The Faerie Queene

by Edmund Spenser

  19 3 frayed: frightened,

  20 5 strand: ground.

  20 8 hap: mishap.

  21 5 long wandring Greeke: Ulysses, who preferred to return to Penelope rather than to accept the immortality offered by the nymph Calypso (Od. 3). The allusion reinforces the idea of Una’s faithfulness.

  22 3 Kirkrapine: see note to 18.4. 24 4 embost: encased.

  28 5 meere: pure.

  30 1 her seemd: seemed to her.

  30 3 dispence: make up for.

  31 1 beaten: storm-beaten.

  31 3 soust: soaked. Tethys: wife of Oceanus, here ‘the ocean’.

  316 Orions hound: Sirius, the dog star, which brings in the ‘dog days’ of summer’

  31 9 Nereus: a sea god. Cf. IV.11.18 ff. pledg around: drink a toast.

  32 s Neptune: god of the oceans.

  32 9 fell: befelL

  33 S yron: bit.

  33 6 chauffed: heated.

  33 9 Sansloy: ‘-without law’. See note to L2.25.6-9.

  34 8 good hap: good fortune.

  35 3 vainely crossed shield: i.e., vain because the cross here does not protect and because it is almost sacrilegious that Archimago should be carrying such a shield.

  35 5 beare: thrust. 3d 2 reaue: take.

  36 6 Lethe: river of forgetfulness in hell.

  36 8 Furies: spirits of evil and discord who with Cerberus the three-headed dog guard the gate to hell (Met. 4.454). doen aslake: do pacify.

  37 3 in place: i.e., whoever you may be.

  389 round lists: enclosures for tournaments or jousts.

  39 8 Which doen away: i.e., when the swoon was passed.

  41 5 ramping: rearing.

  42 6 chaufed: heated.

  42 7 brand: sword.

  43 4 spill: destroy.

  43 7 will or nill: willing or not, willy-nilly.

  CANTO 4

  1 6 misweening: erroneous opinion.

  2 1 lorne: abandoned.

  2 2 misdeeming: misjudging.

  2 3 borne: carried off.

  2 6 brauely garnished: finely decorated.

  2 8 broad high way: see Matthew 7.13: ‘Enter ye in at the strait gate, for it is the wide gate and broad way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.’

  3 6 lazars: lepers.

  4 4 golden foile: probably taken from OF 6.59, in which Alcana’s palace is made of gold.

  5 1 heape: building; no such usage is recorded in OED. 5 2 wit: skill.

  5 3 mould: structure.

  5 5 sandie hill: see Matthew 7.26-7.

  6 4 Maluenil: ‘evil welcome’, opposite of French ‘bienvenu’, welcome; similar to the character Bel Accueil in Roman de la Rose, 2787 S.

  7 2 Presence: i.e., Lucifera enthroned.

  7 5 richesse: richness.

  81 cloth of State: canopy, baldachin.

  8 s Titans: Saturn’s older brother, a figure of rebellious pride, but here a poetic name for the sun.

  9 1 Phoebus fairest childe: Phaetlon, who stole the chariot of the sun from his father Apollo. Through his act of presumption he destroyed the chariot, himself, and almost the whole world (Met. 2.1-328).

  9 8 rapt: carried away. 10 3 lowly: lowliness.

  10 6 mirrhour: in the Renaissance a mirror could be a symbol either of self-knowledge or, as here, self-love.

  11 1–2Lucifera’s genealogy and name link her with the infernal powers. Her mother and father are king and queen of hell. See Chaucer’s “The Merchant’s Tale’, 2219-318. Her name is derived from ‘Lucifer’, the light-bearer, named in Isaiah 14.12 ff, to which the whole stanza is indebted:

  How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? and cut down to the ground, which didst cast lots upon the nations? Yet thou saidst in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven and exalt my throne above beside the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the Congregation in the sides of the North. I will ascend above the height of the clouds, and I will be like the most high. But thou shalt be brought down to the grave, to the sides of the pit.

  12 7 pollicie: political cunning. 14 7 frounce: frizz or curl.

  14 8 prancke their runes: pleat their ruffs. 16 3 hurtlen: dash. 16 4 Aurora: goddess of dawn, pall: robe.

  16 9 glitterand: glittering.

  17 3 Flora: goddess of flowers and spring. See note to I.1.48.9.

  17 5–9The description of Juno’s chariot is derived from II. 5.720 ff, where the same details occur. Spenser moralizes the episode to symbolize Lucifera’s pride. The peacocks that traditionally draw Juno’s chariot are from Met. 1.588 ff, where Jupiter, surprised by Juno while ravishing Io, turns her into a heifer which he is forced to give to Juno, who puts it in the custody of the hundred-eyed monster, Argus. At Jupiter’s request Mercury through his eloquence puts all hundred eyes to sleep and cuts off the monster’s head. Juno in sorrow places the eyes on the tail of the peacock.

  18 ff Samuel Chew, The Pilgrimage of Life (New Haven, 1962), pp. 70 ff, points out that Spenser’s procession of the seven deadly sins is organized around the medieval concept of the ‘Infernal Trinity’: the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, which is ultimately derived from and related to 1 John 2.16: ‘For all that is in the world (as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life) is not of the Father, but is of the world.’ Sloth, Gluttony and Lechery are of the Flesh; Avarice is of the World; and Envy, Wrath, and Pride are of the Devil. See Morton Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins (Michigan State University, 1952), p. 131 and passim. Subsequent explanations of iconographical details can be verified in Chew.

  18 7 Asse: animal associated sometimes with sloth, as here, and sometimes with humility. See L1.4.

  18 8 habit: clothes of a religious. amis: amice; hood.

  19 1 Portesse: breviary or prayer book, ao 1 esloyne: withdrew.

  20 3 chalenged essoyne: pleaded excuse (legal).

  21 5 Crane: Chew quotes John Davies of Hereford that man would like a neck as long as a crane’s so that meat and drink ‘would longer passe, with pleasure to our mawes’. The source is probably Aristotle, Ethics III.10.10. fyne: extremely thin.

  21 9 spued vp his gorge: vomited.

  22 The description is similar to that of Silenus, the satyr foster father of Bacchus (Met. 11.89-99).

  22 5 somewhat: something, a little bit.

  22 6 bouzing can: drinking cup.

  24 2 bearded Goat: traditional symbol of lechery.

  24 3 whally: there is no reason to accept modern editors’ definition of ‘whally’ as ‘greenish’, derived from the more familiar ‘green-eyed monster’ of Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice 3.2.110 and Othello 3.3.165-7. ‘Whally’ is defined by OED as ‘showing much white, glaring’ and is related to ‘wall-eyed’, a term used for animals in which one eye is much lighter than the other. As such this usage relates Lechery and his goat to Malbecco, Spenser’s most explicit figure of jealousy, one of whose eyes is blind (III. 10).

  25 4 new fanglenesse: new fashions.

  25 8 louing bookes: books about love.

  25 9 bait his fleshly hookes: D. W. Robertson, jr, Preface to Chaucer, p. 399, points out that this is a traditional medieval image from Isidore of Seville and Andreas Capellanus, who claim that the word amor (love) is derived from amus (hook).

  26 7 fowle euill: venereal disease.

  27 2 Camell: the symbolism of the camel ridden by Avarice is ex- plained by Matthew 19.24 (also Mark 10.25 and Luke 18.25): ‘And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.’

  27 5 told: counted.

  28 5 richesse to compare: to acquire riches (Latin: comparare).

  29 3 couetise: covetousness.

  30 2 wolfe: traditional attribute of envy.

  30 3 cankred: ulcerated. tode: toad, a common iconographical attribute of envy.

  30 4 chaw: jaw.

  30 5 maw: stomach.

  31 1 kirtle: jacket, outer garment. discolour
d: of various colours. say: a cloth of fine texture, resembling serge.

  31 4 Snake: traditional attribute of envy, perhaps derived from Met. 2.768-70, where Envy feeds on snakes. 31 5 implyes: enfolds (Latin: implicate).

  31 7 griple: greedy, tenacious.

  3a 1 good workes: Spenser may be referring to the traditional seven corporal works of mercy. See the seven beadsmen in I.10.36–43and note.

  32 2 Le., Envy hated good works and the man who did them.

  32 4 Envy does not believe in the good motives of the almsgiver-because of his own lack of faith.

  32 5 abuse: turn the use of.

  3a 6–9cf. VI.1.8 describing the Blatant Beast.

  33 3 brond: sword or brand, probably the latter, a common attribute of wrath.

  33 9 choler: wrath.

  34 7 facts: deeds, things done (Latin: facta).

  35 3 Vnmanly: inhnman

  35 7 Splene: organ associated with anger in Renaissance physiology; c£ adjective ‘splenetic’. 35 8 Saint Frounces fire: unknown. Spenser may mean Saint Anthony’s fire, or erysipelas, a disease producing inflammation of the skin.

  35 9 tire: the meaning is clear, but no such usage is recorded in OED.

  36 4 Slowth: the Idleness of stanzas 18-20.

