Stirring Tongues and Fumish Words: Representing Jewishness in Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam

Abstract

This article explores the anti-Jewish rhetoric of Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam, with particular attention on the linguistic deployment of scorning, scolding, and slurring. It argues that Cary’s closet drama revises Jewish dramatic representation for an elite literary audience, employing incendiary discourse to (1) relay the enduring interconnections between censure and Jewishness stemming from the medieval English imagination, (2) adapt popular representational practices from the public theater for the context of private reading and performance, and (3) contribute to the gendered production of Jewish difference in English Renaissance playwriting. Ultimately, the article reveals that The Tragedy of Mariam is a crucial, if overlooked, resource in the study of Jewish representation in English theater, providing evidence of widespread interest in Jews outside of London’s popular performance culture while offering a rare female perspective on Jewish questions and Jewish women in particular.

Keywords

• religion
• representation
• women
• gender
• Renaissance
• closet drama