Portions Copyright (C) 2004 by Jonathan Barnes A NOTE ON THIS EDITION This is an electronic edition of Volume One of Edmund Spenser's _Faerie Queene_. You are encouraged to use and copy it. The edition includes the following elements: - an entirely new composite text, based on the edition of 1596 (the "Original Text") - details of departures, or proposed departures, from the copy text (the "Textual Appendix") - a modernized version of the Original Text (the "Shadow Text") - definitions of difficult words and phrases in the Shadow Text (the "Glossary"). The Original Text was not scanned, but typed, and proofed against the Scolar Press facsimile (see Bibliography). Editing took place between November 1989 and July 1992, using EMACS. Edition 10 (faeri10.txt) was prepared especially for Project Gutenberg in February 2003. Thus edition (August 2004) corrects a few errors in the convention for italic type. A few definitions appearing in the wrong place have also been fixed, as have anomalous top-bit set characters in the Hales Biography, which has been reformatted to make it easier to read. The edition is best viewed with a monospaced font. Plain ASCII text is used throughout. Accented, etc., characters are indicated by symbols contained in curly brackets, e.g.: {e/} = lower-case e + acute accent (pointing up to right) {e\} = lower-case e + grave accent (pointing up to left) {o^} = lower-case o + circumflex accent {o"} = lower-case o + diaeresis mark {e~} = lower-case e + tilde {ae} = lower-case ae diphthong {Ae} = ae diphthong with initial capital {AE} = fully capitalized ae diphthong etc. In this way all the characters of the 1596 edition have been shown except the long "s", which has been throughout converted to its modern equivalent. In Roman type, the long "s" most closely resembles a lower-case "f" lacking part of the crossbar. It is used in the copy-text in nearly all places where this edition has an ordinary lower-case "s", except at the ends of words and when preceding the letter "k". Using the oblique character in place of the long "s", then, the first lines of the poem read: Lo I the man, who/e Mu/e whilome did maske, As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds, Am now enfor/t a far vnfitter taske, For trumpets /terne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds ... These rules are on occasion broken, apparently by mistake. The long "s" does nothing to aid comprehension, and indeed causes problems, noted in the Textual Appendix: e.g. confusion between "besit" and "befit". Special characters contained in the list of printers' contractions are noted in the preamble to that list. Regions of text printed, or intended to be shown, in italic type are defined by underscores, thus: the _second_ word is in italics.