SOURCE: Lewalski, Barbara K. “Of God and Good Women: The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer.” In Silent but for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works, edited by Margaret Patterson Hannay, pp. 203-24. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1985.

A volume of religious poems published in 1611, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, was written by a gentlewoman who identified herself on her title page as “Mistris Aemilia Lanyer, Wife to Captaine Alfonso Lanyer, servant to the Kings Majestie.”¹ Since published women poets were so very rare in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the volume invites attention on that score alone.² But beyond this, it has considerable intrinsic interest as a defense and celebration of good women and of Lanyer herself as woman poet. It has also some real, if modest, poetic merit.

Lanyer's volume is in three parts. First, there are eleven dedications, all to women: nine dedicatory poems to royal and noble ladies, a prose dedication to the Countess of Cumberland, and a prose epistle “To the Virtuous Reader” which is a vigorous apologia for women's equality or superiority to men in spiritual and moral matters—and by implication an apologia for Lanyer herself as a religious poet. Second, the title poem on Christ's Passion and death incorporates the several subjects which are itemized on the title page as if they were separate poems: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Containing, 1. The Passion of Christ. 2. Eves Apologie in defence of Women. 3. The Teares of the Daughters of Jerusalem. 4. The Salutation and Sorrow of the Virgine Marie. With divers other things not unfit to be read. Although the subtitle is misleading as to the contents of Lanyer's volume it properly registers her emphasis in the title poem upon the good women associated with the passion story. Consonant with that emphasis are the preface and coda, comprising more than a third of the poem's 1,840 lines, praising Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, as a virtuous follower of the suffering Christ. The third part of Lanyer's volume is a country-house poem in heroic couplets, “The Description of Cooke-ham,” which celebrates the Countess of Cumberland's estate as a lost female paradise. This poem may or may not have been written before Jonson's “To Penshurst” (commonly thought to have inaugurated the genre in English literature) but it can certainly claim priority in publication.³

The volume was entered in the Stationers' Register on October 2, 1610, by the bookseller, Richard Bonian, and the poems were probably written within a year or two of this date.⁴ It was issued twice in 1611, with minor changes in the imprint, and is now very rare.⁵ In the British Library copy, several of the dedicatory poems and the epistle to the reader have been omitted, evidently by design, but we can only speculate as to the number of such copies issued, and the reasons for the omissions.⁶

A. L. Rowse's modern edition (1978) marshals the known facts about Aemilia Lanyer's life, drawn chiefly from records kept by Simon Forman the astrologer, in the service of his not impossible but unproven thesis that she was the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare's sonnets.⁷ However, the possible links to Shakespeare suggested by these records are far too tenuous to support Rowse's confident identification, even if we grant his questionable assumption that the sonnets are to be read as straightforward Shakespearean autobiography.⁸ The unfortunate effect of Rowse's speculation has been to deflect attention from Aemilia Lanyer as a poet and from her poems. My concern here is to examine her book in its own terms, and to assess her achievement.

First, a résumé of the little we know of Aemilia Lanyer's life. Her father was Baptista Bassano, one of the queen's Italian musicians, her mother was his “reputed wife,” Margaret Johnson, and Aemilia was christened at St. Bartolph, Bishopsgate, on January 27, 1569. She had one sister, Angela. Her father died in 1576 when she was seven years old, and her mother died eleven years later. She was married in 1592 at age twenty-three to Alfonso Lanyer, one of Queen Elizabeth's (and later King James's) musicians (Rowse, Sex and Society, p. 102; Dark Lady, p. 18). Forman reports several facts about Lanyer's early life, presumably gleaned during her visits to him in 1597:

She hath had hard fortune in her youth. Her father died when she was young; the wealth of her father failed before he died, and he began to be miserable in his estate. … She was paramour to my old Lord Hunsdon that was Lord Chamberlain, and was maintained in great pride; being with child she was for colour married to a minstrel [i.e., Alphonso Lanyer]. …

… She was maintained in great pomp. She is high-minded. … She hath £40 a year and was wealthy to him that married her, in money and jewels. She can hardly keep secret. She was very brave in youth. She hath many false conceptions. She hath a son, his name is Henry. …

… She hath been much favoured of her Majesty and of many noble men, hath had great gifts and been made much of. … But her husband hath dealt hardly with her, that spent and consumed her goods.⁹

It seems clear from this that Lanyer had enjoyed some access to the life of the court as a young girl by reason of the Hunsdon connection, and that she had obtained an estate in money and jewels which her husband squandered. The Lanyers like the Bassanos were a musical family. Alphonso Lanyer was both a court musician and a military man: he served as gentleman volunteer on the Essex Island voyages and evidently hoped to be preferred to a knighthood (Rowse, Dark Lady, p. 18). Forman indicates that when Aemilia visited him she wanted to know “whether she should be a lady or no,” and he also implies that her reduced circumstances might lead her to questionable moral behavior: “She is now very needy, in debt and it seems for lucre's sake will be a good fellow, for necessity doth compel. She hath a wart or mole in the pit of the throat or near it.”¹⁰

Alphonso Lanyer was not knighted on this voyage or in consequence of his later military engagements, nor was he wealthy enough to buy a knighthood from James, as so many did. In 1604 he was awarded a patent to take revenue from the weighing of hay and grain in London, and after his death in 1613 Aemilia was involved in several lawsuits respecting her rights in this commission.¹¹ In 1617 she set up a school in St. Giles in the Fields but was soon in litigation with her landlord about rent arrears and repairs, during which she deposed that the death of her husband left her poor, “he having spent a great part of her estate in the service of the late Queen in her wars of Ireland and other places.” Aemelia died on April 3, 1645, at the age of 76 (Rowse, Dark Lady, pp. 33-34).

From her multiple dedications we can infer some facts concerning the circles she moved in—who was known to her and who was not. While these poems like most of their kind are full of hyperbole, they would not succeed in their purpose of winning favor if they were to falsify blatantly the terms of a relationship. These dedications are obviously intended to call Aemilia Lanyer to the attention of past patronesses, and perhaps to attract new ones. This strategy was common: Spenser appended to his Faerie Queene seventeen dedicatory sonnets honoring former and would-be patrons, while inscribing it in the first instance to Queen Elizabeth.

It is evident from these poems that Lanyer does not enjoy in the court circles of King James the associations and the favors she attracted in Elizabeth's court. The opening dedication to Queen Anne contrasts her present sorrow with an earlier, happier time, when “great Elizaes favour blest my youth” (l. 50). The dedications to Princess Elizabeth and to the two greatest literary patronesses of the period—Mary (Sidney) Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, and Lucy (Harrington) Russell, Countess of Bedford, do not claim personal acquaintance. And Lanyer frankly admits that she is a “stranger” to the Countess of Suffolk, Katherine (Knevet) Howard. However, other dedications attempt to renew relationships harking back to those better Elizabethan times. Lanyer addresses Lady Arabella Stuart, first cousin of James I, as “Great learned Ladie, whom I long have knowne, / And yet not knowne so much as I desired.” And she addresses the Dowager Countess of Kent, Susan (Bertie) Wingfield, as “the Mistris of my youth, / The noble guide of my ungovern'd dayes,” suggesting that as a young girl she had lived in the countess's household, waiting upon her.¹²

Some kind of formal patronage is implied in the dedications to Margaret (Russell) Clifford, Dowager Countess of Cumberland, and to her daughter Anne, Countess of Dorset, as well as in the praises of them incorporated in the major poems of the volume.¹³ Several poets and theologians dedicated books to Margaret Clifford as patron, among them the poet Samuel Daniel who served as tutor for her daughter Anne.¹⁴ Lanyer indicates that the countess also acted as her patron, asserting that she wrote her poems at the countess' behest, and intimating that she owes both her religious conversion and her recognition as a poet to a period of residence with the countess and her daughter at the country estate of Cookham, in Berkshire.¹⁵ Lanyer alludes knowledgeably to the countess' domestic unhappiness with her profligate adventurer husband, George Clifford—troubles which persisted after his death in 1605, when both mother and daughter became engaged in extended litigation over the terms of his will in an effort to secure to Anne her proper inheritance.¹⁶ At the least, Lanyer seems to have received some encouragement in learning, piety, and poetry in the bookish and cultivated household of the Countess of Cumberland. Quite possibly she was also supported by the countess in the unusual venture of offering her poems for publication.

Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, for all its diversity of subject matter, is governed by certain unifying themes and concerns. It is set forth as a comprehensive “Book of Good Women,” fusing religious devotion and feminism so as to assert the essential harmony of those two impulses. Lanyer does not imitate Boccaccio, or Christine de Pizan, or Chaucer—but she does employ several poetic genres and verse forms with considerable facility to celebrate good women.¹⁷ Given Lanyer's questionable past, her evident concern to find patronage, and her continuing focus on women, contemporary and biblical, we might be tempted to suppose that the ostensible religious subject of the title poem, Christ's Passion, simply provides a thin veneer for a subversive feminist statement—but that conclusion would be wrongheaded. Lanyer is a woman of her times, and her imagination is governed by its terms. She appears to be sincerely, if not very profoundly, religious, and she presents Christ's Passion as the focus for all the forms of female goodness—and masculine evil—her poems treat. Her good women meditate upon and imitate this model, and as poet she interprets her experience of life in religious categories.

The first section of the book, the dedications, sets up a contemporary community of good women. Most of the dedicatees were linked through kinship or marriage with the staunchly Protestant faction of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, which promoted resistance to Spain, active support of Protestantism on the Continent, continued reform in the English church, and patronage of the arts, especially Christian poetry.¹⁸ Lanyer's dedications continually emphasize the descent of virtue in the female line, from virtuous mothers to daughters: Queen Anne and Princess Elizabeth, Margaret and Anne Clifford, Catherine and Susan Bertie, Katherine Howard and her daughters. The author positions herself among these women, describing her book as the glass which shows their several virtues, and inviting them to receive and meditate upon Christ their Bridegroom here depicted.

The extraordinary virtue and merit she discerns in these ladies also redounds upon herself as poet, justifying her in undertaking what is “seldome seene, / A Womans writing of divinest things” (“To the Queenes most Excellent Majestie,” ll. 3-4). Aemilia's several apologias for her poetry excuse it as faulty and unlearned by reason of her sex, but her disclaimers seem closer to the humilitas topos than to genuine angst. She continually proclaims her poems worthy of attention for the virtue and divinity they manifest: the implication is that a woman poet may write worthily since all these women are seen to be so worthy.

The first dedication (in six-line pentameter stanzas rhymed ababcc) honors Queen Anne for embodying the qualities of Juno, Venus, Pallas, and Cynthia, and for attracting Muses and Artists to her throne. Lanyer calls the queen's particular attention to “Eves Apologie, / Which I have writ in honour of your sexe” (ll. 73-74), and concludes with a defense of her poems' worth as deriving from nature rather than from learning and art:

Not that I Learning to my selfe assume,
Or that I would compare with any man:
          But as they are Scholers, and by Art do write,
          So Nature yeelds my Soule a sad delight.
And since all Arts at first from Nature came,
That goodly Creature, Mother of perfection,
Whom Joves almighty hand at first did frame,
Taking both her and hers in his protection:
          Why should not She now grace my barren Muse,
          And in a Woman all defects excuse.

(ll. 147-56)

The sonnet-like poems to Princess Elizabeth and the Lady Arabella (dedications two and four) emphasize their learning: Lanyer offers her own “first fruits of a womans wit” to Elizabeth, whose “faire eyes farre better Bookes have seene”; and she apostrophizes Arabella as “Great learned Ladie … / so well accompan'ed / With Pallas, and the Muses.”¹⁹ The third dedication (in seven-line pentameter stanzas rhymed ababacc) is addressed “To all vertuous Ladies in generall”; it praises all who are ladies-in-waiting to Queen Virtue, companions of the Muses, and Virgins waiting for the Bridegroom. The fifth dedication (in the same verse form as that to the queen) praises the Countess of Kent as the glass displaying all virtues to the young Aemilia, and as a heroic follower of Christ even in infancy when her staunchly Protestant mother, Catherine Bertie, Countess of Suffolk, fled England with her family during Queen Mary's reign:²⁰

Whose Faith did undertake in Infancie,
All dang'rous travells by devouring Seas
To flie to Christ from vaine Idolatry,
Not seeking there this worthlesse world to please,
          By your most famous Mother so directed,
          That noble Dutchesse, who liv'd unsubjected.
From Romes ridiculous prier and tyranny,
That mighty Monarchs kept in awfull feare;
Leaving here her lands, her state, dignitie;
Nay more, vouchsaft disguised weedes to weare:
          When with Christ Jesus she did meane to goe,
          From sweet delights to taste part of his woe.

(ll. 19-30)

The next dedication is given special importance by its central position, its length (224 lines), its verse form unique in this volume (four-line pentameter stanzas rhymed abab), and its genre: it is a dream vision narrative entitled “The Authors Dreame to the Ladie Marie, the Countesse Dowager of Pembroke.” In it Lanyer recounts a dream visit under the conduct of Morpheus to the Idalian groves where she finds the Countess of Pembroke enthroned in Honor's chair, crowned by eternal Fame, and receiving tribute from various classical representatives of art, beauty, and wisdom: the Graces, Bellona, Dictina, Aurora, Flora. Under the countess' aegis the strife between Art and Nature is resolved, and all the company join to sing the countess' psalm versions:

Those holy Sonnets they did all agree,
With this most lovely Lady here to sing;
That by her noble breasts sweet harmony,
Their musicke might in eares of Angels ring.
While saints like Swans about this silver brook
Should Hallalu-iah sing continually,
Writing her praises in th'eternall booke
Of endlesse honour, true fames memorie.

(ll. 121-28)

Morpheus then reveals the lady's name, indicates that she spends all her time “In virtuous studies of Divinitie,” and (continuing Lanyer's argument concerning the equality or superiority of women in moral and spiritual matters) ranks the countess “far before” her brother Sir Philip Sidney “For virtue, wisedome, learning, dignity” (ll. 147, 151-52). Dismayed upon awakening from her vision, Lanyer resolves to present her own “unlearned lines” (l. 203) to that lady, expecting that she will value these “flowres that spring from virtues ground” (l. 214) even though she herself reads and writes worthier and more profound books:

Thogh many Books she writes that are more rare,
Yet there is hony in the meanest flowres:
Which is both wholesome, and delights the taste:
Though sugar be more finer, higher priz'd,
Yet is the painefull Bee no whit disgrac'd,
Nor her faire wax, or hony more despiz'd.

(ll. 195-200)

The poem is well conceived, well made, and charming, testifying by its length and art to the importance of the Countess of Pembroke as model for Lanyer's conception of herself as learned lady and poet.

The later dedications are again epistolary in form. That to the Countess of Bedford (in seven-line pentameter stanzas rhymed ababbcc) identifies Knowledge, wielded by Virtue, as the key to her heart, and emphasizes, like Jonson's epigram, her “cleare Judgement.”²¹ The dedication to the Countess of Cumberland—distinguished as the book's primary patron and audience by the fact that only this dedication is in prose—offers the Passion poem as a worthy text for the countess' meditations in that its subject “giveth grace to the meanest and most unworthy hand that will undertake to write thereof.” Also, describing the poems as a mirror of the countess's “most worthy mind,” it claims that their art can extend the life of both dedicatee and author: these poems “may remaine in the world many yeares longer than your Honour, or my selfe can live, to be a light unto those that come after.”

The dedication to the Countess of Suffolk (in six-line, pentameter stanzas rhymed ababcc) praises her as “fountaine” of all her husband's blessings, and, with continuing emphasis upon the female community, urges the countess to guide her “noble daughters” in meditations based upon Lanyer's Passion poem (ll. 49-68). In this dedication Lanyer eschews apologies for her poetic vocation and poetic achievement, claiming that both are God-given. She was led by her birth-star “to frame this worke of grace,” and is enabled to do so by God himself: “his powre hath given me powre to write, / A subject fit for you to looke upon” (ll. 7, 13-14).

The final long dedication to Anne, Countess of Dorset (116 lines, in eight-line pentameter stanzas rhymed abababcc) presents her as the worthy heir to her mother's excellencies and virtues, contrasting a female succession grounded upon virtue and holiness with the male succession through aristocratic titles. In this verse epistle, uniquely, Lanyer presumes to teach proper moral attitudes and conduct to her subject, as if privileged to do so by former familiarity. Intimating (perhaps) that Anne should continue such familiarity despite the differences in their rank, and evidently alluding to the fact that Cumberland's will alienated his estates and the titles they carried from his daughter (against the terms of the entail),²² Lanyer compares the worthlessness of aristocratic titles to the “immortall fame” which “faire virtue” wins:

What difference was there when the world began,
Was it not Virtue that distinguish all?
All sprang but from one woman and one man,
Then how doth Gentry come to rise and fall?
Or who is he that very rightly can
Distinguish of his birth, or tell at all
          In what meane state his Ancestors have bin,
          Before some one of worth did honour win.

(ll. 49-56)

She emphasizes the office of the virtuous to serve as “God's Stewards” in providing for the poor, no doubt intending some application of that stewardship to herself as she urges Anne to fulfill her role as true successor and heir to her mother's virtues:

To you, as to Gods Steward I doe write,
In whom the seeds of virtue have bin sowne,
By your most worthy mother, in whose right,
All her faire parts you challenge as your owne;
…
You are the Heire apparent of this Crowne
Of goodnesse, bountie, grace, love, pietie,
By birth its yours, then keepe it as your owne,
Defend it from all base indignitie;
The right your Mother hath to it, is knowne
Best unto you, who reapt such fruit thereby:
          This Monument of her faire worth retaine
          In your pure mind, and keepe it from al staine.

(ll. 57-60, 65-72)

The dedication ends by begging Anne to excuse any insufficiency in her poem arising from “wants, or weakenesse of my braine” (l. 141), since her subject, Christ's Passion, is beyond any human art.

If these dedications as a group portray a contemporary community of learned and virtuous women with the poet Aemilia their associate and celebrant, the prose “Epistle to the Vertuous Reader” confirms and extends that community, offering the book “for the generall use of all virtuous Ladies and Gentlewomen of this kingdome” (sig. f3r). The epistle is a remarkable contribution to the so-called querelle des femmes, that ongoing controversy over women's inherent worthiness or faultiness which produced a spate of writing, serious and satiric, from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century and beyond.²³ Lanyer first lectures those women who “forgetting they are women themselves … speake unadvisedly against the rest of their sexe,” and she urges them to leave such “folly” to “evill disposed men.” With considerable passion she denounces those men who, “forgetting they were borne of women, nourished of women, and that if it were not by the means of women, they would be quite extinguished out of the world, and a final ende of them all, doe like Vipers deface the wombes wherein they were bred”—associating such men with those who “dishonoured Christ his Apostles and Prophets, putting them to shamefull deaths” (sig. f3r). Marshalling biblical evidence with rhetorical force and flair, she claims that God himself has affirmed women's moral and spiritual equality or superiority to men:

[God] gave power to wise and virtuous women, to bring down their pride and arrogancie. As was cruell Cesarus by the discreet counsell of noble Deborah, Judge and Prophetesse of Israel: and resolution of Jael wife of Heber the Kenite: wicked Haman, by the divine prayers and prudent proceedings of beautiful Hester: blasphemous Holofernes, by the invincible courage, rare wisdome, and confident carriage of Judeth: & the unjust Judges, by the innocency of chast Susanna: with infinite others, which for brevitie sake I will omit.

(sig. f3v)

In clipped, forceful phrases, she cites further evidence to the same point from the singular honors accorded to women by Christ:

It pleased our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, without the assistance of man … to be begotten of a woman, borne of a woman, nourished of a woman, obedient to a woman; and that he healed women, pardoned women, comforted women: yea, even when he was in his greatest agonie and bloodie sweat, going to be crucified, and also in his last houre of his death, tooke care to dispose of a woman: after his resurrection, appeared first to a woman, sent a woman to declare his most glorious resurrection to the rest of his Disciples. Many other examples I could alleadge of divers faithfull and virtuous women, who have in all ages, not onely beene Confessors, but also indured most cruel martyrdome for their faith in Jesus Christ.

(sig. f3v)

Lanyer's long poem on Christ's Passion (in eight-line pentameter stanzas rhymed abababcc) constitutes the second part of her volume. The account of the Passion emphasizes the good women who played a major role in that event, and it is presented from the vantage point of women, past and present. Not only is the Passion narrative interpreted through the sensibility of Lanyer as woman poet, it is also enclosed within descriptions of the Countess of Cumberland as exemplary image, imitator, and spouse of the suffering Saviour. As poetic interpreter, Lanyer treats her material variously, sometimes relating events, sometimes elaborating them in the style of biblical commentary, sometimes meditating upon images or scenes, often apostrophizing participants as if she herself were present with them at these events.

The conceptual scheme of this poem is of primary interest; stylistically, it is uneven. Lanyer uses rhetorical schemes—especially figures of sound, parallelism, and repetition—with considerable skill; her apostrophes often convey strength of feeling; she can describe and sometimes dramatize a scene effectively. There are few striking images or metaphors, but her allusions are usually appropriate and her language straightforward, taking on at times colloquial directness. Her greatest fault is slackness—padding lines and stanzas to fill out the metrical pattern.

The Passion poem begins with a long preface addressing the Countess of Cumberland (sts. 1-33). The first nine stanzas propose to immortalize her in verse, and recall the solace she has found for her many sorrows in the beauties of Cookham and the love of God. Stanzas 10 to 18 comprise an embedded psalmic passage praising God as the strong support of the just and the mighty destroyer of all their enemies, with obvious (and later overt) application to the much wronged Margaret Clifford. Lanyer perhaps intends the passage as a gesture of discipleship to the Countess of Pembroke, as it echoes or paraphrases a melange of psalm texts, chiefly Psalms 18, 84, 89, and 104:²⁴

With Majestie and Honour is He clad,
And deck'd with light, as with a garment faire;
…
He of the watry Cloudes his Chariot frames,
And makes his blessed Angels powrefull Spirits,
His Ministers are fearefull fiery flames,
Rewarding all according to their merits;
The Righteous for an heritage he claimes,
And registers the wrongs of humble spirits;
          Hills melt like wax, in presence of the Lord,
          So do all sinners, in his sight abhorr'd.

(sts. 10.1-12.8)

Stanzas 19 to 33 identify the countess as one of those just who are specially beloved and protected by God, and praise her for abandoning the delights of the court to serve her heavenly king in rural retirement. This section includes a dispraise of beautiful women—Helen, Cleopatra, Rosamund, Lucretia, Matilda—whose beauty led them or their lovers to sin or ruin; by contrast, the countess' inner beauty of grace and virtue made Christ the husband of her soul, and his death “made her Dowager of all” (st. 33.1).

This statement leads into Lanyer's proper subject, the Passion (sts. 34-165). First, however, she invokes and admonishes her “lowely Muse” (sts. 34-41) for risking the fate of Icarus or Phaeton by flying so far above her “appointed straine”:

Thinke when the eye of Wisdom shall discover
Thy weakling Muse to flie, that scarce could creepe,
And in the Ayre above the Clowdes to hover,
When better 'twere mued up, and fast asleepe;
They'l thinke with Phaeton, thou canst ne'r recover,
But helplesse with that poore yong Lad to weepe:
          The Little World of thy weake Wit on fire,
          Where thou wilt perish in thine owne desire.

(st. 36)

But Lanyer takes courage from the story of the Widow's Mite, and the conviction that God's glory will shine the more, “the Weaker thou doest seeme to be / In Sexe, or Sence” (st. 37.1-2). Proposing like many of her contemporaries to render sacred matter “in plainest Words” so as not to distort it,²⁵ she prays God to “guide my Hand and Quill” (st. 41.4).

Her account of the Passion is part commentary or meditation on the biblical story and part apostrophe—a poetic figure which often intensifies emotion and creates an effect of immediacy. The first section begins with Christ's prayers and subsequent capture in the Garden of Gethsemane (sts. 42-99). Using apostrophe to poignant effect, Lanyer conveys Christ's profound isolation even from his beloved apostles:

Sweet Lord, how couldst thou thus to flesh and blood
Communicate thy griefe? tell of thy woes?
Thou knew'st they had no powre to doe thee good,
But were the cause thou must endure these blowes.

(st. 48.1-4)

The emphasis throughout his section is on the sins and failures of Christ's own apostles. Peter declared that his faith would never fail, but Christ knew Peter would deny him three times. Christ implored the apostles to wait and watch with him, but they slept. The Apostle Judas proved to be “A trothlesse traytor, and a mortall foe” (st. 61.5). Peter offended Christ and the laws by drawing his sword against Christ's enemies. Turning then to the “accursed crew” of Scribes and Pharisees who apprehended Christ, Lanyer castigates them with a fine flourish of parallelism and antithesis:

How blinde were they could not discerne the Light!
How dull! if not to understand the truth,
How weake! if meekenesse overcame their might;
How stony hearted, if not mov'd to ruth:
How void of Pitie, and how full of Spight,
Gainst him that was the Lord of Light and Truth:
          Here insolent Boldnesse checkt by Love and Grace,
          Retires, and falls before our Makers face.
…
Here Falshood beares the shew of formall Right,
Base Treacherie hath gote a guard of men;
Tyranny attends, with all his strength and might,
To leade this siely Lamb to Lyons denne.

(sts. 64; 72.1-4)

The section ends by reverting to the disciples' failures: “Though they protest they never will forsake him, / They do like men, when dangers overtake them” (st. 79.7-8). This formulation begins Lanyer's sharply drawn contrast between the weak and evil men in the Passion story and the good women who play a role in it.

The second section (sts. 80-118) focuses upon yet more wicked men, Christ's several judges—“wicked Caiphas,” “Proud Pontius Pilate,” “scoffing Herod.” It begins by describing Christ through a series of epithets—George Herbert's technique in “Prayer I”:²⁶

The beauty of the World, Heavens chiefest Glory;
The mirrour of Martyrs Crowne of holy Saints;
Love of th'Almighty, blessed Angels story;
Water of Life, which none that drinks it, faints;
Guide of the Just, where all our Light we borrow;
Mercy of Mercies; Hearer of Complaints;
          Triumpher over Death; Ransomer of Sinne;
          Falsely accused; now his paines begin.

(st. 81)

The judges are characterized through striking metaphors: Caiaphas' “Owly eies are blind, and cannot see,” and Pilate is a “painted wall / A golden Sepulcher with rotten bones” (sts. 89.8; 116.1-2).

Then Lanyer addresses a lengthy apostrophe to Pilate, explicitly contrasting good women with these weak and evil men (sts. 94.5-105). Ranging herself with Pilate's wife whom she takes as the representative of womankind, Lanyer pleads with Pilate to spare Christ, relating that plea to a remarkable apologia pronouncing Eve guiltless of any evil intention in the Fall:

O noble Governour, make thou yet a pause,
Doe not in innocent blood imbrue thy hands;
          But heare the words of thy most worthy wife,
          Who sends to thee, to beg her Saviours life.
…
          Let not us Women glory in Mens fall,
          Who had power given to over-rule us all.
Till now your indiscretion sets us free,
And makes our former fault much less appeare;
Our Mother Eve, who tasted of the Tree,
Giving to Adam what shee held most deare,
Was simply good, and had no powre to see,
The after-comming harme did not appeare:
          The subtile Serpent that our Sex betraide,
          Before our fall so sure a plot had laide.

