The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858

"Florio," according to Farmer, "gave the first affront by asserting that 'the plays they play in England are neither right comedies nor tragedies, but representations of histories without any decorum.'" We know that Shakspeare must, of his own personal knowledge of the man, have been qualified to paint his character; for while the great dramatist was the early and intimate friend of the Earl of Southampton, the petulant lexicographer boasts of having for years been domesticated in the pay and patronage of that munificent patron of letters. Warburton thinks "it was from the ferocity of his temper, that Shakspeare chose for him the name which Rabelais gives to his pedant of Thubal Holoferne." Were the matter worth arguing, we should say, it was rather from the proclivity with which (according to Camden's rules) the abbreviated Latin name Johnes Florio or Floreo falls into Holofernes. Rabelais and anagrammatism may divide the slender glory of the product between them.

But neither Shakspeare's satire nor Florio's absurdities are comprehended within this single character. Subsequent examination of the text of "Love's Labor's Lost" has enabled the critics to satisfy themselves that the part of Don Adnano de Armado, the "phantastical courtier," was devised to exhibit another phase in the character of the Resolute Italian. In Holofernes we have the pedantic tutor; in Don Adriano a lively picture of a ridiculous lover and pompous retainer of the court.

By a fine dramatic touch, Shakspeare has made each describe the other, in such a way that the portrait might stand for the speaker himself, and thus establishes a dual-identity. Thus, Armado, describing Holofernes, says, "That's all one, my fair, sweet, honey monarch; for I protest the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical,—too, too vain,—too, too vain; but we will put it, as they say, to fortuna della guerra";—whilst Holofernes, not behind his counterpart in self-esteem, sees in the other the defects which he cannot detect in himself. "Novi hominem tanquam te" quoth he;—"his humor is lofty; his discourse peremptory; his tongue filed; his eye ambitious; his gait majestical; and his general behavior vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were; too peregrinate, as I may call it; he draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasms," etc.

Should further proof be needed that Florio, Holofernes, and Armado form a dramatic trinity in unity, we can find it in the personal appearance of the Italian. There was something amiss with the face of the Resolute, which could not escape the observation of his friends, much less his enemies. A friend and former pupil of his own,—Sir Wm. Cornwallis, speaking in high praise of Florio's translation of Montaigne, observes,—"It is done by a fellow less beholding to Nature for his fortune than to wit; yet lesser for his face than his fortune. The truth is, he looks more like a good fellow than a wise man; and yet he is wise beyond either his fortune or education."¹² It is certain, then, that, behaving like a fool in some things, he looked very like a fool in others.

Is it not a remarkable coincidence, that both his supposed dramatic counterparts have the same peculiarity? When Armado tells the 'country lass' he is wooing, that he will 'tell her wonders,' she exclaims,—'skittish female' that she is,—'What, with that face?' And when Holofernes, nettled with the ridicule showered on his abortive impersonation of Judas Maccabaeus, says, 'I will not be put out of countenance,'—Byron replies, 'Because thou hast no face.' The indignant pedant justifies, and, pointing to his physiognomy, inquires, 'What is this?' Whereupon the waggish courtiers proceed to define it: it is 'a cittern-head,' 'the head of a bodkin,' 'a death's-face in a ring,' 'the face of an old Roman coin, scarce seen,' and so forth.

The satire here embodied is of a nature too personal to be considered the mere work of a riotous fancy. It is a trait individualizing and particularising the person at whom the more general satire is aimed; and, coupled with the infirmities of the victim's moral nature, it fastens upon poor Florio identity with "the brace of coxcombs." Such satire may be censured as ungenerous; we cannot help that,—litera scripta manet,—and we cannot rail the seal from the bond. Such attacks were the general, if not universal, practice of the age in which Shakspeare flourished; and we have no right to blame him for not being as far in advance of his age, morally, as he was intellectually. A notorious instance of a personal attack under various characters in one play is to be found in Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," wherein he boasts of having, under the characters of Lanthorn, Leatherhead, the Puppet-showman, and Adam Overdo, satirized the celebrated Inigo Jones,—

 
  "By all his titles and whole style at once
  Of tireman, montebank, and Justice Jones."
 

