29 3 sort: way.
29 5 Procrustes hire: the ‘reward’ of Procrustes, who made his guests fit his bed either by chopping them off if they were too large or by stretching them if they were too small. His ‘reward’ was similar treatment by Theseus. He is included here as an example of what happens to those people who do not observe distinctions either in persons or in hierarchies.
29 6-q Typhons… Ixions… Prometheus: examples of those already punished by Jupiter for opposing his supremacy. For Typhon see VII.6.15.8. brion was bound to a burning wheel for trying to seduce Juno. For stealing fire from heaven and giving it to man Prometheus was bound on the Caucasus where each day a vulture devoured his liver, which grew again each night.
30 1 fry: brood, i.e., the Titans.
304 Whom what should hinder …: i.e., what should hinder us from handling her (whom).
30 9 levin-brond: lightning-brand, lightning bolt.
31 4 sway: power.
32 3 that: that which.
32 5s Bellona: see note to 3.7. spight: envy. 32 7 her affright: fright of her.
32 9 And sure thy worth…: i.e., and surely thy worth does seem to appear no less than hers.
33 3 interesse: legal interest.
33 4 old Titans Right: see note to 27.4.
33 6 eternall doome of Fates decree: divine order of Providence.
34 4 There-to thou maist: to that place you may get.
34 7 Satumes sonne: Mutability’s patronymic epithet is intended as an insult in that it deprives Jupiter of his sovereignty and presses home her claim.
34 9 tride: decided by trial.
35 5 by equall might: equally.
35 6 God of Nature: see notes to VII.7.5.1. 35 8 inly grudge: complain within.
35 9 Dan Pkabus Scribe: Apollo as secretary of this encounter is a humorous touch. Appellation: appeal.
36 6 Arlo-hill: Galtymore, highest peak in the mountain range near Spenser’s home Kilcolman in County Cork, so called because it overlooks the Vale of Aherlow in County Tipperary.
36 6 (Who knowes not Arlo-hilli): aside from the impertinence of answering Spenser’s question with an annotation, one might compare the similar self-awareness in VI.10.16.4: ‘Poore Colin Clout (who knowes not Colin Clout?)’.
36 7 head: peak.
36 8 old father Mole: Spenser’s name for the mountain range near his home, which his ‘shepherd’s quill’ had already described in Colin Clouts Come Home Again (i59S). i^-6g.
37 1 And, were it not…: and if it were not inappropriate in this recital… 37 3 abate: diminish.
37 5 Dianaes spights: injuries of Cynthia. Diana is the more common name for Cynthia when she is associated with the forest and hunting, as here.
37 9 Meane while…: Spenser invokes the aid of Clio, Muse of history, to help Calliope, die Muse of epic poetry, as he always does when he treats of real historical events or geographical places. See II.10.3 (history of British kings); III.34 (Merlin’s prophecy of future kings); and IV.11.10 (catalogue of rivers).
38 1 florished in fame: between the sixth and ninth centuries Ireland was a famous centre of learning and art.
38 9 on ground: on earth.
39 7 enranged on a rowe: arranged in a row.
39 8 consort: mingle.
40 2 Moltmna: the river Behanagh near Spenser’s home. Her name suggests her genealogy: Mol-, ‘old father Mole,’ -anna, Behanna.
40 3 Mutta: the river Awbeg, renamed by Spenser from Kilnemullah, the ancient name for Buttevant, a dty on its banks. Spenser annotates the name himself in Colin Clouts Come Home Again, 108-15.
40 4 Bregog: another river, the story of whose marriage with Mulla Spenser tells in Colin Clouts Come Home Again, 92-155. It would be interesting to know why these river marriages, so characteristically Spenserian, all occurring in areas he knew very well, should find their way into some of the most self-conscious poetry he ever wrote. The most famous example is the marriage of the Thames and the Medway (IV.10), rivers Spenser would have known when he was secretary to John Young, Bishop of Rochester. See note to 53.6-9.
40 s Shepheard Colin: Spenser’s name for himself from The Shepheanks Calender through VI. 10. He is referring here to his Colin Clouts Come Home Again.
40 7 shole: shallow.
40 9 flood: flowing river.
41 4 pompous: full of pomp, no pejorative sense intended.
41 7 coverts: glades.
42 7 Faunas: a faun, for whose qualities see n.2.7–9and note to 11.2.7.5.
42 9 in priuity: in secret, but the rhyme word is meant to expose more of his prurient interests.
