Orlando Furioso Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Roger Prior

Critical Essay by Roger Prior

SOURCE: Prior, Roger. “Shakespeare's Debt to Ariosto.” Notes and Queries 246 [48], no. 3 (September 2001): 289-92.

In the following essay, Prior suggests that the Orlando furioso is an overlooked source for Othello.

Did Shakespeare read Italian? Most of the evidence that he did comes from Othello. His principal source for that play was the story of the Moor in Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi, and the play contains convincing indications that he read Cinthio in the original Italian.¹ It has also long been supposed that he had read a passage in Ariosto's Orlando furioso—canto 46, stanza 80—which describes how the Trojan seer Cassandra embroidered a magic tent as a gift for her brother Hector.² Ariosto refers to Cassandra's ‘furor profetico’, and Shakespeare apparently echoed this phrase when he described the sibyl who embroidered Othello's handkerchief: ‘A sibyl … / In her prophetic fury sewed the work’ (III.iv.72-4). There has been some...
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