Owning in Aemilia Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum (Hail God King of the Jews)

by Audrey E. Tinkham
cholars often discuss the literary significance of Aemilia Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum in terms of its importance as the first original reinterpretation of scripture published by a woman in English. This work also functions as an important contribution to the early modern querelle des femmes, the longstanding controversy over womens ontological and social status. The woman controversy, which has its roots in writings of the fourteenth century, was one outgrowth of humanist thought at a time when ideas about gender were taking shape within a shifting landscape of the Reformation, with its changes in laws concerning property rights and inheritance, its burgeoning print culture, and its increasing distinction between public and private spheres of activity. Debaters in the woman controversy frequently based their invectives or encomia on biblical and classical models of behavioral ideals, citing exempla of exceptionally strong or lascivious women. One popular argument, for example, was that women are innately immoral as typified by Eves role in the biblical account of original sin. Lanyers work, published in 1611, is a tour de force in the midst of this controversy; Salve Deus is a spirited and lively rebuttal of standard misogynist arguments that women are inferior and subject to men by Gods will according to the Bible. Salve Deus engages key Christian tenets in For a detailed analysis of selected texts of the woman controversy, see Diane Purkiss, Material Girls: The Seventeenth-Century Woman Debate, in Women, Texts and Histories, 15751760, ed. Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss (London: Routledge, 1992), 69101. See also Hilda L. Smith, Humanist Education and the Renaissance Concept of Woman, in Woman and Literature in Britain, 15001700, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 929. 52 2009 The University of North Carolina Press

Audrey E. Tinkham

53

its creative exegesis of biblical literature, and in doing so it challenges traditional gender and class hierarchies; at the same time, and just as importantly, it engages specifically secular ideas underwriting those hierarchies. This essay examines Salve Deus as an important reinterpretation of the classical notion of civic virtue that informed early modern humanist thought. Lanyers poetry participates in the humanist educational enterprise to inspire virtuous action in the world and thus fulfills Sir Philip Sidneys well known argument that poetry is A speaking Picture, with this end to teach and delight. At the same time, Lanyer redefines the Aristotelian notion of virtuous citizen by interrogating the philosophical grounds on which women are excluded from civil society. She finds in the conjunction of intellectual property and real property a basis for the assertion of her own citizenship and entitlement on the same grounds that in classical political theory were reserved exclusively for titled, wealthy, educated men. Throughout Salve Deus, and especially in its numerous dedications, Lanyer transforms the standard language of patronage into a strident bid for the acknowledgment of intellectual property in terms that anticipate many of Miltons groundbreaking arguments in Aereopagitica. She argues not merely for monetary support of her artistic abilities but for public recognition of her authorial right to shape the commonwealth and for other womens right to public speech, as well. Lanyer relies on the confluence of the language of patronage and the rhetoric of religion to endorse her claims to authority grounded in virtue, which is an unusual strategy in the tradition of dedications to patrons. Poets seeking patronage from nobles typically adopted a tone of extreme humility and self-effacement, apologizing in advance for the inadequacy of their work as it fails to measure up to the lofty and incomparable worth of the patron or dedicatee. Similarly, the rhetoric of religion emphasizes the innate worthlessness of humanity in its fallen condition, stressing the importance of humility in the recognition that each individual owes his or her redemption to the incomparable sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the savior. This confluence is ironic because, in the language of patronage, the supplicant at least ostensibly acknowledges her indebtedness and inferiority to a social superior, thereby authorizing the legitimacy of class hierarchy; in the rhetoric of religion, the supplicant acknowledges her indebtedness and inferiority to a deity with Sidney, Defence of Poesie (London, 1595; Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library), C1r, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/SidDefe.html.

54 Owning in Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum a view toward the eventual equality in heaven of all who are saved in Christs name. According to Christian theology, ultimately all who are not damned will be one with God; hence all earthly hierarchies will be annihilated forever. Lanyer exploits the Christian concept of equality in heaven, reminding her dedicatees that God makes both even, the Cottage with the Throne, and stressing their indebtedness to her as authorial conduit for the divine. She stresses the importance of virtue in the sense of conformity of life and conduct with the principles of morality, yet she also uses the term virtue to indicate influence working for good upon human life or conduct, which closely relates to the classical notion of civic virtue. Lanyer uses the term virtue in a number of different contexts, and consequently the term virtuous invokes a complex of meanings, one of which pertains to the notion that women can and should participate in the commonwealthbe citizensby speaking, and thus acting, publicly. In order to situate Lanyers work within the context of the humanist discourse in which it participates, this essay first examines the influence of classical humanism in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, before turning to an analysis of the elements of this discourse in Salve Deus, particularly in its prefatory materials.
I

Ideas about political theory and public life in early modern England originated in classical philosophy. Elizabethan humanism, which valued the development of polite speech and behavior through education, owes its existence to the writings of Cicero and other classical The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judorum, ed. Susanne Woods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). All future references are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically within the text by line number unless otherwise noted.  Oxford English Dictionary (OED), s.v. virtue. All subsequent definitions will be cited parenthetically within the text. Lanyer does not use the term civic virtue, of course; the use of the term civic to denote of, pertaining, or proper to citizens did not enter the vernacular until 1790 (OED, 1a). She does, however, employ the terms of the humanist discourse that placed a premium on individual action for the good of the commonweal. The extent of Lanyers command of Latin and Greek is unknown; therefore, I cite only those classical works that were published in English translation prior to 1600. See Charles B. Schmitts Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983) for a detailed discussion of the widespread influence of classical authors in this period. According to Schmitt, Aristotles works saw more new translations and revisions of existing translations from Greek to Latin produced during the sixteenth century than during all previous centuries combined. At the same time, the production of printed editions of Aristotle . . . reached unprecedented numbers (70).

