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Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama
_Far, far from here ...
The sunshine in the happy glens is fair,
And by the sea, and in the brakes
The grass is cool, the sea-side air
Buoyant and fresh._
Matthew Arnold.
Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama
A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration Stage in
England.
By Walter W. Greg, M.A.
MCMVI.
Oxford: Horace Hart
Printer to the University
MAGISTRIS MEIS
AMICISQVE
Preface
Some ten years ago, it may be, Mr. St. Loe Strachey suggested that I
should write an article on 'English Pastoral Drama' for a magazine of
which he was then editor. The article was in the course of time written,
and in the further course of time appeared. I learnt two things from
writing it: first, that to understand the English pastoral drama it was
necessary to have some more or less extensive knowledge of the history of
European pastoralism in general; secondly, that there was no critical work
from which such knowledge could be obtained. I set about the revision and
expansion of my crude and superficial essay, proposing to prefix to it
such an account of pastoral literature generally as should make the
special form it assumed on the English stage appear in its true light as
the reasonable and rational outcome of artistic and historical conditions.
Unfortunately perhaps, but at least inevitably, this preliminary inquiry
grew to ever greater and more alarming proportions as I proceeded, till at
last it swelled to something over half of the whole work. Part of this
bulk was claimed by foreign pastoral poetry, the origins of the kind; part
by English pastoral poetry, and the introduction of the fashion into this
country; part by the pastoral drama of Italy, the immediate parent of that
of England. The original title proved too narrow to cover the subject with
which I dealt. Hence the rather vague and perhaps ambitions title of the
present volume. I make no pretence of offering the reader a general
history of pastoral literature, nor even of pastoral drama. The real
subject of my work remains the pastoral drama in Elizabethan
literature--understanding that term in the wide sense in which, quite
reasonably, we have learnt to use it--and even though I may have been
sometimes carried away by the interest of the immediate subject of
investigation, I have done my best to keep the main object of my inquiry
at all times in view. The downward limit of my work is a little vague. The
old stage traditions, upon which all the dramatic production of the time
was at least in some measure, and in different cases more or less
consciously, based, were killed by the act of 1642: the new traditions,
created or imported by a company of gentlemen who had come under the
influence of the French genius during the eleven years of their exile,
first announced themselves authoritatively in 1660. During the intervening
eighteen years a number of works were produced, some of which continued
the earlier traditions, while some anticipated the later. My treatment has
been eclectic. Where a work appeared to me to belong to or to illustrate
the older school I have included it, where not, I have refrained from
doing so. Fanshawe's _Pastor fido_ (1647) will be found mentioned in the
following pages, T. R.'s _Berger extravagant_ (1654) will not.
Some explanation may be advisable with regard to my method of quotation.
Where a satisfactory modern edition of the work under discussion was
available I have taken my quotations from it, whether the spelling of the
text was modernized or not. Where none such existed I have had recourse to
the original. This explains the perhaps alarming mixture of old and modern
orthographies which appear in my pages. Such inconsistency seemed to me a
lesser evil than making nonce texts to suit my immediate purpose. I have,
however, exercised the right of following my own fancy in the matter of
punctuation throughout, and also in that of capitalization, though I have
been chary of alterations in the case of old-spelling texts. This applies
to English works. I have found it necessary myself to modernize to some
extent the spelling of the quotations from early Italian in order to
render it less bewildering to readers who may possibly, like myself, have
no very profound knowledge of the antiquities of that tongue. I have been
as sparing as possible, however, and trust I may have committed no
enormities to shock Romance scholars. Lastly, the italics and contractions
which are of more or less frequent occurrence in the original editions
have been disregarded, and certain typographical details made to conform
to modern practice.
My indebtedness is not small to a number of friends who, during the
progress of my work, have helped me more or less directly in a variety of
ways. A few have received specific mention in the notes. Alike to those
who have, and to the far greater number, I fear me, who have not, I desire
hereby to confess my debt, and humbly to beg them to claim their share in
the dedication of this volume. More specifically I should mention Mr. R.
B. McKerrow, who was the first to read the following pages in manuscript,
and to make many useful suggestions, and Mr. Frank Sidgwick, to whose
careful revision alike of manuscript and proof and to whose kind and
candid criticism I am indebted perhaps more than an author's vanity may
readily allow me to acknowledge. Lastly, it would argue worse than
ingratitude to pass over my obligation to the admirable readers of the
Clarendon Press, whose marvellous accuracy in the most diverse fields and
whose almost infallible vigilance form a real asset of English
scholarship.
W. W. G.
Park Lodge, Wimbledon.
_December_, 1905.
Contents
Chapter I. Foreign Pastoral Poetry
Introduction
I. The origin and nature of pastoral
II. Greek pastoral poetry
III. The bucolic eclogue in classical Latin
IV. Medieval and humanistic eclogues
V. Italian pastoral poetry
VI. The Italian pastoral romance
VII. Pastoral in Spain
VIII. Pastoral in France
Chapter II. Pastoral Poetry in England
I. Early pastoral verse
II. Spenser
III. Spenser's immediate followers
IV. The regular eclogists
V. Lyrical and occasional verse
VI. Milton's _Lycidas_ and Browne's _Britannia's Pastorals_
VII. The pastoral romances
Chapter III. Italian Pastoral Drama
I. Mythological plays containing pastoral elements
II. Evolution of the pastoral drama (see Appendix I)
III. Tasso and his _Aminta_
IV. Guarini and the _Pastor fido_
V. Minor pastoral drama
Chapter IV. Dramatic Origins of the English Pastoral Drama
I. Mythological plays
II. Translations from the Italian
III. Daniel's imitations of Tasso and Guarini
Chapter V. The Three Masterpieces
I. Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_
II. Randolph's _Amyntas_
III. Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_
Chapter VI. The English Pastoral Drama
I. Plays founded on the pastoral romances
II. The English stage pastoral
Chapter VII. Masques and General Influence
I. Pastoral in the masques and slighter dramatic compositions
II. Milton's masques: _Arcades_ and _Comus_
III. General influence. Pastoral theory. Conclusion.
Appendix I. On the origin and development of the Italian pastoral drama
Appendix II. Bibliography
Index
Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama
Chapter I.
Foreign Pastoral Poetry
In approaching a subject of literary inquiry we are often able to fix upon
some essential feature or condition which may serve as an Ariadne's thread
through the maze of historical and aesthetic development, or to
distinguish some cardinal point affording a fixed centre from which to
survey or in reference to which to order and dispose the phenomena that
present themselves to us. It is the disadvantage of such an artificial
form of literature as that which bears the name of pastoral that no such
_a priori_ guidance is available. To lay down at starting that the
essential quality of pastoral is the realistic or at least recognizably
'natural' presentation of actual shepherd life would be to rule out of
court nine tenths of the work that comes traditionally under that head.
Yet the great majority of critics, though they would not, of course,
subscribe to the above definition, have yet constantly betrayed an
inclination to censure individual works for not conforming to some such
arbitrary canon. It is characteristic of the artificiality of pastoral as
a literary form that the impulse which gave the first creative touch at
seeding loses itself later and finds no place among the forces at work at
blossom time; the methods adopted by the greatest masters of the form are
inconsistent with the motives that impelled them to its use, and where
these motives were followed to their logical conclusion, the resuit, both
in literature and in life, became a byword for absurd unreality. To live
at all the ideal appeared to require an atmosphere of paradox and
incongruity: in its essence the most 'natural' of all poetic forms,
pastoralism came to its fairest flower amid the artificiality of a
decadent court or as the plaything of the leisure hours of a college of
learning, and its insipid convention having become 'a literary plague in
every European capital,' it finally disappeared from view amid the
fopperies of the Roman Arcadia and the puerile conceits of the Petit
Trianon.
Wherein then, it may be wondered, does the pastoral's title to
consideration lie. It does not lie primarily, or chiefly, in the fact that
it is associated with names of the first rank in literature, with
Theocritus and Vergil, with Petrarch, Politian, and Tasso, with Cervantes
and Lope de Vega, with Ronsard and Marot, with Spenser, Ben Jonson, and
Milton; nor yet that works such as the _Idyls_, the _Aminta_, the
_Faithful Shepherdess_, and _Lycidas_ contain some of the most graceful
and perfect verse to be found in any language. Rather is its importance to
be sought in the fact that the form is the expression of instincts and
impulses deep-rooted in the nature of humanity, which, while affecting the
whole course of literature, at times evince themselves most clearly and
articulately here; that it plays a distinct and distinctive part in the
history of human thought and the history of artistic expression. Moreover,
it may be argued that, from this point of view, the very contradictions
and inconsistencies to which I have alluded make it all the more important
to discover wherein lay the strange vitality of the form and its power of
influencing the current of European letters.
From what has already been said it will be apparent that little would be
gained by attempting beforehand to give any strict account of what is
meant by 'pastoral' in literature. Any definition sufficiently elastic to
include the protean forms assumed by what we call the 'pastoral ideal'
could hardly have sufficient intension to be of any real value. If after
considering a number of literary phenomena which appear to be related
among themselves in form, spirit, and aim we come at the end of our
inquiry to any clearer appreciation of the term I shall so far have
attained my object. I notice that I have used the expression 'pastoral
ideal,' and the phrase, which comes naturally to the mind in connexion
with this form of literature, may supply us with a useful hint. It
reminds us, namely, that the quality of pastoralism is not determined by
the fortuitous occurrence of certain characters, but by the fact of the
pieces in question being based more or less evidently upon a philosophical
conception, which no doubt underwent modification through the ages, but
yet bears evidence of organic continuity. Thus the shepherds of pastoral
are primarily and distinctively shepherds; they are not mere rustics
engaged in sheepcraft as one out of many of the employments of mankind. As
soon as the natural shepherd-life had found an objective setting in
conscious artistic literature, it was felt that there was after all a
difference between hoeing turnips and pasturing sheep; that the one was
capable of a particular literary treatment which the other was not. The
Maid of Orleans might equally well have dug potatoes as tended a flock,
and her place is not in pastoral song. Thus pastoral literature must not
be confounded with that which has for its subject the lives, the ideas,
and the emotions of simple and unsophisticated mankind, far from the
centres of our complex civilization. The two may be in their origin
related, and they occasionally, as it were, stretch out feelers towards
one another, but the pastoral of tradition lies in its essence as far from
the human document of humble life as from a scientific treatise on
agriculture or a volume of pastoral theology. Thus the tract which lies
before us to explore is equally remote from the idyllic imagination of
George Sand, the gross actuality of Zola, and the combination of simple
charm with minute and essential realism of Mr. Hardy's sketches in Wessex.
Nor does the adoption of the pastoral label suffice to bring within the
fold the fanciful animalism of Mr. Hewlett. By far the most remarkable
work of recent years to assume the title is Signor d'Annunzio's play _La
Figlia di Iorio_, a work in which the author's powerful and delicate
imagination and wealth of pure and expressive language appear in matchless
perfection. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to add that there is nothing
in common between the 'pastoral ideal' and the rugged strength and
suppressed fire of the great modern Italian's portrait of his native land
of the Abruzzi.
I
Some confusion of thought appears to have prevailed among writers as to
the origin of pastoral. We are, for instance, often told that it is the
earliest of all forms of poetry, that it characterizes primitive peoples
and permeates ancient literatures. Song is, indeed, as old as human
language, and in a sense no doubt the poetry of the pastoral age may be
said to have been pastoral. It does not, however, follow that it bears any
essential resemblance to that which subsequent ages have designated by the
name. All that we know concerning the songs of pastoral nations leads us
to suppose that they bear a close resemblance to the type of popular verse
current wherever poetry exists, folk-songs of broad humanity in which
little stress is laid on the peculiar circumstances of shepherd life. An
insistence upon the objective pastoral setting is of prime importance in
understanding the real nature of pastoral poetry; it not only serves to
distinguish the pastoral proper from the more vaguely idyllic forms of
lyric verse, but helps us further to understand how it was that the
outward features of the kind came to be preserved, even after the various
necessities of sophisticated society had metamorphosed the content almost
beyond recognition. No common feature of a kind to form the basis of a
scientific classification can be traced in the spontaneous shepherd-songs
and their literary counterpart. What does appear to be a constant element
in the pastoral as known to literature is the recognition of a contrast,
implicit or expressed, between pastoral life and some more complex type of
civilization. At no stage in its development does literature, or at any
rate poetry, concern itself with the obvious, with the bare scaffolding of
life: whenever we find an author interested in the circle of prime
necessity we may be sure that he himself stands outside it. Thus the
shepherd when he sang did not insist upon the conditions amid which his
uneventful life was passed. It was left to a later, perhaps a wiser and a
sadder, generation to gaze with fruitless and often only half sincere
longing at the shepherd-boy asleep under the shadow of the thorn, lulled
by the low monotonous rustle of the grazing flock. Only when the
shepherd-songs ceased to be the outcome of unalloyed pastoral conditions
did they become distinctively pastoral. It is therefore significant that
the earliest pastoral poetry with which we are acquainted, whatever half
articulate experiments may have preceded it, was itself directly born of
the contrast between the recollections of a childhood spent among the
Sicilian uplands and the crowded social and intellectual city-life of
Alexandria[1].
As the result of this contrast there arises an idea which comes perhaps as
near being universal in pastoral as any--the idea, namely, of the 'golden
age.' This embraces, indeed, a field not wholly coincident with that of
pastoral, but the two are connected alike by a common spring in human
emotion and constant literary association. The fiction of an age of
simplicity and innocence found birth among the Augustan writers in the
midst of the complex and luxurious civilization of Rome, as an
illustration of the principle enunciated by Professer Raleigh, that
'literature has constantly the double tendency to negative the life
around it, as well as to reproduce it.' Having inspired Ovid and Vergil,
and been recognized by Lucretius, it passed as a literary legacy to
Boethius, Dante, and Jean de Meung; it was incorporated by Frezzi in his
strange allegorical composition the _Quadriregio_, and was thrice handled
by Chaucer; it was dealt with humorously by Cervantes in _Don Quixote_,
and became the prey of the satirist in the hands of Juvenal, Bertini, and
Hall. The association of this ideal world with the simplicity of pastoral
life was effected by Vergil, and in this form it was treated with loving
minuteness by Tasso in his _Aminta_ and by Browne in his _Britannia's
Pastorals_[2]. The fiction no doubt answered to some need in human nature,
but in literature it soon came to be no more than a polite convention.
The conception of a golden age of rustic simplicity does not, indeed,
involve the whole of pastoral literature. It does not account either for
the allegorical pastoral, in which actual personages are introduced, in
the guise of shepherds, to discuss contemporary affairs, or for the
so-called realistic pastoral, in which the town looks on with amused envy
at the rustic freedom of the country. What it does comprehend is that
outburst of pastoral song which sprang from the yearning of the tired soul
to escape, if it were but in imagination and for a moment, to a life of
simplicity and innocence from the bitter luxury of the court and the
menial bread of princes[3].
And this, the reaction against the world that is too much with us, is,
after all, the keynote of what is most intimately associated with the name
of pastoral in literature--the note that is struck with idyllic sweetness
in Theocritus, and, rising to its fullest pitch of lyrical intensity,
lends a poignant charm to the work of Tasso and Guarini. For everywhere
in these soft melodies of luscious beauty, even in the studied sketches of
primitive innocence itself, there is an undercurrent of tender melancholy
and pathos:
Il mondo invecchia
E invecchiando intristisce.
I have said that a sense of the contrast between town and country was
essential to the development of a distinctively pastoral literature. It
would be an interesting task to trace how far this contrast is the source
of the various subsidiary types--of the ideal where it breeds desire for a
return to simplicity, of the realistic where the humour of it touches the
imagination, and of the allegorical where it suggests satire on the
corruption of an artificial civilization.
When the kind first makes its appearance in a world already old, it arises
purely as a solace and relief from the fervid life of actuality, and comes
as a fresh and cooling draught to lips burning with the fever of the city.
In passing from Alexandria to Rome it lost much of its limpid purity; the
clear crystal of the drink was mixed with flavours and perfumes to fit the
palate of a patron or an emperor. The example of adulteration being once
set, the implied contrast of civilization and rusticity was replaced by
direct satire on the former, and later by the discussion under the
pastoral mask of questions of religious and political controversy. Proving
itself but a left-handed weapon in such debate, it became a court
plaything, in which princes and great ladies, poets and wits, loved to see
themselves figured and complimented, and the practice of assuming pastoral
names becoming almost universal in polite circles, the convention, which
had passed from the eclogue on to the stage, passed from the stage into
actual existence, and court life became one continual pageant of pastoral
conceit. From the court it passed into circles of learning, and grave
jurists and administrators, poets and scholars, set about the refining of
language and literature decked out in all the fopperies of the fashionable
craze. One is tempted to wonder whether anything more serious than light
loves and fantastic amours can have flourished amid eighteenth-century
pastoralism. When the ladies of the court began to talk dairy-farming with
the scholars and statesmen of the day, the pretence of pastoral simplicity
could hardly be long kept up. Nor was there any attempt to do so. In the
introduction to his famous romance d'Urfe wrote in answer to objectors:
'Responds leur, ma Bergere, que pour peu qu'ils ayent connoissance de toy,
ils scauront que tu n'es pas, ny celles aussi qui te suivent, de ces
Bergeres necessiteuses, qui pour gaigner leur vie conduisent les troupeaux
aux pasturages; mais que vous n'avez toutes pris cette condition que pour
vivre plus doucement et sans contrainte.' No wonder that to Fontenelle
Theocritus' shepherds 'sentent trop la campagne[4].' But the hour of
pastoralism had come, and while the ladies and gallants of the court were
playing the parts of Watteau swains and shepherdesses amid the trim hedges
and smooth lawns of Versailles, the gates were already bursting before the
flood, which was to sweep in devastation over the land, and to purge the
old order of social life.
II
The Alexandria of the Ptolemies was not the nurse of a great literature,
though the age was undoubtedly one of considerable literary activity.
Scholastic learning and poetic imitation were rife; the rehandling of
Greek masterpieces was a fashionable pastime. For serious and original
composition, however, the conditions were not favourable. That the age
produced no great epic was less due to the disparagement of the form
indulged in by Callimachus, chief librarian and literary dictator, than to
the inherent temper of society. The prevailing taste was for an arrogant
display of rare and costly pageantry. At the coronation of Ptolemy
Philadelphus the brilliant city surfeited on a long-drawn golden pomp,
decked out in all the physical beauty the inheritance of Greek thought and
memories of Greek mythology could suggest, together with a wealth of
gorgeous mysticism and rapture of sensuous intoxication, which was the
fruit of its intercourse with the oriental world. The writers of
Alexandria lacked the 'high seriousness' of purpose to produce an
_Aeneid_, the imaginative enthusiasm needed for a _Faery Queen_. What they
possessed was delicacy, refinement, and wit; what they created, while
perfecting the epigram and stereotyping the hymn, was a form intermediate
between epic and lyric, namely the idyl as we find it in the works of
Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus.
It is interesting to note that the literary _milieu_ in which Theocritus
moved at Alexandria must have abounded in all those temptations which
proved the bane of pastoral poetry at Rome, Florence, and Ferrara. There
were princes and patrons to be flattered, there were panegyrics to be sung
and ancestral feats of arms to be recorded; nor does Theocritus appear to
have stood aloof from the throng of court poetasters. In spite of the
doubtful authenticity of some of the pieces connected with his name, there
appears no sufficient reason to deprive him of the rather conventional
hymns and other poems composed with a view to court-favour. These have
little interest for us to-day: his fame rests on works which probably
gained him little advantage at the time. It was for his own solace,
forgetful for a moment of the intrigues of court life and the uncertain
sunshine of princes, that he wrote his Sicilian idyls. For him, as at a
magic touch, the walls of the heated city melted like a mirage into the
sands of the salt lagoon, and he wandered once more amid the green woods
and pastures of Trinacria, the noonday sun tempered by the shade of the
chestnuts and the babbling of the brook, and by the cool airs that glide
down from the white cliffs of Aetna. There once more he saw the shepherds
tend their flocks, singing or wrangling with one another, dreamily piping
on their wax-stopped reeds or plotting to annex their neighbours' gear; or
else there sounded in his ears the love-song or the dirge, or the
incantation of the forsaken girl rose amid the silence to the silver moon.
Once again he stood upon the shore and watched the fishers cast their
nets, while around him the goats browsed on the close herbage of the
cliff, and the crystal stream leapt down, and the waves broke upon the
rocks below, till he saw the breasts of the nymphs shine in the whiteness
of the foam and their hair spread wide in the weed, and the fair Galatea,
the enticing and the fickle, mocked the clumsy suit of the Cyclops, as she
tossed upward the bitter spray from off her shining limbs. All these
memories he recorded with a loving faithfulness of detail that it is even
now possible to verify from the folk-songs of the south. To this day in
the Isles of Greece ruined girls seek to lure back their lovers with
charms differing but little from that sung by the Syracusan to Lady
Selene, and the popular poetry alike of Italy and Greece is full of those
delicate touches of refined sentiment that in Theocritus appear so
incongruous with the rough coats and rougher banter of the shepherds. For
though the poet raised the pastoral life of Sicily into the realms of
ideal poetry, he was careful not to dissociate his version from reality,
and he allowed no imaginary conceptions to overmaster his art. He depicted
no age of innocence; his poetry reflects no philosophical illusion of
primitive simplicity; he elaborated no imaginary cult of mystical worship.
His art, however little it may tempt us to the use of the term realism, is
nevertheless based on an almost passionate sympathy with actual human
nature. This is the fount of his inspiration, the central theme of his
song. The literary genius of Greece showed little aptitude for landscape,
and seldom treated inanimate nature except as a background for human
action and emotion, or it may be in the guise of mythological allegory.
Nevertheless, it is hard to believe that Theocritus, so tenderly concerned
with the homely aspects of human life, was not likewise sensitive to the
beauties of nature. At least it is impossible to doubt his attachment to
the land of his childhood, and it is at worst a welcome dream when we
imagine him, as the evening of life drew on, leaving the formal gardens
and painted landscapes of Alexandria and returning to Syracuse and his
beloved Sicily once more.[5]
The verse of Theocritus was echoed by his younger contemporaries, Bion
and Moschus.[6] The former is best known through the oriental passion of
his 'Woe, woe for Adonis,' probably written to be sung at the annual
festival of Syrian origin commemorated by Theocritus in his fifteenth
idyl.[7] The most important extant work of Moschus is the 'Lament for
Bion,' characterized by a certain delicate sentimentality alien to the
spirit of either of his predecessors. It is perhaps significant that
Theocritus appears to have been of Syracusan, Bion of Smyrnian, and
Moschus of Ausonian origin.[8] With the exception of this poem, which is
modelled on Theocritus' 'Lament for Daphnis,' there is little in the work
of either of the younger poets of a pastoral nature. Certain fragments,
however, if genuine, suggest that poems of the kind may have perished.
Among the remains of Moschus occurs the following:
Would that my father had taught me the craft of a keeper of sheep,
For so in the shade of the elm-tree, or under the rocks on the steep,
Piping on reeds I had sat, and had lulled my sorrow to sleep;[9]
lines in which we already take leave of the genuine love of the pastoral
life, springing from an intimate knowledge of and delight in nature, and
see world-weariness arraying itself in the sentimental garb of the
imaginary swain.
Once again, five centuries later,[10] the spirit of Greece shone for one
brief moment in a work of pastoral elegance that has survived the
changing tastes of succeeding generations. The 'romance of _Daphnis and
Chloe_ is the last word of a world of sensuous enervation toying with the
idea of vernal freshness and virginity. It is a genuine picture of the
purity of awakening love, wrought with every delicacy of sentiment and
expression, and yet in such manner as by its very _naivete_ and innocence
to serve as a goad to satiated appetite. It has been suggested that the
work should properly be styled the _Lesbiaca_, a name which recalls the
_Aethiopica_ and _Babylonica_, and reminds us that the author, though a
student of Alexandrian literature, belonged to the school of the erotic
romanciers and traditional bishops, Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius. Of his
life we know nothing, and even his name--Longus--has been called in
question. The story, unlike those of most later pastoral romances, is of
the simplest. The author, however, was no longer satisfied with the
natural refinement of popular love poetry; the central characters are
represented as foundlings nurtured by the shepherds of Lesbos, and are
ultimately identified, on much the same conventional evidence as Ion and
others had been before, as the children of certain rich and aristocratie
families.[11] The interest of the story lies in the growth of their
unconscious love, which constitutes the central theme of the work, though
relieved here and there by wholly colourless adventure.
A Latin translation made the book popular after the introduction of
printing, and the renaissance saw the French version by Amyot, a work of
European reputation. This was translated into English under Elizabeth; an
Italian translation followed in the seventeenth century,[12] and a Spanish
is also extant. There is no doubt that it was widely read throughout the
sixteenth and following centuries, but it exercised little influence on
the development of pastoral literature. By the time it became generally
known the main features of renaissance pastoral were already fixed, and in
motive and treatment alike it was alien to the spirit that animated the
fashionable masterpieces. The modern pastoral romance had already evolved
itself from a blending of the eclogue with the mythological tale. The
drama was developing on independent lines. Thus although, like the other
romances of the late Greek school, it supplied many incidents and
descriptions to be found in later works, it played no vital part in the
history of pastoral, and left no mark either on the general form or on the
spirit that animated the kind. Longus' romance finds its true descendant,
as well as its closest imitation, in a work that achieved celebrity on the
eve of the French revolution, that masterpiece of unreal and sentimental
simplicity, Saint-Pierre's _Paul et Virginie_.
III
A faithful reproduction of the main conditions of actual life was the
characteristic of Theocritus' poetry. It was subject to this ever-present
limitation that his graceful fancy exercised its power of idealization. He
took the singing match, the dirge, and the love-song or complaint as he
found them among the shepherd-folk of Sicily, and gave them that objective
setting which is as necessary to pastoral as to every other merely
accidental form of poetry; for the true subjective lyric is independent of
circumstances. The first of his great successors made the bucolic eclogue
what, with trifling variation, it was to remain for eighteen centuries, a
form based upon artificiality and convention. I have already pointed out
that the literary conditions at Alexandria did not differ materially from
those of Rome; it follows that the change must have been due to the
character of Vergil himself. That intense love of beauty for its own sake
which characterized the Greek mind had little hold over the Roman. Nor did
the latter understand the charm of untaught simplicity. It is true that to
the Roman poets of the Augustan period we owe the conception of the golden
age, but it remained with them rather a philosophical mythus than the
dream of an idyllic poet. To writers of the stamp of Ovid, Lucretius, and
Vergil the Idyls of the Syracusan poet can have possessed but little
meaning, and in his own Bucolics the last named seems never to have
regarded the pastoral form as anything but a cloak for matters of more
pith and moment. Although he followed Theocritus in his use of the several
types of song and stamped them to all future ages in pastoral convention,
though he may have begun with fairly close imitation of his model and only
gradually diverged into a more independant style, he at no time showed
himself content with the earlier poet's simplicity of motive.[13] The
eclogue in which he followed Theocritus most closely, the eighth, is
equally, perhaps, the most pleasing of the series. It combines the motives
of the love-lament and incantation, and the closeness with which it
follows while playing variations on its models is striking. One instance
will suffice. Take the passage in the second Idyl thus rendered by
Symonds:[14]
Hail, Hecate, dread dame! to the end be thou my assistant,
Making my medicines work no less than the philtre of Circe,
Or Medea's charms, or yellow-haired Perimede's.
Wheel of the magic spells, draw thou that man to my dwelling.
Corresponding to this we find the following passage in the Latin poem:
Song hath power to draw from heaven the wandering huntress,
Song was the witch's spell transformed the mates of Ulysses....
Home from the city to me, my song, lead home to me Daphnis.
Vergil was the first to begin the dissociation of pastoral from the
conditions of actual life, and just as his shepherds cease to present the
features and characters of the homely keepers of the flock, so his
landscape becomes imaginary and undefined. This peculiarity has been
noticed by Professor Herford in some very suggestive remarks prefixed to
his edition of the _Shepherd's Calender_. 'The profiles of the Sicilian
uplands,' he writes, 'waver uncertainly amid traits drawn from the Mantuan
plain. In this confusion lay, perhaps, the germ of those debates between
highland and lowland shepherds which reverberate through the later
pastoral, and are still loud in Spenser.' The gulf that separated Vergil
from his predecessor, in so far as their treatment of shepherd-life is
concerned, may be measured by the manner in which they respectively deal
with the supernatural. In the Greek Idyls we find the simple faith or
superstition as it lived among the shepherd-folk; no Pan appears to sow
dismay in the breasts of the maidens, nor do we find aught of the mystical
worship that later gathered round him in the imaginary Arcadia. He is
mentioned only as the rugged patron of herds and song, the wild indweller
of the savage woods as he appeared to the minds of the simple swains, who
hushed their midday piping fearful lest they should disturb the sleep of
the god. It is true that Theocritus introduces mythological characters in
the tale of Galatea, but it should be noticed that this merely forms the
theme of a song or the subject of a poetical epistle to a friend.
Moreover, it is open to more than one rationalistic interpretation.
Symonds treats it as an allegory in harmony with the mythopoeic genius of
Greek poetry. It is equally possible to regard the Cyclops as emblematic
merely of the rough neatherd flouted by the more delicate
shepherd-maiden--the contrast is of constant occurrence in later
works--for, alike in one of his own fragments and in Moschus' lament, Bion
is represented as courting this same Galatea after she has rid herself of
the suit of Polyphemus. Vergil was content with no such simple mythology
as this. He must needs shake Silenus from a drunken sleep and bid him tell
of Chaos and old Time, of the infancy of the world and the birth of the
gods. This mixture of obsolescent theology and Epicurean philosophy
probably possessed little reality for Vergil himself, and would have
conveyed no meaning whatever to the Sicilian shepherds. Its introduction
stamps his eclogues with that unreality which has been the reproach of the
pastoral from his day to ours. The didactic homily was one fresh
convention introduced. Far more important was the tendency to make every
form subserve some ulterior purpose of allegory and panegyric.[15] For the
Roman its own beauty was no sufficient end of art. That the _Aeneid_ was
written for the glorification of Rome cannot be made a reproach to the
poet; the greatness of the end lent dignity to the means. That the
pastoral was forced to serve the menial part of a vehicle of sycophantic
praise is less easily pardoned. In Vergil's hands a conversation between
shepherds becomes an expression of gratitude to the emperor for the
restitution of his villa, a lament for Daphnis is interwoven with an
apotheosis of Julius Caesar, and in the complaint of the forsaken
shepherd, whom Apollo and Pan seek in vain to comfort, we may trace the
wounded vanity of his patron deserted by his mistress for the love of a
soldier. The fourth eclogue was written after the peace of Brundisium, and
describes the golden age to which Vergil looked forward as consequent upon
the birth of a marvellous infant, perhaps some offspring of the marriages
of Antonius and Octavianus, celebrated in solemnization of the treaty. The
poem achieved considerable fame, which lasted as late as the time of
Dryden, owing to the belief that it contained a prophecy of the birth of
Christ drawn from the Sibylline books, and won for Vergil throughout the
middle ages the title of prophet and magician. Whether this belief was
well founded or not may be left to those whom it may interest to inquire;
it is sufficient for our purpose to note that in the poem in question
Vergil first introduced the convention of the golden age into pastoral
verse.
The first of the long line of imitators of whom we have any notice was a
certain Calpurnius. His diction is correct and his verse smooth, but the
suggestion that he belonged to the age of Augustus has not met with much
favour among those competent to judge. He followed Vergil closely, chiefly
developing the panegyric. His poems, however, include all the usual
conventions, singing matches, invocations, cosmologies, and the rest, in
the treatment of which originality never appears to have been his aim.
Some of his pieces deal with husbandry, and belong more strictly to the
school of the _Georgics_ and didactic poetry. The most interesting of his
eclogues is one in which he contrasts the life of the town with that of
the country, the direct comparison of which he appears to have been the
first to treat. The poem likewise possesses some antiquarian interest,
owing to a description of a wild-beast show in an amphitheatre in which
the animals were brought up in lifts through the floor of the arena.
Calpurnius is sometimes supposed, on account of a dedication to Nemesianus
found in some manuscripts, to have lived at the end of the third century,
but even supposing the dedication to be genuine, which is more than
doubtful, it does not follow that the person referred to is that
Nemesianus who contested the poetic crown with Prince Numerianus about the
year 283[16]. This Nemesianus was probably the author of some eclogues
which have been frequently ascribed to Calpurnius (numbers 8 to 11 in most
editions), but which must be discarded from the list of his authentic
works on a technical question of the employment of elision[17]. The
_editio princeps_ of these eclogues is not dated, but probably appeared in
1471, so that they were at any rate accessible to writers of the
_cinquecento_. It is not easy to trace any direct influence, unless, as
perhaps we should, we credit to Calpurnius the suggestion of those poems
in which a 'wise' shepherd describes to his less-travelled hearers the
manners of the town.
A few pieces from the _Idyllia_ of Ausonius appear in some of the bucolic
collections, but they cannot strictly be regarded as coming within the
range of pastoral poetry.
IV
Events conspired to make Vergil the model for later writers of eclogues.
The fame of the poet was a potent cause among many. Another reason why
Theocritus found no direct imitators may be sought in the respective
methods of the two poets. Work of the nature of the _Idyls_ has to depend
for its value and interest upon the artistic qualities of the poetry
alone. Such work may spring up spontaneously under almost any conditions;
it is seldom produced through imitation. On the other hand, any scholar
with a gift for easy versification could achieve a certain distinction as
a follower of Vergil. His verse depended for its interest not on its
poetic qualities but upon the importance of the themes it treated.
Accidental conditions, too, told in favour of the Roman poet. During the
middle ages Latin was a universal language among the lettered classes,
while the knowledge of Greek, though at no time so completely lost as is
sometimes supposed, was a far rarer accomplishment, and was restricted for
the most part to a few linguistic scholars. Thus before the revival of
learning had made Greek a possible source of literary inspiration, the
Vergilian tradition, through the instrumentality of Petrarch and
Boccaccio, had already made itself supreme in pastoral[18].
During the middle ages the stream of pastoral production, though it
nowhere actually disappears, is reduced to the merest trickle. Notices of
such isolated poems as survive have been carefully collected by
Macri-Leone in the introduction to his elaborate but as yet unfinished
work on the Latin eclogue in the Italian literature of the fourteenth
century. As early as the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth
century we find a poem by Severus Sanctus Endelechius, variously entitled
'Carmen bucolicum de virtute signi crucis domini' or 'de mortibus boum.'
