Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama / A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration Stage in England

by W. W. Greg

Chapter III.

Italian Pastoral Drama

I

We have now passed in review the main classes of non-dramatic pastoral both abroad and in this country. Such preliminary survey was necessary in order to obtain an idea of the history and nature of pastoral composition in general. It was further rendered imperative by more particular considerations which will appear in the course of the present chapter, for we shall find that the pastoral drama comes into being, not through the infusion of the Arcadian ideal into pre-existing dramatic forms, but through the actual evolution of a new dramatic form from the pre-existing non-dramatic pastoral.

It is time to retrace our steps and to pick up the thread which we dropped in a former chapter, the development, namely, of the vernacular eclogue in Italy. If in so doing we are forced to enter at greater length upon the discussion of individual works, we shall find ample excuse, not only in their intrinsic merit, but likewise in their more direct bearing upon what is after all the main subject of this volume. The pastoral drama of Italy is the immediate progenitor of that of England. Further, it might be pleaded that special interest attaches to the Arcadian pastoral as the only dramatic form of conspicuous vitality for which Italy is the crediter of European letters.

The history of the rise of the pastoral drama in Italy is a complicated subject, and one not altogether free from obscurity. Many forces were at work determining the development of the form, and these it is difficult so to present as at once to leave a clear impression and yet not to allow any one element to usurp an importance it does not in reality possess. Any account which gives a specious appearance of simplicity to the case should be mistrusted. That I have been altogether successful in my treatment I can hardly hope, but at least the method followed has not been hastily adopted. I propose to consider, first of all and apart from the rest, the early mythological drama, which while exercising a marked influence over the spirit of the later pastoral can in no way be regarded as its origin. Next, I shall trace the evolution of the pastoral drama proper from its germ in the non-dramatic eclogue, by way of the ecloghe rappresentative, and treat incidentally the allied rustic shows, which form a class apart from the main line of development. Lastly, I shall have to say a few words concerning the early pastoral plays by Beccari and others before turning to the masterpieces of Tasso and Guarini, the consideration of which will occupy the chief part of this chapter[[152]].

The class of productions known as mythological plays, which powerfully influenced the character of the pastoral drama, sprang from the union of classical tradition with the machinery of native religious representations, in Poliziano's Favola d' Orfeo. This was the first non-religious play in the vernacular, and its dependence on the earlier religious drama is striking. Indeed, the blending of medieval and classical forms and conventions may be traced throughout the early secular drama of Italy. Boiardo's Timone, a play written at some unknown date previous to 1494, preserves, in spite of its classical models, much of the allegorical character of the morality, and was undoubtedly acted on a stage comprising two levels, the upper representing heaven in which Jove sat enthroned on the seat of Adonai. The same scenic arrangement may well have been used in the Orfeo, the lower stage representing Hades[[153]]; while Niccolò da Correggio's Cefalo was evidently acted on a polyscenic stage, the actors passing in view of the audience from one part to another[[154]]. At a yet earlier period Italian writers in the learned tongue had taken as the subjects of their plays stories from classical legend and myth, and among these we find not only recognized tragedy themes such as the rape of Polyxena dramatized by Lionardo Bruni, but tales such as that of Progne put on the stage by Gregorio Corrado, both of which preceded by many years the work of Politian and Correggio.

The earliest secular play in Italian is, then, nothing but a sacra rappresentazione on a pagan theme, a fact which was probably clearly recognized when, in the early editions from 1494 onwards, the piece was described as the 'festa di Orpheo[[155]].' It was written in 1471, when Poliziano was about seventeen, and we learn from the author's epistle prefixed to the printed edition that ît was composed in the short space of two days for representation before Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga at Mantua. From the same epistle we learn that the author desired, or at least assumed the attitude of desiring, that his composition should share the fate of the ill-fashioned Lacedaemonian children; 'Cognoscendo questa mia figliuola essere di qualità da fare più tosto al suo padre vergogna che onore; e più tosto atta a dargli malinconia che allegrezza.' The favola as originally put forth continued to be reprinted without alteration, till 1776, when Ireneo Affò published the Orphei Tragoedia from a collation of two manuscripts. This differs in various respects from the printed version, among others in being divided, short as it is, into five acts, headed respectively 'Pastorale,' 'Ninfale,' 'Eroico,' 'Negromantico,' and 'Baccanale.' It is now known to represent a revision of the piece made, probably by Antonio Tebaldeo, for representation at Ferrara, and in it much of the popular and topical element has been eliminated. The action of the piece is based in a general manner upon the story given by Ovid in the tenth book of the Metamorphoses.

The performance begins with a prologue by Mercury which is nothing but a short argument of the whole plot. 'Mercurio annunzia la festa' is the superscription in the original, evidently suggested by the appearance of 'un messo di Dio' with which the religious rappresentazioni usually open. At the end of this prologue a shepherd appears and finishes the second octave with the couplet:

State attenti, brigata; buono augurio;
Poi che di cielo in terra vien Mercurio.

In the Ferrarese revision these stanzas appear as 'Argomento' without mention of Mercury, while for the above lines are substituted the astonishing doggerel:

Or stia ciascuno a tutti gli atti intento,
Che cinque sono; e questo è l' argomento.

Thereupon (beginning Act I of the revision) enters Mopso, an old shepherd, meeting Aristeo, a youthful one, with his herdsman Tirsi. Mopso asks whether his white calf has been seen, and Aristeo, who fancies he has heard a lowing from beyond the hill, sends his boy to see. In the meanwhile he detains Mopso with an account of his love for a nymph he met the day before, and sings a canzona:

Ch' i' so che la mia ninfa il canto agogna[[156]].

It runs on the familiar themes of love: 'Di doman non c' è certezza.'

Digli, zampogna mia, come via fugge
Con gli anni insieme la bellezza snella;
E digli come il tempo ne distrugge,
Ne l' età persa mai si rinovella;
Digli che sappi usar sua forma bella,
Che sempre mai non son rose e viole...
Udite, selve, mie dolci parole,
Poi che la ninfa mia udir non vole.

The boy Tirsi now returns, having with much trouble driven the strayed calf back to the herd, and narrates how he saw an unknown nymph of wondrous beauty gathering flowers about the hill. Aristeo recognizes from this description the object of his love, and, leaving Mopso and Tirsi to shake their heads over his midsummer madness, goes off to find her.

So far we might be reading one of the ecloghe rappresentative which we shall have to consider shortly, but of which the earliest known examples cannot well be less than ten or twelve years later than Poliziano's play. With the exception, indeed, of one or two in Boccaccio's Ameto, it is doubtful whether any vernacular eclogues had appeared at the time. The character of Tirsi belongs to rustic tradition, and must be an experiment contemporary with, if not prior to, Lorenzo's Nencia. The portion before the canzone is in terza rima; that after it, like the prologue, in octaves.

The original proceeds without break to the song of Aristeo as he pursues the flying Euridice (Act II in the revision):

Poi che 'l pregar non vale,
E tu via ti dilegui,
El convien ch' io ti segui.
Porgimi, Amor, porgimi or le tue ale.

While Aristeo is following Euridice, Orfeo enters upon the scene with a Latin ode in Sapphic metre in honour of Cardinal Gonzaga. A note informs us that this was originally sung by 'Messer Braccio Ugolino, attore di detta persona d' Orfeo.' In place of this ode the revised text contains a long 'Coro delle Driadi,' with two speeches in terza rima by the choragus, announcing and lamenting the death of Euridice, who as she fled from Aristeo has been stung in the foot by a serpent. After this the news of her death is reported to Orfeo--by a shepherd in the original, by a dryad in the revised version. That the substitution of the chorus for the Sapphic ode is an improvement from the poetic point of view will hardly be denied, yet this improvement has been attained at the cost of some dramatic sacrifice. In the original Orfeo is introduced naturally enough in his character of supreme poet and musician to do honour to the occasion, and it is only after he has been on the stage some time that the news of Euridice's death is brought. In the revision he is merely introduced for the purpose of being informed of his wife's death--he has hardly been so much as mentioned before. He thus loses the slight opportunity previously afforded him of presenting a dramatic individuality apart from the very essence of his tragedy.

The announcement to Orfeo of Euridice's death begins the third act of the revised text, which is amplified at this point by the introduction of a satyr Mnesillo, who acts as chorus to Orfeo's lament. The character of a friendly satyr is interesting in view of the role commonly assigned to his species in pastoral.

After this we have in the original the direction 'Orfeo cantando giugne all' Inferno,' while in the revision there is again a new act, the fourth. Symonds pointed out that the merits of the piece are less dramatic than lyrical, and that fortunately the central scene was one in which the situation was capable of lyrical expression. The pleading of Orfeo before the gates of Hades and at the throne of Pluto forms the lyrical kernel of the play, and gives it its poetic value. The bard appears before the iron-bound portals of the nether world, and the pains of hell surcease. 'Who is he?' asks Pluto--

Chi è costui che con sì dolce nota
Muove l' abisso, e con l' ornata cetra?
Io veggo ferma d' Ission la rota,...
Nè più P acqua di Tantalo s' arretra;
E veggo Cerber con tre bocche intente,
E le furie acquietar il suo lamento.

At length he stands before Pluto's throne, the seat of the God of the sacre rappresentazioni, the rugged rock-seat surrounded by the monstrous demons of Signorelli's tondo[[157]]. Here in presence of the grim ravisher and of his pale consort, in whom the passionate pleading of the Thracian bard stirs long-forgotten memories of spring and of the plains of Enna, Orfeo's song receives adequate expression. It is closely imitated from the corresponding passage in Ovid, but the lyrical perfection and passionate crescendo of the stanzas are Poliziano's own. Addressing Pluto, Orfeo discovers the object of his quest:

Non per Cerber legar fo questa via,
Ma solamente per la donna mia.

May not love penetrate even the forbidden bounds of hell?--

se memoria alcuna in voi si serba
Del vostro celebrato antico amore,
Se la vecchia rapina a mente avete,
Euridice mia bella mi rendete.

Why should death grudge the few years at most which complete the span of human life?--

Ogni cosa nel fine a voi ritorna;
Ogni vita mortal quaggiù ricade:
Quanto cerchia la luna con sue corna
Convien che arrivi alle vostre contrade--

or why reap amid the unmellowed corn?--

Così la ninfa mia per voi si serba,
Quando sua morte gli darà natura.
Or la tenera vite e l' uva acerba
Tagliata avete con la falce dura.

Chi è che mieta la sementa in erba
E non aspetti ch' ella sia matura?
Dunque rendete a me la mia speranza:
Io non vel chieggio in don, questa è prestanza.

Next he invokes the pity of the stern god by the name of Chaos whence the world had birth, and by the dread rivers of the nether world, by Styx and Acheron: 'E pel sonante ardor di Flegetonte'; and lastly, turning to 'the faery-queen Proserpina,'

Pel pome che a te già, Regina, piacque,
Quando lasciasti pria nostro orizzonte.
E se pur me la niega iniqua sorte,
Io no vo' su tornar, ma chieggio morte![[158]]

Hell itself relents, and, as Boccaccio had written,

forse lieta gli rendeo
La cercata Euridice a condizione--

the condition being that he shall not turn to behold her before attaining once again to the land of the living. The condition, of course, is not fulfilled. Orfeo seeks to clasp 'his half regain'd Eurydice,' with the triumphant cry of Ovid holding the conquered Corinna in his arms:

Ite triumphales circum mea tempora lauri.
Vicimus: Eurydice reddita vita mihi est.
Haec est praecipuo Victoria digna triumpho.
Hue ades, o cura parte triumphe mea[[159]].

He turns, and his unsubstantial love sinks back into the realm of shadows with the cry:

Oimè che 'I troppo amore
Ci ha disfatti ambe dua.
Ecco ch' io ti son tolta a gran furore,
Nè sono ormai più tua.

Ben tendo a te le braccia; ma non vale, Che indietro son tirata. Orfeo mio, vale.

As he would follow her once more a fury bars the road.

Desperate of his love, the bard now forswears for ever the company of women (Act V of the revised text).

Da qui innanzi vo corre i fior novelli ...
Ouesto è più dolce e più soave amore;
Non sia chi mai di donna mi favelli,
Poi che morta è colei ch' ebbe il mio core.

Now that she is dead, what faith abides in woman?--

Quanto è misero l' uom che cangia voglia
Per donna, o mai per lei s' allegra, o duole!...
Che sempre è più leggier ch' al vento foglia,
E mille volte il di vuole e disvuole.
Segue chi fugge; a chi la vuol, s' asconde,
E vanne e vien come alla riva l' onde.

The cry wrung from him by his grief anticipates the cynical philosophy of later pastorals. Upon this the scene is invaded by 'The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,' eager to avenge the insult offered to their sex[[160]]. They drive the poet out, and presently returning in triumph with his 'gory visage,' break out into the celebrated chorus 'full of the swift fierce spirit of the god.' This gained considerably by revision, and in the later text runs as follows:

Ciascun segua, o Bacco, te;
Bacco, Bacco, oè oè.
Di corimbi e di verd' edere
Cinto il capo abbiam così
Per servirti a tuo richiedere
Festeggiando notte e dì.
Ognun beva: Bacco è quì;
E lasciate here a me.
Ciascun segua, ec.

Io ho vuoto già il mio corno:
Porgi quel cantaro in qua.
Questo monte gira intorno,
O 'l cervello a cerchio va:
Ognun corra in qua o in là,
Come vede fare a me.
Ciascun segua, ec.

Io mi moro già di sonno:
Sono io ebra o sì o no?
Più star dritti i piè non ponno.
Voi siet' ebri, ch' io lo so;
Ognun faccia com' io fo;
Ognun succe come me.
Ciascun segua, ec.

Ognun gridi Bacco, Bacco,
E poi cacci del vin giù;
Poi col sonno farem fiacco,
Bevi tu e tu e tu.
Io non posso ballar più;
Ognun gridi Evoè.[[161]]
Ciascun segua, o Bacco, te;
Bacco, Bacco, oè oè.

Lyrical beauty rather than dramatic power was, it has already been remarked, Poliziano's aim and achievement. The want of characterization in the hero, the insignificance of the part allotted to Euridice, the total inadequacy of the tragic climax, measure the author's power as a dramatist. It is the lyrical passages--Aristeo's song, Orfeo's impassioned pleading, the bacchanalian dance chorus--that supply the firm supports of art upon which rests the slight fabric of the play.

The same simplicity of construction, a simplicity in nature rather narrative than dramatic, characterizes Niccolò da Correggio's Cefalo. The play was represented in state in the great courtyard of the ducal palace at Ferrara, on the occasion of the marriage of Lucrezia d' Este with Annibale Bentivogli, on January 21, 1487[[162]]. Like the Orfeo, the piece exhibits traces of its origin in the religious shows, though, unlike the original draft of Poliziano's play, it is divided into five acts each of some length, and is provided with regular choruses on the classical model. In spite of its inferiority to the Orfeo in lyric power and its possibly even greater deficiency from a dramatic point of view, it will be worth while giving some account of the piece in order to get as clear an idea as possible of the nature and limitations of the mythological drama, and also because it has never, I believe, been reprinted in modern times, and is in consequence practically unknown to English readers.

The author, a descendant of the princely house of Correggio, was born about 1450, and married the daughter of the famous condottiere Bartolommeo Colleoni. He lived for some years at Milan at the court of Lodovico Sforza; later he migrated to that of the Estensi. In 1493 he sent an allegorical eclogue to Isabella Gonzaga at Mantua, which may possibly have been represented, though we have no note of the fact, and the poem itself has perished[[163]]. He died in 1508.

After a prologue which resembles that of the Orfeo in giving an argument of the whole piece, the first act opens with a scene in which Aurora seeks the love of Cefalo. Offended at finding her advances repulsed, the goddess hints that the wife to whom Cefalo is so careful of his faith is, for her part, more free of her favours; and upon Cefalo indignantly refusing credence to the slander, suggests that he should himself in disguise make trial of her fidelity. This the unfortunate youth resolves to do. He approaches Procri in the habit of a merchant, with goods for sale, and takes the opportunity thus afforded of declaring his love. She turns to fly, but the pretended passion of his suit stays her, and she is brought to lend an ear to his cunning. He retails the commonplaces of the despairing lover:

Deh, non fuggire, e non si altiera in vista;
Odime alquanto, e scolta i preghi mei.
Che fama mai per crudeltà se acquista?
Bellissima sei pur, cruda non dei.
Non sai che Amor non vol che se resista
A colpi soi? così vinto mi dei
Subito ch' io ti viddi; eh, non fuggire,
Forza non ti farò; deh, stammi audire.

Not Jove or Phoebus he to assume strange shapes for her love; he is but her slave, and can but offer his pedlar's pack; but he knows of hidden treasure in the earth, and hers, too, shall be vesture of the fairest. After gold and soft raiment comes the trump card of the seducer--secrecy:

Cosa secreta mai non se riprende;
El tempo che si perde mai non torna;
Qui non serai veduta, or che se attende
Quel se ha a dolere, che al suo ben sogiorna.
Secreto è il loco, el sol pur non vi splende;
Bella sei tu, sol manca che sii adorna
Di veste come io intendo ultra il tesoro.
Deh, non mi tener più; vedi ch' io moro.

She is almost won; one last assault, and her defences fall. Why, indeed, should she hesitate--

Poi ch' Amor dice, ogni secreta è casta?

This stroke of cynicism is put forward as it were but half intentionally, and with no appreciation of its intense irony in the mouth of the husband. Throughout the scene indeed he appears merely as a common seducer, and the author seems wholly to have failed to grasp the real dramatic value of the situation. On the other hand, the lesser art of the stage has been mastered with some success, and there is an adaptation of language to action which at least argues that the author had a vivid picture of the staging of his play in his mind when he wrote.

The moment Procri has consented to barter her honour, Cefalo discovers himself, and the unhappy girl flies in terror. Seeing now, too late, the resuit of his foolish mistrust, Cefalo follows with prayers and self-reproaches--

Son ben certo
Che tu mi cognoscesti ancor coperto--

but in vain. The act ends with a song in which Aurora glories in the success of her revenge--

Festegiam con tutto il core;
Biastemate hor meco Amore!

In the second act Procri, having recovered from her fright, is bent on avenging herself for the deceit practised by Cefalo, upon whose supposed love for Aurora she throws the blame in the matter. She seeks the grove of Diana, where she is enrolled among the followers of the goddess. Cefalo, who has followed her flight, rejoins her in the wood, and there renews his prayers. She refuses to recognize him, denies being his wife, and is about to renew her flight, when an old shepherd, attracted by Cefalo's lamentation, stays her and forces her to hear her husband's pleading. Other shepherds appear on the scene, and the act ends with an eclogue. In the next we find her reconciled to Cefalo, to whom she gives the wind-swift dog and the unerring spear which she had received as a nymph of Diana. Cefalo at once sets the hound upon the traces of a boar, and goes off in pursuit, while his wife returns home. He shortly reappears, having lost boar and hound alike, and, tired with the chase, falls asleep. Meanwhile a faun, finding Procri alone, tells her that he had seen Cefalo meeting with his love Aurora in the wood--a piece of news in return for which he seeks her love. She, however, resolves to go and surprise the supposed lovers, and setting fire to the wood, herself to perish with them in the flames. On Cefalo's return he is met with bitter reproaches, and the act ends with a chorus of fauns and satyrs. The fourth contains the catastrophe. Procri hides in the wood in hope of surprising her husband with his paramour. Cefalo enters ready for the chase, and, seeing what he takes to be a wild beast among bushes, throws the fatal spear, which pierces Procri's breast. A reconciliation precedes her death, and the close of the act is rendered effective by the successive summoning of the Muses and nymphs in some graceful stanzas. With a little polishing, such as Poliziano's bacchanalian chorus received in revision, the scene would not be unworthy of the time and place of its production.

Oimè sorelle, o Galatea, presto!
Donate al cervo ormai un poco pace;
Soccorrete al pianger quel caso mesto.
Oimè sorelle, Procri morta giace,
L' alma spirata, e il ciel guardando tace.

At Cefalo's desire Calliope summons her sister Muses, Phillis the nymphs, after which all join in a choral ode calling upon the divinities of mountain, wood, and stream to join in a universal lament:

Weep, spirits of the woods and of the hills,
Weep, each pure nymph beside her fountain-head,
And weep, ye mountains, in a thousand rills,
For the fair child who here below lies dead:
Mourn, all ye gods, the last of human ills,
Your sacred foreheads all ungarlanded.

Here the traditional story of Cephalus and Procris, as founded on the rather inferior version in the seventh book of the Metamorphoses, ends. There remains, however, a fifth act, in which Diana appears, raises Procri, and restores her to her husband.

The play, composed for the most part in octaves with choruses in terza rima, is, from the dramatic point of view, open to obvious and fatal objections. The preposterous dea ex machina of the last act; the inconsequence of motive and inconsistency of character, partly, it is true, inherent in the original story, but by no means made less obvious by the dramatist; the insufficiency of the action to fill the necessary space, and the inability of the author to make the most of his materials, are all alike patent. On the other hand, we have already noticed a certain theatrical ability displayed in the writing of the first act, and we may further attribute the alteration by which Procri is represented as jealous of Cefalo's original lover, Aurora, instead of the wholly imaginary Aura, as in Ovid, to a desire for dramatic unity of motive.

The extent to which either the Orfeo or Cefalo can be regarded as pastoral will now be clear, and it must be confessed that they do not carry us very far. The two fifteenth-century plays constitute a distinct species which has attained to a high degree of differentiation if not of dramatic evolution, and critics who would see in them the origin of the later pastoral drama have to explain the strange phenomenon of the species lying dormant for nearly three-quarters of a century, and then suddenly developing into an equally individualized but very dissimilar form[[164]]. It should, moreover, be borne in mind that contemporary critics never regarded the Arcadian pastoral as in any way connected with the mythological drama, and that the writers of pastoral themselves claimed no kinship with Poliziano or Correggio, but always ranked themselves as the followers of Beccari alone in the line of dramatic development. On the other hand, there can be no reasonable doubt that such performances went to accustom spectators to that mixture of mythology and idealism which forms the atmosphere, so to speak, of the Aminta and the Pastor fido. This must be my excuse for lingering over these early works.

II

When dealing with the Italian eclogue we saw how, at a certain point, it began to assume a distinctly dramatic character, and in so doing took the first step towards the possible evolution of a real pastoral drama. It will be my task in the ensuing pages to follow up this clue, and to show how the pastoral drama arose through a process of natural development from the recited eclogue.

The dramatic tendency was indeed inherent in the eclogue from the very first. Throughout there is a steady growth in the use of dialogue: of the Idyls of Theocritus only about a third contain more than one character; of Vergil's Bucolics at least half; of Calpurnius' all but one; of the eclogues of Petrarch and Boccaccio all without exception. This tendency did not escape Guarini, who, when not led into puerilities by his love of self-laudation, often shows considerable insight. 'The eclogue,' he says, 'is nothing but a short discussion between shepherds, differing in no other manner from that sort of scene which the Latins call dialogue, except in so far as being whole and independent, possessing within itself both beginning and end[[165]].'

Having thus gradually altered the literary form of the eclogue, this tendency towards dramatic expression next showed itself in the manner in which the poem was presented to the world. For circulation in print or manuscript, or for informal reading, came to be substituted recitation in character. The dialogue was divided between two persons who spoke alternately, and it is evident from the somewhat meagre texts that survive that, in the earliest examples, these ecloghe rappresentative, or dramatic eclogues as I shall call them, differed in no way from the purely literary productions which we considered in an earlier section. Evidence of actual representation is often wanting, and the exact date in most cases is uncertain; but, since there is no doubt that such performances actually did take place, we are not only justified in assuming that several poems of the period belong to this class, but we can also, on internai evidence, arrange them more or less in a natural sequence of dramatic development. One such eclogue has come down to us from the pen of Baldassare Taccone, a Genoese who also wrote mythological plays on the subjects of Danaë and Actaeon. Another, interesting as dealing with the corruption of the Curia at a moment when its scandalous traffic was carried on in the light of day with more than usually cynical indifference, was actually presented at Rome under the patronage of Cardinal Giovanni Colonna at the carnival of 1490, during the pontificate of Innocent VIII. Gradually a more complex form was evolved, the number of speakers was increased, and some of these made their entrance during the progress of the recitation. So too in the matter of metrical form, the strict terza rima of the earlier examples came to be diversified with rime sdrucciole, and by being intermingled with verses with internal rime, with ottava rima, settenarî couplets, and lyrical measures. Castiglione's representation at Urbino has been noticed previously. Among similar productions may be mentioned two poems by a certain Caperano of Faenza, printed in 1508, while others are found at Siena in 1517 and 1523. Besides the texts that are extant we also have record of a good many which have perished. In 1493 the representation of eclogues formed part of the revels prepared by Alexander VI for the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia with Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, and this was again the case when, having been divorced from Giovanni, and her second husband having perished by the assassin's dagger, she finally in 1502 became the wife of Alfonso d'Este, heir to the duchy of Ferrara. Eclogues were again represented at Ferrara in 1508, and received specific mention among the dramatic performances dealt with by the laws of Venice.

We thus see that the eclogue had every opportunity of developing into a regular dramatic form. At this point a variety of external influences made themselves felt, which facilitated or modified its growth. Perhaps foremost among these should be reckoned that of the 'regular' drama--that is of the drama based upon an imitation of the classics, chiefly of the Latin authors. The conception of dramatic art which was in men's minds at the time naturally and inevitably influenced the development of a form of poem which was daily becoming more sensibly dramatic. Next there was the influence of the mythological drama embodying the romantic and ideal elements of classical myth, but in form representing the tradition of the old religious plays. This led to the occasional introduction of supernatural characters, counteracted the rationalizing influence of the Roman dramatists, and supplied the pastoral with its peculiar imaginative atmosphere. Lastly, there was the 'rustic' influence, which was at no time very strong, and left no mark upon the form as finally evolved, but which has nevertheless to be taken into account in tracing the process of development. The influence exercised by burlesque and realistic scenes from real life cannot have been brought to bear on the eclogue until it had already attained to a dramatic character of some complexity. The earliest text of the kind we possess dates from 1508, and it is doubtful whether or not it was acted. In 1513 we have record of a rustic performance at the Capitol, and a satyrical and allegorical piece of like nature, and belonging to the same year, is actually preserved, as is also one in Bellunese dialect. These shows became the special characteristic of the Rozzi society at Siena, in whose hands they soon developed into short realistic farces of low life, composed in dialectal verse and acted by members of the society at many of the courts of Italy. The fashion, though never widely spread, survived for many years, the most famous author of such pieces being Michelangelo Buonarroti the younger at the beginning of the next century.

These drammi rusticali, as they were called, may not improbably have owed their origin to the fashion of rustic composition set by Lorenzo de' Medici in his Nencia, and may thus in their origin have been related to the courtly eclogue; but the subsequent development of the kind is at most parallel to that of the pastoral drama, and should not be regarded either as the origin or as a subdivision of this latter. Nor did the rustic compositions exercise any permanent influence on the pastoral drama; the most that can be said is that an occasional text shows signs of being affected by the low vulgarity of the kind.

Returning to the polite eclogues, we soon find an increase in the dramatic complexity of the form. Tansillo's Due pellegrini, which cannot be later than 1528, contains the rudiments of a plot, two lovers bent on suicide being persuaded by a miraculous voice to become reconciled with the world and life. Poetic justice befalls the two nymphs in an eclogue by Luca di Lorenzo, printed in 1530, the disdainful Diversa being condemned to love the boor Fantasia, while Euridice's loving disposition is rewarded by the devotion of Orindio.

We now come to what may almost be regarded as the first conscious attempt to write a pastoral play--an attempt, however, which met with but partial success. This is the Amaranta, a 'Comedia nuova pastorale' by Giambattista Casalio of Faenza, which most probably belongs to a date somewhat before 1538. In it the mutual love of Partenio and Amaranta is thwarted by the girl's mother Celia, who destines her for a goatherd. Partenio is led to believe that his love has played him false, while in her turn Amaranta supposes herself forsaken. The two meet, however, at the hut of a wise nymph Lucina, through whose intervention they are reconciled and their union effected. The piece, which attains to some proportions, is divided into five acts, and, while owing a certain debt to the Orfeo, is itself pastoral in character with occasional coarse touches borrowed from the rustic shows. It is in the Amaranta that we first meet with an attempt to introduce a real plot of some human interest into a purely pastoral composition; we are no longer dealing with a merely occasional piece written in celebration of some special person or festivity, no longer with a mythological masque or pageant, nor with an amorous allegory, but with a piece the interest of which, slight as it is, lies in the fate of the characters involved.

The fifteen years or so which separate the work of Casalio from that of Beccari saw the production of a succession of more or less pastoral works which serve, to some extent at least, to bridge over the gap which separates even the most elaborate of the above compositions from the recognized appearance of the fully-developed pastoral drama in the Sacrifizio. The chief characteristic which marks the work of these years is a tendency to deliberate experiment. The writers appear to have been conscious that their work was striving towards a form which had not yet been achieved, though they were themselves vague as to what that form might be. Epicuro's Mirzia tends towards the mythological drama; the Silvia written by one Fileno, which, like the Amaranta, turns on the temporary estrangement of two lovers, introduces considerable elements from the rustic performances; in Cazza's Erbusto the amorous skein is cut by the discovery of consanguinity and an ἀναγνώρισις after the manner of the Latin comedy. Similar in plot to this last is a fragmentary pastoral of Giraldi Cintio's published from manuscript by Signor Carducci. Another curious but isolated experiment is Cintio's Egle, in intent a revival of the 'satyric' drama of the Greeks, in substance a dramatization of the motive of Sannazzaro's Salices. In one sense these experiments ended in failure; it was not through the elaboration of mythological or superhuman elements, nor through the humour of burlesque or realistic rusticity, nor yet through the violence of unexpected discoveries, that the destined form of the pastoral drama was to be attained. On the other hand, they undoubtedly served to introduce an elaboration of plot and complexity of dramatic structure which is altogether lacking in the earlier eclogues and masques, but without which the work of Tasso and Guarini could never have occupied the commanding position that it does in the history of literature. They carry us forward to the point at which the pastoral drama took its shape and being.

Of the elements compounded of pastoral idealism and the graceful purity of classical myth, and combining the scenic attractions of the masque with the reasoned action and human interest of the regular drama, the Arcadian pastoral first achieved definite form in the work of Agostino Beccari. His Sacrifizio, styled 'favola pastorale' on the title-page of the first impression, was acted at the palace of Francesco d' Este at Ferrara in the presence of Ercole II and his son Luigi, and of the Duchess Renata and her daughters Lucrezia and Leonora, on two occasions in February and March 1554. The piece was revived more than thirty years later, namely in 1587, when the courtly world was already familiar with Tasso's masterpiece, and was ringing with the prospective fame of the Pastor fido, and represented both at Sassuolo and Ferrara.

The action involves three pairs of lovers. Turico loves Stellinia in spite of the fact that she has transferred her affections to Erasto. Erasto in his turn pays his homage to Callinome, the type of the 'careless' shepherdess, a nymph vowed to the service of Diana. There remains Carpalio, whose love for Melidia is secretly returned; its consummation being prevented by the girl's brother Pimonio, who refuses to countenance the match, and keeps dragon guard over his sister. In the meanwhile shepherds and shepherdesses assemble to honour the festival and sacrifice of Pan, which proves the occasion for the unravelling of the amorous tangle. Stellinia, wishing to rid herself of her rival in Erasto's love, induces Callinome so far to break her vestal vow as to be present at the forbidden feast. Here she is promptly detected by the offended goddess and sentenced to do battle against one of the fiercest of the Erymanthian boars. Erasto comes to her aid with a magic ointment, which has the power of rendering the user invisible, and with the help of which she achieves her task unharmed. Out of gratitude she rewards her preserver with her love. Not only is Stellinia thus condemned to witness the failure of her plot, but she is herself carried off by a satyr, who endeavours to deceive each of the nymphs in turn. Being rescued from his power by the faithful Turico, she too capitulates to love. Lastly, in the absence of Pimonio, who has gone to be present at the games held at the festival, Carpalio and Melidia pluck the fruit of love, and are saved from the anger of the brother through his conveniently falling into an enchanted lake whence he emerges in the shape of a boar.

In the prologue the author boldly announces the novelty of his work--

Una favola nova pastorale
............nova in tanto
Ch' altra non fu giammai forse più udita
Di questa sorte recitarsi in scena.

Guarini, who is said to have supplied a prologue for the revival of the piece, bore out Beccari's claim when he wrote in his essay on tragi-comedy: 'First among the moderns to possess the happy boldness to make in this kind, namely the pastoral dramatic tale, of which there is no trace among the ancients, was Agostin de' Beccari, a worthy citizen of Ferrara, to whom alone does the world owe the fair creation of this sort of poem[[166]].'

Several pieces of no great interest or importance serve to fill the decade or so following on the production of Beccari's play. Groto, known as the Cieco d' Adria, combined the mythological motive with much of the vulgar obscenity of the Latin comedy. Lollio also produced a hybrid of an earlier type in his Aretusa. In 1567 a return was made to the pastoral tradition of Beccari in Agostino Argenti's play Lo Sfortunato. Among the spectators who witnessed the first performance of this piece before Duke Alfonso and his court at Ferrara was a youth of twenty-two, lately attached to the household of the Cardinal Luigi d' Este. In all probability this was Tasso's first introduction to a style of composition which not many years later he was to make famous throughout Europe. The play he witnessed on that occasion, however, was no work of surpassing genius. It cannot, indeed, be said to mark any decided advance on Beccari's work except in so far, perhaps, as it at times foreshadows the somewhat sickly sentiment of later pastorals, including Tasso's own. The shepherd Sfortunato loves Dafne, Dafne loves Iacinto, who in his turn pursues Flaminia, while she loves only Silvio, who loves himself. Nothing particular happens till the fourth scene of Act III. Then Silvio, tired of being the last link in the chain of love, devises a plan for placing Flaminia and Dafne in the power of their respective lovers. Flaminia, assailed by Iacinto, makes up her mind to bow to fate, and accepts with a good grace the love it is no longer in her power to fly. Sfortunato, on the other hand, rather than offend his mistress, allows her to depart unharmed, and since he thereby forgoes his only chance of enjoying the object of his passion, determines to die. His vow is overheard by Dafne, who, seeing that her love for Iacinto may no more avail, at last relents. A third nymph, introduced to make the numbers even, takes the veil among the followers of Diana, and so lives the object of Silvio's chaste regard. It will be readily seen how in the character of Sfortunato we have the forerunner of Tasso's Aminta; but it will also appear what poor use has been made of the situation. The truth is that we have up to now been dealing merely with origins, with productions which are of interest only in the reflected light of later work; whatever there is of real beauty and of permanent value in the pastoral drama of Italy is due to the breath of life inspired into the phantasms of earlier writers by the genius of Tasso and Guarini.

III

We have now followed the dramatic pastoral from its obscure origin in the eclogue to the eve of its assuming a recognized and abiding position in the literature of Europe[[167]]. But if it is in a measure easy thus to trace back the Arcadian drama to its historical sources, and to show how the Aminta came to be possible, it is not so easy to show how it came to be actual. All creative work is the outcome of three fashioning forces, the historical position, the personal circumstances of the artist, and his individual genius. The pastoral drama had reached what I may perhaps be allowed to call the 'psychological point' in its development. At the same moment it happened that Tasso, having returned from a fruitless and uncongenial mission to the Valois court, enjoyed a brief period of calm and prosperity in the congenial society of Leonora d' Este, before the critical bickerings to which he exposed himself in connexion with the Gerusalemme wrought havoc with an already over-sensitive and overstrained temperament. Furthermore it happened that he brought to the spontaneous composition of his courtly toy just that touch of languorous beauty, that soft vein of sentiment, which formed perhaps his most characteristic contribution to the artistic tone of his age, veiling a novel mood in his favourite phrase, un non so che[[168]]. Had all this not been, had not the fortune of a suitable genius and the chance of personal surroundings jumped with the historical possibility, we might indeed have had any number of lifeless 'Sacrifices' and 'Unhappy Ones,' but Italy would have added no new kind to the forms of dramatic art. Had it not been for the Aminta, the pastoral drama must almost necessarily have been stillborn, for Guarini was too much of a pedant to do more than to imitate and enlarge, while other writers belong to the decline.

The Aminta, while possessing a delicate dramatic structure of its own, yet retains not a little of the simplicity of the ecloga rappresentativa. Indeed, it is worth noting, alike on account of this quality in the poem itself as also of its literary ancestry, that, in a letter written within a year of its original production, Tiburio Almerici speaks of it by the old name of eclogue[[169]]. Referring to its representation at Urbino, he writes: 'Il terzo spettacolo, che si è goduto questo carnovale, è stato un' egloga del Tasso, che fu recitata questo giovedì passato da alcuni gioveni d' Urbino nella sala, che fu fatta per la venuta delia Principessa.' The princess in question was none other than Lucrezia d' Este, who had lately become the wife of Tasso's former companion Francesco Maria della Rovere, now Duke of Urbino, and who with her sister Leonora, the heroine of the Tasso legend, had, it will be remembered, stood sponsor to Beccari's play nearly twenty years before. The representation at Urbino to which Almerici alludes was not of course the first. Written in the winter of 1572-3 during the absence of Duke Alfonso, the piece was acted after his return from Rome in the summer of the latter year. Ferrara, as we have seen, had become and was long destined to remain the special home of the pastoral drama in Italy. Here on July 31, in the palace of Belvedere, built on an island in the Po, the court of the Estensi assembled to witness the production of Tasso's play[[170]]. The staging, both on this and on subsequent occasions, was no doubt answerable to the nature of the piece, and added the splendour of the masque to the classic grace of the fable. Almerici remarks on the special attractions for spectators and auditors alike of what he calls 'la novità del coro fra ciascuno atto,' by which he clearly meant the spectacular interludes known as intermedî, the verses for which are commonly printed at the end of the play[[171]]. But the representation which struck the imagination of contemporaries was that before the Grand Duke Ferdinand at Florence. This took place in 1590[[172]]. Guarini's play had in its turn won renown far beyond the frontiers of Italy, while the author of the Aminta, a yet attractive but impossible madman, was destined for the few remaining years of his life to drag his tale of woes and but too often his rags from one Italian court to another, ere he sank at last exhausted where S. Onofrio overlooks St. Peter's dome.

The structure of the play is not free from a good deal of stiffness and artificiality, which it bequeathed to its successors. It borrowed from the classical drama a chorus, on the whole less Greek than Latin, the use of confidants, and the introduction of messengers and descriptive passages. These last, it may be noted, are deliberately and wantonly classical, not merely necessitated by the exigencies of the action, difficult of representation as in the attempted suicide of Aminta, impossible as in the rescue of Silvia from the satyr, but resorted to in order to veil the dramatic weakness of the author's imagination, as is plain from the description of the final meeting of the lovers. Yet it may be freely admitted that to this device, the substitution namely of narrative for action, we owe most of the finest poetic passages of the play: the description of the youthful loves of Aminta and Silvia and the former's ruse to win a kiss, the picture of Silvia bound to the tree by the pool, Tirsi's account of the court, the description of Silvia at the spring--one of the most elaborate in the piece--the account of her escape from the wolves, last but not least that description of Silvia finding the unconscious Aminta, so full of subtle and effeminate seduction, prophetic of a later age of morals and of taste:

Ma come Silvia il riconobbe, e vide
Le belle guance tenere d' Aminta
Iscolorite in sì leggiadri modi,
Che viola non è che impallidisca
Si dolcemente, e lui languir sì fatto,
Che parea già negli ultimi sospiri
Esalar l'alma; in guisa di Baccante
Gridando, e percotendosi il bel petto,
Lasciò cadersi in sul giacente corpo,
E giunse viso a viso, e bocca a bocca. (V. i.)

So too the chorus, though awkward enough from a dramatic point of view and in so far as it fulfils any dramatic purpose, offers a sufficient justification for its existence in the magnificent ode on 'honour,' that rapturous song of the golden age of love, the poetic supremacy of which has never been questioned, whatever may have been thought of its ethical significance. To that aspect we shall return later. At present it will be well to give some more or less detailed account of the action of the piece itself.

The shepherd Aminta loves Silvia, formerly as a child his playmate and companion, now a huntress devoted to the service of Diana, proud in her virginity and unfettered state. The play opens in a sufficiently conventional manner, but wrought with sparkling verse, with two companion scenes. In the first of these Silvia brushes aside the importunities of her confidant Dafne who seeks to allure her to the blandishments of love with sententious natural examples and modern instances.

Cangia, cangia consiglio,
Pazzerella che sei,
Che il pentirsi dassezzo nulla giova;

such is the burden of her song, or yet again, recalling the golden days of love she too of yore had wasted:

Il mondo invecchia
E invecchiando intristisce.

Words of profound melancholy these, uttered in the days of the burnt-out fires of the renaissance. But all this moves not Silvia, nymph of the woods and of the chase, and, if she is indeed as fancy-free as she would have us believe, her lover may even console himself with the reflection that

If of herself she will not love,
Nothing will make her--
The devil take her!

She has, after all, every right to the position. The next scene introduces Aminta and his friend Tirsi, to whom he reveals the object and the history of his love. Translated into bald prose, his confession has no very great interest, but it opens with one of those exquisitely pencilled sketches that lie scattered throughout the play.

All' ombra d' un bel faggio Silvia e Filli
Sedean un giorno, ed io con loro insieme;
Quando un' ape ingegnosa, che cogliendo
Sen giva il mel per que' prati fioriti,
Alle guance di Fillide volando,
Alle guance vermiglie come rosa,
Le morse e le rimorse avidamente;
Ch' alla similitudine ingannata
Forse un fior le credette.

Silvia heals the hurt by whispering over it a charm; and the whole description is instinct with that delicate, soft sentiment of Tasso's which almost, though never quite, sinks into sentimentality. Aminta feigns to have been stung on the lip, and begs Silvia to heal the hurt.

La semplicetta Silvia,
Pietosa del mio male,
S' offrì di dar aita
Alla finta ferita, ahi lasso! e fece
Più cupa e più mortale
La mia piaga verace,
Quando le labbra sue
Giunse alle labbra mie.

It is easy to argue that this is childish, that it mattered no whit though they kissed from now to doomsday. But only the reader who cannot feel its beauty is safe from the enervating narcotic of Tasso's style.

The first scene of the second act introduces a new character, the satyr, type of brute nature in the artificially polished Arcadia of courtly shepherds. He inherits no savoury character from his literary predecessors, and he is content to play to the rôle. His monologue may be passed over; it and still more the next scene serve to measure the cynical indelicacy of feeling which was tolerated in the Italian courts. It is a quality wholly different from the mere coarseness exhibited in the English drama under Elizabeth and James, but it is one which will astonish no one who has looked on the dramatic reflection of Italian society in the scenes of the Mandragola. The satyr is succeeded on the stage by the confidants Dafne and Tirsi in consultation as to the means of bringing about an understanding between Aminta and Silvia. The scene is characterized by those caustic reflections on women which serve to balance the extravagant iciness of the 'careless' nymphs and became a commonplace of the pastoral drama.

Or, non sai tu com' è fatta la donna?
Fugge, e fuggendo vuol ch' altri la giunga;
Niega, e negando vuol ch' altri si toglia;
Pugna, e pugnando vuol ch' altri la vinca.

Listening to the deliberations of these two, it cannot but strike us that in spite of their polished speech the straightforward London stage would have hesitated but little to bestow on them the names they deserve, and which it were yet scarce honest to have here set down. We pass on, and, whatever may be said regarding the moral atmosphere of the rest of the play, we shall not again have to make complaint of the corruption of manners assumed in the situation. In the following scene Tirsi undertakes the difficult task of inducing Aminta to intrude upon Silvia, where she is said to be alone at the spring preparing for the chase. It is only by hinting that Silvia has secretly instructed Dafne to arrange the tryst that he in the end succeeds in persuading the bashful lover to risk the displeasure of his mistress.

At the opening of Act III Tirsi enters lamenting in bitter terms the cruelty of Silvia. Interrogated by the chorus, he relates how, as he and Aminta approached the spring where Silvia was bathing, they heard a cry and, hastening to the spot, found the nymph bound hand and foot to a tree, and confronting her the satyr. At their approach the monster fled, and Aminta released the nymph, who ignuda come nacque at once took flight, leaving her lover in despair. In the meanwhile Aminta has sought to kill himself with his own spear, but has been prevented by Dafne, and the two now enter. At this moment too comes Nerina, one of the 'messengers' of the piece, with the news that Silvia has been slain while pursuing a wolf in the forest. Thereupon Aminta, with a last reproach to Dafne for having prevented him from putting an end to his miserable life before being the recipient of such direful news, rushes off the scene at a pace to mock pursuit. In the next act, however, Silvia reappears and narrates her escape. Here we arrive at the dramatic climax of the play. Dafne expresses her fear that the false report of Silvia's death may indeed prove the death of Aminta. The nymph at first shows herself incredulous, but on learning that he had already once sought death on her account she wavers and owns to pity if not to love--

Oh potess' io
Con l' amor mio comprar la vita sua,
Anzi pur con la mia la vita sua,
S' egli è pur morto!

Hereupon Ergasto enters with the news that Aminta has thrown himself from a cliff, and Silvia, now completely overcome, goes off with the intention of dying on the body of her dead lover.

The shortness, as well as the dramatic weakness, of the fifth act is conspicuous even in proportion to the modest limits of the whole. It runs to less than one hundred and fifty lines, and merely relates how Aminta's fall was broken, how Silvia's love awoke, and all ended happily. The most significant passage, that namely which describes Aminta being called back to life in Silvia's arms, has been already quoted. He revives unharmed, and the lovers,

Alike in age, in generous birth alike
And mutual desires,

gather in love the fruits which they have sown in weeping.

It is worth while quoting the final chorus in witness of the spirit of half bantering humour in which the whole was conceived even by the serious Tasso, a spirit we unfortunately too often seek in vain among his followers.

Non so se il molto amaro
Che provato ha costui servendo, amando,
Piangendo e disperando,
Raddolcito esser puote pienamente
D' alcun dolce presente:
Ma, se più caro viene
E più si gusta dopo 'l male il bene,
Io non ti chieggio, Amore,
Questa beatitudine maggiore:
Bea pur gli altri in tal guisa;
Me la mia ninfa accoglia
Dopo brevi preghiere e servir breve:
E siano i condimenti
Delle nostre dolcezze
Non sì gravi tormenti,
Ma soavi disdegni,
E soavi ripulse,
Risse e guerre a cui segua,
Reintegrando i cori, o pace o tregua.

It is with these words that the author leaves his graceful fantasy; and such, we have perhaps the right to assume, was the spirit in which the whole was composed. Were any one to object to our seeking to analyse the quality of the piece, arguing that to do so were to break a butterfly upon the wheel, much might reasonably be said in support of his view. Nevertheless, when a work of art, however delicate and slender, has received the homage of generations, and influenced cultivated taste for centuries, and in widely different countries, we have a right to inquire whereon its supremacy is based, and what the nature of its influence has been.

With the sources from which Tasso drew the various elements of his plot we need have little to do. The child-love of Silvia and Aminta is of the stuff of Daphnis and Chloe; the ruse by which the kiss is obtained is borrowed from Achilles Tatius; the compliment to the court of the Estensi is after the manner of Vergil, or of Castiglione, or of Ariosto, or of any other of the allegorical eclogists of whom Vergil was the first; the germ of the golden-age chorus is to be found in the elegies of Tibullus (II. iii); the character of the satyr belongs to tradition; the rent veil of Silvia reminds us of that of Ovid's Thisbe (Met. IV. 55). The language too is reminiscent. The finest lines in the play--

Amiam: che 'l sol si muore, e poi rinasce;
A noi sua breve luce
S' asconde, e 'l sonno eterna notte adduce--(Coro I.)

belong to Catullus:

Viuamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus;...
soles occidere et redire possunt;
nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda. (Carm. V.)

The words in which Amore describes himself in the prologue--

non mica un dio
Selvaggio, o della plebe degli dei,
Ma tra' grandi celesti il più possente--

recall Ovid's lines:

nec de plebe deo, sed qui caelestia magna
sceptra manu teneo. (Met. I. 595.)

Again, the line:

Dove la costa face di sè grembo;

which occurs alike in the play (V. i.) and in the Purgatorio (VII. 68), supplies evidence, as do similar borrowings in the Gerusalemme, of Tasso's study of Dante.

The prologue introduces Amore in pastoral disguise, escaped from the care of his mother, who would confine his activity to the Courts, and intent on loosing his shafts among the nymphs and shepherds of Arcadia. In the form of this prologue, which became the model for subsequent pastoral writers in Italy[[173]], and in the heavenly descent of the principal characters, we may see the influence of the mythological play; while the substance both of the prologue and of the epilogue, or Amore fuggitivo, in which Venus comes to seek her runaway among the ladies and gallants of the court, is of course borrowed from the famous first idyl of Moschus. Again the topical element is not absent, though it is less prominent than some of the earlier work might lead us to expect. In the poet Tirsi--

allor ch' ardendo
Forsennato egli errò per le foreste
Sì, ch' insieme movea pietate e riso
Nelle vezzose ninfe e ne' pastori;
Nè già cose scrivea digne di riso,
Sebben cose facea digne di riso--(I. i.)

we may, of course, see the poet himself. In Batto too, mentioned together with Tirsi, it is not unreasonable to recognize Battisto Guarini, whom at that time Tasso might still regard as his friend. Again, it is usual to identify Elpino with Giovanbattista Pigna, secretary of state at the Estense court, and one with whom, though no friend of the poet's, it was yet to his advantage to stand well. The flattery bestowed is not a little fulsome:

Or non rammenti
Ciò che l' altrieri Elpino raccontava,
Il saggio Elpino a la bella Licori,
Licori che in Elpin puote cogli occhi
Quel ch' ei potere in lei dovria col canto,
Se 'l dovere in amor si ritrovasse;
E 'l raccontava udendo Batto e Tirsi,
Gran maestri d' amore; e 'l raccontava
Nell' antro dell' Aurora, ove sull' uscio
È scritto: Lungi, ah lungi ite, profani?
Diceva egli, e diceva che gliel disse
Quel grande che cantò l' armi e gli amori,
Ch' a lui lasciò la fistola morendo;
Che laggiù nello 'nferno è un nero speco,
Là dove esala un fumo pien di puzza
Dalle tristi fornaci d' Acheronte;
E che quivi punite eternamente
In tormenti di tenebre e di pianto
Son le femmine ingrate e sconoscenti. (I. i.)

He who sang of arms and love is of course Ariosto--

Le donne, i cavalier, l' arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, l' audaci imprese io canto--

from whom Tasso borrows the above description of the reward awaiting ungrateful women, as also the fiction of the tell-tale walls and chairs in Mopso's account of the court (I. ii). And this Elpino, whose pipe elsewhere

correr fa di puro latte i fiumi
E stillar melle dalle dure scorze, (III. i.)

later becomes the Alete of the Gerusalemme,

Gran fabbro di calunnie adorne in modi
Novi che sono accuse e paion lodi. (II. 58.)

His flattery had not shielded the unhappy poet against the ill-will of the minister[[174]].

Again, the picture drawn by Tirsi of the ideal court (I. ii.) is a glowing compliment to that of the Estensi and to Duke Alfonso himself. It is contrasted with the usual pastoral denunciation of court and city put into the mouth of the pretended augur Mopso. In this character it has been customary to see Sperone Speroni, who later accused Tasso of plagiarizing him in the Gerusalemme, and was the first to apply the ominous word 'madman' to the unfortunate poet. To Speroni's play Canace Tasso may have been indebted for the free measures with which he diversified his blank verse, as likewise for the line:

Pianti, sospiri e dimandar mercede;[[175]]

though it must not be supposed that there is any resemblance in style between the Aminta and Speroni's revolting and frigid declamation of butchery and lust. Nor did the debt pass unnoticed. In 1585 Guarini, who had long since parted with the sinking ship of the younger poet's friendship, was ready to flatter Speroni with the declaration 'che tanto di leggiadria è sempre paruto a me, che abbia nell' Aminta suo conseguito Torquato Tasso, quant' egli fù imitatore della Canace[[176]].'

Lastly, in the hopeless suit of Aminta to Silvia, criticism has not failed to see a reference to the supposed relation between Tasso and Leonora d' Este. That Tasso, who in his overwrought imagination no doubt harboured a sentimental regard for the princess, was conscious of the parallel is in some degree probable; that he should have identified his creation with himself is, in view of the solution of the dramatic situation, utterly impossible. Indeed, it would perhaps not be extravagant to suppose that his care to identify himself with Aminta's confidant may have been an unusual but not untimely piece of caution on his part, to prevent poisoned gossip connecting him too closely with his hero.

The question of the influence of the Aminta on later works and on European thought generally opens up large and difficult issues. It is one of those works which we are not justified in treating from the purely literary point of view. If we wish to see it in its relation to contemporary society, and to estimate its influence upon subsequent literature, we cannot afford to neglect its ethical bearings. This inquiry must necessarily lead us beyond the sphere of literary criticism proper, but it is a task which one who has undertaken to give an account of pastoral literature has no right to shirk.

The central motive of the piece is the struggle between the feverish passion of Aminta and the virginal coldness of Silvia. Of this motive and of the manner in which it is treated it is not altogether easy to speak, and this less from any inherent element in the subject or from the difficulty of accurately apprehending the peculiarities of sentiment proper to former ages, than from the readiness of all ages alike to accept in such matters the counterfeit coin of conventional protestation for the sterling reticence of natural delicacy. No doubt this tendency has been aided by the fact that the secrets of a girl's heart, whatever may be their true dramatic value, form an unsuitable and ineffective subject for declamation. The difficulties must not, however, be allowed to weigh against the importance of coming to a clear understanding as to the true nature of this non so che of false sentiment, of which it would hardly be too much to affirm that it made the fortune of the pastoral in aristocratic Italy on the one hand, and proved its ruin in middle-class London on the other.

To Tasso is due that assumption of extravagant and conventional pudor which forms one of the most abiding features of the pastoral drama. To censure an exaggeration of the charm of modesty on the threshold of the seicento, or to object a strained sense of chastity against the author of the golden-age chorus, may indeed seem strange; but, as with Fletcher at a later date, the very extravagance of the paradox may supply us with the key to its solution.

The falsity of Tasso's position is evinced partly in the main action of the drama, partly in the commentary supplied by the minor personages. The character of Aminta himself is unimportant in this respect; when we have described him as effeminate, sickly, and over-refined, we have said all that is necessary in view of the position he occupies with regard to Silvia. She, we are given to understand, is the type of the 'careless' shepherdess, the unspotted nymph of Diana[[177]], rejoicing in the chase alone, and importuned by the love of Aminta, which she neither reciprocates nor understands, and of the genuineness of which she shows herself, indeed, not a little sceptical. If, however, she is as careless as she appears, her conversion is certainly most sudden. The picture, moreover, drawn by Dafne of Silvia coquetting with her shadow in the pool, though possibly coloured by malice, supplies a sufficient hint of the true state of the girl's fancy. She is in truth such a Chloe of innocence as might spring up in the rank soil of a petty Italian court infected with post-Tridentine morality. Were she indeed careless of Aminta's devotion we could easily sympathize with her when she brushes aside Dafne's importunity with the words:

Faccia Aminta di sè e de' suoi amori
Quel ch' a lui piace; a me nulla ne cale. (I. i.)

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

Odio il suo amore
Ch' odia la mia onestate; (Ib.)

and again:

In questa guisa gradirei ciascuno
Insidiator di mia virginitate,
Che tu dimandi amante, ed io nemico. (Ib.)

Silvia here conjoins the unwholesome medieval ideal of virginity with the corrupt spectre of renaissance 'honour'--

quel vano
Nome senza soggetto,
Quell' idolo d' errori, idol d' inganno[[178]], (Coro I.)

as Tasso himself styled it--that conventional mask so bitterly contrasted with the natural goodness of the age of gold[[179]].

The general conception of love and its attendant emotions that permeates the work and vitiates so many of its descendants appears yet more glaringly characterized in some of the minor personages. On these it is not my intention to dwell. Of Dafne and Tirsi, that is, be it remembered, Tasso's self, I have spoken, however briefly, yet at sufficient length already. Suffice it to add here that Dafne's suggestion, that modesty is commonly but a veil for lust, is nothing more than the cynical expression of the attitude adopted throughout the play. Love is no ideal and idealizing emotion, but a mere gratification of the senses--a luxuria scarcely distinguishable from gula. Ignorance can alone explain an attitude of indifference towards its pleasures. The girl who does not care to embrace opportunity is no better than a child--'Fanciulla tanto sciocca, quanto bella,' as Dafne says. So, again, there is nothing ennobling in the devotion of the hero, nothing elevating in his fidelity. All the mysticism, all the ideality, of the early days of the renaissance have long since disappeared, and chivalrous feeling, that last lingering glory of the middle age, is dead.

We are, indeed, justified in regarding what I may term the degeneration of sexual feeling in the Aminta as to a great extent the negation of chivalrous love, for, even apart from the allegorizing mysticism of Dante, that love contained its ennobling elements. And yet, strangely enough, not a little of the convention at least of chivalrous love survives in the debased Arcadian love of the sentimental pastoral. Both alike are primarily of an animal nature, and this in a sense other than that in which physical love may be said to form an element in all natural relation between man and woman. Again, in both we find the rational machinery by which love shall be rewarded. The lover serves his apprenticeship, either with deeds of arms or with sighs and sonnets, and the credit of the mistress is light who refuses to reward him for his service. The System assumes neither choice, nor passion, nor pleasure on her part. Her act is regarded in the cold light of a calculated payment, undisguised by any joy of passionate surrender. But whereas in the outgrowth of feudalism, in the chivalry of the middle ages, this system formed the great incentive to martial daring, whereas when idealized in Beatrice it became almost undistinguishable from the ferveurs of religion, we find it with Tasso sinking into a weak and mawkish sensuality. More than any other sentimentalist Tasso justified his title by 'fiddling harmonics on the strings of sensualism,' and it may be added that the ear is constantly catching the fundamental note.

