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

by W. W. Greg

Chapter VII.

Masques and General Influence

I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Daphne running to her Majestie uttered this:'

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

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

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

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

like as the Chamelions change themselves
Into all perfect colours saving white;
So they can to all humors frame their speech,
Save only to prove honest;

or else how

light minds are catcht with little things,
And Phancie smels to Fennell.

Nor are other and more marked traces of Lyly's influence wanting: witness the following passage, which is a mere metrical paraphrase of a speech in the Gallathea already quoted (p. 227):

You have an heate, on which a coldnesse waits,
A paine that is endur'd with pleasantnesse,
And makes those sweets you eat have bitter taste:
It puts eies in your thoughts, eares in your heart:
'Twas by desire first bred, by delight nurst,
And hath of late been wean'd by jelousie.

Certain speeches of a sententious nature, on the other hand, remind us rather of Daniel and the sonneteers:

To wish the best, to thinke upon the worst,
And all contingents brooke with patience,
Is a most soveraigne medicine.

All these characteristics point to an early date, and Mr. Fleay, who regards the piece as forming part of the Five Plays in One, acted at the Rose in April, 1597, may very likely be right. Of the other pieces printed in the same volume, a few only show any trace of pastoral blending with the general mythological colouring. Perhaps the most that can be said is that the nymphs are already familiar to us from the pastoral tradition, and must have been scarcely less so to a contemporary audience, fresh from the work of Peele and Lyly. In Jupiter and Io, which perhaps made part of the same performance as Amphrissa, Mercury disguises himself as a shepherd, in order to cut off the head of Argus. This he did to such good purpose that record of the trunkless member remains unto this day in the inventories of the Lord Admiral's company. Another of these pieces, the character of which can be easily imagined from its title, Apollo and Daphne, ends with a song, which may owe something to the traditions of the mythological pastoral:

Howsoe're the Minutes go,
Run the heures or swift or slow:
Seem the Months or short or long,
Passe the seasons right or wrong:
All we sing that Phoebus follow,
Semel in anno ridet Apollo.
Early fall the Spring or not,
Prove the Summer cold or hot:
Autumne be it faire or foule,
Let the Winter smile or skowle: Still we sing, that Phoebus follow, Semel in anno ridet Apollo.

Passing on to the seventeenth century, the first piece that demands attention is the St. John's Twelfth Night entertainment, Narcissus, performed at Oxford in 1602. If its pastoral quality is somewhat evanescent, there is another point of view from which the piece has a good deal of interest. It is, namely, a burlesque production of the nature of the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude in the Midsummer Night's Dream, and flavoured with something of the comic rusticity of Greene's Carmela eclogue in Menaphon. It is needless here to summarize the plot of the 'merriment' which the ingenious author, no doubt a student of St. John's, evolved from Ovid's account in the third book of the Metamorphoses, and which runs to the respectable length of some eight hundred lines.[[342]] I may be allowed, however, to note that echo verses, suggested by Ovid, are introduced and handled with more than usual ingenuity; and further to quote two characteristic passages. In one of these the nymphs Florida and Clois court the affections of the loveless hero.

Florida. Shine thou on mee, sweet plannet, bee soe good
As with thy fiery beames to warme my bloud ...

Narcissus. To speak the truth, faire maid, if you will have us,
O Oedipus I am not, I am Davus.

Clois. Good Master Davis, bee not so discourteous
As not to heare a maidens plaint for vertuous.

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

Flo. O, whiter then a dish of clowted creame,
Speake not of love? How can I overskippe
To speake of love to such a cherrye lippe?

Nar. It would beseeme a maidens slender vastitye
Never to speake of any thinge but chastitye.

Flo. As true as Helen was to Menela
So true to thee will be thy Florida.

Clo. As was to trusty Pyramus truest Thisbee
So true to you will ever thy sweete Clois bee.

Flo. O doe not stay a moment nor a minute,
Love is a puddle, I am ore shooes in it.

Clo. Doe not delay us halfe a minutes mountenance
That ar in love, in love with thy sweet countenance.

Nar. Then take my dole although I deale my alms ill,
Narcissus cannot love with any damzell;
Although, for most part, men to love encline all,
I will not, I, this is your answere finall.

We are here, it is true, as far as ever from the delicate rusticity of Lorenzo de' Medici, and not particularly near to the humour of the Athenian rustics, but for burlesque it is passably amusing. The Midsummer Night's Dream had appeared possibly a decade earlier, and the audience in the college hall at Oxford can hardly but have been reminded of Wall and Moonshine as they listened to the speech by one who enters carrying 'a buckett and boughes and grasse.'

A well there was withouten mudd,
Of silver hue, with waters cleare,
Whome neither sheep that chawe the cudd,
Shepheards nor goates came ever neare;
Whome, truth to say, nor beast nor bird,
Nor windfalls yet from trees had stirrde.
[He strawes the grasse about the buckett. And round about it there was grasse,
As learned lines of poets showe,
Which next by water nourisht was; [Sprinkle water. Neere to it too a wood did growe, [Sets down the bowes. To keep the place, as well I wott,
With too much sunne from being hott.
And thus least you should have mistooke it,
The truth of all I to you tell:
Suppose you the well had a buckett,
And so the buckett stands for the well;
And 'tis, least you should counte mee for a sot O,
A very pretty figure cald pars pro toto.

The first strict masque of a pastoral character that we meet with is that of Juno and Iris, with the dance of nymphs and the 'sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary,' introduced by Shakespeare into the Tempest; but this must not be taken as altogether typical of the independent productions of the time. The masques introduced into plays were necessarily, for the most part, of a slighter and less elaborate character than those performed at court, or for the entertainment of persons of rank. This is more particularly the case with the serions portions of the masques, since the actors, who were engaged for the performance of the antimasques in court revels, frequently transferred their parts bodily on to the public boards. Thus, in the entertainment in the Winters Tale, in which shepherds also appear, the main feature was a dance of satyrs, which was no doubt borrowed from Jonson's Masque of Oberon.[[343]] The Tempest masque, however, is of the simpler type, without antimasque. At Juno's command Iris summons Ceres, and the goddesses together bestow their blessing on the young lovers. Then at Iris' call come the naiads and the reapers for the dance. The date of the play may be taken as late in 1610, or early the next year, a time at which the popularity of the masque was reaching its height.

Although the mythological element is everywhere prominent, the pastoral is comparatively of rare occurrence in the regular masque literature of the seventeenth century. This, considering the adaptability and natural suitability of the form, is rather surprising. Probably the masque as it evolved itself at the court of James needed a subject possessing a traditional story, or at least fixed and known conditions of a kind which the pastoral was unable to supply. Be this as it may, on one occasion only did Jonson make extended use of the kind, namely, in the masque which in the folio of 1640 appears with the heading 'Pans Anniversarie; or, The Shepherds Holy-day. The Scene Arcadia. As it was presented at Court before King James. 1625. The Inventors, Inigo Jones, Ben. Johnson[[344]].' Even here, however, we learn little concerning the condition of pastoralism in general, from the highly specialized form employed to a specific purpose. As in all the regular masques of the Jonsonian type the characters and situations exist solely for the opportunities they afford for dance and song. Shepherds and nymphs constitute the personae of the masque proper, while those of the antimasque are supplied by a band of Bocotian clowns, who come to challenge the Arcadians to the dance. Some of the songs are very graceful, suggesting at times reminiscences of Spenser, at others parallels to Ben's own Sad Shepherd, but the piece does not possess either sufficient importance or interest to justify our lingering over it. Outside this piece the nearest approach to pastoral characters to be found in Jonson's masques are, perhaps, the satyr and Queen Mab in the fairy entertainment at Althorp in 1603, Silenus and the satyrs in Oberon in 1611, and Zephyrus, Spring, and the Fountains and Rivers in Chloridia in 1631.

During James I's reign pastoral shows of a sort no doubt became frequent. While in some cases which remain to be noticed they reached the elaboration of small plays, in others they probably remained simple affairs enough. We get an interesting glimpse of the conditions of production in a note of John Aubrey's.[[345]] 'In tempore Jacobi,' he writes, 'one Mr. George Ferraby was parson of Bishops Cannings in Wilts: an excellent musitian, and no ill poet. When queen Anne came to Bathe, her way lay to traverse the famous Wensdyke, which runnes through his parish. He made severall of his neighbours, good musitians, to play with him in consort, and to sing. Against her majestie's comeing, he made a pleasant pastorall, and gave her an entertaynment with his fellow songsters in shepherds' weeds and bagpipes, he himself like an old bard. After that wind musique was over, they sang their pastorall eglogues.' This was in 1613; Ferraby or Ferebe later became chaplain to the king.

The more elaborate pieces were usually written for performance at schools or colleges. Such a piece is Tatham's Love Crowns the End, composed for the scholars of Bingham in Nottinghamshire in 1633, and printed in his Fancy's Theatre in 1640. Small literary interest attaches to the play, which is equally slight and ill constructed, but is perhaps not unrepresentative of its class. In spite of its very modest dimensions it possesses a full romantic-pastoral plot, with the resuit that it is at times almost unintelligible, owing to the want of space in which to develop in an adequate and dramatic manner the motives and situations. The bewildering rapidity with which character succeeds character upon the stage must have made the representation almost impossible to follow, while the reading of the piece is not a little complicated by the confusion in which the stage directions remain in the only modern edition.[[346]] Some notion of the complexity of the plot may be gathered from the following account. Cliton, having in a fit of jealousy sought to kill his love Florida, is found wandering in the woods by Alexis, who receives his confession and shows him the way to repentance. Florida, moreover, has been found and healed by the wise shepherdess Claudia, and is living in retirement. Meanwhile Cloe (a name which it appears from the rimes that the author pronounced Cloi) is saved by Lysander from the pursuit of a Lustful Shepherd, in consequence of which she transfers to him the affection she previously bore to her lover Daphnes. Next Leon and his daughter Gloriana appear, together with the swain Francisco, to whom against her will the maiden is apparently betrothed. They all go off to view the games in which Lysander, whose heart is also fixed on Gloriana, proves victor. His refusal to entertain the affection of Cloe drives her to a state of distraction, in which the nymphs of the woods take pity on her and bring her to Claudia to be cured. Gloriana in the meantime returns the affections of Lysander, but the meeting of the lovers is interrupted by the jealous Francisco and a gang who wound Lysander and carry off Gloriana. She escapes from her captors, but only after she has lost her reason, and wanders about until she meets with Cliton, who has turned hermit and who now undertakes her cure. Throughout the play we find comic interludes by Scrub, a page or attendant in search of his master, who also has some farcical business with the Lustful Shepherd, who after being disappointed of Cloe disguises himself as a satyr, apparently deeming that rôle suited to his taste. In the end all the characters are brought together. Francisco, found contrite, is forgiven by Lysander and Gloriana; Cliton and Florida love once more; so do Daphnes and Cloe, appropriately enough. Scrub announces the death of the usurping duke, 'who banished good old Leon;' Francisco and Lysander reveal themselves as princes who left the court to win his daughter's love, when he was driven from his land, and so--love crowns the end.

Through this medley it is not hard to see the various debts the author has incurred towards his predecessors. The verse, in rimed couplets, whether deca- or octo-syllabic, ultimately depends on Fletcher; of the comic prose scenes I have already spoken in dealing with Goffe's Careless Shepherdess, a play the influence of which may perhaps be specifically traced in the satyr-disguise, the gang who carry off Gloriana, her unexplained escape, and the songs of the 'Destinies' and a 'Heavenly Messenger,' who in their inconsequence recall the 'Bonus Genius' of Goffe's play. Scrub may owe his origin to the same source, though he is rather more like the page in the Maid's Metamorphosis. The usurping duke recalls As You Like It; the princes seeking their love-fortunes among the shepherd folk suggest the Arcadia; while the influence of the Faithful Shepherdess is not only traceable in the character of the Lustful Shepherd, but also in certain specific parallels, as where the wounded Lysander, seeing his love carried off, exclaims:

Stay, stay! let me but breathe my last
Upon her lips, and I'll forgive what's past; (p. 24)

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

Oh, yet forbear
To take her from me! give me leave to die
By her! (Faithful Shepherdess, III. i. 165[[347]].)

The general level of the verse is not high, but we now and again light on some pleasing lines such as the following:

My dearest love, fair as the eastern morn
As it breaks o'er the plains when summer's born,
Hanging bright liquid pearls on every tree,
New life and hope imparting, as to me
Thy presence brings delight, so fresh and rare
As May's first breath, dispensing such sweet air
The Phoenix does expire in; sit, while I play
The cunning thief, and steal thy heart away,
And thou shalt stand as judge to censure me. (p. 18.)

So again there is some grace in a song which catches perhaps a distant echo of Peele's gem:

Gloriana. Sit, while I do gather flowers
And depopulate the bowers.
Here's a kiss will come to thee!

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

Both. Thus in harmless sport we may
Pass the idle hours away.

Gloriana. Hark! hark, how fine
The birds do chime!
And pretty Philomel
Her moan doth tell. (p. 22.)

Another of these miniature pastorals is preserved in a British Museum manuscript, where it bears the title of The Converted Robber.[[348]] No author's name appears, but a plausible conjecture may be advanced. The scene of the piece, namely, is Stonehenge, and it is evident that the occasion on which it was first performed had some connexion with Salisbury, for there is obviously a topical allusion in the final words:

Lett us that do noe envy beare um
Wish all felicity to Sarum.

Now in 1636,[[349]] according to Anthony à Wood, there was acted at St. John's College, Oxford, a play by John Speed, entitled Stonehenge, the occasion being the return of Dr. Richard Baylie after his installation as Dean of Salisbury. We can hardly be far wrong in identifying the two pieces. The only difficulty is that in the manuscript the play is dated 1637. This, however, may either be a mere slip of the scribe, or may possibly imply that the piece was produced in 1636-7, the scribe adopting the popular and modern, whereas Wood always adhered to the old or legal reckoning.

The piece possesses a certain interest from the fact of its forming, in a stricter sense than any of the other pieces we have examined, a link between the drama and the masque. In this it somewhat resembles Comus, employing a more or less dramatic plot as the setting for the formai dances of the masque.[[350]]

The story is simple enough. A band of robbers and a company of shepherds and shepherdesses keep on Salisbury Plain in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge--'stoy[=n]age y^e wonder y^t is vpon that Playne of Sarum'--which forms the background of the scene. It chanced that the shepherdess Clarinda, falling into the hands of the robbers, was saved from dishonour by their chief Alcinous, an action which won for him her love, and having escaped, she returned dressed as a boy in order to serve him. Meanwhile the robbers have decided to make a raid upon the shepherd folk, and Alcinous, disguising himself as a stranger shepherd, mixes among them, while his companions Autolicus and Conto lie in wait hard by. During a festival Alcinous seeks the love of Castina, Clarinda's sister, and finding her unmoved by entreaty threatens force. At this she attempts to stab herself, and the robber chief is so struck that he vows to reform and is converted to the pastoral life. His companions, left in the lurch, fall upon the shepherds of their own accord, but are soon brought to see reason by the hand and tongue of their chief, and are content to follow him in his conversion. Clarinda now discovers herself and marries Alcinous, while Castina and her fellow shepherdess Avonia consent to reward their faithful swains, Palaemon and Dorus.

In this piece there is a rather conspicuous absence of motive and dramatic construction, the author claiming apparently the freedom of the masque. The verse is mainly octosyllabic, sometimes blank, but the rough accentual 'rime' is also used. Decasyllabics are rare. There is also some prose in the comic part sustained by Autolicus and Conto and the aged clown Jarbus, as well as a certain amount of Spenserian archaism, and a good deal of dialect. Whether comic or romantic, the characters are singularly out of keeping with their surroundings, while the conceit of paganizing the Christian worship appears to be carried to ludicrous lengths, until one recollects that it depends almost entirely upon the substitution of the name of Pan for that of the Deity--a process no doubt facilitated by false etymology. Thus Christ, who is spoken of by name, is called 'Pannes blest babe.' After describing the foundation of Salisbury Cathedral, the old shepherd proceeds:

But sturdy shepherds brought all the other stones,
And reard up that great Munster all at once,
Wher shepherds each one, both woman and man,
Do come to worship theyr great God Pann.

A rustic show formed the first part of an entertainment witnessed by Charles and Henrietta Maria at Richmond, after their return from a visit to Oxford in 1636. A clown named Tom comes in bearing a present for the queen, and is on the point of being unceremoniously removed by the usher, when he espies Mr. Edward Sackville, to whom he appeals, and a dialogue ensues between the two. After he has offered his present, Madge, Doll, and Richard come in, and the four perform a country dance. They are all plain Wiltshire rustics who talk a broad vernacular, but at the end a shepherd and shepherdess enter and sing a duet in a more courtly strain. The author of this slight production is not known, but it is regarded by the latest authority on masques as an imitation, in the looseness of its construction, of Davenant's Prince d'Amour.[[351]]

Little poetic ability was displayed by Heywood on the only occasion on which he introduced pastoral tradition into a Lord Mayor's pageant. The 'first show by land' of the Porta Pietatis, presented by the drapers in 1638 on the occasion of Sir Maurice Abbot's mayoralty, consisted of a speech by a shepherd, which is preceded in the printed copy by a short account of the properties, natural history, and general usefulness of sheep, as well as of their peculiar importance in relation to the craft honoured in the person of the newly appointed Lieutenant of the city of London. Heywood was famous for his wide, miscellaneous, and often startling information.

We have already seen how, in the first blush and budding of the Elizabethan spring, George Peele treated the tale of the judgement of Paris; on the same legend Heywood based one of his semi-dramatic dialogues; it remains to be seen how, in the late autumn of the great age of our dramatic literature, Shirley returned to the same theme in his Triumph of Beauty, privately produced about 1640. It is a regular masque, for which the familiar story serves as a thread; the goddesses and their symbolical attendants, or else the Graces and the Hours with Hymen and Delight, performing the dances, while a company of rustic swains of Ida, who come to relieve the melancholy of the princely shepherd, form a comic antimasque. It has, however, grown to the proportions of a small play. The comic characters also study a piece on the subject of the golden fleece, reminiscent, like Narcissus, of the Midsummer Night's Dream. This, as Mr. Fleay supposes, may well be satirical of some of the city pageants, though it is best to be cautious in discovering definite allusions. But the success of such a piece as the present, in so far as it was dependent on the libretto, demanded a power of light and graceful lyric versification which was not conspicuous among the many gifts of the author. The comic business is frankly amusing, but the long speeches of the goddesses can hardly have appeared less tedious to a contemporary audience than they do to the reader to-day.

I may also notice here a regular short pastoral in three acts, inserted by Robert Baron in his romance Ἐροτοπαίγνιον, or the Cyprian Academy, printed in 1647. It is entitled Gripus and Hegio, or the Passionate Lovers, and relates the loves of these characters for Mira and Daris; while we also find the familiar roguish boy, less amusing and of stricter propriety than usual; a chorus of fairies who discourse classical myth; Venus, Cupid, Hymen, and Echo; and the habitual concomitants of pastoral commonplace. The romance also contains a masque entitled Deorum Dona, in which figure allegorical abstractions such as Fame, Fortune, and the like. It is in no wise pastoral.

Another pastoral show of some elaboration, and of a higher order of poetry than most of those we have been considering, is Sir William Denny's Shepherds' Holiday, printed from manuscript in the Inedited Poetical Miscellany of 1870. The piece appears to date from 1653, and is only slightly dramatic so far as plot is concerned. It is of an allegorical cast, the various characters typifying certain virtues, or rather temperaments--virginity, love and so forth--as is elaborately expounded in the preface.

A few slight pieces by the quondam actor Robert Cox, partaking more or less of the character of masques, possess a certain pastoral colouring. This is the case, for instance, in the Acteon and Diana, published in 1656.[[352]] The piece opens with the humours of the would-be lover Bumpkin, a huntsman, and the dance of the country lasses round the May-pole. Then enters Acteon with his huntsmen, who is followed by Diana and her nymphs. Upon the dance of these last Acteon, returning, breaks in unawares, and is rebuked by the goddess, who then retires with her nymphs to a glade in the forest. They are in the act of despoiling themselves for the bath when they are again surprised by Acteon. Incensed, the goddess turns upon him, and he flees before her anger, only to return once more upon the dance of the bathers in the shape of a hart, and fall at their feet a prey to his own hounds. The verse, whether lyric or dramatic, is of a mediocre description, and the piece, if it was ever actually performed, no doubt depended for success upon the music, dancing, and scenery. It is a curious fact, to which Davenant's work among others is witness, that the nominally private representation of this kind of musical ballet was permitted, while the regular drama was under strict inhibition. At any time, however, it must have been difficult to represent such a piece as the present without sacrificing either propriety or tradition.

Another similar composition, headed 'The Rural Sports on the Birthday of the Nymph Oenone,' is printed together with the above. In it the strains of the polished pastoral are varied by the humours of the clown Hobbinall, the whole ending with a speech by Pan and a dance of satyrs.

One obvions omission from the above catalogue will have been noticed. The reason thereof is sufficiently obvious; and the following section will endeavour to repair it.

II

In Milton's contribution to the fashionable masque literature of his day we approach work the poetic supremacy of which has never been called in question, and whose other qualities, lying properly beyond the strict application of that term, critics have habitually vied with one another to extol. No one, indeed, for whom poetry has any meaning whatever, can turn from the work of Peele, Heywood, and Shirley, of Ben Jonson even, to the early works of Milton, to such comparatively immature works as Arcades and Comus, without being conscious that they belong to an altogether different level of poetical production. It was no mere conventional commendation, such as we may find prefixed to the works of any poetaster of the time, that Sir Henry Wotton addressed to the author of the Ludlow masque: 'I should much commend the Tragical [i.e. dramatic] part, if the Lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your Songs and Odes, wherunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in our Language[[353]].'

The two poems we have now to consider were, in all probability, written within a short while of one another, and the second anticipated by more than three years the composition of Lycidas. But the connexion between the two is not one of date only, nor even of the spectacular demand it was the end of either to meet. It may, namely, in the absence of any definite evidence, be with much plausibility presumed that the impulse to the entertainment, of which as we are told Arcades formed a part, originated with that very Lady Alice Egerton and her two young brothers who, the following year probably, bore the chief parts in Comus. The entertainment was presented at Harefield in honour of their grandmother, the Countess Dowager of Derby. This lady, probably somewhat over seventy at the time, was the honoured head of a large family. The daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe, born about 1560, she married first Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, patron of the company of actors with whom Shakespeare's name is associated; and secondly, after his early death in 1594, the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton, who rose by rapid steps to be Viscount Brackley shortly before his death in 1617. The span of a human life appears strange when measured by the rapidly moving events of the English renaissance. The wife of Shakespeare's patron, who may have witnessed the early ventures of the Stratford lad at the time of his first appearance on the London stage--the 'Amarillis' of Colin Clout, with whom, and with her sisters 'Phillis' and 'Charillis,' Spenser claimed kinship, and to whom he dedicated his Tears of the Muses in 1591--lived to see her grandchildren perform for her amusement in the reign of the first Charles an entertainment for which their music-master Lawes had requisitioned the pen of the future author of Paradise Lost.

Arcades, or 'the Arcadians,' can hardly be dignified by the name of a masque; it is the mere embryo of the elaborate compositions which were at the time fashionable under that name, and of which Milton was to rival the constructional elaboration in his pastoral entertainment of the following year. It rather resembles such amoebean productions as we find introduced into the stage plays of the time; and was, no doubt, as the superscription explicitly informs us, but 'Part of an entertainment presented to the Countess Dowager of Darby.' Nevertheless it is complete and self-contained, and to speak of it, as Professer Masson does, as 'part, and part only, of a masque,' is to give a wholly false impression; for, whatever the rest of the entertainment may have been, there is not the least reason to suppose that it had any connexion or relation with the portion that has survived. This runs to a little over one hundred lines. A group of nymphs and shepherds, coming from among the trees of the garden, approach the 'seat of State' where sits the venerable Countess, whom they address in a song. As this ends their progress is barred by the Genius of the Wood, who delivers a long speech.[[354]] This is followed by a song introducing the dance, after which a third song brings the performance to a close. It cannot be honestly said that the bulk of this slender poem is of any very transcendent merit; but the final song stands apart from the rest, and deserves notice both on its own account and for the sake of that to which it served as herald:

Nymphs and Shepherds dance no more
By sandy Ladons Lillied banks;
On old Lycaeus or Cyllene hoar
Trip no more in twilight ranks;
Though Erymanth your loss deplore
A better soyl shall give ye thanks.
From the stony Maenalus
Bring your Flocks, and live with us;
Here ye shall have greater grace
To serve the Lady of this place,
Though Syrinx your Pans Mistres were,
Yet Syrinx well might wait on her.
Such a rural Queen
All Arcadia hath not seen.

Here we have, if nothing else, promise at least of the melodies to be, as also of that harmonious interweaving of classical names which long years after was to lend weight and dignity to the 'full and heightened style' of the epic. One other point in connexion with the poem is noteworthy, the quality, namely, in virtue of which it claims our attention here. It is, indeed, not a little curious that on the only two occasions on which Milton was called upon to produce something of the order of the masque, he cast his work into a more or less pastoral form; and this in spite of the fact that, as we have seen, the form was by no means a prevalent one among the more popular and experienced writers. It would appear as though his mind turned, through some natural bent or early association, to the employment of this form; an idea which suggests itself all the more forcibly when we find him, a few years later, setting about the composition of a conventional lament in this mode on a young college acquaintance, and producing, through his power of alchemical transmutation, one of the greatest works of art in the English language.

It was, no doubt, in the earlier months of 1634, while his friend Lawes was engaged on the gorgeous and complicated staging and orchestration of the Triumph of Peace and the Coelum Britannicum, that Milton composed the poem which perhaps more than any other has made readers of to-day familiar with the term 'masque.' In the second of the elaborate productions just named--a poem, be it incidentally remarked, which does no particular credit to the pen of its sometimes unsurpassed author, Tom Carew, but in the presentation of which the king and many of his chief nobles deigned to bear a part--minor rôles had been assigned to the two sons of the Earl of Bridgewater, namely, the Viscount Brackley and Master Thomas Egerton. When the earl shortly afterwards went to assume the Presidency of the Welsh Marches, it was these two who, together with their sister the Lady Alice, bore the central parts in the masque performed before the assembled worthies of the West in the great hall of Ludlow Castle. The ages of the three performers ranged from eleven to thirteen, the girl, who was the eighth daughter of the marriage, being the eldest.

It must have been a gay and imposing sight that greeted the spectators in the grim old border fortress, the gaunt ruins of which may yet be seen, but which had at that date already rubbed off some of its medieval ruggedness as a place of defence. Though necessarily less elaborate and costly than the performances in London, no pains were spared to make the spectacle worthy of the occasion, and it must have appeared all the more splendid in contrast to its surroundings, presented as it was in the great hall in which met the Council of the Western Marches in the distant town upon the Welsh border. Nor did the occasion lack the heightening glamour and dramatic contrast of historical association, for in this very hall just a century and a half before, if tradition is to be credited, the unfortunate Prince Edward, son of Edward IV, was crowned before setting out with his young brother on the fatal journey which was to terminate under a forgotten flagstone in the Tower of London.

I do not propose to enter into any detailed account of the manner in which we may suppose the masque to have been performed, nor into the literary history of the poem itself; to do so would be a work of supererogation in view of the able discussion of the whole subject from the pen of Professor Masson. The debts Milton owed to the Somnium of Puteanus, to Peele's Old Wives' Tale and to Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, are now all more or less recognized. From the first he probably borrowed the name and character of Comus himself, as well as a few incidental expressions. The second contains a remarkable parallel to the search of the two brothers for their lost sister, which it is difficult to suppose fortuitous; while many passages might be cited to prove Milton's close acquaintance with Fletcher's poem[[355]].

The masque as performed at Ludlow Castle probably differed in one important particular from the form in which we know it, and which is that in which it left Milton's hand. This form is attested by the original quarto edition, by the texts of the Poems of 1645 and 1673, and by Milton's manuscript draft in the volume preserved at Trinity College, Cambridge. The variant form is found in the manuscript at Bridgewater House, reputed to be in Lawes' handwriting, which seemingly represents the acting version. In Milton's text the scene discovered is a wild wood; the attendant Spirit descends, or enters, and at once launches out into a long speech in blank verse. Lawes seems to have thought that it would be more appropriate for the Spirit--that is, for himself, for it appears that he took the part--to open the performance with a song, and consequently transferred to this place the first thirty-six lines of the final lyrical speech of the Spirit, substituting the words 'From the heavens' for Milton's 'To the ocean.' The change was doubtless effective, and was skilfully made; yet one cannot help feeling that some of the magic of the poem has evaporated in the process. However, Lawes was loyal to his friend, and whatever alterations his wider knowledge of the requirements of stage production may have led him to introduce into the masque as performed at Ludlow, he never sought to foist any changes of his own into the published poem, when, having tired himself with making copies for his friends, he at length decided, with Milton's consent, to send it forth into the world in its slender quarto garb.

A brief analysis will serve to reveal the lines upon which the piece is constructed, and to show how far it follows the traditions respectively of the drama and the masque. The introductory speech puts the audience in possession of the situation, and informs them how the wood is haunted by Comus and his crew, himself the son of Bacchus and Circe, and how they seek to trick unwary passengers into drinking of the fateful cup which shall transform them to the likeness of beasts and, driving all remembrance of home and friends from their imaginations, leave them content 'to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.' Wherefore the Spirit is sent to guide the steps of those 'favoured of high Jove,' and save them from the wiles of the fleshly god. Announcing that he goes to assume 'the weeds and likeness of a swain,' so as to perform his charge unknown, the Spirit leaves the stage, which is at once invaded by Comus and his rout. A brilliant speech by the god, preceding the first measure, illustrates the strange but yet not infrequent irony of fate by which it has happened that the most puritanical of poets have thrown the full weight of their best work into the opposing scale, and clothed vice in magic colours to outdo the richest fancies of the libertine. No doubt this reckless adorning of sin was intentional on Milton's part; he painted the pleasures of κῶμος in their most seductive colours, that the triumph of virtue might appear by so much the greater, fancying that it was enough to assert that final victory, and failing, like most preachers, to perceive that unless it was made psychologically and artistically convincing the total effect would be the very reverse of that which he intended. If we compare the speech of Comus with that of the Lady on her first appearance, we shall hardly escape the conclusion that then, as indeed always, Milton had a mere schoolboy's idea of 'plot,' as of some combination of events to be infused with the breath of life at his own will, and from without, not such as should spring from the fundamental elements of the characters themselves. In the midst of dance and revel Comus interrupts his followers:

Break off, break off, I feel the different pace
Of some chast footing neer about this ground;

and the crew vanishes among the trees as the Lady enters alone and narrates how she lost her brothers at nightfall in the wood, and attracted by the sounds of mirth has bent hither her steps in the hope of finding some one to direct her. She then sings a song by way of attracting her brothers' attention, should they chance to be near. As she ends Comus re-enters in guise of a shepherd, and offers to escort her to his hut where she may rest until her companions are found. She has no sooner left the stage than these enter in search of her, and while away the time with a long discussion on the dangers of the wood and the protective power of virtue. To them at length enters the attendant Spirit, who has certainly been so far very remiss in his duties, in the habit of their father's shepherd Thirsis; and on hearing how they have parted company with their sister, tells of Comus and his enchantments, and arming his hearers with hemony, powerful against all spells, guides them to the hall of the sorcerer. The scene now changes to the interior of the palace of Comus, 'set out with all manner of deliciousness,' where the god and his rabble are feasting. On one side we may imagine an open arcade giving on to the banks of the Severn, silvery in the moonlight, the cool purity of its waters contrasting with the rich jewelled light and perfumed air within. We see the Lady seated in an enchanted chair, while before her stands the magician, wand in hand, offering her wine in a crystal goblet. Then follows the dialogue in which the Lady defends her virtue against the blandishments of Comus, till at last her brothers, followed by the spirit-shepherd, rush in and disperse the revellers. The Lady is now found to be fixed like marble in the chair of enchantment, but the attendant Spirit shows his resource by calling to their help the virgin goddess of the stream:

Sabrina fair
Listen where thou art sitting
Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of Lillies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair,
Listen for dear honour's sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,
Listen and save.

Thus conjured in some of the most perfectly musical lines in the language the daughter of Locrine rises from her waves, and enters the hall with a song, attended by her obedient nymphs. Having broken the spell and freed the captive Lady, she at once departs with her train, and after another speech by the Spirit, the scene changes to the town and castle of Ludlow, a bevy of shepherds dancing in the foreground. After these have concluded their measure, the wanderers enter, still guided by the spirit-shepherd, who presents them safe and sound to their parents. Then follows another dance, and the Spirit, throwing off, we may presume, his pastoral disguise, launches into his final speech:

To the Ocean now I fly,
And those happy climes that ly
Where day never shuts his eye;

concluding:

Mortals that would follow me,
Love vertue, she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to clime
Higher than the Spheary chime;
Or if Vertue feeble were,
Heav'n it self would stoop to her.

Such is the bare outline, the skeleton of the piece; what, we cannot help wondering, was it like when it first appeared clothed in the beauty of the flesh and inspired with the spirit of song? Its fashion and its form we have indeed yet before us, though nothing can again quicken it into the life it enjoyed for one brief hour nearly three hundred years ago. We must be thankful that we count the poem itself among our treasures, and be content to confine our inquiry to it. It is, after all, to the accidents of its production as the body to the robes that adorn it.

It must be confessed that outwardly at least Comus has but little connexion with pastoral. The habit of the Spirit, the disguise of the magician, the dance in the third scene, these are the only points serving to connect the poem with pastoral tradition in any formal manner. It is not, however, on account of these that Comus has been commonly assigned to the same category as the Faithful Shepherdess and Lycidas, but rather because its whole tone, its mode, one might almost say, is essentially pastoral, and because it is directly dependent upon previous pastoral work.

It has been the fashion to praise Comus above all other masques whatever, and from the point of view of the poetry it contains it would be idle to dispute its supremacy. But there are other considerations. As a masque proper, and from the point of view of what had come to be expected of such compositions, how does it stand? I am not here concerned to inquire how far the term can with strict propriety be applied to the piece, a question which may be left to the somewhat arid region of the formal classification of literature. The points in which it resembles the regular spectacular masques, as well as those in which it differs from them, will be alike evident from the analysis given above. It may, however, be well to put in a caution against the manner in which some writers on the masque seek to make their distinctions appear more clearly defined than they in reality are by declaring Comus to be not a masque at all but a play. It is no more a regular play than it is a strict masque, but a dramatic composition containing elements of both in almost equal proportions.

That the songs are for the most part exquisite, that they were worthily set to music and adequately rendered; that the measures, the dance of the revellers in their half-brutish disguises, the antimasque of country folk, and the final or main dance of the wanderers, were effective; that the whole was graceful, complete and polished, is either self-evident to-day, or may with reason be inferred. The scenery, too, must have been striking; the dreary forest, its darkness just relieved by the half-seen 'glistering' forms; the heavy drug-like splendour of the enchanted palace and the cold moonlight outside; the bright, fresh sunshine, lastly, dew-washed, of the early morning; there were here a series of pictures the contrasts of which must have added to their individual effect. The scene, the song and the measure, these form, indeed, the very stuff that masques are made of. But Milton's poem offered more than this; and it may well be questioned how far this more was of a nature to recommend it to the tastes of his audience, or indeed to heighten rather than to diminish its merits as a work of literature and art. There was, in the first place, a philosophical and moral intention, which, however veiled in fanciful imagery and clothed in limpid verse, is yet not content to be an inspiring principle and artistic occasion of the poem, but obtrudes itself directly in the length of some of the speeches; refuses, that is, to subserve the aesthetic purpose, and endeavours to divert the poetic beauty to its own non-aesthetic ends. In the second place, and probably of greater importance as regards the actual success of the piece on the stage, it contained somewhat of dramatic emotion, of incident which depended for its value upon its effect on the characters involved, which was ill served by the spectacular machinery and necessary limitations of the composition, while at the same time it must have interfered with the opportunity for mere sensuous effect which it was the main business of the masque to afford. The weight which different persons will attach to these objections will no doubt vary with their individual temperaments, their susceptibility to the magical charm of the verse, their sense of artistic propriety, and the degree to which they are able to recall in imagination the conditions of a bygone form of artistic presentation. I speak for myself when I say that, in fitness for the particular end it had to serve, Milton's poem appears to me to be surpassed, for instance, by the best of Jonson's masques, no less than it surpasses them, and all others of their kind, in the poetical beauty of the verse, whether of the 'tragical' or lyrical portions.

Since I have ventured to formulate certain objections against an acknowledged masterpiece, it will be well that I should define as clearly as possible the ground upon which those objections are based. I have, I hope, sufficiently emphasized my dissent from that school of criticism which condemns a work of art for not conforming to one or another of a series of fixed types. That Comus lies, so to speak, midway between the drama and the masque, and partakes of the nature of either, is not, by any inherent law of literary aesthetics, a blemish; what in my view is a blemish, and that a serions one, is that the means employed are not calculated to the demands of the situation. The struggle of the Lady against the subtle enchanter, the search of the brothers for their lost sister, the safe event of their wanderings, are all points which, however simple in themselves, yet excite our interest; however certain we may feel that virtue in the person of the Lady will never fall to the allurements of Comus, they neither of them become a mere abstraction. That is to say that, little as there may be of plot, the interest is that of the drama, an interest really felt in the fate of the characters; while the medium adopted is that of the masque, with its spectacular machinery, even if not in its regular and orthodox form. It follows that the dramatic interest is a clog on the scenic elaboration of the form, while the form is necessarily inadequate to the rendering of the content.

