Women Haters: A Controversy
Printed Attacks and Defenses of Women
Para1In the English early modern era, women were both satirically attacked and defended
in several kinds of popular literature, including pamphlets, poems, and plays. In
1540, Edward Gosynhill wrote both an attack and a defense in the same year. His work
was part of misogynist literature, a type that evolved in English starting in the
Middle Ages with texts like Chaucer’s 1405 The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. Plays like Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew are part of this tradition, often called the querelle des femmes (“the quarrel about women”). By the early 17th century, several such texts sparked
furious responses from both men and women.
Notable Attacks
Para2Joseph Swetnam’s misogynistic tract, The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Women, received substantial comment and rebuttal. It was printed in 1615 under the pseudonym
Thomas Tel-troth (“truth teller”), and contains typical and graphic misogyny:
Many women are in shape angels but in qualities devils, painted coffins with rotten bones […] Although women are beautiful, showing pity, yet their hearts are black, swelling with mischief, not much unlike unto old trees whose outward leaves are fair and green and yet the body rotten […]Then who can but say that women sprung from the devil, whose heads, hands and hearts, mind and souls are evil, for women are called the hook of all evil, because men are taken by them as fish is taken with the hook.
Responses to Misogyny
Para3Many authors also defended women against attacks like Swetnam’s, both before and after
his pamphlet sparked a war in print. One author known as Jane Anger wrote the most
well-known feminist pamphlet of the era. The full title of her 1589 feminist pamphlet
was Jane Anger her Protection for Women to Defend them Against the SCANDALOUS REPORTES
of a Late Surfeiting Lover, and All Other like Venerians that Complaine so to be Overcloyed
with Women’s Kindnesse. The name might be a pseudonym, but Anger was a popular last name in parts of England.
Para4Although Jane Anger did not respond directly to Swetnam, she was a passionate defender
of women. Her style combines the complex sentences made fashionable by John Lyly with
many clever insults and quips. Her pamphlet begins with a description of a misogynistic
pamphlet she had just finished:
The chief matters therein contained were of two sorts: the one in the dispraise of man's folly, and the other, invective against our sex, their folly proceeding of their own flattery joined with fancy, and our faults are through our folly, with which is some faith […] Fie on the falsehood of men, whose minds go oft a madding, and whose tongues can not so soon be wagging, but straight they fall a railing. Was there ever any so abused, so slandered, so railed upon, or so wickedly handled undeservedly as are we women?
Para5She also describes how women are trapped by men’s attitudes:
If we will not suffer them to smell on our smocks, they will snatch at our petticoats; but if our honest natures cannot away with that uncivil kind of jesting, then we are coy. Yet if we bear with their rudeness and be somewhat modestly familiar with them, they will straight make matter of nothing, blazing abroad that they have surfeited with love, and …telling the manner how.
Dramatic Response
Para6Another response to Swetnam was the satirical play, Swetnam the Woman-Hater Arraigned by Women, which was performed at the Red Bull Theatre in 1619. The play’s author is unknown,
although many scholars have suggested that its style of comedy resembles Thomas Heywood,
a well-known playwright of the early 17th century.
Para7The main plot is a romance about state politics, but the subplot is about Swetnam
being tried by women, as the illustration on the title page depicts. The ending of
the play depicts Swetnam debating another character, a man disguised as a woman about
women’s traits, before an all-male judges’ panel. Swetnam wins, and then lustfully
pursues his opponent, to comic ends due to the cross-dressing. Eventually, Swetnam
is imprisoned by local women, who force him to recant his misogynist views.
Para8Although the topic was popular, the play was not. Theater historians note that the
play was performed again in 1633, but that not other performance records exist and
it was not reprinted until 1880.
Women’s Prose Responses
Para9Several actual women writers also repled to Swetnam’s attack. Rachel Speght was the
only one not to have used a pseudonym when writing in defense of her gender, A Mouzell muzzle for Melastomus in 1617. She also published poetry in 1621.
Para10Another woman responder was Ester Sowernam, which is also likely a pseudonym inspired
by the Biblical figure Esther. The writer is presumed to be a woman, likely from the
middle class because her response was dedicated to London apprentices.
Para11Yet another woman under the pseudonym Constantia Munda mankind’s constancy wrote The Worming of a Madde Dogge…, another response to Swetnam, putting him in his place. Munda seems to be the most
educated of these responders because she uses quotations in several languages and
cites information from higher status professions.
Key Print Sources
Anger, Jane et al. Defences of Women: Jane Anger, Rachel Speght, Ester Sowernam, and Constantia Munda. Scolar Press, 1996.
Boleyn, Deirdre.
“Because Women Are Not Women, Rather Might Be a Fit Subject of an Ingenious Satyrist”: Constantia Munda’s The Worming of a Mad Dogge (1617).Prose Studies vol. 32, no. 1, 2010, pp. 38–56.
Malcolmson, Christina, and Mihoko Suzuki, eds. Debating Gender in Early Modern England, 1500–1700. Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Key Online Sources
Anger, Jane. Her Protection for Women To Defend them Against the Scandalous Reportes of a Late
Surfeiting Lover, and All Other like Venerians that Complaine so to bee Overcloyed
with Womens Kindnesse. Ed. Mary Mark Ockerbloom. Digital Library. University of Pennsylvania. 1589. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/anger/protection/protection.html.
Best, Michael.
Women: Loved and Loathed.Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/women%20writers/haters.html. Accessed 1 Mar. 2018.
Munda, Constantia. The Worming of a Mad Dogge: or, A Soppe for Cerberus the Jaylor of Hell. No Confutation
but a Sharpe Redargution of the Bayter of Women. Early English Books Online Text Creation Project. University of Michigan. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A07888.0001.001/1:4?rgn=div1;view=fulltext.
Speght, Rachel. A Mouzell for Melastomus. Early English Books Online Text Creation Project. University of Michigan. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A12750.0001.001?view=toc.
Swetnam, Joseph. The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women. University of Oregon. London, 1615. https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/WesternCiv102/SwetnamArraignment1615.htm.
Prosopography
Kate McPherson
Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley
University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity
in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities
Institute,
Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom,at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.
Katelyn Ekker
Katelyn Ekker was an Honors student at Utah Valley University.
Leah Hamby
Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed
several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from
Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her
other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the
Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the
ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery,
a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on
Electronic Shakespeares,and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | Women Haters: A Controversy |
| Type of text | Critical |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | Early Modern England Encyclopedia |
| Source |
By Katelyn Ekker, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
|
| Editorial declaration | This document uses Canadian English spelling |
| Edition | Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a |
| Sponsor(s) |
Early Modern England EncyclopediaAnthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
|
| Encoding description | Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines |
| Document status | published, peer-reviewed |
| Funder(s) |
Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University |
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