The Faerie Queene (132 page)

7 1
nothing nice: not fastidious.

7 4
homely what: simple food. clowne: rustic.

8 5
rout: crowd.

9 9
Pastorella: her name means shepherdess (Latin: pastor, ‘shepherd'); she is revealed to be of noble birth (VI.12.14-22).

10 5
Condon: a conventional shepherd name in the pastoral tradition. See

Virgil, Eclogue 2.

11 3
meane: mien, demeanour, bearing.

11 5
a Princes Paragone: a prince's equal. 11 7 blynd boy: Cupid.

11 9
the bird… stands: Maclean suggests the lark caught in a net while staring in fascination at the hawk held by the fowler.

12 7
fell: befell.

14 9
accompted: accounted, considered.

15 4
seuerall: separate.

16 1
Melibae: Greek: ‘honey-toned'. This is a conventional pastoral name.

Cf. Virgil, Eclogue 1.

17 2
Beldame: wife.

19–25
The contrast of courtly and country life described in these stanzas is a convention of pastoral literature. Spenser is imitating specifically GL 7.8-13.

22 2
forgiue: give up.

23 3
practise: scheme, devise stratagems. 23 4 conuay: steal.

26 2
attent: attentive.

27 5
retyre: retirement.

28 9
pitch: height.

29–30
Meliboe's advice is the traditional Christian precept about earthly fortune: one must use what God has given us and not look for more. Man's content of mind rests in his acceptance of this principle, which was defined crucially for the Middle Ages and Renaissance by St Augustine in his distinction between the use and enjoyment of the goods of this world. Cf. De doctrina cristiana 1.27 ff.

29 4
diffuse: disperse.

30 9
fortunize: make fortunate.

31 4
barcke: boat, i.e., myself. The image of man as a storm-besieged boat was common in classical and later literature and especially favoured by Augustine and Boethius. 3a 2 chargerull: burdensome. chaunge: i.e., change in your mode of life.

32 5–9
Calidore's offer of money to Meliboe shows that he has not under- stood the ‘courtesy' of the pastoral world in which he now finds himself. See note to 10.24.7-9, E.K.'s gloss.

32 9
driue: thrust.

33 2
mould: dross.

33 9
rudeness: rusticity and simplicity.

34 4
bane: destruction.

35 1–2
cf. Chaucer, ‘The Knight's Tale' 2321 ff.

35 7
Colitis: Colin Clout, Spenser's pseudonym throughout his work.

Cf. Shepheardes Calender, Colin Clouts Come Home Again and VI. 10. The name was used earlier by John Skelton, Colin Clout (1523?) and Clement Marot, Complaincte de ma Dame Loyse de Savoye (1531).

36 7–9
The Phrygian Paris is Paris, son of Priam of Troy, who precipitated the destruction of Troy by his error in choosing Venus as the recipient of the golden apple of discord (see note to III.9.36.3-4). Paris abandoned Oenone to accept Helen, the wife of Menelaus. No brook Plexippus (Greek: ‘driver of horses') has been identified in ancient or later literature. Var., p. 243, suggests a connection with Pegasus and Hippo-crene.

39 7
houre: i.e., fortune.

39 9
iarre: contention.

42 4
trimly trace: dance gracefully.

44 2
stiffe pight: sturdily built.

C
ANTO
10

1 3
Vnmyndfull of his vow and high beheast: Spenser seems to be saying that Calidore's sojourn in the pastoral world recalls Odysseus' stay with Circe (Od. 10), Aeneas' with Dido (Aen. 4), Ruggiero's with Alcina (OF 6-8), and Rinaldo's with Armida (GL 16); cf. Calypso (Od. 5). Calidore's predecessors were entrapped by lust and temporarily drawn into realms of sensual enjoyment and diverted from their quests. While Calidore puts aside for a time his promise to capture the Blatant Beast, he is not mired in a world of lust and spiritual torpor. Calidore's stay in the pastoral world may seem a ‘truancy', but one should keep in mind both the philosophy expressed in the discussion between Meliboe and Calidore in the preceding canto and Spenser's characteristic irony in beginning his cantos.

2 1
sew: pursue.

2 9
sayling alwaies on the port: i.e., never resuming his quest.