(sts. 94.5-96)

She presses that argument, claiming that Eve's “harmeless Heart” intended no evil at all, that her fault was only “too much love, / Which made her give this present to her Deare” (st. 101.1-2). All the guilt of the Fall belongs to Adam, who was strong, wise, and undeceived. Moreover, any faults which women might have inherited from Eve are far outweighed by the guilt and malice of men, epitomized in Pilate:

          Her weakenesse did the Serpents words obay,
          But you in malice Gods deare Sonne betray.
Whom, if unjustly you condemne to die,
Her sinne was small, to what you doe commit;
…
Then let us have our Libertie againe,
And challendge to your selves no Sov'raigntie;
You came not in the world without our paine,
Make that a barre against your crueltie;
Your fault being greater, why should you disdaine
Our beeing your equals, free from tyranny?
          If one weake woman simply did offend,
          This sinne of yours, hath no excuse, nor end.
To which (poore soules) we never gave consent,
Witnesse thy wife (O Pilate) speakes for all;

(sts. 102.6-105.2)

The third section presents the procession to Calvary, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection, again contrasting the responses of good women and evil men to these events (sts. 119-65). The journey scene is described with considerable dramatic effectiveness:

First went the Crier with open mouth proclayming
The heavy sentence of Iniquitie,
The Hangman next, by his base office clayming
His right in Hell, where sinners never die,
Carrying the nayles, the people still blaspheming
Their maker, using all impiety;
          The Thieves attending him on either side,
          The Serjeants watching, while the women cri'd.

(st. 121)

A lengthy apostrophe to the daughters of Jerusalem follows (sts. 122-26), contrasting their tears and their efforts to beseech mercy for Christ with their menfolk's cruelty:

When spightfull men with torments did oppresse
Th'afflicted body of this innocent Dove,
Poore women seeing how much they did transgresse,
By teares, by sighes, by cries intreat, nay prove,
What may be done among the thickest presse,
They labour still these tyrants hearts to move;
          In pitie and compassion to forbeare
          Their whipping, spuring, tearing of his haire.
But all in vaine, their malice hath no end,
Their hearts more hard than flint, or marble stone.

(sts. 125-126.2)

Then Lanyer locates herself with the mother of Jesus as observer and mourner at the crucifixion, and in an extended passage (sts. 127-42) meditates upon Mary's role in the Redemption and her exaltation as “Queene of Woman-kind”:

How canst thou choose (faire Virgin) then but mourne,
When this sweet of-spring of thy body dies,
When thy faire eies beholds his bodie torne,
The peoples fury, heares the womens cries.

(st. 142.1-4)

Lanyer's baroque description of the crucifixion itself is not without poetic force and religious feeling:

His joynts dis-joynted, and his legges hang downe,
His alablaster breast, his bloody side,
His members torne, and on his head a Crowne
Of sharpest Thorns, to satisfie for pride:
Anguish and Paine doe all his Sences drowne,
While they his holy garments do divide:
          His bowells drie, his heart full fraught with griefe,
          Crying to him that yeelds him no reliefe.

(st. 146)

But the emphasis on good women continues. This icon of the Crucifixion is presented as an object of meditation to the Countess of Cumberland, who is apostrophized as “Deere Spouse of Christ” (st. 147.2), and urged to judge “if ever Lover were so true” (st. 159.3). Finally, the precious balms brought by still other good women to annoint the dead Christ are interpreted as a figure of the precious ointments “of Mercie, Charitie, and Faith” brought to the risen Christ (the Bridegroom of Canticles) “by his faithfull Wife / The Holy Church” (st. 161).

A long coda to the Countess of Cumberland (sts. 166-230), which parallels the long prologue, expatiates upon the many forms in which Christ appears to the countess as she practices the works of mercy, and portrays her in Canticles imagery as Christ's Spouse. It also proclaims her superiority to the worthy women of history. She is more noble and more faithful to her spouse than Cleopatra was, since “she flies not from him when afflictions prove” and she dies not one death for love but a thousand (st. 180). She also surpasses the famous women who fought and conquered with the sword—the Scythian women who put Darius to flight; Deborah who judged Israel; valiant Judith who defeated Holofernes—since she wages “farre greater warre … / Against that many headed monster Sinne” (st. 187.1-2). Hester who fasted and prayed three days so as to free her people from Haman gives way before the countess, who for “dayes, weekes, months, and yeares” has worn the sackcloth of worldly troubles (st. 190.3-4). So also Susanna's single trial of chastity is overmatched by the countess' conquest of all base affections in her own breast, And the journey of the noble Queen of Sheba to find King Solomon was but a figure of the countess' love and service to an almighty and everlasting king.

At this juncture we find a sensuous and not ineffective baroque passage (sts. 219-28) expatiating upon the sweetness of Christ's grace and love:

Sweet holy rivers, pure celestiall springs,
Proceeding from the fountaine of our life;
Swift sugred currents that salvation brings,
Cleare christall streames, purging all sinne and strife.
Faire floods, where souls do bathe their snow-white wings,
Before they flie to true eternall life:
          Sweet Nectar and Ambrosia, food of Saints,
          Which, whoso tasteth, never after faints.

(st. 217)

Such sweetness “sweet'ned all the sowre of death” (st. 219.1) to the first martyrs—St. Stephen, St. Lawrence, the Apostles Andrew and Peter, and John the Baptist. The praise of these male saints as chief of the martyrs and confessors by whom “our Saviour most was honoured” (st. 229.6) provides some counterweight to the massive wickedness Lanyer lays to men's charge throughout the poem. But it is a small gesture. Lanyer concludes her poem by declaring that the Countess of Cumberland follows in the footsteps of these martyrs, folding up “all their Beauties” in her breast (st. 229.8).

The final poem, “The Description of Cooke-ham” is the gem of the volume. In 210 lines of pentameter couplets it sustains a gentle elegaic tone and contains some lovely pastoral description. The poem presumably executes the Countess of Cumberland's charge, reported in Salve Deus as not yet fulfilled, to write “praisefull lines of that delightfull place,” the “Paradice” of Cookham (st. 3.5). Whether Lanyer's poem was written before or after “Penshurst,” it was conceived on very different lines. It is a valediction—a farewell by the author and by the residents (the Countess of Cumberland and her daughter) to an Edenic home, perhaps in specific reference to the countess' permanent departure to those residences she would occupy as a widow.²⁷

This poem also embodies but gives mythic dimension to Lanyer's dominant concerns: the Eden now lost is portrayed as a female paradise inhabited solely by women—the countess, her young virgin daughter Anne, and Aemilia Lanyer. In keeping with the Edenic myth Lanyer (who is twenty years older than Anne Clifford) describes herself as a constant participant in Anne's sports (ll. 119-21), as if they had been young girls together at Cookham. Located in Berkshire a few miles from Maidenhead, the area is still a beauty spot, with extensive frontages on the Thames, rich woodlands, lush meadows, picturesque scattered hamlets, and high hills in the west—which however do not afford a prospect into thirteen shires, as Lanyer's poem asserts.²⁸

The elegaic tone is established in the opening lines, as Lanyer bids farewell to the place she associates with her conversion and the confirmation of her vocation as poet:

Farewell (sweet Cooke-ham) where I first obtain'd
Grace from that Grace where perfit Grace remain'd;
And where the Muses gave their full consent,
I should have powre the virtuous to content:
…
Never shall my sad eies againe behold
Those pleasures which my thoughts did then unfold.

