1–4 This episode closely follows the third canto of Orlando Furioso, where Bradamante receives a vision of her progeny. Ariosto’s Merlin is no more than a voice from the tomb; the genealogy of the house of Este is revealed by the sorceress Melissa in a procession of spirits like that which Virgil’s Anchises shows Aeneas (Aen 6.703-892).

1.1

St. 1

Cf. Am 8.1-2, ‘full of the living fire, / Kindled above unto the maker neere’. The theory of love as a flame from heaven, kindling desire for the ‘true beautie’ of virtue which inspires lovers to noble action, is woven at large through Spenser’s Fowre Hymnes and is the most basic allegorical significance of Arthur’s quest for Gloriana. In principle it explains the relation between the poem’s ‘fierce warres and faithfull loves’ (I.pr.1.9). The difficulty of perfectly separating this love from ‘base affections’ is also represented in both works, most recently in FQ by the ambiguity of Arthur’s and Guyon’s motives in pursuing Florimell and by the horror Britomart experiences on first discovering sexual passion within herself.

1.3 lamping: Coined by Spenser, possibly from Ital lampante clear.

1.4 which men call: Emphasizes the act of naming as human, in contrast to the divine origins of the fire, in preparation for the second half of the stanza, which insists upon the distinction because ‘men’ tend to apply the name of love to both kinds of flame (as the narrator himself will do at v.1).

1.7–1.8 The parallel in these lines between ‘true beautie’ and ‘vertue’ may insinuate rivalry as well as identity.

2.1

St. 2

Here Spenser presents love as a force mediating between fate and chance, ensuring that ‘The fatall purpose of divine foresight’ will play itself out in the seemingly chaotic course of human events. For moments at which Spenser plays on the interpolation of fate within chance, see I.ix.6.6-7.7; II.ix.59.5, 60.1.

2.1 2.1 Cf. Plato, Symposium 178a: ‘First then, as I said, he told me that the speech of Phaedrus began with points of this sort—that Love was a great god, among men and gods a marvel; and this appeared in many ways, but notably in his birth’.

2.5 fatall: Cf. I.ix.7.1, where Arthur wonders whether the almighty sent him to Faeryland through ‘fatal deepe foresight’.

3.1 triumph: Echoing the title of Petrarch’s Trionfi, of which the first is the Triumphus Amoris. The six triumphs are visionary poems that adapt the trappings of the ancient Roman military procession to celebrate the successive victories of Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity. They were influential in establishing the image of a militant Cupid that is pervasive in Renaissance European literature.

3.7 matrimoniall bowre: The dynastic goal of the narrative must replace the Bower of Bliss with its sanctioned counterpart.

4.2 4.2 The more usual genealogy for the Muses holds them to be the daughters of Jupiter and the Titaness Mnemosyne (memory), a parentage Spenser affirms in SC June 66, Time 336, and FQ IV.xi.10.1-2. Both lineages were reported, however: Conti, who opens his chapter on the Muses by quoting Orpheus and Hesiod on their descent from Jupiter (Myth 7.15), mentions in his chapter on Apollo that ‘the ancients thought he was [the Muses’] father and leader’ (4.10; 288). Spenser more often follows this genealogy (Teares 2, 57; FQ II.x.3; Epith 121; E.K. gloss to SC Apr 41).

4.4 4.4 According to late medieval tradition, the ‘Nine Worthies’ consisted of three subgroups: the pagan worthies Hector, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar; the Jewish worthies Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus; and the Christian worthies Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon.

4.5 4.5 At I.pr.2.3-4, the poet asks an unnamed muse, ‘chiefe of nyne’, to ‘Lay forth out of thine everlasting scryne / The antique rolles’ that tell of Arthur’s quest for Gloriana. At II.ix.56.6 Eumnestes (an alternative figure for memory) lays up the records of human events ‘in his immortall scrine’. The Muse’s ‘great volume of Eternitye’ is another figure for this mythic archive.

4.6 Clio: The muse of history. In previous invocations (I.pr.2; I.xi.6; II.x.3) Spenser has not named the muse he invokes, who may be Calliope, the muse of epic poetry (see gloss to SC Apr 100). Spenser distinguishes the ‘Methode of the Poet historical’ from that of the ‘Historiographer’ in FQLetter45-52, but since FQ contains three substantial and continuous passages of chronicle material (including the lineage foretold by Merlin in the present canto) that are, nevertheless, broken apart and disposed within the narrative out of chronological sequence, it remains unclear whether he is combining the muses of history and epic or distinguishing their functions. (On the disposition of the chronicle materials, see Mills 1976.)

4.8 protense (pretense 1596, 1609): OED cites 1590 as the only known instance of ‘protense’ as a noun for ‘protension’. The later reading relies on the sense, ‘An assertion of a right, title, etc.; the putting forth of a claim’ (OED).

5.4–5.5 5.4-5 Similar expressions are found at I.vii.40.7-8 and II.i.44.2-3.

