A. C. Hamilton, in The Structure of Allegory in The Faerie Queene, writes that “All discussion of Spenser's allegory must begin with his letter to Ralegh.” In a sense, I would agree. Not because, with Hamilton, I accept at face value the letter's claim to give an authoritative exposition of the “whole” of the poem's allegorical meaning; but because it seems to me that the letter's claim to interpret The Faerie Queene in an authoritative and comprehensive manner gives it a uniquely important place within the allegory's workings. What the letter purports to do is merely to tell us what the poem already means; but that purport itself is the first thing that needs scrutinising if the real workings of Spenser's allegory are to be understood. More widely, it is the real nature of the relation between texts and those ostensibly authoritative commentaries that claim merely to make explicit what is already implicit in them, that a theoretical understanding of allegory most needs to come to grips with.