As sick men doe their beds, so have I yet
Injoy'd my selfe, with little rest, much trouble:
I have beene made the Ball of Love and Fortune,
And am almost worne out with often playing;
And therefore I would entertaine my death
As some good friend whose comming I expected. (V. iii.)
Mr. Gosse once expressed the opinion that Cowley's play is 'a distinct following without imitation of The Jealous Lovers of Thomas Randolph.' Exactly what was meant by this phrase it is difficult to tell, but if it was intended to imply any resemblance between the two pieces its application is confined to the character of a woman to whom age has not taught continence, and an incidental hit at the jargon of astrologers.[[334]] That Cowley had read The Jealous Lovers, published in 1633, is by no means unlikely, for he was certainly acquainted with the yet unpublished Amyntas. This he may perhaps have seen when it was performed at Whitehall, and he imitated several passages of it in his own Westminster play. The most important point of connexion is the madness of Aphron, which is modelled with some closeness on that of Amyntas. Actual verbal reminiscences are not common, but there can, I think, be little doubt that the schoolboy has been imitating the half-grotesque, half-poetic fantasies of the university wit, though he has wholly failed to achieve his pathos. Again, the speech of Florellus at the opening of Act III recalls the return both of Corymbus and of Claius in Amyntas, while Cowley is much more likely to have been influenced to lay the scene of his play in Sicily by Randolph's example than by his reading of Theocritus, whose influence, if it exists, is of the slightest. Emulation, rather than imitation, was Cowley's attitude towards his predecessor, and his means are not always happy. Thus, though the humours of Truga may have been suggested by the character of Dipsa in the Jealous Lovers, she is probably introduced into Cowley's play as the counterpart of Dorylas in Amyntas. Randolph trod on thin ice in some of the speeches of the liquorish wag, whose 'years are yet uncapable of love,' but censure will not stick to the witty knave. On the other hand, Cowley's portrait of incontinent age in Truga fails wholly of being comic, and appears all the loathlier for the fact that the author himself was still a mere schoolboy--though this is, indeed, his best excuse. Other parallels could be pointed out, but it would be superfluous; convention and petty theft are the warp and woof of the piece. The satire, which has met with some praise, is, of course, staled by a hundred poets of the pastoral vein. The position of Callidora, loved in her disguise by the two girls, recalls that of many pastoral heroines before and since Daniel's Silvia, particularly perhaps of the courtly Rosalind loved by the Arcadian Phoebe. The chivalric admixture is, as usual, traceable to Sidney, and the duel finds of course an obvious parallel in Twelfth Night. The discovery of Bellula's identity recalls more particularly, perhaps, that of Chloe's in Longus' romance, or may possibly indicate an acquaintance with Bonarelli's Filli di Sciro, which might also be traced in the attribution to centaurs of the character long identified with satyrs in pastoral tradition.
It is a coincidence, but one significant of the nature of the pastoral tradition, if such it can be called, that had sprung up on the English stage, that the next play to claim our notice is again the work of a schoolboy. Love in its Extasy, described on the title-page as 'a kind of Royall Pastorall,' was written, at the age of seventeen, by a student of Eton College, whom it has been customary to identify with one William Peaps.[[335]] The date of composition is said in the stationer's preface to have preceded by many years that of publication, 1649, we may perhaps regard the piece as more or less contemporary with Cowley's juvenile effort. There is, it is true, one passage,[[336]] treating of tyrants and revolutions, which is such as a moderate supporter of 'divine right' might have been expected to pen in the later days of the civil war; the publisher's words, however, are unequivocal, and can hardly refer to a period after 1642.
Love in its Extasy itself cannot, without some straining of the term, be called a pastoral, though there are certain links serving to connect it with pastoral tradition. The only excuse, beyond that afforded by the title-page, for including it in the present category is that several of the characters, finding it for various reasons inconvenient to appear in their own shapes, take upon themselves a pastoral disguise; but there is no hint of any pastoral background to the action, not even the atmosphere of a rural academy as in Montagu's play. The whole piece, however, is in the style of the Hispano-French romance, in which pastoral or pseudo-pastoral plays so large a part. To enter into the plot in detail is for our present purpose unnecessary. It is apparently original, and, considered as a romance, would do no small credit to its youthful author. An exiled king and his lady-love assume the sheep-hook, as do also two princes and the mistress of one of them, the mistress of the other appearing in the disguise of a boy. Disguisings, potions, feigned deaths, and recognitions, or rather revelations of identity, form the staple elements of the plot. The play is long, the stage crowded, the plot intricate and elaborated with a superabundance of incident; but it must be admitted that the attention is held and the interest sustained, even to a wearisome degree, throughout; that the characters are individualized, and the action clear. These are no small merits, as any one whose fortune it has been to wade through any considerable portion of the minor drama will be ready to acknowledge; while the defects of the piece are those commonly incident to immature work. The most conspicuous are the want of one prominent interest, and the lack of definite climax; at least four equally important threads are kept running through the play, and the dramatic tension is at an almost constant pitch throughout. These characteristics are those of the narrative romance and of the novel of adventure respectively, and are fatal to the success of the dramatic form.
The verse is in a way peculiar. It is intended as blank verse, and it is true that the licences taken do not exceed those commonly allowed by the practice of dramatists such as Fletcher, but here they are wholly unregulated by any natural feeling for metre or rhythm, and the resuit can hardly be called pleasing. On the other hand, there are a few happy lines, as where a lover bids his penitent mistress
Go,
Knock at Repentance gate, one tear of thine
Will easily compell an entrance. (V. ii.)
There are also some passages of forcible vigour, not always subject to dramatic propriety. Nevertheless, the qualities of life and brightness displayed are sufficient to induce a belief that had the author begun writing at a moment more propitious than the eve of the civil war, and pursued his career on the practical London stage, our drama might have been the richer by, say, a second Shirley, an addition which those who know that writer best will probably rate most highly. In any case the composition must, I think, be held to surpass in genuine qualities Cowley's flashy precocity.
This will be the most convenient place to mention an anonymous and undated play entitled Love's Victory, extracts from a manuscript of which were printed in 1853.[[337]] The style of the piece is not much guide as to the date, but the play does not appear to be early, in spite of the somewhat archaic spelling. It is in rime; mostly decasyllabic couplets, but with free intermixture of alternative rime and frequent lyrical passages. It is of course difficult to gather much of the plot from the printed extracts, but so far as it is possible to judge the play appears to have been a pure pastoral, with Venus and Cupid introduced in the finale, while the situations and characters are those habitual to pastorals, including the quite superfluous protesting of a not very prepossessing chastity. The only more original trait is the scene in which the nymphs meet and relate their love adventures, a rather awkward device for carrying on the involution of the plot. There is a certain ease in the verse, but on the whole the poetic merit is small.[[338]]
We have now passed in review all the regular pastoral plays lying within our scope. There remain a number of shorter compositions of a similar or at least analogous nature, as well as a good many masques and other pieces in which the pastoral element is more or less dominant. These it will for our present purpose be convenient to consider in connexion with each other, and without troubling ourselves too much concerning such nice differences of form as may be found to exist among them.