1 morall: ‘Didactic, edifying’, but also said ‘Of a literary work, an artistic or dramatic representation’ (OED, citing, e.g., ‘Chaucer Melibeus 2130 It is a moral tale virtuous’). In the General Argument, E.K. classifies Februarie according to the ‘three formes or ranckes’ of eclogues: ‘Plaintive . . . recreative . . . Moral.’ The moral eclogues, identified as Februarye, Maye, Julye, September, and October, ‘for the most part be mixed with some Satyrical bitternesse’ (24-7). Yet E.K.’s three-form structure appears in the three worlds of Februarie itself: ‘recreative’, in Cuddie’s ‘world of joy and delight’; ‘Plaintive’, in Thenot’s counter-world of ‘loss’ and ‘lamentation’; and ‘Moral’, in the world of Thenot’s fable of the Oak and the Briar, ‘where actions are defined in ethical terms’ (Shore 1985: 25).
1–2 then bent to any secrete or particular purpose: E.K. implies a contrast with Januarye. Despite the disclaimer, critics for four centuries have speculated on the secret purpose of Februarie (see headnote).
2–4 discourse of old age . . . Heardmans boye: Introduces the nominal theme of the eclogue: a debate between youth and age.
3 Thenot: Named after a figure in Marot’s Eglogue de ma Dame Loyse de Savoye, the model for November, where Thenot also appears, as he does in Aprill. See Feb gl 3.
4 vnlustinesse: ‘Lack of strength or vigor’, with sexual connotation.
4 Cuddie: Abbreviation for Cuthbert: northern dialect. Cuddie reappears in August, where he judges the singing contest between Willye and Perigot, and in October, where E.K. says Cuddie ‘set[s] out the perfecte paterne of a Poete’ (Oct Arg), as well as in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe.
5–6 yeare . . . last age: The vernal equinox occurs in March, when the legal year was said to begin (cf. Gen Arg 37-8). It was a commonplace to equate the four seasons of the year with the four ages of man.
8 crudled: Both 'curdled' and 'crudled' were common in the early modern period; 'crudled', likely the older of the two forms, was Spenser's preferred form, and typical of northern and Scottish usage in his day.
10–11 so liuely and so feelingly: Readers have long agreed with E.K. in their response to the eclogue’s narrative verve (see headnote).
11 liuely: ‘[T]hat brings the subject to life; that represents the original faithfully’ (OED, citing FQ II.ix.2.9). Spenser recurrently uses the term to describe the working of art and poetry.
11 some Picture: On the commonplace association of poetry with painting (ut pictura poesis), see Horace, Ars Poetica 361-5; Plutarch, How the young man should study poetry 3; Scaliger, Poetices 1.1; P. Sidney, Defence of Poetry 1975: 80.
7 They wont . . . tailes: ‘They would often shake their tails in the wind’.
8 Peacock: A traditional figure of flashy pride or displayed arrogance. See Mar 80 and Oct 31.
8 nowe it auales: 'The wind' must be the referent of the singular 'it' and 'auales' seems to be transitive: it ‘auales’ (humbles) the sheep or ‘auales’ (makes them lower) their wriggling tails. (Avails can be intransitive, and can mean ‘subside’, but context argues against the wind’s subsiding.)
11–14 Must not the world . . . to his former fall: For a commonplace of cyclical history, see Maye 103-31. For a comparison of the aging of man to the decline of the world, see T. Smith, De Republica Anglorum, p. 4 (1.4).
11–12 world . . . worse: Spenser will return to the (false, punning) etymology that links 'world' to 'worse' at Sept 108 (‘They sayne the world is much war than it wont’, where E.K. glosses ‘war’ as ‘worse’), and he will recycle it with a difference at FQ IV.viii.31.6-7 (‘when the world woxe old, it woxe warre old, / [Whereof it hight])’.
14 former fall: The original fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (ME forme means earliest).