It was probably to confront and outface "Aristophanes and his comedians," and to "abrogate the scurrility" of the "sea-dogs" and "land-critics," that our Resolute lexicographer prefixed to the Enlarged Edition of his Dictionary and to his translation of Montaigne, his portrait or effigies, engraved by Hole. This portrait would, to a person unapprised of any peculiarity in the original, present apparently little or nothing to justify the remark of Cornwallis. But making due allowance for the address, if not the flattery, of a skilful painter, it were hardly possible for the observer, aware of the blemish, not to detect in the short and close-curled fell of hair, the wild, staring eyes, the contour of the visage,—which, expanding from the narrow and wrinkled forehead into cheek-bones of more than Scottish amplitude, suddenly contracts to a pointed chin, rendered still more acute by a short, peaked beard, —not to detect in this lozenge-shaped visnomy and its air, at once haggard and grotesque, traits that not only bear out the remark of his pupil, but the raillery also of the court wits in Shakespeare's dramatic satire.

Whatever happiness Rose Daniel may have had in the domestic virtues of her lord, his relations with the world, his temper, eccentricities, and personal appearance could have given her little. That he was an attached and affectionate husband his last will and testament gives touching post-mortem evidence.

Let us return to the fortunes of the faithless Rosalinde. It appears she married Menalcas,—the treacherous friend and rival of the "passionate shepherd." Who, then, was Menalcas? or why was this name specially selected by our poet to designate the man he disliked?

The pastoral name Menalcas is obviously and pointedly enough adopted from the Eclogues of Virgil; in which, by comparing the fifteenth line of the second with the sixty-sixth of the third, we shall find he was the rival who (to use the expression of Spenser) "by treachery did underfong" the affections of the beautiful Alexis from his enamored master. In this respect the name would well fit Florio, who, from his intimacy with the Daniels and their friends, could not but have known the passion of the poet, and the encouragement at one time given him by his fickle mistress.

Again, there was at this time prevalent a French conceit,—"imported," as Camden tells us, "from Calais, and so well liked by the English, although most ridiculous, that, learned or unlearned, he was nobody that could not hammer out of his name an invention by this wit-craft, and picture it accordingly. Whereupon," he adds, "who did not busy his braine to hammer his devise out of this forge?"¹³ This wit-craft was the rebus.

Florio's rebus or device, then, was a Flower. We have specimens of his fondness for this nomenclative punning subscribed to his portrait: —

 
  "Floret adhue, et adhue florebit: floreat ultra
    Florius hae specie floridus,—optat amans."
 

And it was with evident allusion to this conceit that he named his several works his "First Fruits," "Second Fruits," "Garden of Recreation," and so forth. Spenser did not miss the occasion of reducing this figurative flower to a worthless weed:—

"Go tell the las her flower hath wox a weed."

In the preceding stanza we find this weed distinctly identified as Menalcas:—

 
  "And thou, Menalcas! that by treachery
  Didst underfong my lass to wax so light."
 

Another reason for dubbing Florio Menalcas may be found in the character and qualities ascribed to the treacherous shepherd by Virgil. He was not without talent, for in one of the Eclogues he bears his part in the poetical contention with credit; but he was unfaithful and fraudulent in his amours, envious, quarrelsome, scurrilous, and a braggart; and his face was remarkable for its dark, Italian hue,—"quamvis ille fuscus," etc. Compared with the undoubted character of John Florio, as already exhibited, that of Menalcas so corresponds as to justify its appropriation to the rival of Spenser.

There is a further peculiarity in the name itself, which renders its application to John Florio at once pointed and pregnant with the happiest ridicule. Florio rejoiced in the absurd prefix of Resolute. Now Menalcas is a compound of two Greek words ([Greek: menos] and [Greek: ulkm]) fully expressive of this idea, and frequently used together in the sense of RESOLUTION by the best classical authorities, —thus, "[Greek: menos d'ulkmd te lathpsmat]."¹⁴ Again, in Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon [Greek: menos] in composition is said to "bear always a collateral notion of resolve and firmness." And here we have the very notion expressed by the very word we want. Menalcas is the appropriate and expressive nom de guerre of the "Resolute."

Every unprejudiced reader will admit, that in emblem, name, character; and appearance, John Florio and Menalcas are allegorically identical; and it follows, as a consequence, that Rosalinde, married to the same person as Rose Daniel, is one and the same with her anagrammatic synonyme,—and that her sorrows and joys, arising out of the conduct of her husband, must have had the same conditions.

Having identified Rosalinde with Rose Daniel, it may be thought that nothing further of interest with respect to either party remains, which could lead us into further detail;—but Spenser himself having chosen, under another personification, to follow the married life of this lady, and revenge himself upon the treachery of her husband, we should lose an opportunity both of interpreting his works and of forming a correct estimate of his character, if we neglected to pursue with him the fortunes of Mirabella. Like her type and prototype, we find that she has to suffer those mortifications which a good wife cannot but experience on witnessing the scorn, disdain, and enmity which follow the perversity of a wayward husband. Such, at least, we understand to be the meaning of those allegorical passages in which, as a punishment for her cruelty and pride, she is committed by the legal decree of Cupid to the custody and conduct of Scorn and Disdain. We meet with her for the first time as:

 
     "a fair maiden clad in mourning WEED,
  Upon a mangy JADE unmeetly set,
  And a leud fool her leading thorough dry and wet."
 

Again she is:

 
                           "riding upon an ass
  Led by a carle and fool which by her side did pass."
 

These companions treat her with great contempt and cruelty; the Carle abuses her:

 
  "With all the evil terms and cruel mean
  That he could make; and eke that angry fool,
  Which followed her with cursed hands uncleane
  Whipping her horse, did with his smarting-tool
  Oft whip her dainty self, and much augment her dool."
 

All this, of course, is to be understood allegorically. The Carle and Fool—the former named Disdain, the latter Scorn—are doubtless (as in the case of Holofernes and Armado) the double representatives of the same person. By the ass on which she rides is signified, we suppose, the ridiculous position to which marriage has reduced her haughty beauty; the taunts and scourges are, metaphorically, the wounds of injured self-respect.

The Carle himself is extravagantly and most "Resolutely" painted as a monster in nature,—stern, terrible, fearing no living wight,—his looks dreadful,—his eyes fiery, and rolling from left to right in search of "foeman worthy of his steel"; he strides with the stateliness of a crane, and, at every step, rises on tiptoe; his dress and aspect resemble those of the Moors of Malabar, and remind us forcibly of the swarthy Menalcas. Indeed, if we compare this serio-comic exaggeration of the Carle with the purely comic picture of Don Armado given by Holofernes, we shall see at a glance that both depict the same object of ridicule.

That Mirabella is linked in wedlock to this angry Fool is nowhere more clearly depicted than in the passage where Prince Arthur, having come to her rescue, is preparing to put her tormentor to death, until his sword is arrested by the shrieks and entreaties of the unhappy lady that his life may be spared for her sake:—

 
  "Stay, stay, Sir Knight! for love of God abstain
  From that unwares you weetlesse do intend!
  Slay not that carle, though worthy to be slain;
  For more on him doth than himself depend:
  My life will by his death have lamentable end."
 

This is the language of a virtuous wife, whom neither the absurdities of a vainglorious husband, nor "the whips and scorns of the time," to which his conduct necessarily exposes her, can detach from her duties and affections.

Assuming, then, that the circumstances of this allegory identify Mirabella with Rosalinde, and Rosalinde with Rose Daniel, and, in like manner, the Fool and Carle with Menalcas and John Florio, have we not here a thrice-told tale, agreeing so completely in all essential particulars as to leave no room for doubt of its original application to the early love-adventures in which the poet was disappointed? And these points settled, though intrinsically of trivial value, become of the highest interest, as strong corroboration of the personal import of all the allegorical characters introduced into the works of Spenser. Thus, in the "Shepherd's Calendar," the confidant of the lover is Hobbinoll, or Gabriel Harvey; and in the "Faëry Queen," the adventurers who come to Mirabella's relief are Prince Arthur, Sir Timias, and Serena, the well-known allegorical impersonations of Spenser's special friends, the Earl of Leicester, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Elizabeth Throckmorton, to whom Sir Walter was married. Are not these considerations, added to the several circumstances and coincidences already detailed, conclusive of the personal and domestic nature of the history conveyed in both the poetical vehicles? And do they not amount to a moral demonstration, that, in assigning the character and adventures of Mirabella and Rosalinde to the sister of Samuel Daniel, the wife of John Florio, we have given no unfaithful account of the first fickle mistress of Edmund Spenser?—We shall next ascertain the name and history of his wife from the internal evidence left behind him in his works.

