The Thoughtful Female Lover: Lady Mary Wroth’s Sonnet Innovations
Sonnets and other types of love poetry go hand in hand with Valentine’s Day. We are used to cute, brief poems on cut out Valentines, or perhaps a lover might dedicate a song to the beloved. The Word is seductive and enchanting, perfectly complementing the celebration of love. When we think of sonnets, Shakespeare comes to mind or Sir. Philip Sydney. Most people who skipped the survey to Early British Literature in college wouldn’t be able to think of more sonnet writers than that, which is a shame because sonnets can be incredibly enjoyable, and during Valentine’s season, a truly charming lover may think of reading one to the beloved. There is one sonnet writer who definitely doesn’t get enough coverage: Lady Mary Wroth, Sir. Philip Sydney’s niece. She dealt with a marriage marred by unhappiness from the start. When her drunk, gambling, flirt of a husband died (two years prior to their son), Wroth found herself a widow with more liberty than most women enjoyed at the time. She was already educated and participated in court dances, but upon her husband’s death, she was free to find someone she could truly love. She eventually moved on to a long-term love affair with her cousin, William Herbert the third Earl of Pembroke. Although he did not marry her, they had two children and were together for many years before the relationship ended. That she would enter into a relationship with her cousin is odd to modern readers as well, but during that time period, it wasn’t uncommon. Such a tumultuous love life may paint her as unsuccessful at love, but in all actuality, her difficult experiences with love contributed to the depth and innovation of her poetry, which is remarkable considering that she is the first English female to write sonnets during a time when most women were illiterate. The opening sonnet as well as the corona section of Pamphillia and Amphilanthus best demonstrate Wroth’s innovative favoring of reason over purely emotional love. Although Wroth uses some Petrarchan conventions throughout her sonnet sequence, she innovates by making the lover a female whose love efforts traverse interior space and experience rather than using the typical sonnet motifs of the blazon and the hunt for the beloved, which frame love as an experience enmeshed in exteriority. Another unusual feature of her sonnets is her symbolic prioritization of reason rather than emotion, which ultimately demonstrates that in true love, reason dictates that one must take love’s joys moderately and endure the sorrows that may come.
Wroth’s perspective as female lover creates for the first time in the sonnet tradition a female character with true self-agency. Because sonnet writing was a male endeavor, masculine poetics traditionally cast the male as the subject and the female as the object, but because Mary Wroth is a female writer representing a female lover (Pamphillia) and a male beloved (Amphilanthus), she inverts the traditional sonnet subject/object paradigm. Her subject is female, and the male is the one who is talked about and thus put in the object position. The editor of The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth confirms, “Through the creation of a female persona, she was the first English writer to reverse the sexual roles within a complete sonnet collection” (Roberts 48). Her role in literary history proves to be one in which she appropriates the subject position. The female is liberated from the object position in which she is talked about; instead, Wroth presents a woman who speaks to and about a male beloved, the object of her affection. More importantly, in contrast to Petrarchan style sonnets, the subject of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus as female is moved not just by the beloved but by a yearning to know herself. Wroth writes:
When nights black mantle could most darknes prove,
And sleepe deaths Image did my senceses hiere
From knowledge of my self, then thoughts did move
Swifter then those most swiftness need require” (Wroth I.i.1–4)[1].
Wroth’s female lover as subject is not the object of male contemplation or judgment but rather is the one who contemplates, and she is not contemplating the beloved so much as examining herself in the above verse. In this first sonnet of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, she is not burdened by the traditional physical longing of male sonneteers; rather, it is primarily her thoughts that are the center of attention. Her thoughts too are quick and rooted in self-knowledge rather than depending on the beloved or the masculine for legitimacy or significance even if her thoughts and emotions sometimes travel down dark paths. Wroth continues to develop the idea that thought is an empowering state for the feminine lover in sonnet 23:
“When every one to pleasing pastime hies
Some hunt, some hauke, some play, while some delight
In sweet discourse, and musicque shows joys might
Yett I my thoughts doe farr above thes prise…
While others hunt, my thoughts I have in chase (Wroth I. xxiii. 1–4 &9).
Wroth has not dismissed tradition all together as the convention of the hunt still stands, but the prize is not the beloved; instead, it is thought. Wroth innovates by modifying the traditional convention of the lover chasing the beloved. The chase in now framed in terms of thought. Nona Fienberg’s article “Mary Wroth and the Invention of Female Poetic Subjectivity” argues that:
“In sonnet 23,…In the third quatrain, the speaker redefines terms that allow her to create her own subjectivity. Instead of the courtly hunt, she will chase her thoughts. Instead of accepting the court’s definition of hawking, discourse, and music, the speaker appropriates those terms to her own interior landscape. Instead of praising the beloved, she praises her own thoughts” (Fienberg 176).
Fienberg views Pamphillia’s chasing of thought as an act of creation where the female lover frames her own subjective experience in contrast to the masculine sonneteer’s portrayal of the feminine as the root of rejection, where love can only be attained as if it were a hunt, which can be interpreted as an act of cruelty. Thought, however, is within the domain of logic, reason, and the objective. In her praise of thought instead of the beloved, she praises feminine objectivity as well as amorous objectivity in a more general sense. Changing of the sonnet’s subject thereby alters gender’s relation to thought, casting the feminine lover as inhabiting the traditional masculine position of lover-subject, versus the beloved-object position. This inversion later suggests the transformation of the arrows of an immature Cupid (causing immature, emotional love) to the arrows of the mature Cupid (who causes love to be thoughtful and mature). The suggested transformation is paralleled in the inversion of the lover and the beloved: the feminine-lover hunts thought within the context of love rather than the masculine-lover who emotionally hunts the woman-beloved.
Because Wroth emphasizes the importance of thought in love and reclaims love as an interior rather than an exterior effort, her poetry inhabits a radically different intellectual space than Petrarchan poetry, which exteriorizes love and the dynamic between the lover and beloved. The dream vision in the opening sonnet of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus reveals Wroth’s difference from the Petrarchan school in this respect. Pamphilia, the dreamer, envisions:
Venus Queene of love, And att her feete her sonne, still adding fire
To burning hearts which she did hold above,
Butt one hart flaming more then all the rest
The goddess held, and putt itt to my brest,
Deare sonne, now shut sayd she: thus must wee winn;
Hee her obay’d and maritr’d my poore hart,
I waking hop’d as dreames itt would depart
Yett since: O mee: a lover I have bin (Wroth I.i.6–14).
The burning heart is not torn from Pamphilia’s breast by love, but rather Venus determines that the heart should belong to Pamphilia. The image of the heart torn out of the lover’s chest can be seen in Petrarchan style sonnets, for example in the episode of the masque of love in Spencer’s third book of the Faerie Queene. In contrast, Wroth’s image of the burning heart being put up to Pamphilia’s chest intimates the interiority of love and love poetry. Jeff Mastern, author of the article, “‘Shall I Turn Blabb?’: Circulation, Gender and Subjectivity in Mary Wroth’s Sonnets,” explains, “The heart transplant is, as Roberts notes, a recurrent image in the English tradition of Petrarchanism, but the insertion it signifies, the movement inward at this inaugural moment, recurs throughout the sequence as a withdrawal into an interiorized corporeal space” (Mastern 70). Understanding love as an interior effort, one deeply involved with thought, changes the sonnet genre where typically the masculine-lover petitions the female-beloved. The movement is outward at what is yearned for or what is unavailable. Wroth’s conception of love’s interiority creates a state of inner-petitioning, a practice that must be driven by thought in concordance with emotion. The petitioning is for the self to overcome temporary emotional pitfalls and to instead pursue reason. It can also be seen as connecting with the divine within in order to have greater strength during the love effort. Wroth continues to reclaim love as an interior state in sonnet three of section one. She writes:
Yet is there hope: Then Love butt play thy part
Remember well thy self, and think on mee…
Lodg in that brest, and pitty moving see
For flames which in mine burne in truest smart,
Exiling thoughts that touch inconstancie (Wroth I.iii.1–2 &5–6).
In this sonnet, Pamphilia expressses her hope that Love, or Cupid, would pity her because of the inner burning her heart undergoes. In pity, it is suggested that Love would then think upon her and shoot the arrow of desire into the beloved. The exterior movement is directed by a divine hand rather than at the chase of the lover. In this scenario, the emotional state of the lover drives logic within Love, so Love may pity the lover who so suffers and might work in her favor. The interiority of her love does not function as selfishness or weakness; rather, the intensity of her burning love demonstrates a higher level of ethos behind her love. Instead of giving in to the pain of her emotions, she then petitions the divine to strengthen her resolve so that inconstant thoughts may be exiled from her heart. Instead of pain driving her to think poorly of the beloved, her petition to Love functions in a logical way. Her emotional pain is not given the upper hand. It is the constancy of her thoughts that she frames as the goal. She would believe in the beloved and love him even if she is suffering. In this sonnet, unlike traditional sonnets in which almost every consideration is exterior, depending on the beloved for guidance and approval, it is the divine that must guide her considerations in a way that befits a lover. Constancy of thought is proof of her love’s verity. At the same time, Wroth’s imagery pulls love back into the personal, interior space, showing the exercise of feminine privity in a society where exteriority was within the masculine domain. Feminine interiority is not framed as purely emotional though, emphasizing that thought and reason are also important to women, even women in the throes of love.
Continuing her theme of the lover’s prioritization of thought, in Pamphilia and Amphilanthus, the sun is a signifier of reason, which pierces and clears the lover’s dark, emotional confusion. In sonnet five, section one, Wroth questions:
“Can pleasing sight, misfortune ever bring?
Can firme desire a painefull torment try?
Can winning eyes prove to the hart a sting?
Or can sweet lips in treason hidden ly?” (Wroth I.v.1–4)
The questions being asked show how paradoxical love can be: pleasant yet perhaps veiling hidden threats or even deception. Pondering these questions about the nature of love put the lover in a position of agency. The lover can think critically about love’s nature rather than being emotionally blinded. The questions seem to suggest that if the lover approaches love from the avenue of thought, then the truth can be revealed. In the next line, Wroth writes, “The Sun most pleasing blinds the strongest eye” (Wroth I.v.5). The sun is clear and piercing thought that can penetrate the strongest veils of emotion that blind love can place upon the lover. At the same time, the perception of truth can blind lovers as those who living in the caves of ignorance are unaccustomed to the light and the reality it illumines. In the first song of section one, Pamphilia again ponders thought. This time emotion renders thought useless. She laments:
“The Sunn which to the Earth
Gives heate, light, and pleasure,…
His heat to mee is colde,
His light all darkness is
Since I am bar’d of bliss” (Wroth I. Song 1. 9–10 & 13–15).
When thought is not primary within the love effort, emotion remains. The deprivation of thought is like the deprivation of the sun’s warmth. Without thought, her emotional submersion blinds her to the greater power of her love. In a broader sense, when emotions control lovers, thought cannot be reached, and therefore, growth and inner-warmth are divorced from them. The sun is also a symbol of the beloved. In his absence, reason is lost, and without such grace, cold, depressing emotionality reigns.
If the lover is to approach love logically, then constancy of love is requisite even when the beloved may seem unresponsive. Tina Krontiris, in her book Oppositional Voices: Women as Writers and Translators of Literature in the English Renaissance, points out that “Unlike conventional sonneteers, Wroth does not idealize the beloved or seek to praise his physical charms; she is more interested in the psychological state of the female lover and concept of constancy” (Krontiris 122). Krontiris point indicates that Wroth’s focus on the feminine lover and constancy shifts the traditional idealization of the beloved to the idealization of the feminine lover’s ability to be faithful and logical while in love, even if that love appears to be unrequited for a time. Indeed, inconstancy is pinpointed as negative when Wroth remarks:
“Ah! How unkindness moves within the hart
Which still is true, and free from changing thought” (Wroth I.iix.5–6).
Wroth depicts the unkindness subjected upon the constant lover as futile and ineffectual when operating within the paradigm of true love approached from a logical state of mind. Even if the beloved is unkind, a true lover’s attitude toward the beloved would not change. Mastery of thought and control of the emotion allows the lover a constancy that has the power to prevail over temporary emotional fluctuation. It is like quarreling lovers. If emotion is the only consideration, then the anger of the fight could drive them apart. If love’s constancy and faith is a consideration, then they can remain together yet another day. In the third song of the first section, Wroth paints constant (faithful) thought as being positive even if unrequited love does cause emotional pain. She writes:
Say, my thoughts, do nott aspire
To vaine hopes of high desire:
See you nott all meanes bereft
To injoye? Noe joye is left;
Yett still mee thinks my thoughts doe say
Some hopes do live amid dismay (Wroth I. song iii.1–6)
As Wroth writes, thought, as the vehicle of logic, proves that there is hope even when the lover feels hopeless, but thought can only serve this function if it is not rooted in the superficial. The poem suggests that when things are messy, thought must overcome short-lived conflict as well as more negative arcs, such as over-analysis, unrealistic expectations, or pride. That is how hope in love’s strength can prevail. Wroth continues in song three:
Thought hath yet some comfort giv’ne
Which dispaire hath from us drivn;
Therefor deerly my thoughts cherish
Never lett such thinking perish (Wroth I. song iii. 9–12).
Reason has driven away dejection in the lover, and Pamphilia finds thought to be essential in combating emotional despair, not just in her but also in the beloved. It is for that reason positive thought is so important for real love. It stands as a comfort in times of despair, deepening the bond between lovers rather than breaking them apart. Ultimately, Wroth’s poetry argues that constancy of thought is part of true love regardless of the emotional fluctuations that the lover and beloved may experience because true love must be rooted in deeper foundations than emotion itself.
Wroth does not only present readers with thought’s role in the lover’s plight, but she also argues emotional inconstancy, represented by the metaphor of night, only serves to torture lovers. In the twelfth sonnet of section one, emotional love’s connection to the night is apparent. She writes:
“Cloy’d with the torments of a tedious night
I wish for day; which come, I hope for joy:
When cross, I finde new tortures to destroy
My woe-kil’d hart, first hurt by mischiefs might” (Wroth I.xii.1–4)
The speaker is tormented by tedious emotion that challenges the faithfulness of her thoughts. She wishes for the light of thought to clarify the situation. Because thought illuminates the foolishness of unbridled emotion, it is a vehicle of hope and delivers joy as it puts emotional suffering in to a better perspective. The speaker’s suffering is the product of the variability of emotion, symbolized as the night, the dark author of chaotic mischance and shrouded separation. Wroth continues:
My thoughts are sad; her face as sad doth seeme:
My paines are long; Her houers taedious are:
My griefe is great, and endless is my care:
Her face, her force, and all of woes esteeme: (Wroth I.xii.9–12)
Although the speaker earlier indicated that she wished for the day, thought, she is still controlled by emotion; it is still night. Because emotions are controlling the speaker’s viewpoint, her thoughts are sad. Logical thought would reveal the higher truth that emotions are fleeting and would, in juxtaposition, create hope in the speaker. However, as long as emotion is the driving force in the lover, her experience of reality is like a long night, obscuring her vision and ability to move beyond her temporary pains. This intimation is instructive in the sonnet tradition where the sorrows of unrequited love rage.
Despite the false path emotions can lead lovers on, Wroth’s observations take emotion into consideration because although reason should guide the lover, it is natural to process love in an emotional way. In section two, Wroth uses the anachronistic Cupid, Cupid as child, to represent this emotion driven and immature love. The speaker describes this Cupid as:
Love a child is ever criing…
Give him hee the more is craving
Never satisfi’d with having;
His desires have noe measure,
Endless folly is his treasure (Wroth II. song iii. 1–6).
The anachronistic cupid is immature, emotion-based love. In this type of love, yearning is insatiable. Emotional pain infects the situation because immature love cannot be satisfied. Desire rules immature love without the boundaries of reason, and so the emotions twist and contort in the agony of a senseless wanting. In sonnet 10 of the second section, Wroth details how immature love gains the power to hurt the lover who is blinded by emotion. She writes:
Folly would needs make mee a lover bee
When I did little thinke of loving thought…
Yett when I well did understand his might
How hee inflam’de, and forc’d one to affect
I lov’d, and smarted, counting itt delight
Soe still to wast, which reason did reject (Wroth II.x.1–2&9–12).
Folly pushes the lover in to her plight by sparking love where none resided. Through reasoning she comes to see Folly as a catalyst for amorous problems, which only reason can remedy. Although the anachronistic cupid is young and foolish, he has emotional power, causing burning sorrow in the lover who feels rejected, yet Wroth detects that it is immaturity which grants him his power to cause pain as he only functions on this level when mature reason is disregarded.
In section three, Wroth further develops her previous examination of love with the crowned, mature Cupid, who reigns as the just and reasonable ruler of the Court of Love, concluding that mature and logical love is a worthy endeavor. In the corona, she describes a more mature Love, king of the heart, who puts his faith in reason’s advisement. She writes:
“Bee from the court of Love, and reason torne
For Love in reason now doth putt his trust,
Desert, and liking are together borne
Children of love, and reason parents just
Reason adviser is, love ruler must” (Wroth III.x.1–5).
Wroth’s verse suggests that reason is of primary import in love, but it must be servant to Love, who rules affairs of the heart. If Love were monarch and were advised by emotion, it would be like the king who falls under the sway of an unstable advisor. Instead, wise council works as an important foundation for a solid rule, a solid love. The mature Cupid puts his trust in reason because it is essential, for reason is the function that sets standards and boundaries on endeavors in order to prevent pain and folly. In love, if one allows reason to direct thought and feeling, then much of the suffering one may feel during the love effort may prove to be transitory or illusory. The corona extends her praise of mature love to a very high level of laudation. By the thirteenth sonnet of the corona, mature love is not only advisable but a highly recommended state. Wroth describes this state as:
Free from all fogs butt shining faire, and cleere
Wise in all good, and innosent in ill
Wher holly friendship is esteemed deere
With truth in love, and justice in our will,
In love thes title only have theyr fill
Of hapy lyfe maintainer, and the meere
Defence of right, the punisher of skill,
And fraude, from whence directions doth appeere (Wroth III.xiii.1–8).
Mature love treasures that which is virtuous in the beloved and does not cling to the beloved’s flaws. Love grows into a close bond that cannot be destroyed, but to achieve that state, honesty and fairness are requisite. Logically, if a relationship were founded on traits that transcend temporary passions, then happiness would result. Love, within the framework of reason, would be founded on virtue rather than in artifice or deception. Unlike the sonnet tradition of the time, Wroth’s work seems to suggest that overblown idealization of the beloved is counter-productive. It is hyperbole used to convince the beloved to love the subject-lover and is thus symptomatic of immature love. In mature love, the lover and beloved behave as friends even if they are lovers. They esteem each other’s company above all else and offer kindness and acceptance to each other. Honesty and fairness become the will of the lover and beloved. Logic proves that love is the best state they could ever be in, for love is a force that combats death with manifested fruitfulness. If love is mature, it must be navigated through and ruled by thought and reason which will cause it to stand strong in the face of emotional storms and the blows of fate.
Although the corona paints a highly optimistic picture of love, Wroth’s sonnet sequence ends with the recognition that even if the lover tries to remain logical, love is not a logical experience and thus the inevitable blows of fate that affect all human beings must be endured. Wroth describes the reality of her experience as a lover:
“No time, noe roome, noe thought, or writing can
Give rest, or quiett to my loving hart,
Or can my memory or phantsie scan
The measure of my still renuing smart” (Wroth IV.xii.1–4)
As the lover, Pamphillia has prioritized thought to feeling, yet love as emotion rules her heart. In the battle of love, nothing Pamphillia can do eases her pain when the beloved is absent. She has let time past. She has thought her way through the paradoxes of love. Nevertheless, her emotions allow her memories to destabilize her love as she experiences yearning for that which is absent. At the end of so much work, Wroth is still confronted with the painful aspect of love. Wroth writes, however, that:
“Yett would I nott (deere love) thou shouldst depart
Butt lett my passions as they first began
Rule, wounde, and please, itt is they choysest art
To give disquiet which seems ease to man” (Wroth IV.xii.5–8).
