Vicegerent upon earth, supplies her state.
    And doe you hold it weakenesse then to love,
    And love so excellent a miracle
    As is a worthy woman? (III. iv.)

The sententious passages, the occurrence of which we previously noted in
the _Queen's Arcadia_, likewise appear. Thus of dreams:

    Alas, Medorus, dreames are vapours, which,
    Ingendred with day thoughts, fall in the night,
    And vanish with the morning;[260] (III. ii.)

and of thoughts:

    They are the smallest peeces of the minde
    That passe this narrow organ of the voyce;
    The great remaine behinde in that vast orbe
    Of th' apprehension, and are never borne. (III. iv.)

At times these utterances even possess a dramatic value, as where,
bending over the seemingly lifeless form of his beloved Silvia, Thirsis
exclaims:

    And sure the gods but onely sent thee thus
    To fetch me, and to take me hence with thee. (IV. v.)

The two plays we have been considering are after all very much what we
should expect from their author. A poet of considerable taste, of great
sweetness and some real feeling, but deficient in passion, in power of
conception and strength of execution, writing for the court in the
recognized rôle of court-laureate, and unexposed to the bracing influence
of a really critical audience--such is Samuel Daniel as seen in his
experiments in the pastoral drama. We learn from his commendatory sonnet
on the 'Dymocke' _Pastor fido_ that he had known Guarini personally in
Italy, an accident which supplies an interesting link between the dramas
of the two countries, and might suggest a specific incentive to the
composition of his pastorals, were any such needed. So far, however, from
that being the case, the only wonder is that the adventure was not made at
an earlier date, a problem the most promising explanation of which may
perhaps be sought in the rather conservative taste of the officiai court
circle, which tended to lag behind in the general advance during the
closing years of Elizabeth's reign. With the accession of James new life
as well as a new spirit entered the court, and is quickly found reflected
in the literary fashions in vogue. It was in 1605 that Jonson wrote in
_Volpone_:

    Here's Pastor Fido ...
              ... All our English writers,
    I meane such, as are happy in th' Italian,
    Will deigne to steale out of this author, mainely;
    Almost as much, as from Montagnie:
    He has so moderne, and facile a veine,
    Fitting the time, and catching the court-eare. (1616, III. iv.)

On the whole, perhaps, Daniel's merits as a pastoral writer have been
exaggerated. His dependence on Italian models, particularly in his earlier
play, is close, both as regards incidents and style; while he usually
lacks their felicity. His claims as an original dramatist will not stand
examination in view of the concealed shepherds in the _Queen's Arcadia,_
of his careful avoidance of scenes of strong dramatic emotion--a point in
which he of course followed his models, while lacking their mastery of
narrative as compensation--and of his failure to do justice to such scenes
when forced upon him.[261] If the atmosphere of certain scenes is purer
than is the case with his models, it is in large measure due to his
failure to master the style; if his conception of virtue is more
wholesome, his picture of it is at times marred by exaggeration, while his
sentiment for innocence is of a watery kind, and occasionally a little
tawdry. His pathos, as is the case with all weak writers, constantly
trembles on the verge of bathos, while his lack of humour betrays him into
penning passages of elaborate fatuity. His style is formal and often
stilted, his verse often monotonous and at times heavy.[262] On the other
hand Daniel possesses qualities of no vulgar kind, though some, it is
true, may be said to be rather the _qualités de ses défauts_. The verse is
at least smooth; it is courtly and scholarly, and sometimes graceful; the
language is pure and refined, and habitually simple. The sentiment, if at
times finicking, is always that of a gentleman and a courtier. Moreover,
in reckoning his qualifications as a dramatist, we must not forget to
credit him with the plot of _Hymen's Triumph_, which is on the whole
original, and is happily conceived, firmly constructed, and executed with
considerable ability.

With Daniel begins and ends in English literature the dominant influence
of the Italian pastoral drama. No doubt the imitation of Tasso and Guarini
is an important element in the subsequent history of pastoralism in this
country, and to trace and define that influence will be not the least
important task of the ensuing chapters. No doubt it supplied the incentive
that induced a man like Fletcher to bid for a hopeless success in such a
play as the _Faithful Shepherdess_, and placed a heavy debt to the account
of Thomas Randolph when he composed his _Amyntas_. But in these cases, as
in others, wherever the author availed himself of the tradition imported
from the Ferrarese court, he approached it as it were from without,
seeking to rival, to acclimatize, rather than to reproduce. Nowhere else
do we find the tone and atmosphere, the structure, situations, and
characters imitated with that fidelity, or attempt at fidelity, which
makes Daniel's plays almost indistinguishable, except for language, from
much of the work of the later Italians.[263] To minimize with many critics
Daniel's dependence on his models, or to emphasize with some that of
Fletcher, is, it seems to me, wholly to misapprehend the positions they
occupy in the history of literature, and to obscure the actual development
of the pastoral ideal in this country.

Chapter V.

The Three Masterpieces

Among English pastorals there are two plays, and two only, that can be
said to stand in the front rank of the romantic drama as a whole. The
first of these is, of course, Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_. In the
case of the second the statement would perhaps be more correctly put in
the conditional mood, for whatever might have been its importance had it
reached completion, the fragmentary state of Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_ has
prevented its taking the place it deserves in the history of dramatic
literature. With these two productions may for the purposes of criticism
be classed Thomas Randolph's _Amyntas_, which, however inferior to the
others in poetic merit, yet like them stands apart in certain matters of
intention and origin from the general run of pastorals, and may, moreover,
well support a claim to be considered one of the three chief English
examples of the kind.

These three plays embrace a period of some thirty years, before, during,
and after which a considerable number of dramatic productions, more or
less pastoral in character, appeared. The chief feature in which the three
plays we are about to consider are distinguished from these is a certain
direct and conscious, though in no case subservient, relation they bear to
the drama of the Italians; while at the same time we are struck with the
absence of any influence of subsidiary or semi-pastoral tradition, of the
mythological drama, or the courtly-chivalric romance. We shall therefore
gain more by considering them in connexion with each other than we shall
lose by abandoning strict chronological sequence.

When Fletcher's play was produced, probably in the winter of 1608-9, it
proved a complete failure.[264] An edition appeared without date, but
before May, 1610, to which were prefixed verses by Field, Beaumont,
Chapman, and Jonson. If, as some have supposed, the last named already had
at the time a pastoral play of his own in contemplation, the reception
accorded to his friend's venture can hardly have been encouraging, and may
have led to the postponement of the plan; as we shall see, there is no
reason to believe that the _Sad Shepherd_ was taken in hand for another
quarter of a century almost. The _Faithful Shepherdess_ was revived long
after Fletcher's death, at a court performance in 1633-4, and shone by
comparison with Montagu's _Shepherds Paradise_ acted the year before. It
was then again placed on the public boards at the Blackfriars, where it
met with some measure of success.

The _Faithful Shepherdess_ was the earliest, and long remained the only,
deliberate attempt to acclimatize upon the popular stage in England a
pastoral drama which should occupy a position corresponding to that of
Tasso and Guarini in Italy. It was no crude attempt at transplantation, no
mere imitation of definite models, as was the case with Daniel's work, but
a deliberate act of creative genius inspired by an ambitious rivalry. Its
author might be supposed well fitted for his task. Although it was one of
his earliest, if not actually his very earliest work, it is clear that he
must have already possessed an adequate and practical knowledge of
stagecraft, and have been familiar with the temper of London audiences. He
further possessed poetical powers of no mean order, in particular a
lyrical gift almost unsurpassed among his fellows for grace and sweetness,
howbeit somewhat lacking in the qualities of refinement and power. That
he should have failed so signally is a fact worth attention. For fail he
did. His friends, it is true, endeavoured as usual to explain the fiasco
of the first performance by the ignorance and incompetence of the
spectators, but we shall, I think, see reason to come ourselves to a
scarcely less unfavourable conclusion. Nor is this failure to be explained
by the inherent disadvantage at which the sentimental and lyrical pastoral
stood when brought face to face with the wider and stronger interest of
the romantic drama. Such considerations may to some extent account for the
attitude of the contemporary audience; they cannot be supposed seriously
to affect the critical verdict of posterity. We must trust to analysis to
show wherein lay the weakness of the piece; later we may be able to
suggest some cause for Fletcher's failure.

In the first place we may consider for a moment Fletcher's indebtedness to
Tasso and Guarini, a question on which very different views have been
held. As to the source of his inspiration, there can be no reasonable
doubt, though it has been observed with truth by more than one critic,
that the _Faithful Shepherdess_ may more properly be regarded as written
in rivalry, than in imitation, of the Italians. In any case, but for the
_Aminta_ and _Pastor fido_, the _Faithful Shepherdess_ would never have
come into being; as a type it reveals neither original invention nor
literary evolution, but is a conscious attempt to adapt the Italian
pastoral to the requirements of the English stage. As an individual piece,
on the other hand, it is for the most part original and independent,
little direct influence of the Italians being traceable in the plot,
whether in general construction or in single incidents and characters. A
certain resemblance has indeed been discovered between Guarini's Corisca
and Fletcher's Cloe, but the fact chiefly shows the superficiality of the
comparison upon which critics have relied, since if Corisca suggested some
traits of Cloe, she may be held responsible for far more of Amarillis.
Where Guarini depicted a courtesan, Fletcher has painted a yahoo. Corisca,
wanton and cynical, plays, like Amarillis, the part of mischief-maker and
deceiver, and, so far from seeking, like her successfully eludes the
embraces of the shepherd-satyr. On the other hand, a clear difference
between Fletcher's work and that of the Italians may be seen in the
respective use made of supernatural agencies. From these the southern
drama is comparatively free. A somewhat ultra-medicinal power of herbs,
the introduction of an oracle in the preliminary history and of a wholly
superfluous seer in the _dénoûment_ make up the whole sum so far as the
_Pastor fido_ is concerned, while the _Aminta_ cannot even show as much as
this. In the _Faithful Shepherdess_ we find not only the potent herbs,
holy water, and magic taper of Clorin's bower, but the wonder-working well
and the actual presence of the river-god, who rises, not to pay courtly
compliments in the prologue, but to take an actual part in the plot[265].
Alike in its positive and negative aspects Fletcher's relation to the
Italian masters was conscious and acknowledged. Far from feigning
ignorance, he boldly challenged comparison with his predecessors by
imitating the very title of Guarini's play, or yet closer, had he known
it, that of Contarini's _Fida ninfa_[266].

A glance at the dramatis personae reveals a curious artificial symmetry
which, as we shall shortly see, is significant of the spirit in which
Fletcher approached the composition of his play. In Clorin we have a nymph
vowed to perpetual virginity, an anchorite at the tomb of her dead lover;
in Thenot a worshipper of her constancy, whose love she cures by feigning
a return. In Perigot and Amoret are represented a pair of ideal lovers--so
Fletcher gives us to understand--in whose chaste bosoms dwell no looser
flames. Amarillis is genuinely enamoured of Perigot, with a love that bids
modesty farewell, and will dare even crime and dishonour for its
attainment; Cloe, as already said, is a study in erotic pathology. She is
the female counterpart of the Sullen Shepherd, who inherits the
traditional nature of the satyr, that monster having been transformed into
the gentle minister of the cloistral Clorin. So, again, the character of
Amarillis finds its counterpart in that of Alexis, whose love for Cloe is
at least human; while Daphnis, who meets Cloe's desperate advances with a
shy innocence, is in effect, whatever he may have been in intention,
hardly other than a comic character. The river-god and the satyr, the
priest of Pan and his attendant Old Shepherd, who themselves stand outside
the circle of amorous intrigue, complete the list of personae.

The action which centres round these characters cannot be regarded as
forming a plot in any strict sense of the term, though Fletcher has reaped
a little praise here and there for his construction of one. It is hardly
too much to say that the various complications arise and are solved,
leaving the situation at the end precisely as it was at the beginning.
Even so may the mailed figures in some ancestral hall start into life at
the stroke of midnight, and hold high revel with the fair dames and
damsels from out the gilt frames upon the walls, content to range
themselves once more and pose in their former attitudes as soon as the
first grey light of morning shimmers through the mullioned windows.
Perigot and Amoret come through the trials of the night with their love
unshaken, but apparently no nearer its fulfilment; Thenot's love for
Clorin is cured for the moment, but is in danger of breaking out anew when
he shall discover that she is after all constant to her vow; Cloe recovers
from her amorous possession; the vagrant desires of Amarillis and Alexis
are dispelled by the 'sage precepts' of the priest and Clorin; Daphnis'
innocence is seemingly unstained by the hours he has spent with Cloe in
the hollow tree; while the Sullen Shepherd, unregenerate and defiant, is
banished the confines of pastoral Thessaly. What we have witnessed was no
more than the comedy of errors of a midsummer night.

The play, nevertheless, possesses merits which it would be unfair to
neglect. Narrative is, in the first place, entirely dispensed with in
favour of actual representation, though the result, it must be admitted,
is somewhat kaleidoscopic. Next, the action is complete within itself, and
needs no previous history to explain it; no slight advantage for stage
representation. As a result the interest is kept constantly whetted, the
movement is brisk and varied, and with the help of the verse goes far
towards carrying off the many imperfections of the piece.

It will have been already noticed that the characters fall into certain
distinct groups which may be regarded as exemplifying certain aspects of
love. Supersensuous sentiment, chaste and honourable regard, too
colourless almost to deserve the name of love, natural and unrestrained
desire, and violent lust, all these are clearly typified. What we fail to
find is the presentment of a love which shall reveal men and women neither
as beasts of instinct nor as carved figures of alabaster fit only to adorn
a tomb. This typical nature of the characters has given rise to a theory
recently propounded that the play should be regarded as an allegory
illustrative of certain aspects of love[267]. So regarded much of the
absurdity, alike of the characters and of the action, is said to
disappear. This may be so, but does it really mean anything more than that
abstractions not being in fact possessed of character at all, and being as
ideals unfettered by any demands of probability, absurdities pass
unnoticed in their case which at the touchstone of actuality at once start
into glaring prominence? Moreover, though the _Faithful Shepherdess_ was
among the first fruits of its author's genius, and though it may be
contended that he never gained a complete mastery over the difficult art
of dramatic construction, Fletcher early proved his familiarity with the
popular demands of the romantic stage, and was far too practical a
craftsman to be likely to add the dead-weight of a moral allegory to the
already dangerous form of the Arcadian pastoral. The theory does not in
reality bring the problem presented by Fletcher's play any nearer
solution; since, if the characters are regarded solely as representing
abstract ideas, such as chastity, desire, lust, they strip themselves of
every shred of dramatic interest, and could not, as Fletcher must have
known, stand the least chance upon the stage; while if they take to cover
their nakedness however diaphanous a veil of dramatic personality, the
absurdities of character and plot at once become apparent.

What truth there may be underlying this theory will, I think, be best
explained upon a different hypothesis. Let us in the first place
endeavour, so far as may be possible after the lapse of nearly three
centuries, to realize the mental attitude of the author in approaching the
composition of his play. In order to do this a closer analysis of the
piece will be necessary.

The first point of importance for the interpretation of Fletcher's
pastoralism is to be found in the quaintly self-confident preface which he
prefixed to the printed edition. Throughout our inquiry we have observed
two main types of pastoral, to one or other of which all work in this kind
approaches; that, namely, in which the interest depends upon some
allegorical or topical meaning lying beneath and beyond the apparent form,
and that in which it is confined to the actual and obvious presentment
itself. Of the former type Drayton wrote in the preface to his Pastorals:
'The subject of Pastorals, as the language of it, ought to be poor, silly,
and of the coursest Woofe in appearance. Neverthelesse, the most High and
most Noble Matters of the World may bee shaddowed in them, and for
certaine sometimes are[268]. In his preface to the _Faithful Shepherdess_
the author adopts the opposite position, as Daniel, in the prologue to the
_Queen's Arcadia_, and in spite of the strongly topical nature of that
piece, had done before him. Fletcher in an often-quoted passage writes:
'Understand, therefore, a pastoral to be a representation of shepherds and
shepherdesses with their actions and passions, which must be such as may
agree with their natures, at least not exceeding former fictions and
vulgar traditions; they are not to be adorned with any art, but such
improper [i.e. common] ones as nature is said to bestow, as singing and
poetry; or such as experience may teach them, as the virtues of herbs and
fountains, the ordinary course of the sun, moon, and stars, and such
like.' His interest would, then, appear to lie in a more or less realistic
representation, and he appears more concerned to enforce a reasonable
propriety of character than to discover deep matters of philosophy and
state. This passage alone would, therefore, make the theory we glanced at
above improbable. Fletcher next proceeds, in a passage of some interest in
the history of criticism: 'A tragi-comedy is not so called in respect of
mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make
it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no
comedy, which must be a representation of familiar people, with such kind
of trouble as no life be questioned; so that a god is as lawful in this as
in a tragedy, and mean people as in a comedy.' One would hardly have
supposed it necessary to define tragi-comedy to the English public in
1610, and even had it been necessary, this could hardly be accepted as a
very satisfactory definition. The audience, 'having ever had a singular
gift in defining,' as the author sarcastically remarks, concluded a
pastoral tragi-comedy 'to be a play of country hired shepherds in gray
cloaks, with curtailed dogs in strings, sometimes laughing together, and
sometimes killing one another'; and after all, so far as tragi-comedy is
concerned, their belief was not unreasonable. Fletcher's definition is
obviously borrowed from the academic criticism of the renaissance, and
bears no relation to the living tradition of the English stage: since his
play suggests acquaintance with Guarini's _Pastor fido_, it is perhaps not
fantastic to imagine that in his preface he was indebted to the same
author's _Compendio della poesia tragicomica_. What is important to note
is Fletcher's concern at this point with critical theory.

Without seeking to dogmatize as to the exact extent of Fletcher's debt to
individual Italian sources, it may safely be maintained that he was
familiar with the writings of the masters of pastoral, and worked with his
eyes open: whatever modifications he introduced into traditional
characters were the result of deliberate intention. In general, two types
of love may be traced in the Italian pastoral, namely the honest human
desire of such characters as Mirtillo and Amarillis, Dorinda, Aminta, and
the more or less close approach to mere sensuality found in Corisca and
the satyrs. We nowhere find any approach to supersensuous passion,
indifferent to its own consummation; Silvia and Silvio are either entirely
careless, or else touched with a genuine human love. Nor are the more
tumultuous sides of human passion represented, for it is impossible so to
regard Corisca's love for Mirtillo, which is at bottom nothing but the
cynical caprice of the courtesan, who regards her lovers merely as so many
changes of garment--

    Molti averne, uno goderne, e cangiar spesso.

Fletcher appears to have thought that success might lie in extending and
refining upon the gamut of love. He possessed, when he set to work, no
plot ready to hand capable of determining his characters, but appears to
have selected what he considered a suitable variety of types to fill a
pastoral stage, not because he desired to be in any way allegorical, but
because in such a case it was the abstract relationship among the
characters which alone could determine his choice. Having selected his
characters, he further seems to have left them free to evolve a plot for
themselves, a thing they signally failed to do. Thus there may be a
certain truth underlying the theory with which we started, inasmuch as the
characters appear to have been chosen, not for any particular dramatic
business, but for certain abstract qualities, and some trace of their
origin may yet cling about them in the accomplished work; but that
Fletcher deliberately intended to illustrate a set of psychological
conditions, not by dramatic presentation, but by the use of types and
abstractions, is to my mind incredible. In the composition of his later
plays he had the necessities of a given plot, incidents, or other
fashioning cause, to determine the characters which it was in its turn to
illustrate, and here he showed resourceful craftsmanship. In the case of
the present play he had to fashion characters _in vacuo_ and then weave
them into such a plot as they might be capable of sustaining. In other
words, he reversed the formai order of artistic creation, and attempted to
make the abstract generate the concrete, instead of making the individual
example imply, while being informed by, the fundamental idea.

So much for the formal and theoretic side of the question. A few words as
to the general tone and purpose of the play. For some reason unexplained,
having selected his characters, which one may almost say exhibit every
form of love except a wholesome and a human one, the author deemed it
necessary that the whole should redound to the praise and credit of
cloistral virginity and glozing 'honour,' and whatever else of unreal
sentiment the cynicism of the renaissance had grafted on the superstition
of the middle age. Again comparing the _Faithful Shepherdess_ with
Fletcher's other work, we find that when he is dealing with actual men and
women in his romantic plays he troubles himself little concerning the
moral which it may be possible to extract from his plot; he is rightly
conscious that that at all events is not the business of art: but when he
comes to create _in vacuo_ he is at once obsessed by some Platonic theory
regarding the ethical aim of the poet. The victory, therefore, shall be
with the powers of good, purity and vestal maidenhood shall triumph and
undergo apotheosis at his hands, the world shall see how fair a monument
of stainless womanhood he can erect in melodious verse. Well and good; for
this is indeed an object to which no self-respecting person can take
exception. There was, however, one point the importance of which the
author failed to realize, namely, that this ideal which he sought to
honour was one with which he was himself wholly out of sympathy.
Consequently, in place of the supreme picture of womanly purity he
intended, he produced what is no better than a grotesque caricature. His
cynical indifference is not only evident from many of his other works, but
constantly forces itself upon our attention even in the present play. The
falsity of his whole position appears in the unconvincing conventionality
of the patterns of chastity themselves, and in the unreality of the
characters which serve them as foils--Cloe being utterly preposterous
except as a study in pathlogy, and Amarillis essentially a tragic figure
who can only be tolerated on condition of her real character being
carefully veiled. It appears again in the utterly irrational conversion
and purification of these characters, and we may further face it in the
profound cynicism, all the more terrible because apparently unconscious,
with which the author is content to dismiss Thenot, cured of his
altruistic devotion by the shattering at one blow of all that he held most
sacred in woman.

In this antagonism between Fletcher's own sympathies and the ideal he set
before him seems to me to lie the key to the enigma of his play. Only one
other rational solution is possible, namely that he intended the whole as
an elaborate satire on all ideas of chastity whatever. It is hardly
surprising, under the circumstances, that one of the most persistent false
notes in the piece is that indelicacy of self-conscious virtue which we
have before observed in the case of Tasso. If on the other hand we have to
pronounce Fletcher free of any taint of seductive sentiment, we must
nevertheless charge him with a considerable increase in that cynicism with
regard to womankind in general which had by now become characteristic of
the pastoral drama. We have already noticed it in the case of Tasso's 'Or,
non sai tu com' è fatta la donna?' and of the words in which Corisca
describes her changes of lovers, to say nothing of its appearance at the
close of the _Orfeo_. In English poetry we find Daniel writing:

    Light are their waving vailes, light their attires,
    Light are their heads, and lighter their desires;
                                    (_Queen's Arcadia_, II. iii.)

while with Fletcher the charge becomes yet more bitter. Thenot,
contemplating the constancy of Clorin, is amazed

         that such virtue can
    Be resident in lesser than a man, (II. ii. 83,)

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

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

Amarillis, courting Perigot, asks in scorn:

    Still think'st thou such a thing as chastity
    Is amongst women? (III. i. 297.)

The Sullen Shepherd declares of the wounded Amoret:

         Thou wert not meant,
    Sure, for a woman, thou art so innocent; (ib. 358.)

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

    Women love only opportunity
    And not the man. (ib. 127.)

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

    ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake!

But it is high time to inquire how it is, supposing the objections we have
been considering to be justly chargeable against the _Faithful
Shepherdess_, that it should ever have come to be regarded as a classic of
the language, that it should be by far the most widely known of its
author's works, and that we should find ourselves turning to it again and
again with ever-fresh delight. The reader has doubtless already answered
the question. Fletcher brought to the composition of his play a gift of
easy lyric versification, a command of varied rhythm, and a felicity of
phrase, allusion, recollection, and echo, such as have seldom been
surpassed. The wealth of pure poetry overflowing in every scene is of
power to make us readily forget the host of objections which serious
criticism must raise, and revel with mere delight in the verbal melody.
The play is literally crowded with incidental sketches of exquisite beauty
which suggest comparison with the more set descriptions of Tasso, and
flash past on the speed of the verse as the flowers of the roadside and
glimpses of the distant landscape through breaks in the hedge flash for
an instant on the gaze of the rider[269].

Before passing on, and in spite of the fact that the play must be familiar
to most readers, I here transcribe a few of its most fascinating passages
as the best defence Fletcher has to oppose to the objections of his
critics. It is in truth no lame one[270].

In the opening scene Clorin, who has vowed herself to a life of chastity
at the grave of her lover, is met by the satyr, who at once bows in
worship of her beauty. He has been sent by Pan to fetch fruits for the
entertainment of 'His paramour the Syrinx bright.' 'But behold a fairer
sight!' he exclaims on seeing Clorin:

    By that heavenly form of thine,
    Brightest fair, thou art divine,
    Sprung from great immortal race
    Of the gods, for in thy face
    Shines more awful majesty
    Than dull weak mortality
    Dare with misty eyes behold
    And live. Therefore on this mould
    Lowly do I bend my knee
    In worship of thy deity.[271] (I. i. 58.)

The next scene takes place in the neighbourhood of the village. At the
conclusion of a festival we find the priest pronouncing blessing upon the
assembled people and purging them with holy water[272], after which they
disperse with a song. As they are going, Perigot stays Amoret, begging
her to lend an ear to his suit. He addresses her:

                    Oh you are fairer far
    Than the chaste blushing morn, or that fair star
    That guides the wandering seaman through the deep,
    Straighter than straightest pine upon the steep
    Head of an agèd mountain, and more white
    Than the new milk we strip before day-light
    From the full-freighted bags of our fair flocks,
    Your hair more beauteous than those hanging locks
    Of young Apollo! (I. ii. 60.)

They agree to meet by night in the neighbouring wood, there to bind their
love with mutual vows. The tryst is set where

           to that holy wood is consecrate
    A virtuous well, about whose flowery banks
    The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds
    By the pale moonshine, dipping oftentimes
    Their stolen children, so to make them free
    From dying flesh and dull mortality.
    By this fair fount hath many a shepherd sworn,
    And given away his freedom, many a troth
    Been plight, which neither envy nor old time
    Could ever break, with many a chaste kiss given
    In hope of coming happiness.
    By this fresh fountain many a blushing maid
    Hath crown'd the head of her long-lovèd shepherd
    With gaudy flowers, whilst he happy sung
    Lays of his love and dear captivity. (I. ii. 99.)

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

         Come, shepherds, come!
            Come away
            Without delay,
    Whilst the gentle time doth stay.
         Green woods are dumb,
    And will never tell to any
    Those dear kisses, and those many
    Sweet embraces, that are given;
    Dainty pleasures, that would even
    Raise in coldest age a fire
    And give virgin blood desire

    Then if ever,
       Now or never,
    Come and have it;
       Think not I
       Dare deny
    If you crave it. (I. iii. 71.)

Her fortune with the modest Daphnis is scarcely better, and she is just
lamenting the coldness of men when Alexis enters and forthwith accosts her
with his fervent suit. She agrees, with a pretty show of yielding modesty:

                        lend me all thy red,
    Thou shame-fac'd Morning, when from Tithon's bed
    Thou risest ever maiden! (ib. 176.)

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

    Shepherds all and maidens fair,
    Fold your flocks up, for the air
    'Gins to thicken, and the sun
    Already his great course hath run.
    See the dew-drops how they kiss
    Every little flower that is,
    Hanging on their velvet heads
    Like a rope of crystal beads;
    See the heavy clouds low falling,
    And bright Hesperus down calling
    The dead night from under ground,
    At whose rising mists unsound,
    Damps and vapours fly apace,
    Hovering o'er the wanton face
    Of these pastures, where they come
    Striking dead both bud and bloom. (II. i. 1.)

In the following scene Thenot declares to Clorin his singular passion,
founded upon admiration of her constancy to her dead lover. He too can
plead his love in verse of no ordinary strain:

                 'Tis not the white or red
    Inhabits in your cheek that thus can wed
    My mind to adoration, nor your eye,
    Though it be full and fair, your forehead high
    And smooth as Pelops' shoulder; not the smile
    Lies watching in those dimples to beguile
    The easy soul, your hands and fingers long
    With veins enamell'd richly, nor your tongue,
    Though it spoke sweeter than Arion's harp;
    Your hair woven in many a curious warp,
    Able in endless error to enfold
    The wandering soul; not the true perfect mould
    Of all your body, which as pure doth shew
    In maiden whiteness as the Alpen snow:
    All these, were but your constancy away,
    Would please me less than the black stormy day
    The wretched seaman toiling through the deep.
    But, whilst this honour'd strictness you do keep,
    Though all the plagues that e'er begotten were
    In the great womb of air were settled here,
    In opposition, I would, like the tree,
    Shake off those drops of weakness, and be free
    Even in the arm of danger. (II. ii. 116.)

The last lines, however fine in themselves, are utterly out of place in
the mouth of this morbid sentimentalist. They breath the brave spirit of
Chapman's outburst:

    Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea
    Loves t'have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind,
    Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
    And his rapt ship run on her side so low
    That she drinks water and her keel plows air.
                             (_Byron's Conspiracy_, III. i.)

Into the details of the night's adventures there is no call for us to
enter; it will be sufficient to detach a few passages from their setting,
which can usually be done without material injury. The whole scenery of
the wood, in the densest thicket of which Pan is feasting with his
mistress, while about their close retreat the satyr keeps watch and ward,
mingling now and again in the action of the mortals, is strongly
reminiscent of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_. The wild-wood minister thus
describes his charge in the octosyllabic couplets which constitute such a
characteristic of the play:

    Now, whilst the moon doth rule the sky,
    And the stars, whose feeble light
    Give a pale shadow to the night,
    Are up, great Pan commanded me
    To walk this grove about, whilst he,
    In a corner of the wood
    Where never mortal foot hath stood,
    Keeps dancing, music and a feast
    To entertain a lovely guest;
    Where he gives her many a rose
    Sweeter than the breath that blows
    The leaves, grapes, berries of the best;
    I never saw so great a feast.
    But to my charge. Here must I stay
    To see what mortals lose their way,
    And by a false fire, seeming-bright,
    Train them in and leave them right. (III. i. 167.)

Perigot's musing when he meets Amoret and supposes her to be the
transformed Amarillis is well conceived; he greets her:

             What art thou dare
    Tread these forbidden paths, where death and care
    Dwell on the face of darkness? (IV. iv. 15.)

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

         lov'd thee dearer than mine eyes, or that
    Which we esteem our honour, virgin state;
    Dearer than swallows love the early morn,
    Or dogs of chase the sound of merry horn;
    Dearer than thou canst love thy new love, if thou hast
    Another, and far dearer than the last;
    Dearer than thou canst love thyself, though all
    The self-love were within thee that did fall
    With that coy swain that now is made a flower,
    For whose dear sake Echo weeps many a shower!...
    Come, thou forsaken willow, wind my head,
    And noise it to the world, my love is dead! (ib. 102.)

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

    See, the day begins to break,
    And the light shoots like a streak
    Of subtle fire; the wind blows cold
    Whilst the morning doth unfold.
    Now the birds begin to rouse,
    And the squirrel from the boughs
    Leaps to get him nuts and fruit;
    The early lark, that erst was mute,
    Carols to the rising day
    Many a note and many a lay. (ib. 165.)

The last act, with its obligation to wind up such loose threads of action
as have been spun in the course of the play, is perhaps somewhat lacking
in passages of particular beauty, but it yields us Amarillis' prayer as
she flies from the Sullen Shepherd, and the final speech of the satyr.
However out of keeping with character the former of these may be, it is in
itself unsurpassed:

      If there be
    Ever a neighbour-brook or hollow tree,
    Receive my body, close me up from lust
    That follows at my heels! Be ever just,
    Thou god of shepherds, Pan, for her dear sake
    That loves the rivers' brinks, and still doth shake
    In cold remembrance of thy quick pursuit;
    Let me be made a reed, and, ever mute,
    Nod to the waters' fall, whilst every blast
    Sings through my slender leaves that I was chaste!
                                          (V. iii. 79.)

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

      Thou divinest, fairest, brightest,
      Thou most powerful maid and whitest,
      Thou most virtuous and most blessèd,
      Eyes of stars, and golden-tressèd
      Like Apollo; tell me, sweetest,
      What new service now is meetest
      For the satyr? Shall I stray
      In the middle air, and stay
      The sailing rack, or nimbly take
      Hold by the moon, and gently make
      Suit to the pale queen of night
      For a beam to give thee light?
      Shall I dive into the sea
      And bring thee coral, making way
      Through the rising waves that fall
      In snowy fleeces? Dearest, shall
      I catch thee wanton fawns, or flies
      Whose woven wings the summer dyes
      Of many colours? get thee fruit,
      Or steal from heaven old Orpheus' lute?
      All these I'll venture for, and more,
    To do her service all these woods adore.

      So I take my leave and pray
      All the comforts of the day,
      Such as Phoebus' heat doth send
      On the earth, may still befriend
      Thee and this arbour!
    _Clorin._         And to thee,
      All thy master's love be free! (V. v. 238 and 268.)

Such then is Fletcher's play. It is in the main original so far as its own
individuality is concerned, and apart from the general tradition which it
follows. Its direct debt to Guarini is confined to the title and certain
traits in the characters of Cloe and Amarillis. Further indebtedness has,
it is true, been found to Spenser, but some hint of the transformation of
Amarillis, a few names and an occasional reminiscence, make up the sum
total of specific obligations. Endowed with a poetic gift which far
surpassed the imitative facility of Guarini and approached the consummate
art of Tasso himself, Fletcher attempted to rival the Arcadian drama of
the Italians. Not content, as Daniel had been, merely to reproduce upon
accepted models, he realized that some fundamental innovation was
necessary. But while he adopted and justified the greater licence and
range of effect allowed upon the English stage, thereby altering the form
from pseudo-classical to wholly romantic, he failed in any way to touch or
vitalize the inner spirit of the kind, trusting merely to lively action
and lyrical jewellery to hold the attention of his audience. He failed,
and it was not till some years after his death that the play, having been
stamped with the approbation of the court, won a tardy recognition from
the general public; and even when, after the restoration, Pepys records a
successful revival in 1663, he adds that it was 'much thronged after for
the scene's sake[273].'

II

Randolph's play, entitled 'Amyntas, or the Impossible Dowry,' belongs no
doubt to the few years that intervened between the author's exchanging the
academic quiet of Cambridge and the courts of Trinity, of which college he
was a fellow, for the life and bustle of theatre and tavern in London
about 1632, and his premature death which took place in March, 1635,
before he had completed his thirtieth year. It is tempting to imagine that
the revival of Fletcher's play on Twelfth Night, 1633-4, may possibly have
occasioned Randolph's attempt, in which case the play must belong to the
very last year of his life; but though there is nothing to make this
supposition improbable, pastoral representations were far too general at
that date for it to be necessary to look for any specific suggestion. The
play first appeared in print in the collected edition of the author's
poems edited by his brother in 1638.

Like Fletcher's play, the _Amyntas_ is a conscious attempt at so altering
the accepted type of the Arcadian pastoral as to fit it for representation
on the popular stage, for though acted, as the title-page informs us,
before their Majesties at Whitehall, it was probably also performed and
intended by the author for performance on the public boards[274]. Yet the
two experiments differ widely. Fletcher, as we have seen, while completing
the romanticizing of the pastoral by employing the machinery and
conventions of the English instead of the classical stage, nevertheless
introduced into his play none of the diversity and breadth of interest
commonly found in the romantic drama proper, and indeed the _Faithful
Shepherdess_ lacks almost entirely even that elaboration and firmness of
plot which we find in the _Pastor fido_. Randolph, on the other hand,
chose a plot closely resembling Guarini's in structure, and even retained
much of the scenic arrangement of the Italian theatre. But in the
complexity of action and multiplicity of incident, in the comedy of
certain scenes and the substratum of pure farce in others, he introduced
elements of the popular drama of a nature powerfully to affect the essence
of his production. Where Fletcher substituted for a theoretic classicism
an academic romanticism, Randolph insisted on treating the venerable
proprieties of the pastoral according to the traditions of English
melodrama.

Like the _Pastor fido_[275], Randolph's _Amyntas_ is weighted with a
preliminary history. Philaebus, the son of the archiflamen Pilumnus, was
betrothed to the shepherdess Lalage, who, however, was captivated by the
greater wealth of the shepherd Claius, upon whom she bestowed her hand.
Moved by his son's grief, Pilumnus entreated Ceres' revenge on the
faithless nymph, and Lalage died in giving birth to the twins Amyntas and
Amarillis. This but added to Philaebus' despair, so that he died upon her
tomb, and the bereft father having once more sought the aid of the
goddess, the oracle pronounced the curse:

    Sicilian swaines, ill luck shall long betide
    To every bridegroome, and to every bride:
    No sacrifice, no vow shall still mine Ire,
    Till Claius blood both quench and kindle fire.
    The wise shall misconceive me, and the wit
    Scornd and neglected shall my meaning hit. (I. v.)

Upon this Claius fled, leaving his children in the care of his sister
Thestylis. Although Philaebus was dead, two younger children remained to
Pilumnus, Damon and Urania. In the course of years it fortuned that Urania
and Amyntas fell in love, and though misliking of the match, Pilumnus went
so far as to consult the oracle concerning his daughter's dowry. With the
uncalled-for perversity characteristic of oracles the 'ompha[276]'
replied:

    That which thou hast not, mayst not, canst not have
    Amyntas, is the Dowry that I crave:
    Rest hopelesse in thy love, or else divine
    To give Urania this, and she is thine.

Pondering whereon Amyntas lost his wits. In the meanwhile Amarillis had
conceived an unhappy passion for Damon, who in his turn sought the love
of the nymph Laurinda, having for rival Alexis.

This is the situation at the opening of the action. In the first act we
find Laurinda unable or unwilling to decide between her rival lovers, and
her endeavours to play them off one against the other afford some of the
most amusing scenes of the piece. Learning from Thestylis of Amarillis'
love for Damon, she determines on a trick whereby she hopes to make her
choice without appearing to slight either of her suitors. She bids them
abide by the award of the first nymph they meet at the temple in the
morning, and so arranges matters that that nymph shall be Amarillis, whose
love for Damon she supposes will move her to appoint Alexis for herself.
In the meanwhile the banished Claius has returned, in order, having heard
of Amyntas' madness, to apply such cures as he has learnt in the course of
his wanderings. He is successful in his attempt, and without revealing his
identity departs, having first privately obtained from Urania the promise
that she will vow virginity to Ceres, lest Amyntas by puzzling afresh over
the oracle should again lose his reason. The nymphs now appear at the
temple, and the foremost, who is veiled, is appealed to by Damon and
Alexis to give her decision. She reveals herself as Amarillis, and Damon,
fearing that she will decide against him, refuses to be bound by the award
of so partial an arbiter. Alexis thereupon goes off to fetch Laurinda, who
shall force him to abide by his oath, while Damon in a fit of rage seeks
to prevent Amarillis' verdict by slaying her. He wounds her with his spear
and leaves her for dead. She recovers consciousness, however, when he has
fled, and with her blood writes a letter to Laurinda bequeathing to her
all interest in Damon. At this point Claius returns upon the scene, and
finding her wounded applies remedies. Damon too is led back by an evil
conscience, and Pilumnus likewise appears. Claius, in his anxiety to make
Amarillis reveal her assassin, betrays his own identity, to the joy of his
old enemy Pilumnus. Alexis now returns with Laurinda, and upon hearing the
letter which Amarillis had written, Damon confesses his crime and declares
that henceforth his love is for none but her. His life, however, is
forfeit through his having shed blood in the holy vale, and he is led off
in company with Claius to die at the altar of Ceres. In the fifth act we
find all prepared for the double sacrifice, when Amyntas enters, and
bidding Pilumnus stay his hand, claims to expound the oracle. Claius'
blood, he argues, has been already shed in Amarillis, and has quenched the
fire of Damon's love for Laurinda, rekindling it again to Amarillis' self.
Moreover, had not the oracle warned them that the recognized guardians of
wisdom would fail to interpret truly, and that such a scorned wit as that
of the 'mad Amyntas' would discover the meaning? Furthermore, he argues
that since Amarillis was the victim the goddess aimed at, her blood might
without sin be shed even in the holy vale, while Damon is of the priestly
stock to which that office justly pertained. Thus Claius and Damon are
alike spoken free, and Sicily is relieved of the goddess' curse. While the
general rejoicing is at its height, Urania is brought in to take her
vestal vows at the altar. In spite of her lover's remonstrance she kneels
before the shrine and addresses her prayer to the goddess. At length the
appeased deity deigns to answer, and in a gracious echo reveals the
solution of the enigma of the dowry--a husband.

