Lady Jane Lumley’s Private Education and Its Political Resonances

Abstract

In this chapter, Natália da Silva Perez focuses on Lady Jane Lumley, who lived in England in the middle of the sixteenth century. As a young member of a noble household close to the throne, her study practices were fomented and shaped by her family’s political aspirations and alignments, all the while remaining within the private circle of her family. In what follows, Silva Perez maps ideas that Lady Lumley articulated through translations and letters that she wrote for her father as a young woman. In her texts, the private, the political, and the public appear not as distinct categories but are rather co-constructed as mutually interdependent.

Introduction: Education at a Noble Household

Lady Jane Lumley was the daughter of the Earl of Arundel, Henry Fitzalan, and Catherine Grey (who died in 1542, when Jane was a child).¹ Lord Arundel was an important Catholic noble who was close to the royal circle.² He “had served as Lord Chamberlain in the households of Henry VIII and Edward VI until 1550” and, after a period where he had fallen out of grace with the royal family, he was instrumental in Mary I’s accession to the throne in 1553.³ In the midst of a succession controversy following the death of King Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey was crowned and reigned for nine days, thanks to the manoeuvres of the Duke of Northumberland.⁴ Jane Grey was a cousin of Lord Arundel’s first wife, so at first he supported her as the lawful queen, even though she was a protestant.⁵ A politically clever Catholic, when a chance presented itself to him, Arundel led a party against the Duke of Northumberland and turned against Jane Grey, helping Mary I ascend to the throne, consequently becoming one of those responsible for Jane Grey’s imprisonment.⁶ Later, Jane Grey was executed for high treason after having spent some time at the Tower of London.

Arundel’s allegiance to Mary I gained him the sympathy of the Catholic queen, who would “continually demonstrate her gratitude to Arundel in little favours.”⁷ For example, when Mary I took power in 1553, Protestant Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was imprisoned in the Tower of London and his property confiscated.⁸ The queen’s sympathy towards Arundel eventually secured him possession of Cranmer’s library, adding the archbishop’s books to Arundel’s already “substantial collection of some 400 volumes, representing three different interests.”⁹

Acquiring books and developing a prestigious humanist learning was part of noble people’s practices of religious and political views.¹⁰ It was part of their way to perform politics, not simply as a conspicuous display, but in the sense of ‘perform’ that encompasses both the idea of displaying something and of bringing about a certain reality.¹¹ Given the symbolic value of education, it is not surprising that even those families who were not aspiring to foster direct successors to the throne also sought to follow the advice from hortatory books on education, like Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Institutio principis Christiani. In 1516, Institutio principis Christiani was published by Froben Press in Basel, making this practical manual on humanist education available to a wide public of readers.¹² In principle, the book addressed the educational needs of rulers; Erasmus dedicated it to Prince Charles of Spain on his accession to the throne of Aragon and later also offered a hand-illuminated copy to Henry VIII.¹³ In the book, Erasmus asserted that it is “the spirit that distinguishes king from tyrant, not his title.”¹⁴

This is the type of humanist education that Lady Jane Lumley and the other young people in her family received at her father’s house. The young people of the Earl of Arundel’s household, boys and girls alike, received a strong and erudite education.¹⁵ They made use of the rich holdings of the ever-expanding Arundel library and also contributed their own manuscripts of translations to the collection.¹⁶ Mary, Jane, and Henry, the Fitzalan children from the Earl of Arundel’s first marriage with Catherine Grey, and John Radcliff, their stepbrother, who came to live at their home after Arundel’s second marriage to Mary Radcliff, all left manuscripts of translations, which were in their majority offered as New Year’s gifts to their father.¹⁷ When the young Henry Fitzalan went to Cambridge, he became friends with John Lumley. John Lumley eventually also came to live in the Arundel household when, at about the age of 17, he married Jane, who was about 13 years old at the time.¹⁸ Shortly after their marriage, John translated Institutio principis Christiani and offered it as a gift to Lord Arundel, signing it “your Lordeshippes obedient sone, J. Lumley, 1550.”¹⁹ Within the private sphere of the Arundel household, the young people of the family were carefully educated for their future in politics.

