ANAPHORA PROVED

PREFACE: MEMO TO THE MUSES:

ANAPHORA PROVED

BY A SHEPEARDES CALENDAR!

 

©Eric L. Miller, October 21, 2015

 

 Last night before going to bed, a little bored, but not wanting to "work" on anything, I spotted my copy of the Shorter Works of Edmund Spenser (Penguin Classic, everything except Fairy Queen) on the floor where I had left it from my previous episode of checking line and line after line of Spenser’s poetry to determine his uses of anaphora. I had already scanned all of his Sonnets, as I had those of Sidney and the poetry of others and was half-way through the entire Shepheard's Calender.

 

I had left off last night midway into his August section. Of course, SC has a section for each month of the year, beginning in January and ending with December. What I had already found gave me confidence I was perhaps on the verge of something important.  One reason for this feeling, was I was finding little to no anaphora--except what a poet might accidently fall into (i.e., having two consecutive lines begin with the same word, such as a "The" or "And" or “Or”). I was finding that Spenser didn’t use hardly any anaphora at all. Indeed, in most all cases, of which there are only a very few, the "anaphora effect" --to coin a phrase—was only the repetition of a single word—such as, a made-up example:  

 

The day is bright and sunny . ..

The sky is blue and jolly. 

 

A "one" word effect, is certainly a “weak” effect to say the least, but a two or three word anaphora or 5 or 6 word repetition immediately catches the attention of eye and ear. Therefore, I say Spenser uses almost no anaphora, over hundreds of lines, indeed, whole collections of poems. I found the same in my examination of my own poetry in a first volume of about 300 poems. I, too, had almost all, only repetition of articles, conjunctions, etc., as shown above, and didn’t use it any more than Spenser did—though I, too, am a lyric poet and have written hundreds of poems.    

 

Anyway, to the heart of the matter! This morning I picked up where I had left-off checking Spenser’s use of anaphora, with the August section of Spenser's SC.  When I did so, the world of my “Shakespeare scholarship” once again changed!

 

I had discovered NEW EVIDENCE, I believe, for my historical reconstruction of the true biography of Edward de Vere which is incorporated into the Lord Oxford Trilogy, published some 15 years ago.  

 

As required research for my Lord Oxford Trilogy, I had, over the years, dedicated a great deal of time to the SC and, in specific reference to contemporaneous correlations with the life, times, and literature of Edward de Vere.  So, I have in stock many essays on detailed analysis of specific historical matters (gained from extensive research coordinating biographies, etc.) which I have written. In a great many cases no one has ever seen this work.

 

 As I continued my search in SC, after a bit, to my great surprise the use of anaphora started appearing, more and more frequently in SC—indeed, in terms of context, it did seem to me.

 

I mean, for example, in the context of my early identification of various characters in SC who were actually meant to represent Lord Oxford and his love affair with the young, Anne Vavassour (identified as Roselinde in SC)—the very one whom Spenser addresses as his lost love in Shepheard’s Calender!  And, I had in one of my essays, found, analyzed and wrote-up an article as Oxford As Tityrus. Tityrus being one of the characters in SC, the one identified as Lord Oxford! Anyway, here it is:

 

In the final salute of SC by Spenser, he uses excessive anaphora, for the first time in all his work! Yes, I said In his salute to Lord Oxford! And he says so! Then, suddenly it dawned on me. Oxford's first works were published in 1576, in a collection of poetry named, A Paradise of Dainty Devices.  SC was published in 1579 (or so so the convention goes).  The point is, Sidney and Spenser were both younger than Oxford--they idolized and hated him with dire envy--that's what it's all about. I knew this as fact from my many years of research.

 

When we consider the dates of publication, not only for Spenser, but also for Sidney, Ralegh, Queen Elizabeth, and other contemporaries of Oxford’s) and make a comparative analysis of the use of of anaphora, we find there is little or no meaning in comparing them. This is so, because all of them—after the date of his poems, i.e., 1576—may well have been imitating Lord Oxford!

 

This I just discovered is exactly what is happening and I believe I have, if not unassailable evidence, at least cogent and convincing evidence for historical revelations of revolutionary impact on the literary history of the Elizabethan era. With that we turn to the evidence.  

 

The last stanza of SC is:

 

Adieu delightes, that lulled me asleepe,

Adieu my deare, whose love I bought so dear,

Adieu my little Lambes and loused sheepe,

Adieu ye Woodes that oft my witnesse were:

    Adieu good Hobbinol, that was so true,

   Tell Rosalind, her Colin bids her adieu

 

Now there's anaphora--not the repetition of one word, of an article, or conjunction or what have you. No, like above, the way Shakespeare and de Vere and Ignoto did it.

 

And, I must say shivers ran up my spine as I looked again at those lines from SC, long familiar to me, but now seen in a new light  Now as I look at those closing lines above, I see ALSO that the phrase "whose love I bought so dear" reminds me of Lord Oxford's poem (written at about 15 or 16, as said, but not published until 1576) -- of course, it goes without saying private copies may well have been in circulation.  But, we don’t know if Spenser saw a copy that “may have been” in circulation—we do know he would undoubtedly have had and avidly read that, the published version.

 

Here is the motto I have for LO on my ericmillerworks.com website.

 

My meaning is to work

what wonder love hath wrought

Wherewith I must why men of wit,

have love so dearly bought.

 

Recall the second line of Spenser’s final salute at the very end of SC, December’s last words, and the above line: (. .. Adieu my deare whose love I bought so dear,)

 

            Spenser:   “whose love I bought so dear"

            De Vere:   "have love so dearly bought"

 

Edmund Spenser, from Shepheard’s Calender, 1579

(written when Edmund was 30 or 31)

 

Edward de Vere, from "Paradise of Dainty Paradise," 1576

(but written when E.O. was only 15 or 16 years old)

 

Postscript :  There we have it! Spenser, quoting from Lord Oxford’s poem. How do we know that Spenser is actually quoting from Lord Oxford’s poem? Because Spenser tells us so.

As soon as I saw that Spenser, was planting into the end of his famous book of poems, SC a clear “calling up of the face” if you will, of Edward de Vere. He tells us that he was, in fact, writing,  his last lines as a tribute to his love/hate relationship with Lord Oxford! Hard to believe, no one but myself has ever made the claim before, that I know of. Here are Spenser’s own words in his ending Embleme to SC:

“Goe little Calender, thou hast a free passeporte,

Dare not to match thy pype with Tityrus hys style,

    Nor with the Pilgrim that the Ploughman played a whyle:

But follow them farre off, and their high steppe adore,

The better please, the worse despise, I aske nomore.

 

Certainly, “the Pilgrim that the Ploughman played a whyle” is Chaucer, but is it really true, that Tityurus was Edward de Vere, Lord Oxford?

With that we turn to Tityrus.

 

                                                *****

See Part ll for detailed examination, proving that over 15 years ago I was aware of complex relations but I did not have such poignant evidence as the above. Almost unbelievably, I wrote up everything 15 years ago, as the reader will see. Almost everything, I needed, I needed, I needed an anaphoric examination of the whole matter. Then the simple truth showed its triumphant head and said: Here I am. See if the reader agrees.

PART II

WHO IS TITYRUS?  SPENSER'S TROUBLED MIND

The Shepheardes Calender & the Outting of Edward de Vere

As Tityrus By Use of de Vere’s Technique of Anaphora

 

©Eric L. Miller, Oct. 23, 2015/written 5/30/2000

 

 The first mention of Tityrus in SC (i.e., Shepheardes Calender) is in the first entry of January.  In the opening statement of the Gloss it states that the author hides his name under Colin Clout much as Virgil sometimes "secretly shadowed" his identity under the name of Tityrus "thinking it much fitter than such Latin names for the great unlikelyhood of the language."  In other words, Virgil took a non-Latin name for its great improbability. 

 

Though the Glossist does not say it, Tityrus is a Greek name and only comes into the English language via Virgil's use of it. The English Oxford Dictionary informs us, in fact, that we find the name in "the first words of Virgil’s first eclogue, tittyre, tu patulae recumban sub tegmine fagi." 

(i.e., Tityrus, under a roof of recumbens beneath speading beech).  A stock-in-trade-classical environs for a poet or gathering of poets. (It is worth noting, at the beginning, it seems to me, to remind the reader Vergil spelled his name with a VER, not a Vir, as is now mostly the custom. Spenser would certainly have known this fact. From the opening of the SC, then, Spenser and his cohorts wanted to make an analogy between a great work of classic literature with Spenser's own fare. 

 

The improbability for the name for Virgil resides in the fact that the original of the name Titupos is said to derive from a Doric word for satyre.  A Tityrus is "a fictitious monster supposed to be bred between a sheep and a goat." Thus from the very beginning of SC the author was setting the ground work for the entrance of Lord Oxford, who is the most important character in the book, other than Spenser and Rosalinde herself. In reality Spenser has very little to say about Rosalinde, a few passing lines. About himself and Oxford he has much to say—much to glorify in himself and much to defame and praise in Oxford.

 

The OED (Complete Oxford English Dictionary) provides further pertinent information on Tityrus, who becomes very important in SC.  Citing Guillum Heraldy (circa 1610) we find the entry: "Like as Tytirus is engendered between a sheep and a Buck Goat." And yet another reference (W. King Heathen Gods & Heroes, 1710), Tityrus is mentioned again: "Several cruel Daemons, Satyrs, Silini and tityri us'd to accompany him [Baccus] with Cymbals and huge Exclamations."

Another entry in the OED indicates that in the 16th century (and earlier?) use of the word Tityrus referred to "blades" of well-to-do "roughs" who infested London streets." 

 

In the original Greek story of Tityrus he was one of the Titans.  Various stories are told of him, but the most enduring and characteristic is that Tityrus was guilty of an unpardonable sin; he raped Hera, the great god Zeus' wife.  For this unpardonable sin, to make an attack upon a goddess, he was consigned to the Underworld (our Hell) where he was subjected to unending torture.  Two vultures were assigned to be his Tormenters, "who continually prey'd upon his Liver, which was no sooner consumed, but another grew in its stead, that so there might be always Subject Matter for eternal Punishment."  Thus the associations are set up for VERgil, or VIRgil and the lascivious Buck Goat, Oxford.

 

In the February entry, Spenser launches on a bizarre and near incomprehensible tale under the guise of one, Thenot, supposedly an old shepherd, who tells a tale to Cuddie, which he learned from Tityrus.  The Argument of the February entry (each month's entry is preceded with an Argument) tries to throw the reader off from the beginning, by announcing that the Aeglogue is not "bent to any secrete or particular purpose."  Who would have imagined it would have been?  So like a thief who announces to someone who admires his watch, "This watch is not stolen," begs the issue at the outset.  Of course the entire entry is very secret which accounts for its bizarre nature, as many scholars have pointed out.

 

I will not give a detailed accounting of the story, which, though a short entry, because of its intentional obscurities, would take us too far afield.  Rather I will just summarize it and provide in the Appendix an annotation of the text for those who relish every detail and want to subject the text to their own confirmatory examination. The story Spenser relates concerns Lord Oxford and the Lord Treasurer of England, Oxford's father-in-law, Burghley. The attack on Burghley and Oxford is so daring it was necessarily obscure, for its intention was both to reveal his enmity and conceal his responsibility for it.

 

To give the reader confidence that Spenser was not only capable of an attack upon great nobles, but launched another one, of the same sort, in Mother Hubbard, albeit even more vicious, I now quote from the Editors of The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser(1936):

 

As for her [Queen Elizabeth's] lord treasurer, the poet could hope for nothing from him after Mother Hubbardd's Tale.  The references to his ill humor, set at the beginning and end of this part, read, in fact, like a challenge. (p.xxi)

 

But really this is one of the most conceivably watered down versions of the truth one could imagine. The attack is far from "references to his ill humor," it is a hateful indictment of the man, worthy of a Harvey, (a close hateful friend of Spenser’s) had he the talent.

   

First, to disabuse the readers of the inevitable claim that establishment scholars are liable to launch against my proofs, i.e., that by Tityrus Spenser was referring to Chaucer, I will quote from scholars of the pre-Looney era, when no one was worried about the implications of Spenser's relationship to Oxford, then an all but forgotten man.

 

The Editors of the McMillian edition of Spenser's poems (The Work of Spenser, 1910) come a little nearer to the truth when we are informed that. 

 

“Tityrus, on E.K.'s authority, was Chaucer. It is evident from the language -- both the words and the verbal forms -- used in this poem [SC] that Spenser had zealously studied Chaucer, whose greatest works appeared just about two centuries before Spenser's first important publication.  The work, however, in which he imitates Chaucer's manner, is not the SC, but in his Prospopoia or Mother Hubberds Tale, which he says, writing in a later year, he had 'long sithen composed in the conceipt of my youth.'  The form and manner of SC reflected not Chaucer's influence upon the writer, but the influence of a vast event which had changed the face of literature since the out-coming of the Canterbury Tales -- of the revival of learning.”   (p. xxxvi)

 

Actually, the scholar is wrong. E.K. does not say Tityrus is Chaucer, only that he assumes he his. Of course, if any of this were other than a ploy he need only have asked Spenser, his intimate friend, and if Spenser wanted it made known that Tityrus was, in fact, Chaucer, he would have told him so. But that is not what happened. The matter was intentionally kept in the dark because Tityrus is obviously not Chaucer and the real identity of the secret person could not be revealed. Because Tityrus is Oxford!

 

Not only is Tityrus mentioned at the opening of SC, as said, but it is important to note that Spenser also closes his book with Tityrus, in addition to references in other sections of SC.  The twelfth eclogue opens thus:

 

The gentle shepard sat beside a springe

All in the shadow of a bushye brere

That Collin height, which well could pype and singe,

For hee of Tityrus his songes did lere (learn).

 

”For he of Tityrus his songs did learn”! Tityrus is not Chaucer, and he certainly is not;  for one of the comments made about Tityrus, is that he is becoming more popular every day—and that certainly was not the case in 1580 when the "revival of learning," i.e., the Renaissance, was sweeping all of Europe and was the clarion call to England to reinvigorate its arts, away from the antique arts of Chaucer, not into his arms.  For Spenser, to the degree that he imitated (or could imitate Chaucer), all most know, was an anachronism even in his own day!

 

The story then told in the February Ecloge is simply this: The "old man" Thenot tells Cuddie a story, which he says he learned from Tityrus, and asks Cuddie if he wants to hear it, to which he enthusiastically responds that he loves to hear about anything from the old man.  The "old man" we learn in this section is, coincidently the same age of Oxford (Note: "old man" means "nobleman" and was often used in this sense; see Furness). Cuddie says nothing more to his mind could be bent, than to "heare novells of his devise:/They bene so well thewed, and so wise,/What ever that good old man spake."

 

Chaucer was obviously not "novell" two centuries after his death when he was England's greatest poet and had been fed upon for centuries by the literati. There would be little in Chaucer that could be "novel" in 1580.

 

The story then begins with "There grew an aged tree on the greene. . ."  The aged tree was Burghley.  We are told the tree was old, powerful and "grey" and that he was "thoroughly rooted" and that his top was "bald" and "eaten with worms" and his "honor was decayed." All that is quite accurately descriptive of Burghley -- who was thoroughly entrenched in the Queen's court, old and grey—and the most powerful man in England.  A "bragging Bere" or briar shot out "and seemed to threat the firmament."  The young women were all entranced by him, but the old oak was blocking his way at every turn.  The young man (the Brier) then speaks:

 

See how fresh my flowers bene spread,

Died in lily white and cremsin redde

With leaves engrained in lusty green

Colors meete to cloth a mayden queene?

 

Oxford in his early poems (as well as Shakespeare in his later phase) shows that lily white and crimson red were his favorite colors and he uses these colors to describe the "mayden queene," Elizabeth.  One example of this, from which Spenser obviously drew, is Oxford's poem, What Cunning Can Express, a few stanza's of which make the point:

 

The lily in the field

That glories in his white

For pureness now must yield

And render up his right;

Heaven pictured in her face,

Doth promise joy and grace.

 

Fair Cynthia's silver light

Compares not with her white,

Whose hairs are all sun-beams. . .
With this there is a red,
Exceeds the Damask-Rose. . .

This pleasant lily white

This taint of roseate red;
This Cynthia's silver light
This sweet fair Dea spread. 

The flowers of red and white spread in green dyed leafs were the exact colors Oxford clothed his poem to Cynthia (Queen Elizabeth), who was a "mayden queene."

 The Briar is unbelievably arrogant and superior to the great Oak, and it is here that Spenser gives away the role of Lord Oxford in the story in the poem. He, Briar, tells the Oak that he is interfering with his business and that his "mouldie moss" conflicts with his sensitive "sinamon smell." Then, believe it or not the little, “bush" warns the “great tree” not to be in his way: "Wherefore soone, I rede thee, hence remove,/Least thou the price of my displeasure prove." Continuing with "So spake this bold Brere with great disdain."  There is only one person I know of who would speak with great distain to Lord Burghley, the most preeminent Lord of England, the Lord High Chamberlain, Lord Oxford!   The poem continues: the crafty Oak, is accused of concealing "his colowred crime" and that he "unto tyranny doth aspire”. A heardsman comes upon the scene to survey his properties. This “heardsman” is obviously the Queen and is indeed spoken of a "sovereign."  The Briar vents his complaint against the Oak, including the fact that his "flowers" -- read his "verses" -- are being interfered with by Burghley, the Oak.

 Ah my soveraign, lord of creatures all,

Thou placer of plants both humble and tall,
Was not I planted of thine own hand,
To be the primrose of all thy land,
With flowering blossomes to furnish the prime,
And scarlot berries in sommer time?
How falls it then, that this faded Oake,
Whose bodie is sere, whose braunches broke,
Whose nakes armes stetch unto the fyre
Unto such tyranie doth aspire;
Hindering with his shade my lovely light
And robbing me of the swete sonnes sight?
So beate his old boughs my tender side
That oft the bloud springeth from wounds wyde:
Untimely my floweres forced to fall
That bene the honor of your coronall.

All this is the history of the relationship of Lord Oxford with the Queen and his father-in-law, Lord Burghley.  Oxford was "planted" by the Queen into her Ward, upon the death of Oxford's father at the age of 14. Burghley, who had control of Oxford's properties until into his late thirties, constantly hampered Oxford in his desires to further his theatrical and other interests, as well as his desires to prove himself on the field of battle. As Oxford's letter to his father-in-law proves, there was, indeed, a great wound in their relationship. Burghley even put spies upon his famous son-in-law, and he was unquestionably one of the reasons of Oxford's rift with his wife, Anne, Burghley's daughter.

        "For this and many more such outrage" the Briar continues

And as he does, so he sounds clear echoes, from not only letters from Oxford to Burghley, but also what the entire court knew to be true of their relationship. Briar seeks redress:

                        “Nought aske I, but onely to hold my right."

What follows is obscure, but this much is clear. The Queen was incited to rage at Burghley and nearly overthrew him in his place of power. But, she was mindful, too that he had many secrets of state and had so long been her staff of state that she spared him the final cut.  And the Queen, obviously distressed "sighed to see his neare overthrow." The story has more than a touch of reality.

Whatever it was that transpired between the Queen and Burghley, Oxford was to take little comfort from the falling-out. And, indeed, was made to pay himself a heavy price. The Queen imposed some "burden sore" upon Oxford and he himself was down trodden and "gan to repent his pride." This was the prize he won for his "ambition" for he was "trodden in the dirt/Of catell, and brounzed, and sorely hurt."  The reader will recall in the letter of Harvey to Spenser, Oxford was described as "bronzed" having obviously been forced to confinement at his estates where he lived the life of a "Country Gentlemen and Scholar" in seculsion. [reference to another article]

What is most interesting in all this is Spenser's reaction to the Tityrus story.  He had no interest in it and was not sympathetic to the Briar.  Cuddie responds to the very un-Chaucerian story:

Now I pray the, shepheard, tel it not forth:

Here is a long tale, and little worth. . .
But little ease of thy lew tale I tasted.

