Edmund Spenser (1552 ?- 1599):-
Spenser was poet and administrator in Ireland, was born in London but his family possibly came from Burnley in north-east Lancashire. His origins are unclear and his immediate family not established beyond doubt, although a number of possible ancestors and relatives are recorded.
Edmund's father may have been the John Spenser who moved fromHurstwood to London, where he became a member of the Merchant Taylors' Company. John is recorded working as a free journeyman clothmaker in the service of Nicholas Peele, 'sheerman', of Bow Lane, London, in October 1566. He may have been the John Spenser who became an alderman in 1583, owned a house formerly in the possession of the duke of Gloucester, near the Merchant Taylors' Hall,constructed a warehouse nearby, was made lord mayor in 1594, and subsequently received a knighthood. It is also possible that Edmund was the son of an ordinary journeyman, as his claims to gentleman status came through his own achievements-a university degree-and acquisition of land in Ireland. Nothing is known of his mother other than her name, Elizabeth, to which he refers in Amoretti, sonnet 74. Spenser probably had a number of siblings. Gabriel Harvey refers to him as 'your good mother's eldist ungraciaus son' in his Letter Book. There were perhaps two sisters, named Elizabeth and Sarah, the latter of whom later lived in Ireland. A John Spenser who matriculated as a sizar at Pembroke College, Cambridge, at Easter 1575 and graduated in 1577–8 may well have been a younger brother. A John Spenser, perhaps the same person, is recorded as attending Merchant Taylors' School in 1571, and a John Spenser is recorded as serving as constable of Limerick in 1579, the coincidences suggesting, assuming both are the same person, that he was probably related to Spenser in some way.
Early years and education:-
It is not certain where in London Spenser was born. Early eighteenth-century antiquarians claimed that he came from East Smithfield but, given the low population of this area, it is more plausible that he was born in West Smithfield. He was probably born in 1552, since he matriculated at Cambridge University in 1569, at a time when the usual age at matriculation was sixteen or seventeen. First he attended the recently founded Merchant Taylors' School, probably from 1561, the year in which it opened, although the sole record of his attendance is for his last year there, 1569. The headmaster was the humanist educational theorist Richard Mulcaster, whose rigorous pedagogical methods and intellectually demanding approach to the curriculum strongly influenced Spenser. Mulcaster was also interested in the development of the English language, advocating its widespread use but recognizing its need to borrow words and phrases from other languages. It is perhaps significant that this problem was one which Spenser examined throughout his literary career. The school was housed in an old mansion, the Manor of the Rose, in the parish of St Laurence Pountney. Other pupils included Thomas Kyd, Lancelot Andrewes, and Thomas Lodge.
Secretary to Lord Grey in Ireland:-
In 1580 Spenser became private secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, who was appointed lord deputy of Ireland in July. Spenser probably arrived with Lord Grey on 12 August. His salary, as recorded on 31 December, was pound20 p.a. He was also paid pound 43 19s. 3d. for carrying messages, and paid out pound 18 16s. 10d. to messengers. He now lived in Ireland until his death, returning to England at regular intervals for official and literary business. He may not have wished to leave for Ireland, as some have conjectured. It is likely that he incurred the wrath of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, for his hostile portrait in Mother Hubberds Tale, which appears to have circulated in manuscript in the late 1570s or 1580.
Faerie Queens:-
Spenser is most well known for his book-length epic poem, The Faerie Queene. It was one of the first attempts at an English epic poem, which he based on the Italian classics. An epic poem is a long, historical work that attempts to document the events and heroes of a time and place, a country and its culture. Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid are examples of classical epics. Spenser and his contemporary, Philip Sidney, wrote the first English epics, distinguishing them as poets who fundamentally defined and shaped a distinct English poetry of their time.
Spencer wrote the The Faerie Queene in honor of Queen Elizabeth, who was characterized as the Faerie Queen Gloriana, his heroine. His ambition was to write a beautiful work that exalted her reign, while creating a poem cycle of fantasy adventures rooted in the Arthurian legends of knights, damsels and dragons, and whose characters exemplified Spenser's definition of virtue.
This type of symbolism, where a character or place or event represents or parallels an idea, is called an allegory. In this case, Queen Elizabeth's kingdom is allegorized, and major figures in her kingdom are allegorized as certain virtues, such as friendship, courtesy and justice.
