2 Queene Elizabeth: The first historical personage mentioned in a SC Argument. The only others mentioned are poets: Theocritus and Virgil in August; Marot in November.

3 Hobbinoll: Appearing also in June and September, and identified by E.K. at Sept [176] as Spenser’s friend Gabriel Harvey. Hobbinol is thus a primary spokesman in the Calender: whether for ‘the Vacant Head model’, in which young poets aspire to withdraw into paradise by turning erotic desire into art (Berger 1988: 357-8 and see Oct gl 141 and note); or for ‘the center . . . of values’, such as ‘community, . . . pleasures and compassion’ (Lindheim 2005: 32, 34).

3 Thenott: An older shepherd appearing also in Februarie and November. Thenot is one of the Calender’s primary figures of the ‘pastoral elder’: a literary ‘mind divided by its adherence to the paradise principle between the blandishment of the poets who glorify youth and love, and the resultant bitterness of discovering that “all that is lent to love, wyll be lost”’ (Berger 1988: 398).

6 his mynd was alienate: ‘[A]rguably the single most significant aspect of [the] . . . eclogue’s presentation is the conspicuous absence of Colin Clout’: ‘the context of the celebration [of Elisa] is alienation…. [T]he word “alienate” rings heavily for it is simultaneously traditional and topical—traditional in the sense that it evokes the powerful ethos of political and social alienation, evoked by Virgil’s first eclogue, and topical in that it also evokes the prevalent mood of contemporary England’, characterized by fear that Queen Elizabeth would marry Alençon (McCabe 1995: 21). Indeed, ‘alienation is the defining characteristic of Colin Clout’ and ‘the central strategy of Spenser’s poetry, which forces his readers to reencounter their native tongue through a process of occlusion and defamiliarization’: ‘A disinclination to sing, in fact, is the inauspicious starting point of nearly all of the Calender’s eclogues’ (Nicholson 2014: 103, 104, 113). On the word ‘mind’, see 25n.

8 conning ryming and singing: The phrase is ambiguous: ‘conning’ could take ‘ryming’ as the direct object of the participle, accounting for the absence of a comma between them; or the three words could each be distinct gerunds, with absent commas normal in early modern books. In the first possibility, the phrase introduces two phases to an artistic process: making learned poetry and performing it. In the second, the phrase introduces three phases: learning; turning the learning into poetry; and performing it.

8–9 his laudable exercises: Identifies Colin’s songs as expressions of encomiastic poetry and praises those songs as themselves laudable.

10 recorde: Cf. 30. The word draws attention to the reproducibility of the poet’s song and its public performance, as Hobbinol sings the lay of Elisa for Colin during his absence. In turn, Spenser himself records competing versions of previous poets’ work, especially Virgil’s Eclogues 4 and Marot’s Eglogue de Madame Loyse—the first, a work of celebration, with its myth of a male political savior (probably Augustus Caesar); and the second, an elegiac work that darkens the joy, with its funeral elegy on a beloved queen.

3 Bagpype: Cf. Aug 3 and 6; a bagpipe also appears in the Januarye woodcut. Since traditionally it has associations with erotic desire (Winternitz 1967: chapter 4), this musical instrument denotes an erotic art.

5 attempred to the yeare: One of the recurrent tropes of the Calender, the link between the human and the natural, here accommodated to the month of April: Thenot notes the correspondence between Hobbinol’s tears and the traditional association of April with rain (e.g., Chaucer, CT Gen Pro 1-4).

9–28 Nor thys . . . for a frenne: Hobbinol’s complaint that Colin has turned from loving him to loving Rosalind recalls Jan 55-60, and thus measures distance from the homoerotic love featured in Spenser’s intertext there, Virgil, Ecl 2.

12–15 He plongd . . . doth forbeare: Drayton imitates these lines in Pastorals, Eclogue 2.97-8: ‘Now hath this Yonker torn his tressed Locks, / And broke his Pipe which was of sound so sweet’.

14–15 Hys pleasaunt . . . and doth forbeare: Rehearses Jan 71-2, where Colin breaks his pipe. Hobbinol’s emphasis on the ‘pleasaunt’ quality of Colin’s artistic ‘meriment’ speaks to one of the Horatian goals of poetry, delight (the other being instruction; cf. Feb 60); that emphasis is also consistent with the ‘recreative’ function assigned to Aprill by E.K. in his Epistle.

17 is . . . Ladde: Cf. Shakespeare, Much Ado 1.3.47: ‘What is he for a fool’.

19–20 And hath he skill . . . brydle loue: An important link in the Calender relating poetry and love, here expressed as a paradox: Colin can excel at making poems but he cannot order his desire. The paradox gestures to an assumption characteristic of Spenser’s ‘Petrarchan’ canon: ‘excellent’ poetry can be ‘ma[d]e’ out of un-‘brydle[d] love’.

20 brydle: Traditional emblem of reason’s control over desire (see Wind 1958, 1968: 145, 147, and plate 41), prominent in Plato’s Phaedrus, which forms a key precursor text for Aprill (Helfer 2012: 102-14). The word ‘brydle’ may be a ‘sly pun’ on bridal (McCabe 1999: 529).

21 Southerne shepheardes boye: In 1578, Spenser was secretary to John Young, Bishop of Rochester, in Kent.

25 madding . . . starte: ‘His mad, frenzied, or foolish mind has turned away’. The striking alliteration draws attention to the importance of the poet-figure’s inwardness, or consciousness, in this eclogue, and indeed in other eclogues featuring Colin.

26 woes: In Spenser's day, the most common printed form of the third-person present indicative of 'to woo' was 'wooes'; the spelling here may suggest a pun-that wooing is a woe.

26 Widdowes daughter of the glenne: E.K.

27 bredde: Not the kind of breeding Colin has in mind.

28 frenne: Since E.K. points out that ‘frenne’ means ‘straunger’, and is ‘used in commen custome of speach for forenne’, the language here evokes the Alençon courtship. The ‘frend’ is Hobbinol and the ‘frenne’ Rosalind; the line highlights the complex ‘alienation’ of Colin’s affections.

30 recorde: See note in the General Argument. Spenser’s strategy differs from Harvey’s and that of other courtiers, such as Leicester, who courted the queen either directly with their work or through commissioned performances like the famed pageants at Kennilworth Castle (1567): ‘Colin’s “laye” . . . is an imaginary apostrophe for an encounter that never happens’ (McCoy 1997: 58; cf. Knapp 1992: 90-4).

32 in thys shade alone: Underscores a notable feature of most eclogues: in the narrative, shepherds withdraw in intimacy into the landscape to talk and sing privately; in the ‘book’ printing the poem, ‘the author’ publishes the scene of secrecy.

33–35 laye . . . laye: Spenser relies on a pun: Colin sang his lay as he lay by a spring.

35–36 by a spring . . . Waters fall: Colin’s preferred locale, a symbol of the harmony of poetic inspiration. Spenser takes over the trope from predecessors (e.g., Theocritus, Idylls 1.7-8; Marot, Complainct de Madame Loyse 2.261), yet he makes it his own by inflecting it in specific ways (June 8, Aug 155, Dec 1, and woodcuts to Apr, June, Dec, as well as Petrarch 4). Subsequent poets imitate the trope widely: Drayton, Pastorals, Eclogue 3.63-4: ‘And let them set together all, / Time keeping with the Waters fall’; and The Return from Pernassus (1606), sig. Bv, where the anonymous authors identify the waterfall as Spenser’s ‘signature’ (Hollander 1988: 176): ‘to the waters fall he tun’d for fame, / And in each barke engrav’d Elizaes name.’ The poet’s special relationship with the land, here and throughout the lay, evokes the myth of Orpheus as a civilizing poet, able to move the woods, stop the flow of rivers, and tame wild beasts, for Colin ‘charms the external world into configuration around Eliza’ (Cain 1978: 10-4). See also Let 4.6-7n. In the first recorded commentary on Spenser’s waterfall trope, William Webbe sees an equation with Colin’s verse-form, which includes ‘manie unequall verses, but most sweetelie falling together, which the Poet calleth the tune of the waters fall’ (Var 7: 274).

37–153 Ye dayntye. . . you among: Colin’s thirteen-stanza lay has an elaborate structure, dividing into two six-stanza sequences, with the seventh stanza serving as a bridge (Cain 1978: 20-2). Two patterns emerge: in the first, the two sequences mirror each other in content (e.g., stanza 1 mirrors stanza 8); in the second, the sequences are symmetrical (e.g., stanza 1 matches stanza 13). Whereas the first sequence presents a static icon, featuring a stationary Eliza, the second is dynamic, evoking a masquelike progression. If in the first sequence Colin functions as the poetic maker of an artistic image, in the second he functions as a vates or visionary; these are the two principal roles of the poet coming out of antiquity and familiar from Renaissance treatises on poetry. The specific content of the elaborate structure derives from and adapts the rhetorical tradition of encomiastic poetry, designed to immortalize an important person, especially rulers (Cain 1978: 6-7, 14-15); the structure includes the following parts: proemium pro qualitate rei (a preface featuring the subject’s excellence, here including an invocation); genus (background, here parents and race); gestae (deeds, focusing on beauty), comparatio (comparison to others), and votum (prayer, or here, an address to the subject).

39–40 hether looke, / at my request: Establishes the basic conceit of the lay, in which Colin as poet calls on figures from the landscape—most of them from classical mythology—to come to the grassy green to attend on Queen Elisa, himself serving as master of the revels (cf. Alpers 1985: 92). The figures invoked are all feminine (with one exception): nymphs of the brook, the Nine Muses, Phoebus and Cynthia, Calliope as the Muse of epic, the Three Graces, the Ladies of the Lake, especially Chloris, and shepherds’ daughters.

41 Uirgins: ‘The Aprill eclogue celebrates Elizabeth’s virginity at the very moment she seemed most determined to abandon it’ (by marrying Alençon): ‘Colin’s song employs the imagery of an epithalamium while precluding all possibility of actual marriage’ (McCabe 1995: 23, 27).

42 Whence floweth . . . well: E.K. ‘Helicon’ was the name of the mountain only; its wells were named Hippocrene and Aganippe. This is the first of Spenser’s references to the ‘blessed Brooke’, which he imagines flowing on Mount ‘Parnasse’ (41), traditional home of the Muses, and thus the originary site of poetic creation, as well as of its goal, fame. The mythological reference forms part of Spenser’s main artifice, which features the poet making his sovereign famous (D.L. Miller 1979: 230-1). Cf. Chaucer, HF 521; Lydgate, Troy Book Prologue 42; Skelton, Garland of Laurel 74.

43 blaze: Announces the poet’s formal purpose.

46 your siluer song: E.K. mis-attributes the phrase to Hesiod (Var 7: 288). The phrase ‘silver song’ might seem paradoxical, attaching a color or material substance to a sound. Yet the word ‘silver’ could mean ‘Of sounds: Having a clear gentle resonance like that of silver; soft-toned, melodious’ (OED). The word ‘silver’ also has connotations of whiteness, brightness, clearness, and riches (OED), making it a metaphor for purity, illumination, lucidity, and value. One other association may bear on Spenser’s interest: the word’s use in ornamentation (OED), evoking his pioneering role in developing a sixteenth-century eloquent style. Since Spenser so often uses ‘silver’ as an adjective for ‘song’, ‘sound’, and ‘swan’ within an alliterative phrase, and since E.K. records its origin in a classical author, it qualifies as a metonym for an eloquent intertextual authorship, and thus for Spenserian poetry itself. Hence its appearance opening both Time (‘silver streaming Thamesis’ [2]) and Proth (‘silver streaming Themmes’ [11]): the fountain of Spenser’s eloquent, intertextual art of mutability. Spenser’s language in Aprill equates the silver song with Elisa, at once tracing the origin of Colin’s art to the queen and identifying Elisa as the form that his art takes. On the allied phrase ‘silver sound’ in the Spenser canon, see notes at June 61, Aug 181, as well as Oct [90] for E.K.’s quotation of two lost lines of Spenserian verse, which mention the ‘silver swanne’.

48–49 The flowre of Uirgins . . . In princely plight: Ambiguous: ‘Does the poet wish her to flourish long as a virgin or for the virgin to flourish in princely plight (which could include marriage)’ (Norbrook 2002: 78).

49 plight: The word could have both positive and negative connotations.

50–51 For shee . . . begot: On Pan and Syrinx, see Ovid, Met 1.689-712. In assigning the name Pan to Henry VIII, Spenser transposes Marot, Complainct de Madame Loyse, who applies the name to François I. But Spenser’s extrapolation of the Ovidian myth to represent Elizabeth’s parents is bold, since Ovid tells how the god attempts to rape the river nymph. Given that this attempted rape leads to the invention of the syrinx, or panpipe (the musical instrument of pastoral), Spenser uses the myth to record the origin of his own art—and perhaps even of the Henrician era (the age of Skelton and Barclay, Wyatt and Surrey, poets important in differing ways to the Calender). Colin refers to the myth again at 91-4. The myth forms the ‘crux of the Aprill eclogue’s strategy’, for ‘the poet metamorphoses an Ovidian aetiology into a Tudor genealogy’; specifically, Spenser may replay Sannazaro, who ‘has recreated the myth of the origins and history of pastoral poetry in the Tenth Prose of his Arcadia’, when the shepherds see the Pipe of Pan hung on a cave, and a priest narrates Ovid’s story of Pan and Syrinx with allusions to both Theocritus and Virgil, including the Messianic Eclogue (one of Aprill’s acknowledged intertexts): ‘the pipes of Pan have passed into the hands of Sincero, Sannazaro’s Petrarchan persona’ (Montrose 1979: 40).

50 without spotte: Stainless, immaculate, evoking the Virgin Mary and its scriptural origin, Song Sol 4:7, said of the bride: ‘there is no spot in thee’ (see J.N. King 1982: 368-71, 1989: 257-61). For Elizabeth’s association with King Solomon and the bride, see L.S. Johnson 1990: 156-71. Also said of the ermine, appearing below at 58. The phrase manages to record (or conceal) a discreet (or tactless) reference to Anne Boleyn, claiming that Elizabeth’s birth, despite her mother’s tragedy, is innocent.

52–53‘Heavenly birth is mentioned about thirty times from the Calender to Proth. It is of course corollary to Spenser’s Platonism as set forth in H.L. and H.B.’ (Var 7: 281).

52 grace: Both social and Christian grace.

55 See, where she sits vpon the grassie greene: E.K.’s gloss on Nov 178 (Colin’s vision of Queen Dido in the Elysian Fields), is apropos here: ‘A lively Icon, or representation as if he saw her . . . present.’

57–58 Scarlot . . . white: The colors of both England and St. George.

57 Scarlot: A color of royalty; a rich cloth not always of scarlet color.

58 Ermines: Emblematic of purity, as in the ‘Ermine Portrait’ of Elizabeth (1585; see Strong 1963: 82; 1977: 147-9).

59–63 Cremosin . . . Uiolet: The flowers in Elisa’s crown bloom across the seasons, from early spring (daffodils, primroses) to early summer (damask roses), evoking the prelapsarian Eden and associated with the Golden Age (Cullen 1970: 112-9). See the more detailed catalogue of flowers at 136-44 and note.

59 Cremosin coronet: Probably a garland of red roses (associated with Venus and the Three Graces, and with the Virgin Mary). Elisa (and Elizabeth) is thus a Diana-Venus figure (Brooks-Davies 1995: 64-5).

60 Damaske roses: Red or pink roses thought to have originated in Damascus.

60 Daffadillies: Spring flowers, appropriately. As at Jan 22, Brooks-Davies, suggests that the flowers here are 'possibly white asphodel (see red and white motif at 68)' (Brooks-Davies 1995:68). Cf. Jan 22 and note, as well as Apr 140.

61 Bayleaues: Symbolic of both virginity and conquest, but also of poetic fame. At 104-5, Colin sees the Muses bearing ‘Bay braunches’ for Elisa ‘in her hand to weare’.