The foregoing remarks appeared necessary in order to understand the subsequent history of the dramatic pastoral as well as the conditions under which it took form and being, but they have led us far beyond the limits of literary criticism proper. The next characteristic of the play to be considered is one which, while possessing an important ethical bearing, is also closely connected with the aesthetic composition. I refer to the peculiar, not sensual but sensuous, nature of the beauty. The effect produced by the descriptions, by the suggestions, by the general tone, by the subtle modulations of the verse in adaptation to its theme, is less one of literary and intellectual than of direct emotional perception, producing the immediate physical impression of an actual presence. The beauty has a subtle enervating charm, languid and voluptuous, at the same time as clear and limpid in tone. The effect produced is one and whole, that of a perfect work of art, and the same impression remains with us afterwards. Smooth limbs, soft and white, that shine through the waters of the spring and amid the jewelled spray, or half revealed among the thickets of lustrous green, a slant ray of sunlight athwart the loosened gold of the hair--the vision floats before us as if conjured up by the strains of music rather than by actual words. This kinship with another art did not escape so acute a critic as Symonds as a characteristic of Tasso's style. But the kinship on another side with the art of painting is equally close; a thousand pictures rise before us as we follow the perfect melody of the irregular lyric measures. The white veil fluttering and the swift feet flashing amid the brambles and the trailing creepers of the wood, bright crimson staining the spotless purity of the flying skirts as the huntress bursts through the clinging tangles that seek to hold her as if jealous of a human love, the lusty strength of the bronzed and hairy satyr in contrast with the tender limbs of the captive nymph, the dark cliff, and the still mirror of the lake reflecting the rosebuds pressed artfully against the girl's soft neck as she crouches by its brink,

Backed by the forest, circled by the flowers,
Bathed in the sunshine of the golden hours,

the armed huntress, the grey-coated wolves, and the white-robed chorus--here are a series of pictures of seductive beauty for the brush of a painter to realize upon the walls of some palace of pleasure.

The Aminta attained a wide popularity even before the appearance of the first edition from the Aldine house at Venice early in 1581--the epistle is dated 1580. The printer of the Ferrarese edition of the same year remarks: 'Tosto che la Fama ... mi rapportò, che in Venetia si stampava l' Aminta, ... così subito pensai, che quella sola Impressione dovesse essere ben poca per sodisfattione di tanti virtuosi, che sono desiderosi di vederla alla luce.' A critical edition was prepared at Paris in the middle of the following century by Egidio Menagio of the Accademia della Crusca, and dedicated to Maria della Vergna, better known, under her married name of Madame de la Fayette, as the author of the Princesse de Clèves[[180]]. In 1693 the play was attacked by Bartolomeo Ceva Grimaldi, Duke of Telese, in an address read before the Accademia degli Uniti at Naples[[181]]. He was answered before the same society by Francesco Baldassare Paglia, and in 1700 appeared Giusto Fontanini's elaborate defence[[182]]. To each chapter of this work is prefixed a passage from Grimaldi's address, which is then laboriously refuted. The Duke's attack is puerile cavil, and in spite of the reputed ability of its author the defence must be admitted to be much on the same level.

IV

The attention which we have bestowed upon the Aminta will allow us to pass more rapidly than would otherwise have been possible over its successor and rival, the Pastor fido. This is due to the fact that the moral and artistic environment of the two pieces is much the same, and further, that it is this environment which to a great extent determined, not only the individual character of the poems, but likewise the nature of their subsequent influence.

Recent research has had the effect of dispelling not a few of the traditional ideas respecting Guarini's play. Among them is the fable that it took twenty years to write, which would carry back its inception to days before the composition of the Aminta. It is now recognized that nine years is the utmost that can be assigned, letters being extant which fix the genesis of the play in 1581, or at the earliest in 1580 a year or so previous to Guarini's departure from Ferrara[[183]]. Again, it has been usual to assume that the play was performed as early as 1585, whereas there is in truth no evidence of any representation previous to the appearance of the first edition dated 1590[[184]]. The early fortunes of the play are indeed typical of the ill-success that dogged the author throughout life. Though untouched by the tragic misfortunes which lend interest to Tasso's career, his lot was at times a hard one and we may excuse him if, at the last, he was no less embittered than his younger rival. He was not cursed, it is true, with Tasso's incurable idealism; but, if in consequence he exposed himself less to the buffets of disillusionment, he likewise lacked its sustaining and ennobling power. Tasso used the pastoral machinery to idealize the court; Guarini accepted the pastoral convention of the superiority of the 'natural' life of the country, and used it as a means of pouring out his bitterness of soul. The Aminta, it should be remembered, was written during a few weeks, months at most, at a time when Tasso was comparatively fortunate and happy; the Pastor fido was the ten years' labour of a retired and disappointed courtier, whose later days were further embittered by domestic misfortunes. In the same way as it was characteristic of Tasso's rosy view that no law should be allowed to curb the purity of natural love in his dream of the ideal age, so it was characteristic of the spirit of his imitator to seek the ideal in the prudent love that strives towards no distant star beyond the bounds of law. And the fact that Guarini saw fit seriously to oppose a scholastic's moral figment to the poet's age of gold may serve as a sufficient measure of the soul of the pedant.

When Battista Guarini[[185]] entered the service of the Duke of Ferrara in 1567 he was already married and had attained the age of thirty, being seven years older than Tasso. His duties at court were political, and he was employed on several missions of a diplomatic character. There was no reason whatever, beyond his own perverse ambition, why he should have come into rivalry with Tasso, yet he did so both as a writer of verses and as a hanger-on of court beauties. It is impossible to acquit him of bad taste in the manner in which he and some at least of his fellow courtiers treated the unfortunate poet, and there was certainly bad blood between the two soon after the production of the Aminta, owing, probably, to the ungenerous remarks passed by Guarini upon the author's indebtedness to previous writers. After Tasso's confinement to S. Anna in 1579, Guarini became court poet, and the luckless prisoner was condemned to see his own poems entrusted to the editorial care of his rival.

Guarini, however, was not satisfied with the court of Ferrara. His estate was reduced by the expenses entailed by his missions as ambassador, for which, like Machiavelli, he appears never to have received adequate supplies, and by the continuous litigation in which he involved himself. His political imagination, too, had been fired during a stay at Turin with the possibilities inherent for Italy in the house of Savoy--an enthusiasm which possibly did not tend to smooth his relations with his own master. In 1582 he left Ferrara and the service of Alfonso and retired to his ancestral estates of S. Bellino. Here he devoted himself to the composition of the play he had lately taken in hand, which, in spite of spasmodic returns to political life not only at the court of the Estensi but also at Turin and Florence, forms thenceforward with its many vicissitudes the central interest of his biography. He survived till 1612, dying at the age of seventy-four.

To do justice to the Pastor fido it would be best to give the story in the form of a continuous narrative rather than an analysis of the actual scenes, since the author's constructive power lay almost wholly in the invention of an intricate plot and his weakness in the scenic rendering of it. His dramatic methods, however, so far elaborated from the simplicity of Tasso's, had a vast influence over subsequent work, and it is highly important to obtain a clear idea of their nature. We shall, therefore, be condemned to follow Guarini, part-way at least, through the stiff artificiality of his interminable scenes.

A complicated story which is narrated at length in the course of the play explains the peculiar laws of Arcadia on which the plot hinges[[186]]. These comprise an edict of Diana to the effect that any nymph found guilty of a breach of faith shall suffer death at the altar unless some one offers to die in her place; likewise a custom whereby a nymph between fifteen and twenty years of age is annually sacrificed to the goddess. When besought to release the land from this tribute Diana through her oracle replies:

Non avrà prima fin quel che v' offende,
Che duo semi del ciel congiunga amore;
E di donna infedel l' antico errore
L' alta pietà d' un pastor fido ammende.

The only two in Arcadia who fulfil the conditions of the oracle are Silvio, the son of the high priest Montano, and Amarilli, daughter of Titiro, who have in their veins the blood of Hercules and Pan. These two have consequently been betrothed and, being now arrived at marriageable age, their final union is imminent.

At this point the play opens. Silvio cares for nothing but the chase, regardless alike of his destined bride and of the love borne him by the nymph Dorinda; Amarilli is seemingly heart-whole, but secretly loves her suitor Mirtillo, a stranger in Arcadia, whom, however, she persists in treating with coldness in view of the penalty involved by a breach of faith. Mirtillo in his turn is loved by Corisca, a wanton nymph who has learned the arts of the city, and who is pursued both by Coridone, to whom she is formally engaged, but whom she neglects, and by a satyr. Almost every character is provided with a confidant: Silvio has Linco; Mirtillo, Ergasto; Dorinda, Lupino; Carino[[187]], the supposed father of Mirtillo, has Uranio; Montano and Titiro act as confidants to one another. The only case arguing any dramatic feeling is that in which Amarilli makes a confidant of her rival Corisca; while Corisca and the satyr alone among the more important characters are left to address the audience directly. Even the confidants sometimes need confidants in their turn, these being supplied by a conveniently ubiquitous chorus.

In the first scene of Act I, after the prologue, in which Alfeo rises to pay compliments to Carlo Emanuele and his bride, we are introduced to Silvio and Linco, who are about to start in pursuit of a savage boar which has been devastating the country. Linco taxes his companion with his neglect of the softer joys of love, to which Silvio replies with long-drawn praise of the free life of the woods. The scene is parallel to the first of the Aminta, and the author has sought here and elsewhere to point the contrast. Thus where Tasso wrote:

Cangia, cangia consiglio,
Pazzerella che sei;
Che il pentirsi dassezzo nulla giova;

Guarini has:

Lascia, lascia le selve,
Folle garzon, lascia le fere, ed ama.

In the next scene, again modelled on the corresponding one in Tasso's play, we find Ergasto comforting Mirtillo in his despair at Amarilli's 'cruelty.' Mirtillo has but recently arrived in Arcadia, and is ignorant of its history and customs, which Ergasto explains at length. The third scene is devoted to a long monologue by Corisca; the fourth to a conversation between Montano and Titiro, who discuss the oracles concerning the approaching marriage and recount portentous dreams. A monologue by the satyr relating his ill-usage at the hands of Corisca, followed by a chorus, ends the first act. The next scene contains the history of Mirtillo's passion as narrated to his confidant. Ergasto has enlisted the services of Corisca, and the whole paraphernalia of love lead in the next act to an interview between Mirtillo and Amarilli. The author's dramatic method whereby he presents us with alternate scenes from the various threads of the plot will by now be evident to the reader, and the remainder may for clearness' sake be thrown into narrative form.

Corisca, well knowing that it is impossible for Amarilli to show favour to Mirtillo, and hoping to ingratiate herself with him, prevails upon the nymph to grant her lover a hearing, provided the interview be secret and short. During a game of blind man's buff the players suddenly retire, leaving Mirtillo and Amarilli alone. The interview of course comes to nothing, but as soon as Mirtillo has left her Amarilli relieves her feelings in a monologue confessing her love, which is overheard by Corisca[[188]]. Charged with her weakness, she confesses her dislike of the marriage with Silvio. Hereupon Corisca conceives a plan for ridding herself at once of her rival in Mirtillo's affections and of her own affianced lover. She leads Amarilli to suppose that Silvio is faithless to his betrothal vow. If Amarilli can prove Silvio guilty she will herself be free, and she agrees to hide in a recess in a cave where Corisca alleges that Silvio has an assignation. Next Corisca makes an appointment to meet her lover Coridone in the same cave, intending that he and Amarilli shall be surprised together. Finally, in order to obtain a witness, she accuses Amarilli to Mirtillo of being faithless, and bids him watch the mouth of the cave in which she alleges the nymph has an assignation with Coridone. This ingenious plan would have succeeded to perfection but for Mirtillo's precipitancy, for, seeing Amarilli enter the cave, he at once concludes her guilt and follows her forthwith to wreak revenge. At that moment the satyr appears and, misunderstanding some words of Mirtillo's, proceeds to bar the entrance to the cave with a huge rock, thinking he is imprisoning Mirtillo and Corisca. He then goes off to inform the priests of the pollution committed so near their temple. These enter the cave and apprehend the lovers. Amarilli is at once condemned to death, but Mirtillo thereupon offers himself in her place and, being accepted by the priests, is kept as a sacrifice, Amarilli being at the same time closely guarded lest she should lay violent hands upon herself.

In the meantime Silvio has been successful in his hunting of the boar, whose head he brings home in triumph. There follows an echo-scene, one of those toys which, as old as the Greek Anthology, and cultivated in Latin by Tebaldeo, and in Italian by Poliziano, owed, not indeed their introduction, but certainly their great popularity in pastoral, to Guarini. His example is fairly successful. The echo predicts that the end of Silvio's 'carelessness' is at hand, when he shall himself break his bow and follow her who now follows him. The prophecy is quick of fulfilment. With a jest he turns to go, when his eye falls on a grey object crouching among the bushes. He supposes it to be a wolf, and looses an arrow at it. It proves, however, to be Dorinda, who has throughout followed his chase disguised in the rough wolf-skin coat of a herdsman, and who is now led fainting on to the scene by Lupino. Silvio is overcome with remorse, and, careless alike of his troth to Amarilli and of the fate of Arcadia, declares that thenceforth he will love none but Dorinda, and will die with her should his arrow prove fatal. They leave the stage for good--to get healed and married.

To return to the main plot. At sundown Mirtillo is led out to die, and the sacrifice is about to be performed when his supposed father, an Arcadian by birth, though he has long lived at Elis, and has just arrived in search of his foster child, interposes. Explanations ensue, and it gradually appears that Mirtillo is the eldest son of Montano, washed away in his cradle by the floods of the Alpheus twenty years before. Thus in the love between him and Amarilli, and in his voluntary sacrifice of himself in her place, the oracle is fulfilled, and Arcadia freed from its maiden tribute. This seems obvious enough, though it takes the inspiration of a blind prophet to drive it into the heads of the assembled Arcadians. A final difficulty remains--the broken troth. But it so happens that Mirtillo was originally named Silvio, so that to 'Silvio' no faith is broken. A casuistical reason indeed; but good enough for the purpose. No attempt is made to clear Amarilli of the compromising evidence on which she had been condemned, but the pair have the favour of the gods, and the chorus makes no difficulty of chanting the virtue of the bride.

Such is Guarini's play; a plot constructed with consummate ingenuity, but presented with an almost entire lack of dramatic feeling. Almost the whole of the action takes place off the stage. Silvio and Dorinda leave the scene apparently for a tragic catastrophe; their subsequent union is only reported; so is the surprisal of Mirtillo and Amarilli, the scene in which the former offers himself as a sacrifice in her place, and their meeting after the cloud of death has passed. The solitary scene revealing any real dramatic power is that between Amarilli and the priest Nicandro, in which the girl maintains her innocence. Her terror when confronted with death is drawn with some delicacy and pathos, though we sadly miss those poignant touches that the English playwrights seem always to have had at command on similar occasions. Her fear of death, however, stands in powerful dramatic contrast with the sudden courage she displays when her lover seeks to die in her place. Guarini was perfectly aware of the value of this contrast, for he placed the following lines in the mouth of the messo who reports the scene:

Or odi maraviglia.
Quella che fu pur dianzi
Sì dalla tema del morire oppressa,
Fatta allor di repente
A le parole di Mirtillo invitta,
Con intrepido cor così rispose:
'Pensi dunque, Mirtillo,
Di dar col tuo morire
Vita a chi di te vive?
O miracolo ingiusto! Su, ministri;
Su, che si tarda? omai
Menatemi agli altari.' (V. ii.)

And yet this dramatic contrast has been wantonly thrown away by the substitution of narrative for representation, less for the sake of a blind adherence to classical convention, as on account of the author's inability honestly to face a powerful situation. The same dramatic incapacity shows itself in his use of borrowings. It will be sufficient to mention the sententious words from Ovid (Amores, I. viii. 43) placed in the mouth of the chorus:

Dunque non si dirà donna pudica
Se non quella che mai
Non fu sollecitata; (IV. in.)

in order to compare them with the use made of the same by Webster when he made Vittoria at her trial exclaim:

Casta est quam nemo rogavit!--

a comparison which at once reveals the gulf fixed between the clairvoyant dramatist and the mere pedantic scholar.

And yet the subsequent history of pastoral reminds us that it is quite possible to underestimate Guarini's merits as a playwright. In the construction of a complicated plot, apart from the dramatic presentation thereof, he achieved a success not to be paralleled by any previous work in Italy, for the difference in the titles of the Aminta and the Pastor fido, the one styled favola and the other tragi-commedia, indicates a real distinction; and Guarini's proud claim to have invented a new dramatic kind was not wholly unfounded[[189]]. It was this that caused Symonds to speak of his play as 'sculptured in pure forms of classic grace,' while describing the Aminta as 'perfumed and delicate like flowers of spring.' And lastly, it was this more elaborately dramatic quality that was responsible for the far greater influence exercised by Guarini than by Tasso, both on the subsequent drama of Italy and still more on the fortunes of the pastoral in England.

Moreover, in Amarilli, Guarini created one really dramatic character and devoted to it one really dramatic scene. His heroine is probably the best character to be found in the whole of the pastoral drama, and this simply because there is a reason for her coldness towards the lover, upon her love to whom the plot depends. Unless love is to be mutual the motive force of the drama fails, and consequently, when nymphs insist on parading their inhuman superiority to the dictates of natural affection, they are simply refusing to fulfil their dramatic raison d'être. With Amarilli it is otherwise. She has the right to say:

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

and there is a pathos in the words which the author may not have himself fully understood; whereas the similar expression of Tasso's Silvia quoted on a previous page is insufferable in its smug self-conceit.

Of this quality of extravagant virginity noticed as a characteristic of Tasso's play there is on the whole less in the Pastor fido. It is also freer from the tone of cynical corruption and from improper suggestion. These merits are, however, more than counterbalanced in the ethical scale by the elaboration of the spirit of sentimental sensualism, which becomes as it were an enveloping atmosphere, and lends an enervating seduction to the piece. This spirit, already present in the Aminta, reappeared in an emphasized form in the Pastor fido, and attained its height in the following century in Marino's epic of Adone. We find it infusing the scene of Mirtillo's first meeting with Amarilli, which may be said to set the tone of the rest of the poem. Happening to see the nymph at the Olympian games, Mirtillo at once fell in love and contrived to introduce himself in female attire into the company of maidens to which she belonged. Here, the proposal being made to hold a kissing match among themselves, Amarilli was unanimously chosen judge, and, the contest over, she awarded the prize to the disguised youth. The incident owes its origin, as Guarini's notes point out, to the twelfth Idyl of Theocritus, and the suggestion of the kissing match is aptly put into the mouth of a girl from Megara, where an annual contest of kisses among the Greek youths was actually held. Guarini, however, most probably borrowed the episode from the fifth canto of Tasso's Rinaldo.

The sentimental seductiveness of this and other scenes did not escape sharp comment in some quarters within a few years of the publication of the play. In 1605 Cardinal Bellarmino, meeting Guarini at Rome, told him plainly that he had done as much harm to morals by his Pastor fido as by their heresies Luther and Calvin had done to religion. Later Janus Nicius Erythraeus, that is Giovanni Vittorio Rossi, in his Pinacoteca, compared the play to a rock-infested sea full of seductive sirens, in which no small number of girls and wives were said to have made shipwreck. It is at first sight ratifier a severe indictment to bring against Guarini's play, especially when we remember that a work of art is more often an index than a cause of social corruption. After what has been said, however, of the nature of the sentiment both in the Pastor fido and the Aminta, the charge can hardly be dismissed as altogether unfounded. It is only fair to add that very different views have been held with regard to the moral aspect of the play, the theory of its essential healthiness finding an eloquent advocate in Ugo Angelo Canello[[190]].

Little as it became him, Guarini chose to adopt the attitude of a guardian of morals, and Bellarmino's words clearly possessed a special sting. This pose was in truth but a part of the general attitude he assumed towards the author of the Aminta. His superficial propriety authorized him, in his own eyes, to utter a formal censure upon the amorous dream of the ideal poet. He paid the price of his unwarranted conceit. Those passages in which he was at most pains to contrast his ethical philosophy with Tasso's imaginative Utopia are those in which he most clearly betrayed his own insufferable pedantry; while critics even in his own day saw through the unexceptionable morality of his frigid declamations and ruthlessly exposed the sentimental corruption that lay beneath. When we compare his parody in the fourth chorus of the Pastor fido with Tasso's great ode; his sententious 'Piaccia se lice' with Tasso's 'S' ei piace, ei lice'; his utterly banal

Speriam: che 'l sol cadente anco rinasce;
E 'l ciel, quando men luce,
L' aspettato seren spesso n' adduce,

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

Amiam: che 'l sol si muore, e poi rinasce;
A noi sua breve luce
S' asconde, e 'l sonno eterna notte adduce--

when we make this comparison we have the spiritual measure of the man. A similar comparison will give us his measure as a poet. Take the graceful but over-elaborated picture:

Quell' augellin che canta
Sì dolcemente, e lascivetto vola
Or dall' abete al faggio,
Ed or dal faggio al mirto,
S' avesse umano spirto
Direbbe: 'Ardo d' amore, ardo d' amore!'

Compare with this the spontaneous sketch of Tasso:

Odi quell' usignuolo
Che va di ramo in ramo
Cantando: 'Io amo, io amo!'[[191]]

Or again, with the irresistible slyness of the final chorus of the Aminta already quoted compare the sententious lines with which Guarini closed his play:

O fortunata coppia,
Che pianto ha seminato, e riso accoglie!
Con quante amare doglie
Hai raddolciti tu gli affetti tuoi!
Quinci imparate voi,
O ciechi e troppo teneri mortali,
I sinceri diletti, e i veri mali.
Non è sana ogni gioia,
Nè mal ciò che v' annoia.
Quello è vero gioire,
Che nasce da virtù dopo il soffrire.

It is impossible not to come to the conclusion that we are listening in the one case to a genuine poet of no common order, in the other to a poetaster of considerable learning and great ingenuity, who elected to don the outward habit of a somewhat hypocritical morality. The effect of the contrast is further heightened when we remember that Guarini never for a moment doubted that he had far surpassed the work of his predecessor.

Guarini's comment on the Aminta in his letter to Speroni has been already quoted: it does little credit to the writer. Manso, the companion and biographer of Tasso, records that, the poet being asked by some friends what he thought of the Pastor fido, a copy of which had lately found its way to him at Naples:

Et egli, 'Mi piace sopramodo, ma confesso di non saper la cagione perchè mi piaccia.' Onde io rispondendogli, 'Vi piacerà per avventura,' soggiunsi, 'quel che vi riconoscete del vostro.' Et egli replicò, 'Ne può piacere il vedere il suo in man d' altri.'[[192]]

Guarini would hardly have acknowledged his indebtedness to Tasso in the way of art, but he drew on all sources for the incidents of his plot, and, since he appears to have valued a reputation for scholarship above one for originality, he recorded a fair proportion of his borrowings in his notes.

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The Pastor fido was the talk of the Italian Courts even before it was completed. Early in 1584 the heir to the duchy of Mantua, Vincenzo Gonzaga, to whose intercession Tasso later owed his liberty, entreated Guarini to let him have his already famous pastoral for the occasion of his marriage with Eleonora de' Medici. The poet, however, found it impossible to complete the work in time, and sent the Idropica instead. In the autumn a projected representation of the now completed play came to naught. The following year Guarini presented his play to the Duke of Savoy, and received a gold chain as an acknowledgement. The occasion was the entry into Turin of Carlo Emanuele and his bride, Catharine of Austria, the marriage having taken place at Saragossa some time previously. The dedication is recorded on the title-page of the first edition in words that have not unnaturally been held to imply that the play was performed on that occasion.[[193]] It is clear, however, from contemporary documents that this is an error, and, though preparations were made in view of a performance at the following carnival, these too were abandoned. After this we find mention of preparations made at a variety of places, but they never came to anything, and there is reason to believe that some at least were abandoned owing to the opposition of Alfonso d' Este, who never forgave a courtier who transferred his allegiance to another prince. In 1591 Vincenzo Gonzaga, now duke, summoned Guarini to Mantua, and matters advanced as far as a prova generale or dress rehearsal. The project, however, had once more to be abandoned owing to the death of Cardinal Gianvincenzo Gonzaga at Rome. We possess the scheme for the four intermezzi designed for this occasion, representing the Musica della Terra, del Mare, dell' Aria, and Celeste. They were scenic and musical only, without words. About this time too, that is after the appearance of the first edition dated 1590, we have notes of preparations for several private performances, the ultimate fate of which is uncertain. The first representation of which there is definite evidence, though even here details are lacking, took place at Crema in Lombardy in 1596, at the cost of Lodovico Zurla[[194]]. After this performances become frequent, and in 1598, after the death of Alfonso, the play was finally produced in state before Vincenzo Gonzaga at Mantua. On all these occasions we may suppose that other prologues were substituted for that addressed to gran Caterina and magnanimo Carlo[[195]].

