with
its emphasis upon the use of secular forms to spread Catholic devotional
practices, was one which privileged female agency. The deployment of the
methods espoused by St Franc;ois de Sales and devout humanism placed
considerable stress upon female spirituality, and emphasised the power of
women to persuade men to devotion via beauty, love and virtue. 47 De Sales'
programme of proselytisation depended upon the reorientation of pro-
fane forms, such as drama, poetry and romance, to divine ends, and upon
the encouragement of lay activity, and self-consciously drew upon secular,
courtly movements such as preciosite and honnetete, in order to win believers to
forms of devotion new in England. Erica Veevers has given an authoritative
account of the 'intimate connections' between the ideals oflove and religion
at the court of Henrietta Maria, arguing that the ideal of female virtue in
the French 'cults' was adapted to embrace a proselytising idea1. 48 It was via
the assimilation of such religious ideals into pre-existing courtly forms, not-
ably romance and the pastoral masque, that political positions were inscribed
and enacted by a complex process of encoding which, via the use of a
closed, precieux hermeneutic, was open to misinterpretation, as it deliber-
ately exploited the appeal of secular discourses to advance spiritual ends.
The politics of the queen's dramatic activities are reasonably weH docu-
mented and have been ably discussed in recent years by, among others,
Erica Veevers and Martin Butler. 49 However, little work has been done on
the other texts dedicated to, and encouraged by, Henrietta Maria and her
circle in the years preceding the outbreak of the Civil War. As Veevers has
noted, translated works were used to introduce 'similar habits of religious
interpretation to the English court'. 50 Henrietta Maria herself (whose reluct-
ance and tardiness in learning English was weH known) had little or no
need of texts translated from the French, but she did provide a useful and

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

prominent patron for those wishing to disseminate the ideas current at

the queen's court to a wider audience. The queen's role was frequently
seen as being that of a mediatrix, negotiating between England and France,
Protestantism and Catholicism, masculine and feminine, so it was entirely
fitting that she should be the protectress of translated texts, which were them-
selves attempting to achieve similar aims, with the added agenda of spread-
ing a Counter-Reformation spirituality, largely alien to English Catholics.
The most infiuential of these texts was undoubtedly Nicolas Caussin's The
Ho!J Court, translated by Thomas Hawkins and dedicated to Henrietta Maria
in 1626. Subsequent volumes were dedicated to various members of the
queen's circle, including the Duchess of Buckingham and Frances Weston,
Countess of Portland. The Ho!J Court provided a manifesto of sorts for the
coexistence of courtly pleasure and religion, by insisting that the tempta-
tions of the courtly life needed to be tempered by humility and wisdom and
kept in check by adherence to the devotional practices of the Catholic
Church. The dedication of this text to Henrietta Maria immediately testifies
to an attempt to translate the habits of the French court to England, as
the original had been dedicated to Henrietta Maria's brother, Louis XIII,
and it posits the queen as the link for the practices encouraged by the text:

Let lesser Lightes borow Beames of Radiance, from your Greater Orbe;
and persist you (Glorious Example ofVertue) to illumine, and heate our
more Notherne Clime, with celestiall ardours. Add to earthly Crownes,
heavenly Diademes of Piety.51

Hawkins alludes he re to the central tenet of The Ho!J Court, by juxtapos-

ing 'earthly Crownes' with 'heavenly Diademes of Piety': the compatibility
of the courtly life with devotion and virtue, mediated through a concept
of chaste love, '[tJo love is naturall: not to love is monstrous'.52 The text
undertakes the transformation of what is sinful and licentious to virtue and
godliness. Courtly behaviour is turned inside out, so that forms are given a
new content, enabling courtliness to be assimilated into a programme of
devotion which concentrates upon the relations hip between exterior and
interior contemplation:

we may say to Courtiers, the more to inftame them, to fortify themselves in

great, & glorious vertu es, to wit, that arriving at Court, they enter into a
house of Pennance, where they every day have a thousand occasions of
suffering, which is the shortest way to perfection.:)3

Caussin infuses devotion with a Neoplatonic vocabulary of beauty and

grace, relocating desire as a quality of the soul's relation to God, and

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 WOMEN READING AND WRITING ROMANCE

enabling a courtly discourse of love to be redirected to divine ends. The

second volume of The Hofy Court places particular stress upon the power of
women to inspire virtue: 'the good life of women is a piece so necessary for
Christianity, that it cannot be cut off without introducing a notable dis-
order,.54 While women are not to be assertive in their demeanour, the
argument of The Hofy Court is that women are aH the more persuasive when
they operate within the hierarchy laid down within marriage. The exercise
of modesty, for example, is much more effective than creating noise and
elamour: '[wJith this mild temper of spirit, Hester changed King Assuerus into
a lamb'.55 The use of this particular example asserts the notion of female
agency as an important element in the pursuit of devotion and the effecting
of conversions.
The reorientation of secular forms to religious ends, and the valorisation
offemale agency, is indicated by Suzanne du Vergerre's translation ofJean-
Pierre Camus' Admirable Events (1639), presented as a courtly text which has
elose associations with the hermeneutic practices ofHenrietta Maria's court.
Admirable Events is dedicated to the queen, and derives so me of its authority
from Caussin's favourable mention ofCamus' work in The Hofy Court, which
du Vergerre cites in her dedication:

Rare Caussin, who in a noble translation of the Holy Court, towards the end
of the seeond part, hath these words, as weil of proper gratitude to his
person, as of a fuH Elogie of the graees and beauties of his minde. 56

The mention of Caussin immediately aligns du Vergerre's translation with

the intermingling of discourses that The Hofy Court exemplifies. 57 Camus was
associated with de Sales, and was a prolific producer of stories and prose
fictions which were thinly veiled discussions ofvirtue and doctrine. Many of
his works are elose imitations of the kinds of devotional pro se being pro-
duced by de Sales. Admirable Events participates in the process of appropri-
ation and reformation of available cultural forms advocated in the first
instance by the Jesuits, as weH as by devout humanism's utilisation of a
courtly discourse. 58 Camus' position is strongly anti-romance:

to wrastle, or rather to eneounter with those frivolous books, whieh may all
be eomprized under the name of Romants, whieh would require the hands
whieh fables attribute unto Briarius, or the strength whieh Poets give unto
Hercules ... 0 why hath not my pen the vertue to eure the wounds that
these wieked books eause in this world!'>9

His project is one of using the romance writers' weapons upon themselves,
where the process of reform is a transformative one, inveigling readers by

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 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

the form of the text, hut replacing fictions and fantasies with truth, reli-
gion and virtue, without the reader's heing overtly aware of the type of
text heing read. A form of deception is practised, whereby one discourse
is made to do the work of another, and surface becomes separated from
content, being only a means to entice the reader to virtue:

to overthrow so many fabulous Bookes, I undertake not my combat

directly, as if I were confuting heresies, for it is not needfull that I should
trouble my self to prove the obscurity of darknesse, nor to shew the
falshood of these Romants, Adventures, Chivalries, and other such
trash ... By what mann er doe I then labour to overcome my adversaries?
it is by diversion, setting relations true and beneficiall, in the place of those
that are prophane, fabulous, and not onely unprofitable, but for the most
part pernicious. GO

Du Vergerre herself is implicated in the transformative process, not only by

taking part in making roman ce moral, but also by the act of translation
itSelf Du Vergerre emphasises the virtues of plain style, asserting the value
of the matter rather than the language, and thereby affirming the fidelity of
her translation to the intentions of the author of the original, as weIl as
confirming the power of female agency in proposing this type of reforma-
tion, which was seen by critics of the court as a way of licensing pleas-
ure and practising deceit. For all this cumbersome apparatus, from both
translator and author, asserting the moral value of the tales, the text itself
appears to embrace the very techniques it claims to eschew. 61 The individual
narratives draw upon many commonplaces of romance: mistaken identities,
mismatched lovers, parental opposition. Occasionally, there is a glirnpse of
the kind ofNeoplatonic vocabulary current at the court ofHenrietta Maria,
and the stories collectively seem to celebrate an ideal of chaste love, in
which both parties are willing participants, and where earthly love is a
mirror image of divine love: 'true love only airneth at the good of the object
beloved'.62 Rosana insists that it is 'treason' to bestow the body and not
the heart, and various stories emphasise the need for virtue. In the 'Good
Fortune of Honestie', for example, two Roman temples of Honour and
Virtue are described as being joined together: 'this served as an Embleme
to shew that there can be no progresse to honour but by vertue'.63 Such
appropriative discourses demonstrate the instability of language and rep-
resentation at the court of Henrietta Maria, and playapart in the identi-
fication of corruption with Catholicism and the feminine. Such discourses
can be seen to be doing something other than what they claim, as they
consciously participate in forms that are repeatedly linked to sensuality,
hypocrisy and the undermining of good government in church and state.

256
 WOMEN READING AND WRITING ROMANCE

Du Vergerre's translation of Camus participates in a wider translation

movement associated with Henrietta Maria and her circle, evinced by the
dedication of works which embraced a particular kind of courtly spirituality
to the queen and her attendants, and many other texts of the 1630s repres-
ent similar appropriations of language to religious ends, building upon the
idea, advanced by Caussin, of the court as a place where perfection may be
attained through the imitation of God, and the notion that the earthly life is
apreparation for death. Several of the texts dedicated to Henrietta Maria
develop arguments about the need to infuse the courtly life with virtue,
humility and devotion, and emphasise the fact that death comes to all, and
must be prepared for by the rich and powerful as weIl as by the poor and
humble. 64
The intersection between courtly and religious discourses is not only
found in the transformation of secular forms to devotional ends, but in the
use of a Neoplatonic language oflove and beauty in devotional texts, which
immediately serves to elide the distinction between sacred and profane in
such a way as to call their true status into question, and to imply that a
superficial appeal to the senses is being used to insinuate Catholicism into
court and government. This quality of language is particularly notable in
the works of St Franc;ois de Sales, which were directed to a predominantly
female readership and seem to have had some currency among both Catholic
and Protestant women in England. Agnes More, a Benedictine nun, trans-
lated de Sales' Delicious Entertainments qf the Soul in 1632. 65 This text was
intended as a supplement to the Introduction to a Devout Lift, and was directed
to those already initiated into Salesian devotion. More resists the usual
apologies found in texts authored by women, under the guise of a conven-
tional modesty topos:

the translatresse a woman, that had not much skille in the Frenche, but
why did shee then undertake it? wilt thou say, truely for her private
imployment & instruction; never intending more than the use of a
particular cloister; though God and her superiours have otherwise disposed
of it; & exposed it to the publiek view of the world, as thou seest. 66

The text, More explains, is esteemed 'not onely by Religious persons, but
also by the best seculars, especially of the devout sexe'. 67 Delicious Entertain-
ments, as its tide implies, proceeds to a fuller understanding of God via a
series of contemplations based upon the engagement of the senses, and a
notion of pleasure, rather than by the severity of external devotions:

Lett the sisters make a particuler Profession to nourish in their hartes an

interiour strong and generous devotion; I say intenour that they have their

257
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

wills conforme to the good exteriour actions they shall doe, whether they be
little or great; Lett nothing be done out of custome: but by election and
application of the wil1. 68

Like de Sales' other works, Delicious Entertainments uses a sensuallanguage of

love to describe the soul's relationship to God, and much of the text is
concerned with orientating this language correctly: the devout believer has
to submit to 'good pleasure', and to learn a 'most holy and amourous submis-
sion,.69 The authority for this language of pleasure and love derives from
the possibility of transformation, the idea that the soul will be attracted to
God through the perception of beauty and the senses, and that it is the end
rather than the means which ultimately counts. The only end is the glory of
God, and 'provided they walke rightly to that end, she careth not by what
way it iS'.70
The interplay of courtly and religious discourses was an integral part of
the particular form of devotion espoused by Henrietta Maria and her fol-
lowers in the l630s. While these practices have their own internallogic and
coherence, the context in which they were exercised served to make their
meanings unstable and open to interpretation, as they are seen to bring
continental forms of worship into the heart of the English court, and are
characterised as exemplifying the iniquitous influence of all that is 'other'.
Combined with proselytising zeal, and Laud's attempts to reform church
ceremony, the queen's particular brand of Catholicism came to represent
all that was corrupt about the Roman faith: it concentrated on surface and
pleasure (itself a sign of effeminate decay); it had elose affinities with contin-
ental Counter-Reformation spirituality; it valorised female mediation and
agency; and it appeared to be popular not only among court women, but
among a portion of the London population. 71 Worse of all, perhaps, the
queen's Catholicism was highly visible, thus contributing to a perception
that Catholic sympathies were more widespread than in fact they were.
The relationship between roman ce and a female readership was a para-
doxical and often vexed one in the early modern period. Elizabethan and
Jacobean commentators in particular express considerable une ase regard-
ing the moral consequences of women's apparently keen appreciation of
lengthy tales of love, knighthood and derring-do. However, this is not as
straightforward as it might at first appear: why, if their effect was so dele-
terious, did romances continue to be heavily marketed for a female reader-
ship? Is there not perhaps some degree of self-interest in statements which
suggest that roman ce reading will lead causally to sexual capitulation? It
would seem that abstract arguments about the morality of romance reading
as it related to the two sexes opens up a particularly problematic anomaly
in Renaissance thinking - namely that women's exclusion from the public

258
 WOMEN READING AND WRITING ROMANCE

sphere and politics often serves to produce them as unfit recipients of such
responsibility, or, at least, that is what these kinds of discourses aim to
suggest. 1t is also true that for many commentators romances were thought
to be equally corrupting to male morality, and that despite the rather
tendentious statements many perfectly respectable women read and were
entertained by these texts. Lurking behind some of the critiques is a barely
veiled dass disdain, unhappy about the accessibility of these vernacular
texts to the uneducated: they provided few frameworks whereby old orders,
ideas and hierarchies could be securely held in place. 1t is clear from the
degree to which women were involved in the production of roman ces, as
inspirations, editors, readers, patrons and writers, that the intended align-
me nt of licentious readings with the feminine could not be sustained, even
if ultimately women's engagement with romance was frequently construed
by others as negative. However, such constructions, as in the case of Mary
Wroth and the court of Henrietta Maria, only demonstrate the degree to
which women's writing was politicised in the early modern period: these
may not be politics that we readily recognise, but they are politics nonethe-
less and it is our responsibility as readers to be alert to them.

