To mery London, my most kyndly Nurse,
That to me gaue this Lifes first natiue sourse:
130
Though from another place I take my name,
An house of auncient fame.
There when they came, whereas those bricky towres,
The which on Themmes brode aged backe doe ryde,
Where now the studious Lawyers haue their bowers,
135
There whylome wont the Templer Knights to byde,
Till they decayd through pride:
Next whereunto there standes a stately place,
Where oft I gayned giftes and goodly grace
Of that great Lord, which therein wont to dwell,
140
Whose want too well, now feeles my freendles case:
But Ah here fits not well
Olde woes but ioyes to tell
Against the bridale daye, which is not long:
Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song.
9
145
Yet therein now doth lodge a noble Peer,
Great Englands glory and the Worlds wide wonder,
Whose dreadfull name, late through all Spaine did thunder,
And Hercules two pillors standing neere,
Did make to quake and feare:
150
Faire branch of Honor, flower of Cheualrie,
That fillest England with thy triumphes fame,
Ioy haue thou of thy noble victorie,
And endlesse happinesse of thine owne name
That promiseth the same:
155
That through thy prowesse and victorious armes,
Thy country may be freed from forraine harmes:
And great Elisaes glorious name may ring
Through al the world, fil’d with thy wide Alarmes,
Which some braue muse may sing
160
To ages following,
Vpon the Brydale day, which is not long:
Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song.
10
From those high Towers, this noble Lord issuing,
Like Radiant Hesper when his golden hayre
165
In th’Ocean billowes he hath Bathed fayre,
Descended to the Riuers open vewing,
With a great traine ensuing.
Aboue the rest were goodly to bee seene
Two gentle Knights of louely face and feature
170
Beseeming well the bower of anie Queene,
With gifts of wit and ornaments of nature,
Fit for so goodly stature:
That like the twins of loue they seem’d in sight,
Which decke the Bauldricke of the Heauens bright.
175
They two forth pacing to the Riuers side,
Receiued those two faire Brides, their Loues delight,
Which at th’appointed tyde,
Each one did make his Bryde,
Against their Brydale day, which is not long:
180
Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song.
FINIS.
Commendatory Sonnets.
To the right worshipfull, my singular good frend, M. Gabriell Haruey, Doctor of the Lawes.
Haruey, the happy aboue happiest men
I read: that sitting like a Looker-on
Of this worldes Stage, doest note with critique pen
The sharpe dislikes of each condition:
5
And as one carelesse of suspition,
Ne fawnest for the fauour of the great:
Ne fearest foolish reprehension
Of faulty men, which daunger to thee threat.
But freely doest, of what thee list, entreat,
10
Like a great Lord of peerelesse liberty:
Lifting the Good vp to high Honours seat,
And the Euill damning euermore to dy.
For Life, and Death is in thy doomefull writing:
So thy renowme liues euer by endighting.
Dublin: this xviij. of Iuly: 1586.
Your deuoted frend, during life,
EDMUND SPENCER.
[Prefixed to Nennio, or A Treatise of Nobility]
Who so wil seeke by right deserts t’attaine
vnto the type of true Nobility,
And not by painted shewes and titles vaine,
Deriued farre from famous Auncestrie,
5
Behold them both in their right visnomy
Here truly pourtray’d, as they ought to be,
And striuing both for termes of dignitie,
To be aduanced highest in degree.
And when thou doost with equall insight see
10
the ods twixt both, of both then deem aright
And chuse the better of them both to thee,
But thanks to him that it deserues, behight:
To Nenna first, that first this worke created,
And next to Jones, that truely it translated.
ED. SPENSER.
[Prefixed to The Historie of George Castriot, surnamed Scanderbeg]
Wherefore doth vaine antiquitie so vaunt,
Her ancient monuments of mightie peeres,
And old Heroes, which their world did daunt
With their great deedes, and fild their childrens eares?
5
Who rapt with wonder of their famous praise,
Admire their statues, their Colossoes great,
Their rich triumphall Arcks which they did raise,
Their huge Pyramids, which do heauen threat.
Lo one, whom later age hath brought to light,
10
Matchable to the greatest of those great:
Great both by name, and great in power and might,
And meriting a meere triumphant seate.
The scourge of Turkes, and plague of infidels,
Thy acts, ô Scanderbeg, this volume tels.
Ed. Spenser.
