Jupiter. Shepherd, thou hast been heard with equity and law,
And for thy stars do thee to other calling draw,
We here dismiss thee hence, by order of our senate;
Go take thy way to Troy, and there abide thy fate.

Venus. Sweet shepherd, with such luck in love, while thou dost live,
As may the Queen of Love to any lover give.

Paris. My luck is loss, howe'er my love do speed:
I fear me Paris shall but rue his deed.

Apollo. From Ida woods now wends the shepherd's boy,
That in his bosom carries fire to Troy.

This, however, does not settle the case, and the final adjudication of the apple of beauty is entrusted by the gods to Diana, since it was in her grove that it was found. Parting company with classical legend in the incident which gives its title to the play, Peele further adds a fifth act, in which he contrives to make the world-famous history subserve the courtly ends of the masque. When the rival claimants have solemnly sworn to abide by the decision of their compeer, Diana begins:

It is enough; and, goddesses, attend.
There wons within these pleasaunt shady woods,
Where neither storm nor sun's distemperature
Have power to hurt by cruel heat or cold, ...
Far from disturbance of our country gods,
Amid the cypress springs[[211]], a gracions nymph,
That honours Dian for her chastity,
And likes the labours well of Phoebe's groves;
The place Elizium hight, and of the place
Her name that governs there Eliza is,
A kingdom that may well compare with mine,
An auncient seat of kings, a second Troy,
Y-compass'd round with a commodious sea.

The rest may be easily imagined. The contending divinities resign their claims:

Venus. To this fair nymph, not earthly, but divine,
Contents it me my honour to resign.

Pallas. To this fair queen, so beautiful and wise,
Pallas bequeaths her title in the prize.

Juno. To her whom Juno's looks so well become, The Queen of Heaven yields at Phoebe's doom.

The three Fates now enter, and singing a Latin song lay their 'properties' at the feet of the queen. Then each in turn delivers a speech appropriate to her character, and finally Diana 'delivereth the ball of gold into the Queen's own hands,' and the play ends with a couple of doggerel hexameters chanted by way of epilogue by the assembled actors:

Vive diu felix votis hominumque deumque,
Corpore, mente, libro, doctissima, candida, casta.

The jingle of these lines would alone suffice to prove that Peele's ear was none of the most delicate, and he particularly sins in disregarding the accent in the rime-word, a peculiarity which may have been noticed even in the short passages quoted above. Nevertheless, even apart from its lyrics, one of which is in its way unsurpassed, the play contains passages of real grace in the versification. The greater part is written either in fourteeners or in decasyllabic couplets with occasional alexandrines, in both of which the author displays an ease and mastery which, to say the least, were uncommon in the dramatic work of the early eighties; while the passages of blank verse introduced at important dramatic points, notably in Paris' defence and in Diana's speech, are the best of their kind between Surrey and Marlowe. The style, though now and again clumsy, is in general free from affectation except for an occasional weakness in the shape of a play upon words. Such is the connexion of Eliza with Elizium, in a passage already quoted, and the time-honoured non Angli sed angeli--

Her people are y-clepèd Angeli,
Or, if I miss, a letter is the most--

occurring a few lines later; also the words of Lachesis: