Chapter LXXXIV: Intitled "the Rending in Sunder." Revealed at Mecca (3)

In the Italian Renaissance there is a curious mingling of classical and romantic influences, and the generation which gave itself up passionately to the study of Greek and Latin still read with delight the stories of the Paladins of Charlemagne and the Knights of the Round Table. What Sir Thomas Malory had done in English prose, Boiardo did in Latin poetry. When Ariosto entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito, every one was reading the 'Orlando Innamorato,' and the young poet soon fell under the charm of these stories; so that when the inward impulse which all great poets feel toward the work of creation came to him, he took the material already at hand and continued the story of 'Orlando.' With a certain skill and inventiveness, Boiardo had mingled together the epic cycles of Arthur and Charlemagne. He had shown the Saracen host under King Agramante driving the army of Charlemagne before them, until the Christians had finally been shut up within the walls of Paris. It was at this critical moment in his poem that Boiardo died. Ariosto took up the story where he had left it, and carried it on until the final defeat of Agramante, and his death at the hands of Orlando in the desert island.

But we must not think that the 'Orlando Furioso' has one definite plot. At first reading we are confused by the multiplicity of incident, by the constant change of scene, and by the breaking off of one story to make place for another. In a single canto the scene changes from France to Africa, and by means of winged horses tremendous distances are traveled over in a day. On closer examination we find that this confusion is only apparent. The poet himself is never confused, but with sure hand he manipulates the many-colored threads which are wrought into the fabric of the poem. The war between the Saracens and the Christians is a sort of background or stage; a rallying point for the characters. In reality it attracts but slightly our attention or interest. Again, Orlando's love for Angelica, and his madness,--although the latter gave the title to the book, and both afford some of the finest episodes,--have no organic connection with the whole. The real subject, if any there be, is the loves of Ruggiero and Bradamante. These are the supposed ancestors of the house of Este, and it is with their final union, after many vicissitudes, that the poem ends.

But the real purpose of Ariosto was to amuse the reader by countless stories of romantic adventure. It was not as a great creative genius, as the inventor of new characters, as the earnest and philosophical reformer, that he appears to mankind, but as the supreme artist. Ariosto represents in its highest development that love for form, that perfection of style, which is characteristic of the Latin races as distinguished from the Teutonic. It is this that makes the 'Orlando Furioso' the great epic of the Renaissance, and that caused Galileo to bestow upon the poet the epithet "divine."

For nearly thirty years Ariosto changed and polished these lines, so that the edition of 1532 is quite different from that of 1516. The stanzas in which the poem is written are smooth and musical, the language is so chosen as always to express the exact shade of thought, the interest never flags. What seems the arbitrary breaking off of a story before its close is really the art of the poet; for he knows, were each episode to be told by itself, we should have only a string of _novelle_, and not the picture he desired to paint,--that of the world of chivalry, with its knights-errant in search of adventures, its damsels in distress, its beautiful gardens and lordly palaces, its hermits and magicians, its hippogriffs and dragons, and all the paraphernalia of magic art.

Ariosto's treatment of chivalry is peculiar to himself. Spenser in the sixteenth century, and Lord Tennyson in our own day, pictured its virtues and noble aspirations. In his immortal 'Don Quixote,' Cervantes held its extravagances up to ridicule. In Ariosto's day no one believed any longer in the heroes or the ideals of chivalry, nor did the poet himself; hence there is an air of unreality about the poem. The figures that pass before us, although they have certain characteristics of their own, are not real beings, but those that dwell in a land of fancy. As the poet tells these stories of a bygone age, a smile of irony plays upon his face; he cannot take them seriously; and while he never goes so far as to turn into ridicule the ideals of chivalry, yet, in such episodes as the prodigious exploits of Rodomonte within the walls of Paris, and the voyage of Astolfo to the moon, he does approach dangerously near to the burlesque.

We are not inspired by large and noble thoughts in reading the 'Orlando Furioso.' We are not deeply stirred by pity or terror. No lofty principles are inculcated. Even the pathetic scenes, such as the death of Zerbino and Isabella, stir no real emotion in us, but we experience a sense of the artistic effect of a poetic death.

It is not often, in these days of the making of many books of which there is no end, that one has time to read a poem which is longer than the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey' together. But there is a compelling charm about the 'Orlando,' and he who sits down to read it with serious purpose will soon find himself under the spell of an attraction which comes from unflagging interest and from perfection of style and construction. No translation can convey an adequate sense of this beauty of color and form; but the versions of William Stewart Rose, here cited, suggest the energy, invention, and intensity of the epic.

In 1532 Ariosto published his final edition of the poem, now enlarged to forty-six cantos, and retouched from beginning to end. He died not long afterward, in 1533, and was buried in the church of San Benedetto, where a magnificent monument marks his resting-place.

THE FRIENDSHIP OF MEDORO AND CLORIDANE

From 'Orlando Furioso,' Cantos 18 and 19

Two Moors among the Paynim army were,
From stock obscure in Ptolomita grown;
Of whom the story, an example rare
Of constant love, is worthy to be known.
Medore and Cloridane were named the pair;
Who, whether Fortune pleased to smile or frown,
Served Dardinello with fidelity,
And late with him to France had crost the sea.

Of nimble frame and strong was Cloridane,
Throughout his life a follower of the chase.
A cheek of white, suffused with crimson grain,
Medoro had, in youth, a pleasing grace;
Nor bound on that emprize, 'mid all the train,
Was there a fairer or more jocund face.
Crisp hair he had of gold, and jet-black eyes;
And seemed an angel lighted from the skies.

These two were posted on a rampart's height,
With more to guard the encampment from surprise,
When 'mid the equal intervals, at night,
Medoro gazed on heaven with sleepy eyes.
In all his talk, the stripling, woeful wight,
Here cannot choose, but of his lord devise,
The royal Dardinel; and evermore
Him left unhonored on the field, deplore.

Then, turning to his mate, cries, "Cloridane,
I cannot tell thee what a cause of woe
It is to me, my lord upon the plain
Should lie, unworthy food for wolf or crow!
Thinking how still to me he was humane,
Meseems, if in his honor I forego
This life of mine, for favors so immense
I shall but make a feeble recompense.

"That he may not lack sepulture, will I
Go forth, and seek him out among the slain;
And haply God may will that none shall spy
Where Charles's camp lies hushed. Do thou remain;
That, if my death be written in the sky,
Thou may'st the deed be able to explain.
So that if Fortune foil so far a feat,
The world, through Fame, my loving heart may weet."

Amazed was Cloridane a child should show
Such heart, such love, and such fair loyalty;
And fain would make the youth his thought forego,
Whom he held passing dear: but fruitlessly
Would move his steadfast purpose; for such woe
Will neither comforted nor altered be.
Medoro is disposed to meet his doom,
Or to inclose his master in the tomb.

Seeing that naught would bend him, naught would move,
"I too will go," was Cloridane's reply:
"In such a glorious act myself will prove;
As well such famous death I covet, I.
What other thing is left me, here above,
Deprived of thee, Medoro mine? To die
With thee in arms is better, on the plain,
Than afterwards of grief, shouldst thou be slain."

And thus resolved, disposing in their place
Their guard's relief, depart the youthful pair,
Leave fosse and palisade, and in small space
Are among ours, who watch with little care;
Who, for they little fear the Paynim race,
Slumber with fires extinguished everywhere.
'Mid carriages and arms they lie supine,
Up to the eyes immersed in sleep and wine.

A moment Cloridano stopt, and cried,
"Not to be lost are opportunities.
This troop, by whom my master's blood was shed,
Medoro, ought not I to sacrifice?
Do thou, lest any one this way be led,
Watch everywhere about, with ears and eyes;
For a wide way, amid the hostile horde,
I offer here to make thee with my sword."

So said he, and his talk cut quickly short,
Coming where learned Alpheus slumbered nigh;
Who had the year before sought Charles's court,
In med'cine, magic, and astrology
Well versed: but now in art found small support,
Or rather found that it was all a lie.
He had foreseen that he his long-drawn life
Should finish on the bosom of his wife.

And now the Saracen with wary view
Had pierced his weasand with the pointed sword.
Four others he near that Diviner slew,
Nor gave the wretches time to say a word.
Sir Turpin in his story tells not who,
And Time has of their names effaced record.
Palidon of Moncalier next he speeds;
One who securely sleeps between two steeds.

* * * * *

Rearing th' insidious blade, the pair are near
The place where round King Charles's pavilion
Are tented warlike paladin and peer,
Guarding the side that each is camped upon,
When in good time the Paynims backward steer,
And sheathe their swords, the impious slaughter done;
Deeming impossible, in such a number,
But they must light on one who does not slumber.

And though they might escape well charged with prey,
To save themselves they think sufficient gain.
Thither by what he deems the safest way
(Medoro following him) went Cloridane
Where in the field, 'mid bow and falchion lay,
And shield and spear, in pool of purple stain,
Wealthy and poor, the king and vassal's corse,
And overthrown the rider and his horse.

* * * * *

The silvery splendor glistened yet more clear,
There where renowned Almontes's son lay dead.
Faithful Medoro mourned his master dear,
Who well agnized the quartering white and red,
With visage bathed in many a bitter tear
(For he a rill from either eyelid shed),
And piteous act and moan, that might have whist
The winds, his melancholy plaint to list;

But with a voice supprest--not that he aught
Regards if any one the noise should hear,
Because he of his life takes any thought,
Of which loathed burden he would fain be clear;
But lest his being heard should bring to naught
The pious purpose which has brought them here--
The youths the king upon their shoulders stowed;
And so between themselves divide the load.

Hurrying their steps, they hastened, as they might,
Under the cherished burden they conveyed;
And now approaching was the lord of light,
To sweep from heaven the stars, from earth the shade,
When good Zerbino, he whose valiant sprite
Was ne'er in time of need by sleep down-weighed,
From chasing Moors all night, his homeward way
Was taking to the camp at dawn of day.

He has with him some horsemen in his train,
That from afar the two companions spy.
Expecting thus some spoil or prize to gain,
They, every one, toward that quarter hie.
"Brother, behoves us," cried young Cloridane,
"To cast away the load we bear, and fly;
For 'twere a foolish thought (might well be said)
To lose _two_ living men, to save _one_ dead;"

And dropt the burden, weening his Medore
Had done the same by it, upon his side;
But that poor boy, who loved his master more,
His shoulders to the weight alone applied:
Cloridane hurrying with all haste before,
Deeming him close behind him or beside;
Who, did he know his danger, him to save
A thousand deaths, instead of one, would brave.

* * * * *

The closest path, amid the forest gray,
To save himself, pursued the youth forlorn;
But all his schemes were marred by the delay
Of that sore weight upon his shoulders borne.
The place he knew not, and mistook the way,
And hid himself again in sheltering thorn.
Secure and distant was his mate, that through
The greenwood shade with lighter shoulders flew.

So far was Cloridane advanced before,
He heard the boy no longer in the wind;
But when he marked the absence of Medore,
It seemed as if his heart was left behind.
"Ah! how was I so negligent," (the Moor
Exclaimed) "so far beside myself, and blind,
That, I, Medoro, should without thee fare,
Nor know when I deserted thee or where?"

So saying, in the wood he disappears,
Plunging into the maze with hurried pace;
And thither, whence he lately issued, steers,
And, desperate, of death returns in trace.
Cries and the tread of steeds this while he hears,
And word and threat of foeman, as in chase;
Lastly Medoro by his voice is known,
Disarmed, on foot, 'mid many horse, alone.

