VI: don't be a tree like me

Canto VI

It's almost time to get back to Ruggiero's adventures, but we're not out of Scotland yet. The first fifth of the canto revisits the end of the Ginevra/Polinesso/Rinaldo story from a new point of view: the mystery knight who turns out to be Ariodante, Ginevra's sweetheart, not dead after all.

He did throw himself off a cliff into the sea, but then changed his mind about the suicide. After swimming to safety, naturally his first question was whether Ginevra cried about his death; when he learned that she did, he decided he might have been wrong about her. That meant he would have to fight his brother Lucranio, who brought the charges against Ginevra; Ariodante couldn't let anyone else take on that fight, because no one else is as good at fighting as he is. Fortunately it all worked out well.

After Ariodante has revealed himself, the king rewards him by giving him Ginevra's hand in marriage, and Polinesso's former title of Duke. But what about Dalinda, who helped in the evil plot? It's clear that she meant well, so no problem. Having had enough of Scotland and of men, she decides to become a nun in Denmark.

Now, enough of courtroom drama: Ruggiero is still being propelled through the sky on a hippogriff. He's already left Europe and is somewhere “over the forbidden seas,” three thousand miles away. (Of our three main characters so far, Bradamante is the only one who's still on the continent.) Finally the hippogriff decides to land in a very nice place:

Mid cultivated plains and rounded hils,
Lush meadows, shadowed banks and sparkling rills,
Welcoming groves of laurel, cool and soft,
Of palm, and myrtle, fragrant and most sweet ….
In myriad lovely forms which twine aloft
A leafy shelter from the summer's heat ….
And every creature frolics without risk.

Ruggiero leashes the hippogriff to one of the myrtle trees and takes a much needed rest, until he notices that the animal has started freaking out and pulling on the rope, causing so much distress to the tree that the tree moans, shrieks, and finally speaks.

Where another writer might have just said a voice came from the tree, Ariosto describes the voice in inventive detail, first saying that it's like the rushing of air through a hollow log that's on fire, and then that it's actually sap that flows through the tree's bark and is converted into sound. But Ruggiero isn't interested in how this works and, after a brief double-take, he's not even all that surprised; he just apologizes to the tree for tying the unruly hippogriff to it, and asks if he can do anything to help.

The tree introduces itself as Astolfo, a French knight who is another one of Orlando's cousins. Returning from a long ocean adventure, he and Rinaldo and some others had run across the mysterious Alcina, who was standing on the shore fishing without a hook or net— fish just offer themselves up to her. You might think that that's someone you should hesitate to approach, but Astolfo is drawn in by her “courteous manner and disarming speech,” and also because, as he now admits, he tends to do things without thinking.

Alcina isn't just any magician; she's one of King Arthur's half-sisters, the one you haven't heard of, since Ariosto invented her. She's a lot like her famous sister Morgana le Fey, who in this version of the myth is purely evil, but they've got a third sister who's purely good, Logistilla (also original to Ariosto).

Astolfo doesn't know any of this yet and he follows Alcina onto what he thinks is a small island, where she promises to show him a “fish menagerie” and also a siren. But the island is really a whale, and he's quickly carried away with Alcina. She wastes no time in finding “ways of consoling” him, and by the time they get to her castle, he's far gone:

Alcina in great bliss now held me in
Her toils, and with a love insatiate
She burned, and I enamored was no less ….
Naught can I do but on her beauty stare.

But after two months she meets someone else, gets bored with Astolfo, and turns him into a tree, as she's done with her last thousand lovers (except for a few who are now animals or streams). In case this cautionary tale wasn't clear, Astolfo spells it out for Ruggiero: do not date this woman— not only for your own sake, but also for the poor guy before you, who will get turned into a rock as soon as she sees your pretty face.

Ruggiero thinks this is a very sad story (especially because Astolfo, being a tree, can no longer do “noble deeds which for a knight win fame”), and he agrees that he should under no circumstances go anywhere near Alcina. He asks how to get to the domain of the good sister, Logistilla, and he sets off that way on foot along with the hippogriff.

