II Year

B.A. (Hons.) Programme, English

PAPER Ill: English Literature - I

Edmund Spenser
Study Material : 2C

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SCHOOL OF OPEN LEARNING

(Campus of Open Learning)

University of Delhi
Department of English

Graduate Course
PAPER III : ENGLISH LITERATURE I
[CONTENTJ

Edmund Spenser
Section I
1.0

Introducing Edmund Spenser

2.0

Edmund Spenser and the Renaissance

3.0

Cultural and Scientific Background

4.0

Amoretti
Epitlia/amion

Section II
2.0

Amoretti and Epitha/amion

Verse forms in Amoretti and Epitha/amion

3.0

Spenser's Poetic Device

4.0

The Triumph over Hasty Accidents

1.0

Orphism in

Epitha/amion.

A Note on the Symbolic Mode of the

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EDMUND SPENSER AND HIS POEMS

SECTION I
1. Introducing Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was born in 1552 in London. He had his early education in the
Merchant Taylor's School in London. Mulcaster was the master of the school. Spenser
was greatly influenced by Mulcaster and the atmosphere of the school. In his poems we
have glimpses of his school days. Mulcaster encouraged his pupils not only to study
Greek and Latin, but also the English language.
Poetry had a place in the scheme of studies, and for those boys with an aptitude
for creative writing Mulcaster prescribed, wider and fuller reading of it, 'the whole books
and arguments of poets were laid before them . ...... Spenser ...... was in debt to Mulcaster
for many attitudes, and qualities we find in his character and writing enthusiasm for the
widely educated and finely trained individuals, respect for discipline and self-discipline,
faith in the English tongue in all its variety, and a desire to extend and enrich the
language in which English poetry was written (especially by drawing on native sources),
an eager ambition to produce illustrious works in English, and a zealous patriotism.' (A
Preface to Spenser: Helena Shire)
In 1569, Spenser, after completing his school studies went to a college at
Cambridge. By that time seventeen verses of his had appeared in print. He was also
greatly familiar with - the religious controversies waging in Europe. Queen Elizabeth of
England was not opposed to Protestantism and she gave refuge to the Protestant Dutch
and Flemings who were being ruthlessly suppressed by Catholic Spain. These refugees
belonged to all walks of life, many of them were men of talent and skill; intellectuals,
writers, poets, and master-craftsmen such as painters and engravers. "Jan Van der Noot's
(A Dutch poet and propagandist) A Theatre ... became very popular in England because
the book exhorted against worldliness and attacked the shortcomings of the Roman
Catholic Church. It had both pictures and poetry and the pictures were matched to the
poetry in style. Such a printed book was known as the Emblem Book. The Theatre was
translated into English and Spenser also translated a few verses." We see the impact of
the style of the book on Spenser's The Faerie Queene, The Shepheardes Calendar, etc.
At Cambridge Spenser continued to write verses and was involved in the religious
controversies now invading England. But the 'fight was mainly intellectual'. Here Spenser
cultivated friendship with Gabriel Harvey, a young don of Pembroke Hall, and Edward
Kirke. Harvey was devoted to the study of Latin and Greek literatures and interested in
English and Italian writers. Spenser describes Harvey as Hobbinol in The Shepheardes
Calendar. Spenser himself is Cohn Clout. Edward Kirke perhaps wrote the commentary
of The Shepheardes Calendar. In 1576 Spenser graduated Master of Arts. Perhaps during
the last years of his stay at Cambridge he fell in love with a young woman who features
as Rosalind in his verses. In one of the verses of The Shepheardes Calendar Cohn Clout
laments the loss of Rosalind.

To succeed in life and in his career as a poet Spenser needed a powerful patron.
Spenser got acquainted with the Earl of Leicester, who was then a favourite of Queen
Elizabeth but Leicester lost favour with the Queen when his secret love affair with a lady,
who he later married, was known. The Earl of Leicester could not be of much help. Even
Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Edward Dyer (a friend of the Sidneys) could not be of much
help. Spenser found himself in financial difficulties. He was constrained to become the
secretary to Lord Deputy, Arthur Lord Grey, who was sent to Ireland by the Queen.
Spenser continued to write poetry in Ireland. His The Shepheardes Calendar,
Prosopopoia or Mother Hubbard's Tales were already printed. He was busy writing The
Faerie Queene.
Ireland was a source of trouble to England. The Irish rebelled against the British
authority and Grey tried to suppress the revolt. Queen Elizabeth was annoyed with his
handling of the situation, and so he was recalled. Spenser did not go back with him to
England. He stayed in Ireland and became deputy to Ludowick Bryskettclerk in Dublin
to the Council of Munster. Spenser came in close contact with Sir John Norris (the
President of Munster) and his brother Thomas. Sir John Norris is celebrated in a sonnet
prefacing The Faerie Queene The Queen encouraged the English to settle in Ireland and
Spenser also became a land-owner there. But he had to face many difficulties because of
his Irish neighbour. Spenser published a volume of Complaints and a short pastoral elegy,
Daphnaida. The Queen was pleased to know that he was engaged in writing an
epicThe Faerie Queene and in the poem he had praised her, so he was rewarded for his
heroic poem-The Faerie Queene Books Ito III - with a pension of 50 a year as long as
he lived.
"Dazzlqd by the presence of Elizabeth, his monarch and the 'Gloriana' of his
poetry, delighted to pay tribute to the poets who served her and the gracious ladies, who
attended her, he yet was not blind to what was false or vicious in court life, flattery,
conspiracy, backbiting and long suing for favour by merit that went unrewarded. This
whole experience was deeply moving and disturbing and he transmuted it into poetry in
Cohn Clouts Come Home Again. The particular and the personal experience becomes
ideal as he searches out the essential meaning and expresses this in moral and spiritual
values. Pastoral tradition offered him the perfect vehicle: two favourite themes of the
pastoral are intertwinedthe shepherd's journey from 'shepherd-land' to sophisticated
society and back (with meditation on the experience), and the singing match where
shepherds sing in contest on the theme of love. The stay in England had included time
spent in wooing Rosalind and the wooing had not won acknowledgement of his devotion
in love returned, but his faith in love is unshaken, his devotion undying. This poem is an
exploration of love on earth in all aspectsabuse of love in incestuous lust punished by
oblivion, love-service of sweetheart and love-service of Queen-monarch, love conceived
'philosophically' in myth of classical antiquity as a cosmic force creating and holding
creatures in harmony, behind this last is glimpsed the working of love divine, God's love
in Christian terms. Co/in Clouts Come Home Again was written after his return to Ireland
that spring and the dedicatory letter that stands at the head of the printed poem is

subscribed, 'From my house of Kilcolman the 27 of December, 1591 (Which is the home
for the poet now-England or Ireland ?)" (A Preface to Spenser).
Spenser's first wife (whom he had married in 1580) had died by now. He married
Elizabeth Boyle in 1594 on St. Barnabas 'tide' mid-summer, propitious as the summer 'the
solstice, the Zenith of vital energy in the universe.'
The courtship and its course of love with joys, rebuffs, delays, absence, and
delight in beauty, laughter and gracious company is written into a sonnet sequence
entitled the Amorerti. 'It is Spenser's story, but it traces for everyman a deepening
experience of love as a discipline of the soul. And when it was printed it culminated in
the splendid celebration of love fulfilled in marriage in the Epithalamion .. . The poem is a
paean of cosmic joy in sexual vigour and fulfilment, the universal superbly at one with
the particular and personal' (A Preface to Spenser). Amoretti and Epithalamion were
printed in 1595 and in 1595/96 the revised edition of The Faerie Queene Books I to III
and new edition of Books IV to VI appeared in print.
By this time Ireland was in a state of turmoil. The Irish rebels and the Spaniards
joined hands to fight the English. Queen Elizabeth sent an expedition under Raleigh and.
the Earl of Essex to defeat Spain's plans and to dismantle the possible second Spanish
Armada. They returned in triumph but the Queen was not pleased with the expedition.
Meanwhile Spenser ever loyal to the house of Leicester and Essex, praised 'the heroic
parts' of Essex in the Prothalamion, which was written in honour of a betrothal that was
held in Essex House. Spenser wrote a political treatise A Vue of the Present State of
Ireland in which he criticised the crown-policy and thus created a great furore. The
treatise was entered for printing in 1598 and was not printed eventually.
In Ireland the authorities were at cross purposes. The Lord Deputy SirWilliam
Russell and Sir John Norris, the Vice-President of Munster, did not see eye to eye. Sir
Russell followed a policy of appeasement to befriend the rebellious Irish people but Sir
Norris concentrated his whole attention on
raising an army to crush the rebellion. In
October 1597, Spanish Armada was scattered by autumn gales. The Irish rebels under
Tyrone defeated the English army at the Battle of Yellow Ford. This encouraged the Irish
army to fight the English, who were not well prepared for this eventuality. The English
had to flee and Spenser's house and estate were stormed and looted by the Irish
peopleSpenser and his family had to go back to England. Two weeks after Christmas
of 1598 Spenser died at Westminster.

2. Edmund Spenser and the Renaissance

Edmund Spenser is considered by many critics as a poet of his age. 'His life spanned
the crucial decades from 1552 to 1599, during which the process of assimilating the
achievements of the continental Renaissance rapidly intensified, and radically altered English culture.. .Spenser did not simply swallow his sources and influences; like
Chaucer and Wyatt before him, though in a different manner, he took a critical stance
73

toward the more idealistic and Neo-Platonic manifestations of the Renaissance in France
and Italy' (from Introduction to Spenser, a Collection of Critical Essays edited by Harry
Berger, Jr.)
According to Berger there are four aspects of the Renaissance imagination. The
first aspect is "the new dignity of fiction and make-believe, the new interest in the ability
of poet or artist to create a relatively autonomous yet explicitly artificial and imaginary
world, the second world or second nature." This second world- the imaginary world- was
envisaged by Leonardo da Vinci and Sir Philip Sidney and others. Why second ? God
created the first world, in this world man found himself. It was the world of reality, the
world of actuality. It included angels, stars, planets, men, kingdoms, trees, elements etc.
But the second world could be created imaginatively. This world need not be bound by
actuality- it could be independent of all actual boundaries, it could be an idealised place
or space' where 'the mind may project its revised and corrected images of experience
and where the soul may test and enlarge itself- such a notion lies at the roots of a variety
of phenomena identified with the renaissance enterprise.' In a way imagination was
given free hand to choose its material from various sources to assimilate them and create
something new and 'ideal'. The sources included 'the theory of perspective in art, the
gradual return to an Aristotelian emphasis on the plot as the center offiction and to the
Neo-platonic enhancement of this idea in various descriptions of the diversified unity of
the godlike poet's creation, the development ofpastoral as a simplified and experimental
play world, and the corresponding development in scientific thought of the idea of
experimental method in connection with the idea of a closed world, that is, a specially
controlled environment into which the experimenter temporarily has
withdrawn., (Introduction H. Berger, Jr.)
This second world provided opportunities to many artists to escape the harsh
realities of life- despair and disappointments- and also 'to indulge fully and legitimately
the mind's absolute impulses towards total knowledge and power, utopian visions, and
universal harmony' (H. Berger. Jr.) The artists were aware of the fact that this makingbelieve could provide a limiting frame within which they could 'abandon themselves to
pleasures or seriousness with all the more intensity.' They were also conscious of the
tensions and interrelations between fiction and actuality. The artist stressed 'the reality of
illusion, the self-sufficiency of artice' and thus the reader or spectator could be involved
in his experience- the reader/spectator was either involved or detached. The artist could
take him to his second world and make him part of the world if he so liked, and the
reader/the spectator was always aware of the co-relation between the artists' secondworld of make-believe and the actual-world. He was conscious of the boundaries between
art and life. 'The artist and the reader then cross and re-cross the boundaries of the first
world and the imaginary world time and again.'
Closely connected with the imaginative creation of a world of make-believe is the
second aspect of the Renaissance imagination. This is "an interest in experimenting with
the stylistics and semantics of visual and verbal presentation, communication and
symbolism." The poets and artists experimented with various kinds of imageslogical,
rhetorical, pictorial, theatrical, allegorical, emblematical, symbolical, typographical and

so on. We discern in their works skilful interplay of various image-genres like similitude,
metaphor, symbol, allegory, emblem, and personification and also a continual flux from
one to another.
The third aspect of the renaissance imagination is 'a concern for precise definition
of the spirit of the age- a concern for the culture's self-image. The second world is selfsufficient and romantically unreal- it is different from the actual or first world Thus it
may frequently be used as a reflecting or refracting surface 'to beam back the image of
the first world ' The Renaissance thinkers tried to create this rich and significant new
world-second world- to identify 'the quality of their age with their image of its quality'the ideal image of the world could be thus preserved from 'the depredations of chance,
change and ignorance and thus it could be presented to the future untainted:
The fourth is an outcome or rather a development of the third one. It may be
defined as 'the development of historical consciousness, the self-generated ideas of
cultural renaissance as a blueprint for action. It included the revival of learning. The
interaction between the past and the present-between the self-then-and there and selfhere-and-now- is the central issue of the Renaissance imagination. The classical 'other'
and the Renaissance 'self are brought together- the other is presented as an exemplary
ideal and then this ideal is superseded by the Renaissance present. As there is a crossing
and re-crossing of boundaries of the actual world and the make-believe second world in
writings, there is an encountering of the world of the medieval and classical and the
Renaissance- the three worlds have distinctive characteristics of their own, and yet they
do interplay and intermingle in the Renaissance period The Renaissance artist is aware
of the distinctness of different periods of history and this awareness is exhibited in his
works where we note that these periods with their universes of cultures encounter each
other in dialectical play.
In Spenser's poems we discern all the aspects skilfully blended. Broadly we may put
these aspects into two groups. (a) The first and second aspects concern the creation of a
new world- an imaginary world with the help of various poetic devices. (b) The other two
are concerned with the historical presentation of the world- the second world vis-a-vis
the actual world, the past vis-a-vis the present.
As critics of literature we often use the term 'world' to denote the world of a poet,
a novelist or a dramatist. The term 'world' then implies the world created by the poet, the
dramatist or the novelist. It means the fictional world. 'Now this fictional world need not
be an unreal world- it may be the real/actual world transformed into a fictional world by
the imagination of the writer. This fictional world is also known as the 'second world'. In
Spenser's time the second world was given cognisance. Let us look at Spenser's
Epithalamion. The poem is autobiographical and historical in the sense that Spenser is
writing about his beloved- the woman- he is going to marry. But it is not a mere
description of a real incident it is something more. The world of the poem is both
imaginary and fictional.

C'

The poet describes his wedding and while describing it he transcends the present
and the real and presents to us an idealised picture of beauty (physical and spiritual), love
(worldly and heavenly), and happiness (physical and spiritual). Consequently, to
appreciate the poem we (the readers) have to forget the real world and go along the poet
to the world which he is unfolding in the poem. Then only we are able to share his
experiences and enjoy the music, the images he is deploying to create the fictional world
"The fictional world expects us to give ourselves wholly to the presented experience and
to respond as if the work before us is all there is. And since the word fiction connotes
something made as well as something made up, we may expect fictional experiments to be
more completely articulated, more vivid and coherent, than any counterpart in actual
4Th" (Introduction H. Berger Jr.)
The world of the poet varies from poem to poem. It depends on what sort of poem
he is writing. Spenser's minor poems the Amoretti, the Prothalamion and the
Epithalamion are subjective- in the sense they are personal or quasi-autobiographical.
They are lyrical, they are less fictional and imaginary. In them the speaker is his own
character. The narrative experience happens mainly to himself But his major works like
The Shepherdes Calendar, The Teares of the Muses and Mother Hubbard's Tale are
narrative poems. In these poems the poet 'impersonates or tries out various kinds of
conventional attitudes in order to present through first-person enactment their strengths
and (more often) their limitations'. Other minor poems Virgils' Gnat, Muiopotmos, Cohn
Clouts Come Home Again, and Fowre Hymnes, embody various combinations of these
two forms of subjectivity- the personal and the impersonal. Spenser, in various ways,
deals with the relation between life and poetry. He also shows "the dilemma of a man
torn between the urge to write poems and demands imposed by love, mutability,
vicissitude, society and sheer survival in a world dominated by knaves, fools and fickle
patrons.' The poems portray both the actual and the fictional. worlds- the brazen world
surrounding the poet and the imaginary Faerie world. In lyrical poems the poet gives vent
to his personal feelings and experiences which he has had in the first world- these poems
perform various functions of poetry - re-creative, plaintive and normal. But to create the
second world- the idealised dream world - the poet takes recourse to epic mode 'then
breaks free of the limits of actuality and translates his concerns into the narrative that
unfolds his model universe. 'In the Faerie Queene 'the voice and the problems of the lyric
speaker- as Spenser (personal) and Cohn (impersonal)- penetrate the second world of
Faerie and make increasing demands upon our attention.'
(Based on Berger's Introduction.).

3.0 Cultural and Scientific Background

To understand the poetry of Spenser it is necessary to know his poetic,
philosophic and scientific background. You may get a detailed description of the
background in A Preface to Spenser by Helena Shire published by Longman London and
New York. Since it may not be possible for all of you to get hold of a copy of the book,
we have summarised some of the things.

3.1 The Concept of Space and Place in Spenser's time

It was believed that God created the universe to a grand design, harmoniously
ordered. The earth was the centre of the great cosmos (macrocosm) and man was made to
a pattern that corresponded to the greater one. Man was the culmination of creation.
Man's place could be gauged in terms of his relationship with the universal order, his
distance from or nearness to God.
The universe was spherical- the figure of perfection- it was a great round frame
hanging on two immovable hooks (the poles) and contained eleven heavens and spheres.
Each sphere and heaven had its own intelligence or activating force. From the centre
outwards they were arranged thus- the earth, the moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn. The eighth sphere was of the fixed stars- the firmament of Genesis. The
crystal heaven was the ninth and the tenth, the first moveable, and the eleventh the
heaven where God and his angels dwelt.
The ethereal region formed the higher and upper part. It enclosed the elementary
region. The elementary region was actually below the moon's sphere (sublunary) 'in
which are all corruptible bodies and things harmed by diverse alternations- except the
'mind of man'. Man was the chief of the order of creation, below him in order ranked
birds, beasts, fish, trees or plants and stones. Each rank had its own peculiar excellenciesthe plant had growth, the beast had senses and man reason. Man's soul had three powers:
vegetable life he shared with plants, the life of the senses he shared with beasts and the
reasonable soul made him akin to the angels above.
Man was born to use all the created things. It depended on his reason how to divine
that use and put it into action. Each created thing had its peculiar property, which man
could know through the implanted clues in the properties. (for instance the shape of the
walnut resembled the brain, so it could be used as a medicine to cure brain disorders).
The 'elementary' region consisted of four elements- fire, water, earth and air. These
elements were always in motion- fire and air moved upwards, but earth and water moved
downwards. These elements were present even in man, in the form of choler, phlegm,
blood and melancholy. Their proportion varied from individual to individual,
consequently people's temperaments were different. Man's fate and temperament were
determined by the elements, which were in turn determined by the disposition of power
in the heavenly bodies at the moment of his birth. But this did not mean that man was
completely a puppet of fate or stars. He was endowed with reason that enabled him to
change and govern his behaviour and action. The disposition of power in the heavenly
bodies was calculated in the terms of the day of the week. Each day had its guardian or
ruling planet. 1. Sunday-Sun, (the Lord's day) 2, Monday-Moon 3. Tuesday-Mars. 4.
Wednesday-Mersury. 5. Thursday-Jove (Jupiter) 6. Friday-Venus. 7. Saturday-Saturn.
Even the 24 hours of the day belonged to the sun. The cycle was repeated. The day was
divided into two halves - from the sunrise to the sunset 12 hours, from the sunset to the
sunrise 12 hours. In those days 'clock hours' of time was not numerically measured.

The good or bad influence of each planet on human beings etc was determined by
the nature of the lord of the planet, enumerated by the antiquity writers of Greece, Rome,
Egypt, India etc. Saturn and Mars were malignant planets, Jupiter and Venus benignant.
The Sun and the Moon were half good and half evil while -Mercury was good in the
company of good planets, bad in the company of malignant ones. Each planet had its
special relationship with other planets- so man's personality, temperament, profession and
behaviour to a large extent depended on the planetary combinations at the time of his
birth. Each planet had its own weapon, insignia, emblem. Spenser was aware of all these
aspects of astrology and astronomy and has used his knowledge in his poetry, particularly
in The Shepheardes Calendar, and The Facrie Queene.
It is interesting to remember that Copernicus had already (1536-1543) refuted the
age-old concept that the earth was the center of the universe, and a fixed planet. He had
shown that cosmos was self-centered and the earth moved round the sun. But this new
concept was not accepted by the thinkers and writers of those days because they had great
faith in Ptolemy, Aristotle and other ancient writers who maintained that the Earth was in
the middle of all the planets and was immovable. Even the Holy Scriptures affirmed the
fixedness of the foundations of the earth. 'Men's minds were not yet ready to relinquish
the old philosophy.'
Since the Middle Ages, the sense of the space and place on the surface of the
earth had changed vastly. New lands and continents with varied cultures and civilisations
had been explored. India, the USA and Africa were discovered. The discoveries brought
richness and wealth to Europe and there was vigorous interest in mathematics as an aid to
navigation, in geometry as an aid to cartography. The Englishmen knew about oceans and
lands and savages also.
In Book IV of the Faerie Queene Spenser scans the known world from the
Ganges, to rich Oranochy, though but known late.' Queen Elizabeth is depicted not only
as the Queen of England, France and Ireland but also the Queen of Virginia.
3.2 Time
In the old philosophy space, place and time were God-created and God-given. But
new dimensions were given to the ancient time-concept in the Renaissance period. In the
dynamics of the sacral universe time had two aspects - the cyclic and the sacral. It was
put into motion at the creation, consequently it had cyclic pattern, day and night, the lunar
week, the solar year with its months and Zodiac signs were accepted by all. The cyclic
motion of time was a manifestation of God's law and on its proper motion depended
man's survival. The agricultural crops got associated with the cycle of seasonconsequently months, seasons were also assigned their characteristics corresponding to
four elements. Thus 'Man was in touch with cosmic rhythm and visualised his life-span as
offour seasons with the year, seven ages with the planets or twelve phases corresponding
to the months.'

Not only the Greeks, the Romans and the others believed in the course of the year
as ordained by God, but also the Christian church had (has) its own concept of the year
with its seasons such as Advent, its great days of Christmas and Easter, many a festival of
occasions, Saints Day etc. In February fell the old pre-Christian feast of the returning sun.
Then the Purification of the Blessed Mary - the Feast of Candle-mass was celebrated.
What is important to remember is that both Christians and non-Christians believed in the
grand universal plan.
(Book VI) these
In Spenser's The Shepheardes Calendar and the Faerie Queene
concepts of time and space have been beautifully blended. In the Faerie Queene the
Christian concept of the course of year has been enriched by linking it with an apt myth
of antiquity. For example for April the Zodiac steed is the bull of Jove's Love for Europa.
If the cyclic time is measured by calendar, the second aspect (the sacral aspect) of
time is measured from creation to Doomsday. Cosmic time began 'at the creation and
time on earth began for man with his fall from grace. Then it moved from the dark period
of Old Testament to the Flood, with a second chance for man in Noah and the promise
given, then onwards and downwards through the ancient world of the old law, but with
voices of prophets foretelling the coming of Christ and with His early pedigree traced
through chosen figures to culminate in His earthly mother, Mary.'
Time began anew with Christ's birth, Anne Down, and the epoch of the New
Testament it initiated. The thirty years of his life on earth had special significance and
events in his life were envisaged as prefigured in earlier time: the imperfect pattern of
Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac was fulfilled in God's sacrifice of his son at the Crucifixion.
This was the true type; the near sacrifice of Isaac the anti type, the forerunner. From
crucifixion onwards the new pattern of redemption promised to the sinners held good for
all Christians, and saints and martyrs bore witness to that.
According to this time scheme man in Elizabethan Christendom was still fallen
man but there was still a hope for his redemption. He was endowed with wit or reason
Which had its portion of the divine and reason could help him to know good and to
discern virtueGod's purpose for him. Man's life span was ordained but his course of
action was his own-and so he had the advantage of working and living for his salvation.
The salvation he could attain, partly through his work and mainly through his acceptance
of the gift of God's grace.
This scheme is used in Spenser's poetry-particularly in the Faerie Queene Book I,
in Spenser's days time began to be measured with clocks and astrological calculation of
time-pattern was not given much importance. Consequently people were more concerned
with the passage of time, the span of time and life than with astrology. Spenser could not
he celebrated the twenty-first year of
ignore this. In The Shepheardes Calendar
Elizabeth's reign and Epithalamion celebrated his marriage which was solemnised in his
forty-second year.

The passage of time according to Renaissance thinking could be stopped by

creating a worlda second world imaginativelydifferent from the mutable first world
of actually. In this second worldin the world of the poet and the artisttime cannot
destroy everything, Poetry could immortalize what seemed to be mortal by using certain
devices, linguistic, semantic, metaphorical, allegorical etc.the reader could be easily
made to forget the 'present' and be transported to the world--a new-world.
Poetry could itself transcend time and confer 'deathless name'. "It could celebrate
heroic endeavour in heroic poem, the most important kind of poetry as the
Renaissance. It could celebrate the noble line, as Spenser did the line of Dudley,
Earl of Leicester... Poetry could satisfy the need to feel the present moment in
relation to time, which has been claimed as a key characteristic of Renaissance
man: Spenser, gave 'durance perpetuate' to year 1579 in his Calendar, to the day
of his own wedding in Epithalamion." (A Preface to Spenser)
3.3 Concept of Number in Spenser's poetry
The study of numbers or Numerology was a popular fashion of the intellectuals of
the Renaissance and the Middle Ages. 'Derived from the wisdom of the antique
world-Greek, Egyptian, Jewish and Arabic, and developed , and elaborated through the
Dark and Middle Ages, numerology had become imbued with Christian doctrine'.
Edmund Spenser, like other great thinkers, was not only interested in numerology as 'art
mathematical' but also employed numbers in his verse.
Numbers had two main aspects (1) philosophical or Pythagorean (2) astronomical.
They were inter-related. Number was created by God and was fundamental to universal
order as all numbers emanate from 'Unity which is God and Mind.'
Unity or number one 'is associated with truth, the light, the guiding principle of
the cosmic mind and of the individual mind.' One is a single number from which
proceeds more-than-oneness or diversity. Double implies duplicity or multiplicity or
falsehood. One is thus no number and in the planetary week one stands for the sun.
Two is a female number, is related to body 'the order of nature, of earthly
existence and values: it is the number of the moon and sublunary regions.'
Three unifies one and twounity and diversitythus it is a number of harmony.
It is a magical number, is associated with Trinity-Christian Trinity. Number three was a
male number and had a generative power. "The threeness of the triad is widely used by
Spenser as a pattern of composition both in the form in his heroic poem and within its
narrative as a pattern of 1. Unfolding into three aspects, for instance the three sons of
Night, Sans Foy, Sans Loy and San Joy.' Its planet is Mars.
Four is a cosmic number of concord-(2+2 or 2x2), the world order was created out
of four elements, then there were 4 quarters of the world, four rivers of paradise, It is a
number of stability. It is associated with Mercury.

10

Five comprises 3+2 (odd numbers are male numbers Sand even ones are female).
So it is a mixture of like and unlike, a number of wedlock, a just relation of man and
woman. Mans number (3) is higher than woman's (2). It is a number of Justice and of a
sovereign power. Jupiter is its planet.
Number Six is a multiple of 20, associated with sexual love and procreation. It
belongs to planet Venus. It is a number of love, procreative power, of peace and plenty.
Number Seven is a prime number, is 'the key to the universe' in ancient love. It is
the number of days in the lunar week and is the number of days of creation preceding 8 in
Christendom. It is a figure of change. Saturn is its planet.
Number Eight--a number of regeneration and of resurrection, of eternityis the
8th day of creation and of the Holy Sunday when Christ rose again.
Number Nine is the perfect form of the perfect 3, the number of spheres, and of
the sphere of the angelic hierarchy.
Number ten is the number of completion, of toes and fingers, of the Ten
Commandments.
Eleven stood for sin, it transgressed the ten of the Decalogue. Judas was the
number eleven disciple of Christ.
Twelve is the multiple of 2, 3, 4 and 6 so it was considered a number of
completion, order and stability. Aristotle wrote about 12 cardinal virtues and there were
twelve apostles.
Numbers also stood for metrical composition in Elizabethan period. Poetic lines
were measured by counting feet or syllablesmeasuring implied proportion and
harmony. A poetic device underlined the processi of bringing words into a scheme of
proportion and harmonyan order.
Number was closely linked with the form.of a poem, and could contribute towards
total meaning. For instance "the central line (Line 478) of Cohn Clouts Come Home
Againe voices the heart of the poemwhile other lines pivot on it. The central line of
Milton's Paradise Lost shows 'Sons of Man.' In Prothalamion the number of stanzas and
of lines in its stanza belong to the poem's subject and purpose. In Epithalamion Spenser
uses number as an ordering and activating principle in poetry. The number of st.;:nzs are
closely linked with the hours of the day and as:ronomy. Spensermarried in southern
Ireland at St Barnabas tide. June II, midsummer in the old Julian calendar. He
celebrated in poetry his own wedding, making for his bride a song in lieu of many
ornaments. It is not only a lovely and moving account of the wedding-day and night that
made the marriage timeless in poetry, it is also 'the thing that may the mind delight.' The

11

ceremony, the 'doing' of the day is, through the poet's devising, keyed into the rhythms of
the universe."
"The course of Epithalamion corresponds symbolically in one way to the passage
of a day and in another to that of a year, beyond that it is made to belong to the greater
motions and conformations of the cosmosThe poem has twenty-four stanzas for the
hours of a day and night, but the houi; attendant on the bride are also the hours of the
classical myth; the sidereal hours as the term is still used in modem astronomy. Each
Stanza is an arrangement of long lines and short and the long lines number 365 for the
year's days; the short lines, Hieatt suggests, are of a number and distribution to render
times divisions.
"In the course of the poem hours run from sunrise onwards. The change from day
to night is marked at a key point by a change in the refrain from positive to negative. The
woods shall to me answer and my Echo ring' becomes at stanza 17 'The woods shall no
more answer nor your echo ring' This division at the proportion of 16+17+ corresponds
to the actual proportion of day light hours to hours of darkness obtaining on midsummer
day at the latitude of southern Ireland. Date and place have been rendered in universal
terms through the form and the wording of the poetry; the mediating power is number
this act and ceremony of love and marriage looking to procreation, was performed at the
mid summer solstice, which is the Zenith of the Sun's power of transmitting cosmic
energy.. The poem made to celebrate the act and ceremony is itself an energy system of
numbers(poetry) in which number of the cosmos is an activating principle. Act, date and
place of actuality are through the operation of 'numbers' and number in active
communion with cosmic rhythm. What was individual and personal, unique and
transitory, is now organically related to 'endless time, and is auspiciously in touch with
cosmic power. "(A Preface to Spenser).
3.4 Concept of Man
Although Christian doctrine that man was a 'fallen being' was accepted by
Spenser, he combined this concept, like other thinkers of the Renaissance and Classical
age, with that of the antiquity, "Man was created in the image of God. The beauty of
man, the microcosm, the wonder of his proportions, had been revealed in the world of art
through contact with the values of the classical sculpture... The new weight on human
values-humanism-was linked with scholarship of classical languages, literature and
philosophy... The ideal of the man of active virtue was derived from the ethics of
Aristotle. Man as an image of God became more important than the man fallen or man to
be redeemed."
To attain perfection man must imbibe in virtues-divine virtues. These virtues
could be acquired if we begin to love the universe. It was accepted that "God created out
of love and all embracing love provided the dynathic of the universe ... Man aspired
towards union with the divine.,,." The doctrine of love as a dynamic of the sacral universe
gave a new meaning to physical love. Earlier the physical love was considered an
obstacle to the course of divine love. But now "physical love, response to the beauty of

12

the senses, was seen as a possible first step in aspiration to love of the highest. Beauty
was a divine Idea in the material object; and love was the perception of the Idealove
for the fair human beloved was for the lover a stair, to climb up to another far higher
lovethus love for a particular beauty or one woman becomes universalit is no more
physical but it becomes spiritual, sacred and holy. Thus the Christian concept of love and
Neo-Platonic concept of lov& are merged,in the poetry of Spenser, Consequently the end
of loving is the union with the beloved in Christian marriage and procreation of
children-beauty's print of form on matter." (Source-A Preface to Spenser by Helena
Shire)

4. AMORETTI

Amoretti is a collection of 89 sonnets and forms a unit of Epithalamion. Amoretti

and_Epithalamion were published in 1595. Amoretti sonnets are inspired by Francesco
Petracas (Petrarch's) 366 Rime Sparse (Canzoniere), completed by the mid 1350 and
Dante's Vita Nuova. Petrarch's Rime deals with the theme of love, and is believed to be
addressed to the poet's or the speaker's beloved, Laura. Whether Laura was an imaginary
or real character is a controversial issue, but there is no doubt that the Rime is a collection
of "precisely focussed statements about the poet's relationship with God, beauty,
intellect, appetite and so on."
In Amoretti, like silver poets of England and French soimeteers, Spenser deals
with the theme of.Love, rather with the theme of courtship. Following the traditional
courtly love, the lover poet woos his beloved with humility, courtesy, adultery and
worship. Spenser's Amoretti attracted earlier, critics to its autobiographical details,
because in this sonnet sequence, the poet lover is not wooing an imaginary character nor
a courtly Lady, but a lady, Elizabeth Boyle, whom he later married. The beloved is
glorified, idolised, idealised and is presented as a symbol of physical and spiritual
perfection, an ideal woman, an angel, a sovereign, a celestial being, the lover under her
influence changes into an ideal man, a perfect man.
Apart from personal notes, the critics have also found in this sonnet-sequence the
impact of Platonism and neo-Platonism- the idealising of love, raising it to divinity and
unifying the whole universe within this 'love' make the work a unique poem a poem
which presents a model courtship to be initiated and followed by generations of lovers.
2
Some critics later read the work "as a Neo-Platonic structure Lhe iover's
attainment of, and failure to attain recognition of his beloved as a manifestation of divine
beauty." (Douglas Brooks - Davies's Edmund Spenser: selected shorter poems). They
found that Spenser's Neo-Platonism was influenced by Baldassare Castiglione's
Cortergiano (The Courtier, 1528 translated into English in 1561) and the Italian
sonneteer Tasso (1544-95), himself. a Platonist writer.

13

According to Douglas Brooks- Davies Amoretti 's sonnet nos. 1, 3, 7, 10, 11, 26,
35, 39, 40,45, 61, 72, 79, 81 and 88 are excellent illustrations of the impact of neoPlatonic doctrines of love. But the sonnet sequence is much more than a love poem. He
writes:
As a way of explaining the world, and its relation meditated by the human
intellect to the deity neo-Platonism was a complete symbolic system that saw the
effects of the divine percolating through angels, constellations, planets, plants and
music (to..... but a few.)......' Amoretti 's numerology belongs to that system
and so does much of its imaginary....
For example, in sonnet 64, line 6, Spenser mentions the flower rose, which
symbolises transience and the fragility of love, but it has other meanings also. As the
flower of Venus it also signifies "love as the manifestation of the procreative urge
(Plato's and neo-Platonism's earthly Venus or Aphrodite Pendemos) and/or as the
manifestation of our loving to be at one with the divine (Plato's Aphrodite Ourania or
Heavenly Venus)". We discern the impact not only of the contemporary emblematists but
also of Agrippa 1651 (the English translation of the work of a celebratedeven
notoriousearly sixteenth century 'Occult philosopher who combined numerological,
astrological, medical, animal and plant lore, together with the Jewish mystical
interpretative tradition known as cabbala, and angelology, into what is in many ways a
typical neo-Platonic mix.) on the usage of imageries in these sonnets.
Amoretti 's very fabric is neo-Platonic partly because neo-Plafonism fashioned the
learned contemporary thought and partly because Spenser belongs to the Sidney group
for sometime and as we know "Sidney combined firm Protestantism with a considerable
.interest in Platonism". (Brooks-Davies).
Brooks-Davies argues "Spenser reveals himself in Amoretti as Sidney and
Shakaspeare do in their sonnets- to be a l'udic pragmatist. If he echoes Petrarach with an
eye on the Neo-Platonising commentators, he can also deconstruct Neo-Platonic
attitudinising with considerable glee; the reader is never fully sure how serious Spenser is
because his narrating persona is so aware of the essential ludicrousness of the rituals of
courtship and the contemporary vocabulary that the Petrarchan Neo-Platonic vogue
demanded for it" (Refer to sonnets 88, 76 and 77. Is the poet idolising 'love' or the
beloved (her body) or he desires to manhandle it?)
During the post Reformation period the institution of marriage had perhaps lost its
sacramental importance, but it did gain importance because of the rigidity of Roman.
Catholicism's commitment to monasticism and a celibate priesthood: Protestantism
provides another magic component of Amoretti thinking. We are reminded that the lover
(the bridegroom) and the beloved (the bride) are not merely the representative of Adam
and Eve (in paradise) but they also symbolise Christ and the Churchmarriage "signifies
unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church". The lover's craving for
his mistress's love echoes the Calvinistic assurance that one cannot earn divine graceit
is either bestowed or not. (Am. 10, 38, 41, 46, 48, 69, 84.)

14

Amoretti sonnets celebrate courtship (sonnets 1-67) then betrothal (68-69) but
does not end in marriage. The lovers are separated for sometime the theMe of 'love'
culminates in marriage in Epithalmion. Courtship, betrothal and marriage (Arnortti and
Epithalamion) form "a triad that emulates, like the dance of the three Graces, liumanity'
relationship through love, with god." Spenser also points out that marriage has anoth&r
dimension also it involves compromises of individuality, liberty and captivity (sonnEt
67) as well as misogyny (sonnet 2, 53). Breaking away from the chventiOhal
love/courtly love poetry. Spenser addresses his sonnets to, his bride, Sidney and Petrarch
and other poets presented the beloved as an unattainable beingby being already
married.
Another factor that makes Amoretti and Epithalamion a unique unit is its spatial
structure. Dunlop and his followers (1969, 1970) have shown how like Petrarch's Rima,
Amoretti is structured "in accordance with numerological principles derived from the
church calendar for the period from Ash Wednesday (the beginning of Lent) to Easter
Sunday." According to Dunlop Anioretli follows a scheme derived from the liturgical
calendar for 1594. Amoretti sonnet 62 marks the new year beginning on March 25, each
sonnet following stands for a day leading to the Easter Day sonnet, 68.(31 March 1594).
Counting backward we reach sonnet 22 ('This holy season, fit to, fast and pray),
signifying Feb 13, (Ash Wednesday in 1594). Thus the symmetrical scheme is - 21
sonnets (1-21), 47 sonnets (22 to 68 - the Lent-Easter sequence) 21 sonnets (69-89). This
is the way Dunlop explains the Amoretti scheme. But later critics have included the
anarcreontic verses and Epithalamion into the scheme. Fowler discovered that sonnets 35
and 83 were identical. He modified Dunlop's scheme thus 34+1 (Am. sonnet 35) + 47
(36-82) + 1 (Am 83) + 34 (6 sonnets - 84-89) + 4 anacreontics +24 (the total stanzas of
Epithalamion.). Following Renaissance authorities, Fowler argues that 89 sonnets
represent 89 days-(the winter quarter of the year), added to 89, 4 anaoreontics make the
total 93 (the number of days in spring quarter) and Epithalamion encodes summer (its
stanzas are subdivided by short lines into a total of 92 long-lines section 92 being the
number of days in the summer quarter.).
It is interesting to note that the Amoretti charts courtship pattered according to a
numerological-calendar schemeand it relates courtship and betrothal to the winter,
spring and together with Epithalamion summer seasons and also to the liturgical calender
that refers to fasting, penitence and rebirth.
Brooks-Davies writes "Interwoven throughout are myths, allusions and echoes
relating the lover and his beloved to the bride and the bride groom of the Songs of
Solomon, to such avatars of love and self-love as Orpheus and Narcissus; and to the
certainties and fragilities of Protestant humanism (the belief that god is good and
approachable and his love manifests in our earthly power to love; all of which, is undercut
by the Calvinist certainty that he is forbidding and unknowable and that we can never
merit grace. Hence, when ones beloved froSvns and rejects, this is an emblem of one's
vulnerability to damnation)"

15

Amoretti and
Spenser had started writing The Faerie Qucene before he wrote
Epithalanon. He had to discontinue writing the epic for sometime in order to produce
his sequence thus permitting private love to supersede the affirmation of his public love
to his monarch. It was a coincidence that his beloved's name was Elizabeth (Boyle) also,
we do find echoes of his relationship with his queen, when he describes his distance from
and he expresses his desire to win his beloved's favour. "He compensates by creating
controlling, vituperating, adoring and textually mastering his beloved fantasing as he
does so about both Elizabeths. In Sonnet 75 the waves wash away the inscribed name
Elizabeth. Is the poet referring to the monarch when he talks about the baser things
destined to 'die in dust' and to Elizabeth Boyle the woman who is destined to live
eternally in her lover's verse? Here is an illustration of Spenser's skill he undermines
'convention with egotistical and politically barbed wit'.
The Anioretti is thus a wonderful masterpiece of Spenser. It celebrates courtship
and betrothal, idealises 'love' and relates it to divinity. Spenser uses various
devisesreferences, allusions and imageries skilfully and has structured the sonnet
sequence on numerological calendar.
4.1 A Study of the prescribed Sonnets
Sonnet 34
Lyke as a ship that through the Ocean wyde,
By conduct of some star doth make her way,
Whenas a storme hath her trusty guyde,
Out of her course doth wander far astray:
So I whose star, that wont with her bright ray
Me to direct, with clouds is overcast,
Doe wander now in darkness and dismay,
Through hidden peri ) s round about me plast.
Yet hope I well, thai when this storme is past

MS' Helice the lodstar Of my life
Will shine again, and looke on me at last,
With lovely light to cleare my cloudy grief.
Till then I wander careftill comfortlesse,
In secret sorrow and sad pensivenesse.

10

Explanation and Comments

In this sonnet Spenser exploits the common Petrarchan simile of a ship rocked by
and 235. The lover is compared to a ship that
storms. The simile is based on Rime 189
has lost its direction and destination because of cloudy sky and stormy weather. The polestar which guides the ship has disappeared behind the clouds and the ship is being tossed
about in the stormy sea-waves. It has wandered far away from its destination. The
comparison of the lover to a storm-tossed ship or its sailor who can not see the guiding

16

stars ('the pole star with its group of seven stars') of his beloved eyes is commonly used
by Renaissance poets.
The poet-lover has been separated from his guiding star the beloved (whose
brilliant starry eyes have always been his guide.) Clouds of doubts, indecision and
indifference have dimmed her sight she is no more interested in him or perhaps she is
indifferent to him. His ship of life is unable to get out of the turbulent waters of lust and
greed. He is surrounded by darkness and disappointment darkness because she is
indifferent to his feelings and disappointment because she has not reciprocated his
wishes.
Spenser through the images of the sea and the storm attempts to present sensual
temptations that separate the lover from his beloved and destroy the bodily ship. Spenser
here exploits the traditional allegory of the tempted ship of the body. There is an indirect
reference to Odyssey's Scylla and Charbydis in this sonnet (line 8, 'hidden perils'). The
beloved is a bright star. God-figure or Christ who guides the lover, ennobles him so that
he can attain divinity, reach his gcal, be united with his beloved, with his God.
There are many teiiipiations that do not allow the ship (the lover) to see its
guiding star clearly and reach its goal (destination-the beloved). The lover, like a storm
ridden ship, is surrounded by doubts, despair and dismay and has lost sight of the guiding
star (the beloved) that used to direct his life (the ship) with its bright rays. He has drifted
away from her and is in a precarious situation. Here Spenser mingles the Platonic concept
of an ideal woman, (the belief of the courtly lovers that the beloved is an angel, a god, a
sovereign) and the Christian concept of the union of the Christ and the Church. In order
to attend divinity the lover must control his passions and desires and become pure and
virtuous. The hidden perils have been troubling him and he has lost sight of God-the
guiding star. Inspite of all these problems, the lover does not lose hope forever. He still
believes that the starry eyes of the beloved will once again smile on him. She will
respond to his love and the storm of doubts will blow over. The Storm will abate and once
again Helice will shine brightly.
In lines 9 to 12 the lover refers to his beloved as Helice (name given to Ursa
Major and by extension to Ursa Minor which contains the pole star). Helice, by
implication, points to the circling motion of the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor around the
North Pole. The beloved is his Helice (the Pole star) his guide. The constellation of stars
helped the navigators to steer their ships to the right direction. The beloved is the Pole
star (the lodestar) the northern star which is always constant. The lover's only guide and
destination is his beloved. With the reappearance of Helice, his lodestar, all his worries
and anxieties will be annihilated. Once again his star will shine on him and his cloudy
grief will be over, he hopes.
With this optimism the lover consoles himself. Till the pole star shines on him he
must patiently bear the cares and worries of life. His ship will continue to wander
aimlessly, full of cares, devoid of any contact. He will be sorrowful (sad and

17

disappointed) but will bear the sorrows silently and secretly, will remain melancholic but
will not complain.
The allusion to Helice (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) is significant as well as witty
- because (i) "Ursa Major is the stellified nymph Callisto, raped by Jupiter, metamorphosed
into a bear by Juno, elevated to Heaven by Jupiter (Refer to Ovid's Metamorphoses 2,
409-530) (ii) in Dante's Purgatorio, 25, 130-2) Diana banishes Callisto/Helice for her
unchastity (3) Helice recalls Helicon (Amoretti Sonnet 1,10) and (4) Helice sounds like
Elise/Elisa (Refer to sonnets 74, 13 n Amoretti).
Observe the use of "carefull comfortless" and secret sorrow" repetition of 'C'
and 'B' (examples of alliteration) carefull implies full of cares and worries while secret
sorrow refer to the silent sufferings, without any complaints and show of sad feelings.
The sonnet has religious connotations also. The sea stands for sensual pleasures
So long as the lover is engrossed in worldly pleasures and is goaded by stormy passions,
he cannot be united with God. He must patiently bear sufferings, should not complain or
grieve. The guiding light will shine on him one day.
Once he is purified his soul is purified he will be united with his beloved
his God. Love for his beloved symbolically means love for God union with the beloved
is really the union of the Church and Christ. One who patiently suffers pangs of life and
continuously seeks his polar star Godultimately enjoys divine grace is united with
his celestial beloved.
Sonnet 67
Lyke as a huntsman after weary chace,
Seeing the game from him escapt away,
Sits downe to rest him in some shady place,
With panting hounds beguiled of their pray:
So after long pursuit and vaine assay,
When I all weary had the chace forsooke,
The gentle deare returnd the selfe-same way,
Thinking to quench her thirst at the next brooke.
There she beholding me with mylder looke,
Sought not to fly, but fearelesse still did bide:
Till I in hand her yet halfe trembling tooke,
And with her owne goodwill hir fyrrnely tyde.
Strange thing me seemd to see a beast so wyld,
So goodly wonne with her owne will beguyld.

