Lastly, as in the case of the _Pastor fido_, record has to be made of a

Latin version acted at Cambridge. It was the work of a Dr. Brooke of

Trinity[246], and purports to have been performed, no doubt at that

College, before Prince Charles and the Count Palatine, on March 30,

1612[247]. The title is 'Scyros, Fabula Pastoralis,' which has hitherto

prevented its being identified as a translation of Bonarelli's play, and

it is preserved in manuscripts at the University Library[248], Trinity and

Emmanuel. At the beginning is a note to the effect that in the place of

the prologue--Marino's _Notte_--was to be presented a triumph over the

death of the centaur. The cast is given, and includes three

undergraduates, five bachelors, and five masters.

III

After translation the next process in logical sequence is direct

imitation. Although it is true that the influence of Tasso and Guarini may

be traced either directly or indirectly in the great majority of the

English pastorals composed during the first half of the seventeenth

century, there are nevertheless two plays only in which that influence can

be regarded as completely paramount, and to which the term 'imitation' can

be with full justification applied. These are the two pastorals by Samuel

Daniel, historian and court-laureate, namely the _Queen's Arcadia_, 'A

Pastorall Trage-comedie presented to her Majestie and her Ladies, by the

Universitie of Oxford in Christs Church, in August last. 1605[249],' and

_Hymen's Triumph_, which formed part of the Queen's 'magnificent

intertainement of the Kings most excellent Majestie' on the occasion of

the marriage in 1614 of Robert Ker, Earl of Roxburgh, and Mistress Jean

Drummond, sister of the Earl of Perth[250].

The earlier of these pieces displays alike the greater dependence on

Italian models and the less intrinsic merit, whether from a poetic or

dramatic point of view. It is, indeed, in its apparent carelessness of the

most elementary necessities of dramatic construction, distinctly

retrograde as compared with these models themselves. In the first scene we

are introduced to two old Arcadians who hold long discourse concerning the

degeneracy of the age. The simple manners of earlier times are forsaken,

constant quarrels occur, faith is no longer untarnished nor modesty

secure. In the hope of probing to the root of the evil the two determine

to hide close at hand and so overhear the conversations of the younger

swains and shepherdesses. The fact is that Arcadia has recently been

invaded by a gang of rascally adventurers from Corinth and elsewhere:

Techne, 'a subtle wench,' who under pretence of introducing the latest

fashions of the towns corrupts the nymphs; Colax, whose courtier-airs find

an easy prey in the hearts of the country-wenches; Alcon, a quacksalver,

who introduces tobacco to ruin the constitutions of the shepherds; Lincus,

'a petty-fogger,' who breeds litigation among the simple folk; and lastly

Pistophanax, who seeks to undermine the worship of Pan. Colax has, it

appears, already abused the love of Daphne, and won that of Dorinda from

her swain Mirtillus; Techne has sown jealousy between the lovers Palaemon

and Silvia; while Lincus has set Montanus and Acrysius by the ears over

the possession of a bit of land. Ail the plotting is overheard by the two

concealed shepherds, who when the crisis is reached come forward, call

together the Arcadians, expose the machinations of the evil-doers, and

procure their banishment from the country. Such an automatic solution is

obviously incompatible with the smallest dramatic interest in the plot; it

is not a _dénoûment_ at all, properly speaking, but a severing of the

skein after Alexander's manner, and it is impossible to feel any emotion

at the tragic complications when all the while the sword lies ready for

the operation.

The main amorous action centres round Cloris, beloved of Amyntas and

Carinus, the latter of whom is in his turn loved by Amarillis. Carinus'

hopes are founded on the fact that, in imitation of Tasso's Aminta, he has

rescued Cloris from the hands of a satyr, while Amyntas bases his upon

certain signs of favour shown him. Colax, however, also falls in love with

the nymph, and induces Techne to give her tryst in a cave, where he may

then have an opportunity of finding her alone. Techne, hereupon, in the

hope of winning Amyntas' affection for herself if she can make him think

Cloris unworthy, directs him to the spot where she has promised to meet

the unsuspecting maiden. This is obviously borrowed from the _Pastor

fido_; indeed, Techne is none other than Corisca under a new name, and it

was no doubt she who suggested to Daniel the introduction of the other

agents of civilization. Amyntas, on seeing Cloris emerge from the cave in

company with Colax, at once concludes her guilt, and in spite of all

Techne's efforts to restrain him rushes off with the intention of putting

an end to his life. Techne, perceiving the ill-success of her plot, tells

Cloris of Amyntas' resolve. We here return to the imitation of Tasso:

Cloris, like that poet's Silvia, begins by pretending incredulity and

indifference, but being at length convinced agrees to accompany Techne in

search of the desperate swain. Daniel has produced what is little better

than a parody of the scene in his model. Not content with placing in the

girl's mouth the preposterous excuse:

If it be done my help will come too late,

And I may stay, and save that labour here, (IV. iv.[251])

he has spun out the dialogue, already over-long in the original, to an

altogether inordinate and ludicrous extent. When the pair at last come

upon the unhappy lover they find him lying insensible, a horn of poison by

him. The necessary sequel is reported by Mirtillus:

For we perceiv'd how Love and Modestie

With sev'rall Ensignes, strove within her cheekes

Which should be Lord that day, and charged hard

Upon each other, with their fresh supplies

Of different colours, that still came, and went,

And much disturb'd her, but at length dissolv'd

Into affection, downe she casts her selfe

Upon his senselesse body, where she saw

The mercy she had brought was come too late:

And to him calls: 'O deare Amyntas, speake,

Look on me, sweete Amyntas, it is I

That calles thee, I it is, that holds thee here,

Within those armes thou haste esteem'd so deare.' (V. ii.)

Amyntas' subsequent recovery is reported in the same strain. The reader

will remember the lines in which Tasso described a similar scene. And yet,

in spite of the identity of the situations and even of the close

similarity of the language, the tone and atmosphere of the two passages

are essentially different; for if Daniel's treatment of the scene, which

is typical of a good deal of his work, has the power to call a tear to the

eye of sensibility, his sentiment, divested as it is of the Italian's

subtle sensuousness, appears perfectly innocuous and at times not a little

ridiculous.

Cloris and Amyntas are now safe enough, and Carinus has the despised but

faithful Amarillis to console him. The other pairs of lovers need not

detain us further than to note that their adventures are equally borrowed

from Tasso and Guarini. Silvia relates how, wounded by her 'cruelty,'

Palaemon sought to imitate Aminta by throwing himself from a cliff, but

was prevented by her timely relenting. Amarillis fondles Carinus's dog,

and is roughly upbraided by its master in the same manner as her prototype

Dorinda in the _Pastor fido_.

Amid much that is commonplace in the verse occur not a few graceful

passages, while Daniel is at times rather happy in the introduction of

certain sententious utterances in keeping with the conventionality of the

pastoral form. Thus a caustic swain remarks of a girl's gift:

Poore withred favours, they might teach thee know,

That shee esteemes thee, and thy love as light

As those dead flowers, shee wore but for a show,

The day before, and cast away at night;

and to a lover:

When such as you, poore, credulous, devout,

And humble soules, make all things miracles

Your faith conceives, and vainely doe convert

All shadowes to the figure of your hopes. (I. ii.)

Colax is a subtle connoisseur in love:

Some thing there is peculiar and alone

To every beauty that doth give an edge

To our desires, and more we still conceive

In that we have not, then in that we have.

And I have heard abroad where best experience

And wit is learnd, that all the fairest choyce

Of woemen in the world serve but to make

One perfect beauty, whereof each brings part. (I. iii.)

The historical importance of the _Queen's Arcadia_, as the first play to

exhibit on the English stage the direct and unequivocal influence of the

Italian pastoral drama, is evident to the critic in retrospect, and it is

not impossible that it may have lent some extraneous interest to the

performance even in the eyes of contemporaries; but the zest of the play

for a court audience in the early years of the reign of James I was very

possibly the satirical element. The shadowy fiction of Arcadia and its age

of gold quickly vanished when the actual or fancied evils of the day were

exposed to the lash. The abuse of the practice of taking tobacco flattered

the prejudices of the king; the quack and the dishonest lawyer were stock

butts of contemporary satire; Colax and Techne, the he and she

coney-catchers, have maintained their fascination for all ages.

Pistophanax, the disseminator of false doctrine, who had actually presumed

to reason with the priests concerning the mysteries of Pan, was perhaps

the favourite object of contemporary invective. The term 'atheist' covered

a multitude of sins. This character appears in the final scene only, and

even there he is a mute but for one speech. He is indeed treated in a

somewhat different manner from the other subjects of satire in the play.

Thus the discovery that he is wearing a mask to hide the natural ugliness

of his features passes altogether the bounds of dramatic satire, and

carries us back to the allegorical manner of the middle ages. Apart from

these figures, who bear upon them the form and pressure of the time, and

who are, it must be remembered, the main-spring of the action, there is

little of note to fix the attention in this first fruit of the Arcadian

spirit in the English drama.

In every way superior to its predecessor is the second venture in the kind

made by Daniel after an interval of nearly a decade. Instead of being a

patchwork of motives and situations borrowed from the Italian, and pieced

together with more or less ingenuity, _Hymen's Triumph_ is as a whole an

original composition. The play is preceded by a prologue in which Daniel

departs from his models in employing the dialogue form, the speakers being

Hymen, Avarice, Envy, and Jealousy[252]. In the opening scene we find

Thirsis lamenting the loss of his love Silvia, who is supposed to have

been devoured by wild beasts while wandering alone upon the shore--we are

once again on the sea-board of Arcadia--her rent veil and a lock of her

hair being all that remains to her disconsolate lover. Their vows had been

in secret owing to the match proposed by Silvia's father between her and

Alexis, the son of a wealthy neighbour[253]. In reality she has been

seized by pirates[254] and carried off to Alexandria, where she has lived

as a slave in boy's attire for some two years. Recently an opportunity for

escape having presented itself, she has returned, still disguised, to her

native country, where she has entered the service of the shepherdess

Cloris, waiting till the approaching marriage of Alexis with another nymph

shall have made impossible the renewal of her father's former schemes.

Complications now arise, for it appears that Cloris has fallen in love

with Thirsis, but fears ill success in her suit, supposing him in his turn

to be pining for the love of Amarillis. She employs the supposed boy to

move her suit to Thirsis, and Silvia goes on her errand to court her lover

for her mistress, fearing to find him already faithless to his love for

her[255]. On her mission she is waylaid by the nymph Phillis, who has

fallen in love with her in her male attire, careless of the love borne her

by the honest but rude forester Montanus. The varying fortune of Silvia's

suit on behalf of Cloris, Thirsis' faith to the memory of Silvia,

Montanus' jealousy, and Phillis' shame when she finds her proffered love

rejected by the boy for whom she has sacrificed her modesty, are presented

in a series of scenes and discourses which do not materially advance the

business in hand. Towards the end of the fourth act, however, we approach

the climax, and matters begin to move. Alexis' marriage being now

imminent, Silvia thinks she can venture at least to give her lover some

spark of hope by narrating her story under fictitious names. This she

does, making use of the transparent anagrams Isulia and Sirthis[256]. As

Silvia ends her tale Montanus rushes in, determined to be revenged for the

favour shown by his mistress to the supposed youth. He stabs Silvia, and

carries off the garland she is wearing, believing it to be one woven by

the hand of Phillis. This naturally leads to the discovery of Silvia's sex

and identity, and supposing her dead, Thirsis falls in a swoon at her

side. The last act is, as usual, little more than an epilogue, in which we

are entertained with a long account of the recovery of the faithful

lovers, thanks to the care of the wise Lamia, an elaborate passage again

modelled on Tasso, but again falling far short of the poetical beauty of

the original.

Taken as a whole, and partly through being unencumbered with the satyric

machinery of the _Queen's Arcadia, Hymen's Triumph_ is a distinctly

lighter and more pleasing composition. At least so it appears by

comparison, for Daniel everywhere takes himself and his subject with a

distressing seriousness wholly unsuited to the style; we look in vain for

a gleam of humour such as that which in the final chorus of the _Aminta_

casts a reflex light over the whole play[257]. Again an advance may be

observed, not only in the conduct of the plot, which moves artistically on

an altogether different level, and even succeeds in arousing some dramatic

interest, but likewise in the verse, which has a freer movement, and is on

the whole less marred by the over-emphatic repetition of words and phrases

in consecutive lines, a particularly irritating trick of the author's

pastoral style, or by the monotonous cadence and painful padding of the

blank verse. Daniel was emphatically one of those poets, neither few nor

inconsiderable, the natural nervelessness of whose poetic diction

imperatively demands the bracing restraint of rime. It is noteworthy that

this applies to his verse alone; such a work as the famous _Defence of

Rime_ serves to place him once for all among the greatest masters of 'the

other harmony of prose.'

_Hymen's Triumph_ contains many more passages of notable merit than its

predecessor. There is, indeed, one passage in the _Queen's Arcadia_ which

will bear comparison with anything Daniel ever wrote, but it stands in

somewhat striking contrast with its surroundings. This is the opening of

the speech in which Melibaeus addresses the assembled Arcadians, and well

deserves quotation.

You gentle Shepheards and Inhabitors

Of these remote and solitary parts

Of Mountaynous Arcadia, shut up here

Within these Rockes, these unfrequented Clifts,

The walles and bulwarkes of our libertie,

From out the noyse of tumult, and the throng

Of sweating toyle, ratling concurrencie,

And have continued still the same and one

In all successions from antiquitie;

Whil'st all the states on earth besides have made

A thousand revolutions, and have rowl'd

From change to change, and never yet found rest,

Nor ever bettered their estates by change;

You I invoke this day in generall,

To doe a worke that now concernes us all,

Lest that we leave not to posteritie,

Th' Arcadia that we found continued thus

By our fore-fathers care who left it us. (V. iii.)

Such passages are more frequent in _Hymen's Triumph_. Take the description

of the early love of Thirsis and Silvia, instinct with a delicacy and

freshness that even Tasso might have envied[258]:

Then would we kisse, then sigh, then looke, and thus

In that first garden of our simplenesse

We spent our child-hood; but when yeeres began

To reape the fruite of knowledge, ah, how then

Would she with graver looks, with sweet stern brow,

Check my presumption and my forwardnes;

Yet still would give me flowers, stil would me shew

What she would have me, yet not have me, know. (I. i.)

Thirsis, who is the typical 'constant lover' of pastoral convention, and

does

Hold it to be a most heroicke thing

To act one man, and do that part exact,

thus addresses his friend Palaemon in defence of love:

Ah, know that when you mention love, you name

A sacred mistery, a Deity,

Not understood of creatures built of mudde,

But of the purest and refined clay

Whereto th' eternall fires their spirits convey.

And for a woman, which you prize so low,

Like men that doe forget whence they are men,

Know her to be th' especiall creature, made

By the Creator as the complement

Of this great Architect[259] the world, to hold

The same together, which would otherwise

Fall all asunder; and is natures chiefe

Vicegerent upon earth, supplies her state.

And doe you hold it weakenesse then to love,

And love so excellent a miracle

As is a worthy woman? (III. iv.)

The sententious passages, the occurrence of which we previously noted in

the _Queen's Arcadia_, likewise appear. Thus of dreams:

Alas, Medorus, dreames are vapours, which,

Ingendred with day thoughts, fall in the night,

And vanish with the morning;[260] (III. ii.)

and of thoughts:

They are the smallest peeces of the minde

That passe this narrow organ of the voyce;

The great remaine behinde in that vast orbe

Of th' apprehension, and are never borne. (III. iv.)

At times these utterances even possess a dramatic value, as where,

bending over the seemingly lifeless form of his beloved Silvia, Thirsis

exclaims:

And sure the gods but onely sent thee thus

To fetch me, and to take me hence with thee. (IV. v.)

The two plays we have been considering are after all very much what we

should expect from their author. A poet of considerable taste, of great

sweetness and some real feeling, but deficient in passion, in power of

conception and strength of execution, writing for the court in the

recognized rôle of court-laureate, and unexposed to the bracing influence

of a really critical audience--such is Samuel Daniel as seen in his

experiments in the pastoral drama. We learn from his commendatory sonnet

on the 'Dymocke' _Pastor fido_ that he had known Guarini personally in

Italy, an accident which supplies an interesting link between the dramas

of the two countries, and might suggest a specific incentive to the

composition of his pastorals, were any such needed. So far, however, from

that being the case, the only wonder is that the adventure was not made at

an earlier date, a problem the most promising explanation of which may

perhaps be sought in the rather conservative taste of the officiai court

circle, which tended to lag behind in the general advance during the

closing years of Elizabeth's reign. With the accession of James new life

as well as a new spirit entered the court, and is quickly found reflected

in the literary fashions in vogue. It was in 1605 that Jonson wrote in

_Volpone_:

Here's Pastor Fido ...

... All our English writers,

I meane such, as are happy in th' Italian,

Will deigne to steale out of this author, mainely;

Almost as much, as from Montagnie:

He has so moderne, and facile a veine,

Fitting the time, and catching the court-eare. (1616, III. iv.)

On the whole, perhaps, Daniel's merits as a pastoral writer have been

exaggerated. His dependence on Italian models, particularly in his earlier

play, is close, both as regards incidents and style; while he usually

lacks their felicity. His claims as an original dramatist will not stand

examination in view of the concealed shepherds in the _Queen's Arcadia,_

of his careful avoidance of scenes of strong dramatic emotion--a point in

which he of course followed his models, while lacking their mastery of

narrative as compensation--and of his failure to do justice to such scenes

when forced upon him.[261] If the atmosphere of certain scenes is purer

than is the case with his models, it is in large measure due to his

failure to master the style; if his conception of virtue is more

wholesome, his picture of it is at times marred by exaggeration, while his

sentiment for innocence is of a watery kind, and occasionally a little

tawdry. His pathos, as is the case with all weak writers, constantly

trembles on the verge of bathos, while his lack of humour betrays him into

penning passages of elaborate fatuity. His style is formal and often

stilted, his verse often monotonous and at times heavy.[262] On the other

hand Daniel possesses qualities of no vulgar kind, though some, it is

true, may be said to be rather the _qualités de ses défauts_. The verse is

at least smooth; it is courtly and scholarly, and sometimes graceful; the

language is pure and refined, and habitually simple. The sentiment, if at

times finicking, is always that of a gentleman and a courtier. Moreover,

in reckoning his qualifications as a dramatist, we must not forget to

credit him with the plot of _Hymen's Triumph_, which is on the whole

original, and is happily conceived, firmly constructed, and executed with

considerable ability.

With Daniel begins and ends in English literature the dominant influence

of the Italian pastoral drama. No doubt the imitation of Tasso and Guarini

is an important element in the subsequent history of pastoralism in this

country, and to trace and define that influence will be not the least

important task of the ensuing chapters. No doubt it supplied the incentive

that induced a man like Fletcher to bid for a hopeless success in such a

play as the _Faithful Shepherdess_, and placed a heavy debt to the account

of Thomas Randolph when he composed his _Amyntas_. But in these cases, as

in others, wherever the author availed himself of the tradition imported

from the Ferrarese court, he approached it as it were from without,

seeking to rival, to acclimatize, rather than to reproduce. Nowhere else

do we find the tone and atmosphere, the structure, situations, and

characters imitated with that fidelity, or attempt at fidelity, which

makes Daniel's plays almost indistinguishable, except for language, from

much of the work of the later Italians.[263] To minimize with many critics

Daniel's dependence on his models, or to emphasize with some that of

Fletcher, is, it seems to me, wholly to misapprehend the positions they

occupy in the history of literature, and to obscure the actual development

of the pastoral ideal in this country.

Chapter V.

The Three Masterpieces

I

Among English pastorals there are two plays, and two only, that can be

said to stand in the front rank of the romantic drama as a whole. The

first of these is, of course, Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_. In the

case of the second the statement would perhaps be more correctly put in

the conditional mood, for whatever might have been its importance had it

reached completion, the fragmentary state of Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_ has

prevented its taking the place it deserves in the history of dramatic

literature. With these two productions may for the purposes of criticism

be classed Thomas Randolph's _Amyntas_, which, however inferior to the

others in poetic merit, yet like them stands apart in certain matters of

intention and origin from the general run of pastorals, and may, moreover,

well support a claim to be considered one of the three chief English

examples of the kind.

These three plays embrace a period of some thirty years, before, during,

and after which a considerable number of dramatic productions, more or

less pastoral in character, appeared. The chief feature in which the three

plays we are about to consider are distinguished from these is a certain

direct and conscious, though in no case subservient, relation they bear to

the drama of the Italians; while at the same time we are struck with the

absence of any influence of subsidiary or semi-pastoral tradition, of the

mythological drama, or the courtly-chivalric romance. We shall therefore

gain more by considering them in connexion with each other than we shall

lose by abandoning strict chronological sequence.

When Fletcher's play was produced, probably in the winter of 1608-9, it

proved a complete failure.[264] An edition appeared without date, but

before May, 1610, to which were prefixed verses by Field, Beaumont,

Chapman, and Jonson. If, as some have supposed, the last named already had

at the time a pastoral play of his own in contemplation, the reception

accorded to his friend's venture can hardly have been encouraging, and may

have led to the postponement of the plan; as we shall see, there is no

reason to believe that the _Sad Shepherd_ was taken in hand for another

quarter of a century almost. The _Faithful Shepherdess_ was revived long

after Fletcher's death, at a court performance in 1633-4, and shone by

comparison with Montagu's _Shepherds Paradise_ acted the year before. It

was then again placed on the public boards at the Blackfriars, where it

met with some measure of success.

The _Faithful Shepherdess_ was the earliest, and long remained the only,

deliberate attempt to acclimatize upon the popular stage in England a

pastoral drama which should occupy a position corresponding to that of

Tasso and Guarini in Italy. It was no crude attempt at transplantation, no

mere imitation of definite models, as was the case with Daniel's work, but

a deliberate act of creative genius inspired by an ambitious rivalry. Its

author might be supposed well fitted for his task. Although it was one of

his earliest, if not actually his very earliest work, it is clear that he

must have already possessed an adequate and practical knowledge of

stagecraft, and have been familiar with the temper of London audiences. He

further possessed poetical powers of no mean order, in particular a

lyrical gift almost unsurpassed among his fellows for grace and sweetness,

howbeit somewhat lacking in the qualities of refinement and power. That

he should have failed so signally is a fact worth attention. For fail he

did. His friends, it is true, endeavoured as usual to explain the fiasco

of the first performance by the ignorance and incompetence of the

spectators, but we shall, I think, see reason to come ourselves to a

scarcely less unfavourable conclusion. Nor is this failure to be explained

by the inherent disadvantage at which the sentimental and lyrical pastoral

stood when brought face to face with the wider and stronger interest of

the romantic drama. Such considerations may to some extent account for the

attitude of the contemporary audience; they cannot be supposed seriously

to affect the critical verdict of posterity. We must trust to analysis to

show wherein lay the weakness of the piece; later we may be able to

suggest some cause for Fletcher's failure.

In the first place we may consider for a moment Fletcher's indebtedness to

Tasso and Guarini, a question on which very different views have been

held. As to the source of his inspiration, there can be no reasonable

doubt, though it has been observed with truth by more than one critic,

that the _Faithful Shepherdess_ may more properly be regarded as written

in rivalry, than in imitation, of the Italians. In any case, but for the

_Aminta_ and _Pastor fido_, the _Faithful Shepherdess_ would never have

come into being; as a type it reveals neither original invention nor

literary evolution, but is a conscious attempt to adapt the Italian

pastoral to the requirements of the English stage. As an individual piece,

on the other hand, it is for the most part original and independent,

little direct influence of the Italians being traceable in the plot,

whether in general construction or in single incidents and characters. A

certain resemblance has indeed been discovered between Guarini's Corisca

and Fletcher's Cloe, but the fact chiefly shows the superficiality of the

comparison upon which critics have relied, since if Corisca suggested some

traits of Cloe, she may be held responsible for far more of Amarillis.

Where Guarini depicted a courtesan, Fletcher has painted a yahoo. Corisca,

wanton and cynical, plays, like Amarillis, the part of mischief-maker and

deceiver, and, so far from seeking, like her successfully eludes the

embraces of the shepherd-satyr. On the other hand, a clear difference

between Fletcher's work and that of the Italians may be seen in the

respective use made of supernatural agencies. From these the southern

drama is comparatively free. A somewhat ultra-medicinal power of herbs,

the introduction of an oracle in the preliminary history and of a wholly

superfluous seer in the _dénoûment_ make up the whole sum so far as the

_Pastor fido_ is concerned, while the _Aminta_ cannot even show as much as

this. In the _Faithful Shepherdess_ we find not only the potent herbs,

holy water, and magic taper of Clorin's bower, but the wonder-working well

and the actual presence of the river-god, who rises, not to pay courtly

compliments in the prologue, but to take an actual part in the plot[265].

Alike in its positive and negative aspects Fletcher's relation to the

Italian masters was conscious and acknowledged. Far from feigning

ignorance, he boldly challenged comparison with his predecessors by

imitating the very title of Guarini's play, or yet closer, had he known

it, that of Contarini's _Fida ninfa_[266].

A glance at the dramatis personae reveals a curious artificial symmetry

which, as we shall shortly see, is significant of the spirit in which

Fletcher approached the composition of his play. In Clorin we have a nymph

vowed to perpetual virginity, an anchorite at the tomb of her dead lover;

in Thenot a worshipper of her constancy, whose love she cures by feigning

a return. In Perigot and Amoret are represented a pair of ideal lovers--so

Fletcher gives us to understand--in whose chaste bosoms dwell no looser

flames. Amarillis is genuinely enamoured of Perigot, with a love that bids

modesty farewell, and will dare even crime and dishonour for its

attainment; Cloe, as already said, is a study in erotic pathology. She is

the female counterpart of the Sullen Shepherd, who inherits the

traditional nature of the satyr, that monster having been transformed into

the gentle minister of the cloistral Clorin. So, again, the character of

Amarillis finds its counterpart in that of Alexis, whose love for Cloe is

at least human; while Daphnis, who meets Cloe's desperate advances with a

shy innocence, is in effect, whatever he may have been in intention,

hardly other than a comic character. The river-god and the satyr, the

priest of Pan and his attendant Old Shepherd, who themselves stand outside

the circle of amorous intrigue, complete the list of personae.

The action which centres round these characters cannot be regarded as

forming a plot in any strict sense of the term, though Fletcher has reaped

a little praise here and there for his construction of one. It is hardly

too much to say that the various complications arise and are solved,

leaving the situation at the end precisely as it was at the beginning.

Even so may the mailed figures in some ancestral hall start into life at

the stroke of midnight, and hold high revel with the fair dames and

damsels from out the gilt frames upon the walls, content to range

themselves once more and pose in their former attitudes as soon as the

first grey light of morning shimmers through the mullioned windows.

Perigot and Amoret come through the trials of the night with their love

unshaken, but apparently no nearer its fulfilment; Thenot's love for

Clorin is cured for the moment, but is in danger of breaking out anew when

he shall discover that she is after all constant to her vow; Cloe recovers

from her amorous possession; the vagrant desires of Amarillis and Alexis

are dispelled by the 'sage precepts' of the priest and Clorin; Daphnis'

innocence is seemingly unstained by the hours he has spent with Cloe in

the hollow tree; while the Sullen Shepherd, unregenerate and defiant, is

banished the confines of pastoral Thessaly. What we have witnessed was no

more than the comedy of errors of a midsummer night.

The play, nevertheless, possesses merits which it would be unfair to

neglect. Narrative is, in the first place, entirely dispensed with in

favour of actual representation, though the result, it must be admitted,

is somewhat kaleidoscopic. Next, the action is complete within itself, and

needs no previous history to explain it; no slight advantage for stage

representation. As a result the interest is kept constantly whetted, the

movement is brisk and varied, and with the help of the verse goes far

towards carrying off the many imperfections of the piece.

It will have been already noticed that the characters fall into certain

distinct groups which may be regarded as exemplifying certain aspects of

love. Supersensuous sentiment, chaste and honourable regard, too

colourless almost to deserve the name of love, natural and unrestrained

desire, and violent lust, all these are clearly typified. What we fail to

find is the presentment of a love which shall reveal men and women neither

as beasts of instinct nor as carved figures of alabaster fit only to adorn

a tomb. This typical nature of the characters has given rise to a theory

recently propounded that the play should be regarded as an allegory

illustrative of certain aspects of love[267]. So regarded much of the

absurdity, alike of the characters and of the action, is said to

disappear. This may be so, but does it really mean anything more than that

abstractions not being in fact possessed of character at all, and being as

ideals unfettered by any demands of probability, absurdities pass

unnoticed in their case which at the touchstone of actuality at once start

into glaring prominence? Moreover, though the _Faithful Shepherdess_ was

among the first fruits of its author's genius, and though it may be

contended that he never gained a complete mastery over the difficult art

of dramatic construction, Fletcher early proved his familiarity with the

popular demands of the romantic stage, and was far too practical a

craftsman to be likely to add the dead-weight of a moral allegory to the

already dangerous form of the Arcadian pastoral. The theory does not in

reality bring the problem presented by Fletcher's play any nearer

solution; since, if the characters are regarded solely as representing

abstract ideas, such as chastity, desire, lust, they strip themselves of

every shred of dramatic interest, and could not, as Fletcher must have

known, stand the least chance upon the stage; while if they take to cover

their nakedness however diaphanous a veil of dramatic personality, the

absurdities of character and plot at once become apparent.

What truth there may be underlying this theory will, I think, be best

explained upon a different hypothesis. Let us in the first place

endeavour, so far as may be possible after the lapse of nearly three

centuries, to realize the mental attitude of the author in approaching the

composition of his play. In order to do this a closer analysis of the

piece will be necessary.

The first point of importance for the interpretation of Fletcher's

pastoralism is to be found in the quaintly self-confident preface which he

prefixed to the printed edition. Throughout our inquiry we have observed

two main types of pastoral, to one or other of which all work in this kind

approaches; that, namely, in which the interest depends upon some

allegorical or topical meaning lying beneath and beyond the apparent form,

and that in which it is confined to the actual and obvious presentment

itself. Of the former type Drayton wrote in the preface to his Pastorals:

'The subject of Pastorals, as the language of it, ought to be poor, silly,

and of the coursest Woofe in appearance. Neverthelesse, the most High and

most Noble Matters of the World may bee shaddowed in them, and for

certaine sometimes are[268]. In his preface to the _Faithful Shepherdess_

the author adopts the opposite position, as Daniel, in the prologue to the

_Queen's Arcadia_, and in spite of the strongly topical nature of that

piece, had done before him. Fletcher in an often-quoted passage writes:

'Understand, therefore, a pastoral to be a representation of shepherds and

shepherdesses with their actions and passions, which must be such as may

agree with their natures, at least not exceeding former fictions and

vulgar traditions; they are not to be adorned with any art, but such

improper [i.e. common] ones as nature is said to bestow, as singing and

poetry; or such as experience may teach them, as the virtues of herbs and

fountains, the ordinary course of the sun, moon, and stars, and such

like.' His interest would, then, appear to lie in a more or less realistic

representation, and he appears more concerned to enforce a reasonable

propriety of character than to discover deep matters of philosophy and

state. This passage alone would, therefore, make the theory we glanced at

above improbable. Fletcher next proceeds, in a passage of some interest in

the history of criticism: 'A tragi-comedy is not so called in respect of

mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make

it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no

comedy, which must be a representation of familiar people, with such kind

of trouble as no life be questioned; so that a god is as lawful in this as

in a tragedy, and mean people as in a comedy.' One would hardly have

supposed it necessary to define tragi-comedy to the English public in

1610, and even had it been necessary, this could hardly be accepted as a

very satisfactory definition. The audience, 'having ever had a singular

gift in defining,' as the author sarcastically remarks, concluded a

pastoral tragi-comedy 'to be a play of country hired shepherds in gray

cloaks, with curtailed dogs in strings, sometimes laughing together, and

sometimes killing one another'; and after all, so far as tragi-comedy is

concerned, their belief was not unreasonable. Fletcher's definition is

obviously borrowed from the academic criticism of the renaissance, and

bears no relation to the living tradition of the English stage: since his

play suggests acquaintance with Guarini's _Pastor fido_, it is perhaps not

fantastic to imagine that in his preface he was indebted to the same

author's _Compendio della poesia tragicomica_. What is important to note

is Fletcher's concern at this point with critical theory.

Without seeking to dogmatize as to the exact extent of Fletcher's debt to

individual Italian sources, it may safely be maintained that he was

familiar with the writings of the masters of pastoral, and worked with his

eyes open: whatever modifications he introduced into traditional

characters were the result of deliberate intention. In general, two types

of love may be traced in the Italian pastoral, namely the honest human

desire of such characters as Mirtillo and Amarillis, Dorinda, Aminta, and

the more or less close approach to mere sensuality found in Corisca and

the satyrs. We nowhere find any approach to supersensuous passion,

indifferent to its own consummation; Silvia and Silvio are either entirely

careless, or else touched with a genuine human love. Nor are the more

tumultuous sides of human passion represented, for it is impossible so to

regard Corisca's love for Mirtillo, which is at bottom nothing but the

cynical caprice of the courtesan, who regards her lovers merely as so many

changes of garment--

Molti averne, uno goderne, e cangiar spesso.

Fletcher appears to have thought that success might lie in extending and

refining upon the gamut of love. He possessed, when he set to work, no

plot ready to hand capable of determining his characters, but appears to

have selected what he considered a suitable variety of types to fill a

pastoral stage, not because he desired to be in any way allegorical, but

because in such a case it was the abstract relationship among the

characters which alone could determine his choice. Having selected his

characters, he further seems to have left them free to evolve a plot for

themselves, a thing they signally failed to do. Thus there may be a

certain truth underlying the theory with which we started, inasmuch as the

characters appear to have been chosen, not for any particular dramatic

business, but for certain abstract qualities, and some trace of their

origin may yet cling about them in the accomplished work; but that

Fletcher deliberately intended to illustrate a set of psychological

conditions, not by dramatic presentation, but by the use of types and

abstractions, is to my mind incredible. In the composition of his later

plays he had the necessities of a given plot, incidents, or other

fashioning cause, to determine the characters which it was in its turn to

illustrate, and here he showed resourceful craftsmanship. In the case of

the present play he had to fashion characters _in vacuo_ and then weave

them into such a plot as they might be capable of sustaining. In other

words, he reversed the formai order of artistic creation, and attempted to

make the abstract generate the concrete, instead of making the individual

example imply, while being informed by, the fundamental idea.

So much for the formal and theoretic side of the question. A few words as

to the general tone and purpose of the play. For some reason unexplained,

having selected his characters, which one may almost say exhibit every

form of love except a wholesome and a human one, the author deemed it

necessary that the whole should redound to the praise and credit of

cloistral virginity and glozing 'honour,' and whatever else of unreal

sentiment the cynicism of the renaissance had grafted on the superstition

of the middle age. Again comparing the _Faithful Shepherdess_ with

Fletcher's other work, we find that when he is dealing with actual men and

women in his romantic plays he troubles himself little concerning the

moral which it may be possible to extract from his plot; he is rightly

conscious that that at all events is not the business of art: but when he

comes to create _in vacuo_ he is at once obsessed by some Platonic theory

regarding the ethical aim of the poet. The victory, therefore, shall be

with the powers of good, purity and vestal maidenhood shall triumph and

undergo apotheosis at his hands, the world shall see how fair a monument

of stainless womanhood he can erect in melodious verse. Well and good; for

this is indeed an object to which no self-respecting person can take

exception. There was, however, one point the importance of which the

author failed to realize, namely, that this ideal which he sought to

honour was one with which he was himself wholly out of sympathy.

Consequently, in place of the supreme picture of womanly purity he

intended, he produced what is no better than a grotesque caricature. His

cynical indifference is not only evident from many of his other works, but

constantly forces itself upon our attention even in the present play. The

falsity of his whole position appears in the unconvincing conventionality

of the patterns of chastity themselves, and in the unreality of the

characters which serve them as foils--Cloe being utterly preposterous

except as a study in pathlogy, and Amarillis essentially a tragic figure

who can only be tolerated on condition of her real character being

carefully veiled. It appears again in the utterly irrational conversion

and purification of these characters, and we may further face it in the

profound cynicism, all the more terrible because apparently unconscious,

with which the author is content to dismiss Thenot, cured of his

altruistic devotion by the shattering at one blow of all that he held most

sacred in woman.

In this antagonism between Fletcher's own sympathies and the ideal he set

before him seems to me to lie the key to the enigma of his play. Only one

other rational solution is possible, namely that he intended the whole as

an elaborate satire on all ideas of chastity whatever. It is hardly

surprising, under the circumstances, that one of the most persistent false

notes in the piece is that indelicacy of self-conscious virtue which we

have before observed in the case of Tasso. If on the other hand we have to

pronounce Fletcher free of any taint of seductive sentiment, we must

nevertheless charge him with a considerable increase in that cynicism with

regard to womankind in general which had by now become characteristic of

the pastoral drama. We have already noticed it in the case of Tasso's 'Or,

non sai tu com' è fatta la donna?' and of the words in which Corisca

describes her changes of lovers, to say nothing of its appearance at the

close of the _Orfeo_. In English poetry we find Daniel writing:

Light are their waving vailes, light their attires,

Light are their heads, and lighter their desires;

(_Queen's Arcadia_, II. iii.)

while with Fletcher the charge becomes yet more bitter. Thenot,

contemplating the constancy of Clorin, is amazed

that such virtue can

Be resident in lesser than a man, (II. ii. 83,)

or that any should be found capable of mastering the suggestions of

caprice

And that great god of women, appetite. (ib. 146.)

Amarillis, courting Perigot, asks in scorn:

Still think'st thou such a thing as chastity

Is amongst women? (III. i. 297.)

The Sullen Shepherd declares of the wounded Amoret:

Thou wert not meant,

Sure, for a woman, thou art so innocent; (ib. 358.)

and sums up his opinion of the sex in the words:

Women love only opportunity

And not the man. (ib. 127.)

So Fletcher wrote, and in the same mood the arch-cynic of a later age

exclaimed:

ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake!

But it is high time to inquire how it is, supposing the objections we have

been considering to be justly chargeable against the _Faithful

Shepherdess_, that it should ever have come to be regarded as a classic of

the language, that it should be by far the most widely known of its

author's works, and that we should find ourselves turning to it again and

again with ever-fresh delight. The reader has doubtless already answered

the question. Fletcher brought to the composition of his play a gift of

easy lyric versification, a command of varied rhythm, and a felicity of

phrase, allusion, recollection, and echo, such as have seldom been

surpassed. The wealth of pure poetry overflowing in every scene is of

power to make us readily forget the host of objections which serious

criticism must raise, and revel with mere delight in the verbal melody.

The play is literally crowded with incidental sketches of exquisite beauty

which suggest comparison with the more set descriptions of Tasso, and

flash past on the speed of the verse as the flowers of the roadside and

glimpses of the distant landscape through breaks in the hedge flash for

an instant on the gaze of the rider[269].

Before passing on, and in spite of the fact that the play must be familiar

to most readers, I here transcribe a few of its most fascinating passages

as the best defence Fletcher has to oppose to the objections of his

critics. It is in truth no lame one[270].

In the opening scene Clorin, who has vowed herself to a life of chastity

at the grave of her lover, is met by the satyr, who at once bows in

worship of her beauty. He has been sent by Pan to fetch fruits for the

entertainment of 'His paramour the Syrinx bright.' 'But behold a fairer

sight!' he exclaims on seeing Clorin:

By that heavenly form of thine,

Brightest fair, thou art divine,

Sprung from great immortal race

Of the gods, for in thy face

Shines more awful majesty

Than dull weak mortality

Dare with misty eyes behold

And live. Therefore on this mould

Lowly do I bend my knee

In worship of thy deity.[271] (I. i. 58.)

The next scene takes place in the neighbourhood of the village. At the

conclusion of a festival we find the priest pronouncing blessing upon the

assembled people and purging them with holy water[272], after which they

disperse with a song. As they are going, Perigot stays Amoret, begging

her to lend an ear to his suit. He addresses her:

Oh you are fairer far

Than the chaste blushing morn, or that fair star

That guides the wandering seaman through the deep,

Straighter than straightest pine upon the steep

Head of an agèd mountain, and more white

Than the new milk we strip before day-light

From the full-freighted bags of our fair flocks,

Your hair more beauteous than those hanging locks

Of young Apollo! (I. ii. 60.)

They agree to meet by night in the neighbouring wood, there to bind their

love with mutual vows. The tryst is set where

to that holy wood is consecrate

A virtuous well, about whose flowery banks

The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds

By the pale moonshine, dipping oftentimes

Their stolen children, so to make them free

From dying flesh and dull mortality.

By this fair fount hath many a shepherd sworn,

And given away his freedom, many a troth

Been plight, which neither envy nor old time

Could ever break, with many a chaste kiss given

In hope of coming happiness.

By this fresh fountain many a blushing maid

Hath crown'd the head of her long-lovèd shepherd

With gaudy flowers, whilst he happy sung

Lays of his love and dear captivity. (I. ii. 99.)

Cloe, repulsed by Thenot, sings her roguishly wanton carol:

Come, shepherds, come!

Come away

Without delay,

Whilst the gentle time doth stay.

Green woods are dumb,

And will never tell to any

Those dear kisses, and those many

Sweet embraces, that are given;

Dainty pleasures, that would even

Raise in coldest age a fire

And give virgin blood desire

Then if ever,

Now or never,

Come and have it;

Think not I

Dare deny

If you crave it. (I. iii. 71.)

Her fortune with the modest Daphnis is scarcely better, and she is just

lamenting the coldness of men when Alexis enters and forthwith accosts her

with his fervent suit. She agrees, with a pretty show of yielding modesty:

lend me all thy red,

Thou shame-fac'd Morning, when from Tithon's bed

Thou risest ever maiden! (ib. 176.)

The second act opens with the exquisite evensong of the priest:

Shepherds all and maidens fair,

Fold your flocks up, for the air

'Gins to thicken, and the sun

Already his great course hath run.

See the dew-drops how they kiss

Every little flower that is,

Hanging on their velvet heads

Like a rope of crystal beads;

See the heavy clouds low falling,

And bright Hesperus down calling

The dead night from under ground,

At whose rising mists unsound,

Damps and vapours fly apace,

Hovering o'er the wanton face

Of these pastures, where they come

Striking dead both bud and bloom. (II. i. 1.)

In the following scene Thenot declares to Clorin his singular passion,

founded upon admiration of her constancy to her dead lover. He too can

plead his love in verse of no ordinary strain:

'Tis not the white or red

Inhabits in your cheek that thus can wed

My mind to adoration, nor your eye,

Though it be full and fair, your forehead high

And smooth as Pelops' shoulder; not the smile

Lies watching in those dimples to beguile

The easy soul, your hands and fingers long

With veins enamell'd richly, nor your tongue,

Though it spoke sweeter than Arion's harp;

Your hair woven in many a curious warp,

Able in endless error to enfold

The wandering soul; not the true perfect mould

Of all your body, which as pure doth shew

In maiden whiteness as the Alpen snow:

All these, were but your constancy away,

Would please me less than the black stormy day

The wretched seaman toiling through the deep.

But, whilst this honour'd strictness you do keep,

Though all the plagues that e'er begotten were

In the great womb of air were settled here,

In opposition, I would, like the tree,

Shake off those drops of weakness, and be free

Even in the arm of danger. (II. ii. 116.)

The last lines, however fine in themselves, are utterly out of place in

the mouth of this morbid sentimentalist. They breath the brave spirit of

Chapman's outburst:

Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea

Loves t'have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind,

Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,

And his rapt ship run on her side so low

That she drinks water and her keel plows air.

(_Byron's Conspiracy_, III. i.)

Into the details of the night's adventures there is no call for us to

enter; it will be sufficient to detach a few passages from their setting,

which can usually be done without material injury. The whole scenery of

the wood, in the densest thicket of which Pan is feasting with his

mistress, while about their close retreat the satyr keeps watch and ward,

mingling now and again in the action of the mortals, is strongly

reminiscent of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_. The wild-wood minister thus

describes his charge in the octosyllabic couplets which constitute such a

characteristic of the play:

Now, whilst the moon doth rule the sky,

And the stars, whose feeble light

Give a pale shadow to the night,

Are up, great Pan commanded me

To walk this grove about, whilst he,

In a corner of the wood

Where never mortal foot hath stood,

Keeps dancing, music and a feast

To entertain a lovely guest;

Where he gives her many a rose

Sweeter than the breath that blows

The leaves, grapes, berries of the best;

I never saw so great a feast.

But to my charge. Here must I stay

To see what mortals lose their way,

And by a false fire, seeming-bright,

Train them in and leave them right. (III. i. 167.)

Perigot's musing when he meets Amoret and supposes her to be the

transformed Amarillis is well conceived; he greets her:

What art thou dare

Tread these forbidden paths, where death and care

Dwell on the face of darkness? (IV. iv. 15.)

while not less admirable is the pathos of Amoret's pleading; how she had

lov'd thee dearer than mine eyes, or that

Which we esteem our honour, virgin state;

Dearer than swallows love the early morn,

Or dogs of chase the sound of merry horn;

Dearer than thou canst love thy new love, if thou hast

Another, and far dearer than the last;

Dearer than thou canst love thyself, though all

The self-love were within thee that did fall

With that coy swain that now is made a flower,

For whose dear sake Echo weeps many a shower!...

Come, thou forsaken willow, wind my head,

And noise it to the world, my love is dead! (ib. 102.)

Then again we have the lines in which the satyr heralds the early dawn:

See, the day begins to break,

And the light shoots like a streak

Of subtle fire; the wind blows cold

Whilst the morning doth unfold.

Now the birds begin to rouse,

And the squirrel from the boughs

Leaps to get him nuts and fruit;

The early lark, that erst was mute,

Carols to the rising day

Many a note and many a lay. (ib. 165.)

The last act, with its obligation to wind up such loose threads of action

as have been spun in the course of the play, is perhaps somewhat lacking

in passages of particular beauty, but it yields us Amarillis' prayer as

she flies from the Sullen Shepherd, and the final speech of the satyr.

However out of keeping with character the former of these may be, it is in

itself unsurpassed:

If there be

Ever a neighbour-brook or hollow tree,

Receive my body, close me up from lust

That follows at my heels! Be ever just,

Thou god of shepherds, Pan, for her dear sake

That loves the rivers' brinks, and still doth shake

In cold remembrance of thy quick pursuit;

Let me be made a reed, and, ever mute,

Nod to the waters' fall, whilst every blast

Sings through my slender leaves that I was chaste!

(V. iii. 79.)

Lastly, we have the satyr's farewell to Clorin:

Thou divinest, fairest, brightest,

Thou most powerful maid and whitest,

Thou most virtuous and most blessèd,

Eyes of stars, and golden-tressèd

Like Apollo; tell me, sweetest,

What new service now is meetest

For the satyr? Shall I stray

In the middle air, and stay

The sailing rack, or nimbly take

Hold by the moon, and gently make

Suit to the pale queen of night

For a beam to give thee light?

Shall I dive into the sea

And bring thee coral, making way

Through the rising waves that fall

In snowy fleeces? Dearest, shall

I catch thee wanton fawns, or flies

Whose woven wings the summer dyes

Of many colours? get thee fruit,

Or steal from heaven old Orpheus' lute?

All these I'll venture for, and more,

To do her service all these woods adore.

* * * * *

So I take my leave and pray

All the comforts of the day,

Such as Phoebus' heat doth send

On the earth, may still befriend

Thee and this arbour!

_Clorin._ And to thee,

All thy master's love be free! (V. v. 238 and 268.)

Such then is Fletcher's play. It is in the main original so far as its own

individuality is concerned, and apart from the general tradition which it

follows. Its direct debt to Guarini is confined to the title and certain

traits in the characters of Cloe and Amarillis. Further indebtedness has,

it is true, been found to Spenser, but some hint of the transformation of

Amarillis, a few names and an occasional reminiscence, make up the sum

total of specific obligations. Endowed with a poetic gift which far

surpassed the imitative facility of Guarini and approached the consummate

art of Tasso himself, Fletcher attempted to rival the Arcadian drama of

the Italians. Not content, as Daniel had been, merely to reproduce upon

accepted models, he realized that some fundamental innovation was

necessary. But while he adopted and justified the greater licence and

range of effect allowed upon the English stage, thereby altering the form

from pseudo-classical to wholly romantic, he failed in any way to touch or

vitalize the inner spirit of the kind, trusting merely to lively action

and lyrical jewellery to hold the attention of his audience. He failed,

and it was not till some years after his death that the play, having been

stamped with the approbation of the court, won a tardy recognition from

the general public; and even when, after the restoration, Pepys records a

successful revival in 1663, he adds that it was 'much thronged after for

the scene's sake[273].'

II

Randolph's play, entitled 'Amyntas, or the Impossible Dowry,' belongs no

doubt to the few years that intervened between the author's exchanging the

academic quiet of Cambridge and the courts of Trinity, of which college he

was a fellow, for the life and bustle of theatre and tavern in London

about 1632, and his premature death which took place in March, 1635,

before he had completed his thirtieth year. It is tempting to imagine that

the revival of Fletcher's play on Twelfth Night, 1633-4, may possibly have

occasioned Randolph's attempt, in which case the play must belong to the

very last year of his life; but though there is nothing to make this

supposition improbable, pastoral representations were far too general at

that date for it to be necessary to look for any specific suggestion. The

play first appeared in print in the collected edition of the author's

poems edited by his brother in 1638.

Like Fletcher's play, the _Amyntas_ is a conscious attempt at so altering

the accepted type of the Arcadian pastoral as to fit it for representation

on the popular stage, for though acted, as the title-page informs us,

before their Majesties at Whitehall, it was probably also performed and

intended by the author for performance on the public boards[274]. Yet the

two experiments differ widely. Fletcher, as we have seen, while completing

the romanticizing of the pastoral by employing the machinery and

conventions of the English instead of the classical stage, nevertheless

introduced into his play none of the diversity and breadth of interest

commonly found in the romantic drama proper, and indeed the _Faithful

Shepherdess_ lacks almost entirely even that elaboration and firmness of

plot which we find in the _Pastor fido_. Randolph, on the other hand,

chose a plot closely resembling Guarini's in structure, and even retained

much of the scenic arrangement of the Italian theatre. But in the

complexity of action and multiplicity of incident, in the comedy of

certain scenes and the substratum of pure farce in others, he introduced

elements of the popular drama of a nature powerfully to affect the essence

of his production. Where Fletcher substituted for a theoretic classicism

an academic romanticism, Randolph insisted on treating the venerable

proprieties of the pastoral according to the traditions of English

melodrama.

Like the _Pastor fido_[275], Randolph's _Amyntas_ is weighted with a

preliminary history. Philaebus, the son of the archiflamen Pilumnus, was

betrothed to the shepherdess Lalage, who, however, was captivated by the

greater wealth of the shepherd Claius, upon whom she bestowed her hand.

Moved by his son's grief, Pilumnus entreated Ceres' revenge on the

faithless nymph, and Lalage died in giving birth to the twins Amyntas and

Amarillis. This but added to Philaebus' despair, so that he died upon her

tomb, and the bereft father having once more sought the aid of the

goddess, the oracle pronounced the curse:

Sicilian swaines, ill luck shall long betide

To every bridegroome, and to every bride:

No sacrifice, no vow shall still mine Ire,

Till Claius blood both quench and kindle fire.

The wise shall misconceive me, and the wit

Scornd and neglected shall my meaning hit. (I. v.)

Upon this Claius fled, leaving his children in the care of his sister

Thestylis. Although Philaebus was dead, two younger children remained to

Pilumnus, Damon and Urania. In the course of years it fortuned that Urania

and Amyntas fell in love, and though misliking of the match, Pilumnus went

so far as to consult the oracle concerning his daughter's dowry. With the

uncalled-for perversity characteristic of oracles the 'ompha[276]'

replied:

That which thou hast not, mayst not, canst not have

Amyntas, is the Dowry that I crave:

Rest hopelesse in thy love, or else divine

To give Urania this, and she is thine.

Pondering whereon Amyntas lost his wits. In the meanwhile Amarillis had

conceived an unhappy passion for Damon, who in his turn sought the love

of the nymph Laurinda, having for rival Alexis.

This is the situation at the opening of the action. In the first act we

find Laurinda unable or unwilling to decide between her rival lovers, and

her endeavours to play them off one against the other afford some of the

most amusing scenes of the piece. Learning from Thestylis of Amarillis'

love for Damon, she determines on a trick whereby she hopes to make her

choice without appearing to slight either of her suitors. She bids them

abide by the award of the first nymph they meet at the temple in the

morning, and so arranges matters that that nymph shall be Amarillis, whose

love for Damon she supposes will move her to appoint Alexis for herself.

In the meanwhile the banished Claius has returned, in order, having heard

of Amyntas' madness, to apply such cures as he has learnt in the course of

his wanderings. He is successful in his attempt, and without revealing his

identity departs, having first privately obtained from Urania the promise

that she will vow virginity to Ceres, lest Amyntas by puzzling afresh over

the oracle should again lose his reason. The nymphs now appear at the

temple, and the foremost, who is veiled, is appealed to by Damon and

Alexis to give her decision. She reveals herself as Amarillis, and Damon,

fearing that she will decide against him, refuses to be bound by the award

of so partial an arbiter. Alexis thereupon goes off to fetch Laurinda, who

shall force him to abide by his oath, while Damon in a fit of rage seeks

to prevent Amarillis' verdict by slaying her. He wounds her with his spear

and leaves her for dead. She recovers consciousness, however, when he has

fled, and with her blood writes a letter to Laurinda bequeathing to her

all interest in Damon. At this point Claius returns upon the scene, and

finding her wounded applies remedies. Damon too is led back by an evil

conscience, and Pilumnus likewise appears. Claius, in his anxiety to make

Amarillis reveal her assassin, betrays his own identity, to the joy of his

old enemy Pilumnus. Alexis now returns with Laurinda, and upon hearing the

letter which Amarillis had written, Damon confesses his crime and declares

that henceforth his love is for none but her. His life, however, is

forfeit through his having shed blood in the holy vale, and he is led off

in company with Claius to die at the altar of Ceres. In the fifth act we

find all prepared for the double sacrifice, when Amyntas enters, and

bidding Pilumnus stay his hand, claims to expound the oracle. Claius'

blood, he argues, has been already shed in Amarillis, and has quenched the

fire of Damon's love for Laurinda, rekindling it again to Amarillis' self.

Moreover, had not the oracle warned them that the recognized guardians of

wisdom would fail to interpret truly, and that such a scorned wit as that

of the 'mad Amyntas' would discover the meaning? Furthermore, he argues

that since Amarillis was the victim the goddess aimed at, her blood might

without sin be shed even in the holy vale, while Damon is of the priestly

stock to which that office justly pertained. Thus Claius and Damon are

alike spoken free, and Sicily is relieved of the goddess' curse. While the

general rejoicing is at its height, Urania is brought in to take her

vestal vows at the altar. In spite of her lover's remonstrance she kneels

before the shrine and addresses her prayer to the goddess. At length the

appeased deity deigns to answer, and in a gracious echo reveals the

solution of the enigma of the dowry--a husband.

This plot is a mingling of comedy in the scenes of Laurinda's

'wavering'[277] and the 'humours' of Amyntas' madness, and of tragi-comedy

in the catastrophe. But besides this there is what may best be described

as an antiplot of pure farce, in which the main character is the roguish

page Dorylas, who in the guise of Oberon robs Jocastus' orchard, tricks

Thestylis into marrying the foolish augur, and gulls everybody all round.

The humour of this portion of the piece may be occasionally a trifle broad

and at the same time childish, but there is nevertheless no denying the

genuineness of the quality, while the verse is as a rule sparkling, and

the dialogue both racy and pointed, occasionally displaying qualities

hardly to be described as other than brilliant.

This comic subplot obviously owes nothing to Guarini, but is introduced

in accordance with the usage of the English popular drama, and is grafted

somewhat boldly on to the conventional stock. Dorylas is one of the most

inimitable and successful of the descendants of Lyly's pages; while the

characters of Mopsus and Jocastus, although the former no doubt owes his

conception to a hint in the _Aminta_, belong essentially to the English

romantic farce. The scenes in which the page appears as Oberon surrounded

by his court recall the introduction of the 'mortal fairies' of the _Merry

Wives,_ and that in which Amyntas' 'deluded fancy' takes the augur for a

hound of Actaeon's breed may owe something to a passage in _King Lear_.

But even apart from the elements of farce and comedy there are important

aspects in which the _Amyntas_ severs itself from the stricter tradition

of the Italian pastoral. Randolph, while adopting the machinery and much

of the scenic environment of Guarini's play, made certain not unimportant

alterations in the dramatic construction, tending towards greater variety

and complicity. In the _Pastor fido_ the four main characters, though they

ultimately resolve themselves into two pairs, are throughout

interdependent, and their story forms but a single plot. That the play

should have needed a double solution, the events that bring two couples

together having no connexion with one another, was a dramatic blunder but

imperfectly concealed by the fact that Silvio and Dorinda are purely

secondary, the whole interest being concentrated on the fortunes of

Mirtillo and Amarilli. In Randolph's play, on the other hand, there are no

less than six important characters. These are divided into two groups,

each with an independent plot, one of which contains a telling though

somewhat conventional περιπέτεια, while the other, though possessing

originality and pathos, is lacking in dramatic possibilities. Thus each

supplies the elements wanting in the other, and if woven together

harmoniously, should have been capable of forming the basis of a

well-constructed play. The first of these groups consists of Laurinda,

Alexis, Damon, and Amarillis, the last two being really the dramatically

important ones, though their fortunes are connected throughout. It is

Laurinda's choice of Alexis that leads to the union of Damon and

Amarillis, and it is not till Damon has unconsciously fulfilled the oracle

and been freed by its interpretation, that the loves of Laurinda and

Alexis can hope for a happy event. Thus Randolph has at least not fallen

into the error by which Guarini introduced a double catastrophe into a

single plot, though he has not altogether avoided a somewhat similar

danger. This is due to the other group above mentioned, consisting of

Amyntas and Urania, who, so far as the plot is concerned, are absolutely

independent of the other characters. Their own story is essentially

undramatic, although it possesses qualities which would make it effective

in narrative; and it is, moreover, wholly unaffected by the solution of

the other plot. This is obviously a weak place in the construction of the

play, but the author has shown great resource in meeting the difficulty.

First, by placing the interpretation of the oracle in the mouth of

Amyntas, who must yet himself remain hopeless amid the general rejoicing,

he has produced a figure of considerable dramatic effect, and so kept the

attention of the audience braced, and stayed the relaxing effect of the

anti-climax. Secondly, he has amused the spectators with some excellent

fooling until, while Io and Paean are yet resounding, it is possible to

crown the whole by the solution of the second oracle, and send the hero

and his love to join the others in the festive throng. The imperfection of

plot is there, but the author has been skilful in concealing it, and it

may well be that his success would appear all the greater were his play to

be put to the real test of dramatic composition by being actually placed

on the boards.

But there is yet another point in which the _Amyntas_ differs not only

from its Italian model but from its English predecessors likewise. This is

a certain genially humorous conception of the whole, quite apart from and

beyond the mere introduction of comedy and farce, which we have never

found so marked before, and which has indeed been painfully absent from

the pastoral since Tasso penned the final chorus of the _Aminta_. This

humorous tone is never harshly forced upon the attention, and consists, in

a measure, merely in the fact of the comic business constantly elbowing

the serious action, and thus saving the latter from the danger of becoming

stilted and pretentions--a fault not less commonly and quite as justly

charged against pastoral literature as that of artificiality. A leaven of

humour is the great safeguard against an author taking either himself or

his creations too seriously. Randolph's _Amyntas_, it is true, renounces

the high ideality of its predecessors, of the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor

fido_, of _Hymen's Triumph_ and the _Faithful Shepherdess_; but it makes

up for it by human sanity of feeling and expression, by good humour and by

wit. It is, moreover, genuinely diverting. Here at least we find no

endeavour to attain to the importance and solemnity of a classical tragedy

as with Guarini, nor a striving after an utterly unreal, unsympathetic and

impossible ideal as with Fletcher. It is, moreover, noticeable and

eminently to the credit of the author that the comic scenes, even when

somewhat extravagant alike in tone and proportion, seldom clash

unpleasantly with the more serious passages, nor derogate from the

interest and dignity of the whole.

The play has generally met with a far from deserved neglect, owing in part

no doubt to the singular failure on the part of most critics to apprehend

correctly the nature and conditions of pastoral poetry.[278] Mr. W. C.

Hazlitt, who edited Randolph's works in 1875, does not so much as mention

the play in the perfunctory introduction, in which he chiefly follows the

extravagant, pedantic, and utterly worthless article in the sixth volume

of the _Retrospective Review_.[279] The merits of the piece have been

somewhat more fully recognized by Dr. Ward and Mr. Homer Smith, but the

treatment accorded the play by the former is necessarily scanty, while

that of the latter is inaccurate. Throughout a tendency is manifest to

find fault with the artificiality of the piece, and to blame the author

for not representing the true 'simplicity' of pastoral life. That the

pastoral tradition was a wholly impossible, not to say an absurd one,

bearing no true relation to nature at all, may be admitted; and it may be

lamented by such as love to shed bitter tears because the sandy shore is

not a well-swept parquet, or because anything you please is not something

else to which it bears not the smallest resemblance. It may or may not be

unfortunate that Randolph should have elected to write _more pastorali_,

but to censure the individual work because it is not of a type to which

its author never had the remotest intention of making it conform, and to

which except for something like a miracle it was impossible that it should

even approach, is the acme of critical fatuity. Judged in accordance with

the intention of the author the _Amyntas_ is no inconsiderable achievement

for a young writer, and compared with other works belonging to the same

tradition it occupies a highly respectable place. With Tasso's _Aminta_

and Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_ it cannot, in point of poetic merit,

for one moment compare, falling as far below them in this as it surpasses

them in complexity and general suitability of dramatic construction. A

fairer comparison may be made between it and the _Pastor fido_ in Italian

or _Hymen's Triumph_ in English, and here again, though certainly with

regard to the former and probably with regard to the latter it stands

second as poetry, as a play it is decidedly better suited than either for

representation on the stage--at least on a stage with the traditions and

conventions which prevailed in this country in the author's day.

* * * * *

It is then in the matter of the poetical quality of the verse that

Randolph's play appears to least advantage. Living in a polished and

cultured literary circle at Cambridge, and enjoying after his remove to

London the congenial fellowship of the tribe of Ben, he naturally attained

the ease and skill necessary to maintain a respectable level of

composition, but he was sparing of the higher flights. He seldom strikes

the attention by those purple patches which make many of his

contemporaries so quotable, yet, while by no means monotonously correct,

it is equally seldom that he sinks much below his general level. The

dialogue is on the whole natural and easy, and at the same time crisp and

pointed. A few of the more distinctively poetic and imaginative passages

may be quoted, in order to give some idea of the style. Laurinda thus

appoints a choice to her brace of lovers:

I have protested never to disclose

Which 'tis that best I love: But the first Nymph,

As soone as Titan guilds the Easterne hills,

And chirping birds, the Saints-bell of the day,

Ring in our eares a warning to devotion--

That lucky damsell what so e're she be

[That first shall meet you from the temple gate][280]

Shall be the Goddesse to appoint my love,

To say, 'Laurinda this shall be your choice':

And both shall sweare to stand to her award! (III. i.)

Another passage of deliberate poetic elaboration is the monologue of

Claius on once again treading his native soil:

I see the smoake steame from the Cottage tops,

The fearfull huswife rakes the embers up,

All hush to bed. Sure, no man will disturbe mee.

O blessed vally! I the wretched Claius

Salute thy happy soyle, I that have liv'd

Pelted with angry curses in a place

As horrid as my griefes, the Lylibaean mountaines,

These sixteene frozen winters; there have I

Beene with rude out-lawes, living by such sinnes

As runne o' th' score with justice 'gainst my prayers and wishes:

And when I would have tumbled down a rock,

Some secret powre restrain'd me. (III. ii.)

By far the greater part of the play is in blank verse, but in a few

passages, particularly in certain dialogues tending to stichomythia, the

verse is pointed, so to speak, with rime. The following is a graceful

example in a somewhat conceited vein; the transition, moreover, from

blank to rimed measure has an appearance of natural ease. The rivals are

awaiting the arbitrement of their love:

_Alexis._ How early, Damon,

Doe lovers rise!...

_Damon._ No Larkes so soon, Alexis.

_Al._ He that of us shall have Laurinda, Damon,

Will not be up so soone: ha! would you Damon?

_Da._ Alexis, no; but if I misse Laurinda,

My sleepe shall be eternall.

_Al._ I much wonder the Sunne so soone can rise!

_Da._ Did he lay his head in faire Laurinda's lap,

We should have but short daies.

_Al._ No summer, Damon.

_Da._ Thetis[281] to her is browne.

_Al._ And he doth rise

From her to gaze on faire Laurinda's eyes....

_Da._ I heare no noise of any yet that move.

_Al._ Devotion's not so early up as love.

_Da._ See how Aurora blushes! we suppose

Where Tithon lay to night.

_Al._ That modest rose

He grafted there.

_Da._ O heaven, 'tis all I seeke,

To make that colour in Laurinda's cheeke. (IV. iv.)

A more tragic note is struck in the speech in which Claius retorts on

Pilumnus after his discovery:

I, glut your hate, Pilumnus; let your soule

That has so long thirsted to drinke my blood,

Swill till my veines are empty;... I have stood

Long like a fatall oake, at which great Jove

Levels his thunder; all my boughes long since

Blasted and wither'd; now the trunke falls too.

Heaven end thy wrath in mee! (IV. viii.)

In some of these 'high tragical endeavours,' and notably in Damon's

confession, we do indeed find a certain stiltedness, but even here there

rings a true note of pathos in the farewell:

Amarillis,

I goe to write my story of repentance

With the same inke, wherewith thou wrotes before

The legend of thy love. (IV. ix.)

These passages will serve to give a fair and not unfavourable impression

of the style, but I have reserved for separate consideration what I

consider to be the most striking portions of the play. The first of these

is the string of Latin songs in which the would-be elves comment on their

nefarious proceedings in Jocastus' orchard. I quote certain stanzas only:

Nos beata Fauni Proles,

Quibus non est magna moles,

Quamvis Lunam incolamus,

Hortos saepe frequentamus.

Furto cuncta magis bella,

Furto dulcior Puella,

Furto omnia decora,

Furto poma dulciora.

Cum mortales lecto jacent,

Nobis poma noctu placent;

Illa tamen sunt ingrata,

Nisi furto sint parata.

* * * * *

Oberon, descende citus,

Ne cogaris hinc invitus;

Canes audio latrantes,

Et mortales vigilantes.

* * * * *

I domum, Oberon, ad illas

Quae nos manent nunc ancillas,

Quarum osculemur sinum,

Inter poma, lac et vinum. (III. iv.)

To discuss verses such as these seriously is impossible. The dog-Latin of

the fellow of Trinity is inimitable, while there is a peculiarly roguish

delicacy about his humour. In the admirable ease with which the words are

adapted to the sense, the songs are unsurpassed except by the very best of

the _carmina vagorum_. Lastly, as undoubtedly the finest passage of the

play, and as one that must give us pause when we would deny to 'prince

Randolph' the gifts requisite for the higher imaginative drama, I must

quote the scene in which the distracted Amyntas fancies that in his

endless search for the 'impossible dowry' he has arrived on the shores of

Styx and boarded Charon's bark.

_Amyntas._ Row me to hell!--no faster? I will have thee

Chain'd unto Pluto's gallies!

_Urania._ Why to hell,

My deere Amyntas?

_Amyntas._ Why? to borrow mony!

_Amarillis._ Borrow there?

_Amy._ I, there! they say there be more Usurers there

Then all the world besides.--See how the windes

Rise! Puffe, puffe Boreas.--What a cloud comes yonder!

Take heed of that wave, Charon! ha? give mee

The oares!--So, so: the boat is overthrown;

Now Charons drown'd, but I will swim to shore....

My armes are weary;--now I sinke, I sinke!

Farewell Urania ... Styx, I thank thee! That curld wave

Hath tos'd mee on the shore.--Come Sysiphus,

I'll rowle thy stone a while: mee thinkes this labour

Doth looke like Love! does it not so, Tysiphone?

_Ama._ Mine is that restlesse toile.

_Amy._ Is't so, Erynnis?

You are an idle huswife, goe and spin

At poore Ixions wheele!

_Ura._ Amyntas!

_Amy._ Ha?

Am I known here?

_Ura._ Amyntas, deere Amyntas--

_Amy._ Who calls Amyntas? beauteous Proserpine?

'Tis shee.--Fair Empresse of th' Elysian shades,

Ceres bright daughter intercede for mee,

To thy incensed mother: prithee bid her

Leave talking riddles, wilt thou?... Queene of darknesse,

Thou supreme Lady of eternall night,

Grant my petitions! wilt thou beg of Ceres

That I may have Urania?

_Ura._ Tis my praier,

And shall be ever, I will promise thee

Shee shall have none but him.

_Amy._ Thankes Proserpine!

_Ura._ Come sweet Amyntas, rest thy troubled head

Here in my lap.--Now here I hold at once

My sorrow and my comfort.--Nay, ly still.

_Amy._ I will, but Proserpine--

_Ura._ Nay, good Amyntas--

_Amy._ Should Pluto chance to spy me, would not hee

Be jealous of me?

_Ura._ No.

_Amy._ Tysiphone,

Tell not Urania of it, least she feare

I am in love with Proserpine: doe not Fury!

_Ama._ I will not.

_Ura._ Pray ly still!

_Amy._ You Proserpine,

There is in Sicilie the fairest Virgin

That ever blest the land, that ever breath'd

Sweeter than Zephyrus! didst thou never heare

Of one Urania?

_Ura._ Yes.

_Amy._ This poore Urania

Loves an unfortunate sheapheard, one that's mad, Tysiphone,

Canst thou believe it? Elegant Urania--

I cannot speak it without tears--still loves

Amyntas, the distracted mad Amyntas.

Is't not a constant Nymph?--But I will goe

And carry all Elysium on my back,

And that shall be her joynture.

_Ura._ Good Amyntas,

Rest here a while!

_Amy._ Why weepe you Proserpine?

_Ura._ Because Urania weepes to see Amyntas

So restlesse and unquiet.

_Amy._ Does shee so?

Then will I ly as calme as doth the sea,

When all the winds are lock'd in Aeolus jayle;

I will not move a haire, not let a nerve

Or Pulse to beat, least I disturbe her! Hush,--

Shee sleepes!

_Ura._ And so doe you.

_Amy._ You talk too loud,

You'l waken my Urania.

_Ura._ If Amyntas,

Her deere Amyntas would but take his rest,

Urania could not want it.

_Amy._ Not so loud! (II. iv.)

It was no ordinary imagination that conceived this example of the

grotesque in the service of the pathetic.

I have endeavoured in the above account to do a somewhat tardy justice to

the considerable and rather remarkably sustained qualities of Randolph's

play. I do not claim that as poetry it can be compared with the work of

Tasso, Fletcher, or Jonson, or that it even rivals that of Guarini or

Daniel, though had Randolph lived he might easily have surpassed the

latter. But I do claim that the _Amyntas_ is one of the most interesting

and important of the experiments which English writers made in the

pastoral drama, that it possesses dramatic qualities to which few of its

kind can pretend, and that pervading and transforming the whole is the

genial humour and the sparkling wit of its brilliant and short-lived

author. His pastoral muse was a hearty buxom lass, and kind withal, not

overburdened with modesty, yet wholesome and cleanly, and if at times her

laugh rings out where the subject passes the natural enjoyment of kind, it

is even then careless and merry, and there is often a ground of real fun

in the jest. Her finest qualities are a sharp and ready wit and a wealth

of imaginative pathos, alike pervaded by her bubbling humour; on the other

hand there are moments, if rare, when in an ill-considered attempt to

assume the buskin tread she reveals in her paste-board fustian somewhat of

the unregeneracy of the plebian trull. The time may yet come when

Randolph's reputation, based upon his other works--the _Jealous Lovers_, a

Plautine comedy, clever, but preposterous in more ways than one, the

_Muses' Looking Glass_, a perfectly undramatic morality of humours, and

the poems, generally witty, occasionally graceful, and more than

occasionally improper--will be enhanced by the recognition of the fact

that he came nearer than any other writer to reconciling a kind of

pastoral with the temper of the English stage. It was at least in part due

to a constitutional indifference on the part of the London public to the

loves and sorrows of imaginary swains and nymphs, that Randolph's play

failed to leave any appreciable mark upon our dramatic literature.[282]

III

In Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_ we find ourselves once again considering a work

which is not only one of very great interest in the history of pastoral,

but which at the same time raises important questions of literary

criticism. So far the most interesting compositions we have had to

consider--Daniel's _Hymen's Triumph_, Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_,

Randolph's _Amyntas_--have been attempts either to transplant the Italian

pastoral as it stood, or else so to modify and adapt as to fit it to the

very different conditions of the English stage. Jonson, on the other hand,

aimed at nothing less than the creation of an English pastoral drama.

Except for such comparatively unimportant works as _Gallathea_ and the

_Converted Robber_,[283] the spectators found themselves, for the first

time, on English soil. In spite of the occasional reminiscences of

Theocritus and the Arcadian erudition concerning the 'Lovers Scriptures,'

the nature of the characters is largely English. The names are not those

of pastoral tradition, but rather of the popular romance, Aeglamour,

Lionel, Clarion, Mellifleur, Amie, or more homely, yet without Spenser's

rusticity, Alken; while the one name of learned origin is a coining of

Jonson's own, Earine, the spirit of the spring. The silvan element, which

had been variously present since Tasso styled his play _favola

boschereccia_, was used by Jonson to admirable purpose in the introduction

of Robin Hood and his crew. A new departure was made in the conjoining of

the rustic and burlesque elements with the supernatural, in the persons of

the witch Maudlin, her familiar Puck-hairy, her son the rude swineherd

Lorel, and her daughter Douce the proud. In every case Jonson appropriated

and adapted an already familiar element, but he did so in a manner to

fashion out of the thumbed conventions of a hackneyed tradition something

fresh and original and new.

Unfortunately the play is but half finished, or, at any rate, but half is

at present extant. The fragment, as we have it, was first published, some

years after the author's death, in the second volume of the folio of

1640, and the questions as to whether it was ever finished and to what

date the composition should be assigned are too intricate to be entered

upon here. Suffice it to say that no conclusive arguments exist for

supposing that more of the play ever existed than what we now possess, nor

that what exists was written very long before the author's death. It is

conceivable that the play may contain embedded in it fragments of earlier

pastoral work, but the attempt to identify it with the lost _May Lord_ has

little to recommend it.[284] Seeing that the play is far from being as

generally familiar as its poetic merit deserves, I may be allowed to give

a more or less detailed analysis of it in this place.[285]

After a prologue in which Jonson gives his views on pastoral with

characteristic self-confidence, the Sad Shepherd, Aeglamour, appears,

lamenting in a brief monologue the loss of his love Earine, who is

supposed to have been drowned in the Trent.

Here she was wont to goe! and here! and here!

Just where those Daisies, Pincks, and Violets grow:

The world may find the Spring by following her;

For other print her aerie steps neere left. (I. i.)

He retires at the approach of Marian and the huntsmen, who are about to

fetch of the king's venison for the feast at which Robin Hood is to

entertain the shepherds of the vale of Belvoir. When they have left the

stage Aeglamour comes forward and resumes his lament in a strain of

melancholic madness. He is again interrupted by the approach of Robin

Hood, who enters at the head of the assembled shepherds and country

maidens. Robin welcomes his guests, and his praise of rustic sports calls

forth from Friar Tuck the well-known diatribe against the 'sourer sort of

shepherds,' in which Jonson vented his bitterness against the hypocritical

pretensions of the puritan reformers--a passage which yields, in biting

satire, neither to his own presentation in the _Alchemist_ nor to Quarles'

scathing burlesque quoted on an earlier page. As they discourse they

become aware of Aeglamour sitting moodily apart, unheeding them. He talks

to himself like a madman.

It will be rare, rare, rare!

An exquisite revenge: but peace, no words!

Not for the fairest fleece of all the Flock:

If it be knowne afore, 'tis all worth nothing!

Ile carve it on the trees, and in the turfe,

On every greene sworth, and in every path,

Just to the Margin of the cruell Trent;

There will I knock the story in the ground,

In smooth great peble, and mosse fill it round,

Till the whole Countrey read how she was drown'd;

And with the plenty of salt teares there shed,

Quite alter the complexion of the Spring.

Or I will get some old, old Grandam thither,

Whose rigid foot but dip'd into the water,

Shall strike that sharp and suddaine cold throughout,

As it shall loose all vertue; and those Nimphs,

Those treacherous Nimphs pull'd in Earine;

Shall stand curl'd up, like Images of Ice;

And never thaw! marke, never! a sharpe Justice.

Or stay, a better! when the yeares at hottest,

And that the Dog-starre fomes, and the streame boiles,

And curles, and workes, and swells ready to sparkle;

To fling a fellow with a Fever in,

To set it all on fire, till it burne,

Blew as Scamander, 'fore the walls of Troy,

When Vulcan leap'd in to him, to consume him. (I. v.)

Robin now accosts him, hoping, since his vengeance is so complete, that

he will consent to join his fellows in honouring the spring. At this his

distracted fancy breaks out afresh:

A Spring, now she is dead: of what, of thornes?

Briars, and Brambles? Thistles? Burs, and Docks?

Cold Hemlock? Yewgh? the Mandrake, or the Boxe?

These may grow still; but what can spring betide?

Did not the whole Earth sicken, when she died?

As if there since did fall one drop of dew,

But what was wept for her! or any stalke

Did beare a Flower! or any branch a bloome,

After her wreath was made. In faith, in faith,

You doe not faire, to put these things upon me,

Which can in no sort be: Earine,

Who had her very being, and her name,

With the first knots, or buddings of the Spring,

Borne with the Primrose, and the Violet,

Or earliest Roses blowne: when Cupid smil'd,

And Venus led the Graces out to dance,

And all the Flowers, and Sweets in Natures lap,

Leap'd out, and made their solemne Conjuration,

To last, but while shee liv'd. Doe not I know,

How the Vale wither'd the same Day?... that since,

No Sun, or Moone, or other cheerfull Starre

Look'd out of heaven! but all the Cope was darke,

As it were hung so for her Exequies!

And not a voice or sound, to ring her knell,

But of that dismall paire, the scritching Owle,

And buzzing Hornet! harke, harke, harke, the foule

Bird! how shee flutters with her wicker wings!

Peace, you shall heare her scritch. (ib.)

To distract him Karoline sings a song. But after all he is but mad

north-north-west, and though he would study the singer's conceits 'as a

new philosophy,' he also thinks to pay the singer.

Some of these Nimphs here will reward you; this,

This pretty Maid, although but with a kisse;

[_Forces Amie to kiss Karolin._

Liv'd my Earine, you should have twenty,

For every line here, one; I would allow 'hem

From mine owne store, the treasure I had in her:

Now I am poore as you. (ib.)

There follows a charming scene in which Marian, returning with the

quarry, relates the fortunes of the chase, and proceeds, amid Robin's

interruptions, to tell how 'at his fall there hapt a chance worth mark.'

_Robin._ I! what was that, sweet Marian? [_Kisses her._

_Marian._ You'll not heare?

_Rob._ I love these interruptions in a Story; [_Kisses her

again._

They make it sweeter.

_Mar._ You doe know, as soone

As the Assay is taken-- [_Kisses her again._

_Rob._ On, my Marian.

I did but take the Assay. (I. vi.)

To cut the story short, while the deer was breaking up, there

sate a Raven

On a sere bough! a growne great Bird! and Hoarse!

crying for its bone with such persistence that the superstitious huntsmen

swore it was none other than the witch, an opinion confirmed by

Scathlock's having since beheld old Maudlin in the chimney corner,

broiling the very piece that had been thrown to the raven. Marian now

proposes to the shepherdesses to go and view the deer, whereupon Amie

complains that she is not well, 'sick,' as her brother Lionel jestingly

explains, 'of the young shepherd that bekiss'd her.' They go off the

stage, and the huntsmen and shepherds still argue for a while of the

strange chance, when Marian reappears, seemingly in ill-humour, insults

Robin and his guests, orders Scathlock to carry the deer as a gift to

Mother Maudlin, and departs, leaving all in amazement. In the next act

Maudlin relates to her daughter Douce how it was she who, in the guise of

Marian, thus gulled Robin and his guests out of their venison and brought

discord into their feast. Douce is clad in the dress of Earine, who, it

now appears, was not drowned, but is imprisoned by the witch in a hollow

tree, and destined by her as her son Lorel's mistress. The swineherd now

enters with the object of wooing the imprisoned damsel, whom he releases

from the tree, Maudlin and Douce retiring the while to watch his success,

which is small. Baffled, he again shuts the girl up in her natural cell,

and his mother, coming forward, rates him soundly for his clownish ways,

reading him a lecture for his guidance in his intercourse with women, in

which she seems little concerned by the presence of her daughter. This

latter, so far as it is possible to judge from the few speeches assigned

to her in the fragment, appears to be of a more agreeable nature than one

might, under the circumstances, have expected. Jonson sought, it would

appear, to invest her with a certain pathos, presenting a character of

natural good feeling, but in which no moral instinct has ever been

awakened; and it is by no means improbable that he may have intended to

dissociate her from her surroundings in order to balance the numbers of

his nymphs and swains.[286] After Lorel has left them, Maudlin shows Douce

the magic girdle, by virtue of which she effects her transformations, and

by which she may always be recognized through her disguises. In the next

scene we find Amie suffering from the effect of Karol's kiss. She is ill

at ease, she knows not why, and the innocent description of her love-pain

possesses, in spite of its quaint artificiality, something of the

_naïveté_ of _Daphnis and Chloe_.

How often, when the Sun, heavens brightest birth,

Hath with his burning fervour cleft the earth,

Under a spreading Elme, or Oake, hard by

A coole cleare fountaine, could I sleeping lie,

Safe from the heate? but now, no shadie tree,

Nor purling brook, can my refreshing bee?

Oft when the medowes were growne rough with frost,

The rivers ice-bound, and their currents lost,

My thick warme fleece, I wore, was my defence,

Or large good fires, I made, drave winter thence.

But now, my whole flocks fells, nor this thick grove,

Enflam'd to ashes, can my cold remove;

It is a cold and heat, that doth out-goe

All sense of Winters, and of Summers so. (II. iv.)

To the shepherdesses enters Robin, who upbraids Marian for her late

conduct towards him and his guests. She of course protests ignorance of

the whole affair, bids Scathlock fetch again the venison, and remains

unconvinced of Robin's being in earnest, till Maudlin herself comes to

thank her for the gift. Marian endeavours to treat with the witch, and

begs her to return the venison sent through some mistake, but Maudlin

declares that she has already departed it among her poor neighbours. At

this moment, however, Scathlock returns with the deer on his shoulders, to

the discomfiture of the witch, who curses the feast, and after tormenting

poor Amie, who between sleeping and waking betrays the origin of her

disease, departs in an evil humour. The scene is noteworthy for its

delicate comedy and pathos.

_Amie_ [_asleep_]. O Karol, Karol, call him back againe ...

O', ô.

_Marian._ How is't Amie?

_Melifleur._ Wherefore start you?

_Amie._ O' Karol, he is faire, and sweet.

_Maud._ What then?

Are there not flowers as sweet, and faire, as men?

The Lillie is faire! and Rose is sweet!

_Amie._ I', so!

Let all the Roses, and the Lillies goe:

Karol is only faire to mee!

_Mar._ And why?

_Amie._ Alas, for Karol, Marian, I could die.

Karol he singeth sweetly too!

_Maud._ What then?

Are there not Birds sing sweeter farre, then Men?

_Amie._ I grant the Linet, Larke, and Bul-finch sing,

But best, the deare, good Angell of the Spring,

The Nightingale.

_Maud._ Then why? then why, alone,

Should his notes please you? ...

_Amie._ This verie morning, but--I did bestow--

It was a little 'gainst my will, I know--

A single kisse, upon the seelie Swaine,

And now I wish that verie kisse againe.

His lip is softer, sweeter then the Rose,

His mouth, and tongue with dropping honey flowes;

The relish of it was a pleasing thing.

_Maud._ Yet like the Bees it had a little sting.

_Amie._ And sunke, and sticks yet in my marrow deepe

And what doth hurt me, I now wish to keepe. (II. vi.)

After this exhibition of her malice the shepherds and huntsmen no longer

doubt that it was Maudlin herself who deceived them in the shape of

Marian, and they determine to pursue her through the forest. The wise

shepherd, Alken, undertakes the direction of this novel 'blast of

venerie,' and thus discourses of her unhallowed haunts: /p Within a

gloomie dimble shee doth dwell, Downe in a pitt, ore-growne with brakes

and briars, Close by the ruines of a shaken Abbey Torne, with an

Earth-quake, down unto the ground; 'Mongst graves, and grotts, neare an

old Charnell house, Where you shall find her sitting in her fourme, As

fearfull, and melancholique, as that Shee is about; with Caterpillers

kells, And knottie Cobwebs, rounded in with spells. Thence shee steales

forth to releif, in the foggs, And rotten Mistes, upon the fens, and

boggs, Downe to the drowned Lands of Lincolneshire. .....[There] the sad

Mandrake growes, Whose grones are deathfull! the dead-numming Night-shade!

The stupifying Hemlock! Adders tongue! And Martagan! the shreikes of

lucklesse Owles, Wee heare! and croaking Night-Crowes in the aire!

Greene-bellied Snakes! blew fire-drakes in the skie! And giddie

Flitter-mice, with lether wings! The scalie Beetles, with their

habergeons, That make a humming Murmur as they flie! There, in the stocks

of trees, white Faies doe dwell, And span-long Elves, that dance about a

poole, With each a little Changeling, in their armes! The airie spirits

play with falling starres, And mount the Sphere of fire, to kisse the

Moone! While, shee sitts reading by the Glow-wormes light, Or rotten wood,

o're which the worme hath crept, The banefull scedule of her nocent

charmes. (II. viii.)

In the third act we are introduced to Puck-hairy, who laments his lot as

the familiar of the malignant witch in whose service he has now to 'firk

it like a goblin' about the woods. Meanwhile Karol meets Douce in the

dress of Earine, who, however, runs off on the approach of Aeglamour. The

latter fancies she is the ghost of his drowned love, and falls into a

'superstitious commendation' of her. His delusions are conceived in a vein

no less happy and more distinctly poetical than those of Amyntas.

But shee, as chaste as was her name, Earine,

Dy'd undeflowr'd: and now her sweet soule hovers,

Here, in the Aire, above us; and doth haste

To get up to the Moone, and Mercury;

And whisper Venus in her Orbe; then spring

Up to old Saturne, and come downe by Mars,

Consulting Jupiter; and seate her selfe

Just in the midst with Phoebus, tempring all

The jarring Spheeres, and giving to the World

Againe, his first and tunefull planetting!

O' what an age will here be of new concords!

Delightfull harmonie! to rock old Sages,

Twice infants, in the Cradle o' Speculation,

And throw a silence upon all the creatures!...

The loudest Seas, and most enraged Windes

Shall lose their clangor; Tempest shall grow hoarse;

Loud Thunder dumbe; and every speece of storme

Laid in the lap of listning Nature, husht,

To heare the changed chime of this eighth spheere! (III. ii.)

After this Lionel appears in search of Karol, who is in requisition for

the distressed Amie. They are about to go off together when Maudlin again

appears in the shape of Marian, with the news that Amie is recovered and

their presence no longer required. At this moment, however, Robin appears,

and suspecting the witch, who tries to escape, seizes her by the girdle

and runs off the stage with her. The girdle breaks, and Robin returns with

it in his hand, followed by the witch in her own shape. Robin and the

shepherds go off with the prize, while Maudlin summons Puck to her aid and

sets to plotting revenge. Lorel also appears for the purpose of again

addressing himself to his imprisoned mistress, and, if necessary, putting

his mother's precepts into practice. With the words of the witch:

Gang thy gait, and try

Thy turnes with better luck, or hang thy sel';

the fragment breaks off abruptly. From the Argument prefixed to Act III we

know that Lorel's purpose with Earine was interrupted by the entrance of

Clarion and Aeglamour, and her discovery was only prevented by a sudden

mist called up by Maudlin. The witch then set about the recovery of her

girdle, was tracked by the huntsmen as she wove her spells, but escaped

by the help of her goblin and through the over-eagerness of her pursuers.

Strangely different estimates have been formed of the merits of Jonson's

pastoral, alike in itself and in contrast with Fletcher's play. Gifford,

who, in spite of his vast erudition, seldom soared in his critical

judgements above the more obvious and conventional considerations of

propriety and style, praised the work as 'natural and elegant' in thought,

and in language 'inexpressibly beautiful,' while at the same time with the

petty insolence which habitually marked his utterances concerning any who

stood in rivalry with his hero, he referred to the _Faithful Shepherdess_

as being 'insufferably tedious' as a poem, and held that as a drama 'its

heaviness can only be equalled by its want of art.' Gifford's spleen,

however, had evidently been aroused by Weber, who had declared the _Sad

Shepherd_ to be written 'in emulation of Fletcher's poem, but far short of

it,' and his remarks must not be taken too seriously. Two quotations will

serve to illustrate the diversity of opinion among modern critics. They

display alike more condescension to particulars and greater weight of

judgement. Thus we find Mr. Swinburne, in his very able study of Ben

Jonson, not a little disgusted at the introduction of the broader humour

and burlesque of the dialect-speaking characters, Maudlin, Lorel,

Scathlock, in conjunction with the greater refinement of Robin, Marian,

and the shepherds. 'A masque including an antimasque, in which the serious

part is relieved and set off by the introduction of parody or burlesque,

was a form of art or artificial fashion in which incongruity was a merit;

the grosser the burlesque, the broader the parody, the greater was the

success and the more effective was the result: but in a dramatic attempt

of higher pretention than such as might be looked for in the literary

groundwork or raw material for a pageant, this intrusion of incongruous

contrast is a pure barbarism--a positive solecism in composition.... On

the other hand, even Gifford's editorial enthusiasm could not overestimate

the ingenious excellence of construction, the masterly harmony of

composition, which every reader of the argument must have observed with

such admiration as can but intensify his regret that scarcely half of the

projected poem has come down to us. No work of Ben Jonson's is more

amusing and agreeable to read, as none is more graceful in expression or

more excellent in simplicity of style.' This last is high meed of praise,

but it is the question raised in the earlier portion of the criticism that

now particularly concerns us. His love of strong contrasts has no doubt

influenced Mr. Swinburne to express at any rate not less than he felt, but

he has raised a perfectly clear and evident issue, and one which it is

impossible for the critic to neglect. Although had the play undergone

final revision, it is possible that Jonson, whose literary judgement was

of no mean order, would have softened some of the harsher contrasts in his

work, it is evident that they were in the main intentional and

deliberately calculated. This appears alike from the prologue, in which he

denounces the heresy

That mirth by no meanes fits a Pastorall,

as also from what we gather concerning an earlier work, in which he

introduced 'clownes making mirth and foolish sports,' as recorded by

Drummond. As against Mr. Swinburne's view may be set that of Dr. Ward. 'In

_The Sad Shepherd_ [Jonson] has with singular freshness caught the spirit

of the greenwood. If this pastoral is more realistic in texture than

either Spenser's or Milton's efforts in the same direction, the result is

due, partly to the character of the writer, partly to the circumstance

that Jonson's "shepherds" are beings of a definite age and country. It

must, however, be observed that the personages in this pastoral are in

part not shepherds at all, but Robin Hood and his merry men. We may admit

that the lucky combination thus hit upon could probably not easily be

repeated; but this is merely to acknowledge the felicity of the author's

invention.' Allowing for the difference of temper in the two writers, it

will be seen that the view taken of certain essentials of the piece is as

favourable in the one case as it is unfavourable in the other. Both alike

are critics of recognized standing, so that whichever position one may

feel disposed to adopt, ample authority may be quoted in support. There

are unfortunate occasions on which one's favourite oracle perversely

refuses to accommodate himself to one's own view. Mr. Swinburne is a

writer from whom on points of aesthetic judgement I for one differ, but

with the greatest reluctance. Nevertheless in the present case I feel

bound to record my dissent.

Jonson's play was, as I have already said, an attempt to create a new and

genuinely English form of pastoral drama. How far did he succeed? Mr.

Homer Smith charitably hints that it was owing to the 'exquisite poetry'

in which Jonson's design was clothed 'that many critics do not perceive

that he failed in the task he set himself.' This is, however, but to

repeat in cruder form Mr. Swinburne's contention.[287] That Jonson did not

fail in the task he set himself it would be difficult to maintain--only,

however, I believe, because he faiîed to carry it to completion. Had he

lived to finish the remaining portion of the play in a manner consonant

with that which he has left us, there would probably have been no question

as to the propriety of the means he used. I am fully aware how difficult

and often dangerous it is in these matters to argue from a mere fragment,

especially in view of the breakdown of so many plays when they come to the

unravelling, but it should be borne in mind that in the matter of dramatic

construction Jonson stood head and shoulders above all the other writers

with whom we have been concerned, Fletcher not excepted.

Before, however, proceeding to discuss the issue raised by Mr. Swinburne,

it will be well to clear up certain minor misapprehensions. In the first

place Mr. Homer Smith states that Jonson 'wove together the two threads,

pastoral and forest, apparently regarding them of equal importance and

seeing no incongruity in the combination.' In so far as this may be taken

to imply a necessary incompatibility of the traditions of field and

forest, it is of course utterly opposed to the whole history of pastoral

tradition. Tasso's Silvia and Guarini's Silvio alike are silvan not in

name only, but are truly figures of the woods, hunters of the wolf and

boar; while the same distinction survives in a modified form in Daniel's

_Hymen's Triumph_, in which the ruder characters, Montanus and the rest,

are described as foresters. The contrast appears sharply in the _Maid's

Metamorphosis_ in the characters of Silvio and Gemulo; more faintly

indicated by Randolph in Laurinda's lovers, of whom one frequents the

woods and one the plains. The pastoral and forest traditions are in their

essence and history indistinguishable.[288] Probably, however, what the

writer had in view was some supposed incongruity between the characters of

popular romance, such as Robin and his crew, and the shepherds whom he

regards as pure Arcadians. This is the same objection as that raised by

Mr. Swinburne, to which I shall return.

Another point which has been somewhat obscured by previous writers is the

comparative importance of the two threads. Thus, again to quote Mr. Homer

Smith, it has been held that 'In general the pastoral incidents serve as

an underplot, utterly foreign in spirit to the main plot.' Against this

view that the pastoral is, intentionally at least, the subsidiary element,

the title itself is a strong argument--'The Sad Shepherd: A Tale of Robin

Hood.' Clearly the first title would naturally indicate the main subject

of the plot, and the vague addition suggest, the surroundings amid which

the action is laid. This is a consideration which no amount of

stichometrical argument can seriously discount, especially in the case of

a fragment. The same view is borne out by the plot itself so far as it is

known to us. In Aeglamour's despair at the supposed loss of his love we

have a situation already familiar from at least two English pastorals,

_Hymen's Triumph_ and Rutter's _Shepherds' Holiday_; while in the

detention of Earine in the power of the witch we have the material for an

exciting and touching development. Where else can we look for the elements

of a plot? The only possible alternative lies in the dissensions sown by

Maudlin between Robin and his love Maid Marian. Here indeed we find the

materials for some excellent comedy, and the instinctive sympathy excited

by the characters in the breast of every Englishman, as well as the

exquisite charm and grace imparted to the forest scenes by Jonson's verse,

have undoubtedly combined to obscure the real action in the earlier part

of the fragment. But since Lord Fitzwater's daughter is doomed by an

unkind tradition to remain Maid Marian still, no fortunate solution of the

_imbroglio_ can do more than restore the harmony which had been before,

and the plot would therefore be open to the precise objection from the

dramatic point of view which we found in the case of the _Faithful

Shepherdess_. Moreover, the complication is completely solved by the end

of the second act, and it was obviously introduced for no other purpose

than to bring about a general crusade against the wise woman and her

confederate powers, which should be the means of restoring Earine to her

Sad Shepherd. Thus the story of these lovers alone can supply the

materials for the main, or indeed for any real plot at all; and the fact

that, as Mr. Homer Smith informs us, out of some thousand lines less than

half are devoted to strictly pastoral interests, is but evidence of the

felicity of construction, by which Jonson, while keeping the pastoral plot

as the mainspring of the piece, nevertheless avoided the tediousness

almost inseparable from pastoral action and atmosphere, and threw the

burden of stage business upon the more congenial personages of Maid

Marian, Robin Hood and his merry men, the Witch of Paplewich, and Robin

Goodfellow. It remains for us to consider the fundamental question which

arises in connexion with Mr. Swinburne's criticism. Are the various

threads of which Jonson wove his plot in themselves incompatible and

incongruous? Is it correct to describe the parts played by the more rustic

characters as a grotesque antimasque to the action of the polished

shepherds? Or is Dr. Ward right in considering the combination a happy

one, and the characters harmonious? Now any one who wishes to defend Mr.

Swinburne's view must do so on one of two ground: either he must maintain

the general proposition that various degrees of idealization are

essentially incompatible within the limits of a single artistic

composition, or else he must hold that the contrast between the two sets

of characters in the actual play is itself of a grossness to offend the

sense of literary propriety in an audience. If any one is prepared without

qualification to maintain the former of these two propositions, he is

welcome to do so, and he will be perfectly entitled to condemn Jonson's

pastoral on the strength of it; but I doubt whether this was the intention

of the critic himself. Although as a general rule the English drama found

its romance rather in what it imagined to be realism than in conscious

idealization, yet the contrast between the imaginative and refined

creations of the fancy and the often coarse and gross transcripts from

common life are too frequent even to require specific mention, and many

shades even of imaginative painting, many degrees of idealism, may

frequently be met with in the course of a single play. What of Rosalind,

Phoebe, and Audrey in _As You Like It_? But that is a question to which we

shall have to return. It will, however, be contended that in the _Sad

Shepherd_ we are introduced to a wholly idealized and artificially refined

atmosphere surrounding the shepherds and their hosts, which is yet

constantly liable to be broken in upon by beings of the outer world, rude

unchastened mortals compounded of our common clay, whose entrance dispels

at a stroke the delicate, refined atmosphere of pastoral convention. This

brings us to the second alternative mentioned above, to meet which we

shall have to condescend to particulars, and consider the real natures of

the various groups of personages with which Jonson crowds his stage.