Spenser: The Faerie Queene
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their own natural seats laid to the view, that we seem by many readers today as humanly constructed, its not to hear of them, but clearly to see through them’ reconstruction in the poem is where we meet. (Defence of Poetry 86). In other words, we do not In his Discourse on Civil Life (1606), Lodowick see beyond, or outside, the virtues to something else Bryskett writes that Spenser is known to be very but rather through them as lenses. Only by so seeing well read in philosophy, both moral and natural, and through them may we share Spenser’s vision of that he intends to appeal to him to learn what moral human life from his moral perspective. It follows that philosophy is, ‘what be the parts thereof, whereby finally nothing outside the poem is needed to under-vertues are to be distinguished from vices’ (21). stand it, except (for us) the shared primary culture of Spenser rightly terms his poem ‘this present treatise’ its first audience. (I adapt the term ‘primary culture’ (in the current sense of the term) for his task is ‘True from the account by N. Frye 1990b:22–23 of ‘pri-vertue to aduance’ (V iii 3.8–9). One chief problem mary mythology’ or ‘primary concerns’ in contrast to is to separate virtue from vice, for what used to be ‘secondary concerns’, such as ideology.) called virtue ‘Is now cald vice; and that which vice To gain ‘an exact knowledge of the virtues’ was hight, | Is now hight vertue, and so vs’d of all’ (V needed to write The Faerie Queene, Spenser calls proem 4.2–3). Raleigh makes the same point in the upon the muses to reveal to him ‘the sacred noursery History of the World 1614:2.6.7: ‘some vertues | Of vertue’ (VI proem 3.1–2). Since he goes on to and some vices are so nicely distinguished, and so claim that the nursery was first planted on earth by resembling each other, as they are often confounded, the Gods ‘being deriu’d at furst | From heauenly and the one taken for the other’; and he praises The seedes of bounty soueraine’, for him the virtues exist Faerie Queene because Spenser has ‘formed right true transcendentally. As this nursery provides what vertues face herein’ (CV 2.3). The problem is noted Sidney calls ‘that idea or fore-conceit’ by which the in the opening cantos of the poem: in the argument poet’s skill is to be judged rather than by the poem to canto i, the Red Cross Knight is called ‘The itself, his effort as a poet is to plant its garden of Patrone of true Holinesse’, but he is so named only virtue in the minds of his readers so that they may after Archimago assumes his disguise. Then readers share his state of being ‘rauisht with rare thoughts are told – in fact, they are admonished – that ‘Saint delight’. Since ‘vertues seat is deepe within the mynd’, George himselfe ye would haue deemed him to be’ (ii however, he does not so much plant the virtues in 11.9), as even Una does. them as nurture what is already there. Today Spenser’s purpose may seem ideologically To spell out this point using the familiar Platonic innocuous but in his day those who called virtue vice, doctrine of anamnesis: while Spenser needed an exact and vice virtue, may well have regarded the poem knowledge of the virtues in order to write his poem, as subversive. But who were they? Most likely, the his readers need only to be reminded of what they pillars of society, such as Burghley (see IV proem already know (even today) but have largely forgotten 1.1–2n), theologians, such as John King who, in (especially today). What he finds deep within the 1597, complained that ‘instead of the writings of minds of his readers may be identified with the Moses and the prophets . . . now we have Arcadia, primary culture upon which his poem draws. It led and the Faëry Queene’ (cited Garrett 1996:139), him to use allegory, which, as Tuve cited by Roche and those religiously-minded for whom holiness 1964:30 explains, ‘is a method of reading in which meant professing correct doctrine; temperance we are made to think about things we already know’; meant life in a moral strait-jacket; chastity meant the and to use proverbs extensively, as Cincotta 1983 rejection of sexual love; friendship meant patriarchal explains, as a means to give authority to his poem. family ties; justice meant the justification of present Being primary, this culture is basic: simply expressed, authority; and courtesy meant the conduct of it is what we all know as human beings regardless of Elizabeth’s courtiers – in sum, those for whom virtue gender, race, religion, and class. It is what we just meant remaining subject to external law rather living know and have always known to be fair, right, and in the freedom of the gospel. just, both in our awareness of who we are and also Although generally Spenser overtly endorses the our relation to society and to some higher reality claims of noble blood, his poem values individual outside ourselves, both what it is and what it ought worth over social rank by ranking middle-class nur-
