Chapter 11: Emilia
Spoiler Warning: This analysis contains full plot details of Chapter 11. Read the chapter first if you wish to avoid spoilers.
Summary
The chapter opens in 1592 with Emilia, now 23, continuing as Lord Hunsdon’s mistress. Puritan agitation under Philip Stubbs threatens the theaters, and Emilia devises a plan to host a dinner that would allow Hunsdon to demonstrate his piety. The plan collapses when Hunsdon reminds her that no Puritan would enter the home of a man living with a mistress, a moment that cuts Emilia deeply.
She is secretly finishing Arden of Faversham with Christopher Marlowe, insisting that the murderous wife Alice speak more lines than any other character—a deliberate choice to give voice to a woman otherwise silenced. After a gap of three years, Emilia receives a note from the Earl of Southampton and meets him again in Paris Garden. Their reunion is passionate, and they begin a clandestine affair that includes a night at a coaching inn where they pretend to be a married couple and exchange miniature portraits.
Marlowe presses Emilia to get her play staged. She cannot risk being known as the author, so Marlowe introduces her to a businessman-actor named Shakespeare, who agrees to front the play for a fee. Emilia hands over the foul copy of Arden of Faversham, feeling she is cutting away a piece of her flesh.
The plague descends on London; theaters close and the court flees. Marlowe presents her with a printed pamphlet of her play, published anonymously. Shortly afterward, Emilia falls seriously ill with what everyone fears is the plague. A plague doctor examines her, but the diagnosis is not contagion: she is pregnant. Hunsdon, shattered, tells her she will not be going to court. Her relationship with him is over.
Key Events
- Emilia’s plan to pacify the Puritans fails when Hunsdon points out that his living with a mistress makes the dinner impossible.
- She and Kit Marlowe read the scene where Alice Arden and Mosby wrestle with betrayal; Emilia borrows Alice’s lines to voice her own fears.
- The Earl of Southampton, now 20, reenters Emilia’s life after three years; they resume their affair.
- Southampton arranges for Nicholas Hilliard’s apprentice to paint miniatures; the lovers exchange portraits as secret tokens.
- They steal a night at an inn, inhabiting a fantasy of being an ordinary married couple with imagined children.
- Marlowe suggests Shakespeare as a front; at the Falcon Inn, Shakespeare agrees to sell the play under his own name for a fee of one shilling per performance, plus half of any print sales.
- Emilia hands over Arden of Faversham.
- Plague forces the theaters closed; the court prepares to move to Hampton.
- Marlowe gives Emilia the printed play—her work in physical form—and they say goodbye.
- Emilia collapses; after days of fever, a plague doctor examines her. She learns she is pregnant and that Hunsdon has withdrawn his protection.
Character Development
- Emilia: She moves from defending Hunsdon’s position and writing in secret to risking everything by passing her manuscript to a stranger. The chapter shows her dual craving for creative recognition and romantic fulfillment, both of which prove impossible to sustain. The pregnancy revelation strips her of the safety she has clung to for a decade.
- Lord Hunsdon: He appears exhausted, politically besieged, and emotionally distant until his final painful discovery. His reaction is one of quiet devastation, not rage, which underscores the finality of Emilia’s fall from favor.
- Kit Marlowe: He remains the loyal, provocative collaborator who pushes Emilia toward authorship and devises the Shakespeare scheme. His boastful affection and theatrical swagger make him the chapter’s chief enabler.
- Earl of Southampton: Now a young man, he is at once more mature and still deeply entangled with Emilia. His willingness to meet her in disguise, to commission a miniature, and to playact a domestic life reveals the depth of his feeling, but also the permanent limits on their future.
- William Shakespeare: Introduced as a pragmatic broker for anonymous plays, he is unmoved by literary ambition and focused on profit. He becomes the mechanism for Emilia’s voice to reach the public while keeping her invisible.
Themes, Symbols, and Motifs
- Anonymity and Authorship: The chapter’s central image is the Puritan pamphlet used as a cover for a manuscript. Emilia’s play reaches the world only after she hands it to a man who will claim it. Mary Sidney’s advice—that a woman must be invisible to succeed—is realized.
- Performance and Disguise: Emilia performs as a pious helpmeet, a boy messenger, a lover, and a wife for a night. Each disguise allows a genuine part of her to express itself while protecting her from ruin.
- Love as Religion: During the Sunday service, Emilia recasts Southampton’s note into a blasphemous prayer, vowing to burn the prayer-book and make his words her gospel. The miniature portraits function as devotional objects she hides in her mattress.
- The Plague as Judgment: The Puritans call the plague God’s punishment for the theater. Emilia’s own illness is revealed not to be plague but a pregnancy—a different kind of sentence, and one that ends her place at court.
- The Recorder Dream: In her fever, Emilia’s father appears with a recorder that has no finger holes and cannot sound. The instrument mirrors her own voicelessness, even as her play is about to speak for her.
- The Six of Hearts: Painted on the back of Southampton’s miniature is a cartomancy symbol for a destined love that must also be lost—a motif that maps onto their entire relationship.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 11 is the hinge on which the historical plot swings. It marks the moment Emilia’s play leaves her hands and enters the world under the name Shakespeare, concretizing the novel’s central premise. At the same time, her personal life implodes. The twin arcs—artistic triumph and emotional catastrophe—culminate in the pregnancy reveal, which forces Emilia out of Hunsdon’s household and into an uncertain future. The chapter also introduces Shakespeare as a character, linking the two timelines in a tangible and historically plausible way.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does Emilia’s relationship with Southampton mirror the themes of her own play, Arden of Faversham?
Emilia’s affair with Southampton echoes Alice Arden’s illicit love for Mosby. Both women risk everything for a forbidden passion; both understand that their desires could lead to destruction. Emilia even composes lines for Alice that double as a veiled conversation with Southampton. The play becomes a vessel for her own emotional life, making the boundary between creator and creation dangerously thin.
2. What does the concept of using a “cover” (the Puritan pamphlet, a man’s name) reveal about the constraints on women in Renaissance England?
The cover motif exposes the ironclad rule that a woman’s work could only circulate if it appeared to belong to a man. The Puritan pamphlet—a tool for attacking the theater—literally wraps the subversive script, while Shakespeare’s name functions as a second, more permanent disguise. Both protections illustrate that for Emilia, making art means erasing her own identity from it.
3. In what ways does the plague serve as both a literal and metaphorical force in this chapter?
The plague closes the theaters, sends the court fleeing, and nearly kills Emilia. Metaphorically, it acts as the disaster that brings hidden truths to the surface: the Puritans frame it as divine punishment for the theater, and Emilia’s “plague” symptoms turn out to hide a pregnancy that ends her protected life. Both literal and figurative plagues accelerate the collapse of Emilia’s carefully constructed world.