A hundred horsemen who the youth surround,
Zerbino leads, and bids his followers seize
The stripling; like a top the boy turns round
And keeps him as he can: among the trees,
Behind oak, elm, beech, ash, he takes his ground,
Nor from the cherished load his shoulders frees.
Wearied, at length, the burden he bestowed
Upon the grass, and stalked about his load.

As in her rocky cavern the she-bear,
With whom close warfare Alpine hunters wage,
Uncertain hangs about her shaggy care,
And growls in mingled sound of love and rage,
To unsheath her claws, and blood her tushes bare,
Would natural hate and wrath the beast engage;
Love softens her, and bids from strife retire,
And for her offspring watch, amid her ire.

Cloridane, who to aid him knows not how,
And with Medoro willingly would die,
But who would not for death this being forego,
Until more foes than one should lifeless lie,
Ambushed, his sharpest arrow to his bow
Fits, and directs it with so true an eye,
The feathered weapon bores a Scotchman's brain,
And lays the warrior dead upon the plain.

Together, all the others of the band
Turned thither, whence was shot the murderous reed;
Meanwhile he launched another from his stand,
That a new foe might by the weapon bleed,
Whom (while he made of _this_ and _that_ demand,
And loudly questioned who had done the deed)
The arrow reached--transfixed the wretch's throat
And cut his question short in middle note.

Zerbino, captain of those horse, no more
Can at the piteous sight his wrath refrain;
In furious heat he springs, upon Medore,
Exclaiming, "Thou of this shalt bear the pain."
One hand he in his locks of golden ore
Enwreaths, and drags him to himself amain;
But as his eyes that beauteous face survey,
Takes pity on the boy, and does not slay.

To him the stripling turns, with suppliant cry,
And, "By thy God, sir knight," exclaims, "I pray,
Be not so passing cruel, nor deny
That I in earth my honored king may lay:
No other grace I supplicate, nor I
This for the love of life, believe me, say.
So much, no longer, space of life I crave,
As may suffice to give my lord a grave.

"And if you needs must feed the beast and bird,
Like Theban Creon, let their worst be done
Upon these limbs; so that by me interred
In earth be those of good Almontes's son."
Medoro thus his suit, with grace, preferred,
And words to move a mountain; and so won
Upon Zerbino's mood, to kindness turned,
With love and pity he all over burned.

This while, a churlish horseman of the band,
Who little deference for his lord confest,
His lance uplifting, wounded overhand
The unhappy suppliant in his dainty breast.
Zerbino, who the cruel action scanned,
Was deeply stirred, the rather that, opprest,
And livid with the blow the churl had sped,
Medoro fell as he was wholly dead.

* * * * *

The Scots pursue their chief, who pricks before,
Through the deep wood, inspired by high disdain,
When he has left the one and the other Moor,
_This_ dead, _that_ scarce alive, upon the plain.
There for a mighty space lay young Medore,
Spouting his life-blood from so large a vein
He would have perished, but that thither made
A stranger, as it chanced, who lent him aid.

THE SAVING OF MEDORO

From 'Orlando Furioso,' Canto 19

By chance arrived a damsel at the place,
Who was (though mean and rustic was her wear)
Of royal presence and of beauteous face,
And lofty manners, sagely debonnair.
Her have I left unsung so long a space,
That you will hardly recognize the fair
Angelica: in her (if known not) scan
The lofty daughter of Catay's great khan.

Angelica, when she had won again
The ring Brunello had from her conveyed,
So waxed in stubborn pride and haught disdain,
She seemed to scorn this ample world, and strayed
Alone, and held as cheap each living swain,
Although amid the best by fame arrayed;
Nor brooked she to remember a gallant
In Count Orlando or King Sacripant:

And above every other deed repented,
That good Rinaldo she had loved of yore;
And that to look so low she had consented,
(As by such choice dishonored) grieved her sore.
Love, hearing this, such arrogance resented,
And would the damsel's pride endure no more.
Where young Medoro lay he took his stand,
And waited her, with bow and shaft in hand.

When fair Angelica the stripling spies,
Nigh hurt to death in that disastrous fray,
Who for his king, that there unsheltered lies,
More sad than for his own misfortune lay,
She feels new pity in her bosom rise,
Which makes its entry in unwonted way.
Touched was her naughty heart, once hard and curst,
And more when he his piteous tale rehearsed.

And calling back to memory her art,
For she in Ind had learned chirurgery,
(Since it appears such studies in that part
Worthy of praise and fame are held to be,
And, as an heirloom, sires to sons impart,
With little aid of books, the mystery,)
Disposed herself to work with simples' juice,
Till she in him should healthier life produce.

And recollects an herb had caught her sight
In passing thither, on a pleasant plain:
What (whether dittany or pancy hight)
I know not; fraught with virtue to restrain
The crimson blood forth-welling, and of might
To sheathe each perilous and piercing pain.
She found it near, and having pulled the weed,
Returned to seek Medoro on the mead.

Returning, she upon a swain did light,
Who was on horseback passing through the wood.
Strayed from the lowing herd, the rustic wight
A heifer missing for two days pursued.
Him she with her conducted, where the might
Of the faint youth was ebbing with his blood:
Which had the ground about so deeply dyed
Life was nigh wasted with the gushing tide.

Angelica alights upon the ground,
And he, her rustic comrade, at her best.
She hastened 'twixt two stones the herb to pound,
Then took it, and the healing juice exprest:
With this did she foment the stripling's wound,
And even to the hips, his waist and breast;
And (with such virtue was the salve endued)
It stanched his life-blood, and his strength renewed.

And into him infused such force again,
That he could mount the horse the swain conveyed;
But good Medoro would not leave the plain
Till he in earth had seen his master laid.
He, with the monarch, buried Cloridane,
And after followed whither pleased the maid.
Who was to stay with him, by pity led,
Beneath the courteous shepherd's humble shed.