Notes

2 E[dwardJ. H[akeJ., A Touchestonefir this time present London, 1574, sig. C4r.
2 See the account in Caroline Lucas, Writingfir Women: 7he Example rf Woman as
Reader in Elizabethan Romance (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1989),
ch. 1.
3 See ch. 1, above.
4 See George Pigman, 'Versions of imitation in the Renaissance', Renaissance
Qyarterly 33 (1980): 1-32.
5 Wye Saltonstall, 'A Maide', Picturte Loquentes. Or Pictures DrawneJorth in Characters
(1631), sig. E6v-E7r.
6 Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: 7he Conditions rf Reading and
Writing in Early Modem England (Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 1984),
160.
7 Miscellaneous Prose rf Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine Duncan:Jones andJan van
Dorsten (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973),92.
8 Fulke Greville, 7he Lift rf Sir Philip Sidney, introduced by Nowell Smith (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1907), 15.
9 See Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation, 10-11.

259
 THE POllTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

i
10 See Jonathan Crewe, Hidden Designs: The Critical Profession and Renaissance Liter-
ature (London: Methuen, 1986), 76-88.
11 For a general oudine of prose fietion in this period, see Paul Salzman, English
Prose Fiction 1558-1700: A Critical History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).
12 Crewe, Hidden Designs, 77.
13 The Argenis went through three Latin editions (1621, 1622, 1634). Kingsmill
Long's translation appeared in 1625, and a seeond edition with a key was
issued in 1636. Le Grys' translation was published in 1628 and reprinted the
following year. The work was reprinted in virtually every year from 1621 to
1634, sometimes twiee.
14 See N.E. MeClure (ed.), Letters rif lohn Chamberlain, 2 vols (Philadelphia:
American Philosophie al Soeiety, 1939), 2: 435-6.
15 Jonson's translation was entered in the Stationers' Reeord on 2 Oetober 1623,
C.R. Rerford and Perey Simpson (eds), Ben ]onson's Works, 12 vols (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1925-52), XI: 78. See the doeumentation reprodueed in
W. Greg, A Companion to Arber (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 238-40.
16 John Barclay, His Argenis, Translated out rif Latine into English: The Prose upon his
Mqjesties Command, trans. Robert le Grys, verses by Thomas May (1628), 485.
17 Lucas, Writingfor Women, 29.
18 SP 16/7/85. It is unclear whether the Argenis is banned beeause it is a
romanee, or beeause of Barclay's unorthodox Catholie opinions - like his
father, William, Barclay denies the authority ofthe Pope in temporal matters.
See D. Willson, james I and his 1iterary assistants', Huntington Library Qyarterly
8 (1944-5): 35-57.
19 See G. Williamson, Lady Anne ClijfOrd Countess rif Dorset, Pembroke & Montgomery,
1590-1676. Her Lift, Letters and Work (Kendal: Titus Wilson & Son, 1922),
344.
20 Ben]onson's Works, vol. VIII (Underwood, XLIII), 207.
21 John Barclay, Barclay His Argenis: or, the Loves rif Poliarchus and Argenis, trans.
Kingsmill Long (1625), 54.
22 See Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation, 180-l.
23 F.N. Coeffeteau, Histoire de Poliarque et d'Argenis (Paris, 1928).
24 See C. Urbain, Nicolas Coiffiteau, Dominicain, Eveque de Marseille (Paris: Thorin &
Fils, 1893), and below, 255-7.
25 F.N. CoefTeteau, Epitome rif the History rifFaire Argenis and Polyarchus, trans. J udith
Man (1640), sigs A6r-A7r.
26 Judith Man may have been the daughter of Peter Man, Strafford's solieitor.
Re is mentioned in C. Wedgwood, Thomas Wentworth, First Earl rif Strajford

260
 WOMEN READING AND WRITING ROMANCE

1593-1641 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1964), 29 and in J. Cooper (ed.),

Wentworth Papers 1597-1628, Camden Society, 4th series (London, 1973), 12.
27 Tyler's preface is reprinted in Betty S. Travitsky (ed.), 7he Paradise qf Women:
Writings by Englishwomen qf the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1989), 144-6. The Arcadia was translated into French by Jean Baudoin
in 1624-5.

28 Lady Mary Wroth, 7he Countesse qf Mountgomeries Urania (1621), 450. All sub-
sequent references will be included in the text.

29 See Mary Ellen Lamb, Gender and Authorship in the Sidney Circle (Madison:
Wisconsin University Press, 1990), 149; and Barbara K. Lewalski, Writing
Women in Jacobean England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993),
249. See also E1aine V. Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers in the Renaissance
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), eh. 8; Maureen Quilligan, 'Lady
Mary Wroth: female authority and the family romance', in George Logan
and Gordon Teskey (eds), UrifOlded Tales: Essays on Renaissance Romance (Ithaca:
Cornen University Press, 1989): 257-80;Jennifer carren, 'A pack oflies in a
100king glass: Lady Mary Wroth's Urania and the magie mirror ofromance',
Studies in English Literature 34 (1994): 79-107; Gary Waller, 7he Sidney Family
Romance: Mary Wroth, William Herbert, and the Early Modem Construction qf Gender
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), eh. 8; and NaomiJ. Miller,
Changing the Subject: Mary Wroth and Figurations qf Gender in Early Modem England
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996).
30 See also eh. 5, 213 -27. The verses exchanged between W roth and Denny are
in Josephine A. Roberts (ed.), 7he Poems qf Lady Mary Wroth (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1983), 32-5.

31 See Roberts (ed.), Poems, 28-37 and the Appendix; Paul Salzman, 'Contem-
porary references in Mary Wroth's Urania,' Review qf English Studies 29 (1978):
178-81; andJohnJ. O'Connor, james Hay and the Countess ofMontgomeries
Urania', Notes and Qyeries 200 (1955): 150-2.

32 See Chamberlain to Carleton, 9 March 1622, where he relates that at court

it was thought that Wroth 'takes great libertie or rather licence to traduce
whom she please, and thincks she daunces in a net', Letters, 2: 427.

33 The letter from the Earl of Rutland is in Roberts (ed.), Poems, 244-5, but its
1640 date, and the fact that it refers to 'a Manuscrip you shewed me in your
study att Banerds Casten' leads me to suspect that he refers to the unpublished
manuscript continuation of the Urania (Newberry Case MS fY 1565. W95).

34 For fun details ofbiographical evidence and possible paralleis with Urania, see
Roberts (ed.), Poems, 3-40.
35 Sir Philip Sidney, 7he Countess qf Pembroke's Arcadia (The Old Arcadia), ed. Jean
Robertson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 3.

261
 THE POLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

36 Mary Ellen Lamb suggests that Susan Herbert may have read some ofWroth's
drafts, and discusses her relation to the Urania in 'Women readers in Mary
Wroth's Urania', in Naomi J. Miller and Gary Waller (eds), Reading Mary
Wroth: Representing Alternatives in Early Modem England (Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1991),210-27,214-15.
37 See Roger Pooley, English Prose qfthe Seventeenth Century, 1590-1700 (London:
Longman, 1992), 17; and Helen Hackett, '''Yet tell me some such fiction":
Lady Mary Wroth's Urania and the "femininity ofromance"', in Women, Texts
and Histories 1575-1760, ed. Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss (London: Routledge,
1992): 39-68.

38 See Maureen Quilligan, 'The constant subject: instability and authority in

Wroth's Urania poems', in Elizabeth D. Harvey and Katharine Eisaman Maus
(eds), Soliciting Interpretation: literary Theory and Seventeenth-Century English Poetry,
307-35 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 310-11.

39 Quilligan, 'Constant subject', 311-12.

40 See Lewalski, Writing Women, 264-5.

41 Sidney, Old Arcadia, 198.

42 SeeJeffMasten, , "Shall I turne blabb?": circulation, gender, and subjectivity
in Mary Wroth's sonnets', in Miller and Waller, Reading Mary Wroth, 67-87,
82.

43 The story of Lindamira (Ladi Mari) seems to refer to her father's (Bersindor)
courtship of Barbara Gamage, Wroth's favour at court, her marriage and
love for another, and her fall from the queen's favour. Many critics have
noted the parallels between the story and Wroth's life, but have usually not
noted the implications of the form in which the story is told. See Margaret
Hannay, '''Your vertuous and learned aunt": the Countess ofPembroke as a
mentor to Mary Wroth' in Miller and Waller, Reading Mary Wroth, 15-34,27-
8; Roberts, Poems, 30-1 and Lamb, Gender and Authorship, 185-8.

44 See Quilligan, 'Constant subject', 310-12.

45 See Masten, '''Shall I turne"', 67-87.

46 See Danielle Clarke, 'The iconography of the blush: Marian literature of the
1630s', in Voicing Women: Gender and Sexuality in Early Modem Writing, ed. Kate
Chedgzoy et al. (Keele: Keele University Press, 1996), 111-28.

47 For the context of these forms of devotion, see Henri Bremond, A Literary
History qfReligious Thought in Franceftom the Wars qfReligion down to our own Times,
trans. K.L. Montgomery, 3 vols (London: Macmillan, 1928-36), vol. I; David
Mathew, Catholicism in England 1535-1935, The Portrait qf a Minority: Its Culture
and Tradition (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1936); and PierreJanelle, The
Catholic RifOrmation (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1963).

262
 WOMEN REAOING ANO WRITING ROMANCE

48 Eriea Veevers, Images qf Love and Religion: Qyeen Henrietta Maria and Court Enter-
tainments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 65-74. See also
Wendy Gibson, Women in Seventeenth-Century France (Basingstoke: Maemillan,
1989), eh. 13.
49 Veevers, Images qf Love; Suzanne Gossett, '''Man-maid, begone!": women in
masques', English Literary Renaissance 18 (1988): 96-113; Martin Butler, Theatre
and Crisis 1632-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), eh. 3;
and Sophie Tomlinson, 'She that plays the king: Henrietta Maria and the
threat of the aetress in Caroline eulture', in The Politics qf Tragicomedy: Shake-
speare andA.fter, ed.Jonathan Hope and Gordon MeMullan (London: Routledge,
1992): 189 -207. On the politieal implieations of Caroline literature more
generally, see Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics qf Literature in
the England qf Charles I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, repr.
1990); and Lawrenee Venuti, Our Halcyon Dayes: English Prerevolutionary Texts and
Postmodern Culture (Madison: University ofWiseonsin Press, 1989), ehs. 4 and 5.
50 Veevers, Images qf Love, 125.
51 Nieholas Caussin, The Holy Court. Or the Christian Institution qf Men qf Qyality,
trans. Thomas Hawkins (Paris, 1626), I: sig. *v.
52 Ibid., I: 7.
53 Ibid., I: 76.
54 The Holy Court, trans. [T]homas. [H]awkins (Paris, 1634), II: 255.
55 Ibid., II: 267.
56 Jean-Pierre Camus, Admirable Events: Selected out qf Foure Bookes . .. Together with
moral! Relations, trans. Suzanne du Vergerre (London, 1639), sig. A4r.
57 The idea of Catholie ritual as drama is a eommon one: see, for example,
Peter Smart, The Vanitie & Downe-:foll qfSuperstitious Popish Ceremonies (Edinburgh,
1628), sig. *2v.
58 On the Jesuits' use of drama see William H. McCabe, An Introduction to the
Jesuit Theater, ed. Louis]. 01dani, SJ (St Louis MO: Institute ofJesuit Sourees,
1983); and Suzanne Gossett, 'Drama in the English College, Rome, 1591-
1660', English Literary Renaissance 3 (1973): 60-93.
59 Admirable Events, sig. A8r.
60 Admirable Events, sig. ar-v.
61 Helen White, English Devotional Literature [Prose} 1600-1640 (Madison: University
of Wiseonsin Press, 1931), 113-14.

62 Admirable Events, 15.

63 Admirable Events, 80.

263
 THE rOLlTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

64 See for example, Puget de la Serre, 7he Mirror "Which Flalters Not, trans.
T[homas]. C[ary]. (London, 1639).
65 For biographical information on Agnes More, see Dorothy L. Latz (ed.),
."Glow-worrn light": Writings qf 17th Century English Recusant Women from Original
Manuscripts, Salzburg Studies in English Literature 92: 121, (Salzburg, 1989),
92: 121; and Jeanne de Cambry, 7he Building qf divine love, as translated by
Dame Agnes More, introduced by Dorothy L. Latz, Salzburg Studies in English
Literature 92: 17 (Salzburg, 1992).
66 St Fran<;ois de Sales, Delicious Entertainments qf the Soule, trans. Agnes More
(Douai, 1632), sigs. a2r-v.
67 Ibid., sig. a2v.
68 Ibid., 10.
69 Ibid., 21 and 44.
70 Ibid., 14.
71 See Thomas Birch (ed.), 7he Court and Times qfCharles 1,2 vols (1848), II: 309
on the popularity of the queen's chapel at Somerset House.

