She pounds the precious plant between two stones,

Then, gathering the juice in her white hands,

She pours some in his wound, and some, which runs

Over his chest and belly, she extends,

Smoothing it to his very thighs. At length

His blood she staunches and revives his strength.2

The wounded boy is Medoro, who, with his friend Cloridano, had crept out from the pagan camp under cover of darkness to look for the body of their young king, Dardinello, and give him burial. His body and that of Cloridano lie beside him now and he will not depart with Angelica to the shepherd’s house until they have been buried.

In that humble home, where Angelica devotedly tends him, his beauty opens in her heart a wound which grows deeper as his own closes and heals. She is the daughter of the Great Khan, he is a common soldier. The irony of the situation is too much for the poet and he bursts out:

O Count Orlando, O Circassian,

Of what avail your prowess and your fame?

What price your honour, known to every man?

What good of all your long devotion came?

Show me one single favour, if you can,

What recompense, what kindness can you name,

What gratitude, what mercy has she shown

For sufferings for her sake undergone?

O Agricane, great and noble king,

If to our life on earth you were restored,

How you would suffer now, remembering

How cruelly your person she abhorred!

O Ferraù, o thousands I might sing,

Who vainly served that ingrate, and adored,

You would be stricken to the core, I vow,

To see her in those arms enfolded now!1

Angelica marries her soldier and sets off to Cathay with him, where, since her father and her brother are both dead, she will be queen and Medoro will be king – a fairy tale indeed, but whether or not they live happily ever after we are left to imagine for ourselves. They depart from the poem, glimpsed again only for a fleeting moment as Orlando in his frenzy pursues Angelica like a mad dog, without recognition on either side.2

So many pairs of lovers star this firmament that the reader is dazzled by the radiance they shed. Eros is omnipresent and, if not omnipotent, he inspires feelings that are forceful in the extreme. The intensity with which they are communicated reveals experience of life as well as verbal craftsmanship. Dalinda, with her foolish passion for Polinesso, expresses a physical ardour which bodes ill for her peace of mind as a nun in Denmark. Isabella, in total surrender to the charm and valour of Zerbino, is prepared to let members of her father’s household be killed in order to reach him, and all without remorse:

‘… I did not weep.

No maidenly regrets my transports marred.

The joy I felt I cannot now express,

So much I yearned my dear love to possess.’1

In her fidelity to Zerbino, Isabella is heroic; the manner of her resistance to Odorico when he tries to rape her is magnificent; her reunion with Zerbino is a memorable moment of tenderness and joy. These qualities of tenderness and heroism continue to be manifested by her to the very end, the pitiful end, of her story. She has the single-mindedness of an early Christian martyr.

King Norandino of Syria and his bride, Lucina, are another devoted couple, but they are drawn with less subtlety, perhaps even with an undercurrent of mockery. The author himself seems hardly to believe in them. They are, to tell the truth, rather stupid, but love binds them none the less heroically in their readiness to die for each other. Lucina’s inability to make good her escape from the den, after her husband has taken so much trouble to disguise them both as goats, fills the reader with much the same irritation as the failure of her near-namesake, Lucia, in Manzoni’s novel, to utter the few words that will make her Renzo’s wife.2

Doralice, the promised bride of Rodomonte, while on a journey to meet him, escorted by a militia and a train of attendants, is captured by the valorous Mandricardo. At first Doralice weeps, but, unlike Isabella, she soon succumbs to Mandricardo’s expert wooing and seductive charm:

She answers him more kindly and with grace,

His bold appraisal she no longer shuns,

Allows her eyes to linger on his face,

And with compassion kindles in response.

The pagan, who has felt the smarting trace

Of Cupid’s piercing arrow more than once,

Not only hopes, is sure, the damsel will

Not always be rebellious to his will.1

He is not mistaken; they spend that night together in a shepherd’s hut and from then on there is no further mention by Doralice of Rodomonte.

By comparison Bradamante and Ruggiero behave towards each other with almost Victorian propriety. It is true that after searching for each other for many months, when they meet at last,

Ruggiero clasps the lovely maiden to

His breast; from rosy pink her blushes spring

To crimson in her cheeks, and from her lips

The first sweets of a love so blest he sips.

The happy lovers, locked in an embrace, .

A thousand times each to the other pressed.

Their joy, depicted in their eyes and face,

Could scarcely be contained within their breast.2

But Bradamante, who has been well brought up, knows where to stop. She suggests that it is time for Ruggiero to present himself formally to her father; in the meantime he must be baptized.

Though love and duty contend in the breasts of the warriors, Christian and infidel alike, it is only Orlando who fails utterly to keep the balance. Rinaldo, though ardently desiring Angelica and bitterly resenting Charlemagne’s command to leave Paris (where he thinks she is) and sail immediately for Britain to raise troops, nevertheless obeys orders.3 True to his knightly vocation, he finds time also to rescue Ginevra, the Scottish princess, from a shameful and undeserved death. He is entirely successful in his military mission, as may be seen from the vast array of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish troops, as well as forces from Sweden, Norway, Thule and Iceland, who are mustered outside London, waiting to embark for Calais. His deployment of the armies outside the walls of Paris is masterly, and his speech of exhortation a model of its kind. The climax of his action in this battle is his encounter with Dardinello. The young African prince has just slain Lurcanio, whom his brother, Ariodante, is eager to avenge. The press of combatants, surging round them both, prevents their coming together. Dardinello’s death is deferred: Fortune has other plans. And here occurs one of Ariosto’s breath-taking interruptions. We see Rinaldo coming, his horse plunging through the fray to the fateful spot:

Fortune continually blocks the way,

Unwilling these two cavaliers should meet.

For one she has another plan that day,

And seldom does a man escape his fate.

See now Rinaldo turn and join the fray

And closer round the victim draw the net.

See now Rinaldo come, by Fortune led,

That Dardinel by him shall be struck dead.1

At that point, the action is held fixed in an eternal moment, like Paolo Uccello’s painting of the battle of San Romano; and we go to Damascus to continue the story of Grifone. After eighty-eight stanzas we return and the picture dissolves into mobility once more. We see Rinaldo, as we last saw him:

… on Baiard,

Against Prince Dardinello, spurring hard.2

Young Dardinello, courageous and undaunted, is no match for Rinaldo. His followers know it:

A shudder ran through all the pagan veins,

Chilling the very heart within each breast,

Soon as Rinaldo by the Saracens

Was seen to grasp Fusberta in his fist….1

Rinaldo scarcely feels Dardinello’s blow on his helmet.