Audrey E. Tinkham

55

authors. While humanism is a difficult term to define, one might conservatively argue that the zeitgeist of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in England included an emphasis on human agency, especially as it was manifest in public speech, and these values derive directly from classical humanism. As I shall discuss below in detail, Lanyers humanist treatment of speech as a form of virtuous action in the world underwrites her claims to authority and entitlement. In effect, she denies the notion that polite speech is the exclusive purview of the upper classes; in her hands, speech is a tool to indict the elitist principles that underwrote the social hierarchy in which she was marginalized. Lanyers precocious interrogation of class hierarchies suggests that she was aware of a range of early modern discourse on political philosophy, with which humanism was concerned. One argument common to Ciceronian and Elizabethan humanismand one that may account for the ready adaptation by a monarchial society of ideas central to a republican philosophyholds that the commonwealth is best served by the preservation of social hierarchies in which individuals within a stratum focus solely on their own vocations. Moreover, an individuals given position in the social hierarchy was directly correlated to his or her capacity for moral virtue. This meritocracy in which social rank and moral virtues are mutually dependent was thought to mirror Nature, which Aristotle demonstrates explicitly in his exposition on different types and degrees of moral virtue:
by Nature there bee diuers sorts of rulers and obeyers. . . . The bondman is altogether depriued of that part which belongeth to deliberation: The wife hath it, howbeit weake: The childe hath it also, but imperfect. The like is to bee deemed of the morrall vertues. And wee must suppose, that they ought to haue them: howbeit, not after the same maner and measure, but in such measure as is conuenient for the office and exercise of euery one. Therefore it is expedient for a gouernour to haue perfect morrall vertue: for his office is simply and absolutely to command and giue order for the execution of affaires, and reason beareth the sway in commanding and appointing. (56)

English Books Online, University of Arizona Library), http://gateway.proquest.com .ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.882003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri: eeo:citation:99842553: THE voice which is the signifier of sadnes and ioy, was bestowed for this cause vpon other creatures: But speech was giuen to vs to signifie what is profitable, what vnprofitable (15). All future references to Aristotles Politics are from this source and will be cited parenthetically within the text.

See Mike Pincombe, Elizabethan Humanism (London: Longman, 2001), 15. See Aristotle, Politics, trans. Loys LeRoy, as Aristotles Politiques (London, 1598; Early

56 Owning in Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum Here Aristotle idealizes a social hierarchy in which a male governor alone can achieve the acme of human reason and moral virtuea hierarchy in which women, children, and servants are necessarily defined as inferior and imperfect. By constructing binaries such as ruler/subject, male/female, father/child, master/servant, so that male and ruler are mutually dependent constructs, Aristotle (and his Elizabethan translator, Loys LeRoy, in his commentary) naturalizes the social inequality that underlies his definition of virtue. Aristotle explains that wisdome is a vertue proper to the commander, all other vertues are common both to commaunders and obeyers. . . . [F]or he that is in subiecti, is like vnto a maker of pipes, and he that is in authority, like vnto him that playeth on the pipes (145). According to Aristotle, a noblemans innate capacity for civic virtue justly entitles him to a position of social superioritythat is, full citizenshipin the commonwealth. Leroy paraphrases Aristotles definition of a virtuous commonweal thus: the vertuous City is happy, and that city vertuous where the Citizens that be members of the Commonweale be vertuous (372). This definition of a virtuous commonweal is predicated, however, on the definition of citizen as a wealthy free male who is capable of publick honors and offices (146); as Aristotle explains, wealth and possessions are necessarie for Citizens, and such only as haue them, are true and right Citizens. . . . For handicraftsmen or anie other sort of people, whose actions swarue from vertue, are no part of the Citie (363). Aristotle argues that it is impossible for him to exercise the works of vertue, that occupieth a mechanical & mercenary trade (146). As J. G. A. Pocock summarizes, within this classical concept of civic virtue,
property appears as a moral and political phenomenon, a prerequisite to the leading of a good life, which is essentially civic. In the form of the Greek oikos,

See Janet M. Atwill, Rhetoric and Civic Virtue, in The Viability of the Rhetorical Tradition, ed. Richard Graff et al. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 7592. Here Aristotles treatment of political wisdom reflects his vision of the political order as harmonia, which Janet M. Atwill describes as a social model in which elements are grouped and hierarchized so that equality might obtain, but it is equality within not between classes (77). For this reason Atwill argues that there are problems with invoking Aristotelian phronesis [wisdom] as the authority for a democratic notion of civic rhetoric (80). Atwill observes that Aristotle does admit to the possibility that a state governed by a middle class may be characterized by virtue when citizens come together; however, he maintains that the result is a compromised sort of virtue that cannot be judged by the standard of a virtue that is above the level of private citizens or of an education that needs natural gifts and means supplied by fortune, nor by the standard of the ideal constitution [Politics 1295a2530] (80). Cf. Leroy, Aristotles Politiques: [A]mongst men of like condition, there should be the like equality (148).

Audrey E. Tinkham

57

a household productive unit inhabited by women, minors and slaves, it provided the individual with power, leisure and independence, and the opportunity to lead a life in which he . . . could become what he ought to be. . . . The citizen possessed property in order to be autonomous and autonomy was necessary for him to develop virtue or goodness as an actor within the political, social and natural realm or order.10

Womens exclusion from the classical model of civic virtue was carried forward in early modern English culture in the idealization of the feminine as passive, domestic, and silent. Both class and gender hierarchies are implicated in this model of civic virtue because women artificers such as Lanyer are excluded from roles of authority on the grounds of both their sex and their need to work for a living.11 Lanyers outspoken treatment of class and gender hierarchies exposes the logical fallacy behind Aristotles claim that males are citizens, citizens are virtuous, and therefore virtuous citizens are male. While the wisdom, regality, and virtue of the women who populate her poetry and dedications inevitably pail in comparison to those qualities she herself evinces, Lanyer does insist that women in general possess all the exemplary human faculties reserved by Aristotle for full citizens and that women are de facto agents of the good of the commonwealth. She also demonstrates that (her own) inferior social status is no bar to civic virtue. In Lanyers vision of humanism, her corpus functions both as a saleable commodity and as a vehicle through which she acts (speaks) on behalf of the commonwealth. As such it functions as the property that allows her to develop virtue or goodness as an actor within the political, social and natural realm. Because Lanyer lived in the margins of a social hierarchy that placed an extremely high premium on pedigree, her work reflects profoundly the preoccupation in Elizabethan and Jacobean England with the distinction between honor as elevation of character (OED, s.v. honor, 2a) and exalted rank or position (4a). As Lanyers contemporary, Sir William Segar, explains in Honour Military, and Civil (1602),
It is not therefore as ignorant persons and vnskilfull folke doe surmise, that great riches, or titles of dignitie, do make men honourable, vnlesse they be accompanied with the vertues and perfections aforesayd: for riches (albeit they
103.

10Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985),

11See Joseph Lowenstein, The Authors Due (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); he argues that an account of the late Renaissance reader is significantly an account of the early capitalist consumer. . . . [T]he book is quintessentially a modern commodity and the author in some ways quite an unexceptional laborer (22).

