The Cantos of Mutability: Spenser’s Last Testament of Faith

THE CANTOS OF MUTABILITY: SPENSER'S LAST TESTAMENT OF FAITH JUDAH L. STAMPFER THE Cantos of Mutability have presented a problem to critics since they were appended to the 1609 edition of the Faerie Queene as a fragment entitled "Two Cantos of Mutability: Which, both for Forme and Matter, appeare to be parcell of some following Booke of the Faerie Queene, under the legend of Constancie. Never before imprinted ." We do not know how the material came into the hands of Matthew Lownes, the publisher, nor do we know when the Cantos were written or how they were intended by Spenser to be related to the Faerie Queene. In this paper I shall argue that the Cantos were written during the few weeks of Spenser's last visit to England, between the fall of 1598 and January 13, 1599, when he passed away in Westminster,' and that they were intended as a brief philosophical poem to complete his otherwise fragmentary epic, the Faerie Queene. I So fundamental are the differences between the Cantos and the Faerie Queene that some critics' have denied that they were intended as a part of the epic at all. While the weight of critical opinion has been against this position, any proposed account of the Cantos must consider the cogency of its objections, including the wide variance between the content of the Cantos and that of the Faerie Queene. However fragmentary the Cantos may be in relation to a complete "legend of Constancie" of which the publisher supposes them to form a part, in themselves they are a complete, polished, and exquisite poem. Beginning with the description of Mutability, Spenser discusses her origin, her ambition for dominion, her first assault on Cynthia, and her forcible entry into the court of Jove. After a brief and delightful digression on the legend of Molanna and Faunus, the following canto describes the trial before Dame Nature and the judgment of Nature. The two stanzas of Canto viii, which have been taken by critics to be Spenser's customary introduction to another canto, might equally plausibly be an envoi to the complete poem of Mutability as we have it. 1The latest possible date for his arrival in England is before December 24, when he delivered letters to Whitehall, while the date of his death is established exactly by a contemporary reference. "Spencer, OUf principal poet, coming lately out of Ireland, died at Westminster on Saturday last." Ths Letters of John Chamberlain , I. 64-5, quoted in A. C. Judson, The Life of Edmund Spenser (Baltimore, 1945 ), 201. . 2S. Evans, "A Lost Poem by Edmund Spenscr,1I Macmillan's Magazine, XLII, 1880, 145·51. 140 Vol. XXI, no. 2, Jan'J 1952 THE CANTOS OF MUTABILITY 141 In order to appreciate its unique quality, one must sharply distinguish this complete and well-rounded poem on Mutability both from the narrative stream of the Faerie Queene and from the occasional mythological digressions. The latter, whether involving static descriptions , as in the Garden of Adonis (Bk. III, Canto vi), or pageantry and movement, as in the wedding of the Medway and the Thames (Bk. IV, Canto xi), never entail plot or dramatic action. The Cantos, on the other hand, have dramatic conflict at their very centre. Furthermore , when Spenser introduces these tapestry-like interpolations, he invariably limits them in certain characteristic ways. He never permits them to overflow from one canto to the next; neither does he introduce any of these passages without having one of the agents of the narrative present so as to bind it into the plot. Thus Scudamour enters and views the Temple of Venus (Bk. IV, Canto x) ; the Red Cross Knight is healed of his spiritual wounds in the House of Holiness (Bk. I, Canto x) ; Sir Guyon reads the chronicle of the English kings (Bk. II, Canto x) ; and Marinell is present at the wedding of the Medway and the Thames (Bk. IV, Canto xi). In the Cantos of Mutability the limitation to one canto is ignored, as the poem overflows two cantos; and there is not introduced a single human agent from the longer narrative to bind the Cantos to the book as a...