The Tragedy of Mariam

by Elizabeth Cary, Karen Britland (Editor)

Overview

The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry is a Jacobean closet drama by Elizabeth Tanfield Cary. First published in 1613, it was the first work by a woman to be published under her real name. Never performed during Cary's lifetime, and apparently never intended for performance, the Senecan revenge tragedy tells the story of Mariam, the second wife of Herod. The play exposes and explores the themes of sex, divorce, betrayal, murder, and Jewish society under Herod's tyrannous rule.

The wide-ranging introduction discusses the play in the context of closet drama, female dramatists and feminist criticism, providing an ideal edition for study and teaching. This is a major edition of an unusual and provocative play not widely available elsewhere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408143797
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	06/13/2014
Series:	New Mermaids
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Karen Britland is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Elizabeth Cary (1585-1639) was an English poet, translator and dramatist. She is best known today for The Tragedy of Mariam (1613), the first original play in English known to have been written by a woman. Over her lifetime, she married Sir Henry Cary, and had eleven children by him. Disinherited by her father for using her own income to defray household expenses, she was later abandoned by her husband when she converted to Catholicism. She would spend much of the rest of her life battling for custody of her sons and daughters.
Karen Britland studied English at Lincoln College Oxford and teaches Literature at Keele Univeristy. Recent publishing work: Assistant Editor on the Cambridge University Press Complete Works of Ben Jonson and is editing James Shirley's The Imposture for the Oxford University Press Complete Works of James Shirley.

Karen Britland is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Elizabeth Cary: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

The Tragedy of Mariam

Emendations and Variant Readings

Appendix A: Main Sources

1. The Antiquities of the Jews
2. The Wars of the Jews

Appendix B: Extracts from Selected Didactic and Polemical Texts

1. Instruction of a Christian Woman
2. The second tome of homilies
3. A godly form of household government
4. The Book of Common Prayer
5. Basilikon Doron
6. The true law of free monarchies
7. The Mothers Blessing
8. A Muzzle for Melastomus
9. Ester Hath Hang’d Haman
10. A Bride-Bush, or A Wedding Sermon
11. The Mother’s Legacy to her Unborn Child

Appendix C: Photographs from the Tinderbox Theatre Company Production of The Tragedy of Mariam

Bibliography and Works Cited

Editorial Reviews

Anyone interested in early modern women writers owes a debt of gratitude to Broadview Press, who produce an unrivalled range of fascinating—and affordable—texts, many available nowhere else. To this they now add Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam. Stephanie Hodgson-Wright’s excellent edition of this important work is the most user-friendly available. It contextualises the play by providing full historical sources and a good range of relevant contemporary writings about gender, and it resolves some previously unsolved questions about the play. Its full, informative and subtle introduction allows the reader to engage with its key themes, like gender, performance, public and private language and public and private spaces.” — Jacqueline Pearson, University of Manchester

“Stephanie Hodgson-Wright’s edition provides the reader with both a sense of the writer’s historical context and of the play’s dramatic power.” — Christy Desmet, University of Georgia

From the Publisher