ABSTRACT
Writing before the publication of Victoria Burke and Sarah Ross's article on the poem's authorship, Kari Boyd McBride is deeply critical of what she sees as Middleton's poem, calling it 'hackneyed' and 'unoriginal,' and identifying in it stark patterns of anti-semitism. Patronage and gift-exchange are overlapping, sometimes identical, social systems, differing most at the margins. Yet, insofar as Aemelia Lanyer does not characterize her work specifically as a gift, while Middleton's presentation does not construct Sara Edmondes as an elite potential patron, a distinction needs to be accounted for. Robert C. Evans describes patronage as a practical manifestation of a hierarchical and patriarchal society. The Queen Anne is to view and to read Lanyer's writing, not by passively observing, but by actively gracing with her excellence a poem presented as defective by its author. Lanyer's poem directly explores two kinds of action to which reading might contribute: changing social constructions of women's reading and developing a model for female governance.
