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

by W. W. Greg

Chapter IV.

Dramatic Origins of the English Pastoral Drama

I

Having at length arrived at what must be regarded as the main subject of this work, it will be my task in the remaining chapters to follow the growth of the pastoral drama in England down to the middle of the seventeenth century, and in so doing to gather up and weave into a connected web the loose threads of my discourse.

Taking birth among the upland meadows of Sicily, the pastoral tradition first assumed its conventional garb in imperial Rome, and this it preserved among learned writers after its revival in the dawn of the Italian renaissance. With Arcadia for its local habitation it underwent a rebirth in the opening years of the sixteenth century in Sannazzaro's romance, and again towards the close in the drama of Tasso. It became chivalric in Spain and courtly in France, and finally reached this country in three main streams, the eclogue borrowed by Spenser from Marot, the romance suggested to Sidney by Montemayor, and the drama imitated by Daniel from Tasso and Guarini. Once here, it blended variously with other influences and with native tradition to produce a body of dramatic work, which, ill-defined, spasmodic and occasional, nevertheless reveals on inspection a certain character of its own, and one moreover not precisely to be paralleled from the literary annals of any other European nation.

The indications of a native pastoral impulse, manifesting itself in the burlesque of the religions drama and the romance of the popular ballads, we have already considered. The connexion which it is possible to trace between this undefined impulse and the later pastoral tradition is in no wise literary; in so far as it exists at all and is one of temperament alone, a bent of national character. In tracing the rise of the form in Italy upon the one hand, and in England upon the other, we are struck by certain curious contrasts and also by certain curious parallelisms. The closest analogy to the ballad themes to be discovered in the literature of Italy is in certain of the songs of Sacchetti and his contemporaries, but it would be unwise to insist on the resemblance. The more suggestive parallel of the novelle has to be ruled out on the score of form, and is further differentiated by the notable lack in them of romantic spirit. Again, in the sacre rappresentazioni, the burlesque interpolations from actual life, which with us aided the genesis of the interlude, and through it of the romantic comedy, are as a rule so conspicuously absent that the rustic farce with which one nativity play opens can only be regarded as a direct and conscious imitation from the French. It is, on the other hand, a remarkable fact, and one which, in the absence of any evidence of direct imitation,[[205]] must be taken to indicate a real parallelism in the evolution of the tradition in the two countries, that in England as in Italy the way was paved for pastoral by the appearance of mythological plays, introducing incidentally pastoral scenes and characters, and anticipating to some extent at any rate the peculiar atmosphere of the Arcadian drama.

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The earliest of these English mythological plays, alike in date of production and of publication, was George Peele's Arraignment of Paris, 'A Pastorall. Presented before the Queenes Majestie, by the children of her Chappell,' no doubt in 1581, and printed three years later.[[206]] It partakes of the nature of the masque in that the whole composition centres round a compliment to the Queen, Eliza or Zabeta--a name which, as Dr. Ward notes, Peele probably borrowed along with one or two other hints from Gascoigne's Kenilworth entertainment of 1575. The title sufficiently expresses its mythological character, and the precise value of the term 'pastoral' on the title-page is difficult to determine. The characters are for the most part either mythological or rustic; the only truly pastoral ones being Paris and Oenone, whose parts, however, in so far as they are pastoral, are also of the slightest. It is of course impossible to say exactly to what extent the fame of the Italian pastoral drama may have penetrated to England--the Aminta was first printed the year of the production of Peele's play, and waited a decade before the first English translation and the first English edition appeared[[207]]--but no influence of Tasso's masterpiece can be detected in the Arraignment; still less is it possible to trace any acquaintance with Poliziano's work.

After a prologue, in which Atè foretells in staid and measured but not unpleasing blank verse the fall of Troy, the silvan deities, Pan, Faunus, Silvanus, Pomona, Flora, enter to welcome the three goddesses who are on their way to visit 'Ida hills,' and who after a while enter, led by Rhanis and accompanied by the Muses, whose processional chant heralds their approach. They are greeted by Pan, who sings:

The God of Shepherds, and his mates,
With country cheer salutes your states,
Fair, wise, and worthy as you be,
And thank the gracions ladies three
For honour done to Ida.

When these have retired from the stage there follows a charming idyllic scene between the lovers Paris and Oenone, which contains the delightful old song, one of the lyric pearls of the Elizabethan drama:

Oenone. Fair and fair, and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be;
The fairest shepherd on our green,
A love for any lady.

Paris. Fair and fair, and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be;
Thy love is fair for thee alone,
And for no other lady.

Oenone. My love is fair, my love is gay,
As fresh as bin the flowers in May,
And of my love my roundelay,
My merry, merry, merry roundelay,
Concludes with Cupid's curse--
They that do change old love for new,
Pray gods they change for worse!

Both. They that do change old love for new,
Pray gods they change for worse!

The second act presents us the three goddesses who have come to Ida on a party of pleasure with no very definite object in view, and are now engaged in exercising their tongues at one another's expense. The scene consists of a cross-fire of feminine amenities, not of the most delicate, it is true, and therefore not here to be reproduced, yet of a keenness of temper and a ringing mastery in the rimed verse little less than brilliant in themselves, and little less than a portent at the date of their appearance. Then a storm arises, during which, the goddesses having sought refuge in Diana's bower, Atè rolls the fatal ball upon the stage. On the return of the three the inscription Detur pulcherrimae breeds fresh strife, until they agree to submit the case for judgement to the next man they meet. Paris arriving upon the scene at this point is at once called upon to decide the rival claims of the contending goddesses. First Juno promises wealth and empery, and presents a tree hung as with fruit with crowns and diadems, all which shall be the meed of the partial judge. Pallas next seeks to allure the swain with the pomp and circumstance of war, and conjures up a show in which nine knights, no doubt the nine worthies, tread a 'warlike almain.' Last Venus speaks:

Come, shepherd, come, sweet shepherd, look on me,
These bene too hot alarums these for thee:
But if thou wilt give me the golden ball,
Cupid my boy shall ha't to play withal,
That whenso'er this apple he shall see,
The God of Love himself shall think on thee,
And bid thee look and choose, and he will wound
Whereso thy fancy's object shall be found.

Whereupon 'Helen entereth in her bravery' attended by four Cupids, and singing an Italian song which has, however, little merit. As at a later day Faustus, so now Paris bows before the sovereignty of her beauty, and then wanders off through Ida glades in the company of the victorious queen of love, leaving her outraged rivals to plot a common revenge. Act III introduces the slight rustic element. Hobbinol, Diggon, and Thenot enter to Colin, who is lamenting the cruelty of his love Thestylis. The names are obviously borrowed from the Shepherd's Calender, but while Colin is still the type of the hopeless lover, there is no necessity to suspect any personal identification. The Arraignment was probably produced less than two years after the publication of Spenser's eclogues, and Peele, who was an Oxford man, may even have been ignorant of their authorship[[208]]. Still more unnecessary are certain other identifications between characters in the play and persons at court which have been propounded. Such identifications, at any rate, have no importance for our present task, which is to ascertain in what measure and in what manner Peele's work paved the way for the advent of the Italian pastoral; and we note, with regard to the present scene, that the more polished and more homely elements alike--both Colin on the one hand, and Diggon, Hobbinol, and the rest on the other--are inspired by Spenser's work, and by his alone. Meanwhile Oenone enters, lamenting her desertion by Paris. There is delicate pathos in the reminiscence of her former song which haunts the outpouring of her grief--

False Paris, this was not thy vow, when thou and I were one,
To range and change old loves for new; but now those days be gone.

She is less happy in a set lament, beginning:

Melpomene, the Muse of tragic songs,

in which we may perhaps catch a distant echo of Spenser's:

Melpomene, the mournfull'st Muse of nine.

As she ends she is accosted by Mercury, who has been sent to summon Paris to appear at Juno's suit before the assembly of the gods on a charge of partiality in judgement. A pretty dialogue ensues in broken fourteeners, in which the subtle god elicits a description of the shepherd from the unsuspecting nymph--it too contains some delicate reminiscences of the lover's duet.

Mercury. Is love to blame?

Oenone. The queen of love hath made him false his troth.

Mer. Mean ye, indeed, the queen of love?

Oen. Even wanton Cupid's dame.

Mer. Why, was thy love so lovely, then?

Oen. His beauty height his shame;
The fairest shepherd on our green.

Mer. Is he a shepherd, than?

Oen. And sometime kept a bleating flock.

Mer. Enough, this is the man.

In the next scene we find Paris and Venus together. First the goddess directs the assembled shepherds to inscribe the words, 'The love whom Thestylis hath slain,' as the epitaph of the now dead Colin. When these have left the stage she turns to Paris:

Sweet shepherd, didst thou ever love?

Paris. Lady, a little once.

She then warns him against the dangers of faithlessness in a passage which is a good example of Peele's use of the old rimed versification, and as such deserves quotation.

My boy, I will instruct thee in a piece of poetry,
That haply erst thou hast not heard: in hell there is a tree,
Where once a-day do sleep the souls of false forsworen lovers,
With open hearts; and there about in swarms the number hovers
Of poor forsaken ghosts, whose wings from off this tree do beat
Round drops of fiery Phlegethon to scorch false hearts with heat.
This pain did Venus and her son entreat the prince of hell
T'impose on such as faithless were to such as loved them well:
And, therefore, this, my lovely boy, fair Venus doth advise thee,
Be true and steadfast in thy love, beware thou do disguise thee;
For he that makes but love a jest, when pleaseth him to start,
Shall feel those fiery water-drops consume his faithless heart.

Paris. Is Venus and her son so full of justice and severity?

Venus. Pity it were that love should not be linkèd with indifferency.[[209]]

Then follow Colin's funeral, the punishment of the hard-hearted Thestylis, condemned to love a 'foul crooked churl' who 'crabbedly refuseth her,' and the scene in which Mercury summons Paris before the Olympian tribunal. Here we find him in the next act. The gods being seated in the bower of Diana, Juno and Pallas, and Venus and Paris appear 'on sides' before the throne of Jove, and in answer to his indictment the shepherd of Ida delivers a spirited speech. Again the verse is of no small merit. Defending himself from the charge of partiality in the bestowal of the prize, he argues:

Had it been destinèd to majesty--
Yet will I not rob Venus of her grace--
Then stately Juno might have borne the ball.
Had it to wisdom been intitulèd,
My human wit had given it Pallas then.
But sith unto the fairest of the three
That power, that threw it for my farther ill,
Did dedicate this ball--and safest durst
My shepherd's skill adventure, as I thought,
To judge of form and beauty rather than
Of Juno's state or Pallas' worthiness--...
Behold, to Venus Paris gave the fruit,
A daysman[[210]] chosen there by full consent,
And heavenly powers should not repent their deeds.

After consultation the gods decide to dismiss the prisoner, though we gather that he is not wholly acquitted.

Jupiter. Shepherd, thou hast been heard with equity and law,
And for thy stars do thee to other calling draw,
We here dismiss thee hence, by order of our senate;
Go take thy way to Troy, and there abide thy fate.

Venus. Sweet shepherd, with such luck in love, while thou dost live,
As may the Queen of Love to any lover give.

Paris. My luck is loss, howe'er my love do speed:
I fear me Paris shall but rue his deed.

Apollo. From Ida woods now wends the shepherd's boy,
That in his bosom carries fire to Troy.

This, however, does not settle the case, and the final adjudication of the apple of beauty is entrusted by the gods to Diana, since it was in her grove that it was found. Parting company with classical legend in the incident which gives its title to the play, Peele further adds a fifth act, in which he contrives to make the world-famous history subserve the courtly ends of the masque. When the rival claimants have solemnly sworn to abide by the decision of their compeer, Diana begins:

It is enough; and, goddesses, attend.
There wons within these pleasaunt shady woods,
Where neither storm nor sun's distemperature
Have power to hurt by cruel heat or cold, ...
Far from disturbance of our country gods,
Amid the cypress springs[[211]], a gracions nymph,
That honours Dian for her chastity,
And likes the labours well of Phoebe's groves;
The place Elizium hight, and of the place
Her name that governs there Eliza is,
A kingdom that may well compare with mine,
An auncient seat of kings, a second Troy,
Y-compass'd round with a commodious sea.

The rest may be easily imagined. The contending divinities resign their claims:

Venus. To this fair nymph, not earthly, but divine,
Contents it me my honour to resign.

Pallas. To this fair queen, so beautiful and wise,
Pallas bequeaths her title in the prize.

Juno. To her whom Juno's looks so well become, The Queen of Heaven yields at Phoebe's doom.

The three Fates now enter, and singing a Latin song lay their 'properties' at the feet of the queen. Then each in turn delivers a speech appropriate to her character, and finally Diana 'delivereth the ball of gold into the Queen's own hands,' and the play ends with a couple of doggerel hexameters chanted by way of epilogue by the assembled actors:

Vive diu felix votis hominumque deumque,
Corpore, mente, libro, doctissima, candida, casta.

The jingle of these lines would alone suffice to prove that Peele's ear was none of the most delicate, and he particularly sins in disregarding the accent in the rime-word, a peculiarity which may have been noticed even in the short passages quoted above. Nevertheless, even apart from its lyrics, one of which is in its way unsurpassed, the play contains passages of real grace in the versification. The greater part is written either in fourteeners or in decasyllabic couplets with occasional alexandrines, in both of which the author displays an ease and mastery which, to say the least, were uncommon in the dramatic work of the early eighties; while the passages of blank verse introduced at important dramatic points, notably in Paris' defence and in Diana's speech, are the best of their kind between Surrey and Marlowe. The style, though now and again clumsy, is in general free from affectation except for an occasional weakness in the shape of a play upon words. Such is the connexion of Eliza with Elizium, in a passage already quoted, and the time-honoured non Angli sed angeli--

Her people are y-clepèd Angeli,
Or, if I miss, a letter is the most--

occurring a few lines later; also the words of Lachesis:

Et tibi, non aliis, didicerunt parcere Parcae.

With regard to the general construction of the piece it is hardly too much to say that the skill with which the author has enlarged a masque-subject into a regular drama, altered a classical legend to subserve a particular aim, and conducted throughout the multiple perhaps rather than complex threads of his plot, mark him out as pre-eminent among his contemporaries. We must not, it is true, look for perfect balance of construction, for adequacy of dramatic climax, or for subtle characterization; but what has been achieved was, in the stage of development at which the drama had then arrived, no mean achievement. The dramatic effects are carefully prepared for and led up to, reminding us almost at times of the recurrence of a musical motive. Thus the song between Paris and Oenone, just before the shepherd goes off to cross Dame Venus' path, is a fine piece of dramatic irony as well as a charming lyric; while the effect of the reminiscences of the song scattered through the later pastoral scenes has been already noticed. Another instance is Venus' warning of the pains in store for faithless lovers, which fittingly anticipates the words with which Paris leaves the assembly of the gods. Again, we find a conscious preparation for the contention between the goddesses in their previous bickerings, and a conscious juxtaposition of the forsaken Oenone and the love-lorn Colin. Lastly, there are scattered throughout the play not a few graphic touches, as when Mercury at sight of Oenone exclaims:

Dare wage my wings the lass doth love, she looks so bleak and thin!

Such then is Peele's mythological play, presented in all the state of a court revel before her majesty by the children of the Chapel Royal, a play which it is more correct to say prepared the ground for than, as is usually asserted, itself contained the germ of the later pastoral drama. In spite of the care bestowed upon its composition, the Arraignment of Paris remains a slight and occasional production; but it nevertheless claims its place as one of the most graceful pieces of its kind, and the ascription of the play to Shakespeare, current in the later seventeenth century, is perhaps more of an honour to the elder than of an insult to the younger poet. Nor, at a more recent date, was Lamb uncritically enthusiastic when he said of Peele's play that 'had it been in all parts equal, the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher had been but a second name in this sort of Writing.'

Before leaving Peele, mention must be made of one other play from his pen, namely the Hunting of Cupid, known to us unfortunately from a few fragments only. This is the more tantalizing on account of the freshness of the passages preserved in England's Helicon and England's Parnassus, and in a commonplace-book belonging to Drummond of Hawthornden, and also from the fact that there is good reason to suppose that the work was actually printed[[212]]. So far as can be judged from the extracts we possess, and from Drummond's jottings, it appears to have been a tissue of mythological conceits, much after the manner of the Arraignment, though possibly somewhat more distinctly pastoral in tone[[213]].

About contemporary with the Arraignment of Paris are the earliest plays of John Lyly, the Euphuist. Most of these are of a mythological character, while three come more particularly under our notice on account of their pastoral tendency, namely, Gallathea, Love's Metamorphosis, and the Woman in the Moon[[214]].

Although Lyly's romance itself lay outside the scope of this inquiry, we have already had, in the pastoral work of his imitators, ample opportunities of becoming acquainted with the peculiarities of the style he rendered fashionable. Its laborious affectation is all the more irritating when we remember that its author, on turning his attention to the more or less unseemly brawling of the Martin Mar-prelate pasquilade, revealed a command of effective vernacular hardly, if at all, inferior to that of his friend Nashe; and its complex artificiality becomes but more apparent when applied to dramatic work. Nevertheless in an age when prose style was in an even more chaotic state than prosody, Euphuism could claim qualities of no small value and importance, while as an experiment it was no more absurd, and vastly more popular, than those in classical versification. Its qualities, when we consider the general state of contemporary literature, may well account for the popularity of Lyly's attempt at novel-writing, but the style was radically unsuited for dramatic composition, and the result is for the most part hardly to be tolerated, and can only have met with such court-favour as fell to its lot, owing to the general fashion for which its success in the romance was responsible. It is indeed noteworthy that Lyly is the only writer who ever ventured to apply his literary invention in toto to the uses of the stage, while even in the romance he lived to see Euphuism as a fashionable style pale before the growing popularity of Arcadianism[[215]]. The opening of Gallathea may supply a specimen of the style as it appears in the dramas; the scene is laid in Lincolnshire, and Tyterus is addressing his daughter who gives her name to the piece:

In tymes past, where thou seest a heape of small pyble, stoode a stately Temple of white Marble, which was dedicated to the God of the Sea, (and in right being so neere the Sea): hether came all such as eyther ventured by long travell to see Countries, or by great traffique to use merchandise, offering Sacrifice by fire, to gette safety by water; yeelding thanks for perrils past, and making prayers for good successe to come: but Fortune, constant in nothing but inconstancie, did change her copie, as the people their custome; for the Land being oppressed by Danes, who in steed of sacrifice, committed sacrilidge, in steede of religion, rebellion, and made a pray of that in which they should have made theyr prayers, tearing downe the Temple even with the earth, being almost equall with the skyes, enraged so the God who bindes the windes in the hollowes of the earth, that he caused the Seas to breake their bounds, sith men had broke their vowes, and to swell as farre above theyr reach, as men had swarved beyond theyr reason: then might you see shippes sayle where sheepe fedde, ankers cast where ploughes goe, fishermen throw theyr nets, where husbandmen sowe their Corne, and fishes throw their scales where fowles doe breede theyr quils: then might you gather froth where nowe is dewe, rotten weedes for sweete roses, and take viewe of monstrous Maremaides, in steed of passing faire Maydes.

The unsuitability of the style for dramatic purposes will by this be somewhat painfully evident, and, as may be imagined, the effect is even less happy in the case of dialogue. To pursue: the offended deity consents to withdraw his waters on the condition of a lustral sacrifice of the fairest virgin of the land, who is to be exposed bound to a tree by the shore, whence she is carried off by the monster Agar, in whom we may no doubt see a personification of the 'eagre' or tidal wave of the Humber. At the opening of the play we find the two fairest virgins of the land disguised as boys by their respective fathers, in order that they may escape the penalty of beauty. While they wander the fields and graves, another maiden is exposed as the sacrifice, but Neptune, offended by the deceit, rejects the proffered victim, and no monster appears to claim its prey. In the meanwhile, Cupid has eluded the maternal vigilance, and, disguised as a nymph, is beginning to display his powers among the followers of Diana. Here is an example of a euphuistic dialogue. Cupid accosts one of the nymphs:

Faire Nimphe, are you strayed from your companie by chaunce, or love you to wander solitarily on purpose?

Nymph. Faire boy, or god, or what ever you bee, I would you knew these woods are to me so wel known, that I cannot stray though I would, and my minde so free, that to be melancholy I have no cause. There is none of Dianaes trayne that any can traine, either out of their waie, or out of their wits.

Cupid. What is that Diana? a goddesse? what her Nimphes? virgins? what her pastimes? hunting?

Nym. A goddesse? who knowes it not? Virgins? who thinkes it not? Hunting? who loves it not?

Cup. I pray thee, sweete wench, amongst all your sweete troope, is there not one that followeth the sweetest thing, sweet love?

Nym. Love, good sir, what meane you by it? or what doe you call it?

Cup. A heate full of coldnesse, a sweet full of bitternesse, a paine ful of pleasantnesse; which maketh thoughts have eyes, and harts eares; bred by desire, nursed by delight, weaned by jelousie, kild by dissembling, buried by ingratitude; and this is love! fayre Lady, wil you any?

Nym. If it be nothing else, it is but a foolish thing.

Cup. Try, and you shall find it a prettie thing.

Nym. I have neither will nor leysure, but I will followe Diana in the Chace, whose virgins are all chast, delighting in the bowe that wounds the swift Hart in the Forrest, not fearing the bowe that strikes the softe hart in the Chamber.

The nymphs are soon in love with the two girls in disguise, and what is more, each of these, supposing the other to be what her apparel betokens, falls in love with her. After a while, however, Diana becomes suspicious of the stranger nymph, and her followers make a capture of the boy-god, whom they identify by the burn on his shoulder caused by Psyche's lamp, and set him to untie love-knots. There follows one of those charming songs for which Lyly is justly, or unjustly, famous[[216]].

O Yes, O yes, if any Maid,
Whom lering Cupid has betraid
To frownes of spite, to eyes of scorne,
And would in madnes now see torne
The Boy in Pieces--Let her come
Hither, and lay on him her doome.

O yes, O yes, has any lost
A Heart, which many a sigh hath cost;
Is any cozened of a teare,
Which (as a Pearle) disdaine does weare?--
Here stands the Thiefe, let her but come
Hither, and lay on him her doome.

Is any one undone by fire,
And Turn'd to ashes through desire?
Did ever any Lady weepe,
Being cheated of her golden sleepe,
Stolne by sicke thoughts?--The pirats found,
And in her teares hee shalbe drownd.
Reade his Inditement, let him heare
What hees to trust to: Boy, give eare!

This is the position of affairs when Venus appears in search of her wanton, and is shortly followed by the irate Neptune. After some disputing, Neptune, to quiet the strife between the goddesses, proposes that Diana shall restore the runaway to his mother, in return for which he will release the land for ever from its virgin tribute. This happily agreed upon, the only difficulty remaining is the strange passion between the two girls. Venus, however, proves equal to the occasion, and solves the situation by transforming one of them into a man. An allusion to the story of Iphis and Ianthe told in the ninth book of the Metamorphoses suggests the source of the incident[[217]]. Otherwise the play appears to be in the main original. The exposing of a maiden to the rage of a sea-monster has been, of course, no novelty since the days of Andromeda, but it is unnecessary to seek a more immediate source[[218]]; while the intrusion of Cupid in disguise among the nymphs was doubtless suggested by the well-known idyl of Moschus, and probably owes to this community of source such resemblance as it possesses to the prologue of the Aminta. A comic element is supplied by a sort of young rascals, and a mariner, an alchemist, and an astrologer, who are totally unconnected with the rest of the play. The supposed allusions to real characters need not be taken seriously. Lyly's rascals are generally recognized as the direct ancestors of some of Shakespeare's comic characters, and we not seldom find in them the germ at least of the later poet's irresistible fun. Take such a speech as Robin's: 'Why be they deade that be drownd? I had thought they had beene with the fish, and so by chance beene caught up with them in a Nette againe. It were a shame a little cold water should kill a man of reason, when you shall see a poore Mynow lie in it, that hath no understanding.' As regards the euphuistic style, the passages already quoted will suffice, but it may be remarked that the marvellous natural history is also put under requisition. 'Virgins harts, I perceive,' remarks one of Diana's nymphs, 'are not unlike Cotton trees, whose fruite is so hard in the budde, that it soundeth like steele, and beeing rype, poureth forth nothing but wooll, and theyr thoughts, like the leaves of Lunary, which the further they growe from the Sunne, the sooner they are scorched with his beames.' At times one is almost tempted to imagine that Lyly is laughing in his sleeve, but as soon as he feels an eye upon him, his face would again do credit to a judge. The following is from a scene between the two disguised maidens:

Phillida. It is pitty that Nature framed you not a woman, having a face so faire, so lovely a countenaunce, so modest a behaviour.

Gallathea. There is a Tree in Tylos, whose nuttes have shels like fire, and being cracked, the karnell is but water.

Phil. What a toy is it to tell mee of that tree, beeing nothing to the purpose: I say it is pity you are not a woman.

Gall. I would not wish to be a woman, unless it were because thou art a man. (III. ii.)

Gallathea may be plausibly enough assigned to the year 1584[[219]]. The date of the next play we have to deal with, Love's Metamorphosis, is less certain, though Mr. Fleay's conjecture of 1588-9 seems reasonable. All that can be said with confidence is that it was later than Gallathea, to which it contains allusions, that it is an inferior work, and that it has the appearance at least of having been botched up in a hurry[[220]]. The story is as follows. Three shepherds, or rather woodmen, are in love with three of the nymphs of Ceres, but meet with little success, one of the maidens proving obdurate, another proud, and the third fickle. The lovers make complaint to Cupid, who consents at their request to transform the disdainful fair ones into a rock, a rose, and a bird respectively. Hereupon Ceres in her turn complains to the God of Love, who promises that the three shall regain their proper shapes if Ceres will undertake that they shall thereupon consent to the love of the swains. She does so, and her nymphs are duly restored to their own forms, but at first flatly refuse to comply with the conditions. After a while they yield:

Nisa. I am content, so as Ramis, when hee finds me cold in love, or hard in beliefe, hee attribute it to his owne folly; in that I retaine some nature of the Rocke he chaunged me into.... Celia. I consent, so as Montanus, when in the midst of his sweete delight, shall find some bitter overthwarts, impute it to his folly, in that he suffered me to be a Rose, that hath prickles with her pleasantnes, as hee is like to have with my love shrewdnes.... Niobe. I yeelded first in mind though it bee my course last to speake: but if Silvestris find me not ever at home, let him curse himselfe that gave me wings to flie abroad, whose feathers if his jealousie shall breake, my policie shall imp.[[221]] (V. iv.)

This plot, at once elementary and violent, is combined with the fantastic story of Erisichthon, 'a churlish husband-man,' who in the nymphs' despite cuts down the sacred tree of Ceres, into which the chaste Fidelia had been transformed. For this offence the goddess dooms him to the plague of hunger. The ghastly description of this monster, who may be compared with Browne's Limos, was probably suggested by some similar descriptions in the Faery Queen (I. iv. and III. xii). Erisichthon is put to all manner of shifts to satisfy the hunger with which he is ever consumed, and is at last forced to sell his daughter Protea to a merchant, in order to keep himself alive. Protea, it appears, was at one time the paramour of Neptune, who now in answer to her prayer comes to her aid in such a way that, when about to embark on the vessel of her purchaser, she justifies her name by changing into the likeness of an old fisherman. The deluded merchant, after seeking her awhile, is obliged to set sail and depart without his ware. She returns home to find her lover Petulius being tempted by a 'syren,' who is evidently a mermaid with looking-glass and comb and scaly tail, disporting herself by the shore--the scene being laid, by the way, on the coast of Arcadia. Protea at once changes her disguise to the ghost of Ulysses, and is in time to warn her lover of his danger. Finally, at Cupid's intercession her father is relieved of his affliction by the now appeased goddess. This plot is even more crudely distinct from the principal action of the play than is usual with Lyly[[222]].

It will be noticed that in the play we have just been considering the nymphs are no longer treated with the same respect as was the case in Gallathea; we have, in fact, advanced some way towards the satirical conception and representation of womankind which gives the tone to the Woman in the Moon. It would almost seem as though his experience of the inconstancy of the royal sunshine had made Lyly a less enthusiastic devotee of womanhood in general and of virginity in particular, and that with an unadvised frankness which may well account for his disappointments at court, he failed to conceal his feelings. The play is likewise distinguished from the other dramatic works of its author by being composed almost entirely in blank verse. Certain lines of the prologue--

Remember all is but a Poets dreame,
The first he had in Phoebus holy bowre,
But not the last, unlesse the first displease--

have not unnaturally been taken to mean that the piece was the first venture of the author; but on investigation this will be seen to be impossible, since the constant reminiscence of Marlowe in the construction of the verse points to 1588 or at earliest to 1587 as the date. Mr. Fleay's suggestion of 1589-90 may be accepted as the earliest likely date[[223]]. To my mind it would need external proof of an unusually cogent description to render plausible the theory that the year, say, of the Shepherd's Calender saw the appearance of such lines as:

What lack I now but an imperiall throne[[224]],
And Ariadnaes star-lyght Diadem? (II. i.)

or:

O Stesias, what a heavenly love hast thou!
A love as chaste as is Apolloes tree,
As modest as a vestall Virgins eye,
And yet as bright as Glow wormes in the night,
With which the morning decks her lovers hayre; (IV. i.)

or yet again:

When will the sun go downe? flye Phoebus flye! O, that thy steeds were wingd with my swift thoughts: Now shouldst thou fall in Thetis azure armes[[225]], And now would I fall in Pandoraes lap. (IV. i.)

Nor are these isolated passages; from the opening lines of the prologue to the final speech of Nature the verse has the appearance of being the work of a graceful if not very strong hand writing in imitation of Marlowe's early style. We must, therefore, it seems to me, take the words of the prologue as signifying not that the play was the first work of the author, but that it was his earliest adventure in verse.

The plan of the work is as follows. The shepherds of Utopia come to dame Nature and beg her to make a woman for them. She consents and fashions Pandora, whom she dowers with the virtues of the several Planets. These, however, are offended at not being consulted in the matter, and determine to use their influence to the bane of the newly created woman. Under the reign of Saturn she turns sullen; when Jupiter is in the ascendant he falls in love with her, but she has grown proud and scorns him; under Mars she becomes a vixen; under Sol she in her turn falls in love, and turns wanton under Venus; she learns deceit of Mercury when he is dominant, and runs mad under the influence of Luna. At length, since the shepherds will no longer have anything to do with the lady, Nature determines to place her in the heavens. Her beauty makes each planet desire her as companion. Nature gives her the choice:

Speake, my Pandora; where wilt thou be?

Pandora. Not with old Saturne for he lookes like death;
Nor yet with Jupiter, lest Juno storme;
Nor with thee Mars, for Venus is thy love;
Nor with thee Sol, thou hast two Parramours,
The sea borne Thetis and the rudy morne;
Nor with thee Venus, lest I be in love
With blindfold Cupid or young Joculus;
Nor with thee Hermes, thou art full of sleightes,
And when I need thee Jove will send thee foorth.
Say Cynthia, shall Pandora rule thy starre,
And wilt thou play Diana in the woods,
Or Hecate in Plutos regiment?

Luna. I, Pandora.

Pand. Fayre Nature let thy hand mayd dwell with her,
For know that change is my felicity,
And ficklenesse Pandoraes proper forme.
Thou madst me sullen first, and thou Jove, proud;
Thou bloody minded; he a Puritan:
Thou Venus madst me love all that I saw,
And Hermes to deceive all that I love;
But Cynthia made me idle, mutable,
Forgetfull, foolish, fickle, franticke, madde;
These be the humors that content me best,
And therefore will I stay with Cynthia....

Nat. Now rule, Pandora, in fayre Cynthias steede,
And make the moone inconstant like thy selfe;
Raigne thou at womens nuptials, and their birth;
Let them be mutable in all their loves,
Fantastical, childish, and foolish, in their desires,
Demaunding toyes:
And stark madde when they cannot have their will.
Now follow me ye wandring lightes of heaven,
And grieve not, that she is not plast with you;
Ail you shall glaunce at her in your aspects,
And in conjunction dwell with her a space. (V. i.)

And so Pandora becomes the 'Woman in the Moon.' The play, in its topical and satiric purpose, and above all, in its utilization of mythological material, bears a distinct relationship to the masque. The shepherds are in their origin philosophical, standing for the race of mankind in general, rather than pastoral; Utopian, in fact, rather than Arcadian. These early mythological plays stand alone, in that the pastoral scenes they contain are apparently uninfluenced by the Italian drama. The kind attained some popularity as a subject of courtly presentation, but it did not long preserve its original character. The later examples, with which we shall be concerned hereafter, always exhibit some characteristics which may be immediately or ultimately traced to the influence of Tasso and Guarini. This influence we must now turn to consider in some detail, as evidenced as well in translations and imitations as in the general tone and machinery of an appreciable portion of the Elizabethan drama.[[226]]

II

In any inquiry involving the question of foreign influence in literature it is obviously necessary to treat of the work done in the way of translation, although when the influence is of at all a widespread nature, as in the present instance, such discussion is apt to usurp a position unjustified by its intrinsic importance. In most cases, probably, the energy devoted to the task of rendering the foreign models directly into the language they influenced is rather useful as supplying us with a rough measure of their popularity than itself significant as a step in the operation of that influence. We may safely assume that, in the case of the English pastoral drama, the influence exercised directly by the Italian masterpieces was beyond comparison greater than that which made itself indirectly felt through the labours of translators.

Having thus anticipated a possible misapprehension it will be worth our while to devote some little attention to the history of the attempts at translation in this line. The first English writer to venture upon the task of turning the choice music of Tasso into his native language was the eccentric satellite of the Sidneyan circle, Abraham Fraunce, fellow of St. John's College in Cambridge. It so happened that he was at the time pursuing that elusive phantasm, the application of the laws of classical versification to English poetry. The resuit was at least unique, in English, at any rate, namely a drama in hexameter verse. It also occurred to him that Watson's Lamentations of Amyntas, a translation of which he had himself published in 1587, might be made to serve as an appendix to Tasso's play. With this object in view he changed the name of the heroine from Silvia to Phillis. This appears to have been the exact extent to which he 'altered S. Tassoes Italian' in order to connect it with 'M. Watsons Latine Amyntas' and 'to make them both one English.'[[227]] Certain other changes were, however, introduced upon other considerations. Various unessential points were omitted, notably in connexion with Tirsi, whose topical character disappears; the name Nerina is altered to Fulvia; frequent allusions are introduced to the nymph Pembrokiana, to whom among other things is ascribed the rescue of the heroine from the bear which takes the place of the wolf in Tasso. Lastly, we have the addition of a whole scene immediately before the final chorus. Phillis and Amyntas reappear and carry on a conversation, not unamiably, in a sort of hexametrical stichomythia. The maiden modestly seeks to restrain the amorous impatience of her lover, and the scene ends with a song between the two composed in 'Asclepiades.'[[228]] Of this literary curiosity Amyntas' opening stave may be quoted:

Sweete face, why be the hev'ns soe to the bountifull,
Making that radiant bewty of all the starrs
Bright-burning, to be fayre Phillis her ornament?
And yet seeme to be soe spytefuly partial,
As not for to aford Argus his eyes to mee,
Eyes too feawe to behould Phillis her ornament?

It is, perhaps, not a little strange that the pedant who made the preposterous experiment of turning the Aminta into English hexameters should nevertheless have been capable of clearly perceiving, however incapable he was of adequately rectifying, the hopelessly undramatic character of the last act of Tasso's play. As an example of the style of the translation we may take the following rendering of the delicate Chi crederia, with which the original prologue opens:

Who would think that a God lay lurking under a gray cloake,
Silly Shepheards gray cloake, and arm'd with a paltery sheephooke?
And yet no pety God, no God that gads by the mountaines,
But the triumphantst God that beares any sway in Olympus:
Which many times hath made man-murdring Mars to be cursing
His blood-sucking blade; and prince of watery empire
Earth-shaking Neptune, his threeforckt mace to be leaving,
And Jove omnipotent, as a poore and humble obeissant,
His three-flak't lightnings and thunderbolts to abandon.

This is in some respects not wholly inadequate; indeed, if it happened to be English it might pass for a respectable translation, for the exotic pedantry of the style itself serves in a way to render the delicate artificiality of the original, and such an expression as a 'God that gads by the mountaines' is a pithy enough paraphrase of dio selvaggio, if hardly an accurate translation. The unsatisfactory nature of the verse, however, for dramatic purposes becomes evident in passages of rapid dialogue; for example, where Daphne tells the careless nymph of Amyntas' resolve to die.

Phillis. As to my house full glad for joy I repayred, I met thee
Daphne, there full sad by the way, and greately amased.

Daphne. Phillis alas is alive, but an other's gone to be dying[[229]].

Ph. And what mean's this, alas? am I now so lightly regarded,
That my life with, Alas, of Daphne must be remembred?

Da. Phillis, I love thy life, but I lyke not death of an other.

Ph. Whose death?

Da. Death of Amyntas.

Ph. Alas how dyed Amyntas?

Da. How? that I cannot tell; nor yet well whether it is soe:
But noe doubt, I beleeve; for it is most lyke that it is soe.

Ph. What strange news doe I heare? what causd that death of Amyntas?

Da. Thy death.

Ph. And I alive?

Da. Thy death was lately reported,
And he beleevs thy death, and therfore seeketh his owne death.

Ph. Feare of Phillis death prov'd vayne, and feare of Amyntas
Death will proove vayne too: life eache thing lyvely procureth. (IV. i.)

Even in such a passage as this, however, those strong racy phrases which somehow find their way into the most uninspired of Tudor translations, are not wholly wanting. Thus when the careless nymph at last goes off to seek her desperate lover, Daphne in the original remarks:

Oh tardi saggia, e tardi
Pietosa, quando ciò nulla rileva;

a passage in translating which Fraunce cannot resist the application of a homely proverb, and writes:

When steedes are stollen, then Phillis looks to the stable.

It may, at first sight, appear strange that at a time when the Italian pastoral was exercising its greatest influence over the English drama this translation by Fraunce of Tasso's play should have satisfied the demand for more than thirty years. The explanation, of course, is that the widespread knowledge of Italian among the reading public in England rendered translation more or less superfluous[[230]], while at the same time it should be remembered that in this country Tasso was far surpassed in popularity by Guarini. So far as we can tell no further translation of the Aminta was attempted till 1628, when there appeared an anonymous version which bibliographers have followed one another in ascribing to one John Reynolds, but which was more probably the work of a certain Henry Reynolds[[231]]. However that may be, the translation is of no inconsiderable merit, though this is more apparent when read apart from the original. It bears evidence of having been written by a man capable of appreciating the poetry of Tasso, and one who, while unable to strike the higher chords of lyric composition, was yet able to render the Italian into graceful and unassuming, if seldom wholly musical or adequate, verse. Thus the version hardly does itself justice in quotation, although the general impression produced is more pleasing and less often irritating than is the case with translations which many times reveal far higher qualities. The following is a characteristic specimen chosen from the story of Aminta's early love for Silvia.

Being but a Lad, so young as yet scarce able
To reach the fruit from the low-hanging boughes
Of new-growne trees; Inward I grew to bee
With a young mayde, fullest of love and sweetnesse,
That ere display'd pure gold tresse to the winde;...
Neere our abodes, and neerer were our hearts;
Well did our yeares agree, better our thoughts;
Together wove we netts t' intrapp the fish
In flouds and sedgy fleetes[[232]]; together sett
Pitfalls for birds; together the pye'd Buck
And flying Doe over the plaines we chac'de;
And in the quarry', as in the pleasure shar'de:
But as I made the beasts my pray, I found
My heart was lost, and made a pray to other. (I. ii.)

Many a translator, moreover, has failed to instil into his verse the swing and flow of the following stanzas from the golden age chorus, which, nevertheless follow the metrical form of the original with reasonable fidelity[[233]]:

O happy Age of Gould; happy' houres;
Not for with milke the rivers ranne,
And hunny dropt from ev'ry tree;
Nor that the Earth bore fruits, and flowres,
Without the toyle or care of Man,
And Serpents were from poyson free;...
But therefore only happy Dayes,
Because that vaine and ydle name,
That couz'ning Idoll of unrest,
Whom the madd vulgar first did raize,
And call'd it Honour, whence it came
To tyrannize or'e ev'ry brest,
Was not then suffred to molest
Poore lovers hearts with new debate;
More happy they, by these his hard
And cruell lawes, were not debar'd
Their innate freedome; happy state;
The goulden lawes of Nature, they
Found in their brests; and them they did obey. (Ch. I.)

Before leaving the Aminta it will be worth while straying beyond the strict chronological limits of this inquiry to glance for a moment at the version produced by John Dancer in 1660, for the sake of noting the change which had come over literary hack-work of the kind in the course of some thirty years. Comparing it with Reynolds' translation we are at first struck by the change which long drilling of the language to a variety of uses has accomplished in the work of uninspired poetasters; secondly, by the fact that the conventional respectability of production, which has replaced the halting crudities of an earlier date, is far more inimical to any real touch of poetic inspiration. Equally evident is that spirit of tyranny, happily at no time native to our literature, which seeks to reduce the works of other ages into accordance with the taste of its own day. Thus, having 'improved' Tasso's apostrophe to the bella età dell' oro almost beyond recognition, Dancer complacently closes the chorus with the following parody:

We'l hope, since there's no joy, when once one dies
We'l hope, that as we have seen with our eies
The Sun to set, so we may see it rise. (Ch. I.)

Again, while all the spontaneity and reverential labour of an age of more avowed adolescence has disappeared, there is yet lacking the justness of phrase and certainty of grammar and rime, which later supply, however inadequately, the place of poetic enthusiasm. The defects of the style, with its commonplace exaggeration of conceits, the thumbed token-currency of the certified poetaster, are well seen in such a passage as the following:

Weak love is held by shame, but love grows bold
As strong, what is it then can it with-hold:
She as though in her ey's she did contain
Fountains of tears, did with such plenty rain
Them on his cheeks, and they such vertue had,
That it reviv'd again the breathlesse lad;...
Aminta thought 'twas more then heav'nly charms,
That thus enclasp'd him in his Silvia's armes;
He that loves servant is, perhaps may guesse
Their blisse; but none there is can it expresse[[234]]. (V. i.)

As was to be expected, the attention of translators was early directed to the Pastor fido. The original was printed in England, together with the Aminta, the year after its first appearance in Italy, that is in 1591, and bore the imprint of John Wolfe, 'a spese di Giacopo Castelvetri'; the first translation saw the light in 1602. This version was published anonymously, and in spite of the confident assertions and ingenious conjectures of certain bibliographers, anonymous it must for the present remain; all that can with certainty be affirmed is that it claims to be the work of a kinsman of Sir Edward Dymocke[[235]]. Most modern writers who have had occasion to mention it have shown a praiseworthy deference to the authority of one of the most venerable figures of English criticism by each in turn repeating that the translation, 'in spite of Daniel's commendatory sonnet, is a very bad one.' And indeed, when we have stated the very simple facts concerning the authorship as distinct from the very elaborate conjectures, there remains little to add to Dyce's words. With the exception of the omission of the prologue the version keeps pretty faithfully to its original, but it does no more than emphasize the tedious artificiality of the Italian, while whatever charm and perhaps over-elaborated grace of language Guarini infused into his verse has entirely evaporated in the process of translation. No less a poet and critic than Daniel, regarding the work doubtless with the undiscriminating eye of friendship, asserted that it might even to Guarini himself have vindicated the poetic laurels of England, and yet from the whole long poem it is hardly possible to extract any passage which would do credit to the pen of an average schoolboy. We turn in vain to the contest of kisses among the Megarean maidens, to the game of blind man's buff, to Amarillis' secret confession of love, and to her trembling appeal when confronted by a death of shame, for any evidence of poetie feeling. The girl's speech in the last-mentioned scene, 'Se la miseria mia fosse mia colpa,' is thus rendered:

If that my fault did cause my wretchednesse,
Or that my thoughts were wicked, as thou thinkst
My deed, lesse grievous would my death be then:
For it were just my blood should wash the spots
Of my defiled soule, heavens rage appease,
And humane justice justly satisfie,
Then could I quiet my afflicted sprights,
And with a just remorse of well-deserved death,
My senses mortifie, and come to death:
And with a quiet blow pass forth perhaps
Unto a life of more tranquilitie:
But too too much, Nicander, too much griev'd
I am, in so young years, Fortune so hie,
An Innocent, I should be doom'd to die. (IV. v.)

The next translation we meet with never got into print. It is preserved in a manuscript at the British Museum[[236]], and bears the heading: 'Il Pastor Fido, or The Faithfull Sheapheard. An Excellent Pastorall Written In Italian by Battista Guarinj And translated into English By Jonathan Sidnam Esq, Anno 1630.' The prologue is again omitted, and the translation is distinguished from its contemporaries by an endeavour to reproduce to some extent the freer metrical structure of the Italian. This was not a particularly happy experiment, since it ignored the fact that the character of a metre may differ considerably in different languages. The Italian endecasillabi sciolti are far less flexible than our own blank verse, and it is only when freely interspersed with the shorter settinarî that they can attempt to rival the range of effect possible to the English metre in the hands of a skilful artist. Thus the imitation of the irregular measures of Guarini was a confession of the translator's inability adequately to handle the dramatic verse of his own tongue. As a specimen we may take the rendering of Amarillis' speech already quoted from the 'Dymocke' version:

If my mischance had come by mine own fault,
Nicander, or had beene as thou beleevst
The foule effect of base and wicked thoughts,
Or, as it now appeares, a deed of Sinn,
It had beene then lesse greevous to endure
Death as a punishment for such a fault,
And just it had beene with my blood to wash
My impure Soule, to mitigate the wrath
And angar of the Godds, and satisfie
The right of humane justice,
Then could I quiett my afflicted Soule
And with an inward feeling of my just
Deserved death, subdue my outward Sence,
And fawne uppon my end, and happelie
With a more settled countenance passe from hence
Into a better world:
But now, Nicander, ah! tis too much greefe
In soe yong yeares, in such a happie state,
To die so suddenlie, and which is more,
Die innocent. (IV. v.)

It was not until the civil war was at its height, namely in 1647, that English literature was enriched with a translation in any way worthy of Guarini's masterpiece. It is easy to strain the interpretation of such facts, but there is certainly a strong temptation to see in the occasion and circumstances of the composition of the piece an illustration of a critical law already noticed, namely the constant tendency of literature to negative as well as to reproduce the life of actuality, and furthermore of the special liability of pastoral to take birth from a desire to escape from the imminence and pressure of surrounding circumstance. Like Reynolds' Aminta, Richard Fanshawe's Pastor fido is better appreciated as a whole than in quotation, though, thanks partly to its own greater maturity of poetic attainment, partly to the less ethereal perfection of the original, it suffers far less than the earlier work by comparison with the Italian. For the same reasons it is by far the most satisfactory of any of the early translations of the Italian pastoral drama. One noticeable feature is the constant reminiscence of Shakespeare, whole lines from his works being sometimes introduced with no small skill. For instance, where Guarini, describing how love wins entrance to a maiden's heart, writes:

E se vergogna il cela,
O temenza l' affrena,
La misera tacendo
Per soverchio desío tutta si strugge; (I. iv.)

Fanshawe renders the last two lines by:

Poor soul! Concealment like a worm i' th' bud,
Lies in her Damask cheek sucking the bloud.

A few illustrative passages will suffice to give an idea of Fanshawe's style. He stands alone in having succeeded in recrystallizing in his own tongue some at least of the charm of the kissing match, and is even fairly successful in the following dangerous conceit:

With one voice
Of peerlesse Amarillis they made choice.
She sweetly bending her fair eyes.
Her cheeks in modest blushes dyes,
To shew through her transparent skin
That she is no lesse fair within
Then shee's without; or else her countenance
Envying the honour done her mouth perchance,
Puts on her scarlet robes as who
Should say: 'And am not I fair too?' (II. i.)

So again he alone among the translators has infused any semblance of passion into Amarillis' confession of love:

Mirtillo, O Mirtillo! couldst thou see
That heart which thou condemn'st of cruelty,
Soul of my soul, thou unto it wouldst show
That pity which thou begg'st from it I know.
O ill starr'd Lovers! what avails it me
To have thy love? T' have mine, what boots it thee?
(III. iv.)

In a lighter vein the following variation on the theme of fading beauty by Corisca also does justice to its original:

Let us use it whilst wee may;
Snatch those joyes that haste away.
Earth her winter-coat may cast,
And renew her beauty past;
But, our winter come, in vain
We sollicite spring again:
And when our furrows snow shall cover,
Love may return, but never Lover. (III. v.)

When it is borne in mind that not only is the rendering graceful in itself, but that as a rule it represents its original if not literally at any rate adequately, it will be realized that Fanshawe's qualifications as a translator are not small. His version, which is considerably the best in the language, is happily easily accessible owing to its early popularity. It first appeared in 1647 in the form of a handsomely printed quarto with portrait and frontispiece engraved after the Ciotti edition of 1602, the remaining copies being re-issued with additional matter the following year; it went through two editions between the restoration and the end of the century, and was again reprinted together with the original, and with alterations in 1736[[237]]. In the meantime, however, the translation had been adapted to the stage by Elkanah Settle. In a dedication to Lady Elizabeth Delaval, the adapter ingenuously disclaims all knowledge of Italian, and when he speaks of 'the Translated Pastor Fido' every reader would no doubt be expected to know that he was referring to Fanshawe's work. He left his readers, however, to discover for themselves that, while he considerably altered, and of course condensed, the original, for whatever poetic merit his scenes possess he is entirely indebted to his predecessor. The adaptation was licensed by L'Estrange in 1676, and printed the following year, while reprints dated 1689 and 1694 seem to indicate that it achieved some success at the Duke's Theatre. It was presumably of this version that Pepys notices a performance on February 25, 1668.[[238]]

Besides these English translations there is also extant one in Latin, a manuscript of which is preserved in the University Library at Cambridge.[[239]] The name of the translater does not appear, but the heading runs: 'Il pastor fido, di signor Guarini ... recitata in Collegio Regali Cantabrigiae.' The title is so scrawled over that it would be impossible to say for certain whether the note of performance referred to the present play, were it not for an allusion casually dropped by the anonymous recorder of a royal visit to Oxford, which not only substantiates the inference to be drawn from the manuscript, but also supplies us with a downward limit of August, 1605.[[240]] In this translation a dialogue between the characters 'Prologus' and 'Argumentum' takes the place of Guarini's long topical prologue, and a short conventional 'Epilogus' is added at the end.

---

It was not till 1655 that the Filli di Sciro of Bonarelli, which has usually been thought to hold the third place among Italian pastorals, appeared in English dress. The translation published in that year is ascribed on the title-page to 'J. S. Gent.,' an ascription which has given rise to a good deal of conjecture. And yet a very little investigation might have settled the matter. Prefixed to the translation are some commendatory verses signed 'I. H.', in a marginal note to which we read: 'This Comedy was Translated long ago by M. I. S. and layd by, as also was Pastor Fido, which was since Translated and set forth by Mr. Rich. Fanshaw.' Another note,[[241]] to some verses to the reader, tells us that both translations were made 'neer twenty years agone,' and, as we should expect, the Pastor fido first; and further, that the latter remained in manuscript owing to the appearance of Fanshawe's version, which is spoken of in terms of warm admiration. Now the only manuscript translation of Guarini's play extant in English is that of Jonathan Sidnam, whose name gives us the very initials which appear upon the title-page of the printed play.[[242]] Since the preliminary verses may have been written any time between 1647 and 1655, the vague allusion to the date of composition will quite well fit 1630, the year given in the manuscript. When, furthermore, we find J. S.'s work characterized by precisely the same use of short lines as we noted above in the case of Sidnam's, the identification becomes a practical certainty. The version, though, as the author was himself aware, it will not stand comparison with Fanshawe's work, is not without merit, and is perhaps as good as the rather tedious original deserves. As a specimen we may take a passage in which the author deliberately followed Tasso, Celia's narration of her adventure with the centaur:

There, to a sturdy Oak, he bound me fast
And re-enforct his base inhumane bonds
With the then danglinst Tresses of my hair;
Ingrateful hair, ill-nurtur'd wicked Locks!
The cruel wretch then took up from the foot
Both my loose tender garments, and at once
Rent them from end to end: Imagine then
Whether my crimson red, through shame was chang'd
Into a pale wan tincture, yea or no.
I that was looking toward Heaven then,
And with my cries imploring ayd from thence,
Upon a suddain to the Earth let fall
My shamefac'd eyes, and shut them close, as if
Under mine eye-lids, I could cover all
My naked Members. (I. iii.)

Of the various unfounded conjectures as to the author of this version, among which Shirley's name has of course not failed to appear, certainly the most ingenious is that which has seen in it the work of Sir Edward Sherburne. The suggestion appears to have been originally made by Coxeter, on what grounds I do not know. 'There is no doubt of the authorship of this play,' writes Professer Gollancz in his notes to Lamb's Specimens, '"J. S." is certainly an error for "E. S." I have found in a MS. in the British Museum Sir E. Sherburne's preface to this play.' Professer Gollancz deserves credit for having unearthed the interesting document referred to,[[243]] but an examination of it at once destroys his theory. It is a preface 'To the Reader' intended for a translation of the Filli, and another copy also is extant,[[244]] both being found among the papers of Sir Edward Sherburne, though in neither does his name actually occur. In the course of the preface the writer quotes 'the Censure of my sometime highly valued, and most Ingenious friend S'r. John Denham, to whom (some years before the happy Restauration of King Charles the 2^d being then at Paris) I communicated Some Part of this my Translation. Who was not only pleasd to encourage my undertaking, but gave me likewise this Character of the Original. "I will not say It is a Better Poem then Pastor Fido, but to speak my Mind freely, I think it a Better Drama."' From this it is clear that the preface was penned after 1660, and we may furthermore infer that the version was as yet unfinished when the writer was in Paris, apparently at some time during the Commonwealth. It is therefore impossible that the preface should be intended for a translation which was printed in 1655, and which was then distinctly stated to have been composed not later than 1635. Furthermore, I question whether either the preface or the version mentioned therein were by Sherburne at all. There is a translation extant in a British Museum manuscript[[245]] purporting to be the work of Sir George Talbot, who is said to have been a friend of Sir Edward's, into whose hands some of his papers may have come. The translation is headed: 'Fillis of Scirus, a Pastorall Written in Italian, by Count Guidubaldo de' Bonarelli, and Translated into English by S'r. G: Talbot,' and there follows 'The Epistle Dedicatory To his sacred Ma'ty. Charles 2'd. &c. prophetically written at Paris, an: 57.' The opening is not wanting in grace:

The dawning light breaks forth; I heare, aloofe,
The whistling ayre, the Saints bell of the Heav'n,
Wherewith each morne it call's the drowsy Birds
To offer up theyre Hymnes to th' new-borne day.
But who ere saw, from night's dark bosome, spring
A morne soe fayre and beautifull? Observe
With what imperceptible hand, it steales
The starres from Heav'n, and deck's the earth with flow'rs:
Haile, lovely fields, your flow'rs in this array
Fournish a kind of star-light to the day.

Or take again Celia's encounter with the centaur. And in this connexion it is worth while mentioning that, when revising his translation and introducing a number of verbal changes, in most cases distinctly for the better, Sir George appears to have been struck by the absurdity of this machinery, and throughout replaced the centaur by a 'wild man.' After telling how she was seized and carried to 'the middle of a desart wood,' Celia proceeds:

There, to a sturdy oake, he bound me fast,
Doubling my bonds with knots of mine own hayre;
Ungratefull hayre, thou ill returnst my care.
The Tyrant then my mantle took in hand
And with one rash tore it from head to foote.
Consider whether shame my trembling pale
Did now convert into Vermillion: up
I cast my eyes to Heav'n, and with lowd cryes
Implor'd it's ayd; then lookt downe tow'rd the earth,
And phancy'd my dejected eyebrows hung
Like a chast mantle ore my naked limbs. (I. iii.)

A comparison of this and the preceding renderings with the original will show that while Talbot's is by far the more fiowing and imaginative, Sidnam's is on the whole rather more literal, except where he appears to have misunderstood the original. No other English translation, I believe, exists.

Lastly, as in the case of the Pastor fido, record has to be made of a Latin version acted at Cambridge. It was the work of a Dr. Brooke of Trinity[[246]], and purports to have been performed, no doubt at that College, before Prince Charles and the Count Palatine, on March 30, 1612[[247]]. The title is 'Scyros, Fabula Pastoralis,' which has hitherto prevented its being identified as a translation of Bonarelli's play, and it is preserved in manuscripts at the University Library[[248]], Trinity and Emmanuel. At the beginning is a note to the effect that in the place of the prologue--Marino's Notte--was to be presented a triumph over the death of the centaur. The cast is given, and includes three undergraduates, five bachelors, and five masters.

III

After translation the next process in logical sequence is direct imitation. Although it is true that the influence of Tasso and Guarini may be traced either directly or indirectly in the great majority of the English pastorals composed during the first half of the seventeenth century, there are nevertheless two plays only in which that influence can be regarded as completely paramount, and to which the term 'imitation' can be with full justification applied. These are the two pastorals by Samuel Daniel, historian and court-laureate, namely the Queen's Arcadia, 'A Pastorall Trage-comedie presented to her Majestie and her Ladies, by the Universitie of Oxford in Christs Church, in August last. 1605[[249]],' and Hymen's Triumph, which formed part of the Queen's 'magnificent intertainement of the Kings most excellent Majestie' on the occasion of the marriage in 1614 of Robert Ker, Earl of Roxburgh, and Mistress Jean Drummond, sister of the Earl of Perth[[250]].

The earlier of these pieces displays alike the greater dependence on Italian models and the less intrinsic merit, whether from a poetic or dramatic point of view. It is, indeed, in its apparent carelessness of the most elementary necessities of dramatic construction, distinctly retrograde as compared with these models themselves. In the first scene we are introduced to two old Arcadians who hold long discourse concerning the degeneracy of the age. The simple manners of earlier times are forsaken, constant quarrels occur, faith is no longer untarnished nor modesty secure. In the hope of probing to the root of the evil the two determine to hide close at hand and so overhear the conversations of the younger swains and shepherdesses. The fact is that Arcadia has recently been invaded by a gang of rascally adventurers from Corinth and elsewhere: Techne, 'a subtle wench,' who under pretence of introducing the latest fashions of the towns corrupts the nymphs; Colax, whose courtier-airs find an easy prey in the hearts of the country-wenches; Alcon, a quacksalver, who introduces tobacco to ruin the constitutions of the shepherds; Lincus, 'a petty-fogger,' who breeds litigation among the simple folk; and lastly Pistophanax, who seeks to undermine the worship of Pan. Colax has, it appears, already abused the love of Daphne, and won that of Dorinda from her swain Mirtillus; Techne has sown jealousy between the lovers Palaemon and Silvia; while Lincus has set Montanus and Acrysius by the ears over the possession of a bit of land. Ail the plotting is overheard by the two concealed shepherds, who when the crisis is reached come forward, call together the Arcadians, expose the machinations of the evil-doers, and procure their banishment from the country. Such an automatic solution is obviously incompatible with the smallest dramatic interest in the plot; it is not a dénoûment at all, properly speaking, but a severing of the skein after Alexander's manner, and it is impossible to feel any emotion at the tragic complications when all the while the sword lies ready for the operation.

The main amorous action centres round Cloris, beloved of Amyntas and Carinus, the latter of whom is in his turn loved by Amarillis. Carinus' hopes are founded on the fact that, in imitation of Tasso's Aminta, he has rescued Cloris from the hands of a satyr, while Amyntas bases his upon certain signs of favour shown him. Colax, however, also falls in love with the nymph, and induces Techne to give her tryst in a cave, where he may then have an opportunity of finding her alone. Techne, hereupon, in the hope of winning Amyntas' affection for herself if she can make him think Cloris unworthy, directs him to the spot where she has promised to meet the unsuspecting maiden. This is obviously borrowed from the Pastor fido; indeed, Techne is none other than Corisca under a new name, and it was no doubt she who suggested to Daniel the introduction of the other agents of civilization. Amyntas, on seeing Cloris emerge from the cave in company with Colax, at once concludes her guilt, and in spite of all Techne's efforts to restrain him rushes off with the intention of putting an end to his life. Techne, perceiving the ill-success of her plot, tells Cloris of Amyntas' resolve. We here return to the imitation of Tasso: Cloris, like that poet's Silvia, begins by pretending incredulity and indifference, but being at length convinced agrees to accompany Techne in search of the desperate swain. Daniel has produced what is little better than a parody of the scene in his model. Not content with placing in the girl's mouth the preposterous excuse:

If it be done my help will come too late,
And I may stay, and save that labour here, (IV. iv.[[251]])

he has spun out the dialogue, already over-long in the original, to an altogether inordinate and ludicrous extent. When the pair at last come upon the unhappy lover they find him lying insensible, a horn of poison by him. The necessary sequel is reported by Mirtillus:

For we perceiv'd how Love and Modestie
With sev'rall Ensignes, strove within her cheekes
Which should be Lord that day, and charged hard
Upon each other, with their fresh supplies
Of different colours, that still came, and went,
And much disturb'd her, but at length dissolv'd
Into affection, downe she casts her selfe
Upon his senselesse body, where she saw
The mercy she had brought was come too late:
And to him calls: 'O deare Amyntas, speake,
Look on me, sweete Amyntas, it is I
That calles thee, I it is, that holds thee here,
Within those armes thou haste esteem'd so deare.' (V. ii.)

Amyntas' subsequent recovery is reported in the same strain. The reader will remember the lines in which Tasso described a similar scene. And yet, in spite of the identity of the situations and even of the close similarity of the language, the tone and atmosphere of the two passages are essentially different; for if Daniel's treatment of the scene, which is typical of a good deal of his work, has the power to call a tear to the eye of sensibility, his sentiment, divested as it is of the Italian's subtle sensuousness, appears perfectly innocuous and at times not a little ridiculous.

