ANALYSIS OF SPENSER'S MUTABILITIE CANTOS

 The first month to proceed is March, most closely affiliated with war, and hence with epic. He is armed as a warrior, yet curiously sows the earth as he proceeds, generating not the glory and heroism of epic, but rather the abundance and fertility of pastoral. April is happily dressed for love:

Next came fresh April full of lustyhead,
  And wanton as a kid whose horn new buds:
  Upon a Bull he rode, the same which led
  Europa floating through the Argolic floods:
  His horns were gilded all with golden studs
  And garnished with garlands goodly dight
  Of all the fairest flowers and freshest buds
  Which the earth brings forth, and wet he seemed in sight
With waves, through which he waded for his love's delight. (VII.vii.33)

The focus on dressing in this representation of April is interesting in that he is a stylistically embellished object of art (riding on a bull with varnished and gilded horns); yet April also gestures to epic in Spenser’s reference to the story of Europa. The other seasons are similarly dressed. May is also artistically adorned with flowers (as are the horns of the mount of “lusty” April). May is also generative, throwing flowers all around as she proceeds. She also inspires laughter in the living things that she passes: “Lord! how all creatures laughed, when her they spied, / And leapt and danced as they had ravished been!” (VII.vii.34). This construction is an interesting paradox in regards to the manner in which Dame Mutabilitie is construed earlier in the poem, as the agent of death. June is dressed as an actor on a stage (here, on the stage of Spenser’s poem): “All in green leaves, as he a Player were; / Yet in his time he wrought as well as played” (VII.vii.35). June’s status as both an artist and an actor gestures to the artistic subject of the poem, and comedy ensues as Spenser places him atop a crab (appropriate for the subsequent zodiac sign of Cancer) walking backwards in “crooked crawling steps.” 

July follows, similarly suggesting inspired creation in his generative virility, for he proceeds while ripping off his clothes (because of the heat of the month), and riding on a raging lion. August retains clothing, for he is “rich arrayed” in “gold” and foreshadows the coming abundance of the harvest, which September carries, as he walks behind on foot. October is “full of merry glee,” and November, as in the Shepheardes Calender, is the finest of them all – albeit the funniest:

Next was November, he full gross and fat,
  As fed with lard, and that right well might seem;
  For, he had been a-fatting hogs of late,
  That yet his brows with sweat, did reek and steam, (VII.vii.40)

Spenser’s representation of November, when considered in terms of both a neoteric aesthetic and Nature’s final ruling in Dame Mutabilitie’s trial, is the clearest indication (apart from the dramatic difference in tone) of Spenser’s satirical reprise of the Shepheardes Calender. The tone in the procession of seasons here is not only at odds with the Cantos initial meditation on death and decay, its rendering is nearly the antithesis of the stately “November” in the Shepherd's Calendar, the most finely wrought of the twelve eclogues (as E.K. points out in his initial “Argument”). In light of Nature’s verdict, in which a changed thing, or we might say, things crafted by the neoteric poet embodied in Dame Mutabilite, “by their change their being do dilate” is literally expressed here in the plump, sweaty, ostentatious and “dilated” figure which provides a satirical counterpart to the elegy of the “November” eclogue. 

(The analysis says nothing of the remaining months or signs)

In the voice of The Faerie Queene’s narrator Spenser, we might take the phrase ‘that plaine appeares’ as a hollow or ironic endorsement of how star-gazers observe that Aries (the Ram) has ‘shouldred’ or pushed against Taurus (the Bull). All the same, what is being described here is in marked contrast with Du Bartas’ account of how Aries moves in sequence alongside neighbouring signs of the zodiac:

De son estoillé vase une onde blonde-perse,
Et fait (qui le croira?) naistre de ses flambeaux
Pour les suyvans Poissons un riche torrent d’eaux.
Les alterez nageurs courent vers ceste source,
Mais le fleuve à plis d’or s’enfuit devant leur course,
Ainsi que les Poissons fuyent tousjours devant
Le celeste Bélier qui les va poursuyvant.

In whose [i.e. Aquarius’] clear channel might at pleasure swim
Those two bright Fishes that do follow him;
But that the Torrent slides so swift away,
That it outruns them ever, even as they
Out-run the Ram: who ever them pursues,
And by returning yearly, all renews. (trans. Josuah Sylvester)

Spenser matches Du Bartas’ precision, even though their cosmic visions diverge. He also adds references to classical mythology: to Phrixus and Helle (who were rescued from their stepmother Ino by a flying ram), and Europa (carried away by Zeus in the form of a bull). Consciously or not, he is also correcting the Fourth Day’s astrological knowledge. 

(For that same golden fleecy Ram, which bore

   Phrixus and Helle from their stepdame's fears,
   Has now forgot, where he was placed of yore,
And shouldered has the Bull, which fair Europa bore. )

It is not just the subject matter of the Mutabilitie Cantos that is familiar from Du Bartas (both the Fourth Day and ‘Columnes’ from La Seconde Semaine), but how astrological details are incorporated into his poetry. This stanza about February, the final month of the zodiacal year, merits comparison with the first passage from Du Bartas quoted above:

And lastly, came cold February, sitting
  In an old wagon, for he could not ride;
  Drawn of two Fishes for the season fitting,
  Which through the flood before did softly slide
  And swim away: yet had he by his side
  His plough and harness fit to till the ground,
  And tools to prune the trees, before the pride
  Of hasting Prime did make them burgeon round:
So passed the twelve Months forth, and their due places found.

There are technical similarities with the passage from the Quatrième Jour, especially in Sylvester’s translation: in how the fishes are given agency (to which Spenser adds personification of February), in the development towards a final line about how the cycle begins again (not in the French source text), and also the verbal resemblance in ‘slides so swift away’ in Sylvester’s translation and ‘softly slide | And swim away’ in Spenser.