“Thou hast a free passeporte”: Poetic Personation and Literary Patronage in Spenser’s Prosopopoia, Or Mother Hubberds Tale and The Shepheardes Calender

Abstract

Abstract:The forged passports in Prosopopoia, Or Mother Hubberds Tale and the “free passe-porte” in The Shepheardes Calender reveal Edmund Spenser’s recurring interest in passport documents. This article examines how authorities in early modern England used passports to control the movement, poverty, labor, property, and allegiance of subjects, despite widespread abuse by rogues. I argue that, by connecting the ambivalent license of passport documents with the ethical tensions of personation, or imitation, Spenser creates a “device” for negotiating the traditional pressures of patronage, on the one hand, and authorship, on the other. The Shepheardes Calender’s “free passport” imitates not only Geoffrey Chaucer’s envoi to Troilus and Criseyde but also the “franke pasporte” from Thomas Drant’s 1567 translation of Horace’s Epistles. Spenser’s “free passeporte,” therefore, should not be read as inherently deceitful and roguish but as a legitimate and time- honored literary strategy for achieving poetic renown.