Women writers in Renaissance England : an annotated anthology

481 Pages·2010·2.31 MB·English

by  Randall Martin

WOMEN WRITERS
RENAISSANCE

IN
ENGLAND
EIW
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R
edited by Randall Martin GEM
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General Editors: DIS W
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Charlotte Brewer, Hertford College, Oxford
AR
H.R. Woudhuysen, University College London
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Daniel Karlin, University of Sheffield T
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Making a strong case for a revitalised Renaissance canon, this book R

presents twenty still relatively unknown female writers from the S
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
WOMEN WRITERS
Its selections are substantial, original and historically representative,
taking in the religious prose of the Protestant martyr Anne Askew,
the verse of the prolific Lady Mary Wroth and the autobiographical
RENAISSANCE
work of the Catholic reformer Mary Ward, amongst other examples of poetry, fiction, religious
IN
works, letters, journals, translations and books on childcare. It establishes new contexts for the
debate about women as writers within the period and suggests potential intertextual connections
with works by well-known male authors of the same time. Red ENGLAND
ai
t
ne
Individual authors and works are given concise introductions, with critical analysis setting them d
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in a theoretical and historicised context. All texts are made readily accessible through modern ab
y
spelling and punctuation, on-the-page annotation and headnotes, whilst the substantial l
l

bibliography provides a source for further study. This new edition has also been updated with a M
preface by Christina Luckyj, who argues that anthologising such authors does not collapse them
a AN ANNOTATED
into a simple category of ‘women’s writing’, but rather reveals the multiplicity, range and r
historical difference of Renaissance female voices. ti ANTHOLOGY
n
Randall Martin
is Professor of Modern English at the University of
New Brunswick, Canada
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(c.1490-c.1540) / Private Collection www.pearson-books.com
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WOMEN WRITERS IN
RENAISSANCE ENGLAND
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LONGMAN ANNOTATED TEXTS
general editors
Charlotte Brewer, Hertford College, Oxford
H. R. Woudhuysen, University College London
Daniel Karlin, University of Sheffield
published titles
Chaucer’s Dream Poetry Helen Phillips and Nick Havely
Women’s Writing in Middle English Alexandra Barratt
King Lear: A Parallel Text Edition René Weis
Alexander Pope: The Dunciad in Four Books Valerie Rumbold
William Blake: Selected Poetry and Prose David Fuller
Lyrical Ballads Michael Mason
Victorian Women Poets Virginia Blain
Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems Tim Armstrong
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WOMEN WRITERS IN
RENAISSANCE ENGLAND
edited by
RANDALL MARTIN
A01_WOMW4993_01_SE_FM1.QXD 1/30/10 6:55 AM Page iv
PEARSON EDUCATION LIMITED
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United Kingdom
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Website: www.pearsoned.co.uk
First edition published in Great Britain in 1997
This second edition published 2010
© Pearson Education Limited 1997, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4082-0499-3
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book can be obtained from the Library of Congress
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1 PREAMBLE: WOMEN’S SELF-IMAGE AS WRITERS
margaret tyler: Epistle to the Reader, from Diego Ortúñez
de Calahorra’s The Mirror of Princely Deeds and Knighthood
(c. 1578) 15
anne dowriche: Epistle to the Reader, from The French
History (1589) 25
rachel speght: Epistle Dedicatory, from Mortality’s
Memorandum, with a Dream Prefixed (1621) 29
elizabeth jocelin: Epistle Dedicatory, from The Mother’s
Legacy to Her Unborn Child (1624) 34
2 PROSE
katherine parr, Queen of England: From The Lamentation
of a Sinner (1547) 45
anne askew: The Examinations 58
The First Examination (1546) 61
The Latter Exam ination (1547) 71
jane anger: From Jane Anger Her Protection for Women
(1589) 80
elizabeth grymeston: From Miscellanea, Meditations,
Memoratives (1604, 1605–6) 97
dorothy leigh: From The Mother’s Blessing (1616) 117
rachel speght: From A Muzzle for Melastomus (1617) 126
elizabeth caldwell: A Letter Written by Elizabeth Caldwell
to her Husband During the Time of her Imprisonment, from A
True Discourse of the Practices of Elizabeth Caldwell (1604) 139
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vi Contents
elizabeth clinton, Countess of Lincoln: From
The Countess of Lincoln’s Nursery (1622) 148
elizabeth cary, Lady Falkland: From The History of the Life,
Reign and Death of Edward II (c. 1627) 160
3 AUTOBIOGRAPHY
margaret, lady hoby: From The Diary of Margaret,
Lady Hoby (1599–1605) 191
grace, lady mildmay: From Autobiography (c. 1617–1620) 208
mary ward: From The Autobiographical Papers (1617–1626) 228
lady anne clifford: From The Diary of Lady Anne Clifford
(1616–1619) 245
4 VERSE
isabella whitney: From A Sweet Nosegay, or Pleasant Posy
(1573) 279
Certain Familiar Epistles and Friendly Letters 282
The Manner of Her Will, and What She Left to London 289
The Lamentation of a Gentlewoman upon the Death of her
Late-Deceased Friend, William Gruffith (1578) 303
mary (sidney) herbert, Countess of Pembroke:
From The Psalms (c. 1586–1599) 311
A Dialogue between Two Shepherds, Thenot and Piers, in Praise
of Astraea (1602) 334
anne dowriche: From The French History (1589) 337
aemilia lanyer: From Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) 360
lady mary wr oth: Selected Songs and Sonnets from
Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621) 398
From The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania (1621) 416
From Love’s Victory (after 1621) 421
rachel speght: A Dream, from Mortality’s Memorandum
(1621) 431
Textual Notes 444
Bibliography 449
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is a great pleasure to record my gratitude for the support and encouragement
I have received from many people while working on this project, especially from
women scholars who were gracious enough never to utter a discouraging word
about what they must often have recognised as a male editor’s blind spots. The fol-
lowing friends and colleagues took time to read various sections of the manuscript
at different stages and to offer valuable suggestions for improvement. Their col-
laboration has been indispensable: Elizabeth Archibald, Margaret Arnold, Richard
Carruthers-Zarowski, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Frances Dolan, A.S.G. Edwards,
Isobel Grundy, Gwynne Kennedy, Kathy Kerby-Fulton, M.J. Mills, Andrea Sella,
Lisa Surridge, Wendy Wall, and Alice Woolley.
Other people offered expert assistance and advice in particular areas. Steven
Gunn of Merton College, Oxford and Diarmaid MacCulloch of the University of
Bristol provided me with answers to queries about the Howard Family. Sister M.
Esther Hanley, Archivist of Loretto College, Toronto, kindly furnished me with
information about Mary Ward and obtained Sister Immolata Wetter’s Letters of
Instruction,containing Ward’s writings, for my use. George Schner s. j. of Regius
College, University of Toronto, obtained permission for me to consult Jeanne
Cover’s unpublished University of Toronto Ph.D. dissertation, ‘The Significance of
Mary Ward’s Spirituality and Practice for Moral Theology Today’. I also had
many enlightening discussions about Ward, the Hebrew Psalms, Old Testament
heroines, and female spirituality with Walter Deller of the Logos Institute,
Toronto. William Cooke of the Records of Early English Drama Project at the
University of Toronto offered me meticulous help with translations of difficult and
obscure Latin and Greek passages in Elizabeth Grymeston’s Miscellanea.
My colleagues in th e Departments of English at the Universities of Toronto,
Victoria, and New Brunswick have continuously shown me cheerful solidarity.
I am also grateful to each of these universities for providing me with funding which
enabled me to visit research libraries in the United States and Britain. I should fur-
ther like to thank the following persons and institutions for permission to consult
and quote from material held by them: the Rt Hon. the Viscount De L’Isle, MBE;
the British Library; the Bodleian Library; the Huntington Library; the Fisher Rare
Book Library and John Robarts Research Library at the University of Toronto; the
Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone; and M.E. Arnold of the Northampton
Central Library. Diana Rutherford of the University of Victoria transcribed several
long sections of this volume, thereby saving me considerable labour, while Misty
Hazlett, Vera Zarowsky, and Jacqueline Cox of the University of New Brunswick
helped me assemble the final typescript. Linda McNutt took time from a busy
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viii Acknowledgements
schedule to proof-read the entire work. Elizabeth Mann, my publisher at
Longman’s, has kindly sent regular messages of encouragement and been very
forbearing in the face of several delays. Finally, my work has benefited hugely from
the scholarly advice of Henry Woudjuysen, Renaissance general editor of this
series. He has guided my handling of this project from the very beginning with
shrewd intelligence, devoted more time than I deserved to making helpful sugges-
tions, and patiently corrected my errors and omissions. Those that remain are now
my own responsibility.
On a personal note, I should like to thank Peter and Betsy Newell, and
Jonathan and Henrietta Freeman-Attwood, for their warm and generous hospi-
tality during several research trips to Oxford and London.
Fredericton, New Brunswick,
28 January 1996
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PREFACE
By Christina Luckyj
Dalhousie University
A dozen years ago, when this anthology was in preparation, it was almost man-
datory to begin with a routine exorcism of the spectre of Judith Shakespeare.
In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf explained the apparent absence
of Renaissance women writers by imagining Shakespeare’s sister as an aspiring
author who, stifled by a hostile patriarchal culture, ‘killed herself one winter’s
night and lies buried at some crossroads where the omnibuses now stop outside
the Elephant and Castle.’1 If Woolf invented and then killed off a woman writer
in order to mourn her loss, over the past thirty years a new generation of critics
has dug up the body of the ‘lost’ woman writer in order to declare her alive and
well. The project of recovery has amply demonstrated their claims. In Martin’s
anthology, for example, Grace Mildmay records her admiration for her governess,
who ‘could apprehend, and contrive any matter whatever propounded unto her
most judiciously, and set her mind down in writing, either by letters indicted or
otherwise, as well as most men could’ (214–15). Unlike Judith Shakespeare, how-
ever, the anonymous gentlewoman never sought to write a play for the public
theatre – indeed, she would likely have been horrified at the prospect, since
Mildmay presumably learned from her to ‘think all times ill bestowed in books of
idle plays and of all such fruitless and unprofitable matter’ (213). Ironically,
most of these women writers would doubtless have utterly rejected any identifi-
cation with ‘Shakespeare’s sister’ on the grounds that Shakespeare’s class and
profession were beneath them. Certainly, the large and diverse collection of
writing included in this anthology is the most convincing evidence that
Renaissance women writers were not Judith Shakespeares, ‘pathetically isolated
eccentrics crying in the patriarchal wilderness’ (Martin 7), but productive and
engaged participants in their reading and writing communities.
With the ghost of Judith Shakespeare laid firmly to rest, the project of recover-
ing and collecting writing by Renaissance women might appear to be an
unassailably worthy one. Yet fresh challenges to the project’s methods and
assumptions have emerged; indeed, it is a sure sign that the study of early modern
women’s writing is coming of age when a number of its own practitioners are call-
ing for its demise. Some have argued that the very existence of such anthologies
suggests that women writers, unable to ‘compete’ with their male contemporaries,
must be confined to a room of their own, in a sense quite unintended by Woolf.
Is this ‘room’ of women’s own actually a ghetto? If the traditional literary
canon is defined according to the criterion of ‘aesthetic value’ (itself historically
1 Virginia Woolf,A Room of One’s Own(London: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 54.