[xiv.] Kitchin and Percival think this whole passage a clever compliment to the parsimony of the Queen's court.
[161.] that proud Paynim king, probably a reference to Philip of Spain.
[168.] Nor doen undo, nor undo what has been done.
[173.] In sort as, even as.
[205.] all were she, although she had been. In place, in various places.
[313.] bait. In Spenser's time bear-baiting was a favorite pastime of the people and received royal patronage.
[328.] The housling fire, the sacramental fire. Spenser seems here to have in mind, not the Christian housel or Eucharist, but the Roman marriage rites with their symbolic fire and water.
[347.] trinall triplicities, the threefold three orders of the celestial hierarchy according to the scholastic theologians. They were as follows: (1) Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; (2) Dominations, Virtues, Powers; (3) Princedoms, Archangels, and Angels. Cf. Dante's Paradiso, xxviii, Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, xviii, 96, and Milton's Paradise Lost, v, 748.
[375.] her tackles spent, her worn-out rigging.