43 1 to compasse: to achieve, with overtones of’to embrace’. 43 3 Her: Diana. to discouer: to reveal.
43 6 Queene-apples and red Cherries …: these are typical pastoral gifts, but here they carry overtones of the temptation of Eve.
44 1 pleasure: please.
44 4 Fanchin: the river Funsheon into which die Behanagh flows.
45 3 saue onely one: Actaeon; a reference to the myth of Diana and Actaeon, a hunter who in chase came upon Diana naked. In fury she turned him into a stag, and his own dogs devoured him. See Met. 3.173-252, although some of Spenser’s details may derive from other Ovidian myths: Callisto, 2.409 ff; Arethusa, 5.572 ff. The whole episode of Faunus and Diana closely parallels the structure of the Actaeon story. The parallelism of characters (Cynthia: Diana; Mutability: Faunus; Molanna: reader), the similarity in theme: an act of presumptuous rebellion, echoing the Christian myth of the Fall, the numerous verbal parallels, all suggest that Spenser wanted his retelling of the Actaeon myth to be an analogue of and commentary on the main narrative of the poem.
45 4 to so foole-hardy dew: due to one so foolhardy.
45 5 hew: slaughter.
45 8 array: clothes.
46 3 some-what: something.
46 8 conceit: thought.
47 5 darred: dazzled, with a pun on ‘daring’. Larks were dazzled by mirrors or bits of glass so they could be caught, but see Ringler, MP 63, 1965, 13, note 12.
48 4 Dayr’house: dairy.
49 2 baile: custody. 49 5 haile: pull.
49 7 countervaile: resist.
49 9 Mome: fool, blockhead, unknowing comic butt.
50 1 flouted: derided. 50 3 spill: destroy.
50 5 driue: driven.
51 3 gamesome: sportive.
51 4 in straighter sort: in stricter manner.
52 5 so sore him dread aghast: i.e., so sorely did his dread terrify him.
52 8–9Compare the refrains of Epithalamim: “The woods shall to me answer, and my eccho ring,’ etc.
53 4 whelm’d: overwhelmed.
53 6–9This is another Spenserian river marriage in which Spenser symbolizes the triumph of love over mutability in a fallen world through the merging of rivers. Cf. The Shepheardes Calender, ‘July’ 79-84; Colin Clouts Come Home Again, 92-155; IV.10.
54 8 champian: plain. rid: past participle of’to read’, seen.
54 9 Shure: the river Suir that flows through rich country.
55 Spenser intends Diana’s curse to explain the present state of Ireland, harassed and torn by faction, an etiological myth. See R. Gottfried, SP 34. 1937. 107-25.
55 1 way: consider.
55 4 space: roam.
55 7 Chase: hunting ground.
CANTO 7
Arg. 1 Pealing: appealing. Bar: court.
2 Alteration: another name for Mutability.
3 Large: extensive.
I 1 thou greater Muse: Calliope; see I. Proem. 2.1 and VII.6.37.9 and note.
1 3–5Spenser invokes the Muse to lift his firail spirit, whose wing, too weak, may refuse to undertake such a high poetic flight.
1 6 Thy soueraine Sire: here and at IV.11.10 Spenser makes Jupiter the father of the Muses. The more traditional father is Apollo, as in I.11.5, II. 10.3 and IH.3.4. a 3 tume: change of direction, in returning to his original narrative. sable: the 1609 reading. Some editors emend to ‘feeble’. Milton, for one, was not
bothered by the original reading, which he imitates in PL 1:22-3: ‘What in me is dark Illumine.’
3 9 Pluto and Proserpina: the king and queen of the underworld. Their presence at this trial is essential because their power is derived from Nature, whose laws reach to and regulate even the anomalies of the underworld.
5 1 great dame Nature: this is the same ‘god of Nature’ referred to in VII.6.3 s.6. Her apparently changed sex is explained by lines 5–7and by the literary tradition of which she is a part. She is God’s vice-regent of the Providential order of nature and can be identified with the Wisdom or Sapience that Spenser describes in Hymn of Heavenly Beauty, 183 ff. The ambiguity of her description is part of the tradition beginning with Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae and extending through Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, Alanus de Insulis, De planctu naturae and Chaucer, Parkment ofFouks.
5 2 port: bearing.
5 3 greater and more tall: to show her greater importance.
5 5 physnomy: countenance.
S 7 descry: discover.