5.6–5.9 5.6-9 See ii.52.7-8; after the opening invocation, the narrative is resuming where it left off.

6.3 straungely . . . straunge: The repetition suggests that through the act of looking, Britomart has assumed some of the foreignness of the image that invades her.

6.7–6.8 the Africk Ismael, / Or th’Indian Peru: Occupants of northern Africa were thought to be descended from Ishmael; India and America were imagined to be the same place. Both represent the farthest reaches of the known world. At II.pr.2.6 ‘th’Indian Peru’ appears as a precedent for Faeryland, where Britomart will eventually find Artegall; at II.x.72.5-6 the empire of Faeryland is said to include ‘all India . . . / And all that now America men call’.

7.1 See 6.3n.

7.3–7.4 Maridunum . . . Cayr-Merdin: The modern Welsh town of Carmarthen, named ‘Maridunum’ in Ptolemy’s Geographiae (1511: B2) and ‘Kaermerdin’ in Geoffrey of Monmouth (Historia 136). Geoffrey reports that Vortigern first discovered the young Merlin in Kaermerdin, while Holinshed dismisses the Merlin stories as ‘not of such credit as deserveth to be registered in anie sound historie’ (Chronicles 1.564).

7.5 (they say): Repeated at 8.3; followed by ‘some say’ (10.1) and ‘men say’ (13.1), signaling that what follows is more folktale than historical record, as Holinshed indicates (7.3-4n; see also st. 8-9n). The comic tone of the narrator’s warnings against the danger of being devoured by fiends or of having one’s ‘feeble braines’ stunned by the underground rumbling of their chains (8.7-9; 9.1-5) likewise signals the tongue-in-cheek status of the passage’s claim to truth.

7.7 delue: Merlin’s ‘delve’ corresponds to the grotta in Ariosto (OF 3.10.1)

8.1

St. 8-9

In these stanzas Spenser plays with a distinction from the rhetorical tradition between factual and fictional descriptions. Thus Peacham (1577), for example, distinguishes between Topographia, ‘an evident and true description of a place’ (P1), and Topothesia, ‘a fayned description of a place, that is, when we describe a place, and yet no such place’ (P1v).

8.4–8.6 8.4-6 On Spenser’s geographical confusion in these lines see Osgood (Var 3.224-25). The river Barry is more than fifty miles from the hills of Dynevor.

8.9 cruell Feendes: Merlin is associated in medieval romance with diabolical spirits, one of whom supposedly fathered him (cf. 13.1-5). So in Malory, for example, one knight warns another, ‘Beware . . . of Merlion, for he knowith all thinges by the devylles craffte’ (Morte 3.18-19). Spenser mentions Merlin’s ‘sprights’ at 7.9, and they figure prominently in the legend of his demise (st. 10-12). In Ariosto, Bradamante’s offspring appear explicitly as a procession of such spirits (see arg.n). Spenser, by contrast, isolates his references to sprights and demons within stanzas 7-13, where they are rhetorically ‘flagged’ as popular superstition. When Britomart and Glauce arrive on the scene in st. 14, Merlin appears to be alone; and although he seems at one point in the genealogy to point at a spectacle (‘Behold the man’, 32.1), the absence of other signals implies that this is rather a moment of heightened rhetorical vividness than a reference to anything literally visible in the cave. (So too at 21.5 Merlin, beginning to speak after a brief silence, is said to ‘foorth display’ ‘his spirite’.) Ariosto’s explicitly demonic procession reflects a tradition in Virgilian commentary that rationalizes Aeneas’s descent to the underworld as the product of demons and witchcraft (Wilson-Okamura 2010: 157-63).

10.1

St. 10-11.2

Cf. Malory 4.1-2, where the object of Merlin’s dotage is not the Lady of the Lake herself, but one of her damsels ‘that hight Nenyve’.

11.1 traine: In Malory she tricks him into entering a tunnel under a rock, and traps him there.

12.1

St. 12-13

Cf. the description of Fidelia’s power ‘when she list poure out her larger spright’ at I.x.20. Like the subtle distancing of Merlin from his medieval reputation as half-demon, the strong resemblance between st. 12 and that earlier account casts Merlin as an agent of divine providence. Through such indirect means Spenser hints at a conversion narrative similar to the story of Merlin’s birth as given (for example) in the Old French Merlin, where the magician is sired upon a young nun by a demon acting as an incubus. The council of devils intends for this parody of the Annunciation to produce an antichrist, but Merlin is sanctified in the womb by his mother’s prayers and repentance, and after birth by the sacrament of baptism. Spenser’s Merlin remains a more ambiguous figure, claiming to speak for providence without having entirely severed his connection to diabolical origins—related, not coincidentally, in st. 13 immediately following the description that links him to Fidelia.

12.1–12.2 12.1-2 Cf. Virgil, Ecl 8.69, carmina vel caelo possunt deducere lunam (‘Songs can even draw the moon down from heaven’).

