The Tragedy of Miriam,
The Fair Queen of Jewry
By Lady Elizabeth Cary
"the first play authored by an
Englishwoman to ever be published"
FOR PDF FILE OF ENTIRE BOOK
The Two Mariams: Elizabeth Cary and the Source for Her Play
Lady Elizabeth Cary's closet drama The Tragedy of
Mariam was written around 1602-1604 but was not published until 1613,
becoming the first play authored by an Englishwoman to ever be published.
She takes the basic plot and characters of her story from the ancient story
of evil King Herod and his wife Mariam, chronicled most notably in Josephus'
Antiquities of the Jews. (Cary uses Thomas Lodge's 1602 translation
of Antiquities). While she generally stays faithful to the chain of
events chronicled in Josephus, she changes the timeline of the original
story and some facets of the characters' personalities, while adding a
Christian undertone and a romantic subplot or two to the work.
The events that take place in the story are spread out
over the period of about a year in Josephus, but Cary chooses instead to
compress the entire tale into the span of one day, thus keeping with the
classical tradition of unity in time. Cary also begins the play in medias
res, with Mariam and her mother, Alexandra, talking of the news that
Herod has been killed on his way back from Rome. The visit to Egypt
mentioned in Josephus is placed far back in the past. The quarrels between
the women who surround Herod, however, are as apparent here as in Josephus;
even though Cary does not go through all of the incidents that heretofore
set Mariam against Doris and Salome, the tensions between the women are
readily seen. For example, when Alexandra mentions to Mariam that perhaps
Herod wants her dead so he can legally reunite with his first wife, Doris,
Mariam replies, "Doris, alas her time of love was passed, / Those coals were
raked in embers long ago" (I.132-133). Herod divorced Doris many years
before in order to marry Mariam, and Mariam acknowledges this event caused
the hatred that Doris has against her.
In Josephus, Mariam is at times portrayed as a shrewish,
whiny wife who plots against her husband. At the beginning of his account of
Mariam and Herod, he writes that, while locked up in the castle during
Herod's absence, Mariam is upset that she "neither might make use of other
mens, nor enjoy [her] owne goods," thus implying that she is not only
complaining for no reason but is an adulteress (Weller 277). In The
Tragedy of Mariam, however, she is characterized as an innocent woman
torn between being a good wife--that is, chaste, silent, and obedient--and
standing up against his tyranny to protest the deaths of her grandfather and
brother, both of whom Herod had murdered in order to obtain the throne. The
beginning of the play catches Mariam in her soliloquy, lamenting how she
once despised Julius Caesar for weeping over Pompey's death (I.1-10). She
now mourns her loved ones' deaths openly, wanting to love Herod because he
is her husband but hating him because he engineered her grandfather and
brother out of the picture.
Josephus writes about the scheming of Salome and Herod's
mother to frame Mariam for attempting to poison the king, but only mentions
one occasion where there were harsh words exchanged by the two opposing
camps of women. Cary writes her own version of some of the ugly exchanges
she supposed might have flown between Salome and Mariam; these exchanges
make up some of the most lively parts of the play. In one scene, Mariam
finally loses her temper and proclaims Salome to be of low birth, scarcely
better than her own servants before she became queen (I.223-226).
Mariam is, in Cary's work, a woman who is unafraid to speak her mind and
eventually is killed for having such audacity in a world where the only good
woman is a silent one.
The subplots of the marriage of Graphina and Pheroras and
the triangle of Salome, Constabarus, and Silleus are not found in the
Antiquities. However, they add interest to the main story and also
reflect on Salome's moral character. Salome herself wants to divorce
Constabarus and marry her lover, Silleus, an act impossible under Hebrew
law, for only men could initiate a divorce from a wife, and only under very
specific circumstances such as adultery. Somehow Salome does manage to
finagle a divorce from Constabarus and shows the reader that not only does
her lust for power send an innocent woman to her death, but her lust for the
male body breaks sacred law and likely sends her soul to hell.
Cary's Mariam has Christian undertones, most
notably in the martyrdom that Mariam goes through in her death. She is an
innocent woman whose only crime was speaking up for herself. In Act III,
Sohemus reflects on the troubled Mariam, musing, "Unbridled speech is
Mariam's worst disgrace / And will endanger her without desart"
(III.183-184). Mariam continues to protest her innocence from Herod's
accusation in IV.162-165 until her death, much as did many Christian saints
who were tortured and martyred for their faithfulness to Christ.
Although Lady Elizabeth Cary changes details of Josephus'
writings to suit her own literary purposes, she basically stays within the
lines of the original story of how scheming relatives and a foolish, evil
king send an innocent woman to be executed.
Elizabeth Carey's Life
Elizabeth Tanfield was born in 1585, the daughter of Sir
Laurence and Lady Elizabeth Tanfield. She spent much of her time as a young
girl studying, immersing herself in Latin, Spanish, French, and Hebrew (her
extraordinary abilities as a translator were widely known). In 1602, she
married Sir Henry Cary in what was no doubt a marriage arranged by her
parents. As Sir Henry went off to the Netherlands as a soldier not long
after their wedding, the new bride was left alone for several years, at
first still living in her family's home and then finally joining the Cary
household in 1603.
Elizabeth and her husband seem to have gotten along quite
well at first, with Elizabeth eventually giving birth to 11 children. Their
religious differences--Henry's strict Protestantism against Elizabeth's
Catholic tendencies, not to mention his cruel treatment of Irish Catholics
as Lord deputy Of Ireland-- put a tremendous strain on their relationship in
1626, when Elizabeth's alleged plan to officially convert to Catholicism was
revealed at Court. Henry, upon hearing the news, immediately took her
children from her, cut off all of her financial support, and disowned her.
In 1631, Queen Henrietta Maria managed to get the two to agree to a lukewarm
reconciliation, and in 1633, when Henry was dying of gangrene in a wounded
leg, Elizabeth rushed to his side to tend him in his final days.
Elizabeth herself died in 1639, after a long creative and
monetary drought; her alliances with all things Catholic had made her a sort
of pariah at Court. All but two of her daughters entered convents, and one
(perhaps Anne, who took the name Clementia upon becoming a nun at Cambray)
wrote The Lady Falkland: Her Life, a biography of Elizabeth Cary that
is a cross between hagiography and an honest account of a person's life.
Excerpts from Lodge's translation of Josephus' Antiquities of the
[XV.vii.I] But as soone as he [Herod] returned unto his
kingdome, he found all his household troubled, and both his wife Mariamme
and her mother Alexandra grievously displeased with him. For they supposing
(and not without cause) that they were not shut up in the Castle for their
securities sake, but as it were in a prison; so that in as much as they
might neither make use of other mens, nor enjoy their owne goods, they were
highly discontented. Mariamme also supposed that her husband did but
dissemble his love, rather for his owne profit and commoditie, th[a]n for
any intire affection he bare towards her. But nothing more grieved her, but
that she had not any hope to live after him, if so be he should happen to
die, especially for the order he had left as concerning her: neither could
she ever forget what commandement before that time he had left with Joseph;
so that by all meanes possible, she laboured to winne the affections of
those that had the charge of her, and especially Sohemus, knowing verie well
that her safetie depended wholy on his hands. ...
...For when as Herode beyond all expectation arrived in
his countrey, being adorned with mightie fortune, he first of all, as it
became him, certified his wife of good tidings and happy successe, whom
onely amongst all other his friends and wives, he embraced and saluted, for
the pleasing conversation and affection that was in her. But she, whilest he
repeated unto her these fortunate events of his affaires, rather
enter[tai]ned the same with a displeasant attention, th[a]n applauding joy:
and these affections [i.e., emotions] of hers likewise she could not
conceale. For at such time as he folded his armes about her necke, she
unfolded her sorrow in her sighes; so simple and unfained were her
affections; and seemed rather to be displeased th[a]n appeased by his
narrations. Whereupon Herode was sore troubled, perceiving these things not
onely suspected, but also fully manifest: but above all things he was was
distracted, when he considered the incredible and apparant hatred that his
wife had conceived against him, which in such sort incensed him that he
could not resist the love that had attainted him; so that he neither could
continue in wrath, nor listen long to peace; and being unresolved in
himselfe, he now was attempted by this; straight distracted by a contrarie
affection: so much was his mind travailed between love [and] hatred, that
when as oftentimes he desired to punish the womans pride, his heart by loves
meditation failed him in the enterprise. For nothing did more torment him
th[a]n this feare, least executing his displeasure against her, he should by
this meanes more grievously wound himselfe, thorow the desire he bare unto
his unceased delight.  Whilest thus he was sweltered and devoured in his
passions, and conceived sinister opinions against Mariamme his wife; Salome
his sister and his mother having an inckling of his discontents, thought
that they had gotten a fit opportunitie to expresse and execute their hatred
towards Mariamme: for which they conferred with Herode, and whetted his
spleene and displeasure with varietie of slanders, sufficient at one assault
to engender hatred, and kindle his jealousy against her. ...
...Herode, who before this was highly displeased...was so
much the more incensed: for which cause he presently commanded Mariammes
most faithful servant to be examined by torments, as concerning the poison,
supposing that it was impossible for her to undertake any thing whatsoever,
without his privitie. He being tired and tormented after this cruell manner,
confessed nothing of that for which he was tortured, but declared unto the
king that the hatred which his wife had conceived against him, proceeded
from certaine wordes that Sohemus had told her. Scarcely had he finished
these words, but that the king cried out with a loud voice, saying that
Sohemus who before time had beene most faithfull both to him and his
kingdome, would not have declared these his privie commands, except there
had been some more inward familiaritie and secrecie betwixt him and Mariamme:
for which cause he presently commanded his ministers to lay hands on Sohemus,
and to put him to death. As for his wife, he drew her to triall, and to this
effect he assembled his most familiar friends, before whom he began to
accuse her with great spight and spleene, as touching these potions and
poisons aforesaid; wherein he used intemperate and unseemly speeches, and
such as for their bitternesse did ill become him in cause of justice; so
that in the end the assistants [i.e., those present], seeing the butte and
bent of his desire, pronounced sentence of death against her; which, being
past, both he, and all other the assistants were of this opinion, that she
should not so speedily be executed, but that she should be kept close
prisoner in some sure place of the pallace. But by Salomes sollicitations
Herode was incited to hasten her death, for that she alleaged that the king
ought to feare, least some sedition should be raised among the people, if he
should keepe her alive in prison. And by this meanes Mariamme was led unto
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