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No reader of Renaissance literature need be reminded that when Spenser wrote, friendship rivalled love as a poetic theme. High friendships give life whatever good it has, says one of Castiglione's courtiers; and the Elizabethan gentleman agreed with him. If the Elizabethan gentleman was also a story-teller, the thought of friendship, it seems, usually put happy devices into his plot-making, as the thought of Helen's beauty, if he was a poet, kindled his style. Yet Spenser, who himself enjoyed friendships with the best, and who of all men should have risen to the theme of friendship, wrote of it very lamely. At least, so his critics decide. Their general verdict is that of the six books in the Faerie Queene the fourth, on the virtue of friendship, is, in spite of splendid episodes, the least satisfactory as a story and the least comprehensible as an allegory.
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