1 arg.1 Aquinas writes that ‘the first reaction of anger is called wrath; enduring anger is called ill-will; when it seeks an opportunity for revenge it is [furor] . . . the Greek word θυμωσις thymosis, which in Latin becomes furor, may imply both quickness to anger and a firm intention to obtain revenge’ (Summa I, qu. 21, art. 108-11, translation modified).

2 occasion: See OED for the personification of Occasion in 15th- to 17th-c usage, typically as a figure representing opportunity—a commonplace that dates back to late antiquity in the Roman poets Ausonius and Phaedrus, appears in the Greek Anthology, and is illustrated in contemporary emblem books such as Whitney (1586, no. 181, In Occasionem). Given the extended allegory of sin and the law in canto i, with its texture of allusions to Romans 5-7, the mention of ‘occasion’ here will also recall Paul’s celebrated definition of the law as the ‘occasion’ of sin (Rom 7:8); the provocative inversion of causality on which Paul insists (the law creates sin) foreshadows the repeated compounding of cause and consequence in this episode. Cf. also Paul’s admonition against using ‘liberty as an occasion unto the flesh’ (Gal. 5:13-16).

3 Phaon (Phedon 1596): Phaon is the young man addressed by Sappho in Ovid’s Heroides 15. Phedon is mentioned by Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticae 2.18) and by Ficino (In convivium 6.16) as a handsome young man rescued by Socrates from sexual slavery.

1.5 natiue influence: ‘Seed’ and ‘blood’ stress ancestry, but ‘influence’ also suggests the effect of the stars at nativity.

1.7 skill to ride: Etymologically, chivalry, originally a synonym for ‘cavalry’, but in extended use a term for both the military skills and the ethos of gallantry specific to armed knights in the late Middle Ages.

1.9 As a noun, ‘menage’ names the ability both to ride horses and to train them.

2.2 2.2 The repetition of ‘menage’ emphasizes the allegorical connection, reinforced by the ambiguity of the pronoun ‘his’, between the knight’s horse and the knight’s passionate nature. Cf. the tensions in the opening procession of Book I, where Una rides slowly on a donkey while Redcrosse both spurs his steed and reins it in, or in the first canto of Book II, where Guyon rushes ahead leaving the Palmer behind. Such passages reflect the tradition descending from Plato’s Phaedrus in which the passions are represented as a horse resistant to the bit (cf. 34.1-2, ‘most wretched man / That to affections does the bridle lend’). Here the passion in question is pride, humbled by the need to go on foot; in canto i, it was anger leading to haste.

2.3 yeed: In ME, ‘yeed’ is the past tense of ‘go’; the infinitive ‘to yeed’ appears only in pseudo-archaic usage by 16th-c poets.

2.6–2.9 2.6-9 Cf. the Palmer’s moralization of the polarity of strength and weakness at i.57.7-9; both passages reflect Aristotle’s concept of virtue as a mean between the excess and deficiency of a given quality (Nic Eth 2.6-9).

3.2 3.2, 5 See 10.2-5n. Spenser’s equivocations echo the simile describing Aeneas’s glimpse of Dido in the underworld: qualem primo qui surgere mense / aut vidut aut videsse putat per nubila lunam (‘even as, in the early month, one sees or fancies he has seen the moon rise amid the clouds’; Aen 6.454). Milton echoes this echo in a conspicuously Spenserian moment at the close of PL 1, when ‘Some belated peasant sees / Or dreams he sees’ a fairy dance by moonlight (781-88).

3.4 in hast it to agree: For Guyon’s tendency to respond ‘in haste’, see i.13.1-2, i.39.2, ii.25.1, and especially ii.21.6-7.

3.5–3.7 3.5-7 In ‘Slander, A Warning’ (an essay widely known in the Renaissance), Lucian describes a painting by Apelles that shows Slander ‘haling a youth by the hair’ (Works 4.2). He explains that Apelles—falsely accused of conspiracy and nearly executed—transformed his experience into an allegorical painting. For a full account of the Renaissance literary and pictorial tradition to which Lucian’s brief essay gave rise, see Cast (1981).

4.1

st. 4-5 Spenser’s allegorical portrait of the ‘wicked Hag’—not named until the Palmer identifies her as Occasion at 10.9—draws upon literary and iconographic traditions for several related figures, including Occasion, Penitence, Fortune, Envy, Discord, and Punishment. Within these traditions, the attributes, appearances, and accoutrements of such figures continually alter as the concepts they embody are redefined. Kiefer (1979), for example, describes the gradual conflation of Fortune with Occasion in the literature, emblems, paintings, and imprese of the Italian Renaissance, as the medieval view of an arbitrary force imposed upon largely passive victims yields to a rival conception of Fortune as a variable set of conditions to be met and mastered by the resourceful human agent.

Occasion is regularly depicted in emblems as a naked young woman with winged heels, not a lame hag clothed in rags. The lameness of Spenser’s hag in 4.3 may echo a verse from Horace used by Van Veen in Horatii Flacci Emblamata (Plate 27a): raro antecedentem scelestum / deseruit pede Poena claudo (‘Punishment with her lame foot rarely forsakes the fleeing criminal’; Odes III.ii.31-32); it may also echo Homer, who says that the sharp-tongued detractor Thersites was ‘bandy-legged and lame in one foot’ (Il 2.217). See Var 2.225-27 and Manning and Fowler (1976).

Beyond these echoes, Spenser recombines elements from at least three sources, Lucian, Ausonius, and Boiardo. From Lucian he takes the image of the young man dragged by the hair—transferring it from Calumny, a beautiful woman, to his ‘mad man’. (The theme of calumny will resurface when this young man’s story is revealed). Unlike Calumny, Spenser’s ‘wicked Hag’ comes stalking after the young man dragged by his hair, in the place of Lucian’s Penitence. As a provocateur in this oddly trailing position, she reflects a persistent motif in canto iv wherein temporal sequences are reversed.

In Ausonius, Epigram 33, Occasio and Metanoea (Regret) appear together as a before-and-after pair. Boiardo offers a similar conception: Orlando, failing to grasp the forelock of Fata Morgana, is set upon by a hag with a flail who identifies herself as ‘Penitenza’ (OI II.ix.1-20). The forelock is a familiar attribute of Occasion, as in the proverb ‘Seize occasion (opportunity, time) by the forelock’ (Smith 1970, no. 777) and in the emblem tradition illustrating it, e.g. Whitney’s In occasionem: ‘What meanes longe lockes before? that suche as meete / Maye houlde at firste, when they occasion finde. / The head behinde all balde, what telles it more? / That none shoulde houlde, that let me slippe before’ (lines 9-12; see arg.2n).

Spenser joins the forelock of opportunity to the abusive speech of Calumny, the ‘vengeaunce’ visited upon her victims by Punishment, and the trailing position of Penitence. This conception mingles figures of consequence with those of cause, suggesting, for example, a connection between the youth dragged along by his hair in st. 3 (consequence) and the forelock (st. 4) by which ‘cause is caught’ (44.6). This compounding of before-and-after reflects the broad irony by which characters in the canto, having mistaken an allegorical figure for the causes of wrath (arg.2n) as the conventional emblem of an opportunity to be grasped, find themselves pursued by the uncontrolled fury they have sought (cf. 32.1n).

4.1–4.2 4.1-2 Cf. Lucian’s description of Penitence, as translated by Melanchthon: A tergo, lugubri habitu, pullata laceraque Poenitentia subsequitur (‘Following behind in mourning guise, black-robed and with torn hair, comes [I think he named her] Repentance’). Bull conjectures that Spenser read pullata as ‘filthy’ rather than ‘black’ (1997, n10).

5.1 5.1 Cf. Jas 3.6: ‘set among our members . . . [the tongue] defileth the whole bodie, and setteth on fire the course of nature, and is set on fyre of hell’; to which the Geneva gloss adds ‘the intemperancie of the tongue is as a flame of hel fyre’.

6.3 6.3 See ii.21.5-9n for Guyon’s previous effort to pacify with force.

6.4 mighty hands: Cf. Medina’s contrast between ‘mighty hands’ and ‘rightful cause’ at ii.29.8-9.

6.8 6.8 The madman’s lack of governance (7.2) is anticipated here in the disarticulated flailing of his hand-to-hand combat, which resembles a tantrum.

6.9 auengement: Trisyllabic.

7.2 gouernaunce: See i.29.9n for the link to Guyon’s rash anger in the opening episode of Book II.

7.4 wyde: Echoing the efforts of passion ‘from the right way . . . to draw him [Guyon] wide’ (2.7).

7.7 reason blent through passion: Cf. I.ii.5.7, ‘The eie of reason was with rage yblent’.

7.8 at randon: Randomly; from OF randir to run fast, hence also impetuously (cf. 6.3).

8.3–8.4 menaging / Of armes: Cf. 1.9, 2.2; Guyon’s skill is contrasted to the madman’s lack of governance (7.2).

8.8–8.9 The first of several suggestions that in wrestling with the figure of rage Guyon wrestles himself.

9.1–9.2 villein . . . clownish: Cf. the emphasis on social class in st. 1, and note the contrast between ‘clownish fistes’ and ‘manly face’.

9.4 in the place: For the figurative treatment of space in this episode, see 32.4n.

10.2–10.5 10.2-5 Echoing the equivocations at 3.2 and 3.5, the Palmer tells Guyon that he only ‘seems to see’ Furor. Having personified both Furor and Occasion as embodied agents whose features, actions, and accoutrements call for interpretation, the allegory now insists they are not really embodied agents after all. Spenser’s allusion to the ‘Calumny of Apelles’ topos, with its emphasis on the artistic processes of embodiment and depiction (see 3.5-7n), anticipates this self-conscious undoing of personification. The Palmer’s decoding sheds light as well on the motif of inverted cause and consequence (st. 4-5n), which complements the transposition of self and other whereby Guyon misreads his own affective state as an embodied adversary (8.8-9n).

10.6–10.9 10.6-9 Here as often, names are disclosed not when a character first appears, but in a climactic moment, to signal that the character’s nature has been revealed. In this instance, the moment of naming confirms an interpretation in which personification as such is revealed to be a symptom of rage.

10.9 10.9 The Palmer seems less concerned that Guyon repress anger’s consequences than that he discern its causes. To disentangle self from other in dealing with rage is also to clarify the relation of causes to consequences.

11.1 St. 11 Cf. 2 Cor 11:12: ‘that I may cut away occasion, from them which desire occasion’. The Palmer’s advice that anger needs to be prevented (L pre + venire to come before) arrives belatedly, much as Occasion, with whom he says Guyon ‘Must first begin’, trails after the fury she provokes, introduced with the words ‘And him behynd’ (4.1). On the episode’s play with hysteron proteron, see the notes to 10.2-5 and st. 4-5.

11.2 amenage: From ménage as household, but cf. 1.9, 2.2, and 8.3-4. The emergence of this term as a motif underlines the allegory of horsemanship as anger-management.

11.9 11.9 Blocking a river without stopping its source will cause it to flood. Cf. Smith (1970, no. 731), ‘The stream (current, tide) stopped swells the higher’, and Prov 17:14, ‘The beginning of strife is as one that openeth the waters; therefore or [ere] the contention be medled with, leave off’. The Palmer’s advice points to the consequences (flooding) of not attending to causes (stopping the source).

12.2–12.3 12.2-3 Belatedly realizing the proverb ‘to seize occasion by the forelock’ (Manning and Fowler 1976: 264).

12.4 n’ould she stent: ‘n’ould’ is a contraction of ‘ne would’, ‘stent’ a form of ‘stint’.

12.9 an yron lock: Evoking the branks, or scold’s bridle, ‘a kind of iron framework to enclose the head, having a sharp metal gag or bit which entered the mouth and restrained the tongue’ (OED).

13.3 the last help: Both Furor and (as lines 4-5 retroactively suggest) the hands she uses to summon him.

14.3 defaste: The sense ‘destroy, demolish’ reflects the Latin roots of the word (de + facere to make, to do). Given the canto’s emphasis on allegorical personification, the sense ‘mar the face, disfigure’, with its proximate etymology in Fr deffacer (de + face face), suggests that Furor’s defeat is accomplished by undoing the personfication that had given a face and body to an affective state.

15.1–15.2 hundred yron chaines . . . And hundred knots: See Jupiter’s prophecy of the Augustan pax in Virgil: Furor impius intus / saeva sedens super arma et centum vinctus aënis / post tergum nodis fremet horridus ore cruento (‘within, impious Rage, sitting on savage arms, his hands fast bound behind with a hundred brazen knots, shall roar in the ghastliness of blood-stained lips’; Aen 1.294-96).

15.5–15.6 15.5-6 Wrath’s eyes similarly give off sparks of fire in the House of Pride (I.iv.33.5-6).

15.5–15.9 15.5-9 The red of Furor’s eyes, the copper of his hair, and the yellow- or orange-brown of his beard are all conventional signs of an irascible temperament. Humoral theory ascribed this temperament to an excess of choler, called ‘yellow bile’ and often associated with the color red.

16.1 Guyon Furor had captiud: On the episode’s deliberate confounding of self and other, see notes to 8.8-9 and 10.2-5. The question whether Guyon will ‘captive’ Furor or be ‘captivd’ by him has been the crux of the passage; here, the juxtaposition of names underlines the reversibility of the syntax even as context resolves the question.

16.4 Lying on ground, all soild with blood and myre: The posture of this ‘wretched Squire’ echoes that of the prostrate Mortdant in canto i: cf. ‘the soiled gras’ upon which ‘the dead corse of an armed knight was spred, / Whose armour all with blood besprincled was’ (41.1-3).

16.5 respyre: Literally, to breathe; figuratively, ‘To breathe again, after distress, trouble, etc.; to recover hope, courage, or strength’ (OED).

16.7 recured: Combining the senses of ‘cured’ and ‘recovered’.

16.9 caytiues: Wretch’s, villain’s, but the more specific sense ‘captive’s’, followed by the doubling of ‘thrall’, emphasizes the circularity of Furor as a form of self-captivity or self-defeat.

17.1 St. 17-35 The following inset narrative derives from Ariosto (OF 4.42-6.61) and reappears in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (see Evans 2010 on the relations among the three texts). Spenser’s is the only version related in the first person. Tales of friendship destroyed by love (or love destroyed by false friendship) have a distinguished history that includes Chaucer’s ‘Knight’s Tale’ and Shakespeare’s Othello. The story recalls Archimago’s use of a fabricated tale and a disguised female to provoke Guyon at II.i.9-30, and his earlier use of disguised sprights to enrage Redcrosse at I.ii.3-6.

17.2–17.5 17.2-5 These lines introduce a self-exculpating motive that reappears throughout the squire’s tale.

17.5 whelming: In earlier usage, the mention of Fortune refers to the downward turn of her wheel; the sense of submerging under water also recalls Fortune’s association with the sea in the emblem books. Using the term to describe her ‘lap’ may recall the Palmer’s complaint to Gloriana that the ‘wicked Fay’ Acrasia had ‘many whelmd in deadly paine’ (ii.43.3-4), especially as it anticipates the reiterated association of the Bower of Bliss with various female laps (v.36.3, vi.14.6-7, vi.15.4-5, xii.76.9). Fortuna and Occasion were sometimes described as beautiful (or depicted as nude) to emphasize their potentially deceptive allure.

17.6 weake wretch: Either one who is helpless and miserable or one who is morally feeble and hence contemptible.

17.8 trech: Not in OED; probably formed from ME ‘treche’, to deceive or betray. The c-rhymes in this stanza are revised or corrected in 1596, replacing ‘her guileful trech’ with ‘through occasion’ to rhyme with ‘weakest one’ and ‘light upon’.

18.3 18.3 The shared breast of their nurse identifies the two as foster-brothers.

19.1 It was my fortune: Echoes both the opening of st. 18, ‘It was a faithless Squire’, and the emphasis on fortune and ‘hap’ in st. 17. The squire, who characterizes ‘Misfortune’ in terms of female sexual allure (17.5n) even though he knows his male friend to be the source of the ‘guilful trech’ (17.8) that brought him to mischief, fails even now to distinguish his fortune from his misfortune.

20.1 Philemon: From Gk φιλημων philēmōn affectionate. A common Greek proper name, it became the title of ‘The Epistle of Paul to Philemon’ and hence a Christian name of some currency in 16th-c England.

21.1 grace: Cf. ‘gratious’ (20.4), meaning courteous or benevolent, with a secondary sense of charming or pleasing.

21.6 mariage make: Cf. Epith 216-17: ‘sacred ceremonies . . . / The which do endlesse matrimony make’.

22.2 toward: The related sense ‘favorable or propitious’ is also relevant.

22.9 stay: Phaon’s diction in this stanza is marked by legalisms, including treason, assynd, bynd, and stay.

23.2 sad: Relevant senses include wise, discreet, sober, grave, mature, sorrowful, and distressing.

23.2 infixed: Used twice previously in the poem, both times to describe the action of stinging, first by Errour’s brood (I.i.23.6) and then by the Dragon in Eden (I.xi.11.8). Cf. ‘out wrest’ (23.5) and ‘mortall sting’ (33.5).

23.4 engreeued: Given the legal coloring of Phaon’s diction in this passage, the sense ‘made into a grievance, taken as a ground of accusation’ may be relevant (OED).

23.6 sacred band: Cf. 18.6. Phaon’s language reflects a set of attitudes and social practices characteristic of early modern friendship in one of its specific forms: a learned tradition, with classical and medieval roots, in which the formal exchange of vows solemnizes a degree of intimacy, intensity of affect, and sense of mutual obligation that modern custom more often reserves to the marriage relation or domestic partnership.

24.2 boulted: The proverb means that Philemon has found out the truth. Spenser may be echoing Chaucer, CT Nun’s Priest 7.3240: ‘But I ne kan nat bulte it to the bren’.

24.3 groome of base degree: A groom is a serving-man or other male of inferior position. Phaon and Philemon have both been identified as squires (16.2, 18.1), a rank just below knighthood. The distance between Phaon’s rank and that of the groom is real, then, but may be less than the distance between himself and his lady of ‘great degree’. His phrasing recalls the ME romance ‘The Squire of Low Degree’, which similarly turns on a deception that keeps the squire apart from his beloved, the king’s daughter.

24.4 partener Paramoure: The adverbial sense of ‘Paramoure’ reflects its derivation from OF par amour, by or through love. Spenser here plays the sexual sense against the polite usage in which it meant ‘for the sake of love’ or ‘if you please’. Partener glances at its synonym ‘parcener’, familiar in such standard legal phrases as ‘parcener per le cours de commune ley’ and ‘parcener per le custome’ (partner in the course of common law, partner by custom). Spenser’s mock-legalese implies that the ‘groome of base degree’ is a ‘parcener per amour’, that is, a joint tenant in Claribell by virtue of an adulterous liaison.

25.1 gracelesse: Unregenerate, lacking decency; cf. 21.1, 20.4, and 25.4, ‘more pleasing to appeare’.

25.6 Pryene: From L prae before + iens going. Gk πυρ pyr ‘fire’ is also suggested by the reference to ‘blazing pride’ at 26.3. Note the alliterative link to ‘proud through praise’ at 27.1.

25.7–25.9 25.7-9 Cf. 17.4-8, 19.1 for the recurrent emphasis on fortune.

25.9 deface: Immediate context suggests the sense ‘outshine by contrast’, but the word and its etymology also link Phaon’s tale to the preceding episode’s concern with the poetics of ‘impersonation’ (see 14.3n).

26.3 blent: Cf. 7.7. She blinds ‘their blazing pride’ by outshining it. In ME the verb can also mean to conceal or put out of sight.

26.5 Claribell: From L clara famous or bright + bella beauty.

26.7 as thou art: The rhyming pair (‘all her art’) pointedly contrasts the being ascribed to Pryene with the artifice attributed to Claribell—ironically, since Pryene will soon be dressed in Claribell’s identity.

