Shorter Verse After 1595

Abstract

In 1596 Spenser published two major works: Prothalamion, a poem celebrating the double wedding of Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset, daughters of the Earl of Worcester, and Fowre Hymnes on Love, Beauty, Heavenly Love, and Heavenly Beauty (which appeared together with the second edition of Daphnaida). These were the final works published in his lifetime, but his last poem did not appear until 1609. In that year the bookseller Matthew Lownes published a new edition of The Faerie Queene, in which (under a separate title-page) Two cantos of Mutabilitie appeared for the first time. These cantos were presented as, and apparently are, additional material from the unfinished epic. These late works are rarely considered as a trio, and yet they do share interests. Critics repeatedly argue that they explore their own lateness in Spenser’s career, and that they deliver notes of studied finality. Closure is implied in a turn towards comprehensiveness, a partial success in the quest for understanding, and in different versions of literary retraction, wherein a poet renounces some or all of his earlier work. These poems all have a scale one could call “philosophical”: they explore ideas about transcendence, or ideas which in themselves transcend the everyday world. However, these works also have a material side, in that they interact with this everyday world, with time, bodies, politics, and the realities of a poetic career.