Although unbound, this series of holograph notes has been designated a notebook. It dates from 1949–50. As John Ayre recounts (226–7), in September 1950 Frye had broken his right arm in a car accident. However, “He was faithful to his Guggenheim grant plans and dictated notes for the Spenser book from a large rocking chair” (226). Notebook 43 is undoubtedly those notes: the running commentary on Spenser’s Faerie Queene, book by book and canto by canto, in Frye’s handwriting, leaves off after book 2, canto 2 (paragraph 61). It takes up, in Helen Kemp Frye’s handwriting, with book 3, canto 1 (paragraph 62), and continues through book 4, canto 10, at which point it trails off permanently. Upon their first appearance in each paragraph, certain of Frye’s abbreviations have been expanded in this particular notebook as follows: “co.” = canto; “Sp.” = Spenser; “St. G” = St. George. Also, Arabic numerals, unless otherwise identified, refer to stanza numbers (Frye’s commonest means of glossing The Faerie Queene), rather than line, canto, or book numbers. Upon first appearance in each paragraph, these are designated “st.” Notebook 43 is in the NFF, 1991, box 37, file 1.
[1] “antique” means Golden Age.1
[2] Int. [Introduction].2 Virgilian stereotypes. The muse may be Clio/Calliope, which overdoses the historical allegory. The appeal, if so, is to 1. Clio, 2. Mars, Venus, Eros, 3. Elizabeth as (moon or) sun.3 Mars not as war-god but as lover of Venus. Doesn’t make much sense. The knight has hope & faith, but is too sad,4 which suggests he lacks charity; but surely Sansfoy & Sansjoy attack faith & hope, Sansloy being the attack on Christian law, the rule of charity. The failure of hope & the consequent plunge to despair is certainly the theme, although the quest is the quest of faith. Possibly Guy on is a hopeful protagonist, & has a lack in faith corresponding to faith’s lack in hope. This would fit Bunyan, to some extent: Faithful is destroyed by the Church of the World (Vanity Fair = Mammon); Hopeful gets all the way. In Dante faith is white, love red & hope green.
[3] Una’s ass & lamb are white, & so’s her own ass; but she’s concealed by a black veil. Hence she’s the hidden ark of the covenant, portable in the nomadic-quest, & is due to be taken into the city of God, stripped & fucked, as opposed to the harlot Duessa, who is to be stripped & burned. The ass, the humble bearing animal, symbolizes Christ & his entry into Jerusalem. Her white body is innocence concealed in the fallen world: she’s covered in black as the Lady in Comus is paralyzed. Thus her black stole, & even her veil, are part of the body of the dragon. Note that she’s dressed as a nun, an allegory the R.C. Ch. [Roman Catholic Church] takes literally. There are limits to identifying her with the Wisdom of Proverbs, but I certainly think she’s in the “black but comely” allegory of the Song of Songs. She has nothing to do with Mary, of course, but she could be5 the woman crowned with stars in Rev. xii, if that’s the Church.6
[4] Her black robe is also a symbol of the world of darkness, St. George being the rising sun—hero who repeats, in a more or less Kierkegaardian sense, the coming of Jesus as the light of the world. The dark world is the dragon, who has swallowed it; hence the solar light-dark cycle predominates. Of the fallen world as Eden, & Una’s parents as the unfallen Adam & Eve, I need nothing further just now. Incidentally, the very easygoing morality of the romance—for the dwarf will hardly do as a chaperone—is most naturally referable to the same psychological basis—libido & anima travelling in the same unconscious symbolized by a forest. Ariosto says this in his very first canto, so Spenser knows all about it.7
[5] Una’s name indicates that she is the pure unfallen world. Duessa is the attempt to hold the spiritual & physical orders together by representative symbolism, the analogy of religion. Hence the point Spenser makes of using R.C. [Roman Catholicism] allegorically instead of imitatively or literally. Or, in my terms, the “literal” is really the allegorical, & the allegory the moral.
[6] The dwarf is the physical body in dreamland, the persona that’s so important in the waking world & so contemptible in the sleeping one. Note the resemblance of St. George, Una & the dwarf to Blake’s strong, beautiful (who is also feminine) & ugly man.8 Ugliness is Reason, the incapability of intellect, in Blake; hence reason as prudence, calculation & other forms of imgve. [imaginative] cowardice. The more “realism” the author attempts, the more important the dwarf or principle of the necessitous, grows: Sancho Panza. He’s not the Jungian “shadow.”
[7] Epics & romances alike begin with the threshold symbols of sinking into a forest or sea. Hence the frequency of opening with a tempest. The storm is the dissolution of the mind which is symbolized by the sky & sun, & the coming of unconscious powers. Also, I think, falling to sleep plunges the sun-hero of the libido into the dark world, & his quest is the awakening of the spirit. Tempest, storm, cloud & thunder are all Urizenic, attributes of the Old Man & the female will. In Virgil it’s the latter (Juno); in Spenser Jove is angry & soaks his “leman” with rain,9 so the pair take refuge in a forest: a forest, by the way, that completely hides the sky. This, of course, is error, the house of a monster in a cave, & a labyrinth (it absorbs therefore the Minotaur pattern, with Una in the role of Ariadne). Thus it marks the symbolism of the dream world as darkness, as fallen, as a world out of which the hero struggles to free himself. The dream forest has other aspects, notably the green-world one, but that belongs in a comic context. The “leman” business is the heaven-fucks-earth theme, not in its fertility (comic) but its harlotry (tragic or fallen) aspect. Note that the action of Book I begins in the summer (probably Midsummer). Note that a forest underneath a storm of rain is really under water too. That’s part of the point about the tempest.
[8] The monster of error is female, so it’s linked with Duessa & mamma’s cunt (cave in thick woods). The echo of Chaucer’s PF [The Parliament of Fowls] seems very curious.10 As usual in these tempest & forest symbols, the image of the point of fixed light in darkness occurs, though only in imagery. The monster is labyrinthine & self-devouring, & a pure principle of darkness: the knight’s armor, which is borrowed, gives some (reflected or lunar?) light.11 The serpentine tail is not only labyrinthine, but there’s a slight suggestion of its covering what’s left of the sky, as in Rev. [Revelation]. The wrapping boa-constrictor image is terrible-mamma too. There’s a whole series of creatures in Book I, including this one, who get strength like Antaeus by contact with the “durtie grounde.” The hermaphrodite symbol also turns up as well as the “equivocal” generation of sun & mud on the Nile.12 When error gets divided it blows up, evidently: the self-devouring imagery suggests the Druidic serpent with its tail in its mouth.
[9] Archimago is the fake old wise man (the true one is the Palmer of Book II), as Duessa’s the fake bride or anima. Faking in Book I relates to the physical or sacramental analogy. Hypocrisy in the moral allegory, Papacy in the historical one, he’s essentially the physical counterfeiting of spiritual reality. Holiness, on the other hand, is [Rudolf] Otto’s awe of the noumenal,13 the vision of the spiritual world. Hence A’s name, the magician (he’s dressed like one) or creator of a hallucinatory world. He like Error lives in a “hidden cell,” the monastic contemplative life being the literal counterfeit of charity, & he’s the terrible father as Error-Duessa is the mother. He’s a Faust figure, & contains the Protestant fear of hidden knowledge & control of elemental creatures, vs. plain sense of (daylight) revelation.
[10] I don’t know what the point of the simile is in [st.] 23: it makes a curious shift of sympathy on the part of the reader, from the knight & monsters to the clown & gnats. The pastoral image of course is something else; & in any case it anticipates the later sunset of 32. The cloud of gnats reappears in 38, where it has “Beelzebub” overtones. Even Ariel reminds one occasionally of an insect, sucking where the bee sucks (or perhaps a hummingbird). I don’t know either why Spenser’s head is so full of Chaucer’s minor poems: BD’s [The Book of the Duchess’s] visit to cave of Morpheus.14
[11] I suppose one may dream of day or night, & while both are with-drawn from the waking world, the sun & sky world of dreamland is perhaps the comic or creative pleasure-principle (L’Allegro), while night in dreamland is a double unconsciousness, either penseroso or malignant. Morpheus’ house is a cave of Urthona in the bowels of the earth, but even so he’s exposed to the moon. The night in Bk. I is consistently malignant. I don’t know why Archimago’s Chapel has a fountain inside it which is repeated at the house of Morpheus,15 but evidently the sleep & threshold images of rain & water are becoming explicit. The two gates of ivory & silver16 are Beulah materials. The sense of remoteness from a concourse is marked several times. The temptation through a dream, repeated in P.L. [Paradise Lost],17 begins here, & ties up the dream: reality :: reality: spiritual reality pattern. [St.] 48 marks the parody of love by the C of L [Court of Love] which runs all through Spenser. Finally, hypocrisy deceives the simple, like angels in P.L. [Paradise Lost]. An age of controversy makes truth rather than grace the primary guide, hence importance of illusion & disguise. Wonder if demogorgon, etymologized I think by Boccaccio as demon of the earth, is an echo of George’s name?18 Note that the first canto goes through a day cycle, assuming the action to begin in the morning. How this fits the 12-day festival I supposed to be at Christmas I don’t know (summer).
[12] I suppose the North Star could be a symbol of the focussed consciousness, as it never falls beneath the waters.19 The trick Archimago plays on St. George has for its ultimate design the dividing of him & Una into double parts (9),20 which means primarily to separate them, but may also refer to the doubling theme of Duessa parodying Una & A. [Archimago] himself St. G. Line 3 of st. 9 is one for the rhetoric chapter.21 The link between A. & Proteus22 (the spirit of matter, I think usually in the handbooks) is important, & reinforces a Calypso-Duessa assoc. as well as a lurking Prot. [Protestant]: form :: Cath. [Catholic] : substance (= matter) assoc. The remark about A’s being afraid of his own disguises I don’t get, but his vice role is important: he’s the old-bastard eiron, the kind of thing everyone thinks the MM [Measure for Measure] Duke should be. There’s a link too between Proteus as creatures of the 4 elements & A’s Paracelsian power over them. His disguse as St. G is of course the turning of the C of E [Church of England] Roman. Note the female will aspect of Duessa: Sansfoy fights to gain her approval (st. 14). Slight touch of sadism about the illicit relations, which Duessa appeals to.
[13] Note of course contrast between the Biblical “eastward in Eden” & Rome’s assoc. w. the West (Hesperia). Almost the modern historical sense of “Western.” I suppose it would be forcing things to link Duessa’s story of her abduction by the Saracen Sansfoy with the conquest of Spain by the Moors.
[14] I don’t know what to make of the Fradubio story, except that he represents those who see the truth of religion & are prevented by fear, or rather weakness of faith, from attaining it. The living well that releases them is the water of life as grace rather than as baptism. Note the careful paralleling of this story with the corresponding canto of Bk. II. The well of the woman of Samaria [John 4:7–14] is involved: also they’re the analogy of the trees for the healing of the nations in Ezek. & Rev. [Ezekiel 47:7–12; Revelation 22:1–2]. Cf. also Jer. [Jeremiah] 2.13.23 There’s also an anticipation of the release of waters theme in QIV [bk. 4]: that’s a spring symbol, & it’s at “Prime” that Fradubio saw Duessa naked.24 Meanwhile the two trees stand in the waste land outside the garden of promise, helplessly following the cycle of nature without the true springtime palingenesis which St. George himself achieves. I don’t know what the detail means about burying the bleeding branch in clay:25 the theme of blood-guilt turns up in, again, the corresponding canto in [bk.] II, & the red clay (Adam) theme is familiar. Perhaps a dim allusion to Jesus’ enabling the blind man with wet clay to see men as trees walking [Mark 8:24]. See st. 44.
[15] As I’ve said, the theme of this canto is: “Truth without holiness acquires a destructive power that leads to anarchy,” the historical example being the suppressing of the monasteries. I don’t know what more there is in this canto: the folklore theme of the lion made harmless by the power of virginity is elsewhere: I think in fact I found something like it in Ramon Lull.26 She’s royal, & the lion won’t touch the true prince.27 The rather dim-witted lion of Mother Hubbard’s Tale, who is Queen Elizabeth, may be noted. Note that when Truth is away from men she can take at least her black stole off ([st.] 4). I don’t really know what the symbolism is about the natural perception of truth by animals, satyrs & simple people, which begins here with the lion. Of course the invulnerable power of virginity, or rather chastity, the Comus theme, also begins here. The reference to Calypso (21)28 reinforces the Odyssey allusions already mentioned: the repetition of “wandring” is almost thematic, & the assoc. of wandering & a waste land is very explicit. Wandering in sea as well as desert is the point of the Odyssey allusions, & is reinforced by the sailor simile in 31–2.
[16] Note the successive appearance of the Sans brothers: Foy in co [canto] 2, Loy in 3, Joy in 4. That suggests a Loy-Hope Joy-Charity antagonism, but I dunno. Note the cult of appeasing the dead by revenging their death ([st.] 36): Sp’s [Spenser’s] touches of Druidism are very subtle. It’s interesting too the way that in this canto Urizen appears disguised as Ore.29 The canto ends with a statement of the natural animal vs. unnatural human theme. Note Ariosto’s technique of achieving the suspense by splitting the action.
[17] I don’t know why St. G [George] alone goes to courts & Una alone to cottages, but in the historical allegory I suppose there’s a point to it. The essential thing in the House of Pride is the false courtesy, the analogy of the true court. Of course, as I’ve said, the House of Pride isn’t the Dungeon of Pride: it’s pride of vanity & ostentation, but St. George follows something of the downward career of Milton’s Satan. The House of Pride suggests Belshazzar, Babel & others summed up in the next canto. The architectural details of [st.] 4 are quite good. Note the parallel way (co. [canto] 3.10 & co. 4.2) that St. G. & Una pick up signs of habitation. I suppose, just as there’s PF [Parliament of Fowls] in co. 1 & BD [Book of the Duchess] too, so there’s some HF [House of Fame] here, with a similar roll call of history. Note that St. George & Duessa the Western harlot30 enter the golden house at sundown, like Samson & Delilah moving toward Gaza. The sandy foundation is commonplace, & the Horatian use of Persia31 (7: cf. co. 2.13): the whole thing is a careful parody, along Ascham’s lines, of the “Presence.” The royal figure like the sun [Lucifera] with the dragon underneath her parodies Elizabeth (cf. Bk. V). This is the third female creature (Error & Duessa bathing in co. 2) with a serpent’s tail, more or less ([st.] 10).32 The symbol of the false sun is well rubbed in (Phaethon in 9; cf. 16) & even the false spring (17; cf. the io Hymen of St. G’s dream in co. 1).33
[18] Nothing to be said about the seven (or rather six) deadly sins except that they’re all sick & pride is their final cause. The canto is oppressively emblematic. The assoc. of Envy with attacks on poets seems to run right through. The general idea is a Saturnalia of disorder in charge of society, hence all the analogies. The mist as the symbol of the inability to see clearly which is so fundamental to this book turns up in [st.] 36, as well as in co. [canto] 2.38. Duessa’s speech jangles in 45 as in co. 1.51, & note how she precisely reverses the correct sun-vs.-storm imagery in 48.
[19] The opposition of St. George & Sansjoy in the House of Pride is like the opposition of the two sides of Hamlet, the plain dealer or sweet prince & the prince of gloom. Sansjoy’s speech has a fine sombre dignity about it: he has something of Milton’s Satan’s self-command. The language in [st.] 49 is almost Scriptural. He’s the core of despair in pride & epicurish wantonness, & he devoutly believes in the cause of night: “guiltie Elfin blood” [st. 49, 1. 9] anticipates Despair. Note the association of both Duessa & Sansjoy with secrecy (45 & 51). The calling of St. G.’s cross enchanted is, of course, the Pharisaic “he hath a devil” [Matthew 11:18; Luke 7:33] charge. I think the secrecy implies that Duessa: Calypso :: Acrasia: Circe.
[20] In the first stanza the symbolic hatred of night makes Sp. [Spenser] forget that St. G. [George] needs a good night’s sleep. I think both [bks.] I & II are solar, the others mainly vegetative. The second stanza is absolutely superb in the way it makes St. G. the son of the sun, in “sun-bright armes” with the solar emblem of the red cross, along with Ps. [Psalm] xix “bridegroom” themes & the assoc. of the Pagan with the dragon of darkness. Also the Saturnalia-Pandemonium aspect of the House of Pride with its gold covering as a kind of mock-sun is brought out in the “golden Orientall gate” of the true sun. Something of Blake’s Europe about it. It’s stretching, but the Saracen’s “woven maile” (st. 4) is correct. As for the idea that Sansfoy’s ghost is wandering, & can’t rest till he’s avenged, that ties in with the whole theme of wandering in this book. Una is described in Bk. II as the “errant damozell” & the pun on “error” is established at the start: it fits the labyrinthine captive-sun wanderings of the Israelites, & so on. The evil spirits, enchanters who have the power of the air, are as tough as Proteus (part of A. [Archimago])34 to locate: they are, like the darkness they’re a part of, possessed of the gift of invisibility. Sansjoy retires into his own secrecy when he vanishes: A. & Duessa get caught but reappear elsewhere like the Blatant Beast: consolidation of error is part of the dialectic. As for the figures, I don’t think the griffin-dragon fight means anything, even with the soothsayer, & Duessa’s crocodile tears have only fragile links with the seven-headed monster she rides on later (7-mouthed Nile) & with the equivocal generation there.35 Still, I think the Rahab-in-Egypt point is there, via Ezek. [Ezekiel] 29 & possibly some Horatian remarks about Cleopatra.
[21] Note of course the withershins movement of the terrible mother to the east ([st.] 19) at sundown.36 There’s no point in the hatred of night except in making St. G. [George] a sun hero. He’s also a spring hero up to a point, but not as much as in the play. However, he would have Xmas & Easter, the dragon Halloween & perhaps Midsummer (not impossibly even Beltane, or Walpurgis night). Duessa is clearly marked as the false sun, “sunny bright,” with the gold & gems of Blake’s serpent. The fact that Night saw “the secrets of the world unmade”37 shows the link between darkness & chaos, the complex of cloud symbols. Lewis talks very well about Night as draeme bedaeled:38 note carefully that she’s a fatalist & a believer in the chain of being as a necessary process. Her remarks in 25 start the theme of the cyclic movement of pride that runs all through the historical allegory, especially in the next few cantoes.39 A curious detail describes the two pair of horses of the night, two black & two brown, as “each to each vnlich,”40 i.e., no ordered progress or equity in advance. Some wit in the symbolism when Duessa is called the “false resemblance” of Deceit, her mother, or father, whichever it is.41 Also in st. 30 there’s very deft use of animal noises in darkness, dogs & wolves howling & owls hooting, as animal fear of night-as-hag, or nightmare. I think Milton drew on this canto for the end of P.L. ii. [Paradise Lost, bk. 2].
[22] The katabasis means that Spenser rather shot the works in this book: he didn’t have to do everything archetypal at once, & as he did he had to repeat it later in Bk. ii. Maybe a Kierkegaardian repetition, but I doubt it. No one returns from hell but Furies & damned spirits:42 another P.L. [Paradise Lost] germ. The theme of riding with the night reinforces the witch symbolism attached to Duessa. The hell is Virgilian, but some lurking sense of Jove as an inferior deity, within necessity, may be there. Æsculapius & Hippolytus story forms a long digression, but the reason for Jove’s jealousy is that the knowledge of death & resurrection, St. G.’s [George’s] quest, bursts the cyclic pattern of which Jove forms part, according to the Mut. Coes [Mutabilitie Cantos].43 I don’t know if Spenser really gets the sparagmos theme in Hippolytus: he may, & of course it fits, but every once in a while you feel that Spenser’s fundamentally stupid. However Æsculapius as man’s inability to overcome death by himself remains. The only thing man can prolong in life is despair (despondency): Despair’s argument is unanswerable as far as the natural man is concerned. This fits in with the conception of Despondency as the kernel of the epicurism of the House of Pride. Æsculapius means well, but he’s bound to work for the cause of darkness.
[23] The dungeon at the base of the House of Pride is not the same as Orgoglio’s dungeon: it isn’t so much spiritual pride as the low point of the wheel of fortune. In this canto the two medieval themes of hell & the wheel of fortune are closely linked—maybe some Sackville influence. Anyway there are all the archetypes: Nimrod, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, Croesus, & a whole lot of Romans.44 The point is the Babylon-Rome consolidation (Cleopatra is in too): Dante would be horrified to find Romulus & Caesar in hell. I don’t know, though: Caesar is. Anyway the cyclic rhythm of pride in history is certainly there. Some suggestion in [st.] 46 that if you play ball with a tyranny you get caught by it: become what you behold.45
[24] Duessa’s—I mean Una’s—wandering from one India to the other sounds Ariostan.46 Sansloy is compared to a lion’s claws, which is probably pointless:47 Spenser begins breathing heavily as soon as he gets a fuck going & bends all his energies to stop it. Actually Una falling among the satyrs modulates the allegory rather clearly. Anarchy can’t screw Truth: the only possible assoc. of truth & anarchy is in the primitive society as the Renaissance conceived it. So far as I know this episode doesn’t occur in the historical allegory. Symbolically Una does get fucked by Sansloy & the products are the satyrs. In the hist. all. [historical allegory] this is linked, like George’s name & origin, with the fact that the Reformation was essentially a popular movement, Catholicism in England being as a rule the refuge of intellectuals. Note that that damned lion keeps on running through: he’s Sansloy in [st.] 7 & the satyrs in 10, & Satyrane, more or less, in 27, so the lion as the associate of Una does seem insisted on: it’s a good blackboard example of how symbolism works.
[25] I think Spenser has a Bergsonian view of instinct as direct apprehension all right: no believer in the chain of being could very well miss it. Montaigne’s cannibals & the general impact of America not impossibly involved in the hist. all. [historical allegory]. But I may be wrong in associating the Faerie Queene’s world with the green world: I think it’s the moral world, perhaps even the world of comic resolution, but the green world is surely something more specialized, as here. Maybe not: maybe there’s a green world within the green world, but it’s very important to keep this canto in mind & see why the figure of the goddess of satyrs returns in Bk. VI. Natural religion, of course, & doubtless Woodhouse will make it all clear.48 Note that the green world and the comic spirit are demonic in Comus, as the romance is in P.L. [Paradise Lost]. The whole scene strongly suggests Renaissance painting, & note that the satyrs have a real god, Sylvanus, so there’s nothing strange about their taking Una for a goddess. This last confuses the allegory: you can’t, or at least satyrs can’t, idolize truth. The reference to Cyparissus49 is the germ of later quasi-Adonis features.
[26] Satyrane is supposed to be somebody quite specific in the hist. all. [historical allegory]. His father Therion (beast-man)50 carries on the Adonis theme: forsakes wife to hunt & leaves her home to get fucked by a satyr. Child of nature therefore (usual pun on bastardy). The training of Satyrane anticipates Artegall & may go back, like Artegall, to Percival. Curious how deeply rooted in literature the Tarzan theme is. He’s also brought up without a mother, which is the opposite of Percival—wash that out. In any case I gather the salvage man is stock Renaissance: beginning of homme moyen sensuel of 18th c.—Tom Jones. Maybe some Arcadian-bear pun. Withdrawal into the satyr world ([st.] 30).
[27] I don’t know why Sansloy has a “threesquare shield”:51 all three have “bloody letters,” but that’s stock. Note Foy-2, Joy-4, as I’ve said, then Joy-5, Loy-6 & in 7, Sansfoy being dead, we get Orgoglio.52 Satyrane’s whole rhythm, from a conquest of animals to his fight with Sansloy, is Artegallian: as St. G.’s [George’s] fortunes go down, his go up: I mean that the revival of Sansjoy is the turning point in the dark fortunes, & the coming of Satyrane the t.p. [turning point] of the light ones. He’s an “Elf,” like the Redcross ([st.] 42), & a “Faerie’s Sonne” (47). The disguise of Archimago as a pilgrim53 is interesting: as the false old man, he’s the direct opposite of the true old man who appears as the Palmer in Bk. II, & the final co. [canto] of II brings them together in order to analogize A. [Archimago]. I have a note which says “the magicians can’t touch the real fighting.” At the end of 6 he promises, Ariosto-fashion, to tell the end of the fight between Satyrane & Sansloy, but so far as I can see he doesn’t. Seems to me there’s a slight link between st. 35 of this co. & the first appearance of Satan in P.R. [Paradise Regained].
[28] I wish I knew what the fountain symbols meant, so many of them being sinister. A.’s [Archimago’s] chapel & Morpheus’ house both have them.54 I think it’s clear that Sp. [Spenser] has a water of death (cf. the rivers of hell in [st.] 5) in mind, analogizing the “living well” of co. [canto] xi, & he conceivably read Dante’s Inferno co. xiv. In that case there’d be analogous trees too, such as Fradubio & his girl friend, the contrast being marked by F.’s ref. [Fradubio’s reference] to the well.55 Hence the key position of the wood of error & the fountain of hypocrisy & sleep in co. one. Even the dragon of error is regressive in a way that the real dragon isn’t. Note that the cheerful birds are here as well as in co. one & the Bower of Bliss. I suppose the enervating water business is a common myth, but note how it makes sloth, or more specifically accidia, the keynote of the Orgoglio episode. Note too that in the narrative it’s a pure accident that St. G. [George] drinks of the lazy nymph’s water, but in the allegory it’s not an accident.56 Interesting fact. Note the amb. [ambiguity] of “poured out in looseness” (7).57
[29] Some suggestion, reinforced later when he blows up & busts, that Orgoglio is the gigantic shadow thrown by St. G.’s [George’s] weakness. He’s connected with Antaeus, & is one of a whole series (I think) of those who get strength from the earth: the black earth in Bk. I at least shares the symbolic evil of night, as contrasted with the fertility symbolism of 3 & 4. The solar hero is thought of as being held down by the earth. His [Orgoglio’s] father is Aeolus: sense of an earthquake about him in the sense then understood—a gigantic fart let by the earth.58 Parody of the birth of Hercules, only it’s pregnancy & not conception that’s trebled—that’s 27 months, by the way.59 Spenser regularly uses 3’s & 9’s for useless & magical rituals (Catholics & witches). The giant in folklore regularly has a club or staff: his is an oak “torn out of his mother’s bowels,”60 & he goes in for haymakers. Simile on gunpowder61 has the regular devil-sulphur connection that the Gunpowder Plot developed later & goes into P.L. [Paradise Lost]. Gunpowder too is a kind of devil’s fart. Curious how prophetic the imgn. [imagination] is: St. G. dodges the blow, but is knocked over by the concussion, which is true of blockbusters, though hardly of 16th c. cannon. Anyway, St. G. has had it.
[30] In Duessa’s victory she shows her true colors, which are scarlet62 and gold.63 Now she’s the Rev. [Revelation] Great Whore, Sp. [Spenser] of course taking the Prot. [Protestant] view that Rev. refers to the future woes of the Church. But it’s important that this dragon is not the ultimate dragon though that also, surely, is the Rev. dragon—well, maybe the beast of ch. xii & of ch. xiii could be distinguished, but Sp.’s real point is that the political dragon of the future in Rev. is not the apocalyptic dragon of eternity. In any case this creature’s tail reaches the stars, like the latter dragon’s in Rev. xii, & he’s described like Blake’s Golden Chapel, though it doesn’t seem directly phallic. He’s compared to the Hydra,64 which (a) associates St. G. [George] with the sun-hero Hercules, which is natural (b) associates the R.C. Ch. [Roman Catholic Church] with the mob: it’s inconsistent with Sp.’s sense of Protsm. [Protestantism] as popular, but not wholly. A note of mine says “later the Blatant Beast”: certainly the two are closely connected, & the B.B. [Blatant Beast] is not Puritanism, as Jonson said.
[31] There’s some silly stuff about the Dwarf’s report to Una, & I have some ribald notes on it, but the point is the stretto of darkness in the action.651 suppose the reference to the fates in [st.] 22 is too stock to be really a symbol of darkened vision like Night’s fatalism, but the cursing of light in 23, beside the Job echoes (where Leviathan comes in)66 associates the sun & the dark, imprisoned in a dungeon by Jove, with St. G. [George] & his detention in a dungeon. In 26 the summary of the St. G. part of the narrative is technically correct, I think, immediately preceding the coming of Arthur as it does, & in 28 we have what could be Isis symbolism:67 anyway, as in 3, it’s the woman who seeks the man, not the reverse. The seventh line about storms & winds shows how completely symbolic the weather is & Sp. [Spenser] isn’t worried about any pathetic fallacy.
[32] Arthur, as an agent of grace (cf. the first stanza of the next canto) is also a solar hero. This is confusing, but so is the presence of two epic heroes, which violates the whole quest form. He’s a little more explicitly solar ([st.] 29) & his two talismans, a sort of personal moon & sun respectively (the stars are also in 29) are important. The first is a precious stone on his helmet compared to Hesperus & in the shape of the F.Q.’s [Faerie Queene’s] head (30).68 The other is the magic Perseus shield that turns to stone. This last is the light of revelation that shows things as they are: well, he turns men to stones, stones to dust, dust to nought at all (35). It’s made by Merlin & it’s adamant. The very lovely description of the “bunch of hairs” in 321 don’t get, but the dragon crest is traditional: like the head of Medusa, it’s the visionary use of the analogy.69 It’s a Beowulf-type helmet. I wonder if the “he” in “he dyde,” 36, means Arthur or Merlin?70 Indicates perhaps something of Spenser’s mind if it’s Arthur. It’s still in Fairyland: you can always get the light of revelation by relaxing your mind into the collective unconscious. The line in 41, “no faith so fast but flesh does pair (impair)” is important, I think, & the curative function of “reason” may be too.71 There’s not much in Una’s caterwaul: the summary of the narrative is unnecessary except for the hint it gives of the real beginning of the action in the F.Q.’s [Faerie Queene’s] court; thus Bk. I follows the epic shape.721 don’t know why the great dragon comes from Tartary—Mongol, perhaps,73 but the Eden reference in 43 is important, & in 44 the cpt. [counterpoint] of Una’s parents imprisoned by the dragon & St. G. [George] imprisoned by Orgoglio & Duessa’s very similar dragon is a pattern. Duessa, Una says, is her only foe: consolidation of error.
[33] The bugle ought to be the proclaiming of the Word (lines 5 & 6 of 4: line 4, by the way, is an important type C imit. har. [imitative harmony] one): cf. Bayley on Roland’s horn.74 It breaks open locked doors & is derived partly, I suppose, from the Jericho story. The shield of Arthur would be the Word as an open book, the light of revelation. The doors fly open “of free will,” whatever that means.
[34] The fight is a curious one, with the giant’s vast haymaker with his club, which sticks so in the earth he can’t get it out again: touch of Ariosto in that. It’s very important, I think, that the haymaker is carefully compared to the thunderbolts of Jove ([st.] 9) & Arthur’s shield to “th’Almightie’s” lightning (21). The former reinforces the Titanian symbolism around Orgoglio. Arthur’s cutting off his arm is in the best epic mutilating tradition: cf. of course Beowulf. The fresh water from riven rock, suggesting Moses (10) makes no sense whatever.75 Duessa’s golden cup turns up in 14: it’s full of narcotics, like Circe’s & overthrows the squire: I don’t know why, & his name (Timias) isn’t given. The cup seems to continue the lazy-nymph-fountain symbol,76 & to show that the l.n. [lazy nymph] is the same person allegorically as Duessa. I don’t know why the giant’s force of two arms is united in his left one (Ariosto, I suppose). The shield ends the fight, Ariosto fashion: the cutting off of O.’s [Orgoglio’s] leg associates him with the dead tree complex that perhaps his oak club also belongs to. 23 offers a second simile,77 that ties up the Jericho suggestion in 4; also of course the Babel symbolism that always goes with gigantic pride. The vanishing of the giant in 2478 continues the allegory, though not the narrative, of the shield’s ability to reduce things to nothing. Incidentally only God can annihilate, so if Spenser means what he says the shield-Word assoc. is reinforced.
[35] The Castle of Orgoglio is a real castle, full of genuinely good things (last line of canto). Arthur can use the keys that Ignorance can’t use (cf. Bunyan’s key), & it seems to be two things: the castle of the R.C.Ch. [Roman Catholic Church] & its traditions ([st.] 35) & the castle of the inner mind, which is spiritual bondage when one can’t get out of it. The second may be an oversubtle conclusion from my conception of Orgoglio: I don’t really see why R.C. [Roman Catholic] power & solipsism belong together. Orgoglio is surely just Prot. [Protestant] invective against the scarlet whore (29): cf. the massacre of innocents theme in 35, where sheep out of the fold anticipates Milton, & the altar of Prot. martyrs in Rev. [Revelation 6:9–10] in 36.79 Note in 32 the repetition of ignorance & aged gravity: cf. A. [Archimago]: the grotesque Epimethean detail in 31 may have “dunce” overtones, though Sp. [Spenser] is so pro-medieval I don’t know.80 The theme of the moon going underground in 38 is cpt. [counterpoint] to the imprisoning of the epic hero. I don’t know why St. G. [George] is stuck there for 9 months. I suppose the “key” business means that an ignorant Catholic priesthood doesn’t know the Xn trdns. [traditions] & Arthur does.81 Curious that the Orgoglio triumph should be assoc. w. the wheel of fortune (44): but I suppose prolonged bliss is pride, or at least produces it.
[36] On the stripping of Duessa, which is also Biblical of course, I have a note that it’s a contrast to the description of the loved one’s body in the Song of Songs—Isaiah 3[:16–26] too. The seeing of the analogy in the light of revelation needs no elaboration.
[37] The opening reference to the chain suggests a mystique of knighthood that reinforces garter & even Round Table symbolism (as the body of Arthur). Symbol also of communion of saints. Not the chain of being, but the chain pulled up into the body of God. This golden chain, via girdle & so forth, is greatly developed in the “Friendship” book, natch.82 There too the garter lurks. It’s the opposite of the witch-wrapping image (Tirzah): it’s something that contains the body of the woman. It’s redeemed-Rahab or Jerusalem, the daughter-wife of man. However, here it’s just the political chain of friendship among knights; collectivism essential to supremacy, as Orwell says. This mystical collectivism on the part of rulers is of course the analogy for the communion of saints: it’s the concilior or rather even the cardinal-college aspect of the Church. Note the cpt. [counterpoint] of “bands” at the end of the stanza.
[38] Arthur’s lineage is of course also unknown, except that he’s the son of a king. I don’t know what Rauran & Dee have to do with it:83 slight suggestion of a green knight. Here as usual love is the fruit of perfect education, & of course it comes irresistibly because it’s resisted: what corresponds to a kind of Dostoievskianism in the C of L [Court of Love]. Note how the F.Q, [Faerie Queene] appears in a dream as pure anima: we know it’s a grave mistake for one to seek an anima in external incarnation, so probably Spenser did too.84 Allegorically, there’s perfect correlation between beauty & virtue; existentially there’s no such correlation. I’m still not clear in what exact sense Elizabeth is also Queen of the Fairies. Arthur has sought her 9 months85 & St. G. [George] has been in jail 9 mos. (mystically the 5 years of Mary’s reign, when the only fruit of her declarations of pregnancy was, so to speak, Elizabeth). The exchange of gifts between Arthur & St. G. is an exchange of Bible & ointment (spiritual vs. physical healing).86
[39] My points about Despair are, first, that his goal is annihilation rather than death, which is why Trevisan is so terrified of him; second, that he’s the stretto of the “Sansjoy” symbolism, St. G.’s [George’s] deadliest enemy; third, that he catches St. G. on the rebound from Orgoglio (co. [canto] x, st. 2); fourth, that such a conviction of sin can be transformed into grace, which may be the reason for its garrulous & blathering repetition in co. x, 21 ff. It’s Carlyle’s everlasting no, & of course the death-impulse. I think Spenser is trying to say that Despair is the loss of the capacity for love: hence the tie-up with the C of L [Court of Love] in 27 & the fact that St. G. is saved by Una. Naturally Despair lives in a cave, surrounded by dead trees & rocky cliffs. Note that Trevisan is forced to stay (34) to look the bogey in the face.
[40] The suddenness ([st.] 41.1) & energy of Despair’s attack is as remarkable as the long spondaic (48.8) narcotic chant of his temptation. Somewhere decorum demands an attractive vice, along with all the repulsive ones. What is really attractive is relaxation of effort, both here & in Bk. II. Despair really believes in despair, & quotes Scripture like the devil. Naturally it’s mostly O.T. [Old Testament] & the law, & the wages of sin is death, & as all are sinners all should die: in short, it’s pure Xy without grace or redemption: Despair is accurately described as a “Miscreant.”87 Note carefully the fatalism of the dark: Despair’s remarks about fate, necessity, destiny (42) echo Night in co. [canto] 5, st. 25.88 Despair stands for wrath (46), vengeance (43) & a pure Father-worship, for he’s answerable only by a doctrine of atonement (47.4), & Spenser is saying that without Christ you have only a Father, which means only the Urizenic ghost of the Father, old Nobodaddy. Of course the orthodox don’t quite dare accept the idea of Nobodaddy: they talk about God’s wrath & desire for revenge as though God really had it, or would have it without Christ. That’s one reason why (though Sp. [Spenser] doesn’t quite know this) St. G. [George] is too solemn sad.89 He’s oppressed with wrath & hell in the indicative instead of the subjunctive mood, & doesn’t realize that in the divine comedy there is no hell, & therefore wasn’t & won’t be. Similarly in Bunyan, P.P. II [Pilgrim’s Progress, pt. 2] introduces Mr. Fearing, who is unnecessarily frightened, though in GA [Grace Abounding] he was practically the means to salvation. You can’t get the quest from a literal hell, only a perfunctory throwing of something precious on a bloody altar & then a life of limited hedonism. This is almost suggested in 49.
[41] Spenser several times ([st.] 53 & co. [canto] ×, 57) uses the word “chosen” in a way that opposes predestination to fatalism but seems to imply the possibility of sin after choosing. I don’t know what Calvin says about that. One of Despair’s most effective points is the Kierkegaardian sense of the first sin as the “qualitative leap” which repeats the Fall (43.89). C.S. Lewis says of the last stanza, “despair’s immortal suicide.”90
[42] In co. [canto] ix the golden chain of nature is in contrast to the idea of deserting one’s post that the treachery of Despair leads to. In this canto the statement that all good action is God’s sets the theme for the achievement of the quest through the relaxation of will that attains vision. The end of the Druidic vision is to become what you behold,91 the natural man disappearing in nature: that ends with Despair. When the opposite of the natural man sees, he sees the fallen world as the opposite of himself, or Leviathan. To kill the dragon is to realize that it was, & is not, & yet is [cf. Revelation 17:8]. Thus the dragon is the space separating the knight at the top of Mt. Contemplation from the New Jerusalem he sees. Allegorically it’s the consolidation of the fallen world at the Beulah gap: co. x is true purgatory, as the world of despair is the true hell, & you need Dante’s apocalyptic climax for it.
[43] In [st.] 3 note the contrast (line 8) between Cælia & Corceca in co. [cantos] 3, 13, where the emphasis is on number & counting (act of merit, not product of grace).92 This whole canto, as Lewis saw,93 is a profound & searching use of Catholic rituals as myths, the stations of the cross become the mystic way, in order to show Spenser’s crucial point, that the real form of the epic quest is the Christian pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which has nothing to do with crusades or Mediterranean cruises. The use of Catholic imagery accounts for the seven Bead-men, who echo the seven sacraments, oppose the seven deadly sins, are the stages of the seven-story mountain both of this canto & of life as a whole, but are not the seven cardinal virtues.94 Only the three theological virtues of grace are of any use at this stage. I think there is some connection, though I wouldn’t push it too far, in 36–43 with the patterns I mentioned: 38 with Gluttony & the Eucharist, 41 with unction & sloth, 40 with wrath & penance, etc.95 (I don’t know how much etc.). The inasmuch parable is also involved.96
[44] All Spenser’s female virtues (at least in this book) are either married or heading for marriage. He doesn’t say who fucks Charity so incessantly, but I suppose it’s grace. Note the deliberate assoc. of Charity with fruitfulness. The straight & narrow gate they go in through is not only an obvious moral & Scriptural image (cf. also the interpretation of the “eye of a needle” as a gate) but a psychological one too. One reenters the gate of rebirth (either re can be dropped) & there are several indications that St. G. [George] is reborn. The gate of Humility, the open court of Zeal & the hall of Reverence precede admission to the mother: it sounds logical, but I don’t know the analogues. Two of the flunkeys, a franklin & a squire, are Chaucerian (note the filial relation of Sq. [Squire] & Fr. [Franklin] in Ch. [Chaucer]).
[45] Note in [st.] 10 the pun in knight “errant,”97 for a book in which the wandering symbol predominates. Spenser’s view of knight-errantry is Ascham’s: there has to be a teleological direction, a Grail or Promised Land, out of which the errant labyrinthine wanderings of the solar hero are to come. Note too that the three virtues are in white, blue & yellow, the consolidated colors of the awakened heaven, the Virgin with the gold star (= sun) on her shoulder. Faith’s gold cup is the anagogic form of Duessa’s: it’s the Holy Grail of Christ’s blood & water, & it’s the cup of Christ’s agony, hence the serpent, who is the crucified body. In the Exodus level of allegory the brazen serpent is due at this point.98 The delay in the summoning of Charissa is because of the uselessness of good works without faith.
[46] The allegory begins to break away from the narrative here, especially when Speranza [st. 22] lugs in her damned anchor & tells St. G. [George] to grab it. I think cultivated taste, notably modern taste, always regards the leaving of the narrative line as a bungle. Whatever your premises, poetic reality implies maintaining an unbroken narrative line. Dante doesn’t do this sort of thing, & that, I think, is why a sensitive & civilized student of allegory like Henry Reynolds said Spenser overdid the moral allegory.99 However, the ability of Faith to tear up the natural world (28) is good, & the last two lines of 19 set the rebirth pattern.100 The education is of course founded on the Word, which isn’t plain sense (13.8, though the ref., again apocalyptic, is to Rev. [Revelation])101 & is taught only by Faith. 10 proceeds with a lot of nonsense about cauterizing the corruption of sin102 (well, to be fair, it’s nonsense when such metaphors lead to literal acts, & Sp. [Spenser] explicitly says they are just metaphors) which again uses Catholic purgatorial & sacramental imagery allegorically. I don’t think St. G.’s eating his flesh in 28.3 has any Euch. ref. [Eucharistic reference]: it sounds like the Nosnibor family in Erewhon. But the point about cherishing himself in order to avoid Hamlet’s self-destructive accidia (29.5–6) is very important. Before that, note that the crisis in attaining his cure comes through hope, the transition from understanding to realization (faith to charity), which fits the Sansjoy complex. In the St. George play a doctor brings St. G. to life.
[47] This is his new birth, & the only doctor explicitly so called is Patience ([st.] 23) which brings into the allegory the [Taoist] conception of wu wei, the paradox of fulfilling the will by surrendering the will, which is a main theme, & goes right on to P.R. [Paradise Regained] & Milton’s doctrine of time (i.e. that relaxing the will is discovering eternity in time which is the recognition or epiphany of the Incarnation of Christ, as in Satan’s recognition of “The Lord thy God.”
[48] I have another note on allegory to the effect that breaking the narrative is a sign that the narrative has left the “physical” place of adventure & has gone into the psychic changes that those adventures symbolize anyway. Also that this purgatorial co. [canto] is a microcosm of the Book. Well, Charissa is love as opposed to Cupid’s love ([st.] 30.56), & is chaste, so here’s the germ of the whole Bk. Ill business. She is surrounded with babies like the Sistine Madonna (also a Xn form of Venus with a lot of cupids) & line 4 in 31 about thrusting them forth is Sp.’s [Spenser’s] emphasis on the active life of Charity. The fact that her emblem is a pair of doves also makes her a Xn Venus. A curious reference in 32.9 suggests that St. G. [George], like Dante, has actually come through hell.103 Maybe Sp. means that the true doctrine of purg. [purgatory] is that Christ has power to redeem from hell, & so turn hell for the redeemed from an eternal state to a temporal one. This is more important than a foolish note of mine on 17.9 that obedience “rightfully ared” indicates Spenser’s dislike of courtly servitude.104 Returning, putting purgatory into the next life instead of this one is the nature of the Catholic error. The real mt. of purg. [mountain of purgatory] is on this, not the other (Dante) side of the world.