16 lusty prime: Pleasant spring. Prime could also mean first age, the return of Edenic innocence. The word ‘lusty’ also has connotations of both self-confidence and sexual vigor (OED).
17 thrise threttie: Ninety is a number of renewal in Scripture, especially aged renewal through childbirth. In Gen 5:9 and 17:17, Enosh and Sarah each become parents at ninety.
21–24 Ne euer was to Fortune foeman . . . they mought well fare: Identifies Thenot as a ‘Christian stoic,’ able to endure the buffets of fortune and to act ethically in society, in contrast to Cuddie with his ‘thoughtless hedonism’ (J.N. King 1990: 32).
21–22 foeman . . . came: A rare instance in the Calender of assonance for rhyme.
21 Fortune: The goddess of cyclical experience, conventionally depicted with a wheel. Yet the randomness of Fortune (misfortune) is both the core concept in Thenot’s moral philosophy and one of the major themes of the Calender; his emphasis on the role of Fortune here contrasts with his emphasis on human agency (esp. envy) in the fable of the Oak and Briar (Bond 1981: 55-6).
26 Cherefully . . . cheare: The rhetorical figure of ploce, the repetition of a word in close proximity having different meanings. ‘Cherefully’ means ‘cheerfully’; ‘cheare’, either ‘face’ or ‘mood’.
27–29 For Age . . . lookes downe: Cf. Ovid, Met 15.212: Inde senilis hiems tremulo venit horrida passu (‘And then comes aged winter, with faltering step and shivering’).
29 lowring Wether: The spelling and capitalization of ‘Wether’ personifies the frowning weather as the Ram, Aries, the first astrological sign of spring (in February, still a month away). A ‘wether’ is a ram (or male sheep), especially a castrated one.
30 So semest thou . . . to frowne: See Luke 23:44-5 for the sky becoming overcast as the crucifixion approaches. The image becomes proverbial. February is typically the month when Lent begins.
35–50 So loytring . . . and misery: Embroiders Mantuan, Eclogues 6.19-24, perhaps through Turberville’s 1567 translation (pp. 53-4).
35–36 So loytring . . . broomes: A striking imitation (as E.K. notes) of Chaucer’s House of Fame 1225-6, which dilates briefly on pastoral: ‘As han thise lytel herde-gromes / That kepen bestis in the bromes’.
36 broomes: Broom is a sun-loving shrub that flowers in spring.
40 And crowing . . . corne: A clear imitation of Chaucer, House of Fame 1224: ‘And pipes made of grene corn.’ Thus, Spenser divides his imitation of House of Fame 1224-6 across lines 35-40. The crow is a traditional image of the false, cacophonous poet, from Pindar (Olympian Odes 2.85-87) to George Whetstone (‘Dedication’ to Promos and Cassandra [1578] in G.G. Smith 1: 60). As such, the crow is the antagonist of the sweet-singing nightingale, referred to at Feb 123 (see note). For the crow as the antagonist of Colin Clout, see Dec 136 and note. See also Sept 46.
41 You thinken . . . yeare: Lords of misrule: OED, citing Grindal, Injunction at York: ‘The Minister and churchwardens shall not suffer any Lords of misrule or Summer Lords . . . to come unreverently into any Church’ (see McLane 1961: 153).
43 chamfred: An architectural term meaning ‘Channelled, fluted, furrowed, grooved’ (OED, citing this passage).
47 corage: Cf. Feb 80.
51–63 Ah foolish . . . Phyllis prayse: Imitated in An Eglogue Concerning olde Age 59-62, in Francis Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody (1602): ‘Ah Thenot, be not all thy teeth on edge, / To see youngths folke to sport in pastimes gay? / To pitch the Barre, to throwe the weightie fledge / To dance with Phillis all the holli-day?’
55 tottie: See Chaucer, CT Reeve 4253: ‘Myn heed is toty of my swynck to-nyght’.
56 corbe: See Gower, Florent 5.273: ‘Her neck is short, her shoulders courb’.
