Duessa

du-es'sa, in Spenser's Faerie Queene, a loathsome old witch. The name Duessa means "double-mind," or "false-faith"; and Duessa is represented as the daughter of Falsehood and Shame. She assumes the name of Fidessa and the appearance of a young and beautiful woman in distress. In this disguise she entices the Red-Cross Knight into the Palace of Pride, and leads him to drink of an enchanted fountain, which so paralyzes him that he is overcome by a giant. Una sends Prince Arthur to the rescue. He slays the giant, saves the knight, strips Duessa of her disguise, and drives her into the wilderness. Duessa appears under various disguises in several cantos of the poem. It is supposed that Spenser intended Duessa to typify the anti-Elizabethan party in religion and politics. In the fifth book she is said to represent Mary, Queen of Scots, taken as a type of the enmity of the Romish Church toward Queen Elizabeth. Whatever political and religious significance The Faerie Queene may have had in Spenser's time, is long since forgotten, but its romantic beauty and poetic imagery will endure for all time. See Spenser; Faerie Queene