In these lines, Pamphillia explains that she wouldn’t want a life without love even if emotional love, the type that is so prominent in the beginning of love. The beloved may be absent, but she would not elect for a life without him. The emotions affecting the lover in the beloved’s absence are tumultuous. When love is experienced only emotionally, the lover is dominated and wounded, yet the lines emphasize that romantic love is idealized despite the emotional pain that potentially comes with it; it’s the emotional pain that brings disquiet. Even with the potential for disquiet, the speaker favors love rather than not, despite potential suffering. In Changing the Subject: Mary Wroth and Figurations of Gender in Early Modern England Naomi Miller, a leading Wroth scholar, argues, “Wroth’s speaker uses her male lover’s absence to empower her own lyric voice rather than complaining of victimization. Over the course of the sequence, so pervasively shaped by the absence of the beloved, Wroth moves ultimately to decenter that loss…” (Miller 87). In sonnets, it is common that the beloved is absent, and that is why the sonnet is penned in the first place. The traditional sonnet functions as a petition, pleading that the beloved consider the lover’s needs. While the motif of absent lover is still present in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, it is confronted with thought even in the most emotional of times and thus frames the lover as someone who has transcended victimhood, turning to thought to overcome sorrows. Love is so important that even its pitfalls are worth the pain. Additionally, Wroth argues that love is just a state of qualitative fluctuation. She explains:
“Like to huge clowds of smoke which well may hide
The face of fairest day though for awhile
Soe wrong may shadow mee, till truth doe smile
And justice (sun like) hath those vapors tyde” (Wroth IV.v.1–4)
Love is like the vault of heaven: sometimes clear and sometimes dim. Like the sky, love has its days of radiance and its times of gloom. Wroth suggests that like a cloudy sky, therefore, love’s moments of pain will clear to a cheerful state. Because emotions cannot be escaped, they will always be able to create suffering. However, because emotions are transitory, reason stands as a universal truth, a permanent source of clarity to assist the lover when things become difficult.
Unlike the male sonnet writers of her time, Wroth’s artistic presentation of love favors the interiority and constancy of logical love while considering the role of tumultuous emotion. Traditional sonnets praised the beloved, and their ornamented style favored the exteriority of love. The traditional sonnet writers focused on the beloved and the beloved’s every fluctuation, losing themselves in the process. Wroth uses some traditional sonnet conventions, yet she innovates by reframing customary attitudes toward love. As a female, she favors logic in love, not only differing from the linear emotional experience of traditional sonnets but also proving that a female could be more reasonable than a male lover. At the same time, she does not neglect the consideration of emotion in love. Her sonnet sequence creates a space of dialectic between the logical and emotional as both of those states occur within love. She ultimately finds that emotions cannot be escaped, and sometimes they obscure logic. Nevertheless, if the lover tries to maintain logic throughout the experience of love, then those times of emotional pain will sooner dissipate.
To modern readers, this is a lot. There is a demand for the feminine author, works lost in history. Then when confronted with a historic work by a female author, there’s a tendency to judge the work by the norms of the reader’s own time. In an age where hook up culture and divorce have destabilized traditional love, many readers would view constancy as putting up with a relationship that is abusive. However, in Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, there is no abuse, only normal quarrels and the periodic absence of the beloved, which causes pain, but the pain is overcome with reason. That authorial choice is innovative in the sonnet tradition, but it is also innovative now when so many people are willing to endlessly pursue immature love at the expense of mature love. To illustrate the positive quality of the sonnet collection, I will conclude with the last sonnet of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus:
My Muse now happy lay thy selfe to rest,
Sleepe in the quiet of a faithful love,
Write you no more, but let those Phant’sies move
Some other hearts, wake not to new unrest.
But if you Study be those thoughts adrest
To truth, which shall eternall goodness prove;
Enjoying of true joy the most, and best
The endless gaine which never will remove.
Leave the discourse of Venus, and her sonne
To younge beginners, and their braines inspire
With storyes of great Love, and from that fire,
Get heat to write the fortunes they have won.
And thus leave off; what’s past shewes you can love,
Now let your Constancy your Honor prove.
Finis
Works Cited
Fienberg, Nona. “ Mary Wroth and the Invention of Female Poetic Subjectivity.” Reading Mary Wroth: Representing Alternatives in Early Modern England. Eds. Naomi J. Miller and Gary Waller. Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1991.
Kontiris, Tina. Oppositional Voices: Women as Writers and Translators of Literature in the English Renaissance. London: Routledge, 1992.
Masten, Jeff. “‘Shall I Turn Blabb?’: Circulation, Gender and Subjectivity in Mary Wroth’s Sonnets.” Reading Mary Wroth: Representing Alternatives in Early Modern England. Eds. Naomi J. Miller and Gary Waller. Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1991.
Miller, Naomi, J. Changing the Subject: Mary Wroth and Figurations of Gender in Early Modern England. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky. 1996.
Roberts, Josephine, A. The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.
Wroth, Mary. The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth. Ed. Josephine A. Roberts. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.
[1] I have chosen to site Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus by section, poem number, and line number. Large Roman numerals signify section, small roman numerals signify poem number, and Arabic numerals signify line numbers.
