For we perceiv'd how Love and Modestie
With sev'rall Ensignes, strove within her cheekes
Which should be Lord that day, and charged hard
Upon each other, with their fresh supplies
Of different colours, that still came, and went,
And much disturb'd her, but at length dissolv'd
Into affection, downe she casts her selfe
Upon his senselesse body, where she saw
The mercy she had brought was come too late:
And to him calls: 'O deare Amyntas, speake,
Look on me, sweete Amyntas, it is I
That calles thee, I it is, that holds thee here,
Within those armes thou haste esteem'd so deare.' (V. ii.)
Amyntas' subsequent recovery is reported in the same strain. The reader will remember the lines in which Tasso described a similar scene. And yet, in spite of the identity of the situations and even of the close similarity of the language, the tone and atmosphere of the two passages are essentially different; for if Daniel's treatment of the scene, which is typical of a good deal of his work, has the power to call a tear to the eye of sensibility, his sentiment, divested as it is of the Italian's subtle sensuousness, appears perfectly innocuous and at times not a little ridiculous.
Cloris and Amyntas are now safe enough, and Carinus has the despised but faithful Amarillis to console him. The other pairs of lovers need not detain us further than to note that their adventures are equally borrowed from Tasso and Guarini. Silvia relates how, wounded by her 'cruelty,' Palaemon sought to imitate Aminta by throwing himself from a cliff, but was prevented by her timely relenting. Amarillis fondles Carinus's dog, and is roughly upbraided by its master in the same manner as her prototype Dorinda in the Pastor fido.
Amid much that is commonplace in the verse occur not a few graceful passages, while Daniel is at times rather happy in the introduction of certain sententious utterances in keeping with the conventionality of the pastoral form. Thus a caustic swain remarks of a girl's gift:
Poore withred favours, they might teach thee know,
That shee esteemes thee, and thy love as light
As those dead flowers, shee wore but for a show,
The day before, and cast away at night;
and to a lover:
When such as you, poore, credulous, devout,
And humble soules, make all things miracles
Your faith conceives, and vainely doe convert
All shadowes to the figure of your hopes. (I. ii.)
Colax is a subtle connoisseur in love:
Some thing there is peculiar and alone
To every beauty that doth give an edge
To our desires, and more we still conceive
In that we have not, then in that we have.
And I have heard abroad where best experience
And wit is learnd, that all the fairest choyce
Of woemen in the world serve but to make
One perfect beauty, whereof each brings part. (I. iii.)
The historical importance of the Queen's Arcadia, as the first play to exhibit on the English stage the direct and unequivocal influence of the Italian pastoral drama, is evident to the critic in retrospect, and it is not impossible that it may have lent some extraneous interest to the performance even in the eyes of contemporaries; but the zest of the play for a court audience in the early years of the reign of James I was very possibly the satirical element. The shadowy fiction of Arcadia and its age of gold quickly vanished when the actual or fancied evils of the day were exposed to the lash. The abuse of the practice of taking tobacco flattered the prejudices of the king; the quack and the dishonest lawyer were stock butts of contemporary satire; Colax and Techne, the he and she coney-catchers, have maintained their fascination for all ages. Pistophanax, the disseminator of false doctrine, who had actually presumed to reason with the priests concerning the mysteries of Pan, was perhaps the favourite object of contemporary invective. The term 'atheist' covered a multitude of sins. This character appears in the final scene only, and even there he is a mute but for one speech. He is indeed treated in a somewhat different manner from the other subjects of satire in the play. Thus the discovery that he is wearing a mask to hide the natural ugliness of his features passes altogether the bounds of dramatic satire, and carries us back to the allegorical manner of the middle ages. Apart from these figures, who bear upon them the form and pressure of the time, and who are, it must be remembered, the main-spring of the action, there is little of note to fix the attention in this first fruit of the Arcadian spirit in the English drama.