It remains possible, though, that Webbe was himself being less than
serious. What Peter says is worth pondering, but I simply can't believe
that by Burton's day anybody was seriously confused. By now Spenser's
authorship was common knowledge, as witness the frequency with which
spenser is called "Colin." Wasn't the SC in the 1611 *Works*? I write
separatd from my scholarly materials and feel terribly embarrassed not to
remember this, esp. as I have examined not one but two copies of that
edition. Anne Prescott.
On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Peter C. Herman wrote:
>
> Someone in this thread (forgive me, I forget who) mentioned that
> Spenser's authorship of the SC was a secret all over the block, even
> though the author is never identified by name in the book itself.
> However, Spenser's authorship of the Calender was, if known to some,
> unknown to others. The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems of Edmund
> Spenser, for example, reproduces the title page to Robert Burton's copy
> of the Calender, and directly underneath the title Burton mistakenly
> ascribes the "twelve Aeglogues proportionable to the twelve
> monethes"--not the commentary--to "E. K." Also, William Webbe reported
> in A Discourse of English Poetry (1586) that he made a concerted but
> unsuccessful effort to discover the New Poet's identity. Clearly, some
> people were not in on the joke, and as Webbe writes, people refused to
> tell him the author.
>
> Peter C. Herman
>
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