Lanyer, Aemilia (Vol. 30) - Salve Deus: The Dedications:
Salve Deus: The Dedications:
The nine dedications make a bold bid for patronage on a very wide front: they are obviously intended to call Lanyer to the attention of past patrons or acquaintances from her better Elizabethan days, and to attract new ones. She has chosen her targets very carefully, reaching out to all the obvious female power brokers of the court. In the opening dedication to Queen Anne, Lanyer laments that she does not now enjoy the associations and favors of that earlier time, when "great Elizaes favour blest my youth" (sig. a 4v), intimating that the present Queen might like to renew that happy condition. She next addresses Princess Elizabeth, whom she does not claim to know personally, as heir to all the virtues of her great namesake. Then she reaches out "to all vertuous Ladies in generall" who attend on "Queen" Virtue and with the Muses wait on Pallas (Queen Anne's chosen personification in masques and addresses); these allusions...
[The entire page is 2989 words long]
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