Wroth, Lady Mary

(?1587-?1651)

   The eldest daughter of Robert Sidney, first earl of Leicester and niece of Sir Philip Sidney (see entry), in 1604 she married Sir Robert Wroth, who became very wealthy on his father's death in 1614. Lady Mary was often at court after her marriage and acted in Ben Jonson's Masque of Blackness (1605). In 1621, she published The Countess of Montgomery's Urania, a close imitation, in four books, of Arcadia by Sir Philip Sidney. The volume includes a collection of poems, some hundred sonnets and twenty songs. The same year she published Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, a poem of 1,675 lines, one section of which is Crown of Sonnets Dedicated to Love. The book caused some offense and Lady Mary withdrew it. She created a scandal at court by having two illegitimate children by her first cousin William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke. Some of her other poems: "Cupid Blessed Bee Thy Might," "Drowne Me Not You Cruell Teares," "Love Lett Mee Live, Ore Lett Mee Dye," "Love, and Reason Once Att War," "Silent Woods with Desarts Shade," "The Sunne Hath No Long Iourney Now to Goe."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www. lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Life of Lady Mary Wroth. (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/wroth/wrothbio.htm). The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth. Louisiana State University Press, 1883.