Friday, July 26, 2013
William Shakespeare: Sonnet 18 and 130
SONNET 18
Shall I compare thee to a
summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
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PARAPHRASE
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Shall I compare you to a summer's day?
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You are more lovely and more constant:
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Rough winds shake the beloved buds of May
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And summer is far too short:
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At times the sun is too hot,
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Or often goes behind the clouds;
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And everything beautiful sometime will lose its beauty,
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By misfortune or by nature's planned out course.
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But your youth shall not fade,
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Nor will you lose the beauty that you possess;
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Nor will death claim you for his own,
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Because in my eternal verse you will live forever.
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So long as there are people on this earth,
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So long will this poem live on, making you immortal.
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Sonnet 18,
often alternately titled Shall
I compare thee to a summer's day?, is one of the best-known of 154 sonnets written
by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. Part of the Fair Youth
sequence (which comprises sonnets 1–126 in the accepted numbering stemming
from the first edition in 1609), it is the first of the cycle after the opening
sequence now described as the Procreation sonnets. Most scholars now agree
that the original subject of the poem, the beloved to whom the poet is writing,
is a male, though the poem is commonly used to describe a woman.
In the sonnet, the speaker compares his beloved to the summer
season, and argues that his beloved is better. He also states that his beloved
will live on forever through the words of the poem. Scholars have found
parallels within the poem to Ovid's Tristia and Amores,
both of which have love themes. Sonnet 18 is written in the typical Shakespearean sonnet form, having 14 lines of iambic
pentameter ending in a
rhymed couplet.
Detailed exegeses have revealed several double meanings within the poem, giving it a greater
depth of interpretation.
The poem starts with a flattering question to the beloved—"Shall
I compare thee to a summer's day?" The beloved is both "more
lovely and more temperate" than a summer's day. The speaker lists some
negative things about summer: it is short—"summer's lease hath all too
short a date"—and sometimes the sun is too hot—"Sometime too
hot the eye of heaven shines." However, the beloved has beauty that
will last forever, unlike the fleeting beauty of a summer's day. By putting his
love's beauty into the form of poetry, the poet is preserving it forever. "So
long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives
life to thee." The lover's beauty will live on, through the poem which
will last as long as it can be read.
The poet never describes anything specific about the beloved. None
of the qualities which make the beloved superior to a summer's day are actually
possible - remaining eternally young and beautiful and never dying - nor are
they inherent in the beloved. They are qualities given to the beloved by the
poet through the act of writing the poem and only existing within it.
Sonnet 18 is a
typical English or Shakespearean sonnet. It consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet, and has the characteristic rhyme scheme:abab
cdcd efef gg. The poem carries the meaning of an Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet. Petrarchan sonnets typically discussed
the love and beauty of a beloved, often an unattainable love, but not always.[4] It
also contains a volta, or
shift in the poem's subject matter, beginning with the third quatrain.
Summary
The speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to the
beloved: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” The next eleven lines are
devoted to such a comparison. In line 2,
the speaker stipulates what mainly differentiates the young man from the
summer’s day: he is “more lovely and more temperate.” Summer’s days tend toward
extremes: they are shaken by “rough winds”; in them, the sun (“the eye of
heaven”) often shines “too hot,” or too dim. And summer is fleeting: its date
is too short, and it leads to the withering of autumn, as “every fair from fair
sometime declines.” The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs
from the summer in that respect: his beauty will last forever (“Thy eternal
summer shall not fade...”) and never die. In the couplet, the speaker explains
how the beloved’s beauty will accomplish this feat, and not perish because it
is preserved in the poem, which will last forever; it will live “as long as men
can breathe or eyes can see.”
Commentary
This sonnet is certainly the most famous in the sequence of
Shakespeare’s sonnets; it may be the most famous lyric poem in English. Among
Shakespeare’s works, only lines such as “To be or not to be” and “Romeo, Romeo,
wherefore art thou Romeo?” are better-known. This is not to say that it is at
all the best or most interesting or most beautiful of the sonnets; but the
simplicity and loveliness of its praise of the beloved has guaranteed its
place.
