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The Composition of the Shepheardes Calender
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The teasing sense of mystery felt by the student of the biography of Spenser is nowhere more noticeable than with regard to the Shepheardes Calender. C. H. Herford's statement is still too near the truth:
Except that the authorship is absolutely certain, posterity knows very little more about the circumstances in which the Shepheardes Calender was composed than “E. K.” has chosen to tell us.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1935
References
1 In his edition of the Shepheardes Calender (London and New York, 1907), p. xiii.
2 Cambridge History of English Literature (New York and Cambridge, 1907–19), iii, 250 f.—H. J. C. Grierson, Cross Currents in English Literature of the XVIIth Century (London, 1929), pp. 42–43, seems to imply an orderly process of composition beginning with January and ending with December.
3 English Writers (London, Paris and Melbourne, 1891–97), ix, 36 f. Cf. The Shepherd's Calendar, ed. W. L. Renwick (London, 1930), p. 167.—Frederick Morgan Padelford (M. P., xi, 98) admits the possibility that Spenser “may have followed his practice of incorporating certain verses written at an earlier time” in the poem, as did also Edwin Greenlaw in PMLA, xix (1911), 448. C. H. Herford (op. cit., p. 150) alludes with favor “to the view that the eclogues were composed independently and at different times.”
4 Loc. cit.
5 See The Complete Works … of Edmund Spenser, ed. Grosart (privately printed, 1882–84), i, 113 ff. and Courthope, op. cit., iii, 256.—Alexander Pope, in his Discourse on Pastoral Poetry, notices this weakness but takes it to lie rather in the plan than in the execution. “Yet the scrupulous division of his pastorals into months has obliged him either to repeat the same description, in other words, for three months together, or, when it was exhausted before, entirely to omit it; whence it comes to pass that some of his eclogues (as the sixth, eighth, and tenth for example) have nothing but their titles to distinguish them. The reason is evident, because the year has not that variety in it to furnish every month with a particular description, as it may every season.” One suspects, however, that Pope is more interested in explaining why he has written only four instead of twelve eclogues than in understanding reasons for Spenser's failure entirely to conform to his avowed plan.
6 Line 51, “Beating the withered leafe from the tree,” is not particularly well suited to September. Notice the foliage on the trees in the woodcut set at the head of September.
7 As C. H. Herford suggests (op. cit., p. 172), “Thys long lingering Phoebus race” (l. 3) seems a reference to the time of day rather than to the time of year.
8 That February and November may have been transposed, one of the suggestions which Professor W. L. Renwick made (op. cit., p. 184) to account for this flaw, Doctor G. C. Moore Smith refuted (M.L.R., xxvi, 458) by pointing out that “the whole context in November, 'But nowe sadde Winter welked hath the day,' agrees much better with November than with February, and similarly the opening couplet of February with its expectation of winter's assuagement and the later reference to the 'rather lambes,' agree with February and not November.” The last point is sound; his conclusion, however, that it is “simpler then to impute to the poet an error in astronomy,” does not necessarily follow, for another of Professor Renwick's suggestions (loc. cit.), that November was originally the February poem and was displaced by the present, more recently composed occupant of that position, is not open to the same objections. There is nothing in November that will not fit February equally well. It might be argued, however, that the last line of the following passage is proper only to November:
Thenot, now nis the time of merimake.
Nor Pan to herye, nor with love to playe:
Sike myrth in May is meetest for to make,
Or summer shade under the cocked haye.
But nowe sadde Winter welked hath the day. (November, 9 S.)
But the argument is unsound. The lines state Colin's reasons for refusing Thenot's request that he sing of love or in praise of Pan. “Such songs as you request,” he says, “are quite in keeping in pleasant weather, but winter makes them unsuitable.” But nowe, in other words, may mark a contrast to the preceding thought instead of indicating that just recently the coming of winter has rendered jollity unseemly.
The point rests in part upon Spenser's knowledge of astronomy, and, although no thorough treatment of the question exists, the evidence is against his having been likely to make a blunder in a matter of almost common knowledge. Harvey (Marginalia, ed. G. C. Moore Smith [Stratford, 1913], p. 162) gives him credit for some astronomical knowledge; Spenser, with no suggestion from Marot, one of whose eclogues he is there paraphrasing, adds to December (ll. 83 f.) a statement of his training in astronomy; he connects Pisces and February in the Faerie Queene (vii, 7, 43); and his correct use of astronomical information in many passages of his works shows him to have had sufficient knowledge of the subject to avoid such an error. See, for instances, F.Q., Prol. to Book v, 4 ff., v, 1, 11, vii, 7, 32–43; Mother Hubberds Tale, 1–8; S.C., vii, 17–24.
