[In the following essay, Bednarz discusses the historical context of The Faerie Queene and focuses on representations of the relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh in the poem.]

The allegory of Timias and Belphoebe in The Faerie Queene documents two distinct periods in the ongoing relationship between Sir Walter Ralegh and Queen Elizabeth. The first describes an early era of mixed fortune in which Ralegh's preeminence was being undermined by the earl of Essex, and the second alludes to a later time of disgrace, occasioned by his clandestine marriage to Elizabeth Throckmorton in 1592. The 1590 and 1596 installments of The Faerie Queene, considered together, trace a historical pattern that moves from Ralegh's participation in the quelling of the Desmond Rebellion, through which he gained the queen's attention, to their first meeting, his rejection, and later reconciliation with her. The 1590 edition of the poem shows Ralegh engaged in acts of war (III.v.12-26) and love (III.v.27-55). The 1596 sequel continues this allegory, but shifts its interest to the more pressing issue of whether or not Ralegh had broken faith with the queen by violating her trust. In detailing the court history of Elizabeth and Ralegh, Spenser inevitably found himself in a difficult social situation, when the two principal patrons of his poem became engaged in a bitter feud that he recreates—as a “biographical fiction”—in the pages of The Faerie Queene.

In the summer of 1589, Spenser had the good fortune to be visited by Ralegh on his Kilcolman estate. Ralegh and Spenser, who may have met in the earl of Leicester's service or on military maneuvers with Lord Grey in Ireland, were landholding neighbors in Munster County. And in November of the same year, Ralegh, acting as Spenser's patron, accompanied him back to London for the purpose of publishing the first three books of The Faerie Queene and enjoying an audience with Queen Elizabeth. Spenser evidently saw the acquisition of Ralegh's patronage as one of the great turning points of his career, since Ralegh's prominent position at court assured him a fitting reception. Spenser's joy upon receiving this golden opportunity for advancement must have been considerable—especially if we agree with Edwin Greenlaw's persuasive theory that the poet had brought exile upon himself in 1579 for attacking Lord Burghley and the duke of Alençon in the caustic farce of Mother Hubberds Tale.¹ Spenser's outspoken objection to the French match had placed him at the outskirts of empire, in the “waste” of Ireland, that “savadge soyle, far from Parnasso mount.”² The arrangement of this audience with the queen would be the most important of the “singular favours and sundrie good turnes” for which he vows an “infinite debt” to Ralegh in the dedicatory epistle of Colin Clouts Come Home Againe.

But even though Ralegh's patronage came as a propitious event, it drew Spenser into a potentially dangerous position at court. He would arrive in London with a patron whose status was tensely ambiguous. In 1589, at the age of thirty-seven, Ralegh saw his role as the queen's favorite unexpectedly upset by the rising star of the twenty-three-year-old earl of Essex. Before 1587, the year in which the earl of Leicester introduced his red-haired stepson to the queen, Ralegh's meteoric rise to power had been unhampered. From the time of his first appearance before the queen in 1582, Ralegh had been showered with honors.³ After 1587, however, he would never again enjoy Elizabeth's undivided attention. Spenser must have been aware of the precariousness of his patron's situation at court, which had deteriorated to the point where Essex could disdainfully reproach Ralegh by reminding the queen of Ralegh's humbler days, of “what he has been and what he was.”⁴ Indeed, the arrogant, erratic Essex even had the audacity to “disdain his competition of love” and ferociously taunted Ralegh by asking Elizabeth, “What comfort can I have to give myself over to a mistress that [is] in awe of such a man?”⁵

We do not know if Spenser was aware that Essex had challenged Ralegh to a duel, prevented only by the intervention of the Privy Council.⁶ Nor can we be sure whether he heard gossip that his patron's excursion to Munster was a concession to Lord Essex, who, in Sir Francis Allen's words, “hath chased Mr. Ralegh from the court, and hath confined him in Ireland.”⁷ We do know, however, that as early as 1589 Spenser had heard poetry by Ralegh complaining of his mistreatment at court, since he writes in Colin Clout that he and Ralegh had recited verses to each other, and that Ralegh's

          song was all a lamentable lay,
Of great unkindnesse, and of usage hard,
Of Cynthia the Ladie of the sea,
Which from her presence faultlesse him debared.

(164-67)

One of the extraordinary features of Spenser's comment on Ralegh's poetry is the fact that he wrote it in the crossrimed quatrains that his patron often employed. Spenser also picked up another characteristic element in Ralegh's poetry—the “undersong” or refrain. Spenser states that while the queen's besieged favorite recited his verse,

He cryed out, to make his undersong
Ah my loves queene, and goddesse of my life,
Who shall me pittie, when thou doest me wrong?

(169-71)

After suffering his great disgrace of 1592, in “The 11th: and last book of the Ocean to Scinthia,” Ralegh repeats the undersong—“Of all which past the sorrow only stayes”—from his complaint “A Farewell to the Court,” and notes that the refrain was written in his previous period of mixed fortune:

Of all which past the sorrow only stayes.
So wrate I once, and my mishapp fortolde,
My minde still feelinge sorrowfull success
Yeven as before a storme the marbell colde
Douth by moyste teares tempestious tymes express.
So fealt my heavy minde my harmes att hande
Which my vayne thought in vayne sought to recure;
At midel day my soonn seemde under land
When any littel cloude did it obscure.(8)

In this explicitly autobiographical passage we hear of two periods of crisis in Ralegh's service to the queen. Plunged into a far greater disgrace, buffeted by the “storme” that sweeps through The Ocean's Love to Cynthia, he remembers the oxymoronic season of “sorrowfull success.” This was the period before 1592—while the marble still gently wept—which probably occasioned the composition of a short complaint that begins: “Fortune hath taken the away my love / my lives soule and my soules heaven above / fortune hath taken the away my princes.” Recent scholarship has uncovered the fact that the queen wrote a reply to this poem which encourages Ralegh to “Revive againe & live without all drede, / the lesse afraid the better thou shalt spede.”⁹ But what modern scholarship has uncovered Spenser must have known, for in Colin Clout he has the Irish shepherd Marin attest to the mollifying effect that Ralegh's complaints had upon the queen:

                                        Right well he sure did plaine:
That could great Cynthiaes sore displeasure breake:
And move to take him to her grace againe.

(CCCHA 173-75)

Before Spenser arrived in London at the end of 1589, he seems to have been vividly aware of his patron's difficulties at court. He had heard the “lamentable lay” of his fellow courtier-poet, whom he names “the sommers Nightingale” in his dedicatory sonnet to Ralegh in the 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene, recalling the mournful strains of his Philomela-like poetry from the summer of their friendship.

Spenser embedded Ralegh's complaint in the Book of Chastity. But he prefaces his depiction of the grieving Timias with an example of Ralegh's martial prowess, in a portion of the poem that has escaped detailed analysis by critics. At the beginning of the Book of Chastity, Arthur, his squire Timias, Guyon, and Britomart are outraged at the sight of “A goodly Ladie” (III.i.15), fiercely pursued by “a griesly Foster … Breathing out beastly lust her to defile” (III.i.17). Arthur and Guyon instantly race after the frightened Florimel, while Timias spurs onward to punish her beastly assailant. Timias reappears in the fifth canto, where he continues to follow him, “To bene avenged of the shame, he did / To that faire Damzell” (III.v.13). But the villain soon outdistances him, “through swiftnesse of his speedy beast, / Or knowledge of those woods, where he did dwell” (III.v.14), and enlists the aid of his two brothers. Armed with “sad instruments / Of spoyle and murder,” vowing that “never he alive, / Out of that forest should escape their might” (III.v.16), they wait in ambush for Timias, in “a covert glade, / Foreby a narrow foord” (III.v.17). Once he comes into sight, they spring from cover and launch an attack, during which the brothers are swiftly dispatched by Arthur's valiant squire.

This brief martial episode, which precedes Timias's initial encounter with Belphoebe, seems at first to be little more than one of the hundreds of anonymous battles in The Faerie Queene. Upon closer examination, however, it turns out to be a glorified account of the part Ralegh played in suppressing the Desmond Rebellion, which ripped through Munster County, Ireland, from 1579 to 1583.¹⁰ The allegory conflates two distinct (but related) historical events: the ambush Ralegh weathered on the road from Youghall to Cork in February 1581 and the service he rendered in the execution of the revolt's instigators: the earl of Desmond and his brothers John and James.

Spenser is quite specific about the place where the “fosters” [foresters] lie in ambush for Timias. He writes that within the forest they inhabit

                    there was a covert glade,
Foreby a narrow foord, to them well knowne,
Through which it was uneath for wight to wade;
And now by fortune it was overflowne:
By that same way they knew that Squire unknowne
Mote algates passe; for thy themselves they set
There in await, with thicke woods overgrowne,
          And all the while their malice they did whet
With cruell threats, his passage through the ford to let.

(III.v.17)

This incident at the ford transformed Ralegh into an English hero, who was first recorded as such in the 1586 edition of Holinshed's Chronicles. There, in John Hooker's addition to the Chronicles of Ireland, the historian describes the outstanding valor that Ralegh exhibited when, as a captain delivering dispatches, he was suddenly attacked by a band of Irish rebels. Hooker relates:

This capteine making his returne from Dubline, & the same well knowne unto the seneschall of Imokellie, through whose countrie he was to passe, laie in ambush for him to have intrapped him between Youghall and Corke, lieing at a foord, which the said capteine must passe over. … The capteine little mistrusting anie such matter, had in his companie onelie two horssemen and foure shot on horssebacke, which was too small a force in so doubtfull and dangerous times.¹¹

Hooker then proceeds to describe how Ralegh, riding slightly ahead of his troop, singlehandedly routs the entire gang of rebels led by the seneschal of Imokelly (Eustace Fitz Edmond) and saves the life of his fellow Devonshireman, Henry Moile. In a paragraph that must have particularly pleased Ralegh, we read:

The Captaine being come toward the foord, the seneschall had espied him alone, his companie being scattered behind, and verie fiercelie pursued him, and crossed him as he was to ride over the water, but yet he recovered the foord and was passed over. … The captaine being thus over the water, Henry Moile, riding alone about a bowes shoot before the rest of the companie, when he was in the midel of the foord, his horsse foundered and cast him downe; and being afraid that the seneschals men would have folowed him and have killed him, cried out to the captaine to come and save his life; who not respecting the danger he himselfe was in, came unto him, and recovered both him and his horsse.

Ralegh's courage so impresses his adversaries that they soon abandon their siege and slink back into the woods whence they came:

The capteine nevertheless staid still, and did abide for the coming of the residue of his companie … sat upon his horsse in the meane while, having his staffe in one hand, and his pistoll charged in the other hand. The seneschall, who had so fiercelie folowed him upon spur, when he saw him to stand and tarrie as it were for his coming, notwithstanding he was counted a man (as he was indeed) of great service, and having also a new supplie of twelve horssemen and sundrie shot come unto him; yet neither he nor anie one of them, being twentie to one, durst to give the onset upon him, but onelie railed and used hard speeches unto him, untill his men behind him had recovered and were come unto him, and then without anie further harme departed.¹²

In his superb history of English colonialism in sixteenth-century Ireland, The Twilight Lords, Richard Berleth writes that through this act of bravery, Ralegh became “the talk of the army” early in 1581. “This gallant action was to shape his future,” Berleth notes. Because of it “Elizabeth would hear of his heroism from Burghley.”¹³ Less than three years after Holinshed's Chronicles made the occurrence general knowledge, Spenser could count on the fact that his readers would have little trouble in pinpointing the actual historical event he was alluding to, when he sends Timias headlong into the trap set by the “fosters.” The incident at the ford would immediately come to mind, when they read how

          The gentle Squire came ryding that same way,
          Unweeting of their wile and treason bad,
          And through the ford to passen did assay;
          But that fierce foster, which late fled away,
          Stoutly forth stepping on the further shore,
          Him boldly bad his passage there to stay,
          Till he had made amends, and full restore
For all the damage, which he had him doen afore.

(III.v.18)

Spenser highlights Ralegh's courage at the ford, however, by fusing the incident with the execution of the principal leaders of that “treason bad,” those “three / Ungratious children of one graceless sire” (III.v.15): the Desmonds.

Timias's destruction of the “fosters” is narrated with unusually acerbic wit. After the squire painfully fights his way to the opposite bank, he spears “the third brother” through “both his sides” (III.v.21). As this “foster” dies, Spenser writes:

He tombling downe, with gnashing teeth did bite
          The bitter earth, and bad to let him in
          Into the balefull house of endlesse night,
          Where wicked ghosts do waile their former sin.

(III.v.22)

The next brother to feel Timias's wrath, the one who attempted to assault Florimel, is struck on the skull “so rudely … That to the chin he cleft his head in twaine” (III.v.23). But the full thrust of Spenser's black humor surfaces in the stanza illustrating the last brother's brutal death. The remaining “foster” tries to escape the vengeful Timias, after his two siblings have been butchered:

With that he would have fled into the wood;
          But Timias him lightly overhent,
          Right as he entring was into the flood,
          And strooke at him with force so violent,
          That headlesse him into the foord he sent:
          The carkas with the streame was carried downe,
          But th' head fell backeward on the Continent.
          So mischief fel upon the meaners crowne;
They three be dead with shame, the Squire lives with renowne.

(III.v.25)

When Spenser states that the last brother's head fell “backeward on the Continent,” causing “mischief” to fall “upon the meaners crowne,” he subtly traces the full political thrust of his allegory. Here, Spenser, using remarkable linguistic compression, spices his sardonic commentary with three wry puns on the words: “Continent,” “meaner,” and “crowne.” The capitalized noun “Continent” refers to the land adjoining Spenser's fictional ford, but it also undoubtedly stands for the European mainland, from which Philip II of Spain incited the Irish to rise against British rule. The slain “foster” is the “meaner” or plotter, who unsuccessfully plans Timias's ambush and is also more debased or “meaner” in spirit than his intended victim. He suffers the effects of retributive justice. However, Spenser's allegory looks beyond the Desmonds and, with brilliant wordplay, implicates Philip II in their treachery. Philip II—in Spenser's elaborate system of puns—is the “meaner” or prime instigator behind the Desmond revolt, who is “meaner” in birth and nobility than Elizabeth of England. According to Spenser, the treasonous “mischief” promoted by the king of Spain, which was thwarted by the Desmonds' execution, has redounded upon his tarnished “crowne.” This reading is verified by the facts of a struggle in which both Ralegh and Spenser played active roles.

The ill-fated Desmond Rebellion erupted in 1580, after an army of Spanish and Italian mercenaries, financed by Philip II, had landed in Dingle Bay. The landing signaled a general insurrection against English control of Ireland that constituted the greatest threat to British security before the Armada of 1588. The revolution, led by the Desmonds, was viciously crushed by an English state that feared the expansionist ambitions of Spain, ambitions that would lead to an attempted invasion of the British mainland only eight years later. English power was first released in the wholesale massacre of all mercenaries captured at Smerwick. Approximately 500 soldiers were hacked apart in a single day. As Latin secretary to Lord Grey, who engineered the assault, Spenser probably witnessed the massacre.¹⁴ Ralegh was one of three captains directly responsible for the annihilation of this invading force that hoisted their white flag of surrender in vain.¹⁵ The continued exercise of English power led to the vindictive executions of the three rebel leaders who collaborated with Spain—the Desmonds. Thus James was hunted down in 1580, John in 1582, and Gerald, the earl, in 1583, at which point the conflict was terminated. Ralegh was closely connected with the first two of these executions. After James was captured by the sheriff of Cork, he was imprisoned for several months, and then, as Berleth records, “he was hanged, drawn, and quartered under the supervision of Sir Warham St. Leger and Ralegh.”¹⁶ Ralegh was also present at the garrison in Cork, when Captains Zouch and Dowdall returned with the body of Sir John, who was shot in the neck and bled to death soon after being apprehended.¹⁷

Ralegh's thorough familiarity with the Desmonds' fate is evident in his introduction to A Report of the Fight about the Iles of the Açores, published in 1591. There he recalls how “one Morice Fitz John, sonne of old John of Desmond, a notable traitor,” tried to rally English sailors to the cause of Catholic Spain. When John of Desmond's son promises them good fortune under a Spanish flag, Ralegh ironically adds: “If he had withall vaunted of this successe of his owne house, no doubt the argument woulde have moved much, and wrought great effect; which because he for that present forgot, I thought it good to remember in his behalfe.” The “successe” of Morice's father and two uncles was well known to Ralegh, who summarizes the demise of the ancient house of Desmond for the edification of his crew. He had the story by heart and repeats it at length:

For the Earle his cosen being one of the greatest subjects of Ireland, having almost whole contries in his possession; so many goodly manners, Castles, and Lordships; the Count Palatine of Kerry, five hundred gentlemen of his owne name and familie to follow him, besides others. All which he possessed in peace for three or foure hundred yeares: was in lesse then three yeares after his adhering to the Spaniards and rebellion, beaten from all his holdes, and not so many as ten gentlemen of his name left living, him selfe taken and beheaded by a soldiour of his owne nation, and his land given by a Parlament to her Majestie, and possessed by the English. His other Cosen, Sir John of Desmond taken by M. John Zouch, and his body hanged over the gates of his native citie to bee devoured by Ravens: the third brother of Sir James hanged, drawne, and quartered in the same place.¹⁸

In The Faerie Queene, Timias brings the Desmonds to ruin. When the Squire chases the “foster” who menaces Florimel, Spenser may be recalling Gerald Desmond's reputation for lechery, which would then thematically unite the preservation of chastity, the titular virtue of the third book, with the historical allegory of the fifth canto.¹⁹ The depiction of the Desmonds as forest dwellers who wage guerilla warfare against their foes is remarkably accurate. As traitors to the English crown, they die “with shame” in Spenser's narrative, deprived of proper names that would perpetuate their identities. The decapitation of the last brother to feel Timias's power is a vivid emblem of the Desmonds' overthrow that had specific relevance for Elizabeth. When Gerald, the earl, was finally captured, they cut off his head on the spot and forwarded it to the queen. Berleth provocatively observes that, according to legend, “she spent the morning sitting quietly and looking at it, before having it impaled on London Bridge.”²⁰

