Emilia Lanier
Encyclopedia
Emilia Lanier, also spelled Lanyer, (1569–1645) was the first Englishwoman to assert herself as a professional poet through her single volume of poems, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
(1611). Born Aemilia Bassano and part of the Lanier family tree
, she was a member of the minor gentry through her father's appointment as a royal musician, and was apparently educated in the household by Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent
. She was for several years the mistress of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon
, first cousin of Elizabeth I of England
. She was married to court musician Alfonso Lanier in 1592 when she became pregnant by Hunsdon, and the marriage was reportedly unhappy.
Simon Forman
's (1552–1611) professional diary, which mention his accounts with Lanier. Lanier visited Foreman many times during 1597 for astrological readings, and because Forman was evidently sexually interested in her and rejected, his account is likely biased.
Church records show that Lanier was baptised Aemilia Bassano at the parish church of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate
, on January 27, 1569. Her father, Baptiste Bassano, was a Venice
-born musician at the court of Elizabeth I. Her mother was Margret Johnson (born ca. 1545–1550), possibly the aunt of court composer Robert Johnson. Lanier also had a sister, Angela Bassano, who married Joseph Hollande in 1576. There were also brothers Lewes and Phillip, both of whom died before they reached adulthood.
Baptiste Bassano died on April 11, 1576, when Aemilia was seven years old. Bassano's will dictated to his wife that he had left young Aemilia a dowry of £100, to be given to her either when she turned 21 years old or on the day of her wedding, whichever came first. Forman's records indicate that Bassano's fortune might have been waning before he died which caused him to be unhappy.
Foreman's records also indicate that, after the death of her father, Lanier went to live with Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent
. Some scholars have questioned whether Lanier went to serve Bertie rather than be fostered by her, but there is no conclusive evidence to confirm this. It was in Bertie's house that Lanier was given a humanist education and learned Latin
. Bertie greatly valued and emphasised the importance of young girls receiving the same level of education as young men. Later evidence indicates that this decision may have greatly impacted Lanier and her own decision to publish her writing. After living with Bertie, Lanier went to live with Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland
, and Margaret's daughter, Lady Anne Clifford
. Dedications in Lanier's own poetry seem to confirm this information.
Lanier's mother died when Lanier was eighteen. Church records show that Johnson was buried in Bishopsgate on July 7, 1587.
Not long after her mother's death, Lanier became the mistress
of Tudor courtier and cousin of Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon
. At the time of their affair, Lord Hunsdon was Elizabeth's Lord Chamberlain
and a patron of the arts and theatre (he supported Shakespeare
's theatre company, known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men
, but not until two years after their affair was over). He was also forty-five years older than Lanier. Records indicate that Carey gave her a pension of £40 a year. Lanier apparently enjoyed her time as Carey's mistress. An entry from Forman's diary reads "[Lanier] hath bin married 4 years/ The old Lord Chamberlain kept her longue She was maintained in great pomp... she hath 40£ a yere & was welthy to him that married her in monie & Jewells".
In 1592, when she was 23, Lanier became pregnant with Carey's child. Carey paid her off with a sum of money. Lanier was then married to her first cousin once removed, Alfonso Lanier. He was a Queen's musician and church records show the two were married in St. Botolph's church, Aldgate
, on October 18, 1592.
Another of Forman's diary entries indicates that the marriage was an unhappy one. It also indicates that Lanier was much happier as Carey's mistress. It reads "...and a nobleman that is ded hath Loved her well & kept her and did maintain her longe but her husband hath delte hardly with her and spent and consumed her goods and she is nowe...in debt".
Alfonso and Aemilia remained married until his death in 1613. Forman's diary entries suggest Lanier told him about having several miscarriages. It is known that Lanier gave birth to a son, Henry, in 1593 (presumably named after his father, Henry Carey) and a daughter, Odillya, in 1598. Odillya died when she was ten months old and was buried at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate. Lanier's son married Joyce Mansfield in 1623; they had two children, Mary (1627) and Henry (1630). Henry senior died in October 1633. It is implied from later court documents that Lanier may have been providing for her two grandchildren after their father's death.
In 1611, Lanier published her volume of poetry, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Lanier was forty-two years old at the time and the first woman in England to declare herself a poet. People who read her poetry considered it very radical and many scholars today refer to its style and arguments as "proto-feminist".
