Aemilia Lanyer

English poet

• Born: January 27, 1569
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: 1645
• Place of death: London, England

One of the first women in England to publish a book of original poetry, Lanyer opposed the time’s patriarchal conventions and social proscriptions. She also wrote the first country house poem published in England.

Early Life

Aemilia Lanyer (ih-MIHL-ee-ah LAN-yuhr) was born Aemilia Bassano. Her exact date of birth is unknown, but she was baptized January 27, 1569, in the church of St. Bardolph’s, Bishopgate, England. Her father was Baptista Bassano, a musician in the court of Elizabeth I. Some historians have argued that the Bassano family was of Jewish origins, but the evidence is inconclusive. Lanyer herself seems to have been raised as a Protestant. Her father died when Lanyer was seven, and her mother, Margaret Johnson, died when Lanyer was eighteen.

Lanyer wrote that as a child she served in the household of Susan Bertie, dowager countess of Kent. Although little is known directly of Lanyer’s education, she would most likely have learned Italian from her father, his family, and connections, and would have received an education in music. It is not known how long she served in the dowager countess’s household, but there she would have been exposed to Protestant learning and devotion as well as a Humanist education. From her work, it seems that this education included Latin classical works and possibly some Greek.

At some point, most likely after her mother’s death, Lanyer became the mistress of Henry Carey, lord Hunsdon (about forty-five years older than she). When she became pregnant, she was married to a court musician, Alfonso Lanyer, on October 10, 1592. A son born early the next year was named Henry. Based partly on these events, a case for identifying Lanyer as the “dark lady” of William Shakespeare’s sonnets has not been accepted widely. A daughter, Odillya, was born December, 1598, and died in September, 1599. Although marriage most likely took Lanyer away from court circles, it does seem that she spent time with her patron Margaret Clifford, countess of Cumberland, and Margaret’s daughter, Anne, at the country estate of Cookham perhaps between 1603 and 1605.

Life’s Work

Lanyer is best known for a single book of poetry, Salve Deus Rex Judæorum (1611; The Poems of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady: Salve Deus Rex Judæorum , 1978), which was entered in the Stationer’s Register October 2, 1610. The volume begins with a number of dedications in verse and prose, followed by two poems: “Salve Deus” and “The Description of Cooke-ham.” “Salve Deus,” by far the most substantial piece in the volume, is a narrative poem written in ottava rima (stanza of eight lines of heroic verse) depicting Christ’s Passion. The poem is presented in four parts: “The Passion of Christ,” “Eves Apologie in Defence of Women,” “The Teares of the Daughters of Jerusalem,” and “The Salutation and Sorrow of the Virgine Marie.” This single volume is all that is extant or known of Lanyer’s poetry, but Lanyer’s achievement is important from a number of perspectives.

The first notable feature of “Salve Deus” is the multiple dedications it contains in a variety of poetic forms and prose. Although multiple dedications were not unusual at a time when poets routinely dedicated their work to nobles from whom they sought patronage, Lanyer’s dedications are exceptional in that all are to women, including Queen Anne, Princess Elizabeth, and Mary Sidney. Not all the extant copies of Salve Deus Rex Judæorum, however, contain the same dedications, which could indicate that Lanyer was conscious of the politically sensitive nature of some of her choices of dedicatees. The protofeminist nature of Lanyer’s poems makes it clear that her decision to dedicate the work to women entirely was no coincidence. There is no evidence that the book won her the support she sought.

“Salve Deus,” the longest poem in the volume, is noteworthy for its thoughtful exploration of the role of women in Christianity and particularly in the Passion. In the poem, Lanyer moves easily between biblical and classical allusions, suggesting something of the breadth of her own reading. She presents a feminized Christ betrayed and wronged by the men around him. In the poem’s closely argued defense of Eve, Lanyer maintains that while Eve’s fall was the result of ignorance, Eve’s sin is vastly outweighed by the sins of men in condemning and crucifying Christ. She points out that Pilate’s wife attempted to save Christ, only to be denied.

In the final two sections of the poem “The Teares of the Daughters of Jerusalem” and “The Salutation and Sorrow of the Virgine Marie” Lanyer depicts the women who mourn at Christ’s suffering and death, while Mary’s love is rewarded with an angelic visitation offering her comfort. Lanyer’s opening and closing of the poem praise the virtues and chastity of Lanyer’s main patrons, Margaret Clifford and her daughter, Anne, countess of Dorset. Some critics have found these passages intrusive, but they link the poem to its dedications and look forward to the final poem of the volume, “The Description of Cooke-ham.”

Although Ben Jonson is usually credited with the first country house poem, Lanyer’s “The Description of Cooke-ham” was the first country house poem published in England. Country house poems conventionally celebrate a family, their estate, and their creation of social order based in courtesy and aristocratic virtue. Some of these poems also sought to offer instruction on the mutual obligations of the estate’s owners and the supporting community. Lanyer’s poem praises the country house estate of Cookham where Margaret Clifford and her daughter lived for a time. Lanyer once again makes a community of women, including herself, the center of her poem. Cookham seems to have no lord, and men are absent from the poem. Unlike other examples of the genre, Lanyer’s has an elegiac quality, and at the conclusion of the poem, the estate is imagined mourning the departure of the women.

It is assumed that Lanyer’s poetry did not win the patronage she sought, because it seems she did not publish again, and one can catch only glimpses of the rest of her life. Her husband died in 1613. From 1617 to 1619, she opened and ran a school for the children of the wealthy. Her later life involved litigation against Alfonso’s family as she sought income derived from a patent originally held by her husband. Lanyer was buried at St. James Clerkenwell on April 3, 1645.

Significance

Lanyer’s work is still being assessed, and her significance has yet to be fully appreciated. Salve Deus Rex Judæorum appeared in a first edition only, and there are no known contemporary references to her poetry.

Lanyer’s work, however, enjoyed a substantial revival in the twentieth century, a revival that continues into the twenty-first century. She is widely studied in early modern literature courses and in courses on women’s writing, and scholarship on her poetry suggests her work is valued both for what it adds to the knowledge of protofeminist thought of the early modern period and for its intrinsic value as the work of an original, thoughtful, and critical poet.

Bibliography

Grossman, Marshall, ed. Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998. A collection of eleven essays by top scholars in the field, including David Bevington’s critique of A. L. Rowse’s case for Lanyer as Shakespeare’s “dark lady.”

Lamb, Mary Ellen. “Patronage and Class in Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judæorum.” In Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain, edited by Mary E. Burke, Jane Donawerth, Linda L. Dove, and Karen Nelson. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Discusses the issue of class in the context of arts patronage in Lanyer’s time, and includes a look at Lanyer’s dedications to her patrons.

Lasocki, David. The Bassanos: Venetian Musicians and Instrument Makers in England, 1531-1665. Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1995. Helpful discussion of the evidence pointing to a Jewish background for the Bassano family. One chapter argues for the identification of Lanyer as the “dark lady.”

McGrath, Lynette. Subjectivity and Women’s Poetry in Early Modern England: “Why on the Ridge Should She Desire to Go?” Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002. Lanyer is one of three poets examined extensively in this feminist psychoanalytic study of women’s writing in the early modern era.

Rowse, A. L., ed. The Poems of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady: “Salve Deus Rex Judæorum” by Emilia Lanier. London: Jonathan Cape, 1978. Using the diaries of the astrologer Simon Forman, Rowse makes a case for identifying Lanyer as the “dark lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Woods, Susanne. Lanyer: A Renaissance Poet in Her Context. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. A careful and detailed examination of Lanyer’s life and all that is known about her. Places Lanyer in the context of other poets of her day.

Woods, Susanne, ed. The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judæorum. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. This annotated edition of Lanyer’s poems begins with a helpful biography.