Did Edmund Dream of Shorthaired Sheep?

Abstract

This chapter analyses Spenser’s representation of sheep and sheep farming to ask whether his work demonstrates a sympathetic understanding of animals and whether he thought that they had a consciousness or even rights. Spenser had access to a wide series of works on animals and farming as well as experience of sheep farming in Ireland; he would also have been conscious that the Spencer family, to whom he claimed to be related, had made their vast fortune from sheep. Sheep were a vital component of the early modern economy, and the first section of this chapter reconstructs the evidence of their significance in Britain and Ireland to show how Spenser would have interacted with them. Sheep would have played a vital role in Spenser’s life but, as the second part of this chapter demonstrates, they appear only rarely in his writings. The woodcuts to The Shepheardes Calender (1579) 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 Clouts Come Home Againe (1595). The evidence suggests 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’.