Spenserian Ekphrasis

Kaitlyn Johnson
Oct. 9, 2014
Spenserian Ekphrasis
In Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, the purpose behind Book III is the theme of Chastity. Spenser attempts to illustrate Chastity as one of the virtues of life and, through ekphrasis, determines to let the reader contemplate the obstacles against it. As the Knight of Chastity, Britomart faces multiple challenges during her quest. One of these such challenges occurs in the House of Busirane. Spenser utilizes ekphrasis in Busirane's hanging tapestries and the performing of the Masque of Cupid to display the stages of love and the vices that accompany it. While previously in the Castle Joyous, he introduces Britomart to her first real confrontation with dark scenes of love and lust and consequences from falling prey to either emotion, in the House of Busirane he enhances on the fact that Britomart now has some experience and can somewhat recognize what she is seeing. Quite possibly, Spenser was showing what strength and persistence it took to remain chase in a world where such actions of lust were commonplace. Book III, Canto XI immediately alerts the reader to what pictures Britomart comes upon as she enters the House of Busirane:

And in those Tapets weren fashioned
Many fair pourtraicts, and many a faire feate,
And all of loue, and all of lusty-hed,
As seemed by their semblaunt did entreat;
And eke all Cupids warres they did repeate,
And cruell battels, which he whilome fought
Gainst all the Gods, to make his empire great;
Besides the huge massacres, which he wrought
On might kings and kesars, into thraldome brought. (Stanza 29)

Unknowing of the danger that awaits her on her mission to save Scudamore's beloved, Britomart enters the House of Busirane and beholds an almost shrine to scenes of lust performed by the gods under the influence of Cupid's arrows. It seems that a key aim of Spenser in showing Britomart and the reader such events is a way of alluding to the more vicious sensation that often accompany love. Tapestry upon tapestry covers the walls depicting not only acts of love and lust, but most of which are acts of rape. Spenser refers to the many times Zeus would change his shape in order to violate women he was attracted to:

Then was he turnd into a snowy Swan,
To win faire Leda to his lovely trade:
O wondrous skill, and sweet wit of the man,
That her in daffadillies sleeping made,
From scorching heat her daintie limbes to shade:
Whiles the proud Bird ruffing his fethers wyde,
And brushing his faire breast, did her inuade; (Book III, Canto XI, Stanza 32)

Spenser may have chosen the first scenes of this house of evil as illustrations that not even gods, higher beings considered much stronger than mere humans, could withstand the power of one of Cupid's darts. The message possibly being sent to Britomart is, "If a god can't even remain pure, how can you?" No one is free from the consequences of love, as Spenser plainly says in Stanza 46:

Kings Queens, Lords Ladies, Knights & Damzels gent
Were heap'd together with the vulgar sort,
And mingled with the raskall ramblement,
Without respect of person or of port,
To shew Dan Cupids powre and great effort; (Book III, Canto XI)

The tapestries act as an ekphrasis display on the struggle and possible futility of chastity in the real world. Instead of seeing the paintings simply as that, paintings, Spenser digs deeper to the dark underbelly that alludes to the morals his own society was encountering. Since gods are not the only ones prone to love's penalties, Spenser continues his visual metaphors into the next room with tapestries filled with the humans affected by love and the violence that accompanied it:

And all about, the glistring walles were hong
With warlike spoiles, and with victorious prayes,
Of mighty Conquerours and Captaines strong,
Which were whilome captiued in their dayes
To cruell loue, and wrought their owne decayes:
Their swerds & speres were broke, & hauberques rent;
And their proud girlonds of tryumphant bayes
Troden in dust with fury insolent,
To shew the victors might and mercilesse intent. (Book III, Canto XI, Stanza 52)

Spenser shows Britomart examples that enforce his viewpoint that where love is concerned, therein follows pain and suffering. In this passage, love is followed by war and those enslaved to their sensations. In the line "…captiued in their dayes to cruell loue, and wrought their own decayes;", Spenser might be declaring that these men or soldiers brought about their own torment and downfall by falling prey to their hearts. Busirane has these tapestries hanging in his home because, for Spenser's purposes, he is the most dangerous enemy of Britomart, which is mostly because he is the most dangerous enemy of love, or at least of chaste love. The farther Britomart travels into the castle, the more she is plagued with these scenes of love's power to destroy. However, these are not all that Spenser intends to bombard Britomart with to illustrate the obstacles of love that lie in the way of one's goals. He moves on to a three-dimensional aspect in Book III Canto XII:

The noble Mayd, still standing all this vewd,
And merueild at his strange intendiment;
With that a ioyous fellowship issewd
Of Minstrels, making goodly meriment,
With wanton Bardes, and Rymers impudent,
All which together sung full chearefully
A lay of loues delight, with sweet consent:
After whom marcht a iolly company,
In manner of a maske, enranged orderly. (Stanza 5)

