1. EN6010 Presentation
Women and their Texts in
Early Modern England
Megan Ryan
107532695
22 March 2012

2. Thus when shee had his eyes and sences fed
With false delights, and fild with plesaures vayn,
Into a shady dale she soft him led,
And laid him downe vpon a grassy playn;
And her sweete self without dread, or disdayn,
She sett beside, laying his head disarmd
In her loose lap, it softly to sustayn,
Where soone he slumbred, fearing not be harmd,
The whils with a loue lay thus him sweetly charmd.
(FQ II.vi.14)

3. Acrasia, a false enchauntresse, [. . .]
Within a wandring Island,
[. . .] her dwelling is;
[. . .] Lnow it by the name; it hight the Bowre of blis.
Her blis is all in pleasure and delight,
Wherewith she makes her louers dronken mad,
And then with words and weedes of wondrous might,
On them she workes her will to vses bad (FQ II.i.51-2)

4. The Tragedy of Mariam
MARIAM. They can
but my life destroy,
My soul is free from
adversary‟s power.

5. Swetnam & Speght
“they are vngratefull, periured, full of
fraud, flouting and
deceit, vnconstant, waspish, toyish, lig
ht, sullen, proud, discurteous and
cruell” (Swetnam)
“And neuer man hated his owne flesh
(which the woman is) vnlesse a
monster in nature.” (Speght)

6. Shakespeare‟s King John
BLANCHE. Which is the side I must go withal?
I am with both, each army hath a hand,
And in their rage, I having hold of both,
They whirl asunder and dismember me
[. . .]
Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose,
Assured loss before the match be played. (3.1.253-
62)

7. Katherine Philips
“We court our own
captivity,
Than thrones more
great and innocent;
„Twere banishment to
be set free,
Since we wear fetters
whose intent
Not bondage is, but
ornament.”

8. Thesis Proposals
Cary‟s Mariam and gender
representations
↓
Female authored texts, methods of
dissemination, and reception
↓
Cary‟s Mariam, closet drama, and
gender representations

9. “I know I have but the body of a weak and
feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king”

10. Selected Primary Sources
• Cary, E. The Tragedy of Mariam. 1613.
• Philips, K. Poems. 1678
• Shakespeare, W. King John. 1623.
• Speght, R. A Mouzell for Melastomus.
1616.
• Spenser, E. The Faerie Queene. 1596
• Swetnam, J. The Arraignment of
Women. 1615.

11. Selected Secondary Sources
• Clarke, D. The Politics of Early Modern Women’s Writing. Harlow:
Longman, 2001.
• Ferguson, M. First Feminists. Indiana: Indiana UP, 1985.
• Fisher, S. and Janet Halley. Seeking the Woman in Late Medieval
and Renaissance Writings. Tennessee: U of Tennessee P,
1989.
• Fitzmaurice, J. Major Women Writers of Seventeenth-Century
England. Michigan: U of Michigan P, 1997.
• Richards, J. and Alison Thorne. Rhetoric, Women, and Politics in
Early Modern England. London: Routledge, 2007.
• Smith, B. and Ursula Appelt. Write or Be Written. Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2001.
• Travitsky, B. The Paradise of Women. Connecticut: Greenwood,
1981.
• Travitsky, B. and Anne Lake Prescott. Female and Male Voices in
Early Modern England. New York: Columbia UP, 2000.