1–2 arg.1-2 Spenser’s ‘house of Temperance’ as the dwelling-place of the soul finds precedents in Langland’s castle of Anima (Piers P 9.48-52), Gower’s ‘Alme’ and her castle (Mirrour de L’omme, 11281-92, 14713-24), and du Bartas Div Wks 1.6; in Paul’s definition of the body as ‘the temple of the holie Gost’ (1 Cor 6:19); and in Plato’s account of how the body was constructed to house the soul and the passions (Tim 65-75). For a more extensive listing of precedents, see Var 2.285-89. Phineas Fletcher amplifies Spenser’s allegory of the body in The Purple Island (1633); Helkiah Crooke uses the description of Alma’s castle to structure his anatomical textbook Microcosmographia (1615), especially books II-VII (although Crooke, unlike Spenser, in books IV-V does include the ‘parts of generation’).

2 sober: The word reappears at 1.4 (cf. i.7.7, ii.14.5).

2 Alma: Ital alma soul; Heb Almah maiden; L alma kind, nourishing.

3 straunger: Because they are new arrivals to the house of Temperance.

1.1–1.4 1.1-4 Cf. 1 Cor 12:24, ‘God hathe tempered the bodie together’.

1.1 Of all Gods workes: Cf. ‘all his workes with mercy doth embrace’ (viii.1.7).

1.1 adorne: In the technical sense of ornament as betokening cosmos, Gods workes decorate the macrocosm by mirroring its structure. (For ornament as ‘cosmic image’, see Fletcher 1964: 108-117.)

1.4 gouernment: Cf. ‘governaunce’ (i.29.8 and note). In the analogy between the body and the body politic, temperance corresponds to government; see 48.9, where the counselors in the tripartite brain counsel Alma ‘how to governe well’, and 59.9, where Arthur reads about the reduction of Briton ‘to one mans governements’.

1.5 indecent: FE corrects 1590 incedent, which better fits the meter and might, as ‘incident’, imply an etymological pun on L in + caedere to fall. The metrical torque on ‘indecent’ suggests a comparable pun on ‘in descent’.

1.6 Distempred: Having the bodily humors thrown out of balance.

1.8 his: ‘His’ is both the neuter and the masculine form of the possessive pronoun in OE and ME. Spenser is writing on the threshold of the change from ‘his’ to ‘its’ (Shakespeare, for example, varies in his usage), so the pronoun does not decisively distinguish the natural gender of ‘mans body’ as masculine rather than epicene—especially since that body is ‘it’, not ‘he’, in lines 4, 5, and 7.

1.8 loose: Carries a strong scriptural sense: ‘To destroy, ruin, bring to destruction or perdition’ (OED). Hamilton 2001 quotes Elyot on the soul that ‘loseth hir dignitie, and becommith minister unto the sences’ (1946: 119-20).

1.9 this place: ‘A particular part of or location in a book or document’ (OED). The reference to ‘one and other’ is indefinite enough to imply that Alma’s castle may be contrasted with any number of incontinent bodies, including Maleger and the rascal route, the transmogrified lovers in the Bower of Bliss, and the many sunderings of the body politic in the chronicle materials of canto x.

2.3 yfere: Cf. viii.56.7, ‘So goodly purpose they together fond’, and note the internal rhyme with ‘in fayre’.

2.5 with gentle court did bord: Addressed in a courteous/courtly manner.

2.7–2.8 2.7-8 The portrait on Guyon’s shield is mentioned previously at i.28.7-8, v.11.7-8, and viii.43.2-6.

3.3 liuely -head: the living original of ‘that Ladies head’, with a punning use of the suffix -head, corresponding to modern ‘-ness’ (‘liveliness’) or ‘-hood’ (‘likelihood’); cf. ‘Maydenhed’, 6.6.

3.6 bounty: Cf. 5.4-5.

3.5–3.9 3.5-9 Through equivocation, the diction and phrasing here blur the line between spiritual qualities and effects of wealth and power, even as they draw the line more firmly between these and the visible beauty of ‘mortal hew’. As a result the explicit contrast between Gloriana (here and at 5.4-5) and Philotime at vii.44-50 is somewhat hedged.

4.2 retraitt: Coined by Spenser, the word combines ‘portrait’ with ‘retreat’: the visible ‘semblaunt’ incised in the ‘substance’ of the shield retreats from view as it passes over into ‘the beauty of her mind’.

4.5 liege: Cf. viii.51.7 and note, viii.55.5.

4.6–4.7 4.6-7 Cf. the language describing Elizabeth at I.pr.4.3-4, Una at I.xii.21.5-9, and the damsels bathing in Acrasia’s fountain at II.xii.65.1-2.

5.9 to die at her desire: The movement away from the visible image in st. 3-4 is qualified by the erotic charge of this phrasing. See the story of Arthur’s dream at I.ix.13-16 and his response to the shield’s image at II.viii.43.1-6.

6.6 knights of Maydenhed: Mentioned previously at I.vii.46.4 and II.ii.42.1-5. Faery counterpart to the English Order of the Garter, founded by King Edward III in the late 14th century.

6.9 Arthogall: Arthegall, the patron knight of Justice in Book 5.

6.9 Sophy: Gk σοφια sophia wisdom. Hamilton 2001 notes that Drayton mentions a holy Welsh king bearing this name (1931-41: 41:4.482).

7.5–7.6 7.5-6 See i.33.6n and ‘Introduction’ 00 for the symbolic rather than realistic time-scheme of the narrative. The seven solar years mentioned in these lines correspond to the seven years that Alma’s castle has been under siege (12.8), but not to the ‘three years’ Praysdesire says Arthur has sought Gloriana (38.9). 1596 revises these lines: ‘Seven times . . . Hath walkte’ at 7.5-6 becomes ‘Now hath . . . Walkt round’, reducing the number of solar years from seven to one, and ‘three years’ at 38.9 becomes ‘twelve moneths’. These revisions bring Arthur’s reckoning into alignment with Guyon’s: at the corresponding moment in Book I, Arthur tells Una and Redcrosse he has sought Gloriana for nine months (ix.15.9), and at ii.44.1-4 Guyon reports that his quest has been underway for three months. For ‘the Sunne with his lamp-burning light’, cf. Virgil, postera Phoebea lustrabat lampade terras (‘The morrow’s dawn was lighting the earth with the lamp of Phoebus’; Aen 4.6).

7.7 I haue sought the sight: Responding to Guyon’s rhetorical question at 3.1-4.

8.1 Fortune: Iconographic details associated with Fortuna appear in Spenser’s portrait of Occcasion (see iv.4-5n).

8.1 cheuisaunce: Cf. gloss by E.K. at SC May 92: ‘sometime of Chaucer used for gaine; sometime of other for spoyle, or bootie, or enterprise, and sometime for chiefdome’.

9.4 subdew: Context suggests ‘achieve’; OED cites only this example.

9.5–9.8 9.5-8 On the differing versions of this story see i.35.5-36.1, ii.42.6-43.9, and the note to each.

10.7 10.7 First mention of Guyon on horseback since the disappearance of his ‘loftie steed’ at ii.11.5-7.

10.9 loup: An opening in the wall of a castle.

11.3–11.5 11.3-5 Cf. Timias’s challenge to Orgoglio at I.viii.3-5.

12.8 Seuen yeares: Cf. 7.5 and 22.7. Commentators have seen the number as alluding to various learned or proverbial sevens: deadly sins, ages of man, ages of the world, days of creation, number of known planets, or the esoteric numerology of the Roman philosopher Macrobius in his Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (1.6).

13.2 villeins: Details in the description of these ‘villeins’ reflect Ariosto’s account of the strana torma (‘fantastic throng’) that attacks Ruggiero on his way to the castle of Logistilla, OF 6.60-67. They also resemble Spenser’s accounts in A Vewe of the Irish and their warlike forbears: ‘a flyinge / Enymie hydinge him self in woodes and bogges’ (the Irish, at 3968-69); attacking with ‘atyrrible yell / and Hubbubbe’ (the Scythians and Parthians, at 2175-76); a ‘confused kynde of march in heapes’ (the Irish, at 3211); and ‘feirce rvnninge vpon theire / Enemies’ (the Irish, at 2313-14).

13.6–13.7 13.6-7 Echoing Virgil: Non iam certamine agresti, / stipitibus duris agitur sudibusve praeustis ( ‘Not now do they contend in rustic quarrel with heavy clubs or seared stakes’; Aen 7.523-4).

13.7 rusty: OED 4.a, ‘Lacking polish or refinement’ is relevant in context.

15.4 raskall routs: Common term for a mob; Todd cites its use by Heywood in The First Part of King Edward IV to characterize popular rebellions (1.2.29)

15.8–15.9 15.8-9 See Virgil’s description of Aeneas trying to combat shades in the underworld (Aen 6.290-94).

