SOURCE: Parker, M. Pauline. “Justice and Equity.” In The Allegory of The Faerie Queene, pp. 202-27. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.

In the following excerpt, Parker discusses Book V of The Faerie Queene as an allegory about justice and equity.

Book Five of The Faerie Queen belongs on the whole, to the knight it is assigned to, Artegall; a severe figure, of character akin to Guyon's, but lacking the sweetness which is one of Guyon's qualities. Was Spenser simply writing as a psychologist, or should we read an allegorical significance into Britomart's lack of sure confidence in Artegall's fidelity? As a theologian, the poet might have remembered that justice was precisely the virtue specially attacked by the original sin of man; and he may well have thought it the one most to seek in human, social, political, relations as he knew them by experience. It is true also that Artegall...