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Spenser's Faerie Queene, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Chapter 36: FOOTNOTES:
By Edmund Spenser
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About This Book

A lengthy allegorical epic in Spenserian stanza unfolds through a sequence of chivalric episodes in which knights and maidens travel across enchanted realms, facing monsters, temptations, and deceptive enchantments that personify moral qualities. Each quest dramatizes a particular virtue and the trials that test it, combining courtly romance, classical allusion, and pastoral description. The diction favors archaisms and rich imagery, and the poem alternates narrative adventure with reflective digression and moral meditation.

To youre faire selues a faire ensample frame, liv
Of this faire virgin, this Belphœbe faire,
To whom in perfect loue, and spotlesse fame
Of chastitie, none liuing may compaire:
Ne poysnous Enuy iustly can empaire
The prayse of her fresh flowring Maidenhead;
For thy she standeth on the highest staire
Of th’honorable stage of womanhead,
That Ladies all may follow her ensample dead.
In so great prayse of stedfast chastity, lv
Nathlesse she was so curteous and kind,
Tempred with grace, and goodly modesty,
That seemed those two vertues stroue to find
The higher place in her Heroick mind:
So striuing each did other more augment,
And both encreast the prayse of woman kind,
And both encreast her beautie excellent;
So all did make in her a perfect complement.

FOOTNOTES:

[960] lx 4 bright? 1590, 1596

[961] Arg. 4 swound 1609

[962] ii 8 breathe 1609

[963] iii 2 till at the last 1609

[964] iv 6 account 1609

[965] v 5 A] And 1596, 1609

[966] vi 9 where. 1590, 1596

[967] viii 8 belou’d of a 1596

[968] xi 1 ye] you 1596, 1609

[969] xii 6 douht 1596

[970] 8 faithfall 1596

[971] xiii 8 strong. 1596

[972] xiv 2 beast; 1590, 1596

[973] xvii 3 wade] made 1590: corr. F. E.

[974] xix 3 habericon 1590

[975] 5 no] now 1590

[976] xxi 9 bloud] flood 1590

[977] xxx 7 better] bitter 1590

[978] xxxii 5 nursed 1609

[979] xxxvi 7 common 1609

[980] 8 common 1609

[981] xxxvii 2 undertaken after her arriu’d 1596: undertaken, after her arriu’d 1609

[982] xxxviii 9 forthwith 1596

[983] xxxix 9 his] their 1590

[984] xl 4 loues sweet] sweet loues 1590

[985] 9 liuing] liking 1590

[986] xli 6 guarish 1590

[987] xliv 7 renew 1596, 1609

[988] xlvi 5 restore: 1590 &c.

[989] l 8 To him and all 1609

[990] lii 6 admire 1590, 1596

[991] liii 3 Reames 1590

[992] 9 weare] were 1590