Abstract
On 26 December 1613, a wedding took place in the Chapel Royal in Whitehall. Lavishly staged, the celebrations went on for several days. Among those contributing masques and poems in honour of the happy couple were John Donne, Thomas Campion, George Chapman and Ben Jonson. The union had been a long time coming: Frances Howard,1 Countess of Somerset, made her vows with Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, in the same place where, almost exactly eight years earlier, on 5 January 1606, she had married her first husband, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, when she had been just 15 years old, and he 14.
If the devil / Did ever take good shape, behold his picture.
The White Devil, 3.2.216–17
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© 2014 Stevie Simkin
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Simkin, S. (2014). Frances Howard (1590–1632). In: Cultural Constructions of the Femme Fatale. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313324_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313324_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-34721-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-31332-4
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