like as the Chamelions change themselves

Into all perfect colours saving white;

So they can to all humors frame their speech,

Save only to prove honest;

or else how

light minds are catcht with little things,

And Phancie smels to Fennell.

Nor are other and more marked traces of Lyly's influence wanting: witness

the following passage, which is a mere metrical paraphrase of a speech in

the _Gallathea_ already quoted (p. 227):

You have an heate, on which a coldnesse waits,

A paine that is endur'd with pleasantnesse,

And makes those sweets you eat have bitter taste:

It puts eies in your thoughts, eares in your heart:

'Twas by desire first bred, by delight nurst,

And hath of late been wean'd by jelousie.

Certain speeches of a sententious nature, on the other hand, remind us

rather of Daniel and the sonneteers:

To wish the best, to thinke upon the worst,

And all contingents brooke with patience,

Is a most soveraigne medicine.

All these characteristics point to an early date, and Mr. Fleay, who

regards the piece as forming part of the _Five Plays in One_, acted at the

Rose in April, 1597, may very likely be right. Of the other pieces printed

in the same volume, a few only show any trace of pastoral blending with

the general mythological colouring. Perhaps the most that can be said is

that the nymphs are already familiar to us from the pastoral tradition,

and must have been scarcely less so to a contemporary audience, fresh from

the work of Peele and Lyly. In _Jupiter and Io_, which perhaps made part

of the same performance as _Amphrissa_, Mercury disguises himself as a

shepherd, in order to cut off the head of Argus. This he did to such good

purpose that record of the trunkless member remains unto this day in the

inventories of the Lord Admiral's company. Another of these pieces, the

character of which can be easily imagined from its title, _Apollo and

Daphne_, ends with a song, which may owe something to the traditions of

the mythological pastoral:

Howsoe're the Minutes go,

Run the heures or swift or slow:

Seem the Months or short or long,

Passe the seasons right or wrong:

All we sing that Phoebus follow,

_Semel in anno ridet Apollo_.

Early fall the Spring or not,

Prove the Summer cold or hot:

Autumne be it faire or foule,

Let the Winter smile or skowle:

Still we sing, that Phoebus follow,

_Semel in anno ridet Apollo_.

Passing on to the seventeenth century, the first piece that demands

attention is the St. John's Twelfth Night entertainment, _Narcissus_,

performed at Oxford in 1602. If its pastoral quality is somewhat

evanescent, there is another point of view from which the piece has a good

deal of interest. It is, namely, a burlesque production of the nature of

the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, and

flavoured with something of the comic rusticity of Greene's Carmela

eclogue in _Menaphon_. It is needless here to summarize the plot of the

'merriment' which the ingenious author, no doubt a student of St. John's,

evolved from Ovid's account in the third book of the _Metamorphoses_, and

which runs to the respectable length of some eight hundred lines.[342] I

may be allowed, however, to note that echo verses, suggested by Ovid, are

introduced and handled with more than usual ingenuity; and further to

quote two characteristic passages. In one of these the nymphs Florida and

Clois court the affections of the loveless hero.

_Florida._ Shine thou on mee, sweet plannet, bee soe good

As with thy fiery beames to warme my bloud ...

_Narcissus._ To speak the truth, faire maid, if you will have us,

O Oedipus I am not, I am Davus.

_Clois._ Good Master Davis, bee not so discourteous

As not to heare a maidens plaint for vertuous.

_Nar._ Speake on a Gods name, so love bee not the theame.

_Flo._ O, whiter then a dish of clowted creame,

Speake not of love? How can I overskippe

To speake of love to such a cherrye lippe?

_Nar._ It would beseeme a maidens slender vastitye

Never to speake of any thinge but chastitye.

_Flo._ As true as Helen was to Menela

So true to thee will be thy Florida.

_Clo._ As was to trusty Pyramus truest Thisbee

So true to you will ever thy sweete Clois bee.

_Flo._ O doe not stay a moment nor a minute,

Love is a puddle, I am ore shooes in it.

_Clo._ Doe not delay us halfe a minutes mountenance

That ar in love, in love with thy sweet countenance.

_Nar._ Then take my dole although I deale my alms ill,

Narcissus cannot love with any damzell;

Although, for most part, men to love encline all,

I will not, I, this is your answere finall.

We are here, it is true, as far as ever from the delicate rusticity of

Lorenzo de' Medici, and not particularly near to the humour of the

Athenian rustics, but for burlesque it is passably amusing. The _Midsummer

Night's Dream_ had appeared possibly a decade earlier, and the audience in

the college hall at Oxford can hardly but have been reminded of Wall and

Moonshine as they listened to the speech by one who enters carrying 'a

buckett and boughes and grasse.'

A well there was withouten mudd,

Of silver hue, with waters cleare,

Whome neither sheep that chawe the cudd,

Shepheards nor goates came ever neare;

Whome, truth to say, nor beast nor bird,

Nor windfalls yet from trees had stirrde.

[_He strawes the grasse about the buckett._

And round about it there was grasse,

As learned lines of poets showe,

Which next by water nourisht was; [_Sprinkle water._

Neere to it too a wood did growe, _[Sets down the bowes._

To keep the place, as well I wott,

With too much sunne from being hott.

And thus least you should have mistooke it,

The truth of all I to you tell:

Suppose you the well had a buckett,

And so the buckett stands for the well;

And 'tis, least you should counte mee for a sot O,

A very pretty figure cald _pars pro toto_.

The first strict masque of a pastoral character that we meet with is that

of Juno and Iris, with the dance of nymphs and the 'sunburnt sicklemen, of

August weary,' introduced by Shakespeare into the _Tempest_; but this must

not be taken as altogether typical of the independent productions of the

time. The masques introduced into plays were necessarily, for the most

part, of a slighter and less elaborate character than those performed at

court, or for the entertainment of persons of rank. This is more

particularly the case with the serions portions of the masques, since the

actors, who were engaged for the performance of the antimasques in court

revels, frequently transferred their parts bodily on to the public boards.

Thus, in the entertainment in the _Winters Tale_, in which shepherds also

appear, the main feature was a dance of satyrs, which was no doubt

borrowed from Jonson's _Masque of Oberon_.[343] The _Tempest_ masque,

however, is of the simpler type, without antimasque. At Juno's command

Iris summons Ceres, and the goddesses together bestow their blessing on

the young lovers. Then at Iris' call come the naiads and the reapers for

the dance. The date of the play may be taken as late in 1610, or early the

next year, a time at which the popularity of the masque was reaching its

height.

Although the mythological element is everywhere prominent, the pastoral is

comparatively of rare occurrence in the regular masque literature of the

seventeenth century. This, considering the adaptability and natural

suitability of the form, is rather surprising. Probably the masque as it

evolved itself at the court of James needed a subject possessing a

traditional story, or at least fixed and known conditions of a kind which

the pastoral was unable to supply. Be this as it may, on one occasion

only did Jonson make extended use of the kind, namely, in the masque which

in the folio of 1640 appears with the heading 'Pans Anniversarie; or, The

Shepherds Holy-day. The Scene Arcadia. As it was presented at Court before

King James. 1625. The Inventors, Inigo Jones, Ben. Johnson[344].' Even

here, however, we learn little concerning the condition of pastoralism in

general, from the highly specialized form employed to a specific purpose.

As in all the regular masques of the Jonsonian type the characters and

situations exist solely for the opportunities they afford for dance and

song. Shepherds and nymphs constitute the personae of the masque proper,

while those of the antimasque are supplied by a band of Bocotian clowns,

who come to challenge the Arcadians to the dance. Some of the songs are

very graceful, suggesting at times reminiscences of Spenser, at others

parallels to Ben's own _Sad Shepherd_, but the piece does not possess

either sufficient importance or interest to justify our lingering over it.

Outside this piece the nearest approach to pastoral characters to be found

in Jonson's masques are, perhaps, the satyr and Queen Mab in the fairy

entertainment at Althorp in 1603, Silenus and the satyrs in _Oberon_ in

1611, and Zephyrus, Spring, and the Fountains and Rivers in _Chloridia_ in

1631.

During James I's reign pastoral shows of a sort no doubt became frequent.

While in some cases which remain to be noticed they reached the

elaboration of small plays, in others they probably remained simple

affairs enough. We get an interesting glimpse of the conditions of

production in a note of John Aubrey's.[345] 'In tempore Jacobi,' he

writes, 'one Mr. George Ferraby was parson of Bishops Cannings in Wilts:

an excellent musitian, and no ill poet. When queen Anne came to Bathe, her

way lay to traverse the famous Wensdyke, which runnes through his parish.

He made severall of his neighbours, good musitians, to play with him in

consort, and to sing. Against her majestie's comeing, he made a pleasant

pastorall, and gave her an entertaynment with his fellow songsters in

shepherds' weeds and bagpipes, he himself like an old bard. After that

wind musique was over, they sang their pastorall eglogues.' This was in

1613; Ferraby or Ferebe later became chaplain to the king.

The more elaborate pieces were usually written for performance at schools

or colleges. Such a piece is Tatham's _Love Crowns the End_, composed for

the scholars of Bingham in Nottinghamshire in 1633, and printed in his

_Fancy's Theatre_ in 1640. Small literary interest attaches to the play,

which is equally slight and ill constructed, but is perhaps not

unrepresentative of its class. In spite of its very modest dimensions it

possesses a full romantic-pastoral plot, with the resuit that it is at

times almost unintelligible, owing to the want of space in which to

develop in an adequate and dramatic manner the motives and situations. The

bewildering rapidity with which character succeeds character upon the

stage must have made the representation almost impossible to follow, while

the reading of the piece is not a little complicated by the confusion in

which the stage directions remain in the only modern edition.[346] Some

notion of the complexity of the plot may be gathered from the following

account. Cliton, having in a fit of jealousy sought to kill his love

Florida, is found wandering in the woods by Alexis, who receives his

confession and shows him the way to repentance. Florida, moreover, has

been found and healed by the wise shepherdess Claudia, and is living in

retirement. Meanwhile Cloe (a name which it appears from the rimes that

the author pronounced Cloi) is saved by Lysander from the pursuit of a

Lustful Shepherd, in consequence of which she transfers to him the

affection she previously bore to her lover Daphnes. Next Leon and his

daughter Gloriana appear, together with the swain Francisco, to whom

against her will the maiden is apparently betrothed. They all go off to

view the games in which Lysander, whose heart is also fixed on Gloriana,

proves victor. His refusal to entertain the affection of Cloe drives her

to a state of distraction, in which the nymphs of the woods take pity on

her and bring her to Claudia to be cured. Gloriana in the meantime returns

the affections of Lysander, but the meeting of the lovers is interrupted

by the jealous Francisco and a gang who wound Lysander and carry off

Gloriana. She escapes from her captors, but only after she has lost her

reason, and wanders about until she meets with Cliton, who has turned

hermit and who now undertakes her cure. Throughout the play we find comic

interludes by Scrub, a page or attendant in search of his master, who also

has some farcical business with the Lustful Shepherd, who after being

disappointed of Cloe disguises himself as a satyr, apparently deeming that

rôle suited to his taste. In the end all the characters are brought

together. Francisco, found contrite, is forgiven by Lysander and Gloriana;

Cliton and Florida love once more; so do Daphnes and Cloe, appropriately

enough. Scrub announces the death of the usurping duke, 'who banished good

old Leon;' Francisco and Lysander reveal themselves as princes who left

the court to win his daughter's love, when he was driven from his land,

and so--love crowns the end.

Through this medley it is not hard to see the various debts the author has

incurred towards his predecessors. The verse, in rimed couplets, whether

deca- or octo-syllabic, ultimately depends on Fletcher; of the comic prose

scenes I have already spoken in dealing with Goffe's _Careless

Shepherdess_, a play the influence of which may perhaps be specifically

traced in the satyr-disguise, the gang who carry off Gloriana, her

unexplained escape, and the songs of the 'Destinies' and a 'Heavenly

Messenger,' who in their inconsequence recall the 'Bonus Genius' of

Goffe's play. Scrub may owe his origin to the same source, though he is

rather more like the page in the _Maid's Metamorphosis_. The usurping duke

recalls _As You Like It_; the princes seeking their love-fortunes among

the shepherd folk suggest the _Arcadia_; while the influence of the

_Faithful Shepherdess_ is not only traceable in the character of the

Lustful Shepherd, but also in certain specific parallels, as where the

wounded Lysander, seeing his love carried off, exclaims:

Stay, stay! let me but breathe my last

Upon her lips, and I'll forgive what's past; (p. 24)

a reminiscence of the lines spoken by Alexis in a similar situation:

Oh, yet forbear

To take her from me! give me leave to die

By her! (_Faithful Shepherdess_, III. i. 165[347].)

The general level of the verse is not high, but we now and again light on

some pleasing lines such as the following:

My dearest love, fair as the eastern morn

As it breaks o'er the plains when summer's born,

Hanging bright liquid pearls on every tree,

New life and hope imparting, as to me

Thy presence brings delight, so fresh and rare

As May's first breath, dispensing such sweet air

The Phoenix does expire in; sit, while I play

The cunning thief, and steal thy heart away,

And thou shalt stand as judge to censure me. (p. 18.)

So again there is some grace in a song which catches perhaps a distant

echo of Peele's gem:

_Gloriana._ Sit, while I do gather flowers

And depopulate the bowers.

Here's a kiss will come to thee!

_Lysander._ Give me one, I'll give thee three!

_Both._ Thus in harmless sport we may

Pass the idle hours away.

_Gloriana._ Hark! hark, how fine

The birds do chime!

And pretty Philomel

Her moan doth tell. (p. 22.)

Another of these miniature pastorals is preserved in a British Museum

manuscript, where it bears the title of _The Converted Robber_.[348] No

author's name appears, but a plausible conjecture may be advanced. The

scene of the piece, namely, is Stonehenge, and it is evident that the

occasion on which it was first performed had some connexion with

Salisbury, for there is obviously a topical allusion in the final words:

Lett us that do noe envy beare um

Wish all felicity to Sarum.

