Richard Rambuss, I believe, in *Spenser's Secret Career*, makes some
intriguing innuendos about Spenser's role as cabineted (closeted?)
secretary to Lord Grey, based on the role of secretaries in the period.
Even more interesting, perhaps, is the analogy Rambuss draws between
renaissance secretaries and Secretaries of State today; George Schultz, for
example, slept in close proximity to George Bush in Air Force 1. This may
(or may not) show the "homosocial" bonds built by men of power today, like
kings of yore. It makes for good reading.
Another intriguing analogy, perhaps relevant to Sp (cf. work of McCabe et
al on the "bardic Spenser") is the renaissance Celtic bard who openly
considers himself the "beloved" of his lord, in a spiritual yet clearly
eroticised relationship akin to marriage. This would seem to bleed
thematically into Spenser's own eroticised praise of QE; and since QE is,
in her own rhetoric, both prince and princess, how "eroticised" did Sp.
consider his relationship to his more immediate patron Grey? Or to those
before Grey? Or how strong was his desire for someone to protect him after
Grey? His most forward praise of Essex comes in the middle of the
Prothalamion, after all, the marriage poem.
--Tom Herron
>
>I'm not aware of any information or passages in his work that indicate
>seriously that Spenser's sexual orientation was anything other than
>heterosexual, but I would be willing to consider such evidence if someone
>could convince me that the evidence was valid and that it truly helped me
>and my students to understand better the Spenserian literature that we
>study.
>
>Susan Oldrieve
>Baldwin-Wallace College
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