A concordance to the rhymes of The Faerie Queene 9781526158598

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A Concordance to the Rhymes of The Faerie Queene

Spenser

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Spenser Spenser Spenser

R ic ha r d Da n s on B row n J. B. L e t h br i d g e

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A Concordance to the Rhymes of The Faerie Queene

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The Manchester Spenser is a monograph and text series devoted to historical and textual approaches to Edmund Spenser – to his life, times, places, works and contemporaries. A growing body of work in Spenser and Renaissance studies, fresh with confidence and curiosity and based on solid historical research, is being written in response to a general sense that our ability to interpret texts is becoming limited without the excavation of further knowledge. So the importance of research in nearby disciplines is quickly being recognized, and interest renewed: history, archaeology, religious or theological history, book history, translation, lexicography, commentary and glossary – these require treatment for and by students of Spenser. The Manchester Spenser, to feed, foster and build on these refreshed attitudes, aims to publish reference tools, critical, historical, biographical and archaeological monographs on or related to Spenser, from several disciplines, and to publish editions of primary sources and classroom texts of a more wide-ranging scope. The Manchester Spenser consists of work with stamina, high standards of scholarship and research, adroit handling of evidence, rigour of argument, exposition and documentation. The series will encourage and assist research into, and develop the readership of, one of the richest and most complex writers of the early modern period. General Editor J. B. Lethbridge Editorial Board Helen Cooper, Thomas Herron, Carol V. Kaske, James C. Nohrnberg & Brian Vickers Also available Celebrating Mutabilitie: Essays on Edmund Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos Castles and Colonists: An archaeology of Elizabethan Ireland Shakespeare and Spenser: Attractive opposites

Jane Grogan (ed.)

Eric Klingelhofer

J. B. Lethbridge (ed.)

Renaissance erotic romance: Philhellene Protestantism, Renaissance translation and English literary politics Victor Skretkowicz Literary and visual Ralegh

Christopher M. Armitage (ed.)

God’s only daughter: Spenser’s Una as the invisible Church

Kathryn Walls

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A Concordance to the Rhymes of The Faerie Queene With Two Studies of Spenser’s Rhymes

• RICHARD DANSON BROWN and J. B. LETHBRIDGE

Manchester University Press Manchester

Copyright © Richard Danson Brown and J. B. Lethbridge 2013 The rights of Richard Danson Brown and J. B. Lethbridge to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 8888 9 hardback First published 2013

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by J. B. Lethbridge Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow

Contents Preface

vii

Acknowledgements

xix

Abbreviations for Spenser's Works

xx

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Part I Critical Studies ‘Charmed with inchaunted rimes’: An Introduction to The Faerie Queene Rhymes Concordance Richard Danson Brown 1 Spenser and Rhyme 2 Critical Reception 3 Reading with Rhyme and Using the Concordance 3.1 Rime Riche 3.2 Alliterative and Assonantal Rhyme 3.3 Masculine and Feminine Rhyme 3.4 Polysyllabic Rhyme 3.5 Interlaced Rhyme and Inter-stanzaic Knitting 3.6 Imperfect Rhyme 3.7 Verbal Rhyme 4 Disordered for Rymes sake?: Spenser’s Rhymes, Spenser’s Times The Bondage of Rhyme in The Faerie Queene: Moderate ‘this Ornament of Rhyme’ J.B. Lethbridge 1 Prolegomena to Rhyme 2 Spenser’s Rhyme 3 Systematic Weakening of Rhyme 3.1 Rhyme on Insubstantial Terms 4 Spenser’s Formulaic Rhymes 4.1 Formulaic Epithets 4.2 Fixed Formulae 4.3 Syntactical Formulae 4.4 Grammatical or Rhetorical Formulae 4.5 Particle Formulae 4.6 Relations Among Formulae 4.7 Penultimate Positions 4.8 Formulae in Modals in Penultimate Position 4.9 Extended Examples 5 Ornament and Res-Verba 5.1 Sed addat uerborum lumen 6 Pyrochles and Angry Poetry 6.1 Malbecco

1 1 9 32 38 42 47 57 60 63 66 71 76 78 92 111 124 134 138 139 141 142 143 144 150 151 153 157 160 171 179

Part II The Concordance The Concordance of Rhymes

181

Part III Elaborations and Lists Alphabetical List of Rhymes with Frequency and Distribution

349

All Words in The Faerie Queene Arranged Alphabetically

386

Rhymes in Order of Frequencey of Occurrence

424

All Words in The Faerie Queene Arranged in Order of Frequency of Occurrence

432

Reverse Index of Rhymes

452

The hapax legomena in Rhyme Position

467

Rhymes on Two Separate Words

472

List of Variant Forms Included in the Concordance

473

Names in Rhyme Position (Omitting Arguments)

475

Hyphenated Rhymes

479

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Part IV Appendix Lists from ‘The Bondage of Rhyme’ ‘Good’ as epithet ‘Goodly’, mid-line positions Epithet, ‘good’ in rhyme position [penultimate] ‘Goodly’ Epithet ‘faire’ pre- and postposed ‘Case’ ‘Estate’ ‘Plight’ synonym for ‘case/state’ etc. Syntactical forms: ‘both . . . and . . . ’ Rhyme-phrases in ‘x + and + y’ ‘Prowest’ . . . man/Dame . . . ‘aliue’ ‘Passe[d] forth’ Penultimate position: ‘wondrous’ Penultimate ‘all’ Penultimate position: ‘of all’ Rhymes in ‘to’ Rhymes in ‘did’, with ‘did’ immediately preceding the rhyme-term: alphabetical Rhymes in ‘did’ with a word between ‘did’ and verb Penultimate position: ‘might’ Penultimate position: ‘could’ ‘Could’ in antepenultimate position Penultimate forms in ‘can’, ‘gan’ and others Rhymes in ‘can’ + ‘verb’ Rhymes in ‘gan to’ Rhymes in ‘may’ (omitting the month of May) ‘Despight’ Formulae in ‘vaine’, ‘paine’, ‘remaine’, ‘gaine’, etc ‘Paine’ ‘Remaine’ ‘Gaine’, ‘againe’ Rhymes in ‘it’ Rhymes in ‘to be’ and various forms ‘Were’ in rhyme-position Rhymes on ‘are’ Rhymes in ‘to have’ Rhymes in ‘for to’ forms: ‘for’ and ‘to’ immediately juxtaposed ‘For’ and ‘to’ with intervening words

480 480 480 480 480 481 481 482 482 483 483 489 489 489 490 491 491 505 516 521 522 523 523 524 524 524 525 525 526 527 527 528 529 530 531 531 532 533

Bibliography

534

Index

545

vi

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Preface This book can be divided conceptually into three parts: the Concordance itself – the primum mobile of the matter; the elaborations and appended lists which respectively develop and add to it; the pair of studies that accompany and introduce it, including the appendices to the second study. These parts each require some explanation, as does the text on which the concordance, elaborations and lists are based. Finally, we consider the case for print versions of research tools such as concordances.

The Main Concordance This Concordance to the Rhymes of The Faerie Queene is based on a complete text of the poem prepared by J.B. Lethbridge, and lists every word in rhyme position in the verse portions of The Faerie Queene, including those of the arguments to each canto, of both endings to Book III and relevant variant forms throughout. Each word rhyming with the headword in each stanza in which that headword occurs is listed next to the headword; this list takes the place of the local line or phrase context supplied by an orthodox complete concordance. Against each rhyme is noted the numeric stanza reference (Book, canto, stanza) and an alpha reference giving the rhyme group in the stanza (‘a’-, ‘b’- or ‘c’-rhyme) formed by the terms listed in that entry. Terminal punctuation in the line has been reproduced. In accordance with the received principles of a concordance, each term in the source-text, in this case a list of rhymes in The Faerie Queene, has a separate entry, so that while scanning down the column of rhymes in ‘abide’, say, all first generation rhymes on the headword (those rhyming directly with it) can be found at a glance. However, not all rhyme-words related to ‘abide’ will be listed under ‘abide’; but turning up the entry on say ‘spide’ will give all first generation rhymes on that term, of which ‘abide’ will be one. Those concordance lines under ‘spide’ which do not include ‘abide’ give rhyme-words related to ‘abide’ as rhyme in the second generation. In this way, second generation rhymes on ‘abide’ (those that rhyme with one of the first generation rhymes but not with the given term, in this case ‘abide’) can easily be located, and so on for third or fourth generation rhymes ad infinitum: 1st generation in ‘abide’: abide. wide, magnifide: ∼ betide, abide: ∼ spide, wide. abide: beside, pride. guide, ∼ abide: wide pride; aside, ∼

3.5.11[b] 2.3.41[c] 5.2.10[b] 5.3.25[b]

1st generation in ‘spide’, giving 2nd generation in ‘abide’: spide, abide: ∼ wide. spide, aside, ∼ beside.

2.3.41[c] 3.5.34[c]

The main Concordance functions are now clear: what rhyme-words appear in The Faerie Queene, in which book, canto and stanza they appear, rhymed with what in each stanza, and in what rhymeposition in the stanza, whether in the ‘a’-, ‘b’- or ‘c’-rhyme-group. All this can be seen at a glance. Line numbers within the stanzas are not given, but can be calculated from the position in each case, the rhymes being listed in order of appearance within each rhyme-position, with a tilde (∼) indicating the position of the headword. Thus from the example above it is easy to see that at 2.3.41, ‘abide’, occurring first in the ‘c’ rhyme-group is at line 6, ‘spide’ at line 8 and ‘wide’ at line 9. vii

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A Concordance to the Rhymes of The Faerie Queene

The key to the concordance Each entry in the concordance takes the following basic form:

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extract: sackt, act, fact, ∼

3.9.38[b]

The first element is the headword or lemma printed in bold type, the subject of the entry: all punctuation attached to the other terms in the line is preserved from the text of The Faerie Queene (in this case the colon attached to ‘extract’ and the commas attached to the next three terms have no function in the Concordance, but are carried over from Spenser’s line): terminal punctuation carries much information whether or not Spenser himself is directly responsible for it. The following elements are the terms in the stanza that rhyme, or that are expected by position to rhyme with the headword. It is sometimes necessary to distinguish between position and rhyme, between the word or lemma in terminal or rhyme position in the line and the rhyme-term, for occasionally the terminal lemma is not a rhyme-term strictly speaking. Thus ‘terminal position’ is a more general expression than ‘rhyme-term’. The order of appearance is preserved in the concordance entries, so that in this example, ‘sackt’ is the first occurrence of the ‘b’ rhyme-group (read off from the terminal element in the line), and its line number will therefore be 2; ‘act’ is the second term, its line number will be 4; ‘fact’ will be at line 5. As remarked, the tilde indicates the position of the headword in the stanza, in this case the fourth of the ‘b’ rhymes, line 7. The next element (numerical element) is the location of the rhymes listed in The Faerie Queene, in this case, Book III, Canto ix, Stanza 38. The final element in the entry, in brackets, is the letter indicating which of the three rhyme groups in each of Spenser’s stanzas is represented in the concordance entry. Where a headword appears in more than one rhyme group in the same stanza, it will have more than one entry. Each entry in the concordance accounts for only one of the possible rhyme groups. Book and canto numbers in the concordance and the lists are Arabic for ease of computing. (However in the elaboration ‘Alphabetical List of Rhymes . . . ’ (349 ff) the Book numbers have been changed to Roman numerals for the sake of legibility.) There are other signs in the concordance that extend the basic form. Where a reference on the right has a ‘p’ in place of a canto numeral, it refers to the Proem to the book indicated in the first field of the reference. The three cases below refer to the ‘a’-, ‘b’- and ‘c’-rhymes of the Proems to Book II, IV and V respectively. admire, inquire, ∼ aboue, doue, remoue: loue, ∼ admyred. desyred, outhyred, ∼

2.p.4[a] 4.p.5[b] 5.p.3[c]

Where a capital ‘A’ appears in place of the stanza number expected in the reference, it refers to the Argument to the canto identified in the second element of the reference. Thus these examples refer to the Arguments to Book II canto i (the ‘a’-rhyme), to Book VI, canto xi (‘b’-rhyme) and to Book IV canto iii (‘b’-rhyme). abusd, ∼ slaine againe. slaine: ∼ agree. Canacee: †Canacee ∼

2.1.A[a] 6.11.A[b] 4.3.A[b]

Note that the lineation of the Arguments does not follow the actual line or rhyme of the verse, probably breaking as it does to serve layout; the lines are in fact fourteeners rhyming in pairs. So that in the concordance the ‘a’ rhyme is not a rhyme, but merely the rhyme position of the first and third lines of the verse as they were printed. The changed ending of III.xii is also specially marked. We have included both endings, the one from 1596 taking priority over the 1590. The 1590 ending is thus flagged, the 1596 not. The 1590 appears with a lower case ‘a’ immediately following the stanza number (that is unbracketed), as in these lines: annoyd, ioyd, ∼ bright, ∼ delight: quight spright: breathlesse. egernesse, thirstinesse, ∼

3.12.44.1a[a] 3.12.45.2a[b] 3.12.44.6a[c]

Preface

ix

The concordance (but not the elaborations or the lists) has obelisks scattered among the lines, and these are directly prefixed to the variant terms we have included in the concordance. †abide, side, abide ∼ pride. abide side, ∼ †abide, pride. abusd. refusd †refused accusd, †accused, ∼ †abused.

6.7.46[c] 6.7.46[c] 1.5.37[c]

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The obelisks make no difference to the line except to indicate extra terms in the line, up to three regularly (as in the third example above) and as many as four: †vewed vewd ∼ transmewd, †transmewed, renewd; †renewed; pursewd †pursewed 2.3.37[b] †vewed, sewd †sewed vewd, ∼ indewd. †indewed. subdewd †subdewed 3.10.9[b]

It should be pointed out that each stanza has nine lines in the concordance: two for the ‘a’- rhyme group, four for the ‘b’-group, three for the ‘c’-group. However, there is one more iteration of the relevant line for each variant in that line. Thus the two lines just cited each with four variants, would each be iterated an additional four times, making 13 entries in the concordance for the relevant stanza. This affects any counting from the concordance. However, in the elaborations and lists, the variants have been removed. We have printed a list of included variants. Finally, a plus-minus sign (±) indicates the second term of a hyphenated rhyme in the following example ‘prays-worthily’: ±worthily, thereby; ∼

5.12.31[a];

and a raised, left half bracket indicates the second element of a rhyme on two words; a pair of words enclosed in raised half brackets is the full double-word rhyme. (On both these last, see immediately below.) ⌜gaue her,⌝ endeuour ⌜saue her.⌝ fauour, ∼ ⌜her. endeuour ∼ fauour, ⌜her,

5.4.12[b] 5.4.12[b]

A note on hyphenated rhymes There are a number of rhymes where the rhyming term is hyphenated, such as ‘Arlo-hill’ (VII.vi.36.6) and ‘ouer-aw’ (V.ii.38.8). Our practice is to list these rhymes under both the complete hyphenated term (‘Arlo-hill’) and the second term (‘hill’), with the following symbol attached to the second term-entry, (±). It should be noted though that there is no separate entry for the first part of the hyphenated term alone, and that the listing for the second part comprises only one iteration, that with the second part as the headword. Thus the complete listing in the concordance for the ‘c’ group in VII.vi.36 consists of four lines instead of the expected three for a ‘c’ group and not the six lines that would result if the listing for the second part of the hyphenated term were complete, thus: Arlo-hill?) ∼ quill skill. ±hill?) ∼ quill skill. quill Arlo-hill?) ∼ skill. skill. Arlo-hill?) quill ∼

7.6.36[c] 7.6.36[c] 7.6.36[c] 7.6.36[c]

This system leads to some anomalies, such as ‘hold’ for‘with-hold’ at I.ii.39(c), or ‘ward’ for ‘thitherward’ at II.vii.25(b), where the hyphen binds two elements not separable without change of meaning in one or both, as when a preposition or suffix appears as one element of the compound. However, dealing with these individually would have involved the editors in making decisions for the reader each requiring perhaps lengthy justification. In line with our principle of preferring inclusion rather than editorial choice, we have treated the odder cases the same as the more ordinary. The likelihood is that such hyphenated rhymes represent the practices of manuscript copyists and compositors rather than Spenser himself.1 In the case of VII.vi.36, the same phrase is repeated in the 1 See Andrew Zurcher, ‘The printing of the Cantos of Mutabilitie in 1609’ in Jane Grogan (ed.), Celebrating Mutabilitie: Essays on Edmund Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 47, for the preponderance of hyphens in the Cantos, against Spenser’s normal practice.

x

A Concordance to the Rhymes of The Faerie Queene

rhyming position but without a hyphen at VII.vii.3.2, ‘The Gods assembled all on Arlo hill’; in brief, in both cases, hill takes sonal and semantic priority as the rhyming term. We have however given the full listing to reflect the usages in the early texts and in modern scholarly editions. There are two lines with hyphens in the terminal element in the line which strictly do not count as hyphenated rhymes:

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bro- Merth, †Merth ∼ great- made ∼

2.6.A[a] 1.7.A[a]

These are each a line from an Argument broken mid-word: ‘brother’ and ‘greatly’ respectively. We have included them in the listing of hyphenated rhymes on p. 479 in that they are terms in rhyme-position involving hyphens, and for completeness’ sake. A note on the rhymes on two words There are some sixteen rhymes in Books IV–VII where Spenser rhymes on two words (see the ‘Rhymes on Two Separate Words’ list for the full listing p. 472 below). The first example in the poem serves as an illustration: Yet dread of shame, and doubt of fowle dishonor Made her not yeeld so much, as due she deemed. Yet Britomart attended duly on her, As well became a knight, and did to her all honor. (IV.i.8.6–9).2

This phenomenon is related to the introduction of feminine rhymes in the second instalment of The Faerie Queene, on which see Brown’s study, pp. 21–23 and 48–57 below. In almost all cases, Spenser’s rhymes on two words take the form of preposition + pronoun (as above), or more commonly, verb + pronoun, as in ‘Long lov’d the Fanchin, who by nought did set her’ (VII.vi.44.4).3 These rhymes are listed both under the first and second terms of the rhyme. That is, double rhymes are listed as a pair of words considered as a single rhyme unit, since both terms participate in the sonal effect of the rhyme; and again listed under the second term of the pair, that term lying in rhyme-position. In this way the concordance remains true to its nature as a concordance of rhymes, and as a listing of all lemmata in terminal position Thus IV.i.8.8 is listed under both ‘on’ for ‘⌜on her⌝’ and ‘⌜her’; VII.vi.44.4 is listed under both ‘⌜set her⌝’ and ‘⌜her’, and so on. The reader should not be confused into thinking that there are a larger number of rhymes on her for instance than in fact is the case: the examples above are properly rhymes on two words. All double rhymes are marked by raised half-brackets as in the examples just given. Though the full sonal rhyme is in each case made up of two separate lemmata making a single rhyme, yet, unlike the hyphenated rhymes, the pairs have no intrinsic textual flag. For this reason we have enclosed the full rhyme in half brackets, and the second of those terms where it appears alone in the concordance, we have marked by only the opening half bracket, something that identifies the lemma as incomplete in itself. A glance at the list on p. 472 will illustrate. One apparent rhyme on two words is worth recording because it clarifies our practice. At 7.6.55a, Spenser seems to rhyme ‘did way’ with ‘did lay’. However, this example is not strictly a rhyme of the same kind as the feminine rhymes recorded in the appendix because in each line, ‘did’ is the unstressed the final iamb: x / | x /| x /| x / | x / Them all, and all that she so deare did way x /| x / |x /| x / | x / There-on an heauy haplesse curse did lay

This particular cluster is more properly an illustration of the verbal quality of Spenser’s rhymes, and his reliance on auxiliary verb forms to secure his rhymes, a device discussed in both studies. In consequence, ‘did’, used as here, is not recorded in the main Concordance. Neither the hyphenated nor 2 Our 3 Our

emphases (except ‘Britomart’). emphasis (except ‘Fanchin’).

Preface

xi

the double-word rhymes have entries under only the first part of the rhyme-unit; the first term is represented by the entry for the full unit.