  36 5 routs: crowds.

  37 7 repaire: approach.

  37 8 ioyaunce: joy.

  38 2 breathing: emitting fragrance.

  38 7 hardy-hed: boldness.

  39 5 enuious gage: envied pledge.

  39 7 which… wage: who owned the shield.

  39 9 rencountring: engaging in battle. pray: prize.

  40 1 hurtlen: rush together.

  40 9 equall lists: impartial formal combats.

  41 5 treachour: traitor.

  41 9 rentierst: reversed or turned upside down; a reversed shield symbolized defeat and disgrace.

  42 7 So be: if.

  44 6 Morpheus: god of sleep.

  46 5 launcht: pierced.

  48 9 Stygian: of the river Styx, which surrounded the classical Hades.

  49 4 neuer vantage none: i.e., help anyone.

  49 5 Le., it does not help to moan over events about which one can do nothing.

  49 6 vitall: of life.

  50 9 I no whit reck: i.e., I do not care at all. to reherce: to tell.

  CANTO 5

  2 8 battailous: warlike.

  5 3 paled: fenced.

  6 4 blesse: wave, brandish.

  8 2 Gryfon: mythical beast with body of lion, head and wings of eagle. seized: in possession.

  85 rauine: plunder.

  8 7 souce: strike.

  10 Spenser may intend a reversal of the roles of Turnus and Aeneas at the end of Aen. Aeneas, seeing the belt of his dead friend Pallas on Turnus, kills him in a fury of vengeance. Spenser often uses wry imitations of action in Virgil; in particular, see the meeting of Braggadocchio and Trompart with Belphoebe, II.3, a parody of the meeting of Aeneas and Achates with Venus, dressed as Diana (Aen. 1.314 ff). In this instance, Sansjoy adopts a heroic stance (that of Aeneas) only to deal an impotent stroke. He is then shielded by a’ darksome clowd’ (see note to 13.6). When Redcross seeks Sansjoy (stanza 15), the description recalls Aeneas looking for Turnus (Aen. 12.466-7), but the intent is now ironic at the expense of the hero, who is brave in defence of a bad cause, Duessa.

  10 2 suddein: glancing quickly.

  10 6 Stygian: of the river Styx; cf. note to I.4.48.9.

  10 7 hyre: reward.

  10 8 german: brother, slake: slacken.

  12 5 Ladies sake: for the sake of the lady.

  13 6 The device of a god’s sending a cloud to rescue a favourite in danger has parallels in Il. 3.380, Aen. 5.810-12, and GL 7.44-5.

  14 8 Plutoes baleful! bowres: hell.

  15 1–3cf. Aen. 12.466–7and note to stanza 10.

  16 4 gree: favour.

  16 5 aduauncing: praising.

  16 8 on hight: aloud.

  17 2 leaches: doctors. abide: attend.

  17 5 can embalme: anointed.

  17 7 diuide: descant.

  20 ff Following the tradition begun by Hesiod, Spenser makes Night one of the important pre-Olympian gods. She is opposed to light and all its associations in this book and numbers among her descendants Duessa and Aveugle, father of the three Sans brothers. The details of her appearance are taken from Natalis Comes, a Renaissance mytho-grapher (Mythologiae 3.12). She is the eldest of the gods because she existed before the world was formed and before the Olympian gods were begotten in Demogorgon’s hall (chaos). Demogorgon, who is meant to recall Plato’s Demiurge, is the invention of Boccaccio, who makes him the progenitor of all the gods, since his name is derived from daimort (spirit) andgorgos (earth). See I.1.37–8and IV.2.47.

  20 4 mew: den.

  22 6 vnmade: i.e., before it was made.

  22 7 Nephewes: grandsons (Latin: nepotes), a common usage in the Renais sance.

  23 7 so euill heare: i.e., are not esteemed (Latin: audire male), 25 3 their foes ensew: follow their foes.

  25 9 excheat: plunder.

  26 4 price that: pay for that which.

  27 9 vnwares: unexpectedly, unknowingly.

  28 2 welfauoured: beautiful. 28 4 twyfold: twofold.

  28 9 fine element: air.

  29 6 cruddy: clotted.

  31 3–9Avernus is a lake near Naples but is traditionally associated with a cave-like entrance to the underworld, celebrated by Virgil (Aen. 6.237-42) as the place of Aeneas’ descent into hell. Once there, he was initiated into the mysteries of the dead, and learned the future glories of the city he was to found.

  32 3 Plutoes house: hell.

  33 1 Acheron: river in hell (Greek: ‘stream of woe’).

