Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama by Walter W. Greg

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But, however fascinating Marot may be as an historical figure, he was in
no sense a great poet. His chief merit in literature, apart from his often
delicate epigrams, his _elegant badinage_ and his graceful if at times
facile verse, lies in the power he possesses, in common with Garcilaso and
Spenser, of treating the allegorical pastoral without entirely losing the
charm of naive simplicity and genuine feeling. In his _Eclogue au Roi_ he
addresses Francis under the name of Pan, while in the _Pastoureau
chrestien_ he applies the same name to the Deity; yet in either case there
is a justness of sentiment underlying the convention which saves the verse
from degenerating into mere sycophancy or blasphemy. His chief claim to
notice as a pastoral writer is his authorship of an eclogue on the death
of Loyse de Savoye, the mother of Francis; a poem through which, more than
any other, he influenced his greater English disciple, and thereby
acquired the importance he possesses for our present inquiry.

Marot, however, whose inspiration, in so far as it was not born of his own
genius, appears to be chiefly derived from Vergil, whose first eclogue he
translated in his youth, was far from being the only poet who wrote
bucolic verse or bore other witness to pastoral influence. France was not
behind other nations in embracing the Italian models. Margaret, as I have
said, imitated Sannazzaro in her _Histoire des satyres et nymphes de
Diane_. The _Arcadia_ was translated in 1544. Du Bellay was familiar with
the original and honoured its author with imitation, translation, and even
a respectful mention of it in his famous _Defense_. Elsewhere he asks:

Qui fera taire la musette
Du pasteur neapolitain?

The first part of Belleau's _Bergerie_ appeared in 1565, the complete
work, including a piscatory poem, in 1572. On the stage Nicolas Filleul
anticipated the regular Italian drama in a dramatized eclogue entitled
_Les Ombres_ in 1566. Later Nicolas de Montreux, better known under the
name of Ollenix du Mont-Sacre, a writer of a religious cast, and author
of a romantic comedy on the story of Potiphar's wife, composed three
pastoral plays, _Athlette_, _Diane_, and _Arimene_, which appeared in
1585, 1592, and 1597 respectively. They are conventional pastorals on the
Italian model, futile in plot and commonplace in style. He was also the
author of the _Bergerie de Juliette_, a romance published in 1592, which
Robert Tofte is credited with having translated in his _Honour's
Academy_,' or the Famous Pastoral of the Fair Shepherdess Julietta,' which
appeared at London in 1610. Tofte's work, however, while purporting to be
'done into English,' makes no mention of the original author, and though
indebted for its form and title to Nicholas' romance does not appear to
bear much further resemblance to it. A far more important work in itself,
but one which does not much concern us here, is Honore d'Urfe's _Astree_,
an autobiographic compilation in which the fashionable pastoral romance
found its most consummate example. The work was translated into English as
early as 1620, but the history of its influence in this country belongs
almost exclusively to the French vogue, which began about the middle of
the century, and formed such an important element in the literature of the
restoration.

The comparatively small influence exerted by the French pastoral of the
renaissance on that of England must excuse the scanty summary given in the
preceding paragraphs. It remains to be said that there had existed at an
earlier period in France another and very different tradition, which
supplied one of the regular forms of composition in vogue among
_trouveres_ and _troubadours_ alike. The _pastourelle_ has sometimes been
described as a popular form, but it would be difficult to determine
wherein its 'popularity,' in the sense intended, consists, for it is
easily recognized as the offspring of a knightly minstrelsy, and indeed is
scarcely less artificial or conventional than the Italian eclogue.
Although the situation is frequently developed with resource and invention
on the part of the individual poet, the general type is rigidly fixed. The
narrator, who is a minstrel and usually a knight, while riding along meets
a shepherd-girl, to whom he pays his court with varying success. This is
the simple framework on which the majority are composed. A few, on the
other hand, depart from the type and depict purely rustic scenes.
Others--and the fact is at least significant--serve to convey allusions,
political, personal or didactic: a variety found as early as the twelfth
century in Provencal, and about the fourteenth in northern French.
Wandering scholars adopted the form from the knightly singers and produced
a plentiful crop of Latin _pastoralia_, usually of a somewhat burlesque
nature. An idea of the general style of these may be gathered from such
lines as the following, which contain the reply of a country girl
hesitating before the advances of a merry student:

Si senserit meus pater
uel Martinus maior frater,
erit mihi dies ater;
uel si sciret mea mater,
cum sit angue peior quater:
uirgis sum tributa.[70]

Appropriated, lastly, and refashioned by the hand of an original genius,
the _pastourelle_ gave to German poetry the crowning jewel of its
_Minnesang_ in Walther's 'Under der linden,' with its irrepressibly
roguish refrain:

Kuster mich? wol tusentstunt:
tandaradei,
seht wie rot mir ist der munt!

