March 7, 2022 • 31 mins
She was a patron of the arts, the first woman to publish an English-language play, and the first woman to publish pastoral poetry. Mary Sidney Herbert was also incredibly wily when it came to navigating the limitations and possibilities of being a woman in 16th century England.
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(00:43):
Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio.
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and
I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and today we are going to
talk about someone who's been on my list for a while,
but I kind of finally sidled up next to it,
and that is Mary Sydney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke.
(01:06):
She was a patron of the arts. She was the
first woman to publish an English language play, which was
a translation, and the first woman to publish pastoral poetry
in English. Which is something that she got away with
because she was writing for the Queen. Um. Mary is
really interesting because she was an incredibly wily woman in
(01:26):
her life. She definitely understood her position as a woman
in the Elizabethan world and what its limitations and possibilities were,
and she was able to carefully step around the obstacles
of that society, finding ways that she could do the
things she wanted without stirring up criticism of her behavior.
And she also was smart enough to leverage her husband's
(01:49):
wealth and her family connections to support artists, and she
became truly influential in the literary world of her time.
Just as a quick aside on her name, sometimes we'll
just call her Mary, sometimes Mary Sydney, sometimes Mary Sidney Herbert,
and that's just because you'll see her in all those
ways if you look up any biography of her um
as well as the Countess of Pembroke. So that is
(02:11):
the scoop, and we're going to talk about her her
influence on so much of the things we read today. Yeah.
So Mary Sydney was born on October fifteen, sixty one
at tick and Hill Palace in Worcestershire, near Bewdley. Her
father was Sir Henry Sydney and her mother was Mary Dudley.
At the time, Sir Henry, who had been really close
(02:33):
to King Edward the Sixth before his death, was serving
as Governor of the Marches of Wales. This is the
region of England that's right up against the Welsh border.
Mary Dudley also had deep ties to the crown. Her
father was the Earl of Northumberland and had been very
influential during Edward the Sixth Rain. When Mary was a child,
(02:55):
the family spent time in Dublin, where her father was
Lord Deputy Lieutenant of Ireland, and in pan shirt Kent,
where the Sydney family home was located, and this very
Protestant family was very close to Queen Elizabeth the First.
Her brother, Robert Dudley, is that Robert Dudley that had
been the Queen's favorite for a long time. Um Mary Dudley,
(03:17):
her mother, was a lady in waiting to the Queen
and she had actually nursed Elizabeth through smallpox, contracting it
herself in the process and becoming, at least by her
husband's account, disfigured. As a result. Mary Sydney and her
sister Ambrosia were unique for girls of their time because
they got a really well rounded and extensive education. They
(03:38):
learned the things that were fairly typical for girls, a
bit of music through singing in lute lessons, tutoring, and
activities like needlework, but they were also taught literature and
multiple languages, including French, Italian, and Latin. Mary had three brothers,
Robert Thomas and her older brother, Sir Philip Sidney, who
(03:59):
became the most well known of the siblings. You will
often see rite ups about Mary that subtitle her as
the sister of Philip Sidney, but he is not referred
to with the same sibling definer usually. Philip was seven
years older than marying he was a scholar and a poet.
He served the country in the military, and Philip was
very important in Mary's life. The two were close and
(04:21):
they would collaborate on writing projects at times, and the
events of Philip's life deeply impacted the course of Mary's life,
as we're going to discuss in just a moment. Philip
was well known and well liked in his time, but
he made the mistake of criticizing Queen Elizabeth the first
for negotiating the possibility of a marriage to a French
suitor that would have meant she was marrying a Catholic,
(04:44):
which he thought was a terrible idea, and for being
critical of the Queen, he was soon banished from court.
When Mary was fourteen, she was invited to the court
of Queen Elizabeth the First with the promise that the
Queen would take quote a special care of the teenager.
This invitation was catalyzed by the death of Mary's sister Ambrosia.
(05:06):
The Queen couched it as an invitation to get away
from Wales. It seems likely she just wanted to give
Mary a chance to just get out of a grieving home.
Mary was married not that long thereafter, less than two
years later, at the age of fifteen, to Henry Herbert,
second Earl of Pembroke, who was in his thirties. Herbert
was a friend of Mary's father, Sir Henry Sydney, and
(05:29):
this match made her one of the wealthiest women in England.
It also offered her new husband's family a lot of influence.
The new role as a wife was initially a little
bit overwhelming for her, but Mary pretty quickly hit her
stride and she realized just what she could accomplish with
her husband's influence and wealth. The couple lived primarily in
(05:50):
their residence of Wilton House in Salisbury. Wilton House had
been built on the land of the Wilton Abbey by
William Herbert, the first Earl of Pembroke. It still exists today.
It's open to the public, although the current structure has
been changed a good bit due to a fire in
the seventeenth century. They also spent time at Baynard's Castle
in London that had been built in the fourteen twenties,
(06:12):
and that structure was destroyed in the Fire of London
in sixteen sixty six. It is believed that Mary's brother
Philip may have visited Wilton House in fifteen eighty and
spent some time there, during which time he wrote the
book The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, which is dedicated to Mary.
This sort of residency in exile from court may have
(06:33):
also planted the seeds of Wilton House being a haven
for other literary minds of the day. It eventually had
the nickname the Wilton Circle that was cultivated by Mary,
although not until several years later Mary had her first
child in fifteen eighty. This was a daughter named Catherine,
who sadly didn't live to adulthood, and she had another
(06:54):
daughter named Anne, who did live to be an adult,
but still died very young. She was in her twenties.
She also had two sons, William and Philip. Catherine actually
died on the same day that Philip was born, when
she was just three. Mary's family has enjoyed a good
bit of fame throughout the centuries, aside from her brother,
(07:14):
in part because Mary and Henry Soon's were the beneficiaries
of the dedication of Shakespeare's first folio in sixty three.
The famed writer refers to them as end quote incomparable
pair of brethren. But William and Philip were not the
only members even of that immediate family to receive notice
from writers of the day. Edmund Spencer, Nicholas Bretton, and
(07:37):
Thomas Morley, among others, dedicated their works to Marry and
that is because she was a dedicated patron of poetry
and the arts in general. But her in depth work
in the arts did not start right away. So we
just mentioned the death of Mary's toddler, Catherine, that happened
in fifteen eighty four, and this was the first of
(07:58):
several deaths in Mary's life. In fifteen six, she lost
both her father and her mother within just a few
months of each other, and that was at a time
when all of her brothers were away at war. England
was trying to regain Holland, which was Protestant, from Spain,
which was Catholic. Mary was the sole member of her
family at her mother's funeral, and then this was followed
(08:20):
by the death of her dear brother Philip in October
of that same year. That happened because the wound that
he had received in battle had become infected. The death
of Philip, to whom she was so close, on top
of these other losses, was just devastating for Mary. She
took two full years to grieve, and when she emerged
(08:41):
from this period, during which she stayed exclusively in the country,
she returned to London in a literal parade, and she
was ready to really invest in the literary world. And
this time it was with the idea that she was
going to honor her brother, who had been deeply mourned
by the public as well. She commissioned elegies of Philip,
(09:01):
of which there had already been many, but patronage for
those had waned, so she kind of took up that effort,
and Abraham France, Edmund Spencer, and Thomas Moffatt all wrote
of Sir Philip Sidney under this desire of Mary's. This
is really when she established Wilton House as a nexus
point of the arts, something that was described as being
(09:22):
like a college where learning and writing were encouraged and
supported by the Duchess of Pembroke, who presided over some
of the most prolific writers of the day. And she
worked consistently to elevate the literary reputation of her brother Philip,
who she felt should be seen as one of the
greatest writers of their time, like she wanted him to
be the chaucer of their era, and this included publishing
(09:45):
a number of his works posthumously. Coming up, we'll talk
about how Mary was not just a supporter of writers,
but also did a great deal of her own writing.
We will dig into that after we pause for a
sponsor break. Mary Sidney was an incredibly smart person. She was,
(10:11):
in addition to being a fan of the arts and
particularly of literature, a contributor to the works of the
day herself and a significant one. Her translation work in
particular has been incredibly important. Her first published original work
was the Doleful Lay of Clarinda that was published in
in a Book of Elegies. She likely wrote other pieces
(10:34):
before this, but if so, we don't have any evidence
of them or any record. We do know that she
wrote this elegy well before it was published, as she
mentioned it in correspondence In is something she had written
long ago, presumably not long after her brother Philip's death.
The language of the poem is very clearly about her
coping with the loss of her brother. One Stanza speaks
(10:56):
of how the world has been robbed of its joy
in the a of a person quote death, The devourer
of all the world's delight hath robbed you and reft
from me my joy, both you and me and all
the world he quite hath robbed of joyance and left
sad annoy joy of the world. And shepherd's pride was
(11:17):
he shepherd's hope, never like again to see. And this
poem concludes with imagery of the deceased having gone to
heaven and existing in a state of bliss, while the
people who remain behind on earth are left with their
grief at their loss quote, but live thou, They're still happy,
happy spirit, and give us leave thee here thus to lament,
(11:39):
not thee that dosed thy Heaven's joy inherit, but our
own selves that here in dolor drent. Thus do we
weep and wail and wear our eyes morning and others
are own miseries. Even before she started publishing her own
original works, Mary Sidney Herbert was translating the work of others.
In she pish a translation of Philippe Duplessi mourns Discorde
(12:03):
la vilam That's Discourse on life and Death. She dated
this in May off. This was a project that her
brother Philip had actually started, but he couldn't complete it
before his death. She also translated Petrarch's trionfo de la
Morte the Triumph of Death. She translated it into terts arima.
That's the verse form that uses three line stanzas, in
(12:26):
which the first and third line of each stands a rhyme,
and then the second line rhymes with the first and
third line of the stanza that follows. Dante's divine comedy
is written in tertsarema. This project was another that offered
Mary a meditation on death, something that had touched her
life so very deeply. And one of the interesting things
that shifts in Mary's Sidney's translation from Petrarch's is that
(12:49):
she chose to give the female character of Laura more
focused than other scholars of the day. The character was
always there, she wasn't adding to it, but a lot
of English speaking scholars had simply not paid much attention
to that portion of the work. They had focused on
the earlier section of it. She also translated Robert Garnier's
mark Antoine. That translation of mark Antoine was more than
(13:11):
just a way to bring French historical drama to an
English language audience. It also brought the commentary on contemporary
politics through the use of historical storytelling over from France.
The Garnier play is based on life of Antonius, and
it's one of the larger group of biographies that Plutarch
wrote that are grouped under the umbrella title of Plutarch's
(13:34):
Lives or parallel Lives. So for context of why this
translation was important in the fifteen nineties in England, Elizabeth
the First was four decades into her reign. She was
in her sixties she was embroiled in a financial conundrum
because England was deeply in debt from war and the
economy was struggling. There had also been some issues with crops,
(13:56):
the conflict between Catholics and Protestants was ongoing, and Elizabeth
was seen in a far less favorable light than she
had enjoyed earlier in her reign. People were starting to
wonder what is going to happen when Elizabeth dies because
there is some discord and strife, and one of the
greatest fears that there was going on at the time
was that England would plunge into a civil war. So
(14:17):
the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, whose relationship was
connected to the civil War of Actium, probably felt like
a cautionary tale in late sixteenth century England. And in
addition to translating works of this nature, Mary Sidney Henry
began to encourage writer she patronized to create similar works.
(14:38):
One of the translations that Mary Sidney is most well
known for is another project that her brother Philip had
been working on before his death. It was the translation
and poetic adaptation of Psalm's forty four through a hundred
and fifty, with the intent that they would be appealing
for personal devotional use. It's believed that Mary was probably
(14:59):
working on this alongside her brother from the very beginning.
To develop this work, Mary studied numerous editions of the
Bible and existing translations in Hebrew, Latin, and English, and
worked to create verse versions of the songs that were
both true to the original text and esthetically appealing, and
(15:19):
how they formed versus. This was to be clear a
massive project. Psalm one nineteen, for example, contains one hundred
seventy six verses. Those verses are grouped into twenty two sections,
and each begins with a different letter representing the twenty
two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. For example, the section
(15:40):
beginning with oh starts oh what a lantern? What a
lamp of light? Is thy pure word to me? To
clear my paths and guide my goings? Right? I swear
and swear again I of the statutes, will observer be
thou justly dosed? Ordain? There are more than a hundred
and twenty different verse forms the work, which have come
(16:01):
to be known as the Sydney Psalms. They weren't published
in Mary's lifetime, but circulated only in manuscript Some modern
scholars have viewed these psalms as a sacred parody, meaning
that they used the poetry style more associated with secular
romantic verse as a means of popularizing religious poetry. There
(16:22):
are in the original manuscript also two additional poems. One
is written in honor of Mary's brother Philip, and there
is a dedication poem to Queen Elizabeth. Though this is
considered an important work and was recognized for its achievement
in its time, Mary refers to this whole project as
quote half maimed, because she was piecing together and editing,
(16:44):
and reworking the efforts of her brother, who she felt
was absolutely matchless in skill. In her poem about him,
to the Angel Spirit of the most excellent Sir Philip Sidney,
she writes, behold, oh that thou were now to behold
this finished, long, perfect actions, part begun the rest, but
peaced as left by the undone pardon, blessed soul, presumption
(17:07):
overbold if love and zeal hath to this error, run
to zealous love, love that hath never done, nor can enough,
though justly here controlled. There was a dedication to Queen Elizabeth,
which is titled to the thrice sacred Queen Elizabeth, but
you'll often see it referred to you by the opening words,
which are even now that care and this Mary maintained humility,
(17:31):
recognizing that the Queen is a woman whose time is
filled with responsibilities and who acts as an agent whose
power had been bestowed by God. Mary also makes it clear, though,
that her brother died for the Protestant cause in service
to the Queen. The second stanza of this poem conveys
the hope that the Queen, who Mary did seem to
(17:51):
genuinely care for for her entire life, will accept this dedication,
writing quote, yet I dare so as humbleness may dare perish,
some hope they shall acceptance. Find not weighing less thy state,
lighter thy care, but knowing more thy grace, abler thy mind,
what heavenly powers the highest thrown assigned assigned the goodness
(18:13):
suiting that degree, And by thy strength thy burden so
defined to others, toil is exercised to the This was
not the only poem that Mary wrote for Elizabeth. She
penned another and anticipation of the Queen's visit to the
Pembroke Estates in This was titled a dialogue between two
shepherds they not and Peers and praise of Austraia, and
(18:37):
this poem Australia clearly represents the Queen and the two
shepherds debating the best way to praise Austraia or sitting
as proxy for the poets, sort of working out within
herself how best to compliment someone like Elizabeth. In the end,
words are deemed not worthy, as the poem concludes with
Piers saying, words from conceit do only eyes above conceit?
(19:01):
Her honor flies, but silence not can praise her. So
there were a couple of reasons that Mary Sidney Herbert
would want to ensure Elizabeth's favored during this time uh
and why she might have been writing such very, very
crazy things to her, And she pursued this favor in
letters to the Queen as well as in her poetry.
(19:22):
For one, her husband, the Earl of Pembroke, was nearing
the end of his life, and for another, her son
William was almost an adult and she was hoping that
the Queen would grant him a place at court. The
ill health of Henry Herbert was making things especially tricky,
because if he died before William came of age, which
would happen in April of sixt one. Mary worried that
(19:43):
she and the family and the estates would be at
the mercy of the Court of Wards, and indeed Mary's
husband died in January, several months before William's twenty first birthday.
What happened next is a true mess, and we will
explain after we hear from the sponsor that keeps stuffy
meth in history class going. So, this precarious position that
(20:13):
Mary felt her family's future was in got a lot
worse in a hurry in early sixteen o one, having
little to do with the fact that Henry Herbert had died.
Mary's son, William, had a sexual relationship with one of
the Queen's maids of honor, that was a young woman
named Mary Fitton. Mary got pregnant and William did not
behave honorably per the mores of the day, although he
(20:36):
did acknowledge that the child was his, but he abandoned
Mary Fitton, and as a consequence, he was arrested and
incarcerated at Fleet Prison. Queen Elizabeth was understandably furious, and
this tank to any hope that Mary Sydney had of
using her connection to the throne to secure a place
at court for her son. William and his mother became estranged.
(20:59):
The Sydneys were not welcome at court. Mary Fitton's child
was born but did not live, and William spent his
time in prison writing. He was eventually released due to
ill health, but he was banished from court. That was
until King James took the throne of England in sixteen
o three. That whole ordeal represented a turning point in
(21:20):
Mary Sydney's life. She had lost her influence with the Queen,
and then once King James was in place, she just
became irrelevant. She became busy with managing issues of family property,
and she seems to have stopped writing. We should mention
that some of those property issues involved stopping uprisings by
the residents who didn't like the way the land had
(21:41):
been parceled out to them. She also was not the
least bit shy about being litigious, and she was very
quick to bring suits against anyone she thought had wronged her. Yeah,
we're speaking very very praisingly of her in many ways,
but I don't want to be clear that she was
at this point a rich count who was putting down
peasant uprisings, who were just trying to get a fair shake,
(22:05):
maybe suing her tenants. It sounds like right. It was
like I think you stole from me. It was a
lot of petty power moves um. In the early six hundreds,
post Elizabeth and in the reign of King James, Mary
Sidney saw her sons married once the scandal of his
involvement with Mary Fitton had faded in the memory of
(22:27):
the court. William got married to Mary Talbot. There are
so many Mary's. Mary Talbot's father was the Earl of Shrewsbury.
