Edmund Spenser, A view of the present state of Ireland [1596]: a radical re-appraisal of a well-known text
Published in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature, 2025.
Link
Abstract
Most scholars believe that Spenser’s View was written in 1596. This study indicates that it is a 1596 amalgamation of two elements: one drafted about 1589 when an optimistic Spenser portrayed the controversial actions of Lord Grey de Wilton in Ireland as a humanist enterprise; the other composed in 1596 when a panic-stricken Spenser, believing England’s control over Ireland to be in jeopardy, argued for the appointment of a new governor, backed by a fresh cohort of English Protestant officials, who would revive the abandoned policies of Grey. Each element of the text proposed actions that may have seemed extreme to educated people in England. However, it is shown how the successive denigration by Spenser’s interlocutors of the Gaelic, the Old English and the English Protestant elements of Ireland’s population, reflected opinions that were widespread among English settlers in Ireland. For them experience was the most reliable source of knowledge.