264
 EPILOGUE

Since one of the aims of this book has been to avoid coHapsing aH women
into a single gendered category, the notion of drawing dear condusions
or making definitive statements is rather misplaced. However, it is pos-
sible to puH together some repeated threads or ideas and to suggest areas
which might be fruitfuHy explored. The exciting thing about early modern
women's writing for the researcher is the possibility of discovering (or redis-
covering) something new and this fact means that our knowledge is in a
continual state of flux and requires constant modification. I hope that it is
now dear that this also presupposes vigilance about methodology. By altering
the focus from biographicalor author-based interpretations to text-based
and generic approaches I have signaHed one way in which this might be
done. Of course, this is not the only critical framework that demands atten-
tion. Work remains to be done on women as readers and on the topic of
women's language, and whether there are specific formal and linguistic
features or registers which we can identifY in early modern women's writing.
Innovative work is currently being done on manuscript culture as practised
by Renaissance women which will unsettle the print bias of much criticism
and alter the focus from largely noble or upper-dass women.
It should be stated dearly that there is always a danger in deploying a
purely literary focus when looking at material from this period, although it
does fit neatly into our post-Victorian and institutionalised perceptions of
subject boundaries. Many of the texts written by Renaissance women are
not 'literary' in our ill-defined and evaluative modern sense, and the distinc-
tion between 'literature' and other kinds of texts makes little sense in rela-
tion to the Renaissance. In many cases, 'literature' is not in any sense a
high-status category, ceding position to historical texts, Latin material or
theology. In other words, far more attention needs to be paid to context, in
a fuHy historical sense, and rather less on the relationship of these writers to
a canon, which in any case is under constant revision. We would do weH to
bear in mind, when arguing about women writers' indusion or exdusion
from the canon,John Guillory's argument that canons are determined both
by producers and consumers, and that readers of early modern women's
writing are part of this process. Furthermore, the very canon to which we

265
 THE POLITICS OF EARlY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

seek access for these writers is grounded in a nexus of post-Renaissance

assumptions about literature, its functions and its value: these writers are
not Shakespeare or Donne or Spenser but in many ways they are entirely
typical of their culture and should not be treated as 'add-ons' to major
writers which whom they often have little in common. Reading Cary's
Mariam against Shakespeare's Othello simply because both plays deal with
marital strife is litde more than a function of our own feminist demands
that women be 'represented', but ends up unintentionally placing Mariam in
a position of secondariness, primarily because her chosen discourse has not
had the powerful afterlife that Shakespeare's has. In the final event, our
modern canon of Renaissance texts would look exceedingly strange to an
early modern reader: it is almost entirely in the English language, it stresses
poetry very heavily, and it is primarily secular in focus.
It has been my argument in this book that sustained attention to context
can start to open up areas of agency that easily remain hidden to us if we
engage with women writers of the Renaissance on our terms rather than on
theirs. In many sens es this is at best a utopian project, and runs the risk of
eiosing down access to an interesting body of material. However, my guid-
ing principle has been that these texts become more interesting if we at-
tempt to understand more fuHy not only their writers, but the networks of
which they were apart, how they were produced physicaHy and materiaHy,
who read them and for what purposes. We should not shy away from the
fact that many texts accept the patriarchal dictates of their culture, for it is
from these that women could derive power and authority, however limited.
In short, I have tried to suggest ways in which women writers might be
placed more securely in the Renaissance, and hope that in so doing their
achievements will be more fully appreciated by students of early modern
literature and culture.

266
 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anthologies and selections of texts

Aughterson, Kate (ed.). Renaissance Woman: a Sourcebook. London: Routledge, 1995.

Bradner, Leicester (ed.). The Poems rif Qyeen Elizabeth L Providence, RI: Brown
University Press, 1964.
Cerasano, S. and M. Wynne-Davies (eds). Renaissance Drama ry Women: Texts and
Documents. London: Routledge, 1996.
Clarke, Danielle (ed.). Three Renaissance Women Poets: Isabella Whitnry, Mary Sidnry,
Aemilia Lanyer. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001.
Crawford, Patricia and Laura Gowing (eds). Women's Worlds in England 1580-
1720. London: Routledge, 2000.
Cusack, Bridget (ed.). Everyday English 1500-1700: AReader. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1998.
Davie, Dona1d (ed.). The Psalms in English. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar (eds). The Norton Anthology rif Literature ry
Women. 2nd edn. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.
Greer, Germaine, et al. (eds). Kissing the Rod: An Anthology rif Seventeenth-Gentury
Women's Verse. London: Virago, 1989.
Henderson, Katherine Usher and Barbara F. McManus (eds). HalfHumankind:
Gontexts and Texts rif the Gontrover~ about Women in England, 1540-1640. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1985.
Hutson, Loma (ed.). Feminism and Renaissance Studies. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999.
Keeb1e, N.H. (ed.). The Gulturalldentity rif Seventeenth-Gentury Woman: AReader.
London: Routledge, 1994.
Kersey, Shirley N. (ed.). Glassics in the Education rif Girls and Wamen. Metehen, NJ:
Scarecrow Press, 1981.
Martin, Randall (ed.). Wamen Writers in Renaissance England. London: Longman,
1997.
Norbrook, David, and H.R. Woudhuysen (sel. and ed.). The Penguin Baak rif
Renaissance Verse, 1509-1659. London: Allen Lane, 1992.

267
 TH E rOLITICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITI NG

Osley, A. (seI. and trans.). Scribes and Scholars: Handbook qf the Chancery Hand in the
Sixteenth Century. London: Faber and Faber, 1980.
Pepper, R. (ed.). Four Tudor Books on Education. Gainsville: Scho1ars' Facsimiles
and Reprints, 1966.
Purkiss, Diane (ed.). Renaissance Women: 17ze Plays qf Elizabeth Cary, 17ze Poems qf
Aemilia Lanyer. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1994.
Purkiss, Diane (ed.). 17zree Tragedies by Renaissance Women. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1998.
Spingarn, J.E. (ed.). Critical Essays qf the Seventeenth Century. 3 vols. Oxford:
C1arendon Press, 1908.
Travitsky, Betty (ed.). 17ze Paradise qf Women: Writings by Englishwomen qf the
Renaissance. New York: Co1umbia University Press, 1989.
Tril1, Suzanne, Kate Chedgzoy and Melanie Osborne (eds). Lay by rour Needles
Ladies, Take the Pen: Writing Women in England, 1500~1700. London: Arno1d,
1997.

Primary texts

Agrippa, Coruelius. A treatise qf the Nocilitie and Excellencie qf Womanbyude. Trans.