Philip got married to Susan Daver. Mary's daughter Anne was betrothed,
something Mary had arranged, but after several postponements to the
wedding due to illness and died, most likely in the
(22:47):
early winter of sixteen o six. Documentation of Mary Sydney's
life after Anne's death is a little sparse for several years,
but by the mid sixteen teens it seems like her
life settled a bit. Her sons had achieved good positions
at court. They had taken up her mantle as patrons
of the arts. So Mary, who had reconciled by this
(23:09):
point with William seems to have taken advantage of her
later years to mostly focus on enjoying herself. Yeah. There
are lots of fun stories about her during this time,
where she's reported as smoking and dancing and shooting pistols
for fun. Uh. She is also rumored to have possibly
had a romance with Sir Matthew Lister, who was her
(23:29):
doctor and was younger than her. The King, even though
she wasn't influential at court but her kids were, had
granted her land in Bedfordshire, and she had a home
built there called Hotton House, which she adorned with her
own crest, which she designed. It incorporated the letters M
and H for Mary Herbert and featured a bear, the
symbol of the deadly side of the family, and a porcupine,
(23:51):
the symbol used by the Sydneys. The King visited Hotton
House in sixteen o one, giving recognition to Mary as
the mother of two imports men of the Court. The
ruins of Hotten House still exists today and that site
is open to the public. I think you can only
go during daylight hours. Mary also spent time in London,
where she retained a second residence. Mary died of smallpox
(24:14):
on September one in London, that was a month away
from her sixtieth birthday. She died in her London home
and was buried at Salzbury Cathedral under the choir steps,
alongside her husband. Eventually, William and Philip were also laid
to rest there. Unfortunately, as well documented as Mary's life
(24:34):
is in many ways, there are still huge gaps in
her record. For example, we don't have any of her
writing work from after the fifteen nineties, although she lived
for more than two decades after that, and she is
believed to have continued to exchange manuscripts with other writers,
even though she probably wasn't writing at the rate she
had been before. We don't have many of her personal letters,
(24:56):
just some business correspondents, and this is probably because, as
we mentioned earlier, Wilton House burned in the seventeenth century,
so any of her personal effects that had been stored
there were likely destroyed at that time, and her secondary residence,
Baynard's Castle, also had a fire in the seventeenth century.
We mentioned it burned during the Great Fire, so we
can assume the same thing happened to any of her writing.
(25:19):
That may have been on hand. There one aspect of
her life's work that remains a little underdocumented. It's difficult
to actually proves their interest in science, particularly chemistry and alchemy.
She's said to have had a lab at Wilton House
and to have devised a recipe for disappearing inc using
bismuth and salt. This is mostly sourced from a seventeen
(25:42):
fifty five book that was published in Germany, allegedly translated
from a writing in English by somebody who claimed to
know Mary and Philip Sydney. This includes a secret procedure
which creates ink that disappears. The author says that he
has two documents create did by Mary Sydney Herbert using
this inc. One depicting the Tower of London and the
(26:05):
other that's a fortress floor plan. And to see the ink,
the reader had to hold the paper near a heat source.
It would appear, according to this writing, in a greenish color,
and then it would fade away after a few hours.
And that recipe for disappearing ink, which is in that book,
it works. It's a real recipe for disappearing inc. But
we we don't know for sure if it was Mary's
(26:26):
doing or not. That same book also claims that Mary
had developed something quite charming, which was a musical code
assigning certain bars to letters so that she could play
a tune on the violin that was actually a musical
representation of a piece of writing. There is also an
account from Mary's time in Salisbury that indicates that she
(26:46):
tried to hire a very skilled chemist named Mr Boston,
who was believed to be looking for the elusive Philosopher's Stone,
to work exclusively at Wilton House, but he declined. She did, however,
manage to employ Sir Walter Raleigh's half brother Adrian Gilbert,
to work in her chemistry lab. Mary Sidney Herbert, Duchess
of Pembroke had garnered some esteem during her life, but
(27:10):
that seemed to diminish for a while after her death.
Before the twentieth century, it was common to see most
mentions of her claim she had a rivalry with Shakespeare
that's not really supported by any actual record, and a
lot of what she wrote herself was rumored to have
really been the work of men. There's an irony here,
(27:31):
and that she had taken a personal tragedy, which was
the death of her beloved brother, to seize a rare
opportunity for a woman to achieve a literary career in
the pursuit of honoring the memory of a man. In
the twentieth century, however, scholars have looked more closely at
Mary Sidney's life, and they've been able to reveal that
she was formidable. She was a woman who was able
(27:53):
to take charge when needed and work in the interest
of her family, and she also has emerged as one
of the most important literally or figures of the Elizabethan era.
There are scholars in recent history that make the case
that she may have actually been the author of shakespeare Sonnets,
pointing out that the narrative plot of the Sonnets, the
poet being romantically involved with a younger man who has
(28:14):
feared to be in love with someone else, a married woman,
actually parallel the events of Mary's life after her husband died,
when she was close with and rumored to be involved with,
Sir Matthew Lister. The very fascinating little side tale we
can talk a little bit about in our behind the scenes. Um. Yeah,
she's an interesting one. Interesting interesting Mary Sydney. Do you
(28:37):
have some listener mail for us? I do, and it
features one of my favorite things which is pets uh uh.
This is from our listener Brandy, who writes, Ladies, I
have finally done it. Today I can proudly say I
have finished the archive of stuff you missed in history class.
I started listening over two and a half years ago.
(28:58):
I listen anytime I'm in my car myself. I started
with Josh and Candice when Josh pretended to know nothing
about history, and remember when he finally had enough of
himself that he could no longer stand lying to us.
I hail from a place I personally love, home in Louisiana,
and was so pleased when you talked about the Rugaroo
Festival that I sent the podcast to the organizers of
(29:19):
the festival, only to realize they probably had already heard
about it since I was listening a year after it
was published. I look forward to attending the festival this year,
whom you two fingers crossed. It was canceled last year
due to Hurricane Ida, but I was impressed with the organizers.
They canceled the festival and immediately started helping our community
to recover from the storm. I hear the question why
do you still live there after every storm? There are
(29:41):
so many answers to this question, but the main one
for me is this is our home. A large part
of the Cajun culture is the importance of family. We
stay here because our family is here and this is
our home. Anyway, I'm off my soapbox. Thank you both
for the amazing podcast and keep up the good work.
And she has included pup be pictures. These these puppies
(30:03):
are in portraits where they look like historical figures and
it is one of the best, she says. The matriarch
is Luna, and the three boys are her offspring, Taft, Rutherford,
and Fillmore named after presidents per my niece's request. Sincerely, Brandy,
these pictures are so stinking cute. I can't deal with it.
I love it, um and I'm I'm just delighted. I
(30:26):
you know, I grew up on the Gulf Coast, so
I understand that question of why do people live there,
and it's just it's a beautiful place, and if it's
your home, it's your home. That's that's what's up. Almost
anywhere has some weird thing that comes with it, whether
that be earthquakes or fires or terrible cold or whatever.
Everybody's got a different thing um, Brandy, thank you for
(30:48):
writing us this email. Congratulations on your PhD and Stuff
you Missed in History Class, um, and thank you for
sitting us those pictures because they delight. If you would
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(00:43):
Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio.
