The long-standing need for this book on Spenser and humor is attested by the neglect of comedy in The Spenser Encyclopedia (1990), in which the topic receives no separate article, just an entry in the index. There, one is referred to the articles on books 2 and 3, despite so many laughable moments in book 1, with Red Crosse's clownish bravado, Duessa's femme-fatalerie, slimy Archimago's unhorsing and unmasking, and the whole parodic episode of Lucifera's court. Brooks-Davies's long article on book 1 in the Encyclopedia shows only ankle-deep awareness of humor. So Comic Spenser, with its richly detailed explorations of book 1, is a new resource for fresh and interesting ideas on this most-taught (if taught at all) part of The F.Q.

Victoria Coldham-Fussell courageously undertakes both comedy (the easy part) and the theory of humor–—why people laugh. Study of this question leads her to enumerate three principles of comedy guiding her approach: reduction (e.g., bathos, error, rudeness), ambiguity (tonal inconsistency, incongruity), and play (nonsense, exaggeration, affirmation). The eternally vexing theory of humor eventually gives way, in the introductory section called “Spenserian Humour,” to Spenser. Chapter 1, “Spenser and the Comic Renaissance,” defines the Renaissance as an age of gravitas alternating with comic masterpieces and works of wit. Humanists played humorists in epistolary collections and, for a while, in jestbooks. The Fox and Ape in Mother Hubberd's Tale resemble jestbook rogues like Howleglas and, in The F.Q., characters like Braggadocchio, the Squire of Dames, and Malbecco. Punning and wordplay in Spenser, first memorably explored decades ago by Martha Craig, receive renewed attention, notably when Coldham-Fussell unpacks the meanings of pride both in the sexual sense and in that of Christian morality. Spenser enlivens this wordplay with imagery of hidden caves, towers, swords, and deep dungeons—which in the Duessa-Orgoglio episode “hints not at intercourse so much as masturbation” (132). This attention to repressed desire supports the larger contention that the chief symptom of Red Crosse's spiritual erring throughout book 1 is shame, as he proves unable to give himself in any loving relationship. In the past, terms like character and personality have met with resistance in Spenser criticism (139), but in this reading the Knight takes on more humanity than does a mere vehicle for symbolism.

Characterization is more palpable, of course, in books 3 and 4. In the chapter “Laughing at Love,” everyone, even Arthur, is seen as snared in the folly of romantic love at one time or another—the Prince in his pursuits of Gloriana and Florimel or his struggle to avoid scandal after spending the night with Amoret and Amelyia following their rescue from Lust. More conventional laughter at love attends the comments by (and on) Britomart's nurse, Glauce, the comical stereotype pretending to be her “aged squire” (3.1.4). The twosome of young maiden and old nurse derives from both page and stage in Spenser's time, serving a theatrical pattern consummated in the pageant of Cupid's masque (3.12). Coldham-Fussell in fact observes that Spenser's whole poem is “something of a chivalric pageant in itself” (184). Underlying the wide range of lovers’ activities in these two books is the concept of love as the performative essence of life, whose actors play roles, wear costumes, and even follow scripts.

In a book so cognizant of sources—contemporary, classical, and medieval—an oversight is the neglect of Shakespeare's favorite ancient comedian, Plautus. Besides E.K.'s word that Spenser wrote “nine comedies” modeled on Ariosto, there is the evidence of Teares of the Muses, where, in summoning Thalia, Spenser reveals a Sidnean concern regarding the current state of comedy. She laments that “ugly Barbarisme” and “brutish Ignorance” have “ycrept of late” onto the comic stage, and “with vaine toyes the vulgar entertaine.” This possibly alludes to the contemporary quarrels between the comedic followers of Plautus and Terence—though Terence doesn't get noticed either in Comic Spenser. The author's discussion of Merlin's mirror as a metaphor for the whole of Spenser's poem might usefully be enhanced with reference to the ancient, well-known concept of comedy as a mirror of life.