Or take Clematis' prayer for her mistress Eglantine:
Thou gentle goddesse of the woods and mountains,
That in the woods and mountains art ador'd,
The Maiden patronesse of chaste desires,
Who art for chastity renouned most,
Tresgrand Diana, who hast power to cure
The rankling wounds of Cupids golden arrowes,
Thy precious balsome deigne thou to apply
Unto the heart of wofull Eglantine. (I. iii.)
Or yet again, in lighter mood, Acanthus' boast:
When Sol shall make the Easterne Seas his bed,
When Wolves and Sheepe shall be together fed,...
When Venus shal turn Chast, and Bacchus become sober,
When fruit in April's ripe, that blossom'd in October,...
When Art shal be esteem'd, and golden pelfe laid down,
When Fame shal tel all truth, and Fortune cease to frown,
To Cupids yoke then I my necke will bow;
Till then, I will not feare loves fatall blow. (I. ii.)
Yet the author of the above passages--for there is no reason to suppose a second hand, and the play was published under his own direction--chose to write the main portion of his poem in a measure of this sort:
Oh impotent desires, allay the sad consort
Of a sublime Fortune, whose most ambitious flames
Disdaine to burne in simple Cottages,
Loathing a hard unpolish'd bed;
But Coveting to shine beneath a Canopy
Of rich Sydonian purple, all imbroider'd
With purest gold, and orientall Pearles. (I. iii.)
Why he should have so chosen I cannot presume to say; whether from haste and carelessness, or from a deliberate intention of writing a sort of measured prose; but it was certainly from no inability to be metrical. The occasional lyrics, moreover, are not without merit; the following lines, sung by Eglantine, are perhaps the most pleasing in the play:
Upon the blacke Rocke of despaire
My youthfull joyes are perish'd quite;
My hopes are vanish'd into ayre,
My day is turn'd to gloomy night;
For since my Rhodon deare is gone,
Hope, light, nor comfort, have I none.
A Cell where griefe the Landlord is
Shall be my palace of delight,
Where I will wooe with votes and sighes
Sweet death to end my sorrowes quite;
Since I have lost my Rhodon deare,
Deaths fleshlesse armes why should I feare? (I. iii.)
To treat of Walter Montagu's Shepherds' Paradise at a length at all commensurate with its own were to set a premium on dull prolixity; there are, however, in spite of its restricted merits, a few points which give it a claim upon our attention. A brief analysis will suffice. The King of Castile negotiates a marriage between his son and the princess of Navarre. The former, however, is in love with a lady of the court named Fidamira, who repulses his advances in favour of Agenor, a friend of the prince's. The prince therefore resolves to leave the court and seek the Shepherds' Paradise, a sequestered vale inhabited by a select and courtly company, and induces Agenor to accompany him on his expedition. In their absence the king himself makes love to Fidamira, who, however, escapes, and likewise makes her way to the Shepherds' Paradise in disguise. Meanwhile, Belesa, the princess of Navarre, misliking of the proposed match with a man she has never seen, has withdrawn from her father's court to the same pastoral retreat, where she has at once been elected queen of the courtly company. On the arrival of the prince and his friend they both fall in love with her, but the prince's suit is seconded by the disguised Fidamira, and soon takes a favourable turn. At this point the King of Castile arrives in pursuit, together with an old councillor, who proceeds to reveal the relationship of the various characters. Fidamira and Belesa, it appears, are sisters, and Agenor their brother. The marriage of the prince and Belesa is of course solemnized; the king renews his suit to Fidamira, but she prefers to remain in Paradise, where she is chosen perpetual queen[[329]].
The plot, it will be observed, belongs entirely to the school of the Hispano-French romance, and the style, intricate, involved, and conceited, in which this prose pastoral is written betrays the same origin. Moreover, as Euphuism, objectionable enough in the romance, becomes ten times more intolerable on the stage, so too with the language of the pastoral-amorous tale of courtly chivalry. There are, however, incidental passages of verse which in their own rather intricate and ergotic style are of greater merit than the prose, though that is not saying much. The close dependence of the piece upon the chivalric tradition serves to differentiate it from the majority of those we have to consider; while certain external circumstances have combined to give it a fortuitous reputation.