At 11:30 AM 10/11/00 +0100, Peter Zenner wrote:
>Spenser was working as a secretary to the new Bishop of Rochester
>in 1578. He was introduced to Sidney by the latter's uncle, Robert
>Dudley, and the two spent a lot of time together. That puts Spenser
>in Kent and close to young Kit Marlowe.
You probably already know this, but most of the evidence for Edmund Spenser
and Gabriel Harvey's personal acquaintance with Sir Philip Sidney has been
reviewed--and found wanting--in S. K. Heninger, Jr.'s article "Spenser and
Sidney at Leicester House," Spenser Studies 8 (1990): 239-50. Willy Maley
offers a corrective in "Sir Philip Sidney and Ireland," Spenser Studies 12
(1998): 223-27, pointing out that "Elizabethan Ireland was a small world,
smaller than the world of the court," and "there is every chance that the
two poets met there" (p. 226). That said, there's no evidence that the two
spent a _lot_ of time together.
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David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask]
Macalester College Virgil Tradition: discussion, bibliography, &c.
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