Lady Mary Wroth

16 Lady Mary Wroth

When night’s black mantle could most darkness prove, And sleep (death’s image) did my senses hire From knowledge of myself, then thoughts did move Swifter than those, most sweetness need require. In sleep, a chariot drawn by winged Desire, I saw, where sate bright Venus, Queen of love, And at her feet her son, still adding fire To burning hearts, which she did hold above. But one heart flaming more than all the rest, The goddess held, and put it to my breast. Dear Son, now shoot, she said, this must we win. He her obeyed, and martyred my poor heart. I waking hoped as dreams it would depart, Yet since, O me, a lover have I been. Lady Mary Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus

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Lady Mary Wroth (1587 – c 1653), née Sidney was the niece of the poet, statesman, and soldier, Sir Philip Sidney, and the niece, namesake and goddaughter of his sister Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. Her father, a senior government official was also a poet and although Mary was not formally educated she had household tutors arranged by her mother; in 1599 her father’s steward wrote to him about his children, ‘my lady sees them well taught, and brought up in Learning, and Qualities, fit for their Birth and Condition.’ In 1604 Mary had an arranged marriage with a wealthy Essex landowner who had very little interest in literature but was close to the court of James I, of whom he was a hunting companion. Mary became part of the circle surrounding the new protestant King, who had ascended the throne in 1603 after the death of Elizabeth, and she performed in several of the great public masques of the time, including the hugely expensive production of The Masque of Blacknesse, an early piece of theatrical racism commissioned by the King’s consort, Queen Anne of Denmark, written by Ben Jonson with sets designed by Inigo Jones and performed on Twelfth Night 1605, nine months before the foiling of the gunpowder plot. Jonson later dedicated The Alchemist to Wroth and wrote several poems of fawning praise to the ‘faire crown of your fair sex.’

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I that have been a lover, and could show it, Though not in these, in rhythms not wholly dumb, Since I exscribe your Sonnets, am become A better lover, and much better Poet.

Mary’s husband Sir Robert Wroth died in 1614, leaving his wife in huge debt. This poverty, plus her long-standing affair with her cousin, with whom she had two children, meant she soon went out of favour with the court. She got her own back. Between 1618-20 Lady Mary began writing her vast prose/poetry romance, The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, 1621, and her pastoral tragicomedy, Loves Victory. Urania is probably the first work of original fiction and certainly the first romance published by an English woman though it draws on enormous range of English and European men’s fiction including Don Quixote, Orlando Furioso, Spenser’s Faerie Queen and her uncle Philip’s Arcadia. It is far larger than any of them, and longer than possibly any later novel at six hundred thousand words for both volumes, nearly twice as long as Don Quixote and four times as long as Richardson’s enormous Pamela. The sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus which was appended to the 1621 edition is the first secular sonnet sequence written by an English woman.

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Wroth, venturing into this new territory, had the example of her famous aunt, also called Mary to guide her. And her printer wanted to make sure that potential buyers knew of the connection: the splendidly illustrated title page has the subtitle (spelling mistakes and all), ‘written by the right honourable the Lady MARY WROATH, Daughter to the right Noble Robert Earle of Leicester. And Niece to the ever famous and renowned Sr Phillips Sidney knight. And to the most excellent Lady Mary Countess of Pembroke late deceased.’

The frame story of Urania, of the lovers Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, contains a large number of smaller stories. Amongst a vast cast of characters, mainly women with unfaithful husbands or disappointed lovers, Wroth included thinly-disguised caricatures of many prominent court figures and noblemen. The outrage of the men who believe themselves to have been referenced in it reached as far as the King; Wroth wrote a disclaimer to the Duke of Buckingham saying that the copies of the book were ‘sold against my mind, I never purposing to have them published.’ She asked for a King’s warrant to recover the copies already circulated and she did indeed buy some of the copies back but that cat was already out of the bag, even though Mary protested, perhaps disingenuously:

The strange constructions which are made of my book contrary to my imagination, and as far from my meaning as it is possible for truth to be from conjecture, my purpose no way bent to give the least cause of offence, my thoughts free from so much as thinking of any such thing as I am censured for.

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Fortunately, unlike Delarivier Manley ninety years later with The New Atlantis, with which Urania has many parallels, Wroth and her publisher were not actually arrested, though Sir Edward Denny, who was satirised, pseudonymously but recognisably, did charge Wroth with slander and wrote a very spiteful poem about her, calling her a hermaphrodite.

Hermaphrodite in show, in deed a monster As by thy words and works all men may conster Thy wrathful spite conceived an Idle book Brought forth a fooe which like the dam doth look Wherein thou strikes at some man’s noble blood.

Wroth responded in kind with ‘Railing Rimes Returned upon the Author by Mistress Mary Wroth;’ like all great satirists, she brilliantly and mercilessly turns the target’s words against him.

Hermaphrodite in sense in Art a monster As by your railing rimes the world may conster Your spiteful words against a harmless book Shows that an ass much like the sire doth look Men truly noble fear no touch of blood Nor question make of others much more good

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At the time, many moral, male writers were warning women against reading romances, let alone writing them; women should, according to these men, restrict themselves to religious works. Denny advised Wroth that she should:

Redeem the time with writing as large a volume of heavenly lays and holy love as you have of lascivious tales and amorous toys that at the last you may follow the rare, and pious example of your virtuous and learned aunt, who translated so many godly books and especially the holy Psalms of David.

Mary’s aunt Mary Sidney did of course write and translate religious works but she was at least as transgressive as her niece and there is no doubt whose side she would have been on in this argument between a progressive woman writer and a regressive misogynist.

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