61 pages • 2 hours read
Jodi PicoultBy Any Other Name
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Emilia, 1582”
Emilia is 13 and is in the library at court to practice music for a masque where she will play a butterfly. She discovers the newly minted Earl of Southampton, who is eight, crying there. They talk briefly and she shows him how to play a recorder before they are interrupted by one of the queen’s ladies who scolds Emilia for being there.
Emilia performs in the masque, which stars Queen Elizabeth, and afterward, the Baron introduces her to Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, who is to be her protector. She is shocked to realize he is the kindly older man she met at court before. They dance together and she is icy with him at first, but he is kind. He tells her that he hopes she will come to care for him and that he chose her because she will keep him young.
For her final lesson, Isabella has Emilia spy in a brothel on a prostitute having sex with a customer. Afterward, they go to visit an herb woman, and Isabella explains about using teas to prevent pregnancy.
The next day, Emilia is taken to Hunsdon’s house, Somerset House, and meets Bess, her maid, and the housekeeper Mary. She is surprised at how beautiful her room is and thinks that it might be a cage, but it is a nice one. She is also surprised that Hunsdon does not immediately demand intercourse but instead shows her around the house and to his orangery, where he grows rare plants. He gives her a taste of the exotic pineapple, which she has never encountered. Emilia makes herself at home, wandering the house and keeping Hunsdon company. She is also enchanted by his falcons but draws parallels between the caged birds and her own status as a kept woman. Hunsdon encourages her interest in writing poetry but is not interested enough to read it. She asks him to take her somewhere, and he is delighted to oblige.
At court, they watch a joust in the presence of the queen. Emilia fends off a spiteful court lady by trading banter with her but errs by offering a knight her favor. The queen rebukes her and Hunsdon, saying that she brings shame to him. That night, she cannot sleep and worries she will be turned out. She finds Hunsdon in his study, reading plays and working. She asks him why he is kind to her, and he tells her he has no reason not to be. She attempts to seduce him, and they have sex for the first time. She decides that her life will be a comedy or tragedy, and it will be up to her to choose.
She and Hunsdon settle into a routine, and he takes her to the theater. She is delighted to be in a balcony and have a good view. Emilia asks Hunsdon why women can’t act in plays, and he explains that the Puritans see theater as sinful, and it would only inflame them further. He also tells her that women cannot write plays.
That night, after sex, she reads some plays in his study, including one she deems bad by a man named William Shakespeare. She thinks that the plays would be more interesting if they included women’s stories.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Melina, August 2023”
Andre gets Melina a babysitting job for a choreographer. She quits after the first day because the woman is a control freak. As she is on the train, trying to decide how to tell Andre, she receives an email from the festival telling her they are delighted to accept her play. It is addressed to Mr. Mel Green.
At home she confronts Andre angrily, telling him he had no right to go behind her back. He apologizes but begs her not to decline the invite. Instead, he hatches a plan where they will go together to the meet-and-greet for the winners and reveal the mistake in person. Andre thinks the director will be too embarrassed to go back on his word and Melina will be able to stay in the festival.
However, once they arrive at the auditorium, they are unable to tell the truth to Felix due to constant interruptions. A surprise announcement reveals that Jasper Tolle, Melina’s old nemesis, is present and slated to review the plays in a special New York Times column. Melina tells Andre to not reveal her identity yet, planning to reveal it after the play is staged and favorably reviewed by Jasper. She believes she can have revenge and prove him and Felix wrong at the same time.
A section narrated from Jasper’s point of view reveals that he is not the evil misogynist Melina believes he is. Instead, his bluntness arises from an inability to recognize social cues. Diagnosed as neurodivergent from a young age, he still sometimes worries about fitting in with others and their mystifying codes of behavior. He finds reviewing an excellent career for his skillset—unlike real life, he is praised for telling the truth as he sees it. He is not very interested in the festival but was forced to come for work, and he plans to spend as little time there as possible.
An excerpt from the By Any Other Name rehearsal script shows playwright Christopher Marlowe teasing Emilia about her racy poetry. She snatches it from him, and it is revealed the poem is about her lover, Southampton.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Emilia, 1588-1592”
Emilia matures and becomes more beautiful and hones her craft by secretly writing. She understands that her role in Hunsdon’s household is to be a “decorative object” and plays the part, though she is often lonely. Hunsdon is kind to her, and they have a close and warm relationship, though she doesn’t love him.
Hunsdon takes her to visit Wilton House, the home of Mary Sidney Herbert, a countess and a writer who holds literary salons in her home. Knowing that Emilia will likely outlive him, he hopes to win her some allies among his friends. She attends a reading by Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser, and afterward, Sidney urges Emilia to share her work. She does so, and they banter about women’s lives and rights in society. Hunsdon retires to bed but tells Emilia to stay, and she is delighted when Sidney produces a play script for them to read from. Though it would not be proper for her to have a play performed, this closet drama among friends is acceptable. Later in the visit, Sidney meets with Emilia in her workshop and shows her the invisible ink she has invented. She tells Emilia that a woman would have to be invisible to produce a real play and suggests that Emilia will solve the riddle for all the women in the future.