58 Owning in Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum

are a great ornament to illustrate vertue) yet are they not any efficient cause to make men honourable. Neither are dignities in descents of noble blood, enough to aduance men vnto Honor: for whatsoeuer is not within vs, cannot be iustly called ours, but rather the graces and goods of fortune.12

Neither riches nor titles alone signify honor, as Lanyer unflinchingly observes throughout Salve Deus, and while titles and wealth may have originated through honorable action, that action may not have been perpetuated by succeeding generations. William Vaughan decries the behavior of young noblemen, observing, Another againe craketh and breaketh his lungs wel-nigh with windie bragges, because he is a Knights eldest sonne, fetching his pedegree by a thousand lines and branches, from some worthie Lord, and because some neere kinsman of his is made Censour, Maior, Iustice of peace, or Lieutenant of the Shire.13 Vaughan cites Aristotle, Plato, and scripture in his outline for the humanist education of young men, admonishing them to embrace vertue and not glorie too much in worldly goods (160), which emphasizes the difference between nobility as wealth and as virtue. This relationship between honor, nobility, and virtue is complicated, however, because nobility can be defined as virtue. As Segar elsewhere points out, Aristotle in his 4. booke of Politikes maketh foure kindes of Nobility, viz. Diuitiarum, Generis, Virtutis, & Disciplinae: that is, noble by riches, noble by ancestors, noble for vertue, and noble for learning (121). Lanyers use of the term vertue invokes these permutations of nobility, conflating or contorting them to her specific ends, in order to substantiate her own nobility and to indict her social superiors on the grounds that they do not exhibit nobility in every sense of the word, nor can they without her instruction. Her pastiche of classical and Christian ideas demonstrates that a humanist education could be used to undermine the elitist principles on which humanism was predicated.
II

Lanyers dedicatees occupied prominent and conspicuous roles of authority in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, and much discerning 12Segar, Honour Military, and Civil (London, 1602; Early English Books Online, University of Arizona Library), 209, http://gateway.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/ openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:citation:99852106. 13Vaughan, The Golden Grove (London, 1600; Early English Books Online, University of Arizona Library), 135, http://gateway.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.arizona.edu/openurl ?ctx_ver-Z39.88-2003&res_id-xri:eebo&rtf_id-xri:eebo:citation:99846847. All subsequent references are to this edition and will be cited parenthetically in the text.

Audrey E. Tinkham

59

scholarship on Lanyer has sought to appreciate her work vis--vis their writings, their social and literary milieu, and, in the case of the Cliffords, her personal acquaintance with them. Anne Cliffords diaries, for example, feature details of her lengthy legal battle for her inheritance, punctuated by descriptions of the quotidian aspects her life and ample evidence that, like Lanyer, she believed strongly in the importance of piety and high moral character. In comparing the works of Anne Clifford and Aemilia Lanyer, Barbara K. Lewalski has observed that In Lanyers imaginative vision, as in Anne Cliffords, God testifies for women and takes their part.14 Lewalski argues that, like Clifford, Lanyer envisions a female community united by Christian virtue, thus empowered to undermine and reconfigure traditional patriarchal structures. While Lewalskis interpretation of Salve Deus is appealing, Lisa Schnell makes a compelling counterargument, pointing out that Lanyer has written not an encomium to but an indictment of the myth of aristocratic generosity and fairness.15 Whereas Lewalski and other critics have emphasized Lanyers concerns with gender, Schnell emphasizes instead Lanyers concerns with class, arguing that Lanyer is unable to subordinate her belief in her own considerable intelligence and personal worth to a social system that demands self-abnegation of those in the lower orders who wish any favor. Thus she is also unable, in the end, to celebrate her fantasy of a united community of women. Her bitterness toward, envy of, even rage at other women are just as real as her disgust with patriarchal politics.16 Schnell points out that if Lanyers main concern in memorializing these noblewomen is to garner their patronage, she goes about it in a strangely conflicted way and that we must pay attention to the mixed messages contained in the text if we are to understand its full import. While both Lewalskis and Schnells critiques are important and insightful, their respective works represent a divergence among many Lanyer scholars who tend to focus either on class or on gender. But clearly Lanyers poems address a broad complement of early modern ideological concerns, including both class and gender. As Mihoko Suzuki points out, the split between these two approaches to Lanyers poems indicates the difficulty of simultaneously attending to both gender and class: if the former critics focus on gender and thereby de14Lewalski, Re-writing Patriarchy and Patronage: Margaret Clifford, Anne Clifford, and Aemilia Lanyer, Yearbook of English Studies 21 (1991): 102. 15Schnell, So Great a Difference Is There in Degree: Aemilia Lanyer and the Aims of Feminist Criticism, Modern Language Quarterly 57 (1996): 34. 16Ibid., 35.

60 Owning in Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum emphasize class differences, then the latter in emphasizing class divisions do not give sufficient importance to the common experience of women in patriarchy. After all, Anne Clifford would not have been in the position to enter into disputes over estates and titles if she were not an aristocratic woman.17 Diverging from both Schnells and Lewalskis general lines of inquiry, I will highlight a different dimension of Lanyers poems, one that is concerned specifically with Lanyers advocacy of womens public agency that transcends class and gender restrictions. Lanyer aligns herself with Christ not only for the purposes of criticizing class and gender hierarchies and garnering the patronage of specific noblewomen but also as a call to action. Most of her noble dedicatees meet the description of citizens according to the classical definition of civic virtue, with the sole exception that they are women. They are nobly born, wealthy, and well educated, all of which entitles them to hold positions of leadership and authority in the civis. Many of them are also wise, which qualifies them as rulers.18 They do, in deed, demonstrate civic virtue, yet, like Lanyer, the fact that they are women renders them ineligible for citizenship. Through her public speech, however, Lanyer exercises civic virtue better than her social superiors do, which calls into question the grounds of their superiority. Her dedications to specific nobles and to readers in general are calculated as a challenge to Englishwomen to amplify their roles on the worlds stage by owning, in the sense of speaking publicly. At the same time, Lanyers allusions to the Cliffords litigious waves of woe (34) serve as reminders that her female dedicatees, although they belong to the propertied class, faced great opposition to their legal ownership of the landed estates that underwrote their elite status. The two senses of owning (possessing and speaking) are intricately entwined throughout Lanyers work, and, read together, they illuminate her vision of virtue and authority. Lanyers writing is a means by which she may exercise civic virtue, just as her dedicatees exercise civic virtue in deed, yet Lanyers exercise of civic virtue surpasses theirs because she has a clear title of ownership, so to speak, one that is not rendered suspect by a failure to act or by a 17Suzuki, Anne Clifford and the Gendering of History, CLIO 30 (2001): 222. 18Queen Anne has Wisdome . . . [and] Fortitude (To the Queenes most Excellent

Majestie, 14); Princess Elizabeth has goodly wisdome (To the Lady Elizabeths Grace, 10); Mary Sidney is to be esteemd / For virtue, wisedome, learning . . . [and] dignity (The Authors Dreame to the Ladie Marie, 15152); Katherine Howard has beautie . . . [and] wisedome (To the Ladie Katherine, 23); Margaret Clifford is wise and sage (Salve Deus, 171). Cf. Leroy, Aristotles Politiques: in euery humane societie or assembly, the wisest ought to sit in the chaire of authority, and the vnaduised to stand and attend at their beckes: hauing need of the conduct, counsell, and protection of another (25).

Audrey E. Tinkham

61

judges decree. Her virtue is based not on social status but on a willingness to transgress artificial social barriers. Her text constitutes outright ownershipof her ideas, of her authority, and of herself as an agent of change in the commonwealth. While she demurs to write [the] worth of Queen Anne, she does write most emphatically her own worth as a citizen (To the Queenes Most Excellent Majestie, 161). Womens owning was a source of cultural anxiety in the early modern period, both in the sense of owning property and in the sense of admitting, confessing, or attesting. Another contemporaneous sense of the term own was to acknowledge as due to oneself or to merit or deserve, and, in yet another sense, to own was to claim for ones own or to lay claim to (OED, s.v. own). In any sense of the term, womens owning transgressed behavioral ideals for women within patriarchy. Lanyers hermeneutics of virtue integrates her concerns about gender and class by challenging sexist notions about how women can achieve virtue. Her version of virtue thus differs significantly from conventional early modern versions of female virtue, particularly in the way Lanyer claims a public role for women through authorship. As Mary V. Silcox summarizes, Cultural doctrine generally described women as intellectually and morally flawed, and women were constrained in the home, the church, and the law courts to an inferior status. The virtuous woman was held to an almost superhuman standard of conduct, continually exhorted to chastity, modesty, obedience, and silence. In spite of such difficulties, compounded in many cases by an inferior education and the heavy burdens of childbearing and domestic duty, women did write, but their works . . . were influenced and shaped (limited) by womens cultural environment.19 As Lewalski elsewhere has made clear, Lanyers piety is genuine, yet the model of virtue she presents is more than a straightforward encomium to Christian morality and values.20 By repeatedly likening herself to Christ and by presenting her text as our Lord Jesus himselfe (To the Lady Margaret, 34), she creates an indisputable authority for herself as a writer, and she asserts the legitimacy of her speech in print, as well as other womens right to speak publicly.21 19Silcox, Aemilia Lanyer and Virtue, in Teaching Tudor and Stuart Women Writers, ed. Susanne Woods and Margaret P. Hannay (New York: MLA, 2000), 29596. 20Barbara K. Lewalski, Of God and Good Women: The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer, in 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), 20324. 21For extensive critical discussion of Lanyers conflation of herself and her text with Christ, see, for example, Catherine Keohane, That Blindest Weakenesse Be Not OverBold: Aemilia Lanyers Radical Unfolding of the Passion, ELH 64 (1997): 35990; Kari

62 Owning in Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum Lanyers dedicatees are selected not merely as likely potential patrons but as tangible examples of womens public agency and citizenship in the sense that they are authors of the commonweal. Lanyers relationship to dedicatees Margaret Clifford and her daughter, Anne Clifford is central to the import of Salve Deus. Margaret Clifford initiated a complex set of legal proceedings designed to protect the property rights of her daughter, Anne Clifford, whose lawful inheritance of her familys landed estates was repeatedly and forcefully disputed by her husband and other male relatives, numerous courtiers, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and King James I. The inheritance dispute arose when Margaret Cliffords husband, George, third Earl of Cumberland, died in 1605, having willed all his property to his brother, Francis, rather than to his daughter, Anne, who would have inherited his landed estates at common law if her father had died intestate. Apparently unbeknownst to him, however, his will was unlawful; according to Richard T. Spence, The Lord Chief Justices determined that the heir male had no right because common custom favoured the heir general.22 Thanks largely to her mothers initial efforts and to Annes stalwart refusal to capitulate to the noblemens attempts to force her to relinquish her claims on the property, she ultimately prevailed in asserting her right as legal heir to
Boyd McBride and John C. Ulreich, Answerable Styles: Biblical Poetics and Biblical Politics in the Poetry of Lanyer and Milton, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100 (2001): 33354; Lynette McGrath, Let Us Have Our Libertie Againe: Aemilia Laniers 17th-Century Feminist Voice, Womens Studies 20 (1992): 342; and Wendy Wall, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 325. 22Spence, Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, Dorset and Montgomery (15901676) (Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1997), 40. The countesses litigation was bifurcated, involving Anne Cliffords claims both to hereditary titles and to a number of landed estates. As Spence points out, the grounds for the legal dispute over the Clifford properties originated with the forms of estate planning employed by Annes grandfather, who had no male heir at the time of his death. In an attempt to continue the earldom, he inserted a special deed of entail in his will, by the terms of which all his estates were entailed on his son, George; if George left no sons then they were to go to Francis and his male heirs, and if Francis, too, died without sons then successively to other named male Cliffords from related branches of the family (42). This entail led Annes father and his legal advisors to believe that he had inherited from his father in fee simple, but they were mistaken; there was a legal flaw in all the settlements and deeds on which Franciss claim to inherit was based, although the court actions were well under way before it came to light (42). The Court of Wards in 1609 held that the reversion of the Westmorland properties on Earl Georges death had been vested in the Crown, so they were subject to the Henrician statutes governing estates held in chief. . . . The finding favoured Annes claim to the Westmorland lordships as the direct descendant of the Viponts (47). Nevertheless, Anne Clifford only received the majority of her inheritance after both Francis Clifford and his son had died (41). After her death, her claim to the hereditary titles prevailed as well (41).

