Orlando Furioso

“ He is no more originative than he was before, but he does not again attempt to treat an imitative drama in the spirit of its original. Certain of the scenes of Alphonsus of Arragon were ridiculous enough, but they were undertaken in no apparent spirit of burlesque. In Orlando Furioso Greene proceeds to parody the two most popular types holding the boards in his day. The real hero of Orlando Furioso is not the mad French knight, Orlando, but Sacripant. And Sacripant is a foiled Tamburlaine, a high aspiring king whose ambition comes to nothingness. ”

“ Orlando’s Vulnerable Part. Orlando was invulnerable except in the sole of his foot, and even there nothing could wound him but the point of a large pin; so that when Bernardo del Carpio assailed him at Roncesvallês, he took him in his arms and squeezed him to death, in imitation of Herculês, who squeezed to death the giant Antæ ́us (3 syl.) .—Cervantes, Don Quixote, II. ii. 13 (1615) .
Orlando Furioso, a continuation of Bojardo’s story, with the same hero. Bojardo leaves Orlando in love with Angelica, whom he fetched from Cathay and brought to Paris. ”

“ As man can love a brother, friend, or son,
Disposed to seek Orlando, far and near,
Nor pain nor peril in the adventure shun,
Till something for the comfort of that peer
By wizard's or by leech's art be done,
Armed as he is, leaps lightly on his steed,
And takes his way beneath the lady's lead.
LXV
Thitherward were Orlando she had spied,
In company the knight and lady made.
They daily post till to that bridge they ride,
Which Argier's king maintained, in arms arraid,
To him the guard their coming signified;
Courser and arms his squires as well conveyed ”

“ To her left breast her naked sword applied;
Then recollected she was wholly armed.
Meanwhile her better Spirit, at her side,
With these persuasive words her fury charmed:
"O lady, born to such illustrious name!
Would'st thou conclude thy life with such foul shame?
XLV
"Were it not better to the field to go,
Where aye thy breath with glory may be spent?
There, should Rogero chance to lay thee low,
He to have slain thee haply may repent;
But, should his faulchion deal the mortal blow,
What death could ever yield thee more content? ”

“ Unconquered Duke Alphonso, anger so
Inflamed thy host the day that weighty stone
Wounded thy forehead with such grievous blow,
That all believed it to its rest was gone;
— Inflamed them with such fury, for the foe
In rampart, fosse, or wall, defence was none,
Who, one and all, within their works lay dead,
Nor wight was left the woeful news to spread.
IV
Seeing thy fall caused thine such mighty pain,
They were to fury moved; hadst thou, my lord,
Maintained thy footing, haply might thy train
Have with less licence plied the murderous sword. ”

“ In rest against the paladin of France;
LXXXIII
He broke it on the border of the shield
Of the intrepid count, with stedfast hand,
Who, by the stroke unshaken, nothing reeled:
And smote the king, in passing, with his brand.
Him Fortune saved; for as Orlando wheeled
The blade, it turned, descending, in his hand.
Although an-edge he guides not still the sword,
Stunned from his saddle reels the paynim lord.
LXXXIV
Astounded from his saddle reels the king,
Nor him Orlando turns about to see.
He cuts, and cleaves, and slays his following;
Who all believe him at their backs to be. ”

“ He, without quarrel, had no other wight
Suffered to part, of such a prize possest;
But would endure, Orlando (such his debt)
A foot upon his prostrate neck should set.
LXVII
The three in silence journey to a font,
Where they alight, and halt beside the well;
His helmet here undid the weary Count,
And made the prince too quit the iron shell.
The youth unhelmed, she sees her lover's front,
And pale with sudden joy grows Isabel:
Then, changing, brightened like a humid flower,
When the warm sun succeeds to drenching shower. ”

“ Ariosto's Orlando Furioso was a revival of the old chivalrous romances in a new and elegant form, adapted to the conditions and taste of his times; a huge fresco, rather than an epic. As we shall see in the next chapter, comedy and tragedy had to wait nearly two hundred years after the death of Ariosto before finding worthy representatives in Alfieri and Goldoni. The regular epic, however, was given to Italy by Tasso at the end of the sixteenth century. ”

