I think I would plump for the war-like drum (though I long thought it a joke on the name Clarion). But compare the very last stanza of FQ, with a possible play on Sabbath/Sabbaoth. Isn't 'Sabaoth' connected with war? When we reflect that Spenser was in the Leicester camp, that he may well have started the FQ for them, not Elizabeth, we may start to hear the hostility to the Tudors that underlies the whole FQ and everything he writes (I believe). Literature as factionalism.
Penny
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