Warning: this is just silliness; delete at will.
At FQ 2.2.13, Spenser says that in Medina's castle there are "three
sisters...of sundry sort, / The children of one syre by mothers three."
See, however, stanza 27, in which Medina tries to mediate the fight between
the two boyfriends, Sans loi and Sir Huddibras:
Whilst thus they mingled were in furious armes,
The faire Medina with her tresses torne,
And naked brest, in pitty of their harmes,
Emongst them ran, and falling them beforne,
Besought them by the womb, which them had born,
And by the loues, which were to them most deare,
And by the knighthood, which they sure had sworn,
Their deadly cruell discord to forbeare,
And to her iust conditions of faire peace to heare. (FQ 2.2.27)
Medina is trying to emphasize things that the two knights have in common:
they are both in love with sisters and they are both members of the order
of knighthood. There is also "the womb, which them had born." Where came
that womb in? Sans loi and Huddibras are not, as Forrest Gump might say,
"relations." The sisters, though, have different mothers (as we just
learned in st. 13), so they didn't come from the same womb, either. What,
then, is Medina appealing to: is it the fact that everyone has a mother?
This leaves me, I confess, a little cold.
Can anyone propose a better solution? Extra points if you can identify an
iconographical or literary source for the image of the bare-breasted
peace-weaver in line 3. (And no, Janet Jackson is _not_ a peace-weaver.)
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David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask]
East Carolina University Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c
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