Edward Herbert as Early Reader of Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedie of Mariam

Abstract: In a packet housed at the National Library of Wales, Edward Herbert (1583-1648) transcribes nearly ninety lines, hitherto unidentified, from The Tragedie of Mariam (1613) by Elizabeth Cary (1585-1637). These extracts from the first original play published by an Englishwoman shed new light on the contemporary circulation and reception of Cary's verse drama among the Sidney-Herbert literary circle, of which Herbert was a prominent member. Herbert's lengthy, largely faithful extracts suggest his deep admiration for Cary's thought and style. His few probable revisions, especially to the play's dedicatory sonnet, disclose his complementary desire to give her work his own formal and stylistic stamp by deploying a more unusual rhyme scheme and allowing more metrical variation than does Cary. His choice of passages reveals, furthermore, his particular appreciation of Cary's highly original exploration of marriage, divorce, and gender inequality in ways that arguably influenced Herbert's own poetry, including his own unfinished verse drama, The Amazon .