After the death of her husband, Lanier supported herself by running a school. She rented a house from Edward Smith to house her students but, due to disputes over the correct rent price, was arrested on two different occasions between 1617 and 1619. Because parents weren't willing to send their children to a woman with a history of arrest, Lanier's dreams of running a prosperous school ended.
Little else is known about Lanier's life between 1619 and 1635. Court documents state that, in this year, Lanier brought a lawsuit against her husband's brother, Clement, for money owed to her from the profits of one of her late husband's financial patents. The court ruled in Lanier's favour, declaring that Clement pay her £20. Clement couldn't pay her immediately, so Lanier brought the suit to court again in 1636 and in 1638. There are no records that verify whether Lanier was ever paid in full but it is known that, at the time of death, she was described as a "pensioner", someone who has a steady income or pension.
Lanier died at the age of seventy-six and was buried at Clerkenwell, on April 3, 1645.
, Anne Dowriche
, and Elizabeth Melville
preceding her. Her volume centres on the title poem, a long narrative work of over 200 stanzas. It tells the story of Christ's passion
satirically and almost entirely from the point of view of the women who surround him. The main poem is prefaced by ten shorter dedicatory works, all to aristocratic women, beginning with the queen. There is also a prose preface addressed to the reader, comprising a vindication of "virtuous women" against detractors of the sex. After the central poem there is a verse "Description of Cookham," dedicated to Margaret, Countess of Cumberland and her daughter Lady Anne Clifford
. This last is the first published country house poem
in English (Ben Jonson
's more famous "To Penshurst
" may have been written earlier but was first published in 1616). Her inspiration came from a visit to Cookham Dean
, where Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, and her daughter Lady Anne Clifford lived. While visiting the residence she says to have received a spiritual awakening, inspired by the piety of Margaret.
At the age of 42, in 1611, she published Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail, God, King of the Jews). At the time that she published her book, it was extremely unusual for an Englishwoman to publish work and to do so as a means of making a living was even more unusual. The book was radical for its time, although the topics of virtue and religion were considered to be suitable themes for women. It was viewed as radical because it addressed topics such as the maltreatment of women. Lanier defends Eve, and womankind in general, arguing that Eve has been wrongly blamed for the original sin of eating the forbidden fruit, while no blame has been pointed at Adam. She argues that Adam shares most of the guilt by concluding that Adam was stronger than Eve, and thus, he should have been able to resist the temptation. She also defends women by pointing out the dedication of the female followers of Christ who stayed with Him throughout the Passion, and looked for him first after the burial and resurrection. She also draws attention to Pilate’s wife who attempted to intervene and prevent the unjust trial and crucifixion of Christ. Lanier reproaches mankind by accusing them of crucifying Christ. She also notes the male apostles that forsook and even denied Christ during His crucifixion and Passion. Theorists who claim Lanier was Jewish ignore the fiercely anti-Semitic statements she makes in the poem, though these beliefs are of course the norm for her period.
had ended, he became the patron of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the theatre company which performed the Shakespearean plays after 1594. Some have speculated that Lanier, an apparently striking woman, was Shakespeare's "Dark Lady". This identification was first proposed by A. L. Rowse
and has been repeated by several authors since, notably David Lasocki and Roger Prior in their 1995 book The Bassanos:Venetian Musicians and Instrument makers in England 1531–1665 and in articles by Martin Green and Stephanie Howard Hughes. Although the colour of her hair is not known, records exist of her cousins having "black" skin, and her background in coming from a musical family fits the picture of the "dark lady" in the Shakespearean Sonnets. More recently, the theory that she was the Dark Lady has fallen into disfavor and is widely disputed by Lanier scholars like Susanne Woods (1999), given that Rowse posited her immorality based on Forman's biased accounts. Woods offers the most reliable account of Lanier's life. Barbara Lewalski notes that Rowse's theory that Aemilia Lanier was Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" has unfortunately deflected attention from Lanier's poems and from Lanier as a poet.
A number of commentators have concluded that it cannot be just coincidence that in Shakespeare’s two Venetian plays, there is an Emilia in one (Othello
) and a Bassan(i)o in the other (Merchant of Venice). In addition in Titus Andronicus
there is an Aemilius and a Bassianus. In 2008 Roger Prior suggested that in 1593 Shakespeare visited Bassano (del Grappa) where he saw the fresco of Goats & Monkeys that he apparently cites in Othello (IV.i.263) on the external wall of a house there. Prior does not, however, feel there is conclusive proof that the Bassanos were Jewish.
