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British Women Dramatists

“Why should such privilege to man be given? / Or given to them,

why barred from women then?”: The Tragedy of Mariam and the Female

Body as a Site of Rebellion

Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland, is one of the unique

figures of the early modern period in England and a survey of

her life would be beneficial to understand her literary career

as the importance of Cary’s upbringing cannot be denied. She

was the only child of Sir Lawrence Tanfield, who was a judge

and Lord Chief Baron. She began to display a wilful nature even

when she was very young. It was evidenced in her rejection of

several tutors whom her parents provided for her. However, this

in no way hindered her learning; it simply resulted in her

being largely self-taught (Glew 7). Her intellectual abilities

as a young woman were considerable and she was able to read

fluently in, and translate from, French, Spanish, Latin and

Hebrew (Wynne-Davies 105, Farris 1, Glew 7). Growing up with no

siblings or any other companions her age as she was an only

child, Cary spent most of her time reading. She is even said to

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have bribed the servants for candles when her strict mother had

forbidden her to read at night (Farris 1). According to The Lady

Falkland: Her Life, Cary’s biography written by one of her

daughters, by the age of twelve Cary owed the servants three

hundred pounds for candles, books, and writing materials, a

debt which she paid off at the time of her marriage (180-190).

As can be understood from the accounts, Cary experienced a

stimulating and educative environment while growing up. She was

schooled to speak her mind and was not hesitant to use her

voice on public occasions.

Cary was contracted in marriage to Henry Cary in 1602 and

although she was married to Henry Cary when she was young, the

couple initially lived apart for several years, while Henry was

engaged in military service, which resulted in Elizabeth

enjoying a relatively independent time that might have

otherwise been focused on house holding and familial

occupations. After her husband went abroad, Cary continued to

live with her parents until her mother-in-law insisted she come

and live with her (Glew 9). She found herself in conflict with

her mother-in-law, who kept her isolated as Cary declined to

defer to her and humour her. In The Lady Falkland: Her Life it is

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stated that this isolation did not disturb Cary as she started

spending time with her books but her occupation with her books

drew her mother-in-law’s attention which resulted in the

removal of all the books (189). Conditioned by her upbringing

to pursue independent action, she took to writing her own

verses and it was during this time period she wrote “The

Tragedy of Mariam,” a classical tragedy that is her only extant

work of this period (Glew 9).

After Henry Cary returned from duty, he was named viscount

of Falkland and shortly afterward was appointed Lord Chief

Deputy of Ireland. In order to finance the move to Dublin,

Elizabeth Cary mortgaged her inheritance, which caused her

father to disinherit her. It was during her time in Ireland

that Elizabeth seems to have become interested in Catholicism

(Wynne-Davies 105). In the early years of her marriage, Cary

secretly converted to Catholicism and when her husband finally

learned of her conversion, he was outraged (Glew 23). Publicly

embarrassed and no longer finding Elizabeth to be a suitable

wife, Sir Henry separated from her and she was disinherited by

her father as well (Farris 2). Upon hearing the news, the

Viscount ordered his wife’s quarters stripped. Therefore, most

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of the food, furniture, and fuel were removed. In addition, all

the children living there were taken away as well as all but

one servant (Glew 23). The rest of her life was a struggle for

survival and she died in 1639 due to a lung disease.

According to Wolfe, Elizabeth Cary “[a]s a female author

she can be credited with a number of firsts: she is the first

English woman to have an original play printed, the first woman

to author an English history, and the first woman to publish a

translation of a religious polemical work” (1). During her

lifetime she composed the first original tragedy by an

Englishwoman, The Tragedy of Mariam (1613); a combined work of

historical prose and drama, The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of

Edward II (1628); and several works which have been lost,

including a life of Tamburlaine, and poems on the Virgin Mary,

Mary Magdalene, Saint Agnes and Saint Elizabeth of Portugal

(Wynne-Davies 105). Her writings are said to be “representative

of women's writing in the early modern period” (Poitevin 13).

Although it wasn’t published until 1613, The Tragedy of

Mariam was probably written between 1602 and 1604. It is

believed to be the first original play in English written by a

woman to be published in England (Farris 2, Glew 3, Poitevin

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13, Miller 354). The play is an adaptation of an already

existing story and based on the story of Herod and Mariam taken

from Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities. It is possible argue that Cary

chose to base her play on another work because it was

acceptable for a woman to work on translations (Farris 13).

