Amyntas. Row me to hell!--no faster? I will have thee
Chain'd unto Pluto's gallies!

Urania. Why to hell,
My deere Amyntas?

Amyntas. Why? to borrow mony!

Amarillis. Borrow there?

Amy. I, there! they say there be more Usurers there
Then all the world besides.--See how the windes
Rise! Puffe, puffe Boreas.--What a cloud comes yonder!
Take heed of that wave, Charon! ha? give mee
The oares!--So, so: the boat is overthrown;
Now Charons drown'd, but I will swim to shore....
My armes are weary;--now I sinke, I sinke!
Farewell Urania ... Styx, I thank thee! That curld wave
Hath tos'd mee on the shore.--Come Sysiphus,
I'll rowle thy stone a while: mee thinkes this labour
Doth looke like Love! does it not so, Tysiphone?

Ama. Mine is that restlesse toile.

Amy. Is't so, Erynnis?
You are an idle huswife, goe and spin
At poore Ixions wheele!

Ura. Amyntas!

Amy. Ha? Am I known here?

Ura. Amyntas, deere Amyntas--

Amy. Who calls Amyntas? beauteous Proserpine?
'Tis shee.--Fair Empresse of th' Elysian shades,
Ceres bright daughter intercede for mee,
To thy incensed mother: prithee bid her
Leave talking riddles, wilt thou?... Queene of darknesse,
Thou supreme Lady of eternall night,
Grant my petitions! wilt thou beg of Ceres
That I may have Urania?

Ura. Tis my praier,
And shall be ever, I will promise thee
Shee shall have none but him.

Amy. Thankes Proserpine!

Ura. Come sweet Amyntas, rest thy troubled head
Here in my lap.--Now here I hold at once
My sorrow and my comfort.--Nay, ly still.

Amy. I will, but Proserpine--

Ura. Nay, good Amyntas--

Amy. Should Pluto chance to spy me, would not hee
Be jealous of me?

Ura. No.

Amy. Tysiphone,
Tell not Urania of it, least she feare
I am in love with Proserpine: doe not Fury!

Ama. I will not.

Ura. Pray ly still!

Amy. You Proserpine,
There is in Sicilie the fairest Virgin
That ever blest the land, that ever breath'd
Sweeter than Zephyrus! didst thou never heare
Of one Urania?

Ura. Yes.

Amy. This poore Urania
Loves an unfortunate sheapheard, one that's mad, Tysiphone,
Canst thou believe it? Elegant Urania--
I cannot speak it without tears--still loves
Amyntas, the distracted mad Amyntas.
Is't not a constant Nymph?--But I will goe
And carry all Elysium on my back,
And that shall be her joynture.

Ura. Good Amyntas,
Rest here a while!

Amy. Why weepe you Proserpine?

Ura. Because Urania weepes to see Amyntas
So restlesse and unquiet.

Amy. Does shee so?
Then will I ly as calme as doth the sea,
When all the winds are lock'd in Aeolus jayle;
I will not move a haire, not let a nerve
Or Pulse to beat, least I disturbe her! Hush,--
Shee sleepes!

Ura. And so doe you.

Amy. You talk too loud,
You'l waken my Urania.

Ura. If Amyntas,
Her deere Amyntas would but take his rest,
Urania could not want it.

Amy. Not so loud! (II. iv.)

It was no ordinary imagination that conceived this example of the grotesque in the service of the pathetic.

I have endeavoured in the above account to do a somewhat tardy justice to the considerable and rather remarkably sustained qualities of Randolph's play. I do not claim that as poetry it can be compared with the work of Tasso, Fletcher, or Jonson, or that it even rivals that of Guarini or Daniel, though had Randolph lived he might easily have surpassed the latter. But I do claim that the Amyntas is one of the most interesting and important of the experiments which English writers made in the pastoral drama, that it possesses dramatic qualities to which few of its kind can pretend, and that pervading and transforming the whole is the genial humour and the sparkling wit of its brilliant and short-lived author. His pastoral muse was a hearty buxom lass, and kind withal, not overburdened with modesty, yet wholesome and cleanly, and if at times her laugh rings out where the subject passes the natural enjoyment of kind, it is even then careless and merry, and there is often a ground of real fun in the jest. Her finest qualities are a sharp and ready wit and a wealth of imaginative pathos, alike pervaded by her bubbling humour; on the other hand there are moments, if rare, when in an ill-considered attempt to assume the buskin tread she reveals in her paste-board fustian somewhat of the unregeneracy of the plebian trull. The time may yet come when Randolph's reputation, based upon his other works--the Jealous Lovers, a Plautine comedy, clever, but preposterous in more ways than one, the Muses' Looking Glass, a perfectly undramatic morality of humours, and the poems, generally witty, occasionally graceful, and more than occasionally improper--will be enhanced by the recognition of the fact that he came nearer than any other writer to reconciling a kind of pastoral with the temper of the English stage. It was at least in part due to a constitutional indifference on the part of the London public to the loves and sorrows of imaginary swains and nymphs, that Randolph's play failed to leave any appreciable mark upon our dramatic literature.[[282]]

