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‘This Girle Hath Spirit’: Rewriting Girlhood Reading

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Reading Children in Early Modern Culture

Part of the book series: Early Modern Literature in History ((EMLH))

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Abstract

This chapter interrogates early modern concepts of girlhood through an analysis of how educational reading produced gendered and aged concepts of childhood. It explores the literacy instruction of young women at school and at home through an evaluation of the books recommended to girls and of young women’s responses to their reading in their school exercises. Focusing on the translation exercises of Elizabeth Cary (The Mirror of the World, c. 1597) and Rachel Fane (c. 1620s), it builds on recent theorizations of the creative potential of early modern girls to ask how these authors’ early reading experiences shaped their girlhoods.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    John Johnson, The Academy of Love (London, 1641), 99.

  2. 2.

    Lucy Cary, Lady Falkland: Her Life, in Lady Falkland: Life and Letters, ed. Heather Wolfe (London: Continuum, 2004), 108. Further references are given in the text.

  3. 3.

    For an extended discussion of Johnson’s representation of these readers as girls see Edel Lamb, ‘“Shall we playe the good girles”: Playing Girls, Performing Girlhood on Early Modern Stages’, Renaissance Drama 44.1 (2016): 73–100.

  4. 4.

    The Life was written during the years 1643–1649 by ‘one of her daughters’. Wolfe has argued that Lucy Cary is the main author, working in collaboration with her siblings, Mary and Patrick.

  5. 5.

    On the evolution of the language of girlhood, see Jennifer Higginbotham, ‘Fair Maids and Golden Girls: The Vocabulary of Female Youth in Early Modern English’, Modern Philology 110 (2011): 171–96. On the tendency to divide the stages of the female life cycle according to sexual categories, see Hilda Smith, All Men and Both Sexes: Gender, Politics and the False Universal in England, 1640–1832 (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State Press, 2010), 4.

  6. 6.

    John Harrington recalls the young Arabella Stuart (c. 1587/8) reading Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and her ability to ‘read French out of Italian, and English out of both, much better than I could’ (John Harrington, A Tract on the Succession to the Crown 1602 [London: Nicholas & Sons, 1880], 45).

  7. 7.

    For full list of the books in the painting, see Heidi Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 225–227; Kevin Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 297–298.

  8. 8.

    Caroline Bicks, ‘Incited Minds: Rethinking Early Modern Girls’, Shakespeare Studies 44 (2016): 180–202; Caroline Bicks, ‘Instructional Performances: Ophelia and the Staging of History’, in Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England, ed. Kathryn Moncrief and Kathryn McPherson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), 205–216; Jennifer Higginbotham, The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters: Gender, Transgression, Adolescence (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013); Deanne Williams, Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

  9. 9.

    Williams, 51; Bicks, ‘Instructional Performances’, 205.

  10. 10.

    Although many of the examples have been boys and young men, this is a consequence of the nature of the extant evidence. On the challenges of accessing female reading experiences, Brayman Hackel, 196; Margaret Ferguson, Dido’s Daughters: Literacy, Gender and Empire in Early Modern England and France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 3–12.

  11. 11.

    See Chap. 2, 34–43. On mothers as early teachers of early literacy, see Kenneth Charlton, ‘“Not publike onely but also private and domesticall”: Mothers and Familial Education in Pre-industrial England’, History of Education 17.1 (1988): 1–20; Elizabeth Mazzola, Learning and Literacy in Female Hands, 1520–1698 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), 25–26.

  12. 12.

    Mazzola, 27.

  13. 13.

    On the gendering of early modern childhood, see Naomi Miller and Naomi Yavneh, ‘Introduction’, in Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood, ed. Naomi Miller and Naomi Yavneh (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), 1–16.

  14. 14.

    R. Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2014), 17.

  15. 15.

    Eve Sanders, Gender and Literacy on Stage in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1.

  16. 16.

    George Savile, The Lady’s New-Years Gift, Or Advice to a Daughter (London, 1688), 22; 7.

  17. 17.

    Giovanni Bruto, The Necessarie, Fit, and Convenient Education of a Yong Gentlewoman (London, 1598), D6r–v.

  18. 18.

