i.2 Florimell: From L flos, floris flower + mel honey.

i.2 chaced: The inevitable pun on ‘chaste’ introduces a thematic keynote for the Legend of Chastity. To what extent does chastity in women depend on flight, and what are the terms on which it may be sustained in an engagement with male sexuality? To what extent can male sexuality free itself from the fantasies of ‘maistery’ (25.7) that motivate pursuit and capture?

i.3 Duessaes traines: In this phrase the plot-summary slips a gear, dropping back to the opening canto of Book II, where Duessa last appeared in the poem. The mention of her here may be the remnant of an abandoned plot-line (see iv.45.1-4n), but the error is overdetermined: Guyon’s pending encounter with Britomart will replay (now in a comic mode) the irascibility that nearly precipitated his attack on Redcrosse at II.i.25-27. This is the first of many moments in III.i that signal a revisionary relationship to the Legend of Temperance (see 36.1-4n).

i.3 Malecastaes: From L malus bad or evil + castus chaste, with a multivalent pun on cast, meaning to reckon, conjecture, design, arrange, intend, or set upon an action.

i.1.1 Since the close of Book II, Guyon and the Palmer appear to have completed their voyage back to Alma’s castle.

i.1.9 together yode: Guyon’s horse, stolen by Braggadoccio at II.iii.3-4, will not be recovered until V.iii.35. He nevertheless tends to ride when in Arthur’s company (cf. II.ix.10.7). Here it has been suggested that the two knights share Arthur’s horse, but Hamilton 2001 wisely notes that ‘it may be simpler not to seek narrative consistency, for the allegorical point of having Guyon on foot has already been made’. It may be added that there is an allegorical point to having Guyon remounted in the present episode, insofar as it reenacts the encounter with Redcrosse that got him assigned to foot-patrol in the first place (see arg.3n).

i.2.1 See II.ix.7-8. Arthur’s quest for Gloriana proceeds on a figural plane that renders the ‘nigher way’ unavailable to him even within the literal action of the poem—a deliberate breaking of its ‘apparent narrative’ (Kouwenhoven 1983) that stresses the narrative’s provisional status.

i.4.1

St. 4-12

Based on the initial appearance of Bradamante in Ariosto, OF 1.60-67, where the Saracen knight Sacripant is unhorsed before his lady Angelica. Unlike Spenser, Ariosto does not reveal the identity of the unknown champion who gallops back into the forest, nor does he sympathize with the pagan warrior in his discomfiture. Sacripant does lose his mount, killed in the encounter, and is comforted not by a fellow knight but by Angelica, who stretches diplomacy so far as to declare Sacripant victorious quando a lasciare il campo è stato primo (‘since he [the unknown champion] was first to leave the field’; 67.8).

i.4.1–i.4.2 open plaine . . . pricked: An echo of the first line of Book I, ‘A gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine’.

i.4.9 4.9 Heraldic language for a lion walking against a golden background, looking to the right and with the right forepaw raised. For the resemblance of this shield to the armorial bearings of Britomart’s ancestor Brutus, see Leslie (1983: 34).

i.5.2 The Prince of grace: Guyon asks Arthur as a gift or favor to let him joust with the stranger knight, although the phrase also glances at Arthur’s role as foreshadowing divine grace in the allegory (see st. 12n).

i.5.5–i.5.6 5.5-6 This inflammatory charge links Guyon to the irascible Pyrhocles (cf. II.v.2.5-9).

i.6.1 6.1 Echoing Guyon’s encounter with Redcrosse, II.i.26.6.

i.6.9 mischieuous mischaunce: Guyon’s fall, punningly emphasizing that even though ‘both theyr points arriv’d’, he has missed his chance at victory.

i.7.8 7.8 Cf. the poet’s concern in the proem with how to represent chastity, which, as Shakespeare’s Iago waspishly observes, ‘is an essence that’s not seen’ (Othello 4.1.16). In its invisibility, the ‘secret powre’ of chastity contrasts with the beauty of the coyly forth-peeping rose in the Bower of Bliss, which ‘fairer seemes, the lesse ye see her may’ (II.xii.74.6).

i.7.9

7.9 Ariosto’s Bradamante receives from Astolfo la lancia che di quanti ne percuote / fa le selle restar subito vòte (‘the lance that at first touch / left the saddle immediately vacant’; 23.15.7-8). Ariosto inherits this spear from Berni’s 1542 redaction of Boiardo, as Upton explains in a gloss that would be difficult to improve on:

[This spear] was made by Bladud, a British king, skilled in magick; see B.iii.C.3.St.60. . . . The staff of this Speare was of ebony, see B.iv.C.6.St.6. and it was headed with gold: ‘una lanza dorata’, as Boyardo, in Orl. Innam. calls it. . . . But let us hear the history of it from the Italian poets. —Galafron King of Cathaia, and father of the beautiful Angelica, and of the renowmed warriour Argalia, procured for his son, by the help of a magician, a lance of gold, whose virtue was such, that it unhorsed every knight as soon as touched with its point. Berni Orl. Innam. L.i.C.1.St.43. . . . . After the death of Argalia, this lance came to Astolpho, the English duke [Orl.Inn.L.i.C.2.St.20.] with this lance he unhorses his adversaries in the tilts and tourneyments [Ibid. Canto iii.] Just as Britomart overthrows the knights with her enchanted spear, in B.iv.C.4.St.46. In Ariosto, Orl.Furios. . . . we read of this same inchanted lance. Again C.xviii.St.118 . . . Astolfo, in C.xxiii.St.15. gives this inchanted speare of gold to Bradamante . . . With this speare Bradamante gains a lodging in Sir Tristans castle, ‘la Rocca di Tristano’, Canto xxxii. (St.65.) Not unlike to Britomartis, who gains her entrance, when refused a lodging, B.iii.C.9.St.12. (1987: 625-26)

Upton also suggests the spear of Athena (Il 5.746) as the model for this enchanted spear, but Homer does not specify any enchantments, observing only that with her spear ‘heavy and huge and strong’ the goddess ‘vanquishes the ranks of men’ (τῷ δάμνησι στίχας ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων tōi damnēsi sthichas andrōn hērōōn).

i.8.7–i.8.9 8.7-9 See ii.18-21 for this part of the story. The anticipatory summary here emphasizes the parallel between Britomart’s quest and Arthur’s, hers for an image seen in a mirror, his for a vision beheld in a dream. Unlike the Prince, Britomart will find her partner in the narrative. On ‘Venus looking glas’, see pr.5.5-9, where the queen is asked to see herself ‘fashioned’ in ‘mirrours more than one’. That Britomart sees a future spouse in the mirror expresses a key difference between her and the queen, whose espousal of her unmarried state is one reason Arthur cannot find Gloriana.

i.8.7 Britayne: ‘A sixth-century heroic and legendary setting in Arthurian Britain (Wales and Cornwall), from which the Saxon Redcrosse and all the Briton knights enter Faeryland’ (Erickson 1996: 3). In this sense Britomart is not a ‘forreine’ example (pr.1.4).

i.9.7 toward . . . vntoward: ‘Untoward’ may also suggest awkwardness.

i.9.7 blame: Like ‘evill’ at 10.9, implies that Guyon’s ‘disdainefull wrath’ is intemperate—unlike the fall itself, which he experiences as ‘reprochefull shame’ but which the narrator has excused as ‘not thy fault’ (7.8).

i.9.8 rencounter: Appears once in each of the three books of 1590, most recently at II.i.26.5, describing Guyon’s averted attack upon Redcrosse. OED cites this line among examples for sense 1b, a fight or duel.

i.10.4 mightie Science: With magical overtones, given that the other uses of the word in the 1590 text associate it with Archimago, Duessa, and Merlin (I.ii.10.2, I.ii.38.4, III.ii.18.7).

i.11.2 reuenging rage: Cf. 9.7n. Hamilton 2001 notes that ‘the tempest of [Guyon’s] wrathfulness’ in destroying the Bower fulfills a vow of ‘dew vengeance’ against Acrasia sworn at II.i.61, and that at II.ii.30 Medina warns him against ‘fowle revenging rage’—a passion he has yet to master.

i.11.3 handeled: ‘To deal with or treat in speech or writing’ (OED), with overtones of managing or manipulating tactfully.

i.11.4–i.11.9 Arthur’s assuaging ‘reason’ differs comically from the Palmer’s proverbs, appeasing Guyon with pretexts rather than precepts and in the process implying that his rage owes more to wounded pride than to inflamed ‘corage’.

i.12.1 See I.ix.1 and note. Encounters among the protagonists of the various legends, or between any of them and Arthur, typically issue in pledges of faith seen as links in the ‘golden chaine of concord’. Accordingly, this stanza is linked to Arthur’s rescue of Redcrosse in Book I, Guyon’s reconcilement with Redcrosse (II.i.34.1-2), Arthur’s rescue of Guyon (II.viii.55-56), and, still to come, the mutual aid rendered by Britomart and Redcrosse (i.28-30, 66.7-9; iv.4.4-5). The pattern is varied in Book III: in the first two legends Arthur arrives in canto viii as an allegory of divine grace, delivering first Redcrosse and then Guyon from certain death. In Book III he is present instead for the first-canto reconciliation, and his subsequent course runs parallel to Britomart’s rather than supervening upon it. Instead it is Britomart who renders aid, initially to Redcrosse and eventually to Scudamour.

i.12.2 12.2 The virtues enabling the reconciliation are those espoused by Guyon and Britomart, respectively.

i.13.1

St. 13

Based on Ariosto, OF 1.22, where Ferraù and Rinaldo have just decided that they will try to catch the fleeing Angelica before they fight over her. The two knights dash off in pursuit of her (sharing Ferraù's horse), at which point the narrator exclaims, Oh gran bontà de' cavallieri antiqui! (‘O great goodness of the ancient knights!’). Given that the motive for the knights’ reconciliation mingles concupiscence with calculation of advantage, Ariosto’s irony is apparent. Spenser has separated the two moments (for the flight of Angelica, see st. 15-18) and, by doing so, muted the irony. But insofar as his golden chain of concord is still partly knit by the artful soothing of Guyon’s wounded pride (11.4-9n), Spenser is not so much ignoring Ariosto’s irony as softening its touch.

i.13.8 enuy: A richly ambiguous term in Spenser (see II.ii.19.2n), ‘envy’ here complicates the muted irony of the narrator’s tone by suggesting that the mixed motives of rivalry and covetous resentment that have to be pacified in Guyon may pass over into readers who reenact the knight’s combative response to Britomart in an imaginary contest with a deceptively idealized past.

i.14.4 dernly: Cited by OED as ‘a Spenserian archaism’.

i.14.5–i.14.9 14.5-9 The knights pass from the ‘equall plaine’ of their chivalrous encounter (8.5) to a forest inhabited by beasts noted for their violent natures.

i.15.1

St. 15-18

Based on Ariosto, OF 1.33-35. See st. 4-12n and st. 13n. In this canto Spenser recombines elements from two separate episodes in Ariosto, Bradamante’s joust with Sacripant and the flight of Angelica with Ferraù and Rinaldo in pursuit.

i.15.2 Palfrey: Cf. Una’s ‘snowy Palfrey’, I.iii.8.8.

i.15.4–i.15.5 15.4-5 Crystal and whalebone are conventional terms of praise in medieval courtly lyric.

i.16.3–i.16.4 16.3-4 Echoing Golding’s translation of Ovid: as Daphne flees from Apollo, ‘Hir goodly yellowe golden haire that hanged loose and slacke, / With every pluffe of ayre did wave and tosse behind her backe’ (1.643-44).

i.16.5–i.16.9 16.5-9 See SC Dec 55-60, where a comet that arouses ‘unkindly heate’ in Colin is glossed by E. K. as ‘a blasing starre, meant of beautie, which was the cause of his whote love’.

i.16.6 16.6 Alluding to the etymology of ‘comet’ from L cometa, derived in turn from the Gk κομήτης komētēs (‘wearing long hair’).

i.16.8–i.16.9 16.8-9 Precedents for the comet as ill omen include Pliny, Virgil, Cicero, Lucan, Silius Italicus, Tasso, Lydgate, and Du Bartas (see Var 3.205-7).

i.17.2 foster: Personifying the forest as a place of lust and violence.

i.18.2 great enuy and fell gealosy: Ambiguous motives: envy and jealousy may signify hostility and indignation, but also suggest a sense of rivalry with the pursuer (see II.ii.19.2n and 13.8n above). The ambiguity is reinforced when their desire to rescue the maiden is equated with pursuit of her ‘selfe’ as a ‘meede’, or reward.

i.18.6 byliue: That the knights are ‘equally’ eager in their sexually-tinged pursuit of the lady renders them undifferentiated.

i.18.9 18.9 Emphasizing that Arthur and Guyon have elected to pursue the damsel rather than her assailant.

i.19.1–i.19.2 19.1-2 See 18.9n; the point is amplified in these lines, which indirectly impute lightness and inconstancy to the male knights. See st. 13n and st. 15-18n: some of the Ariostan irony deflected in Spenser’s earlier echo of the pursuit of Angelica by Ferraù and Rinaldo resurfaces here in the implicit contrast between Britomart and the male knights.

i.19.7 that perlous Pace: Echoing the ‘Pace Perelus’ confronted by Sir Beawmaynes in the Morte D’Arthur (7.9; fol. 120).

i.20.5 20.5 Given the forest’s associations with violence and concupiscence, the castle’s placement near it ‘for pleasure’ is not a promising sign.

i.20.6–i.20.7 20.6-7 Cf. II.xii.50.2-4, ‘A large and spacious plaine . . . Mantled with greene’—one of many hints that the narrative is, in some sense, revisiting the Bower of Bliss.

i.21.1 Mainely: Spenser may also be punning on the heraldic term for ‘hand’, from Fr main and L manus.

i.22.2 embost: Insofar as the term’s uncertain etymology suggests OF bos, bois wood, and Ital imboscare, defined by Florio as ‘to enter or goe into a wood, to take covert or shelter as a Deere doeth’, it calls attention to the blurring of settings. The hunting simile in these lines figuratively places the action back in the forest from which Britomart has just emerged.

i.23.6 gyre: The knights are wheeling around their opponent like a vortex; cf. II.v.8.7.

i.24.1

St. 24

The refusal of the ‘single knight’ to change echoes the description of Britomart’s ‘constant mind’ and ‘stedfast corage’ in contrast to Guyon and Arthur (19.1, 8).

i.24.3–i.24.4 liefe . . . me liefer were: ‘beloved . . . would be preferable to me’. The knight’s wordplay, converting a noun that signifies exclusive attachment into an adjective expressing comparison and preference, mocks the effort of the six knights to enforce upon him a ‘choice’ that turns out (st. 26-27) to be no choice at all.

i.24.5 my wrested right: ‘my enforced truth’; ‘right’ is opposed to ‘wrong’, with an added play on the sense of a legal or moral entitlement, since ‘wrested’ evokes the etymology of tort, from L tortus twisted, wrung.

i.24.6 one, the truest one: Una, evoking the phrase una vera fides, one true faith.

i.24.7 th’Errant damzell: First applied to Una at II.i.19.8, the phrase suggests her wandering in search of Redcrosse.

i.25.5–i.25.9 25.5-9 The formulaic or sententious quality of these lines marks them as a thematic keynote, echoing Chaucer, CT Franklin 764-66: ‘love wol nat been constreyned by maistrey. / What maistrie comth, the God of Love anon / Beteth his wynges, and farewel, he is gon!’ Lines 5-6 reformulate a major theme of Book I, recalled here as a Legend of Fidelity, while lines 7-9 go on to link this to the main theme of Book III; they also glance back at Florimell in flight from masculine pursuit.

i.26.3 soueraine: A conventional use of the adjective to mean ‘surpassing’, but perhaps a loaded term insofar as Malecasta’s form of erotic ‘maistery’ may be seen to parody the sorts of double-bind Elizabeth imposed on her favorites (27.6-9).

i.26.4 debonayre: From OF de bonne aire of good disposition.

i.26.6–i.26.9 26.6-27.9 First instance in the poem of a recurrent motif, ‘the custom of the castle’ (see Zurcher 2007: 66-67). Such episodes are a stock element of the chivalric romance tradition, common in the narratives of Chretien, Malory, Boiardo, and Ariosto. Because the knight encountering a local custom must judge it according to universal ethical and political norms, the encounter provides a conceptually clear way of staging arguments about universality and locality, rule and exception, relativism, and sovereignty—or, in the present instance, about love and dominion. Given the importance accorded by early modern English common law to the legal authority of custom, it is not surprising to find that, for all of its parodic force in the present episode, Spenser’s use of this romance convention tends more toward ambiguity and relativism than comparable examples in French and Italian sources. His use of the topos was doubtless also influenced by his experience of the native customs of the Irish and Old English in Elizabethan Ireland, which he discusses at length in A Vewe, and by his New English attitudes to civil reform there.

i.27.1–i.27.9 26.6-27.9 First instance in the poem of a recurrent motif, ‘the custom of the castle’ (see Zurcher 2007: 66-67). Such episodes are a stock element of the chivalric romance tradition, common in the narratives of Chretien, Malory, Boiardo, and Ariosto. Because the knight encountering a local custom must judge it according to universal ethical and political norms, the encounter provides a conceptually clear way of staging arguments about universality and locality, rule and exception, relativism, and sovereignty—or, in the present instance, about love and dominion. Given the importance accorded by early modern English common law to the legal authority of custom, it is not surprising to find that, for all of its parodic force in the present episode, Spenser’s use of this romance convention tends more toward ambiguity and relativism than comparable examples in French and Italian sources. His use of the topos was doubtless also influenced by his experience of the native customs of the Irish and Old English in Elizabethan Ireland, which he discusses at length in A Vewe, and by his New English attitudes to civil reform there.

i.26.6 approue: Cf. 27.3, 28.6, and 30.1.

i.28.6–i.28.8 28.6-8 If Britomart’s assault on ‘one . . . ere well aware he weare’ is meant to suggest a certain over-zealousness on her part, it belongs to a combative strain in her character that corresponds to Guyon’s irascibility. The canto will close on a similar note: Britomart’s daunger is dangerous.

i.28.7 auentred: Perhaps (as Hamilton 2001 suggests) mingling English ‘aventure’ with Ital aventare, which Florio 1598 glosses ‘to hurle, to fling, to throw, to darte, to cast violently, to seaze greedily or leape upon’.

i.29.8 29.8 Mingling the proverbs ‘truth is mighty’ and ‘love conquers all’ (Smith 1970, nos. 792, 481.) The proverbs blended in this line reflect the alliance of Redcrosse’s ‘truth’ with Britomart’s ‘true love’.

i.30.1 proue: ‘Prove’ and the related form ‘approve’ are key thematic terms in this episode, focused on Britomart’s combination of inexperience and combative prowess. Cf. 26.6, 27.3, and 28.6.

i.30.6 mard: FE; all three early editions read ‘shard’. One of a few instances where FE appears to ‘correct’ readings that are unusual rather than wrong. ‘Shard’ may be read as a variant of ‘shear’ (OED ‘share’ v. 1, ‘cut into parts’) with a pun on turning swords into plowshares.

i.31.2 Castle Ioyeous: The name of the castle echoes both the Palazzo Gioioso created for Rinaldo by Angelica in Boiardo (OI 1.8.1-14) and the ‘Joyus Garde’ where Launcelot installs Trystram and Isode, ‘garnyshed and furnysshed for a kynge and a quene royall there to have suggeourned’, and where ‘they made joy togydrys dayly with all manner of myrthis that they coude devyse’ (Morte D’Arthur 10.52). More generally, the Castle evokes the milieu of medieval courts of love like those convened in the court of Princess Marie de Champange, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the ethos of seduction or amour courtois associated with Medieval romances like the Roman de la Rose (see Fowler 1959).

i.31.4–i.31.6 31.4-6 Strong enjambments appear occasionally in FQ, but two in rhyming succession are rare. The effect is intensified by the repeated syntactic formula, in which a modifying adjective is suspended at line’s end with the noun it modifies following (but not immediately) after the break. The effect, which prolongs closure by drawing the sense out over three lines, nicely realizes the narrator’s opening claim (‘long were it to describe’) as it characterizes the ‘stately port’—the elaborate courtesies of induction—that delay the knights’ presentation to the Lady of the castle, whose importance is, presumably, magnified by such protocols. This effect will be redoubled in the following stanzas, as it turns out that we have not yet arrived in the Lady’s presence after all, and will not in fact do so until after another nine stanzas of description.

i.31.7–i.31.9 31.7-9 Hamilton 2001 suggests that the ‘Chamber long and spacious’ that brings the knights ‘unto their Ladies sight’ recalls the ‘King's Long Gallery’ in the Queen’s chambers at Hampton Court (floor plan reproduced in Frye 1993: 125). If so, the resemblance reinforces the suggestion that Malecasta offers a critical reflection on Elizabeth’s relations with her favorites (see 26.3n, and cf. 32.4, st. 33-44).

