Amoretti

by Edmund Spenser

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What is a critical interpretation of "Sonnet 54" of Edmund Spenser's Amoretti?

Posted by iannexx on May 14, 2010 at 8:42 PM and tagged with amoretti, elizabeth boyle, literature, practical criticism, sonnet 54, sonnet cycle, spenser

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lit24

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Edmund Spenser's "Amoretti" is a sonnet cycle which describes his courtship and marriage to Elizabeth Boyle.

Spenser's "Sonnet54" is made up of three quatrains and a couplet.

In the first quatrain Spenser compares the whole world to a stage and himself to an actor performing on that stage. His lover Elizabeth Boyle, of course, is the spectator watching him perform his different roles on that stage. He complains that all she does is "idly sit" and watch him strain to give an excellent all round performance:

all the pageants play,
Disguising diversely my troubled wits.

In the second quatrain, Spenser remarks that he is adept at displaying the entire gamut of emotions from joy[comedy] to sorrow [tragedy] in order to entertain her:

Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits,
And mask in mirth like to a comedy:
Soon after, when my joy to sorrow flits,
I wail, and make my woes a tragedy.

In the third quatrain, Spenser expresses his disappointment and exasperation saying that all his efforts at entertaining her are of no use. She observes him critically, and very  unsympathetically mocks at him when he tries to make her laugh or ridicules him when he expresses sorrow:

Yet she, beholding me with constant eye,
Delights not in my mirth, nor rues my smart:
But, when I laugh, she mocks; and, when I cry,
She laughs, and hardens evermore her heart.

Spenser concludes his sonnet with a couplet in which he calls his vain and unsympathetic lover "a senseless stone" because she is so cold and incapable of any emotion:

What then can move her? if nor mirth nor moan,
She is no woman, but a senseless stone.

Posted by lit24 on May 16, 2010 at 12:09 AM

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