Author of the English poem, A Chaine of Pearle Absolutely nothing is known about the poet Diana Primrose except that, in London in 1630 under her name, the printer Thomas Paine published the poem, A Chaine of Pearle. Or a Memorial of the peerles Graces, and Heroick Vertues of Queene Elizabeth, of Glorious Memory. Evidence suggests that Primrose might have been either the daughter or wife of Gilbert Primrose, a minister in the French Protestant church who returned to England in 1622/1623. However, antiquarian John Nichols (1745—1826) proposed that Diana Primrose might be a pseudonym; certainly, the Latin epigraph to the poem,“Dat rosa mel apibus qua sugit aranea virus” (“the rose gives honey to the bees, from which the spider sucks venom”) plays on the author’s name, Primrose. The poem, composed in rhyming iambic pentameter, opens with a dedication to “All Noble Ladies, and Gentlewomen”; these lines are followed by a second dedicatory poem in praise of Diana by another unknown poet who signs herself as Dorothy Berry. A third dedicatory piece, the Induction, directly addresses Queen Elizabeth herself: “Thou English goddess, empresse of our Sex,/ O thou whose name still reigns in all our hearts.” The poem goes on to celebrate the virtues of the queen (Eliza, she is called), and, associating her “empresse” with Diana, the virgin goddess, Primrose presents Elizabeth as an exemplar for all women to emulate in the realms of education, religion, and the intellect.
Some scholars have suggested a composition date much earlier than the print date, placing the work among poems written in remembrance of the recently deceased queen. Others who support a composition date closer to 1630 argue that the poem may have been intended either as a veiled criticism of Charles I or perhaps as a nostalgic look back on a more enlightened age.
Regardless of the identity of Diana Primrose, A Chaine of Pearle stands as an example of the ways in which some seventeenth-century women-centered poets evoked the image of Elizabeth I as a model of female erudition and autonomy.
Tara Wood
Bibligraphy
Primary Work
Primrose, Diana. A Chaine of Pearle. Or, A Memori-all of the peerless Graces, and Heroick Vertues of Queene Elizabeth, of Glorious Memory. London: Printed by J. Dawson for Thomas Paine, sold by Philip Waterhouse, 1630.
Secondary Works
Gim, Lisa. “ ‘Faire Eliza’s Chaine’:Two Female Writers’ Literary Links to Queen Elizabeth I.” In Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens. Edited by Susan Frye and Karen Robertson, 183—198. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Wynne-Davies, Marion. Women Poets of the Renaissance. New York: Routledge, 1999.
World History