David C1apam. 1542.
[Anger, Jane]. ]ane Anger her Protectionfor Women. 1589.
Ascham, Roger. 17ze Scholemaster. In English Works, ed. W.A. Wright. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1904.
Barclay, John. Barclay His Argenis: or, the Loves qf Poliarchus and Argenis. Trans.
Kingsmill Long. 1625.
Barclay, John. His Argenis, Translated out qf Latine into English. Trans. Robert le
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281
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 INDEX

Achilles 86, 87 Barnfie!d, Richard 203

Actium 90, 92 Basire, Isaac 36
Adam 68,69 Bathsheba 131
Agamemnon 85, 86, 87 Bedford, Countess of 209
Agrippa 92 Beilin, Elaine 149, 163, 164, 166, 168
Agrippa, Corne!ius 159 Beze, Theodore de 128, 131, 139
Alen<;on, Duke of 209 Bible 33, 37, 67, 69, 70-1, 123-5, 127,
Alpers, Paul 107 148,170-1
Amadis de Gaule 234, 236 see also Psalms
Anger,Jame 49,60,61,63,68 Geneva 128, 134, 137-8, 164, 209
Protection 53-8 Isaiah 130
Anjou, Duke of 206 Lamentations 150
Anne of Denmark 240, 245 poetic interpretations of 125-6
annotation, practice of 36-7 re-readings of 157-62
Antonie, Tragedie qf Reve!ations 160
see Garnier, Robert; Pembroke, Countess St. Matthew 157-8
of St. Paul's Epistles 36
Antony 89-95 Song of Songs 160
Appian 92, 93 biographical criticism 4-7
Appleby Castle 236 Bisham Abbey
Aretino, Pietro 34, 35 tombs in 176-7
Argenis Book of Common Prayer 137
see Barday,John Bruce, John 41
Ariadne 57 Bruster, Douglas 30
Ariosto, Ludovico 34 Buchanan, George 82
ars moriendi 154 Buckingham
Artemis 84 Duchess of 254
Arunde! family 85 Duke of 172
Arunde!, Lord 84 Burgeus, Annas 163, 165, 166
Ascham, Roger 27 Bushnell, Rebecca 102
Astrea 245 Butler, Martin 253
see also Pyper,John
authorship 4,49-51,54, 147, 191 Caesar, Octavius 89, 92, 93, 94, 95
Calvin,John 41, 127, 128, 130, 131
'bachelor' text 59 commentaries on the Psalms 137,209
Bacon, Anne Cooke Sermons 129, 132
Apologia ecclesiae anglicanae 14 Calvinism 89, 130
ballad 52 Camden, William
Banbury 20 Annals qf Ogeen Elizabeth 14
Barday, John Cameron, Deborah 19
Argenis 232,234, 235-9, 241 Camus, Jean-Pierre 237
translations of 235-9 Admirable Events 255-7

283
 THE POllTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Carey, Elizabeth (Bess) 212-13 Culross, Lady

Cary, Elizabeth, Viscountess Falkland 82, see Colville, Elizabeth
83 Cumberland, Countess of
elegy on Buckingham 171-2 see Clifford, Margaret
History qf the Lift, Reign and Death qf Edward
III72 Daniel 148
Tragedie qf Mariam 5,81,83,95-106 Daniel, Samuel 203
teatment of adultery in 99-100 Dante, Alighieri 34, 148
Cary, Henry, Viscount Falkland 172 David 71, 129, 131, 134-5, 145
Castiglione, Baldassare see also Psalms
Boke qf the Courtier 189 Davie, Donald 123, 129, 138, 141
sprezzatura 189 Davies, John 137
Catherine of Aragon 98 Dekker, Thomas, Westward Hoe 41-2
Catholicism 99, 131 De Mornay, Philippe 9
Catholics 139, 165 Discourse qf Lift and Death 89
see also Camus; Caussin; de Sales; du Denbigh, Countess of 172
Vergerre; Henrietta Maria Denny, Lord Edward 191, 215, 240
and courtly iconography 252-9 Denny, Honora 240
representation of 164 Dering, Edward 130
Caussin, Nicolas 254, 255, 257 de Sales, St. Franc;ois 253,255, 257
Cerberus 72 see also More, Agnes
Chamberlain, J ohn 215 Delicious Entertainments qf the Soule 257-58
charivari 52 Introduction to a Devout Lift 257
Charles I 14, 235, 237 de Serres, Jean 162
Charles IX of France 166 Devereux, Robert, 2nd Earl of Essex 206
Charmian 91, 94 Devereux, Robert, 3rd Earl of Essex 98
Chaucer, Geoffrey 148, 151, 194 devout humanism 253-59
Cheshire 20 I Dido 193, 194
chorus 94-5 Diomede 90,91
Christ 150, 152, 158, 160-1, 164-5 divorce 96, 97, 98, 99
Cicero 76 see also Cary, Elizabeth
De Oratore 29 'Dolefull Lay of Clorinda' 167
Clapam, David 159 see also Pembroke, Countess of
Cleopatra 82,83,89-95, 106 Donne,John 124,125,127,136,142,143,
Clifford, Lady Anne 236 177, 188
Clifford, Margaret, Countess of Dowriche, Anne 162-6
Cumberland 158, 160 The French Historie 162-6
closet drama 80, 82-3, 88, 106 drama 80-118
Clytemnestra 57, 86, 87 dream poetry 147-57, 162
Coeffeteau, Nicholas 237 dreams
see also Man, Judith theories of 148-9
Colville, Elizabeth, Lady Culross 9, 148, Duncan:Jones, Katherine 212,213
149-52, 154, 163 Dunstan, A.C. I
A Godlie Dreame 149-52 d'Urfe, Honore 245
Biblical imagery in 151 see also Astrea
conduct manuals 68, 96, 98, 10 I, 103 du Vergerre, Suzanne 255-7
Cooke family 175 see also Camus,Jean-Pierre
see also Bacon, Anne Cooke; Mildmay,
Lady Grace; RusselI, Lady Elizabeth Echo, figure of 53, 246, 249-50
copia 61 Edgecombe, Pearse 163
Corbet, Frances 36 education 19-22, 49
Coverdale, Miles 125 curriculum 20
Crawford, Patricia 25, 124 Edward II 172
Crewe, Jonathan 235 Edward VI 85, 131