Glew argues that the “[r]e-working an already-existing story as

Cary did was a characteristically female strategy for achieving

self-expression without seeming to be too independent” (40) and

as Fischer puts it, “the voice of silence thus speaks through

historical reinterpretation” (228).

According to Maurice Valency, the Herod and Mariam plays

have three elements in common: “A man loves a woman

excessively; he does or has done something which causes her to

turn cold against him; this coldness he is incapable of

separating in his mind from the suspicion of infidelity; every

circumstance works upon his suspicion, and he is driven to kill

the woman he loves” (15). However, apart from having storyline

more or less similar to Valency’s plan, Cary’s The Tragedy of

Mariam is an original treatment of the story as Cary makes

Mariam the centre of her tragedy, and in this way she gives her

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greater depth and complexity than the Mariam in earlier plays

(Glew 40, 56).

The Tragedy of Mariam is written in the style of Senecan

closet drama, “which takes unity of place, time and demands the

voice of the chorus which shows the arguments and the

conventional view or contemporary common sense” and it was

written for private reading, not for public performance

(Yoshida 35). According to Glew, The Tragedy of Mariam has certain

characteristics which firmly places in Senecan style: it

consists of a series of acts separated by choral interludes

(48); it has an opening scene consisting of a lengthy

monologue, which provides exposition, and an intensely

emotional final scene (49); the unities of time, place and, to

a certain extent, action are observed (49); it is highly

rhetorical in nature as plot gives way to lengthy speeches and

whatever takes place is usually recounted either by a messenger

or one of the characters (49-50). Apart from writing in the

style of Senecan closet drama, Cary’s uses Renaissance lyric,

with “nearly forty sonnets and countless sestets are embedded

throughout the play” (Wolfe 4). Wolfe argues that “the use of

Petrarchan sonnets and dialogic love poetry allows the female

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characters to respond to and transform a typically male genre,

and in turn, allows the playwright herself to critique the

contradictory rhetoric of the Petrarchan sonneteers of the

Elizabethan period” (4).

The play consists of the events which take place on the

last day of Mariam’s life and it has a “rebellious and radical

nature” (Wynne-Davies 109). The focus of the text is on female

characters, especially on Mariam and Salome, and it is about

“female virtue and rebellion” (Callaghan 169). Gender issues

are in the foreground and gender is used both as representation

and as self-representation (Poitevin 15, Lauretis 2). As Newman

argues, “the female body is the site of discourses that manage

women” (6). However it is still possible to argue that although

“patriarchy limits women's possibilities for self-fashioning”,

women's bodies can also be read as “potential instruments of

resistance” (Poitevin 15). In Gender Trouble (1990), Judith Butler

explains self-fashioning as such:

[A]cts, gestures, and desires produce the effect ofan internal core or substance, but produce this onthe surface of the body. [... ] Such acts, gestures,enactments, generally construed, are performative inthe sense that the essence or identity that theypurport to express is fabrications manufactured andsustained through corporeal signs and otherdiscursive means. (136)

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This is not so different from Cary’s motto, the motto she

presumably chose to live by: “be and seem”. In the play, Salome

is the one who manages to fashion herself in such a way that

she is able to survive in a patriarchal world and even

manipulate it according to her wishes, whereas Mariam fails and

is executed. Both Mariam and Salome are “speaking and

performing agents” (Bennett 298), but while Mariam attempts to

set aside any possibility of duplicity within her nature,

Salome makes a deliberate decision to profit from her skill

(Bennett 303, Poitevin 27). She says: “But shame is gone, and

honor wiped away, / And impudency on my forehead sits: / She

bids me work my will without delay, / And for my will I will

employ my wits” (I.iv.293-96).

Although the focus of the play is on female characters, it

is impossible to talk about a sisterhood among them. Whereas

the men in the play are more inclined to social bonding, as

seen when Constabarus refuses to fight with Silleus, the women

in the play not only act independently of one another, but

against one another as well (Farris 27). Fischer also draws

attention to this by pointing out that all of the women are at

odds with one another in what seem to be attempts at survival

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and not only does each woman fight tyranny alone, she also

fights against other women (Fischer 234). They are more

concerned with survival than forming sisterhood bond and

willing to turn against each other.

