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Friday, August 29, 2025

The Rival Poets: A Peek Behind the Curtain.

In this series:

Upon accepting Edmund Spenser as the rival described in Shakespeare's Rival Poet sonnets, not only does Queen Elizabeth I clearly emerge as the recipient of Shakespeare's Rival Poet sonnets, and all of Shakespeare's Monument Sonnets, but a number of impediments are removed from reading certain poems by Edmund Spenser and by Shakespeare.

The first thing that becomes obvious is that the odds are astronomically against the Stratford man being the playwright Shakespeare. The intimacy with which the Queen is addressed requires an author of noble stature. And not just any man but a man with a deep personal relationship to the Queen.

So much in the plays and poems corresponds with the life of Edward de Vere that, together with this requirement, he becomes the leading candidate. Still more, Vere's appeals to bring an end to his extended exile from the Queen's presence correspond to sonnets 50-51. His memory of the time he was her favorite, and his hope to return to be so once again, closely corresponds with sonnet 521.

Taken in isolation, mere sonnets cannot possibly be definitive. But taken together with the plays and other sonnets, and the historical record a noble man so close to royalty was bound to leave behind, a life emerges. The historical record takes on flesh and blood.

The publication of Spenser's The Faerie Queene stunned the Elizabethan literary world. The shock was so great that its tremors are found in the works of Shakespeare. What else could be the case?

Was Shakespeare Gay? What Do the Sonnets Really Say?

The first three books, published in 1590, included a dedicatory sonnet to Edward de Vere.

To the right Honourable the Earle of Oxenford Lord

high Chamberlayne of England


BY EDMUND SPENSER.


RECEIVE, most Noble Lord, in gentle gree,

The unripe fruit of an unready wit ;

Which by thy countenaunce doth crave to bee

Defended from foule Envies poisnous bit.

Which so to doe may thee right well besit,

Sith th'antique glory of thine auncestry

Under a shady vele is therein writ,

And eke thine owne long living memory,

Succeeding them in true nobility :

And also for the love which thou doest beare

To th' Heliconian ymps, and they to thee ;

They unto thee, and thou to them, most deare.

Deare as thou art unto thy selfe, so love

That loves and honours thee, as doth behove.

This much might be expected given the reputation of the earl as among England's finest poets and playwrights. Also the two did likely share a venue in the 1573 anthology, An Hundreth Sundrie Flowers2 before Spenser gravitated toward the Sidney circle at Wilton House.

Shakespeare's works show a familiarity with the goings on around the Wilton group. The same could be said of Vere, while he gathered Walter Raleigh, Tom Watson, John Lyly, Anthony Munday and many others of the London literati around him at the Royal Court and his rooms at the Savoy. In 1580 he acquired the London mansion called “Fisher's Folly” and the group revolved around that address.

Raleigh and Spenser traveled to Ireland, in 1580, with the English army under the Lord Grey, Baron of Wilton. Both received Irish estates for their service. Raleigh returned to London, leaving his in care of servants. Spenser remained a resident of Ireland for the remainder of his life, twice visiting London at Raleigh's invitation and once more, to die, following the destruction of his Irish estate by rebels.

It is an interesting question as to whether the line “Deare as thou art unto thy selfe” might be a bit of a jab at Vere. Usage was much looser in Tudor times. It need not have been.

A congratulatory poem appears in the same 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene by “Ignoto”. This is generally considered to be a monker employed by Shakespeare. Here it is written in the form since called “Venus and Adonis” stanza. No jab is returned upon the author. The praise is completely an act of the highest praise.

To looke upon a worke of rare devise

The which a workman setteth out to view,

And not to yield it the deserved prise,

That unto such a workmanship is dew.

Doth either prove the judgement to be naught,

Or els doth shew a mind with envy fraught.

Accepting these as words of Shakespeare, in 1590, by the time he was writing the Rival Poet sonnets the 1596 second volume had been published. Among the mix of emotions they contain is included envy.

There is a jab or two at Spenser but no worse. Perhaps done in return for the line in the dedicatory poem.

Yet what of thee thy Poet doth invent,

He robs thee of, and payes it thee againe,

Still, there is no rancor. Shakespeare knows his sonnets have been displaced by a work of genius and cannot bring himself to say otherwise.3

That there is a jab at the queen in Sonnet #84, and that it does contain a touch of rancor, suggests that one of the sonnets was not designed for her eyes.

You to your beautious blessings adde a curse,

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.4

The theme of the Rival Poet sonnets is that Shakespeare's monument to the Queen presented her actual self rather than making of her a faerie land character. Spenser, he said, several times throughout, had actually devalued her by implying she must be transformed into a faerie queene in order to be admired.

And their grosse painting might be better us’d,

Where cheekes need blood, in thee it is abusd.

Her real beauty could only be found in the sonnets, he averred. In real life she was even more beautiful than in faerie land.

In the meantime, all of these poems give us a peek behind the curtain. A verbal jab here and there, perhaps; a witty turn, there and here; an exasperated word on the queen, even; monikers and pen-names for the reasons of the time and place.



2See my Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096GSQV14

3Time, of course, has reversed the estimates.

4Shake-speare's Sonnets, #84.



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