3 8
stales: lures.

4 9
by course: i.e., in the progress of the narrative.

5 3
troad: tread, path.

5 9
pill: plunder, pillage.

6 8
towre: perch.

7 5
drowne: drench.

7 8
noysome: harmful.

7 9
cf. Shepheardes Calender, ‘Aprill' 36; ‘June' 8.

8 4
course about their bases light: play at game of prisoner's base. See m.11.5.5 and V.8.5.4-5.

8 9–9
Mount Acidale, Acidalia being an epithet for Venus (Greek:' without care'), is contrasted with Cytheron, the mountain where Venus showed herself in royal splendour. Spenser confused the name Cytheron with Cythera (see III.6.29). The distinction between Acidale and Cytheron-Cythera was probably meant to figure the distinction between Cali-dore's ‘truancy' in the pastoral world and his royally appointed task of catching the Blatant Beast

10 3
on hight: aloud.

10 5
cf. refrain in Epithalamion: “that all the woods shall answer and theyr eccho ring,' etc.

12 5
did in compasse stemme: encircled.

13 Spenser conflates two myths: (1) Ariadne, who helped Theseus escape the labyrinth of Minos, was deserted by Theseus and received her wedding crown from Bacchus, who later transformed it into the constellation. (2) The battle between the Centaurs and the Lapiths took place at the marriage of Firithous and Hippodamia {Met. 8.172 ff and 12.210 ff). See Cheney, Spenser's Image of Nature, pp. 232-6; Kathleen Williams, Spenser's ‘Faerie Queene': The World of Glass, pp. 217-18; and Tonkin, Spenser's Courteous Pastoral, pp. 129-31.

13 1
Looke how: like; commonly used to introduce a simile: see Samuel Daniel, Complaint of Rosamond, 113, 582.

15 1
Graces: see stanza 22 and note and IV.5.5.

15 7
parauaunt: most prominently.

16
The woman at the centre of the one hundred dancing maidens and the three Graces is Colin Clout's love. Some critics identify her as the Rosalind of the Shepheardes Calender, in which Spenser first identified himself as Colin Clout. Other critics identify her as Elizabeth I, an identification that Colin himself refutes by his apology to Elizabeth in stanza 28. These critics generally cite Shepheardes Calender, ‘Aprill' 113-I7, in which Elizabeth is advanced to be a fourth Grace. Still others identify her as Elizabeth Boyle, whom Spenser married in 1594 and for whom he wrote the Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595). The difficulty of trying to specify one historical identification for this ‘lass' is resolved by referring to Amoretti 74, in which Spenser gives praise in one figure to the three Elizabeths who were important to him: his mother, his wife, and his Queen. The ‘lass' is love, wife, Queen, and source of inspiration.

18 4–5
Colin's breaking of his pipe is an allusion to his similar gesture in
Shepheardes Calender, ‘Januarye' 72. It may also be a suggestion that he is breaking off his poem before his grand scheme, outlined in the Letter to Ralegh, is finished.

19 3
make: making.

20–28
Colin's explanation of the vision of the dance is the most self-conscious artistic act in Renaissance poetry. Critics have often noted that Frospero's speech ‘Our revels now are ended' (Tempest 4.1.148 ff) is in reality Shakespeare's farewell to the stage, but Spenser, under his mask of Colin Clout, not only cuts off his vision because of the intrusion of Calidore but also explains its meaning, relating the vision to the source of civilization, ‘Ciuility'.

22
Spenser follows Hesiod, Theogony, 907-11, in making Jove and Eury-nome (Greek: ‘wide rule') parents of the Graces. Cf. also Natalis Comes, 4.15. Spenser is responsible for making the occasion of this mating the return of Jove from the marriage of Thetis and Peleus (Æacidee), thus combining the conception of the Graces with the occasion that precipitated the Trojan War. See note to III.9.36. For etymology of the names of the Graces see note to I.1.48.7.

22 9
cherry: make cheerful.

23 9
Ciuility: social order, and the kind of behaviour which perpetuates social order.

