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Updated: June 28, 2025
The Red Cross of his Knight, "the dear remembrance of his dying Lord," was in those days the flag of England, and is still the Red Cross of our Union Jack. And besides the allegory the poem has something of history in it. The great people of Spenser's day play their parts there. Thus Duessa, sad to say, is meant to be the fair, unhappy Queen of Scots, the wicked magician is the Pope, and so on.
I can see the pitying look in Molly's eyes as she watched me; I can see it now. And I could beat myself for being such a blind fool as to What must she think of me? how she must despise me, choosing the false Duessa. 'Come, come! Cynthia isn't so bad as that. She's a very fascinating, faulty creature. 'I know! I know! I will never allow any one to say a word against her.
But so mighty was it that the wind of it threw him to the ground, where he lay senseless. And ere he woke out of his swoon the Giant took him up, and "Him to his castle brought with hasty force And in a dungeon deep him threw without remorse." Duessa then became the Giant's lady. "He gave her gold and purple pall to wear," and set a triple crown upon her head.
All that passionate, chivalrous devotion, which in Sidney, Spenser, and many more attached itself to then-great Gloriana, had in these young men, all either secretly or openly reconciled to Rome, found its object in that rival in whom Edmund Spenser only beheld his false Duessa or snowy Florimel. And, indeed, romance had in her a congenial heroine, who needed little self-blinding so to appear.
The brilliance that flowed from it burnt into the eyes of the giant, so that he was 'blinded by excess of light, and sank sightless on the ground. At a fresh cry from Duessa he struggled to his feet, but all in vain. He had no power to hurt nor to defend, and fell back so heavily that the very earth shook beneath him, and was an easy prey for his foe, who smote his head from his body.
Moreover, apart from argument, he clung as a point of honour to the Church as to the wife that he had accepted in his childhood; and often tried to recall the sketch that Philip Sidney had once given him of a tale that a friend of his designed to turn into a poem, like Ariosto's, in terza rima, of a Red Cross knight separated from his Una as the true faith, and tempted by a treacherous Duessa, who impersonated at once Falsehood and Rome.
On such an occasion Magdalen, being a regular attendant, and connected with the bridesmaids, was marshalled by a churchwarden into a reserved seat; but there they were dismayed by the voices and the scrambling behind them, which, in the long waiting, the Vicar from the vestry vainly tried to subdue by severe looks; and Felicia, whose notions of wedding behaviour were moulded on Vale Lecton and Beechcroft, looked as if she thought she had got into the house of Duessa, amid all Pride's procession, as in the prints in the large- volumed "Faerie Queene."
Duessa, as we know, never stayed with those with whom the world went ill, and she was stealing away quietly, when once more the squire stopped her. 'You are captive to my lord, he said, and, holding her firmly, led her back. Then Una came running full of grateful words, but when she saw Duessa a cloud of fierce wrath passed over her face.
When the false Duessa discovered that the Red Cross Knight had fled, she followed him and found him resting beside a fountain. Not knowing that the water was enchanted, he drank of it, and at once all his manly strength ebbed away, and he became faint and feeble. Then, when he was too weak to hold a sword or spear, he saw a fearful sight:
Arthur, who always appears to rescue the oppressed, is Leicester, which is another outrageous flattery. Una is sometimes religion and sometimes the Protestant Church; while Duessa represents Mary Queen of Scots, or general Catholicism. POETICAL FORM. For the Faery Queen Spenser invented a new verse form, which has been called since his day the Spenserian stanza.
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