ABSTRACT
Abraham Fraunce (156o?-1633) studied at St Johns College, Cambridge, of which he became a Fellow, and Gray's Inn. Early he came under the aegis of Sidney, as whose protege he would have met Spenser and Dyer and along with whom he championed the introduction of classical metres into English. Spenser calls him 'hablest wit of most I know this day' (Colin Clout 1. 383) and whether or not as an able critical wit, Fraunce clearly had access to the Faerie Queene before its publication. The Shepheardes Logike (B.M. MS. Add. 3436r, fols. 3-28; written 1580-85) uses the Shepheards Calender extensively for purposes of illustration as does its revision The Lawiers Logike, and it is in The Arcadian Rhetorike (1588) that we find the earliest quotation of the Faerie Queene (of II. iv. 35). In spite of Fraunce's dependence on Spenser for illustrative material (perhaps only out offriendly courtesy), the two sentences below make up his only sustained comment on anything of Spenser's.
