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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Edmund Spenser Biography SPENSER, Edmund (c.1552–99). An English poet, born in London. His father has been identified with John Spenser, a London clothmaker. The boy was apparently sent to the Merchant Taylors’ School, London, and passed, as sizar or poor scholar, to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. Here he read widely in Latin, Greek, Italian, and French literature, being especially fond of Petrarch and Chaucer, of Marot and Du Bellay. He formed lifelong friendships with Gabriel Harvey and Edward Kirke. After graduating M.A. in 1576, he seems to have spent two years with kinsfolk in Lancashire, where he fell in love with a young woman whom he celebrated under the name of Rosalind. In 1578 he went to London and found a place in the household of the Earl of Leicester. There he probably met Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated The Shepheardes Calender (1579). In 1580 he was appointed secretary to Lord Grey, the new Lord Deputy of Ireland. Thenceforth Spenser lived mostly in Ireland. There he wrote the remainder of The Faerie Queene, begun at Leicester House. By 1588 or 1589 he was living at Kilcolman Castle, in the County of Cork, which with its extensive lands was legally transferred to him in 1591. In the meantime he had written Astrophel (1586), a noble pastoral elegy on Sidney, and had received a visit from Sir Walter Raleigh (1589), made memorable by Colin Clouts Come Home Againe. In 1589 he accompanied Raleigh to London, was welcomed at court, and published three books of The Faerie Queene, a moral and historical allegory. In 1590 followed a volume of miscellanies called Complaints including "The Ruines of Time," "The Teares of the Muses," "Mother Hubbard's Tale," "The Tale of the Butterflie," and four other poems. Disappointed of expected court preferment, Spenser returned to Ireland, where he married (1594) a certain Elizabeth, probably Elizabeth Boyle, related to the first Earl of Cork. The courtship is described in the Amoretti (published in 1595), a series of sonnets; the marriage is celebrated in the Epithalamion (published in 1595), the richest nuptial hymn in the English language. In 1596 he brought to London for publication three more books of The Faerie Queene. Spenser intended to continue the work to twelve books, but never got further than two cantos on Mutabilitie (printed 1609). While in England he seems to have completed a prose treatise on the Present State of Ireland (not published till 1633); he prepared for the press the beautiful Foure Hymnes (1596), in honor of love, beauty, heavenly love, and heavenly beauty; and wrote (1596) for a double marriage at Essex House the Prothalamion, one of his finest poems. Again disappointed of preferment, he returned to Ireland. In October, 1598, his castle was sacked and burned by the Irish rebels. Spenser fled to England, where he died at a London inn, Jan. 16, 1599. He was buried near Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. The Shepheardes Calender marks an epoch in English poetry. Conventional in theme, it yet shows a command over rhythm greater even than Chaucer's. It sounded the note of the Elizabethan outburst. As Spenser grew older he became more weighty in substance and discovered, new melodies. In The Faerie Queene he invented a nine-line stanza known as "Spenserian." It is the Italian ottava rima with an added Alexandrine (12 syllables). The rhymes run ababbcbcc. Spenser’s imagination dwelt in a realm of beauty and the noblest ideals. His fault is an insistence on the allegory which sometimes becomes monotonous and frequently obscure. Spenser has been a favorite with the poets. The generation following him were Spenserians, and Milton owed much to him. In the Romantic revival at the end of the eighteenth century he was potent, and Keats’s Eve of Saint Agnes and Byron’s Childe Harold were written in the Spenserian stanza. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXI (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 388-389. |