Of this worlds Theatre by Edmund Spenser

Of this worlds Theatre in which we stay,
My love lyke the Spectator ydly sits,
Beholding me that all the pageants play,
Disguysing diversly my troubled wits.
Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits,	5
And mask in myrth lyke to a Comedy:
Soone after when my joy to sorrow flits,
I waile and make my woes a Tragedy.
Yet she beholding me with constant eye,
Delights not in my merth nor rues my smart:	10	pities/hurt
But when I laugh she mocks, and when I cry
She laughes, and hardens evermore her hart.
What then can move her? if nor merth nor mone,	moan
She is no woman, but a sencelesse stone.

Edmund Spenser

The Edmund Spenser Home Page
Spenser, Edmund (short bio from The Columbia Encyclopedia)

Links

Spenser's Amoretti (brief introduction of Spenser's sonnets in this collection)
Edmund Spenser, Amoretti and "Epithalamion" (quick summary of genre, form, characters, issues and research sources)
Amoretti and Epithalamion (html e-text of these two works)
Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599. Amoretti and Epithalamion (another source for the e-text of these two works)

1 Of this worlds Theatre in which we stay: A favorite Renaissance theme derived in part from Lucian's Menippos and further popularized by Erasmus's Praise of Folly; cf. Shakespeare, As You Like It 2.7.139.

6 mask: Put on a mask; also, act in a masque, an elite entertainment with symbolic costumes or "guises." If the lover plays comedies when happy and tragedies when sad, his masks dramatize as much as they conceal.

9 with constant eye: Noteworthy in that women were often called inconstant; Elizabeth I defied the same stereotype with her motto semper eadem: "ever the same."

14 She is no woman, but a senceless stone: Some readers (e.g. Martz in pp. 804-9 in this Norton Critical Edition of Edmund Spenser's poetry) note in this sonnet a friendly wit that lightens the tone; the lover's seeming anger at his failure to move the lady may be more role-playing for her entertainment.

Edmund Spenser's Poetry: Authoritative Texts, Criticism. 3rd ed. Eds. Hugh Maclean and Anne Lake Prescott. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. 608-9. (The poem notes and some of the glosses are from this Norton Critical Edition)