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The "Setting Foorth" of Harington's
Ariosto
by
Simon Cauchi
Just as book design has only recently become established as a specialist craft in which a skilled workman may make a living and be credited for his work, so the historical study of book design is a relatively new field in inquiry, not yet thoroughly incorporated into the conventional wisdom of historical bibliography and of textual and literary criticism. Adrian Wilson is a pioneer in both fields, and his book The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1976) is a remarkable demonstration that book design was practised in a recognizable way in the earliest years of printing—and indeed before—and that evidence of its practice survives. Somewhat similar evidence survives in relation to Harington's Ariosto,[1] which Philip Gaskell has described as "an unusually well-documented example of the progress from writer to reader of a work of literature of the late Elizabethan period". Yet Gaskell in his study of Robert McNulty's critical edition pays hardly any attention to questions of book design, preferring to concentrate his discussion on the transmission of the text and on McNulty's treatment of it.[2] The "text" is understood narrowly as being constituted by the "words" and their "details" (spelling, punctuation, etc.) but such matters as the layout of the words on the page are regarded as "relatively minor" (p. 15) and the
In this article I shall be arguing, on the contrary, that the design of Harington's book (the 1591 edition) did indeed affect the text of his apparatus and does indeed affect—in ways that Harington intended—a reader's understanding and enjoyment of the work as a whole. Harington chose to publish his verse-translation in the form of a fine, elaborately-presented printed book, in which he addressed his readers not only in the verse of his translation and in the verse and prose of his apparatus but also in the ancillary languages of picture and typography. I believe that, if these ancillary languages are interpreted aright, one is led to a new respect for his work as a translator; or, in other words, that his work as a book-designer is an essential part of his achievement in "setting foorth" Ariosto's poem for the reading public of Elizabethan England. Like the poem itself and much of the apparatus, the book's design was largely "filcht from forren lands"[4] —that is to say, the pictures and typography are modelled on Italian originals, notably the Franceschi edition of 1584—but Harington imposed his own treatment on all three elements of the book (poem, apparatus, and design) and did his best to reconcile and integrate the diverse materials he energetically brought together, imitated, adapted, and improvised. The verse-translation was written first, and the length of each of the forty-six cantos seems to have been determined by purely literary constraints (Harington's time, patience, and skill); but there is ample evidence to suggest that the apparatus was shaped to fit the design that Harington had in mind, and that the design itself was shaped to express the form and indeed some of the significances of the work. No doubt it is going a little far to call Harington a "book-designer" in his own right—he was a "print-customer", really—but the term does serve to emphasize two well-known facts: that the printer, Richard Field, took his instructions from Harington in these matters, and that Harington "gaue direction" for the making of the book's engraved title-page and forty-six engraved illustrations. It seems clear that Harington intended the book's design to serve as an expressive means of communication with his readers, modifying as well as reinforcing the verbal meanings of the text. Just how well his intentions were carried out, and just what degree of fidelity to the 1591 design may properly be called for in a modern edition, are interesting questions, which deserve to be looked at quite closely.
I
The materials which enable us to form an assessment of Harington's design-intentions are quite plentiful. First of all, the advertisement to the reader, as D. F. McKenzie has written,[5] is "a remarkably informative statement about the range of reader responses that Harington thinks to elicit" (p. 104). In it, Harington explained "more plainely, then for the learned sort had haply bene requisite" the arrangement of the book, the functions of its component parts (or, rather, most of them, including the illustrations), and how and in what spirit he wished the book to be read. The language is plain and direct, admirably suited to its immediate purpose; yet it abounds, as so many old documents do, and like the rest of Harington's prose in this book, in fascinating half-expressed thoughts, which I shall be attempting to elucidate and amplify. If one reads the text of the advertisement straight through and counts up all the main verbs in the active voice and first person singular, one gains a very clear impression indeed of Harington's close personal involvement in every part of the book. So, too, the wording of its title suggests clearly enough Harington's concern with the book's presentation as well as with its substance:
More light is shed on Harington's conception of the book's design, and on the chronological sequences of composition, design, and printing, by the
Further information about Harington's design-intentions can be obtained by comparing the 1591 edition with other printed books, and especially with the various Italian editions of Ariosto's poem that served as its design-models. These include not only the 1584 Franceschi edition but also the Valgrisi edition and possibly earlier Italian editions as well.[8] In particular,
Reference was made earlier to some doubtful points of chronology. A good deal is clear, however, and before going on to consider the book's design in more detail, it will be worth while sketching out some of the salient facts that can be inferred. The poem itself was the first part of the British Library manuscript to be copied out, with room being left for the addition in single or double column of the verse-arguments; but the fair copy of the verse was not necessarily completed before the earlier cantos were revised, equipped with verse-arguments and marginal notes, and printed. The marginal notes were evidently entered in at various times. They are in handwriting of various sizes and degrees of neatness, now in secretary script, now in italic. Since several have been traced to their sources in Lavezuola's "Osservationi" and Ruscelli's "Annotationi" incorporated in the Franceschi edition, it seems likely that Harington, while using these and perhaps other commentaries, would turn from one place to another in the manuscript to enter his marginal notes. The end-of-canto notes (mostly absent from the manuscript) seem to have been written in sequence, beginning from the beginning; this is observable from the text, for some promises made about them are not fulfilled, or their fulfilment is deferred.[10] From Book IV on, most of them, like Ruscelli's canto-by-canto "Annotationi" in the Valgrisi and Franceschi editions, were written to fit the available space left over at the end of the verse; they usually end neatly at or near the foot of the page. The general allegory was written after the work of annotation was complete, as can be seen from its first paragraph; so also, presumably, was the life of Ariosto. Drafts or early versions of the preface and the index seem to have been in existence at an early stage of the work, although both were printed late. They are both referred to in the advertisement to the reader, somewhat inaccurately, and also in marginal notes and elsewhere.[11] In brief, the text of the work seems to have
The printers, however, seem to have worked through the book systematically, gathering by gathering, from A to ¶. The sequence of setting within each gathering does not appear to follow a regular pattern. There was no need to keep to one, since most of the text consisted of verse in regular stanzas, easy to cast off accurately. The running-titles never wander further than into an adjacent book or gathering, forward or back. Wrong page-numbers are few and far between, even though there are some lengthy sequences of them in the printer's copy, most but not all subsequently corrected. The major confusion in page-numbering occurs in Book XXIV, after an irregular gathering of four leaves at the end of Book XXIII—about which more later. An interesting improvement in the layout of the canto-openings is first made in Book XIV. These layouts are of three types. Book I, with a lengthier headtitle than the rest, has the first six stanzas on the first page. The remainder have the first seven, the break between columns coming after the first line of the third stanza in Books II-XIII, XV and XXVI, but after the second line of the third stanza (a decided improvement) in Books XIV, XVI-XXV, and XXVII-XLVI. It seems clear that the improvement in layout was made too late for Book XV but in time for Book XIV; or, in other words, that sig. K4 was printed before sig. I5. (The untypical break later on, at Book XXVI, was necessitated by an extra turned-over line, mistakenly indented below the initial in the first stanza.) From Book XIV on, also, and not before, there regularly appear below the notes of allusion such lines as "The end of the Annotations vpon the fourteenth booke". Questions of layout and presentation were evidently reconsidered at this stage of the job, and it may be more than sheer coincidence that, from Book XIV on, the printer's copy has survived—though it is of course not known when the copy for Books I-XIII and the verse-argument for Book XIV was lost. Harington's manuscript direction to Field at the end of the annotations to Book XLVI shows that only then was the type chosen for the preface, general allegory, and life of Ariosto. Pointedly, I think, these were to be—and are—in the same fount of pica roman as Field had used for printing The Arte of English Poesie (1589): "Mr Feeld . . . I would have the allegory (as allso the appollygy and all the prose that ys to come except the table [)] in the same printe that Putnams booke ys." Not only the fount of pica roman but also the initials and ornaments of "Putnams booke" were used again in Harington's.[12]
I have been unable to establish whether the sheets regularly went through the rolling press, for the printing of the engravings, before or after the printing of the text; it may or may not be significant that two of the wrong page-numbers, "208" at sig. S3v and "141" at sig. X5, are on the same side of the sheet as engravings. The printers regularly made allowance for these engravings in their casting-off, and in the 1591 edition (unlike the 1607 and 1634 reprints, and for that matter unlike the 1584 Franceschi edition)[13] they are all correctly printed, in their proper places and the right way up.
Thus, with only one major exception (the irregular gathering of four leaves at the end of Book XXIII), the work of preparing and printing the book seems to have gone reasonably smoothly, once the methods of annotating and illustrating it had been chosen and devised. The only major alteration in the book's contents made in the course of printing seems to have been the addition of new material at the end of the preface and possibly also at the back of the book. The additions—if that is what they are—were intended principally but not solely to answer and forestall readers' criticisms of the translation, verse, and notes. These last, the end-of-canto notes in particular, seem to have given Harington a good deal of trouble, for in them he "strained" himself not only "to make mention of some of my kindred and frends" (as he wrote in the third part of the preface) but to organize them according to a preconceived fourfold division (moral, history, allegory, and allusion) and at the same time to make them fit neatly on the page. However, the chosen method was applied pretty consistently, and the description Harington gives in the advertisement to the reader of the functions of these end-of-canto notes is quite remarkably accurate.
II
It is time now to consider in more detail the "setting foorth" of the book as it is described in the advertisement to the reader and to try to form an assessment of Harington's authorial intentions in regard to the book's design (illustrations and typography). The first point to be noted is that the "setting foorth" is by no means merely derivative; it is adapted, not copied, from the Franceschi and Valgrisi editions, and has a number of interesting original features. Secondly, even its most conspicuously derivative features—that is to say, the illustrations—were borrowed for an artistic purpose and employed to calculated effect; or so it can be argued. They are examples of "honest Theft".
The first question to be asked concerns Harington's book in relation to his readers. What was Harington's purpose, his authorial intention, in bringing
Considering the readership, it is entirely understandable that the ancillary matter with which the poem is accompanied should tend, for all its elaboration, to be comparatively simple and straightforward (though it is graced with many details intended to give pleasure to the more discerning). In the preface, which is clearly intended to be a statement of some weight, Harington undertakes the initial task of introducing the translation to his English readers. He relates the work to the moral and literary concerns and controversies of contemporary English society, deprecating and ridiculing much that seems to him foolish, and dealing at length with the matters that seem to him to present serious threats to the success of his book. These are principally the fears of the pious but less cultivated reader that such "Italian toyes" as Ariosto's poem might be "hurtfull for his soule, or conscience", and the cant of the time that poetry was a "nurse of lies" and an "inticer to wantonnes". Harington defends his work in his own individual way, laying
Ariosto's narrative method is too large a topic to be fully treated here. The particular points relevant to this discussion are the characteristic interruptions of the stories both within and at the end of the cantos (the two kinds of interruption are quite distinct from one another); the artistry in the succession of Ariosto's short narrative flights; the resumption of the preceding narratives at the beginning of each canto after the proemes; and the interposition in the narrative texture of a number of whole stories told consecutively from beginning to end. These last seem to be what Harington
That key phrase—"the meane matter betweene the so deuided stories (vpon which commonly they depend)"—is strikingly reminiscent of the words of a modern critic, C. P. Brand, on Ariosto's "specific contribution to the romance tradition":
From the point of view of book design, however, the breaks between the cantos are the main thing, and they have their own special character. Ariosto's congedi at the end of each canto, followed by the proemi at the start of the next, serve quite a different function from the dropping within a canto of one narrative thread in order to pick up another. The congedi and the proemi enforce a pause, and at the same time, despite Ariosto's more sophisticated treatment of them, they hark back to the practice of his predecessors in the romance tradition, suspending the action at a particularly exciting point.[18] The proemi themselves are neatly made to fit their positions, facing as they do Janus-like to past and future, and the resumed narrative after the proemio invariably—or, rather, with only one exception[19] —takes up the story again at just the point where it was broken off by the preceding congedo. The narrative technique is time-worn and familiar, reminiscent of cliff-hanging endings in silent-film serials. Or, in more modern terms, it is as if the poet imposes a "freeze" (as the TV technicians call it) on the moving images of his story, and begins the next canto's narrative with the melting of the same "freeze". Or again, in perhaps more decorous terms, it is as if Shakespeare, by mingling together and modifying the principles of the romantic and classical drama in a way he did not, had permitted himself the grossest disunities of time, place and action from scene to scene, and yet had rigorously observed an unknown—and, of course, theatrically quite pointless —liaison des actes.[20]
The elaborate treatment of the canto-breaks in the printed books—Valgrisi's, Franceschi's, Harington's—clearly reinforces the poet's own requirement of a pause. Hence the positioning of the plates immediately before each canto; hence the elaborately bordered verse-arguments (and, in the Italian editions, the prose allegorie) at the top of the page above the beginning of the text; hence the ornamental initial in each first stanza, inviting the reader to start the new canto with the proeme. To be sure, a similar treatment of the canto-breaks (or such divisions) can be seen in other contemporary books of poetry where the same narrative technique is not used and where there is no regular liaison across the divide; but Ariosto's use of liaison was well understood by the illustrators of the Valgrisi and Franceschi editions that Harington used, and also by the author of the verse-arguments that Harington translated.
The plates and the arguments of Harington's book are to be considered more fully later. Here it is appropriate to point out a rhythmical regularity that has not previously been commented upon. The borders surrounding the verse-arguments in Harington's book are of two kinds: one, a frame of type-ornaments; the other, a compartment made up of four head-pieces, i.e. ornamental woodblocks. The two borders alternate in a regular sequence, with a change of step at Book XXIV. This feature of the design was imitated, not from the Franceschi edition, where six different engraved borders are used in no particular order, but from the Valgrisi edition of 1556 or one of its reprints. In the 1556 edition, according to Mrs Falaschi, "Each canto is preceded by an argomento framed in an ornamental woodcut for which there are two alternating patterns consisting of putti, garlands and masks . . .".[21] Although there is no positive evidence on the matter, we may take it that Harington either suggested or at least approved of the imitation. Significantly, the alternating sequence—still with its change of step at Book XXIV, which seems not to have had Italian precedent—was to be preserved in the 1607 edition, printed by Field "for Iohn Norton and Simon VVaterson" and published in Harington's life-time. It was not preserved in the posthumous 1634 edition, printed "by G. Miller for J. Parker".
III
Harington "gaue direction" for the making of the plates and was particularly proud that they were "all cut in brasse". However, it is a striking fact that in only three of the plates were significant changes made to the designs. The remaining forty-three were copied as closely as possible within the limits of the English engravers' abilities. Why was this so? Lack of ideas, lack of a skilled draughtsman, or some such reason? Was Harington merely taking the easy—though most costly—way out, and filching the best illustrations he could find in the Italian editions? Or did he really understand and
Porro's practice differs in a number of respects from that of his immediate predecessor, the Valgrisi artist, but the basic principles of illustration are the same. These Valgrisi woodcuts, too, had their models and precedents, as Mrs Falaschi has shown, but their unique character is what is of interest. They are the first full-page illustrations of Ariosto's poem and the first and last attempts to represent in full detail and in a single plate the entire substance of each canto. The perspective is the key to the interpretation of the multiple scenes, which usually (though not quite invariably) follow one another in narrative sequence upwards from the foot of the page, so that the figures—"cosi sfuggendosi, & diminuendo a poco a poco"—become reduced to minute proportions at the top. Where the perspective does not follow the narrative sequence, it is because the artist has sensibly chosen to separate Paris from Damascus, for example, and to arrange the illustrated actions geographically in different parts of the illustration (Plate XVIII). The problem of perspective diminution was compounded by the small size of the wood-blocks. For Valgrisi's quarto edition, they were inserted in a series of what look like quite unnecessarily broad and elaborate factotum borders. They were used without the borders in Valgrisi's octavo edition, also first published in 1556.
The task undertaken by the Valgrisi artist is indeed quite breathtaking, as well as eye-straining, in its ambition. The problems of illustration posed by Ariosto's poem each seem to have been systematically isolated and tackled. How to represent—say—a lady who vanishes, a palace which dissolves, a phantasm
From our point of view, the important thing about the Valgrisi illustrations is that both the beginnings and the endings of the cantos are systematically represented: the first in the main scene of larger figures at the foot of the page, the latter diminutively somewhere at the top, very often in the top right-hand corner. There is thus a kind of pictorial liaison from one woodcut to the next, which parallels the poet's own liaison between the cantos. So, also, the points at which stories are "abruptly broken off" and later picked up again are illustrated in the body of the pictures, somewhere in the nearer or further middle distance.
Porro, taking these woodcuts as his model, took over many of the same technical solutions. He, too, but more consistently, used perspective to represent the narrative sequence. He, too, omitted reported narratives, had his problems with the phantasms, represented the naked and invisible Angelica all too visibly, the palace of illusions all too solidly. His designs usually borrow a good deal from the Valgrisi woodcuts, often containing details that are reversed adaptations of those in the woodcuts, so that (for example) the endings of the narrative sequences usually appear in the top left-hand corner. We may confidently presume that Porro worked with the Valgrisi edition open before him, but he also consulted the text, usually carefully, in order to make his own adaptations and improvements.[22] Allowing himself more space by including his own narrow borders as an integral part of the engravings, he gave much greater prominence to the foreground scenes and carefully strengthened and varied the composition of the designs. He enlarged the principal figures and made use of architecture, rocks, foliage, and so on, to separate the smaller groups of figures into discrete sequences. However detailed they may be, his plates do not become mere frames for a mêlée of minute figures—as some of the Valgrisi woodcuts certainly do.
Porro's main concern was to make his designs bolder and more dramatic. To do this, he occasionally omitted or conversely added or enlarged the illustration of the very first narrative stanzas of a canto. If these were omitted, the next few stanzas supplied the principal subject. He clarified the action, either by separating successive phases of an episode combined in one
The results of this procedure are at once admirable and curiously unsatisfactory. To take the most obvious example, Ruggiero's rescue of Angelica takes place towards the very end of canto X and is therefore illustrated only by tiny figures in the top left-hand corner of Plate X. Similarly, the pastoral idyll of Angelica and Medoro is shown only in the background of Plate XIX. The foreground of Plate XIX, at least, gives prominent treatment to Cloridan and Medoro, thanks to the continuation of that episode at the start of the canto; but, even there, it is a later part of the episode that is illustrated, not the famous passage in canto XVIII describing their nocturnal search for the body of Dardanello, hidden in darkness and then suddenly illuminated by the moon. (This is illustrated in the background of Valgrisi's Plate XVIII, but not in Porro's.) At their worst, Porro's methods bring about some quite ludicrous distortions of emphasis. Thus, in Plate IV, a conspicuous detail in the foreground of an otherwise admirable design illustrates Bradamante's purchase of a horse from an inn-keeper—a mere narrative iota (Ariosto, IV: 10. 3-5) and omitted by Harington from his translation—but Ruggiero's conversion and baptism (Ariosto, XLI:59) are not illustrated at all in Plate XLI, though the deficiency is partially made good in Plate XLIV. The lack of illustration of reported narrative is also unsatisfying. It means the omission, for example, of Pinabello's vivid description of Atlante and his flying horse in canto II, an important passage because it gives the reader his introduction to the hippogriff.
