1. Amelia Lanyer's poetry strikes the reader as skillful and accomplished. Her works include poems of varying verse forms and two prefatory pieces and an afterword in prose. She is radical in both her theology and politics. As a proto-feminist, she argues for women's religious and social equality. Admired in her own day, she has piquednew interest as a result of A.L. Rowse's assertion and documentation that she is the Dark lady of Shakespeare's twenty-six sonnets addressed to a dark woman ("Shakespeare's Sonnets"). The mysterious, dark-complexioned lady of the sonnets was Amelia Bassano Lanyer, the daughter of Baptista Bassano, a member of Queen Elizabeth's recorder consort that included him and four of His brothers, who were Jewish and had immigrated to England from Spain. As a young woman, she became the mistress of Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, who was forty-five years her senior. When she became pregnant, she was married to a Court musician named Alphonso Lanyer, who reared the child, Henry, as his own. As an adult, she spent time in several noble households, most notably that of Bertie, dowager Countess of Kent, and that of Margaret Russell Clifford, dowager countess of Cumberland, and her daughter, Anne Clifford. As a result of her time with the Cliffords, she wrote poetry that established her as a major English female author (Grendler 3:380). After her husband's death, she supported herself at least in part by running a school.

2. Student examination of excerpt from "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum" ("Eve's Apology of Women") (See document 4)

• Written in 1611, this work retells the biblical story of the fall from Eve's viewpoint. Lanyer argues that Eve gave Adam the apple from the Tree of Knowledge because she was good and acted out of unconscious innocence. Lanyer argues that unlike the men who betrayed Jesus and caused his crucifixion, Eve was an innocent. Since women are less to blame than men because Eve acted out of goodness and men out of evil, women deserve a right to be equal to men. Lanyer's account of the Passion contrasts the virtues of women as seen in Pilate's wife, the tearful daughters of Jerusalem, the Virgin Mary, and even the Countess of Cumberland with men's wickedness as seen in Caiphas, Pilate and Peter. The second section is Eve's apology and argument for women's liberty.
• Stanza 1: Pilate's wife begs to be heard. In the biblical account she wrote a letter.
• Stanza 2: She pleas on Christ's behalf and asks that women not glory in the faults of men, who were, after all, given dominion over them. Here Lanyer shows the superior moral quality of women, who are not only right in judgment but also supercede the men who were placed above them.
• Stanza 3: Pilot's wife argues that men's indiscretions make Eve's fault much less. Eve gave only what was good (knowledge) to Adam, and it was the serpent that betrayed her.
• Stanza 4: Eve was deceived by the serpent; she intended no harm, but she prefers godlike wisdom to immortal ignorance. Here Lanyer portrays Eve as vulnerable but pure in her desire for wisdom.
• Stanza 5: Lanyer plays on the belief that men are morally stronger than women when she argues that Adam is more to blame than Eve because he has more strength and therefor should have refused the apple.
• Stanza 6: Adam knew when he ate the apple that he was relinquishing immortality.
• Stanza 7: Eve erred for the sake of knowledge, and the Serpent did not betray Adam as it did her. She did not have the power to restrain Adam.
• Stanza 8: Eve's only fault is too much love; she wanted to share her knowledge with Adam. He did not reprove her weakness. Men boast of knowledge that is actually the result of Eve's eating of the apple.
• Stanza 9: How can man call Eve evil when she was from Adam's rib? In weakness she succumbed to the serpent's temptation, but men betrayed Jesus out of malice.
• Stanza 10: The sin of betraying Jesus is much greater than Eve's sin.
• Stanza 11: Because of men's greater sin, they should not pretend to be superior to women. They should also remember that only through a woman's pain are they born.
• Stanza 12: Displaying wisdom, Pilate's wife call upon him to refrain from seeking the death of the man who is his savior.

2. Since Lanyer is most likely the woman to whom Shakespeare's Sonnets 127-153 are addressed, they could be studied in light of how the subject defies Elizabethan standards of femininity. Particularly Sonnets 127, 128, 130, and 147 might be rewarding.