230 remaine: linger, abide.
236 looke… awry: discipline of the glance is essential to chastity. Cf. FQ, 3. 1. 65; 3. 3. 24.
237 vnsownd: wanton, wicked.
239 pledge… band: token of our union (playing on ‘band’ as ring).
240 Alleluya: cf. Revelation 19: 1.
243–4 triumph… gaine: cf. Amor, 69; HL, 33–5.
248 liue long: an intensive form of long.
250 stay: restraint.
252 wull: will.
253 postes: door posts. This was a Roman marriage custom.
255 Bacchus: god of wine and revelry.
257 Graces daunce: cf. SC, Aprill, 109–12, [109]. The Graces dance around Colin Clout’s lady at FQ, 6. 10. 14–15.
265–72 sunne… night: in the Elizabethan calendar St Barnabas’s Day, 11 June, usually marked the summer solstice. Hence the proverb ‘Barnaby bright, Barnaby bright, / The longest day and the shortest night’.
267 by degrees: gradually, and by astrological degrees.
269 Crab: the sign of Cancer. The sun enters Leo in mid-June leaving Cancer ‘behind his back’. Cf. FQ, 7. 7. 35–6; Campbell (1987).
273 late: at last, finally.
278–9 Ah… loue: cf. Claudian, Epithalamium of Honorius, 14–15.
280 numbers: i.e. numbers of minutes and numbers on the clock face.
281 feathers: Time is traditionally depicted with wings.
282 fayrest Planet: the sun, as one of the traditional seven ‘planets’.
283 fome: sea.
284 tyred steedes: as at Virgil, Aeneid, 11. 913–14.
285 gloome: grow dark or dusky.
286 euening star: Hesperus, the planet Venus.
287 East: presumably a printer’s error for west.
288–9 Fayre… lead: cf. Catullus 62. 20–31; 64. 328–32; Bion, Idylls, 9.
289 host of heauen: biblical phrasing. Cf. Isaiah 34: 4; Jeremiah 8: 2.
290 nights: often emended to ‘nightes’ (i.e. with two syllables) to aid the metre.
292 atweene: between.
294 these… many: this joyous multitude.
296–7 Now… youres: cf. Catullus 61. 227–8.
296 forepast: previous.
299 bring… boures: cf. Catullus 61. 179.
301 bed… lay: cf. Catullus 61. 182–4.
304 Arras: the French town of Arras was famous for richly embroidered tapestries. For the lady’s bedding cf. Catullus 64. 46–51.
306 proud humility: the oxymoron encapsulates the essence of the lady’s moral character. Cf. Amoretti, 56.
307 Maia: mother of Hermes and one of the Pleiades, renowned for her modesty. Cf. The Homeric Hymns, 4. 1–6; MHT, 1257 and note.
308 Tempe: Maia was a nymph of Mount Cyllene not of Tempe, site of the myth of Apollo and Daphne.
310 Acidalian brooke: associated not with Maia but Venus. The Graces bathed in the fountain of Acadalia in Boeotia. Cf. Servius, Commentarii (Aeneid, 1. 720); FQ, 4. 5. 5; 6. 10. 8.
313 leaue: cease.
315 Now… expected: Catullus 62. 1–2. Cf. also Pearcy (1981).
316 defray: discharge by payment.
317–18 cares… aye: recalling the imagery of lines 32–3 above.
318 cancelled: i.e. paid or recompensed in full.
319 broad wing: for this iconography cf. Virgil, Aeneid, 8. 369.
321 sable mantle: a traditional detail. Cf. FQ, 1. 1. 39.
323 treason: recalling the perilous political state of Ireland.
326 quietsome: quiet, peaceful.
328 Ioue… Alcmena: cf. MHT, 1299 and note.
329 Tirynthian groome: Hercules of Tiryns. The phrase translates Ovid’s ‘iuvenis Tirynthius’ (cf. Fasti, 2. 305).
330–31 selfe… Maiesty: the mythology is apparently original to Spenser. In Ovid Majesty is the child of Honour and Reverence (cf. Fasti, 5. 23–6).
334–51 The warding off of evils is a convention of the genre. Cf. Claudian, Epithalamium of Honorius, 191–3.
339 sad affrights: disturbing terrors.
340 helpelesse harmes: ills for which there is no protection or remedy.
341 Pouke: Puck, the hobgoblin Robin Goodfellow, sometimes identified with the devil.
343 names… not: names of spirits undetectable by our senses.
345–8 shriech… vultures: the owl, the stork, the raven and the vulture are declared to be abominations in Leviticus 11: 13–19. Cf. SC, June, [23]; FQ, 2. 7. 23. For the owl cf. Pliny, Natural History, 10. 16. 34–5.
