Part 9 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: RALEIGH'S BIRTHPLACE, BUDLEIGH SALTERTON.
Hayes, Devons.h.i.+re]
The publication of the first parts of _The Faery Queen_ (1590) raised Spenser to the foremost place in English letters. He was made poet-laureate, and used every influence of patrons and of literary success to the end that he be allowed to remain in London, but the queen was flint-hearted, insisting that he must give up his estate or occupy it. So he returned sorrowfully to ”exile,” and wrote three more books of _The Faery Queen_. To his other offices was added that of sheriff of County Cork, an adventurous office for any man even in times of peace, and for a poet, in a time of turmoil, an invitation to disaster. Presently another rebellion broke out, Kilcolman castle was burned, and the poet's family barely escaped with their lives. It was said by Ben Jonson that one of Spenser's children and some parts of _The Faery Queen_ perished in the fire, but the truth of the saying has not been established.
Soon after this experience, which crushed the poet's spirit, he was ordered on official business to London, and died on the journey in 1599. As he was buried beside Chaucer, in Westminster Abbey, poets were seen casting memorial verses and the pens that had written them into his tomb.
[Sidenote: CHARACTER]
In character Spenser was unfitted either for the intrigues among Elizabeth's favorites or for the more desperate scenes amid which his Lot was cast. Unlike his friend Raleigh, who was a man of action, Spenser was essentially a dreamer, and except in Cambridge he seems never to have felt at home. His criticism of the age as barren and hopeless, and the melancholy of the greater part of his work, indicate that for him, at least, the great Elizabethan times were ”out of joint.” The world, which thinks of Spenser as a great poet, has forgotten that he thought of himself as a disappointed man.
WORKS OF SPENSER. The poems of Spenser may be conveniently grouped in three cla.s.ses. In the first are the pastorals of _The Shepherd's Calendar_, in which he reflects some of the poetical fas.h.i.+ons of his age. In the second are the allegories of _The Faery Queen_, in which he pictures the state of England as a struggle between good and evil. In the third cla.s.s are his occasional poems of friends.h.i.+p and love, such as the _Amoretti_. All his works are alike musical, and all remote from ordinary life, like the eerie music of a wind harp.
[Sidenote: SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR]
_The Shepherd's Calendar_ (1579) is famous as the poem which announced that a successor to Chaucer had at last appeared in England. It is an amateurish work in which Spenser tried various meters; and to a.n.a.lyze it is to discover two discordant elements, which we may call fas.h.i.+onable poetry and puritanic preaching. Let us understand these elements clearly, for apart from them the _Calendar_ is a meaningless work.
It was a fas.h.i.+on among Italian poets to make eclogues or pastoral poems about shepherds, their dancing, piping, love-making,--everything except a shepherd's proper business. Spenser followed this artificial fas.h.i.+on in his _Calendar_ by making twelve pastorals, one for each month of the year.
These all take the form of conversations, accompanied by music and dancing, and the personages are Cuddie, Diggon, Hobbinoll, and other fantastic shepherds. According to poetic custom these should sing only of love; but in Spenser's day religious controversy was rampant, and flattery might not be overlooked by a poet who aspired to royal favor. So while the January pastoral tells of the unhappy love of Colin Clout (Spenser) for Rosalind, the springtime of April calls for a song in praise of Elizabeth:
Lo, how finely the Graces can it foot To the instrument!
They dancen deffly and singen soote, In their merriment.
Wants not a fourth Grace to make the dance even?
Let that room to my Lady be yeven.
She shall be a Grace, To fill the fourth place, And reign with the rest in heaven.
In May the shepherds are rival pastors of the Reformation, who end their sermons with an animal fable; in summer they discourse of Puritan theology; October brings them to contemplate the trials and disappointments of a poet, and the series ends with a parable comparing life to the four seasons of the year.
The moralizing of _The Shepherd's Calendar_ and the uncouth spelling which Spenser affected detract from the interest of the poem; but one who has patience to read it finds on almost every page some fine poetic line, and occasionally a good song, like the following (from the August pastoral) in which two shepherds alternately supply the lines of a roundelay:
Sitting upon a hill so high, Hey, ho, the high hill!
The while my flock did feed thereby, The while the shepherd's self did spill, I saw the bouncing Bellibone, Hey, ho, Bonnibell!
Tripping over the dale alone; She can trip it very well.
Well decked in a frock of gray, Hey, ho, gray is greet!
And in a kirtle of green say; The green is for maidens meet.
A chaplet on her head she wore, Hey, ho, chapelet!
Of sweet violets therein was store, She sweeter than the violet.
THE FAERY QUEEN. Let us hear one of the stories of this celebrated poem, and after the tale is told we may discover Spenser's purpose in writing all the others.
[Sidenote: SIR GUYON]
From the court of Gloriana, Queen of Faery, the gallant Sir Guyon sets out on adventure bent, and with him is a holy Palmer, or pilgrim, to protect him from the evil that lurks by every wayside.
Hardly have the two entered the first wood when they fall into the hands of the wicked Archimago, who spends his time in devising spells or enchantments for the purpose of leading honest folk astray.
For all he did was to deceive good knights, And draw them from pursuit of praise and fame.