It is significant that in all the early editions the piece is merely styled 'A Maske Presented At Ludlow Castle'; the title of Comus was first affixed by Warton. It was an obvious title for a critic to adopt; it is probably the last that the author would himself have thought of choosing. Had it been named contemporaneously, and after the fashion of the masques at court, the title of the Triumph of Virtue could not but have suggested itself. This is indeed the very theme of the piece. Virtue in the person of the Lady, guarded by her brothers, watched over by the attendant Spirit, aided at need by the nymph Sabrina, triumphant over the blandishments and temptations of fancy and of sense in the persons of Comus and his followers; that is the subject of the masque. It is a subject finely and suitably conceived for spectacular illustration, and possesses a moral after Milton's own heart. The closing lines of the poem, already quoted, give admirable expression to the motive. Were the subject, on the other hand, to be treated dramatically, then the character of the Lady, virtue at grip with evil, was worthy to exercise--had; indeed, in varying forms long exercised--the highest dramatic genius. But in this direction lay, consciously or unconsciously, one of Milton's most evident limitations, and had he attempted to give full dramatic expression to the idea it is not improbable that the experiment would have resulted in undeniable failure. From such an attempt he was, however, debarred by the terms of his commission, which demanded not a drama, but a spectacular performance. Yet in spite of this Milton's conception of the piece is, as we have seen, essentially dramatic, and consequently in so far as the means prevented the due fulfilment of that conception in so far must the Lady necessarily fall short of the adequate realization of her high rôle. The action is too much abstracted, the characters too allegorical, to satisfy in us the dramatic expectations which they nevertheless call forth; while, on the other hand, they remain too concrete and individual to be adequately rendered by purely spectacular means.

These considerations have an important bearing upon the other objection which I ventured to bring forward, that of moralizing; for it cannot be argued, I imagine, that the direct expression of philosophical or ethical ideas is in any way illegitimate in the masque proper, any more than it is in the choric ode. But, as I have said, Milton--no doubt intentionally, though the point is irrelevant--has raised dramatic issues and dramatic emotions, and consequently by the laws of the drama, that is, by his success in satisfying those emotions, he must be judged. All speeches therefore introduced with a directly moral and philosophical rather than a dramatic end must be pronounced artistic solecisms. Whether Milton has been guilty of such undramatic interpolations, such lapses from the one end of art, may be left to the individual judgement of each reader to determine; for my own part I cannot conceive that any doubt should exist.

But even if we pass over what some readers will be inclined to dismiss as a mere theoretical objection, there are other charges which these same passages will have to meet. Those who have borne with me in my remarks on the Aminta and the Faithful Shepherdess, will probably also agree with me here, when I say that to me at least there is something not altogether pleasing in Milton's presentment of virtue. I should add at once, that to place Milton's poem on an ethical level with either of the above-mentioned pieces would, of course, be preposterous. It is impossible to doubt the severe chastity of Milton's own ideal, and to compare it for one moment to the conventional onestà which replaced virtue in Tasso's world, or with the nauseous unreality of the puppet Fletcher sought to enthrone in its place, would be to commit an uncritical outrage. Nevertheless, the expression Milton chose to give to his ideal cannot, therefore, lay claim to privilege. That expression had become intimately associated with pastoral convention, and he accepted it along with much else from his predecessors. I am not aware of any reason why spectators should have been prejudiced otherwise than in favour of the Lady Alice Egerton; but she is, nevertheless, careful to take the first opportunity of informing them, with much earnest protestation, of her quite remarkable purity and virtue, implying as it were a naïve surprise at having arrived unsullied at the perilous age of thirteen. The stilted affectation of this self-conscious innocence is perhaps less evident in the scene in which we should most readily look for it--that, namely, in which the Lady defends herself from the persuasions of the Sorcerer, where a certain fervour of feeling raises her utterances above a merely colourless level--than in the long soliloquy in which she indulges on first appearing on the stage. Something of the same disagreeable quality is present in the rather mawkish discussion between her two young brothers. Milton, who is entirely untouched, either with the levity of Tasso or the cynicism of Fletcher, was undoubtedly himself wholly unconscious that any such charge could be brought against his work. It is the direct outcome of a certain obtuseness, a curious want of delicacy, which in his later work results at times in passages of offensively bad taste[[356]]. As yet it is hardly responsible for anything worse than a confused conception in the poet's imagination. Πάντα καθαρὰ τοῖς καθαροῖς, and the allegory is an old one whereby virtue appears as the tamer of the beasts of the wild. It is, however, to those alone who are innocent of evil that belongs the faery talisman. The virtue, knowing of itself and of the world, may be held a surer defence, but it is by comparison a gross and earthly buckler, with less of the glamour of romance reflected from its aegis-mirror. Somehow one feels instinctively that Una did not, on meeting with the lion, launch forth into a protestation of her chastity. Nothing, of course, would be easier than by means of a little judicious misrepresentation to cast ridicule upon the whole of Milton's conception of virtue in woman, and nowhere is it more needful than in such a case as the present to remember the fundamental maxim that bids one take the position one is attacking at its strongest. Nevertheless, putting aside for the moment all questions of art and all considerations of taste, there remains a question worthy of being fully and carefully stated, and of being honestly entertained. Milton has deliberately penned passages of smug self-conceit upon a subject whose delicacy he was apparently incapable of appreciating, and these passages he has placed, to be spoken in her own person, in the mouth of a child just passing into the first dawn of adolescence, thereby outraging at once the innocence of childhood and the reticence of youth. Is it possible to pretend that this is an action upon which moral censure has no word to say[[357]]?

It would hardly have been necessary to emphasize this point of view, or to dwell upon objections which, when one surrenders to the magic of the verse, can hardly appear other than carping, were it not for the somewhat injudicious and undiscriminating praise which it has been the fashion of a certain school of critics to lavish upon the piece. The exquisite quality of the verse may be readily conceded, as may also the nobleness of Milton's conception and the brilliance, within certain limits, of the execution; but when we are further challenged to admire the 'moral grandeur' of the figure in which virtue is honoured, there are some at least who will feel tempted to reply in the significant words: 'Methinks the lady doth protest too much!'

A word may be said finally as to the quality of the verse. I need not repeat that it is exquisite, that the music of it is like a full stream overflowing the rich pastures; what I am concerned to maintain is, that it is not for the most part of Milton's best. In the first place, what, for want of a better name, I have called Milton's moralizing is a blemish upon the poetic as it is upon the dramatic merits of the piece. The muse of poetry, like all her sisters, is not slow in avenging herself of a divided allegiance. By the cynical irony of fortune already noticed, where Milton would most impress us with his moral he becomes least poetical. There is, it is true, hardly a speech or a song which does not contain lines worthy to rank with any in the language, from the opening words:

Before the starry threshold of Joves Court,

to the final couplet:

Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heav'n it self would stoop to her.

But there are passages in which these memorable lines appear as so much rich embroidery superimposed upon the baser fabric of the verse, not woven of the woof. They are in their nature more easily detached, and often form the best known and most often quoted passages of the work. Take the first speech of the Lady, concerning which something has already been said. Here we find the lines:

They left me then, when the gray-hooded Eev'n
Like a sad Votarist in Palmer's weed
Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus wain;

or again:

A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory
Of calling shapes, and beckning shadows dire,
And airy tongues, that syllable mens names
On Sands, and Shoars, and desert Wildernesses;

or yet again:

Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

We have the song:

Sweet Echo, sweetest Nymph that liv'st unseen
Within thy airy shell
By slow Meander's margent green,
And in the violet imbroider'd vale
Where the love-lorn Nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad Song mourneth well.

Such lines would justly render famous any passage in any poem in which they occurred. Nevertheless, remove them, which can be done without material injury to the sequence of the thought, and see whether in its warp and web the speech can for a moment stand comparison with that of Comus, to which it stands in direct and dramatic contraposition.

But this drawback is only incidental; through nine-tenths of the piece, perhaps, there is little or no moral preoccupation to disturb us. And here, though no doubt the poetic beauty reaches a climax in the song to Sabrina--a song for pure music certainly unsurpassed and probably unequalled by anything else that Milton ever wrote--there are others, such as 'By the rushy-fringed bank,' as well as less distinctively lyrical passages, which come within measurable distance even of its perfection. And yet, with certain noticeable exceptions, there are few passages in which comparison with Milton's later works will not reveal technical immaturity. This is no less true of the decasyllabic verse, when compared with the full sonority of Lycidas, than of the shorter measures. Take, for example, the invocation of Sabrina which follows the song previously quoted--the speech beginning:

Listen and appear to us
In name of great Oceanus.

In spite of its very great beauty there is observable at the same time a certain monotony of cadence, and an occasional want of success in the attempts to relieve it, which place the passage distinctly below Milton's best. And yet it seems almost ungenerous to place Milton even below himself, particularly when in the very speech we are criticizing we are brought face to face with two such flawless lines as those on 'fair Ligea's golden comb',

Wherwith she sits on diamond rocks
Sleeking her soft alluring locks--

lines which anticipate and rival the perfection of rhythmic modulation in L'Allegro and Il Penseroso[[358]].

III

There remains to inquire what influence of pastoral tradition is traceable in the wider field of the romantic drama, whether in individual scenes and characters, or more vaguely in general tone and sentiment; and, finally, to consider for a moment the critical expression given by writers of various dates to the sentimental philosophy of life which went under the name of pastoralism in fashionable circles.

The number of plays in which definite pastoral elements can be traced is surprisingly small, even when every allowance has been made for the fact that we have already included in our examination several pieces which come but doubtfully within the fold. The spirit of the romantic drama, instinct with sturdy life, had little in common with the artificial and unreal sentiment of a tradition which had almost ceased to pretend to a basis in the emotions of natural humanity. The result was, as might be expected, that when the drama introduced characters of a nominally pastoral type, they were either direct transcripts from actual life, deliberately ignoring conventional tradition, or else specifie borrowings from that tradition, introduced with full consciousness of its fashionable unreality, and using that unreality for a definite dramatic purpose. Thus, although the basis of pastoralism is found in non-traditional garb, and though pastoralism itself is found as the subject of dramatic treatment, yet, so far as the introduction of individual scenes and characters is concerned, it is seldom possible to say that pastoral has influenced the romantic drama in any sensible degree.

A certain number of plays, presumably of a more or less pastoral nature, have perished. Thus no trace remains of the Lusus Pastorales licensed to Richard Jones in 1565, the nature of which can be only vaguely conjectured. The early date of the entry renders it important, and it is much to be regretted that the work should have perished, since it might have thrown very interesting light upon the condition of pastoralism in England previous to the appearance of the Shepherd's Calender. Most probably, however, the piece, whatever it may have been, was composed in Latin. We also have to lament the non-survival of a Phillida and Corin, which, we learn from the Revels' accounts, was acted by the Queen's men before the court, at Greenwich, on St. Stephen's day, 1584. This again would be an interesting piece to possess, since the title suggests a purely pastoral composition contemporary with Peele's mythological play. On February 28, 1592, Lord Strange's men performed a piece at the Rose, the title of which is given by Henslowe as 'clorys & orgasto,' presumably Chloris and Ergasto. It was an old play, probably dating from some years earlier. Whether 'a pastorall plesant Commedie of Robin Hood and little John,' entered to Edward White in the Stationers' Register, on May 14, 1594, could have justified its title may be questioned, but it is curious as suggesting an anticipation of Jonson's experiment. Again, on July 17, 1599, George Chapman received of Philip Henslowe forty shillings, in earnest of a 'Pastorall ending in a Tragydye,' which, however, was apparently never finished. Possibly our loss is not great, for Chapman's talents hardly lay in this line; but a tragical ending to a play of the pure pastoral type would have been something of a novelty, and the early date would also have lent it some interest. Yet another play known to us solely from Henslowe's accounts is the Arcadian Virgin, on which Chettle and Haughton were at work for the Admiral's men in December, 1599, and for which they received sums amounting in all to fifteen shillings. The title suggests that the play may have been founded on the story of Atalanta, but it was probably not completed. Ben Jonson's May Lord, which we know only through the notes left by Drummond of his conversations, was almost certainly not dramatic, though critics have always accepted it as such; but the same authority records that Jonson at the time of his visit to Hawthornden was contemplating a fisher-play, the scene to be laid on the shores of Loch Lomond. There is no evidence that the scheme ever reached a more mature stage. Finally, I may mention a play entitled Alba, a Latin pastoral, which incurred the royal displeasure when performed before James and his consort in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1605. The historian of the visit, quoted by Nichols, says that 'It was a pastoral, much like one which I have seen in King's College, Cambridge, but acted far worse.' The allusion is presumably to the Latin translation of the Pastor fido. The cause of offence was the appearance of 'five or six men almost naked,' who no doubt represented satyrs.

To what extent these plays were of a pastoral character must, of course, be matter of conjecture. They may have been pastoral plays of a more or less regular type, they may have been mythological dramas, or they may have been distinguished from the ordinary run of romantic compositions by a few incidental traits of pastoralism only. Not a few pieces of the latter description have been preserved, pieces in which definite traces of pastoral are to be found, but which cannot as a whole be included in the kind.

We have already had occasion to note the very slight pastoral influence which exists in the short masques or dialogues of Thomas Heywood, in spite of the opportunity afforded by their mythological character. The same may be noticed in the plays in which he drew his subject from classical legend. Love's Mistress is the appropriate and attractive title of a dramatization of the last-born fancy of the mythopoeic spirit of Greece, Apuleius' tale of Cupid and Psyche. The early editions add to the title the further designation of 'The Queen's Masque.' The work is indeed a composite piece, a masque grown into a play through the accretion of foreign matter, and was probably in its original state a far simpler composition than it now appears. The writing is in a dainty vein, and had the piece been completed in a manner consonant with the simple and idyllic grace of the earlier scenes, it would have been no such unequal companion to Peele's Arraignment of Paris. What the play contains of pastoral belongs to one of the accretions. It is a rustic element in the interludes, satiric and farcical, supplied by a country clown, some shepherds, and 'a shee Swaine,' Amarillis. In his Ages the pastoral element shrinks to an occasional dance and song. Thus in the Golden Age the satyrs and nymphs sing a song in honour of Diana, which introduces the disguised Jupiter in his courtship of Calisto. In the Silver Age, again, the rape of Proserpine by Pluto is preluded by a song of 'a company of Swaines, and country Wenches' in honour of Ceres.

An unkind and quite worthless tradition, based on a manuscript note in an old copy, has connected Peele's name with the lengthy and tedious drama of Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes. It was admitted into the canon of Peele's works by Dyce, and though Mr. Bullen differed from his predecessor as to the justness of the ascription, he retained it in his edition. We find in it a coarse, dialect-speaking rustic, named Corin, who at one point succours Clyomon, and with whom Neronis, daughter of the King and Queen of the Strange Marshes, seeks service in the disguise of a boy. Apart from his name and the profession of shepherd he is a mere countryman, with nothing to connect him with pastoral tradition, though the princess' action finds, of course, abundant parallels therein. The Old Wives' Tale, printed as 'by G. P.,' and of which there is no reason to question Peele's authorship, connects itself with pastoral chiefly through the already mentioned parallel which it affords to Comus. It also anticipates, in a song of harvesters, the introduction of the 'sunburnt sicklemen' of the Tempest masque.

At a later date we find Shirley in his Love Tricks introducing two sisters who leave their home and, taking the disguise of shepherd and shepherdess, dwell among the country folk in the fields and pastures, whither they are followed by their lovers. There are passages which reveal a genuine pastoral tone, such as Shirley could readily adopt when it suited his purpose, and it is not only in the measure that the tradition reveals itself in such lines as:

A shepherd is a king whose throne
Is a mossy mountain, on
Whose top we sit, our crook in hand,
Like a sceptre of command,
Our subjects, sheep grazing below,
Wanton, frisking to and fro. (IV. ii.)

Again, in the Grateful Servant we have a show of 'Satyres pursuing Nymphes; they dance together. Exeunt Satyres; three Nymphes seem to intreat [Lodowick] to goe with them,' accompanied by a song of Silvanus.

Yet slighter traces of pastoral are to be occasionally found in other plays of the period. Thus in Brome's Love-Sick Court the swains and nymphs are led in the dance by characters who have sought and found a cure for love among the country folk. In John Jones' Adrasta, the scene of which is laid at Florence, several of the characters disguise themselves in pastoral attire, and there is one definitely pastoral scene in which they appear in the midst of real shepherds and shepherdesses. The play was printed in 1635, and it is noticeable as containing, in the pastoral scene, satire on the Puritans resembling that introduced by Jonson in the Sad Shepherd. So again, similar disguisings, though of a less pronouncedly pastoral character, occur in the anonymous Knave in Grain, in which the scene is Venice. Satyrs and nymphs, clowns and maids, join in a song in Nashe's curious allegorical show entitled Summer's Last Will and Testament; nymphs and satyrs appear in the interludes of Dekker's Old Fortunatus; Silvanus, with nymphs and satyrs, perform a sort of interlude with song in the anonymous Wily Beguiled; and, lastly, we have the morris danced by the countrymen and wenches who accompany the jailor's daughter in the Two Noble Kinsmen.

---

The wider influence of tone and spirit is, in the nature of the case, far more difficult to determine. It is possible that some court-plays may show the influence of the artificial arrangement of characters and the conventional play of motives characteristic of the pastoral drama. But it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to analyse with certainty such structural peculiarities as these, still more so to assign them with confidence to their proper origin. Many characteristics which one might at first sight put down to the influence of the pastoral drama are, in reality, far more likely to be due to that of the comic stage of Italy in general. But while it would be rash to assert that the pastoral plays in this country exercised any wide influence over the regular drama, there can be no question such an influence was exercised to a very appreciable degree by pastoral poetry in general. I am not thinking of the romances at this moment, for as we have already seen it was the non-pastoral elements in the pastoral novel that exerted such influence as can be traced over the drama, but rather of the pastoral ideal and the pastoral mode in general, as expressed either in the lyric, the eclogue, or the drama. In this the drama shared an influence which was also exercised on other departments of literature. Numerous songs might be quoted from the scenes of the Elizabethan dramatists in support of this contention; while, on the other hand, we also find dramatic and descriptive passages the idyllic quality of which may not unreasonably be referred to a pastoral source.

