Literary Circles And Gender in Early Modern Europe: A Cross-cultural Approach (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World) (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World)

LITERARY CIRCLES AND GENDER IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

Women and Gender in the Early Modern World Series Editors: Allyson Poska and Abby Zanger In the past decade, the study of women and gender has offered some of the most vital and innovative challenges to scholarship on the early modern period. Ashgate’s new series of interdisciplinary and comparative studies, ‘Women and Gender in the Early Modern World’, takes up this challenge, reaching beyond geographical limitations to explore the experiences of early modern women and the nature of gender in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Submissions of single-author studies and edited collections will be considered. Titles in this series include: Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France Mastering Memory Faith E. Beasley Boccaccio’s Heroines Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society Margaret Franklin Women’s Letters Across Europe, 1400–1700 Form and Persuasion Edited by Jane Couchman and Ann Crabb Publishing Women’s Life Stories in France, 1647–1720 From Voice to Print Elizabeth C. Goldsmith The Medici Women Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence Natalie R. Tomas

Literary Circles and Gender in Early Modern Europe A Cross-Cultural Approach

JULIE CAMPBELL Eastern Illinois University, USA

© Julie Campbell 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Julie Campbell has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Campbell, Julie D., 1965Literary circles and gender in early modern Europe : a cross-cultural approach. – (Women and gender in the early modern world) 1.European literature – Renaissance, 1450-1600 – History and criticism 2.European literature – 17th century – History and criticism 3.European literature – Women authors – History and criticism 4.Women – Europe – Intellectual life – 16th century 5.Women – Europe – Intellectual life – 17th century I.Title 809.8’9287’0903 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Campbell, Julie D., 1965Literary circles and gender in early modern Europe : a cross-cultural approach / by Julie Campbell. p. cm.—(Women and gender in the early modern world) Includes bibiographical references and index. ISBN 0-7546-5467-2 (alk. paper) 1. European literature—16th century—History and criticism. 2. European literature—17th century—History and criticism. 3. European literature—Women authors—History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series. PN731.C36 2006 809’.9335220903—dc22 ISBN-10: 0 7546 5467 2

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Contents Acknowledgements Note on the Texts Introduction

vi viii 1

1 Tullia d’Aragona, Sperone Speroni, and the Inscription of Salon Personae

21

2 The Querelle over Silvia: La Mirtilla and Aminta in Dialogue

51

3 Pastoral Defenses and the Nymphs of the Salon Vert

73

4 Louise Labé, l’Imparfaicte Amye

97

5 The Amyes of the English Court

123

6 Querelle Resonance and Literary Circle Ritual in English Romances

165

Conclusion

197

Bibliography Index

203 217

Acknowledgements It is a pleasure to thank those who have provided support and guidance for this project. A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend facilitated work at the Biblioteca Marciana and the Bibliothèque nationale. A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute called “A Literature of Their Own? Women Writing: Venice, London, Paris 1550–1700” influenced my concept of this project. The Eastern Illinois University Council on Faculty Research provided two grants and one Summer Research Award to support research at the libraries noted above, as well as the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, the Houghton, Schlesinger, and Widener Libraries at Harvard, and the Harvard Theater Collection. In the earliest stages of the project, a Research Travel Grant from Texas A&M University enabled me to work at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Additionally, the excellent interlibrary loan service of Booth Library greatly aided my progress. Without the financial support of these organizations, the invaluable assistance and expertise of the staffs of these institutions, and the stimulating exchanges provided by the “A Literature of Their Own?” cohort of 2001, this book would not have been possible. I am very grateful to friends and colleagues who answered many questions and generously shared their knowledge with me during the preparation of this book. Above all, I thank Anne Larsen for her commentary on the book as a whole, as well as her clear, insightful advice and attention to detail during the final revisions. Maria Galli Stampino, Christopher Nissen, Sharon Michalove, Rosemary Buck, and Ruth Hoberman gave much appreciated feedback on drafts of chapters. Thanks also go to those who responded to the many queries that I posed as I drew upon their formidable collective expertise, including Bonnie Irwin, Christine MerllieYoung, Kathryn Bulver, and Baird Whitlock. The Eastern Illinois University English Department’s Junior Faculty Writing Group read and responded to parts of this project over a two-year period; thus, I am indebted to Angela Vietto, Christopher Hanlon, Francine McGregor, Dagni Bredesen, Daiva Markelis, Marty Scott, Robin Murray, and Jad Smith. I am also grateful to Linda Coleman who brought the initial “A Literature of Their Own?” conference to my attention. Special thanks are due to Donald Beecher for his permission to revise an earlier version of Chapter Six which appeared in his edited volume, Comparative Critical Approaches to English Prose Fiction, 1520–1640 (1998). For their early encouragement of my interest in the areas researched for this study, I am always

Acknowledgements

vii

grateful to James Harner, Margaret Ezell, and Craig Kallendorf. Moreover, it is critical to note that Erika Gaffney’s guidance has been key to the preparation of this book. From her initial response to the book proposal to the completion of the publication process, she has been a constant source of encouragement and good will, for which I cannot thank her enough. The vicissitudes of my progress on this project were the subject of numerous conversations held over the course of several years with Mity Myhr, Paula Sodders, Melissa Benson, and Kelly Lowe. For their sage advice, unfailing patience, and wholehearted encouragement, I am deeply grateful. Similarly, I thank Jan Marquardt, Diana Slaviero, and Jenny Chi for their generous willingness to listen to my ideas, frustrations, and revelations. Circles of friends who meet to discuss our professional endeavors, as well as everything else, have been fundamental sources of inspiration during the genesis of this project. Thomas Over has provided a great deal of in-house technical support for this project. He has also frequently (and sometimes futilely) offered the practical, efficiency-conscious advice for which engineers and hydrologists are known. For those reasons and innumerable others, I dedicate this book to him.

Note on the Texts Since this is a work that relies in large part upon examination of primary and secondary sources in Italian and French, I have endeavored to provide clear, modern English translations of quotes from the texts that I employ. In general, the translations are mine unless otherwise noted. Regarding major primary texts, when recent translations are available, I make use of them. For example, in Chapter One, I use the translation of Tullia d’Aragona’s Dialogue on the Infinity of Love (1997) by Rinaldina Russell and Bruce Merry, but the translations from Sperone Speroni’s Dialogo di amore are mine. Similarly, in Chapter Two, I use the translation of Torquato Tasso’s Aminta (2000) by Charles Jernigan and Irene Marchegiani Jones as well as my translation of Isabella Andreini’s La Mirtilla (2002). In Chapter Four, the translations from Pontus de Tyard’s Solitaire premier are mine, but I use Edith R. Farrell’s translation of Labé’s Complete Works (1986). Regarding spelling and use of accent marks in foreign language texts and document titles, I retain the original styles in most cases. Similarly, I retain archaic English spellings of texts printed in that manner. When quoting passages from plays, I use parenthetical documentation when act, scene, and line numbers are available. When they are not, I use footnotes and indicate page numbers.

Introduction

Literary Circles and the Inscription of the Querelle des femmes It is no insult . . . to say that the souls of women are not as purged of the passions as those of men or as versed in contemplation as Pietro has said those which are to taste divine love must be. Thus do we not read that any woman has ever received this grace, but we do read of many men who have . . . . Signor Gaspare But women would not be surpassed by men in the slightest as far as this is concerned: for Socrates himself confessed that all the mysteries of love that he knew had been revealed to him by Diotima, and the angel who pierced St. Francis with the fire of love has also made several women of our own time worthy of the same seal. Magnifico Giuliano Baldesar Castiglione, The Courtier1

The roots of the literary quarrel known as the Querelle des femmes have been traced to Christine de Pizan’s objection to the portrayal of women in the Roman de la rose (Guillaume de Lorris, ca. 1236; Jean de Meung’s continuation, ca. 1276), which she voiced in her Epître au dieu d’amours (1399).2 It is a debate that helped to nurture literary production throughout the early modern period. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the querelle continued unabated, with fresh skirmishes breaking out in Continental and English literary society. While numerous treatises, pamphlets, sermons, and poems directly address issues from the querelle, references to such issues also permeate literature that is not primarily polemical. In short, the querelle provided topoi for most genres of early modern writing. Moreover, during the period addressed in this study, approximately 1530– 1650, it was inextricably related to perceptions of women defying traditional mores that included provocative behaviors by the cortigiane oneste, or honest courtesans, of Italy, the early Italian actresses, and the ladies of the French and English courts and literary circles. Such women were admired for their humanist educations and 1

Baldesar Castiglione, The Courtier (1528), trans. George Bull (London: Penguin, 1976), 343–4. 2 With this work and others, including Le Livre de la cité des dames (1405), Pizan participated in the early skirmish of the Querelle des femmes referred to as the Querelle de la rose. See Charity Willard, Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works (New York: Persea, 1984), 73–89.

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Literary Circles and Gender

their abilities as poets, musicians, orators, and conversationalists, but some were also reviled for their behaviors in matters regarding love and marriage and for their breaching of traditional gender boundaries.3 The combination of admiration and dismay acted as a catalyst for numerous writers of the period. The agonistic tradition in rhetoric, both oral and written, fueled the “praise or blame” patterns in which such writers engaged.4 Women were typically praised for extraordinary merits or blamed for nefarious faults. The fame of those included among the traditionally “good” women who participated in salon and academic society or who were simply lauded for great learnedness spread widely during this period. Evelyne Berriot-Salvadore reminds us that in the catalogue of influential learned women in the argument on “l’excellence des femmes” from Paradoxes (1553), Charles Estienne includes two female academicians and poets, “une Marquisanna de Pesquière” (Vittoria Colonna) and “une Veronica Gambara.”5 Similarly, in his dedication of Pernette du Guillet’s Rymes (1545) to the women of Lyon, Antoine de Moulin attempts to spark a sense of “international rivalry” by telling them that “they should be inspired by Pernette’s example to ‘animate themselves in letters’ to compete for ‘the great and undying praise that the ladies of Italy have acquired for themselves today.’”6 Hilarion de Coste pronounces that “Madame de Retz” (Claude-Catherine de Clermont) and “la duchesse de Camerino Catherine Cibo” are the most learned ladies of their respective countries, France and Italy.7 Moreover, in a letter to his daughters, “À mes filles touchant les femmes doctes de nostre siècle,” Théodore Agrippa d’Aubigné (1551–1630) includes praise of the maréschale de Retz and Madame de Lignerolles (Louise de Cabriane de la Guyonnière), recalling an occasion when they debated with each other during a meeting of the French academy. He also includes “la Marquise de Pesquiere” (Vittoria Colonna) and the celebrated actress, poet, and academician, “Izabella Andrei” (Isabella Andreini), as well as other learned ladies in Europe and Queen 3

By “traditional gender boundaries,” I mean the idealized standards of behavior for women of the time, specifically that they were to be silent, chaste, and obedient to male authority. 4 The term agon indicates, in general, a contest. In the tradition of Greek tragedy, it refers to a debate in which the chorus takes sides with those arguing. For a discussion of the agonistic tradition, see Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Routledge, 1982), 110–11. Ong examines the antithetical nature of rhetoric, as well as the “praise or blame” pattern that develops in part from the tradition of the agon in Greek tragedy, 111. 5 Evelyne Berriot-Salvadore, Les femmes dans la société française de la Renaissance (Genève: Droz, 1990), 351. 6 Antoine de Moulin is quoted in Ann Rosalind Jones’s The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540–1620 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 83. 7 Hilarion de Coste is quoted in Edouard Frémy’s L’Académie des derniers Valois, 1887 (Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1969), 159.

Introduction

3

Elizabeth in England.8 By the mid-sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries, learned women across the Continent and in England had clearly earned international reputations, though not all of them were referred to as positive exempla. John Calvin labeled the celebrated poet and Lyonnaise salon habituée Louise Labé a common prostitute (plebeia meretrix);9 Edward Denny called Lady Mary Wroth of the Sidney circle a “Hermaphrodite in show, in deed a monster.”10 Veronica Franco, indeed a courtesan, but one of the most famous for her learning, her poetry, and her association with the Accademia della Fama of Venice, was called a “Donna reduta mostro in carne humana” [a woman reduced to a monster made of human flesh] by Maffio Venier.11 There were words for women who transgressed the boundaries of behavior considered appropriate by the moral majority of their times, usually “monster” or “whore.” Yet, the matter is complex. Labé’s Oeuvres (1555) include Ecritz de divers Poetes à la louenge de Louize Labé, a series of twenty-four poems written in praise of Labé. In his dedication of The Alchemist (1612) to Wroth, Jonson calls her “The Grace, and Glory of women.”12 Moreover, some women who exhibited arguably transgressive behaviors, such as the actresses Isabella Andreini, Vittoria Piisimi, and Vicenza Armani, or the ladies associated with the French court, known for its scandals and intrigues, such as Claude-Catherine de Clermont, the maréschale de Retz, or Madeleine de L’Aubespine, Madame de Villeroy, received mainly praise and adulation. The same is true for Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke, who is believed to have taken a lover in later years, yet whose literary reputation remained spotless.13 The historical reception of such women clearly varied 8 Agrippa d’Aubigné, “À mes filles touchant les femmes doctes de nostre siècle,” Œuvres, ed. Henri Weber et al. (Bruges: Gallimard, 1969), 852–3. 9 Calvin’s comment is from his pamphlet, “Gratulatio ad venerabilem presbyterum dominum Gabrielum de Saconay . . .” (1561) quoted in Charles Boy, “Recherches sur la vie et les œuvres de Louise Labé,” Œuvres de Louise Labé, 2 volumes (Paris, 1887; reprint, Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1968), 2: 15, 101. See also Jones, The Currency of Eros, 157 and Jeanne Prine, “Poet of Lyon: Louise Labé,” in Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 132. 10 See “To Pamphilia from the father-in-law of Seralius.” Denny’s poem is reproduced in Josephine Roberts’s introduction to The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983), 32–3. An alternative title given to the poem that appears in some seventeenth-century commonplace books is “To the Lady Mary Wroth for writeing the Countes of Montgomeryes Urania,” 33. 11 Venier is quoted and translated in Margaret Rosenthal’s The Honest Courtesan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 188–9. 12 See The Alchemist in Ben Jonson, 7 vols., ed. C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), 5: 289. See also Roberts, introduction to The Poems, 16. 13 In their introduction to Mary Sidney’s The Tragedy of Antonie, S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies write, “What we do know is that, when the Earl of Pembroke died in 1601, Mary Sidney chose not to remarry, taking on the role of virtuous widow. But even in this final piece of self-fashioning, the Countess continued to juggle orthodox and

4

Literary Circles and Gender

according to the levels of anxiety that they induced in specific male writers who made public their judgments, or, in the cases of powerfully influential women, such as Retz and Pembroke, how much their favor was curried. On one hand, as the cases of Labé, Wroth, and Franco suggest, the act of publishing provocative original works seemed to tip the scales for some critics, who then seized the opportunity to rail; on the other, as Pembroke’s and Andreini’s cases illustrate, publication only increased the respect these women had already incurred. Criticism of learned women was, thus, intriguingly subjective. Moreover, it was inevitably couched in the rhetoric of the centuries old Querelle des femmes. Scholarship and newly edited texts from the last two decades related to the phenomenon in England, including Constance Jordan’s Renaissance Feminism, Linda Woodbridge’s Women and the English Renaissance, and Katherine Henderson and Barbara McManus’s Half Humankind, reveal that the stock issues of the querelle regarding women’s worth, ability to reason, education, spirituality, sexuality, and place in family and society had a firm grasp on writers’ imaginations. The same was true on the Continent, as many volumes in the University of Chicago Press’s series The Other Voice illustrate.14 Writers of the period endeavored with varying degrees of seriousness to understand human nature, especially the realities of human behavior versus the received stereotypes specifically regarding women that arose from ancient literature, unrelenting waves of Petrarchism and Neoplatonism, and misogynistic interpretations of biblical texts. The proliferation of these debates during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries may be linked to many factors, but the one especially of interest for this study is the development of literary circles15 in which both men and women took part. unconventional identities. For while she appeared to resign herself to a life of chaste mourning, in reality it seems that she took a lover, Sir Matthew Lister, a physician ten years her junior” [Renaissance Drama by Women: Texts and Documents (London: Routledge, 1996), 17]. 14 The Other Voice series includes such volumes as Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist by Laura Cereta, The Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, and The Education of a Christian Woman by Juan Luis Vives, to note only a few examples. 15 I use the term literary circle in general to describe groups whose members are writers and whose main connections involve their mutual literary and philosophical interests. It is a term that I inevitably employ when discussing English coteries, but I occasionally extend my usage of it to describe literary groups of other nationalities. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth provide a particularly helpful definition that encompasses mine. They write, “Most often, the literary circle is defined as a coterie whose members are linked by shared social, political, philosophical, or aesthetic interests or values, or who vie for the interests and attention of a particular patron, or who are drawn together by bonds of friendship, family, religion, or location” [Introduction to Literary Circles and Cultural Communities in Renaissance England (Columbia: University of Missouri Press,

Introduction

5

The first goal of this study is to examine how querelle issues are raised, contextualized, and debated in works by male and female writers who were familiar with each other’s views, moved in the same circles, and, in some cases, were writing directly in response to each other’s work. In the process, the serious play in which such writers engage is illustrated, revealing the ludic natures of both the querelle and literary circles. The main issues and rhetorical approaches addressed in the works covered include portrayals of women’s abilities to reason and act on their own behalf, humanist education for women, attacks on character based on negative querelle stereotypes, disillusion with Neoplatonic love traditions, and general employment of both positive and negative querelle exempla. The second goal of this study is to look at a selection of types of women who participated in literary society during this period and how their transgressing of traditional gender boundaries helped to fuel new waves of the querelle. To that end, I examine the interactions in literary circles of women who span the social classes, from the courtesan to the noblewoman. Italian actresses, whom scholars argue began their careers as cortigiane oneste, fascinated the noblewomen of the French court, many of whom, in turn were known for their eloquence and their gifted performances in court entertainments, as well as for demonstrating risqué behavior reminiscent of that associated with Italian actresses and courtesans. Knowledge of such Continental women was, moreover, implicated in contemporary critiques of the behavior of certain English courtly women. Perceptions of the trajectories of influence regarding women’s participation in literary and courtly society are thus important to consider in light of the perpetuation of the querelle in literary circles across the Continent and in England. The multidimensional nature of the querelle—which was both a literary game and a resource for social critique or approbation of such women—becomes apparent when we consider contexts and texts associated with this array of women from various social strata taking part in literary circles. Like the group of characters in The Book of the Courtier, circles of writers enthusiastically carried on the querelle tradition, using it as a device in their writing. Sir Philip Sidney, writing The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia for his coterie of family and friends, has Musidorus scorn the “peevish imperfections” of the female sex, as he reprimands Pyrocles for his choice of Amazon costume, noting that the “effeminate love of a woman doth so womanize a man that, if you 2000), 1–2.] I also use the terms salon and academy in their relevant French and Italian contexts. Because associations with the word salon often best indicate social activities or rituals of groups, thanks to the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century usage, I occasionally employ the terms salon-like or salon style. For the same reason, I also use the more familiar term salon to describe the gatherings at the homes of Tullia d’Aragona in Italy rather than classify them as ridotti (private, salon-like gatherings or retreats) or pseudoacademic gatherings. When I use the term academic, I refer to the type of meetings held by the groups of Renaissance intellectuals who attempted to imitate the academies of classical antiquity.

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yield to it, it will not only make you an Amazon, but a launder, a distaff-spinner, or whatsoever other vile occupation their idle heads can imagine and their weak hands perform.”16 In this passage, Sidney refers to Omphale’s famous degradation of Hercules, a classic tale frequently recounted by traditional attackers of women in the querelle. In Solitaire premier, Pléiade member Pontus de Tyard has his character Solitaire take the part of a traditional defender of women who claims that women have far more “diverse perfections” than men. He points out that the revered Muses were made female in order to exhibit these wonders and to show that women, too, must therefore be “excellently constant.” Pasithée, his interlocutor, expresses relief at his conclusion and reminds him that her sex is often accused of inconstancy and flightiness.17 These passages from Sidney and Tyard recall the traditional polarization of the querelle which suggests that women are either perfect spiritual creatures who are quiet, if not silent, constant, obedient, and, above all, chaste, or that they are Satan’s minions—stupid, greedy, lustful, vain, and considered responsible for most of the ills that afflict humankind. Another, less easily defined line of argument appears in texts by writers, usually women, who eschew the traditional dichotomy, presenting instead such arguments that might be summarized as “men and women have issues,” or, as Jane Anger puts it, “Our behaviors alter daily, because men’s virtues decay hourly.”18 In The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, Mary Wroth, writing for a circle of female friends and relatives, recounts instance after instance of men’s inconstancy. Her characters Amphilanthus and Parselius vacillate between women, moving from one love to the next, and occasionally back to the first, wreaking heartbreak as they go. Louise Labé, an habituée of Lyonnais literary circles, scorns the Petrarchan swearing of eternal constancy by a male lover in Sonnet 23, as she dryly questions, “Where are you, tears that lasted so briefly, / And Death, which was supposed to guarantee / Your faithful love and oft-repeated vows?”19 It appears that at times women’s writing reflects something that might more accurately be called the Querelle des hommes. In her Débat de Folie et d’Amour, however, Labé shows the effects of Folly upon both men’s and women’s behavior in love, outlining the sometimes comic, sometimes tragic extremes that both men and women go to in love. Isabella Andreini does something similar in her pastoral tragicomedy La Mirtilla in which she features a traditionally cold, chaste Petrarchan beloved so 16

Sir Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia), ed. Victor Skretkowicz (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 71–2. 17 Pontus de Tyard, Solitaire Premier, ed. Silvio F. Baridon (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1950), 46–7. 18 Jane Anger, Her Protection for Women, Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women in England, 1540–1640, ed. Katherine Usher Henderson and Barbara F. McManus (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 179. 19 Louise Labé, Sonnet 23, trans. Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency of Eros: Women’s Love Lyric in Europe, 1540–1620 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 169.

Introduction

7

vain that she can love only herself, as well as a wildly idealistic shepherd who comically tries to bribe his way into his beloved’s affections. Thus, some writers take a broader view of the querelle, insisting that the behaviors of both men and women are to be judged. Nevertheless, the “official” or dominant literary quarrel, in which the majority of participants were male, remained resolutely focused on the nature of women. Input from women on the questions that arose from the querelle was, relatively speaking, prolific, due in part to the venues that provided them outlets for their voices, such as the variety of types of literary circles. To understand the origins of such groups, we must look to the classical roots of the Renaissance. These groups who met for literary and philosophical discussion, as well as elegant dining, musical entertainments, and game playing, had their origins in the academies of classical antiquity via the early academies of the Italian Renaissance. Paolo Ulvioni, repeating Scipione Bargagli’s observations from Delle lodi dell’Academie (1564), notes that “le origini delle Accademie risalivano all’antica Grecia” [the origins of the Academies arise from ancient Greece] and that they were born in Athens, with the first Accademia, that of “divin Platone,” constituting the prototype for all the others.20 Making further reference to Bargagli, Ulvioni suggests that four conditions favored the birth and development of the Italian academies: a temperate climate in which “chiari e grandi ingegni” [illustrious and great geniuses] could easily live and sustain themselves; noble-minded princes and lords as exemplified by the Medici; beautiful and courteous women who inspire the soul and intellect; and virtuous men who guide and counsel.21 The notion of this ideal intellectual climate, perpetuated by genius, enlightened leadership, and virtuous men and women, inspired groups of intellectuals across Europe and England to create their own academies or more informal circles. The activities that served as entertainments for such gatherings are important to consider in light of literary production and querelle concerns. In such gatherings, men and women carried out verbally the philosophical debates generated by Neoplatonic thought. They discussed the ideals of love, virtue, and honor much as do Castiglione’s courtiers and ladies in The Book of the Courtier, a work replete with querelle references, as the epigraph suggests. Additionally, they recited poetry, told stories, listened to music, sang, and danced.22 These activities are reflected in their poetry, dialogues, plays, and romances and, we might say, participated in the production of these texts, if we accept the expanded notion of 20

Paolo Ulvioni, “Accademie e cultura in Italia dalla Controriforma all’Arcadia, Il caso veneziano,” Libri e documenti: Archivio storico civico e Biblioteca Trivulziana (Milano: Archivio Storico Civico e Biblioteca Trivulziana, 1979), 21. 21 Ulvioni, 21. Regarding Ulvioni’s statements, see also Scipion Bargagli, Delle Lodi dell’Accademie Oratione (1569), reprinted in Dell’Imprese di Scipion Bargagli (Venetia: Francesco de’Franceschi Senese, 1594), 512–13 and 530–41. 22 Fiora A. Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa, Twayne’s World Authors Series 658 (Boston: Twayne, 1982), 9.

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textuality reflected in Clifford Geertz’s theory of a “continuum between texts and the textuality of behavior.”23 The idea that an action and the inscription of the action perpetuate each other is especially well-illustrated by the activities and works of literary circle members who, as Margaret Ezell points out, “wrote their responses to the texts of others in a continual literary flow.”24 The concepts of debate, point and counter-point, and of writers writing in response to the ideas, as well as actions, of familiar others, then, are intrinsic to this study. That the debates often moved from orality to textuality is clear as both male and female writers bring salon and academic discourse into their written arguments. The sense of orality shadowing the arguments employed by the writers in this study underscores the immediacy of the orality/textuality relationship. Intertexts are taken for granted, as is the understanding that audiences will be familiar enough with the “formulas and themes” in use that they will be amused and perhaps instructed by the permutations of them deployed in the textualized arguments.25 In his important study on John Donne as a coterie poet, Arthur Marotti points out that “Donne expected his audience to have the literary and social sophistication enabling them to contribute cocreatively to the dramatic and rhetorical realization of his poetic texts (my emphasis).”26 The same is true of any author writing for a coterie audience. That author has in mind a context that is intrinsically connected with the world of intellectual inquiry and debate, a great deal of which is generated through oral encounters among salon, academic, or literary circle gatherings. Walter J. Ong notes that “[t]hough Renaissance humanism invented modern textual scholarship and presided over the development of letterpress printing, it also harkened back to antiquity and thereby gave new life to orality.”27 As groups of Renaissance intellectuals, both male and female, sought to imitate the academies of ancient Greece by forming their own so-called academies and more informal salons or literary circles, issues from the querelle became standard fixtures, or loci communes, in their discussions and debates. The popularity of commonplaces from the querelle had continued from the Middle Ages on, but a heightened sense of interest in querelle topics during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries may be attributed to the fact that the status of women was in such a fascinatingly unstable place, thanks to differing notions about women’s education and abilities, 23

Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretative Anthropology (New York: BasicBooks-HarperCollins, 1983), 31; W. B. Worthen, “Disciplines of the Text/Sites of Performance,” The Drama Review 39, no. 1 (1995): 14. 24 Margaret Ezell, “Reading Pseudonyms in Seventeenth-Century English Coterie Literature,” Essays in Literature 21 (1994): 23. 25 For a discussion of manuscript culture, rhetorical formulae, and intertextuality, see Ong, 133. 26 Arthur F. Marotti, John Donne, Coterie Poet (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 58–9. 27 Ong, 115.

Introduction

9

and, not least, the fact that more women than ever before were taking active roles in intellectual society, adding their voices to the debates. Questions about women often arise in the context of discussing the questioni d’amore, the questions about love frequently used as commonplaces to spark discussion in medieval courtly circles and later in Renaissance literary circles. Since such groups, especially the salons, were often hosted or co-hosted by women who participated in discussions and circulated their writing in manuscript among the group members, a dynamic evolved which paradoxically underscored and confounded Renaissance notions about the place of women in such circles. Were they to be present to inspire men with their beauty, spirituality, and chastity, rather like Petrarch’s Laura? Were they to be like the hetaerae of ancient Greece? If so, were only highly educated courtesans, such as those in Renaissance Italy to be included in such groups? Should noblewomen be so educated and similarly allowed entry into such elite circles? Would that make them adopt courtesan-like behaviors? Did education for women promote their promiscuity? We may observe the rapid development of anxieties such lines of questioning produce and readily understand the proliferation of the Querelle des femmes during this period of shifting social relationships between women and men. Writing of late seventeenth- through early nineteenth-century literary society, the members of the Folger Collective on Early Women Critics call early modern salon culture a “border space between private and public life” 28 in an attempt to label this social, liminal space in which women interacted with each other and their male contemporaries. Such liminal “border spaces” clearly provided the developmental grounds for many women’s participation in literary society during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as well, but the diversity of venues and participants in them defies easy categorization in terms of public and private life. These spaces emerged in academies and salon-style gatherings in Italy, salons and, to a limited extent, the court academies of France, and English coteries. In recent years, the concept of public and private spheres in the context of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French salons has been rigorously questioned by scholars, especially in relation to their considerations of Jürgen Habermas’s “bourgeois public sphere,” and such arguments are valid to consider in the broader context of this study as well. Steven Kale suggests that salons were “useful to aristocrats” because they perpetuated the feudal tradition of placing noble women “at the center of a family’s public responsibilities.”29 Dena Goodman simply calls the use of public and private sphere theory in this period a “false opposition.”30 28

Folger Collective on Early Women Critics, Women Critics 1660–1820 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), xv. 29 Steven Kale, “Women, the Public Sphere, and the Persistence of Salons,” French Historical Studies 25.1 (2002): 146. 30 Dena Goodman, “Public Sphere and Private Life: Toward a Synthesis of Current Historigraphical Approaches to the Old Regime,” History and Theory 31.1 (1992): 1.

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Norbert Elias, in The Court Society, argues that the concept of Victorian public and private spheres is not particularly relevant in the seigniorial society of the ancien régime because in that historical moment a noble household was a very public one.31 Facets of these observations also hold true for the households and social positions of female and male members of the sixteenth- and early seventeenthcentury literary circles. During this period, literary circles gathered in such venues as the home of the courtesan, Tullia d’Aragona, in Florence, arguably a commercial space masquerading as a private space, and the provincial home of the Mesdames des Roches in Poitiers, members of the robe elite, who cultivated an atmosphere of chaste exceptionality for themselves, even as they, like Aragona, opened their home for gatherings of learned men. Literary circles also met in the great houses of nobles. At his Venetian home Ca’Venier in Santa Maria Formosa, Domenico Venier’s hospitality extended to “writers, artists, musicians, and patrician scholars,”32 as well as the courtesan Veronica Franco and the virtuosa Gaspara Stampa. At the Retz’s country house at Noisy and their Paris quarters, the hôtel de Dampierre in the Faubourg St. Honoré, elite French nobles and royals gathered. The château of Pontus de Tyard called Bissey-sur-Fley was popular with Lyonnais literary circle habitués who ranged from French nobility to the bourgeoise Louise Labé; similarly, the Countess of Pembroke’s Wilton House in Salisbury was open to her noble friends and relatives as well as aspiring writers of lower circumstances, such as the poet and playwright Samuel Daniel and the lawyer Abraham Fraunce. An especially favored few met in the abodes of royalty, such as King Henri III’s chamber for meetings of the court academy at the Louvre and the royal residence at Ollainville.33 These illustrations of settings and the classes of women and men who inhabited them clearly range widely and contradictorily in terms of their private and public aspects, rendering a blanket statement about women’s emergence from a generic private sphere into a generic public one via 31

Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 50–53. Elias argues that “[a]s court aristocrats had no professional life in our sense, the distinction between professional and private life is inapplicable,” 53. See also Kale on Elias’s views, 146. 32 Rosenthal, 177. 33 For further descriptions of these locales and gatherings, see the following: Georgina Masson, Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), 91–92, 98–102, and 115; Rosenthal, 17, 89, 177; Anne Larsen, From Mother and Daughter: Poems, Dialogues, and Letters by Les Dames des Roches, The Other Voice Series (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming); L. Clark Keating, Studies on the Literary Salon in France (1550–1615) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941), 105; Madeleine Lazard, Louise Labé, Lyonnaise (Paris: Fayard, 2004), 105; Roberts, introduction to The Poems, 15; Frances Yates, The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century, The Warburg Institute: University of London 1947 (Nedneln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1968), 31–3.

Introduction

11

participation in literary circles problematic. The Folger Collective’s observation, however, that literary circle society “gave women unprecedented opportunities to participate in shaping a critical discourse” may be seen in the earlier context considered in this study, especially regarding the discourse of the querelle. Regarding the Querelle des femmes, the presence of educated, opinionated women in these circles gave a fresh immediacy to the arguments, and the nature of these venues permitted women to join in the debates that arose. Moreover, excluding meetings of academies, hostesses often presided over the activities of such groups. The result was a fascinating friction that inspired, both positively and negatively, many writers of the period. Instead of calling literary circles border spaces between private and public life, in the scope of this study we might more profitably see them as liminal rhetorical spaces that facilitated women’s involvement in the humanist play of ideas. Depending upon their class and social status, the women in this study attained their humanist educations in a variety of ways, but in each individual case, her education was her entrée into the world of humanist intellectual and philosophical inquiry and literary production, a world traditionally considered men’s domain.34 The literary circle thus provided a rhetorical space in which women could participate in this world, an idea that I adapt from Susan Broomhall’s recognition of the published rhetorical spaces available to sixteenth-century women writers. Broomhall borrows the term rhetorical space from Lorraine Code, who calls such spaces “fictive but not fanciful or fixed locations, whose (tacit, rarely spoken) territorial imperatives structure and limit the kinds of utterances that can be voiced within them with a reasonable expectation of uptake and ‘choral support’. . . .” She also calls them “textured locations” in which “it matters who is speaking and where and why, and where such mattering bears directly upon the possibility of knowledge claims [and] moral pronouncements . . . .” 35 These descriptions of rhetorical space resonate with the dialogic atmosphere cultivated in Renaissance literary circles. In such rhetorical spaces, women and men could interact in ways circumscribed by cultural manners and mores and influenced by philosophical ideals, yet, at the same time, critique and transgress those very boundaries, thanks to the scope for play inherent in such spaces. The ludic nature of literary circle interaction is part of the creative matrix that such circles provided for their members, especially those influenced by issues arising from debate topics. A paradigm useful to consider when discussing the 34

See Larsen’s article, “Reading/Writing and Gender in the Renaissance: The Case of Catherine des Roches (1542–1587), Symposium 41.4 (1987–1988): 292–307, for a discussion of educated women’s tenuous position between traditionally gendered spheres represented in polemical statements about them by the distaff and the pen. 35 Susan Broomhall, Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 71. Lorraine Code’s theory of rhetorical spaces is articulated in her book, Rhetorical Spaces: Essays on Gendered Locations (New York: Routledge, 1995), ix–x.

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ludic nature of salons or literary circles may be derived from Michael Bristol’s Carnival and Theater. In it, Bristol takes his cue from sociological and anthropological studies by Victor Turner, René Girard, and Michel Foucault as he explores the cultural significance of the theater in Renaissance England. He asserts: Theater is an art form; it is also a social institution. By favoring a certain style of representation and a particular etiquette of reception, the institutional setting of a performance informs and focuses the meaning of a dramatic text and facilitates the dissemination of that meaning through the collective activity of the audience . . . . Because of its capacity to create and sustain a briefly intensified social life, the theater is festive and political as well as literary—a privileged site for the celebration and critique of the needs and concerns of the polis.36

Similar consideration of the characteristics of Renaissance literary circles provides insight into the context for the querelle literature they produced. The Renaissance literary circle was certainly a social institution, and, when we consider the performative nature of its gatherings, it might be said to constitute an art form that favored specific styles of self-representation by those who frequented it. It fostered a particular etiquette of the reception of the writing, conversation topics, and musical entertainments presented at its gatherings. Like theater, there was an audience who listened, watched, and judged, assimilating into their consciousness the debates, readings, story-telling, and musical presentations. Additionally, there were specific roles for the participants. All were to be masters of the art of conversation. Some played musical instruments and sang. Some danced, told stories, and read or composed poetry. These characteristic activities of group ritual informed the literature of the period and were further perpetuated by their reproduction in it. Episodes of debate, poetry or singing contests, poetry composition, and musical interludes permeate much literature of the time. Of course, the dialogue genre itself was extremely popular. These devices clearly echo both classical sources and salon ritual, illustrating the interest in the period for imitating classical texts and classical pastimes, such as those that might have taken place in an academy of classical antiquity. Men and women, however, appropriated these traditions according to their own literary and philosophical agendas, and some women, especially, rewrote the traditional gender roles and ideology regarding women. In Impersonations, Stephen Orgel asserts that “the ideology of a culture does not describe its operation, only the ideals and assumptions, often refracted and unacknowledged, of its ruling elite.”37 The context for Orgel’s statement is his 36

Michael Bristol, Carnival and Theater: Plebeian Culture and the Structure of Authority in Renaissance England (New York: Routledge, 1985), 3. 37 Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 125.

Introduction

13

commentary on the public activities of early modern women in England. The truth in it, however, may be applied to the operation of both Continental and English early modern women’s literary endeavors, and it is especially applicable to women’s place and performance in Renaissance literary circles. Traditional Renaissance ideology as formulated by male fantasy and desire38 says that women are encouraged to be part of salon society to provide beauty and inspiration for their male counterparts and to be something of a moral barometer for their discussions. The ideal is illustrated in Book Four of The Courtier (1528), in which Castiglione has Elisabetta Gonzaga suggest, “if the activities of the courtier are directed as they should be to the virtuous end I have in mind, then I for one am quite convinced not only that they are neither harmful nor vain but that they are most advantageous and deserving of infinite praise.”39 With that prompt to guide the interlocutors, the Duchess fulfills her role as the Neoplatonic ideal feminine influence, guiding the male speakers to higher planes of thought on the concept of virtue for the courtier. Of course, near the end of The Courtier, Pietro Bembo is so inspired by the discourse that he gives a treatise on Neoplatonic love that concludes with his experiencing for a moment the very essence of such love, and he must be called back from his reverie.40 The group at the Court of Urbino thus provides an ideal form for traditional Renaissance ideology regarding literary circles, such as those that Bargagli describes in which women are to be present to inspire men. The reality, however, often deviates from the ideal. In reality, some women actively took part in such circles and provided much more than inspiration. When we look at the literary circle as a rhetorical space created through social ritual out of which literature is generated by both sexes, especially if we hypothesize that the women involved acted as more than ornaments to the proceedings, several things become clear. First, like theater, we could argue that the literary circle, too, holds a privileged place in social life where events of social and political importance occur. The literary circle presents a venue for debate and critique of social, political, and philosophical concerns by both sexes and, thus, gives the literary circle “an importance of its own.”41 Second, the contention that the institutional setting “informs and focuses the meaning of a . . . text and facilitates the dissemination of that meaning through the collective activity of the audience” (my emphasis) suggests that in order to appreciate fully whatever “meaning” we derive from reading Renaissance literature produced by members of literary circles, we ought to consider the works and activities of the group as a 38

For a discussion of the shaping powers of male fantasy and desire on Renaissance ideology regarding women, see “A Perfect Gentleman: Performing Gynephobia in Urbino” and “A Perfect Lady: Pygmalion and His ‘Creature’” in Harry Berger, Jr.’s The Absence of Grace: Sprezzatura and Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy Books (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 63–86; 87–115. 39 Castiglione, 284. 40 Castiglione, 342–3. 41 Here, and in the following two points, I paraphrase Bristol, 3.

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whole to achieve anything resembling the institutionalized arena of thought which influenced the production of the text.42 Third, to examine literary works by men and women writers who “collectively” take part in such groups is to explore the products of artists who are assimilating their salon roles as well as those of their friends into their works, a consideration that further illuminates the sources of such a writer’s sense of authority and purpose as he or she brings the philosophical issues of interest at large in society into the controlled spaces of his or her own arguments.43 With this critical framework in mind, I place Claude-Catherine de Clermont, the maréschale, and later duchesse, de Retz, at the center of this study by exploring the influence of her salon persona in her own literary circle, as well as the ways in which her career in courtly and salon society both reflects and deflects querelle issues. Moreover, I indicate the ways in which Retz’s literary and performative activities place her at a central point in the transmission of Renaissance literary and performative trends for women from Italy to England, thus making her “career” a critically important one to observe when contextualizing the writing and literary circle activities of the other women writers in this study. In keeping with the goal of putting texts by men and women who took part in the same or closely related literary circles into dialogues that reveal the influence of the querelle, I examine texts by the Italian writers Tullia d’Aragona, Sperone Speroni, Isabella Andreini, and Torquato Tasso; the French writers Louise Labé and Pontus de Tyard; and the English writers Mary Sidney Herbert, Elizabeth Cary, Mary Wroth, Anna Weamys, Samuel Daniel, and Philip Sidney. In Chapter One, I focus on how the celebrated courtesan Tullia d’Aragona writes with considerable familiarity of her opponent as she engages Sperone Speroni in a debate in which impressions of her own character are at stake. In her Dialogo della infinità di amore she depicts herself as an articulate, intelligent woman whose humanist education arms her with sharp, insightful arguments that keep her male interlocutor en garde. She writes her dialogue in response to that of Speroni, entitled Dialogo di amore, which was inspired by his encounters with Aragona at salon gatherings in Venice around 1535. Speroni casts his dialogue in such a setting and makes her a key figure in the debate about the nature of love. While he gives a passing nod to the idea that Tullia should enjoy her Diotima-like status as a cortigiana onesta, that status is not reflected in his portrayal of her. On the contrary, his version of her character is a stereotypically lustful, jealous, wheedling courtesan who begs to be enlightened by the men in the group. Aragona, too, places her dialogue in a salon setting and gives herself the role of hostess, but that, more or less, is where the similarities in their portrayals end. Aragona’s dialogue provides many rich counterpoints to that of Speroni as she cannily interweaves debate after debate in which she shows her wit and knowledge to an 42 43

Bristol, 3. Bristol, 3.

Introduction

15

advantage before giving Speroni, by name, a resounding reprimand at the end of her piece by having other male interlocutors defend her rare intelligence and her universally lauded literary academy. Aragona’s reputation for extraordinary musical talent and eloquence foreshadows the gifts for which early Italian actresses are praised. Scholars usually argue that early actresses were first courtesans, and, although none have ever directly proven that Isabella Andreini started her career that way, her gifts for singing and eloquence and her facility with languages suggest that she indeed was given the rudiments of a humanist education similar to that given courtesans. In Chapter Two, I look at reflections of the courtesan/actress attributes in the characterization of innamorate and explore the ways in which Andreini’s female characters in La Mirtilla contrast with those of Torquato Tasso in his Aminta. Although they were probably not as often in social contact with each other as were Aragona and Speroni, Andreini, who was made a member of the Accademia degli Intenti, and Torquato Tasso, a frequenter of courtly and academic gatherings, were acquaintances and unquestionably aware of each other’s work. Both were also influenced by the academic tastes of the courtly society in which they mingled. As a veteran performer of roles in Tasso’s play, Aminta, Andreini’s response to that play, her pastoral, La Mirtilla, is a study in imitation and subversion, with special attention given to illustrating the strength and resourcefulness of women—an area of her play which contrasts sharply with Tasso’s traditional damsel in distress. Although Tasso’s play does not fall neatly into the category of a misogynistic attack on women, as manifested in some polemics in the querelle, his stereotypical portrayal of women as weak, helpless, and easy sexual prey for male predators of both the human and satyr varieties provides Andreini with grounds for launching an intertextual debate over those particular querelle issues. Ultimately, her play brings into question the concepts of women’s supposedly innate helplessness, jealous natures, and inability to reason and act on their own behalf, as she writes directly in response to Tasso’s Aminta. Italian players held an enormous fascination for those associated with the French court. Andreini’s popularity with French royals and nobles is reflected in her acclaimed performance for the wedding festivities of Christine de Lorraine and Ferdinando de’Medici in 1589, as well as in Henri IV’s patronage of her from about 1601 to 1604.44 While Italian players in general were very popular, Italian 44 Louise George Clubb, in Italian Drama in Shakespeare’s Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), discusses Andreini’s performance of La pazzia d’Isabella for the Medici wedding. Regarding Andreini’s performances in France, Clubb points out that Isabella and Francesco Andreini “enter the history of the stage in 1578” after a tour in France, which suggests that they may have been performing with the Gelosi during their tour in France in 1577, 262. Anne MacNeil traces some of Andreini’s and the Gelosi’s performances in France in an extensive chronology in Music and Women of the Commedia dell’Arte in the Late Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 187–263. See also MacNeil, “Music and the Life and Work of Isabella Andreini: Humanistic Attitudes

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actresses especially made profound impressions on those who saw them perform, and the noblewomen associated with the French court were rumored to imitate them.45 Known for their learnedness, wit, and alleged risqué dealings with gentlemen of the court, the ladies-in-waiting who attended Catherine de Medici were, like Italian actresses, known for their performances of various kinds. On one hand, the women of the French court were associated with tales of marital infidelity and political intrigue; on the other many were acclaimed for their writing, their dancing in court spectacles, and their witty participation in salon society. In Chapter Three, I explore the performative nature of Retz’s exchanges in academic and salon society, as well as her participation in court spectacles. To that end, I note the lawyer Estienne Pasquier’s memories of her participation at a salon gathering in her home, the accounts of her debate before the Academie du palais and her Latin oration for Polish ambassadors who, in 1573, came to request the duc d’Anjou for their king, and her association with and performance in court spectacles, including the Balet comique de la Royne (1581). I especially emphasize Retz and her circle’s fostering of the use of positive querelle rhetoric in the form of Petrarchan, Neoplatonic encomiastic poetry to buttress her and her female friends’ reputations in literary society, and I point out the ways in which Retz’s witty salon banter, her learned orations, and her dancing are all reminiscent of the performative traits valued in the actresses of the Italian stage. These observations indicate the ways in which such activities were coming to be considered arguably acceptable behaviors for noblewomen, as well as illustrate the spread of Continental culture. Toward Music, Poetry, and Theater During the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1994), 172. 45 Pierre de l’Estoile, an audiencier or “clerk-in-chief” for the Parlement, writes in his Mémoires-Journaux (1574–1611), on June 26, 1577, that “the Court assembled and issued an order forbidding the Italian comedians, I Gelosi, to perform any more in Paris. Some said . . . that their comedies taught nothing but fornication and adultery, and served as a school of debauchery for the youth of Paris of both sexes. And in truth their influence was so great, principally among the young ladies, that they took to showing their breasts—like soldiers—which shook with perpetual motion and served as a bellows to their forge.” In spite of outrage from some quarters over the licentiousness of the Italian troupe, they held sway with the right person, namely, Henri III. On July 27, L’Estoile writes that “having presented to the court letters patent from the King authorizing them to perform despite the court’s decision,” the Gelosi “were refused appeal and charged not to bring the question up again on pain of a fine . . . but at the beginning of September following they opened again at the Hotel de Bourbon in defiance of the court, with the express permission of the King, the corruption of the times being such that clowns, buffoons, prostitutes, and mignons have all the credit and influence.” L’Estoile also notes some scandalous performances by Catherine de Medici’s ladies-in-waiting that he seems to associate with Italian influence. See L’Estoile’s Mémoires-Journaux. The Paris of Henry of Navarre as Seen by Pierre de L’Estoile, ed. and trans. Nancy Lyman Roelker (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), 58–60.

Introduction

17

The conflation of activities common to the women of French salon society and Italian courtesans, virtuose, and some noblewomen indicates the fertile grounds for a skirmish in the querelle that erupted initially in the 1540s in France and remained popular throughout the rest of the century. Called the Querelle des Amyes, it was inspired by such writers as Bertrand de la Borderie and Antoine Héroët who, in their respective works, L’Amye de Court (1541) and La Parfaicte Amye (1542), started a trend in pamphlet writing that exalted or deplored the character of the courtly woman and argued hotly about the nature of love. The early phase of this querelle was a critical part of the backdrop for the career of Louise Labé, the daughter of a ropemaker whose social ambition was realized through her interaction in literary circles. She became one of the early modern women writers whose works have never been as thoroughly “lost” as those of others. In Chapter Four, I discuss literary society in Lyon and the anxieties that women such as Labé produced in it, even while being considered central to it. Then I examine how Labé’s writing interacts intertextually with that of Pontus de Tyard (1521–1605), her friend and a staunch Neoplatonist. They shared the same publisher, Jean de Tournes, who was known for his interest in and publication of querelle literature, including that made popular by the Querelle des Amyes. Read together, Labé’s dedication to her Œuvres and her dialogue and Tyard’s preface to Solitaire premier, along with passages from it, illustrate the tensions between a nontraditional and a traditional querelle stance. Although Labé was not writing her Débat directly in response to Tyard’s Solitaire premier, she no doubt had such Neoplatonic treatises in mind while writing it, and the two dialogues read together provide an excellent encapsulation of the friction between men’s and women’s views of ideal relationships in love. As in the cases of Aragona and Speroni, as well as Andreini and Tasso, an intertextual conflict arises between Labé’s and Tyard’s dialogues regarding portrayals of women, in particular, and of lovers in general. Tyard’s depiction of the ideal Neoplatonic beloved Pasithée is greatly at odds with Labé’s critique of human behavior in love that explores and occasionally skewers the actions and beliefs of both women and men. While Tyard portrays a man in the grip of divine poetic fury who seeks to educate a beautiful, brilliant, and highly circumspect young woman who adores him, giving his readers a glimpse of the ideal Neoplatonic relationship, Labé allows one of her narrators to slip, at one point, into a first person diatribe by Folly on the painful realities of men’s and women’s behaviors in and expectations of love. She spares neither sex in her rousing critique and thus throws down the literary gauntlet before faithful disciples of Petrarchism and Neoplatonism. Skirmishes in the querelle surface in England, as does women’s involvement in literary circles and performances in court entertainments, activities associated with Continental women. In England, the Sidney circle provides something of an Anglicized version of a Continental literary circle, due in part, no doubt, to Sir Philip Sidney’s encounters during his grand tour. Like her French counterparts who hosted literary salons, wrote and circulated their work in manuscript, and

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avidly patronized the poets of their time, Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke, played hostess, muse, and patron to a group of writers interested in imitating Continental literary trends, activities assiduously imitated by her kinswoman Lucy Harington Russell, the Countess of Bedford. Like the Morel circle, hosted by Jean de Morel and his wife, Antoinette de Loynes, which especially encouraged composition in classical languages, or the Retz circle, which supported a revival of Petrarchism, the Sidney circle is especially known for experimentation with closet drama, in addition to Petrarchan poetry and romances. In Chapter Five, I introduce the background of the English querelle under Queen Elizabeth and King James. Next, I explore the development of the Sidney circle’s imitative practices regarding Continental literary trends, in particular focusing on the ways in which querelle issues and national religio-political issues become conflated. Finally, regarding texts that engage in querelle debate, I look at two ways in which closet dramas produced by members of the Sidney circle engage in intertextual debate with plays written for the public stage and popular pamphlets that debate the nature of women. Specifically, I discuss treatments of women who woo and depictions of women in tragedy, especially regarding their options for heroic status. From examining the macrocosm of imitative practices and the microcosm of a specific genre of literature adopted and adapted by Mary Sidney Herbert and other members the Sidney circle from Continental and classical precedents, we may see how this group recalls those of French salon society in the sixteenth century, as well as how they demonstrate a solidarity regarding nontraditional stances on querelle issues. An examination of how Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, Mary Wroth’s Urania, and Anna Weamys’s Continuation of the Arcadia reflect the engagement of three generations of literary circles in the Querelle des femmes is the subject of the Chapter Six. For each author, the querelle is central to the shaping and, we could say, marketing of his or her romance. Sidney makes use of the stances of both traditional defenders and attackers of women in many instances in his romance, depicting young, beautiful heroines of surpassing virtue, and young, dashing heroes who are eternally faithful to their chosen beloveds. He also makes use of a villainess and a depraved stepmother of middle age, and assorted other female characters whose appearances, personalities, and stages of experience are related in terms of querelle rhetoric. As a male writer constructing a fantastic and often comic pastoral world for his coterie audience, Sidney received little but praise for his endeavor from his contemporaries, and the Arcadia in its revised, “new” form, or, more recently, in its “old” form, has enjoyed scholars’ attention ever since.46 Although the nature of that attention has varied, criticism has focused on the text or 46

In her introduction to The Old Arcadia (Oxford World Classics [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999]), Katharine Duncan-Jones traces the reception of the “New” Arcadia, which she refers to as a “literary centaur” and compares this disjointed text to the “Old” Arcadia and its reception after its rediscovery in 1907 and publication in 1926, viii–x.

Introduction

19

texts; the author himself has maintained a positive, even cherished, reputation in English literary history. Sidney’s niece, on the other hand, writing in response to her uncle’s romance for a circle of her own contemporaries, produced a romance significantly darker in tone and rife with exposés of relations between men and women. As a consequence, she was reviled in courtly circles and labeled a hermaphrodite and a monster for her temerity to allow her work to appear in print. Issues from the querelle pervade both her work and the public’s reception of it and her as a writer, demonstrating that the Querelle des femmes was far more than a literary game. Weamys’s Continuation recalls the traditional querelle atmosphere of Sidney’s Arcadia, a stance no doubt endorsed by her circle of royalist readers, and the careful emphasis on her position as a writer, specifically as a young woman writer, is worthy of note. The numerous poets of her circle who write laudatory poems for the prefatory matter of the romance hasten to illustrate that she is a woman of utmost respectability who is, in effect, channeling the great Sir Philip Sidney and not actually writing the work by herself. Instead, his guiding spirit is claimed to be the true author. To that end, his political views, too, are shown to undergird their royalist agenda. As a result, Weamys receives mainly praise for her literary efforts. In each of these three romances, written for different literary circles but connected by the thread of Sidney’s influence, the authors and their circumstances provide a compelling look at the influence of the Querelle des femmes in reality and in print. This series of examples of literary circle habitués and their engagement in the Querelle des femmes illustrates in part why the reexamination of works by Renaissance women writers in light of feminist and new historicist criticism has been a key component of Renaissance scholarship for nearly three decades now. Inclusion of women’s texts in “the big picture” of early modern literature reveals fascinating intertextual connections that shed new light on the rich context in which writers were engaged. It also suggests the importance of reading works by male and female writers together, in pairs or groups, instead of isolating texts by either sex in survey courses or segregating work by women into special topics courses, such as those focused specifically on women’s literature. Ultimately, the exploration of men’s and women’s approaches to topics from the Querelle des femmes in the context of writing produced by literary circle members provides a window on the debates perpetually sparked by these issues as they traverse national, cultural, and, especially, gender boundaries and sheds new light on the “ideals and assumptions” that Orgel argues are only a fraction of the historical whole.

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Chapter One

Tullia d’Aragona, Sperone Speroni, and the Inscription of Salon Personae Fasseli gratia per poetessa Pardon her, for she’s a poet Cosimo dei Medici, 15471 Libera tu, signora tu, miserella? e non hai membro sulla persona, che non sia servo di tutto’l populo. You, free, signora, you miserable woman? Yet, you have no limb that is not at the service of all the populace. Sperone Speroni, Contra le cortigiane, 15752

In Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance, Georgina Masson calls Tullia d’Aragona (ca. 1510–56) “the intellectual queen of a literary salon.”3 Drawing upon contemporary accounts, Masson presents Aragona as the consummate salon hostess or guest, noting that in addition to her literary skills, she “possessed a voice of great charm and was an excellent performer on the lute.”4 Aragona hosted gatherings in Rome, Venice, Ferrara, and Florence, with those in Florence culminating in a recognized “salon or literary academy.”5 As a published author and courtesan, Aragona’s place in literary society was complex. Some alleged that 1

Cosimo’s pardon is officially recorded by his minister Lelio Torelli in a document dated 1 May 1547 in the Archivio di Stato in Florence. See Enrico Celani, introduction to Le Rime di Tullia d’Aragona (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1968), XXXIX. 2 Sperone Speroni, Contra le cortigiana, Parte seconda, Opere, ed. Marco Forcellini and Natale Dalle Laste (Roma: Vecchiarelli Editore, 1989), 238. 3 Georgina Masson, Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), 88. 4 Masson especially relies on descriptions by Pietro Aretino, 89, Giovanni Battista Giraldi, and Ludovico Domenichi, 91. Like Masson, Rinaldina Russell refers to Aretino’s account of Aragona in “Zoppino fatto frate e Ludovico puttaniere” from his Ragionamenti (1534), in which he explains that Aragona was reared to be a virtuosa—usually an accomplished musician—by her courtesan mother, Giulia Campana [Introduction to Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, Tullia d’Aragona, trans. Rinaldina Russell and Bruce Merry, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 22]. 5 See Masson’s tracing of these salons, 91–2, 98–102, and 115.

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her literary activities were merely a screen for prostitution; others fervently praised her work, which appeared in numerous editions, suggesting that it was valued for more than its association with a famous cortigiana. In any case, Aragona’s combined infamy and fame were such that her legacy includes vivid illustrations of her interactions in Italian salon society that show not only how a courtesan’s salon persona might foreshadow the performative characteristics of early Italian actresses but also how salon personae and salon encounters could influence Renaissance dialogues. First, I explore Aragona’s and Sperone Speroni’s literary careers and connections in literary society. Then, I examine how the dialogues inspired by Aragona’s salon encounters, her Dialogo della infinità di amore (1547) and Sperone Speroni’s Dialogo di amore (1542), reveal an intertextual engagement in the Querelle des femmes in which the issues are both personified and addressed by two very different versions of the same character called Tullia. This exchange illustrates the friction generated during this period over women’s, and in this case a courtesan’s, abilities to participate in the life of the mind. Moreover, the inscription of salon personae gestures to the ludic nature of salon debate, depicting the move from orality to a scripted textuality that is dramatic in nature.

Aragona and Speroni in literary society Performances, be they sexual or intellectual, were part of the honest courtesan’s stock in trade. Inevitably, as the quotations above from Cosimo dei Medici’s statement regarding Aragona’s skirmish with Florentine sumptuary law and from Sperone Speroni’s scathing recantation of his views of courtesans suggest, Aragona’s literary activities could not help but be intrinsically interwoven with her career as a courtesan. Critics have tried to assess the writing while downplaying the career as a courtesan and to emphasize the career as courtesan in order to downplay the writing. But ultimately they are of a piece. It is true that Aragona relied upon her position as the leader of a well-known literary salon in Florence to avoid compliance with the sumptuary laws for courtesans in that city (ultimately receiving the pardon from Cosimo dei Medici), and there is no doubt that her literary fame was a boon to her erotic fame, but the fact also remains that her actual literary production was prolific and well-received.6 Her writing is thus difficult to 6

The sumptuary laws stated that a prostitute was “forbidden to wear jewels or silk dresses” and that she must wear “a veil or a handkerchief with a wide yellow border over her head” (Masson, 119). Upon the advice of Don Pedro de Toledo, a kinsman of the Duchess of Florence, Eleanora de Toledo, and a frequenter of Aragona’s salon, Aragona, with the help of Benedetto Varchi, wrote an appeal to the Duchess, asking that she petition her husband, Cosimo dei Medici, upon Aragona’s behalf. Ultimately, she was excused on the grounds that she was officially considered a “poetessa” by the state (Masson, 119–20). Russell and Celani also repeat this story (Russell, 26; Celani, XXXVIII–XXXIX).

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dismiss as simply a prop for her “other” career; instead, it is clear that a symbiotic relationship existed between Aragona’s two vocations. Fifty-six of her poems, along with seventy-four others by members of the literary circles in which she moved, are collected in the Rime della Signora Tullia d’Aragona et di diversi a lei, which was first published in 1547, then reprinted in 1549, 1557, and 1560.7 Her Dialogo della infinità di amore was first published in 1547, and new editions appeared in 1552, 1694, 1864, and 1912. The 1864 edition was reprinted in 1974.8 Most recently, Rinaldina Russell and Bruce Merry have translated it for The Other Voice series of the University of Chicago Press (1997). Aragona also wrote Il Meschino altrimento detto il Guerrino (1560), a romance in ottava rima.9 The contemporary success of Aragona’s works may be attributed to what Ann Rosalind Jones calls “the poetics of group identity”10 embedded in her oeuvre; thus, her association with literary circles—as courtesan and writer—was key to the popularity, as well as the production and dissemination, of her writing.11 The context provided by literary circles was equally important for Sperone Speroni (1500–1588), who wrote numerous dialogues, orations, tales, letters, and poems and was considered a leading authority on Neoplatonic philosophy. Like Aragona, Speroni spent time in Ferrara, Venice, and Florence, as well as Urbino, cities where interest in Neoplatonism flourished.12 A regular at salon and courtly gatherings, Speroni enjoyed a network of friends who were also part of Aragona’s circle, including Bernardo Tasso, Pietro Aretino, and Nicolò Grazia.13 Inspired by his encounters with Aragona in salon society in Venice around 1535, Sperone Speroni cast his Dialogo di amore in a salon setting and made her a key figure in Something similar happened to Aragona in Siena. See Masson, 109–110; Russell, 24; and Celani, XXXIII. 7 A new edition appeared in 1891 and was reprinted in 1968. More recently, a selection of her poems has been included in Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance (1997). 8 Excerpts in this study are from the 1912 edition, ed. Giuseppe Zonta. The dialogue appears in Zonta’s collection, Trattati d’amore del cinquecento (Bari: Laterza, 1912), 353– 64, which was later reprinted in 1975 and 1980. See commentary on these editions in Russell, 26. 9 See commentary on the romance in Stortoni, 83. 10 In “The Poetics of Group Identity” in The Currency of Eros, Jones explores Aragona’s and Pernette du Guillet’s strategies for showcasing their writing and making names for themselves by emphasizing the dialogic nature of their work and that of their male contemporaries, 79–117. 11 Julia Hairston explores the diverse make up of members of Aragona’s literary circle in “Out of the Archive: Four Newly-Identified Figures in Tullia d’Aragona’s Rime della Signora Tullia di Aragona et di diversi a lei (1547),” MLN 118.1 (2003): 257–63. 12 Natale dalle Laste and Marco Forcellini, eds., Dialogo di Amore, by Sperone Speroni (1740; reprint, Mario Pozzi. Roma: Vecchiarelli, 1989), IV–V. 13 Speroni’s fame as an “eccellentissimo filosofo ed oratore” [most excellent philosopher and orator] is underscored in the mentions of his name in Giuseppe Betussi’s Il Raverta (1544) which appears in Trattati d’amore del cinquecento (Zonta, 56).

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the debate.14 Later, when the moral climate of Italy became more oppressive, and new laws were passed to limit the social freedom of the cortigiane, Speroni was forced by Roman censors to recant his Dialogo di amore. He then wrote his Orazione contra le cortigiane (1575) in which he denounces every facet of a courtesan’s life. The social pressures that would eventually force Speroni to write this oration and hinder him in his quest to republish his dialogues in the 1570s were the culmination of the ones that Aragona battled as she moved from city to city, a few decades earlier, seeking to maintain her luxurious lifestyle and her literary reputation.15 In 1535, however, Aragona’s reputation as a courtesan and an intellectual still withstood slander and was bolstered favorably by her participation in salon society. While Aragona’s and Speroni’s dialogues have their inceptions in Socratic and Ficinian Neoplatonic ideas and form, their more immediate experiences in salon society especially shape these texts. Tullia’s salon persona is brought into dialogue with those of other stars of literary society who are well known in Italian salon and academic circles. The two chief male interlocutors, who are also Tullia’s lovers, are Bernardo Tasso in the Dialogo di amore and Benedetto Varchi in the Dialogo della infinità di amore. Tasso (1493–1569) was a courtier who served, among others, the Prince of Salerno, Antonello Sanseverino. He was also a poet. His works include his lyric poems published in Amori (1555) and an epic poem inspired by Amadis de Gaula, L’Amadigi.16 Varchi (1503–65) was a poet and a leading humanist scholar. Russell points out that by the time Varchi met Aragona in 1546, he had “written a good quantity of verse and had lectured on philosophical topics at the Accademia degli Infiammati of Padua and at the Accademia Fiorentina . . . .”17 The other figures in the dialogues, Nicolò Grazia, Lattanzio Benucci, and Francesco Maria Molza were also poets, philosophers, and habitués of Italian salon and academic society, as well as personal friends of Aragona and Speroni. Aragona’s presence in salon society was marked by her exceptional learnedness and eloquence, as well as her musical talent. Her provocative salon interactions with leading male intellectuals brought her welcome attention from some that helped to combat the negative press she received from others. Among the latter is Pietro Aretino whose character Pippa in the Ragionamenti is believed to shadow Aragona; he is also thought to be associated with the scurrilous pamphlet, La Tariffa delle puttane de Venetia, in which Aragona is called “the most abject of

14

Speroni began the dialogue ca. 1528, revised and completed it ca. 1536 or early 1537, apparently adding the figure of Tullia at this point, and published it in 1542 (Masson, 99). 15 Rosenthal, 25. 16 It was completed by his son Torquato Tasso and published as Florindante in 1587. 17 Russell, 25.

