Orlando Furioso

London Calling: John Harington’s Exegetical Domestication of Ariosto in Late Sixteenth-Century England

“…Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, translated by Guido Waldman (Oxford, 2008), 683-84. effects if a great fault be not in the readers owne bad disposition.' 29 A similar sentiment is also present in his gloss to Ruggiero's dalliances with Alcina. In canto seven, he includes a marginal note explaining: 'This lascivious description of carnall pleasure needs not offend the chast eares or thoughts of any, but rather shame the unchast that have themselves bene at such kinde of bankets.'…”

“…In Harington, however, the metaphor is absent; stanza 78 in Ariosto is summarized by the last two lines in Harington's stanza 71: 'So though Orlando with his fall was troubled/ His force and furie seemed to be doubled'. 50 Some critics might here point to Harington's carelessness in including an allusion to a metaphor he omits, or his tin ear for the beauty of Ariosto's text. We might add to their chorus, noting the impossibility of Harington's claim that Ariosto 'alludes perhap' to the explosion Lavezola describes, which occurred in 1569, 36 years after Ariosto's death.…”

“…Excuse me then if I in a worke that may perhaps last longer then a better thing and, being not ashamed of my kindred, name them here and there to no mans offence. 54 Harington's inclusion of personal references emulates both the practice of other Elizabethan writers, such as Sidney, and of Ariosto himself. 55 Such details, however, are more than a simple way for Harington to insert himself into the text; they model a pragmatic practice of reading that relates elements in Ariosto's poem to the reader's own life, and in so doing extends linguistic hospitality to a foreign writer by welcoming his text into the translator's domestic sphere.…”

“…In canto seven, he includes a marginal note explaining: 'This lascivious description of carnall pleasure needs not offend the chast eares or thoughts of any, but rather shame the unchast that have themselves bene at such kinde of bankets.' 30 Harington's anticipation of how his readers might read or misread the text echoes ideas of his contemporaries. Responding to the accusation that poets teach lustful love in his 1583 Defense of Poesy, Sir Philip Sidney writes:…”

Macbeth and Trauma

“…4 John Harington recollected that Rory, besieged by Sidney and a hundred soldiers, "gat through them all without hurt, where a mouse almost could not haue got betweene them: and I haue heard it affirmed in Ireland, that it was with meere witchcraft". 5 This is a tale twice told, the second time with some skepticism. In a letter written in 1599, Harington, referring to his men being spooked by the Irish, recalls his cousin's plight twenty years earlier.…”