A chronological survey of the regular plays to be classed as pastorals will best serve the needs of our present inquiry, and for this purpose it is fortunate that in nearly all cases we possess evidence which enables us to date the work with tolerable accuracy, while the few which yet remain doubtful are themselves unimportant, and probably fall near the limit of our period. Even, however, were this not so, the singular independence of most of the pieces and the absence of any visible line of development would make uncertainty as to their order of far less consequence here than in many departments of literary history in which similar evidence is unhappily wanting.

In substance, then, the romantic pastoral in England was a combination of the Arcadian drama of Italy with the chivalric romance of Spain, as familiarized through the medium of Sidney's work, and also, though less consistently, with the never very fully developed tradition of the mythological play. In form, again, it may be said to represent the mingling of the conventions of the Italian drama with the freer action and more direct and dramatic presentation of the romantic stage. The earliest play in which these characteristics are found is the anonymous Maid's Metamorphosis, printed and probably acted 'by the Children of Powles' in 1600.[315] The plot, which from the blending of different elements it presents is of considerable historical interest, is briefly as follows. Eurymine, of whose connexions we hear nothing but that she is supposed to be lowly born, and Ascanio, the duke's son, are in love. The duke, discovering this, orders two of his retainers to lead Eurymine secretly into the forest and there slay her. Her youth and beauty, however, touch their hearts, and they agree to spare her on condition that she shall live among the country folk, and never return to court. They have no sooner left her than she meets with a shepherd and a hunter, who both fall in love on the spot, and whose rivalry supplies her with the means of livelihood. Ascanio now appears in search of his love, and is directed by Morpheus, at the hest of Juno, to seek out a certain hermit, who will be able to advise him. In the meantime, however, an unexpected complication has arisen. Apollo, meeting Eurymine in her shepherdess' disguise, has fallen violently in love, and threatens mischief. To escape from his pursuit she craves a boon, and having extorted a promise from the infatuated god, demands that he shall change her into a man. Much regretting his rash promise, Apollo complies. The next thing that happens is that the lovers meet. This is distinctly unsatisfactory, but at the suggestion of the hermit 'three or four Muses' and the 'Charities' or Graces are called in to help, and by their prayers at length induce Apollo to relent and restore Eurymine to her original sex. No sooner is this performed than she is discovered to be the daughter of the hermit, and he the exiled prince of Lesbos. At this juncture arrives a messenger from the duke, begging Ascanio to return to court, and adding casually, as it seems, that should Eurymine happen to be still alive she too will be welcome.

Thus we see the threefold weft, Arcadian, courtly, and mythological, weaving the fantastic web of the earliest of the romantic pastorals. Of the influence of the drama of Tasso and Guarini there is, indeed, but little, the plot being in no wise that of orthodox tradition; but shepherd and ranger are true Arcadians, neither disguised courtiers nor rustic clowns, as in the Sidneian romance. The author, whoever he was, may have drawn a hint for his plot from Lyly's Gallathea, in which, it will be remembered, Venus promises to change one of the enamoured maidens into a man, or else, maybe, direct from the tale of Iphis in Ovid.[316] As to the sources of the other elements, it will be sufficient for our purpose to note that the verse portions of the play are rimed throughout in couplets, a fact that carries them back towards Peele's Arraignment and the days previous to Marlowe. The slight comic business is in prose, and the characters of the three young rogues are directly traceable to the waggish pages of Lyly.[317]

The piece has the appearance of being a youthful work; the verse is often irregular and clumsy, and the rimes uncertain. On the whole, however, it contains not a little that is graceful and pleasing to the ear, while in description the unknown author shows himself a faithful and not unsuccessful disciple of Spenser in his idyllic mood. Here, for instance, are two passages which have been thought to reveal a study of the master:[318]

Within this ore-growne Forrest, there is found A duskie Cave, thrust lowe into the ground: So ugly darke, so dampie and so steepe, As for his life the sunne durst never peepe Into the entrance: which doth so afright The very day, that halfe the world is night. Where fennish fogges, and vapours do abound: There Morpheus doth dwell within the ground, No crowing Cocke, nor waking bell doth call, Nor watchfull dogge disturbeth sleepe at all. No sound is heard in compasse of the hill, But every thing is quiet, whisht, and still. Amid this Cave, upon the ground doth lie, A hollow plancher, all of Ebonie Cover'd with blacke, whereon the drowsie God, Drowned in sleepe, continually doth nod. (II. i. 112.)

And again:

Then in these verdant fields al richly dide, With natures gifts, and Floras painted pride: There is a goodly spring whose christal streames Beset with myrtles, keepe backe Phoebus beames: There in rich seates all wrought of Ivory, The Graces sit, listening the melodye: The warbling Birds doo from their prettie billes Unite in concord, as the brooke distilles, Whose gentle murmure with his buzzing noates Is as a base unto their hollow throates. Garlands beside they weare upon their browes, Made of all sorts of flowers earth allowes: From whence such fragrant sweet perfumes arise, As you would sweare that place is Paradise. (V. i. 104.)

The same influence may perhaps be traced in slighter sketches, such as the

grassie bed With sommers gawdie dyaper bespred. (II. i. 55.)

Here is a passage in another strain, which culminates in a touch of haunting melody that Spenser himself might have envied:

I marvell that a rusticke shepheard dare With woodmen thus audaciously compare? Why, hunting is a pleasure for a King, And Gods themselves sometime frequent the thing. Diana with her bowe and arrowes keene, Did often use the Chace, in Forrests greene. And so alas, the good Athenian knight, And swift Acteon herein tooke delight: And Atalanta the Arcadian dame, Conceiv'd such wondrous pleasure in the game, That with her traine of Nymphs attending on, She came to hunt the Bore of Calydon. (I. i. 318.)

We have also the introduction of an Echo scene—the earliest, I suppose, in English. A notable feature of the play, on the other hand, are the songs, which are in some cases of rare excellence, and certain of which bear a resemblance to those found in Lyly's plays. In the lines sung by Eurymine—

Ye sacred Fyres, and powers above, Forge of desires working love, Cast downe your eye, cast downe your eye Upon a Mayde in miserie—(I. i. 131.)

there is a subtlety of sound rare even in the work of lyrists of acknowledged merit. Again, there is a fine swing in the song:

Round about, round about, in a fine Ring a: Thus we daunce, thus we daunce, and thus we sing a. Trip and go, too and fro[319], over this Greene a: All about, in and out, for our brave Queene a. (II. ii. 105.)

The best of these songs, however, and indeed the gem of the whole play, is undoubtedly the duet of the shepherd and the ranger, as they call upon Eurymine, with its striking crescendo of antiphonal effect:

Gemulo. As little Lambes lift up their snowie sides, When mounting Larke salutes the gray-eyed morne—

Silvio. As from the Oaken leaves the honie glides, Where Nightingales record upon the thorne—

Ge. So rise my thoughts—

Sil. So all my sences cheere—

Ge. When she surveyes my flocks—

Sil. And she my Deare.

Ge. Eurymine!

Sil. Eurymine!

Ge. Come foorth!

Sil. Come foorth!

Ge. Come foorth and cheere these plaines!

Both. Eurymine, come foorth and cheere these plaines—

Sil. The Wood-mans Love—

Ge. And Lady of the Swaynes[320] (IV. ii. 39.)

