Spenser was certainly their kinsman, in what degree is unknown, but his own family must have been poor. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, was aided by the munificent Robert Nowell, and obtained a Sizarship (corresponding to the old Oxford servitorship), at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge (1569). Here he made two friends, Gabriel Harvey, a true friend, if a rather pedantic don (the Hobbinol of his "Shepherd's Calendar"), and E. Kirke, the E. K. who furnished the notes explanatory of old English words in that poem. Spenser also gained the good graces of Grindal, then Bishop of London, later Primate, a puritan, who fell into Elizabeth's disgrace, and is applauded as Algrind by Spenser in the "Shepherd's Calendar".
Spenser's youth was passed in an England disturbed by the claims of the captive Mary Stuart to the Crown; by the rebellion of her adherents in the North; by the papal excommunication of Elizabeth, and by the pretensions of the extreme puritan exiles who, driven abroad by the Marian persecution, had imbibed at Geneva the doctrines of Calvin. In their attacks on the English Bishops they out-wearied even the successors of Calvin in Geneva, who regarded them as men not to be satisfied by any concessions; "a sect of perilous consequence who would have no king but a presbytery," said Elizabeth. Here were all the elements which caused Elizabeth's cruel persecution of Catholics, the long struggle of the puritans under Elizabeth and James I, the wars under Charles I, and the strife with Spain and Catholic Ireland. In the words of James VI, it was "a world-wolter," and Spenser, as a poor young man, eager to make his fortune, had to swim as best he might in the cross-currents of this troublesome world. He never enjoyed the peaceful leisure of a Tennyson or a Wordsworth; he had to play an active part in strenuous and most unhappy affairs.
His nature, too, was divided. With all his love of pleasure and of beauty he leaned, though not virulently, towards the puritan party, and, as a good patriot, loathed and detested Rome.
It is probable that, when a freshman at the age of 17, he contributed to a Miscellany, Van der Noodt's "Theatre of Worldlings" (1569), translations in blank verse of certain sonnets of the French poet Joachim du Bellay, and of Petrarch. These, re-cast into the form of sonnets, recur in a volume of Spenser's, of 1591.
After taking his Master's degree (1576) Spenser visited Lancashire, and if his words as Colin Clout in the "Shepherd's Calendar" be autobiographical, lost his heart to a lady whom he calls Rosalind, "the widow's daughter of the glen". According to Gabriel Harvey she "christened him her Signior Pegaso," though neither his poetry nor his wooing won her from her cruelty. Many years later he still writes of her with chivalrous affection, so, like Scott, he had his heart broken and cleverly pieced again.
By 1579 Spenser was in London, a literary retainer or protégé of Elizabeth's favourite, the Earl of Leicester; while he also enjoyed the friendship of Leicester's nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, the Flower of Chivalry, himself a poet, and the best beloved man of his time. Now (1579) Spenser published, and dedicated to Sidney, his "Shepherd's Calendar," a set of twelve eclogues or pastoral poems, one for each month. The pastoral had wandered far from the rural beauty of Theocritus, and, in the hands of Mantuan and Clement Marot, had become a vehicle for allegory, and even of Protestant argumentation. Spenser does not stray far into party and puritanic politics, but they are not unknown to his shepherds. In January, as Colin Clout, he bewails the coldness of Rosalind,
She laughs the songs that Colin Clout doth make,
which is carrying cruelty very far. February is occupied with a rustic dispute between youth and age: the metre is one of the measures of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel":—
Who will not suffer the stormy time,
Where will he live tyll the lustry prime?
(Shepherd's Calendar, Feb., 11. 15, 16.)
They burn'd the chapel for very rage
And cursed Lord Cranstoun's Goblin-page.
(Lay of the Last Minstrel, C. II., Stanza, 33).
March, with the dialogue of Willie and Thomalin about the strange bird, Love, is adapted from the Greek of Bion in a most pleasant manner, and April contains a melodious song of fair Eliza, a Maiden Queen; which probably procured Spenser's presentation to Elizabeth. The great variety of melodious verse of which Spenser was already a perfect master is, for us, perhaps the chief merit of his pastorals. Through life Spenser keeps up the shepherd's mask, and Raleigh, in his verse, is "The Shepherd of Ocean". The rival Protestant and Catholic clergy also appear as shepherds, good or bad, while in another eclogue the perfect poet, Cuddie, complains, like Theocritus, of public indifference, and is advised to sing of redoubted knights: and, indeed, Spenser had already conceived the idea of his knightly romantic poem "The Faery Queen," and was ambitious to excel his model, Ariosto. In this Harvey discouraged him; "Hobgoblin" must not "run away with the garland from Apollo".