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and
I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and today we are going to
talk about someone who's been on my list for a while,
but I kind of finally sidled up next to it,
and that is Mary Sydney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke.
(01:06):
She was a patron of the arts. She was the
first woman to publish an English language play, which was
a translation, and the first woman to publish pastoral poetry
in English. Which is something that she got away with
because she was writing for the Queen. Um. Mary is
really interesting because she was an incredibly wily woman in
(01:26):
her life. She definitely understood her position as a woman
in the Elizabethan world and what its limitations and possibilities were,
and she was able to carefully step around the obstacles
of that society, finding ways that she could do the
things she wanted without stirring up criticism of her behavior.
And she also was smart enough to leverage her husband's
(01:49):
wealth and her family connections to support artists, and she
became truly influential in the literary world of her time.
Just as a quick aside on her name, sometimes we'll
just call her Mary, sometimes Mary Sydney, sometimes Mary Sidney Herbert,
and that's just because you'll see her in all those
ways if you look up any biography of her um
as well as the Countess of Pembroke. So that is
(02:11):
the scoop, and we're going to talk about her her
influence on so much of the things we read today. Yeah.
So Mary Sydney was born on October fifteen, sixty one
at tick and Hill Palace in Worcestershire, near Bewdley. Her
father was Sir Henry Sydney and her mother was Mary Dudley.
At the time, Sir Henry, who had been really close
(02:33):
to King Edward the Sixth before his death, was serving
as Governor of the Marches of Wales. This is the
region of England that's right up against the Welsh border.
Mary Dudley also had deep ties to the crown. Her
father was the Earl of Northumberland and had been very
influential during Edward the Sixth Rain. When Mary was a child,
(02:55):
the family spent time in Dublin, where her father was
Lord Deputy Lieutenant of Ireland, and in pan shirt Kent,
where the Sydney family home was located, and this very
Protestant family was very close to Queen Elizabeth the First.
Her brother, Robert Dudley, is that Robert Dudley that had
been the Queen's favorite for a long time. Um Mary Dudley,
(03:17):
her mother, was a lady in waiting to the Queen
and she had actually nursed Elizabeth through smallpox, contracting it
herself in the process and becoming, at least by her
husband's account, disfigured. As a result. Mary Sydney and her
sister Ambrosia were unique for girls of their time because
they got a really well rounded and extensive education. They
(03:38):
learned the things that were fairly typical for girls, a
bit of music through singing in lute lessons, tutoring, and
activities like needlework, but they were also taught literature and
multiple languages, including French, Italian, and Latin. Mary had three brothers,
Robert Thomas and her older brother, Sir Philip Sidney, who
(03:59):
became the most well known of the siblings. You will
often see rite ups about Mary that subtitle her as
the sister of Philip Sidney, but he is not referred
to with the same sibling definer usually. Philip was seven
years older than marying he was a scholar and a poet.
He served the country in the military, and Philip was
very important in Mary's life. The two were close and
(04:21):
they would collaborate on writing projects at times, and the
events of Philip's life deeply impacted the course of Mary's life,
as we're going to discuss in just a moment. Philip
was well known and well liked in his time, but
he made the mistake of criticizing Queen Elizabeth the first
for negotiating the possibility of a marriage to a French
suitor that would have meant she was marrying a Catholic,
(04:44):
which he thought was a terrible idea, and for being
critical of the Queen, he was soon banished from court.
When Mary was fourteen, she was invited to the court
of Queen Elizabeth the First with the promise that the
Queen would take quote a special care of the teenager.
This invitation was catalyzed by the death of Mary's sister Ambrosia.
(05:06):
The Queen couched it as an invitation to get away
from Wales. It seems likely she just wanted to give
Mary a chance to just get out of a grieving home.
Mary was married not that long thereafter, less than two
years later, at the age of fifteen, to Henry Herbert,
second Earl of Pembroke, who was in his thirties. Herbert
was a friend of Mary's father, Sir Henry Sydney, and
(05:29):
this match made her one of the wealthiest women in England.
It also offered her new husband's family a lot of influence.
The new role as a wife was initially a little
bit overwhelming for her, but Mary pretty quickly hit her
stride and she realized just what she could accomplish with
her husband's influence and wealth. The couple lived primarily in
(05:50):
their residence of Wilton House in Salisbury. Wilton House had
been built on the land of the Wilton Abbey by
William Herbert, the first Earl of Pembroke. It still exists today.
It's open to the public, although the current structure has
been changed a good bit due to a fire in
the seventeenth century. They also spent time at Baynard's Castle
in London that had been built in the fourteen twenties,
(06:12):
and that structure was destroyed in the Fire of London
in sixteen sixty six. It is believed that Mary's brother
Philip may have visited Wilton House in fifteen eighty and
spent some time there, during which time he wrote the
book The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, which is dedicated to Mary.
This sort of residency in exile from court may have
(06:33):
also planted the seeds of Wilton House being a haven
for other literary minds of the day. It eventually had
the nickname the Wilton Circle that was cultivated by Mary,
although not until several years later Mary had her first
child in fifteen eighty. This was a daughter named Catherine,
who sadly didn't live to adulthood, and she had another
(06:54):
daughter named Anne, who did live to be an adult,
but still died very young. She was in her twenties.
She also had two sons, William and Philip. Catherine actually
died on the same day that Philip was born, when
she was just three. Mary's family has enjoyed a good
bit of fame throughout the centuries, aside from her brother,
(07:14):
in part because Mary and Henry Soon's were the beneficiaries
of the dedication of Shakespeare's first folio in sixty three.