Nor would the damsel quit the lowly pile
(So she esteemed the youth) till he was sound;
Such pity first she felt, when him erewhile
She saw outstretched and bleeding on the ground.
Touched by his mien and manners next, a file
She felt corrode her heart with secret wound;
She felt corrode her heart, and with desire,
By little and by little warmed, took fire.

The shepherd dwelt between two mountains hoar,
In goodly cabin, in the greenwood shade,
With wife and children; in short time before,
The brand-new shed had builded in the glade.
Here of his grisly wound the youthful Moor
Was briefly healed by the Catayan maid;
But who in briefer space, a sorer smart
Than young Medoro's, suffered at her heart.

[She pines for love of him, and at length makes her love known. They solemnize their marriage, and remain a month there with great happiness.]

Amid such pleasures, where, with tree o'ergrown,
Ran stream, or bubbling fountain's wave did spin,
On bark or rock, if yielding were the stone,
The knife was straight at work, or ready pin.
And there, without, in thousand places lone,
And in as many places graved, within,
Medoro and Angelica were traced,
In divers ciphers quaintly interlaced.

When she believed they had prolonged their stay
More than enow, the damsel made design
In India to revisit her Catay,
And with its crown Medoro's head entwine.
She had upon her wrist an armlet, gay
With costly gems, in witness and in sign
Of love to her by Count Orlando borne,
And which the damsel for long time had worn.

No love which to the paladin she bears,
But that it costly is and wrought with care,
This to Angelica so much endears,
That never more esteemed was matter rare;
This she was suffered, in the isle of tears,
I know not by what privilege, to wear,
When, naked, to the whale exposed for food
By that inhospitable race and rude.

She, not possessing wherewithal to pay
The kindly couple's hospitality,--
Served by them in their cabin, from the day
She there was lodged, with such fidelity,--
Unfastened from her arm the bracelet gay,
And bade them keep it for her memory.
Departing hence, the lovers climb the side
Of hills, which fertile France from Spain divide.

THE MADNESS OF ORLANDO

From 'Orlando Furioso,' Canto 23

The course in pathless woods, which without rein
The Tartar's charger had pursued astray,
Made Roland for two days, with fruitless pain,
Follow him, without tidings of his way.
Orlando reached a rill of crystal vein,
On either bank of which a meadow lay;
Which, stained with native hues and rich, he sees,
And dotted o'er with fair and many trees.

The mid-day fervor made the shelter sweet
To hardy herd as well as naked swain:
So that Orlando well beneath the heat
Some deal might wince, opprest with plate and chain.
He entered for repose the cool retreat,
And found it the abode of grief and pain;
And place of sojourn more accursed and fell
On that unhappy day, than tongue can tell.

Turning him round, he there on many a tree
Beheld engraved, upon the woody shore,
What as the writing of his deity
He knew, as soon as he had marked the lore.
This was a place of those described by me,
Whither oft-times, attended by Medore,
From the near shepherd's cot had wont to stray
The beauteous lady, sovereign of Catay.

In a hundred knots, amid these green abodes,
In a hundred parts, their ciphered names are dight;
Whose many letters are so many goads,
Which Love has in his bleeding heart-core pight.
He would discredit in a thousand modes,
That which he credits in his own despite;
And would perforce persuade himself, _that_ rind
Other Angelica than his had signed.

"And yet I know these characters," he cried,
"Of which I have so many read and seen;
By her may this Medoro be belied,
And me, she, figured in the name, may mean."
Feeding on such like phantasies, beside
The real truth, did sad Orlando lean
Upon the empty hope, though ill contented,
Which he by self-illusions had fomented.

But stirred and aye rekindled it, the more
That he to quench the ill suspicion wrought,
Like the incautious bird, by fowler's lore,
Hampered in net or lime; which, in the thought
To free its tangled pinions and to soar,
By struggling is but more securely caught.
Orlando passes thither, where a mountain
O'erhangs in guise of arch the crystal fountain.

* * * * *

Here from his horse the sorrowing county lit,
And at the entrance of the grot surveyed
A cloud of words, which seemed but newly writ,
And which the young Medoro's hand had made.
On the great pleasure he had known in it,
This sentence he in verses had arrayed;
Which to his tongue, I deem, might make pretense
To polished phrase; and such in ours the sense:--

"Gay plants, green herbage, rill of limpid vein,
And, grateful with cool shade, thou gloomy cave,
Where oft, by many wooed with fruitless pain,
Beauteous Angelica, the child of grave
King Galaphron, within my arms has lain;
For the convenient harborage you gave,
I, poor Medoro, can but in my lays,
As recompense, forever sing your praise.

"And any loving lord devoutly pray,
Damsel and cavalier, and every one,
Whom choice or fortune hither shall convey,
Stranger or native,--to this crystal run,
Shade, caverned rock, and grass, and plants, to say,
'Benignant be to you the fostering sun
And moon, and may the choir of nymphs provide,
That never swain his flock may hither guide.'"

In Arabic was writ the blessing said,
Known to Orlando like the Latin tongue,
Who, versed in many languages, best read
Was in this speech; which oftentimes from wrong
And injury and shame had saved his head,
What time he roved the Saracens among.
But let him boast not of its former boot,
O'erbalanced by the present bitter fruit.

Three times, and four, and six, the lines impressed
Upon the stone that wretch perused, in vain
Seeking another sense than was expressed,
And ever saw the thing more clear and plain;
And all the while, within his troubled breast,
He felt an icy hand his heart-core strain.
With mind and eyes close fastened on the block,
At length he stood, not differing from the rock.

Then well-nigh lost all feeling; so a prey
Wholly was he to that o'ermastering woe.
This is a pang, believe the experienced say
Of him who speaks, which does all griefs outgo.
His pride had from his forehead passed away,
His chin had fallen upon his breast below;
Nor found he, so grief-barred each natural vent,
Moisture for tears, or utterance for lament.

Stifled within, the impetuous sorrow stays,
Which would too quickly issue; so to abide
Water is seen, imprisoned in the vase,
Whose neck is narrow and whose swell is wide;
What time, when one turns up the inverted base,
Toward the mouth, so hastes the hurrying tide,
And in the strait encounters such a stop,
It scarcely works a passage, drop by drop.

He somewhat to himself returned, and thought
How possibly the thing might be untrue:
That some one (so he hoped, desired, and sought
To think) his lady would with shame pursue;
Or with such weight of jealousy had wrought
To whelm _his_ reason, as should him undo;
And that he, whosoe'er the thing had planned,
Had counterfeited passing well her hand.

With such vain hope he sought himself to cheat,
And manned some deal his spirits and awoke;
Then prest the faithful Brigliadoro's seat,
As on the sun's retreat his sister broke.
Not far the warrior had pursued his beat,
Ere eddying from a roof he saw the smoke;
Heard noise of dog and kine, a farm espied,
And thitherward in quest of lodging hied.

Languid, he lit, and left his Brigliador
To a discreet attendant; one undrest
His limbs, one doffed the golden spurs he wore,
And one bore off, to clean, his iron vest.
This was the homestead where the young Medore
Lay wounded, and was here supremely blest.
Orlando here, with other food unfed,
Having supt full of sorrow, sought his bed.

* * * * *

Little availed the count his self-deceit;
For there was one who spake of it unsought:
The shepherd-swain, who to allay the heat
With which he saw his guest so troubled, thought
The tale which he was wonted to repeat--
Of the two lovers--to each listener taught;
A history which many loved to hear,
He now, without reserve, 'gan tell the peer.

"How at Angelica's persuasive prayer,
He to his farm had carried young Medore,
Grievously wounded with an arrow; where
In little space she healed the angry sore.
But while she exercised this pious care,
Love in her heart the lady wounded more,
And kindled from small spark so fierce a fire,
She burnt all over, restless with desire;

"Nor thinking she of mightiest king was born,
Who ruled in the East, nor of her heritage,
Forced by too puissant love, had thought no scorn
To be the consort of a poor foot-page."
His story done, to them in proof was borne
The gem, which, in reward for harborage,
To her extended in that kind abode,
Angelica, at parting, had bestowed.

* * * * *

In him, forthwith, such deadly hatred breed
That bed, that house, that swain, he will not stay
Till the morn break, or till the dawn succeed,
Whose twilight goes before approaching day.
In haste, Orlando takes his arms and steed,
And to the deepest greenwood wends his way.
And when assured that he is there alone,
Gives utterance to his grief in shriek and groan.

Never from tears, never from sorrowing,
He paused; nor found he peace by night or day;
He fled from town, in forest harboring,
And in the open air on hard earth lay.
He marveled at himself, how such a spring
Of water from his eyes could stream away,
And breath was for so many sobs supplied;
And thus oft-times, amid his mourning, cried:--

* * * * *

"I am not--am not what I seem to sight:
What Roland was, is dead and under ground,
Slain by that most ungrateful lady's spite,
Whose faithlessness inflicted such a wound.
Divided from the flesh, I am his sprite,
Which in this hell, tormented, walks its round,
To be, but in its shadow left above,
A warning to all such as trust in love."

All night about the forest roved the count,
And, at the break of daily light, was brought
By his unhappy fortune to the fount,
Where his inscription young Medoro wrought.
To see his wrongs inscribed upon that mount
Inflamed his fury so, in him was naught
But turned to hatred, frenzy, rage, and spite;
Nor paused he more, but bared his falchion bright,

Cleft through the writing; and the solid block,
Into the sky, in tiny fragments sped.
Woe worth each sapling and that caverned rock
Where Medore and Angelica were read!
So scathed, that they to shepherd or to flock
Thenceforth shall never furnish shade or bed.
And that sweet fountain, late so clear and pure,
From such tempestous wrath was ill secure.

* * * * *

So fierce his rage, so fierce his fury grew,
That all obscured remained the warrior's sprite;
Nor, for forgetfulness, his sword he drew,
Or wondrous deeds, I trow, had wrought the knight;
But neither this, nor bill, nor axe to hew,
Was needed by Orlando's peerless might.
He of his prowess gave high proofs and full,
Who a tall pine uprooted at a pull.

He many others, with as little let
As fennel, wall-wort-stem, or dill uptore;
And ilex, knotted oak, and fir upset,
And beech and mountain ash, and elm-tree hoar.
He did what fowler, ere he spreads his net,
Does, to prepare the champaign for his lore,
By stubble, rush, and nettle stalk; and broke,
Like these, old sturdy trees and stems of oak.

The shepherd swains, who hear the tumult nigh,
Leaving their flocks beneath the greenwood tree,
Some here, some there, across the forest hie,
And hurry thither, all, the cause to see.
But I have reached such point, my history,
If I o'erpass this bound, may irksome be.
And I my story will delay to end
Rather than by my tediousness offend.

ARISTOPHANES

(B.C. 448-380?)

BY PAUL SHOREY

The birth-year of Aristophanes is placed about 448 B.C., on the ground that he is said to have been almost a boy when his first comedy was presented in 427. His last play, the 'Plutus,' was produced in 388, and there is no evidence that he long survived this date. Little is known of his life beyond the allusions, in the Parabases of the 'Acharnians,' 'Knights,' and 'Wasps,' to his prosecution by Cleon, to his own or his father's estate at Aegina, and to his premature baldness. He left three sons who also wrote comedies.