10

Explanation and Comments:

Sonnet 67 is "influenced in part by Petrarch's Rime 190 via Psalm 42 ('As the
hart brayeth for the rivers of water, so panted my soul after thee, 0 God.") which was

18

sung by newly converted as they proceeded to baptism on Easter Eve (along with
Whitsun, the traditional time for baptism from the early Christian period on, as the
Prayer Book 1559, 107 recalled)" (Brooks- Davies). It is also influenced by Tasso's
Rime, Horace's Odes 3.23, Marguerite de Navarres Chansons Spiritelles (1547)..
In this sonnet Spenser uses a simile - the lover is compared with a hunter. The
reference to the huntsman recalls the myth of Actaeon, "the hunter who spies on Diana
bathing in her sacred grove and is punished for his vision of the divine mystery by being
metamorphoses into a deer and devoured by his Own hounds." (Ovid's Metamorphoses 3,
155-252)

The weary lover compares himself with a huntsman who has been in pursuit of his
prey for a long time, but now he is weary because his game has escaped away. His chase
has been a futile one. The poet describes 'chase' as heavy chasean example of
transferred epithet it is the huntsman who is tired or exhausted for his chase of the
game has proved a vain attempt. The huntsman, seeing the prey escape, feels desperate
and tired and sits down in a shady place to rest, along with him sit his hounds, who are
panting because of the 'wild goose chase' They had been relentlessly chasing their
prey in vain they have been cheated of their prey.
Similarly the lover who has been pursuing the beloved to win her over, to capture
her, to make her love him, sat down, after a long pursuit and vain assay, to rest. He
pursued her for a long time and made various attempts to catch her - but failed in his
mission. The dear beloved would not surrender to his wishes. He ultimately gave up the
chase realising the futility of his assay. Here 'assay' has an implied meaning. He had
tried to drink or taste prematurely and unsatisfactorily and did not realise the fitness for
hunting and killing 'the dear'. He tried to achieve something without comprehending its
significance and value.
Like a greedy huntsman the lover wishes to capture his beloved forcefully. But he
does not succeed in his aim. The beloved can not be won by passion, greed and force.
The 'gentle dear' here refers both to the beloved and Christ. "In Song of Solomon 2:9 the
bridegroom (allegorically Christ) is a deer and in proverbs 5, 19 the bride is referred to as
the loving hind and pleasant roe".
Realising his foolishness the deer, the huntsman (the bridegroom or the lover) sat
down to rest. He observed the gentle deer returning the 'self same way'withOut any
fear and looking for the next brook where she could quench her thirst. The lines 7 and 8
refer to the divine quality of love. The deer intends to quench her thirst. The deer2s
drinking is an indication of longing for God Water is emblematic of godliness and purity.
Love implies purity and godliness. The lover often forgets these when he chases his goal
like a hunter, like Actaeon.
There is a perceptible change in the attitude and mood of the beloved. When he
realises his folly, she returns she is a gentle deer forgiving and lovinga Christ
figure pure and godly. She pities the lover she looks at him gently, mildly without

IN

any sign of hatred or fear. The lover held her trembling hand and she gently yielded or
surrendered to him. "God, the beloved, the deer returns to the lover once he has realised
his folly and repented over his unethical, immoral activity.
Reference to Christ continues in lines 9 to 12. Spenser's deer submits perhaps like
Christ, willingly incarnate and sacrificed. As Christ forgives his worshipper and yields to
his self less love, the deer (the beloved) surrenders to the lover.
"The submission of the deer is more like the submission of a woman forced to
admit her lover's .fantasy of Caesar-like greatness" The lover took her hand in histhus
accepted his responsibility to protect and discipline her. He did not force her to accept
him rather she herself voluntarily yielded to his love and nuptial knot was thus tied. Here
the submission of the (the beloved) to her lover refers to Prayer-Book, 1559, 127-8.
Where it is mentioned "Ye wives, submit yourself unto your own husbands."
Spenser thus moves from the classical myth of hunting to the Christian marriageconcept.
The poem ends on a surprise note. The lover realises the futility of hunting. The
beast (the deer-wild and cavely) becomes docile and submissive, if she desires to do so.
The beloved willingly and easily submits. The lover concludes that one need not force his
wish on his beloved. The lines echo the Prayer Book and the Calvinistic belief you
cannot force God to shower love or grace on you. You have to wait patiently.
Spenser perhaps ridicules the conventional belief (the classical or mythical belief)
that the lover has to be Caesar like powerful and aggressive. He exposes the futility of
aggressiveness in love. The hunter and his hounds fail to capture their prey. The lover is
unable to captivate his beloved. When he realises the futility of his assay he sits down
and repents. His patience and perseverance are rewarded. The beloved surrenders herself
Church and Christ are united only when Church becomes an abode of patience. The lover
repents his action and god who had forsaken him ultimately forgives him and surrenders
to him.

5.0
5.1 Introduction

Epithalarnion is a wedding song which celebrates Spenser's marriage with

Elizabeth Boyle. Spenser wrote it with a purpose.
Song made in lieu of many ornaments,
With which my love should duly have been dect,
Which cutting off through hasty accidents,
Ye would not stay your dew time to expect,

20

But promist both to recompens,

Be unto her a goodly ornament,
And for short time an endless moniment
It is evident then the poem not only celebrates his wedding but also acts as a
precious ornament for his bride. The poem is written in the Greek and Latin tradition of
the marriage
Epithalamia, a literary genre. It is actually a wedding song, which describes
ceremony in detail. What is remarkable about Spenser's Epithalamion is that the beloved
ladythe brideis not merely Elizabeth Boyle but she is also a representative of real
and ideal womanhoodshe is beautiful and her physical beauty is matched with the
angelic and holy beauty of heart and soul. She symbolises both perfect physical beauty
and ideal spiritual, intellectual beauty. The poet's marriage with her is also a marriage of
the two holy souls--joined together to perform the sacred duty of producing issues who
are expected to be noble and pure in temperament and action. The personal experience
becomes impersonal, the subjective approach becomes universal. Critics have traced the
impact of the works of Greek and Roman poets and the French Neo-PlatonistS on the
de Buttet's
Epithalamion. It seems the poet was greatly influenced by Marc-Claude
Du Bellay's
poems, particularly his Epithalarne, Catullus's Manlius and Vinia,

Epithalame.
Epithalamion
Like Catullus' poem and Senaca's Epithalamion Medea, Spenser's
begins with an invocation to the Muses and an invitation to the virgins to sing the songs
of wedding. The bride is taken to the Church and then to her home with great rejoicing
and the bridegroom is accompanied by boys shouting 'Hymen/0 Hymen!' Inspite of these
not an imitation of other poetic works.. The poem
similarities, Spenser's Epithalamion is
is autobiographical also, and it is this which distinguishes it from other wedding songs.
his allusions to
"Spenser's Epithalamion achieves a certain independence and reality by
his earlier works in the opening passage, by his adoption of an Irish setting and by his
introduction of native folk-fore."
"It was customary for Elizabethan poets to write marriage songs and the greatest
Hymenaei and
among them, Shakespeare in A Mid-Summer Nights Dream, Ben Jonson in
responded to the occasion with inspired
Donne in the Epithalamion made at Lincoln's Inn
published in 1595. It
humanity. Spenser shares this human quality in Epithalamion
celebrates his own wedding and concludes the sonnet sequence Amoretti... Its mood gains
warmth and eloquence from the personal experience underlying it, and the whole poem
makes an extraordinary rich emotional impact."
5.2 A Detailed Summary
The poem is divided into 24 stanzas. The last two lines of each stanza (exept:the
concluding one) are refrains of the wedding song.
come to his aid
In the first s,tanza the poet invokes the nine Muses which have
whenever he desired to write poetry. It is the Muses who inspired him to write, about
heroic deeds of great personalities including Queen Elizabeth, and it is because of them

21

his works were acclaimed by both common men and the great personalities whose lives
were commemorated in them. Here the poet indirectly refers to his epic poem-The Faerie
Queene, The Muses have extraordinary power of imagination, and talent for music.
Whenever they desire to describe some tragedy, some death, or disappointment in love,
or loss of fortune, they change the tune of their song and their accompanying music is
then so pathetic and heart-rendering that even the woods and the water begin to shed
tears. What actually Spenser implies here is that he has not only written songs of chivalry
and heroism but also songs of melancholy. He is referring to his Complaints and The
Tears of Muses.
The poet in this poem does not desire to sing praises of great personalities nor
shed tears of sorrows. Here he requests the Muses to forget their doleful music and
chivalric tunes, rather he wants them to wear garlands and wreaths of flowers round their
heads, they, have to sing songs for himthe poethe wants them to enable him to
compose, love poems which none will envy or grudge and- will surpass even the song of
Orpheus in intensity and musicality. Orpheus sang heart rendering songs (for his
beloved's release) but the poet will sing heart warming songs (for his beloved) because he
is soon going to get married. His song will be so powerful and heartfelt that even the
woods would be induced to join him and his song will be echoed all around by the
woods. Here Spenser compares himself with Orpheus, Like Orpheus's music his song
should be extremely moving and enthralling. Orpheus sang songs to win back his beloved
from the clutches of death. But the poet will sing for his beloved. He seeks the aid of the
Muses for 'thine owne loves prayes to resound.'
- The poet then appeals to the Muses to wake up very early in the morning before
The sun rises and spreads his bright golden light on the hill tops, thus dispersing the
nights', gloomy darkness and cheerless dampness. The Muses should then wash their
faces, be tidy and fresh, and with freshly decked head they may enter the bower of his
beloved. He affectionately calls her 'my truest turtle lo*'. The beloved to him symbolises
conjugal fidelity and true love. The Muses may gently wake her up. 'She must get up
earlyto dress herself for the wedding. The Hymenthe God of marriageis already
awake and is ready to begin merrymaking with masked young men who are waiting
trimly dressed to sing and dance in the torch light. Many young unmarried men have
come in their gorgeous and smart dresses to join in the merriment. The poet appeals to
the Muses to wake up his beloved so that she is dressed quickly for the happy day has
arrived, and all the pains, anxieties, worries of the past are going to be over. The lovers
had to face difficulties and uncertainties during the courtship. Now their pains are going
to be rewarded with bliss and happiness. While his beloved gets dressed up, the Muses
may sing songs ofjoy, happiness and consolation. Why consolation ? They must console
her for her earlier pains. Their song will resound in the woods.
Who else are the invitees to the wedding ?
The Muses should bring along with them nymphs of the'rivers and the green
forests, even of the sea which flows close by her home. All the nymphs should bring
pleasant garlandsgarlands made of fresh blooming flowers. All the nymphs and the

22

Muses will be wearing flowers and garlands round their heads and necks, and will also
bring fresh garlands for his fair love. The garlands will be made of lilies, and roses, and
will be tied with blue ribbonthe knot of love will be tied on each garland. The knot of
love symbolises great fidelity and purity. They should also bring plenty of posies and
other flowers to decorate the bridal chamber. Even the ground (the floor) should be
completely covered with flowers so that her tender feet are not hurt by stones. The
flower-covered ground (floor) will appear to be meadows of various colours. After
spreading flowers on the floor of the bridal chamber, they (the nymphs and the Muses)
sing songs of love and joy, which would be echoed by the surrounding woods.
Now the poet invites the Nymphs of river Mulla, flowing by the house of his
beloved. The river teems with silver scaled trouts and greedy pikes (species of fish). He
also invites the Nymphs of Kilcolman Lake that is known for its fresh water and fishes.
(it is evident here that Spenser was in Ireland for his wedding). The nymphs must tie their
locks of hair and make up their faces. They may do so by seeing their reflection in the
crystal clear water of the lake. They should be so well decked that his beloved is not able
to see any trace of ugliness, tiredness and weakness. The nymphs should bring along with
them the light-footed maids who tend the deer on the snow-covered mountains and chase
asay the wolves which try to prey on the deer. All the nymphs and maids then should
decorate his bride and sing to her songs that may echo and resound in the woods.
In the fifth stanza the poet tells us how the time is moving. It is high time the
bride wakes up. Rosy Morning has already left the bed of Tithonusher lover and is ready
to ride her silver coach. The Dawn is gone and the sun is shining brightly. Phoebus (the
Sun) has begun to show his glorious head. They must listen to the cheerful songs of
birdsthey (birds) are the first to celebrate the joyful wedding day. They are singing
songs of love and joy, in praise of Love (cupid).
Even the happy lark is singing matin aloud, the thrush responds, the Mavis sings
her song the ouzell shrills, the Ruddock warbles softly. All the birds are celebrating the
wedding day through their cheerful songs.
The poet is anxious to know why his beloved is still sleeping. It is the most
suitable time for her to wake up and wait for her bridegroom. Till then she should listen
to the songs of birds which are singing of joy and pleasure not only for her but also for
others-their songs echo and resound in the woods.
You must have noted that in the first stanza the poet wishes his song to be
resounded and echoed. In the second and third the songs of the nymphs are echoed and in
the fifth the birds songs are resounded. Birds wake up with the early light of dawn and
begin to sing cheerfully. We can easily note how the hours are changing and how Nature
and all the surroundings are participating in his joy.
In the sixth stanza the bride is awake. The poet is relieved. She is awakened out of
her dreams. The bride is not an ordinary human being. Her bright fair eyes are
comparable to the brilliant stars. In one of the sonnets in Amoreni he refers to her strong

23

light, her starry eyes, A few seconds ago those star-like bright eyes were dimmed with
dark-some clouds (perhaps worries and anxieties are referred to here) but now they are
shining brilliantly.. Their brilliance surprises the brightness of the Hesperus (the evening
star). That is her eyes are brighter than the beams emanating from Hesperus head.
The poet is extremely happy. He invites the young maidens, the daughters of
happiness and joy to decorate and dress the bride. But before the maidens begin their
task, he wishes the Hours to do their work. Here Spenser uses the phrase 'daughter of
delight' for young maids attending upon bride when actually it is generally applied to the
Graces mentioned in Line 103. Why does the poet wish the Hours to attend to his bride ?
Perhaps Spenser has derived the idea from Homer's Hymn to Aphrodite where the flows,
who are daughters of Zeus, welcome and receive the newly risen Venus in Cyprus,
decorate her, and take her to the house of Gods. Since the poet has compared his beloved
to Hesperus he intends that the Hours, the daughters of Jupiter and Night (Day and Night)
should receive and deck his bride before any human being does. In fact Spenser is using
Hours and Graces for the bride-maids. If the bride is an ethereal being, then the maids
waiting on her are bound to be extraordinary ones. It was customary to describe Hours,
Grates and Venus in wedding songs. They are said to control seasons and have the power
to make and preserve all that is fair in the world. The Graces and Hours will sing to the
bride as they did sing to Venus and their song will be echoed and resounded.
The poet is excited and delighted to see that his bride is well decorated for the
occasion and suggests to the maids to wait upon her. Now he addresses the young boys
and men, who are attending on her bridegroom (the poet himself) to get ready to receive
the groom who will be coming soon. They must arrange everything in a proper way on
the cheerful day for the happy occasion. It is the happiest day for the lovers primarily but
the poet imagines that it is so for all the beings, even for the sun. The poet then appeals to
the sun to be considerate and favourablehe should not shine brightly and warmly (the
life-full heat) rather should shine gently so that the bright sun-shining face of the bride is
not burnt. Her beauty may not be disgraced. He requests the sun, the fairest and brightest
sun, the father of the Muse, to show mercy to him. He argues that if he (the poet) has
praised the sun and worshipped the Muse rightly in his works and if the sun is pleased
with him, then he (the sun) should grant him his wisha boon. He is a servant of the sun
and as a servant he must be paid for his service. What is the poet's desire ? He requests
the sun that he should allow this day, only one day, to be his (the poet's) and let other
days belong to the sun. Why is the poet appealing earnestly to the Sun ? Read the line
116 The Joy fuist ... did see. Here Spenser perhaps is referring to a superstition that a wet
day is an unlucky day, and a fair one brings fortune. It is because the Sun not only gives
us light but also heat to grow and generate life.. Hence its heat is 'life-full'. But the poet
does not want the sun to shine 'fervently' it wants him to shine rightly. The sun should
protect his beloved, save her beauty.
In the concluding lines of the stanza the poet reassures the sun that if his wish is
granted for the day, he (the poet) would sing loudly the praise of King Sun to the
worldhis song will be responded to by the woods. The sun also refers to Queen
Elizabeth. The poet has been writing the Faerie Queene. He tells the Queen to let him

24

have the wedding day exclusively for himself and his beloved. He will complete the
Faerie Queene later.
The poet wants us to listen to the loud music of the minstrels. They are singing in
accompaniment of musical instrumentsthe croud, the timbrels, and the pipeand the
bridegroom is accompanied by the minstrels and young men. But, the poet observes, the
music played on timbrels by the bride's maids is more sonorous and delightful. They are
dancing and singing as they play on their instrument. The boys run up and down the
streets shouting aloud "Hymen io Hymen", they are shouting so loudly that even the sky
is reverberated. Such is the loudness of merry making and the tone of songs that all the
people around approve of it and happily participate in their joy and happiness. Even the
woods are resounded by their happiness. Here in fact Spenser is emphasising the great
happiness enveloping the whole surrounding on the occasion of his marriage. The whole
universethe sky, the heaven and the earth, that is the firmamentis filled with joy and
ecstasy. Such is the happiness of the lover that he feels that the whole world, the world of
human beings, animals and birds, nature, is echoing his joy. Here he has universalised his
joy.
Both the ..bridegroom and the bride are all set for the ceremony. He addresses the
spectators and invitees to look at the bride who is coming out of her chamber gracefully.
He compares her to Phoebe, coming out of the chamber of the East. Why does he
compare the bride to Phoebe ? Phoebethe Moon Goddesswears pure white dress and
has a youthful appearance. The young bride in her white shining dress with crowned head
resembles the Moon Goddess. The poet says that the dress fits her so well and such is the
grace, charm and beauty of the bride that you (the spectators) would take her to be an
angel, not a human being. Now he describes her physical appearance. Her long yellow
locks are untied and look like golden wires, they are sprinkled with pearls, and pearl-like
small white flowers in between the pearls are to be seen. The pearls and the flowers are
so well interwoven that you get the impression that she is covering her head with a
golden dress. The bride is crowned with a green garland. She appears to be a Queen.
Her eyes and face express her shyness when she sees so many beholders, who are
staring at her amazing Angelic beauty and grace. She is feeling so shy that she is looking
at the ground below. Here the poet is stressing the bride's modesty, shyness and virginity.
She does not lift her eyes to see around, and she blushes to hear people praising her. She
is not proud at all. Her praise is echoed by the woods even.
In the next stanza the poet describes the physical beauty of the bride. He asks the
daughters of the merchants who have been watching the marriage procession and the
bride whether they have ever seen such a beautiful, lovely, modest, meek and sweet bride
as his bride is. Then he describes each organ of the bodythe eyes, the forehead, the
cheeks, the lips, the breast, the neck etcin detail. He employs various images like
sapphires, ivory, apples, cherries, bowl of creame, budded lilies, marble tower to
highlight her perfect beauty. The stanza is remarkable for its pictorial beauty. In the
tradition of the sonneteers of Italy, France and England Spenser catalogues the beauties
of his lady. Here is true Spensarian stanza, "in which the abundant and voluptuous

25

description of the brides beauty is finally interpreted as the mere outward sign of her
perfect virtue. In the lines 177-80 we find perhaps the most admirable expression of
Spenser's Platonic conception of outward beauty which, he says 'heads the mind' with
many a stately stair to the seat of perfect divine virtue," The bride epitomises the perfect
physical beauty which is also an abode of honour and chastity. The maids are spell-bound
by the bride's beauty and they forget to sing the wedding songs. The poet gives a jolt to
them in the concluding lines of the stanza to awaken them and reminds them to sing
loudly so that their songs are echoed by the woods.
He continues to talk to the daughters of the merchants. He tells them that if they
would see the heart of the brideThe inward beauty of her lively heartwhich is
('garnished') well decorated with heavenly gifts, they would not be surprised at her
celestial beauty, they would not have stared at her like 'Medusaes mazeful hed.' (Medusa
was a Gorgon. Minervathe Goddess, was angry at Medusa's desecration of her temple
with Neptune and she cursed her with the petrifying power. It allegorically means the
paralysing power of desire at the sight of great beauty.) The maidens were amazed like
Medusa at the sight of the bride.
In the heart of the bride dwells sweet love, constant chastity, unspotted faith, and
comely womanhood, the regard of honour and mild modesty, (virtues of an ideal
woman). Like a Queen, Virtue reigns her heart. She is guided by virtue. Virtue is the law
to her and all her feelings and actions are controlled by virtueevil or vice can never
encroach upon her heart and tempt her mind, If they (the maidens) know her celestial
treasures and unrevealed pleasures, then they would not wonder at her matchless beauty
and would constantly praise her in their songs which would be echoed by the woods.
After describing her physical beauty and her chaste and noble heart, the poet
carries the bride through the gates to the holy church where the marriage ceremony will
be performed. The holy chaste woman is to enter the churchthe gates may be opened
wide to welcome her, all posts and pillars shall be decked with garlands for the sacred
ritualto receive and welcome the honourable saintthe bride. How does she enter the
Church ? With trembling steps and humble reverence she enters and stands before God
and Jesus. Other maidens must emulate the bride and learn from her obedience and
humility when they themselves come there to get married. He asks the maids to take the
bride to the high altar where the marriage will be solemnised. Now let the organs play
loudly accompanied by loud hymns in praise of the Lord. The choristers then will sing
loudly the Anthem, so that the woods are able to repeat them. The whole atmosphere will
thus be made holy.
Now, before the altar the bride stands listening to the holy priest who blesses him
(the poet) with her two hands. The bride and the bridegroom's hands are put together by
the priest. At the touch of the hand the bride blushes and her whiteness is for a few
minutes coloured with redness. Such is her excitement that the Angels rush up to her to
protect her and to peep into her pure white head and heart which they consider to be purer
than they themselves are. The bride does not lift her eyes to behold her husbands she
continues to look at the ground because of modesty and shyness. She does not glance at

OR

anything lest an evil thought should enter her heart and mind. The bridegroom desires to
know why she should blush to give her hand to him, for he is going to be her husband.
There is no sin in touching the husband's hand. The poet requests the angels to sing songs
of praise to God, so that the woods may answer them.
You must have observed that the two stanzas discussed above are the ones in
which there is no reference to mythology and antiquity and classical literature. A
Christian ceremony is described with all its piety. The description is so vivid that we
seem to see the poet and his bride standing in the holy church with pillars adorned with
flowers and where the organs play loudly.
The tone of the poem changes the moment they are out of the Church. We note a
contrast here. The pagan mood of the festivity breaks out. 'in a lively Bacchic stanza we
have the banquet full of true rustic profusion of meat and wine, and boundless
hospitality.'
The marriage ceremony is followed by a wedding feast. The bride is brought
home with triumph. The 'poet has been successful in his courting. Now he has married his
beloved so he has been victorious. She is to be brought home with joy and merriment.
Once again the poet expresses his great joy and happiness. It is the most blissful day for
him. It is a holy day and he wants the feast to last the whole day. They must eat and drink
and be merry. Even the door posts and walls of the house should be anointed with wine.
Here is a reference to the Roman custom of anointing the house where the bride was
brought. Both the god of wine and the god of marriage are to be crowned with garlands
and wreaths of wines and even the Graces are invited to join in the festivity-they may
dance and sing. Even the house and the feast have become sacred. All the invitees must
enjoy the occasion to the full, with lots of wine and meat, songs and merriment. As the
feast continues the maidens go on singing carols which are resounded by the woods.
The poet invites the young-men of the town to participate in the merriment and
the feast. Let the bells ring and proclaim to the townsmen that it is a holiday. The youngmen need not attend to their routine work. They may note down, so that the)' don't forget
that this day the sun is at its highest, and the Barnaby is close bythe day is the longest
oneafter this day the sun will begin to lose his heat and light gradually, by degrees,
when once the crab is gone. The marriage took place on June 11. Here we have a glimpse
of Spenser's knowledge of astronomy, astrology and geography. The poet is not very
happy to observe that the longest day has been chosen to celebrate his marriage for the
festivity will continue all through the day. He would rather like the day to end soon.
When the bells ring, time will pass fast and the day will be over, all work will stop and
people will return home to rest. Let the bonfires be made all day. Let dance a :o': go
on and the whole atmosphere be filled with joy and gaiety.
c
The poet is restless. He wants the day to end soon so that he may meet his wife.
He regrets that the time flies slowly. Now he requests the bright sun to hasten to his
western home. His horses are tired. They need rest. The poet sights the evening star and
is glad to observe that the night is not far off it is evening now.

