Nor ye forget, O Minyæ!
LUDOVICO ARIOSTO
(1474-1533)
BY L. OSCAR KUHNS
mong the smaller principalities of Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, none was more brilliant than the court of Ferrara, and none more intimately connected with the literature of the times. Here, on September 8th, 1474, was born Ludovico Ariosto, the great poet of the Renaissance. Here, like Boiardo before him and Tasso after him, he lived and wrote; and it was to the family of Este that he dedicated that poem in which are seen, as in a mirror, the gay life, the intellectual brilliancy, and the sensuous love for beauty which mark the age. At seventeen he began the study of the law, which he soon abandoned for the charms of letters. Most of his life was passed in the service first of Cardinal d'Este, and afterward of the Duke of Ferrara. But the courtier never overcame the poet, who is said to have begun the famous 'Orlando Furioso' at the age of thirty, and never to have ceased the effort to improve it.
The literary activity of Ariosto showed itself in the composition of comedies and satires, as well as in that of his immortal epic. The comedies were written for the court theatre of Ferrara, to which he seems to have had some such relation as that of Goethe to the theatre at Weimar. The later comedies are much better than the early ones, which are but little more than translations from Plautus and Terence. In general, however, the efforts of Ariosto in this direction are far less important than the 'Orlando' or the 'Satires.' At the first appearance of his plays they were enormously successful, and the poet was hailed as a great dramatic genius. But these comedies are interesting to-day chiefly from the fact that Ariosto was one of the very first of the writers of modern comedy, and was the leader of that movement in Italy and France which prepared the way for Molière.
Of more importance than the comedies, and second only in interest to the 'Orlando' are the 'Satires' seven in number, the first written in 1517 and the last in 1531, thus representing the maturer life of the poet. Nearly everything we know of Ariosto's character is taken from this source. He reveals himself in them as a man who excites neither our highest admiration nor our contempt. He was not born to be a statesman, nor a courtier, nor a man of affairs; and his life as ambassador of Cardinal Ippolito, and as captain of Garafagno, was not at all to his liking. His one longing through all the busy years of his life was for a quiet home, where he could live in liberty and enjoy the comforts of cultured leisure. A love of independence was a marked trait of his character, and it must often have galled him to play the part he did at the court of Ferrara. As a satirist he was no Juvenal or Persius. He was not stirred to profound indignation by the evils about him, of which there were enough in that brilliant but corrupt age. He discussed in easy, familiar style, the foibles of his fellow-men, and especially the events of his own life and the traits of his own character.
The same views of life, the same tolerant temper, which are seen in the 'Satires,' form an important part of the 'Orlando Furioso,' where they take the form of little dissertations, introduced at the beginning of a canto, or scattered through the body of the poem. These reflections are full of practical sense and wisdom, and remind us of the familiar conversation with the reader which forms so great a charm in Thackeray's novels.