It is a hymn to the saint cross, and in it for the first time the pastoral
suffered violence from the tyranny of the religious idea. The 'Ecloga
Theoduli' alluded to by Chaucer in the _House of Fame_[19] appears to be
the work of an Athenian writer, and is ascribed to various dates ranging
from the fifth to the eighth centuries. While preserving as its main
characteristic a close subservience to its Vergilian model, the eclogue
participated in the general rise of allegory which marked the later middle
ages. Pastoral colouring of no very definite order had shown itself in the
elegies of Alcuin in the eighth century, as also in the 'Conflictus veris
et hiemis,' traditionally ascribed to the Venerable Bede, but more
probably the work of one Dodus, a disciple of Alcuin. Of the tenth century
we possess an allegorical religious lament entitled 'Ecloga duarum
sanctimonialium.' About 1160 a Benedictine monk named Metellus composed
twelve poems under the title of _Bucolica Quirinalium_, in honour of St.
Quirinus and in obvious imitation of Vergil. Reminiscences and paraphrases
of the Roman poet are scattered throughout the monk's own barbarous
hexameters, as in the opening verses:
Tityre tu magni recubans in margine stagni
Silvestri tenuique fide pete iura peculi!
It would hardly be worth recording these medieval clerks, the
undistinguished writers, 'de quibus,' Boccaccio said, 'nil curandum est,'
were it not that they show how the memory at least of the classical
pastoral survived amid the ruins of ancient learning, and so serve to lead
up to one last spasmodic manifestation of the kind in certain poems which
else appear to stand in a curiously isolated position.
It was in 1319, during the bitter years of his exile at Ravenna, that
Dante received from one John of Bologna, known, on account of his fame as
a writer of Latin verse, as Giovanni del Virgilio, a poetical epistle
inviting him to visit the author in his native city. His correspondent,
while doing homage to his poetic genius, incidentally censured him for
composing his great work in the base tongue of the vulgar[20]. Dante
replied in a Vergilian eclogue, courteously declining Giovanni's
invitation to Bologna, on the ground that it was a place scarcely safe for
his person. As regarded the strictures of his correspondent, his
triumphant answer in the shape of the _Paradiso_ lay yet unfinished, so
the author of the _De Vulgari Eloquio_ trifled with the charge and
purported to compose the present poem in earnest of reform. There is a
tone of not unkindly irony about the whole. Was it an elaborate jest at
the expense of Giovanni, the writer of Vergilian verse? The Bolognese
replied, this time also in bucolic form, repeating his invitation and
holding out the special attraction of a meeting with Mussato, the most
regarded poet of his day in Europe. Dante's second eclogue, if indeed it
is correctly ascribed to his pen, introduces several historical
characters. It is said not to have reached Bologna till after his death.
These poems were not included in any of the early bucolic collections, and
first appeared in print in the eighteenth century. They seem, from their
purely occasional nature, their inconspicuous bulk, and lack of any
striking characteristics, to have attracted little notice in their own
day, and to have been ignored by later writers on pastoral as forming no
link in the chain of historical development. Given, indeed, the Bucolics
of Vergil, they are imitations such as might at any moment have appeared,
irrespective of date and surroundings, and independent of any living
literary tradition[21]. It is therefore impossible to regard them as in
any way belonging to, or foreshadowing, the great body of renaissance
pastoral, a division of literature endowed with remarkable vitality and
evolutionary force, which must in its growth and decay alike be studied in
close connexion with the ideas and temperament of the age, and in
relation to the general development of the history of letters[22].
The grandeur of the Roman Empire, the background against which in
historical retrospect we see the bucolic eclogues of Vergil and his
immediate followers, had vanished when Italian literature once more rose
out of chaos. The political organism had resolved itself into its
constituent elements, and fresh combinations had arisen. Nevertheless,
though the Empire was hardly now the shadow of its pristine greatness, men
still looked to Rome as the centre of the civilized world. As the seat of
the Church, it stood for the one force capable of supplying a permanent
element among the warring interests of European politics. Nothing was more
natural than that the poetic form that had reflected the glories of
imperial Rome should bow to the fascination of Rome, the visible emblem on
earth of the spiritual empire of Christ. To the medieval mind, so far from
there being any antagonism between the two ideas, the one seemed almost to
involve and necessitate the other. It saw in the splendeur of the Empire
the herald of a glory not of this world, a preparation as it were, a
decking of the chamber against the advent of the bride; and thus the
pastoral which sang of the greatness of pagan Rome appeared at the same
time a hymn prophetic of the glory of the Church[23].
Moreover, during the centuries that had elapsed since the days of Vergil
the term 'pastoral' had gained a new meaning and new associations. In the
days of Augustus Pan was a boorish anachronism; it was left to medieval
Christianity to create a god who was in fact a shepherd of men[24] and so
to render possible a pastoral allegory that should embody the dearest
hopes and aspirations of the human heart. That Christian pastoralists
availed themselves successfully of the possibilities of the theme it would
be difficult to maintain. It is a singular fact that, at a time when
allegory was the characteristic literary form, it was yet so impossible
even for the finer spirits to follow a train of thought clearly and
consistently, that it was only when a mind passed beyond the limitations
of its own age, and assumed a position _sub specie aeternitatis_, that it
was able to free itself from the prevalent confusion of the imaginary and
the real, the word and the idea, and to perceive that success in allegory
depends, not on the chaotic intermingling of the attributes of the type
and the thing typified, but on so representing the one as to suggest and
illuminate the other.
In the early days of renascent humanism, the first to renew the pastoral
tradition, broken for some ten centuries, was Francesco Petrarca. It is
not without significance that the first modern eclogues were from the same
pen as the sonnet 'Fontana di dolore, albergo d'ira,' expressive of the
shame with which earnest sons of the Church contemplated the captivity of
the holy father at Avignon; for thus on the very threshold of Arcadia we
are met with those bitter denunciations of ecclesiastical corruption which
strike so characteristic a note in the works of the satirical Mantuan, and
seem so out of place in the songs of Spenser and Milton. In one eclogue
the poet mourns over the ruin and desolation of Rome, as a mother deserted
of her children; another is a dialogue between two shepherds, in which St.
Peter, under the pastoral disguise of Pamphilus, upbraids the licentious
Clement VI with the ignoble servitude in which he is content to abide; a
third shows us Clement wantoning with the shameless mistress of a line of
pontifical shepherds, a figure allegorical of the corruption of the
Church[25]; in yet a fourth Petrarch laments his estrangement from his
patron Giovanni Colonna, a cardinal in favour at the papal court, whom it
would appear his outspoken censures had offended. Petrarch's was not the
only voice that was raised urging the Pope to return from the 'Babylonian
captivity,' but the protest had peculiar significance from the mouth of
one who stood forth as the embodiment of the new age still struggling in
the throes of birth. When 'the first Italian' accepted the laurel crown at
the Capitol, he dreamed of Rome as once more the heart of the world, the
city which should embody that early Italian idea of nationality, the ideal
of the humanistic commonwealth. The course urged alike by Petrarch and by
St. Catherine was in the end followed, but the years of exile were yet to
bear their bitterest fruit of mortification and disgrace. In 1377 Gregory
XI transferred the seat of the papacy from Avignon to Rome, with the
resuit that the world was treated to the edifying spectacle of three
prelates each claiming to be the vicar of Christ and sole father of the
Church.
These ecclesiastical eclogues form the most important contribution made by
Italy's greatest lyric poet to pastoral. Others, one in honour of Robert
of Sicily, another recording the defeat of Pan by Articus on the field of
Poitiers, follow already existing pastoral convention. Some few, again, of
less importance in literary history, are of greater personal or poetic
interest. In one we see Francesco and his brother Gherardo wandering in
the realm of shepherds, and there exchanging their views concerning
religious verse. A group of three, standing apart from the rest, connect
themselves with the subject of the _Canzoniere_. The first describes the
ravages of the plague at Avignon; the second mourns over the death of
poetry in the person of Laura, who fell a victim on April 6, 1348; the
third is a dirge sung by the shepherdesses over her grave. One, lastly, a
neo-classic companion to Theocritus' tale of Galatea, recounts the poet's
unrequited homage to Daphne of the Laurels, thus again suggesting the
idealized source of Petrarch's inspiration. This poem is not only the gem
of the series, but embodies the mythopoeic spirit of classical imagination
in a manner unknown in the later days of the renaissance.
The, eclogues, twelve in number, appear to have been mostly composed
about the middle of the fourteenth century. In the days of Petrarch the
art of Latin verse was yet far from the perfection it attained in those of
Poliziano and Vida; it was a clumsy vehicle in comparison with the vulgar
tongue, which he affected to despise while setting therein the standard
for future ages. Nevertheless, Petrarch's Latin poems bear witness to the
natural genius for composition and expression to which we owe the
_Canzoniere_. The _editio princeps_ of the pastorals appeared in the form
of a beautifully printed folio at Cologne in 1473, ninety-nine years after
the poet's death. They were entitled _Eglogae_[26] (i.e. _aeglogae_), by
which, as Dr. Johnson remarked, Petrarch, finding no appropriate meaning
in the form _eclogae_, 'meant to express the talk of goatherds, though it
will only mean the talk of goats.'
No two men ever won for themselves more diverse literary reputations than
Petrarch and his friend Boccaccio. The Latin eclogue is one of their few
points of literary contact. The bucolic collections contain no less than
sixteen such poems from the pen of the younger writer[27], which, though
not devoid of merit as poetical exercises, show that as a metrist
Boccaccio fell almost as far short of his friend in the learned as in the
vulgar tongue. They were composed at various dates, mostly, it would
appear, after 1360, though some are certainly earlier; and it would be
difficult to say whether to him or to Petrarch belonged the honour of
reviving the form, were it not that, both in the poems themselves and in
his correspondance, he explicitly mentions Petrarch as his master in the
kind[28]. In any case the dates of composition must cover a wide period,
for the poems reflect varions phases of his life. 'Le Egloghe del
Boccaccio,' says an Italian critic, 'rappresentano tutta la vita
psicologica del poeta, dalle febbri d'amore alle febbri ascetiche.' The
amorous eclogues, to which in later life Boccaccio attached little
importance, are early; several are historical in subject and are probably
of later date, though one may be as early as 1348; there are others of a
religions nature which belong to the author's later years. The allusions
in these poems are so obscure that it would in most cases be hopeless to
seek to unravel the meaning had not the author left us a key in a letter
to Martino da Signa, prior of the Augustinians. Many of the subjects are
purely conventional, such as those of the early poems on the loves of the
shepherds, the historical panegyrics and laments, and the satire on rich
misers. The same may be said of a dispute on the respective merits of
poetry and commerce, and of a poem in praise of poetry; although the
former has an obvious relation to the author's own circumstances, and the
latter appears to be inspired by genuine enthusiasm and love of art. The
forces of confusion that have dogged the pastoral in all ages show
themselves where the poet tells a Christian fable in pagan guise; the
antithesis of human and divine love, while suggesting Petrarch's influence
over his life, is a theme that runs throughout medieval philosophy and was
later embodied by Spenser in his _Hymns_. One poem stands out from the
rest somewhat after the manner of Petrarch's _Daphne_. In it Boccaccio
tells us, under the thinnest veil of pastoral, how his daughter Violante,
dead in childhood many years before, appeared to him bearing tidings of
the land beyond the grave. The theme is the same as that of the almost
contemporary _Pearl_; and in treating it Boccaccio achieves something of
the sweetness and pathos of the English poem. One eclogue, finally, the
_Valle tenebrosa (Vallis Opaca)_, which appears to owe something to
Dante's description of hell, is probably historical in its intention, but
the gloss explains _obscurum per obscurius_, and we can only suppose that
the author intended that the inner sense should remain a mystery.
When Boccaccio wrote, the eclogue had not yet degenerated into the
literary convention it became in the following century; and, though he was
no doubt tempted to the use of the form by Vergilian tradition and the
example of Petrarch, he must also have followed therein a natural
inclination and no mere dictate of fashion. Even in these poems the
humanity of the writer's personality makes itself felt. While Laura tends
to fade into a personification of poetry, and Petrarch's strongest
convictions find expression through the mouth of St. Peter, we feel that
behind Boccaccio's humanistic exercise lies his own amorous passion, his
own religious enthusiasm, his own fatherly tenderness and love. His
eclogues, however, never attained the same reputation as Petrarch's, and
remained in manuscript till the appearance of Giunta's bucolic collection
of 1504.
* * * * *
As humanism advanced and the golden age of the renaissance approached,
Latin bucolic writers sprang up and multiplied. The fullest
collection--that printed by Oporinus at Basel in March, 1546--contains the
poems of thirty-eight authors, and even this makes no pretence of giving
those of the middle ages. The collection, however, ranges from Calpurnius
to Castalio (i.e. the French theologian Sebastien Chateillon), and
includes the work of Petrarca, Boccaccio, Spagnuoli, Urceo, Pontano,
Sannazzaro, Erasmus, Vida, and others. There is a strong family likeness
in the pastoral verse of these authors, and the majority are devoid of
individual interest. A few, however, merit separate notice.
It was in the latter half of the fifteenth century that the renaissance
eclogue, abandoning its last claims to poetic inspiration, assumed its
definitive form in the works of Battista Spagnuoli, more commonly known
from the place of his birth by the name of Mantuanus. His eclogues, ten in
number, were accepted by the sixteenth century as models of pastoral
composition, inferior to those of Vergil alone, were indeed any
inferiority allowed. Starting with the simple theme of love, the author
proceeds to depict its excess in the love-lunes of the distraught Amyntas.
Thence he passes to one of those satires on women in which the fifteenth
century delighted, so bitter, that when Thomas Harvey came to translate it
in 1656 he felt constrained, for his credit's sake, to add the note,
'What the author meant of all, the translater intends only of ill
women[29].' There follows the old complaint of the niggardliness of rich
patrons towards poor poets, and a satire on the luxury of city life. The
remaining poems are ecclesiastical. One is in praise of the religious
life, another describes the simple faith of the country folk and the joys
of conversion; finally, we have a satire on the abuses of Rome, and a
discussion on points of theological controversy. None of these subjects
possess the least novelty; the author's merit, if merit it can be called,
lies in having stamped them with their definitive form for the use of
subsequent ages. Combined with this lack of originality, however, it is
easy to trace a strong personal element in the bitterness of the satire
that pervades many of the themes, the orthodox eclogue on conversion
standing in curious contrast with that on ecclesiastical abuses.
It is not easy to account for Spagnuoli's popularity, but the curiously
representative quality of his work was no doubt in part the cause. His
poems were what, through the changing fashions of centuries, men had come
to expect of bucolic verse. They crystallized into a standard mould
whatever in pastoral, whether classical or renaissance, was most obviously
and easily reducible to a type, and so attained the position of models
beyond which it was needless to go. They were first printed in 1498, and
went through a number of editions during the author's lifetime. As a young
man--and it is to his earlier years that the bulk of the eclogues must be
attributed--Spagnuoli was noted for the elegance of his Latin verse; but
his facility led him into over-production, and Tiraboschi reports his
later writings as absolutely unreadable. He was of Spanish extraction, as
his name implies, became a Carmelite, and rose to be general of the order,
but retired in 1515, the year before his death.
Three eclogues are extant from the pen of Pontano, a distinguished
humanist at the court of Ferdinand I and his successors at Naples, and a
Latin poet of considerable grace and feeling. His poems were first
published by Aldus in 1505, two years after his death. In one
characteristic composition he laments the loss of his wife, to whom he was
deeply attached; another introduces under a pastoral name his greater
disciple Sannazzaro[30].
Jacopo Sannazzaro, known to humanism as Actius Sincerus, disciple of the
'Accademia Pontana,' and editor of his master's works, the greatest
explorer, if not the greatest exponent, of the mysteries of Arcadia, was
born of parents of Spanish origin at Naples in 1458. His boyhood was spent
at San Cipriano, but he soon returned to Naples, where he fell in love
with Carmosina Bonifacia. His passion does not appear to have been
reciprocated, but the lady has her place in literature as the Phillis of
the eclogues. He attached himself to the court of Frederick of Aragon,
whom he followed into exile in France. Returning to Naples after his
patron's death in 1503, he again fell in love, this time with a certain
Cassandra Marchesa, to whom he continued to pay court, _more Platonico_,
till his death in 1530. He is said to have died at her house.
To his Italian work I shall have to return later; here it is his five
Latin piscatory eclogues that demand notice. There is nothing in the
subject-matter to arrest attention--they consist of a lament for
Carmosina, a lover's complaint, a singing match, a panegyric, and a poem
in honour of Cassandra--but the form is interesting. Of course the claim
sometimes put forward for Sannazzaro, as the inventor of the piscatory
eclogue, ignores various passages in Theocritus, notably the twenty-first
Idyl, whence he presumably borrowed the idea. But it is certainly
refreshing, after wandering in an unreal Sicily and an imaginary Arcadia,
and listening to shepherds discourse of the abuses of the Roman Curia, to
dive into the waters of the bay of Naples, or wanton in fancy along its
sunlit shore from the low rocks of Baiae to the sheer cliffs of Sorrento,
and to feel that, even though Jacopo was no Neapolitan fisher-boy, and
Carmosina no nymph of Posilipo, yet the poet had at least before him the
blue water and the dark rocks, and in his heart the love that formed the
theme of his song[31].
Sannazzaro also wrote a mythological poem entitled _Salices_, in which
certain nymphs pursued by satyrs are changed by Diana into willows. The
tale was evidently suggested by Ovid, and cannot strictly be classed as
pastoral, though it may have helped to fix in pastoral convention the
character of the satyr; who, however, at no time enjoyed a very savoury
reputation. The Latin works were first published at Naples in 1536, and
though far from rivalling the popularity of the _Arcadia_, went through
several editions.
The Latin eclogues of the renaissance are distinguished from all other
forms of allegory by the obscure and recondite allusions that they
affected. There were few among their authors for whom the narration of
simple loves and sorrows or the graces of untutored nature possessed any
attraction; we find them either making their shepherds openly discuss
contemporary affairs, or more often clothing their references to actual
events in a sort of pastoral allegory, fatuous as regards its form and
obscure as regards its content. Tityrus and Mopsus are alternately lovers,
courtiers and spiritual pastors; Pan, when he does not conceal under his
shaggy outside the costly robes of a prince, is a strange abortive
monster, drawing his attributes in part from pagan superstition, in part
from Christian piety; a libel upon both. The seed sown by Petrarch and
Boccaccio bore fruit only too freely. The writers of eclogues, either
debarred from or incapable of originality, sought distinction by ever more
and more elaborate and involved allusions; and their works, in their own
day held the more sublime the more incomprehensible they were, are now the
despair of those who would wring from them any semblance of meaning.
The absurdities of the conventional pastoral did not, indeed, pass
altogether unnoticed in their own day, for early in the sixteenth century
Teofilo Folengo composed his _Zanitonella_ in macaronic verse. It consists
of eclogues and poems in hexameter and elegiac metre ridiculing polite
pastoralism through contrast with the crudities of actual rusticity. In
the same manner Berni travestied the courtly pastoral of vernacular
writers in his realistic pictures of village love. But though the satirist
might find ample scope for his wit in anatomizing the foible of the day,
fashionable society continued none the less to encourage the exquisite
inanity, and to be flattered by the elegant obscurity, of the allegorical
pastoral.
V
In 1481 appeared an Italian translation of the Bucolics of Vergil from the
pen of Bernardo Pulci. The same volume also contained a collection of
eclogues in the vernacular by various authors, none of which have any
particular interest beyond what attaches to them as practically heading
the list of Italian pastorals[32]. It will be noticed that these poems
correspond in date with the later school of Latin bucolic writers,
represented by Mantuan; and the vernacular compositions developed
approximately parallel to, though usually in imitation of, those in the
learned tongue. But the fourteenth-century school of Petrarch had not been
entirely without its representative in Italian. At least one poem included
by Boccaccio in his _Ameto_ is a strict eclogue, composed throughout in
_terza rima_, which was destined to become the standard verse-form for
'pastoral,' as _ottava rima_ for 'rustic,' composition. The poem is a
contention between an upland and a lowland shepherd, and begins in genuine
pastoral fashion:
Come Titan del seno dell' aurora
Esce, cosi con le mie pecorelle
I monti cerco sema far dimora.
It is chiefly differentiated from many similar compositions in Latin--and
the distinction is of some importance--in that the interest is purely
pastoral; no political or religious allusions being discernible under the
arguments of the somewhat quarrelsome swains[33]. This peculiarity is on
the whole characteristic of the later vernacular pastoral likewise, which,
after the appearance of the collection of 1481, soon became extremely
common, Siena and Urbino, Ferrara, Bologna and Padua, Florence and Naples,
all alike bearing practical witness to the popularity of the kind[34].
In 1506 Castiglione[35] and Cesare Gonzaga, in the disguise of shepherds,
recited an eclogue interspersed with songs before the court of Duke
Guidubaldo at Urbino. The Duchess Elizabeth was among the spectators. The
_Tirsi,_ as it is called, begins with the simple themes of pastoral
complaint, whence by swift transition it passes to a panegyric of the
court and the circle of the _Cortegiano_. It was not the first attempt at
bringing the pastoral upon the boards, since Poliziano's _Orfeo_ with its
purely bucolic opening had been performed as early as 1471; but
Castiglione's _ecloga rappresentativa_ was the first of any note to depend
purely on the pastoral form and to introduce on the stage the convention
of the allegorical pastoral. Some years later a further step was taken in
the dramatization of the eclogue by Luigi Tansillo in his _Due pelegrini_,
performed at Messina in 1538, though composed and probably originally
acted some ten years before. It is through these and similar poems that we
shall have to trace the gradual evolution of the pastoral drama in a later
section of this work. Tansillo was likewise the author, both of a poem
called _Il Vendemmiatore_, one of those obscene debauches of fancy which
throw a lurid light on the luxurious imagination of the age, and of a
didactic work, _Il Podere_, in which, as his editor somewhat naively
remarks, 'ci rende amabile la campagna e l'agricoltura[36].'
The practice of eclogue-writing soon became no less general in the
vernacular than in Latin, and the band of pastoral poets included men so
different in temperament as Machiavelli, who left a 'Capitolo pastorale'
among his miscellaneous works, and Ariosto, whose eclogue on the
conspiracy contrived in 1506 against Alfonso d'Este was published from
manuscript in 1835. The fashion of the piscatory eclogue, set by
Sannazzaro in Latin, was followed in Italian by his fellow-citizen
Bernardino Rota, and later by Bernardino Baldi of Urbino, Abbot of
Guastalla, in whose poems we are able at times to detect a ring of simple
and refreshing sincerity.
Though, as will be understood even from the brief summary given above, the
allusive element is not wholly absent from these poems, it is nevertheless
true, as already said, that it appears less persistently than in the Latin
works, the weighty matters of religion and politics being as a rule
avoided. The reason is perhaps not far to seek, since, being in the vulgar
tongue, they appealed to a wider and less learned audience, before whom it
might have been injudicious to utter too strong an opinion on questions of
church and state.
So far the pastoral poetry of Italy had been composed exclusively in the
literary Tuscan of the day. To Florence and to Lorenzo de' Medici in
particular is due the honour of having first introduced the rustic speech
of the people. His two poems written in the language of the peasants about
Florence, _La Nencia da Barberino_ and a canzonet _In morte della Nencia_,
possess a grace to which the quaintness of the diction adds point and
flavour. A short extract must suffice to illustrate the style.
Ben si potra tener avventurato
Chi sia marito di si bella moglie;
Ben si potra tener in buon di nato
Chi ara quel fioraliso senza foglie;
Ben si potra tenersi consolato
Che si contenti tutte le sue voglie
D' aver la Nencia, e tenersela in braccio
Morbida e bianca, che pare un sugnaccio.
* * * * *
Nenciozza mia, vuo' tu un poco fare
Meco a la neve per quel salicale?--
Si, volentier, ma non me la sodare
Troppo, che tu non mi facessi male.--
Nenciozza mia, deh non ti dubitare,
Che l' amor ch' io ti porto si e tale,
Che quando avessi mal, Nenciozza mia,
Con la mia lingua te lo leveria.
This form of composition at once became fashionable. Luigi Pulci[37]
composed his _Beca di Dicomano_, which attained almost equal success and
passed for the work of Lorenzo. It is, however, a far inferior production,
in which the quaintness of the model is replaced by coarse caricature and
its delicate rusticity by a cruder realism. Other imitations followed, but
none bear comparison with Lorenzo's poem[38]. It is in thought and
expression rather than in actual language that these poems distinguish
themselves from the literary pastoral. More noticeably dialectal is an
anonymous _Pescatoria amorosa_ printed about 1550. It is a Venetian
serenade sung in the persons of fishermen, and possesses a certain grace
of language:
Cortese donne, belle innamorae,
Donzelle, vedovette, e maridae,
Ascholte ste parole, che le no se cortelae,
Che intendere la causa del vegnir in ste contrae[39].
Symonds and D'Ancona alike remark, with perfect truth, that Lorenzo's
rustic style, in spite of its sympathetic grace, is not altogether
dissociated from burlesque. While free from the artificiality of court
pastoral, it is equally distinct from the natural simplicity of the
Theocritean idyl. Its flavour depends upon the half cynical, half kindly,
amusement afforded by the contrast between the _naivete_ of the country
and the familiar and conventional polish of town life. This theme had
already caught the fancy of the song-writers of the fourteenth century,
who produced some of the most delightful examples of native and
unconventional pastoral anywhere to be found[40]. Franco Sacchetti the
novelist, for example, gives us a series of charming vignettes of country
life and scenery, but always from the point of view of the town observer.
One poem of his in particular gained wide popularity, and a modernized and
somewhat altered version was iater printed among the works of Poliziano.
It was originally a _ballata_, but I prefer to quote some stanzas from the
traditional version:
Vaghe le montanine e pastorelle,
Donde venite si leggiadre e belle?--
Vegnam dall' alpe, presso ad un boschetto;
Picciola capannella e il nostro sito;
Col padre e colla madre in picciol tetto,
Dove natura ci ha sempre nutrito,
Torniam la sera dal prato fiorito
Ch' abbiam pasciute nostre pecorelle.--
Ben si posson doler vostre bellezze,
Poiche tra valli e monti le mostrate,
Che non e terra di si grandi altezze
Che voi non foste degne ed onorate.
Ora mi dite, se vi contentate
Di star nell' alpe cosi poverelle?--
Piu si contenta ciascuna di noi
Gire alla mandria, dietro alla pastura,
Piu che non fate ciascuna di voi
Gire a danzare dentro a vostre mura;
Ricchezza non cerchiam, ne piu ventura,
Se non be' fiori, e facciam ghirlandelle[41].
Other writers besides Sacchetti produced songs of the sort, but in all
alike the strictly pastoral element was accidental, and merged insensibly
into the more delicately romantic of the _novelle_ themes. The following
lines touch on a situation familiar in later pastoral and also found in
English ballad poetry. They are by Alesso Donati, a contemporary of
Sacchetti's. A nun sings:
La dura corda e 'l vel bruno e la tonica
Gittar voglio e lo scapolo
Che mi tien qui rinchiusa e fammi monica;
Poi teco a guisa d'assetato giovane,
Non gia che si sobbarcoli,
Venir me n' voglio ove fortuna piovane:
E son contenta star per serva e cuoca,
Che men mi cocero ch' ora mi cuoca[42].
But if pastoralism made its appearance in the lyric, the lyric equally
influenced pastoral, for it is in the songs of the fifteenth century that
we first meet with that spirit of graceful melancholy sighing over the
transitoriness of earthly things, the germ of the _volutta idillica_ of
the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor fido._ This vein is strong in Lorenzo's
charming carnival songs, which at once recall Villon's burden, 'Ou sont
les neiges d'antan?' and anticipate Tasso's warning:
Cangia, cangia consiglio,
Pazzerella che sei;
Che il pentirsi dassezzo nulla giova.
The 'triumph' of _Bacchus and Ariadne_, introduced with amorous nymphs and
satyrs, has the refrain:
Quant' e bella giovinezza,
Che si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
Di doman non c' e certezza.
The flower of lyric melancholy is already full blown. So, too, in another
carnival song of his:
Or che val nostra bellezza?
Se si perde, poco vale.
Viva amore e gentilezza!
_Gentilezza, morbidezza_--the yielding fancy in the disguise of pity, the
nerveless languor that passes for beauty--such is the dominant note of the
song upon men's lips in the troublous times of the renaissance[43].
Another of the outlying realms of pastoral is the mythological tale, more
or less directly imitated from Ovid. The first to introduce it in
vernacular literature was Boccaccio, who in his _Ninfale fiesolano_ uses
a pagan allegory to convey a favourite _novella_ theme. The shepherd
Affrico loves a nymph of Diana, and the tale ends by the goddess changing
her faithless votary into a fountain. It is written in somewhat cumbrous
_ottava rima_, and seldom shows any conspicuous power of narrative.
Belonging to the same class of composition, though of a very different
order of poetic merit, is Lorenzo's wonderfully graceful tale of _Ambra_.
The grace lies in the telling, for the plot was probably already stale
when Phoebus and Daphne were protagonists. The poem recounts how the
wood-nymph Ambra, beloved of Lauro, is pursued by the river-god Ombrone,
one of Arno's tributary divinities, and praying to Diana in her hour of
need, is by her transformed into a rock[44]. Lorenzo's _Selva d'amore_ and
_Caccia col falcone_ might also be mentioned in the same connexion.
Less pastoral in motive and less connected in narrative, but of even
greater importance in the formation of pastoral taste, is the famous
_Giostra_ written in honour of the young Giuliano de' Medici. I have
already more than once had occasion to mention its author, Angelo
Ambrogini, better known from the place of his birth as Poliziano or
Politian[45], the contemporary, dependent, and fellow-litterateur of
Lorenzo il Magnifico, and the greatest scholar and learned writer of the
Italian renaissance. As the author of the _Orfeo_ he will occupy our
attention when we come to trace the evolution of the pastoral drama.
Though he left no poems belonging to the recognized forms of pastoral
composition, his work constantly borders upon the kind, and evinces a
genuine sympathy with rustic life which makes the ascription to him of the
already quoted modernization of Sacchetti not inappropriate. He left
several other pieces of a similar nature, some of which at least are known
to be adaptations of popular songs[46]. Such, for instance, is the
irregular _canzone_ beginning:
La pastorella si leva per tempo
Menando le caprette a pascer fuora,
Di fuora, fuora: la traditora
Co' suoi begli occhi la m' innamora,
E fa di mezza notte apparir giorno.
The _Giostra_ is composed, like its predecessors, in the octave stanza,
and presents a series of pictures drawn from classical mythology or from
the poet's own imagination, adorned with all the physical beauty the study
of antiquity could supply and a rich and refined taste crystallize into
chastest jewellery of verse[47]. This blending of luxuriance and delicacy
is the characteristic quality of Poliziano's and Lorenzo's poetry. It is
admirably expressed in the phrase of a recent critic, 'the decorum of
things exquisite.' After the lapse of another half-century, during which
the renaissance advanced from its graceful youth to the full bloom of its
maturity, appeared the _Ninfa tiberina_ of Francesco Maria Molza. 'The
_volutta idillica_[48],' writes Symonds, 'which opened like a rosebud in
the _Giostra_, expands full petals in the _Ninfa tiberina_; we dare not
shake them, lest they fall.' Like the earlier poem it possesses little
narrative unity--the taie of Eurydice introduced by way of illustration
occupies more than a third of the whole--but every point is made the
occasion of minute decoration of the richest beauty. It was written for
Faustina Mancina, a celebrated courtesan, whose empire lay till the day of
her death over the papal city. The wealth of sensuality and wit that made
a fatal seduction of Rome for Molza, scholar and libertine, is reflected
as it were in the rich cadences and overwrought adornment of his verse.
Such compositions as these had a powerful influence over the tone of
idyllic poetry. I have mentioned only a few out of a considerable list.
The _Driadeo d'amore_ earlier--a mythological medley variously ascribed in
different editions to Luca and to Luigi Pulci--and Marino's _Adone_ later,
were likewise among the works that went to form the courtly taste to which
the pastoral drama appealed. The detailed criticism, however, of such
compositions lies beyond the scope of this work.
VI
We must now return to an earlier period in order to follow the development
of the pastoral romance. When dealing with _Daphnis and Chloe_ I pointed
out that the Greek work could claim no part in the formation of the later
prose pastoral. Between it and the work of Boccaccio and Sannazzaro there
exists no such continuity of tradition as between the bucolics of the
classical Mantuan and those of his renaissance follower. The Italian
pastoral romance, in spite of its almost pedantic endeavour after
classical and mythological colouring, was as essentially a product of its
age as the pastoral drama itself. So far as any influence on the evolution
of the subsequent Arcadia was concerned, Longus might as well never have
written of the pastures of Lesbos. Indeed, were we here concerned in
assigning to its historical source each particular trait in individual
works, rather than in tracing the general development of an idea, it would
be casier to distinguish a faint and slightly cynical reminiscence of
_Daphnis and Chloe _ in the _Aminta_ and _Pastor fido_ than in the _Ameto_
or the _Arcadia_.
In his pastoral romance, 'Ameto, ovvero Commedia delie ninfe fiorentine,'
Boccaccio set a fashion in literature, namely the intermingling for
purposes of narration of prose and verse[49], in which he was followed a
century and a half later by Pietro Bembo, the Socrates of Castiglione's
renaissance Symposium, in his dialogue on love entitled _Gli Asolani_, and
by Jacopo Sannazzaro in his still more famous _Arcadia_. The _Ameto_ is
one of Boccaccio's early compositions, written about 1341, after his
return from Naples, but before he had gained his later mastery of
language. It is not unfairly characterized by Symonds as 'a tissue of
pastoral tales, descriptions, and versified interludes, prolix in style
and affected with pedantic erudition.' It is, however, possible to
underrate its merits, and it would be easy to overlook its historical
importance. Ameto is a rude hunter of the neighbourhood of Florence. One
day, while in the woods, he discovers a company of nymphs resting by a
stream, and overhears the song of the beautiful Lia. His rough nature is
touched by the sweetness of the music and he falls in love with the
singer. Their meetings are interrupted by the advent of winter, but he
finds her again at the feast of Venus, when shepherds, fauns, and nymphs
forgather at the temple of the goddess. In this company Lia proposes that
each of the nymphs present, seven in number, shall narrate the story of
her love. This they in turn do, each ending with a song of praise to the
gods; and Ameto feels his love burn for each in turn as he listens to
their tales. When the last has ended a sudden brightness shines around and
'there descended with wondrous noise a column of pure flame, even such as
by night went before the Israelitish people in the desert places,' Out of
the brightness cornes the voice of Venus:
Io son luce del cielo unica e trina,
Principio e fine di ciascuna cosa,
Del quai men fu, ne fia nulla vicina.
