4 Maleger: The name suggests both ‘badly sick’ and ‘evil-bearing’, from L mal evil + either aeger sick or gerens bearing. In Ovid, ‘Maleager’ is the son of Oeneus, King of Calydon, and his wife Althaea. At his birth, the fates cast a log onto the fire, declaring that Maleager and the burning brand shall enjoy ‘an equal span of life’. Althaea snatches the burning brand from the flames and douses it. When Maleager slays her two brothers in a dispute over the killing of the Caledonian boar, she ends his life by casting the log back into the flames (Met 8.525-546).

4 deface: From L de + facere make or do.

1.1 St. 1 In its emphasis on ‘captivity’, ‘infirmity’, ‘tyrrany’, and the ‘partes, brought into . . . bondage’, this and the following stanza echo language from Romans chapters 6 and 7: ‘Nether give ye your membres as weapons of unrighteousnes unto sin’ (6:13); ‘the infirmitie of your flesh’ (6:19); ‘my membres, rebelling against the law of my minde, and leading me captive’ (7:23). These echoes associate the Maleger episode with the deaths of Mortdant and Amavia in canto i.

1.9 vellenage: From L velle ‘to wish’ or ‘to be willing’, the bondage through which the corrupt will subordinates the flesh to sin.

2.1–2.5 2.1-5 The language of governance and sovereign rule in these lines reinforces the connection between the chronicles in canto x and the allegory of the temperate body in cantos ix and xi; see ix.1.4n.

2.2 His: On the use of ‘his’ as a neuter pronoun, see ix.1.8n.

2.3 2.3 ‘And permits her that ought to wield the scepter [reason] to do so’.

3.2 windowes of bright heauen: Echoing the biblical account of Noah’s flood, which began when ‘the windowes of heaven were opened’ (Gen 7:11).

5.1 St. 5 Maleger’s ‘wicked band’ is modeled in part on the strana torma who attack Ariosto’s Ruggiero (OF 6.61.1). More broadly, the seige of Alma’s castle reflects an allegorical tradition reaching back through medieval texts such as The Castle of Perseverance, Piers Plowman, and the Ancrene Riwle to Philo Judaeus in antiquity, in which deadly sins beseige the soul by way of the senses.

5.3 villeins: See 1.9n; these serfs owe their fealty to mortal sin.

5.8–5.9 exceeding feare / Their visages imprest: 'their faces imprinted surpassing fear' on the beholder.

6.1 St. 6 In contrast to the earlier emphasis on the ‘huge and infinite . . . numbers’ of the attackers (5.6) and the later emphasis on the disorder of a ‘monstrous rablement’ (8.1), the troops are here carefully enumerated and disposed into an order that both mimics and parodies the organization of the body, so that ‘each might best offend his proper part’ (6.3).

6.3 offend: In biblical usage, to sin against or cause to sin.

6.3–6.4 his proper part, And his contrary obiect: The yoking of these phrases, apparent opposites that function as synonyms, suggests a mirroring between the troops and their objects of attack.

6.4 deface: destroy, as at arg.4, but now also echoing the ‘fowle and ugly . . . visages’ of 5.8-9, which disfigure with fear the faces they oppose, making them reflect their opponents’ ugliness. As the troops become more orderly in their address to the organized body (‘As every one seem’d meetest in that cace’), so the defenders of that body become more ‘monstrous’ (8.1) in response to their attackers.

6.6 Seuen of the same: Seven suggests the deadly sins.

6.6 the Castle gate: The mouth; see ix.23 and ix.23.3n.

7.1 The other fiue: Five suggests the senses; cf. Ancrene Riwle 21, ‘The heart’s wardens are the five senses: sight, hearing, speaking, and smelling, and every limb’s feeling’.

7.3 arrett: See OED (s.v. ‘aret’ 4) and glossary, and cf. viii.8.1, ‘The charge, which God doth unto me arrett’.

7.4 T’assayle with open force or hidden guyle: This phrasing will be echoed by Jove in the Mutability cantos when he asks the assembled pantheon whether they should resist the assault of the Titaness ‘by open force, or counsell wise’ (TCM vi.21.8), and again by Satan in Paradise Lost when he asks the demons in hell whether they should assault heaven through ‘open Warr or covert guile’ (2.41).

8.1

St. 8 Spenser draws in a broad way on classical and medieval pictorial traditions that associate sins and senses with specific animals, as well as on natural histories and bestiaries that retail proverbial lore about the special attributes of different animal kinds. The bestiaries, because they amass references from widely diverse sources, provide a store of anecdotes, judgments, and observations at once copious, random, and contradictory enough to justify almost any associative link. An additional layer of complexity arises from the allegorical emphasis on animal shapes as ‘portraying’ temptations (11.7); because this technique tends to translate all five senses into visual terms, it cuts against the system of classification that disposes the allegory.

A troop of animal-headed monstrosities appearing in Ariosto (see st. 5n) is taken by Harrington to represent the seven deadly sins (80). Spenser’s rablement is associated rather with the senses, which in st. 8-13 follow the traditional sequence based on Aristotle, De anima, 2.6-12.

8.3–8.4 8.3-4 Spenser’s owls, dogs, and gryphons may correspond to the ‘lawlesse lustes, corrupt envyes, / And covetous aspects’ of lines 8-9: dogs are associated with envy and gryphons with covetousness (Carroll 1954: 99, 105). Owls are not noted for lawless lust, but they are associated with noctural activity generally.

8.6 Lynces eyes: The lynx (for which Spenser gives the Italinate form) is proverbially sharp-sighted (see Ripa 1603, s.v. ‘Viso’, and Harvey, Speculum Tuscanismi, in Familiar Letters: ‘Not the like Lynx, to spie out secretes’). The Greek hero Lynceus was said to have preternaturally sharp vision (Apollodorus 1.7.8-9, 3.10.3; Hyginus, Fabulae 100).

8.7 bow and arrowes: Cupid’s weapon of choice, conventionally figuring looks that penetrate the heart.

8.8 lawlesse lustes: See 1 Pet 2:11, ‘fleshlie lustes, which fight against the soule’.

9.9 Beautie, and money: Corresponding to Guyon’s two chief adversaries, Acrasia and Mammon.

10.2 assignment: 1596 revises to ‘dessignment’ (enterprise, undertaking), which seems more apt than any attested sense of ‘assignment’, the passivity of which sits uncomfortably against the force of the verb phrase ‘makes against’. Cf. Othello 2.1.21-22: ‘The desperate Tempest hath so bang’d the Turks, / That their designment halts’.

10.3–10.5 10.3-5 As with the sense of sight, Spenser’s animal associations for hearing seem partly conventional and partly the product of ‘straunge difference’. His ‘Harts’ coincide with Harvey, Speculum (‘A vultures smelling, Apes tasting, sight of an Eagle, / A Spiders touching, Hartes hearing, might of a Lyon’), but where Spenser has ‘wilde Bores’, Ripa (who does mention vna Cerua, a doe, s.v. ‘Vdito’) refers not to boars but to l’orecchia d’un Toro (‘the ears of a Bull’). Snakes are linked to backbiting and slander in Ancrene Riwle (36).

10.6–10.8 10.6-8 The evils that assault the sense of hearing resemble those in Ancrene Riwle: foul speech, heresy, lying, backbiting, and flattery (35).

11.4–11.5 11.4-5 Note that where Harvey’s Ape (10.3-5n) embodies the sense of taste, Spenser associates apes with smell. Spenser’s ‘Puttockes,’ or buzzards, do on the other hand answer to Harvey’s vulture. The link to ‘houndes’ is proverbial because of their function in the hunt.

