1 Marinell: From L marinus of or belonging to the sea, by way of Ango-Norman marin, marine seashore, coast.

4 fond: The unavoidable pun (Florimell isn’t found by Arthur because she isn’t fond of him) sets the tone for a canto in which sympathy for the suffering of characters mingles with amusement at their folly.

1.1

St. 1

On Spenser’s use of Ariosto, see the notes to ii.1 and 2. As Hamilton observes, ‘this stanza is structured on the elegiac ubi sunt [L where are] topos’. The phrase appears in the opening lines or the refrain of medieval Latin works, usually lamenting the brevity of mortal things. Spenser’s focus is different: women’s glory hasn’t faded because of the general mutability of things. The elegiac associations of the language serve rather to set off the sexual politics that take the place of mutability in causing the disappearance to be lamented, even as they also anticipate the sorrowful tone that will prevail in the canto. At the same time, the narrator’s seeming innocence about where all the warlike women have gone, compared to the knowing criticism of masculine bias voiced in the opening of canto ii above, contributes to a wry undertone that qualifies this prevailing sorrow with an amused irony.

2.3 enuy: Like the narrator’s ‘disdaine’, his ‘envy’ may indicate rivalry with the poets who had such warriors to celebrate, contempt for the men who diminish their achievements, or indignant pride on behalf of the women named.

2.4–2.6 2.4-6 Penthesilia is not in Homer, although as Upton observes she is mentioned in para-Homeric additions by other writers; cf. the extended account of Achilles’ infancy incorrectly ascribed to Homer by E.K. in the gloss to SC March 97. Virgil mentions Penthesilia at Aen 1.490-93. Given the narrator’s criticism of male writers who ‘deface’ the deeds of heroic women in their writs (ii.1.9), the errors in this stanza are more than a little ironic.

2.7–2.8 2.7-8 See Judges 4. Debora prophesies the destruction of Sisera, but it is Jaél who drives a tent-stake into his temple.

2.8–2.9 2.8-9 For Camilla’s defeat of Orsilochus, see Virgil, Aen 11.690.

2.9 disdaine: Disdain will become a recurrent motif in the canto, introduced here with a characteristically humorous touch of mildly befuddled exaggeration.

3.1

St. 3

See the similar turn to Britomart and Elizabeth at ii.3.

3.3 Aswell: Echoing ‘I swell’ (2.9).

3.6 stock: The trunk of a tree, as opposed to its roots or branches; in the case of a genealogical tree, the progenitor of later generations. A recurring image for Britomart’s relation to the royal lineage: see ii.17.5n; iii.16.6, 18.3, 22.3.

3.9 along: Cf. iii.4.6-9.

4.4–4.5 4.4-5 Pledges of friendship among Spenser’s protagonists have a special significance in the symbolic structure of the poem; see notes to I.ix.1 and III.i.12.

4.8 win him worship: Echoing I.i.3.4.

5.1

St. 5

Britomart’s refusal to remove her armor is introduced at i.42.7; when she does remove it on going to bed (i.58.6), the consequences are distressing. Here the mention of her unwillingness is not clearly motivated, and so the reader is left to muse upon the relation between Britomart’s keeping to ‘her former course’, her refusal to doff her arms, and her pensiveness as she ‘fashions’ a mental image of Artegall in response to the Redcrosse knight’s rhetorical ‘display’ of his appearance. (For the importance of rhetorical display in the account of Merlin’s prophecy, see the notes to iii.8.9, and 32.1.)

The language of this stanza is dense with terms used by Spenser to describe his own activity as a poet; in its emphasis on the idealizing force of Britomart’s fantasy, the description of her mental activity parallels Sidney’s definition in the Defence of Poetry of ‘right’ poets, ‘who having no law but wit, bestow that in colours upon you which is fittest for the eye to see’ (80). The description of Britomart’s mental activity in this stanza also harks back to the gestation simile (ii.11) that describes her first response to the image ‘displayed’ by Redcrosse.

6.1–6.5 6.1-5 The catachresis of feeding a wound extends the paradox intimated by the spelling ‘amarous’ at 5.3, and suggests that Britomart’s refusal to disarm—which comes too late, since she is already wounded—is doubly futile inasmuch as her thoughts are not only ‘self-pleasing’ but also (and for that very reason) self-wounding.

6.8 6.8 Doubly ironic in that her guide (Cupid) is not only blind but also, as ‘guest’, uninvited—and, as the uninvited guest who blindly presumes to guide, a host’s worst nightmare. Cf. ii.49.2-3, ‘no powre / Nor guidaunce of her selfe in her did dwell’.

7.3 lofty creast: See ii.27.1-2n.

7.6 disdaynd: Spenser’s landscapes characteristically assume the affective and psychological attributes of the poem’s agents. Disdain is a motif throughout the canto, beginning at 2.9 above.

8.1

St. 8-10

The first of three formal complaints in this canto (see 36-39 and 55-60), Britomart’s three stanzas recast Petrarch, RS 189, a sonnet also imitated by Chaucer in the lament of Troilus (T and C 5.638-44) and by Wyatt in ‘My galley chargèd with forgetfulness’. Spenser revisits this topos in Am 34. For the Biblical provenance of the metaphor, see Psalms 69:15: ‘Let not the waterflood drowne me, nether let the depe swallowe me up’.

8.1 8.1 Spenser’s description of the seashore has already presented it as the projection of a psychomachia, preparing the way for Britomart’s apostrophe to a ‘sea of sorrow’ that is both inside and outside of her.

8.5 8.5 This image for the waves marks Spenser's adaptation of the topos to a female speaker.

8.9 thy troubled bowels (these troubled bowels 1596): Cf. ‘my bleeding bowells’ (ii.39.2).

9.4 9.4 As Upton observes, ‘this verse is beyond measure hypermeter, and as rough as the subject requires’. The unstressed rhyming syllable is unusual in Spenser; cf. 53.9, where meter and rhyme together force the accent onto the second syllable of ‘pillow’.

9.5–9.9 9.5-9 Once again (as at 6.8) recalling and expanding upon ii.49.2-4. Merlin’s ‘assurance’ speaks directly to this concern: ‘destiny . . . Guyded thy glaunce’ (iii.24.3-5). See 6.8n.

9.6 lewd: As navigator, the Pilot should be well-versed in the use of compass and in the specific features of the local harbor or coastline. Lewd may also mean ‘unchaste’.

9.7 9.7 The tour de force metrical effects on display in this line are appropriate to a self-conscious set-piece. The counterpoint between words and metrical feet creates a strong trochaic undertow within a perfectly iambic line.

10.2 Continent: The imagery of st. 7 introduces the notion that in opposing the ‘surges’ of oceanic passion, terra firma also represents continence.

10.9 hallow: Upton notes the ‘ancient custom’ whereby ‘the mariner escaped from shipwreck offered his votive tablet to Neptune, Horace, Odes 1.5; Juvenal, Satires 12.27; Tibullus 1.3’.

11.4 repriefe: The rhyme-word ‘reliefe’ retroactively implants an echo of ‘reprieve’ in Glauce’s reproof.

11.8–11.9 sacred . . . immortall: Transferred epithets. Britomart’s offspring will immortalize her on earth through the fame of their exploits and in heaven by enrolling their names in the book of life (cf. Epith 417-23 and Isa 4:3, Geneva gloss: ‘He alludeth to the boke of life, whereof read Exod. 32,33: meaning Gods secret counsel, wherein his elect are predestinate to life everlasting’). The doctrine of predestination thus underwrites the prolepsis.

12.6–12.9 12.6-9 The conversion of kindred emotions into wrath begins with Guyon’s first adventure in II.i and culminates in his destruction of the Bower. On Britomart as resuming Guyon’s irascibility, see i.28.6-8n, ii.6.6-9n, and v.21n. Since her sorrow is an aspect of her desire for Artegall, it follows the pathway already traced by her defensive reaction to that desire, ‘Converting’ into ‘suddein wrath’.

12.9 despight: See 2.9, 7.6, and notes.

13.1–13.6 13.1-6 Cf. II.viii.48.1-7, where the simile describes Arthur’s tactics in combat with Pyrochles; here the weather characterizes an internal action, Britomart’s conversion of grief into wrath.

13.7 disclo’ste: The apostrophe does not signal an actual elision, but may be used to create an eye-rhyme with ‘lo’ste’.

14.6 in my despight: See ‘Love and despight’ at 12.9, ‘disdaynd’ at 7.6, and 2.9n.

15.1 deepe disdaine: Extending the motif introduced at 2.9.

