Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama by Walter W. Greg

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[102] In the above instance the rime is sacrificed, and I do not mean that
all anomalous lines in Spenser's measure become strict decasyllables when
done into ME.; indeed, they do so of course only by accident. My point is
that Chaucer's verse as read by the sixteenth-century editors must have
often contained just such unmetrical lines as Spenser's. The view I have
indicated above is that accepted by W. J. Courthope (_History of English
Poetry_, ii. p. 253). Herford, on the other hand, while having recourse to
Chancer's influence to explain Spenser's anomalies, regards the metre in
question as derived from the old alliterative line. From this view I am
reluctantly forced to dissent. The alliterative line may be readily traced
in the mystery cycles, and later influenced the verse of the interludes
and such comedies as _Royster Doyster_; and this tradition may have
affected the verse of the later poets of the school of Lydgate, and even
the popular ideas concerning Chaucer's metre. But as to the actual origin
of Spenser's four-beat line there can surely be no doubt.

[103] The late A. B. Grosart, in a passage which is a masterpiece of
literary casuistry _(Spenser_, iii. p. lii.), put forward the truly
astounding theory that the discussions on the evils of the clergy and
similar subjects, put into the mouths of shepherds in the _Calender_ and
elsewhere, are 'in nicest keeping with character.' Such a theory ignores
the essence of the question, for, even supposing that shepherds had done
nothing else but discuss the corruption of the Curia since there was a
Curia to be corrupted, it is still utterly beside the mark. Apart from his
own observation of ecclesiastical manners, Spenser's compositions have for
their sole origin the similar discussions of the humanistic eclogues,
while these in their turn did but cast the individual opinions of their
authors into a conventional mould inherited from the classical poets.
Thus, so far as actual shepherds are connected with Spenser's eclogues at
all, they belong to an age when the Curia and all its sins were happily
unknown.

[104] The MS. is now in the library of Caius College, Cambridge, and is
contained in the volume numbered 595 in the catalogue. It is entitled
_Poimenologia_. The dedication to William James, Dean of Christ Church,
fixes the date as between 1584 and 1596. Dove became Master of Arts in
1586, and since he does not describe himself as such, the translation
probably belongs to an earlier date. I am indebted for knowledge of and
information concerning this MS. to the kindness of Prof. Moore Smith, and
of Dr. J. S. Reid, Librarian of Caius College.

[105] Winstanley (_Lives of the English Poets_, 1687, p. 196) ascribes it
to Sir Richard Fanshawe; but he was no doubt confusing it with the Latin
version of the _Faithful Shepherdess_.

[106] _Faery Queen_, VII. vi. 349, &c.

[107] Somewhat similar episodes occur both in the _Orlando_ and the
_Gerusalemme_, to the imitation of which, indeed, certain passages in
Spenser can be directly referred.

[108] See A. H. Bullen's edition, two vols., 1890-91. The poems in question
will be fonnd in vol. i, pp. 48, 58, 63 and 76.

[109] It is worth noting that in the last stanza all the early editions
read 'Thenot' instead of 'Wrenock'; Thenot being the corresponding
character in Spenser.

[110] Perhaps Anne Goodere: but the question is alien to our present
discussion. Some of the allusions in the eclogues are obvious, and
probably all the names, except perhaps the speaker's, conceal real
personalities. In the _Muses' Elizium_, on the other hand, most of the
names and characters appear to me fictitious. In connexion with the name
'Idea,' in which certain critics have wished to see a deep philosophical
meaning, I would suggest that it may be nothing but the feminine of
'Idaeus,' that is, a shepherd of Mount Ida, a name found in the second
eclogue of Petrarch. It is, however, true that the word 'idea' bore the
meaning of 'an ideal,' in which sense, no doubt, we occasionally find it
applied to England.

[111] Concerning translations of Watson's Latin poems, I may be allowed to
refer to a paper contributed to the _Modern Language Quarterly_, February,
1904, vi. p. 125.

[112] Cf. the passage from Spenser's October eclogue, quoted on p. 88.

