We have now reached the end of our survey of the Italian pastoral drama. In spite of the space it has been necessary to devote to the subject, it must be borne in mind that we have treated it from one point of view only. Besides the interest which it possesses in connexion with the development of pastoral tradition, it also plays a very important part in the history of dramatic art, not in Italy alone, but over the whole of Europe. On this aspect of the subject we have hardly so much as touched. Nor is this all. If it is true, as is commonly assumed, that the opera had its birth in the Orfeo of Angelo Poliziano, it is not less true that it found its cradle in the Arcadian drama. A few isolated pieces may still be able to charm us by their poetic beauty. In dealing with the rest it must never be forgotten that without the costly scenery and elaborate musical setting that lent body and soul to them in their day, we have what is little better than the dry bones of these ephemeridae of courtly art.
Chapter IV.
Dramatic Origins of the English Pastoral Drama
I
Having at length arrived at what must be regarded as the main subject of this work, it will be my task in the remaining chapters to follow the growth of the pastoral drama in England down to the middle of the seventeenth century, and in so doing to gather up and weave into a connected web the loose threads of my discourse.
Taking birth among the upland meadows of Sicily, the pastoral tradition first assumed its conventional garb in imperial Rome, and this it preserved among learned writers after its revival in the dawn of the Italian renaissance. With Arcadia for its local habitation it underwent a rebirth in the opening years of the sixteenth century in Sannazzaro's romance, and again towards the close in the drama of Tasso. It became chivalric in Spain and courtly in France, and finally reached this country in three main streams, the eclogue borrowed by Spenser from Marot, the romance suggested to Sidney by Montemayor, and the drama imitated by Daniel from Tasso and Guarini. Once here, it blended variously with other influences and with native tradition to produce a body of dramatic work, which, ill-defined, spasmodic and occasional, nevertheless reveals on inspection a certain character of its own, and one moreover not precisely to be paralleled from the literary annals of any other European nation.
The indications of a native pastoral impulse, manifesting itself in the burlesque of the religions drama and the romance of the popular ballads, we have already considered. The connexion which it is possible to trace between this undefined impulse and the later pastoral tradition is in no wise literary; in so far as it exists at all and is one of temperament alone, a bent of national character. In tracing the rise of the form in Italy upon the one hand, and in England upon the other, we are struck by certain curious contrasts and also by certain curious parallelisms. The closest analogy to the ballad themes to be discovered in the literature of Italy is in certain of the songs of Sacchetti and his contemporaries, but it would be unwise to insist on the resemblance. The more suggestive parallel of the novelle has to be ruled out on the score of form, and is further differentiated by the notable lack in them of romantic spirit. Again, in the sacre rappresentazioni, the burlesque interpolations from actual life, which with us aided the genesis of the interlude, and through it of the romantic comedy, are as a rule so conspicuously absent that the rustic farce with which one nativity play opens can only be regarded as a direct and conscious imitation from the French. It is, on the other hand, a remarkable fact, and one which, in the absence of any evidence of direct imitation,[[205]] must be taken to indicate a real parallelism in the evolution of the tradition in the two countries, that in England as in Italy the way was paved for pastoral by the appearance of mythological plays, introducing incidentally pastoral scenes and characters, and anticipating to some extent at any rate the peculiar atmosphere of the Arcadian drama.
The earliest of these English mythological plays, alike in date of production and of publication, was George Peele's Arraignment of Paris, 'A Pastorall. Presented before the Queenes Majestie, by the children of her Chappell,' no doubt in 1581, and printed three years later.[[206]] It partakes of the nature of the masque in that the whole composition centres round a compliment to the Queen, Eliza or Zabeta--a name which, as Dr. Ward notes, Peele probably borrowed along with one or two other hints from Gascoigne's Kenilworth entertainment of 1575. The title sufficiently expresses its mythological character, and the precise value of the term 'pastoral' on the title-page is difficult to determine. The characters are for the most part either mythological or rustic; the only truly pastoral ones being Paris and Oenone, whose parts, however, in so far as they are pastoral, are also of the slightest. It is of course impossible to say exactly to what extent the fame of the Italian pastoral drama may have penetrated to England--the Aminta was first printed the year of the production of Peele's play, and waited a decade before the first English translation and the first English edition appeared[[207]]--but no influence of Tasso's masterpiece can be detected in the Arraignment; still less is it possible to trace any acquaintance with Poliziano's work.
After a prologue, in which Atè foretells in staid and measured but not unpleasing blank verse the fall of Troy, the silvan deities, Pan, Faunus, Silvanus, Pomona, Flora, enter to welcome the three goddesses who are on their way to visit 'Ida hills,' and who after a while enter, led by Rhanis and accompanied by the Muses, whose processional chant heralds their approach. They are greeted by Pan, who sings: