ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the poet's economy, in the final lines of the eclogue: Who ever casts to compasse weightye prise, and thinks to throwe out thondring words of threate: Let powre in lavish cups and thriftie bitts of meate. Spenser's entrance onto the poetic scene occurs in a dispersal of names and voices. It also explains the theory of textual production, the humanistic proclamation of the public role of the poet, the Sidneian assertion that poetry does work in the world. The internal economy of the initial section of the eclogue appears to be replaced by an external matrix of reward. Yet, these are appearances, for these public models are implicated in the dissemination of the text and in the dispersal of the voice. The differences people name for example, between an internal, intrinsic economy and an external one-are left unresolved; neither denied nor determined they are deferred in the reading.