PART II.—SPENSER'S WIFE

The second passion of our poet, having had birth "In savage soyle, far from Parnasso Mount," is more barren of literary gossip and adventure, and may, therefore, we trust, be compressed into narrow limits.

The chief evidence on which we shall have to rely in this case must be of a similar nature with the former;—not that we shall have to interpret allegories, but the true reading of an anagram; for we may set out on our pursuit, assured, that, according to the poetical alchemy of his age, Spenser did not fail to screen his second innamorata under the same "quintessential cloud of wit" as his first; and that we shall find in his homage some sobriquet, "the right ordering of which" (as in the former case) "will bewray the verie name of his love and mistresse."

On this point, however, his biographies and biographers have hitherto preserved absolute silence. They tell us he was married, and had several children by his wife; but, of the name, the rank, or the country of the lady they confess their ignorance. Todd informs us, that he "married a person of very inferior rank to himself,"– "a country lass";—and he quotes the "Faëry Queen" to prove his assertion:—

"For, certes, she was but a country lass."

It is true, those words occur in the passage cited by the commentator from the "Faëry Queen"; most probably they refer to the person in dispute. But she was no more "a country lass," in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase, than was Spenser himself (Clerk of the Council of Munster) "a shepherd's boy." Had Mr. Todd consulted that portion of our poet's works especially devoted to record this passion, its progress and issue, he would have found she was a "lady," whose rank was rather "disparaged" than otherwise by "sorting" with Edmund Spenser, albeit his blood was noble:—

 
"To all those happy blessings which you have
With plenteous hand by Heaven upon you thrown,
This one disparagement they to you gave,
That you your love lent to so mean a one."
 

                        Amoretti. Sonnet lxvi.

Spenser devoted two entire poems expressly to this passion,—to wit, the "Amoretti," describing its vicissitudes, and the "Epithalamion, or Marriage Song," in which he celebrates its consummation. There are many allusions to it also in the "Faëry Queen" and "Colin Clout's come home again"; and from these sources we propose to supply the name, the lineage, and residence of the happy fair.

She was, undoubtedly, a person of rank and blood, residing in the poet's vicinage, and is so described in many of the Sonnets. She is constantly addressed as "a lady," enjoying the respect and the elegancies, if not the luxuries, of her condition,—well-educated, accomplished in the arts of design and embroidery,—at whose father's house the poet was no infrequent visitor. Her residence, or that of her family, could not have been far from Kilcolman Castle; and was seated, most probably, on the banks of the Mulla, (Spenser's favorite stream,) a tributary of the Blackwater, which empties into the sea at Youghal. For she is seen for the first time in the "Faëry Queen" as the love of Colin Clout, (Spenser,) dancing among the Nymphs and Graces,—herself a fourth Grace,—on a mountain-top, the description of which exactly corresponds with all his other descriptions of his beloved Mole,—a mountain which nearly overhangs his castle;¹⁵ and, undoubtedly, the bridesmaids and companions who attended her at the hymeneal altar were the "Nymphs of Mulla," and,

"of the rivers, of the forest green, And of the sea that neighbours to her near,"—

a localization which would fix her family mansion somewhere between Kilcolman Castle and the prosperous seaport town of Youghal,—but somewhat nearer to the former. This limits our inquiries within the narrow range of the lands bordering the Mulla waters.

But our poet, we believe, did not stop with these ambiguous indications of her birthplace and family; he had promised her to immortalize the triumph of his passion, and to leave to all posterity a monument of the "rare wonderment" of the lady's beauty.¹⁶ He had gone farther; and, in three several sonnets,¹⁷ vowed to eternize her name—"your glorious name in golden monument"—after his own fashion, and to the best of his abilities. We have no right, then, to doubt that he fulfilled his promise; and if we can fix upon any distinctive appellation or epithet addressed to her, common to the several poems which professedly reveal his passion, and solvable into the name of a person whose residence and circumstances correspond with those ascribed to the lady by her worshipper, may we not most reasonably conclude that we have at length discovered the long-lost secret?

