He is sometimes confused with Bacchus.

8 5 incontinent: at once (Latin: continents).

9 3 blubbred: swollen from weeping. 11 6 horror: roughness.

119 teach… obay. i.e., teach them to obey her humbly,

12 2 single: solitary, truth: honesty,

12 4 learnd: taught.

13 1 guise: appearance.

13 5 Prime: early morning, or springtime.

14 8 stadle: staff.

15 2 Or Bacchus merry fruit: i.e., either the wine of Bacchus …

15 3 Cybeles franticke rites: the Corybantes, priests of Cybele, or Shea, celebrated her rites with wild dances and music. See Ovid, Fasti 4.201 ff for origin of the rites.

15 8 Dryope: Aen. 10.551 makes Dryope the wife of Faunus, another wood god. Spenser may not have distinguished between Sylvanus, Faunus, and Pan, because Pholoe is a nymph loved by Pan in Statius, Silvae 2.3.8-11. The pun {‘Pholoe fowle’) may explain Spenser’s use of the name.

16 9 buskins: boots.

17 2 Cyparisse: according to Natalis Comes, 5.10, and Boccaccio, Gen.

13.17, Cyparissus was loved by Sylvanus, for which he was changed into a cypress tree (Latin: cyparissus). Sylvanus ever after carried a cypress branch, which accounts for the ‘Cypresse stadle’ of 14.8. In Met. 10.106 ff, Apollo loved the boy. Ovid uses the story to explain why cypress groves are places of sorrow.

17 9 annoy: sorrow.

18 1 Hamadryades: spirits of trees whose lives ended with the life of the tree they inhabited.

18 3 Naiades: nymphs of rivers or springs.

18 8 woody kind: inhabitants of forest, such as satyrs, fauns, nymphs,

21 4 Thyamis: Greek: ‘passion’. Labryde: Greek: ‘turbulent, greedy’.

21 6 Therion: Greek: ‘wild beast’.

22 5 venery: hunting, with pun an venereal spotting.

23 7 aspire: grow up.

23 8 noursled vp: reared.

24 1 ymp: Satyrane’s education is like that of Achilles, who was taught by the centaur Chiron. Spenser probably has in mind a similar passage in OF 7.57, describing the education of Ruggiero.

25 6 learne: teach.

25 8 Iibbard: leopard.

26 4 Pardale: panther or leopard.

28 3 reuokt: called back (Latin: revocatus).

29 5 haught: high, haughty.

30 4 ofspring: origin. 30 7 habiliment: attire.

30 9 redound: flow.

31 7 hurtlesse: harmless.

32 9 arise: depart.

33–48The action of the rest of this canto is intended to recall the first two cantos of OF, in which Rinaldo and Sacripante fight over Angelica. The outcome of the fight between Sansloy and Satyrane is characteristically withheld, although Sansloy appears again in IL2 and Satyrane in m.7. We hear about Sansjoy’s wounds in great detail; but whether they were healed by Aesculapius we never learn, nor is the reader likely to ask the question unless it is pointed out to him.

35 7 Jacobs staffe: pilgrim’s staff, symbol of St James, whose shrine at Santiago de Compostela was one of the greatest centres of pilgrimages in the Middle Ages. The symbolism is derived from Jacob’s staff in Genesis 32.10-13.

35 9 scrip: bag.

37 8 processe: account.

38 7 imbrew: soak in blood.

39 2 wonne: fought. 39 8 Foreby: close by.

41 2 knightlesse: unknightly. train: deceit.

41 8 three square: triangular.

42 1 misborne: base born. 42 4 blent: blemished.

42 7–8Sansloy is referring to his encounter with Archimago disguised as Redcross, I.3.33-9.

44 9 entire: whole, unbroken, intact. 46 4 doubtfull: undedded. 48 1 leasing: lie.

CANTO 7

1 1 ware: wary, wise. 1 2 descry: perceive, see through.

2 7 foreby: near.

3 1 bayes: bathes.

3–8These stanzas are crucial to understanding the moral condition of Redcross and to the correct reading of Spenser’s figures in general. The lines describing this meeting of Redcross and Duessa have been interpreted a s simple physical fornication (although the sexual loosenes s is never specified) and at the other extreme as spiritual fornication (the whoring after strange gods of the Old Testament). The myth about the nymph who ‘Sat downe to rest in middest of the race’, recalls Paul’s running of the race in I Cor. 9.24. The nymph’s spiritual sloth, in physical terms, taints the waters of the well and thereby Red cross. For an excellent discussion of this passage and the complications of reading Spenser see Paul Alpers, The Poetry of the Faerie Queene, pp. 137-59; also D. Douglas Waters, Duessa as Theological Satire (University of Missouri Press, 1970).

4–7An analogue is the spring in the myth of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus in Met.