Not the kind of response one would expect from a "novel" story by Chaucer.  No one of the times would have considered this latest hot gossip either of anything having to do with Virgil, but much to do with VERgil, Edward Ver or Vere.

2.  TITYUS RETURNS AS MENACLUS

  In a previous section [not presented here] I discussed Mencalus and quoted sections concerning him.  I did not discuss there the (June entry) Spenser's mention of Tityrus in the same breath and in the same section of the poem quoted in references to Menaclus.  Now I shall do so.  The pertinent passage is this:

 

The god of shepheards, Tityrus is dead,

Who taught me homely as I can to make.
He, whilst he lived, was the soverign head
Of shepheards all the been with love ytake;
Well couth he wayle his woes, and lightly slake
The flames which love within his heart had bredd,
And tell us mery tales, to keepe us wake,
The while our sheepe about us safely fedde.

Now dead is he, and lyeth wrapt in lead

(O why should Death on hym such outrage showe)
And all hys passing skil with him is fledde
The fame whereof doth dayly greater grow.
But if on me some little drops would flow
Of that the spring was in his learned head
I would soon learn these woods to wayle my woe,
And teache the trees their trickly tears to shed.

And if he did learn from Tityrus to imitate him he would, he says in the continuing lines:

Then should my plaints, caused of discurtesee,

As messengers of all my painfull plight
Fly to my love, where ever that she bee
And pierce her heart with poynt of worthy wight,
And she deserved, that wrought so deadly spight.
And thous, Menaclus. . .

The Gloss informs us that "the Poynte of worthy wight" means "the pricke of deserved spite."  Where would Spenser have learned from Oxford how to send out pricks of deserved spite?  Might it have been in a poem such as Oxford's Love and Antagonism? -- of which the last stanza reads:

And let her feel the power of your might,

And let her have her most desire with speed,
And let her pine away both day and night,
And let her moan, and none lament her need;
And let all those that shall her see
Despise her state and pity me.

That would be a good teacher, for a poet to learn from, on how to meet out your despites—powerful stuff, not in the Chaucerian mode, I can assure you. Nor in the Virgilian mode either if I not mistake. But definitely in the Shakespearean and VERian mode.

When Spenser says "Tityrus is dead. . .he wilst he lived was the soverign head of Sheparads all that bene with love ytake," he cannot be referring to Chaucer, nor Virgil who were not "love poets" as Lord Oxford/Shakespeare. They did not with great cuth "wail out their woes" of anguished personal love—as Oxford did in his poems and in his sonnets, especially those to the so-called Dark Lady of the Sonnets, his very own Rosalinde. Now there is some wailing.

Oxford’s above quoted passage was written years before Spenser's SC (1566-7 vs. 1579).  But Oxford, now, could not only wail of anguished love, but also, Spenser tells us, "tell us merry tales."  (The reader would do well to keep in mind that the Stratford boy Shaksper is 15 years old at the time Spenser's poem was written, surely he is not the "sovereign" of English poetry).  There was only one acknowledged sovereign of English poetry at the time, skilled in tragedies, comedies, and love poems -- who formerly, before his metamorphosis, after his contact with the Renaissance, was the head of all Shepard poetry. Even Harvey it will be recalled at his Audley End (circa 1579) paean stated that Oxford's poetry was unsurpassed—for 0he was most loved and was most beloved of the Muses. Nothing has changed, except some mysterious circumstances where Oxford is kept from or prohibited from writing poetry.  Even Spenser refers to himself being "dead"—because he was not writing poetry.

In respect of the above lines of Spenser, it is worth noting as well that here he calls Tityrus the "sovereign;" in the entry for August, immediately before the rondelay "contest", Cuddie speaks of "Willy" as the "king"—at least that is one reading of it. Certainly Harvey is not liking Spenser to a "king." "Sike a judge as Cuddie were for a king." Spenser in the guise of "Perigot" will meet Willy's challenge to "match his music."  And Perigot responds "Never shal be sayde that Perigot was dared." It is, of course, interesting that "Perigot" is afflicted just as Collin is by a disappointed love. And, at first, protests that he cannot respond to the challenge because his "old music" was now mard by a new mischaunce," that is, of being disappointed in love. Just as Collin frequently bewails the fact that he is "dead" and his old songs are no more because of his love for Roselinde

Perigot, in fact, tell's Willy just before the "match" that "Sike a song never heardest thou but Colin sing." Which should make the matter quite decisive. Only a Collin could produce such a song. After the contest is over and judged (Willy does not accept the judgment) Cuddie then wants to recite one of Collins songs, to which Willy replies:  "In Colins stede, if thou this song areede: for never thing on earth so pleaseth me/As him to heare, or matter of his deede."

Obviously, from any point of view it is Colin-Spenser that wrote the lines to which Willy-Oxford responded -- unless someone wants to seriously suppose that Phillip Sidney actually wrote the lines. And that I've not yet heard of from any of the Oxford scholars.

In the entry for October immediately after the discussion (above) concerning the "white bear" and Oxford bringing the drama to the Queen's court, Tityrus is mentioned again. This time he is referred to as the Romish Tityrus, meaning, in this case, as in contradistinction to all the other uses, not the Greek Tityrus—which was the sobriquet for Oxford. He remarks there immediately following on his discussion of drama  it shows that he is making a parallel between Oxford's career and Virgil’s, as he does throughout. He began as a "Shepheard," wrote at least one poem, we know of, about farming, and then took to sing of "warres and deadly dede/So as the heavens did quake his verse to here." 

Spenser began his SC on the theme of Tityrus, developed it throughout and ends the Dec. entry on him, as well as in his postscript to the book.  In the December entry he repeats that he had learned to write from Tityrus.  And with Tityrus in mind Spenser pipes again his "piteous mone:"

'O soverigne Pan, thou god of shepheards all

Which of our tender lambkins takest keepe,
And when our flocks into mischaunce mought fall,
Doest save from mischiefe the unwary sheepe,
Als of their maisters has no lesse regard
Then of the flocks, which thou doest watch and ward. 

Spenser is really beside himself; he doesn't know what to do. His teacher, his mater, his beloved mentor has ruined his life by stealing his love—he would have us believe. As Poet, he loves Oxford, even if he is a Tityrus; but that it was his love he hates him for, i.e.,  unflowering his flower, his beloved, Rosalinde. Tityrus wantonly seduced her!  He is the Shepheard’s god as a poet, but as a man he is no god.  He continues in following stanza's in the same section:

The shepheards god (perdie, god he was none)

My hurtess pleassaunce did me ill upbraide;
My freedom lorne, my life he lefte to mone.
Love they him called that gave me checkmate,
But better mought they have behote him Hate.

With that introduction he returns to Rosalinde: "Ah! who has wrought my Rosalind this spight,/To spill the flowers that should her girlond dight. And Spenser ends his interminable self-pitying poem saying that all is over with him; he's hanging up his pipe.  But he does not exit without announcing that a better pipe never played before -- apparently making all the more tragic in his self-pitting moan. The last line ends with Rosalind.  He tell Harvey-Hobbinol: "Tell Rosalind her Colin bids her adieu."

And then comes, the closing poem of December, which is a tribute to Lord Oxford and so it is done in an extended anaphora, as described at the beginning of our remarks.

Finally, it is over. Almost. We have to make one more visit to Tityrus.  In the postscript he admonishes himself to go and seek the lower shades, proper to a poor rustic poet -- apparently having forgotten he had just announced himself to be the greatest rustic poet who ever lived. In the end he gives himself some good advice: 

"Dare not to match thy pipe with Tityrus his style,

Nor with the Pilgrim that the Ploughman playde awhile." 

He tells himself to follow after them, however, "and their high steps adore; the better please, the worse despise, I ask no more."  He asks no more than the right to follow after Oxford to adore his best and despise his worst.  And that is what he does. 

Isn't it interesting that Spenser hates the "shepheards god."  Is it not interesting that he says “Love” they call him, he who checkmated him, and that he would better have been called “Hate”. We know who it was that took his love and left him to moan ("mone").

FINIS/ELM