The sonnets begin on January 23 and end on May 17, and appear to be written for the period leading up to Spenser’s wedding to Elizabeth Boyle on June 11. Sonnet 22 corresponds to Ash Wednesday. Sonnet 68 corresponds to Easter Sunday, and the 46 intervening sonnets generally match up with the scripture readings prescribed for the 46 days of the feast of Lent in 1594.[1] The Pre-Lenten and Lenten sonnets, while somewhat conventional on the surface, contain multi-layers of “humor, salaciousness, irony, parody, and ultimately travesty”.[1] beneath the surface. The Easter sonnets take on a more serious, devotional tone, climaxing with a celebration of marriage as a covenant of grace in which the betrothed overcome the difficulties of lust and passion and are united in grace and mutual love.