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Introduction Notes Introduction 1. RT 454–5. 2. The issue of whether the unsold copies of the Complaints were in fact ‘called in’ by Elizabeth’s government has a long, vexed history. See Hugh Maclean ‘Complaints’, 177–81, 178 and Einar Bjorvand, ‘Complaints: Prosopopia, or Mother Hubberds Tale’, 184–5 in Spenser Encyclopedia, for the traditional argu- ments on this subject. Richard S. Peterson in ‘Laurel Crown and Ape’s Tail: New Light on Spenser’s Career from Sir Thomas Tresham’, Spenser Studies 12 (1991): 1–35, has revealed a contemporary account of Mother Hubberds Tale by English recusant Sir Thomas Tresham that speaks of its being ‘called in’, or impounded, by government authorities, confirming later accounts of the Complaints volume as having been called in. Nev- ertheless, no official record confirms such action. On balance, Tresham’s account, corroborated as it is by later accounts and the censoring of Mother Hubberds Tale and parts of The Ruines of Time from the first edi- tion of Spenser’s folio Works, presents convincing evidence of the volume’s confiscation. 3. Traditional accounts of Spenser’s engagement with Burghley follow Edwin A. Greenlaw, ‘The Sources of “Mother Hubberd’s Tale”’, Modern Philology 2 (1905): 411–32. Greenlaw’s theory was vigorously challenged by Percy Long, ‘Spenser and the Bishop of Rochester’, PMLA 31 (1916): 713–35 and later by Harold Stein, Studies in Spenser’s Complaints (New York: Oxford University Press, 1934), 58, 60–2, but has not been dislodged from general accep- tance. For a fascinating account of Spenser’s animus against Burghley before Greenlaw’s argument, see Alexander Grosart’s late nineteenth-century edi- tion of Spenser, Edmund Spenser, The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Edmund Spenser, Alexander B. Grosart, ed. (London and Aylesbury: Private circulation only, 100 copies, 1882–84), vol. 1, 89–90. 4. The most vigorous defender of the Complaints texts as expressions of Spenser’s early career is W. L. Renwick in his early twentieth-century edition of the volume, Edmund Spenser, Complaints,W.L.Renwick,ed.(London: Scholar Press, 1928), 180–5. At times polemical in tone, Renwick works to separate much of the Complaints from Spenser’s career in 1591. 5. On the influence of Greenlaw on Spenser studies, see David Hill Radcliffe, Edmund Spenser: A Reception History (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996), 163–7. 6. Greenlaw’s original 1905 article was reprinted in Edwin Greenlaw, Studies in Spenser’s Historical Allegory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1932), 104–32. Subsequent citations from this work come from this later version of the essay. 7. Greenlaw 119–20. 223 224 Notes 8. Greenlaw 128–9. 9. ‘[Spenser] was in the service of Leicester, and at the very time of the crisis, in early October, was expecting to be sent on a mission for him. His patron, therefore, who had everything to lose by this marriage, since Burghley and not Leicester would rule the French favorites, should be warned of the danger; perhaps the Queen herself should be warned. So Spenser takes his imitation of Chaucer, written perhaps not long before, applies the beast- allegory to the crisis among Elizabeth’s beasts, and with a daring not less great than Sidney’s own, speaks his mind. Here we have reason for the tradi- tional enmity of Burghley; we have also reason for Spenser’s being shipped to Ireland the following summer; we have the grounds on which the poem was “called in”’ (Greenlaw 120). 10. Greenlaw 115–16. 11. One such argument contends that since the Fox and Ape variously interact with humans and animals in differing episodes, Spenser is either nodding or his episodes were composed at differing times. For this argument, see Robert A. Bryan, ‘Poets, Poetry, and Mercury in Spenser’s Prosopopoia: Mother Hubberds Tale’, Costerus 5 (1972): 27–33, 30. Kent van den Berg disagrees, arguing that such inconsistencies are ‘probably deliberate and need not be regarded as [defects]’, Kent T. van den Berg, ‘The Counterfeit in Personation: Spenser’s Prosopopoia’, in The Author in his Work: Essays on a Problem in Crit- icism, Louis Martz and Aubrey Williams, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 85–102, 91. 12. The argument that Spenser was forced to undergo a rustication to Ireland as Lord Grey’s secretary has been refuted by Jean R. Brink, ‘ “All his minde on honour fixed”: The Preferment of Edmund Spenser’, in Spenser’s Life 45–64 and Vincent P. Carey and Clare L. Carroll, ‘Factions and Fictions: Spenser’s Reflections of and on Elizabethan Politics’, in Spenser’s Life 31–44. 