Yet Porro's methods do peculiarly and no doubt deliberately befit and exploit the exact location of his plates in the Franceschi edition, coming as they do regularly between the end of one canto and the beginning of the next. The principal scenes represent, if not precisely the moments of narrative "freeze" (and some of them do exactly that), then at least the immediately following or closely following action. Their subjects are usually
The English engravers' copies of the Italian plates now need to be compared with Harington's translation itself. Philip Hofer remarked that the English engravers "copied both subject and style, while the translator . . . went to the opposite extreme, and took bold liberties with the text!"[23] This, I believe, gives quite the wrong impression. The generally good accord between the plates and the translation is what needs to be emphasized, not the quite numerous small discrepancies. The principal scenes are all perfectly intelligible by reference to the translation, and apart from Plate IV, already mentioned, there are only two plates out of the forty-six where details given prominent or conspicuous treatment by Porro are inadequately explained in the text. These discrepancies occur in Books XIII and XVII. In both, it may be said that they work ultimately to the benefit of the book as a whole—faute de mieux, that is, and assuming thorough revision of the verse was impracticable. Both, interestingly, are the result of Harington's systematic abridgement in the translation of scenes of cruelty and suffering. In Book XIII, Orlando's brutal punishment of the outlaws who had held Isabella captive in their cave is condensed to a single undescriptive final couplet:
But that he brought them to the hanging ward.
(Harington, XIII:36; cf. Ariosto, XIII:41)
A few words also need to be said about the alterations made to Porro's designs as they were copied for Harington's book.[24] Plate XXVIII, as is well known, was altered by the removal of an architectural background to make room for a pictorial summary of the "Tale of mine Host" about Jocundo, the story which—as tradition has it—first involved Harington in his work of translation and for which he incurred his penance of having to carry it through to completion before being allowed back to court. The light-hearted spirit in which the penance was probably imposed may be gauged from the inclusion in the plate of three scenes of copulation as background vignettes. Plate V was also altered, no doubt by Harington's direction, to include scenes of love. Dalinda's tale of Polinesso's amorous "sleights" is represented at bottom left and the traveller's tale of Ariodante's "saltus amatorius" at top right. There was also a minor change, with nothing (for once) overtly amorous about it, in Plate III. Atlante's castle is shown at top left, presumably to illustrate Melissa's description of it (although according to the narrative the castle does not come into view until the next canto), and a mountain goat at top right is presumably there to suggest the dizzy height of the precipice. Otherwise, the only changes are just as Mrs Falaschi has reported them: two plates reversed (Plate IV and XVII), one copied perforce not from Porro's engraving but from the Valgrisi woodcut and enlarged and reversed in the process (Plate XXXIV), some minor but sensitive improvements (Plates XIII and XXIII), some errors of copying in the labelling, and a number of small omissions and simplifications of detail in the designs and in the borders. Plates XXXIX and XLVI, particularly, are rather crude and simplified by comparison with the originals. None of Porro's various errors of interpretation, large or small, was corrected.[25]
The alterations in Plates III, V and XXVIII all violate Porro's principle of not illustrating reported narrative. We may assume that Harington disliked that principle, or at least was not going to let it stand in his way in his treatment of two favourite cantos. He seems also to have been dissatisfied by the lack of prominence given in Porro's Plate X to Rogero's rescue of Angelica. The Bodleian manuscript shows that he had toyed with the idea of including a full-page plate illustrating that episode, though just where it might have been fitted into the printed book is not at all clear.
IV
Since the Italian "Argomenti" and the Valgrisi woodcuts were first published together, it seems probable on purely a priori grounds that there would have been a certain measure of collaboration between the author of the arguments and the artist of the woodcuts—if only to the extent of one consulting the other's work, when it was possible to do so, as well as the text of the poem itself. They seem in fact to have agreed on a common approach, each working towards the same ends according to the potentialities of his own medium. However, neither Ruscelli in his "A i lettori" nor Harington in his advertisement to the reader say very much about the function of the arguments in the context of the book as a whole. Ruscelli writes merely: "Gli Argomenti in ottaua rima, che habbiamo posti in questo Libro di Canto in Canto, sono del Signor Scipione Ammirato, giouane di belle lettere, di felicissima vena, & di molti studij." Harington, true to form, is a little more forthcoming, but not much: "Also (according to the Italian maner) I haue in a staffe of eight verses comprehended the contents of euery booke or canto, in the beginning thereof, which hath two good vses, one, to vnderstand the picture the perfecter, the other, to remember the storie the better." What is common to these two editorial comments about the arguments is that they draw attention to the fitness of their form and their location. The arguments are written in the same verse-form as the poem itself (Italian or English), and they are "posti . . . di Canto in Canto" "in the beginning thereof". Like the plates with which they are associated, the arguments serve the double purposes of introduction and recapitulation, whetting the reader's appetite to continue and at the same time helping him to remember and consider what he has read. However the forty-six stanzas (Italian or English) may also be read in sequence, as a miniature version of the whole poem. The sequence bears a certain resemblance to a "corona" of sonnets, and one suspects that readers may sometimes have attempted to use them as epitomes, as a substitute for reading the poem itself at length.
In the Italian arguments, all the main-springs of the plot—characters, motives, actions, consequences—are neatly abstracted and fixed in the reader's memory by a variety of means: crisp characterization (especially of the villains in the story), repetition of key words and names, and a complex syntax in which much use is made of participles, phrases in apposition, and so on, in order to give at least some idea of the connections between the various stages of the plot. The final couplet of one stanza is regularly echoed in some
In the Valgrisi edition, more often than not, the first and last lines of the "Argomenti" correspond closely with the beginnings and endings of the narrative sequences as they are represented in the woodcuts; indeed, the artist's comprehensive method of illustration ensured that practically everything mentioned in the "Argomenti" would be represented somewhere or other in the woodcuts—if only one has the patience to find it. In the Franceschi edition, the correspondences between the plates and the "Argomenti" are not so close, for reasons that have already been explained: the different choice of principal scenes, the greater prominence given to them, the lack of illustration of later episodes in the cantos, and so on. Generally speaking, Harington's book has much the same measure of correspondence between plates and arguments as Franceschi's book has—less than that of the Valgrisi edition, but still present in varying degrees from canto to canto. In some cantos practically everything in the argument is illustrated; more often, the beginning but not the end of the argument is illustrated; in only one quite exceptional instance—Book XXVI—nothing mentioned in the argument is represented in the plate (except "Merlins well") and nothing illustrated in the plate, except the well, is mentioned in the argument. In what way, then, did Harington mean the arguments to help the reader "to vnderstand the picture the perfecter"? When it comes to close reading of the plates, the arguments are clearly of no help, but with the principal scenes it is different. A number of Harington's alterations in the arguments seem quite evidently to have been made in order to bring them into better accord with the principal scenes of the corresponding or following plates. His practice is by no means consistent, and one could wish that a few more such alterations had