(ll. 1-10)

She represents the countess as sharing these elegaic sentiments, and advises her to regard those “pleasures past” as but “dimme shadowes of celestiall pleasures.”

Then begins the description of the estate, as it responds to the arrival and departure of its mistress in terms of the seasonal round. The house itself is barely mentioned, but the estate becomes a locus amoenus as each part decks itself out in all its spring and summer loveliness for her arrival:

The Walkes put on their summer Liveries,
And all things else did hold like similies:
The Trees with leaves, with fruits, with flowers clad,
Embrac'd each other, seeming to be glad,
Turning themselves to beauteous Canopies,
To shade the bright Sunne from your brighter eies:
The cristall Streames with silver spangles graced,
While by the glorious Sunne they were embraced:
The little Birds in chirping notes did sing,
To entertain both You and that sweet Spring.

(ll. 21-30)

Other aspects of nature contribute to the welcome with an obsequiousness analogous to that of the Penshurst fish and game offering themselves to capture, but Lanyer's tone carries no hint of Jonson's amused exaggeration.²⁹ The hills descend humbly that the countess may tread on them, the gentle winds enhance her pleasure in the woods by their “sad murmure”; the “swelling Bankes deliver'd all their pride” (their fish) upon seeing this “Phoenix”; and the birds and animals sport before her—(only slightly more timorous than they would have been with Eve):

The pretty Birds would oft come to attend thee,
Yet flie away for feare they should offend thee:
The little creatures in the Burrough by
Would come abroad to sport them in your eye;
Yet fearefull of the Bowe in your faire Hand,
Would runne away when you did make a stand.

(ll. 47-52)

Like that other Eden the focus of interest in this place is a “stately Tree” (l. 53). This oak surpasses all its fellows in height and also incorporates qualities of other trees: it is straight and tall “Much like a comely Cedar” and it has outspread arms and broad leaves “like a Palme tree,” veiling the sun and fanning the breezes (ll. 57, 61). Seated by this tree the countess enjoys regal honors and delights: “Hills, vales, and woods, as if on bended knee” salute her, and the prospect of “thirteene shires” (if not of all the world) is “fit to please the eyes of Kings” (ll. 68, 72). However, this tree offers no temptation, only contentment and incitement to meditate upon the creatures as they reflect their Creators' beauty, wisdom, love, and majesty. Elsewhere in the woods the countess meditates on the Scriptures, “Placing his holy Writ in some faire tree” (l. 83), and in her daily life at Cookham she follows in the spiritual footsteps of the greatest Old Testament saints:

With Moyses you did mount his holy Hill,
To know his pleasure, and performe his Will.
With lovely David you did often sing,
His holy Hymnes to Heavens Eternall King.
…
With blessed Joseph you did often feed
Your pined brethren when they stood in need.

(ll. 85-92)

The next passage is a complaint that Lanyer can no longer associate with Anne Clifford, now Countess of Dorset, because “Unconstant Fortune” has placed too great a social divide between them (l. 102). While the passage gives vent to Lanyer's discontent with her station, and makes a transparent bid for further attention from Anne, it is thematically appropriate. The social constrictions attending Anne's nobility by birth and marriage are set off against the natural associations, dictated solely by virtue and pleasure, in Edenic Cookham, “Whereof depriv'd, I evermore must grieve” (l. 125).

Next, Cookham's grief at the ladies' preparations for departure is described in a notably effective passage in which pathetic fallacy fuses with the seasonal change from autumn to winter:

Me thought each thing did unto sorrow frame:
The trees that were so glorious in our view,
Forsooke both floures and fruit, when once they knew
Of your depart, their very leaves did wither,
Changing their colours as they grewe together.
But when they saw this had no powre to stay you,
They often wept, though speechlesse, could not pray you;
Letting their teares in your faire bosoms fall:
…
Their frozen tops, like Ages hoarie haires,
Showes their disasters, languishing in feares:
A swarthy riveld ryne all over spread,
Their dying bodies halfe alive, halfe dead.

(ll. 132-46)

The countess' gracious leavetaking of all the beloved creatures and places on the estate culminates in the charge to Lanyer to preserve them in poetry. Then the scene declines into sentimentality as Lanyer portrays herself stealing the farewell kiss the countess bestows on the noble oak.

The final passage echoes the imagery of the opening passage, as all the beauties of the locus amoenus wither in desolation:

And those sweet Brookes that ranne so faire and cleare,
With griefe and trouble wrinckled did appeare.
Those pretty Birds that wonted were to sing,
Now neither sing, nor chirp, nor use their wing;
But with their tender feet on some bare spray,
Warble forth sorrow, and their owne dismay.
…
Each arbour, banke, each seate, each stately tree,
Lookes bare and desolate now for want of thee;
Turning greene tresses into frostie gray,
While in cold griefe they wither all away.
The Sunne grew weake, his beames no comfort gave,
While all greene things did make the earth their grave:
Each brier, each bramble, when you went away,
Caught fast your clothes, thinking to make you stay:
Delightful Eccho wonted to reply
To our last words, did for now sorrow die:
The house cast off each garment that might grace it,
Putting on Dust and Cobwebs to deface it.
All desolation then there did appeare,
When you were going whom they held so deare.

(ll. 183-294)

In sharpest contrast to Jonson's “Penshurst” which celebrates a quasi-Edenic place whose beauty and harmony are centered in and preserved by its lord who “dwells” permanently within it, Lanyer's country-house poem portrays the destruction of an idyllic place when its lady departs. Cookham takes on the appearance of a ravaged Eden after the first human couple is expelled. But here it is a female pair—or rather trio—who depart: the countess called away by her “occasions”; the virgin daughter to her marriage; Lanyer to social decline. Offering her poem as “This last farewell to Cooke-ham” (l. 205) Lanyer suggests strongly that none of them will return to this happy garden state, in which women lived without mates, but found contentment and delight in nature, God, and female companionship. Though of uneven quality, “The Description of Cooke-ham” is an attractive poem presenting a sustained imaginative vision.

Until we can learn more about Lanyer's life we will be unable to answer most of the questions her book so insistently provokes: What influences and circumstances led her to write—and especially to publish—poetry? What poetic models did she look to? How much patronage did she in fact enjoy and from whom? Was “Penshurst” written before “Cooke-ham” or did Lanyer invent the English country-house poem? How important was religion and religious devotion to her? How was her book received? Did she write anything else? And especially, how ought we to account for the strong feminism which pervades every part of her book?

Despite its artistic flaws, Lanyer's volume is worthy of attention for the charm of the “Cooke-ham” poem and for its quite remarkable feminist conceptual frame. The patronage poems present a female lineage of virtue from mother to daughter, a community of good women extending from Catherine Bertie, Protestant fugitive in Mary Tudor's reign, to the young Anne Clifford, heir to the “Crowne / Of goodness, bountie, grace, love, pietie” long worn by her mother, the Countess of Cumberland. The Passion poem extends this community back to biblical times, portraying women as Christ's truest apostles and followers. In the “Cooke-ham” poem a female Eden suffers a new Fall when the structures of a male social order force its women inhabitants to abandon it. In sum, the fundamental Christian myths—Eden, the Passion, the Community of Saints—are here revised, with women at their center.

