Calvin, Lock, and Lanyer Assignment
Aemilia Lanyer
Life
Lanyer was born in 1569 to Baptista Bassano, a court musician for Henry VIII.
Lanyer grew up in radically Protestant circles, as her father had close relationships with Edward Seymour, Stephen Vaughan (father of Anne Vaughan Lock), and reformed theologian John Knox.
Lanyer lived on the outskirts of the royal court, never fully a member.
She had an affair with Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, and had one child with him whom she named Henry.
Around the time of her pregnancy, Lanyer was forced into a marriage with Alphonso Lanyer, likely to conceal the scandalous pregnancy. She and Alphonso Lanyer did not have any children together.
While still married to Alphonso, Lanyer took up residence with Margaret Rusell, Countess of Cumberland.
Lanyer’s role in the Countess’s household is unclear, as she was not tutor to Rusell’s daughter, Anne.
It is likely that during this time the Countess became Lanyer’s unofficial patron (a person who funds the artistic endeavors of writers like Lanyer). Rusell was also patron to Edmund Spenser and Samuel Daniel, well known Early Modern writers.
It is for Margaret Rusell and her home that Lanyer wrote “A Description of Cooke-ham,” a nostalgic poem about her time living in the female-only household.
Margaret Rusell, Countess of Cumberland
From 1617 until 1619 Lanyer ran a school in Westminster.
Thereafter she moved to St. James Clerkenwell parish to be near her friend Anne.
She died there in 1645 and was listed as a “pensioner.”
Speculation
Doing a brief Google search will reveal that Aemilia Lanyer is frequently proposed to be Shakespeare’s Dark Lady.
There is virtually no evidence to support this theory, as it is primarily circumstantial.
A Different Kind of Life
Lanyer’s life is unusual compared to many of the authors in this course.
She came from a family just at the outskirts of the aristocracy, and when she attempted to cross that boundary with a relationship with Henry Carey, she was quite thoroughly rebuffed.
She went on to live a fairly secluded life, with a happy interlude at the home of Margaret Rusell. Her poem, “A Description of Cooke-ham,” documents this as the happiest part of her life as she was able to flourish in a female-only community.
Rusell was recently a widow and was fighting to keep control of the estate during Lanyer’s time there.
In these ways, Lanyer presents a unique perspective both on life in England and on religious experience.
Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
This extended poem (“Hail God, King of the Jews”) takes a particularly proto-feminist perspective regarding the Fall of Man (the expulsion of man from the Garden of Eden).
It is “proto-feminist” rather than “feminist” because the movement we call feminism did not begin until the late 19th / early 20th century.
It begins with an introduction entitled “To the Vertuous Reader,” which indicates that this extended poem is designed to instruct its readers, and that it is also to shape the reader’s understanding of the nature of women: “this have I done, to make knowne to the world, that all women deserve not to be blamed” either for the Fall or for any other gender-segregated sins.
Her perspective is made abundantly clear when she addresses those who would blame women alone for the Fall, reminding them of the historic actions of women as well as the virtues of women:
“such points of folly, to be practised by evill disposed men, who forgetting they were borne of women, nourished of women, and that if it were not by the means of women, they would be quite extinguished out of the world, and a finall ende of them all, doe like Vipers deface the wombes wherein they were bred, onely to give way an utterance to their want of discretion and goodnesse. Such as these, were they that dishonoured Christ his Apostles and Prophets, putting them to shamefull deaths. Therefore we are not to regard any imputations, that they undeservedly lay upon us, no otherwise than to make use of them to our owne benefits, as spurres to vertue, making us flie all occasions that may colour their unjust speeches to passe currant.”
She doesn’t pull any punches.
Conclusions
Lanyer’s life and works work to reshape our assumptions about female identity in Early Modern England.
She takes a different path than many, and she asserts her perspective through poetry – particularly through her representations of religious experience.
In many ways her poetry represents a woman taking control of a life that is otherwise mostly out of her control, as was the case with most Early Modern women.