The Shorter Poems

  The strength of that faculty is evident in the structure of the eclogue itself with its complex pattern of thematic and symbolic correspondences between strategically placed verses. The central stanzas (10–11), for example, concentrate upon Virgil, the supreme exemplar of the well-patronized poet, while the fifth and sixteenth focus upon the poet’s Orphic potential. Both the power and the limitations of poetry are hereby acknow ledged in what constitutes a remarkably perceptive accommodation of the spirit to an incipient aesthetics of cultural materialism. It is noteworthy, however, that, in anticipation of November, the Virgilian rota has undergone a Christian recension with religious verse apparently displacing epic as the supreme goal of Orphic flight [cf. P. Cheney (1993), 30–31]. The implication would appear to be that the poet may be forced to look beyond earthly love and power – which commonly entail disappointment (61–72) and tyranny (98–9) – to higher forces. Thus the dialogue pulls in opposite directions simultaneously while creating poetry from the conflict. The ultimate ‘defence’ of poetry is poetry itself. Cf. Berger (1988); Goldberg (1986), 63-7; Richardson (1989); Watkins (1995).

  Argument

  heauenly instinct: aptitude instilled by heaven.

  έvθοvσιασμòς: ‘enthusiasmos’ or divinely inspired poetic frenzy (cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 245a). Sir Philip Sidney defines it as ‘a very inspiring of a divine force, farre above mans wit’. At issue is the distinction between the poet as craftsman or ‘maker’, and the poet as vates or ‘prophet’ (Apology for Poetry, ECE, 1. 154–5, 158–9, 192). Cf. Aprill, [19]; October, [21]; CCH, 823; HB, 1–3 and notes.

  English Poete: not extant.

  October

  1–5 Cf. Mantuan, Eclogues, 5. 1–5.

  2 chace: hurry on, hasten (often used of driving cattle or sheep).

  3 weary… race: wear away the languorous hours of daytime.

  5 bydding base: to ‘bid the base’ was to challenge a player to run from home base in a running contest (cf. FQ, 5. 8. 5), but the expression was also used of offering challenges in a singing contest.

  9 spared store: reserve stock, what she had saved.

  11–12 Cf. Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper, Fables, no. 336.

  12 straine: press hard upon, distress.

  15 bett… thy: better for that.

  16 sclender prise: meagre reward.

  17 I… flye: he flushes out the birds but others catch them.

  19–24 For the moral influence of poetry cf. TM, 451–4.

  23 pleasaunce… vaine: pleasure of your poetic vein or style.

  24 trayned: drawn, trailed along.

  25 in frame: in harmony, in order.

  26 routes: throngs.

  cleaue: cling.

  27 Seemeth: it seems that.

  28 All as: just as.

  29 balefull bowre: menacing or deadly abode, the underworld.

  30 hound: Cerberus, guardian of the underworld. Cf. VG, 345–52.

  31 traine: tail.

  33 ere… thy: ever the more for that.

  35 sheddeth: dissipate, evaporate.

  37–42 Cf. Mantuan, Eclogues, 5. 126–8.

  37 base… clowne: low and uncouth rustic.

  39 giusts: jousts.

  40 weld… crowne: possess or bear the awesome crown, reign.

  41 doubted: redoubted, dreaded.

  42 vnbruzed: undented.

  45 rest: stop, repose (having found a suitable theme).

  46 bigger… sing: i.e. sing in loftier style. Cf. FQ, 7. 7. 1.

  48 white… stake: the Dudley crest displayed a white bear shackled to a ragged staff or stump. Cf. notes to RT, 184, 561.

  50 tenor: tension, tautness.

  53 All: although.

  55–60 Virgil’s progress from pastoral (Eclogues) through bucolic (Georgics) to epic poetry (Aeneid) was described in four lines commonly printed as a preface to the Aeneid: ‘I am he who formerly tuned my song on a slender reed, then, leaving the woodland, compelled the neighbouring fields to obey the husbandman, however grasping, a work pleasing to farmers: but now I turn to Mars [war]’. They established a paradigm for the poetic career, cf. Mantuan, Eclogues, 5. 86–8; FQ, 1 Proem 1. The matter is appropriately recalled here as October was Virgil’s birth month.

  56 Mecœnas: Caius Cilnius Maecenas (73–08 BC), close ally of the Emperor Augustus and renowned as the patron of Horace and Virgil.

  58 laboured: tilled, ploughed. An allusion to Virgil’s Georgics.

  timely eare: seasonable harvest.

  65–6 Cf. Mantuan, Eclogues, 5. 153–6.

  67–72 Cf. Mantuan, Eclogues, 5. 157–9.

  67 vertue: manliness, manly daring (Italian virtu).

