beginning of the poem, give the clue to his method, though without them it would be quite easy to see his meaning in her case. The case of Prince Arthur, however, is difficult, and intentionally so, as in this character the writer sees, under certain aspects, an idealisation of himself. He says, in the Ralegh letter, that his book is "a continued Allegory, or darke conceit," that following Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, "and lately Tasso," he has laboured "to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall virtues, as Aristotle hath devised; the which is the purpose of these first twelve bookes."1 On the principle that "doctrine by ensample" is "more profitable and gratious then by rule," he has framed the character of Arthur, "whome I conceive, after his long education by Timon, to whom he was by Merlin delivered to be brought up, so soone as he was borne of the Lady Igrayne, to have seene in a dream or vision the Faery Queen, with whose excellent beauty ravished, he awaking resolved to seeke her out." He continues: "In that Faery Queene I meane glory in my generall intention, but in my particular, I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our soveraine the Queene and her kingdome in Faery land. And yet in some places els, I doe otherwise shadow her. considering she beareth two persons, the one of a most royall Queene or Empresse, the other of a most vertuous and beautifull Lady, this latter part in some places I doe expresse in Belphoebe. . . . So in the person of Prince Arthure I sette forth magnificence in particular." This, of course, is a non sequitur. To be consistent with the method announced in the case of the Queen he should have written "in general," and then said who Prince Arthur stood for "in particular"; "magnificence For 1 The author writes as though these were complete, and announces them on his title-page, but at this time (1590) he had only written three books— finally completing six. Bacon's philosophic enterprise similarly stopped short at what, in comparison with the scheme floating in his mind, is little more than an exordium. Spenser, in this letter, contemplates a further poem dealing with the "polliticke vertues in his [Arthur's] person, after that hee came to be king." being the Aristotelian virtue "magnanimity," which, he says, "is the perfection of all the rest." The practice, however, which he follows in the poem is this. He has no consistent method, but, writing as the impulse prompts him, he shows the Queen in a variety of characters, and conversely he uses a character to represent more than one person. There are no characters among the principal actors in the poem representing only abstract qualities. The genius of the poet is too objective for this, and he drifts inevitably into the region of actual personality and incident. Even Una, who is the spirit of truth in simplicity, is made, in places, to take up the personality of Queen Elizabeth. And so of the other leading characters: in a general way they are supposed to represent an abstract quality, but the writer soon tires of this, and we find them concealing under a more or less thin disguise some contemporary person, and frequently the author himself. It is with these significations (the "particular" of the Ralegh letter) that I am concerned in this chapter. From a purely literary standpoint the dissertations on the Faerie Queene of the eighteenth-century writers1 are, to my mind, the best. Among them Prebendary John Upton, who published an important edition of the poem, with notes, in 1758, made an attempt to identify some of the leading allegorical characters, observing that "if the reader cannot see through these disguises, he will see nothing but the dead letter." It is remarkable that we have never got much beyond what he attempted in this way, but I think we are never likely to do so until some reasonable relation has been established between the author and his work; in other words, until we find out who, and what manner of man, he was. The "Redcrosse Knight" (Book I.) is, in my opinion, the author himself, under one aspect. He is described 1 The best of them are collected in Todd's edition of Spenser's Works, 1805. in the Ralegh letter as "a tall clownishe younge man," who coming to the Queen's Court at first "rested him on the floore, unfitte through his rusticity for a better place" (an allegory of his inexperience); but when clothed in the armour, "he seemed the goodliest man in al that company." He represents the author's confident outlook, and his aspirations on the religious and philosophical side, at the age of eighteen, on his return to England from the Continent. The Dragon represents intellectual as well as spiritual ignorance. The beauty and earnestness of this book are significant of the author's youth. Guyon" (Book II.) also represents the author, but at a later stage: the man in the temptations of the world. The book is less visionary than the former one, and bears the stamp of more worldly experience. The characters of Guyon and the Redcrosse Knight are, in my belief, purposely confused in Books II. and III., the author's intention being to indicate that they represent different phases of the same personality. This will be explained more fully in a later chapter.1 Upton thought that "the Earl of Essex is imaged in Sir Guyon; Dr. Whitgift, his sometime tutor, in the reverend Palmer." But Essex was only born in 1567, and, even apart from that, to represent Essex as the champion of continence and self-government, and the destroyer of the "Bowre of blis," would surely have been the height of absurdity. Another, and greater, pupil of Whitgift at Trinity was Francis Bacon. the "blacke Palmer" is Grindal, whom evidently Bacon, as well as the author of the Shepheards Calender, admired. Grindal began to go blind and lost his health before his death, which occurred in July 1583 (aet. 64), and this tallies with the description in Canto i. 7: Him als accompanyed upon the way A comely Palmer, clad in black attyre, 1 See Chapter XVII. I think That with a staff his feeble steps did stire, Least his long way his aged limbes should tire : Who taught his trampling steed with equall steps to tread. ... In a paper submitted by Bacon to King James in 1603 "touching the better pacification and edification of the Church of England," it is to Archbishop Grindal that he refers when he says that "prophesying" (clerical meetings for the practice of preaching, as explained in a passage of great interest) was "put down . . against the advice and opinion of one of the greatest and gravest prelates of this land." Grindal was suspended by the Queen, and it is, of course, to those proceedings that Spenser alludes in the Eclogue for "July": "But I am taught by Algrind's ill." The description of the Palmer does not suit Whitgift, nor was the poet, with his self-centred disposition and belief in his own mission, likely to think of himself in the relation of any man's pupil. The Palmer is a ghostly attendant on the knight. I think the stealing of Guyon's horse by Braggadochio (which Guyon does not recover till V. iii. 29) is an allusion to Bacon's loss of position and prospects by the death of his father in January 1579, who also, it is said, had omitted to make the provision for him which he intended. The strange representation of the Angel, sent to minister to Guyon after his trial in Canto viii. 1-8, in the person of something like the pagan "Cupid," is evidently intended for the poet's genius. 2 "Arthegall," as the lover of Britomart, stands, in the original conception, for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the Queen's favourite at that time. The question of her marriage with Alençon was, in 1579, a subject of acute national and political feeling. time an adherent of Leicester, shows him in the magic mirror, under the person of Arthegal, as the Queen's future 1 Spedding, Life, iii. 119. The poet, being at that 2 II. ii. 11, and II. iii. husband (III. ii. 22-25). His death, however, in September 1588, upset the story, so, by an ingenious device, Arthegal is transformed into Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, the new favourite. Perhaps I should give my reasons for this statement here. Merlin, consulted by Britomart (with the nurse Glaucé), says that the man she has seen in the mirror is "Arthegall" (iii. 26), who will help Britomart (the Queen) to withstand "the powre of forreine Paynims which invade thy land" (27). This evidently refers to Leicester as Earl Marshal of the Forces on the approach of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The next stanza (from Merlin's speech) points to the advantage of a marriage for the purpose of the succession, and indicates that the author may have believed in the story that Leicester was poisoned by his third wife, Lettice Knollys, the widow of the late Earl of Essex. Possibly, however, the lines were put in to please Elizabeth, who hated her. Great ayd thereto his mighty puissaunce And dreaded name shall give in that sad day; Too rathe cut off by practise criminall Of secrete foes, that him shall make in mischiefe fall. Now comes the ingenious transformation (29): With thee yet shall he leave, for memory That living him in all activity To thee shall represent. He, from the head Of his coosen Constantius, without dread Shall take the crowne that was his fathers right, "His ymage dead" means the image of himself dead, which is to live in his successor in the Queen's favour, and console her for her loss by being so like the departed favourite that she will not feel the difference. |