Summary
As a last effort to cure Britomart of her lovesickness,
Glauce the nurse brings her to Merlin, the maker of the
magic mirror. They hope he can tell them the name of the
man Britomart saw in the mirror. Merlin agrees to their
request: Not only does he reveal the name of Britomart's
love, but he shows her the future of her line. The man in
the mirror was a knight named Arthegall, the wizard says,
who is related to King Arthur. The sons of Britomart
and Arthegall will rule the Britons, and fight against the
Saxons. After a time, the "wicked" Saxons will be
victorious and the noble race of Britons will go into
hiding. For 800 years, that race will be ruled
wickedly in
their own land, by the Saxons, the Danes, and then the
Normans. Finally, a king will rise from the Britons to
reclaim the throne--but here Merlin ends his predictions.
Britomart is greatly encouraged to know that fate will
smile so kindly on her love; she now is eager to find
Arthegall. She determines to take up arms and dress like a
knight, to enable herself to search for her love, who was
lately in Faerie Land fighting alongside Arthur, as Merlin
told her. There, she meets Redcrosse and (as we have
seen) presses him for news of Arthegall.
Britomart, in fact, is a talented fighter; she is greater
than all the female warriors that have been praised in
history. And yet she is weakened by the good report that
Redcrosse gives her of Arthegall; hearing praise of her
loved one only deepens love's wound in her heart. Leaving
Redcrosse to his own journey, she goes to the seacoast and
pines for the man she cannot find. Suddenly, she sees a
knight galloping toward her with his spear advanced; she
takes up her own sacred spear and, charging, pierces his
side and throws him to the ground. Feeling no pity, she
continues onward, but Marinell (the strange knight) is
wounded almost to death. His mother, a sea-nymph, hears of
his dire condition and comes out of the sea to tend to him.
They fear that he is beyond help; but still, they bind up
his wound and bear him to the sea god Tryphon, who is
skilled in healing.
Ignorant of all this, Britomart continues her journey; and
Guyon and Arthur continue theirs, looking for the fair
damsel Florimell, whom they saw fleeing a lusty shepherd.
They come to a crossways and split up; Arthur's squire
Timias also goes off his own way. It happens that Arthur
chose rightly, for soon he sees the damsel, but she rides
too quickly for him, and by night he has lost sight of her.
He is distraught because he suspects that the damsel may
be the Faerie Queene for whom he has been searching. Continuing
in the morning, he meets a dwarf, who is chasing after the
same girl. They continue the hunt together.
Meanwhile, the squire Timias' path takes him after the
lusty man who had been chasing Florimell. The villain runs
ahead and gathers two friends to help lay a trap for the
squire near a river that the lad must cross. When Timias'
horse is in the river, they jump out and throw their spears
at him; he is wounded
in the thigh but still manages to cross the river. Once
out, Timias gets his revenge, killing all three of them,
but his wound has left him weakened, and he collapses on
the riverbank. Luckily, a "noble hunteress" named
Belphoebe comes upon the unconscious Timias (III.v.27).
Filled with pity, she binds his wound, thus, saving his
life, and she takes him back to her dwelling. When he
recovers, however, the squire has a new wound: He has been
struck by love. Unfortunately for him, Belphoebe is the
model of "stedfast chastity" and has no desire to love a
man; thus, Timias is left to the pangs of his lovesick heart
(III.v.35).
Commentary
Merlin's discourse on the history of the Britons takes up
nearly all of Canto iii, certainly more than was required
to convince Britomart that she should go after Arthegall.
This is because its larger purpose is not to contribute to
the poem's plot, nor even to the allegory. Spenser
includes the long history to
establish a direct connection between characters in The
Faerie Queen--especially Arthur--and his sovereign,
Queen Elizabeth. As much as the poet praises the Queen on
her own merits, he also seeks to increase her stature and
her place in history, by connecting her, in an unbroken
chain, to the legendary heroes of Britain. Not only is she
related to the great Arthur, but to the legendary founder
of the Britons, Brute, and through him to the Trojans (this
link will be brought up in detail in a later canto). This
device of establishing ancestry has its roots in the New
Testament--the Gospel of Matthew begins by tracing the
line of Abraham through David to Christ. More applicable
for Spenser is Virgil's connection in the Aeneid
between Aeneas and Caesar Augustus--it is a secondary
purpose of the poem to make that link, just as the
justification of Elizabeth's rule is for The Faerie
Queene. Of course, not all of Spenser's history can be
proven; the earlier dates (pre-800) and people involve much
speculation. Spenser's most important source is Geoffrey of
Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, from
which the legend of King Arthur first arose. Monmouth
invented much of this "history", and so Spenser's
interpretation may at certain points be a few levels
removed from the truth. However, the important thing is
that no one could disprove most of his history, and
so by incorporating it into The
Faerie Queene, Spenser helped to make it a more
authoritative version. It was simpler, anyway, to view the
history of British rule by the Britons as a single chain.
With the plot of the poem, however, Spenser moves farther
and farther away from an unbroken chain in these cantos.
The story of Britomart is supposed to form the central plot
of the Book, and yet we see the subplots--like the pursuit
of Florimell--taking over the story, even if they have
little to do with Britomart. Spenser picks up and drops
different plot lines almost indiscriminately--for example,
we hear an extensive background of Marinell, but after he
is wounded, he disappears and does not reenter the poem
until a different book. If there is a flaw in Spenser's
ability to create a complex world that draws on many
sources, it is the confusion that sometimes confronts the
reader at keeping track of all the characters and
plotlines. We note that the poet himself became a bit
confused--when he had the dwarf claim that Florimell left
home after Marinell's death, he forgets that she was
already seen on the run two cantos ago.
What these numerous subplots do add to the poem is an
extension of its allegory, an extension best achieved by
adding new characters. In Florimell, we have a woman who
desires chastity but not in the same way as Britomart.
She is not so much active as she is acted upon, as the
object of men's desire. She is Beauty, the kind of beauty
that will always inflame lust in men; since this is not
balanced with active, forceful chastity (Britomart),
Florimell becomes a much-abused character. Belphoebe has a
better lot, and yet she, too, is lacking something when
compared to Britomart. Belphoebe is chaste, and actively
so, but she is static in her chastity. She is the limit of
what chastity can be without leading to Christian love,
which is why she is out in nature, unadorned, like the
satyrs. It is the transition toward love within chastity
that Spenser admires in Britomart.