[113] A certain similarity between this poem and the song in _Love's
Labour's Lost_, beginning:

On a day--alack the day!--
Love, whose month was ever May;

has caused them to be at times ascribed to Shakespeare. They are
subscribed 'Ignoto' in _England's Helicon_, but appeared among the poems
published with Barnfield's _Lady Pecunia_ in 1598, a tail of thirty lines
of very inferior quality being substituted for the singularly perfect and
effective final couplet. The poem appeared again in the following year in
the _Passionate Pilgrim_, this time with both the couplet and the
addition. The _Helicon_ version is certainly by far the best, and not
improbably represents the poem as originally written in imitation of
Shakespeare's. See J. B. Henneman's paper in _An English Miscellany_,
Oxford, 1901.

[114] Gascoigne's _Steel Glass_ is far rather medieval in conception.

[115] Compare with the lines in _Rosalynd_, beginning 'Phoebe sat, sweet
she sat,' those in _Tarlton's News out of Purgatory_, beginning, 'Down I
sat, I sat down,' and see A. H. Bullen's _Poems from Elizabethan Romances_,
1890, p. xi.

[116] The copy of _Pan's Pipe_ in the British Museum wants the _Tale_, but
this will be found by itself marked C. 40. e. 68 (2, 3).

[117] Collier and Hazlitt supposed two William Basses, but the balance of
evidence seems against the theory. See S. L. Lee in _Dic. Nat. Biog_., and
the edition by R. W. Bond, 1893.

[118] Fleay (_Biographical Chronicle_, i. p. 67) identifies Musidore with
Lodge, and 'Hero's last Musaeus' with H. Petowe. The latter
identification, which had already been proposed by Collier
(_Bibliographical Account_, i. p. 130), is in all probability correct.

[119] Printed by me in the _Modern Language Quarterly_, July, 1901, iv. p.
85.

[120] These are missing in most copies of the book; the only one I know
containing them is in the Bodleian.

[121] I do not know who started the idea. It was mentioned in the
_Retrospective Review_ (ii. p. 180) in 1820, accepted by Sommer, and
elaborated with small success by K. Windscheid. Masson makes no mention of
it in his edition of Milton's poetical works. The author of _Lycidas_ was
probably a reader and admirer of Browne's poems, but of _Britannia's
Pastorals_ rather than of the decidedly inferior eclogues.

[122] The _Arcadian Princess_, translated by Brathwaite from Mariano
Silesio, a kind of metaphorical manual of judicial polity, is in no way
pastoral. It may be remarked that in 1627 there appeared as the work of
one I. D. B. an 'Eclogue, ou Chant Pastoral,' on the marriage (1625) of
Charles and Henrietta Maria, in which two Scotch Shepherds, Robin and
Jacquet, discourse in French Alexandrines. _Taylor's Pastoral_ of 1624
again, a fanciful treatise of religious and secular history, does not
properly belong to pastoral tradition.

[123] One of these appeared two years previously, entitled _The Shepherd's
Oracle_.

[124] Appended to the third edition of the _Arcadia_, 1598.

[125] Appended to the _Arcadia_ in 1613.

[126] _Arcadia_, 1590, fol. 237 verso.

[127] _Opera_, Basel, 1553, p. 622.

[128] The song is said to be between 'two nymphs, each answering other
line for line'; but the simple alternation adopted by Spenser makes
nonsense of the present poem. The above arrangement seems to distribute
the lines best; viz. the first quatrain to Phillis, with interposition of
lines 2 and 4 by Amaryllis, the second quatrain to Amaryllis, with
interposition of line 2 only by Phillis.

[129] Others in the _Passionate Pilgrim_, 1599, and Walton's _Complete
Angler_, 1653.

[130] So, rather than 'Fair-lined,' as Bullen prints; but query
'Fur-lined.'

[131] This is the text of _England's Helicon_, which is superior to that
in the play, except for the omission of the couplet in brackets, and
possibly in the reading 'hath sworn' for 'is sworn,' in l. 11.

[132] From E. K. Chambers' _English Pastorals_, p. 113. The date is
uncertain, but a tune of the name was extant in 1603. The earliest
recorded text is a broadside, of about 1650, in the Roxburghe collection
(III. 142). The conjecture of an 'original issue, _circa_ 1600,' is on the
whole plausible. In that case there was, somewhere, a poet capable of
anticipating the particular cadences of _Sirena_ and _Agincourt_, and that
poet is more likely to have been Drayton than another. See Ebsworth's
edition for the Ballad Society (_Roxburghe Ballads_, vi. p. 460).

[133] _Lycidas_ is almost too familiar, one might suppose, to need
comment, but such irreconcilable views have been held by different
authorities, from Dr. Johnson onwards, that it may not be idle to attempt
to view the work critically in relation to pastoral tradition as a whole.

[134] When Johnson went on to describe the form of the poem as 'easy,
vulgar, and therefore disgusting,' he was but exhibiting a critical
incapacity which seriously impairs his authority in literary matters.

[135] For a detailed account of the poem, as well as for a number of
parallel passages--as well as some of doubtful relevance--the reader may
be referred to F. W. Moorman's monograph. I use the text of G. Goodwin's
edition of Browne's poems, with introduction by A. H. Bullen, 2 vols.,
1894.

[136] K. Windscheid professes to discover a different hand in the third
book, and is inclined to ascribe it to some imitator of Browne. Its merit
is certainly not high, but it is no worse than parts of the former books;
and Browne's work is so notoriously unequal that I can see no excuse for
depriving or relieving him of its authorship.

[137]

The hatred which they bore was only this,
That every one did hate to do amiss;
Their fortune still was subject to their will;
Their want--O happy!--was the want of ill. (II. iii. 447.)

Many readers may be inclined to pity poor men and women debarred from that

First of all joys that unto sin belong--
The sweet felicity of doing wrong.

[138] Pail.

[139] The translater was afterwards knighted. Who was the first person to
ascribe this translation to Thomas Wilcox, a certain 'very painful
minister of God's word,' I am not sure. The mistake has, however, been
constantly repeated, and led Underhill, in his able monograph on _Spanish
Literature in England_, to give a detailed account of Wilcox and his
wholly chimerical connexion with the spread of Spanish influence in this
country. The translation is preserved in the British Museum, Addit. MS.
18,638, and contains the translator's name perfectly clearly written, both
on the title-page and at the end of the dedicatory epistle to Fulke
Greville. This MS. is a copy of the original made by the translator
himself about 1617, and bears on the fly-leaf the name 'Dorothy Grevell.'
The title-page is worth transcribing: 'Diana de Monte mayor done out of
Spanish by Thomas Wilso Esquire, In the yeare 1596 & dedicated to the Erle
of Southampto who was then uppon y'e Spanish voiage w'th my Lord of
Essex--Wherein under the names and vailes of Sheppards and theire Lovers
are covertly discoursed manie noble actions & affections of the Spanish
nation, as is of y'e English of [_sic_] y't admirable & never enough
praised booke of S'r. Phil: Sidneyes Arcadia.'

[140] Arber's edition, p. 83.

[141] See the useful table of correspondences given by Homer Smith in his
paper on the _Pastoral Influence in the English Drama_. All needful
apparatus for the study of the story will of course be found in Furness'
'Variorum' edition of the play.

[142] Macaulay once remarked of the _Faery Queen_, that few and weary are
the readers who are in at the death of the Blatant Beast. It might with
equal or even greater force be contended that most readers are asleep ere
the Arcadian princesses in Sidney's romance are rescued from the power of
Cecropia.

[143] Into purely bibliographical questions, such as the history of the
Edinburgh edition of 1599, it is of course impossible to enter here.

[144] Letter in the State Papers. See Introduction to Sommer's facsimile
of the first edition, 1891.

[145] Conversations with Drummond, X. Shakespeare Society, 1842, p. 10.

[146] K. Brunhuber, to whose work on the _Arcadia_ (_Sir Philip Sidneys
Arcadia und ihre Nachlaeufer_, 1903) I am in a measure indebted, failing to
find many specific borrowings, is inclined to make light of Montemayor's
influence. There can, however, be little question that, in general style
and conception, Sidney, while influenced by the Greek romance, yet
belonged essentially to the Spanish school.

[147] Analyses of the _Arcadia_ will be fouud in all works upon the novel
from Dunlop to J. J. Jusserand and W. Raleigh. Perhaps the fullest, which
is also provided with copious extracts, is that in the _Retrospective
Review_, 1820, ii. p. 1.

[148] An allegorical interpretation certainly found favour among the
critics of the time, and was advanced by Puttenham in his _Art of English
Poesy_ (1589), even before the publication of the romance. See also Thomas
Wilson's allusion on the title-page of his translation from the _Diana_,
given above (p. 141, note).

[149] A critical edition remains, however, a desideratum.

[150] See Jusserand's _English Novel in the time of Shakespeare_, 1890, p.
274.

[151] The later fashionable pastoral of French origin, with the _Astree_
as its type and chief representative, does not concern us, or at most
concerns us so indirectly as not to warrant our lingering over it here.

[152] I should at once say that the view of the development of the
pastoral drama adopted above is not endorsed by all scholars. To have set
forth at length the considerations upon which it is based would have
swollen beyond all bounds an introductory section of my work. Since,
however, the question is one of considerable interest, I have added what I
believe to be a fairly full and impartial discussion in the form of an
appendix.

[153] 'Orfeo cantando giugne all' Inferno' is one of the stage directions.

[154] For an elaborate example (1547) of this kind of stage, on which
various localities were simultaneously represented, see Petit de
Julleville, _Histoire de la langue et de la litterature francaise_, ii.
pp. 416-7.

[155] Concerning the play see the account given by Symonds, together with
his admirable translation in _Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece_,
ii. p. 345, also an elaborate essay, 'L'Orfeo del Poliziano alla corte di
Mantova,' by Isidoro del Lungo, in the _Nuova antologia_ for August, 1881,
and A. D'Ancona, _Origini del teatro italiano_, ii. pp. 2 and 106. The
standard edition of Poliziano's Italian works, that by Carducci, is
unfortunately not in the British Museum.

[156] A note concerning the use of the term 'nymph' may save confusion.
Creizenach remarks that the introduction of a nymph as the beloved of a
shepherd is a peculiarity of the renaissance pastoral which manifestly
owes its origin to Boccaccio's _Ninfale fiesolano_ (_Geschichte des
neueren Dramas_, ii. p. 196). In so far as this view implies that the
'nymphs' of pastoral convention are the same order of beings as those
either of the _Ninfale_ or of classical myth, it appears to me utterly
erroneous. The 'nymphs' who love the shepherds in the renaissance
pastorals are nothing but shepherdesses. The confusion no doubt began with
Boccaccio. The nymph of Diana in the _Ninfale_ is, as we have already
seen, nothing but a nun in pagan disguise. The nymphs of the _Ameto_ are
represented as of the classical type, but their amorous confessions reveal
them as in nowise differing from mortal woman. The gradual change in the
connotation of the word is one of the results of the blending of Christian
and classical ideas. The original elemental or local spirits even in Greek
myth acquired some of the characteristics of votaries (as in the legeud of
Calisto), and these Christian tradition tended to accentuate, while
popular romance, and in many cases contemporary manners, facilitated the
connecting of such characters with tales of secret passion. Gradually,
however, the idea of illicit love gave place to one merely of unrestrained
natural desire, the religious elements of the character were forgotten as
the supernatural had been earlier, and 'nymph' came to be no more than the
feminine of 'shepherd' in an ideal society which by its freedom of
intercourse, as by its honesty of dealing, presented a complete contrast
to the polished circles of aristocratic Italy.

[157] A small circular picture in _chiaroscuro_ among the arabesques of
the _cappella nova_ in the cathedral at Orvieto. It represents the
youthful Orpheus crowned with the laureate wreath playing before Pluto and
Proserpine upon a fiddle or crowd of antique pattern. At his feet lies
Eurydice, while around are spirits of the other world.

[158] In some passages of this speech the resemblance with Ovid is very
close:

famaque si ueteris non est mentita rapinae,
uos quoque iunxit Amor...
omnia debentur nobis, paulumque morati
serius aut citius sedem properamus ad unam...
haec quoque, cum iustos matura peregerit annos,
iuris erit uestri; pro munere poscimus usum.
quod si fata negant ueniam pro coniuge, certum est
nolle redire mihi: leto gaudete duorum. (_Met_. x. 28, &c.)