16.2 the fennes of Allan: a great bog in central Ireland; New Abbey, the County Kildare property Spenser leased in 1582, was located near its north-eastern border. The simile fuses personal experience with literary allusion: Spenser refers in A Vewe to the attacks of the Irish gnats, ‘whch in the Countrey doe more annoye the . . . rebels, whilst they kepe the woodes and doe more sharpelie wound them then all theire Enemies swords or speares, whch can seldome come nigh them’ (2089-83); Homer compares the Greeks drawn up to attack the Trojan forces to ‘the tribes of swarming flies that buzz about the herdman’s farmstead in the season of spring’ (Il 2.469-73).

17.9 17.9 ‘Received them graciously, as was fitting’.

18.1 St. 18-19 Spenser’s description of Alma borrows such details as her golden hair and garland of roses from medieval allegories both of courtly love (e.g. Rom Rose) and of the soul (e.g. Pearl). As mistress of the body-castle, Alma corresponds to the ‘rational soul’ as defined by Burton: it ‘includes the powers, and performs the duties of the two other [the sensitive and vegetable souls], which are contained in it, and all three faculties make one soul, which is inorganical of itself, although it be in all parts, and incorporeal, using their organs, and working by them’ (Anatomy 1.1.2.9).

18.9 18.9 As the soul, Alma may be wooed by many but is reserved as the bride of Christ.

19.1–19.2 19.1-2 Cf. Rev 7:9, 13, where the multitude standing before the throne of God are ‘araied in long white robes’; Geneva gloss reads, ‘In signe of puritie’.

21.1

St. 21-32 The balance of the canto is given over to a description and tour of the human body, represented as a medieval castle.

St. 21 describes the material (flesh) from which the walls are built, st. 22 the mystical proportions of the architecture. St. 23 figures the mouth, into which Alma leads the knights (st. 26) as they are allegorically swallowed and digested, rising from the stomach through the breast to the brain. (‘Not where he eats,’ as Hamlet says of Polonius, ‘but where he is eaten’; cf. the recurrent image of feeding the eyes in canto vii.) Meanwhile st. 23-26 describe the lips, chin, beard, moustache, nose, tongue, and teeth. St. 27-28 describe the dining hall (throat), governed by Diet and Appetite, followed in st. 29-31 by the kitchen (stomach), cooled by ‘a great payre of bellowes’ (30.4; the lungs). St. 32.6 mentions a ‘secret’ waste disposal system ‘that none might . . . espy’.

21.4–21.6 21.4-6 Cf. the building of Babel, Gen 11:3: ‘So thei had brycke for stone, and slyme had they in steade of morter’. Also the creation of Adam, Gen. 2.7: ‘The Lord God also made the man of the dust of the grounde [Vulgate, de limo terrae], and breathed in his face breath of life, and the man was a living soule’.

21.5 Ægyptian slime: Cf. I.i.21, III.vi.8.

21.6 king Nine: Ninus, king of ancient Assyria, identified in T. Cooper Thes Ling as founder of Ninevah; associated at I.v.48.1-4 with Nimrod, who is in turn linked with Babel at Gen 10:8-10.

22.1

St. 22 Since the seventeenth century this has been the most commented-upon stanza in the poem. William Austin (1637) and Sir Kenelm Digby (1643) have long been identified as the earliest glossators in this tradition, but recent work on Ben Jonson’s marginalia establish Jonson’s copy as the almost certain source of Digby’s elaborate Observations on the 22. Stanza. Jonson identifies the circle as the human soul and the triangle as the body, with the quadrate fixed between them signifying the principal humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile). He also identifies the numbers seven and nine with the ‘Planetes and the Angells which ar[e] distributed into a Hierarch[y] which governe the body’ (Riddell and Stewart 1995, 107, 175-76.)

Specific verbal resemblances link this stanza to a discussion of the nature of the soul in Bryskett's A Discourse of Civill Life (1606), a dialogue in which Spenser figures as a participant. Mills (1973) establishes the probability that the passage in Bryskett is an immediate source for this stanza, and demonstrates the explanatory power for understanding this language of the philosophical context toward which Bryskett points: the ‘mortalist controversy’ inspired by the dispute between Aquinas and the Muslim scholar Ibn Rushd (known in Europe as Averroes) over the relationship among the vegetative, sensitive, and rational souls and the mens, or contemplative soul.

The tradition that assigns occult symbolism to numbers and geometrical forms derives from Plato’s Timaeus and was elaborated in the early 5th century by Macrobius, who glosses seven, for example, as ‘the number by which man is conceived, developed in the womb, is born, lives and is sustained’ (The Dream of Scipio I.vi.62-82; trans. Stahl 112). For further discussion of the intellectual traditions behind this stanza and of the critical tradition it has generated, see Fowler (1964), Mills (1973), Hamilton (2001: 238-39) and D. L. Miller (2006: 148-150).

