1 Mamon: Aramaic for ‘wealth’; see Kellogg and Steele 1965: ‘The Syriac word was misunderstood by some early commentators of the Gospels who interpreted it as the name of one of the fallen angels and, from the New Testament context, the god of earthly wealth’ (8.1-2n). Where the Geneva Bible translates ‘Ye can not serve God and riches’ (Matt 6:24, Luke 16:13), the Bishops’ and other Elizabethan bibles read ‘God, and mammon’. Spenser’s conception of Mammon as both a god of riches and an underworld deity probably reflects the influence of Boccaccio, Genealogia 8.6, which conflates Pluto, the classical god of the underworld, with Plutus, the god of riches; Conti distinguishes the two but does mention that Strabo identified Pluto as the god of wealth (Myth 250). The descent to Mammon’s cave blends allusions to the hero’s descent to the underworld in classical epic (e.g. Od 11 and Aen 6), Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness (Matt 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13), and a number of folktale motifs (e.g., taboos against eating food or touching treasures in the underworld; cf. Thompson, Motif-Index 1955, C211.1 – C211.2.2, C542).

2 threasure: the (perhaps silent) ‘h’ marks the etymology of ‘treasure’ in L thesis aurum, or the ‘placing’ of gold, and so glances at the episode’s biblical concern with where we ‘lay up treasures’ (Matt 6:19-21). Cf. 32.9, ‘before thee laid’, and 33.3, ‘before mine eyes I place’.

1.1 St. 1 The simile of the experienced navigator both looks back to the topic of new world exploration in the proem and anticipates the sense of perilous exploration removed from heaven’s light (3.2) that attends upon Guyon’s venture into the subterranean kingdom of Mammon. Cf. 14.1-5.

1.2 a stedfast starre: cf. I.ii.1.2 ‘the stedfast starre’. Typically Polaris, in the constellation Ursa Minor (also referred to as the lodestar, the Northern Star, or the Pole Star; cf. II.x.4.7, III.iv.53.3). The hint of relativity in the indefinite pronoun might reflect awareness that the identity of the star closest to the pole depends upon the position of the observer in space and time. Thus Taylor 1971 reports the common belief that the southern hemisphere also had a fixed star to match Polaris in the north, the idea being that these two stars were like the ends of the earth’s axis (or “axle”) and provided similar navigational aid in their respective hemispheres (162). If Mammon’s cave is deep enough, there might be a reminiscence of Dante’s passage with Virgil through the center of the earth, from the northern to the southern hemisphere, at the close of the Purgatorio.

1.4 yblent: Past participle of two different verbs, the first meaning ‘to blind’ and the second meaning ‘to combine’. The first can sometimes mean ‘to conceal’, while the second, in its p ppl, can mean ‘confused’. Spenser’s usage here may itself be a blending of the forms. Cf. 10.5, ‘fowly blend’, and 13.2, ‘confound’.

1.6 card and compas: The ‘card’ is a chart or geographical description; in combination with ‘compas’ it might also refer to a card on which the 32 points of the compass are marked, although this tends to be a later usage.

1.7 maysters: A ‘Master Mariner’ was the captain of a merchant vessel; here, navigational instruments are personified as the pilot’s teachers (L magister).

2.1 2.1 The orthographic resemblance of ‘guyd’ to ‘Guyon’ suggests that, like the ‘Pilot well expert’, Guyon deprived of the Palmer will fall back on the ‘card and compass’ of ‘his owne vertues’ as an internalized guide.

2.4–2.5 2.4-5 Guyon comforted with his own virtues may exemplify Aristotle’s description of ‘the Great-minded man’ as one ‘who values himself highly and at the same time justly’ and who prizes his own self-sufficiency (Nic Eth 4.3, 1123b-1125a). The episode tests the limits of self-sufficiency, reached when Guyon collapses in st. 66.

2.9 wildernesse: See Matt 4:1, ‘Then was Jesus led aside of the Spirit into the wildernes, to be tempted of the devil’. The Spirit’s role in leading Jesus into the wilderness is more explicit in other translations. Cf. King James: ‘Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.’ The gloss to the New International Version notes that the Greek for ‘tempted’ can also mean ‘tested’.

3.6–3.9 3.6-9 Mammon’s description suggests the appearance of a blacksmith; cf. st. 35-36.

3.6 bleard: See Langland, Piers Plowman 5.190 [Text B], where Avarice has ‘two blered eyghen’, and Matt 6:23, ‘if thine eye be wicked, then all thy bodie shalbe darke’. The emphasis through the canto’s opening is on concealment and on vision obscured by layers of darkness, mist, or grime, presumably because ‘Regard of worldly mucke doth fowly blend’ (10.5). Meanwhile the tissue of allusions to the Sermon on the Mount links this episode with Phaedria’s song at II.vi.15-17.

4.1 ouergrowne with rust: See Matt 6:19, ‘Lay not up treasures for your selves upon the earth, where the mothe and canker [Bishops’ Bible: “rust”] corrupt’.

4.2 vnderneath enueloped: A gold surcoat surrounds the iron that, beneath the gold, is overgrowne with rust, like another surcoat. The phrasing is difficult but, in its tendency to confound the opposites of ‘underneath’ and ‘enveloped’, evokes the action of the episode, in which Mammon leads Guyon underground to entrap him with the sight of hidden gold. As in the Bower of Bliss, where the ‘Virgin Rose . . . fairer seemes, the lesse ye see her may’ (xii.74.4-6), the secrecy of the treasure adds to its allure.

4.8 feede his eye: Combines the two principal motifs of the canto, feeding (2.4-5) and gazing (3.6 and note).

5.2 neuer could be spent: The treasure is ‘hore’ (arg.2) because it is hoarded, withheld from circulation.

5.3–5.4 5.3-4 Earlier cantos have explored water as a purifying element; in Mammon’s cave raw materials undergo purification by fire. The recurrent emphasis on looking as a kind of feeding suggests an analogous tempering by heat in the form of digestion, an analogy that will become explicit in canto ix.

5.3 rude: From L rudis unwrought—but also ‘inexperienced’, implying by analogy that Guyon himself is ‘purifide’ by the ‘devouring element’ in the course of his ‘long experiment’ (1.7) in Mammon’s realm.

5.4 Mulcibers deuouring element: Mulciber, or Vulcan, is the Roman god of fire.

5.6 Ingowes: In Spenser’s distinctive variation, Hamilton 2001 hears ‘Ingas’, the Elizabethan form of ‘Incas’, famous for the city of gold.

5.7 moniment: ‘image and superscription’ (cf. Matt 22:20-21; Mark 12:16-17; Luke 20:24-25).

5.9 kesars: emperors (from ‘Caesar’); for the conventional doublet with ‘kings’, cf. Teares 570; FQ III.xi.29.9, IV.vii.1.4, V.ix.29.9, and VI.iii.5.7.

7.4 right vsaunce: See Matt 25:14-30, the Parable of the Talents.

7.5 askaunce: Indicating ‘disdain, envy, jealousy, [or] suspicion’ (OED). Cf. SC March 21; FQ III.i.41.6, ix.27.3, and xii.15.2.

7.9 pelfe: Puttenham calls this ‘a lewd terme to be given to a Princes treasure’ (1589: 3.22.217).

8.1–8.2 God of the world . . . god below the skye: See arg.1n and 5.7n. Mammon’s self-description (‘I me call’; cf. 9.6, ‘thy godheads vaunt’) confounds the distinction Jesus draws between worldly and heavenly jurisdictions. Cf. 2 Cor 4:4, ‘the god of this worlde’; John 12:31, ‘the prince of this worlde’.

8.5 principality: Cf. Matt 4:8, ‘all the kingdomes of the worlde, and the glorie of them’; also Luke 4:5-6.

8.7–8.9 8.7-9 Contrast the pretense of unfettered bounty in lines 3-4 and 8. The goods for which ‘men swinck and sweat incessantly’ may flow from Mammon ‘into an ample flood’, but the implied direction of the flow (from me into the world) is put in question by the way lines 8-9 move, as it were, upstream to the underground breeding-place of gold. For the tendency of Mammon’s rhetoric to give with one hand what it takes away with the other, see 5.2, 9.5, 10.3, and especially 19.6-9, confirming that Mammon withholds the ‘ample flood’ of wealth from proper circulation.

8.9 hollow: Cf. ‘the hollow grownd’ (20.8).

8.9 eternall: Mammon ascribes divine attributes to worldly goods, here with implicit self-contradiction, since ‘brood’ as a verb or noun of birth cannot be eternal.

9.1 serue and sew: Cf. Matt 4:9, ‘All these wil I give thee, if thou wilt fall downe, and worship me’.

9.2 these mountaines: Conflating the earth with its ‘brood’ of riches.

9.5 nombred francke and free: The verb takes back what the adverbs purport to give freely; cf. the contradiction noted in 8.7n.

10.1 derdoing: See ‘derring-do’ in glossary.

10.2 vowed daies: Guyon binds himself with a sacred oath at II.i.61.

10.3 bounteous baytes: See 9.5n. Here the noun takes back what the adjective offers, as Mammon’s apparent liberality turns out to be no more than ‘bait’.

10.4 witchest: OED records this as the first figurative use of the verb.

10.5 blend: See 1.4n.

10.6 heroicke: OED records only one prior use of the adjective in this sense (Complaynt of Scotlande, 1549), although Sidney and Puttehnam use it to describe a kind of poetry or poet.

10.7 crownes: Also the name of a coin; cf. 5.8-9.

11.4 in twinckling of an eye: Cf. Luke 4:5: ‘The devil . . . shewed him all the kingdomes of the worlde, in the twinkeling of an eye’.

11.6 I kings create: Cf. Prov 8:15, ‘By me, Kings reigne’, with the Geneva gloss: ‘honors, dignitie or riches come not of mans wisdome or industrie, but by the providence of God’.

12.2 roote of all disquietnesse: Cf. 1 Tim 6:10: ‘For the desire of money is the roote of all evil’.

12.9 1590 prints ‘in great dishonour’. The reading we adopt from 1596 is easier to construe, and has been preferred by modern editors; 1590’s ‘in’ implicates the noble heart in the evils it ‘doth despize’.

13.8 13.8 Cf. Marlowe, 2 Tamburlaine 5.2.26: ‘Kingdomes made waste, brave cities sackt and burnt’.

14.3–14.4 Caspian sea . . . Adrian gulf: Proverbial for storms. Horace calls the south wind, Auster, Dux inquieti turbidus Hadriae (‘stormy master of the restless Adriatic’; Odes 3.3.4-5). See st. 1n: the simile of the storm-tossed voyager reintroduces the motif that implicitly answers Mammon’s question in the second half of the stanza—men are ‘fond and undiscreet’ because ‘Regard of worldly mucke doth fowly blend’ (see notes to 3.6 and 1.4).

14.7–14.9 14.7-9 ‘[Why do men] complain when they don’t have money, and find fault with it when they do?’

15.1 St. 15-17 For the distinction between need and superfluity and the fall from a golden age of simplicity, see Boethius Cons Phil 2.prose.5 and 2.meter.5; Chaucer, ‘The Former Age’; Ovid, Met 1.89-150.

15.6 empeach: This and the two verbs below may reflect the specific phrasing of Chaucer’s translation of the passage from Boethius cited above: ‘thow wolt achoken the fulfillynge of nature with . . . thinges . . . anoyous’ (2.prose.5).

16.3 vnreproued: Contrast with 14.9, ‘complaine, and . . . upbrayd’.

16.6 corn-fed steed: Proverbial; cf. Smith (1970, no. 121), citing Gascoigne: ‘cornfed beasts, whose bellie is their God’.

16.6–16.9 16.6-9 I.e. the pride of later age abused her (the age’s) plenty and her increase, to the end of excessive, unrestrained pleasure. Note the repeated feminine pronoun, indicating Guyon’s view that when the ‘antique world’ degenerates from innocence and purity to ‘fat swolne encreace’, it also declines from masculinity to femininity of the sort described by Parker 1987.

17.1 wombe: Cf. 8.9, ‘brood’.

17.3–17.4 17.3-4 Mining is here compared to robbing a temple, the etymological sense of sacrilege (L sacra legere to purloin sacred objects).

17.6–17.7 17.6-7 ‘He combined gold and silver into the material cause of his desire’ (OED s.v. ‘matter’); ‘compound’ may also glance at financial senses of the verb that involve agreeing to terms for a payment.

17.8 through his veines: Glancing at the veins of ore mined from the earth; Barkan 1975 notes stanza’s movement ‘from an anthropomorphic cosmos [‘wombe’] to a cosmomorphic human body [‘veins’]’ (212).

18.5 life for gold engage: ‘Pledge your life in exchange for gold’.

18.9 18.9 Cf. 14.9.

19.1–19.2 19.1-2 Cf. Nic Eth 4.1 (1120a), on the unwillingness of the ‘Liberal man’ to ‘receive from improper sources’. Guyon’s desire to understand (‘Did feed his eyes, and fild his inner thought’, 24.4) is contrasted with Mammon’s desire to possess (‘to feede his eye / And covetous desire’, 4.8-9). Milton, insisting that ‘the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world . . . necessary to the constituting of human virtue’, praises Spenser for bringing Guyon through both Mammon’s cave and the Bower of Bliss (II.xii) ‘that he might see and know, and yet abstain’ (Areop 729).

19.6–19.7 19.6-7 See 1 Cor 2:9, ‘The things which eye hathe not sene, nether eare hathe heard, nether came into mans heart’.

20.1–20.5 20.1-5 See John 1:38-9: ‘And they said unto him, Rabbi . . . where dwellest thou? He said unto them, Come, and se’.

20.3 wonne: Possibly with a hint of the archaic sense ‘treasure’.

20.6–20.7 20.6-7 The entrance to Mammon’s cave resembles the exits to the House of Pride (I.v.52.7-53) and the castle of Alma (ix.32), and the ‘hinder gate’ of the Gardens of Adonis (III.vi.32.9-33.4), which is both an entrance (to the Garden) and an exit (from the state of life).

20.7–20.9 20.7-9 Cf. Virgil: Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram / perque domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna ( ‘On they went dimly, beneath the lonely night amid the gloom, through the empty halls of Dis and his phantom realm’; Aen 6.268-9).

21.1 St. 21-25 Spenser’s description of the approach to the underworld draws on Virgil, Aen 6.273-81. Lotspeich 1932: 65-66 adds Statius (see Theb 7.40-62), Cicero (see Nat Deor 3.17), Conti (Myth 622), Chaucer (see CT Knight 1982-2040), and Bocccacio (Genealogia 8.6), which allegorizes Virgil’s House of Dis as a House of Riches.

21.3 broad high way: See Matt 7:13, ‘the wide gate, and broad waye that leadeth to destruction’.

21.4 Plutoes: In Roman mythology, Pluto ruled Hades (see arg.1n).

21.5–21.6 21.5-6 Cf. 12.7. In general, the personifications of stanzas 21-23 correspond to the evils listed by Guyon in st. 12.

21.5 infernall: 1590 prints ‘internall’, not an impossible reading (cf. III.x.59.8, ‘internall smart’), but one that awkwardly undercuts the work of projection that turns affects into personages throughout the passage.

22.1 thother side: Cf. Virgil’s adverso in limine (‘on the threshold opposite’, Aen 6.279) in the passage cited above, st. 21-25n.

22.8 Lamenting Sorrow: Cf. the allegorical figure of Sorrow in Mirror for Magistrates (1563), Induction 106-112.

23.1 horror: Like ‘shame’ in the preceding line, uncapitalized in 1590. Only 1609 capitalizes ‘horror’; both 1596 and 1609 register personification by capitalizing ‘shame’. We retain the uncertainty of 1590 because the series of capitalized personifications in stanzas 21 and 22 is preceded, at 20.9, by an encompassing but not quite personified 'dread and horror', suggesting that the mechanism of personification is on display in this passage; cf. II.ii.26.4-9 for a comparable play on the uncapitalized personification of 'love'. As these examples show, the distinction between personified and non-personified abstractions is not absolute: it is more like a spectrum than a switchpoint.

23.3–23.5 23.3-5 On owles and night-ravens as omens, see I.v.30.6-7, Epith 345-6, and SC June 23-24 with gloss by E.K.

23.6 Celeno: Chief of the harpies, defilers of the feast Aeneas and his men prepare in Aen 3. Celeno rebukes the Trojan remnant for offering only war in exchange for the cattle they have slaughtered, and utters the cryptic prophecy that they will not build their city in Italy until famine has forced them to devour the tables they eat from.

24.4 24.4 On the combination of feeding with gazing, see 4.8n and 19.1-2n.

24.6 gaped wide: Cf. Virgil: noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis (‘night and day the door of gloomy Dis stands open’; Aen 6.127).

25.7 25.7 Cf. Hesiod: νυξ δ᾽ ετεκεν στυγερον τε Μορον και Κηρα μελαιναν / και Θανατον, τεκε δ᾽ Ὕπνον, ετικτε δε φῦλον Ὀνειρων (nyx d’ eteken stygeron te Moron kai Kēra melainan / kai Thanaton, teke d’ Hypnon, etikte de Oneirōn; ‘And Night bare hateful Doom and black Fate and Death, and she bare Sleep and the tribe of Dreams’; Theog 211-12).

26.1 St. 26-27 The fiend who follows Guyon recalls the ‘fury’ in the ancient Eleusinian mysteries who followed initiates to enforce their observance of ritual procedures; Spenser could have learned about this from Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae (early fifth century A.D.) or Pausanias’s Description of Greece (second century A.D.)

26.7 dismall day: from L dies mali evil days; see vi.43.7n.

26.8 stalke: Includes the sense that he is stalking Guyon.

27.3 likte him: Cf. Ben Jonson’s ‘On My First Son’: ‘For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such, / As what he loves may never like too much’ (11-12).

27.2–27.4 27.2-4 These ‘fatall Stygian lawes’ are derived in part from the myth of Persephone, who remains in the underworld for half the year because she ate seven seeds from a pomegranate (Met 5.530-38), and in part from folktale motifs (see arg.1n).

27.9 >Stygian lawes: Laws of the underworld (from Styx, the river the dead must cross over to enter hell), ‘fatall’ both because they punish with death and because they govern the realm of the dead.

28.3 28.3 Arches of stone are said to ‘hang’ from the vaulted ceiling like pants in tatters. The image evokes something like a ‘natural’ gothic arch.

28.4 Embost: Ornamented with raised surfaces bulging in relief. OED s.v. ‘boss’ records a specifically geological sense ‘applied chiefly to masses of rock protruding through strata of another kind’, although this use is not noted prior to 1605.

28.4 of glorious guifte: Although seemingly offered, this gold is hoarded, not given. Accordingly, the preposition suspends guifte as an attribute of the substance, absent an actual giver, gift, or recipient.

28.5 28.5 I.e. every rift [was] loaded with rich metal.

28.6 ruine: From L ruire to fall.

28.7–28.9 28.7-9 Arachne challenged Athena to a weaving contest and was punished by being turned into a spider; cf. Muiop 257-352 and Met 6.5-145. ‘High did lifte’ suggests envy or ambition; ‘cunning’ and ‘subtile’ suggest a trap; ‘smoke’ and ‘clouds’ recall the ‘rust’ and ‘filthy dust’ of 4.1-3 and anticipate the ‘dust and old decay’ of 29.2.

29.1–29.5 29.1-5 These lines reprise several motifs from the initial description of Mammon in st. 3 and 4.

29.6–29.9 29.6-9 Like st. 21-25, these lines echo Virgil’s description of Aeneas’s descent into the underworld: quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna / est iter in silvis, ubi caelum conditit umbra / Iuppiter, et rebus nox abstulit atra colorem (‘even as under the grudging light of an inconstant moon lies a path in the forest, when Jupiter has buried the sky in shade, and black Night has stolen from the world her hues’; Aen 6.270-72). The Virgilian simile is picked up by Tasso, GL 13.2 and 14.37. Spenser’s ‘lamp, whose life does fade away’ may also echo Ariosto’s finí come il debol lume suole, / cui cera manchi (‘he ended like a weak flame running low on wax’; OF 24.85.3-4).

30.6–30.9 30.6-9 Recalling the valley of bones to which the prophet is transported in Ezek 37, although the ‘dead mens bones’ in this scene will not be resurrected like their biblical counterparts.

31.2–31.3 31.2-3 See Acts 12:10: ‘they came unto the yron gate, that leadeth unto the citie, which opened to them by it owne accorde’. The gate that opens to Peter leads out of imprisonment, not into it.

33.1 n’ill: ne will, i.e. will not (accept)

33.2–33.4 33.2-4 Guyon’s play on the word happines may allude to the first book of Aristotle’s Nic Eth, where happiness or the ‘chief good’ of the soul is defined.

33.8–33.9 33.8-9 Guyon’s preference for ruling the rich echoes a popular anecdote about the Roman Manius Curius. See Cicero De Senectute 16.56; Elyot retells the story to illustrate a distinction between ‘abstinence’ and ‘continence’ (1531: 3.17).

33.9 sclaue: Archaic spelling preserves the etymology from Med L sclavus.

34.2 greedie pray: Transferred epithet (if Guyon were greedy, the fiend would not lack his prey).

34.4 take . . . assay: See arg.1n on the taboo against touching treasures in the underworld.

34.6 34.6 ‘More swiftly than a dove in the clutches of a falcon’.

34.7 34.7 An exclamation directed to the reader.

34.7 decay: From L de + cadere to fall.

35.2–35.3 35.2-3 See 31.2-3n.

35.9 tryde: As a term of art in metallurgy, to ‘try’ is ‘to separate (metal) from the ore or dross by melting’ (OED).

36.1 St. 36 This stanza echoes details from Virgil’s description of the cave beneath Mt. Aetna where Vulcan’s team of Cyclops forge a shield for Aeneas (Aen 8.416-51).

36.5 Vulcans rage: the fire’s heat

36.7 36.7 Milton echoes this line in Paradise Lost at 1.704 in a description of Mammon’s foundry that is indebted to Spenser.

37.6 staring: In 15th-c. usage, ‘shining’; cf 7.5 and note.

37.9 Till that: Spenser often uses ‘that’ as a complementizer with prepositions.

40.1–40.2 40.1-2 Cf. ‘the gate of Hell, which gaped wide’ (24.6).

40.5 if that: FE lists ‘the that’ as a correction for page 283. We correct ‘if the’; other plausible candidates appear at 42.4, 42.8, and 43.2. See 37.9 above and 49.8 below for other examples of Spenser’s habitual use of ‘that’ as a complementizer with conjunctions and prepositions.

40.6–40.7 40.6-7 For all of the gold in Mammon’s realm, there is also a great deal of iron: see 4.1, 21.7, 23.2, 30.2, and 36.4. Cf. also the ‘later times’ of 18.4 with Met 1.141-44.

41.6 the Titans race: A brood of gigantic immortals, the offspring of Uranus and Ge in Greek mythology, who overthrew their father and were overthrown in turn by their own offspring, Zeus and the other Olympian deities.

42.1 glitterand: The archaic suffix reflects OE, Old Frisian, and Old Saxon forms (‘-ende’, ‘-and’) out of which ‘–ing’ evolved in the fifteenth century.

42.3 hurtle: OED describes Spenser’s use of the verb in this sense as ‘erroneous’.

42.5–42.9 42.5-9 Cf. Guyon’s encounter with Furor at iv.3-10.

43.1 43.1 Underlining the irony of Mammon taking over the Palmer’s role.

43.4 Gyeld: On the likelihood of topical references here and elsewhere in the scene to the Royal Exchange, the Templar knights, and the Tower Mint, see Owens 2005: 156-64.

43.8–43.9 43.8-9 The third of the temptations that Satan offers to Christ in the wilderness includes ‘all the kingdomes of the worlde’ (Matt 4:8). Commentators vary as to how closely Mammon’s temptation of Guyon follows Satan’s three temptations of Christ; parallels would be mediated by the extensive body of medieval and renaissance theology devoted to classifying the temptations. Milton’s treatment of the temptations in Paradise Regained is clearly informed by Spenser’s Mammon episode.

44.3 preaced: An archaic spelling of ‘pressed’; cf. the noun ‘preace’ at 46.5 and 48.2.

44.5–44.9 44.5-9 Cf. Langland’s description of Lade Meed, Piers Plowman B.2.8-17.

44.5 siege: ‘A seat, esp. one used by a person of rank or distinction’ (OED).

44.8–44.9 neuer earthly Prince . . . pompous pryde display: A parody of Christ’s call for simplicity and contentedness in Matt 6:28-29; turning the natural beauty of the lilies (‘even Solomon in all his glorie was not arrayed like one of these’) into an over-abundance of ornamentation and pomp.

46.1 St. 46 The ‘great gold chaine’ held by the ‘woman gorgeous gay’ (44.6) alludes to the golden chain in Homer with which the other gods sought unsuccessfully to pull Jove down from heaven (Il 8.18-27). The image gains historical resonance as both classical and, later, Christian commentators interpret it as a symbol of cosmic order. Lotspeich 1932 cites as precedents for Spenser’s use of the image Plato, Theat 153D; Boethius, Cons Phil 2.meter.8; Chaucer, Troilus 3.1744-1771, and CT Knight A 2987-93; Rom Rose 16988-9; and Conti Myth 116 (64). See also I.ix.1 and note for Spenser’s use of the chain as a positive symbol linking the virtues and their patron knights in an alliance of ‘noble mindes’. His use of the symbol here to suggest avarice follows Conti in combining both interpretations.

46.9 dignity: ‘Ambition’ was denounced in Elizabethan orthodoxy as a form of rebellion against social order, but if the ranks are links in the chain of ambition, as this line seems to say, then ambition is less a force opposed to hierarchy than its inevitable consequence.

47.1 St. 47 Cf. Colin’s satiric portrait of the English court in Colin Clout 688-730.

49.1 Philotime: ‘love of honor’ from Gk φιλος philos love + τιμη timē honor (cf. Timon, I.ix.4.1-2; Timias, III.i.18.9). Meter calls for the final ‘e’ to be voiced, with the primary accent falling on the second syllable.

49.2 49.2 Cf. ‘greatest god below the skye’ (8.2) and note.

49.6 the gods: Mammon, though himself a Biblical figure, seems to recognize only pagan deities.

49.9 works and merits: Alluding to the theological distinction between works and faith; see OED s.v. ‘merit’: ‘Theol. In pl. Good works viewed as entitling a person to reward from God’.

50.1 Gramercy: An unexpectedly ‘gentle’ reply, compared to the scorn Guyon has exhibited earlier (st.13-17, 33, 39). Perhaps Guyon has overcome Disdayne after all—but the etymology of ‘gramercy’ contains a pointed riposte to Mammon’s last offer, for as OED notes, ‘The primary sense of merci was “reward, favour gained by merit”; hence grant merci originally meant “may God reward you greatly’’’.

50.5 and mine vnequall fate: ‘and [I know] my fate [to be] unequal’ to such an ‘immortal mate’.

51.2 forcing it to fayne: Ellipsis for ‘forcing [himself] to dissemble it [the wrath]’ or ‘forcing it [the wrath] to dissemble [itself]’.

51.8–51.9 51.8-9 Echoing Proteus’s description of caligantem nigra formidine lucum (‘the grove that is murky with black terror’) through which Orpheus passes upon entering the underworld in his quest to recover Euridice (Virgil, Georg 4.467-68).

52.1 St. 52 In contrast to the description offered by Claudian, De Raptu 2.290, where Pluto is praising the beauties of the realm he promises to his bride. Pausanius says ‘black poplars and willows’ grow there (Desc 10.30.72).

52.2 Gall: Gall Oak whose misnamed ‘fruit’ or ‘oak-apple’ is a gall, or spongy spherical deformation of the leaf-bud caused by wasp larvae.

52.2 Heben: Cf. Georg. 2.117 hebenum, glossed by T. Cooper: ‘A tree whereof the wode is blacke as jette within, and beareth nor leaves nor fruite’ (1565, s.v. ‘Hebenus’). OED cites Gower, Conf. 2. 103, ‘Of hebenus that slepy tre’.

52.3 Hellebore: Used as a purgative.

52.4 Coloquintida: Cf. 2 Kings 4:38-41: Elisha shreds wild gourds into ‘the pot of pottage’ during a famine, but the men who eat from it cry out that ‘death is in the pot’. The Geneva gloss identifies the gourds as ‘colloquintida . . . moste vehement and dangerous in purging’.

52.4 Tetra: Hunt 1883 identifies this as ‘the tetrum solanum, or deadly nightshade’ (85).

52.5 Samnitis: Not known, but Upton 1758 guesses (because the ancient Samnites dwelt next to the Sabines on the Italian peninsula) that it refers to the savin, used because of its poisonous properties as an anthelminthic and abortifacient.

52.6–52.9 52.6-9 The friend who attends on Socrates at his death is Crito; Critias was an enemy. Commentators have proposed Xenophon, Hellenica 2.3.56, and Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.40, as sources for an error here.

52.8 last Philosophy: Philosophy of ‘last things’, i.e. the soul’s immortality (which would explain ‘quaffing glad’); philosophy delivered at the point of death.

53.1 Gardin of Proserpina: Cf. Od 10.509-40, where Circe describes the garden Odysseus will pass through on his way to Hades, and st. 52n.

53.5 entreat: Cf. Romeo and Juliet 4.1.40: ‘My lord, we must entreat the time alone’.

54.1

golden apples: Mentioned by Claudian, De Raptu: est etiam lucis arbor praevives opacis / fulgentes viridi ramos curvata metallo (‘There is, moreover, a precious tree in the leafy groves whose curving branches gleam with living ore’; 2.290-91).

Typology would associate Proserpine’s golden apples with the fruit taken by Eve in Gen 2. Spenser may also allude to the golden bough in Virgil: latet arbore opaca / aureus et foliis et lento vimine ramus, / Iuonini infernae dictus sacer (‘There lurks in a shady tree a bough, golden in leaf and pliant stem, held consecrate to nether Juno’; Aen 6.136-38).

54.5–54.6 54.5-6 Hercules’ eleventh labor, to fetch the golden apples of the Hesperides (‘great Atlas daughters’) is discussed by Conti, Myth 622. The labors of Hercules were typologically associated by many Renaissance writers with Christ’s victory over evil.

54.8–54.9 54.8-9 The story of Hippomemes (‘th’Eubæan young man’) racing for the hand of Atalanta is told by Ovid (Met 10.560-680) and mentioned by Conti, Myth 624-25. Spenser links the apples of Hercules and Atalanta in Am 77, a dream vision of his beloved’s breast that associates the apples of the Hesperides with those of Song Sol 2.5 (‘comfort me with apples: for I am sicke of love’) and distinguishes them from the fruit in Gen (‘yet voyd of sinfull vice’). Cf. the description in the same sonnet of how Cupid transplanted these apples from ‘paradice’ into his own garden. Cf. also Ronsard, Amours 1.145.

55.1–55.3 55.1-3 Ovid tells how Acontius used an apple to trick Cydippe into marrying him (Her 20).

55.4–55.9 55.4-9 References to the apple of discord as the origin of the Trojan War are found in various classical sources; Conti Myth 555 quotes from Lucian, Ovid, Strabo, and Euripides in his summary of the story. (Spenser’s substitution of Ate for the figure of Eris in Greek myth may proceed by way of Conti’s Discordia).

55.6 Idæan: From Mount Ida, the setting for the Judgement of Paris. The apple thrown ‘emongest the Gods’ at the wedding of Thetis and Peleus, inscribed ‘for the fairest’, was claimed by Hera, Athena, and Venus.

56.8 Cocytus: Gk Κωκυτoς Kōkytos wailing; one of the rivers in the classical underworld.

59.2 ment: The ambiguity raises the question whether Tantalus controls his own meaning— whether he appears as agent or as emblem.

59.5–59.9 59.5-9 Details of the scene are drawn from Homer (Od 11.582-92), although the fruits after which Tantalus reaches in Homer (pears, pomegranates, apples, figs, olives) would presumably be edible, unlike the ‘golden apples’ in Spenser, which nudge Tantalus in the direction of Midas. Tantalus appears in many classical and medieval texts, often as a symbol of greed: cf. Pindar, Olympia 1; Horace, Satires 1.1; Ovid, Ars Am 2.601-6; Dante, Inf 8.31-39; Boccaccio, Genealogia 1.14; Conti Myth 531-535; Alciati, Embemata 85.

59.6 59.6 Tantalus sought to test the omniscience of the Gods by serving his own son Pelops to them at a banquet. Pelops was restored to life, Tantalus consigned to hell.

59.9 giue to eat: Echoing Mark 6:37, ‘Give ye them to eat’.

60.1 St. 60 See 59.2n above; in this stanza one ambiguity is resolved—Tantalus is told to ‘be’ an emblem—while another ambiguity opens up. In 1590 Guyon instructs Tantalus to be an emblem of ‘mind more temperate’, whereas in 1596 and 1609 the instruction reads ‘Ensample be of mind intemperate’. Either version can make sense: Tantalus may be an emblem of intemperance punished, but if he does ‘abide the fortune’ of his ‘present fate’, he may become an example of ‘mind more temperate’.

60.6–60.9 60.6-9 Cf. Rev 16:9, ‘And men boyled in great heat, and blasphemed the Name of God, which hathe power over these plagues, and they repented not, to give him glorie’. The Geneva gloss identifies the ‘great heat’ of this passage as ‘Signifying famine, drought and hote diseases which procede thereof’.

61.4–61.5 61.4-5 Cf. Isa 1.15: ‘And when you shal stretch out your hands, I wil hide mine eyes from you: and thogh ye make manie prayers, I wil not heare: for your hands are ful of blood’.

61.6–61.9 61.6-9 Pilate’s failed effort to wash his hands of guilt echoes Guyon’s failed attempt to wash the hands of Ruddymane (ii.3).

62.3–62.9 62.3-9 Based on Matt 27: 22-26.

62.5–62.7 62.5-7 Echoing Acts 3:14-15.

62.8–62.9 62.8-9 Cf. Ps 26.6, ‘I wil wash mine hands in innocencie’, as well as the Geneva gloss to Isa 1:16: ‘By this outward washig [sic], he meaneth the spiritual’.

63.7–63.9 63.7-9 Cf. the stratagem used by Pluto to ensnare Theseus and Pirithous when they journey to Hades to kidnap Persephone: ‘on the pretence that they were about to partake of good cheer Hades bade them first be seated on the Chair of Forgetfulness, to which they grew and were held fast by coils of serpents’ (Apollodorus, Epitome 1.24). Cf. I.v.35.8n and Aen 6.617-18: sedet aeternumque sedebit / infelix Theseus (‘hapless Theseus sits and evermore shall sit’). For a modern retelling that shows the influence of Spenser’s passage, see Lewis, The Silver Chair. Some commentators suspect a reminiscence of the ‘forbidden seat’ of the Eleusinian mysteries, as described (for example) by Clement of Alexandria in ‘Exhortation to the Heathen’: ‘For Demeter, wandering in quest of her daughter Core [Proserpine], broke down with fatigue near Eleusis, a place in Attica, and sat down on a well overwhelmed with grief. This is even now prohibited to those who are initiated, lest they should appear to mimic the weeping goddess’ (32).

64.2 frayle intemperaunce: Transferred epithet: intemperance is itself the frailty.

64.9 beguile the Guyler: Cf. Piers Plowman 18.159-60: ‘the old law granteth, / That beguilers be beguiled’.

65.6 three dayes of men: Cf. Matt 12:40: ‘For as Jonas was thre dayes, and thre nighs in the whales bellie: so shal the Sonne of man be thre dayes and thre nights in the heart of the earth’. Brooks-Davies 1977 reports that three days ‘was generally agreed by commentators to be the “permitted time” granted to Aeneas’ in the underworld (157; Aen 6.537).

66.2–66.3 66.2-3 Upton 1758 cites Plutarch’s de genio Socratis as the source for ‘two nights and one day’ being ‘allowed for surveying, according to the sacred mysteries, the infernal regions’ (490; 590A in Plutarch’s text describes the ritual time allowed for underworld exploration).

66.5–66.6 66.5-6 Cf. Marlowe, Tamburlaine: ‘when this fraile and transitory flesh / Hath suckt the measure of that vitall aire’ (II.v.43-44).