Not long after the appearance of the Maid's Metamorphosis there was written a play entitled The Fairy Pastoral, or the Forest of Elves, which is preserved in a manuscript belonging to the Duke of Devonshire, and was printed as long ago as 1824 by Joseph Haslewood, for the Roxburghe Club. The author was William Percy, third son of Henry, eighth Earl of Northumberland, and the friend of Barnabe Barnes at Oxford, but of whose life, beyond the facts of its obscurity and seeming misery, little or nothing is known. He left several manuscript plays, of which the present at least, dated 1603[321] at 'Wolves Hill, my Parnassus,' possesses neither interest nor merit. It is an amateurish performance, partly in prose, partly in verse, either blank or rimed in couplets. Where the author adopts verse as a vehicle, his language becomes crabbed and ungrammatical in its endeavour to accommodate itself to the unwonted restraint of metre, which it nevertheless fails to do. It is also apt to be laden to the point of obscurity with strange verbal mintage of the author's own. The plot is not strictly pastoral at all, the only characters that supply anything traditional in this line being the fairy hunters and huntresses. Oberon, having heard that Hypsiphyle, the princess of Elvida or the Forest of Elves, neglects her charge and suffers the woods and quarry to decay, sends Orion to take over the government and reform the abuses. The princess refuses to resign her authority, and a hunting contest ensues, in which, though she is vanquished, she in her turn overcomes her victor, and finally shares with him the fairy throne. While this plot is in action three careless huntresses play tricks on their enamoured hunters, and, being fooled in their turn, at last consent to reward the service of their lovers. The scenes are spun out by a thread of broad farce, supported by the fairy children, their schoolmaster, and his wench. Some of the obscenity of this part may be elaborated from passages in the Maid's Metamorphosis. The piece has a prologue for representation at court, but it is most unlikely that it ever had that honour. It is from beginning to end a graceless and mirthless composition.

Passing over the Faithful Shepherdess in 1609, we come to a play of a very different order from the last, namely, Phineas Fletcher's Sicelides, a piscatorial, written for presentation before King James at Cambridge in 1614-5, though he left without seeing it. It was acted before the University at King's College, on March 13, and printed, surreptitiously it would appear, in 1631[322]. It is not easy to account for the neglect which has usually fallen to the lot of this play at the hands of critics[323]. No doubt among writers generally it has shared the neglect commonly bestowed on pastorals, while among those more particularly concerned with our present subject it has possibly been overlooked as being piscatory. The fisher-poem, however, as we have already seen, is merely a variant of the pastoral, and must be included under the same general heading, while the play itself has no less poetic merit, and is certainly far more entertaining than the piscatory eclogues of the same author. The scene, as the title implies, is laid in Sicily, which was natural enough, or indeed inevitable, in the case of a writer who would himself in all confidence have pointed to Theocritus as the fountain-head of his inspiration.

Perindus loves Glaucilla, the daughter of Glaucus and Circe, and his affection is returned. In consequence, however, of an oracle he feigns indifference towards her, and though heart-sick when alone, meets her with mockery when she pleads her love. Meanwhile Perindus' sister, Olinda, is courted by Glaucilla's brother, Thalander, to whose suit, however, she turns a deaf ear, and at last bids him leave the country. He does so, but soon returns in disguise, resolved on winning her. She in the meantime has relented of her coldness, and is pining for his love. An opportunity soon offers itself for his purpose. By mistake or through ignorance she plucks the Hesperian apples in the sacred grove, an offence for which she is condemned to be offered as a sacrifice to a monster who inhabits a cave on the shore, and is known by the name of Maleorchus. Andromeda-like, she is bound to a rock, and the orc is in the very act of rushing upon its prey, when Thalander interposes and succeeds in slaying the monster. Meanwhile Cosma—'a light nymph of Messina,' who replaces the 'wanton nymph of Corinth' of the Arcadian cast—has fallen in love with Perindus, and, determining to get rid at a stroke both of his sister Olinda and his mistress Glaucilla, gives the former a poison under pretence of a love-cure. Glaucilla hearing of this, and suspecting the supposed philtre, mingles with it an antidote, so that when Olinda drinks it she only falls into a death-like trance. Hereupon Cosma accuses Glaucilla of substituting a poison for the philtre. She is condemned to be cast from the cliffs, but Perindus comes forward and claims to die in her place. He is actually cast from the rocks, but falling into the sea is rescued by two fishermen. These, we may notice, are borrowed from the twenty-first idyl of Theocritus, and supply, together with Cosma's page and lovers, a comic under-plot to the play. Olinda now revives, Thalander discovering her love for him reveals himself, and Perindus' oracle being fulfilled, all ends happily, the festivities being crowned by the entirely unexpected and uncalled-for return of Tyrinthus, the father of Perindus and Olinda, who had been carried off long before by pirates.

This somewhat complex plot, the dependence of which on the Italian pastoral is evident, is padded with a good deal of farce, but though the construction never evinces any great power on the part of the author, it is not on the whole inadequate. The verse is in great part rimed in couplets, and there are frequent attempts at epigrammatic effect, which at times lead to some obscurity. The language betrays, as in the case of the author's eclogues, a pseudo-archaism, which points, particularly in such phrases as 'doe ycleape,' to a perhaps unfortunate study of Spenser. Occasionally we meet with topical allusions, for instance the thrust at Taylor put into the mouth of the rude Cancrone:

Farewell ye rockes and seas, I thinke yee'l shew it That Sicelie affords a water-Poet. (II. vi.)

The stealing of the Hesperian apples, and the penalty entailed, appear to be imitated from the breaking of Pan's tree in Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, as does also the devotion and rescue of Perindus[324]. The orc probably owes its origin, directly or indirectly, to Ariosto, and the influence of the Metamorphoses is likewise, as so often, present. The following is perhaps a rather favourable specimen of the verse, but many short passages and phrases of merit might be quoted:

The Oxe now feeles no yoke, all labour sleepes, The soule unbent, this as her play-time keepes, And sports it selfe in fancies winding streames, Bathing his thoughts in thousand winged dreames ... Only love waking rests and sleepe despises, Sets later then the sunne, and sooner rises. With him the day as night, the night as day, All care, no rest, all worke, no holy-day. How different from love is lovers guise! He never opes, they never shut their eyes. (III. vi.)

Ten years at least, and probably more, intervened before the next pastoral that has survived appeared on the stage. This is a somewhat wild production, of small merit, though of some historical interest, entitled The Careless Shepherdess. It was printed many years after its original production, namely in 1656, and then purported to be written by 'T. G. Mr. of Arts,' who was identified with Thomas Goffe by Kirkman; nor has this ascription ever been challenged. Goffe was resident till 1620 at Oxford, where his classical tragedies were performed, after which he held the living of East Clandon in Surrey till his death in July, 1629. It is probably to these later years that his attempt at pastoral belongs, but the actual date of composition must rest upon conjecture. It was, we are informed on the title-page, performed before their majesties (at Whitehall, the prologue adds), and also publicly at Salisbury Court, the playhouse in the Strand, opened in 1629. Consequently the 'praeludium,' the scene of which is laid in the new theatre, must belong to the last months of the author's life[325]. The question of the date is interesting principally on account of certain lines which bear a somewhat striking resemblance to those which stand at the opening of Jonson's Sad Shepherd:

This was her wonted place, on these green banks She sate her down, when first I heard her play Unto her lisning sheep; nor can she be Far from the spring she's left behinde. That Rose I saw not yesterday, nor did that Pinke Then court my eye; She must be here, or else That gracefull Marygold wo'd shure have clos'd Its beauty in her withered leaves, and that Violet too wo'd hang its velvet head To mourn the absence of her eyes[326]. (V. vii.)

The general poetic merit of the piece is, except for these lines, slight, while the songs and lyrical passages, which are rather freely interspersed, are almost all wooden and unmusical. Such interest as the play possesses is dependent on the plot. We have the conventional four characters: Arismena, the careless shepherdess, her lover Philaritus, and Castarina, whose affections lean towards the last, though she does not object to hold out some hope to her lover Lariscus. Philaritus is the son of Cleobulus, who is described as 'a gentleman of Arcadia,' and opposes his son's marriage with the daughter of a mere shepherd to the point of disowning him, whereupon the lover dons the pastoral garb, and so continues his suit to his unresponsive mistress. Castarina meanwhile informs her lover that she will show no favour to any suitor until the return of her banished father, Paromet. Both swains are of course in despair at the cruelty of their loves, but the behaviour of the nymphs is throughout marked by a certain sanity of feeling, which contrasts with the exaggerated devotions, and yet more exaggerated iciness, of their Italian predecessors. Philaritus, in the hope of rousing Arismena to jealousy, feigns love to Castarina, who readily meets his advances. He is so far successful that he awakes his mistress to the fact that she really loves him, but she determines to play the same trick upon him by feigning in her turn to love Lariscus. This has the immediate effect of making Philaritus challenge his supposed rival, who, having witnessed his pretended advances to Castarina, eagerly responds. Their meeting is, however, interrupted, in the one tolerably good scene in the play, by the appearance of the two shepherdesses, who threaten to slay one another unless their lovers desist. Arismena's coldness, it may be mentioned, has been shaken by Philaritus having rescued her from the pursuit of a satyr, and the two maidens now consent to make return for the long suit of their lovers. While, however, they are yet in the first transport of joy, a troop of satyrs appear, and carry off the girls by force, leaving the lovers to a despair rendered all the more bitter for Philaritus by the announcement that his father relents of his anger, and is willing to countenance his marriage with Arismena. After a vain search for traces of their loves the swains return home, where they are met by the same satyrs, still guarding their captives. They offer to run at them, when the two leaders discover themselves as the fathers respectively of Philaritus and Arismena. No satisfactory account of their motive for this outrage is offered, for while they are disputing of the matter the other satyrs, supposed to be their servants in disguise, suddenly disappear with the girls. Consternation follows, and great preparations are made for pursuit. Arismena and Castarina, however, apparently escape from their captors, for we next find them sleeping quietly in an arbour. Again a satyr enters, and carries off Arismena, whom Castarina on waking follows to the dwelling of the satyrs, where she finds her friend being courted by her captor. Meanwhile the rash pursuers have fallen into the hands of the pursued, and are brought in bound. Matters appear desperate, and the nymphs are actually brought on the stage apparently dead and lying in their coffins. They soon, however, show themselves to be alive, and the chief satyr reveals himself as the banished Paromet, who has been endeavouring to induce Arismena to marry him, in the hope thereby to get his sentence of banishment revoked. This, it appears, has already been done, and all now ends happily.

In this chaotic medley it will be observed that the plot is twice ravelled and loosed before the final solution. In the frequent enlevements by the satyrs, as in the manner in which these deceive their employer, the story distantly recalls Ingegneri's Danza di Venere. One feature of importance is the comic character Graculus, who is well fooled by the pretended satyrs, and has an amusing though coarse part in prose. He seems to owe his origin to the broad humours of the vulgar stage, though he may be in a measure imitated from the roguish pages of Lyly, and so be the forerunner of Randolph's Dorylas. The tradition of the comic scenes, usually written in prose, was in process of crystallization, and from the Maid's Metamorphosis we can trace it onwards through the present piece, and such slighter compositions as the Converted Robber and Tatham's Love Crowns the End, to Randolph and even later writers. In the present case it was no innovation, nor is there any reason to suppose that it was unpopular with the audience.[327] What was an innovation was the 'gentleman of Arcadia,' a character for which the Spanish romance was without doubt responsible. In the Italian pastoral proper the shepherds are themselves the aristocracy of Arcadia, the introduction of such social hierarchy as is implied in the phrase being a point of chivalric and courtly tradition. Cleobulus, however, as well as his son Philaritus, is in fact purely Arcadian in character. Among other personae we find Apollo and the Sibyls, introduced for the sake of an oracle; Silvia, who more or less fills the office of priestess of Pan, and leads the shepherds to his shrine in a sort of masque; and a very superfluous 'Bonus Genius' of Castarina. This mythological element, however, though suggested, is not, any more than the courtly, put to the fore. I quote Silvia's song as the best example of the lyrical verse of the play:

Come Shepherds come, impale your brows With Garlands of the choicest flowers The time allows. Come Nymphs deckt in your dangling hair, And unto Sylvia's shady Bowers With hast repair: Where you shall see chast Turtles play, And Nightingales make lasting May, As if old Time his youthfull minde, To one delightful season had confin'd. (II. i.)

There is one thing that can be said in favour of the pastoral written by Ralph Knevet for the Society of Florists at Norwich, namely, that while adhering mainly to tradition, it is not indebted to any individual works. Of the author of Rhodon and Iris, as the play was called, little is known beyond the dates of his birth and death, 1600 and 1671, and the bare facts that he was at one time connected in the capacity of tutor or chaplain with the family of Sir William Paston of Oxmead, and after the restoration held the living of Lyng in Norfolk. The play appears to have been performed at the Florists' feast on May 3, 1631, and was printed the same year. The object the author had in view was the characterization of certain flowers in the persons of nymphs and shepherds; other characters are allegorical personifications, while Flora herself plays the part of the pastoral god from the machine. The weakness of the plot, as in so many cases, lies in the existence of two main threads of interest, whose connexion is wholly fortuitous, and neither of which is clearly subordinated to the other. In the present case no attempt is made to interweave the chivalric motive, in which Rhodon stands as champion of the oppressed Violetta, with the pastoral motive of his love for Iris. It is, moreover, hardly possible to credit the play with a plot at all, since one thread is cut short by a dea ex machina of the most mechanical sort, while in the other there is never any complication at all. The following is the outline of the action. The proud shepherd Martagan has encroached on and wasted the lands of Violetta, the sister of Rhodon, to whom she appeals for protection. The latter determines to demand reparation of Martagan, and, in case of his refusal, to offer battle on his sister's behalf. In the meantime, warned, as we are told, by the stars, he has abandoned his love Eglantine, and incontinently fallen in love with Iris. The forsaken nymph seeks the aid of a witch, Poneria (Wickedness), who with her associate Agnostus (Ignorance) is supporting the pretensions of Martagan. Poneria supplies Eglantine with a poison under pretence of a love-philtre, with instructions to administer it to Rhodon disguised as his love Iris, which she succeeds in doing. Meanwhile Martagan has refused to come to terms, and either side prepares for war. Violetta and Iris send Rhodon charms and salves for wounds by the hand of their servant Panace (All-heal), who happily arrives just as he has drunk the poison, and is in time to cure him. Rhodon now prepares for battle under the belief that Iris has sought his death, but being assured of her faith, he vows a double vengeance on his foes, to whose deceit he next attributes the attempt. The forces are about to join battle when, in response to the prayers of the nymphs, Flora appears and bids the warriors hold. Martagan she commands to refrain from the usurped territory, and charges his followers to keep the peace and abide by her award. Poneria and Agnostus she banishes from the land, and Eglantine for seeking unlawful means to her love is condemned to ten years' penance in a 'vestal Temple.' Thus Rhodon is free to celebrate his nuptials with Iris, though the matter is only referred to in the epilogue.

The plot, it will be seen, is anything but that of a pure pastoral. The large chivalric or at least martial element belongs less to the courtly and Spanish type than to that of works like Menaphon, or even Daphnis and Chloe. There is also a comic motive between Clematis and her fellow servant Gladiolus, which turns on the wardrobe and cosmetics of Eglantine and Poneria, and belongs to the tradition of court and city. The allegorical characters find their nearest parallel in those of the Queen's Arcadia.[328]

This amateurish effort is composed for the most part in a strangely unmetrical attempt at blank verse. It differs from the doggerel of the Fairy Pastoral in making no apparent attempt at scansion at all, and so at least escapes the crabbedness of Percy's language. It is not easy to see how the author came to write in this curious compromise between verse and prose, since it is more or less freely interspersed with passages both in blank verse and in couplets, which, while exhibiting no conspicuous poetical qualities, are both metrical and pleasing enough. Take, for example, the lines from Eglantine's lament:

Since that the gods will not my woe redresse, Since men are altogether pittilesse, Ye silent ghosts unto my plaints give eare; Give ear, I say, ye ghosts, if ghosts can heare, And listen to my plaints that doe excell The dol'rous tune of ravish'd Philomel. Now let Ixions wheele stand still a while, Let Danaus daughters now surcease their toyle, Let Sisyphus rest on his restlesse stone, Let not the Apples flye from Plotas sonne, And let the full gorg'd Vultur cease to teare The growing liver of the ravisher; Let these behold my sorrows and confesse Their paines doe farre come short of my distresse. (II. iii.)

Or take Clematis' prayer for her mistress Eglantine:

Thou gentle goddesse of the woods and mountains, That in the woods and mountains art ador'd, The Maiden patronesse of chaste desires, Who art for chastity renouned most, Tresgrand Diana, who hast power to cure The rankling wounds of Cupids golden arrowes, Thy precious balsome deigne thou to apply Unto the heart of wofull Eglantine. (I. iii.)

Or yet again, in lighter mood, Acanthus' boast:

When Sol shall make the Easterne Seas his bed, When Wolves and Sheepe shall be together fed,... When Venus shal turn Chast, and Bacchus become sober, When fruit in April's ripe, that blossom'd in October,... When Art shal be esteem'd, and golden pelfe laid down, When Fame shal tel all truth, and Fortune cease to frown, To Cupids yoke then I my necke will bow; Till then, I will not feare loves fatall blow. (I. ii.)

Yet the author of the above passages—for there is no reason to suppose a second hand, and the play was published under his own direction—chose to write the main portion of his poem in a measure of this sort:

Oh impotent desires, allay the sad consort Of a sublime Fortune, whose most ambitious flames Disdaine to burne in simple Cottages, Loathing a hard unpolish'd bed; But Coveting to shine beneath a Canopy Of rich Sydonian purple, all imbroider'd With purest gold, and orientall Pearles. (I. iii.)

Why he should have so chosen I cannot presume to say; whether from haste and carelessness, or from a deliberate intention of writing a sort of measured prose; but it was certainly from no inability to be metrical. The occasional lyrics, moreover, are not without merit; the following lines, sung by Eglantine, are perhaps the most pleasing in the play:

Upon the blacke Rocke of despaire My youthfull joyes are perish'd quite; My hopes are vanish'd into ayre, My day is turn'd to gloomy night; For since my Rhodon deare is gone, Hope, light, nor comfort, have I none. A Cell where griefe the Landlord is Shall be my palace of delight, Where I will wooe with votes and sighes Sweet death to end my sorrowes quite; Since I have lost my Rhodon deare, Deaths fleshlesse armes why should I feare? (I. iii.)

To treat of Walter Montagu's Shepherds' Paradise at a length at all commensurate with its own were to set a premium on dull prolixity; there are, however, in spite of its restricted merits, a few points which give it a claim upon our attention. A brief analysis will suffice. The King of Castile negotiates a marriage between his son and the princess of Navarre. The former, however, is in love with a lady of the court named Fidamira, who repulses his advances in favour of Agenor, a friend of the prince's. The prince therefore resolves to leave the court and seek the Shepherds' Paradise, a sequestered vale inhabited by a select and courtly company, and induces Agenor to accompany him on his expedition. In their absence the king himself makes love to Fidamira, who, however, escapes, and likewise makes her way to the Shepherds' Paradise in disguise. Meanwhile, Belesa, the princess of Navarre, misliking of the proposed match with a man she has never seen, has withdrawn from her father's court to the same pastoral retreat, where she has at once been elected queen of the courtly company. On the arrival of the prince and his friend they both fall in love with her, but the prince's suit is seconded by the disguised Fidamira, and soon takes a favourable turn. At this point the King of Castile arrives in pursuit, together with an old councillor, who proceeds to reveal the relationship of the various characters. Fidamira and Belesa, it appears, are sisters, and Agenor their brother. The marriage of the prince and Belesa is of course solemnized; the king renews his suit to Fidamira, but she prefers to remain in Paradise, where she is chosen perpetual queen[329].

The plot, it will be observed, belongs entirely to the school of the Hispano-French romance, and the style, intricate, involved, and conceited, in which this prose pastoral is written betrays the same origin. Moreover, as Euphuism, objectionable enough in the romance, becomes ten times more intolerable on the stage, so too with the language of the pastoral-amorous tale of courtly chivalry. There are, however, incidental passages of verse which in their own rather intricate and ergotic style are of greater merit than the prose, though that is not saying much. The close dependence of the piece upon the chivalric tradition serves to differentiate it from the majority of those we have to consider; while certain external circumstances have combined to give it a fortuitous reputation.

One of Montagu's passports to fame is an allusion in Suckling's Session of the Poets, from which it is evident that the style of the play attracted notice of an uncomplimentary character even among the writer's contemporaries:

Wat Montagu now stood forth to his trial, And did not so much as suspect a denial; But witty Apollo asked him first of all, If he understood his own pastoral!

The Shepherds' Paradise is, however, best remembered on account of circumstances attending its performance. It was acted, as we learn from a letter of John Chamberlain's, on January 8, 1632-3, by the queen and her ladies, who filled male and female parts alike. Almost simultaneously appeared Prynne's famous attack on all things connected with the stage, in which was one particularly scurrilous passage concerning women who appeared on the boards. As this, of course, was not the practice of the public stage, it was evident that the author must have had some specific instance in mind, and though it is not certain whether there was any personal intention in the allusion, the cap was made to fit, and for the supposed insult to the queen Prynne lost his ears.

It is presumably at this point that Randolph's Amyntas should appear in a chronological survey of English pastoralism.

Of the 'Pastoral of Florimene,' presented at the queen's command before the king at Whitehall, on December 21, 1635, we possess the plot only, and it is even doubtful in what language the piece was composed[330]. The songs in the introduction and the intermedi were undoubtedly in French, and the prologue by Fame in English; the rest is uncertain, but the French forms of the names, and the fact that it was represented by 'les filles francaises de la Reine' point in the same direction. The plot, which belongs entirely to the court-pastoral type of the French romances, only influenced in the denoument by mythological tradition, appears to be original in the same degree as most other pastoral inventions, that is, to exhibit fresh variations on stock situations.[331] The relation of the characters is involved, and not easily made out from the printed account of the piece, but the outline of the plot is as follows. The shepherdess Florimene is loved by the Delian shepherd Anfrize, who has long been her servant, and the Arcadian stranger Filene, who in order to gain access to the object of his devotion has disguised himself in female attire, and passes under the name of Dorine. In this disguise he is courted by Florimene's brother, Aristee. Filene, however, was loved in Arcadia by the nymph Licoris, who has followed him disguised in shepherd's weeds. Aristee, in order to sound the mind of his love, the supposed Dorine (i.e. Filene), disguises himself in his sister Florimene's dress, and in this garb receives to his astonishment the declaration of Filene's love. Aristee immediately leaves him, and turns his affections towards the faithful Lucinde, who has long pined for his love. She, however, has now fallen in love with Lycoris in her male attire, and rejects the advances of the penitent Aristee, continuing to do so even after she has discovered her mistake. Lycoris, hearing of the disguise of Filene, seeks Florimene at the moment when she is most incensed on discovering the deception, and begs her good offices with Filene, which are readily promised. Florimene accordingly rejects Filene when he presents himself, but he refuses to show any favour to Lycoris until she shall have obtained his pardon from Florimene. The latter is really in love with Filene all the time, and when Lycoris comes to plead his cause, she readily grants her audience. Filene now enters, and is about to pass his vows to Florimene when they are interrupted by Anfrize, who in a fit of jealousy offers to kill Filene. This attempt Florimene prevents with her sheep-hook, and declares that they must all seek the award of Diana, by whose decision she promises to abide. The goddess then appears. Lucinde she decrees shall restore her love to Aristee; Lycoris, she informs the company, is own sister to Filene, whose love she must therefore renounce. She then bids Anfrize and Filene plead their cause, which they do, and she declares in favour of the latter's suit, commanding at the same time that the unsuccessful Anfrize shall wed the forlorn Lycoris. Thus all are happy, so far as having their love affairs arranged by a third party can be supposed to make them. Florimene, who had retired, perhaps to don her bridal robes, now returns to complete the tableau. 'Here the Heavens open, and there appeare many deities, who in their songs expresse their agreements to these marriages'—which was, no doubt, thought very satisfactory by the spectators.

The Shepherds' Holiday is the most typical, as it is on the whole the most successful, of those pastorals which exhibit the blending of the Arcadian and courtly elements. It was printed in 1635, and the title-page informs us that it was 'Written by J. R.,' initials which there is satisfactory evidence for regarding as those of Joseph Rutter, the translater of Corneille's Cid, who appears to have been in some way attached to the households both of Sir Kenelm Digby and the Earl of Dorset. The play was acted before Charles and his queen at Whitehall. The following analysis will sufficiently express its nature.

At the opening of the play we find Thirsis grieving for the loss of Silvia, a strange shepherdess who appeared amongst the pastoral inhabitants of Arcadia some while previously, and has recently vanished, carried off, as her lover supposes, by a satyr. Leaving him to his lament, the play introduces us to the huntress Nerina, courted by the rich shepherd Daphnis, whose suit is favoured by her father, and the poor swain Hylas. Daphnis is in his turn loved by the nymph Dorinda. In a scene between Hylas and Nerina she upbraids him with having once stolen a kiss of her, and dismisses him in seeming anger; immediately he is gone, however, delivering herself of a soliloquy in which she confesses her love for him, which her father's commands forbid her to reveal. Daphnis, finding her cold to his suit, seeks the help of Alcon, who supplies him with a magic glass, in which whoso looks shall not choose but love the giver. In reality it is poisoned, and upon his giving it to Nerina she faints, and in appearance dies, after obtaining as her last request her father's favour to her love for Hylas. The scene now shifts to court. Silvia, who it appears is none other than the daughter of King Euarchus, recounts how she had fled owing to the unwelcome suit of Cleander, the son of the old councillor Eubulus, and on account of her love of the shepherd Thirsis, whom she had seen and heard at the annual show which the country folk were wont to perform at court. After a while, however, Cleander had discovered her retreat and forced her to return. The shepherds are now again about to present their rustic pageant, and she takes the opportunity of sending a private message, seeking an interview with Thirsis. Meanwhile Eubulus has explained to his son Cleander how Silvia is really his own daughter, and consequently Cleander's sister. An oracle had led the king to believe that if a son were born to him harm would ensue, and therefore commanded that in that case the child should be destroyed. A son was born, but Eubulus substituted his own daughter, whom he feigned dead, and carried away the king's son with a necklace round his neck, intending to commit him to the care of some shepherds, but being surprised by robbers fled leaving the child to its fate. Returning now to the shepherds, the play shows us Daphnis and Alcon seeking the tomb of Nerina with a restorative. The glass, it seems, was intentionally poisoned by Alcon, who adopted this elaborate device for placing the nymph in the power of her lover should she continue obdurate. They restore her, and finding her still unmoved by his suit Daphnis threatens her with violence. Her cries, however, attract the swains, who arrive with Hylas at their head. Daphnis, overcome with shame at the exposure of his villany, is glad to find a friend in the despised Dorinda, while Nerina rewards her faithful Hylas in accordance with her father's promise. Meanwhile at court Silvia and Thirsis have been surprised in their secret interview, and both doomed to die by the anger of the king. The necklace on Thirsis' neck, however, leads to the discovery of his identity as the king's son, and all ends happily.[332]

In point of dramatic construction the first three acts leave little to be desired; as is so often the case, the weakness of the plot appears in the unravelling. The double solution of the two threads, neither of which is properly subordinated, and which are wholly independent, is a serious blot on the dramatic merit of the play. The courtly element, moreover, is but clumsily grafted on to the pastoral stock. Throughout the debts to predecessors, whether of language or incident, are fairly obvious. The verse in which the play is written is adequate and well sustained, and if its dependence on Daniel is evident, no less so is the advance in flexibility and expression which the language, as handled by the lesser poets, has made in the course of the twenty years or so that separate the Shepherds' Holiday from Hymen's Triumph. Rutter's verse also displays a certain nervousness of its own which is wanting in the model, though it preserves the intermixture of blank verse with irregular rimes which Daniel affected. These peculiarities may be illustrated in a passage which opens with a reminiscence of Spenser:

All as the shepherd is, such be his flocks, So pine and languish they, as in despair He pines and languishes; their fleecy locks Let hang disorder'd, as their master's hair, Since she is gone that deck'd both him and them. And now what beauty can there be to live, When she is lost that did all beauty give? (I. i.)

Again the opening situation recalls that of Hymen's Triumph, a resemblance rendered all the more striking by the retention of the actual names, Silvia and Thirsis. In like manner the name and character of Dorinda are taken from the Pastor fido. From the Aminta, of course, comes Nerina's description of how her lover stole a kiss, though little of the sensuous charm of the original survives; from the Pastor fido her confession of love as soon as she finds herself alone. The opening lines of this speech are, indeed, a direct translation:

Alas! my Hylas, my beloved soul, Durst she whom thou hast call'd cruel Nerina But speak her thoughts, thou wouldst not think her so; To thee she is not cruel, but to herself.[333] (II. iii.)

