The 17th-century polyglot who wrote England's first original play by a woman

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Elizabeth Cary was a brilliant scholar who mastered six languages before adulthood. Despite being forbidden to read by her mother-in-law, she became a prolific writer and the first woman to publish an original English play. Her life was a turbulent saga of religious conversion, political intrigue, and lost manuscripts.

Born in 1585 or 1586, Elizabeth Cary demonstrated an extraordinary intellect early on. By age five, she had mastered French in just five weeks, later teaching herself Spanish, Italian, Latin, Hebrew, and Transylvanian. Her scholarly reputation was so significant that contemporaries like Michael Drayton and John Davies of Hereford dedicated works to her. However, her life took a restrictive turn at age 15 when she was married to Sir Henry Cary, an arrangement driven by her status as an heiress. Upon entering her new home, she was explicitly banned from reading, forcing her to channel her creative energy into writing poetry in secret.

Cary’s literary legacy is anchored by The Tragedy of Mariam, published in 1613. Written in iambic pentameter with embedded sonnets, it remains a landmark in English literature. Later, she authored a political narrative regarding the reign of King Edward II, which served as a thinly veiled critique of the power dynamics surrounding King Charles I and the Duke of Buckingham. Because she was in constant contact with the Buckingham family, this work likely functioned as a coping mechanism for the pressures of her political environment. Unfortunately, much of her original poetry and prose has been lost to time.

Her later years were defined by profound personal and religious upheaval. After moving to Dublin in 1622, she converted to Catholicism, a decision that caused a massive rift with her husband. He attempted to divorce her, denied her access to their eleven children, and refused to provide financial support. Despite being banished from court in 1626 for attending mass, she remained steadfast in her faith, eventually seeing four of her daughters become Benedictine nuns and her son join the priesthood. She died in 1639, leaving behind a complex legacy that has sparked a significant critical industry since the 1990s.

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