Audrey E. Tinkham

63

substantial portions of her familys landed estates. In doing so, she set a highly conspicuous example of female fortitude in the public arena.23 Even more significant is Margarets success at litigating her right to possess and manage her late husbands estates. She took possession of her dower estates in 1606, against the wishes of her male relatives and the tenants who occupied her land. As Spence observes, Margaret proved tough, resolute and lordly until she had full command of her lands and rights, and in doing so she held herself up as a model to be admired and followed. As an estate manager, Lady Margaret was much more successful than her husband had been, and the income she derived from her estates provided the cash that would support Annes protracted litigation.24 By the time Lanyer published Salve Deus, Margaret had been the legal owner of a landed estate for five years, and as such only her gender prevented her from meeting the description of citizen according to the Aristotelian model of the commonweal. Although her suits before Chancery would continue for several years, she had already secured her position as a landed noble in her own right. Lanyers rhetorical appeal to the countesses religious piety is inextricably tied to their virtues as worthy proprietors of real property, and she makes a clear distinction between the virtues of Margaret and her daughter, Anne. Whereas Margarets nobility is fully realized, Lanyer insists that Anne can fulfill the promise of her social positionher nobility in the sense of her ancestry, riches, and educationonly if she fulfills her nobility in the sense of virtue.25 In her dedication to Anne, she writes, To you, as to Gods Steward I doe write, / In whom the seeds of virtue have bin sowne / By your most worthy mother (5759; emphasis added). Yet Annes virtuous stewardship is entirely at her own discretion. In a particularly bold move, Lanyer suggests to Anne that her ladyship can rightfully claim her title of honor (and like her mother get those Keyes Saint Peter did possesse [1369] and winne in heaven an everlasting crowne [1752]) only if she resists corruption and carries out her duties as a caretaker of those less fortunate than herself:
If base affections over-rules his mind; Or that self-will doth carry such a hand, As worldly pleasures have the powre to blind So as he cannot see, nor understand

together at Cookham certainly presents itself in this dedication.

23Ibid., 158. 24Ibid., 27 and 34. 25The possibility that Lanyer had an axe to grind with Anne as a result of their time

64 Owning in Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum

How to discharge that place to him assignd: Gods Stewards must for all the poore provide, If in Gods house they purpose to abide. (5056)

Lanyer points out that a noblewoman must in deed be worthy of her title, lest she inflict suffering upon Poore virtues friends, presumably those of lower social rank to whom she has a responsibility, like the pious and impecunious poet:
Titles of honour which the world bestowes, To none but to the virtuous doth belong; As beauteous bowres where true worth should repose, And where his dwellings should be built most strong: But when they are bestowd upon her foes, Poore virtues friends indure the greatest wrong: For they must suffer all indignity, Untill in heavn they better graced be. (2532)

Thus, if Annes true worth is to be realized, if she is to be entitled to own herself a Christian duchess, she must maintain her noble stewardship through action; the emphatic repetition of verbs in the following passage, for example, stresses the urgent necessity for Annes virtuous deeds:
And as your Ancestors at first possest Their honours, for their honourable deeds, Let their faire virtues never be transgrest, Bind up the broken, stop the wounds that bleeds, Succour the poore, comfort the comfortlesse, Cherish faire plants, suppresse unwholsom weeds (7378; emphasis added)

Lanyer insists that aristocratic honors (and estates) were originally earned through an individuals virtuous and noble deeds, by which they proved themselves trusty and loyal stewards of crown and country and by which they earned the deeds to their real estate; thus if Anne is to continue fulfilling the promise of her land ownership, she must not allow base pelfe (79) to corrupt her but rather must continue to exercise the civic virtue through which her titles originated. Marie H. Loughlin argues that [b]ecause the dedication insists on the link between a persons virtue and his or her status as legitimate heir to an aristocratic name, Annes inheritance of her mothers spiri-

Audrey E. Tinkham

65

tual virtues implies the legitimacy of her worldly claims: Anne is the rightful inheritor of the material goods, honours, estates, and titles that accompany her status as her mothers virtuous daughter.26 Yet in another sense, whether Anne has inherited her mothers spiritual virtues remains to be seen. Anne challenges as her owne her mothers faire parts (60). Within the context of the poem, Annes nobility is limited to three of the four senses: riches, education, and noble ancestry. She has not yet realized the sense of nobility as virtue, nor can she realize it except through her action as a steward of the estate from which she derives her income and her high social standing. Through Annes deeds of good husbandry and patronage, writes Lanyer in the future tense,
So shal you shew from whence you are descended, And leave to all posterities your fame, So will your virtues always be commended, And every one will reverence your name; So this poore worke of mine shalbe defended From any scandall that the world can frame: And you a glorious Actor will appeare Lovely to all, but unto God most deare. (8188)

Thus, Lanyers speech will achieve its desired ends only if Anne lives up to the legacy of civic virtue on which her nobility is founded; in other words, she will act as a virtuous landowner by granting the desired patronage to Lanyer or, as Mary Ellen Lamb has brought to light, she might hire Lanyer to work in one of her households and in that manner provide her succor.27 It might be tempting to read this and similar rhetorical moves as straightforward pleas for financial assistance and thus interpret the text as a standard ploy for patronage; in other passages, however, Lanyer 26Loughlin, Fast tid unto them in a golden Chaine: Typology, Apocalypse, and Womans Genealogy in Aemilia Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum, Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000): 168. 27Lamb, Patronage and Class in Aemilia Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, in Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain, ed. Mary E. Burke et al. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 40. See also John Huntingtons discussion of Lanyers dedication to Anne Clifford in Ambition, Rank, and Poetry in 1590s England (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001). Huntington agrees that [i]t is the invocation of Gods kingdom that licenses Lanyers otherwise insulting assertions of the dignity of virtue (149), but he argues that despite her economic difficulties, she does not want money from Anne; she wants love (152), a perplexing claim in light of Lanyers assertion that Gods Stewards must for all the poore provide, / If in Gods house they purpose to abide (To the Ladie Anne, 5556).

