A belt of straw and ivy-buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs;

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May-morning:

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me, and be my love.

The popularity of this poem was testified by its widespread influence on

the poets of the day. _England's Helicon_ contains 'the Nymphs reply,'

commonly attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh, and also a long imitation;

Donne wrote a piscatory version, and Herrick paid it the sincerest form of

flattery, while less distinct reminiscences are common in the poetry of

the time. Yet Kit Marlowe's verses stand unrivalled.

The pastoral influence in Shakespeare's verse, both lyric and dramatic, is

too obvious to need more than passing notice. Every reader will recall

'Who is Sylvia,' from the _Two Gentlemen_, and 'It was a lover and his

lass,' the song of which, in Touchstone's opinion, 'though there was no

great matter in the ditty, yet the tune was very untuneable,' or again the

famous speech of the chidden king:

O God! methinks it were a happy life,

To be no better than a homely swain;

(3 _Henry VI_, II. v. 21.)

and Arthur's exclamation:

By my christendom

So I were out of prison and kept sheep,

I should be as merry as the day is long.

(_K. John_, IV. i. 16.)

One poem, bearing a certain resemblance to verses of Barnfield's already

discussed, may be quoted here. It was originally printed in the fourth

act of _Love's Labour's Lost_ in 1598, reappeared in the _Passionate

Pilgrim_ in 1599, and again in _England's Helicon_ in 1600.

On a day--alack the day!--

Love, whose month was ever May,

Spied a blossom passing fair

Playing in the wanton air.

Through the velvet leaves the wind

All unseen gan passage find,

That the shepherd, sick to death,

Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.

Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;

Air, would I might triumph so!

But, alas, my hand hath sworn

Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn;

Vow, alack, for youth unmeet,

Youth is apt to pluck a sweet.

[Do not call it sin in me

That I am forsworn for thee;]

Thou for whom Jove would swear

Juno but an Ethiope were,

And deny himself for Jove,

Turning mortal for thy love.[131]

Lastly, _England's Helicon_ preserves two otherwise unknown poems of

Drayton's, one probably an early work, having little to recommend it

beyond the pretty though not original conceit:

See where little Cupid lies

Looking babies in her eyes!

the other similar in style to the eclogue first published in the

collection of c. 1606. About contemporary possibly is the anonymous ballad

'Phillida flouts me,' which in command alike of rhythm and language is

remarkably reminiscent of some, and that some of the best, of Drayton's

work.

Oh, what a plague is love!

How shall I bear it?

She will unconstant prove,

I greatly fear it.

It so torments my mind

That my strength faileth;

She wavers with the wind,

As the ship saileth.

Please her the best you may,

She looks another way;

Alas and well-a-day!

Phillida flouts me[132].

I have already had occasion to mention the mysterious A. W. in Davison's

_Poetical Rhapsody_, but I cannot refrain from calling attention to one

other poem of his. It is headed 'A fiction, how Cupid made a nymph wound

herself with his arrows,' and is perhaps the nearest thing in English to a

Greek _idyllion_, though in the manner of Moschus rather than of

Theocritus. The opening scene will give an idea of the style:

It chanced of late a shepherd's swain,

That went to seek a strayèd sheep,

Within a thicket on the plain,

Espied a dainty nymph asleep.

Her golden hair o'erspread her face,

Her careless arms abroad were cast,

Her quiver had her pillow's place,

Her breast lay bare to every blast.

The shepherd stood, and gazed his fill;

Nought durst he do, nought durst he say;

When chance, or else perhaps his will,

Did guide the god of love that way.

And so the long pageant troops by, not without its passages of dullness,

its moments of pedestrian gait, for it must be borne in mind that the

poems quoted above are for the most part the choice of what has survived

in a few volumes, and that this in its turn represents the gleanings from

a far larger body of verse that once existed. In spite of its perennial

freshness the charge of want of originality has not unreasonably been

brought even against the best compositions of the kind. It could hardly be

otherwise. Except in the rarest cases originality was impossible. The

impulse was to write a certain kind of amatory verse, for which the

fashionable medium was pastoral; not to write pastoral for its own sake.

The demand was for convention, the familiar, the expected; never for

originality or truth. The fault was in the poetic requirements of the age,

and must not be laid to the charge of those admirable craftsmen who gave

the age what it wanted; especially when in so doing they enriched English

poetry with some of its choicest gems.

The pastoral lyric of the next two reigns is far too wide a subject to be

entered upon here. Grave or gay, satirical or idyllic, coy or wanton,

there is scarcely a poet of note or obscurity who did not contribute his

share. Nowhere is a rarer note of pastoral to be found than in

_L'Allegro_, with its

every shepherd tells his tale

Under the hawthorn in the vale.

Before, however, saying farewell to this, the lighter side of English

pastoral verse, I would call attention to a poem which perhaps more than

any other illustrates the spirit of _voluttà idillica_, characteristic of

so much that possesses abiding value in pastoral. Unfortunately Carew's

_Rapture_ is almost throughout of a nature that forbids reproduction

except in a scientific edition, or an admittedly erotic collection. Though

its licence is coterminous with the bounds of natural desire, the candour

of its appeal to unvitiated nature saves it from reproach, and the

perfection of its form makes it an object of never-failing beauty. The

idea with which the poem opens, the escape to a land where all

conventional restrictions cease to have a meaning, was of course suggested

by the first chorus of the _Aminta_:

quel vano

Nome senza soggetto,

Quell' idolo d' errori, idol d' inganno;

Quel che dal volgo insano

Onor poscia fu detto--

Che di nostra natura 'l feo tiranno.

I can only extract one short passage out of Tom Carew's poem, that which

describes how

Daphne hath broke her bark, and that swift foot

Which th' angry Gods had fast'ned with a root

To the fix'd earth, doth now unfetter'd run

To meet th' embraces of the youthful Sun.

She hangs upon him, like his Delphic Lyre;

Her kisses blow the old, and breath new, fire;

Full of her God, she sings inspired lays,

Sweet odes of love, such as deserve the Bays,

Which she herself was. Next her, Laura lies

In Petrarch's learned arms, drying those eyes

That did in such sweet smooth-paced numbers flow,

As made the world enamoured of his woe.

This is not itself pastoral, but it belongs to that idyllic borderland

which we previously noticed in dealing with Italian verse. And again, as

in Italy, so in England, we find the same spirit infusing the mythological

tales. Did time and space allow it would be an interesting diversion to

trace how the pastoral spirit evinced itself in such works as Peele's

_Tale of Troy_, Lodge's _Scilla's Metamorphosis_, Drayton's _Man in the

Moon_, Brathwaite's _Narcissus Change_ (in the _Golden Fleece_), and found

articulate utterance in the voluptuous cadences of _Venus and Adonis_.

VI

There are two specimens of English pastoral verse which I have reserved

for separate discussion in this place, namely, _Lycidas_ and _Britannia's

Pastorals_. The one is probably the most perfect example of the

allegorical pastoral produced since first the form was invented by Vergil,

the other the longest and most ambitious poem ever composed on a pastoral

theme.[133]

Milton's poem was written on the occasion of the death of Edward King,

fellow of Christ's College, who was drowned on his way to Ireland during

the long vacation of 1637, and first appeared in a collection of memorial

verses by his Cambridge friends published in 1638. It gathers together

within its narrow compass as it were whole centuries of pastoral

tradition, fusing them into an organic whole, and inspiring the form with

a poetic life of its own.

Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more

Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never sear,

I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,

And with forc'd fingers rude,

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.

For Lycidas is dead and claims his meed of song.

Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,

That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;

Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string.

Sing first their friendship, nursed upon the self-same hill, their youth

spent together. But oh! the heavy change; now the very caves and woods

mourn his loss. Where then were the Muses, that their loved poet should

die? And yet what could they do for Lycidas, who had no power to shield

Orpheus himself,

When by the rout that made the hideous roar,

His goary visage down the stream was sent,

Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.

What then avails the poet's toil? Were it not better to taste the sweets

of love as they offer themselves since none can count on reward in this

life? The prize, however, lies elsewhere--

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.

But such thoughts are too lofty for the swains of Arethusa and Mincius.

Listen rather as the herald of the sea questions the god of winds about

the fatal wreck. It was no storm drove the ill-starred boat to

destruction:

The Ayr was calm, and on the level brine,

Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd,

sounds the reply. Next, footing slow, comes the tutelary deity of Alma

Mater, and in one sad cry mourns the promise of a life so soon cut short.

Lastly, 'The Pilot of the Galilean lake,' with denunciation of the

corrupt hirelings of a venal age, laments the loss of the church in the

death of Lycidas. As his solemn figure passes by, the gracious fantasies

of pastoral landscape shrink away: now

Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past,

That shrunk thy streams,

bid the nymphs bring flowers of every hue,

To strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies--

and yet indeed even this comfort is denied, we dally with false

imaginings,

Whilst thee the shores, and sounding Seas

Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurld,

Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,

Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide

Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world,

or on the Cornish coast,

Where the great vision of the guarded Mount

Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold.

But enough!

Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more,

For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,

Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar,

So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and with new spangled Ore,

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.

On this note the elegy ends, and there follow eight lines in which the

poet glances at his own pastoral self that has been singing, and realizes

that the world will go on even though Lycidas be no more, and that there

are other calls in life than that of piping on an oaten reed. These lines

correspond to the plain stanzaic frames in which Spenser set his lyrics in

the _Shepherd's Calender_:

Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th' Okes and rills,

While the still morn went out with Sandals gray,

He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills,

With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay:

And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,

And now was dropt into the Western bay;

At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:

To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.

The poem, in common with the whole class of allegorical pastorals, is

undoubtedly open to the charge of artificiality, since, in truth, the

pastoral garb can never illustrate, but only distort and obscure subjects

drawn from other orders of civilization. Yet none but a great master

could, to produce a desired effect, have utilized every association which

tradition afforded with the consummate skill observable in Milton's poem.

He has been blamed for the introduction of St. Peter, on the ground of

incongruity; but he has tradition on his side. St. Peter, as we have

already seen, figures, under the name of Pamphilus, in the eclogues of

Petrarch, and his introduction by Milton is in nicest keeping with the

spirit of the kind. The whole poem, and indeed a great deal more, must

stand or fall with the Pilot of the Galilean Lake, for to censure his

introduction here is to condemn the whole pastoral tradition of three

centuries, a judgement which may or may not be just, but which is not a

criticism on Milton's poem. So again with the flowers that are to be

strewn on the laureate hearse. Three kinds of berries and eleven kinds of

flowers are mentioned, and it has been pointed out with painful accuracy

that nine of the latter would have been over, and none of the former ripe

on August 11, when King was drowned; while all the flowers, with the

exception of the amaranth, if it were of the true breed, would have been

dead and rotten in November, when the poem was presumably written. It

would be foolish to quarrel with Milton on this point, since where all is

imaginary such licence is as natural as the strictest botany; yet it must

not be forgotten that it is just this disseverance from actuality that has

made the eclogue the type of all that is frigid and artificial in

literature. The dissatisfaction felt by many with _Lycidas_ was voiced by

Dr. Johnson, when he wrote: 'It is not to be considered the effusion of

real passion, for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure

opinions.... Where there is leisure for fiction there is little

grief[134].' This is so absolutely true, with regard to the present poem

at all events, that it would appear hardly worth saying were it not that

there have always been found persons to maintain the contrary. There is no

reason whatever to suppose that Milton felt any keen personal grief at the

death of Edward King. There is nothing spontaneous, nothing, one might

almost say, genuine in the lament. This is indeed strictly irrelevant to

the question of its artistic merit, but it must nevertheless be admitted

that there is thus much justice in the censure, that the poem purports to

be the expression of an intimate sorrow, of the reality of which the

reader is never wholly convinced. In so far as it lacks this

'soul-compelling power,' it may be said, not unfairly, to fail of its own

artistic purpose.

One further question, however, inevitably presents itself when we have to

consider such a work as _Lycidas_, a work, that is, in which art has

attained the highest perfection in one particular kind. Although the

objections urged against the individual poem may be shown to miss their

mark as criticisms on that poem, may they not have force as criticisms on

the class? The allegorical pastoral, though in one sense, as I have said,

created by Vergil, was yet, in another, a plant of slow growth, and

represents a tradition gradually evolved to meet the needs of a long line

of poets. Petrarch, Mantuan, Marot, Spenser were more than mere imitators

of Vergil or of one another; they wrote in a particular form because it

answered to particular requirements, and they fashioned it in the using.

Nevertheless it may be urged with undoubted force, that the requirements

were not primarily of an artistic nature, being ever governed by some

alien purpose, and that consequently the form which evolved itself in

answer to those requirements and to fulfil that purpose, was not by nature

calculated to yield the highest artistic results. And thus, though any

attempt to question the perfection of the art which Milton brought to the

composition of his elegy must needs be foredoomed to failure, the question

of the propriety of the form as an artistic medium remains open; and in so

far as critical opinion tends to give an unfavourable answer, in so far

does the form of pastoral instituted by Vergil and handed down without

break from the fourteenth century to Milton's own time stand condemned in

its most perfect flower.

Few things could be less like _Lycidas_ than the work which next claims

our attention. Unique of its kind, and, in spite of its shortcomings,

possessed of no small poetic interest, William Browne's _Britannia's

Pastorals_ may be regarded at pleasure either as a pastoral epic or as a

versified romance. It resembles the prose romances in being by nature

discursive, episodic and inconsequent, and like not a few it remained

unfinished. Little would be gained by giving any detailed analysis of the

plot developed through the leisurely amplitude of its 10,000 lines, while

any attempt to deal, however slightly, with the sources and literary

analogues of the work would lead us far beyond the scope of the present

chapter[135]. With regard to the latter, it must suffice to note that

among the works to which incidents can be directly traced are Tasso's

_Gerusalemme_, Montemayor's _Diana_, and Fletcher's _Faithful

Shepherdess_, while a more general indebtedness may in particular be

observed to Chaucer, _Piers Plowman_, and the _Faery Queen_. The plot

involves two more or less connected threads of action, the one dealing

with the adventures of the swains and shepherdesses, the other concerned

with the progress of Thetis and her court. This latter recalls the poetic

geography of Drayton's _Polyolbion_. The principal episodes in the former

are the loves of Celandine and Marina, and the allegorical story of Fida

and Aletheia, each of which leads to numerous ramifications. Indeed, so

far as the pastoral action is concerned, the whole is one string of barely

connected episodes.

Celandine loves the shepherdess Marina, who is readily brought to return

his affection. To the love thus easily won he soon becomes indifferent,

and Marina in despair seeks to end her sorrows in a stream. Saved by the

god of the fountain, she is carried off to Mona, and there imprisoned in a

cave by the monster Limos (hunger). With her loss, Celandine's love

revives, and in his search for her he is led to visit the faery realm,

where he finds Spenser lying asleep. The poem ends abruptly in the midst

of his adventures. The story of Fida centres round the slaughter of her

pet hind by the monster Riot. From the mangled remains of the animal rises

the beautiful form of Aletheia (truth). The new-transformed nymph is the

daughter of Chronos (time), born, Pallas-like, without a mother. The

narrative of her rejection by the world gives occasion for some biting

satire on the ill-living of the religious orders, the vanity of the court,

and the dishonesty of the crafts. Meanwhile Riot, who from this point

ceases to be an embodiment of cruelty, and comes to typify fallen

humanity--the _Humanum Genus_ of the moralities--passing successively by

Remembrance, Remorse, and Repentance, is purged of his foul shape, and

appears as the shepherd Amyntas, finally to be united in marriage with

Aletheia. With these adventures is interwoven the progress of Thetis, who

comes to view her dominions. From the Euxine and the Hellespont her train

sweeps on by Adriatic and Atlantic shores, past lands which call up the

names of a long line of poets--Vergil, Ovid, Ariosto, Petrarch, Tasso, Du

Bartas, Marot, Ronsard--till ultimately she arrives off the coast of

Devon--the Devon of Browne and Drake. Here the shepherds assemble to do

her honour, from Colin Clout down to Browne's immediate circle, Brooke,

Davies, and Wither, and here the poet entertains her with the tale of

Walla and Tavy, which forms a charming incidental piece. The nymph Walla

loved the river-god Tavy, and while gathering flowers to weave a garland

for him was surprised by a satyr, who pursued her into a wood. She sought

refuge in a cave, where, being overtaken by her pursuer, she prayed to

Diana, and in the last resort to Ina, by whom she was transformed into a

spring, which, after drowning the venturesome satyr, ran on to join its

waters with those of her beloved Tavy. Thus Browne wove the common names

of his familiar home into a romance of pastoral invention. The

metamorphosis of Arethusa pursued by Alpheus, of Ambra by Ombrone, of the

nymphs by the satyrs of the _Salices_, or as frescoed on the temple of

Pales in the _Arcadia_, the loves of Mulla and Mollana in Spenser, and the

mythological impersonations of the _Polyolbion_, find, as it were, a

meeting-place in Browne's lay of Walla.

The three parts of _Britannia's Pastorals_ did not appear together. Book

I was published during the winter of 1613-14, Book II in 1616, each

containing five songs; while the fragment of Book III, containing two

songs only, remained in manuscript till 1853, when it was discovered in

the Cathedral Library at Salisbury, and printed for the Percy

Society[136].

The narrative, as may have been inferred from what has already been said,

is sufficiently fantastic. In the introduction of allegorical characters

Browne was probably influenced by Spenser, and in a lesser degree by the

masque literature of his day and by the study of Langland. Since the work

is unfinished, we may in charity suppose that had Browne completed his

design the whole would have presented a somewhat less incongruous

appearance; there is, however, a marked tendency towards the accumulation

of unexplained incidents, which may most plausibly be referred to the

influence of the Spanish romances, especially of the _Diana_, which was

already accessible in Yong's translation, and one incident of which Browne

did undoubtedly borrow.

In style and poetic merit Browne's work is most astonishingly unequal,

though the general level of _Britannia's Pastorals_ is distinctly higher

than that of the _Shepherd's Pipe_. The author passes at times abruptly

from careful and loving realism to the most stilted conventionality, and

from passages of impassioned eloquence to others grotesquely banal. In

some of his peculiarities, as in the perpetuai use of elaborate similes

and in the indulgence in inflated paraphrases, he anticipates some of the

worst faults of style cultivated by writers of the next century. There are

portions of the poem where the narrative is literally carried on through a

succession of highly wrought comparisons, each paragraph beginning with an

'As' followed by a correlative 'So' half a page further on. No such series

of pictures, however fairly wrought--and Browne's too often end in

bathos--can possibly convey the impression of continuons action. It is the

same with periphrasis. Used with discretion it may be one of the subtlest

ornaments of style, and even when fulfilling no particular purpose is

capable of imparting a luxuriant and somewhat rococo richness to the

verse. The effect, however, is frequently one of unrelieved frigidity, as

in the lines:

And now Hyperion from his glitt'ring throne

Sev'n times his quick'ning rays had bravely shown

Unto the other world, since Walla last

Had on her Tavy's head the garland plac'd;

And this day, as of right, she wends abroad

To ease the meadows of their willing load.

(II. iii. 855.)

At times it was Browne's moral preoccupation that curbed his muse, as in

his description of the golden age where, for the sensuous glow of Tasso

and for Carew's pagan paradise, he substitutes the insipid convention of a

philosophical age of innocence[137]. In his genuine mood as a loving

observer of country life he is a very different poet. His feeling is

delicate in tone and his observation keen; he was familiar with every tree

that grew in the woods, every fish that swam in the waters of his beloved

Devon; he entered tenderly into the homely life of the farm--

By this had chanticleer, the village clock,

Bidden the goodwife for her maids to knock,

And the swart ploughman for his breakfast stay'd,

That he might till those lands were fallow laid;

The hills and vailles here and there resound

With the re-echoes of the deep-mouth'd hound;

Each shepherd's daughter, with her cleanly peal,[138]

Was come afield to milk the morning's meal.

(I. iv. 483.)

When, however, naturalism of this kind is introduced into pastoral it is

already on the high road toward ceasing to be pastoral at all. Nor are

touches of higher poetic imagination wanting, as when Time is described as

a lusty aged swain,

That cuts the green tufts off th' enamell'd plain,

And with his scythe hath many a summer shorn

The plough'd-lands lab'ring with a crop of corn.

(I. iv. 307.)

The love of his country is, however, the altar at which Browne's poetic

genius takes fire:

Hail, thou my native soil! thou blessed plot,

Whose equal all the world affordeth not!

Show me who can so many crystal rills,

Such sweet-cloth'd valleys or aspiring hills,....

And if the earth can show the like again,

Yet will she fail in her sea-ruling men.

Time never can produce men to o'ertake

The fames of Grenville, Davies, Gilbert, Drake,

Or worthy Hawkins, or of thousands more

That by their power made the Devonian shore

Mock the proud Tagus, for whose richest spoil

The boasting Spaniard left the Indian soil

Bankrupt of store, knowing it would quit cost

By winning this, though all the rest were lost.

(II. iii. 601.)

It is after all in such a passage as this that we see the true William

Browne, with all his high-handedness and worthy enthusiasm, the poet who

not only loves his country with a lover's passion and cannot tolerate that

any should be compared to her in fairness of feature, in stateliness of

stature, or in virtue of mind; but who, first perhaps among English poets,

has that more local patriotism, narrower and more intimate, for his own

home, for its moors, its streams, its associations, all the actual or

imagined surroundings of his beloved Tavistock, and carries in his heart

for ever the cry of the wild west--

Devon, O Devon, in wind and rain!

VII

Approaching the romance, as we do, from the point of view rather of the

development of the pastoral ideal than of the history of prose narrative

or of the novel, we may spare ourselves any detailed consideration of the

famous work of John Lyly. Although in the novel which has made 'Euphuism'

a word and a bye-word in the language he supplied the literary medium for

the work of subsequent pastoral writers such as Greene and Lodge, his

own compositions in this kind are confined entirely to the drama.

The translations in this department are for the most part negligible.

There is, however, one notable exception, namely, the rendering by

Bartholomew Yong or Young of Montemayor's _Diana_, together with the

continuations of Ferez and Gil Polo. Completed as early as May, 1583, the

work remained in manuscript until 1598, when it was published in the form

of a handsome folio. Although, as we have already had occasion to notice,

the verse portions were not for the most part of a nature to add lustre to

an anthology such as _England's Helicon_, the whole forms a not unworthy

Tudor translation. We learn from Yong's preface that portions of the

romance had already been Englished by Edward Paston, a descendant of the

famous Norfolk letter-writers, who had family relations with Spain and

possessed an intimate knowledge of the language. Of this work nothing

further is known. Some two years, however, before Yong's version issued

from the press, the first book of Montemayor's portion was again

translated by Thomas Wilson, and of this a manuscript yet survives[139].

Passing mention may also be made of Angel Day's translation of _Daphnis

and Chloe_ containing the original insertion of the _Shepherd's Holiday_

with the praises of Elizabeth in verse, and of Robert Tofte's _Honours

Academy_ (1610), distantly following Ollenix du Mont-Sacré's _Bergerie de

Juliette_, but which, as also John Pyper's version of d'Urfé's _Astrée_

(1620), have received sufficient notice in being recorded in connexion

with their originals.

Earlier in date of publication and belonging to an elder tradition than

the _Arcadia_, though later in date of composition, and it may be at times

betraying a familiarity with Sidney's manuscript, the romances of the

Bohemian Robert Greene, and the buccaneer-physician Thomas Lodge, are

naturally the first to claim our attention.

With the exception of _Menaphon_, Greene's romances offer little that is

important in pastoral, apart from the more notable works which they

inspired. And even _Menaphon_, in so far as the general conception is

concerned, can hardly be said necessarily to involve the existence of any

antecedent pastoral tradition. Greene's novel is, indeed, far from being

purely pastoral; no more than in Sidney's, to use Professor Herford's

happy phrase, are we allowed to forget that Arcadia bordered on Sparta. In

this it undoubtedly resembles the Spanish romances, but the resemblance

does not appear to go much further; it is on the whole warlike without

being chivalric, the tone Greek, or what Greene considered such, rather

than medieval--indeed it might be argued that in its martial incidents it

rather recalls _Daphnis and Chloe_ than the _Diana_. There is certainly

nothing chivalric about King Democles, who, when some ten score shepherds

are besieging a castle, sends to the 'General of his Forces,' and not only

has ten thousand men brought secretly and by night at three days'

notice--in itself a notable piece of strategy--but when they arrive on the

scene places furthermore the whole force in ambush! No wonder that when

the soldiers are let loose out of their necessarily cramped quarters,

they kill many of the shepherds, and putting the rest to flight remain

masters of the situation.

The plot might perhaps be considered improbable as well as intricate for

anything but a pastoral or chivalric romance: judged by the standards

prevailing in these species it is neither. Democles, king of Arcadia, has

a daughter Sephistia, who contrary to his wishes has contracted a secret

marriage with Maximus. When the birth of a son leads to discovery,

Democles has them placed in an oarless boat and so cast adrift. A storm

arising they are not unnaturally wrecked, and ultimately husband and wife

are cast upon different points of the Arcadian coast(!), where, either

supposing the other to have perished, they adopt the pastoral life,

assuming the names respectively of Melicertus and Samela. The young mother

has with her child Pleusidippus, but while still in early boyhood he is

carried off by pirates and presented as a gift to the King of Thessaly. In

the meantime Menaphon, 'the king's shepherd of Arcadia,' has fallen in

love with Samela, but while accepting his hospitality she meets her

husband in his shepherd's guise, and without recognizing one another

husband and wife again fall in love. Years pass on and Pleusidippus, who

has risen to fame at court, hears of the beauty of the shepherdess of

Arcadia, and must needs go to test the truth of the report himself. He

does so, and promptly falls in love with his own mother. Nor is this all,

for Democles equally hears of Samela's fame, and disguising himself as a

shepherd falls in love with his own daughter. He endeavours to command

Samela's affection by revealing to her his own identity, but Pleusidippus

is beforehand with more drastic measures, and with the help of a few

associates carries Samela off to a neighbouring castle, to which Democles

and the shepherds, headed by Melicertus, proceed to lay siege. A duel

between father and son is unceremoniously interrupted by the inroad of

Democles' soldiery. Upon this the identity of Samela is revealed by a

convenient prophetess, and all ends happily.

In the relation of verse and prose Greene's work differs from that of

Sannazzaro and Sidney, the former being of considerably greater merit than

the latter. The style adopted exhibits a very marked Euphuism, and the

whole form of narrative is characterized by that fondness for petty

conceit which not seldom gives an air of puerility to the lighter

Elizabethan prose. Puerile in a sense it had every right to be, for modern

prose narration was then in its very infancy in this country. No artistic

form destined to contribute to the main current of literature is born

perfect into the world; the early efforts appear not only tentative,

uncouth, at times rugged, but often childish and futile, unworthy the

consideration of serions men. The substance of the _Gesta Romanorum_ and

the style of the _Novellino_ appear so, considered in relation to the

_Decameron_; the mystery plays are an obvious instance, not to be

explained by any general immaturity of medieval ideas. Traces of the

tendency may even be noticed where revival or acclimatization, rather than

original invention, is the aim; we find it in the _Shepherd's Calender_,

nor was it absent in the days of the romantic revival, either from the

German _Lenores_ or the English _Otrantos_. And so it is with the

novelists of the Elizabethan age. Renouncing the traditions of the older

romance, which was adult and perfect a hundred years before in Malory, but

had now fallen into a second childhood, and determined on the creation of

a new and genuine form of literary expression, they paid the price of

originality in the vein of childishness that runs through their writings.

If, however, Greene was content in the main to adopt the style of the new

novel, he, as indeed Lyly too, could at times snatch a straightforward

thought or a vigorous phrase from current speech or controversial

literature, and invest it with all the greater effectiveness by

contrasting it with its surroundings. Here, as an example of euphuistic

composition, is Democles' address to the champions about to engage in

single combat:

Worthy mirrors of resolved magnanimitie, whose thoughts are above your

fortunes, and your valour more than your revenewes, know that Bitches

that puppie in hast bring forth blind whelpes; that there is no herbe

sooner sprung up than the Spattarmia nor sooner fadeth; the fruits too

soone ripe are quickly rotten; that deedes done in hast are repented at

leisure: then, brave men in so weightie a cause,... deferre it some

three daies, and then in solemn manner end the combat[140].

With this we may contrast the closing sentence of the work:

And lest there should be left any thing imperfect in this pastorall

accident, Doron smudged himselfe up, and jumped a marriage with his old

friend Carmela.

This is, of course, intentionally cast in a homely style in contrast to

the courtliness of the main plot; but Greene, as some of his later works

attest, knew the value of strong racy English no less than his friend

Nashe, who, in the preface he prefixed to this very work, pushed

colloquialism and idiom to the verge of affectation and beyond.

The incidental verse, on the other hand, though very unequal, is of

decidedly higher merit. Sephistia's famous song should alone suffice to

save any book from oblivion, while there are other verses which are not

unworthy of a place beside it. I may instance the opening of the

'roundelay' sung by Menaphon, the only character strictly belonging to

pastoral tradition, with its picture of approaching night:

When tender ewes brought home with evening Sunne

Wend to their foldes,

And to their holdes

The shepheards trudge when light of day is done.

Such as it was, _Menaphon_ appealed in no small degree to the taste of the

moment. We know how great was Greene's reputation as an author, how

publishers were ready to outbid one another for the very dregs of his wit.

Thomas Brabine was but voicing the general opinion when, in some verses

prefixed to _Menaphon_, he wrote, condescending to an inevitable pun, but

also to a less excusable mixed metaphor:

Be thou still Greene, whiles others glorie waine.

Of his other romances it is sufficient in this place to mention that

_Pandosto_, which contains the pastoral loves of Dorastus and Fawnia, and

supplied Shakespeare with the outlines of the _Winter's Tale_, appeared

the year before _Menaphon_, while the year after saw his _Never Too Late_,

which is likewise of a generally pastoral character, but does not appear

to have suggested or influenced any subsequent work.

The remarks that have been made concerning Greene apply in a large

measure also to his fellow euphuist Thomas Lodge. His earliest romance,

_Forbonius and Prisceria_, published in 1584, is partly pastoral in plot,

a faithful lover being driven by the opposition of his lady's father into

assuming the pastoral habit; but it is chiefly the connexion of his

_Rosalynde_ of 1590 with Shakespeare's _As You Like It_ that gives him a

claim upon our attention. _Rosalynde_ is not only on this account the

best-known, but is also intrinsically the most interesting of his

romances. The story is too familiar to need detailing. Its origin, as is

also well known, is the _Tale of Gamelyn_, the story which Chaucer

intended putting into the mouth either of the cook, or more probably of

the yeoman, and the hero of which apparently belongs to the Robin Hood

cycle. The interest centres round the three sons of Sir John of Bordeaux,

who retains his name with Lodge and is Shakespeare's Sir Roland de Bois,

and whose youngest son, Lodge's Rosader and Shakespeare's Orlando, is

named Gamelyn, and the outlaw king, Lodge's king of France and

Shakespeare's Duke senior[141]. The entire pastoral element, as well as

the courtly scenes of the earlier portion of the novel, are Lodge's own

invention. His shepherds, whether genuine, as Coridon and Phoebe, or

assumed, as Rosalynde and Rosader, are all alike Italian Arcadians,

equally polished and poetical. Montanus, a shepherd corresponding to

Shakespeare's Silvius, is a dainty rimester, and is not only well posted

in the loves of Polyphemus and Galatea, but can rail on blind boy Cupid in

good French, and on his mistress too--

Son cuer ne doit estre de glace,

Bien que elle ait de Neige le sein.

Thus Lodge added to the original story the figures of the usurper,

Rosalynde, Alinda (Celia), and the shepherds Montanus (Silvius), Coridon

(Corin) and Phoebe, while to Shakespeare we owe Amiens, Jacques,

Touchstone, Audre, and a few minor characters; whence it appears that

Lodge's contribution forms the mainstay of the plot as familiar to modern

readers. Moreover, in spite of the stiltedness of the style where the

author yet remembers to be euphuistic, in spite of the long 'orations,'

'passions,' 'meditations' and the like, each carefully labelled and giving

to the whole the air of a series of rhetorical exercises, in spite of the

mediocre quality of most of the verses, if we except its one perfect gem,

the romance yet retains not a little of its silvan and idyllic sweetness.

Before leaving the school of Lyly, which included a number of more or less

famous writers, I may take the opportunity of mentioning two authors

usually reckoned among them. One, John Dickenson, left two works of a

pastoral nature. His short romance entitled _Arisbas_ appeared in 1594,

and may have supplied Daniel with a hint for the kidnapping of Silvia in

_Hymen's Triumph_. Another yet shorter work, entitled the _Shepherd's

Complaint_, which is undated, but was probably printed in the same year,

is remarkable for being composed more than half in verse, largely

hexameters. In it the author falls asleep and is transported in his dreams

to Arcady, where he listens to the lament of a shepherd for the love of

Amaryllis. The cruel nymph is, however, soon punished, for, challenging

Diana in beauty, she falls a victim to the shafts of the angry goddess,

and is buried with full bucolic honours, whereupon the author awakes. The

other writer is William Warner, well known from his _Albion's England_,

published in 1586, who left a work entitled _Pan his Syrinx_, which

appeared in 1584; but in this pastoralism does not penetrate beyond the

title-page.

Of the books which everybody knows and nobody reads, _The Countess of

Pembroke's Arcadia_ is perhaps the most famous[142]. Yet though an account

of the romance may be found in the pages of every literary textbook, the

history of how the work came to be printed has never been fully cleared

up[143]. The _Arcadia_, as it remained at Sidney's death, was

fragmentary. Two books and a portion of a third were all that had

undergone revision, and possibly represented the portion which Sidney

compiled while living with his sister at Wilton, after his retirement from

court in 1581--the portion for the most part actually written in his

sister's presence. Even of this trustworthy manuscripts were rare, most of

those that circulated being copies of the unrevised text. Sidney died on

October 17, 1586, and even before the end of the year we find his friend

Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, writing to Sidney's father-in-law,

Sir Francis Walsingham, to the effect that the bookseller, William

Ponsonby, had informed him that some one was about to print the _Arcadia_,

and that if they were acting without authority a notification of the fact

should be lodged with the archbishop. Greville proceeds to say that he had

sent to Walsingham's daughter, that is, Lady Sidney, the corrected

manuscript of the work 'don 4 or 5 years sinse, which he left in trust

with me; wherof there is no more copies, and fitter to be reprinted then

the first, which is so common[144].' A complaint was evidently lodged, and

the publication stayed, and we may assume that Ponsonby was rewarded for

his notification by being entrusted with the publication of the revised

manuscript mentioned by Greville, for it was from his house that issued

the quarto edition of 1590. Evidence that it was Greville who was

responsible for the publication of the _Arcadia_ is found in the

dedication of Thomas Wilson's manuscript translation from the _Diana_,

where, addressing Greville, the translater speaks of Sir Philip's

_Arcadia_, 'w^{ch} by yo^{r} noble vertue the world so hapily enjoyes.' In

this edition, containing the first two and a half books only, the division

into chapters and the arrangement of the incidental verse were the work of

the 'over-seer of the print.' The text, however, was not considered

satisfactory, and when the romance was reprinted in 1593 the division into

chapters was discarded, certain alterations were made in the arrangement

of the verse, and there was added another portion of the third book,

together with a fourth and fifth, compiled by the Countess of Pembroke

from the loose sheets sent her from time to time by her brother. This

edition has been commonly regarded as the first published with due

authority, and the term 'surreptitious' has been quite unjustly applied to

the original quarto. The charge, indeed, receives colour from the preface,

signed H. S., to the second edition; but, whoever H. S. may have been,

there is nothing to make one suppose that he was speaking with authority.

The quarto of 1590 having been duly licensed on August 23, 1588, the

rights of the work were in Ponsonby's hands, and to him the publication of

the revised edition had to be entrusted. In 1598 a third edition, to which

other remains of the author were for the first time added, was also

published by Ponsonby. There still remained, however, a lacuna in Book

III, which was not remedied till 1621, when a supplement was added from

the pen of Sir William Alexander. In the edition of 1627 a sixth book was

appended, the work of one Richard Beling, whose initials alone, however,

appear. The early editors seem to have assumed that the unfinished state

of the work, or rather the unrevised state of the later portions, was due

to the author's early death, but most of it must have been written between

the years 1581 and 1583, and it may well be questioned whether in any case

Sidney would have bestowed any further attention upon it. Jonson, indeed,

has preserved the tradition that it had been Sir Philip's intention 'to

have transform'd all his Arcadia to the stories of King Arthure[145],'

though how the transformation was to be accomplished he forbore to hint;

but the more familiar tradition of Sidney's having expressed on his

death-bed a desire that the romance should be destroyed assorts better

with what else we know of his regard for his 'idle worke.'

For the name of his romance Sidney was no doubt indebted to Sannazzaro,

whom he twice mentions as an authority in his _Defence of Poesy_, but

there in all probability his direct obligation ends, since even the _rime

sdrucciole_, which he occasionally affected, may with equal probability be

referred to the influence of the _Diana_. It was, undoubtedly,

Montemayor's romance which served as a model for, or rather suggested the

character of, Sidney's work[146]. Thus the chivalric element, unknown to

Sannazzaro, is with Sidney even more prominent than with Montemayor and

his followers. It is, however, true that, like Greene's, his heroes are

rather of a classical than a medieval stamp, and he also chose to lay the

scene of the action in Greece rather than in his native land, as was the

habit of Spanish writers. The source upon which Sidney chiefly drew for

incidents was the once famous _Amadis of Gaul_, but a diligent reading of

the other French and Spanish romances of chivalry would probably lengthen

the list of recorded creditors. Heliodorus supplies several episodes, and

an acquaintance at least can be traced with both Achilles Tatius and

Chariton.