349 Frogs: they serve as one of the plagues of Egypt at Exodus 8: 1–14 and as hosts for ‘unclean spirits’ at Revelation 16: 13. Cf. VG, 229–30.
351 drery: gloomy.
353 Silence: the initial invocation of the Muses appropriately gives way to that of Silence. Cf. Amor, 43. 9–14 and note.
354 assurance: confidence, security. Cf, Amor, 58 and notes.
356 poure: an ingenious usage, as though the ‘limbs’ of sleep were liquid. Possibly inspired by Virgil, Aeneid, 5. 836–7, but cf. FQ, 1. 7. 7.
playne: the sense is unclear, either the ‘plain’, or countryside, in which the lovers rest or the ‘pleasant complaint’ of the lady on her wedding night as she enjoys both the pain and pleasure of love.
357 winged loues: Cupids. Cf. Amor 16. 6; HB, 240.
358 doues: sacred to Venus and emblems of love.
363 couert: secretive.
364 sonnes of Venus: Cupids or putti.
play… will: translating ‘ludite ut lubet’, Catullus 61. 207.
365 pleasure: pleasure is the offspring of love at FQ, 3. 6. 50–52. Cf. Amor, 65. 14; 76 and notes.
374 Cinthia: (Diana) born on Mount Cynthus on the isle of Delos. Often applied to Queen Elizabeth whose blessing is thus obliquely evoked. Cf. SC, Aprill, 82; CCH, 66 and notes.
378 vnthought: no longer regarded, forgotten.
379–81 fleece… wrought: Endymion of Latmos seduced the moon goddess Phoebe (Cynthia) with the gift of a fleece and was doomed to perpetual sleep. Cf. SC, Julye, [64]; Theocritus, Idylls, 20. 37–9.
383–7 wemens… breed: a conventional topos. Cf. Catullus, 61. 207–26.
383 labours… charge: Diana (Artemis) controlled the pain of childbirth.
384 enlarge: increase, multiply.
386 informe: infuse, animate.
387 comfort: delight (and the eventual ‘support’ of children).
388 hopefull hap: i.e. the good fortune for which we are hoping.
390 Iuno: for Juno as guardian of wedlock cf. Virgil, Aeneid, 4. 59.
awful: awe-inspiring.
391 patronize: promote, uphold.
392 religion: fidelity.
faith… plight: at the betrothal.
394–5 comfort… women: when in labour Roman women cried out ‘Juno Lucina fer opem’ (‘Juno Lucina lend assistance’). Cf. Ovid, Fasti, 2. 449–52.
398 Genius: the god of generation and guardian spirit. Cf. FQ, 2. 12. 46–8; 3. 6. 31–2; Comes, Mythologiae, 4. 3.
399 geniall bed: translating the Latin lectus genialis, the ‘marriage-bed’ as a bed of generation. Cf. Servius, Commentarii (Aeneid, 6. 603).
403–4 fruitfull… fruit: with biblical connotations. Cf. ‘blessed is the fruit of thy womb’ (Luke 1: 42).
405 Hebe: daughter of Hera and goddess of youth, often associated with the Muses and the Horae. Cf. Comes, Mythologiae, 2. 5; RT, 384–5; HL, 283 and notes.
411 clods: lumps of clay.
412 dreadful… light: cf. Luke 1. 78–9 where the light is Christ.
413 powers: one of the nine ranks of angels and often identified with the intelligences which governed the spheres. Cf. HHB, 86 and note.
416 influence: in the astrological sense of an ‘in-flowing’ of power.
420 haughty: lofty.
422 heauenly… inherit: inherit celestial dwellings, conflating the sense of Matthew 25: 34 and Revelation 21: 3.
423 Saints: the elect. Cf. FQ, 1. 10. 61; 2. 1. 32.
424 this: the lack of a rhyme for this word may indicate the loss of a following short line.
425 tymely: in the dual sense of opportune and temporal.
429 cutting… accidents: the circumstances are unknown.
430 Ye: presumably applying to the poem itself.
stay: tarry, wait.
dew: due, appropriate (the time needed for completion).
expect: await.
431 both to recompens: the sense is unclear; ‘both’ may refer to the ‘many ornaments’ and the song itself, or to the bride and time or to some other combination of these elements.
433 short… moniment: a studied oxymoron recalling the ‘Epilogue’ to SC. In FQ ‘short time’ is associated with mutability (7. 8. 1–2) and the coming of the Lord of Sabaoth who ‘will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness’ (Romans 9: 28). The short stanza may indicate that the poem itself has been cut short by ‘hasty accidents’. The poem is both an eternal ‘monument’ and a fragmentary casualty of time.
