Naomi Miller on Mary Sidney Herbert and "Imperfect Alchemist"

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Naomi Miller’s novel "Imperfect Alchemist" is about one of early modern England’s most significant literary figures: a poet, playwright, translator, scientist, and colleague of writers like Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, Mary Wroth, John Donne, and Emilia Lanier Bassano. Her name was Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. We talk to Miller about how she imagined the lives and voices of these literary lights, as well as Shakespeare, in her book. Plus, she discusses female alchemists of Elizabethan England, Sidney’s friends and beneficiaries, and how class shapes her characters’ outlooks. Naomi Miller is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. Dr. Naomi Miller is a professor of English, as well as the Study of Women and Gender, at Smith College. She has written and edited nine books about early modern women authors and their worlds. Her first novel, "Imperfect Alchemist," was published by Allison & Busby in 2020. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published February 2, 2021. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Your Partner in the Cause,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer with help from Leonor Fernandez. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Paul Luke at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.

Transcript

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0:00.0	She was a writer, one of the first to be published in English, she influenced Shakespeare,
0:07.0	and guess what? No one has ever suggested that she was the dark lady of the sonnets.
0:16.0	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:21.6	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folger's director.
0:24.6	When people speculate about Shakespeare's life and career, one place a lot of them go these days is to a woman named Amelia Bissano.
0:32.6	The thinking often is, Shakespeare wrote strong female characters, so there had to be a woman who inspired them.
0:40.3	Dr. Naomi Miller has taught Shakespeare's plays for decades at Smith College,
0:46.3	but when she speculates on the woman who drove Shakespeare, she goes in a completely different direction.
0:53.3	Now she's turned her speculation into a novel,
0:57.0	Imperfect Alchemist, which tells a story based on the life of Mary Sidney Herbert,
1:02.0	Countess of Pembroke, who in the 1590s wrote the first published English play by a woman,
1:09.0	a play that told the story of Antony and Cleopatra.
1:13.0	Dr. Miller jumped off from the handful of facts we know about the Countess and Shakespeare
1:17.9	and spun them into a story of art, science, and cooperation.
1:24.5	We invited her in to talk with us about Mary Sidney Herbert and about her novel for this podcast that we call Your Partner in the Cause.
1:33.3	Dr. Naomi Miller is interviewed by Barbara Bogave.
1:37.3	Naomi, who was the real Mary Sydney Herbert, Countess Pembroke, and what stands out about her?
1:43.3	What's important to know about her?
1:45.1	What stands out about Mary Sydney Herbert, for me, is the fact that she was a very determined
1:50.7	author. And when we think about who inspired, for example, Shakespeare's female characters,
1:57.3	this is what I always tell my students when we're reading Shakespeare. He didn't
2:01.0	pull female characters out of thin air. He was, drew from him, was inspired by the authors of his
	...

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