Answer: In Canto one of The Faerie Queene, Book-I Spenser has shown the interaction of good and evil, virtues and vices. He thought that this fight between good and evil could better be expressed through allegory because a moral lesson rendered plainly might be unpleasant for readers. The conflict between good and evil has been. depicted by means of characters who are divided into two hostile groups. ‘The Faerie Queene’ highlights the struggle between the Roman Catholics headed by Queen Mary of Scots, who stands for evil and English protestants headed by Queen Elizabeth who stands for good.
As a strong supporter of the Protestants’ cause, Spenser calls Roman Catholicism a false religion and recognizes English Protestantism as the true religion or the Church of England as the true Church. So to display this enmity between the Catholics and the Protestants, Spenser has drawn two categories of characters, good and bad. Among the good characters, we have the Red Cross Knight representing Holiness or the Anglican Church. Una (Truth, wisdom, goodness, innocence and also true religion), The Dwarf (Prudence), Una’s parents (Humanity, Adam and Eve or the people of England). Among the bad characters, we find the monster Error representing manifold aspects of errors or evils of human life or Anti-Christ, Archimago who stands for Hypocrisy or Philip II of Spain, a Roman Catholic by faith, Duessa or Fidessa (Falsehood or Mary Queen of Scots). These two groups of characters are hostile to each other. The Red Cross Knight has to fight the monster Error and becomes victorious after a terrible encounter. But he falls easy prey to the trap of Archimago, the guileful magician.
The fight between the Knight and the monster Error proved to be the most terrible one. The Knight of the Red Cross was deputed by the fairy queen to relieve the distress of Lady Una, whose parents dwelt in perpetual dread of a fierce Dragon (Evil) that had laid waste their whole Kingdom and threatened them with death and destruction. The knight of the Red Cross accompanied by Lady Una proceeded on his journey to accomplish the task entrusted to him. As he was going through a wood, he found himself before a cave. This was the cave of monster Error, a horrible creature with the face of a woman and the hind part a serpent. The Knight fell upon it as a lion falls on its prey. There was a terrible fight between the Knight and the monster. At one stage of fighting, the Knight found himself in the tight grip of the monster’s huge tail. At this time lady Una shouted to him to show his bravery. She urged him to have faith in himself and in Jesus Christ and to fight bravely. Being inspired by the lady, the Knight fought with redoubled vigour and courage. He was somehow able to release himself from the grip of the monster’s tail. He then pressed the monster’s throat with such force that she threw out a lot of filth from her mouth. Black poison and big lumps of flesh and raw meat came out from for belly. The monster had many young ones which had all taken shelter inside her mouth when the Knight had entered the cave. These little creatures also now emerged from the monster’s mouth. Ultimately the Knight succeeded in cutting off the monster’s head and killing her. Her offspring now began to drink the blood which was flowing from her large wound. They drank so much blood that their bodies swelled with it and their bellies burst open with the consequence that they all died. Thus evil was killed by evil. This was the allegorical purpose of the first adventure of the Red Cross Knight.
Holiness as represented by the Knight of the Red Cross has first to seek its own perfection through the trial of its strength against its many adversaries. It has first to encounter Error, manifold and contemptible, whose den is the human heart which it infests. Holiness, however, overcomes Error in a dreadful encounter but through a lot of hardships and much peril to its own life.
Again religious as well as political issues of the day are intermingled in the allegory. The Knight of the Red Cross is St. George or the Reformed Church of England or England as a militant spiritual force, fighting corruption, pride and manifold evils of Papacy, Paganism and Catholicism. Una is truth as embodied in the doctrines of the National English Church. Una’s parents represent humanity as well as the Old and the New Testaments, or the classical and Christian philosophy. The foul Dragon (Evil) that forces Una’s Parents to keep themselves confined within their castle is the Anti-Christ or the Pope of Rome.
The fight between the Red Cross Knight with the monster Error is the conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism. The books and Papers vomited by Error allude to the scurrilous pamphlets directed against Queen Elizabeth by the Roman Catholics. Thus in the mission of the Red Cross Knight (True Religion) and Una (Truth), we have seen that so long as truth and holiness or true religion are united, Error (Evil or Antichrist) however, founded on learning cannot stand against holiness. That is, Error or Antichrist is not powerful enough to dismay Holiness armoured by the power of Truth. Holiness must be grounded in Truth to remain pure and immaculate in the world. Thus the force of Truth fortifies Holiness.
Next, the battle between good and evil may be located in the Knight’s encounter with Archimago (Hypocrisy), a magician, who poses to be a holy person, but inwardly he is extremely evil. He is constantly on the move, doing something or the other in the service of the devil. He is a master in the art of disguise and dissembling. He appears before the Red Cross Knight and Lady Una as a very old man with bare feet, a white and grey beard, wearing a long black garment and a book (Bible) hanging from his belt. His eyes are bent downward as if gazing at the ground below, and as he walks on the way, he seems to pray and often beats his breast like a man who repents for his sins.
The Red Cross Knight and Lady Una took this old man, named Archimago, to be a reverend hermit. He courteously offers them night’s lodging, but after they have gone to sleep he starts to work some magic spells. Conjuring up two evil spirits, he sends one to the Kingdom of Morpheus, the god of sleep to borrow a false dream. Archimago meanwhile has transformed the second spirit into the image of Lady Una. In a false dream, the imitation lady is brought to the bedside of the Knight declaring her passion for him in seductive. tone. Though he was stirred by her charms and tender words, he virtuously rebuffs her advances and returns to his rest. Having failed in his first device Archimago tries one more trick, but the knight pays no attention to his allurement. Here ends Canto one of ‘The Faerie Queene’, Book-I.
Allegorically Archimago personifies hypocrisy, but, in fact, he represents far greater wickedness than we generally associate with hypocrisy. His mission is to work out the sinister designs and intrigues against Lady Una (Truth) and the Red Cross Knight (Holiness) so that they may be separated from each other. The Knight blunders in considering himself to be acting on high moral principles in his succumbing to the machinations of a vicious calumniator. His weakness is a sign of inexperience, a failure to distinguish between appearance and reality,
To sum up, Canto I of ‘The Faerie Queene, Book-I mainly deals with the battle between the forces of evil and good. This is aptly illustrated by the Red Cross Knight’s hostile encounter with the monster Error and his calm surrender to the intrigues of Archimago. In the former case, he proves his bravery in suppressing evil but in the latter, he shows his inexperience in distinguishing between appearance and reality. Historically his encounter with Archimago signifies the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden man’s loss of his original purity through the subtle persuasion of Satan (Archimago). Finally, according to the historical allegory, the attempt to cause separation between the Red Cross Knight and Lady Una through the intrigues of Archimago stands for the overthrowing of Protestantism and the re-establishment of Catholicism in the reign of Queen Mary (Mary Tudor). Archimago, an instrument of the separation between Holiness and Truth may be identified with Roman Catholic Pope, willing to damage and undermine the forces of Reformation as represented by the Red Cross Knight and Una.
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