Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral: A Study of the World of Colin Clout 9780773561229

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Introduction
I: The Shepheardes Calender: The Moral Eclogues
1 The Problem of Unity
2 Pastoral Poetics
3 "February"
4 "May"
5 "July"
6 "September"
7 "October"
8 Conclusion
II: The Shepheardes Calender: The Pastoral Image
1 "January"
2 "June"
3 Rosalind
4 "November"
5 "December"
6 Conclusion
III: Spenser's Return to Pastoral in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe
1 The Shepherd and His Song
2 Ideal and Reality
3 The Poet of Love's Perfection
IV: Pastoral and the End of Epic in The Faerie Queene
1 The Pastoral Retreat
2 The Heroic Image
3 Vision and Quest
Notes
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
V
W
Y

Citation preview

Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral: A Study of the World of Colin Clout

The Shepheardes Calender (1579) signalled Spenser's desire to assume the role of an English Virgil and at the same time his readiness to leave behind the pastoral world of his apprenticeship and his early persona, Colin Clout. Yet Spenser was twice to return to the pastoral world of Colin Clout, first in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (written 1591, published 1595), and then again in the sixth and last complete book of The Faerie Queene. In Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral, David Shore considers the structure of the moral eclogues of the Calender as it defines the pastoral vision that informs and unifies the entire poem. He then examines the themes of poetic idealism and courtly corruption in Colin Clout and sees in their confrontation Spenser's questioning of the public foundations of the poet's heroic endeavour. Finally, he considers Calidore's pastoral retreat in The Faerie Queene and finds in it support for the argument that Spenser's greatest poem is essentially complete. Pastoral is a highly self-conscious genre, especially in Spenser's explorations of the imaginative world of Colin Clout. By bringing together Spenser's three versions of that world, Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral contributes to a richer appreciation of the pastoral works themselves and to a better understanding of the shape of Spenser's literary career as a whole. David R. Shore teaches English at the University of Ottawa.

Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral A Study of the World of Colin Clout DAVID R. SHORE

McGill-Queen's University Press Kingston and Montreal

McGill-Queen's University Press 1985 ISBN 0-7735-0577-6 Legal deposit 3rd quarter 1985 Bibliothèque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Shore, David R. Spenser and the poetics of pastoral Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-0577-6 1. Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599 - Criticism and interpretation. 2. Pastoral poetry, English History and criticism. I. Title. PR2364.S541985 821'.3 C85-O98534-X

Contents

Preface vii Introduction

3

I The Shepheardes Calender: The Moral Eclogues 7 1 The Problem of Unity 7 2 Pastoral Poetics 10 3 "February" 14 4 "May" 26 5 "July" 36 6 "September" 48 7 "October" 54 8 Conclusion 66 II The Shepheardes Calender: The Pastoral Image 68 1 "January" 69 2 "June" 74 3 Rosalind 80 4 "November" 86 5 "December" 91 6 Conclusion 102 III Spenser's Return to Pastoral in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe 105 1 The Shepherd and His Song 105 2 Ideal and Reality 113 3 The Poet of Love's Perfection 125 IV Pastoral and the End of Epic in The Faerie Queene 132

1 The Pastoral Retreat 132 2 The Heroic Image 146 3 Vision and Quest 160 Notes 171 Index 189

Preface

This book has had the benefit of example and friendship from friends and teachers at the University of British Columbia and the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, and from many colleagues and students at the University of Tel Aviv and the University of Ottawa. To all of them I would like to express my deep sense of gratitude. I would particularly like to thank Ruby Nemser, in whose graduate seminar my interest in Spenser's pastorals first began, and Robert Smallwood and A.C. Hamilton for encouragement and advice that helped the book and its author over some of their more difficult moments. My greatest debt is to my wife, Elizabeth, without whose support and assistance this book would not have been possible. Thank you. I am grateful to the editors of Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, English Studies in Canada, and Studies in Philology for permission to make use of material which originally appeared in somewhat different form in their journals. This book has been published with the help of grants from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and from the Department of English, University of Ottawa. All references to Spenser's text are to the Poetical Works, ed. J.C. Smith and E. de Selincourt (London: Oxford University Press, 1912). References to Shakespeare are to the Complete Works, ed. W.J. Craig (London: Oxford University Press, 1905). Quotations and translations of Virgil are from the Loeb Virgil, ed. and trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1934-35). I have normalized the use of u, v, vv, i, and j and expanded printers' contractions in all quotations.

To my Mother and the memory of my Father

Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

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Introduction

The publication of The Shepheardes Calender in 1579 was both a display and a promise of poetic achievement. Spenser's Calender, in spite of its veil of anonymity, proudly proclaims its author to be the disciple and heir of Virgil and Chaucer, one whose muse will elevate English verse to the lofty heights of a national epic. The Calender's own pastoral verses are only a beginning, a preliminary testing of poetic powers in a not too arduous field of endeavour: "So flew Virgile, as not yet well feeling his winges. So flew Mantuane ... Petrarque ... Boccace ... Marot, Sanazarus. ... So finally flyeth this our new Poete, as a bird, whose principals be scarce growen out, but yet as that in time shall be hable to keepe wing with the best."1 The true goal lies beyond, in the writing of heroic verse, "the best and most accomplished kind of Poetry."2 At the close of the Calender's December eclogue Colin's farewell to pastoral delights seems almost Spenser's own: Adieu delightes, that lulled me asleepe, Adieu my deare, whose love I bought so deare: Adieu my little Lambes and loved sheepe, Adieu ye Woodes that oft my witnesse were: Adieu good Hobbinol, that was so true, Tell Rosalind, her Colin bids her adieu. (151-6)

Soon Spenser was at work on The Faerie Queene, and by April 1580 he had already completed some portion of the poem by which he hoped to "overgo" Ariosto and his Orlando furioso.3 When the first three books were published in 1590 their opening lines left no doubt that promise was now being replaced by fulfilment:

4 Introduction Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske, As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds, Am now enforst a far unfitter taske, For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,

(i proem i)

The note of reticence scarcely qualifies the forward-looking confidence implicit in this imitation of those prefatory lines to the Renaissance text of the Aeneid in which Virgil takes one last glance at his pastoral apprenticeship before entering the world of heroic conflict. Spenser too, his imitation proclaims, has completed his apprenticeship and is ready to enter an epic world of his own making. But Colin Clout was not to be left behind. Twelve years after the publication of the Calender Spenser returned to the pastoral world and his pastoral persona in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (written 1591, published 1595). Described by its author as "agreeing with the truth in circumstance and matter," the poem recalls under pastoral guise the occasion of Ralegh's visit to Kilcolman in 1589 and the ensuing journey of the two poets to London and Elizabeth's court. Colin Clout clearly reflects Spenser's ambivalent response to court society and it also reflects his gratitude for Ralegh's "singular favours and sundrie good turnes."4 Yet the poem is not to be explained - or explained away - by its autobiographical origins. In 1591 Spenser was at work on the second instalment of the epic that was to justify his life as a poet and the lofty claims he had made on behalf of the art he served. Colin Clout is not "an occasional piece, an affectionate compliment, a trifle,"5 nor can it be justly dismissed as "a contradictory, unhappy, and ultimately personal story."6 Colin Clout is a complex and carefully wrought poem almost a thousand lines long. Spenser did not allow so major an interruption of his epic endeavours only to produce a complimentary gesture or a merely autobiographical reminiscence. For a man to whom poetry was, as he asserted, a "divine gift and heavenly instinct,"7 such indulgence would be somewhat akin to blasphemy. Colin Clout, then, raises important questions for our understanding of Spenser's poetic development. So too does his final return to Colin's pastoral world, in Book vi of The Faerie Queene (published 1596), where Sir Calidore, frustrated and wearied by his pursuit of the Blatant Beast, exchanges his armour for a shepherd's garb, gains the love of Pastorella, and resolves to abandon his "high beheast" and "set his rest amongst the rusticke sort" (x 2). Here he discovers Mount Acidale and glimpses the enchantment of the dance to the music of a shepherd's pipe:

5

Introduction

That jolly shepheard, which there piped, was Poore Colin Clout (who knowes not Colin Clout?) He pypt apace, whilest they him daunst about, (x 16)

For a few stanzas Spenser reassumes his pastoral persona in a realm where the poet is the creator of a song of joy, of harmonies which transcend the misfortunes of temporal existence: Pype jolly shepheard, pype thou now apace Unto thy love, that made thee low to lout: Thy love is present there with thee in place, Thy love is there advaunst to be another Grace,

(x 16)

But for those who are committed to heroic action - knight and epic poet alike - to seek to perpetuate this joy is necessarily a dereliction of duty: Who now does follow the foule Blatant Beast, Whilest Calidore does follow that faire Mayd, Unmyndfull of his vow and high beheast, Which by the Faery Queene was on him layd, That he should never leave, nor be delayd From chacing him, till he had it attchieved? (x i)

Acidale and Colin must be left behind. Calidore must confront the horrors of the brigands' cave and Spenser must face the slanders of the Blatant Beast: Ne may this homely verse, of many meanest, Hope to escape his venemous despite, More then my former writs, all were they clearest From blamefull blot, and free from all that wite, With which some wicked tongues did it backebite, And bring into a mighty Peres displeasure, That never so deserved to endite. (xii 41)

On Acidale the poet had reigned supreme; in the world dominated by the Beast he becomes the fearful author of lines whose hope is simply not to offend and which may at any moment be the object of the Beast's malevolence. Spenser first entered the world of Colin Clout to proclaim himself the "new Poete" who through the inspiration of his muse and the

6 Introduction

moral vision of his art would win poetic renown for himself and his nation. His final parting from Colin leads to a confrontation with a hostile world and the conclusion: "Therfore do you my rimes keep better measure, / And seeke to please, that now is counted wisemens threasure" (41). Spenser's professed intention in writing his epic was "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline."8 As William Nelson remarks, "'And seeke to please/ for Spenser, is as much as to say that he has abandoned his task."9 The Mutability Cantos, published posthumously in 1609, were still to come, but the heroic pursuit of virtue by the knight and poet of the Faerie Queene was at an end. The vision on Acidale and the threatened triumph of the Blatant Beast are related, I believe, as are Spenser's three versions of the world of Colin Clout. The following pages are an attempt to define the meaning of that world as it develops from The Shepheardes Calender, through Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, to the pastoral cantos of The Faerie Queene. The Calender receives the most attention, both because of its complexity and because a clear understanding of Spenser's use of pastoral in the Calender seems to me essential to an attempt to follow his further explorations of Colin's world. The final part of this study tries to explain why Spenser returns to pastoral in The Faerie Queene by examining the pastoral interlude of Book vi in terms of my interpretation of the Calender and Colin Clout. This examination cannot provide a substitute for a reading of the Legend of Courtesy as a whole, but it will, I hope, help to reveal the significance of the conjunction of the vision on Acidale with the descent into the brigands' cave - and the conclusion of both by the escape of the Blatant Beast and the end of epic.

CHAPTER I

The Shepheardes Calender: The Moral Eclogues

1

THE P R O B L E M OF U N I T Y

Though almost every recent commentator agrees that Spenser's Calender does in some way constitute a poetic unity, there is remarkably little agreement over the nature of that unity and the means by which it is achieved. Of course there is no argument over the importance of the calendar form, especially in view of the work that has been done to demonstrate the accuracy of the title-page description of the poem as "Conteyning twelve ^Eglogues proportionable to the twelve monethes."1 The correspondences between the thematic content of the individual eclogues and the traditional associations of their assigned months are as undeniable as the poem's pervasive seasonal references. Nevertheless, such correspondences do not do much to explain the sense of aesthetic unity which is part of our experience of reading the Calender. While it is possible to argue that "the calendar framework provides an all-inclusive unity" in which "the greatest possible variety ... by exhausting infinity leads paradoxically to oneness/'2 such an argument remains disturbingly abstracted from Spenser's actual text. After all, the argument could be (indeed has been) extended to so very different a twelve-book poem as Marcellus Palingenius' encyclopedic Zodiacus vitae, and could even be extended to such things as Thomas Tusser's various verse collections of Good Points, works divided into twelve monthly parts, each containing those points of husbandry or housewifery appropriate to the particular time of year.3 The unity of the Calender is not to be explained merely by what it shares with the Zodiacus and the Good Points. In the search for a more adequate definition of the Calender's unity than the calendar form itself provides, I begin by considering the form

8 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

of five individual eclogues, those classified by E.K., the poem's first commentator, as "moral."4 Joan Grundy several years ago remarked that "the world The Shepheardes Calender creates exists to be contemplated rather than entered; it presents to us a pure art-image, graceful and remote."5 There is little in recent criticism of the Calender to support this observation. The attempt, for example, to trace an unfolding "argument,"6 or the concentration on evaluating "debates between pastoral perspectives of varying but plausible legitimacy,"7 tends to obscure, if not necessarily preclude, the kind of response to which Joan Grundy is pointing. But she is, I think, pointing us in the right direction, and I want to suggest how the moral eclogues, "February," "May," "July," "September," and "October," can be seen as constituent parts of "a pure art-image" which "exists to be contemplated rather than entered." The moral eclogues are central to the critical difficulty in defining the unity of the Calender. Much of the poem seems an evident affirmation of the recreative values of the traditional pastoral ideal, an ideal of harmony which is preserved through the rejection of conflict and aspiration in favour of peace and contentment, friendship and love. However, any attempt to portray the Calender as "an assertion of the values of otium against the values associated with the aspiring mind"8 tends to be frustrated by the clear affirmation in the moral eclogues of a very different set of values. Hallett Smith, for example, in the very course of developing the preceding position, comments that the May eclogue "poses the question of the relative value of the gay, irresponsible pastoral life and the conscientious tending of sheep," and that "October" suggests that "the poet should turn to heroic poetry, celebrating deeds of greatness and becoming the spokesman for the national spirit," though Cuddie, the pastoral poet to whom this exhortation is addressed, "can approximate the high elevated style of truly inspired poetry only by imagining himself aroused by wine. "9 When figures who cling to the recreative ideal are characterized by their rejection of what is "conscientious" or by their inability to achieve "truly inspired poetry," we are clearly dealing with something more than a simple "assertion of the values of otium." In fact most criticism subsequent to Hallett Smith's 1952 study has attempted to account for this obvious complexity by postulating a polemical structure in which pastoral values are rejected in favour of some form of commitment to higher values. A.C. Hamilton, in an important article published in 1956, argues that "the pastoral life is identified with the antagonists in the moral eclogues," and when the "timeless pastoral world is placed in the order of time given by the Calendar form ... the simple pastoral life of enjoyable ease must then be rejected for the dedicated life where man does not live according to

9 The Moral Eclogues

Nature but seeks escape out of Nature."10 Such a formulation has the advantage of being in accord with the dialectic of the moral eclogues, but it is more difficult to reconcile with affirmation of recreative values in other eclogues, and it tends to provoke, as the critical tradition stemming (largely) from Hamilton's article suggests, some curious distortions of Spenser's text. Consider, for example, what has happened to Spenser's pastoral persona. Hamilton suggests a negative view of Colin's career when he describes the close of the December eclogue as the point at which "the poet casts off his pastoral disguise ... and frees himself from bondage to the pastoral life" (177). In much subsequent criticism the suggestion becomes outright denunciation. Colin has been described as "foolish and petulant"11 and castigated for refusing to "face life and place his art in the service of the public good."12 He has been characterized as an "anti-hero"13 or, more often, as a "failure,"14 condemned for having an "abnormal and obsessive" attitude to love,15 and virtually rejected as "morbidly egocentric, socially useless, sterile."16 He has, admittedly, in one instance been accorded salvation on the basis of a twelfth-eclogue repentance/7 and not all critics have been willing to accept the negative verdict of the majority.18 Nevertheless, it remains generally true that the attempt to formulate a principle of unity for the Calender has led to an unconvincing rejection of pastoral values and, in particular, of Spenser's pastoral persona, Colin Clout. "By Colin is ever meant the Authour selfe," we are told by E.K.,19 and the presentation of Colin as a disciple of Tityrus,20 the respect accorded him by his fellow shepherds, and the acknowledged excellence of his pastoral verses - the April lay of Eliza, the August sestina, the November lament for Dido - all suggest he is a character to be held in the highest esteem. I am unable to believe that his unwilling membership in the company of unfortunate lovers justifies the fate he has suffered at the hands of his critics. In fact, so slender is the textual evidence on which the condemnation is based that it seems to me to have been prompted at times less by Spenser's actual portrayal of Colin than by the need to accommodate theories of thematic unity to the perceived didactic emphases of the moral eclogues. It is not perhaps surprising that one sympathetic reader of Spenser has decided that while the Calender "is ostensibly a collection of twelve pieces unified by the device of the twelve months and by the pastoral convention, it is in fact heterogeneous enough for the claim of unity to seem specious."21 Nevertheless, the near unanimity of recent criticism in making such a claim does suggest that the poem's unity is a sufficiently real presence to warrant a fuller explanation than "the device of the

10 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

twelve months" and the poem's adherence to pastoral convention. I would certainly agree that "it is not helpful to seek to impose too definite a statement of aim or theme" (Bayley, 34), but the problem of unity in the Shepheardes Calender remains very real. Until it is solved, I do not believe that it is possible to attain an adequate understanding of Spenser's goals and achievements in the first important step of his literary career. 2

PASTORAL POETICS

The dominant characteristic of pastoral life is its commitment to tranquillity: Content who lives with tryed state, Neede feare no chaunge of frowning fate.

("September/' 70-1)

The imperatives of the moral eclogues are therefore initially puzzling and can cause a certain amount of confusion, particularly for those readers who have accepted the often stated view that pastoral is properly concerned with the celebration of rural harmony and simplicity and with the advocacy of a particular, "pastoral" philosophy of life.22 An influential study by Renato Poggioli describes pastoral as a "negative ethos" founded on a "wishful dream of a happiness to be gained without effort, of an erotic bliss made absolute by its own irresponsibility."23 While Poggioli's position is extreme, it is not unique. His attribution of pastoral to "a double longing after innocence and happiness, to be recovered not through conversion or regeneration, but merely through retreat" (i) is frequently echoed in other less pejorative definitions, as, for example, in Laurence Lerner's statement that nostalgia is the "basic emotion of pastoral," and in his description of pastoral poems as those which "long to escape from the centre to the simpler world of Arcadia."24 There are of course those who oppose the attitudes represented by Poggioli and Lerner - most notably, perhaps, Paul J. Alpers, who argues that it is a mistake to identify "pastoralism with a simple idyllicism,"25 and Helen Cooper, who similarly asserts that "the term has nothing to do with the modern tendency to make it almost a synonym for 'idyllic.'"26 Nevertheless, the belief that pastoral is essentially "the art of the backward glance"27 is pervasive enough in recent criticism to have hindered our understanding of a poem that is self-evidently not a simple celebration of the bucolic ideal. It may be useful, then, to preface an analysis of the Calender with the

ii The Moral Eclogues

assertion that pastoral is not by definition committed to a particular psychological stance or a particular "philosophical conception."28 There is, obviously, a certain amount of ground common to all pastoral literature - otherwise the generic term itself would be meaningless - but it is possible to speak of "the meaning of pastoral" only so long as we use the phrase to designate an imaginative concept that is present in, but less than the whole of, individual pastoral works. The first and universal matter of pastoral is, I think, that image of contentment which is most commonly embodied in the figure of a herdsman at peace with his environs, with the animals for whom he cares, and with himself, the harmony of whose life is reflected in the harmony of his music. This is the image we find at the beginning of pastoral tradition, the opening lines of Theocritus' first Idyll: There's subtle music in the whispers of that pine down by the spring; yet your piping, goatherd, rivals it... Sweeter, shepherd, and more subtle is your song than the tuneful splashing of that waterfall among the rocks.29

Theocritus' herdsmen occupy an enduring imaginative landscape, one that is glimpsed in every re-creation of pastoral recreation. At the heart of Sidney's Arcadia, for instance, the image reappears modified in detail but the same in essence: each pasture stored with sheep feeding with sober security, while the prety lambs with bleting oratory craved the dams comfort: here a shepheards boy piping, as though he should never be old: there a yong shepherdesse knitting, and withall singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voices musick.30

In one form or another this image underlies all versions of pastoral. The image, though, never circumscribes the meaning of a pastoral work; it provides too pure a strain to comprise alone the thematic substance of even a brief lyric. The pastoral poem, play, or romance may affirm, qualify, or condemn the ideal which the pastoral image conveys, but whatever an author's particular viewpoint, he always establishes in his work a frame of imaginative reference greater than that defined by the image itself. The pastoral ideal is timeless, the eternal song of the unfallen garden, but it becomes adequate

12 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

substance for literature only when it is disrupted, however slightly, by the temporal strains of a harsher song, one which speaks of frustrated love, of evil or ambition, of time and of death (et in Arcadia ego - the hint is present even in the above-quoted lines from Sidney's Arcadia}. Usually the discord is resolved and harmony re-established. Yet only in the process of disruption and resolution does pastoral exist as the imaginative substance of a literary form. The pastoral author himself, then, always stands outside the ideal. "The first condition of Pastoral," Frank Kermode observes, "is that it is an urban product."31 From the vantage point of urban sophistication the pastoralist perceives and creates a world that hovers somewhere between the stillness of the unfallen garden and the flux of the fallen city. "Pastoral depends upon an opposition between the simple, or natural, and the cultivated" (Kermode, 19), but it does not simply oppose town and country, urban reality and rural ideal. Rather it establishes an imaginative realm that participates in both while fully realizing neither. Pastoral never looks towards one without maintaining some awareness of the other, and the relative focus is subject to infinite variation. The possible structures of meaning in pastoral literature are therefore innumerable; in the Renaissance they are as likely to be concerned with the satiric portrayal of urban vices as with the lyric celebration of the loves of shepherds and shepherdesses. Both are equally inherent propensities of pastoral. Indeed, few Elizabethans would have understood the notion that pastoral arises or should arise from the desire to retreat into an idyllic realm of rural simplicity. They knew of the existence of that realm, if not from the Idylls of Theocritus,32 then at least from the pastoral romance of Sannazaro's Arcadia (1504) and later the pastoral drama of Tasso's Aminta (written and performed 1573, published 1580). Only rarely, however, as in Drayton, is the creation of such a realm to any significant extent the raison d'etre of an Elizabethan pastoral eclogue such a motivation seldom informs more than a simple song. The Elizabethans formed their expectations of pastoral largely from reading the Eclogues of Virgil, "in which are treated by figure matters of greater importance than the loves of Titirus and Cory don,"33 and from parsing the Latin and (if teachers' hopes were fulfilled) absorbing the "morall discipline" of the Eclogues of Baptista Spagnuoli, the "good old Mantuan" misquoted and eulogized by Shakespeare's Holofernes.34 Pastoral could also mean puzzling over the complex allegories in Petrarch's Bucolicum carmen (1357) with the necessary aid of a commentary, or perusing some of the religious and devotional verses, genethliaca, epithalamia, epicedia, panegyrics,

13 The Moral Eclogues

epinicia, courtly compliments, and contemporary and personal allegories contained in the numerous Latin and occasional vernacular eclogues of the humanists.35 The usual sixteenth-century approach to pastoral was more utilitarian than sentimental. Spenser's two predecessors in the writing of English pastorals certainly cared less for the bucolic ideal than for the moral concerns of the court and the city. Three of Alexander Barclay's five Certayne Egloges (c. 1514) are amplified translations of the didactic prose treatise De curialium miseriis (1444) by Aeneas Sylvius, later Pope Pius ii. The other two, based on Mantuan, are no less concerned with urban and courtly morality, and one manages to include a short "ballade extract of sapience" as well as a long "description of the Towre of vertue and honour, into the which the noble Hawarde contended to enter by worthy actes of chivalry."36 In the eight eclogues included in Barnabe Googe's Eglogs, Epytaphes, and Sonettes (1563) shepherds direct their attention to such unlikely topics as the decline of the old nobility under the pressure of the rising merchant class, the Marian persecutions and the fires of Smithfield (described allegorically), the spiritual dangers of a commitment to earthly love, and the false divinity of the pantheon of the pagan poets.37 Readers of pastoral show a similar concern for practical morality. When George Turberville introduces his 1567 translation of Mantuan he is sufficiently aware of the true nature of the English countryside to be moved to a rather ingenuous defence of the verisimilitude of Mantuan's shepherds, but he is at no pains to defend the literary propriety of their weighty discourse: They were not in that age such siellie sottes as our Shephierdes are nowe a dayes, onely having Reason by Experience to prate of their Pastures ... But these fellowes ... were well able both to move the doubtful cause, and (if neede were) to discide the proponed case. They not only knewe the Calfe from the Lambe, the Woulfe from the Mastife, but had reason to know the dyfference twixt Towne and Countrey, the oddes betwixt Vice and Vertue, and other thinges needefull and appertaining to the life of man.38

Turberville and his contemporaries had come to expect such knowledge from shepherds, at least those they encountered in literature. Puttenham gives evidence of this concern when he attacks the then common idea that pastoral is in its origins a primitive form of poetry by adducing another commonplace, the pastoral poet's sophistication of purpose: I do deny that the Eglogue should be the first and most auncient forme of

14 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral artificiall Poesie, being perswaded that the Poet devised the Eglogue long after the other drammatick poems, not of purpose to counterfait or represent the rusticall manner of loves and communication: but under the vaile of homely persons, and in rude speeches to insinuate and glaunce at greater matters, and such as perchance had not bene safe to have disclosed in any other sorte.39

Sidney defends pastoral with an accurate appeal to the inherent gravity of Virgil's first eclogue: "Is the poor pipe disdained, which sometime out of Meliboeus' mouth can show the misery of people under hard lords or ravening soldiers? And again, by Tityrus, what blessedness is derived to them that lie lowest from the goodness of them that sit highest."40 The conceptions of pastoral held by Mantuan, Barclay, Googe, and Sidney are far from identical. Nevertheless, for each of these authors, as for their readers, the real justification for pastoral is the understanding it provides of "thinges needefull and appertayning to the life of man" - matters more important than an indulgence in nostalgia or a celebration of the delights of even the most ideal shepherds. Spenser, too, makes his own approach to pastoral. But when he reviews his achievement in the completed Calender, he emphasizes not only its uniqueness but also its fulfilment of the goals common to any true pastoral commitment: And if I marked well the starres revolution, It shall continewe till the worlds dissolution. To teach the ruder shepheard how to feede his sheepe, And fronrthe falsers fraud his folded flocke to keepe. (Epilogue)

Spenser's insistence on the moral significance of his work is simply an assertion of its generic integrity.

3 "FEBRUARY" The moral emphasis is at its strongest in those five eclogues which, as E.K. describes them, "for the most part be mixed with some Satyrical bitternesse, namely the second of reverence dewe to old age, the fift of coloured deceipt, the seventh and ninth of dissolute shepheards and pastours, the tenth of contempt of Poetrie and pleasaunt wits" (419). "February," "May," and "July" are obviously similar in structure: each takes the form of a two-sided debate and each concludes with a fable told by one of the shepherds. "September" has no apparent debate and "October" has no fable. All five eclogues are

15 The Moral Eclogues

nevertheless closely related, structurally as well as thematically. Together they represent a singularly successful appropriation to pastoral of the medieval tradition of poetic debate. While the debate has certain debts to the classical amoebaean eclogue,41 the two traditions involve rather different perspectives. "The medieval modification was to shift the emphasis from the contestant's skill in singing or argument to the validity of the ideas they presented or represented: a shift from the personal to the general, or from the technical and particular to the moral and universal."42 The debate provides a framework for the conflict and equilibrium of ideas; it allows the poet to present opposing positions while often leaving his own a matter of doubtful inference or even indifference - though it is a matter of some importance who wins a debate between the Synagogue and the Church or the flesh and the spirit, what matters in a debate between wine and water or the lily and the rose is what can be said in favour of each. In the opportunity the debate provides simultaneously to affirm positions logically irreconcilable Spenser found a valuable and unexploited pastoral resource. "February" offers a clear demonstration of his way of proceeding. The clash between Cuddie and Thenot is generalized in typical debate fashion. Cuddie associates his own youth with the oncoming spring and Thenot's age with the passing winter: No marveile Thenot, if thou can beare Cherefully the Winters wrathfull cheare: For Age and Winter accord full nie, This chill, that cold, this crooked, that wrye. And as the lowring Wether lookes downe, So semest thou like good fryday to frowne. But my flowring youth is foe to frost, My shippe unwont in stormes to be tost. (25-32)

Thenot attacks youth for its presumption and lack of foresight: You thinken to be Lords of the yeare. But eft, when ye count you freed from feare, Comes the breme winter with chamfred browes, Full of wrinckles and frostie furrowes ... Then paye you the price of your surquedrie, With weeping, and wayling, and misery. (41-4, 49-50)

Cuddie attacks age for its envy and sterility:

16 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Now thy selfe hast lost both lopp and topp, Als my budding braunch thou wouldest cropp: But were thy yeares greene, as now bene myne, To other delights they would encline. (57-60)

Thenot ends the debate by telling the fable he learned from Tityrus about the Oak and the Briar, and although Cuddie dismisses it as "a long tale, and little worth," the fable demonstrates to Thenofs satisfaction, at least, the tragic folly of youth in failing to acknowledge the protective wisdom of age. The association of youth and spring, age and winter, is a commonplace. A similar opposition (with a slight seasonal variation) is established in The Debate and Stryfe betwene Somer and Wynter (c. 1 53°)/43 m which Summer, like Cuddie, is young and associated with love and the renewal of nature: I cause the trew lovers hartis to be amerous All birdes by me renew their songes glorious In the shadow under my bowes grene and copious. (2-4)

Winter, like Thenot, is old and chilled, and he too arouses the disdain of his youthful antagonist: Thou art very olde, as thynketh me; go, shave they here. I trow thou art very colde: for frosen is thy cote; As great a fyer nedfull is for the as wolde make an yron hote.

(18-20)

In both poems the conflict is universal. Cuddie and Thenot enact the recurrent confrontation between the old year and the new when, in the month of February, nature begins to move away from age, death, and winter towards a new birth, youth, and spring. There is, however, an important distinction to be drawn between Spenser's treatment of the seasonal debate and that of his anonymous predecessor. In the Debate and Stryfe the opposition takes the form of a conflict of lifestyles - youth preferring the country in summer; age, the court in winter. Both seasons have their advantages, then, and there is a genuine argument involved as to which is preferable. Similarly, in the first of the seasonal debate poems, the Caroline Conflictus veris et hiemis,44 the two seasons set forth their relative merits, and there is in fact a resolution when Palemon, acting as judge, decides in favour of Spring: Desine plura, Hiems; rerum tu prodigus, atrox. Et veniat cuculus, pastorum dulcis amicus. (45-6)

17 The Moral Eclogues Say no more, Winter, you gloomy despoiler, and let the cuckoo come, the delightful friend of the shepherds.

Spenser, in contrast, presents a debate which, in so far as it involves the opposition between youth and age, spring and winter, is essentially static, leaving open no possibility of a movement toward resolution.45 Critics have generally assumed that the eclogue centres on a resolvable point at issue between Cuddie and Thenot. Evidence of a resolution is normally found in the fable's demonstration of the mutual destruction which results from the hostility of the "bragging brere" to the "goodly Oake." The Oak and the Briar are easily identified with Thenot and Cuddie respectively - an identification which Thenot himself obviously intends - and the moral is then transferred from the fable to the introductory debate. Patrick Cullen favours Cuddie more than usual, but he does not represent a radical departure from normal critical practice when he maintains that "neither the old nor the new, neither youth nor age, neither spring nor winter, is sufficient unto itself. They must have the balance-inopposition of the natural year, its harmonious whole, or both perish. This is the teaching for the month of February."46 I would certainly agree that the fable of the Oak and the Briar shows a concern for the maintenance of social harmony, but it seems to me much less apparent that the introductory debate is concerned with the importance of preserving "the balance-in-opposition of the natural year" - or even the balance-in-opposition of youth and age. In fact, although the debate conveys the impression of being an argument, it contains, rather paradoxically, scarcely a single point of contention. Consider Spenser's development of the contrast between youth and age in terms of the herdsman's relation to his animals. Cuddie points first to his own herd: Seest, howe brag yond Bullocke beares, So smirke, so smoothe, his pricked eares? His homes bene as broade, as Rainebowe bent, His dewelap as lythe, as lasse of Kent. See howe he venteth into the wynd. Weenest of love is not his mynd? (71-6)

Then he points to Thenot's flock: Seemeth thy flocke thy counsell can, So lustlesse bene they, so weake so wan, Clothed with cold, and hoary wyth frost.

i8 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Thy flocks father his corage hath lost: Thy Ewes, that wont to have blowen bags, Like wailefull widdowes hangen their crags: The rather Lambes bene starved with cold, All for their Maister is lustlesse and old. (77-84)

Cuddie's animals, like himself, are young, energetic, and filled with a virile enthusiasm for life. Thenot's have sunk into impotence and sterility, and even the young offer no hope for the flock when their aged keeper is unable to protect them from the harshness of the season. When the choice is between life and death the question of preference can scarcely even arise. Cuddie's remarks are not to be read as the gratuitous insults of a flyting, but as valid observations in a pastoral landscape wherein the state of the herds is an accurate reflection of the state of their herdsman. Thenot does not contradict Cuddie's observations on the state of the contrasting herds - nor those on the nature of youth and age. He accepts that love and joy are conditions of youth, for he too once knew joy and, presumably, love: Selfe have I worne out thrise threttie yeares, Some in much joy, many in many teares. (17-18)

In his version of the ages of man, Thenot accepts also Cuddie's assessment of the joyless sterility of age: For Youngth is a bubble blown up with breath, Whose witt is weakenesse, whose wage is death, Whose way is wildernesse, whose ynne Penaunce, And stoopegallaunt Age the hoste of Greevaunce. (87-90)

Cuddie says that youth is to be enjoyed and grudges anything that impairs that enjoyment. Thenot does not deny that youth is more attractive than age. He offers no alternative to youth, he simply sets it in its temporal context. The joys of youth cannot last - "All that is lent to love, wyll be lost" - and man, faced with the inevitability of sorrow, can only accept what cannot be altered: Who will not suffer the stormy time, Where will he live tyll the lusty prime?

(15-16)

Man must abide misfortune in the hope of improvement, meanwhile performing his tasks as best he can - as Thenot has done, who never

19 The Moral Eclogues was to Fortune foeman, But gently tooke, that ungently came. And ever my flocke was my chiefe care, Winter or Sommer they mought well fare.

(21-4)

There is opposition between Cuddie and Thenot, but too little disagreement for there to be any real argument. There is a clear parallel to the first part of Spenser's February eclogue in a late fifteenth-century debate attributed to Robert Henryson, "The Ressoning betuixt Aige and Yowth."47 In this poem the narrator overhears the dialogue that ensues when a youth meets an old man. The former delights in his youth just as Cuddie does: My face is fair, my rigour will nocht faid: 0 yowth, be glaid in to thi flouris grene! (23-4)

Age, like Thenot, insists on the basis of experience that youth must pass: 1 wes within thir sexty yeiris and sevin Ane freik on fold bayth frak, forsy, and fre; Als glad, als gay, als yung, als yaip as ye. Bot now that day is ourdrevin and done; Luk thow my laythly lycome gif I le: O yowth, thy flouris fadis ferly sone! (27-32)

Youth thinks to tarry "At luvis law a quhyle," but Age replies with a sentiment similar to Thenot's "All that is lent to love, wyll be lost": thy fleschly lust thow sail defy, And pane the sail put fra parramour Than will no bird be blyth of the in bour, Quhen thi manheid sail mynnis as the mone. (43-6)

When Youth boasts that his "cors is clene without corruptioun," Age's reply suggests both Cuddie's description of Thenot's flock and Thenot's own description of the ages of man: This breif thow sail obey, sone, be thow bald; Thy stait, thi strenth, thocht it be stark and sterne, The feviris fell and eild sail gar the fald; Thy corpis sail clyng, thi curage sail vax cald,

2O Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Thy heill sail hynk and tak a hurt bot hone; Thy wittis fyve wall wane, thocht thow nocht wald. (58-63)

Youth's pleasures are undeniable; age's inevitability is unanswerable. After the departure of the two disputants the narrator draws the only possible conclusion: I abaid ondir the levis grene. Off the cedullis the suth quhen I had sene, On trewth, me thocht thai trevist in thair tone: "O yowth, be glaid in to thi flouris grene!" "O yowth, thi flouris fedis ferlie sone!" (68-72)

Between two such opposites reconciliation is neither necessary nor possible - their truths are different, but both are true. Spenser develops the seasonal conflict much more fully than does Henryson, but the relation between youth and age is essentially the same in the February debate as in the earlier one. If Cuddie and Thenot are to be judged in terms of the attractiveness and desirability of their respective positions, then Cuddie has all the advantages of life over death. If, however, they are to be judged in terms of their accuracy of analysis and appropriateness of response, then Thenot clearly has the advantage over an opponent who is so far from offering a solution that he does not even acknowledge there is a problem. The poem does not deny either basis of judgment - in fact, it rather demands both. There is, though, an important distinction to be drawn between Spenser's debate and Henry son's, one which points toward the need in the eclogue for the fable of the Oak and the Briar. Thenot, unlike Henryson's Age, does not simply observe the inevitability of change and decay, he also - and with complete generic propriety - recommends in response a doctrine of acceptance and responsibility: "ever my flocke was my chiefe care, / Winter or Sommer they mought well fare." Thenot's doctrine is a pastoral commonplace, his only means of asserting his allegiance to the pastoral ideal of harmony and contentment, and hence a means of maintaining his pastoral identity in the face of fortune and mutability. But when Thenot says that he has always fulfilled his pastoral responsibilities he raises moral issues of which he himself cannot be entirely aware. The shepherd's responsibility to his flock suggests by a time-honoured metaphor man's responsibility to man in an urban world wherein a Cuddie-like commitment to recreative values could only appear as a dereliction of duty. The pastoral context of Spenser's debate thus creates imagina-

21 The Moral Eclogues

tive tensions that are not present in Henry son's. There is in the February eclogue not only a literal debate between age and youth, winter and spring, but also a metaphorical debate between duty and irresponsibility, and though the former requires no resolution, the latter does. Thenot's responses to Cuddie raise for the eclogue's reader though not, I think, for the shepherds for whom pastoral is literal, not metaphorical - questions about the morality of approaching life with a proud disdain for the facts of our urban existence, an existence subject to the vicissitudes of fortune and requiring for survival mutual co-operation within a social order. The fable of the Oak and the Briar serves to resolve these questions. The world of the fable, like the pastoral world of its teller, is one in which youth and age have come into conflict. In the fable, however, youth is presented in a context quite different from the poetic setting in which Cuddie exists. Youth in the fable is unsupported and unjustified by the self-sufficient because imaginatively sustained pastoral ideal. In the fable's world, youth's division from age becomes a refusal to participate in the necessary order of society. And there can be no place in society for the destructive pride of a youth who would refuse all co-operation with those who embody the imperfections of age. Age, like the Oak, is admittedly liable to decay: For it had bene an auncient tree, Sacred with many a mysteree, And often crost with the priestes crewe, And often halowed with holy water dewe. But sike fancies weren foolerie, And broughten this Oake to this miserye. (207-12)

But though the Oak is not without faults, in an imperfect world mere destruction offers no solution. The youthful Briar knows only a brief moment of glory after the downfall of the Oak: "all this glee had no continuaunce. / For eftsones Winter gan to approche" (224-5). Exposed and alone, the Briar can stand no more: And being downe, is trodde in the durt Of cattell, and brouzed, and sorely hurt. Such was thend of this Ambitious brere, For scorning Eld. (234-8)

Time will pass, winter and age will come, and he who is alone and

22 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

unprepared will perish. The fable's analysis of the nature of temporal existence is limited, perhaps, but as far as it goes it is unexceptionable. There may be some doubt as to how particular a meaning the fable will bear. The decline of the Oak obviously suggests some reference to contemporary ecclesiastical affairs, and the portrayal of the Briar may well contain an allusion to a particular courtier. Spenser's moral stance in the fable is, however, quite unambiguous: pride is destructive; social order requires co-operation. The fable, then, does resolve the moral issues raised by the debate portion of the eclogue. Nevertheless, Thenot does not in any way "settle" the initial conflict between youth and age: youth is still characterized by the love and joy of springtime; age, by sorrow and the sterility of winter. Thenot's successful denigration of the "Ambitious brere" is not a denigration of the pastoral ideal. Cuddie is no more a briar than Thenot is an oak, and the young herdsman is not altogether unjustified in his personal dismissal of the fable as "a long tale, and little worth." The world of Thenot's fable reflects the pastoral world in which both he and Cuddie live. The Oak resembles Thenot at least in age. The Briar resembles Cuddie in its youth and is placed in a nominally pastoral setting: Yt was embellisht with blossomes fayre, And thereto aye wonned to repayre The shepheards daughters, to gather flowres, To peinct their girlonds with his colowres. And in his small bushes used to shrowde The sweete Nightingale singing so lowde. (118-23)

The two worlds are, nevertheless, actually quite different. The world of the fable is structured according to very non-pastoral hierarchies, without which the action of the fable could not occur: Yt chaunced after upon a day, The Hus-bandman selfe to come that way, Of custome for to servewe his grownd, And his trees of state in compasse rownd. Him when the spitefull brere had espyed, Causlesse complained, and lowdly cryed Unto his Lord, stirring up sterne strife: O my liege Lord, the God of my life, Pleaseth you ponder your Suppliants plaint, Caused of wrong, and cruell constraint, Which I your poore Vassall dayly endure. (143-53)

23 The Moral Eclogues

This is the verbal register and the drama of the court, not the pasture. The fable evokes a most unpastoral world of ambition, falsehood, and deceit: With painted words tho gan this proude weede, (As most usen Ambitious folke:) His colowred crime with craft to cloke. (160-2)

Cuddie has no place in such a world. When the Briar boasts, Seest, how fresh my flowers bene spredde, Dyed in Lilly white, and Cremsin redde, With Leaves engrained in lusty greene, Colours meete to clothe a mayden Queene,

(129-32)

its words certainly recall Cuddie's mention of his "flowring youth," but they nevertheless refer to an altogether different world where love aspires to the "Lilly white, and Cremsin redde" of conventional courtly beauty and which is ruled over by "a mayden Queene." In the world of the fable even love is characterized by division; in Cuddie's world love is quite different: Phyllis is myne for many dayes: I wonne her with a gyrdle of gelt, Embost with buegle about the belt. Such an one shepeheards woulde make full faine: Such an one would make thee younge againe. (64-8)

Cuddie affirms the value of an ideal wherein love is simple - and the only ambition is to avoid discomfort: So longe have I listened to thy speche, That grafted to the ground is my breche: My hartblood is welnigh frorne I feele, And my galage growne fast to my heele: But little ease of thy lewd tale I tasted. (241-5)

Cuddie might well wonder why he is forced to endure such discomfort while Spenser's fable unfolds to establish the culpability of pride and ambition in a world Cuddie has never known - but then the demands of pastoral poetry are greater than the simple needs of the shepherd.

24 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

"February" has a more obvious moral significance and a more complex imaginative structure than its commentators generally allow. Cuddie clearly and emphatically affirms the pastoral ideal. Characterized by youth, spring, love, and joy, the ideal is the imaginative centre of the February eclogue, The Shepheardes Calender, and the entire pastoral tradition. The eclogue's poetic affirmation of the ideal is absolute. Thenot does not deny that Cuddie's position embodies an ideal, but he does expose its limitations in the context of temporal reality. For Thenot himself, the difficulties caused by these limitations are resolved by a sorrowful acceptance of change and decay as inevitable features of pastoral life. The eclogue requires a further resolution, however. Locating a debate between youth and age in a pastoral context involves presenting the pastoral ideal from the contrasting viewpoints of art and life. In such a situation pastoral is inevitably metaphorical, but the introduction of this metaphorical dimension raises moral questions that cannot, like the question of pastoral ideal versus pastoral reality, simply be left in static equilibrium. The debate, in other words, raises moral issues which extend beyond the confines of pastoral itself. In "February" these issues are only implicit, perhaps, but their presence is nevertheless definite enough to require a resolution to the complex of problems which is suggested by a conflict between youth and age when that conflict is translated into a non-pastoral, urban setting. Spenser's integration of the medieval poetic debate with the classical amoebaean eclogue involves a difficult aesthetic problem to which the fable is a singularly successful solution.48 The fable, a transparent reflection of the hierarchical world of the city and the court, provides the necessary extra-pastoral context in which the moral ambiguities of the debate can be resolved and the priority established (for the reader, not the characters of the eclogue) of a non-pastoral commitment to the preservation of ethical values in the social order. The fable, moreover, provides this extra-pastoral context without destroying the generic unity of the eclogue. However transparent the metaphors of the fable may be to the reader of the Calender, the fable's action is comprehensible (though imperfectly) to the characters of the debate entirely in pastoral terms. The fable is, after all, a pastoral poem. It was taught to a shepherd by a shepherd: a tale of truth, Which I cond of Tityrus in my youth, Keeping his sheepe on the hils of Kent. (91-3)

Now it is told to another shepherd as a tale about the harmful

25 The Moral Eclogues

consequences that can result when youth is disrespectful to age. The knowledge that youth can be unkind to age and that the passage of time brings on the harshness of winter is sufficient to explain Thenot's understanding of the fable. He need have no knowledge of its full range of allusion. Critics, I think, have often been misled by the debate that begins the eclogue into attempting to read the entire poem as though it were structured according to a dialectic whose terms can be abbreviated as youth and age. In fact, there are three terms in the eclogue's imaginative structure, and if two of them are youth and age, the third, established by the fable, comprises youth and age together. Each term is part of a unified poetic whole, but each has different characteristics. One term is Cuddie's world of the pastoral ideal - a timeless world whose values seek simply to preserve its inhabitant's delight in his own youthful nature. Another term is the temporal world of urban reality, where youth and age are necessarily linked by their common participation in the social order. This is the world suggested by Thenot's references to pastoral duty and clearly evoked by the metaphors of the fable. In this world the values of the pastoral ideal become immoral - which is certainly not to say that they are immoral in a pastoral context- and other values are clearly required (though they are not in "February" defined, except in so far as it is clear that they must be adapted to a hierarchical environment troubled by evil desires and deeds and subject to the sway of time and fortune). The final term is the world of Thenot. Like Cuddie's, it is a pastoral world, affirming the value of the pastoral ideal and accepting pastoral values of harmony and contentment. Like the world of the fable, however, it is also a temporal world and therefore pervaded by a sense of the practical limitations of the ideal and its necessarily transient nature. Being pastoral, this world can propose no solution for change and decay other than a quiet acceptance of whatever time and fortune may bring. It is worth noticing that each of these imaginative spheres can be differentiated in tone according to E.K.'s three-fold division of the Calender's eclogues into recreative, moral, and plaintive. Cuddie's world of joy and delight is essentially recreative, and all the seriousness of tone in his debate with Thenot is on the side of the latter.49 The world of the fable is, in E. K.' s sense of the word, moral - it is a world where actions are defined in ethical terms. Thenot's world is essentially plaintive, defined in terms of its awareness of loss, and, like all pastoral lamentation, is concerned with the preservation of harmony in spite of loss. We shall have occasion to see that all of the moral eclogues possess, with varying degrees of emphasis, a similar tripartite tonal structure.

26 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

Finally, the point should be made that the three worlds of Cuddie, Thenot, and the fable do in fact comprise a poetic unity. Thenot's plaintive point of view has empirical authority over Cuddie's, which is idealistic, and, being pastoral, it also has formal authority over the fable's, which is urban. It thus provides an inclusive conceptual framework, and the unity of the eclogue can be defined in terms of Thenot's imaginative position. "February," then, is an affirmation of pastoral life which at the same time recognizes that, given the temporal nature of existence, the pastoral can never actually realize the ideal on which it is based (except, of course, poetically). In the course of defining his position Thenot glances, as only the Calender's author and reader are fully aware, at a world outside the pastoral altogether. In this glance there is at least a suggestion that the pastoral, for all its poetic beauty, is not a sufficient ground for human endeavour.50 In the urban world of the fable man must still encounter the harshness of winter, but possibly he could also try to minimize its effects by taking actions impossible for the shepherd who is committed to pastoral tranquillity. Outside the bounds of pastoral man could, perhaps, act to prevent not simply the cutting down of an oak, but the much more serious destruction the husbandman's deed represents. The suggestion of an alternative course of non-pastoral action is muted in "February," but it becomes stronger in "May" and succeeding eclogues.

4 "MAY" Both "February" and "May" are in various ways concerned with problems of time and morality, but whereas the primary emphasis in "February" is on the mere fact of time, in "May" the chief emphasis is on the moral wrongs which the temporal world inevitably contains. "May," again like "February," is initially structured as a debate and concludes with a fable. Critics have long assumed that the debate constitutes an argument over theological doctrine and ethics, and Patrick Cullen is quite orthodox when he states that "the debate ... centers around the role of the priest in the world, with Palinode defending a more worldly priesthood and Piers a more otherworldly priesthood."51 Obviously questions about the role of the priest are raised for the reader by the debate - very clearly, for example, when Piers remarks, "Ah Palinodie, thou art a worldes childe" - but if the debate is for Piers and Palinode a dispute over so important a matter as priestly conduct, we might reasonably expect such antagonism to issue in some form of overt hostility. Instead, we find that Palinode asks Piers to tell him the tale of the Fox and the Kid "of felowship." On

27 The Moral Eclogues

its conclusion, Palinode asks to borrow Piers' tale "For our sir John, to say to morrowe / At the Kerke," and he is so far from objecting to Piers' moral exemplum that he amicably agrees, "if Foxes bene so crafty, as so, / Much needeth all shepheards hem to knowe." Spenser's unwillingness dramatically to stress the conflict between the two shepherds suggests the desirability of postponing a leap into the realm of theological controversy in order first of all to reassess the grounds of their opposition. At the beginning of the eclogue Palinode looks on the world about him and sees the mery moneth of May, When love lads masken in fresh aray ... thilke same season, when all is ycladd With pleasaunce: the grownd with grasse, the Woods With greene leaves, the bushes with bloosming Buds. (1-2, 6-8)

Many have shared Palinode's vision: May, with alle thy floures and thy grene, Welcome be thou, faire, fresshe May, In hope that I som grene gete may.52

What Palinode sees is a world amenable to the late medieval and the Renaissance imagination, one that even minor poets could capture in the pure strains of pastoral song: In the merry moneth of May, In a morne by breake of day, Foorth I walked by the Wood side, When as May was in his pride: There I spied all alone, Phillida and Condon.53

May is a propitious time for encountering the inhabitants of a pleasance where shepherds lead lives of love and song, of harmony and simplicity: To see those folkes make such jouysaunce, Made my heart after the pype to daunce. Tho to the greene Wood they speeden hem all, To fetchen home May with their musicall: And home they bringen in a royall throne,

28 Spenser anci the Poetics of Pastoral Crowned as king: and his Queene attone Was Lady Flora, on whom did attend A fayre flocke of Faeries, and a fresh bend Of lovely Nymphs. (25-33)

The nymphs and faeries clearly locate Palinode's vision. The world in which he delights is the ideal realm that was known before their deaths by Theocritus' Daphnis and Milton's Lycidas, that realm which Virgil's Meliboeus lost in the upheavals of the Roman civil wars and which his Tityrus will continue to possess forever. Palinode is only a looker-on, but the pastoral ideal holds his loyalties and his heart: (O that I were there, To helpen the Ladyes their Maybush beare) Ah Piers, bene not thy teeth on edge, to thinke, How great sport they gaynen with little swinck? (33-6)

Piers, however, does not agree, for he sees a very different world: Perdie so farre am I from envie, That their fondnesse inly I pi tie. Those faytours little regarden their charge, While they letting their sheepe runne at large, Passen their time, that should be sparely spent, In lustihede and wanton meryment. Thilke same bene shepeheards for the Devils stedde, That playen, while their flockes be unfedde. (37-44)

The accent here is not of Theocritus or Sannazaro but of Ezekiel: "Thus saith the Lorde God unto the shepheardes, wo be unto the shepheardes of Israel that feede them selves: should not the shepheards feede the flockes?"54 The spiritual overtones continue in Piers' description of those whose sheepe bene not their owne, That letten them runne at randon alone. But they bene hyred for little pay Of other, that caren as little as they, What fallen the flocke, so they han the fleece. (45-9)

Piers' words recall another hireling and another shepherd: "I am the good sheephearde. A good sheephearde, geveth his lyfe for the

29 The Moral Eclogues

sheepe. An hyrelyng, and he which is not the sheephearde, neither the sheepe are his owne, seeth the wolfe commyng, and leaveth the sheepe, and fleeth, and the wolfe catcheth, and scattereth the sheepe" (John 10.11-12). Many dangers surround the shepherds' pastures. "The churche hathe many mortall enemyes and continuall warre with them without any peace or truce": these are the words of the Puritan reformer Walter Travers,55 fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, while Spenser was at Pembroke. In such a world, Travers goes on to say, both the rewards and the duties of the shepherd must be centred on his sheep: "should not those shepeherdes be fedde [with] the milke, and clothed with the flece and wolle of there flockes who susteine for the flockes cause the assaultes of most greevous wolves, and watch for them day and night, suffring the parching heate and chillinge cold for ther cause, who feede them oversee them and seeke them and, often tymes put ther life in extreame danger to defend them." Both literally and metaphorically this is a pastoral world far removed from the simple pleasance Palinode desires. Piers, though, sees clearly that he inhabits a world of duty and responsibility: Shepheard, I list none accordaunce make With shepheard, that does the right way forsake.

(164-5)

Equivocation is precluded by his heritage. Piers is a descendant of Langland's fourteenth-century Plowman who, in the eyes of the sixteenth century, had attacked the spiritual corruption of his day in a courageous prophecy of the work of the Reformation.56 The B text of Piers Plowman, edited to give it a Protestant emphasis, was printed by Robert Crowley in 1550 and reprinted from Crowley's text by Owen Rogers in 1561. The figure of Piers was popular with Tudor polemicists who shared Langland's indignation even if they lacked his compassion and were totally without his genius. Works like the Prayer and Complaynt of the Ploweman unto Christ (1531), the Plowman's Tale (c. 1400; published 1535, incorporated into the Chaucer canon 1542), 7 Playne Piers (1546-7), and Pierce the Ploughmans Crede (1393-4; published 1553) were written or revived to set forth the theological doctrines of the reformers and, more characteristically, to expose the abuses of a clergy more interested in its own temporal aggrandizement than in the spiritual welfare of the laity. Spenser's Piers has the spiritual orientation and the aggressive morality of his predecessors. The particular targets of these predecessors vary, but the beginning of Pierce's description of the decay prevalent in the monastic orders in the Ploughmans Crede is typical of the mode of attack:

30 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral A brother quath he tho, beware of tho foles. For Christ seyde hymself, of swhiche I you warne And false profetes in the feith, he fulliche hem calde, In vestimentis ovium, but only with inne They ben wilde werwolves, that wiln the folke robben. The fen founded hem first, the feyth to distrie And by his craft thei comen in, to combren the chirche. By the covetise of his craft, the curates to helpen But nowe they haven an hold, they harmen ful manye They don nought after Dominik, but dreccheth the puple. Ne folwen nought Fraunceis, but falsliche lybben. And Austynes rewle they rekeneth but a fable, But purchaseth hem privilege of Popes at Rome.57

The Piers of the Calender's May eclogue has shifted his stance to meet the abuses prevalent in the Anglican church of 1579, and he reflects something of contemporary Puritan concern about the remnants of Papist ceremony in the Anglican service.58 He remains true to his ancestry, though, and in his speech there is the same use of biblically based pastoral metaphors and the same conviction that the present has perverted the ideals of the past: Tho gan shepheards swaines to looke a loft, And leave to live hard, and learne to ligge soft: Tho under colour of shepeheards, somewhile There crept in Wolves, ful of fraude and guile, That often devoured their owne sheepe, And often the shepheards, that did hem keepe. This was the first sourse of shepheards sorowe, That now nill be quitt with baile, nor borrowe. (124-31)

The suggestion in Piers' words of Matthew 7.15 - "Beware of false prophet.es, which come to you in sheepes clothyng: but inwardly they are ravening woolfes" - is more fully developed in "September." In the May eclogue it helps to emphasize the fact that Piers' attacks are not manifestations of a gratuitous anticlericalism, but are rather attempts to defend the church from the moral and spiritual decay which is nourished by its enemies within and without. Piers is a figure of strong authority both in literary tradition and within the May eclogue itself. In "May," as in "February," Spenser's moral stance is clear. I see no justification for assuming that Piers' position is in some way undercut by Palinode's or is insufficiently realistic to convey without qualification the ethical statement of the

31 The Moral Eclogues

eclogue. At the same time, I think it is equally clear that we are not expected simply to dismiss Palinode as a moral reprobate. Admittedly the condemnation of Palinode has impressive support. E.K., for example, characterizes Piers and Palinode as Protestant and Catholic (Argument), and Milton describes Palinode as a "false Shepheard ... under whom the Poet lively personates our Prelates, whose whole life is a recantation of their pastorall vow."59 Obviously the portrayal of Palinode does function to condemn false prelates. Nevertheless, I think it is important to recognize that Spenser's speakers are shepherds, not "parish priests" (as Anthea Hume, for instance, describes them),60 and to refuse to allow the vehicles of Spenser's metaphors simply to be displaced by their tenors. Palinode is not the direct object of Piers' attacks; he is self-evidently not a gaper after "greedie governaunce," and he is in fact amoral - or even pre-moralrather than culpably immoral. However slight the moral value of Palinode's position, its imaginative value, in what is after all a pastoral poem, is great. The emphasis in "May" is different than in "February," but the positions of Palinode and Piers do resemble those of Cuddie and Thenot. Piers, like Thenot, sees a world subject to mutability and decay: The time was once, and may againe retorne, (For ought may happen, that hath bene beforne) When shepeheards had none inheritaunce, Ne of land, nor fee in sufferaunce ... But tract of time, and long prosperitie: That nource of vice, this of insolencie, Lulled the shepheards in ... securitie. (103-6, 117-19)

Palinode is aware that the pressures of time exist, but he, like Cuddie, would prefer to direct his gaze to a timeless world of youth, love, and joy and to ignore unpleasant realities: Sorrowe ne neede be hastened on: For he will come without calling anone. While times enduren of tranquillitie, Usen we freely our felicitie. For when approchen the stormie stowres, We mought with our shoulders beare of the sharpe showres. (152-7)

Unlike Cuddie and Thenot, Palinode and Piers are both "men of elder witt" and can thus reach a measure of agreement impossible for the

32 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

shepherds of "February." Nevertheless, if Palinode and Piers do not embody opposing states of being, they do adopt very different perspectives. The result is to establish the effective presence in the poem of two quite different worlds, each requiring for its preservation the values affirmed by its particular beholder. Because each world is governed by different criteria, both coexist with equal authority. The distinction between the two worlds is emphasized at the conclusion of the debate portion of the eclogue, just before Piers tells the fable of the Fox and the Kid. Palinode has urged the replacement of contention by concord, but Piers dismisses the plea with scorn: For what concord han light and darke sam? Or what peace has the Lion with the Lambe? (168-9)

For Piers, as for Paul, whose words Piers echoes (2 Corinthians 6.14), the questions are merely rhetorical, but for the reader they help to define not only the moral basis of Piers' position but also the imaginative basis of Palinode's. Righteousness can have no fellowship with unrighteousness, but to a vision not bound by fallen conditions the concord of light and dark is apparent: And after these, there came the Day, and Night, Riding together both with equall pase. (FQ, vn vii 44)

Only in our fallen world is peace between the lion and the lamb an evident impossibility: For once the Lion by the Lambe did lie; The fearefull Hinde the Leopard did kisse.61

Piers' questions suggest not that Palinode's desire for concord is immoral, but that Palinode fails to acknowledge the reality of the fall. Piers' moral superiority to Palinode is as unequivocal as Thenot's to Cuddie. Neither Palinode nor Cuddie, however, really adopts a moral stance at all. Piers beholds a world which, although pastoral, is defined by its decline from that unfallen ideal in which the conditions for evil do not exist: Well ywis was it with shepheards thoe: Nought having, nought feared they to forgoe. For Pan himselfe was their inheritaunce, And little them served for their mayntenaunce. The shepheards God so wel them guided,

33 The Moral Eclogues That of nought they were unprovided, Butter enough, honye, milke, and whay, And their flockes fleeces, them to araye. (109-16)

Palinode's allegiance is to just such a prelapsarian world, a world that is both pastoral and ideal - and one in which Piers' criteria of judgment can rightfully be dismissed as irrelevant: What shoulden shepheards other things tend, Then sith their God his good does them send, Reapen the fruite thereof, that is pleasure, The while they here liven, at ease and leasure? (63-6)

Palinode sees a world devoid of those hierarchies that nourish the aspiring mind, a world where the necessity for struggle is precluded by the harmony between man and man and between man and God. In such a world it is neither bold nor sinful to seize the day. It is simply good sense.62 Palinode's commitment to pleasure and present satisfaction is, in effect, an affirmation of what Hallett Smith calls the "ideal of the good life, of the state of content and mental self-sufficiency."63 The ability to uphold the ideal of pastoral life is, as Ralegh's pragmatic nymph realizes, always dependent on a refusal to recognize the implications of time: The flowers doe fade, and wanton fieldes, To wayward winter reckoning yeeldes.64

Carpe diem, says Palinode, For when they bene dead, their good is ygoe, They sleepen in rest, well as other moe. Tho with them wends, what they spent in cost, But what they left behind them, is lost. (67-70)

Only by denying time's authority is he able to maintain his adherence to pastoral values within the temporal context established by Piers' condemnation of irresponsibility. The ethical value of Palinode's response may be inadequate in the face of the issues raised by Piers' affirmation of duty and future accountability, but these issues do not really pertain to Palinode - or, if they do, as the eclogue's conclusion seems to suggest, they do so only because he is unable to participate in the pastoral ideal he so wistfully beholds.

34 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

"May," then, exhibits substantially the same debate structure as "February." The earlier eclogue uses the traditional debate terms of youth and age to reflect two versions of pastoral, one an affirmation of the pastoral ideal, the other a denial of its possibility. In "May" the same polarity is directly established through contrasting two different kinds of pastoral activity, one based on a commitment to pleasure, the other based on a commitment to duty. The emphasis on modes of action rather than on states of being enables Spenser to develop more fully the metaphorical implications of an image which Thenot could only briefly suggest, the image of the shepherd caring for his flock: I muse, what account both these will make, The one for the hire, which he doth take, And thother for leaving his Lords taske, When great Pan account of shepeherdes shall aske.

(51-4)

For Spenser's reader the shepherd becomes a metaphor for the ruler of men,65 and the god of shepherds a metaphor for the God of all. Nevertheless, the undoubted moral supremacy of Piers should not lead us to overlook the stability of the eclogue's initial debate structure and to assume that "May" must somehow move towards a resolution - either through a rejection of Palinode's position as morally reprehensible (the eclogue as polemical treatise) or through the establishment of a mean position ("what Spenser really thinks") between Palinode's irresponsible devotion to pleasure and Piers' rigid commitment to duty. Either assumption oversimplifies Spenser's rhetorical strategies in a poem wherein both positions have absolute authority in their own very different fields. It is important to remember that however transparently Piers may be speaking in metaphors that portray the ethical and spiritual realities of Elizabethan ecclesiastical life, his words function as metaphors only for the reader of the eclogue, not for its characters. Within the literal confines of the shepherds' debate, Piers portrays to Palinode a world in which literal shepherds have neglected literal flocks and where the beasts that threaten to devour the sheep are nothing more (nor less) than wolves. In this context Palinode's assertion of the delights of the pastoral ideal has equal validity with Piers' assertion of the duties incumbent on the inhabitants of a fallen pastoral reality. The two positions are as distinct and as self-justifying as the February eclogue's assertions of the timeless delights of youth and the temporal realities of age. The value of the pastoral ideal is not denied by the (pastoral) insistence that a recognition of the implications of the fall is a pragmatic necessity in an unfortunately fallen world.

35 The Moral Eclogues

As a literal assertion of non-contiguous positions, the debate between Piers and Palinode requires no resolution. However, in so far as both positions participate in a metaphorical portrayal of contemporary ecclesiastical conditions, the debate raises moral issues which clearly do require a resolution. When Palinode asks, What shoulden shepheards other things tend, Then sith their God his good does them send, Reapen the fruite thereof, that is pleasure, The while they here liven, at ease and leasure? (63-6)

his words are quite irreproachable so long as they are taken, as their speaker intends, to refer to an actual shepherd living in an idyllic setting of prelapsarian innocence. But this assertion of pastoral values takes on a very different significance when it is seen in relation to the far from ideal state of the Elizabethan clergy in 1579. The metaphorical overtones of Piers' speeches require the reader to think of the shepherd of souls as well as the shepherd of sheep. Palinode, Milton's words notwithstanding, is not himself one of the false shepherds who are the true objects of Milton's wrath, as of Spenser's. But Palinode's advocacy of pastoral values that are proper only to a poetic ideal is in "May" placed in a context that necessarily raises the question of the moral validity of those values when they are adhered to in a society that is hierarchical, subject to time and decay, and threatened by the forces of evil. In "May," as in "February," the metaphorical dimensions of the debate thus establish a tension which cannot be resolved within the debate itself. Here too the tension is resolved by Spenser's use of the fable. Piers' tale of the Fox and the Kid is comprehensible in pastoral terms, but at the same time it is removed from the setting which is occupied by the eclogue's pastoral characters. Like the February fable of the Oak and the Briar, the May fable is set in a world where fortune holds sway. The Kid's father would have enjoyed the sight of his son, But ah false Fortune such joy did him spight, And cutte of hys dayes with untimely woe, Betraying him into the traines of hys foe. (198-200)

It is also, as the Goat tells her Kid, a world where danger is a constant but hidden threat: Kiddie (quoth shee) thou kenst the great care, I have of thy health and thy welfare,

36 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Which many wyld beastes liggen in waite, For to entrap in thy tender state: But most the Foxe, maister of collusion: For he has voued thy last confusion. (215-20)

Evil here as in "February" works by deceit. When the Fox comes disguised as a pedlar, "Bearing a trusse of tryfles at hys backe" and claiming to be "a poore Sheepe, albe my coloure donne/' the Kid is deceived by the Fox's appearance and fatally attracted by his wares: Tho shewed his ware, and opened his packe, All save a bell, which he left behind In the bas-ket for the Kidde to fynd. Which when the Kidde stooped downe to catch, He popt him in, and his basket did latch. (287-91)

For Piers and Palinode the fable shows the need to keep a close watch against crafty foxes; for the reader of the eclogue the fable amplifies the portrayal of ecclesiastical affairs initiated in the debate and demonstrates the importance of maintaining an active vigilance against the enemies of the church, who hide behind a false show of piety and lead the ignorant to spiritual destruction with the deceitful attractions of papist ceremony.66 "May/' like "February," establishes the inadequacy of the pastoral ideal to the demands of moral activity at the same time as it asserts the poetic value of the ideal and laments its inevitable vulnerability to temporal decay. Where Palinode would rejoice in the delights of an ideal whose worth he affirms, Piers points to the existence of evils which he can only descry and deplore. But in the world that Piers evokes by his pastoral metaphors and in the non-pastoral world suggested by the fable - both worlds the same, and one in which Piers himself cannot actually participate - an awareness of evil is not only an occasion for complaint but also an imperative directed towards action. This action cannot be realized or even initiated within the pastoral confines of the May eclogue, but its necessity is clearly demonstrated. 5 "JULY" In "July" Spenser develops a suggestion from Mantuan's eighth eclogue and presents a dialogue between an upland goatherd, Morrell, and a lowland shepherd, Thomalin. Spenser borrows heavily from Mantuan (from his seventh eclogue as well as his

37 The Moral Eclogues

eighth), but the structure of Spenser's eclogue is entirely his own. The most common view of "July" goes back as far as E.K.'s prefatory Argument: "This /Eglogue is made in the honour and commendation of good shepeheardes, and to the shame and disprayse of proude and ambitious Pastours. Such as Morrell is here imagined to bee." The antithesis between the way of humility and the life of pride comes easily to both conventional morality and pastoral tradition, and when Hallett Smith follows and expands upon E.K. he is in agreement with most modern criticism of the eclogue: "Thomalin represents the Puritan ideal of a clergy unelevated, humble, and devoted to pastoral care, while Morrell represents the Catholic or Anglican clergy gloating in worldly pomp; most general and most significant of all, Thomalin represents the mean estate, the central theme of pastoralism, and Morrell embodies the aspiring mind."67 Hallett Smith is undoubtedly correct in his identification of Thomalin as a representative of the "mean estate," for Thomalin states very clearly his adherence to the pastoral doctrine of retreat: In humble dales is footing fast, the trode is not so tickle: And though one fall through heedlesse hast, yet is his misse not mickle. (13-16)

It is difficult, however, to see where in the eclogue Morrell shows himself to be "gloating in worldly pomp," or even to have any interest in joining the ranks of those "proude and ambitious Pastours" who would undoubtedly view with disdain the simple hill in which Morrell takes such delight. Moreover, Thomalin and Morrell, like Piers and Palinode, are curiously lacking in mutual hostility for characters supposedly possessing a deep-rooted antipathy. And though, at the close of the eclogue, the two herdsmen remain divided in their choice of physical location, in their esteem for the unfortunate Algrind they are in complete agreement. In order to understand what Spenser is doing in "July," it is necessary first of all to clarify his treatment of Morrell. When Thomalin speaks of the "Goteherd prowd that sitting hye, / upon the Mountaine sayles," it is easy enough, perhaps, to identify the proud goatherd with Morrell and to carry this identification over into Thomalin's subsequent attack on those herdsmen who "reigne and rulen over all, / and lord it, as they list." It is worth noting, though, that when Thomalin departs from his specific image of the hill-sitting herdsman to an attack on seekers of metaphorical heights, his reference changes from a possibly particular goatherd to a general class of shepherd:

38 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Ygirt with belts of glitterand gold, (mought they good sheepeheards bene) Theyr Pan theyr sheepe to them has sold, I saye as some have seene. (177-80)

Not only does this change of reference suggest the inadequacy of any attempt to assign the two herdsmen to moral categories according to a division between the sheep and the goats,68 it also suggests that the goatherd Morrell is not even the nominal object of Thomalin's attack on ambition. In fact the closer we look at "July," the more difficult it becomes to see in Morrell any greater trace of the "aspiring mind" so often attributed to him than a preference, entirely appropriate to a keeper of goats, for physical heights.69 But if Morrell has nothing to say about ambition, he does have more to say in defence of the hills than that they are a good place to raise goats. Spenser begins Morrell's defence by having him follow the lead of Mantuan (8.50-1) in praising the hills for their association with the saints: For sacred unto saints they stond, and of them han theyr name. S. Michels mount who does not know, that wardes the Westerne coste? And of S. Brigets bowre I trow, all Kent can rightly boaste. (39-44)

Morrell is not displaying any papist tendencies here. Spenser naturalizes the poem's geographical references and he does not follow Mantuan (8.51-5) in listing mountains famous as monastic sites. When Thomalin later refers back to this part of Morrell's defence, he is only apparently delivering a rebuttal: The hylls, where dwelled holy saints, I reverence and adore: Not for themselfe, but for the sayncts, Which han be dead of yore. And nowe they bene to heaven forewent, theyr good is with them goe: Theyr sample onely to us lent, that als we mought doe soe. (113-20)

Thomalin clarifies the Protestant stance of the eclogue by rejecting the notion that the dwelling places of the saints can impart merit to their

39 The Moral Eclogues

visitants, but Morrell himself has never advanced this idea. The two herdsmen agree fully that the association of the hills with the saints renders the heights worthy of praise - though there is a slight but significant difference of emphasis in that Thomalin stresses the fact which Morrell passes over, that the association belongs irrevocably to the past. After establishing their association with the saints, Morrell continues his defence of the hills in two directions, one developing their poetic associations, the other further developing their religious associations. And they that con of Muses skill, sayne most what, that they dwell (As goteheards wont) upon a hill, beside a learned well. And wonned not the great God Pan, upon mount Olivet: Feeding the blessed flocke of Dan, which dyd himselfe beget? (45-52)

Pan and the Muses - Christ and Apollo - together they provide weighty testimony to the importance of the hills in man's spiritual and intellectual history. This passage is independent of a source in Mantuan and it argues conclusively against any necessary association of the heights with culpable pride or ambition. Thomalin fully accepts the terms on which the defence is being based, and he echoes and expands Morrell's praise of Christ the good shepherd: O blessed sheepe, O shepheard great, that bought his flocke so deare, And them did save with bloudy sweat from Wolves, that would them teare. (53-6)

The placing on a hill of this central Christian image causes no disagreement between the two herdsmen, although there is again a slight difference of emphasis. Thomalin significantly modifies Morrell's image of the flock feeding in contentment by expanding it to include a recognition of the "Wolves, that would them teare." Also, as we shall see later, it is not entirely without significance that Thomalin refrains from making any comment on Morrell's reference to the Muses. The next part of Morrell's defence continues and develops the

4O Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

already established fusion of pagan and Christian elements. "Holy fathers," says Morrell, tell of a hyllye place, Where Titan ryseth from the mayne, to renne hys dayly race. Upon whose toppe the starres bene stayed, and all the skie doth leane, There is the cave, where Phebe layed, the shepheard long to dreame. (58-64)

In Mantuan this place "ubi surgit ab aequore Titan" is only high enough that its tip reaches to the moon.70 In Spenser it becomes the prop of the very heavens. Of course, these are only poetical heavens through which Titan runs "hys dayly race," and at the same time as the mount is an ideal, it is, we might say, only the fiction of a pagan dream. But then, as Spenser continues to follow Mantuan's lead, we learn that the mount is also associated with the centre and origin of Christian history: Whilome there used shepheards all to feede theyr flocks at will, Till by his foly one did fall, that all the rest did spill. (65-8)

What is here presented in pastoral terms is an image of paradise itself, known and then lost. Christian paradise and classical golden age are, in their imaginative outlines, very similar; and both, whether set in a prelapsarian past or a redeemed future, quite naturally assume a pastoral format. Hence Virgil's fourth eclogue, announcing, "iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna" ("Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns"), found easy acceptance as a prophecy of Christ, and hence Dante could be told of the paradise he regained in a "pastoral oasis"71 at the top of the Mount of Purgatory: Quelli ch'anticamente poetaro 1'eta dell'oro e suo stato felice, forse in Parnaso esto loco sognaro. Qui fu innocente 1'umana radice; qui primavera sempre ed ogni frutto; nettare e questo di che ciascun dice.72

41 The Moral Eclogues Those men of yore who sang the golden time And all its happy state - maybe indeed They on Parnassus dreamed of this fair clime. Here was the innocent root of all man's seed; Here spring is endless, here all fruits are, here The nectar is, which runs in all their rede.

Perhaps now we can see the significance of Morrell's earlier appeal to the Muses and the appropriateness of its conjunction with an image of pastoral harmony in which Christ appears as "the great God Pan, I upon mount Olivet." We can also see the irrelevance of critical attempts to assess the degree of Morrell's pride and ambition, or to sort out the merits of the eclogue's arguments on the basis that "the views expressed by Thomalin and Morrell are relative, rather than absolute, in value."73 Morrell, the inhabitant and representative of the hills, seeks to establish their association with the pastoral ideal. In order to do this he appeals to the two most important points of contact between the pastoral ideal and larger areas of man's imaginative and spiritual experience, the poetic ideal of the golden age and the Christian idea of paradise - both the universal paradise which existed before "one did fall, / that all the rest did spill," and the paradise within which exists whenever men like "the blessed flocke of Dan" live in harmony with God. Although in the Calender the pastoral ideal is particularly associated with the hills only in "July," the alpine location of the golden-age or Christian paradise was a Renaissance commonplace.74 Spenser based part of his expression of the idea on Mantuan, but in Mantuan the hilltop paradise is an incidental item in Candidus' defence of the hills. In Spenser the appeal to paradise is essential both to Morrell's defence and to the structure of the eclogue as a whole. The ideal that provides the basis for Morrell's defence of the hills is outside the conditions of the temporal life to which Thomalin devotes himself. Since the fall, says Morrell, shepheardes bene foresayd from places of delight: For thy I weene thou be affrayd, to clime this hilles height. (69-72)

Morrell places himself, however, clearly on the side of the pastoral ideal, and he asserts it as being, for him, a continuing reality which, together with the hills of history, testifies to the truth of his position:

42 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Of Synah can I tell thee more, and of our Ladyes bowre: But little needes to strow my store, suffice this hill of our. (73-6)

The mountain-garden which is Morrell's hill is nothing less than a pastoral version of paradise, a poetic ordering of existence which realizes for a single goatherd the already established association of the hills with ideal realms of experience. Paradise is a place where man can consort at least occasionally with the gods and demi-gods. We learn of Virgil's "nova progenies" that in the golden age to come, "ille deum vitam accipiet divisque videbit / permixtos heroas et ipse videbitur illis" ("He shall have the gift of divine life, shall see heroes mingled with gods, and shall himself be seen of them"; 4.15-16). Adam and Eve "heard the voyce of the Lord God, walkyng in the garden in the coole of the day" (Genesis 3.8), and if later Christian writers were timorous about placing God himself in their earthly paradises, they were quite ready to have recourse to the rural divinities of pagan mythology in order to express the garden's harmony with the heavens. Dante is led through Eden by Matilda, who walks along the river bank "come ninfe che si givan sole / per le salvatiche ombre" ("even as nymphs that wont to stray alone / Through woodland shadows in the olden days"); he is encircled by a dance of the Cardinal Virtues, who tell him, "Noi siam qui ninfe e nel ciel siamo stelle" ("Here we are nymphs, and stars we are in heaven"; Purgatorio, 29.4-5, 31-106). Morrell knows an abundance of demigods and goddesses: Here han the holy Faunes resourse, and Sylvanes haunten rathe. Here has the salt Medway his sourse, wherein the Nymphes doe bathe. (77-80)

His world is defined by beings who embody and animate the lands they inhabit, transforming the physical landscape into an imaginative ideal. Of course no paradise would be complete without a fountain and a river, and in the Medway Morrell has both: The salt Medway, that trickling stremis adowne the dales of Kent: Till with his elder brother Themis his brackish waves be meynt. (81-4)

43 The Moral Eclogues

Nor are we surprised, I think, when we learn that the Medway is bordered by some rather exotic vegetation: Here growes Melampode every where, and Teribinth good for Gotes: The one, my madding kiddes to smere, the next, to heale theyr throtes. (85-8)

The plants have conventional origins. E.K. informs us that "Of thone speaketh Mantuane, and of thother Theocritus" (Gloss). In the context of Morrell's defence, however, they take on a special significance, for an essential feature of an earthly paradise is the adaptation of its flora to suit the needs and desires of its inhabitants: "out of the grounde made the Lorde God to growe every tree, that was fayre to syght, and pleasaunt to eate" (Genesis 2.9). In the Virgilian golden age, plants grow out of mere love for the newborn child: At tibi prima, puer, nullo munuscula cultu errantis hederas passim cum baccare tellus mixtaque ridenti colocasia fundet acantho. (4.18-20) But for thee, child, shall the earth unfilled pour forth, as her first pretty gifts, straggling ivy with foxglove everywhere, and the Egyptian bean blended with the smiling acanthus.

In Dante's Eden: la percossa pianta tanto puote, che della sua virtute 1'aura impregna, e quella poi, girando, intorno scuote. (Purgatorio, 28.109-11) every tree is potent to give out Virtue when smitten, which impregns the airs, And these, in circling, waft it all about.

"Hearbes good to cure diseased Gotes" (Gloss) are, perhaps, not quite on the same level. Nevertheless, they are of more use to even an idealistic goatherd than the plants summoned up by Virgil and Dante, and they do help Morrell to establish his own brand of paradise while keeping "July" securely within the bounds of pastoral decorum. Finally, we should note that no place on earth is closer to the heavenly paradise than the earthly paradise (such is the testimony of

44 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

Dante's Commedia). Thus when Morrell concludes his defence of the hills in general and "this hill of our" in particular by asserting that "the hills bene nigher heven, / and thence the passage ethe/' E.K. is rather missing the point when he tells us to "Note the shepheards simplenesse, which supposeth that from the hylls is nearer waye to heaven" (Gloss). Admittedly, the shepherd (or rather goatherd) is simple. It is an established feature of pastoral poetry that the herdsman should have only an imperfect grasp of higher matters, and Morrell's interpretation of his own position is naive and even comic when he has recourse to the limited and necessarily pragmatic authority accessible to a speculative goatherd: "As well can prove the piercing levin, / that seeldome falls bynethe." However, Morrell's over-literal understanding of heaven and his ignorance of the laws of metaphysical evidence do not prevent him from establishing himself as an upholder of the pastoral ideal and a lowly but direct descendant in the line of inhabitants of the earthly mountain-top paradise. "July," though, like "February" and "May," is more than a celebration of the pastoral ideal. Morrell's hill-top is set against Thomalin's plain, and the one cannot fully be understood in isolation from the other. Morrell's hill is, he implies, an unfallen paradise, one which denies, for its inhabitant at least, the implications of the fall. Thomalin, on the other hand, is like Thenot and Piers in seeing that even the pastoral world is fallen and therefore subject to fortune and mutability. Hence Thomalin's disagreement with Morrell begins not with the latter's assertion of the ideals which have been associated with the hills in the past, but rather with his assertion of those ideals as a continuing reality, one which the goatherd can physically occupy: Syker thou speakes lyke a lewde lorrell, of Heaven to demen so: How be I am but rude and borrell, yet nearer wayes I knowe. (93-6)

For Thomalin the pastoral ideal does not reflect the pastoral reality. The ideal, if it ever existed outside the original Eden, was certainly lost after the disastrous choice of Paris:75 thilk shephearde ... whom Ida hyll dyd beare, That left hys flocke, to fetch a lasse, whose love he bought to deare. (145-8)

45 The Moral Eclogues

Thomalin perceives a world which is essentially prosaic (hence his lack of comment when Morrell appeals to the evidence of the Muses), dangerous - "And them did save with bloudy sweat / from Wolves, that would them teare" (55-6) - and fallen from ideals that must always be an incentive to struggle, but that are as much an index of present failure as a record of past achievement: "Theyr sample onely to us lent, / that als we mought doe soe" (119-20). Thomalin rejects Morrell's position not as immoral, nor even as founded on false ideals, but simply as an idealistic response that fails to take adequate account of the fallen reality. The parallel with "February" and "May" is obvious. The views of Thomalin and Morrell are in marked contrast, but they do not constitute an argument in which conflicting values are to be resolved into a single and inclusive thematic statement. Thomalin sees one kind of pastoral world, Morrell another. As in "February" and "May," the views of the two herdsmen are not mutually exclusive, but rather coexist within the imaginative frame of Spenser's Calender. In "February" Cuddie's recreative assertion is not denied by Thenot's plaintive response. In "July" Spenser uses Morrell, much as he uses Palinode in "May," to assert the value and attractiveness of a purely recreative pastoral ideal; he uses Thomalin (as he does Piers) to assert the plaintive recognition that the ideal is untenable in any but a world of the imagination. To reject Morrell would be to reject poetry; to reject Thomalin would be to turn one's back on reality. Spenser, creating "a Calender for every yeare," but also one which will "teach the ruder shepheard how to feede his sheepe" (Epilogue), is ready to reject neither. As the Epilogue's reference to pastoral care suggests, though, E.K. and a host of other readers are not simply mistaken in seeing in "July" the "disprayse of proude and ambitious Pastours." If there is no need to seek a resolution between Morrell's delight in his hill-top paradise and Thomalin's sorrow that the world is filled with hungry wolves and greedy shepherds, nevertheless the dialogue between the two characters raises for the reader moral issues that do require a resolution. Morrell says to Thomalin, Thou medlest more, then shall have thanke, to wyten shepheards welth: When folke bene fat, and riches rancke, it is a signe of helth. (209-12) Morrell's words, like Palinode's, are quite unexceptionable when taken as a literal description of pastoral affairs. As a metaphorical

46 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

description of the Elizabethan church their implications are disturbing. While the two herdsmen discuss a life devoted to the care of animals, very different considerations are suggested to the minds of Spenser's readers. These considerations focus on the presentation of Algrind. Algrind is clearly established in "July" as a figure to be esteemed: As meek he was, as meeke mought be, simple, as simple sheepe, Humble, and like in eche degree the flocke, which he did keepe. (129-32)

We learn with some surprise, then, that Algrind is "a shepherd great in gree" who one day "sat upon a hyll," exposing himself to the very dangers Thomalin so assiduously avoids. Having been established by Thomalin as a paragon of lowliness, Algrind is now explicitly associated with the heights, both in his station and in his sphere of activity. Thomalin himself seems unaware of any contradiction inherent in his argument. If he were pressed on the question of Algrind's initial association with lowliness, Thomalin would presumably reply that the worthy Algrind would have been even more praiseworthy had he had Thomalin's own good sense in avoiding areas of potential danger: "I am taught by Algrins ill, / to love the lowe degree." The story of the encounter between Algrind's head and a falling shellfish is not only a thinly veiled allusion to the sequestration of Archbishop Grindal consequent on his refusal to suppress the Puritan prophesyings;76 it is also a clear demonstration of the wisdom of Thomalin's contention that height is dangerous and should be avoided. But Thomalin's response to his story is not the reader's. In "May" Algrind is presented as a figure of strong authority, and in "July" our already favourable disposition towards him does not incline us to condemn either his station or his actions. Indeed, at no point in the eclogue are we given a warrant for such a condemnation, and an awareness of the allusion to the fate of Archbishop Grindal only increases our esteem for the unfortunate shepherd. The association of Algrind with both height and lowliness, then, requires us to reassess Thomalin's simple equation of the lowly with the good and to question the value of the pastoral world which he inhabits. Thomalin's commitment to the pastoral world provides him (as it provides every shepherd in the didactic branch of the pastoral tradition) with a moral standard in the form of the unfallen pastoral ideal - an ideal which Morrell sees as set in a continuing but individual and imaginative present and which Thomalin sees as

47 The Moral Eclogues

belonging to an irrevocable past. Thomalin's knowledge of the ideal and his awareness of the fall enable him, like Piers, to measure the depth of man's descent. The lowliness which wins Thomalin's praise is morally superior to the worldly heights attained by those who "reigne and rulen over all" only to "weltre in welths waves, / pampred in pleasures deepe." Such men "heapen hylles of wrath" that are in marked contrast to the hills associated with the humble shepherds of the past. But if Thomalin's pastoral commitment provides him with an ideal of behaviour, it does not provide him with a program for moral action directed towards bringing the imperfect realities of temporal existence closer to the ideal. On the contrary, the pastoral commitment precludes even the attempt at such action. "July," then, like the preceding moral eclogues, is structured around not two positions, as the initial debate seems to suggest, but three: one recreative and associated with Morrell, one plaintive, associated with Thomalin, and one moral, associated with Algrind. Algrind's hill, understood by Thomalin to be simply a physical height whose dangers deny the validity of Morrell's assertion of the hill-top paradise, is understood by the reader to be an emblematic reflection of the hierarchical world of non-pastoral activity (and is thus parallel to the fables of "February" and "May"). Algrind does not meet with much success in that extra-pastoral world, but his example nevertheless demonstrates that true pastoral humility is not incompatible with non-pastoral action. In fact the esteem in which he is held seems to suggest that such action is virtually a moral necessity. It is a necessity, however, on which neither Thomalin nor Morrell could possibly act. The shepherd may complain about evil, but for all his invective he can never move to fight it on its own ground.77 The only course finally open to him within the bounds of pastoral is simply to avoid misfortune where possible - "In humble dales is footing fast" - and to accept those ills which are unavoidable - "And though one fall through heedlesse hast, / yet is his misse not mickle." In such fields harmony is easily restored and the contented life of the pastoral shepherd is preserved. But "July" raises at least a doubt whether the preservation is worth the cost. Pastoral is often a self-conscious genre, and nowhere more so than in Spenser. In the July eclogue, as elsewhere in the Calender, pastoral enables us to regain within a world of the imagination that paradise which Adam lost. Yet the poem does not allow us to forget that the victory is only an act of the imagination, and it suggests that there are more arduous battles to be fought and that they lie outside the bounds of pastoral altogether. Pastoral, we begin to see, is both ideal and delusion, paradise regained and duty shunned. Morrell celebrates

48 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

the pastoral ideal while Thomalin laments its loss. Algrind brought low is back within the pastoral fold, but as he lies nursing his bruised head we suspect he may also be pondering some questions whose answers will not be given by either goatherd or shepherd - or even by pastoral poet.

6 "SEPTEMBER" "September" is again concerned with the problem of ecclesiastical corruption, the abuse of pastoral office. The eclogue is a dialogue between Colin's friend Hobbinol, already familiar to the reader from "January," "April," and especially "June," and a fellow shepherd, Diggon Da vie, who has spent some nine months in "forrein costes" where, instead of promised plenty, he encountered only misery and corruption: I thought the soyle would have made me rich: But nowe I wote, it is nothing sich. For eyther the shepeheards bene ydle and still, And ledde of theyr sheepe, what way they wyll: Or they bene false, and full of covetise, And casten to compasse many wrong emprise. (78-83)

Diggon speaks very much with the accent of Piers in "May," for the two men have seen the same world with the same clarity. E.K. suggests in the eclogue's Argument that the "farre countrye" to which Diggon travelled is Rome and that the poem is concerned with the "abuses whereof, and loose living of Popish prelates." This, however, is undoubtedly no more than the protective screening we encounter elsewhere in the Calender. If, as has been plausibly suggested, Diggon Da vie represents Bishop Davies of St David's in Wales/8 London would be country distant enough to encounter such evils as Diggon has seen. It is quite clear in any case that Diggon, like Piers, is describing a world which is essentially a metaphorical reflection of the worst aspects of Spenser's own. Diggon's words are loosely based on Faustulus' attack on Rome in Mantuan's ninth eclogue. Both shepherds in Mantuan's dialogue, though, Faustulus and the newly arrived Candidus, are situated in the place whose evils they are attacking. The contrast is not between the fortunes of the one and the misfortunes of the other, but between the fields they left behind in the hope of greener pastures and the miseries of their present environment. The two shepherds occupy, in effect, the same position both geographically and polemically; the

49 The Moral Eclogues

joys of the past serve only to highlight the sorrows of the present. Spenser reverses the situation. By having Diggon Davie report on his experiences after his return from a land similar to Mantuan's Rome, Spenser is able to locate both shepherds within their native pastures and then contrast the fortunes of Diggon, who left, with Hobbinol, who remained behind in accordance with the fundamental principle of pastoral happiness: Content who lives with tryed state, Neede feare no chaunge of frowning fate: But who will seeke for unknowne gayne, Oft lives by losse, and leaves with payne. (70-3)

Hobbinol, like Thomalin in "July," realizes that pastoral contentment is a fragile possession and easily destroyed. The situation in "September" is similar though not identical to that in Virgil's first eclogue, which contrasts Tityrus, who possesses his fields in peace and tranquillity, with Meliboeus, who is being driven out of his fields into an unhappy exile. Meliboeus is departing whereas Diggon Davie is returning, but in both Virgil and Spenser there is the same contrast between one shepherd's contentment and the other's misery. This contrast enables Spenser to structure "September" according to the pattern of the Calender's preceding moral ecloques. Diggon's words not only establish the plaintive position that the pastoral world is sadly fallen from the ideal, but at the same time strongly suggest the need for effective action to combat corruption. Diggon has learned that wolves now "gang in more secrete wise, / And with sheepes clothing doen hem disguise." Shepherds, then, must "ever liggen in watch and ward, / From soddein force theyr flocks for to gard" - an injunction which Diggon supports by telling the story of Roffyn's unmasking of a particularly deceitful wolf. The story appears to relate to an incident in the life of Spenser's one-time employer, Bishop Young of Rochester,79 but whatever its specific reference, the general reference is clearly to a world of affairs too serious to be left to the handling of shepherds. Diggon's insistence that wolves are dangerous and likely to wear sheep's clothing has a literal application only for the inhabitants of a poetic realm where wolves do in fact resort to elaborate camouflage. As metaphor, however, his words have a very real applicability for the reader who inhabits a world where evil often adopts the guise of innocence and wolves come in many forms. In "September," as in "May," the metaphorical complex of shepherds, sheep, and wolves suggests in its development the words

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which are anything but a call to pastoral repose: "Beware of false prophetes, which come to you in sheepes clothyng: but inwardly they are ravening woolfes" (Matthew 7.15). In "May," though, the necessity for action is only an implication to be derived from the fable of the Fox and the Kid. In "July" the implication is clearer: Algrind's hill-top experience is clearly associated for the reader with a dangerous but nevertheless admirable participation in the non-pastoral world of public affairs. In "September" the moral necessity for active participation in the struggle against evil receives as unequivocal an affirmation as a pastoral poem can give - the direct representation of non-pastoral activity in pastoral terms. Most versions of pastoral recognize that the shepherd's life of contentment does not pass entirely unthreatened,80 and the genre accepts without difficulty a plaintive awareness that the possibility of realizing the pastoral ideal has been irretrievably lost. Plaintive acceptance of loss, however, is very different from an active struggle to redress the effects of loss. Diggon Davie tells a tale about a wolf that had beguiled Roffyn's dog and was devouring his sheep, until finally the shepherd, "wise, and as Argus eyed, ... tooke out the Woolfe in his counterfect cote, / And let out the sheepes bloud at his throte." This is admittedly a story about a shepherd, but in itself it is no more a piece of pastoral literature than are, for example, the adventures of Reynard the Fox. These tales, quite popular in the sixteenth century, similarly have a rural setting and tend to suggest with varying degrees of satirical intention that they are a direct reflection of urban activity. Neither in the Reynard stories nor in Diggon's, however, is there an alternative image of pastoral contentment. When the pastoral directly evokes the conditions of urban existence it must maintain - if it is to keep its generic identity - a sense of a rural alternative:81 whether a past alternative lost (as with Thomalin in "July") or a present alternative neglected (as with Morrell). In the September eclogue as a whole this sense of an alternative is maintained - it is, quite simply, the world which Hobbinol has never left and to which Diggon returns. But in the story of Roffyn and the wolf Spenser portrays a world where danger is immediate rather than future or external, and where disaster has in the present instance been only narrowly avoided: Fast by the hyde the Wolfe lowder caught: And had not Roffy renne to the Steven, Lowder had be slaine thilke same even. (223-5)

In such a world contentment must yield to a commitment to struggle.

51 The Moral Eclogues

Of course, if the fable in "September" is not in itself pastoral, neither are the fables in "February," "May," and "July," all of which evoke hierarchical and essentially urban environments. But the September fable's use of the conventional machinery of pastoral to create a similarly non-pastoral environment has an effect on the pastoral context of the eclogue's debate that is different in degree if not in kind from what we find in the preceding moral eclogues. In those eclogues a distinction is maintained not only between the pastoral ideal and the fallen reality, but also, by means of the fable, between the fallen reality which is pastoral (the world of Thenot, Piers, and Thomalin) and the fallen reality which is non-pastoral (the world evoked by the fables of the Oak and the Briar, the Fox and the Kid, Algrind and the shellfish). In "September," however, the latter distinction almost disappears. The world of Diggon's fable and the world he encounters in his wanderings are to all intents and purposes the same, both figuratively and literally. Thus while Piers, for example, sees only imperfectly the significance for pastoral of the fable he tells, Diggon quite clearly sees the significance of his own tale for a shepherd inhabiting a pastoral world. This perception is not just a measure of the difference between Diggon and Piers. It is also a measure of the difference between "September" and the preceding moral eclogues in the strength and self-consciousness of their assertion of the inadequacy of pastoral values as a sufficient moral guide to action within a temporal urban context. Both Piers and Diggon express their indignation at moral corruption, and both are aware of the importance of a careful fulfilment of pastoral duties. This is Piers in "May": Those faytours little regarden their charge, While they letting their sheepe runne at large, Passen their time, that should be sparely spent, In lustihede and wanton meryment. (39-42)

This, Diggon in "September": For thy with shepheard sittes not playe, Or sleepe, as some doen, all the long day: But ever liggen in watch and ward, From soddein force theyr flocks for to gard. (232-5)

The difference is one of emphasis. Whereas Piers throughout the May eclogue focuses on those who fulfil their duties imperfectly, Diggon focuses on what constitutes the proper fulfilment of duties in a fallen

52 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

environment, a focus which is most pronounced in the story of Roffyn and the wolf. In "May" the question does not arise of what the proper course of action for Piers himself should be.82 In "September" this question does arise in relation to Diggon, and, in the nature of things pastoral, he must be found wanting both in the reader's eyes and in his own. Diggon may admire Rof fyn, but he could never follow his example. But let hem gange alone a Gods name: As they han brewed, so let hem beare blame. (100-1)

Such is Diggon's response to those who "han the devill at commaund"; to respond otherwise would be to leave the bounds of pastoral. Diggon can only lament the fate that brought him into contact with a world in which he is incapable of acting and then withdraw to the pastoral world from whence he came: Ah but Hobbinol, all this long tale, Nought easeth the care, that doth me forhaile. What shall I doe? what way shall I wend, My piteous plight and losse to amend? Ah good Hobbinol, mought I thee praye, Of ayde or counsell in my decaye. (242-7)

Though the pastoral shepherd may discover evil, he can never actively confront it. He must withdraw from the possibility of conflict to preserve whatever modicum of contentment is left in the "tryed state."83 What is left in "September" is little enough. Throughout the eclogue the pastoral alternative to action is upheld by Hobbinol. O happy Hobbinol, I blesse thy state, That Paradise hast found, whych Adam lost. Here wander may thy flock early or late, Withouten dreade of Wolves to bene ytost: Thy lovely layes here mayst thou freely boste. ("June," 9-13)

So Colin earlier celebrates Hobbinol's pastoral paradise. In "September," however, the paradise is less impressively asserted and it may appear to be of dubious value. Faced with Diggon's misfortune, Hobbinol can offer only the wisdom of hindsight: Ah fon, now by thy losse art taught, That seeldome chaunge the better brought. (68-9)

53 The Moral Eclogues And he can give only the rude comfort of a rustic shelter: if to my cotage thou wilt resort, So as I can, I wil thee comfort: There mayst thou ligge in a vetchy bed, Till fayrer Fortune shewe forth her head. (254-7)

His paradise now seems to have boundaries not much greater than the walls of his cottage. Yet this does not mean that it is qualitatively inferior to what it was in "June," or that it is less of a paradise than that which is sought or possessed by Cuddie, Palinode, and Morrell. The pastoral ideal is simply unsuited to the demands of the active life, and by its very nature it can offer little in the way of practical guidance or material comforts. Within the pleasance poets thrive and moralists founder (and warriors and statesmen simply depart). Its value as asserted in "February," "May," and "July" is essentially recreative and it has no answer to the objection that the ideal is impractical and fails to accord with fallen realities. What is changed in "September" is not the nature or even the value of the ideal, but rather the light in which it is seen. Before Diggon expresses the full extent of his misery, Hobbinol leads him to a place which in other circumstances would have provided an opportunity for song: Sitte we downe here under the hill: Tho may we talke, and tellen our fill, And make a mocke at the blustring blast. (52-4)

The shepherds are entering a conventional pleasance, but in this eclogue what might be a recreative moment becomes instead an occasion for complaint. "September" is the last of the ecclesiastical eclogues and the last of the eclogues specifically concerned with the shepherd's recognition of decay. Hallett Smith usefully describes it as "the climax of the moral series. Here the bitterness about bad shepherds is stronger than in any of the other eclogues."84 "September" marks the culmination of the clash between the pastoral aesthetic of retreat and the moral ethic of commitment. Diggon's intense awareness of corruption leaves no room for an assertion of the poetic value of the unfallen pastoral ideal, and the focus is restricted to the relationship between the ideal and the fallen pastoral reality. Yet "September" does remain a pastoral debate. Hobbinol's ideal of contentment is confined by circumstance, but is the same ideal as that to which Cuddie, Palinode, and Morrell owe allegiance. Diggon is like Thenot, Piers, and Thomalin in his inability to accept the current validity of the ideal, though unlike

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them in his recognition that conditions require a struggle in which, by virtue of his pastoral nature, he is precluded from participating. Thus he returns to the land he and Hobbinol once shared; but where Hobbinol sees an opportunity for contentment, Diggon sees only the evidence of defeat. Each is in his own way correct. Though Hobbinol's view must yield to Diggon's in any appeal to historical reality, this appeal is made only in the story of Roffyn - and Roffyn inhabits a world with which Hobbinol has all along had nothing to do. It is unnecessary, then, to decide whether Spenser's own view in "September" is represented by Diggon or by Hobbinol, to decide whether the eclogue upholds reform or moderation. Nor is it necessary to resolve the two positions into a compromising third, according to an analysis of "the dual limitation and strength of these two contending forms of conventional pastoral wisdom."85 That he who can live within the "tryed state" will be content is a piece of wisdom known to many before Hobbinol and is not disproved by anything Diggon has to say. Yet the world is, as Diggon insists, corrupt, and I see no reason to suspect that Spenser would either dispute his analysis or disagree with his condemnation. Contentment, we might say - and Spenser would undoubtedly agree - must therefore yield to struggle, but this is not a doctrine that either pastoral shepherd or pastoral poet could possibly follow for long. "September" maintains only the most tenuous hold on the image of tranquillity so essential to pastoral's very existence. But though the eclogue stretches to the limit the capacity of pastoral to enter into the contemporary urban world as an instrument of reform, it does nevertheless remain a pastoral eclogue in a pastoral poem. In a small field, withdrawn from the surrounding confusion, Diggon and Hobbinol can meet. Through his plaintive acceptance of the principle that conflict is to be avoided, Diggon maintains in the midst of decay his allegiance to the ideal that, if given scope and expression, would transform Hobbinol's cottage into an earthly paradise.

7 "OCTOBER" In "October" Spenser draws back into the pastoral landscape and views in a different light the significance of the shepherd's awareness of fallen reality. To do so he again develops a suggestion from Mantuan, this time provided by the fifth eclogue, "De consuetudine divitum erga poetas." Mantuan's eclogue consists of a heated discussion between a wealthy but miserly lover of poetry, Silvanus, and the impoverished poet Candidus. Candidus seeks material aid, without which he can no longer continue to practise his art. Silvanus

55 The Moral Eclogues

offers much advice, but only such hollow promises of actual assistance that he at last receives Candidus' parting curse, "Vade malis avibus numquam rediturus, avare" ("Go with ill omens and never come back, you miser"). The poem evokes a dispiriting image of an anti-poetic age that sets pleasure before virtue and finds in the poet's ideals mere matter for ridicule. Spenser's own attack on cultural "Barbarisme / and brutish Ignorance" in The Teares of the Muses (published 1591, probably written about 1580) shows how congenial Mantuan's theme was to England's new poet, but in the Calender Spenser chose to mute the satirical force of his Latin original and to alter the emphasis in his own portrayal of the pastoral poet's dilemma. Spenser replaces Candidus and Silvanus with Cuddie and Piers, characters who inevitably recall their namesakes in "February" and "May" (the recollection is appropriate, though there are no explicit references in "October" to those earlier eclogues). Cuddie is quite similar to Candidus. Both are moderate in their demands and expectations. Candidus wants a share of Silvanus' wealth, but asserts, non ego ditari cupio, sed vivere parvo. fac habeam tenuem sine sollicitudine vicrum; hoc contentus earn. (117-19) I don't want riches, just a simple life. Let me have slender means without care; I shall be satisfied with that.

Cuddie complains that his art has brought him "little good ... and much lesse gayne," but he shows no interest in leaving his rural home, "thys humble shade" where "we our slender pipes may safely charme." Both, too, look beyond their individual circumstances to lament the general neglect of poetry. Cuddie echoes Candidus when he says, if that any buddes of Poesie, Yet of the old stocke gan to shoote agayne: Or it mens follies mote be forst to fayne, And rolle with rest in rymes of rybaudrye: Or as it sprong, it wither must agayne. (73-7)86

Where Candidus encounters only the self-interest of Silvanus, however, Cuddie meets the sympathetic concern of Piers - concern both for Cuddie himself and for the proper role of the poet in a fallen world. In Mantuan's eclogue Candidus alone carries the didactic

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burden; his words are highlighted by the obviously contemptible position of Silvanus. In Spenser's "October" (as in "May") the position of Piers has strong authority. Both Silvanus and Piers, for example, suggest that the poet should be more interested in gifts of the mind than rewards for the body. But whereas Silvanus only tells Candidus not to envy him his wealth or expect to share in it - "sorte tua contentus abi, sine cetera nobis" Piers offers a view of poetry as the source of rewards that transcend material benefits: "the prayse is better, then the price, / The glory eke much greater then the gayne." Silvanus' advice to Candidus, "Die pugnas, die gesta virum, die proelia regum," is echoed by Piers' suggestion that Cuddie "sing of bloody Mars, of wars, of giusts, / Turne thee to those, that weld the awful crowne." But Silvanus is interested in the court only as a potential source of patronage: "invenies qui te de sordibus eruat istis" ("you will find [there] someone to rescue you from your lowly condition"). Piers does not even mention the possibility of financial advantage. Rather he portrays the court as a place of poetic promise: There may thy Muse display her fluttryng wing, And stretch herselfe at large from East to West. (43-4)

There the poet might sing the virtues of the Queen and the deeds of her servants; there he might sing Of love and lustihead ... And carrol lowde, and leade the Myllers rownde, All were Elisa one of thilke same ring. (51-3)

Whether celebrating the court's heroic virtues or turning its social graces into a song of love, the poet brings fame to his subject and himself when he rises above temporal limitations to participate in the timeless realm of poetry: "So mought our Cuddies name to Heaven sownde." And the poet might rise to even greater heights. Piers suggests another field of poetic endeavour, one not mentioned by Silvanus, presumably because it could not be associated decorously with material interests: O pierlesse Poesye, where is then thy place? If nor in Princes pallace thou doe sitt: (And yet is Princes pallace the most fitt) Ne brest of baser birth doth thee embrace. Then make thee winges of thine aspyring wit, And, whence thou camst, flye backe to heaven apace. (79-84)

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If the poet is precluded from writing about the deeds of princes, then he might write about the heavens themselves, in devotional or theological verse - possibly in a poem like du Bartas' La Sepmaine ou Creation du Monde, published in 1578 and greatly admired by Spenser.87 Finally, Piers passes from the subject matter of poetry to the poet's inspiration. He rejects Cuddie's contention that Colin Clout would achieve higher flights of poetry "were he not with love so ill bedight": Ah fon, for love does teach him climbe so hie, And lyftes him up out of the loathsome myre: Such immortall mirrhor, as he doth admire, Would rayse ones mynd above the starry skie. And cause a caytive corage to aspire, For lofty love doth loath a lowly eye. (91-6)

The "immortall mirrhor" which Colin admires is, presumably, Rosalind. But it is also the eternal beauty that is every true poet's subject, as it is Spenser's in The Faerie Queene: O Goddesse heavenly bright, Mirrour of grace and Majestic divine, Great Lady of the greatest Isle, whose light Like Phoebus lampe throughout the world doth shine, Shed thy faire beames into my feeble eyne, And raise my thoughts too humble and too vile, To thinke of that true glorious type of thine, The argument of mine afflicted stile. (I proem 4)

Elizabeth, too, is an "immortall mirrhor/' a "glorious type" of that heavenly beauty which it is the purpose of The Faerie Queene to recreate in poetic form. Piers' affirmation of the highest reaches of the poet's art significantly alters the emphasis of the October eclogue from Spenser's source. In Mantuan there is a clear concern for the unrecognized nobility of poetry, but this concern is only incidental to the primary theme of the eclogue, the failure of the poet to find material reward. In Spenser the problem of inadequate reward provides the occasion for the dialogue between Cuddie and Piers, but it is not the primary concern of the author or even, apparently, of his characters. Piers acknowledges Cuddie's difficulties and concludes the dialogue with a presumably sincere promise of assistance:

58 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral And when my Gates shall han their bellies layd: Cuddle shall have a Kidde to store his farme. (119-20)

But his survey of the fields open to the aspiring poet is markedly unconcerned with any prospect they may offer of material advancement, and his excursus on love as a source of poetic inspiration is from the point of view of Cuddie's immediate problem simply an irrelevant digression. Yet Cuddie himself makes no objection to this apparent neglect of the issue at hand and instead responds with the assertion that love is in fact prejudicial to poetry: All otherwise the state of Poet stands, For lordly love is such a Tyranne fell: That where he rules, all power he doth expell. (97-9)

He then goes on to contend that the way to poetic heights is not through love but through wine, and describes with impressive passion the verse he would write if only suitably inspired: Thou kenst not Percie ho we the ryme should rage. O if my temples were distaind with wine, And girt in girlonds of wild Yvie twine. (109-11)

The passion is short-lived, but by the time Cuddie lapses back into repose he seems quite to have forgotten the discontent with which the discussion began: For thy, content us in thys humble shade: Where no such troublous tydes han us assayde, Here we our slender pipes may safely charme. (116-18)

It is only Piers' closing offer of a new-born kid that reminds the reader of the eclogue's ostensible concern for Cuddie's lack of material success. In his portrayal of Piers and Cuddie Spenser departs considerably from Mantuan's fairly straightforward indictment of his age for failing to meet the standards of the past in according poets their due recognition. Spenser does, of course, make a similar indictment. He also affirms much more clearly than Mantuan the true nobility of the poet's art. But where Spenser departs most radically from his source is in transforming "October" into a pastoral debate in which the terms are not respect and lack of respect for poetry but rather opposing views of the nature of poetry and the poetic profession. Critics have

59 The Moral Eclogues

often assumed that Piers and Cuddie agree on the fundamental question of the nature of poetry and disagree simply over the way in which the poet should proceed to exercise his art - should he recognize the practical limitations that conditions impose (Cuddie), or should he idealistically attempt the highest level of poetic achievement in spite of those limitations (Piers)? The question is not without interest, but it is not, I think, the eclogue's primary concern.88 There are practical elements in Cuddie's position as there are idealistic elements in Piers', but the eclogue is not an argument between practicality and idealism. The reader is no more required to decide whether he will side with Cuddie or with Piers than Spenser was required to decide whether he would write The Shepheardes Calender or The Faerie Queene, the recreative "August" or the moral "September." Spenser establishes at the outset of "October" that Cuddie and Piers have very different conceptions of poetry. Piers views poetry primarily in terms of its moral function: O what an honor is it, to restraine The lust of lawlesse youth with good advice: Or pricke them forth with pleasaunce of thy vaine, Whereto thou list their trayned willes entice. (21-4)

The poet, says Piers, echoing the words of Horace and of numerous apologists, through his "pleasaunce" conveys "advice": "omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci." But for Piers, as for most Elizabethans, the stress is on the moral profit that justifies the poet's pleasure-giving activity: "with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner. And, pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue."89 Cuddie, on the other hand, views poetry in relation to its audience solely as an instrument of delight: The dapper ditties, that I wont devise, To feede youthes fancie, and the flocking fry, Delighten much: what I the bett for thy? They han the pleasure, I a sclender prise. (13-16)

Whereas Piers affirms the Horatian concept of the poet as "delectando pariterque monendo," Cuddie regards only the "delectando." The omission of the second term is too often repeated to be merely accidental: "Such pleasaunce makes the Grashopper so poore"; "To feede youthes fancie" (but not their judgment); "Delighten much";

60 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

"They han the pleasure." Cuddle is of course interested, as he repeatedly states, in the relationship between poetry and profit, but for him the profit which matters is not the utile the poet conveys to his audience; it is the return from the audience that enables the poet to continue practising his art in comfort: I beate the bush, the byrds to them doe flye: What good thereof to Cuddle can arise? (17-18)

The lack of returning profit has stemmed the outflow of delight. The recreation, then, has momentarily ceased, but Cuddie's conception of his poetic role remains essentially recreative. Stated in the abstract, Cuddie's attitude toward poetry may appear culpably irresponsible. Yet we are not encouraged to condemn him. Piers establishes our initial response when he describes Cuddie as having been the creative centre of a recreative round of existence: Whilome thou wont the shepheards laddes to leade, In rymes, in ridles, and in bydding base: Now they in thee, and thou in sleepe art dead. (4-6)

Though Cuddie himself speaks only of the delight his verses have brought, there is no hint of condemnation of their substance either in Piers' expression of regret that Cuddie has now ceased his recreative activities or in his comparison of Cuddie's powers to those of Orpheus:90 Soone as thou gynst to sette thy notes in frame, O how the rurall routes to thee doe cleave: Seemeth thou dost their soule of sence bereave, All as the shepheard, that did fetch his dame Fron Plutoes balefull bowre withouten leave: His musicks might the hellish hound did tame. (25-30)

Piers' reference to Cuddie's "pleasaunce" leading youth "Whereto thou list their trayned willes entice" suggests the poet's ability to counter the consequences of our infected wills, and Cuddie himself rejects "rymes of rybaudrye" as a perversion of "the old stocke" of poetry. I can see no reason to dismiss Cuddie's verse as morally worthless. Clearly, though, in Cuddie's eyes the question of whether or not his art has didactic value is simply irrelevant. Such an attitude would certainly be reprehensible if it were assumed by an urban poet such as

61 The Moral Eclogues

the Calender's author; and if Cuddle really were the "amateur writer of courtly lyrics" one critic has described him as being,91 the attitude would be reprehensible in Cuddie as well. But Cuddie belongs not to the town or the court but to the pastoral ideal; his art is the product of a pleasance wherein the poet is free from the imperatives governing fallen existence. In "October" Cuddie's recreative ideal has been disrupted, but his position throughout the eclogue continues nevertheless to be defined by his allegiance to that ideal. His concern for profit arises not out of any desire for material advancement, but merely from a wish to avoid the adverse effects of poverty on a life of pastoral song: Piers, I have pyped erst so long with payne, That all mine Oten reedes bene rent and wore: And my poore Muse hath spent her spared store. (7-9)

Cuddie's position is much more coherent when interpreted not as reflecting an awareness of the practical problems which prevent a poet from pursuing the lofty ideals urged by Piers, but rather as upholding an alternative ideal to which the values asserted by Piers do not pertain. The praise which for Piers is "glory ... much greater then the gayne" is for Cuddie no more important than the babbling of children: So praysen babes the Peacoks spotted traine, And wondren at bright Argus blazing eye: But who rewards him ere the more for thy? (31-3)

The poet committed to the pastoral ideal has, paradoxically, only a practical interest in praise. A response to the shepherd's song which enables him to preserve the pastoral pleasance is like the beneficence of a god to his creature: "deus nobis haec otia fecit" (Tityrus, in Virgil's first eclogue). A response which does nothing to sustain the contentment on which the shepherd-poet's activity is based is simply irrelevant: Sike prayse is smoke, that sheddeth in the skye, Sike words bene wynd, and wasten soone in vayne. (35-6)

Fame is only of temporal value. The pastoral pleasance is timeless if not eternal, and the promise of fame is compensation for the poet's loss of the pleasance only in so far as he is something other than a poet of pastoral.

62 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

Cuddle's pastoral commitment explains his attitude toward love. Love, as Piers asserts, teaches the poet to "climbe so hie, / And lyftes him up out of the loathsome myre." But if love leads to high poetic achievement, it does so only through introducing a necessary note of aspiration - the beauty that Colin admires would "cause a caytive corage to aspire" - and the inevitable result is a disruption of the "tryed state" of pastoral contentment. Love is seldom far removed from the shepherd's existence, but love's approach always marks at least a temporary disruption of the pleasance. So long as the disruption continues, the recreative celebration of the ideal in pastoral song is, of course, impossible. Hence at the beginning of the Calender Colin Clout, "but newly (as semeth) enamoured of a countrie lasse called Rosalinde" (Argument to "January"), breaks his oaten pipe, and hence in "October" Cuddie, "the perfecte paterne of a [pastoral] Poete" (Argument), insists that The vaunted verse a vacant head demaundes, Ne wont with crabbed care the Muses dwell. (100-1)

The pleasance is a place for the carefree consummation of pastoral love, not for an aspiration toward the lofty heights of courtly or Petrarchan love.92 Whereas Cuddie clings to the pastoral pleasance, Piers establishes a poetic adapted to conditions in the temporal world outside. He urges Cuddie to Abandon then the base and viler clowne, Lyft up thy selfe out of the lowly dust. (37-8)

Piers evokes a world wherein poetry is too important for the poet to be allowed to lapse into silence, or even to sing only for his own delight. No matter how excellent the pastoral song, it should only initiate the poet's progress along the traditional path toward the writing of the noblest form of secular verse, the heroic song "of bloody Mars, of wars, of giusts." Nor need the poet's achievement finish with the epic. There is a yet higher kind of poetry, that which is written when "pierlesse Poesye" aspires to return to its heavenly source: "The chief, both in antiquity and excellency, were they that did imitate the inconceivable excellencies of God."93 Piers, then, establishes the second term of a pastoral debate whose subject is the pastoral poet himself. On the one hand there is the poet as seen by Cuddie, the poet within the pastoral pleasance, who sings to bring delight and who is concerned only to preserve his ideal of

63 The Moral Eclogues

contentment. On the other hand there is the poet suggested by Piers, the poet who knows of the pleasance without giving it his allegiance, who sees in pastoral only an initial step towards more noble fields of poetic endeavour. Between these two views there was for the practising Elizabethan poet no difficulty of choice. Neither Spenser nor his readers would have had any doubt that Piers' view of the pastoral poet is superior to Cuddie's both in its sense of the poet's moral responsibilities and in its evaluation of the merits of pastoral song in relation to epic and religious poetry. Nevertheless, we should note that these considerations are relevant only to the poet immersed in the actual conditions of temporal life, not to the poet who exists only in the pastoral world which poetry creates. Cuddie's view of poetry would be trivial and irresponsible if held by Spenser himself; it is neither when held by Cuddie. We should also note that in the first part of the eclogue, up to Cuddie's admission of his inability to reach the poetic heights of which Colin is capable, Cuddie's position has equal poetic authority with that of Piers. In the same way, the youthful ideal upheld by the Cuddie of "February" has equal poetic authority with the awareness of time asserted by Thenot, and the ideal of pastoral life perceived by Palinode has equal poetic authority with the fallen realities perceived by the Piers of "May." In each of the eclogues, as in "July" and "September," the positions of the two disputants are independent because non-contiguous. The same is true in "October." The dramatic occasion Spenser borrows from Mantuan enables him to present two views of the pastoral poet without necessitating a choice between them. On the literal surface of the poem Cuddie and Piers do not discuss the proper course of action for a pastoral poet who is aware of the moral imperatives imposed by fallen conditions. Rather they discuss ways a pastoral poet might go about looking for an adequate reward. Piers suggests possibilities; Cuddie dismisses them as impracticable. In the process, they establish without bringing into conflict two opposing positions. Since Piers is only one shepherd presenting practical suggestions to another, his view takes no necessary precedence over Cuddie's within the pastoral landscape. (In fact, given Piers' apparent agreement with Cuddie's account of the present state of poetry, if either position is to be given greater authority, it should presumably be that of Cuddie.) The literal situation in the first part of "October" affirms (through Piers' praise of Cuddie's song and Cuddie's regret for his lost happiness) the recreative ideal of pastoral song and establishes an essentially plaintive response towards the loss of the ideal - Piers' suggestions offer no hope for its recovery. At the same time, the

64 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

eclogue also presents, without deciding between, opposing views of the proper nature of the pastoral poet, either as devoted to the ideal of contentment or as committed to a moral struggle and poetic aspiration which must eventually lead him beyond pastoral altogether. The difference in "October" between Piers' position as understood literally in relation to Cuddie and his needs, and as understood in its implied relation to a poet (Spenser, for example) outside the pastoral world of the Calender is about the same as the difference in "May" between Piers' position as understood in relation to a literal shepherd and as understood in relation to a metaphorical shepherd. In "October" the metaphor is the pastoral poet himself - literally a shepherd-poet, metaphorically a poet writing under the guise of a shepherd. In the first part of the October eclogue, then, we find substantially the same structuring of thematic concepts as we have found in the opening sections of the preceding moral eclogues, with the difference that in "October" the moral positions are presented in terms of opposing poetic stances. The opposition breaks down slightly when Cuddie confesses "For Colin fittes such famous flight to scanne." His description of the poetic flight as "famous" and his admission that such a flight is possible suggest, if only momentarily, that Cuddie's position must ultimately yield to Piers' even within the pastoral world. We have seen that in the earlier moral eclogues it is the function of the fable to establish a non-pastoral setting in which the moral issues raised by the debate can be resolved without denying the equal validity of both positions within the pastoral setting. "October" has no fable, but a precisely similar function is served by Cuddie's expatiation on the virtue of wine as a source of poetic inspiration. Wine, a pastoral product, is a means by which the pastoral confines can be transcended without being broken. In Virgil's sixth eclogue two shepherds' boys persuade the drunken Silenus to sing, and when he complies the pastoral world becomes one with his Orphic music: him vero in numerum Faunosque ferasque videres ludere, turn rigidas motare cacumina quercus. (27-8) Then indeed you might see Fauns and fierce beasts sport in measured time, then stiff oaks nod their tops.

His words tell of a different world, however, one descended from chaos and ever in flux, "a world essentially contradictory and

65 The Moral Eclogues

sometimes ugly/'94 where love is an unrealizable desire of the mind aspiring to impossible goals, where men are driven to violent deeds and violent deaths. Silenus confronts in his song a mutable and often chaotic universe, but he himself never leaves his tranquil pastoral home - and it is here that his words return, sung out from within a world that itself exists only as a creation of words: ille canit (pulsae referunt ad sidera valles), cogere donee ovis stabulis numerumque referre iussit et invito processit Vesper Olympo. (84-6) these [songs] Silenus sings. The re-echoing valleys fling them again to the stars, till Vesper gave the word to fold the flocks and tell their tale, as he set forth over an unwilling sky.

Cuddie does not realize the same heights as Silenus (partially, at least, because he is only thinking about wine; he has not actually had any). Cuddie is, though, enabled by the inspiration of his topic to establish a setting beyond the pastoral world without actually leaving its bounds and thereby destroying the generic unity of the eclogue. Cuddie first imagines himself transported emotionally above the tranquillity that characterizes the pastoral norm: Let powre in lavish cups and thriftie bitts of meate, For Bacchus fruite is frend to Phoebus wise. And when with Wine the braine begins to sweate, The nombers flowe as fast as spring doth ryse. (105-8)

Then he declares that if only his "temples were distaind with wine," How I could reare the Muse on stately stage, And teache her tread aloft in bus-kin fine, With queint Bellona in her equipage. (112-14)

Under the impulse of Bacchic enthusiasm the pastoral muse acknowledges the superiority of the tragic and epic muses. The impetus cannot, of course, be sustained: But ah my corage cooles ere it be warme, For thy, content us in thys humble shade: Where no such troublous tydes han us assayde, Here we our slender pipes may safely charme. (115-18)

66 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

But as the pastoral muse subsides into a plaintive acceptance of its "slender pipes," it does so with the knowledge that it has clearly glimpsed their limitations. There is, in "October," no rejection of the pastoral song, but there is an awareness that the true poet must by the very nature of his calling eventually search for fields not found within the bounds of pastoral - Cuddie will certainly not be accompanied in his retirement by Spenser himself. 8 CONCLUSION

Patrick Cullen has attempted to separate pre-Spenserian pastoral into "Arcadian" (hedonistic) and "Mantuanesque" (ascetic) strands, and then to view the Calender as "a critique of pastoral, through a confrontation of conflicting pastoral perspectives" in which characters are "involved in coming to terms with conflicting demands and ideals."95 But all pastoral intertwines the Arcadian and the Mantuanesque - even Theocritean pastoral, for which such terms are an anachronism. There is always in pastoral a certain tension between the idyllic country and the mundane town, between the desires of the self and the demands of the world, between pleasure and duty, between pastoral values and non-pastoral values. Spenser saw, however, that the first belong to paradise and the second only come into existence when paradise is lost. In the moral eclogues of the Calender he affirms both, for positions that have no common ground require no reconciliation, only a resolution within the formal confines of poetic art - a resolution which he achieves through a skilful conjunction of the two traditions of debate and fable. Spenser affirms the Arcadian pastoral ideal with all its lack of moral responsibility, and at the same time he maintains the Mantuanesque moral awareness which the Renaissance expected from its poets. He affirms the necessity of an active virtue impossible for the shepherd, but proper and imperative for the courtier to whom his poem was dedicated. The moral eclogues vary considerably in their particular meanings, but they all have a remarkably similar imaginative structure. In each of the five eclogues an assertion of the pastoral ideal is set in the manner of a debate against an insistence that the ideal cannot persist: the young shepherd must become old, the flocks must be vigorously guarded against threatening wolves, the shepherd (and the pastoral poet) must rise above his simple song. None of the moral eclogues, then, is a simple affirmation of the pastoral ideal. Each recognizes the limitations of the ideal in a fallen world and, through establishing in metaphorical terms a non-pastoral context where moral imperatives prevail, suggests that the virtuous man must ultimately engage in activities outside the bounds of pastoral.

67 The Moral Eclogues

At the same time, however, the moral eclogues by no means constitute a rejection of pastoral. On the one hand, they recreatively assert the value of the unfallen ideal; on the other, they plaintively lament its loss in the context of a fallen pastoral reality. Complaint is not rejection. If anything, it is a statement of allegiance. In the moral eclogues the plaintive acceptance of loss circumscribes both the recreative assertion of the pastoral ideal and the moral awareness of the necessity for non-pastoral activity in a non-pastoral environment. The moral eclogues point beyond the pastoral but remain within it. Through their plaintiye acceptance of the limitations of the ideal that gives being to the shepherd's pleasance, they preserve the pastoral harmony and remain, for all their moral self-awareness, complex but unified embodiments of the pastoral image of content.

CHAPTER II

The Shepheardes Calender; The Pastoral Image

The interaction of recreative, moral, and plaintive versions of pastoral is, as E.K/s classification suggests, a feature of Spenser's entire poem and not of the moral eclogues alone. The preceding discussion thus prepares the way for a definition of the structural pattern that underlies the Calender as a whole. Obviously such a definition cannot substitute for a sequential interpretation and must seek to supplement rather than replace those studies whose focus is in one way or another on the "argument" of the poem. Our reading of the Calender must finally respond to the eclogues in the order in which Spenser has presented them, and the pattern I present here is perhaps better described as a prolegomenon to a rereading than an interpretation of the Calender. But the subordination of the linear sequence and narrative content to the poem's overall structure is here justified by the better understanding it allows of the nature of Spenser's achievement in the Calender and, particularly, of that quality of unity that has proved so elusive of convincing analysis. The obvious place to begin a definition of the overall structural pattern is with the figure of Colin Clout. Colin alone fully transcends the individual monthly frames. He begins and ends the Calender in soliloquy and his fortunes are a recurrent concern within the poem. Not, of course, that the unity of the Calender can be explained as the story of Colin Clout - in many eclogues Colin does not appear, in some he is not even mentioned. But all the other figures of the Calender (with the partial exception of Hobbinol, who is closely associated with Colin) are essentially confined within the bounds of a single eclogue, figures in a static tableau who, if they do reappear within a subsequent eclogue, do so without giving any impression even of organic continuity, let alone of development. It is a moot point whether the Cuddie of "February" or "August" and the Piers of

69 The Pastoral Image

"May" are to be identified with the Cuddie and Piers of "October," or whether the Thenot of "February" is the same figure as the Thenot of "November." Colin, however, reappears not only as identifiably the same character, but also as a developing one, growing demonstrably older as the year unfolds. The main points of his development are contained in three eclogues: "January," "June," and "December" (though "November" also merits consideration in this regard).

i "JANUARY" In "January" Colin appears, in E.K/s words, as "a shepheardes boy ... but newly (as semeth) enamoured of a countrie lasse called Rosalinde" (Argument). The eclogue, all but the introductory and concluding stanzas, is his complaint, and as he gazes on the wintry landscape he sees a reflection of his own blighted youth: The blossome, which my braunch of youth did beare, With breathed sighes is blowne away, and blasted And from mine eyes the drizling teares descend, As on your boughes the ysides depend. (39-42)

Although Hobbinol seeks to win his affection, Colin is blinded to the proffered friendship by his love for Rosalind: Ah foolish Hobbinol, thy gyfts bene vayne: Colin them gives to Rosalind againe. (59-60)

She, however, rejects his suit and scorns his "rurall musick," whereupon Colin, in despair, renounces his pastoral art: Wherefore my pype, albee rude Pan thou please, Yet for thou pleasest not, where most I would: And thou unlucky Muse, that wontst to ease My musing mynd, yet canst not, when thou should: Both pype and Muse, shall sore the while abye. So broke his oaten pype, and downe dyd lye. (67-72)

The entry of Rosalind into Colin's world has meant his loss of contentment. Love has disrupted his art, his friendship with Hobbinol, even his relationship with nature. Traditionally the pastoral landscape is a direct reflection of the spiritual and emotional state of the shepherd, so that at times the distinction between shepherd and setting virtually disappears:

70 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral My sheepe are thoughts, which I both guide and serve: Their pasture is faire hilles of fruitlesse Love: On barren sweetes they feede, and feeding sterve: I waile their lotte, but will not other prove.1

Colin's world continues to fulfil this function: Thou barrein ground, whome winters wrath hath wasted, Art made a myrrhour, to behold my plight. (19-20)

As Spenser's pun - "Art made a myrrhour" - suggests, the pastoral landscape is as much subjective as objective. The storms that rack Colin's world are a metaphorical reflection of his own discontent: Whilome thy fresh spring flowrd, and after hasted Thy sommer prowde with Daffadillies dight. And now is come thy wynters stormy state, Thy mantle mard, wherein thou maskedst late. (21-4)

Unlike the traditional pastoral complaint, however, the correspondence between the shepherd and his surroundings is here a paradoxical sign of division. The year is now old - the natural year and the old calendar begin in March, not January - and the storms are those of winter. But Colin is still in the springtime of his youth: Such stormy stoures do breede my balefull smart, As if my yeare were wast, and woxen old. And yet alas, but now my spring begonne, And yet alas, yt is already donne. (27-30)

Colin's youth should find its reflection in the fields of spring, not the bleak landscape of winter. The dislocation suggests the value of considering Colin's complaint in relation to pastoral conventions. W. W. Greg has stated, correctly, I believe, that "an insistence upon the objective pastoral setting is of prime importance in understanding the real nature of pastoral poetry."2 Colin's world of pastoral contentment has been destroyed: his flocks, like their shepherd, are "feeble in the folde," his friendship and his art have been disrupted. Nevertheless, the materials of his lost world survive in the very words that express their loss. They survive in Colin's lament for spring and summer (21-2) and in his address to his sheep, with words of self-accusation that recall the traditional harmony between the shepherd and his flocks:

71 The Pastoral Image Thou feeble flocke, whose fleece is rough and rent, Whose knees are weake through fast and evill fare: Mayst witnesse well by thy ill government, Thy maysters mind is overcome with care. (43-6)

They survive in Colin's account of Hobbinol's gifts, gifts which suggest the nature of ideal pastoral friendship, thriving on, not in opposition to, the conditions of rural life: His clownish gifts and curtsies I disdaine, His kiddes, his cracknelles, and his early fruit.

(57-8)

And they survive in Colin's references to his "rurall musick," the traditional and almost the only activity of the contented shepherd. The insistence on objective setting and the consequent evocation of an image of pastoral contentment are enduring characteristics of the pastoral love complaint. In Theocritus' third idyll the image is evoked by the very threat of withdrawing gifts which suggest the nature of the world to which they belong: You will make me tear this garland to pieces, Amaryllis, my love, this crown I made you of ivy, of rosebuds and sweet celery ... Look, I've kept you a snow-white goat, with two kids, which Memnon's dusky girl keeps asking for. And she shall have them since you persist in showing me such disdain.3

In Virgil's second eclogue, as in the famous song of Marlowe's passionate shepherd, the image of contentment is suggested both by the nature of the gifts which are offered and by an explicit portrayal of love as it might be realized in a pastoral setting: o tantum libeat mecum tibi sordida rura atque humilis habitare casas et figere cervos haedorumque gregem viridi compellere hibisco! ... est mihi disparibus septem compacta cicutis fistula ... praeterea duo, nee tuta mihi valle reperti, capreoli, sparsis etiam nunc pellibus albo; bina die siccant ovis ubera; quos tibi servo. (2.28-30, 36-7, 40-2) O if you would but live with me in our rude fields and lowly cots, shooting the

72 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral deer and driving the flock of kids to the green mallows! ... I have a pipe formed of seven uneven hemlock-stalks... Nay more, two roes -1 found them in a dangerous valley - their hides still sprinkled with white, drain a ewe's udders twice a day. These I keep for you.

At the same time as these rejected lovers complain of their misfortunes, their words evoke an image which for the reader becomes a primary focus transcending the discontent which is the dramatic occasion and ostensible focus of Theocritus' idyll and Virgil's eclogue. In each poem, then, our final concern is less with the despair that characterizes the shepherd's thwarted love relationship than with the contentment that characterizes the world he is in danger of losing. The evocation of the image of content means that the world of pastoral harmony survives as an imaginative possibility in spite of its apparent practical loss. Consequently we do not believe in the finality of the loss as we do, for example, when the lover of a Petrarchan sonnet complains about his lost happiness. Theocritus' goatherd casts a parting threat that he will throw himself on the ground and wait for the wolves to devour him, but his words convey little conviction of present despair and no threat of future tragedy. Virgil's Corydon himself initiates at the end of his complaint a return to the world of pastoral content, saying to himself, quin tu aliquid saltern potius, quorum indiget usus, viminibus mollique paras detexere iunco? invenies alium, si te hie fastidit, Alexim. (71-3) Nay, why not at least set about plaiting some thing your need calls for, with twigs and pliant rushes? You will find another Alexis, if this one scorns you.

These words of self-advice are less in the spirit of the cavalier "The devil take her!" attitude toward love than in the spirit of practicality which characterizes the shepherd of the pastoral retreat who would maintain his "tryed state" in the face of potential disruptions. Corydon's words suggest Hobbinol's attitude toward the love-sick Colin: Sicker I hold him, for a greater fon, That loves the thing, he cannot purchase.

("April," 158-9)

Colin himself lacks Hobbinol's allegiance to the dictates of common sense. Nevertheless, in "January," as in the love complaints of

73 The Pastoral Image

Theocritus and Virgil, the image of pastoral content remains an imaginative presence, evoked by and contained within the shepherd's plaintive expression of loss. There is, however, an important difference in tone between Spenser's complaint and those by Theocritus and Virgil. The difference is reflected in Colin's mode of expression: A thousand sithes I curse that carefull hower, Wherein I longd the neighbour towne to see: And eke tenne thousand sithes I blesse the stoure, Wherein I sawe so fayre sight, as shee. Yet all for naught: such sight hath bred my bane. Ah God, that love should breede both joy and payne.

(49-54)

Colin's language, in its carefully balanced phrasing, its parallel structures, its reliance on hyperbole, and particularly in its use of paradox, suggests less the shepherd lover of pastoral tradition than the courtly lover of Petrarchan tradition, for whom love is the source of every delight and every sorrow - and every oxymoron. Of course the distinction between Colin and the conventional pastoral lover is exaggerated by the examples I have chosen. In language alone the difference between pastoral and Petrarchan lovers is often slight. Tasso's Aminta complains that he will die for love of Silvia and wishes the story of his death to be cut in the bark of a tree near his grave: Si che talor passandovi quell'empia Si goda di calcar 1'ossa infelici Co '1 pie superbo, e tra se dica: - E questo Pur mio trionfo ... E forse (ahi spero Troppo alte cose) un giorno esser potrebbe Ch'ella, commossa da tarda pietate, Piangesse morto chi gia vivo uccise, Dicendo: - Oh pur qui fosse, e fosse mio!4 And when that hard one passes by the place, She shall rejoice to trample my poor clay With her proud foot, and say within herself, "This is indeed a triumph!" ... but there may come a day, When moved with tardy pity, she may weep For one, when dead, whom when alive, she killed; And say, "Ah, would that he were here, and mine!"5

74 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

Not only does the language recall Petrarchan conventions - "empia ... superbo ... trionfo ... pietate" - but the very situation is directly imitated from Petrarch's canzone, "Chiare fresche e dolci acque." We recall, however, that Aminta eventually wins his Silvia, whereas Petrarch never attains his Laura - nor Colin his Rosalind. Pastoral lovers are often despairing, but usually they are finally successful. In the last book or the last act shepherds and shepherdesses unite, and the world which has been rendered visible by its entry into temporal multiplicity returns into a timeless unity. Rosalind, though, is not a shepherdess. She belongs not to the pastoral world but to the urban world of the "neighbour towne," and there is no convention that allows for the shepherd's beloved successfully to be drawn from the town into the country. In "January," then, Colin is very close to entering the world of the Petrarchan lover, a world "begotten by despair / Upon impossibility,"6 a world wherein the pastoral image of content must ultimately be destroyed. 2

"JUNE7'

In "April" Hobbinol confirms that Colin's happiness has indeed come to an end: Shepheards delights he dooth them all forsweare, Hys pleasaunt Pipe, whych made us meriment, He wylfully hath broke, and doth forbeare His wonted songs, wherein he all outwent. (13-16)

And in "June" Colin himself reveals that his love was in fact begotten upon impossibility, for Rosalind has been won by another: "Menalcas, that by trecheree / Didst underfong my lasse, to wexe so light." "June" comprises a dialogue between Colin and Hobbinol, one reminiscent in its dialectical structure of the debate sections of the moral eclogues. Hobbinol, speaking, appropriately, in the ideal setting of a pastoral pleasance, adopts a recreative position: Lo Colin, here the place, whose pleasaunt syte From other shades hath weand my wandring mynde. Tell me, what wants me here, to worke delyte? The simple ayre, the gentle warbling wynde, So calme, so coole, as no where else I fynde. (1-5)

Here, very near the imaginative and the literal centre of Spenser's Calender, where there is everything "to worke delyte," where nature

75 The Pastoral Image

is a harmonious blend of textures, colours, and sounds, the "wandring mynde" can find tranquillity and content. Hobbinol's words are a common topos, but they are also an evocation of the timeless appeal of the pastoral dream. This particular pleasance, however, belongs only to Hobbinol. Colin recognizes its worth, but declares that he is unable to participate in it: O happy Hobbinoll, I blesse thy state, That Paradise hast found, whych Adam lost... But I unhappy man, whom cruell fate, And angry Gods pursue from coste to coste, Can nowhere fynd, to shroude my lucklesse pate. (9-10, 14-16)

If Hobbinol's language recalls the beginning of Theocritean pastoral, Colin's recalls the beginning of Virgilian epic: virum ... Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit litora - multum ille et terris iactatus et alto vi superum, saevae memorem lunonis ob iram. (Aeneid, 1.1-4) the man who first from the coasts of Troy, exiled by fate, came to Italy and Lavinian shores; much buffeted on sea and land by violence from above, through cruel Juno's unforgiving wrath.

Colin's love for Rosalind has brought him dangerously far from the fields which Hobbinol inhabits. Colin may be no epic hero, but he appears to be as far from pastoral content as ever were Ulysses or Aeneas. Hobbinol advises Colin to leave the emotional wilderness he has entered because of his love for Rosalind and urges a return to pastoral simplicity: Forsake the soyle, that so doth the bewitch: Leave me those hilles, where harbrough nis to see, Nor holybush, nor brere, nor winding witche: And to the dales resort, where shepheards ritch, And fruictfull flocks bene every where to see. (18-22)

Colin, in reply, asserts a plaintive position which is more than just the expression of a lover's despair: I, whylst youth, and course of carelesse yeeres

76 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Did let me walke withouten lincks of love, In such delights did joy amongst my peeres: But ryper age such pleasures doth reprove, My fancye eke from former follies move To stayed steps: for time in passing weares (As garments doen, which wexen old above) And draweth newe delightes with hoary heares. (33-40)

In The Kalender of Shepherdes, the almanac whose "olde name" provided the title for Spenser's "new worke," the "maister Shepeherde" explains that "we shephardis saythe that the age of man is Ixxii. yere and that we lekene but to one nolle yere. for evermore we take vi. yere for every moneth."7 Each month has its own characteristics. In June "is the sone hyest in his meridyornall he maye assende no hyeer in his stacyone his glemerynge goldene beames rypeethe the corne and than is man xxxvi. he may assende nor more for than hathe nature gyven hym beauty and strength at the full, and repyd the sedes of perfet understondynge" (3.2, italics mine). Colin begins to embody this correspondence between the annual cycle and the cycle of man's life. For as Spenser's poem approaches the mid-point of its calendar year, Colin, no longer a "shepheardes boy," approaches the middle age of life. From this new vantage point he describes his youthful participation in the pleasance to which Hobbinol is now urging him to return: Tho couth I sing of love, and tune my pype Unto my plaintive pleas in verses made: Tho would I seeke for Queene apples unrype, To give my Rosalind, and in Sommer shade Dight gaudy Girlonds, was my comen trade, To crowne her golden locks ... (41-6)

For a few lines we are back in an idyllic world where love thrives on simple gifts and the shepherd makes his "plaintive pleas" in the hope of a joyful end to care. Colin's love, however, can have no such conclusion, not just because of his rejection by Rosalind but also because of the inescapable fact of time: ... but yeeres more rype, And losse of her, whose love as lyfe I wayd, Those weary wanton toyes away dyd wype. (46-8)

The pastoral ideal postulates a world infused by love and untroubled

77 The Pastoral Image

by time. Love unrequited and time unredeemed transform the pleasance into nothing more than a time-worn place of sorrow. Colin's love for Rosalind has driven him out of the pastoral paradise into the realities of temporal existence, an existence wherein the simple delights of pastoral recreation appear - as in "February" Cuddie's delights appear to Thenot - but "weary wanton toyes." "June" establishes Colin's love for Rosalind as a threat both to his own existence and to the existence of the pastoral world he inhabits, the world of The Shepheardes Calender. Colin falls in love, he ages, he repents, but he is in no sense a dramatic character whose imaginative life extends beyond the bounds of the poetic context in which he is placed. Colin is the shepherd as poet. This is not the whole of his character - he is also the shepherd as friend, as lover, and as aging man - but it is its essence. The discussion about poetry which comprises about half of the June eclogue both stresses the importance of Colin's art and helps to establish its limitations. Hobbinol proclaims the merit of that art - Colin's ability to create a golden world of pastoral song: I sawe Calliope with Muses moe, Soone as thy oaten pype began to sound, Theyr yvory Luyts and Tamburins forgoe: And from the fountaine, where they sat around, Renne after hastely thy silver sound. But when they came, where thou thy skill didst showe, They drewe abacke, as halfe with shame confound, Shepheard to see, them in theyr art outgoe. (57-64)

Colin's reply is ostensibly a denial that he deserves such lofty praise: Of Muses Hobbinol, I conne no skill: For they bene daughters of the hyghest Jove, And holden scorne of homely shepheards quill. For sith I heard, that Pan with Phoebus strove, Which him to much rebuke and Daunger drove: I never lyst presume to Parnasse hyll, But pyping lowe in shade of lowly grove, I play to please my selfe, all be it ill. (65-72)

Colin does not, however, deny the position Hobbinol assigns him in the pastoral world; rather, he establishes that his position is limited to that world. The poet like Spenser who writes of pastoral does so through the inspiration of the Muse, and he may eventually "presume

78 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

to Parnasse hyll" regardless of "rebuke and Daunger." But when he does so, he will be leaving the pastoral itself behind, something the shepherd-poet in pastoral obviously can never do. He must remain an inhabitant of the fields that define his existence: Nought weigh I, who my song doth prayse or blame, Ne strive to winne renowne, or passe the rest: With shepheard sittes not, followe flying fame: But feede his flocke in fields, where falls hem best. (73-6)

When the shepherd looks at the world from the perspective of the pleasance, he may well succeed in conferring praise or blame. But to sing songs of praise or blame can never be his reason for being, no more for Colin than for the Cuddie of "October": such activity belongs to those urban poets who "strive to winne renowne, or passe the rest." Colin displays the humility which is a necessary part of any truly pastoral character, but he does not fail to assert what merits his lowly verses do possess: The God of shepheards Tityrus is dead, Who taught me homely, as I can, to make. (81-2)

Tityrus is of course both Virgil, who sang "of warres and deadly drede, / So as the Heavens did quake his verse to here" ("October"), and Chaucer, "whose prayse for pleasaunt tales cannot dye, so long as the memorie of hys name shal live, and the name of Poetrie shal endure" (Gloss to "February"). In proclaiming himself a disciple of Tityrus, Colin is claiming the highest proficiency in pastoral song a shepherd can achieve. Yet all Colin's skills cannot make him other than a shepherd. Fully to confront in poetry the problems he encounters in his progress through the Calender, problems of unrequited love and unredeemed time, he would have to deny his pastoral nature. In his desire for the inspiration which would enable him to pierce the heart of the irretrievably lost Rosalind, Colin suggests (he can do no more than suggest) that he wishes to rise to the courtly poetry of the sonneteers: Then should my plaints, causd of discurtesee, As messengers of all my painfull plight, Flye to my love, where ever that she bee, And pierce her heart with poynt of worthy wight: As shee deserves, that wrought so deadly spight. (97-101)

79 The Pastoral Image

The sonneteers, after all, are masters at writing verses to act as "messengers of ... painfull plight": Loving in truth, and faine in verse my love to show, That the deare She might take some pleasure of my paine: Pleasure might cause her reade, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pitie winne, and pitie grace obtaine, I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe.8

Such a transformation from pastoral to Petrarchan poet could be and indeed was undergone by the author of the Amoretti; but for Colin the change remains an impossibility: But since I am not, as I wish I were, Ye gentle shepheards, which your flocks do feede, Whether on hylls, or dales, or other where, Beare witnesse all of thys so wicked deede: And tell the lasse, whose flowre is woxe a weede, And faultlesse fayth, is turned to faithlesse fere, That she the truest shepheards hart made bleede, That lyves on earth, and loved her most dere. (105-12)

Colin can only spread his complaint through a world which Rosalind will presumably never enter. "June" stretches to the limit the capacity of the pastoral world to include the lover's despair within its bounds. The pastoral must maintain contact with the pleasance or be destroyed (give way, that is, to a non-pastoral form of literature). In "January," as we have seen, Colin himself retains sufficient awareness of the pleasance to stay securely within the only world in which he can safely exist. Had the love situation of "January" developed in the direction usual for pastoral drama or romance, Colin could have re-entered the pleasance with no loss of generic continuity. "June" remains within the bounds of pastoral complaint and Colin remains in contact with the pleasance, but only through the presence of Hobbinol. Not only does Hobbinol assert the value of the pleasance, he also ends the eclogue with a lament for its loss: O carefull Colin, I lament thy case, Thy teares would make the hardest flint to flowe. Ah faithlesse Rosalind, and voide of grace, That art the roote of all this ruthfull woe. But now is time, I gesse, homeward to goe:

80 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Then ryse ye blessed flocks, and home apace, Least night with stealing steppes doe you forsloe, And wett your tender Lambes, that by you trace. (113-20)

Hobbinol manages (with some apparent uncertainty) to bring the eclogue to a pastoral close. Hobbinol is no poet, however. He can only respond and not create. Creation is Colin's task, but in the present condition of the Calender's pastoral poet there is little to inspire the further creation of pastoral poetry. 3 ROSALIND Colin is certainly one of the unfortunate lovers, but he is not so heinous a member of that unhappy company as the widespread critical condemnation would suggest.9 Colin is the poet of a world which is informed with love. Without love the pastoral Arcadia, the world of the pleasance, could scarcely exist.10 Often, as in the moral eclogues of the Calender, the pastoral world serves primarily as a perspective from which to view the urban world. In such poems love usually has little part - though it does at times remain a valuable point of reference: But were thy yeares greene, as now bene myne, To other delights they would encline. Tho wouldest thou learne to caroll of Love, And hery with hymnes thy lasses glove.

Thus Cuddie emphasizes his allegiance to the pastoral ideal in the Calender's February eclogue (59-62). Love also plays little part in pastoral panegyric, such as Colin's praise of Eliza in "April," or in pastoral elegy, such as his lament for Dido in "November." Both panegyric and elegy, however, are formal, enclosed creations. The pastoral world contains them by virtue of the power of the shepherd's song; it is not defined by their presence. Arcadia is rather defined by the delights of the shepherd who inhabits it: partly his delight in song and nature, but chiefly his delight in love. At the beginning of Virgil's Eclogues a shepherd fills his world with the music of love: "tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra / formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas" ("you, Tityrus, at ease beneath the shade, teach the woods to re-echo 'fair Amaryllis'"). Boccaccio's Ameto opens with a disquisition in praise of love and is addressed only to those who are themselves lovers. The prologue to Tasso's Aminta is spoken by Cupid, "Amore, in abito pastorale." In the multiple subplots of Montemayor's Diana, in the

8i The Pastoral Image

formal simplicity of the Aminta, and in the baroque complexity of Guarini's // pastor fido, the difficulties which keep lovers apart serve only to postpone the final resolution in harmony until the pastoral world has received its full definition as a love-filled pleasance. When in "March" Spenser's own pastoral world shakes off the bonds of winter, then, in the words of E.K., "two shepheards boyes ... beginne to make purpose of love and other plesaunce, which to springtime is most agreeable." Colin is part of this world. As youth, as shepherd, and (particularly) as poet, he must awaken to love. He does so, admittedly, with little cause for joy, yet Colin's misery is hardly singular. Love is always a disruption of the pleasance, an awakening to discontent. The classic statement is in Virgil's eighth eclogue, the lines which Macaulay once called the finest in Latin literature: saepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala (dux ego vester eram) vidi cum matre legentem. alter ab undecimo turn me iam acceperat annus, iam fragilis poteram ab terra contingere ramos, ut vidi, ut peril! ut me malus abstulit error! (8.37-41) Within our garden-close I saw thee -1 was guide for both - a little child, along with my mother, plucking dewy apples. My eleventh year finished, the next had just greeted me; from the ground I could now reach the frail boughs. As I saw, how was I lost! How a fatal frenzy swept me away!

The experience and the sentiment echo through countless less articulate expressions. In the Calender's March eclogue Thomalin is struck in the heel by one of Cupid's arrows: And now it ranckleth more and more, And inwardly it festreth sore, Ne wote I, how to cease it. (100-2)

Even here, where love is so closely associated with the natural and joyful awakening of spring, there is no escaping the inevitability of sorrow. Arcadia is not quite paradise, nor, as the Chorus to the first act of Tasso's Aminta laments, is it the Golden Age. Though the shepherd may try to acknowledge only the easy rule of permissiveness, the "legge aurea e felice / Che Natura scolpi: S' ei place, ei lice," he invariably finds that love now is governed by much more stringent criteria:

82 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Opra e tua sola, o Onore, Che furto sia quel che fu don d'Amore. E son tuoi fatti egregi Le pene e i pianti nostri. (1.2.620-3) Thy work [alone, O Honour] it is ... That what was once the gift, is now the theft of Love. Our sorrows and our pains, These are thy noble gains! (trans. Hunt, 163)

Renaissance conventions seldom allowed for immediate reciprocation in love. The shepherd as well as the courtier had to prove his worth and sincerity, if not by deeds then at least by suffering. The despair Colin displays in the January eclogue is a normal enough effect of pastoral love. In Mantuan's first eclogue a shepherd named Faustus recalls the torments he underwent for love of Galla, a shepherdess: nulla quies mihi dulcis erat, nullus labor ... carminis occiderat studium, iam nulla sonabat fistula disparibus calamis; odiosus et arcus, funda odiosa, canes odiosi, odiosa volucrum praeda, nucum calyces cultro enucleare molestum ... summa haec: vitales auras invitus agebam. (1.14, 18-21, 38) I found pleasure in neither rest nor labour... I lost my fondness for song, and my pipe with its different length reeds fell silent. I grew to hate my bow, to hate my sling, to hate my dogs, to hate catching birds; I found it troublesome to open nutshells with my knife ... It came down to this: I breathed unwillingly the air that gave me life.

Faustus, like the youthful and lovelorn Colin Clout, forsook all pastoral delights and rejected his oaten pipe. The shepherd's pipe is his means of giving expression to the joyful life he leads within the pleasance. His rejection of the pipe is a sign of sorrow and of loss, not, as some of Spenser's critics would have it, a sign that his love is in some way morally culpable. Mantuan's eclogue is entitled "De honesto amore et felici eius exitu" ("Of lawful love and its happy outcome"). Of course what distinguishes Colin's from most versions of pastoral love is its ultimate lack of success. Of Rosalind we know little more than that she is both desirable and unattainable. The former quality is sufficiently attested to by Colin himself; the latter is suggested in "January" by her affiliation with the town and confirmed

83 The Pastoral Image

in "June" by her loss to the shadowy Menalcas. Colin's love for Rosalind, then, signals his commitment to an unattainable goal. In Hallett Smith's terms, she marks the destruction of otium by the intrusion of the aspiring mind. In Colin's own terms she marks, as we have seen, the irredeemable loss of (pastoral) paradise: O happy Hobbinoll, I blesse thy state, That Paradise hast found, whych Adam lost. ("June," 9-10)

Hobbinol himself views the matter in terms of pastoral common sense: Sicker I hold him, for a greater fon, That loves the thing, he cannot purchase. ("April," 158-9)

Nevertheless, the fact that Rosalind is unattainable does not justify a condemnation of Colin's love from any point of view except that which regards pastoral tranquillity as the highest good. Decorum decrees that the love which can be realized by a shepherd within the bounds of pastoral must necessarily be a lowly one. Mantuan' s Faustus, like Colin, was driven by love into the turbulence of despair: "Fauste, quis in syrtes Auster te impegerat istas?" ("what wind drove you onto those banks?") he is asked by Fortunatus (a question which may have prompted Spenser's own use of Virgilian imagery in "June," 14-16). Faustus' sufferings, though, are repaid with success: ecce dies genialis adest, mihi ducitur uxor. sed quid opus multis? nox exspectata duobus venit, et in portum vento ratis acta secundo est. (1.156-8) And lo, the happy day arrived -1 received my bride. But what more needs to be said? The night we both awaited arrived, and a favourable breeze brought my ship to port.

But consider the object of his affections: erat ore rubens et pleno turgida vultu et, quamvis oculo paene esset inutilis uno, cum tamen illius faciem mirabar et annos, dicebam Triviae formam nihil esse Dianae. (44-7) Her lips were red and her face round and plump, and though she was almost blind in one eye I used to gaze on her young features with wonder, and I would say that the beauty of Diana was nothing to hers.

84 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

For all Faustus' enthusiasm, Galla is a woman such as a shepherd might both woo and win. Touchstone shows that he has learned the lesson of success in pastoral love when he introduces Audrey to the ''country copulatives" with the words, "A poor virgin, sir, an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own: a poor humour of mine, sir, to take that that no man else will."11 Rosalind, unlike Galla, but like the woman who graces the long courtly tradition of love that is both noble and ennobling, is (for Colin at least) a figure divine both in her perfection and in the distance she maintains from her suppliant lover. From Dante's Vita nuova, through Petrarch's Canzoniere, to the trattati d'amore and the sonnet sequences of innumerable imitators, the worth of the lover has been attested by the height and indeed the impossibility of his aspiration. Love, even unrequited love, has many rewards, but the greatest of these for many centuries was poetry. Beatrice, to look to the medieval fount of the tradition, is for Dante as much an inspiration to poetry as to love (whether of woman or of God), and in the Vita nuova the quality of the lover's desire is indissolubly linked to the quality of his verse.12 Dante's first greeting from Beatrice and his consequent subjection to the rule of Love are commemorated by a sonnet addressed to an audience of those who are both lovers and critics: A ciascun' alma presa, e gentil core, Nel cui cospetto viene il dir presente, In do che mi riscrivan suo parvente, Salute in lor signer, cioe Amore.13 To every captive soul and gentle lover Into whose sight this present rhyme may chance, That, writing back, each may expound its sense, Greetings in Love, who is their Lord, I offer.14

This sonnet, like the other poems in the work, is accompanied by a prosaic analysis: "Questo sonetto si divide in due parti..." The aridity of the analyses has often offended those intent on reading the Vita nuova only as romantic autobiography. They have their place, however, in this work which is the autobiography of a poet as well as a lover. Had Dante been less aspiring a lover, he would also have been less of a poet. His despair of success in love is a promise of his success in poetry; his success in poetry is testimony to the quality of his love.15 I would not argue that there is more than a generic resemblance between Beatrice and Rosalind, and admittedly the resemblance is

85 The Pastoral Image

more clearly drawn in the later Colin Clouts Come Home Againe than in the Calender itself. Nevertheless, the presentation of Dante's love in the Vita nuova does make usefully explicit the relationship between love and poetry which generally remains implicit in the presentation of Colin's love in the Calender. Whether or not Spenser ever read the Vita nuova, its authority is ultimately behind Piers' response to Cuddie's suggestion in "October" that Colin would rise to higher flights of song "were he not with love so ill bedight": Ah fon, for love does teach him climbe so hie, And lyftes him up out of the loathsome myre.

(91-2)

A shepherd like Faustus, whose love befits his lowly status, will never sing except to shepherds. Colin deserves a nobler audience. His love for Rosalind is not, as Patrick Cullen would have it, a "failure to order his own emotions," a "private obsession."16 Rather it is an indication of his poetic stature. In "January" Colin's initial expression of despair is also a virtuoso performance in which the shepherd displays his mastery of the art of rhetoric,17 the ars bene dicendi which in the Renaissance was almost synonymous with the art of poetry. In "August" the rustic accents of the singing contest between Willie and Perigot are in marked contrast to the lofty notes of the "doolefull verse / Of Rosalend," a sestina originally made by Colin and now recited by Cuddie. When it is concluded, Perigot establishes the appropriate response: O Colin, Colin, the shepheards joye, How I admire ech turning of thy verse: And Cuddie, fresh Cuddie the liefest boye, How dolefully his doole thou didst rehearse. (190-3)

Again, despair in love is linked with excellence in poetry. The sestina does not particularly well accord with modern tastes. We are likely to prefer the boisterous song of Willie and Perigot to Colin's rigidly formal lament. Nevertheless, the form had been given authority by Petrarch and, for Spenser, by Sidney/8 and Spenser's audience would have seen in Colin's August sestina further justification for Piers' remark, "love does teach him climbe so hie." Colin's very expressions of sorrow, then, are also a triumphant demonstration of poetic achievement. Perhaps more important, they are also an assertion of poetic potential - the potential of the new poet and the new poetry of Elizabethan England. In the moral eclogues the plaintive awareness of the limitations of the recreative ideal suggests

86 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

the need for moral activity in a non-pastoral environment. Colin's unhappy encounter with love suggests the need and the potential for non-pastoral poetic activity - a suggestion confirmed both by the dialogue between Cuddie and Piers in "October" and by the conclusion to Colin's and the Calender's progress in "December." But of course the shepherds of the moral eclogues will never put down their sheephooks to grapple with ecclesiastical corruption, and any poetic flights to be taken beyond the bounds of pastoral will never be made by Colin himself. Colin is confined to the pastoral world that gives him being, and within that world the only poetic flights love can inspire him to are flights of despair.

4 "NOVEMBER" Rosalind has awakened Colin to a world of conflicts the shepherd can neither endure nor resolve. Yet the pastoral ideal is always liable to disruption; indeed, in pastoral literature it always is disrupted. If it is not intruded upon by a follower of the tempter who so troubled Eve, then it is unsettled by the sorrows of love and the ravages of time. But just as the pastoral can survive the onslaughts of the former through retreat - "if to my cotage thou wilt resort, / So as I can, I wil thee comfort" ("September") - so it can survive the realization of the latter through acceptance. In "December" Colin accepts the losses occasioned by love and time. He thereby preserves his pastoral world from the destruction which threatens it in "June" and consequently maintains the imaginative integrity of Spenser's poetic Calender. And though I would not claim that the Calender as a whole has the same continuity of argument as we find in its individual eclogues, it does seem to me nevertheless that the poem's final movement into tranquillity and acceptance is thematically and tonally initiated by Colin's November elegy on the death of Dido. The pastoral elegy is the shepherd's response to the waste and destruction of death, man's greatest loss to time.19 It is his attempt to preserve the meaning of an individual's life as something of positive value when that life itself has ceased: Waile ye this wofull waste of natures warke: Waile we the wight, whose presence was our pryde: Waile we the wight, whose absence is our carke. The sonne of all the world is dimme and darke. (64-7)

The pastoral elegy is, however, a poetic and not a philosophical or doctrinal response to death. The elegy may be infused by a deeply

87 The Pastoral Image

held religious faith, but only incidentally does it seek to explain death in rational or theological terms. For the elegy's primary generic concern is to transmute the fact of death into an imaginatively acceptable form, to reaffirm what death has called into question - the integrity of the pastoral image of contentment: The fayrest floure our gyrlond all emong, Is faded quite and into dust ygoe. Sing now ye shepheards daughters, sing no moe The songs that Colin made in her prayse, But into weeping turne your wanton layes. (75-9)

In most forms of pastoral elegy the dead shepherd or shepherdess is closely associated with pastoral music: The water Nymphs, that wont with her to sing and daunce, And for her girlond Olive braunches beare, Now balefull boughes of Cypres doen advaunce: The Muses, that were wont greene bayes to weare, Now bringen bitter Eldre braunches seare. (143-7)

Dido, loved by the Muses - like Theocritus' Daphnis, who was also "dear to the Muses" (1.141) - lives on in the music that informs the pastoral world, and in an imaginative sense her death is redeemed by the continuation of the harmony within which she once lived and to which she once helped give expression. The dead shepherd must never be left unwept, for his loss is redeemed whenever the harmony of the pastoral world is restored through the song of the pastoral elegy. The basis of the elegy's poetic response to death, the primary means by which it moves toward an imaginatively satisfying resolution, is a subjugation of sorrow at the death of the individual to an acceptance and affirmation of the universal cycle of life and death. The poet's claim that nature joins in lamenting the dead shepherd is essentially an assertion of the harmony that exists between the shepherd and the natural world of the pastoral landscape: Ay me that dreerie death should strike so mortall stroke, That can undoe Dame natures kindly course: The faded lockes fall from the loftie oke, The flouds do gaspe, for dryed is theyr sourse, And flouds of teares flowe in theyr stead perforse. The mantled medowes mourne,

88 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Theyr sondry colours tourne. O heavie herse, The heavens doe melt in teares without remorse. O carefull verse. (123-32)

But the very claim to kinship between the shepherd and nature implies a recognition of the fact that he must inevitably share the common fate of all things born to die: O trustlesse state of earthly things, and slipper hope Of mortal men, that swincke and sweate for nought, And shooting wide, doe misse the marked scope: Now have I learnd (a lesson derely bought) That nys on earth assuraunce to be sought. (153-7)

The singer of the pastoral elegy does not accept the shepherd's death in ignorance or neglect of the importance of the loss, nor is the acceptance devoid of sorrow. There is always a recognition of the essential difference between the death of man and the death of nature: Whence is it, that the flouret of the field doth fade, And lyeth buryed long in Winters bale: Yet soone as spring his mantle doth displaye, It floureth fresh, as it should never fayle? But thing on earth that is of most availe, As vertues braunch and beauties budde, Reliven not for any good. (83-9)

The words are Spenser's, but the sentiment, deriving from the Lament for Bion once attributed to Moschus, lingers as a suggestion whenever nature is said to mourn for the dead shepherd or flowers are cast upon his coffin. By affirming the harmony between man and nature even when that affirmation involves accepting the death of the individual as a part of the natural pattern, pastoral is able to effect the only redemption within its power - the imaginative redemption that comes through perpetuating the memory of the dead shepherd as a continuing participant in an image of harmony and content. But nowe sike happy cheere is turnd to heavie chaunce, Such pleasaunce now displast by dolors dint: All Musick sleepes, where death doth leade the daunce, And shepherds wonted solace is extinct. (103-6)

89 The Pastoral Image

Colin affirms the harmony that existed between Dido and the world in which she lived. He both expresses the loss suffered by the pastoral world in the death of one who was a creative force for order within it, and enables that loss to be redeemed through his re-creation of the traditional form of the pastoral elegy. Religion, of course, offers its own form of redemption, one brought within the tradition of pastoral elegy by Virgil's fifth eclogue: Candidus insuetum miratur limen Olympi sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis. (5.56-7) Daphnis, in radiant beauty, marvels at Heaven's unfamiliar threshold, and beneath his feet beholds the clouds and stars.

This redemption is formulated in Christian terms as early as the ninth-century elegy in which Radbert characterizes Adalhard, founder and abbot of Corbie, with the epithet of Virgil's Daphnis, "formosi pecoris custos formosior ipse" ("the keeper of a fair flock, himself more fair").20 The importance for the pastoral singer of the dead shepherd's apotheosis is not that it provides a doctrinal answer to the question of loss - and this is not to deny the profound spiritual value for Spenser of the conventions he is using - but that the apotheosis provides an imaginative remedy to the disruption of the pastoral image. The shepherd ascends to a heaven that offers not so much a new life as a continuation of the recreative life of the pastoral pleasance. Nevertheless, to locate the image of pastoral contentment in a life after death is an imaginative act of obvious Christian value, and finally, I think, the poetic and the spiritual resolution are one and the same: She raignes a goddesse now emong the saintes, That whilome was the saynt of shepheards light: And is enstalled nowe in heavens hight. I see thee blessed soule, I see, Walke in Elisian fieldes so free ... No daunger there the shepheard can astert: Fayre fieldes and pleasaunt layes there bene, The fieldes ay fresh, the grasse ay greene. (175-9, ^7~9)

Not only does the pleasance redeem through sorrow and song the loss of the shepherd, but for the dead shepherd himself the loss of the pleasance is redeemed through death which is no more than a rebirth. At the heart of the lament, and because of the lament, comes an image of joy:

90 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral There lives shee with the blessed Gods in blisse, There drincks she Nectar with Ambrosia mixt, And joyes enjoyes, that mortall men doe misse. The honor now of highest gods she is, That whilome was poore shepheards pryde, While here on earth she did abyde. (194-9)

The fact of loss remains, but through his plaintive acceptance of death the singer of the elegy is able to affirm the recreative ideal, the image of the pleasance, the value of pastoral life itself: O happy herse, Ceasse now my song, my woe now wasted is. O joyfull verse. (200-2)

Through much of "November" Spenser follows his model, Clement Marot's Eglogue sur le trespas de ma Dame Loyse de Savoye (1531), fairly closely. One of his interesting departures, however, comes at the close of the eclogue. In both Marot and Spenser the last words of the poem are spoken by Thenot. In the Eglogue Thenot praises Colin for his song and then addresses his herds: Sus, grans Taureaux, et vous Brebis petites, Allez au Tect, assez avez brouste! Puis le Soleil tombe en ces bas limites Et la Nuyct vient devers 1'autre coste.21

The anticipation of nightfall is a traditional pastoral close, originating with Virgil's first eclogue. In "November" Thenot speaks only to Colin: Ay francke shepheard, how bene thy verses meint With doolful pleasaunce, so as I ne wotte, Whether rejoyce or weepe for great constrainte? Thyne be the cossette, well hast thow it gotte. Up Colin up, ynough thou morned hast, Now gynnes to mizzle, hye we homeward fast. (203-8)

"One returns with difficulty to the world of change," as Ellen Lambert comments on this passage," yet, with sorrow now not unmixed with joy, one does return. The shepherd, his song of loss and redemption finished, remains sitting for a moment in the gently falling rain and then moves silently off towards home. It is a close that can bear comparison, I think, with those much more famous lines,

91 The Pastoral Image At last he rose, and twich't his Mantle blue: Tomorrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.

I can see no justification for reading "November" as an indication of Colin's "obsession with death, his nostalgia for and yet increasing alienation from the pastoral world," or for seeing in Dido "a foil to Rosalind ... an image of Rosalind as Colin would have liked her to be."23 But it is not, I think, unreasonable to see in "November" an effective transition from Colin's despair at loss in "June," his previous appearance in the Calender, to his quiet acceptance of loss in "December."24

5 "DECEMBER" Spenser modelled "December" on Marot's Eglogue de Marot au Roy, soubz les noms de Pan et Robin (1539),25 an appeal for patronage from Francis i, the Pan to whom the aging shepherd-poet Robin addresses his words. Spenser took from Marot the structural devices of presenting an appeal by the poet to Pan and of establishing a correspondence between the stages of the poet's life and the seasons of the year. He also borrowed a number of details from Marot in his description of Colin's youthful activities, and in some cases the echoes are little more than direct translations. But Spenser drastically altered the direction and emphasis of Marot's poem in order to serve his own very different purposes. Spenser first of all changed the nature of the shepherd's appeal. Colin asks of Pan only that he listen to his song: Hearken awhile from thy greene cabinet, The rurall song of carefull Colinet. (17-18)

He makes no request for material assistance comparable to that made by Marot's "petit Robinet." Indeed, such a request could have no place in the structure of Spenser's eclogue. Now leave ye shepheards boyes your merry glee, My Muse is hoarse and weary of thys stounde: Here will I hang my pype upon this tree, Was never pype of reede did better sounde. (137-40)

Colin, like Robin, has hung up his pipe, but Robin fully expects to sing again, "Plus hault et cler que ne feiz one 1'este." Robin hopes for relief from the approaching winter: "desja Pan, de sa verte maison, / M'a faict ce bien, de ouyr mon oraison." Colin sees in winter only the herald of death which ends all delight:

92 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Gather ye together my little flocke, My little flock, that was to me so liefe: Let me, ah lette me in your folds ye lock, Ere the breme Winter breede you greater griefe. Winter is come, that blowes the balefull breath, And after Winter commeth timely death. (145-50)

Marot's poem is a pastoral interlude; Spenser's is a pastoral farewell. In this difference lies the originality of "December" and its importance to the unity of the Calender as a whole. E.K. begins the Argument to "December" by observing that "This ^glogue (even as the first beganne) is ended with a complaynte of Colin to God Pan." His words emphasize the obvious similarity between the first and last eclogues of the Calender. Both use the same six-line stanza rhyming ababcc, a form not found elsewhere in the poem. Both are set in winter. Both consist of a brief introduction followed by a complaint by Colin Clout speaking in soliloquy. In both eclogues Colin speaks chiefly of his love for Rosalind, but also of his flocks, his friendship with Hobbinol and his music. In both he draws elaborate comparisons between his present state and the wintry conditions which surround him. In both he concludes by rejecting his shepherd's pipe. In "December," then, the Calender comes full circle. The eclogue is not only a return, however, but also a completion and a resolution. More important than the similarities between "January" and "December" are the differences. For whereas the Calender begins in despair, it finishes in a state of acceptance which is strangely akin to contentment. "January" begins with Colin leading his flocks out of their fold: Tho to a hill his faynting flocke he ledde, And thus him playnd, the while his shepe there fedde. (11-12)

"December" begins with Colin occupying a shady retreat: The gentle shepheard satte beside a springe, All in the shadowe of a bushye brere, That Colin hight, which wel could pype and singe, For he of Tityrus his songs did lere. There as he satte in secreate shade alone, Thus gan he make of love his piteous mone. (1-6)

The difference in matter of fact is slight; we learn at the end of "December" that Colin had already led his sheep out before the

93 The Pastoral Image

eclogue began. The difference in thematic emphasis though is interesting. In "January" Colin moves to a hill whereon his exposure to the elements reflects his exposure to the tempestuous passions of an unhappy love. In "December" Colin has withdrawn to a spot which as yet suggests nothing of winter but rather has unmistakable overtones of the pastoral pleasance: est qui nee veteris pocula Massici nee partem solido demere de die spernit, nunc viridi membra sub arbuto stratus, nunc ad aquae lene caput sacrae.26 Many a one there is who scorns not bowls of ancient Massic nor to steal a portion of the day's busy hours, stretching his limbs now 'neath the verdant arbute-tree, now by the sacred source of some gently murmuring rill.

A green shade and running water are invariable features of a realm which in "June" Colin appeared effectively to have lost for ever. He has not now with Hobbinol regained the paradise of Adam - such would not be the place for a "piteous mone" - but he does appear to have found something curiously similar. There is another interesting difference in emphasis between the openings of the January and December eclogues. Whereas in "January" Colin addresses his complaint first of all to the "Gods of love, that pitie lovers payne/' and only secondly to "Pan thou shepheards God, that once didst love/' in "December" his complaint is addressed only to "soveraigne Pan," thou God of shepheards all, Which of our tender Lambkins takest keepe: And when our flocks into mischaunce mought fall, Doest save from mischiefe the unwary sheepe: Als of their maisters hast no lesse regarde, Then of the flocks, which thou doest watch and ward.

(7-12)

"Pan curat ovis oviumque magistros" ("Pan cares for the sheep and the shepherds of the sheep").27 Colin is no longer associated by his opening with the company of unfortunate lovers. His address to Pan as archetypal pastor has strong spiritual overtones and relates Colin to pastoral values of harmony and contentment from which he has long been set apart. In "January" the emphasis is on disruption; the pastoral ideal survives only in Colin's expressions of loss. "December" too is concerned with loss, but it is also concerned with redemption - redemption that extends to both Colin's life and Spenser's poem.

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In "December" Colin, following the lead of Marot's Robin, reviews his pastoral career. He begins with the youthful days before love took away his freedom: Whilome in youth, when flowrd my joyfull spring, Like Swallow swift I wandred here and there. (19-20)

Colin's account of a youth devoted to recreation is a dramatization of the pastoral ideal, but a dramatization tempered by a poignant because belated recognition of the inability of the ideal to counter the harsh demands of temporal existence. Three times the assertions of free delight in the quatrains of Colin's account are followed in the stanzas' concluding couplets by suggestions of limitations to the ideal (19-36). The woods are "wastefull" and wolves lurk in the "forest wyde"; spring does not "ever laste," and the responsibilities of pastoral care do not allow Colin's equation of "libertee and lyfe" to remain unchallenged. The recreative ideal which informs Colin's description of his youth is the same as that which is asserted in the moral eclogues (and in "June") by Cuddie, Palinode, Morrell, and Hobbinol. As those eclogues suggest, an acknowledgment of the practical limitations of the ideal is not a denial of its imaginative value. In "December," as elsewhere, the ideal finds expression particularly through Colin's song: Fro thence I durst in derring doe compare With shepheards swayne, what ever fedde in field: And if that Hobbinol right judgement bare, To Pan his owne selfe pype I neede not yield. For if the flocking Nymphes did folow Pan, The wiser Muses after Colin ranne. (43-8)

Colin's art is explicitly described as a product of his youth, of his "looser yeares," but the description carries no note of denigration. The Muses are their own justification; where they hold sway, moral and temporal imperatives are simply irrelevant. In "April" Colin's recreation is also a re-creation, an assumption of England's Maiden Queen into a realm of realized ideals: So sprong her grace Of heavenly race, No mortall blemishe may her blotte. (52-4)

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The mortal Elizabeth becomes the immortal Eliza, resplendent in a divinity conferred by Spenser's pastoral muse: Shee is my goddesse plaine, And I her shepherds swayne, Albee forswonck and forswatt I am. (97-9)

Within the bounds of his lyric creation the poet becomes "an Orpheus manipulating the world of praise/'28 and because the world is the poet's own he can realize within it "the pastoral ideal of supreme order, the golden-age ideal of eternal spring, peace, and justice."29 But the ideal must in time be disrupted. Orphic powers do not alter frail mortality: "What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore?" Colin's lay of Eliza, though a triumphant celebration of the Calender's recreative impulse, is for Colin himself merely an echo of lost delights. It is a song Which once he made, as by a spring he laye, And tuned it unto the Waters fall. ("April," 35-6)

It survives only through Hobbinol's repetition; even in "April" the singer can no longer experience the joy of his song. In "December" Colin recalls the moment of transition: The shepheards God (perdie God was he none) My hurtlesse pleasaunce did me ill upbraide, My freedome lorne, my life he lefte to mone. Love they him called, that gave me checkmate, But better mought they have behote him Hate. Tho gan my lovely Spring bid me farewel, And Sommer season sped him to display (For love then in the Lyons house did dwell) The raging fyre, that kindled at his ray. (50-8)

The advent of Rosalind marked the end of youthful pleasures and of youth itself; it meant the loss of pastoral contentment and a journey through regions frequented by the unhappy mind: Where I was wont to seeke the honey Bee, Working her formall rowmes in Wexen frame: The grieslie Todestoole growne there mought I see

96 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral And loathed Paddocks lording on the same. And where the chaunting birds luld me a sleepe, The ghastlie Owle her grievous ynne doth keepe.

(67-72)

The discordant cries of the owl and the frog have replaced the harmonious sounds of the pleasance. Colin's progress, though, was not simply from joy to sorrow, from recreation to complaint: Then as the springe gives place to elder time, And bringeth forth the fruite of sommers pryde: All so my age now passed youngthly pryme, To thinges of ryper reason selfe applyed. And learnd of lighter timber cotes to frame, Such as might save my sheepe and me fro shame. (73-8)

Colin's journey was also toward maturity, and the activities of his maturity are in marked contrast to those of his youth. Once he wandered aimlessly, paying no heed to the danger of wolves; now he purposefully builds sheepcotes to protect his flocks. No longer does he hunt the "hartlesse hare" but pursues instead the "hurtful beastes." Where once he thought that spring is never-ending, now he understands the "signes of heaven" and has the insight of a seer into the operations of the mutable world: And tryed time yet taught me greater thinges, The sodain rysing of the raging seas: The soothe of byrds by beating of their wings, The power of herbs, both which can hurt and ease: And which be wont t'enrage the restlesse sheepe, And which be wont to worke eternall sleepe. (85-90)

The loss of the pleasance, like the loss of innocence, quite naturally leads to an increase in knowledge - little of the fallen world's variety is contained in the earthly paradise - and Colin in age is better suited to confront the world as it is than he was in youth. He is not just a sadder but a wiser shepherd, however; he is also potentially a greater poet. Puttenham observes of poets that "forasmuch as they were the first observers of all naturall causes and effects in the things generable and corruptible, and from thence mounted up to search after the celestiall courses and influences, and yet penetrated further to know the divine essences and substances separate ... they were the first Astronomers and Philosophists and Metaphisicks."30 The art of

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poetry is not to be mastered without learning - "there may no man be an excellent poet nor orator unless he have part of all other doctrine/' says Sir Thomas Elyot31 - and the wit of the poet is not to be satisfied until it attains a knowledge of the heavens themselves: Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore, accipiant caelique vias et sidera monstrent, defectus soils varies lunaeque labores.32 But as for me - first of all, may the sweet Muses whose holy emblems, under the spell of a mighty love, I bear, take me to themselves, and show me heaven's pathways, the stars, the sun's many lapses, the moon's many labours.

When in "October" Piers exhorts the poet's "aspyring wit" to "flye backe to heaven apace," Cuddie replies, "For Colin fittes such famous flight to scanne." In "December" we see that Colin has indeed attained the wisdom "such famous flight" would require. At the same time, of course, we realize that it is Spenser, not Colin, who must fulfil the potential for poetry Colin's love and sufferings have revealed. The Calender, like many other versions of pastoral, acknowledges its generic limitations, and Colin himself could no more transmute his knowledge of the heavens into the Mutability Cantos than he could transmute his love for Rosalind into the Amoretti. Colin remains a shepherd and he must write pastoral verse or none at all. Hence, though Colin's acquired knowledge is rife with significance for the Calender's creator and for the entire future of English literature, for the shepherd himself it is simply irrelevant: But ah unwise and witlesse Colin doute, That kydst the hidden kinds of many a wede: Yet kydst not ene to cure thy sore hart roote, Whose ranckling wound as yet does rifelye bleede. Why livest thou stil, and yet hast thy deathes wound? Why dyest thou stil, and yet alive art found? (91-6)

There is nothing in the course of Colin's life to recompense that loss of the pleasance wherein he spent his "joyfull spring": Thus is my sommer worne away and wasted, Thus is my harvest hastened all to rathe:

98 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral The eare that budded faire, is burnt and blasted, And all my hoped gaine is turnd to scathe. (97-100)

Colin has come to the end of the ages of man; little remains but death itself. Yet I think it would be incorrect to suggest that the Calender ends on a note of despondency. Indeed, considering the artistic optimism and self-consciousness which run throughout Spenser's poem and especially through "December," such a note would be discordant in the extreme. Partly it is the artificial Petrarchan idiom, our recognition of the conventional oxymorons - living deaths, dying life - which prevents too sombre a reading of Colin's complaint. Partly, though, it is precisely the opposite, the existential validity of the complaint - Colin quite literally received his "deathes wound" when love put an end to his pastoral paradise - that enables Spenser to bring "December," even more than "November," to a close at once so gentle and so satisfying. Colin's first appearance in the Calender is marked by conflict, we remember, the discordant contrast between youthful promise and too soon blighted hopes, between his own youth and the year's age: Such stormy stoures do breede my balefull smart, As if my yeare were wast, and woxen old. And yet alas, but now my spring begonne, And yet alas, yt is already donne. ("January," 27-30)

In "December," no longer a "shepheardes boy," his complaint now reflects the natural progression of the pastoral landscape: My boughes with bloosmes that crowned were at firste, And promised of timely fruite such store, Are left both bare and barrein now at erst: The flattring fruite is fallen to grownd before, And rotted, ere they were halfe mellow ripe: My harvest wast, my hope away dyd wipe. The fragrant flowres, that in my garden grewe, Bene withered, as they had bene gathered long. Theyr rootes bene dryed up for lacke of dewe, Yet dewed with teares they han be ever among. (103-12)

Colin himself seems to have changed. There is sorrow in his words,

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but no torment. The sense of conflict with "angry gods" has diminished to the quiet question, spoken without hope or expectation of reply, Ah who has wrought my Rosalind this spight To spil the flowres, that should her girlond dight? (113-14)

The flowers have grown, blossomed, and are about to die. Colin's words convey a sense of completion which is not devoid of a sense of acceptance. The note of acceptance becomes stronger as the eclogue nears its close: And I, that whilome wont to frame my pype, Unto the shifting of the shepheards foote: Sike follies nowe have gathered as too ripe And cast hem out, as rotten and unsoote. (115-18)

The "follies" which Colin is casting out are activities clearly associated with life in the pleasance: recreative music, the pastoral dance expressive of harmony. Colin is not rejecting the pleasance itself that he had already lost as early as "January." Rather he is rejecting despair, plaintively accepting the loss of the pleasance as a natural part of the process of growth. What is healthy in youth becomes "rotten and unsoote" in age: For Youngth is a bubble blown up with breath, Whose witt is weakenesse, whose wage is death, Whose way is wildernesse, whose ynne Penaunce, And stoopegallaunt Age the hoste of Greevaunce. ("February," 87-90)

In Colin's December acceptance of loss, the youthful ideal receives the only affirmation saddened age can give. Colin has reached the position of Thenot, who Ne ever was to Fortune foeman, But gently tooke, that ungently came. ("February," 21-2)

Only through such acceptance can the pastoral ideal survive the realities of temporal decay. Time has been one cause of Colin's despair; love, the other. Now he accepts the loss of Rosalind as well as the loss of his youthful follies:

ioo Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral The loser Lasse I cast to please nomore, One if I please, enough is me therefore.

(119-20)

The references are not entirely clear, but in light of Colin's statement in "June" that Menalcas "Didst underfong my lasse, to wexe so light," I do not see how the "loser Lasse" of "December" can be other than Rosalind. I can see no justification for C.H. Herford's suggestion that she is, "probably, the lightfooted shepherd-girls to whose dances he had played"33 - at least no justification other than an understandable reluctance to believe that Colin would come out with so unPetrarchan a rejection as conclusion to his long commitment to the Petrarchan cause. The rejection, though, is entirely in keeping with the movement towards harmony which in "December" characterizes Spenser's treatment of the correspondence between the seasons and the ages of man. Colin's mode of expression, moreover, is milder than Suckling's famous Cavalier riposte. The periphrasis itself helps to disarm criticism: "Rosalind I cast to please no more" would have come too harshly from the lips of the poet whom love did teach to "climbe so hie." Although Colin later refers to Rosalind as the "deare, whose love I bought so deare," he does not join those recent critics who think it was bought too dear. The last words Colin speaks in the Calender are meant for Rosalind's ears: Adieu good Hobbinol, that was so true, Tell Rosalind, her Colin bids her adieu. (155-6)

The words are affectionate and it is appropriate that Colin's last thought should be of the one who determined the course of his life and defined the nature of his poetic genius. Nevertheless, there is nothing in the words to deny that he has now given up once and for all his role as unfortunate lover. If the reference to "one" ("one if I please") is to be taken as specific, then I think the most likely identification is with Hobbinol. In "January" Colin's love for Rosalind disrupts his pastoral friendship: Ah foolish Hobbinol, thy gyfts bene vayne: Colin them gives to Rosalind againe. (59-60)

Now that Colin in "December" is returning to harmony with the pastoral world, it is appropriate that his friendship with Hobbinol should be re-established, just as it is appropriate that the "secret shade" to which Colin returns in age should resemble the pleasance

ioi The Pastoral Image

in which he spent his youth. The days of youthful friendship between Colin and Hobbinol are gone forever, but the value of their friendship can be affirmed even in the final moment of parting: "Adieu good Hobbinol, that was so true." In "January," where the wintry season is in contrast to Colin's own youth, the parallel between shepherd and landscape is a sign of disruption. "December" establishes a similar parallel, but with a very different emphasis: The carefull cold hath nypt my rugged rynde, And in my face deepe furrowes eld hath pight: My head besprent with hoary frost I fynd, And by myne eie the Crow his clawe dooth wright. (133-6)

The winter landscape is now no more than a reflection of the age of its inhabitant. Colin and his world are approaching together the end of their "latter terme" and the parallel is no longer a sign of disruption: My spring is spent, my sommer burnt up quite: My harveste hasts to stirre up winter sterne, And bids him clayme with rigorous rage hys right. So nowe he stormes with many a sturdy stoure, So now his blustring blast eche coste doth scoure. (128-32)

As death nears and winter rages, the harmony of the pastoral world of The Shepheardes Calender is restored. There is nothing particularly heroic about Colin's acceptance of death. Yet he is in no meaningful sense an "anti-hero," and, as I have attempted to demonstrate, questions about the "success" or "failure" of Colin's life are of little relevance to an understanding of Spenser's achievement in the Calender. As a pastoral poet Colin is obviously a success - the testimony of "April," "August," and "November" is beyond dispute. But those critics who demand that he somehow go beyond the pastoral are in their own terms justified, I suppose, in calling him a poetic failure. As a lover Colin is a success if we judge him by the height of his aspiration, but undeniably a failure if we judge him on the basis of his attainment. Death, in spite of those who would cite Colin's submission to time as evidence of his perversity, is neither success nor failure but merely completion. What is gained by Colin's acceptance of death is something which has nothing to do with Colin as a dramatic character - the Calender is not a tragedy, not even very sad - and yet it has everything to do with Colin as a persona of the poet in the pastoral

102 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

world Spenser himself creates. Death is the culmination of the pattern of Colin's life, a pattern which is also that of Spenser's poem and of every life and of every year: Loe I have made a Calender for every yeare, That steele in strength, and time in durance shall outweare. (Epilogue)

What is gained through the acceptance of death is simply and ail-importantly an image: a pastoral image of human existence. 6 CONCLUSION

This pastoral image is, then, the principle of unity in The Shepheardes Calender. The statement requires some elaboration. It is not, first of all, a reiteration of Hallett Smith's remark that "the pastoral idea, in its various ramifications, fs the Calender."34 The pastoral idea, at least in this formulation, is also the pastoral ideal, and Spenser's poem is by no means thematically unified as a presentation of that ideal. Hallett Smith's conclusion was perhaps the consequence of an overly rigid view of the didactic propensities of pastoral, but I think he may also have been led to it by a sense that the Calender is essentially static, the unfolding of an image rather than the development of an argument.35 Guarini's // pastor fido is a dynamic version of pastoral, its thematic development is a function of a sequential plot. Sannazaro's Arcadia, on the other hand, conveys little sense of thematic progression; its plot elements are intermittent and relatively unimportant. Where Guarini develops an argument within Arcadia, Sannazaro develops a definition of Arcadia. The argument is dynamic, the definition is static. There are many differences between Spenser's Calender and Sannazaro's Arcadia, but both, in my view, are works of unfolding definition rather than progressive argument. Pastoral for Sannazaro, however, is a sentiment - a sentiment which looks with more longing toward Virgil than toward the countryside, but a sentiment nevertheless. Sannazaro, more than any other author of the Renaissance, justifies the attribution of the pastoral impulse to nostalgia. His Arcadia is the evocation of a mood, and when the words of evocation fade, so does his Arcadia, leaving behind only a lingering sense of regret: "Le nostre Muse sono estinte; secchi sono i nostri lauri; ruinato e il nostro Parnaso; le selve son tutte mutole; le valli e i monti per doglia son divenuti sordi ... Ogni cosa si perde, ogni speranza e mancata, ogni consolazione e morta" ("Our Muses are perished; withered are our laurels; ruined is our Parnassus: the woods are all

iO3 The Pastoral Image

become mute; the valleys and the mountains for sorrow are grown deaf ... Everything is lost; all hope is vanished; every consolation is dead."36 Spenser's Calender is an image of being, an eternal creation, "a Calender for every yeare." Pastoral for Spenser is, as Hallett Smith suggests, a poetic image, but Spenser saw in pastoral a more complex image, and one of greater poetic significance, than "an ideal of the good life, of the state of content and mental self-sufficiency which had been known in classical antiquity as otium."37 The Calender is an affirmation of the recreative ideal, of "an ideal of the good life," which is not really a pattern of "life" at all, but rather a timeless moment of idyllic existence. This is the ideal which Colin has lost, which is asserted in one side of the debates of the moral eclogues, which forms the dominant strain in the recreative atmosphere of "March" and "August," which defines the quality of Dido's lost life on earth and her new life in heaven in "November," and which receives its supreme affirmation in Colin's panegyric upon Eliza in "April." Nevertheless, the Calender's affirmation of the ideal does not preclude a plaintive recognition of its limitations. The recreative atmosphere of "March" and "August" does not hide an awareness that love can and does bring sorrow; the other side of the debates laments the ideal's necessary subjection to temporal corruption; "November" recognizes that the ideal life Dido led on earth had inevitably to be disrupted by death; the Calender as a whole acknowledges that the love which is so important a part of Colin's growth and of his poetic stature cannot be contained within the ideal and so destroys it - the recreative impulse which led to the song of Eliza is in the past, and his life has become a complaint destined to cease only in the moment before death. The Calender's awareness of the limitations of the pastoral ideal suggests the possibility and even the necessity of non-pastoral activity in an environment where the pastoral is only a metaphor, an environment where the good shepherd acts through deeds and through poetry to guide his flocks, to protect them from wolves and to confront the sources of evil. This suggestion is most evident in the moral eclogues, but it is also present in the story of Colin Clout, the shepherd-poet who is unable to realize the potential of his art within the confines of pastoral. The suggestion is not entirely absent even in the least serious of the eclogues, "March" and "August": Thomalin in "March" hesitates to tell his tale lest his sheep "may chaunce to swerve, / And fall into some mischiefe"; the prize cup in "August" recalls the need for shepherds to combat those who threaten their sheep: Thereby is a Lambe in the Wolves jawes:

1O4 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral But see, how fast renneth the shepheard swayne, To save the innocent from the beastes pawes: And here with his shepehooke hath him slayne. (31-4)

The Calender can suggest the need for such action, but cannot itself become the realization of an environment where it can be performed. Aware of the limitations of the recreative ideal, the Calender nevertheless maintains the integrity of the pastoral world by accepting those limitations. The moral eclogues are each contained within a plaintive, not an active, response to temporal corruption. Colin in "November" accepts the death of Dido as a necessary part of the natural pattern of life and then in "December" accepts his own coming death, thus completing a framework of plaintive acceptance for the Calender as a whole. Because the Calender accepts the process of time which is its substance, it becomes one with the pattern of time which is its form. The poem becomes a pastoral image for all time, "a pure art-image, graceful and remote."38 The Calender is a plaintive image of existence, but the note of sorrow is always subdued, even in the final farewell which brings almost to an end both Colin's life and Spenser's poem. For behind the shepherd-poet stands the pastoral poet, and as Spenser's very self-conscious poem draws to a close it is already looking towards another and a greater poem, one which will justify the claim of England's new poet to have inherited the legacies of Virgil and Chaucer. Colin's history becomes Spenser's prophecy. The Calender ends in death, but a death which is only the completion of an image. And in the successful completion is the promise of that loftier image glimpsed through the words of Piers in "October": Abandon then the base and viler clowne, Lyft up thy selfe out of the lowly dust: And sing of bloody Mars, of wars, of giusts.

(37-9)

The final note is one of supreme confidence, as the Calender's author asserts his newly won right to a place with those who build the timeless realm of poetry: And if I marked well the starres revolution, It shall continewe till the worlds dissolution. (Epilogue)

Spenser can now leave the world in which the shepherd sang his songs of love for Rosalind and enter that greater and already promised world in which he himself will sing the praises of the Faerie Queene.

CHAPTER III

Spenser's Return to Pastoral in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe 1

THE S H E P H E R D AND HIS SONG

The Shepheardes Calender was for Spenser an exploration of poetic potential and a declaration of poetic purpose. In 1579 that purpose was clear: he would set out to overgo Ariosto as a writer of heroic verse and he would become the new English Virgil. In 1591 his purpose seems to have been much less clear - the most obvious testimony to this fact outside of Colin Clout being the change in direction which many readers have sensed in the second three books of The Faerie Queene.1 Not that Spenser's allegiance to his art ever wavered; in the firmness of that allegiance he surpassed all his contemporaries: Sidney, Tasso, even Shakespeare. Rather the question which seems to have arisen in the 15905, or at least to have reappeared with a new and unexpected urgency, is where does that allegiance lead, what kind of poetic response does it demand? I want in this chapter to view Colin Clout as a reflection of its author's concern with the nature and direction of his poetic career. My focus is admittedly a limited one, but it is not, I think, distorting. Colin Clout, like the Calender, is highly selfreflective; even more than the Calender, it is in large part a poem about poetry. Colin brings to the court the dual perspective of shepherd and poet; Spenser returns in 1591 to the pastoral world of his first creation in order to reassess the goals and limitations of the poetic journey he had begun with such confidence a dozen years before. The opening lines of Colin Clout establish the poem's emphasis on Colin's role as poet while at the same time suggesting that his role has undergone a curious modification since the days of the Calender. The shepheards boy (best knowen by that name) That after Tityrus first sung his lay, Laies of sweet love, without rebuke or blame,

io6 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Sate (as his custome was) upon a day, Charming his oaten pipe unto his peres, The shepheard swaines that did about him play: Who all the while with greedie listfull eares, Did stand astonisht at his curious skill, Like hartlesse deare, dismayd with thunders sound.

(1-9)

In the January eclogue Colin had been introduced with the words, "A Shepeheards boye (no better doe him call)." The later introduction recalls the earlier one, and Colin is still the disciple of Tityrus, skilled in the art of pastoral song. The final image is disconcerting, though, tending to dissociate at the same time as it elevates Colin and his music from the pastoral setting in which they are initially placed.2 The dissociation becomes more pronounced as the poem's prologue continues. Hobbinol tells Colin, now both woods and fields, and floods revive, Sith thou art come, their cause of meriment, That us late dead, hast made againe alive. (29-31)

Hobbinol's welcome is no mere hyperbole. Ever since the first idyll of Theocritus the pastoral pleasance has depended on the herdsman whose music releases its potential for harmony, and Colin's own ability to create a golden world of pastoral song is familiar from his panegyric of Eliza in the April eclogue. But in Colin Clout, when Hobbinol asks Colin to relate his "passed fortunes" in his "late voyage," Colin's reply suggests that he has now also become capable of a very different kind of song: since I saw that Angels blessed eie, Her worlds bright sun, her heavens fairest light, My mind full of my thoughts satietie, Doth feed on sweet contentment of that sight: Since that same day in nought I take delight, Ne feeling have in any earthly pleasure, But in remembrance of that glorious bright, My lifes sole blisse, my hearts eternall threasure. (40-7)

Colin's speech has moved beyond the normal register of pastoral. Though he is expressing sentiments common enough to preclude a specific source, his language owes less to Theocritus than to Dante.3 Certainly the commonplaces are not those usually expressed even by literary shepherds.

107 Spenser's Return to Pastoral

Shepherds may admittedly be granted sights of angels, and Virgil's Tityrus managed to see something of a god. Still, we normally expect in pastoral literature that the shepherd will maintain an interest in his pastoral role, like Tityrus, who was granted not an ineffable vision but a warrant for continued tranquillity: "deus nobis haec otia fecit" ("It is a god who wrought for us this peace" 1.6). Colin's "sweet contentment" resembles less the contentment of the shepherd than that of the (courtly) lover who can successfully "call backe againe the coveting of the bodie to beautie alone, and (in what he can) beholde it in it selfe simple and pure, and frame it within in his imagination sundred from all matter, and so make it friendly and loving to his soule, and there enjoy it, and have it with him day and night, in every time and place, without mistrust ever to lose it."4 Colin instructs his shepherd's pipe to wake, "Till I have told her praises lasting long" (49). The song which would adequately express such devotion would retain little of a pastoral character - it would leave no room for an expression of its singer's allegiance to the humbler joys of sheepcote and pasture. Colin is introduced as a poet of pastoral harmony. Yet he all but declares himself to be a poet of non-pastoral (though secular) devotion. The ensuing narration clarifies and resolves this opening paradox. In order to do so, it recalls not only a physical journey from Ireland to England, but also the imaginative journey which was the path followed by Spenser's own poetic career. Colin's story is, in effect, an examination of Spenser's poetic commitments. Colin's journey, like Spenser's in 1589, begins in Ireland. More importantly, and again like Spenser's - though the Spenser of 1579 - Colin's poetic history begins securely within pastoral bounds: One day (quoth he) I sat, (as was my trade) Under the foote of Mole that mountaine hore, Keeping my sheepe amongst the cooly shade, Of the greene alders by the Mullaes shore. (56-9)

Colin appears here as a latter-day transplanted Tityrus, "patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi" ("[lying] under [the] spreading beech's covert" 1.1), and when he is visited by a stranger "shepheard of the Ocean" it is only natural that the two should begin a musical interchange: He pip'd, I sung; and when he sung, I piped, By chaunge of turnes, each making other mery. (76-7)

io8 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

Colin's song is a river fable. It tells how the river Bregog stole his way into the Mulla, but was then discovered by her father Mole. The "mountaine hore" had affianced his daughter to the Allo and was so angered by the Bregog's deception that he buried him beneath a landslide of "mightie stones": "so deare his love he bought" (155). Critics have attempted to moralize Colin's song. One, appealing to the prerogatives of fatherhood in Renaissance domestic mores, argues that "Spenser intends the myth as an argument against the upsetting of hierarchy, of order, and an argument for permanence as opposed to mutability";5 another, arguing from the story's outcome, claims that "the song says most simply that cunning and guile cannot permanently secure a love that is opposed by wise authority, and that deviousness ... may cause irreparable division of self. "6 But Colin, we remember, is a pastoral poet singing at the heart of the pleasance. Within the pleasance there are simply two shepherds sitting at the foot of the Mole, piping beside the waters of the Mulla, while beneath the limestone the Bregog flows along eventually to reappear above ground some two miles below Kilcolman.7The pleasance may witness the sorrows of unhappy love, but it has no room for hierarchies, paternal prerogatives, or even wise authority. Within the pastoral world Colin's song is simply "a mery lay," informed by and giving form to the setting in which it is sung. His song is No leasing new, nor Grandams fable stale, But auncient truth confirm'd with credence old. (102-3)

The shepherd's song is a true reflection of the brazen world within which he sings - but it is also the only means by which that world can participate in the golden one. The Bregog's love, "Which to the shiny Mulla he did beare, / And yet doth beare, and ever will" (93-4), survives not in the continuing existence of a pair of Irish rivers but in the timeless song of the pastoral poet. Colin's lay of the Bregog and the Mulla is a demonstration of the power of pastoral song, the ability of the shepherd to create in and out of the pleasance an imaginative world in which every objective feature has subjective value. Yet at the same time his lay also suggests the limitations of pastoral art. For as the critical response testifies, the moral implications of the tale cannot simply be dismissed. Colin's song functions rather like the fables in the moral eclogues of the Calender; it is a product of the pastoral world, but it evokes another world beyond the shepherd's horizon, one where authority is not merely the mass of a mountain, deceit the course of a river, and destruction a natural fall of rocks, a world where love is not just the

log Spenser's Return to Pastoral

confluence of two rivers but a genuine human aspiration. This world demands a mode of activity which is alien to the life of the shepherd and the simple harmonies of pastoral song. The shepherd commits no wrong in refusing to respond to the demands of a world to which he owes no allegiance, but the poet and his reader judge and are judged by different criteria. For them the very strains that create the pastoral ideal convey an implicit recognition that their own world demands deeds and poems other than those any mere shepherd is capable of providing: carmina tantum nostra valent, Lycida, tela inter Martia, quantum Chaonias dicunt aquila veniente columbas.8 amid the weapons of war, Lycidas, our songs avail as much as, they say, the doves of Chaonia when the eagle comes.

Few versions of pastoral lack some such awareness. The suggestion in Colin Clout that the nobler tasks for poetry lie beyond the limits of pastoral is strengthened when Colin relates the substance of the song sung by the Shepherd of the Ocean. Since the Shepherd of the Ocean's visit reflects that paid to Spenser in 1589 by Sir Walter Ralegh, the "lamentable lay" may perhaps represent some portion of Ralegh's Cynthia. It is in any case clearly a work outside the pastoral canon and expresses conflicts and aspirations which could not accord with life within the pleasance. The song reflects not contentment but "great unkindnesse" and "usage hard." Yet the Shepherd of the Ocean suffers nobly, out of desire to have as his "loves queene" no less a personage than Cynthia herself. Such desire is matter for a loftier song than Colin's own "mery lay." In his art as in his life the Shepherd of the Ocean has gone beyond the shepherd of the pastures. The difference is not one of poetic skill Colin's mastery of his art has already been demonstrated beyond question - but of poetic subject and intention. The pastoral, as Sidney remarks, is only the lowest part of the poetic hedge,9 and there is a logical progression from the Shepherd of the Ocean's approval of Colin's art to his disapproval of the field in which it is exercised: He gan to cast great lyking to my lore, And great dislyking to my lucklesse lot: That banisht had my selfe, like wight forlore, Into that waste, where I was quite forgot. (180-3)

no

Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

As in the Calender, the perfection of the pastoral song suggests the possibility and the desirability of ascending to a nobler song. Spenser once left behind the pastoral world of the Calender to enter the heroic world of The Faerie Queene; Colin now leaves his pastoral home and confronts the roar of waters, "Rolling like mountaines in wide wildernesse" (198). He journeys into a realm whose moral dimensions far surpass the pastoral norm: as ghastly dreadfull, as it seemes, Bold men presuming life for gaine to sell, Dare tempt that gulf, and in those wandring stremes Seek waies unknowne, waies leading down to hell. (208-11)

The Marlovian undercurrents emphasize the fact that Colin is entering the heroic world which is the proper domain of the aspiring mind. His journey is not, however, recorded in very heroic terms: the waves are hills on which the "great shepheardesse," "faire Cynthia her heards doth feed: / Her heards be thousand fishes with their frie" (241-2). The direct representation of the heroic world can only be accomplished through the medium of heroic verse. It is a task for The Faerie Queene, not Colin Clout. Colin's task, as the transitional sea voyage makes clear, is to view the heroic realm through pastoral eyes and to interpret his findings in pastoral terms. What he finds is certainly rich in promise, however difficult adequately to convey: "there all happie peace and plenteous store / Conspire in one to make contented blisse" (310-11). This realm initially appears almost a poet's paradise regained: There learned arts do florish in great honor, And Poets wits are had in peerlesse price. (320-1)

At the heart of this land is Cynthia, the Elizabethan Astraea, whose descent from heaven marks a return of peace and prosperity: "iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna" ("Now the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns").10 In the words he addresses to his fellow shepherds Colin attempts to recreate the glory of the virgin goddess: we to Cynthiaes presence came ... In which all pure perfection one may see. But vaine it is to thinke by paragone Of earthly things, to judge of things divine: Her power, her mercy, and her wisedome, none Can deeme, but who the Godhead can define. (332, 343-7)

in Spenser's Return to Pastoral The recreation must necessarily be imperfect, but it is nevertheless the reason and the justification for the poet's song. Colin's role as reporter of Cynthia's glory is dictated by the particular circumstances of his return home to a company of curious shepherds, but his list of Cynthia's attendant poets soon makes clear that the role does not pertain to him alone. As shepherds of the court, all the poets in Colin's list have moved beyond the boundaries of pastoral. Colin defines their function in terms of service to Cynthia, and the importance of this service is indicated by the fact that the unfinished state of William Alabaster's Latin poem Elisaeis warrants a direct appeal to Cynthia herself: O dreaded Dread, do not thy selfe that wrong, To let thy fame lie so in hidden shade: But call it forth, O call him forth to thee, To end thy glorie which he hath begun: That when he finisht hath as it should be, No braver Poeme can be under Sun. Nor Po nor Tyburs swans so much renowned, Nor all the brood of Greece so highly praised, Can match that Muse when it with bayes is crowned, And to the pitch of her perfection raised. (406-15)

It is unlikely that Spenser thought Alabaster's poem objectively deserved such lofty terms of praise - Spenser, after all, was committed to English, not neo-Latin poetry, and the completed portion of the Elisaeis is more admirable in intention than achievement.11 Yet we should not assume that Spenser is simply allowing sentiment to override his critical judgment. The example of Alabaster exemplifies the poet's goal in its simplest form: praise of Cynthia. Alabaster provides Spenser with an opportunity to reflect on the proper function of the English poet. The poet's purpose is to give expression to the praise by which Cynthia's glory will be revealed, her fame brought out from "hidden shade." Spenser once told Harvey that he wrote The Faerie Queene to "overgo" Ariosto, and he explained to Ralegh that "In that Faery Queene I meane glory in my generall intention, but in my particular I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our soveraine the Queene" (407). These words are not far from Spenser's thoughts on Alabaster. Spenser does not necessarily think that Alabaster would even be capable of completing his Elisaeis "as it should be." But if such a purpose were to be adequately fulfilled, whether by the Elisaeis or by The Faerie Queene, if the glory which Cynthia represents were to be given adequate form,

112 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

then the poetry of England would equal and even surpass the poetry of modern Italy and of ancient Greece and Rome. Milton was not the first English poet to aspire to things "unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." But is the world Colin encounters in the court ultimately conducive to such an attempt? The court does, obviously, foster the poets who can make of Elizabeth's reign a golden age for English poetry: All these do florish in their sundry kynd, And do their Cynthia immortall make. (452-3)

Just as obviously, the court contains the proper subjects for the poet's song. The twelve nymphs whom Colin describes, each "ne lesse praise worthie" than the others, are the complement to the list of twelve poets.12 Visible emanations of Cynthia's glory - "from you all goodly vertues well / Into the rest, which round about you ring" (FQ vi proem 7) - they provide her poets with a necessary glimpse of the divine: Phyllis for example, the floure of rare perfection, Faire spreading forth her leaves with fresh delight, That with their beauties amorous reflexion, Bereave of sence each rash beholders sight. (544-7)

And as the twelve poets are in some way subordinate to Colin Clout, so too the nymphs are clearly subordinate to Cynthia: she beholds with high aspiring thought, The cradle of her owne creation: Emongst the seats of Angels heavenly wrought, Much like an Angell in all forme and fashion. (612-15)

Cynthia is seen by her shepherd-poet as a participant in the heavenly beauty of which she is an earthly reflection. Her beauty, her "goodnesse and high grace," are, for Colin, an inspiration to the highest reaches of poetry: her great excellence, Lifts me above the measure of my might: That being fild with furious insolence, I feele my selfe like one yrapt in spright. (620-3)

We are reminded of E.K.'s remark that Spenser believed poetry to be

113 Spenser's Return to Pastoral

"no arte, but a divine gift and heavenly instinct ... poured into the witte by a certain e^^ovcrtaKj/xo?. and celestiall inspiration" ("October"). Cynthia's presence appears to promise a realization of the heroic ideal which first led Colin and Spenser alike to move beyond the bounds of pastoral. Yet in the very words of celebration there is a paradoxical suggestion that the goal is being transformed even in the moment of apparent attainment: To her To her To her To her

my thoughts I daily dedicate, my heart I nightly martyrize: my love I lowly do prostrate, my life I wholly sacrifice. (472-5)

The journey to Cynthia's court, the ascent to epic: both are commitments to the realm of public action. But the poet's perception of the "beame of beautie sparkled from above" (468) demands from him not a public response but a private commitment, a gesture of devotion which is the creation of a self-enclosed union of worth and esteem:13 My thought, my heart, my love, my life is shee, And I hers ever onely, ever one: One ever I all vowed hers to bee, One ever I, and others never none. (476-9)

The end of Colin's journey - and of Spenser's - promises now to be something other than a poetic dedication to the public realm in which heroic deeds occur. 2

IDEAL AND REALITY

Colin's description of Cynthia's court reflects a perfection which no actual court could ever attain. His portrayal of her nymphs, for example, is not concerned with mere temporal reality but, as Sam Meyer observes, "with the ideal of supreme merit. None of the images attempts or even approximates visual or physical representation of the ladies in question."14 Non-representational poetic language is reflexive as well as reflective. Colin's praiie*t>f the nymphs, like the proclamation of devotion which precedes it and the panegyric of Cynthia which follows it, affirms the poet's mastery of his craft at the same time as it asserts the worth of his subject. An awareness of the self-reflective nature of poetic praise is something of a commonplace in Elizabethan poetry - "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee" -

114 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

but in the context of Cynthia's golden court such awareness takes on special significance for our own and Spenser's understanding of the nature and limitations of the relationship between the poet and his society. Colin transcends in his re-creation of the court the limitations of the natural, fallen creation. In Spenser's Ireland and Colin's pastoral home - and in Elizabethan England generally - the Golden Age is realized only in the words of the poet. Only the poet, as Sidney has stated with such memorable eloquence, is able to deny the restrictions which fallen nature would impose on the realm of human desire: "Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too much loved earth more lovely. Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden."15 In Colin Clout the poet enables the objects of his praise to participate in the golden world of poetry, and for this he himself becomes worthy of praise: By wondring at thy Cynthiaes praise, Colin, thy selfe thou mak'st us more to wonder, And her upraising, doest thy selfe upraise. (353-5)

The definitive comment on the power of Colin's verse comes from Colin himself: Her name in every tree I will endosse, That as the trees do grow, her name may grow: And in the ground each where will it engrosse, And fill with stones, that all men may it know. The speaking woods and murmuring waters fall, Her name He teach in knowen termes to frame: And eke my lambs when for their dams they call, He teach to call for Cynthia by name. And long while after I am dead and rotten: Amongst the shepheards daughters dancing rownd, My layes made of her shall not be forgotten. But sung by them with flowry gyrlonds crownd. (632-43)

The suggestion that Cynthia's golden realm is not only the subject but also the creation of Colin's words becomes increasingly stronger. The suggestion is implicit in the reflexive rhetoric of praise. It is also implied by Colin's listeners' references to the poet as maker of the world he sings: "her upraising, doest thy selfe upraise" (355); "Thrise

ii5 Spenser's Return to Pastoral

happie Mayd, / Whom thou doest so enforce to deifie" (480-1); "well worthie were those goodly favours / Bestowd on thee, that so of them doest make" (585-6). Finally, as Colin himself declares, the poet's re-creation becomes the shepherd's recreation, an eternal golden world of song, like Colin's lay of Eliza in the Calender, or like the dance of the Graces to the music of Colin Clout in Book vi of The Faerie Queene. At the very centre of the courtly world, face to face with the fairest reflection of heavenly beauty that earth contains, Colin discovers that his proper function is to celebrate his devotion in the timeless music of the pastoral pleasance. The limitations (and delights) of pastoral song are not, for the shepherd-poet at least, to be escaped by leaving the pasture for the court. The awareness of these limitations becomes more insistent as the poem moves from celebration to denunciation of the court. Colin earlier remarked of Cynthia's realm that "Go4 his gifts there plenteously bestowes / But gracelesse men them greatly do abuse" (326-7). We have occasion to remember the qualification when Thestylis asks, Why didst thou ever leave that happie place, In which such wealth might unto thee accrew? (654-5)

The reply is a long, virulent, and almost unqualified attack on the court of the goddess-like Cynthia as a place where "single Truth and simple honestie / Do wander up and downe despys'd of all" (727-8), and where love, which should be esteemed as a holy mystery, is profaned "with lewd speeches and licentious deeds" (787). Colin's journey began like that of Tityrus to Rome in Virgil's first eclogue; it becomes in the latter stages of Colin Clout something very different. Of course Colin is not the first literary shepherd to arrive at a less than happy knowledge of urban realities: While I in youth in Croidon towne did dwell Often to the court I coles brought to sell, And then I learned and noted parfitely Of court and courtiers the care and misery.16

So speaks a shepherd named Cornix about the court, that "devils mouth" and "well of misery," whose iniquities are revealed at length in the first three of Barclay's Certayne Egloges. But though Colin's attack on the court is in itself quite unexceptionable, Colin Clout is not simply another reflection of the traditional tension between rural simplicity and urban corruption. Consider the parallel between Colin and the shepherd who offers refuge to Erminia in the seventh canto of

n6 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata.^7 This shepherd, too, once made a journey to court: Tempo gia fu, quando piu I'uom vaneggia ne 1'eta prima, ch'ebbi altro desio e disdegnai di pasturar la greggia; e fuggii dal paese a me natio, e vissi in Menfi un tempo, e ne la reggia fra i ministri del re fui posto anch'io, e benche fossi guardian de gli orti vidi e conobbi pur 1'inique corti. Pur lusingato da speranza ardita soffrii lunga stagion cio che piu spiace; ma poi ch'insieme con 1'eta fiorita mancd la speme e la baldanza audace, piansi i riposi di quest'umil vita e sospirai la mia perduta pace, e dissi: "O corte, a Dio." Cosi a gli amici boschi tornando, ho tratto i di felici. (7.12-13) Time was (for each one hath his doting time) (These silver locks were golden tresses than) That countrie life I hated as a crime, And from the forrests sweet contentment ran, To Memphis stately pallace would I clime, And there became the mightie Caliphes man, And though I but a simple gardner weare, Yet could I marke abuses, see and heare. Entised on with hope of future gaine, I suffred long what did my soule displease; But when my youth was spent, my hope was vaine, I felt my native strength at last decrease; I gan my losse of lustie yeeres complaine, And wisht I had enjoy'd the countries peace; I bod the court farewell, and with content My later age here have I quiet spent. Spenser knew Tasso's shepherd well. He used him as the basis for some parts of his portrayal of Meliboe in Book vi of The faerie Queene, and the shepherd is also likely to have influenced his portrayal of Colin in Colin Clout. In Tasso's shepherd's brief history of hope and

117 Spenser's Return to Pastoral

disillusionment we recognize Colin's original motive for leaving home - "hope of good, and hate of ill" (192) - his eventual recognition of the court's "enormities," and his realization that he lacked the spirit to "adventure such unknowen waves" and "trust the guile of fortunes blandishment" (670-1). Colin, too, "rather chose back to my sheep to tourne" (672). Tasso's shepherd helps us to understand the perspective from which Colin views the court's abuses. But precisely because the journey of Tasso's shepherd is in so many respects similar to that of Colin, he also highlights for us an important point of difference, one which is central to the problem of interpretation in Colin Clout. For Tasso's shepherd the golden court is only a deceptive appearance; with wisdom comes a recognition of the fallen reality. The story of Erminia among the shepherds plays an important and not altogether simple role in defining the heroic milieu of the Gerusalemme liberata as a whole, but the shepherd's autobiography in itself constitutes a straightforward instance of pastoral satire, just one more exposure of courtly corruption. In Spenser's poem Colin tells Cuddie that Cynthia's realm contains "all happie peace and plenteous store" (310), and there is nothing in the first 650-odd lines of the poem to cause us to distinguish between the quality of Cynthia's realm and the quality of the court from which she rules. On the contrary, the adulatory lists of court shepherds and nymphs enforce the identification: Cynthia's court is the golden centre of a golden land. There is moreover no suggestion in Colin Clout that the golden view of Cynthia's court is merely the mistaken projection of youthful idealism. However awkwardly they may do so, the two views of the court must coalesce; one is not allowed simply to displace the other. Colin imitates the geographical journey of Tasso's shepherd and he even learns some of the same lessons. But neither Colin nor Spenser learns from that shepherd the dual vision of the court which is so prominent a thematic feature of Colin Clout. In another Renaissance pastoral though, also by Tasso, we do find a similarly overt conjunction of opposing views of the court. Near the end of the first act of Tasso's Aminta, the unhappy Aminta tells his friend and fellow shepherd Tirsi that he despairs of ever winning the love of the shepherdess Silvia, "che il saggio Mopso / Mi predisse la mia cruda ventura"("[for] wise Mopsus prophesied my unlucky chance" 1.457-8; trans. Hunt, 160). Tirsi replies that Mopso is a false prophet and that Aminta ought "bene sperar, sol perch'ei vuole / Che nulla speri" ("[well to] hope. / The more because he would have kept thee hopeless" 1.565-6; trans. Hunt, 162). In what appears to be an early addition to the play after its first performance (lines 461-562),l8

n8 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

Tirsi supports his contention with an account of his first-hand acquaintance with Mopso's deceitful prophecies. Tirsi tells Aminta that he had once had occasion to visit the large city on the river's bank. Before he left he had been advised by Mopso to beware of evil courtiers and especially to avoid the "magazzino de le ciance" (the "house of Idle Babbling"), home of the "maghe, che incantando / Fan travedere e traiidir ciascuno" ("Enchantresses ... who make one see / Things as they are not... and hear them too" 1.499-500; trans. Hunt, 161). When Tirsi actually arrived in the city he found no such place as Mopso had described, but rather a joyous dwelling, a "felice albergo," from whence came the songs of celestial sirens and wherein he saw none but men and women of surpassing excellence. Tasso is paying a poet's compliment to his patron Duke Alfonso n. The city on the river is Ferrara and the "felice albergo" is an idealized portrait of the ducal court and its members. Tirsi's vision is not mystical but epideictic - and it does serve the dramatically useful function of countering the foreboding prophecy of the malicious Mopso. Yet Mopso's description is not, as Tirsi thinks, simply a lie, a "fallace antiveder." It is also, as Tasso's readers would easily recognize, a general and quite conventional portrayal of the nature of courtly life presented in terms of pastoral satire. What we are given, then, in these hundred or so lines of the Aminta is a dual vision of the court, one which in both its positive and negative aspects has many similarities to Spenser's vision in Colin Clout. Colin's praise of Cynthia's court centres after his arrival on three main objects. The first and most important is Cynthia herself Elizabeth, whom in Colin Clout "Spenser glorifies... with such soaring idealism as to make all competitors seem feeble in their outbursts."19 Tirsi in the Aminta, having described his arrival at the ducal palace, focuses first on Alfonso: Uom d'aspetto magnanimo e robusto, Di cui, per quanto intesi, in dubbio stassi, S'egli sia miglior duce o cavaliero; Che, con fronte benigna insieme e grave, Con regal cortesia invito dentro. (1.533-7) one, of a noble presence, And stout withal, of whom I was in doubt Whether to think him better knight or leader. He with a look at once benign and grave, In royal guise invited me within, (trans. Hunt, 161)

iig Spenser's Return to Pastoral

Tasso is clearly overgone in Spenser; Tirsi's "duce o cavaliero" can hardly compare with Colin's "image of the heavens in shape humane." Nevertheless the direction of focus is similar, and in Tirsi's marvelling that one so high should direct his courtesy to one so low, "Ei grande e 'n pregio, me negletto e basso" (538), there is something suggestive of Colin's own wonder - and that of his listeners - that so great a goddess as Cynthia should grace with her attention "a simple silly Elfe" (371). The second major object of Colin's praise is that group of courtier poets who surround their monarch and sing her praises: For better shepheards be not under skie, Nor better hable, when they list to blow Their pipes aloud, her name to glorifie. (377-9)

The third is the bevy of nymphs who comprise her train - twelve reflections of the "beame of beautie sparkled from above" (468), a beam which radiates outward from Cynthia who is their centre and which is captured in the verse of the preceding and complementary group of twelve poets. Tasso's description of the Ferrarese court is much briefer than Spenser's of Elizabeth's; nevertheless the basic elements of Colin's celebration are to be found in the Aminta: I' vidi Celesti Dee, ninfe leggiadre e belle, Nuovi Line ed Orfei... Vidi Febo e le Muse. (1.539-41, 546) I saw celestial goddesses, beautiful and graceful nymphs, new Linuses and Orpheuses ... I saw Phoebus and the Muses.

Both Colin and Tirsi move from praise of the court's central figure to praise of its attendants, and in both works those attendants comprise two main groups, nymphs and poets: those who give visual embodiment to the excellence of their ruler and those who elevate that excellence into the timeless realm of the muses. When we turn back from that radiant court encountered by Tirsi to the place of darkness and confusion prophesied by Mopso, we again find that the parallels between the Aminta and Colin Clout are close. Mopso's "magazzino de le ciance" is a place where all appearances are deceptive, where things of apparent value have no genuine content:

i2o Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Cio che diamante sembra ed oro fino, E vetro e rame; e quelle arche d'argento, Che stimeresti piene di tesoro Sporte son piene di vesciche huge. (1.501-4) That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold, Is glass and brass; and coffers that look silver, [That you will think to be filled with treasure,] ... are baskets full of [punctured] bladders, (trans. Hunt, 161) The substance and even the imagery of Mopso's warning reappear in Colin's declaration that the court is a place wherein appearance bears no relation to reality: For highest lookes have not the highest mynd, Nor haughtie words most full of highest thoughts: But are like bladders blowen up with wynd, That being prickt do vanish into noughts. (715-18) Mopso tells Tirsi that he will find himself in a place where speech is distorted, where language lacks the integrity to which the shepherd is accustomed: Quivi le mura son fatte con arte, Che parlano e rispondono a i parlanti; Ne gia rispondon la parola mozza, Com'eco suole ne le nostre selve, Ma la replican tutta intiera intiera, Con giunta anco di quel ch'altri non disse.

(1.505-10)

The very walls there are so strangely made, They answer those who talk; and not in syllables, Or bits of words, like Echo in our woods, But go the whole talk over, word for word, With something else beside, that no one said, (trans. Hunt, 161) Colin tells his listeners that the shepherd's nature is unsuited to the verbal duplicity of the court, that it is a place where he doth soonest rise That best can handle his deceitfull wit, In subtil shifts, and finest sleights devise, Either by slaundring his well deemed name,

121 Spenser's Return to Pastoral Through leasings lewd, and fained forgerie: Or else by breeding him some blot of blame. (692-7)

The implications of Mopso's walls "fatte con arte" reappear in Colin's summation of the requisites for courtly success: a guilefull hollow hart, Masked with faire dissembling curtesie, A filed toung furnisht with tearmes of art, No art of schoole, but Courtiers schoolery. (699-702)

Again, the nature of the concern is similar, though Spenser conveys more effectively than does Tasso, and with more sense of genuine fear, the dangers inherent in the abuse of language (I suspect there is an echo here of Skelton's Bouge of Court [1499], that nightmare vision of a world where words lose their accustomed force and language serves only to create an impenetrable maze of obscure, hostile intention). Mopso, in a clear allusion to courtly conventions of love, concludes his speech to Tirsi with the warning: hi potresti ivi restarne Converse in selce, in fera, in acqua, o in foco: Acqua di pianto, e foco di sospiri. (1.519-21) Thou mightest be arrested In fearful transformation to a willow, A beast, fire, water - fire forever sighing, Water forever weeping, (trans. Hunt, 161)

Pastoral lovers weep and sigh as well, of course, but the Circean overtones of Mopso's words suggest that in the court love is a baser and less joyful affair than it is in the world the shepherd inhabits. The final part of Colin's attack on the court also concerns the usages of love: Ne any there doth brave or valiant seeme, Unlesse that some gay Mistresse badge he beares: Ne any one himselfe doth ought esteeme, Unlesse he swim in love up to the eares. (779-82)

Colin's focus is slightly different from Mopso's, and his subsequent correction of the courtly view of love goes far beyond Mopso's brief

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and implicit suggestion of the pastoral alternative. But that alternative is affirmed by the whole tenor of Tasso's play, and the condemnation of the courtly abuse of love is a further point of similarity between the Aminta and Colin Clout. The formal and verbal echoes of Tasso's play in Spenser's poem certainly seem to me to suggest that a reading of the Aminta is part of the imaginative experience which Spenser brought to the writing of Colin Clout. Nevertheless, in a literary form so highly conventional as the pastoral precise ascriptions of indebtedness are difficult, and I would not want to argue that the Aminta is more than a single thread in the rich fabric of tradition underlying Spenser's poem. Moreover, I do not think that the value of the comparison I have been drawing depends upon accepting the Aminta as a "source" of Colin Clout. In spite of the many similarities between the two works, what seems to me to be most interesting and most useful to our understanding of Colin Clout is not a point of similarity to the Aminta but one of difference. The important contrast is to be found between the attitudes the two works adopt toward the court as an area for continuing poetic activity. Tasso's alternative visions of the court are an exploitation of the capacity of pastoral life to appear in two different aspects, both as an ideal of simplicity and as a simple (and impoverished) reality. In its latter guise the pastoral appears at best a humble beginning, something to be left behind by the man and, especially, the poet who would realize his full potential for virtuous deeds and heroic action. Pastoral is a good field in which to try one's wings neque inexpertus rerum jam texere longas Audeat Iliadas. paullatim assuescat, et ante Incipiat graciles pastorum inflare cicutas. [A youngster], unskilled in matters [poetic], ought not to venture to compose long Iliads, but should gain experience little by little, making his debut by playing on the shepherds' slender pipes.20

Eventually, however, it is time to move on, as did Virgil, who after proving his wits "in matters pastorall" subsequently "durst venture to stile heroicall."21 Pastoral, as we have seen in the Calender and in the opening movement of Colin Clout, tends frequently to become self-critical and point toward the ultimate necessity for a higher, more publicly committed form of poetry, a realization which develops naturally out of the awareness that in one sense pastoral innocence is only rustic simplicity. Hence Sannazaro's Arcadia becomes rife with

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promise when Carino hands to Sincero-Sannazaro a rustic pipe, a "sampogna di sambuco," "con la quale spero che, se da li fate non ti e tolto, con piu alto stile canterai gli amori di Fauni e di Ninfe nel futuro ... cosi per lo inanzi la felice giovenezza tra sonore trombe di poeti chiarissimi del tuo secolo, non senza speranza di eterna fama trapasserai" ("with [which] I trust that you, if it be not denied you by the fates, in the future will sing in loftier vein the loves of the Fauns and the Nymphs ... so hereafter you will pass your fortunate young manhood among the sounding trumpets of the most famous poets of your century, not without hope of eternal fame").22 And hence in the Aminta Tirsi's portrayal of the ducal court as the embodiment of a greater than pastoral virtue leads easily, even inevitably, into an ascent to epic: Vidi Febo e le Muse, e fra le Muse Elpin sedere accolto; ed in quel punto Sentii me far di me stesso maggiore, Pien di nuova virtu, pieno di nuova Deitade, e cantai guerre ed eroi, Sdegnando pastoral ruvido carme. (546-51) [I saw] Apollo and the Nine [Muses]; and with the Nine Elpino sat; and at that moment, I Felt myself greater, gifted newly, and full Of sudden deity; and I sung of wars And chiefs, and trampled the rude pastoral song, (trans. Hunt, 162)

Of course a mere shepherd cannot sustain the epic note; by the time the action of the play occurs Tirsi has returned to the pastoral fold and his "voce piu altera e piu sonora" has effectively been silenced: Udimmi Mopso poscia, e con maligno Guardo mirando affascinommi; ond' io Roco divenni, e poi gran tempo tacqui. (558-60) Mopsus heard; And eying me with a malignant stare, Smote fascination on me; whence I grew Hoarse in my song, and for a long time was mute, (trans. Hunt, 162)

Once again, however, a poet has taken occasion in his pastoral apprenticeship to declare his commitment to a tradition of poetry which finds its loftiest expression in the realm of heroic endeavour.

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Spenser had in 1579 made a precisely similar commitment. But when in 1591, pausing in his progress through the second three books of The Faerie Queene, he makes his very un-Virgilian return to pastoral, it is with a poem which no longer contains - which by its very nature could not contain - a similar commitment to heroic poetry. Tasso, like Spenser, views the court with both approval and condemnation. The court he approves, though, is not the same as the court he condemns. Mopso's portrayal of the court is a satirical generalization while Tirsi's portrayal is of a single realized ideal. The particular exception of the Ferrarese court does not invalidate the general truth that courts tend to be centres of falsehood and deceit - and neither does that satirical insight undermine the heroic (and therefore public) idealization which is the very soul of epic. Colin, though, in both praise and blame, is speaking about the same court. Paradoxical though it may appear, we are unable to escape the conclusion that Cynthia's court is both the embodiment of a loftier ideal than can be found within the bounds of pastoral and at the same time a place of duplicity directly opposed to the innocence of pastoral. The ideal is for Colin a source of wonderment and, in the person of Cynthia, an object of continuing devotion; the duplicity is a source of danger from which he must withdraw. Because Spenser has conflated Tasso's alternative visions of the court into the single complex image he presents in Colin Clout, he is unable both to make public the "enormities" of the court and at the same time to commit himself to a continuing public celebration of its heroic values. Colin, we remember, is both shepherd and poet, and behind Colin stands Spenser himself. Colin's withdrawal from the centre of heroic activity is in some sense Spenser's own, and this in spite of the obvious fact that Spenser did return, at least for a time, to the heroic world of The Faerie Queene. Colin Clout contains no declaration of a commitment to epic, and this omission is a measure of the imaginative distance that finally separates not only Colin Clout from the Aminta, but also the Spenser of 1591 from the Spenser of 1579. Spenser's overt conjunction of praise and blame in Colin Clout is disturbing, so much so that one reader has been led to accuse the poet of jumping "from love to hate, from admiration to scorn in the course of composition, without even taking pains to hide the inconsistency";23 another, to conclude that the poem simply "does not present a coherent pastoral world" and must be adjudged a failure.24 Spenser, such views would suggest, was simply unable to subordinate his complex and often bitter experience to the harmonies of his art. Yet it was precisely because of his concern for his art that Spenser interrupted work on The Faerie Queene and wrote Colin Clout. Spenser returned to pastoral in 1591 not to give vent to a desire for "pure

125 Spenser's Return to Pastoral

irresponsible self-expression/'25 nor, as some critics have suggested, merely to write a continuation of the earlier Calender.26 After the Calender Spenser had left Colin behind and entered alone the heroic world of The Faerie Queene, realm of Gloriana, Belphoebe - and Cynthia.27 Now in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe Colin achieves that goal which Prince Arthur is forever denied and visits the very heart of Spenser's epic creation. He comes armed only with the "oaten quill" which is both the shepherd's pipe and the poet's pen. His purpose is to evaluate the potential for poetry in the court of "our soveraine the Queene, and her kingdome in Faery land."28 When Colin comes to court he encounters in Cynthia not only a reflection of the heavenly beauty which, he learns, is ultimately the true subject of poetry; he also encounters a monarch who presides over a realm that, like all mortal things, is subject to corruption and decay. The shepherd-poet Colin Clout cannot long remain in Cynthia's presence, but his departure is not an assertion that the poet's golden world is spatially distinct from the fallen one. Rather it is a recognition, both Colin's and Spenser's, that the private world of poetic devotion is imaginatively distinct from the world of public action. The relationship between the positive and negative views of the court in Colin Clout is not to be defined in terms of Spenser's autobiography but in terms of his beliefs about the proper function of poetry. Cynthia's court, by embracing both the ideal and the reality, becomes more than merely another example of anti-court satire; it becomes metaphorically representative of the public world as a whole - that world which is the necessary sphere of heroic action and heroic poetry, a world in which the glorious is inescapably intermingled with the base. Colin Clout arrives not at the trifling conclusion that the atmosphere of Elizabeth's court is unsuitable to poetic creation of the highest order, but at the far more important conclusion that ultimately the demands of poetry and the demands of public life are entirely distinct. 3

THE POET OF L O V E ' S PERFECTION

Cynthia's court is no mere fiction. The poets, the nymphs, and Cynthia herself are not just creations of the poet's wit, but thinly veiled representatives of the world in which the poet lives and also suffers. Spenser had long been aware that the world - in England as in Ireland - is more brazen than gold. We should not, though, assume that Colin's attack on the court's "enormities" is meant to be objectively definitive, presenting Spenser's "real" opinion of Eliza-

126 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

beth's court, while Cynthia, her poets, and her nymphs are to be dismissed as the gilded inhabitants of a poet's dream, a brief indulgence in golden-age nostalgia or a fanciful fulfilment of an exile's wish to see, if only for a moment, his native land as a realization of all that is desirable and good. The reflection of heavenly beauty which Colin sees in the court is not just the poet's superaddition to an otherwise prosaic reality, Spenser's creation of Cynthia's golden-age realm, the product of his "celestiall inspiration," is, in the root sense of the word, his invention. Heavenly beauty is for Spenser neither a poetic fiction nor a philosophical abstraction but a spiritual reality that is reflected, however faintly, in every human realization of beauty and virtue.29 The poet finds in the temporal world a reflection of the divine, and through this invention he is able to bring together in the golden world of poetry both human imperfection and heavenly perfection. The noblest (secular) poetic invention is the poet's proclamation of his devotion to an earthly reflection of heavenly beauty. But the court perverts the relationship between worth and esteem which is the basis of the poet's activity. Physical appearances there do not reflect spiritual realities; public words do not reflect private attitudes: single Truth and simple honestie Do wander up and downe despys'd of all; Their plaine attire such glorious gallantry Disdaines so much, that none them in doth call. (727-30)

In such an environment love is necessarily perverted. Though "all the walls and windows there are writ, / All full of love, and love, and love my deare" (776-7), nevertheless, the god of love "they do not serve as they professe, / But make him serve to them for sordid uses" (791-2). Since the perversion of love is nothing less than the perversion of poetic invention, the shepherd-poet is naturally led to conclude his attack on the court with a correction of the courtly view of love. Colin's ensuing account of love surprises Cuddy, for he had not realized that love is "so religiously to be esteemed," and he is led to suggest that Colin is fit for a higher calling than the keeping of sheep: Well may it seeme by this thy deep insight, That of that God the Priest thou shouldest bee.

(831-2)

Colin tells his listeners that "Of loves perfection perfectly to speake" is a task which "passeth reasons reach, / And needs his priest t'expresse his powre divine" (835, 838-9). He does not disavow the

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task, however. Rather he proceeds for some sixty lines to set forth the nature of love's perfection. Melissa then establishes the proper response to Colin's speech: Colin, thou now full deeply hast divynd: Of love and beautie, and with wondrous skill, Hast Cupid selfe depainted in his kynd. (896-8)

She confirms Cuddy's suggestion that Colin is fit to be the priest of love. But though Colin has shown his ability to divine love's mysteries, he has not usurped spiritual powers to which he is not entitled. His speech begins with Venus and ends with the Court of Cupid. Its substance is a series of biblical, classical, and Renaissance commonplaces brought together with typical Spenserian eclecticism. Colin's divination is essentially poetic; it is the imaginative invention and revelation of a spiritual truth acknowledged by the many sources to which the poet has access by virtue of his calling.30 Colin's divination of love's perfection establishes the truth of Cynthia's golden realm, the reality of the ideal in which she and her subjects to varying degrees participate. But the divination also confirms the limitations of his own poetic calling, and is a central event in his progress from a life of pastoral song, through a celebration of the golden court and a condemnation of the fallen one, to his final statement of love for Rosalind. The poet creates through his song a world of harmony. At its simplest, his song is an assertion of his own contentment, and the world he creates is pastoral. In the very process of giving form to this world, however, he inevitably reflects another world which is both more noble and more base, filled with the conflicts and aspirations whose exclusion defines his own contentment. His ability to sing and to create harmony through his song suggests the desirability of confronting this greater world. When he does so he finds within it a clear reflection of heavenly beauty, the most precious thing any earthly realm can contain. Through his expression of devotion to this beauty the poet creates a golden realm where worth and esteem are united in perfect harmony (as in the matching catalogues of nymphs and poets). This creation is justified as a re-creation of the unfalien form of the first creation. The poet discovers through his invention an eternally present ideal which he recreates as the timeless harmony of song: And long while after I am dead and rotten: Amongst the shepheards daughters dancing rownd,

128 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral My layes made of her shall not be forgotten. But sung by them with flowry gyrlonds crownd. (640-3)

The poet's expression of devotion to the "beame of beautie" is both his recognition of the "burning lamp of heavens light" (873) and his revelation of the essential nature of a world ordered according to love. Nevertheless, if this ideal is eternally present, it is also continually denied. His movement beyond the bounds of pastoral leads the poet to recognize that man does not act according to the order of love. There is no escaping the central reality of the fall, and only in the poet's recreation is there a realization of the golden age. The poet's ability to perceive and recreate a golden world enables him to descry and denounce with authority the abuses of the fallen one. But the denunciation is made at the expense of his recreation. The poet is not a warrior; his song cannot transform the realities he so abhors. And all the time his devotion is itself subject to public abuse: Happie indeed (said Colin) I him hold, That may that blessed presence still enjoy, Of fortune and of envy uncomptrold, Which still are wont most happie states t'annoy. (660-3)

Only in song does the poet's harmony reign supreme. In the world of heroic action it is as vulnerable as the shepherds' community ravaged by brigands in the sixth book of The Faerie Queene. Love is the proper sphere of the poet's activity, and Colin's divination reveals love's infinite value and eternal truth. But the revelation is not to be found among the busy haunts of men: So I unto my selfe alone will sing, The woods shall to me answer and my Ecc

ring. (Epithalamion, 17-18)

The poet belongs here, in a landscape of the mind, not in the world of public strife and ambition, not in the court of Cynthia. The negative portrayal of the court in Colin Clout functions quite differently from the anti-court satire we encounter in Mother Hubberds Tale or in the court of Lucifera in Book i of The Faerie Queene. These attacks leave open the possibility of a different kind of court, one which can be affirmed without exception or equivocation. Lucifera's court, for example, leaves the image of the court of Gloriana imaginatively untarnished; the ideal remains a conceptual alternative (and this in spite of our awareness that there is something of

129 Spenser's Return to Pastoral

Lucifera's court to be found in Elizabeth's). The complex image which is Cynthia's court leaves room for no such alternative, for the alternative is already present - and already denied. Colin's journey, though, is not without compensation. He must leave the "enormities" of her court, but he is nevertheless able to learn from Cynthia the nature of devotion and the proper subject of poetry. The perfection she embodies remains the subject of the poet's song even after he has left her presence.31 At the end of Colin Clout, as at the end of The Shepheardes Calender, Colin is still the unfortunate lover of Rosalind. But love for Spenser is a subject seldom far removed from poetry. Rosalind, we learn from Lucida's defence of her behaviour to Colin, is a being very much like Cynthia herself: And sooth to say, it is foolhardie thing, Rashly to wyten creatures so divine, For demigods they be and first did spring From heaven, though graft in frailnesse feminine.

(915-18)

Rosalind, like Cynthia, is "of divine regard and heavenly hey/" (933). It is she who will henceforth furnish the subject of Colin's song, a song which will continue to be the expression of due devotion: Not then to her that scorned thing so base, But to my selfe the blame that lookt so hie: So hie her thoughts as she her selfe have place, And loath each lowly thing with loftie eie. Yet so much grace let her vouchsafe to grant To simple swaine, sith her I may not love: Yet that I may her honour paravant, And praise her worth, though far my wit above. (935-42)

Colin's relationship with Rosalind, in other words, will be precisely what it was with Cynthia.32 Colin's poetic journey is not the circular one its geographical progress would suggest. At the end of Colin Clout he is no longer the singer of the simple pastoral song he was when first visited by the Shepherd of the Ocean. Through his encounter with the heroic realm he has found a new and nobler song, a song whose inspiration is similar to Dante's in the Vita nuova or Petrarch's in the Canzoniere. The Dantesque overtones in Colin's opening statement of devotion to his "hearts eternall threasure" are now seen to be entirely appropriate. Critics have sometimes debated whether that devotion is pledged to

130 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

Cynthia or Rosalind (Colin refers only to "that Angels blessed eie"). But the ambiguity can also now be seen as appropriate - just as is the ambiguity in the identity of Colin's love, "advaunst to be another Grace," in the visionary dance on Acidale in The Faerie Queene (vi x 16). Wherever the poet perceives the reflection of heavenly beauty there is the potential for its recreation. Colin learns the lesson of devotion from Cynthia, but she belongs to a public world which is inevitably hostile to the exercise of the poet's function. Rosalind, however, is also a reflection of the "beame of beautie," and she exists within the private world to which the poet must ultimately withdraw - a world which in a sense he has never left. His devotion has necessarily always been private, and he could respond to Cynthia only as he can now respond to Rosalind. Colin's return to the pastoral world and to Rosalind is a recognition of the true significance of Cynthia in his journey of poetic discovery. Colin's final statement of devotion in Colin Clout (927-51) recalls the language of the sonneteers; it has a particularly close parallel in Spenser's own Amoretti LXI, "The glorious image of the makers beautie." Pastoral often looks towards other forms of poetry usually, though, towards epic. The suggestion of the sonnet at the close of Colin Clout is an indication of the direction Spenser now is looking and of the distance he has moved in his views since he created the pastoral world of the Calender and first approached the heroic world of The Faerie Queene. In neither the Calender nor Colin Clout can Colin devote himself to an unattainable .object without a loss of pastoral contentment. In the Calender devotion is at last rejected in order that the pastoral harmony might be restored: "The loser Lasse I cast to please nomore" ("December," 119). In Colin Clout devotion is sustained: And ye my fellow shepheards which do see And heare the languours of my too long dying, Unto the world for ever witnesse bee, That hers I die, nought to the world denying, This simple trophe of her great conquest. (947-51)

There is no suggestion here of a return to the pleasance, not even, as in the Calender, a final return accomplished through the acceptance of death itself. In the later poem Colin accepts death not to perfect the pastoral harmony but to perfect the quality of his own devotion. At the end of Colin Clout as at the end of the Calender the pastoral world appears to be drawing to a close:

131 Spenser's Return to Pastoral So having ended, he from ground did rise, And after him uprose eke all the rest: All loth to part, but that the glooming skies Warnd them to draw their bleating flocks to rest. (952-5)

But the Calender accepts death easily with the promise that its own world will be renewed, while its author moves on to confront the nobler fields of epic. Colin Clout is a more troubled poem and ends with an enforced awareness of "glooming skies." Pastoral no longer promises an entrance to the heroic world - Colin has examined that world and reluctantly accepted that it is ultimately no proper place for the poet. He is left only with the wish for a perfect and private devotion. But Colin has also discovered that if the poet cannot continue to confront the heroic world, he can nevertheless recreate through his devotion the golden world. Colin Clout suggests that the poet who is not tied to the limitations of pastoral might create of love's perfection "a goodly ornament, / And for short time an endlesse moniment."

CHAPTER IV

Pastoral and the End of Epic in The Faerie Queene

1

THE P A S T O R A L R E T R E A T

On the evidence of Colin Clout, it would appear that as early as 1591 Spenser had foreseen that the demands of his art might ultimately lead him away from the heroic poetry to which he had seemed so firmly committed in 1579. Books iv to vi of The Faerie Queene were still to come, of course, but when they appeared in 1596 they showed, I think, that Spenser's progress through The Faerie Queene had ultimately led him to the end of epic. At the beginning of The Faerie Queene Spenser had laid down the "oaten reeds" of pastoral to take up the "trumpets sterne" of epic. Near the end of the poet's epic journey, Sir Calidore, the Knight of Courtesy, rejects the chivalric quest and turns instead to pastoral delights: from henceforth he meanes no more to sew His former quest, so full of toile and paine; Another quest, another game in vew He hath, the guerdon of his love to gaine: With whom he myndes for ever to remaine, And set his rest amongst the rusticke sort, (vi x 2)

Calidore has been in pursuit of the Blatant Beast, a creature that wounds "with vile tongue and venemous intent" (i 8), disrupting the ties that bind, the "civill conversation" that is the basis of all social harmony, of civilized existence itself. Calidore has pursued his enemy through all regions of human activity: from the court of Gloriana, through cities, towns, country, even "to the little cots, where shepherds lie / In winters wrathfull time, he forced him to flie" (ix 4).

133 Pastoral and the End of Epic

Wherever there were men, there too was the Beast, "the plague and scourge" of fallen man. Now, however, Calidore has happened upon men of a different sort, shepherds whose lives are untroubled by strife or aspiration: Playing on pypes, and caroling apace, The whyles their beasts there in the budded broomes Beside them fed, and nipt the tender bloomes: For other worldly wealth they cared nought, (ix 5)

Calidore enquires after his enemy: They answer'd him, that no such beast they saw, Nor any wicked feend, that mote offend Their happie flockes, nor daunger to them draw: But if that such there were (as none they kend) They prayd high God him farre from them to send, (ix 6)

The shepherds' reply comes as no surprise, for it echoes from the heart of almost two thousand years of pastoral tradition. Calidore enters the shepherds' community covered with sweat from his unceasing and apparently fruitless toil. In their midst he finds the old shepherd and his foundling daughter who together define the dominant appeal of pastoral existence. Listening to Meliboe's expression of contentment and gazing on the beauty of Pastorella, Calidore was rapt with double ravishment, Both of his speach that wrought him great content, And also of the object of his vew, On which his hungry eye was alwayes bent, (ix 26)

Not surprisingly, he sees in Meliboe's way of life an attractive alternative to his own: How much (sayd he) more happie is the state, In which ye father here doe dwell at ease, Leading a life so free and fortunate, From all the tempests of these worldly seas, Which tosse the rest in daungerous disease; Where warres, and wreckes, and wicked enmitie Doe them afflict, which no man can appease, That certes I your happinesse envie, And wish my lot were plast in such felicitie. (ix 19)

134 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

Although the words have been condemned as a "set speech" which comes "rolling off Calidore's tongue with just a little too much facility, just a little too much glibness/'11 do not myself see that the language justifies an ironic inversion. Meliboe's philosophy is not Spenser's final prescription for a contented life in troubled Ireland, but Calidore's respect and admiration are not unwarranted. Meliboe, like the shepherd who shelters Erminia in the Gerusalemme liberata and like the Colin of Colin Clout, had once left his native pastures in search of nobler fields of endeavour. At court, however, he too encountered "such vainenesse, as I never thought," and, after being "long deluded / With idle hopes," eventually returned to his flocks with a new appreciation for the "lowly quiet life" (ix 24-5). The biography follows a conventional pattern, but it gives authority to Meliboe's rejection of the aspiring mind: having small, yet doe I not complaine Of want, ne wish for more it to augment, But doe my self, with that I have, content... My lambes doe every yeare increase their score, And my flockes father daily doth amend it. What have I, but to praise th'Almighty, that doth send it? To them, that list, the worlds gay showes I leave, And to great ones such follies doe forgive, Which oft through pride do their owne perill weave, And through ambition downe themselves doe drive To sad decay, that might contented live. Me no such cares nor combrous thoughts offend, Ne once my minds unmoved quiet grieve, But all the night in silver sleepe I spend, And all the day, to what I list, I doe attend, (ix 20-2)

The position is of course familiar. We remember Palinode, for example, who asks, What shoulden shepheards other things tend, Then sith their God his good does them send, Reapen the fruite thereof, that is pleasure, The while they here liven, at ease and leasure? ("May," 63-6) and Hobbinol, with his belief, Content who lives with tryed state,

135 Pastoral and the End of Epic Neede feare no chaunge of frowning fate: But who will seeke for unknowne gayne, Oft lives by losse, and leaves with payne. ("September," 70-3)

"All the day, to what I list, I doe attend": "S'ei place, ei lice." Meliboe's words are resonant with the ideal of pastoral contentment. Admittedly, Meliboe's speech displays little ethical profundity, and its philosophical substance could be reduced to a Senecan commonplace. I would nevertheless not agree that Meliboe "spouts a philosophy partly based on sour grapes: he worked for ten years as a gardener at court without getting ahead."2 The pastoral context provides no support for such a definition of what constitutes "getting ahead." Spenser in the Legend of Courtesy is in search of the sacred noursery Of vertue ... Where it in silver bowre does hidden ly From view of men, and wicked worlds disdaine.

(vi proem 3)

When Meliboe says that "all the night in silver sleepe I spend," his words suggest that Calidore and Spenser are at last approaching that "silver bowre" which is the ultimate goal of courtesy. This suggestion is amplified by the presence of Pastorella, whose appearance is Calidore's first initiation into pastoral mysteries: Upon a little hillocke she was placed Higher then all the rest, and round about Environ'd with a girland, goodly graced, Of lovely lasses, and them all without The lustie shepheard swaynes sate in a rout, The which did pype and sing her prayses dew, And oft rejoyce, and oft for wonder shout, As if some miracle of heavenly hew Were downe to them descended in that earthly vew. (ix 8)

The image of Pastorella, enclosed by a living garland of "lovely lasses" and the focal point of the shepherds' songs, a "miracle of heavenly hew" in a harmonious interchange of grace and praise, is both a foreshadowing of Acidale and a recollection of the address to Elizabeth with which Spenser introduces his Legend of Courtesy: Then pardon me, most dreaded Soveraine, That from your selfe I doe this vertue bring,

136 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral And to your selfe doe it returne againe: So from the Ocean all rivers spring, And tribute backe repay as to their King. Right so from you all goodly vertues well Into the rest, which round about you ring, Faire Lords and Ladies, which about you dwell, And doe adorne your Court, where courtesies excell. (vi proem 7)

Calidore sees in Pastorella the beauty and virtue that Spenser attributes to Elizabeth and that, in the Calender and Colin Clout, Colin celebrates in Eliza, Cynthia, and Rosalind. Each is a reflection and a source of that perfection which Calidore is struggling to create through action and Spenser to recreate through poetry. Rosalind and Cynthia, however, suggest that perfection lies somewhere beyond the bounds of pastoral, just as they themselves dwell beyond those bounds, in the "neighbour towne" and the court. Pastorella, for a time at least, inhabits the pastoral landscape itself, and her presence helps to locate the aspired goal within that landscape. In spite of her aristocratic birth and the nobility of her thoughts - "Though meane her lot, yet higher did her mind ascend" (ix 10) - she has, as her name and foster parentage suggest, a rightful place within the pastoral world that is evoked and in part created by Meliboe's philosophy of content. To dismiss Calidore's expression of sympathy for that philosophy as a rationalization enabling him to indulge a mere infatuation is to ignore the strength of the imaginative bond between Meliboe and Pastorella, a bond as real as that between the old shepherd and Perdita in The Winter's Tale. Meliboe defines pastoral life as involving a rejection of ambition and a retreat from conflict. As we have seen, the primary value of pastoral renunciation is not pragmatic but poetic. What matters is not its feasibility as a guide to action but its allegiance to the recreative ideal that constitutes life in the pastoral pleasance. Meliboe suggests something of the nature of this life when he describes his own day-to-day activities: Sometimes I hunt the Fox, the vowed foe Unto my Lambes, and him dislodge away; Sometime the fawne I practise from the Doe, Or from the Goat her kidde how to convay; Another while I baytes and nets display, The birds to catch, or fishes to beguyle: And when I wearie I am, I downe doe lay My limbes in every shade, to rest from toyle,

137 Pastoral and the End of Epic And drinke of every brooke, when thirst my throte doth boyle. (ix 23)

We are reminded in this description of pastoral care and contentment of Colin's account in "December" of the time before his youthful happiness was disrupted by his love for Rosalind. Meliboe, though, has known love, and it has not brought him sorrow.3 Love is a necessary part of pastoral life, and the pastoral ideal would be incomplete without the harmony of realized love. The truest expression of the pleasance is a song of joyful devotion in a timeless moment of content. Pastorella, then, is a necessary presence in this pastoral world that appears to offer Calidore so attractive an alternative to a life of seemingly unavailing struggle. Meliboe's words promise freedom from care; Pastorella's beauty promises the joy of love. The latter is the fruition and justification of the former. But while Pastorella's beauty promises a recreative ideal, Meliboe's definition of the bounds of pastoral inevitably includes a moral and plaintive recognition of the "follies," "pride," and "ambition" (22) which pervade the world surrounding the shepherds' pastures. We have seen in relation to the Calender and Colin Clout that pastoral always retains an awareness of both the unfallen ideal and the fallen reality, but in the context of the Legend of Courtesy this dual focus takes on special significance. Both Calidore and Spenser are attracted by an ideal of pastoral harmony which can only be sought through a turning away from the heroic world to which each is in his own way committed. But if both the knight and the poet are in a similarly ambiguous situation, the ambiguity has very different implications for Calidore's quest and Spenser's poem. The demands of poetic creation are not the same as those of chivalric action, as we see when Calidore's truancy makes possible the poet's moment of triumph in the vision of the dance on Acidale. The vision properly inspires both wonder and respect. Rosemond Tuve well expresses the quality of Spenser's art in The Faerie Queene when she speaks of his supreme success at the "secret conveying of unparaphrasable meaning."4 "We should not," she goes on to say, "obscure the success by re-writing his stories into their allegories, but resolutely claim whole images with all their depicted feelings as the sole true statements of his allegorical meanings." Nowhere is her caution more applicable than in Spenser's presentation of Colin Clout piping to his love in the centre of a circle of the Graces, a circle itself enclosed by An hundred naked maidens lilly white, All raunged in a ring, and dauncing in delight,

(x 11)

138 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

When we read The Faerie Queene with even a fading recollection of all that precedes the meeting between the shepherd and the knight, then in the moment of vision we experience, I think, what Northrop Frye describes as "a feeling of converging significance, the feeling that here we are close to seeing what our whole literary experience has been about, the feeling that we have moved into the still centre of the order of words."5 When Spenser suddenly transforms the dance into an image both minute and grand, particular and cosmic, he brings us as close to that centre as words can lead: Looke how the Crowne, which Ariadne wore Upon her yvory forehead that same day, That Theseus her unto his bridale bore, When the bold Centaures made that bloudy fray, With the fierce Lapithes, which did them dismay; Being now placed in the firmament, Through the bright heaven doth her beams display, And is unto the starres an ornament, Which round about her move in order excellent, (x 13)

The stanza is the focal point of one of the most magical moments in English literature, comparable to the wakening of Hermione in The Winter's Tale - and on Acidale, too, "It is requir'd / You do awake your faith. "6 Theseus fought on the side of the Lapiths (in the most "bloudy fray" anywhere in the Metamorphoses) at the marriage of Pirithous and Hippodamia, not at his own marriage to Ariadne; Ariadne's crown was set amongst the stars by Bacchus after she had been abandoned by Theseus. Yet the stanza does not show "a confused memory"7 on the part of the poet, but rather Spenser's awareness and firm control of the magic only poetry can effect. As Humphrey Tonkin remarks, "the tumult of the Centaurs' bloody fray, and the rout of gods and goddesses and mythological stories which seem to fall over one another in a kind of grand literary disorder, give an air of transcendence to the beautiful simplicity of Ariadne's crown."8 In the dance of the maidens to the music of the shepherd's pipe we glimpse the harmony, perfect and eternal, that underlies and informs the mutable patterns of temporal existence. For a timeless moment all discords are resolved, all suffering redeemed. Though poetry, as Auden says, "makes nothing happen," as a way of seeing it can nevertheless, even in the midst of darkness, "Still persuade us to rejoice" ("In Memory of W.B. Yeats"). No discursive commentary could improve on Spenser's poetic

139 Pastoral and the End of Epic

revelation of achieved harmony, but discussion of the significance of the vision is not merely superfluous. Calidore's request, "Tell me, what were they all, whose lacke thee grieves so sore" (x 20), and Colin's eight stanzas of explication (21-8) suggest that an understanding of the relation of the vision to other areas of experience is a necessary part of an adequate response to this central moment in The Faerie Queene. Calidore discovers Acidale when he is wandering through a pastoral landscape, and it is in terms of Spenser's previous creations of the world of Colin Clout that I wish to consider the significance of the vision of Colin and the Graces in the harmony of the dance. C.S. Lewis has observed that "the meaning of the Graces, in their relation to Colin Clout, is perfectly clear: they are 'inspiration/ the fugitive thing that enables a man to write one day and leaves him dry as a stone the next, the mysterious source of beauty."9 For all its Romantic associations, the term "inspiration" is not incompatible with Spenser's concept of poetry as "a divine gift and heavenly instinct." Nor is it at variance with the tenor of Colin's reply when, after the Graces have vanished, Calidore says to him, Right happy thou, that mayst them freely see: But why when I them saw, fled they away from me? Not I so happy, answerd then that swaine, As thou unhappy, which them thence didst chace, Whom by no meanes thou canst recall againe, For being gone, none can them bring in place, But whom they of them selves list so to grace, (x 19-20)

Colin's answer is not alone a full explanation for the disappearance of the dancers at Calidore's approach, but it does emphasize that the dance is part of a moment of poetic recreation. His answer also suggests that this recreation is an activity of the highest order, elevated above the normal course of human events by its association with heavenly and ultimately mysterious powers. Lewis goes on to suggest that the Graces, "the mysterious source of beauty," are not the source "of literary beauty alone. There is a similar inspiration that comes and goes in all human activities - and by its coming adds the last unpurchasable beauty - and especially in our social activities." Some such link between the beauty of art and beauty in life is clearly operative on Acidale. The dance is, as we have seen, the visible realization of the harmony which characterizes courtesy, and the Graces of the dance teach men the social arts, "which skill

140 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

men call Civility": Colin's poetic sense and Calidore's social sense are both gifts of "the daughters of sky-ruling Jove." Yet our awareness of the extent to which grace and beauty, like courtesy, are conceived by Spenser as flowers that branch and spread "through all civility," should not lead us to forget that poetry offers a hope for perfection that social activities do not. Poetry, as Sidney's Apology reminds us, can embrace the ideal; man is tied in his actions to the brazen reality. What Calidore sees on Acidale is a poetic apotheosis: Pype jolly shepheard, pype thou now apace Unto thy love, that made thee low to lout: Thy love is present there with thee in place, Thy love is there advaunst to be another Grace,

(x. 16)

The lines are reminiscent of Colin's lay to Eliza, the climactic achievement of the impulse to recreation in The Shepheardes Calender: Lo how finely the graces can it foote to the Instrument: They dauncen deffly, and singen soote, in their meriment. Wants not a fourth grace, to make the daunce even? Let that rowme to my Lady be yeven: She shalbe a grace, To fyll the fourth place, And reigne with the rest in heaven. ("April," 109-17)

On Acidale, as Harry Berger remarks, "the earliest recreation becomes the latest re-creation";10 Acidale is Spenser's supreme expression of the ideal which is at the heart of pastoral. Here, as in the April eclogue and in Colin Clout, the ideal is given form by the language of devotion. In the Calender Colin sees in Eliza one born of "heavenly race, / No mortall blemishe may her blotte"; in Colin Clout he sees in Cynthia an "image of the heavens in shape humane," and in Rosalind a figure "of divine regard and heavenly hew." So too in The Faerie Queene the subject of Colin's song is an image of heavenly perfection: Another Grace she well deserves to be, In whom so many Graces gathered are, Excelling much the meane of her degree; Divine resemblaunce, beauty soveraine rare, Firme Chastity, that spight ne blemish dare; All which she with such courtesie doth grace,

141 Pastoral and the End of Epic That all her peres cannot with her compare/ But quite are dimmed, when she is in place. She made me often pipe and now to pipe apace,

(x 27)

As Cynthia is a source of grace in the golden realm, so on Acidale Colin's love becomes herself a Grace, "a summation of the other three, an encyclopaedic symbol for 'all gracious gifts.'"" A reader familiar with the Calender and Colin Clout is naturally inclined to identify Colin's love as Rosalind. Colin, though, precludes so specific an identification: Who can aread, what creature mote she bee, Whether a creature, or a goddesse graced With heavenly gifts from heven first enraced? But what so sure she was, she worthy was, To be the fourth with those three other placed: Yet was she certes but a countrey lasse, Yet she all other countrey lasses farre did passe, (x 25)

The ambiguity is functional and clarifies the meaning of the vision. In Colin Clout we have seen that the ambiguity of reference in Colin's expression of devotion (466-79) helps to establish the equivalence of Cynthia and Rosalind in their relation to the function of the poet. Both provide the poet with his proper subject - the earthly reflection of heavenly beauty - and both occasion the expression of devotion that is the poet's most pure song. In The Faerie Queene, as in Colin Clout, the shepherd-poet's loftiest theme is the "beame of beautie sparkled from above," and though his song is addressed but to "a countrey lasse," she becomes, in the world his song creates, the recipient and the source of virtue, "a goddesse graced / With heavenly gifts from heven first enraced." Colin's love does, then, have a particular reference to the Rosalind of the Calender and Colin Clout, but this reference is not exclusive. As Harry Berger remarks, "at the center of the ring of graces is no single creature but a richly complicated knot of all the figures the poet has ever meditated on - Rosalind, Elizabeth, Amoret, Belphoebe, Florimell, Venus, Psyche - 'Who can aread, what creature mote she be'?"12 On Acidale, as in Cynthia's court, the poet's powers of invention reveal to him an eternally present ideal which he recreates in the "order excellent" of an imaginative realm in which worth and esteem are in perfect harmony, both in accord with the rule of love. For a timeless moment the poet's song renders visible "the sacred noursery / Of vertue" and provides a pattern of the perfection man can never

142 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

attain but must always strive towards. The dance on Acidale is the visible realization of the ideal which Pastorella represents to Calidore, Rosalind to Colin, the Queen to Spenser. It is the fulfilment (though not the completion) of Spenser's search for the poetic embodiment of the ideal of virtue which is perfect courtesy. But the realization of the ideal in the moment of the dance does not prescribe a course of action to meet the practical needs of either England or Faeryland. Acidale is a place apart, untroubled by time and decay, In which all trees of honour stately stood, And did all winter as in sommer bud, (x 6)

an earthly paradise only to be approached by ways which "none can find, but who was taught them by the Muse" (proem 2). And even the poet is bound to the world of time, his music always liable to interruption by malice or misfortune; while the knight is inevitably frustrated in his desire to share the shepherd's recreation: But soone as he appeared to their vew, They vanisht all away out of his sight, And cleane were gone, which way he never knew; All save the shepheard, who for fell despight Of that displeasure, broke his bag-pipe quight, And made great mone for that unhappy turne. (x 18)

The disappearance of the dancers is not an indication of Calidore's culpability or imperfection. The dance results from Colin's expression of devotion Pype jolly shepheard, pype thou now apace Unto thy love, that made thee low to lout -

and devotion, as we have seen in Colin Clout, is necessarily private. It is only through the transcendent power of poetry, through Spenser's creation of the special place that is Acidale, that Calidore can briefly glimpse a harmony never to be attained on earth except within the innermost regions of pastoral song: But gentle Shepheard pardon thou my shame, Who rashly sought that, which I mote not see.

(x 29)

Colin's interpretation of the Graces make it clear that the ideal is not

143 Pastoral and the End of Epic

without important implications for the public world of human activity, but the ideal itself is to be found in a landscape of the mind, a landscape accessible only to the poet - and only to the poet devoted not to conflict but to harmony. The ideal form of virtue is not to be achieved by the chivalric endeavours of Gloriana's knight, nor even by the epic endeavours of Elizabeth's poet. No heroic struggle could bring Spenser's Faerie Queene closer to the goal of his poetic quest than does the music of a shepherd piping to his love at the centre of a world of pastoral content. Colin's song of praise, a song that carries the pastoral voice of Spenser himself, is nothing less than the final culmination of the search through Faeryland for "the sacred noursery / Of vertue" which "in silver bowre does hidden ly / From view of men, and wicked worlds disdaine." Yet the vision on Acidale, however satisfying in itself, does nothing to overcome the obstacles to human happiness represented by the continuing existence of the Blatant Beast. While Calidore can never enter the heart of Colin's poetic world, it would be equally impossible for Colin to become a true participant in the active world to which Calidore rightly belongs. Only Calidore is capable of chivalric action, and only after the encounter on Acidale does Calidore learn just how necessary such action can be. The pastoral world of The Faerie Queene, like that of the Calender as a whole and that which Colin inhabits at the beginning of Colin Clout, evokes a recreative ideal at the same time as it enforces a moral and plaintive awareness of a world requiring actions the shepherd committed to the "tryed state" is unsuited to perform. Since the shepherd's only answer to conflict is acceptance and retreat, the security he possesses must always be dependent on factors beyond his own control. In the context of fallen conditions such weakness is dangerous. Meliboe himself emphasizes that the only genuine security to be found in pastoral retirement is a steadfast tranquillity of spirit: In vaine (said then old Meliboe) doe men The heavens of their fortunes fault accuse, Sith they know best, what is the best for them: For they to each such fortune doe diffuse, As they doe know each can most aptly use. For not that, which men covet most, is best, Nor that thing worst, which men do most refuse; But fittest is, that all contented rest With that they hold: each hath his fortune in his brest. (ix 29)

He neither does nor could provide an answer to the problem which

144 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

arises if the impositions of fortune manifestly do not convey what "each can most aptly use." Meliboe is precluded by his pastoral nature from prescribing a formula for the active defence of beleaguered virtue. The disruption of moments of repose by chance events is a dominant theme in Book vi,13 and in the moment that Calidore assumes the role and costume of a shepherd, we are reminded of the near proximity of those very "stormes of fortune and tempestuous fate" (ix 31) he hopes his pastoral retreat will enable him to avoid. When Pastorella disdains his courtly ways, Calidore perceiving, thought it best To chaunge the manner of his loftie looke; And doffing his bright armes, himselfe addrest In shepheards weed, and in his hand he tooke, In stead of steelehead speare, a shepheards hooke, That who had seene him then, would have bethought On Phrygian Paris by Plexippus brooke, When he the love of fayre Oenone sought, What time the golden apple was unto him brought, (ix 36)

The transition in the final three lines from pastoral recreation to the intrusive apple of discord brings the stanza to an almost sardonic close. The reminder of the judgment of Paris, responsible for the ten years' conflict of the Trojan War, does not bode well for the future course of Calidore's own pastoral interlude. Nor is it long before he discovers that the problems and values of his heroic past cannot simply be dismissed in this pastoral world he had described as being "Fearlesse of foes, or fortunes wrackfull yre" (ix 27). The continuing need for chivalric action is made clear on the occasion that he, Coridon, and Pastorella are interrupted in the tranquil pursuit of strawberries by an encounter with a tiger distinctly lacking in pastoral charm: "with fell clawes full of fierce gourmandize, / And greedy mouth, wide gaping like hell gate" (x 34). Pastorella cries for help and Coridon flees; but Calidore, without arms or armour, uses "his shepheards hooke, / To serve the vengeaunce of his wrathfull will" (36). The tiger is slain, Coridon discredited, and Pastorella won. Soon Calidore requires a better weapon than a shepherd's crook. During his absence a band of brigands plunder the shepherds' dwellings, drive off their flocks, and lead into captivity those shepherds they have not killed. Subsequently a dispute breaks out between the band's members, and before it is settled by force of arms the captives are massacred with a ruthlessness untempered even by malice:

145 Pastoral and the End of Epic But first of all, their captives they doe kill, Least they should joyne against the weaker side, Or rise against the remnant at their will; Old Meliboe is slaine, and him beside His aged wife, with many others wide, (xi 18)

Coridon manages to escape, Pastorella survives though wounded and distraught at having seen her parents slaughtered before her eyes, the rest are dead. Calidore, driven by the brutal logic of events, gradually reassumes his chivalric role. He sets out with Coridon in search of Pastorella: Both clad in shepheards weeds agreeably, And both with shepheards hookes: But Calidore Had underneath, him armed privily, (xi 36)

In the brigands' cave, Sir Calidore him arm'd, as he thought best, Having of late by diligent inquest, Provided him a sword of meanest sort. (42)

Then, having found Pastorella and repulsed the attacking brigands, Through the dead carcases he made his way, Mongst which he found a sword of better say, With which he forth went into th'open light: Where all the rest for him did readie stay. (47)

Now the comparisons are truly heroic, the pastoral image of Paris no longer appropriate to the freshly armed warrior: Like as a Lion mongst an heard of dere, Disperseth them to catch his choysest pray, So did he fly amongst them here and there, And all that nere him came, did hew and slay. (49)

Once again he is the epic hero in a world where the keeping of sheep is a fit task only for a rustic like Coridon, and where the beauty and spiritual excellence of Pastorella are found to belong not to a simple shepherdess but to the long-lost daughter of the noble lord Sir Bellamour. After the darkness of the cave there can be no return to the simple joys of pastoral. Calidore pauses only long enough to give the

146 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

flock to Coridon before he (like Spenser) departs for the last time from the world of Colin Clout. 2

THE H E R O I C I M A G E

The vision on Acidale must fade; the prospect of pastoral retirement must ultimately prove illusory. Nevertheless, I believe it is an inadequate explanation of the pattern of events in Book vi simply to say with Arnold Williams that "Spenser had seen through pastoralism and repudiated it. "I4 Williams supports this assertion by conjecturing that perhaps Spenser's "experience in Ireland, where the true nature of 'simple folk' was painfully apparent; perhaps his own native hard-headedness told him that pastoralism is really an avoidance of the issue and a slinking from the good fight." But as early as The Shepheardes Calender Spenser was well aware that "pastoralism is really an avoidance of the issue" - when the issue at hand is to fight "the good fight." In the course of writing The Faerie Queene, however, Spenser became aware that the relation between pastoral and the good literary fight was not what it had first appeared to be. Spenser finds in a moment of vision at the recreative centre of the pastoral landscape the realized ideal which is the object of his poetic quest, but he learns too that the pursuit of the chivalric quest must finally diverge from the pursuit of poetry. The demands of poetry lead to a pastoral retreat and a lyric celebration of the joys of the pleasance; the demands of public life require that the pastoral interlude be only a momentary respite from the ongoing struggle against the forces of evil. The ambiguity of the pastoral interlude resolves not in a fusion of vision and quest but in the acceptance of their ultimate disparity. The vision of the dance is the justification for C.S. Lewis's observation that "the shepherds' country and Mount Acidale in the midst of it are the core of the [sixth] book, and the key to Spenser's whole conception of Courtesy."15 What Calidore sees on Acidale is the obvious fulfilment of Spenser's earlier invocation: Guyde ye my footing, and conduct me well In these strange waies, where never foote did use, Ne none can find, but who was taught them by the Muse. Revele to me the sacred noursery Of vertue, which with you doth there remaine, Where it in silver bowre does hidden ly From view of men, and wicked worlds disdaine. (vi proem 2-3)

147 Pastoral and the End of Epic

Colin's account of the Graces, teachers of that "skill men call Civility" (x 23), makes clear that the vision is a realization of the essence of "comely courtesie," fairest flower in all "the sacred noursery." Calidore is allowed, as we are, for a moment to gaze upon that ideal whose "seat is deepe within the mynd" but which "spreds it selfe through all civilitie" (proem 4,5).16 The vision thus precludes a simple equation of Calidore's pastoral retreat with other betrayals of the quest in The Faerie Queened7 But while Spenser himself is plainly justified by Acidale against the charge of pastoral truancy, it is not equally evident how the vision justifies Calidore against a similar charge. Essential as the vision on Acidale is to Spenser's purposes in writing an allegory of courtesy, in relation to Calidore's quest of the Blatant Beast, the vision is little more than an interesting diversion. Spenser himself is quite aware of the difficulties involved in defining the relation between vision and quest in the Legend of Courtesy. Hence he pauses, for example, to remark that Calidore should not be "greatly blamed" for his decision to remain with Meliboe and his people: For who had tasted once (as oft did he) The happy peace, which there doth overflow, And prov'd the perfect pleasures, which doe grow Amongst poore hyndes, in hils, in woods, in dales, Would never more delight in painted show Of such false blisse, as there is set for stales, T'entrap unwary fooles in their eternall bales, (x 3)

The apology, though, resolves little. The fact that an action is understandable does not necessarily mean it is correct. Calidore's "former quest, so full of toile and paine" (x 2), was carried out in that very realm of "painted show" and "false blisse" which he rejects in favour of pastoral tranquillity and to which he returns when the quest is resumed. The problem of defining the relationship between pastoral and chivalric modes of existence remains. Spenser also suggests that Calidore's retreat is a coherent and even necessary part of a quest whose goal is perfected courtesy: For all that hetherto hath long delayd This gentle knight, from sewing his first quest, Though out of course, yet hath not bene mis-sayd, To shew the courtesie by him protest, Even unto the lowest and the least, (xii 2)

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The assertion that the pastoral cantos have "not bene mis-sayd" is of course justified by Spenser's own thematic commitments. But Calidore's profession of courtesy "unto the lowest and the least" has little to do with the vision on Acidale and does not alter the fact that by his admission and by Spenser's explicit statement the pastoral interlude has been a neglect of Calidore's "first quest" and "out of course." It is sometimes suggested (largely on the basis of analogy with Red Cross's stay in the House of Holiness) that Calidore's stay with the shepherds is a schooling in courtesy preparatory to his successful capture of the Blatant Beast.18 But quite apart from the lack of convincing evidence that Calidore, most courteous knight of all in Faery court, "Where curteous Knights and Ladies most did won" (i 1-2), is actually in need of further schooling, the essential ambiguity of the pastoral cantos would not be removed even by an admission that some such interlude is necessary to the training of a Knight of Courtesy. Red Cross does not actually abandon his quest while he is in the House of Holiness, and though he learns much from his stay in the dungeons of Orgoglio, the lessons are uniformly admonitory and do not call into question the clearly defined position of the dungeons in Spenser's spiritual and ethical framework. Poet and knight proceed together to win the fruits of holiness; their paths diverge in search of the fruits of courtesy. Spenser, I think, can provide no simple explanation of the tensions inherent in Calidore's pastoral retreat because those tensions emanate from the very foundations of the entire poem. As the pastoral cantos point towards the end of Spenser's epic, so they also recall with insistent self-consciousness the path the poet has long been following through the labyrinthine ways of Faeryland.19 Fully to understand the significance of the encounter between Colin and Calidore would mean, I believe, fully to understand The Faerie Queene. Here I want to provide an initial approach to such an understanding by outlining something of the imaginative context within which the pastoral cantos unfold. Spenser's declaration that his purpose in The Faerie Queene is "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline" means not simply that his poem is intended to take its place beside the prose handbooks of social instruction that flourished in the sixteenth century in England as elsewhere, but also that the poem is to be an imaginative recreation of the ideal that constitutes a gentleman: "I labour to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised, the which is the purpose of these

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first twelve books."20 When Spenser wrote the "Letter of the Authors expounding his whole intention in the course of this worke," his "whole intention" was probably far from clear even to himself (significantly, when the second three books were added in 1596 the letter was not republished). Apparently, however, he envisaged the completed poem as an internal allegory of man's moral and spiritual nature, a "darke conceit" in which the poem's readers would see unfolded the virtuous man's heroic struggle to surmount his own inevitable imperfections. In place of the timeless image of pastoral existence embodied in the Calender, Spenser would create another image, equally timeless, but now transcending through its heroic commitment the limitations of pastoral life and pastoral verse. Such a poem would be an achievement worthy of the follower of "all the antique Poets historicall." Spenser had set himself a far more difficult task than the mere codification of theology and ethics into the terminology of verse romance. He had embarked not on an accumulation of moral doctrine, though The Faerie Queene presupposes such doctrine throughout, but on a search for the lineaments of a poetic vision which would enable him to reveal to a fallen world the eternal form of perfected virtue that ideal which man must always strive towards and can never more than partially attain. Spenser seeks to portray through heroic action the virtue which informs such action. He commits himself in The Faerie Queene to an attempt to confront and transcend temporal limitations, to a poetry of apocalypse, striving towards the imaginative achievement of a new heaven and new earth, a totally human creation.21 Through the course of the first instalment The Faerie Queene was equal to his demands. The Legend of Holiness begins in a Wood of Error which is both a local feature of Faeryland and the selva oscura through which every man must pass on life's confusing journey. As Red Cross stumbles along his errant path, Spenser moves with firm assurance to reveal the image of a paradise to be regained if only man could dispel the darkness that veils his fallen vision. The story of Red Cross is less a spiritual biography than an unfolding definition, a progressive revelation of the path that leads to the death of evil and to man's perfect union with heavenly love and heavenly beauty. When Red Cross kills his dragon and the fearsome monster is transformed into a figure of fun and harmless curiosity, we see through his victory the triumph over sin so devoutly to be wished. And when Red Cross is joined with Una, "With sacred rites and vowes for ever to abide" (xii 36), we hear beyond the music of earthly celebration the heavenly harmony like "many an Angels voice, / Singing before th'eternall

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majesty" (xii 39), music to which our first parents once listened in their happy state, but never again heard by man since their first disobedience let death into the world and all our woe. Spenser was of course aware that it is not given to man to achieve perfection, and he was under no illusions as to the necessary course of human affairs. In Faery land as elsewhere the struggle against evil must continue as long as time itself, and Red Cross is not allowed very long to enjoy the fruits of his victory: Yet swimming in that sea of blisfull joy, He nought forgot, how he whilome had sworne, In case he could that monstrous beast destroy, Unto his Farie Queene backe to returne: The which he shortly did, and Una left to mourne. (xii 41)

"The dragon," as Mark Rose remarks, "after all is only a dragon,"22 and the consequences of the fall are unfortunately not to be resolved by the destruction of even the most ferocious monster. Red Cross's victory does not and could not bring about an end to evil itself - but it does allow Spenser to bring to a successful close his quest for an image of holiness perfected. Dealing as it does with man's spiritual nature, Book i is more explicitly apocalyptic than any other in The Faerie Queene. The Legend of Holiness is in part a recreation of the materials in the Revelation of St John,23 and Frank Kermode has argued that "the force of the book ... stems from a peculiarly subtle and active interplay of actual history with apocalyptic-sibylline prophecy."24 But Spenser does not manage his achievement merely through imputed reference. The Legend of Holiness is neither history nor prophecy, though it makes use of both for the all-important task of defining and clarifying its resultant image. Red Cross's defeat of the dragon is a purely poetic apocalypse. It is Spenser's climactic resolution to the problem of imaginatively defining the nature of holiness through the creation of an image which both delineates the eternal form of the ideal and at the same time preserves an awareness of the continuing necessity for temporal struggle. Books ii and in each similarly evolve towards the creation of an image perfected through a representation of the apocalyptic defeat of the evils opposing the virtues of temperance and chastity. Guyon and Britomart act, like Red Cross, within the fallen world of Faeryland, but their actions enable Spenser to define the eternal, unfallen forms of the virtues they represent. Guyon's destruction of the Bower of Bliss and Britomart's rescue of Amoret from the enchantments of

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Busirane do not bring to an end their own personal endeavours. Guyon's capture of Acrasia is only a stage along his individual journey- "let us hence depart, whilest wether serves and wind" (n xii 87) - and though Britomart leaves Busirane's castle to find that the "dreadfull flames" which had kept Scudamour from his Amoret are "vanisht quite," she herself has scarcely begun her search for Artegall. The intransigence of Grill suggests that man's intemperance can never completely be overcome until a final, universal apocalypse fully reveals the human form obscured within a Bower of Bliss more durable and pervasive than that destroyed by the Knight of Temperance. A conclusive demonstration that what Busirane represents survives his defeat by Britomart would require an excursus into Book iv too long for my present purposes. Here it will suffice to point to the contrast at the close of the 1590 instalment between Amoret, united with her love (at least until the ending of Book in was revised for the 1596 edition), and Britomart, still unhappily separated from hers. The particular achievement does not signal a universal triumph in Book in any more than elsewhere. The twelfth-canto victories over Acrasia and Busirane do, however, mark the culmination of Spenser's definition of temperance and chastity - and, as in The Shepheardes Calender, the completion of the poetic definition is the creation of the poetic image. By the end of Book in of The Faerie Queene Spenser has not yet fashioned a gentleman, but he has completed a substantial part of his projected image. Nevertheless, the image Spenser had so confidently begun to create could never be completed - not, at least, in the form he had initially conceived. In fact Spenser seems early to have felt some uneasiness about the ability of his poem finally to attain its projected goal. In the Letter to Ralegh he explains that the twelve books dealing with the "twelve private morall vertues" will only comprise the first part of his portrayal of Arthur, "which if I find to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encoraged, to frame the other part of polliticke vertues in his person, after that hee came to be king" (407). I think it unlikely Spenser ever seriously planned to write a poem whose total length would be almost four times that of the Orlando furioso. I suspect that the seemingly rash or naive suggestion of a second twelve books - a suggestion made when nine of the first twelve still remained to be written - was prompted by Spenser's awareness that he was facing a serious difficulty, one which he was not sure how to solve and which the promise of a later treatment of the "polliticke vertues" in a semi-independent poem seemed at least to postpone. The problem stems from the fact that in a fallen world virtue and

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action cannot be dissociated. For Spenser, as for Sidney, "the ending end of all earthly learning" is "virtuous action."25 When Red Cross ascends the Mount of Contemplation and sees from there the New Jerusalem, "Wherein eternall peace and happinesse doth dwell" (i x 55), he remarks how far the heavenly city surpasses "great Cleopolis" wherein the "fairest Faerie Queene doth dwell" (58). Having glimpsed a world where "peace doth ay remaine, /... and battailes none are to be fought" (62), Red Cross now wishes to leave the world of chivalric action, "whose joyes so fruitlesse are" (63). Contemplation tells him, however, That may not be ... ne maist thou yit Forgo that royall maides bequeathed care, Who did her cause into thy hand commit, Till from her cursed foe thou have her freely quit. (63)

"Bloud can nought but sin, and wars but sorrowes yield" (60) - but the imperfect battle must still be fought. Red Cross must continue to champion Una's cause; virtue must remain locked in struggle against man's "cursed foe." The need for virtuous action means that the heroic image cannot adequately be developed with reference to the individual alone. Virtue pertains not only to man's private relationship to God and to his relation as a rational being to his own passionate nature; it also pertains to his relations with other men. The Wood of Error is common to all, and while man strives to find his own path to moral and spiritual integrity, he must at the same time join with his fellows in love and friendship, justice and courtesy. Contemplation's insistence that Red Cross descend the Mount is an avowal that the imperatives of man's fallen condition preclude the possibility of a complete yet private virtue. Spenser's suggestion of twelve books dealing with the "polliticke vertues" is a reflection of his own awareness that in order fully to fashion a gentleman he would eventually have to pass from the private to the public virtues. The public virtues were not, of course, deferred to a never-written sequel, but comprise the second instalment of The Faerie Queene, the Legends of Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy - all focusing on achieved human relationships rather than on the individual's readiness to enter into such relationships (as in Book in). The complementary nature of Books in and iv alone suggests the inevitability of the move from private to public virtues,26 while the inclusion of the very "polliticke" Legend of Justice testifies to Spenser's rejection of the idea of a later poem structured around the adventures of Arthur after

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he became king. Whether Spenser could have brought The Faerie Queene to a satisfactory close without treating the public virtues is rather fruitless matter for debate, though I suspect - and Spenser himself seems to have believed - that the course the poem actually follows is a necessary consequence of its imaginative nature. The poem properly begins with holiness, "that state which establishes man's right relationship to God and upon which all the virtues depend."27 But Spenser's Christianity demanded that his image of man include the order of nature within the order of grace,28 and his humanism required that the transformation of the Bower of Bliss into a wasteland be only a preliminary to the revelation of the order of love. Nor could the vision of that order be circumscribed by merely personal relationships, but must of necessity expand to embrace the political and social ideals which inform the truly heroic image. Spenser could quite possibly have adapted other virtues to his purposes than those he chose, but it is difficult to believe that any other order than the present could have been imposed on those he does portray. As the poem now exists, Book i defines a canvas which reaches from heaven above to hell below, while subsequent books develop on this canvas a horizontal perspective which gradually broadens until, like the lowly plant of courtesy, it "spreds it selfe through all civilitie." In Book iv Spenser deals for the first time with a virtue that cannot fully be located within an individual and defined in terms of the nature of that individual. Friendship pertains to a relationship between individuals, and since virtue cannot be defined apart from action, the poetic image of friendship cannot be perfected without a portrayal of the realization of this relationship in its ideal form. Hence the Legend of Friendship culminates in a vision - or rather visions - of love perfected: the marriage of the Thames and the Medway and the resolution of the division between Marinell and Florimell: Who soone as he beheld that angels face, Adorn'd with all divine perfection, His cheared heart eftsoones away gan chace Sad death, revived with her sweet inspection, And feeble spirit inly felt refection; As withered weed through cruell winters tine, That feeles the warmth of sunny beames reflection, Liftes up his head, that did before decline And gins to spread his leafe before the faire sunshine. (IV xii 34)

The river-marriage reveals the ideal of concord which underlies the

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mutability of the temporal world; the union of Marinell and Florimell reveals man's participation through love in the cosmic harmony. The first is a secular apocalypse as complete as, and parallel to, the liberation of the beleaguered city in the final cantos of Book i; the second, parallel to the betrothal of Red Cross and Una, affirms the completion, in a timeless moment of life-giving joy, of Spenser's poetic definition of friendship. But as long as the world remains mutable and fallen, the ideal which can at least potentially be realized in a relationship between individuals is not one which can be realized in society as a whole. Faeryland is, as Thomas P. Roche remarks, "an expanding ideal,"29 and Spenser's portrayal of that ideal includes, as we have seen, a recognition of temporal limitations. As the image prefiguring the ideal expands, the poet must necessarily confront and attempt to transmute into its unfallen form an ever-increasing expanse of fallen reality. The path through Faeryland leads ultimately into regions where the poet committed to a realm of ideals is unable to follow. "To fashion a gentleman" Spenser must move from the Legend of Friendship to the Legends of Justice and Courtesy. But while individuals may pursue goals of justice and courtesy, in a poem which retains its awareness of the fall their quests must inevitably be dogged by unfortunately justified feelings of frustration and even futility: So oft as I with state of present time, The image of the antique world compare, When as mans age was in his freshest prime, And the first blossome of faire vertue bare, Such oddes I finde twixt those, and these which are, As that, through long continuance of his course, Me seemes the world is runne quite out of square, From the first point of his appointed sourse, And being once amisse growes daily wourse and wourse. (v proem i)

Spenser's complaint in the prologue to Book v is occasioned not by any new-found sense of pessimism, but rather by his growing awareness of the poetic dilemma towards which The Faerie Queene is leading him: Let none then blame me, if in discipline Of vertue and of civill uses lore, I doe not forme them to the common line Of present dayes, which are corrupted sore, But to the antique use, which was of yore,

155 Pastoral and the End of Epic When good was onely for it selfe desyred, And all men sought their owne, and none no more; When Justice was not for most meed outhyred, But simple Truth did rayne, and was of all admyred. For that which all men then did virtue call, Is now cald vice; and that which vice was hight, Is now hight vertue, and so us'd of all: Right now is wrong, and wrong that was is right, As all things else in time are chaunged quight. Ne wonder; for the heavens revolution Is wandred farre from where it first was pight, And so doe make contrarie constitution Of all this lower world, toward his dissolution, (v proem 3-4)

Spenser had long been aware of the prevalence of corruption and of the propensity of vice to mask as virtue - witness, for the latter, the Fox and the Wolf in The Shepheardes Calender, Archimago and Duessa in The Faerie Queene. But whereas the irrepressible nature of evil does not prevent the imaginative realization of pastoral innocence or perfected holiness, it does for a poet with Spenser's integrity prove a severe hindrance to the imaginative realization of perfected justice. Spenser is committed both ethically and poetically to a vision of justice which encompasses more than the inherent virtue of the just individual. Justice pertains to the formal system of relationships between the individual members of society, and the ideal form of justice is the perfection of that system. Man may act with justice as he may act in holiness, but just action on the part of an individual cannot alter the fact that society in Faeryland is invariably imperfect in its adherence to the ideals of justice. The goal of Spenser's invention in The Faerie Queene is an image of virtue perfected through heroic action. Private virtue can and indeed must be realized within a public world, but public virtues cannot be defined in terms of individual action alone. In order to fashion a gentleman "in vertuous and gentle discipline," heroic action must be defined in terms of the moral imperatives of a fallen reality. Public virtues, however, can be ideally realized only in a golden world which practises "the antique use, which was of yore." In anything less than an apocalyptic environment - and a universal apocalypse was not Spenser's to introduce - the narration of virtuous action cannot lead to the realization of a golden world which is the proper home of perfected virtue. Artegall sets out to bring justice to regions of Faeryland disturbingly overshadowed by the political realities of

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sixteenth-century Europe, and as his quest proceeds it becomes increasingly evident that The Faerie Queene is being troubled by a perhaps irresolvable ambiguity of purpose. Didactic and aesthetic criteria are no longer the same. It is Spenser's growing awareness of this ambiguity which led, I believe, to the writing of Colin Clout. In that poem he re-explores the relation between the golden world which poetry can create and the fallen world in which the poet lives. He decides, as we have seen, that the demands of the first must ultimately involve a turning away from the second. The highest function of poetry is the necessarily private expression of devotion, the creation of a golden world of song in which the poet transcends the corruptions of the temporal world. The eternal image which the poet creates can rise above but not confront the conflicts that mar the world he inhabits. The Faerie Queene points toward and finally enacts a similar conclusion. In the last two books there is an increasing tension stemming from the discrepancy between the image of virtue Spenser is striving to perfect and the actions he is portraying. Jane Aptekar observes that in the Legend of Justice "Spenser recognized the ironical truth that in the actual world of practical men, force and fraud, though they are less than honourable, less than good, are the very means which the governor must use in order to maintain God's justice. "3° The expression of this knowledge in Book v does not reflect Spenser's sudden awakening from past naivete - a man of Spenser's intelligence and humanity could never have preserved such naivete in the face of his almost certain presence at the 1580 massacre at Smerwick. Rather it is a consequence of the fact that for the first time he has had to admit within the previously privileged bounds of Faeryland the necessity for virtue to yield, in "the actual world of practical men," to the demands of expediency. Without this admission Spenser's definition of justice would have been incomplete. But with it, there is a growing recognition of the disparity between the ideal form of justice and the nature of just action in an imperfect world, and this recognition places considerable strain on the poem's imaginative structure. The strain is most evident in those cantos devoted to contemporary military and political events. These events could no more be excluded from an allegory of justice in The Faerie Queene than the conflict with Rome could have been excluded from the allegory of holiness. But their inclusion in the Legend of Justice is not without poetic cost, as Spenser perhaps implicitly acknowledges in that remarkable simile describing Adicia's behaviour after Arthur destroys her husband, the wicked Souldan:

157 Pastoral and the End of Epic Streight downe she ranne, like an enraged cow, That is berobbed of her youngling dere, With knife in hand ... (v viii 46)

Even Spenser nods, of course, and the lines may be nothing more than an unintentional lapse. Elsewhere, though, there are strong indications that Spenser is quite aware of the peculiar difficulties he is facing in directing his poem simultaneously toward public realities and public ideals. In the trial of Duessa, for example, a transparent reflection of the trial of Mary Queen of Scots, Mercilla is, as her name suggests, the embodiment of mercy. Yet neither her "piteous ruth" nor her (and Spenser's) commitment to the lofty principle that it is "better to reforme, then to cut off the ill" can alter the harsh realities of power, and so Duessa is beheaded during what seems almost an embarrassed pause between two lines of a stanza in praise of Mercilla's virtue: Much more it praysed was of those two knights; The noble Prince, and righteous Artegall, When they had scene and heard her doome a rights Against Duessa, damned by them all; But by her tempred without griefe or gall, Till strong constraint did her thereto enforce. And yet even then ruing her wilfull fall, With more then needfull naturall remorse, And yeelding the last honour to her wretched corse, (x 4)

As Michael O'Connell remarks, "Spenser seems so circumspect about Duessa's execution that we suspect he realizes in some way what he has done."31 Indeed, it seems to me likely that Spenser not only realizes what he has done but that he expects his reader to realize it as well, and that he has not, as O'Connell suggests, lost control over his poem as a result of a touching "devotion to his queen and her cause." Had Spenser wished simply to lavish unqualified praise on Elizabeth he could, after all, have chosen an episode more amenable to close ethical analysis. He recalls the execution of Mary not in spite of the ambiguities inherent in Elizabeth's behaviour but because of them. The demands of Spenser's allegory lead him in the Legend of Justice into direct confrontation with that public realm wherein "blood can nought but sin, and wars but sorrowes yield." In this realm the enemies of justice refuse to be encapsulated in any single foe, no matter how fearsome. When Arthur frees Beige from the giant

158 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Geryoneo the celebrations recall those that greet the triumph of Red Cross over the dragon: Then all the people, which beheld that day, Gan shout aloud, that unto heaven it rong; And all the damzels of that towne in ray, Came dauncing forth, and joyous carrols song: So him they led through all their streetes along, Crowned with girlonds of immortall baies, And all the vulgar did about them throng, To see the man, whose everlasting praise They all were bound to all posterities to raise, (xi 34) But whereas the earlier celebrations expand to embrace the very heavens and offer a vision of paradise regained, here the fruits of victory are decidedly local and provide little more than a momentary respite from toil: There he with Beige did a while remaine, Making great feast and joyous merriment, Untill he had her settled in her raine, With safe assuraunce and establishment. Then to his first emprize his mind he lent, Full loath to Beige, and to all the rest: Of whom yet taking leave, thenceforth he went And to his former journey him addrest, On which long way he rode, ne ever day did rest. (35) Artegall's twelfth-canto battle with Grantorto, structurally parallel to Red Cross's encounter with the dragon, Guyon's with Acrasia, and Britomart's with Busirane, is similarly devoid of a sense of climax: Soone as he [Grantorto] did within the listes appeare, With dreadfull looke he Artegall beheld, As if he would have daunted him with feare, And grinning griesly, did against him weld His deadly weapon, which in hand he held. But th'Elfin swayne, that oft had scene like sight, Was with his ghastly count'nance nothing queld ...

(xii 16)

In the Legend of Justice we too oft have seen like sight, and we know that this is only one more skirmish in that ongoing struggle wherein the idealism even of the just must repeatedly yield to the demands of

159 Pastoral and the End of Epic

expediency and where victory is seldom unalloyed by suggestions of defeat. Spenser obviously drew on the fate of Lord Grey to aid in his portrayal of Artegall, but a knowledge of Grey's frustrated career is not necessary to an understanding of Artegall's premature recall to Faery Court and his victimization by Envy, Detraction, and the Blatant Beast. Such events are entirely natural in the realm Spenser's allegory has now led him to confront. This does not, though, mean that Spenser is suffering from "a failure of idealism."32 Red Cross's victory over the dragon is only metaphorically conclusive, and, if Barclay's Life of St. George is any indication,33 the sufferings that await the Knight of Holiness are considerably more unpleasant than the indignities we see heaped on the Knight of Justice. The contrast between the apocalyptic close of Book i and the constrictive close of Book v reflects a change of attitude not towards man's potential for heroic achievement but towards the poem's potential for arriving at an inclusive heroic image. In the Legend of Justice Spenser is committed to the realm of public affairs both literally and metaphorically, and this commitment precludes a representation of heroic struggle that will simultaneously remain true to the injustices inherent in man's fallen condition and at the same time reveal an image of the ideal just society. Evil persists at the end of Book i as at the end of Book v. But in the earlier book the narrative of public action serves allegorically to portray the ideal realization of a private virtue; in the latter, public narrative is bound to the imperfect reality by the constraints of public allegory. The Faerie Queene is now torn by the conflicting demands of chivalric quest, devoted to the ongoing struggle, and of poetic vision, devoted to the timeless ideal. Spenser's treatment of Mercilla is one implicit acknowledgement of this tension; another is the apparent contradiction between Artegall's condemnation of Burbon for forsaking his shield "in dangerous dismay" as "the greatest shame and foulest scorne, / Which unto any knight behappen may" (v xi 52) and Spenser's own refusal to condemn Artegall for "loosing soone his shield" in order to obtain a momentary but decisive advantage in the combat with Grantorto (xii 22). In fact the first action is genuinely reprehensible because of its allegorical import (Henri iv's politic conversion reportedly on the grounds that "Paris is worth a Mass"), while the latter is genuinely laudable as a display of chivalric prowess devoid of adverse symbolic implications. But the literal paradox remains - surely not unintentionally - and it bears striking witness to Spenser's awareness of the growing division between the claims of vision and quest, a division which will lead Spenser through the Legend of Courtesy to Acidale, the brigands' cave, and, ultimately, the end of epic.

