The Spider and the file is probably one of my favorite poems of the sixteenth century. Like a morality play this poem is full of argument , dialogue and allegory, and Heywood takes his time to explore this situation, Perhaps I just like it because I spend a lot of time at a desk next to a window looking .. (out or in?) In any case this is a very wonderful book and like many of my favorite 20th century poems it is mostly about work of the mind ..
( see Max Jacob “The Dice-cup” and John Ashbery “The instruction Manual”)
888G John Heywood 1497?-1580?
The Spider and the Flie. A parable of the Spider and the Flie, made by John Heywood.
Imprinted At London in Flete Streete By Thomas Povvell, 1556 $52,000
Quarto,7 1/2 X 5 3/8 Inches. A-C4, A-Z4, Aa16, Bb6, Cc8, Dd12, Ee16, Ff14, Gg8, Hh-Ss4.
First edition. This is a complete copy bound in nineteenth century red morocco tooled in a cottage style,it is a very elegant copy with silk doublures.
“The Spider and the Fly, an allegorical mock-heroic bestiary in rhyme royal by John Heywood. It was first printed in 1556 but, according to Heywood’s epilogue, was begun nineteen years earlier. The time span between composition and publication may account in part for the generally acknowledge obscurities and inconsistencies of Heywood’s political and religious allegory. Heywood’s poem is nearly as long as Milton’s Paradise Lost.
“As in most of Heywood’s works, a modicum of plot is enlarged upon by liberal use of the medieval debat. The Fly, caught in the Spider’s web, is allowed to plead his case for clemency before the Spider, who promises to judge the plaintiff according to reason, law, custom, and conscience. This lengthy debate satirizing courts and legal procedures is made even more convoluted when the Fly appoints a butterfly and the Spider an ant to act as advocates. When all legal arguments fail, the Spider and the Fly summon their allies and prepare to settle the dispute by war. The flies capture the ant and prepare to execute him, but the eloquent ant manages to win a reprieve. After the attack of the flies against the cobweb castle is repulsed, both sides agree to a truce, but not until an extremely long debate over how the territory (a window) is to be divided. In the midst of this controversy the Spider reopens the original litigation and decrees that the Fly must be condemned to death. Before execution can take place, however, a maid appears and threatens to kill the Spider, who then must plead for his own life. His appeals fail; the maid crushes the Spider, lectures the flies and spiders on the necessity of peace and order, and both factions depart in amity. At the conclusion of the poem the narrator urges his readers to emulate the harmony reached by the spiders and flies:
“Let us here Play our parts in this part, all parts to appear
To this maid as spiders and flies to that maid.
Let our banners of obedience be display’d,
Of love the badge, of rejoicing the right root,
And of our own wealths the right and full boot.“
There is little doubt that the maid of Heywood’s poem is Mary Tudor, who attempted to crush Protestantism and restore Roman Catholicism to England, and that Heywood, a devout Catholic, had to wait almost twenty years for religious developments in England to provide him with a suitable conclusion to his poem. The other principals in the poem are less easy to identify, possibly because Heywood sometimes refers to issues and personages in Henry VIII’s reign and on other occasions to events in Mary Tudor’s. In the first part of the poem the flies seem to represent the commons, the spiders the nobility and rich landowners, and the issue appears to be land enclosures (although not consistently); in the second part the flies appear to be Roman Catholics, the spiders Protestants, and the issue religious conformity. Early in the poem the Fly caught in the web could represent Sir Thomas More and the Spider Cardinal Wolsey; later the crushed Spider suggests Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, executed by the Catholics in 1556. Obscure as Heywood’s allegory is, it is nevertheless recognizable as being patently pro-Catholic, an allegation the author was at pains not to publicize until the restoration of Roman Catholicism under Mary Tudor.” (quoted from Crowell’s Handbook of Elizabethan & Stuart Literature, by James E. Ruoff)
STC 13308, F. HN. HD. N. NY.+; Grolier’s Langland to Wither, number 137. Pforzheimer 469; McKerro & Ferguson 50.
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