women poets, seventeenth century, public, female writers, James I, Rawl Poet 26, Katherine Philips, world turned upside down
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Women’s participation in verse answering becomes even more conspicuous in the increasingly public literary exertions of female writers later in the seventeenth century and answer-poetry constituted a part of the repertoires some of the most prominent women poets.
374 It is also significant that some of the earliest instances in which laywomen venture directly into political commentary employ the medium of answer-poetry. It will be recalled that the answer to James I’s ‘The Answere to the Libell Called the Comons Teares’ (see p.56) is ascribed to a women and begins, remarkably, with an imperative injunction to an anointed monarch: “Condemne not gratious king our playntes and teares/ Wee are noe babyes” (Rawl. Poet. 26, f.20r, ll.1-2). It was around three decades later when Katherine Philips published, openly and in her own name, an answer-poem engaging directly with the most famous and catastrophic political event of the day, ‘Upon the Double Murther of K. Charles, in Answer to a Libellous Rime Made by V. P.’375 It is given pride of place in the miscellany as the first poem after the dedications and prefatory verse and as the first verse listed in the index. It seems that that the bigger or more dramatic the world turned upside down scenario that is manifested, the more licence there is afforded to women writers. These tentative forays into a masculine literary sphere of public and political verse answering required a considerable degree of indignation or moral outrage for women to throw caution to the wind and speak out. They are motivated to write by exceptional circumstances and usually only in such circumstances, it seems, were they bold enough to
374 Among these are Aphra Behn, Katherine Philips, Elizabeth Singer Rowe and Elizabeth Wilmot, Countess of Rochester. See The Works of Aphra Behn, ed. Janet Todd, 7 vols (Pickering and Chatto, 1992-6), I. pp.272-3 and p.432; The Collected Works of Katherine Philips: The Matchless Orinda, ed. Patrick Thomas, 3 vols (Stump Cross, Essex: Stump Cross, 1990), I. no. 1 and no. 108; Singer Rowe’s Poems on Several Occasions Written by Philomela (printed for John Dunton, 1696), sigs Bvir-Bviiiv, sigs Cir-Ciirr-Aaiiir, sigs Cciiir-Ccivr, sigs Ddvir-Ddviir, Wing R2062 and The Works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. Harold Love (Oxford: OUP, 1999), pp.18-19.
375 Thomas ed. (1990), I. no. 1.
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