All eyes on her
Modern women struggle for more than ‘sexy lamp’ representation in film. Elizabeth Cary solved that problem in 1613, so what are we doing?
Recently, Celeste Davis explored how women were depicted in modern cinema.1 The answer to her question “How many female characters in the best movies of all time can be replaced with a sexy lamp?” is, predictably, dismal. A “sexy lamp” is a character who sits in the corner as a pretty accessory, shining warmth and light on those around her. If you can replace a female character with a sexy lamp without damaging the story, the character is a sexy lamp.
“The sexy lamp test asks—do the women in this film/show/book use their agency for anything beyond supporting a man?”
Davis reviewed the top six films based on IMDb’s viewer ratings. She used these criteria to rate the films:
The Bechdel Test Does the film have two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man?
The sexy lamp test Can the female characters be replaced with a sexy lamp without changing the plot?
Patriarchy Dream Girl test Do the women have agency and arcs of their own or do they merely support the men?
The ratio of female to male cast
The results
None of the top-rated films passed all three tests, and female characters accounted for only 14% of the total number of roles. These are men’s stories: The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather, The Dark Knight, The Godfather Part II, 12 Angry Men, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.2
You may protest that we can’t expect women to figure prominently in men’s stories.3 The problem remains that audiences rated these stories as the best. When people cast the story of their culture in male terms, they erase more than half the population.4 As icons of the American culture, these stories encompass only a fraction of the American experience, which is also multiracial and multicultural.
Elizabeth Cary, born in 1585, experienced successive waves of repression despite being born and married into privilege. She remained defiant even though she was forbidden to read in her own home, disinherited, castigated for her religion, abandoned by her husband, disallowed access to her children, and ejected from the King’s court along with its protections and social connections.
When she was 28, with three very young children and eight more to go, Elizabeth Cary delivered the first play written in English by a woman. This play surpasses every one of Davis’ tests. More than that: it subverts a male-centric historic tale, placing the women’s stories that were essential to it front and center.
Cary takes a man’s story—one that had framed a culture’s history—and remakes it into one told by and about women. So yes, we can expect women to figure prominently in stories men claim for themselves. And a woman did it centuries ago.
This essay is part of a series called “Shut Out, Not Shut Up” on women through the ages who’ve written despite being dismissed because of their sex. They persisted.
The Tragedie of Mariam (1613)
At the time Elizabeth Cary published her groundbreaking play, Shakespeare was writing the final plays of his œuvre. Ever the poet, Cary wrote her play in iambic pentameter. Her play mostly consists of monologues and dialogues containing long speeches, a style called Senecan revenge tragedy,5 and provides few stage directions. We call plays like this a closet drama, intended to be read rather than performed.6
Cary made no effort to emulate Shakespeare. Quite the opposite: she wanted to affront the cultural story he’d embellished, a story that was—despite his creation of many strong female characters—ultimately patriarchal. Shakespeare scores only slightly better than IMDb’s top six modern films, writing only 19% of his roles for female characters.
Every Shakespearean drama opens with a scene that sets the tone and themes of the play. Over his 38 plays, only one (Macbeth) opens with female characters, and it’s arguable that these three witches are more plot devices than characters with agency. They’re planning a meeting to discuss a man, the title character.
Cary’s opening salvo showcases a woman, Mariam, talking about her emotions. She’s reasoning through her ambiguous feelings about her presumed-dead husband. The following scene features her mother joining her onstage; the third brings in Salome, Mariam’s sister-in-law; the fourth gives the stage to Salome, who delivers a soliloquy. A male character finally enters in the fifth scene: the last two scenes in the first act feature Salome with her lover and Salome with her husband. Their discussions concern the legal limitations preventing Salome from divorcing to marry her lover.
The entire first act focuses solely on women, primarily using female characters. If anything, male characters exist only to support the female perspective.
Synopsis
Cary lays out the history in her opening “Argument,” which is a preface to the play.
Herod is the King of Judea, who abandoned his first wife to wed Mariam, a Jewish princess. For political reasons, he engineered the deaths of Mariam’s brother and grandfather. Mariam’s aggrieved mother presented these charges to Antony (a friend of Herod) in Rome, which necessitated that Herod travel there to plead his case. Upon his departure, he left Mariam in the custody of his uncle Josephus, along with orders to kill Mariam if he should be killed in Rome.
