These comedies excel in the weaving of intricate incidents, they are replete with grace and winsomeness, melodious with songs inspired by idyllic themes. They are far superior in emotional quality, as is the rustic, woodland, pastoral poetry of Shakespeare, to that of Italy and of Spain, not only to the Pastor Fido, but also to the Aminta, because Shakespeare succeeds in grafting his gay and gentle heart upon his artificial and conventional models. Take for instance in As You Like It the scenes in the third act, between Rosalind and Celia, Rosalind and Orlando, Corin and Touchstone, and in general, the whole life led by the young men and maidens, the shepherds and gentlemen, in that idyllic Forest of Arden; or the open air banquet, in the Winter's Tale, at which the king surprises his son on the point of marrying Perdita; or in Cymbeline, Hyacinth's contemplation of the chaste and tender beauty of the sleeping Imogen; and in the same play, all the scenes among the mountains between Bellario and the two refugee sons of the king, Guiderio and Arviragus.
They correspond to that most beautiful utterance in exquisite verse of Tasso's Hermione Among the Shepherds. His thoughts come back in such lines as the following:
"O, this life
Is nobler than attending for a check,
Richer than doing nothing for a bribe,
Prouder than rustling in unpaid for silk:
Such gain the cap of him that makes 'em fine...."
or
"Come, our stomachs
Will make what's homely savoury: weariness
Can snore upon the flint, when rusty sloth
Finds the down pillow hard. Now, peace be here,
Poor house that keepest thyself!"
But Shakespeare can rise yet higher, to that most tender of songs by the two brothers over Imogene, whom they believe to be dead.
[1] See Sonnet CXXIX: "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame."