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.