62 Primroses: Cf. Feb 166 and E.K’s gloss for the flower’s significance.

63 Uiolet: Color of modesty and love.

68 yfere: E.K. notes the symbolic import for the Tudors of mingling red and white roses. Spenser’s artistic technique stamps Elisa’s complexion with the politics of the nation. See 124n.

69 depeincten: OED sees this as an intermediate form between the synonyms depaint and depict.

69 liuely: A term from Spenser’s artistic vocabulary. See 55n.

73–82 Phœbus . . . Cynthia: The sun and moon looking down on Elisa evoke the civic virtues of justice and mercy.

73–81 I sawe Phœbus . . . to haue the ouerthrowe: A Petrarchan conceit, in which the lady is brighter than the sun; see Petrarch, RS 115. The lines may be imitated by Giles Fletcher, Christs Victorie 620-1: ‘heav’n awakened all his eyes / To see another Sunne, at midnight rise.’ Thomas Warton ‘believes that these lines may have been the inspiration of lines 77-84 of Milton’s Nativity Ode’ (Var 7: 283). The conceit, in which Colin dares Phoebus to compare his brightness with Elisa’s, is a displaced version of ‘Colin’s myth of vocational anxiety’: the singing contest between Pan and Apollo (Montrose 1979: 43). For ‘dare’ as part of Spenser’s vocabulary of the singing match, see Aug 2, 21, and 24.

74–76 gaze . . . amaze: These two words, and their variations, bring a relatively new emphasis to modern English poetry: a fascination with something beyond the rational, in which a subject gazes on an object of desire that amazes. Skelton occasionally includes such rapture in Philip Sparrow, even using the rhyme ‘gaze’ and ‘amaze’ (1099-1100). Colin’s epiphany of Elisa is Spenser’s first instance of such discourse, which, as the Renaissance proceeds, will become associated with an aesthetic of the sublime, first theorized by Longinus (On Sublimity). See ‘abasht’ and ‘dasht’ at 83-5, as well as E.K’s gloss on Hobbinol’s emblem: ‘overcome with the hugeness of his imagination’ (gl 186).

77 another Sunne: Called a parhelion: ‘A bright spot in the sky, often associated with a solar halo and often occurring in pairs on either side of the sun (or occas. above and below it), caused by the reflection of sunlight on ice crystals in the atmosphere; a mock sun, a sun dog’. Cf. Sidney’s ‘When two suns do appear’ from the third book of The Old Arcadia (213). At FQ V.iii.19, Spenser will return to the parhelion when representing the False Florimell set beside the true.

82 Cynthia: Diana, goddess of the moon; see gl 165.

86–90 But I will not match . . . take heede: Colin backs away from his hyperbolic claim of overthrowing Phoebus, inaugurating a recurrent Spenserian move: he relies on the modesty topos to secure authorial self-protection. Simultaneously, however, the lines refuse to deify both Elizabeth and the poet’s image of her—in a sober darkening of the epideictic proclamation to herald the return of the Golden Age.

86–87 Latonaes . . . Niobe: Aprill ‘cannot allow any positive images of maternity. . . . The only other “mother” in the Calender is the unfortunate she-goat of Maye’ (McCabe 1995: 26-7). See note below on the Emblems.

86 Latonaes seede: Apollo and Diana (Phoebus and Phoebe/Cynthia). In addition to E.K.’s gloss, see Ovid, Met 6.146-311.

92 Bellibone: Fr belle, ‘beautiful’; bonne, ‘good’. Cf. the cameo appearance of ‘the bouncing Bellibone’ at Aug 61.

96 milkwhite Lamb: Emblematic of innocence and humility, but also a pastoral prize, often awarded at singing contests, as at Aug 37-9, where Perigot wagers his ‘spotted Lambe’.