13. On the applicability of Mother Hubberds Tale to conditions at court in 1590, see Charles E. Mounts, ‘The Ralegh-Essex Rivalry and Mother Hubberds Tale’, Modern Language Notes 65 (1950): 509–13. The ‘late chayne’ (MHT 628), pos- sibly referring to the marriage of Leicester in 1579 or Essex in 1590, is treated as inconclusive by Oram (YESP 355) and McCabe (Shorter Poems 616). For a theoretical discussion of the function of Mother Hubberds Tale from the perspectives of 1579 and 1591, see Jonathan Crewe, Hidden Designs: The Crit- ical Profession and Renaissance Literature (New York and London: Methuen, 1986), 55–6. 14. For a persuasive account of the unreliable nature of the Spenser–Harvey correspondence, see Brink 59–62. 15. Stanza 35 of Book 2, canto 4 of The Faerie Queene was quoted in Abraham Fraunce, The Arcadian Rhetorike: Or the Praecepts of Rhetorike made plaine by examples, Greeke, Latin, English, French, Spanish (1588), see Spenser Allusions 10. For the text and history of a commendatory poem written for The Faerie Queene before its publication, see Joseph Black, ‘ “Pan is Hee”: Commending The Faerie Queene’, Spenser Studies 15 (2001): 121–34. 16. On the published reception to Mother Hubberds Tale, see Stein 78–86. 17. See Peterson 12. Notes 225 18. Peterson 1; 7–8. 19. Peterson 8. 20. The Complaints volume was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 29 Decem- ber 1590 (YESP 223). 21. Peterson 35, n. 33. 22. Greenlaw 115. 23. Greenlaw 116. 24. For a discussion of Spenser’s allusive topicality, see Michael O’Connell, ‘Allegory, Historical’ in Spenser Encyclopedia 23–4. 25. For a discussion of contemporary annotations connecting the Fox to Burghley, see Chapter 5, 161–5. 26. Peterson 14. 27. While fully apprised of Tresham’s account of Spenser’s disgrace in 1591, McCabe continues to echo Greenlaw’s argument without qualification: ‘It would therefore appear that a poem originally composed during the cri- sis of the French match was cleverly revised for publication in 1591’ (Shorter Poems 610). Not only does McCabe assert the existence of Mother Hubberds Tale in 1579, he claims that it was a different text than the version pub- lished in the Complaints. This is an extraordinary position, given that we possess no such text, no contemporary reference to it, and no indication in 1591 that it was revised. If McCabe utilizes the 1579 theory to compliment Spenser’s ‘cleverly revised’ work, he nevertheless offers no explanation for how such a corrosive poem could have exposed the corruptions underlying the Elizabethan regime not just once, but twice. Nor do the allusions that McCabe identifies about Burghley relate specifically to 1579 – ‘the fox’s accu- mulation of “treasure” (1171–2; 1306), the illegal enrichment of his “cubs” (1151–8) and the formulation of devious “pollicie” (1036)’ (Shorter Poems 609–10). 28. Andrew Hadfield, ‘Spenser, Edmund (1552?–1599)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn., Jan. 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26145, accessed 6 June 2009]. 29. For the view that the poem’s supposed digressions are evidence of the poet’s revision, see van den Berg 86–7, 101 n. 5. 30. Spenser revised his blank verse translations of DuBellay in A Theatre for Worldlings into 14 line sonnets and numerous douxaines of his translation of Petrarch (Rime 323) into sonnets for the Complaints volume (YESP 452; 461; Shorter Poems 639–42). By dating Colin Clouts Come Home Againe ‘the 27. of December. 1591’ (YESP 526), he either revised or backdated it, since he noted the death of ‘Amyntas’, or Ferninando Stanley, Lord Strange, 5th Earl of Derby, who died on 16 April 1594 (CCCHA 434–41, YESP 542). Most significantly, he canceled and rewrote the ending to Book 3 of The Faerie Queene. 31. See van den Berg 91. 32. For further arguments defending the 1579 theory, see Thomas Herron, ‘Reforming the Fox: Spenser’s “Mother Hubberds Tale,” the Beast Fables of Barnabe Riche, and Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin’, Studies in Philology 105 (2008): 336–87, 360 n. 77. 33. Stein 97. 226 Notes 34. On the awarding and collection of Spenser’s pension, see Herbert Berry, ‘Spenser’s Pension’, Review of English Studies 43 (1960): 254–9. 35. Richard Rambuss, Spenser’s Secret Career (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 84. 36. Rambuss 85; 85–7. 37. Rambuss 84; 94; 95. In the context of Spenser’s chronicle of the death of the Earl of Leicester (RT 190–3; 211; 218), Rambuss comments, ‘It is difficult to name the sentiment underwriting these insistent, unflattering declarations. Is it a feeling of loss, coupled with an attempt to awaken militant action among the “survivors” in the Leicester party? Or is it something approach- ing satisfaction?’ (94). See also Rambuss’s inconclusive account of the poet’s antipathy to Burghley in ‘Spenser’s Life and Career’, in The Cambridge Com- panion to Spenser, Andrew Hadfield, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 13–36, 32. 38. Rambuss 91.
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