Though Emilia no longer joins her cousins to celebrate Jewish holidays, she still fasts privately and keeps them herself. One day at court she excuses herself from a feast and walks alone through the wild park, trying not to think of her hunger. She is surprised to find a handsome young man there, who identifies himself as a more grownup Southampton. He flirts with her and then kisses her. Though they exchange a passionate embrace, she tells him that they cannot be together and leaves.
Later, Hunsdon takes her to a practice for a performance of a play about Dido, which will be performed with the queen. While watching, she meets the infamous playwright, Christopher Marlowe. He attempts to shock her with some bawdy innuendo, but she is not impressed. They discuss the play, and he is surprised to find her an astute critic with informed opinions.
Hunsdon is laid up by an attack of gout and Emilia comforts him. While at his bedside she receives a letter from Southampton, telling her he will wait for her in the Paris garden. She lies that she is needed at her cousin’s and meets him for a tryst. They embark on a love affair, meeting when Hunsdon is elsewhere, and she can get away. She starts to compose a poem about Venus and Adonis, inspired by their love. One day, Marlowe shows up at her home unexpectedly and reads the poems on her desk. He offers her critiques from one writer to another, and they become friends.
Marlowe devises a plan for sneaking Emilia out of Somerset House in disguise as a young man, and she accompanies him to a tavern. There, she briefly meets Shakespeare and some other theater men. On the way home, she tells Marlowe about the bad Shakespeare play she read. He also tells her about his newest play which has an evil Jewish character. She tries to defend the Jewish character’s motives, but he dismisses her by saying all religion is a farce.
Emilia is awakened in the night by a noise at her window and is horrified to see Southampton has snuck in to visit her. She hurries him into the orangerie and when they see a light coming, tells him to escape out the back. Hunsdon, home early, appears and tells Emilia he was looking for her. She pretends to have been sleepwalking and, to keep him from investigating a noise that might lead to Southampton, seduces him. While they are having sex, she makes eye contact with Southampton as he escapes. She thinks that it is better that Southampton knows who she truly is, but her heart is broken.
Time passes and Emilia finishes her poem about Venus and confesses her love affair to Marlowe. They meet secretly at the Falcon Inn and talk about writing. He urges her to write a play herself and she agrees, basing it on the plot of a ballad about a woman who killed her husband.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Picoult uses many Shakespeare references and allusions throughout the text, ranging from overt to more subtle. By Any Other Name includes an appendix that highlights the allusions used. Picoult also allows Emilia to invent poetry and phrases that are used in Shakespeare’s plays. An early example is the poem Emilia writes after seeing the falcons. In the novel, falcons operate as a symbol of women’s pursuit of agency. The falconer tells Emilia, “Falcons be ladies” (81-82), and like ladies, falcons are hemmed in by the men who own them. When Emilia learns that falcons are kept hungry to prompt them to hunt, it inspires her to write a verse about a man taming a falcon. This section is in reality lines from The Taming of the Shrew, where Petruchio uses the falcon as a metaphor for his wife Kate, who is the titular shrew. This play is also deeply concerned with The Struggle for Female Autonomy, one of the novel’s themes. By imagining Kate as a falcon, the play contrasts a creature made to soar in the sky with the constraints placed on it by society. Emilia experiences similar constraints, though she is aware that, as Hunsdon’s mistress, she lives in a gilded cage.
Related to this theme is another, The Power of Authorship and Voice. Though Emilia has little control over her life, she experiences power through her writing. She also envisions her real life in writerly ways. When she decides to make the best of her life with Hunsdon, she thinks, “Her life could be viewed as a tragedy, or it could be a comedy. It was truly a matter of perspective” (88-89). She decides to take control of her life and imagine herself in a comedy, rather than a tragedy, and chooses to take happiness where she can find it. She continues this line of thought, saying, “[S]he was not merely an actor in this production. Might she write her own story?” (89). Though circumstances limit her choices, Emilia takes power and agency where she can. The imagery of the playwright in the novel is repeatedly connected to the idea that authorship is a form of power. By choosing to think of her life as a comedy, Emilia pursues the joy available to her.
This section also offers a contrast between Emilia’s two lovers, Hunsdon and Southampton. Hunsdon is a kind and gentle man, who treats Emilia with respect and care. However, their relationship is not one between equals, as Emilia had no choice. With Southampton, the imagery used to describe their passion is not civilized. Emilia thinks that she “knew the entire choreography of lovemaking [but] let herself go feral” (125). He is “a spark to her straw” (125). This imagery suggests passion but also destruction—a spark can easily destroy straw and start a raging inferno that cannot be stopped. Emilia thinks that “[s]ex had been a ladder to take her from one place to another […] it was currency in her pocket” (134). However, with Southampton she is no longer calculating, instead sex is “uncontrollable and primal,” a “tide, rushing the shore and pulling the ground from beneath her feet” (134). This imagery foreshadows the doomed nature of this romance. The lovers cannot be together, and their passion is more punishment than joy.
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By Jodi Picoult