The title character Mariam is a victim of this lack of

sisterhood. She is all alone in a battle against nearly

everyone around her. Salome is her arch-enemy and in the end

causes her fall, and her own mother turns against her when

Mariam falls out of favour. Like Salome, she is fully aware of

the power of pretence, the possibility of using her obvious sex

appeal to maintain domestic harmony. All she needs to do is

smile sweetly at Herod and the efforts of anyone to unseat her

from her privileged position would be in vain.

I know I could enchain him with a smile:And lead him captive with a gentle word,[…]Else Salome in vain might spend her wind,In vain might Herod’s mother whet her tongue:In vain had they complotted and combined,For I could overthrow them all ere long.

(III.iii.163-70)

She knows this, and yet makes a conscious decision not to use

her own deceptive abilities. She naively believes that being

innocent will be enough to protect her from others but, as

mentioned earlier she fails at Cary’s own motto, “be and seem”.

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Women in her position are expected to be chaste, silent and

obedient. Mariam does remain chaste, but not always silent and

obedient, and, according to Farris, “it is this deviation from

her expected role that causes others to doubt her chastity.

Mariam tries to find a voice for herself while still

maintaining the femininity that is expected of her, yet she

soon learns that such an attempt will not succeed and will only

result in her death” (44).

Mariam's ultimate resistance to oppression andtyranny is depicted as a deliberate refusal to(re)engage in dissimulation once she hears of herhusband's survival and return. In order to maintainher articulation of herself as an autonomous subject,she must resist all temptations to reformulate hermeans of agency. Personal integrity is thus notnecessarily a natural state, but a careful self-construction, a resistance to the expediency calledfor in both marital and political realms. (Bennett301-02)

Mariam’s form of resistance is different from Salome’s.

She tries to be a more assertive figure as well as someone who

conforms to ideals of moral or feminine behaviour. When her

version of self-fashioning fails, her final rebellion is her

silence. Bosman reinforces this idea by pointing out the

differences between the death scenes in Josephus’ Antiquities and

The Tragedy of Mariam. In Cary’s play, there is no trial; Mariam

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receives no voice. In place of a trial, Herod and Salome debate

the possibility of Mariam's execution and she is absent from

the only discussion deciding her fate (83). “Mariam is not only

silent but is herself absent from the presentation of her own

death – a presentation which is not visually depicted but

verbally related” (Bosman 83).

Mariam’s foil, the villain of the play is Salome. Although

sometimes she is described Salome as a wicked woman, she has

also been revalued as a feminist leader (Yoshida 38). She is

also oppressed by male authority, and she strives to obtain her

freedom from repression and patriarchy. She is such a powerful

and assertive character that she has no counterparts in the

play and redefines other characters through her behaviour. One

example to Salome’s power to redefine other characters is her

relationship with her husband Constabarus. Farris argues that

[w]hile Constabarus and Salome might be equallymatched in terms of poetic form and content, ascharacters, the two do not truly balance one another,for even if Constabarus’s argument does bear theweight of tradition, Salome reveals herself as awoman who has the strength to lift that weight andtoss it aside. Though Constabarus is not apredominantly feminine character, his masculinityappears to be lost in the presence of Salome. Eventhough Constabarus does question Salome’s actions,and clearly disagrees with her behaviour, he nevertruly attempts to stop her from carrying out her

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will. Despite her gender, it is Salome who isultimately dominant and victorious. (32)

Salome’s success comes from her ability to perform, to

deliberately feign the role that is expected of her, to pretend

in a way that keeps her true motives beyond male suspicion

(Farris 50). She is aware of the double standard in the

society, as can be seen in her questioning the issue of

divorce, she uses this double standard for her own gain. Her

survival is due to her tactics which make the most of her

female power and she pursues freedom as a woman who uses that

power, the power of female sexuality (Yoshida 38, 41). She

proves herself to be a self-fashioner who can employ different

gender characteristics to her advantage and her strategies of

self-representation are not only sympathetic but necessary for

survival in a world where women are constantly judged in moral,

racial, aesthetic and religious terms and on the basis of their

appearances (Poitevin 28, Farris 35).

The character of Salome is different because in many

Renaissance dramas, subjects who transgress racial or gendered

norms are punished. Through Salome, Cary presents a character

that transgresses both and yet still escapes punishment.

