Elizabethan English Poetry
Edmund Spenser: The Faerie Qveene
16th century, Elizabethan English. Numerous printed copies.
She asked if, when the life of her eldest son was taken, his soul might be allowed to pass into the second of the brothers, and so with the second into the third.
‘It’s a fascinating idea, but it makes no sense the way Edmund Spenser has it,’ said Miranda.
‘Why is that?’ asked Quintin.
‘Well, it doesn’t sound, at the end of the story, like the way it was intended at the beginning. When one of the brothers dies and his soul flies out of his body and straight into that of another brother who is himself about to die. It doesn’t seem like the way it was intended! And what happened to the soul that the other one already had? Look. The three brothers Priamond, Diamiond and Triamond were born of the same mother on the same day and are said to possess one soul between them. Their mother was a Fay who frequented forests and conceived them by a knight. She brought them up in seclusion and when their warlike nature, inherited from their father, asserted itself, she went to the three Fates, Clotho, Atropos and Lachesis to learn her sons’ destiny.
‘One of the Fates grasped the rock that held chaos at bay, another pulled a thread from it and the third snipped the thread into lengths, each denoting the length of a man’s life. Being shown the thread of each of her sons and seeing them all so short, all so short, that is, and being told that fate could not be reversed, she asked if, when the life of the eldest was taken, his soul might be allowed to pass into the second of the brothers, and so with the second into the third. She asked the Fates: Then since (quoth she) the terme of each mans life for nought may lessened nor enlarged be, graunt this, that when ye shred with fatall knife his line which is the eldest of the three, which is of them the shortest, as I see, eftsoones his life may passe into the next; and when the next shall likewise ended bee, that both their liues [lives] may likewise be annext vnto the third, that his may be so trebly wext [enlarged].
‘She asked this for her three sons, who were all born on the same day; and the fates allowed this. And then she returned to the surface of the Earth.
‘If the brothers are supposed to have one soul between them, doesn't it make better sense if the three threads are laid end to end? So that when one life comes to the end of its thread, it begins again at the start of the next,’ said Miranda. 'Not just fly out of one body into the body of the next brother who is about to die anyway!'