26.8 26.8 Pryene’s impersonation of Claribell, mingling social advancement with pride in ‘gorgeous geare’, recalls the themes of Braggadocchio’s knightly imposture in the previous canto (see esp. iii.5) as well as the emphasis throughout this canto on the trope of allegorical personification.

27.3 treachour: At 17.8 Phaon ascribed the ‘guilful trech’ to Fortune; here he more properly ascribes it to Philemon, but the accusation still serves to shift his own guilt onto another.

27.3 did remoue: Hamilton suggests ‘moved again’ (2001), although OED does not record such a usage. Alternatively, Phaon may be saying that Philemon ‘transferred’ the deception to him; ‘Me leading’ suggests that Phaon is as much self-deceived as betrayed by another.

27.6 27.6 Phaon does not recognize himself as the subject of ‘his’ tragedy.

28.7 assayd: According to OED influenced by ‘assail’.

28.8–28.9 28.8-9 ‘I would rather suffer death ten thousand times than the pain of jealousy and the shame of disgrace’.

28.8 deathes: Disyllabic.

28.8 priefe: Proof, test. The action of passing through (‘proving’) death is central to Book II, from the allegorical tableau of Mortdant and Amavia in canto i to Guyon’s swoon in canto viii and Arthur’s confrontation with Maleger in canto xi.

29.6–29.7 29.6-7 ‘For when, asked the cause of my outrageous deed, I laid out [my justification] for all to see . . .’.

30.1–30.5 30.1-5 The movement from ‘my selfe’ to ‘him’, reinforced by the repetition of ‘first’, shows Phaon displacing the cause of his ‘hellish fury’ to a source outside himself, in keeping with the self-exculpatory motives of his tale. In replacing himself with another as the source of his rage, Phaon enacts the reversal central to the allegory in this canto (see 10.2-5n).

30.3 vengeable despight: Suggesting an outrage that calls for vengeance (cf. 29.2).

30.9 washt away his guilt: Sardonic reference to absolution. In a Book marked by failed absolutions (Ruddymane in canto ii, Pilate in canto vii), Phaon’s poison is the one instance of efficacious ‘washing’.

31.4–31.5 31.4-5 Playing on the Latin etymology of the name (see 25.6n).

31.5–31.6 first . . . last: In a canto filled with reversals of sequence (see 4-5n and 10.2-5n), Pryene’s move from first to last in Phaon’s program of vengeance suggests that he imagines himself to be working back from consequences to causes (see 30.1-5n). That his confidence is deluded may be suggested by the phrase ‘poursewing my fell purpose’, which implies that he is chasing his own anger.

31.8 ghastly dreriment: ‘Dreriment’ is coined by Spenser from ‘dreary’, by analogy to merry/merriment; synonyms are ‘drerihed’ and ‘dreriness’. ‘Dreriment’ appears 12 times in FQ, and is ‘ghastly’ a third of the time.

32.1 32.1 The rage that ‘enforst’ Phaon’s flight takes embodied form as the ‘mad man’ who pursues him. This emergence of the allegorical personification out of passionate delusion reverses, and retroactively explains, the Palmer’s earlier undoing of the personification allegory (see notes to 10.2-5 and 10.9).

32.3 Till: Spenser often uses temporal succession to imply causality.

32.4 in middle space: Allegorically the place where extremes are moderated (see ii.20.3); also the rhetorical space in which the relations of first/last, cause/effect, and self/other are subject to chiasmus, or reversal.

32.5 32.5 The pattern of self/other reversal is mirrored in the chiasmus of the pronoun sequence ‘I her . . . he me’.

32.8 32.8 The metaphor acknowledges that Furor’s power arises from Phaon’s ‘heat’.

33.5 mortall: Also, characteristic of mortal existence; capable of depriving the soul of grace (as in ‘mortal sin’).

33.8 diseasd: Afflicted with illness, but the rhyme-partner ‘easd’ calls attention to the broader meaning implicit in the etymology: deprived of comfort, tormented.

34.1 St. 34 For the polarity of strength and weakness as central to temperance, cf. i.57.7-8, ‘The strong it weakens with infirmitie, / And with bold fury armes the weakest hart’, and ii.31.3, ‘Weake she makes strong, and strong thing does increace’.

34.2 the bridle lend: See 2.2n.

34.6 perfect: From L perfectus fully grown.

34.7–34.8 34.7-8 Cf. xi.1.1-4 and the attacks on Alma’s castle in cantos ix and xi.

35.1 St. 35 Abraham Fraunce quotes these lines in full in Arcadian Rhetoric (1588, E3r) as an example of polyptoton, ‘the repetition of a word in different cases or inflections within the same sentence’ (OED). The four passions on which the elaborate patterning of the syntax is based correspond to the four humors: wrath to choler, jealousy to phlegm, grief to black bile, and love to blood.

35.1 do thus expell: This and the verb phrases in lines 6-8 are to be construed as imperatives; cf. Col. 3:8: ‘But now put ye away even all these things, wrath, angre, maliciousnes’.

35.4–35.5 35.4-5 ‘The fire bred from sparks, the weed bred from a little seed, the flood bred from drops, and filth bred the Monster’. The lines employ a version of zeugma known as syllepsis: three intransitive clauses are paralleled with a fourth transitive clause, all linked by zeugma to the verb ‘breede’. The effect, in an episode concerned with reversals of sequence, is unsettling.

36.2 mischiefe: Cf. the squire’s self-exculpating accusation against ‘Misfortune’ at 17.8, and ‘Unlucky’ in line 1

36.4 gouernaunce: Cf. Guyon’s ‘goodly governaunce’ (i.29.8n) and Furor’s manifest lack of it (7.2).

36.4–36.5 36.4-5 Cf. John 5:14, ‘Sinne no more, least a worse thing come unto thee’.

36.7 Phaon: Ovid’s Sappho, yearning for Phaon, laments Uror, ut indomitis ignem exertibus Euris / fertilis accensis messibus ardet ager (‘I burn—as burns the fruitful acre when its harvests are ablaze, with untamed east-winds driving on the flame’; Heroides 15.9-10).

36.7 aduaunce: With tendentious senses implied: extol, promote, elevate, put forward as a claim. Cf. ‘rayse . . . to honour’ in line 9.

36.8 Coradin: Gray suggests L cor heart + Atin (2006); cf. 42.5.

37.1 37.1 As at 32.3, succession implies causality.

37.2 varlet: May be used as a synonym for either ‘groom’ or ‘squire’

37.7 soyld: Cf. Phaon ‘Lying on ground, all soild with blood and myre’ (16.4).

37.9 eyglaunce at him shot: Punning on ‘glance’ as a blow or impact, as in Hakluyt: ‘they saile away, being not once touched with the glaunce of a shot’ (1589: 1.153).

38.3–38.4 field . . . wreath: Heraldic terms referring to the surface of the shield and to the ornamental border in which the motto is inscribed.

38.5 Burnt I doe burne: See arg.2n. This riddling motto makes its first person pronoun at once the subject and the object of its doubled verb: ‘I burn (myself/another) because I am burnt’. It thus condenses the play with cause and consequence, self and other, that runs throughout the canto: ‘Having been burnt by another/myself, I burn myself/others as if in an act of retribution’.

39.3 place: Cf. the ‘middle space’ of 32.4. The varlet’s belated claim to have preempted this space of figuration extends the canto’s exploration of the relation between preventative and precipitate action.

39.6–39.9 39.6-9 Instead of rising to the bait, Guyon lets go the ‘opportunity’ for rage presented by the varlet’s ‘great boldness’, checking his scorn in order to discover the cause; the internal rhyme ‘not to grow of nought’ emphasizes that Guyon has learned the Palmer’s lesson: ‘who so will raging Furor tame / Must first begin’ with ‘Occasion, the roote of all wrath’ (10.9-11.2).

40.4 to him, that mindes his chaunce t’abye: ‘to him who intends to take his chances’, responding to the challenge at 39.5; ‘abye’ in this sense is influenced by ‘abide’.