III

In Jonson's Sad Shepherd we find ourselves once again considering a work which is not only one of very great interest in the history of pastoral, but which at the same time raises important questions of literary criticism. So far the most interesting compositions we have had to consider--Daniel's Hymen's Triumph, Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, Randolph's Amyntas--have been attempts either to transplant the Italian pastoral as it stood, or else so to modify and adapt as to fit it to the very different conditions of the English stage. Jonson, on the other hand, aimed at nothing less than the creation of an English pastoral drama. Except for such comparatively unimportant works as Gallathea and the Converted Robber,[[283]] the spectators found themselves, for the first time, on English soil. In spite of the occasional reminiscences of Theocritus and the Arcadian erudition concerning the 'Lovers Scriptures,' the nature of the characters is largely English. The names are not those of pastoral tradition, but rather of the popular romance, Aeglamour, Lionel, Clarion, Mellifleur, Amie, or more homely, yet without Spenser's rusticity, Alken; while the one name of learned origin is a coining of Jonson's own, Earine, the spirit of the spring. The silvan element, which had been variously present since Tasso styled his play favola boschereccia, was used by Jonson to admirable purpose in the introduction of Robin Hood and his crew. A new departure was made in the conjoining of the rustic and burlesque elements with the supernatural, in the persons of the witch Maudlin, her familiar Puck-hairy, her son the rude swineherd Lorel, and her daughter Douce the proud. In every case Jonson appropriated and adapted an already familiar element, but he did so in a manner to fashion out of the thumbed conventions of a hackneyed tradition something fresh and original and new.

Unfortunately the play is but half finished, or, at any rate, but half is at present extant. The fragment, as we have it, was first published, some years after the author's death, in the second volume of the folio of 1640, and the questions as to whether it was ever finished and to what date the composition should be assigned are too intricate to be entered upon here. Suffice it to say that no conclusive arguments exist for supposing that more of the play ever existed than what we now possess, nor that what exists was written very long before the author's death. It is conceivable that the play may contain embedded in it fragments of earlier pastoral work, but the attempt to identify it with the lost May Lord has little to recommend it.[[284]] Seeing that the play is far from being as generally familiar as its poetic merit deserves, I may be allowed to give a more or less detailed analysis of it in this place.[[285]]

After a prologue in which Jonson gives his views on pastoral with characteristic self-confidence, the Sad Shepherd, Aeglamour, appears, lamenting in a brief monologue the loss of his love Earine, who is supposed to have been drowned in the Trent.

Here she was wont to goe! and here! and here!
Just where those Daisies, Pincks, and Violets grow:
The world may find the Spring by following her;
For other print her aerie steps neere left. (I. i.)

He retires at the approach of Marian and the huntsmen, who are about to fetch of the king's venison for the feast at which Robin Hood is to entertain the shepherds of the vale of Belvoir. When they have left the stage Aeglamour comes forward and resumes his lament in a strain of melancholic madness. He is again interrupted by the approach of Robin Hood, who enters at the head of the assembled shepherds and country maidens. Robin welcomes his guests, and his praise of rustic sports calls forth from Friar Tuck the well-known diatribe against the 'sourer sort of shepherds,' in which Jonson vented his bitterness against the hypocritical pretensions of the puritan reformers--a passage which yields, in biting satire, neither to his own presentation in the Alchemist nor to Quarles' scathing burlesque quoted on an earlier page. As they discourse they become aware of Aeglamour sitting moodily apart, unheeding them. He talks to himself like a madman.

It will be rare, rare, rare!
An exquisite revenge: but peace, no words!
Not for the fairest fleece of all the Flock:
If it be knowne afore, 'tis all worth nothing!
Ile carve it on the trees, and in the turfe,
On every greene sworth, and in every path,
Just to the Margin of the cruell Trent;
There will I knock the story in the ground,
In smooth great peble, and mosse fill it round,
Till the whole Countrey read how she was drown'd;
And with the plenty of salt teares there shed,
Quite alter the complexion of the Spring.
Or I will get some old, old Grandam thither,
Whose rigid foot but dip'd into the water,
Shall strike that sharp and suddaine cold throughout,
As it shall loose all vertue; and those Nimphs,
Those treacherous Nimphs pull'd in Earine;
Shall stand curl'd up, like Images of Ice;
And never thaw! marke, never! a sharpe Justice.
Or stay, a better! when the yeares at hottest,
And that the Dog-starre fomes, and the streame boiles,
And curles, and workes, and swells ready to sparkle;
To fling a fellow with a Fever in,
To set it all on fire, till it burne,
Blew as Scamander, 'fore the walls of Troy,
When Vulcan leap'd in to him, to consume him. (I. v.)