Connected with the _pastourelles_ of the _langue d'oil_ is an isolated
dramatic effort, of a primitive and naive sort, but of singular grace and
charm. _Li jus Robins et Marion_, the work of Adan le Bochu or de le Hale,
is in fact a dramatized _pastourelle_ of some eight hundred lines
beginning with the rejection by a shepherdess of the advances of a knight
and ending with the rustic sports of the shepherds on the green.
Unsophisticated nature and playful cunning unite in no ordinary degree to
lend delicacy and savour to the work, while the literary quality of Adan's
verse is evident in such incidental songs as Marion's often quoted:

Robins m'aime, Robins m'a,
Robins m'a demandee, si m'ara.

In spite, however, of the genuine _naivete_ and natural realism of the
piece, it is easy to recognize in it something of the same spirit of
gentle raillery that sparkles in the graceful octaves of Lorenzo's
_Nencia_.

A real and lively love of the country, rather than any idealization of the
actual shepherd class, is reflected in a poem written about 1460 by Rene
of Anjou, ex-king of Naples, describing in pastoral guise the rustic
retreat which he enjoyed in company with his wife, Jeanne de Laval, on the
banks of the Durance. The conventional pastoralism that veils the identity
of the shepherd and shepherdess is scarcely more than a pretence, for at
the end of the manuscript we find blazoned the arms of the royal pair,
with the inscription:

Icy sont les armes, dessoubz ceste couronne,
Du bergier dessus dit et de la bergeronne.

We have now completed the first section of our introductory survey of
pastoral literature. We have passed in review, in a necessarily rapid and
superficial, but, it is to be hoped, not altogether inadequate, manner,
the varions manifestations of the kind in the non-dramatic literature of
continental Europe. The Italian pastoral drama has been reserved for
separate and more detailed consideration in close connexion with that of
this country. It must, however, be borne in mind that in such a survey as
the present many of the byways and more or less obscure and devious
channels by which pastoral permeated the wide fields of literature have of
necessity been left unexplored. Nothing, for instance, has been said about
the pastoral interludes which occupy a not inconspicuous place in the
martial cantos both of the _Orlando_ and the _Gerusalemme_. Before passing
on, however, I should like to say a few words concerning one particular
department of renaissance literature, and that chiefly by way of
illustrating the limitations of the tradition of literary pastoral. I
refer to the _novelle_ or _nouvelles_, in which, although pastoral
subjects are occasionally introduced, the treatment is entirely
independent of conventional tradition. Without making any pretence at
covering the whole field of the _novellieri_, I may instance a tale of
Giraldi's, not lacking in the homely charm which belongs to that author,
of a child exposed in a wood and brought up by the shepherds. These are
represented as simple unpretending Lombard peasants, who look to their own
business and are credited with none of the arts and graces of their
literary fellows. More exclusively rustic in setting is an anecdote
concerning the amours of a shepherd and shepherdess, told with broad
humour in the _Cent Nouvelles nouvelles_ and elaborated with
characteristic gusto and extraordinarily graphic art by Pietro Fortini.
The crude obscenity of the subject alone serves to show how free the
writer was from any influence of the pastoral of polite literature.[71]
Numerous other stories concerning shepherds or _villani_ might be cited,
from Boccaccio to Bandello, the point of which, whether openly licentious
or ostensibly moral, is brought home with a brutal and physical directness
utterly foreign to the spirit of the regular pastoral. This is, on the
whole, what one would expect. The coarse realism that gave life and
vitality to the novel, that characteristic product of middle-class
cynicism and humour, finds no place in the pastoral of literary tradition.
The conventional grace of the pastoral could offer no material to the
novel. It is true that when we speak of the _bourgeois_ spirit of the
_novella_ on the one hand, and the 'ideal' pastoral on the other, it is
well to remember that the author of the _Decameron_ also wrote the first
modern pastoral romance; that the century and country which saw the
publication of the _Arcadia_, the _Aminta_, and the _Pastor fido_, also
welcomed the work of Fortini, Giraldi, and Bandello; and that to Margaret
of Navarre, the imitator of Sannazzaro and patroness of Marot, we are
likewise indebted for the _Heptameron_. Nevertheless the tendencies,
though sometimes united in the person of a single author, yet keep
distinct. Both alike had become a fashion, both alike followed a more or
less conventional type. The novel remained coarse and realistic; the
pastoral, whatever may be said of its morality, remained refined and at a
conscious remove from real life. To examine thoroughly the cause of this
disseverance from actuality which haunted the pastoral throughout its many
transformations would lead us beyond all possible bounds of this inquiry.
One important point may, however, here be noted. The pastoral, whatever
its form, always needed and assumed some external circumstance to give
point to its actual content. The interest seldom arises directly from the
narrative itself. In Theocritus and Sannazzaro this objective point is
supplied by the delight of escape from the over-civilization of the city;
in Petrarch and Mantuan, by their allegorical intention; in Sacchetti and
Lorenzo, by the contrast of town and country, with all its delicate
humour; in Boccaccio and Poliziano, by the opening it gave for golden
dreams of exquisite beauty or sensuous delight; in Tasso, by the desire of
that freedom in love and life which sentimental philosophers have always
associated with a return to nature. In all these cases the content _per
se_ may be said to be matter of indifference; it only receives meaning in
relation to some ulterior intention of the author. Realism under these
circumstances was impossible. Nor could satire call it forth, for no one
would be at pains to satirize actual rusticity. The only loophole left by
which a realistic treatment could find its way into pastoral was when, as
in Folengo's macaronics, it was not the actual rustic life but the
conventional representation of it that was the object of satire. But this
case was naturally a rare one.