The intricate plot, with its innumerable digressions, episodes, and

interruptions, need not here be followed in detail, especially as we shall

have ample opportunity of becoming familiar with its general features when

we come to discuss the plays founded upon it. Here it will be sufficient

to note one or two points. In the first place the romance contains no

really pastoral characters, the personae being all either shepherds in

their disguise only, or else, like Greene's Doron and Carmela, burlesque

characters of the rustic tradition. Secondly, it may be observed that the

amorous confusion is even greater than in _Menaphon_, Pyrocles disguising

himself as an Amazon in order to enjoy the company of his beloved

Philoclea, which leads to her father Basilius falling in love with him in

his disguise, and endeavouring to use his daughter to forward his suit,

while her mother Gynecia likewise falls in love with him, having detected

his disguise, and becomes jealous of her daughter, who on her part

innocently accepts her lover as bosom companion[147].

In general the _Arcadia_ is no more than it purports to be, the 'many

fancies' of Sidney's fertile imagination poured forth in courtly guise for

the entertainment of his sister, though his own more serious thoughts

occasionally find expression in its pages, and he even introduces himself

under the imperfect anagram of Philisides, and shadows forth his

friendship with the French humanist Languet. More than this it would be

rash to assert, and Greville did his friend an equivocal service when he

sought to find a deep philosophy underlying the rather formal characters

of the romance[148]. These characters, as we have seen, are for the most

part essentially courtly; the pastoral guise is a mere veil shielding them

from the crude uncompromising light of actuality, with its prejudice in

favour of the probable; while the few rustic personages merely supply a

not very successful comic antimasque.

To the popularity of the _Arcadia_ it is hardly necessary to advert. It

has been repeatedly printed, added to, imitated, abbreviated, modernized,

popularized; four editions appeared during the last decade of the

sixteenth century, nine between the beginning of the seventeenth and the

outbreak of the civil wars[149]. It was first published at a moment when

the public was beginning to tire of Euphuism, and when the heroic death of

the author had recently set a seal upon the brilliance of his fame.

Looking back in after years, writers who, like Drayton, had lived through

the movement from its very birth, could speak of Sidney as of the author

who

did first reduce

Our tongue from Lyly's writing then in use,

and could praise his style as a model of pure English. In spite of the

generous, if misguided, efforts of occasional critics, posterity has not

seen fit to endorse this view. While finding in Sidney's style the same

historical importance as in Lyly's, we cannot but recognize that in itself

Arcadianism was little if at all better than Euphuism. It is just as

formal, just as much a trick, just as stilted and unpliable, just as

painful an illustration of the fact that a figure of rhetoric may be an

occasional ornament, but cannot by any degree of ingenuity be made to

serve as a basis of composition. In the same way as Euphuism is founded

upon a balance of the sentence obtained by antithetical clauses, and the

use of intricate alliteration, together with the abuse of simile and

metaphor drawn from what has been aptly termed Lyly's 'un-natural

history'; so Sidney's style in the _Arcadia_ is based on a balance usually

obtained by a repetition of the same word or a jingle of similar ones,

together with the abuse of periphrasis, and, it may be added, of the

pathetic fallacy. These last have been dangers in all periods of stylistic

experiment; the former, figures duly noted as ornaments by contemporary

rhetoricians, Sidney no doubt borrowed from Spain. There in one famous

example they were shortly to excite the enthusiasm of the knight of La

Mancha--'The reason of the unreason which is done to my reason in such

manner enfeebles my reason that with reason I lament your beauty'--a

sentence which one is sometimes tempted to imagine Sidney must have set

before him as a model. Thus it would appear that, for their essential

elements, Euphuism and Arcadianism, though distinct, alike sought their

models, direct or indirect, in the Spanish literature of the day. Almost

any passage, chosen at random, will illustrate Sidney's style. Observe the

balance of clauses in the following sentence from Kalander's speech, which

inclines perhaps towards Euphuism:

I am no herald to enquire of mens pedegrees, it sufficeth me if I know

their vertues, which, if this young mans face be not a false witnes, doe

better apparrell his minde, then you have done his body. (1590, fol.

8v.)

Or again, as an instance of the jingle of words, take the following from

the steward's narration:

I thinke you thinke, that these perfections meeting, could not choose

but find one another, and delight in that they found, for likenes of

manners is likely in reason to drawe liking with affection; mens actions

doo not alwaies crosse with reason: to be short, it did so in deed. (ib.

fol. 20.)

Of Sidney's power of description the stock example is his account of the

Arcadian landscape (fol. 7), and it is perhaps the best and at the same

time the most characteristic that could be found; the author's peculiar

tricks are at once obvious. There are 'the humble valleis, whose base

estate semed comforted with refreshing of silver rivers,' and the

'thickets, which being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so

to by the chereful deposition of many wel-tuned birds'; there are the

pastures where 'the prety lambs with bleting oratory craved the dams

comfort,' where sat the young shepherdess knitting, whose 'voice comforted

her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voices musick,' a

country where the scattered houses made 'a shew, as it were, of an

accompanable solitarines, and of a civil wildnes,' where lastly--_si sic

omnia_!--was the 'shepheards boy piping, as though he should never be

old.' It must not be supposed that these are occasional embroideries; they

are the very cloth of which the whole pastoral habit is made. The above

examples all occur within a few pages, and might even have been gathered

from a yet smaller plot. It is, however, on the prose, such as it is, that

the reputation of the _Arcadia_ rests; a good deal of occasional verse is

introduced, but it has often been subject of remark how wholly unworthy of

its author most of it is.

Given the widespread popularity of the work, the influence exercised by

the story on English letters is hardly a matter for wonder. Of its general

influence on the drama it will be my business to speak later; at present

we may note that while yet in manuscript it probably supplied Lodge with

certain hints for his _Rosalynde_, and so indirectly influenced _As You

Like It_. One of the best-known episodes, again, that of Argalus and

Parthenia, was versified by Quarles in 1632, and, adorned with a series of

cuts, went through a large number of editions before the end of the

century, besides being dramatized by Glapthorne. The incident of Pyrocles

heading the Zelots has been thought to have suggested the scene in the

_Two Gentlemen of Verona_ in which Valentine consents to lead the robber

band, while to Sidney Shakespeare was likewise indebted, not only for the

cowards' fight in _Twelfth Night_, but in the 'story of the Paphlagonian

unkinde king,' for the original of the Gloster episode in _King Lear_. A

certain prayer out of the later portion of the romance was, as is well

known, a favourite with Charles I in the days of his misfortune, but the

controversial use made of the fact by Milton it is happily possible to

pass over in silence.

Finally, it is worth mentioning as illustrating the vogue of Sidney's

romance, that it not only had the very singular honour of being translated

into French in the first half of the seventeenth century, but that two

translations actually appeared, the rivalry between which gave rise to a

literary controversy of some asperity[150].

Thus we take leave of the pastoral novel or romance, a kind which never

attained to the weighty tradition of the eclogue, or the grace of the

lyric, nor was subjected to the rigorous artistic form of the drama[151].

It remained throughout nerveless and diffuse, and, in spite of much

incidental beauty, was habitually wanting in interest, except in so far as

it renounced its pastoral nature. As Professor Raleigh has put it: 'To

devise a set of artificial conditions that shall leave the author to work

out the sentimental inter-relations of his characters undisturbed by the

intrusion of probability or accident is the problem; love _in vacuo_ is

the beginning and end of the pastoral romance proper.' A similar attempt

is noticeable in the drama, but the conditions soon came to be recognized

as impossible for artistic use. The operation of human affection under

utterly imaginary and impossible conditions is not a matter of human

interest; the resuit was a purely fictitious amatory code, as absurd as it

was unhealthy, and, when sustained by no extrinsic interest of allegory or

the like, the kind soon disappeared. As it is, in the pastoral novel, it

is only when the enchanted circle is broken by the rough and tumble of

vulgar earthly existence that on the featureless surface of the waters

something of the light and shade of true romance replaces the steady

pitiless glare ot a philosophical or sentimental ideal.

Chapter III.

Italian Pastoral Drama

I

We have now passed in review the main classes of non-dramatic pastoral

both abroad and in this country. Such preliminary survey was necessary in

order to obtain an idea of the history and nature of pastoral composition

in general. It was further rendered imperative by more particular

considerations which will appear in the course of the present chapter, for

we shall find that the pastoral drama comes into being, not through the

infusion of the Arcadian ideal into pre-existing dramatic forms, but

through the actual evolution of a new dramatic form from the pre-existing

non-dramatic pastoral.

It is time to retrace our steps and to pick up the thread which we dropped

in a former chapter, the development, namely, of the vernacular eclogue in

Italy. If in so doing we are forced to enter at greater length upon the

discussion of individual works, we shall find ample excuse, not only in

their intrinsic merit, but likewise in their more direct bearing upon what

is after all the main subject of this volume. The pastoral drama of Italy

is the immediate progenitor of that of England. Further, it might be

pleaded that special interest attaches to the Arcadian pastoral as the

only dramatic form of conspicuous vitality for which Italy is the crediter

of European letters.

The history of the rise of the pastoral drama in Italy is a complicated

subject, and one not altogether free from obscurity. Many forces were at

work determining the development of the form, and these it is difficult so

to present as at once to leave a clear impression and yet not to allow any

one element to usurp an importance it does not in reality possess. Any

account which gives a specious appearance of simplicity to the case

should be mistrusted. That I have been altogether successful in my

treatment I can hardly hope, but at least the method followed has not been

hastily adopted. I propose to consider, first of all and apart from the

rest, the early mythological drama, which while exercising a marked

influence over the spirit of the later pastoral can in no way be regarded

as its origin. Next, I shall trace the evolution of the pastoral drama

proper from its germ in the non-dramatic eclogue, by way of the _ecloghe

rappresentative_, and treat incidentally the allied rustic shows, which

form a class apart from the main line of development. Lastly, I shall have

to say a few words concerning the early pastoral plays by Beccari and

others before turning to the masterpieces of Tasso and Guarini, the

consideration of which will occupy the chief part of this chapter[152].

The class of productions known as mythological plays, which powerfully

influenced the character of the pastoral drama, sprang from the union of

classical tradition with the machinery of native religious

representations, in Poliziano's _Favola d' Orfeo_. This was the first

non-religious play in the vernacular, and its dependence on the earlier

religious drama is striking. Indeed, the blending of medieval and

classical forms and conventions may be traced throughout the early secular

drama of Italy. Boiardo's _Timone_, a play written at some unknown date

previous to 1494, preserves, in spite of its classical models, much of the

allegorical character of the morality, and was undoubtedly acted on a

stage comprising two levels, the upper representing heaven in which Jove

sat enthroned on the seat of Adonai. The same scenic arrangement may well

have been used in the _Orfeo_, the lower stage representing Hades[153];

while Niccolò da Correggio's _Cefalo_ was evidently acted on a polyscenic

stage, the actors passing in view of the audience from one part to

another[154]. At a yet earlier period Italian writers in the learned

tongue had taken as the subjects of their plays stories from classical

legend and myth, and among these we find not only recognized tragedy

themes such as the rape of Polyxena dramatized by Lionardo Bruni, but

tales such as that of Progne put on the stage by Gregorio Corrado, both of

which preceded by many years the work of Politian and Correggio.

The earliest secular play in Italian is, then, nothing but a _sacra

rappresentazione_ on a pagan theme, a fact which was probably clearly

recognized when, in the early editions from 1494 onwards, the piece was

described as the 'festa di Orpheo[155].' It was written in 1471, when

Poliziano was about seventeen, and we learn from the author's epistle

prefixed to the printed edition that ît was composed in the short space of

two days for representation before Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga at Mantua.

From the same epistle we learn that the author desired, or at least

assumed the attitude of desiring, that his composition should share the

fate of the ill-fashioned Lacedaemonian children; 'Cognoscendo questa mia

figliuola essere di qualità da fare più tosto al suo padre vergogna che

onore; e più tosto atta a dargli malinconia che allegrezza.' The _favola_

as originally put forth continued to be reprinted without alteration, till

1776, when Ireneo Affò published the _Orphei Tragoedia_ from a collation

of two manuscripts. This differs in various respects from the printed

version, among others in being divided, short as it is, into five acts,

headed respectively 'Pastorale,' 'Ninfale,' 'Eroico,' 'Negromantico,' and

'Baccanale.' It is now known to represent a revision of the piece made,

probably by Antonio Tebaldeo, for representation at Ferrara, and in it

much of the popular and topical element has been eliminated. The action

of the piece is based in a general manner upon the story given by Ovid in

the tenth book of the _Metamorphoses_.

The performance begins with a prologue by Mercury which is nothing but a

short argument of the whole plot. 'Mercurio annunzia la festa' is the

superscription in the original, evidently suggested by the appearance of

'un messo di Dio' with which the religious _rappresentazioni_ usually

open. At the end of this prologue a shepherd appears and finishes the

second octave with the couplet:

State attenti, brigata; buono augurio;

Poi che di cielo in terra vien Mercurio.

In the Ferrarese revision these stanzas appear as 'Argomento' without

mention of Mercury, while for the above lines are substituted the

astonishing doggerel:

Or stia ciascuno a tutti gli atti intento,

Che cinque sono; e questo è l' argomento.

Thereupon (beginning Act I of the revision) enters Mopso, an old shepherd,

meeting Aristeo, a youthful one, with his herdsman Tirsi. Mopso asks

whether his white calf has been seen, and Aristeo, who fancies he has

heard a lowing from beyond the hill, sends his boy to see. In the

meanwhile he detains Mopso with an account of his love for a nymph he met

the day before, and sings a _canzona_:

Ch' i' so che la mia ninfa il canto agogna[156].

It runs on the familiar themes of love: 'Di doman non c' è certezza.'

Digli, zampogna mia, come via fugge

Con gli anni insieme la bellezza snella;

E digli come il tempo ne distrugge,

Ne l' età persa mai si rinovella;

Digli che sappi usar sua forma bella,

Che sempre mai non son rose e viole...

Udite, selve, mie dolci parole,

Poi che la ninfa mia udir non vole.

The boy Tirsi now returns, having with much trouble driven the strayed

calf back to the herd, and narrates how he saw an unknown nymph of

wondrous beauty gathering flowers about the hill. Aristeo recognizes from

this description the object of his love, and, leaving Mopso and Tirsi to

shake their heads over his midsummer madness, goes off to find her.

So far we might be reading one of the _ecloghe rappresentative_ which we

shall have to consider shortly, but of which the earliest known examples

cannot well be less than ten or twelve years later than Poliziano's play.

With the exception, indeed, of one or two in Boccaccio's _Ameto_, it is

doubtful whether any vernacular eclogues had appeared at the time. The

character of Tirsi belongs to rustic tradition, and must be an experiment

contemporary with, if not prior to, Lorenzo's _Nencia_. The portion before

the _canzone_ is in _terza rima_; that after it, like the prologue, in

octaves.

The original proceeds without break to the song of Aristeo as he pursues

the flying Euridice (Act II in the revision):

Poi che 'l pregar non vale,

E tu via ti dilegui,

El convien ch' io ti segui.

Porgimi, Amor, porgimi or le tue ale.

While Aristeo is following Euridice, Orfeo enters upon the scene with a

Latin ode in Sapphic metre in honour of Cardinal Gonzaga. A note informs

us that this was originally sung by 'Messer Braccio Ugolino, attore di

detta persona d' Orfeo.' In place of this ode the revised text contains a

long 'Coro delle Driadi,' with two speeches in _terza rima_ by the

choragus, announcing and lamenting the death of Euridice, who as she fled

from Aristeo has been stung in the foot by a serpent. After this the news

of her death is reported to Orfeo--by a shepherd in the original, by a

dryad in the revised version. That the substitution of the chorus for the

Sapphic ode is an improvement from the poetic point of view will hardly be

denied, yet this improvement has been attained at the cost of some

dramatic sacrifice. In the original Orfeo is introduced naturally enough

in his character of supreme poet and musician to do honour to the

occasion, and it is only after he has been on the stage some time that the

news of Euridice's death is brought. In the revision he is merely

introduced for the purpose of being informed of his wife's death--he has

hardly been so much as mentioned before. He thus loses the slight

opportunity previously afforded him of presenting a dramatic individuality

apart from the very essence of his tragedy.

The announcement to Orfeo of Euridice's death begins the third act of the

revised text, which is amplified at this point by the introduction of a

satyr Mnesillo, who acts as chorus to Orfeo's lament. The character of a

friendly satyr is interesting in view of the role commonly assigned to his

species in pastoral.

After this we have in the original the direction 'Orfeo cantando giugne

all' Inferno,' while in the revision there is again a new act, the fourth.

Symonds pointed out that the merits of the piece are less dramatic than

lyrical, and that fortunately the central scene was one in which the

situation was capable of lyrical expression. The pleading of Orfeo before

the gates of Hades and at the throne of Pluto forms the lyrical kernel of

the play, and gives it its poetic value. The bard appears before the

iron-bound portals of the nether world, and the pains of hell surcease.

'Who is he?' asks Pluto--

Chi è costui che con sì dolce nota

Muove l' abisso, e con l' ornata cetra?

Io veggo ferma d' Ission la rota,...

Nè più P acqua di Tantalo s' arretra;

E veggo Cerber con tre bocche intente,

E le furie acquietar il suo lamento.

At length he stands before Pluto's throne, the seat of the God of the

_sacre rappresentazioni_, the rugged rock-seat surrounded by the monstrous

demons of Signorelli's _tondo_[157]. Here in presence of the grim ravisher

and of his pale consort, in whom the passionate pleading of the Thracian

bard stirs long-forgotten memories of spring and of the plains of Enna,

Orfeo's song receives adequate expression. It is closely imitated from the

corresponding passage in Ovid, but the lyrical perfection and passionate

crescendo of the stanzas are Poliziano's own. Addressing Pluto, Orfeo

discovers the object of his quest:

Non per Cerber legar fo questa via,

Ma solamente per la donna mia.

May not love penetrate even the forbidden bounds of hell?--

se memoria alcuna in voi si serba

Del vostro celebrato antico amore,

Se la vecchia rapina a mente avete,

Euridice mia bella mi rendete.

Why should death grudge the few years at most which complete the span of

human life?--

Ogni cosa nel fine a voi ritorna;

Ogni vita mortal quaggiù ricade:

Quanto cerchia la luna con sue corna

Convien che arrivi alle vostre contrade--

or why reap amid the unmellowed corn?--

Così la ninfa mia per voi si serba,

Quando sua morte gli darà natura.

Or la tenera vite e l' uva acerba

Tagliata avete con la falce dura.

Chi è che mieta la sementa in erba

E non aspetti ch' ella sia matura?

Dunque rendete a me la mia speranza:

Io non vel chieggio in don, questa è prestanza.

Next he invokes the pity of the stern god by the name of Chaos whence the

world had birth, and by the dread rivers of the nether world, by Styx and

Acheron: 'E pel sonante ardor di Flegetonte'; and lastly, turning to 'the

faery-queen Proserpina,'

Pel pome che a te già, Regina, piacque,

Quando lasciasti pria nostro orizzonte.

E se pur me la niega iniqua sorte,

Io no vo' su tornar, ma chieggio morte![158]

Hell itself relents, and, as Boccaccio had written,

forse lieta gli rendeo

La cercata Euridice a condizione--

the condition being that he shall not turn to behold her before attaining

once again to the land of the living. The condition, of course, is not

fulfilled. Orfeo seeks to clasp 'his half regain'd Eurydice,' with the

triumphant cry of Ovid holding the conquered Corinna in his arms:

Ite triumphales circum mea tempora lauri.

Vicimus: Eurydice reddita vita mihi est.

Haec est praecipuo Victoria digna triumpho.

Hue ades, o cura parte triumphe mea[159].

He turns, and his unsubstantial love sinks back into the realm of shadows

with the cry:

Oimè che 'I troppo amore

Ci ha disfatti ambe dua.

Ecco ch' io ti son tolta a gran furore,

Nè sono ormai più tua.

Ben tendo a te le braccia; ma non vale,

Che indietro son tirata. Orfeo mio, _vale_.

As he would follow her once more a fury bars the road.

Desperate of his love, the bard now forswears for ever the company of

women (Act V of the revised text).

Da qui innanzi vo corre i fior novelli ...

Ouesto è più dolce e più soave amore;

Non sia chi mai di donna mi favelli,

Poi che morta è colei ch' ebbe il mio core.

Now that she is dead, what faith abides in woman?--

Quanto è misero l' uom che cangia voglia

Per donna, o mai per lei s' allegra, o duole!...

Che sempre è più leggier ch' al vento foglia,

E mille volte il di vuole e disvuole.

Segue chi fugge; a chi la vuol, s' asconde,

E vanne e vien come alla riva l' onde.

The cry wrung from him by his grief anticipates the cynical philosophy of

later pastorals. Upon this the scene is invaded by 'The riot of the tipsy

Bacchanals,' eager to avenge the insult offered to their sex[160]. They

drive the poet out, and presently returning in triumph with his 'gory

visage,' break out into the celebrated chorus 'full of the swift fierce

spirit of the god.' This gained considerably by revision, and in the later

text runs as follows:

Ciascun segua, o Bacco, te;

Bacco, Bacco, oè oè.

Di corimbi e di verd' edere

Cinto il capo abbiam così

Per servirti a tuo richiedere

Festeggiando notte e dì.

Ognun beva: Bacco è quì;

E lasciate here a me.

Ciascun segua, ec.

Io ho vuoto già il mio corno:

Porgi quel cantaro in qua.

Questo monte gira intorno,

O 'l cervello a cerchio va:

Ognun corra in qua o in là,

Come vede fare a me.

Ciascun segua, ec.

Io mi moro già di sonno:

Sono io ebra o sì o no?

Più star dritti i piè non ponno.

Voi siet' ebri, ch' io lo so;

Ognun faccia com' io fo;

Ognun succe come me.

Ciascun segua, ec.

Ognun gridi Bacco, Bacco,

E poi cacci del vin giù;

Poi col sonno farem fiacco,

Bevi tu e tu e tu.

Io non posso ballar più;

Ognun gridi Evoè.[161]

Ciascun segua, o Bacco, te;

Bacco, Bacco, oè oè.

Lyrical beauty rather than dramatic power was, it has already been

remarked, Poliziano's aim and achievement. The want of characterization in

the hero, the insignificance of the part allotted to Euridice, the total

inadequacy of the tragic climax, measure the author's power as a

dramatist. It is the lyrical passages--Aristeo's song, Orfeo's impassioned

pleading, the bacchanalian dance chorus--that supply the firm supports of

art upon which rests the slight fabric of the play.

The same simplicity of construction, a simplicity in nature rather

narrative than dramatic, characterizes Niccolò da Correggio's _Cefalo_.

The play was represented in state in the great courtyard of the ducal

palace at Ferrara, on the occasion of the marriage of Lucrezia d' Este

with Annibale Bentivogli, on January 21, 1487[162]. Like the _Orfeo_, the

piece exhibits traces of its origin in the religious shows, though, unlike

the original draft of Poliziano's play, it is divided into five acts each

of some length, and is provided with regular choruses on the classical

model. In spite of its inferiority to the _Orfeo_ in lyric power and its

possibly even greater deficiency from a dramatic point of view, it will be

worth while giving some account of the piece in order to get as clear an

idea as possible of the nature and limitations of the mythological drama,

and also because it has never, I believe, been reprinted in modern times,

and is in consequence practically unknown to English readers.

The author, a descendant of the princely house of Correggio, was born

about 1450, and married the daughter of the famous _condottiere_

Bartolommeo Colleoni. He lived for some years at Milan at the court of

Lodovico Sforza; later he migrated to that of the Estensi. In 1493 he sent

an allegorical eclogue to Isabella Gonzaga at Mantua, which may possibly

have been represented, though we have no note of the fact, and the poem

itself has perished[163]. He died in 1508.

After a prologue which resembles that of the _Orfeo_ in giving an argument

of the whole piece, the first act opens with a scene in which Aurora seeks

the love of Cefalo. Offended at finding her advances repulsed, the goddess

hints that the wife to whom Cefalo is so careful of his faith is, for her

part, more free of her favours; and upon Cefalo indignantly refusing

credence to the slander, suggests that he should himself in disguise make

trial of her fidelity. This the unfortunate youth resolves to do. He

approaches Procri in the habit of a merchant, with goods for sale, and

takes the opportunity thus afforded of declaring his love. She turns to

fly, but the pretended passion of his suit stays her, and she is brought

to lend an ear to his cunning. He retails the commonplaces of the

despairing lover:

Deh, non fuggire, e non si altiera in vista;

Odime alquanto, e scolta i preghi mei.