To get with faire Geneura reputation. (V:i-ii)
Two bands that by Orlando late were slaine, (XIV:i-ii)
Il campo suo, ch'Orlando sol l'ha morte. (XIV:i-ii)
And manie a vverie mile they rode togither. (XXI:vii-viii)
Poi doue ode alti gridi il caual drizza. (XXI:vii-viii)
To heare his mistres hath him quite forsaken. (XXIII:vii-viii)
De la sua Donna, incominciò l'orrenda
Pazzia, ch'altra non fu mai sí stupenda. (XXIII:vi-viii)
Affrighted, doth his mistresse beare away,
Which causd the Pagans both breake of the fray. (XXVI:vi-viii)
Fugge di Doralice, il Re gagliardo
Di Sarza il destrier volge, e Mandricardo. (XXVI:vi-viii)
At which the Pagan Prince is passing wroth. (XXVIII:vii-viii)
Del frate, ch'ella ha seco in compagnia,
Che'l fellon il dà morte acerba e ria. (XXVIII:vi-viii)
King Charles, and in his presence is baptized: (XXXVIII:i-ii)
Marfisa à Carlo, e qui si fa Cristiana. (XXXVIII:i-ii)
Which caused him his dearest frend to want, (XLII:i-ii)
One last example may be given here, out of sequence:
Is tane and bound all naked to the shore: (VIII:v-vi)
Angelica vnto the rocke fast bound (X:vii-viii)
Per cibo del marin monstro s' allaccia. (VIII:v-vi)
Angelica, è per lui tosto saluata. (X:vii-viii)
At their best, the canto divisions in Harington's book are extraordinarily well handled, especially where plate and argument appear on facing pages. A canto-beginning is carefully prepared for in the endings of the previous argument and of the previous canto itself, and on turning over the leaf a wealth of information is displayed through several media: pictorial, poetical, typographical, even marginal. Plate complements argument, proeme complements both (and is the reader's entry-point into the new canto), the topic of the proeme is picked up and developed in the notes (and there may well be a marginal reference to the notes),[26] and with any luck the very stanzas illustrated in the principal scene of the plate will be there on the facing first page. Particularly good examples of this kind of collaboration among all or nearly all of these elements may be seen in Books I, IV, VII, X, XIV, XVI, XVIII, XXIII, XXVII and XXX, and there are many others which, though less good all round, still offer many delights—particularly in the plates. However,
V
The critical purposes served by the work of annotation are not our present concern, but rather the use of space. From the point of view of book design, Harington's method of annotation can be seen as an ingenious solution to a practical difficulty. He sought to imitate his Italian sources by publishing an annotated edition, but Ruscelli's canto-by-canto "Annotationi" could supply him with very little material towards his own notes: they are mostly comments on the fine points of Ariosto's use of the Italian language. Harington's solution was to borrow what he wanted from his other sources—the commentaries and the Valvassori prose allegorie [27] —and to transfer all this borrowed material into his end-of-canto notes and also (sometimes) into his marginal notes. All, that is, except the material borrowed for the general allegory and the life of Ariosto, which as we have seen were probably later additions to the book's contents. The omission of prose allegorie at the head of Harington's cantos makes sense as a consequence of this method. He needed the material for the end-of-canto notes, and to transfer it there had the additional advantage of bringing forward the first seven stanzas of a canto on to the first page, instead of four as in the Franceschi and Valgrisi editions, so that—whether consequently or, possibly, of set purpose—there was a better chance that the principal scene of an illustration would face the very stanza or stanzas it illustrated.[28]
Ideally both sets of annotations, Italian and English, should have regularly come to an end at the foot of a recto page, so that the following plate
The method used by Ruscelli and Valgrisi to adjust the length of the "Annotationi" and to work out their relationships with the following plates is not known. Whatever it was, it worked. Franceschi simply adopted the same layout, but improved on it by adding new copy (presumably also written by Ruscelli) to the notes to cantos XXVII and XXXVIII, so that they too end at the foot of the page in his edition, as they do not in Valgrisi's.[29] In difficult cases, at least one or other of the two conditions for ideal layout is satisfied. There is only one exception to this, at the break following canto XXXVII, and even there the annotations fill up a good two-thirds of the page. In all other cases where much space is left blank, the "Annotationi" finish on a recto, followed by a plate properly facing its canto-beginning. The treatment of the "Annotationi" to canto XXXVI is of particular interest. There the very brief notes could quite easily have fitted below the verse, and were probably originally intended to go there; but they were imposed on the following recto, leaving much blank space at the bottom of both pages (pp. 410-411), presumably so that the following plate would appear on a verso.
In Harington's book, there are three canto-breaks where neither of the conditions for ideal layout are met. In the first two of these, the breaks following Books XVIII and XXV, the notes do fill up most of the remainder of the verso page even though some space is left blank. The third, following Book XXX, is a striking exception to the general rule and conspicuously fails to meet either condition. One suspects a blunder somewhere, and a blunder can be found. It will be discussed in some detail shortly.
There is no doubt at all that Harington concerned himself personally with these questions of layout. We have the evidence of remarks made in
Consider, for example, Harington's instruction to the printer given at the end of the notes to Book XXIX. These notes include two verse-quotations, one Latin, one English, which in the manuscript are both written out in long lines, two lines of verse to one of script. The four lines of Latin verse are each numbered, but not the lines of English verse—it is probable that Harington thought of these latter as three lines of verse with internal rhyme as well as end rhyme, for they are also set out as three lines in Ruth Hughey's edition of The Arundel Harington Manuscript of Tudor Poetry (1960; no. 177). The instruction to Field reads: "Yf thear bee roome enowgh in the page print the verses at length yf not then print them as they are heer written. and yf need bee leave out the latten verse quyte." Harington did not wish the notes to run over on to the next printed page. At it turned out, there was "roome" for the Latin verses to be printed "at length", but the six (or three) lines of English verse remained set out as three. Plate XXX appears properly on the next verso, but there is no means of knowing if this is what Harington was aiming for, or if he merely wished to have a neat finish at the foot of the page.
In the manuscript, the tail end of the notes to Book XXXV is squeezed in above the heading to Book XXXVI. The notes end with a reference to Hudson's Du Bartas, but there is room for only one line of the poem to be quoted. In the printed book the quotation has been lengthened, presumably in proof, by a further five lines. The effect is to strengthen Harington's point and at the same time to bring the end of the notes nearer to the foot of the page. Plate XXXVI, alas, appears opposite, but at least one of the conditions for ideal layout has been met. Similarly, the notes of allusion to Book XXVIII (the tale of Jocundo) are made to fit: "Historie nor Allegorie, nor scant any thing that is good, can be picked out of this bad booke: but for Allusions, they come in my mynd so plentifully, as I can scant tell how to make an end, when I am once enterd into them: Only I will touch one or two, (to fill up this page withall). . . . Plate XXIX, alas, once again appears on a recto.
Where Harington had much space to fill, verse-quotation was a convenient
So far, in fact, there is little to suggest that Harington really cared whether the plates appeared on versos or rectos; but the blunder at the cantobreak following Book XXX, I believe, tips the balance in favour of the suggestion that he did. Here moreover we have a closer glimpse into Harington's working methods. The blunder seems to have been caused by reliance on faulty stanza-numbering in the manuscript. Stanza numbers 35-39 in Book XXX had been repeated, so that the last stanza of the canto was originally misnumbered "84" instead of "89"—though, like the others, it was later corrected. When he wrote the end-of-canto notes to Book XXX, Harington must have thought he had more space than in fact was available to him. The notes take up twenty lines of type and would have fitted comfortably under seven final stanzas of verse (78-84); but in fact there were five more stanzas, and here Harington had not left instructions to the printer that the notes were to be cut "yf need bee". The printers duly cast off and followed their copy, and the text necessarily runs over to the top of the next page, ending high on sig. Y1v after only twelve lines of type. It is followed by a tailpiece—the only tailpiece in all the annotations to appear on a verso. Here, at least, Harington seems to have calculated the length of his notes without reference to the not-yet-printed sheets, relying on the stanza-numbering and on his knowledge that the verse was to be set out in regular equal lengths of seven stanzas at a time. If his calculations had been sound, all would have been well and both conditions for ideal layout would have been satisfied.
The miscalculation in Book XXX, as is the way with these things, led to another one in Book XXXI. There, under the twelve final stanzas, Harington tucked in a very brief note on the moral. It is the shortest end-of-canto note in the whole book, a mere four lines of type, and ends: ". . . The rest of the booke hath no new matter, but such as hath bin noted before: and therefore I will end this little space with this short note." Plate XXXII appears opposite, but if the notes to Book XXX had been calculated aright, the whole sequence from Plate XXXI onwards would have been imposed one page earlier, and Harington's "short note" would have appeared properly at the foot of the preceding recto. That, I suggest, was the real reason why he kept the note so untypically short. These two examples, in which it is possible to trace failures to achieve ideal layout back to an observable miscalculation, lead me to think that, in fact, Harington did prefer the plates to appear facing the canto-beginnings. He must have been disappointed that in the finished book so many of his plates appear on rectos, by comparison with those of Franceschi's book.
Just how much further one can trace the consequences of this miscalculation
Book XLVI, of course, is a special case. There the Italian "Annotationi" end neatly at the foot of a verso page, facing the title-page of the "Cinque Canti", not translated by Harington. Harington's notes, unconstrained by plate or title-page, continue to the top of the next recto, where they take up six lines of type. They are followed by the line: "Here end the notes of the 46, and last Canto of Orlando Furioso"—a phrase that recalls the running-titles of that canto in the Italian editions, "CANTO QVARANTESIMOSESTO, ET VLTIMO". In the manuscript there is the most famous of all Harington's instructions to the printer:
The canto-break following Book XXIII is also a special case, and rather a remarkable one. It deserves to be discussed at some length. This cantobreak marks the mid-point of the poem, for Book XXIII ends with the story of the onset of Orlando's madness, the centre-piece of Ariosto's poem and the heart of what Harington called "the chiefe Allegorie of all the booke, and where-vpon the booke taketh his name Orlando Furioso" (XXXIX: Allegory). Harington made a number of special adjustments in his apparatus to make sure that his readers understood the importance of the episode. This was necessary because the madness of Orlando was not by any means the principal topic of Italian critical debate about the poem. Fornari in his Spositione, the critic from whom Harington borrowed most extensively, devoted the second of his two volumes to an explanation of the allegory, but far from interpreting the whole poem he concentrated his attention on the story of Ruggiero and Alcina and its ramifications. The same emphasis on Ruggiero and Alcina is seen in Bononome's "Allegoria", and also in Harington's general allegory, despite the adjustments made to the text in an attempt to give prominence to Orlando. The end-of-canto notes to Book XXIII are rather compressed by lack of space, and allegorical interpretation of the episode is deferred "till I come to restoring of his wit againe: which I count more proper for this subiect", but Harington did find space in the notes of allusion for an interesting comment on the artistic, literary, indeed Aristotelian qualities of the episode, on its psychological truth and its power to move. As we saw earlier, this note was taken—adapted, that is to say, not merely borrowed—partly from Fornari and partly from Lavezuola, and the argument to Book XXIII was also adjusted in exactly the same spirit. In all these various small ways, then, Harington can be seen to be altering his critical material in an attempt to redress the balance, and to express his own reading or vision of the poem; but commentary alone, however teased and twisted, was not enough.
In the Italian editions, the design-treatment of the canto-break following canto XXIII is not distinguished in any way from the others. However, Field was given the highly significant authorial instruction: "Between the xxiijth booke and the xxiiijth I would have a spare leafe . . ."—maddeningly, the sentence is unfinished because the rest has been trimmed away in binding.
That there were some uncertainties in the printing-house about what was going on is clear from the irregular four-leaf gathering at the end of Book XXIII and from the confused page-numbers throughout Book XXIV and at the start of Book XXV (i.e. all the next regular gathering). In the manuscript, the entire sequence of printers' notations between P.12/178 at XXIII: 8 and S.11./209 at XXVI:36 is in one way or another deficient or incorrect. The confusion in the printed book, however, is much greater here than in other places, where there are also lengthy sequences of missing or erroneous printers' notations in the manuscript. The picture that emerges is a pretty illustration of the relations between one printer and his author at the end of the sixteenth century. Harington knew what he wanted; Field knew what was practicable; together they reached a compromise solution, and in doing so caused a good deal of trouble to the workmen.
In other places, somewhat similar means are used to draw attention to a fundamental division at the mid-point of the poem and to the importance of Orlando's heroical—or perhaps we should call it heroi-comical—loss and recovery of his wits. Below the notes of allusion in Book XXIII the customary line appears, but the wording is different. Instead of something like "The end of the annotations vpon the xxiij. booke", which would have been typical, we read "Here end the first xxiij. bookes of Ariosto", and there is adequate but not excessive room below for a tailpiece. The contents-list similarly divides the poem into two halves, leaving a large gap, a thick white line, between the two entries, thus:
ending with Orlandos falling mad.
recouered his wits; ending with Bradamants marriage.
