Spenser, Edmund

Edmund (1552-1599), a famous man of letters. He was a native of London. Educated at Cambridge. He belongs to the Elizabethan age of literature, and is associated with Shakespeare and Bacon. Like Chaucer, he spent considerable time at court. He was sent as an envoy to France. He was secretary to the viceroy of Ireland for eighteen years, residing on a confiscated Irish estate near Dublin. Naturally enough, he wrote a volume on The Present State of Ireland. Two literary works claim attention. The Shepherd's Calendar comprises twelve pastoral poems, one for each month in the year. Each consists of a poetical dialogue between two shepherds who have opportunity to speak of the time and season and to point out what is wrong in church and state. Spenser's masterpiece is The Faerie Queene, one of the great poems of English literature. The original plan of the poem is something stupendous. Twelve books were to recount twelve moral adventures. Each book was to consist of twelve cantos. If successful, twelve other books, likewise of twelve cantos each, were to follow. The second twelve were to describe political virtues, the "guardians of public faith." The whole scheme involved the writing of some 100,000 lines. Six books only were published, and still the poem is one of the longest in the language. In the first book, Holiness is the virtue personified; in the others, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy. Each virtue is embodied in a knight who rides forth to overcome the evils and the vices that combat the virtue he represents. In the dedication of the poem to Sir Walter Raleigh, through whose influence the first cantos of the poem were published, Spenser sets forth his purpose:

"The generall end of all the books is to fashion a gentleman in vertuous and gentle discipline. Which I conceived shoulde be most pleasing, beeing coloured with an historicall fiction, which men delight to read, rather for varietie of matter than for profit of the ensample: I chose the historie of King Arthure, as most fit for the excellencie of his person, beeing made famous by many men's former works, and also furthest from the danger of envie, and suspicion of present time."

The framework of the poem is derived from the Welsh tale of King Arthur and his Round Table. The twelve champions are drawn more or less in accordance with the stirring characters of Raleigh, Gilbert, Drake, and others, who were carrying the British flag to the remote parts of the world. Una, the spotless maiden, has been identified more or less intimately with the virgin queen, Elizabeth, and Duessa, the false woman, with Mary, Queen of Scots. There is also a strong undercurrent of partisan defense of the English Church as was to be expected at the time. His pages are a panorama of knights, horses, ladies, fair fields, flowers, woods, birds, lions, dragons, restful ease, and stirring action--so highly imaginative that Lamb calls Spenser the poet's poet. The theme of each canto is the same. "It is a noble knight, fighting, overcoming, tempted, delivered, or a beautiful lady, plotted against, distressed, in danger, rescued. The poet's affluence of fancy and speech gives a new turn and color to each adventure."

The form of stanza employed by Spenser in the Faerie Queene was the poet's own invention. It consists of nine lines. The first and third lines rhyme; the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh; the sixth, eighth, and ninth. The ninth line is hexameter, that is, it contains six accented syllables instead of five, the number in the other lines. The first quotation from Faerie Queene will give the form of this stanza. Since the Faerie Queene introduced the "Spenserian Stanza," it has been used by many other poets. Examples are Burns' Cotter's Saturday Night; Keats' Eve of St. Agnes, and Byron's Childe Harold.

The first three books of The Faerie Queene were published in 1590; the others in 1596. "It became at once the delight of every accomplished gentleman, the model of every poet, and the solace of every scholar." In reading the poem, the moral purpose--the allegory--is forgotten, or remembered just enough to keep us from suffering the "pangs of painful pity" for the misfortunes of these gentle knights and lovely ladies. Welsh calls the poem a "phantasmagoria, one part allegory and nine parts beauty." As we read, we are lost, not so much in the story, as in the beauty. As Taine says, "We have that gentle feeling of knowing ourselves to be dreaming." It is poetry pure and simple.

Spenser is one of the great names in literature, but his work, popular as it was, received little pecuniary reward. His life was spent largely in hoping for office and the patronage of those in power, and his end was sorrowful. To understand this, it must be remembered that "before Shakespeare no man had been able to earn his bread by literary work." An Irish uprising resulted in the destruction of Spenser's home and the death of his youngest child. He fled with his wife and family to London, took obscure lodgings, and died brokenhearted. His brother poets bore him reverently to burial in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey where he rests by the side of Chaucer. "Poets attended upon his hearse, and mournful elegies, with the pens that wrote them, were thrown into his tomb."

The following extracts are from The Faerie Queene:

The noblest mind the best contentment has.

SAID OF SPENSER.

We must not fear to assent with the best judges of this and former ages, that Spenser is still the third name in the poetical literature of our country, and that he has not been surpassed, except by Dante, in any other.--Hallam.

Among the numerous poets belonging exclusively to Elizabeth's reign, Spenser stands without a class and without a rival . . . . . There are few eminent poets in the language who have not been essentially indebted to him.--Campbell.

None of our great poets has been welcomed with such universal acclaim and upheld without loss of favor through so many changes of fashion. . . .About the enchantment of his verse, there can be no difference of opinion. . . . .The world would probably never have divined that there was any allegory if he had not himself drawn attention to it in a prose dedication, and in doggerel headings to the cantos.--William Minto.

Short curling hair, a full moustache, closeclipped beard, heavy eyebrows, and under them thoughtful brown eyes, whose upper eyelids weigh them dreamily down; a long and straight nose, strongly developed, answering to a long and some-what spare face, with a well-formed, sensible-looking forehead; a mouth almost obscured by the moustache, but still showing rather full lips, denoting feeling, well set together, so that the warmth of feeling shall not run riot, with a touch of sadness in them. Such is the look of Spenser, as his portrait hands it down to us. A refined, thoughtful, warm-hearted, pure-souled Englishman.--Clarendon Press Series--The Faery Queene.

But some people will say that all this (the Faerie Queene) may be very fine, but they cannot understand it on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the allegory, as if they thought it would bite them; they look at it as a child looks at a dragon, and think it will strangle them in its shining folds. This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them. Without minding it at all, the whole is as plain as a pike-staff.--Hazlitt.

I remember, when I began to read, and take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion;) but there was wont to lie Spenser's Works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave horses, which I found everywhere there, (though my understanding had little to do with all this:) and by degrees, with the tinkling of the rhyme, and dance of the numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet.--Abraham Cowley.

His style lacks the classic qualities of brevity, force, and self-restraint. But we shall nowhere else find a more flowing and melodious verse, an atmosphere of finer sentiment and a larger movement or richer coloring.--Painter.

He is a seer, not a philosopher.--Taine.

Read the poem simply for its exquisite pictures, its wonderfully rich and varied imagery, and the ever changing music of its verse.--Eva M. Tappan.