Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland

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Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland (1585–1639) was an English poet, dramatist, translator, and historian. She is the first woman known to have written and published an original English play: The Tragedy of Mariam (1613).

She was born Elizabeth Tanfield at Burford Priory, Oxfordshire, the only child of Sir Lawrence Tanfield and Elizabeth Symondes. A gifted learner from a young age, she had a French tutor at five and later taught herself Spanish, Italian, Latin, Hebrew, and Transylvanian. Her scholarly talent was praised by writers such as Michael Drayton and John Davies of Hereford.

At 15 she married Sir Henry Cary, who would become Viscount Falkland, because she was an heiress. They had eleven children: Catherine, Lucius, Lorenzo, Anne, Edward, Elizabeth, Lucy, Victoria, Mary, Henry, and Patrick. In 1622 Henry became Lord Deputy of Ireland, and Elizabeth joined him in Dublin, where she mingled with Catholics and may have converted to Catholicism after her eldest daughter Catherine died in childbirth.

Her father disinherited her in 1625 over financial matters. In 1626 she publicly announced her Catholic conversion; Henry Cary tried to divorce her but failed and restricted her from seeing the children. She was banished from court for attending Mass. After Henry’s death in 1633, she fought to regain custody of her children. By 1634 she and several of her daughters were converted to Catholicism, and the king allowed four daughters to be moved to live with her son Lucius, then Viscount Falkland.

Elizabeth Cary died in London in 1639 and was buried in Henrietta Maria’s Chapel. Her known works include The Tragedy of Mariam, the first original English play published by a woman, and The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II (written 1626–1627, published 1680). Much of her poetry is lost, but interest in her work has grown since the 1990s.