MAJOR WORKS AND THEMES

I cannot overemphasize the Erasmian stance of serious jester in Harington’s life and work, and I believe it is beautifully exemplified by his gift to James VI* in 1602, when Elizabeth’s death seemed imminent. He sent James a lantern, a symbol of the transmission of rulership from the waning light of Elizabeth’s reign to the waxing brilliance of James’. On it was inscribed a picture of the Crucifixion of Christ and the words of the repentant thief, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” That Harington was willing to cast himself in the role of thief while begging blessing from the future king reveals not only a fawning audacity but an admirable self-irony as well.

I argue that the satiric, yet sanguine, spirit of Harington’s life and work is best captured in his translation of that “immoral” twenty-eighth canto of Ariosto’s great work, which first earned Harington the charge of the entire translation. In this canto, a host tells a tale “to please the misogyny of the Saracen Rodomont” (193), and yet the main character ends up appreciating women more. In the story, the cuckolded knight Jocundo discovers that his friend King Astolfo is also betrayed by his beloved queen. The two set off together in quest of an honest woman and enjoyment of women in that quest: “Let us not spare our beauty, youth, and treasure/Till of a thousand we have had our pleasure” (205). Eventually, they decide to share a wife, reasoning, “Well might that woman think she had a treasure/That had us two her appetite to please;/And though to one man faithful none remain,/No doubt but faithful they would be to twain” (206). But even this woman manages to enjoy a third man while lying between these two. The two do not, however, give up on all women and become monks; instead they return happily to their wives, who, they realize, are no worse than any other women alive. They are, after all, “as chaste and honest as the best” (212).

As brutal as this implied assessment of women might be, Ariosto has the two knights assert an acceptance of life as it is and embrace it wholly rather than holding out for an ideal that, when lost, might be lamented. Adding to the depth of irony, immediately following the story of Jocundo, another character attempts to defend women, asking that while women may cheat, what husband among them has not also “awry yet stepped?” (213). Thus, Ariosto presents not only the view that women are unfaithful and we can forgive them, but also the view that perhaps women are blameless in their infidelity because men commit the same sin against them. While the tale pokes fun at the faults of both women and men in relationships, there is also a note of universal acceptance.

Harington’s translation is para- rather than metaphrastic. He often takes liberties with the Italian, compressing two stanzas of Ariosto into one of his own. He even adds to the text, offering either religious commentary or moral witticisms such as, “Be not in this sweet gulf of pleasure drowned;/The time will come and must, I tell you all,/When these your joys shall bitter seem as gall” (160). In general, critics praise Harington for expressing the easy ironic tone of Ariosto better than other English translators. Perhaps because of the freedom he allowed himself in translation, he created a more Elizabethan Orlando than more recent word-for-word translations can provide.

The Metamorphosis of Ajax is clearly in the tradition of mock encomium. In his “Prologue to the Reader,” Harington explains how the term “jakes” for privy derived from Ajax. The body of Ajax, after his suicide, turned into hyacinth. Many years later, when a Frenchman plowed a field of hyacinth to build a privy, he was struck with St. Anthony’s fire. In search of relief the offender must do penance to the ghost of such a great warrior. Thus, the man “built a sumptuous privie, and in the most conspicuous place thereof, namely just over the doore; he erected a statue of AJAX, with so grim a countenance, that the aspect of it being full of terrour, was halfe as good as a suppositor” (71). Thereafter, the privy was referred to as AJAX, although, through “ill pronunciation,” it is now just referred to as “a Jakes” (71). In addition to the mock-heroic, the treatise contains detailed directions on how to build a jakes with ventilation and a flush toilet. Harington is supposed to have built a replica at his own residence in Kelston. After philosophizing that most of our pleasures in life consist in avoiding sorrow, including that of wanting to rid ourselves of the stink of the privy, Harington goes on to assert that defecation can often be a more satisfying pursuit of pleasure than lust itself. So Joyce’s Leopold Bloom was not the first to articulate this private joy. Although we may not yet know where he stands, if indeed where he sits, Harington raises questions about the modest nature of happiness.