Cloris and Amyntas are now safe enough, and Carinus has the despised but faithful Amarillis to console him. The other pairs of lovers need not detain us further than to note that their adventures are equally borrowed from Tasso and Guarini. Silvia relates how, wounded by her 'cruelty,' Palaemon sought to imitate Aminta by throwing himself from a cliff, but was prevented by her timely relenting. Amarillis fondles Carinus's dog, and is roughly upbraided by its master in the same manner as her prototype Dorinda in the Pastor fido.

Amid much that is commonplace in the verse occur not a few graceful passages, while Daniel is at times rather happy in the introduction of certain sententious utterances in keeping with the conventionality of the pastoral form. Thus a caustic swain remarks of a girl's gift:

Poore withred favours, they might teach thee know,
That shee esteemes thee, and thy love as light
As those dead flowers, shee wore but for a show,
The day before, and cast away at night;

and to a lover:

When such as you, poore, credulous, devout,
And humble soules, make all things miracles
Your faith conceives, and vainely doe convert
All shadowes to the figure of your hopes. (I. ii.)

Colax is a subtle connoisseur in love:

Some thing there is peculiar and alone
To every beauty that doth give an edge
To our desires, and more we still conceive
In that we have not, then in that we have.
And I have heard abroad where best experience
And wit is learnd, that all the fairest choyce
Of woemen in the world serve but to make
One perfect beauty, whereof each brings part. (I. iii.)

The historical importance of the Queen's Arcadia, as the first play to exhibit on the English stage the direct and unequivocal influence of the Italian pastoral drama, is evident to the critic in retrospect, and it is not impossible that it may have lent some extraneous interest to the performance even in the eyes of contemporaries; but the zest of the play for a court audience in the early years of the reign of James I was very possibly the satirical element. The shadowy fiction of Arcadia and its age of gold quickly vanished when the actual or fancied evils of the day were exposed to the lash. The abuse of the practice of taking tobacco flattered the prejudices of the king; the quack and the dishonest lawyer were stock butts of contemporary satire; Colax and Techne, the he and she coney-catchers, have maintained their fascination for all ages. Pistophanax, the disseminator of false doctrine, who had actually presumed to reason with the priests concerning the mysteries of Pan, was perhaps the favourite object of contemporary invective. The term 'atheist' covered a multitude of sins. This character appears in the final scene only, and even there he is a mute but for one speech. He is indeed treated in a somewhat different manner from the other subjects of satire in the play. Thus the discovery that he is wearing a mask to hide the natural ugliness of his features passes altogether the bounds of dramatic satire, and carries us back to the allegorical manner of the middle ages. Apart from these figures, who bear upon them the form and pressure of the time, and who are, it must be remembered, the main-spring of the action, there is little of note to fix the attention in this first fruit of the Arcadian spirit in the English drama.

In every way superior to its predecessor is the second venture in the kind made by Daniel after an interval of nearly a decade. Instead of being a patchwork of motives and situations borrowed from the Italian, and pieced together with more or less ingenuity, Hymen's Triumph is as a whole an original composition. The play is preceded by a prologue in which Daniel departs from his models in employing the dialogue form, the speakers being Hymen, Avarice, Envy, and Jealousy[[252]]. In the opening scene we find Thirsis lamenting the loss of his love Silvia, who is supposed to have been devoured by wild beasts while wandering alone upon the shore--we are once again on the sea-board of Arcadia--her rent veil and a lock of her hair being all that remains to her disconsolate lover. Their vows had been in secret owing to the match proposed by Silvia's father between her and Alexis, the son of a wealthy neighbour[[253]]. In reality she has been seized by pirates[[254]] and carried off to Alexandria, where she has lived as a slave in boy's attire for some two years. Recently an opportunity for escape having presented itself, she has returned, still disguised, to her native country, where she has entered the service of the shepherdess Cloris, waiting till the approaching marriage of Alexis with another nymph shall have made impossible the renewal of her father's former schemes. Complications now arise, for it appears that Cloris has fallen in love with Thirsis, but fears ill success in her suit, supposing him in his turn to be pining for the love of Amarillis. She employs the supposed boy to move her suit to Thirsis, and Silvia goes on her errand to court her lover for her mistress, fearing to find him already faithless to his love for her[[255]]. On her mission she is waylaid by the nymph Phillis, who has fallen in love with her in her male attire, careless of the love borne her by the honest but rude forester Montanus. The varying fortune of Silvia's suit on behalf of Cloris, Thirsis' faith to the memory of Silvia, Montanus' jealousy, and Phillis' shame when she finds her proffered love rejected by the boy for whom she has sacrificed her modesty, are presented in a series of scenes and discourses which do not materially advance the business in hand. Towards the end of the fourth act, however, we approach the climax, and matters begin to move. Alexis' marriage being now imminent, Silvia thinks she can venture at least to give her lover some spark of hope by narrating her story under fictitious names. This she does, making use of the transparent anagrams Isulia and Sirthis[[256]]. As Silvia ends her tale Montanus rushes in, determined to be revenged for the favour shown by his mistress to the supposed youth. He stabs Silvia, and carries off the garland she is wearing, believing it to be one woven by the hand of Phillis. This naturally leads to the discovery of Silvia's sex and identity, and supposing her dead, Thirsis falls in a swoon at her side. The last act is, as usual, little more than an epilogue, in which we are entertained with a long account of the recovery of the faithful lovers, thanks to the care of the wise Lamia, an elaborate passage again modelled on Tasso, but again falling far short of the poetical beauty of the original.

Taken as a whole, and partly through being unencumbered with the satyric machinery of the Queen's Arcadia, Hymen's Triumph is a distinctly lighter and more pleasing composition. At least so it appears by comparison, for Daniel everywhere takes himself and his subject with a distressing seriousness wholly unsuited to the style; we look in vain for a gleam of humour such as that which in the final chorus of the Aminta casts a reflex light over the whole play[[257]]. Again an advance may be observed, not only in the conduct of the plot, which moves artistically on an altogether different level, and even succeeds in arousing some dramatic interest, but likewise in the verse, which has a freer movement, and is on the whole less marred by the over-emphatic repetition of words and phrases in consecutive lines, a particularly irritating trick of the author's pastoral style, or by the monotonous cadence and painful padding of the blank verse. Daniel was emphatically one of those poets, neither few nor inconsiderable, the natural nervelessness of whose poetic diction imperatively demands the bracing restraint of rime. It is noteworthy that this applies to his verse alone; such a work as the famous Defence of Rime serves to place him once for all among the greatest masters of 'the other harmony of prose.'

Hymen's Triumph contains many more passages of notable merit than its predecessor. There is, indeed, one passage in the Queen's Arcadia which will bear comparison with anything Daniel ever wrote, but it stands in somewhat striking contrast with its surroundings. This is the opening of the speech in which Melibaeus addresses the assembled Arcadians, and well deserves quotation.

You gentle Shepheards and Inhabitors
Of these remote and solitary parts
Of Mountaynous Arcadia, shut up here
Within these Rockes, these unfrequented Clifts,
The walles and bulwarkes of our libertie,
From out the noyse of tumult, and the throng
Of sweating toyle, ratling concurrencie,
And have continued still the same and one
In all successions from antiquitie;
Whil'st all the states on earth besides have made
A thousand revolutions, and have rowl'd
From change to change, and never yet found rest,
Nor ever bettered their estates by change;
You I invoke this day in generall,
To doe a worke that now concernes us all,
Lest that we leave not to posteritie,
Th' Arcadia that we found continued thus
By our fore-fathers care who left it us. (V. iii.)

Such passages are more frequent in Hymen's Triumph. Take the description of the early love of Thirsis and Silvia, instinct with a delicacy and freshness that even Tasso might have envied[[258]]:

Then would we kisse, then sigh, then looke, and thus
In that first garden of our simplenesse
We spent our child-hood; but when yeeres began
To reape the fruite of knowledge, ah, how then
Would she with graver looks, with sweet stern brow,
Check my presumption and my forwardnes;
Yet still would give me flowers, stil would me shew
What she would have me, yet not have me, know. (I. i.)

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

Hold it to be a most heroicke thing
To act one man, and do that part exact,

thus addresses his friend Palaemon in defence of love:

Ah, know that when you mention love, you name
A sacred mistery, a Deity,
Not understood of creatures built of mudde,
But of the purest and refined clay
Whereto th' eternall fires their spirits convey.
And for a woman, which you prize so low,
Like men that doe forget whence they are men,
Know her to be th' especiall creature, made
By the Creator as the complement
Of this great Architect[[259]] the world, to hold
The same together, which would otherwise
Fall all asunder; and is natures chiefe
Vicegerent upon earth, supplies her state.
And doe you hold it weakenesse then to love,
And love so excellent a miracle
As is a worthy woman? (III. iv.)

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

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

and of thoughts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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