Che fama mai per crudeltà se acquista?

Bellissima sei pur, cruda non dei.

Non sai che Amor non vol che se resista

A colpi soi? così vinto mi dei

Subito ch' io ti viddi; eh, non fuggire,

Forza non ti farò; deh, stammi audire.

Not Jove or Phoebus he to assume strange shapes for her love; he is but

her slave, and can but offer his pedlar's pack; but he knows of hidden

treasure in the earth, and hers, too, shall be vesture of the fairest.

After gold and soft raiment comes the trump card of the seducer--secrecy:

Cosa secreta mai non se riprende;

El tempo che si perde mai non torna;

Qui non serai veduta, or che se attende

Quel se ha a dolere, che al suo ben sogiorna.

Secreto è il loco, el sol pur non vi splende;

Bella sei tu, sol manca che sii adorna

Di veste come io intendo ultra il tesoro.

Deh, non mi tener più; vedi ch' io moro.

She is almost won; one last assault, and her defences fall. Why, indeed,

should she hesitate--

Poi ch' Amor dice, ogni secreta è casta?

This stroke of cynicism is put forward as it were but half intentionally,

and with no appreciation of its intense irony in the mouth of the husband.

Throughout the scene indeed he appears merely as a common seducer, and the

author seems wholly to have failed to grasp the real dramatic value of the

situation. On the other hand, the lesser art of the stage has been

mastered with some success, and there is an adaptation of language to

action which at least argues that the author had a vivid picture of the

staging of his play in his mind when he wrote.

The moment Procri has consented to barter her honour, Cefalo discovers

himself, and the unhappy girl flies in terror. Seeing now, too late, the

resuit of his foolish mistrust, Cefalo follows with prayers and

self-reproaches--

Son ben certo

Che tu mi cognoscesti ancor coperto--

but in vain. The act ends with a song in which Aurora glories in the

success of her revenge--

Festegiam con tutto il core;

Biastemate hor meco Amore!

In the second act Procri, having recovered from her fright, is bent on

avenging herself for the deceit practised by Cefalo, upon whose supposed

love for Aurora she throws the blame in the matter. She seeks the grove of

Diana, where she is enrolled among the followers of the goddess. Cefalo,

who has followed her flight, rejoins her in the wood, and there renews his

prayers. She refuses to recognize him, denies being his wife, and is about

to renew her flight, when an old shepherd, attracted by Cefalo's

lamentation, stays her and forces her to hear her husband's pleading.

Other shepherds appear on the scene, and the act ends with an eclogue. In

the next we find her reconciled to Cefalo, to whom she gives the

wind-swift dog and the unerring spear which she had received as a nymph of

Diana. Cefalo at once sets the hound upon the traces of a boar, and goes

off in pursuit, while his wife returns home. He shortly reappears, having

lost boar and hound alike, and, tired with the chase, falls asleep.

Meanwhile a faun, finding Procri alone, tells her that he had seen Cefalo

meeting with his love Aurora in the wood--a piece of news in return for

which he seeks her love. She, however, resolves to go and surprise the

supposed lovers, and setting fire to the wood, herself to perish with them

in the flames. On Cefalo's return he is met with bitter reproaches, and

the act ends with a chorus of fauns and satyrs. The fourth contains the

catastrophe. Procri hides in the wood in hope of surprising her husband

with his paramour. Cefalo enters ready for the chase, and, seeing what he

takes to be a wild beast among bushes, throws the fatal spear, which

pierces Procri's breast. A reconciliation precedes her death, and the

close of the act is rendered effective by the successive summoning of the

Muses and nymphs in some graceful stanzas. With a little polishing, such

as Poliziano's bacchanalian chorus received in revision, the scene would

not be unworthy of the time and place of its production.

Oimè sorelle, o Galatea, presto!

Donate al cervo ormai un poco pace;

Soccorrete al pianger quel caso mesto.

Oimè sorelle, Procri morta giace,

L' alma spirata, e il ciel guardando tace.

At Cefalo's desire Calliope summons her sister Muses, Phillis the nymphs,

after which all join in a choral ode calling upon the divinities of

mountain, wood, and stream to join in a universal lament:

Weep, spirits of the woods and of the hills,

Weep, each pure nymph beside her fountain-head,

And weep, ye mountains, in a thousand rills,

For the fair child who here below lies dead:

Mourn, all ye gods, the last of human ills,

Your sacred foreheads all ungarlanded.

Here the traditional story of Cephalus and Procris, as founded on the

rather inferior version in the seventh book of the _Metamorphoses_, ends.

There remains, however, a fifth act, in which Diana appears, raises

Procri, and restores her to her husband.

The play, composed for the most part in octaves with choruses in _terza

rima_, is, from the dramatic point of view, open to obvious and fatal

objections. The preposterous _dea ex machina_ of the last act; the

inconsequence of motive and inconsistency of character, partly, it is

true, inherent in the original story, but by no means made less obvious by

the dramatist; the insufficiency of the action to fill the necessary

space, and the inability of the author to make the most of his materials,

are all alike patent. On the other hand, we have already noticed a certain

theatrical ability displayed in the writing of the first act, and we may

further attribute the alteration by which Procri is represented as jealous

of Cefalo's original lover, Aurora, instead of the wholly imaginary Aura,

as in Ovid, to a desire for dramatic unity of motive.

The extent to which either the _Orfeo_ or _Cefalo_ can be regarded as

pastoral will now be clear, and it must be confessed that they do not

carry us very far. The two fifteenth-century plays constitute a distinct

species which has attained to a high degree of differentiation if not of

dramatic evolution, and critics who would see in them the origin of the

later pastoral drama have to explain the strange phenomenon of the species

lying dormant for nearly three-quarters of a century, and then suddenly

developing into an equally individualized but very dissimilar form[164].

It should, moreover, be borne in mind that contemporary critics never

regarded the Arcadian pastoral as in any way connected with the

mythological drama, and that the writers of pastoral themselves claimed no

kinship with Poliziano or Correggio, but always ranked themselves as the

followers of Beccari alone in the line of dramatic development. On the

other hand, there can be no reasonable doubt that such performances went

to accustom spectators to that mixture of mythology and idealism which

forms the atmosphere, so to speak, of the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor fido_.

This must be my excuse for lingering over these early works.

II

When dealing with the Italian eclogue we saw how, at a certain point, it

began to assume a distinctly dramatic character, and in so doing took the

first step towards the possible evolution of a real pastoral drama. It

will be my task in the ensuing pages to follow up this clue, and to show

how the pastoral drama arose through a process of natural development from

the recited eclogue.

The dramatic tendency was indeed inherent in the eclogue from the very

first. Throughout there is a steady growth in the use of dialogue: of the

Idyls of Theocritus only about a third contain more than one character; of

Vergil's Bucolics at least half; of Calpurnius' all but one; of the

eclogues of Petrarch and Boccaccio all without exception. This tendency

did not escape Guarini, who, when not led into puerilities by his love of

self-laudation, often shows considerable insight. 'The eclogue,' he says,

'is nothing but a short discussion between shepherds, differing in no

other manner from that sort of scene which the Latins call dialogue,

except in so far as being whole and independent, possessing within itself

both beginning and end[165].'

Having thus gradually altered the literary form of the eclogue, this

tendency towards dramatic expression next showed itself in the manner in

which the poem was presented to the world. For circulation in print or

manuscript, or for informal reading, came to be substituted recitation in

character. The dialogue was divided between two persons who spoke

alternately, and it is evident from the somewhat meagre texts that survive

that, in the earliest examples, these _ecloghe rappresentative_, or

dramatic eclogues as I shall call them, differed in no way from the purely

literary productions which we considered in an earlier section. Evidence

of actual representation is often wanting, and the exact date in most

cases is uncertain; but, since there is no doubt that such performances

actually did take place, we are not only justified in assuming that

several poems of the period belong to this class, but we can also, on

internai evidence, arrange them more or less in a natural sequence of

dramatic development. One such eclogue has come down to us from the pen of

Baldassare Taccone, a Genoese who also wrote mythological plays on the

subjects of Danaë and Actaeon. Another, interesting as dealing with the

corruption of the Curia at a moment when its scandalous traffic was

carried on in the light of day with more than usually cynical

indifference, was actually presented at Rome under the patronage of

Cardinal Giovanni Colonna at the carnival of 1490, during the pontificate

of Innocent VIII. Gradually a more complex form was evolved, the number of

speakers was increased, and some of these made their entrance during the

progress of the recitation. So too in the matter of metrical form, the

strict _terza rima_ of the earlier examples came to be diversified with

_rime sdrucciole_, and by being intermingled with verses with internal

rime, with _ottava rima, settenarî_ couplets, and lyrical measures.

Castiglione's representation at Urbino has been noticed previously. Among

similar productions may be mentioned two poems by a certain Caperano of

Faenza, printed in 1508, while others are found at Siena in 1517 and 1523.

Besides the texts that are extant we also have record of a good many which

have perished. In 1493 the representation of eclogues formed part of the

revels prepared by Alexander VI for the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia with

Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, and this was again the case when, having

been divorced from Giovanni, and her second husband having perished by the

assassin's dagger, she finally in 1502 became the wife of Alfonso d'Este,

heir to the duchy of Ferrara. Eclogues were again represented at Ferrara

in 1508, and received specific mention among the dramatic performances

dealt with by the laws of Venice.

We thus see that the eclogue had every opportunity of developing into a

regular dramatic form. At this point a variety of external influences made

themselves felt, which facilitated or modified its growth. Perhaps

foremost among these should be reckoned that of the 'regular' drama--that

is of the drama based upon an imitation of the classics, chiefly of the

Latin authors. The conception of dramatic art which was in men's minds at

the time naturally and inevitably influenced the development of a form of

poem which was daily becoming more sensibly dramatic. Next there was the

influence of the mythological drama embodying the romantic and ideal

elements of classical myth, but in form representing the tradition of the

old religious plays. This led to the occasional introduction of

supernatural characters, counteracted the rationalizing influence of the

Roman dramatists, and supplied the pastoral with its peculiar imaginative

atmosphere. Lastly, there was the 'rustic' influence, which was at no time

very strong, and left no mark upon the form as finally evolved, but which

has nevertheless to be taken into account in tracing the process of

development. The influence exercised by burlesque and realistic scenes

from real life cannot have been brought to bear on the eclogue until it

had already attained to a dramatic character of some complexity. The

earliest text of the kind we possess dates from 1508, and it is doubtful

whether or not it was acted. In 1513 we have record of a rustic

performance at the Capitol, and a satyrical and allegorical piece of like

nature, and belonging to the same year, is actually preserved, as is also

one in Bellunese dialect. These shows became the special characteristic of

the Rozzi society at Siena, in whose hands they soon developed into short

realistic farces of low life, composed in dialectal verse and acted by

members of the society at many of the courts of Italy. The fashion,

though never widely spread, survived for many years, the most famous

author of such pieces being Michelangelo Buonarroti the younger at the

beginning of the next century.

These _drammi rusticali_, as they were called, may not improbably have

owed their origin to the fashion of rustic composition set by Lorenzo de'

Medici in his _Nencia_, and may thus in their origin have been related to

the courtly eclogue; but the subsequent development of the kind is at most

parallel to that of the pastoral drama, and should not be regarded either

as the origin or as a subdivision of this latter. Nor did the rustic

compositions exercise any permanent influence on the pastoral drama; the

most that can be said is that an occasional text shows signs of being

affected by the low vulgarity of the kind.

Returning to the polite eclogues, we soon find an increase in the dramatic

complexity of the form. Tansillo's _Due pellegrini_, which cannot be later

than 1528, contains the rudiments of a plot, two lovers bent on suicide

being persuaded by a miraculous voice to become reconciled with the world

and life. Poetic justice befalls the two nymphs in an eclogue by Luca di

Lorenzo, printed in 1530, the disdainful Diversa being condemned to love

the boor Fantasia, while Euridice's loving disposition is rewarded by the

devotion of Orindio.

We now come to what may almost be regarded as the first conscious attempt

to write a pastoral play--an attempt, however, which met with but partial

success. This is the _Amaranta_, a 'Comedia nuova pastorale' by

Giambattista Casalio of Faenza, which most probably belongs to a date

somewhat before 1538. In it the mutual love of Partenio and Amaranta is

thwarted by the girl's mother Celia, who destines her for a goatherd.