Now Britomart is confronted with flesh and blood, love's vices brought to life before her. A parade of corruption performs in one of the inner rooms of the castle, each in the attire practical for their character. To begin, players such as Fancy and Desire lead the line, just as they lead the heart when love first appears. However, following on their heels are Doubt and Danger. Spenser may have used such human feelings to illustrate love's many negative effects. A curious fact the reader comes across in Stanza 33, is that not all of Spenser's vices are considered impediments too often:

With him went Hope, in rancke, a handsome Mayd,
Of chearefull looke and louely to behold;
In silken samite she was light arayd,
And her faire lockes were wouen vp in gold;
She always smyld, and in her hand did hold
An holy water Sprinckle, dipt in deowe,
With which she sprinckled fauours manifold,
On whom she list, and did great liking sheowe,
Great liking vnto many, but true loue to feowe. (Book III, Canto XII)

Hope is a reaction that one might normally see as a positive thing. It is what keeps a person going through dark times or dangerous days. Spenser, however, chooses to dress it up and include it in a dance of detriments. His line, "On whom she list, and did great liking sheowe, Great liking vnto many, but true loue to feowe", seems to be detailing his belief that while Hope sometimes does bestow that kind of real love on certain individuals, a greater number are relegated only to be "liked". Thus, it takes its place in the parade, followed by such specters as Grief and Fury, before we reach the end of the troupe. As to Spenser's theory of the progression of love, the procession only goes from bad to worse. The Vices have a purpose to play as more than mere warnings to our hero, Britomart:

After all these there marcht a most faire Dame,
Led of two grysie villeins, th'one Despight,
The other cleped Cruelty by name:
She dolefull Lady, like a dreary Spright,
Cald by strong charmes out of eternall night,
Had deathes owne image figurd in her face,
Full of sad signes, fearefull to liuing sight; (Book III, Canto XII, Stanza 19)

The Vices also act as captors, glorified prison guards. For, being led behind their garish band, is none other than the figure of Love herself. Spenser chooses to display Love as a woman in captive, bound and bleeding, with a look of death on her features. This is a stark contrast to how Love is normally depicted: happy, vibrant, youthful, and free. One might think that Spenser is sharing a belief that falling captive to Love is falling captive to all that imprisons her, as well. Shortly after, in Stanza 21, we find that Love is not even in control of her own heart as Spenser writes, "…her trembling hart/Was drawne forth, and in siluer basin layd,/Quite through transfixed with a deadly dart," (Book III, Canto XI). Love's heart has been cut from her chest and placed in a bowl for all spectators to behold. We aren't kept long to find out who the villain is that would cut the heart out of Love herself:

Next after her the winged God himselfe
Came riding on a Lion rauenous,
Taught to obay the menage of that Elfe,
That man and beast with powre imperious
Subdeweth to his kingdome tyrannous:
His blindfold eyes he bad a while vnbind,
That his proud spoyle of that same dolorous
Faire Dame he might behold in perfect kind;
Which seene, he much reioyced in his cruell mind. (Book III, Canto XI, Stanza 22)

Spenser chooses to show Cupid as the only one who seems to be able to bind and control Love. The "winged God" delights in his prisoner, looking at her suffering and finding happiness in it. In the days when the Greek and Roman gods were still worshipped in high degree, the world was believed to have been subject to the whims of these deities, whims which were considered illogical and unable to be understood by mere mortals. Perhaps in using Cupid as Love's jailor, Spenser is trying to define Love as something that people cannot control, cannot even contemplate fully. He also shows Love's brevity as, moments after Britomart sees this masque and all that are involved in it, they all disappear back from the room they came. Cupid and his minions are gone within seconds, as maybe Spenser believes Love can be there and gone before one can even think it.
Spenser used different dimensions in his ekphrasis for the House of Busirane to contrast the violence and graphic emotions of each. The first, being in the form of tapestries hanging on a wall, possibly invoked more of a mental reaction. Britomart, and the reader along with her, saw the scenes of gods and humans intermingling, and it began a thought process of what might happen after what is shown in the picture. Zeus rapes Leda…and then what? There is only so much a mere picture can do to illustrate Spenser's feelings on the danger of love. Therefore, he brings forward something one could touch, something one could possibly be touched back by: the masque of Cupid. The Lord of Love himself brings forward the sensations that accompany Love or Lust or any combination of the two. This masque may have been designed to produce a more physical reaction. Desire and Fury and Fear are all moving before Britomart; it makes their effect that much more visceral to the viewer. When Spenser made the vices of Love physical, he made them into the primitive, animalistic tendencies that he believed they were. Creating an idea and writing it in human form gave more power to his message, and the reader is left sharing Britomart's struggle to persevere.



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