On the surface, the poem is simply a statement of praise about
the beauty of the beloved; summer tends to unpleasant extremes of windiness and
heat, but the beloved is always mild and temperate. Summer is incidentally
personified as the “eye of heaven” with its “gold complexion”; the imagery
throughout is simple and unaffected, with the “darling buds of May” giving way
to the “eternal summer”, which the speaker promises the beloved. The language,
too, is comparatively unadorned for the sonnets; it is not heavy with
alliteration or assonance, and nearly every line is its own self-contained
clause—almost every line ends with some punctuation, which effects a pause. Sonnet 18 is the first poem in the sonnets not
to explicitly encourage the young man to have children. The “procreation”
sequence of the first 17 sonnets ended with the speaker’s
realization that the young man might not need children to preserve his beauty;
he could also live, the speaker writes at the end of Sonnet 17, “in my
rhyme.” Sonnet 18,
then, is the first “rhyme”—the speaker’s first attempt to preserve the young
man’s beauty for all time. An important theme of the sonnet (as it is an
important theme throughout much of the sequence) is the power of the speaker’s
poem to defy time and last forever, carrying the beauty of the beloved down to
future generations. The beloved’s “eternal summer” shall not fade precisely
because it is embodied in the sonnet: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can
see,” the speaker writes in the couplet, “So long lives this, and this gives
life to thee.”
SONNET 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing
like the sun;Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Summary
This sonnet compares the speaker’s lover to a number of other
beauties—and never in the lover’s favor. Her eyes are “nothing like the sun,”
her lips are less red than coral; compared to white snow, her breasts are
dun-colored, and her hairs are like black wires on her head. In the second
quatrain, the speaker says he has seen roses separated by color (“damasked”)
into red and white, but he sees no such roses in his mistress’s cheeks; and he
says the breath that “reeks” from his mistress is less delightful than perfume.
In the third quatrain, he admits that, though he loves her voice, music “hath a
far more pleasing sound,” and that, though he has never seen a goddess, his
mistress—unlike goddesses—walks on the ground. In the couplet, however, the
speaker declares that, “by heav’n,” he thinks his love as rare and valuable “As
any she belied with false compare”—that is, any love in which false comparisons
were invoked to describe the loved one’s beauty.
Commentary 
This sonnet, one of Shakespeare’s most famous, plays an
elaborate joke on the conventions of love poetry common to Shakespeare’s day,
and it is so well-conceived that the joke remains funny today. Most sonnet
sequences in Elizabethan England were modeled after that of Petrarch.
Petrarch’s famous sonnet sequence was written as a series of love poems to an
idealized and idolized mistress named Laura. In the sonnets, Petrarch praises
her beauty, her worth, and her perfection using an extraordinary variety of
metaphors based largely on natural beauties. In Shakespeare’s day, these
metaphors had already become cliche (as, indeed, they still are today), but
they were still the accepted technique for writing love poetry. The result was
that poems tended to make highly idealizing comparisons between nature and the
poets’ lover that were, if taken literally, completely ridiculous. My mistress’
eyes are like the sun; her lips are red as coral; her cheeks are like roses,
her breasts are white as snow, her voice is like music, she is a goddess.
In many ways, Shakespeare’s sonnets subvert and reverse the
conventions of the Petrarchan love sequence: the idealizing love poems, for
instance, are written not to a perfect woman but to an admittedly imperfect
man, and the love poems to the dark lady are anything but idealizing (“My love
is as a fever, longing still / For that which longer nurseth the disease” is
hardly a Petrarchan conceit.) Sonnet 130mocks
the typical Petrarchan metaphors by presenting a speaker who seems to take them
at face value, and somewhat bemusedly, decides to tell the truth. Your
mistress’ eyes are like the sun? That’s strange—my mistress’ eyes aren’t at all
like the sun. Your mistress’ breath smells like perfume? My mistress’ breath
reeks compared to perfume. In the couplet, then, the speaker shows his full
intent, which is to insist that love does not need these conceits in order to
be real; and women do not need to look like flowers or the sun in order to be
beautiful.
The rhetorical structure of Sonnet 130 is important to its effect. In the
first quatrain, the speaker spends one line on each comparison between his
mistress and something else (the sun, coral, snow, and wires—the one positive
thing in the whole poem some part of his mistress is like. In the second and third
quatrains, he expands the descriptions to occupy two lines each, so that roses/cheeks,
perfume/breath, music/voice, and goddess/mistress each receive a pair of
unrhymed lines. This creates the effect of an expanding and developing
argument, and neatly prevents the poem—which does, after all, rely on a single
kind of joke for its first twelve lines—from becoming stagnant.
from The Faerie Queene: Book I, Canto I BY EDMUND SPENSER xiv to xxvi
Biography of Edmund Spenser (1553-1599)
Edmund Spenser was born in 1552 or 1553.
No documentation exists to establish his exact date of birth, but the year is
known in part due to Spenser's own poetry. InAmoretti Sonnet 60, Spenser writes that he is
forty-one years old. We know this poem was published in 1594 (and written only
shortly prior to its publication), so the year of his birth can be closely
guessed.
Spenser matriculated at the University of
Cambridge on May 20, 1569. Ten years later he published his first
publicly-released poetic work, The
Sheapheards' Calendar, to positive reviews. He then began work on his
magnum opus, The Faerie Queene,
publishing the first three of the projected twelve books in 1590.
Spenser was an English subject during the
reign of Queen Elizabeth I, to whose court he aspired. He offered Elizabeth The Faerie Queene in an attempt to gain her favor.
Unfortunately, Spenser held to political views and associated with individuals
that did not meet the approval of Elizabeth's principal secretary, Lord
Burghley. Through Burghley's influence, Spenser was given only a small pension
in recognition for his grand poetic work.
Sent to Ireland to hold English property
on the oft-rebellious island, Spenser there met and wooed Elizabeth Boyle, a
young woman from an important English family, who was probably half his age.
His year-long suit to win her hand in marriage is recorded (with a deal of
poetic license) in Spenser's Amoretti.
Spenser also dedicated a marriage song,Epithalamion, to his young bride.
As was the custom, both seemingly personal works of poetry were published for
mass consumption in 1594 and helped Spenser's literary career to improve. In
the meantime, Spenser completed the fourth through sixth books of The Faerie Queene and published them, along with revised
versions of the first three books, in 1596.
Spenser is best known for his immense epic
poem The Faerie Queene.
Dedicated to Queen Elizabeth (herself represented by the title character) the
work was envisioned by Spenser as encompassing twelve books, each one detailing
a quest by some knight of King Arthur's court on behalf of Gloriana, the Faerie
Queene. Spenser was only able to finish the first six books (and begin a draft
of the seventh) before his death in 1599.
from The
Faerie Queene: Book I, Canto I
BY EDMUND SPENSER
xiv
But full of fire and
greedy hardiment,
The youthfull knight
could not for ought be staide,
But forth unto the
darksome hole he went,
And looked in: his
glistring armor made
A litle glooming
light, much like a shade,
By which he saw the
ugly monster plaine,
Halfe like a serpent
horribly displaide,
But th'other halfe did
womans shape retaine,
Most lothsom, filthie,
foule, and full of vile disdaine.
xv
And as she lay upon
the durtie ground,
Her huge long taile
her den all overspred,
Yet was in knots and
many boughtes upwound,
Pointed with mortall
sting. Of her there bred
A thousand yong ones,
which she dayly fed,
Sucking upon her
poisonous dugs, eachone
Of sundry shapes, yet
all ill favored:
Soone as that uncouth
light upon them shone,
Into her mouth they
crept, and suddain all were gone.
xvi
Their dam upstart, out
of her den effraide,
And rushed forth,
hurling her hideous taile
About her cursed head,
whose folds displaid
Were stretcht now
forth at length without entraile.
She lookt about, and
seeing one in mayle
Armed to point, sought
backe to turne againe;
For light she hated as
the deadly bale,
Ay wont in desert
darknesse to remaine,
Where plaine none
might her see, nor she see any plaine.
xvii
Which when the valiant
Elfe perceiv'd, he lept
As Lyon fierce upon
the flying pray,
And with his trenchand
blade her boldly kept
From turning backe,
and forced her to stay:
Therewith enrag'd she
loudly gan to bray,
And turning fierce,
her speckled taile advaunst,
Threatning her angry
sting, him to dismay:
Who nought aghast, his
mightie hand enhaunst:
The stroke down from
her head unto her shoulder glaunst.
xviii
Much daunted with that
dint, her sence was dazd,
Yet kindling rage, her
selfe she gathered round,
And all attonce her
beastly body raizd
With doubled forces
high above the ground:
Tho wrapping up her
wrethed sterne arownd,
Lept fierce upon his
shield, and her huge traine
All suddenly about his
body wound,
That hand or foot to
stirre he strove in vaine:
God helpe the man so
wrapt in Errours endlesse traine.
xix
His Lady sad to see
his sore constraint,
Cride out, Now now Sir
knight, shew what ye bee,
Add faith unto your
force, and be not faint:
Strangle her, else she
sure will strangle thee.
That when he heard, in
great perplexitie,
His gall did grate for
griefe and high disdaine,
And knitting all his
force got one hand free,
Wherewith he grypt her
gorge with so great paine,
That soone to loose
her wicked bands did her constraine.
xx
Therewith she spewd
out of her filthy maw
A floud of poyson
horrible and blacke,
Full of great lumpes
of flesh and gobbets raw,
Which stunck so
vildly, that it forst him slacke
His grasping hold, and
from her turne him backe:
Her vomit full of
bookes and papers was,
With loathly frogs and
toades, which eyes did lacke,
And creeping sought
way in the weedy gras:
Her filthy parbreake
all the place defiled has.
xxi
As when old father
Nilus gins to swell
With timely pride
above the Aegyptian vale,
His fattie waves do
fertile slime outwell,
And overflow each
plaine and lowly dale:
But when his later
spring gins to avale,
Huge heapes of mudd he
leaves, wherein there breed
Ten thousand kindes of
creatures, partly male
And partly female of
his fruitfull seed;
Such ugly monstrous
shapes elsewhere may no man reed.
xxii
The same so sore
annoyed has the knight,
That welnigh choked
with the deadly stinke,
His forces faile, ne
can no longer fight.
Whose corage when the
feend perceiv'd to shrinke,
She poured forth out
of her hellish sinke
Her fruitfull cursed
spawne of serpents small,
Deformed monsters,
fowle, and blacke as inke,
Which swarming all
about his legs did crall,
And him encombred
sore, but could not hurt at all.
xxiii
As gentle Shepheard in
sweete even-tide,
When ruddy Phoebus
gins to welke in west,
High on an hill, his
flocke to vewen wide,
Markes which do byte
their hasty supper best;
A cloud of combrous
gnattes do him molest,
All striving to infixe
their feeble stings,
That from their
noyance he no where can rest,
But with his clownish
hands their tender wings
He brusheth oft, and
oft doth mar their murmurings.
xxiv
Thus ill bestedd, and
fearefull more of shame,
Then of the certaine
perill he stood in,
Halfe furious unto his
foe he came,
Resolv'd in minde all
suddenly to win,
Or soone to lose,
before he once would lin;
And strooke at her
with more then manly force,
That from her body
full of filthie sin
He raft her hatefull
head without remorse;
A streame of cole
black bloud forth gushed from her corse.
xxv
Her scattred brood,
soone as their Parent deare
They saw so rudely
falling to the ground,
Groning full deadly,
all with troublous feare,
Gathred themselves
about her body round,
Weening their wonted
entrance to have found
At her wide mouth: but
being there withstood
They flocked all about
her bleeding wound,
And sucked up their
dying mothers blood,
Making her death their
life, and eke her hurt their good.
xxvi
That detestable sight
him much amazde,
To see th'unkindly
Impes of heaven accurst,
Devoure their dam; on
whom while so he gazd,
Having all satisfide
their bloudy thurst,
Their bellies swolne
he saw with fulnesse burst,
And bowels gushing
forth: well worthy end
Of such as drunke her
life, the which them nurst;
Now needeth him no
lenger labour spend,
His foes have slaine
themselves, with whom he should contend.
Book I tells the story of the knight of Holiness, the Redcrosse
Knight. This hero gets his name from the blood-red cross emblazoned on his
shield. He has been given a task by Gloriana, "that greatest Glorious
Queen of Faerie lond," to fight a terrible dragon (I.i.3). He is traveling
with a beautiful, innocent young lady and a dwarf as servant. Just as we join
the three travelers, a storm breaks upon them and they rush to find cover in a
nearby forest. When the skies clear, they find that they are lost, and they end
up near a cave, which the lady recognizes as the den of Error. Ignoring her
warnings, Redcrosse enters and is attacked by the terrible beast, Error, and
her young. She wraps him up in her tail, but he eventually manages to strangle
her and chops off her head. Error's young then drink her blood until they burst
and die. Victorious, the knight and his companions set out again, looking for
the right path. As night falls, they meet an old hermit who offers them lodging
in his inn. As the travelers sleep, the hermit assumes his real identity--he is
Archimago, the black sorcerer, and he conjures up two spirits to trouble
Redcrosse. One of the sprites obtains a false dream from Morpheus, the god of
sleep; the other takes the shape of Una, the lady accompanying Redcrosse. These
sprites go to the knight; one gives him the dream of love and lust. When
Redcrosse wakes up in a passion, the other sprite (appearing to be Una) is
lying beside him, offering a kiss. The knight, however, resists her temptations
and returns to sleep. Archimago then tries a new deception; he puts the sprite
disguised as Una in a bed and turns the other sprite into a young man, who lies
with the false Una. Archimago then wakes Redcrosse and shows him the two lovers
in bed. Redcrosse is furious that "Una" would spoil her virtue with
another man, and so in the morning he leaves without her. When the real Una
wakes, she sees her knight is gone, and in sorrow rides off to look for him.
Archimago, enjoying the fruits of his scheme, now disguises himself as
Redcrosse and follows after Una. As Redcrosse wanders on, he approaches another
knight--Sansfoy, who is traveling with his lady. He charges Redcrosse, and they
fight fiercely, but the shield with the blood-red cross protects our hero;
eventually, he kills Sansfoy. He takes the woman into his care--she calls
herself Fidessa, saying that she is the daughter of the Emperor of the West.
Redcrosse swears to protect her, attracted to her beauty. They continue
together, but soon the sun becomes so hot that they must rest under the shade
of some trees. Redcrosse breaks a branch off of one tree and is shocked when
blood drips forth from it, and a voice cries out in pain. The tree speaks and
tells its story. It was once a man, named Fradubio, who had a beautiful lady
named Fraelissa--now the tree next to him. One day, Fradubio happened to defeat
a knight and win his lady (just as Redcrosse did)--and that lady turned out to
be Duessa, an evil witch. Duessa turned Fraelissa into a tree, so that she
could have Fradubio for herself. But Fradubio saw the witch in her true, ugly
form while she was bathing, and when he tried to run away, she turned him into
a tree, as well. When Fradubio finishes his story, Fidessa faints--because she
is, in fact, Duessa, and she fears that she will be found out. She recovers
though, and Redcrosse does not make the connection, so they continue on their
way.
Commentary
Redcrosse is the hero of Book I, and in the beginning of Canto
i, he is called the knight of Holinesse. He will go through great trials and
fight fierce monsters throughout the Book, and this in itself is entertaining,
as a story of a heroic "knight errant." However, the more important
purpose of the Faerie Queene is its allegory, the meaning behind
its characters and events. The story's setting, a fanciful "faerie
land," only emphasizes how its allegory is meant for a land very close to
home: Spenser's England. The title character, the Faerie Queene herself, is
meant to represent Queen Elizabeth. Redcrosse represents the individual
Christian, on the search for Holiness, who is armed with faith in Christ, the
shield with the bloody cross. He is traveling with Una, whose name means
"truth." For a Christian to be holy, he must have true faith, and so
the plot of Book I mostly concerns the attempts of evildoers to separate
Redcrosse from Una. Most of these villains are meant by Spenser to represent
one thing in common: the Roman Catholic Church. The poet felt that, in the
English Reformation, the people had defeated "false religion"
(Catholicism) and embraced "true religion"
(Protestantism/Anglicanism). Thus, Redcrosse must defeat villains who mimic the
falsehood of the Roman Church.
The first of these is Error. When Redcrosse chokes the beast,
Spenser writes, "Her vomit full of bookes and papers was (I.i.20)."
