with marriage and the marriage bed. EDMUND SPENSER’s
SONNET SEQUENCE loosely follows the liturgical calendar,
with the 21 sonnets referencing January—ordinary
time—and the courtship phase of his relationship. Thus,
Sonnet 4, which employs simple rhyme and sexual
imagery, is meant to woo.
Spenser combines imagery, metaphor, and personi-
fi cation as “New yeare forth looking out of Janus gate”
(l. 1) calls “Fresh love” (l. 6) from sleep and bids the
lady to “Prepare your selfe new love to entertaine” (l.
14); with the approach of spring, the lady is encour-
aged to be open to new love. That “New yeare” looks
through Janus’s gate is not trivial; Janus, keeper of
gates and god of harmony in the Roman tradition,
indicates that as the new year unfolds, it brings with it
new life and harmony, ideal circumstances in which to
foster a relationship. Spenser’s natural world is domi-
nated by masculine forms—New yeare, Janus, Fresh
love (Cupid), and spring. In this context, the solitary
female element, Earth (l. 11) is told to prepare herself
for “lusty spring” (l. 9) in a fashion that mirrors the
arranged marriages of the era. Her preparation takes
on a ritualistic aspect reminiscent of a bride’s prepara-
tion for her wedding as she is instructed to adorn her-
self and to prepare her dowry “with divers colord
fl ower / To deck hir selfe, and her faire mantle weave”
(ll. 11–12).
In describing the lady of the poem as “you faire
fl owre” (l. 13), Spenser aligns her with Earth, and the
sexual undertones triumph: “Lusty spring now in his
timely howre, / Is ready to come forth him [Cupid] to
receive” (ll. 9–10). The employment of terms such as
wanton wings and darts of deadly power (l. 8) also under-
scores the male sexuality prevalent within this sonnet.
Spenser is clear about his intention to court and cap-
ture his lady, and there is no doubt that there will be a
consummation of this love. Furthermore, the feminine,
and by association the lady, has no voice in this poem,
as is customary in Renaissance society and the natural
world. As Earth is fertile and receives spring in the
New Year without fuss or question, so should the lady
receive her intended lord.
See also AMORETTI (OVERVIEW), SONNET.
M. A. Elmes
Amoretti: Sonnet 13 (“In that proud port, which
her so goodly graceth”) EDMUND SPENSER
(1595) Sonnet 13 is more characteristic of EDMUND
SPENSER’s Amoretti than it is remarkable. Each QUATRAIN
elicits the trope (fi gure of speech) of contrast that we
fi nd in many of the others, the second recurrent trope
being a list. Here the contrast is between the Lady’s pride
and lofty aims that look toward the heavens and her
acknowledgement of earthly ties. The contrast in the
fi rst quatrain is between lines 2 and 3, where the lady’s
face rises to the skies but her eyes embrace the earth; the
second quatrain is an exercise in asserting earthy humil-
ity; the third has a 1–2 couplet looking to the divine and
a 3–4 couplet decrying earthly imagery such as “drossy
slime.” In deliberately using words considered archaic
even in his own time (“drossy slime”), Spenser achieved
an atmosphere of age and mystery. Sonnet 13 is sur-
rounded by sonnets characterized by such lexical choices
and tropes of opposition, perhaps reinforcing the read-
ing that Amoretti is a sort of “tour de force” performance
for Spenser.
While often overlooked in early critiques of the
SONNET SEQUENCE, Sonnet 13 has received more atten-
tion in recent decades as an example of Neoplatonism,
intimating that the divine may be achieved at the
expense of the physical. Only the SONNET’s conclusion
wrests it from that philosophical dichotomy between
base body and elevated mind or spirit, for in the last
two lines, the narrator links return to the earth, to the
body, and to the attentions of the poet-lover with his
somewhat arrogant claim that his writing will facili-
tate her ascent to both spiritual and physical bliss.
“To looke on me, such lowlinesse shall make you
lofty be” (ll. 13–14). This invocation has also been
offered as a suggestion that looking at the entire
Amoretti will produce a kind of elevation, the look
being at the work rather than at the narrator and the
looker being the reader rather than the lady. This sort
of metapoetic (unconventional imagery) interpreta-
tion requires separating the subject and object of the
internal narrative (lover speaking to his beloved lady)
from the subject of the work itself as a demonstration
of authorial versatility.
See also AMORETTI (OVERVIEW).
Janice M. Bogstad14 AMORETTI: SONNET 13