Amoretti, A Sonnet Cycle

One of the greatest of all English poets, Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, in 1552. Spenser was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors' School and later at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1579, he published The Shepheardes Calender, his first major work. Spenser journeyed to Ireland in July 1580, in the service of the newly appointed Lord Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton. His time included the terrible massacre at the Siege of Smerwick where he served alongside Walter Raleigh. He remained in Ireland for some time and acquired various lands as well as the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland, an extremely powerful position. The epic poem, The Faerie Queene, is acknowledged as Spenser’s masterpiece. The first three books were published in 1590, and a second set of three books were published in 1596. Spenser had originally planned 12 volumes but even in its shorter form it remains one of the most masterful and longest of all English poems. He later wrote of it that it is "cloudily enwrapped in allegorical devises," and that the aim behind The Faerie Queene was to "fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline.” Indeed the reality is that Spenser, through his great talents, was able to move Poetry in a different direction. It led to him being called a Poet’s Poet and brought rich admiration from Milton, Raleigh, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, and Tennyson, among others. In 1591 Spenser published Complaints, a collection of poems that voices complaints in mournful or mocking tones. By 1594, Spenser's first wife had died, and he married Elizabeth Boyle, to whom he addressed the sonnet sequence Amoretti. The marriage itself was celebrated in Epithalamion. These were both published in 1595. In the following year Spenser wrote a prose pamphlet titled A View of the Present State of Ireland, a highly inflammatory argument for the pacification and destruction of Irish culture. On January 13th, 1599 Edmund Spenser died at the age of forty-six. His coffin was carried to his grave in Westminster Abbey by other poets, who threw many pens and pieces of poetry into his grave followed by many tears.