12.5–12.7 12.5-7 Cf. the powers ascribed to Arthur’s uncovered shield at I.vii.34-35.

13.1–13.5 13.1-5 Spenser takes the story from Geoffrey, Historia 136-38. It offers a distorted analogy to Britomart’s predicament, one that is emphasized by the simile at ii.11.6-9, with its proleptic identification of the image she bears in her imagination and the ‘babe’ to which she will give birth.

13.5–13.6 13.5-6 These names, invented by Spenser, appear to contain further humorous references to Britomart: Matilda comes from the Ger Mahthild battle-maid, while Pubidius seems to be jestingly derived from L pubes signs of puberty.

13.5 a faire Lady Nonne: Punning on ‘lady none’, in keeping with the playful tone of the passage.

13.7 Mathraual: ‘Matrafal’ in Camden, Brit 1586, where it is identified as Principum Powisiae Regia sedes, the royal seat of the medieval Welsh and British kingdom of Powys (383).

13.8 king Ambrosius: Son of Constantius, grandson of Constantine, and brother to Uther Pendragon, whose reign succeeded his (see II.x.67).

14.5 with loue to frend: Echoing I.i.28.7, ‘(with God to frend)’.

14.8–14.9 14.8-9 See 7.1 and 6.3n for ‘straunge’; Merlin’s ‘characters’ are stranger for the wrenching of accent that places metrical stress on the second syllable. Merlin’s writing in the earth sustains the calculated ambivalence with which Spenser presents him, for it echoes both godly and diabolical precedents. At John 8:6, 8, Jesus writes on the ground with his finger when challenging the scribes and Pharisees who accuse the woman taken in adultery; in Tasso’s GL 13.5-11, the Saracen magician Ismen ‘formed his circle and traced his symbols’ (suo cerchio formovvi e i segni impresse; 5.9) to summon ‘spirits innumerable, infinite’ (innnumerabili, infiniti / spiriti; 10.1-2) to enchant the forest that supplies the armies of Godfrey with timber for the siege of Sion. The description of Merlin also echoes that of Archimago calling up ‘Legions of Sprights’ at I.i.36-38; this echo is reinforced by the link both passages share to Tasso’s Ismen, whose ‘dread syllables’ which ‘the tongue that is not irreligious cannot repeat’ (orribil note, / lingua, s’empia non è, ridir no pote; 8.8-9) are closely recalled in Archimago’s ‘few words most horrible, / (Let none them read)’ at I.i.37.1-2.

15.8–15.9 15.8-9 Cf. st. 2n for Spenser’s tendency to equivocate about the degree to which events in the narrative are ‘fatall’ (governed by fate).

16.2–16.3 16.2-3 Glauce’s inflated and comically obscure periphrasis means that either three or nine months have passed, depending on how many of her three threes are simple repetitions for effect, and how many of them signal a reckoning of sums. Cf. I.viii.38.6-7, where Redcrosse’s similar formulation is equally ambiguous. At I.ix.15.9 Arthur reports having sought Gloriana for nine months; at II.i.53.1-3, Amavia describes her gestation of Ruddymane as having taken up ‘thrise three’ lunar months; at II.ii.44.1-3, Guyon reports that his quest has been underway for three lunar months; and at II.ix.7.5-7 Arthur tells Guyon that his quest for Gloriana has been underway for seven solar years (1590; 1596, one year, which would correspond to the nine months he reported at I.ix.15.9 plus the three months Guyon’s quest has been underway). Given the nature of the destiny to be revealed by Merlin, the nine lunar months of gestation would be a symbolically appropriate span.

16.6 First rooting: See ii.17.5n for the figure of the genealogical tree taking root in Britomart’s womb.

17.1 th’Enchaunter: A title shared with Archimago (I.ii.arg.1) and Busirane (xii.31.1).

17.3 dissembled womanish guyle: She dissembles with guile, and her guile is part of what she dissembles.

18.3 engraffed: See 16.6 and ii.17.5n.

18.5 infest: See ii.32.4n.

18.7 hollow brest: Cf. the description of Merlin's mirror as ‘hollow shaped’ (ii.19.8).

18.9 Glauce’s language here echoes the reports of Merlin’s origin in st. 13.

19.7 hauing fate obayd: Unlike Spenser’s narrator and other characters, Merlin does not equivocate about the role of fate in the narrative (cf. 21.6, ‘by fatall lore’, and st. 2n).

20.1–20.7 20.1-7 Britomart’s veilings and unveilings are consistently the subject of epic similes: cf. i.43; also IV.i.13.6-9 and vi.19.5-20. Elsewhere these similes describe the effects of her unveiled beauty on observers; here, the focus is on the shame Britomart feels when her sexual passion is revealed along with her identity. The conceit of Aurura’s blushing departure from the bed of Tithonus at dawn is Homeric and Virgilian; the story upon which it is based appears in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 218-38.