22.4–22.5 22.4-5 The gendering of the body as feminine and the soul as masculine is a commonplace of Western literature and philosophy, deeply imbedded in Christian and Platonic discourse. As the presence of Alma indicates, the soul is also just as traditionally represented as feminine.

22.9 goodly diapase: >Complete harmony, alluding to the mathematical basis of scales and intervals in music (the octave as the mean between seven and nine).

23.3 th’other: The one behind, as opposed to ‘The one before’. Cf. st. 32; in keeping with the decorum of the Porter and his ‘larumbell’ at 25.7-8, the stanza describing the mouth maintains a dignified reticence concerning ‘th’other’.

23.7–23.9 23.7-9 Cf. Ps 141:3, ‘set a watche, O Lord, before my mouth, and kepe the dore of my lippes’.

24.3 from Ireland: Todd 1805 reports that marble was quarried near Spenser’s residence at Kilcolman.

24.4–24.5 24.4-5 Alma’s beard remains an awkward detail for interpreters who justify the absence of genitals in the castle architecture by arguing that ‘as ‘the temple of the holie Gost’ (1 Cor 6:19), the human body is epicene, containing only what both sexes have in common’ (Hamilton 2001). Like the supposedly ‘impersonal’ use of the masculine pronoun, the ‘epicene’ body, deriving from the perfect sphere of Plato’s Timaeus, privileges an implicitly masculine definition of ‘the human’.

24.6 Portcullis: ‘A strong barrier in the form of a grating of wooden or iron bars, usually suspended by chains above the gateway of a fortress, a fortified town, etc., and able to secure the entrance quickly by being released to slide down vertical grooves in the sides of the gateway’ (OED).

24.8 compacture strong: The first use recorded by OED.

25.5 25.5 Spenser’s official position as ‘secretary’ defined him as a keeper of secrets.

25.6 blazers of cryme: Presumably those who utter slander, sedition or the like.

25.8 neuer out of time: appropriate timing is integral to temperance; see II.iv.4-5n on the iconography of Occasion.

25.9 at euening and at prime: Respectively the sixth and first ‘canonical hours’ of the Western Church, and hence appropriate ‘timing’ for prayer.

26.1 porch: Cf. Chaucer’s translation of Boethius, Cons Phil 5.metrum.4.1: ‘The porche (that is to seyn, a gate of the toun of Athenis there as philosophris hadden hir congregacioun to desputen)’.

26.2 warders: Jonson cites Plutarch on the ‘Wall, or Parapet of teeth set in our mouth, to restraine the petulancy of our words’ (1925-52.8.573).

27.8 Steward: Spenser’s duties as a sizar, or scholarship student, at Cambridge would have included waiting at table, and his ancestral name (Fr De Spencier; cf. Proth 130-31n) is synonymous with Steward; hence the pun in CV H.B., addressed to the Muses and referring to the poet as ‘this rare dispenser of your graces’ (line 3). This pun is echoed by Richard Carew’s reference to Spenser in 1598 as the ‘Muses despencier’ (Cummings 1971: 95). For Spenser’s own play with the etymology of his name see 29.1, xii.42.8, V.i.7.5, and notes.

28.2 Marshall of the same: Member of a noble household responsible for seating guests on formal occasions.

28.9 nicenesse: Alma does not out of delicacy omit to show them the kitchen.

29.1 dispence: See 27.8n.

29.2 raunges: See vii.35.4 for the corresponding moment in the tour of Mammon’s cave, and cf. vii.5.3-4n with st. 21-32n above for the suggestion that as the knights are allegorically ‘digested’ in the castle, Guyon is correspondingly ‘purified’ in his tour of Mammon’s realm.

29.5–29.7 29.5-7 Galen of Pergamum, a second-century Greek medical writer recognized as authoritative in the Renaissance, characterizes digestion as similar to boiling in a passage that mentions the volcanic Mount Aetna, also known as Mongiball (Nat Fac 3.7).

30.6 accoyld: OED cites only this instance.

31.1 Concoction: In Renaissance physiology, the first stage of digestion, from L con together + cocquere to boil.

31.3 Digestion: The second stage of digestion, from L digerere to distribute.

31.4 Achates: Provisions, from Anglo-Norman and Middle French achat purchase.

32.1 St. 32 Describing the third stage of digestion, elimination.

32.5 nought: May represent ‘naught’ (as in ‘naughty’) or ‘nought’, from ne not + aught anything.

