“Whence had she all this wealth?”: Dryden’s Note on The Faerie Queene V.vii.24 and the Gifts of Literal Reading

Abstract

This article discusses an annotation that John Dryden made in one of his copies of Spenser’s poems. In it, Dryden expressed surprise at the sudden emergence of the gifts that Britomart gives to the priests of Isis in Book V of The Faerie Queene. This annotation is used to explore the tendency of objects suddenly to emerge in Spenser’s poem, with varying degrees of explanation for their origins. This tendency is part of what grants the literal surface of the narrative its perennial capacity to surprise and delight.