Yes, they were two different people! Sorry John Hudson: you'll have to try to make your name as a Shakespearean in some other forum. Lanyer is one of the under-appreciated poets of the seventeenth century, but her poetic style is more Jonsonian (Ben, not Samuel) than Shakespearean as any undergraduate who reads the poem carefully will tell you. Why do we have to turn Lanyer into Shakespeare to acknowledge the powers of her poetic voice? The Salve stands on its own as one of the great works (with Herbert's Temple and Donne's Songs and Sonnets) of the early part of the century. But we don't have to turn a woman into a man in order to proclaim her a great poet. She was that all on her own--without having to be transformed by academic whimsy (and desire for fame) into Shakespeare. So let them be: Amelia and the Bard: two separate people!
Yes, they were two different people! Sorry John Hudson: you'll have to try to make your name as a Shakespearean in some other forum. Lanyer is one of the under-appreciated poets of the seventeenth century, but her poetic style is more Jonsonian (Ben, not Samuel) than Shakespearean as any undergraduate who reads the poem carefully will tell you. Why do we have to turn Lanyer into Shakespeare to acknowledge the powers of her poetic voice? The Salve stands on its own as one of the great works (with Herbert's Temple and Donne's Songs and Sonnets) of the early part of the century. But we don't have to turn a woman into a man in order to proclaim her a great poet. She was that all on her own--without having to be transformed by academic whimsy (and desire for fame) into Shakespeare. So let them be: Amelia and the Bard: two separate people!