Edmund Spenser
(1552 - 1599) U.K.
Poet
Born in London and educated at Cambridge, he has been called "the poets' poet" because of his rich imagery and command of versification. He published the Shepheard's Calendar (1579), with the Earl of Leicester as his patron, with a preface and a commentary by E. K. (Edward Kirke, a friend of Spenser). In 1580 he became secretary to the Lord Deputy in Ireland and bought Kilcolman Castle. In 1958 Kilcolman was burnt down by rebels and he narrowly escaped. Some of his work were lost in the fire. He died in London and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Spenser shows no moral outrage when in the Garden of Adonis, Eros "With faire Adonis playes his wanton partes" (Faerie Queene, 3. 6. 49) just as he "playes" with Psyche the repeated term "playes" has erotic connotations in the former situation if it has any in the latter. In the medieval masque, the portrait of the boy Fansy is a portrait of a homoerotically attractive Virgilian formosus puer:
... like a lovely boy,
Of rare aspect and beautie without peare,
Matchable ether to that ympe of Troy,
Whom Jove did love and chose his cup to beare,
Or that same daintie lad, which was so deare
to great Alcides.
(Faerie Queene, 3. 12. 7).
The homoerotic allusions to Ganymede and Hylas are clear, and these loves seem to inspire the creative imagination rather than to cause moral degradation.
In the Shepheard's Calendar, Colin is Spenser himself, and Hobbinol is his friend Gabriel Harvey. The two biographical, rather than literary, questions are whether or not Harvey's love contained any erotic motives, and the degree to which Spenser reciprocated his love. As for the latter, it is clear that Spenser-Colin in the Calender at least pursued a female and that he "disdained" Harvey-Hobbinol's advances.
There is no substantial biographical material on Gabriel Harvey which would either prove or disprove homosexual orientation. Harvey met Spenser in 1570, when Harvey entered Pembroke College. Spenser may have been eighteen years old, Harvey may have been twenty (their respective birth dates of 1552 and 1550 are not absolutely certain).
Their friendship became quite close, lasted throughout their lives, for long periods involved almost daily contact, and was certainly "intimate" however we may wish to define that term. Spenser did not marry until the age of forty-four, and Harvey never married. This is the extent of the evidence or non-evidence, and one may be forgiven for inferring that these two men were not very enthusiastic heterosexuals.
We would do best to accept, along with its ambiguities, Edward Kirke's estimation that Harvey was Spenser's "very speciall and most familiar freend, whom he entirely and extraordinarily beloued."
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