Author picks up where Spenser left off
After Edmund Spenser died centuries ago, the records revealed only snippets of his life, like the properties he owned and the £50a-year pension he received from Elizabeth I.
The English poet is famous for writing The Faerie Queene, an epic poem that follows several knights as they examine the virtues of their time. The queen liked it so much she granted Spenser the pension for life. Yet we know little about him, William Shakespeare or other notables of the Elizabethan era because no one was writing biographies.
When the first three books of The Faerie Queene were published in 1590, Spenser declared he intended to write 12 books — all of them in verse. By the time he died in Ireland he’d written six-and-a-half.
Then, along came Kelowna’s Carl Hare. A former actor, director and university professor, Hare has shifted his considerable skills to writing. He’s daring enough to cut to the chase of Spenser’s epic by composing the last book as if he were the poet writing about the final four months of his own life.
“We don’t know why he didn’t write the remaining six (books) or whether the remaining six are missing. I have him write his 12th and final book, which deals with all of the knights coming to the queen’s festival,” he said.
“He dies at the very instant of his last word, which is ‘magnificence’ — the ultimate virtue.”
Hare composed the 460-page Spenser entirely in Spenserian stanza.
Hare, 85, got the idea decades ago when he bought the poet’s collected works in a Winnipeg bookstore. It’s the second volume of his trilogy On the River of Time. The first, Odysseus, was published last year.
Because there’s such a dearth of detail about Spenser himself, Hare was free to fictionalize an adventure story to fill in the gaps. For instance, the queen’s financial records reveal Spenser was paid as a teenager to deliver a letter to the English ambassador to France. Hare has spun that into Spenser’s first encounter with espionage.
“Here’s this guy, not wealthy, who does well at school. Why is he delivering this letter at age 17?
“There’s high tension in France so there are a lot of spies around the ambassador. England wants to know what France is thinking.
“The ambassador . . . brings out a big map and they exchange messages under the map and Spenser goes back to England. No one wants to touch that letter until it’s delivered to the queen.”
Another quirk: Spenser led a double life that straddles artistic beauty and pre-meditated slaughter. At the time he wrote his epic poem, he was developing a treatise that called for the genocide of all Irish rebels, who happened to comprise most of the population.
“This is what struck me. This is a man who speaks with the tongue of angels; the first great poet in the Elizabethan period who allowed the English language to progress as it has since,” Hare said.
“Spenser was no angel but he was a very interesting man.”
Literature lovers can have a taste of the book and Elizabethan food at a book launch Thursday evening. Hare will read excerpts and sign copies of Spenser and Odysseus at the Kelowna Art Gallery starting at 7 p.m.
The trilogy’s final volume Archer is due for release this fall.
You can also view videos of Hare reading and discussing the trilogy at carlhare.ca.