This dissertation explores the roles played by squires and companions in The Faerie Queene by focusing on the textual problems associated with reading the companion figures within the poem, the critical heritage through which readers commonly encounter those characters, the modern theories of rhetoric current readers might bring to a reading of the text, and the contemporary theories of rhetoric Spenser would have employed. While each of these approaches opens new avenues by which to interpret the squires and companions, the readings work best when applied simultaneously to examine the arguments Spenser developed through these secondary characters.