THE NON-DRAMATIC POETS OF THE ELIZABETHAN AGE

EDMUND SPENSER (1552-1599)

_(Cuddie)_
"Piers, I have piped erst so long with pain
That all mine oaten reeds been rent and wore,
And my poor Muse hath spent her spared store,
Yet little good hath got, and much less gain.
Such pleasaunce makes the grasshopper so poor,
And ligge so layd[115] when winter doth her strain.
The dapper ditties that I wont devise,
To feed youth's fancy, and the flocking fry
Delghten much--what I the bet forthy?
They han the pleasure, I a slender prize:
I beat the bush, the birds to them do fly:
What good thereof to Cuddie can arise?
(_Piers_)
Cuddie, the praise is better than the price,
The glory eke much greater than the gain:..."
_Shepherd's Calendar_, October

In these words, with their sorrowful suggestion of Deor, Spenser reveals
his own heart, unconsciously perhaps, as no biographer could possibly do.
His life and work seem to center about three great influences, summed up in
three names: Cambridge, where he grew acquainted with the classics and the
Italian poets; London, where he experienced the glamour and the
disappointment of court life; and Ireland, which steeped him in the beauty
and imagery of old Celtic poetry and first gave him leisure to write his
masterpiece.

LIFE. Of Spenser's early life and parentage we know little, except that he
was born in East Smithfield, near the Tower of London, and was poor. His
education began at the Merchant Tailors' School in London and was continued
in Cambridge, where as a poor sizar and fag for wealthy students he earned
a scant living. Here in the glorious world that only a poor scholar knows
how to create for himself he read the classics, made acquaintance with the
great Italian poets, and wrote numberless little poems of his own. Though
Chaucer was his beloved master, his ambition was not to rival the
_Canterbury Tales_, but rather to express the dream of English chivalry,
much as Ariosto had done for Italy in _Orlando Furioso_.

After leaving Cambridge (1576) Spenser went to the north of England, on
some unknown work or quest. Here his chief occupation was to fall in love
and to record his melancholy over the lost Rosalind in the _Shepherd's
Calendar_. Upon his friend Harvey's advice he came to London, bringing his
poems; and here he met Leicester, then