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whores.”18 The positive reviews, however, lend convincing counterweight to Aretino’s alleged maledictions. Aragona was cited by name as “the sole and only heir of Tullian eloquence” in Iacobo Nardi’s translation of Marcus Tullius Cicero’s De Oratore (1535).19 Drawing upon other contemporary accounts, Enrico Celani summarizes Aragona’s salon persona as follows: Toccava gli strumenti musicali con dolcezza tale e maneggiava la voce cantando così soavemente che i primi professori . . . ne restavano meravigliate. Parlava con grazia ed eloquenza rarissime, sì che o scherzando o trattando davvero, allettava e rapiva . . . come un’altra Cleopatra . . . . [She played musical instruments with such sweetness and managed her voice singing so beautifully that the leading teachers . . . were amazed by it. She spoke with grace and most rare eloquence, so that either joking or speaking truthfully, she allured and ravished . . . like another Cleopatra . . .].20

Aragona’s musical talent and eloquence are repeatedly praised in biographical accounts. Such praise would be echoed in that given to the great actresses of a later generation, such as Isabella Andreini and Vittoria Piisimi for whom musical talent and verbal prowess were essential parts of their performances.21 Scholars have long suggested that the early actresses started out as cortigiane, and from the descriptions of Aragona’s salon persona, it is easy to see how aspects of the two vocations overlap. Resonance between salon and stage performances also arises in the contrasti scenici popular in Italian plays, or used as intermezzi, in which pairs of players, sometimes innamorati, debate numerous topics, ranging from typical questioni d’amore to ethical and moral issues, and even critiques of literary and dramatic genres.22 Such exchanges are similar to those in Aragona’s and Speroni’s dialogues 18

Masson discusses Aretino’s veiled description of Aragona in his Ragionamenti, as well as the anonymous derogatory remarks about her in La Tariffa delle puttane de Venetia, thought to be by Aretino or Lorenzo Venier. In the passage in question in La Tariffa . . . , she notes that the author describes a courtesan with Aragona’s body type and emphasizes her affectation of “Petrarchan rubbish,” 98–9. 19 Masson, 98. 20 Celani, XXII–XXIV. 21 Tommaso Garzoni called Piisimi “a beautiful sorceress of love,” noting that “she entices the hearts of a thousand lovers with her words.” See Kenneth Richards and Laura Richards, The Commedia dell’Arte: A Documentary History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 221. 22 See Isabella Andreini’s contrasti scenici in her Fragmenti de alcune scritture, ed. Francesco Andreini (Venetia: Combi, 1627). A few examples include the “Contrasto sopra le passioni dell’odio, e dell’amore,” in which the lovers Tacito and Amasia discuss if and how love and hate may co-exist, which passion is stronger, and how these passions affect them; the “Contrasto sopra la dignità de gli amanti,” in which Attilio and Diotima debate

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which address the nature of love and explore a variety of philosophical perspectives. The contrasti, thus, like literary dialogues, reflect the popularity of the classical dialogue, but at the same time also recall the contemporary debates held in salon and academic society, indicating that dramatists were aware of the performative elements of salon and academic ritual in which women of the noble and courtesan classes took part.23 The fact that the actress Isabella Andreini was both an author of contrasti and a member of the Accademia degli Intenti di Pavia underscores this notion. Salon or academic performances by women lauded for their wit and learning could easily inspire parts for actresses whose stock in trade was to imitate learned discourse. Although female interlocutors in Renaissance literary dialogues are somewhat rare, and those that exist are usually quite constricted in agency, several learned women were participating in Italian salon and academic society.24 “Several,” of course, must be qualified in that it mainly specifies noblewomen who were afforded humanist educations in order to be groomed for powerful positions attained through marriage and the honest courtesans and virtuose for whom learning meant lucrative relationships with powerful, learned men. Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood point out that conditions for noblewomen’s education in Italy depended largely on geography, with those associated with the “northern Italian courts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, and Urbino”—faring best. They also note that in general, it “is hard to point to any one which one is more worthy, the lover or the beloved; and the “Contrasto sopra le armi e le lettere,” in which Alessandro and Corinna argue which path to immortal fame is more noble, the pursuit of martial victories or the pursuit of literary and philosophical endeavors (17–22, 11–16, 41–8). Titles related to criticism of drama and literature include “Sopra la comedia” and “Sopra la tragedia, & il poema heroico.” 23 In Scripts and Scenarios: The Performance of Comedy in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), Richard Andrews discusses the origins of the contrasti, explaining that they may have descended from the religious laude and/or the acts of the giullari. The laude were the devotional poems performed by religious confraternities and may have developed into dramatized moral debates, i.e., between Soul and Body or Riches and Poverty, or into dialogues based on biblical stories. The giullari were the professional medieval entertainers who featured contrasti in their acts, possibly as showcases for individual performers to take both sides of a debate and thus demonstrate their ability to mimic a range of voices and gestures, 22. It seems, however, that the influence of academic and salon debates should also be taken into consideration, especially regarding the content of such contrasti as Andreini’s. 24 A catalogue of Italian women involved in the academies and the more informal ridotti or salons would take up too much space here. Helpful sources for such a list, however, include Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance: Courtly Ladies and Courtesans (New York: Italica, 1997), ed. Laura Anna Stortoni, trans. Stortoni and Mary Prentice Lillie; Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), ed. Rinaldina Russell; and Michele Maylender’s Storia delle Accademie d’Italia, 5 vols. (Bologna: Licinio Cappelli-Editore, 1926–30).

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institution promoting women’s literacy. Women’s education remained haphazard, dependent within the family on obliging fathers, brothers, and far-sighted mothers, who were themselves educated.”25 Nonetheless, it was a period, relatively speaking, during which humanist education for women prospered. Noblewomen such as Vittoria Colonna, associated with the Neapolitan court academy of Jacopo Sannazaro, Veronica Gambara, associated with the Accademia Correggiana of her own court at Corregio, and Laura Battiferri Ammannati, associated with the Accademia degli Assorditi of Urbino and the Accademia degli Intronati of Siena, to note only a few representative figures, are remembered for their participation in academic society as well as for their writing. Interestingly, connections exist between these women and the interlocutors in Aragona’s and Speroni’s dialogues, illustrating the small world of literary society. Varchi and Tasso corresponded with Battiferri Ammannati, and Tasso was a friend of Gambara. Tasso, Varchi, and Molza were acquainted with Colonna.26 The degree of separation between learned noblewomen and honest courtesans was thus frequently only one person—a learned gentleman who moved freely between their social spheres. Over the course of time, Aragona, her fellow courtesan Veronica Franco (1546–91), and the well-known musical virtuosa, Gaspara Stampa (1523–54), were associated with members of the Accademia della Fama of Venice and the Venetian salon of Domenico Venier,27 which together included such literary luminaries as Bernardo Tasso, Dionigi Atanagi, Celio Magno, Girolamo Parabosco, Sperone Speroni, Lodovico Dolce, Girolamo Molin, Girolamo Ruscelli, and Girolamo Muzio.28 These women were known for performances of all kinds—literary, verbal, musical, and sexual. Their salon personae were characterized by intellectual acuity, verbal eloquence, musical abilities, and poetic talent, garnished with the appeal of their sexual availability.29 The vision of such female figures sparring 25

Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood, introduction to A History of Women’s Writing in Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 4. 26 For lists of the friendships in academic society that these noblewomen enjoyed, see Stortoni and Lillie, 23–6, 49–52, 160–61, and Joseph Gibaldi, “Vittoria Colonna: Child, Woman, and Poet,” Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 25. 27 The Accademia della Fama was also called the Accademia Venezia. It was a group whose members constituted a critical portion of the network through which cultural trends would spread across Europe to England. Founded in 1557 by the Venetian senator Federico Badoer, it became associated with a group lead by Domenico Venier, who had formed his salon in 1546, when he had given up his duties as a senator (Maylender, 5: 446; Rosenthal, 177, 329–30). 28 Ulvioni, 34; Rosenthal 213. 29 For further discussion of Aragona, Stampa, and Franco’s interactions in the Venetian academies and ridotti, see Diana Robin’s essay, “Courtesans, Celebrity, and Print Culture in Renaissance Venice: Tullia d’Aragona, Gaspara Stampa, and Veronica Franco,”

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verbally with some of the most learned men of their times no doubt inspired dramatic imitations, as did the salon and academic performances of their more chaste female counterparts. Just as the noblewoman Vittoria Colonna’s reputation for virtue, learning, and wit inspired a namesake character in Francisco de Holanda’s Diálogos de Roma (ca. 1549), Aragona’s salon persona inspired the creation of her namesake character in the dialogues by Speroni and Aragona herself. The female interlocutor in a literary dialogue is, however, a controversial figure, one who signals friction over women’s place in the intellectual realm. On one hand, the traditional representation of the female interlocutor relates directly to the Neoplatonic notion that women’s beauty and goodness should inspire men to greater spiritual enlightenment. The questions posed by Elisabetta Gonzaga in the Cortegiano which press the male interlocutors on to higher planes of thought, culminating in Bembo’s Neoplatonic reverie in Book Four, illustrate this notion, as does the genteel interaction of the female interlocutors in Pietro Bembo’s Gli Asolani. Pontus de Tyard’s muse-in-training Pasithée also reflects this view. On the other hand, dialogues such as those by Speroni and Aragona or Il merito delle donne by Moderata Fonte (1555–92) contain female interlocutors with more opinionated roles. The interlocutors in Fonte’s dialogue are feisty women of the Venetian upper class who discuss the shortcomings of men, as well as views on such topics as education, literature, and cooking.30 Like the two Tullias of Speroni’s and Aragona’s dialogues, they are outspoken and opinionated. The dialogues in which female characters take such active roles are, however, as Virginia Cox indicates, exceptions to the rule; thus, it is important to avoid oversimplifying the ways in which literary dialogues reflect women’s places in intellectual society. 31 Literary conventions must also be considered. In “Seen but not Heard: The Role of Women Speakers in Cinquecento Literary Dialogue,” Cox notes that in dialogues purporting to be “documentary accounts of conversations between named contemporary speakers,” authors are “considerably restricted” in their representations of women by the necessity to observe the decorum appropriate for the given situation.32 Thus, to protect a noblewoman’s reputation, authors such as Castiglione give their female interlocutors carefully circumscribed parameters within which to speak. Moreover, Cox points out that “[a]t least until the mid-sixteenth century, and to a large extent even afterwards, in Italian Women and the City: Essays, ed. Janet Levarie Smarr and Daria Valentini (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003), 43, 46–7. 30 See Virginia Cox’s introduction to her translation, Moderata Fonte: The Worth of Women (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 1–23. 31 See Cox’s essay, “Seen but Not Heard: The Role of Women Speakers in Cinquecento Literary Dialogue” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford, 2000), 388. 32 Cox, “Seen but Not Heard,” 387.

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access to almost all branches of learning—including, crucially, rhetoric and dialectic, the arts of persuasion—was limited to readers with a knowledge of Latin,” which meant that “effectively . . . the vast majority of women was automatically disqualified from any role in a quasi-documentary dialogue that demanded either learning or argumentational skills.”33 The character Tullia, then, in Speroni and Aragona’s dialogues, is presented with decorum presumably appropriate to the place of a courtesan, and the fact that she is quite learned in respect to other women, but still less so than her male interlocutors, allows for her precocious, though occasionally apologetic, engagement in debates. Regarding the literary history of such dialogues, Cox specifies that Aragona’s and Speroni’s works represent “a trend in dialogue production, particularly marked among the Venetian poligrafi of the mid-century, away from the polite and ceremonious conventions established by writers like Bembo and Castiglione and towards looser, more vivacious and less hierarchic manner of dialogue, closer in spirit to Lucian or Erasmus than Cicero.”34 Although the character Tullia in both dialogues reflects these general assertions, her specific place as a female interlocutor within the debates is one of the key points of friction between Speroni’s and Aragona’s dialogues, one that virtually supercedes the other arguments when the two texts are read together. Under the fashionable guise of writing a discourse about love, Aragona vastly ameliorates the figure of Tullia and excoriates Speroni’s vision of love and courtesans in the process.

The Querelle between the dialogues on love Presumably, it was Aragona’s combination of talents—her vivacious wit and erotic daring, coupled with her poetic and musical abilities—that struck Speroni, inspiring him to place her in his dialogue. How much influence she personally had on his rendition of her character, though, is hard to say. Masson argues that it is difficult to know whether or not “the dialogue was written in collaboration with the protagonists, or at least after consultation with them,” but she notes that “their agreement was in all likelihood obtained before it was first published in 1542, and before 6th June 1537, when Grazia read the dialogue in his house to an audience which included Aretino.”35 In any case, the audience for Speroni’s dialogue was the literary circle in which Aragona moved, acquiring both lovers and enemies, as well as an audience for her own literary efforts. That Aragona clearly believed that whoever read her dialogue would have already read Speroni’s is underscored by her references to it. The small and intimate world of salon society is thus illustrated, and, moreover, implicated in fascinating questions about authorship. 33 34 35

Cox, “Seen but Not Heard,” 388. Cox, “Seen but Not Heard,” 391. Masson, 99.

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Some topics in Aragona’s dialogue, including a discussion of the value of the lover versus the beloved, reflect arguments that Varchi addressed in his own writing, a fact that has led critics to suggest that Varchi must have helped Aragona write her dialogue. Russell and Merry attempt to buttress Aragona’s authorial agency by arguing that the point is moot because the same topics had been addressed by earlier writers to whose works both Aragona and Varchi would have had access. 36 Instead of dismissing the notion of co-authorship because of the intended insult to Aragona’s abilities, I would argue that such possible indicators of co-authorship could be considered signs of literary circle interaction. It is important to remember that some degree of collaborative writing could not help but be the norm for those who participated in literary circles, passing their works around to each other in manuscript form and reading them aloud at group gatherings. An equally likely scenario is that Aragona includes Varchi’s familiar lines of argument for much the same reason she makes him a character in the dialogue: his salon persona is inextricably linked with the lines of thought that he argues in academic and salon society. She thus co-opts his arguments along with his well-known persona. Aragona calls forth her own salon persona to be the defender of her reputation as she confronts the backhanded compliment of being included in Speroni’s piece, yet denigrated repeatedly in its descriptions of her. As image-conscious as any film star, according to her biographers, Aragona welcomed Speroni’s literary attentions, but when she placed her own dialogue in the setting of her Florentine salon, she took the opportunity to engage in an intertextual debate with him, arguing against his portrayal of her as a courtesan too entrenched in her physical passions to achieve the lofty heights of reason, while capitalizing on his acknowledgment of the popularity of her salon persona. It is precisely these dueling salon personae that illustrate the ways in which each author uses or departs from querelle and Neoplatonic stereotypes to underscore his or her arguments about a courtesan’s place in salon and academic society. In these dialogues, Aragona and Speroni have their characters dissect the nature of love, each paying homage to similar discussions in Books Three and Four of the Courtier as well as to Plato’s Symposium. In the process they canvass such topics as women’s alleged inferiority to men, the love of men for men, the roles of the lover and the beloved, and the mysteries of love in general. While doing so, they exhibit their knowledge of mathematics and classical philosophy and mythology, as well as the theories of love espoused by Petrarca, Pietro Bembo, and Leone Ebreo, to note only a few popular threads of the debate over love that run through these works.37 In “Figura meretricis: Tullia d’Aragona in Sperone Speroni’s 36

See Russell and Merry, footnote 12, p. 63, regarding this discussion. In Russell’s introduction to the translation of Aragona’s dialogue, and in Janet L. Smarr’s article, “A Dialogue of Dialogues: Tullia d’Aragona and Sperone Speroni,” MLN 113:1 (1998), the main points of debate in the two dialogues have been explored at length in 37

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Dialogo d’amore,” Robert Buranello suggests that in “essence, the Dialogo d’amore deals with two struggles”—the lovers’ “struggle to overcome their materiality in order to achieve the perfect, harmonious relationship described by Grazia” and the “struggle for supremacy between the real experience of love and the literary treatment of it.”38 Aragona’s purpose in writing is also two-fold: she wants to question the constant reliance upon male authority regarding matters of love in Speroni’s dialogue, and, of course, she wishes to ameliorate his portrait of herself by creating a female salon persona who argues wittily and gracefully, who teaches as much as she is taught, and, especially, who is able to reason with impressive skill, buttressed by her extensive knowledge of classical and contemporary lines of thought. In the process, Aragona addresses negative stereotypes and popular ideas about the nature of women. Janet Smarr notes that in Speroni’s dialogue, “Tullia is firmly identified with carnal, sexual love, and with the resistance of the flesh to accepting the sovereignty of reason.”39 In her own dialogue, however, Aragona showcases her ability to reason, and, perhaps most importantly in contrast to her character in Speroni’s dialogue, to understand the difference between human and divine love, as opposed to the Petrarchan and Neoplatonic notions about men’s abilities to love versus women’s. To that end, Aragona’s Tullia defines animal love, or the most base love in which humans are no better than animals, calling it “vulgar” and “dishonest,” and virtuous love, a spiritual and physical union which is truly noble, based on reason and desire. The latter, she argues, is more like Socratic love, always questing after beauty and thus is indeed infinite.40 When the two dialogues are read together, it becomes clear that each characterization of Tullia embodies arguments about women’s nature and capabilities. On one hand, Speroni uses Aragona’s status as a learned courtesan to imply a specific and honored kinship between Tullia and Diotima, the famous hetaera from Plato’s Symposium, but, on the other, he constructs her character to embody some of the most base assertions made by detractors of women. His exclusion of Tullia from the higher echelons of intellectual achievement echoes such essentialist notions as Lodovico Dolce’s in Della institution delle donne (1545) in which he suggests that women’s “thoughts are more flighty, less steady”

relation to the classical and contemporary lines of philosophical thought inherent in each. In her article, Smarr suggests that Aragona’s praise of Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore “may well be counterposed to Speroni’s dialogue not only for its ideas about love, as Russell and Merry suggest, but even more—or also—for the role it gives its woman speaker” [Sophia], 209. 38 See Buranello’s article in Spunti e Ricerche: Rivista d’Italianistica, vol. 15 (2000): 62. 39 See Smarr, 205. 40 Aragona, 222. Smarr notes that especially in this section, “Tullia resists her identification in Speroni’s dialogue with the subrational,” 210.

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than those of men;41 thus, they are incapable of participating in intellectual discourse at the same level as men. Speroni’s repeated emphasis on women’s “natural” inferiority to men recalls Aristotle’s idea in his Generation of Animals that a female is really just a defective male,42 and his focus on Tullia’s lustful physicality places her firmly on the lower rungs of the Ficinian Neoplatonic ladder of love. The fact that Speroni concludes his exploration of the nature of love by featuring Ganymede as the ultimate representative of love that is transformed from the earthly to the heavenly is particularly telling regarding his beliefs about women’s place in love.43 On the contrary, Aragona fashions her character Tullia to appear well educated, in spite of her rhetorically correct assertions that she is not, and, above all, to be capable of reason. Whereas the Tullia of Speroni’s discourse is present to be educated by the men involved in the discussion, representing the traditional use of female interlocutors in literary dialogues, in Aragona’s own, Tullia nominally holds that place, but repeatedly breaks out of it, arguing her own ideas and opinions. As Smarr puts it, the “argument is truly developed jointly, not simply set forth by one speaker.”44 At one point Tullia tells Varchi that if he thinks Socrates was so great (sí buono e sí santo), he should try imitating him since, in the Symposium, Socrates was instructed by Diotima, instead of the other way around.45 Tullia thus situates herself in a Diotima-like position in a much more striking fashion than Speroni’s lip service to the comparison between them allows. The ideas of Aragona’s Tullia recall the notions put forth by Mario Equicola in his Libro di natura d’amore (1526) in which he argues that “women are as worthy of love and loving” as men are because they, like men, are “rational, and reason is the source of love.”46 While Speroni’s earthbound Tullia and Aragona’s rational, witty Tullia clearly reference numerous assertions about the nature of women, Speroni especially constructs arguments that position Tullia at the mercy of notions put forth by attackers of women, and her confessions about her feelings further underscore such detractors’ lines of reasoning. In Speroni’s dialogue, the question of what to do about loving in excess is addressed first because both Tasso and Tullia claim that the other loves too much, or too unrealistically, and fear the jealousy that may ensue when they are apart 41

Translated by Constance Jordan in Renaissance Feminism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 69. 42 Jordan discusses this point, 30. In the Generation of Animals, Aristotle writes that the woman “is as it were an impotent male, for it is through a certain incapacity that the female is female . . . ” [The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols., Bollingen Series LXXI (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), I: 1130]. Another source would be Castiglione’s Courtier, 217–21. 43 Speroni, 45. 44 Smarr, 208. 45 Aragona, 198. 46 Equicola is paraphrased in Jordan, 75.

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while Tasso serves his prince in Salerno. Their love for each other is based on a mixture of heady adoration and physical pleasure that both fear will not survive separation. Tasso complains about the inevitability of his jealousy over Tullia’s “cortesia di accarezzar volentieri chiunque viene a vederla” [courtesy of gladly caressing whoever comes to see her],47 and Tullia fears that he will pursue others to vindicate his jealousy. Tullia, knowing his reputation well, explains that she is afraid that “[un’]altra più avventurosa il mi toglia, siccome io il tolsi ad un’ altra . . .” [another more adventurous woman will take him from me, just as I took him from another . . .].48 Mired in their passion and jealousy, it becomes clear that they require the rational instruction of Grazia to help them survive the separation.49 The problem, of course, involves what they believe love is. Tullia believes that the physical connection is a critical component of love, but Grazia attempts to convince her that an even higher love may evolve when the two lovers are apart. He argues that once Tasso leaves, he can still love and serve her, as well as immortalize her through his poetry, just as Petrarca did Laura.50 Love, or Amore, thus may be best served with Tullia physically out of the picture. In spite of the seeming equality of Tullia and Tasso’s situations, i.e., each must cope with continuing to love the other while Tasso is away, certain fundamental gender-based assertions are at work in the construction of their characters. Tasso is portrayed as the typical uomo universale; he is a lover, a poet, and a courtier. Speroni makes his potential for spiritual and intellectual growth clear, especially focusing on the notion that simply because of his gender he starts out ahead of the game, since God made men in his image to underscore their connections with the divine. He also is capable of manifesting the kinds of love necessary to be able to serve his prince, his beloved, and his poetry, albeit in different ways. 51 Tullia, however, is approached with equivocation. The facts that a woman’s honor is directly related to her chastity and Tullia’s concerns with her chastity are nil, make her a dangerous woman, one who behaves, in fact, as men do. Moreover, she aspires to write, another mark against her. Speroni clearly finds the real Aragona’s salon persona and talent as a writer fascinating, but deeply disturbing, and he relies upon stereotypical references to a courtesan’s life of the body, as opposed to the life of the mind, to control her, at least in print. To do so, he contextualizes her within the limits of agency traditional for female interlocutors in literary dialogues, and he repeatedly emphasizes her place in the lower levels of Neoplatonic love, even though he urges her to aspire with her lover Tasso to the higher levels of love.

47

Speroni, 2–3. Speroni, 11. 49 Smarr points out the appropriateness of Grazia’s name for an interlocutor in this position, 204. 50 Speroni, 8. The idea is further emphasized on p. 36. 51 Speroni, 8. 48

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Unfortunately, as his Tullia seems to understand, that means losing the physical proximity that the lovers currently have and that she believes a necessary part of love. As part of Speroni’s strategy, Tullia is portrayed as a woman who begs for instruction from a higher source of (male) wisdom, and she is clearly the voice of physical passion whose emotional outbursts create a foil for the men’s more “reasonable” arguments, especially those of Grazia, whom Tullia implores to teach Tasso and herself how to cope with jealousy. To press home the point that she, if the dialogue were an allegory, stands for lust and jealousy, Tullia exclaims dramatically and confessionally, “Io per me mai non amo, che io non mi muoja di gelosia . . .” [I myself never love, that I do not die from jealousy . . .], and she explains that she believes the connection between jealousy and love is like that between a ray and its light, thunder and lightning, or one’s spirit and one’s life.52 Grazia tells her that many things, both good and bad, frequently occur at the same time and are difficult to separate. He insists, however, that to separate the good from the bad is not impossible, and he urges her to believe that perfect love can free itself from jealousy. 53 Later, he explains that fear is the root of jealousy and suggests that “come è lo aceto del vino” [as vinegar is from wine] so is jealousy from love.54 Tullia begs of him, “Insegnateci adunque la bona strada della ragione per fuggir bestia si rabbiosa, come è costei” [Teach us, then, the good way of reason to make the rabid beast (of jealousy), as it is such, flee].55 Tullia’s questions and observations serve much the same purpose throughout Speroni’s Dialogo that Pasithée’s do in Tyard’s Solitaire premier, or the Duchess of Urbino’s do in the Courtier. They provide the male interlocutors the opportunity to discuss eloquently and at length their opinions for the listeners, who are to be educated by exposure to the men’s erudition.56 The lessons for Tullia, in keeping with the spirit of engagement in the querelle, frequently include reminders of the “natural” place for women in life according to the divine providence of God, helpfully communicated through the sexist language of popular biblical passages. One such moment occurs when Francesco Maria Molza is brought into the debate. He suggests that perfect love is like the sun, with its eternal qualities and infinite strength, and that such love that likewise descends from heaven, burns in human hearts.57 Tullia comments that it is difficult for her to believe that love is a 52

Speroni, 3. Speroni, 3 54 Speroni, 5. 55 Speroni, 5. 56 In “Seen but Not Heard,” Cox notes that “the relation between male and female interlocutors in mixed dialogues tends to resolve itself into one of teacher and pupil, however gallantly this is sometimes disguised,” 388. 57 Speroni, 16. Masson notes that the choice of Molza as an interlocutor in this dialogue was especially appropriate because of his expertise in love gleaned from “Furnia, Beatrice Spagnola, Faustina, and possibly . . . Tullia herself”—all courtesans who have been 53

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god who performs his miraculous operations among mortals because in her experience, “amore nascere e morire con esso noi, ed esser mortale, come noi siamo” [love is born and dies with us, and is mortal as we are].58 Molza seizes this opportunity to remind her that “Tutto il mondo in un certo modo è pieno di Dio, specialmente noi uomini fatti a imagine e sembianza sua” [All the world in a certain way is full of God, especially we men who are made in his image and semblance].59 What Tullia frequently receives in response to her input into the dialogue is a reminder of misogynistic beliefs about the place and abilities of women according to the male interlocutors. Speroni uses these lines of reasoning to keep Tullia and her ideas firmly distanced from the superior reasoning, as he sees it, of the male characters. When Tullia, imitating Molza, attempts to illustrate a point with a mythological interpretation, Grazia unceremoniously cuts her short. Smarr notes that this moment illustrates how “Tullia’s presence in the conversation affects not only the contents of the discussion but also its stylistic level.” She points out that Grazia “is afraid of the bad moral effect of her opinions on the ‘volgari,’ and he ascribes to Molza, as ‘vero poeta’ the special ‘privilegio’” of being able to create myths and fables according to his will; Tullia however, is granted no such privilege.60 Tullia, then, in Grazia’s view, has no hope of being considered a “vero poeta.” Instead, he encourages her to be more like “la Sibilla,” that is, to speak the truth with no embellishment. The interlocutors continue to debate the mixture of the divine and the carnal in love, comparing it first to hermaphrodites, then to centaurs, which represent a mixture of intellect and physical passion, the immortal and the carnal.61 Tasso argues that the vision of his beloved as half horse is not particularly appealing and that he would prefer focus on only the higher aspects of love in his poetry in order to best serve Amore.62 He thus signals that his own desires are of a higher order. Guided by Tullia’s questions and comments, the debate presses on, recycling Neoplatonic platitudes that strongly masculinize the more reasonable aspects of love. By the very end of the dialogue, Grazia pronounces that Ganymede, “di terra in cielo portato,” who was carried from earth to heaven, represents the ultimate in love that is transformed from the earthly to the divine. Smarr astutely suggests that this example “might well make a woman feel insecure.”63 Speroni thus chooses to conclude with the argument that women have no place in the higher planes of love, that their passions render them earthbound and ineffectual. Moreover, he underscores the point that women’s role in love is passive and static; therefore, men with their superior capacity for growth and change in love will always surpass linked with him, 99. 58 Speroni, 16. 59 Speroni, 16. 60 Smarr 207; Speroni, 19. 61 Speroni, 22–3. 62 Speroni, 23. 63 Smarr, 206.

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women’s puny efforts as lovers. Implicitly, Speroni concludes that the classical Greek tradition of men’s love for men would be the ideal love, if women were not necessary in the biological scheme of things. Having made clear that the woman’s role in love is a passive one, Speroni insinuates that Tullia and Tasso can never be equals in their experiences of love. When Tullia attempts to argue that both men and women are capable of being lovers, as well as beloveds, Tasso will have none of it. He responds, “Signora mia vostro offizio non e amare, ma essere amata . . .” [My lady, your job is not to love, but to be loved . . .]. 64 Ultimately, he rebukes her for threatening to pervert “tutto la condizion delle cose” [all the condition of things], 65 or the status quo of which he and all male Petrarchist writers are most fond. He also, as Smarr notes, takes Tullia’s idea that “the lover always loves his or her own image in the beloved” and “insists that it is only the male who bears this portrait of the beloved.” Smarr summarizes the argument from this section as follows: “As all actions have one of three aims, glory, pleasure, or utility, men love for pleasure, but women for glory so that a man may make known her beauty, virtue, and courtesy. Thus women love themselves, while men love women.”66 Women, in this view, are only narcissists in matters of love. Ironically, the Petrarchan male lover is more accurately described as a narcissist. The reasoning that leads Speroni’s male interlocutors to their conclusion about women is based on the essentialist, Neoplatonic notions that Joan Kelly, in 1977, cited as key to her inquiry regarding whether or not women really had a Renaissance. Kelly could have been critiquing Speroni’s dialogue, instead of Dante’s Divine Comedy, when she wrote: [a]s former social relations that sustained mutuality and interaction among lovers vanished, [referring to women’s conditions in the middle ages] the lover fell back on a narcissistic experience. The Dantesque beloved merely inspires feelings that have no outer, physical aim; or, they have a transcendent aim that the beloved merely mediates. In either case, love casts off sexuality. 67

Although Tasso suggests that if Amore had given him all the gifts that are in Tullia, he would be only in love with himself and thus “un altro Narciso,”68 as he attempts to prove the necessity of continuing to love her, he is for the most part illustrating Kelly’s assertion that the Petrarchan lover is the narcissist. During their separation, he will love the image of Tullia for the inspiration it gives him, as well as the appropriate spiritual quality that his longing will lend his poetry. 64

Speroni, 32. Speroni, 32. 66 Smarr, 206. 67 Joan Kelly, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” in Women, History, and Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1986), 38. 68 Speroni, 32. 65

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Paradoxically, he loves her for what she can do for him, just as Speroni’s interlocutors claim women do. Physically, it simply will not matter that she is not present; she can be replaced. Spiritually, their separation will be a bonus for him. As Kelly puts it, “the beloved may just as well be dead,”69 something that Tullia clearly understands, but hopelessly argues against in Speroni’s dialogue. Earlier in Speroni’s dialogue, Tullia vows to keep Tasso’s love at any cost, crying, “o io cangiarò vita, e farò donna del voler mio, o morirò nella impresa” [either I will change (my) life and make (myself) a lady of my will, or I will die in the attempt],70 illustrating her urgent understanding of her current position on the bottom rung of the Neoplatonic ladder of love. Grazia attempts to console her by recounting an oration in praise of courtesans by Antonio Brocardo, in which Brocardo “ha mostro esser proprio alla donna il viver vita di cortigiana, e chiunque vive altramente, violar la natura . . .” [has shown that it is proper for a woman to live the life of a courtesan, and (that) whoever lives otherwise violates nature . . .].71 Unfortunately, via Brocardo, another lesson in her place in the cosmic scheme of things is presented for her edification. Brocardo sings the praises of the earthy, natural life of courtesans as they share their favors for the delight of the populace and act as a “scala alla cognizione della natura e del cielo” [stairway to knowledge of nature and heaven] for men.72 Also, ostensibly still praising courtesans, he compares them to God’s other creatures created for the pleasure of men, such as birds, fish, and other animals—a comparison especially demeaning since it is followed by the reminder once again that among all the things God has created, only men are elected to be made in his divine image.73 Brocardo’s glorification of courtesan life does not please Tullia, and she argues that his image of courtesans is as unreal as a painting in which one can manipulate the figures as one desires. Even though she expounds on the harsh realities of courtesan life, Grazia insists that it is to be praised. He argues that Tullia is like Sappho or Corinna, and he reminds her of Diotima’s favored status in Plato’s dialogue.74 Smarr points out that this passage is particularly demeaning to women in that Grazia, and, presumably Speroni, assumes that all these women were courtesans. Furthermore, Grazia insinuates that Tullia must be written about in order to be famous “because she cannot sufficiently write herself into immortality.”75 Tellingly, Speroni, via Grazia, focuses on Plato’s inscription of Diotima’s dialogue with Socrates, implying that he is immortalizing Tullia in the same way, but ultimately much more is made of her status as a courtesan than a writer, illustrating Speroni’s opinion about the 69

Kelly, 37. Speroni, 26. 71 Speroni, 26. 72 Speroni, 26. Margaret Rosenthal points out that in Contra le cortigiane, Speroni especially “rework(s)” the “oration in praise of courtesans” by Brocardo, 25. 73 Speroni, 26–7. 74 Speroni, 27. 75 Smarr, 206. 70

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rightful place of women, especially courtesans, in salon and academic society. They are to inspire men to produce great works of literature—not to write themselves. Although she is supposed to shadow the famous hetaera of Plato’s dialogue, Tullia’s responses little resemble those of the wise, erudite Diotima in Speroni’s dialogue who teaches Socrates about the many facets of love. Tullia instead is constrained to recall all that is earthy and passionate in love. Near the end, for example, she compares parted lovers hungrily recounting their amorous memories to starving people devouring food.76 Grazia returns to this food/love analogy in his final summation of all the points they have addressed during the course of the dialogue; however, he recommends a more moderate, less carnivorous approach. He suggests that when they are apart, Tullia and Tasso’s affair may slowly develop into a higher, more reasonable love, one more lasting than the fiery, passionate relationship that they have presently. He compares immature and mature love with green walnuts and olives that are allowed to mature, noting that when a walnut is ripe or an olive has been seasoned, they become healthful, beneficial foods, just as mature love is more enriching and beneficial to lovers than destructive, short-lived affairs.77 As his discourse draws to a close, Grazia tells Tullia that she is beautiful and valorous, but that heaven has given her these qualities and that she must use them with reason, implying that she must curb her impulsive, passionate nature.78 Speroni, in this dialogue, paradoxically idealizes the figure of the courtesan in a way that is similar to Castiglione, Bembo, and Tyard’s exaggerated Petrarchan reverence for their female interlocutors, yet he also uses her to express the opinions of those who participate in love only at its most base levels. Tullia is exhorted to be wise like Diotima, yet she is seldom allowed to portray such wisdom in the discourse. Instead, she plays a wide range of stereotypical roles attributed to women during the Renaissance, including those of a woman in need of instruction, one more moved by emotion and passion than reason, one who represents what is “natural” as opposed to what is divine, one whose beauty is valued primarily as inspiration for men as they ascend the Neoplatonic ladder of love, and one who is extremely lascivious and jealous—traits conferred on all women, not just courtesans, by attackers of women in the Querelle des femmes. When Aragona takes control of the pen and the multiple voices in a Socratic dialogue, the roles she assigns to her characters mimic those in Speroni’s dialogue, but at the same time, subvert them. Her rhetorical goals unfold smoothly as the character she names after herself controls and directs the dialogue, never missing an opportunity to illustrate her learning and her ability to reason logically and well. Above all, Aragona’s interest in her own public image is underscored as she cleverly refutes Speroni’s charges about the nature of his character, Tullia, 76 77 78

Speroni, 40. Speroni, 43. Speroni, 44–5.

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throughout her dialogue. Especially at the end, she brings up and refutes the charges of jealousy. The setting, a salon held in her home, includes an audience who serve as witnesses to the distinct differences between Aragona’s and Speroni’s Tullias. Masson theorizes that when Aragona returned to Florence from Siena during the winter of 1545–46, she hoped to establish a salon that would secure her position in her contemporary literary world and that “her salon or literary academy . . . became an established fact” in the autumn of 1546.79 Her Dialogo della infinità di amore was published in 1547, so it is reasonable to suggest that it was influenced by the debates that took place at her home in Florence, as well as those that she had by this time frequented or hosted for years in other cities. These gatherings were attended by such literary and noble figures as Benucci and Varchi, the two men she chose to be interlocutors in her discourse; Muzio, her staunch friend, lover, and literary critic; Francesco Grazzini, known as Il Lasca (the Roach), a poet who took part in a poetic exchange with her;80 and the Duchess of Florence’s brother, Don Luigi de Toledo, and his son Don Pedro.81 Such a distinguished group, then, shadows the audience, “questi gentiluomini,” as Tullia frequently refers to them in the dialogue, signifying her understanding that this event is indeed a performance.82 Tullia begins the dialogue by welcoming Varchi, who greets her with fulsome compliments and apologizes for being late, saying that he feared interrupting her ragionamenti . . . i quali so che altro che begli non possono essere, e di cose alte, e degni finalmente cosi di questo luogo, dove sempre si propone qualche materia da disputare non meno utile e grave che gioconda e piacevole, come di cotali persone.83 [conversation . . . which—I am certain—can only have been delightful and must have concerned elevated matters, worthy of the people here and of this place, where the subjects under discussion are always no less useful and important than they are lively and entertaining].84

Having Varchi open her discourse in this manner allows Aragona to depict herself as a woman who habitually does the following: takes part in debates in which she argues with lofty reasoning; holds regular debates on worthy and useful, not to mention amusing, topics in her home; and keeps company with others of like 79

Masson, 114–15. See Jones, The Currency of Eros, 109–11. 81 Masson, 115. 82 Aragona, 198. 83 Aragona, 187. 84 Translations from Aragona’s dialogue are by Rinaldina Russell and Bruce Merry, Tullia d’Aragona: Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). For this passage, see p. 55. 80

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minds. With such an introduction, she instantly elevates her personal status from the lascivious, jealous, and emotionally overwrought prostitute portrayed in Speroni’s dialogue, who nominally holds Diotima-like status, to that of a learned courtesan who actually behaves as Diotima is credited with doing in Plato’s dialogue.85 Next, Varchi expresses his pleasure at being with the esteemed group, and Tullia thanks him for coming to discourse (favellare) with her, noting coyly that she hopes he will not be disappointed in their discussion, since she is a woman who has “nè dottrina di cose nè ornamenti di parole” [neither “sufficient learning or verbal ornaments”].86 Shocked at the idea, Varchi releases such a peal of praise for her, including mention of the public admiration for her expressed by Speroni and Muzio, that her reputation for beauty, wit, and learnedness is firmly buttressed.87 As Smarr notes, however, “praise of Speroni is turned to implicit criticism” here as Varchi implies that although Speroni is very learned, he clearly does not fully appreciate Tullia’s worth (pregio).88 Having appeared appropriately modest (and having reproved herself strongly for doing so), Aragona has Tullia announce, “Ma non voglio che andiamo consumando il tempo in cose non necessarie . . .” [Yet, we must not use up time on marginal matters . . .].89 She explains that she and the others were waiting for him to arrive before they began their debate, but Varchi, taking his turn to appear humble, explains that he came to listen, not to speak.90 Tullia thanks him for his modesty but literally cuts him off mid-sentence, suggesting wittily that he save it for “un altro tempo e con persone che non vi conoscano . . .” [another occasion and people who do not know you . . .].91 Clearly, the voice Aragona gives herself in her dialogue is sharp, witty, self-effacing, and self-aggrandizing—and perhaps much closer to her real personality than that given to her by Speroni. Tullia then takes control of the situation and announces that the questione d’amore they will address is, “Se si può amar con termino” [If it is possible to love with an end (or, within limits)].92 This pronouncement launches the discussion in which Tullia and Varchi act as the primary interlocutors, with Benucci coming in much later, in the role of judge and audience spokesperson. Tullia positions herself as one who learns from Varchi, imitating in part the position that she holds in Speroni’s dialogue, but in this one, she ultimately teaches as much as she is taught. 85

For comparison, see Diotima’s discourse with Socrates on why “Love must necessarily be a philosopher,” Plato, Great Dialogues of Plato, trans. W. H. D. Rouse (New York: New American Library, 1956), 99–100. 86 Aragona, 187–8; Russell and Merry, 56. 87 Aragona, 188. 88 Smarr, 208; Aragona, 188. 89 Aragona, 189. 90 Aragona, 190. 91 Aragona, 190; Russell and Merry, 58. 92 Aragona, 190. Russell and Merry specify “within limits” (58).

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Early in the debate, the interlocutors define terms, discussing the difference in meaning between “amore” and “amare,” “love” and “to love.”93 This discussion leads to consideration of which is more noble, the lover or the beloved. Tullia argues that because the beloved is the cause of loving, it is the more noble entity.94 Russell and Merry comment that the debate over the “comparative value of the lover and the beloved” goes back to the Symposium and that Aragona probably derives her discussion from the work of Leone Ebreo. This is the issue that Varchi, too, discusses in his “Sopra alcune quistioni d’amore. Quistione prima: Qual sia più nobile, o l’amante o l’amato,”95 which leads critics to suspect his “help” in the composition of Aragona’s dialogue. Next, they address which is more worthy, body or soul, with Varchi arguing that the soul alone is the most worthy, while Tullia counters that body and soul must go together. Again, Aragona is making use of a topic from Varchi’s own work that would be familiar to her audience.96 In Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance, Nesca Robb makes the sweeping assertion that, “with the single exception of the Dialoghi d’Amore of Leone Ebreo,” the trattati d’amore of the sixteenth century “show very little originality of thought.” Robb points out that the “fundamental ideas” of such treatises were taken “from the works of Ficino and Pico, and the modifications that they underwent at the hands of different authors were, for the most part, of presentation and atmosphere rather than of substance.”97 That Aragona, probably via Varchi, explores the same “fundamental ideas” taken from Ebreo and others in her dialogue is not so much a cause for comment regarding originality—especially since artful imitation was considered the worthier goal during this period—as it is a valuable clue to Aragona’s inscription of salon personae in her dialogue, her diversification of “presentation and atmosphere.” Having her Varchi expound on ideas with which he is engaged in his own writing and lectures, which are also ideas that he quite likely addresses in salon society, provides verisimilitude for his character. Aragona probably hoped that by creating such a believable characterization of Varchi, the portrayal of her own salon persona would also ring true for her readers. In moments such as the following, however, Aragona reaches beyond verisimilitude to hint at her desire to achieve immortal fame of the same magnitude as that of Diotima. When Varchi protests that they are going off on tangents, Tullia tells him to keep going—and to not worry about what she might or might not know. She then 93

Aragona, 192–3. Aragona, 195. 95 See Russell and Merry, footnote 12, p. 63, regarding this discussion. 96 Aragona, 197. Russell and Merry note that Varchi’s views on the creation of the rational soul, drawn from Aristotle’s De anima II, suggest that “[m]atter is so imperfect as to add nothing to form, while form has the same perfection as the whole, but in a more perfect way.” They point out that Varchi’s lecture of December 1543 was on this subject, 65. 97 Nesca A. Robb, Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance (New York: Octagon Books, 1968), 176. 94

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inserts, “a dir il vero, non mi par saper nulla, se non ch’io non so cosa alcuna” [To tell you the truth, I don’t seem to know anything, except that I know nothing].98 Tullia’s words echo those of Socrates, which Varchi quickly points out. Tullia at first demurs, but then seizes the opportunity to suggest that Varchi imitate him by listening to her as Socrates listened to—and learned from—Diotima.99 Aragona’s comparison of herself, or more specifically, her salon persona, to Diotima differs vastly from Speroni’s allusions to similarities between them. Aragona clearly articulates the roles of teacher and pupil in the relationship as Plato has them, and she underscores them through further references to this section of the Symposium. When Varchi muses that in their century philosophers and lovers are misunderstood, Tullia engages him in a brief discussion of the connections between philosophers, lovers, and poets that resonates with Socrates’ discourse with Diotima on love and philosophers.100 When “love” and “to love” are discussed as cause and effect, Aragona again makes reference to Socrates’ Symposium and Diotima’s part in it in which she tells the story of the birth and nature of love. 101 Ultimately, the view of the beloved as the principle or prime mover of love is upheld in Aragona’s dialogue, creating a point of intertextual debate in which she clearly takes issue with Speroni’s emphasis on the primacy of the male lover and masculine agency in love. Near the middle of Aragona’s debate, another Querelle des femmes moment arises. Varchi draws the conversation up abruptly and demands to know at this point what Tullia thinks “love” is. She parries by pretending that she is surprised that he would address that question so sharply to a woman, and she adds, “E massimamente ad una mia pare?” [especially to a woman such as myself?],102 making reference to her status as a courtesan. Speroni’s encapsulation of a courtesan’s experience in his dialogue—especially its low position on the Neoplatonic ladder of love—is implicitly refuted here and elsewhere in Aragona’s dialogue, as she acknowledges her position as a courtesan, yet draws upon her own experiences and those of others to reason about love with great aplomb.103 Varchi then provokes her by saying that perhaps she is fishing for compliments, that she would like him to pronounce that many women are greater than men, and he goes on to note slyly that he did not ask her what love is, but what she thinks love is—because he knows that “le donne ordinariamente amano poco” [normally, women’s aptitude for love is feeble].104 Tullia quickly responds, “Voi lo sapete 98

Aragona, 198; Russell and Merry, 66. Aragona, 198. 100 Aragona, 217–18. 101 Aragona, 201–202; Russell and Merry, 69–70. At the same time, both Varchi and Tullia’s references extend to allegorical descriptions of love by Ebreo and Ficino, as well as Molza’s in Speroni’s dialogue. 102 Aragona, 201; Russell and Merry, 68. 103 See also her emphasis on experience, Aragona, 204; Russell and Merry, 71–2. 104 Aragona, 201; Russell and Merry, 69. 99

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male, e giudicate forse l’amore delle donne dal vostro” [You’re wrong there. Perhaps you were judging women’s love from your own].105 Varchi then quotes Petrarch as an authority to support his opinion,106 but Tullia counters, “Ma bisognava che madonna Laura avesse avuto a scrivere ella altrettanto di lui quanto egli scrisse di lei, ed avereste veduto come fosse ita la bisogna” [Just think what would have happened if Madonna Laura had gotten around to writing as much about Petrarch as he wrote about her: you’d have seen things turn out quite differently then!].107 This suggestion, both comic and serious, has far reaching implications. First, Aragona’s choice of example suggests that women writers were abundantly aware of the burden that Petrarchism created for women and suggests that women would voice a very different view of Petrarchan and Neoplatonic love. Of course, the prose and verse of numerous Renaissance women writers exhibits this very tendency.108 Second, it presciently foreshadows Virginia Woolf’s musings about the writings of Judith Shakespeare, a conceptualized figure that has become an icon among scholars of early modern women’s writing.109 Aragona’s suggestion illustrates that she and, presumably, her contemporaries, like Woolf, were curious about what the silent, remote Renaissance beloved might have written, had she been provided a literary tradition that encouraged her participation as anything other than a muse. Aragona brings the debate back to its original intent by having Varchi remind Tullia that she has not yet told him what she believes “amore” is.110 Tullia, proving that she is conversant in Platonic philosophy, says that from what she has heard others say, and from what she knows herself (again validating her own experience), “amore . . . non è altro che un desiderio di goder con unione quello o che è bello veramente o che par bello allo amante” [love . . . is nothing other than a desire to enjoy with union what is truly beautiful or seems beautiful to the lover].111 When Varchi asks what she thinks “amare” is, she suggests that it is 105

Aragona, 201; Russell and Merry, 69. Varchi quotes, “ond’io so ben ch’un amoroso stato / in cor di donna picciol tempo dura” [whence I know well that an amorous state / in the heart of a woman endures a short time], 201. The verse is from the Canzoniere 183: 13–14. 107 Aragona, 201; Russell and Merry, 69. 108 See the introduction, 6–7. 109 Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957), writes of Judith Shakespeare: “Perhaps she scribbled some pages up in an apple loft on the sly, but was careful to hide them or set fire to them,” 49. See also Ezell, Writing Women’s Literary History (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 39–65. 110 Aragona, 201. 111 Aragona, 202; Russell and Merry, 69. In his Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, Marsilio Ficino writes, “The grace of this world or ornament is Beauty, to which that Love, as soon as it was born, attracted the Mind; and it led the Mind, formerly ugly, to the same Mind made beautiful. Therefore, the condition of Love is that it carries things off to beauty . . .” and “When we say ‘love,’ understand ‘the desire for beauty’” (trans. Sears 106

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basically the same thing, except she emphasizes the action of the verb. The debate continues concerning the qualities, causes, and effects of “amore” and “amare,” and another important querelle moment occurs, one in which Aragona attempts to level the playing field for men’s and women’s behavior in love. This time, Varchi asks her why she believes that “amore” is finite. At first she says it simply is and that experience has taught her that it is so. He presses her further by suggesting that she wants him to bow to her authority, but she counters that experience is worth more than all the authority of philosophers on the subject. When he presses for examples of experience, she has him rhetorically right where she wants him. Tullia responds, “Non sapete voi meglio di me che infiniti uomini, ed antichi e moderni, sono stati innamorati; e poi per isdegno, or altro che se ne sia stata la cagione, hanno lasciato lo amore e abbandonato le amate?” [Surely you know far better than I do that innumerable men both in ancient and modern times have fallen in love. Then, because of anger or some other feeling, whatever the reason might have been, they have stopped loving and jilted the women they had loved].112 Varchi counters swiftly that he has known both men and women who have done the same and asks if by forcing him to admit that love affairs end, she wants him to believe that love, too, is finite.113 They both agree that this is not the “limit” to love that they have in mind. The point is made, however, that men and women are equally susceptible to folly in matters of love. Aragona’s Tullia continues her assault by suggesting that love affairs that end are not true love in the first place. She argues that those involved in them would claim otherwise, but Varchi insists such lovers should be punished. Tullia qualifies that the men should be, for leading women astray. Varchi immediately states that women have been known to do the same.114 The emphasis in this passage on the equality between the sexes, even in matters of desire, deception, and heartbreak, is a striking intertextual rebuttal to Speroni’s insistence on male supremacy in all things. A similar argument regarding the equality of men and women in these respects is voiced in Louise Labé’s Débat de Folie et d’Amour (1555) in which Labé, gesturing to Erasmus, argues that both men and women are beset by Folly regarding their behaviors in love. Tullia’s reference to men’s inconstancy also creates an intertextual response to such arguments as that in Gli Asolani in which Perottino blames the evils of love on heartless, “capricious” women and Lavinello insinuates that the quality of a woman, whether she is “gallant” and “gentle” or “loose” and “dishonest,” is solely responsible for the success of love in a relationship.115 Moreover, her remark disputes the misogynistic implications Jayne, [Dallas: Spring Publishers, 1985], 39–40). 112 Aragona, 204; Russell and Merry, 72. 113 Aragona, 204. 114 Aragona, 207. 115 Pietro Bembo, Gli Asolani, trans. Rudolf B. Gottfried (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1954), 58, 156.

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embedded in so many texts of this period as she reminds readers that, in spite of such assertions as Perottino’s in Gli Asolani that men “were through a special act of grace endowed . . . with intellect, . . . a divine power” which enables them to lead a “purer life” that “hasten[s] [their] ascent to heaven”116 or Speroni’s that men are made in God’s image, men are as capable as women of inconstancy—a theme that recurs in Renaissance women’s poetry, as well as in other literature by women of this period. Thus, Tullia’s longing to “make herself a lady or die in the attempt” in Speroni’s dialogue gives way to a desire to be recognized as fully human in Aragona’s dialogue, including the understanding that women, too, have divine souls. To this end, Aragona seizes the opportunity to rebut Speroni’s glorification of Ganymede, as well as his stance on women’s intellectual capacities. When speaking of Plato and Socrates, Tullia and Varchi’s conversation turns to the Greek philosophers’ love for other men, especially youths (i gioveni), and Varchi outlines the manly virtues that such men loved and valued in each other, explaining that Socrates’ passion for young men came from his desire to “generate souls, not bodies, that might resemble his own.”117 Tullia takes offense at the idea that women cannot be loved for the same virtues and says pointedly: Io non vorrei passare questa cosa cosi in fretta. E con tutto che conosca quello che dite esser verissimo, tuttavia vorrei sapere perché non si può amare anche una donna di cotesto medesimo amore; ché non penso giá che vogliate dire che le donne non abbiano l’anima intellettiva come gli uomini e non siano di una medesima specie, come ho sentito dire a certi. [I wouldn’t like to let that point slip by in such a hurry. Despite my awareness that what you are saying is perfectly true, I should still like to know why a woman cannot be loved with this same type of love. For I am certain that you don’t wish to imply that women lack the intellectual soul that men have and that consequently they do not belong to the same species as males, as I have heard a number of men say.]118

Varchi quickly reassures her that he does not wish to say such a thing. He notes that although some do think in this way, their theory is “falsissima” [most false] and that he believes that it is possible to love women with a love that is “onesto e virtuoso” [honest and virtuous].119 “Voi mi avete tutta racconsolata” [You have consoled me completely], Tullia tells him.120 We may imagine the smile on 116

Bembo, 67. Aragona, 228–9; Smarr, 210. In “Courtesans, Celebrity, and Print Culture,” Robin points out that Varchi himself had been “notoriously implicated in a series of scandals involving young boys; it was alleged that he was sexually molesting the boys that he taught,” 40. 118 Aragona, 229; Russell and Merry, 97. 119 Aragona, 229. 120 Aragona, 229. Russell and Merry translate this line, “You have quite restored my confidence!” 97. Smarr notes that the word racconsolata suggests that “she had been 117

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Aragona’s face as she wrote these lines. Smarr underscores the importance of this passage by noting that not only Speroni, but also Plato and Aristotle assumed that “only men could take part in this ‘amor virtuoso.’”121 Aragona, however, through demonstration of her own knowledge and her wisdom gleaned from experience, rebuts such essentialist notions. The questioning of love’s infinity continues and is compared to God’s infinity122 and to the infinity of numbers.123 Finally, Tullia articulates her summarizing theory: Amore è infinito non in atto, ma in potenza, e che non si può amar con termine: cioè che i disidèri degli amanti sono infiniti e mai non si acquetano a cosa niuna; perchè, dopo questo, vogliono qualche altra cosa, e, dopo quella altra, una altra, e cosi di mano in mano successivamente; e mai non si contentano . . . . [Love is infinite potentially—not in actuality—for it is impossible to love with an end in sight. In other words, the desires of people in love are infinite, and they can never settle down after achieving something. This is because after obtaining it, they long for something else, and something else again, and something more after that. And so it goes on, one thing after the other. They can never be satisfied . . . .]124

Tullia also notes that Boccaccio has proven the same thing in his Decameron.125 In other words, love itself is eternal and infinite, but human desires concerning love are inconstant and, thus, finite. More discussion follows in which Varchi challenges her conclusion, and both interlocutors bring up authorities such as Plato, Aristotle, Dante, Boccaccio, Ficino, and Petrarch, to support their ideas, proving that Aragona read much, or at least picked up much from salon discussions and debates, before attempting her own discourse. Aragona especially has Varchi praise “Filone,” referring to Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore, in which Filone debates with Sophia, a female personification of wisdom.126 Russell and Merry point out that Aragona dwells on this dialogue for the ways in which its arguments counter those about love in Speroni’s, but Smarr argues that Aragona may emphasize her approval of this dialogue “even more—or also—for the role it gives its woman speaker.” She points out that Sophia “readily understands subtle philosophical analyses, does not balk at references to the ancient philosophers, is frequently able to make rational objections to Filone’s comments, and indeed represents the very wisdom to which her lover Filone is so

grieving at the exclusion of women from intellectual love,” 210. 121 Smarr, 210. 122 Aragona, 210. 123 Aragona, 213–14. 124 Aragona, 216; Russell and Merry, 84. 125 Aragona, 216. 126 Aragona, 224–5.

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devoted.”127 Aragona thus clearly models her Tullia on the figure of Sophia, in addition to the figure of Diotima, to counter Speroni’s patronizing construction of his version of her persona. When the discourse ends, Benucci thanks them for their performance on behalf of the audience and points out that there were to be two more questions on which they would like to have Varchi’s opinions: 1) Is it true that whoever loves is moved principally to do so by his or her own interests, or is it rather that one may find those who love for the sake of others more than for themselves? and 2) Which love is more powerful: that which comes from destiny or that which comes from one’s own choice?128 Varchi addresses the first question briefly, and, with the help of Benucci, underscores the idea that the beloved and the lover are equals in love and that they ultimately love for self-interested reasons, even when one is willing to die for the other, because, ideally, the two really are one, when all is said and done.129 Upon considering the second question, Varchi suggests that it needs much more consideration than they have time to give it, since it should involve a discussion of “fato” and “predestinazione,” fate and predestination. He suggests that they table it for another time.130 Aragona, thus, like Castiglione, makes use of the open ending for her debate, a popular ploy that simultaneously opens the way for sequels and shows that the writer has more profound ground to cover, yet lets the writer off the hook for the moment.131 She, however, does not end her discourse here. She has personal promotion and one small vendetta to which she must attend. Near the end of Aragona’s dialogue, Benucci praises Tullia, reminding everyone that she has been honored by many of the most esteemed gentlemen of their times, including aristocrats, princes, and cardinals, who have throughout the years have visited her home, and continue to do so, as they consider it “una universale ed onorata academia,” a universal and honored academy. He further suggests that it is her most noble and courteous, “nobilissimo e cortesissimo” soul that attracts them.132 Tullia tries to silence Benucci, but Varchi insists that he press on, for he is only stating what is common knowledge, what “tutta Italia” and even “tutto il mondo” already know. Benucci then posits that there are many who believe that Tullia is in love with them, but they are mistaken. He notes that earlier, he brought up the name of Bernardo Tasso and reminded her of the evidence of their love in Speroni’s dialogue, but Tullia replied that even though she loved 127

Smarr, 209. Aragona, 237. 129 Aragona, 237–40. 130 Aragona, 241. 131 At the end of the Courtier, the duchess desires that Bembo be the judge of “whether or not women are as capable of divine love as men,” but it is almost dawn, and they decide to postpone this discussion until the next evening. Unfortunately, Castiglione chooses to end his book at this point, and the debate is never “recorded”—a ploy used routinely in Socratic/Neoplatonic dialogues. 132 Aragona, 241. 128

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Tasso “per le sue virtú, e per essere stata amata da lui assai più che straordinariamente” [both for his qualities and in return for having been loved by him in such an unusual and overwhelming way], she had never experienced any jealousy—“mai non ne aveva avuto gelosia.”133 Clearly, Aragona liked being included in Speroni’s work, but she could have done without the negative aspects of his portrayal of her character. Not one to suffer insults lightly, however, she chose to counter his erroneous assumptions in her own dialogue. She has Varchi express his puzzlement over Speroni’s depiction of Tullia, since he knows Speroni to be a courteous and learned gentleman, and Benucci disingenuously insinuate that this is especially odd, since he knows that Speroni had expressed great fondness for Tullia. The discourse then draws to a close, and Tullia insists that the men move on to other topics, otherwise, her modesty will no longer permit her to listen to their conversation. The figure of Tullia in Aragona’s dialogue is carefully constructed to refute the figure of Tullia in Speroni’s dialogue point by point and trait by trait. To drive home this line of reasoning, Aragona clarifies her refutation in the final exchanges of her dialogue in which Speroni’s dialogue is invoked and criticized. Aragona clearly believes that whoever reads her dialogue will have already read Speroni’s, thus indicating that her work is written with a specific audience in mind, members of their same literary circles. Ultimately, the intertextual exchange between these pieces reflects both authorial intention and salon ritual. While the dialogues themselves clearly reflect the entertaining and dramatic elements of salon debate, the question of manuscript circulation and/or readings during salon gatherings lurks in the background. We know that Speroni’s was read at Grazia’s home in 1537 and that Aretino was present. Could Aretino’s acerbic notions about courtesans, and about Aragona in particular, have helped shape the final product published in 1542? Did such allies as Varchi or Muzio help Aragona fashion her own dialogue as a rebuttal? The nature of salon activities would certainly suggest the possibility that numerous group members had opportunities to comment on these dialogues. Such assistance could range from the odd comment to substantial editing; thus, attempting to divine the extent to which their fellow writers participated in the construction of the dialogues is difficult, if not impossible. Acknowledging the possibility of a collaborative process at work in these texts, however, should not be seen as detracting from authorship but as revealing the nature of authorship within salon society. The rich intertextuality of these literary performances, and the verbal performances upon which they were presumably loosely modeled, evokes the pleasure such writers and speakers took in displaying sprezzatura and an engaging command of popular lines of philosophical thought among their peers. Aragona’s dialogue, then, reflects her and possibly her friends’ engagement with providing a virtuoso debate performance, albeit on paper. And, by aligning her own salon 133

Aragona, 242–3; Russell and Merry, 109.

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persona with the figures of Diotima and Sophia in opposition to Speroni’s alignment of her salon persona with lore about the life of courtesans, Aragona successfully, at least in the rhetorical space of print, refutes Speroni’s arguments about her own character. In the process, she raises her readers’ consciousness about a woman’s place in the intellectual realm.

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Chapter Two

The Querelle over Silvia: La Mirtilla and Aminta in Dialogue Tantam facundiam, tantas litteras in feminam cadere! Ubi robustior ille sexus, qui in chartis pallet, in pulpitis sudat, in studijs consenescit? Ecce litteris nunc quoque Amazones sunt, & Pe[n]thesileam suam habe[n]t. [That such eloquence, that such learning should fall to the part of a woman! Where does that sex which is mighty in writing, which sweats in public declamation, which grows old in literary studies—where does it show itself stronger than you? Behold, now there are Amazons of learning, and they have their own Penthesilea!] Ericius Puteanus to Isabella Andreini in praise of her Mirtilla and Lettere, 16 December 16011

From her obscure early years, during which scholars speculate that Isabella Canali Andreini (1562–1604) was trained to be a cortigiana onesta, like Tullia d’Aragona, to those during which she starred in productions of the acclaimed acting troupe, the Gelosi, which she co-directed with her husband, Francesco Andreini, Isabella had a remarkable rise to fame.2 But unlike most actresses of the time, her fame was not based solely on her acting and musical abilities. She was also acclaimed for her 1

The correspondence between Puteanus and Andreini is transcribed and translated in MacNeil’s dissertation, “Music and the Life and Work of Isabella Andreini,” 403–434, as well as in her book, Music and Women of the Commedia dell’Arte, 305–23. Puteanus writes to Andreini in Latin, and she responds to his letters in Italian. See MacNeil’s discussion of their correspondence in “Music and the Life,” 43–8. I refer to the letters as they appear in her book. The letter of 16 December 1601 is on pp. 309–12. 2 Rosalind Kerr, in “The Actress as Androgyne in the Commedia del’Arte Scenarios of Flaminio Scala” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1993), notes that Andreini’s “education in the fine arts supports the evidence that she began her training as an ‘honest courtesan,’” 64. Rinaldina Russell alludes to Andreini’s flawless reputation in contrast with her potential early training in The Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature (Westport: Greenwood, 1997), noting that although “scandal, travel, and the disturbances actresses incited encouraged society to view them as little better than courtesans . . . ” the “erudite Isabella Canali Andreini, distinguished poet and faithful wife of the comic actor Francesco Andreini, enhanced the respectability of her profession,” 6. Andreini died during a miscarriage of her eighth child at age forty-two in Lyon. For more on Andreini’s fame, see MacNeil, “Music and the Life,” 20, and Maria Luisa Doglio, introduction to La Mirtilla, Serie rosa 7 (Lucca: Fazzi, 1995), 19.