57 lopp and topp: A woodman’s phrase. A ‘top’ is a small branch but can mean the topmost part of a tree. Cuddie suggests that Thenot is ready for felling, having lost his vitality. February is the traditional month for wood-cutting (Luborsky 1981: 21 and her figure 14).
60 delights: Horace and Renaissance heirs like Philip Sidney stress that pleasure in poetry serves the goal of instruction or learning; here, Cuddie makes pleasure an end in itself.
62 hymnes: A hymn could be a song either in praise of the Christian God or in honor of a classical deity. Cuddie’s use of the term to designate an erotic song differs from the other fifteen uses the word hymn in the Spenser canon, where it means a high-ranking devotional genre. For the distinction between divine hymn and love song, see Nov 7-10, where the terms ‘hymn’ and ‘hery’ recur (this last term is used only these two times in the Spenser canon).
62 gloue: Focusing on the beloved’s glove rather than on her person was a common fetish. See Wyatt, ‘What needs these threatening words,’ titled in Tottel’s Miscellany (1557) ‘To his love from whom he had her gloves’. Edward de Vere, earl of Oxford, was well known to have introduced embroidered gloves into England, and famously he gave Queen Elizabeth a scented pair (see McLane 1961: 70).
63 Phyllis: The name, rare in Elizabethan poetry before Spenser, is largely classical and pastoral, and shows up recurrently in Virgil’s Eclogues (e.g., 3.76-9, 106-7), as well as in Horace, Propertius, and Ovid; yet Surrey had included Phyllis in the Petrarchan complaint ‘If waker care’, which Tottle titles ‘The lover confesseth him in love with Phillis’. Edward Dyer, a close friend of Philip Sidney, mentioned by Spenser in Letters~~--~~and called by Harvey ‘oure onlye Inglish poet’ (Sargent 1935: 167), wrote an important poem on a figure named Phyllis, although it may postdate the Calender (May 1991: 7.1-3).
65 gyrdle of gelt: A gold waist-band, or cestus, an emblem of chastity, worn by Venus in Homer, Il 14.214-21, but also by Persephone when raped by Pluto in Ovid, Met 5.468-70. In Spenser, the cestus is worn by Florimell at FQ III.vii.31.8; see also FQ IV.v.3-6. Skelton uses ‘gelt’ for ‘gold’, as in The tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng 607-10. Cuddie’s use of the golden girdle to ‘win’ Phyllis identifies seduction as the goal of his song.
66 buegle: 'A tube-shaped bead made of glass used to make jewellery or to ornament clothing' (OED, citing Spenser).
74 dewelap: 'The fold of loose skin which hangs from the throat of cattle' (OED, citing this instance).
74 lythe, as lasse of Kent: Cf. Drayton, Idea: The Shepheards Garland, Eclogue 8.147-9: ‘Her feature all as fresh above / As is the grasse that growes by Dove / As lyth as lasse of Kent.’
77–84 Semeth thy . . . lustlesse and old: Cf. Jan 43-8.
86 headlesse hood: Heedless hood; (hence brainless, stupid). Spenser is playfully responding to the proverbial phrase, 'two heads in one hood' (sometimes rendered as 'two faces in one hood'): someone with two heads in one hood is two-faced. Thenot wittily dismisses Cuddie as brainless; his hood has no head in it whatsoever.
87–90 For Youngth . . . hoste of Greeuaunce: A mini-narrative that Spenser will expand often in The Faerie Queene, in which a hero’s wandering in the ‘wildernesse’ will lead to an ‘ynne’ of ‘Pennaunce’ or house of instruction (e.g., FQ I.x). Cf. 2 Cor 11:26: ‘In journaying I was often . . . in perils in wilderness.’
87 For Youngth . . . breath: A common emblem. Cuddie violates Eccles 12:1: ‘Remember now thy Creator in the daies of thy youth’.
