ABSTRACT
In the case of Mariam the dates of composition are far too vague to permit the kind of life/art connection wrought by earlier critics. The dedications to Cary press even more urgently when considered together with the very existence of The Tragedie of Mariam, a closet drama modeled closely on the neo-Senecan tragedies of Mary Sidney, Thomas Kyd, Samuel Daniel, Fulke Greville, William Alexander, and Samuel Brandon. The traditional use of stoic discourse to delineate a female heroics is both transmitted and transformed in Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedie of Mariam. According to the Argument, the plot is driven by the patriarchal desire of Herod, whose “violent affection” determines Mariam’s tragedy. Conversely, Mariam’s eventual acknowledgement that female virtue and personal pride are incompatible prepares the ground for her refiguration as a female hero in the final act. Mariam’s message—eventually corroborated by the report of Salome’s treachery—sends Herod into hysteria and fittingly turns him into the antithesis of stoic virtue.