In 2005 the English conductor Peter Bassano
, a co-lateral descendant of Emilia suggested that she provided some of the texts for William Byrd
’s 1589 Songs of Sundrie Natures dedicated to Lord Hunsdon. He further suggested that one of the songs, the setting of the translation of an Italian sonnet: Of Gold all Burnisht may have been used by Shakespeare as a parodied model for Sonnet 130, My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.
Irish poet Niall McDevitt believes the oft-reviled Dark Lady sonnets cannot be properly understood without knowing about Emilia Lanyer. Such phrases as 'bastard shame' and 'my music' and 'careful housewife' are not just metaphors but details of a highly realistic portrait of a very real woman. His essay 'TWO POETS: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE and EMILIA LANYER' argues that the poets had an intense literary and extra-marital relationship akin to that of Robert Graves and Laura Riding; and that Lanyer was Shakespeare's lifelong, oeuvre-long muse, as coded into the earliest Shakespeare plays such as Titus Andronicus with its 'Aemilius' and 'Bassanius' and The Comedy of Errors with its Abbess 'Aemilia', to the final plays The Winter's Tale and The Two Noble Kinsmen, the former which has a minor lady-in-waiting called Amelia and the latter whose leading lady is an Emilia. McDevitt also leads a Shakespeare and Lanyer as 'Dark Lady' Walk through the City of London which tells the whole story in situ.
, based on a thesis by John Hudson at the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, suggested that she was the author of an underlying religious allegory in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and perhaps of the play itself. In summer 2008, Michael Posner, in a 15 page review of the theory in the 'Canadian arts journal The Queen's Quarterly, concluded that the case for Amelia Bassano Lanier is as plausible as Shakespeare’s and more plausible than many others". Posner's 2010 article in Reform Judaism
argued that Lanier was very likely the author of all or most of Shakespeare's plays, and asserts that she was Jewish. In summer 2010, writing in the on-line literary magazine Bibliobuffet.com, Lev Raphael concluded there is no firm evidence that she was Jewish and challenged the basic assumptions of Posner's article. The consensus among Lanier experts is that even if her father was of Jewish heritage, she herself was not educated in Jewish texts and would not have been able to embed coded Jewish references of any sort into the plays, had she written them. Lanier scholars welcome the growing attention to her own poetry, but categorically dismiss the theory that she wrote Shakespeare's plays.
in her article, "Writing Women and Reading the Renaissance," actually calls Lanier the "defender of womankind" Lewalski claims that with the first few poems of the collection, as dedications to prominent women, Lanier is initiating her ideas of the genealogy of women. The genealogy follows the idea that "virtue and learning descend from mothers to daughters". Marie H. Loughlin continues Lewalski’s argument in her article, "'Fast ti'd unto Them in a Golden Chaine': Typology, Apocalypse, and Woman's Genealogy in Aemilia Lanier's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum," by noting that the genealogy of women began with Eve. Loughlin claims that Lanier is advocating the importance of knowledge of both the spiritual and material worlds in connection with women. She argues that women must focus on the material world and their importance in it to supplement their life in the spiritual world rather than focusing solely on the spiritual. This argument stems from Lanier’s desire to raise women up to the same level as men. Lanier attempts to convey the message to her audience that men are not the only important beings in the material world, but that women belong there as well.
