1 00:00:09,500 --> 00:00:12,780 On the 16th of January 1599, 2 00:00:12,780 --> 00:00:16,220 a funeral took place at Westminster Abbey in London. 3 00:00:17,380 --> 00:00:20,660 When the coffin was laid to rest, a line of poets, 4 00:00:20,660 --> 00:00:23,060 clutching eulogies they had written, 5 00:00:23,060 --> 00:00:27,940 threw their poems and their pens into the tomb after it. 6 00:00:30,020 --> 00:00:32,220 They had lost a hero. 7 00:00:32,220 --> 00:00:36,420 This was a man who had changed literature for ever. 8 00:00:36,420 --> 00:00:39,460 And he did it with one poem. 9 00:00:39,460 --> 00:00:40,700 But WHAT a poem! 10 00:00:43,340 --> 00:00:46,940 A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine 11 00:00:46,940 --> 00:00:51,460 Y cladd in mightie armes and silver shielde 12 00:00:51,460 --> 00:00:55,700 Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine 13 00:00:55,700 --> 00:00:58,940 The cruell markes of many a bloudy fielde 14 00:00:58,940 --> 00:01:02,220 Yet armes till that time did he never wield 15 00:01:02,220 --> 00:01:06,380 His angry steede did chide his foming bitt 16 00:01:06,380 --> 00:01:09,780 As much disdayning to the curbe to yield 17 00:01:09,780 --> 00:01:14,140 Full jolly knight, he seemd, and faire did sitt 18 00:01:14,140 --> 00:01:18,180 As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt. 19 00:01:19,940 --> 00:01:22,500 The poem is called The Faerie Queene. 20 00:01:22,500 --> 00:01:25,180 And its author is Edmund Spenser, a lowly civil servant 21 00:01:25,180 --> 00:01:31,780 who had climbed his way up the greasy pole of Elizabethan society 22 00:01:31,780 --> 00:01:34,100 and, for me, it's one of the most 23 00:01:34,100 --> 00:01:36,860 exciting works of literature ever written. 24 00:01:40,620 --> 00:01:42,660 I'm Dr Janina Ramirez. 25 00:01:42,660 --> 00:01:44,860 I'm a social and cultural historian, 26 00:01:44,860 --> 00:01:48,220 and I've been fascinated by this unfinished masterpiece 27 00:01:48,220 --> 00:01:51,020 ever since I first read it as a teenager. 28 00:01:51,020 --> 00:01:52,220 Why? 29 00:01:52,220 --> 00:01:55,740 Because nothing about this poem is as it seems. 30 00:01:55,740 --> 00:01:58,500 Its language may sound otherworldly, 31 00:01:58,500 --> 00:02:02,940 its cast of Arthurian knights and fairies might smack of fantasy, 32 00:02:02,940 --> 00:02:07,060 but look deeper and you'll find something even more intriguing. 33 00:02:08,420 --> 00:02:12,940 This is a deeply subversive book. 34 00:02:12,940 --> 00:02:16,980 It begins with a sense of optimism and order. 35 00:02:16,980 --> 00:02:19,380 But underneath the ornate poetry 36 00:02:19,380 --> 00:02:23,420 lies a society gripped by political upheaval, 37 00:02:23,420 --> 00:02:26,180 violence and religious turmoil. 38 00:02:27,940 --> 00:02:31,460 And, as this turmoil overtook Spenser's own life, 39 00:02:31,460 --> 00:02:35,220 the poem itself turned into something much darker, 40 00:02:35,220 --> 00:02:38,860 chaotic and emotionally complex. 41 00:02:38,860 --> 00:02:41,740 Nothing like this had been seen before. 42 00:02:41,740 --> 00:02:45,660 And I don't think we've seen anything quite like it since. 43 00:02:45,660 --> 00:02:49,460 There may be other contenders but, for me, this is the book 44 00:02:49,460 --> 00:02:53,020 that catapulted English literature into the modern age. 45 00:03:10,420 --> 00:03:14,500 In the summer of 1580, a young English civil servant 46 00:03:14,500 --> 00:03:17,980 travelled to Ireland to begin a new life across the sea. 47 00:03:19,140 --> 00:03:22,540 On the surface, it was a plum posting - 48 00:03:22,540 --> 00:03:26,540 private secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland himself. 49 00:03:26,540 --> 00:03:29,780 But some historians have argued that he was fleeing 50 00:03:29,780 --> 00:03:31,900 from a mess of his own making. 51 00:03:31,900 --> 00:03:35,220 Because the precocious aspiring poet 52 00:03:35,220 --> 00:03:39,620 had written a satire that had landed him in hot water. 53 00:03:39,620 --> 00:03:43,100 The young civil servant was Edmund Spenser. 54 00:03:43,100 --> 00:03:46,620 And the poem was Mother Hubberd's Tale. 55 00:03:46,620 --> 00:03:51,580 But this was no little ditty about fetching a bone for a dog. 56 00:03:51,580 --> 00:03:54,020 It was something much more provocative. 57 00:03:55,180 --> 00:03:59,540 In it, he pokes fun at influential members of the Royal Court, 58 00:03:59,540 --> 00:04:05,260 portraying one as a bumbling ape, and another as a sly fox. 59 00:04:05,260 --> 00:04:08,780 Of course, he never actually names anyone directly. 60 00:04:08,780 --> 00:04:10,740 That would be far too dangerous. 61 00:04:10,740 --> 00:04:15,460 But one courtier in particular gets mocked especially. 62 00:04:15,460 --> 00:04:19,180 The powerful William Cecil, Lord Burghley. 63 00:04:19,180 --> 00:04:22,820 It was a potentially career-ending mistake. 64 00:04:25,860 --> 00:04:29,540 We'll never know just how much this bruising encounter 65 00:04:29,540 --> 00:04:32,580 affected Spenser's decision to leave for Ireland. 66 00:04:32,580 --> 00:04:34,100 But one thing was very clear... 67 00:04:35,340 --> 00:04:38,740 ..if he thought a quiet life in the civil service awaited, 68 00:04:38,740 --> 00:04:40,780 he was sorely mistaken. 69 00:04:40,780 --> 00:04:44,060 When Edmund Spenser arrived here in the 16th century, 70 00:04:44,060 --> 00:04:48,460 Ireland was gripped by one of the bloodiest periods in its history. 71 00:04:51,220 --> 00:04:55,860 By 1580, Ireland had undergone centuries of occupation. 72 00:04:55,860 --> 00:04:57,620 First, by the Norman earls 73 00:04:57,620 --> 00:05:01,620 and then by successive Tudor and Elizabethan forces. 74 00:05:01,620 --> 00:05:03,900 Wave after wave of invasion 75 00:05:03,900 --> 00:05:07,460 had already created a confused, conflicted nation. 76 00:05:07,460 --> 00:05:11,260 And now religion had been thrown into the mix. 77 00:05:11,260 --> 00:05:13,940 After the Reformation in England, 78 00:05:13,940 --> 00:05:18,780 the Protestant faith became the official religion of state. 79 00:05:18,780 --> 00:05:22,860 The Elizabethan government was determined to export 80 00:05:22,860 --> 00:05:26,260 this brand of Christianity across the Irish Sea. 81 00:05:26,260 --> 00:05:31,460 In response, pockets of resistance sprang up all across Ireland, 82 00:05:31,460 --> 00:05:36,140 from indigenous Catholics to old Anglo-Norman settlers. 83 00:05:36,140 --> 00:05:41,220 And what had begun as a series of tit-for-tat raids and counter-raids 84 00:05:41,220 --> 00:05:45,420 escalated into something far more vicious and deadly. 85 00:05:47,100 --> 00:05:50,460 Spenser found himself thrust into a chaotic world 86 00:05:50,460 --> 00:05:52,700 of clashing religious loyalties, 87 00:05:52,700 --> 00:05:56,660 ancient traditions and shockingly brutal violence. 88 00:05:56,660 --> 00:06:00,220 And, in the midst of all of this horror, 89 00:06:00,220 --> 00:06:03,860 he sat down and wrote one of the most beautiful poems 90 00:06:03,860 --> 00:06:05,380 in the English language. 91 00:06:06,660 --> 00:06:10,740 Sadly, Spenser's handwritten manuscripts no longer survive 92 00:06:10,740 --> 00:06:14,660 but, buried in the archives of the University Library at Cambridge, 93 00:06:14,660 --> 00:06:19,860 are extremely rare copies of the very first edition of this important poem. 94 00:06:20,940 --> 00:06:22,740 And here it is. 95 00:06:22,740 --> 00:06:25,380 Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. 96 00:06:25,380 --> 00:06:28,020 This is a really exciting moment for me. 97 00:06:28,020 --> 00:06:30,780 I have been obsessed with this poem 98 00:06:30,780 --> 00:06:33,860 since I first read it as an undergraduate student. 99 00:06:33,860 --> 00:06:36,260 I can't believe I'm in the presence 100 00:06:36,260 --> 00:06:39,740 of such a precious 400-year-old object. 101 00:06:44,660 --> 00:06:47,780 The poem is divided into six books, 102 00:06:47,780 --> 00:06:51,220 each one following a knight who has been sent on a quest by Gloriana, 103 00:06:51,220 --> 00:06:55,460 the Faerie Queene, betrothed to Prince Arthur. 104 00:06:57,700 --> 00:07:02,220 It's a mythic landscape of elves, nymphs and lonely castles. 105 00:07:02,220 --> 00:07:04,500 And even to the Elizabethan reader, 106 00:07:04,500 --> 00:07:07,260 it would have seemed a little quaint and old-fashioned. 107 00:07:07,260 --> 00:07:12,100 Even the language Spenser uses is deliberately outdated and archaic. 108 00:07:43,820 --> 00:07:46,700 Elizabethans wouldn't have talked like this. 109 00:07:46,700 --> 00:07:48,900 But, by writing in this style, 110 00:07:48,900 --> 00:07:52,700 Spenser is drawing on a well-established literary tradition 111 00:07:52,700 --> 00:07:56,980 of romance literature that stretched right back to the 10th century. 112 00:07:56,980 --> 00:07:59,180 And it's what he does with this tradition 113 00:07:59,180 --> 00:08:01,180 that is just so revolutionary. 114 00:08:06,100 --> 00:08:10,620 Spenser took the familiar world of Arthurian chivalry and courtly love 115 00:08:10,620 --> 00:08:13,060 and thoroughly subverted it. 116 00:08:13,060 --> 00:08:15,780 Each character is loaded with meaning. 117 00:08:15,780 --> 00:08:19,860 And at the heart of this epic is a deeply symbolic marriage 118 00:08:19,860 --> 00:08:23,540 between the past and the future. 119 00:08:23,540 --> 00:08:26,460 The Faerie Queen of the poem is, of course, 120 00:08:26,460 --> 00:08:29,140 meant to be Queen Elizabeth I. 121 00:08:29,140 --> 00:08:32,300 And by using her marriage to Prince Arthur 122 00:08:32,300 --> 00:08:34,580 as the framework for the whole poem, 123 00:08:34,580 --> 00:08:40,740 Spenser is lending Elizabeth's politically insecure dynasty 124 00:08:40,740 --> 00:08:46,460 a mythic continuity and credibility through the Arthurian legend. 125 00:08:48,020 --> 00:08:52,020 With this book, Spenser is constructing a narrative 126 00:08:52,020 --> 00:08:56,060 that needs to be decoded before it can be understood. 127 00:08:56,060 --> 00:08:59,020 And, helpfully, he tells us just how to do it. 128 00:09:00,420 --> 00:09:04,580 'Dr Richard Danson Brown is an expert on Spenser's writing, 129 00:09:04,580 --> 00:09:07,820 'and thinks that the key to understanding this epic poem 130 00:09:07,820 --> 00:09:12,100 'lies in a letter that was included at the end of the first edition.' 131 00:09:12,100 --> 00:09:15,220 He wrote it to Sir Walter Raleigh, 132 00:09:15,220 --> 00:09:18,060 and it is a letter which basically explains 133 00:09:18,060 --> 00:09:20,540 the whole intention behind the poem. 134 00:09:20,540 --> 00:09:22,740 Why did he write it to Raleigh? Mm. 135 00:09:22,740 --> 00:09:26,180 Basically, at this stage, in 1590, 136 00:09:26,180 --> 00:09:30,060 Raleigh is a really important courtier. 137 00:09:30,060 --> 00:09:32,260 He's one of Elizabeth's favourites, 138 00:09:32,260 --> 00:09:34,740 and he's something of a Renaissance man. 139 00:09:34,740 --> 00:09:38,700 So, in a sense, by putting this letter in The Faerie Queene, 140 00:09:38,700 --> 00:09:42,380 Spenser is hitching his star to Raleigh's. 141 00:09:42,380 --> 00:09:45,780 Mm, he's backing this very important, influential person. 142 00:09:45,780 --> 00:09:47,300 Right, absolutely. 143 00:09:47,300 --> 00:09:51,580 And what he does here is he gives a kind of explanation 144 00:09:51,580 --> 00:09:54,020 of what's happening in the poem. 145 00:09:54,020 --> 00:09:57,500 So this is just the first three books of the Faerie Queen. 146 00:09:57,500 --> 00:10:00,300 What the letter as a whole tells us 147 00:10:00,300 --> 00:10:05,380 is that his plan is that the final poem will be a full 12 books. 148 00:10:05,380 --> 00:10:08,020 Gosh, right. And he never gets around to the full 12, 149 00:10:08,020 --> 00:10:10,620 but that's the intention? He never gets around to that. 150 00:10:10,620 --> 00:10:14,620 And, in many ways, The Faerie Queene is a massive poem as we have it. 151 00:10:14,620 --> 00:10:16,980 It's six and a bit books. 152 00:10:16,980 --> 00:10:21,020 A 12-book poem would have been truly humongous. Yeah, yeah. 153 00:10:21,020 --> 00:10:23,540 So what the letter is doing 154 00:10:23,540 --> 00:10:26,300 is outlining the plan of the poem as a whole. 155 00:10:26,300 --> 00:10:28,900 And he does this through a series 156 00:10:28,900 --> 00:10:32,260 of really interesting phrases and words. 157 00:10:32,260 --> 00:10:36,340 The one that I'm particularly fond of is he describes it as being 158 00:10:36,340 --> 00:10:39,580 "a continued allegory or a darke conceit". 159 00:10:44,140 --> 00:10:48,180 The Faerie Queene is a puzzle book of symbols and codes, 160 00:10:48,180 --> 00:10:50,980 of hidden meanings and subtexts. 161 00:10:50,980 --> 00:10:53,860 It reflects the world in which it was written, 162 00:10:53,860 --> 00:10:58,020 a world full of metaphor and elaborate representation. 163 00:10:59,580 --> 00:11:02,620 This is a painting of Queen Elizabeth I, 164 00:11:02,620 --> 00:11:05,860 the Faerie Queene herself, Gloriana. 165 00:11:05,860 --> 00:11:09,140 This one's known as the Rainbow Portrait. 166 00:11:09,140 --> 00:11:13,820 And the whole image is composed of a number of symbols. 167 00:11:13,820 --> 00:11:19,420 So you can see, across her cloak, there are eyes and ears painted. 168 00:11:19,420 --> 00:11:24,460 This is because, like God, she can see and hear everything. 169 00:11:24,460 --> 00:11:25,820 And, here on her arm, 170 00:11:25,820 --> 00:11:29,500 there's a beautiful, coiled, embroidered snake, 171 00:11:29,500 --> 00:11:33,860 symbolising her knowledge and wisdom. 172 00:11:33,860 --> 00:11:37,980 Today, we might struggle to decode such an image. 173 00:11:37,980 --> 00:11:41,220 But, to the informed Elizabeth viewer, 174 00:11:41,220 --> 00:11:44,020 its message would have been loud and clear. 175 00:11:47,620 --> 00:11:51,220 Like this painting, The Faerie Queene is a work of art 176 00:11:51,220 --> 00:11:54,540 that needs to be unpicked and unlocked. 177 00:11:54,540 --> 00:11:57,620 And, to do that, the reader needs to come armed 178 00:11:57,620 --> 00:11:59,900 with an astonishing amount of knowledge. 179 00:11:59,900 --> 00:12:03,420 The kind of knowledge that only an educated person at the time 180 00:12:03,420 --> 00:12:04,820 could hope to attain. 181 00:12:06,820 --> 00:12:12,940 Spenser attended university here at Pembroke College in Cambridge. 182 00:12:12,940 --> 00:12:15,980 The fact that he came here at all is pretty remarkable. 183 00:12:15,980 --> 00:12:20,660 Unlike most of his peers, Spenser wasn't born into money. 184 00:12:20,660 --> 00:12:23,780 His father was probably a lowly tradesman, 185 00:12:23,780 --> 00:12:27,580 and records here show that he came as a sizar, 186 00:12:27,580 --> 00:12:30,940 which means that he had to work to fund his studies. 187 00:12:33,500 --> 00:12:36,260 From nowhere, he'd secured for himself 188 00:12:36,260 --> 00:12:38,740 the finest education in the country. 189 00:12:38,740 --> 00:12:41,020 And he certainly didn't waste his time. 190 00:12:42,260 --> 00:12:45,460 Spenser would have read the works of classical writers, 191 00:12:45,460 --> 00:12:49,700 like Virgil and Ovid, but he also became fascinated 192 00:12:49,700 --> 00:12:56,140 by English authors like Chaucer and with French Romantic poetry. 193 00:12:56,140 --> 00:12:59,660 The young Edmund would absorb all these influences 194 00:12:59,660 --> 00:13:02,100 like an intellectual sponge. 195 00:13:02,100 --> 00:13:06,860 And, later, put them to work to create something entirely new. 196 00:13:08,180 --> 00:13:12,500 'It wasn't just the way Spenser fused these influences that was unique. 197 00:13:12,500 --> 00:13:15,340 'It was also his style of writing. 198 00:13:15,340 --> 00:13:19,140 'He wanted to create a style that set him apart from others, 199 00:13:19,140 --> 00:13:21,820 'something that would make him stand out. 200 00:13:21,820 --> 00:13:25,940 'Professor Simon Palfrey has been exploring his signature technique.' 201 00:13:25,940 --> 00:13:30,180 What he does is he kind of constructs his own stanza form. 202 00:13:30,180 --> 00:13:31,340 Now, the... 203 00:13:31,340 --> 00:13:33,780 This stanza form is known as a Spenserian stanza 204 00:13:33,780 --> 00:13:35,140 because it is unprecedented. 205 00:13:35,140 --> 00:13:38,460 His crucial thing is to make a stanza of nine lines. Right. 206 00:13:38,460 --> 00:13:42,620 I mean, if you take pretty much any stanza... Mm. 207 00:13:42,620 --> 00:13:44,700 Here's one from Book III. Mm-hm. 208 00:14:14,660 --> 00:14:18,980 It shows very clearly the kinds of techniques that Spenser users. 