32.6 secret wayes: Cf. 25.5, ‘Utterers of secrets he from thence debard’.

32.7 close: With a likely glance at ‘close-stool’, a toilet.

32.8 Port Esquiline: The gate in ancient Rome that led to the sewer and city dump.

33.3 their mindes did fill: In contrast to the action of excreting at 32.9, the knights are allegorically feeding on the spectacle of human digestion. One of several places where Spenser plays on the mise en abyme of a human body populated by allegorical homunculi who posses bodies of their own; see 33.8-9n, 38.4n, 43.9n. For the corresponding moment in Mammon's cave, see vii.24.4.

33.4 so straunge a sight: Emphasizing the miracle of that which is most familiar, since the ‘sight’ the knights behold is their own anatomy.

33.5 33.5 The knights turn ‘backe againe’, reversing their descent toward the body’s midsection, to ascend into the heart. Appropriately, this turn occurs in the fifth line of the stanza. For analogous moments of discreet turning-away, see 39.6, 44.2-3, 44.6.

33.5–34.5 33.5-44.5 The function of coupling from which the knights turn aside in 33.5 is represented differently: ‘digested’ into the ‘goodly Parlour’ of the heart (33.6), where the allegory is likewise refined from the corporeal-architectural basis of its first phase to the comedy of manners that ensues as each knight encounters a female personification embodying the form of his desire, and experiences a resulting moment of painful self-consciousness (st. 39, 44). On the shifting of representational modes in this canto see Davis 1981: 124-25.

33.8–33.9 33.8-9 Alma’s royall arras contrasts strikingly with the elaborate tapestries at the House of Busirane (III.xi.28-46) and the Castle Joyeous (III.i.34-38). The chiasmus in Spenser’s phrasing suggests a mirroring in which nothing is reflected back to nothing, and hence an undoing of figuration as such, located appropriately at the (literal) ‘heart’ of his allegorical figuration of the body. On this reading the tapestry is, paradoxically, a figure for the mise en abyme of representation referred to above (33.3n). Alternatively, Mills suggests that the unwrought tapestry contains ‘the simplest of perceived sensory forms awaiting conceptualization’ (1970: 569), reading but as ‘except’ to suggest that the tapestry is not entirely empty.

34.4 amate: The earliest instance of this sense cited by OED.

34.8–34.9 34.8-9 At 18.2 we are told that Alma ‘had not yet felt Cupides wanton rage’; for Cupid’s gesture in laying his bow aside, a recurrent motif in FQ, see viii.6n. Cupid’s ‘fierce wars’ are detailed in Busyrane’s tapestries; see III.xi.29.5, ‘And eke all Cupids warres they did repeat’.

35.1 St. 35 The affections personified in this stanza divide between ‘some’—the forward, or concupiscible passions (associated in canto ii with Perissa and in canto v with Cymochles)—and ‘other some’—the froward, or irascible passions (associated with Elissa and Pyrochles).

35.8 gnaw a rush: Possibly related to ‘rush’ as a figure of speech for something unimportant, as in ‘not worth a rush’.

36.5–36.6 chose . . . by chaunce: See the similar coincidence of chance with choice when the knights select books to read at 59.5 and 60.1. Spenser’s characteristic play with chance and providence suspends the action of the poem between romance errancy and epic destiny, e.g. at I.ix.6-7 and III.iii.24.

37.3 Poplar braunch: Sacred to Hercules, hence an emblem of heroic labor; Servius reports in his commentary on Virgil’s Eclogues that Hercules made himself a crown of poplar upon his return from Hades (Comm in Verg Buc 7.61). The story of his choosing virtue over pleasure, attributed to Socrates by Xenophon (who relates it in his Memorabilia, 2.1.21-34), established Hercules as a popular Renaissance symbol of temperance.

38.3 aduise: From L ad to + visere to look at carefully.

38.4 Him ill beseemes: mirroring the phrase ‘beseemes you ill’ at 37.9.

38.9 three years: 1596 ‘twelve moneths’; see 7.5n.

38.9 sought one: Gloriana

39.5 39.6 See 33.5, 44.2-3 for corresponding moments of turning-aside, which link the self-consciousness of the blushing knights to the pudor (modesty, or Shamefastnes [43.9]) of the allegory at the body’s midsection. See 33.5-44.5n.

39.8 Praysdesire: See vii.49.1n; Arthur’s anima contrasts with the match made in Hell that Mammon offers Guyon. On the importance of the pair shamefastness and desire of praise as ‘the most necessarye things to be observed by a maister in his disciples or scholers’, see Elyot 1580: 23.