88 Whose wage is death: Cf. Rom 6:23: ‘the wages of sinne is death’.
90 stoopegallaunt: 'Something that humbles "gallants"' (OED, citing this instance). The word was also a name for the sweating sickness, a highly contagious disease that affected many, so the line means both 'humbling age' and something like 'plague-ridden age'. Brian Melbanke recycles Spenser's phrase, 'stoupe gallant age', in a darker, more bitterly satiric passage from Philotimus (1583, K2r).
91–97 But shall . . . old man bespake: Cf. Mantuan, Eclogues 6.38-40.
91–92 tale of truth . . . cond of Tityrus: As E.K. points out in his gloss, Thenot’s tale does not derive from Chaucer but from Aesop (see headnote).
92 Tityrus: The shepherd’s name adopted by Virgil for his pastoral persona in Eclogues, but here adapted to mean Chaucer (see Introduction). Cf. June 81. At Oct 55, Virgil is distinguished as ‘the Roman Tityrus’.
93 Keeping his sheepe on the hils of Kent: Chaucer was an MP from Kent and contributed to the Kent peace commission.
95 nouells of his deuise: News invented by him. OED cites Spenser’s use of ‘novells’: ‘Something new; novelty. Obs.’ Yet two other definitions apply: ‘news, tidings’, which is closely related to the first; and ‘Any of a number of tales or stories making up a larger work; a short narrative of this type’, including ‘the Decameron of Boccaccio and the Heptameron of Marguerite of Valois’. Modern editors gloss ‘novells’ with only this third definition, but the second also applies, since Cuddie has ‘hear[d]’ the novels. Thus, Spenser’s word taps into all three definitions, suggesting a new form of vernacular literature that communicates important news to society (P. Cheney 2002: 247).
98–101 Many meete . . . hearken the end: Introduces a Chaucerian triad of literary forms: tales of ‘love’; tales of ‘chevalrie’; and ‘novels’ that are ‘well thewed’. This triad coheres with the tripartite scheme of literary topics in Dante’s De vulgaria eloquentia: 'prowess in arms, kindling of love, rectitude of will’ (Shapiro 1990: 71). In turn, the Dantean/Chaucerian model of love poetry, didactic poetry, and heroic poetry forms a medieval version of the Virgilian triad of pastoral, georgic, and epic, which Spenser specifies at Oct 55-9 (and E.K. clarifies in his gloss). Thenot’s fable of the Oak and the Briar qualifies as a didactic work corresponding to the Georgics in Virgil’s career model, as the role of the Husbandman suggests (P. Cheney 2002; see below). The balanced phrasing ‘And some of love, and some of chevalrie’ anticipates ‘Fierce warres and faithfull loves’ at FQ I.pr.1.9.
101 Now listen . . . the end: ‘Listen to the outcome’, but also ‘attend to the moral lesson’. Thenot’s moralizing tale evokes not only an older generation of humanist educators, such as Sir Thomas Elyot, but also an older generation of didactic poets, such as Thomas Churchyard.
102–238 There grewe an aged Tree . . . For scorning Eld: Matt 3:10 and Luke 3:9 became the basis for the Protestant Reformers to cut down the tree of Catholicism. Cf. Maye 174-305 for another fable evoking the religious situation in England. For imitations of Spenser’s fable, see Drayton, Idea: The Shepheards Garland 2.41-60; Shirley, The Royal Master (1638) 5.2.4-17. In Thenot’s fable, the Oak may represent the earl of Leicester, the Briar the earl of Oxford, and the Husbandman Elizabeth (McLane 1961), but such simplistic identifications seem less compelling than more general allusions to generational disputes between older and younger courtiers, although the Husbandman does evoke the queen (Bond 1981; Montrose 1981).