Herod returned home to find an unhappy Mariam who’s learned of his arrangement with Josephus to kill her. Herod ordered Josephus’ execution and partly reconciled with Mariam.
When Cæsar later overthrew Antony, Herod fled to Rome to protect his power. While he was away, baseless rumors of his death at Cæsar’s hand took hold in Jerusalem. When Herod returned, he expected to find a loving wife to greet him but instead found Mariam still angry about the deaths in her family that he had caused.
A butler brought Herod a drink (“love potion”) supposedly from Mariam, although she denied sending it. Thinking Mariam was trying to poison him, a notion abetted by the person actually behind the scheme (his sister Salome), Herod had Mariam taken into custody for treason. With Salome’s urging, Herod ordered Mariam to be beheaded.
The “argument” is a man’s story. The play turns it into a story of two women.
Cary opens the story during Herod’s second trip to Rome, when his people believe him to be dead. She introduces us to her tragic heroine, Mariam, and her antagonist, Salome. We learn details of Salome’s story: unhappy in marriage and wanting to marry an Arabian prince, she lacks the legal right to take her destiny into her own hands. She determines she must use manipulation to obtain her goals. Sharing her brother’s ruthlessness, Salome enters into a take-no-prisoners scheme, manœeuvering the men with power (her lover, her husband, and brother) to ensure they eliminate all of her obstacles.
Thinking her husband dead has somewhat softened Mariam’s feelings against him. Crediting her husband for the love he gave her, she considers that her prior judgement may have been too harsh. She wonders whether her conflicting emotions about Herod indicate a particularly feminine weakness.
His return, however, banishes what good feeling had been evoked from the reputational cleanse of his supposed death. Herod, in response, is astonished by the poor welcome from his wife. A butler arrives with a ‘love potion’ for Herod, supposedly sent by Mariam although she denies it. In a temper, Herod believes the butler and not his wife. He has Mariam arrested and orders her execution on the spot. Relenting, he imprisons her.
Herod continues his vacillation over Mariam’s fate while discussing it with his sister. Salome has her own agenda, and she skillfully influences him to order Mariam’s death, as well as the deaths of others who stand in her way. Mariam is executed.
The hero, the antihero, and the guy
Mariam, Herod, and Salome evoke Shakespeare’s Desdemona, Othello, and Iago. Mariam is pure and loyal, similar to Desdemona, although not so loving. Perhaps early in her marriage Mariam too cherished a naïve love for her groom. However, we meet Mariam when experience has made her grimly knowing about her husband’s character.
Herod. like Othello, is emotional in his tyranny. He fears losing his wife’s affections, despite her evident purity, and is easily manipulated. Salome, like Iago, costumes her merciless avarice with obsequiousness. Despite her claim that she has no legal agency as a woman, she effectively manipulates Herod into killing at least seven characters7 using the baseless accusation of Mariam’s infidelity. At the end of the play, only Salome has what she wants.
As in Othello, the play’s most interesting character is its antihero. Mariam may be the focal point, but her character’s given little depth. She grieves the family she’s lost, and hates her husband for killing them. She’s smugly superior to Salome, displaying her racial antipathy.
Mar. Scorne those that are for thy companions held, Though I thy brothers face had never seene, My birth thy baser birth so farre exceld, I had to both of you the Princesse bene. Thou party Jew, and party Edomite, Thou Mongrell: issu'd from rejected race, Thy Ancestors against the Heavens did fight, And thou like them wilt heavenly birth disgrace. Sal. Still twit you me with nothing but my birth, What ods betwixt your ancestors and mine? Both borne of Adam, both were made of Earth, And both did come from holy Abrahams line. Mar. I favour thee when nothing else I say, With thy blacke acts ile not pollute my breath: Else to thy charge I might full justly lay A shamefull life, besides a husbands death. Sal. Tis true indeed, I did the plots reveale, That past betwixt your favorites and you: I ment not I, a traytor to conceale. Thus Salome your Mynion Joseph slue.
Salome’s past behavior has given Mariam much to criticize, but Mariam nonetheless bases her critique on Salome’s birth and race while claiming divinity for herself. Salome, in claiming her villainy, draws the spotlight to herself. She boasts of her ‘blacke acts,’ which prove the counterweight to Mariam’s vaunted virtue.