This tendency of the drama to absorb pastoral elements rather from the lyric and the idyll than from regular plays in that kind is significant. It is the acknowledgement of an important fact, which pastoralism failed to recognize; namely, that as the expression of the pastoral idea gained in complexity of artistic structure it lost in vitality. The pastoral drama, born late in time, was the outcome of very especial circumstances, emphatically the child of its age, and little calculated to serve the artistic requirements of any other. Once the creative impulse that gave it life was withdrawn the falsity of the kind as a form of art became manifest; and though it lingered on for many years its life was but that of a fashionable toy, with little or no hold over the vital literature of its day. The popularity of the pastoral eclogue or idyll was of far longer duration. Though the form was more or less definitely conditioned, it had less of the structural rigidity of the drama, it brought its subject less into contact with the hard limitations of reality, and, which may also have been important, brought it less into comparison with other subject-matter employing the same or a closely analogous form. Thus it was better able to adapt itself to the tastes and requirements of various ages, and found favour in such vastly different societies as those for which Theocritus, Mantuan, Spenser, and Pope produced their works in this kind. Even here, however, the simple sensuous ideal was too much hampered by the ungenuine paraphernalia which the conventions of these various societies had gathered round it to take rank among the permanent and inevitable forms of literary art. This was granted to the lyric alone. It was through the lyric that the pastoral ideal and pastoral colouring most deeply penetrated and influenced existing forms; for the lyric, the freest and most unconditioned of all poetical kinds, the least tied to the circumstances and limitations of the actual world, was particularly fitted to extract the fragrance from the pastoral ideal without raising any unseasonable questions as to its rational or actual possibility.

It was a lover and his lass
That o'er the green cornfield did pass--

this is the essential; and we ask no more if we are wise. The very essence, be it remembered, of the pastoral ideal is no more than 'love in vacuo.' And this the lyric alone can give us.

---

But there is one play which more than any other illustrates the nature of the influence exerted by pastoral tradition over the romantic drama and the relation subsisting between the two. This is As You Like It; for if in one sense Shakespeare was but following Lodge in the traditional blending of pastoral elements with those of court and chivalry, in another sense he has in this play revealed his opinion of, and passed judgement upon, the whole pastoral ideal. This must necessarily happen whenever a great creative artist adopts, for reasons of his own, and takes into his work any merely outward and formal convention. It was rarely that in his plays Shakespeare showed any inclination to connect himself even remotely with pastoral tradition. The Two Gentlemen of Verona traces its origin, indeed, to the Diana of Montemayor; but all vestige of pastoral colouring has vanished, and Shakespeare may even have been himself ignorant of the parentage of the story he treated. A more apparent element of pastoral found its way many years later into the Winters Tale; but it is characteristic of the shepherd scenes of that play, written in the full maturity of Shakespeare's genius, that, in spite of their origin in Greene's romance of Pandosto, they owe nothing of their treatment to pastoral tradition, nothing to convention, nothing to aught save life as it mirrored itself in the magic glass of the poet's imagination. They represent solely the idealization of Shakespeare's own observation, and in spite of the marvellous and subtle glamour of golden sunlight that overspreads the whole, we may yet recognize in them the consummation towards which many sketches of natural man and woman, as he found them in the English fields and lanes, seem in a less certain and conscious manner to be striving in plays of an earlier date. It was characteristic of Shakespeare, as it has been of other great artists, to introduce into his early writings incidental sketches which serve as studies for further work of a later period. In much the same manner the varied, but at times uncertain, melody of the early love comedies seems to aspire towards the full sonority and magic of lyric feeling and utterance in Romeo and Juliet.

Thus it is neither to the mellow autumn of his art, when he had cast aside as unworthy all the trivialities of convention, nor yet to the storm and stress of adolescence, the immaturity of pettiness and exaggeration, that we must look if we would discover Shakespeare's attitude towards pastoral tradition. As You Like It belongs to his middle period. It will be remembered, from what has been said on an earlier page, that in this play Shakespeare substantially followed the story of Rosalind as narrated by Lodge, to whom we owe the introduction of a pastoral element into the old tale of Gamelyn. The pastoral characters of the play may be roughly analysed as follows. Celia and Rosalind, the latter disguised as a youth, are courtly characters; Phebe and Silvius represent the polished Arcadians of pastoral tradition; while Audrey and William combine the character of farcical rustics with the inimitable humanity which distinguishes Shakespeare's creations. It is noteworthy that this last pair is the dramatist's own addition to the cast. Thus we have all the various types--all the degrees or variations of idealization--brought side by side and co-existent in the fairyland of the poet's fancy. The details of the play are too well known for there to be any call to outrage the delicate interweaving of character and incident by translating the perfect scenes into clumsy prose. Nor would such analysis throw any light upon Shakespeare's attitude towards pastoral. That must be sought elsewhere. We may seek it in the fanciful mingling of ideals and idealizations--of courtly masking, of the conventional naturalism of polished dreamers, and of a rusticity more genuine at once and more sympathetic than that of Lorenzo, all of which act by their very natures as touchstones to one another. We may seek it in the uncertainty and hovering between belief and scepticism, earnest and play, reality and imagination--such as can only exist in art, or in life when life approaches to the condition of an art--which we find in the scenes where Orlando courts his mistress in the person of the youth who is but his mistress in disguise. We may seek it lastly in the manner in which the firm structure of the piece is fashioned of the non-pastoral elements; in the happiness of the art by which the pastoral incidents and business appear but as so much fair and graceful ornament upon this structure, bringing with them a smack of the free, rude, countryside, or a faint perfume of the polished Utopia of courtly makers. It is here that we may trace Shakespeare's appreciation of pastoral, as a delicate colouring, an old-world fragrance, a flower from wild hedgerows or cultured garden, a thing of grace and beauty, to be gathered, enjoyed, and forgotten, unsuited in its evanescent charm to be the serious business of art or life.

On this note, the realization at once of the delicate loveliness and of the unsubstantiality of the pastoral ideal, we may close our survey of its growth and blossoming in our dramatic literature, and before finally turning from the tradition which fascinated so many generations of European artists, pause for one moment to inquire of the critical expression it has received at the hands of more philosophical writers.

We have already seen how in the early days of modern pastoral composition Boccaccio, summing up the previous history of the kind, found in allegory and topical allusion its raison d'être. We have seen how in our own tongue Drayton expressed a similar view, and how Fletcher adopted in theory at least a more naturalistic position. This antagonism which runs through the whole of pastoral theory is really dependent upon two questions which have not always been clearly distinguished. There is, namely, the question of the allegorical or topical interpretation of the poems, and there is the question of the rusticity or at least simplicity of the form and language. It is possible to advocate the introduction of Boccaccio's 'nonnulli sensus' and yet demand that, whatever the esoteric interpretation of which the poem may be capable, the outward expression shall be appropriate to the apparent condition of the speakers; while on the other hand it is possible to confine the meaning to the evident and unsophisticated sense of the poem, while allowing such a degree of idealization in the language and sentiments of the characters as to differentiate them widely from the actual rustics of real life. The former of these positions is that assumed by Spenser in the Shepherd's Calender, however much he may have failed in logical consistency; the second is that which, in spite of much incidental matter of a topical nature, underlies Tasso's masterpiece in the kind. It is with the second of the above questions that critics have in the main been concerned. They have, namely, as a rule, tacitly though not explicitly recognized the fact that a poem whose value depends exclusively upon an esoteric interpretation has no meaning whatever as a work of art, while if artistic value can be assigned to the primary meaning of the work, it is a matter of indifference aesthetically whether there be an esoteric interpretation or not.

Every writer, I think, who comes within the limits of pastoral as usually understood, has found a certain idealization and a certain refinement necessary in bringing rustic swains into the domain of art. That any such process is inherently necessary to produce an artistic result there is no reason whatever to suppose; it may even be rationally questioned whether it is necessary to ensure the result falling within the recognizable field of pastoral; but neither of these considerations affects the historical fact. It is commonly admitted that among pastoral writers Theocritus adhered most closely to nature; yet no one has been found to describe him as a realist, whether in method or intention. But though this process of idealization is practically universal, few poets have confessed to it. Only occasionally an author, writing according to the demands of his age or of his individual taste, has been alive to what appeared to be a contradiction between his creations and what he mistook for the fundamental conditions of the kind in which he created. This was the case with Tasso, and he sought to reconcile the two by making Amore in the prologue declare:

Spirerò nobil sensi a' rozzi petti,
Raddolcirò nelle lor lingue il suono,
Perche, ovunque i' mi sia, io sono Amore,
Ne' pastori non men, che negli eroi;
E la disagguaglianza de' soggetti,
Come a me piace, agguaglio.

This served, of course, no other purpose than to salve the author's artistic conscience, since it is perfectly evident that the polished civility of his characters belongs to them by nature, and is not in any way an external importation. The remark, however, is interesting in respect of the philosophy of love as a civilizing power, which we have seen constantly recurring from the days of Boccaccio onward. Ben Jonson expressed himself sharply on this subject, with respect to Guarini and Sidney, in his conversations with Drummond. 'That Guarini, in his Pastor Fido, keept not decorum, in making Shepherds speek as well as himself could.... That Sidney did not keep a decorum in making everyone speak as well as himself.'[[359]] The critical foundation of these censures in an a priori definition of pastoral is obvious, and they are more interesting for their authorship than for their intrinsic merit. It would be curious to know how Jonson defended such a character as his Sad Shepherd--but his views had time to alter.

