Mary Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke, was born into a literary family. While her brother, Sir Philip Sidney, has received more poetic praise throughout history, Mary was an accomplished poet, playwright, translator, editor, and arts patron. She was a Renaissance noblewoman, and as such attended Queen Elizabeth I's court as a teenager. At 15 years old, Sidney married her husband Henry Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke. While there was a 35-year age gap between the two, the marriage seemed to be socially, economically, and domestically successful.
After her marriage, Mary did retain her Sidney name and coat of arms, perhaps as a way of asserting her independence. She was a well-respected noblewoman, even entertaining Queen Elizabeth at one of the couple's estate homes. Her literary ambitions did not tend towards authorship, but were instead more editorial.
In 1586, Mary Sidney created a literary group at Wilton House. This estate became a place for many poets, essayists, playwrights, and philosophers to gather and compose their works. She worked on compositions and translations of texts with her brother Philip, and after he died she compiled (and perhaps finished) some of his final poems.
As a dramatist, Mary Sidney was largely ignored for a long time. However, she stands as one of the most important female closet dramatists of the era; rather than her plays performed onstage (which was inappropriate and in some cases illegal), her work would be read aloud in social gatherings. Sidney's most famous play, The Tragedie of Antonie, was actually a translation of Robert Garnier's Marc Antonie. However, in her translation, Sidney asserts her own independent voice as a playwright.
Scholars have speculated that Mary Sidney perhaps wrote some of Shakespeare's sonnets, and Shakespeare's First Folio is actually dedicated to two of Mary's sons. Mary Sidney died in 1621 of smallpox, not long after entertaining King James I at her home. She had a grand funeral in St. Paul's Cathedral. She was buried with her husband in Salisbury Cathedral.
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