2face: Personification; the rhetorical term for
personification, ‘prosopopoeia’, from Gk προσωπονpr𝜊sōpon face or person (from προς pr𝜊s to + ωψ
𝜊ps face) and ποι𝜀ω poiein to make.
2golden Meane: Refers to Aristotle’s concept of virtue as a
mean between the excess and deficiency of a given quality (Nic Eth 2.6-9). Cf.
Horace on the aurea mediocritas (Odes 2.10.5).
3Extremities: The extremes of excess and deficiency, as at
38.4; also the hands as they flank the ‘face’.
1.3vptyde: The awkward sense of neatly tidying up, in contrast to
the dénoument (unravelling) proper to tragedy, extends to the unapt repetition of
up as the knight picks the ‘litle babe’ up off the ground, and prepares for
the shocking incongruity of the child’s blissful obliviousness to the ‘sad Tragedy’ of
its birth.
1.7innocent: Ironically not ‘innocent’ in a spiritual
sense, as the surrounding language of blood and guilt insists with its repeated
implication of original sin.
2.2in . . . balefull ashes bred: Cf. the phoenix, a common
Renaissance emblem of resurrection.
2.6
2.6 Links the baby with its bloody hands to the bleeding branch in the Fradubio episode
at I.ii.30.6-9.
2.7–2.8
2.7-8 Cf. John 15:6, ‘If a man abide not in me, he is cast forthe as a branche, and
withereth’. Guyon’s conclusion (‘Such is the state of men’) might seem to assume the
absence of grace, in contrast to the implications of the phoenix; like the texture of
allusion to Romans in this and the previous canto, the metaphor of the babe as a branch
torn from its trunk—in contrast to the conventional image of the genalogical
tree—depicts life itself as a form of death.
3.1
St. 3-4 The image of the phoenix (2.6) recalls the well in which Redcrosse is restored at
I.xi.29-30 (cf. the simile comparing the ‘new-borne’ knight to an Eagle at I.xi.34).
Guyon’s failed effort to wash the baby’s hands in this well has been diversely
interpreted as an allegory of baptism and of Mosaic Law. See The Thirty Nine
Articles IX, on original sin; XVI, on sin after baptism; and XVIII, on the
insufficiency of the Law for salvation. Paul discusses these topics in Rom 5-7; see esp.
6:2-4: ‘Howe shall we, that are dead to sinne, live yet therein? Knowe ye not, that all
we which have bene baptized into Jesus Christ, have bene baptized into his death? We are
buried then with him by baptisme into his death, that like as Christ was raysed up from
the dead to the glorie of the Father, so we also should walke in newnesse of life’. The
language and imagery of these cantos suspend Temperance in the interval between
baptism-into-death and resurrection into newness of life.
3.9diuerse:Cf. I.i.10.9. Refers to the alternative
hypotheses set forth in the next stanza; figuratively, plays out the characteristic pun
on 'maze' in Spenserian 'amazement'.
4.3in lieu of innocence: This interpretation of the stigma
contradicts the hypothesis that the babe smiles on his dead parents 'As . . . innocent /
Of that was doen' (1.7-8). The infant’s shocking combination of inherited guilt and
ignorance of sin suggest to Paul’s description of life prior to the Mocaic law (Rom 7:9,
‘For I once was alive, without the Law’).
4.4Imprinted: Cf. the pun on 'engrave' at i.60.1 and note; as a
token of divine wrath the stigma would similarly be associated with the motif of revenge
and the rhetoric of Despair at I.ix.47-49.
4.5bloodguiltinesse: Normally, ‘guilty of bloodshed’, but here
perhaps ‘guilt inhering in the blood’; see 3.4 and i.61.8 and notes. The word occurs
twice more in FQ, at 30.3 and at II.vii.19.5.
4.6–4.8
4.6-8 These lines treat Mordant and Amavia as a single body: because he drank, ‘they
dronk’, and ‘their blood’ is infected. In line 8 they become a single ‘tronck’. See
i.60.1-4n.
4.6charme and veneme: Cf. i.52.3, ‘words and weedes’.
4.7
4.7 The conjecture of 'secret filth' infecting the parents' blood implies venereal
disease.
4.9
4.9 Since the bodies have not been dead long enough to decay their stench calls for
explanation, although the 'great contagion' of this conjecture may blur the line between
a natural cause like disease and a supernatural cause like sin.
5.1to bord: From the sense of coming up alongside a ship in order
to go aboard.
5.4
5.4 'Out of your ignorance you build up great wonderment/a great prodigy', referring at
once to the conjectures of st. 4 and to the 'wavering wonder' that gives rise to
them.
5.8–5.9
5.8-9 ‘Whoever has the knowledge to have selected among waters based on their secret
powers has been able to use them to effect wonders far beyond the ordinary’.
6.1indewd: The pun on the rhyming partner (invested with dew =
in-dewed) aptly folds the action of supplying moisture back into the 'sourse', Dame
Nature's breast.
6.2great Dame Nature: A frequent character in medieval allegories
from Alain de Lisle’s De Planctu Naturae to Chaucer’s Parlement of Fowles,
the goddess Nature appears at TCM vii.5.1 and disappears at vii.59.9; Alain and
Chaucer are mentioned at vii.9. Faunus, Diana, and another nymph (Molanna) also figure
in TCM, along with an etiological fable about rivers.
6.5Floraes painted lap: Flora is the Roman goddess of flowering
plants, associated with natural fertility; cf. her image in Boticelli’s
Primavera. Contrast her appearance in Redcrosse’s lustful dream (I.i.48.9) and
E.K.’s reference to her as a Roman prostitute (SCMarch gloss to 16).
6.6guifte of later grace: Echoing Rom 5:15: ‘But yet the gift is
not so, as is the offence: for if through the offence of one, many be dead, muche more
the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man Jesus Christ, hathe abunded
unto many’.
6.8vertue: Cf. 5.6.
7.1
St. 7-9 Cf. the enchanted well and indwelling nymph at I.vii.4-6. Spenser may base the
fable of the well’s nymph on the legend of St. Winifred. For Drayton’s account of ‘the
sacred fount of Winifrid’, see Polyolbion 10.124-164. There is a
corresponding well in the episode from Trissino that Spenser draws on in Book II
(L’Italia 4.673-697; see i.8-34n).
7.4hartlesse Hynd: With a pun on ‘hart’ as stag, ‘doe without a
mate’.
7.5Dan Faunus: See 6.2n. Faunus is a wood-god, identified with
Pan and associated with fertility but also specifically with amorous pursuit: Horace
calls him Nympharum fugientum amator (‘lover of the flying nymphs’; Odes
3.18.1).
7.7chace: Since the stanza form calls for a ‘b’-rhyme to end line
7, editors often emend to ‘pray’ (prey) or ‘ray’. Some who consider the repetition of
‘chace, / And chaced’ to be deliberate have devised interpretations for the violation;
Kellogg and Steele 1965 note ‘four other passages in Book II, and nine altogether in
The Faerie Queene, in which the early editions give a non-rhyming word in a
position where an obvious synonym would rhyme . . . . The other imperfect rhymes in Book
II are at ii.42.6, iii.28.7, viii.29.7, and xii.54.7’.
8.2of shame affrayd: See i.20.5, 30.1-9 and notes.
8.4Diana: The goddess of chastity and of the hunt. The nymph’s
invocation of Diana and subsequent metamorphosis mark this episode as a self-conscious
imitation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses; often cited are the transformations of Daphne
in Book 1, Arethusa in Book 5, Biblis in Book 9, and Acis in Book 13.
8.7dismayd: With its rhyme-partner ‘mayd’, emphasizes the paradox
that the nymph can remain a maid (virgin) only by ceasing to be a maid (girl).
8.8mate: The play on 'mayd' and 'mate' suggests by way of a pun
that the miraculous well left Guyon 'amated' at 5.3 because its singularity derives from
the nymph's refusal to be 'amated' (matched, joined) by Faunus. The fountain’s nymph is,
therefore, figuratively the antithesis of the water that mixes with wine in the curse
Acrasia uses to deceive Mortdant: ‘So soone as Bacchus with the Nymphe does
lincke’ (i.55.6 and note).