[49] The final mother-symbol is Mercy, & the narrow way in [st.] 35 (incl. [including] the path out of the forest of error, where the unbeaten path leads to error & the plain beaten path away from it) involves an absurdity in the narrative (big strong man’s afraid of ickle briars) explicable only on the allegorical assumption that he’s a newborn child.105 I have my stuff on the 7 bead men except that they’re a monastic order with its climax in the hermit Contemplation—more redeemed Catholic imagery. St. 46 has some ct. [counterpoint] to Archimago’s hangout: A. is the false father of the Druid forest-labyrinth & here is the true father who knows St. G.’s [George’s] origin & name. The co [canto] 1 adventure is the katabasis to the pit, co. [canto] x the anabasis to the point, the pyramidal apex from which one steps up into nothing, or Paradise. The point, in both senses, is very important, because it’s the P.R. [Paradise Regained] stretto. Note how in 48 the hermit symbolizes the physical death which precedes the departure for Jerusalem. The eagle (47.6) is dropped into exactly the right place. Note the ambiguous but very significant geography of st. 50, which I’ve been following, that allegorically St. G. has to go up, though in the narrative he comes back. This hermit, by the way, is the true Peter who holds the keys of the Church: note two things. First, that the keys of the Church are in the hand of vision, the tradition descending from the first epiphany, when Peter saw Jesus to be the Son of God [Matthew 16:13–19]—I think I can work in my point here without any straining. Second, that the “highest Mount” of 53.1 is carefully compared to Sinai and Olivet and Parnassus. Not Carmel, Parnassus.106 I don’t know why he says Sinai when he means Pisgah, & the Mt. of Olives when he means the Mt. of Transfiguration; he buggers the symbolism in both cases. But surely he does have the Father-Son-Spirit progression in his mind,107 suggesting a H.S.-imgn. [Holy Spirit-imagination] link. Incidentally, just as Pisgah is a vision of the Promised Land or Eden or Jerusalem & so an epiphany of the total body of God, so the Transfiguration is the crucial epiphany of the N.T. [New Testament]; & the use of Parnassus here signifies the Transfiguration of art into the epic telos or cyclic vision. Peter’s erroneous desire to remain in the Mount would108 for Spenser be the fallacy of contemplation as the end of life in itself instead of the vision of the goal. Two details: 50.6 is Blake’s zodiacal city of flaming fire,109 & 53.3, which takes the redness of the Red Sea literally,110 belongs not only with the redeeming blood theme, but with the wine & water in Fidele’s cup. Cf. 57.5.
[50] Jacob’s ladder marks the connection between purgatory (cf. [st.] 57.4) & paradise, as more or less in Milton.111 (I suppose life in Spenser is a tragedy or progressive catharsis of the spirit, leading through death to the divine comedy). Dante drops a curtain at this point, though I think the ladder comes earlier in Purg. [Purgatorio]. Cf. its use in Genesis to mark the connection between the physical & the spiritual bodies of Israel. This is of course given in Spenser through the counterpoising of Jerusalem & Cleopolis, which is a C of E [Church of England] revolt against the centrality of Rome (cf. the lurking rejection of Peter in the keys & desire to stay themes) among other things. St. 59 sounds very silly: I can’t imagine what it means.112
[51] The rebirth of St. G. [George] is followed by his christening: as he pulls loose from the natural world ([st.] 52.8)113 the whole natural cycle comes around in full circle, & the mysteriously born hero is given his name & his home. It coincides with the identifying of his shield with the banner of the risen Christ (61.9). Note that he becomes a Saint in the Protestant way, through God’s knowledge of his faith, not his usefulness to the historical Church. All this is deeply Miltonic, of the Areopagitica period. Just as Jesus in Transfiguration has both past law (Moses) & future prophecy (Elijah), so George sees his origin as well as his prospect114 He’s a Saxon; Arthur is not a historical anti-Saxon Briton (65.5) but a united island, or Albion. I think that the historical allegory is of crucial importance only when the hero is earth-born (St. G. & Artegall), in I & V. One is Ariosto’s defence of Christendom, where an English knight has to find the wits of Christendom’s defender, the other Tasso’s crusade, the Protestant cause in Holland & Ireland. The ploughman is in Chaucer (don’t forget the 15th c. Ploughman’s tale) & of course Langland, & marks the popularity of Protsm. [Protestantism] as well as etymologizing George. As for the “heaped furrow” of 66.2, evidently St. G. is “drawn out” of earth as Moses was from water.115 In 64 St. G. wants to be a pilgrim: the true young man is a knight “errant,” not quite errant, but eventually, like the Israelites in Egypt, with a quest. The true old man is the true pilgrim, who is either on his way to the holy city or has been there & is now a regenerate nomad. The transcendence of war & love, or their sublimation into heavenly forms, links with war as useless blood-spilling: the theme of 60.8116 is picked up in Bk. II, with the babe & Pilate. Oof.
[52] This canto is the epic kernel of hero-kills-dragon, stuffed with solar symbolism. St. G. [George] is assimilated to the St. Michael of Israel in Rev. xii (I must find out more about St. M. & St. G.), to Jesus’ Harrowing of Hell (describe fully in the book: by the way, your idea of redemption making purg. [purgatory] out of hell indicates how you can work in your point of the allegorical identity of the 3-day & 30-year rhythms of Jesus’ life). Its transcendence of the heathen quest is marked in [st.] 2.9.117 The area of conflict, Una’s native soil, is Eden, the spiritual form of George’s own home in the earth of England. (The heaped furrow has Adonis affinities; hence the red & white as the blood & body of man).
[53] The brazen tower, however frequent in folklore & romance, symbolically is the body of the encircling dragon, the furnace of iron.118 The dragon who is a hill against a hill ([st.] 4.6) is the “subterranean” fallen world (St. Gs [George’s] heaped furrow, the earth-plot of Thel, is the microcosmic form of this: the ploughman is the bringer of revelation—well, no, the babe in the furrow is the sown seed of the Word) & the hill & furnace symbols are linked in the Titanic symbol of the volcano,119 which in turn has Babel affinities, returning to the tower of brass. Note the curious suggestion of playfulness about this brute (4.9, 15.3–4, etc.) reminding one of Job 41.120 The solar symbolism of the hero is in 4.8.1211 don’t know if the “hundred folds” of his tail in 11.1. need noting: cf. Piedmont sonnet.122 His (dragon’s) mouth is explicitly compared to the mouth of hell (12.8) which is the opening (literally) for all that stuff. The eyes compared to beacons guarding “every shyre” from invasion123 is a curious reversal: perhaps England as Paradise guarded by a dragon.124 The Alexandrine of 14 is also curious, in relation to the light & dark symbols. In 21 the Perseus elements of the story, where the dragon is the sea, the storm & chaos, begin to come up,125 & the summary of the labors of Hercules in 27. Milton may have got his “adamant” from 25.5 & the like. Here again the narrative collapses into allegory as the knight falls into a well (water of life) & stays there overnight. The solar aspects of this image, & the consequent coming to power of the monster as night, are carefully worked out in 31. So in 33 the sun, the true Titan, rises out of the sea again & in 34 St. G. gets the hell out of the well, “new borne” (34.9). Here is an excellent example of the way that the original libido-sun symbol must be used to make any sense of Spenser. The well is of course the living fountain of the Word, the fourfold river of Eden & water of life, the birth of water & the spirit (hence “new borne”: he did that in co. x; but the regenerate nomad does it every day) & baptism (36.4). Spenser both in 18.4 and in 37.6 underlines the Ephesians (cf. armor of God in co. i) reference to the demonic power over the air.126 I don’t know what cosmological moral Spenser draws from that: the real place of the struggle is the place of the Mut. Coes. [Mutabilitie Cantos] lawsuit. On the other hand, St. G. is now getting compared to a bird (34)127 & the “loathed” soile of 39.3 allows the tieup of the black-earth & general anabasis symbols. The place of the rising sun between earth or water & air is allegorically the place of rising from becoming to being. The cutting off five joints of the dragon’s tail in 39.9 must mean the five rejected sacraments, the other two being involved in the victory. The Lutheran abrogation of the fivefold law is dimly possible—five senses I think not. The grabbing of his red-crossed shield,128 & the serpent on the cross, has the clutching & wrapping image, but I don’t know what else. I don’t suppose it could be the crucifix—surely we’re past this kind of allegory by now, but you can’t be sure with Spenser.
[54] This time ([st.] 45) St. George falls in the mud, & the next symbolic episode is the tree of life & the Eucharist. This introduces fertility symbols (note how differently the sun rises in 51: it’s the female Aurora & like the apples she’s rosie red. Water is not exactly white, but it’s the water mixed with the wine or blood glanced at in the red symbols (46.2–3 & 51.4). Another unexpected symbol is Beulah: under the tree the knight sleeps peacefully because the monster, hating life (49.3) can’t approach it (see 50.4) & he seems in a way protected by the moon (49.9). The tree of life & its balm is the true “unction” leading from death to life (48.7–8), & it embraces oil as well as corn & wine (I think balm is in the oil complex).
[55] I think it may be important that the dragon is killed through his open mouth, reversing the Jonah movement. I suppose that in a sense he is the C.C. [Covering Cherub], & guards the tree & well, so that St. G. [George] gets past his guard both times. [St.] 54 has a strong suggestion in its anaphora of the dragon as the demonic organized form of fire, air, water & earth, resolving as a mountain (54.9).129 Note that as fire in earth = volcano, air in earth = earthquake & water in (or under) earth flood.130 These are the 3 great chaos symbols. I suppose Milton’s 3-day war in heaven owes something to this canto.
[56] This canto begins & ends with the image of a ship putting in to shore, & depositing the characters of Bk. I on land (cf. [st.] 1.7). Symbolism of fallen world as sea & England an island, hence heaven an Atlantis. In st. 2 there is a careful synchronizing of the death of the dragon with the moment of sunrise: the watchman comes from Isaiah [21:5–12]. The release of Adam & Eve suggests the Harrowing of Hell, as does of course the whole dragon-killing episode: note the “eternall bondage” of 4.9. The victor’s triumph suggests Palm Sunday, though that’s a bit out of place. Still, St. George’s day is April 23, & Una becomes Queen of the May131 in this canto. Spenser permits himself some relaxation of his allegory, even some humor, & st. 15 indicates that in the ordinary epic it would be the point of repose from which the preceding struggles were summarized. Note the “hoarie king” of the folktale in 12.2: Parsifal’s Amfortas. The six year’s service & the crusade against the Saracens (18: cf. co. [canto] xi, 7) must refer to the Spanish war following the Elizabethan settlement.132 I don’t need all my comedy & symposium points, though Una is the dawn & the spring (21.2:1 must explain how these things can be female as well as male).133 The theme of eventual return to service is reinforced by Fidessa’s letter, a message from Grendel’s mother, to use the Beowulf pattern, & like it from what is now a subterranean world (now i.e. that Eden has been actualized).134 The “burning altars” of 27 carry on from co. 8, 36. Otherwise there’s little point in this, apart from the historical allegory, except in the use of Archimago, the master of illusion & the Word of the autonomous Church, perceived in anagogy as a pharmakos & expelled from the communion feast. He’s the inevitable pharmakos for a resolution concerned with the quest of holiness, seeing of things in the light of revelation. Cf. the expulsion of Braggadoccio in Bk. V.
[57] The marriage is straight Epith. [Epithalamion]-Song of Songs stuff: note the analogy even of this in co. [canto] 1, in [st.] 48.135 Co. 12, where the father & mother principles are finally revealed, is point for point the opposite of co. 1. Note that Adam himself performs the marriage. The sacred lamp of 37.7 is the candle of the law, the possession of the soul by the Holy Spirit. The sprinkling with water (37.5: another redeemed Catholic symbol) and wine (38.1) ties up the wine & water symbol: note the satisfaction of the five senses in 38, the allegorical mass. The noise in 39 may be several things, including the music of the spheres.136 Note that Eden is the “antique world”137 (14.8), of primitive simplicity of unfallen nature: link here with satyrs & other “natural” images.
[58] Int. [Introduction]: the epic logically should draw on three Muses, Clio for the historical allegory, Urania for the philosophical, & Calliope for epic rhetoric.138 Milton calls on Urania in P.L. vii [Paradise Lost, bk. 7] & Spenser seems on the whole most interested in Clio.139 If he has a third Muse, it’s more likely to be Erato, the Muse of love & the green world, than Urania. So his three deities, Mars, Venus & Eros, are the father, mother & child of Beulah. Mars is the red world of war, the threatening father made genial, hence F.Q. [The Faerie Queene] got buggered on the ghost of the father in [bk.] 5. The Beulah synthesis is reinforced by the fact that he gets his inspiration from Elizabeth-Phoebe, the moon. Q-1.140 If Spenser has anything of Dante’s color-scheme, the red & white of St. G. [George] means his quest is one of faith & love, hope (though he dresses Speranza in blue) being the principle of the green world represented by Una, who gets him out of Despair. Hence Bk. 2 has more green-world about it—if Guyon’s quest has anything to do with hope. The concentration of regressive symbols: serpent-monster wrapping around & self-devouring, labyrinth in forest, terrible mother (= witch) & false ghost of father, I think I have. In connection with the epic as catching the rhythm of time note how “sudden” (cf. 1–1-6) is I think always an ominous word in Sp. [Spenser]. As for the quest beginning in summer, I suppose it’s conceivable that fairyland is seasonably antipodal to England. In the jingle, “patron” is a crack at the R.C. [Roman Catholic] saint-cult.141 Note the marching anaphora of st. 3: the insistence on “upon” is almost like Dante’s march.142 Note the phrase “his new force to learn.” The fact that A. [Archimago] is Hypocrisy means that Sp. is out to destroy the “allegory of the church,” as [Peter] Fisher calls it,143 the sacramental analogy, with the new conception of the Bible as the rhetoric of God. I must try to get this clear from the More-Tyndale controversy. Note that St. G. gets clear of Error only through the Beowulf bear-hug. Of the regressive symbols, I don’t know that I noted the hermaphroditic one ([st.] 21).144 The insect must be a symbol of the indefinite: the “clownish” of 23 is in counterpoint with St. G.’s [George’s] nativity.145 Incidentally, cannibalism is a regressive symb. [symbol], repeated in [bk.] VI, & feeding on the mother is right too. Note the appearance of the “way” symb., in an obvious enough context (28). The ref. to “his book,” 29, is to the apocryphal, hidden, sealed book of magical spells, the opposite or analogy of the Word. Cf. Prospero. Note the affinity of this with “bidding his beades all day.”146 True-seeming lyes” (38)147 is a) hermaph. mod. [hermaphrodite modulation] b) soc. anal, [social analogy]. The double darkness of 39 is also linked with the soc. anal. Actually it’s a third: the dream on the surface of the poem is one level, the night of St. G. & Una is the second, the night of Morpheus the third. Note a consolidation of analogy symbols in 41: the stream (cf. Archimago), rain (tempest-dissolution), insects (cf. “Beelzebub”) & hermitage (A. [Archimago]). The monotony of A.’s rosary is drowsy too. Suggests a three or four-level Beulah like the one in my λ [Rencontre] notes:148 blue world of Una, green world of love, red world of war, black world of illusion. St. G., as 48 shows, thinks he has the green world but actually has descended to the black one. A. is the red-black principle of interconnection. Note that the origin of the false Una is an erotic dream coming out of a place of darkness that ought to be locked up: Sp. couldn’t have put the Freudian view in plainer words. All these worlds are white too: Una’s black-&-white outfit shows her concealment in the analogy, & hence the mimicry of her in 45. Note that the temptation of St. G. begins like that of Eve in P.L. [Paradise Lost]. The dream is a work of submerged pride. The abuse of fantasy (46) is incl. [included] to [show?] Sp.’s insistence on imgve. [imaginative] control by judgment, the reality-principle. Incidentally, Duessa is not error but falsehood (jingle to 2):149 this sounds the opposite of Bacon, to say nothing of Blake, but I don’t think it is, really. Re the white (above): note the ivory & silver gates & the moonshine. St. 48 is intensely Freudian: the anima can’t be fucked because she’s a virgin descending from the mother. At least, not until it’s a symbol of the fulfilment of the heroic act: the death of Laura in Petrarch indicates the possession of the anima as a sort of post-mortem telos.
[59] Book I starts out with a real anima & a false old man: Guy on starts out with a real old man & his quest is the destruction of the false anima. Again, the real old man is a pilgrim. This virtue is Classical & physical, the Elizabethan via media, not the Hebraic apocalypse of the Reformation. Guy on is pure Elf, not a man of earth: I don’t know why he was knighted by Sir Huon (whose name is similar) on his visit to Oberon.150 The escape of A. [Archimago], which ties the narrative closely to Bk. I, xii, 41, has for its purpose the deliberate counterpoising of the true & false old man as seconds to the meeting of Guy on & St. G. [George]. I suppose the Palmer is there because Temperance is essentially the Urizenic virtue: it’s the working of the principle of maturity in youth. Hence there’s no girl friend in Bk. II, just as there’s no boy friend in Comus. Well, the deception of A. & Duessa doesn’t get very far, & its only function seems to be to lead up to the blessing of Guyon by St. G., where they practically admit they’re in a poem. It’s the golden chain again,151 only St. G. is an angel in heaven with a transformation-body. [St.] 31.9 may mean St. G. is the pioneer, or that Spenser really shot the works on him.152 Of course the return of A. & Duessa means the continuation of Catholic intrigue under Elizabeth. 27 is an incident of a type for which the best word is “cute”: it’s a stupid attempt at wit.153 Spenser is rather stupid. The landscape in 24 is a female phallic landscape, if it matters.154 Guyon apparently has the Virgin on his shield:155 like the Comus business, as I’ve said. I have a note on 32 that says the actualizing of each virtue would actualize Prince Arthur as king. In Part II (public virtues) Artegall is a kind of incarnation of Arthur, & Lord Grey’s name was Arthur. I guess however that the dawn maid isn’t the Virgin but Elizabeth, but it doesn’t alter Guyon’s virginity.
[60] Amavia, who plunges from excess of pleasure to excess of despair, is the parallel in a sense to Error in I; the pure opposite of temperance is the manic-depressive, as the pure opposite of holiness is lost direction & illusion. The meeting of Guyon & St. G. is followed by the deadly enemy of St. G., despair, in relation to temperance. There are also close parallels to the Fradubio story. No temptation is involved: A. [Archimago] tackles St. G. with an erotic dream, but Guyon like Jesus in P.R. [Paradise Regained] won’t fall for women.
[61] The theme of blood-guilt begins in [st.] 37, where the mother distinguishes her suicide from the murder of the baby, & continues through the vengeance in 61, which I don’t understand,156 into the next canto. It’s one of the themes of Bk. II, & the picture of the baby playing in the blood in 40 is very striking. Cpt. [counterpoint] of red & white in 39, & of fountain & spurting blood in 40 (cf. the wine & water theme of Bk. I). More reds in 41, where the knight seems an Adonis cut down in pride of youth. I think the theme of the dead & wasted Adonis is important in this canto, & is different from the real fertility god of the next book. More red & white in 42, & Guyon becomes a sun hero against the clouds of death in 45. The statement of the BB [Bower of Bliss] theme in 51 is neater than the cpt. of two monsters in Bk. I: the wandering island theme is important because the island here (it’s only discovered at the end of I) is a symbol of united indy. [individuality]—even of individuation. Amavia assumes a Palmer’s disguise, which is also more or less Una’s incidentally (52). Pun on “natural” child in 53. Oh, yes, I see why there’s a vengeance vow in 61—it’s because the real villain is Acrasia & the object of the quest. The irony of the virginity of the moon dating a pregnant woman’s periods (53) must be frequent. The Enchantress’ cup parallels Fradubio again, & brings in the wine & water link very explicitly (55.6). There’s no judgment on Amavia’s suicide as such, but the remarkable image in 60.2 indicates that the “loathed soil” is going to play a different role from now on.157 The detail in 61.2–4 is an exact parallel to I, ii, 44, where there’s also a blood-guilt theme,158 & the burial links with the “heaped furrow” symbolism of George in I, at the other end.
[62] Prologue [Proem]: Spenser makes it clear first of all, that Queen Elizabeth is going to be unmercifully nudged in the ribs when the subject is chastity. He says in the letter to Raleigh that Cynthia & Phoebe are both names of Diana, so that there is no question but that the whole Diana theme in general, as well as Belphoebe in particular, belongs to Elizabeth. The fact that another name of Diana is Britomartis merely confuses the issue at this point. Stanzas 2 & 3 are significant in view of the whole pictorial approach to the 3rd book. Spenser first of all declares for the supremacy of the poet over the painter & then describes his poetry as “coloured shows.” The poet referred to in stanza 4 is probably Raleigh.159 In the final stanza he at least implies that Belphoebe represents Elizabeth in her private aspect only,160 which is of course quite consistent.
[63] The appearance of Arthur at the very beginning of a book is unusual, & so is the fact that Arthur does not appear in the later cantos. I think that, as the 1st book deals with the order of grace & the 2nd with the order of nature, so the next 3, & possibly the 6th as well, represent a progressive analysis of the order of nature, with a view to distinguishing the redeemable aspect of nature from the unredeemable. Thus Britomart is not strictly Christian chastity—she prays to Neptune & Isis, & there is a general pretense that the whole “antique” setting of the poem is pre-Christian; but nevertheless Britomart is redeemable or potentially Christian chastity, chastity being, from Spenser’s point of view, largely unintelligible apart from Xnity [Christianity]. The same paradox is in Comus, and there again chastity seems to be conceived largely as a physical or natural discipline which has results that look magical from the unenlightened point of view.
[64] The symbol of the magical element in chastity is Britomart’s enchanted spear, & the 1st canto is devoted to showing that chastity is on a level with the other Xn virtue of holiness & hence superior to temperance. Otherwise, the discomfiture of Guyon seems pointless. But then of course Guyon doesn’t do the hard part of his quest anyway. Chastity is temperance in action, with the largely negative, youthful, & even feminine virtue of temperance transformed into a conquering power. In many respects Guyon is more feminine than Britomart is.
[65] It may be noted in passing that Acrasia, unlike Duessa, apparently doesn’t turn ugly when she’s caught. Also that in stanza 3 Spenser indicates an extensive narrative background that he doesn’t fill in for Guyon, in contrast to St. George, who, achieves his quest once & for all. The 3rd book takes up the theme of false illusion which has been developing all through the 1st 2 books and gives it a new twist. Here the main theme is that of sexual disguise, like that of a Shakespearean comedy. The narrative thread begins with Guyon & Arthur, & the first thing they see is a knight described with masculine pronouns who is really a woman, and the “aged squire” who is really her old nurse. The opposite symbol of the woman disguised as the man turns up in Venus’ reference to Cupid in canto 6161 and in the snowy Florimell. The archetype of the hermaphrodite is mentioned in the 1590 conclusion of the 3rd book: it’s cut out in 1596 only because it’s anchored to its proper form in the description of Venus in Bk. 4. The fact that Britomart’s shield has a lion on a gold background is another link with Elizabeth, but somewhat confusing for the story, as her shield is said to have the device of broken spearheads later on. The enchanted spear is of course a straight lift from Ariosto, and a very interesting example of the way that Spenser gives Ariosto an allegorical pattern. Even so, Spenser doesn’t quite know what to do with invulnerable weapons: sometimes they’re fair and sometimes not. Apparently the spear doesn’t work against Paridell, when Britomart is not so much chaste as bad tempered.
[66] Britomart is explicitly said to come from Britain and of course “martial Briton” is one of the sources of her name. Thus she is a compatriot of Arthur, and that’s why she is able to take over from him, as her relation to Scudamour is the same as Arthur’s relation to St.. George & Guyon. The best one can say is that Britomart and Artegall represent the historical cycle and Arthur & the Faerie Queen the apocalyptic one. Note too that fairyland is described, or at any rate symbolized in the very suggestive & important phrase “Venus’ looking glass”—in other words, the order of nature which mirrors the order of grace.162
[67] There are glints of humor in this first canto, which is not surprising in view of its close dependence on Ariosto, & in particular on Ariosto’s opening canto, as there seems to be an unmistakable link between Spenser’s Florimell & Ariosto’s Angelica, the latter’s doubtful morality being assigned to the sham Florimell. The fact that the Palmer sees the virtue of the spear163 introduces the theme of occult knowledge or vision, which is appropriate to an analysis of the order of nature and is continued through Merlin into the gardens of Adonis & beyond to the Res Bina.164 Also, the fact that Guyon blames his disaster on accident165 introduces the complementary theme: in the order of nature things which are really “intendments” are seen as accidents. Stanza 12 not only mentions the 2 virtues in the second line, but brings in the “golden chain of concord” which becomes the dominating symbol of book 4. The threshold symbol of the dismal forest in stanza 14 is the setting for the startling & dramatic vision of Florimell on her white horse. The comet image of 16166 is not only a very lovely image, but seems to be of some importance in these opening cantos, partly because of its link with the theme of occult knowledge and the “sage wizard.” Note that Florimell’s colours are yellow & white whether she is in her true colours or not. The fact that “her garments all were wrought of beaten gold” makes her the presiding genius of bk. 4, where gold is the leading symbol.167
[68] There is a touch of Ariosto again in stanza 18, where the squire is assigned to the villain & Arthur and Guyon both go after the girl. In any case their divergence from Britomart marks the beginning of the elaborate contrapuntal construction of the book. The first thing Britomart sees is a group of six knights surrounding a seventh: I don’t know why the no. 6 is so important in this & the next book, but it runs right through. In stanza 24 the fact that the steadfast knight’s love is the “errant damsel” is not only a direct repetition of the Florimell theme, but an effective contrast in itself, and part of the general contrast of wandering and steadfastness which seems to be significant in a poem dealing with the fixed ideals of a nomadic class.
[69] The Court of Love is also analysed in great detail & variety all through the 3rd book, and the mistress of the castle Joyous represents one of the obviously false standards, along with the mistress of the Squire of Dames. The rescue of the knight by Britomart in front of a castle by defeating a group is in direct contrast to the capture of Amoret by Scudamour, which Spenser probably had in his mind even then. The fact that Britomart is constantly acquiring women in the course of her conquests leads to something more important than misunderstanding—one gets the sense of a female society in the aristocracy consolidating along with that of the men. In this connection the invincibility of true love is insisted on all through. Also, Britomart’s contrasting of love with mastery in stanza 25 not only anticipates the Malbecco theme, and seems to suggest some allegorical conception of the flight of Cupid from Psyche in Apuleius, but also adumbrates the theme of book 4, love finding its fulfilment in a community.
[70] The relation of St. George to this canto is very hard to figure out. The lines which describe him have every appearance of having been stuck in afterwards—incidentally, one of the chief advantages of Spenser’s luxuriant stanza would be the ease with which he could tinker with it on revision. And it almost looks as though St. George were the knight rescued by Britomart from the group of six.168 The description of his lady as the “Errant Damsel” repeats 2-1-19. If so, then my old point about chastity being the Hegelian synthesis of holiness & temperance is right.169 In the historical allegory this works out well enough, as Elizabeth—if Britomart is Elizabeth—certainly was to rescue St. George. Part of Spenser’s difficulty is that he can’t introduce a consistent historical allegory here without the order of grace, which is one reason why he plays down the historical allegory in this book.
[71] It looks as though the Castle Joyous, or Joyous Gard, were a kind of modulation of the Bower of Bliss, so that book 3 begins where 2 ends. I don’t quite know why stanza 31 has the lovely turning b rhyme and the rare run-on lines.170 Certainly the “Lady of Delight” has some connection with Venus, and stands at the opposite pole from Venus’ temple in book 4 as well as the mask of Cupid in this one. The whole book is designed to lead up to the rival epiphanies of Eros and Agape, Cupid and Britomart, and this castle corresponds roughly to Error in book 1. It’s not even impossible that it’s identical with the House of Pride, though very unlikely. Incidentally, the question of who pays for this, raised in stanza 33, is not answered: there’s a slight anticipation of Marinell and his precious shore, but the relation is one of artificial to natural wealth.
[72] The thematic tapestry of Venus and Adonis marks the beginning of the central theme of the book, and marks a deliberation of design on Spenser’s part that is borne out by the elaborate description in which all the themes of the sixth canto are anticipated. For instance, stanza 34, besides having the Adonis flower, has also the threshold symbol of the coming of love as a psychological storm, which has of course mythical overtones. Stanza 35 has the emblematic flower garland and the “secret shade.” Stanza 36 associates Venus with the blue mantle of the Queen of Heaven, which indicates a link with the Virgin Mary that even the puritanic Spenser doesn’t dare follow up. In any case we’re safely on the Eros level. The strewing with flowers anticipates the ritual death of Marinell and the pleasure of watching (repeated later in the name Guardante [Gardante], stanza 45) recalls the Bower of Bliss. Stanza 37 ties up some of the moral allegory: the oxymoron of chance and destiny is thematic,171 and nowhere more so than in direct relation to the dying god. Her unnatural solicitude also anticipates Marinell, and I think the word “Daunger” in line 4 [5] has Court of Love overtones. Stanza 38 has the Eros pieta: the emphasis in line 4 again anticipates the 6th canto. In this case the red & white symbolism is played down.
[73] The moral artillery is brought up in stanza 39: the beds probably recall what Spenser had read about Roman banquets. The reference to the “antique world” in the 3rd line messes up Spenser’s already confused associations of that world with a state of innocence. The stanza is topped off with the images of water & fire carried over from book 2, and introduces the theme of the concealed Cupid.172
[74] The birds in Spenser seem to represent the chorus of nature: they always sing cheerfully whether the context is good or bad, but this I think is the only occasion on which they are brought indoors.173 The association of the lady with “the proud Persian queen,” meaning Semiramis, supports the general feeling that a historical allegory about the monstrous regiment is not far away. The fact that in stanza 42 St. George is disarmed & Britomart is not, underlines the superiority of Britomart, and the elaborate simile with Cynthia in st. 43 reinforces the Elizabeth-Britomart connection.174 The breaking of the moon throughout the clouds supplies an image of direction (line 6) which makes a fine contrast to the comet image associated with Florimell. The alexandrine sounds even more like a compliment to Elizabeth, and the whole stanza helps to establish the whole lunar Beulah setting of the book. Notice too the theme of manifestation and breaking through clouds, and there may be some point in the association of the lunar Britomart with silver and of Florimell with gold.
[75] I don’t think I need anything more on the six Court of Love knights,175 but the fact that they are somewhat violently described as “shadows” introduces another aspect of the symbolism, Britomart’s going from Britain to Fairyland, which means that, like Alice, she is going into the same world reflected. The reflection is symbolized not only by her mirror, but by the whole sun and moon imagery which is not tied up until the Isis episode of book V. In general, in Elizabethan literature, the actual queen presides over the daylight world of England, and Cynthia, her reflection, over the ideal and moral world within. The traditional association of England with the moon has to be kept in mind too. Another ramification of the shadow theme is the merely allegorical one worked out in the first book, where Catholic ritual is the shadow of the spiritual life. In the second book the shadow world is the world of beauty and money, the instrumental taken as an end in itself, nature as without. In the third book the centre of gravity for the shadow-world is Courtly Love.
[76] The curiously addled image of the rose in stanza 46 seems to be introduced only to give Spenser the chance of throwing a red rose into the symbolic stew; but there are other things, not all of them clear. First, the plucking of the rose (a sexual image in itself) out of the thorns is clearly thematic, and prefigures the conquest of Amoret by Scudamour. Again, the word “manly” in line 2 underlines the hermaphrodite symbol. Also, the red rose of passionate chastity may be in direct opposition to the flower of Adonis, also red. Even the curious fear of getting scratched by thorns has turned up earlier in 1–10.
[77] The Twelfth Night situation of the woman falling in love with the woman disguised as a man has nothing particular in it except as a repetition of the Venus-Adonis theme, and to provide the direct opposition to the protagonist (signified in the name Malecasta) that we regularly meet in opening cantos. The shape of the allegory is the opposite of that of books 1 and 2: both St. George and Guyon are plain men seeking reality in the midst of illusion, but Britomart is herself concealed, and the allegory thus assumes more of the shape of the masque with which it concludes. The meal of bread and wine in stanza 51 does not need to be insisted on,176 nor does even the almost Miltonic point in 54 about the ease of deceiving the pure-minded. Somewhat more important is the theme of the “wandering guest” in stanza 55:177 the loves of unchastity are necessarily random and accidental. The allegory deepens in the beautiful conclusion of stanza 57, where the sonorous cosmological imagery gives the right ironical perspective to the revelry, turning it into an artificial escape from nature, and therefore from the true human society that is built up on nature. It becomes a little like the setting of the Masque of the Red Death, if not of the Decameron, which latter is perhaps closer to William Morris. The reference to the stars is necessary to tie up the celestial imagery.178
[78] Of the concluding scene in this canto, which is probably much funnier than Spenser realized, nothing seems particularly significant except perhaps Malecasta’s dressing gown which is the regular Biblical scarlet. The gold & ermine suggest the false Florimell, and the “black veil of guilty night” recalls what I’ve already said about Una [par. 3]. The contrast with poor old Britomart’s “snow white” undershirt can look after itself. In stanza 65 we have several minor themes: there have to be a lot of arrows & darts in all love allegories, and the theme of the dangerous eye, which is repeated later in, I think, Corflambo, is implied in the name of Gardante.179 The wounding of Britomart in the side180 gives us the red & white imagery we’ve been waiting for as well as the thematic wound. The “flaming sword” of the next stanza is probably perfunctory.181 I’m not sure that the same can be said for the Ptolemaic snobbery of “the gross earth’s greasy shade” which begins to separate the redeemable from the damnable, and rounds off the canto with the symbol of the rejection of the gross.182
[79] Spenser is either hopelessly inconsistent in his views of the status of women, or else he simply accommodates his views to his symbolism. I see no way of reconciling the beginning of this canto with 5-5-25, nor have I any desire to.183 He probably never expected Elizabeth to get as far as book 5 anyway. His chief object in this canto is to provide heroic ancestry for the English monarchy, or rather for the Tudor monarchy, as the Tudors being Welsh as well as bastards count as British rather than English. The object is the same as Ariosto, and the historical allegory has been pretty well absorbed in the mythical one. Stanza 3 has another Britomart-Elizabeth association, and the slip of “Guyon” for “Redcross”184 indicates that Spenser’s mind may not be wholly on his subject. The association of Britomart and Redcross is to be referred not only to the historical allegory, but to the fact that Britomart’s destiny is apocalyptic rather than cyclic.
[80] The red and white symbolism of stanza 5185 seems perfunctory, even when associated with the lightning image which picks up the comet of canto 1. The theme of wandering at random is strongly emphasized in stanza 7, line 7.186 At this point some discrimination between Britomart & Elizabeth becomes necessary. Spenser has a Protestant and to him essential point to make about chastity; it is not to be identified with celibacy or virginity, but is consistent with married love as well. Britomart throughout is described in terms of passion, to an extent which indicates that Spenser has the point very consciously in mind. He might easily have ignored the theme of virginity altogether if Elizabeth’s virginity had not given it such a reputation. As the ancestor of Elizabeth, Britomart has to be a mother, as even an Elizabethan poet could hardly go to the point of postulating an immaculate conception for Elizabeth, though even this seems to be glanced at in the miraculous birth of Belphoebe and Amoret. And as Artegall in the historical allegory is Lord Grey, Spenser has to avoid the appearance of recommending Grey as a prince consort. From here on chastity becomes properly natural passion informed by grace, and Belphoebe, who remains outside the direct action of the poem, is detailed off to attend to Elizabeth’s reputation for virginity. So there is no inconsistency in the fact that the natural symbolism of Spenser’s book on chastity should be full of the lushest kind of sexual fruitfulness. On practically every page there is either a good rape or a good try, and no woman in Spenser is ever raped without producing issue—generally triplets. The image of pregnancy in stanza 11 is therefore both beautiful and appropriate. The same is true of the vegetation image in stanza 17.187
[81] The Merlin theme is anticipated in the reference to magic art in stanza 15, where the laying of the snake to sleep has overtones of Adonis’ boar. It’s all the more curious that Merlin’s mirror is no longer associated with Venus.188 The mirror, described in stanza 19, is the opposite of Arthur’s shield: it’s the light of nature, not of revelation, lunar rather than solar, and is explicitly microcosmic. The phrase “a world of glass” makes one wonder how much Lydgate one has to read.189 Spenser’s own reference is to Phao, with a most sinister political application.190 It represents the kind of crystal-gazing that had to be done by such people as Walsingham,191 and represents again the insight into nature which has been lost since heroic times.
[82] It is rather curious that this complicated symbol should become a mere piece of husband-divination such as the servant girls use in Burns’ Hallowe’en, but even in this aspect it is striking enough to attract the attention of Keats. Note that Artegall is first of all compared to the sun between two mountains—the archaic solar figure in the doorway.192 The fact that his arms are those of Achilles suggests that his shield is, like Achilles’, a microcosm; though it is simply called sevenfold,”193 and I have no notion what the “ermilin” is, except that its colours are still solar.194 The reference to Achilles is of a rare type, and points to the deliberate absorption of an archetype.
[83] The arrow of stanza 26 is in counterpoint to canto i-[st.] 65, and indicates a rather important point: that Britomart, like the heathen gods in the masque, is one of Cupid’s conquests. The treatment of love as a disease is one of the drearier Courtly Love conventions which Spenser insists on carrying over, and carrying on. He seems to tie it up regularly with images of blighting, withering, or even poisoning: this is perhaps linked with the fact that the death of Adonis is involved with his refusal to love. This image is in stanza 31, although it forms part of the speech of the nurse Glauce, who is, like Juliet’s nurse, a comic character who goes in for malapropisms, as stanza 32 indicates.195
[84] The references in stanza 36, line 7, to the god of love and the god of sky represent respectively the limits of the inner and the outer world of nature. This partition however leaves out the gods of chaos and matter, like Proteus, and like Neptune who performs the final redemptive act of book 4; and this aspect of nature is what Mutability, not Cupid[,] claims as against Jove.
[85] Stanza 37 begins the theme of the bleeding heart, which is given in terms of vampires in line 5 and of arrows in line 9. The former represents the Busirane motive, as the latter does Cupid. The latter is one of the many occasions in which Eros parodies Agape: the dart in the side has Passion overtones, as Saint Teresa makes clear. One has to watch out for all sorts of pagan images which are intended to be shadowy reflections of Christian ones, like the golden apple of Venus.
[86] Stanza 39 reinforces the bleeding images with images of poison and cancer: they are used by Britomart because of her inexperience in love; but they are very skilfully picked up by Glauce and made into images of the monstrosity of lust (the serpent or dragon makes the link between the poisonous and the monstrous). The Classical examples of perversion are introduced here196 to round out and deepen the antithesis between love and lust which was begun in the figure of Malecasta, who might be described as an involuntary lesbian. The relation between love and lust is what Blake would call the relation between a form and its analogy, and this relationship is beautifully indicated by the reference to Narcissus in stanza 44, which is carefully linked with the Adonis theme in stanza 45, line 4.197 This in its turn leads to a repetition of the shadow theme. It should be remembered that the six knights of canto 1 are shadows partly because they are in the mirror world. The fact that Artegall is as yet a shadow without a body means two things. In the first place, he represents in the Arthurian allegory, the theme of the ideal ruler, the prince who was never king, the invisible consort of Elizabeth. In the second place, in the cosmology of book 3 a form without a substance lies, like chaos, which is substance without form, just outside the order of nature. In short, the world of form without substance is the inner world of passion and desire behind the real world of the human act, just as chaos is the outer world behind the real world of objects. Hence there is a correspondence between passion and chaos which accounts for the references to volcanoes in stanza 32, to earthquakes in stanza 42, and perhaps to the “drunken lamp” in stanza 47.198 This symbolism reaches its culmination in the last stanza, where Britomart is compared to a bodiless ghost.
[87] The opposition of love and lust is further emphasized in Britomart’s speech in stanza 43, where the success of lust is contrasted with the apparent impotence of love. Lust, which in Spenser’s innocent biology is unknown in the animal world[,] is regularly symbolized by bestiality, and the reference to Pasiphae is picked up later in the Argante complex. But the final end of lust is, first cannibalism, literal and symbolic, and secondly, the self-love represented by Narcissus. All references to Myrrha have to be carefully checked as Myrrha was the mother of Adonis.
[88] The only thing that remains is the attempt of Glauce to remove Britomart’s love-disease by magic in which we may note the thematic red & white symbol in stanza 49, line 9, and of course the elaborate & humorous playing around with patterns of 3 in stanzas 50 & 51.199 The implication is that magic has no power over love, which is of course the who [whole] Busirane theme. The anti-solar movement of stanza 51 is merely incidental, but one may note the parody of sympathetic magic in line 6.
[89] Spenser doesn’t make much of the material of the Four Hymns, and I think the opening of this canto is about the only place where he refers to it. Incidentally, the structure of the four hymns fits in perfectly with my point about the Eros allegory as contrapuntal to an unwritten Agape theme. Love does several things: it leads the mind to the contemplation of the form of beauty; it is the inspirer—what Dante would call the “sprone”200—of chivalry; and consequently it finds its fulfilment in the chivalric community, symbolized by the friendship of book 4. The conception of love as the informing of man by the energetic order of heaven unites the three themes. That’s why the chain of being is so important to Spenser. If Jove isn’t confirmed in his imperial see there is no possibility of redeemable earthly love, and consequently no possibility of any heavenly love—no possibility, that is, of man’s responding to or being included in the love of God. Another important factor here, referred to in stanza 2, is the equivalent of predestination in the order of nature. Spenser says of Cupid almost exactly what Donne says: “This god produced a destiny.”201 One falls in love involuntarily and sees the result as part of the machinery of fate: the insistence on the deathly nature of love-sickness links the two great “fatal” states of man, love and death, Eros and Adonis. At the same time the fulfilment of love is, like predestination, not the operation of an external power, but the development of one’s inner being. Britomart’s vision of Artegall is thus the natural counterpart of “the fatal purpose of divine foresight” [st. 2, 1. 5]. It is only lust that’s really blind in Spenser: love is the seeking of a vision.
[90] After the third stanza, the third canto is pretty tough going. Spenser certainly tied himself in a complicated knot when he decided to put his last five books in the order of nature. In the first place, we have a double time clock in the historical allegory. On one clock the present is Arthur’s time, and on the other, Elizabeth’s. In the former everything is apparently, in spite of the real Arthurian tradition, pre-Christian: on the other we have the unwritten melodic line of revelation. Thus in the first book, where we are concerned with revelation, the only time is the immediate past on the Elizabethan clock—in other words, the Protestant Reformation. In the second book the historical allegory refers to the Elizabethan settlement and to the flirtation with the Duke of Anjou; this is duplicated on the Arthurian clock in the tenth canto. In the 3rd book things get really tough: the time is future on both clocks, which means that on the Arthurian one it reaches the present of the Elizabethan one. Merlin is brought in, more to dismiss the historical allegory than anything else, by providing a vision of Elizabeth which is rather like the vision of King James in Macbeth. In stanza 50 there is a reference to a prophecy of the future; but the real historical allegory in book 3 is of a very different shape, and we could well have been spared Merlin’s harangue.
[91] The chief thing of interest is the description of Merlin himself and his cave. Merlin is an important link in the theme of occult knowledge which belongs to the order of nature. The references to his power, particularly in stanza 12, make it clear that Merlin, the only benevolent magician in the Faerie Queen[,] represents the natural equivalent of faith. The basis of this is the conception of nature as a secondary word of God, and the phraseology of the latter part of stanza 12 makes it clear that the quest of justice equipped with power marks the beginning of an attempt to realize it. All the main symbols of book 5—the sun & moon, the land & sea devouring one another, and the destruction of mobs, are summed up in this stanza.
