angement stationed near the spot, so as to witness the supposed
infidelity of his betrothed. This brings on a false charge against
Ginevra, who is doomed to die unless within a month a true knight
comes to do battle for her honour. Ariodante betakes himself to
flight, and is reported to have perished. Polinesso now appears secure
in his treachery. But Dalinda, seized with remorse for her part in the
affair, and flying from her guilty paramour, meets with Rinaldo, and
declares to him the truth. Then comes on the fight, in which Polinesso
is slain by the champion of innocence; which done, the lover
reappears, to be made happy with his Princess.

Here, of course, the wicked Duke answers to the John of the play. But
there is this important difference, that the motive of the former in
vilifying the lady is to drive away her lover, that he may have her to
himself; whereas the latter acts from a spontaneous malignity of
temper, that takes a sort of disinterested pleasure in blasting the
happiness of others.

A translation, by Peter Beverly, of that part of Ariosto's poem which
contains this tale, was licensed for the press in 1565; and Warton
says it was reprinted in 1600. And an English version of the whole
poem, by Sir John Harrington, came out in 1591; but the play discovers
no special marks of borrowing from this source. And indeed the fixing
of any obligations in this quarter is the more difficult, inasmuch as
the matter seems to have been borrowed by Ariosto himself. For the
story of a lady betrayed to peril and disgrace by the personation of
her waiting-woman was an old European tradition; it has been traced to
Spain; and Ariosto interwove it with the adventures of Rinaldo, as
yielding an apt occasion for his chivalrous heroism. Neither does the
play show any traces of obligation to Spenser, who wrought the same
tale into the variegated structure of his great poem. The story of
Phedon, relating the treachery of his false friend Philemon, is in
Book ii. canto 4 of _The Faerie Queene_; which Book was first
published in 1590.

The connection between the play and one of Bandello's novels is much
more evident, from the close similarity both of incidents and of
names. Fenicia, the daughter of Lionato, a gentleman of Messina, is
betrothed to Timbreo de Cardona, a friend of Piero d'Aragona. Girondo,
a disappointed lover of the lady, goes to work to prevent the
marriage. He insinuates to Timbreo that she is disloyal, and then