[159] Cf. _Amores_, II. xii, ll. 1, 2, 5, and 16.

[160] This interpretation of the passion of Orpheus, characteristic as it
is of renaissance thought, was not original. Though unknown in early
times, it is found in Phanocles, a poet probably of the third or fourth
century B. C.

[161] So original: revision 'oe oe.'

[162] The earliest edition I have seen is that contained in the 'Opere' of
June 10, 1507, where the heading runs: 'Fabula di Caephalo coposta dal
Signor Nicolo da Correggia a lo Illustrissimo. D. Hercole & da lui
repsentata al suo floretissimo Populo di Ferrara nel. M. cccc. lxxxvi.
adi. xxi. Ianuarii.' In this edition, printed at Venice by Manfrido Bono
de Monteferrato, the works are said to be 'Stampate nouamente: & ben
corrette.' Bibliographers record no edition previous to 1510. The date in
the heading is either a misprint, or refers to the year 1486-7 according
to the Venetian reckoning. See D'Ancona, _Origini del teatro_, ii. p.
128-9. Symonds (_Renaissance_, v. p. 120) quotes some Latin lines as from
the prologue to this play. This is an error. He has misread D'Ancona, to
whom he refers (ed. 1877), and from whom he evidently copied the
quotation. The lines actually occur in the prologue to a Latin play on the
subject of the taking of Granada.

[163] Rossi, _Battista Guarini ed il Pastor Fido_, 1886, p. 171, note 2.

[164] I do not, of course, mean that no mythological plays were produced
between the days of Correggio and those of Beccari, but that they show no
signs of consistent development in a pastoral or indeed in any other
direction.

[165] _Il Verato secondo_, 1593, p. 206.

[166] _Compendio della poesia tragicomica, tratto dai duo Verati_, 1602,
pp. 49-50.

[167] In this and the following section I have used the texts of the
exceedingly useful collection of _Drammi de' boschi_ in the 'Biblioteca
classica economica,' which comprises the _Aminta, Pastor fido, Filli di
Sciro_, and _Alceo_.

[168] Symonds, in dealing with Tasso in the sixth volume of his _Italian
Renaissance_, lays, to my mind very justly, considerable stress upon this
quality.

[169] Quoted by Serassi, Tasso's biographer, in his preface to the Bodoni
edition of the play (Crisopoli, 1789), p. 8.

[170] See Angelo Solerti, _Vita di T. Tasso_, Torino, Loescher, 1895, i.
p. 181, &c. Carducci, 'Storia dell' _Aminta_,' the third of the _Saggi_,
80, 1st edition.

[171] Leigh Hunt pointed out, in some interesting if rather uncritical
remarks prefixed to his translation of the _Aminta_ (London, 1820), that
some at any rate of the regular choruses cannot have formed part of the
original composition. In fact the first edition (Aldus, 1581) contains
those to Acts I and V only; that to Act II appeared in the second edition
(Ferrara, 1581), and also in the collected _Rime_ (Aldus, 1581); the rest
were added in the Aldine quarto of 1590.

[172] Supposing always that this representation, of which Filippo
Baldinucci, in his _Notizie dei professori del disegno_ (sec. iv, dec.
vii; 1688, p. 102), has left a glowing account, was a representation of
the _Aminta_, and not, as some have maintained, of the _Intrichi d'
amore_, another play sometimes ascribed to Tasso.

[173] Amore had already spoken the prologue to Lodovico Dolce's _Dido_;
and a mythological play by Sannazzaro, of which the opening alone is
extant, introduces Venus in pursuit of her son, and warning the ladies of
the audience against his wiles (Creizenach, ii. p. 209). The prologue to
the _Pastor fido_ is put into the mouth of the river-god Alfeo, that of
Bonarelli's _Filli di Sciro_, which begins with another Ovidian
reminiscence (_Amores_, I. xiii. 40), and was written by Marino, is spoken
by a personification of night, that of Ongaro's _Alceo_ by Venus, of
Castelletti's _Amarilli_ by 'Apollo in habito pastorale,' of Cristoforo
Lauro's _Frutti d'amore_ by Janus in similar garb, of Cesana's _Prova
amoroso_, by Hercules. The list might be extended indefinitely. Contarini,
at the beginning of the next century, followed precedent less closely; his
_Finta Fiammetta_ has a dramatic prologue introducing Venus, Cupid,
Anteros (the avenger of slighted love), and a chorus of _amoretti_; that
of his _Fida ninfa_ is spoken by the shade of Petrarch.

[174] Most of the identifications made by Menagio in his edition, Paris,
1650, have generally been accepted since, except by Fontanini, who would
identify Pigna with Mopso. There seems, however, to be little doubt
possible on the point, though it is not to Tasso's credit. For an audience
conversant with the inner life of the court, the references to Elpino
contained whole volumes of contemporary scandal. In Licori we may see
Lucrezia Bendidio. This lady, the wife of Count Paolo Machiavelli, and
sister-in-law of Guarini, is said to have been the mistress of Cardinal
Luigi d' Este; but Pigna, too, courted her, and brooked no rivalry on the
part of fledgling poets. Tasso appears to have paid her imprudent
attention in the early days of his residence at Ferrara, and thus incurred
the secretary's wrath. The princess Leonora remonstrated with her poet on
his folly, and Tasso, by way of palinode, wrote a fulsome commentary on
three of Pigna's wooden _canzoni_, ranking them with Petrarch's. Tasso is
appareutly allnding to this incident when he puts into Elpino's mouth the
words:

Quivi con Tirsi ragionando andava
Pur di colei che nell' istessa rete
Lui prima e me dappoi ravvolse e strinse;
E preponendo alla sua fuga, al suo
Libero stato il mio dolce servigio. (V. i. 61.)

The origin of the name 'Licori' may possibly, as Carducci points out (p.
94), be sought in an epigram, _Ad Licorim_, found among Pigna's Latin
_Carmina_ (1553). The whole incident throws a curious light on the
pettiness of the Ferrarese Court, a characteristic in which it was,
however, not peculiar. (See Rossi, pp. 34, &c.) It is perhaps worth while
mentioning that by the _antro dell' Aurora_ was no doubt intended the room
in the castle, said to have formed part of the private apartments of
Leonora, still known as the _sala dell' Aurora_, from a wretched fresco on
the ceiling by the local artist Dosso Dossi.

[175] _Aminta_, I. i; _Canace_, IV. ii.

[176] _Lettere del Guarini_, Veneta, Ciotti, 1615, p. 92. See Rossi,
56^{1}

[177] I have already had occasion to point out that, from the time of
Boccaccio onwards, a nymph of Diana might represent a nun, but the whole
of Silvia's relations with Dafne make it plain that she is in no way vowed
to virginity. Her being represented as a follower of Diana implies no more
than that she is fancy-free, and so in a sense under the protection of the
virgin goddess. This use of the phrase is as old as Theocritus: 'Artemis,
be not wrathful, thy votary breaks her vow' (_Idyl_ 27). And it is so used
by Silvia herself in her proud and petulant retort to Aminta: 'Pastor, non
mi toccar; son di Diana' (III. i).

[178] The idea passed from Italian into English verse:

tell me why
This goblin 'honour,' by the world enshrined,
Should make men atheists, and not women kind--

to improve upon the exceedingly neat bowdlerization which the Rev. J. W.
Ebsworth has sought to palm off as the genuine text of Tom Carew.

[179] We have, in the passages quoted, a foretaste of the priggish
extravagance of the _Faithful Shepherdess_. That there should have been
found critics to combine just but wholly otiose condemnation of Cloe with
reverential appreciation of the absurdities of Clorin and Thenot, and to
clap applause to the self-conscious virtue, little removed from smugness,
in which the 'moral grandeur' of the Lady of the Ludlow masque is clothed,
is indeed a striking witness to the tyranny of conventional morality. If
virginal purity were in fact the hypocritical convention which it is to
some extent possible to condone in the _Aminta_, but which becomes wholly
loathsome in the work of Fletcher, the sooner it disappeared from the
region of practical ethics the better for the moral health of humanity.