The Cantos of Mutability: Spenser's Last Testament of Faith

Abstract

The Cantos of Mutability have presented a problem to critics since they were appended to the 1609 edition of the Faerie Queene as a fragment entitled “Two Cantos of Mutability: Which, both for Forme and Matter, appeare to be parcell of some following Booke of the Faerie Queene, under the legend of Constancie. Never before imprinted.” We do not know how the material came into the hands of Matthew Lownes, the publisher, nor do we know when the Cantos were written or how they were intended by Spenser to be related to the Faerie Queene. In this paper I shall argue that the Cantos were written during the few weeks of Spenser's last visit to England, between the fall of 1598 and January 13, 1599, when he passed away in Westminster, and that they were intended as a brief philosophical poem to complete his otherwise fragmentary epic, the Faerie Queene.