Aristophanes is the sole extant representative of the so-called Old Comedy of Athens; a form of dramatic art which developed obscurely under the shadow of Attic Tragedy in the first half of the fifth century B.C., out of the rustic revelry of the Phallic procession and Comus song of Dionysus, perhaps with some outside suggestions from the Megarian farce and its Sicilian offshoot, the mythological court comedy of Epicharmus. The chief note of this older comedy for the ancient critics was its unbridled license of direct personal satire and invective. Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, says Horace, assailed with the utmost freedom any one who deserved to be branded with infamy. This old political Comedy was succeeded in the calmer times that followed the Peloponnesian War by the so-called Middle Comedy (390-320) of Alexis, Antiphanes, Strattis, and some minor men; which insensibly passed into the New Comedy (320-250) of Menander and Philemon, known to us in the reproductions of Terence. And this new comedy, which portrayed types of private life instead of satirizing noted persons by name, and which, as Aristotle says, produced laughter by innuendo rather than by scurrility, was preferred to the "terrible graces" of her elder sister by the gentle and refined Plutarch, or the critic who has usurped his name in the 'Comparison of Aristophanes and Menander.' The old Attic Comedy has been variously compared to Charivari, Punch, the comic opera of Offenbach, and a Parisian 'revue de fin d'année.' There is no good modern analogue. It is not our comedy of manners, plot, and situation; nor yet is it mere buffoonery. It is a peculiar mixture of broad political, social, and literary satire, and polemical discussion of large ideas, with the burlesque and licentious extravagances that were deemed the most acceptable service at the festival of the laughter-loving, tongue-loosening god of the vine.

The typical plan of an Aristophanic comedy is very simple. The protagonist undertakes in all apparent seriousness to give a local habitation and a body to some ingenious fancy, airy speculation, or bold metaphor: as for example, the procuring of a private peace for a citizen who is weary of the privations of war; or the establishment of a city in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land where the birds shall regulate things better than the featherless biped, man; or the restoration of the eyesight of the proverbially blind god of Wealth. The attention of the audience is at once enlisted for the semblance of a plot by which the scheme is put into execution. The design once effected, the remainder of the play is given over to a series of loosely connected scenes, ascending to a climax of absurdity, in which the consequences of the original happy thought are followed out with a Swiftian verisimilitude of piquant detail and a Rabelaisian license of uproarious mirth. It rests with the audience to take the whole as pure extravaganza, or as a _reductio ad absurdum_ or playful defense of the conception underlying the original idea. In the intervals between the scenes, the chorus sing rollicking topical songs or bits of exquisite lyric, or in the name of the poet directly exhort and admonish the audience in the so-called Parabasis.

Of Aristophanes's first two plays, the 'Banqueters of Hercules' (427), and the 'Babylonians' (426), only fragments remain. The impolitic representation in the latter of the Athenian allies as branded Babylonian slaves was the ground of Cleon's attack in the courts upon Aristophanes, or Callistratus in whose name the play was produced.

The extant plays are the following:--

'The Acharnians,' B.C. 425, shortly after the Athenian defeat
at Delium. The worthy countryman, Dicæopolis, weary of being
cooped up within the Long Walls, and disgusted with the
shameless jobbery of the politicians, sends to Sparta for
samples of peace (the Greek word means also libations) of
different vintages. The Thirty Years' brand smells of nectar
and ambrosia. He accepts it, concludes a private treaty for
himself and friends, and proceeds to celebrate the rural
Dionysia with wife and child, soothing, by an eloquent plea
pronounced in tattered tragic vestments borrowed from
Euripides, the anger of the chorus of choleric Acharnian
charcoal burners, exasperated at the repeated devastation of
their deme by the Spartans. He then opens a market, to which
a jolly Boeotian brings the long-lost, thrice-desired Copaic
eel; while a starveling Megarian, to the huge delight of the
Athenian groundlings, sells his little daughters, disguised
as pigs, for a peck of salt. Finally Dicæopolis goes forth to
a wedding banquet, from which he returns very mellow in the
company of two flute girls; while Lamachus, the head of the
war party, issues forth to do battle with the Boeotians in
the snow, and comes back with a bloody coxcomb. This play was
successfully given in Greek by the students of the University
of Pennsylvania in the spring of 1886, and interestingly
discussed in the Nation of May 6th by Professor Gildersleeve.

'The Knights,' B.C. 424: named from the chorus of young Athenian cavaliers who abet the sausage-seller, Agoracritus, egged on by the discontented family servants (the generals), Nicias and Demosthenes, to outbid with shameless flattery the rascally Paphlagonian steward, Cleon, and supplant him in the favor of their testy bean-fed old master, Demos (or People). At the close, Demos recovers his wits and his youth, and is revealed sitting enthroned in his glory in the good old Marathonian Athens of the Violet Crown. The prolongation of the billingsgate in the contest between Cleon and the sausage-seller grows wearisome to modern taste; but the portrait of the Demagogue is for all time.

'The Clouds,' B.C. 423: an attack on Socrates, unfairly taken as an embodiment of the deleterious and unsettling "new learning," both in the form of Sophistical rhetoric and "meteorological" speculation. Worthy Strepsiades, eager to find a new way to pay the debts in which the extravagance of his horse-racing son Pheidippides has involved him, seeks to enter the youth as a student in the Thinking-shop or Reflectory of Socrates, that he may learn to make the worse appear the better reason, and so baffle his creditors before a jury. The young man, after much demur and the ludicrous failure of his father, who at first matriculates in his stead, consents. He listens to the pleas of the just and unjust argument in behalf of the old and new education, and becomes himself such a proficient that he demonstrates, in flawless reasoning, that Euripides is a better poet than Aeschylus, and that a boy is justified in beating his father for affirming the contrary. Strepsiades thereupon, cured of his folly, undertakes a subtle investigation into the timbers of the roof of the Reflectory, with a view to smoking out the corrupters of youth. Many of the songs sung by or to the clouds, the patron deities of Socrates's misty lore, are extremely beautiful. Socrates is made to allude to these attacks of comedy by Plato in the 'Apology,' and, on his last day in prison, in the 'Phædo.' In the 'Symposium' or 'Banquet' of Plato, Aristophanes bursts in upon a company of friends with whom Socrates is feasting, and drinks with them till morning; while Socrates forces him and the tragic poet Agathon, both of them very sleepy, to admit that the true dramatic artist will excel in both tragedy and comedy.