5 8 wimpled: lay in folds.
6 3 agrized: horrified.
6 6–9The implications of this radiance are explained in Hymn of Heavenly Beauty, 183 S, and are based on 2 Corinthians 3.18.
7 3 sheene: bright, beautiful.
7 6 three sacred Saints: Peter, James, and John, who saw Christ transfigured on Mount Tabor. See Matthew 17.1-8; Mark 9.2-3. The Transfiguration was the first time that Christ’s divinity shone through his humanity and became apparent to his disciples.
8 3 idle: vain.
9 1 heard: hard.
9 3 Dan Geffrey: Master Geoffrey Chaucer, whose Parkment of Foules, 295-329, describes Nature, as does Alanus de Insulis in De planctu naturae (Pleynt of Kynde). Spenser is placing himself squarely in the tradition of regarding Nature as a Wisdom figure. See note to 5.1.
9 4 well head: source; Spenser, like most sixteenth-century poets, considered Chaucer the father of English poetry and imitated many of his poems. Spenser’s Daphnaida is based on Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, and IV.2–3is a continuation of Chaucer’s “The Squire’s Tale’.
9 5 Foules parley: Chaucer’s Parkment of Foules.
98 so as it ought: as it should be.
10 4 mores: roots, plants.
11 1 Mole: see VII.6.36.8.
12 3 Haemus hill: the marriage of Peleus and Thetis did not take place on Haemus Hill. Spenser transfers the location because of Ovid’s description of Haemus {Met. 6.87-9), who was changed into a mountain for daring to assume the names of the gods.
12 5 Peleus and dame Thetis:. Jupiter insisted that the goddess Thetis be married to the mortal Peleus when he learned that any son of hers would be more powerful than his father. ThetU objected and resisted Peleus by changing into a number of shapes, but Peleus’ persistence was successful. Their son was Achilles, the hero of Homer’s Iliad. Spenser stresses their wedding day, when Eris threw the apple of discord at the feet of Juno, Minerva, and Venus, the event that led to the Trojan war. See note to m.9.36.3-4. pointed: appointed.
13 7 feld: prostrate.
13 8 obaysance: obedience.
13 9 amplifie: speak with rhetorical figures.
14H7 Mutability’s case is orderly in the extreme and may be divided in two parts: her plea (14-26) and her presentation of witnesses (27-47), and as Hawkins has pointed out, her case reproduces the structure of canto 6 in which the first half is devoted to argument and the second half to the presentation of the Arlo Hill myth. Her plea is based on the fact that she is de hire ruler since all things composed of the four elements are subject to mutability: earth (17-19), water (20-21), air (22-3), fire (24). Her plea ends with a recapitulation (2s) and an extension of her argument to the celestial counterparts of the four elements (26). The witnesses presented are the four seasons (28-31), the twelve months, beginning with March, one of the conventional beginnings of the year in the sixteenth century (32-^.3), Day and Night (44), die Hours (45), and Life and Death (46). In the final challenge (47) she again asserts her claim to sovereignty.
14 4 indifferently: impartially.
14 5 tortious: wrongful.
15 3 challenge: claim.
15 5 heritage in Fee: i.e., hold as one’s absolute and rightful possession.
15 6 -7 Mutability’s presumption is evident here in her lapse of logic: I consider heaven and earth alike because you consider them alike, but she is forgetting about the principle of hierarchy.
16 3 And that: and that which.
16 9 dew descent: see note to VII.6.2.6.
17 2 most regiment: most power. 17 4 inholders: tenants. to conuent: to assemble.
17 5 incontinent: immediately.
18 4 earthly slime: material source of being. 18 5 mortall: deadly.
18 7 Prime: spring.
18 9 still: continually.
20 1 case: condition.
20 9 them vnfold: open themselves.
21 3 plights: condition.
21 7 certaine grange: fixed dwelling.
22 2 i.e., air is the medium by which sense perceptions are transmitted.
22 3 subtill influence: air maintains life in creatures by flowing into them (influencing them) because it is a less material element than either earth or water, hence subtle.
22 4 thin spirit: thin substance, less, that is, than earth or water.
22 6 tickle: unstable.
23 5 Streight: immediately.
24 3 seuer: separate.
25 1 ground-work: the four elements are the basis of all creation. For an explanation of the working of the four elements see Tillyard, Elizabethan World Picture, pp. SS ff
25 5 natiue mights: natural powers. It was believed that elements could be transmuted into one another.
