Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — Plato — John Shaqi
Platonism in English poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
Plato · en
With this vision of the resplendent beauty of chastity begins Arthegal’s
love for Britomart. It has been pointed out by critics that the love
episode between Britomart and Arthegal was a suggestion—so far as plot
goes—which Spenser found in Ariosto’s account of the love of Ruggiero
and Bradamante in the “Orlando Furioso.”[1] But the great difference in
the poets appears in the contrast of the passionate love of beauty
revealed in Spenser’s poem with the superficial delights of love as
explained in Ariosto. As has already been seen, Platonism as a system of
ethics disappears from the “Faerie Queene” after the second book; but so
deeply had Spenser been impressed with the worship of beauty
characteristic of Plato’s manner, that when he came to recount the
history of the passion of love, in his Knight of Justice, for his
heroine, Chastity, he centred attention upon the feeling of awe and
reverence inspired by the beauty of chastity, and intimated the sobering
effect of this vision upon the behavior of the lover. He found nothing
like this in the “Orlando Furioso.” The love episode in Ariosto is thus
briefly described:
“Rogero looks on Bradamant, and she
Looks on Rogero in profound surprise
That for so many days that witchery
Had so obscured her altered mind and eyes.
Rejoiced, Rogero clasps his lady free,
Crimsoning with deeper than the rose’s dyes,
And his fair love’s first blossoms, while he clips
The gentle damsel, gathers from her lips.
“A thousand times they their embrace renew,
And closely each is by the other prest;
While so delightful are these lovers two,
Their joys are ill contained within their breast.”
(xxii. 32, 33.)
Here is only the note of delight. In Spenser, however, the dread awe
aroused by Britomart’s beauty restrains the passionate utterance of the
lover, and only after some time has elapsed, during which the two have
rested from the fatigues of their combat, does Arthegal dare to make
suit to Britomart’s affections,—
“Yet durst he not make love so suddenly,
Ne thinke th’ affection of her hart to draw
From one to other so quite contrary.”
(IV. vi. 33.)