Now in 1636,[349] according to Anthony à Wood, there was acted at St.

John's College, Oxford, a play by John Speed, entitled _Stonehenge_, the

occasion being the return of Dr. Richard Baylie after his installation as

Dean of Salisbury. We can hardly be far wrong in identifying the two

pieces. The only difficulty is that in the manuscript the play is dated

1637. This, however, may either be a mere slip of the scribe, or may

possibly imply that the piece was produced in 1636-7, the scribe adopting

the popular and modern, whereas Wood always adhered to the old or legal

reckoning.

The piece possesses a certain interest from the fact of its forming, in a

stricter sense than any of the other pieces we have examined, a link

between the drama and the masque. In this it somewhat resembles _Comus_,

employing a more or less dramatic plot as the setting for the formai

dances of the masque.[350]

The story is simple enough. A band of robbers and a company of shepherds

and shepherdesses keep on Salisbury Plain in the neighbourhood of

Stonehenge--'stoy[=n]age y^{e} wonder y^{t} is vpon that Playne of

Sarum'--which forms the background of the scene. It chanced that the

shepherdess Clarinda, falling into the hands of the robbers, was saved

from dishonour by their chief Alcinous, an action which won for him her

love, and having escaped, she returned dressed as a boy in order to serve

him. Meanwhile the robbers have decided to make a raid upon the shepherd

folk, and Alcinous, disguising himself as a stranger shepherd, mixes among

them, while his companions Autolicus and Conto lie in wait hard by. During

a festival Alcinous seeks the love of Castina, Clarinda's sister, and

finding her unmoved by entreaty threatens force. At this she attempts to

stab herself, and the robber chief is so struck that he vows to reform and

is converted to the pastoral life. His companions, left in the lurch, fall

upon the shepherds of their own accord, but are soon brought to see reason

by the hand and tongue of their chief, and are content to follow him in

his conversion. Clarinda now discovers herself and marries Alcinous, while

Castina and her fellow shepherdess Avonia consent to reward their faithful

swains, Palaemon and Dorus.

In this piece there is a rather conspicuous absence of motive and dramatic

construction, the author claiming apparently the freedom of the masque.

The verse is mainly octosyllabic, sometimes blank, but the rough accentual

'rime' is also used. Decasyllabics are rare. There is also some prose in

the comic part sustained by Autolicus and Conto and the aged clown Jarbus,

as well as a certain amount of Spenserian archaism, and a good deal of

dialect. Whether comic or romantic, the characters are singularly out of

keeping with their surroundings, while the conceit of paganizing the

Christian worship appears to be carried to ludicrous lengths, until one

recollects that it depends almost entirely upon the substitution of the

name of Pan for that of the Deity--a process no doubt facilitated by false

etymology. Thus Christ, who is spoken of by name, is called 'Pannes blest

babe.' After describing the foundation of Salisbury Cathedral, the old

shepherd proceeds:

But sturdy shepherds brought all the other stones,

And reard up that great Munster all at once,

Wher shepherds each one, both woman and man,

Do come to worship theyr great God Pann.

A rustic show formed the first part of an entertainment witnessed by

Charles and Henrietta Maria at Richmond, after their return from a visit

to Oxford in 1636. A clown named Tom comes in bearing a present for the

queen, and is on the point of being unceremoniously removed by the usher,

when he espies Mr. Edward Sackville, to whom he appeals, and a dialogue

ensues between the two. After he has offered his present, Madge, Doll, and

Richard come in, and the four perform a country dance. They are all plain

Wiltshire rustics who talk a broad vernacular, but at the end a shepherd

and shepherdess enter and sing a duet in a more courtly strain. The author

of this slight production is not known, but it is regarded by the latest

authority on masques as an imitation, in the looseness of its

construction, of Davenant's _Prince d'Amour_.[351]

Little poetic ability was displayed by Heywood on the only occasion on

which he introduced pastoral tradition into a Lord Mayor's pageant. The

'first show by land' of the _Porta Pietatis_, presented by the drapers in

1638 on the occasion of Sir Maurice Abbot's mayoralty, consisted of a

speech by a shepherd, which is preceded in the printed copy by a short

account of the properties, natural history, and general usefulness of

sheep, as well as of their peculiar importance in relation to the craft

honoured in the person of the newly appointed Lieutenant of the city of

London. Heywood was famous for his wide, miscellaneous, and often

startling information.

We have already seen how, in the first blush and budding of the

Elizabethan spring, George Peele treated the tale of the judgement of

Paris; on the same legend Heywood based one of his semi-dramatic

dialogues; it remains to be seen how, in the late autumn of the great age

of our dramatic literature, Shirley returned to the same theme in his

_Triumph of Beauty_, privately produced about 1640. It is a regular

masque, for which the familiar story serves as a thread; the goddesses and

their symbolical attendants, or else the Graces and the Hours with Hymen

and Delight, performing the dances, while a company of rustic swains of

Ida, who come to relieve the melancholy of the princely shepherd, form a

comic antimasque. It has, however, grown to the proportions of a small

play. The comic characters also study a piece on the subject of the golden

fleece, reminiscent, like _Narcissus_, of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_.

This, as Mr. Fleay supposes, may well be satirical of some of the city

pageants, though it is best to be cautious in discovering definite

allusions. But the success of such a piece as the present, in so far as it

was dependent on the _libretto_, demanded a power of light and graceful

lyric versification which was not conspicuous among the many gifts of the

author. The comic business is frankly amusing, but the long speeches of

the goddesses can hardly have appeared less tedious to a contemporary

audience than they do to the reader to-day.

I may also notice here a regular short pastoral in three acts, inserted by

Robert Baron in his romance Ἐροτοπαίγνιον, _or the Cyprian Academy_,

printed in 1647. It is entitled _Gripus and Hegio, or the Passionate

Lovers_, and relates the loves of these characters for Mira and Daris;

while we also find the familiar roguish boy, less amusing and of stricter

propriety than usual; a chorus of fairies who discourse classical myth;

Venus, Cupid, Hymen, and Echo; and the habitual concomitants of pastoral

commonplace. The romance also contains a masque entitled _Deorum Dona_, in

which figure allegorical abstractions such as Fame, Fortune, and the like.

It is in no wise pastoral.

Another pastoral show of some elaboration, and of a higher order of poetry

than most of those we have been considering, is Sir William Denny's

_Shepherds' Holiday_, printed from manuscript in the _Inedited Poetical

Miscellany_ of 1870. The piece appears to date from 1653, and is only

slightly dramatic so far as plot is concerned. It is of an allegorical

cast, the various characters typifying certain virtues, or rather

temperaments--virginity, love and so forth--as is elaborately expounded in

the preface.

A few slight pieces by the quondam actor Robert Cox, partaking more or

less of the character of masques, possess a certain pastoral colouring.

This is the case, for instance, in the _Acteon and Diana_, published in

1656.[352] The piece opens with the humours of the would-be lover Bumpkin,

a huntsman, and the dance of the country lasses round the May-pole. Then

enters Acteon with his huntsmen, who is followed by Diana and her nymphs.

Upon the dance of these last Acteon, returning, breaks in unawares, and is

rebuked by the goddess, who then retires with her nymphs to a glade in the

forest. They are in the act of despoiling themselves for the bath when

they are again surprised by Acteon. Incensed, the goddess turns upon him,

and he flees before her anger, only to return once more upon the dance of

the bathers in the shape of a hart, and fall at their feet a prey to his

own hounds. The verse, whether lyric or dramatic, is of a mediocre

description, and the piece, if it was ever actually performed, no doubt

depended for success upon the music, dancing, and scenery. It is a curious

fact, to which Davenant's work among others is witness, that the nominally

private representation of this kind of musical ballet was permitted, while

the regular drama was under strict inhibition. At any time, however, it

must have been difficult to represent such a piece as the present without

sacrificing either propriety or tradition.

Another similar composition, headed 'The Rural Sports on the Birthday of

the Nymph Oenone,' is printed together with the above. In it the strains

of the polished pastoral are varied by the humours of the clown Hobbinall,

the whole ending with a speech by Pan and a dance of satyrs.

One obvions omission from the above catalogue will have been noticed. The

reason thereof is sufficiently obvious; and the following section will

endeavour to repair it.

II

In Milton's contribution to the fashionable masque literature of his day

we approach work the poetic supremacy of which has never been called in

question, and whose other qualities, lying properly beyond the strict

application of that term, critics have habitually vied with one another to

extol. No one, indeed, for whom poetry has any meaning whatever, can turn

from the work of Peele, Heywood, and Shirley, of Ben Jonson even, to the

early works of Milton, to such comparatively immature works as _Arcades_

and _Comus_, without being conscious that they belong to an altogether

different level of poetical production. It was no mere conventional

commendation, such as we may find prefixed to the works of any poetaster

of the time, that Sir Henry Wotton addressed to the author of the Ludlow

masque: 'I should much commend the Tragical [i.e. dramatic] part, if the

Lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your Songs

and Odes, wherunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing

parallel in our Language[353].'

The two poems we have now to consider were, in all probability, written

within a short while of one another, and the second anticipated by more

than three years the composition of _Lycidas_. But the connexion between

the two is not one of date only, nor even of the spectacular demand it was

the end of either to meet. It may, namely, in the absence of any definite

evidence, be with much plausibility presumed that the impulse to the

entertainment, of which as we are told _Arcades_ formed a part, originated

with that very Lady Alice Egerton and her two young brothers who, the

following year probably, bore the chief parts in _Comus_. The

entertainment was presented at Harefield in honour of their grandmother,

the Countess Dowager of Derby. This lady, probably somewhat over seventy

at the time, was the honoured head of a large family. The daughter of Sir

John Spencer of Althorpe, born about 1560, she married first Ferdinando

Stanley, Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, patron of the company of

actors with whom Shakespeare's name is associated; and secondly, after

his early death in 1594, the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton, who rose by

rapid steps to be Viscount Brackley shortly before his death in 1617. The

span of a human life appears strange when measured by the rapidly moving

events of the English renaissance. The wife of Shakespeare's patron, who

may have witnessed the early ventures of the Stratford lad at the time of

his first appearance on the London stage--the 'Amarillis' of _Colin

Clout_, with whom, and with her sisters 'Phillis' and 'Charillis,' Spenser

claimed kinship, and to whom he dedicated his _Tears of the Muses_ in

1591--lived to see her grandchildren perform for her amusement in the

reign of the first Charles an entertainment for which their music-master

Lawes had requisitioned the pen of the future author of _Paradise Lost_.

_Arcades_, or 'the Arcadians,' can hardly be dignified by the name of a

masque; it is the mere embryo of the elaborate compositions which were at

the time fashionable under that name, and of which Milton was to rival the

constructional elaboration in his pastoral entertainment of the following

year. It rather resembles such amoebean productions as we find introduced

into the stage plays of the time; and was, no doubt, as the superscription

explicitly informs us, but 'Part of an entertainment presented to the

Countess Dowager of Darby.' Nevertheless it is complete and

self-contained, and to speak of it, as Professer Masson does, as 'part,

and part only, of a masque,' is to give a wholly false impression; for,

whatever the rest of the entertainment may have been, there is not the

least reason to suppose that it had any connexion or relation with the

portion that has survived. This runs to a little over one hundred lines. A

group of nymphs and shepherds, coming from among the trees of the garden,

approach the 'seat of State' where sits the venerable Countess, whom they

address in a song. As this ends their progress is barred by the Genius of

the Wood, who delivers a long speech.[354] This is followed by a song

introducing the dance, after which a third song brings the performance to

a close. It cannot be honestly said that the bulk of this slender poem is

of any very transcendent merit; but the final song stands apart from the

rest, and deserves notice both on its own account and for the sake of that

to which it served as herald:

Nymphs and Shepherds dance no more

By sandy Ladons Lillied banks;

On old Lycaeus or Cyllene hoar

Trip no more in twilight ranks;

Though Erymanth your loss deplore

A better soyl shall give ye thanks.

From the stony Maenalus

Bring your Flocks, and live with us;

Here ye shall have greater grace

To serve the Lady of this place,

Though Syrinx your Pans Mistres were,

Yet Syrinx well might wait on her.

Such a rural Queen

All Arcadia hath not seen.

Here we have, if nothing else, promise at least of the melodies to be, as

also of that harmonious interweaving of classical names which long years

after was to lend weight and dignity to the 'full and heightened style' of

the epic. One other point in connexion with the poem is noteworthy, the

quality, namely, in virtue of which it claims our attention here. It is,

indeed, not a little curious that on the only two occasions on which

Milton was called upon to produce something of the order of the masque, he

cast his work into a more or less pastoral form; and this in spite of the

fact that, as we have seen, the form was by no means a prevalent one among

the more popular and experienced writers. It would appear as though his

mind turned, through some natural bent or early association, to the

employment of this form; an idea which suggests itself all the more

forcibly when we find him, a few years later, setting about the

composition of a conventional lament in this mode on a young college

acquaintance, and producing, through his power of alchemical

transmutation, one of the greatest works of art in the English language.

It was, no doubt, in the earlier months of 1634, while his friend Lawes

was engaged on the gorgeous and complicated staging and orchestration of

the _Triumph of Peace_ and the _Coelum Britannicum_, that Milton composed

the poem which perhaps more than any other has made readers of to-day

familiar with the term 'masque.' In the second of the elaborate

productions just named--a poem, be it incidentally remarked, which does no

particular credit to the pen of its sometimes unsurpassed author, Tom

Carew, but in the presentation of which the king and many of his chief

nobles deigned to bear a part--minor rôles had been assigned to the two

sons of the Earl of Bridgewater, namely, the Viscount Brackley and Master

Thomas Egerton. When the earl shortly afterwards went to assume the

Presidency of the Welsh Marches, it was these two who, together with their

sister the Lady Alice, bore the central parts in the masque performed

before the assembled worthies of the West in the great hall of Ludlow

Castle. The ages of the three performers ranged from eleven to thirteen,

the girl, who was the eighth daughter of the marriage, being the eldest.