[92] Psychologically Merlin is the priest of the unconscious: he is the true Archimago, who creates prophecy and vision instead of illusion. I don’t know what stanza 11 is all about:202 the brazen wall turns up occasionally elsewhere, chiefly in connection with Roger Bacon and Agrippa as a typical product of magical power. What we have here suggests, first, the theme of the sorcerer’s apprentice, and second, the separation of natural from human power since the passing of the golden age. Merlin’s birth in stanza 13 is one of the many mixed births in this book, in which the male principle may be anything from a heathen god to a devil, and the female one generally mortal.203 Spenser’s phrasing suggests delicately a natural counterpart to the birth of Christ from a Spirit and a Virgin.
[93] The presence of a benevolent magician means that we are no longer concerned with apocalyptic symbolism, where all magic is demonic, but within the natural cycle. Merlin and Proteus are the opposite poles of the order of nature. An important remark is made by Merlin when he says (stanza 17) that no one is helped by magic if he can get help in any other way. The images attached—pregnancy in stanza 16, the sun hidden by clouds, stanza 19, the sun rising and the white changing to red in stanza 20—all work up to the tree of stanza 22, which is the natural counterpart of the tree of life, as the fourth line indicates.204 A few comments[,] intentionally vague and parenthetical, indicate that an apocalyptic conclusion to English history really is in Spenser’s mind—see for instance, the conclusion of stanza 23.205 All the paradoxes of natural predestination are summed up in the foresight of Merlin, who apparently knows everything except the answer to the question of how does foreknowledge avoid foreordination. His conclusion, that you might as well do, in fact ought to do, what you were going to do anyway, is perhaps as far as a pre-Christian prophet can get.
[94] The fact that Artegall is explicitly said to be terrestrial links him with St. George and marks his superiority to Guy on. Stanza 27 gives him the rotary solar movement and the symbolism of east & west which runs all through book 5.206 Note too that Artegall, like the Achilles he is compared with, is a withdrawn hero who has to be led back to his proper sphere. Unlike Achilles and Orlando, his guide is to be the female principle, which[,] so far as I know, is original in the epic tradition with Spenser. It suggests an association between Britomart and the searching Isis which is made explicit in bk. 5, and it is one of the things that make me certain that Spenser was carefully studied by Joyce. Notice how the imagery suggests a reversal of the St. George theme, with the heroine leading the dragon, which also is carefully worked out in book 5. The “band” is thematic too: it recurs in the girdle of Florimell and is probably involved in a complicated Garter symbolism.
[95] The association of Britomart’s son with a lion207 is also repeated in book 5, but the son is not named in either place. I suspect that the reference to Constantius in stanza 29 has something to do with the theme of the third Troy, of the destiny of England to succeed to the Holy Roman Empire. The coming of the lion seems to be Spenser’s equivalent of the Feltro theme in Dante,208 and of course has Elizabethan overtones too, even in Mother Hubbard’s Tale.
[96] Miscellaneous notes on the harangue:209 Britain consists apparently of six islands (stanza 32), which may have some relation to Spenser’s use of six. Stanza 34 illustrates that Britain has formerly gone through the same experience as Ireland in Spenser’s day. I don’t know what the hostile reference to Augustine means in stanza 35. The wicked sorcerer of 36 has Tasso overtones. The phrase “huge hills of dying people” (stanza 41) has more humanity than Spenser usually permits himself. Stanza 42 has the reference to Trojan blood that the reader expects and is lifted straight from Ariosto. Line 6 belongs to the regular concentric pattern of Spenser’s view of society: the court in the middle, then the city, then the country, and finally the woods.210
[97] The 8-hundred-year bondage of the Britons is not only Tudor propaganda: as in Joyce, the Romans as well as the English form part of the usurpation. The whole theme is connected with the captivity of Artegall under Radigund, and is evidence for my notion that Artegall’s name is Arthur de Galles. The burying of the Britons under successive layers of Saxons, Danes and Normans is parallel to the burying of the ideals of Fairyland under the historical actuality. The specific association of the sleeping Arthur, and therefore the Tudor dynasty[, ] with the island of Mona needs checking from other writers.211 Notice too the association of the Tudor revolution with apocalyptic flames in stanza 48. The reference to Elizabeth and her white rod suggests a link not only with the latter part of Bk 5 but with the precious shore of Marinell, in whose castle the wedding at the beginning of Bk. 5 takes place. One may pick up in passing the reference to masking in stanza 51.212 The association of Britomart with Boadicea is not important, as the anti-Roman link is not followed up: what is considerably more important is the careful pairing of Britomart and her English counterpart Angela, who is said to have given her name to the Angles, and whose name has a weird echo of Angelica.213 I don’t know how far one can pursue the point that Britomart actually dresses herself in Angela’s armor,214 though stanza 59 sounds like a natural counterpart to David’s spoiling of the Temple. Her enchanted spear, by the way, is the work of Bladud.215
[98] The opening of the 4th canto sounds as though Spenser were writing in his sleep & st. 4 puts St. George on the same level as Guyon, contradicting my earlier point [par. 65] about his one quest. Spenser makes a great point of the fact that Britomart almost never removes her armour: apparently it’s supposed to symbolize the physical protection that her chastity gives her. I suppose the “blinded guest” is love:216 if so, the suggestion of actual guidance by love for the knight errant is a very strong point, although when the scene is transferred to the water, the conception of love as a pilot217 is an easy pick-up from Petrarch.
[99] I suppose Spenser makes such a point of Britomart’s reaching the ocean, partly because the ocean is psychologically the unconscious, and partly because Britain, being an island, is supposed to be separated by an ocean from Fairyland. Here the prayer to Neptune starts off the complicated sea imagery which ends with the epiphany of Neptune at the end of Bk. 4. Marinell has the role of the guardian of the shore. Stanza 13 links the sea, storm and passion images so closely as to make us wonder how far Spenser is conscious of the psychological aspect of his ocean. The fourth line of stanza 9 is one for the rhetoric chapter,218 and so is the alliteration & rhythm of lines 7 & 8 of stanza 15.219
[100] Spenser has worked hard on his Adonis symbolism in connection with Marinell. His fear of love belongs to Adonis, and so psychologically does his mother-complex. In the psychological allegory, by the way, the Britomart who nearly kills him & is therefore the woman of whom he should be afraid, although he does not know it, succeeds his actual mother as the regressive mother-principle. Just as the perilous barrier and the obstacle-knight of romance symbolize psychological barriers in life, so the wound in the left side (another passionate counterpart to the Passion) symbolizes a regressive fear of love. With all this, it hardly seems even necessary to mention the sacrificial ox of stanza 17, which puts the symbolic aspect of Marinell as an Adonis figure beyond question.
[101] I haven’t got the point about the precious shore, as Marinell seems to have nothing to do with the sort of thing that Munera represents in book 5. His ancestry is that of a mortal father & a divine mother, which reverses the usual pattern, and follows the theme of miraculous birth which is at the same time illegitimate. The third line of stanza 20 underlines the psychological imagery.220 Marinell is of course a water spirit, the rain coming from the ocean, and I suppose it’s because the rain brings the wealth of nature to man that Marinell is described as having all the wealth of the sea.221 Proteus comes in in stanza 25, continuing the Merlin-theme of a magician-prophet living in a cave—note the contrast between Proteus, who shuts up Florimell in a cave, with Merlin, who gets shut up by the Lady of the Lake.
[102] Marinell’s overthrow is a modulation of the theme of fated love, and also of the woman-chasing-man theme which runs all through. It turns out later that Florimell is chasing him also, although in this book we only see her when she is being chased. The wound in the left side is near enough to Adonis. The description of his mother’s lament222 seems to be just a piece of fine writing, and it contains some of the verbal agonizing that makes Shakespeare’s Venus & Adonis at times so tedious. The essential thing is[,] of course, the female lament for the dying god in which the mother takes the lead. The ritual strewing with flowers comes into stanza 42. One may notice also the blue & silver clothes of the sea-goddesses in stanza 40. One very curious & interesting image comes in stanza 43, where Marinell is placed in another hollow cave at the bottom of the sea which is explicitly compared to the sky, as the covering waves are to storm clouds. One could hardly say more clearly that in fairyland and the world of the unconscious generally, anything that takes place under the sky takes place also underwater. Note that Marinell gets his bride also out of a submarine cave similar to the one in which he was brought up, which makes the Proteus who releases her something very close to a phallic father.
[103] The 3rd book begins as the 2nd one ends, with the separation of the protagonists from Prince Arthur. One chases Florimell and the other half kills Marinell, and they start a counterpoint going that doesn’t come to a full close before the end of book 4. The 3rd voice, connected with Timias, has to wait until the 6th book to get harmonized. I can’t imagine why Archimago is dragged into stanza 45, in spite of the rather striking phraseology of line 3,223 because nothing whatever is done with him that I can see.
[104] I think it is with this 4th canto that Spenser really begins padding. The tirade of Prince Arthur against night224 is badly out of proportion, even allowing for its parallelism with Cymoent’s lament for the dying god. But I still have to find out why Spenser, who was a good friend of Raleigh and may well have known something about the School of Night, should be so damned silly on the subjects of sleep and night. Practically all the references to night treat it as something evil, and over and over again Spenser speaks approvingly of characters because they refuse to sleep. I know what the obvious answers are, but they seem too obvious. The best tentative answer is that darkness is the opposite of revelation, and hence symbolizes the bondage of the order of nature. There certainly are images of lost direction such as the concealing of the north star in stanza 53.
[105] One of the reasons for the consistent attack on sleep is partly that Spenser refers to love as primarily a source of energy. Hence anything connected with idleness, even with relaxation, he tends to think of as potentially lustful. It’s the regular Protestant argument that passion leads to passivity, which is of course the whole point about the Bower of Bliss.
[106] Spenser’s narrative devices are not greatly varied: the terrified dwarf who comes running to Prince Arthur with news of another shrieking heroine with the villain’s hot breath on her neck comes in at least 3 times. Spenser seems to make quite a point of his timing, as in stanza 10, but I doubt if it works out. I don’t know either whether there is some pun on chaste and chased—Spenser was quite capable of one. I don’t know exactly what the 3 fosters mean except lust:225 they don’t represent the satyrs, and although they are villains they don’t appear to be perverts. Nor are they distinguished like the 3 Sans brothers in book 1. One thing to remember is that there is no Robin Hood in Spenser, and there couldn’t be any “green man” in him with that sort of reference. On the other hand, many attributes of a green knight, except for the humour, are given to Artegall.
[107] The fight of the 3 fosters with Timias takes place at a ford, which doesn’t seem to be a particularly important symbol until book 6. Spenser presumably didn’t know that he was constructing an elaborate female phallic symbol, although he did know that a wound in the left thigh would make Timias another Adonis figure.226 I suppose all the darts in this book have erotic overtones although I don’t understand why the first one thrown at Timias is unable to enter his flesh.227 There is certainly more emphasis on the hell that awaits all those who try to rape women of a superior social class. What might be called the starkath theme, of a severed head continuing to gnash its teeth,228 is one of Spenser’s stock tricks. The 3rd foster has his body carried downstream—an image apparently of immense importance in book 5. Nor do I understand why Spenser is so fond of the word continent in this canto.229 The scene in which Belphoebe discovers Timias wounded in the thigh (the red & white theme is in the alexandrine of stanza 29) is another Venus & Adonis picture. Certainly her healing of his wound seems a close & deliberate parallel with the healing of Marinell’s wound. Certainly the myrtle grove in the valley where she hides him, which is compared to a theatre & has a little brook running through it, is also a deliberate contrast to Marinell’s submarine cave. It’s more important though, as an anticipation of the Gardens of Adonis, which is why it is called an “earthly paradise.”230 The phrase “bower of bliss” in stanza 35 may be an accident. Apparently Spenser is trying to distinguish the healing motives of Marinell’s mother, which are purely possessive, from those of Belphoebe, which (stanza 36) are founded on the conception of community. The destroying beast of the scene is split between the 3 fosters and the animal pursued by Belphoebe.
[108] Then begins one of the most tiresome stories in the Faerie Queene: the love of Timias for Belphoebe, which all Spenser’s affection for Raleigh can’t make interesting. One may note in passing for the rhetoric chap. the resounding inner rhyme of stanza 42231 & the use of the refrain as the only possible substitute for a lyric in this kind of epic.232 Evidently the rose of stanza 51, which is said to have been taken from paradise as a platonic archetype, is intended to be a symbol of virginity.
[109] The forest in Spenser is different in different books: in book 5 it’s the abode of savagery, and in bk. 6 it’s the visible symbol of an elaborate philosophy of nature. In the 3rd book it is primeval, the place of seed or nursery of life. The fact that Spenser drops the Garden of Adonis into his middle canto shows how deliberate his technique is.
[110] The symbolism turns[,] of course, on the contrast of the Venus theme, to which Adonis belongs, and the Diana theme. Passing over the usual ducking & scraping to Elizabeth at the beginning, we get to the real symbolism in the 4th stanza. I’ve said [par. 80] that Spenser doesn’t quite venture on an immaculate conception for Elizabeth, but he comes as close to it as he can. Belphoebe’s father is the son233 and the apologetic reference to the monsters bred in the mud of the Nile have [has] a somewhat ambiguous reference. Presumably that belongs to the analogy, the incestuous miracle of Argante and Oliphant. The real reason for the virgin birth is to get the nature myth of the sun & the earth into the symbolism. Chrysogone thus represents the redeemable earth, the place of seed or Garden of Adonis. Note that in stanza 9 the sun is called the father of generation, which apparently is different from being the father of forms, which is what Adonis is. Even more important is the association of the moon with the creative act. The implication is that even virginity has some informing power, & thus has some relation to the theme of creation. I have a suspicion too that the fleeing into the wilderness of stanza 10 may have some oblique reference to Revelation 12.
[111] The flight of Cupid & the searching of Venus underlines the theme of the woman pursuing the man, but as Cupid is carefully differentiated from Adonis, the reference must be very different. Perhaps the best way to put it is to say that the Venus-Adonis relation is horizontal or cyclic, moving through time from one form to another; whereas the Venus-Cupid relation is vertical & apocalyptic, and connected with the chain of being. The flight of the concealed Cupid indicates that love is a power which raises one on the chain of being up to the vision of beauty which is trying to find it. The regular parallel between Venus & Eros and Wisdom & Christ is in the background, & one should notice the theme of concealed activity, a kind of continuous incarnation, associated with Cupid. Venus’ search for him has the same centrifugal movement that Calidore’s search for the Blatant Beast has: from court to city, from city to country (which includes the pastoral world) and from country to forest. Notice that the forest is primarily the domain of Diana, who is surprised also in the Mutability Cantos. Diana’s modesty is to be connected with the flight of the elusive Florimell. The disappearing nymph in Spenser seems to be a principle of concealed beauty corresponding to the concealment of Cupid. The disguising of Cupid as a nymph, referred to in stanza 23[,] is part of the theme of the hermaphroditic disguise which is usually given the other way round as with Britomart. Notice too that the group Eros, Venus & Mars (stanza 24) is the one invoked at the beginning of the poem. It is important to realize too that, as in stanza 22, the gods have become humans. The phrase “wandering forest” is a transferred epithet which is considerably more than that. The painless birth of the twins refers to nature as well as to virginity.
[112] I don’t know that I need so much in the way of notes on the Gardens of Adonis: it is “the first seminary of all things,”234 the word “all” being important. Logically, this includes human beings, the implications of which Spenser doesn’t follow up. But he must have wondered occasionally how Christianity could triumph over death without triumphing over birth too, & without making it equally unreal. The notion is involved in predestination, or the timeless vision, and the natural counterpart to predestination is certainly generation. The iron & gold gates of stanza 31 are to be connected with the general gold & iron symbolism which is given an apocalyptic reference in Lycidas. The double gate and the slight echo of Janus in “Genius”235 belong to the characteristics of Blake’s Beulah.
[113] Miscellaneous: I wish I knew the reason for the phrase “sinful mire” which appears to be the key to Spenser’s treatment of the earth symbol. The forms are on a thousand year wheel, and grow automatically in obedience to the creative word “increase and multiply.”236 As this is a deliberate addition by Spenser to Ovid, the hint of deism may be significant. The statement that the garden is a place of eternal moisture goes back to Plato, but the reference to “sort” in stanza 35 indicates a form of classification which must be post-Aristotelian.237 The conception of the conservation of life in stanza 36 is a curious one in view of Spenser’s generally Christian attitude.238 One wonders at times whether Spenser quite realized what the stuff he transcribed from Ovid really meant. The statement that substance comes from Chaos seems to belong to a myth quite different from, and inconsistent with, the one in stanza 9, which seems impossible.239 The notion of eternal substance & variable form relates only to the order of nature: the order of grace must be, even in Spenser, the exact opposite. Fortunately, Spenser didn’t confuse his own mind and later critics by trying to write a book about creation and the origin of matter, as Milton did.
[114] Spenser seems badly muddled in stanza 39, when he talks of time as the enemy of the garden. The conception of time as a serpent in Paradise (except that he is a kind of bird of prey) is interesting, but time simply does not belong in the Gardens of Adonis:240 he belongs in the lower world & only there. Spenser promptly contradicts himself in stanza 42, where he mentions the perpetual spring.
[115] My connection of this garden with the natural forest of book 6 I think goes quite a long way. It may be deliberately opposed to the wandering forest of Diana, as the myrtle grove of Adonis seems a counterpart to the hide-out of Timias. Notice that in stanza 44 Milton’s banyan image is given its innocent context.241 Actually it’s more like the bower of Adam & Eve. The list of dying god flowers in stanza 45 includes of course the hyacinth; it may contain a reference to Sidney242 and it certainly contains one to Tasso which will have to be checked up. The continuous love of Venus & Adonis seems deliberately contrasted with canto 1, stanza 36, and points up what Lewis says about the opposition in Spenser’s mind between natural love & artificial titillation. The reference to the envy of the infernal gods243 belongs to the whole mythology of the destroying monster of chaos which here takes the form of the imprisoned boar of stanza 48. The perpetual spring in the garden means that the boar is winter as well as chaos, and the rocky cave belongs to the whole complex of the natural cycle in the book. In its larger aspect the emblem of the goddess with the monster underneath her is extensively developed in book 5.
[116] The reconciling of Venus with Psyche means that there is a double theme, one of Venus & Adonis, and the other of Cupid and Psyche, included in the Amoret theme. It is explicitly said that Amoret (Spenser calls her the younger daughter, which seems silly) is brought up by Psyche. I can’t work this out until I know more about the relation of the Psyche theme with the Proserpine theme in which Florimell is involved. The phrasing of stanza 52 seems unnecessarily superlative in view of the fact that at the tournament of Satyrane Florimell outshines Amoret even in her false form.
[117] The shift of narrative to Florimell indicates that in bk. 3 Spenser for the first time is adopting the narrative techniques of Ariosto. In book 1 the narrative split between St. George and Una hardly amounts to the elaborate design of Ariosto, and in book 2 there’s no real split at all. So far as I know, Spenser only once breaks the narrative in the middle of a canto and that is in canto 11 of book 5, where there seems some confusion anyway, judging from the jingle to canto 12.244 Spenser seems to attach some importance to the word “singled”: compare canto 4, stanza 45.245 Florimell’s horse seems to be, as the horse generally is in Spenser, the symbol of physical power, and the valley in which she conceals herself is another one of those valleys.246 Here however, after the opening line of stanza 5, which belongs to the rhetoric chapter,247 we find a folk-lore witch, whose relation to Florimell is that of the regressive mother. As with most witches, it is impossible to account for the motivation of her malignancy. The last line of stanza 6 indicates some of the reason for the terror of witches in Spenser’s day.248 She is also[,] to a very slight extent, a spirit of a storm, as there are several references to an imaginary tempest. The connection between stanza 11 and stanza 19 of canto 6 indicates a Florimell-Diana link249 which is worth mentioning because of the associations of Florimell with nymphs. The Diana theme, through Britomart, carries over from the St. George theme; the Venus theme continues the Guy on theme of temperance. So the transition from the Gardens of Adonis in 6 to the virginal flower spirit Florimell is symbolically a quite natural one, and the alexandrine of stanza 11 continues the theme of paradisal beauty.250
[118] The witch’s son forms a group of shadow, anima, and regressive mother which reminds me of Caliban, Miranda and Sycorax. It is not said why the son is wicked: Spenser’s treatment of him makes him only pathetic to the reader. Only the symbolism justifies calling his love lust.
[119] Florimell again disappears in the dark and the son’s sickness anticipates the later theme of Malbecco.
[120] I suppose the hyena251 symbolizes nothing but fleshly lust, but two things about him are interesting. One is the fact that he feeds on women’s flesh which links up with a great number of similar images from the tortured Amoret of canto 12 to the sacrifice of Serena in book 6. The other is the parodied parallel of Venus, Adonis and the boar, which here we have with the witch, the sow and the hyena, chasing an elusive Psyche.
[121] As practically everybody male in book 3 wants to rape Florimell she has to do a lot of running and she asks a great deal of her horse. The series of hot breathers include the foster, prince Arthur, who wastes his breath trying to explain that his intentions are more honorable, the witches’ son, the hyena, the fisherman and finally Proteus. All this while she is trying to run toward the man she does want, which is Marinell, so that the general theme of the woman pursuing the man includes her as well. Naturally, the running nymph suggests Ovid, where the pursuer is always a god; and this builds up the theme of the lustful god which culminates in the masque of Cupid. The two references in stanza 26 are to Myrrha, the mother of Adonis, and Daphne.252 Poor Florimell is literally between the devil and the deep sea—a situation which reappears not only in The Winter’s Tale but in one of King Lear’s speeches. I don’t know why the hyena eats her horse,253 but the theme of killing the horse echoes book 1 and the theme of losing it and exchanging it for a boat echoes book 2.
[122] Satyrane seems to be more or less the equivalent of Prince Arthur on the level of the order of nature, which is why he here replaces the usual seventh-canto appearance of Arthur.254 In book 1 Satyrane’s rescue of Una in the world of nature corresponds to Arthur’s rescue of St. George. The fact that Satyrane has to win his fight with the monster by a Beowulf bear-hug means something very commonplace in the moral allegory (see line 8 of stanza 33X255 but mythically suggests that the hyena, like Orgoglio and Maleger, is partly an illusion. As everybody suffers from lust, the hyena is the lower part of Satyrane too. As Florimell’s golden girdle which binds him is fully developed in book 4 I can leave it alone here.
