Complaints (poetry collection)

[1] 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.

[5] 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.

[7] 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.

[8] 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.

Some of the sonnets in this section, and the final Visions of Petrarch, had earlier versions in A theatre wherein be represented as wel the miseries & calamities that follow the voluptuous worldlings (1569) translated by Spenser (and others) from the original by Jan van der Noot.

[14] It is not completely clear that authorship lies with Spenser The origins of this poem lay in a version via Clément Marot's French of Standomi un giorno solo a la fenestra, which is canzone 323 by Petrarch.