'The Wasps,' B.C. 422: a _jeu d'esprit_ turning on the Athenian passion for litigation. Young Bdelucleon (hate-Cleon) can keep his old father Philocleon (love-Cleon) out of the courts only by instituting a private court in his own house. The first culprit, the house-dog, is tried for stealing a Sicilian cheese, and acquitted by Philocleon's mistaking the urn of acquittal for that of condemnation. The old man is inconsolable at the first escape of a victim from his clutches; but finally, renouncing his folly, takes lessons from his exquisite of a son in the manners and deportment of a fine gentleman. He then attends a dinner party, where he betters his instructions with comic exaggeration and returns home in high feather, singing tipsy catches and assaulting the watch on his way. The chorus of Wasps, the visible embodiment of a metaphor found also in Plato's 'Republic,' symbolizes the sting used by the Athenian jurymen to make the rich disgorge a portion of their gathered honey. The 'Plaideurs' of Racine is an imitation of this play; and the _motif_ of the committal of the dog is borrowed by Ben Jonson in the 'Staple of News.'

'The Peace,' B.C. 421: in support of the Peace of Nicias, ratified soon afterward (Grote's 'History of Greece,' Vol. vi., page 492). Trygæus, an honest vine-dresser yearning for his farm, in parody of the Bellerophon of Euripides, ascends to heaven on a dung-beetle. He there hauls Peace from the bottom of the well into which she had been cast by Ares, and brings her home in triumph to Greece, when she inaugurates a reign of plenty and uproarious jollity, and celebrates the nuptials of Trygæus and her handmaid Opora (Harvest-home).

'The Birds,' B.C. 414. Peisthetærus (Plausible) and Euelpides (Hopeful), whose names and deeds are perhaps a satire on the unbounded ambition that brought ruin on Athens at Syracuse, journey to Birdland and persuade King Hoopoe to induce the birds to build Nephelococcygia or Cloud-Cuckoo-Burgh in the air between the gods and men, starve out the gods with a "Melian famine," and rule the world themselves. The gods, their supplies of incense cut off, are forced to treat, and Peisthetærus receives in marriage Basileia (Sovereignty), the daughter of Zeus. The _mise en scène_, with the gorgeous plumage of the bird-chorus, must have been very impressive, and many of the choric songs are exceedingly beautiful. There is an interesting account by Professor Jebb in the Fortnightly Review (Vol. xli.) of a performance of 'The Birds' at Cambridge in 1884.

Two plays, B.C. 411: (1) at the Lenæa, 'The Lysistrata,' in which the women of Athens and Sparta by a secession from bed and board compel their husbands to end the war; (2) The 'Thesmophoriazusæ' or Women's Festival of Demeter, a licentious but irresistibly funny assault upon Euripides. The tragedian, learning that the women in council assembled are debating on the punishment due to his misogyny, implores the effeminate poet Agathon to intercede for him. That failing, he dispatches his kinsman Mnesilochus, disguised with singed beard and woman's robes, a sight to shake the midriff of despair with laughter, to plead his cause. The advocate's excess of zeal betrays him; he is arrested: and the remainder of the play is occupied by the ludicrous devices, borrowed or parodied from well-known Euripidean tragedies, by which the poet endeavors to rescue his intercessor.

'The Frogs,' B.C. 405, in the brief respite of hope between the victory of Arginusæ and the final overthrow of Athens at Ægospotami. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are dead. The minor bards are a puny folk, and Dionysus is resolved to descend to Hades in quest of a truly creative poet, one capable of a figure like "my star god's glow-worm," or "His honor rooted in dishonor stood." After many surprising adventures by the way, and in the outer precincts of the underworld, accompanied by his Sancho Panza, Xanthias, he arrives at the court of Pluto just in time to be chosen arbitrator of the great contest between Aeschylus and Euripides for the tragic throne in Hades. The comparisons and parodies of the styles of Aeschylus and Euripides that follow, constitute, in spite of their comic exaggeration, one of the most entertaining and discriminating chapters of literary criticism extant, and give us an exalted idea of the intelligence of the audience that appreciated them. Dionysus decides for Æschylus, and leads him back in triumph to the upper world.

The 'Ecclesiazusæ' or 'Ladies in Parliament,' B.C. 393: apparently a satire on the communistic theories which must have been current in the discussions of the schools before they found definite expression in Plato's 'Republic.' The ladies of Athens rise betimes, purloin their husbands' hats and canes, pack the Assembly, and pass a measure to intrust the reins of government to women. An extravagant and licentious communism is the result.

The 'Plutus,' B.C. 388: a second and much altered edition of a play represented for the first time in 408. With the 'Ecclesiazusæ' it marks the transition to the Middle Comedy, there being no parabasis, and little of the exuberant _verve_ of the older pieces. The blind god of Wealth recovers his eyesight by sleeping in the temple of Æsculapius, and proceeds to distribute the gifts of fortune more equitably.

The assignment of the dates and restoration of the plots of the thirty-two lost plays, of which a few not very interesting fragments remain, belong to the domain of conjectural erudition.

