Emilia Lanier (; 1569–1645) was an English writer and poet during the Elizabethan period. Her 1611 volume Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail, God, King of the Jews) has been seen as protofeminist. She has a claim to be one of the first women poets with a substantial body of commercially-published work in the English language.
Lanier was a contemporary of William Shakespeare, and attempts have been made to identify her with Shakespeare's "Dark Lady" or even with Shakespeare himself. These ideas have inspired several works of fiction with Lanier as a character.
Biography Emilia Lanier's life appears in her letters, poetry, and medical and legal records, and in sources for the social contexts in which she lived. Researchers have found interactions with Lanier in astrologer Dr Simon Forman's (1552–1611) professional diary, the earliest known casebook kept by an English medical practitioner. She visited Forman many times in 1597 for consultations that incorporated astrological readings, as was usual in the medical practice of the period. The evidence from Forman is incomplete and sometimes hard to read (Forman's poor penmanship has caused critical problems to past scholars). However, his notes show she was an ambitious woman keen to rise into the gentry class.
Early life
Church records show Lanier was baptised Aemilia Bassano at the parish church of St Botolph, Bishopsgate, on 27 January 1569.
Lanier was born Aemilia Bassano in London in 1569. Her father, Baptiste Bassano, was an Italian musician from Venice, who was part of a family originally from Bassano del Grappa, a small town in the Veneto region of northern Italy, whose members later moved to Venice before coming to England as court musicians for Henry VIII. Her mother, Margaret Johnson, was an Englishwoman, possibly the aunt of court composer Robert Johnson. She died when Aemilia was 18. Lanier's sister, Angela Bassano, married Joseph Hollande in 1576, but neither of her brothers, Lewes and Phillip, reached adulthood., accessed on May 2015.
Some scholars have suggested that the Bassano family may have had Sephardic Jewish ancestry originating in Spain, although this remains debated and has not been conclusively established. Susanne Woods calls the evidence for it "circumstantial but cumulatively possible".Susanne Woods (1999), Lanyer: A Renaissance Woman Poet, p. 180, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leeds Barroll says Lanier was "probably a Jew", her baptism being "part of the vexed context of Jewish assimilation in Tudor England."Leeds Barroll, "Looking for Patrons" in Marshall Grossman, ed., (1998) Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon, pp. 29 and 44, University Press of Kentucky.
Baptiste Bassano died on 11 April 1576, when Emilia was seven years old. His will instructed his wife that he had left young Emilia a dowry of £100, to be given to her when she turned 21 or on the day of her wedding, whichever came first. Forman's records indicate that Bassano's fortune might have waned before he died, which caused considerable unhappiness.Susanne Woods, ed. (1993) The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer, Oxford University Press, New York, NY
Forman's records also indicate that after the death of her father, Lanier went to live with Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent. Some scholars question whether Lanier went to serve Bertie or be fostered by her, but there is no conclusive evidence for either possibility. It was in Bertie's house that Lanier was given a humanist education and learnt Latin. Bertie greatly valued and emphasised the importance of girls receiving the same level of education as young men. This probably influenced Lanier and her decision to publish her writings. After living with Bertie, Lanier went to live with Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland and Margaret's daughter, Lady Anne Clifford. Dedications in Lanier's own poetry seem to confirm this information.McBride, Biography of Aemilia Lanyer, 1.
Lanier's mother died when Lanier was 18. Church records show that Johnson was buried in Bishopsgate on 7 July 1587.
Adulthood Not long after her mother's death, Lanier became the mistress of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, a Tudor courtier and cousin of Queen Elizabeth I. At the time, Lord Hunsdon was Elizabeth's Lord Chamberlain and a patron of the arts and theatre, but he was 45 years older than Lanier, and records show he gave her a pension of £40 a year. Records indicate that Lanier enjoyed her time as his mistress. An entry from Forman's diary reads, "[Lanier] hath bin married 4 years/ The old Lord Chamberlain kept her longue She was maintained in great pomp ... she hath 40£ a yere & was welthy to him that married her in monie & Jewells."
In 1592, when she was 23, Lanier became pregnant with Hunsdon's child, but he paid her off with a sum of money. Lanier was then married to her first cousin once removed, Alfonso Lanier. He was a Queen's musician; church records show the marriage taking place at St Botolph's Aldgate on 18 October 1592. In 1593 Lanier gave birth to a son, Henry (died 1633).
Forman's diary entries imply that Lanier's marriage was unhappy. The diary also relates that Lanier was happier as Lord Hunsdon's mistress than as Alfonso's bride, for "a nobleman that is ded hath Loved her well & kept her and did maintain her longe but her husband hath delte hardly with her and spent and consumed her goods and she is nowe... in debt." Another of Forman's entries states that Lanier told him about having several miscarriages. Lanier gave birth to a daughter, Odillya, in 1598; she died when she was ten months old and was buried at St Botolph's.
Sometime in the period 1598-1609 Lanier and her husband moved to Hackney, but precisely where or for how long is not known.
In 1611, Lanier published her volume of poetry, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. Lanier was the first woman in England to declare herself a poet. People who read her poetry considered it radical, and many scholars today refer to its style and arguments as protofeminist.
Older years After her husband's death in 1613, Lanier supported herself by running a school. She rented a house from Edward Smith to house her students, but disputes over the rental led to her being arrested twice between 1617 and 1619. Parents then proved unwilling to send their children to a woman with a history of arrest and Lanier's aspirations of running a prosperous school came to an end.McBride, Biography of Aemilia Lanyer, 3.
Lanier's son eventually married Joyce Mansfield in 1623; they had two children, Mary (1627) and Henry (1630). Henry Carey died in October 1633. Later court documents imply that Lanier may have been providing for her two grandchildren after their father's death.
Little else is known of Lanier's life between 1619 and 1635. Court documents state that she sued her husband's brother, Clement, for money owed to her from the profits of one of her late husband's financial patents. The court ruled in Lanier's favour, requiring Clement to pay her £20. Clement could not pay immediately, and so Lanier brought the suit back to court in 1636 and in 1638. There are no records to say whether Lanier was ever paid in full, but at the time of her death, she was described as a "pensioner", i. e. someone who has a steady income or pension.
Lanier died at the age of 76 and was buried at Clerkenwell, on 3 April 1645.
Poetry
In 1611, at the age of 42, Lanier published a collection of poetry called Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail, God, King of the Jews). At the time it was still highly unusual for an Englishwoman to publish, especially in an attempt to make a living.
Lanier was only the fourth woman in the British Isles to publish poetry. Previously, Isabella Whitney had published a 38-page pamphlet of poetry partly written by her correspondents, Anne Dowriche, who was Cornish, and Elizabeth Melville, who was Scottish.
Lanier's book is the first book of substantial, original poetry written by an Englishwoman. She wrote it in the hope of attracting a patron. It was also the first potentially feminist work published in England, as all the dedications are to women and the title poem "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum", about the crucifixion of Christ, is written from a woman's point of view. Her poems advocate and praise female virtue and Christian piety, but reflect a desire for an idealised, classless world.
Influences Source analysis shows that Lanier draws on work that she mentions reading, including Edmund Spenser, Ovid, Petrarch, Chaucer, Boccaccio, Agrippa, as well as protofeminists like Veronica FrancoDana Eatman Lawrence, Class, Authority, and The Querelle Des Femmes: A Women's Community of Resistance in Early Modern Europe. PhD thesis (Texas: Texas A&M University, 2009), p. 195. and Christine de Pizan.In a Cristina Malcolmson paper, "Early Modern Women Writers and the Gender Debate: Did Aemilia Lanyer Read Christine de Pisan?" presented at the Centre for English Studies, University of London, n. d. Lanier makes use of two unpublished manuscripts and a published play translation by Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. She also shows a knowledge of stage plays by John Lyly and Samuel Daniel.Charles Whitney (2006) Early Responses to Renaissance Drama, p. 205, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press The work of Samuel Daniel informs her Masque, a theatrical form identified in her letter to Mary Sidney and resembling the Masque in The Tempest.Melanie Faith, "The Epic Structure and Subversive Messages of Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum." MA thesis (Blacksburg, Virginia: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1998).
Poems The title poem "Salve Deus Rex Judæorum" is prefaced by ten shorter dedicated poems, all for aristocratic women, beginning with the Queen. There is also a prose preface addressed to the reader, containing a vindication of "virtuous women" against their detractors. The title poem, a narrative work of over 200 stanzas, tells the story of Christ's passion satirically and almost entirely from the point of view of the women who surround him. The title comes from the words of mockery supposedly addressed to Jesus on the Cross. The satirical nature of the poem was first emphasised by Boyd Berry.Boyd Berry, "'Pardon though I have digrest': Digression as a style in Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum", M. Grossman, ed., Aemilia Lanyer; Gender, Genre and the Canon (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1998). Although the topics of virtue and religion were seen as suitable themes for women writers, Lanier's title poem has been viewed by some modern scholars as a parody of the Crucifixion, since Lanier approaches it with imagery of the Elizabethan grotesque, found, for instance, in some Shakespeare plays.Nel Rhodes, Elizabethan Grotesque (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980). Her views have been interpreted as "independent of church tradition" and heretical.Achsah Guibbory, "The Gospel According to Aemilia: Women and the Sacred", Marshall Grossman, ed. (1998) Aemelia Lanyer: Gender, Genre and the Canon (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press). Other scholars including A. L. Rowse view Lanier's conversion as genuine and her passionate devotion to Christ and to his mother as sincere. Still, comparisons have been made between Lanier's poem and religious satires that scholars have studied in Shakespearean works, including the poem The Phoenix and the TurtleJames P. Bednarz (2012) Shakespeare and the Truth of Love; The Mystery of "The Phoenix and the Turtle", New York: Palgrave Macmillan and many of the plays.