Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama / A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration Stage in England

by W. W. Greg

The God of Shepherds, and his mates,
With country cheer salutes your states,
Fair, wise, and worthy as you be,
And thank the gracions ladies three
For honour done to Ida.

When these have retired from the stage there follows a charming idyllic scene between the lovers Paris and Oenone, which contains the delightful old song, one of the lyric pearls of the Elizabethan drama:

Oenone. Fair and fair, and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be;
The fairest shepherd on our green,
A love for any lady.

Paris. Fair and fair, and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be;
Thy love is fair for thee alone,
And for no other lady.

Oenone. My love is fair, my love is gay,
As fresh as bin the flowers in May,
And of my love my roundelay,
My merry, merry, merry roundelay,
Concludes with Cupid's curse--
They that do change old love for new,
Pray gods they change for worse!

Both. They that do change old love for new,
Pray gods they change for worse!

The second act presents us the three goddesses who have come to Ida on a party of pleasure with no very definite object in view, and are now engaged in exercising their tongues at one another's expense. The scene consists of a cross-fire of feminine amenities, not of the most delicate, it is true, and therefore not here to be reproduced, yet of a keenness of temper and a ringing mastery in the rimed verse little less than brilliant in themselves, and little less than a portent at the date of their appearance. Then a storm arises, during which, the goddesses having sought refuge in Diana's bower, Atè rolls the fatal ball upon the stage. On the return of the three the inscription Detur pulcherrimae breeds fresh strife, until they agree to submit the case for judgement to the next man they meet. Paris arriving upon the scene at this point is at once called upon to decide the rival claims of the contending goddesses. First Juno promises wealth and empery, and presents a tree hung as with fruit with crowns and diadems, all which shall be the meed of the partial judge. Pallas next seeks to allure the swain with the pomp and circumstance of war, and conjures up a show in which nine knights, no doubt the nine worthies, tread a 'warlike almain.' Last Venus speaks:

Come, shepherd, come, sweet shepherd, look on me,
These bene too hot alarums these for thee:
But if thou wilt give me the golden ball,
Cupid my boy shall ha't to play withal,
That whenso'er this apple he shall see,
The God of Love himself shall think on thee,
And bid thee look and choose, and he will wound
Whereso thy fancy's object shall be found.

Whereupon 'Helen entereth in her bravery' attended by four Cupids, and singing an Italian song which has, however, little merit. As at a later day Faustus, so now Paris bows before the sovereignty of her beauty, and then wanders off through Ida glades in the company of the victorious queen of love, leaving her outraged rivals to plot a common revenge. Act III introduces the slight rustic element. Hobbinol, Diggon, and Thenot enter to Colin, who is lamenting the cruelty of his love Thestylis. The names are obviously borrowed from the Shepherd's Calender, but while Colin is still the type of the hopeless lover, there is no necessity to suspect any personal identification. The Arraignment was probably produced less than two years after the publication of Spenser's eclogues, and Peele, who was an Oxford man, may even have been ignorant of their authorship[[208]]. Still more unnecessary are certain other identifications between characters in the play and persons at court which have been propounded. Such identifications, at any rate, have no importance for our present task, which is to ascertain in what measure and in what manner Peele's work paved the way for the advent of the Italian pastoral; and we note, with regard to the present scene, that the more polished and more homely elements alike--both Colin on the one hand, and Diggon, Hobbinol, and the rest on the other--are inspired by Spenser's work, and by his alone. Meanwhile Oenone enters, lamenting her desertion by Paris. There is delicate pathos in the reminiscence of her former song which haunts the outpouring of her grief--

False Paris, this was not thy vow, when thou and I were one,
To range and change old loves for new; but now those days be gone.

She is less happy in a set lament, beginning:

Melpomene, the Muse of tragic songs,

in which we may perhaps catch a distant echo of Spenser's: