The Renaissance Englishwoman in Code: Blabbs and Cryptographers at Elizabeth I's Court

Abstract

In this essay I argue that the marginalisation of women's work in the early modern period was, sometimes, an enabling condition. Shakespeare's Bianca converses with her lover in a secret language, and Mary Stuart similarly smuggles letters out of prison to her supporters in code, trying to circumvent Elizabeth's spies and cryptographers. Women writers did not always seek to circulate their words or see them in print, in other words, and what looks like illiteracy on the part of women -poor spelling or garbled syntax or a crabbed penmanship -may instead mark a skillful command of letters, a dazzling 'high' literacy which rivals Latin learning, and occasionally disables it. Many women at Elizabeth's court during the years of Mary Stuart's intriguing display a similar expertise in cryptography. I also explore Jane Seager's 1589 New Year's gift to Elizabeth as well as some of Elizabeth's speeches about Mary Stuart as evidence that early modern women writers might represent themselves as practitioners of secret knowledge, disdaining publication, courting misreading.The great number of noble women at that time in England [were] given to the study of devout science and of strange tongues. It was a common thing to see young virgins so nouzled and trained in the study of letters, that they willingly set all other pastimes at nought for learning sake. 1