Ameto, though half blinded by the heavenly effulgence, sees a new joy and
beauty shine upon the faces of the nymphs, and understands that the
flame-shrouded presence is that, not of the wanton _mater cupidinum_, but
of the goddess of divine fire who comes to reveal to him the mysteries of
love. Cleansed of his grosser nature by a baptismal rite, in which each of
the nymphs performs some symbolic ceremonial, he feels heavenly love
replacing human in his heart, and is able to bear undazzled the radiance
of the divine purity. He salutes the goddess with a song:
O diva luce, quale in tre persone
Ed una essenza il ciel governi e 'l mondo
Con giusto amore ed eterna ragione,
Dando legge alle stelle, ed al ritondo
Moto del sole, principe di quelle,
Siccome discerniamo in questo fondo[50].
Various interpretations have been suggested for this work, with its
preposterous mixture of pagan and Christian motives. This peculiarity,
which we have already met with in Boccaccio's eclogues, and in his
_Ninfale fiesolano_, was indeed one of the most persistent as it was one
of the least admirable characteristics of pastoral composition. Francesco
Sansovino, who edited the _Ameto_ in 1545, discovered real personages
underlying the characters of the romance. Fiammetta is introduced by name,
and her lover Caleone can hardly be other than Boccaccio. More recent
commentators are probably right in detecting an allegorical intention. The
seven nymphs, according to them, represent the four cardinal and three
theological virtues, and their stories are to be interpreted symbolically.
This view derives support from the baptismal ceremony, in which after the
public lustration one of the nymphs removes the scales from Ameto's eyes,
while another, 'breathing between his lips, kindled within him a flame
such as he had never felt before.' In these ministrants it is not
difficult to recognize the virtues respectively of faith and love. Ameto
may be taken as typical of humanity, tamed of its savage nature by love,
and through the service of the virtues led to the knowledge of the divine
essence. The conception of love as a civilizing and humanizing power
already underlay the sensuous stanzas of the _Ninfale fiesolano_, while
the later part of the romance was not uninfluenced by recollections of the
_Divine Comedy_[51]. It is true that a modern mind will with difficulty be
able to reconcile the amorous confessions of the nymphs with the
characteristics of the virtues, but in Boccaccio's day the tradition of
the _Gesta Romanorum_ was still strong, and the age that mysticized
Vergil, and moralized Ovid, was capable of much in the way of allegorical
interpretation[52].
The point to which this allegorical interpretation can legitimately be
carried need not trouble us here. Having set himself to characterize the
virtues, it is moreover likely enough that Boccaccio sought at the same
time to connect his figures more or less definitely with actual persons.
It is sufficient for our present purpose if we recognize in the _Ameto_
something of the same triple intention which, not to put too fine a
metaphysical point upon the parallel, we meet with in Dante and in the
_Faery Queen_. Having fashioned in accordance with these motives the
framework of his book, Boccaccio further concerned himself but little with
this philosophical intention, and the allegorical setting having served
its artistic purpose of linking them together into one connected whole, it
was upon the detail of the narratives themselves that the author's
attention was concentrated. It is, however, just in this artistic purpose
of the setting that one of the chief interests of the _Ameto_ lies; for if
in the mingling of verse and prose it is the forerunner of the _Arcadia_,
in the linking together of a series of isolated stories it anticipates
Boccaccio's own _Decameron_.
While there is little that is distinctly bucolic about the _Ameto_, the
atmosphere is eminently pastoral in the wider sense. Nymphs and shepherds,
foresters and fauns meet at the temple of Venus; the limpid fountains and
shady laurels belong essentially to the conventional landscape, whether of
Sicily, of Arcadia, or of the hills overlooking the valley of the Arno.
The Italian imagination was not careful to differentiate between field and
forest: _favola boschereccia_ was used synonymously with _commedia
pastorale_; _drammi dei boschi_ is a term which covers the whole of the
pastoral drama. But what really gives the _Ameto_ its importance in the
history of pastoral literature is the manner in which, undisturbed by its
religions and allegorical machinery, it introduces us to a purely sensual
and pagan paradise, in which love with all its pains and raptures reigns
supreme.
The narratives of the nymphs, and indeed the whole of the prose portions
of the work, are composed in a style of surcharged and voluptuous beauty,
congested with lengthy periods, and accumulated superlatives and relative
clauses, which, in its endeavour to maintain itself and its subject at the
highest possible pitch, only succeeds in being intensely and almost
uniformly monotonous and dull. It is perfectly true that the work
possesses some at least of the qualities of its defects. There are
passages which argue a feeling for beauty, none the less real for being of
a somewhat conventional order, while we not seldom detect a certain rich
luxuriance about the descriptions; but it must be admitted that on the
whole the style exhibits most of Boccaccio's faults and few of his merits.
The verse interspersed throughout is in _terza rima_, and offers small
attraction to the ordinary reader: 'meschinissima cosa' is a verdict
which, if somewhat severe, will probably find few to contradict it.
In a certain passage, speaking of Poliziano's _Orfeo_, Symonds remarks
that 'while Arcady became the local dreamland of the new ideal, Orpheus
took the place of its hero.' Without inquiring too closely how far the
writers of the renaissance actually connected the hero of music, as a
power of civilization, with their newly discovered country, it is
interesting to note that the earliest work in the Italian language
containing in however amoebean a state the pastoral ideal opens with an
allusion to Orpheus.
Quella vertu, che gia l'ardito Orfeo
Mosse a cercar le case di Plutone,
Allor che forse lieta gli rendeo
La cercata Euridice a condizione,
E dal suon vinto dell' arguto legno,
E dalla nota della sua canzone,
Per forza tira il mio debile ingegno
A cantar le tue Iode, o Citerea,
Insieme con le forze del tuo regno[53].
Orpheus, however, does not stand alone. Venus, Phoebus, Mars, Cupid, and
finally Jove, are each in turn invoked, to say nothing of the incidental
mention of Aeneas, Mirra, and Europa. This love of mythology in and out of
season is one of the most prominent features of the work. One of the
nymphs describes her youth in the following words:
il padre mio .... visse eccellentissimo ne' beni pubblici tra' reggenti,
e de' beni degli iddii copioso: me a lui donata da loro, nomino Mopsa, e
vedentemi nella giovanetta eta mostrante gia bella forma, ai servigi
dispose di Pallade, la quale me benivola ricevente nelle sante grotte
del cavallo Gorgoneo, tra le sapientissime Muse commise, la dov' io
gustai l'acque Castalie, e l'altezza di Cirra tentante, le stelle cercai
con ferma mano; e i pallidi visi, quelli luoghi colenti, sempre con
riverenza seguii; e molte volte sonando Apollo la cetera sua, lui nel
mezzo delle nove Muse ascoltai[54].
She continues for pages in the same strain with illustrative allusions to
Caius Julius, Claudius, and Britannicus.
At the risk of devoting to the _Ameto_ an altogether disproportionate
amount of the space at my disposai I must before passing on attempt to
give some notion of the kind of narrative contained in the romance, all
the more so as it is little known except to students. With this object I
have translated a characteristic passage from the tale of Agape[55].
I came from my home nigh unto the temple, before whose altars, with due
devotion, I began thus to pray: 'O Venus, full of pity, sacred goddess
whose altars I am joyful to approach, lend thou thy merciful ears unto
my prayer; for I come to thee a young girl, though fairly fashioned yet
ill-starred in love, fearful lest my empty years lead comfortless to a
chill old age; therefore, if my beauty merit that I be counted among thy
followers, enter thou into my breast who so desire thee, and grant that
in the love of a youth not unworthy of my beauty, and through whom my
wasted hours may be with delight made good, I may feel those fires of
thine which many times and endlessly I have heard praised.' I know not
whether while I was thus engrossed in prayer I fell on sleep, and
sleeping saw those things whereof I am about to tell, or whether,
indeed, I was rapt thence in bodily form to see them; all I can tell is
that suddenly I found myself borne through the heavens in a gleaming
chariot drawn by white doves, and that inclining my eyes to things below
I beheld the fruitful earth shrunk to a narrow room, and the rivers
thereof after the fashion of serpents; and after that I had left behind
the pleasant lands of Italy and the rugged mountains of Emathia, I
beheld the waters of the Dircean fount and the ancient walls raised by
the sound of Amphion's lyre, and soon there appeared to me the pleasant
Cytherean mount, and on it resting the holy chariots drawn by the
spotless birds. Whereon having alighted I went straying, alike uncertain
of the way and of the fortune that might await me, when, as to Aeneas
upon the Afric shore, so to me there amid the myrtles there appeared the
goddess I had invoked, and I was filled with wonder such as I had never
known before. She was disrobed except for the thinnest purple veil,
which hid but little of her form, falling in double curve with many
artful foldings over her left side; her face shone even as the sun, and
her head was adorned with great length of golden hair rippling down over
white shoulders; her eyes flashed with light never seen till then. Why
should I labour to tell the loveliness of her mouth and of her snowy
neck, of her marble breast and of her every part, since to do so lies so
far beyond my powers, and even where I able, hardly should my words gain
credence? But whereas she was now at hand I bowed my knees before her
godhead, and with such voice as I could command, repeated my petition in
her presence. She listened thereto, and approaching bade me rise,
saying, 'Follow me; thy prayer is heard, thy desire granted,' and
thereupon withdrew me to a somewhat loftier spot. There hidden amidst
the dense foliage she discovered to me her only son, upon whom gazing in
admiration, I found his beauty such that in all things did he appear
fashioned like unto her, except in so far as being he a god and she a
goddess. O how oft, remembering Psyche, I counted her happy and unhappy;
happy in the possession of such a husband, unhappy in his loss, most
happy in receiving him again from Jove. But even as I gazed, he, beating
the air with his sacred wings that gleamed with clearest gold, departed
with his load of newly fashioned arrows from those parts, and at the
bidding of the goddess I turned to the spring wherein he used to temper
his golden darts fresh forged with fiercest fire. Its silver waters,
gushing of themselves from the earth and shaded along the margin by a
growth of myrtle and dogwood, were neither violated in their purity by
the approach of bird or beast, nor suffered aught from the sun's
distemperature, and as I leaned forward to catch the reflection of my
own figure I could discern the clear bottom free from every trace of
mud[56]. The goddess, for that the hour was already hot, had doffed her
transparent veil and plunged her into the cool water, and now commanded
me that having stripped I too should enter the spring. We were yet
disporting ourselves in the lovely fountain, when, raising my head and
gazing with longing eyes around, I saw amid the leaves a youth, pale and
shy of appearance, who with slow steps was advancing towards the sacred
water. As I looked on him he was pleasant in my eyes, but that he should
behold me naked filled me with shame, and I turned away to hide my
unwonted blushes. And in like manner at the sight of me he too changed
colour and was troubled; he stayed his steps and advanced no further.
Then at the pleasure of the goddess leaving the water we resumed our
apparel, and crowned with myrtle sought a neighbouring glade, full of
finest grass and diapered with many flowers, where in the freshness we
stretched our limbs to rest. Thereupon the goddess, having called the
youth to us, began to speak in these words: 'Agape, most dear to me,
this youth, Apyros by name, whom thou seest thus shy amid our glades,
shall satisfy thy longing; but see that with care thou preserve
inviolate our fires, which in thy heart thou shalt bear with thee
hence.' I was about to make answer when my tender breast was of a sudden
pierced by the flying arrow loosed by the strong hand of the son of her
who added these unto her former words: 'We give him thee as thy first
and only servant; he lacks nought but our fires, which, kindled even now
by thee in him, be it thy care to nourish, that the frost that bound him
like to Aglauros being driven from his heart, he may burn with the
divine fire no less than father Jove himself.' She ceased; and I,
trembling yet with fear, no sooner opened my lips to assent to her
command, than I found myself once more in prayer before her altars;
whereat marvelling not a little, and casting my eyes around in search of
Apyros, I became aware of the golden arrow in my breast, and near me the
pale youth, his intent gaze fixed upon me, and like me wounded by the
god; and so seeing him inflamed with a passion no other than that which
burned in me, I laughed, and filled with contentment and desire, made
sign to him to be of hopeful cheer.
The advance in style that marks the transition from the _Ameto_ to the
_Arcadia_ must be largely accredited to Boccaccio himself. The language of
the _Decameron_ became the model of _cinquecento_ prose. Sannazzaro,
however, wrote in evident imitation not of the structural method only, but
of the actual style of the _Ameto_. Something, it is true, he added beyond
the greater mastery of literary form due to training. Even in his most
luxuriant descriptions and most sensuous images we find that grace and
clearness of vision which characterize the early poetry of the
Renaissance proper, and combine in literature the luminous purity of
Botticelli and the gem-like detail of Pinturicchio. The mythological
affectation of the elder work appears in the younger modified, refined,
subordinated; there is the same delight in detailed description, but
relieved by greater variety of imagination; while, even in the most
laboured passages, there is a poetical feeling as well as a more
subjective manner, which, combined with a remarkable power of
visualization, saves them from the danger of the catalogue. Again, there
is everywhere visible the same artificiality of style which characterizes
the _Ameto_, but purged of its more extravagant elements and less affected
and conceited than it became in the works of Lyly and Sidney. Like the
_Ameto_, lastly, but unlike its Spanish and English successors, the
_Arcadia_ is purely pastoral, free from any chivalric admixture.
The narrative interest in the _Arcadia_ is of the slightest. It opens with
a description of the 'dilettevole piano, di ampiezza non molto spazioso,'
lying at the summit of Parthenium, 'non umile monte della pastorale
Arcadia,' which was henceforth to be the abode sacred to the
shepherd-folk. There, as in Vergil's Italy and in Browne's Devon, in
Chaucer's dreamland, and in the realm of the Faery Queen, 'son forse
dodici o quindici alberi di tanto strana ed eccessiva bellezza, che
chiunque li vedesse, giudicherebbe che la maestra natura vi si fosse con
sommo diletto studiata in formarli.'[57] The shepherds, who are assembled
with their flocks, are about to seek their homes at the approach of night,
when they meet Montano playing upon his pipe, and a musical contest ensues
between him and Uranio. Next day is celebrated the feast of Pales, an
account of which is given at length, and is followed by a song in which
Galicio sings the praises of his mistress Amaranta, of whom the narrator
proceeds to give a minute description. After another singing-match between
Logisto and Elpino the company betake themselves to the tomb of Androgeo,
whose praises are set forth in prose and rime. There follows a song by the
old shepherd Opico, on the superiority of the 'former age'; after which
Carino asks the narrator, Sincero--the pseudonym under which Sannazzaro
travelled in the realm of shepherds--to recount his history, which he
does at length, ending with a lament in _sestina_ form. By way of
consoling him in his exile Carino, in return, tells the tale of his own
amorous adventures. Next the reverend Opico is induced to discourse of the
powers of magic as the shepherds proceed to the sacred grove of Pan, who
shares with Pales the honours of Arcadian worship, and to the games held
at the tomb of sibyllic Massilia--a name under which Sannazzaro is said to
have commemorated his own mother. At this point the narrator is troubled
by a dream portending death to the lady of his love. As, tormented by this
thought, he wanders lonely in the chill dawn he meets a nymph, who leads
him through a marvellous cavern into the depths of the earth, where he
beholds the springs of many famous rivers, and finally, following the
course of the Sabeto, arrives at his native city of Naples, where he
learns the truth of his sorrowful forebodings.
The form has been systematized since Boccaccio wrote, the whole being
divided into twelve _Prose_, alternating with as many _Ecloghe_, preceded
by a _Proemio_ and followed by an address _Alla sampogna_, both in prose.
The verse is mediocre, and several of the eclogues are composed in the
unattractive _sestina_ form, while others affect the wearisome _rime
sdrucciole_.[58] The most pleasing is Ergasto's lament at Androgeo's tomb,
beginning:
Alma beata e bella,
Che da' legami sciolta
Nuda salisti ne' superni chiostri,
Ove con la tua stella
Ti godi insieme accolta;
E lieta ivi schernendo i pensier' nostri,
Quasi un bel sol ti mostri
Tra li piu chiari spirti;
E coi vestigi santi
Calchi le stelle erranti;
E tra pure fontane e sacri mirti
Pasci celesti greggi;
E i tuoi cari pastori indi correggi. (_Ecloga_ V.)
One would hardly turn to the artificiality of the _Arcadia_ for
representations of nature, and yet there is in the romance a genuine love
of the woods and the fields, and of the rustic sports of the season.
'Sogliono il piu delle volte gli alti e spaziosi alberi negli orridi monti
dalla natura prodotti, piu che le coltivate piante, da dotte mani
espurgate negli adorni giardini, a' riguardanti aggradare,' remarks
Sannazzaro at the outset. Elsewhere he furnishes us with an entertaining
description of the various ways in which birds may be trapped, introduced
possibly in pursuance of a hint from Longus.[59] Yet, in spite of his
professed love of savage scenery and his knowledge of pastoral sports, it
is after all in a very artificial and straitened form that nature filters
to us through Sannazzaro's pages. Rather do we turn to them for the sake
of the paintings on the temple walls, of Amaranta's lips, 'fresh as the
morning rose,' of her wild lapful of flowers, and of a hundred other
incidental pictures, one of the most charming of which, interesting on
another score also, I make no apology for here transcribing.
Subito ordino i premi a coloro, che lottare volessero, offrendo di dare
al vincitore un bel vaso di legno di acero, ove per mano del Padoano
Mantegna, artefice sovra tutti gli altri accorto ed ingegnosissimo, eran
dipinte molte cose: ma tra l' altre una ninfa ignuda, con tutti i membri
bellissimi, dai piedi in fuori, che erano come quelli delle capre; la
quale, sovra un gonfiato otre sedendo, lattava un picciolo satirello, e
con tanta tenerezza il mirava, che parea che di amore e di carita tutta
si struggesse: e 'l fanciullo nell' una mammella poppava, nell' altra
tenea distesa la tenera mano, e con l' occhio la si guardava, quasi
temendo che tolta non gli fosse. Poco discosto da costoro si vedean due
fanciulli pur nudi, i quali avendosi posti due volti orribili di
maschere cacciavano per le bocche di quelli le picciole mani, per porre
spavento a duo altri, che davanti loro stavano; de' quali l' uno
fuggendo si volgea in dietro, e per paura gridava; l' altro caduto gia
in terra piangeva, e non possendosi altrimenti aitare, stendeva la mano
per graffiarlo. (_Prosa_ XI.)
I shall make no attempt at translation. Some versions, really wonderful
in the success with which they reproduce the style of the original, will
be found in Symonds' _Italian Literature_[60]. It is probably unnecessary
to put in a warning that the _Arcadia_ is a work of which extracts are apt
to give a somewhat too favourable impression. In its long complaints,
speeches, and descriptions it is at whiles intolerably prolix and dull,
but it caught the taste of the age and went through a large number of
editions, many with learned annotations, between the appearance of the
first authorized edition and the end of the sixteenth century[61], There
were several imitations later, such as the _Accademia tusculana_ of
Benedetto Menzini; Firenzuola imitated the third _Prosa_ in his
_Sacrifizio pastorale_; while collections of tales and _facetiae_ such as
the _Arcadia in Brenta_ of Giovanni Sagredo equally sought the prestige of
the name. A French translation published in 1544 went through three
editions, and another appeared in 1737, while it was translated into
Spanish in 1547, and again in 1578. It may have been due to the existence
of Sidney's more ambitious work of the same name that no translation ever
appeared in English.
* * * * *
Our survey of Italian pastoralism, in spite of the fact that its most
important manifestation has been reserved for separate treatment later,
has of necessity been lengthy. It was at Italian breasts that the infant
ideal, reborn into a tumultuous world, was nursed. The other countries of
continental Europe borrowed that ideal from Italy, though each in turn
contributed characteristics of its own. It was to Italy that England too
was directly indebted, while at the same time it absorbed elements
peculiar to France and Spain. It will therefore be necessary briefly to
review the forms that flourished in those countries respectively, though
they need detain us but a brief space in comparison with the Italian
fountain-head.
Before proceeding, however, it may be worth while to pause for a moment in
order to take a general survey of the nature of the ideal, we might almost
say the religion, of pastoralism, which reached its maturity in the work
of Sannazzaro. Its location in the uplands of Arcadia may be traced to
Vergil, who had the worship of Pan in mind, but the selection of the
barren mountain district of central Peloponnesus as the seat of pastoral
luxuriance and primitive culture is not without significance in respect of
the severance of the pastoral ideal from actuality.[62] In it the
world-weary age of the later renaissance sought escape from the
materialism that bound it. Italy had turned its back upon mysticism in
religion, and upon chivalry in love; its literature was the negation of
what the northern peoples understand by romance. Yet it needed some relief
from the very saneness of its rationalism, and it found the antidote to
its vicious court life in the crystal springs of Castaly. What the pietism
of Perugino's saints is to the feuds of the Baglioni, such is the Arcadian
dream to the intellectual cynicism of Italian politics.
When children weave fancies of wonderland they use the resources of the
imagination with economy; uninterrupted sunshine soon cloys. So too with
these other children of the renaissance. Their wonderland is a place
whither they may escape from the pressure of the world that is too much
with them; they seek in it at least the virtue that its evils shall be the
opposite of those from which they fly. They could not, it is true, believe
in an Arcadia in which all the cares of this world should end--the golden
age is always a time to be sung and remembered, or else to be dreamed of,
in the years to come, it is never the present--but if they cannot escape
from the changes and chances of this mortal life, if death and unfaith
are still realities in their dreamland as on earth, they will at least
utter their grief melodiously, and water fair pastures with their tears.
Like the garden of the Rose which satisfied the middle age before it, the
Arcadian ideal of the renaissance degenerated, as every ideal must. The
decay of pastoral, however, was in this unique, that it tended less to
exaggerate than to negative the spirit that gave it birth. Theocritus
turned from polite society and sought solace in his no doubt idealized
recollections of actual shepherd life. On the other hand, to the
allegorical pastoralists from Vergil to Spagnuoli, the shepherd-realm
either reflects, or is made directly to contrast with, the interests and
vices of the actual world; in their work the note of longing for escape to
an ideal life is heard but faintly or not at all. In the songs of the late
fifteenth century and in Sannazzaro there is a genuine pastoral revival;
the desire of freedom from reality is strong upon men in that age of
strenuous living. It has been happily said that Mantuan's shepherds meet
to discuss society, Sannazzaro's to forget it. And yet, after all, these
men are too strongly bound by the affections of this world to be able
wholly to sacrifice themselves to the joys of the ideal. Fiammetta must
have her place in Boccaccio's strange apotheosis of love; the foreboding
of Carmosina's death has power to draw her lover from his newly discovered
kingdom along the untrodden paths of the waters of the earth. And so when
Arcadia ceased to be a necessity of sentiment and became one of fashion,
where poets were no longer content to wander with their mistresses in the
land of fancy, alone, 'at rest from their labour with the world gone by,'
there appeared a tendency to return to the allegorical style, and to make
Arcadia what Sicily had already become--the mirror of the polite society
of the Italian courts. Thus it is that in the crowning jewels of Italian
pastoralism, in the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor fido_, we trace a yearning
towards a simpler, freer, and more genuine life, side by side with such
incompatible and antagonistic elements as the reproduction in pastoral
guise of the personages and surroundings of the circle of Ferrara. Not
content with the pure ideal, the poets endeavoured, like Faust at the
sight of Helena, to find in it a place for the earthly affections that
bound them, and at the touch of reality the vision dissolved in mist.
VII
When we turn to the literature of the western peninsula during the early
years of the sixteenth century, we find it characterized by a temporary
but very complete subjection to Italian models. This phenomenon, which is
particularly marked in pastoral, is readily explained by the fact that the
similarity of the dialects made the transference of poetic forms from
Italian to Spanish an easy matter. Thus when among the nations of Europe
Italy awoke to her great task of recovering an old and discovering a new
world of arts and letters, it was upon Spanish verse that she was able to
exercise the most immediate and overpowering influence. Under these
circumstances it was impossible but that she should drag the literature of
that country, for a while at least, in her train, away from its own proper
genius and natural course of development. Other countries were saved from
servitude by the very failure of their attempts to imitate the new Italian
style; and Spain herself, it must be remembered, was not long in
recovering her individuality and in endowing Europe with one of the
richest national literatures of the world.
It is important, however, to distinguish from the pastoral work produced
under this dominating Italian influence certain other work in the kind,
which, while to some extent dependent for its form upon foreign models,
bears at the same time strong marks of native inspiration. In this earlier
and more popular tradition the tendencies of the national literature, the
pastoral possibilites of which appear at times in the ballads, mingle more
or less with elements of convention and allegory drawn from Vergil or his
humanistic followers. Little influence of this popular tradition can as a
rule be traced in the later pastoral work, but it acquires a certain
incidental interest in connexion with another branch of literature. It is,
namely, the remarkable part it played in the evolution of the national
drama that makes it worth while mentioning a few of its more important
examples in this place.[63]
An isolated composition, in which lay not so much the germ of the future
drama as the index of its possibility, is the _Coplas de Mingo Revulgo_,
the composition of an unknown author. It is an eclogue in which two
shepherds, representing respectively the upper and lower orders of Spanish
society, discourse together on the causes of national discontent and
political corruption prevalent about 1472, at the latter end of the weak
reign of Enrique IV. In this poem we find the king's infatuation for his
Portuguese mistress treated much as Petrarch had treated the relations of
Clement VI with the allegorical Epi, except for the striking difference
that the Latin of the Italian poet is replaced by straightforward and
vigorous vernacular. Of far greater importance in the history of
literature are certain poems--_Eclogas_ they are for the most part
styled--of Juan del Encina, which belong roughly to the closing years of
the fifteenth and opening years of the sixteenth century. Numbering about
a dozen, and composed with one exception in the short measures of popular
poetry, these dramatic eclogues, or amoebean plays, supply the connecting
link between the early popular and religious shows and the regular drama.
About half are religious in character; of the rest, three treat some
romantic episode, one is a study of unrequited passion ending in suicide,
and one is a market-day farce, the personae being in each case rude
herdsmen. Contemporary with, though a disciple of, Encina, is the
Portuguese Gil Vicente, who wrote in both dialects, and whose _Auto
pastoril castelhano_ may be cited as carrying on the tradition between his
master and Lope de Vega.
With Lope's dramatic production as a whole we are not, of course,
concerned. He lies indeed somewhat off our track; the pastoral influence
in his work is capricious. It will be sufficient to note that the
influence, where it exists, is external; it is nowhere the outcome of
Christian allegory, nor does it arise out of the nature of the subject as
such titles as the _Pastores de Belen_ might suggest. It is found equally
in the religious or quasi-religious plays--such as the _Vuelta de Egypto_
with its shepherds and gypsies, and the _Pastor lobo_, an allegorical
satire on the church Lope afterwards entered--and in such purely secular,
amorous, and on the whole less dramatic pieces as the _Arcadia_--not to be
confused with his romance of the same name--and the _Selva sin amor_, a
regular Italian pastoral in miniature, both of which were acted, besides
many others intended primarly for reading, though they may possibly have
been recited after the manner of Castiglione's _Tirsi_.
While on the subject of the drama I may mention translations of the
_Aminta_ and _Pastor fido_. Tasso's piece was rendered into Castilian by
Juan de Jauregui, and first printed at Rome in 1607, a revised edition
appearing among the author's poems in 1618. The _Pastor fido_ was
translated by Cristobal Suarez de Figueroa, the best version being that
printed at Valentia in 1609, from which Ticknor quotes a passage as
typical as it is successful. It was to these two versions of the
masterpieces of Italian pastoral that Cervantes accorded the highest meed
of praise, declaring that 'they haply leave it doubtful which is the
translation or original.'[64] There likewise exists a poor adaptation of
Guarini's play, said to be the work of Solis, Coello, and Calderon[65].
The pastoral appears, however, never to have gained a very firm footing
upon the mature Spanish stage, no doubt for the same reason that led to a
similar result in England, namely, that the vigorous national drama about
it overpowered and choked its delicate and exotic growth[66].
Apart from the dramatic or semi-dramatic work we have been reviewing, the
pastoral verse which possesses the most natural and national character,
though it may not be the earliest in date, is to be found in the poems of
Francisco de Sa de Miranda[67]. He appears to have begun writing
independently of the Italian school, and, even after he came under the
influence of Garcilaso, to have preserved much of his natural simplicity
and genuineness of feeling. He probably had some direct knowledge of the
Italians, for he writes:
Liamos....
.... os pastores italianos
Do bom velho Sanazarro.
He may also have been influenced by Encina, most of whose work had already
appeared.
The first and foremost of those who deliberately based their style on the
Italian was Garcilaso de la Vega, whose pastoral work dates from about
1526. To him, in conjunction with Boscan and Mendoza, the vogue was due.
At his best, when he really assimilates the foreign elements borrowed from
his models and makes their style his own, he writes with the true genius
of his nation. The first of his three eclogues, which was probably
composed at Naples and is regarded as his best work, introduces the
shepherds Salico and Nemoroso, of whom the first stands for the author,
while in the other it is not hard to recognize his friend Boscan. This
poem, a portion of which is translated by Ticknor, should of itself
suffice to place Garcilaso in the front rank of pastoral writers. Yet he
does not appear to occupy any isolated eminence among his fellows, and
Ticknor may be right in thinking that, throughout, the regular pastoral
showed fewer of its defects in Spain than elsewhere. It is also true that
it appears to have been endowed with less vital power of development.
Garcilaso's followers were numerous. Among them mention may be made of
Francisco de Figueroa, the Tirsi of Cervantes' _Galatea_; Pedro de
Encinas, who attempted religious eclogues; Lope de Vega; Alonso de Ulloa,
the Venetian printer, who is credited with having foisted the Rodrigo
episode into Montemayor's _Diana_; Gaspar Gil Polo, one of the
continuators of that work; and Bernardo de Balbuenas, one of its many
imitators, who incorporated in his _Siglo de Oro_ a number of eclogues
which in their simple and rustic nature appear to be studied from
Theocritus rather than Vergil.
In spite of the fashion of writing in Castilian which prevailed among
Portuguese poets, we are not without specimens of pastoral verse composed
in the less important dialect. Sa de Miranda has been mentioned above.
Ribeiro too, better known for his romance, left a series of five
autobiographical eclogues[68] dating from about 1516-24, and consequently
earlier than Garcilaso's. They are composed, like some of Sa de Miranda's,
in the short measures more natural to the language than the _terza rima_
and intricate stanzas of the Italianizing poets. Later on Camoens wrote
fifteen eclogues, four of which are piscatorial, and in one, a dialogue
between a shepherd and a fisherman, refers in the following terms to
Sannazzaro:
O pescador Sincero, que amansado
Tem o pego de Prochyta co' o canto
Por as sonoras ondas compassado.
D'este seguindo o som, que pode tanto,
E misturando o antigo Mantuano,
Facamos novo estylo, novo espanto.
Whereas in the case of the verse pastoral the Italian fashion passed from
Spain into Portugal, exactly the reverse process took place with regard to
the prose romance more or less directly founded upon Sannazzaro. The first
to imitate the _Arcadia_ was the Portuguese Bernardim Ribeiro, who during
a two-years' residence in Italy composed the 'beautiful fragment,' as
Ticknor styles it, entitled from the first words of the text _Menina e
moca_. This unfinished romance first appeared, in the form of an octavo
charmingly printed in gothic type, at Ferrara in 1554, though it must
have been written at least thirty years earlier. It differs considerably
from its model, the verse being purely incidental, and the intricacy of
the story anticipating later examples, as does likewise the admixture of
chivalric adventure. It is, indeed, to a large extent what might have
arisen spontaneously through the elaboration of the pastoral element
occasionally to be met with in the old chivalric romances themselves. On
the other hand it resembles the Italian pastoral in the introduction of
real characters, which, though their identity was concealed under anagrams
and all manner of obscurity, appear to have been traceable by the keen eye
of authority, for the book was placed on the Index. Such knowledge of
Sannazzaro's writings as Ribeiro possessed was of course direct, but
before his fragment saw the light there appeared, in 1547, a Spanish
translation of the _Arcadia_. It must be remembered that Sannazzaro was
himself of Spanish extraction, and that he may have had relations with the
land of his fathers of a nature to facilitate the diffusion of his works.
The next and by far the most important contribution made by the peninsula
to pastoral literature was the work of an hispaniolized Portuguese, who
composed in Castilian dialect the famous _Diana_. 'Los siete libres de la
Diana de Jorge de Montemayor'--the Spanish form of Montemor's name and
that by which he became familiar to subsequent ages--appeared at Valencia,
without date, but about 1560.[69] As in the case of its Italian and
Portuguese predecessors, some at least of the characters of the romance
represent real persons. Sireno the hero, who stands for the author, is in
love with the nymph Diana, of whose identity Lope de Vega claimed to be
cognizant, though he withheld her name. The scene is laid in Spain, and
actual and ideal geography are intermixed in a bewildering fashion. Sireno
is obliged, for reasons not stated, to leave the country for a while, and
on his return finds his lady-love married by her parents to his rival
Delio. In his despair he seeks aid from the priestess of a certain temple,
and receives from her a magic potion which drives from him all remembrance
of his passion. This very simple and somewhat unsatisfactory story is
interwoven with a multitude of episodes and incidental narratives,
pastoral and chivalric, and the whole ends with the promise of a second
part, which however never came to be written, the author, as it appears,
being either murdered or killed in duel at Turin in 1561.
Thanks probably to the combination in its pages of the popular chivalric
tradition with the fashionable Italian pastoral, and also to certain
graces of style which it possesses, the _Diana_ held the field until the
picaresque romance developed into a recognized _genre_, and exercised a
very considerable influence on pastoral writers even beyond the frontiers
of Spain. Googe imitated passages from it in his eclogues; Sidney
translated some of its songs, and took it as the model of his own romance;
Shakespeare borrowed from it the plot of the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_. In
the land of its birth its popularity was shown by the number of
continuations and imitations to which it gave rise. Irresponsible
publishers swelled the bulk of their editions with matter purloined from
less popular authors. The year 1564 saw the appearance of two second
parts. One in eight books, by the physician Alonzo Perez, only got so far
as disposing of Delio, and appears to exaggerate all the faults of the
original in compensation for the lack of its merits. The other, from the
pen of Gaspar Gil Polo, is in five books, and narrates, in a style
scarcely inferior to its model, the faithlessness and death of Delio, and
Sireno's marriage with Diana. Both alike promise continuations which never
appeared. A third part was, however, published so late as 1627, as the
work of Jeronimo de Texeda, but it is nothing more than a _rifacimento_
of Gil Polo's continuation, altered apparently with a view to its forming
a sequel to Perez' work. Furthermore, in 1599 there appeared a religions
parody by Fra Bartolome Ponce, and there are said to be no less than six
French, two English, and two German translations, not to mention a Latin
one of Gil Polo's portion at least.
Besides continuations, there are extant nearly a score of imitations of
varying interest and merit. In 1584 appeared the _Galatea_ of Cervantes,
imitated from Ribeiro and Montemayor; which in its turn is supposed to
have suggested the _Arcadia_, written a few years later at the instigation
of the Duke of Alva by Lope de Vega, and published in 1598. Each is more
or less autobiographic or else historical in outline: 'many of its
shepherds and shepherdesses are such in dress alone,' Cervantes confesses
of his romance, while Lope announces that 'the _Arcadia_ is a true
history.' Lastly may be mentioned the Portuguese _Primavera_ of Francisco
Rodrigues de Lobo, which appeared in three long parts between 1601 and
1614, and is pronounced by Ticknor to be 'among the best full-length
pastoral romances extant.'
All these works resemble one another in their general features. The
characteristics of the _genre_ as found in Spain, in spite of a real
feeling for rural life traceable in the national character, are the
elements it borrows from the older chivalric tradition, combined with an
adherence to the circumstances of actual existence even closer than was
the case in Italy. Sannazzaro was content to transfer certain personages
from real life into his imaginary Arcadia, while in the Spanish romances
the whole _mise en scene_ consists of the actual surroundings of the
author disguised but little under the veil of pastoralism. Thus the ideal
element, the desire to escape from the world, is no less absent from these
works than from the Latin eclogues of the renaissance, and the chivalric
pastoral in Spain advances far along the road towards the fashionable
pastoral of France. Not only are knightly adventures freely introduced,
and the devices of disguise and recognition employed, but the hint of
magic in Sannazzaro is developed and made to play a prominent part in the
tales, while the nymphs and shepherds display throughout an alarming
knowledge of literature, metaphysics, and theology. The absurdities of the
style were patent, and did not escape uncomplimentary notice from the
writers of the day, for both Cervantes and Lope de Vega, in spite of their
own excursions into this kind, pilloried the fashion in their more serious
and enduring works.
VIII
In France the interest of pastoralism, from our present point of view, is
summed up in the work of one man--Clement Marot. It is he who forms the
central figure on the stage of French poetry between the final collapse of
the medieval tradition and the ceasing of Villon's song earlier, and later
the full burst of the renaissance in the work of the Pleiade. While
belonging ostensibly to the literary circle of Margaret of Navarre, Marot
appears to have combined in his own person a strange number of conflicting
tendencies. His patroness followed the pastoral tradition in her imitation
of Sannazzaro's _Salices_ and her lament on the death of her brother
Francois I, and rehandled an already favourite theme in her _comedie_ of
human and divine love. Marot, on the other hand, while equally interested
in pastoral, betrayed in his verse little direct influence of the
Italians, and invariably impressed his own individuality upon his subject.
In his early work he continued the tradition of the _Romance of the Rose_;
later he voiced, somewhat crudely may be, the ideals of the renaissance.
By nature an easy-going _bon vivant_, his only real affection appears to
have been for the faithless mistress of his early years, whom a not very
probable tradition identifies with Diane de Poitiers. He had no higher
ambition than to retain unmolested a comfortable post at the court of
Francis. Yet he was destined by a strange irony of fate to pass his days
as a wanderer on the face of the earth, the homeless pilgrim of a cause he
no wise had at heart. He was accused by the Sorbonne, and ultimately
driven into the profession, of the heresy of Calvinism. Expelled from the
bosom of the church, he sought an uncongenial refuge among the apostles of
the new faith, only to be thrust forth from the city, for no more heinous
offence apparently than that playing back-gammon with the Prisoner of
Chillon. He died at Turin in 1544.
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.
So far, intentionally in the case of the drama, and if not intentionally
at least practically in that of the ballads, the appeal of the native
pastoral impulse--tradition it could hardly yet be called--was to an
audience little if at all removed from the actual condition of life
depicted. This ensured at least essential reality, for though in the one
case there may be idealization in a romantic and in the other in a
burlesque direction, either implies that familiarity with the actual world
which appears to underlie all vital art.[79] It was not long, however,
before the pastoral began to address itself to a more cultivated society,
and in so doing sacrificed that wholesome corrective of a genuinely
critical audience which is needed in the long run to keep any literary
form from degeneration. The impulse is still, however, found in all its
freshness and genuineness in such a poem as the following
fifteenth-century nativity carol, which, in its blending of piety and
humorous rusticity, is strongly reminiscent of the dramatic productions we
have just been reviewing:
The shepherd upon a hill he sat,
He had on him his tabard and his hat,
His tar-box, his pipe, and his flagat,
His name was called Jolly, Jolly Wat!
For he was a good herds-boy,
Ut hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.
Can I not sing but hoy.
* * * * *
The shepherd on a hill he stood,
Round about him his sheep they yode,
He put his hand under his hood,
He saw a star as red as blood.
Ut hoy! &c.
* * * * *
Now must I go there Christ was born,
Farewell! I come again to-morn,
Dog, keep well my sheep fro the corn!
And warn well Warroke when I blow my horn!
Ut hoy! &c.[80]
So, again, in the delightful poem that has won for Robert Henryson the
title of the first English pastoralist the warm blood of natural feeling
yet runs full. _Robene and Makyne_ stands on the threshold of the
sixteenth century, a modest and pastoral counterpart of the _Nut-Brown
Maid_, as evidence that there were poets of purely native inspiration
capable of writing verses every whit as perfect in form as anything
produced by the Italianizers of the next generation, and commonly far more
genuine in feeling. Even in the work of Surrey and Wyatt themselves we
find poems which, were it not for the general tradition to which they
belong, one would have no difficulty in regarding as a natural development
and conventionalization of the native tendency. Such is the _Harpelus'
Complaint_ of 'Tottel's Miscellany.' This was originally printed among
the poems of uncertain authors, but when it re-appeared in _England's
Helicon_, in 1600, it was subscribed with Surrey's name. The ascription
does not carry with it much authority, but is in no way inherently
improbable.[81] The opening stanzas may be quoted as conveying a fair idea
of the whole, which sustains its character of sprightly elegance for over
a hundred lines, ending with the luckless Harpelus' epitaph:
Phylida was a fayer mayde,
And fresh as any flowre:
Whom Harpalus the herdman prayed
To be his paramour.
Harpalus and eke Corin
Were herdmen both yfere:
And Phillida could twist and spin
And therto sing full clere.
But Phillida was all to coy
For Harpelus to winne.
For Corin was her onely joye,
Who forst her not a pynne.[82]
The relation of the early Italianizers to pastoral is rather strange.
Pastoral names, imagery and conventions are freely scattered throughout
their works, yet with the exception of the above there is scarcely a poem
to which the term pastoral can be properly applied. They borrowed from
their models a kind of pastoral diction merely, not their partiality for
the form: 'shepherd' is with them merely another word for lover or poet,
while almost any act of such may be described as 'folding his sheep' or
the like. Allegory has reduced itself to a few stock phrases. In this
fashion Surrey complains to his fair Geraldine, and a whole company of
unknown lovers celebrate the cruelty and beauty of their ladies. It is
rarely that we catch a note of fresher reminiscence or more spontaneous
song as in Wyatt's:
Ah, Robin!
Joly Robin!
Tell me how thy leman doth!
Happily the seed of Phillida's coyness bore fruit, and the amorous
pastoral ballad or picture, a true _idyllion_, became a recognized type in
English verse. It certainly owed something to foreign pastoral models,
and, like the bulk of Elizabethan lyrics, a good deal to Italian poetry in
general; but in its freshness and variety, as in its tendency to narrative
form, it asserts its independence of any rigid tradition, and justifies us
in regarding it as an outcome of that native impulse which we have already
noticed. Such a poem is Nicholas Breton's ever charming _Phyllida and
Corydon_, printed above his signature in _England's Helicon_.[83] Although
we are thereby anticipating, it may be quoted as a representative specimen
of its kind:
In the merry month of May,
In a morn by break of day,
Forth I walk'd by a wood-side,
When as May was in his pride:
There I spied all alone,
Phyllida and Corydone.
Much ado there was, God wot!
He would love and she would not.
She said, never man was true;
He said, none was false to you.
He said, he had loved her long;
She said, Love should have no wrong.
Corydon would kiss her then;
She said, maids must kiss no men,
Till they did for good and all;
Then she made the shepherd call
All the heavens to witness truth
Never loved a truer youth.
Thus with many a pretty oath,
Yea and nay, and faith and troth,
Such as silly shepherds use
When they will not Love abuse,
Love which had been long deluded
Was with kisses sweet concluded;
And Phyllida, with garlands gay,
Was made the lady of the May.
We must now turn to the beginnings of regular pastoral tradition in this
country, springing up under direct foreign influence and in conscious and
avowed imitation of specific foreign models. Passing over the Latin
eclogues of Buchanan and John Barclay, as belonging properly to the sphere
of humanistic rather than of English letters, we come to the pretty
thoroughly Latinized pastorals of Alexander Barclay and Barnabe Googe.
Their preoccupation with the humanistic poets is, in Barclay's case at any
rate, no less dominant a factor than in that of the regular translators,
from whom it is neither very easy nor clearly desirable to distinguish
them. Of the professed translators themselves it may be well to say a few
words in this place and allow them at once to resume their veil of
well-deserved oblivion. Their influence may be taken as non-existent, and
their only interest lies in the indication they afford of the trend of
literary fashion. The earliest was George Turberville, who in 1567
translated the first nine of Mantuan's eclogues into English fourteeners.
The verse is fairly creditable, but the exaggeration of style,
endeavouring by sheer brutality of phrase to force the moral judgement it
lacks the art of more subtly stimulating, produces neither a very pleasing
nor a very edifying effect. This translation went through three editions
before the end of the century. The whole ten eclogues did not find a
translator till 1656, when Thomas Harvey published a version in
decasyllabic couplets. The next poet to appear in English dress was
Theocritus, of whose works 'Six Idillia, that is, Six Small, or Petty,
Poems, or Aeglogues,' were translated by an anonymous hand and dedicated
to E. D.--probably or possibly Sir Edward Dyer--in 1588. As before, the
verse, mostly fourteeners, is far from bad, but the selection is not very
much to our purpose. Three of the pieces, a singing match, a love
complaint, and one of the Galatea poems, are more or less pastoral; but
the rest--among which is the dainty conceit of Venus and the boar well
rendered in a three-footed measure--do not belong to bucolic verse at all.
Incidental mention may be also made of a 'dialogue betwixt two sea nymphs,
Doris and Galatea, concerning Polyphemus, briefly translated out of
Lucian,' by Giles Fletcher the elder, in his _Licia_ of 1593; and a
version of 'The First Eidillion of Moschus describing Love,' in Barnabe
Barnes' _Parthenophil and Parthenophe_, which probably appeared the same
year. Lastly we have the Bucolics and Georgics of Vergil, translated in
1589 by Abraham Fleming into rimeless fourteeners.[84] Besides these there
are a few odd translations from Vergil among the experiments of the
classical versifiers. Webbe, in his _Discourse of English Poetry_ (1586),
gives hexametrical translations of the first and second eclogues, while
another version of the second in the same metre appears first in Fraunce's
_Lawyer's Logic_ (1588), and again with corrections in his _Ivychurch_
(1591).[85] Several further translations followed in the seventeenth
century.
But one step, and that a short one, removed from these writers is
Alexander Barclay, translater of Brandt's _Stultifera Navis_, priest and
monk successively of Ottery St. Mary, Ely, and Canterbury. It seems to
have been about 1514, when at the second of these houses, that he composed
at least the earlier and larger portion of his eclogues. They appeared at
various dates, the first complete edition being appended, long after the
writer's death, to the _Ship of Fools_ of 1570.[86] They are there headed
'Certayne Egloges of Alexander Barclay Priest, Whereof the first three
conteyne the misereyes of Courtiers and Courtes of all princes in
generall, Gathered out of a booke named in Latin, Miseriae Curialium,
compiled by Eneas Silvius[87] Poet and Oratour.' This sufficiently
indicates what we are to expect of Barclay as of the Latin eclogists of
the previous century. The interlocutors in these three poems are Coridon,
a young shepherd anxious to seek his fortune at court, and the old Cornix,
for whom the great world has long lost its glamour. The fourth eclogue,
'treating of the behavour of Rich men against Poets,' is similarly 'taken
out of' Mantuan. In it Barclay is supposed to have directed a not very
individual but pretty lusty satire against Skelton.[88] He also
introduces, as recited by one of the characters, 'The description of the
Towre of vertue and honour, into which the noble Howarde contended to
enter by worthy actes of chivalry,' a stanzaic composition in honour of
Sir Edward Howard, who died in 1513. The fifth eclogue, 'of the
disputation of Citizens and men of the Countrey,' or the _Cytezen and
Uplondyshman_, as it was originally styled, again presents us with a
familiar theme treated in the conventional manner, and closes the series.
These poems are written in what would be decasyllabic couplets were they
reducible to metre--in other words, in the barbarous caesural jangle in
which many poets of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries
imagined that they reproduced the music of Chaucer, and which, refashioned
however almost beyond recognition by a born metrist, we shall meet again
in the _Shepherd's Calender_. The following lines from the fifth eclogue
may serve to illustrate Barclay's style:
I shall not deny our payne and servitude,
I knowe that plowmen for the most part be rude,
Nowe shall I tell thee high matters true and olde,
Which curteous Candidus unto me once tolde,
Nought shall I forge nor of no leasing bable,
This is true history and no surmised fable.
It is in justice due to Barclay to say that the fact of his composing this
eclogue in the vernacular should possibly be counted to him as an original
step. The step had, indeed, been taken in Italy before he was born, but of
this he may, in spite of his travels, have been ignorant. Such credit as
attaches to the innovation should be allowed him.
A somewhat more independent writer is Barnabe Googe--writer, indeed, as
original, may be, as the lesser Latin pastoralists of the renaissance. The
fact of his altering the conventional forms to fit the mood of a sturdy
protestantism, of a protestantism still bitter from the Marian
persecutions, is scarcely to be regarded so much as evidence of his
invention as of the stability of literary tradition under the varying
forms imposed by external circumstances. The collection of his poems,
'imprinted at London' in 1563,[89] includes eight eclogues written in
fourteeners, the majority of which may fairly be said to represent Mantuan
adjusted to the conditions of contemporary life in reformation England.
Others show the influence of the author's visit to Spain in 1561-3. The
best that can be said for the verse and style is that they pursue their
'middle flight' on the whole modestly, and that the diction is at times
not without a touch of simple dignity. There are, moreover, moments of
genuine feeling when the author recalls the fires of Smithfield, and of
generous if naive appreciation when he speaks of his predecessors in
English song. A brief summary of contents will give some idea of the
nature of these poems. The first recounts the pains of love; in the second
Dametas rails on the blind boy and ends his song by dying. The third
treats of the vices of the city, not the least of them being religious
persecution. In the next Melibeus relates how Dametas, having as we now
learn killed himself for love, appeared to him amid hell-fire. Eclogue V
contains the pitiful tale of Faustus who courted Claudia through the
agency of Valerius. Claudia unfortunately fell in love with the messenger,
and finding him faithful to his master slew herself. This is imitated, in
part closely, from the tale of the shepherdess Felismena in the second
book of Montemayor's _Diana_, the identical story upon which Shakespeare
is supposed ultimately to have founded his _Two Gentlemen of Verona_,
though it is difficult at first sight to trace much resemblance between
the play and Googe's poem. In the sixth eclogue Faustus--the Don Felix of
the Spanish and the Proteus of Shakespeare--himself appears, for no better
reason it would seem than to give his interlocutor an opportunity of
enlarging on the delights of country life and introducing the remarks on
fowling borrowed from Sannazzaro by way of Garcilaso's second eclogue. The
next is a discussion somewhat after the manner of the _Nut-Brown Maid_,
again paraphrased from the _Diana_ (Book I); while the eighth, lastly, is
a homily on the superiority of Christianity over Roman polytheism, in
which under obsolete forms the author no doubt intended an allusion to
contemporary controversies. Thus it will be seen that Googe follows Latin
and Spanish traditions almost exclusively: the only point in which it is
possible to see any native inspiration is in his partiality for some sort
of narrative ballad motive as the subject of his poems.
So far the literary quality to be registered has not been high among those
owing allegiance to the regular pastoral tradition. The next step to be
taken is a long one. The pastoral writings of Spenser not only themselves
belong to a very different order of work, but likewise brings us face to
face with literary problems of a most complex and interesting kind.
II
In the _Shepherd's Calender_ we have the one pastoral composition in
English literature which can boast first-rate historical importance. There
are not a few later productions in the kind which may be reasonably held
to surpass it in poetic merit, but all alike sink into insignificance by
the side of Spenser's eclogues when the influence they exercised on the
history of English verse is taken into account. The present is not of
course the place to discuss this wider influence of Spenser's work: it is
with its relation to pastoral tradition and its influence upon subsequent
pastoral work that we are immediately concerned. This is an aspect of the
_Shepherd's Calender_ to which literary historians have naturally devoted
less attention. These two reasons--namely, the intrinsic importance of the
work and the neglect of its pastoral bearing--must excuse a somewhat
lengthy treatment of a theme that may possibly be regarded as already
sufficiently familiar.
The _Shepherd's Calender_[90], which first appeared in 1579, was published
without author's name, but with an envoy signed 'Immerito.' It was
dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, and contained a commentary by one E. K.,
who also signed an epistle to Master Gabriel Harvey, fellow of Pembroke
College, Cambridge. 'Immerito' was a name used by Spenser in his familiar
correspondence with Harvey, and can in any case have presented no mystery
to his Cambridge friends. Among these must clearly be reckoned the
commentator E. K., who may be identified with one Edward Kirke with all
but absolute certainty.[91] Within certain well defined limits we may also
accept E. K. as a competent exponent of his friend's work, and his
identity, together with that of Rosalind and Menalcas, being matters of
but indirect literary interest, may be left to Spenser's editors and
biographers to fight over. It will be sufficient to add in this place that
however 'literary' may have been Spenser's attachment to Rosalind there is
no reason to suppose that she was not a real person, while however little
response his advances may have met with there _is_ reason to suppose that
his sorrow at their rejection was not wholly conventional.
Spenser's design in turning his attention to the pastoral form would not
seem hard to apprehend. Less readily may we suppose that any deep
philosophical impulse directed his mind towards certain modes of
expression, than that in an age of catholic experiment he turned from the
penning of impossible iambic trimeters, 'minding,' as E. K. directly
informs us, 'to furnish our tongue with this kind, wherein it faulteth.'
He was qualified for the task by a wide knowledge of previous pastoral
writers from Theocritus and Bion down to Marot, and deliberately ranged
himself in line with the previous poets of the regular pastoral
tradition. Yet we find side by side in his work two distinct and
apparently antagonistic though equally conscious tendencies; the one
towards authority, leading him to borrow motives freely and even to resort
to direct paraphrase; the other towards individuality, nationality,
freedom, informing his general scheme and regulating the language of his
imaginary swains. It is this double nature of his pastoral work that
justifies us as regarding him, in spite of his alleged orthodoxy, as in
reality the first of a series of English writers who combined the
traditions of regular pastoral with the wayward graces of native
inspiration. It is true that in Spenser the natural pastoral impulse has
lost the spontaneity of the earlier examples, and has passed into the
realm of conscious and deliberate art; but it is none the less there,
modifying the conventional form. The individual debts owed by Spenser to
earlier writers have been collected with admirable learning and industry
by scholars such as Kluge and Reissert[92], but the investigation of his
originality presents at once a more interesting and more important field
of inquiry. So, indeed, Spenser himself appears to have thought, for the
only direct acknowledgement he makes in the work is to Chaucer, although,
as a writer to whom the humours of criticism are ever present has
remarked, 'it might almost seem that Spenser borrowed from Chaucer nothing
but his sly way of acknowledging indebtedness chiefly where it was not
due.'
The chief point of originality in the _Calender_ is the attempt at linking
the separate eclogues into a connected series. We have already seen how
with Googe the same characters recur in a sort of shadowy story; but what
was in his case vague and almost unintentional becomes with Spenser a
central artistic motive of the piece. The eclogues are arranged with no
small skill and care on somewhat of an architectural design, or perhaps we
should rather say with somewhat of the symmetry of a geometrical pattern.
This will best be seen in a brief analysis of the several eclogues,
'proportionable,' as the title is careful to inform us, 'to the twelve
monethes.'
In the 'January,' a monologue, Spenser, under the disguise of Colin
Clout, laments the ill-success of his love for Rosalind, who meets his
advances with scorn. He also alludes to his friendship with Harvey, who is
introduced throughout under the name of Hobbinol. The 'February' is a
disputation between youth and age in the persons of Cuddie and Thenot. It
introduces the fable of the oak and the briar, in which, since he ascribes
it to Tityrus, a name he transferred from Vergil to Chaucer, Spenser
presumably imagined he was imitating that poet, though it is really no
more in the style of Chaucer than is the roughly accentual measure in
which the eclogue is composed. For the 'March' Spenser recasts in English
surroundings Bion's fantasy of the fight with Cupid, without however
achieving any conspicuous success. In the April eclogue Hobbinol recites
to the admiring Thenot Colin's lay
Of fayre Eliza, Queene of shepheardes all,
Which once he made as by a spring he laye,
And tuned it unto the Waters fall.
This lay is in an intricate lyrical stanza which Spenser shows
considerable skill in handling. The following lines, for instance, already
show the musical modulation characteristic of much of his best work:
See, where she sits upon the grassie greene,
(O seemely sight!)
Yclad in Scarlot, like a mayden Queene,
And ermines white:
Upon her head a Cremosin coronet,
With Damaske roses and Daffadillies set:
Bay leaves betweene,
And primroses greene,
Embellish the sweete Violet.
In the 'May' we return to the four-beat accentual measure, this time
applied to a discussion by the herdsmen Palinode and Piers of the
lawfulness of Sunday sports and the corruption of the clergy. Here we have
a common theme treated from an individual point of view. The eclogue is
interesting as showing that the author, whose opinions are placed in the
mouth of the precise Piers; belonged to what Ben Jonson later styled 'the
sourer sort of shepherds.' A fable is again introduced which is of a
pronounced Aesopic cast. In the 'June' we return to the love-motive of
Rosalind, which, though alluded to in the April eclogue, has played no
prominent part since January. It is a dialogue between Colin and Hobbinol,
in which the former recounts his final defeat and the winning of Rosalind
by Menalcas. This eclogue contains Spenser's chief tribute to Chaucer:
The God of shepheards, Tityrus, is dead,
Who taught me homely, as I can, to make;
He, whilst he lived, was the soveraigne head
Of shepheards all that bene with love ytake:
Well couth he wayle his Woes, and lightly slake
The flames which love within his heart had bredd,
And tell us mery tales to keepe us wake
The while our sheepe about us safely fedde.
The July eclogue again leads us into the realm of ecclesiastical politics.
It is a disputation between upland and lowland shepherds, the descendant
therefore of Mantuan and Barclay, though the use of 'high places' as
typifying prelatical pride appears to be original. The confusion of things
Christian and things pagan, of classical mythology with homely English
scenery, nowhere reaches a more extravagant pitch than here. Morrell, the
advocate of the old religion, defends the hills with the ingeniously
wrong-headed argument:
And wonned not the great God Pan
Upon mount Olivet,
Feeding the blessed flocke of Dan,
Which dyd himselfe beget?
or else, gazing over the Kentish downs, he announces that
Here han the holy Faunes recourse,
And Sylvanes haunten rathe;
Here has the salt Medway his source,
Wherein the Nymphes doe bathe.
In the 'August' Spenser again handles a familiar theme with more or less
attempt at novelty. Willie and Peregot meeting on the green lay wagers in
orthodox fashion, and, appointing Cuddie judge, begin their singing
match. The 'roundel' that follows, a song inserted in the midst of
decasyllabic stanzas, is composed of alternate lines sung by the two
competitors. The verse is of the homeliest; indeed it is only a rollicking
indifference to its own inanity that saves it from sheer puerility and
gives it a careless and as it were impromptu charm of its own. Even in an
age of experiment it must have needed some self-confidence to write the
dialect of the _Calender_; it must have required nothing less than
assurance to put forth such verses as the following:
It fell upon a holy eve,
Hey, ho, hollidaye!
When holy fathers wont to shrieve;
Now gynneth this roundelay.
Sitting upon a hill so hye,
Hey, ho, the high hyll!
The while my flocke did feede thereby;
The while the shepheard selfe did spill.
I saw the bouncing Bellibone,
Hey, ho, Bonibell!
Tripping over the dale alone,
She can trippe it very well.
Many a reader of the anonymous quarto of 1579 must have joined in Cuddie's
exclamation:
Sicker, sike a roundel never heard I none!
Sidney, we know, was not altogether pleased with the homeliness of the
verses dedicated to him; and there must have been not a few among
Spenser's academic friends to feel a certain incongruity between the
polished tradition of the Theocritean singing match and the present poem.
Moreover, as if to force the incongruity upon the notice of the least
sensitive of his readers, Spenser followed up the ballad with a poem which
is not only practically free from obsolete or dialectal phrasing, but
which is composed in the wearisomely pedantic _sestina_ form. This song is
attributed to Colin, whose love for Rosalind is again mentioned.
Passing to the 'September' we find an eclogue of the 'wise shepherd' type.
It is composed in the rough accentual metre, and opens with a couplet
which roused the ire of Dr. Johnson:
Diggon Davie! I bidde her god day;
Or Diggon her is, or I missaye.
Diggon is a shepherd, who, in hope of gain, drove his flock into a far
country, and coming home the poorer, relates to Hobbinol the evil ways of
foreign shepherds among whom,
playnely to speake of shepheards most what,
Badde is the best.
The 'October' eclogue belongs to the stanzaic group, and consists of a
dialogue on the subject of poetry between the shepherds Piers and Cuddie.
It is one of the most imaginative of the series, and in it Spenser has
refashioned time-honoured themes with more conspicuous taste than
elsewhere. The old complaint for the neglect of poetry acquires new life
through the dramatic contrast of the two characters in which opposite
sides of the poetic temperament are revealed. In Cuddie we have a poet for
whom the prize is more than the praise[93], whose inspiration is cramped
because of the indifference of a worldly court and society. Things were
not always so--
But ah! Mecaenas is yclad in claye,
And great Augustus long ygoe is dead,
And all the worthies liggen wrapt in leade,
That matter made for Poets on to play.
And in the same strain he laments over what might have been his song:
Thou kenst not, Percie, howe the ryme should rage,
O! if my temples were distaind with wine,
And girt with girlonds of wild Yvie twine,
How I could reare the Muse on stately stage,
And teache her tread aloft in buskin fine,
With queint Bellona in her equipage!
Reading these words to-day they may well seem to us the charter of the new
age of England's song; and the effect is rendered all the more striking
by the rhythm of the last line with its prophecy of Marlowe and mighty
music to come. Piers, on the other hand, though with less poetic rage, is
a truer idealist, and approaches the high things of poetry more
reverentially than his Bacchic comrade. When Cuddie, acknowledging his own
unworthiness, adds:
For Colin fittes such famous flight to scanne;
He, were he not with love so ill bedight,
Would mount as high, and sing as soote as Swanne;
Piers breaks out in words fitting the poet of the _Hymnes_:
Ah, fon! for love doth teach him climbe so hie,
And lyftes him up out of the loathsome myre.
And throughout this high discourse the homely names of Piers and Cuddie
seem somehow more appropriate, or at least touch us more nearly, than
Mantuan's Sylvanus and Candidus, as if, in spite of all Spenser owes to
foreign models, he were yet conscious of a latent power of simple native
inspiration, capable, when once fully awakened, of standing up naked and
unshamed in the presence of Italy and Greece. One might well question
whether there is not more of the true spirit of prophecy in this poem of
Spenser's than ever went to the composition of Vergil's _Pollio_.
The 'November,' like the 'April,' consists for the most part of a lay
composed in an elaborate stanza--there a panegyric, here an elegy. This
time it is sung by Colin himself, and we again find reference to the
Rosalind motive. The subject of the threnody is a nymph of the name of
Dido, whose identity can only be vaguely conjectured. The chief point of
external form in which Spenser has departed from his model, namely Marot's
dirge for Loyse de Savoye, and from other pastoral elegies, is in the use
of a different form of verse in the actual lament from that in which the
setting of the poem is composed. Otherwise he has followed tradition none
the less closely for having infused the conventional form with a poetry of
his own. The change by which the lament passes into the song of rejoicing
is traditional--and though borrowed by Spenser from Marot, is as old as
Vergil. Both Browne and Milton later made use of the same device. Spenser
writes:
Why wayle we then? why weary we the Gods with playnts,
As if some evill were to her betight?
She raignes a goddesse now emong the saintes,
That whilome was the saynt of shepheards light,
And is enstalled nowe in heavens hight.
I see thee, blessed soule, I see
Walke in Elisian fieldes so free.
O happy herse!
Might I once come to thee, (O that I might!)
O joyfull verse!
Although some critics, looking too exclusively to the poetic merit of the
_Calender_ as the cause of its importance, have perhaps overestimated the
beauty of this and the April lyrics, the skill with which the intricate
stanzas are handled must be apparent to any careful reader. As the
_Calender_ in poetry generally, so even more decidedly in their own
department, do these songs mark a distinct advance in formal evolution.
Just as they were themselves foreshadowed in the recurrent melody of
Wyatt's farewell to his lute--
My lute, awake! perform the last
Labour that thou and I shall waste,
And end that I have now begun;
For when this song is sung and past,
My lute, be still, for I have done--
so they in their turn heralded the full strophic sonority of the
_Epithalamium_.
Lastly, in the 'December' we have the counterpart of the January eclogue,
a monologue in which Colin laments his wasted life and joyless, for
Winter is come, that blowes the balefull breath,
And after Winter commeth timely death.
Adieu, delightes, that lulled me asleepe;
Adieu, my deare, whose love I bought so deare;
Adieu, my little Lambes and loved sheepe;
Adieu, ye Woodes, that oft my witnesse were:
Adieu, good Hobbinoll, that was so true,
Tell Rosalind, her Colin bids her adieu.[94]
It will be seen from the above analysis that the architectonic basis of
Spenser's design consists of the three Colin eclogues standing
respectively at the beginning, in the middle, and at the close of the
year. These are symmetrically arranged: the 'January' and 'December' are
both alike monologues and agree in the stanza used, while the 'June' is a
dialogue and likewise differs in metrical form. This latter is supported
as it were by two subsidiary eclogues, those of April and August, in both
of which another shepherd sings one of Colin's lays and refers
incidentally to his passion for Rosalind. It is upon this framework that
are woven the various moral, polemical, and idyllic themes which Spenser
introduces. The attempt at uniting a series of poems into a single fabric
is Spenser's chief contribution to the formal side of pastoral
composition. The method by which he sought to correlate the various parts
so as to produce the singleness of impression necessary to a work of art,
and the measure of success which he achieved, though they belong more
strictly to the general history of poetry, must also detain us for a
moment. The chief and most obvious device is that suggested by the
title--_The Shepherd's Calender_--'Conteyning twelve Aeglogues
proportionable to the twelve monethes.' This might, indeed, have been no
more than a fanciful name for any series of twelve poems;[95] with Spenser
it indicates a conscious principle of artistic construction. It suggests,
what is moreover apparent from the eclogues themselves, that the author
intended to represent the spring and fall of the year as typical of the
life of man. The moods of the various poems were to be made to correspond
with the seasons represented; or, conversely, outward nature in its cycle
through the year was to reflect and thereby unify the emotions, thoughts,
and passions of the shepherds. This was a perfectly legitimate artistic
device, and one based on a fundamental principle of our nature, since the
appearance of objective phenomena is ever largely modified and coloured by
subjective feeling. Nor can it reasonably be objected against the device
that in the hands of inferior craftsmen it degenerates but too readily
into the absurdities of the 'pathetic fallacy,' or that Spenser himself is
not wholly guiltless of the charge.
Winter is come, that blowes the balefull breath,
And after Winter commeth timely death.
These lines bear witness to Spenser's intention. But the conceit is not
fully or consistently carried out. In several of the eclogues not only
does the subject in no way reflect the mood of the season--the very nature
of the theme at times made this impossible--but the time of year is not so
much as mentioned. This is more especially the case in the summer months;
there is no joy of the 'hygh seysoun,' and when it is mentioned it is
rather by way of contrast than of sympathy. Thus in June Colin mourns for
other days:
Tho couth I sing of love, and tune my pype
Unto my plaintive pleas in verses made:
Tho would I seeke for Queene-apples unrype,
To give my Rosalind; and in Sommer shade
Dight gaudy Girlonds was my common trade,
To crowne her golden locks: but yeeres more rype,
And losse of her, whose love as lyfe I wayd,
Those weary wanton toyes away dyd wype.
In the same eclogue we may trace a deliberate contrast between various
descriptive passages. Thus Hobbinol feels the magie of the summer woods--
Colin, to heare thy rymes and roundelayes,
Which thou were wont on wastfull hylls to singe,
I more delight then larke in Sommer dayes:
Whose Echo made the neyghbour groves to ring,
And taught the byrds, which in the lower spring
Did shroude in shady leaves from sonny rayes,
Frame to thy songe their chereful cheriping,
Or hold theyr peace, for shame of thy swete layes.
