“Astrophel” and Spenser’s 1595 Quarto

explorations in renaissance culture 41 (2015) 149-177

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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/23526963-04102002

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“Astrophel” and Spenser’s 1595 Quarto

Elisabeth ChaghafiUniversität Tübingen

[email protected]

Abstract

Edmund Spenser’s “Astrophel” tends to be regarded as a minor poem that is inade-quate as an elegy for Sidney and is further overshadowed by “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe.” Originally, both poems were published in the same volume in 1595, along with works by four other poets. Nonetheless, modern readings of “Astrophel” have been substantially shaped by modern editing practice, which has separated it from the rest of the volume’s contents. This article examines the original published context of “Astrophel” in detail and argues that all of the contents of the 1595 quarto — including those not written by Spenser himself — were intended to (and should) be read as a unit.

Keywords

Spenser – Sidney – Astrophel – Clorinda – Colin Clouts Come Home Againe – Elegy – Editing – History of the Book

The poem “Astrophel” presents a challenge for Spenser scholars and editors alike. It is still viewed primarily as one of Spenser’s minor works: an inexplica-bly “bad” elegy, further overshadowed by the apparently much more signifi-cant “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” published within the same volume. “Astrophel”’s oddness is not limited to its timing and its un-elegiac tone; it also creates bibliographic problems, illustrated by the lack of naming conventions to describe the poem within its wider publication context. The title page makes no mention of “Astrophel,” yet it is problematic (given the full list of contents) to call it Colin Clouts Come Home Againe. I will therefore be referring to the volume as a whole as the 1595 quarto. Moreover, since the commemorative poems which constitute the second half of the volume are meant to be read as

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a collection of poems forming a unit (as I argue here), I will use the title Astrophel to refer to this unit, so as to distinguish it from “Astrophel,” the first poem of the collection. Once we properly label the collection, we can properly analyze it.

In this article, I aim to show that “Astrophel” (and Astrophel) has been misunderstood because the title “A Pastorall Elegie vpon the death of […] Sir Philip Sidney” has been taken too literally.1 This has resulted in a de-contextualization reflected in and perpetuated by modern editors. “Astrophel” has been both extracted from Astrophel through the removal of poems by other poets and separated from “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,” although the appearance of the 1595 quarto suggests they were intended to be read together. In order to understand why it is a misconcep-tion to regard “Astrophel” merely as an oddly unsuccessful elegy, we must view it in its original publication context. “Publication context” in this case should be taken both in the material sense (it is paired with the ambitious authorial fiction of “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” and accompanied by poems by others) and in the historical sense, as part of the printed responses to Sidney’s death during the 1580s and 1590s.

For this purpose, the article is structured as follows: the first section examines how “Astrophel” is viewed today and how that view has been indirectly shaped by early Spenser scholars and editors. This overview of the reception history of “Astrophel” is followed by a detailed description of the 1595 quarto’s contents to explain the material publishing context of “Astrophel.” The second section widens the focus by explaining its context within the different waves of responses to Sidney’s death, while paying particularly close attention to the three elegies from The Phoenix Nest (1593) that were reprinted as part of Astrophel. Finally, the third section examines how “Astrophel” connects to the remaining contents of the 1595 quarto —through shared characters, shared setting and the shared con-cept of the “sheapheards nation” — and offers a reading of the volume as an exploration of the poet’s social role and the creation of poetry.

“Astrophel” is almost universally regarded by critics as a poor minor work. Historically, Spenser scholars (especially those of the first half of the twentieth century) have bemoaned its failure as a work of commemoration. H.S.V. Jones’s observation that it “occupies no very distinguished place in the long tradition of the elegy” carries a note of regret that an unquestionably great poet, who in

1 The “Pastorall Elegie” cited here, like other works in the same volume, are found in the original edition: Spenser, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (London, 1595).

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1595 stood at the height of his powers, should have written a “bad” elegy.2 There has been a strong impulse to find excuses for “Astrophel”’s falling short of read-ers’ expectations. S.E. Winbolt tries to defend Spenser by arguing that he only wrote an elegy for Sidney “because it was expected of him [although] [h]is heart was, apparently, not in the work,” while H.E. Cory proposes that Sidney’s death caused Spenser a poetic trauma that left him “chilled by his sadness to an unwonted and uneasy self-consciousness,” rendering him unable to write true to his usual form.3 Michael O’Connell, on the other hand, argues that Spenser deliberately transferred all emotional involvement to the “Lay of Clorinda,” the second half of what he terms “Spenser’s double elegy.”4

There is at once a connection and a disconnection between “Astrophel” and Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender (1579), which in 1595 was already in its fourth reprint. Both texts evoke the presence of Sidney, but they do so in very differ-ent ways. The title page of The Shepheardes Calender had contained an ambig-uously worded dedication to Sidney which, in connection with Sidney’s known interest in poetry, led at least one early reader to mistake it for an attribution of authorship.5 Nevertheless, that dedication, together with the poem “To His Booke,” had based Sidney’s suitability as a patron on his social status as the “president / of noblesse and of cheualree,” not on his reputation for poetry. “Astrophel,” by contrast, evokes Sidney the poet as well as Sidney the soldier. In both cases Spenser’s evocation of Sidney raises the question of how well he knew Sidney and his works. In 1579 (despite the cultivated air of connection in the Letters published soon after) the answer to this question would probably have been “not very well at all.”6 In 1595, however, the situation was different.

2 Jones 330.3 Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender ¶ja-¶jb.4 Winbolt 64; Corey 215; O’Connell 27–35, 34–5. Theodore L. Steinberg has taken a more

uncommon approach by not seeking an emotional or poetic explanation for the poem’s tone but instead proposing that it is intended to be critical of what he terms the “myth of Astrophel” (Steinberg 187–201). This reading fails to take into account the other poems in the collection, however, specifically the Phoenix Nest poems.

5 George Whetstone’s elegy, “The life, death and vertues of Sir Phillip Sidney Knight” (ca. 1587), contains a series of explanatory biographical glosses, including one that names “the last shepheards calenders [as] the reputed work of S. Phil. Sydney” (Whetstone B2b).

6 The Letters repeatedly allude to Sidney’s involvement with the coterie “areopagus” engaged in writing quantitative verse in English and claim that “Immeritô” was present during conver-sations between Sidney and Dyer. As a joint self-promotional exercise orchestrated by Gabriel Harvey, however, they are notoriously problematic as a source of biographical facts. Perhaps more significantly, their only definite claim regarding “Immeritô’s” interaction with

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There is no convincing evidence that Spenser was sufficiently close to the Sidney circle to have read his works as they circulated in manuscript. Yet the wider availability of those works following their publication in the early 1590s meant that irrespective of his level of personal acquaintance with Sidney dur-ing his lifetime, Spenser was certainly familiar with Sidney the poet via his printed works. Additionally, he was aware of a decade’s worth of printed responses to Sidney’s death (and, increasingly, his works) that charted a pro-cess of transformation. While during the 1580s, “Sidney” had signified a courtier, diplomat and soldier as well as a coterie poet, the success of his works’ publica-tion meant that in later tributes, the notion that Sidney’s exemplariness was specifically linked to his skill as a poet grew more dominant.7 Although Sidney had a reputation for poetry during his lifetime and his works were widely circulated in manuscript, Sidney the poet of quasi-national importance emerged only after those works entered print, especially in the versions pub-lished by Ponsonby, which had been “authorised” by the Countess of Pembroke.8 This is the context in which the publication of Spenser’s “Astrophel” and the other contents of the volume needs to be viewed.