  68 a bedde of: to bed by (i.e. manhood is enervated by ease).

  69 pease: pea.

  70 preace: press, in the sense of crowd or throng, but playing on printing press. OED tentatively explains ‘to put in preace’ as ‘to put in practice’ but this is the only example cited.

  73–6 Cf. Mantuan, Eclogues, 5. 148–52.

  74 stocke: source or trunk (continuing the metaphor implicit in ‘buddes’ and ‘shoote’).

  75 Or… fayne: either it must conceal men’s follies.

  76 rybaudrye: ribaldry.

  79 pierlesse: without peer or equal, but with a play on ‘Piers’. Poetry has no such advocate as Piers in ‘Princes pallace’.

  85 to: too.

  87 peeced pyneons: patched wings.

  88 Colin fittes: it is fitting or proper for Colin.

  scanne: climb. Cf. FQ, 7. 6. 8.

  89 bedight: abused, afflicted. Cf. September, 7 and note.

  92 lyftes… myre: alluding to the Platonic doctrine of progressive ascent from earthly to spiritual love. Cf. HL, 176–82 and notes.

  93 immortall mirrhor: according to Platonic theory mortal beauty reflects that of immortality. Cf. HL, 196. Ficino asserts that ‘the single face of God shines successively in three mirrors… the Angelic Mind, the World Soul and the [material] Body of the World’ (Commentary, 5. 4). The phrase may be intended to suggest that Colin will find his true inspiration not in Rosalind but in the queen. Cf. FQ, 1 Proem 4.

  94 aboue… skie: above the firmament, the sphere of fixed stars.

  101 crabbed: harsh, perverse.

  103 casts… prise: determines to attain an important goal or prize.

  105 thriftie bitts: either frugal cuts or prime cuts.

  106 Bacchus… wise: Bacchus, the god of wine, is friendly to Apollo, the god of poetry: i.e. drink aids poetic invention. Cf. Clements (1955), 802-3. However, Cuddie’s confidence is perhaps misplaced: it was during the celebrations of Bacchus that Orpheus, noted as the archetypal pattern of the vatic poet at lines 28–30, was torn to pieces.

  108 nombers: metres, rhythms.

  110 distaind: stained.

  111 Yuie: ivy is used to crown poets at Virgil, Eclogues, 7. 25; 8. 12–13.

  112 Muse: Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy.

  114 Bellona: goddess of war.

  117 assayde: assailed us.

  119 Gates… layd: goats have given birth.

  122 Agitante… illo: cf. Ovid, Fasti, 6. 5, ‘est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo [there is a god within us; we grow inflamed as he afflicts us]’. Ovid is claiming the role of divinely inspired vates, or ‘prophet’.

  Gloss

  Theocritus: cf. Idylls, 16. The indebtedness is slight.

  Hiero… Syracuse: Hieron II of Syracuse (c. 360–215 BC), claimed descent from Hieron I, the ‘tyrant’.

  Mantuane: cf. Eclogues, 5, a principal source for October.

  [1] Cantion: song (cf. the Italian canzona).

  [8] Auena: Latin for ‘reed pipe’. Cf. Virgil, Eclogues, 1. 2.

  [12] vnlustye: dull, listless.

  [21] conspyre: agree.

  Plato… Legibus: not in Plato’s Laws, and unidentified elsewhere.

  vatem: seer or prophet.

  [27] Plato… Pythagoras: Plato cites Pythagoras at Phaedo, 86b–d. br />
  compassion: sympathy.

  Alexander… Timotheus: the story is recounted in this form in the popular encyclopaedia known as Suidas, under ‘Timotheus’.

  Plato… brests: the gloss is garbled. Plato discusses the moral and emotional effects of certain melodies, and draws an analogy between musical and political standards (Laws, 2. 655a–660a; 3. 700a–701b). Certain types of music and poetry are barred from his ideal state (Republic, 10. 605c–607d). Spenser discusses the power of music to alter national character in Vewe (cf. Prose, 121). E. K.’s reference to Aristotle may be a vague reminiscence of Politics, 8. 7.

  [28] Orpheus: a type of the vatic poet. Cf. June, 96 and note. For his recovery and subsequent loss of Eurydice cf. Virgil, Georgics, 4. 453–527.

  [32] Argus: cf. Julye, [154] and note.

  [43] faculty: poetic faculty or ability.

  [47] Erle of Leycester: By the time of publication Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was out of favour with Elizabeth owing to his clandestine marriage to Lettice Knollys and his opposition to the Queen’s proposed marriage to d’Alençon.

  cognisance: crest.

  other: others of his family, for example.

  [55] Romish Tityrus: cf. note to ‘Epistle’, 5.