12.3 grysie: From OE ‘grise’, to shudder with fear. See glossary.

12.4–12.5 12.4-5 Oystriges are said by Caxton to eat iron (Myrrour of Worlde 1481: 2.16.101). Toades were thought to be poisonous: see Shakespeare’s Duke Senior on ‘the toad, ugly and venemous’ (As You Like It 2.1.13).

12.6 luxury: From L luxuria prodigality; Spenser anticipates later usage (for 16th-century senses, OED records only ‘lasciviousness, lust’).

12.7 vnthriftie waste: As Hamilton 2001 notes, embodied in the ‘waistless swine’ of lines 5-6.

13.1 St. 13 Touch, the bulwark so sensitive it cannot be named in the text. Snails were a common image for extreme sensitivity: see Shakespeare on ‘the snail, whose tender horns being hit, / Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain’ (Venus and Adonis 1033-34). Cf. Harvey on ‘A Spiders touching’, 10.3-5n. ‘Urchins’ are hedgehogs (porcupines).

13.5–13.8 13.5-8 Although snails and hedgehogs respectively suffer and inflict pain, the weapons 'Cruelly' employed by the fifth troop are all pleasurable sensations—except, perhaps, ‘stinges of carnall lust’. In Book III we will learn that to Paridell, ‘nothing new . . . was that same paine, / Ne paine at all’ (ix.29.6-7), and that Cupid, in addition to wounding the rest of the pantheon, ‘Ne did . . . spare sometime to pricke himselfe’ (xi.45.3).

14.4 play: The grammatical subject may be either ‘troupes’ or ‘Ordinaunce’; the general sense either way is of heavy weaponry brought to bear on all five bulwarks, with the added suggestion that the rabblement enjoy their work.

14.7 assay: Cf. 11.2.

15.6 two brethren Gyauntes: The hands (Gilbert 1955); in a passage allegorizing the body as a dwelling, Eccles 12:3 refers to ‘the kepers of the house’, identified in the Geneva gloss as ‘The hands, which kepe the bodie’. See ‘Extremities’ at ii.arg.3.

15.7 mayne: Also the heraldic term for ‘hand’.

16.9 remercied: From the Anglo-Norman and Middle French remercier. Echoing ‘recomfort’ to emphasize the reciprocity between Alma and Arthur.

17.1 glitterand: See vii.42.1n.

18.1–18.2 18.1-2 See Virgil, fundunt simul undique tela / crebra nivis ritu (‘at once from all sides they shower darts as thick as snowflakes’; Aen 11.610-11 ).

18.4–18.9 18.4-9 See Virgil, rapidus montano flumine torrens / sternit agros, sternit sata laeta boumque labores / praecipitisque trahit silvas (‘the rushing torrent from a mountain-stream lays low the fields, lays low the glad crops and labours of oxen and drags down forests headlong’; Aen 2.305-7); and non sic, aggeribus ruptis cum spumeus amnis / exiit oppositasque evicit gurgite moles, / fertur in arva furens cumulo camposque per omnis / cum stabulis armenta trahit (‘Not with such fury, when a foaming river, bursting its barriers, has overflowed and with its torrent overwhelmed the resisting banks, does it rush furiously upon the fields in a mass and over all the plains sweep herds and folds’; Aen 2.496-99).

18.9 his headlong ruine may sustayne: ‘May withstand the force of the water’s descent’; ‘may bear up against the husbandman’s fall’.

19.2 raskall flockes: Varying senses of the adj come into play: applied to persons generally, it means ‘forming or belonging to the rabble or the lowest social class’ (OED); applied to soldiers it means ‘belonging to the lowest rank, common’; applied to animal flockes it means ‘young, lean, inferior’. Cf. ‘raskall routs’, ix.15.4.

19.4 19.4-5 Echoing the simile at ii.2.6-7 that compares Ruddymane to ‘budding braunch rent from the native tree, / And throwen forth, till it be withered’, these lines complete a seasonal cycle in the imagery of the passage, from winter (18.2) through summer and harvest (18.4-9) to late autumn as it passes back into winter. See SC Sept 49 gloss: ‘the tyme of the yeare, which is in in thend of harvest, which they call the fall of the leafe: at which tyme the Western wynde beareth most swaye’. Given the association of Maleger and his troops with mortality, it is not surprising that the imaged cycle elides spring and doubles the end of the year. Note also that while ‘flockes’ dehumanizes the troops, ‘locks’ anthropomorphizes the trees.

19.7 19.7 Spumador: golden foam (Ital spuma foam + d’oro of gold). Cf. the echo of spumeus from the Virgilian allusion above (18.4-9n), which reflects a common Virgilian epithet for horses in battle (e.g. Aen 6.881, spumantis equi), and may therefore associate Spumador’s ‘fierce’ disposition with the passions embodied in Maleger’s troops; see iv.2.2n for the conventional association in Spenser between the horse and the rider’s passions. Such hints throughout the episode suggest one reason for Arthur’s difficulty in combating the threat represented by his allegorical opponent.

19.8–19.9 19.8-9 These lines conflate the Solis equi of Ovid (Met 2.154, 162) with the horses of Aeneas in Homer (Il 5.263-73). See Lotspeich 1965, s.v. ‘Laomedon’. This mingled genealogy offsets the glory of descent from ‘heavenly seed’ with darker hints: Laomedon’s horses were originally given to Tros by Zeus as recompense for the kidnapping of Ganymede; the horses of the sun in Ovid are invoked at the moment of Phaëton’s fall; Laomedon is said to have cheated Hercules out of the horses given by Zeus, promised as a reward for the rescue of Hesione (Met 11.211-215); and Aeneas inherits horses through the purloining of their sires’ seed: ἵππων oσσοι εασιν ὑπ᾽ ηω τ᾽ ηελιον τε, / της γενεης εκλεψεν αναξ ανδρων Ἀγχισης (hippon ossoi easin hup’ ēō t’ ēelion te, / tēs geneēs eklion / tēs geneēs eklepsen anax andrōn Hagchoēs; ‘from this stock the lord of men Anchises stole’; Il 5.268-9).

20.4 a Tygre swift: Medieval and early modern bestiaries inaccurately derived the name ‘tiger’ from the word for ‘arrow’ in Greek and other languages, ‘in reference to the celerity of its spring’ (OED). See White (1954: 12), Woodbridge (1993: 29), Topsell (1967: 1.547-8).

20.8 subtile substance and vnsound: Rarefied and insubstantial stuff (cf. ix.15.9, xi.30.3).

21.1–21.4 21.1-4 See 20.4n on the supposed etymological connection of ‘tiger’ and ‘arrow’. For arrows representing the assault of sin upon the upright heart, see Ps 11:2 and Eph 6:16.

21.5 the Indians: See SpE ‘visual arts’ Fig. 1 for a reproduction of Indian with Body Paint from The Drawings of John White, 1577-1590.

22.2 leane and meagre: Playing on the sound of 'Maleger'.

22.2 as a rake: Proverbial: cf. Chaucer, CT Gen Pro 287, ‘As leene was his hors as is a rake’.

22.3 a dryed rooke: ‘A heap or stack of combustible material, esp. when to be used as fuel’ (OED s.v. ‘ruck’). See the story of Maleager in Ovid (arg.4n), and the ‘raging flame’ with which Impatience is armed (23.9).

22.4 as cold and drery as a Snake: See Virgil, frigidus in pratis . . . anguis (‘the cold snake in the meadows’; Ecl 8.71); White: ‘Now all Serpents are cold by nature’ (1954: 186); also Woodbridge (1993: 195). The combination of cold and dry humors associates Maleger with melancholy.

