Private Lyrics in Elizabeth Cary’s Tragedy of Mariam

Abstract

According to The Lady Falkland: Her Life, Elizabeth Cary valued poetry above all other literary genres. Her biographer-daughter asserts that not only had she “read very exceeding much: Poetry of all kinds, ancient and modern, in several languages, all that ever she could meet,” but she also “writ many things for her private recreation, on several subjects, and occasions, all in verse.”¹ Despite the fact that the most likely models for Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam, The Fair Queen of Jewry were written in unrhymed iambic pentameter with intermittent couplets, Cary’s play is writ “all in verse” and in rhyme.² The iambic pentameter lines, quatrains with alternating rhymes, are punctuated by occasional couplets that pro­duce sonnets, or truncated sonnets, throughout the play.