Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama by Walter W. Greg

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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:

Melpomene, the mournfull'st Muse of nine.

As she ends she is accosted by Mercury, who has been sent to summon Paris
to appear at Juno's suit before the assembly of the gods on a charge of
partiality in judgement. A pretty dialogue ensues in broken fourteeners,
in which the subtle god elicits a description of the shepherd from the
unsuspecting nymph--it too contains some delicate reminiscences of the
lover's duet.

_Mercury._ Is love to blame?

_Oenone._ The queen of love hath made him false his troth.

_Mer._ Mean ye, indeed, the queen of love?

_Oen._ Even wanton Cupid's dame.

_Mer._ Why, was thy love so lovely, then?

_Oen._ His beauty height his shame;
The fairest shepherd on our green.

_Mer._ Is he a shepherd, than?

_Oen._ And sometime kept a bleating flock.

_Mer._ Enough, this is the man.

In the next scene we find Paris and Venus together. First the goddess
directs the assembled shepherds to inscribe the words, 'The love whom
Thestylis hath slain,' as the epitaph of the now dead Colin. When these
have left the stage she turns to Paris:

Sweet shepherd, didst thou ever love?

_Paris._ Lady, a little once.

She then warns him against the dangers of faithlessness in a passage which
is a good example of Peele's use of the old rimed versification, and as
such deserves quotation.

My boy, I will instruct thee in a piece of poetry,
That haply erst thou hast not heard: in hell there is a tree,
Where once a-day do sleep the souls of false forsworen lovers,
With open hearts; and there about in swarms the number hovers
Of poor forsaken ghosts, whose wings from off this tree do beat
Round drops of fiery Phlegethon to scorch false hearts with heat.
This pain did Venus and her son entreat the prince of hell
T'impose on such as faithless were to such as loved them well:
And, therefore, this, my lovely boy, fair Venus doth advise thee,
Be true and steadfast in thy love, beware thou do disguise thee;
For he that makes but love a jest, when pleaseth him to start,
Shall feel those fiery water-drops consume his faithless heart.

_Paris._ Is Venus and her son so full of justice and severity?

_Venus._ Pity it were that love should not be linked with indifferency.[209]

Then follow Colin's funeral, the punishment of the hard-hearted Thestylis,
condemned to love a 'foul crooked churl' who 'crabbedly refuseth her,'
and the scene in which Mercury summons Paris before the Olympian tribunal.
Here we find him in the next act. The gods being seated in the bower of
Diana, Juno and Pallas, and Venus and Paris appear 'on sides' before the
throne of Jove, and in answer to his indictment the shepherd of Ida
delivers a spirited speech. Again the verse is of no small merit.
Defending himself from the charge of partiality in the bestowal of the
prize, he argues:

Had it been destined to majesty--
Yet will I not rob Venus of her grace--
Then stately Juno might have borne the ball.
Had it to wisdom been intituled,
My human wit had given it Pallas then.
But sith unto the fairest of the three
That power, that threw it for my farther ill,
Did dedicate this ball--and safest durst
My shepherd's skill adventure, as I thought,
To judge of form and beauty rather than
Of Juno's state or Pallas' worthiness--...
Behold, to Venus Paris gave the fruit,
A daysman[210] chosen there by full consent,
And heavenly powers should not repent their deeds.

After consultation the gods decide to dismiss the prisoner, though we
gather that he is not wholly acquitted.

_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-cleped Angeli,
Or, if I miss, a letter is the most--

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

Et tibi, non aliis, didicerunt parcere Parcae.

With regard to the general construction of the piece it is hardly too much
to say that the skill with which the author has enlarged a masque-subject
into a regular drama, altered a classical legend to subserve a particular
aim, and conducted throughout the multiple perhaps rather than complex
threads of his plot, mark him out as pre-eminent among his contemporaries.
We must not, it is true, look for perfect balance of construction, for
adequacy of dramatic climax, or for subtle characterization; but what has
been achieved was, in the stage of development at which the drama had then
arrived, no mean achievement. The dramatic effects are carefully prepared
for and led up to, reminding us almost at times of the recurrence of a
musical motive. Thus the song between Paris and Oenone, just before the
shepherd goes off to cross Dame Venus' path, is a fine piece of dramatic
irony as well as a charming lyric; while the effect of the reminiscences
of the song scattered through the later pastoral scenes has been already
noticed. Another instance is Venus' warning of the pains in store for
faithless lovers, which fittingly anticipates the words with which Paris
leaves the assembly of the gods. Again, we find a conscious preparation
for the contention between the goddesses in their previous bickerings, and
a conscious juxtaposition of the forsaken Oenone and the love-lorn Colin.
Lastly, there are scattered throughout the play not a few graphic touches,
as when Mercury at sight of Oenone exclaims:

Dare wage my wings the lass doth love, she looks so bleak and thin!

Such then is Peele's mythological play, presented in all the state of a
court revel before her majesty by the children of the Chapel Royal, a play
which it is more correct to say prepared the ground for than, as is
usually asserted, itself contained the germ of the later pastoral drama.
In spite of the care bestowed upon its composition, the _Arraignment of
Paris_ remains a slight and occasional production; but it nevertheless
claims its place as one of the most graceful pieces of its kind, and the
ascription of the play to Shakespeare, current in the later seventeenth
century, is perhaps more of an honour to the elder than of an insult to
the younger poet. Nor, at a more recent date, was Lamb uncritically
enthusiastic when he said of Peele's play that 'had it been in all parts
equal, the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher had been but a second name in
this sort of Writing.'

Before leaving Peele, mention must be made of one other play from his pen,
namely the _Hunting of Cupid_, known to us unfortunately from a few
fragments only. This is the more tantalizing on account of the freshness
of the passages preserved in _England's Helicon_ and _England's
Parnassus_, and in a commonplace-book belonging to Drummond of
Hawthornden, and also from the fact that there is good reason to suppose
that the work was actually printed[212]. So far as can be judged from the
extracts we possess, and from Drummond's jottings, it appears to have been
a tissue of mythological conceits, much after the manner of the
_Arraignment_, though possibly somewhat more distinctly pastoral in
tone[213].

About contemporary with the _Arraignment of Paris_ are the earliest plays
of John Lyly, the Euphuist. Most of these are of a mythological character,
while three come more particularly under our notice on account of their
pastoral tendency, namely, _Gallathea, Love's Metamorphosis_, and the
_Woman in the Moon_[214].

Although Lyly's romance itself lay outside the scope of this inquiry, we
have already had, in the pastoral work of his imitators, ample
opportunities of becoming acquainted with the peculiarities of the style
he rendered fashionable. Its laborious affectation is all the more
irritating when we remember that its author, on turning his attention to
the more or less unseemly brawling of the Martin Mar-prelate pasquilade,
revealed a command of effective vernacular hardly, if at all, inferior to
that of his friend Nashe; and its complex artificiality becomes but more
apparent when applied to dramatic work. Nevertheless in an age when prose
style was in an even more chaotic state than prosody, Euphuism could claim
qualities of no small value and importance, while as an experiment it was
no more absurd, and vastly more popular, than those in classical
versification. Its qualities, when we consider the general state of
contemporary literature, may well account for the popularity of Lyly's
attempt at novel-writing, but the style was radically unsuited for
dramatic composition, and the result is for the most part hardly to be
tolerated, and can only have met with such court-favour as fell to its
lot, owing to the general fashion for which its success in the romance was
responsible. It is indeed noteworthy that Lyly is the only writer who ever
ventured to apply his literary invention _in toto_ to the uses of the
stage, while even in the romance he lived to see Euphuism as a fashionable
style pale before the growing popularity of Arcadianism[215]. The opening
of _Gallathea_ may supply a specimen of the style as it appears in the
dramas; the scene is laid in Lincolnshire, and Tyterus is addressing his
daughter who gives her name to the piece:

In tymes past, where thou seest a heape of small pyble, stoode a stately
Temple of white Marble, which was dedicated to the God of the Sea, (and
in right being so neere the Sea): hether came all such as eyther
ventured by long travell to see Countries, or by great traffique to use
merchandise, offering Sacrifice by fire, to gette safety by water;
yeelding thanks for perrils past, and making prayers for good successe
to come: but Fortune, constant in nothing but inconstancie, did change
her copie, as the people their custome; for the Land being oppressed by
Danes, who in steed of sacrifice, committed sacrilidge, in steede of
religion, rebellion, and made a pray of that in which they should have
made theyr prayers, tearing downe the Temple even with the earth, being
almost equall with the skyes, enraged so the God who bindes the windes
in the hollowes of the earth, that he caused the Seas to breake their
bounds, sith men had broke their vowes, and to swell as farre above
theyr reach, as men had swarved beyond theyr reason: then might you see
shippes sayle where sheepe fedde, ankers cast where ploughes goe,
fishermen throw theyr nets, where husbandmen sowe their Corne, and
fishes throw their scales where fowles doe breede theyr quils: then
might you gather froth where nowe is dewe, rotten weedes for sweete
roses, and take viewe of monstrous Maremaides, in steed of passing faire
Maydes.

The unsuitability of the style for dramatic purposes will by this be
somewhat painfully evident, and, as may be imagined, the effect is even
less happy in the case of dialogue. To pursue: the offended deity consents
to withdraw his waters on the condition of a lustral sacrifice of the
fairest virgin of the land, who is to be exposed bound to a tree by the
shore, whence she is carried off by the monster Agar, in whom we may no
doubt see a personification of the 'eagre' or tidal wave of the Humber. At
the opening of the play we find the two fairest virgins of the land
disguised as boys by their respective fathers, in order that they may
escape the penalty of beauty. While they wander the fields and graves,
another maiden is exposed as the sacrifice, but Neptune, offended by the
deceit, rejects the proffered victim, and no monster appears to claim its
prey. In the meanwhile, Cupid has eluded the maternal vigilance, and,
disguised as a nymph, is beginning to display his powers among the
followers of Diana. Here is an example of a euphuistic dialogue. Cupid
accosts one of the nymphs:

Faire Nimphe, are you strayed from your companie by chaunce, or love
you to wander solitarily on purpose?

_Nymph._ Faire boy, or god, or what ever you bee, I would you knew
these woods are to me so wel known, that I cannot stray though I would,
and my minde so free, that to be melancholy I have no cause. There is
none of Dianaes trayne that any can traine, either out of their waie,
or out of their wits.

_Cupid._ What is that Diana? a goddesse? what her Nimphes?
virgins? what her pastimes? hunting?

_Nym._ A goddesse? who knowes it not? Virgins? who thinkes it not?
Hunting? who loves it not?

_Cup._ I pray thee, sweete wench, amongst all your sweete troope, is
there not one that followeth the sweetest thing, sweet love?

_Nym._ Love, good sir, what meane you by it? or what doe you call it?

_Cup._ A heate full of coldnesse, a sweet full of bitternesse, a paine
ful of pleasantnesse; which maketh thoughts have eyes, and harts eares;
bred by desire, nursed by delight, weaned by jelousie, kild by
dissembling, buried by ingratitude; and this is love! fayre Lady,
wil you any?

_Nym._ If it be nothing else, it is but a foolish thing.

_Cup._ Try, and you shall find it a prettie thing.

_Nym._ I have neither will nor leysure, but I will followe Diana in the
Chace, whose virgins are all chast, delighting in the bowe that wounds
the swift Hart in the Forrest, not fearing the bowe that strikes the
softe hart in the Chamber.

The nymphs are soon in love with the two girls in disguise, and what is
more, each of these, supposing the other to be what her apparel betokens,
falls in love with her. After a while, however, Diana becomes suspicious
of the stranger nymph, and her followers make a capture of the boy-god,
whom they identify by the burn on his shoulder caused by Psyche's lamp,
and set him to untie love-knots. There follows one of those charming songs
for which Lyly is justly, or unjustly, famous[216].

O Yes, O yes, if any Maid,
Whom lering Cupid has betraid
To frownes of spite, to eyes of scorne,
And would in madnes now see torne
The Boy in Pieces--Let her come
Hither, and lay on him her doome.

O yes, O yes, has any lost
A Heart, which many a sigh hath cost;
Is any cozened of a teare,
Which (as a Pearle) disdaine does weare?--
Here stands the Thiefe, let her but come
Hither, and lay on him her doome.

Is any one undone by fire,
And Turn'd to ashes through desire?
Did ever any Lady weepe,
Being cheated of her golden sleepe,
Stolne by sicke thoughts?--The pirats found,
And in her teares hee shalbe drownd.
Reade his Inditement, let him heare
What hees to trust to: Boy, give eare!

This is the position of affairs when Venus appears in search of her
wanton, and is shortly followed by the irate Neptune. After some
disputing, Neptune, to quiet the strife between the goddesses, proposes
that Diana shall restore the runaway to his mother, in return for which he
will release the land for ever from its virgin tribute. This happily
agreed upon, the only difficulty remaining is the strange passion between
the two girls. Venus, however, proves equal to the occasion, and solves
the situation by transforming one of them into a man. An allusion to the
story of Iphis and Ianthe told in the ninth book of the _Metamorphoses_
suggests the source of the incident[217]. Otherwise the play appears to be
in the main original. The exposing of a maiden to the rage of a
sea-monster has been, of course, no novelty since the days of Andromeda,
but it is unnecessary to seek a more immediate source[218]; while the
intrusion of Cupid in disguise among the nymphs was doubtless suggested by
the well-known idyl of Moschus, and probably owes to this community of
source such resemblance as it possesses to the prologue of the _Aminta_.
A comic element is supplied by a sort of young rascals, and a mariner, an
alchemist, and an astrologer, who are totally unconnected with the rest of
the play. The supposed allusions to real characters need not be taken
seriously. Lyly's rascals are generally recognized as the direct ancestors
of some of Shakespeare's comic characters, and we not seldom find in them
the germ at least of the later poet's irresistible fun. Take such a speech
as Robin's: 'Why be they deade that be drownd? I had thought they had
beene with the fish, and so by chance beene caught up with them in a Nette
againe. It were a shame a little cold water should kill a man of reason,
when you shall see a poore Mynow lie in it, that hath no understanding.'
As regards the euphuistic style, the passages already quoted will suffice,
but it may be remarked that the marvellous natural history is also put
under requisition. 'Virgins harts, I perceive,' remarks one of Diana's
nymphs, 'are not unlike Cotton trees, whose fruite is so hard in the
budde, that it soundeth like steele, and beeing rype, poureth forth
nothing but wooll, and theyr thoughts, like the leaves of Lunary, which
the further they growe from the Sunne, the sooner they are scorched with
his beames.' At times one is almost tempted to imagine that Lyly is
laughing in his sleeve, but as soon as he feels an eye upon him, his face
would again do credit to a judge. The following is from a scene between
the two disguised maidens:

_Phillida._ It is pitty that Nature framed you not a woman, having
a face so faire, so lovely a countenaunce, so modest a behaviour.

_Gallathea._ There is a Tree in Tylos, whose nuttes have shels like
fire, and being cracked, the karnell is but water.

_Phil._ What a toy is it to tell mee of that tree, beeing nothing
to the purpose:
I say it is pity you are not a woman.

_Gall._ I would not wish to be a woman, unless it were because thou art
a man. (III. ii.)

_Gallathea_ may be plausibly enough assigned to the year 1584[219]. The
date of the next play we have to deal with, _Love's Metamorphosis_, is
less certain, though Mr. Fleay's conjecture of 1588-9 seems reasonable.
All that can be said with confidence is that it was later than
_Gallathea_, to which it contains allusions, that it is an inferior work,
and that it has the appearance at least of having been botched up in a
hurry[220]. The story is as follows. Three shepherds, or rather woodmen,
are in love with three of the nymphs of Ceres, but meet with little
success, one of the maidens proving obdurate, another proud, and the third
fickle. The lovers make complaint to Cupid, who consents at their request
to transform the disdainful fair ones into a rock, a rose, and a bird
respectively. Hereupon Ceres in her turn complains to the God of Love, who
promises that the three shall regain their proper shapes if Ceres will
undertake that they shall thereupon consent to the love of the swains. She
does so, and her nymphs are duly restored to their own forms, but at first
flatly refuse to comply with the conditions. After a while they yield:

_Nisa._ I am content, so as Ramis, when hee finds me cold in love, or
hard in beliefe, hee attribute it to his owne folly; in that I retaine
some nature of the Rocke he chaunged me into....

_Celia._ I consent, so as Montanus, when in the midst of his sweete
delight, shall find some bitter overthwarts, impute it to his folly,
in that he suffered me to be a Rose, that hath prickles with her
pleasantnes, as hee is like to have with my love shrewdnes....

_Niobe._ I yeelded first in mind though it bee my course last to
speake: but if Silvestris find me not ever at home, let him curse
himselfe that gave me wings to flie abroad, whose feathers if his
jealousie shall breake, my policie shall imp.[221] (V. iv.)

This plot, at once elementary and violent, is combined with the fantastic
story of Erisichthon, 'a churlish husband-man,' who in the nymphs' despite
cuts down the sacred tree of Ceres, into which the chaste Fidelia had
been transformed. For this offence the goddess dooms him to the plague of
hunger. The ghastly description of this monster, who may be compared with
Browne's Limos, was probably suggested by some similar descriptions in the
_Faery Queen_ (I. iv. and III. xii). Erisichthon is put to all manner of
shifts to satisfy the hunger with which he is ever consumed, and is at
last forced to sell his daughter Protea to a merchant, in order to keep
himself alive. Protea, it appears, was at one time the paramour of
Neptune, who now in answer to her prayer comes to her aid in such a way
that, when about to embark on the vessel of her purchaser, she justifies
her name by changing into the likeness of an old fisherman. The deluded
merchant, after seeking her awhile, is obliged to set sail and depart
without his ware. She returns home to find her lover Petulius being
tempted by a 'syren,' who is evidently a mermaid with looking-glass and
comb and scaly tail, disporting herself by the shore--the scene being
laid, by the way, on the coast of Arcadia. Protea at once changes her
disguise to the ghost of Ulysses, and is in time to warn her lover of his
danger. Finally, at Cupid's intercession her father is relieved of his
affliction by the now appeased goddess. This plot is even more crudely
distinct from the principal action of the play than is usual with
Lyly[222].