Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV Charlemagne's Tournament In the brilliant opening of the " Orlando Innamorato " we have the pure creation of Boiardo's imagination, as the incidents are entirely of his own invention. True, he introduces the stock figures of popular romance, assuming a certain familiarity with their previous history on the part of his audience, but he invests them with an absolutely new invididuality, and clothes them for the first time with the semblance of flesh and blood. The puppet heroes of mediaeval fable take on the lineaments of living actors on his crowded stage, and if his heroines are of more conventional type, they are, at least, strongly differentiated. While flagrantly violating all historical, geographical, and archaeological truth, he adheres closely to the unalterable facts of human nature, and never loses sight of the essential distinctions of character between his personages amid all the fantastic wizardry of his narration. Their introduction on the scene in the first act of his drama is perhaps the most vividly descriptive passage in early song. The curtain rises on it in the following fashion: Fair Sirs and gallant knights assembled here, To list to stories rich in new delight, In silence, prithee, give attentive ear To the fail tale my song shall now recite, Then shall ye hear of actions without peer. Of lofty toils and deeds of wondrous might. By bold Orlando wrought 'neath Love's constraining, What time King Charles as Emperor was reigning. Nor deem it, Sire, so strange a thing if I, Of great Orlando as enamoured tell, For nought there is so proud beneath the sky But is subdued by Love's o'ermastering spell, Not strength of arm, or soul of courage high, Not shield or mail nor sword so sharp and fell, Nor other power, what migh...