25 6 sheerer bright, crystal clear.
26 4 Vesta: Roman goddess of heavenly fire as in Ovid, Fasti 6.291-2. 26 4 aethereall: heavenly.
26 5 Vulcan, of this,___: Vulcan, as opposed to Vesta, is god of earthly fire, a more common phenomenon to us. 26 6 Ops: goddess of the earth.
Iuno of the Ayre: Juno’s special province was the air.
26 7 Neptune: god of the seas.
Nymphes: guardian spirits of rivers.
27 3 The rest…: Mutability has in mind the participants in the procession about to start, by which man maintains order in his temporal existence.
27 9 Order: as in VII.7.4.6 Order as sergeant is an important part of the reason that Nature can finally decide against Mutability.
28 Spenser uses only two rhymes in this stanza, as in VII.7.44. 28 1 issew’d: came forth.
28 8 morion: helmet
29 4 well beseene: well adorned.
29 S chauffed: heated (French: chauffer).
29 8 Libbard: leopard.
30 4 to-fore: before.
31 1 in frize: frieze is a coarse woollen cloth. 31 4 bill: nose.
31 5 limbeck: alembic, a vessel for distilling; a retort.
31 9 loosed: out of joint. See Sidney’s translation of Psalms 22.8. to weld: wield, manage.
32–43The stanzas describing the months have certain common features. In each the sign of the zodiac appropriate to it is included, and very often this sign is associated with a well-known classical myth. The procession begins with March because March was the first month of the legal -year according to the old calendar, and the first month of the rebirth of nature. New Year’s Day was still celebrated on I January, a form of the calendar Spenser uses by beginning his Shepheardes Calender with January. Below is a brief chart of the months, their zodiacal signs, and the myths associated with them.
Spenser also incorporates the labours of the months, an ancient theme in Christian art, which makes of the farming cycle of the year a symbol of man’s finding his way to salvation through the proper use of the curse on Adam that man must work (Genesis 3.17). For the tradition see Tuve, Seasons and Months, and for the tradition as it is adapted by Spenser see Hawkins.
March Aries (ram) Helle and Phrixus
April Taurus (bull) Europa and Jove as bull
May Gemini (twins) Castor and Pollux
June Cancer (crab)
July Leo (lion) Hercules and the Nemean lion
August Virgo (maid) Astraea, goddess of justice
September Libra (scales)
October Scorpio (scorpion) Diana and Orion
November Sagittarius (centaur) Chiron
December Capricorn (goat) Jupiter and Amalthea
January Aquarius (urn) Saturn (?)
February Pisces (fish)
32 1 softly: slowly.
32 5 Helkspontus: Ovid, Fasti 3.851-76, tells the story of Helle and Phrixus, who escaped the wrath of Ino through the aid of a ram with golden fleece, which carried them across the body of water now called the Hellespont, whose name came from the feet that Helle slipped off the ram’s back and drowned. This ram has been associated with the zodiacal sign Aries and is identified with Jupiter by Boccaccio.
32 6 hent: held.
32 7 ysame: together.
33 1 lustyhed: lustiness.
33 4 Europa: Jupiter in the form of a white bull enticed Europa onto his back and then fled into the sea in order to capture her love (Met. 2.836-75). Spenser uses the Europa story again in Muiopotmos, 277–96and III.11.3a Ovid associates this bull with Taurus in Fasti 5.617. Argolick fluds: the gulf of Argolis in the Aegean.
34 1 mayd: with a pun on the name of the month.
34 4–5two brethren?… twinnes of Leda: Castor and Pollux. There are many versions of this myth, but basically, when Jupiter in the form of a swan seduced Leda she bore him not only Helen of Troy but also these twins.
34 9 all in greene: no source has been found for Cupid’s being in green. The association of Cupid with spring is a natural but insufficient explanation.
35 2 as he a Player were: probably a reference to the savage man, or Wood- wose, a common figure in Elizabethan pageantry. 35 3 wrought: worked. 35 4 plough-yrons: colter and ploughshare.
35 9 Probably a reference to deferential courtiers who back out of the presence of the monarch.
36 5 forray: ravage.
36 6 Nenuean forrest: a reference to the Nemean lion, killed by Hercules (Amphytrionide, son of Amphitryon) as the first of his twelve labours.
37 3 a louely Mayd: Astraea, goddess of justice, who fled from the earth because of its wickedness; often associated with Ceres. See V.1.5-11.
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