Introduction

Right from the grand council in which Boiardo's Agramante announced his plan to invade France, the North African king exemplified an overreaching ruler destined to lose his kingdom in a reckless attempt to acquire something beyond his reach. Boiardo had foretold, moreover, that the invasion of France would not only end in failure but would lead to the destruction of Biserta as well (OI 2.1.19). As Ariosto fulfills this prophecy in the final cantos of the Furioso, Agramante's original aviditas dominationis gives way to warfare based on religious difference.

In an episode that evokes the fall of Jerusalem in First Crusade chronicles, Biserta is destroyed above all thanks to the leadership of Orlando and Astolfo, the military support of Senapo's Ethiopians, and the direct intervention of the Christian God. Indeed, God not only orchestrates the recovery of Orlando's wits and Senapo's eyesight (in the latter case securing an important ally for the Christians), as we have seen in the previous chapter, but enacts three additional miracles to help the Ethiopian army reach Biserta: the capture of the disruptive African winds inside a wineskin bag, the metamorphosis of stones to horses, and the transformation of leaves into ships (OF 38.29–30, 38.33–35, 39.26–29).

Although with the sack of Biserta Agramante has essentially lost both the war and his kingdom, the final outcome will be determined by a battle of Orlando, Oliviero, and Brandimarte against Agramante, Gradasso, and Sobrino on Lipadusa (the island of Lampedusa that lies between Sicily and Africa). This climactic three-on-three combat is the core of sera 208. The play opens with Gradasso swept by a storm at sea to the shores of Lampedusa, where he is soon thereafter joined by Agramante and Sobrino (Act 1, scene 4). Preliminaries continue intermittently throughout Act 2, while the battle and its aftermath take up all of Act 3.

While this final epic confrontation constitutes much of the play's action, there are two additional narrative threads that are carefully interwoven through the customary technique of entrelacement. The first, concerning Rinaldo, is present in all three Acts and spans from Act 1, scene 2, to the final moments of Act 3. The second, involving Ruggiero, begins in Act 1, scene 8, and is continued in Act 2, scenes 1 and 3.