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literary accomplishments and her learned discourse. Although all actresses who specialized in innamorate roles were expected to have some classical learning so that they could at least imitate learned conversation, Andreini had more than most, and she cultivated her education throughout her life. At the height of her fame,3 one event especially underscores the extent of her achievements. According to Antonio Maria Spelta, member of the Accademia degli Intenti di Pavia and author of a history of Pavia called La curiosa et dilettevole aggionta (1602), Andreini was made a member of the Intenti in 1601.4 Michele Maylender concurs with Spelta in this matter and further notes that Andreini was given an honorary degree, “la laurea dottorale,” by the group.5 Officially an Intenta from 1601 until her death in 1604, Andreini’s inclusion in the academy was the culmination of years of exposure to courtly gatherings in both Italy and France, thanks to the popularity of her troupe, her literary endeavors, and her acclaimed performances on stage. In her performances she argued in contrasti scenici, or staged debates, exhibited her knowledge of several languages, as well as popular lines of philosophical thought, and displayed her much lauded musical abilities, all of which appealed to courtly, academic audiences at home and abroad. Her contrasti, co-written with Francesco, reveal her facility for academic discourse, especially on the nature of love and men’s and women’s behavior in it. It is no surprise, then, that she not only imitates, but also challenges ideas about true love and the nature of women when responding to Torquato Tasso’s Aminta (ca. 1573) in her pastoral La Mirtilla (1588). Such an approach is in keeping with her penchant for debate, as well as protofeminist rhetoric, which she also displays in her “Lettera del nascimento della donna,” a missive in which she chastizes a gentleman who is disappointed over the birth of a daughter.6 Andreini’s prominent stage presence and grasp of popular topics of debate, along with her genius for eloquence, brought her to the attention of the Intenti before she was made a member of the group; however, her official connection with them was no doubt beneficial during the later years of her career. How far-reaching Andreini’s academic and courtly acquaintances were is illustrated in her Rime, parte seconda (1605) in which she includes poems to members of the Intenti, as well as to habitués of French academic and salon society. Along with poems dedicated to Henri IV, Marie de Medici, and numerous French nobles are eight poems to a “Madamoisella Maria de Beaulieu” that 3 For a selection of laudatory verse on Andreini, see the first volume of Luigi Rasi’s I comici italiani: biografia, bibliografia, iconografia, 3 vols. (Florence: Bocca, 1897), 87– 100. 4 MacNeil, “Music and the Life,” 17–18; Music and Women, 78. The group in Pavia was founded in 1593, according to Maylender in Storia delle Accademie d’Italia (Bologna: Licinio Cappelli-Editore, 1926–30), 3: 320. 5 Maylender, 3: 321 6 This letter has been translated by Laura Anna Stortoni and Mary Prentice Lillie in Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance, 226–31.

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especially allude to Andreini’s personal and literary connections in courtly society. Beaulieu, a lady-in-waiting to Marguerite de Valois, published in 1603 “La Première atteinte contre ceux qui accusent la comédie,” a treatise in which she defends Andreini and the Gelosi against those who condemn actors, and L’histoire de la Chiaramonte, a popular romance.7 Andreini’s poetry in praise of Beaulieu and Beaulieu’s treatise suggest that the degree of separation between noblewomen and actresses in France was distinctly more narrow than that between noblewomen and courtesans in Italy, a situation fostered by the French court’s adoration of the comici.8 The extent of Andreini’s connections and renown is also illustrated in the letters of Ericius Puteanus and Agrippa d’Aubigné. During the period of her correspondence with fellow Intento Puteanus, the director of classical languages at the Palatine School of Milan, it is clear that he provides Andreini with new contacts. In a letter dated 6 March 1602, she thanks Puteanus for introducing her via letters to his friends in various places, noting that a “nuovo Olivo” [a new olive tree] and an “altra Athene” [another Athens] appear where his friendships flourish, and she is welcomed because of him.9 Andreini thus made good use of her academic network, a move that paid off in courtly friendships and professional engagements, both of which were a boon to her star status. As noted in the introduction, D’Aubigné includes in his letter, “À mes filles touchant les femmes doctes de nostre siècle,” mention of “Izabella Andrei” along with such noblewomen as Madame de Retz, a close friend of Marguerite de Valois, and Vittoria Colonna, an Italian poet considered a paragon of female virtue. He thus illustrates Andreini’s renown in France in context with high-ranking, erudite French and Italian women, as well as the queen of England.10 Andreini’s combined métiers, actor and writer, accompanied by her reputation for virtue and learning, opened the way for her to cross numerous elite thresholds, as her connections with the Intenti, the French court, and other academies in Italy, including the Accademia Filarmonica of Verona and the Accademia Olimpica of Vicenza, attest.11 As one of the most revered cultural figures of her time, Andreini was given a state funeral

7

See Linda Timmermans, L’accès des femmes à la culture (1598–1715): Un débat d’idées de Saint François de Sales à la Marquise de Lambert (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1993), 67. I am especially grateful to Anne Larsen for bringing Timmermans’s work to my attention. The poems are in Isabella Andreini’s Rime d’Isabella Andreini comica gelosa, & academica intenta detta l’Accesa. Parte seconda (Milan: Bordone and Locarni, 1605), 44–8. 8 Jacqueline Boucher also comments on evidence of Andreini’s correspondence with high-ranking women of the French court. See Société et mentalités autour de Henri III (Paris: Champion, 1981), 3: 1,024. 9 Andreini in MacNeil, Music and Women, 317–19. 10 D’Aubigné, “À mes filles touchant les femmes doctes de nostre siècle,” 852–3. 11 MacNeil, “Music and the Life,” 49; Rasi, 94–100.

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when she died in Lyon at age forty-two. Afterward, medallions with her image on them were cast and inscribed with the words, “Eterna Fama,” or Eternal Fame.12 Andreini’s connections with another Intento, Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini are also a significant part of her literary history, as well as her legend. Aldobrandini was the patron to whom Andreini dedicated her first book of Rime (1601) and to whom her publishers dedicated her second book of Rime (1605). It was at his home in Rome that the possibly apocryphal banquet took place, during which she is said to have competed in a poetry contest with Torquato Tasso (1544–95), taking second place to his first.13 Whether or not this story is true, it provides a glimpse of the popular understanding of Andreini’s association with these men, and it illustrates the activities and entertainment in which Italian academic society engaged. It also mythologizes Andreini and Tasso as artistic rivals. In reality, it is difficult to gauge the extent of Tasso’s personal contact with Andreini because he was plagued with bouts of insanity for which he was occasionally hospitalized throughout his peripatetic career. For his episodes at Ferrara, where he wrote Aminta, he was sent to the hospital of Santa Anna, where he stayed for several years, leaving in 1586,14 a date possibly at odds with an undocumented recollection that the poetry contest with Andreini took place in 1585, although one biographer notes that he was allowed to go out on occasion, if accompanied by friends.15 Maria Luisa Doglio states that this “gara poetica” [poetry contest] took place in the “ultimi mesi” [last months] of 1593,16 but she does not indicate her source. Apocryphal or not, the story places Andreini and Tasso in a scene reminiscent of the settings for Speroni’s and Aragona’s dialogues, and provides an intriguing portrait of Torquato Tasso engaged in academic activities with a famous woman, much like that of his father, Bernardo Tasso, who is immortalized as Aragona’s lover and interlocutor in Speroni’s Dialogo di amore. 12

See MacNeil, “Music and the Life,” 20, and Doglio, 18. See MacNeil, “Music and the Life,” 19, 49. Also for discussion of the sources for this story, see Ferdinando Taviani’s “Bella d’Asia: Torquato Tasso, gli attori e l’immortalità,” Paragone 35.408–410 (1984): 24–40. For more on the poetry contest and the records of Andreini’s activities with the Intenti and other academies, see MacNeil, “Music and the Life,” 9, 48–52; and Louise George Clubb, Italian Drama in Shakespeare’s Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 260. 14 For a brief overview of Torquato Tasso’s life and works, see The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, ed. Alfred Bates (London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906), 5: 1–10. Regarding the question of contact between Tasso and Andreini, see Taviani, 15–26. Tasso did manage to stay in touch with others via correspondence, whether he was in or out of hospitals. In 1589, for example, he corresponded from Rome with Maddalena Campiglia regarding a copy of her pastoral, Flori: Favola Boscareccia (Vicenza, 1588), only one of the many pastorals produced during the vogue of such plays which traced their popularity to his Aminta. 15 See MacNeil, “Music and the Life,” 19; Bates, 5: 1–7. 16 Doglio, introduction to La Mirtilla, 18. 13

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Although her interactions in academic society recall those of Aragona, Andreini, a wife and mother, apparently never had to defend her public persona as Aragona did, nor, indeed, as most actresses did. Instead, she enjoyed a reputation for feminine virtue as well as great learnedness, which may be seen in Puteanus’s urging her to bring forth more of her works, “so that fertile with children as you are, you may also become fertile with books.”17 He also pronounces her virtue so great that it renders her capable of “male glory.”18 When we consider the lavish praise and privilege that Andreini experienced in courtly, learned society, it becomes clear that the intertextual friction between Tasso’s and Andreini’s plays, unlike that between Aragona’s and Speroni’s dialogues, is more philosophical than personal. Instead of repudiating a personal attack, Andreini engages Tasso’s play in an intertextual debate because she takes issue with the sentiments about women expressed in it. She is also no doubt concerned with creating memorable roles for professional actresses. In this chapter, I first examine querelle and theatrical contexts for Tasso’s and Andreini’s plays, particularly commenting on connections between courtesans, actresses, and roles for innamorate, then I explore the facets of intertextual debate between Aminta and La Mirtilla that especially reflect querelle issues and Andreini’s quest for show-stopping roles for actresses.

Transitioning the courtesan’s talents Since Andreini performed many times in Aminta, her characterization in La Mirtilla reflects a unique perspective on the characters in Tasso’s play. In the debate over the nature of women and love that arises between these texts, Tasso’s and Andreini’s conflicting points of view especially emerge in the differing abilities and agency that they give their female characters. While Tasso presents a stereotypically helpless innamorata who requires rescue by Aminta from a satyr attack and has another female character claim that what women really want is rape, Andreini depicts female characters overcoming jealousy and judiciously choosing the “right” men to love. Moreover, she gives her audience an innamorata who rescues herself from a satyr and soundly rebukes him for his evil ways. While some critics scorn the high moralistic tone these innovations give Andreini’s play,19 I would suggest that they are intrinsic parts of her engagement in querelle issues, as well as a mechanism for undergirding her own reputation for virtue. Just as Aragona refutes Speroni’s portrayal of courtesans, Andreini refutes Tasso’s interpretation of the innamorata, and in doing so she illustrates what is reportedly her own virtuous outlook on love and marriage. Neither a traditional defender nor 17 18 19

Puteanus in MacNeil, Music and Women, 309–312. Puteanus in MacNeil, Music and Women, 305–306. Clubb, 271.

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attacker of women, Andreini instead chooses something of a protofeminist, humanist approach that selectively praises traditional Christian virtues for women and supports the notions that women can be strong, rational, and self-reliant.20 Her methods reflect those of nontraditional defenders of women who point out both men’s and women’s foibles in matters of love. When these plays are placed in dialogue with each other, we see that Andreini’s experiences in academic and courtly society and her reputation for great virtue, coupled with her virtuosa status, pave the way for her to create characters and scenarii that refute in part both traditional attacks on and defenses of women as she takes on the misogynistic and Petrarchist treatments of women in Aminta. Their differences regarding querelle issues aside, both Aminta and La Mirtilla reflect the trend in pastoral drama favored in courtly circles, and they are linked thematically through their explorations of the overarching philosophical issue and questione d’amore which especially engaged such groups, what is the nature of true love? Each play reflects the critical intersection between the worlds of courtly and academic circles and the stage, milieux that engaged numerous writers and informed their texts throughout the period. By about 1595, Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost would illustrate, in sometimes maddeningly obscure detail, the depth of the infatuation between the stage and courtly, academic society. Also by that time, Andreini was on her way to the Renaissance equivalent of superstardom, and her cachet as an actress was inextricably combined with her associations with courtly, academic circles, illustrating the ways in which she embodied the fascination of the age with both the stage and academic discourse. As Andreini’s talents suggest, the connections between female performers and the female characters they portray are intrinsically intertwined with the gifts associated with the cortigiane oneste, including sprezzatura, eloquence, learnedness, and musical ability, as well as deceit and flattery. The innamorate are beautiful, young beloved figures, which are typically pursued by lovers vying for their hands in marriage. In addition to appearing elegant, desirable, and vulnerable, such figures are also capable of debate, deception, and, of course, musical performances. They literally embody the tensions of the Querelle des femmes in that they are meant, on the one hand, to reference the silent, chaste, obedient Renaissance beloved of Petrarchan and Neoplatonic love traditions, and, on the other, to showcase the talents of the actresses themselves, often women of questionable repute who arise from the cortigiana class. To illustrate the reputation of actresses, in “The Actress as Androgyne in the Commedia dell’Arte Scenarios of Flaminio Scala,” Rosalind Kerr, discusses a scenario called “Il ritratto” that illustrates the “complex relationships between an actress, her troupe, the townsfolk characters, and the audience.”21 In it, Vittoria 20

Clubb calls La Mirtilla “long on Counter-Reformation moral attitudes,” 271. Kerr dates the scenario “before 1578 when Vittoria left the Gelosi to form her own company,” 72. 21

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Piissimi and Andreini take the rival roles of the actress and matron of society, and they demonstrate how the actress/prostitute figure manipulates the desires of the townsmen, yet, at the same time, provides opportunities for the women to entertain their lovers while their husbands are at the theater.22 Frances Barasch also comments on this scenario, noting that in it Arlecchino declares to one would-be lover of the actress that such women “are not to be obtained as easily as men believe,” and he is ultimately proven correct.23 This scenario confirms and even celebrates the allure and trickery of the courtesan-like actress, but stops short of completely aligning her sexual availability with that of the courtesan. Kerr astutely recognizes that “the presence of the actress on the stage enabled women to sell their images rather than their bodies,”24 a circumstance that clearly benefited Andreini, whose public relations campaign focused unceasingly on her marital chastity. Andreini, too, makes metadramatic use of an actress using her professional talents when Filli tricks the satyr and rescues herself from rape, but Andreini, via Filli, also defies the courtesan stereotype and uses the actress’s power to teach a moral lesson. This type of reversal is key to the development of Andreini’s personal reputation for great virtue as she distanced herself from any hint of courtesan roots. To have an actress performing the role of an actress shows the extent to which audiences were fascinated with the phenomenon of female players. The sensational impact that such roles made is directly related to the fact that they were meant for real women and not male actors. Kerr points out: “Real women” playing the female characters on stage brought about profound changes in the ways that women were represented. The female roles which had previously been interpreted by boys or men were gradually phased out, especially where the apparent beauty of the woman was considered to be the essential facet of her character. Youth and beauty became the prime requisites of the leading ladies who took the roles of the innamorate.25

Such multifaceted female characters, performed by Italian actresses and informed by the traits valued in salon and academic society, fascinated audiences across Europe and in England. In recent years, Louise George Clubb, Pamela Brown, and Barasch have begun to explore the connections between roles for Italian actresses and those created for the English stage, thus tracing a fascinating trajectory of influence from the

22

Kerr, 72–5. Frances Barasch, “Italian Actresses in Shakespeare’s World: Vittoria and Isabella,” Shakespeare Bulletin 19.3 (2001): 7. 24 Kerr, 40–41. 25 Kerr, 96. 23

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courtesan to the actress to the cross-dressed male actors of Shakespeare’s time.26 In “The Counterfeit Innamorata or The Diva Vanishes,” Brown emphasizes the point, also noted by Clubb and Barasch, that “the impressive comic skills of the foreign actress during the golden age of commedia (roughly 1590 to 1650) may help account for the sudden appearance of the witty, willful, and elegant Beatrice, Rosalind, and Viola.”27 Andreini’s and Tasso’s innamorate may easily be seen as prototypes for such figures. In addition to the numerous Continental imitations and adaptations Aminta inspired, its impact on English drama is significant. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night indicate its influence on the public stage, while Samuel Daniel’s The Queen’s Arcadia, Mary Wroth’s Love’s Victory, and Abraham Fraunce’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Ivychurch, written for Mary Sidney Herbert, illustrate the popularity of Aminta among English closet dramatists.28 Although Tasso’s themes and storylines are especially pervasive in these English works, Andreini’s bold female characters also seem to forecast some of Shakespeare’s characterization and story development. Her popular mad scene, La pazzia d’Isabella, has often been compared to that of Ophelia,29 and both her themes and characterization in La Mirtilla especially recall those in As You Like It.30 As You Like It is reminiscent of La Mirtilla in a number of ways. The fast friendship between Filli and Mirtilla is quite similar to that between Rosalind and Celia, and Filli’s gifts for trickery and her general centrality to the play recall Rosalind’s prominent role, but more than similarity of characterization resonates between these plays. Jean E. Howard comments on the ways in which As You Like It shows “how exaggerated and unrealistic are the Petrarchan lover’s claims for the perfection of his mistress” as Orlando pines for Rosalind, writing scores of bad poems for her and fastening them to trees, while Rosalind’s true personality, 26 In “Italian Actresses in Shakespeare’s World: Vittoria and Isabella,” Barasch notes that the “creative work of Vincenza Armani and Flaminia of Rome . . . revolutionized Italian improvised theatre by introducing a new Renaissance heroine, not unlike Shakespeare’s Juliet, Beatrice, or Rosalind,” 5. She also discusses these figures in her article “Italian Actresses in Shakespeare’s World: Flaminia and Vincenza,” Shakespeare Bulletin 18.4 (2000). For an earlier discussion, see Clubb, 23–4, 67–89, 264–9. 27 Pamela Brown, “The Counterfeit Innamorata or The Diva Vanishes,” Shakespeare Yearbook 10 (1999): 409. 28 For more on Continental and English adaptations, see Charles Jernigan and Irene Marchegiani Jones, introduction to Aminta: A Pastoral Play, by Torquato Tasso (New York: Italica Press, 2000), xviii. 29 Clubb (264, 267); Franca Angelini in “La pazzia di Isabella” [Letteratura italiana, Alberto Asor Rosa, ed. (Turin: Teatri moderni, 1986), 112–13]; and Richard Andrews in Scripts and Scenarios: The Performance of Comedy in Renaissance Italy [(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 192], have all commented on similarities between Ophelia’s mad scene in Hamlet and Isabella’s in La pazzia d’Isabella. 30 See Barasch, “Italian Actresses in Shakespeare’s World: Vittoria and Isabella,” 7.

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passionate with a penchant for trickery and disguise, defies the cold, chaste Lauralike stereotype.31 Andreini presents similar lessons for lovers in her send-up of Ardelia as a Petrarchan beloved so vain that she falls in love with herself and in Igilio’s spree of carving poems on trees for Filli, who ultimately loves him not for his poetry, but for his steadfastness, and only then after having come to an understanding of the futility of unrequited love. The pairings of Filli and Igilio and Mirtilla and Tirsi resonate with what Howard sees as Rosalind’s teaching Orlando “a more realistic and egalitarian approach to the relationship of man to woman than that offered by the Petrarchan tradition,”32 as we will see below in the analysis of La Mirtilla and Aminta. The historical bridge, then, between the figures of the witty, risqué courtesan, the winsome, enchanting actress, and Shakespeare’s female characters is intriguing to consider, especially regarding the agency of such figures whose behaviors often reflect an amalgam of traditional virtue and blithe trickery. It is also the issue of agency in the roles for the innamorate that lies at the heart of the intertextual debate between Aminta and La Mirtilla. Of course, the original inspirations for characterization must be taken into consideration: the esoteric tastes and reputations of courtly, noble ladies and gentlemen who may be shadowed in Tasso’s play, and the desire for juicy roles for professional actors in Andreini’s case. Nonetheless, the audiences for the plays were inevitably similar. They were typically the men and women of courtly gatherings sponsored by noble or royal patrons, groups intimately familiar with the issues addressed in the querelle. An examination of the debate between these two texts reveals the playwrights’ use of traditional roles and resistance to them, as well as the introduction of commedia dell’arte influence into the more traditional pastoral comedy. Ultimately, we see what happens when a female playwright gives a strong voice and enhanced agency to the figures of the traditional Petrarchan beloved, the damsel in distress, and the cold, chaste follower of Cynthia.

The Querelle over Silvia, or the debate over divas in love Andreini’s insights into dramatic representations of issues from the querelle come from first-hand experience enacting them, and evidence suggests that she had opportunities to perform them from the perspectives of both sexes. She comments on her ability to play both male and female roles in the first sonnet in her first collection of Rime (1601). In the poem she explains that her audience should not take too seriously the “finti ardori,” the feigned ardors or passions, expressed in her rime because they must remember that she is an actress, used to playing “hor 31

Jean E. Howard, introduction to As You Like It, The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 1593. 32 Howard, 1594.

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Donna, ed hora Huom,” a woman or a man, on stage and that acting has taught her how to portray both very naturally. 33 Historically, scholars have suggested that both Andreini and Vittoria Piissimi were known for their portrayals of Silvia in Tasso’s Aminta. Taviani, however, asserts his belief, based on references to her performance in poetry by Gherardo Borgogni, that Andreini also played Aminta to Piissimi’s Silvia.34 He suggests that since Piissimi had assumed the part of Silvia since the first representation of the play, Andreini, who joined the company a few years later, would probably have been given the young male lead instead.35 Furthermore, Taviani suggests that Andreini provides two substantial innamorate roles in her play, those of Filli and Mirtilla, to allow the Gelosi to show off both talented actresses in innamorate parts and avoid the casting problems presented by Aminta.36 Either way, as Silvia or Aminta, Andreini clearly would have had an intimate understanding of Tasso’s play. Considerations of the première performance of Aminta and who the players were vary, but scholars generally concede that it was written with a courtly audience in mind, particularly that of the court of Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara. Kenneth and Laura Richards assert that the first performance of the play was in 1573, and that the professional actors of the Gelosi joined with court amateurs to enact Tasso’s play.37 Franco Piperno argues, however, that this performance actually may not have been by the Gelosi, but another company.38 Whether or not this was the “first” performance, and no matter who the first troupe to stage the play was, Maria Galli Stampino points out that the delay between this date and that of its first publication (1581) indicates that “Aminta was enjoying another kind of vogue, in learned and popular circles alike: it was represented on stage frequently, hence a printing was deemed unnecessary . . . .”39 Such extraordinary popularity 33

Rime (Milano: Girolamo Bordone and Pietromartire Locarni, 1601), 1. MacNeil, “Music and the Life,” 71; Taviani, “Bella d’Asia: Torquato Tasso, gli attori e l’immortalità, Paragone 35 (1984): 7–8. Taviani quotes Angelo Solerti’s assertion that Andreini, too, played Silvia, 6, but he also quotes the lines from Borgogni’s poem, 7. 35 Isabella and Francesco Andreini appear to have joined the Gelosi in 1578 or 1579, just after they were married (Clubb, 262; MacNeil, “Music and the Life,” 36). 36 Opportunities to play the role of Silvia probably came Andreini’s way since the play was extremely popular, and Andreini and Piissimi were not always working in the same company at the same time. See Kenneth Richards and Laura Richards, The Commedia dell’Arte: A Documentary History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 61–6, on Andreini’s and Piisimi’s roles in the Gelosi and appearances with the Uniti. See also K. M. Lea, Italian Popular Comedy, 2 vols. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1962), 261–9. 37 Richards and Richards, 91. 38 See Franco Piperno, “Nuovi documenti sulla prima rappresentazione dell’Aminta,” Il castello di Elsinore 13 (2000): 37–8. MacNeil, Music and Women, states that the first group to perform Aminta was that of Zan Battista Boschetti, 195. 39 Maria Galli Stampino, “Performance, Text, and Canon: The Case of Aminta,” Romance Languages Annual, 9 (1997): 351–8, 352. 34

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illustrates how emphatically Aminta touched a nerve in Renaissance popular culture. Regarding characterization in Aminta, Charles Jernigan and Irene Marchegiani Jones conclude, based on numerous clues in the text of the play itself, that “several of the characters and some of the settings within the play and for the play were probably real,” that is, based on people and places associated with the Este court.40 The emphasis on courtly influence is further underscored by Daniela dalla Valle, who suggests that some members of the court and their corresponding characters were as follows: Tasso/Tirsi, Lucrezia Bendidio/Licori, and Giovanni Battista Pigna/Elpino.41 Jernigan and Jones reiterate these pairings and also point out that Mopso, who does not actually appear in the play, “is generally held to be Sperone Speroni . . . who tried to dissuade Tasso from returning to court.” In his youth, Tasso studied with Speroni at Padua, and Speroni allegedly warned him about the dangers and intrigues attendant upon life at court. Tasso, via Tirsi, however, turns the warning into a compliment for Alfonso II by boasting of the poetic inspiration life at court has given him.42 Concerning explicit connections between historical figures and characters, Stampino cautions that such specific referentiality is “somewhat suspicious” since it has been “exploited to . . . either attribute the highest importance to the supposed première or to confirm various biographical hypotheses about Tasso’s residence at the Este court.”43 In any case, as David Shore puts it, the play is clearly a “conventional portrayal of courtly life, presented in terms of pastoral satire,” 44 and Dalla Valle concurs, calling Aminta a “pièce de cour, expression d’un milieu aristocratique particulier,” [a court play, an expression of a particular aristocratic milieu].45 As such, the tastes and ideology of the ruling male elite are very much in evidence in Tasso’s characterization. The result is a play in which the innamorata, Silvia, is at first a cold, distant Petrarchan beloved, then a helpless but virtuous damsel in distress, and finally, an ardent but submissive beloved, representing a series of traditionally good exempla for women in pastoral drama. Making use of imitatio, Andreini, like Battista Guarini, Maddalena Campiglia, Shakespeare, Samuel Daniel, and numerous others, Andreini imitates, yet adapts the theatergrams46 of Tasso’s Aminta. In doing so, she reveals her broad-ranging 40

Jernigan and Jones, xvi. Daniela dalla Valle, “Aspects de l’influence de l’Aminta en France: Les Relations entre la pièce, son public et son milieu,” L’Age d’or du mecenat (1598–1661) (Paris: Centre nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, 1985), 306. 42 Jernigan and Jones, xv–xvii. 43 Stampino, 358. 44 David R. Shore, “The Shepherd and the Court: Pastoral Poetics in Spenser’s Colin Clout and Tasso’s Aminta,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 7.4 (1980): 402. 45 Dalla Valle, 307. 46 Clubb defines theatergrams as the “units, figures, relationships, actions, topoi, and framing patterns” used throughout Renaissance drama that were gleaned from classic 41

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interests in poetry, drama, classical mythology, music, Neoplatonic philosophy, and popular topics of debate that stem in part from the questioni d’amore, as well as the Querelle des femmes. These aspects of the play allude to Andreini’s familiarity with courtly entertainments, as well as her prowess at debate in academic and salon society, though she allegedly wrote the play early in her career.47 Since the play was not published until 1588, when Andreini was twentysix years old and had years of professional acting experience behind her, she would have had plenty of time to revise and refine the play, no matter how early she began writing it. Unfortunately, there are no extant records of its performance, but its impressive publication record attests to its popularity. While the play in general is easily recognized as an imitation of Aminta, Andreini clearly makes use of contaminatio, the “meditated and usually explicit combination of pre-texts.”48 Andreini combines elements of Tasso’s play with other texts, both written and unwritten. MacNeil points out that in addition to imitating written sources, such as Aminta, Virgil’s Bucolics, or Ovid’s Metamorphoses, one may “surmise that she borrowed material from current unwritten works as well.”49 Some of those unwritten works were clearly the scenarii used in commedia dell’arte plays. Scenarii that were later written down, collected, and published, however, show that their creators, too, often borrowed material from written sources. K. M. Lea points out that the actresses Vicenza Armani and Isabella Andreini were especially famous for “lo stile pastorale” and argues that in “the grouping, motifs, and conduct of the shepherd love-affairs, the Commedia dell’arte is palpably dependent upon the literary pastoral.”50 Such complexities make it hard to say how influence is at work, but evidence of influence in general may be seen in Lea’s “Specimen Scenari,” which includes several pastoral scenarii that contain theatergrams reminiscent of those in La Mirtilla.51 The characterization of La Mirtilla also references commedia dell’arte examples and modified with use until they constituted a “combinatory of theatergrams that were at once streamlined structures for svelte play making and elements of high specific density, weighty with significance from previous incarnations,” 6. 47 The claim is made that the play was written early in her career in the dedication to Andreini’s Lettere (1607) and commented upon in Clubb, 271. 48 Clubb, 6. 49 MacNeil, “Music and the Life,” 72. 50 Lea, 211. 51 A three-act play called Li Tre Satiri, or The Three Satyrs, especially recalls La Mirtilla. It contains a character called Filli who “discourses on hunting, the power of the Magician, and her deliverance from his enchantments.” She, like Ardelia, “says that she is weary and rails against love and describes the bliss of those who follow Diana.” She also falls asleep beside a fountain. In order to punish her, the Magician enchants the fountain so that upon awaking and seeing herself in it, she will fall in love with herself. In this scenario, the Magician’s role recalls that of Amore in Mirtilla, and Filli’s role mirrors that of Ardelia. The theatergram created from the myth of Narcissus, too, sounds a strong intertextual note.

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concerns in addition to echoing literary precedents. Clubb asserts that Andreini indulges an “inclination toward star turns and striking episodes” for her characters that is the mark of “professional actors” rather than “literary amateurs of the theater.”52 It is precisely in her “inclination toward star turns” that Andreini’s protofeminist manipulation of characters is most apparent. Filli, Mirtilla, and Ardelia take part in scenes that imitate and subvert parts from neoclassical comedy, and the formulation of these characters especially addresses gender stereotypes regarding women and women’s behavior in love. Doglio argues that the speeches of Filli, the role Andreini is said to have reserved for herself,53 especially illustrate the ways in which Andreini’s ideas about the nature of women reflect the philosophies of other Italian Renaissance women poets such as Veronica Gambara, Gaspara Stampa, and Veronica Franco,54 women who also participated in salon and academic society. Doglio suggests that like these poets, Filli “exprime direttamente il suo tormento” [directly expresses her torment] and that throughout the play she acts within “un riconosciuto spazio di autonomia intellettuale” [a recognized space of intellectual autonomy]. 55 Such behavior is indicative of the ways in which Andreini ameliorates the role of the innamorata as portrayed in Tasso’s play. As the play unfolds, Filli takes part in Andreini’s subversion of the traditional theatergram, the damsel in distress, and she also, along with Mirtilla, privileges female friendship over unrequited love. Andreini’s heroines Filli and Mirtilla, who demonstrate their abilities to think rationally about the worth of their friendship, to desire love that is mutually fulfilling, and, in Filli’s case, to free herself from the satyr’s grasp, are counterpoised with Ardelia, a stereotypically cold, heartless follower of Cynthia. Each of Andreini’s female characters serves as an intertextual counterpoint to Tasso’s characterization of Silvia. While Tasso’s Silvia moves predictably from chaste follower of Cynthia to helpless damsel in distress to ardent lover of Aminta, these traditional experiences are splintered among Andreini’s characters, and each is explored in fascinating and often hilarious depth, as she pushes each convention to its limits. Filli, with her ability to think on her feet and argue effectively, especially seems related to the women who participate in salon and academic society. Of course, her ability to dissemble and deceive also recalls characteristics associated with courtesans and actresses. The differences between Filli and Tasso’s Silvia resemble in spirit the differences between the two Tullias in Aragona’s and Speroni’s dialogues. Just as Aragona’s erudite Tullia takes issue with Speroni’s Lea records three published versions of this play and lists two of their manuscript sources (Lea, 2: 663–9). 52 Clubb, 271. 53 See also Taviani, 8. 54 Doglio, introduction to La Mirtilla, 9–10. 55 Doglio, introduction to La Mirtilla, 9.

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depiction of a jealous, earthy courtesan, Andreini’s quick-thinking Filli takes issue with Tasso’s duped Silvia. The result is a heroine who manages to be both virtuous and cunning. As I have noted elsewhere,56 in Aminta, Il pastor fido (written ca. 1580, published 1590), and other male-authored tragicomedies, such as Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595–96) and Samuel Daniel’s The Queen’s Arcadia (1606), which were clearly influenced by the Italian tradition,57 innamorate are typically threatened with rape, murder, and loss of reputation until they are rescued by a hero, a judgment by a patriarchal figure, or supernatural intervention. Such figures are inevitably characterized by their lack of agency and their dependency on others. The traditional satyr and innamorata encounter in the third act of Aminta provides a classic example. With relish, Tirsi describes for the chorus the scene he and Aminta encountered: la giovinetta ignuda come nacque, ed a legarla fune era il suo crine: il suo crine medesmo in mille nodi a la pianta era avvolto; e ‘l suo bel cinto, che del sen virginal fu pria custode, di quello stupro era ministro, ed ambe le mani al duro tronco le stringea; e la pianta medesma avea prestati legami contra lei: ch’una ritorta d’un pieghecole ramo avea a ciascuna de le tenere gambe. [ . . . the sweet young girl tied to a nearby tree, and nude as she was born; her hair composed the cords that bound her there. Her very hair, made in a thousand knots, was wrapped around the tree. The lovely bands which guarded once her virgin breast from view, became an agent of the rape, for both her hands were fastened to by it to the cruel trunk. The plant itself participated too in making ties to bind—a supple limb 56

See Julie D. Campbell, introduction to La Mirtilla, vol. 242, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), xviii–xx. 57 In 1590–91, Samuel Daniel, along with Sir Edward Dymoke, was in Italy where he was introduced to Battista Guarini (Elizabeth Story Donno, introduction to Three Renaissance Pastorals, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies vol. 102 [Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1993], xxvii–xxviii).

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became a bond, which tightly held each of her tender legs.] (3.1.52–63)58

In Tirsi’s lascivious retelling of events, even the tree takes part in the rape, underscoring the notions of bondage and torture inherent in the scene. Moreover, he emphasizes Silvia’s complete powerlessness over what is happening to her: “Ella quanto potea faceva schermo: / ma che potuto avrebbe a lungo andare?” [She tried to screen herself as best she could, / but in the long run what could she have done?] (3.1.66–67) Her only recourse is to await rescue by Aminta, who “come un leone,” like a lion, attacks the satyr. After the satyr has fled, we are told that Aminta then takes the opportunity, as Henry Reynolds so colorfully puts it, to “feast his greedy eyes with her faire limbes, / Which trembling seem’d as tender, white, and soft, / As unprest curds new from the whey divided” (3.1.73–75). Reynolds’s translation (1627)59 is slightly more rapacious than that of Jernigan and Jones, who write that Aminta, gazing upon “her lovely form,” “raised his eyes, / desiring, longing for those lovely limbs, / which seemed so soft and white, as milk is seen / to tremble gently in the rush-wove cups” (3.1.73–76). In either case, however, Tirsi’s praise of Silvia’s “membra belle, / che, come suole tremolare il latte / ne’ giunchi, sì parean morbide e bianche” (3.1.74–76) while she is still naked and bound reveals that she is ultimately a victim of both the satyr’s violence as well as the invasive gaze of Aminta and Tirsi, who, we must not forget, is telling the story. In spite of Tirsi’s report that Aminta begs forgiveness for having to touch Silvia while removing the bonds (3.1.79–85), we are left with the sense that she has been violated anyway, a circumstance that Andreini imaginatively avoids in her play. It is important to emphasize that the scene in question is recounted by Tirsi and not enacted on stage. The audience’s imagination is invoked to visualize the naked Silvia tied to the tree, and she is silent except for her reported lines after Aminta unties her hands, “Pastor, non mi toccar: son di Diana; / per me stessa saprò sciogliermi i piedi” [You shepherd, touch me not; I am Diane’s. / I can untie my feet all by myself] (3.1.105–106). Tirsi describes what he thinks he sees and what he thinks she feels, but she herself is mute and objectified until her final weak show of independence as she frees her feet and flees the scene. Silvia is at once the cold, unattainable Petrarchan beloved, distilled for and distanced from the audience by the thoughts of a male character, and the damsel in distress requiring rescue and protection. Andreini, however, actually stages her satyr scene, and in the process creates two richly textured roles that provide performers a wide range of emotions to portray. Not only does her innamorata have a voice, she makes use of her body, 58

The translation of Aminta is by Jernigan and Jones. Henry Reynolds’s translation has been edited by Donno in Three Renaissance Pastorals, 1–54. 59

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her charm, and her wiles to entrap the satyr, who, torn between lust and wariness, has an equally challenging part. Through use of asides, the audience knows what Filli and the satyr are really thinking throughout their scene as they move between metadramatic posturing for each other and filling the audience in on their “real” reactions in a kind of play-by-play commentary. From a querelle standpoint, Andreini confounds stereotypes by combining cunning with virtue in Filli, a portrayal of female agency that illustrates her nontraditional, protofeminist approach to characterization. In act three of La Mirtilla, Andreini gives a memorable twist to the requisite satyr scene that is reminiscent of that in Agostino Beccari’s Il sacrificio (1554).60 In Beccari’s play, Melidia mistakenly falls into the satyr’s trap, but frees herself by her wits, only to clear the way for the intended victim, Stellinia.61 In Andreini’s play, Filli also manages to save herself from rape, but she is the only nymph caught in the satyr’s trap, and she teaches him a lesson that promises to end his violent and misogynistic ways. At the end of act three, scene one, after a lengthy soliloquy about how he has long lusted after Filli, Satiro announces that he will hide behind a bush so that when she comes by, he may attack her. He swears: E s’ella al mio voler non sarà presta, le farò mille oltraggi. Né sua bellezza voglio che le giovi né gli alti gridi o 'l domandar mercede. (3.1.1285–88)62 [And if she will not surrender to my will, I will do her a thousand outrages! Neither her beauty nor her loud cries for mercy will help her!]63

Satiro’s vows set up scene two to be an enactment of the usual damsel-in-distress scenario. Filli, however, is no defenseless victim. Instead, she turns out to be a quick thinker and a fast talker who rescues herself with the finesse of an 60 Agostino Beccari, Il sacrificio, 1554 (Ferrara: Caraffa, 1587). Meredith Ray traces the development of this theatergram at length through Beccari’s, Andreini’s, and Guarini’s plays in “La castità conquistata: The Function of the Satyr in Pastoral Drama,” Romance Languages Annual 9 (1998): 316–20. Andreini’s scene is also a bit like that in Guarini’s play, in which Guarini uses the escape to illustrate Corisca’s wicked, wily nature (her golden wig flies off, and the satyr accuses her of witchcraft). See also Campbell, introduction to La Mirtilla, xx. 61 Ray points out that in Beccari’s play, while Stellinia is trapped by the satyr, Turico, the shepherd in love with her, forces her “to vow her love for him” before he consents to free her from the satyr’s trap, 316. In spite of Melidia’s cunning escape, Beccari’s story has the traditional conclusion. 62 Italian quotations are from Doglio’s edition of La Mirtilla. 63 The translation of La Mirtilla is by Campbell.

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accomplished con-artist or, perhaps, a courtesan or, especially, a commedia dell’arte actress, who would be an expert at the art of thinking on her feet and invoking the imagination. Filli at first feigns disbelief that Satiro would think such drastic measures as entrapment and assault necessary, revealing swiftly that she has already been “abbattuta,” or overthrown, by his beautiful eyes (3.2.1332). She swears by his “robuste braccia” and “vaga . . . cornuta fronte” (3.2.1334–1335) [robust arms and charming horned brow], that she is not mocking him and that, indeed, she loves him. Ultimately, she convinces him that she wants him as much as he wants her. In order to avoid an overly ardent embrace, she says, she implores him to let her tie him to a tree (3.2.1380–1387). The satyr agrees to be tied up, and the situation immediately becomes more sexually charged. Moreover, the shift in who has control of the situation is now made clear. Satiro’s lustful eagerness diminishes as he realizes how tightly he is being bound. “Non stringer così forte” [Don’t tie me so tightly] (3.2.1397), he complains nervously. Filli assures him that the more securely she ties him, the better their kiss will be (3.2.1397–1401). But, when she begins jerking his beard and pinching his breasts (3.2.1435–43), Satiro finally begins to understand that his plan to torture her has been turned upon himself. The sexually charged atmosphere dissolves as he begs her, “Baciami presto, che farem la pace” [Let’s kiss quickly, then make peace] (3.2.1447). Not certain that Satiro has learned his lesson, Filli insists that she wants this experience to be good for them both and feigns amazement that he does not like her caresses. “Oh che belle carezze!” [Some beautiful caresses!] (3.2.1446), he exclaims in annoyance. Still not done with him, though, Filli compels him to eat a twig of an allegedly sweet, but actually very bitter, herb to “freshen” their breath before kissing. Satiro tastes it, presumably gags, and cries out, “Ohimè, che cosa è questa / cotanto amara?” [Oh me, what is this thing so bitter?]. “O malaccorto,” she retorts, “or hai pur finalmente conosciuto / ch’io me beffo di te . . . ?” [Oh imprudent one, have you at last understood that I am making fun of you . . . ?] (3.2.1484–85; 1488–89). Thus, Filli rescues herself from the satyr’s snare. Leaving him tied to the tree, calling out pitifully for help behind her, Filli calmly walks away. In act three, scene three, Satiro is finally rescued from his ignominious position by Gorgo, the goatherd, who derides the followers of Venus and highly recommends the rewards of worshipping Bacchus. Satiro sees his point, and ultimately swears off women, becoming a follower of Bacchus instead (3.3.1668– 69). Filli is clearly neither a helpless damsel, like Silvia, nor a scheming villainess, like Corisca who escapes the satyr in Guarini’s Il pastor fido.64 Earnest and virtuous in addition to being clever, Filli, is in this scene, a commedia dell’arte actress participating in a metadramatic moment. She gives a magnificent display of 64

Baptista Guarini, Il pastor fido, Three Renaissance Pastorals, ed. Elizabeth Story Donno, 55–182.

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sprezzatura as she convinces the satyr with both words, and, we may presume, melting looks, that she really wants him. In this metadramatic interlude, she plays the part of the damsel in distress, but more like Shakespeare’s Portia might play her: she manipulates appearance vs. reality and takes charge of the situation to rescue someone in trouble, in this case, herself.65 Of course, as Andreini herself surely realized—her manipulation of the traditional satyr scene creates a surprising and comic turn of events that audiences would be sure to love, in addition to a star turn for the actress in question, most likely, herself. While Filli’s character clearly provides the major star turn in the play, thanks to the satyr scene, Mirtilla and Ardelia are also plum parts for comic actresses. Mirtilla and Filli, unlike Silvia, long to love, but they ardently desire the same man, Uranio, who, like Aminta, only has eyes for the fanatic follower of Cynthia. Mirtilla and Filli’s path from infatuation to common sense eludes the typical snares male playwrights usually set up for female characters in this situation. The theatergram in which two women compete for the love of the same man is a familiar one in pastoral comedy. In Il pastor fido both Corisca and Amarillis are in love with Mirtillo, and Corisca plots Amarillis’s death to put an end to the competition (3.1). In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Helena and Hermia’s friendship nearly founders amid accusatory cries of “canker-blossom” and “puppet” as they square off over Lysander (3.2.282, 289). Andreini, however, takes the violent edge off female competition. In the process, she presents two female characters who realize that their friendship is worth more than the inevitably unrequited love of Uranio. The privileging of female friendship over romantic relationships is a deviation from tradition that indicates Andreini’s engagement in the querelle. Such a scene may deprive audiences of a titillating “girl fight” episode like that in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but it entertains in another way: by allowing Andreini and a fellow actress to show off their musical talent. And, friendship intact, each woman is allowed to express a more complex understanding of love than is Silvia. Silvia’s all or nothing response to love resembles that of Sperone Speroni’s Tullia in his Dialogo d’amore, whose range of emotion and reason is limited to concerns of physical love and violent emotion. Andreini’s characters, on the other hand, move, via their use of reason, from hopeless obsession for Uranio to rational choices of obtainable love with Tirsi and Igilio. Before the happy endings, however, the requisite near tragedies must occur. In their handling of the suicide attempts in their stories, Tasso and Andreini also make significantly different use of agency for their female characters. In Aminta, Silvia’s tears, “quell’acqua / di cotanta virtù” [that water of such virtue] (5.1.112–13), revive the unconscious Aminta, and the Chorus celebrates the triumph of Aminta’s constancy to his one true love (5.1), an ending that adheres strongly to Petrarchan convention. Silvia’s tears, fortified by the purity of her 65

Brown suggests that Shakespeare’s Portia “acts suspiciously like the celebrated innamorata of the Italian acting troupes,” 411.

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virtue, lend her a goddess-like power as she seems to perform a miracle, bringing Aminta back from what appears to be death as she weeps over his “freddo viso” [frigid face] (5.1.111). Mirtilla and Filli, however, use reason to rescue their lovers. Tirsi, who scorns the idea of learning to love more wisely, resolves to “lasciar la vita” (5.1.2698), to kill himself for love, and he, like Aminta, chooses to throw himself from a mountainside (5.6.2994–95). When Mirtilla learns of his plans, she stops his attempt and lectures him on the cowardice associated with suicide (5.6.3007). She tells him: Chi cerca di morire per fuggir le miserie che seco il mondo apporta d’ogni viltade è pieno. Non sai che tempo, amor, fede e fermezza non fanno vana mai l’altrui speranza? [He who tries through death to flee the miseries that the world carries with it is full of every cowardice! Don’t you know that time, love, faith, and steadiness never foil other people’s hope?] (5.6.3004–3009)

Tirsi, convinced by her pronouncement of love for him, finally decides that his war with love is finished (5.6. 3034). In the meantime, Igilio, too, despairs of love and decides that only death will bring relief. By act five, he is carving “Qui giace il fido Igilio” [Here lies the faithful Igilio] into the trunk of a tree to prove that he died for love (5.3.2766). His plan is to stab himself with his knife. Filli, like Mirtilla, arrests Igilio’s attempt to kill himself, crying: Per darti non la morte, ma la vita lieta, come tu brami, m’ha qui condotta Amore, sarei ben di macigno se veduta di te sì salda prova i’ non volessi cangiar pensiero e voglia; io mi ti dono, togliendomi a colui che indegnamente mi tenne un tempo in duri lacci avvolta. [To give you not death, but a happy life, just as you long for, Amore has led me here! I would certainly be a block of stone if, having witnessed such solid proof from you, I didn’t want to change my mind and my will! I give myself to you,

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Filli credits true guidance in love by Amore, as opposed to the false fury who roams the earth pretending to be him (Prologue, lines 60–98), with her ability to change her mind about Uranio and rescue Igilio. In the end, both Mirtilla’s and Filli’s abilities to recognize the difference between true love and Petrarchan fantasy triumph. Not tears with special “virtù” (5.1.113), but quick-thinking and persuasive arguments save Tirsi and Igilio. Andreini’s resolutions for the lovers’ fates, as well as the evil satyr’s, may appear morally heavy-handed at times, but they do illustrate Andreini’s engagement with querelle issues regarding the behavior of men and women in love, and they are never so moralistic that they eschew humor. When Tirsi’s lack of experience in love emerges as he tries to impress Mirtilla with his education, lineage, wealth, and athleticism (4.3.2393–2426), Mirtilla sagely notes, “Comprendo dal tuo dir, gentil pastore, / come tu sei d’Amor nuovo seguace . . .” [I understand from what you say, gentle shepherd, / that you are a new follower of Amor . . .] (4.3.2427–28), and she gently refuses his proposal. By the beginning of act five, however, Tirsi is trying to bribe his way into her affections with offers of extravagant gifts, and she, exasperated, lectures him on the ways of true love then gives him a sharp dismissal that concludes, “E se meglio aggradire / mi vuoi, partiti omai,” or, “And if you really want to please me, get out of here!” (5.1.2685– 94). To have her character Tirsi give in so comically and so completely to love strikes an intriguing intertextual note because the Tirsi of Tasso’s play insists that “although he has given up on love” he still enjoys the pleasures of Venus because “he prefers to have ‘love’s sweet without the bitterness’ (2.2.129–30).”66 Tasso himself never married, but Andreini makes sure that her character associated with his self-referential character in his play falls hard. She also asserts her support of marriage by bringing the cold, chaste follower of Cynthia to her knees, as is the case in which Ardelia’s extreme, Petrarchan virtue is shown to be a Narcissistic sham. Instead of growing in her knowledge of love throughout the course of the play, as do Filli and Mirtilla, Ardelia exhibits the extremes of Silvia’s character. In fact, she seems to be a Silvia caricature that Andreini incorporates to expose humorously what the cold, remote Petrarchan beloved might be like, if she were given the agency to express her private thoughts. Silvia’s fierce rejection of anyone she can classify as an “insidator di mia virginitate” (1.1.120), someone who plots against her virginity, is reflected in Ardelia’s (2.2.974) scorn for Uranio, whom she calls a “nemico del mio bene,” (an enemy of my well-being) (2.2.974). Ardelia, like Silvia, wants no part of love, but lives for the hunt and to be a follower of Cynthia. She is also unremittingly vain, and only the threat inherent in Uranio’s 66

Jernigan and Jones, xv.

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carpe diem speech, in which he points out that she will some day lose her looks (5.5.2873–2901) is powerful enough to change her mind. (This particular ploy does not really work on Silvia, though Dafne tries it in 1.1.30–40 and 47–52.) Before Ardelia gives in to love with Uranio, however, she experiences an unforgettable, unrequited love—for herself. In act four, Ardelia, the haughty, chaste follower of Cynthia and Uranio’s obsession, falls ardently in love with her own reflection while bathing in a spring (4.4). Love-struck, she vows to accept the reflected woman as her goddess (4.4.2515), but in vain she reaches out to touch her and strains to hear her voice. Ultimately, she curses her own tears because they cause the water to ripple, and she realizes that they deprive her of seeing her goddess—herself (4.4.2586–90). Doglio views Ardelia’s fascination with her reflection as an image of lesbian erotica, and the striking sensuality of Andreini’s description in this scene may easily be read to support this idea.67 I would also argue that this scene especially provides a witty, subversive interpretation of how narcissistic the stereotypical Petrarchan beloved might reveal herself to be, if that Neoplatonic beauty described in male-authored poetry were allowed a voice. Andreini creates the usual stereotype—the chaste, cold, awe-inspiring beauty—and then pushes things further by allowing her to speak in a soliloquy her innermost thoughts. In doing so, she produces a character so self-absorbed that she falls passionately in love with herself—a figure that provides yet another excellent comic role for a female player.68 Moreover, her looks matter so much to her that the thought of losing them finally drives her into the arms of Uranio (5.5.2902–2908), who comments in a cheerfully sexist manner that she has now truly proven herself a woman since she has so quickly changed her mind (5.5.2909–2911). Clearly, marriage to Uranio may not be the end of Ardelia’s woe. Andreini’s over-the-top imitation of Silvia and Aminta in Ardelia and Uranio, who exhibit the extremes of a woman rejecting a man and a man in single-minded pursuit, suggests that she, like many women writers, understands the disillusionment in store for those who seek Petrarchan-style love, with its emphasis on the so-called perfections that real women seldom truly possess. With this pair, Andreini takes the non-traditional querelle approach as she parodies the behaviors of both men and women in love. In Aminta, female characters do not step out of traditional gender stereotypes. In fact, they underscore them repeatedly. Dafne and Nerina alternately keep tabs on Silvia. Dafne provides information to Tirsi on her whereabouts and activities, and she is also the one who, echoing attackers of women in the Querelle des femmes, insists to Tirsi that Aminta should be more aggressive in his suit, even ravishing Silvia if necessary, because a woman “Fugge e fuggendo vuol ch’altri la giunga; / niega, e negando vuol ch’altri si toglia; / pugna, e pugnando vuol ch’altri 67

Doglio, introduction to La Mirtilla, 14.

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Campbell, introduction to La Mirtilla, xx-xxi.

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la vinca” [flees and fleeing wants to soon be caught; / says no and saying wants to give herself; / . . . fights and fighting wants the man to win] (2.2.91–93). In other words, Dafne suggests that what women really want is rape. Silvia, meanwhile, is unwittingly poised at the spring to be accosted by both a would-be lover and a satyr: in this pastoral world, a woman cannot take a bath without some distressing, and occasionally life-threatening, interruption. She also has trouble keeping her clothes on. Silvia spends a lot of time nude, or “starnak’d” as Reynolds puts it— not on stage, but in other characters’ titillating descriptions of her. The idea of her nudity would simultaneously provide Tasso’s audience with the kind of thrill that Clubb points out was provided by actresses’ mad scenes, in which traditionally they would rip their clothes to expose their flesh,69 and it would be a symbol of her defenselessness, her traditional female need for rescue by a male hero. Selfreliance for women has no real place in Tasso’s pastoral idyll. When Tasso’s Aminta and Andreini’s La Mirtilla are read in tandem, the diversity of these writers’ views on Petrarchan and Neoplatonic love theories and the nature of women surfaces, giving the reader a glimpse of the tensions that underlie the Renaissance debates regarding these topics. Such tensions in Andreini’s play reflect similar ones in works by other women writers who participated in literary circles, such as Tullia d’Aragona and those that Doglio mentions. The oppositional voices expressed in their writings are reminiscent of Christine de Pizan’s as they clearly call for new considerations of depictions of women’s natures and abilities. In effect, Andreini engages in the Querelle des femmes by redefining the usual innamorate offered upon the public stage. Neither traditional paragons of virtue nor prostitute figures, Andreini’s female characters confound the stereotypes.

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Clubb, 264.

Chapter Three

Pastoral Defenses and the Nymphs of the Salon Vert Je ne vous pense point tant oublieuse des fautes par vous commises qu’il ne vous souvienne de l’injure que fistes dernierement en vostre maison à un pauvre innocent mien amy, quand de guet-à-pens ou par hazard l’appellastes Bonhomme, comme s’il eust esté une piece de rebut. Et parce qu’il m’appartient de fort près, j’ay pensé de prendre sa querelle en mains, comme pour un autre moy-mesme, et vous envoyer par une noble vengeance ce cartel de deffy sous l’image d’une Pastorale. [I do not think you so forgetful of the faults that you commit that you do not remember the injury that you did of late in your home to a poor innocent friend of mine, when by treacherous scheme or by chance you called him Bonhomme, as if he were a piece of rubbish. And because he is very close to me, I have decided to take his quarrel in hand, as if for myself, and send you out of noble revenge this challenge under the guise of a Pastoral.] Estienne Pasquier to Madame la duchesse de Retz, 15911

In 1591, in a letter to Pierre Airault, Estienne Pasquier writes that some three weeks earlier he was invited to dine at the home of Claude-Catherine de Clermont, the duchesse (formerly maréschale) de Retz (1543–1603).2 He describes this evening in detail, enthusing over the breadth and depth of conversation, which ranged from discussion of the “calamité de ce temps” to individuals’ personal affairs, with everyone speaking freely and eloquently. After exhausting the serious subjects, rather as if having finished the main course of a dinner and now being allowed to enjoy an elegant dessert, the group’s conversation turns to “le discours de l’amour.”3 The general discussion of love becomes focused on the questione 1

Estienne Pasquier, “A Madame la duchesse de Retz,” Lettres Familières, ed. D. Thickett (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1974), 224–6. 2 In 1582, the baronnie of Retz was officially made a “duché-pairie.” See Madame Michel Jullien de Pommerol, Albert de Gondi, Maréchal de Retz (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1953), 163. See also Christie Ellen St-John, “The Salon Vert of the Maréchale de Retz: A Study of a Literary Salon in Sixteenth-Century France” (Ph.D diss., Vanderbilt University, 1999), 89–90. 3 See also L. Clark Keating’s Studies on the Literary Salon in France, 1550–1615 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941), in which Keating suggests that the “talk of love was considered a seasoning or sauce,” 112.

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d’amore, “who can better speak of love, a young man or an old one?” Pasquier describes the debate with relish, happily recounting for Airault his own part in it and explaining that his adversary was Madame de Retz herself, who provoked him mercilessly by referring to him as a “bonhomme,” an old man. He explains that because “ceste honneste Dame” wanted to stir things up, she suggested that it was inappropriate for a bonhomme such as he to discourse of love. Quickly catching on to her game, he says, he took her words as a grave insult, “comme un huictiesme peché mortel” [as an eighth mortal sin], and the war of wits broke out in earnest.4 Not unlike commedia dell’arte actors and actresses responding on cue in contrasti scenici, salon guests were to be able to move into performance mode, to take up personae and engage in well-known patterns of debate over familiar issues. That such performances moved from orality to textuality is certain, as the popularity of the dialogue genre suggests. Inspired by his evening at the Retz salon, Pasquier wrote his Pastorale du vieillard amoureux, a dialogue between Tenot, an “ancien pasteur” and Catin, his “fidelle serviteur,” and presented it to Retz with a letter of explanation in which he again takes up the debate of “bonhomme” (see epigraph).5 The ludic nature of salon exchange is further illustrated as he continues in his letter the same playful tone and line of argument begun in the salon entertainment. He dramatically announces that he is issuing a challenge to her on behalf of his “friend,” then goes on to announce that he gives “la figue” to “ces jeunes mentons,” these “young chins” or beardless boys, who are inexperienced, arguing that his “barbe grise” [grey beard] gives him special privileges to disperse kisses in a manner that younger men would never attempt.6 He follows this missive with a poem for Retz in which he continues to refer to their quarrel.7 This collection of writings illustrates the playful use of salon personae, as well as the ongoing fascination of the age with debates about the nature of love and men’s and women’s behavior in it. In the same vein, it depicts the “continuum between texts and the textuality of behavior”8 of which Geertz writes as these texts provide a neatly documented history of a salon debate that inspires a fictionalized dialogue that is then circulated in manuscript and ultimately recorded in print. Unfortunately, we do not have a record of Retz’s responses in this debate. Although biographic accounts suggest that she was a well-received writer and 4

Estienne Pasquier, “A Monsieur Airault, Lieutenant Criminel au Siege Presidial d’Angers,” Lettres Familières, 221–3. See also Keating, 109–10. 5 Étienne Pasquier, Œuvres complètes, vol. 2 (Amsterdam, 1723; reprint, Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1971), 903–908. 6 Pasquier, “A Madame la duchesse de Retz,” 224–5. A popular source for this question would be Castiglione’s Courtier, 323–30. 7 In Pasquier’s Lettres familières, Thickett points out in footnote 2, p. 226, that a reference to this “duel” may also be seen in the Retz album. 8 Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretative Anthropology (New York: BasicBooks—HarperCollins, 1983), 31; W. B. Worthen, “Disciplines of the Text/Sites of Performance,” The Drama Review, 39, no. 1 (1995): 14.

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translator, she mainly circulated her writing in manuscript, and very little appears to be extant.9 Her discourse and correspondence, as well her creative writing, were, however, no doubt instigating forces for literary production. Pasquier’s writings illustrate the centrality of Retz’s wit and encouragement to his creative process in a way that is suggestive of her influence on numerous poets of the period who frequented her salon and dedicated works to her. L. Clark Keating writes that “[b]esides Baif, all the living members of the Brigade addressed verses to either husband or wife, and the newer school of poetry was represented not only by Desportes and Bertaut but by a host of lesser lights.”10 Around 1569, Pontus de Tyard joined the group, and Retz is thought to be the new Pasithée of his Nouvelles œuvres poétiques (1573). He dedicated the second edition of Solitaire premier to her in 1573.11 Similarly, Amadis Jamyn’s numerous poems in praise of Artémis are full of references to Retz.12 Jacques Lavaud points out that “Les écrits contemporains, les poésies surtout, permettraient de dresser une longue liste des écrivains que l’on rencontrait dans le salon vert de Dictynne” [The contemporary writings, the poetry above all, would permit one to draw up a long list of the writers that one encountered in the salon vert of Dictynne].13 As these references suggest, Retz was clearly at the center of a lively literary scene; however, she was far more than an ornament to the proceedings. That Retz’s own writing was of great interest to her contemporaries is attested to by D’Aubigné and the literary biographer François Grudé, sieur de La Croix du Maine. In the letter to his daughters, D’Aubigné writes that Retz has “communiqué,” circulated or imparted, to him “un grand oeuvre de sa façon que je voudrois bien arracher du secret au public” [a great work of her own making that I would very much like to wrest from secrecy (and present) to the public].14 He, unfortunately, does not elaborate on the nature of this “grand oeuvre.” In 1584, La Croix du Maine summarizes the scope of her learning and influence, and touches upon the circulation of her writing by noting that she:

9

In Pierre de L’Estoile’s Memoires pour servir à L’histoire de France (1515–1611) [(Cologne: Chez les Héritiers de Herman Demen, 1719)], in an entry under the year 1587, there is a catalogue from the “Bibliotheque de Madame de Montpensier mise en lumiere par l’advis de Cornac avec le consentement du Sr. de Beaulieu son Ecuyer” which includes Les diverses assiettes d’amour, traduit d’Espagnol en François, “par Madame la Marechalle de Retz, imprimé par Pelage avec privilege du Sr. de Dime,” 1: 236; however, it seems no longer extant. Its presence in L’Estoile is also mentioned in Pommerol, 200. 10 Keating, 107. 11 John C. Lapp, introduction to The Universe of Pontus de Tyard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950), xx–xxi. 12 Keating, 116. 13 Jacques Lavaud, Un poète de cour au temps des derniers Valois: Philippe Desportes (1564–1606) (Paris: Librairie Droz, 1936), 93–4. 14 D’Aubigné, 852–3.

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Clearly, Retz’s participation in literary society was a two-way street as these and other accounts suggest.16 Even though she eschewed publication for the most part, she was well known as a writer, scholar, and correspondent. While her admirers typically refer to her in traditional Neoplatonic style as a muse, goddess, or nymph, a style of address particularly in keeping with the fad for pastoral popular with the “salon vert” of Retz, it is obvious that she was much more than an object of inspiration. She was also something of a catalyst in the development of French letters during her time, as Jacques Lavaud suggests, who credits a revival of Petrarchism around 1570 with the “influence féminine” of her circle.17 The creative energy fostered in the liminal space of the Retz salon in which both courtly learned women and male poets and scholars of note mingled was by no means unique in France during this period. Many such salons existed in Paris, Lyon, Poitiers, Toulouse, and wherever the fashion for such gatherings caught on. The phenomenon mirrored that in Italy and especially flourished in such cities as Paris and Lyon where there was a strong Italian cultural influence. The Retz salon is, however, an especially good choice to examine in this chapter, not only because of its hosts’ and members’ proximity to the royal family and the documentation of 15 François La Croix du Maine and Antoine du Verdier, Les Bibliothèques françoises (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1969), 1: 99. 16 In “L’Amour Philosophe” (1599) [Œuvres, ed. Jean Brunel (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1982)], Nicolas Rapin writes of a certain “Diane” de Gondi who is surrounded by “les Graces” and “les Muses,” as well as “une cour de Princesses, / Ou une Synode d’Abbbesses.” He describes at length her learnedness, including her reading of “sainct Jean Chrysostome,” “sainct Augustin,” “Platon,” “Plutarque,” and “Caton”—“Les fleurs Latines & Grecques,” 1: 537–8, 546. Yates and Édouard Frémy read these passages as a description of the salon vert of Retz and a portrait of her tastes in subject matter for study. See Yates, The French Academies, 105. See also Édouard Frémy’s Origines de l’Académie française: l’Académie des derniers Valois, Académie de poésie et de musique 1570–1576, Académie du palais 1576–1585, d’après des documents nouveaux et inédits (Paris: 1887; Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1969), 160. 17 Lavaud, 81. A revival of interest in Ariosto is also associated with this group. See Rosanna Gorris, “‘Je veux chanter d’amour la tempeste et l’orage’: Desportes et les Imitations de l’Arioste,” Philippe Desportes (1546–1606): Un poète presque parfait entre Renaissance et Classicisme, ed. Jean Balsamo (Paris: Klincksieck, 2000), 173–211.

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their activities, as well as their extant manuscripts and published writings, but also because of the group’s infatuation with elements of the pastoral tradition, which poets engage as a defense mechanism for describing the women of the group, especially its leader. Repeatedly referred to as nymphs, muses, and goddesses from classical antiquity, Madame de Retz and her coterie of noble and royal female friends are figuratively placed on pedestals that provide some degree of distance from misogynistic allegations about their personal lives and their literary endeavors. These aspects of the salon’s history provide a particularly detailed look at the ways in which a literary circle responds to its female leader and how she and her cohorts interact in light of querelle representations, especially those that emerged in the skirmish in the Querelle des femmes called the Querelle des Amyes that arose in France while women such as herself were very visibly taking part in literary society, proving powerful patrons and circulating their own works. Instead of comparing texts by writers who move in the same circles in this chapter, I explore the ways in which Retz is positioned at the center of her milieu as an arbiter of literary taste whose cultivation of traditionally positive querelle rhetoric regarding herself is a key facet of her standing. And, since the women of the French court were known to be fascinated with the manners and mores of Italian players during this period, I devote a portion of the analysis to the Italianate aspects of Retz’s career. The result is a portrait of a woman whose behaviors, pastimes, and education reflect Italian influence on the one hand—a distillation of facets of the learned Italian noblewomen, the cortigiane, and the actresses—and on the other foreshadow the careers of such learned, courtly English women as Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke (1561–1621) and Lucy Harington Russell, the Countess of Bedford (1581–1627), who, like Retz, published little in print themselves but became powerfully influential leaders of literary circles. Figuratively, Retz and others of her milieu may be seen as standing at a central point in the transmission of Italian social and literary practices for learned women from Italy to France and England.

