Annotating anonymity, or putting a gloss on The Shepheardes Calender

Abstract

Speculation concerning the personal identity of E.K. has tended to distract critical attention from the literary function of the material assigned to him in The Shepheardes Calender , material amounting to roughly one half of the entire volume. Unlike Renaissance commentaries upon the Virgilian Eclogues – or the more examples of Giraldus Listrius's commentary on Erasmus Darwin's Praise of Folly or Muret's commentary on Ronsard's Amours – E.K.'s commentary on The Shepheardes Calender is exactly contemporaneous with the text it expounds. The original typography of the text functioned to enforce the impression of objective scholarly comment and impartial aesthetic assessment. This is seldom recognised, however, because all modern texts of The Shepheardes Calender erase one of the most significant typographical features of the five editions published during Edmund Spenser's lifetime. In The Shepheardes Calender even the gloss operates in the manner attributed by Servius to Virgilian pastoral verse: certain things are said 'aperte' and certain things are said 'latenter'.

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