Colin Clout and The Shepherd of the Ocean

Abstract

Despite increased critical interest in the political and literary relations between Spenser and Ralegh, surprisingly little close attention has been paid, first, to Ralegh’s side of the picture and, second, to the vexed question of the precise intertextual relations between Colin Clout and The 11th: and last booke of the Ocean to Scinthia. While readers have long recognized that Colin’s brief account of the “lamentable lay” sung to him by the “straunge shepherd” in lines 163–71 of Colin Clout may well refer to Ocean to Scinthia, the uncertain dating of the two poems has led most recent critics and editors to be cautious. I argue that in fact Colin does refer to Ralegh’s poem, that Ralegh’s poem in turn engages Spenser’s, and that both should be read as embodying a “dialogue” carried out over a period of time. In particular, the two poems echo each other in their handling of the Neoplatonic idea of love, and especially in the way Ocean repeatedly scrutinizes Colin’s too-easy reliance on Neoplatonic idealism. His critique is based on Ralegh’s own lived courtly experience and hinges on the two poets’ epistemological differences. My aim in part is to adjust a critical tendency to privilege Spenser as a morally superior teacher of Ralegh.

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