Pastoral defenses and Italian influence Lisa Jardine posits, “Only if mythologized can the woman humanist be celebrated without causing the male humanist professional embarrassment.”18 To be mythologized or satirized were the two courses of representation available for courtly, learned women during this period in terms of the querelle. Key to Retz’s position at the center of her milieu as an arbiter of literary taste was her cultivation of traditionally positive querelle rhetoric regarding herself; thus, she encouraged her own mythologization. Like Andreini’s cultivation of an image of great 18

Lisa Jardine, “Women Humanists: Education for What?” Feminism and Renaissance Studies, ed. Lorna Hutson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 69.

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learnedness and traditional feminine virtue which won her lasting good will among critics, Retz’s reputation for an excellent humanist education, coupled with the fostering of her idyllic salon persona, Dyctinne, allowed her to create a genteel, pastoral world for her salon guests in which she and the women around her were mythologized as nymphs and goddesses and praised for their “rares Beautez” and “la foy et la constance,” fidelity and constancy.19 The fantastic world of “Dictynne” was one into which Retz and her friends fled to escape the troubles of the world around them and to revel in poetry, games, and music. In a poem from the Retz album called “Le Sejour de Dyctinne et des Muses,” 20 dedicated to Retz, an anonymous poet provides an intimate look at these aspects of her salon and in doing so touches on issues and entertainments that recall those Pasquier recounts to Airault in his description of an evening chez Retz. The poet begins by deploring France’s involvement in bloody war21 (like Pasquier’s mention of the “calamité de ce temps”), and then contrasts this state of affairs with the honor and grace found in the company of the muses, specifically the muses that include and surround “Une seule Diane; une seule Dyctinne” at Noisy-le-Roi, the Retz’s “maison de plaisance” in the country.22 The poet describes the beautiful grounds of the park with pastoral eloquence, including the “beau cabinet” of Dyctinne, writing that there, “On adore Dyane, et son frere Apollon” [One adores Diane, and her brother Apollo].23 Just as Pasquier describes the sharp detour of the conversation during his visit from distressing current events to the more pleasing “discours de l’amour,” the anonymous poet also emphasizes the group’s impulse to escape into a pastoral fantasy in which the key players are described as gods and goddesses, as well as muses and nymphs. In classical mythology, Dyctinne is a nymph from Crete who is an attendant of Diana. Fittingly, Catherine de Medici’s daughter, Marguerite de Valois, one of Retz’s closest friends, is occasionally referred to as Diana in poetry produced by Retz’s circle, as she is in “Le Sejour . . . .”24 Marguerite’s brother, Henri III, also 19

“Stances à mes dames,” Retz album, Bibliothèque nationale: fonds français, 25,455, folio 59–59vo. It should be noted that Colette H. Winn and François Rouget have recently edited this manuscript album; their edition is Album de poésies (Manuscript français 25455 de la BNF) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004). 20 Retz album, Bibliothèque nationale: fonds français, 25, 455, folios 62–65vo. 21 The phrase in the poem, “une guerre sanglante,” refers to the Religious Wars. Other references in the poem also situate it in its historic context: there are allusions to the death of Charles IX in 1574 and the battles of Jarnac and Moncontour fought in 1569 by Henri d’Anjou, the future Henri III (Winn and Rouget, 117). 22 For an illustration of Noisy-le-Roi, as well as portraits of Retz and lists of the holdings of both of rhe Retz’s great houses, see G. Wildenstein, “Pasithée: Maréschale de Retz et ses Collections,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1958): 209–218. 23 Retz album, Bibliothèque nationale: fonds français, 25, 455, folios 62–63vo. 24 See, for example, “Stances aux dames parées” and “Le Sejour de Dyctinne,” Retz album, Bibliothèque nationale: fonds français, 25, 455, folios 58vo and 63vo.

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figures prominently in the poetry of the Retz album, as does her husband, Henri de Navarre.25 Adored though they may have been in the company of Dyctinne, these royals were seldom cited for great moral virtue, nor were those who served them. Jacqueline Boucher notes that the men and women of the court of Henri III were not known for their fidelity,26 and, as numerous accounts of this period suggest, extra-marital affairs, as well as espionage, were rather common among Retz’s social set. As might be expected, “Chaste Dictynne”27 was not wholly without detractors. Madame Michel Jullien de Pommerol and Christie Ellen St-John recount the rumors about her romantic liaisons, as well as her political machinations, including an anecdote about a pregnancy that became evident when her husband had been away for a long period of time on a diplomatic mission and her possible involvement in a plot against Charles IX.28 In spite of these alleged contretemps, Retz’s image was defended in traditional terms exalting her beauty and virtue. In the Retz album, one poet scorns “Ceux qui sont ennemys d’une dame si belle” [Those who are enemies of so beautiful a lady], chastising them for their envy, as well as their vice, which, the poet suggests, hates virtue.29 Whether or not Retz was a paragon of virtue, which is highly unlikely, her case illustrates the power of querelle praise or blame to fix a woman’s image in the public eye, as evidenced by the numerous mentions of her great virtue and learnedness by her contemporaries.30 Like Queen Elizabeth’s insistence on her status as the “virgin queen” and her acceptance of the pseudonyms “Astraea” and “Diana” to ensure her association with positive exempla that resonated strongly among her subjects, Retz and the women of her circle embraced pastoral pseudonyms and the Petrarchist’s pedestal for women to promote the creation of a literary defense for themselves that was occasionally at odds with their personal affairs. As the “déesses” Callipante, Pistere, and Pasitée, Marguerite de Valois, Henriette de Clèves, and Retz were the recipients of boundless praise for their beauty, constancy, and perfection in spite of the occasional rumors about their affairs and political 25

Examples may be seen in “Pour le Roy” and “Pour le Roy de Navarre,” Retz album, Bibliothèque nationale: fonds français, 25,455, folios 56 vo and 57. 26 See Jacqueline Boucher, La Cour de Henri III (Rennes: Ouest France, 1986), 27. See also St-John, 70–80. 27 Retz album, Bibliothèque nationale: fonds français, 25,455, folio 52 vo. 28 Pommerol, 199–201; St-John, 70–75, 94–5. 29 “A Madame la Mareschalle de Retz,” Retz album, Bibliothèque nationale: fonds français, 25,455, folio 61. 30 In their praise of Retz’s learnedness and virtue, as well as their attacks on her vices, her contemporaries also clearly echo the rhetorical tradition regarding praise and blame from antiquity. See Cicero’s pronouncements on panegyrics regarding the types of praiseworthy virtues and the “rules for assigning blame” that he states must “be developed out of the vices that are the opposites of these virtues,” De Oratore, vol. 1, trans. E. W. Sutton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942), II. lxxxiv. 343–II. lxxxv. 349.

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schemes.31 Traditional literary attacks and defenses, therefore, sometimes had tenuous connections with truth; rather, they made use of the conventions of the querelle to achieve their own rhetorical ends. Political alliances, the desire for patronage, or simply staunch friendship might inspire praise and defenses on the one hand, while differing political or religious sympathies, malicious gossip, or blatant sexism might, on the other, inspire blame and attacks. In spite of her connections to various scandalous situations involving prominent members of the Valois court, Retz was praised in most quarters, and the language used to describe her gifts was that of Petrarchan exaltation for her virtues combined with humanist respect for her great learning and eloquence. The epideictic nature of the poetry composed for Retz is further exemplified by that of Marie de Romieu (1569?–1585?) who, referring to her as the tenth muse and the fourth grace, praises Retz for her knowledge of Greek, Latin, and Italian, as well as “un parler singulier / Qui contente les Rois et leur cour magnifique” [a singular manner of speaking / That pleases kings and their magnificent court]. She also declares, “Tu ravis les esprits des hommes mieux disans, / Tant en prose et en vers tu sçais charmer nos sens,” [You ravish the spirits of the best spoken men, / Both in prose and in verse you know how to charm our senses].32 Such praise refers to the broad scope of Retz’s literary and performative activities— scholarship, writing, discourse, and oratory—and resonates with that lavished upon such Italian actresses as Andreini and Vittoria Piissimi,33 who, not coincidentally, may be seen as proponents of the fad for pastoral fantasy, thanks to their renown for portraying linguistically and musically gifted innamorate in the pastoral drama wildly popular with courtly audiences during this period.34 From this perspective, 31

“Sonnet sur la constance des Déesses Callipante, Pistere, and Pasitée,” Retz album, Bibliothèque nationale: fonds français, 25,455, folio 48. Regarding the identifications of these women, see Lavaud, 88–90. 32 Marie de Romieu, “Brief Discours, Que l’excellence de la femme surpasse celle de l’homme, autant recreatif que plein de beaux exemples,” Les Premières Œuvres Poétiques, ed. Andre Winandy (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1972), 20–21. 33 Giuseppe Pavoni praises Andreini’s linguistic talents upon seeing her performance of her famous mad scene, La pazzia d’Isabella, in 1589 during the wedding entertainments for Grand Duke Ferdinando de’Medici and Christine de Lorraine. He notes that she raves in Spanish, Greek, Italian, French, and many other languages, and he indicates how much her French speech and singing pleased the bride (see Pavoni in Clubb, 263–4). In a letter to Andreini dated 9 November 1601, Puteanus discusses a speech that he must soon give and desires that he had her talent for “Persuasion” that he might speak “boldly and felicitously” (see Puteanus translated in MacNeil, Music and Women, 305–306). Tommaso Garzoni, for example, writes that Vittoria Piissimi is “a beautiful sorceress of love, she entices the hearts of a thousand lovers with her words” (see Garzoni, translated in Richards and Richards, 221). 34 See Jacqueline Boucher, Société et mentalités autour de Henri III (Paris: Champion, 1981), 3: 1,034–1,039.

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the careers of Retz and Andreini especially resemble each other, underscoring the mimetic nature of such women’s activities. In addition to hosting a salon esteemed by the luminaries of music and letters of this period, Retz, as an intimate friend of Marguerite de Valois and Catherine de Medici, took part in court activities that ranged from debating in the court academy and performing in masques, perhaps most famously in the Balet Comique de la Royne,35 to speaking publicly in Latin before Polish ambassadors in 1573 when they came to request the duc d’Anjou for their king. Retz’s witty salon banter, her skill in debate, her learned Latin oration, and her dancing are clearly reminiscent of the performative traits valued in the actresses of the Italian stage, especially those renowned for their portrayals of linguistically and musically gifted innamorate in the pastoral drama popular with courtly audiences. Of course, admiration and imitation of such skills no doubt went both ways: Italian actresses would have paid close attention to French women’s courtly behaviors and activities. Moreover, criticism of Retz’s alleged romantic escapades, as well as the risqué court performances with which she was associated, is also reminiscent of, and, in some cases coincides with, that directed toward Italian actresses. With these considerations in mind, I examine the ways in which Retz’s activities and the defenses in her honor mirror those of her younger contemporary, Isabella Andreini, and are illustrative of how Italianate literary and social practices were becoming arguably acceptable for French noblewomen. Just as Andreini evaded the usual bad press for actresses, Retz, in spite of her association with the scandal and intrigue of the Valois court and her relatively public performances, was, as noted above, almost universally praised with epideictic fervor. The emphasis upon humanist education for women of the French court, as well as the performative aspects of their activities, reflects the support for such things by the Italians among the courtly milieu in which Retz was involved from girlhood. At “an early age,” writes Keating, Retz was “placed among the ladies-in-waiting, or ‘escadron volant’”36 of Catherine de Medici;37 thus, she was surrounded throughout much of her life by the Italian elements of that court.38 Catherine de 35 In Balet Comique de la Royne (Paris: Adrian le Roy, Robert Ballard, & Mamert Patisson, 1582), Baltasar de Beaujoyeulx notes that Retz danced the part of a naiad, 63v. See also Yates, The French Academies, 242. 36 Interestingly, Enzo Giudici, in his edition of Louise Labé’s Œuvres complètes (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1981), points out that the word escadron is an “Italianisme,” thus a mark of Italian influence upon the French, 230. The Italian term is squádra, which is defined in John Florio’s Italian/English dictionary as “a squadron, a troupe or band of men, but properly a part of a company of soldiers . . .” (Florio’s 1611 Italian/English Dictionary: Queen Anna’s New World of Words [London: 1611], http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/florio/). 37 Keating, 104. In the introduction to their edition of Retz’s Album de poésies, Winn and Rouget provide a well-documented short biography of Mme de Retz, 7–26. 38 For an extensive overview of the Italian cultural and political take-over of the French court, see Boucher, Societé et mentalités, 2: 531–629.

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Medici and her Franco-Italian nobles influenced the tenor of literary culture as they helped to foster the practices of Italian salon and academic society in France, and they were also responsible for the vogue of Italian players there. The French kings supported the Gelosi’s many appearances in France from about 1571 to 1603.39 The Confidenti, too, played there, under the patronage of the duc de Joyeuse, brother-in-law to Henri III.40 In addition to these Italian cultural influences shaping her tastes and education, Retz was aligned with Italian families via marriage and ties of friendship. Her second husband,41 Albert de Gondi, was Italian. His parents were the Florentine Antoine de Gondi, a banker who settled in Lyon, and Marie de Pierrevive, whose mother was a Birague, related to Catherine de Medici’s chancellor François de Birague, né Birago.42 Pierrevive was known in her own right for her literary salon in Lyon, as well as for her close friendship with Catherine de Medici. Henriette de Clèves, one of Retz’s closest friends and a companion in the escadron volant, was married to Louis de Gonzaga, who became, via his wife’s inheritance, the duc de Nevers. Moreover, famous Italian noblewomen such as Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara were held up as role models for learned French women, as D’Aubigné’s letter to his daughters indicates. Antoine de Moulin’s comments in his preface to Pernette du Guillet’s Rymes regarding “the great and undying praise that the ladies of Italy have acquired for themselves today”43 refer to the same phenomenon. In short, Retz and the women of her circle were inundated with Italian cultural stimuli regarding women’s learning and deportment that were absorbed into and perpetuated in French salon and academic practices, as well as courtly performances. Regarding performances at court and the influence of Italian culture, numerous commentators have noted, not always in positive terms, the symbiotic relationship between the French court and Italian players. In his essay, “The Politics of 39 In the latter part of the sixteenth century, the Gelosi enjoyed great popularity among the French nobles and royals. In Societé et mentalités, Boucher writes, “Henri III attira à la cour la fameuse troupe des Gelosi, les meilleurs acteurs de cette époque” [Henri III drew to the court the famous troupe of the Gelosi, the best actors of this epoch], 3: 1,012. For more on the Gelosi’s performances in France, see footnote 54 below. 40 Boucher, Societé et mentalités, 3: 1,012. 41 While still quite young, Clermont was married to Jean d’Annebaut, baron of Retz, who was killed in the battle of Dreux in 1562. In the Nouvelle biographie générale we are told that she was married at eighteen and widowed at twenty (10: 842). Keating claims that she was widowed at nineteen and hypothesizes that the wedding took place around 1560 (104). St-John writes that the two were married on 27 April 1558, when Clermont was sixteen (53). However, if her date of birth was actually 1543, she would have been closer to fifteen according to St-John’s date for the wedding. Suffice it to say that there is confusion regarding these dates. 42 See St-John, 59–60, for a discussion of the Franco-Italian connections surrounding Retz, via her marriage and her friendships. 43 Quoted in Jones’s The Currency of Eros, 83.

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Festivals at the Court of the Last Valois,” Nicolas Le Roux points out that the Valois “are seen as promoters of court life as theater.”44 He provides an overview of major court festivals and ceremonies staged to promote the symbolic links between “those who governed and those governed” 45 from François I to Henri III, suggesting that the latter “used the court as a truly ‘public space’ with the task of publishing to a select audience his concepts of authority.”46 Regarding the reign of Henri III, Le Roux especially touches upon the friction generated between nobles and bourgeoisie by the king and his courtiers’ propensity for fantastic spectacles, dancing, and Italian drama. He notes that the Italian “actors’ appearance and behavior, wearing disguise and adopting exaggerated gestures, invited comparisons with (Henri’s) minions,” and he indicates that such influences upon court spectacle and the behaviors of the royals and nobles caused the bourgeoisie and the clergy to become “less and less tolerant” of the antics of Henri III and his followers.47 The king’s minions, however, were not the only ones whose behaviors were influenced by the Italian players. The negative receptions of Italian actresses and the women of the French court, like the laudatory commentaries about them, were remarkably similar, as gossip about the lewd dancing and scanty costuming of Catherine de Medici’s escadron volant suggests. In his Mémoires-Journaux (1574–1611), Pierre de l’Estoile lodges a general complaint about the influence of members of the Gelosi troupe on young people in Paris, declaring in an entry for 26 June 1577, “in truth their influence was so great, principally among the young ladies, that they took to showing their breasts.”48 In another entry a month earlier, he comments specifically on the ladies of the court who adopted actress-like behavior in that they “waited on table dressed as men in green silk suits” at a party given by the king. (While courtly crossdressing for festival occasions was not unknown, Italian theatrical influence should not be discounted. Italian actresses were known for their ability to play men’s and women’s roles. In the first sonnet of her Rime (1601), Andreini reminds her reader that she plays “hor Donna, ed hora Huom,” now a woman and now a man, on stage, suggesting that she can do the same in her poetry.49 Moreover, French 44 Nicolas Le Roux, “The Politics of Festivals at the Court of the Last Valois,” trans. Valerie Worth-Stylianou, in consultation with R. J. Knecht, Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics and Performance, ed. J. R. Mulryne and Elizabeth Goldring (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2002), 101. 45 Le Roux, 101. 46 Le Roux, 103. 47 Le Roux, 111. The exorbitant expenses of festivals and their spectacles were funded in large part by stringent taxation of the bourgeoisie, which especially inspired feelings of rancor toward the king and his nobles, 104–105. 48 See L’Estoile’s journal entries in The Paris of Henry of Navarre as Seen by Pierre de L’Estoile, trans. Nancy Lyman Roelker (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), 59–60. 49 Rime (Milano: Girolamo Bordone and Pietromartire Locarni, 1601), 1.

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women, too, including Retz, experimented with writing from a masculine perspective in their poetry.50) L’Estoile also mentions Catherine de Medici’s banquet at Chenonceaux at which “the ladies of the court appeared half naked . . . ,”51 intimating the influence of “the Italians” of the court upon such spectacles. Whether or not L’Estoile’s accounts are exaggerated because of his outrage over the expense of such spectacles, which weighed heavily upon those taxed to support such entertainments, or his disgust with the court’s tastes in general, the underlying ire expressed in them is no doubt fueled by his disdain for the performances by the leading ladies of the court, among whom Retz played a central role. Retz would have been thirty-four years old at this point, so it is difficult to judge how audaciously she herself would have dressed for the occasion at Chenonceaux, but she was intimately engaged in staging the entertainment. StJohn points out that Retz was involved in the planning and orchestration of this event, as well as the banquet given by Henri III at Plessis-les-Tours on 15 May 1577.52 Her involvement in court spectacles such as these, as well as her dancing in the Balet Comique de la Royne (1581) and her performances as an orator and musician, suggest that she, too, was influenced by the performances of Italian actresses, known for their prowess in these very types of entertainments. Regarding the masquerades and ballets in which nobles performed, Boucher points out that Italian troupes made use of a fusion of techniques that relied on dance, dramatic action, and stage machinery and that “la France suivait son exemple” [France followed their example]. Specifically, she notes that “Les Gelosi comptaient parmi leurs talents celui de monter des oeuvres à grand spectacle avec chants, danses et machinerie” [The Gelosi counted among their talents that of mounting works of great spectacle with songs, dances and machinery].53 Did Retz and Andreini cross paths in 1577? That year, Andreini would have been only fifteen and perhaps just joining the Gelosi, if she were present at all. However, since the Gelosi were frequent performers at the French court, and there is evidence that Andreini developed contacts and champions among some of the women of the court, as we shall see below, Retz and Andreini most likely crossed paths at some point.54 In 50 In her “Brief Discours,” Romieu writes that Retz could “feindre un souspir d’un amant miserable” [feign a sigh from a miserable lover], as well as “chanter encor un hymne venerable” [sing moreover a venerable hymn], 21. I am grateful to Anne Larsen who pointed out to me that since the genres of the love sonnet and the hymn were especially favored by Ronsard and the Pléiade poets, it seems reasonable to suggest that Retz and Romieu herself adopted male personae in some of their works to compete favorably with these recognized male poets. 51 L’Estoile, trans. Roelker, 59. 52 St-John, 88. 53 Boucher, Societé et mentalités, 3: 1,084. 54 Opportunities for Retz to see Andreini perform clearly arose. Andreini and her husband Francesco are thought to have joined the Gelosi in the mid to late 1570s, ultimately

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any case, it is clear that the performance modes, mannerisms, and linguistic abilities of the Italian players strongly influenced French courtly society. Boucher examines in depth this influence of Italian comedy upon the language and mores of members of the French court, as well as how French noble and royal women were introduced to the world of Italian actresses. She cites instances, documented in letters, memoirs, and histories of French theater, in which nobles and royals participated in “mascarades” in the guises of Pantalon, Arlequin, Brighella, and other classic figures of the commedia. She also shows how these personages of the Italian theater became commonplace references in the “langage quotidien” of the French nobles and royals, citing examples from the memoires of Marguerite de Valois, Brantôme, and L’Estoile.55 Moreover, Boucher concludes that some French noblewomen clearly developed “une certaine familiarité” with Italian culture via personal encounters, as well as literary and epistolary exchanges, with comedians.56 The duchesse de Nemours and Mademoiselle de Beaulieu, the natural daughter of the maréschal de Brissac, provide cases in point. Boucher notes that these women had “des relations personnelles” with Isabella Andreini, as well as other commedians, citing Beaulieu’s treatise, “La Première atteinte contre ceux qui accusent la comédie” (1603), in which she praises Andreini and defends the comedies of the Gelosi against their detractors, and a letter signed “La Franceschina” in which Nemours is called “Aurora preciosa.” Boucher posits that the letter’s author could be an actress, or possibly a cross-dressing actor, who performs the role of Franceschina, a servant “pleine de verve,” full of verve, whose behaviors or exploits are “très libres,” very free.57 Expanding further on “La becoming two of the troupe’s most celebrated actors and directors (Richards and Richards, 63). Clubb notes that their presence is first documented in 1578 when “their return to Italy after a tour in France was chronicled in Florence” (Clubb, 262). In the latter part of the sixteenth century, the Gelosi enjoyed great popularity among the French nobles and royals, both in France and abroad. The duc de Nevers, Louis de Gonzaga, invited them to perform in 1571. In 1575, during his stop in Venice on his way back to France from Poland, Henri III requested that the Gelosi entertain him. They were also in France from 1577 to about May of 1578. During that stay, on their way to Blois at the request of Henri III, they were arrested by Huguenots, and the king had to intercede for them. They played at Blois and in Paris with great success and probably continued to return to France for tours until their last trip in 1603–1604, at the request of Henri IV, during which Isabella Andreini died at Lyon (Richards and Richards, 61–2). See also Boucher, Societé et mentalités, 3: 1,012–13, on the activities of the Gelosi and the Confidenti in France during this period. 55 Boucher, Societé et mentalités, 3: 1,025–28. 56 Boucher, Societé et mentalités, 3: 1,024–25. 57 Boucher, Société et mentalités, 3: 1,024–25. In his edition of Francesco Andreini’s Le Bravure del Capitano Spavento, Roberto Tessari includes a list of Gelosi players and their signature roles that indicates that for the Gelosi under the direction of Francesco Andreini, Franceschina was played by “Silvia Roncagli, Bergamasca” (Pisa: Giardini Editori e Stampatori, 1987), 471.

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Première atteinte . . . ,” which is dedicated to Nemours and contains “Stances à Mme Isabelle,” Linda Timmermans points out that it is devoted almost entirely to the praise and defense of Andreini and the Gelosi, and she contextualizes the relations between Beaulieu, a lady-in-waiting to Marguerite de Valois, and Andreini by indicating Marc Fumaroli’s observation that Isabella and Francesco Andreini were important participants in the debate over the morality of the theatre, a subject of great interest among the French noble devotees of commedia performances.58 More evidence of Andreini’s relationship with Beaulieu may be seen in her Rime, parte seconda (1605) in which she dedicates Sonnet 52 to “Madamoisella Maria de Beaulieu” and the following seven poems to the same, with the last one being “Sopra l’Historia de Madamoisella di Chiaramonte.”59 Timmermans notes that Andreini’s sonnet “Sopra L’Historia di Madamoisella di Chiaramonte,” in which she praises “l’egregia altezza” [distinguished height] of the author’s “canoro stile” [melodious style], most likely refers to Beaulieu’s novel, L’histoire de la Chiaramonte (Paris: Jean Richer, 1603).60 Such contact between commedia troupe members and noblewomen clearly indicates the liminality between the worlds of court and stage. What becomes clear from considering L’Estoile’s contemporary commentary along with Le Roux’s, Boucher’s, and Timmermans’s historical overviews is that during this period, Italian comedians thoroughly captured the imaginations of French royals and nobles. Especially the actresses, who in their pastoral roles perpetuated the stereotypes of virtuous, learned innamorate while their own deportment was rumored to be spiced with transgressive behaviors similar to those of the cortigiane, seemed to influence the ladies of Catherine de Medici’s and Marguerite de Valois’s court circles, including the ladies of the escadron volant. It thus took skill and a propensity for inspiring and fostering positive querelle rhetoric regarding themselves for women such as Retz and Andreini to escape being categorically labeled among the negative exempla of their times. While the similarities between Retz and Andreini are clearly due more to the fostering of Italianate literary and performative practices for women by Catherine de Medici and those around her than direct influence between the two women, it is not as far-fetched as it might first appear to compare the careers of a lady of the French court and a famous actress to illustrate further the mimetic nature of their activities. Retz’s association with the Academie du palais, of which D’Aubigné writes, is comparable to Andreini’s later inclusion in the Intenti, as well as the 58

See Timmermans, note 28, p. 67. Rime d’Isabella Andreini comica gelosa, & academica intenta detta l’Accesa. Parte seconda (Milano: Bordone and Locarni, 1605), 44–8. 60 Andreini, Rime, parte seconda, Sonnet LV. MacNeil has suggested that “Madamoisella di Chiaramonte” might refer to Clermont, since Chiaramonte would be the Italian version of her name (“Music and the Life,” 173), but Timmermans’s identification of Chiaramonte as Beaulieu, in light of the correspondence between Andreini and Beaulieu, makes the most sense (Timmermans, 65). 59

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interactions of earlier Italian noblewomen, such as Vittoria Colonna (1492–1574) and Veronica Gambara (1485–1550), in Italian academies. According to Pierre de L’Anglois in his Discours des Hieroglyphes Aegyptiens, Emblemes, Devises et Armoiries (Paris, 1584), Retz’s academic devices were the rose, the lily, amaranth, shrubs, and brambles.61 Her interaction in salon society under the pastoral pseudonym Dictynne also recalls the use of pseudonyms in Italian salon and academic society. Andreini was called “l’Accesa” among the Intenti, according to the title of her second book of Rime (1605), and Gaspara Stampa (1523–1554) was known as “Anassilla” among the Dubbiosi.62 Also like Andreini, Retz was touted for her musical abilities, especially her playing of the lute, which she studied with the renowned musician Adrian Le Roy.63 Performances of several kinds, then, were as crucial to Retz’s success in courtly society as they were to Andreini’s, and both women used to their advantage the positive querelle rhetoric that such performances could inspire. For Andreini, the laudatory attention was a boon to her professional career, and for Retz, it was an insurance policy regarding the maintenance of her high stature in courtly and literary society.

Protective strategies and circles of influence Unlike Andreini, who clearly sought publication, a move that makes sense since her status as an actor thrust her into the public eye anyway, Retz was apparently reluctant to have her works printed, as the points made by D’Aubigné and La Croix du Maine suggest. Instead she circulated them in manuscript among a select group, with the possible exception of Les diverses assiettes d’amour, traduit d’Espagnol en François, “par Madame la Marechalle de Retz,” the translation mentioned in a catalogue of books entitled “Bibliotheque de Madame de Montpensier mise en lumiere par l’advis de Cornac avec le consentement du Sr. de Beaulieu son Ecuyer” in L’Estoile’s Memoires pour servir à L’histoire de France (1515– 1611).64 Avoiding print publication constituted a measure for preserving one’s reputation for a noblewoman, as well as served as a marker of class. Most eschewed print except in special cases when invited to participate in a worthy cause, such as a tombeau on the death of a close friend or loved one, or when they chose to publish something either anonymously or under a pseudonym. These practices are exemplified in the cases of Antoinette de Loynes, Madame de Morel 61

See Pierre L’Anglois, Tableaux Hieroglyphiques pour exprimer toutes conceptions à la façon des Ægyptiens, par figures & images des choses, au lieu de lettres: avec plusieurs interpretations des songes & prodiges (Paris: Abel l’Angelier, 1584), 106vo– 107vo. See also Yates, The French Academies, 34. 62 Bassanese, 17. 63 See the commentary on Retz’s patronage of musicians along with lists of instruments in her possession in St-John, 151–4. 64 L’Estoile, Memoires pour servir à L’histoire de France, 1: 236.

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(1505–1567), who contributed two sonnets to Charles de Sainte-Marthe’s Oraison funebre de l’incomparable Marguerite, royne de Navarre, duchess d’Alençon (1550) and a sonnet and the translation into French verse of eighteen Latin couplets by the Seymour sisters to the Tombeau de Marguerite de Valois [Navarre] (1551), and Madeleine de l’Aubespine, Madame de Villeroy (1546–96), who appears to have written the discourses included in the Cabinet des saines affections, which was originally published anonymously.65 The result, of course, is that little remains of such women’s writing. In Retz’s case, left are the glowing reviews of literary biographers and little else. Nevertheless, her contemporaries repeatedly pay homage to her wit, learning, and power within the patronage system of the French literary establishment,66 a circumstance that merits closer consideration in light of contemporary querelle developments. To underscore the exigencies of querelle rhetoric that Retz and others of her milieu faced, we should keep in mind that, beginning in the 1540s in France, a new skirmish in the centuries old Querelle des femmes broke out that indicates that the presence of educated women in literary and court circles was both a point of national pride and a locus of anxiety for male intellectuals.67 That these women were sometimes known for cavalier behavior in matters of love only exacerbated the anxiety. The ensuing friction resulted in the debate called the Querelle des Amyes, named for the pamphlets that sparked the quarrel, which will be discussed further in the next chapter. A brief overview, however, is necessary here. L’Amye de Court (1541) by Bertrand de la Borderie and La Parfaicte Amye by Antoine Héroët (1542) were published by Etienne Dolet in Lyon, and they were soon followed by others in the same vein, including Charles Fontaine’s Contr’Amye de Court (1543), Almanque Papillon’s Le Nouvel Amour (1543), and Paul Angier’s

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Colette H. Winn makes the case that Madame Villeroy wrote the Cabinet des saines affections, and she has recently edited the work (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001), 15– 19. 66 For excerpts praising Retz from Nicolas Rapin, Scévole de Sainte-Marthe, François de Bassompierre, see Keating, 112–14. For excerpts from Amadis Jamyn on his Artémis, who is believed to be Retz, see 116–18. Also, in his 1887 work on the Origines de l’Academie française, Fremy devotes approximately eight consecutive pages to the stories about her and the poets’ dedications to her, 153–61. 67 The manifestation of anxiety over women’s status and agency in early modern France reflects the general anxiety regarding the nature and place of women in early modern Europe that has been explored to great effect by many scholars. In “Performing Gynephobia in Urbino” in The Absence of Grace: Sprezzatura and Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy Books (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), Harry Berger, Jr. provides an overview of this scholarship and explores the historicity of gynephobias of sex and gender, 63–86.

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L’Honneste Amant (1544).68 The first editions of the pamphlets were popular at the time that such women as Pernette du Guillet and Louise Labé were active in the literary circles of Lyon, and Du Guillet, in fact, wrote a response to L’Amye de Court in her elegy, “Parfaicte Amytie.”69 To give some idea of the debate’s popularity, the major pamphlets that incited this querelle were published and reprinted in Lyon by Etienne Dolet and Jean de Tournes between 1541 and 1547, as well as reprinted in approximately eight editions of a collection called Le Mespris de la court in Paris between 1544 and 1568.70 The authors of these works were ostensibly attacking or upholding the philosophy of Neoplatonic love or arguing for a more traditional, Pauline view of relations between the sexes, while idealized or reviled figures of courtly women lay at the heart of their writing. The longevity of this querelle, juxtaposed with the sense of national pride in the humanist educations of French women, characterizes the ambivalence toward learned women during this period. The fact that some of these women were also considered powerful arbiters of literary taste no doubt added to the friction. As noted above, the Parisian salons of such women as Retz, Villeroy, and Morel were frequented by poets and scholars of note, both major and minor, and many of those who participated in these salons were also associated with the court academies, the Académie de poésie et de musique and later the Académie du palais. These women were known for their wit and learnedness, and the prodigious number of dedications to them suggests that they were women who could help build or destroy a poet’s career. Even the most famous of the Pléiade poets, Pierre de Ronsard, felt the sway of their approval or ire. Ronsard was so taken with the poetic gifts of Villeroy that in a poem he offered her the emblems for which he was known in academic society, the palm and the laurel.71 He flatteringly writes, “Madelene, ostez moy ce nom de l’Aubespine / Et prenez en sa place et Palmes et Lauriers,” [Madelene, give up for me this name of L’Aubespine / and take in its place both Palms and Laurels]. 72 In contrast, he was so peeved by Monsieur and Madame de Morel’s rejection of his dedication of the “Hymne de la Mort” to them, offered after it had previously been dedicated to Pierre de Paschal, that he dedicated no more works to them after 1560.73 When Madame de Morel was offered the dedication, she responded with a rather scathing tongue-in-cheek poem in which she suggested to Ronsard, it would be better to be “vostre ennemy / (Pour 68

For an overview of the pamphlets and their publication, see Christine M. Hill, introduction to Antoine Héroët: La Parfaicte Amye (Exeter: Exeter University Printing Unit, 1981), xvi–xvii. 69 See a discussion of this exchange in Jones, The Currency of Eros, 19–20. 70 See Hill, xxxi–xxxii. 71 Yates, The French Academies, 34. 72 See Pierre de Ronsard, “Sonnet à Madame de Villeroy,” Œuvres complètes, ed. Jean Céard, Daniel Menager, and Michel Simonin (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), 1: 553. 73 Samuel F. Will, “The Dedication and Rededication of Ronsard’s Hymne de la Mort,” PMLA 46 (1931): 432–40.

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eviter la Mort) que d’estre vostre amy” [your enemy / (To avoid the Death) than to be your friend]. 74 The pointed chiding in the poem, combined with the play on the title of his poem, suggests that she felt free to criticize Ronsard, arguably the greatest French poet of the time. Ronsard’s relationship with the Retz circle, too, has been the subject of much conjecture. Lavaud and Keating posit that the Retz’s salon became prominent between 1567 and 1570,75 and Lavaud argues that during those years, French poetry underwent a change, due largely to the influence of this group. Rather conspicuously absent among the poets writing copious dedications to the couple, however, is Ronsard. Lavaud points out that Ronsard left Paris in 1568 and spent 1569 in the country, returning to Paris in August of 1570, only to find that Amadis Jamyn, Flaminio de Birague, and Antonio Caracciolo were the poets in vogue.76 He writes: L’influence féminine dans ce revirement du goût, dans ce regain du pétrarquisme qui se produisit aux environs de 1570, ne paraît pas douteuse, et nous nous efforcerons de montrer . . . que l’entourage des Gondi fut l’un des points de départ de cette orientation nouvelle. Moresque Ronsard rental de sa longue retracted, les chansons et les complaints que Desportes allay grouper un pea plus tardy sous le evocable de Diane commencement à faire oublier et Cassandra et Marie. Quand, quelques années après, il voudra regagner le terrain perdu, ce sera . . . sur une petite-cousine de la maréchale que se portera son choix. Ainsi . . . pour conserver la faveur du public, le prince des poètes ne trouvait rien de mieux que de graviter, lui aussi, autour de Claude-Catherine de Clermont.77 [The feminine influence in this change of taste, in this revival of Petrarchism, which arose around 1570, does not appear questionable, and we will make an effort to show . . . that the entourage of the Gondi was one of the starting points for this new orientation. When Ronsard returned from his long retreat, the songs and the complaints that Desportes would group a little later under the name of Diane had begun to make (people) forget both Cassandre and Marie. When, some years after, he wished to regain the lost ground, it would be a second cousin of the maréchale upon whom he would fix his choice. Thus . . . to keep the public’s favor, the prince of the poets found nothing better than to gravitate, himself as well, around Claude-Catherine de Clermont.]

The connections between Retz, two of her female relations, and some of the most famous male poets of the period are important to consider in light of literary circle relationships. Hélène de Surgères, believed to be the Hélène of Ronsard’s poetry,

74 75 76 77

Will, “The Dedication,” 438. Keating, 105–106; Lavaud 80–81. Lavaud, 81. Lavaud, 81.

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was a distant cousin to Retz on her father’s side of the family.78 Héliette de Vivonne, thought to be the Cléonice of Desportes’s poetry, was Retz’s mother Jeanne de Vivonne’s great niece.79 Lavaud suggests that these ladies’ connections with Retz were a large part of their attraction for Ronsard and Desportes, thus “nous ne sortirons pas d’un cercle assez restreint” [we do not go out of a rather limited circle].80 As Lavaud’s observations suggest, this limited circle was both powerful and influential.81 Retz and some of the other women who attended her salon were dames d’honneur to Queen Louise de Vaudemont (1553–1601) and/or members of the escadron volant of Catherine de Medici. These circumstances allude to the sorts of friction responsible for a renewed interest in the Querelle des femmes: such women were educated, rich, and powerful, and held sway over their poet protégés. Moreover, many were known for their debaucheries and mésalliances, as well as their political machinations. During a period when a rhetorical tradition with strongly agonistic leanings permeated much literature and communication in general, it is no surprise to find the nature of women dissected for commonplaces and the poetry about them “concerned basically with praise or blame.”82 The Villeroy and Retz albums serve as artifacts of this vogue for the Querelle des femmes. The Villeroy album contains some Petrarchan verse, but it also contains raucous, ribald, and highly misogynistic doggerel. In this respect it contrasts strongly with the Retz album, which contains mostly Petrarchan hyperbole written on behalf of Madame de Retz. Examples from the Villeroy album include a poem entitled “Tout homme marié est infassiblement salvé” on the ways in which a man is saved, whether his wife is good or evil, (if she is good, he is very happy; if she is evil, he is a martyr), and a poem entitled “Contre les mauvaises femmes” which begins “En femme n’a que desplaisir . . . ,” in a woman there is only displeasure . . . .83 Another called “Les mestiers d’une femme” suggests that women occupy themselves solely with foolishness, deceit, greed, and troublemaking.84 The differences in tone and subject matter between these collections of verse allude to the differences in social class between the owners of the albums, with the Retz album being clearly meant for an audience of higher rank 78 She also took part in the Balet Comique, performing the role of a wood nymph or dryad, Beaujoyeulx, 64; Yates, The French Academies, 246. 79 Lavaud discusses these family connections, 73–4. 80 Lavaud, 74. 81 Based on names and pseudonyms mentioned in the poetry of the Retz album, Lavaud identifies and hypothesizes about the identities of the women who attended Retz’s salon, 88–93. 82 Ong, 111. 83 Villeroy album, Ms. 1663, folios 78 and 86. 84 Villeroy album, Ms. 1663, folio 87. Pierre Champion also comments on these verses in Ronsard et Villeroy: Les Secrétaires du roi et les poètes (Paris: Edouard Champion, 1925), 24, 26.

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than that of the Villeroy album. Another reason for the contrasts between the albums is that the Retz album is more carefully transcribed than the Villeroy album and bound in a manner that suggests that it is meant to be a treasured possession of Retz herself, so it stands to reason that the poetry in it is selectively edited to consist mainly of the flattering, Petrarchan/Neoplatonic variety. Although the two ladies in question, Retz and Villeroy, were from differing social classes, and anecdotes regarding the tone of their conversations in salon society differ accordingly, evidence suggests that neither avoided spirited discourse. Regarding the bawdy verse of the Villeroy album, Lavaud opines that Madame de Villeroy “n’était probablement pas effarouchée par ce genre de plaisanteries . . . .” [was probably not shocked by this type of joke . . .]. 85 He bases his observation on a recollection of D’Aubigné’s, in his Confession Catholique du Sieur de Sancy, in which he recounts an absurd conversation on saints in which Madame de Villeroy participated, trading bawdy quips with her interlocutor.86 Moreover, an obscene “Enigme” in a collection of verse attributed to her also suggests that she enjoyed such jokes.87 Pasquier’s depiction of Retz’s provocative conversation during an evening in her salon suggests the same, even though the tamer verses in her album would seem to reflect a more refined sensibility, indicative of her higher rank, than that of Villeroy. The contents of these albums combined with the social portraits of the women in question, compiled from contemporary accounts of their behaviors and activities, suggest that on the one hand, the sixteenth-century querelle was very much a literary game. On the other, however, it seems that it served as a marker for real social anxiety about women’s freedom, behavior, and, in some cases, growing spheres of influence. Retz provides a case in point. In spite of her association with the debaucheries of the Valois court, Retz managed to be the recipient of much praise, although some criticism of her actions was recorded in anonymous verse. Madame de Pommerol and St-John compile examples from L’Estoile’s journals that make reference to Retz’s alleged involvements with “a certain Beauvais la Nocle, Chevalier Lafin,” and Charles de Balsac d’Entragues, as well as the surprise pregnancy during the absence of her husband.88 In a quatrain on the misfortunes of “les quatres Mareschaux,” an anonymous poet comments on one maréschal, apparently Gondi, who is by 85

Lavaud, 61. D’Aubigné, Œuvres, ed. Henri Weber et al., 584. See also Keating’s commentary on L’Aubespine’s reputation for bawdiness, 93–4. He points out, as does Sorg, that the idealized descriptions of her personality in the works of Frémy and Nouaillac are “based on the exaggerated panegyric of Hilarion de Coste,” while the accounts of her bawdy nature and quick wit come from her contemporaries, such as D’Aubigné and L’Estoile, note 53, p. 94. 87 See the “Enigme” in Roger Sorg’s Les chansons de Callianthe: Fille de Ronsard (Paris: Léon Pinchon, 1926), 70. 88 Pommerol, 199–201; St-John, 71–3. 86

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“Lafin,” noted to be “Le jeune Beauvais la Nocle,” punished for his wrongdoings by being cuckolded.89 In December of 1581, L’Estoile records a “Pasquil Courtizan” circulated at court in which a great deal of gossip is aired about numerous ladies of the court. It includes lines that refer to “la mareschalle de Rets” and her alleged affair with Charles de Balsac d’Entragues,90 as does another such poem, “Pasquins,” that he records in December of 1586.91 In spite of these slurs, Retz’s inclusion among the traditionally “good” female exempla of her time has prevailed. Moreover, it is a mark of her power and influence that such derogatory verse is anonymous while the greater quantity of positive, laudatory verse about her is signed by those who seek her good will. Poems such as those recorded in L’Estoile’s journals mainly make use of an arch, insider’s tone as they perpetuate court gossip. Positive querelle rhetoric, however, is used to ameliorate a dicey situation in an example in the Retz album, illustrating the protective use of a querelle commonplace on Retz’s behalf. The sonnet “Sur la Constance des Déesses Callipante, Pistere et Pasitée” alludes to Retz’s knowledge of the plot involving Comte Annibal de Coconas and Comte Boniface de Lèrac de la Mole to put the duc d’Alençon on the throne after Charles IX instead of the duc d’Anjou. Its poet purports to “honor” these nymphs, thought to represent Marguerite de Valois, Henriette de Nevers, and Retz, for their constancy to their alleged lovers who were beheaded when their plot was discovered.92 What could be written as a scathing commentary on these women’s morals, both personal and political, is instead expressed as a traditional querelle defense in praise of the women’s constancy. Of course, the intended audience for the poem must be considered, but it seems that Retz’s reputation could withstand a great deal of bad press, thanks to the powerful persuasion of her position and wealth, even when she was involved in escapades that would surely have resulted in a volley of negative querelle attacks for a lesser personage. The mixture of praise and blame for Retz and other women of the French court clearly fascinated all who came into contact with or heard of them. One intriguing place that such women appear immortalized is in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (1594–95), which critics suggest makes reference to Marguerite de Valois’s visit to her estranged husband, Henri de Navarre in 1578.93 Retz accompanied 89

L’Estoile, Mémoires-Journaux, ed. Brunet et al. (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1888),

1: 18. 90

L’Estoile, Mémoires-Journaux, 2: 42–3. L’Estoile, Mémoires-Journaux, 2: 365–6. 92 See St-John, 76–9; Lavaud, 88–90; and Winn and Rouget, 96. The poem is found in the Retz album, Bibliothèque nationale: fonds français, 25,455, folio 48. 93 In his introduction to the play, Richard David reviews the historical backdrop, commenting on the two embassies to the King of Navarre in 1578 and 1586 that may have influenced Shakespeare’s story, and he notes that on “both occasions the royal envoy, reinforcing diplomacy by coquetry, was supported by that famous bevy of ladies-in-waiting who for their grace and flightiness were known as ‘l’escadron volant.’” [Introduction to 91

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Catherine de Medici and Marguerite de Valois on this journey to Nérac, where, incidentally, the group was entertained by performances of Italian comedies.94 Her pastoral pseudonym “Dyctinne” actually appears in one of the numerous spates of wordplay in Love’s Labour’s Lost, further underscoring the suggestion that the courtly ladies surrounding Catherine de Medici and Marguerite de Valois inspired various facets of Shakespeare’s female characters: Dull: You two are bookmen. Can you tell me by your wit What was a month old at Cain’s birth that’s not five weeks old as yet? Holofernes: Dictynna, Goodman Dull, Dictynna, Goodman Dull. Dull: What is ‘Dictima’? Nathaniel: A title to Phoebe, to luna, to the moon. (4.2.34)95

Technically, Dyctinne was a servant to Diana, and, typically, Shakespeare uses moon-related imagery to refer to Queen Elizabeth. The reference could simply be yet another moon/Diana/Elizabeth marker for Elizabeth. Since the pseudonym Dyctinne had well known associations with Retz, however, it is also possible that this reference is meant to evoke an association with the ladies of the French court as it embeds the familiar pseudonym of one of their most famous members in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Retz and other French salon hostesses, such as Madame de Morel and Madame de Villeroy, may be seen as central to the transmission of Renaissance literary culture in which women participated via the rhetorical spaces provided by salon society. That such women’s personae and salon activities were known and imitated in England is evident, both from the development of literary circles that included courtly, learned women and from the anxiety that arises in commentary on the phenomenon. Of such women as the Countess of Bedford and others in the service of Queen Anne, Sir John Harington writes: These entertayn great princes; these have lerned The tongues, toyes, tricks, of Room, of Spain, of Fraunce; These can Currentos and Lavoltas dance, And though they foot yt false tis nere discerned, The vertues of these dames are so transcendent. Themselves ar learnd, and their Heroyk sperit Can make disgrace an honor, sinn a merit. All penns, all praysers ar on them dependent.96

Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), xxii–xxxiii.] 94 See G. R. Hibbard, introduction to Love’s Labour’s Lost (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 50. 95 William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997), 741–802.

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Harington’s scorn for these women of the English court, whom he accuses of having learned their tricks from the ladies of Rome, Spain, and France, is reminiscent of that of attackers of women in the Querelle des Amyes, albeit with the additional swipe at the corrupting influences of Catholicism. The irony that “All pens, all praysers ar on them dependent,” suggesting that a writer’s success depends upon pleasing powerful women in literary society, no doubt rankles. One suspects that Ronsard could have related. That such ladies can “make disgrace an honor, sinn a merit” brings to mind the circumstances associated with the poem “Sur la Constance des Deesses Callipante, Pistere et Pasitée” in that Retz and others of her milieu did indeed seem to be able to escape disgrace, at least within the confines of their literary circle. Harington’s words also suggest a jaded view of Continental influence similar to that expressed by John Lyly in Euphue’s Glass for Europe, which he dedicates to “the Ladyes and Gentlewomen of Italy.” In it he notes that the “Gentlewoemen” of Greece and Italy use “sonnets for psalmes” and “pastymes for prayers,” and may be found “reading ye Epistle of a Lover, when they should peruse the Gospell of our Lord.”97 Lyly, however, was writing some years earlier than Harington and in staunch praise of Queen Elizabeth. He protests that English women, unlike their Continental sisters, “use their needle to banish idleness, not the pen to nourish it,” and he suggests that they do so, “Contrarie to the custome of many countries, where filthie wordes are accompted to sauour of a fine witte, broade speach, of a bolde courage, wanton glaunces, of a sharpe eye sight, wicked deedes, of a comely gesture, all vaine delights, of a right curteous curtesie.”98 Lyly’s description of Continental women’s behavior and his latent fear of its influence on English women resonate with L’Estoile’s lament that Italian comedies teach “nothing but fornication and adultery” and serve “as a school of debauchery,” especially for the young ladies of France who imitate the Italian actresses.99 Clearly, English impressions of Continental women’s alleged behaviors and pastimes were fraught with anxiety sparked by what they had seen or heard of the risqué behaviors of such Continental women as the Italian actresses and courtesans as well as the escadron volant. In the figure of the duchesse de Retz, we find an encapsulation of trends for French courtly women. She was clearly part of the theater-loving circles of Catherine de Medici, Marguerite de Valois, Henri III, and Henri IV, who were so taken with Italian comici that they frequently commissioned performances by 96

Sir John Harington, “To his Wyfe of womens verteues,” The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington Together with the Prayse of Private Life, ed. Norman Egbert McClure (New York: Octagon Books—Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1977), 291–2. 97 John Lyly, Euphues’ Glass for Europe, The Complete Works of John Lyly, ed. R. Warwick Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 2: 198–9. 98 Lyly, Euphues’ Glass for Europe, 2: 201. 99 L’Estoile, trans. Roelker, 59–60.

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them. She was also a key figure in both the court academy and her own literary salon. While evidence and gossip suggest that Retz indulged in romantic and political machinations, her reputation withstood assaults, and she is remembered chiefly for her great learning, wit, and musical prowess. In essence, she has been “mythologized,” to use Jardine’s term, as a wonder of her day. By avoiding print publication for the most part, the majority of her works have been lost, but the poetry and prose about her suggest that she was a talented writer and translator whose works circulated among the most gifted poets and intellectuals of her time. In Writing Women’s Literary History, Ezell suggests that study of early women’s works should be organized “around the mode of production and the intended audience” in a manner that “would invite fresh questions about the past rather than silencing its answers.”100 These observations about Retz’s activities in sixteenthcentury Parisian salon culture, as well as those of some of her contemporaries, showcase the “modes of production” for such women’s writing, reveal their illustrious reading audiences, and provide provocative glimpses of their behavior, power, and status in their milieu.

100

Ezell, Writing, 65.

Chapter Four

Louise Labé, l’Imparfaicte Amye Estant le tems venu, Madamoiselle, que les severes loix des hommes n’empeschent plus les femmes de s’appliquer aus sciences et disciplines: il me semble que celles qui ont la commodité, doivent employer cette honneste liberté que notre sexe ha autre fois tant desirée . . . . [Now that the time has come, Mademoiselle, that men’s harsh laws no longer prevent women from devoting themselves to the arts and sciences, it seems to me that those who have the opportunity ought to study them, using the rightful freedom that members of our sex have so ardently desired in the past.] Louise Labé, Œuvres, Dedicatory Letter to Clémence de Bourges1

The presence of women participating in intellectual society in France during the sixteenth century coincides with the renewal of the Querelle des femmes in a literary quarrel called the Querelle des Amyes. This skirmish had its beginnings in Lyon during the years that Louise Labé (ca. 1520–66) and many other women, including Pernette du Guillet and Madame de Pierrevive, the mother-in-law of the duchesse de Retz, were active in Lyonnaise literary society. 2 Françoise Joukovsky summarizes views of women during this phase of the querelle as follows: “La dame est tantôt une coquette, bonne à séduire ou à acheter, tantôt un miroir de vertu . . . ” [The lady is sometimes a coquette, good to seduce or to buy, sometimes a mirror of virtue . . . ]. 3 What is missing between these two categories—women as whorish seductresses or mirrors of virtue—is, to point out the elephant in the salon, that which clearly made men the most anxious of all: women who did not fit into familiar, prescribed categories. Women who sought to elevate themselves 1

Louise Labé, Œuvres complètes: Sonnets, Elégies, Débat de Folie et d’Amour, ed. François Rigolot (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1986), 41. Translation by Edith R. Farrell, Louise Labé’s Complete Works, trans. and ed. Edith R. Farrell; introduced by Edith R. Farrell and C. Frederick Farrell, Jr. (Troy, NY: The Whitson Publishing Company, 1986), 27. 2 See Verdun Saulnier, Maurice Scève (Genève: Slatkine, 1981), on the salon of Marie de Pierrevive, as well as his catalogue of “dames savantes lyonnaises,” 112, 413–16. See also Kirk D. Read, “Women of the French Renaissance in Search of Literary Community: A Prolegomenon to Early Modern Women’s Participation in Letters,” Romance Languages Annual 5 (1993): 96–8. 3 Françoise Joukovsky, “La querelle des femmes,” Magazine Littéraire 319 (1994): 51.

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above their social status via their learning, women who eschewed the idea that they should be virtuous and learned simply to inspire men, and women who had the temerity to participate in, as well as dissect, romantic relationships in terms other than those of Petrarchan hyperbole were the new Other. In attempting to write about them, men turned to the comforting, familiar rhetoric of praise and blame— which did little to help them come to terms with the learned women in their midst. Labé is a prime example of this troubling female figure. Her transformation from being known as the daughter of a rope-maker to becoming one of the most celebrated and often reviled early modern women poets illustrates, as Ann Rosalind Jones has pointed out, the rise of the middle class in France and their engagement with “cultural luxuries previously reserved for the aristocracy.”4 It also exemplifies the inspirational power of a humanist education. The quote above from the dedication of her Œuvres suggests that men’s fears regarding what a woman might think and do with such an education were well founded, as it denigrates male-centric traditions of the past, les severes loix des hommes. Such incendiary rhetoric, accompanied by poetry that includes erotic imagery and some anti-Petrarchan sentiment, as well as a satiric dialogue about folly as an intrinsic part of love, did not escape notice. Reviews were mixed, however, and there was no separating the reception of Labé’s writing from that of her personal reputation. Praised in some quarters, Labé was soundly dismissed in others. John Calvin called her a common prostitute (plebeia meretrix);5 Guillaume Paradin, a Catholic deacon in Lyon, “thought Labé virtuous and angelic of face . . . with an understanding superior to her sex.”6 Labé insisted that her “passetems” were “honneste;”7 Dorothy O’Connor has speculated that her “honnesteté” was like that of the cortigiane oneste of Italy.8 Deconstructing the hype, Jones more accurately suggests that the charge of prostitution and the general slurs upon Labé’s reputation seem in retrospect “to have been concocted mainly as ammunition in battles between men—by historians in Lyon as well as ecclesiastics abroad.” Furthermore, she argues that Labé’s “display of learning and her gatherings of high-ranking as well as highly educated men made her vulnerable to gossip on the

4

Jones, The Currency of Eros, 156. Calvin’s comment is from his pamphlet, “Gratulatio ad venerabilem presbyterum dominum Gabrielum de Saconay . . .” (1561). See Charles Boy, “Recherches sur la vie et les œuvres de Louise Labé,” Œuvres de Louise Labé (Paris, 1887; reprint, Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1968), 2: 15, 100–101. See also Jones, The Currency of Eros, 157; and Jeanne Prine, “Poet of Lyon: Louise Labé,” Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 132. 6 Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: University of California Press, 1975), 86. See also Boy, 2: 111. 7 Labé, dedicatory letter, Œuvres complètes, 20. 8 Prine, 133. Prine discusses Dorothy O’Connor’s assertion of this view in Louise Labé: Sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris, 1926), 82ff. 5

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part of the Lyonnais who resented her transgression of social boundaries.”9 This analysis benefits from logical consideration of the contexts for such descriptions. Moreover, it underscores the important facts that Labé’s reputation became a commonplace among male writers and that she herself was depicted as an exemplum for varying arguments about the nature of women. Although Labé herself was objectified as an exemplum, her writing was powerfully subjective. In it, she engaged in the ongoing literary quarrel about the nature of women by expressing her ideas about real, as opposed to objectified or idealized, ones, and she also included criticism about the nature of men—a ploy that no doubt cast her in a negative light among some readers. Even so, she had a wide readership that reached beyond France, and her works continued to be read long after her death, as Robert Greene’s English translation of her Débat de Folie et d’Amour (1608) suggests.10 In this chapter, I first discuss the backdrop for literary society in Lyon and the anxieties that women such as Labé produced in it, even while being considered central to it. Then I examine how Labé’s writing interacts intertextually with that of Pontus de Tyard (1521–1605), her friend and a staunch Neoplatonist. Both writers’ works were published by Jean de Tournes of Lyon, who published a variety of querelle-related literature. Tyard’s preface to Solitaire premier and passages from that dialogue read in tandem with Labé’s dedication to her Œuvres and passages from her Débat de Folie et d’Amour illustrate the conflicting ideologies present in the new querelle. On one side, we find a traditional defense of women that represents one facet of the same old argument: woman as Neoplatonic ideal vs. whorish coquette; on the other, we have a call to broaden the scope of the querelle to consider the nature and behavior of both men and women.

9

Jones, The Currency of Eros, 157. Jones also quotes similar views voiced by Davis in Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Davis writes that from a Reformation point of view: The books Louise read and wrote were lascivious; her salons an impure gathering of the sexes; and her literary feminism impudent . . . . Louise seems to have been the model of the libertine—a woman who talks loud and often, affecting to know divine things but really living a life of debauchery. A Catholic deacon in Lyon, Guillaume Paradin, himself a humanist and literary man, thought Louise virtuous, angelic of face, and with an understanding superior to her sex. Calvin said she was a strumpet. There was some truth in both evaluations. (85–6) 10

Greene (1560–92) called his close translation of Labé’s dialogue, the Debate betweene Follie and Love, and it was published posthumously in London by Mathew Lownes in 1608. On the title page, however, it says only that it is translated “out of French,” and Labé is not given credit for it.

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Literary society in Lyon To provide a geographical and literary backdrop for the city, we should recall that during the first part of the sixteenth century, Lyon became a major center for printing and literary society, as well as a conduit for Italian cultural trends to enter France, thanks to the influx of Italian merchants and bankers. It was there in 1544, that Maurice Scève (ca. 1500–ca. 1560) published his Délie, inspired by Du Guillet (early 1520s–1544). That same year Clément Marot, credited with writing the first Petrarchan sonnet in French while in Venice during the summer of 1536, published a translation of six sonnets by Petrarch to inaugurate the reign of French Petrarchism.11 These poets were forerunners of the Pléiade and helped to establish Lyon as a literary stronghold. In 1541 and 1542, respectively, the Querelle des Amyes commenced when the Lyonnais printer Etienne Dolet published La Borderie’s L’Amye de Court, a portrait of the courtly lady as a scheming, shallow soul who only superficially exhibits the characteristics of the ideal Neoplatonic beloved, and Héroët’s La Parfaicte Amye, a portrait of the ideal Neoplatonic beloved.12 Other pamphlets written in a similar vein soon followed, including Charles Fontaine’s Contr’Amye de Court (1543), Almanque Papillon’s Le Nouvel Amour (1543), and Paul Angier’s L’Honneste Amant (1544). In 1547, Jean de Tournes published a collection of these works in a volume entitled Opuscules d’amour. The popularity of this mixture of Petrarchism and polemics centered on the nature of women suggests that the loosely connected group later called the Ecole lyonnaise13 were avidly engaged in dissecting the “woman question,” no doubt spurred on by the presence of female intellectuals and writers in their midst. It also indicates that some were perhaps more than a little anxious about them, hence the eagerness to resume the querelle on the literary front. In “Women of the French Renaissance in Search of Literary Community: A Prolegomenon to Early Modern Women’s Participation in Letters,” Kirk Read notes that in sixteenth-century French society: Women wrote. Women circulated manuscripts. Women argued in literary salons that they themselves organized and directed. Women learned and taught Latin. Women ran publishing houses upon the death of their spouses. Women published their own writing under their own names.14

11

Rigolot, “Clément Marot Imports into French the Petrarchan Sonnet,” A New History of French Literature, ed. Denis Hollier (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 172. 12 The Parfaicte Amye was also published in Tours, Troyes, and Rouen in 1542 (Hill, vi). 13 See Jones on the history of the Ecole lyonnaise, The Currency of Eros, 80. 14 Read, 95.

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While Read’s goal is to illustrate instances of community among women writers and readers, in his assessment of French women’s participation in literary society, he touches on an issue that might easily be considered an anxiety trigger for their male contemporaries: he points out that what “is immediately striking about women’s published writings . . . is the continual address to other women within the dedicatory and prefatory locus of their works.”15 Read suggests that women were organizing and gaining power among themselves within their own communities— an idea substantiated by Labé’s call for change to the women of Lyon in her dedication. Pointing out the frequency of references to her group of women readers, the “Dames Lionnoises,” in her poetry,16 Read argues that even though “no new, imaginary Orders of Lesbos were chartered with Louise Labé as their Sappho,” Labé’s literary construction of the “dames lyonnoises (following the example set by Antoine de Moulin in his preface to Du Guillet’s works) as a communal, female referent, informed a strategy of self-representation and legitimation which was vitally important.”17 It is easy to surmise that such a strategy would also alienate some of her male contemporaries who preferred to see themselves as traditional defenders of traditional values for women instead of upholders of “les severes loix des hommes,” in spite of the fact that these two positions were usually the same. Moving beyond the focus on women writing for female communities, it is important to recall that upon publication, women’s works were offered up to an integrated literary society of men and women, setting their authors on the threshold of fame or infamy. In some cases, such as those of Antoinette de Loynes, Madame de Morel, and Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, the women were lauded for their talent and their acceptably modest sharing of their intellectual gifts via tombeaux and translations. Their already exalted positions in literary society— Loynes, co-leader of the popular Morel salon along with her husband Jean de Morel, and Herbert, sister of Sir Philip Sidney—no doubt also provided protection. Moreover, both were patronesses of poets and tutors, who would not be so foolish as to bite the hands that fed them. However, in a case such as Labé’s, to publish original writing that spoke of a love other than religious, or that was in any way provocative, with no protective family ally, no powerful position as a patron, and decidedly middle-class roots, was to flirt with critical disaster for reasons familiar to students of early modern women’s literary history. The “body-speech link,” in which a woman’s speech is related to alleged promiscuity, and the “injunction to silence and invisibility,” among the most common injunctions for women to help them avoid the body-speech quagmire, are two insidious and symbiotic examples of impetuses for silencing women and keeping their voices, written and otherwise, out of male-dominated rhetorical 15 16 17

Read, 96. Read, 97. Read, 98.

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spaces.18 True to the silent goddess/vociferous whore paradigm favored by traditional participants in the querelle, after her works appeared in print in 1555 and 1556, an anonymous poem called “Chanson nouvelle de la belle cordière de Lyon,” was published in 1557, in which the author claims that Labé slept with many men to achieve her literary and social success, a charge also reflected in Calvin’s pronouncement.19 Such a charge in print may reflect something of what a publisher might have hoped would happen: from a practical perspective, it added fuel to the fire for the presses. However, from a philosophical perspective, it indicated that a threshold had been crossed—the woman had stepped out of the salon and into the primarily male preserve of print without the protection of a male crossing guard. The result was outrage on the part of some of her male critics. One reason for the uproar is that Labé violated a critical rule for “parfaicte amyes,” hence my title for this chapter. She went “public” with her wit, insight, and amorous feelings, which, according to Héroët’s “Parfaicte Amye” and Tyard’s interlocutors Solitaire and Pasithée, she was supposed to keep insulated in the private world of the relationship between Platonic lover and beloved or at least confined to her salon circle. That Labé’s affairs were purely Platonic has been considered doubtful (witness her exuberant Sonnet 18 on kissing her lover), but according to social code, she should have worried more about appearances. Regarding this matter, the “Parfaicte Amye” provides guidance. Since the “Parfaicte Amye” is married, she is especially concerned with keeping her love affair private because, as Hill puts it, “en privé” people would accept her conduct, but “en public,” they would blame her and consider her behavior adulterous.20 But because this is supposedly a Neoplatonic affair with Perfect Love as its goal, her behavior is to be excused, or so it would seem, according to Héroët. Tyard’s depiction of a Neoplatonic tryst also suggests that privacy is key. Pasithée, Solitaire’s muse and guide, is depicted alone with her lover during their discourse, and the atmosphere that Tyard creates for them suggests that they inhabit a very private world when they are together, one in which they have eyes and ears only for each other. Moreover, in the first section of Solitaire premier, Solitaire explains that he is about to express himself in the dialogue form used by Plato and Cicero and that the ensuing discourse will be between himself and “celle, que je cache souz le nom de Pasithée” [she, whom I hide under the name of Pasithée]. 21 Hiding the identity of his beloved through use of a pseudonym illustrates the requisite level of privacy that a traditional defender of women believes is necessary for a woman to safely participate in the life of the mind and in literary society. Even 18

Jones, “Surprising Fame,” Feminism and Renaissance Studies, ed. Lorna Hutson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 320–21. 19 Jones, The Currency of Eros, 8. See also Jardine on the phenomenon of a woman, once praised, being reviled after she gains “too much” fame, 56–9. 20 Héroët, Book One, lines 275–309; Hill, xxii. 21 Héroët, Book One, lines 112–13.

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though Labé mentions the possible “honte,” or shame that may come from publishing her works in her dedication,22 she clearly has few serious qualms about it, as the fact that two editions were brought out suggests. Moreover, she concludes her letter by urging Clémence de Bourges to bring to light her own work, claiming that it is more worthy than her own for others to see.23 She thus rejects the perceived need for anonymity. Tyard further addresses this issue when he has his characters outline the limitations of what is considered proper fame for learned women—a discussion that brings to mind the careers of Retz and Villeroy and shows where Labé goes woefully wrong. When praising her virtues, Solitaire warns Pasithée, rather ironically it seems to a modern reader, that “trop de modestie qui vous fait souvent estendre au mespris de vos graces, et plaindre du defaut des perfections (lequel a grand tort vous-vous imputez) n’irrite les Muses . . .” [too much modesty which often makes you expound in contempt of your graces, and to complain of your lack of perfections (which is a great wrong you impute to yourself) irritates the Muses . . .]24 Yet, in spite of the muses, self-promotion is allowed to go only so far. In section nine, Pasithée acknowledges that she, too, thinks that for some, too much modesty is a hindrance. She tells Solitaire that she admires “les vers de quelques damoiselles (car bien que je sois jalouse d’elles, si ne puis-je, et ne voudrois celer combien elles sont loüables) qui cachant leurs noms, me semblent se faire tort de vouloir ainsi desrober leur loüange à la renommée” [the verse of some young ladies (for although I am jealous of them, I cannot nor would want to conceal how much they are worthy of praise) who hide their names, they seem to me to cheat themselves by wanting thus to hide their praise to fame].25 Solitaire reassures her that if she continues her studies, she will be as worthy of praise as they are, but he laments the “severes censeurs” who would deny that women (as well as “la langue Françoise”) are capable of understanding and expressing complex philosophies.26 Here, his defense of women and the French language combine. The message regarding women and fame, however, is clear: although right-thinking men should realize the intellectual potential of women (‘l’esprit logé en delicat corps feminin”), many have “leurs grosses testes coiffées de stupidité” [their big heads coifed with stupidity]27 and are thus rendered incapable of giving women a proper chance to prove themselves, much less of considering them worthy of fame. We may thus deduce that the path of anonymity is the safest for women who would excel in intellectual endeavors and belles lettres. 22

Labé, 43. Labé, 43. 24 Pontus de Tyard, Solitaire Premier, ed. Silvio F. Baridon (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1950), 57. 25 Tyard, 65. 26 Tyard, 66. 27 Tyard, 66. 23

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To publish a woman’s works under her own name, then, violates the practices that Tyard describes and sets a woman up to provoke the very censors of whom he writes. Why might a publisher do it? When analyzing nuances of women’s bids for literary fame, Jones asserts that the “‘of’ and the ‘to,’ the context and the audience, must be the starting-points for any understanding of sixteenth-century women’s writing.”28 The same is true for considering the publication of sixteenth-century women’s writing. Beyond the questions regarding merit and aesthetics, the interests of the audience and the motives of the publisher should also be addressed. In Labé’s case, and in that of Du Guillet, the publication of their works by Jean de Tournes was a mark of their acceptance as part of the status quo in Lyonnaise literary society. But there is no doubt more to it than that. To publish works that fit into or made reference to the new querelle was good for business. Tournes published Du Guillet’s Rymes, which included her elegy “Parfaicte Amytie,” a response to the Amye de Court29 in 1545, the year after her death and the publication of Scève’s Délie. He published Labé’s Œuvres, prefaced with her bellicose dedication and consisting of her dialogue, elegies, and sonnets, as well as the poems written in praise of her, the Ecrivez de divers poetes à la louenge de L. L. Lionnoise, in 1555, followed by a second edition in 1556.30 Her poems, sometimes an exuberant celebration of less-than-Platonic passion,31 sometimes a direct attack on Petrarchan posturing,32 offered fans of “parfaicte amyes” plenty of food for thought. The “to” in these women’s cases is clearly Lyon’s literary society, but the “of” is more complex. That Labé and Du Guillet were accomplished poets and thus worthy of publication stands to reason, but the nature of their poetry and their reputations as “Amyes” of some of the most famous male poets of their time surely helped to secure publication for their works. Moreover, Tournes frequently published works that made reference to such women. In 1555, he published L’Art poëtique de Jacques Peletier du Mans, in which Peletier du Mans praises Labé and Lyon in an ode, thus underscoring the sense of her centrality to Lyonnaise literary society,33 and throughout the years that the new querelle was popular, he published several works by Tyard, another staunch defender of women. Additionally, he published the Opuscules d’amour, a collection featuring the attacks on and 28

Jones, “Surprising Fame,” 334. See Jones’s discussion of this exchange in The Currency of Eros, 19–20. 30 Farrell and Farrell also note that “a pirated edition was printed by a Jan Garous, perhaps of Rouen,” 5. 31 See Sonnet 13 in which she describes holding her lover as ivy entwines around trees, 128. 32 See Sonnet 23 in which she asks her absent lover where is the death that was supposed to mark the end of their love, 134. 33 See Charles Boy, “Recherches sur la vie et les œuvres de Louise Labé,” Œuvres de Louise Labé, 2: 14. The ode by Peletier du Mans is reprinted in the appendix, “Les contemporains,” 2: 93–4. 29

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defenses of women that helped to initiate the new round in the querelle. Judging by his choices for publication, Tournes clearly understood his public’s fascination with the nature of women, especially that of well-educated women who participated in courtly and literary society, and he hoped to prosper from it.34 Of the instigating pamphleteers in the new querelle, Héroët was especially influential for the writers who styled themselves as traditional defenders of women. Christine Hill and Ferdinand Gohin note that indeed all the young Pléiade spoke of Héroët’s works with great admiration.35 Tyard expressed his admiration in part through imitation. Pasithée in his Solitaire premier has many attributes of La Parfaicte Amye. She also resembles Sophia, from Leone Ebreo’s Dialoghi d’amore, which Tyard translated and published anonymously in 1551.36 Not incidentally, Solitaire premier (1552) and Leon Hebrieu de l’amour were published by Tournes, who ultimately published several of his other works, including his Erreurs amoureuses (1549), their Continuation (1551), Erreurs amoureuses, augmentées (1555), and Solitaire second (1555). Tyard’s role as a defender of women in the new querelle no doubt won him approbation from his publisher, as well as the learned ladies of his acquaintance. His participation in salon society in Lyon and Paris brought him into contact with numerous women writers, including Labé, Du Guillet, and Marguerite du Bourg in Lyon,37 and the maréschale de Retz and the women who frequented her salon in Paris.38 He also likely met Madeleine and Catherine des Roches during his stay in Poitiers with the royal court in 1577.39 He dedicated the second edition of 34

As noted in the previous chapter, the popularity of the Querelle des Amyes is further illustrated by the fact that such pamphlets were also printed in approximately eight editions of Le Mespris de la court in Paris between 1544 and 1568 (Hill, introduction to La Parfaicte Amye by Antoine Héroët, xxxi–xxxii). 35 Hill notes that Du Bellay praises Héroët’s language in his Deffence et Illustration and gives other evidence that Ronsard, Peletier du Mans, and Pasquier also admired his work, vi–vii. See also Ferdinand Gohin, introduction to Antoine Héroët: Œuvres poétiques (Paris: Droz, 1943), vii. 36 John C. Lapp, introduction to The Universe of Pontus de Tyard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950), xvii. 37 Lapp notes that Tyard “must have known Pernette du Guillet and other poetesses . . . ” and adds, “that he welcomed to Bissy learned ladies as well as men is shown by a remark of Le Curieux added in 1578 to the Second Curieux: “Le beautez et bonnes graces qui sortent de ceans nous remettroit facilement en memoire les anges et les belles âmes à l’entour desquelles nostre discours d’hersoir fut arresté” [The beauties and good graces who leave here easily remind us of the angels and beautiful souls around whom our discourse of last evening was set], xxxviii. 38 Lapp points out that in about 1569, “Pontus joined the admiring group of poets and littérateurs who frequented the Paris salon of the learned Catherine, Comtesse de Retz,” xx. 39 See Anne Larsen, introduction, to Les Œuvres, by Madeleine des Roches and Catherine des Roches, Textes Littéraires Français (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1993), 32.

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Solitaire premier to Retz in 1573, and she is thought to be the new Pasithée of whom he speaks in Nouvelles œuvres poétiques (1573).40 While it is easy to understand the designation of Retz as the new Pasithée, with her penchant for Petrarchism and Neoplatonism, as well as her interest in music and her careful circulation of her work within a limited circle of intimates, it is somewhat more difficult to imagine Labé as the early inspiration for Pasithée, as some critics have suggested. Whether or not Labé was the model for Tyard’s early Pasithée has been a longstanding debate. A poetic tribute by Tyard appears in the poems to Labé published at the end of her Œuvres in which he praises her “douce magesté,” her eyes, and her rare virtue.41 Abel Jeandet has suggested, based on this sonnet, that Tyard’s Pasithée from his Erreurs (1549, 1551, 1554), Solitaire premier ou discours de Muses, and Solitaire second ou discours de la musique (1552) was Labé; however, from his study of Tyard’s works, John C. Lapp deduces that this Pasithée “probably lived in Mâcon and was a noblewoman.”42 He points out that Tyard’s sonnet to Labé appeared in Book III of the Erreurs, with slight variations, before it was published in the Ecrivez de divers poetes à la louenge de L. L. Lionnoise (1555) and that it was “apparently offered as earnest of the poet’s affection for Pasithée, despite rival charms, for it is immediately followed by a sonnet containing these lines”: Un digne objet, pour me tirer à soy, En sa faveur mon jugement transporte; Mais je suis serf d’affection trop forte Pour engager plus que je n’ay de moy. (III, xiii)

Lapp argues, “The ‘digne objet’ whose powers he successfully resists is evidently Louise Labé.”43 In any case, Tyard seems to have respected Labé’s learning and talent. Lapp calls them “intimate friend[s].”44 Other critics suggest that Tyard and his fellow anti-reformists, such as Paladin, showed support for Labé in part because of Calvin’s denouncement of her, but Tyard was acquainted with her before that episode.45 Even so, comparisons of Pasithée’s voice, as it is depicted by Tyard in his Erreurs and his discourses, and Labé’s voice, as it appears in her own writing suggest that more than the poetic marker identified by Lapp stands in the 40

Lapp, xx–xxi See “En contemplacion de D. Louïze Labé,” Œuvres complètes: Sonnets, Elégies, Débat de Folie et d’Amour, ed. François Rigolot (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1986), 146. 42 Lapp, xv. 43 Lapp, xvi–xvii. See also the “Notice biographique sur Pontus de Tyard,” in Les Oeuvres poetiques de Pontus de Tyard by Ch. Marty-Laveax (Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1970), xv–xvi. 44 Lapp, xxxviii. 45 Boy, 2: 15, 81. 41

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way of identifying Pasithée with Labé. The sentiments expressed in Labé’s works and the dedicatory letter that prefaces them provide a case in point. Her dialogue especially mocks the trends popular in traditional debates about the nature of love and provides a send-up of such Socratic discourses.

Perfection, Folly, and the Querelle des Amyes In order to understand the traditional parameters of attackers and defenders of women in the new querelle in which Tyard and Labé were participating, it is useful to contextualize their works by giving brief synopses of the pamphlets of La Borderie and Héroët in tandem with discussion of Tyard’s Solitaire premier before examining the intertextual stress points that appear between these texts and Labé’s work. Her view represents the third, less easily defined line of argument in the querelle that breaks with the traditional dichotomy, providing a voice that counters traditional lines of rhetoric by presenting her audience with a mixture of subversive humor and forthright honesty about the nature of the very human weaknesses prevalent in matters of love, attributable, according to her theme, to the prevalence of Folly in the world. In L’Amye de Court, La Borderie has his lady recount how from her “jeunesse tendre”46 [tender youth] she schemed to attain “grande haultesse” 47 [great rank]. Making use of her blond hair, green eyes, and wit, she thus determined to win “les coeurs d’une grande multitude / De serviteurs, qui mettent leur estude / Chascun pour soy d’avoir ma bonne grace” [the hearts of a great multitude / Of servants, who study how / Each to have for himself my good grace]. 48 She speaks at length on the ambiguities of chastity and honor, and she stresses above all the importance of appearances.49 She gives a scathing illustration of how her admirers jockey for position in her affections and how they tell her that she is cruel but that she is also the most beautiful woman in the world.50 Although it is a pleasure to watch men make fools of themselves over her, she cautions the ladies of Lyon that such beauty does not last; therefore, the recourse of every wise woman is marriage, even though it is “un grand mal” and “un fascheux,” a great evil and a bore.51 Naturally, although it is nice to have a husband who is wise, honest, and handsome, she insists that a rich catch is the goal.52 In this manner, the “Amye de Court” directs 46 Bertrand de la Borderie, L’Amye de Court, Opuscules d’Amour, Héroët et al. ed. M. A. Screech (Lyons: Jean de Tournes, 1547; reprint. Wakefield, Yorkshire: S. R. Publishers, 1970), 113. 47 La Borderie, 114. 48 La Borderie, 115. 49 La Borderie, 130–34. 50 La Borderie, 136–7. 51 La Borderie, 140. 52 La Borderie, 140–41.

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the aspirations and learning of the “wise” courtly woman. The greedy, scheming “Amye de Court” is precisely the portrayal of courtly women that traditional defenders, such as Héroët and Tyard contest. Héroët’s “Parfaicte Amye” instructs women in the secrets of sustaining a Neoplatonic love affair. Her confessions reveal, clearly much to the pleasure of a male audience, that her lover is her “terrestre Dieu” [terrestrial God]53 for whom she regards herself a “servante maistresse”[servant mistress].54 She declares at the beginning of her confession that he is the “conducteur et roy de mon plaisir” [the director and king of my pleasure].55 Hill notes that her happiness comes from knowing how to serve this man “si difficile à satisfaire” [so difficult to satisfy].56 There is a sense that a perfect “amye” should have a desperate need to please her lover, accompanied by a fine disregard for his indiscretions.57 Regarding infidelity, the “Parfaicte Amye” suggests that it is better to have a lover who might be unfaithful, but who knows how to allay one’s suspicions with his “oeil parlant” [speaking eye], “grace asseurante” [assuring grace], and “raison” [reason] than to have one who is loyal but protests his loyalty with little eloquence.58 In other words, exemplary eloquence covers a multitude of sins in this fantasy. In addition to worshipping her lover and willingly turning a blind eye to his faults, the “Parfaicte Amye” also plays the role of disciple to her teacher/lover.59 The woman in such relationships becomes, then, an ornament of and testament to her lover’s learning. Ultimately, the perfect “amye” is a woman far more compliant than Petrarch ever imagined. She may be chaste, but she is so only in the most basic physical sense. Otherwise, her lover is her obsession, pleasing him and learning from him are her goals, and very little else matters to her. In Solitaire premier, Tyard presents a dialogue between the members of such a couple. The teacher and disciple relationship depicted in La Parfaicte Amye is clearly translated into Tyard’s Solitaire premier. To offer an illustration of perfect Neoplatonic love, he portrays Solitaire as a man in the grip of divine poetic fury who seeks to educate the beautiful and brilliant young woman he adores. Completely in tune with him, Pasithée can tell at a glance his emotional state and offers him spiritual and intellectual solace whenever he seeks her company. The model that Tyard presents is that of man as poet and woman as muse-in-training as he takes this pair through a discourse that moves from “the Platonic theory of 53

Héroët, Book One, line 183. See Hill’s commentary, xxii. Héroët, Book One, line 457. See Hill’s commentary, xxii. 55 Héroët, Book One, line 36. 56 Hill, xxii. 57 See also Danielle Trudeau’s commentary on this aspect of La Parfaicte Amye in “Réception et interprétations de L’Amie de court depuis le XVIe siècle,” in L’Amie de court (1542) by Bertrand de La Borderie, ed. Trudeau, Textes de la Renaissance 16 (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1997), 63. 58 Héroët, Book One, line 437–8. See Hill’s commentary, xxiii. 59 Hill, xxiii. 54

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divine fury and . . . why a poet may often seem obscure”60 to lessons in the lore of the Muses. Along the way, their conversation is sprinkled with comments on the current state of poetry, literary society, and education in France. Pasithée’s interactions with Solitaire in the dialogue recall those of some distinguished literary predecessors. Although her questions and comments are astute and provocative, they are ultimately reminiscent of those posed by female interlocutors in The Courtier and The Asolani in that they often serve to clarify arguments and provide transitions to the next idea that the male interlocutor wishes to discuss. Like Elisabetta Gonzaga in The Courtier who urges the speakers in her gatherings on to higher planes of thought or Lisa in The Asolani who asks Perottino, “If Love causes as many evils as you say our writers hold against him, why do they treat him as a god?” so that Perottino may launch into an instructional speech for her,61 Pasithée prods Solitaire’s thought processes, inciting him to pour out his knowledge so that he may at once enlighten her and draw nearer himself to enlightenment via their Socratic exchanges. When we first meet Pasithée, she is playing the lute and singing, a circumstance that simultaneously presents a socially acceptable venue of performance for a wealthy young lady of leisure and foreshadows the conversation about the Muses. Tyard sets the scene by explaining how Solitaire has been recalled by domestic affairs and his desire to see his beloved Pasithée from a lonely ramble in idyllic nature, where he enjoys “l’exercice de la chasse” [the exercise of the hunt] and “le fraiz du’n bois ombrageus” [the coolness of a shadowy wood].62 When he goes to see her, he finds her with “un Leut en ses mains” [a Lute in her hands] playing divinely and singing a French ode in a “voix douce et facile” [voice sweet and gentle].63 When she stops playing and they begin to talk, she observes with her “coustumiere perspicacité” [customary perspicacity] “quelque alteration interieure” [some interior alteration] in him.64 He explains that the change she detects is due to the poetic “fureur, qui vexe, et agite [s]on esprit” [fury that vexes and agitates his mind].65 Upset to find his tranquility so disturbed and that he has been suffering in solitude, she demands, “Pourquoy . . . vous consumez vous en ceste maniere de vivre . . .” [why do you consume yourself in this way of life] when God has made man “l’animal plus compagnable” [the most companionable of animals]?66 60

Lapp, xxviii. Pietro Bembo, Gli Asolani, trans. Rudolf B. Gottfried (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1954), 27–8. 62 Tyard, 5. 63 Tyard, 5. Cathy Yandell points out that in the first edition, Pasithée was playing “une ode italienne” on her lute but that “patriotisme” led Tyard to change it to a French ode in the 1587 edition [Introduction to Solitaire second (Genève: Droz, 1979), 19]. 64 Tyard, 6. 65 Tyard, 6. 66 Tyard, 7. 61

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Thus prompted, Solitaire begins his discourse on the nature of the poetic fury, explaining the Platonic division of body and soul and the four degrees through which the soul must ascend to attain divine thought (la Nature, l’Opinion, la Raison intellectuale, and l’Angelique).67 He warns Pasithée that it may be very difficult for her to understand “la conception de tant grande chose” [the concept of so great a thing] but that she must elevate her mind and endeavor to do so. She interrupts his warning by reminding him that she is quite accustomed to “la lecture des philosophiques secrets” [the reading of philosophical secrets].68 Thus assured, Solitaire continues his discourse. He explains that the first of the divine furies is the poetic fury which proceeds from the Muses, the second is that which proceeds from the intelligence of the mysteries and secrets of the religions of Bacchus, the third is that by which one is ravished by prophecy, vaticination, or divination under the influence of Apollo, and the fourth is that which proceeds from the violence of amorous affection caused by the influence of Cupid and Venus.69 Because his main concern in this discourse is analysis of the Muses and their role in the poetic fury, Solitaire expounds at length in sections four through ten on the history of the muses, the classical allusions related to them, the significance of their names, and their influence on ancient and modern poets and philosophers. Throughout the dialogue he is prompted by Pasithée’s questions and comments which conveniently allow him to show his knowledge of classical mythology, as well as to give his opinions on such topics as the excellence of Scève’s Délie and the importance of French poets imitating the classical forms.70 Thus, from the moment she appears, playing the lute and singing her “celeste harmonie” [celestial harmony],71 Pasithée performs the roles of pupil and muse, a combination that illustrates Tyard’s ideal role for women. The woman-muse connection is further illustrated when Solitaire discusses the gender of the muses and asserts that they are female because “la femme est embellie de plus de diverses perfections, que l’homme” [the woman is embellished with more diverse perfections than the man].72 Solitaire takes advantage of this observation to explain to Pasithée that the muses are female, signifying that “la femme est excellemment constante” [the woman is excellently constant], and, in response to Pasithée’s concern about the fact that her sex is “accusé ordinairement d’inconstance et de legereté” [usually accused of inconstancy and flightiness],73 he expounds on the inspirational feminine virtues of the muses in section seven. He first declares that Pasithée is very like the muses,74 and he emphasizes the 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

Tyard, 13. Tyard, 13. Tyard, 17. Tyard, 68, 65. Tyard, 5. Tyard, 46–7. Tyard, 47. Tyard, 48–9.

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importance of their knowledge of letters, music, and dancing, reminding her that “les Muses sont fertiles de diverses disciplines” [the muses are fertile in diverse disciplines],75 intimating that women in general, including Pasithée, should model themselves after such paragons. Obviously, Solitaire’s (or Tyard’s) ideal woman is well educated, and she may be a poet, too, as his discussion with Pasithée regarding women’s fame in this area indicates, yet his true goal for her as he encourages her to excel in the areas they have been discussing seems to be that she will evolve into a human muse. In the last section, however, his focus shifts from lessons in muse lore for Pasithée back to his own experience with divine inspiration—a state that somewhat recalls the “holy frenzy of love” Bembo experiences in The Courtier.76 Solitaire brings the discourse full circle by taking Pasithée’s lute and playing an ode that brings upon him a new fit of melancholy. Much shaken, he takes his leave of her, and, accompanied only by his “solitude familière” [familiar solitude] to help render his “peine plus facile à porter” [pain more easy to bear],77 he once again gives himself up to the mercy of his own poetic fury.78 Tyard’s discourse, ostensibly about the mysteries of divine inspiration from both classical and neoclassical points of view, is also about the place of women in the poetic process. Although he encourages women to develop their minds and their poetic talents, his main emphasis concerning gender is on the connection between women and the female nature of the muses. His ideal beloved, then, is a muse who is divinely talented, learned, virtuous, and beautiful, who inspires the true poets who suffer fits of divine fury—in his view, usually the male poets. Following the lead of such writers as Castiglione, Bembo, and, more contemporarily, Héroët, Tyard fashions a female interlocutor who asks all the right questions and seeks selflessly to please and uplift him. Pasithée is ultimately a Neoplatonic guide who helps Solitaire move along his path to supreme poetic enlightenment. Like Tyard, Labé is concerned with the concept of divine fury. For her, though, a woman may be afflicted with the divine fureur as easily as a man. In her first elegy, Labé writes that the “divine fureur” was given to her by Apollo; thus, she herself—like Solitaire—was made a poet. Edith R. Farrell and C. Frederick Farrell, Jr., comment on Labé’s understanding of poetic fury in relation to her concepts of rage and Folly, noting that when Labé’s works are considered as a whole, “a portrait of the artist as a young woman and a panegyric on love and folly” are the 75

Tyard, 48. Castiglione, 343. 77 Tyard, 78. 78 Lapp notes that “in his attitude toward poetic inspiration, Pontus follows the Platonic tradition established by Ficino, stressing solitude as most conducive to the composition of poetry, and describing a trancelike sleep as preparation for a visit from the Muse . . . ,” xxx. 76

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resulting dominant themes because, as readers learn from her debate, it is Folly who “leads Love and prompts artists to ever greater efforts.”79 A critical intertextual point of debate between Labé’s Œuvres and Tyard’s Solitaire premier, then, is the role of women in the creative process. Labé suggests that a woman is just as likely as a man to be inspired by divine fury and thus to be a poet. She does not relegate women to the status of muses in the creative process nor does she suggest that women who create their own art should remain anonymous, in spite of her coy invitation in her dedication to those who have urged her to publish her works to share in the “honte,” or shame, that may result from her doing so.80 Further points of intertextual conflict arise between Tyard’s portrait of Neoplatonic love and the Débat de Folie et d’Amour as Labé dissects the combination of love and folly that burns in the breasts of all lovers, would-be Neoplatonists and their beloveds alike, and inspires poets with the divine fureur. Specifically, she focuses on how love and folly interact together as they affect the emotions and behaviors of those in love. Via the allegorical characters Cupid and Folly, who signify a blending of classic Graeco-Roman myth (Cupid) with Medieval and Renaissance thought (Folly), Labé creates a myth that accounts for the blinding of Cupid. In the process, she satirizes the behavior of mortals in love, arguing that far from the Neoplatonic ideal, it is a state fraught with folly. Gesturing to Erasmus’s “The Praise of Folly,” Labé creates a female incarnation of Folly who, like Erasmus’s character, makes great claims for her importance in the grand scheme of things, in this case, particularly in matters of love. If Erasmus’s character’s goal “is to confuse the relationship between forms (religious, literary, or social) and their customary significance,”81 Labé’s character Folly seeks to set the record straight about her role in all that Love accomplishes. From this perspective, the Débat provides a foil for the idealism expressed in Tyard’s dialogue and offers a satirical look at the very human foibles of real, imperfect men and women in love. Regarding form and literary precedents, the Débat is a pastiche of genres and styles—drama, myth, allegory, satire, legal writing, debate, and polemics.82 It 79

See Farrell and Farrell, introduction to Louise Labé’s Complete Works, 12. Labé, 43. 81 “Desiderius Erasmus,” The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, vol. 1, 7th edn., eds Sarah Lawall and Maynard Mack (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 1681. 82 In “A la lumière de la traduction: une stratégie de l’ambiguïté?” [Louise Labé: les voix du lyrisme, ed. Guy Demerson (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1990)], Caridad Martinez reminds us that in the Débat, Labé includes “un bon numbre de sédiments de la tradition, repris et renouvelés par ses contemporains: les traités sur l’amour, les débats médiévaux[,] et les dialogues humanistes, les farces et les contes, la tragédie et les fables mythologiques, les amours et les contr’amours de la poésie lyrique, l’éloge et la satire, le style oratoire et le dialogue de comédie . . . ” [a good number of sediments of the tradition, adopted and adapted by her contemporaries: the treatises on love, the medieval debates[,] and the humanist dialogues, the farces and tales, tragedy and the mythological fables, the amours 80

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segues between a tightly written opening episode that is dramatic in concept— complete with violent action as Folly scuffles with Love, ultimately blinding him—to a more traditional debate format that unfolds at a trial during which Apollo and Mercury give somewhat loosely written testimonies83 on issues regarding love and its follies as they act as both defense attorneys and witnesses on behalf of Love and Folly, respectively. Its themes and exchanges, first between Love and Folly, then between Apollo and Mercury, are especially reminiscent of salon debates on the nature of love in that the interlocutors are practiced in the art of rhetoric, and they frequently argue from exempla. During the trial, they do so before a judge, Jupiter, and a jury of the gods. At the end, paying satirical homage to dialogues with open endings, such as The Courtier, Labé allows the judgment regarding Folly’s guilt to be postponed by Jupiter for “three times seven times nine centuries.”84 Labé’s Débat begins with a dramatic discourse between Folly and Love, who arrive at the same time, equally late, for a feast at Jupiter’s home. They quickly get into an argument over who is to enter first. Threats and insults fly as each spouts off about his or her importance and presents a catalogue of classical exempla to illustrate his/her great influence.85 The argument rapidly deteriorates into a fight. Love pulls out an arrow and shoots it at Folly, but she becomes invisible, so he misses. Shocked that her powers seem equal to his, Love demands to know more about her, and she explains that she has always been working beside him and that he may shoot the arrows, but she makes them strike the hearts she chooses. Claiming that he is always given all the glory for making people fall in love but that she is the one who gets them to do all the silly things that reveal their love, Folly angrily recites her influence upon Jupiter’s choice of disguises for his trysts, her arranging for Mars to be caught in a compromising situation with Love’s own mother, Venus, and her instigation of Paris’s kidnapping of Helen.86 With the air of one demanding, “And this is all the thanks I get?”, Folly blusters on until she declares to Love that “ne te servent tes yeus non plus que la lumiere à un aveugle” [Your eyes are of no more use to you than light to a blind man].87 That said, she plucks out his eyes. Moreover, she binds his wounds with a bandage given to her by one of the Fates whom she happened to run into on her way to the party. Once

and the contr’amours of lyric poetry, eulogy and satire, oratory style and the dialogue of comedy. . .], 112–13. See also “Le théâtre de Louise Labé,” by Kazimierz Kupisz in the same collection on the theatricality of the Débat, 125–45. 83 I say loosely written because during Mercury’s speeches, the first person point of view in his speech is interrupted at times to become that of Folly who begins arguing on her own behalf. 84 Trans. Edith Farrell, 86. 85 Labé, 49–54. 86 Labé, 52–4. 87 Labé, 54; Farrell, 36.

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his eyes are tightly bound, she casually mentions that the bandage is of such a nature that “jamais ne te pourra estre ôté” [it could never be taken off].88 Such a provocative introduction to a discourse on the nature of love is one of the most innovative aspects of Labé’s dialogue. Beyond its obvious attentiondrawing devices, including the fight between Love and Folly that takes it cue more from the stage than from dialogue tradition, it paves the way for an unflinching look at how men and women, affected by Love and Folly, relate to each other in real, as opposed to Neoplatonic, relationships. Elements of the power struggle from which the Querelle des femmes arises are ruthlessly investigated, exposing both men’s and women’s typical behaviors and desires. The findings are seldom flattering to either side—men lose interest in their pursuit as soon as women show 89 interest; women both burn with lust and just pretend to in order to lead men on — yet they offer something of a philosophical shrug in their inconclusiveness. Unlike Andreini, who eschews Neoplatonic idealism in favor of a Christian moralistic approach regarding moral lessons in her play, Labé debunks Neoplatonic love in part through her device of recounting a myth about the potentially inseparable nature of love and folly, but she does not offer a clearly designated alternative. Her response is pagan in context and not particularly judgmental in the Christian humanist tradition. Rather, in good philosophical debate tradition, she leaves the argument open so that her readers may join in, continuing the inquiry into the nature of love. Yet, even this she does with her tongue firmly in cheek, judging from the satirically long spate of time decreed to pass before a verdict is handed down. In the fourth discourse, as trial preparations are under way, Jupiter and Love fall into a philosophical discussion regarding the question of what women really want in love. Love’s persona shifts dramatically from that of the squealing juvenile shrieking for his mother after he is blinded in the first discourse to one of a worldly-wise commentator on the nature of women’s desires. He suggests to Jupiter that few really know what is required in love, and Jupiter asks him to explain. Love tells him: Las dames que tu as aymees, vouloient estre louees, entretenues par un long tems, priees, adorees: quell’Amour penses tu qu’elles t’ayent porté, te voyant en foudre, en Satire, en diverses sortes d’Animaus, et converti en choses insensibles? La richesse te fera jouir des Dames qui sont avares: mais aymer, non. Car cette affeccion de gaigner ce qui est au coeur d’une personne, chasse la vraye et entiere Amour: qui ne cherche son proufit, mais celui de la persone qui’il ayme. [The ladies that you have loved wanted to be praised, talked to for a long time, coaxed, and adored. What love do you think they could have had for you, since you were in the form of a thunderbolt, a satyr, various animals, or even an inanimate object? With 88 89

Labé, 55; Farrell, 37. Labé, 96–8.

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acquisitive ladies, wealth will get you their favors, but not love; for the desire for gain in someone’s heart drives away true and total love, which does not seek its own profit, but the beloved’s.] 90

He also points out: La lubricité et ardeur de reins n’a rien de commun, ou bien peu, avec Amour. Et pource les femmes ou jamais n’aymeront, ou jamais ne feront semblant d’aymer pour ce respect. Ta magesté Royale encores ha elle moins de pouvoir en ceci: car Amour se plait de choses egales. [Lubricity and the loin’s ardor has nothing, or very little, in common with love. Therefore, women will either never love, or never appear to love, for this reason.] 91

Finally, Love makes a plea for equality in relationships, noting that Jupiter with his great celestial position is at a disadvantage in love, “car Amour se plait de choses egales. Ce n’est qu’un joug, lequel faut qu’il soit porté par deus Taureaus semblables autrement le harnois n’ira pas droit” [for love flourishes when everything is equal. It is only a yoke, and, as such, it is borne best by matched oxen. Otherwise the harness does not sit well].92 Labé’s wicked sense of irony emerges as she has Jupiter agree that Love makes sense, but complain that so much wooing of ladies would take a long time and a lot of effort and passion. Clearly, he is just not willing to do the work on his relationships, as a modern psychologist might point out to him. Labé’s lessons in love for Jupiter satirize the attitudes and actions of royal lovers. Love sympathizes that a great “Signeur” such as Jupiter has to attend to many important affairs that usurp the time he might invest in inciting true love in his mistresses, but he also warns Jupiter that he has been known to bring the mighty to their knees to illustrate the greatness of his powers.93 In other words, Jupiter, too, might find himself in love some day, and helpless to fight it, if he is not careful in reaching his verdict. This passage also suggests that Labé is clearly familiar with a few “Amyes de Court” as she points out that there are “acquisitive ladies” whom wealth will convince to bestow their favors, but she firmly separates these lop-sided affairs between a great lord and an avaricious woman from real love in which “everything is equal.” From this perspective, lovers get out of relationships what they put into them, and both men and women are responsible for the kind of love generated. In Discourse Five, the trial finally gets under way. The scene resembles both a courtroom, albeit with a group of gods and goddesses for the jury, and a salon 90 91 92 93

Labé, 63; Farrell, 45. Labé, 64; Farrell, 45. Labé, 64; Farrell, 45. Labé, 64.

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gathering, with illustrious people present to hear a debate. Apollo speaks first, on behalf of Love, identifying him as the author of everything beautiful and good known to humankind and doing his best to make Folly out to be a madwoman set loose in the world, one whom he suggests poses a grave threat to others. He ends his plea by appealing to the Fates, Jupiter, and all those gathered to place Folly “à perpetuité” [in perpetuity] under Love’s authority and to make Love the most “cler voyant” [clear- sighted] of all the gods.94 Throughout his argument, Apollo addresses married love, fraternal love, and the impact of love upon the attitudes, behavior, and appearance of men and women. First, he emphasizes the need for love in marriage, graphically describing the problems that ensue when love is lacking. He argues that men abandon their homes, women never laugh, no one is ever at peace, and life is complete chaos.95 Then he recounts the virtues of friendships exemplified by Castor and Pollux, Jonathan and David, and Damon and Pythias, and the Scythian Zopyrus who claimed that all the riches he needed could be found in his two friends. He also notes the good fortune love brings to some men via the women they love, such as Theseus’s life being saved by Ariadne and Lynceus’s by Hypermnestra.96 Next, he discusses at great and amusing length how love saves people from squalor by inspiring them to be clean and neat and to speak graciously.97 Moreover, love is a boon for industries involving the senses: love inspires men and women to be better dressers, constantly trying new fashions in order to please the beloved’s eyes; love provides an impetus to experiment with horticulture so that many flowers are available for gifts; love invents music that provides numerous pleasures communicated through many ingenious instruments; and, finally, love has given the world poets.98 Apollo concludes by suggesting that if Folly is kept away from Love, then all love will be respectable and pure so that “personne n’ait plus mal en teste” [no one will think evil anymore] when one’s wife is seen out with a male acquaintance and lovers will not have to make a great show of leaving their beloved’s home before nightfall to avoid gossip.99 These last examples of Love’s influences lean toward the Neoplatonic ideal and especially recall Love’s words to Jupiter that lust has no place in true love. If Folly were banished, the logic runs, Love alone could sponsor all the Platonic relationships that he liked, and no one would speak ill of them or suspect the lovers involved in them of giving in to adulterous lust, as Héroët’s “Parfaicte Amye” fears. Mercury, however, steps in to argue that Love has no chance of succeeding without Folly because he has overlooked her role in all that he thinks he has 94 95 96 97 98 99

Labé, 80; Farrell, 62. Labé, 70. Labé, 70–71. Labé, 72–5. Labé, 75–7. Labé, 79; Farrell, 61.

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accomplished on his own. Folly, according to his view, is responsible for the irrational aspects of love, from its very instigation to the lute playing and poetry writing, as well as the burning and freezing of Petrarchan fame.100 Therefore, Love alone is defeated before he begins without Folly as his instigator. Interestingly, Folly is personified as an actress or entertainer and is repeatedly associated with performances and performance venues. In his opening statements, Mercury points out to Jupiter that he has always welcomed Folly to his palace because she and her troupe always brought him something new “pour rendre vos banquets et festins plus plaisans” [to make your banquets and festivals more amusing].101 To push the comparison, Folly is like an actress or a member of Catherine de Medici’s escadron volant. She lends levity and audacity to courtly entertainments. Mercury also associates Folly with the creation of tragedies, comedies, and pantomimes, as well as the building of theaters and amphitheatres and the various kinds of entertainments that take place in them.102 This impulse to attract and entertain, to hold one’s attention, according to Mercury, illustrates how necessary Folly is to Love. She plays a critical part in visual attraction. “Exprimez tant que voudrez la force d’un œil: faites le tirer mile traits par jour” [Talk all you will about the power of the eye. Have it shoot a thousand darts a day], says Mercury, but those arrows will only hit the hearts that Folly has chosen.103 In addition to portraying Folly as the instigator of love, the guiding force behind Love’s arrows, Labé also uses Mercury’s discourse to raise a number of provocative issues regarding love and equality. Mercury’s statements as he recounts the effects of Folly on people in love are simultaneously worldly, ironic, and at times, profoundly derisive, not unlike the tone La Borderie takes in L’Amye de Court. Like Apollo, he touches upon marriage, as well as the behaviors of men and women in love. Regarding Folly’s role in marriage, he demands, “Que dureroit mesme le monde, si elle n’empeschoit que l’on ne previt les facheries et hazars qui sont en mariage?” [Could the world even continue to exist if she did not prevent people from seeing all the troubles and pitfalls in marriage ahead of time?].104 As for falling in love, Mercury reiterates that “jamais Amour ne fut sans la fille de Jeunesse, et ne peut estre autrement: et le grand dommage d’Amour, s’il avoit ce qu’il demande” [Love has never been without Youth’s daughter, that it cannot be otherwise, and that Love would suffer if he got what he is asking].105 He then lists whimsical ways in which people fall in love, such as Francesca da Rimini’s affair with Paolo sparked by reading a book together, or the young “Cnidien’s” obsessive

100 101 102 103 104 105

Labé, 92, 97, 98. Labé, 82; Farrell, 64. Labé, 89–91. Labé, 93; Farrell, 75. Labé, 88; Farrell, 70. Labé, 92; Farrell, 74–5

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love for Praxitelle’s statue of Venus.106 Mercury makes it clear that no matter how cerebral or spiritual a lover believes himself to be, Folly plays a part in his circumstances. In addition to her inciting love through the senses, Mercury places at Folly’s feet the responsibility for young men’s adoption of popular wooing practices as he describes how they obsess over minute details of their dress, as well as that of their entourage, before they go to church where they hope for no more than a passing glance from their beloveds. He also recounts the machinations young men perform as they bribe chambermaids to learn news of their beloveds or wait all day to see them pass in the street.107 Such behavior then leads to Petrarchist outpourings of poetry in which a young man will boast that his beloved is “la plus belle qui soit au monde, combien que possible soit laide” [the most beautiful woman in the world, even though she might be ugly].108 Mercury tracks the development of love via Folly from the first joyful bursts of poetry to the jealousy and scorn of a rival and the competition that ensues as each seeks to appear more generous and clever than the other. He also explains Folly’s role in influencing the behavior of women, noting that some women are surprised to find themselves ensnared by love when they meant only to amuse themselves by dallying with romance while others are cruel and slyly lead their lovers on, only to abandon them when they tire of the game.109 Again, we hear echoes of the cruelty of the “Amye de court” in this last example. When women truly fall in love, however, Folly provides a new set of concerns. At this point Mercury discourses about women’s desires and dilemmas in love, giving examples that reveal a more complex (and human) set of reactions than those exhibited by the “Amye de court,” the “Parfaicte Amye,” or Pasithée. At times he seems to refer to the very type of women they portray, then he gives the audience the insider’s view on such women’s experiences. Through Mercury, Labé shatters the facade of a “parfaicte amye” by debunking the myth of woman as a perfect, spiritual guide who knows nothing of physical desire and is not susceptible to folly, yet she also shows that women in love are seldom as blasé as the “Amye de court.” In this segment of the discourse, Mercury’s first person point of view shifts to become that of Folly; thus, a female voice not unlike those of the “Parfaicte Amye” and the “Amye de Court” directly tells us what women experience when they are in love. Mercury reveals that among such women sometimes “les plus froides se laissent bruler dedens le corps avant que de rien avouer” [the coldest of them let their bodies burn up inside before they will admit anything].110 He also points out 106 107 108 109 110

Labé, 92. Labé, 93–4. See a similar description in the Courtier, 253–4. Labé, 95; Farrell, 77–8. Labé, 96. Labé, 96; Farrell, 79.

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that “combien qu’elles vousissent prier, si elles osoient, elles se laissent adorer: et tousjours refusent ce qu’elles voudroient bien que l’on leur ôtast par force” [however much they would like to beg, if they dared, they allow themselves to be adored and always refuse what they would gladly have taken from them by force] while others “n’atendent que l’ocasion: et heureus qui la peut rencontrer. Il ne faut avoir creinte d’estre esconduit” [only wait for the right moment—and happy is the man who is there when it comes. He need not be afraid of being rejected].111 Mercury’s statements, at once viciously sexist and anti-Neoplatonist, argue that unlike the “Parfaicte Amye,” who says she prefers a chaste love, or Pasithée who is a paragon of virtue and, above all, a model disciple, the women that Mercury, or Labé, perhaps, knows are profoundly affected by the physical aspects of love. Regarding jealousy, Mercury says, “. . . le mal est, que le plus souvent elles rencontrent se mal: que plus ayment, et moins sont aymees. Il y aura quelcun, qui sera bien aise leur donner martel en teste, et fera semblant d’aymer ailleurs, et n’en tiendra conte” [the truth is that most of the time women are so unlucky that the more they love, the less they are loved. There will always be someone who will plant jealousy and suspicion in their minds, who will pretend to love someone else, and who will have no consideration for their feelings].112 The “Parfaicte Amye” may be able to turn a blind eye to her lover’s dallying with others, but the average woman, according to Mercury, will suffer plenty. He goes on to describe how a woman will attempt to assuage her pain with a new relationship but will continue to weep over some possession that the first lover has left her.113 Shortly after this point in the discourse, the voice of Folly breaks in, usurping the voice of Mercury. She describes the tortures that Folly has led women into, the erratic emotions that swing between hope and fear, the blushes and sighs, even the Petrarchan burning and freezing that women, too, experience.114 After the litany of her accomplishments, she triumphantly cries out to Love, “Je te fay grand: je te fay eslever ton nom: voire et ne t’eussent les hommes repute Dieu sans moy” [I make you great; I bring you renown; perhaps men would not even have thought you a god without me].115 After this outburst by Folly, Mercury’s voice returns to conclude the argument. He seeks to make Apollo accept the idea that love cannot exist without desire and that the agitation which accompanies desire brings about changes that only Folly can produce. Love, then, he concludes, cannot be fully effective without Folly. The voice of Folly enters the discourse one more time, as she blusters that Love should not try “rompre l’ancienne ligue qui est entre toy et moy: combien que tu n’en susses rien jusqu’a present” [to break the ancient bond that exists between you and 111 112 113 114 115

Labé, 96; Farrell, 79–80. Labé, 97; Farrell, 81. Labé, 97–8. Labé, 98. Labé, 98; Farrell, 82.

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me—whose strength you didn’t even know until now].116 After restating his case and reminding Jupiter that it is Folly who has led him into great happiness with “Genie, Jeunesse, Bacchus, Silene, et ce gentil Gardien des jardins,” [Genius, Youth, Bacchus, Silenus, and this pleasant guardian of gardens], as well as has protected him from wrinkles and white hair,117 Mercury concludes his defense. In the end, Jupiter pronounces the subject they are discussing too complicated to reach a definitive verdict, so final judgment on the case is to be tabled for “trois fois sept fois neuf siècles” [three times seven times nine centuries].118 He will consult the Fates about the restoration of Love’s eyes, and in the meantime, Folly will be Love’s guide. In spite of the inconclusive conclusion regarding Folly’s punishment, Labé leaves readers with the impression that, for better or worse, Folly and Love will be co-existing for years to come, with Folly leading the way. Labé’s conclusion, with its exaggerated future date for resolution of the conflict, confirms that her dialogue is at least in part a satiric subversion of traditional debates, a fact further confirmed by her masking of the participants and the audience as self-important gods and goddesses taking part in a celestial debate—the debate over the nature of divine love was never portrayed quite like this in the other dialogues. Roissard calls Labé’s debate “un petit drame allegorique, plein de finesse de naïveté, que Voltaire qualifia de ‘gracieuse fable moderne’” [a little allegorical drama, full of finesse and naiveté, which Voltaire termed a “gracious modern fable”];119 however, as the excerpts examined above suggest, a close reading of the dialogue calls into question the label, “naive.” Farrell and Farrell point out that some critics have called the Débat Labé’s best work, and they themselves praise it as proof that she was “a keen observer of her contemporaries [and] a critic of social mores and universal folly;”120 however, others, basing their judgment on the fifth discourse in which characteristics of classic debate form (in which one speaker at a time presents his/her point of view) are mingled with “ideas and vocabulary drawn from sixteenth-century legal procedures,” argue that she “could not have written [it] without a lawyer as a collaborator, if not as ghost writer.”121 Like Masson’s criticism of Aragona, such criticism of Labé falls neatly into Joanna Russ’s category of “Denial of Agency” from her book, How to Suppress Women’s Writing, since it insinuates that Labé was neither capable of writing such a complex piece herself nor that she probably

116

Labé, 102; Farrell, 85. Labé, 102; Farrell, 86. 118 Labé, 103; Farrell, 86. 119 Georges Roissard, introduction to Débat de Folie et d’Amour, élégies, sonnets, by Louise Labé, Cercle des Professeurs Bibliophiles de France 542 (Grenoble: Sadag a Bellegarde, 1970), 11. 120 Farrell and Farrell, introduction, 6–7. 121 Farrell and Farrell, introduction, 7. 117

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did.122 Three difficulties with such a dismissal immediately arise. First, like criticism of Aragona’s seeking editorial help from Varchi, it alleges the myth that the work of all good (i.e., male) writers springs directly from their minds with no research or outside editing necessary. Second, it overlooks the fact that Labé had ample opportunity to educate herself in the intricacies of sixteenth-century law. Lyon was a bustling center of commerce during this period, full of merchants, bankers, publishers, and, necessarily, lawyers. Labé, as the daughter of a rope maker, property-owner, and member of municipal councils, was probably exposed to legal language and machinations from her earliest memories on through her own relations with her publisher, Jean de Tournes; her lawyer, Thomas Fortini; and her friend, the Parisian lawyer, Guillaume Aubert.123 Third, and perhaps most importantly, the question of collaborative writing or writing with input from literary circle members should be considered. It is quite possible that some of her knowledge about legal matters came from her associations with her fellow literary circle members. Moreover, as is likely to be the case for writers participating in salon society, the input of her fellow circle members probably influenced her writing of this dialogue in numerous ways, forcing us to reconsider our traditional notion of authorship. Her education regarding legal matters aside, the fact remains that Labé was an innovative thinker, as her poetry shows in its subversions and adaptations of Petrarchism. Her dialogue, too, confronts the traditions of the genre with its approach. In the midst of the popularity of the Querelle des Amyes, Labé shifts the focus from Neoplatonic love and the nature of women to realistic love and the nature of human beings. The points of intertextual contention between Labé’s dialogue and that of Tyard, as well as the Parfaicte Amye and L’Amye de court, illustrate how Labé breaks away from the either/or reductionism of the traditional querelle. Like Aragona or Andreini to a certain extent in this regard, her emphasis on equalities and similarities between the sexes belie men’s more narrowly argued stances on the nature of women. A theoretical frame for the divergence of these recurring themes may be seen as a “public breach,” to borrow a phrase from Victor Turner, who writes: during social dramas, a group’s emotional climate is full of thunder and lightning . . . . What has happened is that a public breach has occurred in the normal working of society, ranging from some grave transgression of the code of manners to an act of violence . . . . Such a breach may result from real feeling, a crime passionel perhaps, or

122

See Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women’s Writing (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1983), 20–24. 123 See Jones on Labé’s business relations and friendships with these men, The Currency of Eros, 155–6.

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from cool calculation—a political act designed to challenge the extant power structure.124 (My emphasis)

The literary “public breach” that becomes evident in male and female Renaissance writers’ depictions of debates is one that signals women’s protests of the existing power structure. The recurring themes in the women’s texts may be seen as what Turner terms “ritual symbols” which are “crucially involved in situations of societal change”125 such as the one that Read illustrates regarding Labé’s and others’ references to the ladies of Lyon in his examination of women forming intellectual communities. Conversely, the men’s adherence to traditional themes may also be seen as symbolic action, but action which supports the extant power structure; hence, a social metadrama develops intertextually, one that mirrors the social drama taking place in salon debates and in society in general. The texts examined in this chapter represent the diverging lines of thought that illustrate the public breach between men’s and women’s ideological stances concerning the Querelle des femmes via the Querelle des Amyes. This conflict is illustrated by Tyard’s affinity for the Neoplatonic ideal woman as she is described by Ulvioni via Bargagli, or by Héroët, that is, woman as muse, and Labé’s insistence on an iconoclastic portrayal in her poetry and dialogue of woman as opinionated, passionate, and capable of expressing herself creatively as a man, yet also as equally susceptible to Folly. This comparison of dialogues underscores the paradoxical nature of defenses of learned women at this time as we see the juxtaposition of a traditional defense with a strong, oppositional statement made by just the sort of woman ostensibly being praised and encouraged in her studies.

124

Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982), 10. 125 Turner, 22.

Chapter Five

The Amyes of the English Court There that Nymph, brave Nymph, that pearles Pembrokiana Yvychurches Nymph doth meane herself to be present, And with her owne person give grace and life to the pastime. Abraham Fraunce, The Countess of Pembroke’s Ivychurch1 What though with tribade lust she force a muse, And in an epicoene fury can write news Equal with that, which for the best news goes, As airy light, and as like wit as those? Ben Jonson, “An Epigram on the Court Pucell”2

Many sources attest that the Querelle des femmes was alive and well in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In addition to appearing in innumerable literary references and fueling pamphlet wars, querelle rhetoric was also used to shape the public reputations of English courtly women at a time when many were participating in literary society in a manner reminiscent of their Continental counterparts. Abraham Fraunce’s fulsome praise of Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke, and Ben Jonson’s scornful swipe at Cecilia Bulstrode in the epigraphs illustrate the traditional praise and blame dichotomy at work on the reputations of such women. References to Continental women, too, became part of English writers’ rhetorical strategies. As noted in chapter three, in “To his Wyfe of womens verteues,” Sir John Harington implicates the negative influence of Continental women regarding English women’s behavior, suggesting that the “tongues, toyes, tricks, of Room, of Spain, of Fraunce” have so corrupted English 1

Abraham Fraunce, The Countesse of Pembrokes Ivychurch, Conteining the affectionate life, and unfortunate death of Phillis and Amyntas: That in a Pastorrall; This in a Funerall: both in English Hexameters (London: Thomas Orwyn for William Ponsonby, 1591), 1.1. 2 Ben Jonson, “An Epigram on the Court Pucell,” The Complete Poems, ed. George Parfitt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 195–6. In The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), Valerie Traub points out that the “classical discourse of tribadism tended to villify female erotic transgression,” and she notes that the “linking of tribadism and literary creation” is especially “given a more nefarious cast by Ben Jonson who, drawing freely from his reading in classical literature, employed ‘tribade’ and its variant to refer to female vice,” 8, 25.

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courtly women that they now “make disgrace an honor, sinn a merit.”3 His distrust of Catholicism and the permissive attitudes regarding humanist pursuits for women associated with these places is evident. That English writers avidly engaged querelle rhetoric to praise or condemn the behavior of courtly women is clear; yet, a closer look at these writers’ motives reveals that they were inspired by an issue familiar to Continental writers: that of women as powerful patrons and arbiters of literary taste. As Jonson’s depiction of the lady “Collegiates” in Epicoene suggests, in which the ladies “cry down or cry up what they like or dislike in a brain or a fashion, with most masculine, or rather, hermaphroditical authority,”4 he no doubt concurred with Harington in his disgust that “All penns, all praysers”5 were dependent upon learned English ladies who were, according to Harington, influenced by the manners and mores of Continental women. The “president” of the “Collegiates” is thought to represent Lucy Harington Russell, the Countess of Bedford, who is also believed to be one of the targets of Harington’s ire in “To his Wyfe of womens verteues.”6 She is, moreover, the patron to whom John Donne writes, “to you, wee sacrificers runne; / And whether Priests, or Organs, you wee’obey, / We sound your influence, and your Dictates say.”7 Donne’s hyperbolic praise of Bedford is reminiscent of that of Fraunce for Bedford’s kinswoman, the “pearles” Countess of Pembroke, and both writers segue seamlessly between plausible praise and shameless bootlicking in their works dedicated to these women. The outspoken contempt from Harington and Jonson regarding writers’ need to please such women, coupled with Fraunce and Donne’s favor-currying, suggests that women’s

3

Sir John Harington, Letters and Epigrams, 291–2. In Writing Women in Jacobean England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), Barbara Kiefer Lewalski suggests that Lucy Harington Russell, Countess of Bedford, a cousin to Sir John, was “a primary referent” for this “snide description of the court ladies.” She adds, however, that although the descriptions of the women’s accomplishments fit Bedford, the “allusions to sexual impropriety do not; rather, they “pertain to the likes of Frances Howard, Cecilia Bulstrode, Penelope Rich, and the Countess of Suffolk,” 95–6. 4 In Epicoene [Ben Jonson’s Plays and Masques, ed. Richard Harp (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001), 111–99], the ladies are described as “an order between courtiers and country madams, that live from their husbands and give entertainment to all the wits and braveries of the time, as they call them; cry down or cry up what they like or dislike in a brain or a fashion, with most masculine, or rather, hermaphroditical authority . . .” (1.1.67–71). See also Lewalski, 109–10. 5 Harington, Letters and Epigrams, 292. 6 Regarding Jonson’s lady “president” and Bedford, see Marotti’s comments in John Donne, Coterie Poet, 95–6. 7 John Donne, Number 137, “To the Countess of Bedford,” The Complete Poetry of John Donne, ed. John T. Shawcross, The Stuart Editions (New York: New York University Press, 1968), 226.

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patronage and influence on literary taste were as powerful in England at this point as they had been in France for some time.8 In this chapter, I explore English practices regarding Continental trends pertaining to women, patronage, and literary circle ritual, focusing primarily on the Sidney circle.9 First, I discuss background on noblewomen’s participation in literary circles in England and the conditions of the querelle there. In doing so, I examine ways in which querelle issues and national religio-political issues become conflated, causing English writers to deride Continental women and to warn English women against imitating them, while, at the same time, acknowledging a sense of competition between learned noblewomen on the Continent and in England. Then, considering the literary activities of members of the Sidney family, I trace patterns of Continental influence in English literary circle ritual and practice. Finally, regarding texts that engage in querelle debate, I look at two ways in which closet dramas produced by members of the Sidney circle engage in intertextual debate with plays written for the public stage and popular pamphlets that debate the nature of women. From examining the macrocosm of imitative practices and the microcosm of a specific genre of literature adopted and adapted by members of the Sidney circle from Continental and classical precedents, we may see how this particular English literary circle recalls those of French salon society in the sixteenth century, as well as how some of its members demonstrate a solidarity in their nontraditional stance on querelle issues.

English women and Continental influence Although several English women’s literary activities and service at court bear a remarkable resemblance to those of such French women as Madame de Morel, Madame de Villeroy, and the maréschale de Retz, scholars seldom hypothesize

8

For the sake of comparison, the dates of some of the most famous Parisian salon hostesses and female patrons are as follows: Antoinette de Loynes, Madame de Morel (1505–67), Madeleine de L’Aubespine, Madame de Villeroy (1546–96), and ClaudeCatherine de Clermont, maréschale de Retz (1543–1603). Norman Egbert McClure points out that Harington’s epigrams date from “about 1585 to 1603,” [Introduction to Letters and Epigrams, 52]. 9 In this chapter, I use the term Sidney circle to encompass the members of the Sidney family and their friends, with the understanding that the circle crosses generations and includes a variety of coterie configurations. Judith Sherer Herz writes that the “Sidney circle is in many ways the most interesting example of a circle that is and is not. Indeed, line or lineage or double helix may possibly be a more pertinent figure (there is certainly enough Sidney DNA to go around),” [“Of Circles, Friendship, and the Imperatives of Literary History,” Literary Circles and Cultural Communities in Renaissance England, ed. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 16.]

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about the nature of Continental women’s influences upon them.10 Instead, the related subject they frequently address is the lack of reference in English women’s writing to that of Continental women. As cutting descriptions of Continental women in early modern English texts suggest, however, a factor in this omission is the stigma attached to imitation of such women. This stigma is held up as a warning for English courtly women who, in spite of the threat of guilt by association, tacitly imitate their foreign sisters anyway. The result, in Harington’s view, is a rash of uncontrolled “anomelons,”11 the learned lady Europhiles of the English court, who are as troubling to Harington and Jonson as the Italophiles of the escadron volant were to L’Estoile or the “Amye de court” to La Borderie. Numerous English writers propagate the stigma associated with imitation of Continental women. In Euphues’ Glass for Europe, John Lyly voices his anxiety about the “custome of many countries” in which women bandy about “filthie wordes” in shows of wit,12 and Shakespeare portrays French courtly women doing just that in Love’s Labour’s Lost, a depiction some scholars have interpreted as a thinly veiled portrayal and critique of women of the English court.13 In Euphues and His England, Lyly has the English Camilla coldly tell her Italian lover, “I am Philautus no Italian Lady, who commonly are woed with leasings, & won with lust, entangled with deceipt, & enjoyed with delight, caught with sinne, and cast off with shame.”14 In A Little and Brief treatise called the defense of women, Edward More asserts that English women are more inclined to chastity than their Roman counterparts whom he describes as “proner to offend and to venery,”

10

Two exceptions may be found in works by Jan van Dorsten and Gary Waller. In “Literary Patronage in Elizabethan England: The Early Phase” [Patronage in the Renaissance, ed. Guy Fitch Lytle and Stephen Orgel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981)], Dorsten points out that the circle of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and his wife Mildred greatly resembled that of the Morels in Paris during the same period and discusses people who visited both homes, 199. In The Sidney Family Romance (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), Waller also identifies the activities at Wilton with imitation of general Continental traditions, thus implying imitation of Continental women’s literary activities. He writes that after Philip Sidney came to stay at Wilton House in 1580, “a number of Sidney’s friends and associates” also came “to help create, in the isolation of the English countryside, the equivalent of what they admired in the noble houses and academies of France and Italy,” 59. 11 Harington, Letters and Epigrams, 291. 12 Lyly, Euphues’ Glass for Europe, 2: 201. 13 In A Study of Love’s Labour’s Lost, Frances Yates suggests that the Devereux sisters, Penelope and Dorothy, are inspirations for the female characters [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), 102–51; 174]. In “The Double Figure of Elizabeth,” Essays in Literature 19.2 (1992), Maurice Hunt discusses reflections of Queen Elizabeth in the play (173–92). 14 Lyly, Euphues and His England, 2: 128.

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blaming their indiscretions on the hotter climate in Italy. 15 Showing Continental women as loose-tongued, unchaste exempla, then, is one facet of the English querelle meant to discourage English women from imitating their Continental counterparts. This particular characteristic of the English querelle, taken into consideration with Protestant and political injunctions against adopting Continental trends, helps to explain the paucity of references to Continental women writers in English women’s writing.16 Yet, the problem remains that scholars have focused more on finding evidence that English women read and imitated the works of Continental women than they have on examining the bigger picture of imitative practices. How much did English courtiers, male and female, know about women’s participation in literary society on the Continent, especially in France, where a monarchic marriage alliance with England was strenuously sought? How selfconsciously were they imitating their Continental counterparts’ salon activities? That such trends stem from courts and other centers of learning and spread from country to country through the journeys and literary activities of courtiers and other travelers is a given.17 Moreover, as Jonathan Gibson notes, a “French15

Edward More is quoted in the introduction to Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women in England, 1540–1640 by Katherine Usher Henderson and Barbara F. McManus (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 13. 16 In “Women Writing Literature in Italy and France,” Teaching Tudor and Stuart Women Writers, ed. Susanne Woods and Margaret Hannay, Options for Teaching Series, (New York: Modern Language Association, 2000), Pamela Benson writes: In theory any published work by an Italian or French woman writer was available to her English counterpart who was literate in Italian or French, but information about which books were physically present in England is limited and discovering who among the English women writers had access to these books is extremely difficult. Veronica Franco’s name appears on John Florio’s list of books he consulted in writing entries for A Worlde of Wordes (1598); the first printed catalog of the Bodleian Library at Oxford (1605) includes volumes by Colonna and Aragona, and the second edition (1620) adds Andreini’s Lettere. These books may have been available to English women writers— Lanyer may have known her fellow Italian Florio, for example—but so far there is no tangible evidence, and no English woman writer of belles lettres mentions having heard of any Italian or French women writers, let alone reading them. (69) 17

Regarding travelers, Dorsten points out that Charles Utenhove, tutor to the Morel children in Paris, frequented the circle of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and his wife, Mildred Cooke, Lady Burghley, 199. Nicolas Denisot, also a member of the Morel circle, provides an interesting connection between learned courtly women in France and England. From the Nouvelle biographie générale, we learn that he was a popular poet at the court of François I, but, because of an entanglement with “une dame de haut rang” [a woman of high rank] whose “nom est inconnu” [name is unknown], he soon distanced himself from court and went to London where he taught French to the daughters of Edward Seymour. He

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influenced ‘new lyricism’ . . . was the dominant poetic form at the Eizabethan court” during the 1570s, the period of marriage negotiations with the duc d’Alençon, as well as the period during which there was a revival of Petrarchism in France.18 In 1608, Robert Greene’s Debate betweene Follie and Love, his translation of Louise Labé’s Débat de Folie et d’Amour, was published in London, albeit without giving credit to Labé. Since Greene died in 1592, it may have earlier been in manuscript circulation. Such paths and traces of influence suggest that during this period when English writers were attempting to establish a national literature, as their counterparts on the Continent were doing, it is logical to suggest that English writers were imitating more than genre and meter in their endeavors.19 They were also imitating the practices of Continental literary and courtly society. The idea that English writers imitated more than genre and meter is supported by the fact that some courtly English women, like their Continental counterparts, were emerging as central, influential figures in the production of literature through their patronage and their tastes in reading, as well as their participation in literary circles. The female members of the Sidney family admirably illustrate this notion. Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke (1561–1621), a young contemporary of Villeroy and Retz, became like them a much-lauded literary circle hostess, poet, translator, and patron—activities also pursued by her younger kinswoman, Lucy Harington Russell, the Countess of Bedford (1581–1627).20 Pembroke’s niece, Lady Mary Sidney Wroth (1586 or 1587–1651 or 1653), and daughter-in-law, Susan de Vere Herbert, the Countess of Montgomery (1587–1628 or 1629), likewise participated in coteries. They also took part in court masques, as did the Countess of Bedford, illustrating yet another mimetic aspect of courtly Continental entertainment for women in England. All of these women were recipients of numerous dedications by poets, and they were known as authors in their own rights, with Pembroke and Wroth having the most extant writing. Wroth is known for publishing The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania along with her sequence of songs and sonnets, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, which facilitated the circulation of the Seymour sisters’ verses, which Loynes ultimately translated for the Tombeau for Marguerite de Navarre. See Nouvelle biographie générale, vol. 3 (Paris: Firmin Didot Freres, 1855; reprint Copenhague: Rosenkilde et Bagger, 1964), 643. John N. King, in “Patronage and Piety: The Influence of Catherine Parr” [Silent But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works, ed. Margaret Patterson Hannay (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1985)], links Denisot with other “reformist authors” whom “Anne Seymour granted positions in her household,” 53. 18 Jonathon Gibson, “Sidney’s Arcadias and Elizabethan Courtiership,” Essays in Criticism 52.1 (2002): 36–7. See also Lavaud, 81. 19 Of Sidney, Duncan-Jones writes, “Like Bembo in Italian, Ronsard in French, and Schede in German, he hoped to lay the foundations of a body of literature in his own language which might ultimately stand comparison with Greek and Latin classics,” 143. 20 Lewalski points out that the Countess of Bedford was related to the Countess of Pembroke through her grandmother, Lucy Sidney, 97.

