SOURCE: Quilligan, Maureen. “The Comedy of Female Authority in The Faerie Queene.” English Literary Renaissance 17, no. 2 (spring 1987): 156-71.

In the following essay, Quilligan discusses Spenser's use of humor in writing about Queen Elizabeth I in The Faerie Queene.

Basing his argument on Anthony Munday's recasting of an Italian play acted before Queen Elizabeth in 1585, Albert Baugh reasoned some time ago that “it would seem the Queen's taste was for the braggadocchio of Captain Crackstone, who adds malapropism to his other absurdities of the miles gloriosus.”¹ Baugh's shrewd guess not only shows how Spenser's coinages have entered the language, but also supports the notion that Spenser's decision to present Belphoebe on her first appearance in The Faerie Queene in the company of Braggadocchio and Trompart may owe something to his sense of what the Queen might herself have found amusing. If she liked to laugh at braggadocio captains—a...