1–4 Loe I haue made . . . worlds dissolution: The lines ‘advance . . . a larger claim, perhaps, than has been recognized’, taking ‘special force from the issue of calendar reform, which was both controversial and unresolved in the late 1570s. Spenser makes mathematical accuracy into a figure for artistic success, claiming in effect to have brought off a Protestant reformation of the Old Style calendar, something the mathematician John Dee was just then failing to accomplish’ (D.L. Miller 1979: 226).
1 I haue made a Calender: Draws attention to the poet’s role as maker. Cf. 3 and note.
2–3 That steele . . . revolution: Cf. Horace and Ovid in the gloss on the December Embleme.
3 if I marked well the starres reuolution: Supplements the role of poet as maker in line 1 with the poet as cosmologist, making his poem in the shape of the universe (Dec headnote).
4 till: Anticipates Shakespeare’s recurrent use of this word and concept with respect to the Last Judgment, as at Sonnet 55.12-3, Antony and Cleopatra 5.2.231-2 (P. Cheney 2008a: 228-30). Spenser modestly holds off making the Dantean claim that his poem can get through the gate of heaven.
5–6 teach . . . keepe: Evokes the main metaphor of the ecclesiastical eclogues but applies it to the role of the poet in society, as indeed Spenser does throughout the Calender with regard to Colin Clout (e.g., To His Booke 10). Cf. John 10:1-16. In addition to being a maker and a cosmologist, the poet is an educator.
7–12 Goe lyttle . . . nomore: The first phrase, ‘Go lyttle Calender’, echoes To His Booke 1, ‘Goe little booke’; the self-quotation turns the Calender into a perfect circle, an emblem of immortality. Yet the self-quotation is itself an imitation, from Chaucer, TC 5.1786-92: ‘Go, litel bok, go, litel myn tragedye, / Ther God thi makere yet, er that he dye, / So sende myght to make in som comedye! / But litel book, no makyng thow n’envie, / But subgit be to alle poesye; / And kis the steppes where as thow seest pace / Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan, and Stace’. In turn, Chaucer imitates Statius, Thebiad 12.810-9, especially 816-9: vive, precor; nec tu divinam Aeneida tempta, / sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora. / mox, tibi si quis adhuc praetendit nubila livor, / occident, et meriti post me referentur honores (‘Live, I pray; and essay not the divine Aeneid, but ever follow her footsteps from afar in adoration. Soon, if any envy still spreads clouds before you, it shall perish, and after me you shall be paid the honours you deserve’). Finally, several British poets before Spenser imitate Chaucer, including Lydgate, Troyboke, ‘Lenvoye’ 92-107, Falls of Princes 3589-3604; James I of Scotland, Kingis Quair 1352-79; Skelton, Garland of Laurel 1533-86. From Chaucer forward, the conceit tends to show the poet not simply imitating other poets but fictionalizing his response to them: he humbly admires their achievement, but he boldly seeks to place himself in their company. Whereas Chaucer lists the poets in his personal canon, Spenser is more enigmatic, relying on fictional names that make identification difficult: ‘Tityrus . . . Pilgrim . . . Ploughman’. The names bridge the divide between classical and medieval eras and literary forms, but, unlike Chaucer’s group, Spenser’s does cohere in forming an advertisement for a pastoral poetry of Christian worship and Protestant reform (see individual notes below).
7 free passeporte: A resonant phrase. ‘[F]ree’ picks up the discourse of liberty in the Calender, and December in particular, especially discourse evoking the rights of the British citizen, such as ‘libertee and lyfe’ (Dec 36 and note). ‘[P]assporte’ has two interrelated meanings: a government license to travel safely in a foreign country, and, more broadly, a guarantee of safe conduct. Both apply to Spenser’s phrase, the first important because it refers to the rights of the citizen, specifying it with respect to travel and international relations. In Immerito’s poem, however, it is not the monarch who gives the ‘free passporte’, and it is not the subject who receives it. Spenser rewrites law, turning the poet into a figure of authority, perhaps because he is ‘sovereigne of song’ (Nov 25): he makes the poem itself the free citizen able to travel abroad; and he converts European nations into the international community of immortalizing poets. Virgil, Chaucer, and the rest are immortalizing because their community of poets spans not just place but time. In short, Spenser stakes out the freedom of a Christian poet to traverse the controversial topics of the nation. The phrase may also allude to Ovid’s exile (see Pugh 2005: 17-18, as well as 37-8 on the Ovidian nature of the Envoy as a whole; additionally, see E. Cheney 2021: 556-61 on the Horatian dynamic.).
8 lowly gate emongste the meaner sorte: Appropriate both to pastoral as a lowly genre in the Renaissance hierarchy of genres and to a pastoral poem composed by Immerito ('The Unworthy One').
9 Tityrus hys style: Chaucer (June 81), or perhaps Virgil (cf. Oct 55), but most likely a combination. The word ‘style’ refers to the verse language of pastoral but also puns on stylus, Roman writing implement.
10 Pilgrim . . . Ploughman playde a whyle: An ambiguous formulation: most directly, authors of The Pilgrim’s Tale and The Plowman’s Tale, works thought to be written by Chaucer and printed as his in sixteenth-century editions of his works. Yet the phrase ‘playde a whyle’ suggests Spenser’s skepticism about Chaucer’s authorship (Renwick, Var 7: 428). The ‘Ploughman’ may also evoke Langland’s Piers Plowman. It is hard to tell who the three figures identified refer to, the other being ‘Tityrus’. Irrespective of who is who, the lines advertise Spenser’s affiliation with a ‘[Protestant] poetry of social and religious protest’, especially on display in the ecclesiastical eclogues (Maye, Julye, September): ‘The ideal poet presented in the Shepheardes Calender is a Protestant heroic poet who aspires to court favour but retains a measure of prophetic independence’ (Norbrook 2002: 53, 80).
11 followe them farre off, and their high steppes adore: Not just the modesty topos but also a troping of literary imitation: Spenser both adores his precursors and follows them far off. The word ‘followe’ is a technical term for literary borrowing, while ‘steppes’ forms one of the primary metaphors of literary imitation, connected to the familiar pun on ‘foote’ (Dec 116), including in Horace and Ovid (Hinds 1987: 16). Moreover, ‘high’ refers to both the elevated status of the imitated authors and their style, known as the ‘sublime’ style in sixteenth-century poetics (Ascham, Scholemaster 58r). ‘A more disarming assertion of greatness would be hard to imagine’ (D.L. Miller 1979: 227).
13 Merce non mercede: Can mean ‘for reward not hire’, a claim of authorial freedom over political power; but also ‘Grace not wages’, a claim for the reward of a free Christian poet over the demands of the mercenary (cf. McCabe 1999: 574). The Calender’s final emblem likely belongs to Immerito/Spenser, because it appears after his Envoy as the conclusion of the book, and unfolds three primary meanings: 1) ‘amorous’: ‘bountiful grace of favorable countenance, rather than any carnal or financial meed’; 2) ‘poetic’: ‘immortality for the Calender and an enduring, though modest, fame’; 3) ‘religious’: ‘trust in the . . . grace of God, rather than seeking the reward or wages . . . of his own works’ (J.M. Kennedy, 1980: 100-3).