9 Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1906), pp. 91, 92.
10 September, 176–77.
11 Spenser's Shepherd's Calender in Relation to Contemporary Affairs (New York, 1912), pp. 42–43.
12 Higginson, op. cit., p. 42.—Herford (op. cit., p. 96) felt that the February eclogue was irrelevant.
13 PMLA, xix (1911), 447.
14 See Herford, op. cit., p. xl.—Professor Renwick (loc. cit.), remarking that “Thenot appears in April and November,” says that “the reappearance of the same name may imply the same person, but we cannot be quite sure.” There is no necessity for believing that, because a character is the allegorical representation of one of Spenser's acquaintances in one eclogue, he is so in every other eclogue where he appears; on the other hand, there was little purpose in Spenser's using the same name unless the same pastoral character was meant.
15 So marked is this change that Higginson (op. cit., p. 105 n.) says: “This Palinode cannot be identical with the Palinode of the ‘May’; there, he is the object of Spenser's satire, here, he is the friend of Spenser's representative, Thomalin.” Francis T. Palgrave (in Grosart's edition of Spenser's works, iv, li) remarks:“It is noteworthy that Palinode, who in that poem [‘May‘] represents Roman Catholicism, is now spoken of as having travelled to Rome, where the pomp of the Papal Court has impressed him unfavorably.”
16 C. H. Herford (op. cit., p. 150) notes some of these peculiarities and remarks, “ Spenser makes no attempt to use the names with uniform consistency. … This adds strength to the view that the eclogues were composed independently, and at different times.”—One might add that it strengthens also the view that many of them were composed before the idea of combining them into a unified piece occurred to the poet.
17 See January, 1.
18 Some of these inconsistencies are traceable to Spenser's sources. See H. S. V. Jones, A Spenser Handbook (New York, 1930), p. 243.
19 In the notes to June.
20 Professor W. L. Renwick's statement, in Edmund Spenser; An Essay on Renaissance Poetry (London, 1925), p. 36 f., that Spenser deliberately chose the pastoral as the most fitting literary type with which to make his bow to his audience in no way contraverts this idea; what he says of a series of poems would be equally true of each of these poems considered separately. His statements probably also indicate the reasons for the choices Spenser made from the body of poetry at hand at the time when the Shepheardes Calender was put together. E. K.'s reference, in his notes to March, to Spenser's translation of “Moschus his Idyllion of Wandring love” makes probable the belief that Spenser had by him a considerable body of pastorals at this time.
21 See E. K.'s prefatory epistle to Harvey, dated April 10, 1579.
22 It is possible that E. K.'s epistle to Harvey may originally have contained Leicester's name where we now find Sidney's and that the passage was changed to its present form by Spenser only after he later decided to address himself to Sidney; on the other hand, Spenser's letter to Harvey of October 16, 1579, does not read as though that were so; it rather sounds as though Harvey had been trying to persuade Spenser, against a fairly settled conclusion, to make his address to a greater and more powerful man than he had originally intended.
23 The Works of Gabriel Harvey, ed. Grosart (privately printed, 1884–85), i, 7.
24 Ibid.
25 Pages 99 ff.
26 Complaints, ed. W. L. Renwick (London, 1928), p. 190.
27 Harvey, ed. cit., i, 6.
28 By not recognizing that Spenser's final decision to publish came in October rather than in April, Professor Jefferson B. Fletcher (M.L.N., xv, 331) is led to state that “during the interim of approximately eight months [from April 10 to December 5] the volume was presumably passing through the press.” The evidence of Spenser's letter seems conclusive against such a belief. It is possible that the printing was subsequent even to December 5; see Ronald B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford, 1927), p. 137.
29 Mark Eccles, L.T.L.S., December 31, 1931, p. 1053.
30 Professor John W. Draper (J.E.G.Ph., xviii, 556–574) remarks that the Glosse “certainly seems to have been carelessly or hurriedly put together” and later (p. 573) that “such errors as the definition of glen as hamlet, even in the most obtuse editor, could result only from carelessness or haste—and E. K. was probably not obtuse.”
31 The presence of printer's errors is, however, probable. The error which G. L. Craik, Spenser and His Poetry (London, 1845), i, 82 n., suspects in the Emblem for October is probably one.
32 S.C., ii, 119.
33 See C. H. Herford, op. cit., p. xxiv; John W. Draper, op. cit., pp. 568–70; and W. L. Renwick's edition of the Calender, p. 197, note to l. 179 and p. 200, note to l. 100.
34 Mention of it in the “Argument” may indicate that the arguments were written later than the Glosse.