Chapter VIII: Canto XXXVIII: takes Ruggiero from her, to support his honor; “and

that, ladies, is strange.” Canto XLIV still postpones, as lesser issues have been postponed, _the_ issue, their marriage. Canto XLVI ends characteristically on description of the wedding and encomium of Ariosto’s patron Ippolito; but that the poem may conclude as the _Aeneid_ with the defeat of Turnus, it gives Ruggiero one more victory. Boccaccio’s art of the long narrative poem, to say nothing of Chaucer’s, is ignored.

This is not careless; it is intentional. Some of the delay at the close was added in the final revision of 1532. Ariosto designed not sequence, but abundance and variety. His opening _Arma virumque cano_ is: “I sing the ladies, the loves, the courtesies, the bold emprise of the time when the Moors crossed the sea from Africa and did such harm in France.... Of Orlando too will I tell, how for love he went mad.” These loves, traditional in still subscribing to _amour courtois_, are more various than Boiardo’s. But though much of the appeal is by amorous descant, the staple of this Carolingian romance is still single combat. As for Orlando’s love madness, announced in the title and in the opening lines, it is not reached till Canto XXIII; and once his fury is spent, he disappears once more for some six cantos. He is hardly even a leading character. The principal role, for encomium of the house of Este, belongs to Ruggiero. Stories of the other paladins are often brought into connection, sometimes skillfully, sometimes ingeniously, rarely to the extent of making a situation, never in such an onward scheme as Chaucer’s _Troilus and Criseyde_. For that demands what Ariosto never sought, consistent motivation by progressive characterization from scene to scene. Such characterization as Ariosto offers remains separate. Zerbino has more space than is warranted by any distinct function. Oliver, coming in casually, is less a person than a great traditional name. Astolfo’s miraculous journey, with its interesting geographical list has so little visible function that it might as well have been made somewhere else, or by some one else. Leone, one of the most distinct characterizations, comes in only toward the end. Even Ruggiero meets Bradamante when he least expects or deserves her.

Ariosto is a typical example of the popular poet gauging and answering his public. His elegant ease is flattering. His decoration is distinct. His diffuseness relieves us of all coöperative thinking. A scene is dilated through every phase of its emotion, and then discharged as finished in and for itself. The next will be pleasantly different, or, if unpleasantly, may be skipped. The dilation, the variety, that Vergil turned his back upon, and after him Tasso, Ariosto frankly sought. He has no care for poetic sequence beyond neat transitions, no poetic austerity of sustained single purpose. Renaissance poets, for all the cult of classicism, often revived the ancient world in Alexandrian decadence, saw in Vergil only his high style, conceived poetic as rhetoric, and ran after the “Greek Romances.” Ariosto was one of these Alexandrians.

8. TASSO AND SPENSER

The contrast between Tasso and Spenser is heightened by the fact that they were closely contemporary. Spenser’s birth was eight years after Tasso’s; his death, but three years. Tasso began his _Gerusalemme liberata_ in his twenties, published it at thirty-one, kept it on his mind throughout his working life, and finally rewrote it. Spenser published three books of his _Faerie Queene_ at thirty-eight, three more at forty-three, and left it unfinished. Tasso’s is the shortest of the Renaissance verse romances; Spenser’s was to be the longest. Tasso turned away from Ariosto toward Vergil; Spenser moved even farther than Ariosto from epic sequence. Allegory, hardly more than a figure of speech with Tasso, is announced by Spenser as his plan. Religion having more place in these two romances than in any of the others, Tasso’s is conceived as uniting western Europe, Spenser’s as nationalistic. Tasso’s poem is one of the greater European books, and has been widely read in England; Spenser’s great reputation has been very slow to cross the Channel. The latter years of the sixteenth century, then, carried on verse romance in two distinct directions: the classical direction from Aristotelian theory and Vergilian practice toward narrative singleness and sequence; the allegorizing of the medieval cycles toward a series of counsels for individual and social conduct.

(_a_) _Tasso_

Tasso’s is the only one of the Renaissance romances of chivalry whose title is its subject. Malory’s subject is far more than the death of Arthur, Pulci’s than Morgante. Boiardo’s subject is not Orlando in love, nor Ariosto’s Orlando mad for love. Spenser’s title merely makes his encomium part of his allegory. But Tasso’s _Jerusalem Delivered_ exactly sums up his scope and his theme. The Carolingian tradition, still furnishing the scene and the persons, no longer furnishes the pattern. The persons are fewer; and they are recreated to function in a continuous story. Thus Soliman and Peter the Hermit have definite roles; and Godfrey becomes the protagonist. The time is idealized to assemble the heroic past about the medieval enterprise of deliverance, to bring into one sequence the _chansons de geste_, the Carolingian cycle of romance, and several crusades. The struggle of the West with the East, no longer background or setting, is brought forward. It appears much less as the exploits of individuals, much more as an enterprise in common. Further it is an enterprise of religion, to rescue the holy places from unbelievers, to restore them to Christendom as a shrine of pilgrimage. It is animated by _pietas_, the Vergilian motive Christianized, the sense of mission. The individual warriors, no longer adventurers, are soldiers of the Cross. Though the actual crusades were medieval, they were still in men’s minds as unfinished. Boiardo laments the postponement of a recent proposal to revive them. Tasso writes not to further this, or any other present movement, but to present crusade as historic. He focuses all crusades in one historic action. His narrative of Godfrey and the paladins is controlled by the idea of crusade as deliverance.

Such singleness of purpose naturally reduces encomium. The expected rolls of honor celebrating the house of Este, are fewer and more detached.[38] Reduced also, with one important exception, are lyric interludes. Turning conventional themes to beauty, Tasso pauses less often to dilate emotion with Ariosto than to interpose reflection or the escape of pastoral.

[In the garden of Armida] See how the rose pricks modest and
virgin from the green. Half-open yet, half-closed, the less she
shows herself the fairer she. Lo! bold already, she reveals her
breast naked; lo! again it droops and is not seen. It is not
seen which had been desired by a thousand maids and a thousand
lovers.

So passes, at the passing of a day,
Of mortal life the flower and the green.
April cannot be halted nor return
To flower again, to green a second spring.
Gather we roses handsome as the morn
Of this our day, which soon will lose its calm,
Roses of love. Ah! let us love betimes,
When loving we may still be loved again (xvi. 14-15).[39]

Scenery, handled with the usual Italian restraint, is often woven expertly into the narrative. We are made to feel Jerusalem before it is described; and the grave and restrained description of the great Mass is inseparable from the action. Tasso’s subordination of literary means to literary function dominates his style. The frequency of his classical similes is apparent only on review; it does not challenge attention, much less interrupt. His classical allusions are not extraneous decoration, much less parade. His word-play is used oftenest to mark the close of a stanza. His verse is harmonized. These are various aspects of artistic conscience. Tasso never plays the virtuoso; he is too great an artist.

The onwardness of the whole story, which is most distinctive in this achievement, could hardly be carried out in Tasso’s time with entire consistency. Though there is none of the former easy shifting from tale to tale, though tactics and strategy are made to control and subordinate the traditional single combats, there are a few interpolated tales: Sofronia and Olindo in Canto II; Sven, isolated and picturesque in Canto VIII; Clorinda’s origin in Canto XII. Canto X is less a stage than a pause to tell what was said and thought on one side and on the other. The enchantment of the wood in Canto XIII is a parenthesis in the siege. The most serious deviation is for Rinaldo and Armida. Armida has too much stage—as Dido has in the _Aeneid_, yes, but with less warrant. While the siege waits, Cantos XIV and XV detail the infatuation of Rinaldo and linger over the journey for his recall. Nothing of this counts for the sequence of the poem but his defection at a critical point and his return. The rest is dilated for its own picturesqueness and passion. But the flaw is conspicuous only because Tasso’s sequence is beyond any previous attempt. The Rinaldo episode could be added without disturbance, here or there, in Boiardo’s poem, Ariosto’s, or Spenser’s. Tasso has taught us to expect more.

