　When Edmund Spenser (155-99) composed Epithalamion we do not exactly know: most probably in 1594. For it is believed that in this year, on June 11, Spenser married Elizabeth Boyle, and on November 19 a book was entered in the Stationers' Register by William Ponsonby. The book (nearly the size of a modern pocket edition)was entitled Amoretti and Epithalamion: Written not long since by Edmund Spenser. It was published in London in 1595. This is al1 we know about the date of its composition.

　Elizabeth was not Spenser's first wife. Before he came to Ireland in 1580, he had married a lady called Machabyas Chylde, of whom, it is believed, he was bereaved sometime before his second marriage, being left with two children, Sylvanus and Katherine. He was nearly forty at the time of his courtship of Elizabeth, and was living　in a large estate at Kilcolman in southern Ireland. Elizabeth Boyle (1576?-1622)was a kinswoman of Sir Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork. She was a daughter of Stephen and Joan Boyle in Northamptonshire, the same district where the Spencer family had lived. She removed from England to Ireland with one of her brothers and lived with Sir Richard Boyle at Youghal. Their wedding ceremony,　we may reasonably suppose, was held in Cork Cathedral. After their marriage they lived at Kilcolman, and had a son, Peregrine, in 1595. Amoretti and Epithalamion was written above anything else to commemorate his courtship and its fulfilment in the happy consummation of their marriage.