Chapter II.

Pastoral Poetry in England

I

We have seen how there arose in the Italian songs of the fourteenth
century a spontaneous form of pastoral independent of the regular
tradition, and somewhat similar examples are furnished by the dramatic
eclogues of Spain. In the former case, however, pastoral was never more
than a passing note; while in the latter, the impulse, though possessing
some vitality, was early overwhelmed by the rising tide of Italian
influence. In England it was otherwise. On the one hand the spontaneous
and popular impulse towards a form of pastoralism appears to have been
stronger and more consistent than elsewhere; on the other the foreign and
literary influence never acquired the same supreme importance. As a resuit
the earlier native fashion affected in a noticeable degree later pastoral
work, colouring and blending with instead of being overpowered by the
regular tradition. Thus it is possible to trace two distinct though
mutually reacting tendencies far down the stream of English literature,
and to this double origin must be referred many of the peculiar phenomena
of English pastoral work. There was furthermore a constant struggle for
supremacy between the two traditions, in which now one now the other
appeared likely to go under. The greatest poets of their day, Spenser and
Milton, threw the weight of their authority on to the side of pastoral
orthodoxy. Spenser, however, was himself too much influenced by the
popular impulse for his example to be decisive in favour of the regular
tradition, while, by the time Milton wrote, a hybrid form had established
itself on a more or less secure basis and a _modus vivendi_ had already
been achieved. Meanwhile the bulk of pastofal poets affected a less
weighty and more spontaneous song, whether they wrote in the light
fanciful mood of Drayton or the more passionate and romantic spirit of
Browne.

To this double origin may be ascribed a certain noticeable vitality that
characterizes English pastoral composition. Since this quality has been
habitually overlooked by literary historians, I may be excused for
dwelling on it somewhat in this place. The stigma which, not altogether
undeservedly, attaches to pastoral as a whole has tempted critics to
confine their attention to the more notable examples of the kind, and to
treat these as more or less sporadic manifestations. Thus they have
failed, on the whole, to appreciate the relation in which these works
stand to the general pastoral tradition, which was mainly carried on in
works of little individual interest. It is no blame to them if they
considered that these undistinguished productions were of small importance
in the general history of literature: any one who goes through them with
care will probably arrive at a not very dissimilar conclusion.
Nevertheless the fact remains that the neglect of them has obscured both
the relative positions of the greater and more enduring works, and also
the general nature of the pastoral tradition in this country. That
tradition I believe to have been of a far more noteworthy character than
has hitherto been realized. I am not, of course, prepared to maintain that
pastoral composition in England ever attained, as a whole, to the rank of
great literature, or that it formed such a remarkable body of work as we
find, for example, in the Arcadian drama of Italy. But when we come to
regard the pastoral production of this country in the light of a more or
less connected tradition, it is impossible not be struck by the
originality and diversity of the various forms which it assumed. Though as
a literary kind it never rivalled its Italian model in fertility, it
evinced an individual and versatile quality which we seek in vain in other
countries. To substantiate this claim and to show how far the vitality of
the English pastoral was due to its hybrid origin will be my chief aim in
this chapter. When I come to deal with the main subject of this inquiry it
will be necessary to determine how far similar considerations apply in the
case of the pastoral drama.

In the first place we have to consider what was produced on the one hand
by the purely native impulse, and on the other under the sole inspiration
of foreign tradition, at a period when these two influences had not yet
begun to interact. As an argument in favour of the spontaneous and genuine
nature of the earlier fashion may be noticed its appearance in that
miscellaneous body of anonymous literature which, whatever may be its
origin--and it is impossible to enter on so controversial a subject in
this place--is at least 'popular' in the sense of having been long handed
down from generation to generation in the mouths of the people. The
acceptance of pastoral ballads into this great mass of traditional
literature is at least as good evidence of their popular character as that
of authorship could be. In such a body of literature it would indeed be
surprising had the _pastourelle_ motive not found entrance; but it is
noteworthy that whereas the French and Latin poems are habitually written
from the point of view of the lover, the English ballads adopt that of the
peasant maiden to whom the high-born suitor pays his court. At once the
simplest and most poetical of the ballads on this model is that printed by
Scott as _The Broom of Cowdenknows_, a title to which in all probability
it has little claim. It is a delightful example of the minor ballad
literature, and I am by no means inclined to regard it as a mere
amplification of the much shorter and rather abrupt _Bonny May_ of Herd's
collection, though the latter, so far as it goes, probably offers a less
sophisticated text. In either case a gentleman riding along meets a girl
milking, obtains her love, and ultimately returns and marries her. A
similar incident, in which, however, the seducer marries the girl under
compulsion and then discovers her to be of noble parentage, is told in a
ballad, of which a number of versions have been collected in Scotland
under the title of _Earl Richard_ or _Earl Lithgow_, and of which an
English version was current in the seventeenth century and was quoted more
than once by Beaumont and Fletcher.[72] This was printed by Percy in the
_Reliques_, and two broadsides of it dating from the restoration are
preserved in the Roxburghe collection. It is inferior to the northern
versions, but both are probably late, and contain stanzas belonging to or
copied from other ballads, notably the _Bonny Hynd_ of the Herd manuscript
and _Burd Helen_ (the Scotch version of _Child Waters_). The title of the
broadsides is interesting as betraying the influence of the regular
pastoral tradition: 'The beautifull Shepherdesse of Arcadia. A new
pastarell Song of a courteous young Knight, and a supposed Shepheards
Daughter.'[73] Again, apparently from the Aberdeen district, comes a
ballad on the marriage of a shepherd's daughter to the Laird of Drum. On
the other hand we find three somewhat similar ballads, _Lizie Lindsay_ or
_Donald of the Isles, Lizie Baillie_, and _Glasgow Peggie_, recording the
elopement of a town girl with a highland gentleman in the disguise of a
shepherd. These are obviously late, though a certain resemblance in style
with _Johnie Faa_ makes it possible that they are as old as the middle of
the seventeenth century. None of the pastoral ballads, indeed, can show
any credentials which would suggest an earlier date than the second half
of the sixteenth century, nor can any of them lay claim to first-rate
poetic merit.[74]