102–114 There grewe . . . braunches sere: Traditionally, the oak is the tree of kingship, strength, and endurance, but it is also the tree of epic (SpE s.v. ‘trees’). In his Roman epic the Pharsalia, Lucan famously presents Pompey the Great as an old oak tree vulnerable to the lightning bolt of his arch-enemy, Julius Caesar (1.136-43). Subsequently, Du Bellay borrows Lucan’s oak in his sonnet sequence Les Antiquitez de Rome (1558), which Spenser translates in his 1591 Complaints as The Ruines of Rome, where Rome is a ‘great Oke drie and dead, / Yet clad with reliques of some Trophees olde’, still able to support ‘manie yong plants’ (379-89). See also Nov 125, Dec 31, and notes.
114 His honor . . . sere: Cf. Virgil, Geor 2.403-4: Ac iam olim, seras posuit cum vinea frondes, / Frigidus et silvis Aquilo decussit honorem (‘And already, whenever the vineyard has shed her autumn leafage, and the North Wind has shaken their glory from the woods’).
115 brere: Briar, a wild rose bush. Feb 130 evokes the Tudor Rose of Queen Elizabeth (Brooks-Davies 1995: 46), suggesting that Spenser alludes to the proposed French marriage of the late 1570s, when Elizabeth was matched with the Duc d’Alençon, only to be vigorously opposed by the Leicester-Sidney circle, to which Spenser was party.
116 Thelement: The air, regarded as the element par excellence.
120–123 shepheards daughters . . . Nightingale singing so lowde: The image of the shepherds’ daughters coming to the rose briar to make floral garlands for themselves in tune with the nightingale evokes the art of making poetry.
121 girlonds: The unusual spelling, unprecedented in EEBO-TCP, seems to pun on 'girl'. (On the other hand, the word 'girl' appears nowhere in Spenser's printed works.)
123 Nightingale: Philomela, a traditional figure for poetry and pastoral poetry, associated in the Calender with Colin Clout (Aug 183-86; Nov 25 and 141; Dec 79). For the story of Philomela, Princess of Athens, raped and silenced by her brother-in-law, Tereus, and eventually metamorphosed into a nightingale, see Ovid, Met 6.440-674. Feb 123 is ‘the fable’s central line’ (Oram 1989: 38).
126 And snebbe . . . was old: Cf. Chaucer, CT Gen Pro 523.
129–132 Seest, how . . . mayden Queene: An allusion to Queen Elizabeth. Cf. Apr 68 and E.K.’s gloss.
132 Colours meete . . . Queene: Like her father, Henry VIII, Elizabeth united the red rose of the House of Lancaster and the white rose of the House of York.
133 combers the grownd: Cf. Luke 13:7 in William Tyndale’s translation: ‘Cut it down: why combreth it the grounde?’
134 dirks: Cf. Chaucer, Boethius, who uses forms of the word ten times and only in this translation.
135–136 The mouldie . . . annoieth: Cf. Chaucer, PF 517-8: ‘And whoso hit doth ful foule hymself acloyeth, / For office uncommytted ofte anoyeth.’ ‘Encloy’, a variant spelling of ‘accloy’, is also used by Lydgate (OED).
142 overawed: Most editors adopt the reading of the 1586 edition: ‘overcrawed’.
144–146 The Husbandman . . . compasse rownd: This passage contains technical terms from the Elizabethan project of land and property surveying (see below).
145 custome: A term from surveying. A ‘landscape of custom’ is ‘a landscape structured by custom---those activities performed by lord and tenantry, but especially the latter, that "have been used, time out of memorie of man"---and everyday practice’ (Sullivan 1998: 12).
145 seruewe: Evokes estate surveying. During the period, writers complained about ‘the decline of hospitality [and] survey-engendered abuses of the tenantry through rack-renting or "progressive estate management"’ (Sullivan 1998: 12). By surveying his land ‘Of custome’, Thenot’s Husbandman paradoxically evokes both customary relations to the land threatened by surveying and the activity of the surveyor himself.
146 trees . . . rownd: ‘Stately, well-grown trees’. The phrase ‘trees of state’ evokes the monarch and her monarchy.
146 state: Can also mean ‘estate’, the land of a wealthy landowner.