To a degree hitherto unattained in the romances, and rarely even attempted, his persons are characterized for their function. Even Armida thus functions early (Canto V) in the whole scheme as disintegrating. She is more than a type of enchantress, more than a personification of lust. Though toward the end her despair at losing Rinaldo may be too oratorical and too much like Dido’s, her revenge breaks down for love. In other cases, too, magic and demons are more acceptable because the visible human motives and action reduce them almost to figures of speech. For instance, the magic borrowed from the _Aeneid_ in Canto X is merely a device for having Soliman present, acting in his own fate. Personifications are rare; and even the stock hermit has more distinct function. Godfrey is much more than Arthur or Charlemagne. His largeness of view is at once intelligence and faith. A cardinal example of Tasso’s art is the creative use of the archangel St Michael. He comes as light and allies the heavenly host to the earthly. _Jerusalem Delivered_ is not only the integration of the traditional hero stories; it is also the realization of the Renaissance dream of epic.

(_b_) _Spenser_

Spenser’s most obvious peculiarity of style is archaism. Some of the _arts poétiques_ repeat perfunctorily the rhetorical advice to revive old words; but none of the other romancers follows it with conviction. Though archaism is historically one of the habits of sophistic oratory, with Spenser it was animated rather by the desire to revive the English poetic tradition. Failing in this through ignorance of language, he but made his diction more difficult.

The style of the _Faerie Queene_ is of its time in decorative classical similes. In classical allusions Spenser leans more heavily on legend and mythology. Sometimes he inserts lore gratuitously. Throughout he throws together classical and medieval, Christian, and pagan.[40] Occasionally mythology is made a vehicle for contemporary politics and religion. Usually decorative, his mythology is generally incidental, not functional. Thus his angels, too, are disappointing beside Tasso’s.

Following thus generally the Renaissance habit of learned elegance, Spenser shows his own hand in concreteness. He is less often content with mere epithet. He specifies even the details of a kitchen; and he specifies habitually in abundant sensory images, even of ugliness.

Therewith she spewd out of her filthie maw
A floud of poyson horrible and blacke,
Full of great lumps of flesh and gobbets raw,
Which stunck so vildly that it forst him slacke
His grasping hold, and from her turne him backe:
Her vomit full of bookes and papers was,
With loathly frogs and toades, which eyes did lacke,
And creeping sought way in the weedy grass.
Her filthie parbreake all the place defiled has (I. i. 20).

Oftener picturesque, such vividness decorates even the traditional extravagance.

Thus long they trac’d and traverst to and fro,
And tryde all waies, how each mote entrance make
Into the life of his malignant foe;
They hew’d their helmes, and plates asunder brake,
As they had potshares bene; for nought mote slake
Their greedy vengeaunces but goary blood,
That at the last like to a purple lake
Of bloudy gore congeal’d about them stood,
Which from their riven sides forth gushed like a flood (VI. i. 37)

For Spenser’s diction is habitually overloaded.

The verse is surcharged with alliteration.

O how great _s_orrow my _s_ad _s_oule a_ss_aid (I. ii. 24).

Sometimes her head she fondly would a_g_uize
With _g_audy _g_irlonds or _f_resh _f_lowers dight
About her necke, or _r_ings of _r_ushes plight (II. vi. 7).

Day and night keeping _w_ary _w_atch and _w_ard
For _f_eare least _F_orce or _F_raud should unaware
Breake in (II. vii. 25).

That her _b_road _b_eauties _b_eam great _b_rightness threw (II.
vii. 45).

Spenser’s metric, often obscured by fanciful spelling or uncertain pronunciation, is expertly varied. The Spenserian stanza, undoubtedly skillful, is nevertheless inferior to the Italian octave for narrative. It carries on with less ease. The sheer metrical task of the six completed books (3,732 stanzas, or 33,588 lines) was beyond Spenser’s revision. Some rhymes remain forced by stilted transposition, or upon insignificant words, as in the last line of the first example above, and in:

And henceforth ever wish that like succeed it may (I. i. 27).

