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.

III: the magic cave of ass-kissing

Canto III

In the longest authorial aside so far, Ariosto asks for divine inspiration to help him do his story justice. Although he and his heroes are nominally Christian, it's the Renaissance, so he'll take whatever kind of divinity he can get: Phoebus Apollo for instance. The poet is on a prophetic mission to tell the world about the great race of heroes who happen to be his patron's ancestors. (Ippolito thinks: I knew we were awesome, but I had no idea we were that awesome.)

Back to Bradamante, lying stunned in a cave. Pinabello is sure he's killed her and he departs, stealing her horse; Ariosto assures us that he'll come to a bad end.

But it's not just a cave; there's a passage to a new fantastic setting:

A spacious room, it seemed like a revered
And hallowed church, much sanctified by prayer,
And by the skill of architecture reared

On alabaster columns choice and rare;
And at the very central point appeared

An altar where a lamp burned bright and fair.

She's met by a woman in plain dress (in contrast to the imaginary lady of “fair aspect and … costly gown” that Pinabello claimed to have seen in the cave)— Melissa, although her name isn't given for a while— who greets her by name and introduces what sounds like a crazy new layer to the story:

… I had recognizance
Of your predestined journey to this shrine,
For Merlin said, in a prophetic trance …

Yes, Merlin. This is an Arthurian romance, sort of. Merlin however does not not appear, since the legend requires him to stay sleeping in living death in his cave (here relocated to France):

His spirit with his corpse will ever dwell
Until the trumpet on the Day of Doom

Shall summon it to Heaven or to Hell,
When a dove's form, or raven's, it assume.
Alive, too, is his voice. Clear as a bell
You'll hear it issue from the marble tomb …

The prophecy, introduced in Merlin's voice and continued by Melissa (who's in effect his intern), goes on for 42 verses— more than half of this canto. However, it's not really the cool magic subplot you might be hoping for. It consists entirely of a list of the illustrious men who will be Bradamante's and Ruggiero's descendants for the next 700 years, and a summary of the great deeds they'll do… leading up of course to Ippolito, whose greatest deed was paying for the poem.

(The translator's introduction clarifies that Ippolito was not so much the harmless rich dim bulb I've imagined him as, but more of an insanely well-connected (appointed as archbishop at age 18) horrible thug, who once was so annoyed by a lady liking his brother more than him that he had one of the brother's eyes put out. Ariosto even mentions some of his victims in this scene, vaguely, just to say that they deserved it.)

It's just pandering filler; there's not enough space to make these hundreds of non-characters interesting, and Ariosto describes their deeds so briefly that he must have assumed Ippolito either knew all those stories or didn't really care. But the fantasy setup of the scene is still striking, full of evocative visuals, and an interestingly ambiguous attitude toward “good” magic, as Melissa conjures up a huge crowd of semi-demonic spirits to illustrate her story: they fill the room ominously, pressing up against her protective circle, even as they're playing the roles of history's greatest heroes. The rest of the scene can't live up to that, although in its sheer length and hyperbole, it's got to be one of the most audacious feats of brown-nosing in literary history.

Finally concluding this commercial interlude, Melissa returns to the subject at hand: rescuing Ruggiero from the steel castle and its sorcerous ruler. To get past the dazzling shield and other hazards, Bradamante will need a particular magic ring. It has two powers: protecting against all spells when it's worn, and making you invisible when it's held in your mouth.

Melissa hasn't got the ring. It's with a Saracen knight, Brunello, who happens to be going the same way and for basically the same reason: he's off to rescue Ruggiero, sent by King Agramante of the Moors (word certainly travels fast). But, Melissa explains, this won't do, since Brunello's not really up to the task and also he's ugly. So here's what to do: pretend to team up with him, then kill him and swipe the ring. We seem to have left chivalry behind for now.

Bradamante finds Brunello at an inn and, as they start to negotiate with mutual wariness and she waits for the right moment to stab him in the back, there's a loud noise. What is it? Tune in tomorrow.