20.3 Carnation: A term for the rosy-pink color of (Caucasian) flesh, from L carnem; also a form of the flower-name coronation (cf. SC Apr 138-9, ‘Bring Coronations, and Sops in wine, / worne of Paramoures’). These two meanings nicely compress into Britomart’s blush the sense that her royal or dynastic role will be to use her own body to enflesh an heir to the throne.

21.6 fatall lore: See st. 2n and 19.7n. Merlin claims to speak on behalf of ‘the powres’ (19.9) that guide ‘eternall providence’ (24.4).

22.2–22.4 22.2-4 The fullest expression of the image introduced at ii.17.5-6 and recalled at iii.16.6 (‘rooting’) and 18.3 (‘engraffed’). Spenser’s image recalls Isa 11:1, ‘But there shal come a rod forthe of the stocke of Ishái, and a grafe shal growe out of his rootes’, a passage labeled in the Geneva text as a ‘Prophecie of Christ’. It also echoes Herodotus, Hist 1.108, where Astyages ‘dreamed that a vine grew out of the genitals of this daughter, and that the vine covered the whole of Asia’.

22.3 embodied braunches: Medieval and early modern iconography of the ‘tree of Jesse’ showed a rooted trunk whose branches literally bore human bodies as their fruit.

22.4 Repeated from II.x.2.5.

22.5–22.9 Britomart’s Trojan ancestry is set forth at large in canto ix, st. 33-51.

22.8 the heuens brood: Because the Trojan lineage extends back through Dardanus to Zeus and Electra (cf. Homer, Il 20.213-40).

23.1 23.1 Duessa is ‘the sole daughter of an Emperour’ (I.ii.22.7) whereas Una is ‘the daughter of a king’ (i.48.5); the British struggle to throw off Roman rule pits ‘Briton kings’ against Roman emperors (II.x.49.9, 51.1). Britomart’s offspring includes both because after Henry VIII, Tudor England (like other early modern states) asserted its autonomy by claiming an imperial status derived from Constantine; hence the poem is dedicated to ‘The most mightie and magnificent Empresse Elizabeth’.

23.8–23.9 23.8-9 Eliding the distinction between ‘forren foe’ and ‘civill jarre’, or enemy invasion and domestic broils, these lines recall the similar blurring that attends Artegall’s appearance in Merlin’s mirror. There Britomart’s future spouse appears in a mirror whose declared purpose is to reveal enemy invasions (ii.21.3-4), although it also shows ‘What ever . . . frend had faynd’ (19.5). Merlin’s mirror is associated with Ptolemy’s magic glass, shattered ‘when his love was false’ (20.9), and with the mirror in Chaucer, CT Squire 5.132-41, that reveals both adversities affecting the realm and treasons in love. See notes to canto ii, st. 18-21.

24.1 24.1 Cf. Malecasta’s wandering eye at i.41.5-8, i.50.6-7.

24.3 streight: Echoing Isa 40:3-4, ‘make streight in the desert a path for our God . . . and the croked shalbe made streight’, and Luke 3:4.

24.1–24.6 24.1-6 On the contrast between providence and the wandering or glancing of chance, see st. 2n.

24.6 24.6 Merlin directly answers Britomart’s claim that her fortune is ‘wicked’ (ii.44.1).

24.7 prowest: Echoing the praise of Arthur at II.viii.18.3 and xi.30.6.

24.8 his will: In the repetition of ‘his will’ from 24.5, Merlin formulates the patriarchal demand for female submission to a masculine lord authorized by God.

24.9 doe . . . dew: The internal rhyme enforces the imperative: perform that which is owed.

25.2–25.4 25.2-4 The metrical disposition of Glauce’s questions is precise. The first two lines each contain two questions, while the fifth and final question takes up two lines. Within each pair of lines, the position of the caesura shifts, following first the third foot and then the second, to make up a repeated chiasmic pattern (3/2 // 2/3). The first of the two line-breaks on which the repeated pattern turns is end-stopped, the second enjambed.

25.8 confirme: Suggesting through rhyme that if ‘Indeede the fates are firme’, human endeavors are still needed to firm up their firmness.

25.9 The careful balancing of terms in 24.1-5 (wandring/streight, glauncing/ guyded) is extended here as Merlin affirms the need for human striving to ‘guyde’ to their completion the causes that have ‘Guyded [Britomart’s] glaunce’ without her awareness or intention. As McCabe affirms, Britomart’s destiny is not just the goal of her quest but the journey as well, and so she both guides and is guided (1989: 186-87).

25.9 25.9 The careful balancing of terms in 24.1-5 (wandring/streight, glauncing/ guyded) is extended here as Merlin affirms the need for human striving to ‘guyde’ to their completion the causes that have ‘Guyded [Britomart’s] glaunce’ without her awareness or intention. As McCabe affirms, Britomart’s destiny is not just the goal of her quest but the journey as well, and so she both guides and is guided (1989: 186-87).

