The Virtuous and Gentle Discipline of Gentlemen and Poets

Abstract

As flies, whottest sommers day, / Do seize vpon some beast, whose flesh is bare, literary historians have swarmed over the human creations of Spenser's imagination in Book Six of The Faerie Queene. What they have pretended to find matters less than what prompted them to look in this particular book. The superabundance of historical and biographical criticism, in this case, can be traced to a general failure to find enough in the poem itself to permit a coherent and convincing interpretation of the poem's total meaning. Ample reason exists for the literary historian's interest in the book. First, the book follows the Legend of Artegall in which Artegall's battles for fair Irene and Arthur's for Belge clearly refer to contemporary events. Secondly, Spenser re-introduces Timias, who definitely represents Raleigh in Book Four. Although Spenser works Timias into the allegorical frame by portraying him as a victim of scorn, disdain, deceit, malice, and infamy, he does have to go out of his way in the narrative scheme to reconcile Arthur and Timias. Then, too, Calidore, the paragon of courtesy, begins to look like a portrait of one of Spenser's contemporaries. The Elizabethan who saw the ideal courtier wander through pastoral scenes and rescue a maiden from a tiger could hardly fail to recognize the Elizabethan courtier par excellence and the author of Arcadia. But the choicest tidbit for this kind of critcism can be found in Canto X. Spenser suddenly interrupts his narrative to describe Colin Clout piping for rings of naked ladies. Colin Clout would attract little enough attention if Spenser had not so obviously made Colin a mouthpiece for the poet both in The Shepheardes Calender and in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe. With Colin appears a damsel who is decked out in all the graces of courtesy even though she is only of low