Lanier’s poetry is working towards reversing the images of women typically portrayed in the Bible; specifically, that women should be subservient to men. Lanier flips that idea of the subservient woman and instead strives towards illustrating the idea that women are in “mystical and apocalyptic union with Christ”, that is, if either gender was placed nearer the “‘everlasting throne’” of Jesus, it would be the female sex. In lines 745–840 of Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, more commonly known as Eve’s Apology, Lanier brings together two biblical women of different eras who perfectly portray this idea of the genealogy of women striving towards that union with Christ. The first half of the passage has Eve addressing the fact that Adam too should share the blame of the fall of Man. If women are to be subservient to men, men should be protecting women. Adam should have stopped Eve from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, but he instead succumbed to temptation, although he had not been tempted by any "subtle serpent" as Eve had been. Lanier writes, "Her weakness did the serpent's words obey, / But you in malice God's dear Son betray", thereby placing greater blame on the men responsible for Jesus's death. Eve’s disobeying God’s laws led to the need of having a savior. The second half of the passage illustrates that Pilate’s wife tried to save Jesus Christ’s life, therefore remedying any fault of Eve’s. This smaller section of the larger Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum uses Christ’s Passion to depict good women in contrast to bad men. Eve’s Apology and Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum as a whole was Lanier’s vehicle, as Loughlin claims, to “depict(s) woman’s history as a teleological progression from the times of the Old Testament to those of the New Testament and finally beyond time itself into her glorious future union with Christ.”
Shakespeare/Lanier walk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/londonandsoutheast/8295952/Shakespeares-London-summoning-the-spirit-of-the-Bard.html
Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum is a volume of poems by English poet Emilia Lanyer published in 1611. The volume contains several short poems, each dedicated to a different woman, a long poem also entitled 'Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum' and a country house poem entitled 'The Description of...
(1611). Born Aemilia Bassano and part of the Lanier family tree
Lanier family tree
The Lanier family tree contains a number of musicians in the British royal court. This tree is not complete but is focused on showing the relationship of the well-known members of the family.-Sources:***...
, she was a member of the minor gentry through her father's appointment as a royal musician, and was apparently educated in the household by Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent
Susan Bertie, countess of Kent
Susan Bertie was the daughter of Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, née Willoughby, by her second husband, Richard Bertie. Susan was the noblewoman memorialized by Lanyer at the beginning of the Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum as the "daughter of the Duchess of Suffolk." At sixteen years of age, she...
. She was for several years the mistress of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon
Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon
Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, of Hunsdon was an English nobleman.He was the son of Mary Boleyn, the sister of Anne Boleyn and also the mistress to King Henry VIII of England...
, first cousin of Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
. She was married to court musician Alfonso Lanier in 1592 when she became pregnant by Hunsdon, and the marriage was reportedly unhappy.
Biography
Learning about the events of Lanier's life has not always been an easy task for researchers. Very little is known about her. Scholars have had to piece together Lanier's biography by relying on the sparse amount of church, court and legal records that mention Lanier's name and her activity. Researchers have also relied upon entries from astrologerAstrologer
An astrologer practices one or more forms of astrology. Typically an astrologer draws a horoscope for the time of an event, such as a person's birth, and interprets celestial points and their placements at the time of the event to better understand someone, determine the auspiciousness of an...
Simon Forman
Simon Forman
Simon Forman was arguably the most popular Elizabethan astrologer, occultist and herbalist active in London during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and James I of England. His reputation, however, was severely tarnished after his death when he was implicated in the plot to kill Sir Thomas Overbury...
's (1552–1611) professional diary, which mention his accounts with Lanier. Lanier visited Foreman many times during 1597 for astrological readings, and because Forman was evidently sexually interested in her and rejected, his account is likely biased.
Church records show that Lanier was baptised Aemilia Bassano at the parish church of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate
Bishopsgate
Bishopsgate is a road and ward in the northeast part of the City of London, extending north from Gracechurch Street to Norton Folgate. It is named after one of the original seven gates in London Wall...
, on January 27, 1569. Her father, Baptiste Bassano, was a Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
-born musician at the court of Elizabeth I. Her mother was Margret Johnson (born ca. 1545–1550), possibly the aunt of court composer Robert Johnson. Lanier also had a sister, Angela Bassano, who married Joseph Hollande in 1576. There were also brothers Lewes and Phillip, both of whom died before they reached adulthood.
Baptiste Bassano died on April 11, 1576, when Aemilia was seven years old. Bassano's will dictated to his wife that he had left young Aemilia a dowry of £100, to be given to her either when she turned 21 years old or on the day of her wedding, whichever came first. Forman's records indicate that Bassano's fortune might have been waning before he died which caused him to be unhappy.
Foreman's records also indicate that, after the death of her father, Lanier went to live with Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent
Susan Bertie, countess of Kent
Susan Bertie was the daughter of Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, née Willoughby, by her second husband, Richard Bertie. Susan was the noblewoman memorialized by Lanyer at the beginning of the Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum as the "daughter of the Duchess of Suffolk." At sixteen years of age, she...