[123] The theme of lust modulates from the hyena to the giantess: I suppose such symbolic modulations in the narrative structure demand closer study. In any case the giantess running off with the Squire of Dames is a parody of the central theme of the pursuing woman. Like all the vulgar people in Spenser she fights with a mace or club instead of a sword. Her Parthian tactics256 also modulate the theme of the invulnerability of the hyena.
[124] The characters in book 3 are arranged in a scale like those in The Tempest which was certainly based on a close study of this book. The careful counterpointing of the birth of the giantess and her brother with the twins of Chrysogone has already been anticipated in stanza 8 of canto 6, and is continued here in the nature myth of stanza 47, where the explicit reference to the Titans should be picked up in passing.257 With Argante we meet the theme of perversion which was introduced in canto 2 stanza 41, as well as a repulsive modulation of the hermaphrodite theme.258 Argante is more purely the regressive mother than the witch: hence her search for young men in stanza 50 and her secret isle which links her with Circe. The reason is that the kind of love represented by the squire of dames is in danger of collapsing into regression. It is psychologically true that the kind of contempt for women represented in stanza 56 is close to a mother fixation. From there the theme links itself to the main theme of chastity for its own sake (stanza 60) so I suppose that the general theme makes it all right for another double of Britomart, called Palladine, to come into stanza 52, though there seems little point in introducing her. The touch of humour associated with the squire of dames indicates that Spenser doesn’t take the sexual peccadillos of the Court of Love seriously, as his later treatment of Hellenore indicates. The figure of the squire of dames as first a compliant Don Juan and then as a kind of lunatic Diogenes259 may derive from Sidney’s Arcadia.
[125] The attempt of the witch to heal her son by giving him a false Florimell to play with is deliberately contrasted to the attempt of Marinell’s mother to cure her son by getting the real one. For the rest, the mastery of spirits which she has follows the Archimago line rather than the Merlin one, and the descent to hell to get the help of an evil spirit seems to occur in practically every book. The snowy Florimell is of course a spirit of winter, and it is interesting to notice the association of sterility with false chastity. Whether Shakespeare owed anything to this scene for his own Hermione or not I don’t know. The theme of concealed eternal snow in stanza 6 may have some importance,260 and the colours red & white fit the general Eros-Venus pattern. The theme of the living soul in the dead body also has overtones, though I’m not sure what they are; but the emphatic phrase “carcase dead”261 may have been used with some reference to the Christian doctrine of an immortal body. In any case, the demonic nature of a living soul in a dead body is clear enough from stanza 8, and the fact that the spirit is male belongs to the hermaphrodite theme.262 The parallel is the hypothetical disguise of Cupid as a nymph,263 and the contrast is probably with the female serpent in Eden. The fact that he is dressed in Florimell’s cast-off clothes also belongs to the general appearance-and-reality theme. This is carried on by the word “shadows” in stanza 10 and “idol” in stanza 11. The theme of non-sexual creation is close to the theme of spontaneous generation, and the witch has a role which parodies that of Adonis in the previous canto.
[126] Braggadocchio has not been mentioned since the 3rd canto of book 2, and this particular episode is not of great importance, though its developments in book 4 are.
[127] Spenser himself seems to indicate this when he doesn’t even bother to give Ferraugh his name until book 4.264 Ferraugh’s name is an Irish adaptation of Ariosto’s Ferrau, but I don’t know what the political meaning is.
[128] Florimell is often associated with Fortune, who is called a “cruel queen” in stanza 20: the relation between them is curiously like that of Venus to Psyche. When Florimell exchanges land for sea, and a horse for a boat, we are drawing close to the season of snows and sins; but the fact that Florimell is a fertility spirit wherever she goes is marked by the images of revival in stanzas 23 and 25.265
[129] In stanza 28 Spenser seems to be reminding himself to write some stories about Florimell which he doesn’t finish. The fact that one of Florimell’s lovers is said to be Calidore is never followed up, but it’s interesting to see that Calidore here, as in his own book, is associated with an Arthurian knight—at least I suppose that Peridure is that.266 As I’ve said, everybody wants to rape Florimell even in a dinghy, and when there are no knights around to stop them, God has to do it himself.
[130] God’s agent is Proteus, who here has the role of Pluto. Among others, he is also a winter god, of course, and psychologically the impotent old man. He is part of an elaborate symbolism intended to connect the water with the land in book 3, which ends with the role call of rivers at the end of book 4. Fishers and gaolers seem to mean much the same thing, and so do horses and boats. It is notable that in spite of the constant theme of putting to sea, we seem to be dealing only with oceans and caves, not with islands as in book 2.
[131] Florimell’s submarine home repeats the one of the sick Marinell. Her various dodges to resist Proteus recall partly Proserpine in hell and partly Penelope. Spenser seems to be making a great point of Florimell (stanza 43)267 but I don’t know what all of it is. Her various wrigglings in stanza 39 are in counterpoint to those of Proteus himself. Proteus is a spirit of chaos, because he has a constant substance and can take on variable forms. Hence he continues the elaborate substance-and-form-symbolism which runs from the Gardens of Adonis through the false Florimell. He’s a direct contrast to Florimell’s constancy of purpose, or persistence of form, which drives her to variable expedients.
[132] Of the final conversation between Satyrane and Paridell there is nothing particular to note, except that Paridell is first introduced sympathetically, as simply one of the many knights searching for Florimell, and the narrative trick at the end, which comes from Ariosto, and goes back to Dante’s Inferno.268 Morally, the marine symbolism of book 3 relates to passion, which is constant in energy but variable in the form it takes: it is the objective counterpart of unformed desire, and that’s why the figure at the end of the canto is Paridell with his device of a burning heart.
[133] The historical allegory of books 3 & 4 is largely a matter of working out the mythical archetypes of English history. According to Spenser, English history goes back to the Trojan war, and the cause of the Trojan war, the giving of the golden apple to Venus, is the historical (which is another branch of the natural) counterpart of the fall of man. The deeper mythical implications of this are worked out in book 4, where we have the figures of Ate and Agape, the vision of the Fates, and the striving of the ladies for Florimell’s golden girdle. In book 3 what Spenser is trying to show is that the historical fall, the triumph of passion over reason, begins with the rape of Helen, which in Spenser’s eyes is a pure example of the triumph of Courtly Love over chastity. I say chastity rather than marriage, because, although Lewis says a great deal about marriage in Spenser,269 Spenser himself says practically nothing. Only in book 1, where we’re unquestionably in the order of grace, is there a formal marriage; and of course there’s another at the end of book 4 and was to be a big one at the end of the poem. But Spenser in book 3 doesn’t seem to hold any particular brief for marriage, which is introduced in this 9th canto only to be flouted by Courtly Love. The larger point is that the judgment of Paris represented the triumph of Venus over, in particular, Minerva, who may be glanced at in the “Palladine” of canto 7. The arrival of the virginal Elizabeth should represent a historical regaining of paradise for England, which corresponds to the rescue of Amoret, the protegé of Venus, by the virginal Britomart (who as the ancestress of Elizabeth includes Juno). That’s the only reason I can see at the moment for the careful associating of Hellenore and Paridell with Helen and Paris respectively.
[134] In this set-up, Malbecco has the unenviable role of Menelaus, the married cuckold. We may notice several modulations from the previous cantos: a second reference to fallen spirits in stanza 2,270 and the repetition of the Proteus-Florimell situation, which latter forms a kind of hidden counterpoint to the whole canto. Without it, the story of January and May would merely be another anti-marital fabliau.
[135] Apart from the psychological subtlety of the phrase “privy guilt” in stanza 5,271 the point made about Malbecco and his jealousy is that Malbecco is a miser, and hence does not love Hellenore but merely desires to possess her. It is this theme of possessiveness which makes Spenser treat him so badly. Britomart has already said in the 1st canto that love and mastery are opposed principles. The thing that I can not understand is why Britomart beats up Paridell and nearly kills him merely because she is in a bad temper from getting wet.272 Spenser makes a good deal of the tempest and adds to it the image of the earthquake in stanza 15, which in its turn modulates to the threatened burning of the castle. One gathers not only that storms generate bad tempers, but that Malbecco’s “peevish jealousy” is catching. Note in passing how the fire image in stanza 19 suddenly moves indoors, and in stanza 20 turns into the “golden gleams” of Britomart’s hair. Here Britomart is for the first time (stanza 22) compared to Minerva, and the comparison is apparently a deliberate change by Spenser from the “Bellona” of 1590. Notice too that the theme of the defeat of the Titans is repeated here.273 The constant theme of beauty as a divinity which is rightfully adored, lust corresponding to idolatry, is repeated in stanza 24. It prepares the ground for regarding Malbecco, who has only the lust of possession, in the light of a defiler of beauty. I don’t know whether Spenser intended to present the knights in so completely vicious a light, but certainly the fact that Hellenore’s wantonness is directly caused by Malbecco’s jealousy is clear enough.
[136] The succeeding scene is the typical epic flashback at a banquet, and the crucial importance of the theme of the fall of Troy is, I think, indicated in the phrase “sacrament profane” in stanza 30.274 I have a notion too that in a very obscure historical allegory the name of Paridell’s ancestor Paris is linked with the capital of France: this comes out in the trial of Duessa in book 5. The burning of Troy is a further modulation of the original threat to burn Malbecco’s castle. The image is of particular importance because London is explicitly described as the phoenix of Troy (stanza 38).275 The episode is of course designed, not only to establish London as the third Troy (stanza 44), but to indicate Spenser’s relation to the entire epic tradition of both Homer and Virgil. The movement is from the sea in which Aeneas floundered to the river Thames, and this movement is carried out in the whole development of book 3 and 4 from the ocean of the wounded Marinell to the rivers which accompany his healing.
[137] Miscellaneous: the distinction of Brutus from Albion and of London from Cleopolis;276 the repetition of the theme of the conquest of giants in stanza 50; and even more important, the association of these giants with cannibalism. Brutus is also called Sylvius, and is apparently also the son of Mnemon, which fits in well enough with the whole theme of history and memory, or would if the syntax of stanza 48 were not so confused.277 He seems to be trying to distinguish two views of Brutus, and to unscramble the fact that Britomart and Paridell are apparently of two historical eras, although they are talking to each other in the same room. The word “angle” in stanza 47 is a better pun than Spenser himself realized.278
[138] The whole Malbecco episode is a manifestation of the symbol behind it, which is the kidnapping of Florimell by Proteus. In other words, Hellenore is a modulation of the false Florimell. Also, Spenser is trying to show that all “possession” is demonic possession, this point having already been given in the story of Mammon. That is why he loads the dice against Malbecco and presents Paridell as a relatively sympathetic figure. He reserves the debasing of Paridell for the next book. There is a good use of the turn in stanza 5,279 where it seems to be linked with the theme of the concealed Cupid. Notice too, besides the regular parody of religious language, the repetition of the attempt of Malecasta to seduce Britomart. Thus Malbecco’s house becomes another Joyous Gard. Evidently Paridell has to put on the whole erotic show, including poetry & music, before he can get Hellenore, even though she has made up her mind to go with him before he starts.
[139] The deliberate association of Hellenore with Helen of Troy in stanza 12 seems perhaps less important, as the point has already been made, than the sheer viciousness with which she deliberately sets fire to what she can’t steal. The flames symbolize desire both to Spenser and to us, though for different reasons. There is also perhaps a reference to the historical fatefulness of the kind of thing represented by Helen of Troy. If erotic desire breaking out of its legal bounds is fire, it will burn up cities, as Helen’s passion did, and so start going the great wheel of history that has produced the Trojan cycle three times and destroyed it twice.
[140] There is not much to say about poor Malbecco’s vacillations: the theme of the donkey with two carrots, the miser hesitating between his ducats & his daughter, and his very sensible decision to take the cash when the credit has gone already are familiar patterns in fabliaux. The cuckold is so irresistibly a pathetic figure that it is often difficult to say how far we sense the pathos in despite of the author’s intention. For me, Malbecco pursuing Hellenore is a figure of much quiet dignity and genuine affection. So here is a case where the poetic effect of Spenser moves against a rigid and pedantic symbolism. What Spenser means by saying that “love’s extremity” is the father of jealousy, I cannot imagine.280 Nor do I know any recondite reason why he mistakes the pair of Braggadocchio and Trompart for the pair he is chasing. The obvious reason is that all such search produces mirages. Notice how the new comedy situation of the miles gloriosus, the tricky slave, the leno,281 the young hero and the heroine in the distance, shapes itself. The end of stanza 31 is for the rhetoric chapter.282
[141] However, the abandoning of Hellenore has a more sophisticated morality behind it than the new comedy, and there seems to be a kind of parody of the story of Una in book 1. The satyrs do perhaps better than the raggle-taggle gypsies as a symbol of natural will. Hellenore is Spenser’s Criseyde, who catches the rhythm of nature, and slips as easily out of the grasp of man-made laws as the river Simois slips into the sea. The swift modulation from Helen to Criseyde is worth study. It is in stanza 39 that I find what I mean by Malbecco’s quiet dignity.283 He simply won’t do as a leno. I think it’s about at this point that Spenser begins to get restless with his stanza and starts experimenting with medial pauses and a more direct speaking style. Notice particularly the alexandrines of stanzas 35 and 42.284
[142] The curious war that Trompart’s warning about dragons and monsters modulates into a “shrieking hubbub” of satyrs, and from there to a May day celebration, moves in reverse to the morality of the canto, but, I think, in accordance with Spenser’s own inclinations. The poet in Spenser likes Hellenore and admires the satyrs just as he pities Malbecco; the moralist has to make heavy jokes about Malbecco’s horns. The theme of beast disguise in stanza 47 is a mixture of several things:285 it reminds one of Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and it completes the point about the essential moral unity of Malbecco and the satyrs. In other words, jealousy and promiscuity are inverse and reverse of the same thing. Notice of course the snake in stanza 55, which belongs to a series of animal images including the goat of stanza 47 and the bear of stanza 33.
[143] The collapse of Malbecco into the abstraction Jealousy seems to be quite deliberate on Spenser’s part, but I don’t get all its overtones, though it must be important, or Shakespeare wouldn’t have borrowed it for King Lear. His cave belongs to a series of caves in the book, but is not submarine: he belongs rather to the spirits of the middle air who, like the Sybil in Petronius, cannot rest and want nothing but death. The theme of the impending rock carries over from book 2, and the theme of devouring animals is carried on in the figure of Slander in book 4. Notice the phrase “foredamned sprite” in stanza 56, and the absorption of the erotic dart in stanza 59. The end of Malbecco reminds one of that of Despair, but the subtlety of phrasing in stanza 60, especially in line 4, partly makes up for the brutality of Spenser’s moral attitude.286
[144] The construction of book 3 has nothing of the quest in it or of the progressive way. The quest itself is almost unmentioned, and is picked up by Britomart in the eleventh canto entirely by accident. The real quest is Britomart’s search for Artegall, which as a matter of fact is never completed on stage in The Faerie Queene. The rescue of Amoret is only an incident in her career, and is another example of the way in which she takes over the role of Arthur. The seventh canto appearance of Arthur is taken over by Satyrane,287 and it is significant that Britomart leaves Malbecco’s house in company with Satyrane: also that the first person they meet is the brother of the Argante whom Satyrane had defeated on the previous occasion. Stanza 6 tells us that Ollyphant is not afraid of Satyrane but only of Britomart, which seems to mark a distinction between him and Argante as well as to make a close parallel between the relation of Satyrane and of Scudamour to Britomart.
[145] There is a carryover of the snake image of the previous canto, where the snake, which symbolizes jealousy, is said to come from the “house of Proserpine.”288 Spenser never seems to refer to Proserpine except conventionally as the queen of hell, but he must have read Claudian,289 and the connection with the abduction of Florimell as the background symbol for the Malbecco story is certainly close enough. In any case we get the contrasting symbol, not only of the turtle dove, but of the revealed form of Cupid in stanza 2, which is picked up again on Scudamore’s shield in stanza 7. The god addressed by Scudamore in stanza 9 has something of the Court of Love ambiguity. It is also worth noting that Oliphant[,] like his sister, collects boys, and that it is while Britomart is chasing him that she finds Scudamore. The theme of the concealment of lust in the woods is joined to that of the fleeing boy and of the concealed Cupid.
[146] Britomart’s discovery of Scudamore when he is nearly dead from frustration follows the regular Venus & Adonis pattern. Spenser’s timing in this book seems very careful—seven months is recorded in stanza 10 as the entire time lapsing between Scudamore’s gaining and losing of Amoret—and has probably been worked out by somebody else. The important thing is the fact that the abduction of Florimell lasts through the winter. The kidnappings of Florimell and of Amoret seem to be exactly parallel: see for instance the beginning of stanza 11.290 The accidental coming of Britomart makes her of course an agent of divine grace, like the angel in book 2.
[147] I wish I knew how Merlin and his subordinate spirits is [are] supposed to fit into this theme of the imprisoning magician which is carried on by Proteus and Busirane. Of course the fact that Merlin is eventually overcome by the female will is in direct counterpoint, as even Proteus is defeated primarily by Marinell’s mother. I also suspect that the relation of Malbecco to the satyrs is not wholly unconnected with the relation of Scudamour to the demons of Busirane. Amoret has the role of a female Prometheus, with some Psyche overtones, whereas Florimell has the role of Proserpine. The implication is that the symbols of Prometheus and Proserpine are closely connected in Spenser’s symbolism. Notice too the parallelism of the assault on the castle here with the assault on Malbecco’s castle in canto 9. This castle of course, being the castle of desire, is itself in flames.
[148] Around the archaic theme of the passage through the ring of fire Spenser has woven many different themes. Britomart in the first place is a kind of Brynhilde, except that she has more luck getting through it. Actually it’s Amoret who is surrounded with the fiery wall. There are Biblical references to the three Israelites in Daniel, to the passage across the Red Sea, and to Peter’s walking on the water. Very subtle too is the Titanic image used by Britomart in stanza 22 and its sudden reversal into the figure of Jove’s thunderbolt in stanza 25.291 The references to Mulciber—there are several in this book—may be only conventional.292
[149] Stanza 28 brings back the tapestry symbol, along with the theme of the concealed gold, which carries over from book 2 and here relates to the theme of the concealed Cupid. It is explicitly linked with the image of the golden snake in the green grass,293 which has overtones ranging from the fall of man to the figure of Jealousy at the beginning of the canto. It also links the form of this canto with that of the mythological poem. Stanza 29 presents Cupid as the one successful Titanic rebel against the gods. After this it is not surprising to find the gods repeating some of the symbols attached to Love. Notice that in proportion as Cupid is revealed the gods in love take to disguise. In stanza 30 Jove is described as thundering (a parody of stanza 25), as “slaking his scalding smart,” which repeats stanza 26; as perverting Helle, which echoes the name of Hellenore, and as commanding the seas, which links with practically everything in the book. Danae’s golden shower repeats the theme of concealed gold, and is linked with an iron door. The reference to Mount Ida in stanza 34 repeats the speech of Paridell, and the reference to the satyrs, the fire, and the serpent in stanza 35 are all thematic. So is the reference to the adultery of Mars & Venus in stanza 36, the reference to Daphne, in the same stanza, and the reference to Hyacinth in stanza 37. The reference to Phaeton in stanza 38 is probably thematic too as it’s come up before.
[150] The reason for all this stretto of themes is that the theme of the love of the gods inspired the Metamorphoses of Ovid and the theme of metamorphosis is simply the theme of the dissolving of form, as Ovid says in the first line of his poem. Spenser is giving this a Christian twist by showing that the whole of paganism, like the whole of the Court of Love, is within the order of nature. The whole argument of Ovid’s poem, as Spenser read it, shows, not only that the worship of gods is nature worship, but that all nature worship is erotic in origin. There is probably a reference too to the origin of giants in Gen. 6.
[151] The references to Neptune in stanza 40 are also roughly thematic, even allowing for the fact that by this time Spenser has settled down to straight cribbing from Natalis Comes. The thing to keep in mind is mainly the connection between the erotic dart and the bleeding heart with the torturing of Amoret. In stanza 46 we pick up a kind of Danse Macabre in which the hero is love instead of death.294 The broken arrows of line 7 are linked with the shield of Britomart,295 and I’m certain that the bloody river of line 8 is to be connected with the Adonis theme.
[152] The altar brings us to the kind of imagery that Spenser often uses for his final revelations of falsehood. The association of Cupid’s wings with the rainbow seems to have some affinities with the concealed snake, although there is more to it than that, apart from the pun on the word “bow.” The dragon underneath him is repeated in book 5—for that matter it’s repeated in the vision of Venus in book 4. It ties up the ambiguity between Cupid and Christ. The dragon is morally lust, and what we almost have is a vision of the counterpart of the victorious St. George in the order of nature.
[153] The theme of concealing gold goes on to stanza 51,296 and the explicit statement associating false love with monstrous forms helps to establish the whole connection between Cupid & Adonis, the energy of love with the father of forms. Cupid’s triumph is portrayed as a tyranny, largely because it is, like tyranny, the assertion of an unconditioned will. As for the motto, I give it up.297
[154] The scene is presented in terms of the chapel perilous, and Spenser pays much more attention to his atmosphere than usual. The repetition of a sacrificial ritual every night has the psychological reference of neurosis. The wind, thunder and earthquake are partly titanic symbols. The immediate following of the storm by the masque is very effective, and the sudden appearance of pantomime is exactly what is needed poetically.
[155] The masque of love-gods is very like the procession of the seven deadly sins in book 1. The insistence on the ordered march of couples is connected with the ambiguous nature of sensual love, which always includes hatred as part of itself. Stanza 5 refers to the importance of poetry in erotic sentiment, which has already come up in connection with Paridell. The temptation of music in stanza 6 follows a familiar pattern & has come up before in Joyous Gard. The trumpets are far more effective, and fit very well with the theme of the church of love triumphant. Our first concrete reference is again to Troy, and it is followed by a reference to Hylas298 which is one of many references to the boy friends of heroes and gods. The painted plumes of stanza 8 repeats [repeat] the theme of the rainbow in the previous canto. Stanza 9 gives us the stock symbol of desire as a flame.