Closely following upon this stanza we have Colin's lament, 'The God of
shepheards, Tityrus, is dead,' containing the lines:
But, if on me some little drops would flowe
Of that the spring was in his learned hedde,
I soone would learne these woods to wayle my woe,
And teache the trees their trickling teares to shedde.
We have here a specifie inversion of the 'pathetic fallacy.' The moods of
nature are no longer represented as varying in sympathy with the passions
of man, but are deliberately used to heighten an effect by contrast. Even
this inverted correspondence, however, is for the most part lacking in the
subsequent eclogues, and it must be admitted that in so far as Spenser
depended on a cyclic correlation for the unifying of his design, he
achieved at best but partial effect. Another means by which he sought,
consciously or unconsciously, to produce unity of impression was by
consistently pitching his song in the minor key. This accounts for the
inverted correspondence just noted, and for the fact that even the
polemics have an undercurrent of regret in them. In this case the poet has
undoubtedly succeeded in carrying out the prevailing mood of the central
motive--the Rosalind drama--in the subsidiary scenes. Or should we not
rather say that he has extracted the general mood of the whole
composition, and infused it, in a kind of typical form, into the three
connected poems placed at critical points of the complex structure? The
unity, however, thus aimed at, and achieved, is very different from the
cyclic or architectonic unity described above, and of a much less definite
character.
It remains to say a few words concerning the language of the _Calender_
and the rough accentual metre in which parts of it are composed, since
both have a particular bearing upon Spenser's attitude towards pastoral in
general.
Ben Jonson, in one of those utterances which have won for him the
reputation of churlishness, but which are often marked by acute critical
sense, asserted that Spenser 'in affecting the Ancients writ no
Language.'[96] The remark applies first and foremost, of course, to the
_Calender_, and opens up the whole question of archaism and provincialism
in literature. This is far too wide a question to receive adequate
treatment here, and yet it appears forced upon us by the nature of the
case. For Spenser's archaism, in his pastoral work at least, is no
unmeaning affectation as Jonson implies. He perceived that the language of
Chaucer bore a closer resemblance to actual rustic speech than did the
literary language of his own day, and he adopted it for his imaginary
shepherds as a fitting substitute for the actual folk-tongue with which he
had grown familiar, whether in the form of rugged Lancashire or
full-mouthed Kentish. And the homely dialect does undoubtedly naturalize
the characters of his eclogues, and disguise the time-honoured platitudes
that they repeat from their learned predecessors. With our wider
appreciation of literary effect, and our more historical and less
authoritative manner of judging works of art, we can no longer endorse
Sidney's famous criticism:[97] 'That same framing of his stile, to an old
rustick language, I dare not alowe, sith neyther Theocritus in Greeke,
Virgill in Latine, nor Sanazar in Italian, did affect it.'[98] If a writer
finds an effective and picturesque word in an old author or in a homely
dialect it is but pedantry that opposes its use, and it matters little
moreover from what quarter of the land it may hail, as Stevenson knew when
he claimed the right of mingling Ayrshire with his Lothian verse. Even
such archaisms as 'deemen' and 'thinken,' such colloquialisms as the
pronominal possessive, need not be too severely criticized. What goes far
towards justifying Jonson's acrimony is the wanton confusion of different
dialectal forms; the indiscriminate use for the mere sake of archaism of
such variants as 'gate' beside the usual 'goat,' of 'sike' and 'sich'
beside 'such'; the coining of words like 'stanck,' apparently from the
Italian _stanco_; and lastly, the introduction of forms which owe their
origin to mere etymological ignorance, for instance, 'yede' as an
infinitive, 'behight' in the same sense as the simple verb, 'betight,'
'gride,' and many others--all of which do not tend to produce the homely
effect of mother English, but reek of all that is pedantic and
unnatural.[99]
The influence of Chaucer was not confined to the language: from him
Spenser borrowed the metre of a considerable portion of the _Calender_. It
may at first sight appear strange to attribute to imitation of Chaucer's
smooth, carefully ordered verse the rather rugged measure of, say, the
February eclogue, but a little consideration will, I fancy, leave no doubt
upon the subject. This measure is roughly reducible to four beats with a
varying number of syllables in the _theses_, being thus purely accentual
as distinguished from the more strictly syllabic measures of Chaucer
himself on the one hand and the English Petrarchists on the other. Take
the following example:
The soveraigne of seas he blames in vaine,
That, once sea-beate, will to sea againe:
So loytring live you little heardgroomes,
Keeping you beastes in the budded broomes:
And, when the shining sunne laugheth once,
You deemen the Spring is come attonce;
Tho gynne you, fond flyes! the cold to scorne,
And, crowing in pypes made of greene corn,
You thinken to be Lords of the yeare;
But eft, when ye count you freed from feare,
Cornes the breme Winter with chamfred browes,
Full of wrinckles and frostie furrowes,
Drerily shooting his stormy darte,
Which cruddles the blood and pricks the harte:
Then is your carelesse corage accoied,
Your careful heards with cold bene annoied:
Then paye you the price of your surquedrie,
With weeping, and wailing, and misery.[100]
The syllabic value of the final _e_, already weakening in the London of
Chaucer's later days, was more or less of an archaism even with his most
immediate followers, none of whom use it with his unvarying correctness,
and it soon became literally a dead letter. The change was a momentous
one for English prosody, and none of the fifteenth-century writers
possessed sufficient poetic genius to adapt their verse to the altered
conditions of the language. They lived from hand to mouth, as it were,
without arriving at any systematic tradition. Thus it was that at the
beginning of the sixteenth century Hawes could write such verse as:
Of dame Astronomy I dyd take my lycence
For to travayle to the toure of Chyvalry;
For al my minde, wyth percyng influence,
Was sette upon the most fayre lady
La Bell Pucell, so muche ententyfly,
That every daye I dyd thinke fyftene,
Tyl I agayne had her swete person sene.[101]
It is this prosody, dependent usually upon a strong caesural pause to
differentiate it from prose, which may account for the harshness of some
of Wyatt's verse, and which rendered possible the barbarous metre of
Barclay. It was obviously impossible for a poet with an ear like Spenser
to accept such a metrical scheme as this; but his own study of Chaucer
produced a somewhat strange result. The one point which the late
Chaucerians preserved of their master's metric was the five-stress
character of his decasyllabic line; but in Spenser's day all memory of the
syllabic _e_ had long since vanished, and the only rhythm to be extracted
from Chaucer's verse was of a four-stress type. Professor Herford quotes a
passage from the Prologue of the _Canterbury Tales_ as it appears in
Thynne's second edition (1542), which Spenser would inevitably have read
as follows:
When zephirus eke wyth hys sote breth
Enspyred hath every holte and heth,
The tendre croppes, and the yong sonne
Hath in the Ram halfe hys course yronne,
And smale foules maken melodye
That slepen al nyght with open eye, &c.
This certainly bears on the face of it a close resemblance to Spenser's
measure. There are, moreover, occasional difficulties in this method of
scansion, some lines refusing to accommodate themselves to the Procrustean
methods of sixteenth-century editors, and exactly similar anomalies are to
be found in Spenser. Such, for instance, are the lines in the May eclogue:
Tho opened he the dore, and in came
The false Foxe, as he were starke lame.
Now these lines may be written in strict Chaucerian English thus:
Tho opened he the dore, and inne came
The false fox, as he were starke lame,
and they at once become perfectly metrical. Under these circumstances
there can, I think, be little doubt as to the literary parentage of
Spenser's accentual measure.[102]
Like the archaic dialect, this homely measure tends to bring Spenser's
shepherds closer to their actual English brethren. And hereby, it should
be frankly acknowledged, the incongruity of the speakers and their
discourse is emphasized and increased. That discourse, it is true, runs on
pastoral themes, but the disguise and allegory have worn thin with
centuries of use. We can no longer separate the words from the allusions,
and consequently we can no longer accept the speakers in their
unsophisticated shepherd's role. Yet it was precisely the desire to give
reality to these transparent phantasms that led Spenser to endow them with
a rustic speech. Whether he failed or succeeded the paradox of the form
remains about equal.[103]
The importance of the _Shepherd's Calender_ was early recognized, not
only by friendly critics, but by the general public likewise, and six
editions were called for in less than twenty years. Not long after its
appearance John Dove, a Christ Church man, who appears to have been
ignorant of the authorship, turned the whole into Latin verse, dedicating
the manuscript to the Dean.[104] Another Latin version is found in
manuscript in the British Museum copy of the edition of 1597, and after
undergoing careful revision finally appeared in print in 1653. This was
the work of one Bathurst, a fellow of Spenser's own college of Pembroke at
Cambridge.[105]
The _Shepherd's Calender_ was Spenser's chief contribution to pastoral;
indeed it was by so much his most important contribution that it would
hardly be worth while examining the others did they not bear witness to a
certain change in his attitude towards the pastoral ideal.
The first of these later works is the isolated but monumental eclogue
entitled _Colin Clouts come Home again_, of which the dedication to
Raleigh is dated 1591, though it was not published till four years later.
This, perhaps the longest and most elaborate eclogue ever written,
describes how the Shepherd of the Ocean, that is Raleigh, induced Colin
Clout, who as before represents Spenser, to leave his rustic retreat in
the cooly shade
Of the greene alders by the Mallaes shore,
and try his fortune at the court of the great shepherdess Cynthia, and how
he ultimately returned to Ireland. The verse marks, as might be expected,
a considerable advance in smoothness and command of rhythm over the
non-lyrical portions of the _Calender_, and the dialect, too, is much less
harsh, being far advanced towards that peculiar poetic diction which
Spenser adopted in his more ambitions work. On the other hand, in spite of
a certain _allegrezza_ in the handling, and in spite of the Rosalind wound
being at least partially healed, the same minor key prevails as in the
earlier poems. In the spring of the great age of English song Spenser's
note is like the voice of autumn, not the fruitful autumn of cornfield and
orchard, but a premature barrenness of wet and fallen leaves--
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall.
Thus though time has purged the bitterness of his sorrow, the regret
remains; his early love is still the mistress of his thoughts, but years
have softened his reproaches, and he admits:
who with blame can justly her upbrayd,
For loving not; for who can love compell?--
a petard, it may be incidentally remarked, which, sprung within the bounds
of pastoral, is of power to pulverize in an instant the whole artificial
system of amatory ethics.
The most notable points in the poem are the loves of the rivers Bregog and
Mulla, the famous list of contemporary poets, and the presentation of the
seamy side of court life, recalling the more direct satire of the probably
contemporary _Mother Hubberd's Tale_. The first of these belongs to the
class of Ovidian myths already noticed in such works as Lorenzo's _Ambra_.
The subject, however, is treated in a more subtly allegorical manner than
by Ovid's direct imitators, and this mode of presentment likewise
characterizes Spenser's tale of Molanna in the fragment on
Mutability.[106] Browne returned to a more crudely metamorphical tradition
in the loves of Walla and Tavy, while a similarly mythological
_Naturanschauung_ may be traced in Drayton's chorographical epic.
Of the miscellaneous _Astrophel_, edited and in part composed by Spenser,
which was appended to _Colin Clout_, and of the _Daphnaida_ published in
1596, though, like the former volume, containing a dedication dated 1591,
a passing mention must suffice. The former is chiefly remarkable as
illustrating the uniformly commonplace character of the verse called forth
by the death of one who, while he lived, was held the glory of Elizabethan
chivalry. It contains, beside other verse, pastoral elegies from the pens,
certainly of Spenser, and probably of the Countess of Pembroke, Matthew
Roydon, and Lodowick Bryskett. The last-named, or at any rate a
contributor with the same initiais, also supplied a 'Pastorall Aeglogue'
on the same theme. _Daphnaida_ is a long lament in pastoral form on the
death of Douglas Howard, daughter of the Earl of Northampton.
Of far greater importance for our present purpose is the pastoral
interlude in the quest of Sir Calidore, which occupies the last four
cantos of the sixth book of the _Faery Queen_.[107] Here is told how Sir
Calidore, the knight of courtesy, in his quest of the Blatant Beast came
among the shepherd-folk and fell in love with the fair Pastorella, reputed
daughter of old Meliboee; how he won her love in return through his valour
and courtesy; how while he was away hunting she was carried off by a band
of robbers; how he followed and rescued her; and finally, how she was
discovered to be the daughter of the lord of Belgard--at which point the
poem breaks off abruptly. The story has points of resemblance with the
Dorastus and Fawnia, or Florizel and Perdita, legend; but it also has
another and more important claim upon our attention. For as Shakespeare in
_As You Like It_, so Spenser in this episode has, as it were, passed
judgement upon the pastoral ideal as a whole. He is acutely sensitive to
the charm of that ideal and the seductions it offers to his hero--
Ne, certes, mote he greatly blamed be,
says the poet of the _Faery Queen_ recalling the days when he was plain
Colin Clout--but the
perfect pleasures, which do grow
Amongst poore hyndes, in hils, in woods, in dales,
are not allowed to afford more than a temporary solace to the knight; the
robbers break in upon the rustic quietude, rapine and murder succeed the
peaceful occupations of the shepherds, and Sir Calidore is driven once
again to resume his arduous quest. The same idea may be traced in the
knight's visit to the heaven-haunted hill where he meets Colin Clout. In
the
hundred naked maidens lilly white
All raunged in a ring and dauncing in delight
to the sound of Colin's bagpipe, and who, together with the Graces and
their sovereign lady, vanish at the knight's approach, it is surely not
fanciful to see the gracious shadows of the idyllic poet's vision trooping
reluctantly away at the call of a more lofty theme. With this sense of
regret at the vanishing of an ideal long cherished, but at last
deliberately abandoned for matters of deeper and more real import, we may
turn from the work of the most important figure in English pastoral poetry
to his less famous contemporaries.
III
Besides its wider influence on English verse, and the stimulus it gave to
pastoral composition as a whole, the _Shepherd's Calender_ called forth a
series of direct imitations. Of these the majority are but of accidental
and ephemeral interest and of inconspicuous merit; and it is probable that
Spenser himself lived to see the end of this over-direct school of
discipleship. Several examples appeared in Francis Davison's famous
miscellany known as the _Poetical Rhapsody_, the first edition of which,
though it only appeared in 1602, contained the gleanings of the entire
sixteenth century.[108] Of these imitations, four in number, the first,
the work of the editor himself, is a very poor production. It is a love
lament, and the insertion of a song in a complicated lyrical measure in a
plain stanzaic setting is evidently copied from the _Calender_. The other
three poems are ascribed, either in the _Rhapsody_ itself or in Davison's
manuscript list, to a certain A. W., who so far remains unidentified, if,
indeed, the letters conceal any individuality and do not merely stand for
'Anonymous Writer,' as has been sometimes thought. The three eclogues at
any rate bear evidence of coming from the same pen, and the following
lines show that the writer was no incompetent imitator, and at the same
time argue some genuine feeling:
Thou 'ginst as erst forget thy former state,
And range amid the busks thyself to feed:
Fair fall thee, little flock! both rathe and late;
Was never lover's sheep that well did speed.
Thou free, I bound; thou glad, I pine in pain;
I strive to die, and thou to live full fain.
The first of these poems is a monologue 'entitled Cuddy,' modelled on the
January eclogue. The second is a lament 'made long since upon the death of
Sir Philip Sidney,' in which the writer wonders at Colin's silence, and
which consequently must, at least, date from before the appearance of
_Astrophel_ in 1595, and is probably some years earlier. It is in the form
of a dialogue between two shepherds, one of whom sings Cuddy's lament in
lyrical stanzas, thus recalling Spenser's 'November.' These stanzas do not
reveal any great metrical gift. The last poem is a fragment 'concerning
old age,' which connects itself by its theme with the February eclogue,
though the form is stanzaic.[109] Again we find mention of Cuddy, a name
evidently assumed by the author, though whether he can be identified with
the Cuddie of the _Calender_ it is impossible to say. Whoever he was, he
shows more disposition than most of his fellow imitators to preserve
Spenser's archaisms.
But undoubtedly the greatest poet who was content to follow immediately
in Spenser's footsteps was Michael Drayton, who in 1593 published a volume
entitled 'Idea The Shepheards Garland, Fashioned in nine Eglogs. Rowlands
Sacrifice to the nine Muses.' This connexion between the number of the
eclogues and the muses is purely fanciful; Rowland is Drayton's pastoral
name, and Idea, which re-appeared as the title of the 1594 volume of
sonnets, is that of his poetic mistress.[110] It can hardly be said that
the verse of these poems attains any very high order of merit, but the
imitation of Spenser is evident throughout. In the first eclogue Rowland
bewails, in the midst of spring, 'the winter of his grief.' In this and
the corresponding monologue at the end he clearly follows Spenser's
arrangement and likewise adopts his minor key--
Fayre Philomel, night-musicke of the spring,
Sweetly recordes her tunefull harmony,
And with deepe sobbes, and dolefull sorrowing,
Before fayre Cinthya actes her Tragedy.
In Eclogue II a 'wise' shepherd warns a youth against love, and draws a
somewhat gruesome picture of human fate--
And when the bell is readie to be tol'd
To call the wormes to thine Anatomie,
Remember then, my boy, what once I said to thee!
Even this, however, fails to shake the lover's faith in the gentle
passion, and his enthusiasm finds vent in an apostrophe borrowed from
Spenser:
Oh divine love, which so aloft canst raise,
And lift the minde out of this earthly mire.
The next eclogue, containing a panegyric on Elizabeth under the name of
Beta, is closely modelled on the 'April,' and abounds with such
reminiscences as the following:
Make her a goodly Chapilet of azur'd Colombine,
And wreath about her Coronet with sweetest Eglantine:
Bedeck our Beta all with Lillies,
And the dayntie Daffadillies,
With Roses damask, white, and red, and fairest flower delice,
With Cowslips of Jerusalem, and cloves of Paradice.
Here, however, Drayton shows himself more skilful in dealing with a
lyrical stanza than most of his fellow imitators. In the fourth eclogue
two shepherds sing a dirge made by Rowland on the death of Elphin, that is
Sidney. In the next Rowland himself sings the praises of Idea; and in the
sixth Perkin those of Pandora, doubtless the Countess of Pembroke. The
seventh is a singularly unentertaining dispute, in which typical
representatives of age and youth abuse one another by turns; the eighth is
a description of the golden age, a theme Spenser had omitted; and lastly,
in the ninth we return to the opening love-motive, this time, as in the
_Calender_, amid the frosts of winter.
These eclogues were reprinted in a different order in the 'Poems Lyric and
Pastoral' (_c._ 1606) with one additional poem there numbered the ninth.
This describes a rustic gathering of shepherds and nymphs, and contains
several songs. The verse exhibits no small advance on the earlier work,
and one song at least is in the author's daintiest manner. He seldom
surpassed the graceful conceit of the lines:
Through yonder vale as I did passe,
Descending from the hill,
I met a smerking bony lasse;
They call her Daffadill:
Whose presence as along she went,
The prety flowers did greet,
As though their heads they downward bent
With homage to her feete.
Spenser, in spite of the warning he addressed to his book--
Dare not to match thy pype with Tityrus his style,
Nor with the Pilgrim that the Ploughman playde awhyle--
could nevertheless assert in semi-burlesque rime:
It shall continewe till the worlds dissolution;
and his disciple is not to be outdone. Never was truer lover or sweeter
singer--
Oenon never upon Ida hill
So oft hath cald on Alexanders name,
As hath poore Rowland with an Angels quill
Erected trophies of Ideas fame:
Yet that false shepheard, Oenon, fled from thee;
I follow her that ever flies from me.
Thus Drayton endeavoured to follow in the footsteps of a greater than he,
and small success befell him in his uncongenial task. He knew little and
cared less about the moral and philosophical rags that clung yet about the
pastoral tradition. He sang, in his lighter vein at least, for the mere
pleasure that his song could afford to himself and others: the Spenserian
and traditional garb fits him ill. His golden age is rather amorous than
philosophical; he is more concerned that love should be free and true than
that the earth should yield her fruits unwounded of the plough; and even
so he hastens away from that colourless age to troll the delightful ballad
of Dowsabel. The inspiration for this he found, not in Spenser and his
learned predecessors, but in the popular romances, and in it we hear for
the first time the voice of the real Michael Drayton, the accredited bard
to the court of Faery. So again in the barren dispute of the seventh
eclogue, he turns aside from his theme as the shadow of the winged god
flits across his path--
That pretie Cupid, little god of love,
Whose imped winges with speckled plumes been dight,
Who striketh men below and Gods above,
Roving at randon with his feathered flight,
When lovely Venus sits and gives the ayme,
And smiles to see her little Bantlings game.
If these eclogues formed Drayton's only claim upon our attention as a
pastoral poet there would be no excuse for lingering over him. He left
other work, however, which, if but slightly pastoral in subject, is at
least thoroughly so in form and spirit. The _Muses Elizium_ did not appear
till 1630, and it is consequently not a little premature to speak of it in
this place. It is, however, so important as illustrating the freer and
more spontaneous vein traceable in many English pastoralists from Henryson
onwards, that it is worth while to place it for comparison side by side
with the more orthodox tradition as exemplified, in spite of his
originality, in the work of Spenser.
The _Muses Elizium_ is in truth the culmination of a long sequence of
pastoral work. Of this I have already discussed the beginnings when
dealing with the native pastoral impulse; and however much it was
influenced at a later date by foreign models it never submitted to the
yoke of orthodox tradition, and to the end retained much of its freshness.
The early anthologies are full of this sort of verse, the song-books are
full of it, and so are the romances and the plays. To this lyrical
tradition belong Breton's songs, of which one has already been quoted;
there was hardly a poet of note at the end of the sixteenth century who
did not contribute his quota. We find it once more, intermingling with a
certain formal strain, in Drayton's _Shepherds' Sirena_ containing the
delightful song, with its subtle interchange of dactylic and iambic
rhythms, so admirably characteristic of the author of the _Agincourt_
ballad:
Neare to the Silver Trent
Sirena dwelleth,
Shee to whom Nature lent
All that excelleth;
By which the Muses late
And the neate Graces,
Have for their greater state
Taken their places:
Twisting an Anadem
Wherewith to Crowne her,
As it belong'd to them
Most to renowne her.
On thy Bancke,
In a Rancke
Let thy Swanes sing her
And with their Musick
along let them bring her.
In this pervading impulse of pure and spontaneous pastoral the soul of
what is sweet and winning in things common and familiar as our household
fairies blends with the fresh glamour of early love and the dainty
delights of an ideal world, where despair is only less sweet than
fruition, and love only less divine than chastity, where, as Drayton
frankly tells us,
The winter here a Summer is,
No waste is made by time,
Nor doth the Autumne ever misse
The blossomes of the Prime;
The flower that July forth doth bring,
In Aprill here is seene,
The Primrose, that puts on the Spring,
In July decks each Greene,
a world, in short, in which the nymphs may strew the laureate hearse, not
only with all the flowers and fruits of earth, but with the Amaranth of
paradise and the stars of heaven if the fancy takes them. Of a spirit
compounded of these elements and of its quintessence are the 'Nymphals' of
the _Muses Elizium_. There are portions of the work, it is true, in which
the more vulgar strains of the conventional pastoral make themselves
heard, as in the satires of the fourth and tenth Nymphals; but for the
most part we are allowed to wander undisturbed among the woods and
pastures of an earthly paradise, and revel in the fairy laureate's most
imaginative work. There we meet Lirope, of whom
Some said a God did her beget,
But much deceiv'd were they,
Her Father was a Rivelet,
Her Mother was a Fay.
Her Lineaments so fine that were
She from the Fayrie tooke,
Her Beauties and Complection cleere
By nature from the Brooke.
There Naiis sings, roguishly enough, in the martial metre of _Agincourt_:
'Cloe, I scorne my Rime
Should observe feet or time,
Now I fall, then I clime,
What is't I dare not?'
'Give thy Invention wing,
And let her flert and fling,
Till downe the Rocks she ding,
For that I care not';
the song then breaking off into gamesome anapaests:
The gentle winds sally
Upon every Valley,
And many times dally
And wantonly sport,
About the fields tracing,
Each other in chasing,
And often imbracing,
In amorous sort.
There, again, we listen to the litany of the Muses, with the response:
Sweet Muse, perswade our Phoebus to inspire
Us for his Altars with his holiest fire,
And let his glorious, ever-shining Rayes
Give life and growth to our Elizian Bayes;
or else hear the fairy prothalamium, most irrepressible and inimitable of
bridal songs--
For our Tita is this day
Married to a noble Fay.
There, lastly, we behold the flutter of tender breasts half veiled when
Venus and her wayward archer are abroad, and listen as fair Lelipa reads
the decree:
To all th' Elizian Nimphish Nation,
Thus we make our Proclamation
Against Venus and her Sonne,
For the mischeefe they have done:
After the next last of May,
The fixt and peremptory day,
If she or Cupid shall be found
Upon our Elizian ground,
Our Edict mere Rogues shall make them,
And as such, who ere shall take them,
Them shall into prison put;
Cupids wings shall then be cut,
His Bow broken, and his Arrowes
Given to Boyes to shoot at Sparrowes;
And this Vagabond be sent,
Having had due punishment,
To mount Cytheron, which first fed him,
Where his wanton Mother bred him,
And there, out of her protection,
Dayly to receive correction.
Then her Pasport shall be made,
And to Cyprus Isle convayd,
And at Paphos, in her Shryne,
Where she hath beene held divine,
For her offences found contrite,
There to live an Anchorite.
We have here the very essence of whatever most delicately and quaintly
exquisite the half sincere and half playful ideal of pastoral had
generated since the days of Moschus.
How is it then, we may pause a moment to inquire, that in spite of its
crudities of language and even of metre, in spite of its threadbare themes
but half repatched with homelier cloth, in spite of its tedious
theological controversies, its more or less conventional loves and more or
less exaggerated panegyrics--how is it that in spite of all this we still
regard the _Shepherd's Calender_ as serious literature; while with all its
exquisite justness, as of ivory carved and tinted by the hand of a master
and encrusted with the sparkle of a thousand gems, the _Muses' Elizium_
remains a toy? It is not merely the prestige of the author's name: it is
not merely that we tend to accept the work of each at his own valuation.
We have to seek the explanation of the phenomenon in the fact that not
only has the _Shepherd's Calender_ behind it a vast tradition, reverend if
somewhat otiose--the devotion of men counts for something--but also that,
however stiffly laced in an unsuitable garb, it sought to deal with
matters of real import to man, or at any rate with what man has held as
such. It treated questions of religious policy which touched the majority
of men more nearly then than now; with moral problems calculated to
interest the mind of an age still tinged with medievalism; with
philosophical theories of human and divine love. In other words, the
_Shepherd's Calender_ lay in the main stream of literature, and reflected
the mind of the age, while the _Muses' Elizium_, in common with so much
pastoral work, did not. These considerations open up an interesting field
of speculation. Are we to suppose that there is indeed a line of
demarcation between great art and little art wholly independent of that
which divides good art from bad art? Are we to go further, and assume that
these two lines of division intersect, so that a work may be akin to
great art though it be not good art, while, however perfect a work of art
may be, it may remain little art for some wholly non-aesthetic reason? But
we digress.
IV
It will be convenient, in dealing with the considerable volume of English
pastoral verse which has come down to us from the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries, to divide it into two portions, according as it
tends to attach itself to orthodox foreign tradition on the one hand, or
to the more spontaneous native type on the other. To the former division
belong in the main the more ambitious set pieces and eclogue-cycles, to
the latter the lighter and more occasional verse, the pastoral ballads and
the lyrics. The division is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, for the two
traditions act and react on one another incessantly, and the types merge
almost imperceptibly the one into the other; but that does not prevent the
spirit that manifests itself in Drayton's eclogues being essentially
different from that which produced Breton's songs. I shall not, however,
try to draw any hard and fast line between the two, but shall rather deal
first with those writers whose most important work inclines to the more
formal tradition, and shall then endeavour to give some account of the
lighter pastoral verse of the time.
After the appearance of the _Shepherd's Calender_ some years elapsed
before English poetry again ventured upon the domain of pastoral, at least
in any serious composition. In 1589, however, appeared a small quarto
volume, with the title: 'An Eglogue. Gratulatorie. Entituled: To the right
honorable, and renowmed Shepheard of Albions Arcadia: Robert Earle of
Essex and Ewe, for his welcome into England from Portugall. Done by George
Peele. Maister of arts in Oxon.' Like the 'A. W.' of the _Rhapsody_, Peele
followed Spenser more closely than most of his fellow imitators in the use
of dialect, but his eclogue on the not particularly glorious return of
Essex has little interest. His importance as a pastoralist lies elsewhere.
The following year the poet of the _Hecatompathia_, Thomas Watson, a
pastoralist of note according to the critics of his own age, but whose
work in this line is chiefly Latin, published his 'Ecloga in Obitum
Honoratissimi Viri, Domini Francisci Walsinghami, Equitis aurati, Divae
Elizabethae a secretis, & sanctioribus consiliis,' entitled _Meliboeus_,
and also in the same year a translation of the piece into English. The
latter is considerably shorter than the original, but still of tedious
length. The usual transition from the dirge to the paean is managed with
more than the usual lack of effect. The eclogue contains a good deal
beyond its immediate subject; for instance, a lament for Astrophel, a
passage in praise of Spenser, and a panegyric on
Diana, matchless Queene of Arcadie--
all subjects hardly possible for a poet to escape, writing _more
pastorali_ in 1590. Watson also left several other pastoral compositions
in the learned tongue, which, from their eponymous hero, won for him the
shepherd-name of Amyntas. Thus in 1585 he published a work in Latin
hexameter verse with the title 'Amyntas Thomae Watsoni Londinensis I. V.
studiosi,' divided into eleven 'Querelae,' which was 'paraphrastically
translated' by Abraham Fraunce into English hexameters, and published
under the title 'The Lamentations of Amyntas for the death of Phillis' in
1587. This translation, 'somewhat altered' to serve as a sequel to an
English hexametrical version of Tasso's _Aminta_, was republished in 'The
Countesse of Pembrokes Ivychurch' of 1591. Again in 1592 Watson produced
another work entitled _Amintae Gaudia_, part of which was translated under
the title _An Old-fashioned Love_, and published as by I. T. in 1594.[111]
Next in order--passing over Drayton, with whom we have been already
sufficiently concerned--is a writer who, without the advantage of original
genius or brilliant imagination, succeeded by mere charm of poetic style
and love of natural beauty, in lifting his work above the barren level of
contemporary pastoral verse. Richard Barnfield's _Affectionate Shepherd_,
imitated, as he frankly confesses, from Vergil's _Alexis_, appeared in
1594. Appended to it was a poem similar in tone and spirit, entitled _The
Shepherd's Content_, containing a description of country life and scenery,
together with a lamentation for Sidney, a hymn to love, a praise of the
poets, and other similar matters. The easy if somewhat monotonous grace
which pervades both these pieces is seen to better advantage in the
delightful _Shepherd's Ode_, which appeared in his _Cynthia_ of 1595, and
begins:
Nights were short and days were long,
Blossoms on the hawthorn hong,
Philomel, night-music's king,
Told the coming of the spring;
or in the yet more perfect song:
As it fell upon a day
In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a group of myrtles made,
Beasts did leap and birds did sing,
Trees did grow and plants did spring,
Everything did banish moan,
Save the nightingale alone;
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean'd her breast against a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull'st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity....
Ah, thought I, thou mourn'st in vain,
None takes pity on thy pain.
Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee;
Ruthless beasts, they will not cheer thee;
King Pandion he is dead,
All thy friends are lapp'd in lead[112];
All thy fellow birds do sing,
Careless of thy sorrowing;
Even so, poor bird, like thee,
None alive will pity me[113].
No particular interest attaches to the four eclogues included in Thomas
Lodge's _Fig for Momus_, published in 1595, but they serve to throw light
on a kind of pastoral freemasonry that was springing up at this period.
Spenser and Sidney, under the names of Colin and Astrophel, or more rarely
Philisides, were firmly fixed in poetic tradition; Barnfield, by coupling
them with these, made Watson and Drayton free of the craft in his
complaint to Love in the _Shepherd's Content_:
By thee great Collin lost his libertie,
By thee sweet Astrophel forwent his joy,
By thee Amyntas wept incessantly,
By thee good Rowland liv'd in great annoy.
Now we find Lodge dedicating his four eclogues respectively to Colin,
Menalcus, Rowland, and Daniel. Who Menalcus was is uncertain; not, it
would seem, a poet. The themes are serious, even weighty according to the
estimation of the author, and befit the mood of the poet who first sought
to acclimatize the classical satire[114]. These eclogues do not, however,
testify to any high poetic gift, any more than do the couple in a lighter
vein found in the _Phillis_ of 1593. Lodge was happier in the lyric verses
with which he strewed his romances--such for instance as the lines to
Phoebe in _Rosalynde_, though these did certainly lay themselves open to
parody[115]. In the same romance Lodge rose for once to a perfection of
delicate conceit unsurpassed from his day to ours:
Love in my bosom like a bee
Doth suck his sweet;
Now with his wings he plays with me,
Now with his feet.
Within mine eyes he makes his nest,
His bed amidst my tender breast;
My kisses are his daily feast,
And yet he robs me of my rest.
Ah, wanton, will ye?
The year 1595 also saw the publication of Francis Sabie's _Pan's Pipe_,
which contains, according to the not wholly accurate title-page, 'Three
Pastorall Eglogues, in English Hexameter.' These constituted the first
attempt in English at writing original eclogues in Vergilian metre, and
the injudicious experiment has not, I believe, been repeated. The subjects
present little novelty of theme, but the treatment illustrates the natural
tendency of English pastoral writers towards narrative and the influence
of the romantic ballad motives. The same volume contains another work of
Sabie's, namely, the _Fishermaris Tale_, a blank-verse rendering of
Greene's _Pandosto_[116].