209 00:14:18,980 --> 00:14:23,020 You've got the four rhymes there. "Sent", "more", "spent", "store". 210 00:14:23,020 --> 00:14:25,020 Right, A-B-A-B. A-B-A-B. 211 00:14:25,020 --> 00:14:30,340 Now, that seems to be a self-sufficient unit of poetry. 212 00:14:30,340 --> 00:14:31,780 But then you get the crucial... 213 00:14:31,780 --> 00:14:35,060 It's the fifth line in the Spenser stanza which is the crucial one. 214 00:14:35,060 --> 00:14:36,740 Right. Which is the hinge point, 215 00:14:36,740 --> 00:14:38,700 cos you've got four above and four below. 216 00:14:38,700 --> 00:14:42,860 The fifth line is the pivotal line, literally, in the stanza. 217 00:14:42,860 --> 00:14:46,260 Spenser plays with the rhyming pattern of each stanza, 218 00:14:46,260 --> 00:14:49,380 repeating the rhythm of the words back and forth. 219 00:14:49,380 --> 00:14:52,580 It creates a sense of wandering through the text. 220 00:14:52,580 --> 00:14:55,740 For every door that closes, another opens. 221 00:14:55,740 --> 00:14:57,100 So why do you think, then, 222 00:14:57,100 --> 00:15:00,300 that Spenser writes in this very unusual way? 223 00:15:00,300 --> 00:15:01,780 I think he writes in this way 224 00:15:01,780 --> 00:15:03,740 because of his ambition for the work. 225 00:15:03,740 --> 00:15:07,380 The Spenserian stanza, because of its forward and backward rhythms, 226 00:15:07,380 --> 00:15:11,540 because of the fact that it ends in a way that begs further supplements 227 00:15:11,540 --> 00:15:14,220 and is...definitively incomplete, 228 00:15:14,220 --> 00:15:17,980 means that the stanza itself is an embodiment of the idea 229 00:15:17,980 --> 00:15:20,580 of a quest which can never quite be finished. 230 00:15:20,580 --> 00:15:22,860 And the poem is never quite finished. 231 00:15:22,860 --> 00:15:26,260 Each book is, in some fundamental way, unfinished. 232 00:15:26,260 --> 00:15:28,580 You reach an end which is not an end. 233 00:15:28,580 --> 00:15:31,220 It somehow speaks for the sleeplessness 234 00:15:31,220 --> 00:15:33,740 of Spenser's art and imagination. 235 00:15:37,340 --> 00:15:40,340 This intricate style, with its nine lines 236 00:15:40,340 --> 00:15:44,220 and strict rhyming pattern, is fiendishly difficult. 237 00:15:44,220 --> 00:15:46,100 It has inspired and challenged 238 00:15:46,100 --> 00:15:48,660 some of the greatest poets who ever lived, 239 00:15:48,660 --> 00:15:52,100 including the likes of Byron, Keats and Wordsworth, 240 00:15:52,100 --> 00:15:56,900 all of whom would write poems in this style to prove their ability. 241 00:15:58,260 --> 00:16:03,100 The Spenserian stanza became a poetic test of skill. 242 00:16:03,100 --> 00:16:05,260 But while those who came later 243 00:16:05,260 --> 00:16:08,860 wrote maybe one or two poems in this style, 244 00:16:08,860 --> 00:16:14,660 Spenser managed to keep it going for an impressive 35,000 lines. 245 00:16:18,060 --> 00:16:20,500 So what was it all for? 246 00:16:20,500 --> 00:16:22,580 Could it be that this epic poem 247 00:16:22,580 --> 00:16:25,260 is little more than an intellectual exercise 248 00:16:25,260 --> 00:16:27,260 for the amusement of his peers? 249 00:16:27,260 --> 00:16:31,060 Or was it to achieve something else entirely? 250 00:16:31,060 --> 00:16:35,260 In 1590, Edmund Spenser published the first three books 251 00:16:35,260 --> 00:16:37,260 of The Faerie Queene. 252 00:16:37,260 --> 00:16:41,460 It was a full decade since he had left England for Ireland, 253 00:16:41,460 --> 00:16:45,300 and court life must have seemed like a distant memory. 254 00:16:45,300 --> 00:16:50,700 But with this book came the chance for him to turn his fortunes around. 255 00:16:50,700 --> 00:16:53,860 And he knew exactly who to dedicate it to. 256 00:16:53,860 --> 00:16:57,100 Gloriana, the Faerie Queene herself - 257 00:16:57,100 --> 00:16:59,060 Queen Elizabeth I. 258 00:17:01,700 --> 00:17:03,700 It certainly got him noticed. 259 00:17:03,700 --> 00:17:07,300 And, even though he had barely started on his 12-book epic, 260 00:17:07,300 --> 00:17:10,900 he was soon invited to an audience with the Virgin Queen. 261 00:17:10,900 --> 00:17:12,980 An impressive achievement for a commoner 262 00:17:12,980 --> 00:17:16,460 who'd had to serve tables to fund his education. 