Another example of native pastoral, earlier and far more genuine in
character, is to be found in the religious drama. The romantic
possibilities of peasant life were to some extent reflected in the
ballads; it is the burlesque aspect that is preserved to us in the
'shepherd' plays of the mystery cycles. We possess the plays on the
adoration of the shepherds belonging to the four extant series, a
duplicate in the Towneley plays, and one odd specimen, making six in all.
The rustic element varies in each case, but it assumed the form of
burlesque comedy in all except the purely didactic 'Coventry' cycle of the
Cotton manuscript. Here, indeed, the treatment of the situation is
decorously dull, but in the others we can trace a gradual advance in
humorous treatment leading up to the genuine comedy of the alternative
Towneley plays. Thus, like Noah and his wife, the shepherds of the
adoration early became recognized comic characters, and there can be
little doubt of the influence exercised by these scenes upon the later
interludes. With the general evolution of the drama we are of course in no
wise here concerned: what it imports us to notice is that just as it was
the picture of the young gallant riding along on the mirk evening by the
fail dyke of the 'bought i' the lirk o' the hill' that caught the
imagination of the north-country milkmaids, so it was the rough
representation of rustic manners, with which they must have been familiar
in actual life, that appealed to the villagers flocking to York,
Leicester, Beverley, or Wakefield to witness the annual representation of
the guild cycle.[75]

It will be worth while to give some account of the form taken by this
genuine pastoral comedy, as we find it in its highest development in the
two Towneley plays. These belong to the latest additions to the cycle, and
were probably first incorporated when the repertory underwent revision in
the early years of the fifteenth century.[76] Each play falls into three
portions: first, a rustic farce; secondly, the apparition and announcement
of the angels; and thirdly, the adoration. The two latter do not
particularly concern us. Though in the Chester cycle the shepherds show
themselves amusingly ignorant of the meaning of the _Gloria_, in the
Towneley plays they are apt to fall out of character, and certainly
display a singular knowledge of the prophets,[77] for

Abacuc and ely prophesyde so,
Elezabeth and zachare and many other mo,
And david as veraly is witnes thereto,
Iohn Bapyste sewrly and daniel also.

More remarkable still is one shepherd's familiarity with the classics:

Virgill in his poetre sayde in his verse,
Even thus by gramere as I shall reherse;
'Iam nova progenies celo demittitur alto,
Iam rediet virgo, redeunt saturnia regna.'[78]

It is perhaps no matter for surprise that one of his less learned fellows
should break out with more force than delicacy:

Weme! tord! what speke ye here in myn eeres?
Tell us no clerge I hold you of the freres.

It is one of the little ironies of literature that in the earliest picture
of pastoral life in England the greatest pastoral writer of Rome should be
quoted, not as a pastoralist, but as a magician.

Before the appearance of the angels, however, there is nothing to lead one
to expect this strange display of learning. A rougher, simpler set of
countrymen it would have been hard to find in the England of Chaucer and
Langland. In the shepherd-play known as _prima pastorum_ the comic element
consists mostly in quarrels and feasting among the shepherds, but in the
_secunda pastorum_ it constitutes a regular little three-scene farce,
which at its date was absolutely unique in literature. It is thence only a
step, and a very short one, to John Heywood's interludes--though it is a
step that took more than a century to accomplish.

The first shepherd comes in complaining of the hard weather; his fingers
are chapped, the storms blow from every quarter in turn. 'Sely shepardes,'
moreover, are put upon by any rich upstart and have no redress. A second
shepherd appears with another grumble: 'We sely wedmen dre mekyll wo.'
Some men, indeed, have been known to desire two wives or even three, but
most would sooner have none at all. Whereupon enters Daw, a third
shepherd, complaining of portents 'With mervels mo and mo.' 'Was never syn
noe floode sich floodys seyn'; even 'I se shrewys pepe'--apparently a
portentous omen. At this point Mak comes on the scene. He is a notorious
bad character of the neighbourhood, who boasts himself 'a yoman, I tell
you, of the king,' and complains that his wife eats him out of house and
home. The shepherds suspect him of designs upon their flocks, so when they
lie down to rest they place him the middle man of three. As soon, however,
as the shepherds are asleep--'that may ye all here'--Mak borrows a sheep
and makes off. Arrived at home he would like to eat the sheep at once, but
he is afraid of being followed, so the animal is put in the cradle and
wrapped up to resemble a baby, and Mak goes back to take his place among
the shepherds. Before long these awake and rouse Mak, who, pretending he
has dreamt that Gill his wife has been brought to bed of another child,
goes off home. The shepherds miss one of their sheep and, following him,
find Gill on the bed while Mak sings a lullaby at the cradle. They proceed
to search the house, Gill the while praying she may eat the child in the
cradle if ever she deceived them. They find nothing, and are about to
depart when Daw insists on kissing the new baby. Gill vows she saw the
child changed by an elf as the clock struck midnight, but Mak pleads
guilty and gets off with a blanketing.