. Some scholars have questioned whether Lanier went to serve Bertie rather than be fostered by her, but there is no conclusive evidence to confirm this. It was in Bertie's house that Lanier was given a humanist education and learned Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
. Bertie greatly valued and emphasised the importance of young girls receiving the same level of education as young men. Later evidence indicates that this decision may have greatly impacted Lanier and her own decision to publish her writing. After living with Bertie, Lanier went to live with Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland
Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland
Margaret Clifford , Countess of Cumberland was an English noblewoman and maid of honor to Elizabeth I. Lady Margaret was born in Exeter, England to Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford and Margaret St. John...
, and Margaret's daughter, Lady Anne Clifford
Lady Anne Clifford
Lady Anne Clifford, 14th Baroness de Clifford was the only surviving child of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland by his wife Lady Margaret Russell, daughter of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford...
. Dedications in Lanier's own poetry seem to confirm this information.
Lanier's mother died when Lanier was eighteen. Church records show that Johnson was buried in Bishopsgate on July 7, 1587.
Not long after her mother's death, Lanier became the mistress
Mistress (lover)
A mistress is a long-term female lover and companion who is not married to her partner; the term is used especially when her partner is married. The relationship generally is stable and at least semi-permanent; however, the couple does not live together openly. Also the relationship is usually,...
of Tudor courtier and cousin of Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon
Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon
Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, of Hunsdon was an English nobleman.He was the son of Mary Boleyn, the sister of Anne Boleyn and also the mistress to King Henry VIII of England...
. At the time of their affair, Lord Hunsdon was Elizabeth's Lord Chamberlain
Lord Chamberlain
The Lord Chamberlain or Lord Chamberlain of the Household is one of the chief officers of the Royal Household in the United Kingdom and is to be distinguished from the Lord Great Chamberlain, one of the Great Officers of State....
and a patron of the arts and theatre (he supported Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's theatre company, known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men
Lord Chamberlain's Men
The Lord Chamberlain's Men was a playing company for whom Shakespeare worked for most of his career. Formed at the end of a period of flux in the theatrical world of London, it had become, by 1603, one of the two leading companies of the city and was subsequently patronised by James I.It was...
, but not until two years after their affair was over). He was also forty-five years older than Lanier. Records indicate that Carey gave her a pension of £40 a year. Lanier apparently enjoyed her time as Carey's mistress. An entry from Forman's diary reads "[Lanier] hath bin married 4 years/ The old Lord Chamberlain kept her longue She was maintained in great pomp... she hath 40£ a yere & was welthy to him that married her in monie & Jewells".
In 1592, when she was 23, Lanier became pregnant with Carey's child. Carey paid her off with a sum of money. Lanier was then married to her first cousin once removed, Alfonso Lanier. He was a Queen's musician and church records show the two were married in St. Botolph's church, Aldgate
Aldgate
Aldgate was the eastern most gateway through London Wall leading from the City of London to Whitechapel and the east end of London. Aldgate gives its name to a ward of the City...
, on October 18, 1592.
Another of Forman's diary entries indicates that the marriage was an unhappy one. It also indicates that Lanier was much happier as Carey's mistress. It reads "...and a nobleman that is ded hath Loved her well & kept her and did maintain her longe but her husband hath delte hardly with her and spent and consumed her goods and she is nowe...in debt".
Alfonso and Aemilia remained married until his death in 1613. Forman's diary entries suggest Lanier told him about having several miscarriages. It is known that Lanier gave birth to a son, Henry, in 1593 (presumably named after his father, Henry Carey) and a daughter, Odillya, in 1598. Odillya died when she was ten months old and was buried at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate. Lanier's son married Joyce Mansfield in 1623; they had two children, Mary (1627) and Henry (1630). Henry senior died in October 1633. It is implied from later court documents that Lanier may have been providing for her two grandchildren after their father's death.
In 1611, Lanier published her volume of poetry, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Lanier was forty-two years old at the time and the first woman in England to declare herself a poet. People who read her poetry considered it very radical and many scholars today refer to its style and arguments as "proto-feminist".
After the death of her husband, Lanier supported herself by running a school. She rented a house from Edward Smith to house her students but, due to disputes over the correct rent price, was arrested on two different occasions between 1617 and 1619. Because parents weren't willing to send their children to a woman with a history of arrest, Lanier's dreams of running a prosperous school ended.
