Æmelia Lanyer

14 Aemelia Lanyer

Æmalia Lanyer or Emilia Lanier (1569 – 1645) is sometimes said to be the first English woman to publish a printed book, though she was in fact preceded by Isabella Whitney. Nevertheless Lanyer was one of the first British women to assert her status as a professional writer, though her book of poems Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, published in 1611 – the same year as the King James Bible – when Lanyer was forty-two, is advertised as being by a wife, rather than just a woman. ‘Written by Mistress Æmilia Lanyer, Wife to Captain Alfonso Lanyer, Servant to the King’s Majesty.’ The book is addressed, like Jane Anger’s, specifically to women and dedicated to several female aristocrats, seeking their patronage woman to woman, begging pardon for her ‘defects.’ They include a dedication to Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset and ‘To the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty’. (The queen was James I’s wife, Anne of Denmark, a noted patron of the arts.)

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Renowned Empress, and great Britain’s Queen, Most gracious Mother of succeeding Kings; Vouchsafe to view that which is seldom seen, A Woman’s writing of divinest things: Reade it fair Queen, though it defective be, Your Excellence can grace both It and Me. . . .

And since all Arts at first from Nature came, That goodly Creature, Mother of Perfection, Whom Jove’s 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.

Another dedication is to ‘The Lady ELIZABETH’S Grace.’ (Elizabeth was the daughter of James I.)

Even you fair Princess next our famous Queen, I do invite unto this wholesome feast, Whose goodly wisdom, though your years be green, By such good work may daily be increased, Though your fair eyes far better Book have seen; Yet being the first fruits of a woman’s wit, Vouchsafe your favour in accepting it.

Lanyer was born Æmilia Bassano, a member of the Venetian Bassano family of musical instrument makers who lived and worked in London and has been a candidate for the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s

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sonnets. (Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre commissioned the play Emilia on this subject in 2018; it had an all-female cast and won the Olivier Award for Best Entertainment or Comedy Play.) Not much is known about Æmilia’s early years but she seems to have grown up in the household of the Countess of Kent. From around 1587 she had an extended affair with Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, first cousin of Queen Elizabeth I and her Captain of the Gentlemen Pensioners – effectively the Queen’s personal bodyguard. Carey was also patron of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, William Shakespeare’s playing company. Carey gave Æmelia a pension of £40 a year but then in 1592, when she was 23, Lanyer became pregnant with Carey’s child. He settled money on her and married her off to a cousin, Alfonso Lanyer, a Queen’s musician.

Like Jane Anger, Margaret Cavendish, Mary Astell and others, Lanyer specifically addresses herself to other women.

To all virtuous Ladies in general

Each blessed Lady that in Virtue spends Your precious time to beautify your souls; Come wait on her whom wingèd Fame attends And in her hand the Book where she enrolls

The thrust of Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum is female virtue and obedience to God’s will; in this sense she is no transgressive bad girl. But, like Jane Anger before her and Margaret Cavendish later, Lanyer complains that it is unfair

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that, because of Eve, ‘we (poor women) must endure it all.’ Eve cannot be blamed for man’s fall; she was tricked, as was Adam, by the serpent, acting as Satan’s wily agent.

Our Mother Eve, who tasted of the Tree, Giving to Adam what she held most dear, Was simply good, and had no power to see, The after-coming harm did not appear: The subtle Serpent that our Sex betrayed, Before our fall so sure a plot had laid.

‘If Eve did err, it was for knowledge sake,’ she says, and in any case, Adam ate too; he could not even blame the serpent: ‘The fruit being fair persuaded him to fall: / No subtle Serpent’s falsehood did betray him.’ Adam wanted to share in the knowledge which eating the fruit gave Eve; human knowledge comes from Eve but men have always claimed it for themselves. ‘Men will boast of Knowledge, which he took / From Eve’s faire hand, as from a learned Book.’ The evil was not in Eve, who was, quite literally, made from Adam, but in men’s betrayal of God’s intentions.

If any Evil did in her remain, Being made of him, he was the ground of all; If one of many Worlds could lay a stain Upon our Sex, and work so great a fall

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To wretched Man, by Satan’s subtle train; What will so foul a fault amongst you all? Her weakness did the Serpent’s word obey, But you in malice God’s dear Son betray.

Certainly, whatever Eve might have done wrong, this does not give men any excuse for the way they treat women. ‘If one weak woman simply did offend / This sin of yours, hath no excuse, nor end.’ Like many other women writers, Lanyer extols at length the obedient virtue of the Virgin Mary, who more than compensates for any sins of Eve. But, also like other women writers, as enumerated at such great length in Christine of Pizan’s book, Lanyer also extols strong women in history who have physically overcome powerful men, Like the Scythian Women, or the Amazons.

Though famous women elder times have known, Whose glorious actions did appear so bright, That powerful men by them were overthrown, And all their armies overcome in fight; The Scythian women by their power alone, Put king Darius unto shameful flight: All Asia yielded to their conquering hand, Great Alexander could not their power withstand.

Lanyer also mentions with approval the biblical judge and prophet Deborah and the great pre-feminist Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes before he could rape her and so set her people free (portrayed several times in paint

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by woman painter Artemisia Gentileschi, a younger contemporary of Lanyer’s and a Venetian like Lanyer’s family), though what Lanyer is celebrating in Judith’s act is a woman defeating a man who has ignored God’s will rather than a woman’s virtue.

Yea Judith had the power likewise to quell Proud Holofernes, that the just might see What small defence vain pride and greatness hath Against the weapons of God’s word and faith.

Not that Lanyer had much to say in favour of men in general; in the prose piece To the Virtuous Reader, implying virtuous woman reader, she is particularly scathing about ‘evil disposed men, who forgetting they were born 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.’ But Lanyer is also critical of the way that women themselves criticise other women.

I have written this small volume, or little book, for the general use of all virtuous Ladies and Gentlewomen of this kingdom; and in commendation of some particular persons of our own sex, such as for the most part, are so well known to my self, and others, that I dare undertake Fame dares not to call any better. And this I have done, to make known to the world, that all women deserve not to be blamed though some forgetting they are women themselves, and in danger to be condemned by the words of their own mouths, fall into so great an error, as to speak unadvisedly against the rest of their sex.

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