    Bruto, D6r, D8r.

  19. 19.

    See Will Fisher, Materializing Gender in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

  20. 20.

    See Bicks, ‘Instructional Performances’, 207; Kate Chedgzoy, ‘Playing with Cupid: Gender, Sexuality and Adolescence’, in Alternative Shakespeares 3, ed. Diana E. Henderson (London: Routledge, 2008), 138–157; Higginbotham, Girlhood; Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); Kim Phillips, Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270–1540 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003).

  21. 21.

    Savile, 114.

  22. 22.

    See also Comenius’ division of life cycle into comparable stages for men and women (Higginbotham, Girlhood, 35–37).

  23. 23.

    Bruto, D4r.

  24. 24.

    Bruto, D8r.

  25. 25.

    Bianca Calabresi, ‘“you sow, Ile read”: Letters and Literacies in Early Modern Samplers’, in Reading Women: Literacy, Authorship, and Culture in the Atlantic World, 1500–1800, ed. Heidi Brayman Hackel and Catherine Kelly (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 79–104; Juliet Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2001); Margaret Spufford, ‘Women Teaching Reading to Poor Children in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Opening the Nursery Door, ed. Mary Hilton, Morag Styles and Victor Watson (London: Routledge, 1997), 47–62.

  26. 26.

    William Hawkins, Apollo Shroving (London, 1626), 5.

  27. 27.

    Calabresi, 84. See further discussion of this play in Chap. 4, 126–131.

  28. 28.

    Hawkins, 5.

  29. 29.

    Anthony Munday, Fedele and Fortunio, ed. Richard Hosley (London: Garland Publishing, 1981), 5.4.156–9.

  30. 30.

    See OED; Williams, 5.

  31. 31.

    See N. H. Keeble, ed., Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (London: Phoenix Press, 2000), 14; Jane Stevenson, Women Latin Poets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 368–394; Marta Straznicky, Privacy, Playreading and Women’s Closet Drama, 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 21.

  32. 32.

    See Michelle Dowd, Women’s Work in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 139, on how narratives of women’s involvement as educators limit it in scope and duration, offering reassurance to those concerned about extent of female agency in the household.

  33. 33.

    For example, Sarah Coles and Rachel Fane as discussed in this chapter.

  34. 34.

    Juan Luis Vives, The Instruction of a Christian Woman (London, 1592), B4v.

  35. 35.

    Vives, C6r, D3v. Vives’ advice was repeated in English conduct manuals for women throughout the seventeenth century. For example, Richard Brathwait recommends a similar reading list to women in The English Gentlewoman (London, 1631), 183.

  36. 36.

    Wendy Wall, Staging Domesticity: Household Work and English Identity in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 61.

  37. 37.

    Robert White’s masque Cupid’s Banishment was performed by the pupils of this school at Greenwich in May 1617 and is the only record of the school. On the masque as evidence of the girls’ education, see Lamb, ‘Playing Girls’; Clare McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 164–201.

  38. 38.

    On the subjects taught to early modern girls and the history of girls’ schools, see Caroline Bowden, ‘Women in Educational Spaces’, in The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Laura Lunger Knoppers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 85–96; Kenneth Charlton, ‘Women and Education’, in A Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 3–21; Dorothy Gardiner, English Girlhood at School (London: Oxford University Press, 1929), 141–280; Helen Jewell, Education in Early Modern England (London: Macmillan, 1998), 105–106; Josephine Kamm, Hope Deferred: Girls’ Education in English History (London: Methuen & Co., 1965), 34–82; Rosemary O’Day, Education and Society 1500–1800: The Social Foundations of Education in Early Modern Britain (London: Longman, 1982), 179–195; Laetitia Yeandle, ‘A School for Girls in Windsor’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 17 (2005), 272–280.

  39. 39.

    Frances Teague, Bathusa Makin, Woman of Learning (London: Associated University Press, 1998), 93. See also Caroline Bicks, ‘Producing Girls on the English Stage: Performance as Pedagogy in Mary Ward’s Convent Schools’, in Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood, 139–153.

  40. 40.

    Suzanne Hull, Chaste, Silent and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640 (Pasadena: Huntington Library Press, 1982), 65.