The gift of Institutio principis Christiani by John Lumley to his father-in-law is symbolic of the intellectual interests fomented at the Earl of Arundel’s household, centred as they were in the appropriate conduct for political actors. Institutio principis Christiani counsels the leader to rule by consent. Lisa Jardine explains that Erasmus believed it was better to maintain stability in the political order to avoid “discord and social disintegration,” in accordance with his support for European monarchies.²⁰ For Jardine, Institutio principis Christianis had as its purpose “to ensure that those born to rule are educated so as to govern justly and benevolently, and so that the prince’s rule never degenerates into oppression.”²¹ Indeed, these ideas are echoed in Lord Arundel’s speech in defence of Mary I being the queen:

I am onely hereto induced for the safety of the com’on wealth and liberty of this kingdome, wheareto we are bounde noe lesse then to ourselves, both by the lawe of God and nature, as likewise through remorse of conscience, seeing the Lady Maryes right, lawfull successor to this Crowne, by an other possessed, and thearby all we like to be deprived of that liberty w^ch we have so longe enjoyed under our lawfull Kings and Princes.²²

Erasmus’s advice on princely education was complemented by his references to the type of Christian philosophy that he had developed earlier in Enchiridion militis Christiani (1501), and to the rhetorical strategies that he suggested in his De Utraque Verborum ac Rerum Copia (1512), which included the use of translation. He did not simply recommend translation but showed how his own learning owed much to translating Greek works into Latin. Through Erasmus’s influence, translation became a cherished exercise in humanist curricula.

The Private, the Public, and the Political in Lady Lumley’s Writings

Most of Lady Jane Lumley’s extant texts were translations. Dedicatory letters addressed to her father, several translations from Isocrates’s texts, and an entry she copied from an encyclopaedia appeared in Latin. The Tragedie of Euripides Called Iphigeneia is the only text that appeared in English. Translated sometime after 1553, this play was both the first instance where an Ancient Greek tragedy appeared in English, as well as the earliest extant drama by a woman in England.²³

Three separate volumes of Lady Jane Lumley’s writings survive: the first two volumes seem to be clean copies, each containing only one translation and its corresponding letter-preface, while the third volume seems more like a commonplace notebook, containing varied works in more casual handwriting:

• “Oratio Isocratis quem Archidamus inscribitur”, which is prefaced by an “Argumentum” in the form of a letter signed “Filia tua dominationi tue deditissima, Joanna Lumleya” (BL MS Royal 15 A i);

• “Evagoras, Oratio quarta Isocratis ad Nicoclem regem Cypri, versa e graecis in latina per Dominam Lumleyam”, which is prefaced by a letter to her father “Epistola ad dominum patrem” (BL MS Royal 15 A ii);

• A commonplace notebook containing multiple texts (BL MS Royal 15 A ix):

  • “Oratio prima Isocratis ad Demonicum” (incomplete);

  • “Epistola”, adressed to her father;

  • “Oratio Isocratis 2^a ad Nicoclem”;

  • “Nicocles 3^a Oratio Isocratis”;

  • “Epistola”, a draft copy of the above mentioned “Epistola ad dominum patrem”;

  • “Evagoras, Oratio quarta Isocratis ad Nicoclem,” a draft copy of above-mentioned presentation volume;

  • “Argumentum Orationis Isocratis quam in laudem pacis scripsit”;

  • “Oratio Isocratis in laudem pacis”;

  • “The Tragedie of Euripides called Iphigeneia translated out of Greake into Englisshe”, accompanied by “The Argument of the Tragedie”;

  • A single sentence, “acerba audire tolerabilius, quam videre”, which appears upside down on the verso of folio 98;

  • Two pages written by someone other than Lady Lumley (judging by the headings indicating dates, they seem like book-keeping entries, perhaps by John Lumley);

  • And finally, once again in the handwriting of Lady Jane Lumley, a copy of the entry on “Lapis Aquilae” from the encyclopaedia of medicaments Pandectarum Medicinae, compiled by Mattheus Silvaticus in the fourteenth century.

Most of the texts contained in Lady Lumley’s volumes—The Tragedie of Euripides Called Iphigeneia, the orations by Isocrates, and her letters—share the concern with principles of good conduct for rulers, common among those living in the Arundel household. The play The Tragedie of Euripides Called Iphigeneia is an example of this concern with political themes. It dramatizes a crucial moment in the life of a political family, an instance when the cliff between the private and public realms comes crumbling down. It is the story of a young woman who, by choosing to give up her life in a sacrifice, claims responsibility for the destiny of her country.²⁴

The only exception to the political themes is the last text of the list above, a copy of an encyclopaedia entry on the substance Lapis Aquilae. Extracted from an encyclopaedia of medicine, this entry is interesting on its own merits for presenting information from a medieval scholarly source about a remedy to help pregnant women during labour, relieve pain, and help prevent miscarriages.²⁵

The first translation that appears in Lady Lumley’s commonplace notebook, “Oratio prima Isocratis ad Demonicum,” is incomplete, but it ends in a passage about hortatory discourses, indicating that Lady Lumley might have been aware of the role they could play in shaping the personality of political leaders:

Now those who compose hortatory discourses addressed to their own friends are, no doubt, engaged in a laudable employment.²⁶

These lines resonate closely with Erasmus’s words below, indicating a possible source from where Lady Jane Lumley might have learned that the seemingly private practices of studying and writing had a role in politics:

