‘After the First Death, There is No Other’: Spenser, Milton, and (Our) Death

Abstract

That sentence can be read in several ways, and should: the present essay is in some ways a meditation upon it.1 It is true that Death has a literal ‘entry’ in The Faerie Queene: summoned by Order, he and ‘Life’ conclude the Mutabilitie Cantos’ great procession of Time’s circling component parts (7.7.46). His ‘grim and griesly visage’ seems to give the parade a dark final period, a breaking of its self-renewing circles, but the narrator hastens to add that ‘Yet is he nought but parting of the breath.’ He is also hard to discern, a mere ‘shade’: ‘Unbodied, unsoul’d, unheard, unseene.’ If so, it is hardly surprising that despite his many effects he makes so little appearance as himself among The Faerie Queene’s multitude of characters and visible figures. ‘Parting of the breath’ is hard to personify, as is ‘nought’. There is, however, much to say on Spenser and Death — or at least on Spenser and death. Here we concentrate on Book 1 of the Faerie Queene because the Legend of Holiness contains two episodes which may prove enlightening; and our focus is upon readers and reading rather than readings.KeywordsIdeal ReaderGoodly FrameSimple MillerHeadlesse BodySummer SunshineThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.