FOWRE HYMNES
Published in 1596 together with the second edition of Daphnaïda, the Fowre Hymnes represent a new literary departure for Spenser. The genre of the classical hymn had been revived in the Renaissance but in two distinct, if related, modes. Whereas some writers employed it exclusively for mythological subjects after the classical manner, others retained the form while insisting that the subject matter be Christianized [cf. Rollinson (1968), (1971)]. The issue was highly controversial and Spenser would appear to have exploited the divergence of opinion in order to display his prowess in both modes: his first and second hymns are dedicated to Cupid and Venus, his third and fourth to Christ and Lady Sapience. In the dedication Spenser asserts that the first two hymns were written ‘in the greener times of my youth’ and have since exercised a corrupting influence upon the young. He now claims to have resolved ‘at least to amend, and by way of retractation to reforme them, making in stead of those two Hymnes of earthly or naturall loue and beautie, two others of heauenly and celestiall’. Whatever the literal truth of this, readers would recognize the employment of a standard literary device: a mature poet’s apology for the follies of his youth. As so often in Spenser, allegedly biographical detail serves aesthetic design. It is noteworthy in this regard that the dedication speaks not of ‘retraction’ but of ‘retractation’ (a process of rehandling or revision) and proceeds to publish the offending hymns together with those supposedly written ‘in stead’ of them [cf. Oates (1983)]. They are not rejected so much as recontextualized, not displaced so much as relocated.
As even the most cursory examination reveals, the resulting volume is conceived as a unity and if the first two hymns are indeed of earlier composition they have undoubtedly undergone revision. All four hymns are written in stanzas of rhyme royal (seven-line stanzas rhyming ababbcc), and all four display the same tripartite format of invocation, celebration and exhortation or prayer [cf. Welsford (1967)]. The style is appropriately elevated because the hymn was regarded as equivalent in status, or even superior, to the epic [cf. P. Cheney (1993), 201–5]. The relationship between the two pairs of hymns cannot, therefore, be understood merely, or even principally, in terms of contrast. The vocabulary of renunciation – which is certainly present – is invariably offset by the imagery of sublimation. Eros is not discarded but sanctified [cf. Bieman (1988), 153–62]. Thus the Christ of An Hymne of Heavenly Love emerges as the fulfilment rather than merely the antithesis of the Cupid of An Hymne in Honour of Love [cf. Mulryan (1971 ); Hyde (1986)]. Although represented as an essential creative force for the species, Cupid is a blind guide for the individual (HL, 225–6) and his followers often fail (HL, 231–7), but Christ embraces Cupid’s creativity while ‘blinding the eyes and lumining the spright’ (HHL, 280). In Baconian terms the former is an ‘idol’ of the mind, a narrow human conception of the deity, but the latter is God, the divine Cupid. What is adumbrated in the first hymn is realized in the third where mere opinion is represented as giving way to universal truth.
Throughout the first hymn Neoplatonic and Petrarchan imagery are intertwined so inextricably as to suggest the frustrating mixture of creative and destructive energies in ‘earthly or naturall loue’, but in the third hymn Christ emerges as the true Petrarchan lover suffering selflessly for man. It is not so much an ascent from Eros to Agape as a discovery that, properly considered, Eros is Agape. Similarly the figure of Venus, celebrated in An Hymne in Honour of Beautie, is made to prefigure that of Sapience in An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie. Whereas the beauty of Venus is ultimately solipsistic, inspiring the spirit to seek the flesh, that of Sapience, the heavenly Venus, is transcendent, inspiring the flesh to seek the spirit [cf. Quitslund (1969)]. In her realm the ‘hungry soule’ finally secures food because the fusion of wisdom and beauty in the one person is seen to guarantee the significance of love, and even of existence (HHB, 281–94). The paradisal visions which conclude the first two hymns are therefore designed to stand in relation to those that conclude the final two as mere ‘shadowes’ do to substance (HHB, 291). In this manner, through a series of complex structural and thematic correspondences, the genre of the pagan hymn is, ideally at least, subsumed into that of the Christian, and Christianity is seen to fulfil the highest aspirations of pagan society – a notion central to Renaissance humanism. Yet, as I argue in the Introduction, formal resolution is somewhat undercut by the persistence of irresolute imagery: the spiritual appetite is remarkably sensual.