40.7–40.9 40.7-9 Neither ‘the bird’ nor a source for the story of her sexual violation by Pan has been identified. Upton 1758 notes that Pan had by Echo a daughter named Jynx, who was turned into a bird, and suggests that it may be the cuckoo, which accompanies the figure of Jealousy in Chaucer (CT Knight 1930). Others have suggested the owl, the nightingale, or the turtle-dove, identified by Valeriano as an emblem of Pudicitia (Hieroglyphica 1602: 223-24). Since the bird in question ‘shonneth vew’ out of shame, perhaps we are not meant to know its name; cf. 25.5.

41.1 commoned: In ME, also to have sexual intercourse; cf. 42.4, 43.3-4 and notes.

41.3–41.7 41.2-7 For the literary genealogy of this simile, see Homer, Il 4.141; Claudian, R Pros 1.271-4; Statius, Achill 1.304-8; Ovid, Amor 2.5.34-40, Met 330-32; and Ariosto, OF 10.98-99.

41.7 Castory: If the damsel knows that castoreum is a greasy, strong-smelling, evil-tasting reddish-brown substance extracted from glands in loins of the beaver, it is no wonder that she blushes.

42.4 42.4 See 39.6n. The echoes of st. 32 (‘secret’, ‘close’) are extended in 43.1 (‘nought’) and 44.1 (‘privitee’). For ‘the secret of your heart’ as Biblical language, see e.g. Ps 44:21, ‘Shal not God searche this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart’; Ps 51:6, ‘Beholde, thou lovest trueth in the inwarde affections: therefore hast thou taught me wisdome in the secret of mine heart’; 1 Cor 14:25, ‘And so are the secrets of his heart made manifest’.

42.8–42.9 42.8-9 Since revealing the source of her discomfort is exactly what will please the damsel least, Guyon's offer ‘To ease you of that ill’ has the opposite effect.

42.8 discure: A ‘reduced form’ resulting from vocalization of the v; cf. ‘courd’ at viii.9.8 and note. With a possible pun on ‘dis-cure’, since as the comedy of the scene makes clear, to ‘discover’ shamefastness only intensifies its discomfort.

43.3–43.4 43.3-4. Cf. 39.3-5. In the present situation, Alma’s choice of diction (‘that, which ye so much embrace’) seems likely to set off another furious round of blushing, especially as it follows the series of echoes mentioned in 42.4n.

43.8 modestee: According to Thomas Wilson’s Art of Rhetoric, ‘An honest shamefastness’ (76); shame or discomfiture in Lily, Mother Bombie: ‘I can neither without danger smother the fire, nor without modestie disclose my furie’ (3.1.5-6).

43.9 43.9 Another instance of chiasmus as the trope of mirroring; see 33.8-9n, 38.4n. For ‘Shamefastnes it selfe’, see the pseudo-Chaucerian Court of Love, ‘Eke Shamefastenesse was there as I toke hede, / That blushed red, and darst not been aknowe / She lover was . . .’ (1198-1200).

44.1 44.1-2 Blushing by its nature is not able to be contained ‘in privitee’; this is why Guyon turns his face away.

44.4–44.5 44.4-5 Apparently the narrator follows Alma’s example in deciding not to notice the knights’ discomfiture, despite having just described it; see 39.6n.

44.5 44.5-58 At 44.6-9 Alma leads the knights up an alabaster stairway (the ten vertebrae of the neck) to view her castle’s circular Turret (44.8, the head), and the allegory once again modulates, this time from the comedy of self-consciousness to an explicitly historical and typological mode, as references to Thebes and Troy (45.6-9) prepare for a comparison with ‘that heavenly towre, / That God hath built for his owne blessed bowre’ (47.4-5). St. 47-58 describe the three principal chambers of the turret, occupied by ‘three honorable sages; (47.8): Phantastes (st. 49-52) or the fantasy; an unnamed ‘man of ripe and perfect age’ (54.2) who exercises the faculty of judgment (st. 53-54); and the aged Eumnestes with his boy Anamnestes, representing memory and recollection (st. 55-58). In the chamber of Eumnestes the knights come upon the chronicles they will read in canto 10.

44.6 thence away them sought: ‘Invited them to come away’, echoing 33.5, ‘Thence backe againe faire Alma led them right’.

44.9 Alablaster: Early modern spelling of ‘alabaster’, a pure white translucent stone.

45.4 suruewd: Contrasting with its etymological partner ‘oversee’ at 44.3.

45.5–45.6 45.6-7 Cadmea, the acropolis at Thebes, built by Cadmus (Met 3.1-130) and destroyed by Alexander the Great in 335 B.C.E.

45.8 richly guilt: Cf. Virgil: auratasque trabes, veterum decora alta parentum (‘gilded rafters, the splendours of their fathers of old’; Aen 2.448).

45.9 young Hector: Astyanax, son of Hector, was cast over the battlements of Troy (Met 13.415-17).

46.5 liuing fire: Belphoebe’s eyes are described as ‘living lamps’ that dart fire (II.iii.23.1-3); the eyes of the dragon in Eden are compared to flaming beacons (I.xi.15.1-4). In Am Spenser apostrophizes the lady’s eyes as ‘full of the living fire / Kindled above unto the maker neere’ (8.1-2), and says they ‘kindle living fire within my brest’ (7.12). Contrast III.viii.7.1-2 on the witch’s construction of the False Florimell: ‘In stead of eyes two burning lampes she set / In silver sockets, shyning like the skyes’.

47.4 that heauenly towre: Cf. the vision shown to Redcrosse by Contemplation at I.x.55-57.

47.4–47.5 47.4-5 The description of the human head—framed by comparisons to heaven (see 45.2), between which are contained the negative similes (45.6-9, ‘Not that . . . Nor that’) referring to great edifices of pagan antiquity—marks another shift in the symbolic mode of the allegory, from the comedy of courtly manners that prevails in the parlor of the heart to a typological mode appropriate to the head as the seat of the immortal soul and of the intellectual faculties of foresight and memory.

47.6–47.9 47.6-9 Medical tradition descending from Galen identified four ventricles in the human brain, to which were assigned the faculties of fantasy or foresight, judgment, and memory, with fantasy occupying the first two. Chaucer neatly sums up this tradition in CT when he lists the medical authorities studied by the doctor of physic: ‘Olde Ypocras, Haly and Galyen, / Serapion, Rasiz and Avycen’ (Gen Pro 431-32). E. D. Harvey 2003 offers a well-informed summary of the medieval medical and philosophical traditions that lie behind Spenser’s conception of the animating forces within the body.

48.1 St. 48 The negative similes in this stanza parallel those in st. 45.

48.1–48.2 48.1-2 The Delphic Oracle reportedly declared Socrates the wisest man alive (Plato, Apology 21A).

48.4–48.7 48.4-7 Cf. Homer, ηδυεπης ανορουσε λιγυς Πυλιων αγορητης, / του και απο γλωσσης μελιτος γλυκιων ρεεν αυδη: / τω δ᾽ ηδη δυο μεν γενεαι μεροπων ανθρωπων / εφθιαθ᾽, οἵ οι προσθεν αμα τραφεν ηδ᾽ εγενοντο / εν Πυλῳ ηγαθεῃ, μετα δε τριτατοισιν ανασσεν (ēdnepēs anorouse ligys Pyliōn agorētēs, / tou kai apo glōssēs melitos glykiōn rheen audm: / tō d’ ēdē dyo men geneai meropōn anthrōpōn / ephthiath’ , oϊ oi prosthen ama traphen md’ egenonto / en Pylō mgathem, meta de tritatoisin anassen; ‘Nestor, sweet of speech, the clear-voiced orator of the men of Pylos . . . . Two generations of mortal men he had already seen pass away . . . and he was king among the third’; Il I.248-52).

48.9 48.9 Cf. ‘government’ at 1.4 and note.

49.1–49.3 49.1-3 Identified in both medical and philosophical tradition as phantasia (fantasy), cogitatio (judgment), and memoria (memory).

49.5 could one of these comprize: ‘one of these three could comprehend and contain it’

50.4–50.5 50.4-5 Cf. Sidney, Defense, arguing that only poets can invent ‘forms such as never were in nature’.

50.8–50.9 50.8-9 An unstructured series that may (by the reader’s cogitatio) be analyzed into three groups of four—although Hippodames remains a joker in this deck, since as a mythological creature it would be classed with the first three terms, but as an exotic natural creature, classed with the second four (see 50.8n).

50.8 Hippodames: Literally, horse-trainers; possibly an error for either ‘hippocampus’, a mythological sea-horse ‘having two fore-feet, and the body ending in a dolphin’s or fish’s tail, represented as drawing the car of Neptune and other sea-deities’ (OED), or ‘hippotame’, the 16th-c spelling of ‘hippopotamus’.

51.1–51.5 51.1-5 See the similes at I.i.23, describing the attack of Errour’s monstrous brood upon the Redcrosse knight, and st. 16 above, describing the attack of Maleger’s troops upon Arthur and Guyon. To have ‘a bee in your bonnet’ is a proverbial expression equivalent to having a screw loose; cf. Nicholas Udall 1553, ‘Who so hath suche bees as your maister in hys head’ (Roister D. [Arb.] 29).