Partenio is led to believe that his love has played him false, while in

her turn Amaranta supposes herself forsaken. The two meet, however, at the

hut of a wise nymph Lucina, through whose intervention they are reconciled

and their union effected. The piece, which attains to some proportions, is

divided into five acts, and, while owing a certain debt to the _Orfeo_, is

itself pastoral in character with occasional coarse touches borrowed from

the rustic shows. It is in the _Amaranta_ that we first meet with an

attempt to introduce a real plot of some human interest into a purely

pastoral composition; we are no longer dealing with a merely occasional

piece written in celebration of some special person or festivity, no

longer with a mythological masque or pageant, nor with an amorous

allegory, but with a piece the interest of which, slight as it is, lies in

the fate of the characters involved.

The fifteen years or so which separate the work of Casalio from that of

Beccari saw the production of a succession of more or less pastoral works

which serve, to some extent at least, to bridge over the gap which

separates even the most elaborate of the above compositions from the

recognized appearance of the fully-developed pastoral drama in the

_Sacrifizio_. The chief characteristic which marks the work of these years

is a tendency to deliberate experiment. The writers appear to have been

conscious that their work was striving towards a form which had not yet

been achieved, though they were themselves vague as to what that form

might be. Epicuro's _Mirzia_ tends towards the mythological drama; the

_Silvia_ written by one Fileno, which, like the _Amaranta_, turns on the

temporary estrangement of two lovers, introduces considerable elements

from the rustic performances; in Cazza's _Erbusto_ the amorous skein is

cut by the discovery of consanguinity and an ἀναγνώρισις after the manner

of the Latin comedy. Similar in plot to this last is a fragmentary

pastoral of Giraldi Cintio's published from manuscript by Signor Carducci.

Another curious but isolated experiment is Cintio's _Egle_, in intent a

revival of the 'satyric' drama of the Greeks, in substance a dramatization

of the motive of Sannazzaro's _Salices_. In one sense these experiments

ended in failure; it was not through the elaboration of mythological or

superhuman elements, nor through the humour of burlesque or realistic

rusticity, nor yet through the violence of unexpected discoveries, that

the destined form of the pastoral drama was to be attained. On the other

hand, they undoubtedly served to introduce an elaboration of plot and

complexity of dramatic structure which is altogether lacking in the

earlier eclogues and masques, but without which the work of Tasso and

Guarini could never have occupied the commanding position that it does in

the history of literature. They carry us forward to the point at which the

pastoral drama took its shape and being.

Of the elements compounded of pastoral idealism and the graceful purity of

classical myth, and combining the scenic attractions of the masque with

the reasoned action and human interest of the regular drama, the Arcadian

pastoral first achieved definite form in the work of Agostino Beccari. His

_Sacrifizio_, styled 'favola pastorale' on the title-page of the first

impression, was acted at the palace of Francesco d' Este at Ferrara in the

presence of Ercole II and his son Luigi, and of the Duchess Renata and her

daughters Lucrezia and Leonora, on two occasions in February and March

1554. The piece was revived more than thirty years later, namely in 1587,

when the courtly world was already familiar with Tasso's masterpiece, and

was ringing with the prospective fame of the _Pastor fido_, and

represented both at Sassuolo and Ferrara.

The action involves three pairs of lovers. Turico loves Stellinia in spite

of the fact that she has transferred her affections to Erasto. Erasto in

his turn pays his homage to Callinome, the type of the 'careless'

shepherdess, a nymph vowed to the service of Diana. There remains

Carpalio, whose love for Melidia is secretly returned; its consummation

being prevented by the girl's brother Pimonio, who refuses to countenance

the match, and keeps dragon guard over his sister. In the meanwhile

shepherds and shepherdesses assemble to honour the festival and sacrifice

of Pan, which proves the occasion for the unravelling of the amorous

tangle. Stellinia, wishing to rid herself of her rival in Erasto's love,

induces Callinome so far to break her vestal vow as to be present at the

forbidden feast. Here she is promptly detected by the offended goddess and

sentenced to do battle against one of the fiercest of the Erymanthian

boars. Erasto comes to her aid with a magic ointment, which has the power

of rendering the user invisible, and with the help of which she achieves

her task unharmed. Out of gratitude she rewards her preserver with her

love. Not only is Stellinia thus condemned to witness the failure of her

plot, but she is herself carried off by a satyr, who endeavours to deceive

each of the nymphs in turn. Being rescued from his power by the faithful

Turico, she too capitulates to love. Lastly, in the absence of Pimonio,

who has gone to be present at the games held at the festival, Carpalio and

Melidia pluck the fruit of love, and are saved from the anger of the

brother through his conveniently falling into an enchanted lake whence he

emerges in the shape of a boar.

In the prologue the author boldly announces the novelty of his work--

Una favola nova pastorale

............nova in tanto

Ch' altra non fu giammai forse più udita

Di questa sorte recitarsi in scena.

Guarini, who is said to have supplied a prologue for the revival of the

piece, bore out Beccari's claim when he wrote in his essay on

tragi-comedy: 'First among the moderns to possess the happy boldness to

make in this kind, namely the pastoral dramatic tale, of which there is no

trace among the ancients, was Agostin de' Beccari, a worthy citizen of

Ferrara, to whom alone does the world owe the fair creation of this sort

of poem[166].'

Several pieces of no great interest or importance serve to fill the decade

or so following on the production of Beccari's play. Groto, known as the

Cieco d' Adria, combined the mythological motive with much of the vulgar

obscenity of the Latin comedy. Lollio also produced a hybrid of an earlier

type in his _Aretusa_. In 1567 a return was made to the pastoral tradition

of Beccari in Agostino Argenti's play _Lo Sfortunato_. Among the

spectators who witnessed the first performance of this piece before Duke

Alfonso and his court at Ferrara was a youth of twenty-two, lately

attached to the household of the Cardinal Luigi d' Este. In all

probability this was Tasso's first introduction to a style of composition

which not many years later he was to make famous throughout Europe. The

play he witnessed on that occasion, however, was no work of surpassing

genius. It cannot, indeed, be said to mark any decided advance on

Beccari's work except in so far, perhaps, as it at times foreshadows the

somewhat sickly sentiment of later pastorals, including Tasso's own. The

shepherd Sfortunato loves Dafne, Dafne loves Iacinto, who in his turn

pursues Flaminia, while she loves only Silvio, who loves himself. Nothing

particular happens till the fourth scene of Act III. Then Silvio, tired of

being the last link in the chain of love, devises a plan for placing

Flaminia and Dafne in the power of their respective lovers. Flaminia,

assailed by Iacinto, makes up her mind to bow to fate, and accepts with a

good grace the love it is no longer in her power to fly. Sfortunato, on

the other hand, rather than offend his mistress, allows her to depart

unharmed, and since he thereby forgoes his only chance of enjoying the

object of his passion, determines to die. His vow is overheard by Dafne,

who, seeing that her love for Iacinto may no more avail, at last relents.

A third nymph, introduced to make the numbers even, takes the veil among

the followers of Diana, and so lives the object of Silvio's chaste regard.

It will be readily seen how in the character of Sfortunato we have the

forerunner of Tasso's Aminta; but it will also appear what poor use has

been made of the situation. The truth is that we have up to now been

dealing merely with origins, with productions which are of interest only

in the reflected light of later work; whatever there is of real beauty and

of permanent value in the pastoral drama of Italy is due to the breath of

life inspired into the phantasms of earlier writers by the genius of Tasso

and Guarini.

III

We have now followed the dramatic pastoral from its obscure origin in the

eclogue to the eve of its assuming a recognized and abiding position in

the literature of Europe[167]. But if it is in a measure easy thus to

trace back the Arcadian drama to its historical sources, and to show how

the _Aminta_ came to be possible, it is not so easy to show how it came to

be actual. All creative work is the outcome of three fashioning forces,

the historical position, the personal circumstances of the artist, and his

individual genius. The pastoral drama had reached what I may perhaps be

allowed to call the 'psychological point' in its development. At the same

moment it happened that Tasso, having returned from a fruitless and

uncongenial mission to the Valois court, enjoyed a brief period of calm

and prosperity in the congenial society of Leonora d' Este, before the

critical bickerings to which he exposed himself in connexion with the

_Gerusalemme_ wrought havoc with an already over-sensitive and

overstrained temperament. Furthermore it happened that he brought to the

spontaneous composition of his courtly toy just that touch of languorous

beauty, that soft vein of sentiment, which formed perhaps his most

characteristic contribution to the artistic tone of his age, veiling a

novel mood in his favourite phrase, _un non so che_[168]. Had all this not

been, had not the fortune of a suitable genius and the chance of personal

surroundings jumped with the historical possibility, we might indeed have

had any number of lifeless 'Sacrifices' and 'Unhappy Ones,' but Italy

would have added no new kind to the forms of dramatic art. Had it not been

for the _Aminta_, the pastoral drama must almost necessarily have been

stillborn, for Guarini was too much of a pedant to do more than to imitate

and enlarge, while other writers belong to the decline.

The _Aminta_, while possessing a delicate dramatic structure of its own,

yet retains not a little of the simplicity of the _ecloga

rappresentativa_. Indeed, it is worth noting, alike on account of this

quality in the poem itself as also of its literary ancestry, that, in a

letter written within a year of its original production, Tiburio Almerici

speaks of it by the old name of eclogue[169]. Referring to its

representation at Urbino, he writes: 'Il terzo spettacolo, che si è

goduto questo carnovale, è stato un' egloga del Tasso, che fu recitata

questo giovedì passato da alcuni gioveni d' Urbino nella sala, che fu

fatta per la venuta delia Principessa.' The princess in question was none

other than Lucrezia d' Este, who had lately become the wife of Tasso's

former companion Francesco Maria della Rovere, now Duke of Urbino, and who

with her sister Leonora, the heroine of the Tasso legend, had, it will be

remembered, stood sponsor to Beccari's play nearly twenty years before.

The representation at Urbino to which Almerici alludes was not of course

the first. Written in the winter of 1572-3 during the absence of Duke

Alfonso, the piece was acted after his return from Rome in the summer of

the latter year. Ferrara, as we have seen, had become and was long

destined to remain the special home of the pastoral drama in Italy. Here

on July 31, in the palace of Belvedere, built on an island in the Po, the

court of the Estensi assembled to witness the production of Tasso's

play[170]. The staging, both on this and on subsequent occasions, was no

doubt answerable to the nature of the piece, and added the splendour of

the masque to the classic grace of the fable. Almerici remarks on the

special attractions for spectators and auditors alike of what he calls 'la

novità del coro fra ciascuno atto,' by which he clearly meant the

spectacular interludes known as _intermedî_, the verses for which are

commonly printed at the end of the play[171]. But the representation which

struck the imagination of contemporaries was that before the Grand Duke

Ferdinand at Florence. This took place in 1590[172]. Guarini's play had in

its turn won renown far beyond the frontiers of Italy, while the author

of the _Aminta_, a yet attractive but impossible madman, was destined for

the few remaining years of his life to drag his tale of woes and but too

often his rags from one Italian court to another, ere he sank at last

exhausted where S. Onofrio overlooks St. Peter's dome.

The structure of the play is not free from a good deal of stiffness and

artificiality, which it bequeathed to its successors. It borrowed from the

classical drama a chorus, on the whole less Greek than Latin, the use of

confidants, and the introduction of messengers and descriptive passages.

These last, it may be noted, are deliberately and wantonly classical, not

merely necessitated by the exigencies of the action, difficult of

representation as in the attempted suicide of Aminta, impossible as in the

rescue of Silvia from the satyr, but resorted to in order to veil the

dramatic weakness of the author's imagination, as is plain from the

description of the final meeting of the lovers. Yet it may be freely

admitted that to this device, the substitution namely of narrative for

action, we owe most of the finest poetic passages of the play: the

description of the youthful loves of Aminta and Silvia and the former's

ruse to win a kiss, the picture of Silvia bound to the tree by the pool,

Tirsi's account of the court, the description of Silvia at the spring--one

of the most elaborate in the piece--the account of her escape from the

wolves, last but not least that description of Silvia finding the

unconscious Aminta, so full of subtle and effeminate seduction, prophetic

of a later age of morals and of taste:

Ma come Silvia il riconobbe, e vide

Le belle guance tenere d' Aminta

Iscolorite in sì leggiadri modi,

Che viola non è che impallidisca

Si dolcemente, e lui languir sì fatto,

Che parea già negli ultimi sospiri

Esalar l'alma; in guisa di Baccante

Gridando, e percotendosi il bel petto,

Lasciò cadersi in sul giacente corpo,

E giunse viso a viso, e bocca a bocca. (V. i.)