To begin with the beginning,—the "Amoretti." Here she is an Angel, in all moods and tenses, the "leaves," "lines," and "rhymes" are taught, that, "when they behold that Angel's blessed look," they shall "seek her to please alone."¹⁸ In a subsequent sonnet, she is an:

"Angel come to lead frail minds to rest In chaste desires, on heavenly beauty bound."¹⁹

Again, the poet denies that

 
"The glorious portrait of that Angel's face"
 

can be expressed by any art, by pen or pencil.²⁰

Again, she is

 
"Of the brood of Angels heavenly born."²¹
 

And yet again, she is

 
"Divine and born of heavenly seed."²²
 

Once more we are bid

 
  "Go visit her in her chaste bower of rest,
  Accompanied with Angel-like delights."²³
 

Turn we next to the "Epithalamion." And here the same cuckoo-note is repeated usque ad nauseam. We are told, that, to look upon her,

 
          "we should ween
  Some Angel she had been."²⁴
 

Even her bridesmaids (her sisters, probably) are thought to be Angels, and, addressing them, the bridegroom says,

 
"Sing, ye sweet Angels, Alleluya sing!"²⁵
 

Finally, in "Colin Clout's come home again," the poet very dexterously evades the royal anger of Elizabeth, sure to be aroused by the preference of any beauty to her own. To deceive the Queen,—to whom, in gratitude for past favors, and, mayhap, with a lively appreciation of others yet to come, he is offering up homage,—he describes her Majesty by the very same imagery he had elsewhere employed to depict his lady-love; and ostensibly applies to the royal Elizabeth the amatory terms which are covertly meant for an Elizabeth of his own,—between whom and her royal type he either saw or affected to see a personal resemblance. Here we find her placed by the poet:

 
  "Amongst the seats of Angels heavenly wrought,
  Much like an Angel in all form and fashion."
 

The metaphoric 'Angel' of enamored swains is at once so trite and obvious, that both the invention and vocabulary of the lover who abides by it so perpetually must have been poor and narrow beyond anything we can conceive of Spenser's fecundity of language and imagery, if we sit down content to imagine that no more is meant by its recurrence than meets the eye. We are satisfied that this title or simile—call it what you will—is the key-word of the mystery; and we must now look around the neighborhood of the Mulla for a family-surname out of which this "Angel" can be extracted by the "alchemy of wit."

On consulting the "Great Records of Munster," Vol. VI., we find a family residing in the neighborhood of Kilcolman Castle whose name and circumstances correspond exactly with all the requirements of our Angel-ic theory. The Nagles were a very ancient and respectable family, whose principal seats were in the northern parts of the County of Cork and the adjoining borders of the County of Waterford. There seem to have been two races of them, distinguished by the color of their hair into the Red Nagles and the Black Nagles; and of the former, the lord or chieftain of the tribe resided at Moneanymmy, an ancient preceptory of the Knights of St. John, beautifully seated on the banks of the Mulla, where it disembogues its tribute into the Blackwater, on its passage to Cappoquin and Youghal, and at a convenient distance from Spenser's Kilcolman. Elizabeth Nagle belonging to the Red branch of the family, we shall find no difficulty in accounting for her alleged resemblance to Queen Elizabeth.

The proprietor of Moneanymmy, strictly contemporaneous with Spenser, was John Nagle, whose son, David, died in the city of Dublin in 1637. It is therefore but fair to suppose that in 1593 (the year of Spenser's marriage) this David might have had a sister of marriageable age; for he himself, by his marriage with Ellen Roche of Ballyhowly, had a daughter, Ellen, who in due time was married to Sylvanus, the eldest son of Edmund Spenser. If our supposition be correct, therefore, Ellen and Sylvanus were linked by the double bond of cousinhood and matrimony.

Unfortunately for our Spenserian inquiry, however, the full and regular pedigree of these Nagles commences only with David, whose marriage and the issue thereof are recorded at large in Irish books of heraldry; whereas the preceding generations, to a remote antiquity, are merely notified by the bare names of the son and heir as they succeeded to the inheritance.

John Nagle may have had a daughter marriageable at the time of Spenser's marriage; and she may have married the poet,—and did, we are convinced,—even though her family belonged to the Romish persuasion, and the bridegroom to the Protestant Church.

