Love's Victory: by Lady Mary Wroth

by Alison Findlay (editor), Philip Sidney (Editor), Michael G. Brennan (Editor)

Love’s Victory by Lady Mary Wroth (1587–1651) is the first romantic comedy written in English by a woman. The Revels Plays publishes for the first time a fully-authorised, modern spelling edition of the Penshurst manuscript, the only copy of the play containing all five acts, handwritten by Wroth and privately owned by the Viscount De L’Isle. Edited by Alison Findlay, Philip Sidney and Michael G. Brennan, their critical introduction provides details of Wroth’s remarkable life and work as a member of the Sidney family, tracing connections between Love’s Victory, her prose and poetry and her family’s extensive writings. The editors introduce readers to the influence of court drama on Love’s Victory and offer a new account of the play’s stage history in productions from 1999–2018. Extensive commentary notes guiding the modern reader include explanatory glosses, literary references and staging information.

280 pages, Paperback

Published September 20, 2022

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

crazy how much (mention of) violence and death there is in a play called "love's victory"

[cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading the drag that was Urania, I am so glad to be reminded why I love Mary Wroth. Her verse is just masterful. The poetic language had me completely immersed in the pastoral world of the play.
One of the most intriguing things I found about this was the role of the matriarchal figures of Venus and Musella's Mother. I can't think of another comedy from the period in which the agency of the female love interest is restricted by her mother instead of her father. Wroth's works have a tendency to be very autobiographical so I wonder if this was motivated by her own experiences with her mother. I also wonder if Venus's dominance over love to the point of death is satirising the period's assumptions of women as emotional beings.
Another point that I loved in this was the friendships between the female characters. I've read some essays arguing Wroth as a pioneer of representing the interior emotional lives of women and nowhere is it clearer than here in which women exist beyond their relationships of men, something rare in the comedies of this period. The friendship between Silvesta and Musella was unconventional - it could have easily devolved into a love triangle had they been written by a man - especially in Silvesta's aid of Musella's and Philisses's suicides (another progressive moment from Wroth: defying Church doctrine in favour of empowering women's choices, even if that choice is to die).
Overall, I love Mary Wroth. The way she takes patriarchal constructs, be it Church doctrine, literary tropes and legacies, or the structure and values of society, and upends them into something resembling women empowerment will never not be impressive, and the fact that she is so overlooked in Renaissance literature should be a crime.