37 drent: drowned. Virgil’s Dido mounted her own funeral pyre and slew herself with Aeneas’ sword (Aeneid, 4. 642–705).
41–6 Cf. Marot, Eglogue sur le Trépas, 37–44; Theocritus, Idylls, 1. 23–8.
42 Cosset: cf. E. K.’s gloss at [46].
43 rownd… rufull: full and doleful.
46 Then: than.
48 contempt: contemptuously disregarded, spurned.
50 vaine: poetic vein or style. Cf. October, 23.
51 rugged: harsh, lacking polish.
52 strayne: exert or stretch to the limit (with a play on the common phrase of ‘straining’ the voice by singing vigorously).
53–202 The fifteen stanzas of Colin’s elegy have been related to the fifteen rungs of Jacob’s ladder ascending from earth to heaven. Cf. Davies (1981). 60 herse: not merely the bier, but as E. K. notes, the obsequies themselves including the song ‘rehearsed’ or recited by Colin. Cf. August, 193; RT, 255.
71 Breake… pypes: a symbolic gesture. Cf. Januarye, 72.
76 ygoe: gone (an archaic form).
83–92 A common biblical and classical topos: cf. Job 14: 7–10; Moschus, Idylls, 3. 99–104; Marot, Eglogue sur le Trépas, 178–81.
87 of… availe: of most benefit or advantage.
91 quaile: fade, wither.
96 cracknells: light, crisp biscuits. Cf. Januarye, 58.
chere: food.
99 clouted: clotted.
104 dolors dint: sorrow’s stroke or blow.
105 death… daunce: alluding to the topos of the Dance of Death as illustrated, for example, by Holbein.
107 blew… gray: colours emblematic of life and hope are replaced by colours emblematic of death and bereavement. For gray cf. August, [66].
109 embraue: embellish, splendidly adorn.
115 chiefe: head of a flower.
116 gilte Rosemaree: either a special variety of ‘golden’ rosemary or ordinary rosemary adorned with gilt.
129 tourne: change.
131 without remorse: without remittance or intermission.
133–4 Cf. Marot, Eglogue sur le Trépas, 107–9.
135–7 Ibid., 118–21.
138–41 Ibid., 126–9.
138 Turtle: turtle dove, an emblem of love. Cf. FQ, 4. 8. 3–5.
141 steepe: bathe, soak. Cf. March, 116.
144–7 Cf. Marot, Eglogue sur le Trépas, 240–51; Virgil, Eclogues, 5. 20–21.
144 Oliue: an emblem of peace, cf. Aprill, 123–6, [124].
146 bayes: an emblem of poetry. Cf. TW, sonnet 7. 12 and note.
147 Eldre: black-berried elder. Elder was the tree upon which Judas was said to have hanged himself. The berries are bitter. Cf. DLC, 42.
153 slipper: slippery, unreliable.
155 marked scope: target.
158 mould: form or frame (cf. FQ, 2. 7. 42), playing on the alternative sense of earth or dust (from which the body is made and to which it must return).
163–72 For this technique of transition cf. Virgil, Eclogues, 5. 56–80.
167 remorse: remittance.
170–72 For the device of altering the pastoral refrain cf. Theocritus, Idylls, 1. 127; Moschus, Idylls, 3. 119–20.
175 saintes: those received into heavenly bliss.
184 doome of: judgement for.
185 vntil: unto.
186 Dye… dayly: cf. 1 Corinthians 15: 31.
expert: experience (a rare usage).
187–9 Cf. Virgil, Eclogues, 5. 60–61; Marot, Eglogue sur le Trépas, 194–6, 202–3.
203–8 Cf. Marot, Eglogue sur le Trépas, 262–5, 270–78. Thenot’s six-line coda adopts the rhyme pattern of Januarye (ababcc) and thus forms a link to December.
203 francke: generous or sincere. Cf. Marot’s ‘O franc Pasteur’ (Eglogue sur le Trépas, 262).
204 doolful pleasaunce: mournful pleasure.
206 gotte: earned.
208 mizzle: drizzle.
210 La… mord: translated by E. K. as ‘Death biteth not’, this is Clément Marot’s personal emblem as supplied in the 1539 edition of the Œuvres.
Gloss
[13] Welked: the term can also mean cause to fade or darken, cf. Januarye, 73 and note; FQ, 1. 1. 23.
[16] Pisces: a notorious crux. As the woodcuts make clear, the sun is in Sagittarius in November and Pisces in February. McLane (1961) suggests that the error is deliberate and intended to alert the reader to an allusion to the Catholic (fish-eating) Duc d’Alençon (pp. 53–4), in his capacity as Dauphin or ‘dolphin’. Richardson (1989) reviews the astrological background and conjectures that the error reflects Colin’s unbalanced state of mind although this hardly explains E. K.’s acquiescence (pp. 503–10). Brooks-Davies (1995) suggests that the allusion is not to the sign of Pisces but to the twelfth astrological house traditionally correlated with the sign of Pisces and the planet Venus (pp. 403–8). Confusion may have arisen from the equally problematic statement in Virgil’s Georgics that the Pleiades set in November ‘fleeing before the star of the watery fish’ (4. 234–5) which Servius took as an allusion to the star known as the Southern Fish, sometimes alternatively identified with the Dolphin. Modern commentators regard it as an allusion to the sign of Pisces used loosely to designate the winter season. Cf. D. Cheney (1989); L. S. Johnson (1987).
pad: pannier, basket.
[21] Virelaies: cf. Aprill, [33] and note.
[30] Castalias: a fountain on Mount Parnassus sacred to Apollo and the Muses. Cf. Virgil, Georgics, 3. 291–3; Aprill, [42]; VG, 21–4 and notes.
[38] Pan: identified with Henry VIII at Aprill, [50]. The overt disclaimer may be intended both to suggest political allusion and render it safe. For Pan cf. Januarye, 17 and note.
[53] Melpomene… boatu: ‘Melpomene proclaims dismal events in a resounding tragic voice’. Not in Virgil but Ausonius, De Musarum Inventis, 4. Cf. Aprill, [100] and note.
[55] Hecuba… Seneca: the gloss is confusing. The ghost of Polydorus appears in Euripides’ Hecuba and that of Tantalus in Seneca’s Thyestes.
[60] obsequie: ritual, rite.
[73] Epanorthosis: cf. Januarye, [61] and note.
[83] A… maius: ‘From lesser to greater.’
[108] as is vsed: as is customary in.
[113] Lobbin: a possible allusion to the Earl of Leicester, represented as lamenting the symbolic ‘death’ of his queen. Cf. CCH, 735–6 and note.
[141] Philomele: cf. August, 183 and note.
sisters husbande: Tereus.
George Gaskin: George Gascoigne (? 1525–77) to whose Complaynt of Phylomene E. K. refers. Spenser’s allusion to the ‘Titmose’ at line 26 may be a direct borrowing (cf. Phylomene, 25–6).
[148] fatall sisters: cf. FQ, 4. 2. 47–8.
Herebus… Nighte: cf. Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 3. 17. 44; Comes, Mythologiae, 3. 12.
Clotho… occat: ‘Clotho bears the distaff, Lachesis draws out the thread, Atropos cuts it’ (Anthologia Latina, 729R).
[164] Persephone: an error for Tisiphone repeated at TM, 164. Cf. VG, 422–3 where the mistake apparently originated in Spenser’s misreading of Virgil, Culex, 261–2. Persephone is properly Proserpina, spouse of Hades and queen of the underworld.
[179] Elysian fieldes: abode of the blessed in Virgil’s underworld (cf. Aeneid, 6. 637–59, 743–7). By contrast, Virgil’s unfortunate (infelix) Dido inhabits the Mourning Fields (6. 440–66). Spenser is punning on ‘Elissa’, the alternative name of Virgil’s Dido, thereby consolidating a pattern of allusions to the ‘Eliza’ of Aprill. Cf. Marot, Eglogue sur le Trépas, 192. [186] Phœdone: cf. Phaedo, 61b–c where willingness to die characterizes the philosophical temperament.
[195] Manna in scripture: cf. Exodus 16: 4–35.
proper: appropriate, relevant.
Hebe: cupbearer to the gods. The source is unidentified.
dreames: not extant. According to Letters, Spenser intended to publish the work with both gloss and illustrations: ‘I take best my Dreames shoulde come forth alone, being growen by meanes of the Glosse…
full as great as my Calendar. Therin be some things excellently, and many things wittily discoursed of E. K. and the Pictures so singularly set forth, and purtrayed, as if Michael Angelo were there, he could (I think) nor amende the best, nor reprehende the worst’ (cf. Prose, 18).
Emblem
trespasse… one: cf. 1 Corinthians 15: 21–2.
Chaucer: cf. the opening sentences of The Parson’s Tale quoting Jeremiah 6: 16.
Death… all: cf. 1 Corinthians 15: 55.
December
Having composed an elegy for Dido in November, Colin now composes what is, in effect, an elegy for himself, evoking the collective resonances of the Narcissus myth associated with his persona throughout the Calender [cf. L. S. Johnson (1990), 109–14]. Because the final eclogue concludes ‘euen as the first beganne’ with ‘a complaynte of Colin to God Pan’, he has become his own ‘echo’, a figure locked in solipsistic dialogue with himself. The stanza form is that of Januarye and the season is again winter, but from Colin’s viewpoint this structural circularity entails emotional entrapment. He therefore ‘proportioneth his life to the foure seasons of the yeare’ even though, as the calendrical form inevitably dictates, he is scarcely a year older than when he began. His premature apprehension of senescence functions as a potent metaphor for his emotional state: what he attributes to time is, paradoxically, the product of despondent immaturity.
As in Januarye the ‘new Poete’ is careful to distinguish his voice from that of Colin. The first stanza is spoken by an omniscient narrator, and E. K.’s comment upon Colin’s missing ‘embleme’ transforms what might have been a despairing epitaph into a celebration of artistic achievement on a par with that of Horace and Ovid. Similarly the ‘Epilogue’ reverts to the first person singular of the opening ‘envoy’ to assert the triumph of art over time: ‘Loe I haue made a Calender for euery yeare, / That steele in strength, and time in durance shall outweare’. From the viewpoint of the author structural circularity indicates completion. By composing twelve eclogues he looks beyond Virgil’s pastoral achievement to the twelve books of the Aeneid anticipating his own progress from bucolic to heroic verse. His epilogue takes the form of a ‘square poem’ comprised of twelve lines of twelve syllables each because twelve is the Virgilian number of poetic perfection. In terms of quality his work has won a ‘free passeporte’ to posterity, but the issue of political ‘ieopardee’, raised in the ‘envoy’, remains unresolved. By invoking both Horace and Ovid, E. K. reminds us of the contrasting fortunes of these two Augustan poets, the one officially patronized, the other driven into exile. The author’s assertion of achievement subtly fuses echoes of both, just as Colin’s Januarye and December monologues evoke ironic reminiscences of both of the speakers of Virgil’s first eclogue, the politically secure Tityrus and the victimized Meliboeus.
The mood of political anxiety is underscored by Spenser’s use of his principal model, Clément Marot’s Eglogue au Roy soubz les noms de Pan et Robin. In that poem, despite his experience of religious exile, and the dangers still attendant upon his position, Marot (Robin) imagines that Francis I (Pan) has heard his prayer for assistance (259–60). Colin, by contrast, is far less assured of the support of the ‘shepheards God’ – ‘perdie God was he none’ (50). Nowhere indeed is the distinction between the royal and the divine Pan so acute. In his companion piece, La Complaincte d’un Pastoureau Chrestien, in which Christ, and not the king, is addressed as Pan, Marot voices the distress of the dispossessed more overtly, but Spenser has combined both complaints in the one poem. Both Robin (205) and Colin (141–2) hang their pipes upon trees, but only Robin undertakes to retrieve the instrument and sing anew under royal protection (243–6) [cf. A. Patterson (1986)]. The December woodcut, contradicting the text, shows Colin’s pipe lying broken at his feet [cf. Luborsky (1981)]. As so often in the Calender, Colin’s personal discontent appears to serve as an index of national disquiet, but both are subject to structural qualification. From Colin’s perspective ‘after Winter dreerie death does hast’ (144), but the work’s calendrical form implies otherwise. Not death but spring follows winter and, despite political opposition, Ovid has survived no less than Horace or Virgil. And Colin too is destined to survive both as a literary artefact and an enduring instrument of Spenser’s complex self-reflection. Cf. Kennedy (1980); D. L. Miller (1979), (1983); Reamer (1969).
December
2 brere: briar.
7–12 Cf. Marot, Eglogue au Roy soubz les noms de Pan et Robin, 6–14 and La Complaincte d’un Pastoureau Chrestien, 28–40. For Pan cf. note to Aprill, [50].
8 keepe: care.
12 Then: than.
14 Oaten reede: cf. October, 8, [8] and note.
15 sonet: short lyric poem. Cf. Marot’s ‘chansonnettes’, Eglogue au Roy, 12.
17 greene cabinet: Marot’s ‘verd cabinet’ which anticipates the ‘verte maison’ of the court (Eglogue au Roy, 13, 259).
19–36 Cf. Marot, Eglogue au Roy, 15–32.
22 doubted: dreaded. Cf. October, 41.
25 raunge: wander at will.
27 Pricket: buck in its second year with straight, unbranched horns.
29 wreaked: recked, cared.
31 craggie: steep and rugged.
32 All to: just to.
of: off.
37–40 Cf. Marot, Eglogue au Roy, 40–48; Virgil, Eclogues, 9. 32–4.
37 for: because.
39 tomuch: too much.
40 Somedele ybent: somewhat disposed.
41 Wrenock: possibly Richard Mulcaster (? 1530–1611), headmaster of the Merchant Taylors’ School and author of two influential treatises on education, The Positions (1581) and The Elementarie (1582). Marot, Eglogue au Roy, 49 pays similar tribute to his father, also a poet. The play on ‘wren’ continues the avian imagery associated with poetic endeavour.
45 Hobbinol: Gabriel Harvey. Cf. ‘Epistle’, 8; September, [176] and note.
51 hurtlesse pleasaunce: harmless pleasure.
53 gaue me checkmate: a popular love metaphor from chess.
60 reigned… seate: was ascendant in the astrological house of Venus.
63 whether: whither.
63–4 vnbridled… bitte: evoking the celebrated image of the passions as horses in Plato, Phaedrus, 246a-b, 253c–254e. Cf. FQ, 1. 1. 1.
68 formall rowmes: symmetrical combs.
70 Paddocks: toads, perhaps glancing at d’Alençon, cf. Adler (1981), 257.
72 Owle: for owls cf. Isaiah 34: 15; June, 24; Epith, 345 and note.
grieuous… keepe: makes her doleful dwelling.
73–8 Cf. Marot, Eglogue au Roy, 109–11.
81 winding: interwoven, wound.
83–90 Cf. Marot, Eglogue au Roy, 124–33.
85 tryed time: experience, greater maturity.
93 ene: one (an archaic form).
95–6 Cf. Amor, 25.
97–8 Cf. Marot, Eglogue au Roy, 199–202.
98 to rathe: too quickly.
102 brakes: bracken or briars.
105 now at erst: already.
106 flattring: delusively enticing or promising.
107 mellow: sweet and juicy.
118 vnsoote: unsweet.
119 loser: wanton.
120 One: Rosalind.
121–2 Cf. Virgil, Eclogues, 5. 35–7.
123 sheaue: sheaf.
124 Cockel: a weed prevalent in wheat crops. Cf. ‘Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockel instead of barley’ (Job 31: 40).
125 fynd: refined, winnowed.
127 terme: terminus, limit.
136 myne… wright: crowsfeet (wrinkles) are drawn about my eyes. Colin himself has become a text, his lines ‘written’ by time.
141 Cf. Marot, Eglogue au Roy, 205, 243–6.
151–4 Cf. Theocritus, Idylls, 1. 115–18.
157 Colins Embleme: omitted in all editions. Hughes (1715) suggested ‘Vivitur ingenio, caetera mortis erunt’ (‘His intellect endures, the rest is mortal’) from Elegiae in Maecenatem (1. 38), fals
ely attributed to Virgil in the Dumaeus edition of 1542 which Spenser used for VG.
Gloss
[4] Tityrus: cf. ‘Epistle’, 5; June, 81–96 and notes.
[11] Pan… magistros: ‘Pan cares for sheep and the keepers of sheep’ (Virgil, Eclogues, 2. 33). Cf. Marot, Eglogue au Roy, 6–8.
[17–18] Cabinet… diminutiues: imitating Marot, Eglogue au Roy, 13–14.
[40] Qui… musicam: ‘[competition for the palm] is open to all who practise poetry’ (Terence, Phormio, ‘Prologue’, 18).
[81] leapes: baskets.
[84] Cauda… Draconis: ‘tail or head of the dragon’.
[84] Theocritus: cf. Idylls, 7. 52–3; 13. 25–6.
[87] Liuie: cf. Livy, History of Rome, 9. 36, but E. K.’s source is Cicero, De Divinatione, 1. 41. 92.
[88] Dea… herbis: ‘The cruel goddess with potent herbs’ (Virgil, Aeneid, 7. 19).
Emblem
Exegi… vorax: ‘I have completed a monument more lasting than bronze… which neither rain nor the voracious North wind [can destroy]’, misquoted from Horace, Odes, 3. 30. 1–3.
Grande… vetustas: ‘I have completed a great work which neither the wrath of Jove, nor fire, nor sword, nor gnawing time can erode’, misquoted from Ovid, Metamorphoses, 15. 871–2.
Epilogue Loe I haue…
The epilogue is symbolically cast as a ‘square’ poem comprised of twelve lines of twelve syllables each. Puttenham identified this ‘quadrangle equilater’ as ‘the figure of most solliditie and stedfastnesse’ and associated it with Aristotle’s ‘constant minded man euen egal [equal] and direct on all sides, and not easily ouerthrowne by euery litle aduersitie, hominem quadratum, a square man’ (Arte of English Poesie, ECE, 2. 104). Together with the references to Horace and Ovid the device enforces the claims of artistic independence. For the significance of the number twelve cf. TW, sonnet 15. 9 and note.
4 worlds dissolution: end of the world.
5–6 teach… keepe: referring specifically to the ‘moral’ eclogues.
7–12 Cf. Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, 5. 1786–92.
7 passeporte: licence to travel, safe-conduct.
9 Tityrus: Virgil (and possibly Chaucer). Cf. ‘Epistle’, 5; June, 81–96 and notes.
The Shorter Poems Page 68