And each the other from to rise restraine (II. ii. 64).

Though he uses expertly the variation of throwing together two stresses, he has also left many lines clogged with more than can be uttered without scanting or even stumbling. Thus in the second canto of the first book:

And to him calls “Rise, rise! unhappy swaine” (l. 4).

He could not rest; but did his stout heart eat (l. 6).

Did search, sore grieved in her gentle brest (l. 8).

O too deare love, love bought with death too deare! (l. 31).

In both style and verse the _Faerie Queene_ is the least facile of the chivalric romances.

For the composition of the whole, Spenser’s scheme is not narrative. The most descriptive of all the romancers, he has made his total effect not merely abundant separable ecphrasis but pageantry. For holding the pageantry together he proposes in his preface moral allegory, “fashioning a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline.” This end, Caxton’s preface to Malory proclaims, is attained without allegory, by the romances themselves as stories. But now romance, having been first rewritten in Renaissance style, and then recomposed as Vergilian epic, is to be moralized. Further, the allegory is political. Artegall is Lord Grey de Wilton; Duessa and Radegund, Mary Queen of Scots; Archimago, the Pope. The poem is anti-Catholic with the Elizabethan political bias. Its attacks on abuses of the Church, no louder than those of _Piers Plowman_, are essentially different in that Elizabethan England has broken with the medieval vision of unity. Spenser speaks for the most self-sufficient of the rising nations, and makes its national mission his own. For the divine mission of the poet in Renaissance classical phrase means practically the claim of the poet to support by the court. The new nationalism but intensifies encomium. Spenser was a court poet in the same way as Ariosto, and to an even greater degree. He celebrates not only England, but the Queen and his immediate patrons. He prefixes a letter to Raleigh and seventeen poems to lords and ladies; and he interposes the usual references and allusions. None of the chivalric romances is more devoted to encomium than the _Faerie Queene_.

To weave all these strands into any large single sequence is probably beyond the capacity of allegory, and certainly beyond Spenser’s achievement. The legendary history of Britain in Book II has little enough to do with the theme of constancy; the long pastoral in Book VI with the theme of courtesy. Even single books, then, do not always hold together. Within a single virtue we have at most a medieval series of _exempla_. Even if Spenser had lived to subsume all his virtues in Magnificence, the Renaissance _virtù_, he would have achieved only the summary of a series. The earlier critics of the _Faerie Queene_ were embarrassed by their obligation to consider it as epic. Spenser’s quoting of the Horatian _in mediis rebus_ “A poet thrusteth into the middest” in his preface, and his beginning thus “A gentle knight was pricking on the plaine” are merely superficial. No long poem is farther removed from epic than the _Faerie Queene_. Dryden, in a digression of his _Essay on Satire_ (1693), said more significantly: “There is no uniformity of design in Spenser.”

Instead of being ruled out as merely Dryden’s preoccupation with French seventeenth-century “regularity,” this may well be pondered. Later criticism of the romantic period, indeed, was inclined to reply: “What of it? The _Faerie Queene_ offers so much else that we are content to dispense with uniformity of design.” But still later criticism has not been so sure; and, what is more important, many readers have balked. The poem does not carry through. Today those who have read the six books are inclined to boast. Doubtless the forming of a gentleman has less appeal as an idea than Tasso’s common enterprise of deliverance. Certainly the poetic machinery of knight errantry allegorized as the triumphs of virtues over vices has less appeal than crusade. Motive and method are insufficient to integrate the _Faerie Queene_ and carry it forward. Its very timeliness has faded into insularity. _Don Quixote_, full of seventeenth-century Spain, is significant to the whole western world; the _Faerie Queene_ is sometimes significant only in terms of Tudor politics. But probably the main reason for the waning of the _Faerie Queene_ is the insufficiency of the conception to animate a long poem and of the composition to carry it forward. Beside _Paradise Lost_, to say nothing of the _Divina Commedia_, it is seen to have “no uniformity of design” in the sense of lacking effective integration.