263 00:17:17,860 --> 00:17:20,900 By all accounts, the encounter went well. 264 00:17:20,900 --> 00:17:24,700 We've no record of exactly what the Queen said about the poem, 265 00:17:24,700 --> 00:17:28,060 but she clearly felt its poet deserved a reward. 266 00:17:29,620 --> 00:17:32,860 Spenser was granted a pension of £50, 267 00:17:32,860 --> 00:17:35,820 a decent amount in a country where the average wage 268 00:17:35,820 --> 00:17:39,060 was little more than £5 a year. 269 00:17:39,060 --> 00:17:43,260 His contemporaries began to refer to him as "a laureate poet". 270 00:17:43,260 --> 00:17:47,180 His triumphant return to the royal circle seemed secured. 271 00:17:48,380 --> 00:17:50,700 Well, not entirely. 272 00:17:50,700 --> 00:17:54,300 In the same year that Spenser was granted his pension, 273 00:17:54,300 --> 00:17:57,740 he also published a collection of poems, 274 00:17:57,740 --> 00:18:00,180 possibly to cash in on his success. 275 00:18:01,380 --> 00:18:07,540 This collection included a little number from Spenser's back catalogue. 276 00:18:07,540 --> 00:18:09,260 Mother Hubberd's Tale. 277 00:18:10,620 --> 00:18:13,300 Ten years earlier, this very same poem 278 00:18:13,300 --> 00:18:17,660 may have been behind his hasty relocation to Ireland. 279 00:18:17,660 --> 00:18:21,380 Edmund Spenser clearly hadn't learned his lesson. 280 00:18:21,380 --> 00:18:25,940 Perhaps we can put it down to Spenser's naivety about court life. 281 00:18:25,940 --> 00:18:30,820 Or perhaps he thought his favour with the Queen made him untouchable. 282 00:18:30,820 --> 00:18:34,060 In reality, he was anything but. 283 00:18:34,060 --> 00:18:36,420 His old enemy, Lord Burghley, 284 00:18:36,420 --> 00:18:41,740 made sure that, once again, copies of the poem were seized and destroyed. 285 00:18:41,740 --> 00:18:46,180 And Spenser found himself, once again, locked out of court. 286 00:18:49,460 --> 00:18:53,780 Frustrated, Spenser returned to Ireland to finish his poem 287 00:18:53,780 --> 00:18:57,540 and, as his fortunes changed, so did the work itself. 288 00:18:59,020 --> 00:19:02,660 What we have got here are two editions of The Faerie Queene 289 00:19:02,660 --> 00:19:05,100 that were published during Spenser's lifetime. 290 00:19:05,100 --> 00:19:08,300 So the first edition is the 1590, here. 291 00:19:08,300 --> 00:19:11,380 And here we've got the 1596 version. 292 00:19:11,380 --> 00:19:14,540 And there's an intriguing difference between them 293 00:19:14,540 --> 00:19:17,740 in the way the third book ends. 294 00:19:17,740 --> 00:19:19,140 The original ending, 295 00:19:19,140 --> 00:19:23,140 the most beautiful, fantastic ending of the third book, 296 00:19:23,140 --> 00:19:26,140 comes where the female knight, Britomart, 297 00:19:26,140 --> 00:19:32,020 has just rescued Amoret, who's been tortured by this enchanter. 298 00:19:32,020 --> 00:19:36,420 And she delivers poor Amoret back to Scudamore. Mm. 299 00:19:36,420 --> 00:19:39,300 And there's this incredible passage 300 00:19:39,300 --> 00:19:43,700 which describes Scudamore and Amoret embracing. 301 00:19:43,700 --> 00:19:47,300 Oh, I'm going to have a read of that. So it's here, isn't it? Yeah. 302 00:20:24,620 --> 00:20:28,380 It's really beautiful stuff, isn't it? It's stunning. 303 00:20:28,380 --> 00:20:31,260 And the next stanza goes on to describe them 304 00:20:31,260 --> 00:20:33,420 as being like the Hermaphrodite, 305 00:20:33,420 --> 00:20:38,260 so it's an image of almost perfect psychological 306 00:20:38,260 --> 00:20:42,460 and erotic fusion between these characters, a real happy ending. 307 00:20:42,460 --> 00:20:46,140 Yeah, a great sense of resolve, where everything's come together. 308 00:20:46,140 --> 00:20:49,700 That's right. And then, when you go forward to 1596, 309 00:20:49,700 --> 00:20:54,380 that happy ending disappears. He's taken it out completely. 310 00:20:54,380 --> 00:20:58,260 So Britomart and Amoret come out of the castle 311 00:20:58,260 --> 00:21:01,900 but Scudamore has already gone off into the distance. Right. 