i.33.5–i.33.9 33.5-9 The implied criticism of the Castle’s ‘stately manner’ is carefully poised between a judgment that such extravagance constitutes ‘superfluous riotize’ (excessive, dissolute living; cf. the ‘lawlesse riotise’ of Idleness in procession of the Seven Deadly Sins at the House of Pride, I.iv.20.5) under any circumstances, and a more circumspect reflection that it is inappropriate for ‘the state of meane degree’. The closing question—how is it possible to support such a style of magnificence?—is left hanging with respect to an authentically royal court like that of Elizabeth, neither applied directly nor emphatically deflected.

i.34.1

St. 34-38

The second of the poem’s ekphrastic set-pieces (see II.xii.45.1n, and for a concise formal analysis of the present passage, Hollander 1995: 16-17).

i.34.2 34.2 The ‘clothes’ that dress the walls are tapestries, widely used to decorate (and insulate) galleries and hallways in the courts and castles of early modern Europe. Arras, in Northern France, and Tournai, in Belgium, were noted centers for the manufacture of tapestries.

i.34.3 pourtrahed: A recurring term that keynotes the concern with representation and perception through all three books of the 1590 FQ. See glossary and notes to I.viii.33.7, II.viii.43.3, II.ix.33.8-9, and III.pr.1.8-9.

i.34.4–i.34.5 34.4-5 The subject of these tapestries, like that of most others in the Renaissance, derives from written sources—in this case, Ovid (Met 10.519-739) and Bion, ‘Lament for Adonis’—so that the poet’s imitation of an imagined depiction is implicitly reclaiming the narrative for poetry while passing it through a fictional transposition into pictorial art. If the fictional tapestry’s principal sources are Ovid and Bion, Spenser’s is probably Conti (Myth 5.16; 437-441) or C. Stephanus s.v. ‘Adonis’ and ‘Adonis horti’, which provide most of the details in Spenser’s account.

i.35.1 St. 35-38 The passage moves gradually from description to narration, substituting its own ‘speaking picture’ (Sidney, Defence: 80) for the one it is describing as the tapestry fades from view and the story comes forward. (See II.xii.45.3-4n on the equivalent effect in the description of the gate to the Bower of Bliss.) ‘Then’ at 35.1 follows from ‘First did it shew’ (34.7), preserving the reference to the tapestry but doing so in elision; ‘Now’ (at 35.4 and 35.6) sustains the elision while making the temporal reference more immediate. Stanzas 36 and 37 move into direct narration, without reference to the pictorial artifact; by the time st. 38 resumes the rhetoric of deixis (pointing at), it is no longer clear whether ‘Lo, where beyond he lyeth languishing’ asks us to witness the narrative event or its pictorial representation.

i.36.1–i.36.4 36.1-4 These lines, echoing the description of Acrasia as she leans over the sleeping Verdant in the Bower of Bliss (II.xii.73), extend the suggestion in earlier passages that the Legend of Chastity takes up and revises issues imperfectly resolved in the Legend of Temperance (see notes to III.pr and to arg.3, 1.9, 7.8, 9.8, 11.2). Britomart defeats Guyon’s lingering irascibility in an episode that harks back to the opening of Book II, then revisits the Book’s final episode as an initial rather than terminal test of her virtue. It is perhaps not too much to say that the Castle Joyeous ‘is’ the Bower of Bliss, experienced now as Britomart’s nemesis rather than Guyon’s. (So for example the image of maternal eroticism in the tapestries appears less predatory, and conveys more empathy for Venus’s desire, than corresponding moments in the Bower.)

i.36.5 spyes: The motif of voyeurism from the Bower is shifted from the male to the female gaze as Venus here recalls Salmacis spying on Hermaphroditus (Ovid, Met 4.346-49).

i.36.7–i.36.9 36.7-8 Rosemary, as Shakespeare’s Ophelia remarks, is ‘for remembrance’ (Hamlet 4.5.175), and ‘Paunces’ (pansies, also known as heart’s ease or love-in-idleness) are ‘for thoughts’ (Fr pensée). Violets are associated with love: according to Dodoens 1595, the violet first appeared in response to Jupiter’s command that the earth bring forth nourishment for his lover Io during her sojourn as a heifer (A new Herbal 164).

i.38.1 beyond: Perhaps, as Hamilton 2001 suggests, ‘in a farther tapestry’, or perhaps ‘back over there, not in the foreground’; in either case, suggestive of the way the visual representation spatializes narrative time.

i.38.4–i.38.5 38.4-5 ‘Endlesse’ and ‘evermore’ gesture toward one of the commonplace themes of the ekphrastic topos: narrative converted to visual image is frozen in time. Here the movement is not so much stilled as dilated into a perpetually unconsoled tenderness. Milton will capture both the tenderness and the perpetuity of this gesture when he recalls Spenser’s lines in the ‘sweet societies’ of Lycidas, ‘That sing, and singing in their glory move, / And wipe the tears forever from his eyes’ (178-181). Spenser will resume the narrative in line 7 with an adversative ‘But’ that leaves the dilated moment of tenderness strangely intact even as it also leaves it behind.

i.38.8 transmew: With a latent pun on ‘mew’ as cage or prison.

i.38.9 Which: The ambiguity of the pronoun reference focuses the sustained ambiguity of ekphrastic description. If the reference is to ‘flowre’, as the concluding phrase (‘as if it lively grew’) suggests, then the pronoun may be indicating something easily imaged; but proximity at least momentarily suggests as antecedent the action of metamorphosis, which can be narrated but not readily depicted in a static medium. ‘As if’ contrasts the ‘lively’ growth of the anemone created by Venus to the illusion of life created by the tapestry’s visual artistry.

i.39.2–i.39.5 39.2-5 The chamber is furnished with couches for reclining in the Roman fashion, whether for lust (‘delight’; cf. ‘lascivious disport’, 40.8) or idleness (‘untimely ease’).

i.39.8–i.39.9 39.8-9 For the mingling of fire and water imagery in depicting concupiscence, see II.xii.78.6-9n and II.i.34.7-9n.

i.40.1–i.40.6 40.1-6 For the corresponding passage in the Bower, see II.xii.70-71.

i.40.2 Lydian harmony: Dismissed by Socrates as especially inappropriate for warriors because ‘soft and convivial’, and hence ‘useless even to women who are to make the best of themselves, let alone to men’ (Republic 398e-399a, trans. Shorey); also disparaged as ‘verie ill for yong men’ in Ascham, Tox. (sig. Cv); cf. Milton, ‘L’Allegro’, ‘ever against eating Cares, / Lap me in soft Lydian airs’ (135-36).

i.41.2 sitting on a sumptuous bed: A fitting throne for ‘the Lady of delight’ (31.9).

i.41.4 41.4 On the pride of Persian queens, see I.ii.13.4 and I.iv.7.6.

i.41.5 bountihed: Magnificence or liberality—a defining virtue of the Renaissance prince, although context suggests that the lady’s liberality involves more than her wealth.

i.41.6–i.41.9 41.6-9 For the disciplined gaze as a sign of female chastity, cf. Womanhood in the Temple of Venus (IV.x.49.5-9) and the bride in Epith (236-7).

i.42.4 Another echo of the Bower of Bliss (II.xii.80.1-5; cf. 36.1-4n).

i.42.6 42.6 With this delayed naming, a series of clues in the preceding stanzas come into focus: see 24.5-7 and 29.8. In refusing to abandon his faith to Una, Redcrosse shows that he has not forgotten the lessons of Book I.

i.42.9 42.9-43 The first of four highly charged unveilings of Britomart’s face (cf. ix.20-23; IV.i.13-14, vi.19-21). On such revelations as a motif in chivalric romance, see Giamatti (1984: 76-88). The simile seeks out a point of maximum contrast with the immediate context: night as opposed to day, the sky as opposed to an indoor setting, a lost traveler blessing the sudden access of light, as opposed to the lady and her attendants. Echoed by Milton in Comus 331-33.

i.43.1–i.43.9 42.9-43 The first of four highly charged unveilings of Britomart’s face (cf. ix.20-23; IV.i.13-14, vi.19-21). On such revelations as a motif in chivalric romance, see Giamatti (1984: 76-88). The simile seeks out a point of maximum contrast with the immediate context: night as opposed to day, the sky as opposed to an indoor setting, a lost traveler blessing the sudden access of light, as opposed to the lady and her attendants. Echoed by Milton in Comus 331-33.

i.44.3–i.44.4 44.3-4 ‘For’ implies that presenting themselves to Britomart ‘unsought’ is an act of courtesy (not an intrusion).

i.44.8–i.44.9 44.8-9 Feudal language: ‘liegmen’, vassals; ‘free’, not subject to feudal bondage; ‘ought’, owed, as service to the lord (or lady); ‘to hold . . . in fee’, they hold their ‘offices’ from the Lady in return for the service they owe.

i.45.1

St. 45

Spenser’s six knights personify the steps in a conventional ‘ladder of love’ (gradus amoris), a classical topos widely diffused in medieval literature (cf. Friedman 1965-66). Spenser reinvents certain details—the number of steps in the ladder and their specific names varied—but he also revises the topos more fundamentally (and more mischievously), first by reversing assumed genders of lover and beloved and then by substituting the disguised lady knight of romance epic for the male lover of the medieval courtly love tradition (see st. 47n).

i.45.6 Bacchante: A. Fowler notes that ‘fell’ and ‘keene’ are synonyms for ‘pungent’, and thus pun on the sense of taste: ‘He was, as we would say, spirited’ (1959: 589, n11).

i.45.7 Noctante: Breaks the series in that it is formed from a noun (L nox, noctis night) rather than a verb; the rest of the line (‘in armes . . . greater grew’) is a riddle with a pun on ‘armes’ as its key and the suppressed verb as its answer: Spenser’s noun veils the traditional actum or factum (doing).

i.45.9 But to faire Britomart: Both ‘in comparison to’ and ‘in the view of ’; they are shadows to her in the second sense because the actions they represent have not been embodied for her in lived experience.

i.46.1–i.46.5 46.1-5 This mixture of qualities has precedents in Claudian and Petrarch: Prob 91-2: miscetur decori virtus, pulcherque severo/ Amatur terrore pudor (‘She looks as good as she is fair, chaste beauty armed with awe’; trans. Platnauer); RS 171.7-8: et à sì egual a le bellezze orgoglio / che di piacer altrui par che le spiaccia (‘and her pride is so equal to her beauties that it seems to displease her that she pleases’; trans. Durling). Spenser’s version of the trope will be echoed by Fletcher and Milton (Purple Island 10.25; Comus 450-52).

i.46.6–i.46.9 46.6-9 An answer to the theme song of the Bower, ‘Gather the Rose of love, whilest yet is time’ (II.xii.75.8).

i.47.1

St. 47

Spenser bases the Lady’s mistaken lust for Britomart on Ariosto’s Fiordispina, who falls hopelessly in love with Britomart’s prototype Bradamante (OF 25.29-70). The comedy of Ariosto’s episode (based on the Ovidian tale of Iphis and Isis, Met 9.666-797) is tempered with sympathy for Fiordispina, who has better luck than Malecasta in that Bradamante turns out to have a twin brother, much like Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Ariosto shows that Fiordispina’s passion for Bradamante/Ricciardetto is no less powerful for having its basis in illusion and its satisfaction in a bed-trick; Spenser turns this comedy of ‘falsed fancy’ the other way, implying that the Lady’s consuming passion for Britomart would be no less self-deceptive were the knight as ‘fresh and lusty’ as she imagines ‘him’ to be.

i.48.6 48.6 Echoing the description of Redcrosse as ‘pourd out in loosnesse’ (I.vii.7.2).

i.49.1

St. 49

First of several apostrophes to female readers in Book III. See v.53.1, vi.1.1, ix.1.1-2, and xi.2.6; also Quilligan (1983: 185-99).

i.49.1 captiued: Love as a form of captivity—for the lover or the beloved—is a familiar trope in the courtly and Petrarchan traditions; it forms the underlying conceit of Petrarch’s Triumph of Love. Its seemingly casual use here prepares for a serious interrogation, later in Book III, of the implications such language may have for what Sylvester (2008), following Wittig, calls ‘the heterosexual contract’. See arg. 2n.

i.49.8 bounteous deeds: Acts of generosity, in contrast to Malecasta’s ‘bountihed’ (41.5).

i.50.6–i.50.7 crafty glaunce / Of her false eies: The echo of 36.5, ‘her two crafty spyes’, calls attention to the affinity of Malecasta for Venus, also an importunate wooer.

i.50.6 roue: Perhaps enacting an implied pun on ‘cast’ (in the name Malecasta) as ‘throw’ (cf. 51.8, ‘secret darts did throw’).

i.50.9 dissembled it with ignoraunce: ‘Pretended not to notice’, a strategy borrowed from Alma’s parlor (II.ix.44).

i.51.3 Ceres: goddess of grain, and Lyæus (Bacchus; cf. Ovid, Met 4.11) god of wine, here signifying their respective commodities. Cf. Sherry 1555, translating Erasmus, Adagia 521F, Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus: ‘Without Ceres and Bacchus Venus is cold: where Ceres is put for meate, Bacchus for wyne, and Venus for Lechery’ (Tilley, C211).

i.51.3 fatt: Cf. Shakespeare’s ‘Plumpy Bacchus’ (Antony and Cleopatra 2.7.114). Lotspeich suggests that the epithet results from an identification of Bacchus with Silenus (1965, s.v. ‘Bacchus’).

i.51.6 51.6 The latent metaphor of a river flooding is an image of sexual release (see vii.33-34 and note).

i.52.7 purport: The only instance of this usage cited by OED.

i.53.7 priefe: Related to ‘prove’ and ‘approve’ as key terms in the episode; see 30.1n.

i.54.2 54.2 The phrasing here is too compact and suggestive for easy paraphrase, but an initial sense is ‘by her own experience of sexuality as weakness’. This sense will be fleshed out in the next canto.

i.54.4 imperious loue: The narrator’s language here suggests—in contrast to Britomart’s pronouncement at 25.7 that love many not be ‘compeld by maistery’—that love is experienced precisely as an overmastering force. This contradiction lies at the heart of Spenser’s conception of chastity, and will be explored at length in Book III. In the present episode, Britomart’s experience of eros as torment is, ironically, the source of her misplaced empathy for Malecasta.

i.54.7 54.7 ‘Attaches faith too easily to fair appearances’.

i.54.8–i.54.9 54.8-9 See II.xii.81.4n. The fowler’s net deployed by the Palmer in the Bower is here ‘cast’ (figuratively) by the Lady.

i.55.1–i.55.4 55.1-4 Cf. Guyon’s courtesy toward Phaedria at II.vi.26.3-5, and the ‘perfect complement’ of chastity and courtesy in Belphoebe (v.55).

i.55.4 sdeigne: The initial response of the visitors to the ‘lascivious disport’ on display in Malecasta’s court (40.8).

i.56.3–i.56.5 56.3-5 Echoing the description of Dido’s passion for Aeneas: Est molles flamma medullas / Interea, et tacitum vita sub pectore vulnus (‘All the while the flame devours her tender heart-strings, and deep in her breast lives the silent wound’; Aen 4.66-67), and anticipating the description in canto ii of Britomart’s love-wound (st. 37, 39).

i.56.8 Bascimano (Basciomani 1596): From Ital bascio le mani or Span bezo los manos, to kiss the hands. Cf. Puttenham, Arte: ‘With us the wemen give their mouth to be kissed; in other places their cheek; in many places their hand, or, in steed of an offer to the hand, to say these words, Bezo los manos’ (368); Gascoigne, Adventures: ‘proffering to take an humble congé by bezo las manos, she graciously gave him the zuccado dez labros’ (ed. Salzman, 11).

i.57.4 57.4 Named here for the first time outside the Argument (see arg.3n and 50.6n).

i.57.6–i.57.7 57.6-7 The stars are half-spent (as if they were oil-burning lamps), i.e. the time is midnight.

i.57.8–i.57.9 57.8-9 The ‘moist daughters’ are the Hyades, navita quas Hyadeas Graius ab imbre vocat (‘which the Grecian sailor calls the Hyades after the word for rain [hyein]’; Ovid, Fasti 5.166). Conti (Myth. 4.7) calls them daughters of Atlas, as do a number of widely used Renaissance dictionaries; they take their name from their brother Hyas, slain while hunting a lioness (Fasti 5.175-82). For their ‘drove’, or flock—‘weary’ presumably because the constellation is setting—see Fasti 5.164: pars Hyadum toto de grege nulla latet (‘no single part of the whole flock of the Hyades will be invisible’). Their flock is invisible in the northern hemisphere in the autumn close to the vernal equinox, when the constellation passes below the horizon.

i.58.1

St. 58-60

As Britomart slips into bed and Malecasta rises to steal anxiously toward her ‘bowre’ (60.2), Spenser at once recalls and transforms the scene from OF in which Ruggiero awaits the approach of Alcina (7.21-26). As Dodge shrewdly notes, ‘the situation is . . . the exact reverse’: the drama of sexual anticipation is displaced from the male knight in his chamber to the Lady of the castle in her approach (and the outcome will be quite different) (1897: 183). This allusion suggests in yet another way that the Castle Joyeous is a revisionary take on the Bower of Bliss, for the ‘vele of silke and silver thin’ worn by Acrasia at II.xii.77.4 alludes to the vel suttile that Alcina wears to her rendezvous with Ruggiero. The intertextual link points up the comic reversal not only of the scene from Ariosto, but also of that from the Bower: Britomart is no Ruggiero, nor is she about to become another Verdant. The comic reversal of outcome in this noctural scene is coded into the pun on the phrase ‘in armes’ that characterizes Noctante (see 45.7n), as Britomart veers abruptly from one sense of the phrase to the other.

i.58.5–i.58.6 all the rest / Auoided quite: The other guests have retired; the added emphasis (‘all . . . quite’), following the repeated earlier stress on Britomart’s refusal to remove her armor, suggests that she is still apprehensive about her surroundings.

i.59.4 engrieued: Cf. OED 3, ‘to take as a ground of accusation or reproach’.

i.59.6–i.59.7 wearie bed . . . guilty Night: Transferred epithets.

i.59.8–i.59.9 59.8-9 The perilous balance between Malecasta’s stealth and her vanity is humorously conveyed by her choice of a ‘scarlott mantle’ ornamented with gold and ermine to wear ‘under the blacke vele of guilty Night’.

i.60.2 the bowre: Echoing the Bower of Bliss (see st. 58-60n).

i.60.5 proou’d: See 30.1n.

i.60.5–i.60.9 60.5-9 Upton suggests possible sources for these lines in Ariosto’s description of ‘the Greek’ sneaking into bed with Fiametta as she lies between Astolfo and Jocondo (OF 28.62-3); in Ovid’s description of Priapus stealing to the pallet of Lotis (Fasti 1.425-30); and in the Pseudo-Virgilian Ciris, where Scylla creeps to her father’s bed to make off with his charmed lock of hair (1987: 640-41).

i.60.8 weary (1590, 1596; wary 1609): ‘Wary’ is (like many of 1609’s emendations) an inspired conjecture.

i.61.5 61.5 The ‘finest fingers touch’ that frightens Malecasta is her own; the ambiguity of the phrasing strangely links her to the sleeping Britomart. See st. 58-60n on the reversal of the scene from Ariosto.

i.61.9 weary side: The repetition of this adjective (see 59.6, 60.8) is another detail linking Malecasta to Britomart; cf. ‘lightly’ at 59.6, 62.2.

i.62.8 rouzed couches: Transferred epithet.

i.63.5 sencelesse grownd: Transferred epithet.

i.64.8 embosse: See 22.2n; the repetition of this hunting term serves to link the two scenes, as Redcrosse returns the favor with which the episode opens.

i.65.7 rased: relevant senses include grazed, scratched, incised, and inscribed

i.65.7–i.65.9 65.7-9 Cf. Homer, Il 4.139-40: ἀκρότατον δ’ ἄρ’ ὀϊστὸς ἐπέγραψε χρόα φωτός· / αὐτίκα δ’ ἔρρεεν αἷμα κελαινεφὲς ἐξ ὠτειλῆς; akrotaton d’ är hoïstos epegrapse chroa phōtos / antika d’ ërreen ahima kelainephes hex hōteolēs (‘so the arrow grazed the outermost flesh of the warrior, and immediately dark blood flowed from the wound’). Spenser’s very different context both reinforces and repudiates the suggestion (absent in Homer) of a sexual defloration. The imagined loss of virginity is doubly deflected—it was never a literal possibility in the first place, and the ‘dart’ all but misses its target. Britomart does, however, suffer a ‘flesh wound’ (echoing that of Adonis at 38.5-6, though less serious)—perhaps because she was taken in by Malecasta’s histrionic anguish (st. 53-54), or because Gardante alludes to the love-wound inflicted on her by the ‘image shee had seene in Venus looking glas’ (8.9). The two possibilities are related insofar as it is precisely her experience of the love-wound that renders her susceptible to pity for Malecasta.

i.66.2 flaming sword: Cf. the cherubim and flaming sword that prevent Adam and Eve from returning to Eden (Gen 3:24).

i.67.5–i.67.6 vngentle . . . seeming gent: Playing on the discrepancy between the abstract sense of ‘gentle’ and the embedded assumption that social rank corresponds to virtue (analogous to the ambiguity of the term ‘noble’).

i.18.9 Timias: Arthur’s squire, introduced at I.vii.29.3 but first named here. His name, from Gk τιμηεις timneis, means ‘honoured’.