Pembroke College, Cambridge University, as a sizar, a
student who earns his tuition by acting as a servant to
wealthy students. He earned his B.A. in 1573 and his
M.A. in 1576.
While at Cambridge, and later in London, Spenser
cultivated important acquaintances, such as Gabriel
Harvey and Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, and noted
poet and courtier SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. Through these con-
nections, Spenser entered the social circle at Queen
ELIZABETH I’s court, and secured a career in govern-
ment, being appointed secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey
de Wilton, in 1580. Spenser remained in Ireland for
the rest of his life.
In Ireland, Spenser began his masterpiece, The FAERIE
QUEENE. By 1589, he had fi nished the fi rst three books
of his projected 12-book EPIC. After reading these, SIR
WALTER RALEIGH encouraged Spenser to return with
him to England, where he arranged an audience with
Queen Elizabeth. In 1590, with court PATRONAGE, his
work was published and deemed an immediate suc-
cess. Impressed, the queen promised Spenser a large
pension, which was later reduced due to political
machinations. He returned to Ireland, and on June 11,
1594, married Elizabeth Boyle, his second wife, com-
memorating the event with the SONNET SEQUENCE
AMORETTI and his poem EPITHALAMION.
Living in Kilcolman Castle with his family, Spenser
composed the last six books of The Faerie Queene and
was appointed sheriff of Cork in the fall of 1598. Trag-
edy struck only weeks later when rebellion broke out
among the Irish in Munster and mobs set fi re to his
castle. The family escaped with their lives, but the fi re
claimed most of Spenser’s recent writing. Only two
CANTOs of Book 7 of The Faerie Queene survived (pub-
lished in 1609); consequently, Spenser’s ambitious
masterwork was never completed. In December 1598,
Spenser was recalled to England. Weakened by the
winter journey, Spenser died in London on January
16, 1599. He was buried near GEOFFREY CHAUCER in
Westminster Abbey.
FURTHER READING
Cheney, Patrick. Spenser’s Famous Flight: A Renaissance Idea
of a Literary Career. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1993.
Maley, Willy. A Spenser Chronology. Lanham, Md.: Barnes
and Noble, 1994.
Waller, Gary F. Edmund Spenser: A Literary Life. New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Melissa FeminoSPENSERIAN SONNET A variation, devel-
oped by EDMUND SPENSER, of the SONNET (14-line
poem), this form is quite rare. Considered a complica-
tion of the ENGLISH SONNET form, the Spenserian sonnet
also exhibits three QUATRAINs and a concluding COU-
PLET, but features a more complex, interlinking rhyme
scheme: abab bcbc cdcd ee. The repetition of rhymes
bridging quatrains creates a tight, focused narrative
structure. Spenser’s AMORETTI is the most prominent
example of this sonnet type.
See also ITALIAN (PETRARCHAN) SONNET.“STAND WHOSO LIST” SIR THOMAS WYATT
(1557) This short poem is a translation from Sene-
ca’s Thyestes (lines 391–403). Like some of SIR THOMAS
WYATT’s other political laments, it is a declaration that
life at the centers of political power—here described as
“the slipper top / Of court’s estates” (ll. 1–2)—is far too
uncertain. Its joys are “brackish” (l. 4), meaning that
even at its best, the courtly life offers pleasures that
only partially mitigate the dangers. Indeed, to ingest
them may be poisonous. Instead, says the speaker, he
wishes to live apart, in quiet and peace, and to die an
old man in relative anonymity. The alternative is to live
always in the grip of death (l. 8), meeting an unwel-
come and unforseen end (l. 10). The fi nal line of the
poem uses ALLITERATION (“Doth die,” “dazed,” “dread-
ful”) to emphasize the frightening picture. The man-
ners of the two deaths (lines 6–7 and 10, respectively),
when compared, make the point most dramatically:
Better to die old, happy, and anonymous than young
and (implicitly) an easy target.
As is the case with so many of Wyatt’s poems, an
autobiographical reading is hard to avoid. His career at
the court of HENRY VIII was fraught with danger and
confl ict. This also shows how important the work of
translation was in the new poetics Wyatt introduced
into England. It is of a piece with several of Wyatt’s
other poems that also express mistrust of the court and424 SPENSERIAN SONNET