It must have been a gay and imposing sight that greeted the spectators in

the grim old border fortress, the gaunt ruins of which may yet be seen,

but which had at that date already rubbed off some of its medieval

ruggedness as a place of defence. Though necessarily less elaborate and

costly than the performances in London, no pains were spared to make the

spectacle worthy of the occasion, and it must have appeared all the more

splendid in contrast to its surroundings, presented as it was in the great

hall in which met the Council of the Western Marches in the distant town

upon the Welsh border. Nor did the occasion lack the heightening glamour

and dramatic contrast of historical association, for in this very hall

just a century and a half before, if tradition is to be credited, the

unfortunate Prince Edward, son of Edward IV, was crowned before setting

out with his young brother on the fatal journey which was to terminate

under a forgotten flagstone in the Tower of London.

I do not propose to enter into any detailed account of the manner in which

we may suppose the masque to have been performed, nor into the literary

history of the poem itself; to do so would be a work of supererogation in

view of the able discussion of the whole subject from the pen of Professor

Masson. The debts Milton owed to the _Somnium_ of Puteanus, to Peele's

_Old Wives' Tale_ and to Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_, are now all

more or less recognized. From the first he probably borrowed the name and

character of Comus himself, as well as a few incidental expressions. The

second contains a remarkable parallel to the search of the two brothers

for their lost sister, which it is difficult to suppose fortuitous; while

many passages might be cited to prove Milton's close acquaintance with

Fletcher's poem[355].

The masque as performed at Ludlow Castle probably differed in one

important particular from the form in which we know it, and which is that

in which it left Milton's hand. This form is attested by the original

quarto edition, by the texts of the Poems of 1645 and 1673, and by

Milton's manuscript draft in the volume preserved at Trinity College,

Cambridge. The variant form is found in the manuscript at Bridgewater

House, reputed to be in Lawes' handwriting, which seemingly represents the

acting version. In Milton's text the scene discovered is a wild wood; the

attendant Spirit descends, or enters, and at once launches out into a long

speech in blank verse. Lawes seems to have thought that it would be more

appropriate for the Spirit--that is, for himself, for it appears that he

took the part--to open the performance with a song, and consequently

transferred to this place the first thirty-six lines of the final lyrical

speech of the Spirit, substituting the words 'From the heavens' for

Milton's 'To the ocean.' The change was doubtless effective, and was

skilfully made; yet one cannot help feeling that some of the magic of the

poem has evaporated in the process. However, Lawes was loyal to his

friend, and whatever alterations his wider knowledge of the requirements

of stage production may have led him to introduce into the masque as

performed at Ludlow, he never sought to foist any changes of his own into

the published poem, when, having tired himself with making copies for his

friends, he at length decided, with Milton's consent, to send it forth

into the world in its slender quarto garb.

A brief analysis will serve to reveal the lines upon which the piece is

constructed, and to show how far it follows the traditions respectively of

the drama and the masque. The introductory speech puts the audience in

possession of the situation, and informs them how the wood is haunted by

Comus and his crew, himself the son of Bacchus and Circe, and how they

seek to trick unwary passengers into drinking of the fateful cup which

shall transform them to the likeness of beasts and, driving all

remembrance of home and friends from their imaginations, leave them

content 'to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.' Wherefore the Spirit is

sent to guide the steps of those 'favoured of high Jove,' and save them

from the wiles of the fleshly god. Announcing that he goes to assume 'the

weeds and likeness of a swain,' so as to perform his charge unknown, the

Spirit leaves the stage, which is at once invaded by Comus and his rout. A

brilliant speech by the god, preceding the first measure, illustrates the

strange but yet not infrequent irony of fate by which it has happened that

the most puritanical of poets have thrown the full weight of their best

work into the opposing scale, and clothed vice in magic colours to outdo

the richest fancies of the libertine. No doubt this reckless adorning of

sin was intentional on Milton's part; he painted the pleasures of κῶμος in

their most seductive colours, that the triumph of virtue might appear by

so much the greater, fancying that it was enough to assert that final

victory, and failing, like most preachers, to perceive that unless it was

made psychologically and artistically convincing the total effect would be

the very reverse of that which he intended. If we compare the speech of

Comus with that of the Lady on her first appearance, we shall hardly

escape the conclusion that then, as indeed always, Milton had a mere

schoolboy's idea of 'plot,' as of some combination of events to be infused

with the breath of life at his own will, and from without, not such as

should spring from the fundamental elements of the characters themselves.

In the midst of dance and revel Comus interrupts his followers:

Break off, break off, I feel the different pace

Of some chast footing neer about this ground;

and the crew vanishes among the trees as the Lady enters alone and

narrates how she lost her brothers at nightfall in the wood, and attracted

by the sounds of mirth has bent hither her steps in the hope of finding

some one to direct her. She then sings a song by way of attracting her

brothers' attention, should they chance to be near. As she ends Comus

re-enters in guise of a shepherd, and offers to escort her to his hut

where she may rest until her companions are found. She has no sooner left

the stage than these enter in search of her, and while away the time with

a long discussion on the dangers of the wood and the protective power of

virtue. To them at length enters the attendant Spirit, who has certainly

been so far very remiss in his duties, in the habit of their father's

shepherd Thirsis; and on hearing how they have parted company with their

sister, tells of Comus and his enchantments, and arming his hearers with

hemony, powerful against all spells, guides them to the hall of the

sorcerer. The scene now changes to the interior of the palace of Comus,

'set out with all manner of deliciousness,' where the god and his rabble

are feasting. On one side we may imagine an open arcade giving on to the

banks of the Severn, silvery in the moonlight, the cool purity of its

waters contrasting with the rich jewelled light and perfumed air within.

We see the Lady seated in an enchanted chair, while before her stands the

magician, wand in hand, offering her wine in a crystal goblet. Then

follows the dialogue in which the Lady defends her virtue against the

blandishments of Comus, till at last her brothers, followed by the

spirit-shepherd, rush in and disperse the revellers. The Lady is now found

to be fixed like marble in the chair of enchantment, but the attendant

Spirit shows his resource by calling to their help the virgin goddess of

the stream:

Sabrina fair

Listen where thou art sitting

Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,

In twisted braids of Lillies knitting

The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair,

Listen for dear honour's sake,

Goddess of the silver lake,

Listen and save.

Thus conjured in some of the most perfectly musical lines in the language

the daughter of Locrine rises from her waves, and enters the hall with a

song, attended by her obedient nymphs. Having broken the spell and freed

the captive Lady, she at once departs with her train, and after another

speech by the Spirit, the scene changes to the town and castle of Ludlow,

a bevy of shepherds dancing in the foreground. After these have concluded

their measure, the wanderers enter, still guided by the spirit-shepherd,

who presents them safe and sound to their parents. Then follows another

dance, and the Spirit, throwing off, we may presume, his pastoral

disguise, launches into his final speech:

To the Ocean now I fly,

And those happy climes that ly

Where day never shuts his eye;

concluding:

Mortals that would follow me,

Love vertue, she alone is free,

She can teach ye how to clime

Higher than the Spheary chime;

Or if Vertue feeble were,

Heav'n it self would stoop to her.

Such is the bare outline, the skeleton of the piece; what, we cannot help

wondering, was it like when it first appeared clothed in the beauty of the

flesh and inspired with the spirit of song? Its fashion and its form we

have indeed yet before us, though nothing can again quicken it into the

life it enjoyed for one brief hour nearly three hundred years ago. We must

be thankful that we count the poem itself among our treasures, and be

content to confine our inquiry to it. It is, after all, to the accidents

of its production as the body to the robes that adorn it.

It must be confessed that outwardly at least _Comus_ has but little

connexion with pastoral. The habit of the Spirit, the disguise of the

magician, the dance in the third scene, these are the only points serving

to connect the poem with pastoral tradition in any formal manner. It is

not, however, on account of these that _Comus_ has been commonly assigned

to the same category as the _Faithful Shepherdess_ and _Lycidas_, but

rather because its whole tone, its mode, one might almost say, is

essentially pastoral, and because it is directly dependent upon previous

pastoral work.

It has been the fashion to praise _Comus_ above all other masques

whatever, and from the point of view of the poetry it contains it would be

idle to dispute its supremacy. But there are other considerations. As a

masque proper, and from the point of view of what had come to be expected

of such compositions, how does it stand? I am not here concerned to

inquire how far the term can with strict propriety be applied to the

piece, a question which may be left to the somewhat arid region of the

formal classification of literature. The points in which it resembles the

regular spectacular masques, as well as those in which it differs from

them, will be alike evident from the analysis given above. It may,

however, be well to put in a caution against the manner in which some

writers on the masque seek to make their distinctions appear more clearly

defined than they in reality are by declaring _Comus_ to be not a masque

at all but a play. It is no more a regular play than it is a strict

masque, but a dramatic composition containing elements of both in almost

equal proportions.

That the songs are for the most part exquisite, that they were worthily

set to music and adequately rendered; that the measures, the dance of the

revellers in their half-brutish disguises, the antimasque of country folk,

and the final or main dance of the wanderers, were effective; that the

whole was graceful, complete and polished, is either self-evident to-day,

or may with reason be inferred. The scenery, too, must have been striking;

the dreary forest, its darkness just relieved by the half-seen

'glistering' forms; the heavy drug-like splendour of the enchanted palace

and the cold moonlight outside; the bright, fresh sunshine, lastly,

dew-washed, of the early morning; there were here a series of pictures the

contrasts of which must have added to their individual effect. The scene,

the song and the measure, these form, indeed, the very stuff that masques

are made of. But Milton's poem offered more than this; and it may well be

questioned how far this more was of a nature to recommend it to the tastes

of his audience, or indeed to heighten rather than to diminish its merits

as a work of literature and art. There was, in the first place, a

philosophical and moral intention, which, however veiled in fanciful

imagery and clothed in limpid verse, is yet not content to be an inspiring

principle and artistic occasion of the poem, but obtrudes itself directly

in the length of some of the speeches; refuses, that is, to subserve the

aesthetic purpose, and endeavours to divert the poetic beauty to its own

non-aesthetic ends. In the second place, and probably of greater

importance as regards the actual success of the piece on the stage, it

contained somewhat of dramatic emotion, of incident which depended for its

value upon its effect on the characters involved, which was ill served by

the spectacular machinery and necessary limitations of the composition,

while at the same time it must have interfered with the opportunity for

mere sensuous effect which it was the main business of the masque to

afford. The weight which different persons will attach to these objections

will no doubt vary with their individual temperaments, their

susceptibility to the magical charm of the verse, their sense of artistic

propriety, and the degree to which they are able to recall in imagination

the conditions of a bygone form of artistic presentation. I speak for

myself when I say that, in fitness for the particular end it had to serve,

Milton's poem appears to me to be surpassed, for instance, by the best of

Jonson's masques, no less than it surpasses them, and all others of their

kind, in the poetical beauty of the verse, whether of the 'tragical' or

lyrical portions.

Since I have ventured to formulate certain objections against an

acknowledged masterpiece, it will be well that I should define as clearly

as possible the ground upon which those objections are based. I have, I

hope, sufficiently emphasized my dissent from that school of criticism

which condemns a work of art for not conforming to one or another of a

series of fixed types. That _Comus_ lies, so to speak, midway between the

drama and the masque, and partakes of the nature of either, is not, by any

inherent law of literary aesthetics, a blemish; what in my view is a

blemish, and that a serions one, is that the means employed are not

calculated to the demands of the situation. The struggle of the Lady

against the subtle enchanter, the search of the brothers for their lost

sister, the safe event of their wanderings, are all points which, however

simple in themselves, yet excite our interest; however certain we may feel

that virtue in the person of the Lady will never fall to the allurements

of Comus, they neither of them become a mere abstraction. That is to say

that, little as there may be of plot, the interest is that of the drama,

an interest really felt in the fate of the characters; while the medium

adopted is that of the masque, with its spectacular machinery, even if not

in its regular and orthodox form. It follows that the dramatic interest is

a clog on the scenic elaboration of the form, while the form is

necessarily inadequate to the rendering of the content.

It is significant that in all the early editions the piece is merely

styled 'A Maske Presented At Ludlow Castle'; the title of _Comus_ was

first affixed by Warton. It was an obvious title for a critic to adopt; it

is probably the last that the author would himself have thought of

choosing. Had it been named contemporaneously, and after the fashion of

the masques at court, the title of the _Triumph of Virtue_ could not but

have suggested itself. This is indeed the very theme of the piece. Virtue

in the person of the Lady, guarded by her brothers, watched over by the

attendant Spirit, aided at need by the nymph Sabrina, triumphant over the

blandishments and temptations of fancy and of sense in the persons of

Comus and his followers; that is the subject of the masque. It is a

subject finely and suitably conceived for spectacular illustration, and

possesses a moral after Milton's own heart. The closing lines of the poem,

already quoted, give admirable expression to the motive. Were the subject,

on the other hand, to be treated dramatically, then the character of the

Lady, virtue at grip with evil, was worthy to exercise--had; indeed, in

varying forms long exercised--the highest dramatic genius. But in this

direction lay, consciously or unconsciously, one of Milton's most evident

limitations, and had he attempted to give full dramatic expression to the

idea it is not improbable that the experiment would have resulted in

undeniable failure. From such an attempt he was, however, debarred by the

terms of his commission, which demanded not a drama, but a spectacular

performance. Yet in spite of this Milton's conception of the piece is, as

we have seen, essentially dramatic, and consequently in so far as the

means prevented the due fulfilment of that conception in so far must the

Lady necessarily fall short of the adequate realization of her high rôle.

The action is too much abstracted, the characters too allegorical, to

satisfy in us the dramatic expectations which they nevertheless call

forth; while, on the other hand, they remain too concrete and individual

to be adequately rendered by purely spectacular means.

