If, as we see, an allegory may be ingeniously drawn from a work which never was allegorical; so when an allegory seems designed, its secret application is usually the forlorn hope of literature, since the most subtile conjectures on these enigmas have wholly differed from each other.
Persons and incidents in an allegorical fiction are noses of wax, ever to be shaped by a more adroit finger. But in a lengthened allegory, the ground is often shifted; the allegorister tires of his allegory, and at length means what he says and nothing more. This has driven the expounders of the double sense into the absurdity of explaining an identical object, sometimes in a metaphysical, and at others in a material sense; they take up what their fancy requires, and cautiously drop what would place them in an inextricable position.
Dante opened his great work in the darkness of an allegory; but how the erratic commentators have lost their way in “Le tenebre della Divina Commedia!” What are the three allegorical animals which open “the Vision?” The double sense remains inexplicable from its abundant explanations. Are these animals personifications of three great passions? Is the gay panther the type of luxurious pleasure, the lion of ambition, the she-wolf of avarice? But what if the spotted panther should be the representative of Dante’s own Florence, and its spots indicate the Neri and the Bianchi factions? The hungry lion, with its lofty head, would then be superb France, and the lean she-wolf, never satiate, be devouring Rome. Yet a later revelation from Niebuhr, according to his Platonic ideas, sees but three metaphysical beings the types of the soul, the understanding, and the senses. Should some future allegorister discover, by his historical, political, and ethical fancies, that the three animals were designed, one for a wavering and maculated Ghibelline, and the others for the resolute papal Guelphs, the probability would be much the same. In truth we can afford but small confidence to these expounders of the double sense; for when Jean Molinet allegorised the “Roman de la Rose,” and illustrated it by historical appliances, as chronology was rarely consulted in his day, it appears that this good canon of Valenciennes had allegorised in reference to persons who flourished and events which occurred posterior to the time of the writers.
In the instances which we have indicated, such as in Ariosto and Tasso, it was the commentator who had indulged his allegorical genius, not the original writers themselves. With one of our great poets unhappily the case is reversed; the poetic character and destiny of Spenser stand connected with allegory; for here the poet himself prematurely meditated on his allegory before he invented his fiction. The difference is immense. Spenser fell a victim to this phantom of the poetic creed of his day. Deeming a mystic allegory a novel spirit in poesy, he who was to run the glorious career of Faery-land first forged the brazen bonds which he could never shake off. His invention was made subordinate to a prescribed system. The poet was continually running after the allegory, which he did not always care to recover in the exuberance of his imagination, and the copious facility of his stanzas. Often must he have deprived his twelve knights-errant of their tangible humanity, perpetually relapsing into their metaphysical nonentities—Sir Guyon into temperance, Arthegal into justice, and Sir Caladore into courtesy!
Yet this is not the sole defect of the allegorical character of the “Faery Queen.” We may suspect that when Spenser decided on constructing an allegorical poem, he had not any settled notions of the artifice of types, nor yet of the subjects to be symbolised; of fictions which were to conceal truths, and of truths which might be mistaken for fictions. A strange confusion often prevails in his system, sometimes ambiguous, sometimes contradictory, whenever the allegory loses itself in what is not allegorical, or the reality is as suddenly lost amid the mystical fancies.
The poet himself announced that the “Faery Queen” was “a continued allegory or dark conceit;” and he was so strongly convinced that “all allegories are doubtfully construed,” that he determined to expound his own text regarding a most eminent personage; but this was merely to secure a courtly eulogy on a royal patroness. “In the ‘Faerie Queene’ I mean glory in my general intention, but in my particular I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of the Queen and her kingdom in Faery-land.” He afterwards adds that “in some places also I do otherwise shadow her.” And further, the poet informs us that “her Majesty is two persons, a royal Queen and a most virtuous and beautiful lady.” Truly her Majesty might have viewed herself “in mirrors more than one,” and, as she much liked, in different dresses. Now as the Faerie Queen, now as Belphœbe, now as Cynthia, now as Mercilla; and in the “Legend of Chastity,” who would deny that Britomart is the shadow of the Virgin Queen, notwithstanding that this lady-warrior bears a closer resemblance to Virgil’s Camilla, to Ariosto’s Bradamante, and Tasso’s Clorinda? All this the poet has revealed; but had he been silent, these mystical types might have baffled even the perilous ingenuity of Upton, his egregious expounder of the double sense, the exuberance of whose conjectural sagacity might have enlightened and charmed even Spenser himself!
The poet was himself aware that when an allegory does not gracefully unveil itself, it admits of the most dubious expositions. The allegories of the “Faery Queen” which allude to public events are transparent. The first book exhibits the struggles of the Reformation with papistry. Una is Truth, the Red-cross Knight the Christian militant, still subjected to trial and infirmity, separated from Una, or as it was called, “the true Religion,” by the magical illusions of Archimagus, whom Warton considers was the arch-fiend himself, but Upton only an adumbration of “his Holiness.” The terrible giant, Orgoglio, seems to have a stronger claim to be the proud and potent Bishop of Rome, enamoured as he is of Superstition in the false Duessa, that gorgeous enchantress, so fair and foul, arrayed in purple and scarlet, whom he has seated on his seven-headed dragon, and on whose head he has placed a triple crown. The dark den of monstrous Error, the hastening cavalcade of every splendid vice, the combat with the Infidel Sans Foy, the church militant finally triumphant in the solemn union of the Red-cross with Una, complete the allegory of “Holiness.” The Apocalypse may serve as the commentary on some of these personages; but the well-known title of the lady may not be risked to “ears polite.” But such is the moveable machinery of allegorical history, that Sir Walter Scott, in his review of Todd’s Spenser, has discovered many other shadowings of facts, in the history of Christian “Holiness,” who, like the Red-cross Knight, separated from Una, had to encounter “the monster Error, and her brood,” in paganism, before the downfall of Orgoglio and Duessa, and popery in England; in the freedom of the Red-cross Knight from his imprisonment, our critic reveals the establishment of the Protestant Church.[4] Sir Walter might have noticed Spenser’s abhorrence of the puritans.
The allegory is still more obvious when the poet alludes to some contemporary events. It is then a masquerade by daylight, where the maskers pass on, holding their masks in their hands. In the fifth book we see the distressed Knight Bourbon, opposed by a rabble-rout in his attempt to possess himself of the Lady Fleur de Lis, whom he loves for “her lordships and her lands.” He bears away that half-reluctant and coy lady. But for this purpose Bourbon had basely changed his shield, and, reproached by Sir Arthegal or Justice, he offers but a recreant’s apology:—
| ——When time shall serve, My former shield I may resume again; To temporise is not from truth to swerve. Fie on such forgerie! said Arthegal, Under one hood to shadow faces twain. |
The change of shields of Sir Bourbon is the change of faith of Henry of Navarre; and the reluctant mistress is that uncompliant France whom he forced to take him as her monarch. Not less obvious is the episode of the Lady Belgé calling for aid on the British prince—she, now widowed, and whose seventeen sons were reduced to five by the cruelties of Geryon, and the horrors of that implacable “monster, who lay hid in darkness, under the cursed Idol’s altar-stone;” the great revolution of the Netherlands, the reduction of the seventeen provinces, and the horrors of a Romish persecution, are apparent.