The Poetical Works of - OUDL Home

THE FAERIE QUEENE PLOT AND ALLEGORY xlvii
to expel from his nature the evil which makes him unworthy to gain his
quest It is significant, too, of his reading of life, that Belphoebe, the
fancy free, has no masculine counterpart Mannell's avoidance of woman
is from fear, not natural instinct, and leads only to his overthrow For
man, at least, it is
A lesson too too hard for huing clay,
From loue in course of nature to refraine (in IV 26 )
And how love may best be ordered is best taught in the study of its
manifestation in different characters—in Arthur, who is stirred to a
restless desire for noble deeds, and Timias, who allows the strength of
a noble passion to confuse his mind and paralyse his whole nature, in
Malbecco and Braggadocchio, in whom lust is overmastered by two
stronger and baser passions, greed and fear , in the witch's son and the
fisherman in whom mere animalism is uncontrolled by higher impulses,
in Sir Pandell, the accomplished seducer, who degrades the nobler qualities
of a keen and subtle intellect to pander to his lust, and in the Squire of
Dames, the contemptible offspring of a social decadence, who delights in
recording
his aduentures vaine,
The which himselfe, then Ladies more defames, (III vIII 44)
and who is significantly presented as in the clutches of Argante, the
Giauntess of prostitution
The whole book is charged with the subtlest moral significance It is
a mirror of the world that Spenser knew on its ideal and on its sordid sides,
a world of which he recognized the temptations as surely as he saw the
beauty And his treatment of friendship follows the same lines He
presents what he feels to be the ideal as seen in contrast with more
or less counterfeit imitations of it As a centre to the book is the perfect
friendship of Cambell and Tnamond, and parallel to it a perfect friendship
of a different kind between two women, Britomart and Amoret These
are founded on virtue, and on absolute devotion of self to the friend
As a contrast to them is the friendship of the baser knights, Pandell and
Blandamour, who are only friends as long as it suits their private interests,
but are ready to fight directly those interests diverge, and the still baser
Braggadocchio, whose nature is incapable of either friendship or enmity
And the second half of the book deals suggestively with that most delicate
of problems, the friendship between the sexes, thus bearing a close
relationship in theme with the previous book Timias represents that
type of man who lacks the self-restraint demanded by such a friendship
Even in his defence of Amoret he wounds her , and his well-intentioned
protection of her only leads him to be faithless to his sworn allegiance to
Belphoebe, whose
noble heart with sight thereof was fild
With deepe disdame, and great indignity, (iv vu 36)