2 - Allegories of defamation in The Faerie Queene Books iv–vi

Summary

The Legend of Friendship, the first book of the second installment of The Faerie Queene, opens by taking the perspective of a critic of the poet's work in what appears to be a self-criticism. Here “Kingdomes causes … affaires of state” and virtue itself are presented as antithetical to the false allurements of love that the poet takes as his subject. The minister of state authoritatively judges and rejects “vaine poemes weeds” which lead to folly frail youth “that better were in vertues discipled” (iv. Proem I). However, the second stanza of this book reveals the injustice of this allegation by rejecting the judgment of the critic; culpability now lies with the speaker of this false imputation rather than with his victim.

Such ones ill iudge of loue, that cannot loue,

Ne in their frosen hearts feele kindly flame:

For thy they ought not thing vnknowne reproue,

Ne naturall affection faultless blame.

(iv. Proem 2)

Love is the root of “of honor and all vertue,” and poetry, in taking it as its subject, promotes, rather than undermines, virtuous discipline. Spenser brilliantly aligns himself with the example of Elizabeth, the queen whose rhetoric often justified her rule by the love she bore her subjects and who managed the factions at her court by styling them as suitors for her affection, to ballast his defense of love poetry. The “rugged forhead” may have foresight regarding state concerns, but he is rejected as one of the “Stoicke censours” (IV. Proem 3.9) who misunderstands love's relation to virtue and hence cannot serve as a sufficient audience for the poem.