  33 3 Phlegeton: Phlegethon, river of fire in hell (Greek: ‘burning’).

  34 1 Cerberus: the three-headed dog that guards the gate to hell. The ‘adders venemous’ of line 3 are probably derived from the Furies who accompany Cerberus, ‘combing black snakes from their hair’ (Met. 4.454). Spenser uses the continuation of Ovid’s passage in the following stanza.

  34 2 along: at full length. 344 lilled: lolled.

  34 6 gnarre: snarl.

  35 Spenser’s imitation of one of the most famous topoi of classical and Renaissance literature: the catalogue of the damned. Spenser is indebted mainly to Met. 4.458 ff, 10.41 ff, and Aen. 6.617 ff, which in turn are indebted to Od. 11.582 ff. No one of the classical authors includes all the figures or cites them in this order, but Lotspeich notes that Natalis Comes (6.16) lists them in this order and is thus probably Spenser’s source: brion (6.16), Sisyphus (6.17), Tantalus (6.18), Tityus (6.19). Titans (6.20).

  35 1 lxion: invited to dine with Jove, Ixion planned to seduce Juno. Jove, realizing his intentions, deceived him with a cloud shaped like Juno and had Mercury bind him to a wheel of iron, on which he rolls through hell.

  35 2–3For attempting to seduce Proserpina, Sisyphus was condemned by the judges of the underworld to roll a large stone uphill. The stone eternally escapes him as he reaches the top.

  35 5 Tantalus served his own son Pelops as a dinner for the gods. He was condemned to stand chin deep in a pool of water, which receded as he tried to drink from it. Above his head were fruit trees whose boughs retreated from him as he reached for the fruit.

  35 6 Tityus: tried to rape Leto, the mother of Apollo and Diana; he was killed by them, and stretched out over nine acres in hell, where two vultures ate his liver, maw: stomach, or in this case, liver.

  35 7 Spenser conflates Typhoeus and Typhon, the Titan who was among the rebels against Jove (see III.747–8and VII.6.15, 20). He seems to attribute the punishment of Tityus to Typhoeus. See note to 35.6.

  35 8 Theseus: his presence in hell is a problem. As an exemplar of right reason throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it is strange that he should be condemned to hell. Virgil is the only writer who clearly places him among the damned, and Lotspeich may be right in suggesting that Boccaccio’s paraphrase of Virgi
l (1.14) “Theseum perpetuo damnation otio’ may be the source of Spenser’s line. Spenser is not referring to Theseus’ stay in hell with Pirithous, from which he was rescued by Hercules, mentioned by Statius, Thebaid 8.52–6and Dante, Inferno 9.54.

  35 9 fifty sisters: the Danaids, daughters of Danaus, who were condemned to collect water eternally in leaky pots. They had killed their bridegrooms.

  36 1 in place: there.

  36 7–40Æscuhpius: the story of Hippolytus’ death, caused by the passion and deceit of his stepmother Phaedra, is told in Aen. 7.761 ff. There he is restored to life ‘by the herbs of the Healer [Apollo] and by the love of Diana’. The same story is told in Met. 15.45(7 ff and Boc caccio, Gen. 10.50, where he is restored by Aesculapius, the son of Apollo.

  41 8 fordonne: exhausted, overcome; ruined.

  42 8 eeke: increase. defray: discharge debt by paying.

  43 8 else: already.

  43 9 donne: ended.

  44 1 leach: doctor.

  44 2 cunning: knowledgeable.

  44 9 recure: refresh.

  45 1 noyous: harmful. 45 4 albe: although.

  47 1 king of Babylon: in Daniel 4 Nebuchadnezzar, because of his pride and defiance of God, is warned in a dream that he will lose his kingdom and become like a beast. “The very same hour was this thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar, and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as the oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown as eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’ claws’ (4.30; AV 4.33). Spenser’s transformation of Nebuchadnezzar into an ox may come from Gower, Confessio Amantis 1.11.1973.

  47 6 Crcesus: last king of Lydia (sixth century bc), proverbially rich (‘richer than Croesus’), described by Herodotus, 1.26-30.

  47 8 Antiochus: king of Syria (second century bc), who desecrated the

  Temple at Jerusalem (1 Maccabees 1.20-25).

  48 1 Nimrod: see Genesis .10.8-10. Renaissance Biblical commentators make him the first king of the world and a tyrant. He is also closely associated with the building of the Tower of Babel, an act of pride against God, for which man was cursed by diversity of languages (Genesis 11).

  48 a warrayed: waged war on.

  48 3 Ninus: founder of Nineveh, the archetype of the wicked city. See Jonah.