The Forgotten Women Writers of the Shakespearean Era

In a worst-case scenario, Virginia Woolf said, Renaissance women writers would wind up like Judith, Shakespeare’s sister, who, although she was as clever and talented as her older brother, did not amount to anything. Feeling depressed and rejected, she killed herself.

But Woolf was wrong. Shakespeare had a daughter named Judith. His sister was Joan, and there’s no indication that either woman was suicidal or inclined to write. “Woolf’s doomed vision of women writers in the 15th and 16th century Europe was horribly mistaken,” according to Ramie Targoff. Her latest book, Shakespeare’s Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance, focuses on successful women writers who lived from about 1450 to 1650.

Often, they began writing because of a pivotal experience, such as a religious conversion, a death in the family, a divorce, being disinherited, or being unjustly treated. Ultimately, these women had a message, Targoff says, and were determined to express it.

They lived during a time when women were not educated and were mostly illiterate. Only women at the highest level of society, such as Henry VIII’s daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, received an education. A few wealthy women had tutors who taught them to read, write, play music, paint, and dance. But even wealthy women were considered their husbands’ property and were told to keep quiet and let their husbands (whom they called “my lord”) do the talking. Women often tried to hide their work or their names as authors. Only a few sought to be published. Making the situation more difficult, all English books had to be approved by the Anglican Church. Any book that went against the party line was either confiscated or destroyed.

Then, in the early 1990s, everything