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Updated: April 30, 2025
And Panizzi has observed, with striking and conclusive truth, that "without Berni the Orlando Innamorato will be read and enjoyed; without Boiardo not even the name of the poem remains." Nevertheless this conclusion need not deprive us of either work.
It is a page of fairy tale, retold by Boiardo or Spenser. After such things as these it is difficult to speak of those more prosaic tales, really intended as such, on which the painters of the Renaissance spent their fancy. Still they have all their charm, these fairy tales, not of the great poets indeed, but of the nursery.
He writes exquisitely harmonious, supple, and brilliant Tuscan verse, with an infinite richness of diction; while poor Boiardo jogs along in a language which is not the Lombard dialect in which he speaks, and which is very uncouth and awkward, as is every pure language for a provincial; indeed, so much so, that the pedantic Tuscans require Berni to make Tuscan, elegant, to ingentilire, with infinite loss to quaintness and charm, the "Orlando Innamorato" of poor Ferrarese Boiardo.
Nor was this connection broken until far on into the reign of Charles II. What Milton owed to Italy is clear not only from his Italian sonnets, but also from the frequent mention of Dante and Petrarch in his prose works, from his allusions to Boiardo and Ariosto in the 'Paradise Lost, and from the hints which he probably derived from Pulci, Tasso and Andreini.
The worst is that no one will imagine anything sublime in a superior donkey, so my simile is unfair and false. Is it not strange? I love Wordsworth best, and yet Byron has the greater power over me. How is that?" The letter pursued: "I have finished Boiardo and have taken up Berni. The latter offends me. I suppose we women do not really care for humour.
Each Christmas and carnival these theatrical representations were repeated, and many were the distinguished visitors who came to Ferrara to witness these celebrated performances. The Amphitryon and Cassina of Plautus were frequently given. On one occasion, a play adapted from a dialogue of Lucian's by Matteo Boiardo was acted.
The Sicilian, however, no matter how uneducated he may be, has an appetite for romance which must be gratified and, as it would give him some trouble to brush up his early accomplishments and stay at home reading Pulci and Boiardo, Tasso and Ariosto, he prefers to follow the story of Carlo Magno and his paladins and the wars against the Saracens in the teatrino.
The song of Boiardo and Ariosto still lingers in the air about the ruddy pinnacles; the spacious courts and broad piazza recall the tournaments and pageants of olden time.
But here is the fairyland of the Renaissance. And thus Matteo Boiardo, Count of Scandiano, goes on, adding adventure to adventure, stanza to stanza, in his castle villa, or his palace at Ferrara. But suddenly he stops and his bright fiddle and lute music jars and ends: "While I am singing, O Redeeming God, I see all Italy set on fire by these Gauls, coming to ravage I know not what fresh place."
Boiardo thus describes the fountain of hatred: "Fair was that fountain, sculptured all of gold, With alabaster sculptured, rich and rare; And in its basin clear thou might'st behold The flowery marge reflected fresh and fair.
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