To this untoward circumstance—the difference in religion—there is curious reference made in a remarkable passage of the "Amoretti," which seems not only to indicate the name of her family, but to screen the poet himself from the penalties denounced against Protestants who intermarried with Roman Catholics. In the Sixty-first Sonnet, the lady is said to be:

 
                         "divinely wrought,
  And of the brood of Angels heavenly born;
  And with the crew of blessed Saints upbrought,
  Each of which did her with their gifts adorn."
 

Here we have distinctly her birth and education, each assigned to a different source. She is of the "brood" or family of anagrammatic "Angels,"—otherwise, Nagles; but has been "upbrought," or instructed, by persons whom Spenser denominates "Saints," or Orthodox Protestants; for Spenser was by party and profession a Puritan; and the Puritans were "Saints,"—to such as chose to accept their own account of the matter.

But there may be a yet deeper meaning, an anagrammatic appropriateness, in this phrase, "crew of blessed Saints." The Nagles of Moneanymmy had intermarried frequently with the St. Legers of Doneraile; and thus such a close intimacy was established between the families as to warrant the supposition that a child of the one house might have been reared amongst the members of the other. Elizabeth Spenser (born Nagle) may not unlikely have been educated by the Puritan St. Legers. The name St. Leger, as Camden remarks, is a compound name, derived from the German Leodigar or Leger, signifying "the Gatherer of the People." Verstigan also gives it the same translation, as originating from Leod, Lud, or Luyd, which, he says, means "folk or people."²⁶ Therefore St. Leger seems to signify a folk, a gathering, a legion or "crew" of saints, a holy crowd or crew,—which may have been the quibble extorted by Spenser's "alchemy of wit" from the "upbringing" of Elizabeth Nagle, his wife. He calls her with marked emphasis his "sweet Saint," his "sovereign Saint"; and in the "Epithalamion" the temple-gates are called on to:

"Receive this Saint with honors due."

In praying to the gods for a large posterity, he places his request on the ground,

 
  "That from the earth (which may they long possess
  With lasting happiness!)
  Up to your haughty palaces may mount
  Of blessed Saints for to increase the count."
 

There is yet another solution, beside the anagrammatic one, for the name of "Angel" so sedulously applied by the poet to his beloved. The Nagle family, according to heraldry, were divided into three branches, distinguished by peculiarities of surname. The Southern branch signed themselves "Nagle,"—the Meath or Midland branch, "Nangle,"—while the Connaught or Western shoot rejoiced in the more euphonious cognomen of Costello! Let the heralds account for these variations; we take them as we find them. The letter N, as we are informed, according to the genius of the Irish tongue, is nothing more than a prefix, set, euphoniæ gratiâ, before the radical name itself, when commencing with a vowel. Thus, the N'Angles of Ireland were the Angles whose heroic deeds are duly recorded in the lists of the battle of Hastings. They went over to Ireland with Strongbow; one branch assumed (can the heralds tell us why?) the name of Costello;—another became N'Angles, and the Southern shoot dwarfed down their heavenly origin into prosaic Nagle. The well-known punning exclamation of Pope Gregory, on observing the fairness and beauty of some English children,—"Non Angli, sed Angeli forent, si essent Christiani,"—may have set the fervid brain of Spenser on fire, and suggested the divine origin of her he loved. Between Elizabeth de Angelis—the pun of Gregory—and Elizabeth de Angulo—the latter being the derivation of heralds and lawyers—what poet could hesitate a moment?

Our task is done. We think we have established our case. By anagram, Elizabeth Nagle makes a perfect Angel; by heraldry and a pontifical pun, the N'Angles of the County of Meath are Angels in indefeasible succession; Elizabeth belonged to the Red branch of her family, and therefore must have resembled the royal Elizabeth; she was brought up among the "crew of Saints" in the St. Leger family; and, finally, her place of residence corresponds with that depicted by the "passionate shepherd" as the home of his second mistress. We think we have satisfied all the requirements of reasonable conviction, and confidently await the verdict of that select few who may feel interest in this purely literary investigation.

Guided by the rules of anagram here laid down and illustrated, some future commentator, more deeply versed in the history and scandal of the Elizabethan era, may be able to identify real personages with all the fantastic characters introduced in the "Faëry Queen."