Both Ralegh and Spenser had reason to rejoice over the Desmonds' cruel fate. Each acquired possession of an Irish estate that had been confiscated by the Crown from Sir John of Desmond. In all, Ralegh received the bulk of his 42,000-acre estate from territory carved out of the rebel's holdings, while Spenser's Kilcolman castle and its surrounding 3,028 acres of ploughland and forest came from the same confiscation.²¹ Spenser must have especially appreciated Ralegh's help in securing an audience with the queen in 1589, because in that year he faced the possibility of losing some or all of the land on which he had just settled. At that time, Lord Roche, Viscount Fermoy, who had joined in the revolt led by the Desmonds but later recanted, was seeking the restoration of his inheritance—title to land in Munster given to English settlers after its seizure by the queen. On October 12, 1589, Lord Roche complained bitterly to the queen and Sir Francis Walsingham that Spenser was depriving him of his rightful property and molesting his servants. In his letter to Walsingham, Roche enclosed a list of specific grievances, which included the allegation that “one Edmund Spenser, clerk of the council in Munster, by color of his office, and by taking their cattle pasturing upon his lordship's own inheritance, and by refusing and beating of his lordship's servants and bailiffs, hath made waste six other ploughlands of his lordship's inheritance to his no small undoing.”²² The prominence of the Desmonds in The Faerie Queene's historical allegory can then be attributed to the fact that Spenser had not yet received complete and undisputed title to the Kilcolman estate and was struggling for control of the land on which he had settled. By reminding the queen of the Desmonds' treachery, he implicitly strengthened his own claim. On October 26, 1590, due in part perhaps to the queen's acceptance of the poem, Spenser was granted full title to the Kilcolman estate. When he returned to Ireland several months later, the lease he had obtained from the Crown, symbolizing his victory, displayed the name of the castle's former tenant—Sir John of Desmond.²³

But if the destruction of the “fosters” is meant to demonstrate Timias's power, it is also paradoxically intended to show his complete dependence on the queen. At the moment when he has finally achieved mastery over the “fosters,” Timias is suddenly leveled by a wound he received in combat. With alarming rapidity, he slips into a “deadly swowne,” only to be revived by the virgin huntress Belphoebe, who accidentally discovers his bleeding body. Upon awakening, he utters a short prayer of thanksgiving, in a stanza that expresses immense gratitude for her extraordinary kindness:

Mercy deare Lord (said he) what grace is this,
          That thou hast shewed to me sinfull wight,
          To send thine Angell from her bowre of blis,
          To comfort me in my distressed plight?
          Angell, or Goddesse do I call thee right?
          What service may I do unto thee meete,
          That hast from darknesse me returned to light,
          And with thy heavenly slaves and med'cines sweete,
Hast drest my sinfull wounds? I kisse thy blessed feete.

(III.v.35)

Timias's prayer humbly acknowledges Belphoebe to be an instrument of grace extended to “sinfull” humanity. He realizes that her “heavenly slaves” have delivered him from death and requests to be of service to her, in recompense for the love she has manifested. Among these “med'cines sweete,” Spenser includes “divine Tobacco” (III.v.32)—which Ralegh had introduced to the English nation.²⁴

It is important to remember that Spenser's name for the fictional character representing Elizabeth in his allegory—“Belphoebe”—was coined in response to Ralegh's poetic name for the queen. In his letter to Ralegh, Spenser notes that she is sometimes portrayed under the appellation “Belphoebe,” which he has fashioned “according to your owne excellent conceipt of Cynthia, (Phoebe and Cynthia being both names of Diana.)” Years later, in “The 11th booke of the Ocean,” Ralegh would repeat Spenser's variation to recall the period in his life when The Faerie Queene entertained Elizabeth with an allegory inspired by his own mythological name for the queen. Remembering an earlier and happier period of his career, Ralegh laments that “Bellphebe's course is now observed no more, / That faire resemblance weareth out of date” (271-72). Spenser created the Timias-Belphoebe allegory during the period of Ralegh's “sorrowfull success,” and so his narrative demonstrates the queen's double influence on her “gracious servant” (III.Pr. 4). She cures Timias of a thigh wound received in battle that continues to afflict him. Without intending to cause him pain, stirred with “soft passion” (III.v.30), Belphoebe is true to her name, when her Diana-like visage overpowers Timias, even as she attempts to cure him. While gazing at Belphoebe, Timias is again wounded by an “unwary dart” from her eyes that strikes “his hart.” This wounding can be construed as an allegorical distillation of the pain that Ralegh endured in his era of mixed fortune—pain that would appear insignificant in the ensuing years of disgrace.

Soon after the publication of the 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene, Ralegh suffered a major fall from power. In 1592, the Queen discovered that Ralegh, who was then captain of the guard, responsible for her personal welfare, had conceived a child with Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of her maids-in-waiting. The most accurate information we possess on the chronology of events leading to Ralegh's fall is recorded in the diary kept by Arthur Throckmorton, Elizabeth's brother. Arthur confides that he first heard of his sister's secret marriage to Walter Ralegh on November 19, 1591. On March 29, 1592, he reveals, “My sister was delivered of a boy between 2 and 3 in the afternoon.” This notation is followed by the words: “I writ to Sir Walter Ralegh.”²⁵ The child, named Damerei, was sent to nurse at Enfield, and Lady Ralegh quietly resumed her neglected position as personal attendant to the queen after a long absence. But in less than three months news reached the queen and the Raleghs were promptly incarcerated. Sir Edward Stafford caustically wrote to Anthony Bacon in August of that year: “If you have anything to do with Sir Walter Ralegh, or any love to make to Mistress Throckmorton, at the Tower tomorrow you may speak with them.”²⁶ Elizabeth was always angered by the marriage of her favorites. After the earl of Leicester secretly married Lettice Knollys, he was temporarily banished from court, as was the earl of Essex, after he wed Sir Philip Sidney's widow. In Ralegh's case, the queen evidently believed that he had betrayed her trust and had made her demonstration of affection seem ridiculous.”²⁷ He had, after all, used his privileged position as her personal servant to seduce one of her handmaids.