These considerations have an important bearing upon the other objection

which I ventured to bring forward, that of moralizing; for it cannot be

argued, I imagine, that the direct expression of philosophical or ethical

ideas is in any way illegitimate in the masque proper, any more than it is

in the choric ode. But, as I have said, Milton--no doubt intentionally,

though the point is irrelevant--has raised dramatic issues and dramatic

emotions, and consequently by the laws of the drama, that is, by his

success in satisfying those emotions, he must be judged. All speeches

therefore introduced with a directly moral and philosophical rather than a

dramatic end must be pronounced artistic solecisms. Whether Milton has

been guilty of such undramatic interpolations, such lapses from the one

end of art, may be left to the individual judgement of each reader to

determine; for my own part I cannot conceive that any doubt should exist.

But even if we pass over what some readers will be inclined to dismiss as

a mere theoretical objection, there are other charges which these same

passages will have to meet. Those who have borne with me in my remarks on

the _Aminta_ and the _Faithful Shepherdess_, will probably also agree with

me here, when I say that to me at least there is something not altogether

pleasing in Milton's presentment of virtue. I should add at once, that to

place Milton's poem on an ethical level with either of the above-mentioned

pieces would, of course, be preposterous. It is impossible to doubt the

severe chastity of Milton's own ideal, and to compare it for one moment to

the conventional _onestà_ which replaced virtue in Tasso's world, or with

the nauseous unreality of the puppet Fletcher sought to enthrone in its

place, would be to commit an uncritical outrage. Nevertheless, the

expression Milton chose to give to his ideal cannot, therefore, lay claim

to privilege. That expression had become intimately associated with

pastoral convention, and he accepted it along with much else from his

predecessors. I am not aware of any reason why spectators should have been

prejudiced otherwise than in favour of the Lady Alice Egerton; but she is,

nevertheless, careful to take the first opportunity of informing them,

with much earnest protestation, of her quite remarkable purity and virtue,

implying as it were a naïve surprise at having arrived unsullied at the

perilous age of thirteen. The stilted affectation of this self-conscious

innocence is perhaps less evident in the scene in which we should most

readily look for it--that, namely, in which the Lady defends herself from

the persuasions of the Sorcerer, where a certain fervour of feeling raises

her utterances above a merely colourless level--than in the long soliloquy

in which she indulges on first appearing on the stage. Something of the

same disagreeable quality is present in the rather mawkish discussion

between her two young brothers. Milton, who is entirely untouched, either

with the levity of Tasso or the cynicism of Fletcher, was undoubtedly

himself wholly unconscious that any such charge could be brought against

his work. It is the direct outcome of a certain obtuseness, a curious want

of delicacy, which in his later work results at times in passages of

offensively bad taste[356]. As yet it is hardly responsible for anything

worse than a confused conception in the poet's imagination. [Greek: Πάντα

καθαρὰ τοῖς καθαροῖς], and the allegory is an old one whereby virtue

appears as the tamer of the beasts of the wild. It is, however, to those

alone who are innocent of evil that belongs the faery talisman. The

virtue, knowing of itself and of the world, may be held a surer defence,

but it is by comparison a gross and earthly buckler, with less of the

glamour of romance reflected from its aegis-mirror. Somehow one feels

instinctively that Una did not, on meeting with the lion, launch forth

into a protestation of her chastity. Nothing, of course, would be easier

than by means of a little judicious misrepresentation to cast ridicule

upon the whole of Milton's conception of virtue in woman, and nowhere is

it more needful than in such a case as the present to remember the

fundamental maxim that bids one take the position one is attacking at its

strongest. Nevertheless, putting aside for the moment all questions of art

and all considerations of taste, there remains a question worthy of being

fully and carefully stated, and of being honestly entertained. Milton has

deliberately penned passages of smug self-conceit upon a subject whose

delicacy he was apparently incapable of appreciating, and these passages

he has placed, to be spoken in her own person, in the mouth of a child

just passing into the first dawn of adolescence, thereby outraging at once

the innocence of childhood and the reticence of youth. Is it possible to

pretend that this is an action upon which moral censure has no word to

say[357]?

It would hardly have been necessary to emphasize this point of view, or

to dwell upon objections which, when one surrenders to the magic of the

verse, can hardly appear other than carping, were it not for the somewhat

injudicious and undiscriminating praise which it has been the fashion of a

certain school of critics to lavish upon the piece. The exquisite quality

of the verse may be readily conceded, as may also the nobleness of

Milton's conception and the brilliance, within certain limits, of the

execution; but when we are further challenged to admire the 'moral

grandeur' of the figure in which virtue is honoured, there are some at

least who will feel tempted to reply in the significant words: 'Methinks

the lady doth protest too much!'

A word may be said finally as to the quality of the verse. I need not

repeat that it is exquisite, that the music of it is like a full stream

overflowing the rich pastures; what I am concerned to maintain is, that it

is not for the most part of Milton's best. In the first place, what, for

want of a better name, I have called Milton's moralizing is a blemish upon

the poetic as it is upon the dramatic merits of the piece. The muse of

poetry, like all her sisters, is not slow in avenging herself of a divided

allegiance. By the cynical irony of fortune already noticed, where Milton

would most impress us with his moral he becomes least poetical. There is,

it is true, hardly a speech or a song which does not contain lines worthy

to rank with any in the language, from the opening words:

Before the starry threshold of Joves Court,

to the final couplet:

Or if Virtue feeble were,

Heav'n it self would stoop to her.

But there are passages in which these memorable lines appear as so much

rich embroidery superimposed upon the baser fabric of the verse, not woven

of the woof. They are in their nature more easily detached, and often form

the best known and most often quoted passages of the work. Take the first

speech of the Lady, concerning which something has already been said. Here

we find the lines:

They left me then, when the gray-hooded Eev'n

Like a sad Votarist in Palmer's weed

Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus wain;

or again:

A thousand fantasies

Begin to throng into my memory

Of calling shapes, and beckning shadows dire,

And airy tongues, that syllable mens names

On Sands, and Shoars, and desert Wildernesses;

or yet again:

Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

We have the song:

Sweet Echo, sweetest Nymph that liv'st unseen

Within thy airy shell

By slow Meander's margent green,

And in the violet imbroider'd vale

Where the love-lorn Nightingale

Nightly to thee her sad Song mourneth well.

Such lines would justly render famous any passage in any poem in which

they occurred. Nevertheless, remove them, which can be done without

material injury to the sequence of the thought, and see whether in its

warp and web the speech can for a moment stand comparison with that of

Comus, to which it stands in direct and dramatic contraposition.

But this drawback is only incidental; through nine-tenths of the piece,

perhaps, there is little or no moral preoccupation to disturb us. And

here, though no doubt the poetic beauty reaches a climax in the song to

Sabrina--a song for pure music certainly unsurpassed and probably

unequalled by anything else that Milton ever wrote--there are others, such

as 'By the rushy-fringed bank,' as well as less distinctively lyrical

passages, which come within measurable distance even of its perfection.

And yet, with certain noticeable exceptions, there are few passages in

which comparison with Milton's later works will not reveal technical

immaturity. This is no less true of the decasyllabic verse, when compared

with the full sonority of _Lycidas_, than of the shorter measures. Take,

for example, the invocation of Sabrina which follows the song previously

quoted--the speech beginning:

Listen and appear to us

In name of great Oceanus.

In spite of its very great beauty there is observable at the same time a

certain monotony of cadence, and an occasional want of success in the

attempts to relieve it, which place the passage distinctly below Milton's

best. And yet it seems almost ungenerous to place Milton even below

himself, particularly when in the very speech we are criticizing we are

brought face to face with two such flawless lines as those on 'fair

Ligea's golden comb',

Wherwith she sits on diamond rocks

Sleeking her soft alluring locks--

lines which anticipate and rival the perfection of rhythmic modulation in

_L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_[358].

III

There remains to inquire what influence of pastoral tradition is traceable

in the wider field of the romantic drama, whether in individual scenes and

characters, or more vaguely in general tone and sentiment; and, finally,

to consider for a moment the critical expression given by writers of

various dates to the sentimental philosophy of life which went under the

name of pastoralism in fashionable circles.

The number of plays in which definite pastoral elements can be traced is

surprisingly small, even when every allowance has been made for the fact

that we have already included in our examination several pieces which come

but doubtfully within the fold. The spirit of the romantic drama, instinct

with sturdy life, had little in common with the artificial and unreal

sentiment of a tradition which had almost ceased to pretend to a basis in

the emotions of natural humanity. The result was, as might be expected,

that when the drama introduced characters of a nominally pastoral type,

they were either direct transcripts from actual life, deliberately

ignoring conventional tradition, or else specifie borrowings from that

tradition, introduced with full consciousness of its fashionable

unreality, and using that unreality for a definite dramatic purpose. Thus,

although the basis of pastoralism is found in non-traditional garb, and

though pastoralism itself is found as the subject of dramatic treatment,

yet, so far as the introduction of individual scenes and characters is

concerned, it is seldom possible to say that pastoral has influenced the

romantic drama in any sensible degree.

A certain number of plays, presumably of a more or less pastoral nature,

have perished. Thus no trace remains of the _Lusus Pastorales_ licensed to

Richard Jones in 1565, the nature of which can be only vaguely

conjectured. The early date of the entry renders it important, and it is

much to be regretted that the work should have perished, since it might

have thrown very interesting light upon the condition of pastoralism in

England previous to the appearance of the _Shepherd's Calender_. Most

probably, however, the piece, whatever it may have been, was composed in

Latin. We also have to lament the non-survival of a _Phillida and Corin_,

which, we learn from the Revels' accounts, was acted by the Queen's men

before the court, at Greenwich, on St. Stephen's day, 1584. This again

would be an interesting piece to possess, since the title suggests a

purely pastoral composition contemporary with Peele's mythological play.

On February 28, 1592, Lord Strange's men performed a piece at the Rose,

the title of which is given by Henslowe as 'clorys & orgasto,' presumably

_Chloris and Ergasto_. It was an old play, probably dating from some years

earlier. Whether 'a pastorall plesant Commedie of Robin Hood and little

John,' entered to Edward White in the Stationers' Register, on May 14,

1594, could have justified its title may be questioned, but it is curious

as suggesting an anticipation of Jonson's experiment. Again, on July 17,

1599, George Chapman received of Philip Henslowe forty shillings, in

earnest of a 'Pastorall ending in a Tragydye,' which, however, was

apparently never finished. Possibly our loss is not great, for Chapman's

talents hardly lay in this line; but a tragical ending to a play of the

pure pastoral type would have been something of a novelty, and the early

date would also have lent it some interest. Yet another play known to us

solely from Henslowe's accounts is the _Arcadian Virgin_, on which Chettle

and Haughton were at work for the Admiral's men in December, 1599, and for

which they received sums amounting in all to fifteen shillings. The title

suggests that the play may have been founded on the story of Atalanta, but

it was probably not completed. Ben Jonson's _May Lord_, which we know only

through the notes left by Drummond of his conversations, was almost

certainly not dramatic, though critics have always accepted it as such;

but the same authority records that Jonson at the time of his visit to

Hawthornden was contemplating a fisher-play, the scene to be laid on the

shores of Loch Lomond. There is no evidence that the scheme ever reached a

more mature stage. Finally, I may mention a play entitled _Alba_, a Latin

pastoral, which incurred the royal displeasure when performed before James

and his consort in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1605. The

historian of the visit, quoted by Nichols, says that 'It was a pastoral,

much like one which I have seen in King's College, Cambridge, but acted

far worse.' The allusion is presumably to the Latin translation of the

_Pastor fido_. The cause of offence was the appearance of 'five or six men

almost naked,' who no doubt represented satyrs.

To what extent these plays were of a pastoral character must, of course,

be matter of conjecture. They may have been pastoral plays of a more or

less regular type, they may have been mythological dramas, or they may

have been distinguished from the ordinary run of romantic compositions by

a few incidental traits of pastoralism only. Not a few pieces of the

latter description have been preserved, pieces in which definite traces

of pastoral are to be found, but which cannot as a whole be included in

the kind.

We have already had occasion to note the very slight pastoral influence

which exists in the short masques or dialogues of Thomas Heywood, in spite

of the opportunity afforded by their mythological character. The same may

be noticed in the plays in which he drew his subject from classical

legend. _Love's Mistress_ is the appropriate and attractive title of a

dramatization of the last-born fancy of the mythopoeic spirit of Greece,

Apuleius' tale of Cupid and Psyche. The early editions add to the title

the further designation of 'The Queen's Masque.' The work is indeed a

composite piece, a masque grown into a play through the accretion of

foreign matter, and was probably in its original state a far simpler

composition than it now appears. The writing is in a dainty vein, and had

the piece been completed in a manner consonant with the simple and idyllic

grace of the earlier scenes, it would have been no such unequal companion

to Peele's _Arraignment of Paris_. What the play contains of pastoral

belongs to one of the accretions. It is a rustic element in the

interludes, satiric and farcical, supplied by a country clown, some

shepherds, and 'a shee Swaine,' Amarillis. In his _Ages_ the pastoral

element shrinks to an occasional dance and song. Thus in the _Golden Age_

the satyrs and nymphs sing a song in honour of Diana, which introduces the

disguised Jupiter in his courtship of Calisto. In the _Silver Age_, again,

the rape of Proserpine by Pluto is preluded by a song of 'a company of

Swaines, and country Wenches' in honour of Ceres.

An unkind and quite worthless tradition, based on a manuscript note in an

old copy, has connected Peele's name with the lengthy and tedious drama of

_Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_. It was admitted into the canon of Peele's

works by Dyce, and though Mr. Bullen differed from his predecessor as to

the justness of the ascription, he retained it in his edition. We find in

it a coarse, dialect-speaking rustic, named Corin, who at one point

succours Clyomon, and with whom Neronis, daughter of the King and Queen of

the Strange Marshes, seeks service in the disguise of a boy. Apart from

his name and the profession of shepherd he is a mere countryman, with

nothing to connect him with pastoral tradition, though the princess'

action finds, of course, abundant parallels therein. The _Old Wives'

Tale_, printed as 'by G. P.,' and of which there is no reason to question

Peele's authorship, connects itself with pastoral chiefly through the

already mentioned parallel which it affords to _Comus_. It also

anticipates, in a song of harvesters, the introduction of the 'sunburnt

sicklemen' of the _Tempest_ masque.

