4 - Narrative firtations

Summary

Waging dalliance

Penelope for her Vlisses sake,

Deuiz'd a Web her wooers to deceaue:

in which the worke that she all day did make

the same at night she did againe vnreaue.

Such subtile craft my Damzell doth conceaue,

th'importune suit of my desire to shonne:

for all that I in many dayes doo weaue,

in one short houre I find by her vndonne.

So when I thinke to end that I begonne,

I must begin and neuer bring to end:

for with one looke she spils that long I sponne,

and with one word my whole yeares work doth rend.

Such labour like the Spyders web I fynd,

whose fruitlesse worke is broken with least wynd.

(Amoretti 23)

The brilliance of the analogy that informs Sonnet 23 of Spenser's Amoretti lies partly in its extravagant imprecision. Penelope's relationship to Ulysses ought to parallel that of the damsel to her poet admirer, but when we learn that the damsel conceives her craft in order to shun “th'importune suit of [his] desire,” we realize that the speaker is actually analogousto Penelope's suitors – or would be, except that he becomes Penelope herself in the next line when he laments the loss of “all that I in many dayes doo weaue.” Ulysses fades quickly from the poem, flickering back into our sight only peripherally when the endless labor mentioned in the third quatrain reminds us of the sailor's wish to bring his voyage to an end.