We move in the old familiar sphere of Paladins and Paynims, knights errant and Oriental damsels, magicians and distressed maidens.

The action is impelled by the same series of marvelous adventures and felicitous mishaps.

There are the same encounters in war and rivalries in love between Christian and Pagan champions; journeys through undiscovered lands and over untracked oceans; fantastic hyperboles of desire, ambition, jealousy, and rage, employed as motive passions.

Enchanted forests; fairy ships that skim the waves without helm or pilot; lances endowed with supernatural virtues; charmed gardens of perpetual spring; dismal dungeons and glittering palaces, supply the furniture of this romance no less than of its predecessors.

Rinaldo, like any other hero of the Renaissance, is agitated by burning thirst for fame and blind devotion to a woman's beauty.