41.2 Pyrochles: Gk πυρ pyr fire + οχλεω ochleō to be swept away. The correction in FE, reducing the consonant cluster of ‘Pyrrh-’ to ‘Pyr-’, may be calculated to reduce the possibility that a reader will construe the syllable as metrically promoted. In classical quantitative scansion, a syllable spelled ‘Pyrrh’ might be regarded as ‘long by position’ and therefore metrically prominent; the correction thus seems to confirm that the first syllable is not to be regarded as promoted by its orthography and that the first foot of the line therefore conforms to Spenser’s iambic. (For more on Spenser’s interest in the relation of quantitative meter to English verse practice, see the introduction to Letters).

41.5 Cymochles: Gk κυμα kuma wave + οχλεω ochleō to be swept away. For both brothers’ names, meter suggests that the accent should fall on the second syllable.

41.6 Acrates: See II.i.51.2-4n on the etymology of Acrasia as ‘lack of self-control’.

41.7–41.9 41.7-9 Phlegeton is the river of fire in the classical underworld, crossed by Duessa and Sansjoy at I.v.33.3 on their way to visit Aesculapius. Jarre is discord; Herebus is Erebus, generally the region of the underworld. Hesiod, Theog 123-25, makes Erebus and Night the children of Chaos. In making Erebus the son of Aeternitie, Spenser may be adapting Boccaccio (Gen Deor 1.1), who derives Night from Herebus and Litigium (Jarre), who in turn derive from Demogorgon and Aeternitie.

41.8 41.8 The hypermetric line creates an unusual double alexandrine in this stanza. The isochronic tendencies of these lines build on the marked pattern of repetition begun in lines 6-7 to intensify the archaic theogonic turn given to the brothers’ genealogy.

42.3 derring doe: Bold action, courage, a usage derived from misunderstanding of the ME idiom, which meant ‘daring [to] do’; cf. SC Oct 65 gloss by E.K., ‘manhoode and chevalrie’.

42.5 Atin: From Gr ατη atē (‘mischief’ or ‘ruin’), + OF atine incitement to battle (Heiatt 1975: 185); the line thus suggests that Atin is not only Pyrochles’ attendant but his occasion, riding ahead to start the cycle of fury anew. Ate, the Greek goddess of discord who provoked the Trojan War (II.vii.55.4-9) will appear as a character in Book IV.

42.8 stead: Cf. 39.3n.

44.1–44.7

44.1-7 The Palmer’s comment in these lines brings out the implicit irony of an allegorical figure who combines the iconography of strife with that of opportunity (Occasio; see st. 4-5n). Only from the point of view of Atin and his lord, Pyrochles, does strife appear as an opportunity to be ‘caught’ by the forelock. The rhyming pair ‘seeke’ and ‘followes eke’ (like the epithet ‘mad man’, repeated from 3.5) link Pyrochles’ reversal of sequence to the predicament initially faced by Guyon and then elaborated in

Phaon’s tale (see notes to 30.1-5 and 31.5-6).

44.6 cause is caught: ‘occasion [for anger] is seized’. In formulating the reversal of sequence by which Pyrochles, already inflamed, looks for a reason to be angry, this phrase condenses the canto’s sustained meditation on cause and effect with its reversals of pursuit.

45.5–45.7 45.5-7 Echoing Dido’s bitter reproach to Aeneas: egregiam vero laudem et spolia ampla refertis / tuque puerque tuus; magnum et memorabile numen, / una dolo divum si femina victa duorum est (‘Splendid indeed is the praise and rich the spoils ye win, thou and thy boy [Ascanius]; mighty and glorious is the power divine, if one woman is subdued by the guile of two gods!’; Aen 4.93-95).

46.2 vengeable despight: See 30.3n; here ‘despight’ suggests rather ‘contempt’ than ‘injury’.

46.6–46.8 46.6-8 Cf. Eph 6.16, ‘Above all, take the shield of faith, wherewith ye may quench all the fyrie dartes of the wicked’, and Whitney, Calumniam contra calumniatorem virtus repellit (‘virtue beats back slander against the slanderer’; 1586, no. 138b, trans. Green 1866).