ABSTRACT
Seen first in FQ II, Belphoebe is both radically idealized and complexly full of human promise; if she is also full of unresolved tensions between mythic and mortal realities, she is the richer and more nearly perfect or complete for their presence. When she reappears in FQ III and IV, she is less credibly mythic and less fully ideal, compromised by her involvement with humanity and historical reality. In this subsequent diminution, it is possible to see the poet’s growing disappointment-even his disillusionment-with the English Queen.