It's a difficult hilly path, especially since he's within sight of the solid gold city where Alcina lives and it looks very inviting; this seems to be an allegory about self-restraint. He's making a good effort, until he's ambushed by a huge mob of diverse monsters, “female or male or both”:

Some, human downwards from the neck, were seen
With cat or ape-like heads to be ill sorted ….
Some old and slow, some young, with urchin grins,
Some naked, and some clad in furs or skins ….
The monster who was captain of this crew,
His belly swollen and his lips distended,
Upon a turtle rode ….
On this side and on that were ruffians who
With kind solicitude on him attended;
For he was drunk …

They're not well armed or armored but there are a lot of them, and Ruggiero is having difficulty killing them all. He's actually carrying the magic shield that came with the hippogriff, which could just render the whole crew unconscious, but he feels it would be unfair to use “the aid of fraud.” Fortunately for everyone, the monsters suddenly stand aside as two beautiful young women appear from the golden city, in high style— extremely well dressed and riding on unicorns. He forgets all about Alcina and, “with a rosy blush upon his face,” follows them inside.

The golden city, much like Atlante's steel castle, is a perfect oasis of gardens, games, love and leisure. The young people there are kept in a permanently moony state by arrows from swarms of little Cupids who flutter around in the treetops. (Ruggiero, ask yourself why there are so many trees.) But our hero doesn't intend to stay there; he just observes, and follows the two young women as they lead the hippogriff away and replace it with a cool new horse bedecked with jewels.

They claim to need his help. Outside the city there's a bridge guarded by a monstrous giant fanged woman, Erifilla, who prevents people from crossing the bridge and also raids the garden from time to time; some of the monsters Ruggiero has just fought were her children. The women leave it at that without actually asking Ruggiero to do anything in particular, but he gets the idea and agrees to help them out:

I wear this coat of mail, not for the sake
Of conquest or of plunder, but that I
May honorably serve the good and true,
And, most of all, fair damsels such as you.

I imagine that somewhere behind him, a tree is swearing.

V: do right woman

(Edited a little because I misread the fight scene the first time.)
 
Canto V

Less complicated than previous installments, this canto tells a more or less self-contained story about the wronged princess Ginevra. It also has a moral lesson: some guys are just no good. Ariosto opens with a rant against the worst villains of all, men who hurt women:

No creatures on the earth ….
Are hostile to the females of their kind. …
The she-wolf and the wolf at peace appear;
The heifer from the bull has nought to fear. ….
What dreadful plague, what fury of despair
In our tormented bosoms now holds sway,
That wives and husbands constantly we hear
Wounding each other with the things they say? …
An outrage against Nature he commits
Who with his gentle helpmeet stoops to fight,
Or in her face a lovely woman hits ...

This is directed, a little oddly, at the two thugs from whom Rinaldo has rescued Dalinda— oddly since they're not domestic abusers, they're hired assassins, and even wolves are known to kill other wolves they're not married to.

Still, Dalinda certainly did have a terrible boyfriend. Hopelessly in love with Duke Polinesso, she's been using Ginevra's room for trysts with him. She describes the affair as a classic teenage disaster, misguided but so very hot:

For many months and days, joys not a few
We shared; in our delight, no amorous game
Was left untried, and, as our pleasure grew,
I seemed on fire with a consuming flame.
Blinded by love for him, I little knew
How much he feigned …

Polinesso tells her he's going to woo and marry the princess, but it's strictly business; they'll still have their secret love. Dalinda thinks that's just fine. But it's not in the cards anyway, as Ginevra already loves another. Polinesso, who had assumed he was irresistible, decides that if he can't have her then no one can, so he frames her for fornication— by convincing poor Dalinda to dress up as the princess at their next tryst. If this plot sounds familiar, it's because it was reused in Much Ado About Nothing.

Dalinda doesn't know the real point of the scheme; he tells her he's developed the hots for Ginevra and wants to role-play his fantasy just this once, so she does it to make him happy. The translator in her notes finds this willingness “not convincing,” but of course it is. Dalinda is a kid in love, they're making up their own rules. Maybe she thinks his fake-princess fetish is a lovable weakness that he was brave enough to admit to her, or maybe she thinks it's kind of fun; it's imaginable either way or both, and Polinesso's choice of such a non-innocent cover story shows him to be a very manipulative guy who understands what'll work with her.

Anyway, the charade works: Ginevra's beau Ariodante goes crazy with jealousy, runs away, and is later seen flinging himself into the sea. His brother Lurcanio accuses Ginevra, and volunteers to prove her guilt in a duel. (Trial by combat was still legal in some places in Ariosto's time, but just barely.) Rinaldo steps up to fight for her innocence, after hearing Dalinda's story— which Polinesso had tried to have her killed to cover up, in case there was any doubt that he is the worst boyfriend in the world.

Rinaldo shows up for the duel, but there's already someone else there to take Ginevra's side: a mystery knight, in generic armor with his face covered. The fight gets under way, but Rinaldo feels bad for Lurcanio (who's after all just a hothead acting on bad information), calls it to a halt, reveals the real story to everyone, and challenges Polinesso. Pretty much everyone in town hates Polinesso and is hoping that he's guilty, but they can't be sure without a duel. It's over soon: impaled on a lance, Polinesso briefly confesses and dies.

That's pretty much it, although there's a passing mention of Ginevra's father the King of Scotland, and her brother Zerbino (somewhere far away), which makes me think they may be important later on. By the way, the king was no help: despite being totally devoted to his daughter, he either couldn't or wouldn't change the anti-nookie law on her behalf— a law that even the monks thought was too prudish. The law isn't mentioned again, so I assume it's still on the books in Scotland to this day. Be careful there.

IV: fun and no fun

(updated below)
 
Canto IV
 
Sensing that some of his readers may have qualms about Bradamante's “kill the guy who's trying to rescue Ruggiero, so I can rescue him instead” plan (even though Ippolito would probably be OK with it), Ariosto explains that sometimes these things just have to be done; also, her intended victim Brunello is now described as a villainous trickster, although he doesn't seem to have done or even planned to do anything bad.

But the rationalizations are interrupted by a mysterious uproar from outside. Everyone's agog at someone on a winged horse passing overhead: the sorcerer from the steel castle. Ruggiero, Gradasso, and Pinabello's girlfriend aren't his only victims; he's been abducting young women from all over, causing a general panic, which Ariosto depicts not altogether seriously:

The wretched damsels he so terrifies

That any who are beautiful, or deem

They are (he takes whichever he can get),
Remain indoors until the sun has set.

Brunello and Bradamante agree to assault the castle together; he doesn't mention his magic ring, and she doesn't mention that she knows about it. Some travel ensues, with vivid descriptions of the mountain setting; we're supposed to be in the Pyrenees, although I don't know if the geography makes sense.

They're almost there, and as Bradamante gets ready to kill her companion, she finally succumbs to conscience and can't do it. Instead she just clocks him, ties him to a tree (why wasn't that the plan to begin with? Melissa seems to have gone right to murder as the first option), takes the ring, and sounds a challenge in front of the castle.

The sorcerer arrives, even more excessively powered than before: he's got an open book of spells with him, reading while he rides, to materialize all sorts of weapons. And we finally get a good look at his steed:

His horse was not a fiction, but instead

The offspring of a griffin and a mare.
Its plumage, forefeet, muzzle, wings and head

Like those of its paternal parent were.

The rest was from its dam inherited.

It's called a hippogriff. Such beasts, though rare,
In the Rhiphaean mountains, far beyond

The icy waters of the north, are found.

Since a griffin's head is just the head of a big eagle, the hippogriff really looks more like a bird (although with four legs) than a horse, but either way it's impressive. Unlike many of the horses, it doesn't get a name. Ariosto makes a point of saying it's not magical or mythological, just one of those rare animals you may have heard of from a place you haven't been to.

The sorcerer messes around half-attacking for a while, then unveils the beam of his magic shield; Bradamante's ring protects her, but she pretends to be knocked out, and seizes him when he approaches. That was easy. In fact, within a single verse, he's lost all his fearsome panache; he's revealed as a weak and sort of cute old man, and the story he tells her is the opposite of what you'd expect.

It's all about Ruggiero. The sorcerer, Atlante, was just trying to help the kid: a prophecy showed him coming to a bad end some day, so Atlante decided to put him in a steel castle to keep him absolutely safe. All the girls and the other knights were abducted to keep him company. They've been hanging out in a mellow but decadent party:

That they may stay contentedly confined,

I make their every need my sole concern.

From every quarter, joys of every kind:

Games, music, clothing, food, at every turn.

All pleasures, all amusements you will find

For which the lips can ask, the heart can yearn.

Defeated, Atlante begs for Bradamante to either put him out of his misery or let him keep Ruggiero. She refuses on both counts and tells him to free everyone. He does so, by breaking some smoking magic urns; instantly the whole castle disappears, and so does Atlante, leaving just the captives and the hippogriff standing in an empty field. (Ariosto here gets in another dig at shallow women, suggesting that the girls probably were sorry to leave the fancy castle.)

The lovers are reunited, but only briefly. It's a lovely, playful scene: Ruggiero walks through the valley with her, and in their happiness at being with each other, they start goofing around with the hippogriff, which is being cute and letting them almost catch it. Then Ruggiero does catch it— and suddenly he's a thousand feet up in the air, realizing he has no idea how to fly this thing. Bradamante helplessly watches him zoom off into the distance.

Cut to our other detoured traveler, Rinaldo, last seen trying to sail to England. His ship's been blown off course to Scotland— which, in Ariosto's imagination, is a savage but awesome place that's chock full of knights having adventures, even more so than France; Arthur et al. are name-dropped here briefly. Rinaldo tells the rest of the crew to keep sailing to England and he'll meet them there; this makes no sense, he's clearly just trying to avoid his mission, but they agree. He goes off riding randomly around Scotland in search of chivalrous kicks.

He doesn't have to look for long. Friendly monks tell him of an available quest: rescue the princess Ginevra, who's been unjustly condemned to die, because

The law of Scotland, harsh, severe, unjust,

Decrees that every woman who in love

Bestows herself (except in marriage) must

Be put to death …

The penalty is burning at the stake, unless a knight will defend her honor by single combat. Rinaldo doesn't have to think twice. He even ignores the monks' insistence that Ginevra is a good girl, and declares that he'd rescue her even if (or especially if) she had done the deed.

He justifies his position at length and from a somewhat confused point of view. First, he defends the right— nay, the duty— of girls to have sex, as a generous act of “solace” for their boyfriends. In fact, he'd like to reverse the law: “Death rather to such damsels as refuse.” But then he allows that passion should be mutual and that girls like it too; and then he's outraged at the unfairness of the law, because men get away with these things all the time.

Clearly Ariosto's notions of chivalry and Arthurian romance don't have much to do with the mores of the era he's writing about; he's a Renaissance man, so he's permissive one minute, judgmental the next, and often so drily satirical that you can't tell which is which. Shakespeare would certainly understand.

Anyway, the monks applaud his logic (just what goes on in Scottish monasteries?), and the next day Rinaldo and his new squire ride off toward Ginevra's city. The road goes through the woods— always a good place for meeting new characters, and sure enough, here's another damsel in distress, about to be killed by “two rough villains” who immediately run away. The girl isn't just frightened, she's terribly sad about something. Ariosto ends the canto literally as she opens her mouth to speak.

Update: I wrote this and the last one too hastily, and missed at least two things:
1. One of the prisoners freed from the steel castle was Sacripante. How'd he get there? Very recently he was fighting with Rinaldo and had a broken arm. It's a mystery or possibly a mistake.
2. The beginning of Melissa's endless prophecy in Canto III actually contains some important information: Ruggerio is doomed to be betrayed and killed at some point after having a son with Bradamante. The overprotective magician Atlante also foresaw something like this, so he probably really is doomed. Or if not, then Bradamante certainly thinks so by now.

