ABSTRACT
In Arthur Marotti's view, the political antiromance of Astrophil and Stella cannot be overt, but has to be coded in the sense of being actually encrypted for the eyes of a courtly/coterie audience alone. The author begins by acknowledging a certain initial suspicion of historicism on account of what seemed to be its allegorical character, a suspicion capable of being repaid at compound interest as a countersuspicion of invidiousness. The political discourse of the sonnets is masked from the world and can be understood only in the settings in which the sonnets were produced. For one thing, Marotti has suggested that radical endogamy is the real story of the aristocracy, whose loyalty to and affection for kin surpasses any national, centralizing, or counter-dynastic interest. Spenser had come under suspicion or remained under consideration in a hermeneutic of suspicion, the need to pursue other leads was dictated by the developing contingencies of the profession.