312 00:21:01,900 --> 00:21:03,100 So what we've got here... 313 00:21:03,100 --> 00:21:05,940 We've got books I to III, that seem all lovely and finished 314 00:21:05,940 --> 00:21:09,140 but, when he goes to add the next three books, to bring it up to six... 315 00:21:09,140 --> 00:21:13,300 Yeah. ..he changes this ending, he changes the resolve in it. 316 00:21:13,300 --> 00:21:17,620 Yeah, and this is one of the major questions for Spenserians - 317 00:21:17,620 --> 00:21:19,340 why does he make this change? 318 00:21:19,340 --> 00:21:26,100 What's happened between 1590 and 1596 to make this change necessary? 319 00:21:29,380 --> 00:21:32,380 It wasn't just Spenser's rejection from court 320 00:21:32,380 --> 00:21:34,180 that had changed his outlook. 321 00:21:34,180 --> 00:21:39,100 Ireland had descended even further into a bitter and bloody conflict, 322 00:21:39,100 --> 00:21:41,700 with no clear winner and no end in sight. 323 00:21:43,300 --> 00:21:46,380 As a senior civil servant, Spenser had benefited 324 00:21:46,380 --> 00:21:50,300 by acquiring confiscated properties from rebel landowners. 325 00:21:50,300 --> 00:21:55,740 But, as the war raged on, his position became even more precarious. 326 00:21:55,740 --> 00:21:59,660 One of the most important properties was here, 327 00:21:59,660 --> 00:22:05,460 in the beautiful but isolated countryside outside of Cork. 328 00:22:05,460 --> 00:22:08,340 And it wasn't just important to Spenser. 329 00:22:08,340 --> 00:22:11,980 I think this is one of the most important locations 330 00:22:11,980 --> 00:22:14,180 in the history of English literature, 331 00:22:14,180 --> 00:22:18,260 because it was here that Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene. 332 00:22:18,260 --> 00:22:20,020 Kilcolman Castle. 333 00:22:24,380 --> 00:22:27,020 The castle is little more than a ruin now 334 00:22:27,020 --> 00:22:28,700 but, when Spenser arrived here, 335 00:22:28,700 --> 00:22:31,940 two years before he published the first edition of his poem, 336 00:22:31,940 --> 00:22:35,340 he set about establishing a fortified outpost, 337 00:22:35,340 --> 00:22:39,780 embracing his new role as a colonial landowner. 338 00:22:39,780 --> 00:22:42,660 Dr Andrew King from the University College, Cork, 339 00:22:42,660 --> 00:22:44,780 knows the location very well. 340 00:22:44,780 --> 00:22:47,300 And how do you think Spenser felt 341 00:22:47,300 --> 00:22:49,820 about the Irish people around him? 342 00:22:51,340 --> 00:22:54,020 I think there was a considerable ambivalence. 343 00:22:54,020 --> 00:23:00,500 He does express a great interest in the culture, the countryside, 344 00:23:00,500 --> 00:23:06,420 and yet he does, clearly, present the Irish as a savage people. 345 00:23:06,420 --> 00:23:09,900 That's... To put it frankly, that's how he presents them. 346 00:23:09,900 --> 00:23:11,740 Do you think, when Spenser publishes 347 00:23:11,740 --> 00:23:14,940 the second edition of The Faerie Queene in 1596, 348 00:23:14,940 --> 00:23:19,980 that he's lost faith in the Elizabethan enterprise in Ireland? 349 00:23:19,980 --> 00:23:23,700 Absolutely. I think he's completely disillusioned 350 00:23:23,700 --> 00:23:30,420 in the possibility of not only an Elizabethan project in Ireland 351 00:23:30,420 --> 00:23:34,140 but, I think, more philosophically, or, if you like, more abstractly, 352 00:23:34,140 --> 00:23:38,100 he's disillusioned in any human efforts to achieve stability. 353 00:23:38,100 --> 00:23:41,740 The whole book was posited on, you know, 354 00:23:41,740 --> 00:23:45,220 achieving a kind of stability, documenting... 355 00:23:45,220 --> 00:23:47,460 documenting it, nailing it down. 356 00:23:47,460 --> 00:23:50,180 And the realisation that he can't believe in it. 357 00:23:50,180 --> 00:23:54,580 It's a complete switch in tone, isn't it? It really is. It really is. 358 00:23:54,580 --> 00:23:57,020 And that, to me, is the brilliance of the work. 359 00:23:57,020 --> 00:23:59,780 As I've said before, it's intellectual honesty. 360 00:24:03,260 --> 00:24:06,860 The war that had been raging around Spenser as he wrote 361 00:24:06,860 --> 00:24:08,940 finally began to close in. 362 00:24:08,940 --> 00:24:12,620 Two years after the second edition of The Faerie Queen was published, 363 00:24:12,620 --> 00:24:15,660 rebel forces attacked his castle. 