Salome also demonstrates a quintessential characteristic of male leadership: decisiveness. Mariam weighs whether her ambiguous feelings about her (presumed) dead husband disclose her essential feminine weakness. We later witness Herod’s indecision about executing Mariam. Salome, in contrast, makes quick decisions and acts on them.
Indecision is based on fear of uncertainty, and Salome is fearless while her brother is consumed by fear. His political anxieties drive his murderous impulses: he fears that Mariam’s more powerful family poses a threat to him that his marriage didn’t remove.8 He insists his brother Pherora marry their infant sister, more anxious about holding onto power than concerned with his brother’s well-being. Herod rushes to Rome, fearful of how the political upheaval will affect him. Herod’s rash decisions mark him as a fearful and weak man, the opposite to his sister.
Salome’s ease in convincing him to kill Mariam illuminates that Herod rules by passion, not reason. He’s easily convinced of what he fears. At the end of the play, he hangs onto his delusion that he didn’t execute his wife. He ultimately reconciles himself to a shameful death, with a grave marker announcing his fatal error.
The Chorus at the end of Act 2 expounds on the folly of seeing what you want to believe.
Chorus.
To heare a tale with eares prejudicate,
It spoiles the judgement, and corrupts the senses.
That humane error given to every state,
Is greater enemie to innocence.
It makes us foolish, heddy, rash, unjust,
It makes us never try before we trust.
It will confound the meaning, change the words,
For it our sence of hearing much deceives
Besides no time to Judgement it affords,
To way the circumstance our eare receives.
The ground of accidents it never tries,
But makes us take for truth ten thousand lies.
Our eares and hearts are apt to hold for good,
That we our selves doe most desire to bee:
And then we drowne objections in the flood
Of partialitie, tis that we see
That makes false rumours long with credit past,
Though they like rumours must conclude at last.
The greatest part of us prejudicate,
With wishing Herods death do hold it true:
The being once deluded doth not bate,
The credit to a better likelihood due.
Those few that wish it not the multitude,
Doe carrie headlong, so they doubts conclude.
They not object the weake uncertaine ground,
Whereon they built this tale of Herods end:
Whereof the Author scarcely can be found,
And all because their wishes that way bend.
They thinke not of the perill that ensu'th,
If this should prove the contrary to truth.
On this same doubt, on this so light a breath,
They pawne their lives, and fortunes. For they all
Behave them as the newes of Herods death,
They did of most undoubted credit call:
But if their actions now doe rightly hit,
Let them commend their fortune, not their wit.
For half the play, the characters act under the assumption that Herod is dead. This was the outcome they wanted; they were eager to accept the rumor as truth. They seized their opportunities to defy Herod and thus sealed their fates.
The Chorus speaks for the common wisdom of patriarchy. Here, it chastises Judeans for offending the absent king, when in fact they have most to fear from his sister Salome. Later in the play, it criticizes Mariam for not bending her will to her husband’s, stating she ‘usurpes’ his will by having her own. At the end of Act 4, Herod having ordered Mariam’s execution, the Chorus declares that she would have escaped her fate if only she hadn’t been so proud. At play’s end, it wags its finger at Herod’s rashness: if only…. The Chorus claims that the outcomes were ordained, but it does so after Herod orates a long soliloquy in which he finally accepts Mariam’s death and declares his guilt in it. His fate will lead to a grave, where his life will be marked by the words “Heere Herod lies, that hath his Mariam slaine.” Herod, not fate, is responsible for the tragedy.
In the end, the male characters are merely satellites to the women who hold center stage. The opposing wills of Mariam and Salome fuel the play’s propulsion: honor, integrity, and family loyalty on one side; self-interest, decisiveness, and deception on the other.
Cary could have built a narrative extolling Mariam’s virtuousness and martyrdom, as did other women like Christine de Pizan (1364-1431) with her City of Ladies. Instead, she created a nuanced and very human character, flawed yet honorable. Pairing Mariam with Salome, Cary showcased a range of feminine ability. She was the first not only to publish a play written in English by a woman, but also to break the female stereotypes that she’d inherited. Mariam may have been honorable, but demeaning Salome likely sealed her fate. Salome was ruthless, but she was the better tyrant than her brother.
Who was Elizabeth Cary?