[156] Most of the couples represent more or less sham opposites. The opposition of Fancy and Desire picks up the theme of the sensuality of youth carried over from book 2. In other words, Busirane is Acrasia grown up. Doubt and Danger need no comment, nor does Fear, though he is well described. As for Hope, one may notice the hostile reference to the Catholic rite of aspersion,299 and the slight link with Chaucer’s House of Fame. The couples are also appropriate to a love pageant, but their ambiguity belongs to passion; there are seven couples, as there are seven deadly sins.
[157] The figure of Amoret with the wound in her side and her removed heart has several ramifications. In the first place, it is an emblem of the Christian Passion on the level of the order of nature—notice in this connection the typical ambiguity in the word “passion.” The symbols take us back to the original phallic origin of the symbols that later became the bleeding lance and the holy grail, whether Spenser knew this or not. How much Court of Love influence there was on the 17th century cult of the Sacred Heart it would be hard to say. The red and white of stanza 20 are the “amorous” colours, and the “wide wound” repeats the bloody river of the previous canto. There is some anticipation of the story of Serena in book 6, but more important here is the allegory which shows us that sadism is the final fruit of passion. This comes out very clearly in stanza 22.300 Notice that Cupid’s darts in stanza 23 have taken the place of Jove’s thunderbolts, which carries on the theme of the usurpation of all natural power by love in stanza 35 of canto 11.
[158] The difference between the characters in front of Cupid and the characters behind him is largely the difference between the binge and the hangover.301 To what extent the whole masque is to be read as a projection of the mind of Amoret is hard to say: there is a hint of it in stanza 26.302 I don’t quite understand why Britomart has to wait for a second masque before she can rescue Amoret, but the repetition and the theme of the vigil belongs to the tradition of romance. More important is the establishing of the theme of cycle in nature—solar this time rather than seasonal as elsewhere in the book.
[159] Amoret is even more of a female Prometheus the second time than the first, and the iron bands which tie her to the pillar are almost a parody of the symbol of the golden girdle. The magical characters of Busirane represent, besides magic, the theme of love perverted to compulsion, as well of course as continuing the theme of sadism. The general pattern of the symbolism unites the themes of passion, regression, cruelty & mastery—an important group of associations. Notice the pun in the word “charms” in stanza 31.303
[160] The symbol of red & white, as well as the erotic knife, is transferred to Britomart in stanza 33.304 From there on we get the symbols—the paralyzed lady, the enchanter who has to reverse his own spell, and the imperfect rescue—which Milton took over for Comus. The link between the two poets provided by the form of the masque should also be noticed. The reviving river in Spenser has to wait for another book. But after all Comus is a kind of distillation of the whole symbolism of books 3 & 4, if not 2 as well. Only, I think Milton attaches a greater sense of objective reality to the enchanter’s magic. Spenser seems to regard the results of passion as in some profound sense illusory, hence the statements that all these phenomena completely disappeared when the spells were reversed (stanzas 37, 38). This is consistent with something which’ goes very deep in Spenser: he has a very strong feeling for the beast that “is not and yet is” [Revelation 17:8]. With stanza 42 we may compare the whole theme of the stripping of Duessa in book 1.305 Note that this kind of illusion is essentially false or demonic creation. The grief of Busirane at the destruction of his work is that of a demonic artist,306 but probably gave to Milton some suggestions for his treatment of hell as an imitation of heaven.
[161] There are two quite different conclusions to book 3. The second one of 1596 has an uneasy close, on a dominant 7th as it were. Britomart returns with Amoret to find Scudamour gone: one thinks of the desertion of Beowulf by his companions at noon. This conclusion makes of book 3 an uncompleted story, and makes us turn over the page to book 4, which appears for the first time of course in the 1596 edition. In the 1590 edition, where nothing followed book 3, he had to come to a full close, and it is very interesting that in describing the embrace of Scudamour and Amoret he uses the word hermaphrodite. The implication is that he wants this symbol to stand at the climax of his allegory of love. And when he decides to continue his allegory into another book, we are not surprised to find the hermaphrodite symbol recurring at the climax of that book, the appearance of Venus in canto 10.
[162] Books 3 & 4 are called by Spenser the legends of chastity & friendship respectively. Actually, they work out as the legends of love & honour. Spenser is convinced, almost obsessed, with the idea that love & honour must go together: he would be helpless trying to deal with the sort of conflicts between them that we get in French classical drama. For that reason, if for no other, the arguments of books 3 & 4 are closely intertwined. Yet Spenser puzzles the reader by his 4th book. One cannot imagine how his final book would have got it going. There is no quest whatever, and the alleged heroes have disappeared by the 4th canto. It is, in short, a reflective commentary on book 3; but even at that, its comment seems to make sense only in terms of symbolism rather than allegory, if for once we can make this dubious distinction. The real connecting link between love & friendship is through the theme of platonic love, the love of the man for the boy that has as its object the education of the boy & his admission to an aristocratic community. Some obscure intimation of this link no doubt accounts for Spenser’s reference to Plato in his introduction. Unfortunately, he didn’t read Plato.
[163] What he is chiefly interested in in book 4 as in all the 2nd part, is in the growing of individual or private virtue into a community. This community is for Spenser a purely aristocratic one, and for that reason The Faerie Queene comes to a sterile & indecisive close. There are a few glints of a deeper understanding: that the form of such a vision must be a community of producers and not of rulers, but these are not carried through. Spenser gets as far as the conquest of courtesy over rudeness, which is far enough for him to recognize the importance of words, to introduce himself as poet, and to get a slight glimpse of what we might today call the idea of the university. But he is blinded and misled by the illusion of chivalry and by the preoccupation with the search for a ruling class. The most we get, therefore, is a shape a little like the lunar cycle in Yeats, who probably got some of it from Spenser anyway. At the beginning we have the knight of the word, who achieves a supernatural incarnation of self-fulfilment like Yeats’ phase fifteen. At the end we have the knight of words, representing the aristocratic or historical manifestation of the hero. Thus the total scheme in Spenser is the Renaissance allegory of heavenly and earthly counterparts. For the proper climax, the opposition of spiritual reality and physical illusion, we have to wait for Milton. In any case, just as the allegory of private virtue leads to the vision of the original, erotic, phallic Holy Grail, so the allegory of public virtue leads to the vision of the round table which is the body of Arthur.
[164] It is rather curious that Spenser, in picking up the narrative thread of book 3, should tell us that the masque of Busirane which Britomart saw was a real masque at Amoret’s wedding, at which she was abducted.308 In other words, the masque as masque carries off Amoret and then becomes an allegory. Of what, I am not sure; but the curiously archaic quality of the story is striking. There are times when one wishes that Spenser had let himself go more, particularly as the stories of Amoret & Florimell (which he associates in stanza 1) are so close to the theme of the dying and reviving female in Shakespeare. I have no notion whether the name of Busirane is intended to suggest anything Egyptian or not, though two things might be noted: one, the use of the Osiris & Isis myth in book 5, and 2, the possibility of a natural counterpart to the theme of the captivity of the church.
[165] Spenser makes it clear that he is going to use the themes of masque & disguise recurrently: the word masque, besides its use in stanza 3, is repeated in stanzas 7, 14, and 17. The symbolism is as usual linked with the disguise of Britomart, which reminds the modern reader a little of Balzac’s ambiguous Seraphita.309 The castle of canto 1 is in some respects a reduplication of Joyous Gard, but there is far more insistence on the themes of symposium, harmony and fellowship. Britomart’s courtesy to the unnamed knight who wants Amoret is otherwise a pointless episode. Notice too, that the theme of enchantment is associated with Britomart herself in stanza 14, and the lovely image in stanza 13 is also a repetition of similar images of the corresponding canto in book 3.310 Similarly, the theme of the rainbow hues of Cupid, which in its turn was a modulation of the theme of variable form connected with Proteus, is attached to Duessa in stanza 18.
[166] Duessa is introduced again partly because of the reference to the golden chain of friendship in canto 9 of book 1.311 This golden chain is the embryo of all Spenser’s images of community, and is linked both with the round table and with the Garter, though neither reference is explicit. In this book it modulates into the image of Florimell’s golden girdle, which incorporates the theme of chastity into that of friendship.
[167] The larger implications of this are that book 3, which ends with the epiphany of Cupid, deals with love, which is a manifestation of cosmic energy; whereas book 4, ending with the epiphany of Venus, deals with beauty, which is a manifestation of cosmic order. Thus book 3 is in the realm of Mutability, and book 4 in the realm of Jove. In book 3 the primal energy of nature is distributed from the gardens of Adonis down into living beings. In book 4 the primal order is distributed from the heavens into the world. Hence the reference to the golden chain of the order of nature. This golden chain is doubtless the chain of being, but it seems to me more of a horizontal chain, like Vaughan’s ring,312 than a vertical one. The social virtues begin with the concord or harmony of the stellar order, which spreads downward through the round table into a community which is naturally individualistic. If we were moving on the level of the order of grace, there would be references also to the communion of saints and to angelic intelligences. But of course in so far as order manifests itself as beauty, it must appear in the form of the community of ladies who struggle to get into Florimell’s girdle. The musical ramifications of the symbols of concord & discord don’t need to be followed up, as Spenser was no musician.
[168] The opposite of all this is Ate, the principle of discord who appears in the first canto as the direct opposite of the main theme regularly does. Ate is the principle of the historical cycle and of the wheel of fortune, and she is given her proper link with the judgment of Paris. Troy of course reappears in stanza 22, and the whole theme of the ruins of time with it. It is hardly too much to say that Ate is actually the principle of time as she certainly is the driving force of mutability. Spenser seems to be making a good deal of gold images: we have the golden apple of stanza 22 and the golden fleece of st. 23, besides the golden chain of stanza 30. It is even more interesting that Ate is associated with cannibalism. This comes out in the “bloody feast” of stanza 23, and the references to bread and blood in stanza 26.313 The latter almost amounts to a parody of the Eucharist, and suggests the link between the conceptions of community and communion—a further development of the red and white imagery. The image of duplicity (always associated with Duessa in any case) is reinforced by the theme of the conflicting hands of stanza 29, picked up again in stanza 40, and a carry-over from stanza 12 of canto 12, book 3.314 One may also mention the unequal horses of canto 5, book 1. There is even a parody of the natural cycle tying up with the historical one, in stanza 31.315
[169] In this book Paridell is no longer presented sympathetically: he becomes one of a sizable group of promiscuous and maiden-snatching knights. The constant abductions help the narrative to move, although they confuse it too. They carry on the theme of the forcing of love: in stanza 39 Blandamour is said to hate Scudamour because he has won his love “by right.” It is interesting that the same remark made by Britomart in canto 1 of book 3 about love & mastery is repeated by Duessa in the corresponding canto here.316 Evidently whores can quote the Court of Love just as devils can quote Scripture.
[170] From here on Spenser uses (as in stanza 42) a great many images of collision of two similar things;317 they keep going well through book 5, and seem to have something to do with the idea of the similarity of opposites. For the rest, there is little new in this first canto: in the moral allegory Ate can do little more than Occasion in book 2, and the impotence of Glauce is a violent manipulation of the narrative. The theme of the importance of good words in maintaining peace, which is so fully developed in book 6, has already begun. The canto ends in one of the silliest scenes in all Spenser.318
[171] It is interesting that in this second part Spenser seems to be moving toward the conception of an epic conflict between the true and the false word. Hence the reference to the passage on the false tongue in the Epistle of James [1:26, 3:5–10], and the references to Orpheus & David.319 The allusion to musicians helps to round out the conception of “harmony” which belongs in a treatment of friendship: but the full implications of the conflict between good words and slander belong to book 6. Their importance in book 4 is somewhat repetitive. What is much more important is the rounding out of the conception of community by referring to the community of poets. It is in this canto that he refers to himself as continuing the tradition of Chaucer; and in the next one that he makes his only explicit reference to Ariosto.320 In the background there appears dimly the image of three poets, Chaucer, Ariosto and Spenser, three bodies all informed by the same spirit. In other words, tradition is to be regarded, in a book on friendship, as a simultaneous community.
[172] The beginning of this canto deals only with love on the lowest rung of the erotic ladder, where Cupid’s dart is pure stimulation. Hence the images in stanzas 4 & 5 of wandering, wavering and random experience. It is important to realize that this kind of love, which is really lust, works against the community, by dividing man from man and making them rivals in pursuit of the same woman. This is another way of saying that Blandamour and Paridell are really little boys showing off. The reference to gold in stanza 9 is thematic, and the caressing rhythm of lines 4 & 5 belongs to the rhetoric chapter.321 Notice that, in connection with stanza 10, lust expresses itself on the woman’s side as coyness and teasing, which of course carries on the dialectic of book 2. The process ends in the image of dividing the woman in stanza 13.322
[173] There is a recurrent tone of irony all through this canto which runs all through the account of the fight in stanzas 17 & 18. The irony is connected with the presence of the false Florimell, simultaneously with the reference to the golden girdle of the true Florimell. The allegory of the latter is given in the alexandrine of stanza 29,323 and the same stanza carries on the theme of the hiding or concealing gold which has run all through the two previous books, and here connects the images of true and false friendships.
[174] As for the reference to Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, and the promise to continue it, I’m not sure what to do. The alexandrine of stanza 34324 suggests that Spenser read allegory into Chaucer and was going to show what that allegory was, but I don’t believe it. What he is really interested in is in developing the theme of friendship in its cosmological terms. Friendship is ultimately the expression of a single human soul in a variety of bodies, the natural equivalent of the mystical body of the church. Natural counterpart or not, Spenser uses the name Agape, which he must have known was St. Paul’s charity. The drowsy harmonic chiming of stanzas 41 & 42 are attempts to portray the unity of soul in the three bodies—what Sir Thomas Browne calls “a pretty trinity.”325 On the other hand, while I can see that Spenser’s meaning is partly that love is as strong as death, I cannot imagine why he ascribes folly to a character bearing the sacred name of Agape. Notice however that Agape’s power over the Fates is derived from occult knowledge of nature (stanza 44).326 The vision of the Fates seems too big for its context: notice however that book 4, like book 3U begins with benevolent magic. There are suggestions that Spenser is tiring, not only in the over-use of soft double rhymes, but in the promises to continue the story in another canto, which increase from here on. For the rest, it is important, though inevitable, that the Fates should be declared to be more powerful than all the gods: we arrive here at the limits of the order of nature. The repetition of the references to Chaos and Demogorgon327 seem to suggest that Spenser regards the realm of Chaos as surrounding the order of nature like an ocean round an island, only vertical; the top as well as its bottom. As usual, the dark vision of life for Spenser is the fatalistic one, not false, but not complete. It is interesting that Spenser regards Chaos as a realm in which chance and necessity become the same thing. The reason for Agape’s request and the suddenness with which it is granted seem to me both signs of importance.
[175] Spenser got hold of a thoroughly bad idea in this canto, and about the best thing one can say of it is that whatever else one may say of Spenser, he is no quitter. Two things may be noted. First, it’s an excellent example of the way in which myth and morality, subconscious creative urge and conscious manipulation of it, so often clash. The myth is a folklore one, like the story of Atalanta’s race, and only on that basis is the story tolerable. Secondly, a strong sense of the shape of natural life, subject as it is to the play of circumstance, hangs over all the beginning of this book. In this canto the tournament becomes a symbol of the battlefield of life, in which the circumstances surrounding suffering and violence seem to be as irrational as a nightmare. The boasting, the fury and the apparent moral rationalization of an essentially vicious and absurd situation has in it the kind of metaphysical absurdity that the existentialists talk about. Notice too that the passage of the souls of the brothers into one another repeats the pattern of the passage of the soul of Chaucer into Spenser. The image also links itself with the natural image of death and revival derived from the Gardens of Adonis: this is brought out in stanza 23 and to a lesser extent in stanza 21. The image in stanza 23 is probably borrowed from Tasso, & the reference in stanza 45 may actually be to Tasso.328 In this canto too, Spenser follows the spirit of Malory very closely, as though he were trying to draw together his whole tradition at this point. If so, the episode of the Fates is there because it’s in Virgil.329 And although there’s a general pretence that the dialectic of Christiantity is not involved, it hovers over it in the name of Agape.
[176] Cambell’s ring, which makes him invulnerable, helps to make the fight ridiculous, as it does not enter the moral allegory, as Britomart’s spear does. Cambell seems to be a curiously sinister figure—invulnerability usually is ascribed in folk-lore to giants—and opposite him we have the regular three sons of the folk-tale. I’m not sure why the ring seems to breed so many images of revival and the returning of spring: see, for instance, stanza 29.330 The image of the tidal bore may be more significant than it seems.331 It certainly fits into the theme of cyclic life.
[177] This lunatic Valhalla is finally ended by the descent of Canace, who comes in exactly like the deus ex machina of Euripides. There is in fact, an explicit reference to the theatre in stanza 37. She is also the daughter of Agape, and consequently the agent of charity. That is, she brings peace and reconciliation, which suggests that Spenser took the real continuation of the Squire’s Tale to be the one that follows it—The Franklin’s Tale. The symmetry of the scene, with Cambina sitting opposite to Canace, has been quite carefully worked out. Canace’s role as an angel or messenger on the level of nature is indicated by the reference to Mercury and his caduceus.332 The parallelism with the order of grace is further marked by the close resemblance to Fidelia in book 1, with her cup and serpent. The theme of the friendly serpent in stanza 42 is connected with the serpent in the Temple of Venus, as well as with Esculapius. They, like the lions in stanza 39, represent the controlled energy of friendship. For Spenser, friendship is the opposite of hatred, not of indifference. Friendship is of no value unless it has the energy which is perverted by hatred. In fact the hatred does not disappear at all, but is merely transferred to real enemies. The base born spirit, Spenser says, can neither love nor hate. The passing of hatred into friendship is a moral revolution, which turns courage into a crusade. Notice that canto 3, which is prior in time to canto 2, represents the archetype against which the events of canto 2 down to stanza 30 are projected. This technique of the background archetype should be studied all through.
[178] Canace’s rod and cup are perhaps intended to recall the providential symbols of the 23rd Psalm. She is, by the way, explicitly called an angel in stanza 39.333 The cup brings the symbol of communion into the theme of community again, and stanza 44 marks the vertical cleavage between the two orders.334 The only explicit reference is to the contrast of heaven & earth, but the larger pattern is there. That is, the communion of heroes is midway between the communion of saints and the communion of chivalry. The rod of benevolent magic in stanza 46 has a curious echo of the crossing of the Red Sea which is perhaps worth following up, and comparing with stanza 27.335 The cup is explicitly described as golden in stanza 48, which is perhaps the culmination of all the images of true gold in these first three cantos. In any case, the pact at the end of the canto contrasts with the discords of cantos 1 & 2, and leads directly to the tournament in the following canto, which latter is now put on its proper symbolic basis.
[179] The canto needs some checking up for sources, not for the battle, where the Kilkenny cats put on a better show, but for the references to Canace in Ovid and Gower. I think Canace is deeply involved with a brother in both. As for Warton’s reference to Antoninus Liberalis, that can wait its turn.336
[180] The tournament in this canto symbolizes the energetic community of chivalry controlling its own courage in a larger unit. The circular stage makes it a kind of dramatic archetype, a round table in action. It is notable also for deepening and rounding out the symbolism of Braggadocchio. Here he appears primarily as a brother, and the boaster, the man who is all words and no action, is a symbol of the false word, along with Ate and Duessa. It is particularly important that in stanza 14 Br. [Braggadocchio] is described as wanting to be admired. He is thus the anarchic or atomic individual. That he is also the “mock-knight,” the miles gloriosus or alazon, goes without saying. Spenser’s anti-realism makes Br. a pure boaster, as he is as incapable of expanding such a character into a Falstaff as of expanding one of his cowardly dwarfs into a Sancho Panza. The word “folk-moot” in stanza 6 is of considerable importance, as it shows how completely for Spenser the aristocracy monopolizes the idea of community. Spenser is one of the earliest bourgeois masochists. Note in passing that Br.’s “bright arms” and his mask are symbols of hypocrisy like the gilding on Caiaphas in Dante.337
[181] The ark of gold in which Florimell’s girdle is kept has overtones of the Court of Love mythology (stanza 15, lines 2 and 3), but it also carries on the Exodus symbolism hinted at in stanza 46 of the previous canto, and which is consistent with the vision of the formation of a community under the law, more specifically the law of natural affection. The image of the female will which is suggested by the girdle & the ark is carried on by the fact that the side of Satyrane is called the Knights of Maidenhead.
[182] There is no point in following out the details of the tournament, but there are three days, and the entrance of Sir Artegall indicates that Artegall contains within himself the symbol of the green man in the forest. This is not only consistent with Spenser’s conception of Justice as the law of nature, but indicates the very conservative and unimaginative twist that Spenser gives to the conception of Robin Hood. Spenser can conceive the eventual destruction of time, but not of justice. The victory of Britomart on the 3rd day means, of course, the victory of fertility rather than sterility, hence the correct fertility image of stanza 47,338 which accompanies the triumph of the knight of maidenhead. Note that in this canto Artegall not only defeats Satyrane, but in a sense absorbs him.
[183] A canto of Mars is followed by one of Venus. Florimell’s girdle of chastity is said to have belonged to Venus, though how she managed to keep it on Spenser doesn’t say. Implied here is a division, traditional in Court of Love mythology, between the higher and the lower Venus. The girdle was made by Vulcan, which links up with several Vulcan allusions; and the episode is designed to add marriage to the symbols of love & friendship. The fact that Florimell was brought up by the Graces links her dimly with the fourth Grace in book 6. Incidentally, I think the Florimell-Prosperpine links may be stronger than they look, if one thinks of Ovid rather than of Claudian or Chaucer. In a sense Britomart perhaps, and Belphoebe certainly, are rebels against Venus, and Florimell is brought over to Venus’ side through the agency of an underworld god, as in Ovid.
[184] Spenser has an awkward snag to get over in explaining why the false Florimell wins the beauty contest. The theme of concealing gold turns up in stanza 15, but the whole idea of the counterfeit seems to me to be pushed further than it will go. It means partly that the tournament is held over an illusion: over the wintry predominance of false Court of Love values. The fact that she goes over to Braggadocchio is easier. He represents what Mill would call the self-regarding principle.339 The later associations of Br. [Braggadocchio] with the false sun, developed in book 5, are part of the same symbolism. The implication is that the false values which give the prize to the false Florimell are connected with passion, which is essentially self-regarding, and hence destroys the chivalric order of love and friendship.