27

He pays tribute to the evening star. She is the fairy child of beauty, she is the
harbinger of joy to the lovers. The twinkling star seems to be laughing at the agony of the
husband (who is anxiously waiting for the night) and is smiling at the cheerful singers.
The night has arrived. The poet bids the maids to stop singing and dancing. They
should bring the bride to the bridal chamber and lay her in bed covered with linen and
flowers and surrounded by silken curlains. He admires his bride who is lying in humble
pride like Maia who waited for Jove in Temple. The maidens are asked to leave the bride
and go to rest. They need no more sing.
The poet welcomes the night. He has been long waiting for this night. The days of
anxiety, worry and dismay in love are now-over. The lover's miseries and sufferings are
here described in the mathematical terms. The sum total of his sufferings has been
cancelled forever by the events of the auspicious day. The night is requested to enwrap
them in his black robes so that none is able to see them and they are protected from perils
and honors, traps of treason and noise. Let the night be quiet and peaceful, without strong
winds and tempests and without any fights. Perhaps here Spenser is referring to the
disturbed political situation in Ireland. He wants to enjoy the peace and quiet which Jove
had with Alcmena when Hercules was born, and when he (Jove) slept with Night and
Majesty was born. Now the maids and maidens must stop singing.
It was believed in ancient times that evil spirits and malignant forces influence the
lives of people more at the time of marriage than at any other period of their lives. This
belief is assimilated in the next stanzalamenting cries, dolefull teares, false whispers,
deluding dreams, dreadful sights, house fires, lightnings, mischievous witches refer to
evil spirits and forces. They may torture and trouble the newly married people. The night
is requested to keep them off. Even the Puck, the Stork, the ghosts (hobglobins), the owl,
the night Raven, and bewitched vultures may not be allowed to disturb them. The Puck is
a genial spirit who enjoys playing tricks with lovers; the stork, the owl, the Raven, the
vultures are birds of ill omen and death. They bring misfortune.
The poet appeals to Silence to keep a watch over them all through-the night by
making the world sleep in peace. While others are fast asleep little winged cupids busy
themselves in playing and snaring little birds, but the poet and his bride are not disturbed
by their presence. The poet is considerate to them, he allows them to frolic about till the
day dawns.
In the next stanza Cynthia (Moon Goddess) seems to peep into his room. Cynthia
is busy watching people and things at night. The poet appeals to her that she need not feel
jealous. Was she not in love with Endymion (the Latamian shepherd) and met him
secretly in the dark valley? Cynthia here is used deliberately perhaps. Cynthia stands not
only for the Moon but also for Queen Elizabeth. The poet is reminded of his sovereign
and asks for her forgiveness, for once she herself was in love and so she need not be
jealous now. Let Cynthia (Moon Goddess) bless the two with children. Let his wife be
pregnant and bear children later.

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In stanza 22 Greek gods and goddesses are referred to and the poet seeks their
blessings. In the next stanza the Christian faith is wedded to the Mythological.
"The end of the Hymns links together, rather profanely, as we should think
now-a-days, the deities of Olympus, in whom Spenser had only poetic faith, with the
Christian God and the saints whom he really worshipped. Once granted that confusion,
which after all is mainly verbal, the last stanza (23rd) has truly religious ring."
Praying to the gods (perhaps God and his angels here) living in the heaven the
poet entreats them to shower their blessings to the earthlings below, so that they are
blessed with holy children. Platonic concept of spheres and the gods is hinted at in these
lines. The Neo-Platonists believed that "angels guard each sphere.. .the Platonic Idea
corresponding to gods and goddesses, who in turn correspond to the Intelligences, who in
turn correspond to angels, governing our destiny."
In the concluding stanza the poet apologises to his bride for not presenting her
ornaments. The poem is a monumental ornament in place of real jewellery. Ornaments
here mean poems that the poet ought to have written to glorify his beloved. This poem is
an ornament-monument.

5.3 A Critical Stanza-wise Study of the Poem

The title Epithalamion is Spenser's Graeco-Latin form from Latin epithalamos,
which means a song sung before the bridal chamber. The poem celebrates Spenser's
marriage to Elizabeth Boyle possibly at Cork, Kilcolman or Youghal at St. Barnabas's
1th June 1594. This day according to the old style calendar was the longest day or
Day, 1
summer solstice. (See Epithalainion Lines 261-6).
The poem "marks the culmination of the courtship chartered in Amoretti, by
celebrating the Protestant ideal of marriage and married love. Hence Epithalamion
rewrites its classical antecedents and contemporary continental analogues (both neo-Latin
and vernacular) and the prescriptions for epithalamia offered for example, by Julius
Caesar Scaliger, Poetics, 3, 101, or less learnedly, Puttenham 1589; the pagan world is
there, but assimilated, in accordance with Renaissance syncretistic practice, into that of
Protestant Christianity". (Douglas Brooks-Davies).
Let us observe how Spenser combines mythology (Greek and Latin) with
Christian beliefs and how he intersperses this 'Monimental' ornament or garland with
pearl like classical allusions and references from various continental writer, ;- .1ocularly
poets, how he makes the celebration of his marriage a unique marriage-an example for
generations to emulate.
Following the convention Spenser begins his poem with the invocation of the nine
Muses. The mention of the Muses is significant in the poem, since the poet intends to

29

make it an Orphic poem. The nine Muses are often connected with the nine strings of
Orpheus's lyre (so Orpheus did for his own bride). By invoking the Muses Spenser has
implicitly identified himself with Orpheus. Orpheus is believed to be the greatest human
singerthere was no limit to his power when he sang and played on his instrument. None
could resist the power of his music. He could move rocks on the hillside and turn the
course of the rivers.
At the outset of the poem Spenser refers to his poetic works, which he had already
written or had been writing before he wrote Amoretti and Epithalamion. In line two he
mentions the various aristocratic dedicatees of his poems, particularly Sidney the
dedicatee of Shepherd's Calendar and the subject of the elegy Aristophel, and the Queen,
described in Shepherd's Calendar and Faerie Queene ('others'). The Muses have aided
him in writing graceful poems praising the dedicatees (who deserved to be appreciated).
There is a 'pun' in the 'graceful rhymes'. Graceful not only applies to the poems
but also to the eminent persons ('others'). The poems graced the dedicatees. The word
also introduces the three Graces appropriately early.(Refer to line J03 Epith).
In lines 3 and 4 " your graceful rhymes / That eve the greatest did not greatly
scorn", the italicized words are a beautiful illustration of the traductio. The poet has
turned the words 'great', 'grace' in many shapes to give them varied meanings. The
greatest refers to the Queen and greatly also means not much (not at all) and graceful is
applicable to the rhymes and to the dignified dedicatees, and thus by implication Spenser,
is ridiculing the graceful persons who are fond of flattery or praises. Again the poet uses
the epithet simple for the lays (songs). Why simple? Simple here means without any
'ostentation' or 'guile'. Simple lays refer to Shepherd's Calendar, April in which the poet
describes the shepherdess Elisa in songs. Lay was a short song with refrain, popular in
medieval times. The lays also imply virlays (short lyrics based on. two rhymed lines
only). In Shepherd's Calendar Spenser uses Elisa that suggests Elissa, one of Queen
Elizabeth's cult names.
Perhaps here the poet is paying homage to The Queen who appreciated his poems,
and did not mind if he referred to her in simple words- without using any guile.
The poet elaborates the power or gift of Muses. The Muses choose the themes and
modes of poems. It is they who not only inspire poets to write heroic poems but also sad
melancholic poems.
In lines seven to ten the poet says that the Muses choose which mishaps to mourn;
they prepare a list of items, (topics), that is they catalogue the misfortunes. Spenser Once
again is referring to his other works- particularly to the Tears of Muses in Complaints. In
Tears of Muses he has depicted how each Muse laments turn the decline of her
particular art. Mishaps may be caused by death, disappointments in love, or Fortune's
ruin (wreck). There is a pun on the word raise. Raise has double meaning, the literal
meaning is 'cause' the misfortunes caused by the loss of a dear one (death), or
misgivings in love or the loss of Fortune. The other meaning is associated with the sound
/
30

of music. The volume and the tone of music change according to the themes of the songs.
This idea is clarified in the next line (line 8), where the poet refers to the adjustment of
the tune of the musical string (a monochord instrument perhaps).
Spenser has used puns very frequently in the poem. Tenor means a) tone or mood
and b) voice adjacent to the bass. The sad (melancholic) tone of the instrument and the
singer affect both nature and human beings, woods and waters of the rivers and streams
echo the tune and thus they participate in this dreariment (dreary and heavy cheer) -- an
example of Spenser's neologism.
In the next six lines the poet reveals his intention of writing Epithalam ion. He
(being an Orpheus figure himself) orders the Muses to lay aside their melancholic songs
and crown their heads with fresh garlands. (an emblem of joy). According to Fowler
Garlands here symbolizes the circle of time that the poem celebrates structurally. In
Elizabethan times garland was spelt as girland but Spenser uses garland. But the idea of
girl is also implied here. The Muses should appear young, cheerful like gids, without any
indication of pain and sadness. Garland thus implies 1) the circle of time 2) ring and 3)
youthful, cheerful maids.
As already mentioned Epithalamion is a personal poem. The poet has written this
poem for his beloved (his bride) and requests that none should envy him and his work. It
is an Orphic work (Orpheus's name also means the best voice), Spenser identifies himself
with the archetypal poet/singer, and then revises the Orphic story into one of the
consummated marriage. May be Spenser was partly influenced by Ovid'd
Metamorphoses 10, 2-10 (where Orpheus summons Hymen god of marriage) and partly
by the optimistic Orphic wedding in Claudian, Epistle to Serena 1-33. The poet will sing
to himself alone and he expects the woods to echo his joy, his song, the echo will ring, all
the woods will be resounded with the song. Ring is another reference to circle (garland).
Echo is also associated with fame and permanence. Echo never dies. Thus it is evident
that the poem intends to immortalize love and marriage; the personal wedding will
become impersonal, universal, something which the generations of human beings will
read, enjoy, appreciate and emulate.
The stanza one is an introduction to the theme (the wedding) and object of the
poem, the theme is evolved in the following stanzas.
In the stanza two we see the rising of the sun. Before the golden rays of the rising
sun bathe the hills, after dispersing the cheerlessness and dampness (associated with the
night), the Muses should wake up and freshen themselves, go to the chamber (the
bedroom) of the bride, with vigour, pleasure and lustfulness (lustihead) and then awake
her (my beloved love). Lines 23-5 echo Song of Solomon 2, 10,12. (My well-beloved
spoke and said upto me, "Arise, my love.... The voice of turtle is heard in our land).
The poet and his beloved make up a pair of doves (Amore/ti 89); a good omen for
marriage. Spenser desires hisbeloved to wake up in a cheerful mood for the wedding day
has dawned. All the night's uncheerful damp' has dispersed, disappeared. All the

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sufferings, misunderstandings and anxieties which they had to face in the past (referred to
in Ainoretti) is referred to as 'the night's uncheerful damp'. With the dawn of the day all
the dampness of the night disappears similarly with the dawn of the wedding day, all their
sadness and sufferings have vanished. The Hymen is awake. H y men, the god of marriage
(son of the Muse Calliope and hence brother of Orpheus) has arrived with his pine torch
(lead), symbolizing the flames of pure passion.
We observe that Spenser is following epithalamia convention here in the
invocation of Hymen. Hymen (also refers to the bridegroom) has arrived with his
procession of attendants (masque) the masque comprises young knights or bachelors
who are wearing trim garments.
At last the wished day _L the day for which they had been waitinghas come. All
the pains and sorrows have become things of the past. Now she will have the bliss of
married life for a long time. The use of usuary hints at the consummation of
marriageusuary in those days was associated with money marriage bliss and bridebartering. As she (the bride) prepares herself for the wedding, the Muses should sing
aloud songs of joy as well as solace - (solace for whatever she suffered in the past) so
that the woods resound with them and their echo encircles all.
You must have noted that the poem is a song, each stanza ends in a refrain.
Various nymphs of river, green forests and the sea are invited. This invitation
makes the poem a pastoral poem. If Muses are associated with supernatural or spiritual
elements, with the celestial world, the nymphs of rivers and forest represent nature with
the pastoral world of the Greeks and Romans and with water. They are also known as
water deities. Lines 38-9 appropriately indicate the topography of the poem the
marriage perhaps took place in a town or city situated near the sea.
The mention of the nymphs in this stanza is symbolic. In Roman marriages
supplied by Hymen's torch.). In
water, the feminine element, complements male fire (
stanza two Spenser writes about Hymen with his torch (male fire) and in this stanza, the
symbolizes the
nymphs of rivers and the sea (water) complement the fire. Forest green
territory of Diana as goddess of the hunt. Spenser is creating a mythical world (a pastoral
world) and thus the real world is turned into an imaginary pastoral worldnature is thus
made to participate in the wedding ceremony and bless the newly weds.
The nymphs must deck themselves with goodly and well-beseen garlands. Goodly
and well-beseen are applicable to the nymphs as well as to garlands. The nymphs should
wear garlands noticeable enough for their size and number and these garlands should be
beautiful enough to enhance the fairness and charm of the nymphs. Each nymph must
carry a garland for the bride. The garland should be made of lilies and roses and be bound
with a blue silk ribbon. Why lilies and roses ? Lily in Greek and Roman mythologies is
an emblem of purity and virginity and is the flower of Juno, the goddess of marriage.
Rose is the flower of Venusroses here recalls Venus and her Graces mentioned in the

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later part of the poem. The bride is thus both Juno and Venus. Her virginity, purity and
beauty are highlighted
In the line bound true-love wise with a blue silk ribald Spenser is describing the
true knot of love, the emblem of marriage, tied with a blue ribbon. Blue is the colour of
Juno's element air and ribald suggests both the ribbon and the bridal girdle. The garland
is therefore not an ordinary garland but a symbol of pure and chaste love knot; the bridal
girdle hints at the purity, sanctity and virginity of the bride. By this time the poem unifies
the three elementsfire (Hymen's torch), water (nymphs of rivers and the sea) and air
(blue silk ribbon).
The poet requests the nymphs to cover the bridal bower and the ground with
plentiful of fresh and fragrant flowers, so that the bride's tender feet are not hurt. Lines
echo Psalm 91-11-12 where the angels protect people. The walking of the bride on
flowers connects her both with Venus and Chloris-Flora---suggestin the movement from
Virgin to wife. The ground adorned with varied coloured flowers looks like a discoloured
(multicoloured) meadow. The nymphs are ordered to wait outside the bride's chamber
and continue singing loudly so that their songs resound all around.
In the next stanza the poet extends the wedding invitation to the river Mullathe
name used by the poet for the Awbeg, which marked the western and southern
boundaries of his Kilcolman estate. The silver scaly trouts symbolically stand for
feminine elements and pikes suggest male predators. In the river Mulla both pikes and
trouts thrive and the trouts feed on the small fishes. Is there an indirect hint at male
domination? Refer to Sonnet 74 where the symbol of hunting has been used. Perhaps the
lines also imply man-woman relationship. Rushy lake is the lake near the Kilcolman
castle.
Perhaps the tree-branches bending over the river and the creepers loosely swaying
by the river-side are referred to as long loose locks of the nymphs. As the wind blows the
branches and creepers move to and fro and the sun-light falls through them on the river
water. The untied loose locks, of the nymphs do not allow the sun light to be scattered
properly on the water. So the poet requests the nymphs to tie their loose locks and tidy
themselves up. Let the sun light be scattered. Symbolically scattered Light (loose or
united hair or locks) means wantonness. The nymphs should see their faces in the mirror
(river water) if there is any blemish visible, they should remove it, The water (river), as
already mentioned is associated with the feminine element, so mirror, here is Venus
emblem. All the looseness must be tied, wantonness must be curbed. The nymphs must
purify themselves, be properly dressed and presentable. Their faces must be crystal
brightspotless and pure. They must match the bride in spotlessness, virginity and
purity.
In the following lines we encounter the light foot maids who tend deer (dore) on
the high hills, protecting them from the hungry wolves, (who want to devour them). The
maids chase the hungry wolves away with their sharp arrows. The hills are described as
hoary because they are. old (ancient) and white with frost. The deer with their antlers

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(tower) climb up the hills to save theirlives. The stanza is full of symbols. The deer is an
emblem Of Diana and the light foot maids complement the Venerean nymphs to combine
Diana and Venus again. Wolves are forces opposed to Diana.
In stanza five we meet the birds. The lover-poet wakes her (the beloved) up. It is
early morning. Aurora, the dawn goddess, has already left the house of Tithonus and is
ready to climb her silver coach. Note the use of another dark image here like that of
Orpheus in stanza one. (Orpheus sang songs and played on his instrument to please death
god so that he could get his dead-wife back. His wish was not fully fulfilled Orpheus
could not be united with his wife. Spenser intends to sing like Orpheus his wedding
songsong of joy to please his wife and to make the whole universe vibrate with joy.).
Aurora fell in love with Tithonus a mortal, a human being. With the passing of time he
lost his youth and charm and grew old, but did not die. Ultimately she turned him into a
grasshopper.
The sun god has arrived. Phoebus is the leader of the Muses and god of poetry. So
the sun god symbolically represents the bridegroom, the poet. With the dawning of the
day, the appearance of the sun, the birds begin to sing songs of joy and love. The birds
chant the carols praising love, they dance in a ring accompanied by singing. Carol
reinforces the circular symbolism of garlands, mentioned in lines 13, 40 and 42.
Spenser, in this stanza, lists five birdslark, thrush, mavis, ousel and
ruddock,because five is the number of marriage. The cheerful lark sings her matins
(morning song). Matins also hints at the Protestant sense, the order for morning prayer.
The thrush and the mavis are song birds. The ousel (blackbird) is associated with the
search of god during the spring and the ruddock (robin red-breast) is noted for its song
and its connection with love. All the birds sing beautifully in harmony on the happy
occasion of the marriage.
The lover is surprised to note that his beloved has not yet woken up. It is proper or
fitter for her to wake up to welcome the maker of her joythe bridegroom and the
wedding day and to listen to the cheerful songs of the birds, who are singing, hidden
behind among the dewy-leaves.
In stanza six the bride has awakened out of her dreams and her bright eyes which
were dimmed with darksome cloud (nightmarish dreams) once again shine brilliantly.
The poet compares the fair eyes of the bride to Hesperus. Hesperus is the name of Venus
as the evening star and the morning star (Venus) is known as Phospherous/Lucifer.
Spenser deliberately uses Hesperus for the morning star here since Hesperus was
frequently invoked at wedding. It was customary to mention the morning star in
epithalamia.
The damsels are used for both bridesmaids and well-born maidens. They are
described as the daughters of delight; the phrase often used of the Graces. The graceful
bridesmaids should dress or prepare the bride for marriage. But before they perform their
duties, fair hours are to attend upon her. Hours were the daughters of Jove three in

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number and attended Venus along with the Graces. Hours also refers to the sidereal time
24 hours of a day (day and night) and embodies the seasons. In Orphic sense they bring
fertile growth (in understanding) to new initiates. Hours and Graces who attend upon
Venus, must decorate her and sing to the bride.
In the stanza by making the three Gfaces add magnificence to the bride's beauty
and shower graces on her as they array her, Spenser equates her to Venus (to whom 'was
consecrated the island of Cyprus'). Traditionally Graces gather flowers for wedding,
bestow prosperity and manifest liberality. In line 107 Graces are the manifestations of
liberality associated with ideal women and men. Graces are also described as 'charities'
or 'thanks' Three charities are (i) men/women ought to be gracious and bountiful to
others (ii) They should receive benefit at other men's and women's hand courteously (iii)
They should requite them thankfully.
Spenser idolises the bride. She is Venus likegraceful, gracious, bountiful,
courteous and grateful as well as beautiful. He elaborates these qualities in stanzas 10 and
11.
Once the bride is adorned with fresh flowers, beautiful dresses, graces, pious
feelings, and virtues she is ready for wedding. Now the poet draws our attention to the
bridegroom and his boys who are also prepared for the joyful day.
The poet appeals to the sun not to shine brightly for his scorching rays may spoil
the brightness and the charm of her face. The sun is the fairest because according to the
calendar of 1594, the marriage took place on June 11, the longest day, when the sun was
at its zenith. Fairest also, because the sun stands for fair justice.
The lover-poet addresses the sun as Phoebus (Apollo) father of the Muses.
Phoebus also signifies the Monarch (Queen Elizabeth) who encouraged the Knights,
poets, writers, musicians etc. The lines echo stanza one. The poet has praised Phoebes
(the monarch) in many poems (including the Faerie Queene) and will continue to pay his
homage in future also. But today he wants the sun's permission to write about his
weddinglet this One day be his and his only.
Music appears in stanza %because eight is the number of the harmonious octave.
The musicians begin to 'shrill aloud' sing in a shrill and loud tone. Spenser lists a
number of musical instruments (the pipe, the tabour and the crowd). The instruments
produce a harmonious music. The music of the damsels, who are playing on their
tambourines, as they sing and dance (carol) in a circle, is sweeter and more ravishing.
The young boys run here and there shouting joyously 'Hymen to Hymen' the shout
echoes the heaven. Here Spenser follows the traditional motif. People approve of the
wedding cry and shouts of joy, and cheerfully welcome the approaching bride.
The bride is compared to Phoebe (a name for Moon, goddess of virginity) for her
brightness, radiance and purity. Phoebe was also used as the main emblem as Elizabeth as
Virgin Queen. The bride comes out gracefully like Phoebe emerging, from her chamber

35

of the east. The bride is clothed in white (symbolizing virginity) and seems to be an angel
(not a human being). The bride with her long loose yellow locks (refer to the loose locks
of the nymphs of Mulla) is a Diana-Venus composite here. The hair is loose signifies the
sexual openness appropriate to a bride. The yellow locks are sprinkled with pearls
(another emblem of virginity since pearl is an attribute of Diana-Phoebe). In Spenser's
time pearls were common in royal and aristocratic head-dresses.
The bride's loose (golden locks) are likened to golden wire sprinkled with pearls.
The bride's head is crowned with a green garland. She appears to be a maiden queen.
Why does Spenser use the 'garland green'? The words are appropriately used because
"green symbolises" virginal potential about to flower into womanhood." Her modesty
and gentleness are portrayed in this stanza. As she walks meekly, her eyes are fixed on
the ground and there is no indication of any pride or vanity in her deport.
"The address to the merchant's daughter in the next stanza 'places the bride in
context of bourgeois capitalism', but the following bazon (the listing of the beloved's
attributes by means of quazi heraldic emblems) has its roots in the Song of Songs. The
stanza allegorises the Lady as an iconic object of desire through metaphorical jewels via
biblical passages where precious stones and metals (ruby, sapphire, gold etc) are
identified with the perfection of the king of Tyre and to the people of Israel." Why the
merchants' daughters? "Merchants were condemned (Revelation 18: 11-19) for their
greed. They lost all the jewels and metals with the fallof the corrupt earthly city Babylon.
Their dross is replaced by the bridal Heavenly Jerusalem's gold, sapphire and pearl." The
bride here is glorified is presented as a celestial being, representative of God, pure,
chaste and holy - she is 'adorned with Beauty's grace' and 'virtues store'. The
merchants daughters must learn from her grace and virtue. Her goodly eyes are like
sapphires (sapphire is attributed to Venus and is identified with Christ-Song of Solomon).
Spenser time and again uses words and phrases, which are associated both with
mythologies andthe Bible. The beloved's forehead is ivory white ivory is an emblem of
Venus and an attribute of the lovers (Song of Solomon). Each comparison in this stanza
has symbolic connotation for example rudded apples (images of the various desires of the
lover for the beloved), rubies (love and restraint lust). Following the tradition Spenser
describes the bride's body as a royal palace with a stately stair (abundance of wealth
precious jewels and virtues) and this palace is ruled by Honour's seat (the lady's mind,
head) and she is chastity's sweet bower. Her neck is a tower of ivory (refers to Song of
Solomon) her beautifully framed body is ruled by chaste feelings and is an abode of
virtues. In this stanza Spenser has elaborated what he refers to as Beauty's grace and
Virtues store in line 170.
The merchants' daughter are amazed and tongue-tied to observe such an exquisite
woman, full of beauty and grace, so attractive and tempting (yet without any base
feelings), chaste and honourable. The poet uses amaze deliberately perhaps to hint at the
lady as love-object at the centre of a maze. The stanza concludes with a reminder to the
daughters to continue singing joyous wedding songs.

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In the next stanza the poet describes the inner beauty of the lady's lively
spiritrefers to her as a delicious dish. He contrasts between external appearance and
true fair, between physical apparel and the hidden heart (meek and quiet spirit). He draws
the attention of the reader of as well as the merchants' daughters to the inward beauty of
her lively sprig/it, to her spirit or soul, which possesses 'heavenly gifts of high degree'.
Spenser depicts the spiritual beauty as awesome by referring to Medusa's Mazeful head'.
Medusa was cursed by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and chastity, for defiling her
temple with sea-god Neptune. Minerva turned her hair into snakes and whoever gazed on
Medusa was stupefied. The merchants' daughters are bewildered to observe the virtues of
the bride. By implication Spenser uses Medusa as a defence or virtuous love against vice.
What are the female virtues, listed in this stanza? sweet love and constant chastity
(chastity is the married woman's equivalent of the girl's virginity), spotted Faith (pure
trust in god, church and husband a Biblical conceptbride as church in Song of
Solomon) comely womanhood (an attribute of Venus), Honour (as the reward of virtue)
and Modesty (an essential virginal virtue). Spenser has derived the idea of the bride as
church from Prayer Book 1559. The bride/church analogy derives directly from the
Marriage Service. "matrimony represents the spiritual marriage and unity between Christ
and his Church.' Virtue is the Queen which rules the bride, who is referred to as a royal
palace in stanza 10 and as an epitome of virtues in this stanza. Virtue reigns and makes
lawscontrols all passions and will in conjunction with reason and directs the soul to
good. No evil or base passions can ever tempt her mind.
If the maids had observed her saintly qualities and heaven-bestowed- gifts, they
would not have been amazed at her physical beauty rather they would have felt spiritually
delighted and continued singing songs of pleasure and praise.
The following stanzas describe the ceremony. The bride is treated as a divine
being a Divinityso the poet exhorts the gates of the church to be opened widely and
all the posts be decorated suitably and the pillars be decked with beautiful fresh garlands
to welcome her. She is a saint who should be received with due honour. The wedding
takes place on Barnabas day, so Spenser by referring to the bride as saint displaces him.
The bride arrives near the Almighty's (God's) view with trembling steps and
humble reverence; that is, meekly and respectfully. Spenser drws the attention of the
maids, who have come to attend the marriage ceremony, to another female virtue
obedience. They must emulate her when they get married. Spenser here anticipates the
demands of a wife.
Line 217 is the central line of the poem (217/403). The bride is taken to the altar,
where the sacred ceremony takes place, and where the matrimony is immortalised (made
eternal). Why endless? Endless because (1) "the ceremony validates the injunction 'what
God hath joined together let no man put asunder (Prayer-Book 1559) (2) according to a
Protestant poetic common place, marriage yields immortality through children, (3) the
elect will be married to Christ".

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Make is used both as a noun and verb. As a verb it means to perform and as a
noun it implies husband and wife.
As the ceremony is being performed, the organs play loudly and cheerfully
(roaring) the pthises of the Lord and the choristers sing holy songs loudly and heartily
(with wide-open mouths).
In stanza 13 the actual marriage ceremony is described. The bride stands before
the altar, the holy priest speaks some words to her and puts the bridegrooms' propitious
(holy) hands into hers. When she touches his hands, she blushes and her cheeks flush like
the red roses. [Note roses the pagan gift to the bride in line 43 now becomes the emblem
of modesty here]. Her snow like fair complexion is suddenly dyed with vermilion red and
this sudden change of complexion attracts the angels who surround the altar.. As they look
at her, charming red face, soon she regain her composure. The bride's modesty and
steadfastness (sad) are once again emphasised. She does not look around/about lest any
unsound (morally corrupt) thought might come in her mind. The bridegroom reassures
her that she need not be shy for now they are married. We are nearing the end of the
ceremony. The rings have been exchanged, the priest has joined their right hands together
and declared them as husband and wife. 'The pledge of all our band' is a sign of their
unification, marriage contact. Band has double meaning (a) literal -binding/tying/bond,
(b) the other figurative ring, bond thus it implies circle, ring and garland.
The tone of the poem is sober and solemn in stanzas 12 and 13, where the
ceremony is being performed in the holy church. Matrimony is a sacred bond between
man and woman, between Christ and the Church. In stanza 14 the tone of the poem
changes. The mood here is that of triumph, cheerfulness and festivity. The bride is the
trophy of his victory and he is the glory of her gain. Both the bride and the bridegroom
are glorified and treated as royal victors.
Spenser has coined the word joyance meaning enjoyment and festivity. This is the
most-pleasant and blissful day. Let people make feast all through this lively day very
long day. Livelong day implies (a) a very long day (2) enduring or everlasting in
24thi stanza. (see line
reference to the day's monumental quality as emphasised in the
433). This is a sacred day, a holiday. The wedding was celebrated on June 11, St.
Barnabas's day. It was both a holy day and a holiday day. It became a holy day also
because of the wedding (the symbol of the union of Christ and the Church).
After the marriage is over and they are outside the Church, the feast is thrown
open to all. People must participate in it. They should drink wine (bellyful) and to their
hearts' content: .(without any restraint). Bellyful alludes to Bacchus's 'pauch' (Line 255)
and to Comus, the god of revelry and the belly. Let all those who are willing (wull) to
drink, pour out as much as they like and fill their belly. Let the walls, posts and pillars be
covered with wine, bathed in wine.
Sprinkling posts, pillars and walks with wine is a fertility spellan indication of
the fulfilment of happy married life. Moreover the ceremony of the crowning of Bacchus
with an ivory garland or vine leaves was associated with wedding, since Venus is his

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(B's) companion. Even Hymen may be crowned with vine garlands. Once again Graces
are invited but this time todance gracefully. Bacchus, Hymen and graces not only allude
to classical myths but also to the men and women, maids and youths, who participate in
the ceremony. Let them enjoy themselves with abundance and grace. The maidens will
continuously sing songs of joy and the woods shall answer them.
The working men of the town must join the festivity on this holy day (holiday St.
Barnabas day and the wedding day) The stanza reveals Spenser's knowledge of
astronomy. According to the Elizabethan calendar (1559) St. Barnabas day coincided
with the longest day (solstice) day. The Prayer-Book calendar listed Barnabas for 11
June, the sun entering the Cancer on the the summer solstice for the 13 th More
learned sources calculated the solstice at around midnight (11/12 June) 'Barnaby bright
echoes the proverbial Barnaby bright, Barnaby bright, The longest day and the shortest
night".
Spenser consoles himself here. Gradually the sun will lose his heat and brightness
as the Cancer draws nearer. The days will grow shorter and shorter and the nights longer.
Crab is the sign-of-cancer. It was perhaps believed that the crab frightens the sun. The
sun is pursued by the crab through the zodiac and the year. The stars comprising the
zodiacal sign Cancer are behind the Sun's back because they form a backdrop to him.
Note the length of line 271. It is a long line where, on the model of the most of the
other stanzas, one would expect a short one. The poct.! ;Mws that the day can't last now
for a long time and soon it will wear away. The passing of time from stanza 2 to this one
is hinted at. He desires that people should light bonfires to celebrate the day. Bonfires
here remind us of the tradition of celebrating the summer solstice with the lighting of
fires in those days.
The opening lines of the sixteenth stanza echo Claudians's Epithalamium of
Honorius (14-15), "the suffering lover complains at the delay; the long days seem as
though they stood still."
How slowly the hours pass? Numbers in line 280 alludes (a) to the arithmetic of
the passing hours (b) to the poem's numerology (16 day hours 8 night hours), and (c)
to the poem's metrics. Sad time echoes sad eyes. (Lines 234). Sad means steadfast and
inexonerable and also 'Melancholy', an allusion to time conflated with personification of
Saturn, patron of melancholy." Time flies, time has wings symbolising the change of
seasons.
The poet appeals to the fairest planet the sun to go home to rest within the
western foam. People in Spenser's time believed that the sun hid behind the foams of the
oceanthat was his home. The poet reminds the sun that even the horses that draw his
chariot are exhausted and need rest.
The poet is relieved to see the heaven (the sky) becoming darker (indicating the
setting of the sun and the approaching of evening followed by night.) The evening star
(Venus) has come out of the west with her golden crest she is shining with her full

39

brightness. The evening star is the fair child of Beauty because Hesperus (a name for
Venus) is the glorious lamp of love (brightly shining or golden daughter of the
foam--that is Venus). Glorious lamp of love perhaps also stands for "the lamp of
conjugal vigil which was lit when the bride was put to bed and remained lit all the night."
The evening star leads all the stars because it is the first star to be seen. The host
of heavens also refers to the stars in Jeremiah 8:2 (Geneva). The evening star (Venus)
seems to enjoy the listlessness of the bridegroom as the company below (the people who
are attending the marriage) are still singing and -the woods are resounding.
In stanza seventeen the poet requests the maids (virgins) to stop singing now, the
day is over, the night is nearby, so let the bride come to her husband's bower (room or
bed). The bride must prepare herself to receive her husband. Lilies mixed with violets
may be scattered on the bridal bed and silken curtains may be spread out. Perfumed
sheets and the coverlets made of richly embroidered tapestry may be spread. Note,
Spenser is following the convention here. The bed-cover was referred to as the site or the
screen of consummation.
The poet uses Oxymoron here-proud humilitythe bride combines opposites [e.g.
Venus and Diana both. Refer to lines 154-155 golden locks and pearls indicate that the
bride is a Diana-Venus composite]. Proud humility reminds us that as she yields to her
husband she retains her dignity.
Then the bride is likened to Maia. After taking bath in the Acidale spring, Maia
lay down on the flowery grass waiting for Jove. "Spenser conflates the myth of Maia
the origin of the name May (the month of flowers) with allusions that recall Petrarch's
Laura and the rape of Daphne and Venus". (Douglas Brooks - Davies)
In the concluding lines of the stanza we observe a change in the bridegroom's (the
poet's) attitude. The maids should cease singing and go back home and the wood need
not resound and echo ring. Let there be complete peace and silence and let all the guests
depart.
In the next stanza the poet welcomes the night with great enthusiasm. His attitude
to night can be easily contrasted with that of expressed in the second stanza. The night no
more symbolises dampness, sadness, anxieties, uncertainties, worries, despair and
gloominess. Remember in stanza 2 the span of time during which the lover and the
beloved were separated and were not hopeful about their getting married, is also indicated
by the cheerless dampness. That gloomy period is over now. They are united forever. So
this night is welcome. The long day's labour is overthe night is the reward for their
day's hard workmarriage ceremony, feasting, dancing etc. The slowness of the night's
arrival was an epithalamic topos.
All the beloved's cruelties listed in Arnoretti ( Sonnets 10, 12,23, 25 etc:) are now
cancelled by this night. "The year of torment Amoretti 60) is answered by the wedding
and the year symbolised in Epithalamion's 365 long lines".

40

The night, like the sun earlier, has been personified. First she is presented as an
angel or a bird with huge wings,symbolising protection from all sorts of danger or evil
spirits. The Night protects people from various threats. Like a king or a queen, she
envelops the whole world (her subjects) in her black robe. Robe epitomises complete
safety and security as well as royal protection.
The poet appeals to the Night to spread her huge wings and hide them (the
husband and the wife) from the prying eyes of the world. He wishes for complete
privacy. She should cover them frilly with her black robe so that none is able to discover
them and also they are protected from all the dangers and perils associated with night.
(The poet here is referring to the dangers mentioned in the Prayer Book 1559, 51.). He
enlists these dangers and perils here they are fear of perils, foul horror, false treason.
All these fears are imaginary, false and baseless and yet people are scared. Nothing
should disturb the peacefulness of the two newly wedsthe safety of their joy must be
well-guarded. The night should be calm and quiet. Quiet some here is an illustration of
Spenser's nonce use. Let these be no tempestuous storm and calamitous tenor-let them
not be horrified by storm and catastrophes.
In this stanza the poet alludes to two classical myths. The first refers to the night,
when Jove wooed Alcmena (and they had a son Hercules later). That night became a long
night equal to three nights. The second myth concerns Jove wooing Nightthey begot
Majesty. The night here then symbolically gets associated with (a) procreation;
consummation of marriage and the birth of children (b) fertilitygeneration process.
If in stanza 18, the poet illustrates the blessings associated with night, in this
stanza (19) he presents her darker aspect.
Commenting on the stanza Douglas Brooks - Davies writes ", the banishing of
harm was traditional in epithalamia... But this list reads more like the false night fears
that are dispelled by the true orphic night. In lines 334-35 Spenser refers to the cries of
general woe (lamentations at the time of wedding as the bride leaves her parents' home)
as well as of the brides outcry (an expected part of epithalamic ritual)". Let the sleep of
the two be calm and peaceful, no false whispers (rumours), should breed fear and doubt
in their mind and heart, let them not be frightened by nightmarish dreams or horrifying
sights, or terrors. Let there not be any house fires and. fear of lightning which render man
helpless. (Man can't escape it.)
Supernatural and natural, real and imaginary fear and calamities are jumbled up in
this stanza. Neither the Puck (mischievous spirit or goblin, in medieval period identified
with the devil), nor hobgoblins (demons of lust) may frighten them. Let them not hear the
screeching of an owl or the stork. The screech owl is always considered to be unlucky
and the stork is unclean and unchaste. Owls and storks are believed to be evil spirits or
devils. Otherwise also if an owl hoots or screeches, it means something would be wrong.
The night raven's yelling is related to death. Vulture symbolizes death. The influence of
Agrippa is perceptible in lines 340-350. He has enlisted names of birds, animals, spirits
etc. which either symbolize or are associated with evil happenings, devils, death, mishaps
etc. Some people summon ghosts at night. Spells are used for calling dead spirits only at

41

night. Frogs croaking at night is an ill omen. The jarring voices of frogs are considered an
ill omen in Spenser' s works. Frogs signify "the spirits of devils" (Revelation 16: 13-14)
and are infernal.
Thus in this stanza the poet wishes for complete silence and privacy, without fear
of any evil spirit or horror.
"In the next stanza Silence is depicted as a woman with finger on her lips
(perhaps the Roman goddess Angerona) or as a man with the same gesture (Harpocrates)
who stands as sentinel because Orphic night (lines 315-27) must be worshipped in
silence".
The poet continues "Let peaceful Silence keep watch (vigil) over true night
(Orphic night associated with marriage and fertility-stanza 18) so that sacred (pure, holy
and fearless) Peace may rule the universe with confidence." In other words, let there be
perfect silence and peace in the universe. Silence protects people from all sorts of fears
and commotions and creates a perfectly quiet atmosphere where Peace reigns confidently
and is able to guarantee peace to all. Spenser has personified Peace and Silence.
Peace in classical literature is often presented with a cornucopia of flowers etc. to
signify abundance and fertility. Sleep is depicted as a winged young man with a
cornucopia, filled with fragrance, to cause sleep all over the universe. People go to bed
when it is time to sleep'. The poet desires that people should be made to sleep peacefully
and quietly so that the newly weds are not disturbed and troubled.
In line your pleasant plain 'your' most probably refers to Night. If this is true then
plain means the expanse of the sky, or plain cloth, symbolized by Nights mantle or robe
(Lines 319-2]). According to Oxford English Dictionary (1989) plain also implies
lamentation. So your pleasant plain may be explained thus. Night (or sleep) overpowers
all and the normal night time noises and murmuring are not heard. It may also imply that
none is able to hear the murmuring of the newly weds.
When the whole world is fast asleep the Cupids (winged loves) fly about the
bride's (Night's bed). Lovers don't sleep. Night thus here also stands for fertility and
germination.
We observe that in this stanza the angels (lines 229-30) and the birds of ill-omen
(lines 345-6, 348) are displaced by Cupids or amoretti, indicating that the desires of
Amoretti are now fulfilled. The Cupids are compared with diverse feathered doves,
because they are children of Venus (doves belong to Venus). The Cupids are free to visit
all the places including the newly weds' private roomthey are also described as doves
of love and marriage. The Cupids are inseparable part of Classical and Renaissance love
poems. Spenser creates a world of fantasy with the help of these winged loves. When
these children of delight flutter about freely filling the hearts of people with love, greedy
pleasure without caring for these little winged lovers, runs after more and more
enjoyment. The Cupids fly about on the wings of fancy and delight, scattering joy all
around, while earthly pleasure (greedy pleasure) or worldly lust knows no limit. That is

42

one has lustful passions. By implication the Cupids represent unearthly loverelated to
Venus .L superior to the greedy pleasure (lust). The presence of the Cupids incites the
lovers.
Time elapses fast and we get a hint at the passage of time in lines 368 "it will
soon be day."
Stanza twenty-one begins with a rhetoric questionwho is peeping into the room
of the newly-weds? It is'a bright moonlit night. Cynthia, the Queen Moon, who never
sleeps and walks about the heaven all the night, is peeping through the curtains. Cynthia,
the moon goddess is believed to protect married women, especially women in labour.
Cynthia also represents Queen Elizabeth, whom Spenser invokes, with courtly wit, to
bless his marriage.
The poet entreats Cynthia not to feel jealous of his beloved (wife). According to a
mythological story Cynthia fell in love with Endymion, a Latmian shepherd for a fleece
of wool and kept him asleep in a cave for thirty years to enjoy his company. She should
be favourable to them (us) and bless them with children. In line 383 the Moon is thus the
goddess of child birth and line 378-81 recalls Scaliger who wrote about the fleece 'that
was placed under the new bride when bedded.' We discern a biblical reference also in
lines 384-387 (the Prayer Book, 1559) where the blessing is sought for the two persons
so that they may be fruitful 'in the procreation of children'. Their 'wistful vow' (to
increase their generation) may be kept so that in due time his wife may be blessed with
children.
The prayer for the blessings in their married life continues in the following
stanzas. The poet invokes Juno (the goddess of marriage, who has been anticipated earlier
in lines 43, 44 and 176) who presides over as a guardian deity to see the laws of wedlock
and 'the religion of the faith's first plight' are obeyed. The wedlock is a bond or contract
between a man and a woman. It is a state of life bound by vows. It is a religion of the
faith first pledged between man and woman (i.e. Adam and Eve in Paradise:
'matrimony.., is an honourable state, instituted of God in Paradise'- The Prayer-Book).
Man and Woman are bound together by sacred vows and holy rites. This lovely bond is
made eternal, when they are blessed with children. Juno thus as Lucina, as goddess of
child birth, makes the marriage bond as a sacred eternal bond or contract. The etymology
of religion from religare meaning to bind has been exploited at line 396.
Juno was often presented as the Guardian Spirit of women and goddess of lawful
and fruitful marriage in plays and epithalamia of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Spenser is here following the convention.
In the following lines he addresses Genius. Even happy Genius of generation and
male complement of Juno, who tenderly protects the bridal bower or chamber and blesses
the marriage bed (for begetting children) may bless the poet and his wife. Genius protects
the sanctity of married lifethat is the married people have to remain faithful to each
other and have children.

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Note the use of gentle and geniall in this stanza. Gentle literally means tender but
by punning on its etymological root, Latin gentilis it means 'born into the sathe family'.
Spenser here emphasizes the faithfulness or loyalty to family lineage. Geniall has double
meaning- (1) Generation bed that is marriage bed and (2) pleasant bed.,
The poet seeks the blessings of Genius so that they may have children in due
course of time the seed sown now may bear fruits.
After Genius, he appeals to Hebe and Hymen for their blessings. Hebe the
daughter of Juno and the cup-bearer to the gods is presented as goddess of youth and
rejuvenation in these lines; here Spenser in following Ovid and Renaissance mythology.
Juno is invoked in epithalamia because of her marriage to Hercules (referred to in lines
328-9) which all the gods attended.
In the next stanza Hymen's torch (line 27) yields to the stars. The imagery is
Platonic. The Orphic Hymen to the Stars addresses their sacred, light holy diamonds,
'fiery' brilliance and the paths that they mark out for mortals.
The poet prays to the innumerable heavenly stars (which burn brilliantly like a
thousand torches) to shower their blessings on the human beings, who live on this earth
(below the heaven), and who are made of clay. It is believed that man is made of dust or
clay. ("Dust thou art, dust thou shall return"). The stars may lighten their path when they
are engulfed by frightening darkness. He then addresses their powers, astrological virtues
associated with planets and stars and also with angels. Powers thus refers to both the
astrological concepts about the heavenly bodies and implicit faith in Christian angels. It is
beyond the imagination of ordinary human beings to gauge how the heavenly bodies,
angels, bless them by removing all their sufferings. Let the planets (stars etc.) shower
their blessings in abundance and influence (in astrological sense) their life so that they
beget children and their life may perpetuate. The children may have long life, eternal
happiness and wealth. As they grow God rewards them for their good deeds with glory,
honour, immortality and everlasting life. Spenser in the first few lines alludes to the
classical and medieval belief that the heavenly bodies (planets and stars) decide the fate
of human beings and so he seeks their blessings for their married life and for their
children. Later in the stanza he prays to them to enable their children do good deeds so
that they become true Christians and get rewarded by Christ and God for their virtuous
life. Let God bless his saintly children- they will be honoured and remembered for their
saintly deeds. They become saints and thus increase the tribe of saints. By their saintly
deeds these children will occupy high positions in heaven which is supposed to be an
abode of God-this was a belief in the medieval times. God lives in heaven with his angles
and saints and those human beings, who follow the precepts of Christianity are blessed by
God. They live with God after their death. They become immortal and enjoy everlasting
life.
Lines "May heavenly.. ..inherit.. count." echo the Prayer-Book 1559: "Behold,
the Tabernacle of God with men and he will do well with them and they shall be his
people and '0 Lord, bless them both and grant them to inherit the everlasting kingdom'.

44
N

Spenser seeks blessings for his posterity. Since matrimony is not merely the union
of man and woman but also the union of Christ and the Church, the poet here combines
both the concepts and hopes that his children will be the faithful electwho would be
glorified as saints by God on the day of Judgement, Spenser has thus glorified and
sanctified his marriage and made it an epitome of all marriages an exemplary union. So
let us rest, sweet love, in hope of thisthe line is a short one, similar to line 271.
In the next line the poet says cease till then our timely joys to sing here timely
means opportune. It also suggests 'the poem's preoccupation with time through its
numerological structure which ultimately is related to the end of time at the Day of
Judgement. So we observe that in this stanza the poet has invoked the power of the
heaven and the earth to make this day as special and auspicious.
The last stanza is the shortest one, which acts as a clasp of this garland or the
necklace (ornamental poem). The poet explains why this poem has been written,
repeating what he has said in the last five lines of stanza one. The stanza also links it with
Amoretti sonnets.
Commenting on this stanza (envoy)Richard Neuse says" ... the envoy
represents the climax of a deliberate progression that moves from the sonnets to the
marriage song.... In general terms the progression is from romantic to conjugal love and
all that this implies. In aesthetic terms it involves the transition from an essentially
Platonic to a sacramental mode of symbolization.
"The envoy reminds us that the lovers are not merely (or primarily) figures of
literary convention but also actual persons subject to the vicissitudes and discontinuities
of actual experience. Finally it seems to indicate that the Epithalainion is the poet's
personal response to such discontinuities. More than a mere epithalamium, in other
words, it must test and extend the very nature and function of such a poem."
The last stanza pulls up the reader to decipher the hidden meaning of the
9rnament-moniment. In the first line the poet makes it clear that this poem has been
written in lieu of many ornaments implying (a) presumably poems and (b) perhaps other
gifts Spenser was unable to provide. The line also refers to the abruptly terminated
4moretti. In that case perhaps the poet could have written more sonnets on love for this
Northy woman but could not do so, he hints at in the words through hasty accidents.
fhe poet does not indicate what the hasty accidents were and why they (the poems) were
ut off abruptly. We presume that the accidents refer to perhaps those incidents which
caused the marriage to be brought forward' or 'which frustrated Spenser's plans'.
The poems or sonnets are referred to as ornaments here. Earlier alsoiasza one
Spenser alludes to poems as ornaments when he writes (Ye learned sisters which have
7ften times/ Beene to me ayding, others to adorne.... )Thus Epithalainion because of
'iasty accidents becomes 'single ornament poem in their stead' and is expected to
tcompense for the many ornaments and hasty accidents. (The separation of the lovers
md the abrupt preparation for the wedding.) Spenser concludes the poem (the last stanza)
;aying that this poemEpithalatnion--is a goodly ornament and an endless monument

45

for short time. Why goodly ornament? It implies that this is an ornamental poem
celebrating an ideal Christian marriageit also weaves in classical and medieval
traditions, beliefs, concepts, and myths as well as the sacramental allusions together
skilfully. The conceit (metaphor) of love (how to, love and how love must culminate in
marriage (both in Classical and Biblical sense) has been developed through Amoretti and
reaches its climax in Epithalamion.
This goodly ornament makes up for all the lapses, whih perhaps occurred earlier.
It is an endless monument because the vastness of timehours, days, seasons, years
hasbeen condensed into the short time-(24 hours of a day) also the whole universe (with
its natural supernatural, imaginary and real objects) has been made to participate in the
wedding. The poet's wedding ceremony is not merely confined to a particular place or
time but also expands to the sky, the earth and the ocean. Nature, (woods, hills, seas,
oceans, rivers, birds etc), nymphs, gods and goddesses, angels and the merchants
daughters, the heavenly bodies and the heaven all are an integral part of the ceremony.
The wedding day hopes to penetrate into the future time through the married couple's
progeny and then extend to the Day of Judgement when their children will be rewarded
and stay with God in the Heaven as saints. This is what he implies when he says that it is
an endless monument. The bliss of the married life will be everlasting happiness, and
immortality. Short time thus means (1) the duration of the world versus eternity (2) the 24
hours of the wedding day contain in themselves all the years and seasons-past present and
future and also (3) the lives of the lovers ('nights' perpetual sleep follows the brief day.')
In Epithalam ion Spenser has used symbolic mode. Night, day, Graces, hours,
nymphs, heavenly bodies all have double meaning, literal as well as' symbolic. All the
allusions and myths are encompassed within the time frame- 24 hours, the wedding day,
the holiday-union of the Church with Christ. The pastoral world is juxtaposed with the
Renaissance world. Personal becomes universal in its connotation and yet the poem
remains a personal gift from the poet to his wife.
Douglas Brooks-Davies writes 'For Spenser marriage is the result of mutual
choice and love, the re-enactment of the paradisal state and thus literally a state of
pleasure (Am 76. 3 n; Epith 392n). It also gives Spenser the power to surpass Orpheus,
the archetypal poet whose own bride died on her wedding day (Epith 16n). To affirm his
view of marriage'sand . his marriage's - supreme place in the universal scheme, Spenser
devised an elaborate and essentially original structural pattern for his poem: Am had
celebrated courtship through LentenEaster patterns; Epith symbolizes at once the
wedding day on the longest (solstitial) day, and the solar year. Its 24 stanzas correspond
to the hours of Spenser's wedding day; its short line mark the passing of the quarter
hours; its total of long lines (365) corresponds to the number of days in the solar year; the
change from positive to negative refrain in stanza 17, preluded as it is by the
announcement 'Now night is come' at the stanza's quarter point, marks the duration of
daylight hours - 16 1/4 - on the wedding day. The remaining stanzas and a fraction (7 %)
mark the number of the night hours."

46

SECTION II

1.0 Orphism in Amoretli and Epithalamion

Orpheus was important in Renaissance Neo-Platonic thought as the founder of the
ancient mystery religion known as Orphism.
Orphism is the philosophy contained in the extant writings - especially the Hymns
and Orphic Argonautica - that were supposedly written by Orpheus as the founder of a
mystery religion based on his descent to Hades to regain Eurydice and the arcane
knowledge that was revealed to him there. The first manuscript of the Orphic texts
Constantinople in 1423; the first printed edition (containing the Hymns and
Orphic Argonautica) was published in 1500, to be followed by five more editions by
1600 (including one - Paris 1566 - by the Estierme): Spenser's association of himself with
Orpheus the poet is well known. However, the possibility that he was interested in the
literature of the Orphic mysteries has so far remained unexplored, despite hints in Bieman
1988: 147-9 and Brooks-Davies in SpE. pp 485-7.
The Hymns address various deities, supplicating their blessing and influence (as
such, they mesh readily with the practices of Renaissance white magic or 'occult
philosophy': Awareness of their content, and of the general aura of Renaissance Orphism
that Spenser - as a poet absorbed by the philosophies of love and keen to prove himself a
leading English poet aware of all modem movements and areas of knowledge - can be
supposed to have alert to, provokes the following reading of the Am-Epith Volume:
Spenser, through Orphically blind Cupid (Am 8), explores the psychological and
philosophical consequences of human love asking, essentially, how it relates to divine
love. What makes Am more than incidentally Orphic is its Cupid symbolism: the fact that
each sonnet is, as it were, a darting Cupid through frustration and bafflement, to
understanding and illumination. Moreover, Am develops to the point of betrothal, yet
proceeds to stress uncertainty, fragmentation, and failure to reach illumination, until it
climaxes in agonised separation and solitude (Am 86-9), a mood remembered at the
beginning of Epith with the statement that the poet will sing 'unto himself alone'. Now
this statement is preceded by an allusion to Orpheus's and his bride, it seems that we are
to link the references to solitude to Orpheus's own after Eurydice was killed on their
wedding day by a snake bite (see Epith lines 10, 16, 17, 18) - a snake already recalled, by
implication at least, at the opening of Am 86 ('Venomous tongue, tipped with vile adder's
sting). Then, in Am 88, the lover wander[s] as in darkness of the night'- but, we are to
infer, without the illumination that should, in Orphic thought, lic at the heart of night (see
Epith lines 315-27)
The anacreontics follow. Their main character is again blind Cupid, who enacts a
symbolic ritual or reunion through the Neo-Platonic/Orphic idea of love's bittersweetness (honey and the bee sting) as a preparation for Epith, the first stanza of which
marks a return to the solitary Orphic poet who then proceed: to sing reunion into

existence through a wedding that, despite its echoes of ancient epithalamia and its strong
Protestant flavour, is also an Orphic mystery. Prepared for by various clues (the naming
of Orpheus, the invocations of the Hours and Graces, etc.: see Epith lines 10-18 and lines
98-102, 103), the Orphic rationale becomes dominant with the advent of Night (to whom
Orphic Hymn 3 is addressed). This is succeeded by the roll-call of evil spirits,
inauspicious Hadean birds, etc. (st. 19), which suggests on the one hand the exorcism of
the folk fear of the dark, on the other, a landscape of death - a death which the lovers will
unite (in Renaissance Orphism love was equated with Night and Death because only
through dying to imperfection could the perfect union of love be achieved. But note
Spenser's joke: he and his bride enjoy an ecstatic physical union, not an Orphic postmortem one. So that, although the three figures invoked in st. 20 - Silence, Peace and
sleep - were all, like Night, central to Orphic ritual and thus contribute to the poem's
Orphic cast (Epith lines 353, 354, 355), we sense that Spenser's handling of the Orphic
mystery of Eros and Death is, in the end, even more jesting than Shakespeare's in Romeo
and Juliet. And yet it is also much more. serious. For his Orphic invocations are deeply
personal and heartfelt charms against the unthinkable horror of the first Orpheus who was
left alone to mourn after his wedding but before the wedding night.
It may be worth concluding by remarking that Epith's frequent use of the Song of
Songs (in which it complements Am, itself full of echoes of the Song: e.g. Am 64, 65 7 67,
70, 77; Epith lines 23-5, 74-8, 167 etc.) is consonant with the Orphic reading offered
here, since the Song was read by, for example, Pica della Mirandola as an ecstatic
expression of Solomon's desire for union with the divine.

2.0 Verse forms in Amoretti and Epit/talamion

The sonnet was a thirteenth-century invention with a fairly complex history,
particularly in Italy, where Petrarch may be considered, for our purposes here, the main
practitioner. The Petrarchan sonnet was divided into a group of eight lines (octet)
rhyming abbaabba, followed by a group of six (sestet) typically rhyming cdecde (the
pattern varies but never includes a rhyming couplet). English antecedents for Am, usually
with the iambic pentameter line as their norm, include the sonnets by Wyatt and Surrey,
the latter having established what became known as the 'Shakespearean' sonnet, with its
three linked quatrains and terminal couplet rhyming: abab cdcd efefgg.
This was a favourite form with Elizabethan practitioners of the sonnet long after
Surrey's death in 1547 and the publication of his and Wyatt's lyrics in Tottl's Miscellany
(1557). Of the best known of the sequences that emerged from the sonnet vogue that
followed the publication of Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella in 1591, Samuel Daniel's
Delia (1592) adhered to it throughout, as does Michael Drayton in Idea's Mirror (1594),
and Fulke (1633). Sidney himself had preferred the Petrarchan form (with occasional
modifications), while Henry Constable in Diana (1592) had adopted variants of the
Petrarchan pattern on the lines of abba acca dedeff.

48

Spenser didn't invent the form he uses in Am (abab bcbc cdcd ee, the quatrains
being inter-linked in a manner reminiscent of the rhyme-royal stanza). Nevertheless, he is
its most skilful and celebrated practitioner. It should also be noted that, although there
appears to be no precedent for a sequence concluded by an epithalamMn, the sonnet
sequence as practised by Sidney. Greville and others - including Shakespeare himself was a mixed affair: Astrophil and Ste/la is interspersed with songs, as was Caelica;
Shakespeare's sonnets (probably written in the late 1590s even though not published until
1609) end with anacreontics.
Epith, has a stanzaic structure that derives from the Italian and Provencal
Canzofle: a fairly long poem with stanzas of varying length (from seven to twenty lines in
Petrarch's examples of the form), each stanza divided into three parts, the first two
similar, the last dissimilar. The poem ended with a short commiato, or envoy-stanza, and
there was no set rhyme-scheme or metre. The stanza length of Epith varies slightly
(seventeen to eighteen lines, excluding the one-line refrain) and, it has a commiato (of
seven lines). Epith is metrically variable, too, with the basic iambic pentameter unit
interrupted by the three symmetrically-spaced short (trimeter) lines per stanza and the
refrain's alexandrine (the twelve-beat line familiar from French sixteenth-century verse).
It would, however, be misleading to refer Epith to the canzone without mentioning that
the canzone is a close relative of the ode; for in the end it is a moot point whether
Spenser's poem should be called canzone or ode. (An ode is, briefly, a ceremonious lyric
of considerable length with an elaborate stanza structure of varying line totals and line
lengths.) In addition, Epith is influenced by ancient epithalamia. It is to Catullus 61 and
62, specifically, that Spenser is indebted to the idea or refrains in marriage songs: the
device is foreign to both canzone and ode.

3.0 Spenser 's Poetic Device

[Edmund Spenser in his poems tries to attend two difficult tasks namely (1) to
express his meaning rightly and (2) to help his readers to understand the right meaning. It
is evident then that Spenser throughout his literary career "adopts a variety of defensive
and self-defensive postures to protect his texts from potential misuse, from their being, in
his words, either misconstrued or misconstructed" (Introduction, Spenser and the Motives
of Metaphor. A. Leigh Deneef.)
What actually Spenser attempts to do in his works is writing things in such a way
that the reader is able to grasp his meaning rightly and the 'wrong-speakers' and
'fault-finders' are not allowed to misinterpret it. "The strategies by which Spenser yokes
writing and hearing, teaching and learning are many and complex." (A. Leigh Deneef).
His poetic works contain his argumentscomments on his workswhy he wrote them
or what his aim was, how he has conveyed his ideas, and what sort of images and
references he has used for what specific purposes. .Spenser, like the classical writers and
many Renaissance artists, believes in an Idea, which is an absolute Idea, which resides
hidden in the mind of the poet. The poet tries to project this idea in words by choosing an
/
49

appropriate metaphor. Now this metaphor which embodies the Idea is explicated or
expressed in words. When the poet makes an effort to project the absolute idea through a
metaphor and then in words, he makes use of various resources (as Spenser does),
classical, mythological, astronomical, Christian etc. In order to make the concept clear to
the readers, Spenser is doing in his poems what Sir Philip Sidney expects of poetry.
According to Sir Philip Sidney the absolute idea exists in the. mind of the poet.
This Idea which often remains, 'unforgotten' or 'hidden' is recalled through a metaphor
then this metaphor which actually epitomises the Idea is presented to the world in the
verbal form.
Now read the extract from the Introduction to Spenser and the Motives of
Metaphor to understand what Spenser is doing in his Epithalamion.]
In the Apology, Sidney argues "Poesy, is an art of imitation (P. 79). Although
such "imitation" glances occasionally at conventional descriptions of poetry's relatin to
an exterior world, Sidney is more interested in how mimesis orders and controls the
internal process of poetic making. Xenophon, to cite his own example, "imitates" in his
poem an , Idea within his mind. He makes the Idea manifest, that is, by creating two
metaphors of ita conceptual conceit and a verbal text. If we think of this process in
linguistic terms, we might say that Xenophon begins with an abstract noun, "Rule" or
"Right Rule." His first mimetic and metaphorizing act is to conceive an infinitive by
which that Idea can be activated"to rule." Finally, he fashions a particular character,
who acts according to that infinitive and who can therefore serve as a verbal metaphor of
actual "ruling."
Sidney himself hints at such a linguistic paradigm when he addresses, significantly, the problem of poetic mireading. Arguing against mysomousoi, or poet-haters,
Sidney notes that these railers frequently misinterpret and thus falsely imitate the most
excellent of literary texts. When Agrippa ironically condemns science and Erasmus
ironically commends folly, the poet-haters misconstrue their witty jests as a license to
carp at all learning. "But for Erasmus and Agrippa," Sidney writes, "they had another
foundation, than the superficial part would promise." Their intentions and meanings, that
is, were concealed behind the ostensibly lite?al words of their texts. In failing to recognize that fact, the poet-haters have read like all ignorant "faultfinders, who will correct
the verb before they understand the noun, and confute others' knowledge before they
confirm their own".
Sidney's example is susceptible to two different interpretations, but both illustrate
the mimetic and metaphorizing process he envisions. His noun clearly represents the
Ideas Erasmus and Agrippa had in mind. The verb may represent the Erasmian or
Agrippan text, the verbalization of the Idea, which has been fashioned by, or taken its
formal shape from, the infinitive fore-conceit. In this case, the poet-haters have failed to
understand the metaphor that is the text, as well as the true subject (the Idea) to which the
metaphor points. Sidney may, however, be suggesting a broader linguistic model. The
verb of his statement may refer to the railing of the poet-haters and thus to the ethical

us]

actions which the poetic texts incite. The texts themselves offer illustrations of the
conceptual options to rail and therefore represent limited manifestations of the poets'
Ideas. The poet-haters, failing to understand the metaphoric relation between Idea and
conceit, imitate the wrong part of speech. In this interpretation the entire poetic act is
embraced by Sidney's three terms: the noun is the poet's Idea; the fore-conceit is the
infinitive poem; and the verb is the reader's subsequent ethical work. Obviously, such a
model is here used to explore problems of wrong reading, but we may glimpse in the
process a hint of the way such reading conditions further making: the poet-haters, who
initially " misconstrue" the poets words, end by "misconstructing" their own ethical
activities. To misread is a metaphorical adumbration of a miswriting, and he who is a
"faultfinder" becomes, in Sidney's eyes, a subsequent "wrong-speaker."
Later in the Apology, Sidney fashions a debate between a philosopher and an
historian. The debate begins in earnest when the historian argues that he teaches an active
virtue whereas the philosopher teaches only a disputative virtue, pr, as Sidney rephrases
it, the philosopher "giveth the precept, and the other the example" (p. 84). Both
disciplines, he then argues, are incomplete educationally because each provides but half
the necessary truth. The poet, however, who "coupleth the general notion with the
particular example," participates in and completes both studies.
Again Sidney implies a linguistic model. The Idea, as an abstract universal, is the
special province, the object and the subject, of philosophy. Particular texts or works, a
instances of experiential contingencies, are the province of history. Poetry serves as the
mimetic and metaphoric relation between the two (it "coupleth" them). It demonstrates
how the noun-Ideas of philosophy are bodied forth in the gerund-texts of history by
providing the formal and activating principle of mimesis, the infinitive fore-conceit.
The linguistic model proposed in the Apology, is a succinct summation of
common Renaissance assumptions about how poetry is made and used. It is clear,
however, that these notions are not ours. We hardly conceive of Xenophon's Cyrus
inspiring other Cyruses, and the whole concept of mimesis makes us uncomfortable. Yet
unless we understand how Sidney's poetic process unites both poet and reader in the same
act of metaphoric imitation, we may fail to see why reading and writing are equally
problematic for a poet like Spenser.....
(Comment on Epithalamion) Let us clarify Sidney's scheme by means of a
Spenser poem. Behind the Epithalam ion lies the originating abstract Idea, Love. Spenser's
first mimetic act was to fashion that Idea into a fore-conceit capable of giving both direction and form to his subsequent verbal narrative. In this case, we can propose the
infinitive to love as Spenser's conceit. Each element of the narrative then imitates this
conceit by bodying it forth in particular verbal acts of loving. In theory, this is true not
only of the characters in Spenser's poemlover, beloved, priest, nymphs, merchants'
daughters, all demonstrate activities or ways of lovingbut also of its images, its
structures, and, of course, its themes. For example, the process by which the single torch
in stanza 2 grows steadily to "a thousand torches flaming bright" in stanza 23, and that by
which the solitary voice of the lover singing to himself becomes an ever-expanding choir