22.6 canuas thin: Not the thicker fabric used for sailcloth, but the coarse and lightweight material worn by Shakespeare’s ‘hempen home-spuns’ (A Midsummer Night’s Dream 3.1.77). Together with Maleger’s belt of ‘twisted brake’ and his resemblance to a stack of kindling, this garment suggests the image of a scarecrow.

22.8–22.9 22.8-9 Maleger’s helmet-skull confirms the suggestion running throughout the description that he personifies ‘the bodie of this death’ (Rom 7:24), glossed in the Geneva Bible as ‘This fleshlie lump of sinne and death’; cf. 20.9. Rollinson takes exception to this view in SpE (s.v. ‘Maleger’). The helmet may also allude to the myth of Antaeus, who roofed a temple to his father, Poseidon, with the skulls of defeated opponents. Boccaccio cites Fulgentius on Antaeus as ‘lust of the flesh’ (libidine ex carne; Genealogia 1.14).

23.1 Maleger: See arg.4n.

23.6 other: One of two (OED; see II.iv.4.3-4, ‘Her other leg was lame, that she no’te walke, / But on a staffe her feeble steps did stay’, where there has similarly been no mention of ‘one’ leg to precede the ‘other’.) Upton suggests that in both passages, Spenser is playing on Homer’s description of Thersites as ετερον ποδα heteron poda lame in one foot (lit. ‘the other foot of two’), signifying ‘left foot’ (Il. 2.217). Spenser is saying, more or less, that the lameness of Occasion and Impotence makes them ‘heteropods’.

23.8 Impotence: From L impotentia lack of power. Latin usage associates power with self-mastery; as lack of self-control, 'Impotence' suggests a condition almost opposite to its modern meaning. Her kinship with Occasion signals a deeper connection between the two episodes: to cope with Furor, Guyon needs the Palmer’s aid to solve the riddle of uncontrolled strength that turns to weakness. This motif begins with Mortdant and Amavia in canto i: ‘The strong it weakens with infirmitie, / And with bold furie armes the weakest hart’ (57.7-8).

23.9 Impatience: From the L impatienta failure to bear suffering. Although impotence and impatience suggest an etymological contrast between active doing and passive suffering, their alliance in this episode reflects a common ground: impotence, construed not as the inability to do but as the inability to refrain, is in good company with the inability to suffer passively.

23.9 raging flame: Cf. Pyrochles’ shield and motto at iv.38.

25.2 to him . . . at him: The mirroring language may imply that at this stage of the combat Arthur (like the beseiged castle, earlier; see 6.3-4n) bears some resemblance to his foe. The retaliatory motive mentioned in the next line may reinforce this suggestion.

26.2 26.2 This hyperole assumes the extromissive theory of vision that coexisted with intromissive theory in early modern England.

26.6–26.9 26.6-9 Spenser would have found descriptions of Tartar horsemen shooting backward while fleeing in Mandeville (1964: 237-238) and in Marco Polo (1958: 101). Maleger fleeing while turning to face his pursuer may extend the pattern of mirroring between opponents in this canto (see 6.3-4n and 25.2n).

27.2 27.2 Insofar as the knight is ‘greedy’ he may be drawing ‘nigh to’ his foe as well in resemblance as in pursuit.

27.3–27.4 27.3-4 Marco Polo (see 26.6-9n) refers to the Tartars as ‘occasionally pretending to fly’.

28.1 St. 28 See Guyon’s discovery in canto iv that to restrain Furor he must ‘bind’ Occasion (st. 11-14), followed by Pyrochles’ insistence on releasing her (v.17-19).

29.1 St. 29 See Furor’s ‘rude assault’ upon Guyon (iv.6-9) and later Pyrochles (v.22-23).

29.3 gryesly graplement: OED records no other instance of graplement.

29.8–29.9 29.8-9 See the squire’s previous defense of Arthur at I.viii.12.7-9.