Despite the obvious villainy of her character,

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[i]t is Salome alone who is shown to be aware of theways in which women may be read, hated, anddismissed; the ways in which established precedent,custom, and law may be used (and abused) to sustainthe male prerogative; and (finally) the ways in whichthese institutions, ideals, and constructs - all ofthem acts of interpretation - may successfully bechallenged. (Zimmerman 578)

She defies the norms of gender and although her sex prevents

her from having a direct access to power, she demonstrates that

direct access to such power is not necessary if one knows how

to manipulate those who do have such power: “if she cannot be a

Subject and have a public voice, she can at least use the state

of matters to her advantage” (Markow 11). She is the ultimate

puppet master and, by manipulation and defiance “Salome

successfully extricates herself from marriages she no longer

wants to be a part of and manipulates the men around her in

order to negotiate power for herself (queen of Arabia) and to

carry out her revenge on Mariam. Her actions not only secure

her own future but also set a precedent for women of future

generations” (Poitevin 29). She states that she will be the

first woman to procure a divorce from her husband, she claims,

quite assertively, that she will not be the last to do so:

Why shoul such privilege to man be given?Or given to them, why barred from women then?Are men than we in greater grace with Heaven?

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Or cannot women hate as well as men?I’ll be the custom-breaker: and begin To show my sex the way to freedom’s door, (I.iv.305-

10)Though I be first that to this course do bend,I shall not be the last, full well I know. (I.vi.435-

36)

As can be understood from the quotation, Salome intends to be a

“custom-breaker” and claims a more masculine role. Farris

argues that “Salome’s adoption of masculinity could be viewed

as a step toward attacking and destroying the limits placed on

women” (36). She turns her marginal role into an instrument of

defiance against all levels of authority and through her the

play becomes “a sign of defiance, acknowledging not just the

male authorial tradition but also the subversive potential of

marginal authors” (Markow 11).

Race, like gender, seems to be another point which Cary

uses to marginalize some of the character. “Racial lineage is a

constant preoccupation of and source of contention between

female characters, whose identities are often expressed and

grounded in racial terms” (Poitevin 20). In the beginning of

the play Mariam’s mother, Alexandra, boast of Mariam ancestry:

“Why, who can claim from Alexander’s brood / That gold-adorned

lion-guarded chair? / Was Alexander not of David’s blood? / And

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was not Mariam Alexander’s heir?” (I.ii.143-46). Furthermore,

Mariam uses Salome’s racial background to insult her. She says:

“My birth thy baser birth so far excelled, / I had to both of

you the princess been. / Thou parti-Jew, and parti-Edomite, /

Thou mongrel: issued from rejected race” (I.iii.233-36). But

Salome calls into question the existence of any pure categories

of racial difference: “What odds betwixt your ancestors and

mine? / Both born of Adam, both were made of earth, / And both

did come from holy Abraham's line” (I.iii.240-42). There are no

distinct and pure categories of race, as can be understood from

Salome’s lines, which leads to the conclusion that there are no

pure categories when it comes to being a villain or a hero

either.

Salome appears to be “moulded upon the Vice figures of

medieval morality plays” and Mariam to be “an attempted

embodiment of spotless virtue” (Bennett 303). But the key word

here is “appear”. At the heart of the play lies the conflict

between appearance and reality. Although the characters of

Salome and Mariam appear to be different, their similarities

are obvious in the details. For example, while Herod is

speaking with Pheroras, we mistakes Mariam and Salome: “I will

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requite / Thee, gentle Mariam – Salom, I mean” (IV.ii.83-4).

Furthermore, “both of their husbands react in identical ways

and with parallel language to their awareness of female

duplicity” (Bennett 304) and they use similar discourse while

accusing Mariam and Salome. Herod describes Mariam as such:

“Now do I kow thy falsehood, painted devil, / Thou white

enchantress. Oh, thou art so foul, / That hyssop cannot cleanse

thee, worst of evil. / A beauteous body hides a loathsome soul”

(IV.iv.174-77). Likewise, Constabarus talks about Salome when

he argues with Silleus and says: “She merely is a painted

sepulchre, / That is both fair, and vilely foul at once: /

Though on her outside graces garnish her, / Her mind is filled

with worse than rotten bones” (II.ii.325-28). The conflict

between appearance and reality appears in the discourse of the

husbands as they use the word “painted” to describe their

wives, implying that their outward appearance differs from

their true nature.

