calender_jan -- Glosses and Commentary

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.

tune his pipe: Bring his pipe into accord with the feeling of his subject; control his art effectively.

frame his stile: Write 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.’

hill: A pastoral site of poetic inspiration and composition—a diminutive Mt. Parnassus, home of the Muses (see Julye 45-48 and E.K.’s gloss).

Ye Gods of love . . . the while abye: Colin’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 . . . pitie: Rhetorical figure of chiasmus (inversion of word order in succeeding clause).

dolefull dittie: A 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.

And Pan . . . thy selfe didst prove: See 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.

Pan: The 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 Gk 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.

Thou barrein ground . . . As on your boughes the ysicles depend: For 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 myrrhour: The 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).

Whilome: Cf. Aug 8, Oct 4 glosses.

Daffadillies: Not 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).

dight: See Apr 29 gloss.

maskedst: A term from reveling and masquerading. Cf. the opening line of FQ (I.pr.1.1).

mantle: A 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).

stoures: Cf. Jan 51 gloss, FQ IV.ix.39.4. ‘Used by Spenser and his imitators for: Time of turmoil and stress. Obs.’ (OED).

stormy stoures: Repeated at Maye 156.

balefull smart: Painful pain (rhetorical figure of pleonasm); painful suffering (earliest OED example of ‘baleful’ in this sense).

And yet alas . . . yt is already donne: Cf. Dec 29-30.

bloosmes: Conveys the idea of a mass of flowers.

sere: E.K.

My timely buds with wayling all are wasted: The phrasing implicates Colin’s complaint and song in the natural process of seasonal wasting.

Led forth his flock: Symbolically 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.

ypent: Cf. Oct 72 gloss.

Thou feeble flocke . . . overcome with care: Cf. 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.

knees . . . fare: Cf. Ps 109: 24: ‘My knees are weake through fasting.’

ill government: The 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.

mourning . . . mourne: Another chiasmus.

pyne: Cf. Aug 18.

A thousand sithes. . . such sight hath bred my bane: These 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 see: Cf. 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.

neighbour towne: E.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 epic--here frustrated and finalized when Colin breaks his pipe. Barnabe Googe, Eglogs 3.147-49, contrasts ‘towne’ with ‘downe,’ the city with the country.

sithes: E.K. glosses as ‘time,’ yet there may be a pun on ‘sigh.’

stoure: E.K. See Jan 27 note.

Ah God . . . joy and payne: Cf. Horace, Sermones 2.3.267-68: in amore haec sunt mala, bellum, pax rursum (‘In love inhere these evils—first war, then peace’). Later, a common Petrarchan oxymoron.

It is not Hobbinol . . . Rosalind againe: As E.K. points out in his gloss, Spenser imitates Virgil, Ecl 2.56-57, where Alexis criticizes Corydon for giving him gifts.

Hobbinol: Gabriel 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 fruit: E.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).

cracknelles: Cf. Nov 96.

unnethes: E.K.

Rosalinde: E.K.

I love thilke lasse, (alas why doe I love?): As E.K. notes, a n epanorthosis or rhetorical figure that corrects what was just said.

lorne: See Sept 57 gloss.

deignes not: Refuses to accept graciously.

devise: Song, 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.

Wherefore my pype . . . did lye: For Meliboeus’ abandonment of poetry, see Virgil, Ecl 1.77.

unlucky Muse . . . musing mynd: A polyptoton, a rhetorical figure that repeats a word in different cases or inflections within the same sentence.

unlucky Muse: Cf. Milton, Lycidas 20.

All as the Sheepe . . . shepeheards looke: The 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.’

musing: Can 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 abye: Can 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 lye: The major event in the eclogue (Moore 1975). Cf. Apr 3, 15, Nov 71, Dec 141, Teares 599.

oaten pype: Latin avena can mean both ‘oats’ and ‘panpipe.’ See Oct woodcut.

By . . . weepe: For 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.

welked: Cf. Nov 13 gloss.

Phoebus: Apollo, the sun god who drives his chariot across the sky.

availe: E.K.

waine: For a description of Apollo’s chariot, see Ovid, Met 2.107-77.

overhaile: E.K. ‘Draw over as a cover’ (OED); the OED says the word is rare, and cites Spenser as the only example.

pensife: This word climactically summarizes the intense inwardness characterizing Colin, drawing together such earlier words as ‘heart,’ ‘mind,’ ‘longed,’ ‘see,’ and ‘musing.’

homeward: Versions 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 weepe: An alexandrine (six metrical feet)--to become the concluding line to the Spenserian stanza in FQ.

Anchôra Speme: Italian 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.

May seeme he lovd, or els some care he tooke: The 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.

Colin cloute: Spenser’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 love: The nominal theme of the eclogue, unrequited love, which unfolds variously in the other five Colin Clout eclogues (Apr, June, Aug, Nov, Dec).

Rosalinde: Spanish 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).

compareth . . . flocke: The 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.

breaketh his Pipe: A second major theme to the eclogue, the vocational refusal to sing or write more poetry.

Pipe: The 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.

Skeltons: See note to Jan Arg.

Rusticus . . . Alexis: See 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.

pæderastice: For 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.

gathered . . . meaning: Not the author’s meaning.

For who that hath . . . and others: See Plato, Alcibiades 1.131; Xenophon, Symposium 8; Maximus Tyrius 21.8h.

Lucian: Greek 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).

hys develish disciple Unico Aretino: Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), notorious for pornographic dialogues and comedies. The epithet Unico was the badge of another Aretine, Bernardo Accolti.

Perionius: Joachim Pèrion (1499?-1559), Benedictine humanist. Evidently, E.K. refers to Pèrion’s attack on Aretino, In Petrum Aretinum Oratio (Paris, 1551).

Epanorthosis: See note to Jan 61.

So as Ovide . . . wyfe to Agryppa: On 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 Epithalamium: Aruntius 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 Zima: Refers 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.

Petrona: Unidentified.