Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender makes an unusual contribution to the Elizabethan friendship topos by privileging the productive potential of male amicitia over heterosexual amor. This pastoral dramatises a love triangle: Colin loves Rosalind, but she doesn't love him; Hobbinol loves Colin, but Colin doesn't love him anymore. Yet, by the end of its calendric cycle, Hobbinol's love has proven to be enduring and fruitful; he acts as a scribe for Colin's love-stricken outpourings, helping to produce the record of his talent that is the Calender. That is to say, the Calender tells a double story of triumph and defeat. The text articulates worries about the talents of its ‘new Poete’. Will his potential be developed and realised, or will it remain uncultivated? Its final eclogue December records the tragic error of Colin's career: his fruitless chasing after the disdainful Rosalind which has left his gift unnurtured (‘My boughes with bloosmes that crowned were at firste, / And promised of timely fruite such store, / Are left both bare and barrein now at erst’ (lines 103–5)). However, its final two lines also recognise the good faith of Hobbinol: ‘Adieu good Hobbinol, that was so true, / Tell Rosalind, her Colin bids her adieu’ (lines. 155–6), and the reader is left in possession of the fruits of Colin's gift, the physical book called The Shepheardes Calender. It is this second story of discovered talent that I will explore in this chapter.