Spenser E
NAME: Spenser, Edmund.
ACHIEVEMENTS: Major Elizabethan poet
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None.
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 1552/3, in London, England.
DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH: 13th January 1599, in London, England. Aged 47/48.
DISCIPLINE: Poet.
FIELD: Poetry.
LANGUAGE: English.
PARENTS: John Spenser and Elizabeth.
SIBLINGS: John and Sarah.
SPOUSE: Machabyas Chylde; second wife, Elizabeth Boyle.
CHILDREN: By Elizabeth Boyle: Sylvanus, Lawrence, Peregrine and Catherine.
EDUCATION: Merchant Taylors school, London. Pembroke College, Cambridge University.
MAJOR WORK: "The Shepheardes Calendar" (1579), "The Faerie Queene" (1590-96, last vol. 1609).
LIFE AND TIMES: Spenser’s first known work, in 1578, was as secretary to the Bishop of Rochester but, by 1580, he was in the service of the Queen's favorite, the Earl of Leicester.
Leicester introduced him to <a pal of> Sidney*, Leicester's nephew. Sidney was the centre of a literary circle that discussed political and religious matters and debated how the English language could be made to conform to the classical meters of Latin and Greek. Life at court also revolved around courtiers such as <a pal of> Raleigh* and <a pal of> Fulke Greville*, who all took part in jousts and tournaments as well as writing verse.
Spenser's "The Shepheardes Calendar", published anonymously in 1579/80, was dedicated to Sidney. The work mainly depicts Bishops as being the shepherds, but it also portrays and praises Queen Elizabeth as a shepherdess named Elisa.
In 1580, Spenser was made secretary to Lord Grey, who had just been appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland. Spenser arrived in Dublin and became absorbed in his new role, but the Irish rebelled against the presence of the English officials, who saw Ireland as a colony to be managed, and Spain sent troops in support of the rebels.
The result was violent and, in November, Spenser was present at Smerwick, north of Dingle Bay, when six Spanish mercenaries, who had surrendered their arms, were put to the sword on Grey's orders by a company under the command of Raleigh.
Spenser was appointed clerk of the Irish court of Chancery in 1581 and settled to work on "The Faerie Queene". Five years later, Sidney died and Spenser wrote the elegy "Astrophel" before continuing with his epic poem.
In 1588, he resigned his chancery post and bought the post of Clerk of the Council in the Irish province of Munster. When the property of the Earls of Desmond in Munster was declared forfeit, Spenser was given a large amount of land, following the English policy of leasing forfeited land to “undertakers”. These were English colonists who transplanted the land with Englishmen of various trades and professions.
Spenser settled at Kilconan Castle and, in 1589, he entertained Raleigh, showing him the drafts of "Faerie Queene". Raleigh persuaded him to return to England and presented him to <courtier to> Queen Elizabeth*. The poem, dedicated to Elizabeth, was published in 1590 and earned Spenser a royal pension.
His work was recognised as the greatest poem written in the English language since Chaucer. The originality of the work is due to his Spenserian stanza, a nine-lined verse in which the first eight lines have five stresses and the last line six.
He then returned to Ireland, where he struggled with his plantation and was hounded by his publisher to produce more work. The result, in 1591, was a ragbag collection including two poems that offended the court censor. One referred to the falseness of court life and the other made an insulting reference to <slandered> Cecil* (Lord Burghley).
In "Colin Clout comes Home Againe", Spenser wrote an account of his own experiences at court, reflecting on the difference between artificial emotions and true love. This was published in 1595, as were poems: "Amoretti" and "Epithalamion”.
In Ireland, he was cut off from the emergence of satire in English literature and he continued his vision of a world united by virtue in the last books of his epic, published in 1596.
They were as popular as the first sections of the poem, but Spenser had written about <wrote slightingly of> Mary Queen of Scots* in an unsympathetic manner which annoyed her son, then James VI of Scotland and soon to become King James of England.
Troubles in Ireland spread to Munster in 1598 and at the end of the year the President of Munster sent him to England carrying reports.
Within a month of his arrival, Spenser died in London.
ASSESSMENT: "The Faerie Queene" was Spenser’s attempt to hold on to concepts of chivalry and virtue already being challenged by the materialism and scepticism of a fast-changing Elizabethan society.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: Was an admirer of the <an admirer of> Earl of Essex*
His poetry was later attacked by <work attacked by> Leavis*
ONELINER: Edmund Spenser, major Elizabethan poet
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Waller, Gary, Edmund Spenser, A Literary Life, Macmillan, London, 1994.