…those who believe panegyrics are nothing but flattery seem to be unaware of the purpose and aim of the extremely far sighted men who invented this kind of composition, which consists in presenting princes with a pattern of goodness, in such a way as to reform bad rulers, improve the good, educate the boorish, reprove the erring, arouse the indolent, and cause even the hopelessly vicious to feel some inward stirrings of shame.²⁷

Indeed, from what Lady Jane Lumley tells her father in a dedicatory letter written in hortatory style, she enjoyed her studies and took pride in improving her skills, something that she could hone because she had at her disposal the privacy and resources of a noble household concerned with education:

I was impelled by this good and honourable motive, most distinguished father, to present to you these two short orations, which I have translated from Greek into Latin, as a sort of mark of my devotion, partly because I know you are especially pleased by such things and are zealous of knowledge, and partly so that I might hone my skills by working with Greek and Latin at the same time.²⁸

Lady Lumley cited Cicero when she told her father that she was dedicating herself to the study of Greek literature. She told Lord Arundel that Cicero had urged his own son to “mix Greek with Latin more often, because in this way [the son] could get more enjoyment and benefit from [these languages].”²⁹ As she wrote about Cicero, she recognized in her father a similarity with this Roman writer she admired and took for herself the advice the philosopher gave to his son. Furthermore, she demonstrated that one day she could do the same for her own children.³⁰

Lady Jane Lumley was a young woman preparing herself for her noble, genteel life. This would include having children, and it was expected that she would play a role in her future children’s education, as many educated noblewomen did. Historian Kenneth Charlton cites the example of Margaret Roper, daughter of Thomas More, to comment on the role that noblewomen had in the education of their children. Margaret Roper had been described by her father’s biographer as having had a crucial role in her children’s education: “To her children, she was a double mother, one not to bring them forth only into the world, but instructing them herself in virtue and learning.”³¹ It is safe to assume that Lady Lumley was expected to follow a similar path.

Lord Arundel had high stakes in promoting a humanist education for all his children because, in addition to preparing the young nobles for political life, a good education was also a sign of wealth and prestige. Diane Purkiss, in the introduction to the volume Three Tragedies by Renaissance Women where The Tragedie of Euripides Called Iphigeneia is included, goes so far as to affirm that:

In giving his daughter a strong classical education, [Lord Arundel] was not giving her a voice so that she might embark on a career as a writer or express herself fluently. He was buying a commodity, or, rather, he was following the standard practice of Renaissance nobles in turning his daughter into a sign of his own wealth, prestige, power and fashionableness.

Indeed, education signified prestige and wealth, it is undeniable; it required expensive resources like books, tutors, privacy, and time—perks unavailable to those belonging to the lower layers of society. But we should not understand receiving an education as the result of mere ‘fashionableness,’ not even for a girl. Far from being educated only because her father was “turning his daughter into a sign of his own wealth, prestige, power and fashionableness,”³² Jane Lumley would also have an important practical role in the education of her children with Lord John Lumley when she became a mother. Given her own father’s example, Lady Lumley must have been aware that parents had an important role in their children’s education.

Moreover, her education seems to have had more immediate, practical uses. I make this conjecture from the entry in her commonplace book where she copied the medical properties of Lapis Aquilae. As I mentioned above, Lapis Aquilae was a remedy to relieve pain during pregnancy, avoid miscarriages, and help during labour. Lady Lumley’s sister, Mary, in 1557 at about the age of 16, died two months after giving birth to her first child.³³ Perhaps Lady Lumley’s interest in the obstetric medicinal properties of the substance Lapis Aquilae has its origin in her sister’s difficulties during labour. Perhaps she was researching the medicine for other reasons, such as preparing herself for the prospect of her own pregnancy. Of course, I cannot know why she copied that encyclopaedia entry, and it might have been simply to satisfy her curiosity, but even if it was just curiosity, this is already a practical use of her education for purposes beyond those stated by Purkiss’s rather confined historiographical valuation.

When Lady Lumley expressed her admiration for Isocrates’s works, she hinted at the alignment of some of Isocrates’s teachings with her father’s political interests. In the letter to her father that prefaces her translation of “Evagoras”, she wrote that the text “shows that Evagoras was not so concerned with expanding his realm as with ruling it most virtuously and scrupulously.”³⁴ Indeed, to rule in this way, a ruler has to have a comprehensive education, and Erasmus, too, wrote that literature is useful not only as a source of pleasure but can be a source of wisdom for the Christian ruler:

Whenever the prince takes a book in his hands, let him do it not for the purpose of enjoyment but in order that he may get up from his reading a better man.³⁵

In “Nicocles 3^a Oratio Isocratis,” Lady Lumley’s translation reads:

Moreover, it is passing strange if the fact has escaped them that we reverence the gods and practice justice, and cultivate the other virtues, not that we may be worse off than our fellows, but that we may pass our days in the enjoyment of as many good things as possible.³⁶

Another of Lady Lumley’s translations also expressed a similar opinion about literary works, namely, that these activities done in one’s own private time are not mere entertainment, but serve the function of self-improvement. In “Oratio Isocratis 2^a ad Nicoclem,” we can read:

For when men are in private life, many things contribute to their education: first and foremost, the absence of luxury among them, and the necessity they are under to take thought each day for their livelihood; next, the laws by which in each case their civic life is governed; furthermore, freedom of speech and the privilege which is openly granted to friends to rebuke and to enemies to attack each other’s faults; besides, a number of the poets of earlier times have left precepts which direct them how to live; so that, from all these influences, they may reasonably be expected to become better men.³⁷

Lady Lumley’s writings reflect the influence of humanist scholarship in general, but of Erasmus in particular. Erasmus recommended reading Greek authors through philosophia Christi, a reading strategy that her translations seem to follow. Institutio principis Christianis explicitly recommends pondering what one learns from ancient Greek writers by thinking it through “the standard of Christ.” There, Erasmus wrote:

Demetrius Phalereus shrewdly recommends the prince to read books, because very often he may learn from these what his friends have not dared to bring to his attention. But in this matter he must be equipped in advance with an antidote, as it were, along these lines: ‘This writer whom you are reading is a pagan and you are a Christian reader; although he has many excellent things to say, he nevertheless does not depict the ideal of a Christian prince quite accurately, and you must take care not to think that whatever you come across at any point is to be imitated straight away, but instead test everything against the standard of Christ.’³⁸

Her translation The Tragedie of Euripides Called Iphigeneia does precisely that. The play shares political themes with Lady Lumley’s other works, with interests observed in other members of her household (that is, the most adequate conduct for political leaders), and as the translation of a poet’s work, it also exemplifies what Isocrates said about the usefulness of literature in providing examples of good behaviour. Importantly, Iphigenia at Aulis showed Lady Lumley that what can be learned from literature is not only for men; women too can find exemplary behaviours in literature and can also be examples of good behaviour. Iphigenia’s story puts focus on the intersections between political, family, and—particularly in Lady Lumley’s version—religious matters. The character of Iphigenia is an excellent example: a virtuous woman stepping up into the role of benevolent ruler to put the welfare of her country above her private concerns. Euripides’s version was missing the “standard of Christ.” With the aid of Erasmus’s Latin version, Lady Lumley noticed this lack and endeavoured to correct it in her English version.

Lady Lumley’s The Tragedie of Euripides Called Iphigeneia

The Ancient Greek myth of Iphigenia survives in numerous versions with different details.³⁹ In the fifth century BCE, the Athenian tragedians turned their attention to this myth in the version familiar to us: a war depends on a girl’s sacrifice, and this, in turn, depends on her father, King Agamemnon, deciding to go ahead with his daughter’s sacrifice.⁴⁰

Aeschylus, for example, mentions the myth in passing when he uses it as background to the tragedy Agamemnon, where the king’s destruction is an outcome of his decision to take his daughter’s life. In Aeschylus’s version, Iphigenia’s sacrifice explains the revenge that Clytemnestra exacts against her husband: after murdering Agamemnon, Clytemnestra tells the Chorus that “He paid by the sword for what he himself began.”⁴¹ Crucially, when the chorus describes the scene of the sacrifice at the beginning of that play, “Iphigenia is gagged so that she cannot curse her father.”⁴² In Agamemnon, the story of Iphigenia’s actual sacrifice is a contextual clue; it serves to explain Clytemnestra’s murder of her husband as soon as he returns home from his conquering mission in Troy.

In Iphigenia in Aulis, Euripides’s treatment of the myth actively opposes Aeschylus’s. The drama is organized around the wavering, undecided Agamemnon, who is presented with an ethical conundrum when the goddess demands Iphigenia’s sacrifice. Agamemnon goes back and forth between, on the one hand, accepting the goddess’s request to kill Iphigenia, and on the other, preserving the integrity of his family by giving up on the war. In Menelaus’s words, Agamemnon’s “plans are crooked: now one way, now another, soon a third.”⁴³ In Euripides’s play, there is greater attention to Agamemnon’s hesitation in facing the choice between his daughter’s life and his army sailing to Troy. George A. Kovacs highlights that in Iphigenia at Aulis, Euripides “chooses… to explore the psychological effects on the father of Iphigenia as he struggles to validate desires for kleos [renown] at the expense of philia [love].”⁴⁴