99 Albee . . . forswatt: Cf. Plowman’s Tale, a pseudo-Chaucerian poem featured by Protestants as a central work of prophetic poetry : ‘He was forswonke and al forswat’ (14; see Norbrook 2002). Whereas The Plowman’s Tale presents the plowman as a laboring reformer, Spenser’s imitation introduces a significant change, converting the laborer into a poet (Little 2013: 162-3). Colin’s attention to his own labor sits uneasily within the eclogue’s putatively ‘recreative’ form (McCabe 1995: 25-6).

100 Calliope: E.K. Calliope is the Muse of epic poetry, and mother of Orpheus, Spenser’s primary archetype of the civilizing poet. Cf. June 57.

103 Uiolines: Evidently, an early use of the word, and Spenser’s only use of it.

104 Bay braunches: E.K. See 61n.

108–117 heauen . . . heauen: An eclogue that nominally celebrates the immanence of Queen Elisa keeps gesturing to her transcendence, evident in both her ‘heauenly haueour’ at 66 and her ‘heauenly race’ at 53: at 97 and 101, the sovereign is Colin’s ‘goddesse’.

109–117 Lo how . . . rest in heauen: Spenser will refer to the Three Graces throughout his poetic canon (most importantly at FQ VI.x.10-28).

109–110 foote / to the Instrument: The phrase suggests a pun on metrical foot.

113 fourth grace: Traditionally Venus, but here Queen Elizabeth, married to her land and its inhabitants (Spenser will recycle the conceit importantly at FQ VI.x.12-6, 25).

114 yeuen: While 'giuen' and 'geuen' are the dominant forms in English print in 1579, the archaic form 'yeuen', had not died out.

116 fourth place: See 113n.

118 rennes: Medievalism.

122 Chloris: She was the daughter of Amphion, who used his musical instrument to raise the walls of Thebes (Homer, Od 11.281-6). Thus, Amphion joins Orpheus as an archetype for the civilizing poet (see Rome 341-4). Chloris was also a cult name for Queen Elizabeth.

123 Coronall: See Feb 178 and note.

124 Oliues bene: Another overt political image (see note to ‘yfere’ at 68).

126 principall: Not just ‘of prime importance’ but also ‘befitting a prince’.

127 Ye shepheards daughters: The only non-mythological figures addressed by Colin, allowing for a local (Kentish, English) audience to appear on the grassy green, but also lending to the address a formally pastoral tint.

135 tawdrie lace: A silk band, here worn around the waist. St. Audrey died of a throat tumor as punishment for the vanity of her necklaces; hence ‘tawdrie’. The lace is ‘an artifact symbolic of . . . tensions between high and humble. It was sold at fairs on the feast of St. Audrey or Ethelrida. . . . The cheaper, cloth necklaces named for the dead saint and favored by country lasses were a way of simultaneously warding off and defying such a punishment because they were humbler yet showy’ (McCoy 1997: 62).

136–144 Cullambine . . . flowre Delice: The catalogue of flowers is a specialty of Spenser, and first appears here (and in abbreviated form at 60-3). Shakespeare memorably transposes the Spenserian device to such stage heroines as Ophelia in Hamlet and Perdita in Winter’s Tale. See 59-63 and note.

136 Cullambine: A symbol of love.

138 Coronations: A pun on L corona, ‘crown’; also a symbol of love. A political image.

140 Daffadowndillies: the daffodil, which had Venerean associations (Brooks-Davies 1995: 71). Cf. Apr 60, as well as Jan 22 and note.

141 Kingcups: Buttercup. McCabe 1999 sees 'a political pun' (532), perhaps gesturing to the flower as 'deck[ing]' the Queen (145).

142 Pawnce: A symbol of thought.

143 Cheuisaunce: No flower of this name has been identified. Elsewhere, as at Maye 92, Spenser uses 'cheuisaunce' to denote ‘knightly adventures’; the term is derived from Fr chevauché, enterprise. Norbrook 2002 asks, 'Is the implication that the project of the marriage is suspect? Spenser’s garland of flowers provides an elaborate, if not impenetrable, camouflage for his private opinions’. Norbrook qualifies his speculation by observing that ‘it is not Anjou but Colin who dissimulates chevisaunce among the flowers for Elisa’ (79). LaBreche 2010 adds: ‘self-interested “enterprise” and even a desire for “chiefedome” over Elizabeth may lurk not only in the breasts of foreign princes but also in the encomiastic verse of English courts poets . . . presenting Spenser as a forthright client who has nothing to hide from his patrons’ (92-3).

