> Now what 'counterfeyt name' was the author using on his trip with Ralegh?
>
I think we have to turn to Thomas Harriot, do we not? I'm sure we've all
been struck by the coy knowingness of that rhetorical question in the Proem
to FQII: "fruitfullest Virginia who did euer vew?" Here, surely, the author
of the *Brief and True Report* is finally choosing to let the mask slip a
little. And when we remember Harriot's reputation as a mathematician,
Spenser's complex numerological games at last begin to make sense.
But the secret-within-the-secret may be stranger still. Harriot's name was
often spelt by his contemporaries as 'Heriot' - as in the notorious
statement of the informer Richard Baines, which refers to "one Heriots being
Sir W Raleighs man". The variant is significant, for it hints (at least to
those prepared to read it from the curious perspective Baines no doubt
intended) that Thomas was in 'heriot service' to Sir Walter. Could it be
that 'Spenser', aka Harriot, was taking on himself the reputation of the
authorship of *The Faerie Queene*, a reputation that rightly belonged to
Ralegh, and which he expected to revert to himself upon Harriot's death?
Could it be that 'Harriot' was a cover for a poet who knew the work's
potential to cause political waves - and '"Spenser"' a double cover? In the
event, of course, fortune intervened, and Harriot outlived Ralegh by three
years.
No doubt there will be those who scoff, but I leave them to the thin repast
of their bloodless 'facts' and gruel-like 'dates', and wish you all a
well-stuffed turkey of a festive season, and double-helpings of the
plum-pudding of poesy.
Charlie
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