Little else is known about Lanier's life between 1619 and 1635. Court documents state that, in this year, Lanier brought a lawsuit against her husband's brother, Clement, for money owed to her from the profits of one of her late husband's financial patents. The court ruled in Lanier's favour, declaring that Clement pay her £20. Clement couldn't pay her immediately, so Lanier brought the suit to court again in 1636 and in 1638. There are no records that verify whether Lanier was ever paid in full but it is known that, at the time of death, she was described as a "pensioner", someone who has a steady income or pension.
Lanier died at the age of seventy-six and was buried at Clerkenwell, on April 3, 1645.
Poetry
As the author of the collection of poetry known as "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum" (1611) Emelia was only the fourth woman in England to publish a book of original poetry, with Isabella WhitneyIsabella Whitney
Isabella Whitney is the earliest identified woman to have published secular poetry in the English language. She has been called "the first professional woman poet in England."-Biography:...
, Anne Dowriche
Anne Dowriche
Anne Dowriche was an English poet and historian of the 16th century.-Biography:Anne Dowriche was the daughter of Sir Richard Edgecumbe and Elizabeth Tregian Edgecumbe, who were from a prominent family in Cornwall...
, and Elizabeth Melville
Elizabeth Melville
Elizabeth Melville , is the earliest known Scottish woman writer to have her work appear in print and is most famous for writing the Ane Godlie Dreame, a Calvinist dream-vision poem....
preceding her. Her volume centres on the title poem, a long narrative work of over 200 stanzas. It tells the story of Christ's passion
Passion (Christianity)
The Passion is the Christian theological term used for the events and suffering – physical, spiritual, and mental – of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion...
satirically and almost entirely from the point of view of the women who surround him. The main poem is prefaced by ten shorter dedicatory works, all to aristocratic women, beginning with the queen. There is also a prose preface addressed to the reader, comprising a vindication of "virtuous women" against detractors of the sex. After the central poem there is a verse "Description of Cookham," dedicated to Margaret, Countess of Cumberland and her daughter Lady Anne Clifford
Lady Anne Clifford
Lady Anne Clifford, 14th Baroness de Clifford was the only surviving child of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland by his wife Lady Margaret Russell, daughter of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford...
. This last is the first published country house poem
Country house poems
A country house poem is a poem in which the author compliments a wealthy patron or a friend through a description of his country house. Such poems were popular in early 17th century England...
in English (Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
's more famous "To Penshurst
Country house poems
A country house poem is a poem in which the author compliments a wealthy patron or a friend through a description of his country house. Such poems were popular in early 17th century England...
" may have been written earlier but was first published in 1616). Her inspiration came from a visit to Cookham Dean
Cookham Dean
Cookham Dean is a settlement to the west of the village of Cookham in Berkshire, England. It is the highest point of all the Cookhams -Commerce:...
, where Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, and her daughter Lady Anne Clifford lived. While visiting the residence she says to have received a spiritual awakening, inspired by the piety of Margaret.
At the age of 42, in 1611, she published Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail, God, King of the Jews). At the time that she published her book, it was extremely unusual for an Englishwoman to publish work and to do so as a means of making a living was even more unusual. The book was radical for its time, although the topics of virtue and religion were considered to be suitable themes for women. It was viewed as radical because it addressed topics such as the maltreatment of women. Lanier defends Eve, and womankind in general, arguing that Eve has been wrongly blamed for the original sin of eating the forbidden fruit, while no blame has been pointed at Adam. She argues that Adam shares most of the guilt by concluding that Adam was stronger than Eve, and thus, he should have been able to resist the temptation. She also defends women by pointing out the dedication of the female followers of Christ who stayed with Him throughout the Passion, and looked for him first after the burial and resurrection. She also draws attention to Pilate’s wife who attempted to intervene and prevent the unjust trial and crucifixion of Christ. Lanier reproaches mankind by accusing them of crucifying Christ. She also notes the male apostles that forsook and even denied Christ during His crucifixion and Passion. Theorists who claim Lanier was Jewish ignore the fiercely anti-Semitic statements she makes in the poem, though these beliefs are of course the norm for her period.
The sonnets
After Emilia was no longer at court and two years after her affair with Lord HunsdonHenry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon
Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, of Hunsdon was an English nobleman.He was the son of Mary Boleyn, the sister of Anne Boleyn and also the mistress to King Henry VIII of England...
had ended, he became the patron of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the theatre company which performed the Shakespearean plays after 1594. Some have speculated that Lanier, an apparently striking woman, was Shakespeare's "Dark Lady". This identification was first proposed by A. L. Rowse
A. L. Rowse
Alfred Leslie Rowse, CH, FBA , known professionally as A. L. Rowse and to friends and family as Leslie, was a British historian from Cornwall. He is perhaps best known for his work on Elizabethan England and his poetry about Cornwall. He was also a Shakespearean scholar and biographer...
and has been repeated by several authors since, notably David Lasocki and Roger Prior in their 1995 book The Bassanos:Venetian Musicians and Instrument makers in England 1531–1665 and in articles by Martin Green and Stephanie Howard Hughes. Although the colour of her hair is not known, records exist of her cousins having "black" skin, and her background in coming from a musical family fits the picture of the "dark lady" in the Shakespearean Sonnets. More recently, the theory that she was the Dark Lady has fallen into disfavor and is widely disputed by Lanier scholars like Susanne Woods (1999), given that Rowse posited her immorality based on Forman's biased accounts. Woods offers the most reliable account of Lanier's life. Barbara Lewalski notes that Rowse's theory that Aemilia Lanier was Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" has unfortunately deflected attention from Lanier's poems and from Lanier as a poet.
A number of commentators have concluded that it cannot be just coincidence that in Shakespeare’s two Venetian plays, there is an Emilia in one (Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
) and a Bassan(i)o in the other (Merchant of Venice). In addition in Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, and possibly George Peele, believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy, and is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were...
there is an Aemilius and a Bassianus. In 2008 Roger Prior suggested that in 1593 Shakespeare visited Bassano (del Grappa) where he saw the fresco of Goats & Monkeys that he apparently cites in Othello (IV.i.263) on the external wall of a house there. Prior does not, however, feel there is conclusive proof that the Bassanos were Jewish.
In 2005 the English conductor Peter Bassano
Peter Bassano
Peter Bassano is an English conductor.- Family :His descent from Anthony Bassano the oldest brother of a family of six Venetian musicians brought to England by King Henry VIII is registered at the College of Arms. Three generations of the Bassano family dominated instrumental music at the English...
, a co-lateral descendant of Emilia suggested that she provided some of the texts for William Byrd
William Byrd
William Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music.-Provenance:Knowledge of Byrd's biography expanded in the late 20th century, thanks largely...
’s 1589 Songs of Sundrie Natures dedicated to Lord Hunsdon. He further suggested that one of the songs, the setting of the translation of an Italian sonnet: Of Gold all Burnisht may have been used by Shakespeare as a parodied model for Sonnet 130, My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.
Irish poet Niall McDevitt believes the oft-reviled Dark Lady sonnets cannot be properly understood without knowing about Emilia Lanyer. Such phrases as 'bastard shame' and 'my music' and 'careful housewife' are not just metaphors but details of a highly realistic portrait of a very real woman. His essay 'TWO POETS: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE and EMILIA LANYER' argues that the poets had an intense literary and extra-marital relationship akin to that of Robert Graves and Laura Riding; and that Lanyer was Shakespeare's lifelong, oeuvre-long muse, as coded into the earliest Shakespeare plays such as Titus Andronicus with its 'Aemilius' and 'Bassanius' and The Comedy of Errors with its Abbess 'Aemilia', to the final plays The Winter's Tale and The Two Noble Kinsmen, the former which has a minor lady-in-waiting called Amelia and the latter whose leading lady is an Emilia. McDevitt also leads a Shakespeare and Lanyer as 'Dark Lady' Walk through the City of London which tells the whole story in situ.
Shakespeare authorship
A New York production in 2007 by The Dark Lady PlayersThe Dark Lady Players
The Dark Lady Players are a New York based Shakespeare company which aims to perform what they believe to be the religious allegories in the Shakespearean plays. Elizabethan literature routinely used allegories to communicate hidden meanings...
, based on a thesis by John Hudson at the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, suggested that she was the author of an underlying religious allegory in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and perhaps of the play itself. In summer 2008, Michael Posner, in a 15 page review of the theory in the 'Canadian arts journal The Queen's Quarterly, concluded that the case for Amelia Bassano Lanier is as plausible as Shakespeare’s and more plausible than many others". Posner's 2010 article in Reform Judaism
Reform Judaism (magazine)
Reform Judaism is the official magazine of the Union for Reform Judaism. Its print edition has a quarterly circulation to 300,000 households, synagogues, and other Jewish institutions.- Awards and academic recognition :...
argued that Lanier was very likely the author of all or most of Shakespeare's plays, and asserts that she was Jewish. In summer 2010, writing in the on-line literary magazine Bibliobuffet.com, Lev Raphael concluded there is no firm evidence that she was Jewish and challenged the basic assumptions of Posner's article. The consensus among Lanier experts is that even if her father was of Jewish heritage, she herself was not educated in Jewish texts and would not have been able to embed coded Jewish references of any sort into the plays, had she written them. Lanier scholars welcome the growing attention to her own poetry, but categorically dismiss the theory that she wrote Shakespeare's plays.
Feminist ideals, Lanier's poetry and Eve’s Apology
Aemilia Lanier’s book of poetry, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum has been viewed by many critics to be one of the earliest feminist works of British literature. Barbara Kiefer LewalskiBarbara Kiefer Lewalski
Barbara Kiefer Lewalski is an American academic, an authority on Renaissance literature particularly known for her work on John Milton. Since 1983 she is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English Literature and of History and Literature at Harvard University.-Life:Lewalski graduated B.S.E. at...
in her article, "Writing Women and Reading the Renaissance," actually calls Lanier the "defender of womankind" Lewalski claims that with the first few poems of the collection, as dedications to prominent women, Lanier is initiating her ideas of the genealogy of women. The genealogy follows the idea that "virtue and learning descend from mothers to daughters". Marie H. Loughlin continues Lewalski’s argument in her article, "'Fast ti'd unto Them in a Golden Chaine': Typology, Apocalypse, and Woman's Genealogy in Aemilia Lanier's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum," by noting that the genealogy of women began with Eve. Loughlin claims that Lanier is advocating the importance of knowledge of both the spiritual and material worlds in connection with women. She argues that women must focus on the material world and their importance in it to supplement their life in the spiritual world rather than focusing solely on the spiritual. This argument stems from Lanier’s desire to raise women up to the same level as men. Lanier attempts to convey the message to her audience that men are not the only important beings in the material world, but that women belong there as well.
Lanier’s poetry is working towards reversing the images of women typically portrayed in the Bible; specifically, that women should be subservient to men. Lanier flips that idea of the subservient woman and instead strives towards illustrating the idea that women are in “mystical and apocalyptic union with Christ”, that is, if either gender was placed nearer the “‘everlasting throne’” of Jesus, it would be the female sex. In lines 745–840 of Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, more commonly known as Eve’s Apology, Lanier brings together two biblical women of different eras who perfectly portray this idea of the genealogy of women striving towards that union with Christ. The first half of the passage has Eve addressing the fact that Adam too should share the blame of the fall of Man. If women are to be subservient to men, men should be protecting women. Adam should have stopped Eve from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, but he instead succumbed to temptation, although he had not been tempted by any "subtle serpent" as Eve had been. Lanier writes, "Her weakness did the serpent's words obey, / But you in malice God's dear Son betray", thereby placing greater blame on the men responsible for Jesus's death. Eve’s disobeying God’s laws led to the need of having a savior. The second half of the passage illustrates that Pilate’s wife tried to save Jesus Christ’s life, therefore remedying any fault of Eve’s. This smaller section of the larger Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum uses Christ’s Passion to depict good women in contrast to bad men. Eve’s Apology and Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum as a whole was Lanier’s vehicle, as Loughlin claims, to “depict(s) woman’s history as a teleological progression from the times of the Old Testament to those of the New Testament and finally beyond time itself into her glorious future union with Christ.”
External links
- Website dedicated to Lanier's poetry
- Discussion of the identification of Lanier as the Dark Lady
- John Hudson's thesis, that Lanier was the author of Shakespeare's plays
Shakespeare/Lanier walk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/uk/londonandsoutheast/8295952/Shakespeares-London-summoning-the-spirit-of-the-Bard.html