*** THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR "THE FAERIE QUEENE" BY EDMUND SPENSER ***
I began the week tucking into an allegorical work (a text which functions on multiple levels by virtue of its literal and subtextual meanings) - I chose Edmund Spenser's famed epic poem The Faerie Queene. Intended to be subdivided into twelve books, each consisting of multiple cantos, this truly deserves the label of epic; Book I follows the adventures of the knight Redcrosse and his companion Una, who discover a mystical Faerie Land, a series of 'pathes and alleies wide' hidden within 'a shadie grove'. Perhaps this collection of fantasy tropes was already a common recipe by the time Spenser was writing, at the tail end of the 16th century, but the deep layers of allegory ensure its singularity - and hey, there's 'a dragon horrible and stearne' in it, too! I'll admit that a series of confusing introductory sonnets and epigraphs made me anxious that the poem might be utterly incomprehensible, but in fact, its deliberate orthographical archaisms never preclude its easy readability. Put simply – it’s a cracking read.
First, attention needs to be drawn to Spenser’s deeply moral – yet never explicitly didactic – tone, in which the characters’ behaviour leaves lessons for the reader to take. With the poet admitting in an introduction that ‘The general end… of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline’, the reader is primed for anodyne lectures about morals, but in fact Spenser guides the reader to make inferences about which characters best represent good conduct. Immediately any possible expectations of bloodthirstiness or cruelty in the knight Redcrosse are quelled by his introduction as ‘a gentle knight’ who ‘armes till that time did he never wield’ – he is the perfect picture of honour, ‘valiant’, ‘bold’ and ‘fearefull more of shame/Then of the certeine peril he stood in’. His former Lord is ‘dead as living ever ador’d’ – he is loyal even after the death of the person to whom he is loyal – and his companion Una recognises he has ‘great glory wonne’.
In places, Spenser’s characterisation of the knight serves a dual purpose, both evincing his unquestionable virtue and expounding the belief that a person is not tarnished forever by one immoral action. This is shown towards the end of the first canto, when Redcrosse is made to dream of ‘wanton blis and wicked joy’ – an expression of the vice of lust – however, soon after the dream begins ‘he started up, as seeming to mistrust/Some secret ill, or hidden foe of his’, thereby resisting succumbing fully to this vice. However, this vice-virtue rollercoaster ride doesn’t stop there, as he wakes up to see ‘his ladie [the person about whom he had this lusty dream]… Under blacke stole’ and is ‘dismayd to see so uncouth sight,/And halfe enraged at her shamelesse guise’ – something so simple as the juxtaposition between his perceptions of Una in the erotic dream and in the innocent flesh incites him to consider killing her. Surely we are to regard this quickness to anger as a vice? Yet, Redcrosse ‘stayde his hand’, seeing better of his hastiness, and so Spenser teaches us that restraint is perhaps the best of all virtues.
This is not our first indication that Redcrosse isn’t perfect – Spenser injects verisimilitude into this fantastical tale to more effectively and convincingly convey to readers that nobody is without vice. When read through contemporary eyes, the knight’s complete lack of regard for the warnings and advice of his companion Una may even seem misogynistic – and it proves his first flaw within the narrative. The poet relates Una’s advice to her companion when they approach a cave that she knows to be the home of the vile dragon Erroure – she advises ‘“Be well aware… Least suddaine mischief ye too rash provoke’” and warns about ‘“a monster vile, whom God and man does hate’”. And what do you know? He only goes and provokes the bloody dragon and has to fight for his life. In my view, the fact that this disregard for others’ advice clearly fits into the theme of loneliness and company that’s like the glue binding the first canto together… but more on that later!
It’s doubly significant that it’s Una who goes ignored by Redcrosse, because this is regrettably the only moment in the first canto where Spenser portrays a woman as anything approximating a normal thinking, feeling woman. Perhaps excused by the context of the contemporary role of the almost worthless woman, the poet writes Una as a cipher; whilst we learn about Redcrosse’s moral qualities and his status as a brave knight, we learn nothing of Una’s character, and instead only are told that she is ‘lovely’, ‘faire’, ‘much whiter [than snow]’ (the Elizabethan beauty ideal) and ‘so pure and innocent’. Beautiful and unspoiled, in other words. Unfortunately, this description is consistent with Spenser’s disappointing portrayal of the feminine elsewhere in the poem – women are either figures of extreme distracting beauty (‘O Goddesse heavenly bright,/Mirrour of grace and majestie divine’) or exceedingly hideous (the aforementioned dragon’s ‘other halfe did womans shape retaine,/Most lothsom, filthie, foule, and full of vile disdaine’ – unless I’m reading it wrong, this is the woman half, NOT the dragon half, that’s being described as filthy and foul!), and Una’s brief moment of common sense aside (and her warning to Redcrosse has possibly only been included so that Spenser can introduce the idea that nobody’s perfect by having Redcrosse ignore this advice), she mostly swans about fawning over the knight, confessing ‘“Love of your selfe…/Lets me not sleepe, but waste the wearie night/In secret anguish’”. Still, that’s 1590 talking, I suppose.
