grand masterpiece to observe’, yet they objected to Spenser’s adoption of a style
suited to ‘medieval’ romance, preferring a modern elegance to Gothic extravagance.
Medieval poems which used or adapted Spenser’s stanza were James Thomson’s
Castle of Indolence, William Wordsworth’s Resolution and Independence,Lord
Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and John Keats’s Eve of St Agnes. A recent editor
called the poem The Fairy Queen and did away with Spenser’s old spelling where he
could; but antiquity was part of Spenser’s aim.
Sir Walter Ralegh
The inaugurators of the golden age of English verse present an historic contrast.
Sidney was a nobleman who did not print, yet his work survives in many manu-
scripts. None of Spenser’s verse survives in manuscript. He was a scholarship boy,
who for all his professionalism depended upon the Crown for employment and
patronage. The next stage is marked by Marlowe (b.1564), a poor scholar at Kings
School, Canterbury, and Cambridge. He too worked for the Crown but achieved
precocious theatrical success with Tamburlaine in 1587. Shakespeare, also b.1564,
did not attend university, but made a living out of acting and writing for the
commercial theatre, sharing in its profits, publishing verse only when the theatres
were closed. Great gentlemen and ladies wrote, but not for a living: Henry VIII,
Elizabeth I and her Earls of Oxford and of Essex all wrote well, and the Earl of Surrey
and the Countess of Pembroke better than well. But writing was one of their many
parts; Henry wrote good music; Elizabeth translated Boethius and wrote a fine
Italian hand.
The conviction that the gentle do not write for a living is exemplified in Sir
Walter Ralegh(c.1552–1618), the son of a country gentleman, who spoke broad
Devonshire all his life.A national figure, he was a poet of huge talent who hardly
pr inted, an amateur. His thirty surviving poems are scattered gestures surrounding
a large personality. Some cannot be extricated from career and patronage, such as
ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 101Sir Walter Ralegh (1552–1618) with
ruff, and lace in his hair. A miniature
by Nicholas Hilliard, 4.8 cm ×4.2
cm.