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Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry is a Jacobean closet drama by Elizabeth Tanfield Cary. First published in 1613, it was the first work by a woman to be published under her real name. Never performed during Cary''s lifetime, and apparently never intended for performance, the Senecan revenge tragedy tells the story of Mariam, the second wife of Herod. The play exposes and explores the themes of sex, divorce, betrayal, murder, and Jewish society under Herod''s tyrannous rule. The comprehensive, illustrated introduction discusses the play in the context of closet drama, female dramatists and in terms of the religious issues it explores, seeing Mariam as a martyr figure. The on-page commentary notes provide further close analysis and explanation, creating an ideal edition for study and teaching.>
List of contents
Introduction
The Tragedy of Mariam Appendices
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Ramona Wray is Lecturer in English at Queen's University, Belfast, UK. Her publications include Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siècle (2000), Screening Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century (2006).
Elizabeth Cary (1585-1639) was an English poet, translator and dramatist. She is best known today for
The Tragedy of Mariam (1613), the first original play in English known to have been written by a woman. Over her lifetime, she married Sir Henry Cary, and had eleven children by him. Disinherited by her father for using her own income to defray household expenses, she was later abandoned by her husband when she converted to Catholicism. She would spend much of the rest of her life battling for custody of her sons and daughters.
Summary
An annotated edition of an unusual play by a female writer from the early modern period with the high quality scholarship associated with all Arden titles