  41. 41.

    Gardiner, 215.

  42. 42.

    Claude Mauger, The True Advancement of the French Tongue (London, 1653), A2r–A6v. Further references are given in the text.

  43. 43.

    Juliet Fleming, ‘The French Garden: An Introduction to Women’s French’, English Literary History 56.1 (1989): 19–51. On teaching French to girls in the period, see Jerome de Groot, ‘“Every one teacheth after thyr owne fantasie”: French Language Instruction’, in Performing Pedagogy, 33–51.

  44. 44.

    See Chap. 4, 113–123. For example, see ‘The twelfth Dialogue, between two Gentlewomen that learne French’ (239–241), which includes phrases regarding their performance at their lesson, and requests to lend and mend objects used within the schoolroom.

  45. 45.

    On performance in girls’ schools, see Lamb ‘Playing Girls’, 95–96.

  46. 46.

    On the recommendation of Cato and Seneca to grammar schoolboys, see Chap. 4, 112–113, 144 n. 66.

  47. 47.

    See James Daybell, The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Letters and the Culture and Practices of Letter-Writing, 1512–1635 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 60.

  48. 48.

    See Emily Bowles Smith, ‘“Let them Compleately Learn”: Manuscript Clues about Early Modern Women’s Educational Practices’, A Manuscript Miscellany, Proceedings of a Summer 2005 Institute, http://www.folger.edu/html/folger_institute/mm/EssayES.html, accessed 19 Nov. 2009; Heather Woolfe, ‘Women’s Handwriting’, in Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing, 25.

  49. 49.

    Sarah Powell and Paul Dingman, ‘Arithmetic is the Art of Computation’, The Collation: Research and Exploration at the Folger, September 2015, http://collation.folger.edu/2015/09/arithmetic-is-the-art-of-computation/, accessed 21 Aug. 2017.

  50. 50.

    Kate Flint, The Woman Reader, 1837–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 24. See also Moncrief and McPherson, 10.

  51. 51.

    See Chap. 2, 33–34, on the aims of making boys literate.

  52. 52.

    Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette (New York: Norton, 1990), 167.

  53. 53.

    Cited in Anthony Fletcher, Growing Up in England: The Experience of Childhood, 1600–1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 245.

  54. 54.

    Thomas Powell, Tom of All Trades (London, 1631), 47.

  55. 55.

    Flint, 22–24. On the parity of education for women across social class, see also Norma McMullen, ‘The Education of English Gentlewomen 1540–1640’, History of Education 6.2 (1977): 87–101.

  56. 56.

    See Hannah Wolley, The Gentlewoman’s Companion; Or, A Guide to the Female Sex (London, 1673), 9.

  57. 57.

    Richard Mulcaster, Positions Wherein Those Primitive Circumstances Be Examined Which Are Necessary For the Training Up of Children (London, 1581), 177.

  58. 58.

    Mulcaster, 177, 133.

  59. 59.

    Mulcaster, 177.

  60. 60.

    John Batchiler, The Virgin’s Pattern (London, 1661), title page.

  61. 61.

    Batchiler, A2r.

  62. 62.

    Batchiler, A2r.

  63. 63.

    Batchiler, opposite title page.

  64. 64.

    Thomas Salter, The Mirrhor of Modestie (London, 1579), title page.

  65. 65.

    Salter, A6r.

  66. 66.

    Salter, B3r.

  67. 67.

    Salter, B3r.

  68. 68.

    Bruto, G8r.

  69. 69.

    See Jacques Du Bosc, The Compleat Woman (London, 1639), 12–15.

  70. 70.

    Salter, A6r.

  71. 71.

    Bruto, K2v, G8r.

  72. 72.

    See Sanders, 67.

  73. 73.

    Du Bosc, 12. Du Bosc suggests that stories leave their mark on susceptible youths as although ‘wee know well, they are but fictions, yet nevertheless they truly move being read’ (15). See also Grace Mildmay’s recollection in her Autobiography that her mother ‘thought it ever dangerous to suffer young people to read or study books wherein was good and evil mingled together, for that by nature we ae inclined rather to learn and retain the evil than the good’, in Linda Pollock, ed., With Faith and Physic: The Life of a Tudor Gentlewoman, Lady Grace Mildmay 1552–1620 (London: Collins and Brown, 1993), 28.