These papers represent Roman Catholic propaganda that was put out in Spenser's
time, against Queen Elizabeth and Anglicanism. The Christian (Redcrosse) may be
able to defeat these obvious and disgusting errors, but before he is united to
the truth he is still lost and can be easily deceived. This deceit is arranged
by Archimago, whose name means "arch-image"--the Protestants accused
the Catholics of idolatry because of their extensive use of images. The
sorcerer is able, through deception and lust, to separate Redcrosse from
Una--that is, to separate Holiness from Truth. Once separated, Holiness is
susceptible to the opposite of truth, or falsehood. Redcrosse may able to
defeat the strength of Sansfoy (literally "without faith" or
"faithlessness") through his own native virtue, but he falls prey to
the wiles of Falsehood herself--Duessa. Duessa also represents the Roman
Church, both because she is "false faith," and because of her rich,
purple and gold clothing, which, for Spenser, displays the greedy wealth and arrogant
pomp of Rome. Much of the poet's imagery comes from a passage in the Book of
Revelation, which describes the "whore of Babylon"--many Protestant
readers took this Biblical passage to indicate the Catholic Church.
The Faerie
Queene, however, also has
many sources outside of the Bible. Spenser considers himself an epic poet in
the classical tradition and so he borrows heavily from the great epics of
antiquity: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid. This is most evident at the opening of
Book I, in which Spenser calls on one of the Muses to guide his poetry--Homer
and Virgil established this form as the "proper" opening to an epic
poem. The scene with the "human tree," in which a broken branch drips
blood, likewise recalls a similar episode in theAeneid. However, while these ancient poets
mainly wrote to tell a story, we have already seen that Spenser has another
purpose in mind. In the letter that introduces the Faerie Queene, he says that he followed Homer and
Virgil and the Italian poets Ariosto and Tasso because they all have
"ensampled a good governour and a vertuous man." Spenser intends to
expand on this example by defining the characteristics of a good, virtuous, Christian man.
Characters
Arthur -
The central hero of the poem, although he does not play the most significant
role in its action. Arthur is in search of the Faerie Queene, whom he saw in a
vision. The "real" Arthur was a king of the Britons in the 5th or 6th
century A.D., but the little historical information we have about him is
overwhelmed by his legend.
Faerie
Queene (also known as Gloriana) - Though
she never appears in the poem, the Faerie Queene is the focus of the poem; her
castle is the ultimate goal or destination of many of the poem’s characters.
She represents Queen Elizabeth, among others, as discussed in the Commentary.
Redcrosse -
The Redcrosse Knight is the hero of Book I; he stands for the virtue of
Holiness. His real name is discovered to be George, and he ends up becoming St.
George, the patron saint of England. On another level, though, he is the
individual Christian fighting against evil--or the Protestant fighting the
Catholic Church.
Una -
Redcrosse's future wife, and the other major protagonist in Book I. She is
meek, humble, and beautiful, but strong when it is necessary; she represents
Truth, which Redcrosse must find in order to be a true Christian.
Duessa -
The opposite of Una, she represents falsehood and nearly succeeds in getting
Redcrosse to leave Una for good. She appears beautiful, but it is only
skin-deep.
Archimago -
Next to Duessa, a major antagonist in Book I. Archimago is a sorcerer capable
of changing his own appearance or that of others; in the end, his magic is
proven weak and ineffective.
Britomart -
The hero of Book III, the female warrior virgin, who represents Chastity. She
is a skilled fighter and strong of heart, with an amazing capacity for calm
thought in troublesome circumstances. Of course, she is chaste, but she also
desires true Christian love. She searches for her future husband, Arthegall,
whom she saw in a vision through a magic mirror.
Florimell -
Another significant female character in Book III, Florimell represents Beauty.
She is also chaste but constantly hounded by men who go mad with lust for her.
She does love one knight, who seems to be the only character that doesnot love
her.
Satyrane -
Satyrane is the son of a human and a satyr (a half-human, half-goat creature).
He is "nature's knight," the best a man can be through his own
natural abilities without the enlightenment of Christianity and God's grace. He
is significant in both Book I and Book III, generally as an aide to the
protagonists.
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