3–4 The speciall meaning . . . the Poets God of Loue: E.K.’s phrasing suggests a story about the love-inflected art of the youthful poet (not simply love itself). E.K.’s preoccupation with the ‘speciall meaning’ of Spenser’s poetry continues in his subsequent glosses, which recurrently translate the poet’s metaphors for the reader, providing an early cue for modern interpretations (sometimes of E.K. himself). Whereas Cupid is certainly ‘a supernatural ancient source’ (Spitzer 1950: 500), the god is also ‘an even more ancient psychological force subsequently externalized and apotheosized by classical tradition’ (Berger 1988: 362).
5–6 secrete freend: Not identified. Cf. Julye, where Thomalin reappears, more mature, and identifiable with Thomas Cooper, Bishop of London.
6 knights: Hints at the courtly, political matrix of the eclogue.
11 The swallow: Cf. Ovid, Fasti 2.853: veris pranuntia venit hirundo (‘has the swallow come, the harbinger of spring’).
13–24 Seest not . . . our daunce: The unusual congestion of ‘figurative phrases’ here dilates on the gap between Willye’s casual, innocent references (to the hawthorn bush putting forth its head, the classical goddess Flora making Maia’s bower ready, the shepherdess Lettice ‘wex[ing] . . . light’, the god Cupid awakening, and the lake/river Lethe sleeping), on the one hand, and, on the other, the verse’s sophisticated learning, which gives Spenser’s ‘fable a distinctly literary flavor and sets it in a network of myths and motifs that have already been invested with allegorical values by established interpretive traditions’ (Berger 1988: 365-6). Willye’s cheerful representation of a vital springtime world arousing love from dormancy is ominously laden with danger: with arrogance, sexual aggression, illicit misconduct, mastery, and oblivion.
13–15 Seest not . . . head?: The youthful hawthorn here recalls the bragging Briar at Feb 115-26.
13 Hawthorne: Cf. Maye 13.
20 Lettice: Probably from L laetitia, joy, thus a name appropriate for the spring (cf. Apr 144, ‘flower Delice’, which E.K. glossed as flos delitiarum). The name may allude to Lettice Knollys, the widowed countess of Essex, whose secret marriage to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, early in 1579 infuriated the queen.
21 askaunce: The detail is so striking in context as to raise an eyebrow at E.K.’s gloss on Lettice: ‘the name of some country lasse’.
23 That nowe . . . Lethe lake: Lethe was not a lake but a river in the classical underworld, and souls drank of it to lose their memory of a painful life on earth, which Virgil famously describes at Aen 6.703-51. Cf. Aen 6.134 for lacus (‘lake’) applied to the River Styx, which E.K might be remembering. Yet ‘Spenser’s “errors” are . . . poetically motivated’, for ‘Lethe becomes a stagnant lake, not a flowing river’; moreover, ‘in medieval English, lake meant . . . a "slowly flowing river"’ (Spitzer 1950: 501n2).
34–35 my sheepe . . . bewray: Cf. Januarye, where Colin Clout’s love of Rosalind threatens to impede his duty to his flock.
37–57 Thomalin . . . on the greene: In the context of the Calender (e.g., To His Booke 10, Jan 43-9), Willye and Thomalin’s sustained dialogue on watching their sheep suggests the enduring topic of pastoral responsibility---ecclesiastical, political, poetic---as details following indicate.
37–42 Thomalin, haue . . . mine: A topos common to pastoral (see E.K.’s gloss): Theocritus, Idyll 1.12-4; Virgil, Ecl 5.12; Boccaccio, Eclogues 5.620; Marot, Complainct de Madame Loyse 2.261. Cf. Maye 172-3.
38 a double eye: In an eclogue about adolescents who ‘spy’ Cupid, a resonant phrase. Willye uses it to advance his friendly skill at seeing two things at once, his own flock and Thomalin’s--a skill he has honed because his father and stepmother routinely count his sheep. But at Maye 254 ‘double-eyed’ means ‘two-faced’ or ‘deceitful’.
39 Ylike: Archaic.
41 whott: ‘Hot and choleric’, but also ‘sexually aroused and threatening’. Willye is unique in the Calender in having a full set of parents---for having parents at all. Indeed, March is the one eclogue featuring shepherds who have a family, although Spenser keeps it in the background of the fiction. Cf. Maye for Piers’ fable of the Dame and her Kid. The concept of ‘home’ in the Calender, which concludes most eclogues, including Mar (117), tends to be more about friendship than family.
50 clouted: Cf. Maye 243, where the Foxe who traps the Kid has ‘His hinder heele . . . wrapt in a clout’. The word also evokes Colin Clout, Spenser’s persona, suggesting that the ‘unhappye Ewe’ who wears the clout on her leg and falls in a dell might be Queen Elizabeth, who would be harmed through the French marriage. Thus, the idea of the clout as a bandage evokes the traditional idea of the poet as a physician or healer (P. Cheney 1993: 135-56, 277n25). The Ewe with her bandaged leg ‘mirror[s]’ Thomalin’s wounded heel (Berger 1988: 363).
53–54 Mought her . . . spell: ‘If she had also broken her neck, she would not need healing charms’.
57 mought . . . greene: ‘Would not stay on the public pasture land (village green)’.
58–60 Let be . . . seene: ‘These three lines, delicately poised between past and future, serve as the structural centre of the eclogue, dividing 57 lines of dialogue from 57 lines of mythological anecdote’ (McCabe 1999: 527). One wonders whether Shakespeare remembers these lines in Hamlet: ‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be [now], ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it [will] come---the readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is’t to leave betimes, let be’ (5.2.219-24).
61–102 Thomalin’s detailed story of discovering Cupid in a bush while out hunting one holiday---based on Bion’s Idylls 4, perhaps mediated through Ronsard’s translation, L’Amour oiseau, or Poliziano’s Latin translation (see headnote)---is the set piece of March, the correlate to Colin’s song to Pan in Januarye and Thenot’s fable of the Oak and the Briar in Februarie, as well as an anticipation of Colin’s lay of Elisa in Aprill.
62 When shepheardes groomes han leaue to playe: Inaugurates the Calender’s dialogue on the merits of pastoral play. Cf. Sept 232, where Diggon contradicts Thomalin’s youthful holiday principle with one appropriate to the mature gloom of autumn: ‘with shepheard sittes not playe.’ Maye especially features the topos; see Maye 179n. At Mar 95, Cupid continues to ‘playe’ even after Thomalin runs away.
64 wandring: Usually in Spenser a sign of moral straying, yet here presented as the sporting act of youth.
66 tooting: Cf. Skelton, Philip Sparrow 421-2; Piers Plowman’s Creed 219. In the Calender, the singing of birds almost always functions as a symbol of the poet’s art, thereby inviting a vocational reading of Thomalin’s story. In his translation of Tasso’s GL 14.66, Fairfax imitates line 66.
67 Yuie todde: Spenser replaces Bion’s box-tree with an ivy-bush. Typically in Spenser, ivy is a symbol of lust (e.g., Aug 30).
71 Listening:The producers of 1586, working from 1581 as their copy text and having apparently recognized that the orthography of the poems in their copy usually serves to guide syllable-count, adjust their reading to ‘Listning’.
76 snake: Cf. Jan 65 and note on Rosalind’s response to Colin’s art: ‘Shepheards devise she hateth as the snake’.
79–83 With that sprong . . . slacke: Cf. Henry More, Cupid’s Conflict, which imitates the lines: ‘At’s snowy back the boy a quiver wore / Right fairly wrought and gilded all with gold: / A silver bow in his left hand he bore’ (49-51).
80 Peacocks: Here a symbol of alertness and colorful splendor (cf. Ovid, Met 1.720-23), but evocative also of pride (cf. Feb 8, Oct 31). The passage seems to be indebted to lines 9-10 of Ronsard, ‘Ode’ (the original version of ‘L’amour oyseau’), Nouvelle continuation des amours (1556) e2.
82 gylden quiuer: Cf. Moschus, Eros the Runaway 20.
89 pumie: Pumice is not native to England, but rather to the literary tradition. See Ovid’s description of the grotto named Gargaphie (Met 3.156-60; Friedman 1966; Cullen 1970: 104), transplanted to Belphoebe’s glade at FQ III.v.39.8. Yet the pumice stone is also an implement of the poet (Propertius, Elegies 3.1.8; Greek Anthology 6.62-8, 295). The stone reappears at 93.
91wight: Cf. Chaucer, CT Monk 2265-7: 'she koude eke / Wrastlen . . . / With any yong man, were he never so wight'.
94 affrayd I ranne away: Thomalin earlier described himself as ‘manfully’ shooting at Cupid (78).
95 playe: See 62n.
97 And hit me running in the heele: See Mar gl #n. The detail shows Thomalin to be ‘our tiny Achilles’ (Berger 1988: 363).
98–102 For then I little smart . . . cease it: The process recurs throughout Spenser, and especially recalls Colin in Januarye. Yet, whereas lovers like Colin become lovesick at seeing the physical beauty of a person, Thomalin becomes lovesick at the sight of originary desire itself, participating in a ‘homoerotic narcissism, since what the hunter pursues is not a woman but (presumably his own) desire as a god’ (Berger 1988: 361).
102 wote: Archaism.
105 token: E.K. introduces the word in the Argument.
106–114 For once . . . daunted: Willye’s story of his father’s entrapment of Cupid in a net alludes to Vulcan’s entrapment of the adulterous Venus and Mars (headnote). See Homer, Od 8.266-369.
106 For once I heard my father say: Willye’s father (the eclogue’s replacement for Bion’s old ploughman) is the ‘graybeard’ who represents the literary tradition (Berger 1988: 369).
110 carrion Crowes: The idea that ‘love’ (104) becomes entangled in a net originally set for crows who eat carrion functions as a symbol of the tradition of love as a grim form of malady, recorded graphically in the emblems of both Willye and Thomalin (see below).
111 Peeretree: This striking scene with Cupid caught in a pear tree---‘the lecherous perch’ (Allen 1960: 18)---replays Chaucer, CT Merchant 2207-11, the story of beautiful young May’s adultery with her lover Damyan while she stands on the shoulders of her old husband January (Nelson 1963: 42-3).
118–123 In Let 3.188-93, Harvey quotes both emblems.
119–120 To be wise . . . aboue: From Publilius Syrus, Sententiae 22: Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur. Willye’s Emblem fits in with the eclogue’s evocations of two significant marriages, both involving Queen Elizabeth: Leicester’s marriage to Lettice Knollys (see 20n), and Elizabeth’s proposed marriage to Alençon (see 50n and Mar gl #n) by warning powerful adults to be wise about desire.
122–123 Of Hony . . . is more: Refers to the Platonic-Orphic tradition of the bitterness underlying love’s sweetness (cf. Theocritus, Idylls 1.19; Plautus, Cistellaria 1.69-70), which becomes a Renaissance commonplace.
122 Gaule: The spelling suggests an allusion to Elizabeth’s proposed French marriage (Gaul = France).
1 Theocritus: Not Theocritus, but Bion (Idylls 4).
4 Ouerwent We follow 1597 in closing up the two words in our copy, bringing E.K.’s lemma into accord with the text of the eclogue.
6 To quell: A form of the intransitive verb, quail: cf. Nov 91.
14 Andronica: Unidentified. ‘[P]resumably [this] alludes to her power over men as lover or prostitute: Greek andros ([ἀνδρός,] ‘man’) + nikē ([νίκη,] victory)’ (Brooks-Davies 1995: 61).
10 Tacitus: Not Tacitus but Boccaccio, Gen Deor 4.61.3-4. Nonetheless, E.K.’s reference to Tacitus, republican author of Rome and outspoken critic of the corrupt Roman empire, coheres with the reference to Sir Thomas Smith in Januarye, thereby evoking the group of aristocrats in the Sidney-Leicester circle who criticized the queen for pursuing the French marriage.
10 Flora: Cf. Maye 31. The language of E.K.’s gloss here and at Apr 86-7, 122, and especially Apr 110 and Maye 142, derives from Cooper, Thesaurus.
19 Macrobius: See Saturnalia 1.12.19; at paragraph 20, he reports that ‘Maia . . is the Earth’; but E.K. probably relies on Boccaccio, Gen Deor 4.35.4.
18 Mercurie: Messenger god, god of eloquence, and god of shepherds, who could be depicted bearing a ram (zodiacal sign of March).
21 Ascaunce: Can imply disdain.
32 Poetes: Cf. Ovid, Remedia Amoris 701 for purpureas pueri . . . alas (‘the Boy’s purple wings’; trans. adapted). Also, cf. Henry More, Cupid’s Conflict for an imitation of these lines and of 67-9: ‘Lo! on the other side in thickest bushes / A mighty noise! with that a naked swain / With blew and purple wings streight rudely rushes’ (44-6); Milton, PL 4.763-4: ‘Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights / His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings’.
34 Est . . . nouerca: ‘I have at home a harsh father and stepmother’ (Virgil, Ecl 3.33).
40 Chaucer: In CT Thopas 893, but misquoted: E.K. is condensing three separate calls for attention in the Tale of Thopas. The third instances Chaucer's only use of 'spell' to describe a poetic narrative. This notion of poetry as a form of magic influences Colin's account of his developing skills in Dec.
51 Propertius: See Elegies 2.12.
51–53 Moschus . . . Politianus: See Moschus, Idylls 1.15, and Poliziano’s Latin translation in his 1512 Epigrammata.
54 thys Poets: Spenser’s translation does not survive, but cf. FQ III.vi.11-26 for the story of Venus searching for the runaway Cupid. march.glosse.56 Quicke and deliuer: E.K. slightly misrepresents 'wimble and wight' as a pleonasm, whereas the two terms suggest two different, but complementary aspects of Cupid's power. On wight see Mar 91n.
56 Quicke and deliuer: E.K. slightly misrepresents 'wimble and wight' as a pleonasm, whereas the two terms suggest two different, but complementary aspects of Cupid's power. On wight see Mar 91n.
58 Homer: Not in Homer but Fulgentius, Mythologiae 3.7 via Boccaccio, Gen Deor 12.52.
66 Eustathius: A twelfth-century Homeric scholar from Constantinople who produced allegorizing commentary on the Iliad and Odyssey; but E.K.’s source is Boccaccio, Gen Deor 12.52.
71 Hipocrates: Gr physician of the fifth century BC. Cf. Hippocrates, Of Airs, Waters, Places 22.