This plot is a mingling of comedy in the scenes of Laurinda's
'wavering'[277] and the 'humours' of Amyntas' madness, and of tragi-comedy
in the catastrophe. But besides this there is what may best be described
as an antiplot of pure farce, in which the main character is the roguish
page Dorylas, who in the guise of Oberon robs Jocastus' orchard, tricks
Thestylis into marrying the foolish augur, and gulls everybody all round.
The humour of this portion of the piece may be occasionally a trifle broad
and at the same time childish, but there is nevertheless no denying the
genuineness of the quality, while the verse is as a rule sparkling, and
the dialogue both racy and pointed, occasionally displaying qualities
hardly to be described as other than brilliant.

This comic subplot obviously owes nothing to Guarini, but is introduced
in accordance with the usage of the English popular drama, and is grafted
somewhat boldly on to the conventional stock. Dorylas is one of the most
inimitable and successful of the descendants of Lyly's pages; while the
characters of Mopsus and Jocastus, although the former no doubt owes his
conception to a hint in the _Aminta_, belong essentially to the English
romantic farce. The scenes in which the page appears as Oberon surrounded
by his court recall the introduction of the 'mortal fairies' of the _Merry
Wives,_ and that in which Amyntas' 'deluded fancy' takes the augur for a
hound of Actaeon's breed may owe something to a passage in _King Lear_.
But even apart from the elements of farce and comedy there are important
aspects in which the _Amyntas_ severs itself from the stricter tradition
of the Italian pastoral. Randolph, while adopting the machinery and much
of the scenic environment of Guarini's play, made certain not unimportant
alterations in the dramatic construction, tending towards greater variety
and complicity. In the _Pastor fido_ the four main characters, though they
ultimately resolve themselves into two pairs, are throughout
interdependent, and their story forms but a single plot. That the play
should have needed a double solution, the events that bring two couples
together having no connexion with one another, was a dramatic blunder but
imperfectly concealed by the fact that Silvio and Dorinda are purely
secondary, the whole interest being concentrated on the fortunes of
Mirtillo and Amarilli. In Randolph's play, on the other hand, there are no
less than six important characters. These are divided into two groups,
each with an independent plot, one of which contains a telling though
somewhat conventional [Greek: peripe/teia], while the other, though
possessing originality and pathos, is lacking in dramatic possibilities.
Thus each supplies the elements wanting in the other, and if woven
together harmoniously, should have been capable of forming the basis of a
well-constructed play. The first of these groups consists of Laurinda,
Alexis, Damon, and Amarillis, the last two being really the dramatically
important ones, though their fortunes are connected throughout. It is
Laurinda's choice of Alexis that leads to the union of Damon and
Amarillis, and it is not till Damon has unconsciously fulfilled the
oracle and been freed by its interpretation, that the loves of Laurinda
and Alexis can hope for a happy event. Thus Randolph has at least not
fallen into the error by which Guarini introduced a double catastrophe
into a single plot, though he has not altogether avoided a somewhat
similar danger. This is due to the other group above mentioned, consisting
of Amyntas and Urania, who, so far as the plot is concerned, are
absolutely independent of the other characters. Their own story is
essentially undramatic, although it possesses qualities which would make
it effective in narrative; and it is, moreover, wholly unaffected by the
solution of the other plot. This is obviously a weak place in the
construction of the play, but the author has shown great resource in
meeting the difficulty. First, by placing the interpretation of the oracle
in the mouth of Amyntas, who must yet himself remain hopeless amid the
general rejoicing, he has produced a figure of considerable dramatic
effect, and so kept the attention of the audience braced, and stayed the
relaxing effect of the anti-climax. Secondly, he has amused the spectators
with some excellent fooling until, while Io and Paean are yet resounding,
it is possible to crown the whole by the solution of the second oracle,
and send the hero and his love to join the others in the festive throng.
The imperfection of plot is there, but the author has been skilful in
concealing it, and it may well be that his success would appear all the
greater were his play to be put to the real test of dramatic composition
by being actually placed on the boards.

But there is yet another point in which the _Amyntas_ differs not only
from its Italian model but from its English predecessors likewise. This is
a certain genially humorous conception of the whole, quite apart from and
beyond the mere introduction of comedy and farce, which we have never
found so marked before, and which has indeed been painfully absent from
the pastoral since Tasso penned the final chorus of the _Aminta_. This
humorous tone is never harshly forced upon the attention, and consists, in
a measure, merely in the fact of the comic business constantly elbowing
the serious action, and thus saving the latter from the danger of becoming
stilted and pretentions--a fault not less commonly and quite as justly
charged against pastoral literature as that of artificiality. A leaven of
humour is the great safeguard against an author taking either himself or
his creations too seriously. Randolph's _Amyntas_, it is true, renounces
the high ideality of its predecessors, of the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor
fido_, of _Hymen's Triumph_ and the _Faithful Shepherdess_; but it makes
up for it by human sanity of feeling and expression, by good humour and by
wit. It is, moreover, genuinely diverting. Here at least we find no
endeavour to attain to the importance and solemnity of a classical tragedy
as with Guarini, nor a striving after an utterly unreal, unsympathetic and
impossible ideal as with Fletcher. It is, moreover, noticeable and
eminently to the credit of the author that the comic scenes, even when
somewhat extravagant alike in tone and proportion, seldom clash
unpleasantly with the more serious passages, nor derogate from the
interest and dignity of the whole.

The play has generally met with a far from deserved neglect, owing in part
no doubt to the singular failure on the part of most critics to apprehend
correctly the nature and conditions of pastoral poetry.[278] Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt, who edited Randolph's works in 1875, does not so much as mention
the play in the perfunctory introduction, in which he chiefly follows the
extravagant, pedantic, and utterly worthless article in the sixth volume
of the _Retrospective Review_.[279] The merits of the piece have been
somewhat more fully recognized by Dr. Ward and Mr. Homer Smith, but the
treatment accorded the play by the former is necessarily scanty, while
that of the latter is inaccurate. Throughout a tendency is manifest to
find fault with the artificiality of the piece, and to blame the author
for not representing the true 'simplicity' of pastoral life. That the
pastoral tradition was a wholly impossible, not to say an absurd one,
bearing no true relation to nature at all, may be admitted; and it may be
lamented by such as love to shed bitter tears because the sandy shore is
not a well-swept parquet, or because anything you please is not something
else to which it bears not the smallest resemblance. It may or may not be
unfortunate that Randolph should have elected to write _more pastorali_,
but to censure the individual work because it is not of a type to which
its author never had the remotest intention of making it conform, and to
which except for something like a miracle it was impossible that it should
even approach, is the acme of critical fatuity. Judged in accordance with
the intention of the author the _Amyntas_ is no inconsiderable achievement
for a young writer, and compared with other works belonging to the same
tradition it occupies a highly respectable place. With Tasso's _Aminta_
and Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_ it cannot, in point of poetic merit,
for one moment compare, falling as far below them in this as it surpasses
them in complexity and general suitability of dramatic construction. A
fairer comparison may be made between it and the _Pastor fido_ in Italian
or _Hymen's Triumph_ in English, and here again, though certainly with
regard to the former and probably with regard to the latter it stands
second as poetry, as a play it is decidedly better suited than either for
representation on the stage--at least on a stage with the traditions and
conventions which prevailed in this country in the author's day.

It is then in the matter of the poetical quality of the verse that
Randolph's play appears to least advantage. Living in a polished and
cultured literary circle at Cambridge, and enjoying after his remove to
London the congenial fellowship of the tribe of Ben, he naturally attained
the ease and skill necessary to maintain a respectable level of
composition, but he was sparing of the higher flights. He seldom strikes
the attention by those purple patches which make many of his
contemporaries so quotable, yet, while by no means monotonously correct,
it is equally seldom that he sinks much below his general level. The
dialogue is on the whole natural and easy, and at the same time crisp and
pointed. A few of the more distinctively poetic and imaginative passages
may be quoted, in order to give some idea of the style. Laurinda thus
appoints a choice to her brace of lovers:

    I have protested never to disclose
    Which 'tis that best I love: But the first Nymph,
    As soone as Titan guilds the Easterne hills,
    And chirping birds, the Saints-bell of the day,
    Ring in our eares a warning to devotion--
    That lucky damsell what so e're she be
    [That first shall meet you from the temple gate][280]
    Shall be the Goddesse to appoint my love,
    To say, 'Laurinda this shall be your choice':
    And both shall sweare to stand to her award! (III. i.)

Another passage of deliberate poetic elaboration is the monologue of
Claius on once again treading his native soil:

    I see the smoake steame from the Cottage tops,
    The fearfull huswife rakes the embers up,
    All hush to bed. Sure, no man will disturbe mee.
    O blessed vally! I the wretched Claius
    Salute thy happy soyle, I that have liv'd
    Pelted with angry curses in a place
    As horrid as my griefes, the Lylibaean mountaines,
    These sixteene frozen winters; there have I
    Beene with rude out-lawes, living by such sinnes
    As runne o' th' score with justice 'gainst my prayers and wishes:
    And when I would have tumbled down a rock,
    Some secret powre restrain'd me. (III. ii.)

By far the greater part of the play is in blank verse, but in a few
passages, particularly in certain dialogues tending to stichomythia, the
verse is pointed, so to speak, with rime. The following is a graceful
example in a somewhat conceited vein; the transition, moreover, from
blank to rimed measure has an appearance of natural ease. The rivals are
awaiting the arbitrement of their love:

    _Alexis._     How early, Damon,
    Doe lovers rise!...

    _Damon._       No Larkes so soon, Alexis.

    _Al._ He that of us shall have Laurinda, Damon,
    Will not be up so soone: ha! would you Damon?

    _Da._ Alexis, no; but if I misse Laurinda,
    My sleepe shall be eternall.

    _Al._ I much wonder the Sunne so soone can rise!

    _Da._ Did he lay his head in faire Laurinda's lap,
    We should have but short daies.

    _Al._                      No summer, Damon.

    _Da._ Thetis[281] to her is browne.

    _Al._                              And he doth rise
    From her to gaze on faire Laurinda's eyes....

    _Da._ I heare no noise of any yet that move.

    _Al._ Devotion's not so early up as love.

    _Da._ See how Aurora blushes! we suppose
    Where Tithon lay to night.

    _Al._                 That modest rose
    He grafted there.

    _Da._        O heaven, 'tis all I seeke,
    To make that colour in Laurinda's cheeke. (IV. iv.)

A more tragic note is struck in the speech in which Claius retorts on
Pilumnus after his discovery:

    I, glut your hate, Pilumnus; let your soule
    That has so long thirsted to drinke my blood,
    Swill till my veines are empty;... I have stood
    Long like a fatall oake, at which great Jove
    Levels his thunder; all my boughes long since
    Blasted and wither'd; now the trunke falls too.
    Heaven end thy wrath in mee! (IV. viii.)

In some of these 'high tragical endeavours,' and notably in Damon's
confession, we do indeed find a certain stiltedness, but even here there
rings a true note of pathos in the farewell:

                         Amarillis,
    I goe to write my story of repentance
    With the same inke, wherewith thou wrotes before
    The legend of thy love. (IV. ix.)

These passages will serve to give a fair and not unfavourable impression
of the style, but I have reserved for separate consideration what I
consider to be the most striking portions of the play. The first of these
is the string of Latin songs in which the would-be elves comment on their
nefarious proceedings in Jocastus' orchard. I quote certain stanzas only:

    Nos beata Fauni Proles,
    Quibus non est magna moles,
    Quamvis Lunam incolamus,
    Hortos saepe frequentamus.

    Furto cuncta magis bella,
    Furto dulcior Puella,
    Furto omnia decora,
    Furto poma dulciora.

    Cum mortales lecto jacent,
    Nobis poma noctu placent;
    Illa tamen sunt ingrata,
    Nisi furto sint parata.

    Oberon, descende citus,
    Ne cogaris hinc invitus;
    Canes audio latrantes,
    Et mortales vigilantes.

    I domum, Oberon, ad illas
    Quae nos manent nunc ancillas,
    Quarum osculemur sinum,
    Inter poma, lac et vinum. (III. iv.)

To discuss verses such as these seriously is impossible. The dog-Latin of
the fellow of Trinity is inimitable, while there is a peculiarly roguish
delicacy about his humour. In the admirable ease with which the words are
adapted to the sense, the songs are unsurpassed except by the very best of
the _carmina vagorum_. Lastly, as undoubtedly the finest passage of the
play, and as one that must give us pause when we would deny to 'prince
Randolph' the gifts requisite for the higher imaginative drama, I must
quote the scene in which the distracted Amyntas fancies that in his
endless search for the 'impossible dowry' he has arrived on the shores of
Styx and boarded Charon's bark.

    _Amyntas._ Row me to hell!--no faster? I will have thee
    Chain'd unto Pluto's gallies!

    _Urania._                Why to hell,
    My deere Amyntas?

    _Amyntas._    Why? to borrow mony!

    _Amarillis._ Borrow there?

    _Amy._ I, there! they say there be more Usurers there
    Then all the world besides.--See how the windes
    Rise! Puffe, puffe Boreas.--What a cloud comes yonder!
    Take heed of that wave, Charon! ha? give mee
    The oares!--So, so: the boat is overthrown;
    Now Charons drown'd, but I will swim to shore....
    My armes are weary;--now I sinke, I sinke!
    Farewell Urania ... Styx, I thank thee! That curld wave
    Hath tos'd mee on the shore.--Come Sysiphus,
    I'll rowle thy stone a while: mee thinkes this labour
    Doth looke like Love! does it not so, Tysiphone?

    _Ama._ Mine is that restlesse toile.

    _Amy._                               Is't so, Erynnis?
    You are an idle huswife, goe and spin
    At poore Ixions wheele!

    _Ura._             Amyntas!

    _Amy._                      Ha?
    Am I known here?

    _Ura._       Amyntas, deere Amyntas--

    _Amy._ Who calls Amyntas? beauteous Proserpine?
    'Tis shee.--Fair Empresse of th' Elysian shades,
    Ceres bright daughter intercede for mee,
    To thy incensed mother: prithee bid her
    Leave talking riddles, wilt thou?... Queene of darknesse,
    Thou supreme Lady of eternall night,
    Grant my petitions! wilt thou beg of Ceres
    That I may have Urania?

    _Ura._             Tis my praier,
    And shall be ever, I will promise thee
    Shee shall have none but him.

    _Amy._                   Thankes Proserpine!

    _Ura._ Come sweet Amyntas, rest thy troubled head
    Here in my lap.--Now here I hold at once
    My sorrow and my comfort.--Nay, ly still.

    _Amy._ I will, but Proserpine--

    _Ura._                          Nay, good Amyntas--

    _Amy._ Should Pluto chance to spy me, would not hee
    Be jealous of me?

    _Ura._        No.

    _Amy._            Tysiphone,
    Tell not Urania of it, least she feare
    I am in love with Proserpine: doe not Fury!

    _Ama._ I will not.

    _Ura._             Pray ly still!

    _Amy._                            You Proserpine,
    There is in Sicilie the fairest Virgin
    That ever blest the land, that ever breath'd
    Sweeter than Zephyrus! didst thou never heare
    Of one Urania?

    _Ura._    Yes.

    _Amy._         This poore Urania
    Loves an unfortunate sheapheard, one that's mad, Tysiphone,
    Canst thou believe it? Elegant Urania--
    I cannot speak it without tears--still loves
    Amyntas, the distracted mad Amyntas.
    Is't not a constant Nymph?--But I will goe
    And carry all Elysium on my back,
    And that shall be her joynture.

    _Ura._                     Good Amyntas,
    Rest here a while!

    _Amy._        Why weepe you Proserpine?

    _Ura._ Because Urania weepes to see Amyntas
    So restlesse and unquiet.

    _Amy._               Does shee so?
    Then will I ly as calme as doth the sea,
    When all the winds are lock'd in Aeolus jayle;
    I will not move a haire, not let a nerve
    Or Pulse to beat, least I disturbe her! Hush,--
    Shee sleepes!

    _Ura._   And so doe you.

    _Amy._                   You talk too loud,
    You'l waken my Urania.

    _Ura._            If Amyntas,
    Her deere Amyntas would but take his rest,
    Urania could not want it.

    _Amy._               Not so loud! (II. iv.)

It was no ordinary imagination that conceived this example of the
grotesque in the service of the pathetic.

I have endeavoured in the above account to do a somewhat tardy justice to
the considerable and rather remarkably sustained qualities of Randolph's
play. I do not claim that as poetry it can be compared with the work of
Tasso, Fletcher, or Jonson, or that it even rivals that of Guarini or
Daniel, though had Randolph lived he might easily have surpassed the
latter. But I do claim that the _Amyntas_ is one of the most interesting
and important of the experiments which English writers made in the
pastoral drama, that it possesses dramatic qualities to which few of its
kind can pretend, and that pervading and transforming the whole is the
genial humour and the sparkling wit of its brilliant and short-lived
author. His pastoral muse was a hearty buxom lass, and kind withal, not
overburdened with modesty, yet wholesome and cleanly, and if at times her
laugh rings out where the subject passes the natural enjoyment of kind, it
is even then careless and merry, and there is often a ground of real fun
in the jest. Her finest qualities are a sharp and ready wit and a wealth
of imaginative pathos, alike pervaded by her bubbling humour; on the other
hand there are moments, if rare, when in an ill-considered attempt to
assume the buskin tread she reveals in her paste-board fustian somewhat of
the unregeneracy of the plebian trull. The time may yet come when
Randolph's reputation, based upon his other works--the _Jealous Lovers_, a
Plautine comedy, clever, but preposterous in more ways than one, the
_Muses' Looking Glass_, a perfectly undramatic morality of humours, and
the poems, generally witty, occasionally graceful, and more than
occasionally improper--will be enhanced by the recognition of the fact
that he came nearer than any other writer to reconciling a kind of
pastoral with the temper of the English stage. It was at least in part due
to a constitutional indifference on the part of the London public to the
loves and sorrows of imaginary swains and nymphs, that Randolph's play
failed to leave any appreciable mark upon our dramatic literature.[282]

In Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_ we find ourselves once again considering a work
which is not only one of very great interest in the history of pastoral,
but which at the same time raises important questions of literary
criticism. So far the most interesting compositions we have had to
consider--Daniel's _Hymen's Triumph_, Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_,
Randolph's _Amyntas_--have been attempts either to transplant the Italian
pastoral as it stood, or else so to modify and adapt as to fit it to the
very different conditions of the English stage. Jonson, on the other hand,
aimed at nothing less than the creation of an English pastoral drama.
Except for such comparatively unimportant works as _Gallathea_ and the
_Converted Robber_,[283] the spectators found themselves, for the first
time, on English soil. In spite of the occasional reminiscences of
Theocritus and the Arcadian erudition concerning the 'Lovers Scriptures,'
the nature of the characters is largely English. The names are not those
of pastoral tradition, but rather of the popular romance, Aeglamour,
Lionel, Clarion, Mellifleur, Amie, or more homely, yet without Spenser's
rusticity, Alken; while the one name of learned origin is a coining of
Jonson's own, Earine, the spirit of the spring. The silvan element, which
had been variously present since Tasso styled his play _favola
boschereccia_, was used by Jonson to admirable purpose in the introduction
of Robin Hood and his crew. A new departure was made in the conjoining of
the rustic and burlesque elements with the supernatural, in the persons of
the witch Maudlin, her familiar Puck-hairy, her son the rude swineherd
Lorel, and her daughter Douce the proud. In every case Jonson appropriated
and adapted an already familiar element, but he did so in a manner to
fashion out of the thumbed conventions of a hackneyed tradition something
fresh and original and new.

Unfortunately the play is but half finished, or, at any rate, but half is
at present extant. The fragment, as we have it, was first published, some
years after the author's death, in the second volume of the folio of
1640, and the questions as to whether it was ever finished and to what
date the composition should be assigned are too intricate to be entered
upon here. Suffice it to say that no conclusive arguments exist for
supposing that more of the play ever existed than what we now possess, nor
that what exists was written very long before the author's death. It is
conceivable that the play may contain embedded in it fragments of earlier
pastoral work, but the attempt to identify it with the lost _May Lord_ has
little to recommend it.[284] Seeing that the play is far from being as
generally familiar as its poetic merit deserves, I may be allowed to give
a more or less detailed analysis of it in this place.[285]

After a prologue in which Jonson gives his views on pastoral with
characteristic self-confidence, the Sad Shepherd, Aeglamour, appears,
lamenting in a brief monologue the loss of his love Earine, who is
supposed to have been drowned in the Trent.

    Here she was wont to goe! and here! and here!
    Just where those Daisies, Pincks, and Violets grow:
    The world may find the Spring by following her;
    For other print her aerie steps neere left. (I. i.)

He retires at the approach of Marian and the huntsmen, who are about to
fetch of the king's venison for the feast at which Robin Hood is to
entertain the shepherds of the vale of Belvoir. When they have left the
stage Aeglamour comes forward and resumes his lament in a strain of
melancholic madness. He is again interrupted by the approach of Robin
Hood, who enters at the head of the assembled shepherds and country
maidens. Robin welcomes his guests, and his praise of rustic sports calls
forth from Friar Tuck the well-known diatribe against the 'sourer sort of
shepherds,' in which Jonson vented his bitterness against the hypocritical
pretensions of the puritan reformers--a passage which yields, in biting
satire, neither to his own presentation in the _Alchemist_ nor to Quarles'
scathing burlesque quoted on an earlier page. As they discourse they
become aware of Aeglamour sitting moodily apart, unheeding them. He talks
to himself like a madman.

              It will be rare, rare, rare!
    An exquisite revenge: but peace, no words!
    Not for the fairest fleece of all the Flock:
    If it be knowne afore, 'tis all worth nothing!
    Ile carve it on the trees, and in the turfe,
    On every greene sworth, and in every path,
    Just to the Margin of the cruell Trent;
    There will I knock the story in the ground,
    In smooth great peble, and mosse fill it round,
    Till the whole Countrey read how she was drown'd;
    And with the plenty of salt teares there shed,
    Quite alter the complexion of the Spring.
    Or I will get some old, old Grandam thither,
    Whose rigid foot but dip'd into the water,
    Shall strike that sharp and suddaine cold throughout,
    As it shall loose all vertue; and those Nimphs,
    Those treacherous Nimphs pull'd in Earine;
    Shall stand curl'd up, like Images of Ice;
    And never thaw! marke, never! a sharpe Justice.
    Or stay, a better! when the yeares at hottest,
    And that the Dog-starre fomes, and the streame boiles,
    And curles, and workes, and swells ready to sparkle;
    To fling a fellow with a Fever in,
    To set it all on fire, till it burne,
    Blew as Scamander, 'fore the walls of Troy,
    When Vulcan leap'd in to him, to consume him. (I. v.)

Robin now accosts him, hoping, since his vengeance is so complete, that
he will consent to join his fellows in honouring the spring. At this his
distracted fancy breaks out afresh:

    A Spring, now she is dead: of what, of thornes?
    Briars, and Brambles? Thistles? Burs, and Docks?
    Cold Hemlock? Yewgh? the Mandrake, or the Boxe?
    These may grow still; but what can spring betide?
    Did not the whole Earth sicken, when she died?
    As if there since did fall one drop of dew,
    But what was wept for her! or any stalke
    Did beare a Flower! or any branch a bloome,
    After her wreath was made. In faith, in faith,
    You doe not faire, to put these things upon me,
    Which can in no sort be: Earine,
    Who had her very being, and her name,
    With the first knots, or buddings of the Spring,
    Borne with the Primrose, and the Violet,
    Or earliest Roses blowne: when Cupid smil'd,
    And Venus led the Graces out to dance,
    And all the Flowers, and Sweets in Natures lap,
    Leap'd out, and made their solemne Conjuration,
    To last, but while shee liv'd. Doe not I know,
    How the Vale wither'd the same Day?... that since,
    No Sun, or Moone, or other cheerfull Starre
    Look'd out of heaven! but all the Cope was darke,
    As it were hung so for her Exequies!
    And not a voice or sound, to ring her knell,
    But of that dismall paire, the scritching Owle,
    And buzzing Hornet! harke, harke, harke, the foule
    Bird! how shee flutters with her wicker wings!
    Peace, you shall heare her scritch. (ib.)

To distract him Karoline sings a song. But after all he is but mad
north-north-west, and though he would study the singer's conceits 'as a
new philosophy,' he also thinks to pay the singer.

    Some of these Nimphs here will reward you; this,
    This pretty Maid, although but with a kisse;
                [_Forces Amie to kiss Karolin._
    Liv'd my Earine, you should have twenty,
    For every line here, one; I would allow 'hem
    From mine owne store, the treasure I had in her:
    Now I am poore as you. (ib.)

There follows a charming scene in which Marian, returning with the
quarry, relates the fortunes of the chase, and proceeds, amid Robin's
interruptions, to tell how 'at his fall there hapt a chance worth mark.'

    _Robin._ I! what was that, sweet Marian?     [_Kisses her._

    _Marian._             You'll not heare?

    _Rob._ I love these interruptions in a Story;  [_Kisses her
                                                               again._
    They make it sweeter.

    _Mar._        You doe know, as soone
    As the Assay is taken--                     [_Kisses her again._

    _Rob._          On, my Marian.
    I did but take the Assay. (I. vi.)

To cut the story short, while the deer was breaking up, there

              sate a Raven
    On a sere bough! a growne great Bird! and Hoarse!

crying for its bone with such persistence that the superstitious huntsmen
swore it was none other than the witch, an opinion confirmed by
Scathlock's having since beheld old Maudlin in the chimney corner,
broiling the very piece that had been thrown to the raven. Marian now
proposes to the shepherdesses to go and view the deer, whereupon Amie
complains that she is not well, 'sick,' as her brother Lionel jestingly
explains, 'of the young shepherd that bekiss'd her.' They go off the
stage, and the huntsmen and shepherds still argue for a while of the
strange chance, when Marian reappears, seemingly in ill-humour, insults
Robin and his guests, orders Scathlock to carry the deer as a gift to
Mother Maudlin, and departs, leaving all in amazement. In the next act
Maudlin relates to her daughter Douce how it was she who, in the guise of
Marian, thus gulled Robin and his guests out of their venison and brought
discord into their feast. Douce is clad in the dress of Earine, who, it
now appears, was not drowned, but is imprisoned by the witch in a hollow
tree, and destined by her as her son Lorel's mistress. The swineherd now
enters with the object of wooing the imprisoned damsel, whom he releases
from the tree, Maudlin and Douce retiring the while to watch his success,
which is small. Baffled, he again shuts the girl up in her natural cell,
and his mother, coming forward, rates him soundly for his clownish ways,
reading him a lecture for his guidance in his intercourse with women, in
which she seems little concerned by the presence of her daughter. This
latter, so far as it is possible to judge from the few speeches assigned
to her in the fragment, appears to be of a more agreeable nature than one
might, under the circumstances, have expected. Jonson sought, it would
appear, to invest her with a certain pathos, presenting a character of
natural good feeling, but in which no moral instinct has ever been
awakened; and it is by no means improbable that he may have intended to
dissociate her from her surroundings in order to balance the numbers of
his nymphs and swains.[286] After Lorel has left them, Maudlin shows Douce
the magic girdle, by virtue of which she effects her transformations, and
by which she may always be recognized through her disguises. In the next
scene we find Amie suffering from the effect of Karol's kiss. She is ill
at ease, she knows not why, and the innocent description of her love-pain
possesses, in spite of its quaint artificiality, something of the
_naïveté_ of _Daphnis and Chloe_.

