The Shorter Poems

by Spenser, Edmund; Mccabe, Richard A.

• ISBN13: 9780140434453
• ISBN10: 0140434453
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Although he is most famous for The Faerie Queene, this volume demonstrates that for these poems alone Spenser should still be ranked as one of England's foremost poets.Spenser's shorter poems reveal his generic and stylistic versatility, his remarkable linguistic skill and his mastery of complex metrical forms.The range of this volume allows him to emerge fully in the varied and conflicting personae he adopted, as satirist and eulogist, elegist and lover, polemicist and prophet.The volume includes The Shepeardes Calender, Complaints, and A Theatre for Wordlings.

Author Biography

Edmund Spenser was born in London, probably in 1552, and was educated at the Merchant Taylor’s School from which he proceeded to Pembroke College, Cambridge. There he met Gabriel Harvey, scholar and University Orator, who exerted an influence on his first important poem, The Shepheardes Calender (1579) On receiving the MA degree in 1576 he became secretary to John Young, Bishop of Rochester, formerly Master of Pembroke. He may also have served briefly in the household of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, where we assume he met the Earl’s nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated The Shepheardes Calender. In 1580 he went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and stayed there most of his remaining life. While at Kilcolman, his estate in County Cork, Spenser met or reacquainted himself with his neighbor, Sir Walter Ralegh, who in 1589 brought him to London to present three books of The Faerie Queene (1590) to its dedicatee, Queen Elizabeth, who rewarded him with a pension of fifty pounds a year. After his return to Ireland in 1591, his two volumes Complaints and Daphnaida were published in London. His marriage to Elizabeth Boyle was celebrated in his sonnet sequence Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595), and in the same year his pastoral eclogue, Colin Clouts Come Home Again also appeared. 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 his fame, denied him in life, has endured. In 1609 a folio edition of The Faerie Queene appeared, including for the first time The Mutabilitie Cantos, and in 1611 a folio of the complete poetical works. His fame endures to this day as the great precursor of Milton.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	vii
Chronology	ix
Introduction	xi
From a Theatre for Worldlings	1	(22)
Epigrams	2	(6)
Sonets	8	(15)
The Shepheardes Calender	23	(134)
Januarye	35	(5)
Februarie	40	(12)
March	52	(8)
Aprill	60	(12)
Maye	72	(15)
June	87	(8)
Julye	95	(12)
August	107	(9)
September	116	(12)
October	128	(10)
Nouember	138	(10)
December	148	(9)
From Letters (1580)	157	(6)
Complaints	163	(160)
The Ruines of Time	166	(23)
The Teares of the Muses	189	(21)
Virgils Gnat	210	(23)
Prosopopoia. Or Mother Hubberds Tale	233	(39)
Ruines of Rome:	272	(17)
Bellay
Mviopotmos	289	(16)
Visions of the Worlds Vanitie	305	(6)
The Visions of Bellay	311	(8)
The Visions of Petrarch	319	(4)
Daphnaida	323	(20)
Colin Clovts Come Home Againe	343	(42)
Colin Clovts Come Home Againe	345	(27)
Astrophel	372	(8)
Dolefull Lay of Clorinda	380	(5)
Amoretti and Epithalamion	385	(66)
Amoretti	387	(46)
Anacreontics	433	(3)
Epithalamion	436	(15)
Fowre Hymnes	451	(40)
An Hymne in Honovr of Love	453	(10)
An Hymne in Honovr of Beavtie	463	(9)
An Hymne of Heavenly Love	472	(9)
An Hymne of Heavenly Beavtie	481	(10)
Prothalamion	491	(8)
Commendatory Sonnets	499	(4)
Attributed Verses	503	(2)
Notes	505	(1)
Abbreviations	505	(231)
Glossary of Common Terms	736	(9)
Textual Apparatus	745	(16)
Further Reading	761