The Limitations of Concord in the Thames-Medway Marriage Canto of The Faerie Queene

In canto 11 of book 4 of The Faerie Queene—the “Legend . . . of Friendship”—Edmund Spenser pauses the action for forty-six stanzas to describe the procession of sea gods and personified rivers at the wedding of the Thames and the Medway, two important rivers in Elizabethan England. The charming conceit of using the metaphor of “marriage” to describe the geographical fact of two rivers joining together to form a new river provides Spenser with the opportunity to exhibit his poetic virtuosity, leading many critics to interpret the episode as Spenser’s endorsement of “concord” as the natural world’s counterpart to the human virtue of friendship celebrated in book 4.¹ Nevertheless, intrusions of human vice into this representation of the natural world undermine the charm of the scene: the characterization of the Medway as a proud woman who had long declined the proposals of the handsome and worthy Thames suggests a lack of love, and the many violent and contentious stories and myths that Spenser includes in his river descriptions imply the opposite of friendship. Rather than see these examples of vice as contrasting with the concord depicted in the canto, I argue that they represent an essential aspect of concord, which for Spenser refers not to peace but to a state in which opposing parties agree not to act on their animosity.

Scholars have generally read the river-marriage canto as an allegorical idealization of concord and have then made the assumption that Spenser intends to present concord as a virtue similar or equal to the titular virtue of the book, friendship. Although Spenser does create an image of concord in the Thames-Medway wedding procession, the clear distinction between Concord and Friendship established by their personifications in the Temple of Venus episode (4.10.31–36) suggests the danger of conflating these two concepts.² Instead of interpreting this canto as an exemplar of friendship, the virtue celebrated in book 4 as a whole, I see the river-marriage canto as functioning similarly to Briton moniments, the English history book that Arthur reads in book 2, canto 10, of The Faerie Queene: both serve as examples of poetry’s ability to educate a reader in virtue even when it provides examples of vice, such as stories of intemperance and discord.

By approaching the Thames-Medway marriage procession with attention to these two reference points—the emblem of Concord in the Temple of Venus and Briton moniments—we can see the importance of drawing a distinction between the book’s titular virtue, friendship (and love, which appears to be Spenser’s version of the virtue between men and women), and concord. Whereas rituals such as Concord’s bringing together of Loue and Hate and the Thames-Medway wedding procession can create a state of concord, true friendship (allegorically the child of Concord in the Temple of Venus) requires virtue. The virtue can appear in a sudden stroke, as when Cambina creates true friendship between Cambell and Triamond, or through the kind of suffering that both Florimell and Marinell endure. Friendship and love thus differ fundamentally from concord, and Spenser allegorically represents the differences by associating the concord of the Thames-Medway procession with a series of negative images that distance the concept from more positive images associated with friendship and love. In making these distinctions, he parallels his practice in Briton moniments by creating an orderly expository structure that provides a soothing poetic frame for the violence and vice illustrated in the tales themselves. Whereas the historical vignettes featured in Briton moniments expose the dangers of intemperance, the river stories and myths included in the river marriage canto highlight the violence of competition and the inability of concord to effect true peace and friendship.

The Critical Context: Previous Readings of the Thames-Medway Wedding

Because of the allegorical complexity and poetic virtuosity of the river-marriage canto, C. S. Lewis argued in 1936 that Spenser intends the episode to represent book 4’s “allegorical core,” that is, a celebratory set piece in a book...