#shakespeare's sisters

[shakespearenews]

Woolf concluded that any glimmer of female creativity in Shakespeare’s time would have been expunged by a pinched life as a breeding machine of children who so often died, disallowed opinions of her own. Had any woman survived these conditions, wrote Woolf, “whatever she had written would have been twisted and deformed, issued from a strained and morbid imagination.”

Wrong, says the Renaissance scholar Ramie Targoff in “Shakespeare’s Sisters,” her fascinating excavation of four intellectual powerhouse women of the 16th and early 17th centuries. Woolf had just not dug deep enough to find Mary Sidney’s sublime translations, Aemilia Lanyer’s groundbreaking poems or Elizabeth Cary’s subversive dramas. She dismissed the fourth, the great diarist Anne Clifford, as “trivial,” says Targoff — a view not shared by Anne’s distant relative Vita Sackville-West when she discovered and lovingly edited the diaries in 1923.

---

When he left for two years to fight in Protestant wars in the Netherlands, his mother hired someone to write letters to him in Elizabeth’s name in case her husband found her obvious intelligence repellent.

[aaknopf]

In Shakespeare’s Sisters, Ramie Targoff recovers to literary memory the lives and talents of four women who wrote in England during Shakespeare’s time, well before there was any notion of “a room of one’s own.” From Mary Sidney, sister of the well-known poet Sir Philip Sidney (she wrote most of the beautiful translations of the Psalms ascribed to him) to Anne Clifford, a diarist and memoirist who fought for decades against a patriarchy that tried to disinherit her from her family’s land, these women stun us by their bravery. In the passage below, Targoff discusses the important poetry of Aemilia Lanyer, born of an illiterate mother and an immigrant father; it appeared in print in 1611, making her the first woman in the 17th century to publish an original book of verse.

. . .

In the same year the King James Bible first appeared in print, establishing the most influential English translation of scripture ever produced, Aemilia dared to tell a different story. Over the course of 230 rhyming stanzas of eight lines each, her “Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum” lays out the story of Christ’s Passion from a distinctly female perspective. The formal challenge of writing the poem was itself daunting: it’s no easy feat to compose over 1,800 lines of ottava rima (iambic pentameter stanzas written in an abababcc rhyme scheme). But Aemilia’s greater audacity was in tackling the subject of Christ’s crucifixion. To justify this, she makes the same claim for divine inspiration that the great Protestant poet John Milton would make sixty or so years later in writing Paradise Lost. Describing her own “poor barren brain” as “far too weak” for the task, she asks God to “give me power and strength to write”:

Yet if he please to illuminate my spirit,  And give me wisdom from his holy hill,  That I may write part of his glorious merit,  If he vouchsafe to guide my hand and quill Then will I tell of that sad blackfaced night,  Whose mourning Mantle covered Heavenly Light.

     Given the fact that the poem proceeds to do exactly what she petitions for, Aemilia shows her reader that her prayer has been answered: she’s not so much writing as channeling the divine word.[...]      Aemilia’s narrative of Christ’s Passion begins on the “very night our Savior was betrayed.” As part of her overall strategy in “Salve Deus”of celebrating female virtue, the poem draws attention both to the wicked acts of men (Caiaphas, Judas) and to the compassionate acts of women (the daughters of Jerusalem, the Virgin Mary) in the days leading up to Christ’s arrest. None of this comes as a surprise. But when Aemilia arrives at the moment that Pontius Pilate considers Christ’s fate, she does something totally unanticipated. Relinquishing her own role as narrator, she hands the poem over to Pilate’s wife. Among the most minor figures in the New Testament, Pilate’s wife has a single line of verse in only one of the four gospels. In Matthew 27:19, a woman who is never named urges her husband, the Roman governor in Judaea, to disregard the will of the people calling for Christ to be crucified: “Have nothing to do with that just man,” she warns Pilate, “for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.”      In early Christian commentaries and apocryphal writings, this woman was often called Procula Claudia, or simply Procula. In medieval England, Procula was paraded onstage in the mystery plays as an evil woman who almost prevented Christ’s saving humankind; in the York Cycle’s play named for her—The Dream of Pilate’s Wife—Percula, as she’s called there, receives her dream from the Devil himself. There’s no way to know if Aemilia knew this or other medieval dramas; it’s more likely she would have noticed the more positive treatment Pilate’s wife was given in the Geneva Bible, the popular translation done by English Protestants in the 1550s. Consistent with the Protestant belief that everyone should have access to the Bible directly, the translation was heavily glossed with marginal notes. Next to the verse from Matthew regarding Pilate’s wife was a single gloss suggesting that Pilate should have taken the “counsel of others to defend Christ’s innocence.” But whether the treatment of this woman was negative or positive, she had never been asked to perform the role Aemilia gave her in “Salve Deus,” where she delivers one of the strongest defenses for women’s rights that Christianity had ever seen.      In Pilate’s wife, Aemilia found her perfect heroine: a woman whose intervention at the crucial moment could have changed the course of history, if only her husband had listened. With the scriptural verse from Matthew before her, Aemilia made two crucial additions to the story. First, she transformed Pilate’s wife into a faithful believer who already regarded Christ as her Lord. “Hear the words of thy most worthy wife,” she begs her husband, “who sends to thee, to beg her Savior’s life.” Far from simply reporting that she’s had an ominous dream, as she does in Matthew, Pilate’s wife explicitly warns Pilate that he will be killing the son of God.      Second, Aemilia turned Pilate’s wife into a proto-feminist. After urging Pilate to let Christ go on religious grounds, she comes up with a new reason for why he should be pardoned: “Let not us women glory in men’s fall / Who had power given to over-rule us all.” If men are sinful enough to crucify their savior, then women should be liberated from men’s rule. “Your indiscretion sets us free,” she declares, “And makes our former fault much less appear.” In these four short lines, Aemilia’s character anticipates the killing of Christ as the basis for women’s freedom from patriarchy.      As if this weren’t radical enough, Pilate’s wife moves in “Salve Deus” from making her argument about the Crucifixion to recon- sidering the reason for Christ’s sacrifice in the first place. “Our mother Eve,” she exclaims,

. . . who tasted of the Tree Giving to Adam what she held most dear, Was simply good, and had no power to see,  The after-coming harm did not appear.

If Eve had no way to know the damage she might do, Adam was only too aware: it was he who received the command directly “from God’s mouth.” Eve was simply a victim of misinformation and “too much love,” whereas Adam, not betrayed by the “subtle Serpent’s falsehood,” knew exactly what he was doing.      Aemilia was certainly not the first person to defend Eve on grounds of her innocence or to propose that Adam be held responsible for the Fall. She was possibly the first to argue that the crime of killing Christ so overwhelmed any fault of Eve’s that women’s subordination should come to an immediate end. “If unjustly you condemn [Christ] to die,” Pilate’s wife concludes,

. . . Then let us have our Liberty again, And challenge [attribute] to your selves no Sovereignty;  You came not in the world without our pain, Make that a bar against your cruelty; Your fault being greater, why should you disdain  Our being your equals, free from tyranny? If one weak woman simply did offend,  This sin of yours, hath no excuse, nor end.

Hundreds of years before the women’s liberation movement, Aemilia used the figure of Pilate’s wife to argue that the sexes should be equal. In doing so, she also rescued a voice from history, giving full personhood and agency to a woman whom the Bible didn’t regard as worthy of a name.

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Shakespeare’s Sisters by Ramie Targoff.

Browse other books by Ramie Targoff and follow her on Instagram @ramietargoff.

Hear Ramie Targoff read at the Boston Athenaeum in Boston on May 15, 6:00 - 7:00 PM. Click here to join virtually. 

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link.

[tenth-sentence]

Many noblewomen not only studied languages and theology but published under their own names, as revealed by a 2012 exhibition, Shakespeare's Sisters, featuring 50 women writers from these years, some of them hardly known, even now.

"Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History" - Philippa Gregory

[bethanydelleman]

I was talking about a historical male author I dislike because I found his works misogynistic and the person said, "Oh, well I suppose you don't read Shakespeare either." and I was like, "Shakespeare? SHAKESPEARE?!?! Of course I read Shakespeare, that man loved women."

Shakespeare wrote a wide variety of fleshed out female characters. He wrote Damsels in Distress, Cross-dressing Girlbosses, and Complex Female Villains. He wrote a woman who refused to sell her virtue to save her family and then shamed her brother for suggesting it. He wrote Taming of the Shrew and it's opposite, All's Well that Ends Well, in which the wife hunts down and tames the husband. He wrote men who are good because they listen to, trust, and defend women. He wrote women of all kinds. He wrote women who drive the plot and women doomed by the narrative. He wrote women in love and women who pathetically follow a man who doesn't like them and women in hatred. He wrote sensible women and silly women and everything in between of all ages.

I wish modern authors could write women as well as he did.

[two-bees-poetry]

can i come home?

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Shakespears Sister - Stay 1992

"Stay" is a song by British pop-rock act Shakespears Sister, released in January 1992 as the second single from their second album, Hormonally Yours (1992). It is the duo's first and only number-one single in numerous territories, including the UK, where it topped the UK Singles Chart for eight consecutive weeks and was the fourth-biggest-selling single of 1992. "Stay" also reached number 1 in Sweden and Ireland. It was a transatlantic hit as well, reaching number 4 on both the US Billboard Hot 100 and the Canadian RPM 100 Hit Tracks chart. Its music video was directed by Sophie Muller and drew inspirations from the 1953 film Cat-Women of the Moon. At the 1993 Brit Awards "Stay" won the award for British Video of the Year.

"Stay" has been covered by bands such as Cradle of Filth and Ghost. It was featured in the 2000s paranormal television series Ghost Whisperer, and the characters of Jenny Joyce and Aisling impersonated the duo in the television series Derry Girls.

"Stay" received a total of 53,9% yes votes.

[weirdlookindog]

Richard Westall (1765-1836) - "The weird sisters, hand in hand", 1798

William Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' Act I Scene III: The Three Witches

engraved by James Stow (1770-1823)

[moonsun2010]

5 November - Dracula's roommates make a reappearance (to welcome a fourth) ❄️

these are part of an animatic summarising Dracula, which you can watch here (new readers beware; it has spoilers for the entire book!)

✨️support me at: tip jar|commissions

[amoratearte]

“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.”

—Macbeth (Act II, Sc. II)

Daemon and Rhaenyra, the sword and the crown

[daneol]

It was really nice to see all the Odin siblings complete in another reality (if only the reality didn't have a rift on it they would've been happier somewhat) BUT IT FEELS NICE THAT THEY COULD JUST BE CASUAL!! It would be cool to see more of the 1602 universe

[amicus-noctis]

“Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.”

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

[horatiompreg]

I think with laertes’ characteryou reach a point where the amount of shit he goes through just becomes comedic cuz what the HELL was shakespeare cooking w him 😭😭

[pygian-weapon]

DO NOT COMPARE CAESAR TO ELON MUSK HE DOESN'T DESERVE THAT we can come with a Bastille day tumblr celebration or smth, but Caesar was killed by a bunch of old rich men lmao (and his adopted son, et tu brute - cit. Jared Padalecki). this isn't exactly a win for the working people.

Yeah yeah he did war crimes and got too drunk on power, but at least he didn't have an hentai addiction is what I mean

[recycledmoviecostumes]

This beautiful gown, which first appeared on Maggie Han as Eastern Jewel in the 1987 Academy Award-winning film The Last Emperor, was later worn by Marcella Detroit in the Shakespears Sister music video I Don’t Care from the 1992 album Hormonally Yours.

On both occasions, the dress is bathed in shadow, and though it is evidently finely crafted and heavily detailed, it is difficult to see in its full glory.

Costume Credit: Ian

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[jakattax]

Director: we know you’re good at making props, we could do with a spell book for the ‘double double’ scene.

Me: I got you fam.

[two-bees-poetry]