[Prefixed to The Commonwealth and Gouernment of Venice]
The antique Babel, Empresse of the East,
Vpreard her buildinges to the threatned skie:
And Second Babell tyrant of the West,
Her ayry Towers vpraised much more high.
5
But with the weight of their own surquedry,
They both are fallen, that all the earth did feare,
And buried now in their own ashes ly,
Yet shewing by their heapes how great they were.
But in their place doth now a third appeare,
10
Fayre Venice, flower of the last worlds delight,
And next to them in beauty draweth neare
But farre exceedes in policie of right.
Yet not so fayre her buildinges to behold
As Lewkenors stile that hath her beautie told.
Edm. Spencer.
Attributed Verses
From Sir James Ware’s The Historie of Ireland, 1633.
Certaine verses of Mr Edm. Spenser’s.
A translation made ex tempore by Mr Edm. Spenser upon this distich, written on a Booke belonging to the right honorable Richard Earle of Corke, &c.
Nvlla dies pereat, pereat pars nulla diei,
Ne tu sic pereas, ut periere dies.
Let no day passe, passe no part of the day,
Lest thou doe passe, as dayes doe passe away.
Verses upon the said Earles Lute.
Whilst vitall sapp did make me spring,
And leafe and bough did flourish brave,
Ne had the voice which now I have:
5
But when the axe my life did end,
The Muses nine this voice did send.
E. S.
From Thomas Fuller’s The History of the Worthies of England, 1662.
I was promis’d on a time,
To have reason fo
r my rhyme;
From that time unto this season,
I receiv’d nor rhyme nor reason.
NOTES
Abbreviations
The Notes cite items listed under Further Reading in the abbreviated form of surname and date of publication. Thus ‘cf. Lotspeich (1942), 40’ refers to H. G. Lotspeich, Classical Mythology in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser (Princeton, 1942), p. 40. The most important primary sources are cited by author and title as follows:
Boccaccio, Genealogia (cited by book and chapter)
Camden, Britain (cited by page)
Castiglione, Courtier (cited by page)
Comes, Mythologiae (cited by book and chapter)
ECE (for Elizabethan Critical Essays, cited by volume and page)
Ficino, Commentary (cited by book and chapter)
Holinshed, Chronicles (cited by volume and page)
Servius, Commentarii (cited by Virgilian passage)
Wells, Allusions (cited by page)
Full details of these works are supplied under Further Reading.
The following abbreviations for Spenser’s works are used throughout the Notes:
Amor
Amoretti
Ast
Astrophel
CCH
Colin Clouts Come Home Againe
Comp
Complaints
Daph
Daphnaïda
DLC
Dolefull Lay of Clorinda
Epith
Epithalamion
FH
Fowre Hymnes
FQ
The Faerie Queene
ΗΒ
An Hymne in Honour of Beavtie
HHB
An Hymne of Heavenly Beavtie
HHL
An Hymne of Heavenly Love
HL
An Hymne in Honovr of Love
Letters
Three Proper… Letters. Two… Commendable Letters
MHT
Prosopopoia. Or Mother Hubberds Tale
Muiop
Mviopotmos, Or the Fate of the Butterflie
Prose
Spenser’s Prose Works, Variorum Edition, vol. 9 (1949)
Proth
Prothalamion
RR
Ruines of Rome: by Bellay
RT
The Ruines of Time
SC
The Shepheardes Calender
TM
The Teares of the Muses
TW
A Theatre for Worldlings
VB
The Visions of Bellay
Vewe
A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande
VG
VP
The Visions of Petrarch
VW
Visions of the Worlds Vanitie
Other abbreviations used in the Notes and Further Reading are as follows:
CL
Comparative Literature
EA
Études Anglaises
EIC
Essays in Criticism
ELH
English Literary History
ELN
English Language Notes
ELR
English Literary Renaissance
ES
English Studies
HLQ
Huntington Library Quarterly
JEGP
Journal of English and Germanic Philology
JHI
Journal of the History of Ideas
JMRS
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
MLN
Modern Language Notes
MLQ
Modern Language Quarterly
MLR
Modern Language Review
MP
Modern Philology
N&Q
Notes and Queries
OED
Oxford English Dictionary
PMLA
Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
PQ
Philological Quarterly
REL
Review of English Literature
RES
Review of English Studies
SEL
Studies in English Literature
SP
Studies in Philology
SpE
The Spenser Encyclopedia (ed. Hamilton)
SpN
Spenser Newsletter
SR
Studies in the Renaissance
SSt
Spenser Studies
TLS
Times Literary Supplement
TSLL
Texas Studies in Language and Literature
UTQ
University of Toronto Quarterly
Var
The Works of Edmund Spenser. A Variorum Edition
YES
Yearbook of English Studies
For the explanation of recurrent words and phrases the reader is referred to the Glossary of Common Terms. Owing to pressure of space such usages are not normally glossed in the notes. The majority of archaisms and dialectical terms used in The Shepheardes Calender are adequately explained by E. K., but the remainder are dealt with either in the notes or the glossary as appropriate. References to E. K.’s glosses are given in square brackets, for example SC, November, [161].
