"Most fitte for the excellency of his person": Prince Arthur in Edmund Spenser's the Faerie Queene

Abstract

In his Letter to Raleigh Spenser states that Prince Arthur, as an embodiment of the virtue of magnificence, represents the perfection of the twelve private and political virtues that were to be represented in the twelve books of The Faerie Queene. The meaning of this statement has been contested by a number of scholars, most notably C. S. Lewis, who claimed that the letter is misleading in its terminology, not least because magnificence as Spenser defines it means "magnanimity, not magnificence" and that Arthur does not overtly display any such magnanimity C. S. Lewis, Spenser's Images of Life, ed. Alastair Fowler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 138. My thesis, however, stands in support of the more obvious interpretation of the Letter arguing that Arthur does indeed represent the perfection of each of the virtues portrayed in the Faerie Queene (as we know it). Chapter one shows that Spenser's account of Arthur's armour with its precious stones suggests the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21-23) and contemporary interpretations of it. Thus Arthur embodies the virtue of holiness as a manifestation of the grace of God. In Chapter Two I have contended that Arthur's battle with Orgoglio draws closely on Malory's depiction of the battle between his King Arthur and the giant of Mont-St-Michel, thus proving that Spenser did draw on the history of Arthur as he claims in the Letter. As I argue in Chapter Three, it is the fact that Arthur fights with Guyon's sword (the sword of temperance) that confirms him as the epitome of temperance. Chapter Four confronts Arthur's apparent deviation from perfection in his possibly tainted pursuit of Florimell, arguing that his action is in perfect accord with the virtue of love as Spenser interprets it. My Fifth Chapter examines Arthur's role as the perfection of friendship by considering how his friendship encompasses familial love, erotic love, and platonic love. In my penultimate chapter I isolate the romance themes informing Arthur's quest on behalf of Belge. These motifs draw his actions out of the purely historical dimension (where perfection is impossible), so that Arthur may be once again true to Spenser's stated conception of him. Arthur's concession to Mirabella in Book Seven may appear weak. It seems to me, however, that it is in his very refusal to impose his will that he epitomises the Book's titular virtue of courtesy. In my conclusion I have considered the question of what Spenser may have intended for his unwritten final book, the Book of Magnificence.