Even before Damerei's birth (and short life—he died months later), rumors of Ralegh's secret marriage had reached the son of the queen's closest counselor. When Robert Cecil, Lord Treasurer Burghley's son, wrote to Ralegh concerning the affair, Ralegh adamantly denied everything, evidently terrified that his union would be discovered. In a letter dated March 10—almost five months after Arthur Throckmorton heard of his sister's marriage and just a few days before the birth of her son—Ralegh denied reports of his personal alliance. He responded to Cecil with a bold lie, claiming that news of his marriage was a slander meant to discredit him at court: “I mean not to cume away, as they say I will, for feare of a marriage, and I know not what. If any such thing weare, I would have imparted it unto yourself before any man living, and therefore, I pray believe it not, and I beseich you to surpress, what you can, any such malicious report. For I protest before God, there is none on the face of the yearth, that I would be fastened to.”²⁸ Ralegh's letter illustrates the cultivation of the art of deceit. Faced with imminent exposure, he even dares to invoke his Creator's name to bluff his way through a scandal that was becoming increasingly more volatile. His strategy, at this point, was simply to refute the charge and to attribute it to his enemies' spite. His first impulse was to “give the lie” (in the terms of his famous poem) to all those who were telling the truth, albeit maliciously. The queen, however, was not impressed with these protestations of innocence and imprisoned him and his wife in the Tower at the end of July.

Ralegh's first, temporary reprieve was hastened by a matter of expediency. On September 7, the huge East Indian carrack, Madre de Dios, which his ships had captured off the Azores, was brought into Dartmouth harbor. Since Ralegh was the person most familiar with the intricate financial arrangements behind this act of piracy (from which the Crown received a substantial portion), he was set free. Robert Cecil, in whose charge he was placed, sensed his eagerness to atone for his indiscretion and wrote that he found Ralegh “marvelous greedy to do anything to recover the conceit of his brutish offense.”²⁹ Although the Raleghs were released in the autumn of that year, the stigma lingered on. Indeed, Ralegh was still brooding on his fall from favor in November 1596; he wrote to Cecil, describing new enterprises he had been devising in the queen's service, troubled that “because of [his] disgrace all men feare to adventure with [him].”³⁰

The difficulty of interpreting Spenser's treatment of Ralegh's public dishonor stems from the fact that Spenser creates an allegorical narrative that can be construed either as a vindication or as a condemnation of his patron's conduct.³¹ The complexity of Spenser's depiction of this crucial event in Ralegh's career can, in part, be attributed to the peculiar situation regarding patronage that Spenser occupied after 1592, when the two major sponsors of his poem were at odds with each other. Equidistant from the moral perspectives of Elizabeth and Ralegh, the historical allegory of the fourth and sixth books of The Faerie Queene is a point of convergence for conflicting versions of the same event. Here Spenser's generous moral understanding embraces a comprehensive vision which is, as a result, fundamentally ambiguous. The pivotal moment in Spenser's allegory, in the second installment of The Faerie Queene, when he first reflects on the Throckmorton affair, occurs when Belphoebe returns from her execution of Lust only to find Timias comforting Amoret in what she deems to be a highly improper manner.³² Angered by the attention Timias has lavished on Amoret, Belphoebe first thinks of killing him and his “new lovely mate” and then rebukes the squire, before forsaking him. Returning from her conquest:

          There she him found by that new lovely mate,
          Who lay the whiles in swoune, full sadly set,
          From her faire eyes wiping the deawy wet,
          Which softly stild, and kissing them atweene,
          And handling soft the hurts, which she did get.
          For of that Carle she sorely bruz'd had beene,
Als of his own rash hand one wound was to be seene.
Which when she saw, with sodaine glauncing eye,
          Her noble heart with sight thereof was fild
          With deepe disdaine, and great indignity,
          That in her wrath she thought them both have thrild,
          With that selfe arrow, which the Carle had kild:
          Yet held her wrathfull hand from vengeance sore,
          But drawing nigh, ere he her well beheld;
          Is this the faith, she said, and said no more,
But turnd her face, and fled away for evermore.

(IV.vii.35-36)

The poised tendencies of Spenser's thought, evident in this episode, lead analysis in opposing directions. On the one hand, Timias seems innocent of all wrongdoing, victimized by a jealous Belphoebe, who acts unadvisedly and in wrath. Spenser had previously presented Belphoebe's rescue of the wounded Timias as a paradigm of virtuous action. When Belphoebe aids the unconscious Timias, she administers grace that is freely bestowed upon victimized humanity. In the third book, the virgin huntress pursues the chase with a company of followers and comes upon the injured squire. In the fourth book, Timias is part of her retinue and repeats her kindness when he cares for Amoret. These acts of mercy are thus analogous in this regard. But, on the other hand, even though there are basic similarities shared by these two actions, significant differences also exist, which question Timias's integrity in manifesting love for Amoret.

It is the voice of the poet and not that of a possibly mistaken Belphoebe which informs us of the sudden emotional bond uniting Timias and “his new lovely mate.” The adjective “lovely” is a pun on Amoret's name; the word “new” suggests that Timias has abandoned Belphoebe, his “old” mistress. The term “mate” stresses the special attachment of “that lovely boy” (IV.vii.23) with the “lovely” Amoret, the allegorical figure of desire. Spenser had previously hinted at this union in his quatrain introducing the seventh canto, where he outlines this episode:

Amoret rapt by greedie lust
          Belphoebe saves from dread,
The Squire her loves, and being blam'd
          his dayes in dole doth lead.

The statement that “The Squire her loves” is a marvelous example of Spenser's use of ambiguous pronouns. If the antecedent for “her” is “Belphoebe,” then the squire has been unjustly accused of betrayal. But if, instead, it refers to “Amoret,” then Belphoebe's charge is again validated by the narrator. Furthermore, Timias's ministration to Amoret's wounds is related in a tone that insinuates a sexual dimension, but with immense subtlety. After he wipes “the deawy wet” from “her faire eyes,” he ventures past the bounds of discretion and courtesy by “kissing atween” her eyes and “handling soft” her “hurts.” With these phrases an act of salvation is transformed into an act of foreplay. Belphoebe recognizes this erotic motivation instantly and considers killing both lovers with the same weapon with which she dispatched Lust. Through this impulse we are prompted to identify Timias and Amoret—Ralegh and his wife—with the inordinate desire they were unable to resist.³³

Criticism of Ralegh is also implied in Timias's wounding of Amoret. As the squire comforts his “new lovely mate,” Spenser tells us that “of his own rash hand one wound was to be seene.” This line recalls an event that immediately precedes Belphoebe's destruction of Lust and her rebuke of Timias. As soon as Amoret drifts away from her protector, Britomart, she is captured by “a wilde and salvage man” (IV.vii.5), from whose dungeon she escapes. The savage, described at the beginning of the canto as “greedie lust,” pursues her past Timias, who is now Belphoebe's hunting companion. But Timias, who accosts the villain, is unable to overcome him and, indeed, adds to Amoret's torment; Lust defends himself by using her as a shield, which he repeatedly strikes:

Thereto the villaine used craft in fight;
          For ever when the Squire his javelin shooke,
          He held the Lady forth before him right,
          And with her body, as a buckler, broke
          The puissance of his intended stroke.
          And if it chaunst (as needs it must in fight)
          Whilest he on him was greedy to be wroke,
          That any little blow on her did light,
Then would he laugh aloud, and gather great delight.