The famed writer refers to them as end quote incomparable
pair of brethren. But William and Philip were not the
only members even of that immediate family to receive notice
from writers of the day. Edmund Spencer, Nicholas Bretton, and
(07:37):
Thomas Morley, among others, dedicated their works to Marry and
that is because she was a dedicated patron of poetry
and the arts in general. But her in depth work
in the arts did not start right away. So we
just mentioned the death of Mary's toddler, Catherine, that happened
in fifteen eighty four, and this was the first of
(07:58):
several deaths in Mary's life. In fifteen six, she lost
both her father and her mother within just a few
months of each other, and that was at a time
when all of her brothers were away at war. England
was trying to regain Holland, which was Protestant, from Spain,
which was Catholic. Mary was the sole member of her
family at her mother's funeral, and then this was followed
(08:20):
by the death of her dear brother Philip in October
of that same year. That happened because the wound that
he had received in battle had become infected. The death
of Philip, to whom she was so close, on top
of these other losses, was just devastating for Mary. She
took two full years to grieve, and when she emerged
(08:41):
from this period, during which she stayed exclusively in the country,
she returned to London in a literal parade, and she
was ready to really invest in the literary world. And
this time it was with the idea that she was
going to honor her brother, who had been deeply mourned
by the public as well. She commissioned elegies of Philip,
(09:01):
of which there had already been many, but patronage for
those had waned, so she kind of took up that effort,
and Abraham France, Edmund Spencer, and Thomas Moffatt all wrote
of Sir Philip Sidney under this desire of Mary's. This
is really when she established Wilton House as a nexus
point of the arts, something that was described as being
(09:22):
like a college where learning and writing were encouraged and
supported by the Duchess of Pembroke, who presided over some
of the most prolific writers of the day. And she
worked consistently to elevate the literary reputation of her brother Philip,
who she felt should be seen as one of the
greatest writers of their time, like she wanted him to
be the chaucer of their era, and this included publishing
(09:45):
a number of his works posthumously. Coming up, we'll talk
about how Mary was not just a supporter of writers,
but also did a great deal of her own writing.
We will dig into that after we pause for a
sponsor break. Mary Sidney was an incredibly smart person. She was,
(10:11):
in addition to being a fan of the arts and
particularly of literature, a contributor to the works of the
day herself and a significant one. Her translation work in
particular has been incredibly important. Her first published original work
was the Doleful Lay of Clarinda that was published in
in a Book of Elegies. She likely wrote other pieces
(10:34):
before this, but if so, we don't have any evidence
of them or any record. We do know that she
wrote this elegy well before it was published, as she
mentioned it in correspondence In is something she had written
long ago, presumably not long after her brother Philip's death.
The language of the poem is very clearly about her
coping with the loss of her brother. One Stanza speaks
(10:56):
of how the world has been robbed of its joy
in the a of a person quote death, The devourer
of all the world's delight hath robbed you and reft
from me my joy, both you and me and all
the world he quite hath robbed of joyance and left
sad annoy joy of the world. And shepherd's pride was
(11:17):
he shepherd's hope, never like again to see. And this
poem concludes with imagery of the deceased having gone to
heaven and existing in a state of bliss, while the
people who remain behind on earth are left with their
grief at their loss quote, but live thou, They're still happy,
happy spirit, and give us leave thee here thus to lament,
(11:39):
not thee that dosed thy Heaven's joy inherit, but our
own selves that here in dolor drent. Thus do we
weep and wail and wear our eyes morning and others
are own miseries. Even before she started publishing her own
original works, Mary Sidney Herbert was translating the work of others.
In she pish a translation of Philippe Duplessi mourns Discorde
(12:03):
la vilam That's Discourse on life and Death. She dated
this in May off. This was a project that her
brother Philip had actually started, but he couldn't complete it
before his death. She also translated Petrarch's trionfo de la
Morte the Triumph of Death. She translated it into terts arima.
That's the verse form that uses three line stanzas, in
(12:26):
which the first and third line of each stands a rhyme,
and then the second line rhymes with the first and
third line of the stanza that follows. Dante's divine comedy
is written in tertsarema. This project was another that offered
Mary a meditation on death, something that had touched her
life so very deeply. And one of the interesting things
that shifts in Mary's Sidney's translation from Petrarch's is that
(12:49):
she chose to give the female character of Laura more
focused than other scholars of the day. The character was
always there, she wasn't adding to it, but a lot
of English speaking scholars had simply not paid much attention
to that portion of the work. They had focused on
the earlier section of it. She also translated Robert Garnier's
mark Antoine. That translation of mark Antoine was more than
(13:11):
just a way to bring French historical drama to an
English language audience. It also brought the commentary on contemporary
politics through the use of historical storytelling over from France.
The Garnier play is based on life of Antonius, and
it's one of the larger group of biographies that Plutarch
wrote that are grouped under the umbrella title of Plutarch's
(13:34):
Lives or parallel Lives. So for context of why this
translation was important in the fifteen nineties in England, Elizabeth
the First was four decades into her reign. She was
in her sixties she was embroiled in a financial conundrum
because England was deeply in debt from war and the
economy was struggling. There had also been some issues with crops,
(13:56):
the conflict between Catholics and Protestants was ongoing, and Elizabeth
was seen in a far less favorable light than she
had enjoyed earlier in her reign. People were starting to
wonder what is going to happen when Elizabeth dies because
there is some discord and strife, and one of the
greatest fears that there was going on at the time
was that England would plunge into a civil war. So
(14:17):
the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, whose relationship was
connected to the civil War of Actium, probably felt like
a cautionary tale in late sixteenth century England. And in
addition to translating works of this nature, Mary Sidney Henry
began to encourage writer she patronized to create similar works.
(14:38):
One of the translations that Mary Sidney is most well
known for is another project that her brother Philip had
been working on before his death. It was the translation
and poetic adaptation of Psalm's forty four through a hundred
and fifty, with the intent that they would be appealing
for personal devotional use. It's believed that Mary was probably
(14:59):
working on this alongside her brother from the very beginning.
