What is a critical interpretation of "Sonnet 54" of Edmund Spenser's Amoretti?

Sonnet 54 is from Spenser's
Amoretti sonnet cycle (also called sonnet sequence). The conceit of
the cycle is Spenser's unrequited love for Elizabeth Boyle, who being much younger,
scorns the idea of accepting the courtship of a widowed man. The end of the
Amoretti, though, shows that Spenser was ultimately successful in
his suit for her love. The Amoretti is followed by the
Epithalamion, which is the triumphal celebration of their wedding
day and night.

Sonnet 54 in the cycle follows one
Spenserian sonnet structure, which has several differences
from Petrarch's original Italian sonnet form. It has the fourteen sonnet lines with an
octave and a sestet, and the last two lines form a couplet: two lines that
rhyme.

There is no line 5
volta, or turn in the subject of the topic (the topic is Elizabeth's
rejection of his courtship). The first four lines of the initial
octave introduce the metaphor
of Elizabeth as a spectator at the play Spenser is performing in desperate desire to win
her. Line 4 says that in this pageant he disguises his "troubled wits" of unrequited
love.

There is no volta after line
4 because Spenser's innovation to the sonnet
is devising a way to employ the rhyme scheme to carry on the
logic of the first four line into the logic of the second four lines.
This is in contrast to introducing a Petrarchan (or Shakespearean) paradox (or seemingly
untrue contradiction) at line 5. Thus this sonnet is an example of how Spenser's
ababbcbc rhyme scheme in the first octave allows the
continuance of a logical thought through concatenation of
the "linked" bb couplet at 4 and
5:

Disguising
diversely my troubled wits.
Sometimes I joy when glad occasion
fits,

The concluding
sestet turns on a volta at line
9 that introduces the reactions of Elizabeth to Spenser's efforts to
procure her love.

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when I laugh, she mocks; and, when I
cry,
She laughs, and hardens evermore her
heart.

The
resolution to his problem that comes in the ending couplet
is to denounce her (for the moment ...) as "no woman, but a senseless stone" because he
cannot "move her" to love with any ploy: "What then can move
her?"

• 14 line sonnet
  octave +
  sestet
  one volta "turn" at line 9
  continuing logic, no
  paradox
  rhyming resolution in ending couplet
  resolution is a
  conclusion from the foregoing logic
  rhyme scheme ababbcbc
  cdcdee
  concatenation at couplet lines 4/5 and 8/9:
  bb and
  cc