Edmund Spenser

Sonnet 68 (Spenser)

'''Sonnet LXVIII'''
MOST glorious Lord of lyfe that on this day,
Didst make thy triumph ouer death and sin:

Harrowing of Hell

Medieval Christian doctrine: between crucifixion and resurrection, Christ descended to hell to free the righteous dead. This is Easter theology, not just resurrection.

and hauing harrowd hell didst bring away,
captiuity thence captiue vs to win.

Captivity paradox

Wordplay from Ephesians 4:8—Christ takes captivity itself captive. The captives in hell become captors of us (in a good way), binding us to salvation.

This ioyous day, deare Lord, with ioy begin,
and grant that we for whom thou didest dye
being with thy deare blood clene washt from sin,
may liue foreuer in felicity.
And that thy loue we weighing worthily,
may likewise loue thee for the same againe:

Reciprocal love

The turn: from Christ's love for us to our obligation to love each other. 'All lyke deare' means everyone equally precious because equally bought with blood.

and for thy sake that all lyke deare didst buy,
with loue may one another entertayne.
So let vs loue, deare loue, lyke as we ought,

Final couplet shift

Breaks from addressing Christ ('Lord') to addressing his beloved ('deare loue'). The religious lesson becomes the marriage lesson—both are about love.

loue is the lesson which the Lord vs taught.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Easter Sunday Sonnet

This is Sonnet 68 of the *Amoretti*, Spenser's courtship sequence to Elizabeth Boyle, whom he married in 1594. Scholars have mapped the sequence to a calendar: this sonnet falls on Easter Sunday. It's the only explicitly religious poem in a love sequence—and that's the point.

Spenser is solving a Renaissance problem: how do you justify writing 89 sonnets about wanting to marry someone? The answer: make erotic love and divine love mirror each other. Easter is when Christ's love redeems humanity; marriage is when human love redeems the flesh. The final couplet makes this explicit by pivoting from "Lord" to "deare loue" (his fiancée) without changing the subject—both deserve the same word, "love."

"Harrowing hell" refers to the Harrowing of Hell, a doctrine more emphasized in medieval Christianity than modern. Between Good Friday and Easter, Christ descended to hell (mentioned briefly in 1 Peter 3:19) to liberate Old Testament saints. The word "harrow" means to break up soil with spikes—violent agricultural imagery for breaking open hell's gates. This wasn't a quiet resurrection; it was a jailbreak.

The Captivity Wordplay

"Captiuity thence captiue vs to win" is Spenser showing off. He's compressing Ephesians 4:8: "When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive." Paul's Greek phrase *ēchmalōteusen aichmalōsian* is already paradoxical—Christ captures captivity itself, freeing the captives by taking their captor prisoner.

Spenser adds another twist: this captive captivity is brought back "vs to win"—to capture *us*. We're won by being captured by the thing that was captured. It's a triple paradox, and it mirrors the poem's central move: Christ's triumph over death becomes our loving bondage to each other. Freedom through captivity, life through death, self through other.

The technical term is chiasmus—ABBA structure. Christ frees the captives (A) by capturing captivity (B), which captures us (B) to free us (A). Spenser loves this stuff. His whole epic, *The Faerie Queene*, is built on interlocking paradoxes where virtue looks like vice and freedom like bondage until you see the pattern.