284
 INDEX

elegies 166-78 Globe theatres 81

Elizabeth I 14,32,36,41,95,130-1,137, Goldberg, Jonathan 12, 23, 40, 41, 211
140,146,168,190,208 Golding, Arthur 138
and Petrarchanism 204-8 translation of Calvin's commentaries, 138
poems to Ralegh 190-1,207-8 Görlach, Manfred I 7
poetry of 206-7 Gosson, Stephen 82, 125
translations of Petrarch 205-6 Gouge, William 26-7
Elizabeth of Bohemia 208 Gower,John 194
Elyot, Sir Thomas 29, 232 grammar schools 20
England 163 Banbury 20
Eras 90,91 Greek language 84, 175-6
Erasmus, Desiderius 38, 84 Greek tragedy 84-5
Adages 194 Greg, W.W. 1
Instruction qf a Christian Prince 84 Greville, Sir Fulke 82, 83, 234
Erondell, Peter 28-9 Grey, Lady Jane 85, 131, 139
Essex, 2nd Earl of Grosart, Alexander 1
see Devereux, Robert
Essex, 3rd Earl of Hackel, Heidi 37
see Devereux, Robert Hackett, Helen 113
Esther 61 hagiography 105
Euripides 83, 84, 85 Hall, Rowland 138
Eusebius 41 Haman 61
Eve 64,69, 159 Hannay, Margaret 133, 138, 164
Exeter, Bishop of 38 Harington, Sir John 29, 209
Harley, Lady Brilliana 40-1
Falkland, Viscount Harvey, Gabriel 38
see Cary, Henry Hawkins, Thomas 254
Falkland, Viscountess see also The Ho[y Court; Caussin
see Cary, Elizabeth Hay, James 240
female silence 26-7 Heale, William 99
Ferguson, Margaret 96 Hebrew language 143-4
Fisken, Beth Wynne 168 Helen 85,86, 198
Fitzalan, Henry Henderson, Katherine Usher 51
see Arundel, Lord Henrietta Maria 15, 232, 253
Fleming,Juliet 30 confessor of 236
Fletcher, AJ. 20 court of 253-9
Foley, Helen 84 Henri IV of France 128, 235
Folger Shakespeare Library 37 regicide of 237
Foucault, Michel 4, 217 Henry, Duke of Guise 162
Foxe, John 33, 34 Henry VIII 98
Book qf Mar!)JrS 131, 163, 165 court of 204
Foyster, Elizabeth 197 marriage to Catherine of Aragon 98
France 163, 164-6 Herbert, George 124, 125, 136, 177
see also Dowriche, Anne Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pembroke
French language 18 see Pembroke, Countess of
funerary verse I 71-2 Herbert, Susan, Countess of Montgomery
244-5
Gal, Susan 17 Herbert, William
Garnier, Robert 13,88 see Pembroke, 3rd Earl of
see also Antonie; Pembroke, Countess of Hercules
Gaveston, Piers 172 and Omphale 93
Genevan exiles 128,130,131,133,135,136 Herod 95,97-100, 103-5, 158
genre 7-9 and tyranny 100-2
Gilbie, Anthony 139 Herz, Judith Scherer 161

285
 THE POllTlCS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Hezekiah 130, 131 'The Description of Cooke-ham' 8, 158,

Hill, Christopher 128, 129 166
hipallage 27 'To the Ladie Anne' 161
historical writing 164 Latin 7, 18, 20, 31, 38, 175-6, 194
Hoby, Lady Margaret 34, 36, 37 sayings 56-7
Hoby, Philip 176, 177 Laud, William 258
Hoby, Sir Thomas 174 Le Grys, Robert 235
17ze Ho!J Court 254, 255 see also Barclay, John
see also Caussin translation of Argenis 236, 237
Homer 64 Leicester, Earl of 138, 139
honnetete 253 Leigh, Dorofuy
Hotman, Franc;ois 162 Mothers Blessing 20
Howard, Frances, Countess of Essex 98 Lewalski, Barbara K. 12, 141, 159
Howell, James 234 Lodge, Thomas 143
Huguenots 128, 139, 162-6 Lok, Anne 1, 9, 127, 128, 136
humanist leaming 22-3, 84, 189, 201 Meditation qf a Penitent Sinner 129-35
humanist reading 35, 232-3 London 38,52, 62, 81, 193-4, 201-3
Hume, Anna 208 and literacy 33
Huntingdon, Earl of 139 Londonderry, Countess of
Hutson, Loma 201, 202, 203 see Ridgeway, Cassandra
Hyrde, Richard 232 Long, Kingsmill 237
see also Barclay, John
imitation 82 Loraux, Nicole 84
Inns of Court 50, 62, 81 Louis XIII 254
Iphigeneia 84-9, 106 Lucan 92,93
Ireland 139 Lucas, Caroline 236
Irish language 24-5 Lucrece 198
Isocrates 84 Lumley, Lady Jane 82
Italian language 18 Iphigeneia 81, 83, 84-8, 116
Luther, Martin 127
James I 149, 235, 237
court of 240, 245 Machiavelli, Niccolo 164
Jewel,John 14 Macrobius 148
see also Bacon, Anne Cooke Mainwaring, George 201
Jezebel 57 Man, Judith 236
Jones, Richard 196 see also Argenis; Barclay, John
Jonson, Ben 38, 52, 190, 193, 235, 236 translation of Barclay's Argenis 237-9
Eastward Hoe 31 Manley, Lawrence 201, 203
Epicoene 30-1 Manners, George, Earl of Rutland 240
'To Penshurst' 8 manuscript 9-12, 189, 195
Volpone 34-5 Mariam 95-106
as martyr figure 105
Kelly, Joan 2 and mirror image 103-4
kleos 87 and passive resistance 100-2, 106
Mariam, Tragedie qf
Langland, William 148 see Cary, Elizabeth
language Marot-Beze Psalter 137, 138, 142
and gender 17-19 see also Psalms
language instruction marriage 63,96-7, 106, 107, 115
books of 28-9 aristocratic 110, 113, 114, 116
Lanham, Richard A. 189 de futuro 115
Lanyer, Aemilia 3, 148, 152-4, 192, 193 de praesenti 115
Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum 8, 152, 157-62 in UJve's Victory 110-16
'The Authors Dreame' 152-4 Martha 6

286
 INDEX

Martin, Randall 161, 162, 163, 164, 166 as paraphrase 137-8

Mary I 85,128,130,131,139 political meanings of 138-9, 144-7
Mary the Virgin 160 textual history of 137
masque 81, 253 The Tragedie qf Antonie 9,81,83,88-95
Masten,Jeff 214, 215, 216, 218 'To the Angell Spirit' 140-1, 168-70
Master of the Revels 81 Triumph qf Death 208-12
maternity 72 Penelope 198
McManus, Barbara F. 51 Petrarch, Francesco 13, 34, 144, 148
memorising 35-6 Canzoniere 212
Mendelson, Sara 25 translations of 212-13
Menelaus 85 I Triorifi 108, 117,203
Mildmay, Lady Grace 21,34 translations of 205-6, 208-12
Milton, John Laura 204, 205, 208, 210, 213
Comus 81 Rime 203
misogyny 59, 60 Petrarchanism 35, 112, 130, 132, 134, 187,
Montaigne, Michel de 34 246, 250
Montgomery, Countess of blazon 160, 217, 223
see Herbert, Susan in Love's Victory 107, 108-9
More, Agenes 257-8 and politics 203-13
More, Sir Thomas 38, 232 and women 204-5
Margaret Roper, daughter 28 and Wroth 216-17,221-2
Morpheus 153 Plat, Hugh 200
Mou1sworth, Martha 5-7 The Floures qf Philosophie 194
Mulcaster, Richard 23, 38 Plato 34
Munda, Constantia 49, 68, 72 Plutarch 89, 92, 93
Wonning qf a mad Dogge 72-6 Pontius Pilate 9, 148, 157, 158
Muses 154 Portland, Duchess of
see Weston, Frances
Nero 57 preciosite 253
Norland, Howard 84 predestination 132-3
Norton Anthology qf English Literature 192 Prirnrose, Diana
Chaine qf Pearle 14
Octavia 90 print 8-9, 72-3, 189, 195
ora1ity 37-8 Procula 157, 160
Ovid 8, 196 prosopopoeia 51
Amores 167 Protestantism 124-5, 139
Art qf Love 198 Psalms 33, 123, 127-47, 150, 151, 154
Heroides 35, 167, 205 see also Pembroke, Countess of; Sidney,
and Whitney 193-8 Sir Philip
speakers in 197, 198 Sidney Psalter 11, 12, 126, 168
revisions of 12
Paris 85 singing of 164-5
Parker, Patricia 61 voicing in 129
parody 57,60,62,67,69 Purkiss, Diane 51,52,84, 158
pastoral 80, 107, 112, 113, 214 Puttenharn, George 27-8,143,167,190
Patterson, Annabel 233 Pyper, John 245
Pearson, Jacqueline 34 see also Astrea
Pembroke, 3rd Earl of 107, 240
Pembroke, Countess of 1, 3, 82, 83, 106, querelle des femmes
123, 157-8, 192-3, 244 see woman debate
'Dolefull Lay' 166, 167 Quilligan, Maureen 246
'Even Now that Care' 140, 143, 168
Lanyer's poem on 152-4 Rabinowitz, Mary 85
Psalmes 4, 127, 128, 129, 135-47 Ralegh, Sir Walter 4, 190-1, 207-8