Originally, “Astrophel” formed part of a quarto usually referred to as Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, because the title page contains no mention of “Astrophel” — or indeed any indication that the volume’s contents are not entirely “By Ed. Spencer.”9

Sidney is that he was given a copy of Drant’s rules for quantitative verse with Sidney’s own annotations, and the discussion of quantitative verse is based on “Maister Drants Rules” (now lost) rather than on Sidney’s specific interpretation of them [Spenser and Harvey 55]. Consequently, it would not have required a great deal of intimacy with Sidney’s thoughts on the matter (and it is revealing that whenever “Immeritô” and “G.H.” discuss the technicalities of this type of poetry, they refer to Drant, not Sidney). See also Hadfield’s recently published Edmund Spenser: A Life, which notes that despite Harvey’s and Spenser’s attempts to portray themselves as being at the very cusp of current poetic debate, the quantitative verse move-ment “had run out of steam before 1580” (110).

7 For a detailed exploration of this phenomenon, see Alexander.8 Although this essay argues that Spenser was the driving force behind the composition of the

volume, Ponsonby’s motivations in publishing it — as a commercial venture or as a book that could be regarded as a kind of “missing link” between the two major authors whose works he was publishing —are clearly another factor in this context. This is a subject that will merit further discussion elsewhere.

9 For a contemporary counterexample to this practice, see the title page of Q1 of Astrophel and Stella (1591), which notes that some of the contents are not by “Syr P. S.”: “To the end of which are added, sundry other rare Sonnets of diuers Noble men and Gentlemen.” (Sidney, Syr P.S. A.iia)



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Figure 1 The title page of “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe.” Edmund Spenser, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595), Aa.

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Following this title page, which might lead readers to expect a single poem called “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,” is a dedication to Sir Walter Ralegh, dated to 1591 (A2a-A2b). On the next page, visually separated from the dedica-tion by printer’s flowers, begins the title poem, a pastoral travel narrative of sorts, in which Colin tells his fellow shepherds of his encounter with the Shepherd of the Ocean (an easily identifiable pseudonym for Ralegh) and his subsequent journey to the court of Cynthia.

Rather than continuing until the final page, however, the poem concludes with the word “Finis” halfway through the volume, faced by a new title page, which announces the following content as “Astrophel,” a “Pastorall Elegie” on the death of Sir Philip Sidney, although the running title continues as “Colin Clouts / come home againe” for a further nine pages.10

10 The running title breaks off in mid-title after F4b (the page containing the final stanza of “Astrophel,”) possibly because of the changed page layout caused by the added borders of printer’s flowers.

Figure 2 A double page from “Astrophel” with the running title continued as “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe.” Edmund Spenser, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595), E4b-Fa.



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This new poem about the death of the shepherd Astrophel is then followed by an untitled poem “Ay me, to whom shall I my case complaine” (com-monly known today as the “Dolefull Lay of Clorinda”), which begins on a new page framed by printer’s flowers and is attributed to Astrophel’s sister, Clorinda.11

11 Whether this attribution to “Astrophel’”s sister should be taken to mean that the poem was indeed written by the Countess of Pembroke has been the subject of extensive critical debate. The Oxford edition of her collected works includes the “Dolefull Lay of Clorinda,” albeit as a “disputed” work. One of the arguments in favour of Mary Sidney Herbert’s authorship — though not one used by the editors of the collected works — is that the number of lines (108) is a tribute to the 108 sonnets of Astrophel and Stella. This would in turn have required knowledge of the entire sonnet cycle, including sonnet 37 (which had been omitted from the quartos and was not printed until 1598). This numerological argu-ment is somewhat weakened by the fact that the final two stanzas, which are visually separated from the rest of the poem, are a transition to the remaining poems in the col-lection and not strictly part of Clorinda’s “Lay.”

Figure 3 The final page of “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,” facing the title page of “Astrophel.” Edmund Spenser, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595), E2b-E3a.

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After this untitled poem, two more poems follow. “The Mourning Muse of Thestylis” is a pastoral commemorating Sidney the soldier, while “A pastorall Aeglogue vpon the death of Sir Phillip Sidney Knight, &c” is a dialogue between two shepherds called Colin and Lycon, who are engaged in composing mourn-ing verses for “Philisides.” It is signed “L. B.,” which suggests that it was written by Spenser’s friend Lodowick Bryskett.12

The final section of the volume consists of a group of three further com-memorative poems for Sidney, “An Elegie, or friends passion, for his Astrophill,” “An Epitaph vpon the right Honourable sir Phillip Sidney knight” and “Another of the same.” All three poems are unattributed but had previously been printed

12 “The Mourning Muse of Thestylis,” also by Bryskett, had been entered into the Stationers’ Register (although apparently not published) in 1587. The extent of Bryskett’s contribu-tion to the “Pastorall Aeglogue” is uncertain, however, and a collaboration between Bryskett and Spenser is not implausible. Hadfield notes the “Spenserian” tone of Colin’s voice in the poem and argues that “if it is not by Spenser, then it was ventriloquised by someone who was able to imitate [it] perfectly” (Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life 314). See also Cheney 251–52.

Figure 4 The transition to the “lay of Clorinda.” Edmund Spenser, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595), F4b-Ga.



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in the miscellany The Phoenix Nest, and the authors of the first two had already been identified as Matthew Roydon and Sir Walter Ralegh.13 The volume then concludes with a second “Finis,” followed by the printer’s note.

Although the separate title page for “Astrophel” effectively divides the vol-ume in half, it is not a full title page: all bibliographic information (the printer’s emblem, publisher’s and author’s names, and the place and year of publica-tion) is missing.14 Francis Johnson’s Critical Bibliography, acknowledging this, refers to it as a “sub-title.”15 This sub-title appears to refer only to the poem that immediately follows it, i.e., “Astrophel.” Nevertheless, that poem forms a unit not only with the “Lay of Clorinda,” but also with the poems by other authors. This is indicated both visually and through the poems themselves. The two final stanzas of “Astrophel,” a transition to the “Lay of Clorinda,” clearly show that the two poems are intended to be read alongside each other.

While the final stanza of “Astrophel” has received a lot of critical attention because it highlights Clorinda’s role as chief mourner and allows for the inter-pretation that the poem that follows it was written by the Countess of Pembroke, the penultimate stanza has a more important function within the poem. It contains a shift in focus from the story of Astrophel’s life and death — the “song” the speaker had referred to in the final couplet of the very first stanza (“Hearken ye gentle shepheards to my song / And place my dolefull plaint your plaints emong.”16) — to the collective mourning of the shepherd community, within which chorus of voices the speaker’s own becomes sub-sumed. Thus, at this point, the poem effectively performs its own placing “emong”: it links the speaker of “Astrophel” and “Clorinda” by situating both in the wider context of the mourning shepherd nation, while allowing the single “Pastorall Elegie” announced in the sub-title to merge itself into a collection of elegies:

13 The “Friend’s Elegy” was attributed to Roydon by Thomas Nashe in 1589, and England’s Parnassus (1600) quoted from it and ascribed it to Roydon. The attribution of the “Epitaph” to Ralegh rests mainly on the tag “Petrarch of our time,” attributed to Ralegh in book xvi of Sir John Harington’s Orlando Furioso (1591). The attribution of the third poem is less certain, but the most likely candidate appears to be Sir Edward Dyer, although it is occa-sionally attributed to Fulke Greville.

14 All of these feature on the “first” title page of the volume. By contrast, Spenser’s Complaints (1591) contains four separate title pages, all of which contain full bibliographic informa-tion, possibly to strengthen the preface’s claim that Spenser did not intend to have them published in a single volume and that they were “gathered togeather” as “parcels” by the publisher, William Ponsonby (Spenser, Complaints A2a).

15 Johnson 30.16 Spenser, Colin Clouts E4a.

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And euery one did make exceeding mone,With inward anguish and great griefe opprest:And euery one did weep and waile, and mone,And meanes deviz’d to shew his sorrow best.That from that houre since first on grassie greene,Shepheards kept sheep, was not like mourning seen.