But these borrowings are by no means unskilful, so far at least as the construction is concerned. The discovery by Cleander that Silvia is his own sister, and the instant effect of the discovery in destroying his love, are of course commonplaces of the minor pastoral drama of Italy, and also occur in some of the plays we have been examining in this chapter. Verbal reminiscences of the Aminta also are scattered through the play, for instance, the lines in which Nerina protests her hatred of all who seek to win her from her state of unfettered virginity, protestations particularly fatuous, seeing that she is in love with Hylas throughout. Her father not unreasonably retorts:

Yes, you have made a vow, I know, which is, Whilst you are young, you will have all the youth To follow you with lies and flatteries. Fool, they'll deceive you; when this colour fades, Which will not always last, and you go crooked, As if you sought your beauty, lost i' th' ground, Then they will laugh at you! (II. v.)

With which he goes off to attend to the shearing of his sheep, one of those wholly unnecessary operations which the less skilful pastoralists make it a virtue to thrust upon our attention. The scene between Nerina, Daphnis, and Dorinda, a sort of three-cornered love-suit, may possibly have suggested to Cowley the best scene in the play which next claims our attention.

Cowley's Love's Riddle, published in 1638, but written two or three years earlier, is the work of a boy of sixteen, and though it serves amply to prove the precocity of its author, it does not therefore follow that it is itself possessed of any conspicuous merit. To find in it passages of genuine observation and love of nature, as one of Cowley's critics professes to do, is unpardonably partial; to grumble with another at not finding them is futile; even with a third to see in the piece 'a boy's conception of Sicilian life' is, to say the least, unnecessary. Cowley had, indeed, a great deal too much of 'the precocious humour of the world-wise boy' to put forward his play as anything of the kind; he was perfectly aware that it was an absolutely unreal fantasy, based entirely on convention and imitation, the sole merit of which was the more or less clever manner in which borrowing, reminiscence, and tradition were interwoven and combined. The plot is a mixture of the pastoral and courtly, or at least aristocratic, types, not uninfluenced by the rustic or comic, which, like the chivalric, is no doubt of Sidneian origin.

Calidora, the daughter of noble parents in Sicily, retires among the shepherd folk disguised in man's apparel, in order, as we only learn at the end of the play, to escape from the violence of Aphron, one of her suitors. Her other suitor, Philistus, as well as her brother Florellus and Philistus' sister Clariana, all set off in search of her, while Aphron, finding her fled from his pursuit, wanders aimlessly about, having lost his reason. Thus the courtly characters are all brought in contact with the country swains, among whom Palaemon courts the disdainful Hylace, daughter of the crabbed Melarnus and the old hag Truga. Other pastoral characters are old Aegon and his supposed daughter Bellula, and Alupis, who fills at once the roles of the 'merry' shepherd and the 'wise.' On Callidora's appearance in boy's attire among the shepherd folk Hylace and Bellula alike fall in love with her, while in his search for his sister Florellus falls in love with Bellula. This gives occasion for a scene of some merit between Callidora, Bellula, and Florellus, in which, after vainly disputing of their loves, they form a sort of triple alliance under the name of Love's Riddle. A similar scene could obviously be worked with Callidora, Hylace, and Palaemon, and it is perhaps to Cowley's credit that he has avoided the obvious parallelism. Meanwhile Clariana has met the mad Aphron without recognizing him, and taking pity on his state brings him home to cure him, an attempt in which she is successful. He rewards her by transferring to her his somewhat questionable attentions. Also Alupis, working on Truga, has tricked her into seeking the marriage of Hylace and Palaemon; a plan, however, which is upset by Hylace and Melarnus. Florellus in the meantime becomes impatient at finding a rival in Bellula's love, and seeks a duel with Callidora. She apparently fails to recognize her brother, and is forced to fight. They are separated by Philistus and Bellula. The two girls faint, and are carried by their lovers into the house where Clariana is nursing Aphron. Callidora's identity is discovered, and her parents arrive upon the scene. Bellula is found to be, not, as was supposed, Aegon's daughter, but sister to Aphron, stolen by pirates in childhood. Aegon makes Palaemon his heir, thereby removing Melarnus' objection to his suit to Hylace, while the latter and Bellula, discovering the hopelessness of their love for Callidora, consent to reward their respective lovers. Aphron, cured and forgiven, is accepted by Clariana, and thus, all bars removed, the happiness of the four pairs is secured.

There has been a tendency to exaggerate the merits of this plot. Cowley shows, indeed, some skill in the ravelling and in the handling of individual scenes, but in the unravelling he is far from happy, and there is often an utter lack of motive about his characters. Where the whole construction, indeed, depends upon no inner necessity, the various threads, as soon as their interweaving ceases to be necessary to the plot, fall apart of themselves, without any denoument, strictly speaking, at all. Thus Cowley's play has the characteristic faults of immature work, absence of rational characterization, and want of logical construction.

The verse, though well sustained, is on a singularly tedious level of mediocrity, while the lyrics introduced are all alike considerably below the general level. There are seldom more than a few lines together which possess any distinguishing merit, such as an indulgent editor has found in Bellula's exclamation when she first falls in love with Callidora:

How red his cheekes are! so our garden apples Looke on that side where the hot Sun salutes them; (I. ii.)

or in the lines with which Callidora prepares to meet death from her brother's sword:

As sick men doe their beds, so have I yet Injoy'd my selfe, with little rest, much trouble: I have beene made the Ball of Love and Fortune, And am almost worne out with often playing; And therefore I would entertaine my death As some good friend whose comming I expected. (V. iii.)

Mr. Gosse once expressed the opinion that Cowley's play is 'a distinct following without imitation of The Jealous Lovers of Thomas Randolph.' Exactly what was meant by this phrase it is difficult to tell, but if it was intended to imply any resemblance between the two pieces its application is confined to the character of a woman to whom age has not taught continence, and an incidental hit at the jargon of astrologers.[334] That Cowley had read The Jealous Lovers, published in 1633, is by no means unlikely, for he was certainly acquainted with the yet unpublished Amyntas. This he may perhaps have seen when it was performed at Whitehall, and he imitated several passages of it in his own Westminster play. The most important point of connexion is the madness of Aphron, which is modelled with some closeness on that of Amyntas. Actual verbal reminiscences are not common, but there can, I think, be little doubt that the schoolboy has been imitating the half-grotesque, half-poetic fantasies of the university wit, though he has wholly failed to achieve his pathos. Again, the speech of Florellus at the opening of Act III recalls the return both of Corymbus and of Claius in Amyntas, while Cowley is much more likely to have been influenced to lay the scene of his play in Sicily by Randolph's example than by his reading of Theocritus, whose influence, if it exists, is of the slightest. Emulation, rather than imitation, was Cowley's attitude towards his predecessor, and his means are not always happy. Thus, though the humours of Truga may have been suggested by the character of Dipsa in the Jealous Lovers, she is probably introduced into Cowley's play as the counterpart of Dorylas in Amyntas. Randolph trod on thin ice in some of the speeches of the liquorish wag, whose 'years are yet uncapable of love,' but censure will not stick to the witty knave. On the other hand, Cowley's portrait of incontinent age in Truga fails wholly of being comic, and appears all the loathlier for the fact that the author himself was still a mere schoolboy—though this is, indeed, his best excuse. Other parallels could be pointed out, but it would be superfluous; convention and petty theft are the warp and woof of the piece. The satire, which has met with some praise, is, of course, staled by a hundred poets of the pastoral vein. The position of Callidora, loved in her disguise by the two girls, recalls that of many pastoral heroines before and since Daniel's Silvia, particularly perhaps of the courtly Rosalind loved by the Arcadian Phoebe. The chivalric admixture is, as usual, traceable to Sidney, and the duel finds of course an obvious parallel in Twelfth Night. The discovery of Bellula's identity recalls more particularly, perhaps, that of Chloe's in Longus' romance, or may possibly indicate an acquaintance with Bonarelli's Filli di Sciro, which might also be traced in the attribution to centaurs of the character long identified with satyrs in pastoral tradition.

