ABSTRACT
Spenser is not likely to have come across Henryson’s Orpheus. While it was printed in Edinburgh circa 1508, there is no evidence that the poem was known in England. His Fables, on the other hand, was not only printed in Edinburgh in 1570 and 1571 (there is evidence for other lost Scottish editions), but was also ‘translated’ (unskillfully anglicized and modernized) and printed in London in 1577 by Richard Smith. Smith’s version is not attractive, and there is no evidence that Spenser read it.