Another of the themes of The Faerie Queene appears to be the idea of ‘never judge a book by its cover’, and it’s handled with some spectacular shock reveals. Kindly wizened old man Archimago, ‘voide of malice bad’, living in ‘A litle lowly hermitage’, is really an evil sorcerer who ‘seekes out mighty charmes, to trouble sleepy minds’?! He who ‘all the way… prayed as he went’ wiles away his nights ‘[speaking] reprochful shame/Of highest God’?! The theme reintroduces itself more explicitly in a little moment of visual humour when Archimago ‘made a lady of that other spright’, literally dressing up a mythical goblin-type creature as a convincing woman. The dramatic irony generated from this theme is electric, and helps to convey the mythical, fantastical Faerie Land setting, whilst also linking to the prevalent themes of secrecy and the loneliness it sparks. All of the poem’s antagonists so far live in seclusion, with the dragon ‘wont in desert darkness to remaine/Where plain none might her see', the figure who laid waste to Una’s country ‘in wastfull wildernesse’, Archimago ‘downe in a dale…/Far from resort of people’ and the god Morpheus ‘where dawning day doth never peepe’. And, of course, this all takes place in a hidden world. I’m half tempted to argue that this secrecy is just window-dressing to hammer home the fantastical atmosphere of the setting and to create intrigue, but this decision does also offer an insight into the psychology of a villain – the dragon Erroure, we are specifically told, does not want other people to see her, and it’s implied in the case of Archimago too. With secrecy comes loneliness, something which Spenser is adamant is a negative factor. As well as all these villains living solitary lives (could Spenser be making a deliberate link here?), as the poet summarises in his introduction to the poem, Una’s ‘father and mother… had bene by a huge dragon many years shut up’, and in Book II a palmer arrives ‘bearing an infant… whose parents he complained to have bene slayn by an enchaunteresse’ – in both cases, evil (and remember how keen Spenser is for this poem to clearly represent virtue vs. vice) manifests itself by separating child from parents, by making its victims feel lonely. As I mentioned earlier, the knight Redcrosse tries to manage without the input of others, and suffers harsh retribution. The idea of the power of kinship and company has been central, so far, to the Faerie Queene.
And what of the titular queen herself? Spenser is a very sycophantic poet, clearly desperate for that £50 per year pension he earned for the poem (though it’s doubtful Elizabeth ever read it) – he begins with an achingly long dedication to the sovereign, and puts the patriotism front and centre by rendering Elizabeth as ‘that greatest glorious queene of Faery Land’, whose grace ‘of all earthly things [the knight] most did crave’. As if the patriotism hadn’t been evidenced enough, the wonderful noble knight is called Redcrosse! However, if we’re taking Redcrosse to represent England, riding high after its victory against the Spanish Armada concurrent with Spenser beginning to write the poem, consider the knight’s imperfections, as mentioned above, and some nascent criticism of the system begins to suggest itself, very faintly. Whilst Elizabeth gets a flattering portrayal so far, elsewhere, power is presented as a bad thing – Una’s parents, the old king and queen, ‘all the world in their subjection held’, but an ‘infernall feend… forwasted all their land’. Here, the repetition of ‘all’ seems to convey the transience and pointlessness of power, if the king and queen, so certain in their power, enjoying command over ‘all the world’, can in one fell swoop see ‘all their land’ be destroyed. Power has no beneficial effects on the king and queen – in the past, ‘their scepters strecht from east to western shore’ – absolute power – but now they languish as prisoners in a castle. Every character in the poem so far has been ascribed an immense amount of power – Una and her family being royalty, Erroure being a ferocious beast, Archimago possessing magical powers – and Redcrosse’s power is shown by his conduct to the only powerless figure so far. Did I mention that Redcrosse and Una are also accompanied by a dwarf? Nope, that’s how little he means to the plot! At one point, Redcrosse ‘to the dwarfe a while his needless spere gave’ – whilst Redcrosse is so confident in his abilities that he can go without a ‘needless’ weapon, the dwarf is reduced to being a servant who is only trusted to carry things for ‘a while’. Where Spenser presents power as dangerous is when these powerful characters clash, such as in Redcrosse and Una’s power struggle when she advises him not to enter the dragon’s cave and he, ‘full of fire and greedy hardiment… could not for ought be staide’, as this brings problems upon Redcrosse. It’ll be interesting to see how the presentation of power and powerful characters develops through the poem, as at this moment, there’s a veneer that’s slowly being chipped away.
Not only is The Faerie Queene shaping up to be a fruitful poem to analyse, it’s also very nicely-written, replete with nice touches such as the semantic field of filth around the dragon (‘durtie ground’, ‘ill favored’ children who are ‘a floud of poyson horrible and blacke’, ‘uncouth light’, ‘hideous taile’, ‘cursed head’), or the individually personified varieties of trees (‘the warlike beech’, ‘the fruitfull olive’), or how the writing style switches instantly upon the reveal that Archimago is evil – no longer is ‘rest their feast’; now they are ‘drownd in deadly sleepe’, and it’s a perfect indicator of the impact of this revelation upon the plot. Spenser has a distinct style as well, marked by intertextuality and allusion (‘Faire Venus sonne’, ‘most dreaded impe of highest Jove’, ‘light like Phoebus lampe… doth shine’, the god of sleep Morpheus featuring) and written in phonetic archaisms which help to contribute to the olde-worlde fantasy aspect to this story; I’d imagine this would have been particularly effective at the time of publication; following the Great Vowel Shift and other developments in orthography, surely Spenser’s spellings would have been just ever so slightly outdated, just as ‘Faerie Land’ is just ever so slightly different to ours?
It’s on several university English Lit syllabi (I’m applying this time next month – wish me luck!), but even if it weren’t, I’d happily be gorging myself on the rest of this deliciously multi-layered yet engaging and readable work.
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