44THE ANIMAL IN ALLEGORYThe allegory here is explicit: the hunt represents the courtship that is
nearly always the topic of Renaissance sonnets, with the speaker/lover
as hunter and the courted woman (Elizabeth Boyle, Spenser’s second
wife) as deer. That the pursued woman is represented as a hunted ani-
mal is disturbing in multiple ways, though it plays on the conventional
pun of deer and dear. It almost goes without saying that the woman is
dehumanized and de-individualized, even as the speaker is figured as a
forcefully physical lover rather than as a passive one (who merely writes).
The allegory suggests that the point of the pursuit is both conquest and
consumption of “trembling” flesh. This is a very early example of women
figured obliquely as meat, an association the implications of which have
been explored by Carol Adams and others (though she does not exam-
ine this poem or this metaphor). As such, the trope reflects patriarchal
oppression of both women and animals and highlights the connec-
tion between them. An implication of the allegory, made explicit in
Petrarch’s and Wyatt’s versions, is that the deer, being “game,” is neces-
sarily already the property of the landowner (usually the king), whose
interest in the animal is for sport, flesh, and display. In Petrarch and
in Wyatt (quoted here) the doe wears a necklace that bears the inscrip-
tion “ ‘Noli me tangere; for Cæsar’s I am, / And wild for to hold, though
I seem tame,’ ” which reflects the idea that the beloved is already spoken
for and thus unattainable; she is controlled game.^23
It is worth remembering, however, that one of the framing conven-
tions of the Renaissance sonnet is that it is actually addressed to the
woman who is its subject; the sonnet is a kind of love letter, understood
as intended to be read by the desired woman. This sonnet is also written
to woo, flatter, and impress. Indeed, though most sonnets were written
primarily to impress male friends with the poet’s wit, one of Spenser’s
contributions to the form is to undermine the implicit irony of the sonnet
sequence, since he wrote to his actual future wife. In what sense, then,
is this sonnet flattering? That is, why might a woman in sixteenth-
century England not object to being represented as a hunted deer? One
reason is suggested by the fact that Spenser describes his deer as truly
wild, both successfully escaping the exhausted hunter and hounds and