  74. 74.

    See, for example, work on the creative ways that the teenage Jane Lumley deployed her reading in her translations, such as Deborah Uman, ‘“Wonderfullye astonied at the stoutenes of her minde”: Translating Rhetoric and Education in Jane Lumley’s The Tragedie of Iphigeneia’, in Performing Pedagogy, 53–64, and work on Margaret Hoby’s reading as religio-political activism, such as Julie Crawford, ‘Reconsidering Early Modern Women’s Reading, or, How Margaret Hoby Read her de Mornay’, Huntington Library Quarterly 73.2 (2010): 193–223.

  75. 75.

    Wolley, title page.

  76. 76.

    Wolley, A3r.

  77. 77.

    Wolley, 9.

  78. 78.

    See Robert Codrington, The Second Part of Youth’s Behaviour (London, 1664), 5–7. On Wolley’s work, see John Considine, ‘Wolley, Hannah (b. 1622?, d. in or after 1674)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. David Cannadine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29957, accessed 21 Aug. 2017; Dowd, 43.

  79. 79.

    Wolley, A3r.

  80. 80.

    See Lamb, ‘Playing Girls’, for further discussion of this representation of the girl reader.

  81. 81.

    See Higginbotham, 9; Williams, 4–6.

  82. 82.

    See Mary Beth Long, ‘The Life as Vita: Reading The Lady Falkland Her Life as Hagiography’, English Literary Renaissance 38.2 (2008), 304–330; Heather Woolfe, ‘Introduction’, in The Literary Career and Legacy of Elizabeth Cary, 1613–1680 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 1–4; Marion Wynne-Davies, Women Writers and Familial Discourse in the English Renaissance: Relative Values (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 116–117.

  83. 83.

    Cary also learns Hebrew and Transylvanian as a child (Life, 106). Her exceptional mastery of languages from a young age is also noted by one of her tutors, Michael Drayton. See Stephanie Hodgson-Wright, ‘Cary, Elizabeth, Viscountess Falkland (1585–1639)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4835, accessed 21 Aug. 2017.

  84. 84.

    On Cary’s relationship with her parents, especially her mother, see Ramona Wray, ‘Memory, Materiality and Maternity in the Tanfield/Cary Archive’, in A History of Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Patricia Phillippy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 1–20.

  85. 85.

    Williams, 6, 51.

  86. 86.

    Williams, 51.

  87. 87.

    Bicks, ‘Incited Minds’, 182.

  88. 88.

    Bicks, 183. Bicks draws attention to significance of ages 14–15 in relation to this (180–181). On the importance of these ages to early modern girlhood see Chap. 6, 203.

  89. 89.

    See Lesley Peterson, ed., The Mirror of the Worlde (Montreal: McGill University Press, 2012), 7–22 on the dating of and source material for this translation. All references are taken from this edition and are given in the text.

  90. 90.

    See Danielle Clarke, ‘Translation’, in Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing, 173. See Peterson on the presentation of manuscript as a gift for Sir Henry Lee on his admittance to the Order of the Garter in 1597 and as evidence that this translation is a ‘self-conscious act of writing and literary production’ (111).

  91. 91.

    On Cary’s education, see Peterson, 50–58.

  92. 92.

    Peterson, 32.

  93. 93.

    Clarke, 169. On the authorial agency of the early modern translator, see Jaime Goodrich, Faithful Translators: Authorship, Gender and Religion in Early Modern England (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2014), 5–10; Deborah Uman, ‘Translation and Community in the Work of Elizabeth Cary’, in Material Cultures of Early Modern Women’s Writing, ed. Patricia Pender and Rosalind Smith (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014), 76–98.

  94. 94.

    Jordan Carville, Elizabeth Cary: Development of the Author, unpublished MA dissertation (Queen’s University Belfast, 2015), reads Cary’s translation as a ‘creative act of self-expression’ in her insightful analysis of Cary’s early writing. I am grateful to Carville for sharing her work with me.

  95. 95.

