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Judaizing Emilia Lanier: Fruits of the Poisonous Tree
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Journal Article
Judaizing Emilia Lanier: Fruits of the Poisonous Tree
2024
Overview
Lanier's verifiable biography is based mainly on the wills of her parents; on the details recorded about her in the diaries (casebooks) of Simon Forman; on some few clues deduced from her book of poetry, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum; on a limited number of events involving her husband, Alfonso Lanier, and the later disposition of a lucrative patent he acquired for the weighing of hay and straw; on records relating to Lanier's attempt to set up a school; on the record of her burial; and on some scattered official documentations regarding the Bassano family as of the reigns of King Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth I and James I.3 From these we know that: Emilia Bassano was baptized on January 27, 1569 at St. Botolph's Church, Bishopsgate, daughter of a Venetian musician, Battista (Baptista) Bassano and his common-law English wife, Margaret Johnson.4 Baptista was hired in 1539 with his four brothers tojóin the court recorder consort of King Henry VIII.5 He died when Emilia was seven and sometime thereafter she moved into the household of Susan Bertie, Dowager Countess of Kent (1554-C.1596), daughter of the redoubtable Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, by her second marriage to Richard Bertie.6 The timing and circumstances of this are examined in more detail below, but she presumably left that household before the Countess's second marriage, in 1581, when Lanier was 12 (see p. 18). [...]we also learn that her marriage was not a happy one: 'her husband hath dealt hardly with her, hath spent and consumed her goods. The collection was dedicated to nine royal and noble ladies; it may be inferred from these dedications that Emilia was at some point affiliated with Margaret Clifford (née Russell), Countess of Cumberland and was now specifically seeking her patronage, and also that of her daughter, Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset.9 The mother was dedicatee of the title poem of the collection, 'Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum', which is printed with various marginal prompts, steering her to key features, most notably in the climactic section, 'The Passion of Christ'.10 The last poem in Lanier's book is 'The Description of Cooke-ham', a country-house poem eulogizing a royal manor not far from Windsor, which she associates with the Clifford ladies.11 The other dedications - to the royal ladies, Queen Anna, Princess Elizabeth and Lady Arbella Stuart, and to other notable aristocratic ladies - seem rather more speculative.
Publisher
Matthew Steggle,Matthew Steggle, Editor, EMLS
Subject
