ABSTRACT
Spenser follows tradition in frequently associating apples with temptation and love. They are tempting pastoral delicacies: Colin Clout, the witch’s son who dotes on Florimell, and Faunus all offer varieties of them as gifts or bribes (SC, June 43-4; FQ III vii 17, VII vi 43). Their proverbially beautiful color and shape figure in several descriptions of feminine beauty which are ultimately indebted to the Song of Solomon. In Epithalamion, for example, the bride’s cheeks are like red apples (173). Belphoebe’s breasts swell beneath her thin garment like ‘young fruit in May’ (presumably apples yet to mature) (FQ II iii 29; cf Amoret-ti 76). In Amoretti 77, the beloved’s breasts are described emblematically rather than realistically as ‘twoo golden apples’; and their ‘price’ is measured by their superiority to apples coveted in classical mythology-those taken by Hercules from the Garden of the Hesperides and those which tempted Atalanta in the race against her suitor (cf FQ II vii 54; from Conti Mythologiae 7.7, according to Lotspeich 1932:69).