(IV.vii.26)

Timias's desire to overcome Lust works a contrary effect, adding to Amoret's ravishment and degradation. The pain she suffers is a consequence of his unintended collaboration with unchecked sexual desire. To make certain that this point does not go unnoticed, Spenser mentions Timias's part in Amoret's misfortune on two other occasions outside the context of this incident. First, the poet discusses Timias's culpability, as we have seen, when the squire soothes the injured Amoret in IV.vii.35. And he repeats this observation again, when Prince Arthur comes across Amoret in “sad and sorrowful estate,” only to find her still suffering, “Through her late hurts, and through that hapless wound / With which the Squire in her defence her sore astound” (IV.viii.19). Timias does manage to wound Lust, but the poet uses this action to further emphasize Amoret's connection with the vice: “A streame of coleblacke bloud thence gusht amaine / That all her silken garments did with bloud bestaine” (IV.vii.27). Amoret and Lust are pressed together so closely that an assailant cannot attack one without affecting the other. Bathed in Lust's blood, Amoret, like Timias, becomes associated with excessive desire. Only Belphoebe is powerful and pure enough to drive off the villain, who is terrified by the sight of the virgin huntress, “Well knowing her to be his deaths sole instrument” (IV.vii.29). She soon defeats him by shooting an arrow through his “greedy throte” (IV.vii.31), destroying this archetype of consuming passion. After Belphoebe rejects Timias, he wanders wildly through the forest, like the mad Orlando forsaken by Angelica. But he does not blame the virgin huntress for his plight; instead, he rebukes himself for his disgrace, seeking only “on him selfe to wreake his follies owne despight” (IV.vii.39).³⁴

However, a reader sympathetic to Ralegh's plight can readily locate elements in the 1596 edition of the poem that absolve Ralegh of guilt—that prove he is innocent of any transgression—even as Ralegh had protested in his letter to Cecil. One could argue, for instance, that Timias, being Lust's adversary, is thereby aligned with virtue. He attacks Lust for the same reason that he challenges the beastly “foster”: to interrupt an attempted rape and punish the assailant. Spenser even manages to generate pity for Timias by making him Lust's victim rather than his ally. This qualification certainly mitigates the severity of the fourth book's allegory. As the tale continues toward its conclusion, the poet becomes much more emphatic in supporting Ralegh and emphasizing the case against the queen. When they meet again, in the next canto, he accuses her of having misjudged him. She at first does not recognize her former companion in his present state of neglect and asks him to explain the reason for his agonizing self-abuse. Timias then replies with a scathing rebuke:

Ne any but your selfe, O dearest dred,
          Hath done this wrong, to wreake on worthlesse wight
          Your high displeasure, through misdeeming bred:
          That when your pleasure is to deeme aright,
          Ye may redresse, and me restore to light.

After Timias blames her for misunderstanding his actions, Belphoebe has a sudden change of heart, based on his complaint:

          Which sory words her mightie hart did mate
          With mild regard, to see his ruefull plight,
          That her inburning wrath she gan abate,
And him receiv'd againe to former favours state.

(IV.viii.17)

Timias's innocence is predicated on Belphoebe's guilt. He charges her with having caused his distress and the narrator supplies the reason for her mistake—“inburning wrath.” According to this pattern of vindication, a strong passion colored her judgment when she rejected Timias and thought of killing the pair “in her wrath.” She is temporarily blinded with rage and only later comes to recognize her error. The historical allegory, viewed from this perspective, proves that “the displeasure of the mighty is / Then [than] death it selfe more dread and desperate” (IV.viii.1). The shifting attitudes of monarchs cause them to abuse their subjects, when this “displeasure” is melded to a failure to “deeme aright.”

Commenting on Timias's reproach, Allan Gilbert asserts that the squire's alleged faithlessness is here shown to be an inaccurate perception. “This breach is not real,” he argues, “for as Timias explains, Belphoebe's inference is incorrect.”³⁵ But Gilbert simply overlooks the extensive pattern of incrimination that I have previously suggested, against which we are meant to balance Timias's protestations of innocence. He forgets that Timias's “rash hand” has played a part in his catastrophe. Belphoebe's bitter taunt—“Is this the faith?”—and the squire's later retort—that her “misdeeming” has produced “this wrong” she has perpetrated—compel us to consider the Throckmorton affair from the divergent perspectives of Spenser's quarreling patrons. Spenser incorporates both perspectives in his narrative, and thus remained faithful to both Ralegh and Elizabeth in his historical allegory.

The incident that brings Belphoebe and Timias together includes yet another reconstruction of a historical event. She is drawn to Timias through the mediation of a turtle dove that steals a jewel from the squire with which to lure her to his side. The jewel is described as “a Ruby of right perfect hew, / Shap'd like a heart, yet bleeding of the wound, / And with a litle golden chaine about it bound” (IV.viii.6). In January 1595, Arthur Throckmorton wrote to Robert Cecil asking to be numbered among the masquers celebrating the wedding of Elizabeth Vere to the earl of Derby. Sir John Davies had composed the “Epithalamion of the Nine Muses” to commemorate the event, and Throckmorton hoped that during this masque he might be allowed to prostrate himself before the queen and then arise to give her “a ring made for a wedding ring set round with diamonds, and with a ruby like a heart placed in a coronet, with the inscription Elizabetha potest.”³⁶ It is likely that Spenser introduces the heart-shaped ruby into his narrative as a historical detail symbolizing Ralegh's hopes for reconciliation with his sovereign. Arthur Throckmorton construed his offering as an attempt to “modify the easy softened mind of her Majesty as both I and mine may find mercy.” He certainly included the fate of his sister and his brother-in-law in this wish for benevolent treatment. The reconciliation of Timias and Belphoebe, however, does not distribute blame equally between Ralegh and Elizabeth. Instead, it contradicts the imputation of guilt leveled against Ralegh and criticizes the queen for her rashness.

In the final book of The Faerie Queene, the Legend of Courtesy, Ralegh and his wife appear for the last time. Spenser tactfully omits any mention of their misfortune in the Book of Justice, where his advocacy of severe justice culminates with the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, under the guise of Duessa. Walter still retains his identity as Timias, but his companion is now called “Serena,” which was Ralegh's poetic name for his wife.³⁷ The three Desmond brothers are here replaced by the three masters of the Blatant Beast: Despetto, Decetto, and Defetto, who ambush Timias in “a woody glade” and “gan him to invade” (VI.v.14). The vindication of Ralegh in the sixth book utilizes the method of circular composition in The Faerie Queene, through which narrative patterns are made to echo, by analogy, previous events in the poem. A sense of Ralegh's virtue is affirmed by this recreation of the incident at the ford in which he overcame treason and lust. The 1590 and 1596 editions of The Faerie Queene are symmetrically balanced; in the fifth canto of the last book of each installment, Timias triumphs over ignominious foes. As masters of the Blatant Beast, Ralegh's new adversaries are manipulators of slander. Despite (“Despetto”) defines the attitude of Timias's rivals, while deceit (“Decetto”) signifies the method they employ to ensnare him “in treasons subtill traine” (VI.v.14). Their plan to use the Blatant Beast “To worke his utter shame, and thoroughly him confound” (VI.v.14) is a result of their own defective natures—the “Defetto” that represents the state of inadequacy which engenders evil. This link between the traitors of the third book and the slanderers of the sixth parallels the treason of the Desmonds with the malice of Ralegh's unnamed rivals at court.

But Timias is by no means completely absolved of error in the narrative of the sixth book. After he and Serena are bitten by the Blatant Beast and seek to be cured by a “carefull Hermite” (VI.vi.2), we are paradoxically told that the wounds they have received were internally induced. The hermit enjoins the couple to be vigilant in resisting “fraile affection”—the source of their distress:

First learne your outward sences to refraine
From things, that stirre up fraile affection;
Your eies, your eares, your tongue, your talk restraine
From that they most affect, and in due termes containe.
For from those outward sences ill affected,
The seede of all this evill first doth spring,
Which at the first before it had infected,
Mote easie be supprest with little thing:
But being growen strong, it forth doth bring
Sorrow, and anguish, and impatient paine
In th' inner parts, and lastly scattering
          Contagious poyson close through every vaine,
It never rests, till it have wrought his finall bane.

(VI.vi.7-8)

Through the hermit, Spenser acknowledges that the Raleghs' indulgence in “this evill” has brought about their ruin. In the hermit's homily, we are again confronted with the issue of Timias's guilt, as the poem reinforces Belphoebe's suspicion that he has been unfaithful. The hermit's comforting of Timias and Serena provides the third and final example of this motif of compassion in Spenser's historical allegory. Having been cured of the Blatant Beast's venomous bite, the characters of this fiction again lose their identities as analogues to contemporary political figures.

The historical allegory of Timias and Belphoebe is both a chronicle of court events and a vital part of their development. Spenser filled a dual role as both spectator to and actor in the incidents he commemorates. As a vehicle for social aspiration, the 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene unfolds an allegory of power wherein Ralegh defeats the queen's Irish opponents and then submits himself, in turn, to her authority. As a historical commentary, it continues the depiction of Ralegh's early career beyond the limit of Holinshed's Chronicles, in a bipartisan narrative that dramatizes Ralegh's sudden rise and subsequent misfortune. Unlike Dante in exile or Milton in retirement, Spenser composed his epic during a period of political involvement. Perhaps the most poignant aspect of his “biographical fiction” resides in the courage that he demonstrates in sympathetically responding to Ralegh's fate even during the years of his disgrace. In the fourth and sixth books, Spenser at times concedes that Ralegh was guilty of betraying his sovereign's trust. The case against him was strong and the evidence remains irrefutable. In seducing Elizabeth Throckmorton, Ralegh's unchecked desire had compelled him to violate what was regarded as a sacred confidence. But Spenser also realizes that this “crime” was clearly not commensurate with the “inburning wrath” that it engendered, or the imprisonment and calumny that were its consequences. Ralegh had, after all, remedied his lapse of judgment by marrying his “Serena.” Continued vindictiveness toward him could surely be termed a vice. These competing sympathies moved Spenser to create a complex meditation that combines the conflicting interpretations of his embittered patrons.

While outlining his “whole intention in the course of this worke” in the letter to Ralegh appended to the 1590 edition of The Faerie Queene, Spenser, referring to himself as “a Poet historical,” notes that he has chosen to write an Arthurian legend—set far back in the past—because it is “furthest from the daunger of envy, and suspition of present time.” Having decided to incorporate analogues to the activities of Elizabeth and Ralegh in his poem, he was nevertheless fully aware of the fact that he was again exposing himself to the Blatant Beast's “venemous despite,” just as he had in 1579, the year of his self-exile. It was then that he first suffered for his “former writs, all were they clearest / From blamefull blot” (VI.xii.41), which he recalls in the poem's final stanza. In mirroring contemporary court politics, however, Spenser decided to risk the bite of slander to repay a debt of gratitude and to reunite Ralegh and the queen.

Notes

1. See Edwin Greenlaw, “Spenser and the Earl of Leicester,” PMLA 25 (1910), 535-61; Greenlaw maintains that Spenser embarrassed Leicester, in whose service he was temporarily employed in 1579, by writing Mother Hubberds Tale, and was quickly shipped off to the wilds of Ireland.

2. From the dedicatory sonnet in The Faerie Queene addressed to Lord Grey, line 12. All quotations are taken from The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, ed. Edwin Greenlaw et al., 11 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1932-57).

