Bibliography
| Title: Elizabeth Tanfield Cary and "The Tragedie of Mariam" Type: Thesis Year: 1984 Abstract: "In 1613 Thomas Creede printed The Tragedie of Mariam, the Faire Queene of Jewry by that learned, vertuous, and truly noble Ladie, E.C. We now know that the author was Elizabeth Tanfield Cary, wife of Henry Cary, Viscount Falkland, and that she had completed in her early years a respectable body of work, including other plays (now lost) and a translation of Seneca's epistles. Mariam belongs to a category of Senecan imitation practiced by members of the Countess of Pembroke's circle, with which Cary was only remotely associated. Her principal source for the play was Thomas Lodge's translation of the Jewish histories of Flavius Josephus, and Cary drew from both of Josephus' major works to make a play that was in most respects faithful to the known facts of history. In contrast to Josephus, however, Cary ennobled the figure of Mariam, giving her great moral stature as well as intellect. In spite of recent assertions to the contrary, that figure stands at the center of the play where she is surrounded by four other female characters, each representing an aspect of womanhood. Nevertheless, the play is not a feminist treatise, as some would have it; nor is it a play to be read allegorically. Technically, Mariam is inferior to Samuel Daniel's Cleopatra, with which it invites comparison; but as the work of a very young woman in an age when women were not expected to have any intellectual pretensions at all, it is a remarkable achievement. - English classical drama, countess of Pembroke's coterie". Keywords: Reception of Josephus: Antiquity, Middle Ages, Early Modern Period |