160 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral 3 VISION AND QUEST Few readers of The Faerie Queene move from Book v to Book vi without a certain feeling of relief. Most obviously, this is a response to Spenser's progression from the retributive justice of Artegall and the executive powers of Talus to the redeeming courtesy of Calidore from the brutal execution of Munera, for example, to the gracious reformation of Briana. Also, though, it is a response to a return to more spacious, less crowded regions of Faeryland, regions which we feel to be in harmony with the natural world as a whole - the world which fosters Tristram and the Salvage Man - and also closer to Spenser's own poetic nature. Critics often speak of the Legend of Courtesy as involving a turning inward, a movement towards the deepest impulses of man's social and artistic nature,34 and indeed the awareness of such a movement is necessary to any adequate reading of the book. But at the same time it is also important to remember that the Legend of Courtesy is a continuation of the outward movement initiated in the Legend of Friendship and continued through the Legend of Justice. Certainly "vertues seat is deepe within the mynd," but the flower of courtesy "spreds it selfe through all civilitie," and the horizontal dimension of the Legend of Courtesy is the natural counterpart to the vertical dimension of the Legend of Holiness. The book whose subject is the grace that links man with God and the book whose subject is the grace that links man with man together establish the twin axes around which the vision of The Faerie Queene revolves. Courtesy, as A.C. Hamilton observes, "approaches the perfection of all the virtues."35 It does not avoid but includes the categories of justice - an inclusiveness suggested by Calidore's remark to Artegall, "where ye ended have, now I begin" (vi i 6). Nor, then, can Spenser's poetic definition of courtesy escape the tensions which pervade his definition of justice. On the contrary, the ambiguity of the relationship in Book v between Spenser's commitment to the revelation of the ideal and his commitment to the narration of the actuality continues and intensifies in Book vi until, ultimately, vision and quest fully dissociate and the poem, as James Nohrnberg suggests, "is symbolically destroyed from within."36 Calidore belongs to Faery Court, "Where curteous Knights and Ladies most did won / Of all on earth" (vi i i). But when he sets out in pursuit of the Blatant Beast, Calidore enters a realm where knights are capable of subjecting their ladies to the most unknightly behaviour. These, for example, are a knight and lady encountered by Tristram: He with his speare, that was to him great blame,

161 Pastoral and the End of Epic Would thumpe her forward, and inforce to goe, Weeping to him in vaine, and making piteous woe. (ii 10)

As Spenser's own language suggests, such a world demands from those who would act within it without losing sight of their heroic commitment a mode of behaviour quite different from that appropriate to the court of Gloriana. When Calidore aids the unfortunate and scandal-threatened Priscilla not with simple truth but with a "countercast of slight" (iii 16), we are right to feel disturbed - not, though, at Calidore's moral standards (to destroy a woman's reputation out of allegiance to a code which would place abstract principle over humane compassion is not, fortunately, Spenser's brand of virtue), but at the world in which the virtuous are forced to act, the world to which they are required to adapt. Throughout Book vi Calidore, than whom there "was no more courteous Knight" (i 2), acts with the greatest courtesy man can display. If his actions sometimes require equivocation and are less than perfect in their results, the fault is not in Calidore but in the imperfect nature of the world in which he lives and in the impossibility of unequivocal action in a complex social environment. Calidore's deception of Aldus is also disturbing, I think, because it reinforces our sense of increasing ambiguity in the relationship between vision and quest in The Faerie Queene.37 This ambiguity persists and intensifies during the pastoral retreat, a retreat which is far from being an escape into imaginative simplicity. Not that Calidore's motives are at any point to be impugned. That he is attracted as much by the beauty of Pastorella as by the wisdom of Meliboe is, as I have suggested, a legitimate response to the pastoral ideal. His offer of gold to Meliboe is not a failure of courtesy, "a sin against decorum,"38 but an indication of the exceptional nature of pastoral life - if Calidore were to cease offering payment for hospitality when he returned to the chivalric world he would not as a consequence be deemed a more courteous knight. More problematic are Calidore's dealings with Coridon. Spenser tell us that in those dealings "the gentle knight" did so himselfe abeare Amongst that rusticke rout in all his deeds, That even they, the which his rivals were, Could not maligne him, but commend him needs: For courtesie amongst the rudest breeds Good will and favour, (ix 45)

Richard Neuse, who believes that Calidore is one of those holders of

162 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

"privileged status" who have "become divorced from the essential issues of society" and whose "role becomes ornamental, even frivolous," concedes that "the simple minded shepherd is taken in by Calidore's gestures." "But," he asks, "are they not rather absurd acts of condescension?"39 Much of Neuse's argument depends in my view on inferential paraphrase of a kind unjustified by Spenser's poetic,40 and the concept of condescension would seem to have little applicability for an Elizabethan readership holding very definite views as to the relative worth of a knight and a shepherd. Nevertheless, it is difficult not to share something of Neuse's unease when we read of Calidore's behaviour on being asked to "lead the ring, as hee / That most in Pastorellaes grace did sit": But Calidore of courteous inclination Tooke Coridon, and set him in his place, That he should lead the daunce, as was his fashion; For Condon could daunce, and trimly trace. And when as Pastorella, him to grace, Her flowry garlond tooke from her owne head, And plast on his, he did it soone displace, And did it put on Coridons in stead: Then Coridon woxe frollicke, that earst seemed dead, (ix 42)

The wrestling match between Calidore and Coridon evokes a similarly complex response: But Calidore he greatly did mistake; For he was strong and mightily stiffe pight, That with one fall his necke he almost brake, And had he not upon him fallen light, His dearest joynt he sure had broken quight. Then was the oaken crowne by Pastorell Given to Calidore, as his due right; But he, that did in courtesie excell, Gave it to Coridon, and said he wonne it well. (44)

The nature of the complexity is suggested by the difficulty in reading of deciding what stress to give "said" in the stanza's final line. Certainly in such passages the dividing line between courtesy and policy is very fine indeed. Perhaps we can only say with Shakespeare's Troilus, the spacious breadth of this division

163 Pastoral and the End of Epic Admits no orifice for a point as subtle As Ariachne's broken woof to enter.41

For finally, I think, we must conclude, "This is and is not courtesy." To deny the courteousness of Calidore's behaviour is to deny the idealism which is the foundation and the goal of The Faerie Queene; to deny the existence of Calidore's amorous policy is to deny the sincerity and sophistication of Spenser's life-long commitment to the tangled world of human affairs. In the pastoral cantos of the Legend of Courtesy vision and quest come together in momentary equilibrium before diverging to evolve toward their very different culminations on Mount Acidale and in the brigands' cave. The critical temptation- not unlike that occasioned by the moral eclogues in the Calender - is to simplify, to deny the complexity of Spenser's poetic structure by subordinating vision to quest or quest to vision. Neither course is acceptable. To assert the primacy of the quest is, as we have seen, to accuse Calidore and Spenser alike of succumbing to the lure of a "world of nostalgic wishful-thinking,"42 and is to distort the central significance of the dance on Acidale. Equally distorting, though, is to deny the importance of Calidore's quest. The consequences of such a denial are apparent in one of the most interesting studies of Book vi, Harry Berger's "A Secret Discipline. "43 Berger views the book as a dramatization of "the claims imposed by actuality on the life of the imagination" (41). Spenser, he suggests, "shows poetry facing the actual world to cope with the difficult social problems of slander and courtesy, but he knows poetry's true work and pleasure require detachment rather than involvement." The pastoral interlude caters to the interests of poetic vision, whereas the quest must yield to the demands of the actual world. Having performed the valuable task of defining - quite accurately, I believe the two terms of poetry and involvement, vision and quest, Berger then focusses almost exclusively on the first: "The vision is the solution and resolution of all the problems, all the motifs, suggested in earlier parts of the book: the aristocracy and retirement motifs; the motifs of love, of holiday and diversion, of being caught off guard, turning inward - all these, along with the previous circles, are now revealed as symbols and dim prefigurations of Acidale" (72). The danger of this formulation is not that it is incorrect but that it is incomplete. By defining the vision as the "solution and resolution" of all the issues raised in the book, Berger leaves no apparent room within Spenser's pattern of meaning for what is ostensibly the primary subject of the Legend of Courtesy - the history of Calidore's

164 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral

pursuit and capture of the Blatant Beast. Indeed, Berger shows little interest in the quest. He observes that "since slander in real life is not conveniently gathered together into the form of a single monster, and since ... the sting infixed in the name is not susceptible of physical remedies, Calidore's pursuit and conquest can hardly be anything but wish fulfillment" (42). Hence he is inclined to minimize the importance of the quest's resumption: "The conclusion of the quest has nothing to do with slander, everything to do with an Elfin hero's dream: it is a ticker-tape parade through Faerie, whose crowds 'much admyr'd the Beast, but more admyr'd the Knight' (xii.38) - the most triumphant and ridiculous of all Elfin homecomings, exposed a moment later when the beast roars into the present and threatens the poet" (43). Berger resolves the acknowledged ambiguity in the relationship between vision and quest by refusing to grant any true significance to the quest within the context of Spenser's poem - the quest is important only in so far as it provides a means of establishing thematic foreshadowings of Acidale. It is true, of course, that in real life slander is "not conveniently gathered together into the form of a single monster," but neither are error, pride, lust, or any of the other foes faced by Spenser's warfaring pilgrims. Final victories are not within man's powers, and Calidore's "ticker-tape parade through Faerie" is neither more nor less a wish fulfilment than Red Cross's triumph over the "infernall feend." What distinguishes Calidore's victory from Red Cross's is not the degree of plausibility but simply the extent to which each can be given poetic realization within a continuing acknowledgment of fallen conditions. The vision of the private virtue of holiness easily coexists with the knowledge that Archimago and Duessa remain public realities; the vision of the public binding of the Blatant Beast can only be juxtaposed with an admission that in the world nowadays such a celebration is only sadly to be wished: So now he raungeth through the world againe, And rageth sore in each degree and state; Ne any is, that may him now restraine, He growen is so great and strong of late, (xii 40)

But the impossibility of final success does not in any way diminish the importance of Calidore's quest or the need to follow his example. To accept the triumph of the Beast would be to ignore the lessons of both Acidale and the brigands' cave. Pastoral seldom reaches to an O altitude or a De profundis, but in the vision of the dance and the descent into the cave Spenser extends the

165 Pastoral and the End of Epic

pastoral register to both. Acidale is a place of revelation, of total significance. On Acidale the poet's song allows man momentarily to glimpse the heavenly love and heavenly beauty whose gracious gifts are all that he knows on earth of love and beauty. In the brigands' cave poetry becomes only a record of fortuitous events; the cave is a place of mere contingency, a den of error in which virtue itself casts but "a little glooming light, much like a shade" (i i 14): For underneath the ground their way was made, Through hollow caves, that no man mote discover For the thicke shrubs, which did them alwaies shade From view of living wight, and covered over: But darkenesse dred and daily night did hover Through all the inner parts, wherein they dwelt, Ne lightned was with window, nor with lover, But with continuall candlelight, which delt A doubtfull sense of things, not so well seene, as felt, (vi x 42)

In this heart of darkness one sees nothing but "the ugly monster plaine": the mad steele about doth fiercely fly, Not sparing wight, ne leaving any balke, But making way for death at large to walke: Who in the horror of the griesly night, In thousand dreadful shapes doth mongst them stalke, And makes huge havocke, whiles the candlelight Out quenched, leaves no skill nor difference of wight, (xi 16)

The cave is the negation of all that is affirmed on Acidale, the negation of joy, love, poetry, of life itself. Here is revealed the reality of the Blatant Beast, of a world devoid of courtesy, grace, and love.44 Calidore entered the world of Colin Clout and there glimpsed in the shepherd's recreation Spenser's own supreme re-creation of the poetic form of perfected virtue. Calidore is unable to participate in the ideal, however, and he finds himself required to act in a world where even the virtuous must neglect the formal ideal in favour of the expedient reality - as does Pastorella when confronted by the amorous demands of the brigands' captain: She thought it best, for shadow to pretend Some shew of favour, by him gracing small, That she thereby mote either freely wend,

i66 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Or at more ease continue there his thrall... But when she saw, through that small favours gaine, That further, then she willing was, he prest, She found no meanes to barre him, but to faine A sodaine sickenesse, which her sore opprest, And made unfit to serve his lawlesse mindes behest, (xi 6-7)

Not even those critics who have condemned Calidore for resorting to deception to preserve the reputation of Priscilla have thought fit to censure Pastorella's actions in the cave. In the world of the cave unguarded virtue must resort to deception simply to survive, for virtue alone is no defence against the arbitrary forces that sweep through that world to ravish or destroy. One of the more puzzling remarks in recent criticism of The Faerie Queene is, in my view, Kathleen Williams' statement that "because the order and ultimate goodness of the world have so made themselves felt through the whole legend [of Courtesy], we accept without trouble the death of the good Meliboe and his people."45 Whatever Spenser's views on ultimate goodness, I see little evidence that his poem continues to be a reflection of moral order when the innocent are slaughtered in the interests of expedience. Thomas P. Roche has commented that "in a world where holiness and temperance, courtesy and justice, are triumphant, virtue and reward are commensurate."46 But in the murder of the shepherds the correspondence between virtue and reward is totally disrupted. In an allegorical environment actions are a coherent expression of the moral significance of both those who act and those who suffer. When that coherence is manifestly lost, as it is in the events in the brigands' cave, then we have moved from the intelligibility of the allegorical world into the apparent irrationality of our own temporal world. Tasso sought in the Gerusalemme liberata a revelation of the ways of God. But in the process he encountered "1'aspra rragedia de lo stato umano" (20.73), and all his efforts could not resolve the ambiguity inherent in a divine comedy ending in a human tragedy. Spenser sought in The Faerie Queene an ideal of virtue, and his very success led him to the bitter tragedy of the brigands' cave. Spenser, too, is unable to resolve the ambiguity - but he is, I think, able to accept it. Though Colin and Calidore must always belong to different worlds, the song of the shepherd is not irrelevant to the labours of the knight. The harmony of a world ordered according to the rule of love can be realized within our fallen world only in the timeless recreation of the poet's song, but the ideal remains an eternal reality whose

167 Pastoral and the End of Epic

reflection can be glimpsed even in the darkest moments of temporal existence. In the depths of the brigands' cave, Pastorella, though now decayd and mard, And eke but hardly scene by candle-light, Yet like a Diamond of rich regard, In doubtfull shadow of the darkesome night, With starrie beames about her shining bright, These marchants fixed eyes did ... amaze, (xi 13)

In man's awareness of the ideal there is reason to continue the never-ending struggle against evil. So perfect an achievement of harmony as the restoration of Pastorella and the triumph of Calidore can perhaps only be won in a winter's tale of romance. Nevertheless, so long as heroic action continues, the Blatant Beast may at least momentarily be bound, and man may attain some measure of content. Without Colin, man would be without song and without knowledge of beauty; without Calidore, he would be lost in the brigands' cave. A.C. Judson once drew a parallel between Spenser's Knight of Courtesy and the ideal courtier whom Spenser portrays in Mother Hubberds Tale.47 The courtier of that earlier poem is skilled not only in active pursuits but also in those of contemplation - particularly in poetry: when the bodie list to pause, His minde unto the Muses he withdrawes; Sweet Ladie Muses, Ladies of delight, Delights of life, and ornaments of light: With whom he close confers with wise discourse, Of Natures workes, of heavens continuall course, Of forreine lands, of people different, Of kingdomes change, of divers government, Of dreadfull battailes of renowmed Knights; With which he kindleth his ambitious sprights To like desire and praise of noble fame, The onely upshot whereto he doth ayme. (759-70)

There is nothing in Spenser's portrayal of Calidore to compare with this strongly emphasized poetic commitment. We are told that in the initial stages of Calidore's courtship, Pastorella Did little whit regard his courteous guize, But cared more for Colins carolings

i68 Spenser and the Poetics of Pastoral Then all that he could doe, or ever devize: His layes, his loves, his lookes she did them all despize.

(vi ix 35)

Nothing more is said about Calidore's literary accomplishments. Their failure to win favourable comment is not, however, to be taken as implied criticism of Calidore himself, but simply as Spenser's acknowledgment that the demands of poetry and the demands of action are not, after all, the same. The dance on Acidale is the highest reach Spenser can attain in his search for an eternal image of virtue, and what he there discovers is the perfect harmony of a lyric expression of devotion. The vision of the dance is fully satisfying to the imagination - and fully oblivious to the need for moral activity. If Calidore were a poet he could, perhaps, find his own Acidale and create his own image of harmony in a moment of vision. But that vision too would remain essentially private, and public deeds would still lead away from the place of retreat - or someone else would then have to take Calidore's place. Acidale is both eternal and ephemeral. It changes nothing except man's awareness of the harmony which underlies and transcends the imperfections of his temporal existence. Beyond Acidale is the threat of the brigands' cave, the threat of a world which denies all ideals and where the only consideration is expedience. Man must constantly struggle against this threat, and the struggle is essential if the harmony is to be preserved which makes possible such moments as that on Acidale. But the victories he wins can never be more than a temporary respite, and a full record of his struggle could have no end - none, at least, until one is granted from above:48 For, all that moveth, doth in Change delight: But thence-forth all shall rest eternally With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight: O that great Sabbaoth God, graunt me that Sabaoths sight, (vn viii 2)

Spenser's Faerie Queene could have no other conclusion. The world of Colin Clout that led Spenser toward epic has now led him through it and pointed beyond. The end of the Legend of Courtesy points away from poetry toward didactic prose as the proper field for the writer seeking to fulfil his responsibilities to the contemporary struggle against the Beast, and I think it is significant that Spenser went on from his epic to write the prose View of the Present State of Ireland. But if Spenser acknowledged that the poet is not finally the best person to meet the challenge to virtuous action, he by no means decided that poetry is a vain or trivial pursuit. The vision

169 Pastoral and the End of Epic

on Acidale survives as a testament to the magic which only poetry can perform - and since Spenser had on his own testimony completed Book vi when he was writing the Amoretti, it is also a promise of poetry to come: the timeless songs of Epithalamion and Prothalamion; the exploration of love and beauty, the proper realm of poetry, in the Fowre Hymnes. Such achievements are not unworthy of one who would "fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline."

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Notes

ABBREVIATIONS

CE CI EETS ELH ELR ES JEGP JH1 JWCI MLN MP RES RMS RR SEL SP SRen TAP A UTQ

College English Critical Inquiry Early English Text Society Journal of English Literary History English Literary Renaissance English Studies Journal of English and Germanic Philology Journal of the History of Ideas Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Modern Language Notes Modern Philology Review of English Studies Renaissance & Modern Studies Romanic Review Studies in English Literature Studies in Philology Studies in the Renaissance Transactions of the American Philological Association University of Toronto Quarterly INTRODUCTION

1 E.K., Epistle to Harvey; Poetical Works, 418. 2 Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, ed. Geoffrey Shepherd (London: Nelson 1965), 119. 3 Spenser-Harvey correspondence; Poetical Works, 612, 628. 4 Poetical Works, 536.

172 Notes to pages 4-8 5 S.K. Heninger, Jr., ed., Selections from the Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1970), 183. 6 Nancy Jo Hoffman, Spenser's Pastorals: "The Shepheardes Calender" and "Colin Clout" (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press 1977), 120. 7 Calender, Argument to "October." 8 Letter to Ralegh; Poetical Works, 407. 9 The Poetry of Edmund Spenser: A Study (New York: Columbia University Press 1963), 295. I would disagree, however, with Nelson's suggestion that the explanation for this conclusion is to be found outside the poetry itself: "Wearied and discouraged by the slanderous attacks made on his 'former writs' and without hope that this new work will fare better, Spenser ... resolves to escape from his duty." As I shall argue below, the conclusion to the Legend of Courtesy is part of the course of Spenser's poetic career, not an aberration from it. CHAPTER I

1 See, for example, Mary Parmenter, "Spenser's Twelve Aeglogues Proportionable to the Twelue Monethes,'" ELH-$ (i936):i9o-2i7; Patrick Cullen, Spenser, Marvell, and Renaissance Pastoral (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1970), 123-48; Helena Shire, A Preface to Spenser (London and New York: Longman 1978), 99-104; A.C. Hamilton," 'The Grene Path Way to Lyfe': Spenser's Shepheardes Calender as Pastoral," in The Elizabethan Theatre VIII, ed. George R. Hibbard (Port Credit, Ontario: P.O. Meany 1982), 6-11. 2 S.K. Heninger, Jr., "The Implications of Form for The Shepheardes Calender," SRen 9 (i962):3ii. 3 A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie (1557); A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandry, Lately Maried unto a Hundreth Good Points of Huswifery (1570); Five Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry United to as Many of Good Huswiferie (1573)4 Poetical Works, 419. 5 The Spenserian Poets: A Study in Elizabethan and Jacobean Poetry (London: Edward Arnold 1969), 26. 6 As in A.C. Hamilton, "The Argument of Spenser's Shepheardes Calender," ELH 23 (i956):i7i-82. 7 Cullen, Spenser, Marvell, 29-30. 8 Hallett Smith (referring to his argument in Elizabethan Poetry, cited below), "The Use of Conventions in Spenser's Minor Poems," in Form and Convention in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser: Selected Papers from the English Institute, ed. William Nelson (New York: Columbia University Press 1961), 124. 9 Elizabethan Poetry: A Study in Conventions, Meaning, and Expression (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1952), 43, 47.

173 Notes to page 9 10 "Argument of Calender," " 175-6. See also Hamilton's later reading of the Calender in "Grene Path Way to Lyfe." 11 R.A. Durr, "Spenser's Calendar of Christian Time," ELH 24 (1957): 280. 12 Harry Berger, Jr., "Mode and Diction in The Shepheardes Calender," MP 67 (i969):i42. See also A. Leigh DeNeef, Spenser and the Motives of Metaphor, (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press 1982), 23-4. 13 Isabel G. MacCaffrey, "Allegory and Pastoral in The Shepheardes Calender," ELH36(i969):93. 14 Michael D. Bristol, "Structural Patterns in Two Elizabethan Pastorals," SEL10 (1970) 141: "the failure of a poet to assume a public role is the central event in The Shepheardes Calender"; Michael F. Dixon, "Rhetorical Patterns and Methods of Advocacy in Spenser's Shepheardes Calender," ELR 7 (1977):152: Colin's "despair and sense of lost congruence with natural order, the pathetic proofs for his attack on Rosalind, are ... Spenser's indication of a failure in moral judgment"; Anthea Hume, Edmund Spenser: Protestant Poet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984), 45,48: "It is in the control of passion ... that Colin is seen to fail"; "Colin exemplifies the poet disabled by romantic passion." Steven F. Walker, in " 'Poetry is/is not a cure for love': The Conflict of Theocritean and Petrarchan Topoi in the Shepheardes Calender," SP 76 (i979):365, pronounces the mitigated judgment that "Colin has been defeated as a lover, but his defeat as a poet is only partial." 15 Cullen, Spenser, Marvell, 98. 16 Richard Mallette, "Spenser's Portrait of the Artist in The Shepheardes Calender and Colin Clouts Come Home Againe," SEL 19 (i979):29. 17 Maren-Sofie R0stvig, "The Shepheardes Calender - A Structural Analysis," RMS 13 (i969):58: "in December Colin is given the grace to review his life dispassionately and honestly and to turn all his thought and his love towards God. Repentance is a sign of grace, and the repentance shown by Colin is perfect in every respect." 18 See, for example, Paul J. Alpers, "The Eclogue Tradition and the Nature of Pastoral," CE 34 (i972):364; Hoffman, Spenser's Pastorals, 6. Hamilton himself provides very little support for the denunciation of Colin in "Grene Path Way to Lyfe." 19 Gloss to "Colin cloute" in "September." 20 Tityrus, the name of a shepherd in Virgil's first eclogue, is associated in the Calender with both Virgil and Chaucer (as in the opening of E.K.'s Epistle to Harvey, Poetical Works, 416). The dual association not only suggests the sources of Spenser's inspiration and the nature of his aspiration but also, of course, confers considerable authority on Colin himself. 21 Peter Bayley, Edmund Spenser: Prince of Poets (London: Hutchinson 1971), 33-

174 Notes to pages 10-12 22 S.K. Heninger, Jr., for example, in "The Renaissance Perversion of Pastoral/' JHI 22 (i96i):254-6i, insists that "the purpose of pastoral ... is to create an ideal existence in contradistinction to the real world" (255); Heninger's title and argument recall C.S. Lewis's unusually silly remark, in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding Drama (Oxford: Clarendon 1954), that the Eclogues of Mantuan "mark the final stage of a perversion in the pastoral which had been begun by Virgil himself" (131). 23 The Oaten Flute: Essays on Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press 1975), 14; on the negative ethos, he says: "as with all ways or visions of life, the pastoral implies a new ethos, which, however, is primarily negative. Its code prescribes few virtues, but proscribes many vices" (4). 24 The Uses of Nostalgia: Studies in Pastoral Poetry (London: Chatto and Windus 1972), 35/ 4i25 "Eclogue Tradition," 352. Alpers also argues for the non-idyllic basis of pastoral poetics in an important later article, "What is Pastoral?" CI 8 (1982):437-60

26 Pastoral: Mediaeval into Renaissance (Ipswich and Totowa, N.J.: D.S. Brewer, Rowman and Littlefield 1977), 2. 27 The view advanced by Peter V. Marinelli, Pastoral (London: Methuen 1971)/ 928 The specific reference is to W.W. Greg's remark in Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London: A.H. Bullen 1906), 3, that works of pastoral literature are "based more or less evidently upon a philosophical conception, which no doubt underwent modification through the ages, but yet bears evidence of organic continuity." 29 1.1-3, 7~8; trans. Anthony Holden, Greek Pastoral Poetry (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1974), 45. 30 Arcadia (1590); The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1962), i, 13. 31 English Pastoral Poetry from the Beginnings to Marvell (1952; rpt. New York: W.W. Norton, 1972), 14. 32 Few of the Elizabethan notices of Theocritus (including E.K/s) collected by R.T. Kerlin in Theocritus in English Literature (Lynchburg, Virginia: J.P. Bell 1910), suggest any real familiarity with the poet. Spenser himself may have known Theocritus only by reputation; see Merritt Y. Hughes, "Spenser and the Greek Pastoral Triad," SP 20 (i923):i84-2i5. 33 George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589), 1.18; ed. Gladys Doidge Willcock and Alice Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1936), 38. 34 Love's Labour's Lost, iv ii 96-103; cf . Puttenham, Arte, i . 18; ed. Willcock and Walker, 38-9: "Eglogues came after [Virgil] to containe and enforme morall discipline, for the amendment of mans behaviour, as be those of Mantuan and other moderne Poets."

175 Notes to pages 13-25 35 The Latin eclogues are surveyed in W. Leonard Grant, Neo-Latin Literature and the Pastoral (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1965). 36 4.759-90, 823-1134; The Eclogues of Alexander Barclay, ed. Beatrice White, EETS, o.s. 175 (London: Oxford University Press 1928), 168-9, 170-9. 37 in, iv, vn; ed. Edward Arber (London: Constable 1895), 39, 41, 44, 65. 38 The Eglogs of the Poet B. Mantuan Carmelitan (London: Henry Bynneman 1567), sig. A2V. Italics mine. 39 Arte, 1.18; ed. Willcock and Walker, 38. 40 Apology, 116. 41 J.H. Hanford, in "Classical Eclogue and Mediaeval Debate," RR 2 (i9ii):i6-3i, 129-43, argues that the "mediaeval conflictus, or poetic debate between representative or allegorical figures" (16) develops directly out of the Virgilian eclogue. Betty Nye Hedberg, in "The Bucolics and the Medieval Poetical Debate," TAPA 75 (i944):47-67, argues in opposition that "the genre of the debate poem and the genre of the pastoral contest are two separate literary types of different origin, method, purpose, and development" (67). She grants, however, that the two genres occasionally merge and that certain medieval debates are directly influenced by Virgil's Eclogues. 42 Brian Stone, ed. and trans., The Owl and the Nightingale; Cleanness; St. Erkenwald (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1971), 159. 43 In Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England, ed. W.C. Hazlitt, 4 vols. (London: J.R. Smith 1864-6), in, 33-9. 44 In Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, ed. E. Dummler et al., 4 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann 1881-1923), i, 270-2. 45 I am basically in agreement here with Hoffman, Spenser's Pastorals, 93-6. Harry Berger, Jr., in "The Aging Boy: Paradise and Parricide in Spenser's Shepheardes Calender," in Poetic Traditions of the English Renaissance, ed. Maynard Mack and George deForest Lord (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1982), 25-46, approaches the eclogue very differently than I do and with a more negative view of the worth of its speakers, but he similarly argues that "youthful and aged speakers share the same values in spite of their apparent antipathy" (26). 46 Spenser, Marvell, 41. 47 In The Poems of Robert Henryson, ed. Denton Fox (Oxford: Clarendon 1981), 170-3. 48 In "Bucolics and ... Debate," Hedberg interestingly argues that the Carolingian pastoral debates are a "mixed genre": "a close examination... shows that they contain certain inconsistencies and that their clumsiness results from a conflation of the two types" (61). Spenser recognized the problems inherent in placing a true conflictus in a pastoral context and found in the fable a unique solution to them. 49 Cullen usefully observes in this regard that "one does not need Freud to understand the sexual (comically so) undercurrent in Cuddie's fear that

176 Notes to pages 26-31 Thenot himself has lost 'lopp and topp'" (Spenser, Marvell, 35). I am unable to agree with Cullen, however, that Thenot's position is also humorous, that his insistence on the inevitability of winter in lines 35-50 is somehow "comically typical of age's desire to keep youth in check by moralizing on the carelessness, the irresponsibility of youth," or that Thenot's portrayal of the ages of man in lines 87-90 is to be read as "an amusing contradiction to Thenot's picture of age, a minute or two before, as 'the lusty prime'" (35, 36). 50 This suggestion is a common aspect of pastoral. Cf. Sannazaro's Arcadia and Sincero/Sannazaro's realization of the limitations of the Arcadian land he celebrates - as when he tells his shepherd companions how, afflicted by love, he fled to "these Arcadian solitudes in which - by your leave I will say it - I can hardly believe that the beasts of the woodlands can dwell with any pleasure, to say nothing of young men nurtured in noble cities" (Arcadia and Piscatorial Eclogues, trans. Ralph Nash [Detroit: Wayne State University Press 1966], 72). When William Empson suggests in Some Versions of Pastoral (1935; rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1966), that "in pastoral you take a limited life and pretend it is the full and normal one" (95), I think he overlooks pastoral's typical self-consciousness of limitations that do not necessarily extend beyond its own bounds. 51 Spenser, Marvell, 41. 52 Chaucer, Knight's Tale, lines 1510-12, in Works, ed. F.N. Robinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1957). 53 Nicholas Breton, "Phillida and Coridon" (1591); no. 12 in England's Helicon, ed. Hyder E. Rollins, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1935). 54 Ezekiel 34.2. All biblical quotations are from the Bishops' Bible (1568). 55 A Full and Plaine Declaration of Ecclesiasticall Discipline Owt off the Word off God and off the Declinings off the Churche off England from the Same (Zurich: C. Froschauer 1574), sig. c»4r. 56 For Langland and the Piers tradition in the sixteenth century see John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1982), 319-57. On the relation of Spenser's Piers to this tradition see King, 446. 57 STC 19904 (London: Reynold Wolf 1553), sig. cir. 58 For a summary of Spenser's early indictment of the clergy in "May" and elsewhere see Virgil K. Whitaker, The Religious Basis of Spenser's Thought) Stanford: Stanford University Press 1950), 13. On Spenser's Puritan stance in the moral eclogues see Hume, Edmund Spenser, 13-40. 59 Animadversions, ed. Don M. Wolfe, in Complete Prose Works, ed. D. Bush et al., i (New Haven: Yale University Press 1953), 722. 60 Edmund Spenser, 15.

177 Notes to pages 32-40 61 Sidney, "As I my little flocke on Ister banke," 53-4; in The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. William A. Ringler, Jr. (Oxford: Clarendon 1962), 100. 62 K.W. Gransden well observes that "the truest independence is that in which political terminology and hierarchy are meaningless, the ideal republic of Eden. 'The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want' is the ultimate embodiment of the pastoral ideal"; "The Pastoral Alternative," Arethusa 3 (i97o):i82. 63 Elizabethan Poetry, 2. 64 "The Nimphs Reply to the Sheepheard"; in The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Agnes M.C. Latham (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1951), 16. 65 Cf. Bishops' Bible marginal note to Ezekiel 34.2: "By the shepheardes, he meaneth the king, the magistrates, priestes, and prophetes." 66 For the distinction in Tudor polemics and in Spenser between the fox - "a person who seems to be or pretends to be a member of the Church of England, though at heart he has Romish beliefs" - and the wolf - "a Romanist in both belief and outward profession" - see Harold Stein, "Spenser and William Turner," MLN 56 (i936):345-5i. The distinction is supported by Anthea Hume, who convincingly argues that the fate of the Kid "is an expressive image of 'the simple sorte' of Christians who may perish as a result of the idolatrous remnants retained in the church" (Edmund Spenser, 25). 67 Elizabethan Poetry, 44. 68 Cf. E.K.'s Gloss on "Goteheard": "By Gotes in scrypture be represented the wicked and reprobate, whose pastour also must needes be such"; also Durr, "Spenser's Calendar," 284: "In differentiating sheep and goat, Spenser no doubt intended us to recall how on the last day these would be divided." 69 I owe to a communication from A.C. Hamilton the observation that "hills are for goats, not sheep, as any farmer (but no Spenser critic) knows." Morrell's invitation to the shepherd to "come up the hyll" metaphorically raises the question of ambition, but all it demonstrates literally is his ignorance that Thomalin's flock has different requirements than his own. 70 Eclogues, 8.45; The Eclogues ofBaptista Mantuanus, ed. Wilfred P. Mustard (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press 1911). Subsequent references are to this edition. 71 I take the phrase from Renato Poggioli, "Dante Poco Tempo Silvano: Or a 'Pastoral Oasis' in the Commedia," Eightieth Annual Report of the Dante Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Dante Society 1962), 1-20. 72 Purgatorio, 28.139-44; La divina commedia, ed. Natalino Sapegno, 3 vols. (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice 1955-7). Translations of the Purgatorio are from Purgatory, trans. Dorothy Sayers (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1955)-

178 Notes to pages 41-52 73 Judith H. Anderson, "The July Eclogue and the House of Holiness: Perspective in Spenser," ELH 10 (i97o):i8. 74 On the tradition of the mountain-top paradise see A. Bartlett Giamatti, The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1966). Giamatti discusses Mantuan's Parthenices and Spenser's Faerie Queene but does not relate the tradition to the pastoral poetry of either author. 75 The Judgment of Paris was a central myth in the Renaissance imagination and was seldom far from any consideration of the significance of the pastoral ideal in a greater than pastoral context. See Hallett Smith, Elizabethan Poetry, 3ff. 76 See Paul E. McLane, Spenser's Shepheardes Calender: A Study in Elizabethan Allegory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1961), 140-57. 77 We might note that when Morrell is forced to recognize the possibility of danger he responds in precisely the same way as Thomalin: Now sicker I see, thou doest but clatter: harme may come of melling. Thou medlest more, then shall have thanke, to wyten shepheards welth. (207-10) 78 McLane, Spenser's Shepheardes Calender, 216-34. 79 McLane, Spenser's Shepheardes Calender, 158-74. 80 As early as Theocritus' first idyll we are reminded that negligence has its cost even in the midst of apparent tranquillity. One of the carvings on a cup is of a boy guarding a vineyard: "About him hang two foxes, and one goes to and fro among the vine-rows plundering the ripe grapes, while the other brings all her wit to bear upon his wallet, and vows she will not let the boy be until (she has raided his breakfast-bread). But the boy is plaiting a pretty cricket-cage of bonded rush and asphodel, and has more joy in his plaiting than care for wallet or for vine" (48-54; trans. A.S.F. Gow, Theocritus, 2 vols. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1952]). 81 Cf. Kermode, English Pastoral Poetry, 14: "the first condition of pastoral poetry is that there should be a sharp difference between two ways of life, the rustic and the urban." 82 Harry Berger, in "Mode and Diction," 145, does raise this question and in so doing casts an ironical light on Piers which is, I think, quite at odds with Spenser's text. 83 I am unable to agree with Patrick Cullen that Diggon's ideal "is an ideal of reform, the remolding of a corrupt world" (Spenser, Marvell, 63). Diggon's awareness of corruption reveals the necessity of reform, but the attempt to realize the ideal is left to those who actively engage the wolves at large in Elizabethan England.

179 Notes to pages 53-73 84 85 86 87

Elizabethan Poetry, 45. Cullen, Spenser, Marvell, 68. These lines echo Mantuan 5.149-51 and 171-4. See Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, ed. G.C. Moore Smith (Stratford-uponAvon: Shakespeare Head Press 1913), 161. 88 Nor in so far as the eclogue does raise the question of poetic goals can there be any real doubt about the answer. Though Cullen, in Spenser, Marvell, 73, claims that Piers' ideals are not only "traditional and conventional/' as they obviously are, but also "out of touch with the world," I am unable to believe Spenser would thus condemn a poetic program he devoted much of his life to trying to follow. 89 Sidney, Apology, 113. 90 Spenser heightens the suggestion of praise over his source in Mantuan, where Candidus is described only as having participated in, rather than actually having led, the delights of his fellow shepherds (5.1-3). Moreover, as Thomas H. Cain observes in "Spenser and the Renaissance Orpheus," LZTQ 41 (\ 148,166-7; in Calender, 4-5, 9, 68-86, 90-104, 136, 137, 140 Conflictus veris et hiemis, 16-17 Cooper, Helen, 10 Coridon, 144-6, 161-2 Cuddie: in "February," 15-26, 31, 45, 63, 94; in "October," 8, 55-66 Cullen, Patrick, 17, 66, 85 Cynthia, 109, 110-15, 117> 118-19, 124-30, 140-1

Barclay, Alexander: Certayne Egloges, 13, 14, 115; Life of St. George, 159 Berger, Harry, 140, 141, 163-4 Bible: 2 Corinthians, 32; Ezekiel, 28; Genesis, 42, 43; John, 29; Matthew, 30; Revelation, 150 Blatant Beast, 4, 5, 132-3, Dante Alighieri, 106; 143, 147, 148, 159, 164, Purgatorio, 40, 42, 43-4; Vita nuova, 84-5, 129 165, 167, 168, 187^4 Davies, Richard, Bishop of Boccaccio, Giovanni, 80 St David's, 48 Bregog and the Mulla, Debate and Strife betwene 108-9 Somer and Winter, The, 16 Breton, Nicholas: quoted, Diggon Davie, 48-54 27 Drayton, Michael, 12 brigands' cave, 5, 6, 159, Du Bartas, Guillaume, 57 164-7

Duessa, 155, 157, 164

E.K., 14, 25, 31, 37, 43, 44, 45, 68, 92 Elizabeth \, 57, 94-5, 125-6, 129, 135, 142, 157 Elyot, Sir Thomas, 97 Fox and the Kid, 26-7, 35-6, 50, 51 Frye, Northrop, 138

Googe, Barnabe, 13, 14 Grantorto, 158, 159 Greg, W.W., 70 Grey of Wilton, Arthur, Baron, 159 Grindal, Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, 46 Grundy, Joan, 8 Guarini, Giovanni Battista, 81, 102 Guyon, 150-1, 158 Hamilton, A.C., 8-9, 160 Henri iv, 159 Henryson, Robert, 19-21 Herford, C.H., 100 Hobbinol, 48-54, 69, 71, 72' 74-7/ 79-8o, 83, 94, loo-i, 134-5 Horace, 59; quoted, 93 Hume, Anthea, 31

190 Index Judson, A.C., 167 Kalender of Shepherdes, The, 76 Kermode, Frank, 12, 150 Lambert, Ellen, 90 Lament for Bion, 88 Langland, William, 29 Lerner, Laurence, 10 Lewis, C.S., 139-40, 146 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 81 Mantuan (Baptista Spagnuoli), 12, 13, 14, 36-7, 38, 40, 41, 48-9, 54-6, 58, 82, 83-4, i83n2i Marinell and Florimell, 153-4 Marlowe, Christopher, 71 Marot, Clement, 90, 91-2, 94 Mary, Queen of Scots, 157 Meliboe, 133-7, 143-4, 145, 147, 161 Mercilla, 157, 159 Meyer, Sam, 113 Milton, John, 28, 31, 35, 112 Montemayor, Jorge de, 80 Morrell, 36-48, 94 Nelson, William, 6 Neuse, Richard, 161-2 Nohrnberg, James, 160 Oak and the Briar, 16-17, 20-6, 51 O'Connell, Michael, 157 Orpheus, 95 Ovid, 138, i8oni2 Palingenius, Marcellus, 7 Palinode, 26-36, 45, 94, 134 Pastorella, 4,133,135-7, 144-5,161-2,165-6, 167-8 Petrarch, 12, 74, 84, 85, 129, 180n15

Piccolomini, Enea Silvio de' (Aeneas Sylvius), 13 Pierce the Ploughmans Crede, 29-30 Piers, 68-9; in "May," 26-36, 44, 45, 63, 64; in "October," 55-64, 97 Piers tradition, 29-30 Poggioli, Renato, 10 Priscilla, 161 Puttenham, George, 13-14, 96 Radbertus, Paschasius, 89 Ralegh, Sir Walter, 4, 33, 109 Red Cross Knight, 148, 149, 150, 152, 154, 158, 159, 164 Reynard the Fox tales, 50 Roche, Thomas P., Jr., 154, 166 Roffyn and the Wolf, 49, 52, 54 Rosalind: in Colin Clout, 127, 129-30, 140-1; in Faerie Queene, 141; in Calender, 57, 69, 74, 75, 76-7, 78-9, 80-6, 91, 92, 95, 99-100, 104, 137, 141 Rose, Mark, 150 Sannazaro, lacopo, 12, 102-3, 122-3, i76n5o Shakespeare, William, 105; As You Like It, 84; Love's Labour's Lost, 12; Troilus and Cressida, 162-3; The Winter's Tale, 136, 138; quoted, 113 Sidney, Sir Philip, 85, 105; An Apology for Poetry, 14, 109, 114, 140; Arcadia, 11-12; quoted, 32 Skelton, John, 121 Smerwick, 156 Smith, Hallett, 8, 33, 37, 53, 83, 102, 103 Spenser, Edmund: Amoretti, 79, 97, 130, 169; Colin Clouts Come Home

Againe, 4, 85,105-31,134, 136, 140-1, 156; Epithalamion, 128, 169; The Faerie Queene, 3, 57, 105, no, 124-5, 132-68; "A Letter of the Authors," 111, 148-9, 151; Book i, 128-9, *48, 149-50, 152, 153, 154; Book n, 150-1; Book in, 150-1, 152; Book iv, 152, 153-4; Book v, 152-3, 154-9, 16°; Book vi, 4-6, 115, 116, 128, 132-48, 153, 160-9; Mutability Cantos, 32, 97, 168; Fowre Hymnes, 169; Mother Hubberds Tale, 128, 167; Prothalamion, 169; The Shepheardes Calender, 3-4, 7-104, 105, 125, 140, 141, 155; "January," 62, 69-74, 79, 82, 85, 92-3, 98, 99, 100,101,106; "February," 14-26, 31, 34, 35, 36, 44, 45, 51, 63, 99; "March," 81, 103; "April," 9, 74, 80, 83, 94-5, 101, 103, 106, 115, 140; "May," 8, 14, 26-36, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51-2, 63, 134; "June," 52-3, 74-80, 83, 86; "July," 14, 36-48, 49, 50, 51; "August," 9, 85, 101, 103-4; "September," 10, 14, 30, 48-54, 86; "October," 8, 15, 54-66, 85, 86, 97, 104; "November," 9, 80, 86-91, 101, 103, 104; "December," 3, 9, 86, 91-102, 104, 130, 137; Epilogue, 14, 102, 104; The Teares of the Muses, 55; A View of the Present State of Ireland, 168 Suckling, John, 100 Tasso, Torquato, 105; Aminta, 12, 73-4, 80, 81-2, 117-24; Gerusalemme liberata, 115-17, 134, 166

191 Index Tonkin, Humphrey, 138 Travers, Walter, 29 45' 99' m "November," 90 Turberville, George, 13 Tusser, Thomas, 7 Theocritus, 11, 12, 28, Tuve, Rosemond, 137 71-3, 87, 106, 1741132, 1781180 Thomalin: in "July," Vida, Marco Girolamo: quoted, 122 36-48, 81; in "March," Virgil, 3, 78,104; Aeneid, 4, 103 75; Eclogues, 12,14, 28,40, Tityrus, 9, 78, 106, 173n20 Thenot, 68-9; in "February," 15-26, 31,44,

42, 43, 49, 61, 64-5, 71-3, 81, 89, 90, 107, 115, quoted, 93, 109, no; Georgics, quoted, 97

Williams, Arnold, 146 Williams, Kathleen, 166 Young, John, Bishop of Rochester, 49