But first his sister that Clorinda hight,The gentlest shepheardesse that liues this day:And most resembling both in shape and sprightHer brother deare, began this dolefull lay.Which least I marre the sweetnesse of the vearse,In sort as she it sung, I will rehearse.17

The “Lay of Clorinda” itself concludes with a similar transitional passage which echoes the first transition (this echo is reinforced by the fact that both transi-tions end in a couplet that has a “hearse”-rhyme) and so in turn establishes a link to the remaining poems of the volume.18 Additionally, the running title continues well beyond the first “Finis” of the volume, while the second “Finis” is followed by the impressum, which repeats the bibliographical information of the title page and forms a bracket linking the two halves.19 As a result of this, the seemingly separate parts are visually made to form a larger unit.

These bibliographic peculiarities raise a number of questions. Is “Astrophel” the title of the entire collection of Sidney-themed commemorative poems that constitute the second half of the volume, or merely the first poem (and if the latter, where precisely does this poem end)?20 Should the second half of the volume be read as distinct from the first or as part of a larger composite that includes “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe”? And what are we to make of the confusion of dates? The poems of the second half are all introduced as sponta-neous compositions “upon” the death of Sidney (which implicitly dates them

17 Spenser, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe F4a-F4b.18 Here the functions of the two transitional stanzas are reversed, however: the first identifies

the speaker of the next poem (“Which when she ended had, another swaine / […] Hight Thestylis, began his mournfull tourne”), while the second moves back to the community of mourners who “With dolefull layes vnto the time addrest” take turns to pay tribute to Astrophel with “fittest flowres to deck his mournfull hearse” (that is with “poesies”).

19 cf. Complaints, in which the running titles change over.20 Since nearly all editions print l. 216 as the final line of the poem, I am following this con-

vention, for clarity’s sake, even though I argue that ll. 205–15 are effectively a transition between “Astrophel” and the “Lay of Clorinda.”



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to 1586), yet three of them are exactly reproduced from a text printed in 1593. Similarly, the volume as a whole, whose publication date is twice given as 1595, begins with a dedication dated to 27 December 1591, without any explanatory note by author, printer or publisher.21 Finally, are the volume and its different voices orchestrated and “Spenserian” in the same way that The Shepheardes Calender is? Although the multiple pastoral voices and the resulting blurring of authorial identity are characteristics shared between the two texts, The Shepheardes Calender and the 1595 quarto differ not only in tone but also in structure. The former arranges its different voices within a clear framework, of which the visual appearance of the text is a constant reminder, but in its sum reinforces the idea of a single (if elusive) author. The latter has a title page that suggests single authorship, but the text gradually disintegrates into multiple voices without organizing them into a comparable structural framework. The result of this gradual disintegration is a text whose second half resembles a verse miscellany. Yet while there is something to be said for reading the 1595 quarto as part of a miscellany tradition, the volume does not fit wholly com-fortably into that tradition either, because it lacks the clear formal markers of a printed miscellany: a title or title page highlighting the diverse nature of the contents or indicating multiple authors, as well as a list of the contents or a preface by (or purporting to be by) an editor or publisher claiming to have gathered the contents haphazardly or arranged them according to some orga-nizing principle. While those formal markers need not occur all at once and cannot always be taken at face value when they are present, their total absence in a printed volume intended to be identifiable as a miscellany would be highly uncommon.

The bibliographic ambiguity has added to the ambivalence towards Astrophel reflected in modern editing practice. It is generally omitted from selections of Spenser’s poetry, and whenever it is printed in collections, its con-tents tend to be reprinted selectively, which leads to dramatic changes to its form. In a marked contrast to The Shepheardes Calender, where the text as a material object has long been recognized as central to critical debate, the material character of the 1595 quarto has effectively been edited out of the text. The Variorum edition, which places emphasis on single authorship due to its declared aim of consolidating Spenser’s status as a “major” poet worthy of par-ticular critical attention, was among the first to include only the material writ-ten by Spenser.22 For the most part, this decision to remove material by other

21 Once again, the Complaints serve as a counter example.22 General preface in Greenlaw, Osgood and Padelford The Works of Edmund Spenser, v: “The

present edition aims to furnish an accurate text of Spenser’s poetry and prose and to

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authors results in the omission of paratextual materials, such as the commen-datory sonnets of The Faerie Queene, but the 1595 quarto is one of two texts that are changed beyond recognition.23 The Variorum text of Astrophel breaks off after the “Dolefull Lay of Clorinda,” thus omitting the remaining five poems, which together comprise 647 lines — nearly twice as many as “Astrophel” and the “Dolefull Lay” combined (342 lines). The “Dolefull Lay,” however, is given particular prominence: it is listed separately in the index and notes and even receives a separate heading, which is not in the 1595 text.24 None of these edi-torial changes in the Variorum edition are brought to the reader’s attention.

The attitude towards Astrophel exemplified by the Variorum edition persists in more recent editions. Richard McCabe’s 1999 Penguin edition of Spenser’s Shorter Poems at first sight appears very different from the Variorum one, in that it is much more careful about making editorial changes visible. While the index and notes list the “Dolefull Lay of Clorinda” under a separate heading, the title is put in square brackets within the main body of the text. The five elegies not by Spenser are again omitted, but this time the omission is noted and explained by the edition’s intent to “[supply] only Spenser’s contributions to the volume.”25 The reader is then referred to the latest edition that reprints those poems: Sélincourt’s of 1910. So while McCabe is clearly more at pains to lay open and justify his editorial decisions, the effect on the text is essentially the same. Both editions present a version of Astrophel that simply erases any-thing not written by Spenser, and gives a prominence to the “Dolefull Lay” not wholly justifiable by its appearance in the 1595 text (regardless of the critical

make accessible in convenient form the fruits of all the significant scholarship and liter-ary criticism which have contributed to the better understanding and appreciation of this major poet. […] The number of scholars devoting themselves primarily to the study of Spenser has steadily increased for the last quarter of a century, and fresh studies appear with every volume of the learned journals. Since this activity gives promise of continuing indefinitely, the present edition cannot hope to be final, but the editors believe that it is none the less justified.” Even by its mere appearance — eleven folio-sized volumes con-taining substantial amounts of commentary — the Variorum edition sent a clear message regarding Spenser’s importance and the significance of Spenser scholarship within English literary studies. In terms of the scope and ambition of the project, this edition of Spenser’s works was unprecedented.

23 The other text is the Letters (1580). The Variorum edition completely changes the nature of the text by culling Spenser’s contributions from the Letters and presenting them as corre-spondence while relegating Harvey’s letters to an appendix. Richard McCabe’s edition of the Shorter Poems goes even further, reproducing only the four poems embedded in the Letters.

24 In its original form, the “Lay of Clorinda” is distinguished from the first “Astrophel” poem only through the addition of a decorative border and a page break.

25 McCabe, Edmund Spenser 663.



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attention it has received through the debate surrounding its authorship).26 As a result, readers of modern Spenser editions may initially be puzzled to see Astrophel — correctly — referred to by scholars as a collection.27

Although the material aspect of early printed texts has been increasingly acknowledged by modern scholars, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the make-up of the 1595 quarto as a whole. “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” is now recognized as what Louis Montrose called the “pivotal work in Spenser’s poetic corpus.”28 His reading has shaped critical discussion of the poem but nevertheless extracts “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” from its printed context and treats it as though it had been published on its own.29 Consequently, Montrose’s reading of “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” fore-grounds its autobiographical elements and Spenser’s construction of his own authorial persona. Yet this “laureate” reading of the poem has obscured a more complex picture of authorship within the volume as a whole.

If taken as a whole, the 1595 quarto raises three questions. First, why should Spenser have chosen to publish his elegy so late? Second, what is the purpose of the other poems that accompany it? And, above all, how does Astrophel relate to “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe”?

The reception of Sidney over the first years following his death was a com-plex process that unfolded in different phases and reflected an emerging idea of a poet’s character as something that could be summed up by his body of works. Although it may appear counter-intuitive to propose that Sidney the poet did not make his appearance on the literary scene until the 1590s, the most immediate consequence of his works’ posthumous publication in print was to provide him with something he had lacked at the time of his death: a fixed body of works.30 This facilitated and even encouraged readings

26 William Oram in his introduction to “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” in the Yale edition of Spenser’s shorter poems, argues for the unity of “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” and the Astrophel collection as a “Book of the Three Poets” (Ralegh, Sidney and Spenser himself) (Oram). Nevertheless, the Yale edition includes only “Astrophel” and the “Lay of Clorinda.”

27 As for example in Alexander; Falco.28 Montrose 97. See also the importance placed on the work by Cheney.29 Montrose initially introduces the volume as ‘[a poetry book] containing Colin Clouts

Come Home Againe, as well as Astrophel and other elegies for Sidney’ (94), i.e., as a poetic miscellany, but he then proceeds to analyze only “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe.”

30 See stanzas 16 and 17 of Whetstone’s elegy mentioned above, in which the elegist high-lights the absence of a clearly attributable body of works beyond the Arcadia, leading to the speculative identification of ‘reputed’ works, such as The Shepheardes Calender: “What else he wrote, his will was to suppresse,/ […] What be his workes, the finest wittes doe gesse” (ll. 111–113).

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of Sidney’s character through the sum of his own writings, which necessi-tated the Countess of Pembroke’s attempts to control and shape her brother’s posthumous reputation through a definitive edition of his collected works.31 (That it was indeed regarded as definitive is indicated by the fact that William Drummond of Hawthornden, owner of an early manuscript of Astrophel and Stella, not only added the title to the manuscript but also corrected one line to the wording used in the folio edition).32 The first elegies, which had been strongly influenced by the iconography of the spectacular funeral procession in 1587, looked primarily towards Sidney’s public life as a courtier and soldier. With the printing of his extant works between 1590 and 1593, the perception of his life shifted towards one that stressed poetic activity. Thomas Nashe’s preface to Astrophel and Stella (1591) presents Sidney not as “Syr P. S.” but as the poet figure “Astrophel” who had recently emerged on the public stage with the publication of his poetry, while The Phoenix Nest (1593) considered Sidney mainly in terms of poetic impact.

Like many early modern miscellanies, The Phoenix Nest is difficult to catego-rize, precisely because its contents are indeed “miscellaneous.” Identifying generic similarities among them, such as elegy, lover’s complaint, pastoral, sonnet and dream-poetry is possible. However, applying any one of those as a “theme” to the volume as a whole without having to stretch it beyond its limits is impossible. To an extent, this is also true for the theme that perhaps most forces itself on the reader: tributes to Sir Philip Sidney.

The Phoenix Nest begins with a cluster of Sidney-themed texts that together account for nearly one fifth of the volume and that include the only poem in the miscellany to refer to a phoenix. The remaining contents contain several Sidneian echoes, especially of Astrophel and Stella, published two years ear-lier, although not all can be accounted for in this manner. Nevertheless, The Phoenix Nest represents a turning point for Sidney’s posthumous reputation, and this reputation (rather than Sidney’s reputation for poetry during his lifetime) is what Spenser’s 1595 quarto responds to by re-contextualising three of its poems.33

31 For a detailed account of the Countess of Pembroke’s agency in the publication of Sidney’s works, see Alexander ch. 3.

32 In the Drummond ms of Astrophel and Stella (University of Edinburgh ms De.5.96), he changes the phrase “the deare She” in one sonnet to “she (deare She).”

33 Katherine Duncan-Jones observes that Roydon’s elegy and “Astrophel” both consist of 39 stanzas of six lines each and suggested that “in spite of its previous appearance it may have been written for the Spenser-Bryskett collection” (Duncan-Jones 75). Yet the reverse — that “Astrophel” was conceived as part of a collection aimed to respond to as well as incorporate the earlier poem — is equally possible (and perhaps more plausible).



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One peculiarity about the cluster of four overtly Sidney-themed texts at the beginning of The Phoenix Nest is that they are all indirectly dated and all appear to be several years out of date. “The dead mans Right,” a posthumous counterpart to Sidney’s “Defence of the Earl of Leicester” — an open letter circulated in manuscript and possibly printed and distributed as a pamphlet — is introduced as having been written on the occasion of Leicester’s death, that is in 1588. Similarly, the three poems that follow this second defence of Leicester are grouped together in the index as “An excellent Elegie, with two speciall Epitaphes vpon the death of sir Philip Sydney,” which dates them to 1586.34

However, despite their emphasis on an early date, the three commemora-tive poems for Sidney assert “the dead mans right” in a way that differs mark-edly from that of the earliest elegies. Sidney’s death, or to be more precise, his spectacular funeral, had provoked an immediate response in the shape of numerous elegies. Lachrymae, one of four volumes of commemorative verse for Sidney published shortly after the funeral, is typical of those early elegies in that most of the poems are conventional, perhaps even generic, examples of poetic mourning.35 Nevertheless, the recurring topoi in the ele-gies’ portrayal of Sidney reveal something about the received notions of Sidney as a public figure in the wake of his death. The dominant themes are of Sidney as a military hero, exemplary courtier and diplomat, and as a para-gon mourned by the entire nation (all of these echo the stately imagery of Lant’s Roll, a pictorial representation of the funeral procession in a series of engravings).

Although some of the early elegists betray an awareness of, if not familiarity with, his poetry, it is always Sidney’s vita activa that takes precedence. There appears to be a broad consensus with Fulke Greville’s view (expressed in his Life of Sidney) that Sidney ought not to be remembered as a poet because that would belittle his true significance.36 Those elegists who do refer to Sidney’s works prior to their publication in print particularly stress their exclusive nature. Angel Day’s elegy, which gives an unusual prominence to Sidney’s

34 For the use of “upon” to indicate a precise moment, see meanings 6a and 7 in the oed.35 Alexander (57–8) calls the early elegies mostly “formulaic,” adding that “one suspects that

some of the University men had the same themes for amplification suggested to them.”36 It is worth noting, however, that Greville wrote the Life of Sidney some twenty-five years

after Sidney’s death. This may explain why he is so emphatic in making his claim that Sidney “purposed no monuments of books to the world”— Greville was clearly not expecting his readership to share his view that Sidney’s poetry should be regarded as having played a marginal in his life. See Greville 13.

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written works, even deplores the fact that those “sondry meeters, wounde from finest wit” represent an (as yet) underappreciated facet of Sidney’s “worthines.”37 Day’s Sidney, then, is a manuscript poet whose works circulate only among a relatively exclusive readership but are unknown to the wider public. Although Day does not suggest that “this worthie Knight Sir Phillip Sidney bold” should be replaced by “sugred Sidney, Sidney sweete,” he presents this second Sidney as a counterpart to the better known figure.

By stressing the early dating of the three elegies, The Phoenix Nest implies that when they were first written, they fitted into a context similar to that of Whetstone’s and Day’s elegies.38 This early dating of the Phoenix Nest elegies is also borne out by the way in which they refer to Sidney in their titles. The sub-heading of Matthew Roydon’s “Elegie, or friends passion, for his Astrophill” and Walter Ralegh’s “Epitaph” both invoke “the right Honourable sir Philip Sidney knight, Lord gouernor of Flushing,” and this is implicitly echoed in the second epitaph’s title “Another of the same.”

Yet their new printed context — positioned at the beginning of a poetic miscellany consisting mostly of love-sonnets and pastoral poetry, as well as its timing, must have given them at least the appearance of being a response to the print publication of Astrophel and Stella and one (if not two) editions of the Arcadia.39 This particularly applies to Matthew Roydon’s “Elegie,” which is set in a fictional pastoral landscape identified as “these woods of Arcadie” in l. 91, where the “friend” of the title — not the speaker of the poem, but a figure viewed in a vision — mourns for “his Astrophill.”40 Roydon is thus placing a fictionalised version of himself in a poetic landscape with Sidneian references to mourn Sidney’s fictional alter ego. If the poem was indeed written shortly after Sidney’s death, this would needs have signalled a degree of intimacy by implying that the writer belonged to the inner circle who had read Sidney’s

37 Day [A]4a.38 Although no earlier versions of them have survived, there is no reason to doubt that the

poems were originally written in 1587, as Roydon, Ralegh and Dyer were close enough to Sidney’s circle to have conceivably had access to his poetry in manuscript.

39 Whether The Phoenix Nest preceded the “augmented and ended” Arcadia edition of 1593 is unclear.

40 The externalization of mourning is a key theme of the poem: as soon as Astrophill’s friend has finished his complaint, the weather (which until then had been exceptionally fine) abruptly changes, the birds and beasts join in the “ruthfull mone” (l. 189). By far the most dramatic of these “mones” is made by the phoenix, which through compassion dies of spontaneous combustion, “Her ashes flying with the winde / […] Haply the cinders dri-uen about / May breed an offspring neere that kinde” (ll. 208–212).



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works during his lifetime — the “friendes” mentioned in the dedicatory letter prefixed to the Arcadia editions of 1590 and 1593.41 The elegy, then, would have been advertising Roydon’s own status as a “friend” as well as lamenting Sidney’s death.

By 1593, however, as the editor of The Phoenix Nest (if not Roydon himself) must have been aware, those references to Sidney’s works had been given a different significance. As a consequence, what had ostensibly been pre-sented as a personal response to Sidney was transformed into a literary one, in which the line “yet in his Poesies when we reede” (l. 140) assumed a more inclusive meaning than in 1587. In addressing the readers of the “Poesies,” the “friend” of Roydon’s poem had originally addressed himself to a small and exclusive readership able to access Sidney’s unpublished writings. In 1593, by contrast, Sidney’s poetry was in fact the one aspect of his “worthines” accessible even to those who had not belonged to the circle of “friendes” dur-ing his lifetime.42 One aspect in which Roydon’s elegy is unusual is that although Athena and Mars each receive a mention (Astrophill’s donning of Pallas’ armour provokes Mars’ jealousy and, thus, causes the hero’s death by thunderbolt), the main emphasis of the poem is on Astrophill’s poetic per-fection. For example, in the stanzas addressed to Stella (23–25), Astrophill’s love for her is described purely in terms of its poetic consequence, that is the perpetuation of her “short liud beautie” through verse. This is particularly clear in stanza 24:

Although thy beautie do exceed,In common sight of eu’ry eie,Yet in his Poesies when we reede,It is apparant more thereby […]. (ll. 139–142)

41 This letter, addressed to the Countess of Pembroke as the dedicatee of the work, stresses the trifling nature of the “idle worke” and expresses Sidney’s intention to restrict its read-ership: “Now, it is done onelie for you, onely to you: if you keep it to your selfe, or to such friendes, who will weigh errors in the ballaunce of good will, I hope, for the fathers sake, it will be pardoned” (1590 Arcadia, A3b). The editors’ decision to place it at the beginning of the printed edition published in 1590 radically changed the letter’s context. One of the consequences of this was that “friendes” no longer denoted the entire readership of the text but only those who had read it prior to its print publication.

42 See Nashe’s preface to Q1 of Astrophel and Stella (1591) — probably the earliest account of a reader who had first encountered Sidney’s works in their printed form — which cele-brates Sidney/Astrophel’s “escape” into print as a liberation of both the author and his work from the confines of manuscript circulation.

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This passage implies that either 1) Stella is objectively beautiful, but Astrophill’s skill made her poeticized version yet more beautiful than the original, or 2) Astrophill, being more perceptive than other mortals, was able to see (and make apparent in his poetry) an additional layer of beauty which may or may not correspond to reality. Neither interpretation is very flattering for Stella, however, as she is overshadowed by her fictional counterpart either way, and effectively Astrophill is the one credited with “her” beauty. This focus on Astrophill’s “creation” of Stella almost creates the impression that poetry was the sole aim of Astrophill’s love, as well as its only outcome.43

Roydon’s elegy, then, despite its apparently early date of composition, responds primarily to Sidney as a poet, by portraying his persona “Astrophill” as a poet figure. This portrayal of “Astrophill” as a poet resonates particularly strongly in the context of The Phoenix Nest’s publication shortly after Astrophel and Stella’s appearance in print in 1591, which had made Sidney’s “Poesies,” as well as the figure of Astrophel, publicly accessible. Instead of addressing only a relatively small and exclusive readership able to understand references to his writings prior to their publication, Roydon’s poem at the beginning of The Phoenix Nest creates a common point of reference for all Sidney readers, espe-cially readers who were familiar with Sidney only through his works. This, somewhat ironically, makes Roydon’s elegy the most inclusive Sidney-themed text of the miscellany.

While the two epitaphs that follow Roydon’s elegy also respond to Sidney’s poetry, they do so in a more indirect manner. For example, both poems implicitly praise Sidney’s poetic skill through suggesting that he would have written a better epitaph for himself.44 The first epitaph, written by Sir Walter Ralegh, contains a brief account of Sidney’s public life and praises him as a military hero called to “sharpe wars sweet honor” (l. 29) who fought valiantly for his country and “past with praise from of this worldly stage” (l. 36). Yet this life narrative is framed within a narrative of poetry. The first three stanzas express the speaker’s awareness that in the light of Sidney’s superior “wit,” any effort to mourn him poetically can amount to little more than a gesture

43 It is necessary to note, however, that no earlier version of Roydon’s elegy survives. It is therefore possible that the emphasis on Astrophill’s poetry is the result of a revision prior to its inclusion in The Phoenix Nest.

44 cf. the first stanza of the “Epitaph” with its choking final lines: “To praise thy life, or waile thy worthie death, /And want thy wit, thy wit high, pure, diuine, /Is far beyond the powre of mortall line, /Nor any one hath worth that draweth breath” (K2a). In “Another of the same,” the speaker repeatedly stresses that the epitaph is essentially writing itself through his own rage and grief, which are “no kin to skill,” however (l. 37).



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of “friendly care” (l. 6). That the phrase “wit high, pure, diuine” (l. 2) of the first stanza alludes to Sidney’s poetic skill is apparent not only in the fact that it is contrasted with “the powre of mortall line” (l. 3), but also in the poem’s conclusion. The final stanza dubs Sidney the “Scipio, Cicero, and Petrarch of our time” (l. 58). Ralegh’s use of the epithet “Petrarch of our time” here is illus-trative of the importance he assigns to Sidney’s poetic activities. It is the final element of a tripartite praise, which implies that it is the most significant of the three.45 Through its position in the line, “Petrarch” rather than “Scipio” or “Cicero” (which would both be suitable names to associate with Sidney’s vita activa) becomes the ultimate praise.

The second epitaph, probably written by Dyer, features a very similar pas-sage. The speaker states that Sidney was “Declaring in his thoughts, his life, and that he writ, /Highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works of wit” (ll. 15–16). As in the passage from Ralegh’s epitaph, the third element in each line of the couplet is given particular emphasis through its position. Additionally, the rhyme establishes a direct link between “what he writ” and the “deepest works of wit,” which suggests that “works” is intended to be read as “writings.” Dyer’s epitaph is not so much concerned with eulogizing Sidney’s life as with the poetry resulting from his death, that is the ‘sundry sorts [of laments by] ech liuing wight’ (l. 12), which include the speaker’s own attempt to convert grief into furor poeticus.

What links all three Sidney-themed poems of The Phoenix Nest, then, is that they all consider Sidney through his poetic remains and explore the theme of his survival through poetry; both in “his Poesies,” which in 1593 reveal him to a wider audience as the “Petrarch of our time” and through the numerous epi-taphs and elegies lamenting “his lacke.” I have discussed these three poems in some detail in order to illustrate their original publication context in The Phoenix Nest, before Spenser included them in his Astrophel collection two years later. In the following section, I will return to Astrophel and examine it in the light of the responses to Sidney’s death that I have outlined so far, giving particular attention to how it functions as a collection and as a counterpart to “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe.”

Clearly, then, we should not read Spenser’s “Astrophel” in isolation but within the context of the second wave of responses to Sidney’s death to which The Phoenix Nest belongs. One way of reading Spenser’s delayed response to Sidney’s death is as an indication that his chief interest in the 1595 quarto was not in Sidney the public hero, or even Sidney the potential patron, but in the

45 The name “Scipio” is also emphasised here, through its repetition from the preceding line, which runs: “That day their Hanniball died, our Scipio fell” (l. 57).

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“Gentle Shepheard borne in Arcady” — Sidney the poet, who had emerged posthumously from his own works.46 Spenser’s first specific reference to one of Sidney’s works is in “The Ruines of Time,” published in 1591, one year after the first edition of the Arcadia, and no conclusive evidence suggests that Spenser had been more than an outside observer of Sidney’s poetic activities before then. Yet after Sidney had posthumously “slipt into the title of a Poet,” Spenser was able to respond to him as a fellow poet in print.47 In the 1595 quarto he portrays Astrophel as a “shepheards boy” well “knowen” for his songs as is his own alter ego Colin Clout. This “Astrophel,” in other words, is Sidney the post-humous literary phenomenon.

Although the sub-title clearly identifies the subject of “Astrophel” as Sidney, and although most of the subsequent poems repeat this identification, the Astrophel collection as a whole seeks to depict him primarily as a shepherd among shepherds.48 Sidney the knight and familiar public figure remains as a point of reference throughout, yet this Sidney serves merely as a subtext to the

46 The idea of Sidney the author “borne in Arcady” is also referenced in the 1595 quarto by a visual pun: The decorative device placed directly above the heading “Astrophel” (E4a) is the same that had already been used at the very beginning of the 1590 Arcadia. Of course, both books share the same publisher, who presumably owned this device, so it is not surprising that the device should reappear in other books published by Ponsonby. However, in the quarto it is employed at three structurally significant points — the first page of the volume (A2a, containing the dedication to Ralegh), the beginning of “Astrophel” and the end of the “pastorall Aeglogue” (i.e., on H4b, before the Phoenix Nest poems begin). This suggests that the device was employed for deliberate emphasis, because of its distinctness from the border used throughout the rest of the volume and because it was the device that had heralded in Sidney’s birth in print, or perhaps even as a sly self-advertisement by Ponsonby.

47 Though it had, of course, been written in a very different context, this phrase from the opening of Defence of Poesie would have particularly resonated with the public percep-tion of Sidney when it was published in 1595 (Sidney, Defence B1b). Initially, “slipt into the title of a Poet” may simply have referred to his acquiring a reputation as an accom-plished judge of poetry among people such as Spenser and Harvey, who were aware of but had not necessarily read his works. In the wake of the success of Astrophel and Stella and the two Arcadia editions, however, Sidney’s phrase may have appeared like a com-ment from beyond the grave on his unexpected transformation from public hero to printed author.

48 Quite literally, this depiction of Astrophel as a shepherd among shepherds can be seen in the recurrence of the word “emong” at the mention of Astrophel’s special qualities, which serves to single him out but also to place him firmly within the shepherd community of which he forms an integral part. See for example ll. 49–50 of “Astrophel”: “For he could pipe and daunce, and caroll sweet, /Emongst the shepheards in their shearing feast.”



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narrative of Astrophel the pastoral poet and to his poetic survival, both in his own works and in the “dolefull lays” of his fellow shepherds.

The first three stanzas of “Astrophel,” which serve as an introduction both to the poem and to the collection as a whole, address a specific audience — a community of shepherds.49 The speaker’s overt reason for addressing the shepherds is that “the rymes bene rudely dight” (and consequently suitable only for an equally “rude” audience). The main effect of this introduction, how-ever, is to establish Astrophel as a shepherd/poet. This is by no means an obvi-ous association, as most of the poems of Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella have a courtly setting; the two main exceptions to this pattern, however, are precisely the “sonnets of various verse” viii and ix (printed separately in the early quar-tos), the two poems that refer to the protagonist as “Astrophel.” Spenser’s plac-ing of Astrophel in “Arcady” at the beginning of “Astrophel” strengthens both the pastoral setting and the association of Astrophel with Sidney, by merging his “complete” works (as of 1595).

The introduction of “Astrophel”, then, not only uses the figure of Astrophel as an alter ego for Sidney but also adapts that figure in a manner particularly suitable for portraying Sidney as a poet (and, more specifically, as a printed poet). Spenser’s poem presents Astrophel as an exemplary shepherd who especially excels at composing songs and poems of various kinds.50 The poem does portray Astrophel’s martial side, but not in a manner that would make it appear at odds with his nature as a “Gentle Shepheard.”51 Even his penchant for hunting “great troups” of wild beasts is the “sport” of a shepherd and merely

49 The three stanzas are set apart visually through italics and through the fact that the first line of the next stanza (printed on the same page) begins with a new initial.

50 cf. stanzas 10–12 (Fa): “For he could pipe and daunce, and carol sweet,/ Emongst the shep-heards in their shearing feast […] And layes of loue he also could compose, /Thrise happie she, whom he to praise did choose. / Full many Maydens often did him woo, /Them to vouchsafe emongst his rimes to name […] And many a Nymph both of the wood and brooke, /Soone as his oaten pipe began to shrill: /Both christall wells and shadie grouse forsooke, /To heare the charmes of his enchanting skill.”

51 Astrophel is not the only hunter among the shepherds, as can be seen from the fact that after being mortally injured, he is eventually found by “A sort of shepheards sewing of the chace, /As they the forest raunged on a day” (ll. 163–164).While the account of Astrophel’s hunting appears to portray him acting in a brutal manner, the emphasis of those stanzas is not on his cruelty (instead, it is his prey that is referred to as “saluage” (l. 118), “brutish” (l. 122), “beastly” (l. 139) and “cruell” (l. 140)), but on his boldness and strategic skill: (cf. “welwouen toyles and subtil traines” (l. 121), “So well he wrought with practice and with paines, /That he of them great troups did soon entrap” (ll. 123–124). In hunting, then, Astrophel is portrayed as a military genius whose only downfall is that he gets carried away with his success and becomes “heedless of his dearest hale” (l. 127), a failing for

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an extension of running, swimming or shooting, sports in which Astrophel “vanquisht euery one.”52 Similarly, although the poem gestures towards the circumstances of Sidney’s death, Spenser deliberately fictionalizes and mythologizes this death through the Venus and Adonis imagery.53 The subse-quent death of Stella — who in this version is Astrophel’s wife — and their joint metamorphosis into a flower further reduces any factual elements and enhances a poetic reading of Astrophel’s biography whose lack of “happiness” (l. 30) is due to the unfortunate encounter with the “cruell beast” rather than rejection by Stella (or any real person she might represent).54

The speaker also describes the consequences of Astrophel’s death in poetic terms by restricting the circle of mourners to “the sheapheards all “(l. 218) — his fellow poets, who express their grief in a chorus of elegies, or “dolefull lays.” Most important in this context, although the phrase “dolefull lay” has become closely identified with the “Lay of Clorinda” thanks to the critical attention that poem has received, it is not the only “dolefull lay” of the collection. In fact, all poems contained in Astrophel are introduced as “dolefull lays.” Altogether, the phrase occurs three times.55 In l. 232 of “Astrophel,” it introduces the “Lay of Clorinda” as the first of many elegies “deviz’d” by the shepherd community as an expression of their collective grief. The phrase also occurs in l. 6 of the “Pastorall Aeglogue,” where Lycon addresses Colin as “Thou that with skill canst tune a dolefull lay.” Significantly, however, it is repeated at the end of the “Lay of Clorinda,” in the latter of two stanzas that form a transition to the “Mourning Muse of Thestylis” and to the remaining poems of the volume.

which the speaker blames not Astrophel himself but “the cruell skies, /That from himselfe to them withdrew his eies” when he receives his fatal injury (ll. 137–8).

52 cf. stanza 17 (Fb), which describes Astrophel’s skill at sports: “In wrestling nimble, and in renning swift,/ In shooting steddie, and in swimming strong:/ Well made to strike, to throw, to leape, to lift, /And all the sports that shepheards are emong. /In euery one he vanquisht euery one, /He vanquisht all, and vanquisht was of none.” The next stanza acts as a transition between Astrophel’s “vanquishing” of his fellow shepherds at sports and his fondness for hunting and killing forest creatures.

53 Like Astrophel, Sidney was wounded in the thigh after acting “heedless of his dearest hale” by failing to wear leg armour (although he died of an infection rather than bleeding to death).

54 Stella “follow[s] her make like a Turtle chaste / To proue that death their hearts cannot diuide” (ll. 178–9), an image of conjugal love. For the purposes of this article, the reason for Spenser’s (accidentally or deliberately) false identification of “Stella” is irrelevant, although this too is a contentious issue.

55 See also the related phrases “dolefull plaint” (“Astrophel,” l. 6) and “dolefull ryme” (“Pastorall Aeglogue,” l. 77).



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These two stanzas are usually reprinted as part of the “Lay,” but they do not form part of the lay proper (which concludes with the line “Mourning in oth-ers, our owne miseries”). The 1595 edition sets them apart through the absence of the decorative borders that frame the rest of the “Lay” and broadly serve as quotation marks, i.e., as a visual aid to distinguishing between the different voices in the volume. The final stanza of the “Lay of Clorinda” describes how, after Thestylis, “full many other moe” proceed to express their grief in elegies that are referred to as “dolefull layes vnto the time addrest. /The which I here in order will rehearse, /As fittest flowres to deck his mournfull hearse.” This image of the poetic tributes to Astrophel as “flowres” is later repeated in a pas-sage at the end of the “Pastorall Aeglogue” that could be read as a transition to the three Phoenix Nest poems, which conclude the volume: “Behold these floures which on thy graue we strew; /Which faded, shew the giuers faded state, /(Though eke they shew their feruēt zeale & pure).” Rather than singling out Clorinda’s poem, then, the phrase “dolefull lay” serves to place it among the chorus of mourning voices of the shepherd community evoked by the vol-ume.56 This idea of the “shepheards nation,” whose “nation” status is high-lighted and perhaps even created through a situation of collective mourning, binds together the different elements of the 1595 quarto.57

Why, then, did Spenser choose to accompany his own tribute to Sidney the “new Poete” with poems by other authors, some of which had already appeared in print? I would like to suggest that Spenser was interested not only in Sidney the poet, but also in the posthumous emergence of a poet figure, accompanied by a shift in public attitude towards Sidney and reflected in the prefaces to early editions of his works. In Astrophel, Spenser is placing himself among a chorus of poetic voices that are responding at least as much to Sidney’s rebirth in print as to his death by combining his own poetry with earlier elegies by other writers.58 Collectively, they portray Sidney as a semi-fictionalized figure

56 See also “Astrophel” ll. 5–6: “Hearken ye gentle shepheards to my song,/ And place my dolefull plaint your plaints emong.”

57 The term “shepheards nation” is a key concept of the volume. It is first introduced in ll. 16–17 of “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” in Hobinoll’s first words to the returned Colin: “Colin, my liefe, my life, how great a losse/Had all the shepheards nation by thy lacke!” While this “shepheards nation” is of course fictional, it is interesting that William Camden’s famous description of Spenser’s funeral offers something like it, almost making the event sound like a reenactment of Astrophel. According to Camden, Spenser “was buried at Westminster neere Chawcer, […] all Poets carrying his body to Church, and cast-ing their dolefull Verses, and Pens too, into his graue.” (Camden 232)

58 This idea of Sidney’s rebirth is captured in the phoenix analogy (although the fact that the phoenix is one of a kind and consequently a bird without equal may have played a role in

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and create a narrative for his death by providing him with a fictional life derived partly from mythology and partly from his own works. The inclusion of earlier elegies, moreover, also allows Spenser simultaneously to document Sidney’s transformation into a poet during the years since his death, and to contribute to it himself. Thus, the peculiar situation of “Astrophel” as being at once part of the public response to the passing of Sidney and part of the recep-tion of his posthumously published works may explain the poem’s unelegiac tone, which has frequently been cited as one of its shortcomings.

Although all contributors to Astrophel use Sidney’s life as a common point of reference, all traces of biographical “fact” within individual poems merge into the chorus of poetic voices mourning for a fellow poet. The one point on which all “dolefull lays” agree is that they envisage Sidney as a “shepherd” (that is, as a poet) mourned by a community of shepherds. The national hero, who still resonates in the sub-title and the titles of the individual poems, is trans-formed into a poets’ poet, as it were. As a collection, then, Astrophel depicts Sidney’s death as a defining moment for poetry by outlining the grief of what in “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” Spenser terms “the shepheards nation.” Astrophel and “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” are linked through their pas-toral setting and through some of the protagonists who appear in both (Colin, Thestylis, Astrophel and Stella), but the strongest link between the two is this imagined “nation” of poets.59

By placing his alter ego, Colin Clout, at the centre of the chorus of shep-herds mourning Astrophel with their “dolefull layes,” Spenser appears to be declaring himself to be the heir to the role of chief poet.60 Yet, perhaps more

the comparison as well). Matthew Roydon’s elegy adapts this slightly, however: in his elegy, the phoenix dies out of empathy for the death of Astrophel, the second “phoenix.” The death of the phoenix sends its ashes “flying with the winde” (l.208), and leads the speaker to express the wish that a similarly phoenix-like poet might rise from the mourn-ing and elegy-writing. This time, the poetic “flowres” are envisioned as cinders: “Haply the cinders driuen about,/May breede an offspring neere that kinde, / But hardly a peere to that I doubt” (ll. 211–213).

59 One of the few scholars to have noted this link is Michelle O’Callaghan, who observes that “The ‘shepheards nation’ of Colin Clouts Come Home Againe is complemented by the ele-giac pastoral community of Astrophel” (O’Callaghan 12). For discussion of the “shepheards nation” as figuring Spenser’s “New English” faction in Ireland, see Hadfield, Edmund Spenser’s Irish Experience 13–17.

60 Lawrence Lipking compares the poetic responses to Sidney’s death to poetic wars of suc-cession (after which, he argues, Spenser emerged as the victor) (Lipking). There are some problems with this reading, however, given that Spenser’s own poetic reputation in 1595 was already considerable and Sidney’s career in print had unfolded alongside it rather than having preceded it.



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significantly, he is also showing an acute awareness of the process that only several years earlier had led Sidney to emerge posthumously as the chief poet figure of the 1590s. Spenser’s awareness is demonstrated by his re-contextuali-sation of earlier poems that had contributed to this phenomenon. Spenser thus offers readers of Astrophel an intriguing double perspective: on the one hand, he is contributing to the second wave of responses to Sidney’s death, while on the other hand he is identifying it as a poetic phenomenon. This in turn contributes to the sophisticated exploration of the nature of authorship and a poet’s social role that Spenser is proposing in the 1595 quarto.

“Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” is in many ways the poem for which McCabe’s observation that Spenser is given to “auto-fabrication” and that his personae are “persistently auto-referential […] [but] never truly autobiograph-ical” rings most true.61 While it is clear through the geographical references that Colin’s “Home” is located in the vicinity of “my house of Kilcolman,” which Spenser pointedly mentions in his dedicatory epistle to Ralegh, the most thor-oughly autobiographical element of the poem relates not to fact but to fiction. In “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe,” Spenser is revisiting the catalogue of his own published works through this poetic persona, making it a “homecoming” to his own fictional spaces and a physical return to a place clearly intended to be recognized as Ireland. In addition to the evident links to Shepheardes Calender, the poem refers to Daphnaida, as well as all the dedicatees of the Complaints (except Leicester). It even pre-empts some themes of Book vi of The Faerie Queene and the “Mutabilitie Cantos,” such as court and courtesy, pastoral as a form of refuge, and emphasizing Irish connections.62

Applying a fictionalized but loosely recognizable life-narrative to a poet-figure “vnder whose person the Authour selfe is shadowed”63 is of course something that links “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” and Astrophel, but the association goes further. Rather than merely standing side by side, the two parts of the 1595 quarto complement each other. Together, they form a composite narrative whose true interest lies perhaps less in narrating the life

61 McCabe, Edmund Spenser xvii. See Cheney for further discussion of Spenser’s self- shaping of his authorial persona in the Colin Clouts volume.

62 Stanza 40 of the first of the “Mutabilitie Cantos” contains an alternate, much shorter, ver-sion of Colin’s song to the Shepherd of the Ocean that gestures towards the earlier ver-sion: “Amongst the which, there was a Nymph that hight / Molanna; daughter of old father Mole,/ And sister vnto Mulla, faire and bright: / Vnto whose bed false Bregog why-lome stole, / That Shepheard Colin dearely did condole, / And made her lucklesse loues well knowne to be.” (vii.vi.40, ll. 1–6). Spenser seems to ask, “who knowes not Colin Clouts Come Home Againe?”

63 Spenser, “Shepheardes Calender” ¶ iija.

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of a specific poet (either Spenser or Sidney) than in setting out the life of a poet in terms of its poetic impact. The first half of the volume examines the living poet whose role outside a patronage context is defined by the central part he plays within the community of shepherds. The second half portrays the after-life of the dead poet who continues to generate poetry through the poetic responses that his death prompts within the same “shepheards nation.”

The 1595 quarto offers the perspectives of different members of this “shep-heards nation,” and the complex chorus of voices is integral to the text. In this regard, the volume resembles The Shepheardes Calender. In 1986, Jonathan Goldberg demanded “a poetics of the book that… throw the proper name in question,” no matter how “much it may strain criticism and its abiding fictions of ‘the Author selfe.’”64 Criticism appears to have taken the strain, so that now readings of The Shepheardes Calender usually acknowledge the different “voices.” The same cannot be said of the 1595 quarto, however, which in fact takes the multiplicity of authorial voices and the play on authorial identity even further by featuring not only different personae but different authors. Some important observations that have been made about the role of anonym-ity and the interplay between glosses and eclogues, as well as among the differ-ent personae of the eclogues in The Shepheardes Calender could, with minor modifications, also be applied to the 1595 quarto. Take for example Richard McCabe’s statement in “Annotating Anonymity” that attributions of author-ship to the anonymous “Immeritô” and to the equally shadowy (and perhaps imaginary) editor and annotator “E. K.” are “made within, and by, the text itself, and are therefore best regarded as rhetorical functions of an obsessively self-reflexive work.”65 Much of this statement also holds true for the 1595 quarto, which is as “obsessively self-reflexive” as The Shepheardes Calender.

Although the 1595 quarto initially presents itself as a single poem by a named author, it disintegrates into a series of “dolefull layes” halfway through. These “layes” are attributed to various pastoral personae, figures perhaps also best described as “rhetorical functions” of the text. To an extent, critical responses to the “Lay of Clorinda” that argue against the Countess of Pembroke’s author-ship take an approach similar to McCabe’s reading of “E. K.” and “Immeritô” by treating the poem’s attribution to Astrophel’s sister as a rhetorical strategy by Spenser.66 Such scholars do not, however, extend this approach to the other

64 Goldberg 39.65 McCabe, “Annotating Anonymity” 35.66 See particularly Coren, whose essay summarizes the debate over the authorship of the

“Lay of Clorinda” and argues that “The Lay […] completes the fiction with a ‘womanish’ burst of feeling and orthodox otherworldly direction” (Coren 39). Arguably, O’Connell’s “double elegy” reading also treats “Clorinda” as a rhetorical function in the text (O’Connell).



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poems in the volume, possibly because of an erroneous assumption that a poem in fact written by one author could not be deployed by another to serve a rhetorical function.

Colin and Astrophel, the two main protagonists of the 1595 quarto, share two key characteristics: first, that they are both poets who have integral roles within this “shepheards nation,” and second, that their roles as poets are defined by their composing poetry as an everyday social activity. The life of the poet is thereby transformed into an “active” one. Composition is made the sub-ject of narrative in both parts of the volume, and in “Colin Clouts Come Home Againe” this narrative is given so much attention that it is almost made to sub-stitute for the poetry itself. In his initial narrative, Colin tells of his dialogue with the Shepherd of the Ocean purely by describing the piping and singing of two well-matched poets, “by chaunge of turnes, each making other mery” (l. 77). When Cuddy demands to hear the poetry they exchanged, Colin initially replies with a brief synopsis that is even shorter than its corresponding stanza in the first of the Mutabilitie Cantos:

[O]f my riuer Bregogs loue I soong,Which to the shiny Mulla he did beare,And yet doth beare, and euer will, so longAs water doth within his bancks appeare

Spenser, “Colin Clouts” 92–5

Only when further pressed to repeat the poem itself does Colin agree to give his audience at least a paraphrase (“the tenor of [his] tale, / in sort” (ll. 100–101)) of the poem Cuddy is so eager to hear.

The sense of detachment in “Astrophel,” then, can be explained by the fact that it is not merely an elegy meant to be read by itself but part of a poetic collection that needs to be understood through preceding collections. Spenser is not only directly responding to Sidney’s death but is also envisag-ing its poetic consequences by examining the resonance of Astrophel’s death within the “shepheards nation” as part of a conceptual life narrative of a poet within which Sidney/Astrophel as well as Spenser/Colin are points of reference rather than subjects. Through being portrayed primarily via the poetry to which it gives rise, the death of Astrophel is made into a moment of birth. The “shepheards nation” offers a form of poetic survival that is an alternative to being remembered merely through poetry originally written for a patron.67

67 Colin describes this more conventional form of poetic survival in ll. 640–647.

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The 1595 quarto explores authorship in a highly original manner. It offers a fictional narrative not so much for the life of a specific poet — either Spenser or Sidney — but for the poet in the abstract, who, in death as well as in life, is an integral part of the fictional “nation” of poets proposed by Spenser as an alternative to the traditional patronage model. Astrophel appropriates Sidney the poet figure of the 1590s in order to make a wider statement about author-ship and the role of the poet. Thus, the relevance of the 1595 quarto extends beyond the projected image of Spenser as a laureate poet and the portrayal of Sidney as a pastoral poet. Its significance as a text about the nature of poetry has yet to be fully recognized. The 1595 quarto shows Spenser to be keenly aware of, as well as contributory to, changes in thinking about authorship as well as about Sidney. By simultaneously considering the poetic impact of the living and the dead poet and by using Colin and Astrophel, two of the most iconic poet figures of the decade, to illustrate this idea, Spenser is bridging the gap between late-sixteenth-century poets’ vita activa and their works that characterize the different waves of responses to Sidney’s death.

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———. Edmund Spenser’s Irish Experience: Wilde Fruit and Salvage Soyl. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.

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“Astrophel” and Spenser’s 1595 Quarto