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This is the first book to study the work and influence of Elizabeth Cary, author of the first original play by a woman to be printed in English, The Tragedyie of Mariam (1613). Previous criticism focused concentrated on this and The History of Edward II , this volume incorporates critical and historical analyses of other genres too.
Elizabeth Tanfield was born in 1585 or 1586 at Burford Priory in Oxfordshire, the only child of Sir Lawrence Tanfield and Elizabeth Symondes. Her father was a lawyer, who later became a judge and the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. Her parents encouraged their daughter's love of reading and learning, although her mother forbade the servants from giving Elizabeth candles to read by at night. At age five Elizabeth's parents employed a French teacher for her. Within weeks the young child was speaking fluently and would later instruct herself in Spanish, Italian, Latin, Hebrew, and Transylvanian. Her accomplishments as a scholar was acknowledged by such luminaries as Michael Drayton and John ...
The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) is the first original play by a woman to be published in England, and its author is the first English woman writer to be memorialized in a biography, which is included with this edition of the play. Mariam is a distinctive example of Renaissance drama that serves the desire of today's readers and scholars to know not merely how women were represented in the early modern period but also how they themselves perceived their own condition. With this textually emended and fully annotated edition, the play will now be accessible to all readers. The accompanying biography of Cary further enriches our knowledge of both domestic and religious conflicts in the seventeenth century.
This volume brings together two of the earliest women writers. Elizabeth Cary's (1585-1639) "The Tragedie of Mariam" is one of the first in English known to be the work of a woman writer. Aemilia Lanyer (1569-1645) came from a class of artisans and civil servants dependant on court and aristocratic patronage. She wrote professionally, though only the strongly feminist "Salve Deus Rex Judaorum" (1611) was published.