SOURCE: Lamb, Mary Ellen. “Patronage and Class in Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum.” In Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain, edited by Mary E. Burke, Jane Donawerth, Linda L. Dove, and Karen Nelson, pp. 38-57. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Lamb views the poems of Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum within the context of the patronage system and the socioeconomic structure of the period.

Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum shows evident, even blatant, signs of its production under a patronage system: eleven prefatory dedications, the tailoring of various states of the text as presentation copies, explicit allusions to Lanyer's fall from former status, lengthy addresses to the countess of Cumberland.¹ Yet, although various critics note Lanyer's transparent bids for patronage, until recently, most discussions of the Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum have bracketed off financial motives as...