  Mecœnas: cf. October, 56 and note.

  [57] Georgiques: the first and second quartos read ‘Bucoliques’.

  [65] Oration of Tullies: cf. Cicero, Pro Archia Poeta, 10. 24.

  Giunto… Trouasti: ‘When Alexander came to the famous tomb of the fierce Achilles he said sighingly, “O fortunate man who found so clear a trumpet” ’ (Petrarch, Rime Sparse, 187. 1–4).

  Scipio… Ennius: for Scipio Africanus’ patronage of the poet Ennius cf. Horace, Odes, 4. 8. 13–20; Cicero, Pro Archia Poeta, 9. 22.

  Alexander… Pindarus: cf. Pliny, Natural History, 7. 29. 109; Plutarch, Alexander, 11.

  Darius… pillowe: for variants of this story cf. Plutarch, Alexander, 8, 26; Pliny, Natural History, 7. 29. 108.

  [78] Tom Piper: nickname for local village piper often associated with those who accompany Morris dancers.

  [90] one… sonetts: not extant. For the swan as an emblem of the poet cf. Clements (1955), 784–9. Cf. RT, 589–600 and note. Ovid compares his Tristia to the song of a dying swan (5. 1. 14).

  [93] Fiorir… affanni: ‘[the noble tree, i.e. the laurel signifying his lady Laura]… made my weak wit blossom in its shade and grow in my troubles’ (Petrarch, Rime Sparse, 60. 3–4).

  [96] Cacozelon: stylistic affectation.

  [100] Mantuanes… Poscit: ‘Divine [poetry] demands a mind empty of cares.’ The line is not in Mantuan but cf. Eclogues, 5. 69–70; Cicero, Epistulae Ad Quintum Fratrem, 3. 4. 4.

  [105] Fœcundi… disertum: ‘Whom have brimming goblets not made eloquent?’ (Horace, Epistles, 1. 5. 19).

  [110] Poetical furie: illustrating the ‘enthusiasm’ or divine frenzy commended in the ‘Argument’ to October. Sir Philip Sidney cites Plato’s Ion (534a–e) as a source for the notion, cf. Apology for Poetry, ECE, 1. 192.

  numbers: metres.

  [113] buskin: boot worn by Greek tragic actors.

  stockes: socks or stockings worn by Greek comic actors.

  Sola… cothurno: ‘Your songs alone are worthy of the buskin of Sophocles’ (Virgil, Eclogues, 8. 10).

  Magnum… cothurno: ‘[Aeschylus taught] magniloquence and buskined gait’ (Horace, Ars Poetica, 280).

  [114] Queint: E. K.’s gloss is probably correct but the term also has the connotations of ‘skilled’ or ‘haughty’.

  Bellona… Pallas: in classical mythology Bellona and Pallas are distinct but Renaissance commentators sometimes conflate them. Cf. Boccaccio, Genealogia, 5. 48.

  Lucian: cf. Dialogues of the Gods, ‘Hephaestus and Zeus’, 225–6.

  saucinesse: forwardness.

  [114] Æquipage: more properly to be understood as martial accoutrement rather than, as E. K. maintains, ‘order’, but retinue is also possible.

  [118] Charmes: magic spells.

  Aut si carminibus: ‘Or if in songs’ (not in Ovid).

  Emblem

  Piers answereth: Piers’s reply is missing in all editions.

  Epiphonematicos: by way of pithy summary, sententiously.

  Nouember

  In November death comes to Arcadia. Invited by Thenot to resume the poetic career cut short by ‘loues misgouernaunce’ (4), Colin responds with a pastoral elegy suitable to the ‘sollein season’ of the year (17) and to his own dejected mood. The primary model is Clément Marot’s Eglogue sur le Trépas de ma Dame Loyse de Savoye (1531) – in which the speakers are Thenot and Colin – but the tradition stretches back through Virgil’s fifth eclogue (generally regarded as a lament for Julius Caesar) to Moschus, Bion and Theocritus. According to Ε. K. the identity of Dido ‘is unknowen and closely buried in the Authors conceipt’ [38], but the obvious structural and linguistic correspondences with the Aprill eclogue, combined with the argument’s description of Dido as a ‘mayden of greate bloud’, lend an implicitly political dimension to ‘loues misgouernaunce’ [cf. McLane (1961), 47–60]. Both Virgil and Marot were perceived to have written elegies of state, and the choice of the name Dido, recalling the unfortunate Virgilian queen who destroyed herself for love of a foreign prince, suggests an allusion to the proposed match with d’Alençon, an event which, according to Sir Philip Sidney, would accomplish ‘the manifest death’ of the Queen’s ‘estate’ [cf. McCabe (1995), 34]. The olive branches which served in Aprill as symbols of Elizabethan ‘Peace and quietnesse’ [124] now serve as garlands for Dido’s bier (144). Thus Eliza is indeed ‘buried’, figuratively speaking, ‘in the Authors conceipt’ and contemporary readers might well remember that Virgil’s alternative name for Dido was ‘Elissa’. They would certainly know that November is the month of Elizabeth’s accession day with all of its attendant celebrations.

