Merlin's Mirror at Leicester House

Abstract

This article investigates the transformation of Spenser’s image of himself as poet in the interval between the first and second instalments of The Faerie Queene. The poet’s habits of gazing are informed by the lessons Britomart learns about seeing, but Spenser also explores the issue in two other poems written during this period, The Epithalamion (1595) and The Prothalamion (1596). Both works clearly place the poet next to pictures of occluded male gazers, Spenser’s bridegroom as marginal and as crucial as the Essex who emerges only briefly from Leicester House. Both of these male figures are ultimately sidelined by other gazers, their vision finally irrelevant to the nuptial proceedings unfolded in each poem. The 1596 cancellation of the reunion between Amoret and Scudamour is accompanied by a revised representation of Britomart, too. Taught to move beyond the magic mirror she encounters early in Book 3, Britomart is guided to put herself in the larger world and – like the poet – to look away from the image reflected in and by her gaze.