Penguin Classics: Penguin Dramatists S.

1 total work

Three Tragedies by Renaissance Women Writers

by Lady Jane Lumley, Mary Countess of Pembroke, and Elizabeth Carey

Published 25 June 1998

This volume contains unmodernized versions of plays by each of the three leading Renaissance women dramatists: Elizabeth Cary's "The Tragedie of Mariam" (1613), the story of the plight of a woman married against her will to an unbending tyrant; June Lumley's version of Euripides' "Iphigenia" (1550), the earliest surviving translation of a Greek tragedy; and Mary Sidney's "Antonie" (1590), a blank verse translation of a French Senecan play. Intended for private production, all three were able to address contentious political issues - the nature of the good ruler, resistance to unjust authority - which were seldom permitted on the public stage.