ABSTRACT
Friendship is at the heart of social and political structures in Lady Mary Wroth's Countess of Montgomery's Urania. In the Urania, however, friends-whether relatives, lovers, or social acquaintances-retain their primacy, even as they reveal their potential inconstancy. Many of the central figures in the Urania are monarchs or others with high political status; accordingly, they are in constant need of allies against the persistent enemies of their realms. This chapter considers the varied communities established in this environment and discusses how friendship and unpredictable trustworthiness both fulfill and undermine critical personal and political functions. The emphasis upon similarity among friends links the Urania to numerous contemporary texts and to Aristotle, who had entertained the view that 'some define as a kind of likeness and say like people are friends'. In fact, Wroth's juxtaposition of fiction and verisimilitude parallels the fraught relationship between similitude and dissimulation in the friendships portrayed.