66 Owning in Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum casts herself as superior to Anne, which is quite a non standard strategy within the early modern system of patronage. For example, she claims that
Greatness is no sure frame to build upon, God makes both even, the Cottage with the Throne, All worldly honours there are counted base; Those he holds deare, and reckneth as his owne, Whose virtuous deeds by his especially grace Have gaind his love, his kingdome, and his crowne, Whom in the booke of Life he hath set downe. (1723)

Here [g]reatness indicates honor in the sense of exalted rank as opposed to exalted worth, and the poets accusatory tone amounts to a threat to Anne that her present greatness will be short lived, that her name may not ever appear in the booke of Life. These virtuous deeds refer to Lanyers deeds rather than to Annes, so the stanza suggests that Christ holds deare Lanyer, whereas Annes worldly Throne will be toppled. She questions the legitimacy of the social hierarchy that has placed Anne on this throne, of sorts, by suggesting that Annes ancestors possessed the same meane state as Lanyers present state of meanness:
What difference was there when the world began, Was it not Virtue that distinguisht all? All sprang but from one woman and one man, Then how doth Gentry come to rise and fall? Or who is he that very rightly can Distinguish of his birth, or tell at all, In what meane state his Ancestors have bin, Before some one of worth did honour win? (3340)

Here some one of worth could well refer to Annes mother but not to Anne herself because she has not yet won honor through virtuous deeds. Lanyer goes on to remind Anne that this world is but a Stage / Where all doe play their parts, and must be gone; / Heres no respect of persons, youth, nor age (12123). In these passages, Lanyers model of virtue is the great class leveler. By putting her own virtue in creating this Diadem (63) higher than Annes merely potential virtue, she privileges the sense of nobility as virtuous action rather than as riches, ancestry, or education. She also emphasizes Annes, and her own, role as a player on the worlds stage, which suggests a highly public ac-

Audrey E. Tinkham

67

tivity in which one is, in one sense, a spectacle calculated to inspire an audience to change the way they think or behave. The countesses notoriously outspoken legal endeavors may have emboldened Lanyers reinterpretation of scripturethe poems are, after all, specifically dedicated to Margaret and Anne Clifford and emphasize their role as property owners. I will not take up the somewhat controversial question of whether or how well Lanyer personally knew her dedicatees because my reading of her work is more concerned with the theoretical implications of her rhetoric for her audience. As Lamb has demonstrated, Lanyers audience was calculated to include both nobility and commoners, as is evident in the distinctly different tenors of the dedications to each group:
Her verse epistle To all vertuous Ladies in generall appeals to a consumer mentality invested in advancing or affirming its high location in class. Her much less conventional prose letter To the Vertuous Reader appeals to a feminist or protofeminist consciousness that does not rely on class consciousness. Thus, the very anonymity of these women consumers of printed books empowered Lanyer to imagine them in varying terms according to her own predictions or desires. Although buyers and readers were not yet numerous enough to support writers, the fact that they existed at all created a site of resistance that enabled Lanyers critique of the class hierarchy underlying patronage.28

The fact that Lanyer addresses her text to a number of specific noblewomen, as well as to an anonymous vertuous readership, underscores Lanyers sense of herself as a public speaker. The site of resistance to which Lamb refers might be characterized as a readership that, like Lanyer, occupies a betwixt and between social position; Lanyer is neither base, common, and popular nor is she a noblewoman.29 She is educated and virtuous, like the duchesses, but she is not titled or wealthy. By placing herself on an equal footing with these noblewomen in Gods eyes, she sets up an ideological critique that she ultimately parlays into a call for virtuous womens voices to be heard regardless of social status. Lanyer insists that all virtuous women are entitled to participate in and benefit from the shaping of public life, just as entitlement enables Margarets property claims and Annes authority to withstand King Jamess repeated attempts at coercion. Furthermore, as with her urgent entreaties to Anne to uphold the spirit of virtue behind her titles, she does insist that women speak virtuously when they 28Lamb, Patronage and Class, 43. 29Shakespeare, The Life of King Henry the fifth, in The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed.

David Bevington, updated 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 1997), 4.1.39.

68 Owning in Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum speak. In her dedication To the Vertuous Reader, she censors womens owning as it pertains to their powers of ill speaking; according to her, some women forget that they are women themselves, and [are] in danger to be condemned by the words of their owne mouthes, [and] fall into so great an errour, as to speake unadvisedly against the rest of their sexe (p. 48). She states that women who speak ill of women can shew their owne imperfection in nothing more, and she entreats them to referre such points of folly, to be practised by evill disposed men (p. 48). Lanyer rhetorically casts as her vertuous reader all those Ladies and Gentlewomen of this kingdome, and in doing so she flings down the gauntlet for all women to exercise virtue by fulfilling their role as stewards of the realm through owning their (and her) womanly virtue; she specifically claims that her text provides sufficient evidence to inforce all good Christians and honourable minded men to speake reverently of our sexe, and especially of all virtuous and good women (p. 50). Moreover, the readers virtuous action must include the support of other womens intellectual achievements that reflect the same virtue, and they must be able to recognize those achievements when they see them. As Su Fang Ng observes, Lanyer is far from praising freely. She invites women to look at themselves through the mirror of her text because [v]irtue is partly defined as being worthy to be mirrored, being worthy to be seen; but it is also defined as the result of properly directing ones gaze onto worthy objects, namely Lanyers poetry.30 She proffers her text to these virtuous readers knowing that according to their owne excellent dispositions, they will rather, [sic] cherish, nourish, and increase the least sparke of virtue where they find it, by their favourable and best interpretations, than quench it by wrong constructions. To whom I wish all increase of virtue, and desire their best opinion (p. 50). In other words, finding fault with Lanyers text is tantamount to a self-identification with wickedness, while, at the very least, failing to actively praise it casts doubt on the readers discretion. Not surprisingly, her representation of Christ as the ultimate model of virtuous public action is overtly feminized. As Kari McBride and John Ulreich have pointed out, Lanyers reinterpretation of scripture allows her to challenge the socioeconomic structure of her day by aligning herself with Christ, both as a means of subverting gendered hierarchy and of placing herself on equal footing with her social superiors: Like Christ, Lanyer seems powerless vis--vis the Queen and noble30Ng, Aemilia Lanyer and the Politics of Praise, ELH 67 (2000): 443.

