It took 400 years, but
the play “Love’s
Victory” by Lady Mary Wroth is finally performed. It is one of the oldest
comedies in existence that was written by a woman. The comedy in five acts
deals with love and betrayal.
Lady Mary Wroth is
a member of a famous literary family. Her father, Robert
Sidney, was a poet as well as a statesman. Mary was highly educated and the
first woman to get literary recognition for her novel “The
Countess of Montgomery’s Urania” written in 1621. She was also a recognized poet.
Mary wrote “Love’s
victory” in 1617 and it was intended to be read or performed in closed circles. At that time, it was unimaginable that any play
written by a woman, even if she was an aristocrat, would be performed played
female characters. This only changed under King
Charles II.
There were two
performance of the comedy that took place in Penshurst Place, an estate n Kent owned
by Lady Mary’s descendants. Penshurt use to be a hunting lodge of King Henry
VIII. The fact that her play was finally performed, is due to the efforts of Alison
Findlay, a professor of English Literature at Lancaster University. Findlay
had been specializing in literary works of Shakespeare’s female contemporaries
for the last 25 years. For a long time, the play was considered to have been
lost.