    Peterson, 25–26.

  96. 96.

    Peterson, 56–57, 64.

  97. 97.

    Peterson, 25, 4. Peterson also highlights the extended reflection on women’s roles, the omission of violence and errors in translating geographical and mathematical facts as evidence of Cary’s prioritization of her own concerns and ‘active resistance’ in her reading (27–29, 36–40).

  98. 98.

    See Lucy Munro, ‘Infant Poets and Child Players: The Literary Performance of Childhood in Caroline England’, in The Child in British Literature, ed. Adrienne Gavin (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 54–68 on this conventional language in writing by children.

  99. 99.

    Kate Narveson, Bible Readers and Lay Writers in Early Modern England: Gender and Self-Definition in an Emergent Writing Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), 12. See also Jennifer Richards and Fred Schurink, ‘Introduction: The Textuality and Materiality of Reading in Early Modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly 73.3 (2010): 354, on the extent to which thinking about writing can help us understand reading.

  100. 100.

    Smith, 3–4, 53; Higginbotham, Girlhood, 20–27.

  101. 101.

    Chedgzoy, ‘Playing with Cupid’, 139. See also Marjorie Garber, Coming of Age in Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1997), 116–173, on marriage as crucial ritual for the transition from childhood to womanhood.

  102. 102.

    On the significance of these ages for early modern girls, see Keith Thomas, ‘Age and Authority in Early Modern England’, Proceedings of the British Academy 62 (1976): 205–248; Ursula Potter, ‘Greensickness in Romeo and Juliet: Considerations on a Sixteenth-Century Disease of Virgins’, in The Premodern Teenager: Youth in Society 1150–1650, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2002), 271–291; Ursula Potter, ‘Navigating the Dangers of Female Puberty in Renaissance Drama’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 53.2 (2013): 421–439.

  103. 103.

    Centre for Kentish Studies (CKS), Sackville, U269 F 38/1/15.

  104. 104.

    For detailed description of the contents of this collection, see Caroline Bowden, ‘The Notebooks of Rachel Fane: Education for Authorship?’, in Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Writing: Selected Papers from the Trinity/Trent Colloquium, ed. Victoria Burke and Jonathan Gibson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 157–180.

  105. 105.

    See Chedgzoy, ‘Playing with Cupid’; Kate Chedgzoy, ‘Introduction: “What, are they children?”’, in Shakespeare and Childhood, ed. Kate Chedgzoy, Susanne Greenhalgh and Robert Shaughnessy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 15–31; Higginbotham, Girlhood, 172–174; Munro, 54–68; Williams, 173–188.

  106. 106.

    Caroline Bowden, ‘Fane, Lady Rachel [married names Rachel Bourchier, countess of Bath; Rachel Cranfield, countess of Middlesex] (bap. 1613, d. 1680)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/93575, accessed 21 Aug. 2017; Bowden, ‘Notebooks’; Kate Chedgzoy, ‘A Renaissance for Children?’, Newcastle Upon Tyne ePrints, http://eprint.ncl.ac.uk/pub_details2.aspx?pub_id=196398, deposited 20 Nov. 2013, 6.

  107. 107.

    CKS U269 F 38/1/2; CKS U269 F 38/1/5; CKS U269 F 38/1/6; CKS U269 F 38/1/10; CKS U269 F 38/1/11; CKS U269 F 38/1/12; CKS U269 F 38/1/14. I am grateful to Helen Orme at the Centre for Kentish Studies for providing copies of these documents.

  108. 108.

    See Chap. 4, 112–113.

  109. 109.

    William Bullokar, Aesopz Fablz (London, 1585), 3–4.

  110. 110.

    John Penkethman, A Handful of Honesty (London, 1623), n.p.

  111. 111.

    CKS U269 F 38/1/9; CKS U269 F 38/1/7.

  112. 112.

    Kate Chedgzoy, Women’s Writing in the British Atlantic World: Memory, Place and History, 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 32.

  113. 113.

    See Chedgzoy, ‘Playing with Cupid’; Higginbotham, 172–174; Williams, 178–187.

  114. 114.

    Williams, 180, 186.

  115. 115.