51

of earthly and heavenly anthems are verbal metaphors of the way love flows outward
from the blessed pair to embrace and be embraced by all of creation. They are speaking
to love. Or,
pictures of particularised loving and again imitate various ways in which
more exactly, we see that the conceiflo love is the principle, which fashions all the
discrete verbal acts of loving into a metaphoric unity. If we take the additional step of
asking what universal is metaphorically revealed in the multiple options to love, we arrive
at the originating Idea, Love.
What, then, does the Epithalarnion teach us? Not individual acts of loving, but
why and how to love. It teaches us why we must and how we can refashion our own
loving to the Idea that Love is. Thus we can say that each stage of Spenser's making
involves the formation of a metaphor. The conceit metaphorically speaks the Idea, just as
the text metaphorically speaks the conceit. And Sidney, therefore, can conclude that
poetry is a "representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth to speak metaphorically."
Metaphorically here refers primarily to the internal stages of mimetic making; yet the
poet's Idea is an analogue to that innate in the mind of the reader, just as both are
metaphors of the true Idea of Love-as-Marriage existing in the mind of God. Mimesis and
metaphor thus imply and implicate each other.
Although we have been emphasising the poet's stages of writing, we have also
hinted at the reader's obligation when confronted by a text like the Epithalarn ion: he must
reverse the mimetic process of the poet. Whereas the poet transfers an Idea into a text, the
reader must transfer the text into an Idea. He must disembody the textual particulars back
into the conceit and the Idea out of which they were originally bodied forth. He can
accomplish this task only by understanding why and how the text is metaphoric.
Recognizing that, he will be led to the abstract principles the text imitates. Sidney
suggests the following scheme: the reader's senses receive the poem's images and
speaking pictures; his imagination perceives its structure or ground-plot; his reason discursively understands the fore-conceit; his intellect meditates on the Idea; and his will
promotes the subsequent imitative action.
The final step is the most difficult since it transfers the reader from a literary to an
ethical actionand since it depends upon several prior achievements. First, the reader must
recognize the fore-conceit as a metaphoric imitation; second, he must understand that as
an infinitive, the conceit provides the model by which any Idea becomes an action; and
third, he must realize that the conceit can direct his ethical imitation just as it directs the
poet's verbal imitation. Once the reader of the Epithalamion has learned why and how
Spenser has:made that text, he will have recognized the Idea of Love-as-Marriage and the
model by which to love. He can then imitate the poet' "art of imitation": he can body
forth in his own actions the Idea in his own mind, which the poem has now illuminated. It
is important to be clear on this analogy: both poet and reader imitate an Idea by bodying
it forth in particular and concrete work, verbal in the first instance, moral in the second.
The conceit, the mimetic model by which such figuring forth is accomplished, thus draws
poet and reader into the same activity of making. Such an analogy has widespread
implications for all Renaissance poetry. It will allow Spenser, for example, to argue
consistentlythat writing poetry is a moral activity and that moral activity is poetic

52

making. If the reader is envisioned, therefore, as a potential maker, the poet can be seen
as a preceding reader. "Rightly to devise" and "to read aright" may ultimately be
collapsed into a single metaphoric activity.
We can support this conception of the reading process by looking briefly at
another Renaissance theorist, Marsilio Ficino. Discussing an architectural Idea, Ficino
argues:
In the beginning, an architect conceives an idea of the building, like an Idea in the
soul. Then he builds, as nearly as possible, the kind of house he has thought out.
Who will deny..that the house is a body, and that it is very much like the
incorporeal idea of the builder in likeness to which it was made? Furthermore, it
isto be judged like the idea more because of a certain incorporeal plan than
because of its matter. Therefore, subtract its matter, if you can. You can indeed
subtract it in thought, but leave the plan; nothing material or corporeal will remain
to you. On the contrary, these two will be exactly the same internally, both the
plan which comes forth from the builder and the plan which remains
[unmaterialized in the mind of] the builder.
Ficino's "plan," because it is defined generically ("the kind of house he has thought out"),
is a fore-conceit, a first metaphoric imitation of the Platonic Idea of House. It is clear that
a reader following Ficino's instructions would de-materialize the text-house in order to
perceive the form, which that text imitates. By that means, he learns as well the mimetic
process and the precise metaphoric stages by which the Idea of a building can be bodied
forth into a particular house.
With the Epithalatnion, then, we could say that the reader must read through the
textual images, structures, and characters to the form, the conceit, which the text imitates.
Having done so, he learns why and how the maker made that text. He learns, in short, the
infinitive model by which all human actions body forth human absolutes- virtues, vices,
or what else. It is for this reason that both Sidney and Spenser consistently use the term
"conceit rather than "Idea" to refer to the unique lesson of poetry. The Ideas are in the
human mind; what man must learn, and what poetry teaches him, is the model by which
such Ideas can be made manifest in the actions of his will.
As we know, Sidney and Spenser conceive of poetry as playing a far larger role
than simply teaching ethical action. For Spenser, poetry becomes instrumental in societal
and religious reform. Again and again, his poems take us beyond the problems of isolated
and individual characters to political and social issues. The private speaker who begins
the Epithalamion has, by its close, been brought into public relation not only with his
beloved but also with his neighbours, his country, his church, and even with all the
blessed harmony of saved Christian souls both past and future. Spenser clearly thinks of
the song that is the Epithalamion as itself an instrument whereby such societal and cosmic concords are effected, or at least as a means by which we, as poets and readers, can
actively participate in such a wedding, refashioning ourselves according to the model of
heavenly love. Sidney also conceives of poetry in these terms, whether he is thinking

53

about England's participation, through its literature, in the European Protestant League, or
whether he is thinking more specifically about poetry's role in reforming individual mar:
This purifying of witthis enriching of memory, enabling of judgement, and
enlarging of conceitwhich commonly we call learning, under what name so
ever it come forth, or to what immediate end so ever it be directed, the final end is
to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse
by their clayey lodgings, can be capable of.... to know, and by knowledge to lift
up the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying his own divine essence.
[p. 82]
To Sidney, the ' t ending end" of poetry is nothing less than the highest of Christian
callingsthe reformation of man.
Obviously, both Sidney and Spenser inherit much of this urge towards renovation
and reformation from the humanist tradition. But to concede this point is not also to admit
that the reformation of man is a naive ideal arbitrarily grafted onto their poetic theories.
Rather, it is a careful and logical extension of those theories. In fact, it is precisely that
extension that underlies and gives point to Sidney's analogy between the poet-maker and
the heavenly Maker. The poet, like all men, is a narrative character in God's Poem, the
Book of Creation. By learning God's "art of imitation," he learns why and how he himself
has been bodied or figured forth and, in turn, how to fashion or refashion himself
according to the Idea by which he was originally made. The poet, in short, is the true
metaphor of God: he teaches us how to imitate the image or Idea of divinity which has
been implanted in our souls, as well as how to imitate the process of imitation by which
that Idea has been bodied forth to speak metaphorically, to call us to metaphor and to the
mimetic activity of making metaphors. It is ultimately this task that both legitimizes and
directs the poet's vocation as Sidney and Spenser understand it. And it is this task both
authors have in mind when they consider the responsibilities of the Right Poet...
Poetry is an art of imitation that figures forth in order to speak metaphorically.
This assertion, is both definition and warning. The defensive postures we find being
adopted by Renaissance poets like Sidney and Spenser are concessions to that warning,
an open acknowledgement that the imitation poetry calls us to can be abused and
misused. The most common manifestation of this awareness is the routine distinction
both authors make between those poets and readers who remain faithful to the fact that
poetry speaks metaphorically and those who would reduce poetry to literality. For
Sidney, this orientation is demanded by the very nature of his taskto answer those who
have slandered the good name of poetry by calling its literal effects into' question, and to
remind such literary antagonists (both "wrong-speakers" and "faultfinders") what poetry
is and does. For Spenser, the rhetoric of defence would seem to be a freer choice: he is
not answering particular charges against poetry, and he has no apparent antagonists. Yet
the frequency with which Spenser places either his own voice or his poems on the
defensive suggests that the freedom of this choice is not as great as we might expect. Indeed, it could be argued that it is precisely Spenser's acceptance of the Sidneyan theory
that poetry speaks metaphorically that commits him as well to Sidney's rhetoric of

54

defence. For Sidney's theory does more than define the metaphoric nature of the poetic
act: it also identifies the literalizing abuses to which that act is susceptible. These abuses
range from internal errors of the poet's own pen (copying the ancients literally rather than
using them as metaphoric ground-plots for profitable inventions, indecorously mixing
disparate generic models without accommodating them to a broader metaphoric conceit),
to epistemological errors regarding the poet's language (literal-minded dichotomies of
fact or fiction; truth or lie, precept or example, which are avoided only by understanding
how poetry speaks metaphorically), to external threats posed by a variety of either poor
or perverse readers (presuming that the sign of Thebes on a stage door identifies a literal
place, or simply refusing, like Alexander of Pherae, to see any metaphoric relation
between the literal text and literal human experience).
Spenser-was particularly alert to this aspect of Sidney's work. As a consequence,
his desire to announce himself as a Sidneyan Right Poet was, in his own mind, dependent
upon his ability to marshal an adequate defence against the abuses Sidney identifies. He
had, that is, to prove his own claims of right speaking and to guard his texts against the
threat of wrong readings by making the metaphoric nature of the poems a constant and
central focus. The defensive strategies he adopts in order to accomplish these goals
occasion much of the drama of his poetry. It is possible to argue that Spenser's typical
poem is shaped largely by an internal dialogue with itself, one voice continually opening
the textual words, figures, and genres to greater metaphoric extension and the other
continually striving to fix and enclose them in literal reductions. The first voice is usually
characterised as either a true poet or a right reader; the second is a fictional antagonist,
either false poet or false reader, against which the first voice must constantly defend
itself.
Spenser and the Motives of Metaphor::
A Leigh Deneef, Published by Duke University Press - 1982

4.0

The Triumph Over Hasty Accidents: A Note on the Symbolic Mode of the

(This article discusses the significance of the envoy and the use of symbolic mode in Epithalamion. Read the italicised sentences
attentively.)

Spenser's Epithalamion has recently been shown to be of greater complexity as a

poetic artifact than had been suspected. The number symbolism which A. K. Hieatt has, to
my mind convincingly, demonstrated for the poem,' indicates the care with which
The Modem Language Review, Lxl, No. 2 (1966), 163-74. Copyright 1966 by The Modern Humanities Research
Association. Reprinted by permission of The Modem Humanities Research Association and of the Editors.
I. See Hieatt's Short fine's Endless Monument: The Symbolism of the Numbers in Edmund Spenser 's Epithalamion (New
York. 1960). And see his 'The Daughters of Horus: Order in the Stanzas of Epithalamion, "in W. Nelson, ed., Form and
Convention in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser (New York. 1961), pp. 103--21. Spenser citations are Spenser Minor
Poems, ed. E. Dc Selincourt (Oxford, 1910).

55

Spenser composed his poem, the great importance he apparently attached to it. One of
the puzzles raised by Mr. Hieatt's discovery is why Spenser should have done so: what in
the nature of the poem warranted this expenditure of energy and ingenuity?
I attempt an answer to this question by dealing first with a part of the poem that
has always seemed very puzzling to me: the envoy. No critical account I have seen does
justice to the obscurities of the envoy, and the hypothesis, which this essay proposes is
intended to resolve at least some of these. At the same time it has necessitated another
hypothesis, that of a continuity between Amoretti and Epithalamion. In short, I am
proposing that the envoy represents the climax of a deliberate progression that moves
from the sonnets to the marriage song. And it is in terms of this progression, and the
Epithalatnion's special place in it, that I think much of its unusual complexity can be
understood.
In general terms, the progression is one from romantic to conjugal love and all
that this implies; in aesthetic terms it involves the transition from an essentially Platonic
to a sacramental mode of symbolization. But the word progression is misleading here
insofar as it connotes a straightforward linear development. On the surface, indeed, a
series of love poems culminating in a marriage song looks straightforward, not to say
conventional (even if at Spenser's time it was not). But the envoy itself helps to warn us
that the appearances are deceptive: it reminds us that the lovers are not merely (or
primarily) figures of literary convention but also actual persons subject to the
vicissitudes and discontinuities of actual experience. Finally, it seems to indicate that the
Epithalamion is the poet's personal response to such discontinuities: more than a "mere"
epithalamium, in other words, it must test and extend the very nature and function of such
a poem.
Whereas in the previous stanzas the poet invoked the powers of heaven and earth
to set off his wedding day as special and auspicious in the envoy he addresses his poem
itself.Song made in lieu of many ornaments.
With which my loue should duly haue bene dect.
Which cutting off through hasty accidents,
Ye would not stay your dew time to expect.
But promist both to recompens,
Be vnto heir a goodly ornament,
And for abort time an endlesse moniment.
(II. 427-33)
Some of the questions that present themselves here may be stated as follows. Why
is the envoy there at all? What function does it serve? What are the many ornaments with
which his love should have been decked? What are the hasty accidents? What is the due
time? What are the antecedents of "which" in the third line, and of "both" in the fifth?
Obviously, first of all the envoy functions to state the special purpose which the
poem is intended to serve. By breaking with the formal rhythm of the preceding stanzas, it

56

-L

pulls the reader up short and invites him to contemplate the meaning of the
ornament-monument which the poet is presenting to his bride. Further, as we shall try to
show, the envoy serves to place the wedding song in the context of the personal drama,
which began with the sonnet sequence.
That the "many ornaments" refer to poems is suggested by the idea of
poem-as-ornament in the envoy itself and in the beginning of the Epithalam ion ("Ye
learned sisters which haue oftentime/beene to me ayding, others to adorne. . . .). The
poet) in that case, feels he should have adorned his love with many poems. but that the
Epithalam ion, "cutting off" these many, is now to serve as the single ornament-poem in
their stead For it has "promist both to reconipens," that is, to make up for the "many
ornaments" and the "hasty accidents."
The meaning of these ornaments and accidents becomes clearer if we invoke our
second hypothesis, namely that the Amoretti and Epithalamion, published together in
1595, constitute a unit. 3 Now one of the striking features of the sonnet sequence is that it
stops abruptly as if "through hasty accidents" with the separation of the lovers. The
"many ornaments" of the envoy, I therefore suggest, refer to those sonnets that should
"duly" have been written to celebrate the happy reunion of the lovers. These were never,
in fact, composed, and in their stead the Epithalamion shaped itself in the poet's
imagination.
This idea is reinforced by a major element of continuity between sonnet sequence
and wedding song: an overarching time scheme plotted in the Amoretti and leading into
the "dew time" of the Epithalamion. For the due time the latter would not stay to await is,
I think, precisely the time, which it celebrates: the actual wedding day. In a partly witty
but obscure way, therefore, the envoy seems to say that though the poem was written for a
special occasion, it is not merely occasional or conventional, but the product of an
imperious inner impulse.
The "incompleteness" of the Amoretti, as well as their continuity with the
Epithalamion, is intimated in a number of ways. Thus the love affair follows a
well-defined time sequence: New Year (Sonnet 4), Spring (19), one year (60), a second
New Year (62), Easter (68), and Spring (70); but with the separation of the lovers ,the
seasonal progression breaks off on a note of wintry desolation:
Lyke as the Culuer on the bared bough,
Sits mourning for the absence of her mate:
and in her songs sends many a wishful] vow,
for his retume that seemes to linger late.
So I alone now left disconsolate,
Mourne to my selfe the absence of my lone.

(Sonnet 89)

See A. C. Judson The Life of Edmund Spenser (Baltimore, 1945). P.172.

The intervening anacreontics may serve as a way of making the break between ,4more!ti and
Epithalam ion, on which see below.

57

The Epithalamion's opening address to the Muses alludes to the conclusion of the
Amoretti:
Helpe me mine owne loues prayses to resound,
Ne let the same of any he enuide:
So Orpheus did for his own bride,
So I unto my selfe alone will sing,
The woods shall to me answer and my Eccho ring.
(II. 14-18. My italics)
The poem is born of a sense ofprivation, and the Orpheus simile indicates what is
to be its major task: to invoke, by the magic of its music, the presence of the bride. And
here we see another way in which the wedding song brings to fulfilment what has been a
"failure in the sonnet sequence. The image of the beloved that the sonneteer cultivates in
his own soul "Her temple fayre is built within my mind,/ in which her glorious image
placed is/on which my thoughts do day and night attend" (22)reflects in its
development his growth in love. 4 But at the point when he. needs it most to sustain him,
the image fails him. The crisis foreshadowed in Sonnet 78, comes to a climax in Sonnet
88, where, with the absence of the Lady, the interior image dissolves because it is utterly
unconsoling.
Ne ought I see, though in the clearest day,
when others gaze vpon theyr shadowes vayne:
but th'onely image of that heauenly ray,
whereof some glance doth in mine eie remayne
of which beholding the Idaea playne,
through contemplation of my purest part:
with light thereof! doe my selfe sustayne,
And thereon feed my loue-affamisht hart.
But with such brightnesse whylest I fill my mind,
I starue my body and mine eyes doe blynd.
The precise nature of this crisis is and must remain obscure. But we may imagine
it as followed by a period during which the lover meditates on the relationship which the
sonnets have celebrated and the claims his love will have upon him as a person without
the mask of the poet in a world of accidents and impermanent feelings. From the
meditation there emerges the Epithalamion; "promist both to recompens," it will deal
with and make up for the predicament on which the Amoretti had 'foundered" It will
assert an image of the bride that will outlive the night of separation and the vagaries of
time. How can it do so when the sonnets have already declared the inadequacy of the
image? It will do so by means of a poetic mode especially designed to come to terms with,
if not to "conquer," Time. On this point above all, [believe, Spenser brought to bear the
See Ficino: "amana amati figuram suo sculpit in animio. Fit itaque amantis animus speculum in quo amati

relucet imago."Commentarium in Convivium, in Opera Omnia (Facsimile edition, Turin, 1959),

Tomus I, 1329. Also A.Chastel Marsile Ficin et l'Art (Geneva and hue,
involving the inner image are numbers 8, 45, 51 and 61.
U

58

1954), P. 119.

Vol. II,

Other sonnets

full resources of his imagination, and the resultant strategy can best be understood in
terms of the Pythagorism of sixteenth-century Humanist aesthetics.5
Here Mr. Hieatt's discovery of a complex symbolism in the Epithalamion's stanza
and line numbers is of capital importance. He has shown that its
numberscorresponding to the hours of the day, the days of the year, and so
forthmake the poem into a symbol of all time, "a Calendar for euery yeare. "Now this
framework of an ideal time fits in exactly with a cardinal feature of the Pythagorean
aesthetic, namely the hidden or implicit harmony, which the artist was supposed to
impose upon his work. Thus the numerical-symbolic structure of the Epithalamion
serves, in Pythagorean fashion, to express its secret affinity with the mathematical order
of the universe andfunctions as a means of invoking quasi-magical powers.
For combined with its demand for an abstract structure or pattern, Humanist
Pythagorism had a conception of artistic production as a kind of magical ars ministra
naturae. 6 The artist's imagination must enter into, become identified with Nature's
generative course, and produce images as by her agency. This is the same idea as Pico's
natural magic which, 'in calling forth into the light as if from their hiding places the
powers scattered and sown in the world by the loving kindness of God, does not so much
work wonders as diligently serve a wonder-working nature." Pico says,
Having more searchingly examined into the harmony of the universe and
having clearly perceived the reciprocal affinity of natures (the magician)
brings forth into the open the miracles concealed in the recesses of the
world, in the depths of nature, . . . just as if she herself were their maker;
and, as the farmer weds his elms to vines, even so does the magus wed
earth to heaven, that is, he weds lower things to the endowments and
powers of higher things .7
The embodiment of this Humanist dream of man's power over nature was the
poet-magician Orpheus. 8 To this figure, it will be remembered, Spenser relates himself in
the first stanza and it is indeed with an Orphic voice that he sings his epithalamium. He
knows that natural magic commands nature by obeying it, that he "conquers" time by
submitting to it (thus fashioning a "short time's endless monument'). Hence in
demanding of the sun "let this one day be myne" (L 125) the poet at the same time
See R. Kelin, "Forme et L'lntelligible," in E. Castelli, ed., (Jmanesimo et Simbolismo (Padua, 1958), pp.
102-21; also A. Chaste l , Ar/el flumanisme a Florence au Temps de Laurent le Magniflque (Paris, 1959),
pp 99ff. For the manipulation of time in Renaissance poetry, see L. Nelson, Baroque Lyric Poetry (new
Haven, 1961)
See Klein, especially pp. 1041., III.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, E. Cassirer and others, eds., (Chicago. 1959).
PP, 248-9. For the poet's imitation of Nature in her inner drive (natura naturans) see further H. S. Wilson,
"Some Meanings of 'Nature' in Renaissance Literary Theory,' Journal of the History of Ideas, 11(1941),
43417f; and compare the use of energeia by Puttenham, Elizabethan Critical Essays, G. G. Smith. ed., (oxford.
1904), II, 148 and n. 419); scaliger's efficacia is echoed by Sidney (Eli:. Crit. Ess., 1, 157 and n., 386).
See A. Chastet, Are et Hunianisine, P.272; and in his Marsile Ficin et /Art see "Prornethee et Orphee,"
especially PP. 175-6, and" Connaissance Orphique et Magic," PP.71 ff., 941.

