“With a glance of dark meaning”; or, Bloodstained Allegories in Spenser and Hawthorne

According to Gary Scharnhorst, Hawthorne was the anonymous reviewer of the first American edition of Spenser's Poetical Works in the Boston Post in 1839 (668). "Why did the water shrink from this unhappy knight?" inquired the sculptor. "Because he had tried to wash off a bloodstain!" said the young Count, in a horror-stricken whisper. For Shelley, Beatrice's guilt is clear even if the crime is bloodless; in Hawthorne's selective invocation of the story, Hilda is seemingly innocent but possesses the bloodstain of complicity. [...]for Hawthorne, blood serves as a multifaceted allegory of representation: of artistic originality and reproducibility, interpretation and misinterpretation, semblance and resemblance. What remains are a series of duplicitous images and bodies, signs to be read and interpreted and misinterpreted, if not glances of dark meaning. [...]coarsely does the world translate all finer griefs that meet its eye!