[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

Welcome once again to POETS Day, where we usher in Henry Ford’s greatest creation – the weekend – a few hours ahead of schedule by embracing the ethos of the day: Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

Life’s too short for work, and nobody’s gonna notice if you hoof it mid-afternoon.

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In a 1579 letter from Edmund Spenser to Gabriel Harvey, Spenser brings up an organization he’d been invited to join by “Master Sidney and Master Dyer.” The Masters were Sir Philip Sidney and Edward Dyer, a pair of Elizabethan courtiers who acted as agents and soldiers abroad for Her Majesty. Sidney, at least, would be shocked that he’s remembered as a poet rather than envoy or governor. The organization was called The Areopagus, and it’s fairer to call it the proposed organization as it’s not known whether it ever made it past planning. No meetings are recorded.

Sydney may have been inspired in conceiving his literary club by the Wilton Circle, a literary circle of which Spenser is confirmed to have been a member, founded and led by Philip’s sister Mary Sydney and run by Sir Walter Ralegh’s half brother (possibly Humphrey Gilbert, though I haven’t found a site willing to lift whomever out of Ralegh’s shadow with more than “half-brother.”) The Wilton Circle is described by the Shakespearean Authorship Trust as “the most important and influential literary circle in English history.” The Authorship Trust’s mission, depending on your disposition, is “just asking questions” regarding the authorship of plays ascribed to William Shakespeare, or they’re a bunch of conspiracy nuts on a snipe hunt. It’s also possible that Mary’s Wilton Circle postdated Sydney’s idea for the Areopagus. I can’t find minutes.