In three instances we have emended (II.9.9.1; VI.8.47.3; 10.32.6). We have also retained the eight-line stanzas of 1.10.20 and III.6.45. All these readings are cited in the explanatory notes with suggested readings of other editions.

Nevertheless, in such a long poem, printed in so many editions, we have found it necessary to make some changes in the text. We have made all the corrections directed by the erratum page of the 1590 edition, ‘Faults Escaped’. We have made editorial conjectures in the case of manifest errors (VL3.28.6: soft footing for softing foot) and narrative errors (IV.4.2.4: Blandamour for Scudamour, who does not appear in the canto). We have occasionally chosen readings from die 1590 or 1609 texts when the 1596 reading did not seem suitable. All these changes are noted in the textual appendix that follows on p. 1057.

The composite text we present will necessarily be disappointing in some readings to some readers. These textual notes are intended not as a definitive solution to the problems of Spenser’s text but a factual declaration of the sources of our differences from the copy texts. If we had a clearer knowledge of Spenser’s manuscripts or of who was re sponsible for the ‘Faults Escaped’ or of who edited the 1609 and 1611 editions, we might be in a better position to justify our dependence on one text rather than another. However, in the present situation, in which such decisions cannot be made with any certainty, we have thought it best to make a composite text, giving priority to the 1596 copy text, in full awareness of the fact that reliance on one copy of a text is insufficient proof. Our only justification is that we wanted to make available a complete text of the poem with sufficient annotation to help the modern reader.

No note on the text or any part of this edition would be complete without mentioning some of our debts of gratitude. For supporting grants our gratitude to the Committee on Research of Princeton University; its help made possible the assistance of Douglas Rees in the early stages of the edition and for the past three summers the unrelenting alertness of Steven Westergan, who suffered through the interminable trial of getting things straight, summer after summer after summer, with cheerful fortitude and critical acumen. My wife, Lyn Vamvakis Roche, has counselled often with rigorous insistence; her knowledge of literature and language has kept us from fatuities, grammatical lapses and errors too embarrassing to enumerate. To say more would be a further embarrassment to me and a diminishing of her real and un acknowledged contribution to this edition.

TABLE OF DATES

1474 Birth of Ariosto
1485 Accession of Henry VII, first ruler of the Tudor dynasty; Caxton’s edition of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur
1492 Columbus’s discovery of the New World
1509 Accession of Henry VIII
1517 Luther’s Wittenberg Theses
1520 Birth of William Cecil, later Lord Burleigh and principal adviser to Elizabeth I
1532 Birth of Robert Dudley, later Earl of Leicester and Elizabeth’s favourite
Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (complete; partial editions in 1516 and 1521)
1533 Death of Ariosto
1534 Act of Supremacy, severing all ties between England and the Church of Rome
1536 Calvin’s Institutio
1544 Birth of Tasso
1547 Death of Henry VIII; accession of Edward VI
1552 Birth of Ralegh (?)
  Birth of Spenser in London (?)
1553 Death of Edward VI; accession of Mary I
1554 Marriage of Mary to Philip of Spain
Birth of Sidney
1556 Accession of Philip II of Spain
1558 Death of Mary; accession of Elizabeth I
1561?-1569 Spenser attends Merchant Taylors’ School, London
1567 Revolt of the Low Countries
1569 Van der Noodt’s Theatre of Voluptuous Worldlings sonnets translated by Spenser
Spenser’s matriculation as a sizar at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge
1572 St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in France
1576 Spenser proceeds MA
1578 Spenser secretary to John Young, Bishop of Rochester
1579 Shepheardes Calender (later editions 1581, 1586, 1591, 1597)
1580 Spenser’s residence in Ireland begins; secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland
Publication of Spenser-Harvey Letters
Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberate under the title of Il Goffredo
1585 Expedition to the Low Countries under Leicester
1586 Trial of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots
Death of Sidney
1587 Execution of Mary Stuart
1588 Defeat of the Armada
Death of Leicester
1589 Accession of Henri de Navarre as Henri IV of France
Beginning of Spenser’s quarrel and litigation with Lord Roche (lasts until 1595)
October: Spenser with Ralegh to England; in London in November
1590 Faerie Queene, I-III
1591 Complaints and Daphnaida
1593 Henri IV is converted to Roman Catholicism
1594 June 11: Spenser’s marriage to Elizabeth Boyle
1595 Death of Tasso
Colin Clouts Come Home Again
Amoretti and Epithalamion
1596 Faerie Queene, second printing of I-III, first printing of IV-VI
Daphnaida, second edition (with Fowre Hymnes)
Fowre Hymnes
Prothalamion
1598 Edict of Nantes
Death of Philip II
Death of Burleigh
October: Tyrone’s rebellion breaks out in Munster; the ‘spoiling’ of Kilcolman; Spenser flees to Cork; loss of an infant
1599 January 13: Death of Spenser in London
Spenser’s burial in Westminster Abbey
1609 Folio of Faerie Queene; first appearance of ‘Mutabilitie Cantos’
1611 First folio of Spenser’s Works
1620 Erection of a monument to Spenser in Westminster Abbey by Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset
1679 Second folio of the Works

FURTHER READING

Paul J. Alpers, The Poetry of The Faerie Queene, Princeton, 1967.

Paul J. Alpers, ed., Elizabethan Poetry: Modern Essays in Criticism, Oxford, 1967.

Paul J. Alpers, ed., Edmund Spenser: a Critical Anthology, Harmondsworth, 1969.

Jane Aptekar, Icons of Justice: Iconography and Thematic Imagery in Book V of The Faerie Queene, Columbia, 1969.

Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson, jr, New York, 1958.

John B. Bender, Spenser and Literary Pictorialism, Princeton, 1972.

Josephine Waters Bennett, The Evolution of The Faerie Queene, Chicago, 1942.

Harry Berger, jr, The Allegorical Temper: Vision and Reality in Book II of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, New Haven, 1957.

Harry Berger, jr, ed., Spenser: a Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1968.

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. Richard Green, New York, 1962.

Donald Cheney, Spenser’s Image of Nature: Wild Man and Shepherd in The Faerie Queene, New Haven, 1966.

Patrick Cullen, Infernal Triad: The World, the Flesh and the Devil in Spenser and Milton, Princeton, 1974.

R. M. Cummings, ed., Spenser: the Critical Heritage, London, 1971.

T. K. Dunseath, Spenser’s Allegory of Justice in Book Five of The Faerie Queene, Princeton, 1968.

Robert M. Durling, The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic, Cambridge, Mass., 1965.

John R. Elliott, jr, ed., The Prince of Poets: Essays on Edmund Spenser, New York, 1968.

Robert Ellrodt, Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser, Geneva, 1960.

Maurice Evans, Spenser’s Anatomy of Heroism: a Commentary on The Faerie Queene, Cambridge, 1970.

Angus Fletcher, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode, Ithaca, 1964.

Angus Fletcher, The Prophetic Moment: an Essay on Spenser, Chicago, 1971.

Alastair Fowler, Spenser and the Numbers of Time, London, 1964.

Alastair Fowler, Triumphal Forms: Structural Patterns in Elizabethan Poetry, Cambridge, 1970.

Alascair Fowler, ed., Silent Poetry: Essays in numerological analysis, London, 1970.

Rosemary Freeman, The Faerie Queene: A Companion for Readers, Berkeley, 1970.

A.