THE POLITICAL allegory of Books III to VI of The Faerie Queene shows Spenser raising his gaze from the social (friendship, contract), through the consensual institutions of government (justice, equity, the courts), to the sovereign (prerogative, executive power). The Two Cantos of Mutabilitie, in turn, act as a kind of coda to the poem as a whole, providing not only a case study in the ‘virtues’ of government, but a historical and jurisprudential view of the policy needed to coordinate these virtues into a cohering, effective system. Spenser's gathering focus on Ireland reaches its peak in these cantos, as the narrative shifts from the abstract topography of Fairyland to the distinctly Irish geography of Arlo Hill. Similarly, the developing preoccupation with issues of jurisdiction and border-crossing through Books V and VI finds its ultimate apotheosis in Mutability, the errant trespassing titan whose legal claims ‘range’ out of the earthly sphere, through the lunar realm, and into heaven itself. The most obvious organic link between the Cantos and the last two books of The Faerie Queene is, of course, the unyielding emphasis on legal terms, legal process, and legal arguments. By returning to and historicizing these important strands from the legends Of Iustice and Of Courtesy, Spenser signals the political importance of the dispositional, even jurisdictional, question of Mutability's plea; and suggests the need to read these cantos alongside explicit analysis of the contemporary political situation in Ireland, including A view of the present state of Ireland.