145 Now ryse vp Elisa, decked as thou art: Colin and Spenser have indeed dressed Elisa, perhaps with a pun on ‘art’ (familiar from Jan 20; see note). While at line 86 Colin backs off his claim to poetic power, here his command to his sovereign appears bold, even as it is in keeping with the decorum of the praise poem, which self-consciously features the poet’s role in helping to make his subject immortal: the portrait relating poet and sovereign is formally artistic (see Cain 1978: 17).

152 Damsines: Cf. 96, where Colin offers Elisa a lamb.

154–159 And was . . . cannot purchase: Spenser ends the eclogue with an ‘odd emphasis on the problem of purchase’ in order to ‘turn . . . the tables on those who mock him and [he] answers doubts about the effectiveness of his approach. . . . A key factor in Spenser’s approach is his rejection of the courtly obsession with access and proximity’, which he counters through indirectness and evasion, a refusal to court openly (McCoy 1997: 64).

163–165 O quam . . . certe: As E.K. points out in his gloss, the emblems of Thenot and Hobbinol both come from Virgil, Aen 1.327-28, spoken by Aeneas to his mother Venus in disguise as a huntress: ‘what name should I call thee, O maiden? . . . O goddess surely!’ The emblems draw attention to Spenser’s deification of Elizabeth and of his own artistic image of her, and gesture to the dynastic, imperial operation of both. Spenser will re-play the Virgilian scene at FQ II.iii.32-3 and FQ III.vii.11. Yet, in contrast to Virgil’s representation, Spenser’s suggestion of a human who is divine is arguably the key idea and legacy of his canon, from Elisa here and Prince Arthur in The Faerie Queene to the beloved in Amoretti and Epithalamion and the Somerset brides in Prothalamion: ‘The image of the heavens in shape humane’ (CCCHA 351, spoken of Cynthia/Elizabeth). E.K.’s emblems may be offset with Colin’s disclaimer at lines 86-90: ‘But I will not match her with Latonaes seede, / Such follie great sorow to Niobe did breede. / Now she is a stone, / And makes dayly mone, / Warning all other to take heede.’

0 A number of E.K.’s glosses are printed out of order; see SC Tx App. Words appearing in lines 73, 82, 86-7, 92, and 99 of the eclogue are glossed in the sequence 92, 99, 73, 82, 86-7. The disorder affects the notes below only at [73].

12–13 to make . . . Poetes: Cf. Puttenham, Arte of English Poesy 1.1: ‘A poet is as much to say as a maker. And our English name well conforms with the Greek word’ (93). Cf. also Sidney, Defence of Poetry 1975: 77-9.

19 lasse of Kent: Cf. Feb 74.

29 Myrto: Theocritus, Idylls 7.97.

30 Lauretta: Laura in Petrarch, RS 5.

31 Stesichorus: Ancient Greek poet who was blinded by the gods for impugning the virtue of Helen of Troy. E.K. does not record the continuation of the story: Stesichorus’ sight was restored when he wrote a recantation featuring a virtuous Helen, who, he said, did not sail to Troy but was substituted by a false Helen, an eidolon (phantom, spirit), perhaps evoked (or remembered) in E.K’s word ‘idol’, meaning ‘an image or similitude of a deity’ (OED; cf. Roche 1964: 152-67; Hamilton 2001: 363). Himera was not the mistress of Stesichorus but his native town. For his blinding, see Plato, Phaedrus 243a-b; see also Republic 9.586C. ‘Stesichorus’s ode recantation of the Helen, famously imitated and discussed by Socrates in the Phaedrus’, is the ‘classical source’ of the ‘palinode or recantation’ as ‘a much-used lyric trope in the Renaissance’: ‘The palinode thus signals philosophic enlightenment, and by the late sixteenth century, it contained the promise of deliverance from the blindness of erotic seductions both literal and poetic’ (Ramachandran 2009: 375).

