As the Carolingian recitals on the piazza, or behind the marionettes, the Orlando innamorato may be entered at almost any point. What is there heard or read is interesting mainly for itself, very little as arising from previous action and characterization or as preparing for what follows. To say, then, that it fuses the two cycles is quite misleading. Boiardo brings in an Arthurian name, Tristan or Lancelot, as simply as he adds another Carolingian. He puts Merlin’s well in the forest of Ardenne. He interpolates Morgan le Fay among the Orlando stories. But fusion, whether of these Arthurians or of his own Carolingians, is not in all his thoughts. He is engaged not in composing the Carolingian story, but in rehearsing the Carolingian stories.
Boiardo’s Orlando, then, is a collection of heroes fighting in the struggle between East and West. Within that frame, as within the frame of Arthur’s Round Table, tradition had collected many stories. Boiardo finds room for them, and even for others quite unrelated. Those of the greatest knights, Orlando, Rinaldo, Oliver, and their ladies and friends, the obligatory stories, he can tell by installments because they are familiar and have been already connected. The others he inserts here and there for variety. Not only does he accept the medieval cyclical aggregation, he ignores the later medieval achievement of narrative sequence in smaller scope through characterization.
A certain Tisbina, who has nothing to do with Charlemagne, is in much the same dilemma as Chaucer’s Dorigen in the Franklin’s Tale; and her Iroldo’s response is much the same as that of Dorigen’s Arveragus. Chaucer’s solution is convincing, in spite of impossible marvels, because it is motivated by Dorigen’s character. Boiardo’s solution is inferior because it is quite extraneous and casual. His Tisbina is not characterized sufficiently to motivate the story toward any convincing issue.
Much less is Boiardo concerned to motivate his whole story. His Orlando in love is even removed for long stretches from the great struggle; and Boiardo interrupts both the love and the struggle to tell of Tisbina and Iroldo or insert a fabliau.[37] True, his poem remained unfinished; but evidently he had no idea of making it a coherent whole. His Latin and Greek did not suggest to him the shaping of verse narrative. Discernible in his style, though never intrusive, they do not move his composition; for composition was not his concern. Ignoring alike the medieval progress and Pulci’s narrative cleverness with his own material, he was content with abundant activity, variety, and fluency.
But in another use of the classics he forecast the Renaissance habit of encomium. Ruggiero, legendary ancestor of his Ferrara patrons, brought up in paganism and remote from deeds of arms, is sought by Agramante for his great expedition against the Christian West. Ruggiero’s aged tutor warns Agramante against the ultimate consequences of taking the marvelous youth into France. Charlemagne, he says, may be defeated, and our pride and courage enhanced;
... but afterward the youth will become Christian, and—ah! traitress house of Maganza, which heaven should not tolerate on earth—in the end Ruggiero shall have through thee his death.
Would that were the final grief! But his descendants shall remain Christian, and come to honor as great as any the world knows today. They shall keep all, all generosity, all courtesy, sweet love and joyous state in a house the flower of the world.
I see Hugo Alberto di Sansogna descend to the Paduan plain, expert in arms, in intellect, in all the ways of glory, generous, noble, and above all humane. Hear, ye Italians: I warrant you. He who comes with that standard in hand brings with him all your redemption. Through him shall Italy be filled with prowess.
I see Azzo I and Aldobrandino III, nor know which to call the greater; for the one has killed the traitor Anzolino; the other has broken the Emperor Henry. Behold another Rinaldo paladin. I say no more of him than Lord of Vicenza, of Treviso, of Verona, who strikes the crown from Frederick.