If we turn to Sackville's "Gorboduc," acted before Queen Elizabeth in 1561, we shall see how thoroughly blank verse had asserted its freedom of the language. Even Greene, in his "Friar Bacon," in 1594, has passages that in their rich and harmonious diction display the wonderful power of blank verse. The true vehicle for the deathless dramas of Shakespeare was established, and already he had taken possession of it with some of his noblest imaginings, for Nash, as early as 1589, alludes to "Hamlet."
But before coming to Shakespeare, we must add another word regarding Sackville (b. 1527, d. 1608). In 1559 he published "The Mirrour for Magistrates." The poetical preface to this work, which he called "The Induction," and the "Complaint of Henry, Duke of Buckingham," displayed the most remarkable powers of poetry, and at once arrested the public attention. The work itself was a mere series of the lives of personages prominent in English history; it is supposed to be an imitation of Lydgate's "Fall of Princes," but is expanded by the loftier genius of the author, while the induction is so illustrated by allegory, as to give rise to the belief that Spenser was indebted to him.
Edmund Spenser, the greatest of our allegoric poets, was born (1553) in East Smithfield, in London, and was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. He had the good fortune to secure the friendship of the all-powerful Earl of Leicester, of Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh. By their introduction to Queen Elizabeth, he obtained an annuity of £50 a year; and besides being employed by Leicester on a mission to France, went to Ireland in 1580 with Lord Grey de Wilton. We have already mentioned his "View of the State of Ireland," and for that able work, as well as for other services, he received a grant of the abbey and manor of Enniscorthy in Wexford, which the same year, probably under pressure of necessity, he transferred to a Mr. Lynot. The estate, at the time of Gilbert's survey of Ireland, was worth £8,000 a year. Afterwards Spenser obtained the grant of the castle of Kilcolman, in the county of Cork, part of the estate of the unfortunate Earl of Desmond, with 3,000 acres of land. On this property the poet went to live, and his dear friend Sir Philip Sidney being just then killed at the battle of Zutphen, he wrote his pastoral elegy of "Astrophel" in his honour. He also wrote his great work the "Faerie Queene" there; but in 1597 he was chased by the exasperated Irish from his castle, which was burned over his head, his youngest child perishing in the cradle. He reached London, with his wife and two boys and a girl, and thus broken down by his misfortunes, he sank and died in 1599 at an inn or lodging-house in King Street, Westminster. Ben Jonson says "he died for lake of bread, yet refused twenty pieces sent to him by my Lord of Essex, adding he was sorry he had not time to spend them."
It has been asked how he could die of "lack of bread" with an annuity of £50 a year. The thing is very possible. Burleigh was his life-long enemy. He hated him as the commonplace soul instinctively hates the man of genius, and this hatred was aggravated by his being patronised by Leicester, Essex, and Raleigh, all men whom Burleigh detested. Nothing was, therefore, easier than for Burleigh to withhold the dying poet's pension, or his son Robert Cecil, who now possessed his power, for Burleigh was in his last days, and Cecil inherited all his meanness. Spenser has recorded the malice of Burleigh in various places. In his "Ruins of Time" he says:—
"The rugged foremost that with grave foresight
Wields kingdoms' causes and affairs of state,
My looser verse, I wot, doth sharply wite
For praising love."
And at the close of the sixth book of "The Faerie Queene," he declares there is no hope of escaping "his venomous despite." Spenser's verses in "Mother Hubbard's Tales," describing the miseries of Court dependence, have often been quoted:—
"Full little knowest thou that hast not tryed