Audrey E. Tinkham

69

women to whom she addresses her poems. But the existence of the New Jerusalem shows her to be really their equalperhaps even their superior, given her closer present likeness to the meanly attired Christ.31 Lanyers authorial persona is authorized by grace (in every sense of the word) to own herself a free agent on equal footing with her social betters who, indeed, can be her equals only if they enact a model of civic virtue that demands their good husbandry of the land and their charitable behavior toward their inferiors. Even though she does not belong to the propertied class, she enacts a model of civic virtue through authorship, and she seeks to earn a respectable living by exercising her talent for owning. In Lanyers second dedication to Margaret, she claims that God himself advocates womens owning. Margaret is able to withstand the infinite annoyes / That Satan to [her] well-staid mind can show (Salve Deus, 3738), which Susanne Woods glosses as the trouble Margaret continued to have from relatives, judges, and courtiers as she sought to secure her daughter Annes inheritance from Margarets late husband.32 Lanyer thus portrays Margarets male antagonists as representatives of Satan, and God plays an active role in promoting Margarets real estate claims against them:
Tis He that guides thy feet from Sathans snares, And in his Wisedome, doth thy waies controule: He through afflictions, still thy Minde prepares, And all thy glorious Trialls will enroule: That when darke daies of terror shall appeare, Thou as the Sunne shalt shine; or much more cleare. (5156)

In other words, Margarets tribulation and triumph in the law courts has been ordained by God, and her faithful perseverance will ultimately distinguish her as a shining example of virtue for posterity. Her virtuous deeds of ownership also qualify her to never be estrangd from Christ When He shall come in glory (6061). As she reminds Margaret, All those that feare him, shall possesse the Land (86); thus, Margarets civic virtue is akin to Lanyers civic virtue through publicly owning that God himselfe . . . gave power to wise and virtuous women, to bring downe their [mens] pride and arrogancie (To the Vertuous Reader, p. 49). Again, Lanyers intellectual property affords 31McBride and Ulreich, Answerable Styles, 347. 32Woods, ed., The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer, 52.

70 Owning in Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum her exercise of civic virtue in the same way that Margaret is justly entitled by the virtuous management of her estates; ultimately, all will be rewarded according to their merits (Salve Deus, 92). She also reminds Margaret that Unto the Meane he makes the Mightie bow, / And raiseth up the Poore out of the dust (12324). Lanyer is concerned to address the unfortunate earthly reality that many people, including the poet herself, are not rewarded according to their merits. Thus, Lanyer celebrates Margarets persistent public struggles both as a way to claim a civic role for women and to authorize (and sanctify) her own claims for recognition and support. Lanyers most effective strategy for self-authorization throughout Salve Deus is her self-identification with Christ as one who is poor, feminine, virtuous, and the ultimate source of truth. In linking herself with Christ, she presents herself as the authorial conduit through which her readers can learn how to be virtuous. In her dedication to Arbella Stuart, her little Booke (9) is literally this humbled King (12), which has the power to fill Your beauteous Soule with his grace (14). She conflates her verse with the Bible and herself with Christ so as to substantiate her claim to be the irrefutable intermediary of God. In her dedication to Queen Anne, she describes herself and her text as being In poore apparell, shaming to be seene (63), yet she and her text embody that faire Virtue, though in meane attire, / All Princes of the world doe most desire (6566). The author is poor and wears rags, yet her virtue and her words transcend class barriers in the same way that the promise of Christian redemption is available to all who acknowledge Christs sacrifice. Christ, like Lanyer, is willing to be counted of so meane a berth (Salve Deus, 476). He came to earth seeming extreame poore (1720). Christ is so poore (901) that he is Perfections height in lowest penury, / Such glorious poverty as they never knew: / Purple and Scarlet well might him beseeme, / Whose pretious blood must all the world redeeme (89396). Also like Lanyer, he is one in whom A union of contraries did accord (1258). They are both meanly attired yet worthy to be clad in royal garments. They are also both mortals, clothed in flesh and blood: Yea for our gaine he is content with losse, / Our ragged clothing scornes he not to weare, / Though foule, rent, torne, disgracefull, rough and grosse (112426). Yet in Christs mortal humility, in his ragged clothing, he is still a monarch; he comes not in pompe or royaltie, / But in an humble habit, base, dejected; / A King, a God, clad in mortalitie (17058), just as Lanyer is superior to her aristocratic

Audrey E. Tinkham

71

addressees despiteor, to some extent, because ofher penury. This last line is addressed specifically to Margaret, reminding her that her position in the social hierarchy is a potential stumbling block on the path to virtue. Her material security cannot ensure her access to the ultimate source of virtue; only Lanyers text can sufficiently guide her, especially insofar as it provides specific instructions for Margarets virtuous use of her riches. Ironically, Lanyers model of virtue is predicated on the same kinds of implicit exclusivity that the classical (male) model of civic virtue entails. Her rhetoric conveys a meritocracy similar to Miltons: her specifications for the fit audience of owning women imply that she is every bit as invested in a hierarchy as her social betters, but her model of virtue sets up a hierarchy in which she is at the top. As Lanyer develops the feminized Christ (as herself), she also particularly emphasizes his speech in relation to womens speech. In Salve Deus, Christ is very much like a female martyr who is not afraid to speak the truth, even though his/her words are subversive. Lanyers Christ certainly has the appearance of a woman, as in A briefe description of his beautie upon the Canticles, in which her description of Christ the Bridegroom contains a blazon-like inventory of womanly features; yet here the feminized object of adoration is also celebrated for the purity and truth of his/her speech, which stands in marked contrast to the notoriously venomous, unchaste female tongues cataloged by numerous early modern writers of the period:
This is that Bridegroome that appeares so faire, So sweet, so lovely in his Spouses sight, That unto Snowe we may his face compare, His cheekes like skarlet, and his eyes so bright As purest Doves that in the rivers are, Washed with milke, to give the more delight; His head is likened to the finest gold, His curled lockes so beauteous to behold; Blacke as a Raven in her blackest hew; His lips like skarlet threeds, yet much more sweet Than is the sweetest hony dropping dew, Or hony combes, where all the Bees doe meet; Yea, he is constant, and his words are true, His cheekes are beds of spices, flowers sweet; His lips, like Lillies, dropping downe pure mirrhe, Whose love, before all worlds we doe preferre. (130520; emphasis added)

72 Owning in Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum The second stanza of this blazon emphasizes the sweet, nourishing qualities of Christs lips, whence issues the pure mirrhe of his speech. Throughout The Passion of Christ, mens trothlesse tongues (640) and tongues impure (664) are repeatedly contrasted with Christs harmlesse tongue (699) that speaketh truth (709). Elsewhere, harmless tongues that speak the truth belong to women exclusively, whose cries (1132) are contrasted with mens hatefull slaunderous lies (1134). In Eves Apologie, the main thrust of Lanyers defense of Eves actions is that Eve spoke the truth: But she (poore soule) by cunning was deceavd, / No hurt therein her harmlesse Heart intended: / For she alleadgd Gods word, which he denies, / That they should die, but even as Gods, be wise (77376; emphasis added). Her defense of Eve amounts to an injunction to women to speak the truth no matter how transgressive it may seem to those who hear it. In The teares of the daughters of Jerusalem, Lanyer makes a similar rhetorical move by insisting that only the womens (public) entreaties, rather than the mens commands, are able to prevail upon Christ to speak once he has been sentenced to death by the male rulers:
Your cries inforced mercie, grace, and love From him, whom greatest Princes could not moove: To speake one word, nor once to lift his eyes Unto proud Pilate, no nor Herod, king; By all the Questions that they could devise, Could make him answere to no manner of thing; Yet these poore women, by their pitious cries Did moove their Lord, their Lover, and their King, To take compassion, turn about, and speake To them whose hearts were ready now to breake. (97584)

Through her description of the piteous cries of the poore women, powerful enough to move their Lord, Lanyer establishes explicitly that women have the power both to speak the truth and to inspire others to do so. In this passage, especially considered within the feminist context of Lanyers rhetorical framework, these women are literally inspiring the word of God to issue forth from Christs mouth. Similarly, the Virgin Mary, who also has a meane estate (1034) and a poore degree (1086), miraculously inspires all her devotees to spread his glorious Name (1104). Thus, women can be virtuous by actively owning the gospel of Christ, whether through their own speech and actions or through the support of Lanyers righteous muse, whose forward

Audrey E. Tinkham

73

Mind cannot be restraine[d] and whose poore Infant Verse must soare aloft, / Not fearing threatning dangers, happening oft (27880). Indeed, early modern womens owning did often pose threatening dangers, yet Lanyers model of civic virtue demands that women unflinchingly speak and act publicly despite the potentially dire consequences (i.e., the wrath of patriarchal dynasts and all those who would censure womens writing). By likening herself to Christ, the great prophet who hazarded his life to deliver his truth publicly to the masses, she claims a public voice for herself and for all women who speak virtuously. Another attribute Lanyer shares with Christ is the unshakable nobility in the sense of virtue that entitles him to be the King of kings (1627) and wear thimperiall crowne of heaven and earth (1615), which she ardently (and confidently) looks forward to sharing with him. She repeatedly uses Christs monarchical status as a way of reminding her noble readers that her virtue sets her above them, and she turns his sufferings in the face of adversity into yet another call for women to be strong and face headlong their virtuous battle for civil equality.33 In The terror of all creatures at that instant when Christ died, she writes that
Yet, had he beene but of a meane degree, His suffrings had beene small to what they were; Meane minds will shew of what meane mouldes they bee; Small griefes seeme great, yet Use doth make them beare: But ah! tis hard to stirre a sturdy tree; Great dangers hardly puts great minds in feare: They will conceale their griefes which mightie grow In their stout hearts untill they overflow. (123340)

Christs and Lanyers material meane degree in previous passages is here re-echoed to emphasize his/her nobility as virtue, the quality that sets each apart from those wicked men who are like golden Sepulcher[s] with rotten bones (922). Both she and the countesses face [g]reat dangers in exercising their civic virtue, but here she exhorts them to bear up and assert themselves, like she and Christ, lest they show themselves to have meane minds and meane mouldes. Thus, the sturdy tree in this passage refers both to Christ and to Lanyer, and it becomes yet 33Then let us have our Libertie againe, / And challendge to your selves no Sovraigntie (82526); Your fault beeing greater, why should you disdaine / Our beeing your equals, free from tyranny? (82930).

74 Owning in Lanyers Salve Deus Rex Judorum another means for her to celebrate herself as the conduit through which the countesses can access virtue as she re-invokes it to drive home her point in the concluding poem, The Description of Cooke-ham. Once again, Lanyers rhetorical strategy, self-aggrandizing as it is, ultimately places the burden on her readers either to embrace and acclaim her model of virtue or to own themselves cowardly fools who disown Christ. In The Description of Cooke-ham, which ostensibly celebrates the Cliffords virtue, Lanyer provides a visually stunning account of what happens to the land (and to the poet) when that virtue falters in terms of these noblewomens civic responsibilities. The poem details first the salutary effect of responsible proprietorship, marveling that The Trees with leaves, with fruits, with flowers clad, / Embracd each other, seeming to be glad, / Turning themselves to beauteous Canopies, / To shade the bright Sunne from your brighter eies (2326). Here nature itself reflects the virtuous noblesse oblige of Margaret and Anne. When the countesses remove from the scene, however, withdrawing their gracious presence along with their personal supervision and largesse, then the poet thought each thing did unto sorrow frame: / The trees that were so glorious in our view, / Forsooke both flowres and fruit . . . (13234). These trees, attempting to persuade their caretakers to remain at Cooke-ham, cast their leaves away, / Hoping that pitie would have made you stay: / Their frozen tops like Ages hoarie haires, / Showes their disasters, languishing in feares: / A swarthy riveld ryne all over spread, / Their dying bodies halfe alive, halfe dead (14146). These trees languish in feares, much like the female poet facing difficult financial circumstances and having few avenues for self-advancement. Thus, Cooke-ham celebrates the poet herself as a national treasure that must be nurtured, cherished, and supported by the beneficence of her civic-minded patrons, just as it is their public duty to manage their real estate skillfully and to provide care and support for the members of their communities. The classical model of virtue that the countesses embody emphasizes Lanyers disenfranchised position as neither plebeian nor patrician. Thus, her ambivalence pertaining to the social hierarchy that makes her beholden to her dedicatees is generated from her acute awareness of and frustration with the double handicap of being a poor (dis-graced) woman in a world where power and authority derive from property. According to Lanyer, she is an even more virtuous citizen than her dedicatees; thus, she claims the capacity for the exercise of civic virtue by all

Audrey E. Tinkham

75

women while extending the basis of that virtue to womens writing as intellectual property worthy of and entitled to remuneration. She needs the financial support that Annes patronage would provide, but her selfaggrandizing polemic is more than a mere plea for money or an embittered tirade against existing class hierarchies; more importantly, it is a philosophical statement of womens right to participate in the commonweal by staking a claim in that territory previously reserved for men. Despite the rich irony that only virtuous women according to Lanyers specifically articulated hierarchy have a right to enfranchisement, in her terms, social justice and even salvation can be achieved only through womens virtuous authority. University of Arizona