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The Date and Purpose of Spenser's Veue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William Cliff Martin*
Affiliation:
New York University

Extract

A rapid reading of Spenser's Veue will show that here is no allegory and little narrative; for the Veue is an exposition of the present condition of Ireland with proposals of what must be done to correct the manifold evils, to establish Ireland as a loyal colony of England, and to insure a flow of money from west to east, reversing the deep drain from the exchequer of England to the bogs of Ireland.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 1932 , pp. 137 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932

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References

1 I refer here, as throughout this study, to Spenser's discussion of the present state of Ireland; not to the earlier part of the essay in which he speculates on the antiquities of the Irish people and Irish customs.

2 Veue, p. 650a. (Globe Edition).

3 Birch, Thomas, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1754), 2, 20.

4 Birch, 2, 8. (date about end of May, 1596).

5 Devereux, Walter Bourchier, Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex (London, 1853), 1, 351. (Endorsed: Received and laid before the council, the 13th June, 1596).

6 Dev. 1, 353.

7 Robert Cecil to Henry Howard, July 18, 1596, Birch, 2, 68–69.

8 Birch, 2, 65.

9 Note Spenser proposes the same way of providing for the troops. Veue, p. 652a.

10 Birch, 2, 76.

11 Birch, 2, 93–94.

12 Birch, 2, 90.

13 Veue, p. 682b.

14 Veue, p. 683b.

15 Birch, 2, 140–141.

16 Ibid., 2, 143.

17 Ibid., 2, 15.

18 Ibid., 2, 21.

19 Veue, p. 655a: See Raleigh's policy against Ormonde, Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, 3, 86–87.

20 Greenlaw, Spenser and the Earl of Leicester, PMLA, xxv, 535–561.

21 Spenser does not seem to grasp that it may be a plot to get rid of Essex by sending him to Ireland.

22 Vene, p. 683b.

23 Ibid., p. 651b.

24 Ibid., p. 667b and p. 661a.

25 Ibid., p. 664b and p. 666b: Bagwell, 3, 253; 256; 276.

26 Holinshed, 6, 10.