'Deuine Ariosto his Ring' and Gratiano's Bawdy Pun

Abstract

SHAKESPEARE concludes The Merchant of Venice (c.1596–7) with a couplet delivered by Gratiano: ‘Well, while I live I’ll fear no other thing / So sore, as keeping safe Nerissa’s ring’ (V.i.306–7). Many modern editors and critics have commented upon the bawdy meaning of these lines, which liken the ring to the female body.1 These scholars note that the ‘ring pun’ was something of an early modern commonplace, and have also found it to be the basis of a fabliau about a jealous husband that surfaces in Poggio’s Facetiae, Rabelais’s Tiers Livre, and two English jest books entitled Tales, and quicke answeres, very mery, and pleasant to rede (London, 1532?) and Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres (London, 1567). Scholars often reference the latter two books in conjunction with the ‘ring episode’ in 5.1 of The Merchant.2 Yet there exists another, somewhat forgotten retelling of this fabliau that resonates significantly with the Italian elements in The Merchant. Specifically, it amplifies the stereotypically Italian nature of Gratiano’s jealousy that would have been apparent to early modern playgoers. Some scholars have recognized that in addition to Poggio, Rabelais, and the English jest books, the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto employs a version of this ‘ring jest’ in his fifth satire, which addresses the difficulties of married life.3 However, these scholars overlook the ways in which this well-known Ariostean rendition of the bawdy tale could have enriched the setting and themes of Shakespeare’s Italian play in a manner that the other retellings could not. The English books featuring the ‘ring jest’ saw only one edition apiece but Ariosto’s Satires were in great demand in Europe throughout the sixteenth century. First published in Ferrara in 1534, they saw fifteen printings in only sixteen years, with several more to follow. The fifth satire was placed first in the editio princeps, perhaps for its participation in the querelle des femmes.4 Many readers may have been attracted to Ariosto’s retelling of the fabliau about the jealous husband, the Devil, and the ‘ring’, which concludes the satire: Il meschin, ch’avea moglie d’admirande bellezze, e ne vivea geloso, e n’era sempre in sospetto et in angustia grande, pregò che gli mostrasse la maniera che s’avesse a tener, perché il marito potesse star sicur de la mogliera. Par che ‘l diavolo allor gli ponga in dito uno annello, e ponendolo gli dica: —Fin che ce ‘l tenghi, esser non puoi tradito.— Lieto ch’omai la sua senza fatica potrà guardar, si sveglia il mastro, e truova che ‘l dito a la moglier ha ne la fica. [The poor wretch, who had a wife of wondrous beauty, and who lived in constant jealousy, forever suspicious of her and in dire distress, prayed the devil to show him the course a husband must take if he wished to rest assured of his wife. Then the devil seemed to slip a ring on his finger, and while securing it there, seemed to say, ‘As long as you wear this ring, you cannot be betrayed.’ Glad that henceforth he would be able to guard his wife without toil, the master woke up and found his finger in her vagina.]5