26.1

St. 26-50

These stanzas present the second of three installments into which Spenser divides the British chronicles. He begins in II.x with what is chronologically the second part, covering the reigns of British monarchs from the mythic eponymous founder Brut to the succession of Uther Pendragon, the father Arthur does not know (see notes to II.x.arg.1, st. 5-68, and 68.2-3). The second part now resumes with the reign of Artegall and Britomart, which has no direct source in the chronicles but occupies the genealogical space from which Arthur, wandering in Faeryland, has been displaced. The gap between Arthur and Artegall-Britomart is the space in which the poem’s ‘present’—a hybrid of Faery fiction and British chronicle history—unfolds (see st. 29n). The third part of the chronicles, circling back to link the origins of British history to the westward ‘translation of empire’ from Troy through Rome to England, is given in canto ix.

26.2 26.2 For Artegall’s name and role in the poem, see ii.arg.2n.

26.4–26.9 26.4-9 This account of Artegall’s parentage resembles the history of Redcrosse (I.x.65). Arthur is likewise ignorant of his lineage (I.ix.3).

27.1 Gorlois: Duke of Cornwall and husband to the Lady Igerne (see FQ Letter 30, ‘the Lady Igrayne’), by whom Uther Pendragon fathered Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth retails the legend according to which Merlin transformed Uther into the likeness of Gorlois to deceive Igerne (182-88). By implication, Spenser makes Artegall Arthur’s legitimate half-brother as well as his chronicle alter-ego.

27.2 Cador: Mentioned in Geoffrey and in Holinshed as Duke (or Earl) of Cornwall and an ally to Arthur against the Saxons (Historia 194, 200; Chronicles 1.575). ‘Cador, king of Cornwall’ and ‘Arthgal of Kaergueir, now named Warwik’ are both mentioned in Geoffrey as attending Arthur’s Whitsun festival at Caerleon (208-10; Arthgal is not to be confused with Arthgallo, named ‘Archigald’ by Spenser at II.x.44.4). Hardyng mentions both Artegall and Cador as knights of the Round Table, identifying Cador as the ‘kynges brother. . . on the syster syde’ (1543: 17r-v).

28.3–28.5 28.3-5 Merlin portrays the dynastic marriage as a military alliance (for the sustained play on ‘in armes’, see i.45.7n).

28.6–28.7 28.6-7 The parallelism in these lines (‘thee from them do call . . . him from thee take away’) pairs Britomart’s pregnancy with Artegall’s death (see 29.2n).

28.8 Too rathe: Cf. SC Dec 98.

29.1

St. 29

Artegall’s royal heir remains unnamed, in part no doubt to downplay his equivalence to the chronicles’ Conanus, who came to the throne by killing his uncle. (Spenser thus reverses the chronicle acccounts, which identify no father for Conanus.) Spenser may also have chosen not to name the heir because he represents the point at which faery fiction is grafted onto the chronicles. The resulting genealogy, never spelled out, is complex. It may be summarized as follows: the Lady Igrayne (Igerne) bears sons both to Gorlois and to Uther. To Gorlois she bears the brothers Artegall and Cador; to Uther, their half-brother Arthur. Arthur succeeds Uther to the throne but dies without heir. The chronicles report that Arthur is succeeded by Constantius (Constantine), the son of his half-brother Cador. Meanwhile, however, Spenser has created an alternative genealogy whereby Artegall (‘equal to Arthur’; see ii.arg.2n) and Britomart not only succeed King Ryence to the throne of South Wales (cf. ii.18.5n) but also take the place of Ryence’s brother-in-law, Arthur, in the succession of British rule. This silent and, as it were, figurative supplanting of Arthur is re-enacted explicitly when their son merges with the historical Conan to usurp the crown from his uncle Constantius, who succeeds Arthur to the throne in the chronicles.

29.2 his ymage dead: The phrase also suggests ‘his dead image’ and ‘the image of him in death’, and echoes Glauce’s question to Britomart about the first effect Artegall’s image has on her: what has ‘living made thee dead’ (ii.30.9)? This compressed and ambiguous phrasing is found in two other places in Spenser, both suggesting that the poem itself will function as heir to (image of) the childless Elizabeth (v.54.9, Am 33.4). On the structural necessity for patriliny to make sons into spectral likenesses of their fathers, see D. Miller (2000, 2003). Insofar as Artegall’s heir corresponds not only to Conan but also to the juncture where Spenser splices his fiction into the chronicles, it may be said that the nameless child figures the poem’s mirroring function with respect to Elizabeth and the monarchical succession she embodies.

29.4–29.7 29.4-7 The lineal substitution whereby Artegall’s heir ‘shall represent’ his father to Britomart is contrasted with the usurpation whereby he recovers his father’s right to ‘crowne himself in th’others stead’.