In doing so, Euripides also shifted more agency into the female characters of Iphigenia and Clytemnestra. Iphigenia is not silenced; she speaks at length on her own behalf. Clytemnestra fights until the end to try and save her daughter. At the end of the play, Clytemnestra’s scepticism and silence seem to foreshadow her murder of Agamemnon when he returns from Troy. Kovacs explains that such “mythographic decisions made in adapting a myth are a fundamental element in deriving meaning from the work of any Greek poet;” in the case of Euripides even more so because he was fond of “innovation and challenge to generic norms.”⁴⁵ Euripides wrote the play shortly before his death and was posthumously “awarded first prize for Iphigenia at Aulis at the Festival of Dionysos in 405 or 404.”⁴⁶

Written during the Peloponnesian war, this is a play about how private concerns become political. It brings to the fore Euripides’s questioning of commonplace assumptions regarding acceptable motivations for war. The play highlights the complicated nature of the division between private and public affairs and performs a thorough problematization of ideological justifications for military action. In Euripides’s treatment of the myth, a crucial element of the story occurs for the first time: Iphigenia’s willingness to volunteer for sacrifice for the good of her own country.

Euripides made Iphigenia into someone who chooses to die for the glory of saving her country, and Erasmus’s verse-by-verse translation into Latin gave this story a Romanized, closer to Christian, inflection.⁴⁷ Lady Lumley’s translation into English, in turn, adds a particular dimension to Iphigenia’s altruistic-religious-patriotic act: Iphigenia’s immediate concern for her family.

From the textual evidence, we know that Lady Lumley must have used a Greek text alongside the Latin version of Iphigenia at Aulis by Erasmus.⁴⁸ When Lord Arundel received the book collection of Protestant Archbishop Thomas Cranmer shortly after Mary I became queen in 1553, both a Greek and a Latin copy of Iphigenia at Aulis came with it. Euripides’s works had been made available for a broad European audience with the editio princeps by the Aldine press for the first time in 1503. Erasmus’s translations into Latin of Hecuba and Iphigenia in Aulis first appeared in print by 1506.⁴⁹ The collection that the Earl of Arundel received contained the Greek language volume Euripidis Hecuba Iphigenia tragediae graece, edited in 1520 in Louvain, and also a companion Latin translation by Erasmus.⁵⁰ These were likely the texts that Jane Lumley used; she must have been between 16 and 18 years old when she translated the play.

Given the influence of Erasmus on the way that education was organized in Lady Lumley’s household, it is not surprising to note his influence on Lady Lumley’s translation of the play. Her rendition of Iphigenia at Aulis reads very much like an instance where she was checking what she learned from Euripides against the “standard of Christ.” Iphigenia at Aulis is concerned with themes of religion and politics in their intersection, indeed with the untenability of a strict categorical separation between private and public interests. Euripides was a “pagan” whose teachings should not be “imitate[d] straight away” but rather read through the “standard of Christ.” This is precisely what Lady Jane Lumley accomplished in her version of Iphigenia’s story.

Comparing Translations of Iphigenia at Aulis

To give the reader an idea of what emerges from Lady Lumley’s translation choices, below is a comparison of The Tragedie of Euripides Called Iphigeneia with another translation of Iphigenia at Aulis into English, done by Mary-Kay Gamel. I am contrasting Lady Lumley’s text with this other translation into English to highlight some of the effects of her textual changes.⁵¹

Three kinds of effects arise from Lady Lumley’s translated version of the play:⁵² variations in context, action, and characterization. By variations in context, I mean that the place, space, or time of the scenes implied in one version of the play is different from what is implied in the other. For example, both prologues happen at a time of the day when it is dark outside, but while in Gamel’s translation of Euripides, the scene happens in the very early morning, before dawn, in Lady Lumley’s version, the prologue happens late at night. In Gamel’s translation, the Old Man says that Sirius is “still sparkling in mid-heaven” and that “it’s still quiet here at Aulis,” implying that it is too early for Agamemnon to be already up writing letters. But in Lady Lumley’s prologue, Senex says “it is not yet midnighte, as it may be iudged by the course of the seuen stares” and “What is the cause, O kinge, that at this time of nighte, thou comeste abrode?” with which the servant seems to be implying that it is too late for Agamemnon to be still out working.

There are also variations in action, by which I mean that the lines of the characters in one play presuppose a different type of activity, behaviour, or reaction to their interlocutor, compared to the lines in the other play. For example, when Menelaus intercepts the servant who is bringing the second letter to Clytemnestra, in Gamel’s translation of Euripides’s play, it is implied that Menelaus has already gotten a hold of the letter and has opened its seal, but the lines the servant says in Lady Lumley’s version imply that his struggle with Menelaus for the letter is happening as they speak. In Gamel’s translation, the first thing we see the Old Man say to Menelaus is “Menelaos, you’re doing something terrible. You should not commit such an outrage!”⁵³ According to a translation note by Gamel, the word ‘outrage’ here refers to the act of opening the letter.⁵⁴ In Lady Lumley, we hear him saying: “Thou striueste in uaine, Menelaius, for I will not deliuer my letters to the,” to which Menelaus responds “If thou wilte not deliuer them to me I will breake thy hede withe my mace.”⁵⁵ Only towards the end of the scene, Menelaus prevails and gets the letter. The relevant difference is that, in Lady Lumley’s, this struggle for the letter happens in front of the public.