“ After this, the siege was continued, and the Christians were wholly successful. (See Orlando Innamorato.) —Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (1516) .
*** This romance in verse extends to forty-six cantos. Hoole, in his translation, has compressed the forty-six cantos into twenty-four books; but Rose has retained the original number. The adventures of Orlando, under the French form “Roland,” are related by Turpin in his Chronicle, and by Théroulde in his Chanson de Roland.
*** The true hero of Ariosto’s romance is Rogēro, and not Orlando. It is with Rogero’s victory over Rodomont that the poem ends. ”

“ Indeed, one who had not the keenest intellectual delight in the boldest enterprises, the most appalling dangers, and difficulties insurmountable except by magic intervention, would hardly have written "Orlando Furioso;" for in no work of imagination does the author more effectually dispossess himself of himself, and become for the time being the knight or the giant whose exploits he is celebrating.
After his victories, Alfonso, still anxious to conciliate the pope, proposed a second embassy to Rome ”

“ On his foe's forehead smote the Tartar knight,
He made him see, revolving in a ring,
Myriads of fiery balls and sparks of light.
The croupe, with head reversed, the Sarzan king
Now smote, as if deprived of all his might,
The stirrups lost; and in her sight, so well
Beloved, appeared about to quit the sell.
CIII
But as steel arbalest that's loaded sore,
By how much is the engine charged and strained,
By lever or by crane, with so much more
Fury returns, its ancient bent regained,
And, in discharging its destructive store,
Inflicts worse evil than itself sustained ”

“ Of all the works of Ariosto, the most solid monument of his fame is the Orlando Furioso, the extraordinary merits of which have cast into oblivion the numberless romance poems which inundated Italy during the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.
The popularity which an earlier poem on the same theme, Orlando Innamorato, by Boiardo, enjoyed in Ariosto’s time, cannot be well conceived, now that the enthusiasm of the crusades, and the interest which was attached to a war against the Moslems, have passed away. ”

“ Orlando's motions good Gradasso spies;
Nor at his coming is the king dismaid;
Who by his name the paladin defies:
With him, and both his partners in the fight,
He hopes to make it dark before 'tis night.
LXXXIII
Leaving his foe, he, facing Brava's lord,
Thrust at the collar of his shirt of mail,
All else beside the flesh the faulchion bored;
To pierce through which would every labour fail.
At the same time descends Orlando's sword,
(Where Balisarda bites no spells avail)
Shears helmet, cuirass, shield, and all below,
And cleaves whate'er it rakes with headlong blow ”

“ Ariosto’s great poem, the Orlando Furioso, is too generally known to require a long discussion of its merits. It is by universal consent the first of all poems of chivalry and romance. It is a wonderful creation of man’s imaginative powers, extending far beyond the limits of the natural world. But the poet in his wildest flights takes care not 101to fall into too palpable extravagance or absurdity. ”

“ Ascends into the blissful realms above.
XV
Orlando, albeit he should joy in heart
At death so holy, and is certified
That called to bliss above is Brandimart;
For he heaven opened to the knight described;
Through human wilfulness — which aye takes part
With our weak senses — hardly can abide
The loss of one, above a brother dear,
Nor can refrain from many a scalding tear.
XVI
Warlike Sobrino, of much blood bereaved,
Which from his flank and wounded visage rained,
Long since had fallen, reversed and sore aggrieved,
And had by now his vessels well nigh drained. ”

“ Was lord of Bayard and of Durindane.
Not knowing them, Anglantes' valiant knight
So highly rated not the plate and chain
As he that these had proved: they valour were,
But valued less as good than rich and fair;
XXIX
And, for of harness he had little need,
Charmed, and against all weapons fortified,
To Olivier he left the warlike weed:
Not so the sword; which to his waist he tied:
To Brandimart Orlando gave the steed:
Thus equally that spoil would he divide
With his companions twain, in equal share,
Who partners in that rich discovery were. ”

“ Youthful Zerbino sets at large the train;
He in defence of good Orlando's blade,
Is afterwards by Mandricardo slain.
Isabel weeps; by Rodomont is made
War on the Tartar king, and truce again,
To succour Agramant and his array;
Who to the lilies are well-nigh a prey.
I
Let him make haste his feet to disengage,
Nor lime his wings, whom Love has made a prize;
For love, in fine, is nought but phrensied rage,
By universal suffrage of the wise:
And albeit some may show themselves more sage
Than Roland, they but sin in other guise. ”

“ Orlando, furious and insensate wight,
Having torn off the arms and vest he wore,
And cast away from him his faulchion bright,
And up-torn trees, and made the forest hoar
And hollow cave resound, and rocky height,
Towards the noise some shepherds, on that side,
Their heavy sins or evil planets guide.
V
Viewing the madman's wonderous feats more near,
The frighted band of rustics turned and fled;
But they, in their disorder, knew not where,
As happens oftentimes in sudden dread.
The madman in a thought is in their rear,
Seizes a shepherd, and plucks off his head ”

“ It is from this point that Ariosto took up the thread of his story, and in consonance with the proverb that from love to madness there is but one step, he determined to make Orlando run mad with jealousy, on discovering that Angelica had eloped with a young and handsome, but obscure squire, of the name of Medoro, for whom she forgets all the objects of her journey to the west, and despises the sighs of Orlando and the other renowned paladins of Charlemagne’s court. Ariosto styled his poem “Orlando Furioso,” and he wrote it at first in forty cantos, which he afterwards increased to forty-six. ”

“ As much, or little less, would do the knight
By his own love, did not that damsel hide;
Because the wretch discerns not black from white,
And harms where he would help. A curse betide
The wonder-working ring, and eke the wight
Who gave it to that lady, full or pride!
Since Roland, but for this, would venge the scorn
He and a thousand more from her had borne.
LXXIV
Would that of her Orlando were possest,
And of all women that are above ground!
For one and all are ingrates at the best,
Nor is in all an ounce of goodness found. ”

“ The church so soon her champion should bewail;
The glancing stroke his courser's belly tore,
Outstretched on earth, from thence to rise no more.
LXXVII
To earth fall horse and rider: this the knight
Scarce touched; the other thundering pressed the plain:
For the first rose so ready and so light,
He from the fall seemed breath and force to gain.
As African Anteus, in the fight,
Rose from the sand with prouder might and main;
So when Orlando touched the ground, to view
He rose with doubled force and vigour new. ”

“ Both to behold thee, and to prove thy might;
And by the surcoat o'er thine arms I know,
(Instructed of thy vest) thou art the knight:
And if such cognizance thou didst not show,
And, 'mid a hundred, wert concealed from sight,
For what thou art thou plainly wouldst appear,
Thy worth conspicuous in thy haughty cheer."
LXXV
"No one can say," to him Orlando cried,
"But that a valiant cavalier thou art:
For such a brave desire can ill reside,
'Tis my assurance, in a humble heart. ”

“ King Agramant his sails for Africk bent:
His barks ill-armed and almost empty go;
Empty of men, but full of discontent,
In that three-fourths had perished by the foe.
As cruel some, as weak and proud some shent
Their king, and (as still happens in like woe)
All hate him privily; but, for they fear
His fury, in his presence mute appear.
LXXVI
Yet sometimes two or three their lips unclose,
— Some knot of friends, where each on each relies —
And their pent choler and their rage expose:
Yet Agramant beneath the illusion lies,
That each will love and pity overflows ”

“ Yet the father of Tasso, before his son had rivalled the romantic Ariosto, describes in a letter the effect of the "Orlando" on the people:—"There is no man of learning, no mechanic, no lad, no girl, no old man, who is satisfied to read the 'Orlando Furioso' once. This poem serves as the solace of the traveller, who fatigued on his journey deceives his lassitude by chanting some octaves of this poem. You may hear them sing these stanzas in the streets and in the fields every day." ”

“ But of all plays those forever and most intensely adored are the ones founded upon the episodes of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Night after night the successions of thrilling adventures proceed. Year after year the same dramas are presented, regardless of historic veracity or of the artistic unities ”

“ Save Roland could such mighty fear have done;
LXII
Knew him, because a page of honour he
Had been in France, and for the crown, his right
Upon his father's death, had crossed the sea
The year before. So often he the knight
Had seen, and had with him held colloquy,
Their times of meeting had been infinite.
He doffed his casque, with festive welcome pressed
Towards the count, and clasped him to the breast.
LXIII
Orlando is no less rejoined to see
The king, than is the king that champion true. ”