FROM A THEATRE FOR WORLDLINGS
The work which has become known to Spenser’s readers as A Theatre for Worldlings was published in 1569 under the full title of A Theatre wherein be represented as wel the miseries & calamities that follow the voluptuous Worldlings, As also the greate ioyes and plesures which the faithfull do enioy. An argument both profitable and delectable, to all that sincerely loue the word of God. The author was Jan van der Noot, a Dutch refugee fleeing religious persecution at the hands of ‘that wycked tyrant’, the Duke of Alva (fol. 105v) [cf. Forster (1967b)]. How Spenser became involved in the enterprise remains unknown, although the likeliest explanation is through the influence of Richard Mulcaster, his schoolmaster at Merchant Taylors’, who had close associations with the émigré Dutch community. It is noteworthy, however, that the publisher was Henry Bynneman who later produced the Spenser–Harvey Letters (1580). Two previous editions, the first in Dutch and the second in French, had already appeared from the press of John Day (1568) [cf. Van Dorsten (1970)]. The English edition is comprised of a dedicatory epistle to Queen Elizabeth, a series of epigrams and sonnets accompanied by emblematic illustrations, and a long prose commentary (heavily indebted to John Bale and Heinrich Bullinger) expounding the meaning of the preceding ‘visions’ – a format of text and exegesis designed to lend the work something akin to scriptural authority [cf. Hyde (1983)]. Despite an overtly eirenic attitude, the work is uncompromising in its denunciation of the Roman Catholic Church [cf. Prescott (1978)] and in representing its ‘worldliness’ as both cause and symptom of the spiritual malaise of the time [cf. Rasmussen (1980)]. ‘Borne of the subversion of the Empire’, the papacy is represented as the successor to imperial tyranny, and the Church of Rome as the temple of Antichrist (fol. 20ν).
From the viewpoint of literary history, A Theatre is significant for the development of the sonnet form in three languages, Dutch, French and English. The presence of accompanying illustrations constitutes one of the earliest examples of its kind, establishing a tradition that was to influence The Shepheardes Calender. The Dutch and French editions are illustrated by fine copperplate etchings and the English edition by less sophisticated woodcuts. The precise relationship between the two sets of illustrations is problematic, although the traditional attribution of the copperplate engravings to Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder remains possible despite arguments to the contrary [cf. Friedland (1956); Bath (1988)].
The poems are arranged in three groups. The ‘Epigrams’ are derived from Petrarch’s Rime Sparse (323) in the French translation of Clément Marot. Sonnets 1–11 derive from the Songe (a sequence of fifteen sonnets) appended to Du Bellay’s Antiq
uitez de Rome (later translated by Spenser as Ruines of Rome). Sonnets 12–15 are original compositions (presumably by Noot) inspired by the Book of Revelation and full of the Apocalyptic excitement of the age. The French edition simply reproduces the poetry of Marot and Du Bellay and it would appear that this was the version from which Spenser worked, but with some knowledge of the Italian in the case of Petrarch. The quality of the English translations, though variable, is generally accurate and there seems little reason to doubt their attribution to the same hand, although Spenser’s responsibility for the four ‘Apocalyptic’ sonnets has been called in question [cf. Satterthwaite (1960)]. The epigrams display a certain insecurity of structure. Marot was faithful to Petrarch’s twelve-line format, but Spenser develops epigrams 1 and 3 into English sonnets rhyming ababcdcdefefgg. The internal structure, however, remains at odds with the demands of the sonnet form and the problem remained largely unresolved when the epigrams were revised as The Visions of Petrarch. Far more successful in this respect were the translations from Du Bellay, the earliest instance of a blank-verse sonnet sequence in English, and doubtless influenced by current theories of neo-classical poetics of the sort discussed in the Spenser–Harvey correspondence. The Roman subject matter would have made the avoidance of rhyme (present in the original) seem theoretically appropriate.