Born: October 27, 1561
Died: September 25, 1621 (age 59), of smallpox
Portrait of the Countess as a younger woman
 

Mary (Sidney) Herbert, Countess of Pembroke

Do you not know I am a woman?
Shakespeare, As You Like It

·Wrote (or translated) poetry and at least one play.

· Her two sons were the "Incomparable Brethren" to whom the First Folio was dedicated. Her brother was the poet-knight Sir Philip Sidney.

·Even after marrying into the Herbert family, she used the symbols of the Sidney family: the phaon, or spear-head, and the swan.