Orlando Furioso

with a courtesan, who, showing less affection to Ippolito, was one day very earnestly importuned by him to know what moved her to prefer his brother before him; she answered, it was his beautiful eyes; upon which Ippolito ordered them to be thrust out; but the youth found means to preserve his sight, and, meeting with no redress, by making his complaint to the duke, he, and the other brother here mentioned, conspired to kill him; but, at the time of the execution, their hearts failed them, and the plot being discovered, they were kept in perpetual imprisonment.” ↩

Angelica, daughter of Galaphron of Cathay. For this and other thefts of Brunello, see Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato. ↩

The winged horse, and indeed everything in the Furioso even to the adventures, has been maintained to be allegorical. An Italian commentator, nearest to the time of Ariosto, pronounces this beast to be a type of Love, reasoning from his wings, his power of transporting man or woman, etc. The whimsical details of his parentage and education are given in stanzas XVIII and XIX. ↩

Ariosto is in general so correct in his localities, that I suppose he is right in this assertion, though I was unable to verify it in a mountain-tour which I once made in Tuscany. ↩

Agramant. ↩

The reader may be tempted to ask why he did not escape before; a thing which seemed as much in his power at one time as at another; but we must not be too jealous about consistencies where magic is concerned. ↩

These are all characters in the Innamorato; in which Iroldo and Prasildo are particularly distinguished by their friendship. ↩

King Arthur is known to every one as the founder of the round table. Galahalt was a son of Sir Launcelot, who was enamoured of Arthur’s wife, Ganor, or Gineura; but whose constancy to her was surprised by a princess, who, in consequence, gave birth to Galahalt. This knight achieved the quest of the sangreal, or real blood of Christ, as is related in the latter part of the Mort Arthur, where that fine old compilation of romances becomes mystical, Sir Gauvaine was more especially distinguished for his courtesy, and Sir Tristram for the same propensity as ir Launcelot, he being as faithfully attached to Yseult, the wife of King Mark of Cornwall, as Launcelot was to the wife of Arthur, King of Britain. ↩

In imitation of Arthur, the romancers attributed also a round table to Charlemagne. ↩

Alberto Lavezuola, commenting on this stanza, observes⁠—“It would not appear absolutely true that in other descriptions of animals, man excepted, the male does not sometimes war upon the female, and I have read in a worthy author of a he-bear having beat out the eye of a she-bear with his paw.” It is certain, however, that the savage beast is infinitely more generous on the point in question than the savage man; and Ariosto, in the latitude allowed to poets, seems to have sufficient grounds for his justification. ↩

The story of Geneura is familiar to every English reader as forming the plot of Much Ado About Nothing.

Shakespeare has been by some considered as indebted to Ariosto for this tale; but it is clear that he borrowed from a later transcript of it. I cannot trace it higher than the Italian poet, but should have little doubt that he derived it from some ancient novelist. ↩

The faltering voice and pale face are indications of passion sufficiently obvious and common; but I do not recollect any other author who has alluded to the last circumstance in this description⁠—that bitter, poisonous taste, which is sometimes created in the mouth by any painful and unexpected impression. ↩

Perhaps suggested by Juvenal (Sat. VIII l. 149):

“But this is all by night,” the hero cries.
“Yet the moon sees! Yet the stars stretch their eyes.”

Bohn’s Trans., p. 433.

↩

Much importance, during the middle ages, and those which immediately followed, was attached to colours, as emblematical of character or situation. Hence Ariodantes chooses black, and the hue of the “sear and yellow leaf,” as symbolical of his forlorn condition. ↩

In the original, Dazia; a name which is given to many northern countries. ↩

Translated from Dante’s

“Ove Ercole segnò li suoi riguardi.”

↩

“Arethusa was a nymph of Elis, daughter of Oceanus, and one of Diana’s attendants. As she returned one day from hunting, she sat near the Alpheus, and bathed in the stream. The god of the river was enamoured of her, and pursued her, when Arethusa, ready to sink under fatigue, prayed to Diana, who changed her into a fountain. Alpheus immediately mingled his streams with hers, and Diana opened a secret passage under the earth, and under the sea, where the waters of Arethusa disappeared, rising in the island of Ortygia, near Syracuse, in Sicily. The river Alpheus, too, followed her under the sea, and rose also in Ortygia; So that, as mythologists relate, whatever is thrown into the Alpheus in Elis, rises again, after some time, in the fountain of Arethusa near Syracuse.” ↩

For the beginning of the first stanza cited, the author is indebted to Dante. See his Inferno, canto XIII. Also where Rogero offers, if in his power, to compensate the myrtle for the injury he had inflicted, Ariosto has followed Dante, describing the same prodigy, in his thirteenth canto. ↩

Astolpho’s transformation into a tree is certainly an improvement of the story of Polydore in Virgil, which is ridiculous, if considered as a natural phenomenon. But magic gets rid of all difficulties.