To develop this work, Mary studied numerous editions of the
Bible and existing translations in Hebrew, Latin, and English, and
worked to create verse versions of the songs that were
both true to the original text and esthetically appealing, and
(15:19):
how they formed versus. This was to be clear a
massive project. Psalm one nineteen, for example, contains one hundred
seventy six verses. Those verses are grouped into twenty two sections,
and each begins with a different letter representing the twenty
two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. For example, the section
(15:40):
beginning with oh starts oh what a lantern? What a
lamp of light? Is thy pure word to me? To
clear my paths and guide my goings? Right? I swear
and swear again I of the statutes, will observer be
thou justly dosed? Ordain? There are more than a hundred
and twenty different verse forms the work, which have come
(16:01):
to be known as the Sydney Psalms. They weren't published
in Mary's lifetime, but circulated only in manuscript Some modern
scholars have viewed these psalms as a sacred parody, meaning
that they used the poetry style more associated with secular
romantic verse as a means of popularizing religious poetry. There
(16:22):
are in the original manuscript also two additional poems. One
is written in honor of Mary's brother Philip, and there
is a dedication poem to Queen Elizabeth. Though this is
considered an important work and was recognized for its achievement
in its time, Mary refers to this whole project as
quote half maimed, because she was piecing together and editing,
(16:44):
and reworking the efforts of her brother, who she felt
was absolutely matchless in skill. In her poem about him,
to the Angel Spirit of the most excellent Sir Philip Sidney,
she writes, behold, oh that thou were now to behold
this finished, long, perfect actions, part begun the rest, but
peaced as left by the undone pardon, blessed soul, presumption
(17:07):
overbold if love and zeal hath to this error, run
to zealous love, love that hath never done, nor can enough,
though justly here controlled. There was a dedication to Queen Elizabeth,
which is titled to the thrice sacred Queen Elizabeth, but
you'll often see it referred to you by the opening words,
which are even now that care and this Mary maintained humility,
(17:31):
recognizing that the Queen is a woman whose time is
filled with responsibilities and who acts as an agent whose
power had been bestowed by God. Mary also makes it clear, though,
that her brother died for the Protestant cause in service
to the Queen. The second stanza of this poem conveys
the hope that the Queen, who Mary did seem to
(17:51):
genuinely care for for her entire life, will accept this dedication,
writing quote, yet I dare so as humbleness may dare perish,
some hope they shall acceptance. Find not weighing less thy state,
lighter thy care, but knowing more thy grace, abler thy mind,
what heavenly powers the highest thrown assigned assigned the goodness
(18:13):
suiting that degree, And by thy strength thy burden so
defined to others, toil is exercised to the This was
not the only poem that Mary wrote for Elizabeth. She
penned another and anticipation of the Queen's visit to the
Pembroke Estates in This was titled a dialogue between two
shepherds they not and Peers and praise of Austraia, and
(18:37):
this poem Australia clearly represents the Queen and the two
shepherds debating the best way to praise Austraia or sitting
as proxy for the poets, sort of working out within
herself how best to compliment someone like Elizabeth. In the end,
words are deemed not worthy, as the poem concludes with
Piers saying, words from conceit do only eyes above conceit?
(19:01):
Her honor flies, but silence not can praise her. So
there were a couple of reasons that Mary Sidney Herbert
would want to ensure Elizabeth's favored during this time uh
and why she might have been writing such very, very
crazy things to her, And she pursued this favor in
letters to the Queen as well as in her poetry.
(19:22):
For one, her husband, the Earl of Pembroke, was nearing
the end of his life, and for another, her son
William was almost an adult and she was hoping that
the Queen would grant him a place at court. The
ill health of Henry Herbert was making things especially tricky,
because if he died before William came of age, which
would happen in April of sixt one. Mary worried that
(19:43):
she and the family and the estates would be at
the mercy of the Court of Wards, and indeed Mary's
husband died in January, several months before William's twenty first birthday.
What happened next is a true mess, and we will
explain after we hear from the sponsor that keeps stuffy
meth in history class going. So, this precarious position that
(20:13):
Mary felt her family's future was in got a lot
worse in a hurry in early sixteen o one, having
little to do with the fact that Henry Herbert had died.
Mary's son, William, had a sexual relationship with one of
the Queen's maids of honor, that was a young woman
named Mary Fitton. Mary got pregnant and William did not
behave honorably per the mores of the day, although he
(20:36):
did acknowledge that the child was his, but he abandoned
Mary Fitton, and as a consequence, he was arrested and
incarcerated at Fleet Prison. Queen Elizabeth was understandably furious, and
this tank to any hope that Mary Sydney had of
using her connection to the throne to secure a place
at court for her son. William and his mother became estranged.
(20:59):
The Sydneys were not welcome at court. Mary Fitton's child
was born but did not live, and William spent his
time in prison writing. He was eventually released due to
ill health, but he was banished from court. That was
until King James took the throne of England in sixteen
o three. That whole ordeal represented a turning point in
(21:20):
Mary Sydney's life. She had lost her influence with the Queen,
and then once King James was in place, she just
became irrelevant. She became busy with managing issues of family property,
and she seems to have stopped writing. We should mention
that some of those property issues involved stopping uprisings by
the residents who didn't like the way the land had
(21:41):
been parceled out to them. She also was not the
least bit shy about being litigious, and she was very
quick to bring suits against anyone she thought had wronged her. Yeah,
we're speaking very very praisingly of her in many ways,
but I don't want to be clear that she was
at this point a rich count who was putting down
peasant uprisings, who were just trying to get a fair shake,
(22:05):
maybe suing her tenants. It sounds like right. It was
like I think you stole from me. It was a
lot of petty power moves um. In the early six hundreds,
post Elizabeth and in the reign of King James, Mary
Sidney saw her sons married once the scandal of his
involvement with Mary Fitton had faded in the memory of
(22:27):
the court. William got married to Mary Talbot. There are
so many Mary's. Mary Talbot's father was the Earl of Shrewsbury.
Philip got married to Susan Daver. Mary's daughter Anne was betrothed,
something Mary had arranged, but after several postponements to the
wedding due to illness and died, most likely in the
(22:47):
early winter of sixteen o six. Documentation of Mary Sydney's
life after Anne's death is a little sparse for several years,
but by the mid sixteen teens it seems like her
life settled a bit. Her sons had achieved good positions
at court. They had taken up her mantle as patrons
of the arts. So Mary, who had reconciled by this
(23:09):
point with William seems to have taken advantage of her
later years to mostly focus on enjoying herself. Yeah. There
are lots of fun stories about her during this time,
where she's reported as smoking and dancing and shooting pistols
for fun. Uh. She is also rumored to have possibly
had a romance with Sir Matthew Lister, who was her
(23:29):
doctor and was younger than her. The King, even though
she wasn't influential at court but her kids were, had
granted her land in Bedfordshire, and she had a home
built there called Hotton House, which she adorned with her
own crest, which she designed. It incorporated the letters M
and H for Mary Herbert and featured a bear, the
symbol of the deadly side of the family, and a porcupine,
(23:51):
the symbol used by the Sydneys. The King visited Hotton
House in sixteen o one, giving recognition to Mary as
the mother of two imports men of the Court. The
ruins of Hotten House still exists today and that site
is open to the public. I think you can only
go during daylight hours. Mary also spent time in London,
where she retained a second residence. Mary died of smallpox
(24:14):
on September one in London, that was a month away
from her sixtieth birthday. She died in her London home
and was buried at Salzbury Cathedral under the choir steps,
alongside her husband. Eventually, William and Philip were also laid
to rest there. Unfortunately, as well documented as Mary's life
(24:34):
is in many ways, there are still huge gaps in
her record. For example, we don't have any of her
writing work from after the fifteen nineties, although she lived
for more than two decades after that, and she is
believed to have continued to exchange manuscripts with other writers,
even though she probably wasn't writing at the rate she
had been before. We don't have many of her personal letters,
(24:56):
just some business correspondents, and this is probably because, as
we mentioned earlier, Wilton House burned in the seventeenth century,
so any of her personal effects that had been stored
there were likely destroyed at that time, and her secondary residence,
Baynard's Castle, also had a fire in the seventeenth century.