The three pastoral elegies of William Basse, published in 1602, the last
work of the kind to appear in Elizabeth's reign, form in reality a short
pastoral romance. The court-bred Anander falls in love with the
shepherdess Muridella, and charges the sheep-boy Anetor to convey to her
the knowledge of his passion. His love proving unkind he turns shepherd,
and resolves to remain so until his suit obtains better grace. More than
half a century later, namely in 1653, Basse prepared for press a
manuscript containing a series of pastorals headed 'Clio, or The first
Muse in 9 Eglogues in honor of 9 vertues,' and arranged according to the
days of the week. The whole composition is singularly lacking alike in
interest and merit.[117]
It is not surprising to find the eclogues of the early years of James'
reign reflecting current events. In 1603 appeared a curious compilation,
the work of Henry Chettle, bearing the title: 'Englandes Mourning Garment:
Worne here by plaine Shepheardes; in memorie of their sacred Mistresse,
Elizabeth, Queene of Vertue while shee lived, and Theame of Sorrow, being
dead. To which is added the true manner of her Emperiall Funerall. After
which foloweth the Shepheards Spring-Song, for entertainement of King
James our most potent Soveraigne. Dedicated to all that loved the deceased
Queene, and honor the living King.' The book is a strange medley of verse
and prose, elegies on Elizabeth in the form of eclogues, and political
lectures written in the style of the pastoral romance. The most
interesting passage is an address to contemporary poets reproaching them
for their neglect of the praises of the late queen. The pastoral names
under which they are introduced appear to be merely nonce appellations,
but are worth recording as they refer to a set outside the usual pastoral
circle. Thus Corin is Chapman; Musaeus, of course Marlowe; English Horace,
no doubt Jonson; Melicert, Shakespeare; Coridon, Drayton; Anti-Horace,
most likely Dekker, and Moelibee, mentioned with him, possibly Marston. To
Musidore, 'Hewres last Musaeus' (no doubt corrupt), and the 'infant muse,'
it is more difficult to assign an identity.[118] Throughout Chettle
assumes to himself Spenser's pastoral title.
To the same or the following year belong the twelve eclogues by Edward
Fairfax, the translater of Tasso's _Gerusalemme_, which are now for the
most part lost. One, the fourth, was printed in 1737 from the original
manuscript, another in 1883 from a later transcript in the Bodleian, while
a third is preserved in a fragmentary state in the British Museum.[119]
All three deal chiefly with contemporary affairs, the two former being
concerned with the abuses of the church, while the last is a panegyric of
the 'present age,' and especially of English maritime adventure. This is
certainly the most pleasing of the three, though the style is at times
pretentious and over-charged with far-fetched allusions. There are,
however, fine passages, as for instance the lines on Drake:
And yet some say that from the Ocean maine,
He will returne when Arthur comes againe.
More directly concerned with the political events of the day is the
curious eclogue [Greek: Da/phnis Polyste/phanos] by Sir George Buc,
published in 1605, in praise of the Genest crown, the royal right by
Apollo's divine decree of a long line of English kings, who are passed
in review by way of introduction to the praises of their latest
representative. The work was revised by an unknown hand for the accession
of Charles, and republished under the title of _The Great Plantagenet_ in
1635, as by 'Geo. Buck, Gent.' Sir George held the post of Master of the
Revels from 1608 to 1622, and died the following year.
In 1607 appeared a poem 'Mirrha the Mother of Adonis,' by William
Barksted, to which were appended three eclogues by Lewes Machin.[120] Of
these, one describes the love of a shepherd and his nymph, while the other
two treat the theme of Apollo and Hyacinth. Composed in easy verse of no
particular distinction these poems belong to that borderland between the
idyllic and the salacious on which certain shepherd-poets loved to dally.
The years 1614 and 1615 saw the appearance of works of considerably
greater interest from every point of view, among others from that of what
I have described as pastoral freemasonry. In the former year there
appeared a small octavo volume entitled _The Shepherd's Pipe_. The chief
contributor was William Browne of Tavistock, the first book of whose
pastoral epic, _Britannia's Pastorals_, had appeared the previous year.
Besides seven eclogues from his pen, the volume contained one by
Christopher Brooke, one by Sir John Davies, and two by George Wither.
These last two were republished in 1615, with three additional pieces, in
Wither's collection entitled _The Shepherd's Hunting_. With the exception
of one or two of Browne's, these fourteen eclogues all deal with the
personal relation of the friends who disguise themselves respectively,
Browne as Willy, Wither as Roget (a name later exchanged for that of
Philarete), Brooke as Cuddie, and Davies as Wernock. Wither's were
written, as we learn from the title-page of the 1615 volume, while the
author was in prison in the Marshalsea for hunting vice with a pack of
satires in full cry, that is, the _Abuses Stript and Whipt_ of 1611. The
verse seldom rises above an amiable mediocrity, the best that can be said
for it being that it carries on, in a not wholly unworthy manner, the
dainty tradition of the octosyllabic couplet between the _Faithful
Shepherdess_ and Milton's early poems. Browne's eclogues are chiefly
remarkable for the introduction into the first of a long and rather
tedious tale derived from a manuscript of Thomas Occleve's. The last of
the series, an elegy on the death of Thomas, son of Sir Peter Manwood, has
been quoted as the model of _Lycidas_, but the resemblance begins and ends
with the fact that in either case the subject of the poem met his death by
drowning--a resemblance which will scarcely support a charge of
plagiarism[121].
In 1621 appeared six eclogues under the title of _The Shepherd's Tales_ by
the prolific miscellaneous writer Richard Brathwaite. Each in its turn
recounts the amorous misfortunes of some swain, which usually arise out of
the inconstancy of his sweetheart, and the prize of infelicity having been
adjudged, the author, not perhaps without a touch of malice, sends the
whole company off to a wedding. The _Tales_ are noteworthy for the very
pronounced dramatic gift they reveal, being in this respect quite unique
in their kind. The same year saw the publication of the not very
successful expansion of one of these eclogues into the pastoral narrative
in verse, entitled 'Omphale or the Inconstant Shepherdesse.' Brathwaite
had already in 1614 published the _Poet's Willow_, containing a
'Pastorall' which recounts the unsuccessful love of Berillus, an Arcadian
shepherd, for the nymph Eliza[122].
Pursuing the chronological order we come next to Phineas Fletcher's
'Piscatorie Eclogs' appended to his _Purple Island_ in 1633. Except that
the scene is laid on the banks of a river instead of in the pastures, and
that the characters spend their time looking after boats and nets instead
of tending flocks, they differ in nought from the strictly pastoral
compositions. They are seven in number, and deal either with personal
subjects or with conventional themes. As an imitation of the _Shepherd's
Calender_, without its uncouthness whether of subject or language, and
equally without its originality or higher poetic value, the work is not
wanting in merit, but it is most decidedly wanting in all power to arrest
the reader's attention.
The last collection that will claim our notice is that of Francis Quarles,
which appeared posthumously in 1646 under the title of 'The Shepheards
Oracles: Delivered in Certain Eglogues[123]. The interest of the volume
lies not so much in its poetic merit, which however is considerable, as in
the fact that it deals with almost every form of religious controversy at
a critical point in English history. Quarles was a stanch Anglican, and he
lashes Romanists and Precisians with impartial severity. One of the
eclogues opens with a panegyric on Gustavus Adolphus, in the midst of
which a messenger enters bearing the news of his death, thus fixing the
date of the poem in all probability in the winter of 1632-3. In the
eleventh and last the Puritan party is mercilessly satirized in the person
of Anarchus, in allusion to the supposed socialistic tendency of its
teaching. He is thus described in a dialogue between Philarchus and
Philorthus (the lovers of order and justice presumably):
_Philor._ How like a Meteor made of zeal and flame
The man appears!
_Philar._ Or like a blazing Star
Portending change of State, or some sad War,
Or death of some good Prince.
_Philor._ He is the trouble
Of three sad Kingdoms.
_Philar._ Even the very Bubble,
The froth of troubled waters.
_Philor._ Hee's a Page
Fill'd with Errata's of the present Age.
_Philar._ The Churches Scourge--
_Philor._ The devils _Enchiridion_--
_Philar._ The Squib, the _Ignis fatuus_ of Religion.
To their address Anarchus replies in a song which it would be easy to
illustrate from the dramatic literature of the time, and which well
indicates the estimation in which the faction was popularly held. Here is
one verse:
Wee'l down with all the Varsities,
Where Learning is profest,
Because they practise and maintain
The Language of the Beast:
Wee'l drive the Doctors out of doores,
And Arts what ere they be,
Wee'l cry both Arts, and Learning down,
And, hey! then up goe we.
The whole song for sheer rollicking hypocrisy is without parallel in the
language. The date of the poem is doubtful, but Quarles lived till 1644,
and after two years of civil strife the terms which the interlocutors in
the above passage apply to the Puritan party can hardly be regarded as
prophetic.
Besides the works we have examined above, several others are known to have
existed, though they are not now traceable. Thus 'The sweete sobbes, and
amorous Complaintes of Shepardes and Nymphes in a fancye confusde by An
Munday' was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company on August 19,
1583. Two years earlier, on August 3, 1581, had been entered 'A Shadowe of
Sannazar.' Again we know, alike from Wood's _Athenae_ and Meres' _Palladis
Tamia_, that Stephen Gosson left works of the kind of which we have now no
trace; while Puttenham in his _Art of English Poesy_ mentions an eclogue
of his own, addressed to Edward VI, and entitled _Elpine_. Puttenham and
Meres in dealing with pastoral writers also mention one Challener, no
doubt the Thomas Chaloner who contributed to the _Mirror for Magistrates_,
and Nashe in his preface to _Menaphon_ adds Thomas Atchelow, who may be
plausibly identified with the Thomas Achelly who contributed verses to
Watson's _Hecatompathia_ and various sententious fragments to _England's
Parnassus_, among them a not very happy rendering of those lines of
Catullus which might almost be taken as a motto to pastoral poetry as a
whole:
The sun doth set, and brings again the day,
But when our light is gone, we sleep for aye.
V
It is not easy to arrange the mass of occasional lyric verse of a pastoral
nature in a manner to facilitate a general survey. We may perhaps divide
it roughly into general groups which possess certain points in common and
can be treated more or less independently. Little would be gained by
following a strictly chronological order, even were it possible to do so.
We occasionally meet with translations, though from the nature of the case
these, as well as evidences of direct foreign influence, are less
prominent here than in the more formal type of pastoral verse. We have
already seen that Googe, besides borrowing from Garcilaso's version of a
portion of the _Arcadia_, himself paraphrased passages of the _Diana_ in
his eclogues, and the latter work also supplied material for the pen of
Sir Philip Sidney. His debt consists in translations of two songs from
Montemayor's romance, printed among his miscellaneous poems[124]. About a
dozen translations from the same source appeared in _England's Helicon_,
the work of Bartholomew Yong. They are for the most part very inferior to
the general average of the collection, but the opening of one at least is
worth quoting:
'Guardami las vaccas,
Carillo, por tu fe.--
Besami primero,
Yo te las guardare.'
I prithee keep my kine for me,
Carillo, wilt thou? tell.--
First let me have a kiss of thee,
And I will keep them well.
Another translation is the poem headed 'A Pastorall' in Daniel's _Delia_
of 1592, a rendering of the famous chorus to the first act of Tasso's
_Aminta_.
When we turn to original verse, the first group of poets to arrest our
attention is the court circle which gathered round Sir Philip Sidney.
There is a poem by his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, preserved in
Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_, and there headed 'A Dialogue between two
Shepherds, Thenot and Piers, in Praise of Astrea.' It was composed for the
entertainment of the queen, and was no doubt sung or recited in character.
Such was likewise the mode of production of Sir Philip's 'Dialogue between
two Shepherds, uttered in a pastoral show at Wilton,'[125] which is more
rustic in character. _Astrophel and Stella_ supplies a graceful 'complaint
to his flock' against the cruelty of
Stella, fiercest shepherdess,
Fiercest, but yet fairest ever;
Stella, whom the heavens still bless,
Though against me she persever.
Though I bliss inherit never.
The _Poetical Rhapsody_ again preserves two others, the outcome of
Sidney's friendship with Greville and Dyer. The first is a song of
welcome; the second, headed 'Dispraise of a Courtly Life,' ends with the
prayer:
Only for my two loves' sake,
In whose love I pleasure take;
Only two do me delight
With the ever-pleasing sight;
Of all men to thee retaining,
Grant me with these two remaining.
Of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, the loyal admirer and biographer of
Sidney, who desired on his tomb no better passport to posterity than that
he had been Sir Philip's friend, we have among other works published in
1633 a series of so-called sonnets recording his love for the fair
Caelica. There is a thin veil of pastoralism over the whole, with here and
there a more definite note as in 'Sonnet' 75, a poem of over two hundred
lines lamenting his lady's cruelty--
Shepheardesses, yet marke well
The Martyrdome of Philocell.
Of Sir Edward Dyer's works no early edition was published. Such isolated
poems as have survived were collected by Grosart in 1872 from a variety of
sources. If the piece entitled _Cynthia_ is authentic, it gives him a
respectable place beside Greville among the minor pastoralists of his day.
Lastly, in connexion with Sidney we may note a curious poem which appeared
in the first edition of the _Arcadia_ only.[126] It is a 'bantering'
eclogue, in which the shepherds Nico and Pas first abuse one another and
then fall to a comic singing match. It is evidently suggested by the fifth
Idyl of Theocritus, and is a fair specimen of a very uncommon class in
English. Akin to this is the burlesque variety, of which we have already
met with examples in Lorenzo's _Nencia_ and Pulci's _Beca_, and which is
almost equally rare with us. A specimen will be found in the not very
successful eclogue in Greene's _Menaphon_. The following is as near as the
author was able to approach to Lorenzo's delicately playful tone:
Carmela deare, even as the golden ball
That Venus got, such are thy goodly eyes:
When cherries juice is jumbled therewithall,
Thy breath is like the steeme of apple pies.
It would, of course, be grossly unfair to judge Robert Greene, the
ever-sinning and ever-repentant, by the above injudicious experiment. His
lyrical powers appear in a very different light, for instance, in the
'Palmer's Ode' in _Never Too Late_ (1590), one of the most charming of his
many confessions:
As I lay and kept my sheepe,
Came the God that hateth sleepe,
Clad in armour all of fire,
Hand in hand with Queene Desire,
And with a dart that wounded nie,
Pearst my heart as I did lie,
That, when I wooke, I gan sweare
Phillis beautie palme did beare.
From the same romance I must do Greene the justice of quoting the
delightful, though but remotely pastoral, song of every loving nymph to her
bashful swain:
Sweet Adon, darest not glance thine eye--
N'oserez-vous, mon bel ami?--
Upon thy Venus that must die?
Je vous en prie, pity me:
N'oserez-vous, mon bel, mon bel--
N'oserez-vous, mon bel ami?
See how sad thy Venus lies--
N'oserez-vous, mon bel ami?--
Love in heart and tears in eyes;
Je vous en prie, pity me:
N'oserez-vous, mon bel, mon bel--
N'oserez-vous, mon bel ami?
It is hard to refrain from quoting half a dozen other pieces. There is the
courting of Phillis in _Perimedes the Blacksmith_ (1588), with its purely
idyllic close; or again the famous 'Shepherd's Wife's Song' from the
_Mourning Garment_ (1590):
Ah, what is love? It is a pretty thing,
As sweet unto a shepherd as a king;
And sweeter too,
For kings have cares that wait upon a crown,
And cares can make the sweetest love to frown:
Ah then, ah then,
If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
What lady would not love a shepherd swain?
No one not utterly callous to the pathos of human life, or warped by some
ethical twist beyond the semblance of a man, has ever been able to pass
unmoved by the figure of Robert Greene. We see him, the poet of all that
is truest and tenderest in human affection, abandoning his young wife and
child, drawn by the power of some fatal fascination into the whirlpool of
low life in London, and then, as if inspired by a sudden revelation of
objective vision, penning the throbbing lines of the forsaken mother's
song:
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee,
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
We see him again amid the despair and squalor of his death-bed, warning
his friends against his own example, and addressing to the wife he had not
seen for years those words endorsed on a bill for ten pounds, words ever
memorable in the history of English letters: 'Doll, I charge thee by the
love of our youth, and by my soul's rest, that thou wilt see this man
paid; for if he and his wife had not succoured me I had died in the
streets.' Such are the scenes of sordid misery which underlie some of the
choicest of English songs. It is best to return to the surface.
The lyric 'sequences' published towards the close of the sixteenth
century frequently contain more or less pastoral matter. Barnabe Barnes
appended some poems of this sort to his _Parthenophil and Parthenophe_ (c.
1593), among others a version of Moschus' idyl of runaway love, a theme
which had long been a favourite one with pastoral writers. Poliziano's
Latin translation of Moschus[127] was commended by E. K. in his notes to
the _Shepherd's Calender_, and the same original supplied Tasso with the
subject of his _Amore fuggitivo_, which served as epilogue to the
_Aminta_. William Smith's _Chloris_ (1596), except for plentiful swearing
by pastoral deities, is less bucolic in spite of its dedication to Colin
Clout. The most important of the sequences from our present point of view
is Nicholas Breton's _Passionate Shepherd,_ which was not published till
1604. It contains five pastorals in praise of Aglaia:
Had I got a kingly grace,
I would leave my kingly place
And in heart be truly glad
To become a country lad,
Hard to lie and go full bare,
And to feed on hungry fare,
So I might but live to be
Where I might but sit to see,
Once a day, or all day long,
The sweet subject of my song;
In Aglaia's only eyes
All my worldly paradise.
This is a fair specimen of Breton's dainty muse, but his choicest work
appeared in that wonderful anthology published in 1600 under the title of
_England's Helicon_. To this collection Breton contributed such verses as
the following:
On a hill there grows a flower--
Fair befall the dainty sweet!--
By that flower there is a bower,
Where the heavenly muses meet.
In that bower there is a chair,
Fringed all about with gold;
Where doth sit the fairest fair,
That ever eye did yet behold.
It is Phyllis fair and bright,
She that is the shepherd's joy;
She that Venus did despite,
And did bind her little boy.
Or again:
Good Muse, rock me asleep
With some sweet harmony;
The weary eye is not to keep
Thy wary company.
Sweet Love, begone awhile,
Thou knowest my heaviness;
Beauty is born but to beguile
My heart of happiness.
Another poem no less perfect has been already quoted at length. In its own
line, the delicate carving of fair images as in crystal or some precious
stone, Breton's work is unsurpassed. We cannot do better than take, as
examples of a very large class, some of the poems printed, in most cases
for the first time, in _England's Helicon_. Of Henry Constable, the poet
indicated doubtless by the initiais H. C., we have a charming song between
Phillis and Amaryllis, the counterpart and imitation of Spenser's
'Bonibell' ballad:
_P._ Fie on the sleights that men devise--
(Heigho, silly sleights!)
When simple maids they would entice.
(Maids are young men's chief delights.)
_A._ Nay, women they witch with their eyes--
(Eyes like beams of burning sun!)
And men once caught they do despise;
So are shepherds oft undone.
* * * * *
_P._ If every maid were like to me--
(Heigho, hard of heart!)
Both love and lovers scorn'd should be.
(Scorners shall be sure of smart.)
_A._ If every maid were of my mind--
(Heigho, heigho, lovely sweet!)
They to their lovers should prove kind;
Kindness is for maidens meet[128].
Of Sir John Wotton, the short-lived half-brother of the more famous Sir
Henry, there is a spirited song, betraying unusual command over a
complicated rhythm:
Jolly shepherd, shepherd on a hill,
On a hill so merrily,
On a hill so cheerily,
Fear not, shepherd, there to pipe thy fill;
Fill every dale, fill every plain;
Both sing and say, 'Love feels no pain.'
Another graceful poet of _England's Helicon_ is the 'Shepherd Tony,' whose
identity with Anthony Munday was finally established by Mr. Bullen. He
contributed, among other verses, a not very interesting reply to Harpelus'
complaint in 'Tottel's Miscellany,' and the well-known and exquisite:
Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Where fairest shades did hide her,
which reappears in his translation of the Castilian romance _Primelion_.
In Marlowe's 'Passionate Shepherd to his Love,' of which _England's
Helicon_ supplies one of three texts[129], we come to what is, with the
possible exception of _Lycidas_ alone, the most subtly modulated specimen
of pastoral verse in English. So far as internal evidence is concerned the
poem has absolutely nothing but its own perfection to connect it with the
name of Marlowe; it is utterly unlike all other verse, dramatic,
narrative, or lyric, ascribed to him. An admirable eclectic text, which
exhibits to the full the delicacy of the rhythm, has been prepared by Mr.
Bullen in his edition of Marlowe's works. It would be impossible not to
quote the piece in full:
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and vallies, dales and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-lined[130] slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.
A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
The popularity of this poem was testified by its widespread influence on
the poets of the day. _England's Helicon_ contains 'the Nymphs reply,'
commonly attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh, and also a long imitation;
Donne wrote a piscatory version, and Herrick paid it the sincerest form of
flattery, while less distinct reminiscences are common in the poetry of
the time. Yet Kit Marlowe's verses stand unrivalled.
The pastoral influence in Shakespeare's verse, both lyric and dramatic, is
too obvious to need more than passing notice. Every reader will recall
'Who is Sylvia,' from the _Two Gentlemen_, and 'It was a lover and his
lass,' the song of which, in Touchstone's opinion, 'though there was no
great matter in the ditty, yet the tune was very untuneable,' or again the
famous speech of the chidden king:
O God! methinks it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain;
(3 _Henry VI_, II. v. 21.)
and Arthur's exclamation:
By my christendom
So I were out of prison and kept sheep,
I should be as merry as the day is long.
(_K. John_, IV. i. 16.)
One poem, bearing a certain resemblance to verses of Barnfield's already
discussed, may be quoted here. It was originally printed in the fourth
act of _Love's Labour's Lost_ in 1598, reappeared in the _Passionate
Pilgrim_ in 1599, and again in _England's Helicon_ in 1600.
On a day--alack the day!--
Love, whose month was ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air.
Through the velvet leaves the wind
All unseen gan passage find,
That the shepherd, sick to death,
Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.
Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!
But, alas, my hand hath sworn
Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn;
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet,
Youth is apt to pluck a sweet.
[Do not call it sin in me
That I am forsworn for thee;]
Thou for whom Jove would swear
Juno but an Ethiope were,
And deny himself for Jove,
Turning mortal for thy love.[131]
Lastly, _England's Helicon_ preserves two otherwise unknown poems of
Drayton's, one probably an early work, having little to recommend it
beyond the pretty though not original conceit:
See where little Cupid lies
Looking babies in her eyes!
the other similar in style to the eclogue first published in the
collection of c. 1606. About contemporary possibly is the anonymous ballad
'Phillida flouts me,' which in command alike of rhythm and language is
remarkably reminiscent of some, and that some of the best, of Drayton's
work.
Oh, what a plague is love!
How shall I bear it?
She will unconstant prove,
I greatly fear it.
It so torments my mind
That my strength faileth;
She wavers with the wind,
As the ship saileth.
Please her the best you may,
She looks another way;
Alas and well-a-day!
Phillida flouts me[132].
I have already had occasion to mention the mysterious A. W. in Davison's
_Poetical Rhapsody_, but I cannot refrain from calling attention to one
other poem of his. It is headed 'A fiction, how Cupid made a nymph wound
herself with his arrows,' and is perhaps the nearest thing in English to a
Greek _idyllion_, though in the manner of Moschus rather than of
Theocritus. The opening scene will give an idea of the style:
It chanced of late a shepherd's swain,
That went to seek a strayed sheep,
Within a thicket on the plain,
Espied a dainty nymph asleep.
Her golden hair o'erspread her face,
Her careless arms abroad were cast,
Her quiver had her pillow's place,
Her breast lay bare to every blast.
The shepherd stood, and gazed his fill;
Nought durst he do, nought durst he say;
When chance, or else perhaps his will,
Did guide the god of love that way.
And so the long pageant troops by, not without its passages of dullness,
its moments of pedestrian gait, for it must be borne in mind that the
poems quoted above are for the most part the choice of what has survived
in a few volumes, and that this in its turn represents the gleanings from
a far larger body of verse that once existed. In spite of its perennial
freshness the charge of want of originality has not unreasonably been
brought even against the best compositions of the kind. It could hardly be
otherwise. Except in the rarest cases originality was impossible. The
impulse was to write a certain kind of amatory verse, for which the
fashionable medium was pastoral; not to write pastoral for its own sake.
The demand was for convention, the familiar, the expected; never for
originality or truth. The fault was in the poetic requirements of the age,
and must not be laid to the charge of those admirable craftsmen who gave
the age what it wanted; especially when in so doing they enriched English
poetry with some of its choicest gems.
The pastoral lyric of the next two reigns is far too wide a subject to be
entered upon here. Grave or gay, satirical or idyllic, coy or wanton,
there is scarcely a poet of note or obscurity who did not contribute his
share. Nowhere is a rarer note of pastoral to be found than in
_L'Allegro_, with its
every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the vale.
Before, however, saying farewell to this, the lighter side of English
pastoral verse, I would call attention to a poem which perhaps more than
any other illustrates the spirit of _volutta idillica_, characteristic of
so much that possesses abiding value in pastoral. Unfortunately Carew's
_Rapture_ is almost throughout of a nature that forbids reproduction
except in a scientific edition, or an admittedly erotic collection. Though
its licence is coterminous with the bounds of natural desire, the candour
of its appeal to unvitiated nature saves it from reproach, and the
perfection of its form makes it an object of never-failing beauty. The
idea with which the poem opens, the escape to a land where all
conventional restrictions cease to have a meaning, was of course suggested
by the first chorus of the _Aminta_:
quel vano
Nome senza soggetto,
Quell' idolo d' errori, idol d' inganno;
Quel che dal volgo insano
Onor poscia fu detto--
Che di nostra natura 'l feo tiranno.
I can only extract one short passage out of Tom Carew's poem, that which
describes how
Daphne hath broke her bark, and that swift foot
Which th' angry Gods had fast'ned with a root
To the fix'd earth, doth now unfetter'd run
To meet th' embraces of the youthful Sun.
She hangs upon him, like his Delphic Lyre;
Her kisses blow the old, and breath new, fire;
Full of her God, she sings inspired lays,
Sweet odes of love, such as deserve the Bays,
Which she herself was. Next her, Laura lies
In Petrarch's learned arms, drying those eyes
That did in such sweet smooth-paced numbers flow,
As made the world enamoured of his woe.
This is not itself pastoral, but it belongs to that idyllic borderland
which we previously noticed in dealing with Italian verse. And again, as
in Italy, so in England, we find the same spirit infusing the mythological
tales. Did time and space allow it would be an interesting diversion to
trace how the pastoral spirit evinced itself in such works as Peele's
_Tale of Troy_, Lodge's _Scilla's Metamorphosis_, Drayton's _Man in the
Moon_, Brathwaite's _Narcissus Change_ (in the _Golden Fleece_), and found
articulate utterance in the voluptuous cadences of _Venus and Adonis_.
VI
There are two specimens of English pastoral verse which I have reserved
for separate discussion in this place, namely, _Lycidas_ and _Britannia's
Pastorals_. The one is probably the most perfect example of the
allegorical pastoral produced since first the form was invented by Vergil,
the other the longest and most ambitious poem ever composed on a pastoral
theme.[133]
Milton's poem was written on the occasion of the death of Edward King,
fellow of Christ's College, who was drowned on his way to Ireland during
the long vacation of 1637, and first appeared in a collection of memorial
verses by his Cambridge friends published in 1638. It gathers together
within its narrow compass as it were whole centuries of pastoral
tradition, fusing them into an organic whole, and inspiring the form with
a poetic life of its own.
Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never sear,
I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
For Lycidas is dead and claims his meed of song.
Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string.
Sing first their friendship, nursed upon the self-same hill, their youth
spent together. But oh! the heavy change; now the very caves and woods
mourn his loss. Where then were the Muses, that their loved poet should
die? And yet what could they do for Lycidas, who had no power to shield
Orpheus himself,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His goary visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.
What then avails the poet's toil? Were it not better to taste the sweets
of love as they offer themselves since none can count on reward in this
life? The prize, however, lies elsewhere--
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
But such thoughts are too lofty for the swains of Arethusa and Mincius.
Listen rather as the herald of the sea questions the god of winds about
the fatal wreck. It was no storm drove the ill-starred boat to
destruction:
The Ayr was calm, and on the level brine,
Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd,
sounds the reply. Next, footing slow, comes the tutelary deity of Alma
Mater, and in one sad cry mourns the promise of a life so soon cut short.
Lastly, 'The Pilot of the Galilean lake,' with denunciation of the
corrupt hirelings of a venal age, laments the loss of the church in the
death of Lycidas. As his solemn figure passes by, the gracious fantasies
of pastoral landscape shrink away: now
Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past,
That shrunk thy streams,
bid the nymphs bring flowers of every hue,
To strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies--
and yet indeed even this comfort is denied, we dally with false
imaginings,
Whilst thee the shores, and sounding Seas
Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurld,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world,
or on the Cornish coast,
Where the great vision of the guarded Mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold.
But enough!
Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar,
So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new spangled Ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.
On this note the elegy ends, and there follow eight lines in which the
poet glances at his own pastoral self that has been singing, and realizes
that the world will go on even though Lycidas be no more, and that there
are other calls in life than that of piping on an oaten reed. These lines
correspond to the plain stanzaic frames in which Spenser set his lyrics in
the _Shepherd's Calender_:
Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th' Okes and rills,
While the still morn went out with Sandals gray,
He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills,
With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay:
And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the Western bay;
At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:
To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.
The poem, in common with the whole class of allegorical pastorals, is
undoubtedly open to the charge of artificiality, since, in truth, the
pastoral garb can never illustrate, but only distort and obscure subjects
drawn from other orders of civilization. Yet none but a great master
could, to produce a desired effect, have utilized every association which
tradition afforded with the consummate skill observable in Milton's poem.
He has been blamed for the introduction of St. Peter, on the ground of
incongruity; but he has tradition on his side. St. Peter, as we have
already seen, figures, under the name of Pamphilus, in the eclogues of
Petrarch, and his introduction by Milton is in nicest keeping with the
spirit of the kind. The whole poem, and indeed a great deal more, must
stand or fall with the Pilot of the Galilean Lake, for to censure his
introduction here is to condemn the whole pastoral tradition of three
centuries, a judgement which may or may not be just, but which is not a
criticism on Milton's poem. So again with the flowers that are to be
strewn on the laureate hearse. Three kinds of berries and eleven kinds of
flowers are mentioned, and it has been pointed out with painful accuracy
that nine of the latter would have been over, and none of the former ripe
on August 11, when King was drowned; while all the flowers, with the
exception of the amaranth, if it were of the true breed, would have been
dead and rotten in November, when the poem was presumably written. It
would be foolish to quarrel with Milton on this point, since where all is
imaginary such licence is as natural as the strictest botany; yet it must
not be forgotten that it is just this disseverance from actuality that has
made the eclogue the type of all that is frigid and artificial in
literature. The dissatisfaction felt by many with _Lycidas_ was voiced by
Dr. Johnson, when he wrote: 'It is not to be considered the effusion of
real passion, for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure
opinions.... Where there is leisure for fiction there is little
grief[134].' This is so absolutely true, with regard to the present poem
at all events, that it would appear hardly worth saying were it not that
there have always been found persons to maintain the contrary. There is no
reason whatever to suppose that Milton felt any keen personal grief at the
death of Edward King. There is nothing spontaneous, nothing, one might
almost say, genuine in the lament. This is indeed strictly irrelevant to
the question of its artistic merit, but it must nevertheless be admitted
that there is thus much justice in the censure, that the poem purports to
be the expression of an intimate sorrow, of the reality of which the
reader is never wholly convinced. In so far as it lacks this
'soul-compelling power,' it may be said, not unfairly, to fail of its own
artistic purpose.
One further question, however, inevitably presents itself when we have to
consider such a work as _Lycidas_, a work, that is, in which art has
attained the highest perfection in one particular kind. Although the
objections urged against the individual poem may be shown to miss their
mark as criticisms on that poem, may they not have force as criticisms on
the class? The allegorical pastoral, though in one sense, as I have said,
created by Vergil, was yet, in another, a plant of slow growth, and
represents a tradition gradually evolved to meet the needs of a long line
of poets. Petrarch, Mantuan, Marot, Spenser were more than mere imitators
of Vergil or of one another; they wrote in a particular form because it
answered to particular requirements, and they fashioned it in the using.
Nevertheless it may be urged with undoubted force, that the requirements
were not primarily of an artistic nature, being ever governed by some
alien purpose, and that consequently the form which evolved itself in
answer to those requirements and to fulfil that purpose, was not by nature
calculated to yield the highest artistic results. And thus, though any
attempt to question the perfection of the art which Milton brought to the
composition of his elegy must needs be foredoomed to failure, the question
of the propriety of the form as an artistic medium remains open; and in so
far as critical opinion tends to give an unfavourable answer, in so far
does the form of pastoral instituted by Vergil and handed down without
break from the fourteenth century to Milton's own time stand condemned in
its most perfect flower.
Few things could be less like _Lycidas_ than the work which next claims
our attention. Unique of its kind, and, in spite of its shortcomings,
possessed of no small poetic interest, William Browne's _Britannia's
Pastorals_ may be regarded at pleasure either as a pastoral epic or as a
versified romance. It resembles the prose romances in being by nature
discursive, episodic and inconsequent, and like not a few it remained
unfinished. Little would be gained by giving any detailed analysis of the
plot developed through the leisurely amplitude of its 10,000 lines, while
any attempt to deal, however slightly, with the sources and literary
analogues of the work would lead us far beyond the scope of the present
chapter[135]. With regard to the latter, it must suffice to note that
among the works to which incidents can be directly traced are Tasso's
_Gerusalemme_, Montemayor's _Diana_, and Fletcher's _Faithful
Shepherdess_, while a more general indebtedness may in particular be
observed to Chaucer, _Piers Plowman_, and the _Faery Queen_. The plot
involves two more or less connected threads of action, the one dealing
with the adventures of the swains and shepherdesses, the other concerned
with the progress of Thetis and her court. This latter recalls the poetic
geography of Drayton's _Polyolbion_. The principal episodes in the former
are the loves of Celandine and Marina, and the allegorical story of Fida
and Aletheia, each of which leads to numerous ramifications. Indeed, so
far as the pastoral action is concerned, the whole is one string of barely
connected episodes.