149 Unto his . . . strife: Cf. Tyndale’s translation of Prov 10:12: ‘Evyll wyll stereth up stryfe’ (and Prov 15:18, 28: 25). Also, see the opening of the pseudo-Chaucerian Plowman’s Tale: ‘A sterne strife stired newe.’
150–156 O my liege Lord . . . felonous force of mine enemie: The ‘briar engages in a "crafty" exploitation of a legal form---as Thenot notes, he cloaks "colowred crime with craft"---here [dressing] a personal grudge in an apparently [legally] actionable form’(Zurcher 2007: 75).
156 felonous: Chaucerian, obsolete by 1590s.
158 lea: Most likely ‘scythe’ (a northernism: OED) but perhaps also ‘ground’ (untilled land).
160 With painted . . . weede: Cf. Cicero, Orator 27.96.
163–165 Ah my . . . owne hand: Gesturing to the new gentry fostered by the Tudors and the new aristocrats they occasionally created.
167 blossomes, For a possible emendation to ‘bloosmes’ see Maye 187n.
178 Coronall: Cf. Edward Hall: 'euery duches had put on their bonettes a coronal of gold wrought with flowers' (The Vnion of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre [and] Yorke, NNN6r); and Lydgate's apostrophe to the Virgin Mary: 'eternall ye shyne, | In glory with Laureat coronall, | . . . Floure of clennes and pure virginite!' (Regina celi letare, ll. 1-6).
187 sufferance: ‘Choice, decision, indulgence’; also punning on the legal meaning of the condition of holding a lawfully inherited estate or kingdom after the title has become invalid.
191 Had kindled . . . displeasure: Cf. Sept 86.
195 hent: Archaic. Cf. Nov 169.
201 But to . . . stroke: Cf. Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 28: ‘How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke’.
206–210 Or to wrong . . . water dewe: Cf. Virgil, Aen 7.59-62: Laurus erat tecti medio in penetralibus altis, / Sacra comam multosque metu servata per annos, / Quam pater inventam, primas cum conderet arces, / Ipse ferebatur Phoebo sacrasse Latinus (‘In the midst of the palace, in the high inner courts, stood a laurel of sacred leafage, preserved in awe through many years, which Lord Latinus himself, ’twas said, found and dedicated to Phoebus’). The passage is the first in Februarie to evoke the Reformation battle between Protestant and Catholic: ‘a double-edged warning against the religious excesses of both radical Protestants and Catholic recusants. . . . Even though Protestantism claimed that it was the ancient "religion of the apostles and Catholicism a latter-day distortion," Reformation satirists used generational conflict as a conventional allegorical figure that could be directed against either "old" Catholic believers or headstrong Protestant youth’ (J.N. King 1990: 34).
207–208 For it . . . a mysteree: An allusion to the Druids, whom the Reformers identified as an ancient religion thought to herald Christianity, thus identifying the oak ‘as a symbol of ancient British liberties’ (Brooks-Davies 1995: 49). Yet Thenot’s speech is studded with ambiguity (Berger 1988: 427), and the druidic Oak has long been associated with the ‘foolerie’ (211) of Catholicism (Var 7: 264).
209 crewe: A French loan word, suggesting French Catholicism, and thus the proposed Alençon marriage.
210 dewe: Both ‘requisite’ and ‘droplets’.
211 sike: Northern, Scots dialect.
215–220 The blocke . . . to shake: Cf. Virgil, Aen 2.628-31: [ornus] vsque minatur / Et tremefacta comam concusso vertice nutat, / Vulneribus donec paulatim evicta supremum / Congemuit traxitque iugis avulsa ruinam (‘[the ash tree] ever threatens to fall, and nods, with trembling leafage and rocking crest, till, little by little, overcome with wounds, it gives one loud last groan and, uptorn from the ridges, comes crashing down’).
215 The blocke oft groned vnder the blow: Cf. Sonnets and Bellay 5.12.
219–237 His wonderous . . . Ambitious brere: Henry More, in The Apology of Dr. Henry More (1664: pp. 514-5), says of this passage: ‘Spencer . . . in his second Eclogue . . . has so lively set down the effects of the extirpation of Episcopacy upon the Presbyters themselves, when once that great shelter of Church-Government was removed’.
