secular writing, idealised, Petrarchan, heroine, Mary Cheke, Lucy Russell, Queen Elizabeth, Ann Boleyn, Mary Shelton, Margaret Douglas, Thomas Whythorne

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association between female textual and sexual activity at a time when “women’s secular writings were received, described and understood in sexual terms”. ³⁷⁰ Schleiner, for instance, argues that the alternative depictions of women as either idealised Petrarchan heroines, for the purposes of seduction, or as sexually wanton viragos, for the purpose of defamation, “offer women only one unproblematic subject position, the superior chastity one”. ³⁷¹ It should be noted, however, that through the medium of the verse answer women might cultivate more sophisticated and problematic literary identities, and this chapter will deal with some of these as well.

The number of women answer-poets whose work has survived is perhaps longer than expected. Lady Mary Cheke’s only known literary production is an answer-poem as is that of Francis Seymour, Countess of Hertford, cousin of the infamous Francis Howard. Much of the extant verse of Queen Elizabeth is also answer-poetry. From the court of Henry VIII can be added the names of Ann Boleyn, Mary Shelton and Lady Margaret Douglas, and from the aristocratic women during the reign of James I, Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford, and Lady Mary Wroth. At the opposite end of the literary marketplace, Isabella Whitney’s publications engage closely with the genre and, representing middle-class women’s involvement in private verse exchanges, we have Thomas Whythorne’s autobiographical account of engaging in amorous verse dialogues with one of his patronesses and with female servants at houses where he was employed. ³⁷² There is also evidence that a few anonymous answers were written by women. ³⁷³

³⁷⁰ Mary B. Moore, Desiring Voices: Women Sonneteers and Petrarchism (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2000), p.130.
³⁷¹ Schleiner (1994), p.17.
³⁷² See Cat. B 76, C 88, D 109, E 117-22, R 240, S 243, S 245, W 300-3, W 305-7 and W 315-16.
³⁷³See Cat. Anon 9, Anon 27 (see also n.399) and Anon 53 (see also pp.228-30).

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