Aristophanes has been regarded by some critics as a grave moral censor, veiling his high purpose behind the grinning mask of comedy; by others as a buffoon of genius, whose only object was to raise a laugh. Both sides of the question are ingeniously and copiously argued in Browning's 'Aristophanes' Apology'; and there is a judicious summing up of the case of Aristophanes _vs_. Euripides in Professor Jebb's lectures on Greek poetry. The soberer view seems to be that while predominantly a comic artist, obeying the instincts of his genius, he did frequently make his comedy the vehicle of an earnest conservative polemic against the new spirit of the age in Literature, Philosophy, and Politics. He pursued Euripides with relentless ridicule because his dramatic motives lent themselves to parody, and his lines were on the lips of every theatre-goer; but also because he believed that Euripides had spoiled the old, stately, heroic art of Aeschylus and Sophocles by incongruous infusions of realism and sentimentalism, and had debased the "large utterance of the early gods" by an unhallowed mixture of colloquialism, dialectic, and chicane.

Aristophanes travestied the teachings of Socrates because his ungainly figure, and the oddity (_atopia_) attributed to him even by Plato, made him an excellent butt; yet also because he felt strongly that it was better for the young Athenian to spend his days in the Palæstra, or "where the elm-tree whispers to the plane," than in filing a contentious tongue on barren logomachies. That Socrates in fact discussed only ethical problems, and disclaimed all sympathy with speculations about things above our heads, made no difference: he was the best human embodiment of a hateful educational error. And similarly the assault upon Cleon, the "pun-pelleting of demagogues from Pnux," was partly due to the young aristocrat's instinctive aversion to the coarse popular leader, and to the broad mark which the latter presented to the shafts of satire, but equally, perhaps, to a genuine patriotic revolt at the degradation of Athenian politics in the hands of the successors of Pericles.

But Aristophanes's ideas interest us less than his art and humor. We have seen the nature of his plots. In such a topsy-turvy world there is little opportunity for nice delineation of character. His personages are mainly symbols or caricatures. Yet they are vividly if broadly sketched, and genuine touches of human nature lend verisimilitude to their most improbable actions. One or two traditional comic types appear for the first time, apparently, on his stage: the alternately cringing and familiar slave or valet of comedy, in his Xanthias and Karion; and in Dicæopolis, Strepsiades, Demos, Trygæus, and Dionysus, the sensual, jovial, shrewd, yet naïve and credulous middle-aged _bourgeois gentilhomme_ or 'Sganarelle,' who is not ashamed to avow his poltroonery, and yet can, on occasion, maintain his rights with sturdy independence.

But the chief attraction of Aristophanes is the abounding comic force and _verve_ of his style. It resembles an impetuous torrent, whose swift rush purifies in its flow the grossness and obscenity inseparable from the origin of comedy, and buoys up and sweeps along on the current of fancy and improvisation the chaff and dross of vulgar jests, puns, scurrilous personalities, and cheap "gags," allowing no time for chilling reflections or criticism. Jests which are singly feeble combine to induce a mood of extravagant hilarity when huddled upon us with such "impossible conveyance." This _vivida vis animi_ can hardly be reproduced in a translation, and disappears altogether in an attempt at an abstract enumeration of the poet's inexhaustible devices for comic effect. He himself repeatedly boasts of the fertility of his invention, and claims to have discarded the coarse farce of his predecessors for something more worthy of the refined intelligence of his clever audience. Yet it must be acknowledged that much even of his wit is the mere filth-throwing of a naughty boy; or at best the underbred jocularity of the "funny column," the topical song, or the minstrel show. There are puns on the names of notable personages; a grotesque, fantastic, punning fauna, flora, and geography of Greece; a constant succession of surprises effected by the sudden substitution of low or incongruous terms in proverbs, quotations, and legal or religious formulas; scenes in dialect, scenes of excellent fooling in the vein of Uncle Toby and the Clown, girds at the audience, personalities that for us have lost their point,--about Cleonymus the caster-away of shields, or Euripides's herb-selling mother,--and everywhere unstinted service to the great gods Priapus and Cloacina.

A finer instrument of comic effect is the parody. The countless parodies of the lyric and dramatic literature of Greece are perhaps the most remarkable testimony extant to the intelligence of an Athenian audience. Did they infallibly catch the allusion when Dicæopolis welcomed back to the Athenian fish-market the long-lost Copaic eel in high Æschylean strain,--

"Of fifty nymphs Copaic alderliefest queen,"

and then, his voice breaking with the intolerable pathos of Admetus's farewell to the dying Alcestis, added,

"Yea, even in death
Thou'lt bide with me, embalmed and beet-bestewed"?

Did they recognize the blasphemous Pindaric pun in "Helle's holy straits," for a tight place, and appreciate all the niceties of diction, metre, and dramatic art discriminated in the comparison between Aeschylus and Euripides in the 'Frogs'? At any rate, no Athenian could miss the fun of Dicæopolis (like Hector's baby) "scared at the dazzling plume and nodding crest" of the swashbuckler Lamachus, of Philocleon, clinging to his ass's belly like Odysseus escaping under the ram from the Cyclops's cave; of the baby in the Thesmophoriazusæ seized as a Euripidean hostage, and turning out a wine bottle in swaddling-clothes; of light-foot Iris in the rôle of a saucy, frightened soubrette; of the heaven-defying Æschylean Prometheus hiding under an umbrella from the thunderbolts of Zeus. And they must have felt instinctively what only a laborious erudition reveals to us, the sudden subtle modulations of the colloquial comic verse into mock-heroic travesty of high tragedy or lyric.

Euripides, the chief victim of Aristophanes's genius for parody, was so burlesqued that his best known lines became by-words, and his most ardent admirers, the very Balaustions and Euthukleses, must have grinned when they heard them, like a pair of augurs. If we conceive five or six Shakespearean comedies filled from end to end with ancient Pistols hallooing to "pampered jades of Asia," and Dr. Caiuses chanting of "a thousand vagrom posies," we may form some idea of Aristophanes's handling of the notorious lines--

"The tongue has sworn, the mind remains unsworn."
"Thou lovest life, thy sire loves it too."
"Who knows if life and death be truly one?"