It is to the critics of the late years of the seventeenth century and early ones of the eighteenth that we owe the attempt to formulate a theory of pastoral composition. The attempt has not for us any great importance. All the work we have been considering had appeared, and the vast majority of it had passed into oblivion, before the French critics first engaged upon the task. Nor has the attempt much intrinsic interest. The theories of individual writers such as those already mentioned are of value, as showing the critical mood in which they themselves created; but these, and still more the theories of pure critics, are of no importance, either in the field of abstract critical theory or of historical inquiry. Fontenelle, offended at the odour of Theocritus' hines, Rapin, with his Jesuitical prudicity and ethico-literary theories of propriety, are not the kind of thinkers to advance critical and historical science. Yet it was to their school that the far greater English critics of the early eighteenth century belonged. Their work consists for the most part of various combinations of a priori definition and arbitrary rules, based on the notion of propriety. Thus Pope in the Discourse on Pastoral, prefixed to his eclogues in 1717, writes: 'A pastoral is an imitation of the action of a shepherd, or one considered under that character.... If we would copy nature, it may be useful to take this idea along with us, that pastoral is an image of what they call the golden age. So that we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceived then to have been, when the best of men followed the employment.' Shallow formalism this; but what else was to be expected from Alexander Pope at the age of sixteen? His contemporaries, however, and successors down to Johnson, took his solemn vacuity in all seriousness. Steele, writing in the Guardian in 1713 (Nos. 22, &c.), follows much the same lines. He speaks of 'Innocence, Simplicity, and whatever else has been laid down as distinguishing Marks of Pastoral.' Again, the reader is informed that 'Whoever can bear these'--namely, certain concetti from Tasso and Guarini--'may be assured he hath no Taste for Pastoral.' We find the same pedantic and ignorant objections to Sannazzaro's piscatorials as were later advanced by Johnson: 'who can pardon him,' loftily queries the censor, 'for his Arbitrary Change of the sweet Manners and pleasing objects of the Country, for what in their own Nature are uncomfortable and dreadful?' An afternoon's idling along the cliffs of Sorento or the shore of Posilipo will supply a sufficient answer to such ignorant conceit as this. Lastly, in the same familiar strain, but with all the pompous weight of undisputed dictatorship, we find Dr. Johnson a generation later laying down in the Rambler that a pastoral is 'a Poem in which any action or Passion is represented by its Effects upon a Country Life.... In Pastoral, as in other Writings, Chastity of sentiment ought doubtless to be observed, and Purity of Manners to be represented; not because the Poet is confined to the Images of the golden Age'--this is a rap at Pope--'but because, having the subject in his own Choice, he ought always to consult the Interest of Virtue.' The one fixed idea which runs throughout these criticisms is that pastoral in its nature somehow is, or should be, other than what it is in fact[[360]].

This is a view which very rightly meets with small mercy at the hands of the modern historical school of criticism. A last fragment of the hoary fallacy may be traced in Dr. Sommer's remark: 'Die Theorie des Hirtengedichtes ist kurz in folgenden Worten ausgedrückt: schlichte und ungekünstelte Darstellung des Hirtenlebens und wahre Naturschilderung.' It cannot be too emphatically laid down that there is and can be no such thing as a 'theory' of pastoral, or, indeed, of any other artistic form dependent, like it, upon what are merely accidental conditions.[[361]] As I started by pointing out at the beginning of this work, pastoral is not capable of definition by reference to any essential quality; whence it follows that any theory of pastoral is not a theory of pastoral as it exists, but as the critic imagines that it ought to exist. 'Everything is what it is, and not another thing,' and pastoral is what the writers of pastoral have made it.

It may be convenient before closing this chapter to summarize briefly the results of our inquiry into the history of pastoral tradition on the pre-restoration stage in England, without the elaboration of detail and the many necessary though minor distinctions unavoidable in the foregoing account. We saw, in the first place, that the idea of a literature dealing with the humours and romance of farm and sheepcot was not wholly alien to national English literature; but, on the contrary, that the shepherd plays of the religions cycles, the popular ballads, and a few of the Scots poets of the time of Henryson, all alike furnish verse which may be regarded as the index of the readiness of the popular mind to receive the introduction of a formal pastoral tradition. Next, preceding, as in Italy, the introduction or evolution of a regular pastoral drama, we find a series of mythological plays embodying incidentally elements of pastoral, written for the amusement of court circles, and founded on the Metamorphoses of Ovid. In these the nature of the pastoral scenes appear to be conditioned, in so far as they are independent of their classical source, partly by the already existing eclogue, and partly perhaps by the native impulse mentioned above[[362]]. All this anticipates the rise of the pastoral drama proper. The foreign pastoral tradition reached England through three main channels. The earliest of these, the eclogue, was imitated by Spenser from Marot, who, while depending somewhat more closely, perhaps, than was usual upon the ancients, and adding to his work a certain original flavour, yet belonged essentially to the tradition of the allegorical pastoral which took its fashion from the works of Petrarch and Mantuan. The second, and for the English drama vastly the more important channel, was the pastoral-chivalric romance borrowed by Sidney from Montemayor, the great exponent of the Spanish school, which was, however, based upon the Italian work of Sannazzaro. The third was the Arcadian drama of the Ferrarese court, which was imitated, chiefly from Guarini, by Samuel Daniel. Thus, of the three forms, verse, prose, and drama, adopted by England from Italy, the first came by way of France, the second by way of Spain, while the third alone was taken direct[[363]]. These three blended with the pre-existing mythological play, and with the traditions of the romantic drama generally, to produce the pastoral drama of the English stage. The influence ot the eclogue was on the whole slight, but to it we may reasonably ascribe a share of the topical and allusive elements, when these do not appear assignable either to the Arcadian drama or to masque literature generally.[[364]] The influence of the mythological drama, again, is not of the first importance, and is also very restricted in its occurrence; the Maid's Metamorphosis is the most striking example. The three main influences at work in fashioning the pastoral drama upon the English stage were, therefore, the Arcadian drama of Italy, the Sidneian romance borrowed from Spain, and the native tradition of the romantic drama.[[365]] But we have seen that the most important examples of dramatic pastoral in this country, though to some extent conditioned like the rest by the above-mentioned influences, were the outcome of direct and conscious experiment. In part, at least, the earliest, and by far the most simple, was the work of Samuel Daniel himself, which aimed at nothing beyond the mere transference of the Italian tradition unaltered on to the English stage. A different aim underlay the attempts alike of Fletcher and Randolph; the combination, namely, of the traditions of the Arcadian and romantic dramas. This common end they sought, however, by very diverse means. Fletcher, while adopting the machinery and methods of the popular drama, left the ideal and imaginary content practically untouched, and even chose a plot which in its structure resembled those familiar in the romantic drama even less than did Guarini's own. Randolph, on the other hand, while preserving much of the classical mechanism as he found it in Guarini, altered the whole tone and character of the piece to correspond to the greater complexity of interest, more genial humour, and more genuine romanticism of the English stage. Lastly, we found Jonson cutting himself almost entirely adrift from the tradition of Italian Arcadianism, and seeking to create an essentially national pastoral by the combination of shepherd lads and girls, transmuted from actuality by a natural process of refinement akin to that of Theocritus, with the magic and fairy lore of popular fancy, and with the characters of Robin and Marian and all the essentially English tradition of Sherwood. These three chief experiments in the production of an English pastoral drama which should rival that of Italy stand, together with Daniel's two plays, apart from the general run of pieces of the kind. It is also worth notice that they are all alike unaffected by the Sidneian romance. The remaining plays which form the great bulk of the contribution made by English drama to pastoral, and among which we must look for such dramatic pastoral tradition as existed, are almost all characterized by a more or less prevalent court atmosphere, disguisings and adventures in shepherd's garb forming the mainstay of the plot, while the genuine pastoral elements supply little beyond the background of the action.

Into the post-restoration pastorals it is no part of my present scheme to enter. They flourished for a while under the wing of the fashionable romance of France, but were almost more than their predecessors the things of artificial convention, having their form and being in a world whose only pre-occupations were the pangs and transports of sensibility. They occupy by right a small corner in the Carte du Tendre. Nor do I propose to do more than allude in passing to Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd. In spite of the almost unvarying praise which has been lavished upon this 'Scots pastoral,' and even though the characters may have some points of humanity in common with actual Lothian rustics, the whole composition of the piece can scarcely be pronounced less artificial than that of the Arcadian drama itself, and the play has undoubtedly shared in the exaggerated esteem which has fallen to the lot of dialectal literature generally. The tradition lingered on throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century. Goethe in his youth, while under the French influence, composed the Laune des Verliebten, and in his later days at Weimar the Fischerin, a piscatorial adapted for representation on an open-air stage, in which the interest was purely spectacular. As a general rule, however, pastoral inanity seldom strayed beyond the limits of the opera.

That the pastoral should flourish by the side of the romantic drama was not to be expected. It was impossible in England, as it was impossible in Spain. In either case it might now and again achieve a mild success at court, or under some exceptional conditions of representation; it never held the popular stage. No literature based on the accidents of a special form of civilization, or upon a set of artificially imagined conditions, can ever hope to outlive the civilization or the fashion that gave it birth. 'Love in vacuo' failed to arouse the interest of general mankind. Every literature of course wears the livery of its age, but where the body beneath is instinct with human life it can change its dress and pass unchanged itself from one order of things to another; where the livery is all, the form cannot a second time be galvanized into life. Pastoral, relying for its distinctive features upon the accidents rather than the essentials of life, failed to justify its pretentions as a serious and independent form of art. The trivial toy of a courtly coterie, it attempted to arrogate to itself the position of a philosophy, and in so doing exposed itself to the ridicule of succeeding ages. Men with a stern purpose in life turned wearily from the sickly amours of romantic poets who dreamed that human happiness found its place in the economy of the world. They left it to a rout of melodious idlers to imagine unto themselves a state in which serious importance should attach to the gracious things of sentiment and the loves of youth and maiden.