364 00:24:15,660 --> 00:24:19,300 Spenser was forced to flee for his life. 365 00:24:19,300 --> 00:24:23,940 Legend has it he escaped via a secret tunnel somewhere near here, 366 00:24:23,940 --> 00:24:27,060 just a few hundred yards from the castle. 367 00:24:27,060 --> 00:24:28,460 As he emerged, 368 00:24:28,460 --> 00:24:32,540 he must have known that his world had completely collapsed. 369 00:24:35,940 --> 00:24:38,180 As if to compound the tragedy, 370 00:24:38,180 --> 00:24:41,220 it is thought that the original manuscripts of The Faerie Queene 371 00:24:41,220 --> 00:24:43,260 were lost in the flames. 372 00:24:43,260 --> 00:24:47,220 Driven out of court, mired in a failing colonial enterprise 373 00:24:47,220 --> 00:24:48,980 and now homeless, 374 00:24:48,980 --> 00:24:53,060 Spenser was forced to confront the fact that everything he believed in 375 00:24:53,060 --> 00:24:57,140 had fallen far short of the ideal he'd created. 376 00:24:57,140 --> 00:25:01,780 Defeated, he returned to London and died there just a month later, 377 00:25:01,780 --> 00:25:03,900 in January 1599. 378 00:25:05,380 --> 00:25:08,180 But that isn't the end of the story. 379 00:25:08,180 --> 00:25:09,780 Among his papers, 380 00:25:09,780 --> 00:25:15,980 Spenser's friends found a final book of The Faerie Queene, Book VII. 381 00:25:15,980 --> 00:25:18,180 And it contains what is, for me, 382 00:25:18,180 --> 00:25:21,500 one of the most powerful scenes in the whole work. 383 00:25:26,660 --> 00:25:29,860 Only a few stanzas of the final book remain. 384 00:25:29,860 --> 00:25:32,820 They are known as the Cantos of Mutability. 385 00:25:32,820 --> 00:25:36,500 And the story they tell takes place on Galtymore Mountain, 386 00:25:36,500 --> 00:25:38,580 which dominates the skyline 387 00:25:38,580 --> 00:25:41,260 between the counties of Limerick and Tipperary. 388 00:25:43,620 --> 00:25:46,300 The mountain, right in the heart of Ireland, 389 00:25:46,300 --> 00:25:51,140 is christened Arlo Hill, and it's the scene of an epic battle 390 00:25:51,140 --> 00:25:55,060 between the giantess, Mutability, and the God, Jove. 391 00:25:56,980 --> 00:26:01,380 In the poem, Mutability, who represents chaos and change, 392 00:26:01,380 --> 00:26:04,740 clashes with Jove, who represents order. 393 00:26:04,740 --> 00:26:08,660 The two sides fiercely argue over who has supremacy. 394 00:26:08,660 --> 00:26:10,860 When it's over, Mother Nature, 395 00:26:10,860 --> 00:26:13,340 who has been watching the events unfold, 396 00:26:13,340 --> 00:26:16,380 concludes that while change is a powerful force, 397 00:26:16,380 --> 00:26:19,460 it's only part of a broader process. 398 00:26:19,460 --> 00:26:23,380 Ultimately, the only true constant is eternity. 399 00:27:02,260 --> 00:27:07,700 I think this is an incredibly beautiful and powerful book. 400 00:27:07,700 --> 00:27:10,980 For its time, it was revolutionary. 401 00:27:10,980 --> 00:27:14,020 By fusing allegory and symbolism 402 00:27:14,020 --> 00:27:17,460 with the epic legends of Arthurian chivalry, 403 00:27:17,460 --> 00:27:21,940 Spenser was creating something entirely new. 404 00:27:21,940 --> 00:27:27,140 A kind of poetry that would inspire generations of writers 405 00:27:27,140 --> 00:27:29,260 for hundreds of years to come. 406 00:27:30,740 --> 00:27:36,340 In the end, Spenser is saying that only two things really matter - 407 00:27:36,340 --> 00:27:39,100 God and eternity. 408 00:27:39,100 --> 00:27:42,380 They're the words of a man who has been forced to question 409 00:27:42,380 --> 00:27:47,340 everything he believed in, including his own great project. 410 00:27:48,420 --> 00:27:51,020 Perhaps he thought it was a failure. 411 00:27:51,020 --> 00:27:55,380 I think he succeeded in more ways than he will ever know. 412 00:28:03,980 --> 00:28:07,860 If you want to dig deeper into Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, 413 00:28:07,860 --> 00:28:10,700 or the other books in this series, then go to... 414 00:28:14,740 --> 00:28:17,660 ..and follow the links to the Open University.