MARY WROTH
?1587 – ?1653
SONNET XIX
Come, darkest night, becoming sorrow best;
Light, leave thy light, fit for a lightsome soul;
Darkness doth truly suit with me oppressed,
Whom absence' power doth from mirth control:
The very trees with hanging heads condole
Sweet summer's parting, and of leaves distressed
In dying colours make a griefful roll,
So much, alas, to sorrow are they pressed.
Thus of dead leaves her farewell carpet's made:
Their fall, their branches, all their mournings prove,
With leafless, naked bodies, whose hues vade
From hopeful green, to wither in their love:
If leaves and trees for absence mourners be,
No marvel that I grieve, who like want see.
The Countess of Montgomerie's 'Urania'
(1621)
control = restrain, prevent
distressed = plundered, stolen
griefful = sorrowful
roll = a role plus a roll of pressed leaves
prove = experience
vade = weaken, fade
Mary Wroth, the eldest child of well-connected English aristocrat Robert Sidney and his Welsh-born wife Barbara Gamage, was also the niece of Philip Sidney, the most famous poet of the Elizabethan age (far more so than William Shakespeare in his time) and his sister Mary Pembroke, translator of the Psalms into English and a notable poet in her own right.
Wroth's lifelong love for her cousin William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, inspired her to write The Countess of Montgomerie's 'Urania,' an epic work of fiction that, while it contains numerous cross references and a variety of sub-plots, ostensibly tells the tale of Queen Pamphilia and her undying love for her cousin, the philandering Emperor Amphilanthus. (Wroth and Herbert were in a sexual relationship that continued after their respective marriages to other people, with Wroth being a frequent guest at her lover's London home and country estate. She also bore Herbert two illegitimate children following the deaths of her husband and of the one legitimate child that she bore by him.) Considered to be the first work of extended prose fiction ever published by an Englishwoman, its fifty-six verse interludes were admired by many leading poets of the day including Ben Jonson (who would later enjoy the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke in his court role of Lord Chamberlain and go on to dedicate his 1612 play The Alchemist to Wroth) and George Chapman.
But Wroth's work was not without its critics. Edward Denny, Baron of Waltham, recognised himself as one of its characters, as did several other members of the court of James I, and attacked Wroth both in person and in print, his complaints eventually reaching the ear of the King and forcing her to justify herself to the monarch's favourite courtier the Duke of Buckingham. The controversy prevented the volume from being reprinted during Wroth's lifetime, sending a clear signal to other female writers that it would be unwise if not unsafe to make their work publicly available as she had done. In fact, forty more years would pass before Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle, became the next woman to publish another work of long form fiction in Britain under her own name.
Undaunted by this setback, Wroth broke through the gender barrier again by writing the play Love's Victory, which was performed privately despite her London home being situated next door to the Blackfriar's Theatre and a short distance across the Thames from The Globe whose acting company, co-run by William Shakespeare, enjoyed the patronage of her lover William Herbert. Wroth had a passionate interest in the theatre, acting with Queen Anne as an 'Ethiopian nymph' in The Masque of Blackness created by Jonson and his production designing collaborator Inigo Jones which was presented at court in January 1605 and again in The Masque of Beauty which was presented to the King three years later. Nor were these her first performances at court. At the age of thirteen she danced, perhaps solo or accompanied by the daughters of other aristocrats, for Queen Elizabeth I.
Wroth, who yearned to marry her cousin but was prevented from doing so by the disparities in their wealth and social status, entered into an arranged marriage with Robert Wroth in 1604. While theirs was an unhappy union in several respects, the marriage endured until 1614 when Robert Wroth, who was deeply in debt by that time, died. A month later Mary gave birth to their only child, a boy she named James in honour of the reigning monarch. Her son only lived for two years, meaning that the bulk of her late husband's estate then passed to the uncle who was his closest male relative, saddling the widowed Mary with what, for the time, was her own massive debt of approximately £23,000.
This may have contributed, along with the controversy that greeted the publication of Urania, to her subsequent fall from royal favour, although she did apply for and receive a number of royal warrants of protection that were useful in staving off legal proceedings launched against her by her deceased husband's creditors. She remained determined to pay them off and may well have done so prior to moving to the town of Woodford and dying there, her groundbreaking literary achievements entirely forgotten, in either 1651 or 1653.
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