“Now Lettest Thou Thy Servant Depart”: Scriptural Tradition and the Close ofThe Faerie Queene

Sabbath Puns and Okonomia in Spenser's Faerie Queene

“…Cynthia, the Olympian moon goddess and a pseudonym for Queen Elizabeth, is said to reign "in euerlasting glory," which reinforces the allusion to the Queen, who is known as Gloriana in the poem and for whom, according to Margaret Christian, "glory" itself is a code word (7.6.8). 31 Later, at the outset of the bawdy Irish interlude, Cynthia is more openly said to be "soueraine Queene profest / Of woods and forrests," and in another of the Queen's and the moon goddess's shared pseudonyms, Diana appears in these for-ests as the object of Faunus's lecherous peeping, a parody of Mutability's rising against Jove (7.6.38). To make matters worse (or better), Faunus himself is a nature deity, one who, the poem tells us, cannot be gelded, or, effectually for a fertility god, destroyed (7.6.50).…”