Re-Reading Mary Wroth ed. by Katherine R. Larson and Naomi J. Miller (review)

I thought I knew about Mary Wroth. After all, I began more than twenty-five years ago in the Newberry Library trying to decipher her handwriting and haven’t really stopped reading the sonnets, the prose romances and, of course, her play since then. It turns out, however, that I was wrong and I am delighted to be proven so. As Katherine R. Larson and Naomi J. Miller show in their much-awaited Re-Reading Mary Wroth there is a great deal more that we can learn and still more to discover. The book is divided into four cognate sections: biographical; genre and form; editorial; and inspiration for pedagogy and creativity. Yet, there are so many interconnections, almost “conversations,” between the contributors that this review moves across sections in order to focus upon what’s new in Wroth studies.

First, sex. The conventional view of early modern Englishwomen represents them as being policed by the conventions of chastity, silence, and obedience. It has, therefore, been assumed that after Wroth’s affair with her cousin, William Herbert, and the birth of their two illegitimate children that she was excluded from court. However, as Margaret Hannay’s essay, “Sleuthing in the Archives: The Life of Lady Mary Wroth,” proves, this was not the case. Hannay includes a revelatory seven-point list of misconceptions about Wroth that are meticulously evidenced with archival sources; among these, is that after the birth of her illegitimate children she was “shunned by family and friends” (25). Rather than this expected ostracization, Hannay demonstrates that Wroth remained well-connected at court and that her children were “recognized as Herbert’s by Wroth’s friends in Essex and by the Herbert family” (25). Wroth’s ability to challenge gendered conventions is attested to further by Mary Ellen Lamb in her essay on the companionate poems of Wroth and Herbert that refer explicitly to their consummated passion; Wroth confides, “You tell me, that I first did here know love,” while Herbert responds with “an expression of pride in achieving her maidenhead [that] is stark, bordering on crude: ‘I was before them and before me none’” (59). In addition, Ilona Bell’s path-breaking research on the Folger autograph manuscript of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus demonstrates that Wroth carefully edited out all erotic material before the poems were published because the original “leaves no doubt that their [hers and Herbert’s] love affair was consummated. Indeed, Pamphilia eagerly urges Amphilanthus to awaken so that they can resume their lovemaking” (174). In turn, Gary Waller transforms the idea of Wroth as a sexually liberated woman into poems that reimagine the lovers’ voices: “You were like the old Queen. / Or the Virgin. Untouchable. Holy. Well, hole-y. /Will, you are such a pervert. I love it” (258).

Twenty-five years ago when Miller and Waller’s first collection, Reading Mary Wroth (1991) was published, it was a relative surprise to discover an early modern Englishwoman writing such accomplished poetry. With the new essays gathered here, we have proof not only that Wroth wrote innovative erotic verse, but also that she was able to flaunt the conventions of chastity in her own life.

Yet, writing amorous verse was simply one of Wroth’s unconventional literary stratagems. Clare Kinney, in her in-depth analysis of Wroth’s sonnets, demonstrates an accomplished reworking of the lyric, summing up that the seventh sonnet (“Some doe, perhaps, both wrong my love, and care”) is “a complaint with attitude” and that, rather than conform to the conventions of love poetry it “arms her [Wroth] against her critics” (100). Similarly, Kristiane Stapleton analyzes the multiple forms used in Urania to show that Wroth knew “the conventions of genre well enough not just to break the rules she works so hard to establish but to transcend them” (114). Wroth’s experimentation continued through evoking music and dance in both poetry and play. Katherine...