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produced a flurry of controversy, while her aunt is especially remembered for editing and publishing the works of Sir Philip Sidney, as well as some of her own, including translations of Robert Garnier’s Antonie and Philippe de Mornay’s Discourse of Life and Death, to great acclaim. Aunt and niece thus illustrate the delicate balance of propriety and fame with which English women writers, like their Continental counterparts, had to contend. These Sidney women, along with their other female relations and friends, were active in court and coterie circles during Elizabeth’s and James’s reigns, and they were clearly the sort of “anomelons” that caused some of their male contemporaries concern.21 To contextualize the Sidney women’s activities, it is important to recall that the trajectory of English precursors for Elizbethan and Jacobean literary circles strongly influenced by female patrons with Protestant leanings may be traced from Catherine Parr, Catherine Brandon, Anne Seymour, and Mary Fitzroy. John N. King points out that Parr and her circle “broke with traditional modes of patronage and devotion” modeled by Margaret Beaufort and Catherine of Aragon, who had favored the “publication of medieval literature, works of monastic piety, and scholastic learning for an elite aristocratic readership” in order to support “the popularization of Protestant humanism through patronage of devotional manuals and theological translations for the edification of a mixed audience of elite and ordinary readers.”22 The traditions of combining Protestant ideology with educational and literary interests clearly extend to the Sidney circle, but their experimentation with a variety of literary styles and genres popular in Italy and France suggests that Continental influences are also at work. 21

In “The Court of the First Stuart Queen” [The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, ed. Linda Levy Peck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)], Leeds Barroll recounts the associations between the Sidney relations and the other members of the group prominent at court who had supported the earl of Essex. He writes: The Sidneys . . . were first cousins of the Countess of Bedford’s father, Sir John Harington of Exton, and the Countess of Bedford was herself friendly with Barbara Sidney, Sir Robert Sidney’s wife, and was godmother to one of their children. Lady Bedford was also close to Essex’s sisters, Penelope Rich . . . and Dorothy, Countess of Northumberland who indeed had named one of her daughters Lucy,” 200. Barroll also explores the patronage connections in this circle, recounting the largesse of Sir Robert Sidney’s gatherings at Penshurst, and his nephew William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke’s patronage of Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson, as well as his connections with Shakespeare and the English theater. Of the women of the group, he points out that Penelope Rich “had a number of works dedicated to her,” Philip Sidney’s daughter, the Countess of Rutland, was described by Ben Jonson as “‘nothing inferior to her father in poetry,’” and the Countess of Bedford was the “most involved in patronizing the arts and letters of the period,” 201. 22 King, 43.

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The Sidney group had access to specific accounts of practices in literary society on the Continent, thanks especially to travel undertaken by the Sidney men. Philip Sidney’s grand tour and his early exposure to the learned household of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, which had connections to the Morel salon in Paris no doubt helped to introduce French literary practices to the Sidney circle.23 His brother Robert (the father of Mary Wroth) served as ambassador to the court of Henri IV from January to April of 1594, during which period he “developed a close friendship with Gabrielle d’Estrées, the king’s mistress.”24 As a child, Wroth accompanied her mother on trips to the Continent to visit her father who, in 1588, took over as governor of Flushing.25 Additionally, the Sidneys’ close proximity to the English court would have given them ample access to news from abroad, especially news of France, as the English avidly followed the course of the civil wars, as well as cultural developments there.26 The Sidney circle thus provides excellent material for examining the transmission of Continental literary practices for women and the Querelle des femmes issues that arise in English texts during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James. Issues regarding education for women and their right to rule especially influenced mid-sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English querelle skirmishes. The Tudor practice of educating daughters was most notably visible in the figure of Queen Elizabeth, who came to the throne after the reign of her half sister Mary. Later, it was subjected to harsh backlash under the misogynistic rule of King James. Susanne Woods and Margaret Hannay write, “Queen Elizabeth’s own example had encouraged humanist scholarship for women of the highest ranks; in the Jacobean period, when the king mocked learned women, more women were literate, but few were scholars.”27 Elizabeth’s learning was legendary at home and abroad, as the mention of her in D’Aubigné’s letter to his daughters suggests. He writes that in one day she was known to have responded to eight ambassadors in the languages appropriate for each of them, and he praises both her ethics and

23

See Dorsten’s discussion of the Cecil and Morel circles above, note 10. Roberts, introduction to The First Part of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 140 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995), xcii. 25 Roberts, introduction to The Poems, 6-8. 26 In Elizabethan News Pamphlets: Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, and the Birth of Journalism (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2001), Paul J. Voss describes the English’s obsession with news of France as they followed the course of the life of Henri of Navarre and his battles, as well as the general reports on the state of that country, 13–15; 103. He also examines Marlowe’s, Shakespeare’s, and Spenser’s references to prominent French figures of the period in their works, 110–53. 27 Susanne Woods and Margaret P. Hannay, introduction to Teaching Tudor and Stuart Women Writers, Options for Teaching Series (New York: The Modern Language Association, 2000), 10. 24

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politics, noting that she had kept her country “en calme” for forty years.28 Elizabeth, like Andreini and Retz, cultivated a persona derived from positive female exempla. She was Astraea and Cynthia; she was the Virgin Queen. A blend of the classical and the Christian, her powerful investment in such imagery paid off in terms of cultural capital—her humanist model for traditionally “good” women of rank inspired families of noble women to educate their daughters in the humanist tradition. The model of a classically educated noblewoman, however, was not universally lauded (Harington, Elizabeth’s godson, sneers at learned women in “Of Women learned in the tongues,”29 although he wisely makes an exception for the queen in his translation of Orlando Furioso30), and when King James came to power, the shift in “official” imagery of a woman’s place and capabilities changed radically. Lewalski writes, “Received wisdom has it that this era was a regressive period for women, as a culture dominated by a powerful Queen gave way to a court ethos shaped by the patriarchal ideology and homosexuality of James I.”31 Some of James’s theories are voiced in Basilikon Doron and The Trew Lawe of Free Monarchiies. In the former, he warns his son regarding the management of a wife, “suffer her never to meddle with the Politicke government of the Commonweale, but holde her at the Oeconomicke rule of the house; and yet all to be subject to your direction.”32 In the latter, he explains, “Monarchie is the trew paterne of Divinitie,” and asserts that by “the Law of Nature the King becomes a naturall Father to all his Lieges at his Coronation.”33 In these works, as Lewalski notes, he outlines his belief that “the absolute power of God the Supreme Patriarch is imaged in the absolute monarch of the state, and in the husband and father of a family.”34 He also believes that a woman should be subject to her father and then to her husband, in relationships that “supposedly imaged the subjection of all English people to their monarch, and of all Christians to God.”35 This model succinctly replaced Queen Elizabeth’s image of a learned woman, fit to rule, who was both wed to her country and a mother to her loyal subjects. That a woman ruler could claim the right to rule by citing the theory of the “king’s two bodies,”—one 28

D’Aubigné, 852. Harington, Letters and Epigrams, 255–6. 30 Harington, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, ed. Robert McNulty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 230. 31 Lewalski, 15. 32 James I, Basilikon Doron. Or His Majesties Instructions to His Dearest Sonne, Henry the Prince, The Political Works of James I, ed. Charles Howard McIlwain (New York: Russell and Russell, 1965), 36–7. 33 James I, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies: Or the Reciprock and Mutuall Duetie Betwixt a Free King, and His Naturall Subjects, The Political Works of James I, ed. Charles Howard McIlwain (New York: Russell and Russell, 1965), 54, 55. 34 Lewalski, 2. 35 Lewalski, 2. 29

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physical, mortal, and possibly female, in her construction of this notion, and one an “ideal and enduring political construct”—was dismissed.36 Yet, during the early years of James’s reign, Queen Anne presided over her own small court, causing James grief at times with her interference in political matters. Moreover, her court bore a resemblance to that of Catherine de Medici in that she organized her own version of the escadron volant. Josephine Roberts writes, “[a]t the beginning of her reign, she had surrounded herself with an inner circle of beautiful young women, close to her own age of twenty-eight, led by Lucy Harington, countess of Bedford, and Lady Penelope Rich.”37 The abrupt shift in ruling ideologies instated by James, but clearly contested by his queen, sparked new skirmishes over the “woman question” in England and provided fuel for the writers of conduct books and treatises focused on circumscribing women’s education and place in society to fit a traditional patriarchal Christian perspective. The popularity of such works as John Dod and Robert Cleaver’s A Godlie Forme of Householde Government (1598), which went through nine editions by 1630, and William Whately’s A Bride-Bush (1617) illustrates the anxiety over the governance of women. The English querelle thus had two major sources of influence—that of the Continent, via the English’s consumption of Continental literature and courtly mores—and that generated by their own internal issues regarding women, religion, and rule. In part because of Queen Elizabeth’s prominent position in international politics, and in part because of Continental literary boasts about learned women in Italy and France, the English were acutely aware of a sense of nationalistic competition between learned women, even though many writers warned English women against imitating Continental women. Queen Elizabeth, the daughters of Sir Anthonie Cooke, and Mary Sidney Herbert are among those that English writers held up for comparisons. Pamela Benson points out that “Harington’s Furioso is the most obvious example” of this trend because “in a note explaining Ariosto’s praise of [Vittoria] Colonna, he singles out the Russell sisters as young Englishwomen who overgo their Italian competition.”38 While Harington does compare “that honorable Ladie (widow of the late Lord John Russell)” to Colonna for having honored the memories of two husbands with her verses, he goes on to write, “wheras my author maketh so great boast onely of one learned woman in Italie, I may compare (besides one [Queen Elizabeth] above all comparison that I noted in the xx booke)39 three or foure in England out of one famelie,” and in the 36 See footnote 3, p. 999, on Queen Elizabeth’s “Speech to the Troops at Tilbury,” in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 1, 6th edn, ed. Abrams et al. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1993). 37 Roberts, introduction to The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, li. 38 Benson, 70. 39 In Book Twenty, Harington comments on Ariosto’s praise of women from classical antiquity who were learned and who were wise rulers. He admires these women but counters that:

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margin he points out that these are “the four daughters of Sir Anthonie Cooke, Ladie Burlie, Ladie Russell, Ladie Bacon, Mistres Killygrew” (my emphasis).40 The Cooke sisters of whom Harington writes were greatly lauded for their humanist educations. Jan van Dorsten observes that the learning and literary circle of Mildred Cooke, Lady Burghley (wife of William Cecil), are much like those of her Continental contemporary, Madame de Morel, and he points out that “there is sufficient evidence to prove that the Cecils were fully familiar with what went on in that much more remarkable rendezvous across the Channel, for quite a few literati visited both homes.”41 Harington’s mention of the Cooke sisters, as well as Queen Elizabeth, the one “above all comparison,” in the context of his Orlando, indicates that he was fully cognizant of competition between learned Continental and English women. The eagerness of Mary Sidney Herbert’s contemporaries to compare the Countess of Pembroke with Elisabetta Gonzaga, the Duchess of Urbino42 or to place “Pembrokiana” in a work adapted from a play created for an Italian court, Tasso’s Aminta, is also a response to international competition, as well as illustrative of English writers’ desire to imitate Continental ideals and practices associated with learned women. In his dedication of The Pilgrimage to Paradise (1592) to the Countess of Pembroke, Nicholas Breton writes, “who hath redde of the Duchess of Urvina, may saie, the Italians wrote wel: but who knowes the Countesse of Penbrooke, I thinke hath cause to write better: and if shee had many followers? have not you mo servants? and if they were so mindfull of their favours: shall we be forgetfull of our dueties?” He states, “in summe, if shee had any true perfection to be spoken of, you have many mo truly to be written of,” and he concludes that the “poore pilgrim, that seeketh Paradise, finde heaven the better by your favour . . . .”43 Although not overtly comparing Pembroke to the Duchess of

for a perfite patterne of excellency in both kinds, both in governing the common welth most wisely, peaceably, and prosperously, and skill in all kind of learning and languages, Greeke, Latine, French, Italian, and Spanish, I may say it truely and without flatterie that our gracious soveraigne is to be preferred before any of them, yea before all of them, and therfore may justly be called the jewell or rather the wonder of all her sex (Harington, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, 230.) 40

Harington, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, 434. Regarding “such go-betweens,” Dorsten mentions Daniel Rogers along with Utenhove, 199. 42 See Nicholas Breton, Dedication, The Pilgrimage to Paradise, Joyned With The Countesse of Penbrookes Loue (Oxford, 1592), The Works in Verse and Prose, 2 vols., ed. Alexander B. Grosart (1879; reprint, Hildesheim: Goerg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1969), 1: verso of Pilgrimage frontispiece. 43 Breton, Dedication, The Pilgrimage to Paradise, 1: verso of Pilgrimage frontispiece. 41

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Urbino as Breton does in his dedication, Fraunce, in The Third Part of the Countesse of Pembrokes Yvychurch, nevertheless styles Pembrokiana as a “Matchles Lady Regent” who requests verses set to music and storytelling to commemorate Amyntas’s death; thus, he does model her character after such literary depictions as that of Elisabetta Gonzaga in The Courtier or Parlamente in The Heptameron as well as after Continental salon hostesses. 44 The pattern of literary circle activities imitating art is closely interwoven at this juncture. We are told that since Amyntas was “Late transformed to a flowre,” the Lady Regent wills every man to remember Some one God transformd [sic] or that transformed an other: And enjoynes each nymph to recount some tale of a Goddesse That was changed herself, or wrought some change in an other: And that as every tale and history drew to an ending, Soe sage Elpinus with due attention harckning, Shuld his mynd disclose, and learned opinion utter.45

The nymphs and shepherds oblige her by recounting tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the learned Elpinus follows each person’s story with a discourse on its history and others’ accounts of it.46 Fraunce’s depiction of Pembrokiana surrounded by her nymphs and shepherds resembles a Continental salon in pastoral or country house mode, 47 and this style of portrayal is also perpetuated by Breton in Wits Trenchmour, In a conference had betwixt a Scholler 44 Abraham Fraunce, The Third Part of the Countesse of Pembrokes Yvychurch. Entituled, Amintas Dale. Wherein are the most conceited tales of the Pagan Gods in English Hexameters together with their auncient descriptions and Philosophicall explications (London: Thomas Woodcocke, 1592), 1. For other commentary on Pembroke and The Third Part, see Margaret Hannay, Philip’s Phoenix: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 112; and Mary Ellen Lamb, Gender and Authorship in the Sidney Circle (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 40. 45 Fraunce, The Third Part, 1. 46 Elpinus is, in essence, the main character through whom Fraunce shows off his own classical education, as well as his familiarity with the writings of such Continental writers as “Leo Hebraeus” and “Remy Belleau.” Fraunce, The Third Part, 4, 10. 47 Regarding the country house poem tradition, Aemilia Lanyer’s “Description of Cooke-ham” (1611) and Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst” (1616) are often discussed in terms of bids for patronage and concerns about whose poem was written first. It would be useful to consider these poems in context with Ronsard’s “À Conflans” (1570) about the Villeroy group in country mode and “Le Sejour de Dyctinne et des Muses,” which describes the scene at the Retz’s country house at Noisy. While the traditions of country house poems may be traced to Horace’s Odes or Virgil’s Georgics in their praise of country life, the conflation of English and Continental trends regarding literary circle ritual and country house gatherings at this juncture in literary history raises fascinating questions about context and influence.

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and an Angler (1597). In this work he describes Pembroke’s “house beeing in a manner a kind of little Court” where “Gentlewomen of excellent spirits” and “Gentlemen of fine cariage” disport themselves, in an atmosphere where one finds “God daily served, religion trulie preached.”48 In the contexts of Breton’s and Fraunce’s works, the sense of competition between learned English and Continental women is palpable as the Countess of Pembroke is portrayed as a Continental-style patroness and salon hostess (one as given to gathering her fellow nymphs and shepherds around her as Retz), who directs her group’s entertainment and creative endeavors. The paradox resulting from the stigma regarding English women imitating Continental women juxtaposed with the acknowledged competition between learned women on the Continent and in England is especially evident in Breton’s depictions of the Countess of Pembroke. On the one hand, he portrays her as a salon-style hostess, one who is even more adept at the role than the legendary Duchess of Urbino; yet, on the other hand, he resolutely asserts that her Protestant piety accounts for her great goodness and appeal. He suggests that she is a finer lady than the Countess of Urbino because of her Protestant sensibilities—pilgrims “finde heaven the better for [her] favour”49—and that Wilton is a safe place for imitation of Continental-style literary activities because there, “religion [is] trulie preached.”50 Although the Sidney family were staunch supporters of Protestant political efforts, and they were alienated by French Catholic political maneuvers, thanks in part to the fact that Philip Sidney witnessed the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (24 August 1572), they clearly allowed trends in Continental literary culture to supercede politics when it came to their literary activities. Philip Sidney’s exposure to Continental literary society was no doubt in part responsible for the ways in which his sister positioned herself in English literary society, even though her reputation was carefully buttressed by the English Protestant values articulated in her own works and those about her. Dorsten suggests, as noted above, that one early avenue of influence for Sidney was the time he spent at the home of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, to whose daughter Anne he was briefly betrothed, and whose wife Harington praises in his Orlando Furioso. “Cecil House was young Philip Sidney’s first encounter with a private center of learning,”51 writes Dorsten, who points out that the Cecil home resembled “one other household of the same period: that of Jean de Morel in Paris 48 Breton, Wits Trenchmour, In a conference had betwixt a Scholler and an Angler (London, 1597), The Works in Verse and Prose, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (1879; reprint, Hildesheim: Goerg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1969), 2: 19. 49 Breton, Dedication, The Pilgrimage to Paradise, 1: verso of Pilgrimage frontispiece. 50 Breton, Wits Trenchmour, 2: 19. In the same vein, in The Countesse of Penbrookes Loue, published with The Pilgrimage to Paradise, Breton asserts that Pembroke’s home and faith are built on “the rocke of true Religion,” 1: 22. 51 Dorsten, 199.

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whose wife could compare with Mildred as a philologist and who also had several daughters to educate.” He continues, “The general pattern is the same. In the late fifties and sixties their house was a leading and very cosmopolitan meeting place for scholars and poets,” some of whom visited both families.52 The impact of the Morel salon was clearly felt in England, as Dorsten’s study shows, and Sidney was in a position to have knowledge of it. Sidney also had opportunities to learn about the Retz and Villeroy circles. Regarding a probable visit to the Retz home in Paris, Sidney biographer James Osborn, relying on the records of Sir Thomas Smith,53 writes that on Wednesday, 18 June 1572, the following situation arose: . . . it became the responsibility of the King’s youngest brother, the Duke of Alençon, to entertain the English visitors. Because his house was too small for such a crowd, especially during the heat wave in which Paris was sweltering, the Duke arranged to hold his dinner at the house of the Count of Retz. The banquet equalled in sumptuousness those that had preceeded it. The ‘other noble men of England and France’ (presumably including Sidney) were placed at the second of two long tables.54

There is no mention of ladies present, but we must wonder if Madame de Retz had anything to do with the after-dinner musical entertainment since she was known for her love of music, as well as her own outstanding musical skills. Osborn, quoting Smith, notes that after dinner the Duke led them ‘into a chamber somwhat more fresh, where we heard excellent musique both of voice and virginalls, and of voice and violls as the daie before.’ The Duke then explained that he had prepared a comedy and other performances but cancelled them because of the heat. As the guests departed, spouts of ‘damaske and fine water’ rained upon the company, ‘and then a mad felow [blew] damaske and fine smelling powder al abowt.’55

Thus was Sidney’s chance to visit the Retz home and experience their legendary hospitality.56 52

Dorsten, 198. Sir Thomas Smith was Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador who helped to shape the Treaty of Blois. He kept a day-by-day account of the schedule of the Earl of Lincoln, with whom Sidney and his entourage were traveling. See James Osborn, Young Philip Sidney, 1572–1577 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 38. 54 Osborn, 41. 55 Osborn, 42. 56 In his introduction to The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet (London: William Pickering, 1845), Steuart A. Pears intimates that Sidney must have admired Gondi, one of “the best soldiers of [his] day” (xiii), but since their political and religious leanings were directly opposed, it is doubtful that Sidney felt great admiration for Retz. Only a short while later Sidney would most likely hear the stories circulating about 53

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Although there is no evidence that Sidney visited either of the Villeroy houses, he must have known something of the Villeroy salon, not only through his exposure to courtly society in Paris, but also because in Vienna he became friends with Jean de Vulcob, a cousin of Madeleine and Claude de L’Aubespine.57 Vulcob’s poetry appears in Bibliothèque nationale Ms. fr. 1718, one of the manuscripts identified as belonging to the Villeroy group.58 Lavaud notes that Vulcob was the ambassador to Vienna from April 1570 to October 1576 and specifically describes him as an “ami des belles-lettres.”59 Sidney was writing of his acquaintance with Vulcob to Languet as early as 5 December 1573.60 Sidney and Vulcob repeatedly exchange greetings via Languet’s correspondence, and it becomes clear that Vulcob, as an ambassador, is a conduit of news and gossip. In his letters to Sidney, he especially keeps him apprised of the movements of Henri III as he makes his way back to France from Poland.61 Osborn observes that “[a]lthough the letters are formal in tone and confined to the subjects of the moment, they are signed ‘Vostre bien obeissant et affectionne serviteur et amy’ or variations of this, always with the term ‘affectionate’ to distinguish Vulcob’s and Retz’s involvement in the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre that began 24 August 1572, an event Sidney himself witnessed when he was in Paris for the marriage of Henry of Navarre and Marguerite de Valois, one of Madame de Retz’s closest friends. In Albert de Gondi, Maréchal de Retz (Genève: Droz, 1953), Madame Michel Jullien de Pommerol discusses the events leading up to the massacre and speculates on Retz’s role, 59–67. Osborn, too, details the events and notes Retz’s involvement, 61–7. Interestingly, Madame de Retz was thought to be something of a Protestant sympathizer. Pommerol recounts a story that Clermont and her mother, Madame de Dampierre, hid a young protestant called Lavardin during the massacre, saving his life, 197. (See also St-John, 74.) Under the protection of the English ambassador, Sir Francis Walsingham, whose daughter Frances he would marry in 1583, and the Duke of Nevers, husband of Henriette de Clèves, one of Madame de Retz’s closest friends, Sidney escaped the violence of the massacre (Osborn, 67–73). Another reason that Sidney would be disinclined to admire Retz is that he was a key player in the attempt to facilitate a marriage between Elizabeth and Alençon, a match that Sidney later famously protested in his letter to the queen in 1578. In 1573, Retz was sent to the court of Queen Elizabeth to attempt to negotiate a marriage for her with the French Duke. Although she declined this attempt at making the match, Elizabeth wrote to Catherine de Medici to thank her for sending Retz, praising his “sincerité” and “cognoissance des affaires des princes” (Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series of the reign of Elizabeth, 1572–1574, no. 1164, quoted in Pommerol, 106). While there is little reason to think that Sidney admired Retz, it is likely that he heard much about the Retz salon and met some of its regulars. 57 For an overview of the Vulcob and L’Aubespine family relations, see Lavaud, 39– 41. 58 Lavaud, 514. 59 Lavaud, 41. 60 Sidney’s letter in Pears, 5. 61 Translated and quoted in Osborn, 109–10; 115; 127–8; 166–7.

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Sidney’s relationship.”62 The ties that Sidney established with Vulcob are such that there is little reason to doubt that their conversations did not also include mention of the Villeroy salon, as well as discussion of the Continental literary scene in general.63 If we judge only by his extant correspondence, it would appear that Sidney was more concerned with political affairs than with Continental literary society. The worlds of politics and letters were, however, closely interwoven, as Sidney had ample opportunity to observe. Katherine Duncan-Jones astutely points out that Sidney’s personal correspondence with the women of his circle has been lost, as has that to his closest male friends, such as Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer. She suggests that perhaps in these letters to those whom he considered the audience for his literary efforts, he wrote of his impressions of the Continental literary scene.64 In any case, something that particularly resembles a Continental literary circle among the Sidney group emerges after Sidney returns from his grand tour and from his ambassadorial trip to Prague in 1577, and his sister Mary becomes the Countess of Pembroke and, as such, the mistress of great houses, Wilton, in particular. Together, early on, they entertain and encourage a group of writers made up of friends and family members that resembles those who frequent the salons in Paris, and Mary Sidney Herbert carries on the tradition after Philip Sidney’s death. Wilton House, like the Villeroy’s Conflans or the Retz’s country house at Noisy, becomes a country retreat for the writers who join the Sidney-Herbert group there.65

62 Osborn, 101. Apparently Vulcob, like Languet, was fond of Sidney. In a letter from 1575, Languet writes to Sidney that Vulcob has seen the portrait of Sidney in Languet’s possession, and “is so struck with its elegance that he is looking for an artist to copy it.” See Languet’s letter in Pears, 94. 63 Sidney became friends with another cousin of Vulcob, Jacques Bochetel, Sieur de la Fôret, a secretary in Vulcob’s embassy who was close to Sidney in age. Bochetel’s name is often mentioned in Sidney’s correspondence. On 10 December 1573, he writes a letter to Sidney, who has just arrived in Venice, in a light-hearted tone that suggests that a comfortable familiarity between peers. He offers gossip about a hostess’s anger because Sidney did not take his leave of her before he left Vienna. He also expresses his desire that Sidney will stop back in Vienna soon but fears that “those lovely courtesans” will cause him to stay in Venice (translated and quoted in Osborn, 114). 64 Duncan-Jones, 18. 65 See Buxton, Sir Philip Sidney and the English Renaissance (London: Macmillan, 1965), 226–33. A similar group would also gather around the Countess of Bedford, at Twickenham. In Writing Women in Jacobean England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), Barbara Kiefer Lewalski writes that Lucy Harington Russell “claimed the role coterie poet, seeking and gaining a reputation for wit and talent much as a male courtier might . . . .” and that she was “the most important and most powerful patroness of the Jacobean court, except for Queen Anne herself,” 95. Furthermore, she points out that from “1608 to 1617 the Countess resided chiefly at Twickenham when she was not at court,

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The Sidney circle and patterns of Continental influence The practices of the Sidney circle writers and their associated groups particularly mirror those of Continental literary circles, including the ways in which the women of these groups negotiate the querelle issues pertaining to women’s participation in the world of letters. Although there is redundancy between these practices for circles throughout Europe, the relatively close relations between English and French courtly circles provide a logical starting place for comparisons, especially regarding courtly women’s literary activities. Continental literary circle rituals that figure in the Sidney circle’s activities include manuscript circulation, considered especially appropriate for noble women writers; a learned hostess/powerful patroness who influences the kinds of works produced by circle members; use of pastoral pseudonyms that, regarding the female circle members, both provide a sense of privileged anonymity and evoke associations with Neoplatonic ideals for women; and group readings of works, probably with group input into writing and editing of works. In Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 1558–1640, H. R. Woudhuysen provides a detailed overview of scribal publication in England, focusing especially on the manuscripts of Sidney’s works. In the process, he beautifully illustrates the English’s fascination with compiling manuscript albums, or miscellanies much like those of their Continental counterparts.66 “Il était de mode de posséder un album poétique” [It was the fashion to possess a poetry album], writes Boucher, who delves into many such manuscript collections to provide examples of French verse from the reign of Henri III for her monumental thesis, Société et mentalités autour de Henri III.67 Clearly aware of this practice making that estate a salon of sorts for female and male friends, most of whom were also courtiers,” 97. 66 See H. R. Woudhuysen’s introduction to Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 1558–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 1–25, as well as the section, “The Miscellanies,” 242–98. For more on the Sidneys and manuscript circulation, see Gender and Authorship in the Sidney Circle (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), in which Mary Ellen Lamb describes the Bright manuscript (British Library, Additional MS 15,232) which contains poems associated with the Sidney circle, as well as three holograph poems by a female hand other than those of the Countess of Pembroke and Lady Mary Wroth, 194. 67 Boucher, Société et mentalités autour de Henri III, 4: 900. Arthur Marotti, in his introduction to John Donne, Coterie Poet, 3–24. One particular point of comparative interest is Marotti’s assertion regarding the composition of verse on set themes. He writes that this practice for the English writers was “a holdover from the grammar school and university” (9), which may very well be true, but it was also common practice in French verse collections. The occasion of Claude de l’Aubespine’s death in 1570 was lamented in poetry included in B. N., Ms. fr. 1663, a manuscript collection that has come to be called the Album of Nicolas de Neufville. Pieces in the collection are by Baïf, Ronsard, Jodelle,

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abroad, Woudhuysen invites a “comparative approach looking at manuscript publication throughout Europe during the Renaissance,” noting that it “would undoubtedly be valuable in its own right,” but he cautions that while such a study “might well provide clues for students of English manuscripts . . . its results would always be subject to doubts about how similar were authorial, scribal, or commercial habits in one country compared to another.”68 Even so, the details regarding historical connections between English and Continental figures that such a study would surely uncover would be invaluable to scholars of this period. Clues about group authorship, the extent of readerships, processes of editing, and attitudes toward print publication might be insightfully compared, as might women’s participation in manuscript circulation as readers, writers, and editors. Regarding the Sidney women’s participation in the process, Woudhuysen writes, “Women in particular found the use of manuscript to their advantage,”69 as it provided them an audience for their work but saved them from having to negotiate the dangerous terrain of print publication, as Wroth learned to her detriment. In Gender and Authorship in the Sidney Circle, Mary Ellen Lamb suggests that “safe houses” owned by Sidney family members and friends enabled the Sidney women to write and provided havens for the circulation of their manuscripts.70 While the concept of “safe houses” alludes to the actuality of social pressures that would discourage women’s writing, Continental practices and influences also seem to be at work in these havens for literary activity. Regarding manuscript circulation, in Philip’s Phoenix, Margaret Hannay points out that Robert and Philip Sidney sent their sister working copies of their compositions, and she sent copies of hers “to Sir Edward Wotton and others.”71 Regarding Wroth’s literary interactions with her cousins William Herbert and Elizabeth Sidney Manners, Countess of Rutland, Lamb writes that while “manuscript transmission is difficult to ascertain, especially since most of the original manuscripts have been lost, we know at least that Wroth read some of Herbert’s manuscript verse; and it would seem probable that all three cousins shared their work.”72 She also points out the probable literary influence of Anne Cecil and her husband Edward de Vere, parents of Susan de Vere Herbert, the Countess of Montgomery, for whom Wroth named her romance, upon Wroth and company, and suggests that the Vere family

Desportes, and Belleau, among others. As is characteristic of poetry produced for salon entertainment, even when the subject matter is tragic in nature, the poets compete to write the best tribute. Keating comments that “for the most part, this pious duty had degenerated into a mere drawing-room pastime,” and to underscore his point, he quotes the verses that ridicule the poetic efforts of one of the mourners (Keating, 88–90). 68 Woudhuysen, 7. 69 Woudhuysen, 13. 70 Lamb, 149–50. 71 Hannay, 109–110. 72 Lamb, 150.

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“provided another ‘safe house’ in which women could write.”73 Anne Cecil, the learned daughter of William Cecil and Mildred Cooke, grew up in the household that Dorsten calls “a center of letters and learning” that entertained scholars who 74 also frequented the Morel household in Paris. Although the match hoped for between Anne Cecil and Philip Sidney was never realized, the channels of Continental influence open to Sidney via this cosmopolitan household seemed to have remained in tact for the next generation of Sidney writers. Of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania itself, Lamb writes, “Sprinkled with poems addressed by characters to each other, mentioned offhandedly by their authors and eagerly read by kindly insistent friends, Wroth’s romance probably reflects actual literary practices within her circle.”75 These allusions to manuscript circulation among friends and family members, while no doubt part of the “safety” mechanism necessary to protect women writers’ reputations, also suggest that these English women writers were imitating Continental literary circle practices. The “safe houses” of which Lamb writes were owned by people who would have known about Continental salon culture and women’s activities in it. Thus, although the Sidney women were venturing into somewhat new territory for English women writers, they were doing so at a time when such a trend was well established on the Continent. While being fully cognizant of the threats to women’s reputations that exposing their writing to a wide audience might attract, they may also have thought of their homes more as sophisticated havens for the literary pursuits that were à la mode abroad than as “safe houses” where they had to hide their hobbies. Yet, the very concept of “safe houses” suggests what prevalent concerns to these courtly women were the issues of reputation connected with the querelle. English women writers clearly had to contend with the same querelle issues that their Continental counterparts did and chose to negotiate the strictures of public opinion in similar ways. Regarding wealth, status, court connections, and positioning as literary circle hostesses and patrons, the “careers” of the Countess of Pembroke and the Countess of Bedford especially follow the patterns set by successful French salon hostesses of the sixteenth century. Both women were writers and translators who mainly passed their work around in their coterie circles. Pembroke began to publish her work—which fit the criteria for acceptable writing by women since it was mostly translation and/or on subjects religious in nature— as she oversaw the publication of her brother’s work, as a tribute to him and his philosophies in order to keep his memory alive. (Her position in this regard is much like that of Lady Russell, whom Harington compared to the Italian noblewoman Vittoria Colonna, who was praised for writing to honor the memory

73 74 75

Lamb, 150. Dorsten, 198–9. Lamb, 151.

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of her husband, Ferrante Francesco d’Avalos. 76) Bedford’s case is unfortunately similar to that of Retz in that all that remains of her writing are letters and a poem,77 a circumstance that reflects her preference for manuscript circulation. While publishing little or nothing of their own work, Pembroke and Bedford were, however, like their Continental counterparts, content for their names to appear in print, if the circumstances were to their advantage. The Countesses of Pembroke and Bedford welcomed encomiastic poetry and dedications written in their honor. This public relations aspect of patronage is a useful strategy for countering misogynistic commentary about women, as Retz’s and Villeroy’s practices suggest. One of the most often cited dedications in which the two are associated is that by John Davies in which he dedicates his Divine Meditations to Bedford, Pembroke, and Elizabeth Cary whom he calls “at once Darlings as Patronesses, of the Muses” and “Glories of Women.”78 Such hyperbole was widely used in references to Pembroke and Bedford by numerous contemporary figures that they befriended and supported. Coburn Freer points out that the Countess of Pembroke’s “taste and hospitality were celebrated by Francis Meres, Edmund Spenser, Abraham Fraunce, Nicholas Breton, Thomas Moffet, Fulke Greville, Thomas Nashe, Gabriel Harvey, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton,

76

Colonna claims in her introductory sonnet, “Scrivo sol per sfogar l’interna doglia” [I write only to assuage my internal grief], and she says that even though others may be better able to praise her husband’s memory, her pain drives her to write, Rime amorose, Rime di tre gentildonne del secolo XVI, ed. Olindo Guerrini (Milano: Sonzogno, 1882), 19– 79. The Countess of Pembroke probably knew the passage in Orlando Furioso [trans. Guido Waldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 443], in which Ludovico Ariosto writes of Colonna: Victoria is her name—appropriate for one born amid victories, one who, wherever she goes, is preceded or followed by Victory, her constant companion . . . . She is another Artemisia, who was praised for her devotion to her Mausolus: indeed, she is so much the greater in that to rescue a man from the grave is a feat so much more splendid than to bury him . . . . [H]ow much . . . honor is due to Victoria who, despite the Fates and Death, has drawn her consort out from Lethe . . . . If Alexander envied proud Achilles the glorious clarion of Homer, how much more . . . would he envy you, invincible Francesco of Pescara, that a wife so chaste, so dear to you, should sing the eternal honour due to you . . . .(Canto 37:16–20) To draw her brother “out from Lethe” was no doubt an appealing idea to Pembroke, and such an enterprise, as Ariosto’s immortalized praise of Colonna suggests, was sure to succeed. 77 See Lewalski, 96. 78 Davies quoted in Lewalski, 102.

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John Davies of Hereford, Ben Jonson, [and] John Donne,” among others.79 Lewalski writes, “The poetry which [Bedford] inspired and invited was almost exclusively poetry of compliment, centered upon herself, her family, and her household.”80 Writers who visited chez Bedford included, perhaps most famously, Donne, as well as Jonson, Daniel, Davies, John Dowland, and George Chapman. Lewalski points out that Bedford was celebrated for her “exceptional musical knowledge and talents,” and that several writers “offered religious verse to her, praising the concurrence in her of learning and virtue, and often associating her talents and interests with those of her kinswoman the Countess of Pembroke.”81 The reputations of both women were clearly buttressed by the encomiastic “reviews” that they received from their protégés and other admirers, and the combination of their personal charisma and their economic support of writers helped to ensure that such positive “press” would outweigh any of the more negative variety. While Bedford clearly profited from the comparison with her elder kinswoman, the Countess of Pembroke, Wroth was denigrated for her failure to more closely resemble her aunt. Edward Denny excoriated Wroth for her publication of the First Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, writing that she ought to “redeem the time with writing as large a volume of heavenly lays and holy love as you have of lascivious tales and amorous toys; that at the last you may follow the example of your virtuous and learned aunt.”82 Indeed, rather as Louise Labé came to be treated as a negative exemplum by some male critics, the Countess of Pembroke came to be invoked as a positive exemplum. Freer writes, “Few authors in the history of English literature have affected so many other writers in their own time as Mary Herbert,”83 and her status as an icon of the English literary establishment is a testament to her carefully cultivated image. Ultimately, she became an arbiter of literary style and taste, and as such, something of an English Dyctinne. Like the poets who referred to Retz as Dyctinne or to Villeroy as Rozette and Callianthe,84 the writers in Pembroke’s circle gave her several pastoral pseudonyms. Hannay points out that although the figure of Astraea seems to have been reserved for Elizabeth herself, Mary Sidney was praised for sundry virtues as Urania, Mira, Clorinda, Meridianis, “the Lady of the plaine,” Delia, and even as Cynthia.85 The use of pastoral pseudonyms became a fixture in English writers’ 79

Coburn Freer, “Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke,” Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Katharina Wilson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 482. 80 Lewalski, 103. 81 Lewalski, 102. 82 Denny’s letter is quoted in Roberts’ introduction to The Poems, 34. 83 Freer, 481. 84 Regarding the pastoral pseudonyms for Villeroy, see Lavaud, 308 and Sorg, 13– 17. 85 Hannay, 107.

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works, as it did in those of their Continental counterparts. Buxton provides an intriguing discussion of the pseudonyms used by Sidney, Greville, and Dyer in their works, including Philisides, Astrophel, Stella, Caelica, Cynthia, Myra, and Amarillis, as well as Richard Latewar’s reference to Greville as Mirafilus, all of which vividly recall sixteenth-century Continental academic and salon practice. He seems unaware or uninterested in this similarity, however, as he asserts firmly, “What interests us is not the relationship between Sidney’s friends and his sister, but between their poems and his, many of them written in her house at Wilton.”86 The pattern of relationships between the poets, their poetry, and their much-lauded hostess is, however, despite Buxton’s assertion, deserving of attention as it suggests a very Continental emphasis on group identity.87 The practice continues in the second generation of the Sidney circle. Wroth writes both poetry and a romance with autobiographical overtones about the characters Pamphilia and Amphilanthus, whose loves and lives shadow those of herself and her cousin and lover, William Herbert, and she signs a draft of her sonnet sequence, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, “Pamphilia.”88 Clearly, the Continental style of adopting pastoral pseudonyms for subjects and authors became standard practice among the Sidney circle members. While the comparison of the Countess of Pembroke to her Continental counterparts may be pushed only so far, the parallels are intriguing. Like Antoinette de Loynes, Madame de Morel, the Countess of Pembroke played an active role in the education of her family and friends. The emphasis on education in contemporary comments underscores her role as a teacher or mentor. John Aubrey, Thomas Churchyard, Thomas Watson, and Samuel Daniel all remark on the school-like atmosphere of Wilton, and Thomas Moffett, in his dedication of Silkeworms and their flies (1599) to the countess, calls her a “noble Nurse of

86

Buxton, 107. Some scholars argue that Continental-style academies did not exist in England, but they seldom discuss why the literary activities taking place in several great houses in England might so closely resemble those of French salons. Buxton rather weakly blames “that peculiarly English preference for country life to town life” in contrast to practices in “Mediterranean lands” where, according to Buxton, poetry and other arts have “always been the product of cities.” See Buxton, 6, 253. See also Kevin Pask, The Emergence of the English Author: Scripting the Life of the Poet in Early Modern England, Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture 12 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 99–101; and Duncan-Jones, 192. 88 See Folger Shakespeare Library ms. V. a. 104. In “Reading Pseudonyms,” Ezell discusses a variety of uses of pseudonyms during the seventeenth century, including the ways in which they function in coteries. She also compares English use of coterie pseudonyms and that of “les précieuses” in Parisian salons, 21. 87

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Learning.”89 Breton refers to her as “the Nourisher of the Learned.”90 Hannay writes, “[S]he does appear to have taken on a role as teacher, encouraging and assigning writing projects to continue her brother’s campaign against literary barbarism.”91 The directing of “writing projects” in order to banish “literary barbarism” implies both teacher-student relationships and salon hostess/patronesssalon member relationships between the countess and her followers. Like the Retz circle with its emphasis on Petrarchan poetry and its fascination with Ariosto,92 the Countess of Pembroke’s circle cultivated interest in specific genres and styles of poetry: closet drama, Romances, and Petrarchan verse are all associated with this group. It has been noted that Wroth and William Herbert were writing Petrarchan verse long after its general popularity had begun to fade, perhaps because it was a hallmark of Sidney circle style.93 Although English scholars rightly point to the trajectory of English Petrarchism as a trend that starts with Surrey and Wyatt, it is worth noting that it especially comes into vogue in the early Sidney circle not long after it experiences a surge in popularity in French literary circles, during the period that Philip Sidney was in France.94 Gibson argues that Edward de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford “pioneered a revival of courtly Petrarchan lyric” in connection with his “advocacy of the French match” for Elizabeth.95 Despite the fact that Sidney and Oxford were rivals, their mutual engagement with this poetic trend underscores the traces of French influence upon English literary circles. The emphasis on cultivating humanist educations among group members and the fidelity to certain popular Continental literary forms among those connected with the Sidney family indicates a sense of group identity quite similar to that of the Morel or Retz circles, in addition to reflecting general trends in Renaissance literary development. Composing poetry and stories for group entertainment, with group input into the composition, was also a hallmark of salon entertainment. Sidney circle members were cognizant of this fact, as Philip Sidney’s acknowledgment of his audience and his sister’s instigation of his Romance project in the dedication to

89

Hannay, 113. Breton, Dedication, A Divine Poeme, divided into two Parts: The Ravisht Soule, and the Blessed Weeper (London, 1601), The Works in Verse and Prose, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (1879; reprint, Hildesheim: Goerg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1969), 1: verso of Divine Poeme frontispiece. 91 Hannay, 109. 92 In “‘Je veux chanter d’amour la tempeste et l’orage’: Deportes et les Imitations de l’Arioste” [Philippe Desportes 1546–1606: Un poète presque parfait entre Renaissance et Classicisme, ed. Jean Balsamo (Mayenne: Klincksieck: 2000)], Rosanna Gorris writes that Ariosto became a “[v]éritable objet de culte dans le salon de Dictynne,” 180. 93 Hannay, 110. 94 See Lavaud, 81, on the revival of Petrarchism in France, ca. 1570. 95 Gibson, 37. 90

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The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia suggests.96 Just as the Duchess of Urbino requests specific topics of conversation to be posed, then urges the ensuing debates on to higher planes of thought in The Courtier, a salon hostess might request a specific game, a specific kind of verse, or likewise propose or solicit specific debate topics, as Retz does in Pasquier’s description of the evening at her home. Duncan-Jones brings up an intriguing possibility regarding Sidney’s inspiration for Astrophil and Stella that recalls this literary circle ritual. She suggests that he “may have been writing these explosively passionate love poems because Penelope Devereux, to whose family he had some long-standing obligations, had asked him to do so, even as his sister had ‘desired’ him to write the Arcadia.” She continues, “Penelope Devereux’s later patronage of poets, translators and musicians shows her taste to have been exceptionally sophisticated.”97 Duncan-Jones also touches upon a question regarding Sidney’s sonnet sequence that has been raised about the sonnets produced by members of the Villeroy circle, specifically, Madeleine de L’Aubespine and Philippe Desportes: did they constitute a “literary charade”? She writes: The skills of the orator and the debater, which Sidney possessed in a high degree, are very close to those of the actor. It may be that the whole Astrophil-Stella love affair was a kind of literary charade, in which both real-life participants knew exactly what was going on.98

Duncan-Jones hypothesizes that “[p]hysically, as well as thematically, Astrophil and Stella may have been confined to [Devereux] and her immediate circle.”99 The awareness that the writing of sonnets was as much an intellectual and artistic exercise as it was an outlet for true feelings was well understood during this period, as Andreini’s boast about being able to write poetry from a masculine or feminine perspective just as she was able to play “hor Donna, ed hora Huom,” a woman or a man, on stage suggests.100 Similarly, Lavaud cautions readers that the poems L’Aubespine and Desportes exchanged may have been simply part of “un jeu beaucoup plus poétique qu’amoureux” [a game much more poetic than amorous].101 Another example of understanding this facet of literary circle ritual may be seen in The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, when Wroth’s character Pamphilia is discovered carving a love poem into an Ash tree by her rival Antissia. Pamphilia quickly tries to hide her true sentiments by asserting 96

See the dedication in Victor Skretkowicz’s edition of Sir Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 492. 97 Duncan-Jones, 246. 98 Duncan-Jones, 246. 99 Duncan-Jones, 247. 100 Rime (Milano: Girolamo Bordone and Pietromartire Locarni, 1601), 1. 101 Lavaud, 59. See what are generally taken to be L’Aubespine’s poems in Sorg’s Les chansons de Callianthe: fille de Ronsard.

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that “many Poets write as well by imitation, as by sence of passion; therefore, this is no proofe against me.”102 Her words recall her uncle’s in his Defence of Poesy, in which he asserts that poesy is “an art of imitation” and that a poet may “recount things not true” that he “telleth . . . not for true.”103 Composing poetry and stories for group entertainment, with group input into the composition, was, then, as much a part of salon entertainment as the use of characters that reflect those in the group, barely disguised with pseudonyms. The Sidney circle members clearly partook of both practices. The vision of Philip Sidney composing the majority of the Arcadia while enjoying the hospitality of Mary Sidney Herbert and reading aloud the pages to her and a group of their friends has been a part of the backdrop to the romance since Sidney penned the dedication to his sister. That these friends heard the “loose pages” read aloud and probably offered commentary on them that may have helped to shape the story suggests participation in a Continental-style literary circle ritual. Moreover, the literary depictions of Mary Sidney Herbert in a salon hostess role, along with her activities as a patron, teacher, proponent of specific styles and genres, as well as poet, translator, and editor, suggest that she fashioned herself after her Continental counterparts. The role of female coterie director was imitated by Lucy Harington Russell, Mary Wroth, Margaret Clifford, and other noblewomen around whom writers gathered and to whom writers dedicated numerous works. Whether they saw themselves as inhabitants of “safe houses” who had to shelter their literary circle activities or as savvy participants in bringing the sophistication of Continental literary trends to England, such women were clearly an integral part of this new chapter in English literary history.

Two acts of the querelle between closet drama and public drama I am your spaniel, and, Demetrius, The more you beat me I will fawn on you. Use me but as your spaniel: spurn me, strike me, Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave, Unworthy as I am, to follow you. Helena to Demetrius, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2.1.203–207)104 Unfitt and shamful I? Indeed, ‘tis true, Since sute is made to hard, relentles you. Well, I will leave you and restore the wronge 102

Lady Mary Wroth, The First Part of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, 94. Sir Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 1, 6th edition (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1993), 483, 493. 104 Quotes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream are from The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997), 814–61. 103

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Literary circles are known for developing affinities for particular genres and styles of literature. Under the influence of the Countess of Pembroke, the Sidney group developed a passion for closet drama that is reminiscent of the directions taken by such groups as the Morel salon, which strongly supported composition in classical languages, especially Latin, or the Retz group, which encouraged a revival of Petrarchism. English closet dramas notably reflect facets of literary circle or salon ritual. First, they seem meant to be read aloud or enacted for group entertainment as well as passed around in manuscript. Second, women, as well as men, wrote them and probably took part in the readings or performances. Wroth’s Love’s Victory (1620s)106 provides a case in point regarding these first two notions. Its provenance indicates that Sir Edward Dering, known for facilitating performances of theatricals in which his friends participated at his estate, once possessed a manuscript of the play. Aware that the Wroths were among his circle of friends, Lamb writes, “[I]t seems likely that Wroth may have participated, even writing her play for such a group.”107 A third way in which English closet drama reflects literary circle ritual, particularly considering the plays of the Sidney circle, is that some of these works illustrate the tradition of catering to the taste of the literary circle leader. The cases of Daniel’s The Tragedy of Cleopatra (1594) and Greville’s Mustafa (1609) illustrate this notion as they clearly reflect the Countess of Pembroke’s penchant for Senecan tragedy. The examples provided by the Dering group and the Countess of Pembroke’s protégées support the notion that closet drama is in many ways ideal literary circle entertainment. They also suggest that closet drama was quite popular in the “safe houses” of Sidney circle members and their friends. Although scholars posit that English closet dramas were not meant to rival the public stage,108 the storylines and themes in them often reflect those of plays 105

This quote is from the Penshurst Manuscript of the play edited by Michael Brennan (London: Roxburghe Club, 1988). In the Huntington Library manuscript of Loves Victorie, “soe” is “too.” In the edition of the play in Renaissance Drama by Women: Texts and Documents, ed. S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies (London: Routledge, 1996), 97–126, the second line of this quote is quite differently transcribed and punctuated as follows: “Since suit is made too hard, relentless you” (3.2.190). 106 The play was passed around in manuscript among Wroth’s circle; thus, it is difficult to date. Josephine Roberts writes, “In spite of the difficulty of determining the plays’ actual date of composition, it is likely to belong to the 1620s when Lady Mary was working on the unfinished Urania” [Introduction to The Poems, 38]. 107 Lamb, 152. See also Roberts, introduction to The Poems, 37–8. 108 Barry Weller and Margaret Ferguson discuss the “untheatrical ‘Senecan’ style” of these plays in their introduction to The Tragedy of Mariam by Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 27.

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written for the public stage and vice versa, suggesting not rivalry, perhaps, but fascination with the same issues. Moreover, easily identifiable French and Italian precursors of the English plays reflect Continental literary influence, further underscoring the transmission of Continental literary trends. Wroth’s Love’s Victory, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595–96) and Daniel’s The Queen’s Arcadia (1606) clearly echo Tasso’s Aminta, Andreini’s La Mirtilla, Battista Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido,109 and other Continental pastoral tragicomedies. The numerous depictions of Antony and Cleopatra in closet and public drama allude to the pervasive interest of both types of playwrights in this story from classical antiquity; moreover, English plays based on this story arise in the wake of a surge of interest in revisioning classical tragedy in France, with the benchmark play in question being Estienne Jodelle’s Cléopâtre Captive (1574).110 Mary Sidney Herbert’s translation of Robert Garnier’s Marc Antoine (1578), The Tragedy of Antonie (1592), Daniel’s The Tragedy of Cleopatra, and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (1606–1607) partake of this trend. Elizabeth Cary’s Tragedy of Mariam (1613),111 which mentions Cleopatra, also reflects the neo-Senecan fad, and her play has been linked with Shakespeare’s Othello (1604).112 One striking feature of this selection of thematically linked plays is how the playwrights choose 109

See Donno’s introduction to Three Renaissance Pastorals: Tasso, Guarini, Daniel, xxvii–xxx, regarding Daniel’s acquaintance with Guarini. 110 Donald Stone points out that Cléopâtre Captive is considered “the first humanist tragedy in French,” and, regarding the Pléiade’s interest in revisioning classical drama, he notes, “Restitution of classical tragedy and comedy was openly asked for in the Deffence (La Deffence et illustration de la langue française by Joachim Du Bellay)” (Donald Stone, Jr., French Humanist Tragedy: A Reassessment [Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974], 66–7). In French Tragic Drama in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Methuen and Company Ltd., 1973), Geoffrey Brereton writes, “The performance of Etienne Jodelle’s Cléopâtre captive by a group of students in Paris in the winter of 1552–53 has been held traditionally, and on the whole rightly, to mark the beginning of native tragedy in France . . . . The movement had originated in Italy in the previous century when humanist scholars began the rediscovery of the Greek tragic dramatists,” 7. 111 In his comparison of dates of plays by Mary Sidney Herbert, Mary Wroth, and Elizabeth Cary, Michael Brennan points out that Cary’s play was probably written between 1603 and 1605 (Introduction to Love’s Victory, 15). 112 Weller and Ferguson point out that Othello may have been influenced by Cary’s play, since it apparently circulated in manuscript for some years before it was published, 5– 6. Regarding Cary’s connections to the Sidney circle, Weller and Ferguson note that her interest in Senecan closet drama may have developed during the early years of her marriage when she and her husband, Henry Cary, lived apart. They repeat Kurt Weber’s theory that it was during this period that she had the time and the opportunity to participate in the Countess of Pembroke’s literary circle, and they call attention to Sir John Davies’s dedicatory letter to The Muses Sacrifice (1612) in which he mentions both Mariam and another play by Cary set in Syracuse that is now lost as he encourages Cary, as well as Lucy Harington Russell, and Mary Sidney Herbert, to publish their writings, 5–6.

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to embody querelle exempla and represent debate issues from the querelle as critical building blocks for their storylines. Because this topic could easily be pursued in a book-length study, I have narrowed my focus to two particular areas of intertextual debate: women who woo and depictions of women in tragedy, especially regarding their options for heroic status. To that end, I concentrate on ways in which Love’s Victory interacts intertextually with Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as popular pamphlets, to explore depictions of women who woo, and on ways in which the Senecan closet dramas in question interact intertextually with the public dramas by Shakespeare and Jodelle regarding depictions of women in tragedy. A key querelle thread in the plays regarding women who woo is that they contain descriptions of female and male characters that call to mind those used by writers in the English pamphlet war concerned with the nature of women. When traditional roles are reversed, and a female character woos a male character, the scenario is loaded with allusions to cultural warnings regarding a woman risking her chastity.113 The injunctions against women’s wooing are tied to accusations by attackers of women in the querelle that women are innately lustful, more so than men,114 and therefore must be controlled. In the pamphlet, The Schoolhouse of women (ca. 1541), the author115 writes that women’s lustful natures make them easy sexual conquests, but the problem is that even if you “Array them well and lay them soft. / Yet shall another man come aloft; / Have you once turned your eye and back, / Another she will have to smick and smack.”116 The case against Desdemona, as Iago depicts it, runs along these very rhetorical lines, illustrating Shakespeare’s penchant for borrowing from the rhetoric of the querelle and the pamphlet wars.117 Unfortunately, the allusion to Desdemona’s early behavior in her relationship with Othello provides Iago a precedent for his accusations. In 1.3.127– 68, Othello recounts the story of his wooing Desdemona, and in the course of his telling, it becomes clear that she actually encouraged and pursued him: “She’d come again, and with a greedy ear / Devour up my discourse . . .” (148–9), he 113

In The Instruction of a Christian Woman, Juan Luis Vives recommends that young girls be taught that death before dishonor should be paramount for women. Lamb points out that Vives relates “no fewer than twelve stories” of “women who preferred death, usually by suicide, to submitting to sexual dishonor,” 120. He avows that these good female exempla are only a few of those “infinite in number, that had leaver be killed, headed, strangled, drowned, or have their throtes cut, then loose their chastitie” (Vives quoted in Lamb, 120). 114 A classical authority on this point, quoted by attackers of women, is the blind prophet Teiresias, since he lived both as a man and a woman and claimed that women were the more lecherous sex. See note 56 in Henderson and McManus, 146. 115 The author is thought to be Edward Gosynhill (Henderson and McManus, 137). 116 The Schoolhouse of women, 139. 117 Benedick’s speeches in Much Ado about Nothing also illustrate this tendency (see 1.1.134–57), as do Bassanio’s in The Merchant of Venice (see 3.2.88–101).

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explains. For his pains, she gave him “a world of kisses” (167). We also learn that upon hearing of his brave exploits, she flirtatiously suggested that “if (he) had a friend that loved her, / (He) should but teach him how to tell (Othello’s) story, / And that would woo her” (163–5). The fact that Desdemona wooed Othello just as much as he wooed her lays the foundation for Iago’s persuasion of Roderigo to believe that she will embark upon an affair with Cassio. Playing the part of the “stage misogynist,”118 Iago snorts: Mark me with what violence she first loved the Moor, but for bragging and telling her fantastical lies. To love him still for prating?—let not thy discreet heart think it. Her eye must be fed, and what delight shall she have to look on the devil? When the blood is made dull with the act of sport, there should be again to inflame it, and to give satiety a fresh appetite, loveliness in favour, sympathy in years, manners, and beauties, all which the Moor is defective in. Now, for want of these required conveniences, her delicate tenderness will find itself abused, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and abhor the Moor. Very nature will instruct her in it and compel her to some other choice. (2.1.217–29)

The “very nature” of women is prone to lust, rationalizes Iago, which, of course, in his mind, is what first drove Desdemona to woo Othello and will drive her to pursue others. His logic works on Othello, who parrots the disdain of marriage popular with attackers of women: “O curse of marriage, / That we can call these delicate creatures ours / And not their appetites!” (3.3.272–4).119 Thus, Othello begins to formulate his mad scheme to “prove [his] love a whore” (3.3.364) and then to kill her “else she’ll betray more men” (5.2.6). Emilia, who is ultimately powerless to change to the course of events, momentarily diverts the audience’s attention from the men’s evil machinations by voicing a non-traditional defense of women as she recounts to Desdemona how women are justified in some trickery by their husbands’ fickle natures and misdeeds (5.1.82–101). Ultimately, however, Shakespeare uses the negative querelle rhetoric about women popular in the English pamphlets of this period to develop the tragic impulse in Othello. It is a strategy that he also employs in his pastoral tragicomedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The wooing woman motif nearly leads to tragedy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when love-struck Helena pursues Demetrius into the woods. Out of 118

See Linda Woodbridge’s commentary on stage misogynists in Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540–1620 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 275–99. 119 See Henderson and McManus’s discussion of Ercole and Torquato Tasso’s Of Marriage and Wiving (1599) in which Ercole takes the misogynist’s part, arguing from classical exempla and “a medieval repugnance for the female body,” as well as the loose English translation of Antoine de La Sale’s Les quinze joyes de mariage, The Bachelors’ Banquet, 15.

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patience with her, Demetrius cries, “Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair? / Or rather do I not in plainest truth / Tell you I do not nor I cannot love you?” Helena, now beyond all decorum, responds, “And even for that do I love you the more. / I am your spaniel, and, Demetrius, / The more you beat me I will fawn on you” (2.1.199–204). Demetrius, appalled by her wooing, ultimately threatens her in a way that intimates rape, “. . . if thou follow me, do not believe / But I shall do thee mischief in the wood” (2.1.236–7). Helena, outraged, counters with a speech that gets to the heart of the querelle matter: Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field, You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius, Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex. We cannot fight for love as men may do; We should be wooed, and were not made to woo. I’ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell, To die upon the hand I love so well. (2.1.238–44)

Helena rails against the cultural constraints placed upon her sex that would have her be always silent, passive, and obedient. Yet, she confirms her acceptance of such injunctions as she concedes in frustration, “We should be wooed, and were not made to woo.”120 While Shakespeare has Helena pay lip service to the notion that it is men’s “wrongs” that “set a scandal” on her sex, she debases herself anyway by continuing her pursuit of Demetrius. Eventually, thanks to Puck’s flower juice, Helena’s love is requited, as Demetrius reverses his position and becomes her slavish follower (3.2.138–45), but her winning of him is problematized because enchantment is needed to accomplish the match. The dynamics of this scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are echoed in Love’s Victory as Wroth, too, addresses the issue of women who woo. 121 Wroth, however, adapts the exchange in a way that allows the female wooer to save face. Even so, her Helena-like figure Climeana does not win her man. No magical interventions occur, but neither does she debase herself by continuing the futile pursuit. In Love’s Victory, instead of continuing her pursuit of Lissius, Climeana declares his rejection of her his loss and exits. This exchange begins when Lissius, sounding much like Demetrius, declares, “‘tis enough that I have sayd, / Be gon, and leave mee; Is this for a mayd / To follow, and to haunt me thus? You blame / Mee for disdaine butt see nott your owne shame. Fy, I doe blush for you, a woman woo? / The most unfitting’st, shamfull’st thing to doe” (3.287–92). Climeana responds, “Unfitt, and shamfull, I? Indeed, ‘tis true, / Since sute is made to hard, 120 See my discussion of this passage in “Love’s Victory and La Mirtilla in the Canon of Renaissance Tragicomedy: An Examination of the Influence of Salon and Social Debates,” Women’s Writing 4.1 (1997): 106. 121 I have also discussed the intertextuality between Wroth’s and Anger’s works in “Love’s Victory and La Mirtilla,” 106–108.

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relentles you. / Well, I will leave you and restore the wronge / I suffer for my loving you soe longe” (3.293–6). Wroth subverts the tradition by having her female character defend herself against the scornful male character’s rejection, not by begging to be beaten like a spaniel, but by declaring herself a free, albeit disappointed, woman who deserves better than his abuse. Even though the traditionally virtuous Simeana claims Lissius’s heart, Climeana is spared the ensuing degradation with which Helena is threatened and which destroys Desdemona; thus, Wroth takes a more nontraditional defender’s approach than Shakespeare does in her treatment of this scenario. In Love’s Victory, Wroth provides a broader treatment of women’s wooing in general than Shakespeare does in either Othello or A Midsummer Night’s Dream. First, she prefaces the Climeana/Lissius passage with scenes in which her female characters discuss women wooing. Silvesta says, “Indeed a woman to make love is ill, / Butt heare, and you may all thes sorrows kill,” and she advocates that Musella simply show up where Philisses walks and show herself “butt kind” in order to provoke a confession of love from him (3:79–80, 86). In other words, she recommends a very passive wooing technique, in spite of injunctions against women wooing, and she does not discourage Musella from taking the initiative to further her romance. Next, Simeana and Climeana argue over who loves Lissius best and how to win him. Simeana asserts that because Lissius has always been first in her affections, she has the best chance with him. Climeana counters that although her affections were once engaged by another, she now loves Lissius best and therefore should be rewarded with his love (3:209–262). Dalina, disgusted with their naiveté, offers her insights on men’s behavior in wooing, and a thoroughly nontraditional defense of women ensues, one that recalls Jane Anger’s insights in Her Protection for Women (1589) or Emilia’s words about men’s changeable nature in Othello (4.3). Skewering the concept of the ever-faithful Petrarchan lover, Dalina scornfully asserts: Lett (men) alone, and they will seek and sue, Butt yeeld to them and they’ll with scorn pursue. Hold a while of, they’ll kneele, and follow you, And vowe and sweare, yett all theyr othes untrue. Lett them once see you coming then they fly, Butt strangly looke, and they’ll for pitty cry. (3.251–6)

Dalina thus recommends playing hard-to-get and resorting to reverse psychology in order to win men and avoid their misogynist attacks. Her advice is complementary to Silvesta’s in that she recommends subtle machinations. She also underscores men’s inconstant and flighty natures—the sort usually attributed to women by attackers in the querelle. An echo from the pamphlet wars becomes evident when we consider Anger’s lines:

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If we will not suffer (men) to smell on our smocks, they will snatch at our petticoats; but if our honest natures cannot away with that uncivil kind of jesting, then we are coy. Yet if we bear with their rudeness and be somewhat modestly familiar with them, they will straight make matter of nothing, blazing abroad they have surfeited with love, and then their wits must be shown in the telling manner how.122

Dalina and Emilia, like Anger, are nontraditional defenders of women who bring men’s faults into their discussions of women’s problems with love. Emilia’s observations about men in Othello, like Dalina’s in Love’s Victory, recall those of Anger, who writes: men, being of wit sufficient to consider of the virtues which are in us women, are ravished with the delight of those dainties which allure and draw the senses of them to serve us, whereby they become ravenous hawks, who do not only seize upon us, but devour us,123

and “The Lion rageth when he is hungry, but man raileth when he is glutted.”124 Emilia more coarsely remarks to Desdemona, “Tis not a year or two shows us a man. / They are all but stomachs, and we all but food. / They eat us hungrily, and when they are full, / They belch us” (3.4.99–102). Anger also asserts that women’s bad behavior may be blamed on men, writing, “Deceitful man with guile must be repaid,” and “Our behaviors alter daily, because men’s virtues decay hourly.”125 Emilia echoes these sentiments, saying, “I do think it is their husbands’ faults / If wives do fall,” and “The ills we do, their ills instruct us so” (5.1.84–5, 101). We may relate these latter sentiments to issues of women’s wooing: men’s fickle natures which lead them to desire women but to fear women’s desire call for careful, subversive strategies when a woman chooses to woo. Although comparing outcomes in tragedies and comedies is like comparing apples and oranges, this comparison of querelle rhetoric in Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Love’s Victory reveals an interesting intertextual dialogue regarding women who woo. In the two plays by Shakespeare, women’s wooing leads either to death or threat of severe bodily harm. In Wroth’s play, women’s wooing is discussed and pronounced “ill” but possible, if done very subtly. Even when a woman does not woo with subtle finesse, as in Climeana’s case, there is no overweening threat—just Lissius’s self righteous response as she leaves the scene: “Farewell, you now do right” (3.299). He continues, “This is the way / To winn my wish, for when I all neglect / That seeke me, she (Simeana) must needs somthing respect / My love the more . . .” (3.299–302). Ironically, Simeana, as the audience

122 123 124 125

Jane Anger, Her Protection for Women, Half Humankind, 11. Anger, 177–8. Anger, 179. Anger, 176, 79.

