Spenser Expands His TextAuthor(s): Rudolf GottfriedSource: Renaissance News, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Spring, 1963), pp. 9-10Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2857323 .

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SPENSER EXPANDS HIS TEXT SPENSER EXPANDS HIS TEXT

nical ground, later supported upon much more recherche grounds, were reinforced at a critical point by the presence of Anne, whereafter vacil- lation was at an end. Richmond lingered on as a vestige of an older scheme, now second string to the fiddle: perhaps he is the clue to the beginnings of the king's 'great matter'.

LONDON

Spenser Expands His Text

by RUDOLF GOTTFRIED

They bene ybrought into a comely bowre, And seru'd of all things that mote needfull bee; Yet secretly their hoste did on them lowre, And welcomde more for feare, then charitee; But they dissembled, what they did not see, And welcomed themselues. Supper was dight; Then they Malbecco prayd of curtesy, That of his Lady they might haue the sight,

And company at meat, to do them more delight.

ANY reader of Renaissance News will immediately identify this stanza as one of the thousands that make up The Faerie Queene; in

fact, given the name Malbecco and the situation described, he cannot fail to spot it as occurring in the ninth canto of Book Three. In a sense, how- ever, he will be in error. It is actually a spurious composite of two of Spenser's stanzas in that canto: the nineteenth, which supplies every- thing before the period in line 6, and the twenty-fifth, from which the remainder is taken. That the two fragments can be fitted together is not, I think, an accident. Not only are they continuous in meaning, in meter, and in rhyme scheme, but the rhyme words dight-sight-delight at the end of stanza 25 are reflected in the rhyme words vndight-light- plight at the end of stanza I9. The only conclusion one can reach is that Spenser originally wrote the hypothetical stanza given above and that then, before publication, he divided it, inserting between its parts all that occurs between them in the printed text, that is, fifty-four lines.

Is there any evidence outside of stanzas 19 and 25 to support this con-

nical ground, later supported upon much more recherche grounds, were reinforced at a critical point by the presence of Anne, whereafter vacil- lation was at an end. Richmond lingered on as a vestige of an older scheme, now second string to the fiddle: perhaps he is the clue to the beginnings of the king's 'great matter'.

LONDON

Spenser Expands His Text

by RUDOLF GOTTFRIED

They bene ybrought into a comely bowre, And seru'd of all things that mote needfull bee; Yet secretly their hoste did on them lowre, And welcomde more for feare, then charitee; But they dissembled, what they did not see, And welcomed themselues. Supper was dight; Then they Malbecco prayd of curtesy, That of his Lady they might haue the sight,

And company at meat, to do them more delight.

ANY reader of Renaissance News will immediately identify this stanza as one of the thousands that make up The Faerie Queene; in

fact, given the name Malbecco and the situation described, he cannot fail to spot it as occurring in the ninth canto of Book Three. In a sense, how- ever, he will be in error. It is actually a spurious composite of two of Spenser's stanzas in that canto: the nineteenth, which supplies every- thing before the period in line 6, and the twenty-fifth, from which the remainder is taken. That the two fragments can be fitted together is not, I think, an accident. Not only are they continuous in meaning, in meter, and in rhyme scheme, but the rhyme words dight-sight-delight at the end of stanza 25 are reflected in the rhyme words vndight-light- plight at the end of stanza I9. The only conclusion one can reach is that Spenser originally wrote the hypothetical stanza given above and that then, before publication, he divided it, inserting between its parts all that occurs between them in the printed text, that is, fifty-four lines.

Is there any evidence outside of stanzas 19 and 25 to support this con-

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RENAISSANCE NEWS

clusion? The intervening fifty-four lines are almost entirely given to the discovery of Britomart's sex, when the removal of helmet and haber- geon allows her long golden hair and pleated frock to fall freely down; and it is worth noting that on several occasions (3.1.63; 4.1.13-14; and

4.6.20) Spenser repeats the device of letting her hair reveal to those around her that she is a woman. But in what follows stanza 25 it is by no means clear that those around her recognize Britomart as a woman. If Paridell at one point calls her a 'Lady knight' (3.9.47), he goes on to ad- dress her as 'Sir' (3.9.5 I), and three cantos later he clearly thinks of her as a male, speaking of'his manhood and his might' (4.1.35). The use of 'Sir' may not be significant since she is afterward called 'Sir' by one who already knows she is a woman (4.6.34); nevertheless, the reference to 'his manhood and his might' is obviously inconsistent with 'Lady knight' and with the revelation of her sex between stanzas I9 and 25.

Paridell is curiously mixed up about a matter in which we would expect him to have a special competence. Furthermore, Malbecco seems some- how to have missed the change which has taken place in the appearance of the lady knight: no sooner does his wife join them at table than he

begins to look 'still askaunce' at Britomart (3.9.27), jealous as he would never be if he realized that she was a woman.

From this evidence I think there can be little doubt that the fifty-four lines in which Britomart reveals her sex were written later than much of the scene in Malbecco's house; that when Spenser inserted them in the middle of an original stanza, he attempted to bring what follows into line by having Paridell call her 'Lady knight'; but that at the same time, through haste or carelessness, he allowed a few contradictory references to remain from the earlier version. In her Evolution of' TheFaerie Queene' (pp. 63; I49-I50) Mrs. Bennett has suggested that Britomart must have been a relatively late addition to the poem and, in particular, to the Malbecco episode; to extend this hypothesis, we may say that after Brit- omart was added to the poem, Spenser seems to have made a further recension of a major scene in which she appears. INDIANA UNIVERSITY

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