[185] The episode of Scudamour at the house of Care is a good example of the fact that the easier Spenser’s argument is morally, the harder it is to fit it into the mythical argument. This is awkward for me, as the mythical argument is one of the great discoveries of my book, and whenever Spenser ignores it he lets me down. It is perhaps best to regard the house of Care as a symbolic reduplication of the victory of the false Florimell. The descent from the clattering hardware of the tournament to the pounding hammers of the blacksmith shop is quite easy as a descent from conscious to subconscious levels. The episode itself is beautifully written. The image of the blacksmith shop expresses very beautifully the automatic pounding of the “careful” mind in insomnia. It may be worth noting, too, that this is the only time before book 6 that Spenser shows any respect for sleep. He shows very well too how utterly irrational this kind of care is (stanza 38), and he is at his best in the kind of in-and-out allegory, moving from inside the mind to the projected outward scene, that he does far too seldom. The fact that Scudamour has this care is a narrative bungle on Spenser’s part: it happens because Glauce doesn’t think to tell him that Britomart is a woman, even when Scudamour nearly kills her for not doing so. There are some fine touches in the imagery, however: the line in stanza 33 “of many iron hammers beating ranke” is nearly as good as Shakespeare’s “with busy hammers closing rivets up” [Henry V, act 4, Chorus, 1. 13]. The regular repetition and the comparison of the hammers to a set of bells in stanza 36 is excellent, and the use of the figure of the diabolic smith is interesting. I don’t know whether blacksmiths still worked at night in London, or whether Spenser had been reading Chaucer: he can hardly have seen that wonderful alliterative poem on blacksmiths.340 Notice too Spenser’s shrewd comment on the anxiety dream in stanza 43:341 an allegorical poet’s opinion of dreams is always important. In stanza 44 we get a modulation of the torn out heart image, and in stanza 45 there are some fine rhetorical tricks.342 The whole episode represents the katabasis, which we find in every book, and very frequently in the fifth canto.
[186] In this book Spenser’s technique of versification changes slightly: the feminine rhymes are risky, but they never quite land him in doggerel. This is because he is neither bored nor irritable, as he is in book 5. But he does seem to be gathering speed: one infallible sign of impatience to get on with the story is the use of the alexandrine as filler. One gets the general impression that Spenser for the first time is relapsing into narrative for the sake of narrative.
[187] There is very little of interest in this canto: the fight between Artegall and Britomart repeats the theme of friendship reconciling two fighters. As before, the friendship is brought about by a woman, as Glauce finally says her piece. Scudamour is reconciled too, though, as he addresses Britomart as “sir,” he seems to be still confused. It is important that Spenser has nothing to substitute for the Court of Love: he attaches its conventions to marriage, but that is all. Artegall makes a religion out of his love (stanza 22) and a goddess out of Britomart (stanza 24); and the bond of friendship (stanza 31) is the regular Renaissance conception of love as the climax of courtly education. The realistic details are those of a Grade B movie: Britomart is allowed to perspire daintily and that is all. The fact that Britomart (stanza 10) carries on a great number of gold images seems curious, as she doesn’t have them in book 3, and is associated with the moon in book 5.
[188] At the same time, I think the 4th book is intended to be the most platonic one of all. Bk. 3 dealt with images of love, and uses the images of heat and energy, from the comet of canto 1 to the ring of fire in canto 12, both of which are spoken of as typical images of love in “December.” Book 4 is intended to deal with a number of linked platonic conceptions: beauty, community, and the world of forms. Hence the epiphany of Britomart belongs to friendship and the recognition of the form of beauty by the soul in the lover. On the other hand, the false Florimell goes with the world of shadows, the lower half of the divided line in which boasting, cowardice and egotism belong. Hence this canto has the middle position of the appearance of Una among the satyrs in book one. It even has an ironic aspect in the way it anticipates the fight of Artegall and Radigund in book 5. It also marks the accomplishment of Britomart’s actual quest, and it is therefore appropriate that Scudamour should be reconciled in this canto.
[189] Spenser begins this canto by asking Cupid why he keeps his heroines in so much trouble. The answer is that otherwise Spenser couldn’t keep his soap opera formula going. I can make very little out of the abduction of Amoret by a monster who sounds like something in a picture by Piero di Cosimo. Surely he doesn’t mean that Amoret actually succumbs to lust, in the way that Scudamour succumbs to Care in book 5. The writing is better: the double rhyme of stanza 8 and the rhythm of the 3rd line of stanza 9 and of the 7th line of stanza 4 are all noteworthy.343 There is a certain anticipation of the theme of the cannibal feast in book 6, and the giant here, who means lust, suggests some of the moral allegory of the later scene. The giant rapes his victims first and then devours them—eats his cake and has it too, so to speak. The pursuing of women by something beyond the human world suggests Ovid, and Ovidian imagery is very important. In stanza 22 we get the same pair Myrrha and Daphne, that we got in book 3;344 and the whole canto reads like a reversion to book 3.1 don’t suppose there is anything Irish about the giant, but his sadism belongs to a pattern that is much more important in book 6 (see stanza 26).345 I don’t suppose either that there can be any question of a natural counterpart to the Resurrection, in spite of the curious phrasing of stanza 20:346 but there is a suggestion of the death and revival of the female principle which reminds one a little of Shakespearean comedy. There is another descent paralleling the one in canto 5, but this suggests a community on the level of suffering and misfortune: hence the chain in stanza 14.347 Spenser’s moral allegory seems to me to be badly addled: the cave seems to be appropriate to the character of Emilia but not of Amoret, and the cooperative old woman of stanza 19, who seems to be an admirable example of self-sacrifice, turns up in stanza 34 covered with all sorts of moral obloquy.348 The imagery of resurrection is developed in stanza 33, and the whole scene of the virgin huntress at the mouth of a cave of death is something that could have been much further developed. In any case Spenser has not realized the theme of the suffering community, which is what he wants here: he is too hag-ridden morally to accept the idea of undeserved suffering. He speaks of hell in stanza 11, but he thinks only of the orthodox hell in which everyone is getting his just deserts. One wishes here, as in the Busirane episode, that Spenser would tells us more about Amoret’s private life.
[190] The story of Belphoebe and Timias seems to have been included by Spenser solely to get Sir Walter Raleigh in better favour with the queen, in case the queen happened to read book 4. It’s very curious how bored with it Spenser actually is: this is shown by the extraordinary jerks in the narrative. I cannot imagine who the “lovely boy” of stanza 23, is, unless Timias himself. Notice too what a curious twist is given to the regular appearance of Arthur in this part of the book: he is simply brought in not to recognize his own squire, and that is the only tag end of narrative that is not cleared up until book 6. The phrase in stanza 42, “the wandering wood,” makes one wonder how far the opening forest of error extends over fairyland. The explicit reference to Diana and Niobe in stanza 30 adds to the many Diana and Cynthia allusions.349 One almost wonders about the possibility of a link between Timias and Endymion, or at least of the cave with the cave of Latmus.
[191] The bulk of this canto is taken up with more of the Timias-Belphoebe foolishness, which is broken off abruptly in stanza 17. There is not much in it that I see except the use of the folk-lore theme of the tell-tale bird in reverse.350 Also, in stanza 6, Spenser imports the heart-shaped ruby of Chaucer’s Troilus. It has a gold chain to tie it thematically to this book. Belphoebe’s speech brings in the word “grace,” which suggests the whole Court of Love ambiguity of that word.351 Note too, in stanza 15, the religious application of the theme of generosity in friendship. The combination of soul, world and God shows a rather unusual organization. The phrase “restore to light” in stanza 17352 attempts to make the story contrapuntal to the previous story of the giant’s cave. In Prince Arthur’s search for him [Timias] in stanza 18, Spenser seems to be saying that time does not exist in fairyland except as a mental category. The fact simplifies some of Spenser’s narrative problems.
[192] Evidently the giant of the previous canto does not have a name: he seems to be a perfunctory symbol of lust, and that no doubt is why he has to be killed by Belphoebe (stanza 29 of canto 7). The effect on the two women modulates into the figure of Slander, but I don’t think the giant represents that, as he would in book 6. The appearance of Slander has several points of interest, besides her derivation from Ovid. First, she represents a counterpoint to the story of Timias. Second, she continues the theme of false words begun by Ate: see especially stanza 26. Third, she has not only damaged Raleigh’s life, but Spenser’s own, and Spenser has a personal interest in her. It seems curious that Prince Arthur and his two women should plant themselves on Slander all night, even when she never stops scolding.
[193] The appearance of Slander is expertly dove-tailed with a digression on the golden age which is also Spenser’s apology for the fact that his flower of chivalry travels all over the country with unchaperoned women.353 Nothing in the whole of Spenser [better?] indicates his total rejection of satire & realism, if not of humour, from the Faerie Queene. In a sense his apology anticipates the reader, who is assumed probably to have read Ariosto on the subject of chaperonage. It is a great pity that Cervantes never read the Faerie Queene. The description of the golden age itself is partly Ovidian and partly Boethian. The attribution of primal innocence to fairyland, however absurd in the narrative, modulates the theme of the Gardens of Adonis into its proper book 4 context. Here the age of innocence is primarily an innocent community such as chivalry attempts to reproduce in the aristocracy. The contemplation of beauty (stanza 32) is disinterested: the fall of beauty comes through the desire to possess it. It should be remembered too that only on one level of the allegory is Spenser’s fairy world an antique one: stanza 33 shows that his ideal world is a continuous present, and that the attribution to him of nostalgia for a vanished past is either wrong or needs heavy qualification.354
[194] All the monsters in this book seem to represent much the same kind of lust, and the moral platitudes behind them are much the same in all books. Thus the. Ate of book 4 is a mere duplicate of Occasion in book 2, and the Corflambo who turns up here is not very different from the lust who has just come before him. This represents the same kind of foreshortening that we find the the total plan of the poem. Like Slander, the moral allegory involved with him nearly destroys the visualization. The fiery beams of stanza 39 represent the passionate perversion of a well-known courtly love symbol. I’m not sure why Corflambo is described as a pagan, as it seems inconsistent with the general basilisk and Gorgon imagery, as well as with the curious primitive touch of the second line of stanza 49.355 I think that when Spenser starts to repeat his rhymes that [sic] he is getting bored. The same rhyme runs from stanzas 44 to 47, and stanza 49 has only two rhymes.356
[195] The story of the squire of low degree, whose name is. Amyas, does not seem to have any particular social reference. The theme of the hero imprisoned by an amorous female has not come up before, but the theme of the double-doubles, the two men and the two woman, is a carry-over from canto 3. The situation is a general Sidney Carton one, and calls for no particular comment except to notice that the theme of the lustful man and the regressive mother can be sexually reversed. Corflambo is the regressive father, and once his influence is removed his daughter becomes an acceptable heroine. I don’t know whether it is she or the dwarf who is referred to as “that elf” in stanza 61.
[196] Spenser starts off by defining the three forms of friendship as natural affection, sexual love and friendship proper.357 He goes on, in his usual Hegelian fashion, to speak of these as progressive. Family affection is overmastered by sex, and sex by friendship.358 The implication is that family affection belongs peculiarly to youth and when persisted in unduly may become regressive: hence the association of youth and regressive love in the Bower of Bliss. Here it is linked with Pœana’s regressive father. As for love and friendship, they are related as body and soul, and hence belong to the two stages of the ladder of love. Once again, in stanza 2 we get the gold image.359
[197] A number of symbols follow that have every appearance of being thrown in at random. Why Prince Arthur sticks Corflambo’s head on his shoulders again I don’t know:360 it must have something to do with the conception of a body without a soul which is what Corflambo’s passion would lead to. It is also a sort of parody of the imagery of death and revival that runs all through this episode: compare stanza 7 with stanza 8.361 I don’t know either why Spenser insists so much on the physical similarity of Amyas and Placidas, beyond the fact that similarity of appearance is an obvious symbol of friendship. The fact that Pœana moves from love of father and of lordship (stanza 13) to sexual love rounds out the whole symbol of progress through love to friendship. The passageway from love to friendship is marriage, partly because the Court of Love passion is based on the prolongation of disdain and scorn. In this book Arthur appears as a divine agent of friendship, and as therefore an encourager of marriage. Spenser seems also to be making some point about the potential possessiveness of victory in love which he seems to link with Amoret (stanza 18).362
[198] As in book 3, we find a group of six fighting knights, all supplied with different tastes in love, and all promiscuous: variety apparently goes with lust, as uniformity with friendship. Once again there are several rhyme-links connecting the stanzas. Stanza 23 brings in an interesting image connected with the general association of love and cosmology. The image is that of the storm in winter, connected with the reemergence of chaos, and here linked with the struggle of desire over the false Florimell, who of course is a winter symbol. Here again subjective desire & objective chaos are linked. The variety of dispositions among the six knights is further symbolized by their shifting sides (stanza 26, where the storm image is carried on).363 Again as in book 3, the six knights turn on a seventh, who this time is Arthur, and the presence of Britomart also resembles the scene in book 3. Arthur’s role as a peacemaker, in terms of the storm imagery, links him with the Christ whose walking word can command the waves. The elaboration of Spenser’s imagery in stanzas 33 and 34 shows how important this aspect of the symbolism is.364 The image of the group of six, with the seventh as a sort of keystone, has also come up in the house of Busirane and in the progress of the seven deadly sins in book 1.
[199] There is still some moral allegory connected with Amoret that eludes me: I don’t know why she is always behind the 8-ball, nor why Scudamour’s love for her is never really knit up in the general pact of friendship. His statement in stanza 39 is never contradicted,365 and I don’t know whether Spenser means us to assume that they finally do become happy or not.
[200] The narrative technique of books 3 & 4 makes these books a kind of miniature epic. As with his plan for the entire poem, Spenser not only begins in the middle, but puts the chronological beginning, which is this tenth canto, immediately before the chronological and narrative end, which again is an epithalamion. Hence the temple of Venus is the underlying archetype of both books, just as the Faerie Queene’s court is the underlying archetype of the entire poem. It polarizes, so to speak, the house of Busirane, and around it the love of Scudamour and Amoret elliptically revolves. The top of this purgatorial mountain, to change the symbol, is the ring of fire which only Britomart can go through. In connection with the suggestion of Dante, notice the phallic nature of the Busirane symbols as well as of course their connection with a paradisal garden. Notice too, in the introduction to this canto, the fact that Spenser’s regular trick of plunging into a situation in the middle and then explaining how it came about is here adapted to the theme of friendship. What we get by this adaptation is (in stanza 40 of canto 9) something very similar to the scheme of the Canterbury Tales.366
[201] In book 4 we have the regular loth-canto appearance of a castle, but it should be noticed that Spenser is either forgetting or ignoring what he said in his letter to Raleigh. There is no way of reconciling what he says in that letter with what he says in stanza 4 of this canto.367 We have once again, however, the theme of the emblematic shield, which Spenser, following the example of Achilles in Homer [Iliad, bk.18, 11. 457 ff.], regularly uses. We have Arthur’s shield, which is a solar image and signifies pure revelation; Saint George has his red cross, Guy on his virgin, and Scudamour has the figure of Cupid. Spenser is not sure what Britomart has.368 In any case the shield is a kind of mirror of the world it represents, and Scudamour’s shield is “Venus’ looking glass.”369
[202] Notice that Venus throughout this canto is conceived purely as maternal, and her relation to Cupid is that of a madonna to a god of love in the order of nature. The relation of Venus to Cupid here is thus quite different from her relation to Adonis in book 3, and shows that Spenser is careful to separate the mother from the mistress.
[203] The symbolic apparatus of the temple—the island, the bridge, the moat, the porches and pillars—all belong to that dreamy limbo of symbolism in which the author doesn’t know whether he’s constructing an elaborate phallic symbol or not and doesn’t care. I don’t know why there are twenty knights, unless the fact that Scudamour is the 21st has some relation to love’s coming of age. The pillar in front of the castle with the virginal shield on it is perhaps more deliberately phallic. Once he gets into the castle, cyclic imagery begins to come in, as the first person he meets, the porter, is compared with January.370 The appearance of Delay has for the modern reader a most disconcerting similarity to a sketch in Kafka, which is a good example of the necessary uniformity in symbolism. The whole canto shows how allegory can transform a romantic adventure into a psychological exploration of the soul.
[204] There appears to be a double gate in this temple, and what Spenser means by his reference to a river in stanza 15 with its subtle final tag, I shall have to think about.371 Over all the symbolism there hangs the dark pall of the Oedipus situation: the return to the mother’s womb which is both a discovery of the spirit on the way to nativity, a natural rebirth, and the gateway to erotic conquest. Note that the question asked of Jesus by Nicodemus about the possibility of reentering the maternal womb [John 3:4] has, on one level of symbolism, an affirmative answer. That is why this canto ties up the whole theme of death and rebirth which is carried on in the next two cantos. Shakespeare must have studied this canto very carefully before working out the Demeter and Proserpina symbolism of The Winter’s Tale. The dangerous characters whom Scudamour has to get past are much the same as the characters in the house of Busirane, notably Daunger; and further point to the connection between them. It is important that the temple of Venus is a building and not a garden, and is a place of art (stanza 21) as well as nature. The relation of art to nature is precisely the same as it is in Sidney and the Winter’s Tale.372 Spenser calls it a second Paradise,373 meaning probably the Paradise of the order of nature, the one at the end of the Hymn to Beauty, not second in relation to the Gardens of Adonis. The fact that it is definitely preferred to the Elysian fields374 may mean that the latter, a place of shadows in the underworld, may be identified by Spenser with the Garden of Proserpine in book 2. Stanza 24 contains the unusual image of the paradisal labyrinth, and continues the conception of art as a second nature. It seems to be as innocent a place as anything in the order of nature can be, and the theme of the evolution of sexual love into friendship is carried on in stanza 27.375 Note that the evolution involves the detaching of love from life, and hence from the parabolic rhythm of existence. Also that it’s on the level of friendship that love gains its full power to inspire courage. The theme of frankness in love in stanza 28376 is repeated from the Gardens of Adonis, and the relation of Scudamour to the lovers in the temple is parallel: he has to come up from the Generation world and go back to it again. The place given to friendship, however thematic, seems to give the Diana theme preference over the Venus one. But in stanza 30 the superiority of Venus to Diana is clearly marked; and, even more extraordinary, the temple of Venus is preferred to the Temple of Solomon.377 This last perhaps means that the order of nature & its cycle includes and embraces the orders of history and law. The temple of Venus is thus the full natural counterpart of the city of God. This once established, the central epiphany of the book comes into focus, in spite of the woodenness of the allegory. First of all, we get the paired figures of Love and Hate,378 tying up the earlier point that true friendship is founded on an energetic love which is capable of combat. Hate is the elder brother: the references here are to Cain and Abel and to the fact that Darkness is the elder brother of Light. The supremacy of the younger brother has important symbolic ramifications, ranging from the Old Testament to Finnegans Wake. Actually Spenser’s love and hatred are different from Blake’s clod and pebble love:379 the pebble in Spenser would be more like Braggadocchio, the pure egotism which can neither love nor hate.
[205] Next comes Concord, the personification of the golden chain of friendship which links together all the golden images of this book. She represents cosmological order, and explains why Jove, stuffed shirt as he is, has to prevail over Mutability. She gives the final cosmological windup to the symbols which deal with love as the initiation into a world of forms. She also unfortunately belongs to the general symbolism by which the concord of friends becomes a body of crusaders against disorder. It is in this canto particularly that we realize how the book of beauty and form and the status of friendship is both the tomb of book 3 and the womb of book 5.
[206] There follows the symbol of the altar, which is made out of some kind of solidified quintessence, symbolizing probably the philosopher’s gold.380 The profusion of gold images all through book 4 would lead anyone to suspect some alchemical symbolism. This comes out in stanzas 40 & 41. Here we have the ouroboros, the snake with its tail in its mouth, the veil of nature, and the symbol of the heraphrodite. The fact that Venus is definitely said to be father as well as mother seems to point to a deliberate rejection of the cyclic Adonis imagery from this primary vision of form. Here we have form as a unified conception, and not the driving energetic cycle of forms in the world of mutability, which is generated by love. In short, Venus turns out to be the alchemical res bina.381
[207] It is typical of the way that Spenser works that we should get images contrapuntal to the order of grace just before the paraphrase of Lucretius. In stanza 42 Venus appears in the guise of a natural Sistine Madonna, a counterpart of the charity in book 1. In stanza 43, with its beautiful b rhyme,382 the altar of Venus is compared, with typical Courtly Love ambiguity, to the altar of martyrs in Revelation [6:9–10].
[208] The Lucretius paraphrase,383 beautiful as it is, needs no particular comment beyond the fact that Spenser used it. The opening lines of stanza 47 make Venus the creator and sustainer of the order of nature, its source as well as its final object of contemplation. Venus thus includes the principle of concord, and the epithet “queen of the air” in the same stanza, is important too, as Spenser must have known that title belonged to Juno. Thus the supremacy of Venus to all other goddesses parallels the supremacy of Cupid to all other gods in book 3.
[209] We can skip some of the plastic wood that Spenser has stuck into the allegory, but stanza 50 looks like a kind of seed for L’Allegro and Il Penseroso.384 The fact that Amoret sits on the lap of Womanhood is connected with the general psychological symbolism of the mother passing into the mistress. It looks as though the coming of age theme, which I noted in Scudamour, relates to Amoret too: compare Blake’s Ololon and notice the white robes and the symbol of dawn in stanza 52. The quest is accomplished by the natural equivalent of David’s spoiling of the temple: the theme of sacrilege and the staining of honour is psychologically correct. The fact that Venus cannot be served purely by virgins belongs to the general theme of the supremacy of Venus to Diana.385 The showing of the shield is consistent with its general phallic role, and the whole episode links Amoret with the undeveloped Psyche theme mentioned briefly in book 3.
[210] The whole canto seems a careful parallel to the corresponding canto of book 1. The very subtle reference to Orpheus and Cerberus in stanza 58,386 which anticipates a similar reference at the end of book 6, shows that the killing of an underworld dragon is involved here too. Only instead of the killing of the dragon we get its symbolic equivalent, the freeing of the waters; perhaps the release of the river of stanza 15.