The Faerie Queene Love Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Book, canto, stanza

Quote #4

[Verdant's] warlike armes, the idle instruments/ Of sleeping praise, were hong ypon a tree,… Ne for them, ne for honour cared hee… But in lewd loues, and wastfull luxuree,/ His dayes, his goods, his bodie he did spend. (II.xii.80)

Verdant, under the curse of Acrasia in the Bower of Bliss, shows us that while the right kind of love is fundamental to a knight's identity, the wrong kind of love totally completely incompatible.

Quote #5

Euen the famous Britomart it was,/ Whom straunge aduenture did from Britaine fet,/ To seeke her louer (loue farre sought alas,)/ Whose image she had seene in Venus looking glas. (III.i.8)

Although romantic love is important to all the knights we meet—except for Guyon—Britomart is the first to be introduced to us primarily through her quest to find her love.

Quote #6

And [Amoret] before the vile Enchaunter [Busirane] sate,/ Figuring straunge characters of his art… And all perforce to make her him to loue./ Ah who can loue the worker of her smart?/ A thousand charmes he formerly did proue;/ Yet thousand charmes could not her stedfast heart remoue. (III.xii.31)

Even though Busirane has literally removed Amoret's heart from her body, his inability to make her actually love him through magic, as opposed to genuine affection, means her metaphorical "heart" remains untouched.