Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/692

684 which a good wife cannot but experience on witnessing the scorn, disdain, and enmity which follow the perversity of a wayward husband. Such, at least, we understand to be the meaning of those allegorical passages in which, as a punishment for her cruelty and pride, she is committed by the legal decree of Cupid to the custody and conduct of Scorn and Disdain. We meet with her for the first time as:

Again she is:

These companions treat her with great contempt and cruelty; the Carle abuses her:

All this, of course, is to be understood allegorically. The Carle and Fool—the former named Disdain, the latter Scorn—are doubtless (as in the case of Holofernes and Armado) the double representatives of the same person. By the ass on which she rides is signified, we suppose, the ridiculous position to which marriage has reduced her haughty beauty; the taunts and scourges are, metaphorically, the wounds of injured self-respect.

The Carle himself is extravagantly and most "Resolutely" painted as a monster in nature,—stern, terrible, fearing no living wight,—his looks dreadful,—his eyes fiery, and rolling from left to right in search of "foeman worthy of his steel"; he strides with the stateliness of a crane, and, at every step, rises on tiptoe; his dress and aspect resemble those of the Moors of Malabar, and remind us forcibly of the swarthy Menalcas. Indeed, if we compare this serio-comic exaggeration of the Carle with the purely comic picture of Don Armado given by Holofernes, we shall see at a glance that both depict the same object of ridicule.

That Mirabella is linked in wedlock to this angry Fool is nowhere more clearly depicted than in the passage where Prince Arthur, having come to her rescue, is preparing to put her tormentor to death, until his sword is arrested by the shrieks and entreaties of the unhappy lady that his life may be spared for her sake:—

This is the language of a virtuous wife, whom neither the absurdities of a vainglorious husband, nor "the whips and scorns of the time," to which his conduct necessarily exposes her, can detach from her duties and affections.

Assuming, then, that the circumstances of this allegory identify Mirabella with Rosalinde, and Rosalinde with Rose Daniel, and, in like manner, the Fool and Carle with Menalcas and John Florio, have we not here a thrice-told tale, agreeing so completely in all essential particulars as to leave no room for doubt of its original application to the early love-adventures in which the poet was disappointed? And these points settled, though intrinsically of trivial value, become of the highest interest, as strong corroboration of the personal import of all the allegorical characters introduced into the works of Spenser. Thus, in the "Shepherd's Calendar," the confidant of the lover is Hobbinoll, or Gabriel Harvey; and in the "Faëry Queen," the adventurers who come to Mirabella's relief are Prince Arthur, Sir Timias, and Serena,