His "Mother Hubberd's Tale of the Ape and the Fox" may have been written earlier and now was published; in this the satire is much more keen; the poet finds even "the Comic Stage defaced and vulgarized, in his 'Tears of the Muses,' where "our pleasant Willy that is dead of late," cannot conceivably be Shakespeare—the silence of John Lyly may be intended.
When Spenser returned to Ireland a collection of his miscellaneous poems was published, containing, among other things, "Mother Hubberd's Tale," "The Tears of the Muses," "The Ruines of Rome" (sonnets from the French of Joachim du Bellay).
The "Ruines of Time," dedicated to "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," Lady Pembroke, begins with a vision of the genius of the ruined Roman city, Verulam, and in a far-off way reminds us of the Anglo-Saxon poem on the Ruined City. There is a lament for the fall of ancient empires, and the sorrows of the House of Dudley.
Spenser's mood was that of melancholy and disappointment, presently cheered by his marriage with Elizabeth Boyle. From his love came his sonnets, and his matchless "Epithalamion," his "love-learned song". If the "Faery Queen," and all else that Spenser did were lost, the "Epithalamion" and the "Prothalamion" would win for him the crown of the chief of English poets before Shakespeare. The marriage occurred in June, 1594: then troubles with the Irish whom he had supplanted, or some other cause, sent him to England, with the last three books of his romance. The affair of Duessa's treatment caused James VI to remonstrate through Bower, the English ambassador to Holyrood, and though the poet was not punished, his designs may not have been advanced. He now published his Hymns to Love and Beauty, Earthly and Heavenly, the latter under the influence of Plato, and his "Prothalamion" for the Ladies Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset. These splendid poems were his swan-song; Ireland called him, and in October, 1598, the natives whom he had despoiled drove him from Kilcolman, which they burned. Spenser died, a ruined man, in Westminster (16 January, 1599), Essex paid for his funeral, he lies in Westminster Abbey.
As Hephæstus, when he fashioned the arms of Achilles, melted bronze and gold and silver in his furnace, so Spenser combined the wealth of Greece and Italy, France, Rome, and England in the great crucible of his genius. In the "Epithalamium," for example, we find a translation of four lines from a sonnet of Ronsard, mingling with notes from Theocritus and the Song of Songs, with all the beautiful things of all the creeds. It would, perhaps, be unfair to call the style of Spenser, as it appears in the "Faery Queen," "Corinthian". Yet the metal in which he works is like that "Corinthian bronze" formed, at the conflagration of the city, from the molten gold and silver and copper of the sacred vessels and images of the gods. The spoils of all old poetry are mingled with his own. He has been called "the poets' poet"; his successors have taken from him his very tones. As has been said well, when Spenser writes—
Scarcely had Phœbus in the glowing East
Yet harnessëd his fiery-footed team,
that is Shakespeare, the Shakespeare of "Romeo and Juliet".
And taking usury of time forepast
Fit for such ladies and such lovely knights,
that is Shakespeare again, the Shakespeare of the Sonnets.
Many an Angel's voice
Singing before the eternal Majesty
For their triune triplicities on high: