• To The Reader
• 1. Shakspere or Shakespeare?
• 2. Shakespeare a Pseudonym?
• 3. Treasure Texts
  • 3.1. Harvey - Nashe The Players
  • 3.2. Gascoigne-Willobie
  • 3.3. Munday - Shakespeare
  • 3.4. Spenser - Edwards
    • 3.4.1. The Shepheardes Calender
    • 3.4.2. The Faery Queene
    • 3.4.3. The Teares of the Muses
    • 3.4.4. Edwards, Adon
    • 3.4.5. Colin Clouts Come Home Again
  • 3.5. Lyly-Greene-Chettle
  • 3.6. Hall-Marston-Parnassus
  • 3.7. Sir Thomas Smythes voiage
  • 3.8. List of contemporary witnesses
• 4. Edward de Vere
• 5. Works
• 6. Ben Jonson’s Forgery
• 7. Research for Shake-speare
• 9. Relationship
• 10. Chronology

3.4.3. Edmund Spenser, The Teares of the Muses, 1591

 

Twelve years after the publication of his Shepheardes Calender Spenser reviews the London theatre and literature and comes to the judgement: The theatre no longer flourishes. He says through Thalia (an otherwise happy go lucky muse) that comedy is dying out. The public is only interested in cheap, superficial entertainment. The good play-writes, who brought intelligence and wit to the stage, no longer drew audiences. “Our pleasant Willy” is dead of late and “with whom all joy and jolly meriment”. In its stead we see bawdiness and tomfoolery in the theatre. – Up to his death in 1586, Sir Philip (or Phillye) Sidney had enjoyed a reputation, at court, as a writer of masques. –

After a further verbal attack on the vulgarity of the theatrical presentations of the time, Spenser continues:

But that same gentle Spirit, from whose pen
Large streams of honey and sweet Nectar flow,
Scorning the boldness of such base-born men,
Which dare their follies forth so rashly throw,
Doth rather choose to sit in idle Cell,
Than so himself to mockery to sell.

Whom did Spenser mean when he spoke of “that gentle Spirit, from whose pen large streams of honey flow”? If we compare this “sweet” epithet with those of other literary contemporaries, Barnfield’s “honey-flowing vein” (1598), Francis Meres’ “mellifluous & honey-tongued” (1598), Weever’s “honey-tongued” (1599) and William Covell’s “Sweet Shakespeare” (1595), we soon come to the conclusion that he was talking about the same person that they were: William Shakespeare.

But why does this man live, withdrawn from a world of trivial literature in his “idle cell”? Spenser is making a reference to “the slumbering Euphues in his “idle cell at Silex[s]edra” (from Robert Greene’s Menaphon, 1589). Since the publication of John Lyly’s novel Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1579) the Earl of Oxford had been associated with the learned individual, Euphues.

Contrary to the recommendation made twelve years previously, Cuddie (=Oxford) should abandon comedy and turn his attentions to tragedy, Spenser now expresses a desire to see him back on the serene stage.

 

THE

TEARES OF THE MUSES.

by Ed[mund] Sp[enser]

 

LONDON.
Imprinted for William
Ponsonbie, dwelling in Paules
Churchyard at the sign of
the Bishops head.

1591.

 

 

THALIA.

Where be the sweet delights of learning's treasure,[1]
That wont with Comic sock to beautify[2]
The painted Theatres, and fill with pleasure
The listeners' eyes, and ears with melody;
In which I late was wont to reign as Queen,
And mask in mirth with Graces well beseen?

O all is gone; and all that goodly glee,
Which wont to be the glory of gay wits,
Is lay'd a-bed, and nowhere now to see;
And in her room unseemly Sorrow sits
With hollow brows and grisly countenance,
Marring my joyous gentle dalliance.

And him beside sits ugly Barbarism,
And brutish Ignorance, ycrept of late
Out of dread darkness of the deep Abysm,
Where being bred, he light and heaven does hate:
They in the minds of men now tyrannize,
And the fair Scene with rudeness foul disguise.

All places they with folly have possess'd,
And with vain toys the vulgar entertain;
But me have banishèd, with all the rest
That whilom wont to wait upon my train,
Fine Counterfeisance [imitation], and unhurtful Sport,
Delight, and Laughter, deck'd in seemly sort.[3]

All these, and all that else the Comic Stage,
With seasoned wit and goodly pleasance graced,
By which man's life in his likèst image
Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced;
And those sweet wits which wont the like to frame[4]
Are now despised and made a laughing game.

And he the man, whom Nature self had made
To mock herself and Truth to imitate,
With kindly counter under Mimic shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah is dead of late:[5]
With whom all joy and jolly merriment
Is also deaded and in dolour drent.

Instead thereof scoffing Scurrility
And scorning Folly with Contempt is crept,
Rolling in rhymes of shameless ribaldry,
Without regard or due Decorum kept,
Each idle wit at will presumes to make,
And doth the Learned’s task upon him take.[6]

But that same gentle Spirit, from whose pen[7]
Large streams of honey and sweet Nectar flow,
Scorning the boldness of such base-born men,[8]
Which dare their follies forth so rashly throw,
Doth rather choose to sit in idle Cell, [9]
Than so himself to mockery to sell.[10]

So am I made the servant of the many,
And laughingstock of all that list to scorn,
Not honourʼd nor cared for of any;
But loathʼd of losels as a thing forlorn:
Therefore I mourn and sorrow with the rest,
Until my cause of sorrow be redressʼd.

Therewith she loudly did lament and shrike.
Pouring forth streams of tears abundantly,
And all her Sisters with compassion like,
The breaches of her singults [sobs] did supply.
So rested she: and then the next in rew
Began her grievous plaint, as doth ensue.

 

NOTES: