though it must not be supposed that there is any resemblance in style

between the _Aminta_ and Speroni's revolting and frigid declamation of

butchery and lust. Nor did the debt pass unnoticed. In 1585 Guarini, who

had long since parted with the sinking ship of the younger poet's

friendship, was ready to flatter Speroni with the declaration 'che tanto

di leggiadria è sempre paruto a me, che abbia nell' Aminta suo conseguito

Torquato Tasso, quant' egli fù imitatore della Canace[176].'

Lastly, in the hopeless suit of Aminta to Silvia, criticism has not failed

to see a reference to the supposed relation between Tasso and Leonora d'

Este. That Tasso, who in his overwrought imagination no doubt harboured a

sentimental regard for the princess, was conscious of the parallel is in

some degree probable; that he should have identified his creation with

himself is, in view of the solution of the dramatic situation, utterly

impossible. Indeed, it would perhaps not be extravagant to suppose that

his care to identify himself with Aminta's confidant may have been an

unusual but not untimely piece of caution on his part, to prevent poisoned

gossip connecting him too closely with his hero.

The question of the influence of the _Aminta_ on later works and on

European thought generally opens up large and difficult issues. It is one

of those works which we are not justified in treating from the purely

literary point of view. If we wish to see it in its relation to

contemporary society, and to estimate its influence upon subsequent

literature, we cannot afford to neglect its ethical bearings. This inquiry

must necessarily lead us beyond the sphere of literary criticism proper,

but it is a task which one who has undertaken to give an account of

pastoral literature has no right to shirk.

The central motive of the piece is the struggle between the feverish

passion of Aminta and the virginal coldness of Silvia. Of this motive and

of the manner in which it is treated it is not altogether easy to speak,

and this less from any inherent element in the subject or from the

difficulty of accurately apprehending the peculiarities of sentiment

proper to former ages, than from the readiness of all ages alike to accept

in such matters the counterfeit coin of conventional protestation for the

sterling reticence of natural delicacy. No doubt this tendency has been

aided by the fact that the secrets of a girl's heart, whatever may be

their true dramatic value, form an unsuitable and ineffective subject for

declamation. The difficulties must not, however, be allowed to weigh

against the importance of coming to a clear understanding as to the true

nature of this _non so che_ of false sentiment, of which it would hardly

be too much to affirm that it made the fortune of the pastoral in

aristocratic Italy on the one hand, and proved its ruin in middle-class

London on the other.

To Tasso is due that assumption of extravagant and conventional _pudor_

which forms one of the most abiding features of the pastoral drama. To

censure an exaggeration of the charm of modesty on the threshold of the

_seicento_, or to object a strained sense of chastity against the author

of the golden-age chorus, may indeed seem strange; but, as with Fletcher

at a later date, the very extravagance of the paradox may supply us with

the key to its solution.

The falsity of Tasso's position is evinced partly in the main action of

the drama, partly in the commentary supplied by the minor personages. The

character of Aminta himself is unimportant in this respect; when we have

described him as effeminate, sickly, and over-refined, we have said all

that is necessary in view of the position he occupies with regard to

Silvia. She, we are given to understand, is the type of the 'careless'

shepherdess, the unspotted nymph of Diana[177], rejoicing in the chase

alone, and importuned by the love of Aminta, which she neither

reciprocates nor understands, and of the genuineness of which she shows

herself, indeed, not a little sceptical. If, however, she is as careless

as she appears, her conversion is certainly most sudden. The picture,

moreover, drawn by Dafne of Silvia coquetting with her shadow in the pool,

though possibly coloured by malice, supplies a sufficient hint of the

true state of the girl's fancy. She is in truth such a Chloe of innocence

as might spring up in the rank soil of a petty Italian court infected with

post-Tridentine morality. Were she indeed careless of Aminta's devotion we

could easily sympathize with her when she brushes aside Dafne's

importunity with the words:

Faccia Aminta di sè e de' suoi amori

Quel ch' a lui piace; a me nulla ne cale. (I. i.)

It is altogether different with her attitude of arrogant pudicity when she

announces:

Odio il suo amore

Ch' odia la mia onestate; (Ib.)

and again:

In questa guisa gradirei ciascuno

Insidiator di mia virginitate,

Che tu dimandi amante, ed io nemico. (Ib.)

Silvia here conjoins the unwholesome medieval ideal of virginity with the

corrupt spectre of renaissance 'honour'--

quel vano

Nome senza soggetto,

Quell' idolo d' errori, idol d' inganno[178], (_Coro_ I.)

as Tasso himself styled it--that conventional mask so bitterly contrasted

with the natural goodness of the age of gold[179].

The general conception of love and its attendant emotions that permeates

the work and vitiates so many of its descendants appears yet more

glaringly characterized in some of the minor personages. On these it is

not my intention to dwell. Of Dafne and Tirsi, that is, be it remembered,

Tasso's self, I have spoken, however briefly, yet at sufficient length

already. Suffice it to add here that Dafne's suggestion, that modesty is

commonly but a veil for lust, is nothing more than the cynical expression

of the attitude adopted throughout the play. Love is no ideal and

idealizing emotion, but a mere gratification of the senses--a _luxuria_

scarcely distinguishable from _gula_. Ignorance can alone explain an

attitude of indifference towards its pleasures. The girl who does not care

to embrace opportunity is no better than a child--'Fanciulla tanto

sciocca, quanto bella,' as Dafne says. So, again, there is nothing

ennobling in the devotion of the hero, nothing elevating in his fidelity.

All the mysticism, all the ideality, of the early days of the renaissance

have long since disappeared, and chivalrous feeling, that last lingering

glory of the middle age, is dead.

We are, indeed, justified in regarding what I may term the degeneration of

sexual feeling in the _Aminta_ as to a great extent the negation of

chivalrous love, for, even apart from the allegorizing mysticism of Dante,

that love contained its ennobling elements. And yet, strangely enough, not

a little of the convention at least of chivalrous love survives in the

debased Arcadian love of the sentimental pastoral. Both alike are

primarily of an animal nature, and this in a sense other than that in

which physical love may be said to form an element in all natural relation

between man and woman. Again, in both we find the rational machinery by

which love shall be rewarded. The lover serves his apprenticeship, either

with deeds of arms or with sighs and sonnets, and the credit of the

mistress is light who refuses to reward him for his service. The System

assumes neither choice, nor passion, nor pleasure on her part. Her act is

regarded in the cold light of a calculated payment, undisguised by any joy

of passionate surrender. But whereas in the outgrowth of feudalism, in the

chivalry of the middle ages, this system formed the great incentive to

martial daring, whereas when idealized in Beatrice it became almost

undistinguishable from the ferveurs of religion, we find it with Tasso

sinking into a weak and mawkish sensuality. More than any other

sentimentalist Tasso justified his title by 'fiddling harmonics on the

strings of sensualism,' and it may be added that the ear is constantly

catching the fundamental note.

The foregoing remarks appeared necessary in order to understand the

subsequent history of the dramatic pastoral as well as the conditions

under which it took form and being, but they have led us far beyond the

limits of literary criticism proper. The next characteristic of the play

to be considered is one which, while possessing an important ethical

bearing, is also closely connected with the aesthetic composition. I refer

to the peculiar, not sensual but sensuous, nature of the beauty. The

effect produced by the descriptions, by the suggestions, by the general

tone, by the subtle modulations of the verse in adaptation to its theme,

is less one of literary and intellectual than of direct emotional

perception, producing the immediate physical impression of an actual

presence. The beauty has a subtle enervating charm, languid and

voluptuous, at the same time as clear and limpid in tone. The effect

produced is one and whole, that of a perfect work of art, and the same

impression remains with us afterwards. Smooth limbs, soft and white, that

shine through the waters of the spring and amid the jewelled spray, or

half revealed among the thickets of lustrous green, a slant ray of

sunlight athwart the loosened gold of the hair--the vision floats before

us as if conjured up by the strains of music rather than by actual words.

This kinship with another art did not escape so acute a critic as Symonds

as a characteristic of Tasso's style. But the kinship on another side with

the art of painting is equally close; a thousand pictures rise before us

as we follow the perfect melody of the irregular lyric measures. The white

veil fluttering and the swift feet flashing amid the brambles and the

trailing creepers of the wood, bright crimson staining the spotless purity

of the flying skirts as the huntress bursts through the clinging tangles

that seek to hold her as if jealous of a human love, the lusty strength of

the bronzed and hairy satyr in contrast with the tender limbs of the

captive nymph, the dark cliff, and the still mirror of the lake reflecting

the rosebuds pressed artfully against the girl's soft neck as she crouches

by its brink,

Backed by the forest, circled by the flowers,

Bathed in the sunshine of the golden hours,

the armed huntress, the grey-coated wolves, and the white-robed

chorus--here are a series of pictures of seductive beauty for the brush of

a painter to realize upon the walls of some palace of pleasure.

The _Aminta_ attained a wide popularity even before the appearance of the

first edition from the Aldine house at Venice early in 1581--the epistle

is dated 1580. The printer of the Ferrarese edition of the same year

remarks: 'Tosto che la Fama ... mi rapportò, che in Venetia si stampava l'

Aminta, ... così subito pensai, che quella sola Impressione dovesse essere

ben poca per sodisfattione di tanti virtuosi, che sono desiderosi di

vederla alla luce.' A critical edition was prepared at Paris in the middle

of the following century by Egidio Menagio of the Accademia della Crusca,

and dedicated to Maria della Vergna, better known, under her married name

of Madame de la Fayette, as the author of the _Princesse de Clèves_[180].

In 1693 the play was attacked by Bartolomeo Ceva Grimaldi, Duke of Telese,

in an address read before the Accademia degli Uniti at Naples[181]. He was

answered before the same society by Francesco Baldassare Paglia, and in

1700 appeared Giusto Fontanini's elaborate defence[182]. To each chapter

of this work is prefixed a passage from Grimaldi's address, which is then

laboriously refuted. The Duke's attack is puerile cavil, and in spite of

the reputed ability of its author the defence must be admitted to be much

on the same level.

IV

The attention which we have bestowed upon the _Aminta_ will allow us to

pass more rapidly than would otherwise have been possible over its

successor and rival, the _Pastor fido_. This is due to the fact that the

moral and artistic environment of the two pieces is much the same, and

further, that it is this environment which to a great extent determined,

not only the individual character of the poems, but likewise the nature of

their subsequent influence.

Recent research has had the effect of dispelling not a few of the

traditional ideas respecting Guarini's play. Among them is the fable that

it took twenty years to write, which would carry back its inception to

days before the composition of the _Aminta_. It is now recognized that

nine years is the utmost that can be assigned, letters being extant which

fix the genesis of the play in 1581, or at the earliest in 1580 a year or

so previous to Guarini's departure from Ferrara[183]. Again, it has been

usual to assume that the play was performed as early as 1585, whereas

there is in truth no evidence of any representation previous to the

appearance of the first edition dated 1590[184]. The early fortunes of the

play are indeed typical of the ill-success that dogged the author

throughout life. Though untouched by the tragic misfortunes which lend

interest to Tasso's career, his lot was at times a hard one and we may

excuse him if, at the last, he was no less embittered than his younger

rival. He was not cursed, it is true, with Tasso's incurable idealism;

but, if in consequence he exposed himself less to the buffets of

disillusionment, he likewise lacked its sustaining and ennobling power.

Tasso used the pastoral machinery to idealize the court; Guarini accepted

the pastoral convention of the superiority of the 'natural' life of the

country, and used it as a means of pouring out his bitterness of soul. The

_Aminta_, it should be remembered, was written during a few weeks, months

at most, at a time when Tasso was comparatively fortunate and happy; the

_Pastor fido_ was the ten years' labour of a retired and disappointed

courtier, whose later days were further embittered by domestic

misfortunes. In the same way as it was characteristic of Tasso's rosy view

that no law should be allowed to curb the purity of natural love in his

dream of the ideal age, so it was characteristic of the spirit of his

imitator to seek the ideal in the prudent love that strives towards no

distant star beyond the bounds of law. And the fact that Guarini saw fit

seriously to oppose a scholastic's moral figment to the poet's age of gold

may serve as a sufficient measure of the soul of the pedant.

When Battista Guarini[185] entered the service of the Duke of Ferrara in

1567 he was already married and had attained the age of thirty, being

seven years older than Tasso. His duties at court were political, and he

was employed on several missions of a diplomatic character. There was no

reason whatever, beyond his own perverse ambition, why he should have come

into rivalry with Tasso, yet he did so both as a writer of verses and as a

hanger-on of court beauties. It is impossible to acquit him of bad taste

in the manner in which he and some at least of his fellow courtiers

treated the unfortunate poet, and there was certainly bad blood between

the two soon after the production of the _Aminta_, owing, probably, to the

ungenerous remarks passed by Guarini upon the author's indebtedness to

previous writers. After Tasso's confinement to S. Anna in 1579, Guarini

became court poet, and the luckless prisoner was condemned to see his own

poems entrusted to the editorial care of his rival.

Guarini, however, was not satisfied with the court of Ferrara. His estate

was reduced by the expenses entailed by his missions as ambassador, for

which, like Machiavelli, he appears never to have received adequate

supplies, and by the continuous litigation in which he involved himself.

His political imagination, too, had been fired during a stay at Turin with

the possibilities inherent for Italy in the house of Savoy--an enthusiasm

which possibly did not tend to smooth his relations with his own master.

In 1582 he left Ferrara and the service of Alfonso and retired to his

ancestral estates of S. Bellino. Here he devoted himself to the

composition of the play he had lately taken in hand, which, in spite of

spasmodic returns to political life not only at the court of the Estensi

but also at Turin and Florence, forms thenceforward with its many

vicissitudes the central interest of his biography. He survived till 1612,

dying at the age of seventy-four.

To do justice to the _Pastor fido_ it would be best to give the story in

the form of a continuous narrative rather than an analysis of the actual

scenes, since the author's constructive power lay almost wholly in the

invention of an intricate plot and his weakness in the scenic rendering of

it. His dramatic methods, however, so far elaborated from the simplicity

of Tasso's, had a vast influence over subsequent work, and it is highly

important to obtain a clear idea of their nature. We shall, therefore, be

condemned to follow Guarini, part-way at least, through the stiff

artificiality of his interminable scenes.

A complicated story which is narrated at length in the course of the play

explains the peculiar laws of Arcadia on which the plot hinges[186]. These

comprise an edict of Diana to the effect that any nymph found guilty of a

breach of faith shall suffer death at the altar unless some one offers to

die in her place; likewise a custom whereby a nymph between fifteen and

twenty years of age is annually sacrificed to the goddess. When besought

to release the land from this tribute Diana through her oracle replies:

Non avrà prima fin quel che v' offende,

Che duo semi del ciel congiunga amore;

E di donna infedel l' antico errore

L' alta pietà d' un pastor fido ammende.

The only two in Arcadia who fulfil the conditions of the oracle are

Silvio, the son of the high priest Montano, and Amarilli, daughter of

Titiro, who have in their veins the blood of Hercules and Pan. These two

have consequently been betrothed and, being now arrived at marriageable

age, their final union is imminent.

At this point the play opens. Silvio cares for nothing but the chase,

regardless alike of his destined bride and of the love borne him by the

nymph Dorinda; Amarilli is seemingly heart-whole, but secretly loves her

suitor Mirtillo, a stranger in Arcadia, whom, however, she persists in

treating with coldness in view of the penalty involved by a breach of

faith. Mirtillo in his turn is loved by Corisca, a wanton nymph who has

learned the arts of the city, and who is pursued both by Coridone, to whom

she is formally engaged, but whom she neglects, and by a satyr. Almost

every character is provided with a confidant: Silvio has Linco; Mirtillo,

Ergasto; Dorinda, Lupino; Carino[187], the supposed father of Mirtillo,

has Uranio; Montano and Titiro act as confidants to one another. The only

case arguing any dramatic feeling is that in which Amarilli makes a

confidant of her rival Corisca; while Corisca and the satyr alone among

the more important characters are left to address the audience directly.

Even the confidants sometimes need confidants in their turn, these being

supplied by a conveniently ubiquitous chorus.

In the first scene of Act I, after the prologue, in which Alfeo rises to

pay compliments to Carlo Emanuele and his bride, we are introduced to

Silvio and Linco, who are about to start in pursuit of a savage boar which

has been devastating the country. Linco taxes his companion with his

neglect of the softer joys of love, to which Silvio replies with

long-drawn praise of the free life of the woods. The scene is parallel to

the first of the _Aminta_, and the author has sought here and elsewhere to

point the contrast. Thus where Tasso wrote:

Cangia, cangia consiglio,

Pazzerella che sei;

Che il pentirsi dassezzo nulla giova;

Guarini has:

Lascia, lascia le selve,

Folle garzon, lascia le fere, ed ama.

In the next scene, again modelled on the corresponding one in Tasso's

play, we find Ergasto comforting Mirtillo in his despair at Amarilli's

'cruelty.' Mirtillo has but recently arrived in Arcadia, and is ignorant

of its history and customs, which Ergasto explains at length. The third

scene is devoted to a long monologue by Corisca; the fourth to a

conversation between Montano and Titiro, who discuss the oracles

concerning the approaching marriage and recount portentous dreams. A

monologue by the satyr relating his ill-usage at the hands of Corisca,

followed by a chorus, ends the first act. The next scene contains the

history of Mirtillo's passion as narrated to his confidant. Ergasto has

enlisted the services of Corisca, and the whole paraphernalia of love lead

in the next act to an interview between Mirtillo and Amarilli. The

author's dramatic method whereby he presents us with alternate scenes from

the various threads of the plot will by now be evident to the reader, and

the remainder may for clearness' sake be thrown into narrative form.

Corisca, well knowing that it is impossible for Amarilli to show favour to

Mirtillo, and hoping to ingratiate herself with him, prevails upon the

nymph to grant her lover a hearing, provided the interview be secret and

short. During a game of blind man's buff the players suddenly retire,

leaving Mirtillo and Amarilli alone. The interview of course comes to

nothing, but as soon as Mirtillo has left her Amarilli relieves her

feelings in a monologue confessing her love, which is overheard by

Corisca[188]. Charged with her weakness, she confesses her dislike of the

marriage with Silvio. Hereupon Corisca conceives a plan for ridding

herself at once of her rival in Mirtillo's affections and of her own

affianced lover. She leads Amarilli to suppose that Silvio is faithless

to his betrothal vow. If Amarilli can prove Silvio guilty she will

herself be free, and she agrees to hide in a recess in a cave where

Corisca alleges that Silvio has an assignation. Next Corisca makes an

appointment to meet her lover Coridone in the same cave, intending that he

and Amarilli shall be surprised together. Finally, in order to obtain a

witness, she accuses Amarilli to Mirtillo of being faithless, and bids him

watch the mouth of the cave in which she alleges the nymph has an

assignation with Coridone. This ingenious plan would have succeeded to

perfection but for Mirtillo's precipitancy, for, seeing Amarilli enter the

cave, he at once concludes her guilt and follows her forthwith to wreak

revenge. At that moment the satyr appears and, misunderstanding some words

of Mirtillo's, proceeds to bar the entrance to the cave with a huge rock,

thinking he is imprisoning Mirtillo and Corisca. He then goes off to

inform the priests of the pollution committed so near their temple. These

enter the cave and apprehend the lovers. Amarilli is at once condemned to

death, but Mirtillo thereupon offers himself in her place and, being

accepted by the priests, is kept as a sacrifice, Amarilli being at the

same time closely guarded lest she should lay violent hands upon herself.

In the meantime Silvio has been successful in his hunting of the boar,

whose head he brings home in triumph. There follows an echo-scene, one of

those toys which, as old as the Greek Anthology, and cultivated in Latin

by Tebaldeo, and in Italian by Poliziano, owed, not indeed their

introduction, but certainly their great popularity in pastoral, to

Guarini. His example is fairly successful. The echo predicts that the end

of Silvio's 'carelessness' is at hand, when he shall himself break his bow

and follow her who now follows him. The prophecy is quick of fulfilment.

With a jest he turns to go, when his eye falls on a grey object crouching

among the bushes. He supposes it to be a wolf, and looses an arrow at it.

It proves, however, to be Dorinda, who has throughout followed his chase

disguised in the rough wolf-skin coat of a herdsman, and who is now led

fainting on to the scene by Lupino. Silvio is overcome with remorse, and,

careless alike of his troth to Amarilli and of the fate of Arcadia,

declares that thenceforth he will love none but Dorinda, and will die

with her should his arrow prove fatal. They leave the stage for good--to

get healed and married.

To return to the main plot. At sundown Mirtillo is led out to die, and the

sacrifice is about to be performed when his supposed father, an Arcadian

by birth, though he has long lived at Elis, and has just arrived in search

of his foster child, interposes. Explanations ensue, and it gradually

appears that Mirtillo is the eldest son of Montano, washed away in his

cradle by the floods of the Alpheus twenty years before. Thus in the love

between him and Amarilli, and in his voluntary sacrifice of himself in her

place, the oracle is fulfilled, and Arcadia freed from its maiden tribute.

This seems obvious enough, though it takes the inspiration of a blind

prophet to drive it into the heads of the assembled Arcadians. A final

difficulty remains--the broken troth. But it so happens that Mirtillo was

originally named Silvio, so that to 'Silvio' no faith is broken. A

casuistical reason indeed; but good enough for the purpose. No attempt is

made to clear Amarilli of the compromising evidence on which she had been

condemned, but the pair have the favour of the gods, and the chorus makes

no difficulty of chanting the virtue of the bride.

Such is Guarini's play; a plot constructed with consummate ingenuity, but

presented with an almost entire lack of dramatic feeling. Almost the whole

of the action takes place off the stage. Silvio and Dorinda leave the

scene apparently for a tragic catastrophe; their subsequent union is only

reported; so is the surprisal of Mirtillo and Amarilli, the scene in which

the former offers himself as a sacrifice in her place, and their meeting

after the cloud of death has passed. The solitary scene revealing any real

dramatic power is that between Amarilli and the priest Nicandro, in which

the girl maintains her innocence. Her terror when confronted with death is

drawn with some delicacy and pathos, though we sadly miss those poignant

touches that the English playwrights seem always to have had at command on

similar occasions. Her fear of death, however, stands in powerful dramatic

contrast with the sudden courage she displays when her lover seeks to die

in her place. Guarini was perfectly aware of the value of this contrast,

for he placed the following lines in the mouth of the _messo_ who reports

the scene:

Or odi maraviglia.

Quella che fu pur dianzi

Sì dalla tema del morire oppressa,

Fatta allor di repente

A le parole di Mirtillo invitta,

Con intrepido cor così rispose:

'Pensi dunque, Mirtillo,

Di dar col tuo morire

Vita a chi di te vive?

O miracolo ingiusto! Su, ministri;

Su, che si tarda? omai

Menatemi agli altari.' (V. ii.)

And yet this dramatic contrast has been wantonly thrown away by the

substitution of narrative for representation, less for the sake of a blind

adherence to classical convention, as on account of the author's inability

honestly to face a powerful situation. The same dramatic incapacity shows

itself in his use of borrowings. It will be sufficient to mention the

sententious words from Ovid (_Amores_, I. viii. 43) placed in the mouth of

the chorus:

Dunque non si dirà donna pudica

Se non quella che mai

Non fu sollecitata; (IV. in.)

in order to compare them with the use made of the same by Webster when he

made Vittoria at her trial exclaim:

Casta est quam nemo rogavit!--

a comparison which at once reveals the gulf fixed between the clairvoyant

dramatist and the mere pedantic scholar.

And yet the subsequent history of pastoral reminds us that it is quite

possible to underestimate Guarini's merits as a playwright. In the

construction of a complicated plot, apart from the dramatic presentation

thereof, he achieved a success not to be paralleled by any previous work

in Italy, for the difference in the titles of the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor

fido_, the one styled _favola_ and the other _tragi-commedia_, indicates a

real distinction; and Guarini's proud claim to have invented a new

dramatic kind was not wholly unfounded[189]. It was this that caused

Symonds to speak of his play as 'sculptured in pure forms of classic

grace,' while describing the _Aminta_ as 'perfumed and delicate like

flowers of spring.' And lastly, it was this more elaborately dramatic

quality that was responsible for the far greater influence exercised by

Guarini than by Tasso, both on the subsequent drama of Italy and still

more on the fortunes of the pastoral in England.

Moreover, in Amarilli, Guarini created one really dramatic character and

devoted to it one really dramatic scene. His heroine is probably the best

character to be found in the whole of the pastoral drama, and this simply

because there is a reason for her coldness towards the lover, upon her

love to whom the plot depends. Unless love is to be mutual the motive

force of the drama fails, and consequently, when nymphs insist on parading

their inhuman superiority to the dictates of natural affection, they are

simply refusing to fulfil their dramatic _raison d'être_. With Amarilli it

is otherwise. She has the right to say:

Ama l' onestà mia, s' amante sei; (III. iii.)

and there is a pathos in the words which the author may not have himself

fully understood; whereas the similar expression of Tasso's Silvia quoted

on a previous page is insufferable in its smug self-conceit.

Of this quality of extravagant virginity noticed as a characteristic of

Tasso's play there is on the whole less in the _Pastor fido_. It is also

freer from the tone of cynical corruption and from improper suggestion.

These merits are, however, more than counterbalanced in the ethical scale

by the elaboration of the spirit of sentimental sensualism, which becomes

as it were an enveloping atmosphere, and lends an enervating seduction to

the piece. This spirit, already present in the _Aminta_, reappeared in an

emphasized form in the _Pastor fido_, and attained its height in the

following century in Marino's epic of _Adone_. We find it infusing the

scene of Mirtillo's first meeting with Amarilli, which may be said to set

the tone of the rest of the poem. Happening to see the nymph at the

Olympian games, Mirtillo at once fell in love and contrived to introduce

himself in female attire into the company of maidens to which she

belonged. Here, the proposal being made to hold a kissing match among

themselves, Amarilli was unanimously chosen judge, and, the contest over,

she awarded the prize to the disguised youth. The incident owes its

origin, as Guarini's notes point out, to the twelfth Idyl of Theocritus,

and the suggestion of the kissing match is aptly put into the mouth of a

girl from Megara, where an annual contest of kisses among the Greek youths

was actually held. Guarini, however, most probably borrowed the episode

from the fifth canto of Tasso's _Rinaldo_.

The sentimental seductiveness of this and other scenes did not escape

sharp comment in some quarters within a few years of the publication of

the play. In 1605 Cardinal Bellarmino, meeting Guarini at Rome, told him

plainly that he had done as much harm to morals by his _Pastor fido_ as by

their heresies Luther and Calvin had done to religion. Later Janus Nicius

Erythraeus, that is Giovanni Vittorio Rossi, in his _Pinacoteca_, compared

the play to a rock-infested sea full of seductive sirens, in which no

small number of girls and wives were said to have made shipwreck. It is at

first sight ratifier a severe indictment to bring against Guarini's play,

especially when we remember that a work of art is more often an index than

a cause of social corruption. After what has been said, however, of the

nature of the sentiment both in the _Pastor fido_ and the _Aminta_, the

charge can hardly be dismissed as altogether unfounded. It is only fair to

add that very different views have been held with regard to the moral

aspect of the play, the theory of its essential healthiness finding an

eloquent advocate in Ugo Angelo Canello[190].

Little as it became him, Guarini chose to adopt the attitude of a

guardian of morals, and Bellarmino's words clearly possessed a special

sting. This pose was in truth but a part of the general attitude he

assumed towards the author of the _Aminta_. His superficial propriety

authorized him, in his own eyes, to utter a formal censure upon the

amorous dream of the ideal poet. He paid the price of his unwarranted

conceit. Those passages in which he was at most pains to contrast his

ethical philosophy with Tasso's imaginative Utopia are those in which he

most clearly betrayed his own insufferable pedantry; while critics even in

his own day saw through the unexceptionable morality of his frigid

declamations and ruthlessly exposed the sentimental corruption that lay

beneath. When we compare his parody in the fourth chorus of the _Pastor

fido_ with Tasso's great ode; his sententious 'Piaccia se lice' with

Tasso's 'S' ei piace, ei lice'; his utterly banal

Speriam: che 'l sol cadente anco rinasce;

E 'l ciel, quando men luce,

L' aspettato seren spesso n' adduce,

with Tasso's superb, even though borrowed, paganism:

Amiam: che 'l sol si muore, e poi rinasce;

A noi sua breve luce

S' asconde, e 'l sonno eterna notte adduce--

when we make this comparison we have the spiritual measure of the man. A

similar comparison will give us his measure as a poet. Take the graceful

but over-elaborated picture:

Quell' augellin che canta

Sì dolcemente, e lascivetto vola

Or dall' abete al faggio,

Ed or dal faggio al mirto,

S' avesse umano spirto

Direbbe: 'Ardo d' amore, ardo d' amore!'

Compare with this the spontaneous sketch of Tasso:

Odi quell' usignuolo

Che va di ramo in ramo

Cantando: 'Io amo, io amo!'[191]

Or again, with the irresistible slyness of the final chorus of the

_Aminta_ already quoted compare the sententious lines with which Guarini

closed his play:

O fortunata coppia,

Che pianto ha seminato, e riso accoglie!

Con quante amare doglie

Hai raddolciti tu gli affetti tuoi!

Quinci imparate voi,

O ciechi e troppo teneri mortali,

I sinceri diletti, e i veri mali.

Non è sana ogni gioia,

Nè mal ciò che v' annoia.

Quello è vero gioire,

Che nasce da virtù dopo il soffrire.

It is impossible not to come to the conclusion that we are listening in

the one case to a genuine poet of no common order, in the other to a

poetaster of considerable learning and great ingenuity, who elected to don

the outward habit of a somewhat hypocritical morality. The effect of the

contrast is further heightened when we remember that Guarini never for a

moment doubted that he had far surpassed the work of his predecessor.

Guarini's comment on the _Aminta_ in his letter to Speroni has been

already quoted: it does little credit to the writer. Manso, the companion

and biographer of Tasso, records that, the poet being asked by some

friends what he thought of the _Pastor fido_, a copy of which had lately

found its way to him at Naples:

Et egli, 'Mi piace sopramodo, ma confesso di non saper la cagione perchè

mi piaccia.' Onde io rispondendogli, 'Vi piacerà per avventura,'

soggiunsi, 'quel che vi riconoscete del vostro.' Et egli replicò, 'Ne

può piacere il vedere il suo in man d' altri.'[192]

Guarini would hardly have acknowledged his indebtedness to Tasso in the

way of art, but he drew on all sources for the incidents of his plot, and,

since he appears to have valued a reputation for scholarship above one for

originality, he recorded a fair proportion of his borrowings in his notes.

* * * * *

The _Pastor fido_ was the talk of the Italian Courts even before it was

completed. Early in 1584 the heir to the duchy of Mantua, Vincenzo

Gonzaga, to whose intercession Tasso later owed his liberty, entreated

Guarini to let him have his already famous pastoral for the occasion of

his marriage with Eleonora de' Medici. The poet, however, found it

impossible to complete the work in time, and sent the _Idropica_ instead.

In the autumn a projected representation of the now completed play came to

naught. The following year Guarini presented his play to the Duke of

Savoy, and received a gold chain as an acknowledgement. The occasion was

the entry into Turin of Carlo Emanuele and his bride, Catharine of

Austria, the marriage having taken place at Saragossa some time

previously. The dedication is recorded on the title-page of the first

edition in words that have not unnaturally been held to imply that the

play was performed on that occasion.[193] It is clear, however, from

contemporary documents that this is an error, and, though preparations

were made in view of a performance at the following carnival, these too

were abandoned. After this we find mention of preparations made at a

variety of places, but they never came to anything, and there is reason to

believe that some at least were abandoned owing to the opposition of

Alfonso d' Este, who never forgave a courtier who transferred his

allegiance to another prince. In 1591 Vincenzo Gonzaga, now duke, summoned

Guarini to Mantua, and matters advanced as far as a _prova generale_ or

dress rehearsal. The project, however, had once more to be abandoned owing

to the death of Cardinal Gianvincenzo Gonzaga at Rome. We possess the

scheme for the four _intermezzi_ designed for this occasion, representing

the _Musica della Terra, del Mare, dell' Aria_, and _Celeste_. They were

scenic and musical only, without words. About this time too, that is after

the appearance of the first edition dated 1590, we have notes of

preparations for several private performances, the ultimate fate of which

is uncertain. The first representation of which there is definite

evidence, though even here details are lacking, took place at Crema in

Lombardy in 1596, at the cost of Lodovico Zurla[194]. After this

performances become frequent, and in 1598, after the death of Alfonso, the

play was finally produced in state before Vincenzo Gonzaga at Mantua. On

all these occasions we may suppose that other prologues were substituted

for that addressed to _gran Caterina_ and _magnanimo Carlo_[195].

In the meanwhile Guarini, fearing piracy, had turned his attention to the

publication of his play. He first resolved to submit it to the criticism

of Lionardo Salviati and Scipione Gonzaga, the latter of whom had been a

member of the unlucky committee for the revision of the _Gerusalemme_.

Unfortunately little or nothing is known as to the criticisms and

recommendations of these two men. The work finally appeared, as we learn

from a letter of the author, at Venice in December, 1589. It is a handsome

quarto from the press of Giovanbattista Bonfadino, and is dated the

following year[196]. In 1602 a luxurious edition, said on the title-page

to be the twentieth, was issued at Venice by Giovanbattista Ciotti. This

represents Guarini's final revision of the text, and contains, besides a

portrait and engravings, elaborate notes by the author, and an essay on

tragi-comedy[197].

The _Pastor fido_ was the object of a violent attack while as yet it

circulated in manuscript only. As early as 1587 a certain Giasone de Nores

or Denores, a Cypriot noble who held the chair of moral philosophy at the

university of Padua, published a pamphlet on the relations existing

between different forms of literature and the philosophy of government, in

which, while refraining from any specific allusions, he denounced

tragi-comedies and pastorals as 'monstrous and disproportionate

compositions ... contrary to the principles of moral and civil

philosophy.' Guarini argued that, as his play was the only one deserving

to be called a tragi-comedy and was at the same time a pastoral, the

reference was palpable. He proceeded therefore to compose a counterblast

which he named _Il Verato_ (1588) after a well-known comic actor of the

time, who, it may be remarked, had had the management of Argenti's

_Sfortunato_ in 1567. In this pamphlet Guarini traversed the professor's

propositions with a good deal of scholastic ergotism: 'As in compounds the

hot accords with the cold, its mortal enemy, as the dry humour with the

moist, so the elements of tragedy and comedy, though separately

antagonistic, yet when united in a third form,' _et cetera et cetera_. De

Nores replied in an _Apologia_ (1590), disclaiming all personal allusion,

and the poet finally answered back in a _Verato secondo_, first published

in 1593, after his antagonist's death, restating his arguments and

seasoning them with a good deal of unmannerly abuse. These two treatises

of Guarini's were reprinted with alterations as the _Compendio della

poesia tragicommica_, in the 1602 edition of the play, and together with

the notes to the same edition form Guarini's own share of the

controversy[198]. But in 1600, before these had appeared, a Paduan,

Faustino Summo, published a set attack on and dissection of the play;

while a certain Giovan Pietro Malacreta of Vicenza illustrated the

attitude of the age with regard to literature by putting forward a series

of critical _dubbî_, that is, doubts as to the 'authority' of the form

employed. Both works are distinguished by a spirit of puerile cavil, which

would of itself almost suffice to reconcile us to the worst faults of the

poet. Thus Malacreta is not even content to let the author choose his own

title, arguing that Mirtillo was faithful not in his quality of shepherd

but of lover[199]. He goes on to complain of the tangle of laws and

oracles which Guarini invents in order to motive the action of his play;

and here, though taken individually his objections may be hypercritical,

he has laid his finger on a very real weakness of the author's ingenious

plot. It is, moreover, a weakness common to almost the whole tribe of the

Arcadian, or rather Utopian, pastorals. Apologists soon appeared, and had

little difficulty in disposing of most of the adverse criticisms. A

specific _Risposta_ to Malacreta appeared at Padua in 1600 from the pen of

Paolo Beni. Defences by Giovanni Savio and Orlando Pescetti were printed

at Venice and Verona respectively in 1601, while one at least, written by

Gauges de Gozze of Pesaro, under the pseudonym of Fileno di Isauro,

circulated in manuscript. These writings, however, are marked either by

futile endeavours to reconcile the _Pastor fido_ with the supposed

teaching of Aristotle and Horace, or else by such extravagant laudation as

that of Pescetti, who doubted not that had Aristotle known Guarini's play,

it would have been to him the model of a new kind to rank with the epic of

Homer and the tragedy of Sophocles[200]. Finally, Summo returned to the

charge with a rejoinder to Pescetti and Beni printed at Vicenza in

1601[201]. But all this writing and counter-writing in no way affected the

popularity of the _Pastor fido_ and its successors. Moreover, the critical

position of the combatants on both sides was essentially false. It would

be an easy task to fill a volume with strictures on the play touching its

sentimental tone, its affected manners, its stiff development, its

undramatic construction, the weak drawing of character, the lack of motive

force to move the complex machinery, and many other points--strictures

that should be unanswerable. But those who wish to understand the

influence exercised by the play over subsequent literature in Europe will

find their time better spent in analysing those qualities, whether

emotional or artistic, which won for it the enthusiastic worship of the

civilized world.

Numerous translations bear witness to its popularity far beyond the shores

of Italy. The earliest of these was into French, and appeared in 1595; it

was followed by several others. The Spanish versions have already been

mentioned, and the English will occupy our attention shortly. Besides

these there are versions, often more than one, in German, Greek, Swedish,

Dutch, and Polish. There are likewise versions in the Bergamasc and

Neapolitan dialects, while the manuscript of a Latin translation is

preserved in the University Library at Cambridge.

V

There were obvious advantages in treating the two masterpieces of pastoral

drama in Italy in close connexion with one another. It must not, however,

be supposed that they stood alone in the field of pastoral composition.

Both between the years 1573 when the _Aminta_ was composed and 1590 when

the _Pastor fido_ was printed, and also after the latter year, the stream

of plays continued unchecked, though, apart from a general tendency

towards greater regularity of dramatic construction, they do not form any

organic link in the chain of artistic development. Few deserve more than

passing notice. In the earlier ones, at least, we still find a tendency to

introduce extraneous elements. Thus _Gl' Intricati_, printed in 1581, and

acted a few years before at Zara, the work of Count Alvise, or, it would

appear, more correctly Luigi, Pasqualigo, contains a farcical and magical

part combined with some rather coarse jesting between two rogues, one

Spanish and one Bolognese, who speak in their respective dialects. Another

play in which a comic element appears is Bartolommeo Rossi's _Fiammella_

(1584), which has the further peculiarity of introducing allegorical

characters into the prologue, and mythological into the play. Another

piece belonging to this period is the _Pentimento amoroso_ by Luigi Groto,

which was printed as early as 1575. It is a wild tale of murder and

intrigue, judgement and outrageous self-sacrifice, composed in

_sdrucciolo_ verse and speeches of monstrous length. Another piece,

Gabriele Zinano's _Caride_, surreptitiously printed in 1582, and included

in an authorized publication in 1590, has the peculiarity of placing the

prologue in the mouth of Vergil. Lastly, I may mention Angelo Ingegneri's

_Danza di Venere_, acted at Parma in 1583, and printed the following year.

It contains the incident of a mad shepherd's regaining his wits through

gazing on the beauty of a sleeping nymph, thus borrowing the motive of

Boccaccio's tale of Cymon and Iphigenia. Its chief interest for us,

however, lies in the episode of the hero employing a gang of satyrs to

carry off his beloved during a solemn dance in honour of Venus. This looks

like a reminiscence of Giraldi Cintio's _Egle_, and through it of the old

satyric drama[202].

These plays all belong to the period between the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor

fido_. Tasso's and Guarini's masterpieces mark the point of furthest

development attained by the pastoral drama in Italy, or indeed in Europe.

With them the vitality which rendered evolution possible was spent, though

the power of reproduction remained unimpaired for close on a century.

Signor Rossi, in the monograph of which I have already made such free use,

mentions a number of plays, whose dependence on the _Pastor fido_ is

evident from their titles, though Guarini's influence is, of course, far

more widely spread than such eclectic treatment reveals. The most curious,

perhaps, is a play, _I figliuoli di Aminta e Silvia e di Mirtillo ed

Amarilli_, by Ercole Pelliciari, dealing with the fortunes of the children

of the heroes and heroines of Tasso and Guarini. We are on the way to a

genealogical cycle of Arcadian drama, similar to the cycles of romance

that centred round Roland and Launcelot. It would be a work of

supererogation to demonstrate in detail the influence exercised by Tasso

and Guarini over their Italian followers, and a task of forbidding

proportions to give the bare titles of the plays that witnessed to that

influence. Serassi reports that in 1614 Clementi Bartoli of Urbino

possessed no less than eighty pastoral plays; while by 1700, the year of

Fontanini's work on the _Aminta_, Giannantonio Moraldi is said to hsve

brought together in Rome a collection of over two hundred.[203] Every

device was resorted to that could lend novelty to the scenes; in Carlo

Noci's _Cintia_ (1594) the heroine returns home disguised as a boy to find

her lover courting another nymph; in Francesco Contarini's _Finta

Fiammetta_ (1610), on the other hand, the plot turns on the courtship of

Delfide by her lover Celindo in girl's attire; while in Orazio Serono's

_Fida Armilla_ (1610) we have the annual human sacrifice to a monstrous

serpent--all of which later became familiar themes in pastoral drama and

romance. Two plays only call for closer attention, and this rather on

account of a certain reputation they have gained than of any intrinsic

merit. One of these, Antonio Ongaro's _Alceo_, which was printed in 1582

and is therefore earlier than the _Pastor fido_, has been happily

nicknamed _Aminta bagnato_. It is a piscatorial adaptation of Tasso's

play, which it follows almost scene for scene. The satyr becomes a triton

with as little change of character as the nymphs and shepherds undergo in

their metamorphosis to fisher girls and boys. Alceo shows less

resourcefulness than his prototype in that he twice tries to commit

suicide by throwing himself into the sea. The last act is spun out to

three scenes in accordance with the demand for greater regularity of

dramatic construction, but gains nothing but tedium thereby. The other

play to be considered connects itself in plot rather with the _Pastor

fido_. It is the _Filli di Sciro_, the work of Guidubaldo Bonarelli della

Rovere. The poet's father enjoyed the protection of the Duke Guidubaldo II

of Urbino, but in after days he removed to the court of the Estensi at

Ferrara. It was here that the play appeared in 1607, though it is

dedicated to Francesco Maria della Rovere, who had by that time succeeded

his father in the duchy of Urbino. The plot of the play is highly

intricate, and shows a tendency towards the introduction of an adventurous

element; it turns upon the tribute of youths and maidens exacted from the

island of Scyros by the king of Thrace. The figure of the satyr is

replaced by a centaur who carries off one of the nymphs. Her cries attract

two youths who succeed in driving off the monster, but are severely

wounded in the encounter. The nymph, Celia, thereupon falls in love with

both her rescuers at once, and it is only when one of them proves to be

her long-lost brother that she is able to make up her mind between

them[204]. This brother had been carried off as a child by the Thracians

together with his betrothed Filli, and having escaped was lately returned

to his native land. From a dramatic point of view the _dénoûment_ is even

more preposterous than usual. The principal characters leave the stage at

the end of the fourth act, under sentence of death, and do not reappear,

the whole of the last act being occupied with narratives of their

subsequent fortunes. A point which is possibly worth notice is the

introduction of that affected talk on the technicalities of sheepcraft

which adds so greatly to the already intolerable artificiality of the

later pastoral drama, but which is happily absent from the work of Tasso

and Guarini.

* * * * *

We have now reached the end of our survey of the Italian pastoral drama.

In spite of the space it has been necessary to devote to the subject, it

must be borne in mind that we have treated it from one point of view only.

Besides the interest which it possesses in connexion with the development

of pastoral tradition, it also plays a very important part in the history

of dramatic art, not in Italy alone, but over the whole of Europe. On this

aspect of the subject we have hardly so much as touched. Nor is this all.

If it is true, as is commonly assumed, that the opera had its birth in the

_Orfeo_ of Angelo Poliziano, it is not less true that it found its cradle

in the Arcadian drama. A few isolated pieces may still be able to charm us

by their poetic beauty. In dealing with the rest it must never be

forgotten that without the costly scenery and elaborate musical setting

that lent body and soul to them in their day, we have what is little

better than the dry bones of these _ephemeridae_ of courtly art.

Chapter IV.

Dramatic Origins of the English Pastoral Drama

I

Having at length arrived at what must be regarded as the main subject of

this work, it will be my task in the remaining chapters to follow the

growth of the pastoral drama in England down to the middle of the

seventeenth century, and in so doing to gather up and weave into a

connected web the loose threads of my discourse.

Taking birth among the upland meadows of Sicily, the pastoral tradition

first assumed its conventional garb in imperial Rome, and this it

preserved among learned writers after its revival in the dawn of the

Italian renaissance. With Arcadia for its local habitation it underwent a

rebirth in the opening years of the sixteenth century in Sannazzaro's

romance, and again towards the close in the drama of Tasso. It became

chivalric in Spain and courtly in France, and finally reached this country

in three main streams, the eclogue borrowed by Spenser from Marot, the

romance suggested to Sidney by Montemayor, and the drama imitated by

Daniel from Tasso and Guarini. Once here, it blended variously with other

influences and with native tradition to produce a body of dramatic work,

which, ill-defined, spasmodic and occasional, nevertheless reveals on

inspection a certain character of its own, and one moreover not precisely

to be paralleled from the literary annals of any other European nation.

The indications of a native pastoral impulse, manifesting itself in the

burlesque of the religions drama and the romance of the popular ballads,

we have already considered. The connexion which it is possible to trace

between this undefined impulse and the later pastoral tradition is in no

wise literary; in so far as it exists at all and is one of temperament

alone, a bent of national character. In tracing the rise of the form in

Italy upon the one hand, and in England upon the other, we are struck by

certain curious contrasts and also by certain curious parallelisms. The

closest analogy to the ballad themes to be discovered in the literature of

Italy is in certain of the songs of Sacchetti and his contemporaries, but

it would be unwise to insist on the resemblance. The more suggestive

parallel of the _novelle_ has to be ruled out on the score of form, and is

further differentiated by the notable lack in them of romantic spirit.

Again, in the _sacre rappresentazioni_, the burlesque interpolations from

actual life, which with us aided the genesis of the interlude, and through

it of the romantic comedy, are as a rule so conspicuously absent that the

rustic farce with which one nativity play opens can only be regarded as a

direct and conscious imitation from the French. It is, on the other hand,

a remarkable fact, and one which, in the absence of any evidence of direct

imitation,[205] must be taken to indicate a real parallelism in the

evolution of the tradition in the two countries, that in England as in

Italy the way was paved for pastoral by the appearance of mythological

plays, introducing incidentally pastoral scenes and characters, and

anticipating to some extent at any rate the peculiar atmosphere of the

Arcadian drama.

* * * * *

The earliest of these English mythological plays, alike in date of

production and of publication, was George Peele's _Arraignment of Paris_,

'A Pastorall. Presented before the Queenes Majestie, by the children of

her Chappell,' no doubt in 1581, and printed three years later.[206] It

partakes of the nature of the masque in that the whole composition centres

round a compliment to the Queen, Eliza or Zabeta--a name which, as Dr.

Ward notes, Peele probably borrowed along with one or two other hints from

Gascoigne's Kenilworth entertainment of 1575. The title sufficiently

expresses its mythological character, and the precise value of the term

'pastoral' on the title-page is difficult to determine. The characters are

for the most part either mythological or rustic; the only truly pastoral

ones being Paris and Oenone, whose parts, however, in so far as they are

pastoral, are also of the slightest. It is of course impossible to say

exactly to what extent the fame of the Italian pastoral drama may have

penetrated to England--the _Aminta_ was first printed the year of the

production of Peele's play, and waited a decade before the first English

translation and the first English edition appeared[207]--but no influence

of Tasso's masterpiece can be detected in the _Arraignment_; still less is

it possible to trace any acquaintance with Poliziano's work.

After a prologue, in which Atè foretells in staid and measured but not

unpleasing blank verse the fall of Troy, the silvan deities, Pan, Faunus,

Silvanus, Pomona, Flora, enter to welcome the three goddesses who are on

their way to visit 'Ida hills,' and who after a while enter, led by Rhanis

and accompanied by the Muses, whose processional chant heralds their

approach. They are greeted by Pan, who sings:

The God of Shepherds, and his mates,

With country cheer salutes your states,

Fair, wise, and worthy as you be,

And thank the gracions ladies three

For honour done to Ida.

When these have retired from the stage there follows a charming idyllic

scene between the lovers Paris and Oenone, which contains the delightful

old song, one of the lyric pearls of the Elizabethan drama:

_Oenone._ Fair and fair, and twice so fair,

As fair as any may be;

The fairest shepherd on our green,

A love for any lady.

_Paris._ Fair and fair, and twice so fair,

As fair as any may be;

Thy love is fair for thee alone,

And for no other lady.

_Oenone._ My love is fair, my love is gay,

As fresh as bin the flowers in May,

And of my love my roundelay,

My merry, merry, merry roundelay,

Concludes with Cupid's curse--

They that do change old love for new,

Pray gods they change for worse!

_Both._ They that do change old love for new,

Pray gods they change for worse!

The second act presents us the three goddesses who have come to Ida on a

party of pleasure with no very definite object in view, and are now

engaged in exercising their tongues at one another's expense. The scene

consists of a cross-fire of feminine amenities, not of the most delicate,

it is true, and therefore not here to be reproduced, yet of a keenness of

temper and a ringing mastery in the rimed verse little less than brilliant

in themselves, and little less than a portent at the date of their

appearance. Then a storm arises, during which, the goddesses having sought

refuge in Diana's bower, Atè rolls the fatal ball upon the stage. On the

return of the three the inscription _Detur pulcherrimae_ breeds fresh

strife, until they agree to submit the case for judgement to the next man

they meet. Paris arriving upon the scene at this point is at once called

upon to decide the rival claims of the contending goddesses. First Juno

promises wealth and empery, and presents a tree hung as with fruit with

crowns and diadems, all which shall be the meed of the partial judge.

Pallas next seeks to allure the swain with the pomp and circumstance of

war, and conjures up a show in which nine knights, no doubt the nine

worthies, tread a 'warlike almain.' Last Venus speaks:

Come, shepherd, come, sweet shepherd, look on me,

These bene too hot alarums these for thee:

But if thou wilt give me the golden ball,

Cupid my boy shall ha't to play withal,

That whenso'er this apple he shall see,

The God of Love himself shall think on thee,

And bid thee look and choose, and he will wound

Whereso thy fancy's object shall be found.

Whereupon 'Helen entereth in her bravery' attended by four Cupids, and

singing an Italian song which has, however, little merit. As at a later

day Faustus, so now Paris bows before the sovereignty of her beauty, and

then wanders off through Ida glades in the company of the victorious queen

of love, leaving her outraged rivals to plot a common revenge. Act III

introduces the slight rustic element. Hobbinol, Diggon, and Thenot enter

to Colin, who is lamenting the cruelty of his love Thestylis. The names

are obviously borrowed from the _Shepherd's Calender_, but while Colin is

still the type of the hopeless lover, there is no necessity to suspect any

personal identification. The _Arraignment_ was probably produced less than

two years after the publication of Spenser's eclogues, and Peele, who was

an Oxford man, may even have been ignorant of their authorship[208]. Still

more unnecessary are certain other identifications between characters in

the play and persons at court which have been propounded. Such

identifications, at any rate, have no importance for our present task,

which is to ascertain in what measure and in what manner Peele's work

paved the way for the advent of the Italian pastoral; and we note, with

regard to the present scene, that the more polished and more homely

elements alike--both Colin on the one hand, and Diggon, Hobbinol, and the

rest on the other--are inspired by Spenser's work, and by his alone.

Meanwhile Oenone enters, lamenting her desertion by Paris. There is

delicate pathos in the reminiscence of her former song which haunts the

outpouring of her grief--

False Paris, this was not thy vow, when thou and I were one,

To range and change old loves for new; but now those days be gone.

She is less happy in a set lament, beginning:

Melpomene, the Muse of tragic songs,

in which we may perhaps catch a distant echo of Spenser's:

Melpomene, the mournfull'st Muse of nine.

As she ends she is accosted by Mercury, who has been sent to summon Paris

to appear at Juno's suit before the assembly of the gods on a charge of

partiality in judgement. A pretty dialogue ensues in broken fourteeners,

in which the subtle god elicits a description of the shepherd from the

unsuspecting nymph--it too contains some delicate reminiscences of the

lover's duet.

_Mercury._ Is love to blame?

_Oenone._ The queen of love hath made him false his troth.

_Mer._ Mean ye, indeed, the queen of love?

_Oen._ Even wanton Cupid's dame.

_Mer._ Why, was thy love so lovely, then?

_Oen._ His beauty height his shame;

The fairest shepherd on our green.

_Mer._ Is he a shepherd, than?

_Oen._ And sometime kept a bleating flock.

_Mer._ Enough, this is the man.

In the next scene we find Paris and Venus together. First the goddess

directs the assembled shepherds to inscribe the words, 'The love whom

Thestylis hath slain,' as the epitaph of the now dead Colin. When these

have left the stage she turns to Paris:

Sweet shepherd, didst thou ever love?

_Paris._ Lady, a little once.

She then warns him against the dangers of faithlessness in a passage which

is a good example of Peele's use of the old rimed versification, and as

such deserves quotation.

My boy, I will instruct thee in a piece of poetry,

That haply erst thou hast not heard: in hell there is a tree,

Where once a-day do sleep the souls of false forsworen lovers,

With open hearts; and there about in swarms the number hovers

Of poor forsaken ghosts, whose wings from off this tree do beat

Round drops of fiery Phlegethon to scorch false hearts with heat.

This pain did Venus and her son entreat the prince of hell

T'impose on such as faithless were to such as loved them well:

And, therefore, this, my lovely boy, fair Venus doth advise thee,

Be true and steadfast in thy love, beware thou do disguise thee;

For he that makes but love a jest, when pleaseth him to start,

Shall feel those fiery water-drops consume his faithless heart.

_Paris._ Is Venus and her son so full of justice and severity?

_Venus._ Pity it were that love should not be linkèd with indifferency.[209]

Then follow Colin's funeral, the punishment of the hard-hearted Thestylis,

condemned to love a 'foul crooked churl' who 'crabbedly refuseth her,'

and the scene in which Mercury summons Paris before the Olympian tribunal.

Here we find him in the next act. The gods being seated in the bower of

Diana, Juno and Pallas, and Venus and Paris appear 'on sides' before the

throne of Jove, and in answer to his indictment the shepherd of Ida

delivers a spirited speech. Again the verse is of no small merit.

Defending himself from the charge of partiality in the bestowal of the

prize, he argues:

Had it been destinèd to majesty--

Yet will I not rob Venus of her grace--

Then stately Juno might have borne the ball.

Had it to wisdom been intitulèd,

My human wit had given it Pallas then.

But sith unto the fairest of the three

That power, that threw it for my farther ill,

Did dedicate this ball--and safest durst

My shepherd's skill adventure, as I thought,

To judge of form and beauty rather than

Of Juno's state or Pallas' worthiness--...

Behold, to Venus Paris gave the fruit,

A daysman[210] chosen there by full consent,

And heavenly powers should not repent their deeds.

After consultation the gods decide to dismiss the prisoner, though we

gather that he is not wholly acquitted.

_Jupiter._ Shepherd, thou hast been heard with equity and law,

And for thy stars do thee to other calling draw,

We here dismiss thee hence, by order of our senate;

Go take thy way to Troy, and there abide thy fate.

_Venus._ Sweet shepherd, with such luck in love, while thou dost live,

As may the Queen of Love to any lover give.

_Paris._ My luck is loss, howe'er my love do speed:

I fear me Paris shall but rue his deed.

_Apollo._ From Ida woods now wends the shepherd's boy,

That in his bosom carries fire to Troy.

This, however, does not settle the case, and the final adjudication of the

apple of beauty is entrusted by the gods to Diana, since it was in her

grove that it was found. Parting company with classical legend in the

incident which gives its title to the play, Peele further adds a fifth

act, in which he contrives to make the world-famous history subserve the

courtly ends of the masque. When the rival claimants have solemnly sworn

to abide by the decision of their compeer, Diana begins:

It is enough; and, goddesses, attend.

There wons within these pleasaunt shady woods,

Where neither storm nor sun's distemperature

Have power to hurt by cruel heat or cold, ...

Far from disturbance of our country gods,

Amid the cypress springs[211], a gracions nymph,

That honours Dian for her chastity,

And likes the labours well of Phoebe's groves;

The place Elizium hight, and of the place

Her name that governs there Eliza is,

A kingdom that may well compare with mine,

An auncient seat of kings, a second Troy,

Y-compass'd round with a commodious sea.

The rest may be easily imagined. The contending divinities resign their

claims:

_Venus._ To this fair nymph, not earthly, but divine,

Contents it me my honour to resign.

_Pallas._ To this fair queen, so beautiful and wise,

Pallas bequeaths her title in the prize.

_Juno._ To her whom Juno's looks so well become,

The Queen of Heaven yields at Phoebe's doom.

The three Fates now enter, and singing a Latin song lay their 'properties'

at the feet of the queen. Then each in turn delivers a speech appropriate

to her character, and finally Diana 'delivereth the ball of gold into the

Queen's own hands,' and the play ends with a couple of doggerel hexameters

chanted by way of epilogue by the assembled actors:

Vive diu felix votis hominumque deumque,

Corpore, mente, libro, doctissima, candida, casta.

The jingle of these lines would alone suffice to prove that Peele's ear

was none of the most delicate, and he particularly sins in disregarding

the accent in the rime-word, a peculiarity which may have been noticed

even in the short passages quoted above. Nevertheless, even apart from its

lyrics, one of which is in its way unsurpassed, the play contains passages

of real grace in the versification. The greater part is written either in

fourteeners or in decasyllabic couplets with occasional alexandrines, in

both of which the author displays an ease and mastery which, to say the

least, were uncommon in the dramatic work of the early eighties; while the

passages of blank verse introduced at important dramatic points, notably

in Paris' defence and in Diana's speech, are the best of their kind

between Surrey and Marlowe. The style, though now and again clumsy, is in

general free from affectation except for an occasional weakness in the

shape of a play upon words. Such is the connexion of Eliza with Elizium,

in a passage already quoted, and the time-honoured _non Angli sed

angeli_--

Her people are y-clepèd Angeli,

Or, if I miss, a letter is the most--

occurring a few lines later; also the words of Lachesis:

Et tibi, non aliis, didicerunt parcere Parcae.

With regard to the general construction of the piece it is hardly too much

to say that the skill with which the author has enlarged a masque-subject

into a regular drama, altered a classical legend to subserve a particular

aim, and conducted throughout the multiple perhaps rather than complex

threads of his plot, mark him out as pre-eminent among his contemporaries.

We must not, it is true, look for perfect balance of construction, for

adequacy of dramatic climax, or for subtle characterization; but what has

been achieved was, in the stage of development at which the drama had then

arrived, no mean achievement. The dramatic effects are carefully prepared

for and led up to, reminding us almost at times of the recurrence of a

musical motive. Thus the song between Paris and Oenone, just before the

shepherd goes off to cross Dame Venus' path, is a fine piece of dramatic

irony as well as a charming lyric; while the effect of the reminiscences

of the song scattered through the later pastoral scenes has been already

noticed. Another instance is Venus' warning of the pains in store for

faithless lovers, which fittingly anticipates the words with which Paris

leaves the assembly of the gods. Again, we find a conscious preparation

for the contention between the goddesses in their previous bickerings, and

a conscious juxtaposition of the forsaken Oenone and the love-lorn Colin.

Lastly, there are scattered throughout the play not a few graphic touches,

as when Mercury at sight of Oenone exclaims:

Dare wage my wings the lass doth love, she looks so bleak and thin!

Such then is Peele's mythological play, presented in all the state of a

court revel before her majesty by the children of the Chapel Royal, a play

which it is more correct to say prepared the ground for than, as is

usually asserted, itself contained the germ of the later pastoral drama.

In spite of the care bestowed upon its composition, the _Arraignment of

Paris_ remains a slight and occasional production; but it nevertheless

claims its place as one of the most graceful pieces of its kind, and the

ascription of the play to Shakespeare, current in the later seventeenth

century, is perhaps more of an honour to the elder than of an insult to

the younger poet. Nor, at a more recent date, was Lamb uncritically

enthusiastic when he said of Peele's play that 'had it been in all parts

equal, the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher had been but a second name in

this sort of Writing.'

Before leaving Peele, mention must be made of one other play from his pen,

namely the _Hunting of Cupid_, known to us unfortunately from a few

fragments only. This is the more tantalizing on account of the freshness

of the passages preserved in _England's Helicon_ and _England's

Parnassus_, and in a commonplace-book belonging to Drummond of

Hawthornden, and also from the fact that there is good reason to suppose

that the work was actually printed[212]. So far as can be judged from the

extracts we possess, and from Drummond's jottings, it appears to have been

a tissue of mythological conceits, much after the manner of the

_Arraignment_, though possibly somewhat more distinctly pastoral in

tone[213].

About contemporary with the _Arraignment of Paris_ are the earliest plays

of John Lyly, the Euphuist. Most of these are of a mythological character,

while three come more particularly under our notice on account of their

pastoral tendency, namely, _Gallathea, Love's Metamorphosis_, and the

_Woman in the Moon_[214].

Although Lyly's romance itself lay outside the scope of this inquiry, we

have already had, in the pastoral work of his imitators, ample

opportunities of becoming acquainted with the peculiarities of the style

he rendered fashionable. Its laborious affectation is all the more

irritating when we remember that its author, on turning his attention to

the more or less unseemly brawling of the Martin Mar-prelate pasquilade,

revealed a command of effective vernacular hardly, if at all, inferior to

that of his friend Nashe; and its complex artificiality becomes but more

apparent when applied to dramatic work. Nevertheless in an age when prose

style was in an even more chaotic state than prosody, Euphuism could claim

qualities of no small value and importance, while as an experiment it was

no more absurd, and vastly more popular, than those in classical

versification. Its qualities, when we consider the general state of

contemporary literature, may well account for the popularity of Lyly's

attempt at novel-writing, but the style was radically unsuited for

dramatic composition, and the result is for the most part hardly to be

tolerated, and can only have met with such court-favour as fell to its

lot, owing to the general fashion for which its success in the romance was

responsible. It is indeed noteworthy that Lyly is the only writer who ever

ventured to apply his literary invention _in toto_ to the uses of the

stage, while even in the romance he lived to see Euphuism as a fashionable

style pale before the growing popularity of Arcadianism[215]. The opening

of _Gallathea_ may supply a specimen of the style as it appears in the

dramas; the scene is laid in Lincolnshire, and Tyterus is addressing his

daughter who gives her name to the piece:

In tymes past, where thou seest a heape of small pyble, stoode a stately

Temple of white Marble, which was dedicated to the God of the Sea, (and

in right being so neere the Sea): hether came all such as eyther

ventured by long travell to see Countries, or by great traffique to use

merchandise, offering Sacrifice by fire, to gette safety by water;

yeelding thanks for perrils past, and making prayers for good successe

to come: but Fortune, constant in nothing but inconstancie, did change

her copie, as the people their custome; for the Land being oppressed by

Danes, who in steed of sacrifice, committed sacrilidge, in steede of

religion, rebellion, and made a pray of that in which they should have

made theyr prayers, tearing downe the Temple even with the earth, being

almost equall with the skyes, enraged so the God who bindes the windes

in the hollowes of the earth, that he caused the Seas to breake their

bounds, sith men had broke their vowes, and to swell as farre above

theyr reach, as men had swarved beyond theyr reason: then might you see

shippes sayle where sheepe fedde, ankers cast where ploughes goe,

fishermen throw theyr nets, where husbandmen sowe their Corne, and

fishes throw their scales where fowles doe breede theyr quils: then

might you gather froth where nowe is dewe, rotten weedes for sweete

roses, and take viewe of monstrous Maremaides, in steed of passing faire

Maydes.

The unsuitability of the style for dramatic purposes will by this be

somewhat painfully evident, and, as may be imagined, the effect is even

less happy in the case of dialogue. To pursue: the offended deity consents

to withdraw his waters on the condition of a lustral sacrifice of the

fairest virgin of the land, who is to be exposed bound to a tree by the

shore, whence she is carried off by the monster Agar, in whom we may no

doubt see a personification of the 'eagre' or tidal wave of the Humber. At

the opening of the play we find the two fairest virgins of the land

disguised as boys by their respective fathers, in order that they may

escape the penalty of beauty. While they wander the fields and graves,

another maiden is exposed as the sacrifice, but Neptune, offended by the

deceit, rejects the proffered victim, and no monster appears to claim its

prey. In the meanwhile, Cupid has eluded the maternal vigilance, and,

disguised as a nymph, is beginning to display his powers among the

followers of Diana. Here is an example of a euphuistic dialogue. Cupid

accosts one of the nymphs:

Faire Nimphe, are you strayed from your companie by chaunce, or love

you to wander solitarily on purpose?

_Nymph._ Faire boy, or god, or what ever you bee, I would you knew

these woods are to me so wel known, that I cannot stray though I would,

and my minde so free, that to be melancholy I have no cause. There is

none of Dianaes trayne that any can traine, either out of their waie, or out

of their wits.

_Cupid._ What is that Diana? a goddesse? what her Nimphes?

virgins? what her pastimes? hunting?

_Nym._ A goddesse? who knowes it not? Virgins? who thinkes it not?

Hunting? who loves it not?

_Cup._ I pray thee, sweete wench, amongst all your sweete troope, is

there not one that followeth the sweetest thing, sweet love?

_Nym._ Love, good sir, what meane you by it? or what doe you call it?

_Cup._ A heate full of coldnesse, a sweet full of bitternesse, a paine ful

of pleasantnesse; which maketh thoughts have eyes, and harts eares;

bred by desire, nursed by delight, weaned by jelousie, kild by dissembling,

buried by ingratitude; and this is love! fayre Lady, wil you any?

_Nym._ If it be nothing else, it is but a foolish thing.

_Cup._ Try, and you shall find it a prettie thing.

_Nym._ I have neither will nor leysure, but I will followe Diana in the

Chace, whose virgins are all chast, delighting in the bowe that wounds

the swift Hart in the Forrest, not fearing the bowe that strikes the softe

hart in the Chamber.

The nymphs are soon in love with the two girls in disguise, and what is

more, each of these, supposing the other to be what her apparel betokens,

falls in love with her. After a while, however, Diana becomes suspicious

of the stranger nymph, and her followers make a capture of the boy-god,

whom they identify by the burn on his shoulder caused by Psyche's lamp,

and set him to untie love-knots. There follows one of those charming songs

for which Lyly is justly, or unjustly, famous[216].

O Yes, O yes, if any Maid,

Whom lering Cupid has betraid

To frownes of spite, to eyes of scorne,

And would in madnes now see torne

The Boy in Pieces--Let her come

Hither, and lay on him her doome.

O yes, O yes, has any lost

A Heart, which many a sigh hath cost;

Is any cozened of a teare,

Which (as a Pearle) disdaine does weare?--

Here stands the Thiefe, let her but come

Hither, and lay on him her doome.

Is any one undone by fire,

And Turn'd to ashes through desire?

Did ever any Lady weepe,

Being cheated of her golden sleepe,

Stolne by sicke thoughts?--The pirats found,

And in her teares hee shalbe drownd.

Reade his Inditement, let him heare

What hees to trust to: Boy, give eare!

This is the position of affairs when Venus appears in search of her

wanton, and is shortly followed by the irate Neptune. After some

disputing, Neptune, to quiet the strife between the goddesses, proposes

that Diana shall restore the runaway to his mother, in return for which he

will release the land for ever from its virgin tribute. This happily

agreed upon, the only difficulty remaining is the strange passion between

the two girls. Venus, however, proves equal to the occasion, and solves

the situation by transforming one of them into a man. An allusion to the

story of Iphis and Ianthe told in the ninth book of the _Metamorphoses_

suggests the source of the incident[217]. Otherwise the play appears to be

in the main original. The exposing of a maiden to the rage of a

sea-monster has been, of course, no novelty since the days of Andromeda,

but it is unnecessary to seek a more immediate source[218]; while the

intrusion of Cupid in disguise among the nymphs was doubtless suggested by

the well-known idyl of Moschus, and probably owes to this community of

source such resemblance as it possesses to the prologue of the _Aminta_.

A comic element is supplied by a sort of young rascals, and a mariner, an

alchemist, and an astrologer, who are totally unconnected with the rest of

the play. The supposed allusions to real characters need not be taken

seriously. Lyly's rascals are generally recognized as the direct ancestors

of some of Shakespeare's comic characters, and we not seldom find in them

the germ at least of the later poet's irresistible fun. Take such a speech

as Robin's: 'Why be they deade that be drownd? I had thought they had

beene with the fish, and so by chance beene caught up with them in a Nette

againe. It were a shame a little cold water should kill a man of reason,

when you shall see a poore Mynow lie in it, that hath no understanding.'

As regards the euphuistic style, the passages already quoted will suffice,

but it may be remarked that the marvellous natural history is also put

under requisition. 'Virgins harts, I perceive,' remarks one of Diana's

nymphs, 'are not unlike Cotton trees, whose fruite is so hard in the

budde, that it soundeth like steele, and beeing rype, poureth forth

nothing but wooll, and theyr thoughts, like the leaves of Lunary, which

the further they growe from the Sunne, the sooner they are scorched with

his beames.' At times one is almost tempted to imagine that Lyly is

laughing in his sleeve, but as soon as he feels an eye upon him, his face

would again do credit to a judge. The following is from a scene between

the two disguised maidens:

_Phillida._ It is pitty that Nature framed you not a woman, having

a face so faire, so lovely a countenaunce, so modest a behaviour.

_Gallathea._ There is a Tree in Tylos, whose nuttes have shels like fire,

and being cracked, the karnell is but water.

_Phil._ What a toy is it to tell mee of that tree, beeing nothing to the purpose:

I say it is pity you are not a woman.

_Gall._ I would not wish to be a woman, unless it were because thou art

a man. (III. ii.)

_Gallathea_ may be plausibly enough assigned to the year 1584[219]. The

date of the next play we have to deal with, _Love's Metamorphosis_, is

less certain, though Mr. Fleay's conjecture of 1588-9 seems reasonable.

All that can be said with confidence is that it was later than

_Gallathea_, to which it contains allusions, that it is an inferior work,

and that it has the appearance at least of having been botched up in a

hurry[220]. The story is as follows. Three shepherds, or rather woodmen,

are in love with three of the nymphs of Ceres, but meet with little

success, one of the maidens proving obdurate, another proud, and the third

fickle. The lovers make complaint to Cupid, who consents at their request

to transform the disdainful fair ones into a rock, a rose, and a bird

respectively. Hereupon Ceres in her turn complains to the God of Love, who

promises that the three shall regain their proper shapes if Ceres will

undertake that they shall thereupon consent to the love of the swains. She

does so, and her nymphs are duly restored to their own forms, but at first

flatly refuse to comply with the conditions. After a while they yield:

_Nisa._ I am content, so as Ramis, when hee finds me cold in love, or

hard in beliefe, hee attribute it to his owne folly; in that I retaine some

nature of the Rocke he chaunged me into....

_Celia._ I consent, so as Montanus, when in the midst of his sweete

delight, shall find some bitter overthwarts, impute it to his folly, in that

he suffered me to be a Rose, that hath prickles with her pleasantnes, as

hee is like to have with my love shrewdnes....

_Niobe._ I yeelded first in mind though it bee my course last to speake:

but if Silvestris find me not ever at home, let him curse himselfe that gave

me wings to flie abroad, whose feathers if his jealousie shall breake, my

policie shall imp.[221] (V. iv.)

This plot, at once elementary and violent, is combined with the fantastic

story of Erisichthon, 'a churlish husband-man,' who in the nymphs' despite

cuts down the sacred tree of Ceres, into which the chaste Fidelia had

been transformed. For this offence the goddess dooms him to the plague of

hunger. The ghastly description of this monster, who may be compared with

Browne's Limos, was probably suggested by some similar descriptions in the

_Faery Queen_ (I. iv. and III. xii). Erisichthon is put to all manner of

shifts to satisfy the hunger with which he is ever consumed, and is at

last forced to sell his daughter Protea to a merchant, in order to keep

himself alive. Protea, it appears, was at one time the paramour of

Neptune, who now in answer to her prayer comes to her aid in such a way

that, when about to embark on the vessel of her purchaser, she justifies

her name by changing into the likeness of an old fisherman. The deluded

merchant, after seeking her awhile, is obliged to set sail and depart

without his ware. She returns home to find her lover Petulius being

tempted by a 'syren,' who is evidently a mermaid with looking-glass and

comb and scaly tail, disporting herself by the shore--the scene being

laid, by the way, on the coast of Arcadia. Protea at once changes her

disguise to the ghost of Ulysses, and is in time to warn her lover of his

danger. Finally, at Cupid's intercession her father is relieved of his

affliction by the now appeased goddess. This plot is even more crudely

distinct from the principal action of the play than is usual with

Lyly[222].

It will be noticed that in the play we have just been considering the

nymphs are no longer treated with the same respect as was the case in

_Gallathea_; we have, in fact, advanced some way towards the satirical

conception and representation of womankind which gives the tone to the

_Woman in the Moon_. It would almost seem as though his experience of the

inconstancy of the royal sunshine had made Lyly a less enthusiastic

devotee of womanhood in general and of virginity in particular, and that

with an unadvised frankness which may well account for his disappointments

at court, he failed to conceal his feelings. The play is likewise

distinguished from the other dramatic works of its author by being

composed almost entirely in blank verse. Certain lines of the prologue--

Remember all is but a Poets dreame,

The first he had in Phoebus holy bowre,

But not the last, unlesse the first displease--

have not unnaturally been taken to mean that the piece was the first

venture of the author; but on investigation this will be seen to be

impossible, since the constant reminiscence of Marlowe in the construction

of the verse points to 1588 or at earliest to 1587 as the date. Mr.

Fleay's suggestion of 1589-90 may be accepted as the earliest likely

date[223]. To my mind it would need external proof of an unusually cogent

description to render plausible the theory that the year, say, of the

_Shepherd's Calender_ saw the appearance of such lines as:

What lack I now but an imperiall throne[224],

And Ariadnaes star-lyght Diadem? (II. i.)

or:

O Stesias, what a heavenly love hast thou!

A love as chaste as is Apolloes tree,

As modest as a vestall Virgins eye,

And yet as bright as Glow wormes in the night,

With which the morning decks her lovers hayre; (IV. i.)

or yet again:

When will the sun go downe? flye Phoebus flye!

O, that thy steeds were wingd with my swift thoughts:

Now shouldst thou fall in Thetis azure armes[225],

And now would I fall in Pandoraes lap. (IV. i.)

Nor are these isolated passages; from the opening lines of the prologue to

the final speech of Nature the verse has the appearance of being the work

of a graceful if not very strong hand writing in imitation of Marlowe's

early style. We must, therefore, it seems to me, take the words of the

prologue as signifying not that the play was the first work of the author,

but that it was his earliest adventure in verse.

The plan of the work is as follows. The shepherds of Utopia come to dame

Nature and beg her to make a woman for them. She consents and fashions

Pandora, whom she dowers with the virtues of the several Planets. These,

however, are offended at not being consulted in the matter, and determine

to use their influence to the bane of the newly created woman. Under the

reign of Saturn she turns sullen; when Jupiter is in the ascendant he

falls in love with her, but she has grown proud and scorns him; under Mars

she becomes a vixen; under Sol she in her turn falls in love, and turns

wanton under Venus; she learns deceit of Mercury when he is dominant, and

runs mad under the influence of Luna. At length, since the shepherds will

no longer have anything to do with the lady, Nature determines to place

her in the heavens. Her beauty makes each planet desire her as companion.

Nature gives her the choice:

Speake, my Pandora; where wilt thou be?

_Pandora._ Not with old Saturne for he lookes like death;

Nor yet with Jupiter, lest Juno storme;

Nor with thee Mars, for Venus is thy love;

Nor with thee Sol, thou hast two Parramours,

The sea borne Thetis and the rudy morne;

Nor with thee Venus, lest I be in love

With blindfold Cupid or young Joculus;

Nor with thee Hermes, thou art full of sleightes,

And when I need thee Jove will send thee foorth.

Say Cynthia, shall Pandora rule thy starre,

And wilt thou play Diana in the woods,

Or Hecate in Plutos regiment?

_Luna._ I, Pandora.

_Pand._ Fayre Nature let thy hand mayd dwell with her,

For know that change is my felicity,

And ficklenesse Pandoraes proper forme.

Thou madst me sullen first, and thou Jove, proud;

Thou bloody minded; he a Puritan:

Thou Venus madst me love all that I saw,

And Hermes to deceive all that I love;

But Cynthia made me idle, mutable,

Forgetfull, foolish, fickle, franticke, madde;

These be the humors that content me best,

And therefore will I stay with Cynthia....

_Nat._ Now rule, Pandora, in fayre Cynthias steede,

And make the moone inconstant like thy selfe;

Raigne thou at womens nuptials, and their birth;

Let them be mutable in all their loves,

Fantastical, childish, and foolish, in their desires,

Demaunding toyes:

And stark madde when they cannot have their will.

Now follow me ye wandring lightes of heaven,

And grieve not, that she is not plast with you;

Ail you shall glaunce at her in your aspects,

And in conjunction dwell with her a space. (V. i.)

And so Pandora becomes the 'Woman in the Moon.' The play, in its topical

and satiric purpose, and above all, in its utilization of mythological

material, bears a distinct relationship to the masque. The shepherds are

in their origin philosophical, standing for the race of mankind in

general, rather than pastoral; Utopian, in fact, rather than Arcadian.

These early mythological plays stand alone, in that the pastoral scenes

they contain are apparently uninfluenced by the Italian drama. The kind

attained some popularity as a subject of courtly presentation, but it did

not long preserve its original character. The later examples, with which

we shall be concerned hereafter, always exhibit some characteristics which

may be immediately or ultimately traced to the influence of Tasso and

Guarini. This influence we must now turn to consider in some detail, as

evidenced as well in translations and imitations as in the general tone

and machinery of an appreciable portion of the Elizabethan drama.[226]

II

In any inquiry involving the question of foreign influence in literature

it is obviously necessary to treat of the work done in the way of

translation, although when the influence is of at all a widespread nature,

as in the present instance, such discussion is apt to usurp a position

unjustified by its intrinsic importance. In most cases, probably, the

energy devoted to the task of rendering the foreign models directly into

the language they influenced is rather useful as supplying us with a rough

measure of their popularity than itself significant as a step in the

operation of that influence. We may safely assume that, in the case of the

English pastoral drama, the influence exercised directly by the Italian

masterpieces was beyond comparison greater than that which made itself

indirectly felt through the labours of translators.

Having thus anticipated a possible misapprehension it will be worth our

while to devote some little attention to the history of the attempts at

translation in this line. The first English writer to venture upon the

task of turning the choice music of Tasso into his native language was the

eccentric satellite of the Sidneyan circle, Abraham Fraunce, fellow of St.

John's College in Cambridge. It so happened that he was at the time

pursuing that elusive phantasm, the application of the laws of classical

versification to English poetry. The resuit was at least unique, in

English, at any rate, namely a drama in hexameter verse. It also occurred

to him that Watson's _Lamentations of Amyntas_, a translation of which he

had himself published in 1587, might be made to serve as an appendix to

Tasso's play. With this object in view he changed the name of the heroine

from Silvia to Phillis. This appears to have been the exact extent to

which he 'altered S. Tassoes Italian' in order to connect it with 'M.

Watsons Latine Amyntas' and 'to make them both one English.'[227] Certain

other changes were, however, introduced upon other considerations. Various

unessential points were omitted, notably in connexion with Tirsi, whose

topical character disappears; the name Nerina is altered to Fulvia;

frequent allusions are introduced to the nymph Pembrokiana, to whom among

other things is ascribed the rescue of the heroine from the bear which

takes the place of the wolf in Tasso. Lastly, we have the addition of a

whole scene immediately before the final chorus. Phillis and Amyntas

reappear and carry on a conversation, not unamiably, in a sort of

hexametrical stichomythia. The maiden modestly seeks to restrain the

amorous impatience of her lover, and the scene ends with a song between

the two composed in 'Asclepiades.'[228] Of this literary curiosity

Amyntas' opening stave may be quoted:

Sweete face, why be the hev'ns soe to the bountifull,

Making that radiant bewty of all the starrs

Bright-burning, to be fayre Phillis her ornament?

And yet seeme to be soe spytefuly partial,

As not for to aford Argus his eyes to mee,

Eyes too feawe to behould Phillis her ornament?

It is, perhaps, not a little strange that the pedant who made the

preposterous experiment of turning the _Aminta_ into English hexameters

should nevertheless have been capable of clearly perceiving, however

incapable he was of adequately rectifying, the hopelessly undramatic

character of the last act of Tasso's play. As an example of the style of

the translation we may take the following rendering of the delicate _Chi

crederia_, with which the original prologue opens:

Who would think that a God lay lurking under a gray cloake,

Silly Shepheards gray cloake, and arm'd with a paltery sheephooke?

And yet no pety God, no God that gads by the mountaines,

But the triumphantst God that beares any sway in Olympus:

Which many times hath made man-murdring Mars to be cursing

His blood-sucking blade; and prince of watery empire

Earth-shaking Neptune, his threeforckt mace to be leaving,

And Jove omnipotent, as a poore and humble obeissant,

His three-flak't lightnings and thunderbolts to abandon.

This is in some respects not wholly inadequate; indeed, if it happened to

be English it might pass for a respectable translation, for the exotic

pedantry of the style itself serves in a way to render the delicate

artificiality of the original, and such an expression as a 'God that gads

by the mountaines' is a pithy enough paraphrase of _dio selvaggio_, if

hardly an accurate translation. The unsatisfactory nature of the verse,

however, for dramatic purposes becomes evident in passages of rapid

dialogue; for example, where Daphne tells the careless nymph of Amyntas'

resolve to die.

_Phillis._ As to my house full glad for joy I repayred, I met thee

Daphne, there full sad by the way, and greately amased.

_Daphne._ Phillis alas is alive, but an other's gone to be dying[229].

_Ph._ And what mean's this, alas? am I now so lightly regarded,

That my life with, Alas, of Daphne must be remembred?

_Da._ Phillis, I love thy life, but I lyke not death of an other.

_Ph._ Whose death?

_Da._ Death of Amyntas.

_Ph._ Alas how dyed Amyntas?

_Da._ How? that I cannot tell; nor yet well whether it is soe:

But noe doubt, I beleeve; for it is most lyke that it is soe.

_Ph._ What strange news doe I heare? what causd that death of Amyntas?

_Da._ Thy death.

_Ph._ And I alive?

_Da._ Thy death was lately reported,

And he beleevs thy death, and therfore seeketh his owne death.

_Ph._ Feare of Phillis death prov'd vayne, and feare of Amyntas

Death will proove vayne too: life eache thing lyvely procureth. (IV. i.)

Even in such a passage as this, however, those strong racy phrases which

somehow find their way into the most uninspired of Tudor translations, are

not wholly wanting. Thus when the careless nymph at last goes off to seek

her desperate lover, Daphne in the original remarks:

Oh tardi saggia, e tardi

Pietosa, quando ciò nulla rileva;

a passage in translating which Fraunce cannot resist the application of a

homely proverb, and writes:

When steedes are stollen, then Phillis looks to the stable.

It may, at first sight, appear strange that at a time when the Italian

pastoral was exercising its greatest influence over the English drama this

translation by Fraunce of Tasso's play should have satisfied the demand

for more than thirty years. The explanation, of course, is that the

widespread knowledge of Italian among the reading public in England

rendered translation more or less superfluous[230], while at the same time

it should be remembered that in this country Tasso was far surpassed in

popularity by Guarini. So far as we can tell no further translation of the

_Aminta_ was attempted till 1628, when there appeared an anonymous version

which bibliographers have followed one another in ascribing to one John

Reynolds, but which was more probably the work of a certain Henry

Reynolds[231]. However that may be, the translation is of no

inconsiderable merit, though this is more apparent when read apart from

the original. It bears evidence of having been written by a man capable of

appreciating the poetry of Tasso, and one who, while unable to strike the

higher chords of lyric composition, was yet able to render the Italian

into graceful and unassuming, if seldom wholly musical or adequate, verse.

Thus the version hardly does itself justice in quotation, although the

general impression produced is more pleasing and less often irritating

than is the case with translations which many times reveal far higher

qualities. The following is a characteristic specimen chosen from the

story of Aminta's early love for Silvia.

Being but a Lad, so young as yet scarce able

To reach the fruit from the low-hanging boughes

Of new-growne trees; Inward I grew to bee

With a young mayde, fullest of love and sweetnesse,

That ere display'd pure gold tresse to the winde;...

Neere our abodes, and neerer were our hearts;

Well did our yeares agree, better our thoughts;

Together wove we netts t' intrapp the fish

In flouds and sedgy fleetes[232]; together sett

Pitfalls for birds; together the pye'd Buck

And flying Doe over the plaines we chac'de;

And in the quarry', as in the pleasure shar'de:

But as I made the beasts my pray, I found

My heart was lost, and made a pray to other. (I. ii.)

Many a translator, moreover, has failed to instil into his verse the swing

and flow of the following stanzas from the golden age chorus, which,

nevertheless follow the metrical form of the original with reasonable

fidelity[233]:

O happy Age of Gould; happy' houres;

Not for with milke the rivers ranne,

And hunny dropt from ev'ry tree;

Nor that the Earth bore fruits, and flowres,

Without the toyle or care of Man,

And Serpents were from poyson free;...

But therefore only happy Dayes,

Because that vaine and ydle name,

That couz'ning Idoll of unrest,

Whom the madd vulgar first did raize,

And call'd it Honour, whence it came

To tyrannize or'e ev'ry brest,

Was not then suffred to molest

Poore lovers hearts with new debate;

More happy they, by these his hard

And cruell lawes, were not debar'd

Their innate freedome; happy state;

The goulden lawes of Nature, they

Found in their brests; and them they did obey. (Ch. I.)

Before leaving the _Aminta_ it will be worth while straying beyond the

strict chronological limits of this inquiry to glance for a moment at the

version produced by John Dancer in 1660, for the sake of noting the change

which had come over literary hack-work of the kind in the course of some

thirty years. Comparing it with Reynolds' translation we are at first

struck by the change which long drilling of the language to a variety of

uses has accomplished in the work of uninspired poetasters; secondly, by

the fact that the conventional respectability of production, which has

replaced the halting crudities of an earlier date, is far more inimical

to any real touch of poetic inspiration. Equally evident is that spirit of

tyranny, happily at no time native to our literature, which seeks to

reduce the works of other ages into accordance with the taste of its own

day. Thus, having 'improved' Tasso's apostrophe to the _bella età dell'

oro_ almost beyond recognition, Dancer complacently closes the chorus with

the following parody:

We'l hope, since there's no joy, when once one dies

We'l hope, that as we have seen with our eies

The Sun to set, so we may see it rise. (Ch. I.)

Again, while all the spontaneity and reverential labour of an age of more

avowed adolescence has disappeared, there is yet lacking the justness of

phrase and certainty of grammar and rime, which later supply, however

inadequately, the place of poetic enthusiasm. The defects of the style,

with its commonplace exaggeration of conceits, the thumbed token-currency

of the certified poetaster, are well seen in such a passage as the

following:

Weak love is held by shame, but love grows bold

As strong, what is it then can it with-hold:

She as though in her ey's she did contain

Fountains of tears, did with such plenty rain

Them on his cheeks, and they such vertue had,

That it reviv'd again the breathlesse lad;...

Aminta thought 'twas more then heav'nly charms,

That thus enclasp'd him in his Silvia's armes;

He that loves servant is, perhaps may guesse

Their blisse; but none there is can it expresse[234]. (V. i.)

As was to be expected, the attention of translators was early directed to

the _Pastor fido_. The original was printed in England, together with the

_Aminta_, the year after its first appearance in Italy, that is in 1591,

and bore the imprint of John Wolfe, 'a spese di Giacopo Castelvetri'; the

first translation saw the light in 1602. This version was published

anonymously, and in spite of the confident assertions and ingenious

conjectures of certain bibliographers, anonymous it must for the present

remain; all that can with certainty be affirmed is that it claims to be

the work of a kinsman of Sir Edward Dymocke[235]. Most modern writers who

have had occasion to mention it have shown a praiseworthy deference to the

authority of one of the most venerable figures of English criticism by

each in turn repeating that the translation, 'in spite of Daniel's

commendatory sonnet, is a very bad one.' And indeed, when we have stated

the very simple facts concerning the authorship as distinct from the very

elaborate conjectures, there remains little to add to Dyce's words. With

the exception of the omission of the prologue the version keeps pretty

faithfully to its original, but it does no more than emphasize the tedious

artificiality of the Italian, while whatever charm and perhaps

over-elaborated grace of language Guarini infused into his verse has

entirely evaporated in the process of translation. No less a poet and

critic than Daniel, regarding the work doubtless with the undiscriminating

eye of friendship, asserted that it might even to Guarini himself have

vindicated the poetic laurels of England, and yet from the whole long poem

it is hardly possible to extract any passage which would do credit to the

pen of an average schoolboy. We turn in vain to the contest of kisses

among the Megarean maidens, to the game of blind man's buff, to Amarillis'

secret confession of love, and to her trembling appeal when confronted by

a death of shame, for any evidence of poetie feeling. The girl's speech in

the last-mentioned scene, 'Se la miseria mia fosse mia colpa,' is thus

rendered:

If that my fault did cause my wretchednesse,

Or that my thoughts were wicked, as thou thinkst

My deed, lesse grievous would my death be then:

For it were just my blood should wash the spots

Of my defiled soule, heavens rage appease,

And humane justice justly satisfie,

Then could I quiet my afflicted sprights,

And with a just remorse of well-deserved death,

My senses mortifie, and come to death:

And with a quiet blow pass forth perhaps

Unto a life of more tranquilitie:

But too too much, Nicander, too much griev'd

I am, in so young years, Fortune so hie,

An Innocent, I should be doom'd to die. (IV. v.)

The next translation we meet with never got into print. It is preserved in

a manuscript at the British Museum[236], and bears the heading: 'Il Pastor

Fido, or The Faithfull Sheapheard. An Excellent Pastorall Written In

Italian by Battista Guarinj And translated into English By Jonathan Sidnam

Esq, Anno 1630.' The prologue is again omitted, and the translation is

distinguished from its contemporaries by an endeavour to reproduce to some

extent the freer metrical structure of the Italian. This was not a

particularly happy experiment, since it ignored the fact that the

character of a metre may differ considerably in different languages. The

Italian _endecasillabi sciolti_ are far less flexible than our own blank

verse, and it is only when freely interspersed with the shorter

_settinarî_ that they can attempt to rival the range of effect possible to

the English metre in the hands of a skilful artist. Thus the imitation of

the irregular measures of Guarini was a confession of the translator's

inability adequately to handle the dramatic verse of his own tongue. As a

specimen we may take the rendering of Amarillis' speech already quoted

from the 'Dymocke' version:

If my mischance had come by mine own fault,

Nicander, or had beene as thou beleevst

The foule effect of base and wicked thoughts,

Or, as it now appeares, a deed of Sinn,

It had beene then lesse greevous to endure

Death as a punishment for such a fault,

And just it had beene with my blood to wash

My impure Soule, to mitigate the wrath

And angar of the Godds, and satisfie

The right of humane justice,

Then could I quiett my afflicted Soule

And with an inward feeling of my just

Deserved death, subdue my outward Sence,

And fawne uppon my end, and happelie

With a more settled countenance passe from hence

Into a better world:

But now, Nicander, ah! tis too much greefe

In soe yong yeares, in such a happie state,

To die so suddenlie, and which is more,

Die innocent. (IV. v.)

It was not until the civil war was at its height, namely in 1647, that

English literature was enriched with a translation in any way worthy of

Guarini's masterpiece. It is easy to strain the interpretation of such

facts, but there is certainly a strong temptation to see in the occasion

and circumstances of the composition of the piece an illustration of a

critical law already noticed, namely the constant tendency of literature

to negative as well as to reproduce the life of actuality, and furthermore

of the special liability of pastoral to take birth from a desire to escape

from the imminence and pressure of surrounding circumstance. Like

Reynolds' _Aminta_, Richard Fanshawe's _Pastor fido_ is better appreciated

as a whole than in quotation, though, thanks partly to its own greater

maturity of poetic attainment, partly to the less ethereal perfection of

the original, it suffers far less than the earlier work by comparison with

the Italian. For the same reasons it is by far the most satisfactory of

any of the early translations of the Italian pastoral drama. One

noticeable feature is the constant reminiscence of Shakespeare, whole

lines from his works being sometimes introduced with no small skill. For

instance, where Guarini, describing how love wins entrance to a maiden's

heart, writes:

E se vergogna il cela,

O temenza l' affrena,

La misera tacendo

Per soverchio desío tutta si strugge; (I. iv.)

Fanshawe renders the last two lines by:

Poor soul! Concealment like a worm i' th' bud,

Lies in her Damask cheek sucking the bloud.

A few illustrative passages will suffice to give an idea of Fanshawe's

style. He stands alone in having succeeded in recrystallizing in his own

tongue some at least of the charm of the kissing match, and is even fairly

successful in the following dangerous conceit:

With one voice

Of peerlesse Amarillis they made choice.

She sweetly bending her fair eyes.

Her cheeks in modest blushes dyes,

To shew through her transparent skin

That she is no lesse fair within

Then shee's without; or else her countenance

Envying the honour done her mouth perchance,

Puts on her scarlet robes as who

Should say: 'And am not I fair too?' (II. i.)

So again he alone among the translators has infused any semblance of

passion into Amarillis' confession of love:

Mirtillo, O Mirtillo! couldst thou see

That heart which thou condemn'st of cruelty,

Soul of my soul, thou unto it wouldst show

That pity which thou begg'st from it I know.

O ill starr'd Lovers! what avails it me

To have thy love? T' have mine, what boots it thee?

(III. iv.)

In a lighter vein the following variation on the theme of fading beauty by

Corisca also does justice to its original:

Let us use it whilst wee may;

Snatch those joyes that haste away.

Earth her winter-coat may cast,

And renew her beauty past;

But, our winter come, in vain

We sollicite spring again:

And when our furrows snow shall cover,

Love may return, but never Lover. (III. v.)

When it is borne in mind that not only is the rendering graceful in

itself, but that as a rule it represents its original if not literally at

any rate adequately, it will be realized that Fanshawe's qualifications as

a translator are not small. His version, which is considerably the best in

the language, is happily easily accessible owing to its early popularity.

It first appeared in 1647 in the form of a handsomely printed quarto with

portrait and frontispiece engraved after the Ciotti edition of 1602, the

remaining copies being re-issued with additional matter the following

year; it went through two editions between the restoration and the end of

the century, and was again reprinted together with the original, and with

alterations in 1736[237]. In the meantime, however, the translation had

been adapted to the stage by Elkanah Settle. In a dedication to Lady

Elizabeth Delaval, the adapter ingenuously disclaims all knowledge of

Italian, and when he speaks of 'the Translated _Pastor Fido_' every reader

would no doubt be expected to know that he was referring to Fanshawe's

work. He left his readers, however, to discover for themselves that,

while he considerably altered, and of course condensed, the original, for

whatever poetic merit his scenes possess he is entirely indebted to his

predecessor. The adaptation was licensed by L'Estrange in 1676, and

printed the following year, while reprints dated 1689 and 1694 seem to

indicate that it achieved some success at the Duke's Theatre. It was

presumably of this version that Pepys notices a performance on February

25, 1668.[238]

Besides these English translations there is also extant one in Latin, a

manuscript of which is preserved in the University Library at

Cambridge.[239] The name of the translater does not appear, but the

heading runs: 'Il pastor fido, di signor Guarini ... recitata in Collegio

Regali Cantabrigiae.' The title is so scrawled over that it would be

impossible to say for certain whether the note of performance referred to

the present play, were it not for an allusion casually dropped by the

anonymous recorder of a royal visit to Oxford, which not only

substantiates the inference to be drawn from the manuscript, but also

supplies us with a downward limit of August, 1605.[240] In this

translation a dialogue between the characters 'Prologus' and 'Argumentum'

takes the place of Guarini's long topical prologue, and a short

conventional 'Epilogus' is added at the end.

* * * * *

It was not till 1655 that _the Filli di Sciro_ of Bonarelli, which has

usually been thought to hold the third place among Italian pastorals,

appeared in English dress. The translation published in that year is

ascribed on the title-page to 'J. S. Gent.,' an ascription which has given

rise to a good deal of conjecture. And yet a very little investigation

might have settled the matter. Prefixed to the translation are some

commendatory verses signed 'I. H.', in a marginal note to which we read:

'This Comedy was Translated long ago by M. _I. S._ and layd by, as also

was _Pastor Fido_, which was since Translated and set forth by Mr. Rich.

Fanshaw.' Another note,[241] to some verses to the reader, tells us that

both translations were made 'neer twenty years agone,' and, as we should

expect, the _Pastor fido_ first; and further, that the latter remained in

manuscript owing to the appearance of Fanshawe's version, which is spoken

of in terms of warm admiration. Now the only manuscript translation of

Guarini's play extant in English is that of Jonathan Sidnam, whose name

gives us the very initials which appear upon the title-page of the printed

play.[242] Since the preliminary verses may have been written any time

between 1647 and 1655, the vague allusion to the date of composition will

quite well fit 1630, the year given in the manuscript. When, furthermore,

we find J. S.'s work characterized by precisely the same use of short

lines as we noted above in the case of Sidnam's, the identification

becomes a practical certainty. The version, though, as the author was

himself aware, it will not stand comparison with Fanshawe's work, is not

without merit, and is perhaps as good as the rather tedious original

deserves. As a specimen we may take a passage in which the author

deliberately followed Tasso, Celia's narration of her adventure with the

centaur:

There, to a sturdy Oak, he bound me fast

And re-enforct his base inhumane bonds

With the then danglinst Tresses of my hair;

Ingrateful hair, ill-nurtur'd wicked Locks!

The cruel wretch then took up from the foot

Both my loose tender garments, and at once

Rent them from end to end: Imagine then

Whether my crimson red, through shame was chang'd

Into a pale wan tincture, yea or no.

I that was looking toward Heaven then,

And with my cries imploring ayd from thence,

Upon a suddain to the Earth let fall

My shamefac'd eyes, and shut them close, as if

Under mine eye-lids, I could cover all

My naked Members. (I. iii.)

Of the various unfounded conjectures as to the author of this version,

among which Shirley's name has of course not failed to appear, certainly

the most ingenious is that which has seen in it the work of Sir Edward

Sherburne. The suggestion appears to have been originally made by Coxeter,

on what grounds I do not know. 'There is no doubt of the authorship of

this play,' writes Professer Gollancz in his notes to Lamb's _Specimens_,

'"J. S." is certainly an error for "E. S." I have found in a MS. in the

British Museum Sir E. Sherburne's preface to this play.' Professer

Gollancz deserves credit for having unearthed the interesting document

referred to,[243] but an examination of it at once destroys his theory. It

is a preface 'To the Reader' intended for a translation of the _Filli_,

and another copy also is extant,[244] both being found among the papers of

Sir Edward Sherburne, though in neither does his name actually occur. In

the course of the preface the writer quotes 'the Censure of my sometime

highly valued, and most Ingenious friend S'r. John Denham, to whom (some

years before the happy Restauration of King Charles the 2^{d} being then

at Paris) I communicated Some Part of this my Translation. Who was not

only pleasd to encourage my undertaking, but gave me likewise this

Character of the Original. "I will not say It is a Better Poem then Pastor

Fido, but to speak my Mind freely, I think it a Better Drama."' From this

it is clear that the preface was penned after 1660, and we may furthermore

infer that the version was as yet unfinished when the writer was in Paris,

apparently at some time during the Commonwealth. It is therefore

impossible that the preface should be intended for a translation which was

printed in 1655, and which was then distinctly stated to have been

composed not later than 1635. Furthermore, I question whether either the

preface or the version mentioned therein were by Sherburne at all. There

is a translation extant in a British Museum manuscript[245] purporting to

be the work of Sir George Talbot, who is said to have been a friend of Sir

Edward's, into whose hands some of his papers may have come. The

translation is headed: 'Fillis of Scirus, a Pastorall Written in Italian,

by Count Guidubaldo de' Bonarelli, and Translated into English by S'r. G:

Talbot,' and there follows 'The Epistle Dedicatory To his sacred Ma'ty.

Charles 2'd. &c. prophetically written at Paris, an: 57.' The opening is

not wanting in grace:

The dawning light breaks forth; I heare, aloofe,

The whistling ayre, the Saints bell of the Heav'n,

Wherewith each morne it call's the drowsy Birds

To offer up theyre Hymnes to th' new-borne day.

But who ere saw, from night's dark bosome, spring

A morne soe fayre and beautifull? Observe

With what imperceptible hand, it steales

The starres from Heav'n, and deck's the earth with flow'rs:

Haile, lovely fields, your flow'rs in this array

Fournish a kind of star-light to the day.

Or take again Celia's encounter with the centaur. And in this connexion it

is worth while mentioning that, when revising his translation and

introducing a number of verbal changes, in most cases distinctly for the

better, Sir George appears to have been struck by the absurdity of this

machinery, and throughout replaced the centaur by a 'wild man.' After

telling how she was seized and carried to 'the middle of a desart wood,'

Celia proceeds:

There, to a sturdy oake, he bound me fast,

Doubling my bonds with knots of mine own hayre;

Ungratefull hayre, thou ill returnst my care.

The Tyrant then my mantle took in hand

And with one rash tore it from head to foote.

Consider whether shame my trembling pale

Did now convert into Vermillion: up

I cast my eyes to Heav'n, and with lowd cryes

Implor'd it's ayd; then lookt downe tow'rd the earth,

And phancy'd my dejected eyebrows hung

Like a chast mantle ore my naked limbs. (I. iii.)

A comparison of this and the preceding renderings with the original will

show that while Talbot's is by far the more fiowing and imaginative,

Sidnam's is on the whole rather more literal, except where he appears to

have misunderstood the original. No other English translation, I believe,

exists.