EDMUND SPENSER was born in London, probably in 1552, and was educated at the Merchant Taylors’ School, from which he proceeded to Pembroke College, Cambridge. There he met Gabriel Harvey, scholar and University Orator, who exerted a considerable influence on his first important poem, The Shepheardes Calender (1579) and with whom he collaborated on a volume of familiar letters (1580). He graduated BA in 1573 and proceeded MA in 1576. By 1578 he was employed as secretary to John Young, Bishop of Rochester, formerly Master of Pembroke College. He may have also served briefly in the household of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, where it is commonly assumed that he met the Earl’s nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, to whom The Shepheardes Calender is dedicated. In 1580 he went to Ireland as Secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and stayed there for much of the remainder of his life, eventually becoming an undertaker in the Plantation of Munster. While at Kilcolman, his estate in County Cork, he met or reacquainted himself with his neighbour, Sir Walter Ralegh, with whom he travelled to London in 1589 to present the first three books of The Faerie Queene (1590) to its dedicatee, Queen Elizabeth, who rewarded him with an annual pension of fifty pounds. 1591 saw the publication of Complaints and Daphnaïda, the former exciting political controversy owing to the criticism of Lord Burghley contained in Mother Hubberds Tale. Spenser’s marriage to Elizabeth Boyle was celebrated in his Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595), and his pastoral eclogue, Colin Clovts Come Home Againe, appeared in the same year. In 1596 he brought out the second three books of The Faerie Queene as well as his Fowre Hymnes and Prothalamion. In 1598 his estate was burned during the Tyrone rebellion, and he fled to Cork and thence to London, where he died in 1599. He was buried in Westminster Abbey and posthumously celebrated as the ‘Prince of Poets’. In 1609 a folio edition of The Faerie Queene appeared, including the previously unpublished ‘Mutabilitie Cantos’, followed, in 1611, by a folio edition of the complete poetical works. A View of the Present State of Ireland, written in 1596, was published by Sir James Ware in 1633.
RICHARD A. McCABE is a Fellow of Merton College and Reader in English at Oxford University. He was formerly Drapers’ Research Fellow at Pembroke College, Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. His publications include, Joseph Hall: A Study in Satire and Meditation (1982), The Pillars of Eternity: Time and Providence in ‘The Faerie Queene’ (1989), Incest, Drama and Nature’s Law (1993) and Presenting Poetry: Composition, Publication, Reception (1995), co-edited with Howard Erskine-Hill.
EDMUND SPENSER
The Shorter Poems
Edited by RICHARDA. McCABE
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All of the illustrations are by courtesy of the Bodleian Library with the exception of those from Daphnaïda and Amoretti and Epithalamion which are reproduced by permission of the British Library. Details of the editions used are supplied in the Textual Apparatus.
Birth of Spenser in London (but the date is uncertain and may be as late as 1554).
1553
Death of Edward VI. Accession of Mary Tudor.
1554
Birth of Sir Philip Sidney. Mary weds the future Philip II of Spain.
1556
Accession of Philip II to the Spanish throne.
1558
Death of Mary Tudor. Accession of Elizabeth I.
1561–9
Spenser attends the Merchant Taylors’ School under Richard Mulcaster.
1564
Birth of Shakespeare and Marlowe.
1566
Birth of James VI of Scotland.
1567
Revolt of the Low Countries.
1568
Mary Queen of Scots flies to England.
1569
Publication of A Theatre for Worldlings with translations by Spenser. Spenser matriculates at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge.
1570
Excommunication of Elizabeth I.
1572
Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day in France.
1573
Spenser graduates BA.
1576
Spenser proceeds MA.
1578
Spenser acts as secretary to John Young, Bishop of Rochester.
1579
Publication of The Shepheardes Calender. Spenser is believed to have wed his first wife, Maccabaeus Chylde on 27 October. Outbreak of the Desmond Rebellion in Munster.
1580
Publication of the Spenser–Harvey Letters. Spenser travels to Ireland as secretary to Lord Arthur Grey, the newly appointed Lord Deputy.
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