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The elaborations and lists ‘Elaborations’ The lists printed with the Concordance are essentially elaborations of the main Concordance: lists of words in rhyme-position, organised by quantity (numerically) and alphabetically. These lists are controlled by lists of all words in The Faerie Queene, arranged similarly. The list of rhymes organised alphabetically is of particular importance: it gives the distribution of rhymes by Book and canto in The Faerie Queene as well as the total number of occurrences. Such a listing will have many uses, but it is hoped that it might contribute to the analyses of the composition of The Faerie Queene. abace 1: 1:II 1(1) abide 43: 11:IV 1(7) 1(11) 1(12) 2(5) 2(10) 4(8); 12:V 1(3) 1(5) 1(10) 2(1) 2(4) 5(2); 1:VII 1(6); 3:II 1(3) 1(8) 1(11); 3:VI 1(3) 1(7) 1(11); 6:I 1(2) 1(4) 1(8) 1(9) 2(5); 7:III 1(1) 1(3) 1(5) 1(9) 1(10) 2(7)

The line is read as follows: ‘abace’ appears in rhyme-position once in The Faerie Queene [headword: ’abace’, numeral: ’1’, colon]: 1 occurrence in Book II [1 (II)] of which 1 occurrence in canto 1 [1(1)]. The longer lines, including more citations and a wider distribution read the same. That is: unenclosed arabic numerals stand before the Book or canto number (always in parentheses) and represent the number of occurrences in that part of The Faerie Queene beginning on the left with the whole The Faerie Queene (the senior figure of the list and as such directly attached to the headword); the roman numerals in parentheses (VII) are Book numbers; the arabic numerals in parentheses are the canto numbers in the Book already indicated; entries for Books are separated by semicolon. Accordingly, the second line just quoted would be read aloud as follows: ‘abide’ appears in rhyme-position 43 times altogether in The Faerie Queene, as follows: 11 times in Book IV of which 1 in canto 7, 1 in canto 11, 1 in canto 12, 2 in canto 5, 2 in canto 10, 4 in canto 8; 12 in Book V of which 1 in canto 3, 1 in canto 5, 1 in canto 10, 2 in canto 1, 2 in canto 4, 5 in canto 2; one in Book VII of which 1 in canto 6; ... and so on.

The derivation could be performed with pencil and paper and a clear pair of eyes: but it would be tedious work and more importantly, error-prone, whereas the computer can make the calculations very quickly and the person instructing the computer must only perform the lengthy tasks involved once. There is less room for error though room enough. It will be seen that this list is simply an elaboration of information implied in the main concordance itself. There are other elaborations which prevent that the same large tasks must be performed by each scholar interested in the results. The most important of these are two lists of the words which occur in rhyme-position, organised in two ways: alphabetical and numerical by frequency of appearance in The Faerie Queene. From those one can see at a glance whether Spenser rhymes on a specific term, and how many times any given term occurs in rhyme position – or: what words appear in rhyme position and how often. At the same time it is important to have a control list of non-rhyming terms in The Faerie Queene to assess relative rhyme frequencies, lexical spread and various other properties; assessing Spenser’s rhymes involves seeing their places quite generally in his larger vocabulary and usage. For these reasons two lists of all words in The Faerie Queene also arranged by alphabet and by frequency is provided. We believe that this is the first reliable such list to be published; an authoritative list of words is an invaluable help in using a concordance, and in Spenser’s case even more so, since the concordance will usually, as here, be organised by lemmata and not words and Spenser’s spelling habits multiply lemmata. Each of these four lists prints each of its words with a numeral attached. The numeral is the number of relevant occurences of the word. In addition, rhymes on names, rhymes on hyphenated terms, rhymes on two words, and the variants used in the text for concordance have been supplied in further lists. Finally to cope with the sound of the rhymes, a standard reverse index has been included. A reverse index arranges rhymes in

xii

A Concordance to the Rhymes of The Faerie Queene

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alphabetical order but from the last letter in the word rather than as usual from the first. This has the effect of collecting similar sounds together and making them readily findable. Any such list is fairly crude, relying on orthography and not pronunciation, but it is nevertheless a key tool for the study of Spenser’s rhyme qua sound. Such lists, put to interaction with the concordance, can generate more information about Spenser’s rhymes and vocabulary than that directly listed. Some of the uses of the concordance and the lists are given in the two studies by the editors opening this volume. ‘Numerical accuracy in the Lists’ It should be noted that the lists of rhyme-words and all words provide numbers of instances for all terms. However, these numbers are, must be, only approximate.4 In general the numbers represent accurately the instances in the basic text here used, without the variations we have included in the main concordance; and they are counts of lemmata not words. But this implies that certain choices have already been made for the reader by the editor of the text, and of course it includes the revised ending to Book III. If the editors fixed a text, numbers could be made accurate relative to that text. Our policy of fixing as little as possible entails that numbers are only approximations to some ideal, partly composite partly exclusive Text. The main Concordance would yield accurate numbers relative to the text actually fed to the computer, and there all variants, all repeated lines and so on are clearly marked. The lists represent numbers generated by computer fed on the slightly reduced text without the variants. ‘Lists’ Other listed information relevant to Spenser’s rhyming practices but not deducible from the concordance is given in the appendices to the second of the accompanying studies. These lists are not self-explanatory but are cross-referenced from the main location of discussion in Lethbridge’s study. The lists provide samples of certain types of repetition characteristic of The Faerie Queene which have important effects on the way in which The Faerie Queene is read and which are not deducible from the rhymes concordance (partly because they invoke terms backwards of rhyme position). The headwords The concordance is not lexicalised. The headwords, more accurately ‘lemmata’, do not strictly represent the words of The Faerie Queene: each lemma in the concordance and in each list printed represents a series of contiguous alpha characters terminated by the punctuation that follows them if any, or by the white space occurring after them, and separated by white space in the original text from which the concordance and the lists are drawn. What this means is that there is an entry, or lemma, for words Spenser uses, but also, and separately, for each variant spelling of that word. There are more lemma than words in The Faerie Queene. Thus ‘despise’, considered as a word occurs as spelled, but also as ‘despize’ and as ‘despyse’. Thus the one word ‘despise’ has three lemmata. Variant syntactical forms, such as ‘despysd’, ‘despis’d’ and so on are treated each in the same manner, but as separate lemmata. Lemmata for the same word are not necessarily adjacent in the concordance or the lists, where the order of entry is strictly alphabetical. To find all occurrences of a rhyme-term several lemmata might need to be consulted. Here the lists are helpful since the lemmata distributed across three pages of the concordance are likely to be on the same page in one or another of the lists. Original spelling has been retained with no exceptions. In the ordering of entries capitalisation has been ignored, though it has been retained for the concordance and most elaborations and lists. We have not standardised variant spelling on the grounds that Spenser’s variants are as often as not meaningful and deliberate. Collating variants by a series of cross-references would have entailed judgements as to what constitutes a variant spelling of the same word and what constitutes a different word entirely – judgements which would often appear capricious without the space to give the arguments brought to bear; this is work, already in progress, for the future. A list of Spenser’s words with 4 Exactly how ‘approximate’ can be calculated accurately relative to the text used by noting all variants, double entries for hyphenated rhymes and rhymes on two words and for the additional stanzas at the end of Book III, the variations introduced by the manner of listing the Arguments. It has not seemed necessary or advisable to do so; however, JBL, using the basic text without variants, has occasionally rounded numbers to the nearest five (e.g., 143=145) to account for the approximations.

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all variant spellings cross-referenced has not yet been produced and is a desideratum; but is a task for a separate book. We felt it better for the present work to give the student the raw material on which decisions on the issue can be made as required. Also, there is a danger that information will be lost through collation, and we felt that the added task for the user of the concordance would be a fair price for the fullest array of information presented without editorial judgement so far as possible. The spelling of one word in various ways has an answering variation in that different words are sometimes spelt in the same way. So ‘to be’ is spelt as ‘bee’, but this collides with the spelling of the quite different word used for a ‘hony-lady’ bee (‘Bee’) at III.xii.18. In this case the spelling is strictly speaking variant, since the honey bee is capitalised, but capitalisation is ignored in the presentation of entries as just remarked, so that both the auxiliary verb ‘to be’ and the noun ‘honey bee’ are found under the same lemma. Using lemmata instead of words for headwords means that the numbers in the lists of frequencies, referring as they do to lemmata and not words, represent therefore only approximate numbers of words. As explained, we have retained punctuation after the lemmata: all punctuation following a rhymeterm in the concordance and the lists is from the original printings, and some variations have been included. On the other hand, punctuation, including italics and capitalisation, has in some lists and elaborations been omitted entirely. The text The text of The Faerie Queene from which the concordance and lists are derived has been independently prepared (by JBL) as a composite text of the 1590 and 1596 editions of The Faerie Queene with the Mutabilitie Cantos added from the 1609 edition. It is closely based on the Smith edition which served much in the role of a copy text. The Smith text is in the public domain and is released under the EULA licence at the Oxford Text Archive.5 By no means should the text for this concordance be considered as a full critical edition. The aim was to produce a reliable digital text – based on modern editions, with the main, substantial, variants included where they affect rhyme – to serve as a reliable basis for a concordance as complete and as accurate as possible. The text of The Faerie Queene is not especially problematical, the main difficulty is in accounting in a single text for the relatively few but significant variations in the first three books between the two editions which were or may have been supervised by Spenser and the 1609 edition which may well have some of Spenser’s own corrections and revisions to the first six books included.6 In some cases the text has been compared against copies of The Faerie Queene available on EEBO, courtesy of the University of Tübingen, and against an early copy of The Faerie Queene in the editor’s possession (1609). Comparisons in detail of the present text against those available on the web have also been made: against the Grosart text keyed by Risa Bear at Renascence Texts, against the Oxford text already mentioned, against the Variorum text available from WordHoard, and against the Chadwyck-Healey text, courtesy of the University of Freiburg. The process of four-way electronic comparison and old-fashioned proof reading has, we hope, led to a text as far as humanly possible accurate and correct. A full concordance based on this text will eventually be published. The differences between these texts have not recorded, where they differed Smith has been followed in most cases, occasionally one of the control texts already mentioned. The varia have been treated in the following manner: in order to give the fullest possible concordance of words that appeared under Spenser’s name in The Faerie Queene at any time during his life, but except for the Mutabilitie Cantos, not after it, the editor has not chosen between but simply added the substantial varia to the main text, as the varia are listed in Smith and with particular care in the Textual Companion to The Faerie Queene, 1590.7 Each line affected by one or more variant was printed once for each variant in addition to being printed once to begin with; the variants are marked with the obelisk illustrated above. For this concordance to the rhymes, only rhyme-position variants were included. 5 http://ota.ahds.ac.uk. 6 But 7 Ed.

see Joseph Loewenstein, ‘Spenser’s Textual History’ in McCabe (ed.), Oxford Handbook. Hiroshi Yamashita, Haruo Sato, Toshiyuki Suzuki, and Akira Takano (Tokyo: Kenyusha Books Co., 1993).

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Not all variants are included. The general principle has been more rather than less; but some filtering was required, for wantonly multiplying obelisks (a temptation) would dilute the concordance, which is not after all itself a critically established text. The general principle has been to make as few decisions as possible, rather including variants than choosing between them. Uncertainty whether to include a variant or no has been settled by inclusion; doubt over a specific reading, has been resolved by recourse to Smith. Obvious misprints are not recorded, but there has been no haste to call something a misprint, for one needs to be careful with Spenser, whose usage is highly imaginative. E.g.: 1.3.17.9 Then he by cunning sleights in at the window crept. † 1.3.17.9 Then he by conning sleights in at the window crept.

‘Conning’ is possible (=knowing, =>clever, studied) and not therefore necessarily or ‘obviously’ a misprint. Changes in spelling, but not errors in spelling, have been recorded, changes in capitalisation, however, not recorded. Most emendations have been rejected in favour of what was originally printed, none have been included as variants in their own right. Terminal punctuation variants have been included in what must appear an obsessive manner; but terminal punctuation, though Spenser was not in full control of it, is nevertheless of the greatest importance in interpreting rhyme, as JBL’s Study in this volume suggests. We have not felt it necessary to record these things precisely: all variants are marked with †. 1.5.24.1 Vp then, vp dreary Dame, of darknesse Queene, 1.5.24.2 Go gather vp the reliques of thy race, 1.5.24.3 Or else goe them auenge, and let be seene, 1.5.24.4 That dreaded Night in brightest day hath place, 1.5.24.5 And can the children of faire light deface. 1.5.24.6 Her feeling speeches some compassion mou’d †1.5.24.6 Her feeling speeches some compassion moued 1.5.24.7 In hart, and chaunge in that great mothers face: 1.5.24.8 Yet pittie in her hart was neuer prou’d †1.5.24.8 Yet pittie in her hart was neuer proued 1.5.24.9 Till then: for euermore she hated, neuer lou’d. †1.5.24.9 Till then: for euermore she hated, neuer loued. †1.5.24.9 Till then: and euermore she hated, neuer lou’d.

In this stanza we have four variants of three lines, and of the variants, three affect the rhyme. This means there are three extra entries in the concordance for this stanza, making 12 iterations of the lines instead of nine. (In the Concordance itself they would be widely scattered, We have brought them together here the better to illustrate.) seene, Queene, ∼ race, ∼ place, deface. face: Queene, ∼ seene, †proued mou’d †moued prou’d ∼ lou’d. †loued. prou’d mou’d †moued ∼ †proued lou’d. †loued. place, race, ∼ deface. face: †moued mou’d ∼ prou’d †proued lou’d. †loued. mou’d ∼ †moued prou’d †proued lou’d. †loued. †loued. mou’d †moued prou’d †proued lou’d. ∼ lou’d. mou’d †moued prou’d †proued ∼ †loued. face: race, place, deface. ∼ deface. race, place, ∼ face:

1.5.24[a] 1.5.24[b] 1.5.24[a] 1.5.24[c] 1.5.24[c] 1.5.24[b] 1.5.24[c] 1.5.24[c] 1.5.24[c] 1.5.24[c] 1.5.24[b] 1.5.24[b]

The variant rhyme terms are then brought into the concordance together with their obelisk. It is to be noted that this adds a few lines, and thus a few lemmata to the whole. But following the same principle that guided the treatment of variant spellings, it seemed best to aim at completeness, rather than recording only, say, what survived into the 1596 edition, even at the expense of further blurring the face value of the various numbers. No one need be mislead by the numbers, which do not record only

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the number of times a lemma appears in any given copy of The Faerie Queene, but rather how many times it occurs in this composite text. The source text, should, then be considered as approximating a diplomatic edition of 1596 and the Mutabilitie Cantos from 1609, with the main variants from 1590 included, ideal as a source for concordances and indices. But it is a text of books, not of an author and some compositors and proof readers. The text used to generate the main Concordance is a text not based on authorial intention or any derivation of it: we have not asked either ‘what was the author trying to say or write?’ or (the same question in thin disguise) ‘what is the text trying to say or write?’ in order to settle some puzzle in the tradition: we have asked ‘what was printed?’ (which is quite a different question) and where there were several things printed, we have included most of them. So that the text used for the concordance is a text not of what was written, but of what was printed. The forthcoming Oxford edition will challenge existing textual paradigms, probably in many ways, but in particular by arguing that 1590 and 1596 are distinct documents. However, that text is not at the time of going to press, published, and work began on this present text several years before it became clear what the Oxford text would be like; we have assiduously checked 1590 against 1596, especially where it matters in terms of rhyme and like Hamilton we have preferred 1590’s uninflected past participle rhymes over 1596’s tendency to insert extra ‘ed’s, so that in Books I–III it is the 1596 lines that are obelised. Other texts we have made use of in digital forms are those of Fairfax’s translation of Tasso, and Harington’s of Ariosto.8 The ability to analyse these texts with a computer has been of the utmost help in making the important comparisons and have served as control texts for statements made about Spenser’s practices. The studies Two full-length studies of Spenser’s rhymes are included in this volume. They represent different and complementary approaches to Spenser’s rhymes. Where JBL focuses on the repetitive, formulaic cast of The Faerie Queene, exploring the limited semantic and aesthetic payload of rhyme purposively suppressed, RDB explores the extent to which rhyming formulae may also be semantically loaded and poetically purposive. At the same time, RDB’s study provides more of an historical overview of the reception of Spenser’s rhymes, whilst JBL’s study is more formalist and urges greater inspection of the formulaic quality of the poem. We have not sought to suppress disagreements, but consider the studies a pair: together they constitute the most sustained treatment of Spenser’s rhyme so far attempted. Each of them is based on the Concordance, using therefore a resource which has not hitherto been available, and at the same time taking pains to introduce the potential of the tool and put it through some of its paces. The codex in the computer age The printing of a codex concordance deep into the computer age requires some comment. The Osgood Concordance (1915) is still in print on the verge of its centenary. Osgood has not been replaced by digital editions, such as that at Renascence Editions9 and databases such as WordHoard;10 despite its manifest inadequacies (modernised spelling, principled incompleteness and some errors), it is still in demand as a standard research tool. Other publishers continue to print concordances and cognate indices. For example, Georg Olms has since 1997 published a whole string of very large lexica, indices and concordances by James H. Dee on Homer, Virgil, Ovid (seven to date, most recently 2011).11 Bible concordances abound in print and various Shakespeare concordances, lexica and indices are still in print and new ones being devised and printed. Herbert S. Donow, writing the Preface to his Concordance to the Poems of Sir Philip Sidney (Cornell University Press, 1975) includes an extraordinary passage on the inflexibility of the print medium and the many advantages of the computer concordance (ix–x), concluding that ‘The printed concordance 8 For

Fairfax: http://omacl.org/Tasso/ For Harington: Chadwyck-Healey database.

9 http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/fqintro.html. 10 http://wordhoard.northwestern.edu/userman/index.html. 11 See

Bibliography.

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has none of this flexibility, – it cannot prove as serviceable’ (x). The flexibility he describes was not in 1975 widely available: according to Donow, only a dozen or so institutions possessed the resources required for computer concordancing. Almost 40 years later, every netbook and laptop let alone the PC has far more computing power than needed, even some of the latest tablet computers can do the job. Yet few who require the resources of a computerised concordance have the expertise required to manipulate the text accurately. Though print medium is fixed, that does not mean it is inflexible. Imaginative use of a printed concordance can make it reveal information beyond what is actually printed in its long columns, in particular if there are ancillary materials such as those provided here. The fixed nature of the printed concordance, and its structure as a codex is one of its advantages over the computerised concordance. A distinction must be made between two broad types of digitalised concordances: the digital version which reproduces the printed form, as a pdf- or html-version of the present volume would do – and which can be searched, marked, copied and pasted, but which is often as fixed as the printed version, though changes are easier and cheaper to a digital version, and it is presented in very similar form, page by page or screen by screen – and the database form. The latter typically presents only the information sought for by searches complex if need be far beyond what can be performed by the digital iteration of the print form. In truth, printed concordances are not in competition with digital versions of either type, rather they complement them. While digital editions have functionalities absent from printed editions there are benefits in a printed concordance not matched by a digital version. A printed concordance offers a great many lines at one glance: the format of the present volume presents 354 lines to view when the book is open, a screen much larger than common would be needed to achieve that at a readable resolution on a computer. In contrast to the database form, in the paged forms digital and printed the information is presented raw whereas in a database it is always already an answer to a specific question or series of them, so that a printed concordance will readily reveal patterns unsought for. With a database one is in general searching for answers to questions already posed; whereas in browsing the printed form one is more creatively vulnerable to questions not posed – is at least stalked by different vulnerabilities. Databases take great pains to counter this tendency, as printed forms take great pains to match the efficiencies of the database. Another advantage of a printed concordance arises from one of its limitations in comparison to digital versions: despite efforts to overcome the fact, the printed media is already interpreted or chosen by the editors of the volume. A digital search, relying equally only on information keyed in, will print out a mass of information at once presenting the problem of contextualisation or sorting. That we find this to be an advantage of the printed medium is shown by the interpretative para-concordance texts included in this volume. A database could produce more and more raw information and produce surprises the more fixed medium cannot do; this printed version, however, serves the user in being static, becoming eventually familiar, highly contextualised, and where some of the task of choosing, sorting and presentation have already been performed by the editors. The question of permanent record is also important and the advantages so far lie with the codex. For all the great work that has been done on digital storage, the very speed at which it changes is a weakness in permanency, and the means of foolproof, recoverable storage over very long periods of time has not yet been found: the magnetic forms of storage decay relatively quickly in comparison with the codex, while the more stable engraved, light-based forms (such as CDs and DVDs) also deteriorate, and are easily damaged. Damaging a codex to the point of uselessness is a fairly difficult task. A codex not interfered with by fire or water will last 300 years, and if cared for, a great many more; digital media even fifteen years old are no longer accessible without sophisticated (or antiquated) hard- and software, and keeping digital records both widely distributable and current is expensive. What ever the cause, wide delivery of digital media in a permanent or semi-permanent form, remains more difficult and more expensive than the delivery of printed matter. Although books are and have always been expensive, they are cheaper and more widely distributable than the equivalent digital media. There are more personal factors involved among those who buy or get their libraries to buy printed works of this nature. Given wide distribution, ease of access is superior with the codex than with the computer concordance. The world would be a poorer place without the printed concordance. None of this is to denigrate the digital editions and databases available to us nowadays; only to

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suggest reasons why the printed and bound volume is still desirable. Great efforts have been and are being made to turn the limitations of the computer, conceived as a form of book, into advantages, and the speed at which things change in the digital world will probably ensure that equivalent advantages are developed for the digital media. But as yet they are not. Finally, that the computer and the codex are complementary is illustrated, not without irony, by the fact that no concordance is likely to be produced again except on the basis of a digitalised text and computerised manipulations which treat the text as both a digital version of the printed form and as a database. In that sense, presupposing and requiring it, the codex is one possible elaboration of the digital. This is acknowledged here with grateful humility.

Additional Materials The bibliography In addition to the concordance and its appendent elaborations and lists, in order to facilitate the study of Spenser’s rhyme, we have added a Bibliography of books and papers on Spenser’s rhyme and related subjects, such as grammar and rhetoric; also included are certain other works of importance to the study of rhyme more generally. As to works dealing with Spenser, we have tried to make the Bibliography complete; as to other works, the Bibliography is selective only though generous in that selection. The same bibliography also contains works cited in the two Studies whose footnotes are keyed to it. The index The Index at the back is to the two studies accompanying the concordance, including their notes. The index is based on an original prepared by Isobel Fletcher. The division of labour A task that has occupied two friends of long standing for several years, over periods to be sure of less intensity, but also of greater intensity, cannot be cleanly separated into areas of sole responsibility. However, JBL is responsible for the original preparation of the text, the preparation of the concordance, elaborations and lists and for all computer issues. The text, concordance and indices were then read and corrected by RDB, and joint decisions were made as to variants, presentation and contents. Each of us has provided critical commentary on the Study of the other, and while we are not always in agreement with each other, the Studies also represent the close and enjoyable collaboration of friends over a long period. The generation of the Concordance and lists Most of the computing was done on a Lenovo ThinkPad (X-series) using Debian Linux and the standard Gnu-Linux text utilities; for keying the text, comparing versions, and for manipulating and basic formatting of the text, Keith Bostick’s nvi text editor, a clone of the original vi Unix editor was used. The typesetting was done (by JBL) with LATEX, the Tex-Live distribution; the font is MinionPro. No user of Linux and Gnu can fail to be grateful for the provision of so much computer software delivered free of charge to all comers, and to the vast number of fora, email lists and helpful web pages, all also supplied free of charge with great skill, good nature and generosity in sharing solutions to problems with the novice (the ‘newbie’). Specifically, JBL is glad to acknowledge the help of Mr Tim Chase who, in answer to a query from a complete stranger, provided a python script which saved endless hours and generated some of the more interesting elaborations. RDB and JBL, Milton Keynes and Tübingen, December, 2013

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Two notes on JBL’s study On footnotes: there are 200 footnotes left in this Study introducing a reference work; at least so many I have deleted. I had no intention that the monograph should become a debate; those familiar with the secondary literature will see that I have attended to it; specific debts I have noted, but paying tribute to Alpers and Wilson-Okamura or disagreement with others several times a page seems superfluous, so does indexing Sugden and Rix. Better to state and focus on my own case about Spenser’s rhymes. Space is a pressing concern. On Ramism: I leave Ramism out of the discussion of res and verba. Much support for my contentions would have been gained from its inclusion, but it would have unnecessarily multiplied controversies. (The latest discussion of Spenser and Ramism is in Hadfield’s biography of Spenser.) Some colleagues have protested and Dr Niranjan Goswami of Presidency University (to whom I am grateful for this and other collegial graces) stated the main points with learning and force in a mail he has permitted me to quote to indicate the argument: – You have trodden on safe ground by not choosing to mention Ramus. I would suggest that Ramus would have been relevant. The reasons are the following: – Rhyme is more appropriate in vernacular poetry in the Renaissance than in classical imitations. – Ramist rhetoric emphasized the idea of ornamentation to be the function of rhetoric by limiting rhetoric to ‘elocutio’ and making ‘inventio’ and ‘dispositio’ strictly the subject of dialectic. – Spenser belonged to the Sidney circle and Sidney, Harvey and Fraunce were followers of Ramism in different degrees. His particular friendship with Harvey should alert us for possible influence of Ramist rhetoric on him. – Ramus was instrumental in promoting the vernacular and often quoted Du Bellay and other French poets in his French Dialectique. Spenser translated Du Bellay and was influenced by many ideas of the Pleiade. – The Ramist rhetorician Fouquelin aided the process of vernacularization of Latin rhetoric by emphasizing rhyme. – Fraunce extensively used Spenser in writing his manual Shepherd’s Logic. The case for Spenser’s Ramism is only waiting to be made.

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Acknowledgements Expressing each his gratitude to the other editor is awkward; but friendship cannot be taken for granted and should be acknowledged with thanks where it is found and made, and such a joint work as this book has been could hardly have been carried out but for mutual help, respect, patience, the outspoken and unspoken courtesies, personal and collegiate, and many other of the values of old friendship. We have joint thanks to others. To Manchester University Press for agreeing to take on such a publication in the digital age, and to the two Press readers for their encouragement, suggestions and criticisms; to the Board of The Manchester Spenser monograph series for the constant stream of advice and encouragement as well as the warnings that shield the editors’ paths, the most profound gratitude and respect; to Pia Prestin and latterly to Natalia Christoforou, both of Tübingen University, who have typed, cross-checked and proof read in quantities that would have wearied Hercules. We also have individual thanks to others. RDB: I would like to acknowledge the support and encouragement of friends and colleagues who have read parts of the work in draft or given useful suggestions at key moments. In particular, it’s a pleasure to acknowledge the varied contributions of Clive Baldwin, Peter Golphin, Sara Haslam, David Johnson, Anita Pacheco and Lynda Prescott. For camaraderie and more during moments of diuerse doubt, I raise my glass to Pat Atkins. JBL: While I should not wish, and I fancy he would not wish me to invoke his name as a supporter of my version of a text of The Faerie Queene, David Lee Miller very kindly gave me a lengthy afternoon in Columbia, SC discussing the text of The Faerie Queene (neither his first nor last generosity to me). The University of Tübingen I thank for leave of absence granted to complete the project, and the University of Aberdeen and Dr Syrithe Pugh of that University, the English department (and the departments of Philosophy and Theology), for the opportunity during a visiting scholarship in 2010 to experiment with some of the ideas in my contribution to the Introductory papers and the concordance generally. Behind the formula section of that contribution lies a larger task devoted to Spenser’s formulae in general, and postponed to make room for this concordance, the first fruits of which I presented to the Spenserians at Kalamazoo, and from whom I received valuable criticism of all sorts, in particular a detailed and characteristically direct and enlightening response by Judith Anderson. I thank Brian Vickers, Jane Grogan, Paul Hecht and Tom Herron and Niranjan Goswami for long conversations (I hope that is the right term) on matters arising. My wife does not like to be thanked like this; but I am not, at any rate here, acknowledging the decades of love, companionship, support, friendship, criticism, wisdom – but the typing, reading, re-reading and the weeks spent correcting. Finally: the published and unpublished work of David Scott Wilson-Okamura, his scholarship, wisdom and generosity I acknowledge and honour. In the beginning was Matthew Frost of Manchester University Press.