It might show less than perfect balance on my own part to descant at any great length on the significance of these two blank pages at the heart of
The interesting thing about all this is that Harington had no Italian precedents for these features of the typographical design, or rather that he imitated Italian precedents and then took them one stage further. He followed Ruscelli, Valgrisi and Franceschi in making the annotations fit the space available for them on the page, so that the great majority of the pages in his book are printed from top to bottom of the printing surface. Only if this norm was clearly discernible would the two blank pages at the centre—for which there was no Italian precedent—have significance. Similarly he followed the 1556 Valgrisi edition (or one of its reprints) in maintaining an alternating sequence in the ornament of the canto-beginnings, and only in the context of that regularity does the change of step at Book XXIV also acquire significance. In the arrangement of the front and end matter and in the choice of type for the preface, general allegory, and life of Ariosto, he contrived a consistent design and sense of orderly sequence in the English book that are quite lacking in the Italian editions, yet wholly in keeping with the rhythmical presentation of the poem itself and its accompanying material; and the printing of the poem itself in roman, not italics, was just one of the many ways in which Ariosto's stanzas were tactfully "tempered to the obstinate humours of the island".[34] There could hardly be a better example than Harington's Ariosto of "triumphal form" in which the "centre" is "finessed", i.e. treated negatively; but the means used to achieve the effect were not the line-counting methods of numerology—which (it seems) interested neither Ariosto nor Harington—but rather the silent poetry of book design.[35] Harington expressly admired the shaping of Ariosto's poem, praising among much else its first and last lines and remarking in his life of Ariosto how "absolute a peece of worke" the poem is and how "euery matter" is "brought . . . to a good and well pleasing conclusion". He equally admired Ariosto's skills as a story-teller, recognizing his ability to "draw a
No doubt, it is also a fair assumption that Harington wished to dress his book in the best contemporary Italian manner—to be sophisticated and up-to-date. Here, however, he was less successful. Considering together the nineteen plates that appear on rectos, the layout of the verse in seven stanzas to a full column instead of six, the omission of the prose allegorie at the head of each canto, the use of printer's ornaments in lieu of engraved designs in the borders for the arguments, the substitution of the sometimes troublesome "broken . . . discourse" (XVII:Moral) of annotation for commentary, and even the very choice of a folio rather than quarto format, one must acknowledge that Harington's book is a more thrifty production than Franceschi's—however lavish it must appear compared with other contemporary English books of poetry. Certain design problems were less successfully resolved in his book, and indeed, in one respect, the design of Harington's book was already out-of-date when it appeared in 1591, for in the previous year the Italian publisher Bartoli had brought out an edition of Tasso, also modelled on Franceschi's Ariosto, but with the design modified so that all the plates were made to face the canto-beginnings (Mortimer, no. 494). Of contemporary and early seventeenth-century English books, only Speght's Chaucer of 1598 and 1602 and Sandys' Ovid of 1632 may possibly owe certain features of their design to Harington's example.
To what extent—finally—should a modern edition follow the 1591 design? I hope I have shown that McNulty's edition, admirable though it is in giving us an entire version of the text (poem and apparatus) and in reproducing all the plates, nevertheless obscures Harington's meaning in certain small but crucial ways by failing to respect his design-intentions. The arrangement, typography, layout, and ornament, are all freely altered. His edition has been much discussed recently, but the question of book-design has not been seen to be part of the editorial problem, and it is worth considering what design-treatment of a modern edition would best fulfil Harington's intentions. Not, I suggest, a facsimile reproduction: Harington wished his book to be read and enjoyed. A re-set edition is called for, and let us assume (for argument's sake) that it will be in two volumes in paperback. There is room for considering a variety of design-treatments, but this is what I would recommend. The sequence of the contents from start to finish should be respected. The typography should follow the 1591 edition in its use of roman and (a calligraphic) italic, and in making appropriate discriminations in type-size, but the verse might well be in the same size of type as the arguments and the notes smaller. The page-layouts would necessarily be different from those Harington refers to in his text. The ornament of a paperback edition would need to be modest, but present; in particular, it should follow the system in Harington's book of an alternating
In all this, we need to remember what Greg well knew, and what any poet or playwright knows, that the substance of literary invention lies in the "Idea or fore-conceite of the work, and not in the work it selfe".[36] An editor's duty is to communicate that "Idea or fore-conceite" as fully and as faithfully as he can. His procedures will be determined by the particular circumstances of each case, and may according to those circumstances require close adherence to a single model or radical reconstruction from diverse sources. Among the sources that need to be considered is the design of the printed editions (or, for that matter, of a carefully-prepared presentation manuscript—but that is another story); and editorial treatment of what we may call the "accidentals" of book design needs to be informed by the same good sense, rational method and historical understanding as we expect in the procedures of textual criticism.
Notes
Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" Translated into English Heroical Verse by Sir John Harington (1591), ed. Robert McNulty (1972), is "Example I" in Gaskell's From Writer to Reader: Studies in Editorial Method (1978), pp. 11-28 (quotation from p. 11).
Cf. Harington's epigram, "Of honest Theft. To my good friend Master Samuel Daniel".—Book 2, no. 30, in Epigrams 1618 (STC 12776), and no. 126 in Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington Together with "The Prayse of Private Life", ed. N. E. McClure (1930).
"Typography and Meaning: The Case of William Congreve", in Buch und Buchhandel im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Giles Barber and Bernhard Fabian (1981), pp. 81-126 (Wolfenbütteler Schriften zur Geschichte des Buchwesens, Bd. 4). The research on which this article is based was supervised by Professor McKenzie.
McNulty, p. xliv; see also Gaskell, pp. 11-12, and Kathleen M. Lea, "Harington's Folly", in Elizabethan and Jacobean Studies Presented to Frank Percy Wilson (1959), pp. 42-58.
See Gaskell, pp. 11-12; Sir Walter Greg, "An Elizabethan Printer and his Copy", Library, 4th ser., 4 (1923), 102-118, also printed in his Collected Papers, ed. J. C. Maxwell (1966), pp. 95-109; and Percy Simpson, Proofreading in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1935), pp. 71-75.
The Valgrisi quarto, first published in 1556 and frequently reprinted, was the basis of Franceschi's; that is to say, Franceschi replaced the Valgrisi woodcuts by Porro's superior engravings, and he prefixed or appended much new scholarly apparatus, by various hands, to a page-for-page reprint of most of Valgrisi's text (comprising poem, verse-arguments, annotations, commentaries, indexes, etc., also by various hands). See especially McNulty, pp. xlii-xliv; also Harvard College Library, Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts, comp. Ruth Mortimer, Part II: Italian 16th Century Books (1974), nos. 28-30; Townsend Rich, Harington & Ariosto: A Study in Elizabethan Verse Translation (1940), chapter 4; and note 24 below.
See especially John A. Spevak, "Sir John Harington's Theoretical and Practical Criticism: The Sources and Originality of his Apparatus to the Orlando Furioso", Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago (1978).
Thus, at IX:10, for example, the reader is directed in the margin to "Looke in the end of this book in the Allegorie", where, however, in a mere sixteen lines of notes at the foot of the page, he will find only another and vaguer reference: "Allegory I finde none but of the Ile of Ebuda where women be giuen to monsters to be deuoured, of which I will speak in an other of the Cantoes that followes of that matter." The allegory is finally got in at Book XI.