    How often, when the Sun, heavens brightest birth,
    Hath with his burning fervour cleft the earth,
    Under a spreading Elme, or Oake, hard by
    A coole cleare fountaine, could I sleeping lie,
    Safe from the heate? but now, no shadie tree,
    Nor purling brook, can my refreshing bee?
    Oft when the medowes were growne rough with frost,
    The rivers ice-bound, and their currents lost,
    My thick warme fleece, I wore, was my defence,
    Or large good fires, I made, drave winter thence.
    But now, my whole flocks fells, nor this thick grove,
    Enflam'd to ashes, can my cold remove;
    It is a cold and heat, that doth out-goe
    All sense of Winters, and of Summers so. (II. iv.)

To the shepherdesses enters Robin, who upbraids Marian for her late
conduct towards him and his guests. She of course protests ignorance of
the whole affair, bids Scathlock fetch again the venison, and remains
unconvinced of Robin's being in earnest, till Maudlin herself comes to
thank her for the gift. Marian endeavours to treat with the witch, and
begs her to return the venison sent through some mistake, but Maudlin
declares that she has already departed it among her poor neighbours. At
this moment, however, Scathlock returns with the deer on his shoulders, to
the discomfiture of the witch, who curses the feast, and after tormenting
poor Amie, who between sleeping and waking betrays the origin of her
disease, departs in an evil humour. The scene is noteworthy for its
delicate comedy and pathos.

    _Amie_ [_asleep_]. O Karol, Karol, call him back againe ...
    O', ô.

    _Marian._ How is't Amie?

    _Melifleur._       Wherefore start you?

    _Amie._ O' Karol, he is faire, and sweet.

    _Maud._             What then?
    Are there not flowers as sweet, and faire, as men?
    The Lillie is faire! and Rose is sweet!

    _Amie._               I', so!
    Let all the Roses, and the Lillies goe:
    Karol is only faire to mee!

    _Mar._          And why?

    _Amie._ Alas, for Karol, Marian, I could die.
    Karol he singeth sweetly too!

    _Maud._          What then?
    Are there not Birds sing sweeter farre, then Men?

    _Amie._ I grant the Linet, Larke, and Bul-finch sing,
    But best, the deare, good Angell of the Spring,
    The Nightingale.

    _Maud._      Then why? then why, alone,
    Should his notes please you? ...

    _Amie._ This verie morning, but--I did bestow--
    It was a little 'gainst my will, I know--
    A single kisse, upon the seelie Swaine,
    And now I wish that verie kisse againe.
    His lip is softer, sweeter then the Rose,
    His mouth, and tongue with dropping honey flowes;
    The relish of it was a pleasing thing.

    _Maud._ Yet like the Bees it had a little sting.

    _Amie._ And sunke, and sticks yet in my marrow deepe
    And what doth hurt me, I now wish to keepe. (II. vi.)

After this exhibition of her malice the shepherds and huntsmen no longer
doubt that it was Maudlin herself who deceived them in the shape of
Marian, and they determine to pursue her through the forest. The wise
shepherd, Alken, undertakes the direction of this novel 'blast of
venerie,' and thus discourses of her unhallowed haunts: /p Within a
gloomie dimble shee doth dwell, Downe in a pitt, ore-growne with brakes
and briars, Close by the ruines of a shaken Abbey Torne, with an
Earth-quake, down unto the ground; 'Mongst graves, and grotts, neare an
old Charnell house, Where you shall find her sitting in her fourme, As
fearfull, and melancholique, as that Shee is about; with Caterpillers
kells, And knottie Cobwebs, rounded in with spells. Thence shee steales
forth to releif, in the foggs, And rotten Mistes, upon the fens, and
boggs, Downe to the drowned Lands of Lincolneshire. .....[There] the sad
Mandrake growes, Whose grones are deathfull! the dead-numming Night-shade!
The stupifying Hemlock! Adders tongue! And Martagan! the shreikes of
lucklesse Owles, Wee heare! and croaking Night-Crowes in the aire!
Greene-bellied Snakes! blew fire-drakes in the skie! And giddie
Flitter-mice, with lether wings! The scalie Beetles, with their
habergeons, That make a humming Murmur as they flie! There, in the stocks
of trees, white Faies doe dwell, And span-long Elves, that dance about a
poole, With each a little Changeling, in their armes! The airie spirits
play with falling starres, And mount the Sphere of fire, to kisse the
Moone! While, shee sitts reading by the Glow-wormes light, Or rotten wood,
o're which the worme hath crept, The banefull scedule of her nocent
charmes. (II. viii.)

In the third act we are introduced to Puck-hairy, who laments his lot as
the familiar of the malignant witch in whose service he has now to 'firk
it like a goblin' about the woods. Meanwhile Karol meets Douce in the
dress of Earine, who, however, runs off on the approach of Aeglamour. The
latter fancies she is the ghost of his drowned love, and falls into a
'superstitious commendation' of her. His delusions are conceived in a vein
no less happy and more distinctly poetical than those of Amyntas.

    But shee, as chaste as was her name, Earine,
    Dy'd undeflowr'd: and now her sweet soule hovers,
    Here, in the Aire, above us; and doth haste
    To get up to the Moone, and Mercury;
    And whisper Venus in her Orbe; then spring
    Up to old Saturne, and come downe by Mars,
    Consulting Jupiter; and seate her selfe
    Just in the midst with Phoebus, tempring all
    The jarring Spheeres, and giving to the World
    Againe, his first and tunefull planetting!
    O' what an age will here be of new concords!
    Delightfull harmonie! to rock old Sages,
    Twice infants, in the Cradle o' Speculation,
    And throw a silence upon all the creatures!...
    The loudest Seas, and most enraged Windes
    Shall lose their clangor; Tempest shall grow hoarse;
    Loud Thunder dumbe; and every speece of storme
    Laid in the lap of listning Nature, husht,
    To heare the changed chime of this eighth spheere! (III. ii.)

After this Lionel appears in search of Karol, who is in requisition for
the distressed Amie. They are about to go off together when Maudlin again
appears in the shape of Marian, with the news that Amie is recovered and
their presence no longer required. At this moment, however, Robin appears,
and suspecting the witch, who tries to escape, seizes her by the girdle
and runs off the stage with her. The girdle breaks, and Robin returns with
it in his hand, followed by the witch in her own shape. Robin and the
shepherds go off with the prize, while Maudlin summons Puck to her aid and
sets to plotting revenge. Lorel also appears for the purpose of again
addressing himself to his imprisoned mistress, and, if necessary, putting
his mother's precepts into practice. With the words of the witch:

              Gang thy gait, and try
    Thy turnes with better luck, or hang thy sel';

the fragment breaks off abruptly. From the Argument prefixed to Act III we
know that Lorel's purpose with Earine was interrupted by the entrance of
Clarion and Aeglamour, and her discovery was only prevented by a sudden
mist called up by Maudlin. The witch then set about the recovery of her
girdle, was tracked by the huntsmen as she wove her spells, but escaped
by the help of her goblin and through the over-eagerness of her pursuers.

Strangely different estimates have been formed of the merits of Jonson's
pastoral, alike in itself and in contrast with Fletcher's play. Gifford,
who, in spite of his vast erudition, seldom soared in his critical
judgements above the more obvious and conventional considerations of
propriety and style, praised the work as 'natural and elegant' in thought,
and in language 'inexpressibly beautiful,' while at the same time with the
petty insolence which habitually marked his utterances concerning any who
stood in rivalry with his hero, he referred to the _Faithful Shepherdess_
as being 'insufferably tedious' as a poem, and held that as a drama 'its
heaviness can only be equalled by its want of art.' Gifford's spleen,
however, had evidently been aroused by Weber, who had declared the _Sad
Shepherd_ to be written 'in emulation of Fletcher's poem, but far short of
it,' and his remarks must not be taken too seriously. Two quotations will
serve to illustrate the diversity of opinion among modern critics. They
display alike more condescension to particulars and greater weight of
judgement. Thus we find Mr. Swinburne, in his very able study of Ben
Jonson, not a little disgusted at the introduction of the broader humour
and burlesque of the dialect-speaking characters, Maudlin, Lorel,
Scathlock, in conjunction with the greater refinement of Robin, Marian,
and the shepherds. 'A masque including an antimasque, in which the serious
part is relieved and set off by the introduction of parody or burlesque,
was a form of art or artificial fashion in which incongruity was a merit;
the grosser the burlesque, the broader the parody, the greater was the
success and the more effective was the result: but in a dramatic attempt
of higher pretention than such as might be looked for in the literary
groundwork or raw material for a pageant, this intrusion of incongruous
contrast is a pure barbarism--a positive solecism in composition.... On
the other hand, even Gifford's editorial enthusiasm could not overestimate
the ingenious excellence of construction, the masterly harmony of
composition, which every reader of the argument must have observed with
such admiration as can but intensify his regret that scarcely half of the
projected poem has come down to us. No work of Ben Jonson's is more
amusing and agreeable to read, as none is more graceful in expression or
more excellent in simplicity of style.' This last is high meed of praise,
but it is the question raised in the earlier portion of the criticism that
now particularly concerns us. His love of strong contrasts has no doubt
influenced Mr. Swinburne to express at any rate not less than he felt, but
he has raised a perfectly clear and evident issue, and one which it is
impossible for the critic to neglect. Although had the play undergone
final revision, it is possible that Jonson, whose literary judgement was
of no mean order, would have softened some of the harsher contrasts in his
work, it is evident that they were in the main intentional and
deliberately calculated. This appears alike from the prologue, in which he
denounces the heresy

    That mirth by no meanes fits a Pastorall,

as also from what we gather concerning an earlier work, in which he
introduced 'clownes making mirth and foolish sports,' as recorded by
Drummond. As against Mr. Swinburne's view may be set that of Dr. Ward. 'In
_The Sad Shepherd_ [Jonson] has with singular freshness caught the spirit
of the greenwood. If this pastoral is more realistic in texture than
either Spenser's or Milton's efforts in the same direction, the result is
due, partly to the character of the writer, partly to the circumstance
that Jonson's "shepherds" are beings of a definite age and country. It
must, however, be observed that the personages in this pastoral are in
part not shepherds at all, but Robin Hood and his merry men. We may admit
that the lucky combination thus hit upon could probably not easily be
repeated; but this is merely to acknowledge the felicity of the author's
invention.' Allowing for the difference of temper in the two writers, it
will be seen that the view taken of certain essentials of the piece is as
favourable in the one case as it is unfavourable in the other. Both alike
are critics of recognized standing, so that whichever position one may
feel disposed to adopt, ample authority may be quoted in support. There
are unfortunate occasions on which one's favourite oracle perversely
refuses to accommodate himself to one's own view. Mr. Swinburne is a
writer from whom on points of aesthetic judgement I for one differ, but
with the greatest reluctance. Nevertheless in the present case I feel
bound to record my dissent.

Jonson's play was, as I have already said, an attempt to create a new and
genuinely English form of pastoral drama. How far did he succeed? Mr.
Homer Smith charitably hints that it was owing to the 'exquisite poetry'
in which Jonson's design was clothed 'that many critics do not perceive
that he failed in the task he set himself.' This is, however, but to
repeat in cruder form Mr. Swinburne's contention.[287] That Jonson did not
fail in the task he set himself it would be difficult to maintain--only,
however, I believe, because he faiîed to carry it to completion. Had he
lived to finish the remaining portion of the play in a manner consonant
with that which he has left us, there would probably have been no question
as to the propriety of the means he used. I am fully aware how difficult
and often dangerous it is in these matters to argue from a mere fragment,
especially in view of the breakdown of so many plays when they come to the
unravelling, but it should be borne in mind that in the matter of dramatic
construction Jonson stood head and shoulders above all the other writers
with whom we have been concerned, Fletcher not excepted.

Before, however, proceeding to discuss the issue raised by Mr. Swinburne,
it will be well to clear up certain minor misapprehensions. In the first
place Mr. Homer Smith states that Jonson 'wove together the two threads,
pastoral and forest, apparently regarding them of equal importance and
seeing no incongruity in the combination.' In so far as this may be taken
to imply a necessary incompatibility of the traditions of field and
forest, it is of course utterly opposed to the whole history of pastoral
tradition. Tasso's Silvia and Guarini's Silvio alike are silvan not in
name only, but are truly figures of the woods, hunters of the wolf and
boar; while the same distinction survives in a modified form in Daniel's
_Hymen's Triumph_, in which the ruder characters, Montanus and the rest,
are described as foresters. The contrast appears sharply in the _Maid's
Metamorphosis_ in the characters of Silvio and Gemulo; more faintly
indicated by Randolph in Laurinda's lovers, of whom one frequents the
woods and one the plains. The pastoral and forest traditions are in their
essence and history indistinguishable.[288] Probably, however, what the
writer had in view was some supposed incongruity between the characters of
popular romance, such as Robin and his crew, and the shepherds whom he
regards as pure Arcadians. This is the same objection as that raised by
Mr. Swinburne, to which I shall return.