231 stalke: The final e is perhaps sounded, (see Maye 279). Given the balance of evidence in the eclogue, one might expect a disyllabic ‘stalke’, but other lines are also out of measure.
238 For scorning Eld: Unpunctuated in the original edition, a half line functioning in the fiction of the debate as an interruption---the first instance in the Spenser canon of a broken verse line to represent interrupted meaning (cf. Jan 71 and note; for later examples, see FQ II.x.68.2, III.iii.50.1). One of the ‘notable functions’ of Thenot’s fable ‘is to be interrupted’ (Montrose 1981: 71). Thenot’s failure to persuade Cuddie recalls Colin’s failure to persuade Rosalind (Jan 63-6).
244 galage: Variant of galosh, or a shoe with wooden sole and leather-thonged upper.
248–249 Jddio . . .essempio: '"Because he is old, God makes his own to his own pattern", or "Because God is old, take him for an example"' (McCabe 1999:525). Ital.
251–252 Niuno . . . Iddio: ‘No old man fears God’. Ital.
2–3 Gride) perced . . . in Chaucer: According to MED, ‘girds’ and ‘grides’ are interchangeable. Cf. Chaucer, who uses ‘girt’ and ‘girden’ (CT Knight 1010, Monk 7.2546 [3736]; TC 4.627), of which ‘gride’ is a metathesis. E.K. refers the form correctly to Lydgate, Troy Book 2.14.
10 Mimus Publianus: Erasmus edited the Sententiae or proverbs of Publius (Publilius) Syrus as Mimi Publiani (Opuscula Aliquot, Basel, 1514). Publilius Syrus was a Latin mime writer (one who wrote dramatic scenes representing real life) of the first century BC.
11 Improbe . . . facit: ‘It is an outrage in a man twice shipwrecked to blame the God of Sea’ (Sententiae 331).
20 Breme: OED notes Spenser's revival of the word from Lydgate as an adjective for ‘winter’ (Troy Book 2.16).
21 Chamfred: In Thesaurus linguae Romanae et Britannicae (1565), Thomas Cooper uses the word to translate striatus.
29 Phyllis: Cf. Virgil, Ecl 3.76; Mantuan, Eclogues 4.176. Theocritus never mentions Phyllis.
47 Æsopes: Cf. the reed and the olive tree, Fables 143.
111 Feb gl 111: furre] The spelling was sufficiently uncommon to incite 1586 to emendation, both here and four lines later. Either here or at 116, ‘furre’ may be a misreading of ‘ſure’ (sure, secure).
51 To wonne: E.K.s explanation of 'wonned' would lead to a tautology; Spenser’s 'wonned to' means 'used to'.
52 Sneb: 'Snub', a form of 'snib'.
63 The Primrose: An etymological pun: prim rose = L prima rosa, the first (or spring) rose.
67 κατ’ είκασμόν: Kat’ eikasmon (‘as a comparison’).
73 Enaunter: Or, ‘in case’. Archaic. Cf. Maye 78, Sept 161.
78–79 The blocke . . . grauido etc.: This phrase does not appear in Virgil. Cf. Mother Hubberd 1029-30; Silius Italicus, Punicorum 5.398: Dant gemitum scopuli (‘the cliffs bellow’); Flaccus, Argonautica 3.164: cuneisque gemit grave robur adactis (‘and the heavy oak groans as the wedges are driven home.’)
79 Saxa gemunt grauido: ‘[T]he rocks groaned at the heavy blow’.
113 [Em] Erasmus: Not in his Adagia (1500). Desiderius Erasmus was a widely influential Dutch humanist, author of The Praise of Folly (1509), and a friend of Sir Thomas More.
115 Nemo . . . Iouem: ‘No old man fears Jove’. Not in Erasmus.