Note 3 — SPENSER’S FAERIE QUEENE

This argument loses some of its weight from the likelihood that Spenser had been in Ireland before 1580. In his View of the Present State of Ireland, Irenæus, who is Spenser’s mouthpiece, speaks of himself as an eyewitness of the execution of Murrogh O’Brien, which took place at Limerick in July, 1577. The statement, of course, is not conclusive, as it would be if made in Spenser’s own person. Yet Spenser’s account of this hideous incident has the stamp of personal observation, and, taken with the evidence of Phillips’s Theatrum Poetarum Anglicorum, points to the conclusion that in 1577 Spenser had been sent to Ireland by Leicester with letters to Sir Henry Sidney. His visit, however, must have been brief, and may well have left no trace in his poetry.

Upton believed that the Ruddymane episode in II. ii referred to the O’Neills, whose badge was a bloody hand (v. the View of the Present State of Ireland). If there be anything in this, it makes against the view that a book and a half had been written by August, 1580; for Spenser is not likely to have known the O’Neill ‘badge’ till he settled in Ireland.