Another point which has been somewhat obscured by previous writers is the
comparative importance of the two threads. Thus, again to quote Mr. Homer
Smith, it has been held that 'In general the pastoral incidents serve as
an underplot, utterly foreign in spirit to the main plot.' Against this
view that the pastoral is, intentionally at least, the subsidiary element,
the title itself is a strong argument--'The Sad Shepherd: A Tale of Robin
Hood.' Clearly the first title would naturally indicate the main subject
of the plot, and the vague addition suggest, the surroundings amid which
the action is laid. This is a consideration which no amount of
stichometrical argument can seriously discount, especially in the case of
a fragment. The same view is borne out by the plot itself so far as it is
known to us. In Aeglamour's despair at the supposed loss of his love we
have a situation already familiar from at least two English pastorals,
_Hymen's Triumph_ and Rutter's _Shepherds' Holiday_; while in the
detention of Earine in the power of the witch we have the material for an
exciting and touching development. Where else can we look for the elements
of a plot? The only possible alternative lies in the dissensions sown by
Maudlin between Robin and his love Maid Marian. Here indeed we find the
materials for some excellent comedy, and the instinctive sympathy excited
by the characters in the breast of every Englishman, as well as the
exquisite charm and grace imparted to the forest scenes by Jonson's verse,
have undoubtedly combined to obscure the real action in the earlier part
of the fragment. But since Lord Fitzwater's daughter is doomed by an
unkind tradition to remain Maid Marian still, no fortunate solution of the
_imbroglio_ can do more than restore the harmony which had been before,
and the plot would therefore be open to the precise objection from the
dramatic point of view which we found in the case of the _Faithful
Shepherdess_. Moreover, the complication is completely solved by the end
of the second act, and it was obviously introduced for no other purpose
than to bring about a general crusade against the wise woman and her
confederate powers, which should be the means of restoring Earine to her
Sad Shepherd. Thus the story of these lovers alone can supply the
materials for the main, or indeed for any real plot at all; and the fact
that, as Mr. Homer Smith informs us, out of some thousand lines less than
half are devoted to strictly pastoral interests, is but evidence of the
felicity of construction, by which Jonson, while keeping the pastoral plot
as the mainspring of the piece, nevertheless avoided the tediousness
almost inseparable from pastoral action and atmosphere, and threw the
burden of stage business upon the more congenial personages of Maid
Marian, Robin Hood and his merry men, the Witch of Paplewich, and Robin
Goodfellow. It remains for us to consider the fundamental question which
arises in connexion with Mr. Swinburne's criticism. Are the various
threads of which Jonson wove his plot in themselves incompatible and
incongruous? Is it correct to describe the parts played by the more rustic
characters as a grotesque antimasque to the action of the polished
shepherds? Or is Dr. Ward right in considering the combination a happy
one, and the characters harmonious? Now any one who wishes to defend Mr.
Swinburne's view must do so on one of two ground: either he must maintain
the general proposition that various degrees of idealization are
essentially incompatible within the limits of a single artistic
composition, or else he must hold that the contrast between the two sets
of characters in the actual play is itself of a grossness to offend the
sense of literary propriety in an audience. If any one is prepared without
qualification to maintain the former of these two propositions, he is
welcome to do so, and he will be perfectly entitled to condemn Jonson's
pastoral on the strength of it; but I doubt whether this was the intention
of the critic himself. Although as a general rule the English drama found
its romance rather in what it imagined to be realism than in conscious
idealization, yet the contrast between the imaginative and refined
creations of the fancy and the often coarse and gross transcripts from
common life are too frequent even to require specific mention, and many
shades even of imaginative painting, many degrees of idealism, may
frequently be met with in the course of a single play. What of Rosalind,
Phoebe, and Audrey in _As You Like It_? But that is a question to which we
shall have to return. It will, however, be contended that in the _Sad
Shepherd_ we are introduced to a wholly idealized and artificially refined
atmosphere surrounding the shepherds and their hosts, which is yet
constantly liable to be broken in upon by beings of the outer world, rude
unchastened mortals compounded of our common clay, whose entrance dispels
at a stroke the delicate, refined atmosphere of pastoral convention. This
brings us to the second alternative mentioned above, to meet which we
shall have to condescend to particulars, and consider the real natures of
the various groups of personages with which Jonson crowds his stage.

The question of the incongruity of the various characters in Jonson's
pastoral is one which every reader of taste must decide for himself. All
that the critic can hope to do is to point out how the figures on the
stage compare with previous tradition and convention on the one hand, and
with the characters of actual life on the other. But in doing this I hope
to be able to vindicate Jonson's taste, for I believe Mr. Swinburne to be
in error in regarding the shepherds of the play as more, and the rustic
characters as less, idealized than Jonson intended them, and than they in
reality are. Were the shepherds the pure Arcadians Mr. Homer Smith asserts
them to be, and were it necessary with Mr. Swinburne to regard Scathlock
and Maudlin as mere parody and burlesque, then indeed Jonson's taste, as
exhibited in the _Sad Shepherd_, would not be worth defending. But it is
not so.

It is necessary in the first place, however, to make certain admissions.
It is true that in the fragment as we possess it there are certain
passages which pass beyond any legitimate idealization of the actual world
in which Jonson chose to lay his scene, and which contrast jarringly and
irreconcilably with the coarser threads of homespun. Thus Aeglamour, in so
far as it is possible to form an opinion, keeps too much of the artificial
Arcadianism of the Italians about him, and is hardly of a piece with the
rest of the personae. The same may be said of the name at least of Earine;
of her character it is impossible to judge--in one passage indeed we find
her talking broad dialect, but that doubtless only through an oversight of
the author. Much the same may be censured of individual passages: the
singularly out-of-place catalogue of 'Lovers Scriptures' put into the
mouth of Clarion, and, in a speech of Aeglamour's, the collocation of Dean
and Erwash, Idle, Snite, and Soar, with the nymphs and Graces that come
dancing out of the fourth ode of Horace. Some have been inclined to add an
occasional reminiscence of Sappho or so; but critics appear somewhat dense
at understanding that when Amie, for instance, speaks of 'the dear good
angel of the spring,' it is not she but her creator who is exhibiting a
familiarity with the classics. In this and similar cases the fact of
borrowing in no wise affects the question of dramatic propriety. Certain
incongruities must then be admitted, but they lie rather in casual
passages than in any necessary portion of the play; while in so far as
they appear in the presentation of any character, the contrast seems to
lie rather between Aeglamour and the rest of the shepherds than between
these and the less polished huntsmen. It should furthermore be
remembered--though the remark is perhaps strictly beside, or rather
beyond, the point--that where the incongruous elements are not
fundamental, it is always possible that they might have been removed had
the play undergone revision.

Subject to these reservations it appears to me that the characters and
general tone of Jonson's pastoral are perfectly harmonious and congruent.
The shepherds are far removed from the types of Arcadian convention, and
may more properly be regarded as idealizations from the actual country
lads and lasses of merry England. Their names are borrowed from popular
romance, which, if somewhat French in its tone, was certainly in no way
antagonistic to the legends of Sherwood nor to the agency of witchcraft
and fairy lore[289]. Even Alken, in spite of his didactic bent, is as far
as possible from being the conventional 'wise shepherd,' and certainly no
Arcadian ever displayed such knowledge as he of the noble art, while his
lecture on the blast of hag-hunting, though savouring somewhat of
burlesque, contains perhaps the most thoroughly charming and romantic
lines that ever flowed from the pen of the great exponent of classical
tradition. That the characters owe nothing to Arcadian tradition is not
contended, nor do I know that it would be desirable that they should not,
since that tradition forms at least a convenient, if not an altogether
necessary, precedent for such pastoral idealization; but even if it is
going rather far to say that they 'belong to a definite age and country,'
they have yet sufficient individuality and community of human nature to be
wholly fitting companions for the gallant Robin and his fair lady. Jonson,
it would appear, consciously adopted the pastoral method, if hardly the
pastoral mood, of Theocritus, in contradistinction to that of the courtly
poets in Italy. It will be noticed that he has not forborne to introduce
references to sheepcraft, but the fact that these enter more or less
naturally into the discourse, and are not, as in Fletcher's pastoral,
introduced in the vain hope of giving local colour to wholly uncolourable
characters, saves them from having the same stilted effect, and is at the
same time evidence of the greater reality of Jonson's personae. It is also
noteworthy that Jonson has even ventured upon allegorical matter in one
passage at least, but has succeeded in doing so in a manner in no wise
incongruous with the nature of actual rustics, though the collocation of
Robin Hood and the rise of Puritanism must be admitted to be historically
something of an anachronism.

Robin and Maid Marian are, of course, characters no whit less idealized
than the shepherds, though the process was largely effected by popular
tradition instead of by the author. But this being so, such characters as
Much and Scathlock must be no less incongruous with Robin and Marian than
with Karol and Amie--a proportion which those who love the old Sherwood
tradition would be loath to admit. In any case the incongruity, if it
exists, is not of Jonson's devising, but consecrated for ages in the
popular mind. The truth is, however, that Much and Little John, Scathlock
and Scarlet are, in spite of their more homely speech and humour, scarcely
less idealized than any of the other characters I have mentioned. That
Jonson has even sought to tone down such harshness of contrast as he found
is noticeable in his treatment of a recognized figure of burlesque like
Friar Tuck, who is throughout portrayed with decorum and respect.

Lastly, to come to the third group of characters. If it was impossible for
an English audience to regard as burlesque such popular and sympathetic
characters as Robin and his merry men, so a malignant witch and a
mischievous elf were far too serious agents of ill to be treated in this
light either. Characters whose unholy powers would have fitted them for
death at the stake can scarcely have been regarded even by the rude
audiences of pre-restoration London as fitting subjects of farce, while
there is nothing to lead us to suppose that Jonson, whatever his private
opinion on the subject may have been, sought in the present instance to
cast ridicule upon the belief in witches, but rather it is evident that he
laid hands upon everything that could give colour to their sinister
reputation. On the other hand, he has treated the whole subject with an
imaginative touch which relieves us of all tragic or moral apprehension,
removes all the squalid and unblessed surroundings into the region of
romantic art, and makes it impossible to regard the characters as less
idealized than those of the shepherds and huntsmen. I cannot myself but
regard the elements of witchcraft and fairy employed by Jonson as far more
in harmony not only with Robin Hood and his men, but also with the
shepherds of Belvoir vale, than would have been the oracles, satyrs, and
other outworn machinery of regular pastoral tradition.

There remains the rusticity of language which distinguishes some of the
ruder characters from others more refined. That some contrast between the
groups was intended is indisputable, that the contrast is rather harsher
than the author intended may be plausibly maintained. There is, on the
whole, a lack of graduation. Into the question of dialectism in general it
is needless to enter. The speech employed would be inoffensive, were it
not that it is, and is felt to be, no genuine dialect at all, but a mere
literary convention, a mixture of broad Yorkshire and Lothian Scots, not
only utterly out of place in Sherwood forest, but such as can never have
been spoken by any sane rustic. Still more than of Spenser is Ben's dictum
true of himself, that where he departed from the cultivated English of his
day, whether in imitation of the ancients or of provincial dialect matters
not, he failed to write any language at all. Yet here, if anywhere, we
should be justified in arguing that it is unfair to judge an unrevised
fragment as if it were a completed work in the form in which the author
decided to give it to the world. Jonson, as his _English Grammar_ shows,
was not without a knowledge of the antiquities at least of our tongue, and
it is reasonable to suppose that, had he lived to publish his pastoral
himself, he would have removed some of the more glaring enormities of
language, along with certain other improprieties which could hardly have
escaped his critical eye.

Jonson then, as it seems to me, setting aside a few points of minor
importance, successfully combined what he found suited to his purpose in
previous pastoral tradition, with what was most romantic and attractive in
popular legend and a genuine idealization from actual types, to produce a
veritable English pastoral, which failed of success only in that it
remained unfinished at the death of its author.

In 1783 F. G. Waldron published his continuation of Jonson's fragment.
This work, while betraying throughout the date of its composition, and
falling in every respect short of the original, yet catches some measure
of its glamour and charm, and has received deserved, if somewhat
qualified, praise at the hands of Jonson's critics. The chief faults of
the piece are the writer's anxiety to marry every good character and
convert every bad one, and the manner in which the dramatic climax by
which Aeglamour and Earine should be brought together is frittered away.
The shepherdess is duly released from the hands of the lewd Lorel, but
only to find that her lover has drowned himself. The hermit is, of course,
introduced to revive the Sad Shepherd and restore his wits, and so all
ends happily. The only original passage of any particular merit is the
hunter's dirge over the drowned Aeglamour, which is perhaps worth
quoting[290]:

    The chase is o'er, the hart is slain!
    The gentlest hart that grac'd the plain;
    With breath of bugles sound his knell,
    Then lay him low in Death's drear dell!

    Nor beauteous form, nor dappled hide,
    Nor branchy head will long abide;
    Nor fleetest foot that scuds the heath,
    Can 'scape the fleeter huntsman, Death.

    The hart is slain! his faithful deer,
    In spite of hounds or huntsman near,
    Despising Death, and all his train,
    Laments her hart untimely slain!

