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At grips with the theatre, the fantasy of the poet is obscured, because it is caged in. The craft of playwrite kept Ariostos imagination within bounds. In his time the theatre was only theatrical in sacred mysteries and profane actions of popular mediaeval origin.
The Imaginative and Visual Originality of the Poem.
There is then very little that is theatrical in the " erudite theatre ". The truly modern theatrical Ariosto, the incomparable creator of images which follow one another in a daring cinematic rhythm, is miraculously revealed in " Orlando ". The fantasy of Ariosto breaks down all barriers, it is truly representative of the spirit of the Renaissance in its Olympian severity, in the classic order of its form and at the same time it abounds in a profusion of actions, descriptions and masterstrokes of theatre, scenes from melodramatic and mythological films.
The learned ones, Pio Rayna at their head, have taken the trouble to try and discover the sources of Orlando which they pretend are to be found in the first place in " Orlando Amando " by Boiardo, from which he has certainly borrowed the epic characters and the idea of a large number of different episodes. As for us, we see in the poem so novel a painting of people and places, such originality of line and touch in the fantastic portrayal of marvellous adventures, so original a mise-en-scene that we stand seized with an admiration, which, in spite of the age of the work, makes us consider it from a modern and surrealist point of view. These inventions full of light and colour are more alive than reality itself.
The pretended epic tendencies sought out by Gioberti in " Orlando ", his conclusions and those of many others on the irony, caricature and humour in this marvellous tale, hardly interest us, for, on the plainest of evidence, Ariosto created for the pleasure of creating. He invents pictures in terrifying tones and then harmonious embroideries on the theme of dead chivalry and he opposes the two, with a perfect understanding of their different characters, to the new methods of war resulting from the use of masses of infantry and artillery. He does it all smilingly but not without a certain regret.
It may be that Ariosto wished also in the poem to flatter courtly taste and more particularly the house of Este, but, as de Sanctis very justly remarks, all that is subordinate to a pure ideal of art for arts sake, to the cult of the beau