Edmund

Spenser
(1552?-1599)
• He was born in 1551 or 1552 in London, probably in East
Smithfield.
• He was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School.
• He matriculated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, in May
1569, where he was a sizar.
• While at Cambridge he became a friend of Gabriel Harvey.
• He seems to have begun writing during his Cambridge days,
translating some sonnets and “visions” by Petrarch and the
French poet Du Bellay.
• Spenser took his BA in 1573 and his MA in 1576.
• In 1578, he became for a short time secretary to John Young,
Bishop of Rochester.
• In 1579, he entered the service of the Earl of Leicester and made
acquaintance with Philip Sidney who was the Earl’s nephew
• In 1579, he published The Shepherd's Calendar, dedicated to
Sidney.
• In July 1580, Spenser went to Ireland in service of the newly
appointed Lord Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de
Wilton.
• In 1584, he became deputy to the clerk of the Council of
Munster in Ireland.
• Lamb called him “the poet’s poet”
• He was successful enough to obtain a life pension of £50 a year
from the Queen.

I was promis'd on a time,

To have reason for my rhyme;
From that time unto this season,
I receiv'd nor rhyme nor reason
• Spenser celebrates his love for Elizabeth Boyle in Amoretti and
his marriage to her in Epithalamion.
• In 1590, Spenser brought out the first three books of his most
famous work, The Faerie Queene.
• In 1591, Spenser published many short poems and several
translations. These include “The Ruins of Time”; “The Teares of
the Muses”, “Virgil’s Gnat”, “Prosopopoia or Mother Hubberds
Tale”, “Ruines of Rome”, “Muiopotmos or the Fate of the
Butterflie”, “Visions of the Worlds Vanitie”. These short works
were collected in the volume Complaints.
• He died prematurely in the year of salvation 1598, and is
• buried near Geoffrey Chaucer, in Westminster Abbey.
Spenserian Sonnet
• It is a type of sonnet in which the lines are grouped into three
interlocked quatrains and a couplet and the rhyme scheme is
abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee.
• The stanza’s main meter is iambic pentameter with a final line
in iambic hexameter (having six feet or stresses known as
Alexanrine

• Examples: The Faire Queen and Amoretti

Sonnet 75
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I write it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

Vain man, said she, that doest in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalize,

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eek my name be wiped out likewise.

 Not so, (quod I) let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse, your virtues rare shall eternize,

And in the heavens write your glorious name.

Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.

The Faerie Queene
And more, to lulle him in his slumber soft,
A trickling streame from high rocke tumbling downe
And ever-drizling raine upon the loft,
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swowne:
No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes,
As still are wont t'annoy the walled towne,
Might there be heard: but carelesse Quiet lyes,
Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enemyes.