The Poetical Works of - OUDL Home

THE FAERIE QUEENE PLOT AND ALLEGORY xlv
knight, representing a particular virtue,, brings his quest to a successful
issue and in each Prince Arthur plays a well defined and significant role 1
But in the second of them we see-sighs of a different handlings, not only
in the more intimate human psychology, but also In the introduction
of characters, like Braggadocchio and Belphoebe, who are irrelevant to the
main plot) In the third and fourth books this change in the conduct
of the poem is so far developed as to break the" pattern of the original
design Spenser's canvas becomes more crowded He realizes that the
mere presence of Arthur in each book is not enough to save his poem from
falling into twelve separate romances, he feels the need of a closer interdependence
, and desires not only to keep in sight those heroes whose mission
is already fulfilled, 2 but also to introduce others whose main achievements
are to be his subsequent theme His action, therefore, becomes more
complicated He starts adventures, but keeps the reader in suspense
as to their issue, and as far as mere narrative is concerned he seems to
be treating his plot with all the daring inconsequence of Ariosto
But to argue from this impression that Spenser was writing at random,
and, grown weary of his allegory, was using his poem as a mere receptacle
tor any casual and irrelevant thought or incident, is to draw a false
conclusion For this modification of his plan was suggested by the nature
of the virtues that he came in these books to interpret, and the allegory
only becomes more intricate because, in dealing with Love and Friendship,
it must adapt itself to the complex realities of life
The position of women in society had lately undergone a significant
change At the court of Elizabeth women no longer received an empty
homage which excluded them from all the more serious interests of life
Their culture, their education, their artistic accomplishments, enabled them
to share in the intellectual life of their time they were not merely lovers,
they had become companions and friends At the same time, the veneration
in which the Middle Ages had professed to hold them, though it
was often a transparent cloak for contempt, had received new life from
the teaching of the Platonists, whose doctrines, as set forth for example in
the Courtier of Castighone, had a wide vogue among the more thoughtful
men of the time Love was to them the expression of the yearning of
the soul after true beauty They~recognized Its physical basis,but saw
in ' sensualll covetynge the lowermost steppe in the stayers by the whiche
a man may ascende to true love'. Beautie, said Bembo in the Courtier3
was good, and consequently ' the true love of it is most good, holy, and
evermore bringeth forth good frutes in the soules of them, that with the
1 It is worth noticing, as illustrative of the care with which Spenser arranged his
plot, that the part played by Arthur, important as it is as a first climax in the general
allegorical development, is described in the eighth canto of each book, except in
Book III, where, as Britomart is herself invulnerable, Arthur finds no organic place
2 This, indeed, begins in Book II, into which the Red Cross Knight enters
Castighone's Courtier, translated by Hoby 1561 Ed Tudor Translations,
PP 345, 346