Emilia Lanier
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Emilia Lanier, also spelled Aemilia Lanyer, (1569-1645) was the first Englishwoman to assert herself as a professional poet through her single volume of poems, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611).[1] Born Aemilia Bassano and part of the Lanier family tree, she was a member of the minor gentry through her father's appointment as a royal musician, and was apparently educated in the household by Susan Bertie, the dowager Countess of Kent. She was for several years the mistress of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, first cousin of Elizabeth I of England. She was married to court musician Alfonso Lanier in 1592 when she became pregnant, and the marriage was reportedly unhappy.
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[edit] Poetry
As the author of the collection of poetry known as "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum" (1611) Emelia was the first woman in England to publish a book of original poetry. Her volume centres on the title poem, a long narrative work of over 200 stanzas. It tells the story of Christ's passion satirically and almost entirely from the point of view of the women who surround him. The main poem is prefaced by ten shorter dedicatory works, all to aristocratic women, beginning with the queen. There is also a prose preface addressed to the reader, comprising a vindication of "virtuous women" against detractors of the sex. After the central poem there is a verse "Description of Cookham," dedicated to Margaret, Countess of Cumberland and her daughter Lady Anne Clifford. This last is the first published country house poem in English (Ben Jonson's more famous "To Penshurst" may have been written earlier but was first published in 1616).
[edit] Shakespeare's "Dark Lady"?
After Emilia was no longer at court, Lord Hunsdon became the patron of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the theatre company which performed the Shakespearean plays after 1594. Some have speculated that Lanier, an apparently striking woman, was Shakespeare's "Dark Lady". This identification was first proposed by A. L. Rowse and has been repeated by several authors since, notably David Lasocki and Roger Prior in their 1995 book The Bassanos;Venetian Musicians and Instrument makers in England 1531-1665 and in articles by Martin Green and Stephanie Howard Hughes. Although the colour of her hair is not known, records exist of her cousins having "black" skin, and her background in coming from a musical family fits the picture of the "dark lady" in the Shakespearean Sonnets. A New York production in 2007 by The Dark Lady Players, based on a thesis by John Hudson at the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, suggested that she was the author of the underlying religious allegory in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
[edit] References
- ^ Isabella Whitney, a half century before, had been the first Englishwoman known to have published non-religious poetry.
Martin Green ‘Emilia Lanier IS the Dark Lady’ English Studies vol. 87, No.5, October (2006)
Stephanie Hopkins Hughes ‘New Light on the Dark Lady’ Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter, 22 September (2000)
Julia Wallace ‘That’s Miss Shakespeare To You’ Village Voice March 28-April 3, (2007) pg 42
Roger Prior ‘Jewish Musicians at the Tudor Court’ The Musical Quarterly, 69, no 2 Spring 1983, 253-265
Giulio M. Ongaro ‘New Documents on the Bassano Family’ Early Music vol 20, 3 August (1992) 409-413
Susanne Woods, Lanyer: A Renaissance Woman Poet. New York: Oxford University Press, (1999).
Ted Merwin ‘The Dark Lady as a Bright Literary Light’ The Jewish Week, 23 March 2007 pgs 56-7
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