Born in Oxfordshire in 1585, Elizabeth Tanfield lived a privileged life. Her father, Sir Lawrence Tanfield, was a lawyer who became a judge and Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. Elizabeth was an only child, and her parents encouraged her education. They hired a French tutor for five-year-old Elizabeth, who became fluent in the language within five weeks. Having acquired one foreign language, she insisted on learning more, adding Spanish, Latin, Italian, Hebrew, and Transylvanian through self-study.
When she was 15, her parents arranged her marriage to Sir Henry Cary, who became the Viscount Falkland (and she, Viscountess Falkland). When she moved into Lord Cary’s house, his mother informed him that Elizabeth was not allowed to read. Elizabeth responded by writing poetry.
She began bearing children at age 24, eventually delivering 11 children, her last at age 38—an average of one child every 15 months. In 1622, nearing the end of her run in child production, she moved with her husband—newly appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland—to Dublin. This move precipitated her conversion to Catholicism, a decision only deepened by her oldest child Catherine’s deathbed vision of the Virgin Mary.9 Eventually, four of Elizabeth’s daughters became Benedictine nuns and one son became a priest.
Her husband Henry’s finances suffered in Ireland, where he struggled to pay for his lands. Elizabeth used money from her jointure10 to settle her husband’s debts. Her father used this as an excuse to disinherit her.
Elizabeth Cary returned to England in 1626, where she announced her religious conversion. Her husband denounced her, and although he failed to divorce her, he successfully prevented her from seeing her children (the youngest was a toddler at the time). He overrode the Privy Council’s order to provide her a maintenance income, and she was banished from court in 1626.
When Henry Cary died in 1633, Elizabeth sought to regain custody of her children (her youngest was then about 10 years old). The court didn’t prevent her from bringing her daughters to her home, but stepped in when she attempted to take in her sons. When the court learned that her four daughters in her care had converted to Catholicism, King Charles had the girls removed from Elizabeth’s custody and placed in the care of her eldest son who was now Viscount Falkland.
Elizabeth Cary died in 1639, about 54 years old. Although she wrote multiple plays and much poetry, few remnants of her writing survive, The Tragedie of Mariam being one. She possessed an extraordinary mind supported by a fierce will to live on her terms.
Elizabeth Cary made history in 1613, with little acknowledgement. Quite apart from being the first woman to publish a play in the English language, she also introduced the literary world to a woman’s perspective. Her play, The Tragedie of Mariam, fixes a defiantly female perspective on the religious story of Herod, his wife Mariamne, and his sister Salomé. It would have been revolutionary in her time. Four hundred twelve years later, it hasn’t lost its transgressive punch.
Ellie’s Corner
She’s a little out of sorts with me. I’ve paid her so little attention today.
Thanks for reading,
Celeste Davis, Do you keep mistaking the women in your life for sexy lamps?, 23 February 2025, Matriarchal Blessing. Davis credits Kelly Sue DeConnick for coining the term “sexy lamp” in 2012.
Also, what does it say about the American culture that the top five are about US crime and failures of its law enforecement and justice systems?
I’m ceding this point for just a few paragraphs. Read on.
These are also the stories of white men, and American men at that (with one exception: LOTR). They are not the stories of immigrants, who literally populated the United States.
This term refers to a classical style of play that features a chorus explicating the plot, minimal onstage action, and long speeches.
Most of the women succeeding Cary into 17th Century wrote closet dramas because they lacked the opportunity to have their plays performed for public audiences. It’s possible that Cary’s Mariam was performed in a private home, since it has minimal stage directions. In publishing the play, Cary intended it to be read.
Salome’s body count by proxy: Josephus—which she admits to in Act 1 Sc 3, Sohemus, the butler, Constaburus (her husband), Baba’s two sons (whom Constabarus had allowed to live against Herod’s order years prior), and Mariam. However, we have to wonder if the murders of Mariam’s brother and grandfather weren’t also at her insistence.
Mariam’s family ruled the Hesmonean Dynasty of Judea.
Catherine died age 16.
Money given by the bride’s family to the couple at marriage, jointures were intended to provide for the wife after she became widowed. Typically, a woman wasn’t in line to inherit upon a father’s or husband’s death, so the jointure was a means to provide capital while restricting a husband’s use of money given as a dowry.
I had no idea, but having read this, I am reminded of Gena Davis' examinations of the lack of women in decisive roles in film.