Not Understanding Mary Wroth's Poetry

This essay relates the interpretation of Mary Wroth's poetry to the material conditions of their appearance in the autograph manuscript, 'Pamphilia to Amphilanthus'. In it I consider issues that link the process of editing to some neglected aspects of Wroth's style. I look at the Folger manuscript of Wroth's poems and compare it with other manuscript poetry in order to explore how editing needs to take into account the material details of such texts. I relate the editing out of the 'noise' of such texts to the process of smoothing out difficulties in interpreting Wroth's poems. Finally I venture a few tentative suggestions as to why Wroth may have deliberately chosen a 'concealing' syntax for her poetry