Notes

1. All citations are from the Huntington Library copy of the first issue (STC 15227) with the imprint in four lines, “AT LONDON / Printed by Valentine Simmes for Richard Bonian and / are to be sold at his Shop in Paules Church- / yard. Anno 1611.” The STC lists only this single copy of the first issue, with imprint in four lines. At the end of the book, in a postscript addressed “To the doubtfull Reader” Lanyer explains the origin of the title in a dream many years before the book itself was conceived:

   Gentle Reader, if thou desire to be resolved, why I give this Title, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, know for certaine, that it was delivered unto me in sleepe many yeares before I had any intent to write in this maner, and was quite out of my memory, untill I had written the Passion of Christ, when immediately it came into my remembrance, what I had dreamed long before; and thinking it a significant token, that I was appointed to performe this Worke, I gave the very same words I received in sleepe as the fittest Title I could devise for this Booke.

2. The Countess of Pembroke's poetic translation of Robert Garnier's classical drama appeared in 1595 as The Tragedie of Antonie, her pastoral dialogue in honor of Queen Elizabeth was published in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody in 1602, and (if it was hers) “The Dolefull Lay of Clorinda” appeared as part of Spenser's elegy for Sidney, “Astrophel,” in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, 1595. But her terza rima translation of Petrarch's “Triumph of Death” was published for the first time in 1912, and the Sidney-Pembroke version of the Psalms circulated only in manuscript and was not published for over two centuries. Queen Elizabeth's metrical translation of Psalm 13 [14] appeared in her translation of Marguerite de Navarre's Godly medytacyon of the christen sowle, edited by John Bale in 1548, but her other poetic translations and poems remained in manuscript. Other aristocratic women—Lucy, Countess of Bedford for one—evidently wrote poetry for private circulation (as did their male counterparts) but very little seems to have survived. The only other women who published substantial original poetry (besides Lanyer) in the Elizabethan-Jacobean period are Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland, whose verse drama, The Tragedie of Mariam, the Fairie Queene of Jewry appeared in 1613, and Lady Mary Wroth, niece of Sir Philip Sidney and the Countess of Pembroke, whose pastoral sonnet sequence with interspersed songs, “Pamphilia to Amphilanthus,” appeared as part of her unfinished Arcadian romance, The Countesse of Montgomeries Urania in 1621.

3. From internal evidence it is clear that Jonson's “Penshurst” was written sometime before the death of Prince Henry in 1612 (l. 77), but it was first published in the folio of 1616. Lanyer's poem was written sometime after Anne Clifford's marriage to Richard Sackville on Feb. 25, 1609 (she is referred to as Dorset, the title her husband inherited two days after the marriage) and before the volume was registered with the Stationer on Oct. 2, 1610. If Jonson's poem was written first Lanyer might have seen it in manuscript, but there are no obvious allusions.

4. Since the Passion poem contains an apology for the author's delay in fulfilling the Countess of Cumberland's charge to write about Cookham, it was evidently written before the Cookham poem. Since it alludes to the countess as a widow, it was clearly written sometime after the death of George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, on Oct. 30, 1605. The several dedications were probably written shortly before publication; the Countess of Dorset's marriage date supplies a terminus post quem for the dedication to her.

5. The STC (1976) lists eight copies, only one of the rare first issue, and seven with the imprint in five lines, “AT LONDON / Printed by Valentine Simmes for Richard Bonian, and are / to be sold at his Shop in Paules Churchyard, at the / Signe of the Floure de Luce and / Crowne, 1611” (STC 15227.5).

6. The British Library copy may be a unique book prepared for the Countess of Cumberland or the Countess of Dorset, or it may possibly represent a special issue. It omits the dedication to Arabella Stuart (probably because she had been taken into custody in March 1611 and sent to the Tower). It also omits the dedications to the Countesses of Kent, Pembroke, and Suffolk—perhaps so as to identify the volume yet more closely with the Countess of Cumberland and her daughter, and to present it only to the obvious court patrons: the queen, the Princess Elizabeth, and the Countess of Bedford who was the queen's most influential lady-in-waiting and the most important Jacobean literary patroness. The epistle “To the Virtuous Reader” is also omitted, possibly because its strong feminist tone would offend the audience for whom this version was prepared. The front matter is not reset: signature c is eliminated as are all but the final leaf of signature d (d4, the Bedford dedication), and signature f (all but the first seven stanzas of the Dorset dedication and the epistle to the reader). The final sheets are shifted so that the dedications appear in the following order: the Queen, Princess Elizabeth, All Virtuous Ladies, the Countess of Bedford, the Countess of Dorset, the Countess of Cumberland.

7. A. L. Rowse, ed., The Poems of Shakespeare's Dark Lady: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum by Emilia Lanier (London: Jonathan Cape, 1978). The edition is based on the Bodleian copy, complete except for the Cookham poem, which is supplied from the British Library copy. Rowse urges his thesis in an edition of Shakespeare's sonnets and also in Sex and Society in Shakespeare's Age: Simon Forman the Astrologer (New York: Scribner's, 1974).

8. Rowse notes that Shakespeare's landlady also visited Forman; that in 1592, as a girl of seventeen, Lanyer had an illegitimate son by Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, later patron of the company of players with whom Shakespeare was associated; and that Lanyer, as an Italian beauty from a family of court musicians, with some literary talent and a questionable moral character, fits the general description Shakespeare gives to the “Dark Lady” in the sonnets.

9. Forman records that Lanyer visited him on May 17, June 3, and June 16, 1597, and the three passages quoted are from his notes on these three occasions, respectively. Cited in Rowse, Dark Lady, pp. 11-12.

10. From Forman's record on June 16, 1597, cited in Rowse, Dark Lady, p. 12. Forman follows up his speculation about her loose morals with an account of his efforts to seduce her, and he implies some success in that endeavor—but it is hard to know how far to believe this self-styled Casanova in such matters.

11. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1634-35, pp. 516-17.

12. Princess Elizabeth was later Elizabeth of Bohemia, the Winter Queen. Lanyer honors her primarily as namesake of the great Queen Elizabeth.

    The Countess of Pembroke, sister of Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Robert Sidney of Penshurst, wife of Henry Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, extended hospitality and patronage at her Wilton estate to many writers—such as Nicholas Breton, Samuel Daniel, Abraham Fraunce, Gervase Babington, Thomas Moffatt—and received dedications from many others—Michael Drayton, Thomas Nashe, Henry Lok, Nathaniel Baxter, Edmund Spenser. Lucy, Countess of Bedford, was patron and friend to Donne and Jonson, among many others. Franklin B. Williams, Jr.'s Index of Dedications and Commendatory Verses in English Books Before 1641 (London: Bibliographical Society, 1962) lists more dedications and praises addressed to these two noblewomen than to any other patronesses except members of the royal family.