At a later date we find Shirley in his _Love Tricks_ introducing two

sisters who leave their home and, taking the disguise of shepherd and

shepherdess, dwell among the country folk in the fields and pastures,

whither they are followed by their lovers. There are passages which reveal

a genuine pastoral tone, such as Shirley could readily adopt when it

suited his purpose, and it is not only in the measure that the tradition

reveals itself in such lines as:

A shepherd is a king whose throne

Is a mossy mountain, on

Whose top we sit, our crook in hand,

Like a sceptre of command,

Our subjects, sheep grazing below,

Wanton, frisking to and fro. (IV. ii.)

Again, in the _Grateful Servant_ we have a show of 'Satyres pursuing

Nymphes; they dance together. Exeunt Satyres; three Nymphes seem to

intreat [Lodowick] to goe with them,' accompanied by a song of Silvanus.

Yet slighter traces of pastoral are to be occasionally found in other

plays of the period. Thus in Brome's _Love-Sick Court_ the swains and

nymphs are led in the dance by characters who have sought and found a cure

for love among the country folk. In John Jones' _Adrasta_, the scene of

which is laid at Florence, several of the characters disguise themselves

in pastoral attire, and there is one definitely pastoral scene in which

they appear in the midst of real shepherds and shepherdesses. The play was

printed in 1635, and it is noticeable as containing, in the pastoral

scene, satire on the Puritans resembling that introduced by Jonson in the

_Sad Shepherd_. So again, similar disguisings, though of a less

pronouncedly pastoral character, occur in the anonymous _Knave in Grain_,

in which the scene is Venice. Satyrs and nymphs, clowns and maids, join in

a song in Nashe's curious allegorical show entitled _Summer's Last Will

and Testament_; nymphs and satyrs appear in the interludes of Dekker's

_Old Fortunatus_; Silvanus, with nymphs and satyrs, perform a sort of

interlude with song in the anonymous _Wily Beguiled_; and, lastly, we have

the morris danced by the countrymen and wenches who accompany the jailor's

daughter in the _Two Noble Kinsmen_.

* * * * *

The wider influence of tone and spirit is, in the nature of the case, far

more difficult to determine. It is possible that some court-plays may show

the influence of the artificial arrangement of characters and the

conventional play of motives characteristic of the pastoral drama. But it

is a matter of the greatest difficulty to analyse with certainty such

structural peculiarities as these, still more so to assign them with

confidence to their proper origin. Many characteristics which one might at

first sight put down to the influence of the pastoral drama are, in

reality, far more likely to be due to that of the comic stage of Italy in

general. But while it would be rash to assert that the pastoral plays in

this country exercised any wide influence over the regular drama, there

can be no question such an influence was exercised to a very appreciable

degree by pastoral poetry in general. I am not thinking of the romances at

this moment, for as we have already seen it was the non-pastoral elements

in the pastoral novel that exerted such influence as can be traced over

the drama, but rather of the pastoral ideal and the pastoral mode in

general, as expressed either in the lyric, the eclogue, or the drama. In

this the drama shared an influence which was also exercised on other

departments of literature. Numerous songs might be quoted from the scenes

of the Elizabethan dramatists in support of this contention; while, on the

other hand, we also find dramatic and descriptive passages the idyllic

quality of which may not unreasonably be referred to a pastoral source.

This tendency of the drama to absorb pastoral elements rather from the

lyric and the idyll than from regular plays in that kind is significant.

It is the acknowledgement of an important fact, which pastoralism failed

to recognize; namely, that as the expression of the pastoral idea gained

in complexity of artistic structure it lost in vitality. The pastoral

drama, born late in time, was the outcome of very especial circumstances,

emphatically the child of its age, and little calculated to serve the

artistic requirements of any other. Once the creative impulse that gave it

life was withdrawn the falsity of the kind as a form of art became

manifest; and though it lingered on for many years its life was but that

of a fashionable toy, with little or no hold over the vital literature of

its day. The popularity of the pastoral eclogue or idyll was of far longer

duration. Though the form was more or less definitely conditioned, it had

less of the structural rigidity of the drama, it brought its subject less

into contact with the hard limitations of reality, and, which may also

have been important, brought it less into comparison with other

subject-matter employing the same or a closely analogous form. Thus it was

better able to adapt itself to the tastes and requirements of various

ages, and found favour in such vastly different societies as those for

which Theocritus, Mantuan, Spenser, and Pope produced their works in this

kind. Even here, however, the simple sensuous ideal was too much hampered

by the ungenuine paraphernalia which the conventions of these various

societies had gathered round it to take rank among the permanent and

inevitable forms of literary art. This was granted to the lyric alone. It

was through the lyric that the pastoral ideal and pastoral colouring most

deeply penetrated and influenced existing forms; for the lyric, the freest

and most unconditioned of all poetical kinds, the least tied to the

circumstances and limitations of the actual world, was particularly fitted

to extract the fragrance from the pastoral ideal without raising any

unseasonable questions as to its rational or actual possibility.

It was a lover and his lass

That o'er the green cornfield did pass--

this is the essential; and we ask no more if we are wise. The very

essence, be it remembered, of the pastoral ideal is no more than 'love

_in vacuo_.' And this the lyric alone can give us.

* * * * *

But there is one play which more than any other illustrates the nature of

the influence exerted by pastoral tradition over the romantic drama and

the relation subsisting between the two. This is _As You Like It_; for if

in one sense Shakespeare was but following Lodge in the traditional

blending of pastoral elements with those of court and chivalry, in another

sense he has in this play revealed his opinion of, and passed judgement

upon, the whole pastoral ideal. This must necessarily happen whenever a

great creative artist adopts, for reasons of his own, and takes into his

work any merely outward and formal convention. It was rarely that in his

plays Shakespeare showed any inclination to connect himself even remotely

with pastoral tradition. The _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ traces its origin,

indeed, to the _Diana_ of Montemayor; but all vestige of pastoral

colouring has vanished, and Shakespeare may even have been himself

ignorant of the parentage of the story he treated. A more apparent element

of pastoral found its way many years later into the _Winters Tale_; but it

is characteristic of the shepherd scenes of that play, written in the full

maturity of Shakespeare's genius, that, in spite of their origin in

Greene's romance of _Pandosto_, they owe nothing of their treatment to

pastoral tradition, nothing to convention, nothing to aught save life as

it mirrored itself in the magic glass of the poet's imagination. They

represent solely the idealization of Shakespeare's own observation, and in

spite of the marvellous and subtle glamour of golden sunlight that

overspreads the whole, we may yet recognize in them the consummation

towards which many sketches of natural man and woman, as he found them in

the English fields and lanes, seem in a less certain and conscious manner

to be striving in plays of an earlier date. It was characteristic of

Shakespeare, as it has been of other great artists, to introduce into his

early writings incidental sketches which serve as studies for further work

of a later period. In much the same manner the varied, but at times

uncertain, melody of the early love comedies seems to aspire towards the

full sonority and magic of lyric feeling and utterance in _Romeo and

Juliet_.

Thus it is neither to the mellow autumn of his art, when he had cast aside

as unworthy all the trivialities of convention, nor yet to the storm and

stress of adolescence, the immaturity of pettiness and exaggeration, that

we must look if we would discover Shakespeare's attitude towards pastoral

tradition. _As You Like It_ belongs to his middle period. It will be

remembered, from what has been said on an earlier page, that in this play

Shakespeare substantially followed the story of Rosalind as narrated by

Lodge, to whom we owe the introduction of a pastoral element into the old

tale of Gamelyn. The pastoral characters of the play may be roughly

analysed as follows. Celia and Rosalind, the latter disguised as a youth,

are courtly characters; Phebe and Silvius represent the polished Arcadians

of pastoral tradition; while Audrey and William combine the character of

farcical rustics with the inimitable humanity which distinguishes

Shakespeare's creations. It is noteworthy that this last pair is the

dramatist's own addition to the cast. Thus we have all the various

types--all the degrees or variations of idealization--brought side by side

and co-existent in the fairyland of the poet's fancy. The details of the

play are too well known for there to be any call to outrage the delicate

interweaving of character and incident by translating the perfect scenes

into clumsy prose. Nor would such analysis throw any light upon

Shakespeare's attitude towards pastoral. That must be sought elsewhere. We

may seek it in the fanciful mingling of ideals and idealizations--of

courtly masking, of the conventional naturalism of polished dreamers, and

of a rusticity more genuine at once and more sympathetic than that of

Lorenzo, all of which act by their very natures as touchstones to one

another. We may seek it in the uncertainty and hovering between belief and

scepticism, earnest and play, reality and imagination--such as can only

exist in art, or in life when life approaches to the condition of an

art--which we find in the scenes where Orlando courts his mistress in the

person of the youth who is but his mistress in disguise. We may seek it

lastly in the manner in which the firm structure of the piece is

fashioned of the non-pastoral elements; in the happiness of the art by

which the pastoral incidents and business appear but as so much fair and

graceful ornament upon this structure, bringing with them a smack of the

free, rude, countryside, or a faint perfume of the polished Utopia of

courtly makers. It is here that we may trace Shakespeare's appreciation of

pastoral, as a delicate colouring, an old-world fragrance, a flower from

wild hedgerows or cultured garden, a thing of grace and beauty, to be

gathered, enjoyed, and forgotten, unsuited in its evanescent charm to be

the serious business of art or life.

On this note, the realization at once of the delicate loveliness and of

the unsubstantiality of the pastoral ideal, we may close our survey of its

growth and blossoming in our dramatic literature, and before finally

turning from the tradition which fascinated so many generations of

European artists, pause for one moment to inquire of the critical

expression it has received at the hands of more philosophical writers.

We have already seen how in the early days of modern pastoral composition

Boccaccio, summing up the previous history of the kind, found in allegory

and topical allusion its _raison d'être_. We have seen how in our own

tongue Drayton expressed a similar view, and how Fletcher adopted in

theory at least a more naturalistic position. This antagonism which runs

through the whole of pastoral theory is really dependent upon two

questions which have not always been clearly distinguished. There is,

namely, the question of the allegorical or topical interpretation of the

poems, and there is the question of the rusticity or at least simplicity

of the form and language. It is possible to advocate the introduction of

Boccaccio's 'nonnulli sensus' and yet demand that, whatever the esoteric

interpretation of which the poem may be capable, the outward expression

shall be appropriate to the apparent condition of the speakers; while on

the other hand it is possible to confine the meaning to the evident and

unsophisticated sense of the poem, while allowing such a degree of

idealization in the language and sentiments of the characters as to

differentiate them widely from the actual rustics of real life. The former

of these positions is that assumed by Spenser in the _Shepherd's

Calender_, however much he may have failed in logical consistency; the

second is that which, in spite of much incidental matter of a topical

nature, underlies Tasso's masterpiece in the kind. It is with the second

of the above questions that critics have in the main been concerned. They

have, namely, as a rule, tacitly though not explicitly recognized the fact

that a poem whose value depends exclusively upon an esoteric

interpretation has no meaning whatever as a work of art, while if artistic

value can be assigned to the primary meaning of the work, it is a matter

of indifference aesthetically whether there be an esoteric interpretation

or not.

Every writer, I think, who comes within the limits of pastoral as usually

understood, has found a certain idealization and a certain refinement

necessary in bringing rustic swains into the domain of art. That any such

process is inherently necessary to produce an artistic result there is no

reason whatever to suppose; it may even be rationally questioned whether

it is necessary to ensure the result falling within the recognizable field

of pastoral; but neither of these considerations affects the historical

fact. It is commonly admitted that among pastoral writers Theocritus

adhered most closely to nature; yet no one has been found to describe him

as a realist, whether in method or intention. But though this process of

idealization is practically universal, few poets have confessed to it.

Only occasionally an author, writing according to the demands of his age

or of his individual taste, has been alive to what appeared to be a

contradiction between his creations and what he mistook for the

fundamental conditions of the kind in which he created. This was the case

with Tasso, and he sought to reconcile the two by making Amore in the

prologue declare:

Spirerò nobil sensi a' rozzi petti,

Raddolcirò nelle lor lingue il suono,

Perche, ovunque i' mi sia, io sono Amore,

Ne' pastori non men, che negli eroi;

E la disagguaglianza de' soggetti,

Come a me piace, agguaglio.

This served, of course, no other purpose than to salve the author's

artistic conscience, since it is perfectly evident that the polished

civility of his characters belongs to them by nature, and is not in any

way an external importation. The remark, however, is interesting in

respect of the philosophy of love as a civilizing power, which we have

seen constantly recurring from the days of Boccaccio onward. Ben Jonson

expressed himself sharply on this subject, with respect to Guarini and

Sidney, in his conversations with Drummond. 'That Guarini, in his Pastor

Fido, keept not decorum, in making Shepherds speek as well as himself

could.... That Sidney did not keep a decorum in making everyone speak as

well as himself.'[359] The critical foundation of these censures in an _a

priori_ definition of pastoral is obvious, and they are more interesting

for their authorship than for their intrinsic merit. It would be curious

to know how Jonson defended such a character as his Sad Shepherd--but his

views had time to alter.

It is to the critics of the late years of the seventeenth century and

early ones of the eighteenth that we owe the attempt to formulate a theory

of pastoral composition. The attempt has not for us any great importance.

All the work we have been considering had appeared, and the vast majority

of it had passed into oblivion, before the French critics first engaged

upon the task. Nor has the attempt much intrinsic interest. The theories

of individual writers such as those already mentioned are of value, as

showing the critical mood in which they themselves created; but these, and

still more the theories of pure critics, are of no importance, either in

the field of abstract critical theory or of historical inquiry.

Fontenelle, offended at the odour of Theocritus' hines, Rapin, with his

Jesuitical prudicity and ethico-literary theories of propriety, are not

the kind of thinkers to advance critical and historical science. Yet it

was to their school that the far greater English critics of the early

eighteenth century belonged. Their work consists for the most part of

various combinations of _a priori_ definition and arbitrary rules, based

on the notion of propriety. Thus Pope in the _Discourse on Pastoral_,

prefixed to his eclogues in 1717, writes: 'A pastoral is an imitation of

the action of a shepherd, or one considered under that character.... If we

would copy nature, it may be useful to take this idea along with us, that

pastoral is an image of what they call the golden age. So that we are not

to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as they

may be conceived then to have been, when the best of men followed the

employment.' Shallow formalism this; but what else was to be expected from

Alexander Pope at the age of sixteen? His contemporaries, however, and

successors down to Johnson, took his solemn vacuity in all seriousness.

Steele, writing in the _Guardian_ in 1713 (Nos. 22, &c.), follows much the

same lines. He speaks of 'Innocence, Simplicity, and whatever else has

been laid down as distinguishing Marks of Pastoral.' Again, the reader is

informed that 'Whoever can bear these'--namely, certain _concetti_ from

Tasso and Guarini--'may be assured he hath no Taste for Pastoral.' We find

the same pedantic and ignorant objections to Sannazzaro's piscatorials as

were later advanced by Johnson: 'who can pardon him,' loftily queries the

censor, 'for his Arbitrary Change of the sweet Manners and pleasing

objects of the Country, for what in their own Nature are uncomfortable and

dreadful?' An afternoon's idling along the cliffs of Sorento or the shore

of Posilipo will supply a sufficient answer to such ignorant conceit as

this. Lastly, in the same familiar strain, but with all the pompous weight

of undisputed dictatorship, we find Dr. Johnson a generation later laying

down in the _Rambler_ that a pastoral is 'a Poem in which any action or

Passion is represented by its Effects upon a Country Life.... In Pastoral,

as in other Writings, Chastity of sentiment ought doubtless to be

observed, and Purity of Manners to be represented; not because the Poet is

confined to the Images of the golden Age'--this is a rap at Pope--'but

because, having the subject in his own Choice, he ought always to consult

the Interest of Virtue.' The one fixed idea which runs throughout these

criticisms is that pastoral in its nature somehow is, or should be, other

than what it is in fact[360].

This is a view which very rightly meets with small mercy at the hands of

the modern historical school of criticism. A last fragment of the hoary

fallacy may be traced in Dr. Sommer's remark: 'Die Theorie des

Hirtengedichtes ist kurz in folgenden Worten ausgedrückt: schlichte und

ungekünstelte Darstellung des Hirtenlebens und wahre Naturschilderung.' It

cannot be too emphatically laid down that there is and can be no such

thing as a 'theory' of pastoral, or, indeed, of any other artistic form

dependent, like it, upon what are merely accidental conditions.[361] As I

started by pointing out at the beginning of this work, pastoral is not

capable of definition by reference to any essential quality; whence it

follows that any theory of pastoral is not a theory of pastoral as it

exists, but as the critic imagines that it ought to exist. 'Everything is

what it is, and not another thing,' and pastoral is what the writers of

pastoral have made it.

It may be convenient before closing this chapter to summarize briefly the

results of our inquiry into the history of pastoral tradition on the

pre-restoration stage in England, without the elaboration of detail and

the many necessary though minor distinctions unavoidable in the foregoing

account. We saw, in the first place, that the idea of a literature dealing

with the humours and romance of farm and sheepcot was not wholly alien to

national English literature; but, on the contrary, that the shepherd plays

of the religions cycles, the popular ballads, and a few of the Scots poets

of the time of Henryson, all alike furnish verse which may be regarded as

the index of the readiness of the popular mind to receive the

introduction of a formal pastoral tradition. Next, preceding, as in Italy,

the introduction or evolution of a regular pastoral drama, we find a

series of mythological plays embodying incidentally elements of pastoral,

written for the amusement of court circles, and founded on the

_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. In these the nature of the pastoral scenes appear

to be conditioned, in so far as they are independent of their classical

source, partly by the already existing eclogue, and partly perhaps by the

native impulse mentioned above[362]. All this anticipates the rise of the

pastoral drama proper. The foreign pastoral tradition reached England

through three main channels. The earliest of these, the eclogue, was

imitated by Spenser from Marot, who, while depending somewhat more

closely, perhaps, than was usual upon the ancients, and adding to his work

a certain original flavour, yet belonged essentially to the tradition of

the allegorical pastoral which took its fashion from the works of Petrarch

and Mantuan. The second, and for the English drama vastly the more

important channel, was the pastoral-chivalric romance borrowed by Sidney

from Montemayor, the great exponent of the Spanish school, which was,

however, based upon the Italian work of Sannazzaro. The third was the

Arcadian drama of the Ferrarese court, which was imitated, chiefly from

Guarini, by Samuel Daniel. Thus, of the three forms, verse, prose, and

drama, adopted by England from Italy, the first came by way of France, the

second by way of Spain, while the third alone was taken direct[363]. These

three blended with the pre-existing mythological play, and with the

traditions of the romantic drama generally, to produce the pastoral drama

of the English stage. The influence ot the eclogue was on the whole

slight, but to it we may reasonably ascribe a share of the topical and

allusive elements, when these do not appear assignable either to the

Arcadian drama or to masque literature generally.[364] The influence of

the mythological drama, again, is not of the first importance, and is also

very restricted in its occurrence; the _Maid's Metamorphosis_ is the most

striking example. The three main influences at work in fashioning the

pastoral drama upon the English stage were, therefore, the Arcadian drama

of Italy, the Sidneian romance borrowed from Spain, and the native

tradition of the romantic drama.[365] But we have seen that the most

important examples of dramatic pastoral in this country, though to some

extent conditioned like the rest by the above-mentioned influences, were

the outcome of direct and conscious experiment. In part, at least, the

earliest, and by far the most simple, was the work of Samuel Daniel

himself, which aimed at nothing beyond the mere transference of the

Italian tradition unaltered on to the English stage. A different aim

underlay the attempts alike of Fletcher and Randolph; the combination,

namely, of the traditions of the Arcadian and romantic dramas. This common

end they sought, however, by very diverse means. Fletcher, while adopting

the machinery and methods of the popular drama, left the ideal and

imaginary content practically untouched, and even chose a plot which in

its structure resembled those familiar in the romantic drama even less

than did Guarini's own. Randolph, on the other hand, while preserving much

of the classical mechanism as he found it in Guarini, altered the whole

tone and character of the piece to correspond to the greater complexity of

interest, more genial humour, and more genuine romanticism of the English

stage. Lastly, we found Jonson cutting himself almost entirely adrift from

the tradition of Italian Arcadianism, and seeking to create an essentially

national pastoral by the combination of shepherd lads and girls,

transmuted from actuality by a natural process of refinement akin to that

of Theocritus, with the magic and fairy lore of popular fancy, and with

the characters of Robin and Marian and all the essentially English

tradition of Sherwood. These three chief experiments in the production of

an English pastoral drama which should rival that of Italy stand, together

with Daniel's two plays, apart from the general run of pieces of the kind.

It is also worth notice that they are all alike unaffected by the Sidneian

romance. The remaining plays which form the great bulk of the contribution

made by English drama to pastoral, and among which we must look for such

dramatic pastoral tradition as existed, are almost all characterized by a

more or less prevalent court atmosphere, disguisings and adventures in

shepherd's garb forming the mainstay of the plot, while the genuine

pastoral elements supply little beyond the background of the action.

Into the post-restoration pastorals it is no part of my present scheme to

enter. They flourished for a while under the wing of the fashionable

romance of France, but were almost more than their predecessors the things

of artificial convention, having their form and being in a world whose

only pre-occupations were the pangs and transports of sensibility. They

occupy by right a small corner in the _Carte du Tendre_. Nor do I propose

to do more than allude in passing to Allan Ramsay's _Gentle Shepherd_. In

spite of the almost unvarying praise which has been lavished upon this

'Scots pastoral,' and even though the characters may have some points of

humanity in common with actual Lothian rustics, the whole composition of

the piece can scarcely be pronounced less artificial than that of the

Arcadian drama itself, and the play has undoubtedly shared in the

exaggerated esteem which has fallen to the lot of dialectal literature

generally. The tradition lingered on throughout the eighteenth and into

the nineteenth century. Goethe in his youth, while under the French

influence, composed the _Laune des Verliebten_, and in his later days at

Weimar the _Fischerin_, a piscatorial adapted for representation on an

open-air stage, in which the interest was purely spectacular. As a general

rule, however, pastoral inanity seldom strayed beyond the limits of the

opera.

That the pastoral should flourish by the side of the romantic drama was

not to be expected. It was impossible in England, as it was impossible in

Spain. In either case it might now and again achieve a mild success at

court, or under some exceptional conditions of representation; it never

held the popular stage. No literature based on the accidents of a special

form of civilization, or upon a set of artificially imagined conditions,

can ever hope to outlive the civilization or the fashion that gave it

birth. 'Love _in vacuo_' failed to arouse the interest of general mankind.

Every literature of course wears the livery of its age, but where the body

beneath is instinct with human life it can change its dress and pass

unchanged itself from one order of things to another; where the livery is

all, the form cannot a second time be galvanized into life. Pastoral,

relying for its distinctive features upon the accidents rather than the

essentials of life, failed to justify its pretentions as a serious and

independent form of art. The trivial toy of a courtly coterie, it

attempted to arrogate to itself the position of a philosophy, and in so

doing exposed itself to the ridicule of succeeding ages. Men with a stern

purpose in life turned wearily from the sickly amours of romantic poets

who dreamed that human happiness found its place in the economy of the

world. They left it to a rout of melodious idlers to imagine unto

themselves a state in which serious importance should attach to the

gracious things of sentiment and the loves of youth and maiden.

Addenda

Page 19.--Even apart from the evidence of the _Bucolica Quirinalium_, it

is, of course, clear that Vergil's eclogues were familiar to the writers

of the early middle ages. How far their interest in them was literary, and

how far, like that of the mystery-writers, it was theological, may,

however, be questioned. It is worth noticing in this connexion that a

German translation was projected by no less a person than Notker, and

since they are coupled by him with the _Andria_, we may reasonably infer

that in this case at least the writer's concern, if not distinctively

literary, was at any rate educational. (See W. P. Ker, _The Dark Ages_, p.

317.)

Page 112, note 2.--There is an error here. _The Passionate Pilgrim_

version of 'As it fell upon a day' does not contain the couplet found in

_England's Helicon_. I was misled by its being supplied from the latter by

the Cambridge editors. Another poem of the same description appears in

Francis Sabie's _Pan's Pipe_. (See Sidney Lee's introduction to the Oxford

Press facsimile of the _Passionate Pilgrim_, p. 31.)

Page 204.--It is perhaps hardly surprising to find Tasso's 'S' ei piace,

ei lice' quoted by English writers as summing up the cynical philosophy of

those whom they not unaptly styled 'politicians.' In Marston's tragedy on

the story of Sophonisba, for instance, the villain Syphax concludes a

'Machiavellian' speech with the words:

For we hold firm, that 's lawful which doth please.

(_Wonder of Women_, IV. i. 191.)

Appendix I

On the Origin and Development of the Italian Pastoral Drama

The chapter in the history of Italian literature which shall deal with the

evolution of the Arcadian drama still remains to be written. The treatment

of it in Symonds' _Renaissance_ is decidedly inadequate, and even as far

as it goes not altogether satisfactory. The explanation of this is, that

the most important works fall outside his period; the _Aminta_ and the

_Pastor fido_ are admirably treated in the volumes dealing with the

counter-reformation, but these are of the nature of an appendix, and

formed no part of his original plan. Tiraboschi's account is also meagre.

A long discussion of the subject will be found in the fifth volume of J.

L. Klein's _Geschichte des Dramas_ (Leipzig, 1867), but the bewildering

irrelevancy of much of the matter introduced by that eccentric writer

seriously impairs the critical value of his work. An excellent sketch of

the early history as far as Beccari, with full references, is given in

Vittorio Rossi's valuable monograph, _Battista Guarini ed il Pastor Fido_

(Torino, 1886), pt. ii. ch. i. This has the immense advantage of

conciseness, and of a clear and scholarly style. An important review of

Rossi's book, concerning itself particularly with the chapter in question,

appeared in the _Literaturblatt für germanische und romanische Philologie_

for 1891 (col. 376), from the pen of A. L. Stiefel, who incidentally

announced that he was himself engaged on a comprehensive history of the

pastoral drama. Of this work I have been unable to obtain any further

information. Next an elaborate essay by the veteran Giosuè Carducci,

largely combatting Rossi's conclusions as to the literary evolution of the

form, and bringing forward a good deal of fresh evidence, appeared in the

_Nuova Antologia_ for September, 1894, and was reprinted with additions

and corrections as the second of three papers in the author's pamphlet _Su

l'Aminta di T. Tasso_ (Firenze, 1896). To this Rossi rejoined, effectively

as it seems to me, in the _Giornale storico della letteratura italiana_

(1898, xxxi. p. 108). The treatment in W. Creizenach's _Geschichte des

neueren Dramas_ (Halle, 1901, ii. p. 359) is unfortunately not yet

complete.

The theory of development which I have adopted is substantially that

elaborated by Rossi. To him belongs the honour of having been the first

clearly to indicate the historical steps by which the eclogue passes into

the drama. The idea, however, was not original; it underlies the accounts

given by Egidio Menagio in the notes to his edition of the _Aminta_

(Paris, 1655), by G. Fontanini (_Aminta difeso_, Roma, 1700, and Venezia,

1730), by P. L. Ginguené (_Histoire littéraire d'Italie,_ vol. vi, Paris,

1813), and by Klein. It was also virtually accepted by Stiefel in his

review of Rossi, since he confined his criticism to pointing out and

attempting to fill occasional gaps in the sequence of development, and to

insisting on the influence of the regular drama, and more particularly of

the Intronati comedy. The incomplete state of Creizenach's work, and the

caution with which he expresses himself on the subject, preclude our

reckoning him among the declared supporters of the theory; but there can

be little doubt, I think, as to the tendency of his remarks. This may then

be regarded as the orthodox view. It has not, however, received the

exclusive adherence of scholars, and it may therefore be thought right

that I should both give in detail the arguments by which it is supported

and my reasons for accepting it, and likewise state the grounds on which I

reject the rival theories that have been propounded.

