A Biographical and Critical Study of the Life and Works of Elizabeth Carey, 1st Viscountess Falkland (1585-1639). by Stephanie J. Wright Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds, School of English March 1994. The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. Stephanie J. Wright A Biographical and Critical Study of the Life and Works of Elizabeth Carey, 1st Viscountess Falkland (1585-1639). Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. University of Leeds, School of English, March 1994. ABSTRACT This thesis argues for a full recognition of the significance of Elizabeth Carey and her literary works by offering new theoretical and critical approaches to her life and her two major works, The Tragedy of Mariam and The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward II. The Introduction offers an assessment of the recent critical works on Elizabeth Carey and ultimately rejects the prevalent tendency to interpret her works simply in terms of her life. Chapter 1 constitutes a biographical study of Elizabeth Carey which focuses upon the roles she played: as wife, recusant and writer. Chapter 2 ex~mines Carey' s use of two sources of "patriarchal" authority - Seneca and Flavius Josephus - in her composition of The Tragedy of Mariam. It explores the ways in which she manipulates these sources in order to create a text which offers resistance to patriarchal authority. Chapter 3 is a reading of The Tragedy of Mariam which eschews the traditional critical opposition between "virtuous" and "vicious" characters in the text. Rather, the text is viewed as a set of competing discourses which, by their very competition, effect a de construction of patriarchal ideology. Chapter 4 seeks to re-establish Carey's claim to the authorship of The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward II. This issue of authorship has been confused by the existence of the text in a longer, folio form and a shorter, octavo form. Here, I argue against a recent publication to show that Carey is the author of the folio but not the octavo. Chapter 5 focuses upon the historical and literary contexts of The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward II, beginning by exploring the possibility that the text is a criticism of Buckingham's role in the courts of James I and Charles I. The chapter then focuses upon the ways in which Carey rejects the characterisation of Queen Isabel by Dray ton and Marlowe and constructs her own version of the history in which Isabel is both powerful and sympathetic. CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements ................................................................... i Colour Plate .......................................................................... ii Abbreviations ........................................................................ iii Introduction ........................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 ............................................................................ 18 "I am a Catholique and a Woman": A biographical study of Elizabeth Carey, 1st Viscountess Falkland. Chapter 2 ............................................................................ 75 "Foule pith contain'd in the fairest rinde": Seneca, Josephus and Elizabeth Carey. Chapter 3 ........................................................................... 120 "I will not speake unles to be beleev' d ": Discourse and deconstruction in The Tragedy of Mariam. Chapter 4 ........................................................................... 159 "Thou gavest me birth and yet denyest me being": The "true" authorship of The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward II. Chapter 5 ........................................................................... 201 "I strive to please the Truth, not Time": The (sexual) politics of Edward II. Bibliography ....................................................................... 239 Appendix A ........................................................................ 249 Appendix B ........................................................................ 254 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I should like to acknowledge the kind assistance of the following individuals in the preparation of this thesis: Dr. M. Butler, Prof. I.-S. Ewbank, Mr. D. Lindley, Dr. P. Hammond, Dr. J. Hope, Ms. L. Paget (all at the School of English, University of Leeds); Lucius, 15th Viscount Falkland; M. Claude Lannette, Directeur des Archives departementals du Nord, Lille; Dr. S. Owen, La Sainte Union College, Southampton; Rev. M.B. Tingle, Burford Vicarage, Burford, Oxfordshire; the librarians and staff of the Reprographics Departments at the Bodleian Library, the Brotherton Library at the University of Leeds; the National Portrait Gallery; the British Library; the Houghton Library at Harvard University; the Huntington Library; University Microfilms, Inc., and the Yale University Library. Above all, I wish to thank my supervisor, Dr. M.G. Brennan, without whose constant support and encouragement this thesis would not have been written. I should also like to express my gratitude to the following bodies and organisations who have provided financial support during my research for this thesis: The British Academy; the Access Fund and the School of English (both at the University of Leeds) and the Yorkshire Ladies Council for Education. 11 COLOUR PLATE: VAN SOMER'S PORTRAIT (c. 1621) OF ELIZABETH CAREY, 1ST VISCOUNTESS FALKLAND III ABBREVIATIONS Ant., Flavius Josephus, The Antiquities, in The Famous and Memorable Works of Josephus, trans. Thomas Lodge, 1602, STC 14809, pp.1-528. Beilin (1980), Elaine Beilin, "Elizabeth Cary and The Tragedie of Mariam", PLL, vol. 16, 1980, pp. 45-64. Beilin (1987), Elaine Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance, Guildford, 1987. Beilin (1990), Elaine Beilin, "Current Bibliography of English Women Writers 1500-1640", in Haselkom and Travitsky (1990), pp. 347-60. Belsey (1985), Catherine Belsey, The Subject of Tragedy: identity and difference in Renaissance drama, 1985. Bird (1974), Phyllis Bird, "Images of Women in the Old Testament", in Religion and Sexism: Images of Women in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Radford Reuther, New York, 1974, pp. 41-88. Bridenthal and Koonz (1977), Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, eds., Becoming Visible: Women in European History, 1977. Carroll (1976), Berenice A. Carroll, ed., Liberating Women's History: Theoretical and Critical Essays, Illinois, 1976. Cotton (1977), Nancy Cotton, "Elizabeth Cary, Renaissance Playwright", TSLL, vol. 18, 1977, pp. 601-8. Cotton (1980), Nancy Cotton, Women Playwrights in England, 1363-1750, 1980. CSP Dom., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1601-1640. CSP Ire!., Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1625-1632. Drayton, Works I, Michael Dray ton, Works, ed. J.W. Hebel, Oxford, vol. I 1931. Drayton, Works 11, Michael Dray ton, Works, ed. J.W. Hebel, Oxford, vol. Il, 1932. Duncan-Jones (1989), Katherine Duncan-Jones, ed., Sir Philip Sidney, Oxford, 1989. Dunstan (1908), A.C. Dunstan, An Examination of Two English Tragedies, Konigsberg, 1908. Dunstan (1914), Elizabeth Carey, The Tragedy of Mariam (1613), ed. A.C. Dunstan, 1914, rpt. with a supplement by Marta Straznicki and Richard Rowland, Oxford, 1992. Edward Il, Elizabeth Carey, The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward Il, written by E.F. in the year 1627, 1680, Wing F313. Fabyan (1516), Robert Fabyan, The Chronicle of Fabyan, 1516, STC 10659. iv Fabyan (1542), - corrected, 1542, STC 10662. Fabyan (1559), - revised and enlarged, 1559, STC 10663. Ferguson (1992), Margaret Ferguson, "The Spectre of Resistance", in Staging the Renaissance: reinterpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, eds. David Scott Kastan and Peter Stallybrass, 1992, pp. 233-50. Fischer (1985), Sandra K. 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Hardyng (1543), John Hardyng, The Chronicle of Jhon [sic] Hardyng, 1543, STC 12767. Haselkorn and Travitsky (1990), Ann M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky, eds., The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, Amherst, Massachusetts, 1990. Henderson and McManus (1985), Katherine Usher Henderson and Barbara F. McManus, eds., Half Humankind: The Texts and Contexts of the Controversy About Women in England, 1540-1640, Chicago, 1985. Hirst (1975), Derek Hirst, The Representative of the People? Voters and Voting in England Under the Early Stuarts, Cambridge, 1975. Holinshed (1577), Raphael Holinshed,