    Fane’s dramatic writing has been analysed in detail for what it reveals about her familial connections and her literary knowledge, particularly her knowledge of masquing practices and of Shakespeare. Her translations and poems have received less attention. In addition to work by Chedgzoy and Williams cited above, see Alison Findlay, Playing Spaces in Early Women’s Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 40–43, 96–103; Marion O’Connor, ‘Rachel Fane’s May Masque at Apethorpe, 1627’, English Literary Renaissance 36.1 (2006): 90–113.

  116. 116.

    See Joseph Loewenstein, ‘Humanism and Seventeenth-Century English Literature’, in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, ed. Jill Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 275.

  117. 117.

    Bowden, ‘Notebooks’, 168.

  118. 118.

    Fane works from a French version such as that published in Lyon in 1575 (British Library Reference 245 a 9). Her translation corresponds directly to Book 9, Chapters 6, 65 and 70, 72–74, 802–803 and 861–863 of this edition.

  119. 119.

    On the history of Amadis de Gaule and changing attitudes towards it, see Bowden, ‘Notebooks’, 170; Helen Moore, ‘Introduction’, Amadis de Gaule, ed. Helen Moore (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), ix–xxviii; John J. O’Connor, Amadis de Gaule and its Influence on Elizabethan Literature (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1970).

  120. 120.

    Thomas Paynell, The Most Excellent and Pleasaunt Booke, Entitled The Treasurie of Amadis of Fraunce (London, 1572), n.p.

  121. 121.

    Daybell, 60.

  122. 122.

    Vives, D1v. See Moore, ix–xxviii.

  123. 123.

    Nandini Das, Renaissance Romance: The Transformation of English Prose Fiction, 1570–1620 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), 157.

  124. 124.

    Wye Salonstall, Pictures Drawn forth into Characters (London, 1631), 17.

  125. 125.

    Salonstall, 19.

  126. 126.

    Chedgzoy, ‘Introduction’, 16.

  127. 127.

    Williams, 173.

  128. 128.

    See Lynn Enterline, Shakespeare’s Schoolroom: Rhetoric, Discipline, Emotion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 1–8, 22–26; Kate Chedgzoy, ‘“Make me a Poet, and I’ll quickly be a Man”: Masculinity, Pedagogy and Poetry in the English Renaissance’, Renaissance Studies 27.5 (2013): 592–611.

  129. 129.

    See L. C. Black, ‘Some Renaissance Children’s Verse’, Review of English Studies 24.93 (1973): 1–6; Chedgzoy, ‘Make Me’; Chedgzoy, ‘Renaissance’.

  130. 130.

    Steven May, ed., Henry Stanford’s Anthology: An Edition of Cambridge University Library MS, Dd. 5.75, New York: Garland, 1988), items 87 and 89.

  131. 131.

    CKS U269 F 38/3, 6r.

  132. 132.

    CKS U269 F 38/3, 6v.

  133. 133.

    See Williams, 178–187, on Fane’s knowledge of Shakespeare and the extent to which this informs her drama. Williams suggests that it is possible that Fane’s awareness of the author was a result of theatrical attendance. However, it is also possible that Fane read the plays in book form, even though her grandmother, Lady Grace Mildmay, warned against ‘books of idle plays and of all such fruitless and unprofitable matter which will pervert and carry the mind from all goodness and [which] is an introduction unto all evil’ (Pollock, 24). See O’Connor, 93, on playbooks at Apethorpe. Other early modern girls accessed ‘play books’, even when parents forbade it, as the Johnson example considered in this chapter suggests. See also example of Elizabeth Isham in Chap. 6, 211. See Sasha Roberts, Reading Shakespeare’s Poems in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 1–58, on early modern female readers of Shakespeare.

  134. 134.

    CKS U269 F 38/3, 7r.

  135. 135.

    See Carville; Peterson, 4.

  136. 136.

    Williams, 188.

  137. 137.

    Bowden, ‘Notebooks’, 173.

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    Edel Lamb

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Lamb, E. (2018). ‘This Girle Hath Spirit’: Rewriting Girlhood Reading. In: Reading Children in Early Modern Culture. Early Modern Literature in History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70359-6_5

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