II: fight and flight

Canto II

Ariosto reflects briefly on the unfairness of love, then returns to the fight where we left off. Rinaldo is on foot and Sacripante is on horseback, but the horse he's on used to be Rinaldo's and feels belatedly loyal to him; in a nice comedy bit, Sacripante

tries to urge it on: the horse stops dead.
He tugs the rein: it breaks into a trot;

Then suddenly it checks and ducks its head,
Arches its back and with its hoofs kicks out.

He finally realizes the horse is not an advantage and dismounts. In an intense high-speed swordfight, Rinaldo breaks Sacripante's sword and also his arm. Angelica, watching, realizes Rinaldo is winning and will go after her next, so she flees again.

She's not alone for long: here's a kindly old hermit, who happens to also be a magician. Angelica asks for help in getting out of France, preferably by sea. The hermit's well-intentioned but not directly helpful response is to conjure up a genie, which flies back to where the knights are still fighting vigorously (Sacripante is presumably fighting with his feet) and tells them they'd best run off the other way: Angelica is with Orlando, heading for Paris. (This is a lie, but we haven't really seen Orlando yet and have no idea where he is.) Rinaldo swears and gallops away— on his own horse, finally.

Speaking of the horse, Ariosto finally clarifies that Baiardo isn't as fickle as he seemed: he's actually been leading Rinaldo all over the place in an attempt to reunite him with Angelica. A smart horse, in fact so smart that he understands the genie's story; but a trusting horse, so he's fooled by it too.

Rinaldo gets to Paris, but before he can find out that Angelica was never there, Charlemagne reminds him that he's still supposed to be in the army and sends him on a mission to England. Next thing he knows, he's on a ship from Calais and it's caught in a terrible storm. And Ariosto once again points out his cliffhangery narrative methods:

But many threads are needed for my tale

And so, to weave my canvas as I please,
I'll leave Rinaldo and the plunging prow,
And turn to talk of Bradamante now.

We learn that the warrior maid is Rinaldo's sister (another character borrowed from Orlando Innamorato). No military glass ceiling here; Bradamante is famous and universally respected. And the love of her life— although they've only met once, and they're on opposite sides of the war— is our other top-billed hero, Ruggiero.

After humiliating Sacripante in Canto I (he “kissed our ancient mother,” i.e. the dirt), she's on her way to nowhere in particular, when she meets a weeping knight by a creek: Pinabello. Unlike the previous sad knight, this one seems to be a decent guy. He tells her his story, and it's a good one.

Pinabello's girlfriend has been abruptly abducted by someone on a flying horse. He follows them to a rocky valley, surrounding an unclimbable spire, upon which is a huge castle all made of steel:

From far away it seemed to glow like flame.
No glaze, no marble, has such radiance.
When nearer to the shining work I came

And saw the marvel of its walls, at once

I knew that demon masons of ill fame

With incense, exhalations and weird chants

Had clad the castle walls with finest steel,
Forged in the fires and cooled in streams of Hell.

And he's not the only adventurer on the scene: Ruggiero and another knight, Gradasso, guided by an anonymous dwarf, are also on the trail of the aerial bandit,

the castle's owner, who,
Clad in full armour, travels through the sky
Aboard a bird-like quadruped, a new,
Unheard-of means of transport.

These two promise to rescue the lady, and Pinabello watches from a safe distance (hmm, maybe not such a nice guy after all) as they ride toward the castle and engage its owner. The villain has an effective fighting technique based on diving from a great height and smashing them into the ground again and again, but eventually he gets bored with this and unveils his secret weapon: a magic shield that knocks everyone unconscious with a beam of light. When Pinabello recovers, he's alone.