We mentioned it burned during the Great Fire, so we
can assume the same thing happened to any of her writing.
(25:19):
That may have been on hand. There one aspect of
her life's work that remains a little underdocumented. It's difficult
to actually proves their interest in science, particularly chemistry and alchemy.
She's said to have had a lab at Wilton House
and to have devised a recipe for disappearing inc using
bismuth and salt. This is mostly sourced from a seventeen
(25:42):
fifty five book that was published in Germany, allegedly translated
from a writing in English by somebody who claimed to
know Mary and Philip Sydney. This includes a secret procedure
which creates ink that disappears. The author says that he
has two documents create did by Mary Sydney Herbert using
this inc. One depicting the Tower of London and the
(26:05):
other that's a fortress floor plan. And to see the ink,
the reader had to hold the paper near a heat source.
It would appear, according to this writing, in a greenish color,
and then it would fade away after a few hours.
And that recipe for disappearing ink, which is in that book,
it works. It's a real recipe for disappearing inc. But
we we don't know for sure if it was Mary's
(26:26):
doing or not. That same book also claims that Mary
had developed something quite charming, which was a musical code
assigning certain bars to letters so that she could play
a tune on the violin that was actually a musical
representation of a piece of writing. There is also an
account from Mary's time in Salisbury that indicates that she
(26:46):
tried to hire a very skilled chemist named Mr Boston,
who was believed to be looking for the elusive Philosopher's Stone,
to work exclusively at Wilton House, but he declined. She did, however,
manage to employ Sir Walter Raleigh's half brother Adrian Gilbert,
to work in her chemistry lab. Mary Sidney Herbert, Duchess
of Pembroke had garnered some esteem during her life, but
(27:10):
that seemed to diminish for a while after her death.
Before the twentieth century, it was common to see most
mentions of her claim she had a rivalry with Shakespeare
that's not really supported by any actual record, and a
lot of what she wrote herself was rumored to have
really been the work of men. There's an irony here,
(27:31):
and that she had taken a personal tragedy, which was
the death of her beloved brother, to seize a rare
opportunity for a woman to achieve a literary career in
the pursuit of honoring the memory of a man. In
the twentieth century, however, scholars have looked more closely at
Mary Sidney's life, and they've been able to reveal that
she was formidable. She was a woman who was able
(27:53):
to take charge when needed and work in the interest
of her family, and she also has emerged as one
of the most important literally or figures of the Elizabethan era.
There are scholars in recent history that make the case
that she may have actually been the author of shakespeare Sonnets,
pointing out that the narrative plot of the Sonnets, the
poet being romantically involved with a younger man who has
(28:14):
feared to be in love with someone else, a married woman,
actually parallel the events of Mary's life after her husband died,
when she was close with and rumored to be involved with,
Sir Matthew Lister. The very fascinating little side tale we
can talk a little bit about in our behind the scenes. Um. Yeah,
she's an interesting one. Interesting interesting Mary Sydney. Do you
(28:37):
have some listener mail for us? I do, and it
features one of my favorite things which is pets uh uh.
This is from our listener Brandy, who writes, Ladies, I
have finally done it. Today I can proudly say I
have finished the archive of stuff you missed in history class.
I started listening over two and a half years ago.
(28:58):
I listen anytime I'm in my car myself. I started
with Josh and Candice when Josh pretended to know nothing
about history, and remember when he finally had enough of
himself that he could no longer stand lying to us.
I hail from a place I personally love, home in Louisiana,
and was so pleased when you talked about the Rugaroo
Festival that I sent the podcast to the organizers of
(29:19):
the festival, only to realize they probably had already heard
about it since I was listening a year after it
was published. I look forward to attending the festival this year,
whom you two fingers crossed. It was canceled last year
due to Hurricane Ida, but I was impressed with the organizers.
They canceled the festival and immediately started helping our community
to recover from the storm. I hear the question why
do you still live there after every storm? There are
(29:41):
so many answers to this question, but the main one
for me is this is our home. A large part
of the Cajun culture is the importance of family. We
stay here because our family is here and this is
our home. Anyway, I'm off my soapbox. Thank you both
for the amazing podcast and keep up the good work.
And she has included pup be pictures. These these puppies
(30:03):
are in portraits where they look like historical figures and
it is one of the best, she says. The matriarch
is Luna, and the three boys are her offspring, Taft, Rutherford,
and Fillmore named after presidents per my niece's request. Sincerely, Brandy,
these pictures are so stinking cute. I can't deal with it.
I love it, um and I'm I'm just delighted. I
(30:26):
you know, I grew up on the Gulf Coast, so
I understand that question of why do people live there,
and it's just it's a beautiful place, and if it's
your home, it's your home. That's that's what's up. Almost
anywhere has some weird thing that comes with it, whether
that be earthquakes or fires or terrible cold or whatever.
Everybody's got a different thing um, Brandy, thank you for
(30:48):
writing us this email. Congratulations on your PhD and Stuff
you Missed in History Class, um, and thank you for
sitting us those pictures because they delight. If you would
like to write to us, you could do so at
History podcast i heeart radio dot com. You can also
find us as Missed in History on social media, and
you can subscribe to the podcast on the I heart
radio app or wherever it is you listen to podcasts.
(31:15):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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