The Ape in "Mother Hubberds Tale"

Abstract

INCE THE publication of Spenser's Complaints, in 1591, few peoS ple have entertained serious doubts that the Fox in the second part of Mother Hubberds Tale represented William Cecil, Lord Burghley. The servile and cowardly Ape who accompanied the Fox on his adventures and usurped the Throne at the Fox's behest has not succeeded so well in passing his name on to posterity as a specific person. In 1855 T Keightley suggested that the Ape represented Edward De Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford.' Edwin Greenlaw advanced a theory in 1g9o that the second part of Mother Hubberds Tale mirrored the projected French marriage of 1579-80, in which the Ape played the part of the French ambassador, Simier, or possibly Simier plus AlenSon.2 In 1934 Dr. Harold Stein conjectured that the second part referred to the succession and that the usurping Ape was James VI of Scotland.! There is evidence, however, that actually the Ape represented Sir Robert Cecil, Burghley's son, and that the second part of Mother Hubberds Tale concerned Spenser's