The Faerie Queene

Themes
MA English Annual System
University of Sargodha
Pakistan  🇵🇰 🇵🇰 🇵🇰

Instruction in Virtue

Spenser intended The Faerie Queene to be read primarily by young men desiring to learn
better what virtues to cultivate in their lives. As such, the epic makes clear who the heroes
and villains are, whom they represent, and what good behavior looks like. The most basic
reading of The Faerie Queene is an education in proper living for 16th Century England.

Interdependence of the Virtues

The Faerie Queene makes it clear that no single virtue is greater than the rest. While some
are superior to others, they require one another to strengthen the integrity of the whole
person. For example, Redcrosse’s Holiness requires rescuing by Britomart’s Chastity, while
Britomart’s Chastity seeks Justice to complete it in the social realm.

Chivalric Society and Social Classes

Spenser chose to set his epic in a romanticized medieval fantasy world full of knights,
monsters, and damsels in distress. He uses this environment to give power to his allegorical
statements, but at the same time, he includes an undercurrent of criticism for feudal Britain
(and the class system his own age had inherited from it). Along with virtuous knights,
Spenser includes noble savages (the Savage Man), honorable squires (Tristram), and even
battle-hardened women (Britomart and Radigund). The knights, who are supposed to be the
ideal of virtue, are often the most wrong-headed characters in the epic.

Christian Humanism

While ostensibly constructing an epic devoted to theological virtues of the Christian faith,
Spenser cannot resist including his beloved classical mythology and legends in the work.
Alongside the Redcrosse knight stands the half-satyr Satyrane; Calidone, the knight of
Courtesy, spends time with rustic shepherds and a magical storyteller; and the virtuous
Queen of England herself is depicted as Gloriana, Queen of the Faerie. To Spenser, there
was no contradiction between classical aesthetic values and Protestant Christianity.

Protestantism versus Catholicism

Although The Faerie Queene can be read as a simple allegory of virtue, there are too many
overt criticisms of the Catholic Church to keep the work theologically neutral. The monster
Errour vomits Catholic tracts upon Redcrosse in Book 1, and Grantorto stands in for
Catholicism as a whole in Book 6. Throughout the epic, Godliness is equated with
Protestant theology, while falsehood and the destruction of lives are attributed to Catholic
sources.
Chastity

Spenser makes much of female Chastity in The Faerie Queene, and not just in the book
devoted to that virtue (Book 3). Britomart is the ideal of chastity, yet she does not seek to
remain a maiden; her quest is to find the man she has fallen in love with and marry him.
Belphoebe, the virgin huntress, eventually develops a relationship with Arthur’s squire
Timias. Arthur himself looks forward to the day when he will woo and win the Faerie
Queene herself. Each of these strong female figures points to the real-life Queen Elizabeth,
whose continued celibacy caused great concern among many of her subjects (who feared
she would leave no heir to continue her glorious reign). In some ways, the entire epic is not
just dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I, but it also aims to change her mind and push her into
accepting a suitor.

The Pervasive Effects of Slander

Through the Blatant Beast in Books 5 and 6, Spenser expounds the effects slander can
have upon its victims. The Blatant Beast bites its prey, leaving them poisoned and dying.
Only self-control, good living, and forthrightness of speech can cure them of their ills.
Spenser uses the poisoning of Serena to show how a woman’s virtue can suffer even when
she has done no wrong; he uses the poisoning of Timias following Belphoebe’s
misperception of his intentions toward Amoretta to show a similar evil worked upon an
upright man. Spenser had real-world counterparts in mind for these episodes: well-known
political figures had been the victims of slander and could not escape its detrimental effects
even after the allegations were disproved. The Blatant Beast is the one creature left alive by
the questing knight: apparently, Slander is subject to repression (the Beast’s jaws can be
bound for a while) but not complete elimination (the Beast still lives).