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Abbreviations for Spenser’s Works Amor Amoretti Ast Astrophel CCH Colin Clouts Come Home Againe DS Dedicatory Sonnets to The Faerie Queene (1590) Epith Epithalamion FH Fowre Hymnes FQ The Faerie Queene, Hamilton’s second edition (2001; 2007) HB An Hymne in Honour of Beavtie HL An Hymne in Honour of Loue HHL An Hymne in Honour of Heauenly Loue HHB An Hymne in Honour of Heauenly Beavtie Letters Three Proper . . . Letters. Two . . . Commendable Letters MHT Prosopopoia. Or Mother Hubberds Tale Prose Spenser’s Prose Works, Variorum Edition, ix (1949) Proth Prothalamion RT The Ruines of Time SC The Shepheardes Calender TM The Teares of the Muses VG Virgil’s Gnat View A Vewe of the Presente State of Irelande VP The Visions of Petrarch Yale Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems (1989)

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‘Charmed with inchaunted rimes’: An Introduction to the Faerie Queene Rhymes Concordance Richard Danson Brown A Concordance to the Rhymes of The Faerie Queene offers a unique insight into Spenser’s creative processes and the tools of his trade. It enables readers to review the variety of Spenser’s rhyming in a detail which has not previously been possible. In this study, I illustrate this rhetorical variety by focusing on a selection of key devices which are characteristic of the poem as a whole, and which stress the radical and hybrid aesthetic which underpins The Faerie Queene. In addition, Spenser’s rhymes must be approached contextually because they are simultaneously a key strand in the aesthetic fabric of his poetry – the weft out of which his verse is spun – and a poetic practice which is informative about the literary culture which he was a product of and which in his turn he reshaped. Rhyme itself was a contentious practice which was at best uneasily harnessed to the classicising impulses of the continental Renaissance. The Faerie Queene established the Renaissance credentials of English rhyming verse – the capacity of English to produce an epic comparable in scale and achievement of poems like the Aeneid and the Orlando Furioso. Spenser’s work as a rhymer is thus a crucial facet of that wider cultural process.

1 Spenser and Rhyme Spenser’s slippery sense of the slipperiness of rhyme is shown in dozens of places. Typically, rhyme is mentioned at moments of writerly self-consciousness, in which it functions as a synecdoche for poetry – a provocative part standing for the whole, as in Milton’s boast, via Ariosto, to be writing ‘Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme’.1 But the Spenserian discourse of rhyme is not always stable, and sampling some of these moments from throughout his work emphasises the tensions in his use of the word and his understanding of the concept. What follows is a miniature anthology of Spenser on rhyme:2 1) Ye learned sisters which have oftentimes beene to me ayding, others to adorne: Whom ye thought worthy of your gracefull rymes (Epith,1–3)3 2) I wote my rymes bene rough, and rudely drest: The fytter they, my carefull case to frame (‘June’, 77–78)4 1 Milton, Paradise Lost, I:43. As Fowler notes, Milton ironically translates Ariosto’s ‘Cosa non detta in prosa mai, né in rima’. 2 All

emphases are mine unless otherwise noted, excluding proper names (which are usually italicised both in primary texts and modern editions), quotations from the Letter to Ralegh, and the arguments, which are originally printed in italics. Emphases for rhymes are in italics unless the original text is printed in italics, in which case the emphasised terms are in bold. Emphases for assonance and alliteration are in bold. 3 Unless otherwise stated, quotations from The Faerie Queene are from Hamilton’s revised second edition (2001, 2007), abbreviated as FQ. Quotations from the shorter poems are from Oram’s Yale edition, abbreviated as Yale. Quotations from the prose are from the Variorum, vol. 10, abbreviated as Prose. See also Amor I, RT, 334; TM, 381; HHL, 47; ‘June’, 49; ‘October’, 5; ‘November’, 43; E. K.’s note to l.19 of ‘Aprill’ (Yale, 77) 4 See also Ast, Proem l.12 ‘For well I wot my rymes bene rudely dight’. Note the variations on the same trope in the nonSpenserian laments in the ‘Astrophel’ volume: ‘Though my rude rymes, ill with thy verses frame’ (‘A pastorall Aeglogue’); ‘Whose vertues wounded by my worthlesse rime’ (Ralegh, ‘An Epitaph vpon the right Honourable sir Phillip Sidney knight’). See also TM, 545; ‘November’, 51; DS 10, 11, 14; III.viii.42; I.xii.23; III.ii.3; IV.ii.33. See I.vi.13 and VG, 153–55, for the connection between rhyme and pastoral: ‘on shrill reedes chaunting his rustick rime’. The introduction of ‘rime’ is a characteristic touch, since Spenser is translating Culex (99–100): ‘dum non arte canora/compacta solitum modulatur [h]arundine carmen’; ‘customary song’ would be a more literal version of ‘solitum carmen’. See Spenser, The Minor Poems, Part Two, 550–58, for the Dumaeus text used by Spenser for his translation (552).

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A Concordance to the Rhymes of The Faerie Queene 3) O too high ditty for my simple rime (II.x.50)

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4) REdoubted knights, and honorable Dames, To whom I leuell all my labours end, Right sore I feare, least with vnworthy blames This odious argument my rymes should shend, Or ought your goodly patience offend, Whiles of a wanton Lady I doe write (III.ix.1)5 5) THe rugged forhead that with graue foresight Welds kingdomes causes, and affaires of state, My looser rimes (I wote) doth sharply wite, For praising loue (IV Proem 1)6 6) Ne may this homely verse, of many meanest, Hope to escape his venemous despite, More then my former writs, all were they clearest From blamefull blot, and free from all that wite, With which some wicked tongues did it backebite, And bring into a mighty Peres displeasure, That neuer so deserued to endite. Therfore do you my rimes keep better measure, And seeke to please, that now is counted wisemens threasure. (VI.xii.41)7 7) Thou kenst not Percie howe the ryme should rage (‘October’, 109) 8) [. . . ] had those wits the wonders of their dayes, Or that sweete Teian Poet which did spend His plenteous vaine in setting forth her prayse, Seene but a glims of this, which I pretend, How wondrously would he her face commend, Aboue that Idole of his fayning thought, That all the world should with his rimes be fraught? (HHB, 218–24) 9) Such high conceipt of that celstiall fire, The base-borne brood of blindnes cannot gesse, Ne ever dare their dunghill thoughts aspire Unto so loftie pitch of perfectnesse, But rime at riot, and doo rage in love; Yet little wote what doth thereto behove. (TM, 392–96)8 10) As for the twoo worthy Gentlemen, Master Sidney, and Master Dyer, they haue me, I thank them, in some vse of familiarity: of whom, and to whome, what speache passeth for your credite and estimation, I leaue your selfe to conceiue, hauing alwayes so well conceiued of my vnfained affection, and zeale towardes you. And nowe they haue proclaimed in their ἀρείῳ πάγῳ [areopagus] a