Commentary on the Shepheardes Calender Colin clouteSpenser’s most recognizable name for his poetic persona, including later in Colin Clout and FQ VI.x.16, and the name by which he was known to contemporaries (e.g., Drayton, Shepheards Garland [1593], Eclogue 3.12-14). The name derives from the anticlerical poem Collyn Clout by John Skelton, who uses it to attack Cardinal Wolsey at the court of Henry VIII, while Clément Marot introduces a pastoral speaker named Colin in Eglogue de ma Dame Loyse de Savoye, a funeral elegy on the mother of Francis I and a major source-text for Nov. As E.K. points out in his gloss, the idea of an authorial pastoral persona traces to antiquity, and principally to Virgil’s Tityrus in Ecl 1 and 6. complaineth . . . unfortunate loveThe nominal theme of the eclogue, unrequited love, which unfolds variously in the other five Colin Clout eclogues (Apr, June, Aug, Nov, Dec). RosalindeSpanish and Italian for ‘beautiful rose’evidently a Spenserian invention. Her name appears in six eclogues (Jan 60; Apr 27; June 44, 115; Aug 141; Nov 44; Dec 113, 156) and in Colin Clout (908, 926), but she herself never appears in either fiction. Cf. the Dance of the Graces on Mt. Acidale, where Colin’s unnamed mistress is ‘Crownd with a rosie girlond’ (FQ VI.x.14.5). As E.K.’s gloss makes clear, the name is a pseudonym designed to conceal her real-life identity; speculations include Spenser’s first wife, Machabyas Childe, Mary Sidney Herbert, and even Queen Elizabeth (SpE 1990: 622). In the Sp-Har Letters, published the year after SC, Gabriel Harvey calls the mistress of Spenser mea Domina Immerito, mea bellissima Collina Clouta and altera Rosalindula (3 Letters 3). The name has had a robust afterlife in English literature, starting with Thomas Lodge’s prose romance Rosalynde (1590) and subsequently Shakespeare’s memorable heroine in As You Like It, as well as the absent ‘Rosaline’ in Romeo and Juliet. For the pairing of Rosalind with Colin as an ideal couple, see Michael Drayton, Shepheards Garland, Eclogue 8.231-32; Phineas Fletcher, Piscatorie Eclogs (1633), ‘To my beloved Thenot in answer of his verse’ (22-23). traveledtravailed, burdened compareth . . . flockeThe central conceit of the eclogue, which compares the stages of a person’s life with the seasons of the year, a shepherd to his flock, etc. carefullfull of care or grief breaketh his PipeA second major theme to the eclogue, the vocational refusal to sing or write more poetry. PipeThe oaten reed or panpipe, the instrument and symbol of poetic song and pastoral writing in Theocritus, Virgil, and Continental heirs. Cf. the woodcut, which depicts bagpipes; Dec 141-42. A Shepeheards boye (no better doe him call)Cf. Phineas Fletcher’s imitation in Piscatorie Eclogs 3.1: ‘A Fisher-lad (no higher dares he look).’ Fletcher also imitates Jan 13-20 and 25-26. wastfulcreating desolation ypentpenned up Led forth his flockSymbolically introduces the theme of leadership, derived from David the shepherd-king and Christ the Good Shepherd, but here accommodated to the role of the poet in society, shepherding his flock. See Jan 11. ypentCf. Oct 72 gloss. woxewaxed, grew unnethesnot easily, with difficulty, hardly unnethesE.K. All as the Sheepe . . . shepeheards lookeThe shepherd-sheep comparison is a commonplace of pastoral. See Julye 129-32, Sept 141. The line echoes proverbs with similar formats. See Petronius, Satire 58: qualis dominus, talis et servus (‘like master, like man’); and Hos 4: 9: ‘And there shalbe like people, like Priest: for I wil visite their wayes upon them, and reward them their deedes.’ Nonetheless, see Berger 1988: 336: ‘Colin does not compare himself to nature; he compares nature to himself.’ caresorrow, anxiety tookesuffered May seeme he lovd, or els some care he tookeThe word ‘seem’ was often used without ‘it.’ Cf. Feb 77, Maye 211, Oct 27, FQ I.i.4.8. This use of ‘seem’ becomes a signature of the Spenserian narrator, a character who observes from a distance and interprets what he sees, established prominently to open FQ: e.g., I.i.1.8, I.i.2.8. couthE.K. tune his pipeBring his pipe into accord with the feeling of his subject; control his art effectively. frame his stileWrite his poem; voice his discourse; direct his pen. OED defines ‘style’ as ‘an instrument made of metal, bone, etc.’ and used for writing, as well as ‘the manner of expression characteristic of a particular writer’. Thothen fayntingfeeble, sluggish hillA pastoral site of poetic inspiration and compositiona diminutive Mt. Parnassus, home of the Muses (see Julye 45-48 and E.K.’s gloss). playndcomplained, lamented Gods of love . . . the while abyeColin’s complaint, addressed to a series of imagined listeners: the natural world, the gods of love, Pan, the ground, the trees, his flock, and finally his pipe. pitie . . . pitieRhetorical figure of chiasmus (inversion of word order in succeeding clause). And Pan . . . thy selfe didst proveSee Apr 50-51. For Pan’s love of Syrinx, see Ovid, Met 1.689-712. Rejecting Pan’s love, Syrinx asked her river-nymph sisters to turn her into a syrinx or reed; Pan found the syrinx, sighed into it, and invented the panpipe. Pan and Syrinx form the mythological model for Colin’s complaint to Rosalind. dolefull dittieA grief-filled song or poem. The OED says that ‘ditty’ is ‘often used of the songs of birds, or applied depreciatively’. Cf. Apr 29, Oct 13, Dec 14. PanThe presiding deity of pastoral poetry. Pan was an erotic Arcadian god of the woodlands, of music, and of shepherds, identified with nature, the cosmos, eventually Christ, and sometimes kings. Cf. Apr 51, Maye 54, Dec 7. Pan was half man and half goat, and in some accounts the son of Mercury (god of eloquence, grammar, and music) and Penelope (wife of Odysseus). The name derives from the Gr paein = 'to pasture', later understood to derive from pan = 'everything'. Cf. Virgil, Ecl 2.31-33. Pan’s alternative name, Inuus (from L ineo = 'enter', 'begin'), equates him with Janus, god of January; see Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.22.2. proveexperience, suffer Thou barrein ground . . . As on your boughes the ysicles dependFor a similar conceit, see June 95-101, Nov 123-35. Spenser’s depiction of the wintry landscape echoes Sackville’s Induction (especially 1-21) to Mirror for Magistrates. For the association between love melancholy and winter, see also Petrarch, RS 66. Art made a myrrhourThe phrase offers a complex play on art, made, and mirror (Berger 1988: 332-37). For the mirror image, see Maye 274, Oct 93. In FQ, Spenser identifies his poem as a mirror, into which the reader can look (II.pr.4.7, III.pr.5.6). Whilomein the past, some time ago, once upon a time WhilomeCf. Aug 8, Oct 4 glosses. dightdress, clothe DaffadilliesNot the daffodil but the white or yellow asphodel, whose leaves provide sheep with fodder. In Ovid’s Met, Narcissus is metamorphosed into a daffodil (3.509-10). dightSee Apr 29 gloss. maskedstA term from reveling and masquerading. Cf. the opening line of FQ (I.pr.1.1). mantleA natural covering but also a blanket or cloth covering, often made of wool. Cf. Jan 75. Both ‘mantle’ and ‘maskedst’ are terms of costume and performance (see ‘clothd’ at Jan 33 and ‘dight’ at Jan 22). unkindlyunnatural; hurtful stouresturmoils, upheavals, emotional crises stouresCf. Jan 51 gloss, FQ IV.ix.39.4. ‘Used by Spenser and his imitators for: Time of turmoil and stress. Obs.’ (OED). stormy stouresRepeated at Maye 156. balefull smartPainful pain (rhetorical figure of pleonasm); painful suffering (earliest OED example of ‘baleful’ in this sense). And yet alas . . . yt is already donneCf. Dec 29-30. springyouth bloosmesConveys the idea of a mass of flowers. sereE.K. My timely buds with wayling all are wastedThe phrasing implicates Colin’s complaint and song in the natural process of seasonal wasting. dependhang down Thou feeble flocke . . . overcome with careCf. Aug 17-20. For the pastoral convention on the relationship between love melancholy and sheep-neglect, see Theocritus, Idylls 11.12-16, Virgil, Ecl 3.3-6. evillunwholesome knees . . . fareCf. Ps 109: 24: ‘My knees are weake through fasting.’ ill governmentpoor care ill governmentThe word ‘government’ appears only here in SC (cf. ‘governance’ at Maye 121 and ‘misgovernaunce’ at Nov 4), and identifies Colin as a governor, a leader and manager of his flock, in accord with humanist teaching about the educated individual who contributes to the state (as in Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Boke Named the Governour [1531]). The word thus consolidates a line of political discourse that appears in several of E.K.’s glosses: from his references to Marot and Skelton in the Arg, to his reference to Thomas Smith’s ‘booke of goverment’ in his gloss on ‘couth’ at Jan 10. pynewaste from grief mourning . . . mourneAnother chiasmus. pyneCf. Aug 18. A thousand sithes. . . such sight hath bred my baneThese lines echo Petrarch’s first sight of Laura in RS 61. RS 23.21-40 also portrays the immediacy of love and its after effects. A thousand sithes . . . the neighbour towne to seeCf. Feb 71-77, Apr 21, June 19-20, 50, Julye 44, 75-79, Sept 150-53, which suggest that much of SC was written in Kent or Surrey. sithesE.K. glosses as ‘time,’ yet there may be a pun on ‘sigh.’ neighbour towneE.K.’s gloss of ‘the next towne’ requires supplement, since town can mean variously ‘An enclosed place’, ‘a village or hamlet with little or no local organization’, or ‘an inhabited place . . . more regularly built than a village, and having more complete and independent local government’ (OED). Since Colin is a shepherd, his reference to the town where Rosalind lives suggests a geographical movement from countryside to town or city, hinting at the corresponding change in literary genres, from pastoral to epichere frustrated and finalized when Colin breaks his pipe. Barnabe Googe, Eglogs 3.147-49, contrasts ‘towne’ with ‘downe,’ the city with the country. stoureE.K. See Jan 27 note. banewoe; ruin Ah God . . . joy and payneCf. Horace, Sermones 2.3.267-68: in amore haec sunt mala, bellum, pax rursum (‘In love inhere these evilsfirst war, then peace’). Later, a common Petrarchan oxymoron. It is not Hobbinol . . . Rosalind againeAs E.K. points out in his gloss, Spenser imitates Virgil, Ecl 2.56-57, where Alexis criticizes Corydon for giving him gifts. HobbinolGabriel Harvey, Spenser’s friend at Cambridge, identified by E.K. in his gloss to Sept 176. Hobbinol appears as an interlocutor in Apr, June, Sept, while in Dec Colin addresses him directly (45, 155). The name derives from hob = rustic + noll = head. Also, a hoball was a clown or idiot (see OED). Hobbinol also shows up as a shepherd in Colin Clout. His clownish gifts . . . and his early fruitE.K. An important feature of pastoral: a character in the fiction outwardly expresses loss while the poet manages to evoke concrete features of the good life (cf. Goldberg 1989). clownishrustic curtsiescourteous acts, gifts cracknellesa light, crisp biscuit of hollow shape cracknellesCf. Nov 96. Beneare RosalindeE.K. thilkethis, or that I love thilke lasse, (alas why doe I love?)As E.K. notes, an epanorthosis or rhetorical figure that corrects what was just said. lorneleft lorneSee Sept 57 gloss. deignes notRefuses to accept graciously. deviseSong, speech, invention, artful making. A ‘Shepheards devise’ is thus a pastoral song or poem. snake‘Used to denote some lurking danger . . esp. in the phr. snake in the grass (after Virgil, Ecl 3.93 Latet anguis in herba)’ (OED). For Spenser’s audience, the word snake likely had Satanic connotation; cf. FQ I.ii.9.8. makecompose Wherefore my pype . . . did lyeFor Meliboeus’ abandonment of poetry, see Virgil, Ecl 1.77. ruderustic unlucky Muse . . . musing myndA polyptoton, a rhetorical figure that repeats a word in different cases or inflections within the same sentence. unlucky MuseCf. Milton, Lycidas 20. musingCan mean both ‘worrisome’ and ‘contemplative’ (OED). The phrase ‘musing mynd’ is evocative of Spenser’s emphasis on poetic inwardness in this eclogue; cf. note below on ‘pensife boy’. shall sore the while abyeCan mean ‘pay for the time’ or ‘pay for a while.’ Since this is the last line of Colin’s complaint, it is broken off, compelling the narrator to complete the rhyme in the next line. So broke his oaten pype, and downe dyd lyeThe major event in the eclogue (Moore 1975). Cf. Apr 3, 15, Nov 71, Dec 141, Teares 599. oaten pypeLatin avena can mean both ‘oats’ and ‘panpipe.’ See Oct woodcut. By . . . weepeFor the convention of the eclogues ending to coincide with the end of the day, see Feb 246, Mar 115-17, Apr 160-61, Maye 315-17, June 118-210, Aug 195. For the pastoral tradition, see Virgil, Ecl 1.82-83, 2.66-67, 6.85-86; Boccaccio Eclogues 2.158-59, 4.152-53; Mantuan, Eclogues 3.192-94, 7.156-61; Marot, Eglogue de ma Dame Loyse de Savoye 275-76. welkedfaded, diminished in brightness welkedCf. Nov 13 gloss. PhoebusApollo, the sun god who drives his chariot across the sky. availeE.K. wainewagon waineFor a description of Apollo’s chariot, see Ovid, Met 2.107-77. overhaileE.K. ‘Draw over as a cover’ (OED); the OED says the word is rare, and cites Spenser as the only example. pensifesad, brooding pensifeThis word climactically summarizes the intense inwardness characterizing Colin, drawing together such earlier words as ‘heart’, ‘mind’, ‘longed’, ‘see’ and ‘musing’. homewardVersions of the word ‘home’ or its concept appear at the end of nine SC eclogues, usually in the last or penultimate line. Whose hanging heads . . . to weepeAn alexandrine (six metrical feet)to become the concluding line to the Spenserian stanza in FQ. Anchôra SpemeItalian ancóra ('still') + speme ('hope'). See Heb 6: 19: ‘Which we have, as an ancre of the soule, bothe sure and stedfast.’ See also Fidelia with her anchor at FQ I.x.14. The eminent Venetian printer Aldus Manutius adopted the device of the dolphin coiled around the anchor, together with the Latin motto anchora spei; following Aldus, William Ponsonby adopted the emblem, and it appears on the title pages to the 1596 FQ and FH. unlikelyhooddissimilarity, discrepancy SkeltonsSee note to Jan Arg. As well . . . wrytingsSir Thomas Smith (1513-77) was the first Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge, and served as Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador to France. Since his influential treatise De Republica Anglorum (1556) was not published till 1581, E.K. must have read it in MS. In 1570, Smith helped Gabriel Harvey get a fellowship at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge; Harvey wrote a series of Latin elegies in honor of his benefactor: Smithus (1578). E.K.’s comment invites the reader to view both Jan and SC in light of Smith’s emphasis on the importance of the people and the parliament in the governing of the monarchy, a tripartite entity that Collinson 1997 terms ‘the monarchical republic of Queen Elizabeth I’ (essay title). Rusticus . . . AlexisSee Virgil, Ecl 2.56: ‘Corydon, you are a clown! Alexis cares naught for gifts.’ With Ovid’s myth of Pan and Syrinx, Virgil’s eclogue becomes an important model for Colin’s complaint. pæderasticeloving boys gynerasticeloving women For who that hath . . . and othersSee Plato, Alcibiades 1.131; Xenophon, Symposium 8; Maximus Tyrius 21.8h. pæderasticeFor the classical tradition of male friendship within a pastoral setting, see Theocritus, Idylls 23; Virgil, Ecl 2. Cf. Googe, Eglogs 1.149-56, where the older shepherd Amintas warns the young shepherd Daphnis to avoid the unlawful love of Jove for Ganymede. LucianGreek author (c.115-c.200) of ironic dialogues. Although he was studied and imitated by More and Erasmus, he was criticized for his amorality. In 1578, Spenser wagered Harvey for a four-volume edition of Lucian (Stern 1979: 228). gathered . . . meaningNot the author’s meaning. hys develish disciple Unico AretinoPietro Aretino (1492-1556), notorious for pornographic dialogues and comedies. The epithet Unico was the badge of another Aretine, Bernardo Accolti. PerioniusJoachim Pèrion (1499?-1559), Benedictine humanist. Evidently, E.K. refers to Pèrion’s attack on Aretino, In Petrum Aretinum Oratio (Paris, 1551). Asterisstar Ianthisviolet So as Ovide . . . wyfe to AgryppaOn the tradition of disguising a beloved’s true name, see Ovid, Tristia 4.10.60, nomine non vero dicta Corinna mihi (‘whom I called, not by a real name Corinna’). Renaissance writers believed that Ovid’s relationship with Julia was a cause of his exile from Rome. So doth Aruntius Stella . . . in his EpithalamiumAruntius Stella (Consul c. 101 A.D.) was a patron and friend of Statius and Martial. Statius wrote a poem on the occasion of Stella’s marriage, ‘An Epithalamium in Honour of Stella and Violentilla,’ Silvae 1.2. Part of E.K.’s statement is based on lines 197-98: Asteris et vatis totam cantata per urbem / Asteris ante dapes, nocte Asteris, Asteris ortu (‘the whole city sang of the poet’s Asteris, before the banquet Asteris, Asteris at night, Asteris at dawn of day’). Martial records that Stella called his lady Ianthis (Epigrams 7.14.5). And so the famous . . . name of ZimaRefers to Lettre Amorose di Madonna Celia Gentildonna Romana. Scritte al suo Amante (Venice, 1562). Most likely, E.K refers to the preliminary note, which reports that the lady calls herself sometimes Celia and sometimes Zima. PetronaUnidentified. EpanorthosisSee note to Jan 61.