Two of these latter may be quickly dismissed. These are the views put

forward respectively by Gustav Weinberg, _Das französische Schäferspiel in

der ersten Hälfte des XVIIten Jahrhunderts_ (Frankfurt, 1884), and by J.

G. Schönherr in his _Jorge de Montemayor_ (Halle, 1886). Weinberg finds

the origin of the Italian pastoral drama in the 'Éclogas' of Juan del

Encina. With regard to this theory it may be sufficient to observe that,

at the time Encina wrote, the _ecloga rappresentativa_, or dramatic

eclogue, was already familiar in the Italian courts, and that, so far from

his writings being the source of any pastoral tradition even in his own

country, what subsequent dramatic work of the kind is to be found in Spain

merely represents a further borrowing from Italy. Schönherr, on the other

hand, regards the _Jus Robins et Marion_ as the source of the Arcadian

drama. Not only, however, did Adan de le Hale's play fail to originale any

dramatic tradition in its own country, but it is itself nothing but an

amplified _pastourelle_, a form which, in spite of marked Provençal

influence, never obtained to any extent in Italy. It need hardly be said

that there is not a vestige of historical evidence to support either of

these theories[366].

It is different with the theory advanced by Carducci in the essay already

mentioned. The reputation of the great Italian critic would alone entitle

any view he advanced to the most respectful consideration. In the present

case, however, there is more than this, for his essay is a monument of

deep and loving scholarship, and whether we agree or not with its

conclusions, it adds greatly to our knowledge of the subject. Briefly and

baldly stated, his contention is as follows. The Arcadian drama was a

creation of the literary and courtly circles of Ferrara, and so far as

Italy is concerned the precursors of the _Aminta_ are to be sought in

Beccari's _Sacrifizio_ and Giraldi Cintio's _Egle_ alone, with a

connecting link as it were supplied by the pastoral fragment of the latter

author, first printed as an appendix to the essay in question. Beyond

these compositions no influence can be traced, except that of a study of

the classics in general, and of Theocritus in particular. It is certainly

remarkable that the important texts mentioned above, as well as Argenti's

_Sfortunato_ and the _Aminta_ itself, should all alike have been written

for and produced at the court of the Estensi at Ferrara. The selection,

however, I regard as somewhat arbitrary. The _Egle_ appears to lie

entirely off the road of pastoral development, and I cannot help thinking

that Carducci falls into the not unnatural error of exaggerating the

importance of the interesting document he was the first to publish. The

primitive dramatic eclogue was not altogether unknown at Ferrara, nor do

the pastoral shows elsewhere appear to have been always as remote from the

courtly grace of the Arcadian tradition as the critic is at pains to

demonstrate. In view therefore of the practically unbroken line of formal

development, and the consistency of artistic aim observable from

Sannazzaro in the last quarter of the fifteenth to Guarini in the last

quarter of the sixteenth century, I find it impossible to accept

Carducci's conclusions.

The advocates of the orthodox theory, however, must be prepared to meet

and combat the objections which Carducci has raised, and which, in his

opinion, necessitate the adoption of a different explanation. The

evolution of the pastoral drama from the eclogue he declares to be

impossible, in the first place, on historical grounds. This objection

relates to the evidence as to a continuous development traceable in the

accessible texts, and to it the account given in the following pages

will--or will not--be found a sufficient answer. In the second place, he

declares it to be impossible on aesthetic grounds. These are three in

number, and may be briefly considered here. (_a_) 'Idealization cannot

develop out of caricature.' Here, I presume, he is using 'caricature' in

its technical sense of what Aristotle calls 'imitation worse than nature,'

not merely for the resuit of an inadequate command over the medium of

artistic μίμησις. The remark, therefore, can only apply to the 'rustic'

productions. But, as Aristotle's phrase suggests, burlesque, or

caricature, is only idealization in a different direction, so that there

appears to be less antagonism between the two tendencies than might at

first be supposed. Moreover, no one has suggested that the rustic shows

were the origin of the Arcadian drama, so that it is to be presumed that

Carducci had in mind the more or less frequent but still sporadic elements

borrowed by the eclogues from the popular drama. These, however, are found

in conjunction with idealized elements of courtly tradition, both in the

dramatic eclogues themselves and more especially in the _ecloghe

maggiaiuole_ or May-day shows of the Congrega dei Rozzi. Thus, although it

is true that we should not expect idealization to be evolved out of

caricature, there is no reason to deny its evolution from a form in which

burlesque and romance subsisted side by side. (_b_) 'Those eclogues that

are not burlesque are occasional compositions equally incapable of

developing into the Arcadian drama.' Though, no doubt, usually written for

presentation upon some particular occasion, several of the dramatic

eclogues present no topical features. Nor does it appear why a form of

composition, the type of which was fairly constant although the individual

examples might be ephemeral enough, should not develop into something of a

more permanent nature. Moreover, the topical allusions scattered

throughout the _Aminta_, as well as the highly occasional character of the

prologue to the _Pastor fido_, serve to connect these plays directly with

the 'occasional' eclogue. (_c_) The metrical form of the recognized

dramatic pastorals differs from that of the eclogues.' While beginning,

however, with simple _terza_ or _ottava rima_, the dramatic eclogue

gradually became highly polymetric in structure, though it is true that it

seldom affected the free measures peculiar to the Arcadian drama. These,

however, were no more suited to short compositions than the stiff terzines

and octaves to more complicated dramatic works. The prevalent metre, as

indeed many other points, might well be borrowed by the dramatic pastoral

from the practice of the regular stage without it thereby ceasing to be

the formal descendant of the eclogue.

Another point in debate is the view taken of the question by contemporary

critics--that is, by Guarini and his adversaries. Rossi pointed out a

passage in Guarini's _Veraio_ of 1588[367] which he held to support his

theory of development. Translated, the passage runs: 'And why should it

not be thought lawful for the eclogue to grow out of its infancy and

arrive at mature years, if this has been possible in the case of tragedy?

... Even as the Muses grafted tragedy upon the dithyrambic stock, and

comedy upon the phallic, so in their ever-fertile garden they set the

eclogue as a tiny cutting, whence sprang in later years the stately growth

of the pastoral,' that is, of the _favola di pastori_, or dramatic

pastoral, as he elsewhere explains. 'But in thèse words,' objects

Carducci, 'the writer is in no way referring to the Italian eclogues of

the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The eclogue had passed out of its

infancy in the work of Theocritus.' Here, however, Carducci appears to me

to misinterpret Guarini's meaning in an almost perverse manner. The

metaphoric 'infancy' of which Guarini speaks is the pre-dramatic period of

pastoral growth. No one will deny that the Theocritean idyl had attained

full and perfect development in its own kind; but from the dramatic point

of view, and granted that it contained the germ of the later pastoral

drama, it belonged to a period of infancy, or, to adopt a more strictly

accurate metaphor, of gestation. Were further evidence needed to show that

the allusion is to the Italian rather than to the classical eclogue, it

might be found in the fact that the passage in question was Guarini's

answer to the following criticism of De Nores, as to the meaning of which

there can be no two opinions. Attacking the pastoral tragi-comedy, the

critic remarks: 'Until the other day similar compositions were represented

under the name of eclogues at festivals and banquets, ... but now of a

sudden they have been fashioned of the extension of comedies and tragedies

in five acts[368].' It will be noticed that in his reply Guarini makes no

attempt to question the underlying identity of the pastoral tragi-comedy

with the dramatic eclogue, but contents himself with very justly asserting

the right of the latter to develop into a mature literary form. Two other

passages from Guarini have been quoted as germane to the discussion. They

occur in the _Verato secondo_, written as a counterblast to De Nores'

_Apologia_,[369]. One may be rendered thus: 'Although the dramatic

pastoral, in respect of the characters introduced, recognizes its ultimate

origin in the eclogue and in the satire [i. e. the satyric drama] of the

ancients, nevertheless, in respect of its form and ordinance it may be

said to be a modern kind of poetry, seeing that no example of such

dramatic composition, whether Greek or Latin, is to be found in ancient

times.' The other runs: 'having regard to the fact that Theocritus stepped

beyond the number of persons usual in similar poems, and composed one [the

_Feast of Adonis_] which not only contains many interlocutors, but is of a

more dramatic character than usual, and remarkable also for its greater

length; it seemed to him [Beccari] that he might with great honour supply

that kind neglected by the Greek and Latin authors[370].' In the former of

these passages Guarini, while recognizing the community of subject-matter

between the classical eclogue and the renaissance pastoral drama, claims

that as an artistic form the latter is independent of the former. Nor is

this inconsistent with what he says in the subsequent passage, for it is

perfectly true that it was with Beccari that the pastoral first attained

its full complexity of dramatic structure, and his allusion to Theocritus

means, not that he regarded him as the father of the form, but that, after

the manner of a _cinquecento_ critic, he is seeking for authority at least

among the ancients where direct precedent is not to be found. His

reference to the evolution of classical tragedy and comedy in the passage

cited from his first essay shows clearly that he had in mind a process of

gradual and natural development, not one of definite borrowing or

artificial creation.

It appears to me, therefore, that Carducci has erred in not taking a

sufficiently broad view of the lines on which literary development

proceeds; and also, more specifically, in failing to recognize the

importance of the distinction between the ordinary and the dramatic

eclogue. This distinction, though on the scanty evidence extant it is

extremely hard to draw it with any degree of certainty, appears to me a

vital point in the history of the species. The value of Carducci's work

lies in his insistence on the influence of the regular drama, to which,

perhaps on account of its very obviousness, Rossi had failed to attach

sufficient importance; in his directing attention to the local Ferrarese

tradition; in the admirable energy and patience with which he has

collected all available evidence; and in his reprinting the interesting

pastoral fragment of Giraldi Cintio. For these he deserves the warmest

thanks of all students of Italian literature; for my own part I need only

refer the reader to the footnotes to the following pages as indicating in

some measure the extent of my indebtedness[371].

The theatrical tendency first exhibited itself in the mere recitation of

a dialogue in character, and the earliest examples of these _ecloghe

rappresentative_ are identical in form with those written merely for

literary circulation. For the dates of these external evidence

unfortunately fails us almost entirely, but a fairly well-marked sequence

may be established on the grounds of internal development. Roughly, they

must fall within a few years of the close of the fifteenth century, say

between 1480 and 1510. They are commonly of an allegorical nature,

containing allusions to real persons, and are for the most part composed

in _terza rima_, diversified in the more complex examples by the

introduction of octaves and lyrical measures[372]. Of this primitive form

is a poem by the Genoese Baldassare Taccone, bearing the superscription

'Ecloga pastorale rapresentata nel Convivio dell' III. Sig'r. Io. Adorno,

nella quale si celebra l' amor del Co. di Cayace [Francesco Sanseverino] e

di M. Chiara di Marino nuncupata la Castagnini[373].' This piece, in which

the characters represent real persons, is a mere dialogue without any

semblance of action. Aminta questions his fellow-shepherd Fileno as to the

cause of his melancholy, and learns that it arises from his hopeless

passion for a certain cruel nymph. His offer to undertake his friend's

cure is met with the declaration, that of the two death were preferable.

Similar in simplicity of construction is another poem, the work of

Serafino Aquilano, which deals with the corruption of the Church, and was

performed at Rome during the carnival of 1490[374]. An advance in

dramatization is made by an eclogue of Galeotto Del Carretto's, written in

1492, in honour of the newly elected Alexander VI, in that one character

enters upon the scene after the other has been discoursing for some time;

while another, the work of Gualtiero Sanvitale, contains three speakers,

of whom one enters towards the close, and is called upon to decide between

the other two. This arbiter is none other than Lodovico Sforza

himself[375]. So far the eclogues have all been in Sannazzaro's _terza

rima_. A wider range of metrical effect, including not only terzines both

_sdrucciole_ and _piane_, but also hendecasyllables with internal rime and

a _canzone_, and at the same time a more dramatic treatment, is found in

another eclogue of Aquilano's[376]. In this Palemone sends his herdsman

Silvano to inspect his flocks after a stormy night. The herdsman meets

Ircano in a melancholy mood, who when questioned endeavours to hide the

nature of his grief by feigning that he has lost his flock in the storm.

At that moment, however, the real cause of his sorrow enters in the shape

of a nymph, and Ircano leaves Silvano in order to follow her with prayers

and supplications. Silvano endeavours to dissuade him from his love, but

meets with the usual want of success. In the case of this piece, as also

of the two preceding ones, we have no direct evidence of any

representation, but all three, and especially the last, have the

appearance of being composed for recitation. Another piece, exhibiting an

advance in complexity of dramatic structure, is an 'ecloga overo

pasturale,' a disputation on love by Bernardo Bellincioni[377], apparently

in some way connected with Genoa, in the course of which five characters,

probably representing actual personages, though we lack external evidence,

forgather upon the stage. The versification again exhibits novel features,

the piece being for the most part in _ottava rima_ with the introduction

of _settenarî_ couplets. In the former we may perhaps see the influence of

the _Orfeo_, or possibly of the old _sacre rappresentationi_ themselves.

In 1506 the court of Urbino witnessed the eclogue composed and recited by

Baldassare Castiglione and Cesare Gonzaga[378]. It also belongs to the

octave group, and is diversified with a canzonet. Dramatically the piece

is somewhat of a retrogression, but it is interesting from the characters

introduced in pastoral guise. Thus in Iola and Dameta we may see

Castiglione and his fellow author; Tirsi, who gives his name to the poem,

is a stranger shepherd attracted by reports of the court; while among the

characters mentioned are discernible Bembo and the Duchess Elizabeth. At

this point may be mentioned a somewhat similar eclogue found in a Spanish

romance of about 1512, entitled _Cuestion de amor_, descriptive of the

Hispano-Neapolitan society of the time. The eclogue, which is clearly

modelled on the Italian examples, contains five characters, and is

supposed to represent the love affairs of real personages[379]. Two

so-called 'commedie pastorali,' from which Stiefel hoped for useful

evidence, prove on inspection to be medleys of pastoral amours exhibiting

little advance in dramatization, though interesting as showing traces of

the influence of the not yet fully developed 'rustic' eclogue. They are

composed throughout in _terza rima_ without any division into acts or

scenes, and are the work of one Alessandro Caperano of Faenza, thus

hailing, like the later _Amaranta_, from the Romagna[380]. In 1517 we find

a fantastic pastoral entitled _Pulicane,_ written in octaves by Piero

Antonio Legacci dello Stricca, a Sienese, who was also the author of

several rustic pieces, in which is introduced a monster half dog and half

man. Another work by the same, again in octaves, and entitled _Cicro_,

appeared in 1538. Another piece mentioned by Stiefel as likely to throw

light on the development of the dramatic pastoral is the 'Ecloga di

amicizia' of Bastiano di Francesco, or Bastiano 'the

flax-dresser'(_linaiuolo_), also of Siena, which was first printed in

1523. It turns out, however, to be a decidedly primitive composition in

_terza rima_, with a certain slightly satirical colouring[381].

If the texts that have survived are somewhat scanty, there is good reason

to believe that they form but a small portion of the eclogues actually

represented at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth

centuries. Thus we find a show, of the nature of which it is not

altogether easy to judge, recorded in a letter by a certain Floriano

Dulfo, written from Bologna in July, 1496[382]. It appears to have been a

composition of some length, pastoral only in part, supernatural in others,

but belonging on the whole rather to the cycle of chivalresque romance

than of classical mythology. In Act I an astrologer announces the birth of

a giant, who in Act II is represented as persecuting the shepherds. Acts

III and IV are occupied by various complaints on his account In Act V,

called by Dulfo 'la ultima comedia, overo egloga,' the giant carries off a

nymph while she is gathering flowers; the shepherds, however, come to her

rescue and restore her to her lover. This incident, reminiscent possibly

of the rape of Proserpine, tends to connect the piece with the

mythological tradition. So far as can be gathered, the verse appears to

have been _ottava rima_ with the introduction of lyrical passages. Again,

we know that the representation of eclogues formed part of the festivities

at the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia with Giovanni Sforza in 1493, and again

in 1502, when she espoused Alfonzo d' Este. In 1508 the carnival shows at

Ferrara included three eclogues, the work respectively of Ercolo Pio,

Antonio dall' Ongano. and Antonio Tebaldeo[383]. At Venice we have note of

similar performances, and even find _ecloghe_ mentioned among the forms of

dramatic spectacle recognized by the laws of the state. I may also call

attention in this connexion, and as illustrating the habituai introduction

of acted eclogues in all forms of festival, to the occurrence of such a

performance in a chivalrous romance by Cassio da Narni, entitled _La morte

del Danese_[384]. The piece is, however, of the most primitive form, and

must not be taken as typical of its date, just as the masques introduced

into the plays of the Elizabethan drama are commonly of a far simpler

order than actually represented at court. It may also not improbably have

been influenced by the more popular form of rustic shows, as its

description as a 'festa in atti rusticali' would seem to indicate.

Meanwhile the rustic eclogue was developing upon lines of its own, though

rather in arrear of the courtly variety. In 1508 we find a piece in _terza

rima_, exhibiting traces of Paduan dialect, composed or transcribed by one

Cesare Nappi of Bologna, in which no less than fourteen 'villani' appear

with their sweethearts to honour the feast of San Pancrazio[385]. Eating

and dancing form the mainstay of the composition, and since the female

characters are described but do not speak, it may be questioned whether

the piece was intended for representation. Not till five years later have

we any evidence of a rustic eclogue forming part of an actual show. In

1513, Giuliano de' Medici was at Rome, and in the entertainment provided

at the Capitol on the occasion of his receiving the freedom of the city

was included an eclogue by a certain 'Blosio,' otherwise Biagio Pallai

delia Sabina, of the Roman Academy. The argument alone has come down to

us. A rustic, who has first suffered at the hands of the foreign soldiers

then overrunning Italy, and has afterwards been plundered by the sharper

citizens of Rome, meets a friend with whom it has fared similarly, and the

two determine to seek justice of the Conservators, as a last chance before

retiring to live among the Turks, since a man may not abide in peace in a

Christian land. They find the Capitol _en fête_, and the piece ends with a

song in praise of Giuliano and Leo X[386]. Of the same year is the 'Egloga

pastorale di Justitia,' the earliest extant specimen of the rustic

dramatic eclogue proper. It is a satirical piece concerning a countryman,

who fails to obtain justice because he is poor. He at last appeals to the

king himself, but is again repulsed because he is accompanied by Truth in

place of Adulation[387]. This form of composition, recalling as it does

the allegories of Langland and other satirists of the middle ages, differs

widely from that usually found in the courtly eclogues, nor is it typical

of rustic representations. Again, to the same year, 1513, belongs an

eclogue in rustic speech and Bellunese dialect, by Bartolommeo Cavassico,

which like the Roman show turns upon the horrors of the war which had been

devastating the country since 1508. Recollections of the 'tagliata di

Cadore[388]' blend incongruously with fauns, nymphs, bears, pelicans, and

wild men of the woods, to form a whole which appears to be of a decidedly

burlesque character. The distribution, however, of these rustic eclogues

never appears to have been very wide, and in later times they were chiefly

confined to the representations of the famous Congrega dei Rozzi at Siena,

though the activity of this society extended, it is true, far beyond the

limits of its Tuscan home. Most of these representations, at any rate in

the earlier years with which we are concerned, were short realistic farces

of low life composed in dialectal verse. Some of the cleverest are by

Francesco Berni, better known for his obscene _capitoli_ and his

_rifacimento_ of Boiardo's _Orlando_, and appeared between 1537 and 1567;

while in later days the kind attained its highest perfection in the work

of Michelangelo Buonarroti the younger, whose _Tancia_ originally appeared

in 1612[389].

It may be questioned to what extent these rustic shows influenced the

development of the pastoral eclogue. Their recognition as a dramatic form

was subsequent to that of the _ecloga rappresentativa_, and no element

traceable to their influence can be shown to exist in the dramatic

pastoral as finally evolved. On the other hand, we do undoubtedly meet

with incidents and characters in the courtly shows which appear to belong

to the style of the popular burlesque. A point of contact between the two

traditions may be found in the _commedie maggiaiuole_, a sort of May-day

shows also represented by the Rozzi, but of a more idealized character

than the rustic drama proper. They may, indeed, be regarded as to some

extent at least a parody of the two kinds--the courtly and the popular

pastoral--since by combining the two each was made the foil and criticism

of the other. Nymphs and shepherds appear as in the pastoral eclogues, but

their loves are interrupted by the incursion of boisterous rustics, who

substitute the unchastened instincts and brute force of half-savage boors

for the delicate wooing and sentimentality of their rivals.

* * * * *

We return to the development of the dramatic eclogue in a work of some

importance as marking an advance both in dramatic construction and

versification. _I due pellegrini[390]_, written not later than 1528, when

the author, Luigi Tansillo, was a youth of sixteen or seventeen, was

doubtless produced on some occasion before the court of the Orsini, at

Nola, near Naples. It was revived with great pomp ten years later at

Messina, when Don Garcia de Toledo, commander of the Neapolitan fleet,

entertained Antonia Cardona, daughter of the Count of Colisano, for whose

hand he was a suitor[391]. Two shepherds, pilgrims of love, bereft of the

objects of their affection, the one through death, the other through

inconstancy, meet in a forest and reason of the comparative hardness of

their lots. Unable to decide the question, they each resolve to bear the

strongest possible witness to the depth of their affliction by putting an

end to their lives. At this moment, however, the voice of the dead

mistress is heard from a neighbouring tree, persuading them to relinquish

their intentions, reconciling them once more with the world and life, and

directing them to join the festivities in the city of Nola. Here for the

first time we meet with a pastoral composition of some length pretending

to a dramatic solution, and contrasting with the stationary character of

most of the eclogues we have been examining in that the change of purpose

among the actors constitutes a sort of περιπέτεια, or _rivolgimento_. The

piece is likewise important from a metrical point of view, since it not

only contains a free intermixture of _ottava_ and _terza rima_, and

hendecasyllables with _rimalmezzo_, a favourite verse form in certain

kinds of composition[392], but likewise foreshadows, in its mingling of

freely riming hendecasyllables with _settenarî_, the peculiar measures of

the pastoral drama proper. _I due pellegrini_ was not, however, an

altogether original composition. In 1525 had appeared a work by the

Neapolitan Marco Antonio Epicuro de' Marsi, styled in the original edition

'dialogo di tre ciechi,' and in later reprints 'tragi-commedia intitulata

_Cecaria_[393].' In this three blind men, one blind with love, another

with jealousy, the third with gazing too intently on the sun-like beauty

of his mistress, meet and determine to die together. They fall in,

however, with a priest of Amor, who sends them back to their respective

loves to be cured. It was this theme that Tansillo arranged in pastoral

form, borrowing even the metres of the original, but it was just the

element which justifies our including it here that he added, and it is

useless to seek in Epicuro's work the origin of the form with which it was

thus only accidentally associated.

A composition of some importance, dating from a period about two years

later than Tansillo's piece, is an 'ecloga pastorale' by the 'mestissimo

giovane' Luca di Lorenzo of Siena.[394] Two nymphs, by name Euridice and

Diversa, respectively seek and shun the delights of love. They meet a

_citto_--that is a _bambino_ in Sienese dialect--who proves to be none

other than Cupid himself, and rewards them according to their deserts,

Euridice obtaining the love of the courtly shepherd Orindio, while Diversa

is condemned to follow the rude and loveless Fantasia. The piece is

written in a mixture of _ottava_ and _terza rima_, with a variety of

lyrics introduced. The contrast between the loving and the careless

nymphs, and the episode of the latter being bound to a tree, appear to

anticipate the later pastoral; while the introduction of Cupid as a

dramatis persona carries one back to the mythological drama, and the

rustic characters connect the piece with the plays of the Rozzi. Another

composition of Tuscan origin is the _Lilia_, first printed in 1538, and

composed throughout in polished octaves.[395] It merely relates how the

shepherd Fileno courted the fair Lilia, a certain rustic element being

introduced in the persons of the herdsmen Crotolo and Tirso.

With the _Amaranta_ of Casalio we have been sufficiently concerned in the

text (p. 172). It was printed at Venice in 1538,[396] having probably been

written some years earlier. It is composed in _ottava_ and _terza rima_,

with the introduction of a canzonet, and marks an important advance on

previous work, not only in the nature of the plot, but in being divided

into acts and scenes. Sixteen years elapsed between the publication of

_Amaranta_ and the appearance of the regular pastoral drama in Beccari's

_Sacrifizio_. Some time ago Stiefel pointed out a considerable hiatus at

this point in Rossi's account, and mentioned certain works which might be

expected to fill it. These and others have since been examined by

Carducci, with the result that it is possible, at least partially, to

bridge the gap. The period proves to be one less of gradual evolution than

of conscious experiment. At least this is how I read the available

evidence.

Besides the _Cecaria_, mentioned above, Epicuro de' Marsi also left a

manuscript play entitled _Mirzia_, which he describes as a 'favola

boschereccia,' being thus the first to make use of the term later adopted

by Tasso.[397] The piece, which was written some ten years before the

author's death in 1555, leads us off into one of the numerous by-paths

into which the pastorals of this period were for ever wandering. Two

despised lovers, together with their friend Ottimo, witness unseen the

dances of Diana and the nymphs, on which occasion Ottimo falls in love

with the goddess herself. After passing through various plights, into

which they are led by their love of the careless nymphs, they all have

recourse to an oracle, whose predictions are fulfilled through a series of

violent metamorphoses. This mixture of mythology and magic is wholly

foreign to the spirit of the Arcadian drama, and the _Mirzia_ cannot any

more than the _Cecaria_ be regarded as the progenitor of that form. I may

mention incidentally that among the characters is a good-natured satyr,

who consoles Ottimo in his hopeless passion for Diana.

Another attempt at mingling the pastoral with the mythological drama, and

one which likewise exhibits a tendency to borrow from the rustic

compositions, is the Florentine 'commedia pastorale' first printed in 1545

under the title of _Silvia_.[398] The author calls himself Fileno

Addiacciato, from which it would appear that he was a member of the

pastoral academy of the Addiaccio, founded at Prato in 1539 by Agnolo

Firenzuola. The prologue relates how the first _archimandrita_ of the

academy, the title assumed by the president, here called Silvano, was

driven out by his followers because of certain innovations he made,

'Alzando i Rozzi e deprimendo i buoni.' This would seem to imply that the

head of the Addiacciati was expelled for evincing too particular an

interest in the Sienese society, a piece of literary gossip fairly borne

out by the little we know of the events which led up to Firenzuola's

departure from Prato. The prologue, indeed, speaks of Silvano as already

dead, which would appear to necessitate the placing of Firenzuola's death

earlier by three years than the accepted date. The inference, however, is

not necessary, since the expelled president might in his pastoral

character be represented as dead though still alive in the flesh. The play

itself, which is in five acts, and contains characters alike Olympian,

Arcadian, and rustic, besides a hermit and a slave, is composed in a

variety of metres--_terza rima_, octaves both _sdrucciole_ and _piane_,

and in the style alike of Poliziano and Lorenzo, hendecasyllables both

blank and with _rimalmezzo_, and lyrical stanzas. The plot itself is of

the simplest, and resembles that of the _Amaranta_. Through the sovereign

will of Venus and Cupid, Silvia and Panfilo love. A temporary

estrangement, brought about by the mischievous rustic Murrone and his

burlesque courting of Silvia, is set right by an opportune appearance of

Cupid just as the girl has determined on suicide, and the lovers are

united according to the Christian rite by the hermit, in the presence of

Cupid and Venus. What could be more complete?