30.1–30.2 30.1-2 The image of the lion rousing itself echoes Jacob’s prophecy for his son Judah: ‘as a lions whelpe shalt thou come up from the spoile, my sonne’ (Gen 49:9). It also echoes the denunciation of Conan by Gyldas, quoted in Holinshed 5.25: ‘And thou lions whelpe, as sayeth the prophet [i.e., Jacob], Aurelius Conanus what doost thou? Art thou not swallowed up in the filthie mire of murdering thy kinsmen . . . ?’ (It should be mentioned that Gyldas has similar opinions of most British kings.)

30.3 spred his banner: Cf. Song Sol 6:3, ‘terrible as an armie with banners’.

30.3–30.9 30.3-9 No source is known for Conan’s wars against the Mertians, which appear to be Spenser’s invention, substituted for the civil conflicts that characterize Conan’s reign in the chronicles. The trace of Conan’s unsavory chronicle character may linger in the ‘if’ of line 8, unusual for prophetic utterance: it may simply mean that he will end his days in peace if he can achieve victory, but it seems to say that he will do so if he can be satisfied with victory, i.e. quit while he’s ahead.

30.9 his earthly In: Cf. II.i.59.1-2, ‘death is . . . the commen In of rest’.

31.1

St. 31

Spenser continues to diverge from the chronicles in making Vortipore less successful than his father, and in giving Vortipore an heir. (Holinshed says Vortipore ‘left no issue behind him’, and calls Malgo ‘the nephue of Aurelius Conanus’; 5.26, 27.)

32.1 Behold the man: Echoing John 19:5. See 8.9n on whether there is a spectacle for Britomart to ‘behold’. This momentary rhetorical heightening echoes the sustained deictic mode of Anchises’ address to Aeneas in the corresponding passage from Virgil (Aen 6.760-886).

32.3–32.5 32.3-5 Spenser here ends his divergence from the chronicles, which praise Malgo as pulcherrimus (‘the most handsome of all Britain’s rulers’; Geoffrey, Historia 254), or ‘the comeliest gentleman in beautie and shape of personage that was to be found in those daies amongst all the Britains, and therewith of a bold and hardie courage’ (Holinshed, Chronicles 1.585).

32.6 32.6 Translated directly from Geoffrey: Hic etiam total insulam optinuit, et sex comprovinciales occeanis insulas (‘He too ruled the whole island as well as its six neighbors’; 254-55). The ‘islands’ referred to are Ireland, Iceland, Gotland, the Orkneys, Norway, and Denmark.

33.1

St. 33-34

In the words of Harper, ‘Careticus was not the son of Malgo, and he did not conquer the Saxons’ (1910: 151). The account of Gormond’s arrival to help the Saxons drive Careticus into Wales, laying waste to churches, towns, and fields along the way, corresponds to Geoffrey except in one detail, for Geoffrey refers to ‘Gormundus’ as ‘the king of the Africans’ (Historia 256); Spenser’s reference to his Norveyses follows Holinshed’s conjecture that Geoffrey mistook ‘the Norwegians for Affricanes, bicause both those nations were Infidels’ (6.90).

33.7 fell through emptinesse: ‘Deadly because hungry’ (with a pun on ‘gourmand’).

34.2 holy Church: Here explicitly Christian, unlike the ambiguous edifices mentioned at ii.48.4 and iii.59.3.

34.9 starued den: Transferred epithet.

35.1

St. 35

Here Spenser seems to have adjusted the account in Geoffrey by consulting multiple other sources, possibly some in Welsh. For details see Harper (1910: 153-58).

35.2 Etheldred: Ethelfrith, the first king to unite Bernicia and Deira into what would later be known as Northumbria, a medieval English kingdom stretching north from the river Humber into what is now southern Scotland.

35.3 Augustine: Augustine of Canterbury, designated by Pope Gregory the Great as the first Bishop of Canterbury in 598, was sent from Rome to England to convert the Angles to Christianity, as well as to reassert Papal authority over the Christian churches that had survived in isolation in England after the withdrawal of the Roman legions in 410.

35.4 Dee: The river Dee, forming part of the border between Wales and England, lies between the city of Chester and the Welsh village of Bangor.

35.5 Brockwell: Brocmale, Earl of Chester (on the English side of the river) was either defeated by Etheldred or simply fled. Crossing the river, Etheldred then put to death the monks in the monastery at Bangor, whose number is variously reported as 200, 1000, or 1200.

35.8–35.9 35.8-9 Cadwan ruled North Wales (Gwynedd); his people are the Britons. After the Britons’ defeat of Etheldred, they made peace. According to Geoffrey, Cadwan and Etheldred (Caduan and Edelfridus) divided the rule of Britain between themselves (260).

