Conclusion “Contrary to truth”: Elizabeth Cary’s Tragedy of Rumor

Abstract

Early in The Lady Faulkland Her Life (1645), Elizabeth Gary’s daughter recounts an incident where the ten-year-old Elizabeth was present when “a poore old woman was brought before her father for a wicth [sic]” (106). The woman in turn confessed that the report about her was true and begged for pardon. The bystanders at this hearing were said to remark, “what would they have more then her owne confession?” (107). At this moment young Elizabeth interjects, discerning that the woman was confessing out of fear, and “so she whispered her father” urging him to pose a set of questions to the woman about how she had bewitched to death a Mr. John Symondes, who was actually an uncle standing in the courtroom. From this incident, we can view Elizabeth as a precocious young girl who displays a keen sense of reading other people, of hearing inconsistency in the spoken word, of being cautious about accepting stories as true without careful discernment. As Karen Raber has written, Cary has access to her father’s ear because she is his daughter and “can intrude her voice in this minimal, intimate, but powerful fashion to change the outcome of public decision-making.”¹ Elizabeth is able to assert herself at her father’s ear, counseling him, in effect, to practice earwitnessing in order to discern this woman’s lies. Elizabeth’s shrewdness in seeking out truth from the stories that people profess had remarkable resonance with her only published play.²

Neither is it safe for the Royal ear to be principally open to one mans information, or to rely solely on his judgment. Multiplicity of able Servants that are indifferently (if not equally) counte- nanced, are the strength and safety of a Crown, which gives it glory and luster. When one man alone acts all parts, it begets a world of errour, and endangers not only the Head, but all the Members Admission of the Royal ear to one Tongue only, ties all the rest, and resembles the Councel-chamber to a School where Boys repeat their Lessons.

Elizabeth Cary, The Reign and Death of Edward the Second