refuses to give the required oracle, but finally,
importuned by the attendant priests, gives a false one. Even the
marriage of Alphonsus with Iphigenia fails to enliven the style of the
poet. But the machinery that moves the action is all wonderful and
striking and quite un-historical. Venus and the Muses recite the
Prologue and act the dumb shows, representing at the beginning of each
act a retrospection of the Past and a forecast of the Future. And Venus
herself, with the help of Calliope, writes the play, "not with pen and
ink, but with flesh and blood and living action." "This ... indicates
the fundamental idea of the piece. Wherever the all-powerful goddess of
love and beauty herself plans the actions and destinies of mortals,
there extraordinary things come to pass with playful readiness and
grace."

"The Historie of Orlando Furioso," issued from the London press in 1594,
is a light production hastily sketched for a Court Festival, based upon
the great romance of Ariosto, "but the superstructure presents the most
extravagant deviations from Ariosto's plan. The pomposity of the diction
is not amiss in the mouths of such stately personages as the Emperor of
Africa, the Soldan of Egypt, the Prince of Mexico, the King of the Isles
and the mad Orlando."

It may not be amiss to quote an example:

"Discourteous woman, nature's fairest ill,
The woe of man, that first created curse,
Base female sex, sprung from black Ate's loins,
Proud, disdainful, cruel and unjust,
Whose words are shaded with enchanting wiles,
Worse than Medusa mateth all our minds;
And in their hearts sit shameless treachery,
Turning a truthless vile circumference!
O, could my fury paint their furies forth!
For hell's no hell, compared to their hearts,
Too simple devils to conceal their arts;
Born to be plagues unto the thoughts of men,
Brought for eternal pestilence to the world."

It is difficult to think of Shakspere "bombasting out a blank verse"
like this.

* * * * *

The dramatic characters recite passages from the classic authors; the
enchantress Melissa gives a whole speech in Latin hexameters; Orlando
bursts into Italian rhymes to utter his rage against Angelica,--"a want
of taste," says the commentator, "which brings the already unsuccessful
scene, the centre of the whole action, down to the sphere of the
ridiculous."

Nobody