38 Dight: Cf. Jan 22. E.K. labels the word a medievalism, but both Wyatt and Surrey had used it.

39 Roundelayes and Virelayes: Fr medieval lyric forms. Roundelays are short lyrics with a refrain, and are associated with pastoral (OED). Spenser identifies the singing match at Aug 53-124 as a roundelay (56, 124, 125, 140; cf. June 49). Virelays are short lyrics using only two rhymes, ‘the end-rhyme of one stanza being the chief one of the next’ (OED). For details on virelays, see Nov 21 and note, as well as [21]. The first three examples of OED under ‘virelay’ record how its link with roundelays traces to Chaucer, LGW F423, Gower, Confessio Amantis 1.133.2709, and Lydgate, To Soverain Lady 40.

47 Exordium . . . animos: ‘A formal introduction to prepare the minds of the hearers (or readers).’ ‘Animus’ also means soul or spirit, suggesting Orphic power.

48 daughters . . . Memorie: On the genealogy of the Muses, see Conti, Myth 4.10; 7.15. Jupiter/Zeus was traditionally the father of the Muses, while Apollo, their leader, was god of music and poetry: Hesiod, Theogony 53-6.

59 ἀργυρέον μέλος: Gr argurion melos, i.e., silver song; but the phrase is not in Hesiod.

71.lem–73 Θυμός . . . Ζεύς: Homer, Il 2.196-7: ‘Proud is the heart of god-nurtured kings; for their honour is from Zeus, and Zeus, god of counsel, loveth them’ (our translation).  The 1579 reading for the last two words of 71, διοτρεφέως βασιλήως (diotrefeōs basileōs), is obviously erroneous, since the form of both words seems to straddle plural and singular. We emend, therefore, following the now-accepted Homeric reading, which casts both words in the plural. We note, however, that many Renaissance editions derive from a competing manuscript tradition that gives the reading, διοτρεφέος βασιλῆος (diotrefeos basilēos, 'god-nurtured king’); it is likely that E.K.’s quotation derives inaccurately from one of these editions.

100 Epigrams: Nomina Musarum (or De Musarum Inventis), from Ausonius's fourth-century work on the Nine Muses, once attributed to Virgil.

102 Signat . . . gestu: ‘Polymnia expresses all things with her hands and speaks by gesture.'

111–112 Arbor . . . Poëti: See Petrarch, RS 263: Arbor vittoriosa triunfale, / onor d’imperadori et di poeti (‘Victorious triumphal tree, the honor of emperors and poets’).

113 Graces: Cf. Seneca, De Beneficiis, 1.3; Servius, Commentarii (Aeneis 1.7220).

115 Pasithea: See Homer, Il 14.276.

117 Theodontius: A medieval Italian mythographer, known only from Boccaccio, Gen Deor.

121 Boccace: Gen Deor 5.35.1 and 7.

136–137 Authors of King Arthure the great and such like: E.K. sides with Roger Ascham, late tutor to Queen Elizabeth, who attacks Arthurian romance in his 1570 The Scholemaster (27r-v). Antiquarian attacks on the historical veracity of King Arthur were making the Tudor claim of descent from Arthur problematic (see Escobedo 2004: 45-80).

145 Olives bene: Cf. Virgil, Georg 2.425, Aen 8.116, 11.330-4; Ps 52:8, 128:3.

151 Neptune and Minerua: Cf. Servius, Commentarii (Georg 1.12).

158 Coronation: A sixteenth-century variant for carnation, or cultivated pink; named because the tooth-edged petals make the flower look like a coronet (OED).

159 Flowre de luce: ‘Flower of light’. The flowre-de-luce is the lily, emblem of purity, as well as of Juno, goddess of marriage (hence of the Virgin Queen’s marriage to her realm).

160 Flos delitiarum: ‘Flower of pleasure (or delights)'.

140 Behight The obvious error in 1579 remained uncorrected until 1611.

164 παρουσία: Gr parousia, making a thing seem present.

183–184 [Em] Dianaes damosells . . . forth: Cf. Virgil, Aen 1.314-20.