The thread initiated by Genevieve's query has come to
resemble Ariadne's.  I was set thinking by Jim
Broaddus's reply, and have followed the subsequent
discussion with great interest.  Perhaps a few more
interesting things may be said, widening the frame of
reference.

Genevieve's ‘working through' is a commendable response
to Lewis (cited in Hamilton's first ed. and eclipsed by
other matter in the new ed.) on the soul's ‘first
meeting with a transcendental or at least incorporeal
object of love.'  Confirmation of her thoughts on the
doubts associated with dreams and visions will be found
in the Spenser Encyclopedia entry on dreams.  Also, I
was reminded of a paper Tom Roche gave years ago at
Kalamazoo (published in Spenser Studies 4), on the
juxtaposition in I ix of Arthur's dream story and RC's
encounter with Despair.  Should we say that in Spenser's
doubt-breeding anatomy of the inner life, despair is the
antithesis, and often the corollary, of wonder?

It seems to me that Lewis mis-characterizes the
doubtfulness of Arthur's experience when, in both the
places cited, he offers a choice between ‘dream'
and ‘reality.'  When I hear the word ‘reality,' that's
when I reach for my revolver.  Arthur doesn't ‘doubt
whether it was a dream,' but wonders ‘whether dreames
delude, or true it were,' and in any case, ‘Was neuer
hart so rauisht with delight' (14).  Arthur's dream was
apparently, if we accept his interpretation of the kind
of token fairies leave behind, inspired by the real
presence of Gloriana, paying him a kind of attention
that would be illicit if he were awake.  Arthur's
introduction to true love is ‘platonic' in the sense
Bert Hamilton gives to the term, following Lewis; I
would add that it's reminiscent of what Penia did with
the sleeping Porus in Plato's ‘Symposium' (203b-c, part
of the lesson in the neither/nor, both/and nature of
Love that Socrates learned from Diotima).

In Spenser's poetry, most access to what Marshall
Grossman nicely terms an ‘ideal, idealizing and
inaccessible erotic object' is mediated and fraught with
uncertainty.  The desperate case of Timias shows us what
can happen when the ideal comes too close for comfort.
Episodes comparable to Arthur's initiatory dream are
distributed throughout the poem; RC's dream of (false)
Una and Britomart's glimpse of Arthegall in her father's
gazing ball are the most-discussed analogues, but there
are others.  Spenser is a connoisseur of the uncanny.

Guyon's vulnerable sleep in II viii also bears
comparison to Arthur's in I ix, although maybe it is
more like the insensibility of RC when Arthur brings him
out of Orgoglio's dungeon.  As seen by the Palmer, Guyon
is ‘slumbring fast/ In senceless dreame,' but perhaps
the Palmer (soon to be captivated, surprisingly, by ‘a
faire young man,' Guyon's Cupid-like guardian angel) is
an unreliable witness to Guyon's state of mind: some
unconscious awareness of the divinely ordained care
being taken of him may aid in his eventual revival.
Spenser lets us do the wondering.  We may wonder also if
Chrysogone dreamed while she conceived Belphoebe and
Amoret; in due time we are told ‘She bore withouten
paine, that she conceiv'd/ Withouten pleasure' (III vi
27.2-3).  In this instance, knowing less than we do,
Venus and Diana ‘were through wonder nigh of sence
bereu'd.'