frequently setting them as guides at the beginning of the cantos.

2. _The Allegory. Lack of Unity_. So complex and vast a plan could
scarcely have been worked out by any human genius in a perfect and clear
unity, and besides this, Spenser, with all his high endowments, was
decidedly weak in constructive skill. The allegory, at the outset, even in
Spenser's own statement, is confused and hazy. For beyond the primary moral
interpretation, Spenser applies it in various secondary or parallel ways.
In the widest sense, the entire struggle between the good and evil
characters is to be taken as figuring forth the warfare both in the
individual soul and in the world at large between Righteousness and Sin;
and in somewhat narrower senses, between Protestantism and Catholicism, and
between England and Spain. In some places, also, it represents other events
and aspects of European politics. Many of the single persons of the story,
entering into each of these overlapping interpretations, bear double or
triple roles. Gloriana, the Fairy Queen, is abstractly Glory, but humanly
she is Queen Elizabeth; and from other points of view Elizabeth is
identified with several of the lesser heroines. So likewise the witch
Duessa is both Papal Falsehood and Mary Queen of Scots; Prince Arthur both
Magnificence and (with sorry inappropriateness) the Earl of Leicester; and
others of the characters stand with more or less consistency for such
actual persons as Philip II of Spain, Henry IV of France, and Spenser's
chief, Lord Grey. In fact, in Renaissance spirit, and following Sidney's
'Defense of Poesie,' Spenser attempts to harmonize history, philosophy,
ethics, and politics, subordinating them all to the art of poetry. The plan
is grand but impracticable, and except for the original moral
interpretation, to which in the earlier books the incidents are skilfully
adapted, it is fruitless as one reads to undertake to follow the
allegories. Many readers are able, no doubt, merely to disregard them, but
there are others, like Lowell, to whom the moral, 'when they come suddenly