Finally, there are differences in characterization. For example, when Agamemnon talks to his servant about Paris in the prologue, this helps us have an idea of who Agamemnon is and who Paris is. In Gamel’s translation of Euripides, Agamemnon emphasizes to the Old Man the fact that Paris is a foreigner, something that would ensue implications for an audience in Ancient Greece, because of the tendency to xenophobic feelings they expressed. Paris’s identity as foreigner is almost conflated with him being lowly and villainous:Verse

Verse And then, from the East, he came, the one who judged the goddesses (or so the story has it) to Sparta, blooming in his fancy getup, sparkling with gold—Oriental pansy! He lusted after Helen, she after him. Since Menelaos was away, he snatched her up, went back to the cowbarns of his native land.Footnote

Euripides and Gamel, ‘Iphigenia at Aulis (Play)’, ll. 71–77.

In Lady Lumley’s version, Agamemnon describes Paris as a noble young man whose personal characteristics are morally acceptable in her environment. He does not lust after Helen but falls in love with her. He does not snatch her, he takes her “priuelye” away:

Paris, whoo, as the cõmon uoice saithe was iudge betwene the goddes of their bewtie, came to Lacedemon and he beinge a goodlie yonge man, and of noble parentage, began to fall in loue withe her and so takinge hir priuelye awaye, broughte hir to a litle uillage, uppon the hill Ida.⁵⁷

Though the changes made by Lady Lumley seem small, sometimes timid, together they make a difference for the overall interpretation of the play, giving it a particular coherence in her cultural context. Indeed, all the characters seem to be functioning fully within a Christian world.

Like its Ancient Greek source, Lady Lumley’s The Tragedie of Euripides Called Iphigeneia is also concerned with Agamemnon’s ethical conundrum. The translation also resolves it via Iphigenia’s decision to take upon herself the responsibility for Greece’s freedom. The “lawfull cause” behind the need for her death is the “destruction of Troie and the welthe of grece:”

Consider I praie you mother, for what a lawfull cause I shalbe slaine. Dothe not bothe the destruction of Troie, and also the welthe of grece, whiche is the mooste frutefull countrie of the worlde hange upon my deathe?⁵⁸

What is specific to Lady Lumley’s abridged version of the story is that a different network of motivations emerges for Iphigenia’s decision to die. Though Iphigenia still overtly says her motivation for volunteering to die is the glory of bringing the welfare of Greece, Lady Lumley’s translation points also to a set of more immediate concerns. For example, when Iphigenia is about to leave for the temple of the goddess, in Gamel’s translation, she says to her mother “You brought me up to be a light for Greece. I do not reject dying,”⁵⁹ while in Lady Lumley’s version the emphasis on Greece is removed, and the focus is shifted to her mother’s feelings: “I wolde not haue you to mourne for my cause, for I will not refuse to die.”⁶⁰ An apparent small change, but which has important implications for the relationship between mother and daughter. In the first example, Clytemnestra’s feelings are not of concern. In the second, Iphigenia shows empathy with her mother, noticing her suffering, even as she remains resolute in her decision to die.

Both versions of Iphigenia at Aulis dramatize the contradictions of a social contract that imposes a sharp division between private and public interests, and they do so by telling the story of a ruling family in conflict.⁶¹ But each play does so from slightly different angles. In Gamel’s translation of Euripides, Iphigenia starts off as a girl, playful, naïve, carefree—something that it shares with other translations, too. For example, when Iphigenia and Clytemnestra arrive at Aulis, Iphigenia calls Agamemnon “daddy,”⁶² and a little while later blatantly asks him to ignore his obligations as a king: “Be with me now. Don’t focus on your responsibilities.”⁶³

Lady Lumley’s Iphigenia, on the other hand, starts already as a young adult who shows awareness of the unrealistic nature of the promises offered by that social contract dividing public from private. For example, when daughter and father first meet at her arrival in Aulis, Agamemnon gives her an obscure explanation about why he appears worried instead of happy, and Iphigenia shows an understanding of the unspoken “sondrie causes” that “disquiet” her father as a ruler:

Agamemnon: You knowe daughter, that he whiche rulethe an hooste shall haue diuers occations to be trobled.