Spenser also hoped to gain patronage by the court for his writing career. In other words, he was trying to flatter the court so that he could gain recognition and monetary support for his writing. He accomplished this to some extent, but not enough to quit his day job, which was to serve the crown by protecting its interests in Ireland. His genocidal views on Ireland, as written in his A View of the Present State of Ireland, published 1633, postmortem, are brutal and incredibly disturbing, but that does not detract from the rich body of poetry he has left us.
Marriage and later works:-
On 11 June 1594, St Barnabas day, Spenser married, as his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle, a relative of Richard Boyle, later earl of Cork. They had one child, Peregrine, born possibly in 1595. The courtship and marriage are represented in the sonnet sequence Amoretti and the marriage hymn Epithalamion, entered into the Stationers' register on 19 November 1594 and published as a single volume in early 1595, when they were advertised as poems 'Written not long since'. The dedicatory note by Spenser's usual publisher, William Ponsonby, to Sir Robert Needham claims that he has taken responsibility for publishing the poems in the absence of the poet. Needham, according to Ponsonby's dedication, had brought them from Ireland to London, and it is possible that he also brought over the completed second edition of The Faerie Queene. Sonnet 80 of Amoretti states that Spenser had already finished the six completed books of The Faerie Queene, which were to be published in 1596, giving the newly married Spenser time to turn his attentions from Elizabeth, the queen, to his wife of the same name.
A View of the Present State of Ireland:-
It is likely that Spenser completed A View of the Present State of Ireland in June and July 1596, possibly before he travelled to London to attend the weddings celebrated in the Prothalamion. The work recommends that a lord lieutenant be appointed to oversee Irish affairs and refers to 'such an one I Coulde name uppon whom the ey of all Englande is fixed and our last hopes now rest'. Many commentators have suggested that Spenser-through his character, Irenius-was referring to the earl of Essex, a supposition made plausible by other indications that he had started to move in the large Essex circle.
Final years:-
Spenser was still active in acquiring land, despite the mounting threat to the Munster plantation from Hugh O'Neill's forces in the Nine Years' War. In 1597 he purchased the castle of Renny, in the south of co. Cork, and its surrounding lands for his young son, Peregrine, for pound200. Buttevant Abbey also came into his possession. On 7 February 1598 he was noted as being in arrears for the rent of this property. On 30 September, with the Munster plantation on the brink of being overrun by O'Neill's forces, he was made sheriff of Cork by the privy council 'for his good and commendable parts.
Spenser's lands were under serious threat from the rebels when he was appointed, indicating that his elevation was a desperate measure and might not have happened in quieter times. On 4 October Sir Thomas Norris, James Goold, and George Thornton wrote to the privy council from Kilmallock that a force of 2000 Irish rebels were marching towards the area of Kilcolman. By 7 October the plantation was effectively overrun. On 15 October Kilcolman was sacked and burnt. A letter by Sir Thomas Norris of 23 October noted that the son of the Lord Roche with whom Spenser had been in dispute, David Roche, was one of the prominent rebels in the area. Spenser and his family escaped through an underground tunnel, known as the fox hole, leading to caves north of the estate. The family fled to Cork for refuge.
Reputation:-
Spenser's work has had an enormous influence over the course of English poetry in the four centuries since his death. His most widely read poem has been The Faerie Queene, which any aspiring English poet has felt obliged to read carefully and imitate. But The Shepherds Calender and much of Complaints have also had a major impact. Spenser's principal strands of influence have been to create an oppositional, protestant-inspired, anti-courtly poetry in the seventeenth century; to define the style and subject matter of mainstream canonical writers within a central tradition of English writing; to establish the Gothic in art and literature in the eighteenth century; and to help fashion a protestant Anglo-Irish identity in Ireland.
But perhaps it is true to suggest that Spenser became more of a scholar's poet in the twentieth century and had little impact on a wider reading public. As David Hill Radcliffe has pointed out, 'In the first three decades of the twentieth century, more was written about Spenser than in the previous three hundred years. Spenser became one of the key major authors central to university English courses and a writer with whom the aspiring university teacher was expected to struggle.
References :-
www.oxforddnb.com
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Word count :- 1678
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