In the meanwhile Guarini, fearing piracy, had turned his attention to the publication of his play. He first resolved to submit it to the criticism of Lionardo Salviati and Scipione Gonzaga, the latter of whom had been a member of the unlucky committee for the revision of the Gerusalemme. Unfortunately little or nothing is known as to the criticisms and recommendations of these two men. The work finally appeared, as we learn from a letter of the author, at Venice in December, 1589. It is a handsome quarto from the press of Giovanbattista Bonfadino, and is dated the following year[[196]]. In 1602 a luxurious edition, said on the title-page to be the twentieth, was issued at Venice by Giovanbattista Ciotti. This represents Guarini's final revision of the text, and contains, besides a portrait and engravings, elaborate notes by the author, and an essay on tragi-comedy[[197]].

The Pastor fido was the object of a violent attack while as yet it circulated in manuscript only. As early as 1587 a certain Giasone de Nores or Denores, a Cypriot noble who held the chair of moral philosophy at the university of Padua, published a pamphlet on the relations existing between different forms of literature and the philosophy of government, in which, while refraining from any specific allusions, he denounced tragi-comedies and pastorals as 'monstrous and disproportionate compositions ... contrary to the principles of moral and civil philosophy.' Guarini argued that, as his play was the only one deserving to be called a tragi-comedy and was at the same time a pastoral, the reference was palpable. He proceeded therefore to compose a counterblast which he named Il Verato (1588) after a well-known comic actor of the time, who, it may be remarked, had had the management of Argenti's Sfortunato in 1567. In this pamphlet Guarini traversed the professor's propositions with a good deal of scholastic ergotism: 'As in compounds the hot accords with the cold, its mortal enemy, as the dry humour with the moist, so the elements of tragedy and comedy, though separately antagonistic, yet when united in a third form,' et cetera et cetera. De Nores replied in an Apologia (1590), disclaiming all personal allusion, and the poet finally answered back in a Verato secondo, first published in 1593, after his antagonist's death, restating his arguments and seasoning them with a good deal of unmannerly abuse. These two treatises of Guarini's were reprinted with alterations as the Compendio della poesia tragicommica, in the 1602 edition of the play, and together with the notes to the same edition form Guarini's own share of the controversy[[198]]. But in 1600, before these had appeared, a Paduan, Faustino Summo, published a set attack on and dissection of the play; while a certain Giovan Pietro Malacreta of Vicenza illustrated the attitude of the age with regard to literature by putting forward a series of critical dubbî, that is, doubts as to the 'authority' of the form employed. Both works are distinguished by a spirit of puerile cavil, which would of itself almost suffice to reconcile us to the worst faults of the poet. Thus Malacreta is not even content to let the author choose his own title, arguing that Mirtillo was faithful not in his quality of shepherd but of lover[[199]]. He goes on to complain of the tangle of laws and oracles which Guarini invents in order to motive the action of his play; and here, though taken individually his objections may be hypercritical, he has laid his finger on a very real weakness of the author's ingenious plot. It is, moreover, a weakness common to almost the whole tribe of the Arcadian, or rather Utopian, pastorals. Apologists soon appeared, and had little difficulty in disposing of most of the adverse criticisms. A specific Risposta to Malacreta appeared at Padua in 1600 from the pen of Paolo Beni. Defences by Giovanni Savio and Orlando Pescetti were printed at Venice and Verona respectively in 1601, while one at least, written by Gauges de Gozze of Pesaro, under the pseudonym of Fileno di Isauro, circulated in manuscript. These writings, however, are marked either by futile endeavours to reconcile the Pastor fido with the supposed teaching of Aristotle and Horace, or else by such extravagant laudation as that of Pescetti, who doubted not that had Aristotle known Guarini's play, it would have been to him the model of a new kind to rank with the epic of Homer and the tragedy of Sophocles[[200]]. Finally, Summo returned to the charge with a rejoinder to Pescetti and Beni printed at Vicenza in 1601[[201]]. But all this writing and counter-writing in no way affected the popularity of the Pastor fido and its successors. Moreover, the critical position of the combatants on both sides was essentially false. It would be an easy task to fill a volume with strictures on the play touching its sentimental tone, its affected manners, its stiff development, its undramatic construction, the weak drawing of character, the lack of motive force to move the complex machinery, and many other points--strictures that should be unanswerable. But those who wish to understand the influence exercised by the play over subsequent literature in Europe will find their time better spent in analysing those qualities, whether emotional or artistic, which won for it the enthusiastic worship of the civilized world.

Numerous translations bear witness to its popularity far beyond the shores of Italy. The earliest of these was into French, and appeared in 1595; it was followed by several others. The Spanish versions have already been mentioned, and the English will occupy our attention shortly. Besides these there are versions, often more than one, in German, Greek, Swedish, Dutch, and Polish. There are likewise versions in the Bergamasc and Neapolitan dialects, while the manuscript of a Latin translation is preserved in the University Library at Cambridge.

V

There were obvious advantages in treating the two masterpieces of pastoral drama in Italy in close connexion with one another. It must not, however, be supposed that they stood alone in the field of pastoral composition. Both between the years 1573 when the Aminta was composed and 1590 when the Pastor fido was printed, and also after the latter year, the stream of plays continued unchecked, though, apart from a general tendency towards greater regularity of dramatic construction, they do not form any organic link in the chain of artistic development. Few deserve more than passing notice. In the earlier ones, at least, we still find a tendency to introduce extraneous elements. Thus Gl' Intricati, printed in 1581, and acted a few years before at Zara, the work of Count Alvise, or, it would appear, more correctly Luigi, Pasqualigo, contains a farcical and magical part combined with some rather coarse jesting between two rogues, one Spanish and one Bolognese, who speak in their respective dialects. Another play in which a comic element appears is Bartolommeo Rossi's Fiammella (1584), which has the further peculiarity of introducing allegorical characters into the prologue, and mythological into the play. Another piece belonging to this period is the Pentimento amoroso by Luigi Groto, which was printed as early as 1575. It is a wild tale of murder and intrigue, judgement and outrageous self-sacrifice, composed in sdrucciolo verse and speeches of monstrous length. Another piece, Gabriele Zinano's Caride, surreptitiously printed in 1582, and included in an authorized publication in 1590, has the peculiarity of placing the prologue in the mouth of Vergil. Lastly, I may mention Angelo Ingegneri's Danza di Venere, acted at Parma in 1583, and printed the following year. It contains the incident of a mad shepherd's regaining his wits through gazing on the beauty of a sleeping nymph, thus borrowing the motive of Boccaccio's tale of Cymon and Iphigenia. Its chief interest for us, however, lies in the episode of the hero employing a gang of satyrs to carry off his beloved during a solemn dance in honour of Venus. This looks like a reminiscence of Giraldi Cintio's Egle, and through it of the old satyric drama[[202]].

These plays all belong to the period between the Aminta and the Pastor fido. Tasso's and Guarini's masterpieces mark the point of furthest development attained by the pastoral drama in Italy, or indeed in Europe. With them the vitality which rendered evolution possible was spent, though the power of reproduction remained unimpaired for close on a century. Signor Rossi, in the monograph of which I have already made such free use, mentions a number of plays, whose dependence on the Pastor fido is evident from their titles, though Guarini's influence is, of course, far more widely spread than such eclectic treatment reveals. The most curious, perhaps, is a play, I figliuoli di Aminta e Silvia e di Mirtillo ed Amarilli, by Ercole Pelliciari, dealing with the fortunes of the children of the heroes and heroines of Tasso and Guarini. We are on the way to a genealogical cycle of Arcadian drama, similar to the cycles of romance that centred round Roland and Launcelot. It would be a work of supererogation to demonstrate in detail the influence exercised by Tasso and Guarini over their Italian followers, and a task of forbidding proportions to give the bare titles of the plays that witnessed to that influence. Serassi reports that in 1614 Clementi Bartoli of Urbino possessed no less than eighty pastoral plays; while by 1700, the year of Fontanini's work on the Aminta, Giannantonio Moraldi is said to hsve brought together in Rome a collection of over two hundred.[[203]] Every device was resorted to that could lend novelty to the scenes; in Carlo Noci's Cintia (1594) the heroine returns home disguised as a boy to find her lover courting another nymph; in Francesco Contarini's Finta Fiammetta (1610), on the other hand, the plot turns on the courtship of Delfide by her lover Celindo in girl's attire; while in Orazio Serono's Fida Armilla (1610) we have the annual human sacrifice to a monstrous serpent--all of which later became familiar themes in pastoral drama and romance. Two plays only call for closer attention, and this rather on account of a certain reputation they have gained than of any intrinsic merit. One of these, Antonio Ongaro's Alceo, which was printed in 1582 and is therefore earlier than the Pastor fido, has been happily nicknamed Aminta bagnato. It is a piscatorial adaptation of Tasso's play, which it follows almost scene for scene. The satyr becomes a triton with as little change of character as the nymphs and shepherds undergo in their metamorphosis to fisher girls and boys. Alceo shows less resourcefulness than his prototype in that he twice tries to commit suicide by throwing himself into the sea. The last act is spun out to three scenes in accordance with the demand for greater regularity of dramatic construction, but gains nothing but tedium thereby. The other play to be considered connects itself in plot rather with the Pastor fido. It is the Filli di Sciro, the work of Guidubaldo Bonarelli della Rovere. The poet's father enjoyed the protection of the Duke Guidubaldo II of Urbino, but in after days he removed to the court of the Estensi at Ferrara. It was here that the play appeared in 1607, though it is dedicated to Francesco Maria della Rovere, who had by that time succeeded his father in the duchy of Urbino. The plot of the play is highly intricate, and shows a tendency towards the introduction of an adventurous element; it turns upon the tribute of youths and maidens exacted from the island of Scyros by the king of Thrace. The figure of the satyr is replaced by a centaur who carries off one of the nymphs. Her cries attract two youths who succeed in driving off the monster, but are severely wounded in the encounter. The nymph, Celia, thereupon falls in love with both her rescuers at once, and it is only when one of them proves to be her long-lost brother that she is able to make up her mind between them[[204]]. This brother had been carried off as a child by the Thracians together with his betrothed Filli, and having escaped was lately returned to his native land. From a dramatic point of view the dénoûment is even more preposterous than usual. The principal characters leave the stage at the end of the fourth act, under sentence of death, and do not reappear, the whole of the last act being occupied with narratives of their subsequent fortunes. A point which is possibly worth notice is the introduction of that affected talk on the technicalities of sheepcraft which adds so greatly to the already intolerable artificiality of the later pastoral drama, but which is happily absent from the work of Tasso and Guarini.

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We have now reached the end of our survey of the Italian pastoral drama. In spite of the space it has been necessary to devote to the subject, it must be borne in mind that we have treated it from one point of view only. Besides the interest which it possesses in connexion with the development of pastoral tradition, it also plays a very important part in the history of dramatic art, not in Italy alone, but over the whole of Europe. On this aspect of the subject we have hardly so much as touched. Nor is this all. If it is true, as is commonly assumed, that the opera had its birth in the Orfeo of Angelo Poliziano, it is not less true that it found its cradle in the Arcadian drama. A few isolated pieces may still be able to charm us by their poetic beauty. In dealing with the rest it must never be forgotten that without the costly scenery and elaborate musical setting that lent body and soul to them in their day, we have what is little better than the dry bones of these ephemeridae of courtly art.