ABSTRACT
The ‘Legend of Constancie’ is no more than a fragment; but it forms an important part of our discussion for two reasons: first, because it summarizes in an explicit fashion ideas which have been expressed through image and symbol in earlier books of the poem; and second, because as a fragment the ‘Mutabilitie’ cantos provide, as Lewis suggests, a clue to Spenser’s method of composition, and consequently a valuable indication of Queen Elizabeth’s role in the whole poem. The speech in which titaness defends her claim to universal sovereignty is one of the most eloquent passages in The Faerie Queene. In a poem celebrated for its pageantry this solemn spectacle of time’s ineluctable passage is without comparison. Now constancy is one of the fundamental characteristics of the Pythagorean cosmos: though the four elements of which all things are framed are in a state of endless flux, continually dissolving one into another, the end result is a state of perfect equilibrium.
