The Chase as Indoor Sport and Moral Comedy

Britomart's adventures in Castle Joyeous complicate the erotic chase as pursuit across the landscape is domesticated and transformed into bedroom farce. The reversibility of hunter and hunted is transformed into the androgynous combination of traits identified with Britomart:

For she was full of amiable grace,
    And manly terrour mixed therewithall,
    That as the one stird vp affections bace,
    So th'other did mens rash desires apall,
    And hold them backe, that would in errour fall;
    As he, that hath espide a vermeill Rose,
    To which sharpe thornes and breres the way forstall,
    Dare not for dread his hardy hand expose,
But wishing it far off, his idle wish doth lose.
                                                                   (3.1.46)

The Malecasta episode focuses directly on the issue of gender identity, which is both assumed and elided in the discourse of hunter and hunted. A fundamental strategy of the episode is the defamiliarization of heterosexual desire that Spenser achieves throughout Book III by focusing on the female point of view. This episode goes further. As Spenser adapts the Fiordespina episode from the Orlando furioso (25.4–70), he suppresses the undercurrent of lesbianism and, in its place, explores the permutations of heterosexuality. In Ariosto's text, ironic humor is generated by Fiordespina's confusion about her feelings for Bradamante. Although her desire persists after it has been revealed that the cross-dressed Bradamante is a female knight, Fiordespina dismisses her feelings because she is unaware of the possibility of love between women:

—Quai tormenti (dicea) furon mai tanto
crudel, che più non sian crudeli i miei?
D'ogn'altro amore, o scelerato o santo,
il desiato fin sperar potrei;
saprei partir la rosa da le spine:
solo il mio desiderio è senza fine!

Se pur volevi, Amor, darmi tormento
che t'increscesse il mio felice stato,
d'alcun martìr dovevi star contento,
che fosse ancor negli altri amanti usato.
Né tra gli uomini mai né tra l'armento,
che femina ami femina ho trovato:
non par la donna all'altre donne bella,
né a cervie cervia, né all'agnelle agnella.

In terra, in aria, in mar, sola son io
che patisco da te sì duro scempio;
e questo hai fatto acciò che l'error mio
sia ne l'imperio tuo l'ultimo esempio.

La moglie del re Nino ebbe disio,
il figlio amando, scelerato ed empio,
e Mirra il padre, e la Cretense il toro:
ma gli è più folle il mio, ch'alcun dei loro.
                                             ( O.f.  25.34.3–36)

["Never was any torment so cruel," she lamented, "but mine is crueller. Were it a question of any other love, evil or virtuous, I could hope to see it consummated, and I should know how to cull the rose from the briar. My desire alone can have no fulfillment. / If you wanted to torment me, Love, because my happy state offended you, why could you not rest content with those torments which other lovers experience? Neither among humans nor among beasts have I ever come across a woman loving a woman; to a woman another woman does not seem beautiful, nor does a hind to a hind, a ewe to a ewe. / By land, sea, and air I alone suffer thus cruelly at your hands—you have done this to make an example of my aberration, the ultimate one in your power. King Ninus' wife was evil and profane in her love for her son; so was Mirra, in love with her father, and Pasiphae with the bull. But my love is greater folly than any of theirs."]^[50]

Ariosto titillates us as Fiordespina unwittingly alludes to a love that cannot speak its name without appropriate terminology. Although some of the episode's humor comes from Fiordespina's naïveté, much of it derives from Bradamante's speedy comprehension of the other woman's intentions, and from their shared viewpoint about what constitutes masculine honor. As Bradamante's twin brother Ricciardetto explains when he narrates the story:

La mia sorella avea ben conosciuto
che questa donna in cambio l'avea tolta;
né dar poteale a quel bisogno aiuto,
e si trovava in grande impaccio avvolta.
—Gli è meglio (dicea seco) s'io rifiuto
questa avuta di me credenza stolta
e s'io mi mostro femina gentile,
che lasciar riputarmi un uomo vile.—

E dicea il ver; ch'era viltade espressa,
conveniente a un uom fatto di stucco,
con cui sì bella donna fosse messa,
piena di dolce e di nettareo succo,
e tuttavia stesse a parlar con essa,
tenendo basse l'ale come il cucco.
Con modo accorto ella il parlar ridusse,
che venne a dir come donzella fusse;
                                          ( O.f.  25.30–31)

[It was clear to my sister that the damsel had illusions about her; my sister could never have satisfied her need and was quite perplexed as to what to do. "My best course is to undeceive her," she decided, "and to reveal myself as a member of the gentle sex rather than to have myself reckoned an ignoble man." / And she was right. It would have been a sheer disgrace, the conduct of a man made of plaster, if he had kept up a conversation with a damsel as fair as Fiordespina, sweet as nectar, who had set her cap at him, while like a cuckoo, he just trailed his wings. So Bradamante tactfully had her know that she was a maiden.]

After Ricciardetto hears that his twin sister has acquired the affection of a woman he himself had despaired of winning, he decides to renew his attentions disguised as Bradamante. When he takes his twin sister's place in Fiordespina's bed, he accounts for the difference by telling her that, while they were apart, he rescued a nymph and was granted one wish. They enjoy the serendipity until caught at it, at which point Ricciardetto is sentenced to be burned at the stake.

In the Ariostan episode, dizzying sexual disorientation contrasts pointedly with an almost cynical determinacy of sexual intention. Not only has Bradamante "well understood" Fiordespina, despite the ambiguity of Fiordespina's desire, but Ricciardetto has very carefully calculated the likely outcome of his masquerade before he puts on his sister's clothes. In Spenser's version, the ambivalence is shifted from the realm of sexual orientation to that of interpersonal intentions and expectations. Unlike Bradamante, Britomart does not realize the full implications or consequences of her hostess's false impression of her. Consider the description of Malecasta's overtures and Britomart's response:

And all attonce discouered her desire
    With sighes, and sobs, and plaints, and piteous griefe,
    The outward sparkes of her in burning fire;
    Which spent in vaine, at last she told her briefe,
    That but if she did lend her short reliefe,
    And do her comfort, she mote algates dye.
    But the chaste damzell, that had neuer priefe
    Of such malengine and fine forgerie,
Did easily beleeue her strong extremitie.
                                                            (3.1.53)

Britomart is too ingenuous to understand the significance of Malecasta's pleas for "comfort" and "short reliefe." Although she chastely disapproves of Malecasta's seeming lightness, Britomart entertains her advances out of a naive courtesy and wish to please, totally unaware of the unfortunate surprise she thereby prepares for Malecasta.

Spenser writes a comedy of mistaken identity that reaches a point of maximum confusion with the two principals in bed together, each thinking that the other is a man. Ariosto writes a comedy of protean identity, in which sexual difference and sexual preference are virtually arbitrary matters. Ariosto's comedy is thoroughly destabilizing, but the Spenserian comedy puts more at risk. Ricciardetto nearly dies, but that is the result of being found out as a seducer, not of being mistaken for one. There is a sense of moral ambiguity in Britomart's involvement with Malecasta absent from the Ariostan source.^[51] Mistaking Malecasta's intentions and being herself mistaken results in Britomart's being wounded by Gardante. The final image of Britomart, with drops of purple blood staining her lily-white smock, is morally indeterminate. The imagery suggests vulnerability, the beginnings of passion, the loss of virginity; it mirrors Britomart's enrapturement at the sight of Artegall and foreshadows her own wounding by the evil Busirane. Britomart's wounding by Gardante, the figure who represents sight, refigures the fate of Actaeon. In place of the erotic chase in which nominally distinct male subject and female object fatally exchange the roles of predator and prey, Britomart pursues a quest in which risk and subjective engagement are necessary conditions for going forth.