It is a coincidence, but one significant of the nature of the pastoral tradition, if such it can be called, that had sprung up on the English stage, that the next play to claim our notice is again the work of a schoolboy. Love in its Extasy, described on the title-page as 'a kind of Royall Pastorall,' was written, at the age of seventeen, by a student of Eton College, whom it has been customary to identify with one William Peaps.[335] The date of composition is said in the stationer's preface to have preceded by many years that of publication, 1649, we may perhaps regard the piece as more or less contemporary with Cowley's juvenile effort. There is, it is true, one passage,[336] treating of tyrants and revolutions, which is such as a moderate supporter of 'divine right' might have been expected to pen in the later days of the civil war; the publisher's words, however, are unequivocal, and can hardly refer to a period after 1642.

Love in its Extasy itself cannot, without some straining of the term, be called a pastoral, though there are certain links serving to connect it with pastoral tradition. The only excuse, beyond that afforded by the title-page, for including it in the present category is that several of the characters, finding it for various reasons inconvenient to appear in their own shapes, take upon themselves a pastoral disguise; but there is no hint of any pastoral background to the action, not even the atmosphere of a rural academy as in Montagu's play. The whole piece, however, is in the style of the Hispano-French romance, in which pastoral or pseudo-pastoral plays so large a part. To enter into the plot in detail is for our present purpose unnecessary. It is apparently original, and, considered as a romance, would do no small credit to its youthful author. An exiled king and his lady-love assume the sheep-hook, as do also two princes and the mistress of one of them, the mistress of the other appearing in the disguise of a boy. Disguisings, potions, feigned deaths, and recognitions, or rather revelations of identity, form the staple elements of the plot. The play is long, the stage crowded, the plot intricate and elaborated with a superabundance of incident; but it must be admitted that the attention is held and the interest sustained, even to a wearisome degree, throughout; that the characters are individualized, and the action clear. These are no small merits, as any one whose fortune it has been to wade through any considerable portion of the minor drama will be ready to acknowledge; while the defects of the piece are those commonly incident to immature work. The most conspicuous are the want of one prominent interest, and the lack of definite climax; at least four equally important threads are kept running through the play, and the dramatic tension is at an almost constant pitch throughout. These characteristics are those of the narrative romance and of the novel of adventure respectively, and are fatal to the success of the dramatic form.

The verse is in a way peculiar. It is intended as blank verse, and it is true that the licences taken do not exceed those commonly allowed by the practice of dramatists such as Fletcher, but here they are wholly unregulated by any natural feeling for metre or rhythm, and the resuit can hardly be called pleasing. On the other hand, there are a few happy lines, as where a lover bids his penitent mistress

Go, Knock at Repentance gate, one tear of thine Will easily compell an entrance. (V. ii.)

There are also some passages of forcible vigour, not always subject to dramatic propriety. Nevertheless, the qualities of life and brightness displayed are sufficient to induce a belief that had the author begun writing at a moment more propitious than the eve of the civil war, and pursued his career on the practical London stage, our drama might have been the richer by, say, a second Shirley, an addition which those who know that writer best will probably rate most highly. In any case the composition must, I think, be held to surpass in genuine qualities Cowley's flashy precocity.

This will be the most convenient place to mention an anonymous and undated play entitled Love's Victory, extracts from a manuscript of which were printed in 1853.[337] The style of the piece is not much guide as to the date, but the play does not appear to be early, in spite of the somewhat archaic spelling. It is in rime; mostly decasyllabic couplets, but with free intermixture of alternative rime and frequent lyrical passages. It is of course difficult to gather much of the plot from the printed extracts, but so far as it is possible to judge the play appears to have been a pure pastoral, with Venus and Cupid introduced in the finale, while the situations and characters are those habitual to pastorals, including the quite superfluous protesting of a not very prepossessing chastity. The only more original trait is the scene in which the nymphs meet and relate their love adventures, a rather awkward device for carrying on the involution of the plot. There is a certain ease in the verse, but on the whole the poetic merit is small.[338]

We have now passed in review all the regular pastoral plays lying within our scope. There remain a number of shorter compositions of a similar or at least analogous nature, as well as a good many masques and other pieces in which the pastoral element is more or less dominant. These it will for our present purpose be convenient to consider in connexion with each other, and without troubling ourselves too much concerning such nice differences of form as may be found to exist among them.



Chapter VII.

Masques and General Influence



I

The history of the English masque offers a very interesting study in what may be called literary morphology. Under the influence of the stage the early disguisings and spectacular dances developed into a semi-dramatic kind, intermediate between the literary drama and mere scenic displays, and recognized as possessing a definite nature and proper limitations of its own. To this highly individualized form of art the term masque may often with convenience and propriety be restricted, but all such rigid and exclusive definitions have this disadvantage, that they tend to make lines of division appear clearer and more logically convincing than they in fact usually are, and further that they tempt us to neglect the often numerous and closely allied specimens which cannot be brought to accommodate themselves to the abstract type. Those writers who deny that Comus is a masque are entirely justified from their point of view; it is a question of classification, and the classification which it is convenient to adopt may vary according to the nature of the investigation in hand. It must not, therefore, be thought that I place myself in antagonism to critics such as Dr. Brotanek for example, if I give to the term masque its widest possible signification as including not only the regular and highly developed compositions of the Jonsonian type, but also mere pageants on the one hand, and what may be called miniature plays on the other; all dramatic or semi-dramatic pieces, in short, which it is undesirable or inconvenient to treat along with the regular productions. Approaching the question as we do, not from the point of view of the evolution of a particular literary form, but from that of a persistent ideal and quasi-philosophical tradition, which manifests itself in all manner of forms and fashions, we have a perfect right to adopt whatever classification suits our purpose best, provided always that we have a clear notion what it is we are discussing. I propose, therefore, to treat in chronological order all those pieces which, owing to their less fully developed dramatic form, were omitted from the previous chapter. Something no doubt has been sacrificed by thus separating the regular dramas from the slighter and more occasional compositions, for in the earlier times especially these latter serve to fill considerable gaps in the sequence, and must have had a powerful influence in fashioning that pastoral tradition to which the pieces we have already considered belong.

The connexion of the pastoral with the masque began very early, and may well have been more constant than we should be tempted to suppose from the isolated examples that remain. The union was a natural one, for the pastoral, whether in its Arcadian or chivalric guise, was well suited to supply the framework for graceful poetry and elaborate dances alike, while the rustic and burlesque elements were equally capable of furnishing matter for the antimasque, when the form had reached that stage of structural elaboration. The allusive and allegorical features which had long been traditional in the pastoral likewise suited the topical and occasional nature of the masque. The connexion, however, with the stricter forms at least, was never very close, the tendency on the part of the pastoral to confine itself to a mere external formalism being even more noticeable here than in the case of the regular drama.

The earliest instance of this connexion of which we have notice is one of interest in English history. It is none other than the masquerade in which Henry appeared disguised as a shepherd at Wolsey's feast, which, according to Shakespeare, was the occasion of his first meeting with Anne Boleyn. The disguising is attested by the authority of Cavendish and Hall, but it is clear that the pastoral element was confined to the garb, there being no indication of anything of the nature of a literary presentation.

The first literary specimen of the kind does not appear till near the middle of Elizabeth's reign, and even then there is barely an excuse for classing it as pastoral. The composition in question is the slight entertainment, to which the name of The Lady of May has been given by modern critics, composed by Sidney for presentation before Elizabeth during her visit to Leicester at Wanstead, in May, 1578. It appears to have been his earliest work. Though not itself a masque in the strict sense of the word in which we have learnt to use it, the piece contains the undeveloped germs of most of the later characteristics of the kind. The Queen in her walks through the grounds came to a spot where the May-Lady was being courted by a shepherd and a 'foster,' hotly contending for the prize. The strife was stayed, and, the deserts of either party being duly set forth, the Lady referred the choice to the Queen, who decided in favour of the pastoral suitor. A song and music ended the show. A strongly rustic element is sustained by the Lady's mother and the old shepherd Dorcas, while a touch of broad burlesque is introduced in the character of the pedagogue Rombus, who speaks in a style really little more extravagant than that of Sidney's own Arcadia. As in the romance, at the end of which the piece was first printed in 1598, the occasional songs are of small merit.

The spring-like freshness that characterizes so much of Peele's best work breathes deliciously through the polite convention of the Descensus Astraeae, the 'Pageant, borne before M. William Web, Lord Maior of the Citie of London on the day he tooke his oath; beeing the 29. of October. 1591.' The conceit is graceful in itself, and significant of the sentiment of contemporary London. Astraea, bearing her sheep-hook as a sort of pastoral sceptre, typified the Queen, and passed on in her triumphal car with the words:

Feed on, my flock, among the gladsome green, Where heavenly nectar flows above the banks; Such pastures are not common to be seen: Pay to immortal Jove immortal thanks, For what is good fro heaven's high throne doth fall; And heaven's great architect be praised for all[339].

In her praise the graces, the virtues, and a champion utter appropriate speeches, whilst Superstition, a friar, and Ignorance, a priest, together with other malcontents, shrink back abashed before her onward march.

The following year appeared the anonymous 'Speeches delivered to her Majestie this last progresse, at the Right Honorable the Lady Russels, at Bissam, the Right Honorable the Lorde Chandos, at Sudley, at the Right Honorable the Lord Norris, at Ricorte.' This piece being very characteristic of a certain sort of courtly shows, and itself possessing rather greater intrinsic interest than is to be found in most of the compositions we shall have to examine, may lay claim to a somewhat more detailed discussion. As the Queen approached through the woods towards Bisham, cornets were heard to sound, and presently there appeared a wild man who began his speech thus:

I followed this sounde, as enchanted; neither knowing the reason why, nor how to bee ridde of it: unusuall to these Woods, and, I feare, to our gods prodigious. Sylvanus whom I honour, is runne into a Cave: Pan, whom I envye, courting of the Shepheardesse. Envie I thee Pan? No, pitty thee; an eie-sore to chast Nymphes, yet still importunate. Honour thee Sylvanus? No, contemne thee; fearefull of Musicke in the Woods, yet counted the god of the Woods.

He then proceeds to welcome the royal visitor. Further on 'At the middle of the Hill sate Pan, and two Virgins keeping sheepe, and sowing in their Samplers.' Pan courts the shepherdesses, who mock him, and finally all join in welcome of the Queen. 'At the bottome of the hill,' we read further, 'entring into the hous, Ceres with her Nymphes in an harvest Cart, meete her Majesty, having a Crowne of wheat-ears with a Jewell.' Ceres sings:

Swel Ceres now, for other Gods are shrinking; Pomona pineth, Fruitlesse her tree; Fair Phoebus shineth Onely on mee. Conceit doth make me smile whilst I am thinking,... All other Gods of power bereven, Ceres only Queene of heaven.

With Robes and flowers let me be dressed; Cynthia that shineth Is not so cleare, Cynthia declineth When I appeere, Yet in this Ile shee raignes as blessed, ... And in my eares still fonde Fame whispers, Cynthia shalbe Ceres Mistres.

She then proceeds to welcome the Queen as 'Greater then Ceres.' At Sudely Castle her Majesty was received by an old shepherd with a long speech; whereafter we read: 'Sunday, Apollo running after Daphne,' a show accompanied by a speech from another shepherd, at the end whereof, the metamorphosis safely accomplished, 'her Majesty sawe Apollo with the tree, having on one side one that sung, on the other one that plaide.'

Sing you, plaie you, but sing and play my truth, This tree my Lute, these sighes my notes of ruth: The Lawrell leafe for ever shall bee greene, And chastety shalbe Apolloes Queene. If gods maye dye, here shall my tombe be plaste, And this engraven, 'Fonde Phoebus, Daphne chaste.'

'The song ended, the tree rived, and Daphne issued out, Apollo ranne after, with these words:'

Faire Daphne staye, too chaste because too faire, Yet fairer in mine eies, because so chaste, And yet because so chaste, must I despaire? And to despaire, I yeelded have at last.

'Daphne running to her Majestie uttered this:'

I stay, for whether should chastety fly for succour, but to the Queene of chastety, &c.

a speech which can without loss be left to the imagination of the reader. The third day's show was prevented by bad weather: it was designed thus. Summoned by one clad in sheep-skins, the Queen was to be led to where the shepherds of Cotswold were engaged in choosing a king and queen of the feast by the simple divination of a bean and a pea concealed in a cake. After a while spying her Majesty, the whole company should have joined in a welcome. The rest of the show is in no wise pastoral. The very marked Euphuism of the prose portions, combined with some lyrical merit, makes the composition worth notice, and has led to its ascription to the pen of Lyly himself. It was, of course, composed and presented for her Majesty's delectation at a time when Lyly's plays were the delight of the court; but however grateful we may feel to Mr. Bond for having made this and other similar pieces accessible in his edition of the poet, we need not necessarily accept his view of the authorship.[340]

To the end of the sixteenth century belong undoubtedly many of the pieces printed for the first time in 1637 in Thomas Heywood's volume of Dialogues and Dramas.[341] The only one of these that can really be styled pastoral is a slight composition entitled Amphrissa, or the Forsaken Shepherdess. Two shepherdesses, Pelopaea and Alope, meet and fall to discoursing of love and inconstancy, and cite incidentally the unhappy case of Amphrissa, who at that moment appears in person and joins in the conversation. The nymphs undertake her cure, and give her much wise counsel while they crown her with willow. Then there appears upon the scene the huntress queen of Arcadia herself, attended by her nymphs, virgin Diana, before whom the country maidens bow in awe. She graciously raises them, and the slight piece ends with dance and song.

In this drama or dialogue or masque, or whatever it may be most appropriately called, we see all plot disappear, and the interest concentrate itself in the dialogue, which, for all that it is written in blank verse of some rhythmical merit, reveals a strong inclination towards Euphuism. Thus we read of men how

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 role 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 a 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—'stoynage 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.