Celandine loves the shepherdess Marina, who is readily brought to return
his affection. To the love thus easily won he soon becomes indifferent,
and Marina in despair seeks to end her sorrows in a stream. Saved by the
god of the fountain, she is carried off to Mona, and there imprisoned in a
cave by the monster Limos (hunger). With her loss, Celandine's love
revives, and in his search for her he is led to visit the faery realm,
where he finds Spenser lying asleep. The poem ends abruptly in the midst
of his adventures. The story of Fida centres round the slaughter of her
pet hind by the monster Riot. From the mangled remains of the animal rises
the beautiful form of Aletheia (truth). The new-transformed nymph is the
daughter of Chronos (time), born, Pallas-like, without a mother. The
narrative of her rejection by the world gives occasion for some biting
satire on the ill-living of the religious orders, the vanity of the court,
and the dishonesty of the crafts. Meanwhile Riot, who from this point
ceases to be an embodiment of cruelty, and comes to typify fallen
humanity--the _Humanum Genus_ of the moralities--passing successively by
Remembrance, Remorse, and Repentance, is purged of his foul shape, and
appears as the shepherd Amyntas, finally to be united in marriage with
Aletheia. With these adventures is interwoven the progress of Thetis, who
comes to view her dominions. From the Euxine and the Hellespont her train
sweeps on by Adriatic and Atlantic shores, past lands which call up the
names of a long line of poets--Vergil, Ovid, Ariosto, Petrarch, Tasso, Du
Bartas, Marot, Ronsard--till ultimately she arrives off the coast of
Devon--the Devon of Browne and Drake. Here the shepherds assemble to do
her honour, from Colin Clout down to Browne's immediate circle, Brooke,
Davies, and Wither, and here the poet entertains her with the tale of
Walla and Tavy, which forms a charming incidental piece. The nymph Walla
loved the river-god Tavy, and while gathering flowers to weave a garland
for him was surprised by a satyr, who pursued her into a wood. She sought
refuge in a cave, where, being overtaken by her pursuer, she prayed to
Diana, and in the last resort to Ina, by whom she was transformed into a
spring, which, after drowning the venturesome satyr, ran on to join its
waters with those of her beloved Tavy. Thus Browne wove the common names
of his familiar home into a romance of pastoral invention. The
metamorphosis of Arethusa pursued by Alpheus, of Ambra by Ombrone, of the
nymphs by the satyrs of the _Salices_, or as frescoed on the temple of
Pales in the _Arcadia_, the loves of Mulla and Mollana in Spenser, and the
mythological impersonations of the _Polyolbion_, find, as it were, a
meeting-place in Browne's lay of Walla.
The three parts of _Britannia's Pastorals_ did not appear together. Book
I was published during the winter of 1613-14, Book II in 1616, each
containing five songs; while the fragment of Book III, containing two
songs only, remained in manuscript till 1853, when it was discovered in
the Cathedral Library at Salisbury, and printed for the Percy
Society[136].
The narrative, as may have been inferred from what has already been said,
is sufficiently fantastic. In the introduction of allegorical characters
Browne was probably influenced by Spenser, and in a lesser degree by the
masque literature of his day and by the study of Langland. Since the work
is unfinished, we may in charity suppose that had Browne completed his
design the whole would have presented a somewhat less incongruous
appearance; there is, however, a marked tendency towards the accumulation
of unexplained incidents, which may most plausibly be referred to the
influence of the Spanish romances, especially of the _Diana_, which was
already accessible in Yong's translation, and one incident of which Browne
did undoubtedly borrow.
In style and poetic merit Browne's work is most astonishingly unequal,
though the general level of _Britannia's Pastorals_ is distinctly higher
than that of the _Shepherd's Pipe_. The author passes at times abruptly
from careful and loving realism to the most stilted conventionality, and
from passages of impassioned eloquence to others grotesquely banal. In
some of his peculiarities, as in the perpetuai use of elaborate similes
and in the indulgence in inflated paraphrases, he anticipates some of the
worst faults of style cultivated by writers of the next century. There are
portions of the poem where the narrative is literally carried on through a
succession of highly wrought comparisons, each paragraph beginning with an
'As' followed by a correlative 'So' half a page further on. No such series
of pictures, however fairly wrought--and Browne's too often end in
bathos--can possibly convey the impression of continuons action. It is the
same with periphrasis. Used with discretion it may be one of the subtlest
ornaments of style, and even when fulfilling no particular purpose is
capable of imparting a luxuriant and somewhat rococo richness to the
verse. The effect, however, is frequently one of unrelieved frigidity, as
in the lines:
And now Hyperion from his glitt'ring throne
Sev'n times his quick'ning rays had bravely shown
Unto the other world, since Walla last
Had on her Tavy's head the garland plac'd;
And this day, as of right, she wends abroad
To ease the meadows of their willing load.
(II. iii. 855.)
At times it was Browne's moral preoccupation that curbed his muse, as in
his description of the golden age where, for the sensuous glow of Tasso
and for Carew's pagan paradise, he substitutes the insipid convention of a
philosophical age of innocence[137]. In his genuine mood as a loving
observer of country life he is a very different poet. His feeling is
delicate in tone and his observation keen; he was familiar with every tree
that grew in the woods, every fish that swam in the waters of his beloved
Devon; he entered tenderly into the homely life of the farm--
By this had chanticleer, the village clock,
Bidden the goodwife for her maids to knock,
And the swart ploughman for his breakfast stay'd,
That he might till those lands were fallow laid;
The hills and vailles here and there resound
With the re-echoes of the deep-mouth'd hound;
Each shepherd's daughter, with her cleanly peal,[138]
Was come afield to milk the morning's meal.
(I. iv. 483.)
When, however, naturalism of this kind is introduced into pastoral it is
already on the high road toward ceasing to be pastoral at all. Nor are
touches of higher poetic imagination wanting, as when Time is described as
a lusty aged swain,
That cuts the green tufts off th' enamell'd plain,
And with his scythe hath many a summer shorn
The plough'd-lands lab'ring with a crop of corn.
(I. iv. 307.)
The love of his country is, however, the altar at which Browne's poetic
genius takes fire:
Hail, thou my native soil! thou blessed plot,
Whose equal all the world affordeth not!
Show me who can so many crystal rills,
Such sweet-cloth'd valleys or aspiring hills,....
And if the earth can show the like again,
Yet will she fail in her sea-ruling men.
Time never can produce men to o'ertake
The fames of Grenville, Davies, Gilbert, Drake,
Or worthy Hawkins, or of thousands more
That by their power made the Devonian shore
Mock the proud Tagus, for whose richest spoil
The boasting Spaniard left the Indian soil
Bankrupt of store, knowing it would quit cost
By winning this, though all the rest were lost.
(II. iii. 601.)
It is after all in such a passage as this that we see the true William
Browne, with all his high-handedness and worthy enthusiasm, the poet who
not only loves his country with a lover's passion and cannot tolerate that
any should be compared to her in fairness of feature, in stateliness of
stature, or in virtue of mind; but who, first perhaps among English poets,
has that more local patriotism, narrower and more intimate, for his own
home, for its moors, its streams, its associations, all the actual or
imagined surroundings of his beloved Tavistock, and carries in his heart
for ever the cry of the wild west--
Devon, O Devon, in wind and rain!
VII
Approaching the romance, as we do, from the point of view rather of the
development of the pastoral ideal than of the history of prose narrative
or of the novel, we may spare ourselves any detailed consideration of the
famous work of John Lyly. Although in the novel which has made 'Euphuism'
a word and a bye-word in the language he supplied the literary medium for
the work of subsequent pastoral writers such as Greene and Lodge, his
own compositions in this kind are confined entirely to the drama.
The translations in this department are for the most part negligible.
There is, however, one notable exception, namely, the rendering by
Bartholomew Yong or Young of Montemayor's _Diana_, together with the
continuations of Ferez and Gil Polo. Completed as early as May, 1583, the
work remained in manuscript until 1598, when it was published in the form
of a handsome folio. Although, as we have already had occasion to notice,
the verse portions were not for the most part of a nature to add lustre to
an anthology such as _England's Helicon_, the whole forms a not unworthy
Tudor translation. We learn from Yong's preface that portions of the
romance had already been Englished by Edward Paston, a descendant of the
famous Norfolk letter-writers, who had family relations with Spain and
possessed an intimate knowledge of the language. Of this work nothing
further is known. Some two years, however, before Yong's version issued
from the press, the first book of Montemayor's portion was again
translated by Thomas Wilson, and of this a manuscript yet survives[139].
Passing mention may also be made of Angel Day's translation of _Daphnis
and Chloe_ containing the original insertion of the _Shepherd's Holiday_
with the praises of Elizabeth in verse, and of Robert Tofte's _Honours
Academy_ (1610), distantly following Ollenix du Mont-Sacre's _Bergerie de
Juliette_, but which, as also John Pyper's version of d'Urfe's _Astree_
(1620), have received sufficient notice in being recorded in connexion
with their originals.
Earlier in date of publication and belonging to an elder tradition than
the _Arcadia_, though later in date of composition, and it may be at times
betraying a familiarity with Sidney's manuscript, the romances of the
Bohemian Robert Greene, and the buccaneer-physician Thomas Lodge, are
naturally the first to claim our attention.
With the exception of _Menaphon_, Greene's romances offer little that is
important in pastoral, apart from the more notable works which they
inspired. And even _Menaphon_, in so far as the general conception is
concerned, can hardly be said necessarily to involve the existence of any
antecedent pastoral tradition. Greene's novel is, indeed, far from being
purely pastoral; no more than in Sidney's, to use Professor Herford's
happy phrase, are we allowed to forget that Arcadia bordered on Sparta. In
this it undoubtedly resembles the Spanish romances, but the resemblance
does not appear to go much further; it is on the whole warlike without
being chivalric, the tone Greek, or what Greene considered such, rather
than medieval--indeed it might be argued that in its martial incidents it
rather recalls _Daphnis and Chloe_ than the _Diana_. There is certainly
nothing chivalric about King Democles, who, when some ten score shepherds
are besieging a castle, sends to the 'General of his Forces,' and not only
has ten thousand men brought secretly and by night at three days'
notice--in itself a notable piece of strategy--but when they arrive on the
scene places furthermore the whole force in ambush! No wonder that when
the soldiers are let loose out of their necessarily cramped quarters,
they kill many of the shepherds, and putting the rest to flight remain
masters of the situation.
The plot might perhaps be considered improbable as well as intricate for
anything but a pastoral or chivalric romance: judged by the standards
prevailing in these species it is neither. Democles, king of Arcadia, has
a daughter Sephistia, who contrary to his wishes has contracted a secret
marriage with Maximus. When the birth of a son leads to discovery,
Democles has them placed in an oarless boat and so cast adrift. A storm
arising they are not unnaturally wrecked, and ultimately husband and wife
are cast upon different points of the Arcadian coast(!), where, either
supposing the other to have perished, they adopt the pastoral life,
assuming the names respectively of Melicertus and Samela. The young mother
has with her child Pleusidippus, but while still in early boyhood he is
carried off by pirates and presented as a gift to the King of Thessaly. In
the meantime Menaphon, 'the king's shepherd of Arcadia,' has fallen in
love with Samela, but while accepting his hospitality she meets her
husband in his shepherd's guise, and without recognizing one another
husband and wife again fall in love. Years pass on and Pleusidippus, who
has risen to fame at court, hears of the beauty of the shepherdess of
Arcadia, and must needs go to test the truth of the report himself. He
does so, and promptly falls in love with his own mother. Nor is this all,
for Democles equally hears of Samela's fame, and disguising himself as a
shepherd falls in love with his own daughter. He endeavours to command
Samela's affection by revealing to her his own identity, but Pleusidippus
is beforehand with more drastic measures, and with the help of a few
associates carries Samela off to a neighbouring castle, to which Democles
and the shepherds, headed by Melicertus, proceed to lay siege. A duel
between father and son is unceremoniously interrupted by the inroad of
Democles' soldiery. Upon this the identity of Samela is revealed by a
convenient prophetess, and all ends happily.
In the relation of verse and prose Greene's work differs from that of
Sannazzaro and Sidney, the former being of considerably greater merit than
the latter. The style adopted exhibits a very marked Euphuism, and the
whole form of narrative is characterized by that fondness for petty
conceit which not seldom gives an air of puerility to the lighter
Elizabethan prose. Puerile in a sense it had every right to be, for modern
prose narration was then in its very infancy in this country. No artistic
form destined to contribute to the main current of literature is born
perfect into the world; the early efforts appear not only tentative,
uncouth, at times rugged, but often childish and futile, unworthy the
consideration of serions men. The substance of the _Gesta Romanorum_ and
the style of the _Novellino_ appear so, considered in relation to the
_Decameron_; the mystery plays are an obvious instance, not to be
explained by any general immaturity of medieval ideas. Traces of the
tendency may even be noticed where revival or acclimatization, rather than
original invention, is the aim; we find it in the _Shepherd's Calender_,
nor was it absent in the days of the romantic revival, either from the
German _Lenores_ or the English _Otrantos_. And so it is with the
novelists of the Elizabethan age. Renouncing the traditions of the older
romance, which was adult and perfect a hundred years before in Malory, but
had now fallen into a second childhood, and determined on the creation of
a new and genuine form of literary expression, they paid the price of
originality in the vein of childishness that runs through their writings.
If, however, Greene was content in the main to adopt the style of the new
novel, he, as indeed Lyly too, could at times snatch a straightforward
thought or a vigorous phrase from current speech or controversial
literature, and invest it with all the greater effectiveness by
contrasting it with its surroundings. Here, as an example of euphuistic
composition, is Democles' address to the champions about to engage in
single combat:
Worthy mirrors of resolved magnanimitie, whose thoughts are above your
fortunes, and your valour more than your revenewes, know that Bitches
that puppie in hast bring forth blind whelpes; that there is no herbe
sooner sprung up than the Spattarmia nor sooner fadeth; the fruits too
soone ripe are quickly rotten; that deedes done in hast are repented at
leisure: then, brave men in so weightie a cause,... deferre it some
three daies, and then in solemn manner end the combat[140].
With this we may contrast the closing sentence of the work:
And lest there should be left any thing imperfect in this pastorall
accident, Doron smudged himselfe up, and jumped a marriage with his old
friend Carmela.
This is, of course, intentionally cast in a homely style in contrast to
the courtliness of the main plot; but Greene, as some of his later works
attest, knew the value of strong racy English no less than his friend
Nashe, who, in the preface he prefixed to this very work, pushed
colloquialism and idiom to the verge of affectation and beyond.
The incidental verse, on the other hand, though very unequal, is of
decidedly higher merit. Sephistia's famous song should alone suffice to
save any book from oblivion, while there are other verses which are not
unworthy of a place beside it. I may instance the opening of the
'roundelay' sung by Menaphon, the only character strictly belonging to
pastoral tradition, with its picture of approaching night:
When tender ewes brought home with evening Sunne
Wend to their foldes,
And to their holdes
The shepheards trudge when light of day is done.
Such as it was, _Menaphon_ appealed in no small degree to the taste of the
moment. We know how great was Greene's reputation as an author, how
publishers were ready to outbid one another for the very dregs of his wit.
Thomas Brabine was but voicing the general opinion when, in some verses
prefixed to _Menaphon_, he wrote, condescending to an inevitable pun, but
also to a less excusable mixed metaphor:
Be thou still Greene, whiles others glorie waine.
Of his other romances it is sufficient in this place to mention that
_Pandosto_, which contains the pastoral loves of Dorastus and Fawnia, and
supplied Shakespeare with the outlines of the _Winter's Tale_, appeared
the year before _Menaphon_, while the year after saw his _Never Too Late_,
which is likewise of a generally pastoral character, but does not appear
to have suggested or influenced any subsequent work.
The remarks that have been made concerning Greene apply in a large
measure also to his fellow euphuist Thomas Lodge. His earliest romance,
_Forbonius and Prisceria_, published in 1584, is partly pastoral in plot,
a faithful lover being driven by the opposition of his lady's father into
assuming the pastoral habit; but it is chiefly the connexion of his
_Rosalynde_ of 1590 with Shakespeare's _As You Like It_ that gives him a
claim upon our attention. _Rosalynde_ is not only on this account the
best-known, but is also intrinsically the most interesting of his
romances. The story is too familiar to need detailing. Its origin, as is
also well known, is the _Tale of Gamelyn_, the story which Chaucer
intended putting into the mouth either of the cook, or more probably of
the yeoman, and the hero of which apparently belongs to the Robin Hood
cycle. The interest centres round the three sons of Sir John of Bordeaux,
who retains his name with Lodge and is Shakespeare's Sir Roland de Bois,
and whose youngest son, Lodge's Rosader and Shakespeare's Orlando, is
named Gamelyn, and the outlaw king, Lodge's king of France and
Shakespeare's Duke senior[141]. The entire pastoral element, as well as
the courtly scenes of the earlier portion of the novel, are Lodge's own
invention. His shepherds, whether genuine, as Coridon and Phoebe, or
assumed, as Rosalynde and Rosader, are all alike Italian Arcadians,
equally polished and poetical. Montanus, a shepherd corresponding to
Shakespeare's Silvius, is a dainty rimester, and is not only well posted
in the loves of Polyphemus and Galatea, but can rail on blind boy Cupid in
good French, and on his mistress too--
Son cuer ne doit estre de glace,
Bien que elle ait de Neige le sein.
Thus Lodge added to the original story the figures of the usurper,
Rosalynde, Alinda (Celia), and the shepherds Montanus (Silvius), Coridon
(Corin) and Phoebe, while to Shakespeare we owe Amiens, Jacques,
Touchstone, Audre, and a few minor characters; whence it appears that
Lodge's contribution forms the mainstay of the plot as familiar to modern
readers. Moreover, in spite of the stiltedness of the style where the
author yet remembers to be euphuistic, in spite of the long 'orations,'
'passions,' 'meditations' and the like, each carefully labelled and giving
to the whole the air of a series of rhetorical exercises, in spite of the
mediocre quality of most of the verses, if we except its one perfect gem,
the romance yet retains not a little of its silvan and idyllic sweetness.
Before leaving the school of Lyly, which included a number of more or less
famous writers, I may take the opportunity of mentioning two authors
usually reckoned among them. One, John Dickenson, left two works of a
pastoral nature. His short romance entitled _Arisbas_ appeared in 1594,
and may have supplied Daniel with a hint for the kidnapping of Silvia in
_Hymen's Triumph_. Another yet shorter work, entitled the _Shepherd's
Complaint_, which is undated, but was probably printed in the same year,
is remarkable for being composed more than half in verse, largely
hexameters. In it the author falls asleep and is transported in his dreams
to Arcady, where he listens to the lament of a shepherd for the love of
Amaryllis. The cruel nymph is, however, soon punished, for, challenging
Diana in beauty, she falls a victim to the shafts of the angry goddess,
and is buried with full bucolic honours, whereupon the author awakes. The
other writer is William Warner, well known from his _Albion's England_,
published in 1586, who left a work entitled _Pan his Syrinx_, which
appeared in 1584; but in this pastoralism does not penetrate beyond the
title-page.
Of the books which everybody knows and nobody reads, _The Countess of
Pembroke's Arcadia_ is perhaps the most famous[142]. Yet though an account
of the romance may be found in the pages of every literary textbook, the
history of how the work came to be printed has never been fully cleared
up[143]. The _Arcadia_, as it remained at Sidney's death, was
fragmentary. Two books and a portion of a third were all that had
undergone revision, and possibly represented the portion which Sidney
compiled while living with his sister at Wilton, after his retirement from
court in 1581--the portion for the most part actually written in his
sister's presence. Even of this trustworthy manuscripts were rare, most of
those that circulated being copies of the unrevised text. Sidney died on
October 17, 1586, and even before the end of the year we find his friend
Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, writing to Sidney's father-in-law,
Sir Francis Walsingham, to the effect that the bookseller, William
Ponsonby, had informed him that some one was about to print the _Arcadia_,
and that if they were acting without authority a notification of the fact
should be lodged with the archbishop. Greville proceeds to say that he had
sent to Walsingham's daughter, that is, Lady Sidney, the corrected
manuscript of the work 'don 4 or 5 years sinse, which he left in trust
with me; wherof there is no more copies, and fitter to be reprinted then
the first, which is so common[144].' A complaint was evidently lodged, and
the publication stayed, and we may assume that Ponsonby was rewarded for
his notification by being entrusted with the publication of the revised
manuscript mentioned by Greville, for it was from his house that issued
the quarto edition of 1590. Evidence that it was Greville who was
responsible for the publication of the _Arcadia_ is found in the
dedication of Thomas Wilson's manuscript translation from the _Diana_,
where, addressing Greville, the translater speaks of Sir Philip's
_Arcadia_, 'w^{ch} by yo^{r} noble vertue the world so hapily enjoyes.' In
this edition, containing the first two and a half books only, the division
into chapters and the arrangement of the incidental verse were the work of
the 'over-seer of the print.' The text, however, was not considered
satisfactory, and when the romance was reprinted in 1593 the division into
chapters was discarded, certain alterations were made in the arrangement
of the verse, and there was added another portion of the third book,
together with a fourth and fifth, compiled by the Countess of Pembroke
from the loose sheets sent her from time to time by her brother. This
edition has been commonly regarded as the first published with due
authority, and the term 'surreptitious' has been quite unjustly applied to
the original quarto. The charge, indeed, receives colour from the preface,
signed H. S., to the second edition; but, whoever H. S. may have been,
there is nothing to make one suppose that he was speaking with authority.
The quarto of 1590 having been duly licensed on August 23, 1588, the
rights of the work were in Ponsonby's hands, and to him the publication of
the revised edition had to be entrusted. In 1598 a third edition, to which
other remains of the author were for the first time added, was also
published by Ponsonby. There still remained, however, a lacuna in Book
III, which was not remedied till 1621, when a supplement was added from
the pen of Sir William Alexander. In the edition of 1627 a sixth book was
appended, the work of one Richard Beling, whose initials alone, however,
appear. The early editors seem to have assumed that the unfinished state
of the work, or rather the unrevised state of the later portions, was due
to the author's early death, but most of it must have been written between
the years 1581 and 1583, and it may well be questioned whether in any case
Sidney would have bestowed any further attention upon it. Jonson, indeed,
has preserved the tradition that it had been Sir Philip's intention 'to
have transform'd all his Arcadia to the stories of King Arthure[145],'
though how the transformation was to be accomplished he forbore to hint;
but the more familiar tradition of Sidney's having expressed on his
death-bed a desire that the romance should be destroyed assorts better
with what else we know of his regard for his 'idle worke.'
For the name of his romance Sidney was no doubt indebted to Sannazzaro,
whom he twice mentions as an authority in his _Defence of Poesy_, but
there in all probability his direct obligation ends, since even the _rime
sdrucciole_, which he occasionally affected, may with equal probability be
referred to the influence of the _Diana_. It was, undoubtedly,
Montemayor's romance which served as a model for, or rather suggested the
character of, Sidney's work[146]. Thus the chivalric element, unknown to
Sannazzaro, is with Sidney even more prominent than with Montemayor and
his followers. It is, however, true that, like Greene's, his heroes are
rather of a classical than a medieval stamp, and he also chose to lay the
scene of the action in Greece rather than in his native land, as was the
habit of Spanish writers. The source upon which Sidney chiefly drew for
incidents was the once famous _Amadis of Gaul_, but a diligent reading of
the other French and Spanish romances of chivalry would probably lengthen
the list of recorded creditors. Heliodorus supplies several episodes, and
an acquaintance at least can be traced with both Achilles Tatius and
Chariton.
The intricate plot, with its innumerable digressions, episodes, and
interruptions, need not here be followed in detail, especially as we shall
have ample opportunity of becoming familiar with its general features when
we come to discuss the plays founded upon it. Here it will be sufficient
to note one or two points. In the first place the romance contains no
really pastoral characters, the personae being all either shepherds in
their disguise only, or else, like Greene's Doron and Carmela, burlesque
characters of the rustic tradition. Secondly, it may be observed that the
amorous confusion is even greater than in _Menaphon_, Pyrocles disguising
himself as an Amazon in order to enjoy the company of his beloved
Philoclea, which leads to her father Basilius falling in love with him in
his disguise, and endeavouring to use his daughter to forward his suit,
while her mother Gynecia likewise falls in love with him, having detected
his disguise, and becomes jealous of her daughter, who on her part
innocently accepts her lover as bosom companion[147].
In general the _Arcadia_ is no more than it purports to be, the 'many
fancies' of Sidney's fertile imagination poured forth in courtly guise for
the entertainment of his sister, though his own more serious thoughts
occasionally find expression in its pages, and he even introduces himself
under the imperfect anagram of Philisides, and shadows forth his
friendship with the French humanist Languet. More than this it would be
rash to assert, and Greville did his friend an equivocal service when he
sought to find a deep philosophy underlying the rather formal characters
of the romance[148]. These characters, as we have seen, are for the most
part essentially courtly; the pastoral guise is a mere veil shielding them
from the crude uncompromising light of actuality, with its prejudice in
favour of the probable; while the few rustic personages merely supply a
not very successful comic antimasque.
To the popularity of the _Arcadia_ it is hardly necessary to advert. It
has been repeatedly printed, added to, imitated, abbreviated, modernized,
popularized; four editions appeared during the last decade of the
sixteenth century, nine between the beginning of the seventeenth and the
outbreak of the civil wars[149]. It was first published at a moment when
the public was beginning to tire of Euphuism, and when the heroic death of
the author had recently set a seal upon the brilliance of his fame.
Looking back in after years, writers who, like Drayton, had lived through
the movement from its very birth, could speak of Sidney as of the author
who
did first reduce
Our tongue from Lyly's writing then in use,
and could praise his style as a model of pure English. In spite of the
generous, if misguided, efforts of occasional critics, posterity has not
seen fit to endorse this view. While finding in Sidney's style the same
historical importance as in Lyly's, we cannot but recognize that in itself
Arcadianism was little if at all better than Euphuism. It is just as
formal, just as much a trick, just as stilted and unpliable, just as
painful an illustration of the fact that a figure of rhetoric may be an
occasional ornament, but cannot by any degree of ingenuity be made to
serve as a basis of composition. In the same way as Euphuism is founded
upon a balance of the sentence obtained by antithetical clauses, and the
use of intricate alliteration, together with the abuse of simile and
metaphor drawn from what has been aptly termed Lyly's 'un-natural
history'; so Sidney's style in the _Arcadia_ is based on a balance usually
obtained by a repetition of the same word or a jingle of similar ones,
together with the abuse of periphrasis, and, it may be added, of the
pathetic fallacy. These last have been dangers in all periods of stylistic
experiment; the former, figures duly noted as ornaments by contemporary
rhetoricians, Sidney no doubt borrowed from Spain. There in one famous
example they were shortly to excite the enthusiasm of the knight of La
Mancha--'The reason of the unreason which is done to my reason in such
manner enfeebles my reason that with reason I lament your beauty'--a
sentence which one is sometimes tempted to imagine Sidney must have set
before him as a model. Thus it would appear that, for their essential
elements, Euphuism and Arcadianism, though distinct, alike sought their
models, direct or indirect, in the Spanish literature of the day. Almost
any passage, chosen at random, will illustrate Sidney's style. Observe the
balance of clauses in the following sentence from Kalander's speech, which
inclines perhaps towards Euphuism:
I am no herald to enquire of mens pedegrees, it sufficeth me if I know
their vertues, which, if this young mans face be not a false witnes, doe
better apparrell his minde, then you have done his body. (1590, fol.
8v.)
Or again, as an instance of the jingle of words, take the following from
the steward's narration:
I thinke you thinke, that these perfections meeting, could not choose
but find one another, and delight in that they found, for likenes of
manners is likely in reason to drawe liking with affection; mens actions
doo not alwaies crosse with reason: to be short, it did so in deed. (ib.
fol. 20.)
Of Sidney's power of description the stock example is his account of the
Arcadian landscape (fol. 7), and it is perhaps the best and at the same
time the most characteristic that could be found; the author's peculiar
tricks are at once obvious. There are 'the humble valleis, whose base
estate semed comforted with refreshing of silver rivers,' and the
'thickets, which being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so
to by the chereful deposition of many wel-tuned birds'; there are the
pastures where 'the prety lambs with bleting oratory craved the dams
comfort,' where sat the young shepherdess knitting, whose 'voice comforted
her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voices musick,' a
country where the scattered houses made 'a shew, as it were, of an
accompanable solitarines, and of a civil wildnes,' where lastly--_si sic
omnia_!--was the 'shepheards boy piping, as though he should never be
old.' It must not be supposed that these are occasional embroideries; they
are the very cloth of which the whole pastoral habit is made. The above
examples all occur within a few pages, and might even have been gathered
from a yet smaller plot. It is, however, on the prose, such as it is, that
the reputation of the _Arcadia_ rests; a good deal of occasional verse is
introduced, but it has often been subject of remark how wholly unworthy of
its author most of it is.
Given the widespread popularity of the work, the influence exercised by
the story on English letters is hardly a matter for wonder. Of its general
influence on the drama it will be my business to speak later; at present
we may note that while yet in manuscript it probably supplied Lodge with
certain hints for his _Rosalynde_, and so indirectly influenced _As You
Like It_. One of the best-known episodes, again, that of Argalus and
Parthenia, was versified by Quarles in 1632, and, adorned with a series of
cuts, went through a large number of editions before the end of the
century, besides being dramatized by Glapthorne. The incident of Pyrocles
heading the Zelots has been thought to have suggested the scene in the
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_ in which Valentine consents to lead the robber
band, while to Sidney Shakespeare was likewise indebted, not only for the
cowards' fight in _Twelfth Night_, but in the 'story of the Paphlagonian
unkinde king,' for the original of the Gloster episode in _King Lear_. A
certain prayer out of the later portion of the romance was, as is well
known, a favourite with Charles I in the days of his misfortune, but the
controversial use made of the fact by Milton it is happily possible to
pass over in silence.
Finally, it is worth mentioning as illustrating the vogue of Sidney's
romance, that it not only had the very singular honour of being translated
into French in the first half of the seventeenth century, but that two
translations actually appeared, the rivalry between which gave rise to a
literary controversy of some asperity[150].
Thus we take leave of the pastoral novel or romance, a kind which never
attained to the weighty tradition of the eclogue, or the grace of the
lyric, nor was subjected to the rigorous artistic form of the drama[151].
It remained throughout nerveless and diffuse, and, in spite of much
incidental beauty, was habitually wanting in interest, except in so far as
it renounced its pastoral nature. As Professor Raleigh has put it: 'To
devise a set of artificial conditions that shall leave the author to work
out the sentimental inter-relations of his characters undisturbed by the
intrusion of probability or accident is the problem; love _in vacuo_ is
the beginning and end of the pastoral romance proper.' A similar attempt
is noticeable in the drama, but the conditions soon came to be recognized
as impossible for artistic use. The operation of human affection under
utterly imaginary and impossible conditions is not a matter of human
interest; the resuit was a purely fictitious amatory code, as absurd as it
was unhealthy, and, when sustained by no extrinsic interest of allegory or
the like, the kind soon disappeared. As it is, in the pastoral novel, it
is only when the enchanted circle is broken by the rough and tumble of
vulgar earthly existence that on the featureless surface of the waters
something of the light and shade of true romance replaces the steady
pitiless glare ot a philosophical or sentimental ideal.
Chapter III.
Italian Pastoral Drama
I
We have now passed in review the main classes of non-dramatic pastoral
both abroad and in this country. Such preliminary survey was necessary in
order to obtain an idea of the history and nature of pastoral composition
in general. It was further rendered imperative by more particular
considerations which will appear in the course of the present chapter, for
we shall find that the pastoral drama comes into being, not through the
infusion of the Arcadian ideal into pre-existing dramatic forms, but
through the actual evolution of a new dramatic form from the pre-existing
non-dramatic pastoral.
It is time to retrace our steps and to pick up the thread which we dropped
in a former chapter, the development, namely, of the vernacular eclogue in
Italy. If in so doing we are forced to enter at greater length upon the
discussion of individual works, we shall find ample excuse, not only in
their intrinsic merit, but likewise in their more direct bearing upon what
is after all the main subject of this volume. The pastoral drama of Italy
is the immediate progenitor of that of England. Further, it might be
pleaded that special interest attaches to the Arcadian pastoral as the
only dramatic form of conspicuous vitality for which Italy is the crediter
of European letters.
The history of the rise of the pastoral drama in Italy is a complicated
subject, and one not altogether free from obscurity. Many forces were at
work determining the development of the form, and these it is difficult so
to present as at once to leave a clear impression and yet not to allow any
one element to usurp an importance it does not in reality possess. Any
account which gives a specious appearance of simplicity to the case
should be mistrusted. That I have been altogether successful in my
treatment I can hardly hope, but at least the method followed has not been
hastily adopted. I propose to consider, first of all and apart from the
rest, the early mythological drama, which while exercising a marked
influence over the spirit of the later pastoral can in no way be regarded
as its origin. Next, I shall trace the evolution of the pastoral drama
proper from its germ in the non-dramatic eclogue, by way of the _ecloghe
rappresentative_, and treat incidentally the allied rustic shows, which
form a class apart from the main line of development. Lastly, I shall have
to say a few words concerning the early pastoral plays by Beccari and
others before turning to the masterpieces of Tasso and Guarini, the
consideration of which will occupy the chief part of this chapter[152].
The class of productions known as mythological plays, which powerfully
influenced the character of the pastoral drama, sprang from the union of
classical tradition with the machinery of native religious
representations, in Poliziano's _Favola d' Orfeo_. This was the first
non-religious play in the vernacular, and its dependence on the earlier
religious drama is striking. Indeed, the blending of medieval and
classical forms and conventions may be traced throughout the early secular
drama of Italy. Boiardo's _Timone_, a play written at some unknown date
previous to 1494, preserves, in spite of its classical models, much of the
allegorical character of the morality, and was undoubtedly acted on a
stage comprising two levels, the upper representing heaven in which Jove
sat enthroned on the seat of Adonai. The same scenic arrangement may well
have been used in the _Orfeo_, the lower stage representing Hades[153];
while Niccolo da Correggio's _Cefalo_ was evidently acted on a polyscenic
stage, the actors passing in view of the audience from one part to
another[154]. At a yet earlier period Italian writers in the learned
tongue had taken as the subjects of their plays stories from classical
legend and myth, and among these we find not only recognized tragedy
themes such as the rape of Polyxena dramatized by Lionardo Bruni, but
tales such as that of Progne put on the stage by Gregorio Corrado, both of
which preceded by many years the work of Politian and Correggio.