(Ariosto pauses during the fight scene for another authorial aside: “This is the truth: I added not one jot …. Here fiction is less marvelous than fact.” I imagine Ippolito's jaw dropping as he realizes: It's all true?! So the part about me being descended from Ruggiero and being the coolest guy ever is also true! He hands Ariosto another well-earned sack of gold.)

Back to the present: Bradamante is moved by the story and vows to help, hoping to rescue Ruggiero at the same time. But, as we're now informed, Pinabello is well known by everyone except her (and presumably his girlfriend) to be a treacherous schmuck. When he learns that she's been assigned to the army defending Marseilles, and is therefore an ally of a noble house that he has a grudge against, he decides to betray her somehow as soon as possible.

Distracted by scheming, Pinabello forgets where they're going and gets them lost in the woods. But he spots a cave leading to a deep dark hole, and evil inspiration strikes: telling Bradamante that he thinks he sees a helpless princess trapped in the cave, he gets her to climb part way in, then drops her into the pit. End-of-canto cliffhangers (or cave-floor-hangers) are definitely a regular feature, but this one feels less arbitrary than some: hero loses consciousness, fade to black.

I: horse trading

Canto I

Of ladies, cavaliers, of love and war,
Of courtesies and of brave deeds I sing ….

The wit to reach the end is all I ask.

Ariosto introduces the story's setting, the war between Emperor Charlemagne and the Saracens 700 years earlier. He dedicates the poem to his patron, Ippolito, claiming that the hero Ruggiero is one of Ippolito's superhuman ancestors. Ruggiero who? Never mind for now. First we hear a bit about the other hero, the one the book is named after, although he's not doing anything yet.

Orlando has just joined Charlemagne's army, bringing with him the object of his affection, Angelica. She's also caught the eye of Orlando's cousin Rinaldo, so to forestall trouble and get the boys' minds back on the war, the Emperor has taken Angelica off their hands and offered her in marriage to one of his allies. But Angelica has no use for any of these three guys, and the first thing we see her do is run away on a horse, with no particular plan.

This has all flashed by in a few verses, and one might wonder who the hell Orlando and Angelica and Ruggiero are. I turn to the introduction and learn that Orlando (a.k.a. Roland) was a familiar character from French and Italian romances from way back, a somewhat generic hero whose main personality traits were recklessness and romantic obsession, based loosely on a real guy who fought for the Franks. He'd most recently figured in Orlando Innamorato, by Boiardo, which also introduced Angelica— the daughter of the Great Khan of Cathay (China, or more generally, “somewhere east of here”)— and Ruggiero, a knight in the Muslim armies. Ariosto has borrowed his three main protagonists from Boiardo's earlier epic. Interestingly, two of them are from the “wrong” side, i.e. the Saracens or their various allies, whom Ariosto describes indiscriminately as “pagans.”

Anyway, immediately after escaping, Angelica meets a knight who has misplaced his horse. Bad luck: it's Rinaldo. She flees into the woods and meets a second, unfamiliar knight, Ferráu. This one is currently occupied with trying to retrieve his helmet which he's dropped in a creek, but he's interrupted by Rinaldo. Since Ferráu is a “pagan,” they fight briefly, until Rinaldo points out that the pretty girl is getting away; they team up (both on Ferráu's horse) to go after her:

O noble chivalry of knights of yore!

Here were two rivals, of opposed belief ….

Yet to each other no resentment bore.

Never mind that “knights” and “chivalry” were unknown concepts in eighth-century Europe, and that a Frank and a Saracen would probably not have made nice like this; Ariosto is trying to convey an ideal, and for him chivalry means the non-ideological coolness of the good old days, when even the enemy could be a good guy.

They start scouting the woods, but Ferráu can't resist trying one more time to get that damn helmet out of the water. Here's one of the many instances where Ariosto switches suddenly from fast-paced adventure to carefully observed realistic action, usually for comic effect, as the knight tries using a branch—

Which delicately in the stream he dipped,

Poking with care in every nook and hole,

Although with patience he was ill-equipped.

Boredom at last began to try his soul …

But he's interrupted again, this time by the ghost of the knight whose helmet it used to be, or at least his upper half, rising out of the stream. The ghost curses Ferráu out for a while, and then tells him there's a much cooler and more appropriate helmet out there somewhere— and Orlando has it. Ferráu is so impressed that he vows to give up wearing helmets until he can find Orlando and get his. Pretty girls are all well and good, but helmet quests are serious business, so he rides off. Shortest team-up ever.

Rinaldo is now horseless again; the horse appears briefly in the distance, ignoring him. He is not a happy man.

Angelica wanders through the woods, which are beautifully described:

Where flowering thorn with the vermilion red

Of roses is made gay, glassed in the brook,

With shady oak-trees arching overhead.

In its recess, as she draws near to look,

She finds a sheltered space, untenanted,

Branches and leaves together so entwine,

No sunlight can within directly shine.

But here's another knight! A sad one— “the cavalier of grief,” lamenting to himself about his hopeless love. This is Sacripante, king of Circassia, another of Charlemagne's opponents. Angelica recognizes him from back home, and the girl he's been pining over is her. She's got stalkers everywhere.

Although Angelica has no intention of getting together with Stalkerpants, she rather coldly decides to play on his feelings, since she could use some help in whatever it is she's trying to do. But her vamping is too successful: the king thinks he's going to get lucky right there in the woods. Fortunately he hears a noise and runs off to investigate (he wasn't well prepared to commit sexual assault anyway, since “he always wears full armor”).

The noise is from an unknown knight in white. Without a word, the two start fighting on horseback, and then playing chicken— which goes badly for Sacripante when their horses collide head to head, and his instantly dies and falls on him. The white knight does a victory lap and departs.

Sacripante crawls out from under his ex-horse, horribly embarrassed. Angelica tries to soothe his pride by pointing out that the white knight left the field first and therefore, in a way, lost. He's ready to accept this, until a messenger appears, sent to inform him that he was in fact defeated by a woman. The white knight was the warrior maid Bradamante; more about her later.

This shame-o-gram has the intended effect: the mortified king “knows neither what to say nor what to do.” So he rides off aimlessly with Angelica (both on her horse), trying to forget all about it.

They meet a solo horse: the one Rinaldo was chasing, named Baiardo, no relation to Boiardo. (Horses are prominent characters here; there's a list of their names in the introduction.) Notable for his leaping skills and his cool gold harness, this fickle beast seems to have ditched his owner without a second thought, but he recognizes Angelica and likes her, as everyone always does. So now she and the cavalier of horny grief both have horses. And just in time, since here comes Rinaldo, jogging miserably over hill and dale in his clanking armor, in the tireless hope of one day having both a horse and a girlfriend.

Ariosto chooses this point to provide more background for these two, and it turns out that this particular one-sided love story is less random than the rest. Some time ago, Rinaldo and Angelica accidentally drank from two magic springs; unfortunately, his was a love potion and hers was a hate potion.

Back to the present: as Rinaldo very gradually approaches, Angelica feels that this would be a good time to move on, but Sacripante feels a need to fight someone and not lose. As he prepares to attack this (to him) totally random person, he reminds Angelica of the many great victories he had prior to getting thrashed by Bradamante, including

the night when I, alone and nude,

King Agrican and all the field withstood

—but alas, that's all we hear about that intriguing scene.

Ariosto ends the canto on this cliffhanger, telling the boss that he'll have to wait till the next installment to find out what happens. Despite having described his patron as the smartest and most awesome guy in the world, whenever he addresses Ippolito directly I get the feeling that he regards him as an excitable six-year-old kid. Actually, there's also something about the storytelling so far that reminds me of such a kid— a feeling of breathless improvisation: there's a girl and she sees a knight and he lost his horse and then he meets another knight and they have a fight and there's a ghost with a helmet and then the girl meets the… and so on. If Ariosto knew about dinosaurs, surely one would pop up at any moment, and two pages later it would be gone.