ABSTRACT
The first instalment of The Faerie Queene is thus retrospectively parallelled with the Ars amaris, ostensible cause of Ovid's exile. However, just as Ovid's exile poetry repeatedly mentions two causes for his punishment, a mysterious error which he cannot publicly describe as well as the carmen ('song') of the Ars, so Spenser's contemporary audience, recognizing Lord Burghley in the 'rugged forhead', might well have been reminded of Burghley's more tangible reason for enmity toward Spenser, in the 'looser rimes' of his satirical Mother Hubberds Tale, the recall of which was probably due to its thinly veiled attacks on Burghley and his son Robert Ceci1.2 As Ovid implies of Augustus in the exile poetry, the rugged forhead ' s stand against amatory poetry conceals the suppression of political opposition. In any case, Spenser makes it clear that his intentions in the present work are political, recapitulating his formulation, in the 1595 poems, of Ovidian amatory doctrine as serious instruction on the ordering of society. Spenser's epic is a 'lesson' of 'loue' (Pr.5.9), an Ars amaris, with particular political application, an indictment of the 'frosen heart' of such self-seeking and unjust governors as
Burghley (according to the depiction in Mother Hubberds Tale), and counsel to Elizabeth to rule with 'bountie' and 'loue' (4.3-4) rather than with 'imperious feare' and 'awfull Maiestie' (5.3-4). The image through which he envisions this effect on Elizabeth is likewise drawn from Ovid's exile poetry. In Ex ponto III.iii, Ovid begs Amor to intercede for him with Augustus, and the god promises that Caesar's anger mitescet ('will grow milder') and a mollior hora (,softer hour,' 8384) will come for Ovid's prayers. Spenser appeals to the same god to intercede with and 'soften' (5.8) his Queen.
