Poetry
The Faerie Queene
Edmund Spenser · 1590
Opening lines
LO I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far vnfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Six books, six virtues, each carried by a knight or nearly so. The first follows the Redcrosse Knight, whom Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, charges with freeing the parents of the lady Una, whom a dragon holds prisoner. The enchanter Archimago sends him a troubled dream, then shows him his companion in the arms of a squire, who is only a spirit; he leaves her at dawn and takes under his protection another woman, beautiful and deceitful. The following books treat temperance, chastity, friendship, justice and courtesy in the same way, in a land where monsters stand for vices.
Context
Six books appeared out of the twelve announced, three in 1590 and three in 1596, and the author died three years after the second instalment. For the occasion he invented a nine-line stanza that bears his name and a deliberately archaic language, already judged strange by his contemporaries, in order to restore its old words to English and to place himself in the line of Chaucer. Presented to the queen by Walter Ralegh, he obtained from her in February 1591 a life pension of fifty pounds a year. The same year he published a collection in which a satirical fable targeted the chief minister; the volume was withdrawn from sale almost at once. The Romantic poets took up his stanza two centuries later.
Who it is for
A very long poem in deliberately archaic English, of which only extracts exist in French. One can begin with the first book, which can be read on its own.
Prizes and reception
“Poet of poets”, in Charles Lamb's phrase, and pensioned by the queen more generously than any other poet of his time.
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