“Le donne, i cavallier, l’arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, l’audaci imprese io canto,
Che furo al tempo che passaro I Mori
D’Africa il mare, e in Francia nocquer tanto,
Seguendo l’ire e i giovenil furori
D’Agramante lor re, che si vanto
Di vendicar la morte di Troiano
Sopra re Carlo imperator romano.”
Plots, characters and inspirations for the extraordinary English literary renaissance of the 16th and early 17th centuries often were inspired by the Italian literary renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries. For example, Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), Giovanni Boccaccio, and Ludovico Ariosto were the cornerstones of many of Shakespeare’s works. (By the way, there’s very good evidence that the Bard read and spoke excellent Italian. Where did he learn that?)
Part of the fun is puzzling out who translated what from Italian to English. The answer isn’t always obvious. Some of those Italian works had very hot and racy, even outright hilariously bawdy, content. English translators risked running afoul of the government censors.
My last post promised to tell you what happened in 1591 when the Queen’s maids-of-honor were caught red-handed with a book on the strictly forbidden list according to the (not-so)-venerable Juan Luis Vives who advocated the “policing” of women’s reading.
The trouble began when an English translation of a portion of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso started circulating at court. Orlando Furioso is a sprawling and wonderfully complex romantic epic. As its multiple characters are transported by their intersecting story lines over seas and continents amid nearly 40,000 lines of poetry arranged in 8-line stanzas, the sensation is truly breathtaking. The opening lines quoted above in Italian, were translated into English like this in 1591:
Of loves and ladies, knights and arms I sing,
Of courtesies, and many a daring feat.
And from those ancient days my story bring,
When Moors from Afric passed in hostile fleet
And ravaged France, with Agramant their king.
Flushed with his youthful rage and furious heat,
Who king Charles’, the Roman emperor’s head
Had vowed due vengeance for Troyano dead.
Orlando Furioso contains more than a few scandalous and racy moments, including the famous scene where one of the heroines, Angelica, is tied naked to a rock before she is rescued from the jaws of a sea monster by one of the heroes, Ruggerio, astride a hippogriff. Now that’s some irresistibly exciting content for female readers who had been plodding diligently through the Gospels, the Old Testament, St. Augustine and a daily dose of instructions on how they should be ruled in all things by men!
The Queen snatched the translation from one of her maids-of-honor and reprimanded John Harington, the man named as its translator. (Harington was also one of her godsons - an honor, to be sure, but then, again, she had 102 godchildren.) She commanded Harington to retire to the country and not to return until he had finished the lengthy and challenging translation as penance for endangering the morals of her maids.
An odd response, don’t you think? Playful even? If the queen were truly worried about her maids’ morals, why would she command him to finish the translation, thereby creating more sweet forbidden fruit for their potential “endangerment”? Her Majesty read Italian perfectly well, so she didn’t need the translation. Why didn’t she call in the government censors and have the text confiscated and burned? Clearly, she knew Harington was not up to the task. She knew someone else had done the translating and put Harington’s name on it as a joke.
The jokester with the sprezzatura to command both Italian and English poetry sufficiently well to toss off translating the entire 38,746 lines in perfect ottava rima, took pity on poor banished Harington and came through with the remainder of the translation, thereby freeing Harington from his otherwise inescapable isolation. The exquisite translation survives today under Harington’s name.
Why am I so sure Harington’s name on the translation was joke?
In addition to Queen Elizabeth’s obvious lack of confidence in his abilities to pull off completing the feat, Harington’s true claim to fame was as the inventor of the first flush toilet. It was called the “Ajax” because “jakes” was then slang for “toilet”, just as Harington’s first name, “john”, is slang for it today. Harrington even installed one in Richmond Palace for his godmother’s comfort.
The other major clue is that in 1596, some wag (possibly the same poet with the formidable command of Italian and English) put Harington’s name on another work, A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax, which described Harington’s invention in such bawdy terms and with veiled (but accurate) criticisms of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, that poor Harington was banished again from court.
Meanwhile, how did those maids-of-honor face the peril of their endangered morals, once the Queen had confiscated the translation of the first part of Orlando Furioso?
I do not know. But I lay odds that with “adventurous spirit”, they forthwith crossed that “current roaring loud”, and located another copy. To it, I imagine they added The Decameron, Tristan and Isolde, Amadis of Gaul, Celestina and everything they could lay their hands on written by Ovid. In short, I imagine they read and discussed every scrap of forbidden reading that they could find in vivid detail, very covertly, while waiting for whoever had tweaked John Harington to complete the English translation of Orlando Furioso.
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