The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry Before 1600

The scholar Paul E. McLane sought to identify doz-
ens of Spenser’s allegorical fi gures and topical allusions
and has pinned down several: Colin Clout is Spenser
himself or the English people as a whole; Rosalind is
usually Queen Elizabeth. The forms of the various
eclogues also vary. “Januarye,” for instance, features a
six-line STANZA, which reappears again in “October”
and “December.” “Aprill” offers a marvelously lyrical
“laye” [LAY] in honor of the Queen composed of linked
QUATRAINs made to frame the emblematic ode at the
center.

FURTHER READING
Brennan, M. G. “Foxes and Wolves in Elizabethan Episcopal
Propaganda.” Cahiers Elizabéthains 29 (1986): 83–86.
Hamilton, A. C. “The Argument of Spenser’s Shepheardes
Calender.” ELH 23, no. 3 (1956): 171–182.
Herman, Peter C. “The Shepheardes Calender and Renais-
sance Antipoetic Sentiment.” SEL 32 (1992): 15–33.
Maley, Willy. A Spenser Chronology. London: Macmillan,
1994.
McLane, Paul E. Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender: A Study
in Elizabethan Allegory. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1961.
Spenser, Edmund. Shepheardes Calender. Edited by S.
K. Heninger, Jr. Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars’ Facsimiles &
Reprints, 1979.
Melissa A. Harris and Michelle M. Sauer

The Shepheard’s Calender: “Maye Eclogue”
EDMUND SPENSER (1579) “Maye” is the fi rst ECLOGUE
in EDMUND SPENSER’s The SHEPHEARDES CALENDER to focus
on the politics of the Elizabethan church. (The other
ecclesiastical eclogues are “Julye” and “September.”) It
is an allegorical dialogue between the two shepherds,
Piers and Palinode, who are identifi ed in the Argument
as representations of Protestant and Catholic clerics. In
this context, Catholic means priests who are considered
superfi cially or insuffi ciently reformed by the more
zealous Protestants whom Piers represents. Piers is not
a Puritan, however.
Piers’s name and speech evokes the PIERS PLOWMAN
TRADITION, and especially The Plowman’s Tale, which is
connected to “Februarie.” These other texts are as con-
cerned as Piers is in “Maye” with “faytours” (i.e., “fak-
ers”), or corrupt priests. Faytours is the term Piers uses

to condemn the shepherds who are celebrating the sea-

son after Palinode describes them admiringly in sensu-

ous detail. In Piers’s view, these shepherds should be

tending to their fl ocks, meaning those in their spiritual

care. Palinode then accuses Piers of envy and argues

against austerity: One must enjoy what is good in life

while it lasts. Piers counters that shepherds must live

for others, not themselves. Then he makes an appeal

for returning to the practices of the early church when

he suggests that inheritable lands and wealth have cor-

rupted many shepherds and injured their fl ocks. Palin-

ode is deeply angered by this last criticism, which he

rejects as an absurd and divisive exaggeration. In his

view, things are as they are and cannot be otherwise.

Piers insists that the situation is inherently divisive:

There are true and false shepherds, and they are as dif-

ferent as day and night. Piers’s arguments are more

intellectually developed and persuasive than Palin-

ode’s, but his cold, stoic temperament contrasts nega-

tively with Palinode’s colorful praise and enjoyment of

the late spring landscape and festivities.

The eclogue concludes with Piers telling a variation

of a traditional FABLE about a disguised fox who tricks

and catches a young goat. This is intended as an ALLE-

GORY of the various foreign and domestic Roman Cath-

olic threats to English Protestantism. Palinode seems to

agree about the threat, but since he wants to tell the

story in church to a potentially Roman Catholic priest

or sympathizer, it is unlikely he has been persuaded to

think as Piers does.

FURTHER READING

Hume, Anthea. “Spenser, Puritanism, and the ‘Maye’

Eclogue.” RES 20 (1969): 155–167.

Daniel P. Knauss

SIDNEIAN PSALMS (THE SIDNEY

PSALMS) (OVERVIEW) SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

AND MARY SIDNEY HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE

(1599) Begun by Sir PHILIP SIDNEY but completed by

his sister, MARY SIDNEY HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE,

the collection contains 150 translations of the biblical

psalms. Herbert contributed 107 of the 150. She also

wrote two poems that preface the psalms themselves:

“TO THEE, PURE SPRITE,” an ELEGY for her brother, and

402 THE SHEPHEARD’S CALENDER: “MAYE ECLOGUE”