24 7–9
The problem of these lines is whether two Graces are facing toward or away from the viewer; this apparently simple problem, however, lies at the heart of Spenser's courtesy and any possible interpretation of the poem, because of the iconographic traditions of depicting the Graces. The pertinent critics are DeWitt T. Starnes and E. W. Talbert, Classical Myth and Legend in Renaissance Dictionaries (Chapel Hill, I9S5) and Starnes's two earlier articles, PQ 21,1942, 268–82and SP 39, 1942, 143-59; Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, second edition (Harmondsworth, 1967), pp. 28 ff; Tonkin, Spenser's Courteous Pastoral, pp. 248 ff. Seneca, De benefidis, 1.3, states that the circling dance of the Graces symbolizes the three phases of liberality: offering, accepting, and returning benefits. Servius, in his commentary on Aen. 1.720, says that one Grace is pictured from the back while two are shown facing front because for one benefit issuing from us two are supposed to return. E. K. in his gloss on Shepheardes Calender,' Aprill' 109 ff, reproduces much of the Senecan and Servian iconography:

The Graces be three sisters, the daughters of Jupiter, (whose names are Aglaia, Thalia, Euphrosyne, and Homer onely addeth a fourth, s. Pasithea) otherwise called Charites, that is thanks, whom the Poetes feyned to be the Goddesses of al bountie and comelines, which therefore (as sayth Theodontius) they make three, to wete, that men first ought to be gracious and bountiful to other freely, then to receiue benefits at other mens hands curteously, and thirdly to requite them thankfully: which are three sundry Actions in liberalitye. [Seneca] And Boccace saith, that they be painted naked, (as they were indeede on the tombe of C. Iulius Caesar) the one
hauing her backe toward vs, and her face fromwarde, as proceeding from vs: the other two toward vs, noting double thanke to be due to vs for the benefit, we haue done [Servius],

In addition to this late classical iconography, which continued into the Renaissance as E. K.'s gloss shows, there was another specifically Christian tradition, which allegorized the Graces as the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity, because of the etymology of their Greek name Charites. This etymological allegory is reinforced in English by the coincidence of the name Graces and the theological meaning of the word grace, which produced another visual image of two Graces pictured from the back and one facing forward. Since faith and hope are virtues related to the afterlife, they are pictured facing away from the viewer; charity as a virtue directed to action in this life is pictured as facing toward the viewer. This double iconographic tradition is the basis for interpreting Spenser's lines. Most editors emend ‘forward' as printed in 1596 and 1609 to ‘froward' to conform with the late classical iconography. But Spenser always uses ‘froward' in its negative sense of ‘evilly disposed, perverse, adverse'. Line 8, in which the third Grace is described as ‘afore' (viewed frontally), is another reason given for emendation. If, however, one interprets the ‘forward' of line 7 as meaning that two Graces are nearer the viewer without specifying that they are dorsally or frontally displayed, this difficulty is solved. Spenser is trying to accommodate both iconographic traditions verbally; his language insists that we read the lines both ways; he is being genuinely ambiguous. The ‘then' of line 9 can be read in both ways: either as the late classical view that good should from us go, then come in greater store, or in the spirit o f Christian charity: greater good should from us go than come in greater store.

24 8
afore: frontally.

25
a traced: danced.

25 5
enraced: implanted.

26 4
beare the bell: win the prize, lead the crowd.

27 3
meane: norm, median.

28 6
minime: short musical note.

30 7
regard: observation.

31 1
sting: i.e., the wound of Cupid's arrow (VI.9.11). 31 5 Leaches: doctor's.

31 8
Dinting: striking.

31 9
maine: deep sea.

33 2
aggrate: please.

34 5
gourmandize: gluttony.

35 5
steemed: esteemed, valued.

35 8
prayde: captured as booty.

37 1
affect: have a preference for.

37 8
colour: disguise.

37 9
skill: knowledge.

39
See VI.8.35.

42 7
louer: louvre, an opening in the roof.

43 2
watch and ward: guard.

44 7
glade: make cheerful or glad.

C
ANTO
11

1 8–9
cf. Shepheardes Calender, ‘Marche', Thomalin's emblem, 2 ff Spenser bases this episode on the story of Isabel in OF 12.91 ff.

4 8
wowed: wooed.

5 3
lay: song.

6 3
will: passion, particularly sexual passion. See Shakespeare, Sonnets 135 and 136.