Iphigeneia: Althoughe in dede a captaine ouer an hooste shall be disquieted withe sondrie causes, yet I praye you set aside all soche trobles, and be merie withe us whiche are therfore come unto you.⁶⁴

In Gamel’s translation of Euripides, Iphigenia’s transition into adulthood comes only much later in the drama, when she, having learned the cruel rules of that tacit social contract that separates private from public interests, decides to accept them, attempting to claim these rules for herself, and trying to convince her mother that the glory of dying for Greece is the most desirable outcome⁶⁵:Verse

Verse Listen, Mother, what sorts of things have come to me as I’ve been thinking. Death has been decreed—for me and by me. I want to carry out this same act in a glorious way, casting all lowborn behavior aside. Look at it this way with me, Mother, see how well I reason: All of Greece, great Greece, is looking at me now! In me lies the setting forth of the ships, the ruin of the Trojans, and women, in the future, even if barbarians try something, never again to allow them to rob those happy women from Greece, once they have paid for the theft of Helen, whom Paris stole. I will fend off all these things by dying, and my glorious fame, as the woman who made Greece free, will become blest. Also, I should not love my life too much. You bore me as something shared with all Greeks, not just for yourself.Footnote

Euripides and Gamel, ‘Iphigenia at Aulis (Play)’, vv. 1373–1386.

Lady Lumley’s Iphigenia, on the other hand, with a resilience that shows Christian undertones, still chooses to abide by that tacit social contract, which she senses is bound to fail, but does so in an attempt to save her family from further harm:

Herken O mother I praye you unto my wordes for I perceiue you are angrie withe your husband, whiche you may not do, for you can not obtaine your purpose by that meanes […] Againe remember how I was not borne for your sake onlie, but rather for the cõmodite of my countrie, thinke you therfore that it is mete, that suche a companie of men beinge gathered together to reuenge the greate iniurie, whiche all grece hathe suffered shoulde be let of their iournye for my cause. Suerlie mother we can not speke againste this, for do you not thinke it to be better that I shulde die, then so many noble men to be let of their iournye for one womans sake?⁶⁷

There is spiritual strength implied in Iphigeneia’s formulation, a sense of altruism in being able to calmly reason about her mother’s feelings—“I perceiue you are angrie withe your husband”—when her own death is imminent.⁶⁸ In reasoning with Clytemnestra, Iphigenia is once again showing her concern for her mother: this is the context for her reasoning. Iphigenia does not want her mother to be angry with her husband because that will not have good consequences for anybody involved. The end of this excerpt also points to a parallel between a woman’s death for the greater good of “so many noble men,” and Christ’s death for the good of humankind. Diane Purkiss explains that this was a fairly common reading of the story of Iphigenia at Aulis in the sixteenth century.⁶⁹ This passage shows that Lady Lumley was considering Iphigeneia’s reasoning within the discursive horizon available to a Catholic noblewoman in the sixteenth century such as herself.

Many cuts that Lady Lumley makes to background information also help emphasize Iphigenia’s impulse to protect her family from being harmed as the main justification for the abruptness of her decision to die. In Lady Lumley’s version, we have no access to many of the mythical clues that would justify Iphigenia’s desire for glory. In the absence of these mythical explanations, her implied altruism takes more prominence.

In Lady Lumley’s version, Achilles’s reaction to Iphigenia’s announcement supports this reading as well. Expressing himself with a temperate, polite vocabulary, he acknowledges Iphigenia’s choice as stemming from her pondering the best option, and stands by Iphigenia:

Trulie I wonder gretelie at the bouldenes of your minde. And bicause you seme to be so willinge to die, I can not speake againste you: yet neuertheles I will promise to helpe you still, leste you shulde happen to chaunge your minde.⁷⁰

In Gamel’s version, Achilles is much less nobly behaved; he is almost condescending to Iphigenia. He says that he thinks she will change her mind once she sees where she got herself into—“You will take me up on my words, perhaps, when you see the knife close to your throat”—implying that Iphigenia does not realize what she is doing in choosing to die. He makes himself available to save Iphigenia from herself, from her own “thoughtlessness:”Verse

Verse Brave spirit! I have nothing more to say in answer, since this course seems right to you. Your thought is noble. Why shouldn’t someone speak the truth? Nevertheless, you might still, perhaps, change your mind about this. So you can understand the things I’ve said, I will go now and place my arms near the altar, so as not to let it happen, but keep you from dying. You will take me up on my words, perhaps, when you see the knife close to your throat. I won’t allow you to die because of your own thoughtlessness. I will go now, with these arms of mine, to the goddess’s altar, and there I’ll watch carefully for your arrival.Footnote

Euripides and Gamel, ‘Iphigenia at Aulis (Play)’, vv. 1421–1432.

