Oh lord Iām sorry I meant to respond to this and forgot. Please keep in mind Iām heavily influenced by my personal dislike of Spenser.
Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare have similar schticks going. Theyāre the Elizabethan golden age Disney. They take well known pre existing stories and dress them up with some flair for the contemporary audience. It doesnāt matter that we know the ending because itās about the journey through language.
Both have an appreciation for roman mythology and art seen by the elements they incorporate into their stories.
While Shakespeare is inspired by Virgil, Spenser wanted to BE Virgil. Or at least, he wanted to be to England as Virgil was to Rome. So, like Virgil, he wrote a pastoral before he wrote an Epic.
Both curried favor with Queen Elizabeth I. This is where my clear preference of Shakespeare is going to make my analysis āMY favorite playwrightās clever courting versus HIS pathetic undignified suck up attempts.ā Keep in mind both worked. She sent Spenser a salary and heās buried in Westminster Abby.
Shakespeareās plays catered to the current monarchy throughout his life. Macbeth is one of the more egregious āplease like me, your majestyā moments and even then, what a way to do it. āHereās the legend of your ancestor. No heās not the focus. ~~ignore the original myth~~ Hereās a story about how you came to power and itās from the perspective of your ancestorās enemy and itās going to be one of the greatest things ever. Sit at the edge of your seat waiting to uncover whether the tyrant king is slain and your rightful throne falls to youā. Brilliant. No notes.
With Elizabeth, it was more subtle. All his histories looked favorably on the Tudors and some scholars argue the strong intelligent female characters he wrote are in Elizabethās image. In Loves Labors Lost thereās a queen who shows up all the men and makes fools of them but sheās a three dimensional character that could stand on her own outside of Elizabeth. Nothing that makes me go āWilly boy have some self respect.ā Then of course when she said āyou killed off my favorite character. Bring him back and give him his own play,ā he said āyes maāamā and wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor. The play in which Elizabeth actually appears, Henry VIII, representing hope and joy for England, was written after her death.
Meanwhile in the Fairie Queene, Queen Elizabeth is the Fairie Queene. But she is also alluded to as a Guenivere figure, a Goddess, a muse, daughter of Oberon. Sheās not part of the story other than to send the knight out to have his story. *insert stanza about how pure and virginal she is*
I tried to like Fairie Queene. I really did. I just remember decoding a line and once the prose was stripped away it boiled down to āyou remember the hydra Hercules fought? This hydra was just like that but worseā WHY. WHY IS IT WORSE. LAZY ASS. Canāt stand without Ovid or Virgil propping him up. But I digress.
We all know how Shakespeare has issues with racism and antisemitism as well as some loose obligatory anti Catholicism. If he wasnāt dead Iād likely have a very different relationship with him.
Spenser not only was all of those things but is also actively anti Irish to a distracting degree. Iām a little more forgiving of Shakespeare over Spenser because Spenser was writing treatises on how Britain needs to treat the Irish worse, actually, and how England needs to step up their empire game over all the non Christian and non white people if theyāre ever to become like their natural predecessor, Rome.
Not to mention the cognitive dissonance in his worship of Roman culture while also adhering to strict Anglican ideals.
The fairy queen is pushing these ideals: Christian superiority, British superiority, and Queen Elizabeth please like me.
While also trying to be: Virgil and Ovid style Epic, Arthurian legend, fairy tale, a scathing condemnation of Catholicism and paganism, and religious instruction.
He needs to include Roman gods if he wants to be Virgil, but also only! One! God! Because Christian superiority and he canāt even have saints because Catholicism is evil and idolatrous. While this is par for the time it quickly gets comedic reading stuff like (paraphrasing) āThese terrible evil inhuman pagans spit in the face of Jupiter/Zeus/Jove!ā
Which is how you have characters like Queen Juno Lucifera, who is simultaneously Juno and Satan and she holds her power by claiming sheās the daughter of Jupiter/Jove aka the One True God but in reality Shes the daughter of Hades aka Satan! And she spends all her time looking in a mirror in a room full of peacocks because sheās also Pride but donāt forget she is Juno and her makeup proves sheās self idolizing and she leads the seven deadly sins. (Depending on what scholar you listen to she may also be Queen Mary or Catholicism)
And Diana is a devil! And Hecate is a devil and a witch! And Catholicism is a shape changing devil witch named Duessa who is the foil of the sweet nice gentle paler than snow virgin Una and- Spenser arent you tired? Iām tired. Check out Protestant Roman mythology syncretism if youāre not tired itās fascinating and exhausting at the same time.
Spenser: AND THE PERFECT WOMAN IS A VIRGIN WHO KEEPS HER BREASTS OUT FOR WAYWORD BABIES TO SUCKLE BUT NOT IN A SEXY WAY BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE A SIN-
Oh god heās still going. Heās-
This was a planned seven part series named after each of the virtues that he never finished.
He and Shakespeare also took inspiration from hollinsheds history but while Shakespeare made King Lear, Spenser just sorta dumps it in as context. And forgets to stir.
TLDR: Theyāre both massive borrowers from other stories and the culture of the time, but while Shakespeare lands personal success and plays I think deserve their renowned position in literary canon for their accessibility if taught correctly, Spenser immediately gets on his British and Christian nationalism agenda because he canāt be the Virgil of England until England becomes the next Rome, but the moment you take Rome out of the equation his writing suffers; You have to have a working knowledge of both the Bible and Greek and Roman mythology to understand any given stanza. A great snapshot into what England was at the time with academic merit written by a fanboy I feel profoundly ungenerous to.
