The Teares of the Muses

Complaints is a poetry collection by Edmund Spenser, published in 1591. It contains nine poems. Its publisher, William Ponsonby, added an introduction of his own.

The poem is narrated by Verulame, female spirit of Verulamium, and praises the late Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, though perhaps in an ironic tone.

This poem was dedicated to Alice Spencer, Countess of Derby. It was composed around 1580. We hear from the Muses in order: Clio, Melpomene, Thalia, Euterpe, Terpsichore, Erato, Calliope, Urania, and Polyhymnia. The order is traditional, following a Latin mnemonic poem De musarum inventis, and had been adopted by the earlier English writer Gabriel Harvey in his Smithus.

The poem is concerned with the state of contemporary literature, but also mourns the death of the poet Richard Willes in about 1579. It was suggested by William Warburton in the 18th century that the lines from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream on the nine Muses mourning the death/ of Learning, first deceas'd in beggary refer to this poem.

A translation of Culex, an epyllion traditionally attributed to Virgil, it is a beast fable, and was dedicated to Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, who had died in 1588.

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