    The chase is o'er, the hart is slain!
    The gentlest hart that grac'd the plain;
    Blow soft your bugles, sound his knell,
    Then lay him low in Death's drear dell!

    (Act IV.)

Chapter VI.

The English Pastoral Drama

We have seen in an earlier chapter what had been achieved within the
limits of the mythological drama proper, and also how it had fared with
the attempts to introduce the Italian pastoral into England either by way
of translation or of direct imitation. We have also seen how, in three
notable compositions, three different and variously gifted artists had
endeavoured to produce a form of pastoral drama suited to the requirements
of the English stage, and how they had each in turn fallen short of
complete success. We have now to consider a series of plays, less
distinguished on the whole, though varying greatly in individual merit,
which, amid the luxuriant growth of the romantic drama, tended, in a more
spontaneous and less purposeful manner, towards the creation of something
of a pastoral tradition. We shall find in thèse plays a considerable
traditional influence, a groundwork, as it were, borrowed from the
Arcadian drama of Italy, together with frequent elements owing their
origin to plays of the mythological type. But in the great majority of
cases we shall also find another influence, which will serve to
differentiate these plays from those we have been hitherto concerned with.
This is the influence of the so-called pastoral romances of the Spanish
type, which manifests itself in the introduction of characters and
incidents, warlike, courtly, or adventurous, borrowed more or less
directly from the works of writers such as Sidney, Greene, and Lodge.
Their influence was extended and enduring, and survived until, towards the
middle of the seventeenth century, the fashionable tradition of the
_Astrée_ was introduced from France[291]. It was evinced both in a general
manner and likewise in direct dramatic adaptation. Since the romances
thus dramatized lay claim to a pastoral character, it will be necessary
for us to examine as briefly as may be these stage versions, however
little of the pastoral element may survive, as a preliminary to
considering other plays in which the debt is less specific.

There are extant at least seven plays founded upon Sidney's
_Arcadia_.[292] Since these appear to be wholly independent of one
another, it will be convenient to disregard chronology, and to consider
first those which have for subject the main story of the romance, four in
number, and then the remaining three founded upon various incidents.
First, then, and most important, Shirley's play bearing the same title as
the romance will claim our attention as the most full and faithful
stage-rendering of Sidney's work. Although not printed till 1640 the play
was, according to Mr. Fleay's plausible conjecture, performed on the
king's birthdayas early as 1632. It cannot exactly be pronounced a good
play, but the dramatization is effected in a manner which does justice to
the very great abilities of the author, and the same measure of success
would probably not have been attained by any other dramatist of the time.

At the opening of the play we find that Basilius, king of Arcadia, has, in
consequence of a threatening oracle, committed the government of his
kingdom into the hands of a nobleman Philanax, and retired into a rural
'desert' along with his wife Gynecia and his daughters Philoclea and
Pamela. Here they live in company with the 'most arrant dotish clowne'
Dametas, his wife Miso and daughter Mopsa, rustic characters which supply
a coarsely farcical element in the plot, certainly no less out of place
and inharmonious in the play than in the romance. There are also the
cousins Pyrocles and Musidorus, son and nephew respectively to Euarchus,
king of Thessaly, who have arrived in quest of the princesses' loves, and
have obtained positions near the objects of their affection, the one
disguised as an Amazon under the name of Zelmane, the other seeking
service under Dametas and assuming the name of Dorus. Complications,
moreover, have already arisen, Basilius falling in love with the supposed
Amazon, while Gynecia sees through the disguise and falls in love with the
concealed Pyrocles. The disguised lover, in order to allay suspicion, has
to feign a return of love to the queen and also to humour the dotage of
the king, in the meanwhile revealing himself and his love to Philoclea,
whom her father employs to court the affections of the Amazon. Musidorus,
on his part, while pretending to court Mopsa, takes the opportunity of
addressing his suit to Pamela. At length all is arranged, the princesses
consenting to accompany their lovers in flight, and the various guardians
being cleverly duped. Pyrocles gives rendezvous both to Basilius and
Gynecia in a dark and lonely cave, Dametas is sent to dig for hidden
treasure, Miso to seek her maligned husband in the house of one of her
female neighbours, and Mopsa to await the coming of Apollo in the
wishing-tree. Musidorus and Pamela make for the coast, while Pyrocles goes
to fetch his mistress Philoclea. While, however, he is endeavouring to
persuade her to take the final and irrevocable step, they are both
overcome by a strange drowsiness and are discovered by Dametas, who,
disappointed of his treasure, has missed his charge Pamela and comes to
give the alarm. Musidorus and his mistress on their side have been
captured by outlaws, who, discovering their identity, bring them back,
hoping thereby to secure their own pardons. In the meantime, in the cave
Gynecia has given Basilius by mistake for Zelmane a love potion, which
turns out apparently to be a strong narcotic, for the king at once falls
into a death-like trance, and the queen, discovering her mistake and
overcome by shame and remorse, accuses herself publicly of having poisoned
her husband, and is consequently put under guard. At this juncture
Euarchus happens to arrive in search of his son and nephew, and consents
to act as judge in the case. The princes, who for no apparent reason
assume false names, are brought up for judgement and sentenced to death by
Euarchus, whom, unaccountably enough, they fail to recognize. They are
about to be led off to execution when Basilius, who is lying on a bier in
the judgement hall, suddenly rises, the potion having spent its force.
Explanations and recognitions of course follow, the oracle is
satisfactorily expounded, and all ends to the sound of marriage bells.

It will be seen that in spite of the description 'pastoral' which appears
on the title-page of the play, there is little or nothing of this nature
to be found in the plot, and in this it is typical of all the plays
founded upon Sidney's romance. The only pastoral element indeed is a sort
of show or masque, presented by the rustic characters in company with
certain shepherds, and even here little of a pastoral nature is visible
beyond the characters of the performers. As a play, the _Arcadia_ is
distinctly pleasing; the action is bright and easy, the gulling scenes are
very entertaining, and some of the love scenes, notably that in which
Pyrocles endeavours to persuade Philoclea to escape with him, are
charmingly written. Take for instance the following passage, in which the
princess confesses her love:[293]

                            such a truth
    Shines in your language, and such innocence
    In what you call affection, I must
    Declare you have not plac'd one good thought here,
    Which is not answer'd with my heart. The fire
    Which sparkled in your bosom, long since leap'd
    Into my breast, and there burns modestly:
    It would have spread into a greater flame,
    But still I curb'd it with my tears. Oh, Pyrocles,
    I would thou wert Zelmane again! and yet,
    I must confess I lov'd thee then; I know not
    With what prophetick soul, but I did wish
    Often, thou were a man, or I no woman.

    _Pyrocles._ Thou wert the comfort of my sleeps.

    _Philoclea._              And you
    The object of my watches, when the night
    Wanted a spell to cast me into slumber;
    Yet when the weight of my own thoughts grew heavy
    For my tear dropping eyes, and drew these curtains,
    My dreams were still of thee--forgive my blushes--
    And in imagination thou wert then
    My harmless bedfellow.

    _Pyr._          I arrive too soon
    At my desires. Gently, oh gently, drop
    These joys into me! lest, at once let fall,
    I sink beneath the tempest of my blessings. (III. iv.)

Or again when he urges her to escape:

                I could content myself
    To look on Pyrocles, and think it happiness
    Enough; or, if my soul affect variety
    Of pleasure, every accent of thy voice
    Shall court me with new rapture; and if these
    Delights be narrow for us, there is left
    A modest kiss, where every touch conveys
    Our melting souls into each other's lips.
    Why should not you be pleas'd to look on me?
    To hear, and sometimes kiss, Philoclea?
    Indeed you make me blush.       [_Draws a veil over her face_.]

    _Pyr._            What an eclipse
    Hath that veil made! it was not night till now.
    Look if the stars have not withdrawn themselves,
    As they had waited on her richer brightness,
    And missing of her eyes are stolen to bed. (ib.)

These passages display the tenderer side of Shirley's gift at its best,
and prove that, had he but set himself the task, he possessed the very
style needed for a successful imitation of the Italian pastoral adapted to
the temper of the English romantic drama.

But Shirley's, though the most complete, was not the earliest attempt at
placing Sir Philip's romance upon the boards. As long before as 1605 was
acted Day's _Isle of Gulls_, a farcical and no doubt highly topical play,
which is equally founded on the _Arcadia_, though it follows the story far
less closely. Day's title was probably suggested by Nashe's _Isle of
Dogs_, a satirical play performed in 1597, which brought its author into
trouble, but if it deserves Mr. Bullen's epithet of 'attractive,' it must
be admitted that it is almost the only part of the play to which that
epithet can be applied. Day was in no wise concerned to maintain the
polished and artificial dignity of the original; his satiric purpose
indeed called for a very different treatment. The _Isle of Gulls_ is a
comedy of the broadest and lowest description, almost uniformly lacking in
charm, notwithstanding a certain skill of dramatization, and the
occurrence of passages which are good enough of their kind. It will easily
be conceived that a highly ideal and romantic plot treated in the manner
of the realistic farce of low life may offer great opportunities of
satiric effect; but it must have made the courtly Sidney turn in his grave
to see his gracious puppets debased into the vulgar rogues and trulls of
the lower-class London drama. Day in no wise sought to hide his
indebtedness, but on the contrary acknowledged in the Induction that his
argument is but 'a little string or Rivolet, drawne from the full streine
of the right worthy Gentleman, Sir Phillip Sydneys well knowne Archadea.'
The chief differences between the play and its source are as follows.
Basilius and Gynetia--as Day writes the name--are duke and duchess of
Arcadia[294]--near which, apparently, the island is situated--Philoclea
and Pamela become Violetta and Hipolita, Pyrocles and Musidorus appear as
Lisander and Demetrius, Philanax and Calander from being lords of the
court become captains of the castles guarding the island, and Dametas
comes practically to occupy the post of Lord Chamberlain. Among the more
important characters Euarchus disappears and Aminter and Julio, rivals of
the princes in the ladies' loves, are added, as also Manasses,
'scribe-major' to Dametas. When the princes have at last prevailed upon
their loves to elope with them, and tricked as before their various
guardians into leaving the coast clear, they are in their turn persuaded
to leave the ladies in the charge of their disguised rivals, who, of
course, secure them as their prizes. Thus the gulling is singularly
complete all round, not least among the gulled being the audience, whose
sympathy has been carefully enlisted on the princes' behalf. The last
scene, in which all the characters forgather from their various ludicrous
occupations, is, as might be expected, one of considerable confusion,
which is rendered all the more confounded by frequent errors in the
speakers' names, which remain in spite of the labours of Day's
editor.[295]

If we approach the play with Sir Philip's romance in our mind, the
characters cannot but appear one and all offensive. In every case Day has
indulged in brutal caricature. The courtly characters are represented from
the point of view of a prurient-minded bourgeoisie; the rustic figures are
equally gross in their vulgarity; while the traitor Dametas, who serves as
a link between the two classes, is an upstart parasite, described with a
satiric touch not unworthy of Webster as 'a little hillock made great with
others' ruines.' But if we are content to forget the source of the play,
we may take a rather more charitable view. Not all the characters are
consistently revolting, several, including the princesses, having at times
a fine flavour of piquant roguishness, at others a touch of easy
sentiment. For a contemporary audience, of course, there were other points
of attraction in the play, for the satirical intent is sufficiently
obvious, though it is needless for us here to inquire into the personages
adumbrated, that investigation belonging neither to pastoral nor to
literary history properly speaking. By far the cleverest as well as the
most pleasing scene in the play is that introducing a game of bowls,[296]
during which Lisander courts Violetta in long-drawn metaphor. Part at
least of this brilliant double-edged word-play must be quoted, even though
the verse-capping may at times pass the bounds of strict decorum:

    _Duke._ Doth our match hold?

    _Duchess._         Yes, whose part will you take?

    _Duke._ Zelmanes.

    _Duchess._    Soft, that match is still to make.

    _Violetta._ Lets cast a choice, the nearest two take one.

    _Lisander._ My choice is cast; help sweet occasion.

    _Viol._ Come, heere's agood.

    _Lis._         Well, betterd.

    _Duch._               Best of all:

    _Lis._ The Duke and I.

    _Duke._       The weakest goe to the wall.

    _Viol._ Ile lead.

    _Lis._     Ile follow.

    _Viol._        We have both one mind.

    _Lis._ In what?

    _Viol._    In leaving the old folke behinde.

    _Duke._ Well jested, daughter; and you lead not faire,
    The hindmost hound though old may catch the hare.

    _Duch._ Your last Boule come?

    _Viol._          By the faith a me well led.

    _Lis._ Would I might lead you.

    _Viol._          Whither?

    _Lis._              To my bed.

    _Viol._ I am sure you would not.

    _Lis._           By this aire I would.

    _Viol._ I hope you would not hurt me and you should.

    _Lis._ Ide love you, sweet ...

    _Duke._        Daughter, your bowle winnes one.

    _Viol._ None, of my Maidenhead, Father; I am gone:
    The Amazon hath wonne one.

    _Lis._            Yield to that.

    _Viol._ The cast I doe.

    _Lis._        Yourselfe?

    _Viol._           Nay scrape out that. (II. v.)[297]

The unprinted dramas founded on the _Arcadia_ need not detain us long.
One is preserved in a volume of manuscript plays in the British Museum,
and is entitled _Love's Changelings' Change_.[298] It is written in a hand
of the first half of the seventeenth century, small and neat, but, partly
on account of the porous nature of the paper, exceedingly hard to read.