The advertisement describes the preface as having been written "generally in defence of poemes, and specially of this present worke". However, I believe the preface was always in three parts, not two, and that additions and consequential deletions were made in the third part after the unbound sheets or gatherings were circulated among Harington's friends. See a marginal reference at XIV:16, which leads nowhere, for evidence of the deletion, and the third part of the preface itself for evidence of the addition. The references in the index are to page numbers, not canto and stanza numbers; in the advertisement, the list of tales is said to show the reader "where to begin and end" but the printed list gives only the beginnings.
Cited from Gaskell, p. 24, where there is also a photograph of the manuscript passage. A study of Harington's expressed and implied views about "heroical" verse leads me to think that Puttenham was in Harington's estimation an ally like Sidney, not an opponent, however unsatisfactory he may have found parts of both men's treatises. See T. G. A. Nelson, "Sir John Harington as a Critic of Sir Philip Sidney", Studies in Philology, 67 (1970), 41-56.
Harington's copy of the 1584 Franceschi edition must have lacked the proper plate for Book XXXIV; for an explanation of this defect (found also in other copies), see Roberto Ridolfi, "L' "Orlando Furioso" del 1584 e una sua singolarità tipografica", La Bibliofilia, 54 (1952), 92-96. Harington supplied the defect by having Plate XXXIV copied for his own book from the Valgrisi edition.
H. S. Bennett, English Books and Readers 1558 to 1603 (1965), p. 300, and the reference there cited.
I suspect, without much in the way of evidence, that the first reader, or hearer, of Harington's work in progress was usually his wife Mall, and that the translation was in many small ways adjusted to her tastes. See (for example) XIII: History, where the praise of the "education of children" attributed to "my Author" is in fact a quotation from a passage of Harington's own composition, interpolated in the text.
Much of the general allegory is a close and unacknowledged translation of Bononome's "Allegoria" printed in the Franceschi edition, but modified to suit its position at the back of the book and to bring the interpretations more into line with those of Harington's end-of-canto notes (Spevak, chapter 6).
Ludovico Ariosto: A Preface to the "Orlando Furioso" (1974), pp. 54-55; see also, for example, R. M. Durling, The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic (1965), especially chapter 5; Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando) . . . tr. Barbara Reynolds (1975-77), II, 7-18; and William Nelson, "From 'Listen, Lordings' to 'Dear Reader'", University of Toronto Quarterly, 46 (1976/77), 110-124.
Brand (p. 136) writes pertinently that "The mere suspension of the excitement would, however, have little significance for the reader, who has only to turn the page, were it not for a deliberate pause the poet enforces on him in the opening stanzas of the next canto. The proemio, like the congedo, was a natural device of the oral poet for welcoming his audience and setting the context of his narration".
Book XXXII, where the proeme is on the chopping and changing of narrative threads. That Harington was well aware of this departure from the norm may be inferred from his translation of the congedo of Book XXXI:
The next booke sauing one, the sequell showes.
Cf. McKenzie's discussion (pp. 112-116) of Congreve's use of neo-classical scene-division in his 1710 Works.
Enid T. Falaschi, "Valvassori's 1553 illustrations of Orlando furioso: the development of multi-narrative technique in Venice and its links with cartography", La Bibliofilia, 77 (1975), 227-251 (quotation from p. 236).
McNulty (p. xliii) understates the case when he writes that "rarely does more than a suggestion seem evident", and so does Mrs Falaschi when, in order to correct earlier critics' errors, she writes that Porro probably "took little note of the content of the woodcuts" (p. 248).
"Illustrated editions of 'Orlando Furioso' . . .", in Fragonard: Drawings for Ariosto; with Essays by Elizabeth Mongan, Philip Hofer and Jean Seznec (1945), pp. 27-40.
Enid T. Falaschi, "Notes on some illustrations for Ariosto's Orlando Furioso", La Bibliofilia, 75 (1973), 175-188, gives a thorough comparison of the English plates with their sources.
Porro's two glaring errors are in Plate VIII, where Melissa and Astolfo fly away from Alcina's island on a horse, not on the hippogriff, and in Plate XII, where Orlando should be shown with sword drawn (not lance in rest) and should be pursuing the phantasm of a knight riding a great horse (not a "Gigante")—Porro must have failed to refer back across the canto-divide to the last few stanzas of canto XI.
E.g. Book V:1 mn, "Looke more at large in the end of the booke of this morall", where we read, "The verie beginning being as it were a morall of it self, were sufficient for the point it treats of without any more speech to that purpose: but because the matter is such as cannot be too much spoken of, namely to perswade men to concord in matrimonie, I must needs adde a word or two thereof". His "word or two" takes up twenty-one lines.
Harington's use of the prose allegorie in the Valvassori edition, primarily for his notes on the moral, has been established by Spevak, pp. 122-130.
See, for example, Books VII, IX, XII, XVIII, XXIII, XXVII, XXVIII, XXX, XLVI; and others where the illustrated stanzas are in the first seven stanzas of a canto but where the plate is overleaf.
Judging (that is) by the editions I have seen: two Valgrisi editions of 1568 and 1587 held by Auckland Public Library, and microfilm of the 1584 Franceschi edition (a British Library copy, shelf-mark 79 K 12).
These notes are also, by the way, the most striking example of literary pressure affecting the design of the book. The lengthy historical notes take up most of nearly four pages and (unusually) they are keyed by marginal references to the stanzas discussed in them paragraph by paragraph. An instruction to the printer reads: "Yow must quote the numbers by the sydes, as I have donne in the story".
These are also cantos where one observes a catchword in lieu of a signature appearing on a recto (Z3; Book XXXII); headpieces incorrectly arranged for the argument borders (Y6v, 2A6, 2C2v, 2D6, 2F2v; Books XXXII, XXXIV, XXXVI, XXXVIII, XL); and a factotum used in lieu of initial 'F' of the proper foliated series (2D6; Book XXXVIII); judging, that is, by the copy in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.
Sir Walter Greg plausibly suggested that the word "yow" may have been trimmed in binding after the word "have".
That is one explanation. Another might be that Harington somehow miscalculated the length of the notes to Book XXIII and would have tolerated Plate XXIV on the recto following his "spare leafe"; but I doubt it.
Review of McNulty's edition, Times Literary Supplement (6 October 1972), 1195-96; the reviewer is anonymous, but see also D. S. Carne-Ross, "The One and the Many: A Reading of Orlando Furioso Cantos 1 and 8", Arion, 5 (1966), 195-234, where Ariosto's poem and Harington's translation are discussed in very similar terms.
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