30.1 St. 30 The narrator here treats Arthur’s vulnerability as a generic condition (‘life unsound’, line 3) rather than an individual character flaw.

30.4–30.5 30.4-5 Echoing the Geneva gloss to 2 Cor 5:1: ‘After this bodie shalbe dissolved, it shalbe made incorruptible and immortal’.

30.7 Britayne land: Wales and Cornwall, ‘the place in southwestern Great Britain from which the Briton characters enter Faeryland’ (Erickson 1996: 87).

30.9 30.9 As an instance of divine grace extended to fallen mortals (‘thing on ground’, ‘may never stand’), the squire’s intervention reiterates on a smaller scale the general significance of Arthur’s five eighth-canto appearances in the poem, this time applied to Arthur himself.

31.2 Iade: OED glosses this instance under n.1, 2. ‘A term of reprobation applied to a woman’.

31.6–31.9 31.6-9 Compare the revivals of Cymochles (vi.27) and Guyon (viii.53). Athur’s 'Revivyng thought', or animating principle, is Praysdesire (ix.38.7, 39.8).

32.1 St. 32 The simile compares resurgent Arthur to a volcanic eruption, thought to result from fire trapped underground. Plato’s Phaedo talks about an underground river of fire (‘Pyrephlegethon’) that feeds volcanoes through a system of cold and warm waters (Phaedo, 113 b3-5); Lucretius too believed that subterranean fires akin to furnaces are source of volcanic activity (he thought winds drive the flames up in eruptions; De Rerum 6.680-703); finally, German geologist Georgius Agricola in his work De re Metallica argued that chemical vapors erupted under extreme pressure and spewed flames of basalt and mountain ‘oil’ (12.566). The theory of the elements holds that each of them naturally gravitates toward its ‘native seat’: see Ovid, ignea convexi vis et sine pondere caeli / emicuit summaque locum sibi fecit in arce (‘the fiery weightless element that forms heaven’s vault leaped up and made place for itself upon the topmost height’; Met 1.26-7).

32.5 infest: 1596 and 1609 give 'unrest'. The use of infest as a noun meaning 'outbreak' or 'attack' is without known precedent in sixteenth century English but not without justification in context. The 1596 revision is not necessarily authorial.

33.2 caytiue bands: Cf. Archimago’s escape from ‘caytives handes’ at i.1.7.

33.4 33.4 It is unclear how the ‘curres’ of line 3 have acquired ‘hands’.

33.7–33.8 his hands / Discharged: Maleger lays his bow and arrows aside, the verb ‘discharged’ wittily transferred from the action of shooting an arrow to that of discarding the weapon.

33.8 quar’le: See 24.8n.

33.9 33.9 Arthur was prone when Maleger dismounted: ‘his foe flatt lying’ elides ‘his foe who was then flatt lying’.

34.1 St. 34-46 Arthur’s combat with Maleger is modeled on Hercules’ wrestling with Antaeus. See Lucan (Pharsalia 4:680-739).

34.9 fild his place: I.e., he takes Arthur’s (former) place (33.9); or, as Arthur is about to discover, ‘the ground’ belongs to Maleger in a special way.

35.3–35.4 35.3-4 A parody of the resurrection; also of the resurgences of Guyon (viii.53) and Redcrosse (I.xi.53).

35.7–35.9 35.7-9 See Aen 12.897-98, where Turnus hurls at Aeneas ‘a giant stone and ancient, which haply lay upon the plain, set for a landmark, to ward dispute from the fields’ (saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte iacebat, / limes agro positus litem ut discerneret arvis). As a literary landmark, this stone links Arthur to Turnus at the moment when the doomed hero’s strength is leaving him. Virgil in turn is recalling two distinct moments from the Iliad—one in which Diomedes wounds Aeneas (5.302-4) and a second in which Aeneas prepares to hurl a boulder at Achilles (20.283-87)—and is combining these with the famous dream-simile from the scene of Hector’s defeat (22.199-201). One effect of this complex allusive network is to link Arthur at this moment to heroes on the brink of defeat. Another is to linka him to a series of reversals: Aeneas as the target of a stone; then Aeneas hoisting a stone to throw it at Achilles; then Aeneas as the target once again, with Turnus taking his place hoisting as he re-experiences Hector’s sense of dreamlike unreality in flight from Achilles. This series of reversals echoes hints throughout this canto that link Arthur to Maleger, and suggests that on closer examination, the epic ‘land-marke’ will indeed become a ‘signe of sundry way’.

36.7 souse: OED cites Spenser as the first instance of this sense, which it speculates may be due to confusion with the sense, ‘The act, on the part of a bird, of rising from the ground, as giving the hawk an opportunity to strike’. Given this canto’s persistent tendency implicitly to identify attackers and their targets, it is tempting to speculate that the ‘confusion’ is deliberate.

37.8–37.9 37.8-9 The internal rhyme adds a weirdly comic note to the nightmarish quality of the moment.

38.4 in amaze: A favorite pun in Spenser: in amazement and in a maze.

39.8 aery spirite: A spirit made of air—not the proper element for Maleger, but Arthur is in a state of shock from which he must recover in order to interpret correctly what he is beholding.

39.9 hellish feend raysd vp through diuelish science: See I.v.32-44 where Duessa takes Sansfoy to hell to seek Aesculapius’ medical skill (40.1: ‘Such wondrous science in mans witt’).

40.1 St. 40 For a possible answer to the stanza’s series of riddles, see 22.9n, above. There are seven riddles, a number associated with the body (see ix.22n).

40.8 40.8 For the parodox of strength through weakness, see 23.8n.

41.6 Mordure: See viii.21.6n. The sword’s name, evoking a vocabulary of death (murder, mordant, mors), may suggest a reason for its inability to wound Maleger.

42.7 wrest: A reminder that Arthur has resorted to ‘wrestling’. Antaeus forced strangers passing through his kingdom to wrestle him.

42.9 his mother earth: Antaeus derived strength from the earth because Ge was his mother; Maleger derives strength from the earth because earth is metonymically the origin of human mortality, and the mortal weakness of the flesh is Maleger’s strength (see 44.6-45.6).

43.5 43.5 A suggestive line insofar as Arthur is combatting, in Maleger, the consequences of the Fall of Man, experiencing a second fall so that he can double back to imitate the undoing of the first by means of divine grace.

44.3 this lifelesse shadow: FE corrects ‘his’ to this, presumably to retain the latency of the sense, suggested throughout the episode, in which Maleger is indeed Arthur's ‘shadow of death’ (Ps 23).

44.6–45.6 44.6-45.6 In remembering that had bene sayd, Arthur is recalling the myth of Hercules’ combat with Antaeus, interpreted in Medieval and Renaissance literature as his victory over the lusts of the flesh (see 22.9n).

46.2 scruzd: Coined by Spenser; OED suggests that it combines the verbs ‘screw’ and ‘squeeze’, which would suggest a wringing motion.

46.5 three furlongs: Originally, ‘furlong’ signified the length of a furrow in a plowed field.

46.6 standing: See Shakespeare’s reference to ‘a sort of men, whose visages / Do cream and mantle like a standing pond’ (The Merchant of Venice 1.1.88-89).

47.6 47.6 Imitating both Pyrochles at vi.42 and the Gadarene swine possessed by demons at Mark 5:13.

48.1 conquerour: Cf. I.xii.6.1n. The term associates Arthur with Christ.

49.5 49.5 Cf. 1.5, ‘Their force is fiercer through infirmity’, and 40.8, ‘most strong in most infirmitee’.

49.7 despoyled: Contrast the image of Verdant disarmed and recumbent in the Bower of Bliss, attended to by Acrasia, xii.72-80.