Spenser’s Real Sheep An illustrated talk by Professor Andrew Hadfield

Sheep were a vital component of the early modern economy in Britain and Ireland, and in this lecture Professor Andrew Hadfield talks about the poet Edmund Spenser’s representation of sheep and sheep farming to ask whether his work demonstrates a sympathetic understanding of animals. Spenser had access to a wide series of works on animals and farming as well as experience of sheep farming in Ireland and would have been conscious that the Spencer family, to whom he claimed to be related, had made their vast fortune from sheep. Professor Hadfield will reconstruct the evidence of their significance in Britain and Ireland to show how Spenser would have interacted with the animals.

Sheep would have played a vital role in Spenser’s life but they appear only rarely in his writings. The woodcuts to The Shepherds Calender (1579), written before he went to Ireland, depict accurate representations of early modern sheep, but the text itself shows little interest in them other than as creatures reflecting the mood and life of the shepherds in the eclogues. A similar case might be made about Colin Clout come home againe (1595), written when he had settled in Ireland. The evidence suggest that Spenser knew a great deal about sheep but that his work concentrates more on the shepherds, the animals serving as symbols that are ‘good to think with.’

Andrew Hadfield is Professor of English at the University of Sussex and a fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of Edmund Spenser: A Life (2012), and a number of other works, including Lying in Early Modern English Culture (2017) and Literature and Class from the Peasants Revolt to the French Revolution (2021). With Raymond Gillespie he edited The Oxford History of the Irish Book: Volume III, The Irish Book in English, 1550-1800 (2006).

This talk is presented by the Office of Public Works as part of the 2023 Cultural Programme at Doneraile Court.