9.3old conceiued dreads: Implicitly contrasting the conception of
unchanging ‘dreads’ with the sexual conception that the maid refuses.
10.2–10.9
10.2-9 The Palmer’s interpretation of the bloody hands as a testament to Amavia’s
‘innocence’ neglects the Christian belief that suicide is a mortal sin; his sense of
them as a ‘sacred Symbole’ calling for ‘revengement’ violates the Biblical injunction
against revenge, and aligns Amavia uncomfortably with Duessa, in the preceding episode,
as a distressed damsel appealing for vengeance. (See i.37.8n for the topical allusion in
the 'bloody hand'.)
10.5innocence: See 1.7-8, 4.3, and i.37.6-9. In the theological
allegory, the mother 'in her last testament' bequeaths not innocence but original
sin.
10.7Symbole: OED identifies this as the earliest recorded
use of the word in its modern sense to mean something that stands for something
else.
10.7dwell: Cf. Romans 7.17, 'the sin that dwelleth in me'.
11.7–12.4
11.7-12.4 The import of Guyon’s loss is suggested by the shared etymology of ‘chivalry’
and ‘cavalry’ from L caballarius horseman. In Le Morte Darthur, Sir
Lamerok berates his brothers, unhorsed in jousting, by demanding ‘What is a knyght but
whan he is on horseback? For I sette nat by a knytht whan he is on foote’ (10.48).
12.7Built on a rocke: Cf. the ‘wise man, which hathe buylded his
house on a rocke’ at Matt 7:24.
13.4by equall shares in equall fee: The sisters inherit equal
shares and equal rights to hold those shares.
13.7–13.9
13.7-9: Cf. Aristotle: ‘the extreme states are contrary both to the intermediate state
and to each other, and the intermediate to the extremes’ (Nic Eth 2.8).
14.4Medina: From L mediana in the middle, and perhaps also
medens physician. Cf. SC Julye 234, Thomalin’s emblem, In medio
virtus, glossed by E.K. with reference to ‘the saying of olde Philosophers, that
vertue dwelleth in the middest, being environed with two contrary vices’. At
Julye 236 this motto is counterpoised by Morrell’s emblem, In summo
foelicitas, which replies to Thomalin’s ‘with continuaunce of the same
Philosophers opinion, that albeit all bountye dwelleth in mediocritie, yet perfect
felicitye dewlleth in supramacie’. The philosophers in question, who start out in the
plural and then seem to coalesce into a single figure, are apparently Aristotle and
Plato respectively.
14.9enterprize: From L inter between and prendere to
take.
15.6
15.6 ‘Beyond what would normally be the rational capacity of one so young’ (the
paradoxical excess of the golden mean).
16.4wanton: Has a wide range of possible meanings, from
‘undisciplined’ to ‘amorous’ to ‘lewd and lascivious’.
16.5Accourting: Cf. ‘comely courted’ at 15.2 above; this courting
may simply be extravagant (‘lavish’), or it may be amorous. OED cites only this
instance.
16.8countenaunce: OED cites only this instance for the
sense ‘make a show of or pretend’.
17.2Huddibras: The ‘great . . . name’ of an early English king
whose role in Briton moniments resembles that of Medina rather than of his
namesake in this episode: ‘Next Huddibras his realm did not encrease, / But
taught the land from wearie wars to cease’ (x.25.4-5). The knight’s name associates him
here with his chief quality (Huddi hardy + Fr bras arm) and with his armor
of ‘shyning bras’; cf. Job 6.12, ‘is my flesh of brasse?’
17.8
17.8 He was more temperamental than courageous.
18.1Sansloy: Last seen at the close of I.vi engaged in combat with
Sir Satyrane.
20.3middle space: Medina’s proper turf.
20.5the scorned life to quell: Their rage is ultimately
suicidal.
20.6–20.7
20.6-7 See 12.6-9n and 20.5n; the conflict between extremes not only disturbs the
occupants of the castle but threatens its foundations (‘raysd’ = ‘raised’, but the
secondary sense ‘razed’ threatens).
20.9fouldring: From L fulgere to flash and fulgur
lightning-flash.
21.5–21.9
21.5-9 The anticlimax of ‘to understond’ emphasizes the comedy of Guyun’s rushing in
wielding sword and shield complete with Homeric epithet (‘sunbroad’) in order to
‘pacifie’ the combatants—not ‘as well he can’ (which the meter would favor), but ‘well
as he can’, which turns out to be not very well. Having lost his horse and borne his
armor as a ‘burden’ (12.4), Guyon is learning the limited value of armor and weapons in
achieving temperance.
22.6lybicke Ocean: Presumably the desert with its wave-like dunes,
since bears and tigers would be unlikely to fight in a literal ocean.
22.7surbet: Cf. III.iv.34.5.
24.1–24.9
St. 24 Cf. Ariosto, OF 21.53.1-6: Come ne l’atro mar legno talora, / che da duo
venti sia percosso e vinto, / ch’ora uno inanzi l’ha mandato, et ora / un altro al
primo termine respinto, / e l’han girato da poppa e da prora, / dal più possente al
fin resta sospinto (‘As a ship on the high seas will sometimes be driven and
buffeted by two winds, and one wind will thrust it onwards until the opposing wind blows
it back whence it came; and it is slewed round, stem and tern, by the winds until the
stronger of the two prevails’).
25.5dismade: Dismayed, i.e. discouraged, but the secondary pun
‘dis-made’ undercuts the narrator’s double . . praise (25.9) by suggesting that
Guyon’s intervention partakes of the same destructive impulses that motivate the
combatants. Cf. 20.5-7 and notes, and note further how Guyon ceases to be differentiated
from the other two knights in 26.1-27.1, where the adjectives ‘valiaunt’, ‘miserable’,
and ‘furious’ apply equally to all three.
26.2darraine: With an emphasis (ironic, here) on the orderly
drawing up of ranks in preparation for battle (cf. ‘enraunged’, 21.4).
26.3triple warre: Cf. 13.7-9n.
27.1
St. 27-33 Cf. IV.iii.46-52, where Cambina reconciles Triamond and Cambel.
27.2–27.3tresses torne, / And naked brest: Conventional signs of
grief.
28.2bad: The line-ending floats ‘not good’ as a momentary (and
apt) possibility.
29.2Erinnys: The Erinyes (Roman name, Furies) are spirits of vengeance in Greek myth. Cf.
‘mortal vengeaunce’ and ‘fowle revenging rage’ at 30.4 and 30.9, as well as i.61.7,
ii.10.8, and the repetition of ‘bloodguiltinesse’ cited in ii.4.5n. See also E.K.’s
gloss to SC Nov 164 naming the three Furies.
29.2–29.3
29.2-3 At Aen 7.456-57 one of the Furies, Allecto, flings a torch at Turnus et
atro / lumine fumantis fixit sub pectore taedas (‘and fixed in his breast the
brand, smoking with lurid light’).
29.6thrust: By metathesis, a 16th-c form of
‘thirst’.
31.1louely concord: See IV.x.34-35.
31.3
31.3 Cf. i.57.7-8, ‘The strong it weakens with infirmitie, / And with bold fury armes the
weakest hart’.
31.7Oliue girlond: Cf. SC Apr 124, ‘Olives bene for
peace’.
32.7requests: Subjects petitioning the king were heard by a part
of the council called the Court of Requests.
32.8as a law: Compare the legal language here with allusions to
passages on the law in Rom 7, glossed at i.54.5, 55.3, and 55.9.
32.9
32.9 I.e., they gave their word as knights to observe the terms of the treaty.
33.3treague: From medieval Latin treuga and Goth
triggwa, covenant.
33.5grace to reconcile: L gratiam reconciliare.
34.6–34.8
34.6-8 Cf. Ps 39:11, ‘When thou wt [with] rebukes doest chastise man for iniquitie, thou
as a mothe makest his beautie to consume: surely every man is vanitie’.
35.1Elissa: From Gr ελασσων elassōn (‘too little,
inferior’). Cf. 34.9: having ‘too little’ appetite for pleasure, she presumably
considers the ‘cheare . . . too mutch’.
36.1Perissa: from Gr περισσoς perissos (‘too much,
excessive’), would be the sister who ‘thought her [Medina’s] cheare too litle’ (34.9).
Throughout these stanzas Spenser plays with the irony of apparent opposites that
actually mirror each other.
36.4measure in her mood: In late medieval music ‘mood’ is a
technical term used in describing aspects of rhythm, as for example in the singing of
psalms. OED cites Sternhold et al. 1572: ‘To set out a full and absolute knowledge of
the nature of the Scale: what moodes there are, & how many: what is perfection, what
imperfection . . .’ (sig. Aviiv).
36.5poured out in pleasure: Cf. I.vii.7.2, where Redcrosse lies
‘pourd out in loosnesse’.
37.6Malecontent: A common character-type in Elizabethan and
Jacobean drama; eventually (1604) the title of a play attributed to John Marston.
38.4extremities: Cf. arg.3n.
38.5–38.7forward . . . froward: Cf. i.37.1n.
39.3–39.4
39.3-4 The turn from feasting to storytelling is repeated several times in Homer and
Virgil, e.g. Il 1.469, Od 8.430-32, Aen 1.723, Aen
8.184-85.
39.8–39.9
39.8-9 Cf. Aen 2.1-2: Conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant. / inde toro
pater Aeneas sic orsus ab alto (‘All were hushed, and held their gaze bent upon
him; then from his lofty couch father Aeneas thus began’).
40.9
40.9 Echoing Ps 85:10, ‘Mercie and trueth shal mete: righteousnes and peace shal kisse
one another’.
41.9Idole: It is conventional to say that a monarch is the earthly
resemblance of God’s magnificence. It is possible as well to suspect that offering
‘sacred reverence’ to a mortal ‘idol’ might evoke the sense, ‘Any thing or person that
is the object of excessive or supreme devotion, or that usurps the place of God in human
affection’ (OED), but the poet is careful not to say so.
41.9magnificence: Identified in FQ Letter as ‘the
perfection of all the rest’ of the virtues, and as represented ‘in the person of Prince
Arthure’ (38-39).
42.4Order of Maydenhead: Una tells Arthur that she was drawn to
Gloriana’s court to seek aid against the dragon by the fame of ‘that noble order hight
of maidenhed’ (I.vii.46.4), alluding to the Elizabethan Order of the Garter. For
subsequent references see II.ix.6.6 and IV.iv.17-25.
42.6–43.9
42.6-43.9 This account revises the version given at FQ Letter 49-52 and 70-74,
where the Palmer arrives at court with the infant Ruddymane already in hand.
42.6make: The rhyme-scheme calls for ‘hold’, and some editors
emend.
42.7
42.7 Traditionally the year was thought to begin on March 25, but Spenser begins
SC in January, and more than half of the ‘Generall Argument’ is given over to
a defense of this choice. If Gloriana holds her feast on the twelve days of Christmas,
then this line probably refers to January 1.
44.1–44.2
44.1-2 Three months have passed.
44.4roiall presence: Referring to the Presence Chamber, where the
Queen, surrounded by her attendants, received visitors.
44.4entrold: Cf. Zurcher 2007: ‘a curious and apparently textually
corrupt word . . . that has excited the confusion and creativity of editors for three
centuries. Its situation as a rhyme-word at the end of the fourth line of its stanza . .
. links ‘world’ to ‘hold’ and ‘told’, which without . . . some phonetically hingeing or
elastic word cannot be knit successfully together; its function as a phonetic bridge,
with the trill moving metasthetically between ‘entrold’ and ‘entorld’ (a feat more
straightforward in Elizabethan pronunciation than our own), strongly suggests that
Spenser intended this exact spelling. . . . [T]he word itself also combines . . . enroll
and enter--the Tudor legal senses of which words make semantic sense in a passage where
Guyon is swearing a sacred oath to avenge the loss of Ruddymane's parents . . .’
(52).
45.1–45.4
45.1-4 Medina already knows the moral she wants the story to illustrate.
45.5
45.5 I.e., misfortune or evil often leads to or procures good results when treated as an
example.
46.1–46.3
46.1-3 Cf. SpE s.v. ‘constellations’. Orion has set beneath the horizon, followed
in the night sky by the constellation Hydra.