Speaker

The central character of the poem, as in most poems, is the speaker who narrates the poem's action. The speaker may be closely associated with Spenser himself, as the poem cycle was written for and dedicated to Spenser's wife. The speaker is a poet and a romantic, dedicated to using his art to memorialize his beloved.

Beloved

The subject of the poem is a woman whom the speaker is in love with. She is clever and well-spoken. The content of her speech, however, is self-deprecating, with a religious consciousness of her own mortality.