Although Mariam and Salome have some remarkable

similarities within the play, they are still very different in

their core and this difference is a result of what they

accomplish at the end of the play. Some critics, like Beilin,

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argue that Mariam is “the atoner who devoted herself to

redeeming her sex from Eve’s guilt” (175). However it is also

possible to view Salome as having redeemed women from Eve’s

guilt as well. As Farris points out, “Mariam’s redemption of

women acknowledges the patriarchal structure that holds all

women culpable for Eve’s sin; however, Salome’s redemption of

women is one in which she refuses to have blame placed upon her

(even if it is deserved)” (48). It is the character of Salome

and her “victory” at the end of the play that promises real

change. She comes closest to replacing the old system with a

new one and she represents the potential for change.

In conclusion, although the female representations in the

play seem to reinforce the stereotypical “Virgin Mary” and

“Eve” images, their similarities creates a much closer link

between the two important female figures. Also “the fact that

Mariam is beheaded while Salome divorces undesirable husbands,

has her enemies killed, and secures higher social standing

suggests that these opposing strategies of self-representation

are not equally successful” (Poitevin 28). What Cary shows is

that “women may well conform to given expectations in their

outward behaviour but take advantage (as Salome does) of the

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opportunities offered by time and chance in acting according to

their own thoughts or beliefs, thereby creating an alternative

space for themselves as discursive and performative subjects”

(Bennett 305). Furthermore, as Gutierrez points out, “the lack

of closure in the play undercuts an interpretation of Mariam as

subversive document, offering an ambivalent comment on the role

of women” (246). Salome, after all, does indeed get what she

wants without any unpleasant consequences: she gets rid of her

first and second husband, marries her new lover, and causes

Mariam’s death.

Unlike other machiavels or Vice figures of theperiod, Salome suffers no ultimate revelation of thedepths of her deceptions, no hubristic fall intodisgrace and death. […]. Instead, [her] manipulationsof her appearance to suit her environment and toachieve her desires are left unpunished, creating theimage of a woman's ultimate success in survivalwithin a given power structure. (Bennett 306)

The Tragedy of Mariam is not simply a tale of one woman's

unshakable integrity in the face of oppression, but instead an

exploration of duplicity, multiplicity, and their implications

for women. By setting up an apparent opposition between the

characters of Mariam and Salome yet delineating specific

parallels between them, Cary examines the ways in which both

women choose to construct themselves as speaking and performing

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agents, revealing a remarkable awareness of the possibilities

afforded to women by different tactics of self-representation

(Miller 358, Bennett 298).

Works Cited

Beilin, Elaine V. Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance.

Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987. Print.

Bennett, Alexandra G. “Female Performativity in “The Tragedy of

Mariam”” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 Tudor and Stuart

Drama 40.2 (2000): 293-309. JSTOR. Web.

Bosman, Diane Rose. The Tragedy of Mariam and the Woman Question

Debate. Thesis. McMaster University, 1995. ProQuest. Web.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New

York: Routledge, 1990. Print.

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Callaghan, Dympha. “Re-reading The Tragedie of Mariam.” Women,

“Race,” and Writing in the Early Modern Period. Ed. Margo Hendricks

and Patricia A. Parker. London: Routledge, 2000. 163-77.

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Cary, Victoria, and Francis Slingsby, eds. The Lady Falkland: Her

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Farris, Jennifer. Gender Roles in Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam.

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Fischer, Sandra K. “Elizabeth Cary and Tyranny, Domestic and

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and Writers of Religious Works. Ed. Margaret P. Hannay. Kent:

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Glew, Dorothy Fitzgerald. Elizabeth Cary and “The Tragedy of Mariam”: A

Study of Submission and Subversion. Diss. Lehigh University,

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Gutierrez, Nancy A. “Valuing Mariam: Genre Study and Feminist

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Lauretis, Teresa De. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and

Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987. Print.

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Markow, Raluca. Seductive Power: A Reevaluation of Salome in Elizabeth Cary's

The Tragedy of Mariam. Thesis. The University of Alabama

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Miller, Naomi J. “Domestic Politics in Elizabeth Cary's The

Tragedy of Mariam.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 Tudor and

Stuart Drama 37.2 (1997): 353-69. JSTOR. Web.

Newman, Karen. Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama.

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Poitevin, Kimberly Woosley. ““Counterfeit Colour”: Making up

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Studies in Women's Literature 24.1 (2005): 13-34. JSTOR. Web.

Valency, Maurice-Jacques. The Tragedies of Herod and Mariamne. New

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Yoshida, Kimiko. “Divorce in Elizabeth Cary.” UT

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Zimmerman, Shari A. “Disaffection, Dissimulation, and the

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