2008/01/01 by Anne Lake Prescott · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Historical Art and Culture Studies #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity #European Political History Analysis
paper · doi:10.1353/yes.2008.0021
openalex publication_date 2008/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
Mary Sidney Herbert's translation of Garnier's "Marc-Antoine" has a trans-Channel context that sharpens and complicates its implications. To remember that Garnier was an official who nevertheless flirted with the radically subversive Holy League and wrote during a three-sided civil war in which definitions of loyalty were in flux adds further poignancy to a play set during Roman civil tumults. Sidney wrote shortly after the assassination of Henry III, a mother-dominated and (it was said) sexually ambiguous murderer whom many in England despised even as they preferred him to the League. Such a background gives Sidney's work additional irony and moral ambiguity.