  And yet, despite the elegiac theme, it is not true that ‘All Musick sleepes, where death doth leade the daunce’ (105). Like the nightingale to which he is compared, Colin transforms grief into ‘song’ (25) thereby creating a paradoxical effect of ‘doolful pleasaunce’ (204), the very essence of the poetic elegy. Consigning Marot’s relatively unsophisticated interlocking quatrains to the opening dialogue (rhyming abab bcbc etc.), Spenser conspicuously outdoes his model by creating for the elegy itself an elaborate ten-line stanza (rhyming ababbccdbd) opening with an alexandrine (a line of six iambic feet) and skilfully deploying a repeated pattern of pentameters, tetrameters and dimeters to achieve increasingly subtle effects of rhythmic and tonal variation. Through Colin’s ‘vatic’ artistry the earthly calamity of Dido’s death is transformed into a vision of Christian transcendence: I see thee blessed soule, I see, / Walke in Elisian fieldes so free’ (178–9) [cf. P. Cheney (1991)]. In marked contrast to Virgil’s Dido, who is fated to inhabit the ‘Mourning Fields’ (‘lugentes campi’), Spenser’s Dido-Elissa is ushered into the pastoral care of the good shepherd and the refrain alters accordingly from ‘O heauie herse… O carefull verse’ (160–62) to ‘O happye herse… O ioyfull verse’ (170–72). A spiritual springtime of ‘fresh’ fields and ‘greene’ grass is hereby recovered at the very onset of winter (189).

  But who is ‘the good shepherd’? According to E. K. the Elysian fields ‘be deuised of Poetes to be a place of pleasure like Paradise’ [179], and the vision of Dido’s apotheosis – a traditional component of the elegiac genre – is a ‘liuely Icon, or representation as if he saw her in heauen present’ [178]. The ‘herse’ referred to in the refrain signifies not merely the bier or decorative catafalque but, as E. K. notes, the funeral obsequies themselves [60], including the elegy rehearsed, or recited, by Colin [cf. Berger (1988), 400–401]. If Eliza is fated to die, she desperately needs her poet to place her in the ‘Elisian fieldes’. In the woodcut Dido’s funeral cortège is consigned to the background while pride of place is assigned to the coronation of Colin Clout as the undisputed ‘souereigne of song’ [cf. Luborsky (
1981)]. Ideally art and faith fuse, but only ideally. The deepest political theme of the Calender – underlying all particular examples – is the role of images in Elizabethan society, the relationship between the art of politics and the politics of art. Virgil’s transformation of Dido from faithful widow to desperate lover was itself politically informed [cf. D. Cheney (1989), 154-61; Watkins (1995), 79–82], as was Marot’s presentation of Louise de Savoy, whose religious policies he bitterly opposed, as ‘the shepherdess of Peace’ [cf. A. Patterson (1986)]. By recalling both the chaste and the passionate Dido, November registers in a darker key the radical ambivalence towards Queen Elizabeth evident even in Aprill, and, like Thenot, the reader is left uncertain whether to ‘reioyce or weepe for great constrainte’ (205). Cf. Davies (1981); Hoffman (1977); Kay (1990); Mallette (1981); Martin (1987); Montrose (1979); Parmenter (1936); Pigman (1985); Reamer (1969); Sacks (1985); Sagaser (1989); Whipp (1990).

  Argument

  bloud: family, descent.

  required: inquired.

  Marot… Queene: cf. Clément Marot, Eglogue sur le Trépas de ma Dame Loyse de Savoye (1531). Queen Louise of Savoy was the mother of King Francis I.

  November

  3 to: too.

  5 somewhat: something.

  7–8 Both Spenser and Marot imitate Virgil, Eclogues, 5. 10–11.

  8 Pan: cf. Januarye, 17 and note.

  12 cocked: arranged in conical heaps or cocks (hay-cocks).

  15 laye: lair or couch.

  17 Thilke… aske: this sullen season requires a sadder mood or state of mind.

  21 algate: in any case (an archaic usage).

  22 vnderfong: undertake.

  24 Relieue: lift up or restore to use.

  25–8 Cf. Marot, Eglogue sur le Trépas, 29–32.

  25 Nightingale: cf. August, 183 and note.

  26 Titmose: tomtit.

  30 han be: have been.

  35 quill: pipe.