However uncertain their literary status, however belated their appearance, the Mutabilitie Cantos comprise probably the most challenging, complex and surprising part of Spenser’s poem, England’s first national epic. Yet Spenser had been dead ten years by 1609, and the first readers of the Cantos lived in a radically changed political landscape, with a Stuart king, peace with Spain, calmer days in Ireland and, for the first time, a relatively unified and peaceable ‘Great Britain’.