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knows, not only respects his love, but has also been lying in wait to secure it for herself. Simeana, like Musella, follows Silvesta’s guide to subtle wooing, and makes sure that she strolls by Lissius at just this moment. She also uses the recommended reverse psychology. When Lissius begs her to forgive him and swears, “. . . you I will reserve / My lyfe to pay, your love butt to deserve, / And for your sake I doe my self preserve” (3.322–4), Simeana, although madly in love with him, feigns disdain and responds, “Preserve itt nott for mee, I seeke nott nowe, / Nor can I creditt this or any vowe / Which you shall make” (3.325–7). As Dalina or Anger might predict, this provokes a volley of protests that his love for Simeana is true. Lissius, who believes that he has done the wooing, is neatly caught by Simeana’s subtle timing and seeming scorn. In reality, all has gone as she has planned. Musella, too, has success with Silvesta’s advice. When she encounters Philisses, she slyly says, “Tell mee who ‘tis you love, and I will give / My word I’le winn her if she may bee wun” (4.64–5). He, of course, reveals that it is she for whom he pines (4.77). Wroth’s wooing women, unlike Shakespeare’s in Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, get their men via their subversive wooing practices and suffer no serious consequences as a result of doing so. The agency Wroth grants them is based on an understanding of men’s fickle natures, [“I know the world,” says Dalina, who is accused of being fickle herself, “heere me, this I’advise: / Rather then too soone wun, bee too precise” (3.267–8).] Unlike Helena, they are not helpless victims of their passions. After ensuring that she has Lissius firmly engaged, Simeana declares that she will no longer be a victim of men’s false swearing simply because she is in love. “I was too long dispis’d / To bee decev’d,” she declares. “Noe, I wilbe advis’d / By reason now, my love shall noe more blind / Mee, nor make me beeleeve more then I find” (3.327–30). Women who woo in Love’s Victory do so with an understanding of the fictional nature of Petrarchan love, as well as the foibles of both men and women. Wroth’s direct engagement with plays written for the public stage—her imitation of Tasso and possibly Andreini, as well as A Midsummer Night’s Dream (most notable in her setting, the mirroring of the spaniel scene, and her use of Arcas, a trickster figure, who, like Puck, causes much confusion among the lovers and, also like Puck, gets to have the last word)—is indicative of her fascination with the public stage and her desire to imitate the sort of drama meant to be enacted, and not simply read. The earlier Senecan-style tragedies favored by her aunt’s followers, however, reflect that group’s affinity for the trend of imitating and translating Seneca’s work, which was popular in France during this period. In this style of drama, most of the action takes place off stage and characters engage in long, philosophical speeches, creating plays meant to be read or recited rather than enacted. Like Wroth, however, the writers of Senecan-style tragedies also emphasize querelle topics that resonate in plays meant for public stages. A facet of Senecan tragedy that no doubt appealed to the writers in the Countess’s group is what Donald Stone calls “the lure of the rhetorical display, of

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which Seneca is an avowed master.”126 The rhetorical tradition of Senecan drama provides excellent scope for taking up querelle issues and creatively shaping an audience’s response to them, as Seneca’s treatment of Medea suggests. Stone opines that Seneca’s sympathetic study of “the passion that brings about Medea’s crimes”127 lays the groundwork for his “aggrandizement of Medea’s role.”128 This trend may be seen in the Sidney group’s tragedies in which the playwrights use Seneca’s strategies to gain sympathy for their wayward heroines and the nontraditional defenses of these women that they espouse. On the other hand, Stone points out that Euripides’s treatment of Medea, considered by some more negative than Seneca’s,129 is the result of his study of “a proud woman’s reaction to her situation,”130 a tradition that seems to be reflected in Jodelle’s and Shakespeare’s treatments of Cleopatra for the public stage, although critics usually indicate that the main source for their more negative portrayals is Plutarch’s Lives, not Euripidean drama.131 I do not want to oversimplify issues of imitation here: Seneca, after all, was drawing upon Euripides’s plays, 132 and elements of influence from both may be seen in the works of sixteenth-century playwrights, including Jodelle’s and Shakespeare’s.133 Classical precedents for sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century French and English tragedies should, however, be considered part of the Querelle des femmes context for the plays in question, as the 126

Stone, 75. Stone, 76. 128 Stone, 75. The play opens with the first of many of Medea’s long speeches on her past deeds and why she did them, on her present woes, and on her heart torn between love and hate: see 1.1.1–55; 1.2.108–150; 4.2.743–849 [Seneca, Medea, trans. Frank Justus Miller, The Complete Roman Drama, ed. George E. Duckworth (New York: Random House, 1942), 2: 584–619]. 129 Recent scholars read Euripides more sympathetically. Henderson and McManus assert that Euripides “composed in Medea an indictment of men’s treatment of women” and that he “showed more empathy for women than any other ancient writer,” according to the “relatively modern critics” who “have been able to rescue him from his centuries-old reputation as a woman-hater” (Introduction to Half-Humankind, 6). 130 Stone, 76. 131 See Frank Kermode, introduction to The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 1343; regarding Cléopâtre captive, see Stone, 141; and Brereton, 8. 132 Stone, 74. 133 See Brereton’s discussion of Jodelle’s fusion of Greek and Senecan features in Cléopâtre captive, 8–10, as well as the numerous references to Euripidean and Senecan influence on Shakespeare in the bibliographic entries of John Velz’s Shakespeare and the Classic Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968), 411, 44. See also Adrian Poole’s comparison of Shakespearean tragedies to classical tragedies in Tragedy: Shakespeare and the Greek Example (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987); and Stone’s discussion of the ways in which Garnier’s Les Juives reflects characteristics of both Euripides’s and Seneca’s plays on Hecuba, 68. 127

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playwrights’ choices for imitation carry with them strategies for shaping views about the natures and circumstances of female characters. Regarding contemporary trends in tragedy, Linda Woodbridge writes that the “highest literary achievement of the Renaissance, tragedy, affirms by the very intensity of its grieving the value of what is lost, the individual human life: it is this genre, wherein human beings are crushed, which is most firmly humanistic.”134 It is in this genre, too, that we may see the variety of qualities valued in the lives that are lost or endangered. The values placed on the characters sacrificed or compromised in Renaissance tragedy vary from author to author, depending, naturally, on the story told or the style of classical tragedy imitated; however, some of the common theatergrams135 of tragedy, such as women murdered because of false misogynistic accusations, as in the cases of Desdemona and Mariam, or variations on the figure of Cleopatra, are adapted by dramatists in ways that underscore systems of evaluation of women’s worth that resonate strongly with sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century querelle concerns. The two traditions concerning death by which women might especially be venerated include the ars moriendi tradition, or the art of dying well, and the concept of “death before dishonor,” which for women meant death before the loss of chastity. As Lamb points out, the ars moriendi tradition was especially of interest to Mary Sidney Herbert. She writes, “Taken as a group, Mary Sidney’s translations from Mornay, Garnier, and Petrarch suggest an interest in the art of dying which apparently gained strength not only from her grief over the death of her brother Philip, but also from her mother’s impressive death, from her husband’s expressed desire to die, and from the preoccupation with the topic evidenced by her culture in general.”136 Of the “death before dishonor” concept, Lamb writes: This form of heroism was a cultural cliché, set forth in a multitude of works read in the Renaissance, from Boccaccio’s De Claris Mulieribus to Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women to Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. In all of these works, the willingness to die was represented primarily as a means of exonerating women from the charge of sexual guilt.137

134

See Woodbridge, 324. In Italian Drama in Shakespeare’s Time, Clubb defines theatergrams as the “units, figures, relationships, actions, topoi, and framing patterns” used throughout Renaissance drama that were gleaned from classic examples and modified with use until they constituted a “combinatory of theatergrams that were at once streamlined structures for svelte play making and elements of high specific density, weighty with significance from previous incarnations,” 6. 136 Lamb, 115. 137 Lamb, 120. 135

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In some plays, the idea of death before dishonor becomes intermingled with the art of dying well, and the attendant virtues of both traditions are appropriated to illustrate the tragic virtue of such characters as Desdemona, Mariam, and Cleopatra. Like Desdemona, Mariam’s portrayal of a traditionally good exemplum, coupled with the suspicion that she has sullied her chastity, leads to an early and violent death. Unlike Desdemona, however, her memory does not get pushed aside or subsumed in the death of the central male figure. At the end of the play, we learn that Herod will become a living monument to Mariam, albeit one that “strangely, lunaticly rave[s]” (5.1.287). Since Herod lives, Mariam’s virtue has the last word, and Cary’s centralization of this theatergram leaves the audience with what the chorus calls, a “warning to posterity” (5.1.290). Although she does not have the chorus elaborate upon the warning, she does suggest that “in aftertimes” this day will be called “the school of wisdom” (5.1.294). This intertextual echo, whether intentional or not, acts as a rebuttal to “The Schoolhouse of Women,” in which women are repeatedly denigrated. By placing the theatergram of a woman murdered because of false misogynistic accusations at the center of her tragedy, instead of using it as a sensational step in the debasing of a central male character as Shakespeare does in Othello, Cary brings the crisis of reputation and its relation to a woman’s worth to the forefront of the debate over the “nature of Woman.”138 When the theatergram is a specific figure, in this case, Cleopatra, the diverse portrayals reveal subjective intent. In the tragedies about Antony and Cleopatra, who inspired numerous plays by Renaissance male dramatists, as well as attracted the interest of the Countess of Pembroke, and Cary, a male and female character share the center, at least theoretically. Occasionally, the colorful figure of Cleopatra takes over the writer’s imagination, and Antony is relegated to a shadowy presence. In Estienne Jodelle’s Cléopâtre captive (1574), he is represented only by his shade. The centralization of Cleopatra is similarly achieved in Daniel’s The Tragedy of Cleopatra (1594), which also picks up the story after Antony’s death. Daniel’s play, a companion piece to Mary Sidney Herbert’s The Tragedy of Antonie (1592), her translation of Robert Garnier’s Marc Antoine (1578), draws Cleopatra to the center and continues the amelioration of her character begun in the countess’s work.139 Jodelle’s play, like Shakespeare’s, 138

Which play was written first and may have served as an influence on the other is debated. Weller and Ferguson suggest that “Although Mariam was published in 1613 . . . the play had evidently circulated for some years in manuscript: it might have been known to Shakespeare when he wrote Othello (1607) and was very likely known to the anonymous author of The Second Maiden’s Tragedy . . . ,” 5–6. 139 In Daniel’s dedication of the play to the Countess of Pembroke, he announces, “Loe here the worke the which she did impose, / Who onely doth predominate my Muse.” He also explains that he would have been content to keep writing of “Delia” but the Countess’s “well grac’d Anthony, / (who all alone having remained long,) / Requir’d his Cleopatras company.” See “To the Right Honourable, the Ladie Marie, Countesse of

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however, is more aligned with those who would classify her as an evil exemplum, or as a replica of Euripides’s so-called “proud woman,” who provokes pity up to a point, but ultimately inspires more dismay than sympathy. 140 Although Jodelle and Shakespeare capitalize on the passion and drama of her story, as it is outlined in Plutarch, they do little to ennoble her character. The antitypes thus created from this one female character illustrate the innumerable permutations in querelle arguments created by attackers and defenders of women as they appropriated exempla and shaped them to suit their own purposes. In Boccaccio's De Claris Mulieribus, the catalogue of exempla that Woodbridge calls the “most important single source of classical exempla used in the Formal Controversy between 1540 and 1620,” Cleopatra’s character is treated somewhat ambivalently, thus making her a popular figure in the rhetoric of both attackers and defenders in the debates.141 In Plutarch’s Lives, the most likely source for Jodelle’s and Shakespeare’s renditions of her character, she is portrayed mainly as an evil exemplum.142 Cary, too, styles Cleopatra in a negative light in the mentions of her in Mariam.143 However, in the closet dramas Marc Antoine, The Tragedy of Antonie, and The Tragedy of Cleopatra, Cleopatra is represented as a woman valorized by the choices she makes in extreme circumstances. “Die will I straight now, now straight will I die, / And straight with thee a wandering shade will be,” she cries out to Antony near the end of the Countess of Pembroke’s play (5.179–80). Weller and Ferguson write, “Following Garnier’s French closely, Mary Sidney brought to English readers a play dramatizing the noble pathos of Anthony’s and Cleopatra’s death scenes,” and they note that both Garnier and Sidney “demand our admiration for the eloquent Cleopatra as she laments her mistake, remains steadfast in her love for Antony, and finally resolves to commit suicide rather than become Caesar’s prisoner.”144 Mary Sidney Herbert’s and Garnier’s Cleopatra clearly chooses death before dishonor, but she redefines the boundaries of what constitutes honor for women. Instead of chastity, she re-visions it as constancy or loyalty, a shift in values that decentralizes the traditional arguments put forth by a writer such as Vives. Pembrooke,” in The Tragedy of Cleopatra, in Delia and Rosamund Augmented. Cleopatra (London: Simon Waterford, 1594), 1. 140 Stone, 76. 141 Woodbridge, 15. 142 Plutarch calls Antonius’s love for Cleopatra the “extreamest mischiefe of all” in which he was involved and notes that she “did waken and stirre up many vices yet hidden in him, and were never seene to any: and if any sparke of goodnesse or hope of rising were left him, Cleopatra quenched it straight, and made it worse then before” [“The Life of Marcus Antonius,” Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, trans. Sir Thomas North, 1579 (London: David Nutt, 1896; reprint, New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1967), 6: 24]. 143 See the conversation between Alexandra and Mariam in act one, scene two, especially lines 187–206. 144 Weller and Ferguson, 28.

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Daniel’s play also gives Cleopatra traits of an admirable exemplum. He illustrates her changed character in the speech where she confesses: Though life were bad, my death may yet be prais’d, That I may write in letters of my blood, A fit memoriall for the times to come: To be example to such Princes good That please themselves and care not what become. (1.1)145

By serving as a warning to “good” princes who mistakenly think they may live as they please, Cleopatra hopes her tragic end will redeem her “bad” life. By way of explanation to Caesar, she states, “I was by love, by feare, by weakness, made / An instrument to such disseignes as these” (2.2). Her defense of her actions—her pleas of moral weakness and fear—echoes the qualities traditional attackers of women despise, but her confessional manner suggests profound regret. Yet, in spite of her regret, she refuses to ask for mercy from Caesar; thus, like Cary’s Mariam, she seals her own doom. In a speech ringing with intertextual echoes from that of Sohemus in Mariam,146 Proculeius tells Caesar, “. . . I labour’d to advise her, / To come to Casar, and to sue for grace,” but she “Scornes yet to make an abject legue with Fate, / Or once descend into a servile thought” (2.1). He reports, “Words of command conjoyn’d with humble speech, / Shew’d shee would live, yet scorn’d to pray her foe” (2.1). As in Mariam’s case, Cleopatra’s pride is her downfall in Daniel’s play, yet this tragic flaw is ultimately rendered subordinate to each woman’s diverse virtues as both authors shape a character that they wish to be remembered and valued more for her strengths than her weaknesses—not unlike Shakespeare’s Othello. Weller and Ferguson note that the “actual references to Cleopatra in Cary’s play present her as a sensual ‘antitype’ to Mariam, and hence as a character apparently closer to Plutarch’s (and Shakespeare’s) dangerous Egyptian than to Daniel’s and Sidney’s noble queen.”147 Intertextually, however, Daniel’s and Cary’s main female characters share characteristics, similarities of circumstance, even the same tragic flaw, and they both may ultimately be viewed as positive, albeit complex, exempla.

145

The text of Samuel Daniel’s The Tragedie of Cleopatra (London, 1594) from which I quote is on a microcard and has no line numbers. 146 Regarding Mariam’s fate, Sohemus comments: Poor guiltless queen! Oh, that my wish might place A little temper now about thy heart: Unbridled speech is Mariam’s worst disgrace, And will endanger her without desert. (3.3.181–4) 147

Weller and Ferguson, 29–30.

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In Jodelle’s play, the character of Cléopâtre is at the center, but she is not as exalted or ameliorated as in Daniel’s rendering of her, nor is she viewed with as much sympathy by her enemies. In the second act, Octavien, Agrippe, and Proculée grieve the loss of Antoine, and Agrippe laments the “orgueil” [pride] that led to Antoine and Cléopâtre’s predicament, asserting that their “amours lascifs” 148 [lascivious loves] made them blind to the consequences that would befall them. Octavien blames “ceste Dame / Qui consuma Marc Antoine en sa flame” [this woman who consumed Mark Antony in her flame],149 and remarks that certain ruin lies in wait for a man who “s’effemine” [becomes effeminate].150 The chorus in Act Two sings of Cléopâtre’s vice, pride, and hubristic appropriation of “le nom d’Isis” [the name of Isis].151 Cléopâtre’s speeches frequently substantiate the others’ descriptions of her. In her exchanges with Octavien in Act Three, Cléopâtre is incensed. Lashing out at him, she cries: Hou! le dueil qui m’efforce Donne à mon coeur langoureux telle force, Que je pourrois, ce me semble, froisser Du poing tes os, et tes flancs crevasser A coups de pied. [Fie! the pain that drives me gives to my languorous heart such force, that I could, it seems to me, crumple your bones with my fist, and crack your flanks with my kicks.] 152

He responds, “O quel grinsant courage! Mais rien n’est plus furieux que la rage / D’un coeur de femme” [Oh what scathing courage! But nothing is more furious than the rage of a woman’s heart].153 Jodelle’s feisty, belligerent Cléopâtre has much in common with Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, who, while Antony is dying, cries, “. . . let me rail so high / That the false hussy Fortune break her wheel, / Provoked by my offence” (4.16.45–7). Jodelle’s characters’ comments on Antoine’s effeminacy and his ruin at Cléopâtre’s hands are also echoed in Shakespeare’s character Philo’s opening comments on Antony, as well as in the scene where Cleopatra describes their cross-dressing escapade. Philo scoffs: 148

Estienne Jodelle, Cléopâtre captive, Sous le signe de la chouette: Textes anciens et modernes (Paris: Librairie Garnier Frères, 1925), 50. 149 Jodelle, 52. 150 Jodelle, 54. 151 Jodelle, 61. 152 Jodelle, 76. 153 Jodelle, 76.

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Look where they come! Take but good note, and you shall see in him The triple pillar of the world transform’d Into a strumpet’s fool. (1.1.10–13)

What he does not know is that the strumpet’s fool also enjoys playing the strumpet. Cleopatra reminisces with Charmian about her good times with Antony, especially emphasizing her ability to manipulate his moods: I laugh’d him out of patience; and that night I laugh’d him into patience; and next morn, Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed; Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst I wore his sword Philippan. (2.5.19–23)

Jodelle’s and Shakespeare’s versions of Cleopatra little resemble those of Garnier, Mary Sidney Herbert, and Daniel. Their foul tempers, conniving wits, and licentious behavior are portrayed with more sensationalistic flair than redemptive pathos, in a manner reminiscent of Euripides’ Medea who, after slaying her children, triumphantly tells Jason, “So now you may call me a monster, if you wish, / Or Scylla housed in the caves of the Tuscan sea / I too, as I had to, have taken hold of your heart” (lines 1333–5),154 or Plutarch’s Cleopatra who would dress “in a chamber maides array” and go through the city streets at night with Antonius, who was disguised as a slave, engaging in numerous “foolishe sportes.”155 Ultimately, this collection of Cleopatras participates in a bewildering array of querelle debate positions, and matters are only complicated by the way in which Cary’s Mariam resembles Daniel’s Cleopatra. Although working with antitypes, Daniel and Cary produce defensible characters who mirror each other, as well as Mary Sidney Herbert’s and Garnier’s Cleopatras; thus, the trends of influence within the Sidney circle are powerfully represented, and the influence of the Countess of Pembroke herself seems to be paramount. In his play’s dedication to her, Daniel asserts that it is “Shee, whose cleere brightnes doth alone infuse / Strength to my thoughts, and makes mee what I am.”156 Although Michael Brennan and Mary Ellen Lamb have persuasively argued against the idea that the Countess of Pembroke intended to “instigate a dramatic ‘school’ of neo-Senecanism which aspired to rival the popular drama of

154 Euripides, Medea, trans. Rex Warner, The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, expanded edition, ed. Maynard Mack et al. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995), 1: 669–700. 155 Plutarch, 6.29. 156 Daniel, 1.

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Marlowe and Shakespeare,”157 the plays written by those associated with her private circle clearly engage in intertextual debate with the plays for public consumption examined here. Moreover, Frank Kermode notes that in 1607, “Daniel brought out a heavily revised version of his Cleopatra . . . and his alterations seem to owe something to Shakespeare’s play.” 158 The countess’s group’s blending of classical and Continental sources, with contemporary influences from the English stage, illustrates a sophisticated awareness of trends in dramatic literature with which these playwrights consciously engaged as they sought to valorize the female characters in their tragedies The countess’s methods of subverting traditions to legitimate her own writing, as well as the stances she takes in it, are explored by Lamb who reminds readers that “[n]o matter what connections the women of the Sidney family or circle forged between their work and that of Sir Philip Sidney, [they] were still women and therefore subject to the discourse of gender difference,” so “[a]s they created themselves as authors, they navigated the treacherous waters of their culture’s gender ideologies by vastly diverging routes.”159 She suggests that the Countess of Pembroke “purified her translations from the sexual stain supposedly tainting women’s writings by embedding her version of authorship within the art of dying,” noting that the art of dying well “was one of the few forms of heroism offered to women” and that the countess’s mother “was written up by Holinshed as making a good death.”160 Lamb also argues that Mary Sidney Herbert’s choice of heroines reveals authorial intent, contending that Garnier’s Cleopatra “performs the additional function of permitting an indirect expression of anger at patriarchal authority” because her “intended suicide proves not only her love of Anthony but also her defiance of Caesar.”161 Ultimately, Garnier, and hence the Countess of Pembroke and her protégés, present theatergrams of Cleopatra that are quasidefensible heroines, theatergrams that contrast with those created by Shakespeare and Jodelle. In doing so, they shift the virtues of constancy and repentance to the center of the theatergram, shaping the value of the life of the woman in question to reflect not death before dishonor in relation to loss of chastity, but death before dishonor in relation to constancy in love and personal dignity. The Sidney circle closet playwrights demonstrate their solidarity on querelle issues via their closet dramas in ways that illustrate their nontraditional approach to defenses of women. Wroth argues in Love’s Victory that men’s and women’s behaviors in wooing must be considered in relation to their circumstances and that the sentiments and desires of women are as worthy of expression as those of men. 157

See Michael G. Brennan, Literary Patronage in the English Renaissance: The Pembroke Family (London: Routledge, 1988), 78–82. 158 Kermode, 1343. 159 Lamb, 24. 160 Lamb, 24. 161 Lamb, 24.

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The neo-Senecan tragedies by Sidney circle writers posit that the virtues of constancy and repentance are as valuable as those of chastity and perfect piety. The group portrait resulting from this survey of Sidney circle closet dramas regarding women who woo and women as defensible characters in tragedies is one of writers who promote nontraditional views in contrast to the praise and blame dichotomy of traditional querelle rhetoric.

Chapter Six

Querelle Resonance and Literary Circle Ritual in English Romances1 Hermaphrodite in show, in deed a monster As by thy words and works all men may conster Thy wrathfull spite conceived an Idell book Brought forth a foole which like the damme doth look. . . . Edward Denny, “To Pamphilia from the father-in-law of Seralius”2 If a male soul, by transmigration, can Pass to a female, and her spirits man, Then sure some sparks of Sidney’s soul have flown Into your breast. . . . James Howell, “To Mistress A. W. Upon Her Additionals to Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia”3

The circulation of the Old Arcadia, which remained in manuscript until last century, alludes to its place in literary circle activities, as do the mentions of it in the dedicatory letter as a “trifle” produced in “loose sheets of paper” to be read at leisure by the Countess of Pembroke and a few friends.4 The New Arcadia illustrates the intersection of print and manuscript circulation as it simultaneously presents a revised version of the Old Arcadia, presumably thought more fit to

1

This chapter is adapted with permission from the publisher of my article, “‘Foolish Sport,’ ‘Delightful Games,’ and ‘Sweet Discourse’: Intertextuality and the Inscription of Literary Circle Ritual in Sidney’s Arcadia, Wroth’s Urania, and Weamys’s Continuation of the Arcadia,” Critical Approaches to English Prose Fiction, 1520–1640, ed. Donald Beecher, The Barnabe Riche Series 9 (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1998). 2 Denny’s poem is reproduced in Roberts’s introduction to The Poems, 32–3. An alternative title given to the poem that appears in some seventeenth-century commonplace books is “To the Lady Mary Wroth for writeing the Countes of Montgomeryes Urania,” 33. 3 Howell’s poem appears in the front matter of Anna Weamys’s Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, ed. Patrick Cullen, Women Writers in English 1350–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 10. 4 Sir Philip Sidney, Dedication, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia), 492. Alll references to The New Arcadia in this chapter are from Victor Skretkowicz’s edition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987).

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print,5 and offers it to a much broader circle of readers, some of whom incorporate it into their literary circle activities through reading and imitation. Two romances written in response to Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia are Lady Mary Wroth’s The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania (1621) and Anna Weamys’s Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (1651).6 Both reflect continuity with the Arcadia, as well as demonstrate the interests and pastimes of Wroth’s and Weamys’s own literary circles, illustrating something of the “continual literary flow” of literary circle members writing in response to the texts of others that Ezell describes in “Reading Pseudonyms in Seventeenth-Century English Coterie Literature.”7 In this case, however, the literary flow occurs not between group members, but across time, as Wroth appropriates her uncle’s practices of writing for, and alluding to, members of the Sidney circle, and as Weamys picks up Sidney’s storylines and weaves them into an ending for the Arcadia that especially reflects the concerns of her circle during the interregnum. An analysis of these three texts reveals not only the development of the literary flow from generation to generation, but also the impact of the literary circle as a cultural context in which querelle issues are of ongoing importance. In addition to the authors’ use of querelle rhetoric and motifs to appeal to their specific audiences, another dimension of the querelle also affects these works— that of the crisis of reputation for women writers. As the epigraphs suggest, Wroth and Weamys were received quite differently as published writers, even though each woman sought approval for breaching the threshold between manuscript and print by attaching her reputation and literary intentions to those of the legendary Sir Philip Sidney. Wroth, writing during the repressive Jacobean era a thinly veiled roman à clef that provided an all-too-realistic representation of relationships between men and women, was a target for vituperative rhetoric meant to destroy her reputation.8 Weamys, writing during the interregnum a direct continuation of Sidney’s romance, with the approval of leading male authority figures in her group, earned much praise and, evidently, little blame for her efforts. It no doubt helped that her allusions to querelle motifs mirrored the traditional ones authored by Sidney with no particularly offensive exceptions. The Querelle des femmes in all its facets, then—traditional attacks and defenses, along with nontraditional critiques of men and women—inspired the contents of these romances, as well as 5

Fulke Greville pronounced the incomplete revision “fitter to be printed” than the first version of the Arcadia [quoted in Victor Skretkowicz’s introduction to Sir Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia), xliii]. 6 The New Arcadia, first printed in 1590, which is Sidney’s incomplete revision of the Old Arcadia, is used in this study. Although Wroth knew both, Weamys responded to the New Arcadia and endeavored to create an ending for that work. Of course, she may have seen the 1593 edition of the New Arcadia to which the last two and a half books of the Old Arcadia were appended. See Cullen, xxxi. 7 Ezell, “Reading Pseudonyms,” 23. 8 Roberts, introduction to The Poems, 31–7.

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shaped their receptions. It seems appropriate to conclude this study with a look at these works, which, in addition to depicting an array of querelle positions and arguments, also resonate with classical and Continental precedents and refer to the tastes and experiences of two generations of the Sidney circle, as well as an interregnum group who identify strongly with the first generation of the Sidney circle. Like the interlocutors in the Heptameron who take turns telling stories about “the bad turns done by women to men, and by men to women,”9 or “the virtuous patience and long-suffering of women to win their husbands . . . ,”10 and the ladies and gentlemen of the court at Urbino who, “using various ways of concealment . . . revealed their thoughts in allegories to this person or that,”11 Sidney, Wroth, and Weamys spin stories that prolong the dialogic play of literary circles. All three romances provide elaborate demonstrations of arguments over debate topics typically posed at salon gatherings, such as those derived from the questioni d’amore, the Querelle des femmes, and, especially in Sidney’s and Weamys’s works, political questions regarding aristocratic and royalist ideals. This list of topics recalls that of Estienne Pasquier in his letter to Pierre Airault regarding his evening chez the duchesse de Retz in which he notes that those present at her salon discussed issues ranging from the political and religious turmoil—the “calamité de ce temps”—to individuals’ personal affairs, after which they moved on to “le discours de l’amour.”12 The issues covered in Sidney’s, Wroth’s, and Weamys’s romances bear witness to the topics of debate popular in their own circles. Additionally, in the romances we find depictions of characters whose talents and pastimes reflect those of the figures discussed in this study, women and men who write poetry, share their work, or attempt to conceal it from others, meet for story-telling and game-playing, and enjoy dancing and other musical and dramatic entertainments. Sidney’s shepherds frequently “meet together, to hear their rural muse,”13 and Weamys’s elder shepherd Claius and younger shepherd Strephon debate who can best love Urania—an older man or a younger one,14 echoing the questione d’amore from the Retz salon. A scene from The First Part of Wroth’s Urania provides a triptych of such references. At the end of Book One, a troupe of shepherds and shepherdesses, presented by the “King of Ciprus,” sing a poetic dialogue and debate reminiscent of “The First Eclogues” in Sidney’s Old

9

Marguerite de Navarre, The Heptameron, trans. Arthur Machen (New York: Knopf, 1924), 11. 10 Navarre, 209 11 Castiglione, 44. 12 Pasquier, “A Monsieur Airault, Lieutenant Criminel au Siege Presidial d’Angers,” Lettres Familières, 221–3. 13 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 24. 14 Weamys, 74–7.

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Arcadia.15 Here, Wroth synthesizes pastoral tradition and salon ritual, as well as the ways in which players co-opt them. First, a pair of lovers sings a dialogue about “true” or Neoplatonic love in which the shepherdess questions her lover’s faithfulness, and the shepherd swears that even after she dies, his love for her will live on because of her “Vertue, beauty, [and] faith.”16 Next, invoking the classic questione d’amore, “Love what art thou?” a shepherdess sings of Love’s fickleness, and we are told that “[t]his was much commended, and by the Ladies well like of, onely Amphilanthus seem’d to take Love’s part.”17 Amphilanthus, unfortunately, has difficulty loving only one woman, so the first song piques him. To please him, “a spruce Shepherd” sings a song with the refrain, “Who can blame me if I love?” 18 He intimates that Love’s power and influence should never be questioned. This musical staged debate over questioni d’amore, presented before an audience of nobles and royals who pass judgment on the songs and the quality of the performance, recalls salon ritual as depicted in the works of Speroni and Aragona; stage ritual, especially Andreini’s contrasti scenici; and the general practice of groups gathering to take part in such entertainments, as depicted in The Countess of Pembroke’s Ivychurch and “Le Sejour de Dyctinne et des Muses” or a gathering at the home of Sir Edward Deering where members of Wroth’s circle watch and take part in dramatic entertainments. Such is the comprehensive venue that romances provide for depictions of literary circle activities. When Sidney’s, Wroth’s, and Weamys’s romances are read in tandem, intertextual dialogues that relate to popular debates and literary circle ritual arise, revealing diverging lines of thought on such controversial topics as women’s speech and writing, men’s and women’s behavior in love, and, of course, politics. These dialogues may be construed as intertextual debates that mirror those popular in salon society throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A pronounced sense of the “continuum between texts and the textuality of behavior”19 becomes evident, allowing us to see very clearly the reciprocity between writing and participating in literary circle rituals.

Subject to debate: women and romances By writing their romances, Sidney, Wroth, and Weamys were participating in a literary genre that, as Dana Heller indicates, has been deemed “fundamental to our

15

See Sidney’s Old Arcadia, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones, Oxford World Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 50–79. 16 Wroth, The First Part of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, 172. 17 Wroth, The First Part, 173. 18 Wroth, The First Part, 172–4. 19 Geertz, 31.

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understanding of the historical conditions that gave rise to civilization.”20 Its traditional themes, motifs, and structures evolved from such sources as Homer’s and Virgil’s epics, the pastorals of Virgil and Theocritus, and the tales of such writers as Chrétien de Troyes, Luigi Pulci, Matteo Boiardo, Ludovico Ariosto, and Giovanni Boccaccio. The popularity of the genre in England is well illustrated by Louis B. Wright’s assertion that Romances . . . fell from the presses like leaves in autumn, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the great period of productivity, both for translation and original composition, was the last quarter of the sixteenth century, when enough chivalric stories were produced to supply printers with subject matter for the next generation.21

This surge in the production of romances in England coincides with the escalation of such published materials as pamphlets, conduct books, and treatises on education concerning the “formal controversy” over women.22 It is no surprise, then, to find in the dedications and intratextual overtures to women readers of romances many allusions to querelle stereotypes concerning their modesty, chastity, forbearance, and merciful natures, with the authors taking the stance that their audience is made up of women who are firmly aligned with the traditional positive exempla. In the stories themselves, both good and evil female exempla are displayed in cautionary tales often framed by moralistic commentary dictating how women should look and behave, as well as how they should respond to such stories. Donald Beecher points out that the “anatomization of women through such literary exempla was a passionate Tudor pastime, and any collection of stories, no matter how modified in the direction of history, could not escape evaluation in

20

Dana Heller, The Feminization of Quest-Romance: Radical Departures (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 1. 21 Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (1935; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958), 382. 22 See Woodbridge, 13–17. Woodbridge notes that “in the seminal years 1540–1542, five documents of the formal controversy were published, while the years 1615–1620 saw intense activity in both the formal controversy . . . and the transvestite controversy,” 7. Concerning the former, Woodbridge especially refers to Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Defence of Good Women (1540), Edward Gosynhill’s The School House of Women (ca. 1541), Robert Vaughan’s A Dyalogue Defensyve for Women . . . (1542), Gosynhill’s Mulierum Paean (ca. 1542), Joseph Swetnam’s Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Women (1615), and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim’s De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus, called A Treatise of the Nobilitie and Excellence of Woman Kynde in David Clapham’s 1542 translation. For a bibliography that includes several commentaries on conduct and treatises on education, see Elaine Hobby’s A Virtue of Necessity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), 245–50.

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these terms.”23 This notion clearly holds true regarding the romance and underscores the importance of considering both its largely female audience and the responses of female authors and literary circle members to issues emanating from the querelle. Because the romance genre, with its history of association with female audiences, becomes especially directed toward women readers during this period when the focus of these later romances is more on courtship and love than on chivalric adventure,24 critics have paid more attention to women as readers of romance rather than as writers of these works, mainly because few by women were widely known during this period.25 Roberta Krueger and Caroline Lucas study women as readers of Medieval and Renaissance romances, each examining what Krueger calls the “complex mechanisms” by which romances “invite the female reader’s complicity with, or criticism of, these simultaneously romantic, seductive, and misogynist fictions.”26 Lucas suggests that the romances are “primarily about women and for women—but they are written by men, so that women’s relationship to language is often at best oblique, most apparent in gaps and silences . . . .”27 Yet, in England, Wroth’s Urania and Weamys’s Continuation provide intriguing glimpses of women’s complicity with or subversion of traditional romance storylines. Readers, today, however, who hope to identify protofeminist voices that cleverly debate Renaissance sexism in the women’s romances will be somewhat disappointed. Such voices exist, but they do so along with those that support tradition. Wroth’s character Antissia, for example, “pursues her passion in violation of all the codes for courtly female conduct, especially secrecy, passivity, [and] selfcontrol,” and her “determination to have Amphilanthus punished for his inconstancy stands in marked contrast to Pamphilia’s forgiveness and

23

Donald Beecher, introduction to Barnabe Riche: His Farewell to Military Profession, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 91; Publications of the Barnabe Riche Society 1 (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992), 67. 24 Caroline Lucas, Writing for Women: The Example of Woman as Reader in Elizabethan Romance, Gender in Writing (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1989), 4–6. 25 Other romances by female authors which are beginning to receive critical attention are Il Meschino, altramente detto Il Guerrino (1560) by Tullia d’Aragona, which she most likely wrote in imitation of Bernardo Tasso’s Amadis, and the Urania by Giulia Bigolina, which was written in the 1550’s and has remained in manuscript form until the recent editions edited and translated by Valeria Finucci (Roma: Bulzoni, 2002; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004) and Christopher Nissen (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2004). 26 Roberta Krueger, Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 14. 27 Lucas, 4.

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resignation,”28 according to Josephine Roberts. Yet, neither the protofeminist Antissia nor the more traditionally behaved Pamphilia conclusively wins the man. Moreover, the man in question continues this course of behavior throughout both parts of the romance. The emphasis on Amphilanthus’s and the other male characters’ fickleness in the Urania constitutes a defense of women in that it refutes the traditional position taken by poets from Wyatt to Donne that women are the inconstant ones, yet Wroth does not depict ideal relationships between men and women. Carolyn Ruth Swift points out that while Wroth defends women, she also represents women who are “as trapped and bewildered” as she is.29 Patrick Cullen argues that “Weamys uses the chaste heroine to problematize the romance form’s own ideology of desire,” and that her character Urania “is the result, admittedly incomplete, of a woman writer’s effort to create within a romance a heroine who transcends romance.”30 Ultimately, however, neither Wroth nor Weamys offers clear solutions to what Swift calls the “feminine consciousness in conflict with societal values.”31 Swift’s and Cullen’s analyses provide interesting critical windows through which to view contemporary feminist concerns in their Renaissance manifestations;32 however, equally interesting and more valuable for this study are the ways in which these romance writers address the critical issues of their own centuries—the issues with which their respective literary circles were most concerned. For example, how do Wroth and Weamys incorporate issues from the querelle into their works? And how might their literary circle connections influence their views on various debate topics? Above all, how do their texts react intertextually with those that they were probably not trying to “transcend” but to which they wished to respond, as they reciprocated, albeit in print, in the literary

28

Roberts, introduction to The First Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania,

lxii. 29

Carolyn Ruth Swift, “Feminine Identity in Lady Mary Wroth’s Romance Urania,” reprinted in Women in the Renaissance: Selections from English Literary Renaissance, ed. Kirby Farrell, Elizabeth Hageman, and Arthur F. Kinney (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 171. 30 Cullen, introduction to A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, by Anna Weamys, Women Writers in English 1350–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), lii. 31 Swift, 174. 32 Swift’s and Cullen’s assessments of how Wroth and Weamys negotiate the social currents and constraints concerning women’s writing during this period recall Elaine Hobby’s identification of ways that women made of their writing “a virtue of necessity,” 9. They also reflect the various means of subversion and adaptation of literary traditions that are described in Ann Rosalind Jones’s assessments of the different levels of radicalization in Renaissance women poets’ imitation, negotiation, and appropriation of traditional forms in The Currency of Eros, 1–10.

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circle rituals of debate and story-telling? A study of their works in dialogue with Sidney’s suggests some grounds for consideration of these questions.

Romances in dialogue Writing for his sister, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, Sidney indicates that his romance is to be read, at least initially, by her and a coterie of intimate friends.33 Perhaps with that particular audience in mind, Sidney includes descriptions of salon or literary circle activities throughout the Arcadia. Scenes in which poetry is written, sung, and read especially permeate the romance. Near the beginning, Kalander tells Musidorus, disguised as Palladius, how artful and poetic the shepherds of that region are, noting how delightful it is when “two or three of them meet together, to hear their rural muse.”34 He describes how prettily it will deliver out sometimes joys, sometimes lamentations, sometimes challengings one of the other, sometimes under hidden forms uttering such matters as otherwise they durst not deal with. Then have they most commonly one who judgeth the prize to the best doer—of which they are no less glad than great princes are of triumphs—and his part is to set down in writing all that is said, save that it may be his pen with more leisure doth polish the rudeness of an unthought-on song. 35

These poetry contests, displays of wit when discussing the “matters as otherwise they durst not deal with,” and the polishing of poetry by a chosen judge recall literary circle ritual as well as pastoral conventions. This episode, early in the romance, sets the scene for more to follow, such as that when Musidorus, disguised as Dorus the shepherd, entertains Pamela and Mopsa with a love song he has written36 or the gathering of ladies in Zelmane’s “little arbour” at which Pamela plays her lute, then Zelmane reads Basilius’s dialogue, “The Complaint of Plangus.”37 This particular scene provides insights into Sidney’s use of salon circle ritual and his stance as a traditional defender of women. This “exercise of my father’s writing,” as Philoclea calls Basilius’s dialogue, provides the impetus for an ensuing game of story-telling that harkens both to literary tradition—the story-tellers of the Decameron, Heptameron, or Courtier— and literary circle ritual which mimics such literary devices. In this case, Philoclea elaborates upon the context of the dialogue for Zelmane, which happens to involve 33

In his introduction to The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia), Victor Skretkowicz surveys the early reception and influence of the Arcadia, showing its impact on many diverse writers and their works, xliii–lii. 34 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 24. 35 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 24. 36 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 129–30. 37 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 198.

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recounting “the wonderful valour” of the princes Pyrocles (disguised as Zelmane, the Amazon) and Musidorus (disguised as Dorus, the shepherd).38 She then attempts to pass the role of story-teller off to her sister, protesting modestly, “for I have held the stage long enough,”39 but she is interrupted by the servant Miso who insists that she will speak next and that the other ladies present will have to “draw cuts” to see who will speak after her.40 Her story is a cautionary tale about the nature of love, illustrated with a poem by “a great learned clerk,” given to a “wise old man,” given to Miso by “a good old woman,” in which Cupid is pronounced, not a god, but “an old false knave.”41 The gist of her tale so offends Zelmane (a rather false knave her/himself at this point in the romance) that she/he interrupts Mopsa and insists that Pamela get on with her part of the story of Plangus. Pamela, a paragon of traditional Renaissance virtue for women, gently answers her/him, “since I am born a prince’s daughter, let me not give example of disobedience,” and she insists that, as her “governess” has instructed, they should “draw cuts.”42 Mopsa, the daughter of Miso, draws the short straw and begins an awkwardly told tale of a knight, who, if asked his name would “presently vanish away.”43 She, however, is interrupted by Philoclea who bribes her to cease talking by asking her to “keep this tale till my marriage-day” and offering Mopsa her “best gown” if she will do so.44 Pamela then at last picks up the thread of Plangus’s story.45 This gathering at which there is musical entertainment, followed by the reading of a dialogue, which then inspires a lengthy session of story-telling, organized according to drawn “cuts,” is clearly inspired by salon or literary circle ritual, in addition to pastoral tradition. On the surface, this episode seems deceptively protofeminist in that the female characters are allowed space to express themselves, even though issues of class intervene as the servant, Miso, and her daughter, Mopsa, are silenced by the young royals.46 It is important to remember, however, that Zelmane is indeed Pyrocles in disguise and that he remains essentially in control of the group. To have a male figure masquerading as a salon hostess may be seen as a sign of the power associated with such a position. In this case, Sidney has a wiley male figure usurp the power of that position in order to 38 39

Sidney, The New Arcadia, 198–209. Lamb notes that in the New Arcadia, women “are not allowed to talk for very

long,” 94. 40

Sidney, The New Arcadia, 210. Sidney, The New Arcadia, 210–13. 42 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 213. 43 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 214. 44 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 214. 45 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 215. 46 Lamb writes, “While male protagonists freely narrate their experiences to female auditors, women are generally permitted to narrate their experiences only to other women. Even then, their stories, especially to lower-class women, are notably brief and subject to sudden interruption,” 73. 41

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infiltrate a female coterie so that he may manipulate the women’s story-telling. Lamb points out that in Sidney’s work, “Ladies do not tell stories to men,” but, rather, they tell stories to other women; thus, Pyrocles has a better chance as Zelmane to have access to the usually guarded speech of his beloved, Philoclea.47 Lamb also reminds us that during this period the sensuousness of women’s speech is considered “so overwhelming that it requires guarding, for the power of its verbal/sexual expression is implied by its very containment.48 Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane, who acts with the authority of a salon hostess, uses the power of that position to make his beloved speak freely, and, thus, presumably, sensuously, to him, extolling his own virtues before him in a manner that gives him great voyeuristic delight.49 Regarding women’s speech, sexuality, and querelle issues in Sidney’s romance, Lamb concludes, “Despite its sympathy for women, the New Arcadia conveys a strong sense of the danger of women’s speech through positive and negative exampla [sic].”50 These aspects of Sidney’s approaches to women’s speech are indicative of his stance as a traditional defender of women who strongly equates women’s words with their sexuality. While Sidney includes many references to dangers associated with the sexuality of women’s speech, such as the “wicked wit” of Andromana, who seeks “with words nearer admiration than liking” to seduce Plangus, or Cecropia’s evil henchwomen, who, disguised as shepherdesses, tempt the princesses with sensual viands and eclogues, only to have them kidnapped,51 he nevertheless makes frequent use of the princesses’ speech with its inherent sensuality to please the princes and further their aims, as well as their fame. The scene in which Pyrocles/Zelmane has his way conversationally with Philoclea provides a case in point. Sidney blends the perceived rightness of the princesses’ passions for the princes with their opportunities to speak and the alleged sexuality of such acts. A corresponding example may be seen when Pyrocles, having revealed his true identity, begs Philoclea to resume telling him the story of Erona, but she manages to utter only a few words before he finds that he cannot stop kissing her; thus, he simultaneously succumbs to the sensuality of her speech and effectively silences her.52 No longer in doubt of her love and affection, he no longer needs to hear her story for sexual gratification or for clues as to how she feels about him; he can simply embrace her. Aim achieved. Most notably, Sidney uses the speech of the princesses to create opportunities for extolling the virtues of 47

Lamb, 90, 93. Lamb, 91. 49 Tellingly, Pyrocles fixates on Philoclea’s mouth as she speaks: “‘Oh, sweet words!’ thought Zelmane to herself, ‘which are not only a praise to me, but a praise to praise itself, which out of that mouth issueth!” (The New Arcadia, 206). 50 Lamb, 90. 51 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 217–18, 314–17. See also Lamb, 90–93. 52 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 276–7. 48

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the princes,53 as Philoclea’s story-telling serves to do in the context of Zelmane’s gathering. In keeping with the tradition illustrated by Castiglione in the Courtier, Pietro Bembo in the Asolani, and Tyard in Solitaire premier, Sidney frequently uses his female characters as interlocutors whose questions and interjections prompt the story-telling in a manner that allows the brilliance and bravery of the male characters to be showcased—a trick that in some ways reflects Sidney’s explanation of his own decision to write. As he puts it in his dedication to his sister: “But you desired me to do it, and your desire is an absolute commandment.”54 Just as Mary Sidney Herbert’s request for a romance permits Sidney to show off his literary talent and air his views on right rule as he spins tales that that in some cases thinly veil events in the lives of members of the Sidney circle, Pamela’s inquiries into the shepherd Dorus’s past and his knowledge of the story of Plangus allow Musidorus, to discourse freely of Pyrocles’s and his own dashing exploits. Pamela says coyly: But I pray you, Dorus, . . . tell me, since I perceive you are well-acquainted with that story, what prince was that Euarchus, father to Pyrocles, of whom so much fame goes for his rightly royal virtues, or by what ways he got that opinion. And then so descend to the causes of his sending, first away from him, and then to him, for that excellent son of his, with the discourse of his life and loss. And therein you may, if you list, say something of that same Musidorus, his cousin, because they going together, the story of Pyrocles (which I only desire) may be the better understood. 55

53

When Pamela discloses to Philoclea that she knows Dorus’s identity, she describes at length his skill at horsemanship, including the image, “as if centaur-like he had been one piece with the horse . . .” (The New Arcadia, 153). She also praises his dancing and acting skills. “One time, he danced the matachin dance in armour (Oh, with what a graceful dexterity!),” she cries, and of his acting she notes, “Another time, he persuaded his master, to make my time seem shorter, in manner of a dialogue to play Priamus while he played Paris. Think, sweet Philoclea, what a Priamus we had! But truly, my Paris was a Paris—and more than a Paris! who, while in a savage apparel, with naked neck, arms, and legs he made love to Oenone, you might well see by his changed countenance—and true tears—that he felt the part he played” (The New Arcadia, 154–5). 54 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 492. 55 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 158. See also 133–8 where Pamela encourages Dorus to discourse of Musidorus—that is to say, of himself and his journey with Pyrocles that began these adventures. Pamela says, “But I pray you, Dorus, . . . tell me, since I perceive you are well-acquainted with that story, what prince was that Euarchus, father to Pyrocles, of whom so much fame goes for his rightly royal virtues, or by what ways he got that opinion. And then so descend to the causes of his sending, first away from him, and then to him, for that excellent son of his, with the discourse of his life and loss. And therein you may, if you list, say something of that same Musidorus, his cousin, because they going together, the story of Pyrocles (which I only desire) may be the better understood.”

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Even though Pamela claims to desire mainly to hear of Pyrocles,56 she pretends to be grudgingly willing to hear about Musidorus, too; thus, Dorus has the chance for which he has longed to tell her more of himself. The situation is similarly constructed, but reversed, in the scene discussed above in which Philoclea, prompted by Zelmane, tells such stories. After revealing that he is indeed Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane, however, the “natural order,” according to Sidney, rights itself: men tell stories to women, and Philoclea entreats Pyrocles to tell her more of the story of Plangus, saying: But what since in the course of your doings, until you came after so many victories to make a conquest of poor me, that I know not, the fame therof having rather showed it by pieces than delivered any full form of it. Therefore, dear Pyrocles . . . be liberal unto me of those things which have made you indeed precious to the world . . . .57

In each case, including Sidney’s own, if we consider his sister’s prompting, the women’s discourse is used as a conduit or directive for male-centered narratives, a ploy that serves his purpose in story-telling and underscores his traditional views on women’s speech. In his narratives featuring the dashing young princes, Sidney illustrates his engagement with popular debate issues ranging from topics concerning the nature of women and the education of the ideal prince to political and monarchical concerns. Like Castiglione’s characters who describe the education of an ideal courtier, Sidney has Dorus describe the education of ideal princes as he outlines the upbringing of Musidorus and Pyrocles. In vivid detail he describes the perfecting of their bodies and souls, stressing that: in sum, all bent to the making up of princely minds, no servile fear used towards them, nor any other violent restraint, but still as to princes so that a habit of commanding was naturalized in them . . . nature having . . . made them lords of truth, whereon all other goods were builded.58

In contrast to the lengthy description of the princes’ training, however, Sidney writes little of Philoclea and Pamela’s education. When Kalender tells the story of King Basilius to Musidorus, he includes descriptions of the women’s physical beauty and personal “excellencies,” which are those typically allotted to ideal Petrarchan beloveds. Echoing traditional defenders of women in the formal controversy, Kalender describes these two as positive exempla who are

56 By this time, she suspects that Dorus is more than a simple shepherd since he has given her “a jewel made in the figure of a crabfish” to give to Mopsa, with the words “By force, not choice,” The New Arcadia, 139–40. 57 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 233. 58 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 70.

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so beyond measure excellent in all gifts allotted to reasonable creatures that we may think they were born to show that nature is no stepmother to that sex, how much soever some men (sharp-witted only in evil speaking) have sought to disgrace them.59

His defense would take to task a writer such as the author of The Schoolhouse of Women, while his praise of the female sex echoes that of the male Petrarchists whose poems are dedicated to their beloveds’ physical and spiritual beauty. Both of these aspects allude to Sidney’s position as a traditional defender of women. If the portraits of the young princes in Sidney’s romance are built upon narratives about their dashing exploits, evoking movement and volatile passions, the portraits of the princesses are built upon narratives of visual objectification that evoke passivity and Petrarchan and Neoplatonic standards of beauty and goodness. The princesses themselves, and the other women in the Arcadia, are described and judged according to their appearances,60 as exemplified in Zelmane/Pyrocles’s blason that describes Philoclea literally from head to toe.61 While Pamela and Philoclea, with their blond locks and fair visages, signify ideal Renaissance beloveds, their primary foils, the aging women Gynecia, with her jealous, adulterous passion for Zelmane, and Cecropia, the scheming aunt who would have her son on the throne, display stereotypical traits of evil exempla. Moreover, Miso, of whom it is said that “her face and her splay-foot have made her accused for a witch,”62 and Mopsa, her daughter who is ridiculed by Kalender in an anti-blason on her lack of beauty and her loutish behavior,63 further illustrate the judgment of women’s personalities by their appearances in which Sidney engages throughout the romance. Nowhere is this device more obviously used than in the examples of ekphrasis regarding portraits of women that Sidney incorporates. Ekphrasis, a detailed description, usually of a piece of art, that “conjures an image in the mind of the reader” and “expresses the poet-reader-viewer’s reaction to actual or imagined works of art,”64 first appears in the beginning of the romance, when Musidorus, masquerading as Palladius,65 is shown through a gallery of

59

Sidney, The New Arcadia, 17. In “Wife and Widow in Arcadia: Re-Envisioning the Ideal,” College Literature 29.2 (2002), Stephanie Chamberlain also comments on the ways in which Sidney uses women’s physicality to symbolize their moral makeup, 81–3. 61 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 190–95. 62 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 18. 63 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 18. 64 This definition is a blend of definitions of ekphrasis compiled by Amy Golahny in her introduction, “Ekphrasis in the Interarts Discourse,” to The Eye of the Poet: Studies in the Reciprocity of the Visual and Literary Arts from the Renaissance to the Present (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1996), 12–13. 65 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 12. 60

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Kalander’s paintings, “delightful pictures made by the most excellent workman of Greece.”66 There, he sees Diana, when Actaeon saw her bathing, in whose cheeks the painter had set such a colour as was mixed between shame and disdain, and one of her foolish nymphs, who weeping and withal louring, one might see the workman meant to set forth tears of anger. In another table was Atalanta, the posture of whose limbs was so lively expressed that (if the eyes were the only judges as they be the only seers) one would have sworn the very picture had run; besides many mo, as of Helena, Omphale, Iole. But in none of them all beauty seemed to speak so much as in a large table which contained a comely old man with a lady of middle age—but of excellent beauty—and more excellent would have been deemed but that there stood between them a young maid whose wonderfulness took away all beauty from her, but that which it might seem she gave her back again by her very shadow. And such difference (being known that it did indeed counterfeit a person living) was there between her and all the other, though goddesses, that it seemed the skill of the painter bestowed on the other new beauty, but that the beauty of her bestowed new skill of the painter.67

We are told, of course, that the couple represents Basilius and Gynecia—whose “excellent beauty” is overshadowed by that of Philoclea, a detail that foreshadows her moral demise. We are also told that Pamela is left out of the family portrait because “the rude clown her guardian would not suffer it” and that the painter would not take the matter up with Basilius for “fear of suspicion.”68 In his descriptions of these paintings, Sidney sets the scene for various episodes to follow, as if making use of the theatrical conceit, the “dumb show,” as Shakespeare does in Hamlet (3.2), but using paintings instead of mime. Amphialus, like Actaeon, will crash a bathing party, 69 Gynecia’s goodness will rapidly degenerate as she grows jealous of her daughter’s beauty and infatuated with her daughter’s lover,70 and Palladius/Musidorus’s inquiries into the family portrait will prompt Kallender to provide the exposition for the romance as a whole.71 That these “delightful pictures” are predominantly of women—goddesses from classical antiquity who surround a Renaissance paragon of beauty and goodness of Sidney’s own invention—underscores Sidney’s Neoplatonic ideology. The trend continues in Sidney’s use of ekphrasis in a passage devoted to the staging of a tournament in which the knights defend ladies who are represented by

66

Sidney, The New Arcadia, 15. Sidney, The New Arcadia, 15. 68 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 15. 69 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 195–8. 70 By the beginning of Book Two, Gynecia is so besotted with Pyrocles disguised as Zelmane that she is no longer sleeping, but pacing back and forth, raving about “her wretched estate” and calling herself “a dust-creeping worm” (The New Arcadia, 119). 71 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 16–23. 67

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their portraits.72 Here, Sidney’s illustration of the connections between love, beauty, and goodness recall Pietro Bembo’s discourse on the Neoplatonic ladder of love in Book Four of the Courtier. “The ugly are therefore for the most part wicked, too, and the beautiful are good,” Bembo explains, “and we may say that beauty is the pleasant, gay, acceptable and desirable face of good, and that ugliness is the dark, disagreeable, unpleasant and sad face of evil.”73 Judgments of the women in the tournament portraits are based on their appearances, which are arranged to represent the progression of love from earthy attractions, such as those of Andromana and Artaxia, to heavenly attributes, such as those of the princess Zelmane, who is not only exceedingly beautiful, but dead and therefore wholly of spirit, beyond earthly concerns. One important but ultimately resolved variation on this theme arises in Sidney’s engagement with women’s beauty and character. Parthenia, thought to represent Mary Dudley Sidney, is disfigured when “the wicked Demagoras” rubs “all over her face a most horrible poison”74; however, unlike Sidney’s mother who contracted smallpox while caring for Queen Elizabeth during her illness with that disease, Parthenia is miraculously cured by a physician sent by Queen Helen of Corinth, and her beauty is completely restored.75 Sidney’s insistence on upholding literary and philosophical traditions regarding women’s goodness and beauty, as well as the need to limit and control their speech, both underscores his position as a traditional defender of women and his assessment of his initial audience, who, as Duncan-Jones indicates, was “predominantly female.”76 Lamb posits, “Both versions of Sidney’s Arcadia may well have been intended and sometimes perceived in part as an apology for women,”77 an observation that reinforces Duncan-Jones’ argument that the excellence of Sidney’s heroines “typifies general excellence in women.”78 The less-than-excellent others, Gynecia, Cecropia, et al., then, serve as warnings for the women of his audience. Especially the portrayal of Gynecia, an aging queen with wayward passions, seems to serve as an oblique warning to Queen Elizabeth whose infatuations with her favorites were viewed as dangerous by many, as was her apparent desire for the duc d’Alençon.79 Models of goodness for women in the 72

Sidney, The New Arcadia, 94–104. Castiglione, 291. 74 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 30. 75 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 45. 76 Katherine Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 182. 77 Lamb, 83. 78 Duncan-Jones, 182. 79 In “Sidney’s Arcadias and Elizabethan Courtierships,” Gibson notes, “Most scholars suggest as a backdrop for Sidney’s work the acrimonious row over the ‘French match’ between Queen Elizabeth and the duke of Alençon which split the English court in the late 1570s and early 1580s,” 36. Duncan-Jones suggests that although the Arcadia is not a roman à clef, there are clearly resonances between characters and events in the story and 73

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New Arcadia are especially reflected in the heroines’ willingness to die rather than forsake their lovers, Pyrocles and Musidorus, whom they love with a constant passion. Lamb writes that the “heroism of the constant woman lover” is exemplified in the “self-sacrificing love of Philoclea and Pamela for their princes [which] casts a romantic glow over the otherwise severe demeanor of the religious martyr,” a traditional model of heroism for women.80 In this case, the “selfsacrificing love” of the princesses stands as a logical counterpart to the Petrarchan zeal of the young princes, who are willing to die for the love of their ladies.81 Concerning debates over issues from the Querelle des femmes, Sidney clearly sides with the traditional defenders of women and takes stances that reflect conventional Ficinian, Neoplatonic thought. Wroth, as we will see, echoes his emphasis on female constancy, but shapes it to reflect the experiences of her own audience, and, in the process, she gives her female interlocutors far more material—and time—for story-telling. Although in the Urania Wroth takes issue with Sidney regarding his traditional defenses and portrayals of women, and his use of their discourse mainly to showcase the ways in which men are “precious to the world,”82 she seeks to profit from her familial association with him. The Urania, like the Arcadia, is full of literary circle allusions; in this case, some of them connect Wroth’s circle and generation with those of her uncle. On her title page, Wroth boldly inscribes her name along with those of Sidney and her aunt, the Countess of Pembroke, clearly identifying herself with the Sidney circle. She also includes characters believed to shadow her uncle and aunt. Roberts points out that Mary Sidney Herbert is represented “most prominently” by the Queen of Naples but that she “also appears briefly as the mother of Laurimello” and “as Clorina.”83 Of Philip Sidney, she writes, “At least three characters . . . appear to be based on [him],” “the shepherd Sildurino,” the shepherd-poet “Belario,” and “the King of Pamphilia,” the uncle of the romance’s heroine.84 Furthermore, some of Wroth’s characters have names that recall the pastoral pseudonyms used by the coterie writers with whom she was closely associated. The most notable, of course, are Pamphilia and Amphilanthus,

Sidney’s “own situation.” She especially sees resonance between Basilius’ behaviors, rule, and the fears his subjects have about them and those of Elizabeth, and she suggests that Gynecia’s foibles are simply those of the “evergreen comic figure, the Phaedra, or incestuously lustful middle-aged woman,” 177–80. 80 Lamb, 101. 81 Pyrocles protests to Musidorus that his love’s end “ends not, no sooner than the life,” The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia, 75), and, upon falling in love with Pamela, Musidorus tells Pyrocles that his “only shield” against Venus’s onslaught “must be [his] sepulchre,” 107–108. 82 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 233. 83 Roberts, introduction to The First Part, lxxxiv. 84 Roberts, introduction to The First Part, xcv–xcvi.

