ABSTRACT
Wroth’s songs, sonnets, and lyrics have to be seen in the general context of Petrarchan imitation and the popularity of song and sonnet sequences in england in the 1590s and beyond (see Kinney, “Mary Wroth’s guilty ‘Secret Art’”). Petrarch’s songs and sonnets to Laura were written in italian in the fourteenth century, and they became popular throughout europe and were much imitated (Kennedy). Petrarch’s influence in england began to increase when a series of Tudor poets/courtiers, notably Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, translated and imitated his sonnets. There have been numerous studies of the way the sonnet as a poetic form became increasingly fashionable in england through to its high point in the 1590s and very early 1600s (Roche; Lever; Ferry). it was not long before a native sonnet tradition, or perhaps “fashion” would be a better term, overtook any direct influence of Petrarch on english writers, although they often continued to imitate specific Petrarch sonnets. Petrarch did play a significant role in the family poetic tradition for Mary Wroth, because her aunt, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, translated Petrarch’s Trionfo della morte in 1599-although this was a very different poem from the sonnets, and it might be seen to exemplify the difference between Mary Sidney’s general interest in pious/ religious poetry, in contrast with her niece’s interest in secular/erotic poetry.2