MIA,

through the very form of his poem gives the progress of the sun its due, translating the
rhythm of nature into the poem's numbers, for these are also the hours through which the
sun moves (cf Li. 278ff). The zodiacal motion in the poet's wit is in harmony with that of
the heavens.
That time is thus of the essence in the Epithalamion appears not only from the
poem's temporal structure but also from the basically temporal nature of its major
symbols. Following Mr. Hieatt's lead, we have seen how the sun, and its movement (sol
temporis auc tolA: Macrobius), serves as paradigm for the poem's movement. Night, out of
which the sun emerges and to which it returns, plays an analogous though more complex
role, and may serve as our first and principal example of the Epithalamion's symbolic
mode. Much of the imagery, it may be noted in passing, which in the Amoretti served as
part of the metaphoric play of the sonnet conceit, is taken up again in the Epithalamion.
There it is used, characteristically, to point simultaneously to an external reality in time
and to the inward activity of the mind, establishing a sense of mysterious congruence
between them.
The Amoretti ended in a metaphoric night, the Epithalamion begins in a literal
night: in terms of the day whose progression the poem imitates, it is still night when the
poem opens (and night again in its final stanzas). Night is thus) as it were, the source of
the day, which the poet tries to make his own, but it also comes to be felt as its potential
negation. "I wander as in darkness of the night," the poet had said in Sonnet 88, and the
associations of this statement linger on in the Epithalam ion. They have been well
described by Thomas Greene:
The poem is unconventional in the repeated expression it gives to the
ominous elements associated with night, the elements, which might potentially destroy the joy of the wedding and even the marriage. The induction
refers to mishaps raised by "death or love or fortune's wreck" in the lives
of those who have appeared earlier in Spenser's poems. The second stanza
refers to the vicissitudes of the courtship dramatised in the Amoretti, the
"Pains and sorrows past." and the Muses are asked to sing of "solace" as
well as of joy to the bride. At nightfall the appearance of Hesperus
occasions unconventional praise of the star for its guidance of lovers
"through the night's sad dread." This "sad dread" is elaborated two stanzas
below in the invocation to night
The ominous associations of darkness are evoked again, ....in the
last stanza, where the stars are described as torches in the temple of
heaven
that to us wretched earthly clods
In dreadful darkness lend desired light.
Here it is not only the marriage but the whole of human experience which
is menaced by the night's sad dread. Thus the threat of disaster, the
irrational fear of vaguely specified suffering, hovers faintly over the poem,

60

lending particular urgency to the concluding prayers. It is perhaps not too

fanciful to relate the wolves of the fourth stanza to this cluster of night
associations and to find in the decorative invocation to the "light-foot
maids" an added symbolic nuance. . .
This excellent account of Night in its negative, threatening aspects, needs only to
be extended and made more specific in one particular point. The "fear of vaguely
specified suffering" can be linked with the poet's anguish described in the last sonnets of
the Amoretti. Remembering the images of night and darkness with which the Ainoretti
concluded, and the Orpheus image in the first stanza of the Epithalamion, we can add: it
is out of this very night that the wedding must be evoked; in the face of its hostile, almost
demonic, forces the wedding day's resplendent actuality must be asserted.
A suggestion of this is to be found in the description of the sunrise, with the
continued appeal to the !v1use.s in stanza 2:
Early before the worlds light giuing lampe,
His golden beame vpon the hils doth spied,
Hauing disperst the nights vnchearefull dampe,
Doe ye awake, and with fresh lusty hed,
Go to the bowre of my beloued loue,
My truest turtle doue.
Bid her awake. . . .
(II. 19-25)
The sun rising and dispersing the night's dampness is, as the wording seems to
imply, a repetition of the first "Let there be light"; and the poem, an analogous creative
act, intends what the Muses are called upon to do: to rouse the bride out of the night of
absence and separation.
But the negative is only part of Night's symbolic significance in the poem. It is
balanced by a positive role such as appears in the sixth stanza for instance. As parent,
with Day, of the Hours, Night is shown to be also an integral element in the creative
dynamism at the heart of the poem's design:
But first come ye fayre houres which were begot
In loues sweet paradice, of Day and Night,
Which doe the seasons of the yeare allot,
And al that euer in this world is fayre
Doe make and still repayre.

(II.

98-102)
The Hours are the Horai of Greek mythology, identified variously with the seasons, as
giver offertility, ripeness, and so forth. But they are also the twenty-four segments of the
day, and thus point to the conception of time as an essentially generative process. The
other, destructive role of time is also hinted at, however, in the word repayre. We may
Thomas Greene. "Spenser and the Epithalarnic Convention," Comparative Literature, IX (1957), 226-7.

61

conclude that the creative and destructive are here seen as dual aspects of time
dialectically related: or that in the temporal process there is a negative element,
nothingness into which things pass but out of which they also come into being.
It is in the latter part of the poem that Night's dual role is emphatically restated:
Now welcome night, thou night so long expected,
That long dales labour doest at last defray,
And all my cares, which cruel] loue collected,
Hast sumd in one, and cancelled for aye;
Spread thy broad wing ouer my loue and me,
That no man may vs see,
And in thy sable mantle vs enwrap,
From feare of perrill and foule horror free,
Let no false treason seeke vs to entrap,
But let the night be calme and quietsome,
Without tempestuous storms or sad afray:
Lyke as when loue with great Alcmena lay,
When he begot the great Tirynthian groome'
Or lyke as when he with thy selfe did lie,
And begot Maiesty.

(IL 3:I531)

Night as the, sum of all 'cares' ('griefs and fears) embodies the negative role of
an antagonistic, destructive force. It symbolises the source of chaos, of hasty accidents
wreaking havoc with human existence, of time the destroyer, with which, as we saw, the
poet had to come to terms. The Epithalamion was his way of doing so, and the degree to
which it has succeeded in its task and wrought a redemption of time, is here symbolically
asserted: through this same night all the cares are now "cancelled for aye."
The role ofJove (embodiment ofpower and a kind of grace) hinted at in this and
the preceding stanza represents a striking parallel to that of the poet. Thus the bride is
compared to Maia, "when as Ioue her tooke/In Tempe, lying on the Jlowry gras,/Twixt
sleepe and wake" (II. 307-9 my italics); and as Jove descends and takes Maia, so the poet
has conjured the Muses, and through them the bride out of "sleep" and awakened her to
life in his soul as in his poem.
With Alcmena Jove momentarily made time stand still as he extended one night
into three (and made it fruitful). The poet has performed a similar if lesser feat in
incorporating the wedding dayhis dayin the timely-timeless structure of his poem.
Finally Jove lying with Night and begetting Majesty, quae mundum temperat omnem
(Fasti, v, 25), sum up most fully the genesis of the poem.
Majestic is surely the one adjective to apply to bride and poem, both in the
traditional and mythic Ovidian sense. But if we understand the mythological imagery in
an internal, spiritual sense, then night points to a state like that self absorption of the soul
when, as Dante describes it, the senses are extinguished and it is ready for the grace of

62

inspiration: into the soul's darkness there enters the "light formed in heaven'
('Purgatorio," xvii, 17). So Jove cohabiting with Night would parallel the sunrise
(described in stanza 2) seen as the light dai.ining upon the landscape of the soul. In both
cases it may be thought, the majesty of the visible world of day is engendered.
Aside from encompassing the ambivalence of Time's process. Night accordingly
expresses an ecstatic, timeless moment by which the imagination it enabled to divine the
10
creative ground at the source of this process. As such it is perhaps the most complex
figure, but its operation can be paralleled by the other major symbols of the poem. In
stanza 2, for instance, we are told that
Hymen is awake,
And long since readyforth his maske to moue,
With his bright Tead that flames with many a flake.
And many a bachelor to waite on him . .................... 11 --- 25-8)
The figure of Hymen reflects the image of the sun (at the beginning of this stanza)
waiting in the dark to move over the run of the horizon. It is set in dance-like motion as
the performer of the day' ceremonial, and this motion echoes the larger rhythmof the
day and of the sun, so that lower things are again wedded to the endowments of higher
things.
At the same time Hymen with his masque is none other than the epithalamium, the
embodied symbol of the poem itself The Muses, Nymphs, Graces, and Hours, therefore,
come to be seen as participants in this masque, as ifsprungftom its "Invention." But jut
as the processional masque of the sixteenth century created its setting by transforming the
actual social scene into an integral part, of its symbolic ritual, so the figures -of the
Epithalamion become more than allegories or symbols: each in turn and in its 'way is
made to unfold its traditional associations; thus fashioning a scene for the wedding.
The movement is from convention outward to the establishment of a natural and
social context, and the poetic principle involved is that of echo. This, as the refrain
indicates, is also the poem's fundamental device, and the Muses' role is paradigmatic in
this respect. Traditionally, they can "teach the woods and waters to lament"( I. 10), so
that the pastoral song finds its resonance from without: "The woods shall to you answer
and your Echo ring." So as the poet invokes the various figures, they come forth as an
echo to his command or song; he rediscovers them, as it were, out there, with their
multiple associations and functions. The echo is thus truly incremental: in .response to the

For the "intuition of becoming" see C. Poulet, Studies in 1-hanan Time, trans. E. Coleman (New York.
959). pp. 31-3. Also, Augustine's discussion of Time. Confessions, XI. xxvii ff.; J. F. Callahan. Four views of
flme in Ancieni Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.. ]948). Chapter 4, especially pp. 177111; and Plotinus,Enneadc,
Ill, vii. 13. There Is a multiplicity of sources, from Hesiod's Theogonv and the Orphic Hymn to Night'14:George
Chapman's The Shadow of Night (London, I 594).for Night as an ambivalent figure at once demonic and a
creative source. For Chapman's association of Night with "rapture." see M. C Bradbrook, The School ofMght: A
Study of Literary Relations/ups of Sir Walter Raleigh (Cambridge, 1936), 1W, 134-136.

Mi
63

(initially) single voice there is created a regular polyphony of voices which,

interpenetrating form an expanding context for the rite to be enacted.
By the end of the poem the image of Hymen's torch has undergone enormous
expansion to encompass the host of "other steirs
And ye high heauens, the temple of the gods,
In which a thousand torches flaming bright
Doe burne, that to vs wretched earthly clods,
In dreadful darkness lend desired fight. ..

(II. 409-12)

The image of the cosmic temple framing earthly existence here is itself the
culmination of a development that has its-antecedents in the Amoretti. There the temple
occurs apart of the metaphoric of the sonnet: the Lady's "temple fayre is built within my
mind. . . "(sonnet 22). A similar imagery is applied to the bride in the Epithalamion, but
no longer with merely internal reference:
all her body like a pallace fayre,
Ascending vppe with many a stately stayre,
To honors seat and chastities sweet bowre.

(II. 178-80)

The ascent from physical to spiritual and moral, into the inner chamber to see
"that which no eyes can see,/The inward beauty of her liuely spright" (II. 185-6), is
moreover, directly paralleled to the entry into the actual temple:
Open the temple gates vnto my Ioue,
Open them wide that she may enter in,...
And all the pillours deck with girlands trim,
For to recyue this Saynt with honour dew,
That commeth in to you.
-With trembling steps and humble reuerence,
She commeth in, before thalmighties yew,
Of her ye virgins learn obedience,
When so ye come into these holy places,
(II. 204-14)
To humble your proud faces. ...
Palace, royal throne of the mind (1. 194), and temple images fuse into the image
of the bride as at once real woman and saint in her own temple, a physical, moral, and
spiritual exemplar in one.
The command in the temple: "all the Posts adorne as doth behoue,/ And all the
pillours deck . . "(II. -.206-7) is echoed by that after the temple ceremony, at home:
"Sprinkle all the postes and wals with wine ...(I. 253). We can say that we have
movedfrom one "holy place" to another: for Bacchic feast and holy day (stanzas 14 and
1 5 sanctify even the home. Or else the temple and its ceremony hav expanded to include
the home and its feast, just as by the end of the poem the temple image has expanded to

64

SI

encompass the cosmos in a hallowing of all space: "And ye high heauens, the temple of
the gods,/In which a thousand torches flaming bright . . "(11409- 10).
The kind of symbolism that the poem achieves may best be called typological as
this term is now used in Dante criticism.' 'At the least, it represents an extension of the
typological principle insofar as it combines the visionary with the seise or authority of a
literal reality (thought to be) revealed by scripture or similarly sacred tradition. Thus we
might speak here of a twofold typological symbolism, Of which one is essentially Biblical:

the temple imagery, that is, draws upon the Solomon's temple and the pleromatic temple
of the New Jerusalem (Revelation, 21), and the architectural (and other) imagery ap lied
to the bride in stanza 10 is based upon the "epithalam ium " of the Song of Songs.' The
second
kind consists of the typology of the day or time and is essentially liturgical though
it
might also draw on a text like Ephesians 5:13-16:
For whatsoever is manifest, that same is light
Wherfore he sayth: Awake thou that slepest, and stond vppe from deeth, and
Christ shall geve the light.
Take hede therfore that ye walke circumspectly: not as foles: but as Wyse
redemynge the tyme: for the dayes are evyll. (Tyndal&s translation, 1534)

Poetically it is achieved through the inter-penetration of images; by which the

images of the imagination are wedded to the typical, the diurnally repeated phenomenon.
Thus Hymen, invoked for the unique occasion of this particular day, comes to participate
in the reality and power of the sun daily passage from night to day. In this sense, it is
another way of looking upon the event of dawn. '3
The concept of typological symbolism was introduced in part because I think that
if we combine it with the poem's ritual, incantatory manner we may be justified in seeing
the Epithalamion as a poetic analogue to the religious sacrament whose signs 'function
to transform man and the world on a supernatural level. Like the sacrament, the poem
may itself be regarded as a dramatic performance taking place in the poet's soul, in such
See J. Chydenius, The Typological Problem in Dante: A Study in the History of Medieval Ideas
(Copenhagen, 1958). Another term would be "figural": see E. Auerbach, "Figura," Scenes from the Drama
of European Literature (New York, 1959), Pp. 11-76. Spenser employed this kind of symbolism earlier in
Book I of The Faerie Queene.
12
See Israel Baroway. "The Imagery of Spencer and the Song of Songs" lEG.?., XXXIII (1934). 23-45.
For the sacramental and typological importance of Canticles, see jean Danielou, The Bible and the Liturgy
(Notre Dame, Ind. 1956), pp. 193ff.
' Both kinds of symbolism biblical and diurnal, are combined in the bride, who rise in a gradual birth out
ofdarkness. II. 93ff., 1481T As type of rising evening star, moon, sun (Il. 151, 154ff) she participates in the
celestial masque of Hymen. At the same time, the bride's existence as real woman is established by the
realistic social context projected: II. 159ff
14

Sister M. Laurentia Digges, Congreption of St. Joseph. Transfigured World: Design, Theme and Symbol
in Worship (New York. 1957). P. 25. See J. Danielou, The Bible and the Liturgy, p. 3. and Hooker's
Anglican view of the sacraments, of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, V, lvii (Everyman edition. II, 236).
Spenser was familer with the made poetice use of traditional medieval (catholic) sacramentalism, as
Beatrice Ricks shows "Catholic Sacramentals and Symbolism in Spenser's Faerie Queene, " lEG.?., LII
(1953),322-31.

65
0

a way that "the meaning of the symbolic words. Acts,. . are not only brought to mind but
are effected, caused, actually happen there.'
For-further illustration let us consider the typology of the solstitial holy day,
which culminates with the boldest stroke of literal realism At the homeward procession
the poet exclaims: 'Make feast ... now all this hue long day,/This day for euer to me
holy is" (II. 248-9). Next he proclaims it a holiday, calling fbi a general cessation from
profane labors:
Ring ye the bels, ye yong men of the towne,
And !eaue your wonted labors for this day:
This day is holy; doe ye write it down,
That ye for euer jt remember may.

(II.

261-4)
And finally conies the triumphant assErtion that this is literally a calendrical
holiday:
This day the sunne is in his chiefest hight\
With Barnaby thebright,
From whence declining daily by degrees,
He somewhat loseth of his heat and light,
When once the Crab behind his back he sees.
(II.
265-9)
Here the poem has achieved its greatest expansion: its symbols momentarily
become transparent, as it were, to the real sun and to real time. This is perhaps the
closest the poet can come in his mimesis of the sacrament. whose signs "effect what they
sign fr."
The day of the solstice itself is,s -then, the most perfect embodiment or analogue of
the poem. It signifies the apex of Time's plenitude ) and as a turning point in the annual
calendar when the sun (and thus time) seems temporarily to stand still, it represents an
ecstatic moment which, to men of earlier societies, afforded an extraordinary perspective
on the very rhythm of nature and the eternal pattern or powers controlling its course. As
in the poem, therefore, men experienced their existence as participating simultaneously
in a timeless, eternal order and in a temporal one. This conjunction may be the essence
of the holy; it signified a highly intensified mode of life in which existence was felt to be
charged with and taken out of itself by celestial vigour. These feelings found formal
expression in the festival, which enacted the cosmic event by participation, as it were.
Through ritual release from the profane time of everyday, the celebrants returned to a
"mythical dream-time ... located simultaneously at the beginning and outside of

15

Digges, p.26, See the ancient Greek concept of mousikd and the comments of the poem as

"performance" Nelson, Baroque Lyric Poetry PP. 71ff.

VV

evolution. ,,16 The ritual varied, but had two typical features: Dionyian revelry excess;
and ceremonial gesture, invocation, dance.
The solstitial holiday heightens the festal nature of the wedding and gives it an
added dimension. The Dionysian excess in stanza 14, "Poure out the wine without
restraint or stay /Poure not by cups, but by the belly full "UI. 250-I)) implies release
and festive immersion in the beneficent fullness of life corresponding to the "height" of
solar power of the next stanza. And there the singing and dancing about bonfirea
standard feature of Midsuinmerfestivals' 7points to ritual participation in the plenitude
.?f the sun's energy.
El

Now, in terms both of the year and clay, the sun is "declining..., by degrees"froin
"his chiefest hight." And the poet-lover impatiently urges it on its way: 'Hast three 0
fayrest Planet to thy home/Within the Westerne fome......(II. 282-3). And with nightfall
he dissolves the masque which has been his wedding song: "Now ceasse ye damsels"
(merchants' daughters? Muses? Nymphs? All "these glad many, "L 294)
your delights forepast;
Enough is it, that all the day was youres:
Now day is doen.
(11.296-8)
The very thing the poet had striven to make histhis one day"he now surrenders as, .
Prospero-like, he dismisses the revels and their cast:
Now it is night ye damsels may be gon.
And leaue my loue alone,
And leaue likewise your former lay to sing.
The woods no more shal answere; nor your echo ring.
R. Caillois Man and the Sacred. trans. M. Barash (Glencoe, III, 1959). P. 103. For the importance of
seasonal festivals in Elizabethan literature, see C.L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A stud;' of
Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom (Prienceton, 1959). Foe his key terms, "release" and
"clarification," see Chapter I, "The Saturnalian Pattern."
7 This custom appears to be the chief Midsummer ceremony. See Thomas Naogeorgus (Kirchmaier),
"Popular and Popish Superstitions and Customs on Saints-Days and Holy-Days ... being the Fourth Booke
of The Popish Kingdon1e . . . englyshed by Barnabe Googe ... 1570," in F. J. Furnivall. ed., Phiilip
Stuhbess Anatom y of the Abuses in England (London, 1877-82), Part I. P. 339, II. 769ff. An unresolved
problem is the customary dating of Midsummer on John the Baptist's Day. June 24; however, many
ceremonies were associated with more than one day, and according to one tradition Barnabas' had a broad
designation: "The author of the Festa Anglo Romano says. P. 72. "This Barnaby-day, or thereabout is the
summer solstice... being the lon g est day of the year, about the 11111 or tI June; it is taken for the whole
time, when the days appear nor for fourteen days together either to lengthen or shorten." (John Brand,
Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, enlarged by Sir Henry Ellis.[London. 1890], I.
294.) In other words. Spenser's day might be one in and For a number of days, like Jove's three nights in one
with Alcmena.
Despite its obvious impoftance, I pass over the possible liturgical organization of the Epithalamion.
(The poem might be seen. for example, as the wedding framed by Matins and Vespersthe "reformed"
Hours of the Book of Common Prayer.) See H. C. White. The Tudor Books of Private Devotion (Madison,
Wis. 1951).
16

67

(11.311-14)
With the return of night we sense again an inward movement of the imagination,
as indicated by the poet's withdrawal from the damsels and the change to the 'negative
18
refrain. With significant variations, the symbolic-reflexive mode of the beginning of the
poem reappears, and it is as though the poem has, in circular fashion, turned in upon
itself The poet's sacrament, generated out of the night, having passed through the
circling hours of the day, finds its conclusion where it began, rediscovers its source, but a
source clarified and transformed.
The transformation is signalised by the change of pronoun from You (as in the
dismissal of the damsels: "your delights forepast") to We in the final stanzas, where it
becomes part of the refrain to form "our song." The poem thus has moved from the single
I of the first refrain to the personal plural. And in the course of this movement it, or the
poet's self has discovered that it was never really alone in the radical, singular meaning
of the term. What has been clarified is the nature of the self as containing the love, which
is both the subject of the poem and its generative law. For Spenser this love leads forward as well as upward, into the future symbolised in the poem by the generations of a
large posterity" (1 417), but also into a realm before which his art finally abdicates. The
envoy deliberately breaks with the symmetrical structure of the Epithalamion, as the poet
offers up the poem on which he has expended the full resources of his imagination to the
greater reality of his bride to be.
In this ealutside the poemhis song is to be no more than ornament for the
woman. And yet in this one point art and life do meet again: the ornamental function of
poetry as an enrichment of existence. More: art is also paying back its debt to life; for it
was through the real woman, his relationship to her, that the poet found his true self in
relation to the "short time" which in the redemptive transformation of the Epithalamion
has become the Infinitely precious moment of human existence. The stage at which he has
arrived has a perfect gloss in the thought of Kierkegaard:19
Time; where the aesthete gets stranded, is important. The judge [in Either/Or]
asserts this by an aesthetic analogy. He says that the better an art-knows how to
express its theme in time, the higher it stands. The highest of all arts is the art of
living and time is its medium, as it is with music. Marriage belongs to the art of
living and therefore time is its medium too. He, who recognises the value of time,
lives as a. Person; i.e. as a persona in a play, where God is both Playwright and
Prompter. This play has time as its real element The person in the play has a
history. It is the history imputed to him by God and his own reflective will. As
Kierkegaard puts it elsewhere, "Time is taken into the service of an ethically
existing individual"

See L.W. Hyman, "Structure and Meaning in Spenser's Epithalamion," Tennessee Studies in Literature.
3 (1958), 40, 41.
'9 T.H. Croxall, Kierkegaard Commentary (New York, 1956), p. 118. See also Kierkegaard's Either/Or,
trans. David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson (New York, 1959) for the aesthetic-ethical distinction
metioned below.

68

Intertwined with the time element, whose invisible arc extends from the Amoretti
to the Epithalamion, the poet's personal history has been in the background all along
Thus the consciousness of time is there from the outset: to a limited extent it affects and
controls the more or less extravagant play of attitudes and images of the Amoretti. But the
latter ended inconclusively, even despairingly, in the face of times hasty accidents.
In the ensuing crisis the mind resolves its perplexity: still speaking in
Kierkegaard's terms, it makes a leap from the aesthetic to the ethical, from romantic to
conjugal love, The leap does not mean an abandonment of the aesthetic-romantic ideality
and inwardness (or even its theatrical playfulness); instead, these are transfigured in the
ethical-sacramental perspective of the Epithalamion, whose magical mode achieved a
kind of identity between its aesthetic time and real time by divining the eternal centre in
mutability. In the envoy, therefore, the poets Self can shed all poetic disguises and renew
its history on the stage where all are merely players for the short time allotted to them.
-
The part he must play is revealed: his poem is its "endlesse moniment."
Richard Neuse

Spenser: A Collection of Critical Essays,

Harry Berrger, Jr Published by Prentice Hall Pvt. Limitd

ri

Li
I

69

NOTES