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thought to represent Wroth and her cousin and lover William Herbert, the third earl of Pembroke. Regarding specific connections between coterie identities and the romance, it is important to recall that Wroth signed the first group of poems in the Folger manuscript “Pamphilia.” Moreover, in Sonnet 48 to Amphilanthus, she puns on the name “Will.”85 Additionally, in the Urania, Wroth specifically explains that Pamphilia and Amphilanthus are cousins and that both write poetry. In fact, Pamphilia states that she herself is “excellent in writing” and that Amphilanthus writes “such excelling [verses] as none could any more imitate or match them.”86 Another family and coterie relationship is shadowed in the full title of Wroth’s work, The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania. Wroth dedicates her romance to Susan de Vere Herbert, the Countess of Montgomery, the wife of William’s brother, Philip Herbert, and an intimate member of Wroth’s own circle of female friends and relatives.87 Although Susan de Vere Herbert may not have asked that Wroth write a romance for her, as Mary Sidney Herbert purportedly requested of Sidney, Roberts detects a reference to Vere Herbert’s life in the opening storyline, namely in Urania’s quest for her identity and her desire to discover her true parentage. Roberts points out that Susan de Vere Herbert grew up in the shadow of a false rumor that her mother had been unfaithful to her father.88 Rather as Sidney creates a fictional cure for his mother’s disfigurement in the story of Parthenia, Wroth provides unquestionable royal parentage for Urania to reflect the truth about Susan de Vere Herbert’s paternity. Also like Sidney, who depicts characters participating in literary circle ritual, Wroth shows men and women taking part in such activities as composing poetry, playing games, and telling stories. Moreover, she makes use of ekphrasis in a way similar to that in the Arcadia in Book Two of the Urania where “justs” are held for which “no man must come into the Field to Just, without his Ladies Portraiture.”89 Instead of focusing extensively on the women’s reputations via their appearances, however, Wroth emphasizes the worth of the ladies according to their “fame,” with the greatest being Pamphilia, Urania, Selarina, and Limena, ladies known for their constancy. Another deviation is that while Sidney’s female characters, like Castiglione’s, mainly direct the flow of dialogue or they engage in story-telling to exalt the characters and exploits of the main male characters in the romance, Wroth’s female characters, more like those of Marguerite de Navarre in the Heptameron or Tullia d’Aragona’s self-portrayal in the Dialogo della infinità di 85

Wroth, The Poems, 42. Wroth, The First Part, 62, 136. 87 Susan de Vere Herbert was the daughter of Philip Sidney’s rival, Edward de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, and Anne Cecil, one of the learned daughters of William, Lord Burghley (Roberts, introduction to The First Part, lxxvi). 88 Roberts, introduction to The First Part, lxxvi. 89 Wroth, The First Part, 238. 86

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amore, participate in story-telling and debate to express their own feelings and beliefs, as well as to expose the foibles of the men of their acquaintance. Despite the similarities between the Arcadia and the Urania, Wroth’s stance as a nontraditional defender of women quickly becomes apparent. In Wroth’s romance, ladies do tell stories to men. The “dainty Maide” whom Amphilanthus and Ollorandus encounter fishing is heard first discoursing with herself: they discover her making “neate comparisons, betweene her betraying the poore silly fish, and her owne being betrayed by the craft of love, which some times she commended; and yet againe would condemne.”90 After she sings a song, apparently of her own composition, the two approach her, “desiring to discourse with her,” and she, “curteous and excellently witty, gave them entertainment . . . ,”91 as any salon hostess or polished lady of the court would do. (At one point she describes her manners as follows: “my fashion being free, and such as having still been bred in Court, I carryed with me . . . .”92) Eventually, she and Amphilanthus agree to trade stories. He tells her “the whole story of his affection,” but he does not actually recount the tale in the text. She, however, recounts at length the story of her suitors, her love for her cousin Laurimello, and how she currently lives in harmony with her husband but enjoys “Oft times” the company of her cousin, “the sweete enjoyer of her free given joyes.”93 Such a tale of relationships that resemble a menage à trois, told by a woman who Wroth explains is “of the best sort of women”94 is greatly at odds with those told by women in Sidney’s work. First, the woman is ostensibly an equal with the men in terms of story-telling, yet Wroth allows her to usurp the story-telling by only alluding to Aphilanthus’s tale while having the “Maide” tell hers in its entirety. Wroth thus subverts the traditional power structure as seen in the Arcadia in which men tell stories to women, but women mainly tell stories to other women, and women’s stories are often cut short. Second, even though she protests that her husband lives “secure in her chastity” and that she will always “rule [her] affection by vertue,”95 the reality of the situation is fraught with sexual tension as her preference for her cousin over her husband is made clear, a situation with which Wroth herself dealt while torn between the affections of her husband Robert Wroth, and those of her cousin, William Herbert. Third, the lady’s acknowledgment that “rebellious passions have ever tormented [her]”96 underscores Wroth’s engagement with the depiction of wayward passions, not in the stereotypical aged women of whom her uncle writes, but in the “best sort of 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

Wroth, The First Part, 288. Wroth, The First Part, 288–9. Wroth, The First Part, 295. Wroth, The First Part, 291–5. Wroth, The First Part, 289. Wroth, The First Part, 295. Wroth, The First Part, 291.

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women,” a realistic illustration of women’s sexuality and desire that has little place in the carefully directed and controlled sexuality of Philoclea and Pamela. In another instance, a lady of honor to Emilina, the Princess of Stiria, tells Amphilanthus the story of the false Amphilanthus, detailing his inconstant nature and infidelity which lead the princess to lose “her beauty with sorrow, with weeping whole nights and sobbing.” Seeing the change wrought in her, the false Amphilanthus has the gall to tell her “she [is] growne old, and her beauty alter’d.” He says that if she will recover her beauty, when he returns from his journey, “he [will] be as he was.”97 He is, of course, an unreformed philanderer. When he takes his leave of Emilina, we are told, “he went as neere her heart, as marrow to the bones, yet staid he afterwards with the other wench som certaine daies.”98 The false Amphilanthus is hopelessly inconstant and treacherous, and the real Amphilanthus is horrified to find that such a knave has “abused” his name.99 Of course, Wroth’s readers realize that the fellow’s behavior mirrors that of the true Amphilanthus. This doubly nuanced tale of men’s inconstancy told by a woman to a man whose own behavior in love is treacherous and who deals out snide, goading accusations of “prettie envie”100 to his own beloved, Pamphilia, while consorting with another woman, is one that partakes of an ideological context far removed from Sidney’s for his Arcadia. Wroth’s railing, passion-torn heroines have much to say, and Wroth gives them ample scope to do so, in story-telling and in writing. Regarding women’s writing, Wroth’s female characters pour out their hearts in poetry and imitate each other’s literary efforts. Emilina writes a mournful poem on the humiliation and heartbreak she has suffered at the hands of the false Amphilanthus, concluding it pathetically with “. . . Death I come, I come.”101 Before carving a sonnet into an Ash tree, Pamphilia asks herself how she should cope with the knowledge that seeing Amphilanthus will give her great pleasure, but that seeing him because his “hopes, his joyes, and content come from another” will make her despair. As she works through these considerations, she finishes “a Sonnet, which at other times shee had begunne to ingrave in the barke of one of those fayre and straight Ashes,” and after that, she carves a quatrain on its roots.102 Shortly after Pamphilia finishes her poems, Antissia arrives on the scene and announces that she has discovered Pamphilia’s secret love because “her owne hand in yonder faire Ash” gives her away. Pamphilia cleverly retorts, “Not so . . . for many Poets write as well by imitation, as by sence of passion; therefore this is no proofe against me.”103 Her swift defense reveals both her ability to think quickly in 97

Wroth, The First Part, 298. Wroth, The First Part, 298. 99 Wroth, The First Part, 299. 100 Wroth, The First Part, 61. 101 Wroth, The First Part, 299–300. 102 Wroth, The First Part, 92–3. 103 Wroth, The First Part, 93–4. Wroth seems to be echoing Sidney’s idea from the Defence of Poesy, where, as Duncan-Jones points out, “he stressed the importance of poets 98

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a situation requiring concealment and her understanding of the importance of imitation regarding Renaissance literary traditions. Furthermore, Antissia later returns to the ash to carve her own poems, “in imitation of that excellent Lady,” Pamphilia.104 The illustration of female poets imitating each other seems to allude to Wroth’s literary circle activities. Roberts writes, “Wroth belonged to a circle of women writers of her own generation, many of them related by kinship,” and she notes that this group probably included Elizabeth Sidney, countess of Rutland, Wroth’s first cousin, who was described by Ben Jonson as “nothing inferior to her father” (Philip Sidney) in poetry, Lady Anne Clifford, and possibly Lucy Harrington, the countess of Bedford.105 Susan de Vere Herbert, too, would probably have taken part in such a group. Wroth’s frequent references to women’s writing, such as that of Emilina, Pamphilia, and Antissia, suggest that the women of her circle wrote poems, imitated each others’ efforts, and probably took care at times to conceal the identities of themselves and those of whom they wrote, for the most part eschewing publication in favor of manuscript circulation, like many of their French counterparts. Wroth’s portrayal of women’s writing and its themes contrasts strongly with that in the Arcadia, indicating another point of intertextual debate. In the Arcadia, Philoclea’s poem in praise of chastity, written in ink on “a goodly white marble stone,” is blotted when she returns to read it. It illustrates her change of heart since she has fallen in love with Zelmane/Pyrocles. Distraught over her memory of writing the poem, she mourns the inconstancies of women and praises the constancy and purity of the marble, composing, only in her mind this time, a poem that ends, “May witness bear, how ill agree in one, / A woman’s hand with constant marble stone.”106 Sidney’s illustration of the temporary and disposable nature of a woman’s writing is particularly at odds with Wroth’s depictions of poetry carved into a tree or written down in ink “imprinted” on paper.107 Moreover, his emphasis on women’s engagement with issues of constancy is echoed in the Urania, but in a manner that suggests that Wroth and her circle held views that more closely reflect Mary Sidney Herbert’s and Samuel Daniels’ depictions of Cleopatra’s constancy as a replacement for chastity in their Senecan tragedies than Sidney’s characters’ close guarding of their chastity.108 Wroth’s female characters,

writing cogent, powerful love poetry that persuades the reader that ‘in truth they feel those passions,’” but he does not say “that in order to produce this result poets needed ‘in truth’ to be in love—only that they should have sufficient skill to persuade the reader of the reality of feeling within the poem,” Duncan-Jones, 180. 104 Wroth, The First Part, 114. 105 Roberts, introduction to The First Part, xxxvii. 106 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 147–8. 107 Wroth, The First Part, 146. 108 A similar case, however, could be made for Philoclea and Pyrocles in the Old Arcadia. Lamb writes, “Love apparently excuses even sex without marriage, for when

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often faced with marriages that they do not want, while secretly loving someone else, tend to value their constancy to their lovers over their relationships with their husbands. Thematically, however, these women are much more concerned with men’s inconstancy than they are with their own vacillations between devotion to Diana and Cupid. The conflict between chastity and constancy, compounded by men’s inconstancy, in the Urania is especially well illustrated in Pamphilia’s impassioned speech to the moon and “the chast Goddesse” Diana after Amphilanthus has tortured her with his praise for Antissia, the other woman that he loves. Pamphilia argues that her love and heart are “as cleare, and bright in faith” as Diana’s face, yet her beloved’s affections are as cold as the moon, a reversal of the stance of the male Petrarchan lover.109 Even so, after much deliberation on her “passions” which burn hotter and brighter than her candle, she cries, “O love, thou dost master me.”110 Cupid secures her allegiance in this round of deliberations, yet aspects of Diana’s influence remain in that she swears herself to constancy to Amphilanthus. Her torment stems from a recent encounter during which she and Amphilanthus speak together alone in her chamber, and he gives “so much commendations of Antissia” that Pamphilia is moved to rebuke him.111 He, in turn, accuses her of having “much Womanish disposition” manifested in “so much prettie envie.”112 Before she can argue her case, Antissia arrives, and Amphilanthus leaves with her. Distraught, Pamphilia turns to writing out her heartbreak in verse in which she berates her eyes for being the “instruments of woe” which instigated her love for Amphilanthus.113 The next day, considering her predicament, she vows that onely one should enjoy all love and faith from her; and . . . her constancie . . . made her of many to be esteemed proud, while it was that flame, which made her burne in the humblest subjection of Love’s meanest subjects; yet was her choice like her selfe, the best.114

The traditional Renaissance view that a woman’s honor is her chastity and that a man’s honor encompasses his word, his prowess at sports and as a warrior, and his behavior in wooing, is for the most part upheld in the Arcadia but subverted in the Urania in which Pamphilia argues that faithfulness to one’s lover is the greater virtue for a woman—no matter what the gentleman’s behavior may be.

Pyrocles achieves sexual consummation with his beloved Philoclea, the narrator discreetly closes the door on the lovers with a congratulatory aside . . . ,” 77. 109 Wroth, The First Part, 62. 110 Wroth, The First Part, 63. 111 Wroth, The First Part, 61. 112 Wroth, The First Part, 61–2. 113 Wroth, The First Part, 62. 114 Wroth, The First Part, 64.

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This intertextual debate on considerations of love and virtue between the Arcadia and the Urania is reminiscent of debates over the questioni d’amore that arise in the Courtier and the Heptameron. In the Courtier, Cesare reasons that women’s “love of true virtue and their desire for honour” may be stronger than their (alleged) natural inclinations toward inconstancy, 115 and Gaspar maligns men who boast of conquering women at any cost.116 Of course, the tales told to illustrate these arguments are matched by tales of women’s inconstancy and men’s heroic continence. Similarly, in the Heptameron, interlocutors tell stories about women and men who behave both honorably and dishonorably in love. In Marguerite de Navarre’s text, questions such as “If a lady loves one man, should another have her by craft?”117 “What do you call a perfect love?” and “How different is a good woman from a wanton?”118 arise, and the interlocutors offer their interpretations of the views of honor that accompany the stories. Concepts of honor are similarly considered in Sidney’s and Wroth’s romances. Sidney’s characters, however, are aligned with tradition regarding their behavior in love—his valiant princes unswervingly pursue their chaste beloveds—while Wroth’s characters, both male and female, struggle with jealousy, lust, ambivalence, and deception as their uncertain romances progress. Although Sidney’s lovers are presented as eternally constant to their beloveds, questions arise about the way their means of pursuit justify the ends they desire. Of Pyrocles and Musidorus, Duncan-Jones writes: Their aristocratic bearing, their good looks, charm and eloquence are mediated through the narrator’s apparently approving words in such a way that for much of the time the reader is persuaded that their love for Basilius’s two daughters is noble and admirable. Strictly speaking . . . , it is not, for the end they aim at is sexual enjoyment, in pursuit of which they are willing to sacrifice every moral principle and to place everyone, including the princesses they supposedly love, in extreme danger.119

Duncan-Jones’s observation of the liberties Sidney takes under the guise of presenting the constancy—and ingenuity—of his princes recalls Patricia Cholakian’s commentary on interpretations of honor in the Heptameron. In her examination of the discussion following the fourth novella of the Heptameron, in which a princess fights off a would-be rapist, Cholakian notes that Hircan’s interpretation of the thwarted rape attempt is one that exemplifies the potential for distortion in the traditional code of honor for Renaissance men. Upon considering the story, Hircan is unimpressed with the princess’s “valiant defense of her honor” and is instead appalled at the gentleman’s lack of perseverance in the 115 116 117 118 119

Castiglione, 207. Castiglione, 207–208. Navarre, 103. Navarre, 195. Duncan-Jones, introduction to Old Arcadia, 180.

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assault, declaring that if he, Hircan, failed at such an attempt, he would consider himself “dishonored.”120 For Hircan, Cholakian explains, love is approached as a “military conquest whose success or failure determines a man’s honor.”121 It would seem that Sidney’s princes are also willing to conflate concepts of honor in battle with conquests in love. Distorted though this view of honor may be, Sidney clearly underscores the constancy of his princes as they risk all to achieve the hands of the women they love. Unlike the heroes of the Arcadia, the men in the Urania have great difficulty deciding which women they really want. Amphilanthus vacillates between his loves for Pamphilia and Antissia, dallies with Selarina long enough to cause gossip, rekindles an old love affair with Musalina, and has many other such relationships.122 Parselius temporarily forgets his love for Urania and marries another woman, Dalinea, then later regrets his decision.123 Later still, he plunges into the sea after Urania, who, as prophesied, must undergo the lover’s leap to rid herself and her friends of Love’s torments so that Love “might have new worke in new kinds,” yet, at this point, he still longs “to see his Dalinea.”124 She, having been abandoned by him, eventually shows up at the Court of Morea with his child in her arms.125 Begging the king, Parselius’s father, to help her, she tells her tale, explaining that Parselius “left [her] with a faigned excuse,” after which, to her chagrin, she learned that she was pregnant.126 The king calls forth Parselius to question him about this surprise announcement, and Parselius falls to his knees, swearing, “If ever . . . I gave my word to marry any, or had a child by any, let Heaven—” At this point, Dalinea breaks in to prove him a liar, and he slowly comes around to confessing all—his love for Dalinea, his dream of Urania, and finally, his leap after Urania which, he claims, made him “quite forg[e]t that I had e’re lov’d, so farre was passion from me. . . .”127 Dalinea is happy to remind him, and he soon takes her back. When considered as part of an intertextual dialogue with the Arcadia, the anecdotes recounted about men’s behavior in love in the Urania may be seen as more illustrative of arguments posed by such defenders of women as Anger who points out that women’s “behaviours alter daily, because

120

Patricia Cholakian, “Signs of the ‘Feminine’: The Unshaping of Narrative in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron, Novellas 2, 4, and 10,” Reconsidering the Renaissance, ed. Mario A. Di Cesare, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 93 (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992), 236. 121 Cholakian, 236. 122 Wroth, The First Part, 168, 266, and 397. 123 Wroth, The First Part, 127 and 150. 124 Wroth, The First Part, 230–31. 125 Wroth, The First Part, 241. 126 Wroth, The First Part, 242. 127 Wroth, The First Part, 243.

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men’s virtues decay hourly”128 than they are of the dashing tales of heroic male constancy that Sidney spins. While Pamphilia remains true to Amphilanthus through all of his dalliances in the First Part, Urania finally escapes her torment over Parselius in her lover’s leap at St. Maura.129 Instead of being a disappearing goddess figure as in Sidney’s Arcadia, Wroth’s Urania is, by the end of Book Three, a strong, wise, practical woman who has learned much about love. After getting over Parselius, she graciously accepts the suit of Steriamus,130 and the two live happily together. She attributes their success to the fact that she has learned to “love Love, as he should be loved”—not as “a Deity,” but as a “good child well used,” as she tells Pamphilia.131 Urania also tells her: Tis pittie . . . that ever that fruitlesse thing Constancy was taught you as a vertue, since for vertues sake you will love it, as having true possession of your soule, but understand, this vertue hath limits to hold it in, being a vertue, but thus that it is a vice in them that breake it, but those with whom it is broken, are by the breach free to leave or choose againe where more staidnes may be found; besides tis a dangerous thing to hold that opinion, which in time will prove flat heresie.132

Urania, a nontraditional defender of women par excellence by this point in her life, attempts to teach Pamphilia an important lesson about constancy—that it is meant to be a joint virtue. When it is violated by one party or the other, a “breach” is created that opens the way for the wronged lover to “choose again where more staidnes may be found.” Unfortunately, Wroth’s romance contains far more stories of men who betray than stories of women who learn this difficult lesson, Pamphilia being one of them. Drawing on her experiences in courtly society, Wroth refers to many activities which fall into a broad category of Elizabethan and Jacobean games, such as “Maskes, Justs, [and] Huntings.”133 A few interludes that she describes especially mimic salon ritual and pose anti-Petrarchan arguments concerning idealization of men’s behavior in love. At the end of Book One, as noted above, a shepherd, a shepherdess, and another “delicate Mayd” sing their debate over the nature of love before Pamphilia, Amphilanthus, and their friends. Their songs are somewhat reminiscent of the villanelles between Desportes and Rozette, thought to be Madame de Villeroy,134 as they rail about inconstant love. First, the shepherdess pleads in favor of constant love, then the Mayd sings of deception in love, and, 128 129 130 131 132 133 134

Anger, 179. Wroth, The First Part, 230–31. Wroth, The First Part, 265–6. Wroth, The First Part, 469–70. Wroth, The First Part, 470. Wroth, The First Part, 184. See Sorg, 47–54.

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finally, the shepherd argues that constant love is impossible. He implies that men are inconstant by nature and that their inconstancy is something for them to enjoy and for women to accept.135 This argument, staged much like those in the Asolani or those between Desportes and Rozette, throws down an intertextual gauntlet, so to speak, for Sidney’s defense of men’s loyalty in love, and it echoes Marguerite de Navarre’s assessment of men’s constancy in the Heptameron. In the ninth novella, Dagoucin recounts the story of a nobleman who remains constant to one love, even though he cannot have her, until he grieves himself to death, a model Dagoucin suggests represents ideal male virtue. The interlocutors argue that Dagoucin is “describing Plato’s Republic, which sounds all very fine in writing, but is hardly true to experience.”136 Wroth, too, eschews idealization of men’s and women’s behavior in love in story after story in the Urania. In the shepherdess Allarina’s tale, told to Pamphilia, Wroth makes further use of salon-style entertainments by describing the “Many sweete, pleasant, and delightfull games” that Allarina and her lover play at his sister’s home where they gather in the evenings. One game centers on “a discourse of many pretty things, and all of love,” in which the players are asked questions about what and whom they love, and they must “tell truly what [they] were asked, and so to draw a lot who should demand.”137 Such a game seems to be an early incarnation of “Truth or Dare”; however, it clearly reflects the questioni d’amore. It also recalls the group members in the Arcadia who draw lots to see who tells the next story138 and may suggest the gatherings at Wilton House and Baynard’s Castle. The rhetoric espoused by the players of games during the evenings Wroth describes is “sweete, pleasant, and delightful” in context, but Allarina quite cynically points out its artificial nature when she compares her lover’s speeches to his actions. She recalls her ex-lover’s poetic stances on the nature of ideal love, noting especially how his sworn constancy quickly came to naught when he met his next beloved. She says, “I did beleeve, and much commend his mind, and what I prais’d, or lik’d he likewise seem’d to be affected with; but what in men can last in certaine kind?”139 Her question is also reflected in Limena’s story about a woman who learns that “mens words are only breath, their oathes wilde, and vows water,”140 and Musalena’s suggestion that even 135

Wroth, The First Part, 172–3. Quoted in Roberts, introduction to The First Part, xxxvi. 137 Wroth, The First Part, 218. 138 Sidney, The New Arcadia, 213. Pamela suggests that they “draw cuts” to see who recounts the next tale. This practice also recalls the duchess’s requests for topics in the Courtier, Tullia d’Aragona’s direction of the discussion of love in her Dialogo which reflects the debates staged at the ridotti held in her home, and Claude Catherine de Clermont’s direction of the evening’s entertainment in her home, as recorded by Estienne Pasquier. 139 Wroth, The First Part, 219. 140 Wroth, The First Part, 228. 136

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the kindest, lovingst, passionatest, worthiest, loveliest, valiantest, sweetest, and best man, will, and must change, not that he, it may bee, doth it purposely, but tis their naturall infirmities, and cannot be helped. It was laid to our charge in times passed to bee false, and changing, but they who excell us in all perfections, would not for their honours sake, let us surpass them in any one thing.141

These complaints about the fickle nature of men recall the works of other authors who respond to literary attacks on women’s behavior by pointing out the differences between ideals men pride themselves on upholding and their actual deportment. Anger notes dryly, “As men are valiant, so are they virtuous . . . . But as there are some which cannot love heartily, so there are many who lust incessantly.”142 Labé, too, questions men’s use of Petrarchan blandishments in Sonnet 23 in which she demands to know why her lover is not yet dead if he no longer loves her. Such observations arise repeatedly in the story-telling in the Urania, creating a more dissonant or, as Dale Spender and Janet Todd put it, a “darker” tone in Wroth’s romance than exists in the Arcadia or Weamys’s Continuation.143 Wroth, then, may be seen as a nontraditional defender of women, a stance that caused her grief upon the publication of the First Part of the Urania. While Wroth’s romance, with its questioning of Petrarchan and Neoplatonic ideals was strongly criticized upon publication,144 Weamys’s Continuation of the Arcadia, with its closer adherence to the sentiments expressed in Sidney’s work, seems to have been more favorably received. Like Wroth, Weamys’s female characters participate in story-telling, reflecting both literary tradition and literary circle ritual. Of Philoclea’s retelling of the tale of Plangus to Pyrocles, Weamys states, “And believe me, she told it with more liveliness and quickness of wit than Plangus did himself . . . .”145 She also permits Mopsa, who was interrupted while telling a story in the Arcadia, to finish it in her Continuation.146 Weamys’s female characters are also writers, but they mainly write letters that are necessary to move along the plot; they do not, like Wroth’s female characters, write poetry about their

141

Wroth, The First Part, 440. Anger, 184. 143 Dale Spender and Janet Todd, eds., introduction to “Lady Mary Wroth,” British Women Writers: An Anthology from the Fourteenth Century to the Present (New York: Bedrick, 1989), 13. 144 Wroth was requested to stop the sale of her book within six months of its reaching the booksellers because of the protests by readers who thought it was slanderous, Roberts, introduction to The First Part, cv. See also Roberts’s “An Unpublished Literary Quarrel,” Notes and Queries n.s. 24 (1977): 532–5, in which she discusses the case of Edward Denny, as well as other events leading up to the removal of the Urania from sale. 145 Weamys, 19. 146 Weamys, 70–73. 142

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torments in love.147 Beyond their uses of women’s participation in story-telling and writing, however, Wroth and Weamys have little in common regarding their approaches to their romances, a fact that may be at least in part the result of influence from their diverse literary circles. While the Urania is especially focused on conflicts in relationships between men and women that reflect issues in her own life and those of women around her, Weamys’s story is more concerned with depicting royalist and aristocratic ideals than it is with seriously engaging in debate over issues from the querelle.148 Weamys uses querelle exempla freely, but she does so in a way that more mirrors Sidney’s traditional style than Wroth’s subversive tactics. In effect, she “ventriloquize[s] masculine poetic convention,” as Jones might put it,149 and she does so much to the delight of her readers, as a brief survey of readers’ responses reveals. As Cullen demonstrates, Weamys’s dedication of her Continuation and the five commendatory poems that preface her romance contain clues to the literary circle for which she writes. Henry Pierrepont, the father of Anne and Grace Pierrepont, to whom Weamys directs her dedicatory letter, was a royalist of some renown, and he may have been a supporter of Weamys’s project.150 Cullen cites one letter from James Howell to a “Dr. Weames” in which he praises “Weames’s” daughter’s work and quotes the commendatory poem he wrote for it, along with another letter from Howell to Pierrepont in which he discusses royalist politics and asserts that Pierrepont’s house “may be called a true academy,” while Pierrepont himself is “the capitol of knowledge, or rather an exchequer, wherein there is a treasure enough to give pensions to all the wits of the time.”151 Cullen adds that “Pierrepont’s ‘academy’ may be only an epideictic metaphor, but Howell seems to be alluding to the existence of an interregnum royalist academy, or salon, with Pierrepont as its focus.”152 Thus, however loosely formed, Weamys’s circle was apparently a cluster of writers or “wits” with royalist sympathies. The dialogue between Weamys’s and Sidney’s texts especially reflects their concerns about ruling powers during their respective times. Although Weamys writes during the interregnum, in an England quite different from that of Sidney’s day, connections both literary and historical link their circles. Clearly, Sidney’s romance, with its critique of kingly and princely behavior, would appeal to the daughter of a staunch royalist. Political interests aside, Cullen also points out that Weamys’s father’s friend Howell “knew Robert Sidney, [Sidney’s younger brother and Wroth’s father] for whose embassy to Denmark he was secretary,” as well as 147

Helena writes to Philoclea, 36; Philoclea writes to Amphialus (Weamys, 45–50). Cullen gives a detailed discussion of the royalist politics associated with Weamys’s literary circle, xxii–xxx. 149 Jones, Currency of Eros, 65. 150 Cullen, xxiii. 151 Cullen, xxvii. 152 Cullen, xxvii. 148

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Ben Jonson.153 The literary connections blend with historical ones as Howell serves as the link between the Sidney and Pierrepont circles. Weamys, as it were, reaches back in time to pick up the thread of Sidney’s discourse and creates her own response to it in a project that would easily win the approval of a royalist audience. That audience’s terms of approval, however, provide a defense of Weamys’s writing that proves Woodbridge’s theory that “Renaissance attacks on women are more congenial to modern feminism than are Renaissance defenses of women.”154 In this case, the interregnum writers defending Weamys’s reputation as a woman suggest, metaphorically, that her virtue is secure because she did not actually write the romance herself; rather, she channeled Sidney. Paradoxically, their explanations for Weamys’s success reflect Joanna Russ’s theories of techniques for suppressing women’s writing, especially that of “denial of agency.”155 T. H., probably Thomas Heath,156 writes “Marvel not to find heroic Sidney’s renowned fancy pursued to a close by a feminine pen: rather admire his prophetical spirit now as much as his heroical before.”157 He also suggests that Sidney’s soul has transmigrated into Weamys’s. Thus, a woman, and, in his opinion, a “virago,” such as Weamys writes so well because the spirit of a man writes through her. Howell suggests that: If a male soul, by transmigration, can Pass to a female, and her spirits man, Then sure some sparks of Sidney’s soul have flown Into [her] breast . . . .158

These defenders of Weamys’s romance suggest metaphorically that, “she didn’t write it, he did,” as Russ puts it.159 Their praise illustrates the literary circle members’ preoccupation with traditional idealization of women, and their hearty admiration of Sidney indicates their affinity for the world he illustrates in the Arcadia. This evidence of her literary circle’s characteristics helps to explain why, instead of engaging with Sidney’s text in a debate about the state of women or Petrarchan love traditions, Weamys’s text reflects his traditional Renaissance ideological stances. Yet, it does so in the context of illustrating how a new generation of noble and royal leaders may, through successful marriage alliances and careful military maneuvers, bring about a peaceful and strong monarchy. She 153

Cullen, xxv–xxvi. Woodbridge, 8. 155 Russ, 20. 156 Cullen, xxi. 157 Heath, quoted in Weamys, 4. 158 Howell, quoted in Weamys, 10. 159 Russ, 21. Wroth, too, was praised for her connections with Sidney, especially regarding her poetry. See comments by George Chapman and Joshua Sylvester in Roberts, introduction to The Poems, 18. 154

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especially emphasizes the power of youth and new political alliances, as she has King Basilius’s authority replaced by that of Musidorus and Pyrocles and Strephon chosen as a husband for Urania instead of the elderly Claius.160 Regarding traditional defenses of women and portrayals of Neoplatonic love, Weamys describes relationships between the valorous men and virtuous women of her Continuation in terms that echo Sidney’s. About Erona’s beauty and captivation of Plangus, she writes, “Now Erona’s beauty had grounded such an impression in his heart that no other thought but of her perfections could enter into his. She was his image, her he worshipped, and her he would forever magnify.”161 Of Urania, Strephon says that she “is compounded so artificially [artfully] as she cannot be paralleled nor described” and that “for Platonic courtiers, her heavenly modesty is a palpable witness of her innocency.”162 In Weamys’s work, the good women are perfectly good, and even the bad women are redeemable. We are told that Basilius “lovingly condol[es] Gynecia “for her former sufferings,”163 suggesting that she has duly repented of her inappropriate passion for Pyrocles, and even Artaxia, after she is conquered, confesses that she has “infinitely wronged” her cousin Plangus and pledges to be his “trusty deputy” until he returns from Arcadia, after which, she will quietly “end [her] life in widowhood.”164 Redeemed or not, however, the polarized split between women with wayward passions and women who are unswervingly virtuous remains, with Pamela and Philoclea residing in the latter camp. In Weamys’s romance Musidorus and Pyrocles are still consummate Petrarchan lovers who extol the virtues of their beloveds, also know as “the Paragons of the World.”165 Their interactions with Pamela and Philoclea at the time of their weddings reflect the culmination of attraction and courtship outlined in the paradigm for wooing between the ideal Courtier and Lady discussed in the Courtier. Magnifico explains: Because if the beauty, behaviour, cleverness, goodness, knowledge, modesty, and the many other qualities that we have given the Lady, are the cause of the Courtier’s love for her, the end of his love will necessarily be worthy, too: and if nobility, excellence in arms and letters and music, if gentleness and the possession of so many graces in speech and conversation, be the means whereby the Courtier is to win the lady’s love, the end of that love must needs be of like quality with the means whereby it is attained.166

160 161 162 163 164 165 166

Weamys, 77–103. Weamys, 20. Weamys, 75. Weamys, 40. Weamys, 62. Weamys, 13. Castiglione, 224.

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In the Continuation, Weamys provides the fitting ending for the princes’ virtuous wooing—a wedding scene in which the brides are so spiritually pure that their feet barely tread the ground. Musidorus and Pyrocles “discours[e] in commendations of their brides,”167 especially emphasizing the Neoplatonic ideals that they see in the women. Musidorus admires Pamela’s “heavenly beauty” and “how her soul seemed to fly with her body” when she entered the temple, “as transported with entering so holy an habitation which was too sacred for any other but her self.”168 Pyrocles responds by noting that “Philoclea might be admitted with her, so lightly did she set her feet upon the pavement, lest she should profane it.”169 In these descriptions of Pamela and Philoclea, Weamys clearly subscribes to the notions of the Neoplatonic ladder of love that women’s beauty and purity should guide men’s souls to heavenly contemplation. Her words also recall Petrarch’s sonnet 90 in which Laura “did not walk in any mortal way, / But with angelic progress.”170 Weamys’s male characters who wed these women are ideal courtiers—brave in battle, articulate in debate, and eternally constant. They thus fulfill Sidney’s ideals and turn a blind eye to the more realistic relationship predicaments that Wroth addresses. Weamys does, however, make interesting use of ekphrasis that simultaneously honors Sidney’s use of it in the beginning of the Arcadia, where he tells us that “the most excellent workman of Greece” has made the portraits he describes, and echoes Wroth’s emphasis on women’s creative abilities. In this instance, she portrays a woman as an excellent artist, one as capable of making art as a man. After Pyrocles and Musidorus kill Plaxirtus and Anaxius, rescue Erona, and persuade her that Plangus should be her husband, Erona decides that she must make a special gift for Philoclea and Pamela. We are told that Erona employed her inventions about a present for Pamela and Philoclea, which she was very ambitious of . . . , and without delayance, she set all her maids to work the story of their love, from the fountain to the happy conclusion: which by her busy fancy she shadowed so artificially [artfully] that when it was perfected, and she had shewed it to the Princes, they vowed that had they not known by experience those passages to have been gone and past, they should have believed they were then in acting in that piece of workmanship.171

167

Weamys, 78–9. Weamys, 78–9. 169 Weamys, 79. 170 Translated by Morris Bishop, The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, vol. 1, expanded edn., ed. Maynard Mack et al. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995), 2409. 171 Weamys, 64. 168

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Later, we are told that the night before the nuptials, “Erona presented Pamela and Philoclea with her rare piece of work, which they received with thanks and admiration; and for the honor of Erona (she being the inventor of it) they caused it to be hung up by the image of Cupid in the Temple . . . .172 Thus, a pictorial rendition of the story of the Arcadia serves as an icon of love, created by a woman and hung beside that of Cupid, in the temple where the couples are to be married. Sidney’s use of portraits of goddesses surrounding that of Philoclea and her parents at the beginning of his Arcadia is echoed in this concluding image of a piece of art in which the whole of the tale is depicted, flanked by Cupid, illustrating the triumph of Love. Ultimately, Weamys adopts the traditional style of Sidney’s romance to depict idyllic circumstances of courtly society as she knows her royalist audience would like them to be, and it is clear that she is more concerned with depicting the behavior and ideals of symbolic courtly life and love than she is with the more complex, often more negative views of real courtly circumstances that Wroth relates. To that end, her romance closes in a manner fitting for Petrarchan lovers. Two of them die when they cannot have the loves of their chosen ladies. Claius resigns “up his breath with her name in his mouth,” and Philisides, who shadows Sidney himself, is found dead upon Claius’s monument, with lines engraved on a stone beside him explaining that his “breast is the cabinet” where his beloved’s name is “fixed.”173 In Weamys’s Arcadian world, eternally constant men die for the love of their ladies, young princes rule wisely, old kings fade gracefully away, and virtuous royal women serve as Neoplatonic guides and muses, a portrait of Nirvana for a royalist coterie audience. It is a portrait strikingly at odds with Wroth’s vision of courtly, inconstant men and the women who passionately love them, depictions no doubt more familiar to Wroth’s coterie of young women writers. Taken together, Sidney’s Arcadia, Wroth’s Urania, and Weamys’s Continuation provide an overview of the diverse authorial intentions and audience analyses employed by these writers. More specifically, these texts reflect salon ritual and literary circle concerns at three levels: the influences of the authors’ coterie audiences; their literary engagement with traditional topics of debate from such sources as the Querelle des femmes and the questioni d’amore which are often illustrated in salon-style debates in such texts as the Courtier and the Heptameron; and the intertextual debates that arise when their texts are read in tandem, producing an intertextual extension of the salon ritual itself. The inscription of literary circle ritual and querelle rhetoric, then, is multi-layered in these romances. It is richly indicative of how powerful an influence the social institution of the

172 173

Weamys, 66. Weamys, 104–105.

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literary circle had upon these works, as well as how pervasive the arguments of the querelle were in this genre so strongly associated with women readers.

Conclusion In these chapters that traverse examples of participation in the rhetorical spaces of literary society by an Italian courtesan, an Italian actress, French noblewomen, a French bourgeois woman of letters, English noblewomen, and a young English gentlewoman, my goals have been to illustrate ways in which the Querelle des femmes helped to shape the writing of those who participated in literary circles, as well as to observe how women’s interactions in such circles helped to generate new waves of the querelle. In the process, I have alluded to the rich literary heritage associated with Renaissance women writers and the social institution of the literary circle. Of these women, Tullia d’Aragona built her reputation as a writer and a courtesan through salon contacts and chose the setting of her salon as a vehicle through which to do her own self-fashioning in print, with her aim being to ameliorate the portrait of the courtesan, in this case herself, in salon society. Moving in theatrical, academic, and courtly circles, Isabella Andreini was inspired to author her own debates in her contrasti scenici and to write her pastoral tragicomedy La Mirtilla in response to a work by an admired acquaintance and fellow writer, Torquato Tasso. In doing so, she rebuts Tasso’s version of the stereotypically helpless innamorata. Claude-Catherine de Clermont, the duchesse de Retz, like Antoinette de Loynes and Madeleine de L’Aubespine, passed her writing around in manuscript, meddled in French politics, and generally made a name for herself as an extraordinarily learned woman based on her literary circle activities. Retz, Loynes, and L’Aubespine may be considered the foremothers of such seventeenth-century salon hostesses as Madeleine de Scudéry and Madame de Lafayette.1 Colette Winn and François Rouget point out that the marquise de Rambouillet, famous for her “salon bleu,” was the “petite cousine” of Clermont.2 Louise Labé defiantly wrote, published, and withstood, for the most part, the criticism that came her way for doing so. She adapted and challenged Petrarchism, spoke her mind about the nature of men’s and women’s behavior in love in her Débat, and was considered a leading figure in Lyon’s literary society. Mary Sidney Herbert, Lucy Harington Russell, and Mary Wroth helped to create and 1

See Joan DeJean’s Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991) for a study of French salons of the seventeenth century. 2 Winn and Rouget, 17.

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participated in literary circles in England that appear to have been very similar to those of their Continental counterparts. Herbert’s and Wroth’s writing, along with that of Anna Weamys, illustrates ways in which querelle issues shaped Englishwomen’s writing and its reception. These women and numerous others (witness such documents as La Croix du Maine’s and Du Verdier’s dictionaries of French literary biography) were intrinsic parts of early modern literary society, and we are just beginning to grasp fully the catalytic nature of their presence in it. Groups of readers and writers thrived during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and many were composed of women and men whose opinions, taste, and influence, as well as their writing and editing skills, helped to shape the literary heritages of their respective countries. Literary circles, in all their rich variety—academies, salons, coteries, circles of correspondents—provided liminal rhetorical and ludic spaces in which learned women and men could explore in conversation and writing the issues generated by philosophy, politics, religion, literary trends, and society in general. Ultimately, such circles provided contexts in which women and men could examine and comment on just about “everything that constitute[d] [their] social and cultural sel[ves],” as Hélène Cixous might put it,3 and as Pasquier’s examples of conversation topics chez Retz or Speroni’s and Aragona’s dialogue subject matter suggest. Inevitably, issues from the Querelle de femmes were entwined in men’s and women’s writing and conversations with and about each other, provoking numerous new skirmishes in that centuries old battle. The creative friction that they generated played an important role in the production of literature—Shakespeare’s Hero and Beatrice, Andreini’s Filli, Tyard’s Pasithée, Wroth’s desperate princesses, and Sidney’s good and evil, beautiful and ugly exempla prove eloquent examples. These characters are the products of writers from a wide swath of social strata, who wrote for audiences ranging from literary circle intimates to courtly gatherings to those who frequented public theaters, thus illustrating the universal appeal that the arguments of the querelle held across social and cultural boundaries. The widespread interest in querelle issues may be read as a sign of general fascination with the worlds of salons and academies. Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost especially illustrates a popular interest in such things, as do Andreini’s contrasti scenici. As diverse as their provenances may be, it is interesting to note that most of the writers in this study, regardless of class or nationality, produced writing that fits Marotti’s description of “the historically embedded work” of authors who “chose to function as literary amateurs, submerging their writing in their social lives” 4 and were also involved in the more public, commercial realm of print publication (or play production) considered to be 3

Hélène Cixous, “Coming to Writing,” “Coming to Writing” and Other Essays, ed. Deborah Jenson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 12. 4 Marotti, xiv.

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the domain of professional writers. The degree of engagement in these types of authorship varies from figure to figure—Shakespeare and Andreini, who wrote coterie-style poetry to suit circles of nobles in the manner of literary amateurs are clearly less identified with literary amateurs than are Tyard and Labé, for example, who published their work but were mainly known, at least initially, for their involvement in genteel literary society. Some degree of this duality occurs for virtually all of the writers discussed in this study except, possibly, Retz and Bedford, who almost exclusively passed their work around in manuscript. It could even be considered true for Sidney, via the efforts of his sister, who published his works posthumously, and allegedly mistakenly for Wroth, who claimed that she did not intend to have the First Part of the Countess of Montgomery’s Urania and her sonnet sequence published.5 Sidney, of course, began revising his coteriefocused work, presumably for a broader audience, during his lifetime, and Wroth, whose romance echoes Sidney’s, from his use of the character Urania to the unfinished final line, is thought to have followed the family example regarding her venture into publication.6 The fact that such literary circle-referential works appeared in print, and on stage, illustrates how the artistic and philosophical interests of literary circles were closely aligned with commercial interests during this period. A brief survey of examples from this study further bears out this argument. An Italian publisher’s willingness to capitalize on both Aragona’s fame as a courtesan as well as the cachet of the literary society connections embedded in her poetry and dialogue supports this notion. Diana Robin points out that Gabriel Giolito, the most successful commercial publishing business in Venice and a press well known for its interest in women’s writing, in 1547 offered [Aragona] a contract for her first book of collected poems. That year Giolito published both her book of sonnets and her dialogue On the Infinity of Love, edited by her friend Muzio. Both books were instant successes . . . .7

Jean de Tournes’s record of publishing querelle related literature by men and women associated with literary circles in Lyon and Paris, such as Tyard, Labé, and Du Guillet, also suggests a commercial awareness of the importance of coterie readerships and their literary interests. Regarding his bids for artistic fame via publication of his poetry, Ronsard’s consideration of the tastes of the Villeroy and Retz circles, as well as his inspiration by women associated with them, is indicative of the importance of such groups’ influence upon his career in a broader sense than is usually considered in his case. Traditionally, he is primarily discussed 5 Wroth wrote to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, that the copies of the First Part of the Urania were sold against her will and that she never meant to have them published (Roberts, introduction to The First Part, cv–cvi). 6 Roberts, introduction to The First Part, cvi. 7 Robin, 41.

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in context with the men of the Pléiade whose literary aim was to shape the development of French literature on a national level. Finally, the intertextual dialogue that arises between closet and public drama indicates the complementary interests in querelle issues of playwrights both coterie, or closet, and professional. In Literary Circles and Cultural Communities in Renaissance England, Summers and Pebworth suggest that “careful scrutiny of literary circles—in their many and varied forms—enriches our understanding and appreciation of early modern literature by elucidating some of the crucial social transactions, intellectual networks, and material conditions that helped shape it.”8 In my examination of the circles in this study, I have attempted to trace elements of the trajectory of the Continental and English literary Renaissance pertaining to the phenomenon of literary circles, especially women’s participation in them, in hopes of underscoring Summers and Pebworth’s argument. To that end, I have commented on a broad scope of literary circle activities, including conversations and debates over a variety of topics, such as those inspired by the questioni d’amore and the Querelle des femmes, game playing, poetry contests, story-telling, singing, playing musical instruments, and manuscript circulation. I have emphasized the fact that men and women participated in these activities, which they in turn inscribed in their works. The ludic and interactive natures of such activities illustrate not only the “intellectual networks” and “material conditions” of which Summers and Pebworth write, but also the ways in which the Renaissance literary circle may be seen as “a social institution,” and, given the performances involved, something of an “art form,” to paraphrase Bristol’s description of the Elizabethan theater mentioned in the introduction. When we consider the allusions to social and political contexts for texts in this study—the “calamité de ce temps” that Pasquier mentions, which is echoed in “Les perils et l’effroy d’une guerre sanglante,” the opening line of “Le Sejour de Dyctinne et des Muses,” or Sidney’s and Weamys’s critiques of aging monarchs with wayward passions written in response to the reign of Elizabeth and the turmoil of the Interregnum, for example, we may see ways in which the literary circle may be considered “festive and political as well as literary—a privileged site for the celebration and critique of the needs and concerns of the polis.”9 The members of the French court and academies who also participated in the Morel, Villeroy, and Retz salons clearly practiced political machinations in the festive spaces provided by salon gatherings. Careers were fostered along with literature. The same was true among those who sought the patronage of the Countess of Pembroke, who made sure to pay homage to her Protestant sensibilities. In the writing and conversations generated by members of literary circles, considerations of the “needs and concerns” of society were addressed with insight, vigor, and, naturally, personal bias. 8 9

Summers and Pebworth, 9. Bristol, 3.

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Both personal bias and the influence of group dynamics appear in the works inspired by such encounters. Tullia d’Aragona and Louise Labé pose arguments and counterarguments about the nature of love and men’s and women’s behavior in love in their dialogues, even though they, of course, have the final word. Such counterarguments are a classic rhetorical strategy; in these cases, however, they are probably also the residue of witty salon encounters. Pasquier’s Pastorale du vieillard amoureux, along with his letter and poem, all inspired by his evening at the Retz salon, likewise illustrate the catalytic nature of literary circle society. Moreover, in the story-telling of the Urania, Mary Wroth has female characters rail against the foibles of men in love, and the roman à clef nature of her characters suggests that she is clearly writing against the views of those men in her social circle who pose as Petrarchan lovers and Neoplatonic philosophers while objectifying and abusing the real women of their acquaintance. The sense of playing to an audience, not just any readership, but a specific one made up one’s fellow literary circle members, permeates the writing by these authors. As Summers, Pebworth, and Marotti have suggested, it is critical that as we read the literature produced by writers who participated in salon or literary circle society, we keep in mind the group dynamics that likely influenced the production of their works. Like Bristol who contends that the institutional setting of the theater “informs and focuses the meaning of a . . . text and facilitates the dissemination of that meaning through the collective activity of the audience,”10 I would reiterate that to appreciate fully the “meaning” we assume is in literature produced by members of literary circles, we ought to consider the activities and relationships of the group as a whole. Otherwise, critical pieces of a text’s context are missing. In John Donne, Coterie Poet, Marotti writes: It makes sense historically . . . to view much lyric poetry from the early Tudor through the Stuart periods as coterie literature, especially poems composed in courtly and satellite-courtly environments. Though some professional and quasi-professional writers of the time publicly attempted to invest authorship with social and political as well as intellectual and literary authority, many authors, like Donne, chose to function as literary amateurs, submerging their writing in their social lives. While the former no doubt helped to create modern conceptions of authorship and literature, the historically embedded work of the latter presents us with the clear challenge of rediscovering the vital connections between less literarily isolated texts and their immediate social, economic, and political contexts.11

This study illustrates the ways in which Marotti’s assertions hold true beyond the parameters of Tudor and Stuart England and suggests that the Continental precursors and counterparts for the aspects of English literary history of which

10 11

Bristol, 3. Marotti, xiv.

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Marotti writes should be further investigated regarding “social, economic, and political contexts.” Since the institution of the literary circle is an historic, consistent factor in the development of Renaissance literature across national and gender lines, it provides a context for analysis of literature in areas that have previously been only marginally addressed in comparative Renaissance studies. In this study, I have examined ways in which texts by Italian, French, and English writers interact historically and intertextually when considered in the contexts of specific circles, but there are clearly many fascinating questions yet to be explored, especially regarding the influence of Continental literary circles and works by Continental women writers on English circles and English writers. Further examinations of women’s and men’s approaches to topics from the questioni d’amore and the Querelle des femmes in the context of writing produced by literary circle members would deepen our understanding of the debates perpetually sparked by these issues as they cross national, cultural, and, especially, gender boundaries. Questions about group authorship and group editing practices should be addressed in much greater detail as they raise important issues that are at odds with many preconceived notions about authorship during this period. Ultimately, the general impact of academic and salon society on Renaissance literature should be further investigated. The women and men who took part in it produced, critiqued, and inspired some of the most influential literature of the period; thus, exploration of the literary circle as a social institution and a creative matrix for the shaping of literary history is a worthwhile endeavor—one that will richly reward our efforts by increasing our understanding of Renaissance literature and the culture that produced it.

Bibliography Manuscript Sources Bibliothèque nationale de France Bibliothèque nationale de France Folger Shakespeare Library

Retz album, fonds français, 25,455 Villeroy album, Ms. 1663 Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Ms. V.a. 104

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Roissard, Georges, introduction to Débat de Folie et d’Amour, élégies, sonnets, by Louise Labé, Cercle des Professeurs Bibliophiles de France 542 (Grenoble: Sadag a Bellegarde, 1970). Rosenthal, Margaret, The Honest Courtesan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Russ, Joanna, How to Suppress Women’s Writing (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983). Russell, Rinaldina, The Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature (Westport: Greenwood, 1997). ———, ed., Italian Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook (Westport: Greenwood, 1994). ——— and Merry, Bruce, introduction to Dialogue on the Infinity of Love by Tullia d’Aragona, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). Saulnier, Verdun, Maurice Scève (Genève: Slatkine, 1981). Shore, David R., “The Shepherd and the Court: Pastoral Poetics in Spenser’s Colin Clout and Tasso’s Aminta,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 7.4 (1980): 394–410. Skretkowicz, Victor, introduction to The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia), by Sir Philip Sidney (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987). Smarr, Janet L., “A Dialogue of Dialogues: Tullia d’Aragona and Sperone Speroni,” Modern Language Notes 113.1 (1998): 204–212. Sorg, Roger, Les chansons de Callianthe: fille de Ronsard (Paris: Leon Pinchon, 1926). Spender, Dale, and Todd, Janet, introduction to “Lady Mary Wroth,” British Women Writers: An Anthology from the Fourteenth Century to the Present (New York: Bedrick, 1989), 13–14. Stampino, Maria Galli, “Performance, Text, and Canon: The Case of Aminta,” Romance Languages Annual, 9 (1997): 351–8. St-John, Christie Ellen, “The Salon Vert of the Maréchale de Retz: A Study of a Literary Salon in Sixteenth-Century France” (Ph. D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1999). Stone, Donald, Jr., French Humanist Tragedy: A Reassessment (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974). Stortoni, Laura Anna, and Lillie, Mary Prentice eds. and trans., Women Poets of the Italian Renaissance (New York: Italica, 1997). Summers, Claude J., and Pebworth, Ted-Larry, introduction to Literary Circles and Cultural Communities in Renaissance England (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000). Swift, Carolyn Ruth, “Feminine Identity in Lady Mary Wroth’s Romance Urania,” reprint, Women in the Renaissance: Selections from English Literary Renaissance, ed. Kirby Farrell et al. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 154–74.

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———, A Study of Love’s Labour’s Lost (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936).

Index actresses 1, 3, 5, 16, 22, 25, 26, 51– 72, 74, 77, 80–86, 95, 117, 197 agonistic rhetorical tradition (praise and blame) 2, 79, 80, 91, 93, 98, 123, 164, 167 Andreini, Francesco 25, 51–2, 60 Andreini, Isabella 2–4 , 6, 14–15, 17, 25–6, 51–72, 77, 80–81, 83–7, 114, 121, 127, 168, 197–9 La Mirtilla 6, 15, 52–72, 152, 197 Anger, Jane 6, 153–5, 187–8, 190 Aragona, Tullia d’ 5, 10, 14–15, 17, 21–49, 51, 54–5, 63, 72, 120– 21, 127, 168, 170, 181, 189, 197–9, 201 Dialogo della infinità di amore 14, 22–49, 181, 189 Ariosto, Ludovico 76, 131–3, 142, 145, 169 Balet comique de la Royne 16, 81, 84, 91 Barasch, Frances 57–8 Beaulieu, Mademoiselle de 52–3, 85–6 Bedford, Lucy Harington Russell, Countess of 18, 77, 94, 124, 128, 129, 132, 138, 141–3, 184, 199 Bembo, Pietro 13, 28–30, 38, 44–5, 47

The Asolani 28, 44–5, 109, 175, 189 Benson, Pamela 127, 132 Bochetel, Jacques 138 Boucher, Jacqueline 53, 79–82, 84– 5, 139 Brennan, Michael 148–9, 162–3 Breton, Nicholas 133–5, 142, 145 Bristol, Michael 12–14, 200–201 Broomhall, Susan 11 Brown, Pamela 57–8, 68 Burghley, Mildred Cooke, Lady 126–7, 133, 136 Burghley, William Cecil, Lord 126– 7, 130, 133, 135 Calvin, John 3, 98–9, 102, 106 Cary, Elizabeth 14, 142, 148–9, 158–62 The Tragedy of Mariam 148, 149, 157–62 Castiglione, Baldesar 1, 7, 13, 28–9, 32, 38, 47, 74, 111, 157, 167, 176, 179, 181, 186, 193 The Courtier 1, 5, 7, 13, 28, 30, 34, 47, 74, 109, 111, 113, 133–4, 146, 157, 172, 176, 179, 186, 189, 193, 195 Cerasano, S. P. and Marion WynneDavies 3, 148 Cicero 25, 29, 79 Clubb, Louise George 15, 54–8, 60– 3, 72, 157 Code, Lorraine 11

218

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Colonna, Vittoria 2, 27–8, 82, 87, 127, 132, 141–2 commedia dell’arte 15, 25, 51, 56– 62, 67, 74, 85–6 Cooke, Anthonie, Sir 132–3 cortigiane oneste, or honest courtesans 1, 5, 14, 21–49, 51, 53, 55–9, 63–4, 67, 77, 86, 95, 98, 138, 197, 199 Cox, Virginia 28–9, 34 Cullen, Patrick 171, 191–2 D’Aubigné, Théodore Agrippa 2–3, 53, 75, 82, 86–7, 92, 131 Daniel, Samuel 10, 14, 142–4, 148– 9, 158, 160–63, 184 The Queen’s Arcadia 149 The Tragedy of Cleopatra 148, 156, 158–63 Denny, Edward 143, 165, 190 Diotima 1, 14, 31–2, 37–42, 47, 49 Donne, John 8, 124, 139, 143, 171, 201 Du Guillet, Pernette 2, 82, 89, 97, 100–101, 104–105 Duncan-Jones, 18, 128, 138, 144, 146, 179–80, 183–4, 186 ekphrasis 177–8, 181, 194 Elizabeth I 2–3, 18, 79, 94–5, 126, 129–33, 136–7, 143, 145, 179, 200 Euripides 156, 159, 162 Ezell, Margaret 8, 43, 96, 144, 166 Franco, Veronica 3–4, 10, 27, 63, 127 Fraunce, Abraham 123–4, 134, 142 Freer, Coburn 142–3 Gambara, Veronica 2, 63, 82, 87 Garnier, Robert 129, 149, 156, 157– 9, 162–3

Geertz, Clifford 8, 74, 168 Gelosi 51, 53, 56, 60, 82–6 Gibson, Jonathan 127–8, 145 Greene, Robert 99, 128 Greville, Fulke 138, 142, 144, 148, 166 Guarini, Baptista 64, 66–7 Il pastor fido 64, 67 Hannay, Margaret 127, 128, 130, 134, 140, 143, 145; see also Susanne Woods and Margaret Hannay Harington, Sir John 94–5, 123–4, 126, 131–3, 141 Heller, Dana 168–9 Henderson, Katherine, and Barbara McManus 4, 127, 150–51, 156 Henri III, duc d’Anjou 10, 78–83, 93, 95, 139 Henri IV, Henri de Navarre 52, 79, 93, 95, 130 Héroët, Antoine 17, 88, 100, 102, 105, 108, 116 La Parfaicte Amye 17, 88–9, 100, 102, 104–105, 108, 116– 19, 121 Hill, Christine M. 89, 100, 102, 105, 108 Horace 134 Howard, Jean E. 58–9 innamorate 15, 52, 55–65, 68, 72, 80–81, 86, 197 James I 18, 129, 130–32 Jardine, Lisa 77, 96, 102 Jernigan, Charles, and Irene Marchegiani Jones 58, 61, 65, 70 Jodelle, Estienne 139, 149–50, 156, 158–9, 161–3

Index Cléopâtre captive 149, 156, 158, 161–3 Jones, Ann Rosalind 2–3, 6, 23, 39, 82, 89, 98–100, 102, 104, 121, 171, 191 Jonson, Ben 3, 123–4, 129, 134, 184, 192 Jordan, Constance 4, 32 Keating, L. Clark 10, 73–5, 81–2, 88, 90, 92, 140 Kelly, Joan 36–7 Kerr, Rosalind 51, 56–7 King, John N. 128–9 Krueger, Roberta 170 L’Anglois, Pierre de 87 La Borderie, Bertrand de 17, 88, 100, 107, 117 L’Amye de Court 17, 88–9, 100, 104, 107–108, 115, 117–18, 121, 126 La Croix du Maine, François Grudé, sieur de, 75–6, 87 Labé, Louise 3–4, 6, 10, 14, 17, 81, 89, 97–122, 128, 143, 190, 197, 199, 201 Débat de Folie et d’Amour 6, 44, 97, 99, 106, 112–22, 128 Lamb, Mary Ellen 134, 139, 140–41, 148, 150, 157, 162–3, 173–4, 180, 184 Languet, Hubert 136, 137–8 Lapp, John C. 75, 106–7, 109, 111 Larsen, Anne 10–11, 53, 84, 105 Lavaud, Jacques 75–6, 80, 90–3, 128, 137, 143, 145–6 Lea, K. M. 60, 62 L’Estoile, Pierre de 16, 75, 83–7, 92–3, 95, 126 Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer 124, 128, 131, 138, 142–3 Lucas, Caroline 170

219 Lyly, John 95, 126 MacNeil, Anne 15, 51–5, 60, 62, 80, 86 manuscript circulation 8–9, 17, 30, 48, 74–5, 87, 100, 128, 137, 139–42, 148–9, 158, 165–6, 172, 184, 197, 199, 200 Marotti, Arthur 8, 124, 139, 198, 201–2 Masson, Georgina 10, 21–5, 29, 34, 39, 120 Maylender, Michele 26–7, 52 Medici, Catherine de 78, 81–4, 86, 91, 94–5, 117, 132, 137 Montgomery, Susan de Vere Herbert, Countess of 128, 140, 181, 184 More, Edward 126–7 Morel, Antoinette de Loynes, Madame de 18, 87, 89, 94, 101, 125–7, 130, 133, 136, 141, 144, 145, 148, 200 Morel, Jean de 18, 101, 126–7, 130, 135, 136, 141, 145, 148, 200 Moulin, Antoine de 2, 82, 101 Navarre, Marguerite de 88, 128, 167, 181, 186, 189 Heptameron 167, 172, 181, 186– 7, 189, 195 Neoplatonism 4–5, 7, 13, 16–17, 23– 4, 28, 30–43, 56, 62, 72, 76, 89, 92, 99–100, 106–22, 139, 168, 177–80, 194–6, 199, 201 Ong, Walter J. 8 Orgel, Stephen 12, 19 Osburn, James 136–8 Pasquier, Estienne 16, 73–5, 78, 92, 146, 167, 198, 200–201

220

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pastoral 52, 56, 59, 61–2, 67–8, 72, 73–4, 76–87, 94, 134, 139, 143–4, 149, 151, 168–73, 180, 197, 201 Pears, Steuart A. 136–8 Pembroke, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of 3–4, 14, 58, 77, 123–49, 158–9, 162–3, 165, 172, 180 The Tragedy of Antonie 3, 129, 149, 158–60 Petrarca, Franceso (Petrarch) 9, 30, 33, 43, 46, 100, 108, 157, 194 Petrarchism 4, 6, 16–18, 31, 36, 38, 56–72, 76, 79–80, 90–92, 98, 100, 104, 106, 117–19, 121, 128, 145, 148, 153, 155, 176–7, 180, 185, 188, 190, 192–5, 197, 201 Piisimi, Vittoria 3, 25, 60 Pizan, Christine de 1, 72 Pommerol, Marie-Henriette, Madame Michel Jullien de 73, 75, 79, 92, 137 Prine, Jeanne 3, 98 pseudonyms 8, 79, 87, 91, 94, 102, 139, 143–4, 147, 166, 180 Querelle des Amyes 17, 77, 88, 95, 97, 100, 107, 121, 122 Querelle des femmes 1–19, 22, 29– 49, 55–72, 77–96, 97–122, 123–64, 165–96, 197–202 questioni d’amore 9, 25, 56, 62, 73– 4, 167, 186, 189, 195, 200, 202 Read, Kirk D. 97, 100–101, 122 Retz, Albert de Gondi, duc de 73, 82, 90, 92–3, 136–7 Retz, Claude-Catherine de Clermont, duchesse de 2–4, 10, 14, 16, 18, 53, 73–96, 97, 103, 105–

106, 125, 128, 131, 134, 135– 8, 138, 142–6, 148, 167, 197– 201 Rich, Penelope Devereux 124, 126, 129, 132, 146 Richards, Kenneth, and Laura Richards 25, 60, 80, 84–5 Rigolot, François 97, 100, 106 Roberts, Josephine, 3, 10, 130, 132, 143, 148, 165–6, 171, 180– 84, 189–90, 192, 199 Robin, Diana 27, 45, 199 Ronsard, Pierre de 84, 89–91, 92, 95, 105, 128, 134, 139, 146, 199 Rosenthal, Margaret 3, 10, 24, 37 Russ, Joanna 120–21, 192 Russell, Rinaldina and Bruce Merry 21–4, 26, 30, 31, 39, 40–48 salon personae 14, 22, 24–42, 74, 78 Salon vert 73, 75–6 Seneca 148–50, 155–6, 162, 164 Shakespeare, William 12, 15, 54, 56–9, 61, 64, 68, 93–4, 126, 129, 130, 144, 147, 149–63, 178, 198–9 Antony and Cleopatra 149, 156– 63 As You Like It 58–9 Love’s Labour’s Lost 56, 93–4, 126, 198 The Merchant of Venice 68, 150 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 58, 64, 68, 147, 149–55 Much Ado About Nothing 150 Othello 149–60 Sidney, Sir Philip 5, 6, 17–19, 129– 30, 135–47, 165–95, 198–200 The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia 5, 18, 19, 128, 146– 7, 165–96 Astrophil and Stella 144, 146

Index Skretkowicz, Victor 6, 146, 165–6, 172 Smarr, Janet L. 28, 30, 31–7, 45, 46, 47 Sorg, Roger 92, 143, 146 Speroni, Sperone 14–15, 17, 21–49, 54, 55, 61, 63, 68, 168, 198 Dialogo di amore 14, 22–49, 54, 68 Stampino, Maria Galli 60–61 St-John, Christie Ellen 73, 79, 82, 84, 87, 92, 93, 137 Stortoni, Laura Anna, and Mary Prentice Lillie 23, 26, 27, 52 Summers, Claude J., and Ted-Larry Pebworth 4, 125, 200–201 Tasso, Bernardo 23, 24, 27, 47, 54, 170 Tasso, Torquato 14, 15, 24, 51–72, 133, 149, 151, 155, 197 Aminta 15, 17, 54–72, 133, 149 Taviani, Ferdinando 54, 60 Timmermans, Linda 53, 86 Turner, Victor 12, 121–2 Tyard, Pontus de 6, 10, 14, 17, 99– 122, 175, 198–9 Solitaire premier 6, 17, 75, 99– 122, 175 Valois, Marguerite de 78–86, 93–5, 137 Venier, Domenico 10, 27 Venier, Maffio 3

221 Villeroy, Madeleine de L’Aubespine, Madame de 3, 88–94, 125, 128, 134, 136–8, 142, 143, 146, 188, 199, 200 Virgil 62, 134, 169 Vulcob, Jean de 137–8 Weamys, Anna 14, 18–19, 166–71, 190–95, 198, 200 Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia 18–19, 165, 166–70, 171, 190–95 Weller, Barry and Margaret Ferguson 148, 149,158–60 Wilson, Katharina M. 3, 27, 98, 143 Winn, Colette H. and François Rouget, 78, 81, 88, 93 Woodbridge, Linda 4, 151, 157, 159, 169, 192 Woods, Susanne and Margaret Hannay 127, 130 Woudhuysen, H. R 139–40 Wroth, Lady Mary 3–4, 6, 14, 18, 128–30, 140–52, 163, 166– 71, 180–96, 197–201 The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania 3, 6, 18, 128, 130, 132, 140–43, 146–8, 166–71, 180–96, 199, 201 Love’s Victory 58, 126, 147–9, 152–5 Pamphilia to Amphilanthus 181 Yates, Frances 10, 76, 81, 87, 89, 91, 126