Aristotle in his Poetics called attention to the fact that Iphigenia’s character starts off having almost exclusively personal interests and then changes to having exclusively political ones, and this assessment is corroborated in Gamel’s translation. Aristotle criticized this change as a lack of consistency:

[the character] should be consistent. Even if the original be inconsistent and offers such a character to the poet for representation, still he must be consistently inconsistent… An example of … inconsistent character [is] Iphigeneia in Aulis, for the suppliant Iphigeneia is not at all like her later character.⁷²

Classical scholar Dana L. Burgess analyses the “play’s concentration upon the formation of convictions from lies,” explaining the shift in Iphigenia’s character through a more generous lens.⁷³ For Burgess, Iphigenia renounces her well-being because she acquires the (unwarranted) conviction that her death will ensure the welfare of her country. Aristotle’s interpretation is very famous, and Burgess’s is better argued, but Lady Lumley’s text opens yet another possibility: perhaps Iphigeneia does appear inconsistent, or deluded, but this is due to her contingently manoeuvring the options she had available to keep her family safe, and help her father save the country.

In Lady Lumley’s text, Iphigeneia’s sudden choice to die is of course still present, but it is further complicated by her understanding that her personal and political concerns are entangled beyond her ability to separate them. She takes responsibility for a public duty that is her father’s, and does so while also claiming ownership of the glory that will come with it, but she never gives up on her concern for her family. In fact, her family, particularly her mother, seems to be very much at the centre of her sudden decision, standing almost as the trigger for it. In other words, Iphigeneia’s decision to die is tied to her desire to protect both her family and Greece, tied to her desire for glory and for a Christian virtue of selflessness.

By introducing Iphigenia as a volunteer for sacrifice, Euripides’s made her into the bearer of the solution to Agamemnon’s conundrum. She steps in and takes on her father’s responsibility for ensuring that the army sails. Within Euripides’s logic of the story (due to our knowledge of the treatment of the rest of the myth in other plays), we know that her volunteering for sacrifice will be a very provisory solution to the danger her family is under: Clytemnestra will murder her husband as a consequence of her having lost her daughter. But we have no indication that Lady Lumley knew the outcome of the myth for Clytemnestra, as other plays by Euripides did not enjoy the same popularity as Iphigenia at Aulis and Hecuba did following their translations by Erasmus.⁷⁴ Thus we can infer that Lady Lumley was likely working with the story of Iphigenia at Aulis as a self-contained narrative, which makes Iphigenia appear like a selfless, Christ-like figure in Lady Lumley’s view.

As Lady Lumley reshaped the text within her sixteenth-century, familial, Christian framework, especially through cuts and abbreviations, Iphigeneia’s motivations for giving herself up for sacrifice are expanded and acquire an added nuance. What in Euripides’s text could be understood as an intrinsically bad choice—that of allowing one’s own death based on poorly supported convictions, as Burgess indicates—becomes, in Lady Lumley’s version, a more complex, situated one.⁷⁵

In Lady Lumley’s version, Iphigeneia finds in her love for her family and in her implied Christian convictions the strength to convince herself to take up the task to save her country. Lady Lumley’s version of the text complicates the plot’s gendered opposition of personal and political interests; in fact, it complicates the definition of what constitutes a good choice between these two types of interest.⁷⁶ In this logic, Lady Lumley’s translation presents a story where glory for Iphigeneia comes from her decision based on Christian principles, and is something rightly deserved from a religious point of view.

It is in slight shifts that Lady Lumley’s particular inflections come into play to shape a version of the story that intersects with Euripides’s but also has its own distinct implications, notably an implied religious framework that seems to sustain the drama, shaping the conceptual space where the characters act. In Lady Lumley’s historical context, these motivations seemed utterly plausible, and even desirable, as the forces driving the story forward.

As Catholic nobles, the relationship between politics and religion was ever-present for those in the Arundel household; they could not really manifest separately from one another. That Lady Lumley translated the play into English might in part be explained by her father’s possible interest in the themes treated in Iphigenia at Aulis. Arundel had a reputation for not being fond of foreign languages, preferring to conduct his affairs in English.⁷⁷ But he seemed to have been able to read fluently in Latin, as his book collection prior to the addition of Cranmer’s, as well as the letters from Lady Lumley, suggest. The play could have been read aloud among the family members, which could explain not only the translation into English but also the adaptations Lady Lumley performs as she abridges the text of the play.⁷⁸

In Conclusion

As is evident from the writings Lady Lumley produced, her education process was far from being a one-way street.⁷⁹ She received an education appropriate to her ranking and family, and in turn, she started to perform her own version of it through her choices and attitudes. She started to think for herself through the tools that this education brought to her. Through her process of translation, Lady Lumley was performing the type of political-religious thought fostered at the Arundel household. Indeed, today education theory widely accepts that education can never be simply a matter of transfer of knowledge from a knower to a learner, but a process where the subject matter is constantly reworked, performed.⁸⁰ In her private practice of knowledge production through translation and letter writing, Lady Jane Lumley could bring classical texts into her own environment, engaging her educational background in her creative process in the context of sixteenth-century English political, public, and private expectations.