287
 THE POLlTICS OF EARLY MODERN WOMEN'S WRITING

Raynolds, John 99 Sidney, Robert 139,193,214

reading 33-8 Sinon 197
Reformation 187 Smith, Henry 26
resistance 90-5 Smith, Rosalind 130, 131
rhetoric Smuts, Maleolm 88
attacks on 55 Solomon 69-70, 160
Ridgeway, Cassandra Somerset, Countess of 174
e!egy on 173 see also Howard, Frances
epitaph on 173 sonnet
Ringler, William A.Jr. 137 Petrarchan 131
The Roaring Girl 27 sequences 129-35
Roberts, Josephine A. 239 Southwell, Lady Anne 4, 10-11, 126, 172
Roman his tory 88 'Elegie' 167
Russell, Arme 176 The war/fes 10
Russell, Lady Elizabeth 174-7 Sowernam, Esther 49,61-7,69, 70
epitaphs by 174-7 Speght, Rache! 51,52,60, 148, 154-7
Rutland, Earl of Certain Qyaeres 71 -2
see Manners, George Mortalities Memorandum 154-7, 170-1
'R.w.' 199-200 Mouzellfor Melastomus 67-71, 155
Spenser, Edrnund 37, 206
St. Bartholomew Massacre 166 Astraphel 166
Salome 96, 97, 98 The Faerie Qyeene 117, 233, 235
Salter, Thomas 21-2,23 Ruines qf Time 139
Saltonstall, Wye 233 Shepheardes Calender 165
translation of Heraides 35 Stanford, Henry 212-13
Satan 69, 164 Stanyhurst, Richard 24
Saul 145, 146 Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter 136
Schi einer, Louise 175, 176 Stewart, Alan 23
Schnell, Lisa 162 Stoicism 89
scold 61,67, 75 Strafford, Earl of
se!f 188-9 see Wentworth, Thomas
Seneca 41, 83, 84 Stuart, Arbella 41
sermons 33 Stubbes, Katherine 22, 26
Shakespeare, William 80, 187, 188 Stubbes, Philip 125
Antony and Cleopatra 93 subject, political 96-106, 159
Measurefor Measure 108, 115 subjectivity
The Merry Wives qf Windsor 31-2 and poetry 187-92
AMidsummer Night's Dream 81 in Wroth's Urania 249-51
The Winter's Tale 108 Suffolk, Countess of 36, 37
Sheba, Queen of 160 Suffolk, Duchess of
Sidney, family 3, 106, 113, 145,214 see Willoughby, Katherine
Dudley-Sidney alliance 138, 139, 209 suicide 92
Sidney, Sir Henry 139 Surrey, Earl of 195
Sidney, Mary Swan theatre 81
see Pembroke, Countess of Swetnam,Joseph 51,68-76, 155
Sidney, Sir Philip 9, 11, 106, 113, 127, 139, Araignment 4, 58-61
143, 188, 193-4,206,208,212,218
Arcadia 107, 216, 224, 233, 234, 235, Tacitus 88
244, 245, 246 Tasso, Torquato 34
Astrophil to Stella 187,203,214,215 Taverner, Richard 194
Dqence qf Poetry 142, 234 Thatcher, Margaret 2
elegies on 168-70 Thersites 64
Lady qf May 107 Thomas, Keith 38
Psalter 137 Tibullus 167

288
 INDEX

tongue 25-6 'W.G.' 199

topicality 234-5, 240, 250-1 Whitney, Geoffrey 192
Tottel, Richard 195 Whitney,Isabella 5,9, 12, 192-203
Touteville, Daniel 33 'Admonition' 58, 198
tragi-comedy 80, 106-18 'The Auctor to the Reader' 201
translation 13-14, 82 'A carefull complaynt' 193
Trill, Suzanne 13 1he Copy qf a Letter 194-200
Turberville, George 194, 195 'A modest meane for Maides' 202
Tyler, Margaret 239 A SweetNosgay 194,195,200-3
Tymme, Thomas 162 'To her Unconstant Lover' 196-8
Tyndale, William 128 WYLL and Testament 212 -13
Willoughby, Francis 38
ubi sunt motif 163 Willoughby, Katherine 130
Udall, Nicholas 34, 194 Willoughby, Margaret 38
Urania Winthrop, John 39
see Wroth woman debate 4, 49-76, 156, 159
woman writer, category of 3
Veevers, Erica 253 women
Velleius, Paterclus 89 category of 1
vernacular and devotion 123-7
women and 29-30, 31 education of 7
verse epistle 195-203 literacy levels of 24
verse miscellanies 195 and poetry 27-8, 189-91, 192
Villiers family 172 politics and 2
Villiers, George as readers 232-5
see Buckingham, Duke of women's speech
Virgil 107, 156, 193, 194 dramatic representation of 30-2
Eclogues 107 sexualisation of 31-2
Vives, Juan Luis 23, 232 Woodbridge, Linda 50,67
Instruction qf a Christian Woman 22 Woodforde, Samuel 143
voice 49 writing 38-42
in Psalms 129, 133, 150 handwriting 38-9
in Urania 225-6 Wroth, Lady Mary 1, 106-18, 191, 192,
193, 213-27
Wall, Wendy 161, 191, 195 Love's Victory 106-18
Warwick, Earl of 139 constancy in 109-10
Webbe, George discretion in 110-11
Araignement 25 use of death-trick in 108, 116-18
Webster,John Pamphilia to Amphilanthus 108, 215-26
Westward Hoe 41-2 Urania 113, 214-16, 222, 224-6, 232,
Weller, Barry 96 239-52
Wentworth, Anne 238 Wyatt, Sir Thomas 131,141,142,195,
Wentworth, Thomas 236, 238 223
Weston, Frances 254 Psalm paraphrases 131

289