36.1

St. 36

Cadwallin was Cadwan’s son, Edwin the son of Etheldred. Geoffrey explains that the peace negotiated by their fathers was broken when Cadwallin refused to permit Edwin to crown himself king of Northumbria (262-64). In the hostilities that followed, Edwin prevailed at first, aided by a magician (a sapientissimus auger, Pellitus) whose warnings gave him a military advantage until he was assassinated (264-70). (The gallows are Spenser’s innovation; other passages in which Spenser substitutes hanging for another form of execution are I.v.50.5-6 and II.x.32.9; see the discussion in Harper 1910: 83-84).

37.1

St. 37

Spenser continues to follow the main lines of Geoffrey’s account but conflates battles and alters other details, suggesting that he may have consulted other chronicles, including a source now unknown.

37.2–37.3 37.2-3 Offricke and Osricke are not brothers in Geoffrey, who names Offridus as the son of Edwinus and Osrico as his successor, killed subsequently (272). Holinshed names two sons of Edwin ‘Osfrid’ and ‘Edfride’, but still reports their deaths in separate battles. The phrase ‘twinnes unfortunate’ may suggest an additional source through which the ‘sunen tweien’ of Layamon’s version could have reached Spenser (see Harper 1910: 161-62).

37.4 Layburne playne: In Geoffrey, the location is given as ‘the plain of Hedfield’; Oswald is killed in a later battle ‘fought at a place named Burne’ (272).

37.5–37.7 37.5-7 In Geoffrey the kings of Orkney and Scotland (‘Louthiane’) fall, like Ofridus and Oscrico, in separate battles (see 37.2-3n).

37.8–37.9 37.8-9 Geoffrey reports that Peanda was subdued by Caduallo, and became his ally, before the battle with Edwinus (270).

38.1

St. 38

Cadwallin sends Penda in pursuit of Oswald, next in line as king of Northumbria. Geoffrey reports that Oswaldus, under siege at Hevenfield, raised a cross and ordered his followers to pray (272). Spenser heightens the account with angels raising crosses on high who sponsor a bloodless victory, and makes the name a result of the battle rather than, as Geoffrey implies, the inspiration for Oswald’s pious actions.

–39.4 39.1-4 The battle Geoffrey reports as having taken place at Burne (see 37.4n).

39.5–39.9 39.5-9 These lines follow Geoffrey’s account of Oswio, the brother of Oswaldus (272).

39.5 like dread: Cf. 37.8, ‘fearefull of like desteny’.

39.7–39.8 39.7-8 Oswin shall ‘tread adowne’ Penda rather than being trodden down by him; the chiasmic mirroring of the phrasing on either side of the line break expresses this turning of the tables.

40.1

St. 40-41

In Geoffrey, Cadwalladrus rules for a dozen years before he falls ill, whereupon the combination of civil war, famine, and plague destroys the kingdom, forcing him to withdraw into Armorica (on the coast of Brittany; cf. II.x.64.5). The account of heavenly disfavor and the vision preventing the Britons’ return are based on Cadwallader’s lament in departing from England, and on the report that he heard an angel’s voice commanding that he give over his intended return: ‘as Cadualadrus was preparing a fleet, an angelic voice rang out, ordering him to give up the attempt. God did not want the Britons to rule over the island of Britain any longer, until the time came which Merlin had foretold to Arthur’ (276, 278).

41.4 Armoricke: See st. 40-41n.

42.1 42.1 Echoing Rev 8:13: ‘Wo, wo, wo, to the inhabitants of the earth’.

42.7 42.7 In Geoffrey, Merlin bursts into tears (144).

42.8–42.9 42.8-9 Geoffrey’s account of British kings covers about 1800 years, starting with Brut and the Trojan remnant and ending with the death of Cadualadrus on 20 April 689 (280).

43.3 fashioned: See ii.16.9n on Spenser’s use of this verb to describe both mimesis and poesis.

44.3 the iust reuolution: The exact period of the historical cycle.

44.4 44.4 Cf. Jer 35:7: ‘Nether shal ye buylde house, nor sowe sede, nor plant vineyarde, nor have any, but all your daies ye shal dewll in tentes, that ye may live a long time in the land where ye be strangers’.

44.5 44.5 Cf. Acts 7:6: ‘But God spake thus, that his sede shulde be a sojourner in a strange land, and that thei shulde kepe it in bondage, and entreate it evil four hundreth yeres’. Henry Tudor ascended to the throne in 1485, seven hundred ninety-six years after the death of Cadwallader.

44.7 importune: The sense of timing (see 31.5 gloss) is also relevant.

45.1

St. 45

The rulers named in this stanza are Welsh monarchs from the ninth, tenth, and twelfth centuries.

46.7 faithlesse chickens: The raven’s brood (its ‘chicks’) are ‘faithless’ because not converted to Christianity.

47.3 47.1-3 Neustria: Geoffrey’s Latin name for Normandy; the Lion is William the Conqueror, who invaded England in 1066.

47.6 the Daniske Tyrants: It was actually Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, that William defeated in the Battle of Hastings. Harold had previously defeated Harald III of Norway, another claimant to the throne following the death of Edward the Confessor; after Harold’s death at Hastings, Edgar Aethling of Wessex was briefly proclaimed king before William seized the crown.

47.9 Upon his deathbead in 1087, William divided his succession among his three sons.

48.5 Mona: Welsh name for the Isle of Anglesey, where Henry of Richmond was born.

48.5 in exile: See 44.5n for the ‘strange land’ of Henry’s exile.

48.9 48.9 The Tudors traced their royal line back through the Welsh remnant of the Britons to Arthur, and back through the Briton royal line to Brut and the remnant from Troy.

49.1–49.2 49.1-2 England and Wales were joined in 1536 by the Act of Union. The claim that this union is ‘eternall’ echoes the Roman claim to imperium sine fine, ‘empire without end’.

49.5 ciuile armes: Cf. ‘civill jarre’ at 23.9. Refers primarily to the Wars of the Roses, 1455-87.

49.6–49.9 49.6-9 The ‘royall Virgin’ Elizabeth I extended her royal scepter across ‘the Belgicke shore’ in defending the Netherlands against Spain (‘the great Castle’); Phillip II, as King of Castile, bore a castle on his coat of arms. Cf. DS Howard, ‘those huge castles of Castilian king’, referring to the ships of the Armada.

49.7 white rod: The phase used by Cooper 1565 to describe Mercury’s Caduceus.

50.1 50.1 Cf. Matt 24:6, where Christ says to the disciples ‘And ye shal heare of warres, and rumors of warres: se that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to passe, but the end is not yet’.

50.2 spirites: Probably singular possessive; if plural, it would imply the presence of the ‘spirits’ of the descendants about which he has prophesied. See notes to Argument and 8.9.

50.5 halfe extatick stoure: It is characteristic of Spenser’s ambivalence toward Merlin that the magician’s ‘fitt’ should be only half-ecstatic, ascribed by way of similitude (‘As overcomen’) to very different alternatives.

50.9 50.9 The submetric ninth line is adjusted in 1609 by the addition of ‘as earst’ following ‘looks’.

51.2 51.2 i.e., ‘everything they needed to ask’

52.5–52.9 52.5-9 Uther’s battles against Octa, son of the Saxon Hengist (see II.x.65-66), and ‘his relative Eosa’ are detailed in Geoffrey (180-90). Cayr Verolame (the Roman city of Verulamium, later St. Albans, personified in the speaker of Time) was the scene of Uther’s final battle; Octa and Eosa were slain (broken), but Uther was poisoned shortly thereafter. The narrative present of the poem is thus located in the brief span between his victory and death.

53.2 feigned armes: A transferred epithet, although the transference is complicated by the absence of a noun to which the adjective might properly apply.

53.8–53.9 53.8-9 At ii.6.1-5, Britomart tells the Redcrosse knight that she had trained in arms since infancy.

53.9 make you a mayd Martiall: With a pun on her name (Brito-mart = martial Britoness) as well as on ‘make’ and maid/made.

54.7 Bunduca: Mentioned in Briton moniments at II.x.54-56.

54.8 Guendolen: Mentioned in Briton moniments II.x.17-20.

54.9 Martia: Dame Mertia in Briton moniments at II.x.42.

54.9 Emmilen: Perhaps Emiline, mentioned at VI.ii.29.2 as queen of Cornwall.

55.1

St. 55-56

Spenser elaborates freely on hints from various chronicle sources (see Harper 1910:165-68). Uther fought the Saxons at Menevia (St. David’s, in south-central Wales) following the assassination of his brother Aurelius, and was crowned after the battle (Geoffrey, Historia 180). The Saxon queen Angela, mentioned by chroniclers as one possible source for the etymology of the name ‘Angles’/England, is a virgin only in Spenser’s account. Spenser has invented her combat with Ulfin (the knight who accompanies Uther on his nocturnal visit to Igerna) and Carados (a name that appears in Geoffrey and Malory, but not as one of Uther’s knights).

58.9 58.9 Echoing the descriptions of Artegall’s armor (ii.25.4) and the skirt of Praysdesire (II.ix.37.1-2).

59.3 Church: For the ambiguity of this designation, see the notes to ii.48.4 and iii.34.2.

59.9 bauldrick: An ornamented belt or girdle like those worne by Arthur (I.vii.29.8) and Belphoebe (II.iii.29.5).

60.1–60.2 60.1-2 The spear is first introduced at i.7.9. For Bladud’s reign and his ‘wondrous faculty’, see II.x.25-26. Joining a British spear with Saxon armor, Britomart foreshadows in her own equipage the union of kingdoms foretold by Merlin (st. 49).

61.6 clombe: An archaic form, imitated from Chaucer or Lydgate.

62.2 62.2 Merlin also directed Arthur to Faeryland (I.ix.7.1-2).

62.9 forth rode: Emphasizing Britomart’s purposeful action (cf. 61.9).