Book IV begins with the poet telling 
the queen to listen to the lesson of 
love, and Cupid asked to "with drops 
of melting loue, / Deawed with 
ambrosiall kisses, by [him] gotten / 
From [his] sweete smyling mother from 
aboue, / Sprinkle her heart. " But the 
book ends with Marinell cured not by 
Tryphon but by the release of 
Florimell, after the climactic 
appearance of Medway at her wedding, 
bedecked with a scattering of 
flowers--as if going to seed--"The 
which ambrosiall odours forth did thow 
/ To all about, and all her shoulders 
spred / As a new spring; and likewise 
on her hed / A Chapelet of sundry 
flowers she wore, / From vnder which 
the deawy humour shed / Did tricle 
down her haire, like to the hore / 
Congealed litle drops, which doe the 
morne adore."  The dynastic genealogy 
and pedigrees of the first installment 
have dropped out of the 
poem-as-recital, and been replaced by 
the celebration of a fertilization 
that in the queen's case was merely 
out-of-date wishful thinking.  Thus 
the genealogical imperative, glanced 
backwards at in the proem, has been 
displaced or generalized into the 
reproductive imperative obeyed by the 
flora and the catalogue of fertilizing 
rivers, "the seas abundant progeny, / 
Whose fruitfull seede farre passeth 
those in land ... to Seas posterity: / 
So fertile be the flouds in generation 
... Therefore ... Venus of the fomy 
sea was bred; / For that the seas by 
her are most augmented."

I suppose one could imaginatively and 
conjecturally translate ‘Then also me 
seemeth the work too base for his 
excellent Lordship [Leicester], being 
made in Honour of
a private Personage unknowne, which of 
some yl-willers might be upbraided, 
not to be so worthie, as you know she 
is’ this way:  "Sometimes it seems to 
me that the opus is too simple-minded 
to be attached or dedicated to the 
great Lord whom I would serve, the 
work being designed to honor the 
unknown private person (or private 
life and affairs) of the/his/our queen 
-- and some malicious folk might 
indeed wish to censure that private 
life as an unworthy or scandalous one 
-- which, on the contrary, we know to 
be a worthy and blameless life indeed 
(for there is nothing in it whatsoever 
to take moral exception to)."   [I.e., 
one could read "private Personage 
unknown" as Belphoebe in the woods, 
and not at the court of Philotime with 
honor-seeking Braggadocchio, or 
Lucifera with two-timing Duessa.]

   
On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:29:42 -0500
  Marshall <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> What does the FQ actually say about 
>all this? The poem itself suggests 
>two things to me: 1. Life is 
>uncertain and when you sit down to 
>write books 4-6, what you wrote in 
>1-3 has to change its meaning, even 
>for the writer, and 2. When you get 
>to book six, you give it all up, 
>because a blundering courtier 
>inadvertently discovers that all 
>these stories are coming from Colin 
>Clout and the images of the great 
>queen are really based on his local 
>lass (the Elizabeth at home rather 
>than the ones in London and 
>Fairyland?). It feels a little silly 
>to say this right out, but there is 
>something in this parable that may 
>explain why Elizabeth, Sidney, Ralegh 
>and Spenser are dead, but Colin Clout 
>lives on.
> 
> Penny M wrote:
>>
>> Yes indeed, Bruce. And Damerei was a 
>>Plantagenet name. And Ralegh allied 
>>himself to the Throckmorton family, 
>>who had a claim to the throne, they 
>>thought. And the Faerie Queene is 
>>really, if you think of it, dedicated 
>>to Ralegh. (The dedication to the 
>>Queen was literally an afterthought, 
>>according to Andrew Zurcher.) And the 
>>pedigree in FQ trying to link 
>>Elizabeth to Arthur/ fails/ to link 
>>them. I really need you as a champion 
>>for the view that Spenser was not 
>>paying homage to the Queen /at all/. 
>>Elizabethans were quite accustomed to 
>>wondering if everything they read did 
>>not really mean the opposite of what 
>>it seemed to mean.
>>
>> We know FQ was being drafted and 
>>written in the heart of the Sidney 
>>circle by 1579 (Familiar Letters). 
>>What do you make of this from the 
>>first Commendable Letter: Spenser is 
>>doubtful whether to press on with his 
>>project, which is prima facie The FQ. 
>>And he speaks of his doubts thus: 
>>‘Then also me seemeth the work too 
>>base for his excellent Lordship 
>>[Leicester], being made in Honour of 
>>a private Personage unknowne, which 
>>of some yl-willers might be 
>>upbraided, not to be so worthie, as 
>>you know she is’?
>>
>> Penny.
>>
> 

[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121