    Katherine, Countess of Suffolk, was wife to the wealthy and ambitious Lord Admiral and Lord Chamberlain of the Household, Thomas Howard, whose manor, Audley End, was said to have been built with a foundation of Spanish gold. She alone seems out of place in Lanyer's company of good women, though she and her husband were not yet notorious for the rapacity which was to lead in 1618 to their disgrace and imprisonment for extortion and embezzlement.

    Arabella Stuart was a constant focus for political intrigue during the final years of Elizabeth's reign and the early years of James, because of her strong title to the throne derived from Margaret, eldest sister of Henry VIII. Forbidden to marry without the king's permission, she did so secretly in July 1610 to William Seymour, grandson of Catherine Grey—an alliance which strengthened her title. When the marriage became known, she was taken into custody on Mar. 3, 1611, and after an abortive attempt to escape in June 1611 was lodged in the Tower.

    Susan Bertie's first husband was Reynold Grey of Wrest, de jure Earl of Kent, who died in 1573. In 1581 she married Sir John Wingfield of Withcall, a member of the Leicester-Sidney faction (knighted by Leicester at Zutphen, one of the twelve honor guard at Sidney's funeral, and a participant in the Cadiz expeditions). Lanyer's residence with the countess may or may not have taken place before the countess' second marriage, but clearly antedates Lanyer's own marriage in 1592. Lanyer is probably being ingenuous when she disclaims (ll. 43-48) any thought of “former gaine” or “future profit” from the countess.

13. Margaret Clifford, third and last daughter of Francis Russell, second Earl of Bedford, married George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland in 1577. Their only surviving child, Anne, married Richard Sackville, Earl of Dorset in 1609, was widowed in 1624, and in 1630 remarried Philip Herbert, younger son of Mary, Countess of Pembroke, and then Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. See George C. Williamson's biographies, Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery. 1590-1676, (Kendal: Titus Wilson and Son, 1922), and by the same author, George, Third Earl of Cumberland (1558-1605): His Life and His Voyages (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1920).

14. There are dedications to Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, by Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge, Samuel Daniel, Henry Lok, Edmund Spenser, Samuel Hieron, Henry Peacham, William Perkins, Richard Greenham, and Peter Muffett, among others. See Williams, Index. On her connection with Edmund Spenser, see Jon Quitslund's essay in this collection.

15. Cookham, a manor belonging to the crown from before the Norman Conquest until 1818, was annexed to Windsor Castle in 1540. It was evidently granted or leased to the Cliffords and occupied by Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, at some periods during her estrangement from her husband in the years before his death in 1605. The countess may have spent some time there during the early months of her widowhood, before the journey she and her daughter made in 1607 to visit the Cumberland and Westmorland estates. In 1608 they took up residence at Lady Clifford's own house at Austin Friars. Anne Clifford's diary records a visit to Cookham in 1603, but unfortunately there are no entries from 1603 to 1616; see The Diary of the Lady Anne Clifford, ed. V. Sackville-West (London, 1923), p. 15. It is not clear just when or for how long Lanyer was at Cookham.

16. George Clifford, noted Elizabethan seaman, explorer and adventurer, and womanizer was for several years virtually separated from his wife (Diary of Anne Clifford, pp. 10-15), though he begged forgiveness and reconciled with her on his deathbed. He left a will bequeathing to his brother, Sir Francis Clifford, the new Earl of Cumberland, his northern estates (with a reversion to the Lady Anne in the event of the failure of male heirs). In doing so he ignored a deed executed in the reign of Edward II entailing the estates upon his child regardless of sex. Margaret Clifford and later Anne herself engaged in continual litigation and court appeals to secure her right to these estates, but they only redounded to her in 1643, at the death of her cousin Henry Clifford, son to Sir Francis. Williamson, Lady Anne Clifford, pp. 25-55.

17. Lanyer may or may not have known or known about Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus, Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, or Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, published in 1521 in an English translation by Brian Anslay. But Anne Clifford might have directed her to Chaucer: much later in her life (1649), Anne declared Chaucer to be a favorite poet and a great consolation to her in trouble (Harley MS. 7001, f. 212).

18. I am indebted to my colleague David Sacks for this observation and for working out the genealogies supporting it.

19. These poems are in 14 lines, divided into two stanzas. That to Princess Elizabeth is rhymed ababacc, dededff; that to Arabella Stuart, ababbcc, dedeeff.

20. The dedication “To the Ladie Susan, Countesse Dowager of Kent, and daughter to the Duchesse of Suffolke,” associates her at the outset with her famous mother whose flight and wanderings with her family in Europe—as recorded by her husband Richard Bertie—was incorporated in Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Catherine married Richard Bertie in 1553, after the death of her first husband Charles Brandon, Earl of Suffolk; Susan was born in 1554, only a few months before the flight. Susan herself accompanied her second husband, Sir John Wingfield, on his military expeditions and was imprisoned with him briefly in Breda after the fall of Gertruydenburg.

21. Cf. Jonson, “Epigram 76,” in The Complete Poetry of Ben Jonson, ed. W. B. Hunter (New York: Norton, 1968), p. 32, which ascribes to her “a learned, and a manly soule.”

22. See note 16 above. Anne Clifford could not have inherited her father's earldom, but she could and eventually did inherit titles which pertained to the estates: Baronesse Clifford, Westmorland, and Vessey, Lady of the Honor of Skipton in Craven, High Sheriffesse of the County of Westmorland.

23. For an account of and bibliography pertaining to this controversy through 1568 see Francis L. Utley, The Crooked Rib (New York: Octagon Books, 1970), and for discussion and listing of later titles see Suzanne W. Hull, Chaste, Silent & Obedient (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1982).

24. Cf. Psalm 104 to Lanyer's passage:

    2. Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:
    3. Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his charriot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind.
    4. Who maketh his angells spitits; his ministers a flaming fire.
    32. He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke.

25. See the discussion of this concern in Barbara K. Lewalski, Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric, (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 3-13, 213-50.

26. Cf. George Herbert, “Prayer I,” in The Works of George Herbert, ed. F. E. Hutchinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), p. 51:

    “Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age,
    Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
    The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
    The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth …”

    (ll. 1-4)

27. See note 15. The valedictory mode of this poem suggests a permanent rather than a seasonal departure, probably related to the move the countess would have to make from the major Clifford properties to her own estates or to dower residences after she was widowed in 1605.

28. The Victoria History of Berkshire, ed. P. H. Ditchfield and William Page, 4 vols. (London: A. Constable, 1906-24), III, 124-25.

29. Cf. Jonson, “To Penshurst,” in Complete Poetry, pp. 78-79, ll. 29-38:

    The painted partrich lyes in every field,
              And, for thy messe, is willing to be kill'd.
    And if the high swolne Medway faile thy dish,
              Thou hast thy ponds, that pay thee tribute fish,
    Fat, aged carps, that runne into thy net.
              And pikes, now weary their owne kinde to eat,
    As loth, the second draught, or cast to stay,
              Officiously, at first, themselves betray.
    Bright eeles, that emulate them, and leape on land,
              Before the fisher, or into his hand.

Research for this paper was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980-81.