Why can’t the dragon just eat RedCrosse Knight while he’s in the fountain? This is a question that might be on our minds for a while after reading book 1 canto 11 of The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. From a regular person’s perspective, this would make little sense because the dragon gave the knight a chance to recover and heal and wanted a good fight. But if it’s looked at from the perspective of a Christian, this would make sense. There are two parts where the dragon gives the knight a chance to heal and get back in the fight. One is when the knight is struck and thrown into a stream and again when he falls into a well. In one of the stanzas of canto 11, there are a lot of supernatural aspects to the well and why the dragon did not kill him right away.
The four supernatural aspects of the well I have chosen to focus on are the fact that the well itself might be holy, the well is a well of life, when innocent blood was spilled into it and the dragon was cursed and forbidden from setting foot on holy ground. The reason on why I think Spenser wrote the fight between RedCrosse Knight and the dragon the way he did was to give the audience a formidable fight between the “forces of good and evil” as one would say, or since there a lot of aspects to the Christian religion, one might consider this is a Christian reading. There are other forms of literature out there like this one where the author gave the audience a good fight between the hero and the villain of the story. Because since the story is set in the Middle Ages, Christianity and other religions played a big role in the lives of people back then. Christianity and other religions are still being practiced and play roles in the lives of people today.
The first aspect of the well from the fight between RedCrosse Knight and the dragon is that the well itself might have been holy. When the knight fell into the well because of the dragon, this was when the knight had one of two chances to get better and back into the fight. This is one of the reasons it happened and from a regular person’s perspective, why the dragon didn’t kill the knight is because the dragon’s body would not fit into the well. From a Christian’s perspective, because since the dragon was evil, and in my understanding of the Christian religion, evil beings cannot harm or destroy holy items, otherwise they’ll end up harming and/or killing themselves. And that in turn gave RedCrosse Knight a chance to heal up and continue fighting the dragon.
As Edmund Spenser writes in The Faerie Queene, “For vnto life the dead it could restore, And guilt of sinful crimes cleanse wash away.” Spenser, pg. 185, 1979. This quote from the book tells the audience on how the well itself was holy because it was said to wash away sins and give life back to the dead. In my understanding of God, Christianity, and religion that I got from other forms of literature, things that have been blessed and play a role in a religious person’s life have Godly powers and are capable of making a person better in the world by washing away the sins they may have committed in their lives, so they no longer have to look back on what they did.
The second aspect of the well from the fight between the knight and the dragon is that it was a well of life. Why it was dubbed a “well of life” was because over the centuries and over the course of human history, the waters from the well helped those who were stricken by a disease or plague. This is another reason on why the dragon let the knight heal before continuing the fight, the waters possibly healed the wounds RedCrosse Knight sustained from the dragon prior to getting thrown into the well. In other forms of literature and fantasy films, well, streams, and whatnot had waters that healed wounds or diseases that people sustained.
Spenser writes says in the book, “Those that with sicknesse were infected sore, It could recure, and aged long decay Renew, as one were borne that very day.” Spenser, pg. 185, 1979. This quote from the book tells the audience that well was capable of healing those who were stricken by disease and restoring the youth of those who were starting to get old, and their age was finally catching up to them. In the fantasy world, wells, charms, spells, potions, etc., anything that can be used to benefit the human body, whether they are blessed by God, man-made, or created by magic can make people better and live good lives.
The third supernatural aspect of the well from the fight is that since the dragon was cursed, the well might have been built on holy ground and the dragon was forbidden from setting foot onto holy ground. Hence why the dragon did not go anywhere near the well and that also may have given RedCrosse Knight a chance to heal up and fight the dragon. In my understanding of the Christian world, if anything is built on holy ground, evil forces are forbidden from setting foot onto holy ground, or they would be struck down by God himself and face his wrath. So, one reason why the dragon gave the knight a chance to recover was because it was not allowed to step onto holy ground, and it would rather fight the knight than face God himself.
The author wrote in book 1 canto 11 of The Faerie Queene, “The clouds before him fled for terrour great, And all the heauens stood still amazed with his threat.” Spenser, pg. 180, 1979. This quote tells the audience and the reader that the dragon was such a creature of evil, death and destruction that the clouds in the sky cleared out and the heavens were amazed at the threat he posed. In the fantasy world, if a creature of darkness is so feared that even the clouds clear at the presence of it and the heavens are amazed by the threat it poses, it will put one heck of a fight with the hero of the world.
The final aspect of the well from the fight between RedCrosse Knight and the dragon is that innocent blood defiled the sacred waves of the well itself. What made the waves of the water in the well sacred is that before the well was built on the land, the dragon had already killed possibly countless lives of humans and the lives of livestock along with countless animals, and the ground was watered with their blood, hence why the sacred waves were defiled. Since the ground became watered with innocent blood because of the dragon’s killings, that is the reason why the ground the well was built on became holy in the first place. One would say that the dragon was cursed with being evil, hence why he also could not go near the well and had to let the knight recover.
Edmund Spenser writes in another part of book 1 canto 11, “His blazing eyes, like two bright shining shields, Did burne with wrath, and sparkled liuing fyre; As two beacons, set in open fields, Send forth their flames farre off to euery shyer.” Spenser, pg. 181, 1979. This quote from one of the stanzas of canto 11 tells the audience and the reader that this was a brief description of the dragon and the look it had in its eyes saying that it was evil. Even though it sometimes killed for food, it also killed for sport. Everything and everyone that the dragon ever killed were innocents and that in turn defiled the sacred waves of the water from the well.
But the fight between RedCrosse Knight and the dragon is not the only fight where one fighter had to give the other a chance to recover because of the villain risking stepping on holy ground and facing the wrath of God, risk destroying a holy item, or where the villain has watered the ground with innocent blood to a holy item being built, it has happened to in many other fights between heroes and villains in the fantasy world and other forms of literature and possibly in real life throughout human history.
When the fight is read and looked over by someone who is part of the Christian religion, they would see these are some of the reasons as to why in the fight between the RedCrosse Knight and the dragon, even though the dragon had many chances to just kill his opponent and be done with it, it did not happen. In the eyes of the Christian religion and the supernatural, when one is fighting the forces of evil, the hero of the story will have advantages such as having God on his side. In the eyes of one who is no religious, they would think that the author wrote it that way to give the reader and audience an interesting fight and make it more dramatic.
Works Cited
Spenser, Edmund. Originally (1590). Republished (1979). The Faerie Queene, London, England: Penguin Classics
Sprockets and Springes 