For Queene and Country: The Middle-Road Adventures of the Temperate Knight

The Myth: Gloriana, the Faerie Queene! Mythic England! Magic queens! Knights! Ladies! Witches! Sorcerers! Giants! Lions! Dragons! More allegory than you could possibly imagine!
The Book: The Faerie Queene
The Author: Edmund Spenser, 1590
This text: Unclear: probably the etext of the 1903 edition, edited by George Armstrong Wauchope, but without any footnotes or editorial matter.
Price: 81 cents (Everyman Library)

Previously: The holy knight.

I confess to struggling with The Faerie Queene. Some of it is the archaic spelling and stilted meter, but mostly it's that the Elizabethan virtues are championed with such thin and transparent allegories and with such a smug manner that you really want to go out and be intemperate out of spite. 

The Legend of Sir Guyon
So anyway, Sir Guyon is Gloriana's Knight of Temperance: level-headed, virtuous and dull. He is accompanied by a Palmer, who is wise, aged and unmounted. Guyon's first adventure sees him come across Archimago and Duessa, fresh from their defeat and humiliation by the Redcrosse Knight in the earlier chapter. Duessa claims to have been outraged at the hands of a nameless knight, and demands Guyon avenge her. This quest lasts as long as it takes Guyon to learn that Redcrosse is the knight in question. Redcrosse is the Knight of Holiness; he couldn't possibly rape anyone. Quest resolved, Elizabethan justice demonstrated, on we go.

The second quest takes a bit more effort. Guyon comes across a woman bleeding dying in the woods, with a baby in her arms. The lady, Amavia, is in the process of killing herself. Her husband, Sir Mortdant, was seduced by the sorceress Acrasia, and taken to her Bower of Bliss. Amavia set off to rescue him, pausing only to give birth with the help of a local nymph. Acrasia let Mortdant go, but lay a curse on him: he would die as soon as he took a drink. That happened pretty quickly, and at that point Amavia decided to kill herself. She was almost finished when Guyon came along, and having croaked out her story, she dies.

Guyon buries the bodies, cleans the baby and vows to avenge their death. He abandons his horse to take the baby to a nearby castle, where he meets his female equivalent, Medina the Mean (in the sense of Golden). He also meets her sisters, Elissa the Austere and Pelissa the Wanton, and fights with their champions, Sir Huddibras the Big and Stupid and Sir Sansloy the Lawless, one of the Saracen brothers from the previous chapter. The fight threatens to destroy the castle, but Medina pleads for calm and, eventually, temperance reigns and everyone calms down. Guyon stays the night, commends the infant to Medina's care and then leaves the castle on his quest.

His quest involves any number of encounters:

• The knave Braggadacio who steals his horse and styles himself a knight, and is engaged by Archimago to attack Guyon.
• The monster Furor and his mother Occasion, who set upon pretty much everyone with extreme violence.
• The giant brothers Pyrochles and Cymochles, descendants of Jove and thralls to Acrasia.
• The demon Mammon, who tempts Guyon with a lot of rather unappealing wealth.
• Prince Arthur, hero of the realm, who is looking for his magic sword that was stolen by Archimago, given to Braggadacio and then to Pyrrochles.
• The Castle of Temperance, where Arthur and Guyon learn the mythic history of their peoples, British and Faerie respectively, and which they defend from the allegorical forces of Things That Are Not Temperate.
• Alma, the mistress of the Castle of Temperance.
• The demon Maleger, leader of the forces of Intemperance.

Guyon wins through all of this by sheer equanimity,  and hits the high seas, which are full of dangerous allegories,. He sees it through and makes it to the island which holds the Bower of Bliss, and it's only a few more allegories before Guyon is able to confront Acrasia in her bed (along with some random nobleman). Acrasia, of course, tries on the old wiles, but it's not very convincing. Guyon goes berserk, smashing the bed, chopping down the trees, burning the houses, and generally letting loose in a way that only the really uptight can manage.

So, with the sorceress' house smashed all to pieces and her household turned out, Guyon and the Palmer ride off into the sunset with the satisfaction of a quest well done.

--

It's harder to imagine a duller hero than Guyon, who is perfectly poised and balanced and thoughtful and careful. The end of his quest involves turfing a woman out of her own bed and smashing her place up, and this is the most passion he's shown in the whole piece.

I'm in two minds about continuing with the Faerie Queene. My completeness urge wants me to press forward, but I've found the whole thing pretty dire so far and I don't hold much hope for improvement. The next chapter concerns Britomarte, Champion of Chastity, and I'm not sure I can stomach that much Elizabethan virtue.