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Andrew Pinnock, The Rival Maids: Anne Killigrew, Anne Kingsmill and the making of the court masque Venus and Adonis (music by John Blow), Early Music, Volume 46, Issue 4, November 2018, Pages 631–652, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/cay066
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Abstract
James A. Winn’s paper ‘A versifying maid of honour: Anne Finch and the libretto for Venus and Adonis’ (Review of English Studies, lix (2008), pp.67–85) presented an array of evidence enabling him to identify Anne Kingsmill (later Anne Finch, ultimately Anne, Countess of Winchilsea) as the likely author of the libretto of Venus and Adonis, an all-sung court entertainment performed before King Charles II probably in 1683. John Blow composed the music. This article—complementing Winn’s—does not dispute his main findings but does examine additional pictorial evidence suggesting that Anne Killigrew also worked on the court’s Venus and Adonis project, producing several paintings on the Venus and Adonis theme and perhaps helping to shape the libretto in some way. Killigrew and Kingsmill were both serving as Maids of Honour to Duchess Mary of Modena at the crucial time. Signs of rivalry rather than untroubled friendship can be detected. With Killigrew included, a clearer picture of the social world from which Venus and Adonis emerged can be discerned—a world in which the authorship concept had vivid meaning (authors knew who they were), while open acknowledgement of authorship could prove problematic.
