Footnoting Lanyer’s Salve Deus

First I must get out of the way how pointless I found 80-90 percent of the footnotes in Salve Dues. The ones that provided detail about the female patrons to whom Lanyer dedicated her poems were helpful and I could have used more of these or more detail into these, especially for the Cooke-ham piece. The other 80-90 percent of the notes provided details into basic Greek mythology and the Bible, even so basic as to tell the reader that “Pallas” means Athena, and to tell who Helen, Diana, and other of the most basic goddesses in Greek mythology are, which most readers learn in high school. I assume then that this edition is targeted towards undergraduates or even high school students. Fewer people are perhaps aware of the basic biblical references, which did not delve beneath the surface of citing the verse which Lanyer was paraphrasing, most often Matthew or the Song of Songs/Solomon; however, for line 1277, for instance, it is pretty basic to point out “Joseph of Arimathea, who gave Jesus his tomb (Mat. 27:57); see lines 1277-79” when 1277 says, (after “Thus honorable Joseph is possest …”) “He finds aTombe, a Tombe most rarely blest.” Perhaps this editor’s main goal is to drive home Lanyer’s biblical knowledge/prowess exhibited in the Salve Deus. 

For all of Lanyer’s bold claims to the female patrons to whom she exclusively devotes the Salve Deus—and these really were impressive to me in their not only upholding female honor (Eve) but stating man (Adam) was more to blame for the Fall—the Salve Deus and “Cooke-ham” starts off with a bold opening to those likely to understand and sympathize with her cause (upper class educated women who value the arts) and it ends with a (much shorter) address “To the doubtfull Reader.” This assumes that these doubtful (curious, according to the (helpful) footnote) readers were interested in her work enough to read it to the end, and not cast it aside or into the fire in self-righteous anger, say, during her, a female’s, defense of Eve (well before Milton’s Paradise Lost portrayal). She answers directly the question why she “give this Title, Salve Deus Rex Judaorum”: “know for certaine; that it was delivered unto me in Sleepe many yeares before I had any intent to write in this maner, and was quite out of my memory, untill I had written the Passion of the Christ, when immediately it came into my remembrance, what I had dreamed long before.” She “was appointed to performe this work, I gave the very same words I received in Sleepe as the fittest Title I could devise for this Booke.” To this end, Lanyer is insisting she didn’t write this work, she isn’t taking credit for this work; all credit is due to God, who gave this to her in a dream and did not allow her to remember it until it was time, until she was compelled out of faith to write the Passion narrative. This exhibits the humble traits of (1) a Christian and (2) a woman, which reminds me of how excellent her points were earlier in the work in which she wrote about Jesus’ healing, socializing, and revealing himself in the resurrection to women.