ABSTRACT
Sidney was born with a silver spoon but also knew disappointment, none greater perhaps than the three-year interval from 1581 to 1584, between the birth and early death of his uncle Leicester’s young son, when it seemed his hopes of inheriting an earldom had been dashed. Despite this blow to his great expectations, Sidney’s brilliance as a writer suggests that he knew the solace that talent brings as its own reward. Spenser was even more talented as a poet, but he had to earn his way in the world. Born in 1554, the same year as Sidney, he received a first-class education as a scholarship student at the Merchant Taylor’s School, where Richard Mulcaster was the headmaster, and then at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he spent seven years.2 He may have traveled to Ireland in 1577 before becoming secretary to the Bishop of Rochester. On October 5, 1579, he wrote to his friend Gabriel Harvey that he was in the service of the earl of Leicester and in “some use of familiarity” with Sidney, to whom that year he dedicated his first major work, The Shepheardes Calendar. In 1580 he became private secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, and arrived with him in Ireland on August 12. Except for occasional visits to England, he stayed there until his death in 1599. During his stay he was favored with various escheated properties, including, in 1586, 3028 acres in Cork, a small part of the half-million acres of scattered parcels that the earl of Desmond forfeited to the Crown as a result of his rebellion. Schooled in the ways of the world, Spenser shows an understanding of the ways of fraud when he pictures a financial con man in Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubberds Tale (1591).
