Amoretti & Epithalamion A Cosmological & Chemical Wedding

[A Phoenix]

 

Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595) A Cosmological and Chemical Wedding

What this book attempts to show is the presence of a dominant, most surprising, and hitherto unsuspected symbolic structure and meaning in the marriage ode generally known as one of the dozen or so great poems in our language.
…In a journalistic sense the facts and interpretations presented here are novel-in fact, staggering: they appear to have gone unnoticed for 365 years; they suggest something apparently unprecedented among all other great lyrics of world literature.

[A. Kent Hiett, Short Time’s Endless Monument: The Symbolism of the numbers in Edmund Spenser’s Epithalamion (Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 3-4]
 

 

[A Phoenix]

Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595) A Cosmological and Chemical Wedding

Every student of Spenser is now indebted to Professor Kent Hiett for his brilliant discovery of the number symbolism by which Epithalamion is metrically and structurally ordered. He has shown us what it is almost incredible that no critic has noticed before: namely, that the twenty-four stanzas and 365 lines of the poem represent the measure of the day in hours and of the year in days; while further line-totals imitate the apparent daily movement of the sun relative to the fixed stars. Even the proper disproportion between the hours of daylight and darkness at the summer solstice (when the action of Epithalamion takes place) is indicated by a change in the refrain at a numerically significant point. Nor does this numerology merely constitute an external husk, a static frame within which the real poem proceeds. As Hieatt demonstrates, the sequence of the poem’s images, even the meaning of many of its lines, cannot be fully understood except in terms of the structure of number symbolism. The analogy between the repetition of the seasons and the perpetuation of life through human generation is part of the content; so that for numerology which imitates the year’s cycle makes a dynamic contribution to the unfolding of the meaning. In subtle ways (too intricate to be described briefly here) numerological form participates in the action of Epithalamion.

[Alastair Fowler, Spenser and the Numbers of Time (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc, 1964), p. 3]
 

[A Phoenix]

Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595) A Cosmological and Chemical Wedding

In several of the shorter poems, number symbolism serves a central structuring device. Epithalamion consists of 24 stanzas marking the hours of the day. The 365 long lines represent the number of days in the solar year; the 68 short lines may plausibly be assigned to other temporal units: the total weeks, months, and seasons. These universal temporal symbols are joined, by means of astronomical detail…
    Calendar symbolism is a primary structural device in the first part of the Amoretti-Epithalamion volume as well, where it again links universal temporal and religious symbols with specific historical events.

[Alexander Dunlop, ‘Number Symbolism’ in The Spenser Encyclopedia, ed., A. C. Hamilton (University of Toronto Press, 1997), p. 512]
 

[A Phoenix]

Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595) A Cosmological and Chemical Wedding

The top half of the title page of Amoretti and Epithalamion contains 10 words and 68 letters which minus the device produces a total of 67 Francis in simple cipher and the bottom half of the page has 4 words, 25 letters & 4 digits in the date: 4+25+4=33 Bacon in simple cipher.

The total of 14 words and the addition of the date (1+5+9+5=20) minus the device equals 33 Bacon in simple cipher.  

The page contains 34 italic letters minus one device: 34-1=33 Bacon in simple cipher.

The whole page contains a total of 14 words, 83 letters and 4 digits in the date minus the device produces a total of 100 Francis Bacon in simple cipher.

The 83 letters and the addition of the date: 83+20=103 Shakespeare in simple cipher. 

[A Phoenix]

Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595) A Cosmological and Chemical Wedding

The dedication is adorned with a headpiece which has a rose, symbol of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross (Rosicrucian Brotherhood), at its centre.

The word Rosicrucian is derived from ‘Rose Cross’ and Christian Rosencreutz of The Chemical Wedding adorns a red cross and roses as symbols of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood and the symbol of the Red Cross and a Rose is depicted on the title pages of Rosicrucian publications and publications about them.

The Epithalamion (a song or poem celebrating a marriage) is itself a Chemical Wedding about the union of the microcosm of man and macrocosm of the universe and time itself.    

[A Phoenix]

   Amoretti and Epithalamion (1595) A Cosmological and Chemical Wedding

The first line of the Epithalamion contains 33 non-capital Roman letters Bacon in simple cipher:

                                        YE learned sisters which haue oftentimes
                                        Beene to me ayding, others to adorne:
                                        Whome ye thought worthy of your gracefull rymes,
                                        That euen the greatest did not greatly scorne
                                        To heare theyr names sung in you simple layes
                                        But ioyed in theyr prayse.1

And the last line of the poem contains 33 Roman letters Bacon in simple cipher:

                                        SOng made in lieu of many ornaments,
                                        With, which my loue should duly haue bene dect,
                                        Which cutting off through hasty accidents,
                                        Ye would not stay your dewtime to expect,
                                        But promise both to recompens,
                                        Be vnto her a goodly ornament,
                                        And for short time an endlesse moniment.2

1. Edmund Spenser, Amoretti and Epithalamion. Written not long since by Edmunde Spenser (London: printed by Peter Short for William Ponsonby, 1595), G3r.
2. Ibid., last page.