Combining these pieces of evidence, we receive the impression that for some time after he came to Ireland Spenser worked but intermittently on the F. Q., resuming the regular composition and arrangement of the poem about the time when he ceased to reside in Dublin.[7] By 1588—the date of Fraunce’s quotation—he may have already been settled at Kilcolman. There, at least, Raleigh found him in 1589, and was shown the poem; with the result that in the autumn of that year Spenser accompanied Raleigh to London, and set about the publication of Books I-III.
The volume was licensed to William Ponsonbye on Dec. 1, 1589. Spenser’s explanatory letter to Raleigh bears date Jan. 23, 1589 (i. e. 1590 N. S.). In the course of 1590, but not before March 25, the volume was published. The printing shows some signs of haste; there is a long list of errata or ‘Faults Escaped in the Print’. This list, though not itself faultless, is of paramount authority in determining the text of Books I-III; it is cited in the notes as F. E.
In 1591 Spenser returned to Ireland, a disappointed man. I fear that Burleigh had taken occasion of the Milesian tone of certain episodes in Book III to stir the ashes of an old resentment: the second part of F. Q. begins and ends with complaints of misconstruction by that ‘mighty Pere’. But once back at Kilcolman he resumed his task. At first the stream of poetry flows languidly. The fable rambles, dispersing its force in many channels, like a river choked with sand; the verse flags; the play of alliteration is fitful; and Spenser essays a new, but to my ear an unhappy, variation in the form of a feminine ending.[8] But presently he gathers strength again under some new influence, which one would fain associate with his courtship of Elizabeth Boyle. The treatment of Britomart in Book V has strong, dramatic touches beyond anything in the earlier books; and in the lovely pastoral episodes of Book VI the poet lives once more in Arcadia. But positive indications of date are very rare. Book V Canto xi must be later than July 25, 1593, when Henri IV heard that mass which was the price of Paris: the singular dislocation of the Argument to Canto xii—half of which refers to the incidents of Canto xi—suggests that this Burbon episode was an afterthought; that it was inserted after Book V had been disposed into Cantos; and that Spenser meant it to form part of Canto xii. On the ordinary interpretation of the Amoretti,[9] all these books were finished before, but not long before, his wedding on June 11, 1594 (v. Sonnet 80); and on any interpretation they must have been finished by 1595, when Sir Robert Needham brought the manuscript of the Amoretti to London. Yet Spenser may have added and retouched up to the date of publication. For, in spite of Sonnet 80, I have fancied that when he wrote certain descriptions in Books V and VI Spenser was not only a husband but a father. See especially V. v. 53 (simile of the nurse and infant); V. vi. 14 (the child crying in the night); VI. iv. 18, 23, 24 (Calepine’s treatment of the foundling, which should be compared with Guyon’s behaviour in a similar situation, II. ii. 1); also VI. iv. 37, particularly line 8. Now Spenser’s eldest child was born in 1595. This may be fanciful. What is certain is that towards the close of 1595 Spenser followed Needham to London with the manuscript of the second part of F. Q. It was licensed to Ponsonbye on Jan. 20, 1596, and published by autumn of that year. James VI took offence at the treatment of Duessa, and had to be appeased by the English Ambassador, whose letter detailing the incident is dated Nov. 12, 1596. The new edition was in two volumes, the first being a reprint, with alterations, of 1590.
Late in 1596, or early in 1597, Spenser returned to Ireland. In 1598 Tyrone’s rebellion broke out. In October the rebels attacked and burned Kilcolman Castle. Spenser fled to Cork, whence in December he made his way to London; and there, on Jan. 16, 1599, he died. Ten years after his death a folio edition of F. Q. was published by Mathew Lownes, which added to the six books already published two Cantos of Mutabilitie, ‘which, both for Forme and Matter, appeare to be parcell of some following Booke of the Faerie Queene, vnder the Legend of Constancie.’ These two cantos, with two stanzas of a third, are all that remain of the third part of F. Q. Whether Spenser wrote more is unknown. But the fact that the two cantos are numbered vi and vii makes it fairly certain that he had at least sketched the whole Seventh Book. I cannot accept the view that these two cantos are an independent poem, in the sense that they were not designed to form part of F. Q. The lines (VII. vi. 37)—
‘And, were it not ill fitting for this file,
To sing of hilles and woods, mongst warres and Knights’—
show clearly that they were so designed. That they may have been written independently, in the sense in which the Wedding of Thames and Medway was written independently, I am not concerned to deny. The view that these cantos are spurious is unworthy of serious discussion. If they are spurious, there must have been living in 1609 an unknown poet who could write the Spenserian style and stanza as well as Spenser at his best. For there is nothing of its kind in F. Q. superior to the pageant[10] of the months and seasons; and no one who really knows Spenser can doubt that the two stanzas which alone remain of the ‘vnperfite’ eighth canto came from his heart.
IV.
The chief critical problem that confronts an editor of F. Q. concerns the text of Books I-III. Should the text of these books be based on 1590 or on 1596? I have chosen the latter. And I have done so, in the main, for a quite general reason. 1596 was produced under Spenser’s eye and by his authority. That authority must be held to cover both volumes, not the second only. Behind this we cannot go. The case is quite different with the later quartos of the Shepheards Calender, which were produced in Spenser’s absence.
This general position is confirmed by a minute comparison of 1590 and 1596. To take the more massive changes first: in 1 596 Spenser completely remodelled the conclusion of Book III. Instead of bringing Scudamour and Amoret together, as in 1590, he left them still parted, hoping thus to prolong the interest of their story into Book IV, and so to form a link between the two volumes, which he desired to be read as one continuous poem. For this he sacrificed five glorious stanzas, one of them the most rapturous that he ever wrote. The three stanzas which he substituted are far inferior, as he must have known; but they served his purpose. He also added a new stanza at I. xi. 3. He rewrote single lines, in the interests of sound or sense; he altered single words or phrases; and he made—what is even more significant—several minute changes of order designed to improve the rhythm. Let me add that most of these changes are more happily inspired than the second-thoughts of poets have sometimes been.