51.6–51.9 51.6-9 See 50.8-9 for a parallel group of twelve.

52.2 Phantastes: Gk φανταστηζ phantastes visionary or dreamer.

52.4–52.6 52.4-6 For these details as signs of melancholy humor, see Burton Anat 1.3.1.1; ‘sharpe staring eyes’ suggest foresight.

52.8–52.9 52.8-9 For Saturn’s traditional association with melancholy, see Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl 1964. In astrology Saturn is the planet of baleful adversity (the ‘great Malefic’), ‘oblique’ when it stands at an adverse angle to one or more of the other natal planets. It is especially adverse when passing through the twelfth house of the zodiac (‘th’house of agonyes’).

53.1 St. 53 Cf. Aristotle, Nic Eth 6.5-8: ‘Practical wisdom [ϕρονησις phronesis] is a rational faculty exercised for the attainment of truth in things that are humanly good and bad . . . . In the popular mind prudence is more associated with the self and the individual—a usurpation of the title of prudence, which actually belongs to all forms and kinds, including those designated as domestic economy, constitution-building, the art of the lawgiver, and political science which again is subdivided into deliberative and judicial science’. Such wisdom differs from pure reason, which ‘apprehends the truth of definitions which cannot be proved by argument, while prudence involves knowledge of the ultimate particular thing’ (6.6, 182).

53.4 picturals: OED cites only this instance. Note that this noun governs the rest of the list, so that the chamber is described as containing not laws, judgments, and the like, but images of these things.

53.8 science: From L scientia.

54.2 ripe and perfect age: See 27.8-9 and 27.8n. The verbal echo associates this unnamed figure with Diet (and hence with the poet) as the mind’s steward, governing its digestion of the materials taken in through the senses (‘who them did meditate’).

55.4 they declind: Sloped downward, following the shape of the skull.

55.5–55.9 55.5-9 Cf. the description of Contemplation’s weak eyes and strong ‘spright’ at I.x.47.1-6

55.8 scorse: The only instance of the noun cited by OED.

56.1–56.3 56.1-3 Another instance of this canto’s recurrent interest in the mise en abyme (see 33.3 and 33.8-9 notes). An ‘infinite’ record of all things, made on the spot ‘as they did pas’, would be caught in an endless loop, deprived of any temporal or spatial perspective in which to order and contain events (cf. ‘withouten end’, 58.2; ‘endlesse exercise’, 59.2).

56.6 immortall scrine: See the ‘everlasting scryne’ of the Muses at 1.pr.2.3. In both instances the transferred epithet applies properly to the contents rather than to the container. A ‘scrine’ is a wooden chest in which records or valuables were kept; see Anderson (2008: 82) for the association of ‘scrine’ with shrine and hence with the body as a temple, as in Nicholas Udall’s translation from Erasmus: ‘The mynde or solle of manne is covered, and . . . housed or hidden within the tabernacle or skryne of the bodye . . . .’ (1542: 145v).

56.5–56.6 56.6-7 Contrast ‘immortall’ and ‘incorrupted’ with the description of Emnestes and his dwelling as ‘decrepit’, ‘ruinous and old’ (55.6, 1).

56.8–56.9 56.8-9 The ‘warres’ mentioned in these lines are older than the Trojan war: King Ninus founded Ninevah (see 21.6n), Assaracus was an ancestor of Aeneas, and Inachus was a river god, founder of Argos and father of Io.

57.1–57.2 The yeares of Nestor . . . Mathusalem: Nestor live three hundred years, according to T. Cooper 1565; Methushélah, according to Genesis 5:27, ‘nine hundred sixty and nine’.

57.6–57.9 57.6-9 Unlike the first two chambers, where imagery predominates, this chamber contains written records.

58.8 Anamnestes: Gk αναμνησς anamnesis remembrance.

58.9 Eumnestes: Gk ευμνηστος eumnestos well-remembering.

59.4 auise: From L videre to see.

59.6 moniments: From L monere to remind

59.9 gouernements: Echoing ‘government’ at 1.4. The macrocosmic analogy between the temperate body and the well-governed body politic is realized when the chronicle history of British rule is found in Eumnestes’ chamber, although this proves in canto x to be a history largely of misgovernance. In this sense the moniments may be understood as admonitory.

60.2 Antiquitee: Associated in Spenser with an ideal era, and hence contrasted to the warning function of moniments.