If the hymns do not afford a simple dichotomy between the earthly and the celestial neither do they afford the progressive, systematic rise from one to the other envisaged in the Neoplatonic ‘ladder of ascent’. The first two hymns supply the language of ascent without the experience, the final two celebrate the achievement of ascent through the descent of grace and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For Spenser, this is to acknowledge that Christianity is a revealed religion whose God is ‘found’ only when he discloses himself. Not surprisingly, therefore, meditation on the life of Christ is crucial to An Hymne of Heavenly Love (225–59). Similarly ‘those Idees… which Plato so admyred’ are afforded due recognition in the Christian cosmology of An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie (82–3), but only by way of ‘retractation’: Plato did not glimpse Sapience residing in the ‘bosome’ of God far above the admired ideas (183) because she is an aspect of the Christian deity revealed through ‘grace’ alone (240). Furthermore, although the higher reaches of mysticism breed disaffection with the material world, ‘heauenly loue’, in a passage reminiscent of Amoretti 68, inspires us to ‘loue our brethren’ (197–210) rather than to forsake them [cf. W. C. Johnson (1992)]. The dedicatees of Fowre Hymnes are complimented as ‘ornaments of all true loue and beautie, both in the one and the other kinde’ (my emphasis), and the pervasive influence of Christian Neoplatonists such as Ficino, Benivieni and Castiglione through the first pair of hymns establishes a complex dialectical continuity with the second [cf. Ellrodt (1960), 141-70]. As in the fourth book of The Faerie Queene, the number four serves as the sign of cosmic harmony, ideally reconciling opposites to produce unity and concord [cf. Fletcher (1911); Fowler (1964), 24–33]. Cf. Bjorvand (1975); Comito (1977); DeNeef (1982); Jayne (1952); P. Johnson (1972); Lewis (1954); Nelson (1963); Rice (1958); Rogers (1983); Røstvig (1971); Sowton (1962); J. Stewart (1957).
Dedication To the Right…
Cumberland… Warwicke: the first lady is Margaret Russell, third daughter of the Earl of Bedford, and wife of George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland. Her daughter erected Spenser’s monument in Westminster Abbey in 1620. Cf. CCH, 504–7 and note. ‘Marie Countesse of Warwicke’ is an error for Anne Russell, eldest daughter of the Earl of Bedford, and widow of Ambrose Dudley, first Earl of Warwick who died in 1590. Cf. Quitslund (1985); RT, 240–52; CCH, 492–503 and notes.
1 greener: immature, callow.
2 praise of Loue: by contrast cf. Spenser’s vigorous defence of love as an epic theme likely to inspire the young at FQ, 4 Proem 1–3.
> 5 poyson… hony: recalling the traditional opposition between the spider and the bee. Cf. Amor, 71 and notes.
9 retractation: more in the sense of rehandling (as the words ‘amend’ and ‘reforme’ suggest) than recantation. St Augustine published a book of ‘Retractations’ shortly before his death. Cf. P. Cheney (1993), 196–7.
10–11 earthly… celestiall: cf. the two Aphrodites of Plato’s Symposium, the heavenly Aphrodite–Urania and the earthly Aphrodite–Pandemus: ‘for love is not of himself either admirable or noble, but only when he moves us to love nobly’ (180d–181d). Cf. Ficino, Commentary, 2. 7.
21 Greenwich: where the court was on 1 September 1596.
An Hymne in Honovr of Love
1–21 Cf. Ovid, Amores, 1. 2; Girolamo Benivieni, Canzona della Amore, 1–18 for the text of which cf. Fletcher (1911).
13 Victors: i.e. those more accustomed to inflicting wounds on others.
14 darts: cf. line 121. Cupid had arrows tipped with gold and arrows tipped with lead. The former caused attraction, the latter aversion. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1. 468–71.
16 bred: caused.
17 faint: grow weak.
18 triumphs: recalling Petrarch’s Triumph of Love. Cf. Amor, 69 and notes; FQ, 3. 12. 5–26.
20 shadow… wing: cf. Psalms 36: 7. Wings are traditional attributes of Cupid. In Plato they serve to elevate earthly desires to the heavens (Phaedrus,
246c–e). Cf. lines 176–89.
24 Venus lap: combining the sensuous and spiritual aspects of love. Venus and Cupid recall the Virgin and child. Cf. the common phrase ‘in the lap of the gods’ and note to line 62 below.
25–6 ambrosiall… Nectar: cf. SC, November, [195].
28 furie: divinely inspired poetic frenzy. Cf. SC, October, ‘Argument’; CCH, 823 and notes. Here poetic and amorous ‘furie’ fuse.
29 Muses: more commonly regarded as virgins, but Calliope was the mother of Orpheus. Cf. SC, Aprill, [41].
38–9 eyes… harts: for this lover’s malady cf. Amor, 35 and notes.
41–2 hymne… king: cf. ‘raising our voices in harmony with the heavenly song of Love’ (Plato, Symposium, 197e).
43 Great… god: cf. Plato, Symposium, 178a.
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