English court poet and feminist Born the daughter of Margaret Johnson and Baptista Bassano, a Venetian-born musician at the court of Elizabeth I, Aemilia Bassano Lanyer grew up in more privileged circumstances than most women of her class because, through her father, she enjoyed access to court circles. Much of what is known about Lanyer’s life has been gleaned from the dedicatory poems and epistles in the Salve Deus, her major poetic work. Textual evidence suggests that, after her father’s death on 11 April 1576, Ae-milia benefited from a connection with Susan Montgomery, the countess of Kent, “The noble guide of my ungovern’d dayes” (“To the Ladie Susan” in Lanyer 1993,18).Through her association with the countess, Aemilia would have had access to humanist works, enabling her to learn about rhetorical traditions as well as to become acquainted with Biblical and Classical texts.
A more private portrait of Aemilia Lanyer emerges from the diary entries of Simon Forman (1552—1611), an astrologer serving at the English court; however, Forman’s frustrated sexual advances toward Lanyer may have skewed the information he recorded. A. L. Rowse’s claim that the mysterious dark lady of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets must have been none other than Aemilia Lanyer has been discredited by Woods as a “fantasy [that] has tended to obscure Lanyer as a poet” (Lanyer 1993, xix). What is certain is Lanyer’s desire to regain the privileged status she once enjoyed as the mistress of Elizabeth I’s Lord Chamberlain
Sir Henry Cary, baron of Hunsdon (1520— 1596). Her life after she was hastily married off to a court musician, Alphonso Lanyer, to cover up being pregnant with Lord Hunsdon’s child, proved disappointing for her.
Forman records Lanyer’s visit to inquire about the possibility of whether the couple would attain higher social standing. Lanyer seemed especially concerned, according to Forman, to learn whether her husband’s attempt to gain social favors from his association with Robert Devereux, the second earl of Essex, would succeed. Evidence also suggests that Alphonso presented copies of his wife’s works to influential officials. In spite of the couple’s efforts to profit from their association with influential patrons, Lanyer’s financial and social status fell far short of her expectations. When Alphonso died in 1613, Lanyer struggled to support herself. She tried running a school, but this venture failed after a few years.
Published in 1611, Aemilia Lanyer’s book, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail Lord, King of the Jews) broke new ground in a number of ways. Lanyer redeemed Eve by comparing her transgression to the far greater sin committed by men in their crucifixion of Christ. In her dedication to the work, Lanyer bestowed Saint Peter’s keys to the Church not upon a male but a woman: her patron Lady Margaret Russell Clifford, countess of Cumberland. Moreover, she prefaced the Salve Deus with eleven dedicatory poems, all of them addressed to women. Finally, Lanyer presented a new Christian biblical history in which women occupied all the central roles (Kennedy 2000, 166). Taken together, Lanyer’s protofeminist Salve Deus and its companion dedicatory poems, epistles, and concluding “country-house” poem fuse several poetic traditions: the pastoral, the political, and the sacred. Whereas Lanyer’s revision of Genesis (in “Eve’s Apology”), as Suzanne Woods has noted, “audaciously argues for women’s liberty,” her finale to the Salve Deus—the pastoral poem,”The Description of Cook-ham”—contrasts the beauty and serenity of nature to the corruption and injustice of human society (Lanyer 1993,381).
Debra Barrett-Graves
See also Eve; Literary Culture and Women.
Bibliography
Primary Work
Lanyer, Aemilia. Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Edited by Suzanne Woods. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. (Originally printed in London, 1611.)
Secondary Works
Beilin, Elaine V “Aemilia Lanyer.” Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance. Pages 177—207. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.
Kennedy, Gwynne. “Aemilia Lanyer.” In Extraordinary Women of the Medieval and Renaissance World: A Biographical Dictionary. Edited by Carole Levin, Debra Barrett-Graves, Jo Eldrige Carney, W. M. Spellman, Gwynne Kennedy, and Stephanie Witham, 160—167. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer.“Imagining Female Community: Aemilia Lanyer’s Poems.” Writing Women in Jacobean England. Pages 212—241. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Trill, Suzanne. “Feminism Versus Religion: Towards a Re-Reading of Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum.” Renaissance and Reformation 25, no. 4 (2001): 67—80.
White, Micheline. “A Woman with Saint Peter’s Keys? Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) and the Priestly Gifts of Women.” Criticism 45, no. 3 (2003): 323—341.
World History
