University Microfilms International - Arizona Campus Repository

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principal action is summarized and by which the reader's curiosity is
supposed to be aroused. There are, however, no marginal comments or
annotations similar to those which appear in Harington's volume. Tofte
translates stanza for stanza from the Italian, digressing occasionally
to include some reference to himself or to add moralizing commentary.
In the first and second stanzas of "The Third Booke," for example, he
refers to his own problems in love and calls attention to himself by
repeatedly using the initials "RT": "LIGHT of mine eyes, LIFES spirit
unto my HaRT" (stanza 1, line 1); and "DAZIE of CHESSHIRE, view my
heavie plight,/Who am Loves MaRTire, tortured day and night" (stanza 2,
11. 7-8).
By the time Orlando Inamorato was given to the printer, Tofte
must have completed (or nearly so) his next work. In the second stanza
of "The First Booke" he identifies his "beloved," whose name furnishes
the title for his second volume of original poems:
If my Deare ALBA so much favor show,
Who in her hate to me is too extreme,
(Like sea that never ebbes, but still doth flow)
My comfort's this, though high my Thoughts be plac't,
If I obtain not, None shall Shee's so chaste.
(sig. A3 V )
And again, in "The Conclusion" of the Orlando, he departs from the
Italian text:
Faire Shadowe of a Substance passing Faire,
The Picture of my Mistris Excellence,
Receive these lines impolished and bare,
For unto thee, and none else are they meant,
Daine to accept them what so e're they are,
Since for thy sake, few idle houres I spent;
So cristall-like still cleare may run thy BROOKE;
Worthy on whom, all eyes may gaze and looke.