3. See Kathrine Koller, “Spenser and Ralegh,” ELH 1 (1934), 39, for a list of the gifts and grants heaped upon Ralegh before 1587.

4. Quoted in Walter Oakeshott, The Queen and the Poet (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), p. 28.

5. Ibid.

6. From an account of the Pomeranian traveler Leopold von Wedel, in W. B. Rye, England as Seen by Foreigners (London, 1865; rpt. New York: B. Bloom, 1967), p. 113.

7. Oakeshott, The Queen and the Poet, p. 36.

8. Sir Walter Ralegh, “The 11th: and last book of the Ocean to Scinthia,” 123-31. All quotations from Ralegh's poetry are taken from The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, ed. Agnes Latham (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1951), unless otherwise cited.

9. Oakeshott includes late seventeenth-century versions of these verses in The Queen and the Poet, pp. 217-19, from MS 3602 of the Phillips collection. Sixteenth-century copies of both poems have subsequently been located: Ralegh's in Archbishop Marsh Library (MS 2.3.5.21. f. 30^v); and the queen's in the Petyt collection of the Inner Temple Library (MS Petyt 538, vol. 10).

10. This correspondence is cited by R. W. Church, Spenser (London: Macmillan, 1906), pp. 88-90. Church writes that “the Faerie Queene might also be called the Epic of the English wars in Ireland under Elizabeth” (p. 89). See also Philo Buck, “On the Political Allegory of The Faerie Queene,” Nebraska University Studies 11 (1911), 184-85; and Koller, “Spenser and Ralegh,” p. 46.

11. John Hooker, The Supplie of the Irish Chronicles (London, 1586), p. 173.

12. Ibid.

13. Richard Berleth, The Twilight Lords (New York: Knopf, 1978), p. 180.

14. In August 1580, Spenser was appointed to be Lord Grey's private secretary. He records the Smerwick massacre in his View of the Present State of Ireland, ed. W. L. Renwick (London: Partridge, 1934), pp. 139-40.

15. Hooker, Irish Chronicles, p. 171; Berleth, The Twilight Lords, pp. 167 ff.

16. Berleth, The Twilight Lords, p. 147.

17. Ibid., pp. 188-90; Hooker, Irish Chronicles, p. 175.

18. Sir Walter Ralegh, A Report of the Truth of the fight about the Iles of Açores (London, 1591), C4^r-C4^v.

19. Hooker, Irish Chronicles, p. 144, writes in a marginal note of how Gerald “putteth away his wife and married another mans wife.” However, Berleth, The Twilight Lords, pp. 80-82, tempers this opinion of the earl's imputed vice.

20. Berleth, The Twilight Lords, p. 204.

21. See Fredric Carpenter, A Reference Guide to Edmund Spenser (New York: Kraus, 1969), p. 32, for grant 5473 to Spenser.

22. Quoted from Alexander Judson, The Life of Edmund Spenser, Var. 11.23.

23. It seems likely that Spenser read either part or all of the Timias-Belphoebe episode, when he entertained the queen, with selections from The Faerie Queene, “at timely houres” (CCCHA 362). One could hardly imagine a more apposite excerpt.

24. Thomas Roche, ed., The Faerie Queene (Bungay, Suffolk: Penguin, 1978) comments of III.v.32 that “this is the first reference to tobacco in English literature” (p. 1151).

25. Arthur's diary notations can be found in A. L. Rowse, Sir Walter Ralegh, His Family and Private Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 160; Ralegh's child is mentioned on pp. 159-60.

26. Ibid., p. 167.

27. Fred Sorenson, “Sir Walter Ralegh's Marriage,” SP 33 (1936), 182-202.

28. Edward Edwards, Life of Ralegh (London: Macmillan, 1868), vol. 2, p. 46.

29. Rowse, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 167.

30. Oakeshott, The Queen and the Poet, p. 50.

31. Thomas Roche, The Kindly Flame (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University 1964), pp. 142-49, offers a different reading of this episode, which defines it as an “allegory of honor” wherein Timias is first accepted and then wrongfully rejected by Belphoebe, who temporarily misprizes his virtue. I state that the poem exhibits two opposing strands of argumentation: one that shows Timias being victimized by Belphoebe's error and another, no less significant, that hints at Timias's misconduct, thereby justifying Belphoebe's wrath.

32. This generally accepted allusion can be found in Allan Gilbert, “Belphoebe's Misdeeming of Timias,” PMLA 62 (1947), 627-28; and E. M. English, “Spenser's Accommodation of Allegory to History in the Story of Timias and Belphoebe,” JEGP 59 (1960), 418 ff.

33. I agree with William Oram, whose essay in this volume argues that the poet's “fictional distortion” of history “seizes on the problematic.” Yet I fear that his final assessment of Amoret as being “essentially blameless”—“only unlucky”—is not successfully reconciled with Oram's previous remark that “the text suggests that her seizure by Lust is not simply bad luck.” Since Oram's analysis is attuned to the subtle suggestion at IV.vii.4 that Amoret contributes to her own ravishment, that she is not merely the victim of bad luck, his closing remark unduly simplifies Spenser's complex treatment of Amoret, in distinguishing her from Aemylia. Using Oram's terminology, we might maintain that the character of Amoret has been “fragmented” and “reshaped … as a question.”

34. Arthur Gorges identifies Ralegh with the mad Orlando in a letter to Cecil, dated 9 August 1592 (Oakeshott, The Queen and the Poet, p. 46). During this same period, Ralegh also writes to Cecil, admitting his guilt and lamenting that “once amiss hath bereaved me of all” (ibid., p. 47).

35. Gilbert, “Belphoebe's Misdeeming,” p. 634.

36. The foregoing commentary is indebted to J. R. Brink, “The Masque of the Nine Muses: Sir John Davies's Unpublished ‘Epithalamion’ and the ‘Belphoebe-Ruby’ Episode in The Faerie Queene,” RES 23 (1972), 445-47.

37. See J. H. Adamson and H. F. Folland, The Shepherd of the Ocean: An Account of Sir Walter Ralegh and His Times (Boston: Gambit, 1969), pp. 200-06; Oakeshott, The Queen and the Poet, p. 46; and Agnes Latham, ed., The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951), pp. 118-19, in her gloss on “Now Serena bee not coy.”