So too the chorus, though awkward enough from a dramatic point of view

and in so far as it fulfils any dramatic purpose, offers a sufficient

justification for its existence in the magnificent ode on 'honour,' that

rapturous song of the golden age of love, the poetic supremacy of which

has never been questioned, whatever may have been thought of its ethical

significance. To that aspect we shall return later. At present it will be

well to give some more or less detailed account of the action of the piece

itself.

The shepherd Aminta loves Silvia, formerly as a child his playmate and

companion, now a huntress devoted to the service of Diana, proud in her

virginity and unfettered state. The play opens in a sufficiently

conventional manner, but wrought with sparkling verse, with two companion

scenes. In the first of these Silvia brushes aside the importunities of

her confidant Dafne who seeks to allure her to the blandishments of love

with sententious natural examples and modern instances.

Cangia, cangia consiglio,

Pazzerella che sei,

Che il pentirsi dassezzo nulla giova;

such is the burden of her song, or yet again, recalling the golden days of

love she too of yore had wasted:

Il mondo invecchia

E invecchiando intristisce.

Words of profound melancholy these, uttered in the days of the burnt-out

fires of the renaissance. But all this moves not Silvia, nymph of the

woods and of the chase, and, if she is indeed as fancy-free as she would

have us believe, her lover may even console himself with the reflection

that

If of herself she will not love,

Nothing will make her--

The devil take her!

She has, after all, every right to the position. The next scene introduces

Aminta and his friend Tirsi, to whom he reveals the object and the history

of his love. Translated into bald prose, his confession has no very great

interest, but it opens with one of those exquisitely pencilled sketches

that lie scattered throughout the play.

All' ombra d' un bel faggio Silvia e Filli

Sedean un giorno, ed io con loro insieme;

Quando un' ape ingegnosa, che cogliendo

Sen giva il mel per que' prati fioriti,

Alle guance di Fillide volando,

Alle guance vermiglie come rosa,

Le morse e le rimorse avidamente;

Ch' alla similitudine ingannata

Forse un fior le credette.

Silvia heals the hurt by whispering over it a charm; and the whole

description is instinct with that delicate, soft sentiment of Tasso's

which almost, though never quite, sinks into sentimentality. Aminta feigns

to have been stung on the lip, and begs Silvia to heal the hurt.

La semplicetta Silvia,

Pietosa del mio male,

S' offrì di dar aita

Alla finta ferita, ahi lasso! e fece

Più cupa e più mortale

La mia piaga verace,

Quando le labbra sue

Giunse alle labbra mie.

It is easy to argue that this is childish, that it mattered no whit though

they kissed from now to doomsday. But only the reader who cannot feel its

beauty is safe from the enervating narcotic of Tasso's style.

The first scene of the second act introduces a new character, the satyr,

type of brute nature in the artificially polished Arcadia of courtly

shepherds. He inherits no savoury character from his literary

predecessors, and he is content to play to the rôle. His monologue may be

passed over; it and still more the next scene serve to measure the cynical

indelicacy of feeling which was tolerated in the Italian courts. It is a

quality wholly different from the mere coarseness exhibited in the English

drama under Elizabeth and James, but it is one which will astonish no one

who has looked on the dramatic reflection of Italian society in the scenes

of the _Mandragola_. The satyr is succeeded on the stage by the confidants

Dafne and Tirsi in consultation as to the means of bringing about an

understanding between Aminta and Silvia. The scene is characterized by

those caustic reflections on women which serve to balance the extravagant

iciness of the 'careless' nymphs and became a commonplace of the pastoral

drama.

Or, non sai tu com' è fatta la donna?

Fugge, e fuggendo vuol ch' altri la giunga;

Niega, e negando vuol ch' altri si toglia;

Pugna, e pugnando vuol ch' altri la vinca.

Listening to the deliberations of these two, it cannot but strike us that

in spite of their polished speech the straightforward London stage would

have hesitated but little to bestow on them the names they deserve, and

which it were yet scarce honest to have here set down. We pass on, and,

whatever may be said regarding the moral atmosphere of the rest of the

play, we shall not again have to make complaint of the corruption of

manners assumed in the situation. In the following scene Tirsi undertakes

the difficult task of inducing Aminta to intrude upon Silvia, where she is

said to be alone at the spring preparing for the chase. It is only by

hinting that Silvia has secretly instructed Dafne to arrange the tryst

that he in the end succeeds in persuading the bashful lover to risk the

displeasure of his mistress.

At the opening of Act III Tirsi enters lamenting in bitter terms the

cruelty of Silvia. Interrogated by the chorus, he relates how, as he and

Aminta approached the spring where Silvia was bathing, they heard a cry

and, hastening to the spot, found the nymph bound hand and foot to a tree,

and confronting her the satyr. At their approach the monster fled, and

Aminta released the nymph, who _ignuda come nacque_ at once took flight,

leaving her lover in despair. In the meanwhile Aminta has sought to kill

himself with his own spear, but has been prevented by Dafne, and the two

now enter. At this moment too comes Nerina, one of the 'messengers' of the

piece, with the news that Silvia has been slain while pursuing a wolf in

the forest. Thereupon Aminta, with a last reproach to Dafne for having

prevented him from putting an end to his miserable life before being the

recipient of such direful news, rushes off the scene at a pace to mock

pursuit. In the next act, however, Silvia reappears and narrates her

escape. Here we arrive at the dramatic climax of the play. Dafne expresses

her fear that the false report of Silvia's death may indeed prove the

death of Aminta. The nymph at first shows herself incredulous, but on

learning that he had already once sought death on her account she wavers

and owns to pity if not to love--

Oh potess' io

Con l' amor mio comprar la vita sua,

Anzi pur con la mia la vita sua,

S' egli è pur morto!

Hereupon Ergasto enters with the news that Aminta has thrown himself from

a cliff, and Silvia, now completely overcome, goes off with the intention

of dying on the body of her dead lover.

The shortness, as well as the dramatic weakness, of the fifth act is

conspicuous even in proportion to the modest limits of the whole. It runs

to less than one hundred and fifty lines, and merely relates how Aminta's

fall was broken, how Silvia's love awoke, and all ended happily. The most

significant passage, that namely which describes Aminta being called back

to life in Silvia's arms, has been already quoted. He revives unharmed,

and the lovers,

Alike in age, in generous birth alike

And mutual desires,

gather in love the fruits which they have sown in weeping.

It is worth while quoting the final chorus in witness of the spirit of

half bantering humour in which the whole was conceived even by the serious

Tasso, a spirit we unfortunately too often seek in vain among his

followers.

Non so se il molto amaro

Che provato ha costui servendo, amando,

Piangendo e disperando,

Raddolcito esser puote pienamente

D' alcun dolce presente:

Ma, se più caro viene

E più si gusta dopo 'l male il bene,

Io non ti chieggio, Amore,

Questa beatitudine maggiore:

Bea pur gli altri in tal guisa;

Me la mia ninfa accoglia

Dopo brevi preghiere e servir breve:

E siano i condimenti

Delle nostre dolcezze

Non sì gravi tormenti,

Ma soavi disdegni,

E soavi ripulse,

Risse e guerre a cui segua,

Reintegrando i cori, o pace o tregua.

It is with these words that the author leaves his graceful fantasy; and

such, we have perhaps the right to assume, was the spirit in which the

whole was composed. Were any one to object to our seeking to analyse the

quality of the piece, arguing that to do so were to break a butterfly upon

the wheel, much might reasonably be said in support of his view.

Nevertheless, when a work of art, however delicate and slender, has

received the homage of generations, and influenced cultivated taste for

centuries, and in widely different countries, we have a right to inquire

whereon its supremacy is based, and what the nature of its influence has

been.

With the sources from which Tasso drew the various elements of his plot we

need have little to do. The child-love of Silvia and Aminta is of the

stuff of _Daphnis and Chloe_; the ruse by which the kiss is obtained is

borrowed from Achilles Tatius; the compliment to the court of the Estensi

is after the manner of Vergil, or of Castiglione, or of Ariosto, or of any

other of the allegorical eclogists of whom Vergil was the first; the germ

of the golden-age chorus is to be found in the elegies of Tibullus (II.

iii); the character of the satyr belongs to tradition; the rent veil of

Silvia reminds us of that of Ovid's Thisbe (_Met._ IV. 55). The language

too is reminiscent. The finest lines in the play--

Amiam: che 'l sol si muore, e poi rinasce;

A noi sua breve luce

S' asconde, e 'l sonno eterna notte adduce--(_Coro_ I.)

belong to Catullus:

Viuamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus;...

soles occidere et redire possunt;

nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux,

nox est perpetua una dormienda. (_Carm._ V.)

The words in which Amore describes himself in the prologue--

non mica un dio

Selvaggio, o della plebe degli dei,

Ma tra' grandi celesti il più possente--

recall Ovid's lines:

nec de plebe deo, sed qui caelestia magna

sceptra manu teneo. (_Met._ I. 595.)

Again, the line:

Dove la costa face di sè grembo;

which occurs alike in the play (V. i.) and in the _Purgatorio_ (VII. 68),

supplies evidence, as do similar borrowings in the _Gerusalemme_, of

Tasso's study of Dante.

The prologue introduces Amore in pastoral disguise, escaped from the care

of his mother, who would confine his activity to the Courts, and intent on

loosing his shafts among the nymphs and shepherds of Arcadia. In the form

of this prologue, which became the model for subsequent pastoral writers

in Italy[173], and in the heavenly descent of the principal characters, we

may see the influence of the mythological play; while the substance both

of the prologue and of the epilogue, or _Amore fuggitivo_, in which Venus

comes to seek her runaway among the ladies and gallants of the court, is

of course borrowed from the famous first idyl of Moschus. Again the

topical element is not absent, though it is less prominent than some of

the earlier work might lead us to expect. In the poet Tirsi--

allor ch' ardendo

Forsennato egli errò per le foreste

Sì, ch' insieme movea pietate e riso

Nelle vezzose ninfe e ne' pastori;

Nè già cose scrivea digne di riso,

Sebben cose facea digne di riso--(I. i.)

we may, of course, see the poet himself. In Batto too, mentioned together

with Tirsi, it is not unreasonable to recognize Battisto Guarini, whom at

that time Tasso might still regard as his friend. Again, it is usual to

identify Elpino with Giovanbattista Pigna, secretary of state at the

Estense court, and one with whom, though no friend of the poet's, it was

yet to his advantage to stand well. The flattery bestowed is not a little

fulsome:

Or non rammenti

Ciò che l' altrieri Elpino raccontava,

Il saggio Elpino a la bella Licori,

Licori che in Elpin puote cogli occhi

Quel ch' ei potere in lei dovria col canto,

Se 'l dovere in amor si ritrovasse;

E 'l raccontava udendo Batto e Tirsi,

Gran maestri d' amore; e 'l raccontava

Nell' antro dell' Aurora, ove sull' uscio

È scritto: _Lungi, ah lungi ite, profani_?

Diceva egli, e diceva che gliel disse

Quel grande che cantò l' armi e gli amori,

Ch' a lui lasciò la fistola morendo;

Che laggiù nello 'nferno è un nero speco,

Là dove esala un fumo pien di puzza

Dalle tristi fornaci d' Acheronte;

E che quivi punite eternamente

In tormenti di tenebre e di pianto

Son le femmine ingrate e sconoscenti. (I. i.)

He who sang of arms and love is of course Ariosto--

Le donne, i cavalier, l' arme, gli amori,

Le cortesie, l' audaci imprese io canto--

from whom Tasso borrows the above description of the reward awaiting

ungrateful women, as also the fiction of the tell-tale walls and chairs in

Mopso's account of the court (I. ii). And this Elpino, whose pipe

elsewhere

correr fa di puro latte i fiumi

E stillar melle dalle dure scorze, (III. i.)

later becomes the Alete of the _Gerusalemme_,

Gran fabbro di calunnie adorne in modi

Novi che sono accuse e paion lodi. (II. 58.)

His flattery had not shielded the unhappy poet against the ill-will of

the minister[174].

Again, the picture drawn by Tirsi of the ideal court (I. ii.) is a glowing

compliment to that of the Estensi and to Duke Alfonso himself. It is

contrasted with the usual pastoral denunciation of court and city put into

the mouth of the pretended augur Mopso. In this character it has been

customary to see Sperone Speroni, who later accused Tasso of plagiarizing

him in the _Gerusalemme_, and was the first to apply the ominous word

'madman' to the unfortunate poet. To Speroni's play _Canace_ Tasso may

have been indebted for the free measures with which he diversified his

blank verse, as likewise for the line:

Pianti, sospiri e dimandar mercede;[175]