15.2–15.3 15.3-4 Both the curtness of Britomart’s reply and the promptness of her charge against the stranger knight in the ensuing lines are very much in character not only with her mood at present but with her pattern of behavior thus far (see 12.6-9n).

15.8–15.9 15.8-9 She is bent over backwards by the force of the blow; the ‘crouper’, or crupper, is a leather strap attached to the saddle and running back under the horse’s tail.

16.5 left side: Proximity to the heart suggests a love-wound.

17.1

St. 17

Classical precedents for the comparison of a sacrificial ox to a warrior struck down in battle include Homer, Il 17.520-24, and Apollonius Rhodius, Apollon 4.468-70, but Spenser’s simile is distinctive in its emphasis on the sacrificial animal’s pride in his ornaments, ignorance of their meaning, and stupefaction on receiving the ‘mortall stroke’—features that sustain the precarious balance between pathos and amused irony characteristic of this canto (see arg.4n).

17.3 deare: The ox’s ‘bandes’ are ‘deare’ to him because he takes pride in them, but also because they will cost him his life. Introduced in the adverbial form at 15.6, the word ‘deare’ becomes a motif in the canto.

17.7 Distaines: Linked by sound to a keyword for the canto, ‘disdain’.

17.9 Marinell: Named (for the first time in the narrative) after the shore he defends (see arg.1n).

17.9 pretious shore: At 16.8 the shore was ‘sandy’; it becomes ‘pretious’ now in anticipation of Britomart’s discovery in the next stanza.

18.9

all was in her powre: Cf. Horace, Odes 2.2.19-24:

Virtus . . . . . . regnum et diadema tutum deferens uni propriamque laurum, quisquis ingentes oculo inretorto spectat acervos.

‘Virtue . . . conferring power, the secure diadem, and lasting laurels on him alone who can gaze upon huge piles of treasure without casting an envious glance behind’.

Britomart does not need to struggle with Mammon; Guyon has won that battle. Cf. i.19.1-3, where Britomart is equally indifferent to Guyon’s other major temptation, ‘beauties chace’.

19.1 stonishment: A favorite Spenserian pun: stunned, Marinell becomes stone-ish.

19.3 blacke-browd Cymoent: Upton derives the nymph’s proper name from Gk κυμα kuma (‘wave’) (cf. ‘Cymochles’ at II.iv.41.5), and her epithet from  kuanophrus (‘dark-browed’).

19.3–19.9 19.3 -20.6 The account of Marinell’s begetting and his growth to become ‘A mighty man at armes’ are derived from the story of Achilles (see Ovid, Met 11.229-265 for the story of Peleus begetting Achilles on the sea-nymph Thetis). This may imply an opposition between Marinell and Artegall, who enters the poem, in imago if not in person, having won ‘Achilles armes’ (ii.25.6).

20.1–20.6 19.3 -20.6 The account of Marinell’s begetting and his growth to become ‘A mighty man at armes’ are derived from the story of Achilles (see Ovid, Met 11.229-265 for the story of Peleus begetting Achilles on the sea-nymph Thetis). This may imply an opposition between Marinell and Artegall, who enters the poem, in imago if not in person, having won ‘Achilles armes’ (ii.25.6).

19.4 Nereus: Sea god and father to the sea nymphs, or Nereids.

20.8 Rich strond: A threshold not only between land and sea but also between mortal and immortal domains, as Marinell descends from the union between a sea-nymph and an ‘earthly’ knight (19.3-6).

21.5 glade: Hamilton suggests that this term is applied (oddly) to the Rich strond in order to associate it with Mammon’s cave (see 18.9n). If Britomart revisits the Bower of Bliss from the point of view of Chastity in Castle Joyeous, then here she revisits Mammon’s cave.

21.6–21.9 21.6-22 Zurcher notes that ‘Neptune has conferred upon Marinell a lucrative monopoly, the franchise of “wreck” on the high seas, or in the Latin wreccum maris’ (2007: 107).

22.1–22.9 21.6-22 Zurcher notes that ‘Neptune has conferred upon Marinell a lucrative monopoly, the franchise of “wreck” on the high seas, or in the Latin wreccum maris’ (2007: 107).

21.7 dearely: The discovery that Marinell’s ‘sandy shore’ is also a ‘pretious shore’ adds to the semantic density of the term; cf. ‘pretious and deare’ at 23.6 and see 17.3n.

23.5 owches: ME ouche originally signified a clasp or brooch but later was used to refer to precious ornaments generally.

24.2 24.2 Ambiguous syntax may be construed ‘often keenly tested to the harm of many’, ‘often tested to the acute harm of many’, or ‘often tested to the harm of many who were highly esteemed’. See 17.3n and 21.7n for the recurrent pressure placed on the modifier ‘deare’ in this episode.

25.1

St. 25

In the prophecy of Proteus concerning Marinell’s ‘sad end’, Spenser combines Thetis’s foreknowledge of Achilles’s death at Troy (Ovid, Met 13.162-3) with Cyrene’s instructions to her son Aristaeus on obtaining prophetic counsel from Proteus (Virgil, Georg 4.387-456).

25.7–25.9 25.7-9 Proteus’s warning may also be indebted to Renaissance versions of the Achilles legend; according to Boccaccio Genealogia 12.52 and Conti Myth 9.12, Achilles fell in love with Priam’s daughter Polyxena, who lured him to his death in Troy.

25.9 straunge: Cf. v.9.8, ‘a forreine foe’.

26.8–26.9 dy: / Dy: The repetition plays the common euphemism for orgasm against the end of life, much as the play on ‘deare’ throughout the canto (see 17.3n) contrasts Marinell’s possessive love of the strand and its riches with their cost to him.

26.9 who so list: Ironically echoing the title of Wyatt’s lyric ‘Whoso list to hunt’.

27.2 weene: Cf. ‘weening’, line 9.

27.4 amate: With a characteristic pun on a-mate, couple in love, and checkmate (cf. ‘mated’ at I.ix.12.2).

27.9 27.9-28.5 Cymoent’s misinterpretation of the prophecy, as it leads her to ‘disarme’ Marinell by arming him, extends the play on martial and erotic ‘arms’ that begins with Britomart in canto i (see i.45.7n): as one who turns to combat in a defensive refusal of love, Marinell mirrors a tendency within Britomart. Cymoent’s ‘vaine’ interpretation also enters into Book III’s extended play on the differences between literal and figurative wounds: indeed, if her son’s battle-wound may be interpreted allegorically as a love-wound (see 16.5n), Cymoent is not entirely wrong; she has merely substituted allegorical meaning for literal action within the fable.

28.1–28.5 27.9-28.5 Cymoent’s misinterpretation of the prophecy, as it leads her to ‘disarme’ Marinell by arming him, extends the play on martial and erotic ‘arms’ that begins with Britomart in canto i (see i.45.7n): as one who turns to combat in a defensive refusal of love, Marinell mirrors a tendency within Britomart. Cymoent’s ‘vaine’ interpretation also enters into Book III’s extended play on the differences between literal and figurative wounds: indeed, if her son’s battle-wound may be interpreted allegorically as a love-wound (see 16.5n), Cymoent is not entirely wrong; she has merely substituted allegorical meaning for literal action within the fable.

28.6–28.9 28.6-9 Contrast iii.25.9 (and note), where Merlin’s confidence that heavenly causes will reach ‘their constant terme’ underplays the ambiguity of his own prophetic utterance. Cymoent’s reliance on Proteus offers a close analogy to Glauce’s reliance on Merlin: at stake in both situations is the interpretation of a wound, which can be understood only by locating it within the right narrative context. In each instance the predestined outcome (‘terme’ as end-point) depends on the hazards of interpretation (‘terme’ as the riddling language of oracular utterance).

28.6 termes of mortall state: Exemplifying the point it states, this line conflates the two senses of ‘terme’ distinguished above.

28.9 approue: The narrator suggests that the misinterpretation of ambiguous prophecies may itself serve the purposes of destiny.

29.5–29.9 29.5-30.4 Cymoent’s grief on hearing of her son’s fall recalls both Homer’s account of Thetis as she hears Achilles groan in anguish (Il 18.35-38) and Virgil’s of Clymene when she hears Aristaeus’s lament (Georg 4.333-57).

30.1–30.4 29.5-30.4 Cymoent’s grief on hearing of her son’s fall recalls both Homer’s account of Thetis as she hears Achilles groan in anguish (Il 18.35-38) and Virgil’s of Clymene when she hears Aristaeus’s lament (Georg 4.333-57).

29.7 her watry sisters: See 19.4 and note.

29.9 29.9 The unusual overrunning of the stanza close adds formal emphasis to the ‘turn’ described in 30.3-4; the repetition of ‘girlonds’ emphasizes the turn.

30.5–30.9 30.5-9 Cymoent’s actions mimic Marinell’s fall (cf. ‘swownd’ at 29.3 with ‘swowne’ at 30.6); her ‘sisters’ follow suit when they lament ‘for her’ rather than for him. These details may elaborate a hint in the name of the flowers they were gathering at 29.8: the nymphs first crowning themselves with Narcissus and then tearing the garlands from their ‘crownes’ figuratively mirror Marinell’s narcissistic wound. For the ongoing contrast with Britomart, see the notes to 27-28 and Britomart’s comparison of herself to ‘Cephisus foolish chyld’ at ii.44.6-9.

31.1–31.6 31.1-6 Both the motif of narcissistic mirroring and the blending of pathos with amused irony are sustained in the parallels between Cymoent and her chorus of sister-nymphs, most emphatically in the lumbering chiasmus of line 6.

32.1

st. 32

Neptune’s unsolicited response to Cymoent and her sisters contrasts with the absence of any response to Britomart’s prayer and vow at 10.6-9, immediately preceding her encounter with Marinell. His response also extends the motif of mirroring, both in the repetition of line 3 (‘mournd at their mournfull’) and in the closing rhyme (‘See’ with ‘see’). In Ovid, the great flood summoned by Neptune recedes when Triton sounds his conch (Met 1.330-42); with Cymothoë, he helps Neptune calm the storm that opens the Aeneid (1.142-45).

33.1–33.3 33.1-3 Based on passages from Virgil and Apollonius, Conti infers that Triton was half-dolphin (Myth 8.3, 708).

33.7 bubling rowndell: Evidently Cymoent is so opposed to the love of women that even her dolphins refrain from creating the sort of froth from which Venus was said to have been born.

33.9 33.9 The smoothness of the dolphins’ progress is suggested by the muting of the caesura.

34.5–34.6 34.5-6 That fish don't literally have ‘tender feete’ (any more than dolphins have a ‘gate’, 32.9) belongs to the curious humor of the episode, as it plays back and forth across the border between sea and land.

34.9 34.9-35.1 For the second time in five stanzas Spenser violates the norm of syntactic closure at stanza end. Here the effect is complicated by the emphasis on the ‘margent’ as a border between the mythic seas and the land inhabited by mortals, and by the mirroring across that border between Cymoent and her son, signaled as before by the repetition of ‘swownd/swowned’.

35.1 34.9-35.1 For the second time in five stanzas Spenser violates the norm of syntactic closure at stanza end. Here the effect is complicated by the emphasis on the ‘margent’ as a border between the mythic seas and the land inhabited by mortals, and by the mirroring across that border between Cymoent and her son, signaled as before by the repetition of ‘swownd/swowned’.

35.4 relyu’d: The expression implies that Cymoent is ‘reliving’ her son’s demise in her own repeated swooning.

35.6 deare: For the importance of this term as a motif in the canto see 17.3n, 21.7n.

35.8–35.9 35.8-9 Musical terms: ‘consent’, harmony; ‘breaches’, divisions; ‘complement’, completion by filling in the pauses (OED); ‘breaches’ also describes the breaking of waves. The combination of hyperbolically weeping rocks with this aestheticizing of lament may distance Cymoent’s grief. The nymphs’ musical ‘complement’ may also echo the ‘most melodious sound’ heard by Guyon and the Palmer (II.xii.70.1) as they approach Acrasia and Verdant—another ironic pietá, expressing self-indulgent sexuality rather than, as here, self-indulgent grief.

36.1

St. 36-39

The second of three formal complaints in this canto (see st. 8-10n).

36.1 Deare image of my selfe: This phrasing brings together two motifs running through the episode: the recurrent play on senses of ‘deare’ and the repeated hints of narcissism (see st. 30-32 and notes).

36.6–36.9 36.6-9 The addition of the question-mark comes like an after-thought, recasting what initially were declarative clauses in the interrogative mood and reminding us that in fact Marinell is not yet dead.

36.9

wefte: On Spenser’s use of this form, see Zurcher (2007: 103).

Hamilton declares of ‘irrevocable’, ‘fittingly, the word cannot be scanned’. The scansion is difficult but not impossible: ‘thy’ and the first syllable of ‘irrevocable’ must be read as elided into a single unaccented syllable: ‘thy’revocable’.

37.1 37.1 Proteus’s reputation as a prophet derives from Virgil, Georg 4.387-529.

37.9 deare: For this word as a motif in the canto, see 36.1n.

38.1

St. 38

In keeping with the narcissistic themes of the episode, Cymoent is here bewailing her own misfortune, not Marinell’s, and by the end of the stanza is arguing that he’s the lucky one. In the process she echoes the laments of Juturna for her brother Turnus in Virgil and of Inachus for his daughter Io in Ovid: quo vitam dedit aeternam? cur mortis adempta est /condicio? (‘Wherefore gave he me life eternal? Why of the law of death am I bereaved?’; Aen 12.879-80); sed nocet esse deum, praeclusaque ianua leti (‘It is a dreadful thing to be a god, for the door of death is shut to me’; Met 1.662).

38.8–38.9 38.8-9 ‘It is a greater burden to see a friend’s grave than to be dead and fill one’s own’.

39.4–39.5 39.4-5 Cf. the lament of Eryalus’ mother in the Aeneid: nec te, tua funera, mater produxi pressive oculos aut volnera lavi (‘Nor have I, thy mother, led thee—thy corpse—forth to burial, or closed thine eyes, or bathed thy wounds ’; 9.487-88)

39.7 39.7 The submetric line may be deliberate, corresponding to the supposed broken thread of Marinell’s life; it also marks a shift from accusing heaven to bidding the son farewell. For other submetric lines in the poem, see II.iii.26.9 and note.

39.9 till we again may meet: sith we no more shall meet 1596

40.1 sorowed their fill: Cymoent and her sisters lament Marinell’s death for ten stanzas before examining his wound.

40.8–40.9 40.8-9 Cf. Thetis tending to the body of Patroclus in Homer (Il 18.39-40) and Venus tending to the wound of Aeneas in Virgil (Aen 12.416-19).

41.1–41.6 41.1-6 Hesiod mentions Liagore (Gk  leukoenos, ‘white-armed’) as one of the Nereids (Theog 257). Spenser transfers to her the story of Oenone, ravished by Apollo and then instructed in the arts of medicine (Ovid, Her 5.145-50). They had no offspring, but Paeon is mentioned in Homer as physician to the gods (Il 5.401-02, 899; Od 4.232).

41.1 lilly handed: Other lilly-handed maidens in the poem include Una, Belphoebe, Amoret, and Florimell.

41.4 Pindus: Thessalian mountain range associated with whiteness (cf. Proth 40-41, ‘The snow which doth the top of Pindus strew, / Did never whiter shew’) and with potent herbs (Ovid’s Medea gathers magical ingredients there at Met 7.224-27).

41.7 staied still: With a secondary suggestion in each word that the pulse is barely detectable (‘stay’ as stop or delay, ‘still’ as quiet or motionless).

42.5 beare: Since ‘corse’ can mean dead body and ‘bier’ is often used for the pallet on which a body is carried to the grave, Spenser is still playing on Marinell’s condition as close to death (cf. 41.7n).

43.2 43.2 Cf. Homer's description of Poseideon’s seduction of Tyro disguised as the river-god Enipeus: πορφύρεον δ’ ἄρα κῦμα περιστάθη οὔρεϊ ἶσον, /κυρτωθέν, κρύψεν δὲ θεὸν θνητήν τε γυναῖκα; porphyreon d’ ara kūma peristathē oureï ison, / kyrtōthen krypsen de theon thnētēn te gunaika (‘And the dark wave stood about them like a mountain, vaulted-over, and hid the god and the mortal woman’; Od 11.243-44). Virgil translates this line in describing Aristaeus’ descent to the underwater dwelling of his mother Cyrene: at illum / curvata in montis faciem circumstetit unda (‘And lo, the wave, arched mountain-like, stood round about’; Georg 4.360-61). Tasso echoes the same line when the Wise Man of Ascalon escorts Charles and Ubaldo to his cell beneath a river (GL 14.36.5-8).

43.7 Tryphon: This sea-god Spenser derives from an error in Boccaccio, Genealogia 7.36, who gives triphon for Cicero’s Trophonius (Nat Deor 3.22). From his being brother to Aesculapius, Spenser invents that he is a physician, and from the resemblance of ‘Tryphon’ to ‘Triton’, that he is a sea-god.

44.9 44.9 Cf. 5.1, ‘kept on her former course’; these phrases frame the episode.

45.1–45.4 45.1-4 The mention of Archimago here looks like the trace of an abandoned plot line, which may have involved his long-standing partnership with Duessa. It is his last appearance in the poem. Cf. i.arg.3n, ii.4.1n for similar traces of incomplete revision.

45.5–45.9 45.5-9 Further evidence that this transitional stanza reflects an earlier stage of composition, since abandoned: Arthur and Guyon are spoken of as pursuing the Foster, whereas at i.18-19 above and again in st. 46 below they pursue Florimell, leaving Timias in sole pursuit of her assailant.

46.4–46.6 46.4-5 Tellingly, Spenser echoes the account of Daphne’s flight from Apollo in Ovid, Met 1.533-39: ut canis in vacuo leporem cum Gallicus arvo / vidit, et hic praedam pedibus pedit, ille salutem (‘just as when a Gallic hound has seen a hare in an open plain, and seeks his prey on flying feet, but the hare, safety’). Compare Spenser’s implicit questioning of the motives behind ‘beauties chace’ at i.18-19.

46.9 pray: The positive sense associated with Biblical usage (OED 3.b) is not infrequent in Spenser, but the hunting simile in this stanza necessarily activates the predatory senses of the term as well.

47.1 Timias: Resuming the narrative from i.18.9.

47.5 ybent: Contrast Britomart’s undeviating ‘right course’ at 44.9.

48.2 fomy steed: See II.xi.19.7n.

48.6–48.9 48.6-9 See 46.4-5n for the echo of Daphne and Apollo. Ovid implies a comparable self-deception on the part of the god, who had earlier (Met 1.504-07) called out to Daphne just as Arthur is here said to call out to Florimell.

49.2–49.3 49.2-3 Florimell recognizes no distinction between fleeing from Arthur and from the Foster. Arthur insists on the distinction, while the Ovidian intertext questions it.

49.4–49.9 49.4-9 For the flight of the dove cf. the lines from Ovid just cited (Met. 1.504-07) and Arethusa’s description of her flight from Alpheus (5.605-06).

49.8 49.8 The syntax lends added emphasis to the main verb; deferred for three-and-a-half lines, it arrives just in time to speed the movement of the verse.

49.8 for-hent: Cf. ‘forlent’ (47.2).

50.1

St. 50

Dilates upon the sense of 49.1-3. As usual, Spenser’s narrator takes Arthur at face value, and is careful not to notice ironies that might complicate this assessment of motive.

50.4–50.5 50.4-5 The phrasing here and at 49.1 conveys a sense of something involuntary in Florimell’s flight, almost as if her emotions were acting on her from without.

50.7 insolent: The normal sense of the word is ‘presumptuous’. Spenser appears to be extending its meaning.

51.1–51.2 51.1-2 For an extended description of Arthur's arms, see I.vii.29.4-36; his shield is ‘uncouth’ (unknown) because ‘all closely cover’d’ (I.vii.33.1).

51.5 corage keene: Among the range of meanings evoked by this phrase would be ‘ardent sexual desire’.

51.6 golden Hesperus: Venus, the evening star. Cf. Epith 286-87, where the groom impatient for the arrival of night sees ‘the bright evening star with golden creast / Appeare out of the East’, where it should appear in the west. Venus always appears near the setting sun, above the horizon, and so would never be ‘mounted high in top of heaven sheene’ at nightfall. Its placement in these lines may be a joke at Arthur’s expense: he has followed Florimell so long that his Venus is in the ascendant, ‘mounted high in top’ of his heaven wherever it may appear in the night sky.

53.2 at disauenture: Spenser seems to have coined this idiom to mean something like ‘at random’, with the added suggestion of misfortune.

53.3–53.4 53.3-4 Echoing the conceit embedded in Britomart’s complaint (st. 9; see st. 8-10n).

53.7–53.9 53.7-9 Cf. I.ix.13.1-4, where Arthur lies down to dream of Gloriana. Both passages echo the account Chaucer’s Sir Thopas gives of his dream (CT Thopas 7.778-96).

53.9 53.9 Rather an uncomfortable pillów, with the accent wrested onto the second syllable.

54.4–54.5 54.4-5 Echoing the simile that compares Maleger’s troops to gnats (II.ix.16), the description of Phantastes’ chamber (II.ix.51), and the ‘guilefull semblants’ deployed by ‘Pleasures porter’ (II.xii.48.6), these lines identify Arthur’s pursuit of Florimell with the temperate soul’s vulnerability to erotic fantasies.

54.8 54.8 Insofar as both ladies defined by their inaccessibility, Arthur’s Fairy Queen is precisely ‘such, as shee’.

55.1

St. 55-60

The third and final complaint in this canto’s series (see st. 8-10n). All three evoke amused sympathy as they balance pathos against various qualifying ironies, underlined by the parallels among them. Spenser’s account of Night in these stanzas is based principally on Conti, Myth. 3.12, which in turn gathers references from Euripedes, Cicero, and Hesiod. Arthur’s hostile address to ‘hasty Night’ (54.9) specifically echoes that of Chaucer’s Troilus, who also blames night for its haste (3.1427-42). For the praise of sleep, see Sidney, AS 39, ‘Come sleep, oh sleep, the certain knot of peace’. Both the longing for rest and the need to resist that longing are deeply rooted in Spenser’s sense of life as moral struggle: see especially the seductive rhetoric of Despair (‘sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas’; I.ix.40.8).

55.1

St. 55

At I.v.20-44, Night accompanies Duessa on a journey to seek out Aesculapius in the classical underworld. Her genealogy is given at I.v.22.2-6.

55.1–55.2 55.1-2 Here the language of genealogy is metaphoric, as Spenser reenacts the emergence of personification allegory from figurative language.

55.5 Cocytus: Named from Gk Κωκυτός Kōkytos (‘wailing’); one of the rivers in the classical underworld.

55.6 Herebus: Erebus, generally the region of the underworld (see II.iv.41.7-9n).

55.6–55.8 55.6-8 Night’s link to Herebus is featured in the genealogy of Pyrochles and Cymochles at II.iv.41.6-9.

55.9 Halfe of thy dayes: Punning on ‘day’ as contrasted with and as inclusive of night. During her own proper half of each inclusive ‘day’, Night leaves the underworld and ascends into the sky (cf. I.v.44.4-9).

56.1–56.2 56.1-2 Referring to Gen 1:3-5, where God creates light and separates it from darkness: ‘And God called the light, Day, and the darkenes, he called Night’.

56.5–56.9 56.4-9 The syntax in these lines is difficult because two different phrases, ‘in sleepe’ and ‘Calles thee’, end up doing overlapping duty as the sentence proceeds. The slothfull body loves to steep his limbs ‘in sleepe’ and also ‘Calles thee in sleepe’; he ‘Calles thee, his goddess . . . [up] from Stygian deepe’ and also ‘Calles thee . . . great Dame Natures handmaide’.

57.4 rayling: Cf. Visions of Bellay 155, ‘I saw a spring out of a rocke forth rayle’.

57.6–57.7 57.6-7 See the description of death’s ‘dreary image’ at TCM VII.vii.46.1-5, where life and death are similarly mingled.

58.5 dreriment: Coined by Spenser from ‘dreary’ (57.7).

58.7–58.9 58.7-9 See John 3:20, ‘For everie man that evil doeth, hateth the light, nether commeth to light, lest his dedes shulde be reproved’.

59.1–59.2 59.1-2 See 1 Cor 3:13, ‘Every mans worke shalbe made manifest: for the day shal declare it, because it shalbe reveiled by the fyre: and the fyre shall trie everie mans worke of what sort it is’.

59.5 children of day: Cf. I.v.25.7, and 1 Thess 5:5-6, ‘Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day; we are not of the night nether of darkenes. Therefore let us not slepe as do other’. 1596 (‘Dayes dearest children’) mutes the scriptural but reiterates one of the canto’s key terms (see 17.3n).

59.7 Truth is his daughter: Cf. the motto Temporis filia veritas, ‘Truth the daughter of time’, alluded to at I.ix.5.9 and 14.4 in Arthur’s account of his training and his dream of the Faery Queene.

60.3 Titan: See Conti Myth 6.20 on the identificatio of Titan with the sun (542).

61.5 disdaine: For disdain as a motif in the canto, see 2.9n.

61.6 61.6 Echoing the similar use of this verb form at 31.6.

61.9 61.9 In a parody of the tendency for knights’ horses in FQ to reflect their owners’ temperaments, Spumador (cf. II.xi.19.7n) adopts a ‘lumpish’ pace to suit Arthur’s mood.