65 pages • 2 hours read
Elizabeth CaryThe Tragedy of Mariam
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1613A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Beauty
Beauty is a significant motif throughout the play, appearing even in its title. Almost without exception, every character describes Mariam using the word “fair.” As the play progresses, these descriptions become more elaborate, linking Mariam to other beautiful women—especially monarchs, but sometimes even goddesses. In every case, Mariam herself emerges as the more beautiful woman.
As this universal adoration of Mariam’s beauty continues, it becomes apparent that her beauty is not merely physical attractiveness—though that is part of it. Rather, “fairness” comes to connote a radiant feminine perfection that also encompasses virtues like chastity and gentleness. Much like these broader feminine norms, this standard of beauty is limiting. For example, it is notable that what Nuntio emphasizes most about Mariam’s execution is the fact that she retained her beauty throughout, as though this were more important than her innocence, or as though her death would be less tragic if she were less beautiful.
It’s also important to recognize that the beauty standards Cory applies to Mariam are those of Renaissance Europe—i.e., the emphasis placed on her pale complexion. At the time of the play’s writing, these standards were less strongly racialized than they are now, and more associated with social class (since only the lower classes would spend their days working in the sun and thus tanning). However, in Mariam’s case race and class intertwine; she is pure-blooded Jewish royalty, and her “fairness” symbolizes both.
Eventually, other women in the play find themselves measured against Mariam. Doris explains that it wasn’t really Mariam’s beauty that Herod found irresistible, but her social prominence (though, again, the two are linked). Pheroras assures Graphina, who of course does not believe him, that she is just as beautiful as Mariam. Herod remarks that Salome’s real problem with Mariam is that Mariam is much more attractive. Throughout the play, beauty is the highest measure of women’s worth, and Mariam sets the standard.
Purity
When characters in The Tragedy of Mariam discuss purity, it typically is not moral purity but rather racial purity that they have in mind. In those cases, the discussion usually centers around who possesses racial purity and who does not. In her complaints about Herod, Alexandra doesn’t just condemn him for his murderous acts, but also takes care to point out that he’s only half Jewish. In criticizing Salome, Mariam goes so far as to call her a “mongrel.”
It is interesting that those most interested in (Jewish) racial purity have the least interest in religious observance. By contrast, the two individuals who most often invoke religious observance and the law are Constabarus, who is married to a law-breaking Edomite, and Herod, who is himself only half Jewish. These contradictions perhaps reflect the complex interplay between religion, ethnicity, and power in Cary’s own time. Henry VIII had broken with the Catholic Church not so much for religious reasons as to ensure the line of succession; later, James I’s Catholic parentage (his mother was Mary Queen of Scots) complicated his status as Elizabeth I’s successor, even though he himself was Protestant. Religious practice and religious heritage shaped these individuals’ relationships to power in different but intersecting ways, and in ways comparable to the play’s distinction between ethnic and religious Jewishness.
Sudden Death
The threat of execution seems to hang over the heads of everyone in the play, including even Herod—the man who holds the lives of everyone in Jerusalem in his hand. The play begins with people assuming Herod has been executed and ends with Herod wishing Mariam had not been executed. False executions, unjust executions, and emotionally-ordered executions form the backdrop of all discussions. They serve as a nerve-wracking reminder of what it was to live beneath a ruler who possessed the right of summary execution and did not hesitate to use it. This was only somewhat less true of Cary’s time than Mariam’s; though the English Magna Carta placed some limits on the English monarchy, rulers could (and did) execute even their own relatives in order to maintain their power.
Cory’s play captures this dynamic. Being a friend, counselor, or family member of the king makes characters more rather than less likely to die at his command, as the deaths of Constabarus, Josephus, Sohemus, and of course Mariam herself demonstrate.