The earliest secular play in Italian is, then, nothing but a _sacra
rappresentazione_ on a pagan theme, a fact which was probably clearly
recognized when, in the early editions from 1494 onwards, the piece was
described as the 'festa di Orpheo[155].' It was written in 1471, when
Poliziano was about seventeen, and we learn from the author's epistle
prefixed to the printed edition that it was composed in the short space of
two days for representation before Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga at Mantua.
From the same epistle we learn that the author desired, or at least
assumed the attitude of desiring, that his composition should share the
fate of the ill-fashioned Lacedaemonian children; 'Cognoscendo questa mia
figliuola essere di qualita da fare piu tosto al suo padre vergogna che
onore; e piu tosto atta a dargli malinconia che allegrezza.' The _favola_
as originally put forth continued to be reprinted without alteration, till
1776, when Ireneo Affo published the _Orphei Tragoedia_ from a collation
of two manuscripts. This differs in various respects from the printed
version, among others in being divided, short as it is, into five acts,
headed respectively 'Pastorale,' 'Ninfale,' 'Eroico,' 'Negromantico,' and
'Baccanale.' It is now known to represent a revision of the piece made,
probably by Antonio Tebaldeo, for representation at Ferrara, and in it
much of the popular and topical element has been eliminated. The action
of the piece is based in a general manner upon the story given by Ovid in
the tenth book of the _Metamorphoses_.
The performance begins with a prologue by Mercury which is nothing but a
short argument of the whole plot. 'Mercurio annunzia la festa' is the
superscription in the original, evidently suggested by the appearance of
'un messo di Dio' with which the religious _rappresentazioni_ usually
open. At the end of this prologue a shepherd appears and finishes the
second octave with the couplet:
State attenti, brigata; buono augurio;
Poi che di cielo in terra vien Mercurio.
In the Ferrarese revision these stanzas appear as 'Argomento' without
mention of Mercury, while for the above lines are substituted the
astonishing doggerel:
Or stia ciascuno a tutti gli atti intento,
Che cinque sono; e questo e l' argomento.
Thereupon (beginning Act I of the revision) enters Mopso, an old shepherd,
meeting Aristeo, a youthful one, with his herdsman Tirsi. Mopso asks
whether his white calf has been seen, and Aristeo, who fancies he has
heard a lowing from beyond the hill, sends his boy to see. In the
meanwhile he detains Mopso with an account of his love for a nymph he met
the day before, and sings a _canzona_:
Ch' i' so che la mia ninfa il canto agogna[156].
It runs on the familiar themes of love: 'Di doman non c' e certezza.'
Digli, zampogna mia, come via fugge
Con gli anni insieme la bellezza snella;
E digli come il tempo ne distrugge,
Ne l' eta persa mai si rinovella;
Digli che sappi usar sua forma bella,
Che sempre mai non son rose e viole...
Udite, selve, mie dolci parole,
Poi che la ninfa mia udir non vole.
The boy Tirsi now returns, having with much trouble driven the strayed
calf back to the herd, and narrates how he saw an unknown nymph of
wondrous beauty gathering flowers about the hill. Aristeo recognizes from
this description the object of his love, and, leaving Mopso and Tirsi to
shake their heads over his midsummer madness, goes off to find her.
So far we might be reading one of the _ecloghe rappresentative_ which we
shall have to consider shortly, but of which the earliest known examples
cannot well be less than ten or twelve years later than Poliziano's play.
With the exception, indeed, of one or two in Boccaccio's _Ameto_, it is
doubtful whether any vernacular eclogues had appeared at the time. The
character of Tirsi belongs to rustic tradition, and must be an experiment
contemporary with, if not prior to, Lorenzo's _Nencia_. The portion before
the _canzone_ is in _terza rima_; that after it, like the prologue, in
octaves.
The original proceeds without break to the song of Aristeo as he pursues
the flying Euridice (Act II in the revision):
Poi che 'l pregar non vale,
E tu via ti dilegui,
El convien ch' io ti segui.
Porgimi, Amor, porgimi or le tue ale.
While Aristeo is following Euridice, Orfeo enters upon the scene with a
Latin ode in Sapphic metre in honour of Cardinal Gonzaga. A note informs
us that this was originally sung by 'Messer Braccio Ugolino, attore di
detta persona d' Orfeo.' In place of this ode the revised text contains a
long 'Coro delle Driadi,' with two speeches in _terza rima_ by the
choragus, announcing and lamenting the death of Euridice, who as she fled
from Aristeo has been stung in the foot by a serpent. After this the news
of her death is reported to Orfeo--by a shepherd in the original, by a
dryad in the revised version. That the substitution of the chorus for the
Sapphic ode is an improvement from the poetic point of view will hardly be
denied, yet this improvement has been attained at the cost of some
dramatic sacrifice. In the original Orfeo is introduced naturally enough
in his character of supreme poet and musician to do honour to the
occasion, and it is only after he has been on the stage some time that the
news of Euridice's death is brought. In the revision he is merely
introduced for the purpose of being informed of his wife's death--he has
hardly been so much as mentioned before. He thus loses the slight
opportunity previously afforded him of presenting a dramatic individuality
apart from the very essence of his tragedy.
The announcement to Orfeo of Euridice's death begins the third act of the
revised text, which is amplified at this point by the introduction of a
satyr Mnesillo, who acts as chorus to Orfeo's lament. The character of a
friendly satyr is interesting in view of the role commonly assigned to his
species in pastoral.
After this we have in the original the direction 'Orfeo cantando giugne
all' Inferno,' while in the revision there is again a new act, the fourth.
Symonds pointed out that the merits of the piece are less dramatic than
lyrical, and that fortunately the central scene was one in which the
situation was capable of lyrical expression. The pleading of Orfeo before
the gates of Hades and at the throne of Pluto forms the lyrical kernel of
the play, and gives it its poetic value. The bard appears before the
iron-bound portals of the nether world, and the pains of hell surcease.
'Who is he?' asks Pluto--
Chi e costui che con si dolce nota
Muove l' abisso, e con l' ornata cetra?
Io veggo ferma d' Ission la rota,...
Ne piu P acqua di Tantalo s' arretra;
E veggo Cerber con tre bocche intente,
E le furie acquietar il suo lamento.
At length he stands before Pluto's throne, the seat of the God of the
_sacre rappresentazioni_, the rugged rock-seat surrounded by the monstrous
demons of Signorelli's _tondo_[157]. Here in presence of the grim ravisher
and of his pale consort, in whom the passionate pleading of the Thracian
bard stirs long-forgotten memories of spring and of the plains of Enna,
Orfeo's song receives adequate expression. It is closely imitated from the
corresponding passage in Ovid, but the lyrical perfection and passionate
crescendo of the stanzas are Poliziano's own. Addressing Pluto, Orfeo
discovers the object of his quest:
Non per Cerber legar fo questa via,
Ma solamente per la donna mia.
May not love penetrate even the forbidden bounds of hell?--
se memoria alcuna in voi si serba
Del vostro celebrato antico amore,
Se la vecchia rapina a mente avete,
Euridice mia bella mi rendete.
Why should death grudge the few years at most which complete the span of
human life?--
Ogni cosa nel fine a voi ritorna;
Ogni vita mortal quaggiu ricade:
Quanto cerchia la luna con sue corna
Convien che arrivi alle vostre contrade--
or why reap amid the unmellowed corn?--
Cosi la ninfa mia per voi si serba,
Quando sua morte gli dara natura.
Or la tenera vite e l' uva acerba
Tagliata avete con la falce dura.
Chi e che mieta la sementa in erba
E non aspetti ch' ella sia matura?
Dunque rendete a me la mia speranza:
Io non vel chieggio in don, questa e prestanza.
Next he invokes the pity of the stern god by the name of Chaos whence the
world had birth, and by the dread rivers of the nether world, by Styx and
Acheron: 'E pel sonante ardor di Flegetonte'; and lastly, turning to 'the
faery-queen Proserpina,'
Pel pome che a te gia, Regina, piacque,
Quando lasciasti pria nostro orizzonte.
E se pur me la niega iniqua sorte,
Io no vo' su tornar, ma chieggio morte![158]
Hell itself relents, and, as Boccaccio had written,
forse lieta gli rendeo
La cercata Euridice a condizione--
the condition being that he shall not turn to behold her before attaining
once again to the land of the living. The condition, of course, is not
fulfilled. Orfeo seeks to clasp 'his half regain'd Eurydice,' with the
triumphant cry of Ovid holding the conquered Corinna in his arms:
Ite triumphales circum mea tempora lauri.
Vicimus: Eurydice reddita vita mihi est.
Haec est praecipuo Victoria digna triumpho.
Hue ades, o cura parte triumphe mea[159].
He turns, and his unsubstantial love sinks back into the realm of shadows
with the cry:
Oime che 'I troppo amore
Ci ha disfatti ambe dua.
Ecco ch' io ti son tolta a gran furore,
Ne sono ormai piu tua.
Ben tendo a te le braccia; ma non vale,
Che indietro son tirata. Orfeo mio, _vale_.
As he would follow her once more a fury bars the road.
Desperate of his love, the bard now forswears for ever the company of
women (Act V of the revised text).
Da qui innanzi vo corre i fior novelli ...
Ouesto e piu dolce e piu soave amore;
Non sia chi mai di donna mi favelli,
Poi che morta e colei ch' ebbe il mio core.
Now that she is dead, what faith abides in woman?--
Quanto e misero l' uom che cangia voglia
Per donna, o mai per lei s' allegra, o duole!...
Che sempre e piu leggier ch' al vento foglia,
E mille volte il di vuole e disvuole.
Segue chi fugge; a chi la vuol, s' asconde,
E vanne e vien come alla riva l' onde.
The cry wrung from him by his grief anticipates the cynical philosophy of
later pastorals. Upon this the scene is invaded by 'The riot of the tipsy
Bacchanals,' eager to avenge the insult offered to their sex[160]. They
drive the poet out, and presently returning in triumph with his 'gory
visage,' break out into the celebrated chorus 'full of the swift fierce
spirit of the god.' This gained considerably by revision, and in the later
text runs as follows:
Ciascun segua, o Bacco, te;
Bacco, Bacco, oe oe.
Di corimbi e di verd' edere
Cinto il capo abbiam cosi
Per servirti a tuo richiedere
Festeggiando notte e di.
Ognun beva: Bacco e qui;
E lasciate here a me.
Ciascun segua, ec.
Io ho vuoto gia il mio corno:
Porgi quel cantaro in qua.
Questo monte gira intorno,
O 'l cervello a cerchio va:
Ognun corra in qua o in la,
Come vede fare a me.
Ciascun segua, ec.
Io mi moro gia di sonno:
Sono io ebra o si o no?
Piu star dritti i pie non ponno.
Voi siet' ebri, ch' io lo so;
Ognun faccia com' io fo;
Ognun succe come me.
Ciascun segua, ec.
Ognun gridi Bacco, Bacco,
E poi cacci del vin giu;
Poi col sonno farem fiacco,
Bevi tu e tu e tu.
Io non posso ballar piu;
Ognun gridi Evoe.[161]
Ciascun segua, o Bacco, te;
Bacco, Bacco, oe oe.
Lyrical beauty rather than dramatic power was, it has already been
remarked, Poliziano's aim and achievement. The want of characterization in
the hero, the insignificance of the part allotted to Euridice, the total
inadequacy of the tragic climax, measure the author's power as a
dramatist. It is the lyrical passages--Aristeo's song, Orfeo's impassioned
pleading, the bacchanalian dance chorus--that supply the firm supports of
art upon which rests the slight fabric of the play.
The same simplicity of construction, a simplicity in nature rather
narrative than dramatic, characterizes Niccolo da Correggio's _Cefalo_.
The play was represented in state in the great courtyard of the ducal
palace at Ferrara, on the occasion of the marriage of Lucrezia d' Este
with Annibale Bentivogli, on January 21, 1487[162]. Like the _Orfeo_, the
piece exhibits traces of its origin in the religious shows, though, unlike
the original draft of Poliziano's play, it is divided into five acts each
of some length, and is provided with regular choruses on the classical
model. In spite of its inferiority to the _Orfeo_ in lyric power and its
possibly even greater deficiency from a dramatic point of view, it will be
worth while giving some account of the piece in order to get as clear an
idea as possible of the nature and limitations of the mythological drama,
and also because it has never, I believe, been reprinted in modern times,
and is in consequence practically unknown to English readers.
The author, a descendant of the princely house of Correggio, was born
about 1450, and married the daughter of the famous _condottiere_
Bartolommeo Colleoni. He lived for some years at Milan at the court of
Lodovico Sforza; later he migrated to that of the Estensi. In 1493 he sent
an allegorical eclogue to Isabella Gonzaga at Mantua, which may possibly
have been represented, though we have no note of the fact, and the poem
itself has perished[163]. He died in 1508.
After a prologue which resembles that of the _Orfeo_ in giving an argument
of the whole piece, the first act opens with a scene in which Aurora seeks
the love of Cefalo. Offended at finding her advances repulsed, the goddess
hints that the wife to whom Cefalo is so careful of his faith is, for her
part, more free of her favours; and upon Cefalo indignantly refusing
credence to the slander, suggests that he should himself in disguise make
trial of her fidelity. This the unfortunate youth resolves to do. He
approaches Procri in the habit of a merchant, with goods for sale, and
takes the opportunity thus afforded of declaring his love. She turns to
fly, but the pretended passion of his suit stays her, and she is brought
to lend an ear to his cunning. He retails the commonplaces of the
despairing lover:
Deh, non fuggire, e non si altiera in vista;
Odime alquanto, e scolta i preghi mei.
Che fama mai per crudelta se acquista?
Bellissima sei pur, cruda non dei.
Non sai che Amor non vol che se resista
A colpi soi? cosi vinto mi dei
Subito ch' io ti viddi; eh, non fuggire,
Forza non ti faro; deh, stammi audire.
Not Jove or Phoebus he to assume strange shapes for her love; he is but
her slave, and can but offer his pedlar's pack; but he knows of hidden
treasure in the earth, and hers, too, shall be vesture of the fairest.
After gold and soft raiment comes the trump card of the seducer--secrecy:
Cosa secreta mai non se riprende;
El tempo che si perde mai non torna;
Qui non serai veduta, or che se attende
Quel se ha a dolere, che al suo ben sogiorna.
Secreto e il loco, el sol pur non vi splende;
Bella sei tu, sol manca che sii adorna
Di veste come io intendo ultra il tesoro.
Deh, non mi tener piu; vedi ch' io moro.
She is almost won; one last assault, and her defences fall. Why, indeed,
should she hesitate--
Poi ch' Amor dice, ogni secreta e casta?
This stroke of cynicism is put forward as it were but half intentionally,
and with no appreciation of its intense irony in the mouth of the husband.
Throughout the scene indeed he appears merely as a common seducer, and the
author seems wholly to have failed to grasp the real dramatic value of the
situation. On the other hand, the lesser art of the stage has been
mastered with some success, and there is an adaptation of language to
action which at least argues that the author had a vivid picture of the
staging of his play in his mind when he wrote.
The moment Procri has consented to barter her honour, Cefalo discovers
himself, and the unhappy girl flies in terror. Seeing now, too late, the
resuit of his foolish mistrust, Cefalo follows with prayers and
self-reproaches--
Son ben certo
Che tu mi cognoscesti ancor coperto--
but in vain. The act ends with a song in which Aurora glories in the
success of her revenge--
Festegiam con tutto il core;
Biastemate hor meco Amore!
In the second act Procri, having recovered from her fright, is bent on
avenging herself for the deceit practised by Cefalo, upon whose supposed
love for Aurora she throws the blame in the matter. She seeks the grove of
Diana, where she is enrolled among the followers of the goddess. Cefalo,
who has followed her flight, rejoins her in the wood, and there renews his
prayers. She refuses to recognize him, denies being his wife, and is about
to renew her flight, when an old shepherd, attracted by Cefalo's
lamentation, stays her and forces her to hear her husband's pleading.
Other shepherds appear on the scene, and the act ends with an eclogue. In
the next we find her reconciled to Cefalo, to whom she gives the
wind-swift dog and the unerring spear which she had received as a nymph of
Diana. Cefalo at once sets the hound upon the traces of a boar, and goes
off in pursuit, while his wife returns home. He shortly reappears, having
lost boar and hound alike, and, tired with the chase, falls asleep.
Meanwhile a faun, finding Procri alone, tells her that he had seen Cefalo
meeting with his love Aurora in the wood--a piece of news in return for
which he seeks her love. She, however, resolves to go and surprise the
supposed lovers, and setting fire to the wood, herself to perish with them
in the flames. On Cefalo's return he is met with bitter reproaches, and
the act ends with a chorus of fauns and satyrs. The fourth contains the
catastrophe. Procri hides in the wood in hope of surprising her husband
with his paramour. Cefalo enters ready for the chase, and, seeing what he
takes to be a wild beast among bushes, throws the fatal spear, which
pierces Procri's breast. A reconciliation precedes her death, and the
close of the act is rendered effective by the successive summoning of the
Muses and nymphs in some graceful stanzas. With a little polishing, such
as Poliziano's bacchanalian chorus received in revision, the scene would
not be unworthy of the time and place of its production.
Oime sorelle, o Galatea, presto!
Donate al cervo ormai un poco pace;
Soccorrete al pianger quel caso mesto.
Oime sorelle, Procri morta giace,
L' alma spirata, e il ciel guardando tace.
At Cefalo's desire Calliope summons her sister Muses, Phillis the nymphs,
after which all join in a choral ode calling upon the divinities of
mountain, wood, and stream to join in a universal lament:
Weep, spirits of the woods and of the hills,
Weep, each pure nymph beside her fountain-head,
And weep, ye mountains, in a thousand rills,
For the fair child who here below lies dead:
Mourn, all ye gods, the last of human ills,
Your sacred foreheads all ungarlanded.
Here the traditional story of Cephalus and Procris, as founded on the
rather inferior version in the seventh book of the _Metamorphoses_, ends.
There remains, however, a fifth act, in which Diana appears, raises
Procri, and restores her to her husband.
The play, composed for the most part in octaves with choruses in _terza
rima_, is, from the dramatic point of view, open to obvious and fatal
objections. The preposterous _dea ex machina_ of the last act; the
inconsequence of motive and inconsistency of character, partly, it is
true, inherent in the original story, but by no means made less obvious by
the dramatist; the insufficiency of the action to fill the necessary
space, and the inability of the author to make the most of his materials,
are all alike patent. On the other hand, we have already noticed a certain
theatrical ability displayed in the writing of the first act, and we may
further attribute the alteration by which Procri is represented as jealous
of Cefalo's original lover, Aurora, instead of the wholly imaginary Aura,
as in Ovid, to a desire for dramatic unity of motive.
The extent to which either the _Orfeo_ or _Cefalo_ can be regarded as
pastoral will now be clear, and it must be confessed that they do not
carry us very far. The two fifteenth-century plays constitute a distinct
species which has attained to a high degree of differentiation if not of
dramatic evolution, and critics who would see in them the origin of the
later pastoral drama have to explain the strange phenomenon of the species
lying dormant for nearly three-quarters of a century, and then suddenly
developing into an equally individualized but very dissimilar form[164].
It should, moreover, be borne in mind that contemporary critics never
regarded the Arcadian pastoral as in any way connected with the
mythological drama, and that the writers of pastoral themselves claimed no
kinship with Poliziano or Correggio, but always ranked themselves as the
followers of Beccari alone in the line of dramatic development. On the
other hand, there can be no reasonable doubt that such performances went
to accustom spectators to that mixture of mythology and idealism which
forms the atmosphere, so to speak, of the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor fido_.
This must be my excuse for lingering over these early works.
II
When dealing with the Italian eclogue we saw how, at a certain point, it
began to assume a distinctly dramatic character, and in so doing took the
first step towards the possible evolution of a real pastoral drama. It
will be my task in the ensuing pages to follow up this clue, and to show
how the pastoral drama arose through a process of natural development from
the recited eclogue.
The dramatic tendency was indeed inherent in the eclogue from the very
first. Throughout there is a steady growth in the use of dialogue: of the
Idyls of Theocritus only about a third contain more than one character; of
Vergil's Bucolics at least half; of Calpurnius' all but one; of the
eclogues of Petrarch and Boccaccio all without exception. This tendency
did not escape Guarini, who, when not led into puerilities by his love of
self-laudation, often shows considerable insight. 'The eclogue,' he says,
'is nothing but a short discussion between shepherds, differing in no
other manner from that sort of scene which the Latins call dialogue,
except in so far as being whole and independent, possessing within itself
both beginning and end[165].'
Having thus gradually altered the literary form of the eclogue, this
tendency towards dramatic expression next showed itself in the manner in
which the poem was presented to the world. For circulation in print or
manuscript, or for informal reading, came to be substituted recitation in
character. The dialogue was divided between two persons who spoke
alternately, and it is evident from the somewhat meagre texts that survive
that, in the earliest examples, these _ecloghe rappresentative_, or
dramatic eclogues as I shall call them, differed in no way from the purely
literary productions which we considered in an earlier section. Evidence
of actual representation is often wanting, and the exact date in most
cases is uncertain; but, since there is no doubt that such performances
actually did take place, we are not only justified in assuming that
several poems of the period belong to this class, but we can also, on
internai evidence, arrange them more or less in a natural sequence of
dramatic development. One such eclogue has come down to us from the pen of
Baldassare Taccone, a Genoese who also wrote mythological plays on the
subjects of Danae and Actaeon. Another, interesting as dealing with the
corruption of the Curia at a moment when its scandalous traffic was
carried on in the light of day with more than usually cynical
indifference, was actually presented at Rome under the patronage of
Cardinal Giovanni Colonna at the carnival of 1490, during the pontificate
of Innocent VIII. Gradually a more complex form was evolved, the number of
speakers was increased, and some of these made their entrance during the
progress of the recitation. So too in the matter of metrical form, the
strict _terza rima_ of the earlier examples came to be diversified with
_rime sdrucciole_, and by being intermingled with verses with internal
rime, with _ottava rima, settenari_ couplets, and lyrical measures.
Castiglione's representation at Urbino has been noticed previously. Among
similar productions may be mentioned two poems by a certain Caperano of
Faenza, printed in 1508, while others are found at Siena in 1517 and 1523.
Besides the texts that are extant we also have record of a good many which
have perished. In 1493 the representation of eclogues formed part of the
revels prepared by Alexander VI for the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia with
Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro, and this was again the case when, having
been divorced from Giovanni, and her second husband having perished by the
assassin's dagger, she finally in 1502 became the wife of Alfonso d'Este,
heir to the duchy of Ferrara. Eclogues were again represented at Ferrara
in 1508, and received specific mention among the dramatic performances
dealt with by the laws of Venice.
We thus see that the eclogue had every opportunity of developing into a
regular dramatic form. At this point a variety of external influences made
themselves felt, which facilitated or modified its growth. Perhaps
foremost among these should be reckoned that of the 'regular' drama--that
is of the drama based upon an imitation of the classics, chiefly of the
Latin authors. The conception of dramatic art which was in men's minds at
the time naturally and inevitably influenced the development of a form of
poem which was daily becoming more sensibly dramatic. Next there was the
influence of the mythological drama embodying the romantic and ideal
elements of classical myth, but in form representing the tradition of the
old religious plays. This led to the occasional introduction of
supernatural characters, counteracted the rationalizing influence of the
Roman dramatists, and supplied the pastoral with its peculiar imaginative
atmosphere. Lastly, there was the 'rustic' influence, which was at no time
very strong, and left no mark upon the form as finally evolved, but which
has nevertheless to be taken into account in tracing the process of
development. The influence exercised by burlesque and realistic scenes
from real life cannot have been brought to bear on the eclogue until it
had already attained to a dramatic character of some complexity. The
earliest text of the kind we possess dates from 1508, and it is doubtful
whether or not it was acted. In 1513 we have record of a rustic
performance at the Capitol, and a satyrical and allegorical piece of like
nature, and belonging to the same year, is actually preserved, as is also
one in Bellunese dialect. These shows became the special characteristic of
the Rozzi society at Siena, in whose hands they soon developed into short
realistic farces of low life, composed in dialectal verse and acted by
members of the society at many of the courts of Italy. The fashion,
though never widely spread, survived for many years, the most famous
author of such pieces being Michelangelo Buonarroti the younger at the
beginning of the next century.
These _drammi rusticali_, as they were called, may not improbably have
owed their origin to the fashion of rustic composition set by Lorenzo de'
Medici in his _Nencia_, and may thus in their origin have been related to
the courtly eclogue; but the subsequent development of the kind is at most
parallel to that of the pastoral drama, and should not be regarded either
as the origin or as a subdivision of this latter. Nor did the rustic
compositions exercise any permanent influence on the pastoral drama; the
most that can be said is that an occasional text shows signs of being
affected by the low vulgarity of the kind.
Returning to the polite eclogues, we soon find an increase in the dramatic
complexity of the form. Tansillo's _Due pellegrini_, which cannot be later
than 1528, contains the rudiments of a plot, two lovers bent on suicide
being persuaded by a miraculous voice to become reconciled with the world
and life. Poetic justice befalls the two nymphs in an eclogue by Luca di
Lorenzo, printed in 1530, the disdainful Diversa being condemned to love
the boor Fantasia, while Euridice's loving disposition is rewarded by the
devotion of Orindio.
We now come to what may almost be regarded as the first conscious attempt
to write a pastoral play--an attempt, however, which met with but partial
success. This is the _Amaranta_, a 'Comedia nuova pastorale' by
Giambattista Casalio of Faenza, which most probably belongs to a date
somewhat before 1538. In it the mutual love of Partenio and Amaranta is
thwarted by the girl's mother Celia, who destines her for a goatherd.
Partenio is led to believe that his love has played him false, while in
her turn Amaranta supposes herself forsaken. The two meet, however, at the
hut of a wise nymph Lucina, through whose intervention they are reconciled
and their union effected. The piece, which attains to some proportions, is
divided into five acts, and, while owing a certain debt to the _Orfeo_, is
itself pastoral in character with occasional coarse touches borrowed from
the rustic shows. It is in the _Amaranta_ that we first meet with an
attempt to introduce a real plot of some human interest into a purely
pastoral composition; we are no longer dealing with a merely occasional
piece written in celebration of some special person or festivity, no
longer with a mythological masque or pageant, nor with an amorous
allegory, but with a piece the interest of which, slight as it is, lies in
the fate of the characters involved.
The fifteen years or so which separate the work of Casalio from that of
Beccari saw the production of a succession of more or less pastoral works
which serve, to some extent at least, to bridge over the gap which
separates even the most elaborate of the above compositions from the
recognized appearance of the fully-developed pastoral drama in the
_Sacrifizio_. The chief characteristic which marks the work of these years
is a tendency to deliberate experiment. The writers appear to have been
conscious that their work was striving towards a form which had not yet
been achieved, though they were themselves vague as to what that form
might be. Epicuro's _Mirzia_ tends towards the mythological drama; the
_Silvia_ written by one Fileno, which, like the _Amaranta_, turns on the
temporary estrangement of two lovers, introduces considerable elements
from the rustic performances; in Cazza's _Erbusto_ the amorous skein is
cut by the discovery of consanguinity and an [Greek: a)nagno/risis] after
the manner of the Latin comedy. Similar in plot to this last is a
fragmentary pastoral of Giraldi Cintio's published from manuscript by
Signor Carducci. Another curious but isolated experiment is Cintio's
_Egle_, in intent a revival of the 'satyric' drama of the Greeks, in
substance a dramatization of the motive of Sannazzaro's _Salices_. In one
sense these experiments ended in failure; it was not through the
elaboration of mythological or superhuman elements, nor through the humour
of burlesque or realistic rusticity, nor yet through the violence of
unexpected discoveries, that the destined form of the pastoral drama was
to be attained. On the other hand, they undoubtedly served to introduce an
elaboration of plot and complexity of dramatic structure which is
altogether lacking in the earlier eclogues and masques, but without which
the work of Tasso and Guarini could never have occupied the commanding
position that it does in the history of literature. They carry us forward
to the point at which the pastoral drama took its shape and being.
Of the elements compounded of pastoral idealism and the graceful purity of
classical myth, and combining the scenic attractions of the masque with
the reasoned action and human interest of the regular drama, the Arcadian
pastoral first achieved definite form in the work of Agostino Beccari. His
_Sacrifizio_, styled 'favola pastorale' on the title-page of the first
impression, was acted at the palace of Francesco d' Este at Ferrara in the
presence of Ercole II and his son Luigi, and of the Duchess Renata and her
daughters Lucrezia and Leonora, on two occasions in February and March
1554. The piece was revived more than thirty years later, namely in 1587,
when the courtly world was already familiar with Tasso's masterpiece, and
was ringing with the prospective fame of the _Pastor fido_, and
represented both at Sassuolo and Ferrara.
The action involves three pairs of lovers. Turico loves Stellinia in spite
of the fact that she has transferred her affections to Erasto. Erasto in
his turn pays his homage to Callinome, the type of the 'careless'
shepherdess, a nymph vowed to the service of Diana. There remains
Carpalio, whose love for Melidia is secretly returned; its consummation
being prevented by the girl's brother Pimonio, who refuses to countenance
the match, and keeps dragon guard over his sister. In the meanwhile
shepherds and shepherdesses assemble to honour the festival and sacrifice
of Pan, which proves the occasion for the unravelling of the amorous
tangle. Stellinia, wishing to rid herself of her rival in Erasto's love,
induces Callinome so far to break her vestal vow as to be present at the
forbidden feast. Here she is promptly detected by the offended goddess and
sentenced to do battle against one of the fiercest of the Erymanthian
boars. Erasto comes to her aid with a magic ointment, which has the power
of rendering the user invisible, and with the help of which she achieves
her task unharmed. Out of gratitude she rewards her preserver with her
love. Not only is Stellinia thus condemned to witness the failure of her
plot, but she is herself carried off by a satyr, who endeavours to deceive
each of the nymphs in turn. Being rescued from his power by the faithful
Turico, she too capitulates to love. Lastly, in the absence of Pimonio,
who has gone to be present at the games held at the festival, Carpalio and
Melidia pluck the fruit of love, and are saved from the anger of the
brother through his conveniently falling into an enchanted lake whence he
emerges in the shape of a boar.
In the prologue the author boldly announces the novelty of his work--
Una favola nova pastorale
............nova in tanto
Ch' altra non fu giammai forse piu udita
Di questa sorte recitarsi in scena.
Guarini, who is said to have supplied a prologue for the revival of the
piece, bore out Beccari's claim when he wrote in his essay on
tragi-comedy: 'First among the moderns to possess the happy boldness to
make in this kind, namely the pastoral dramatic tale, of which there is no
trace among the ancients, was Agostin de' Beccari, a worthy citizen of
Ferrara, to whom alone does the world owe the fair creation of this sort
of poem[166].'
Several pieces of no great interest or importance serve to fill the decade
or so following on the production of Beccari's play. Groto, known as the
Cieco d' Adria, combined the mythological motive with much of the vulgar
obscenity of the Latin comedy. Lollio also produced a hybrid of an earlier
type in his _Aretusa_. In 1567 a return was made to the pastoral tradition
of Beccari in Agostino Argenti's play _Lo Sfortunato_. Among the
spectators who witnessed the first performance of this piece before Duke
Alfonso and his court at Ferrara was a youth of twenty-two, lately
attached to the household of the Cardinal Luigi d' Este. In all
probability this was Tasso's first introduction to a style of composition
which not many years later he was to make famous throughout Europe. The
play he witnessed on that occasion, however, was no work of surpassing
genius. It cannot, indeed, be said to mark any decided advance on
Beccari's work except in so far, perhaps, as it at times foreshadows the
somewhat sickly sentiment of later pastorals, including Tasso's own. The
shepherd Sfortunato loves Dafne, Dafne loves Iacinto, who in his turn
pursues Flaminia, while she loves only Silvio, who loves himself. Nothing
particular happens till the fourth scene of Act III. Then Silvio, tired of
being the last link in the chain of love, devises a plan for placing
Flaminia and Dafne in the power of their respective lovers. Flaminia,
assailed by Iacinto, makes up her mind to bow to fate, and accepts with a
good grace the love it is no longer in her power to fly. Sfortunato, on
the other hand, rather than offend his mistress, allows her to depart
unharmed, and since he thereby forgoes his only chance of enjoying the
object of his passion, determines to die. His vow is overheard by Dafne,
who, seeing that her love for Iacinto may no more avail, at last relents.
A third nymph, introduced to make the numbers even, takes the veil among
the followers of Diana, and so lives the object of Silvio's chaste regard.
It will be readily seen how in the character of Sfortunato we have the
forerunner of Tasso's Aminta; but it will also appear what poor use has
been made of the situation. The truth is that we have up to now been
dealing merely with origins, with productions which are of interest only
in the reflected light of later work; whatever there is of real beauty and
of permanent value in the pastoral drama of Italy is due to the breath of
life inspired into the phantasms of earlier writers by the genius of Tasso
and Guarini.
III
We have now followed the dramatic pastoral from its obscure origin in the
eclogue to the eve of its assuming a recognized and abiding position in
the literature of Europe[167]. But if it is in a measure easy thus to
trace back the Arcadian drama to its historical sources, and to show how
the _Aminta_ came to be possible, it is not so easy to show how it came to
be actual. All creative work is the outcome of three fashioning forces,
the historical position, the personal circumstances of the artist, and his
individual genius. The pastoral drama had reached what I may perhaps be
allowed to call the 'psychological point' in its development. At the same
moment it happened that Tasso, having returned from a fruitless and
uncongenial mission to the Valois court, enjoyed a brief period of calm
and prosperity in the congenial society of Leonora d' Este, before the
critical bickerings to which he exposed himself in connexion with the
_Gerusalemme_ wrought havoc with an already over-sensitive and
overstrained temperament. Furthermore it happened that he brought to the
spontaneous composition of his courtly toy just that touch of languorous
beauty, that soft vein of sentiment, which formed perhaps his most
characteristic contribution to the artistic tone of his age, veiling a
novel mood in his favourite phrase, _un non so che_[168]. Had all this not
been, had not the fortune of a suitable genius and the chance of personal
surroundings jumped with the historical possibility, we might indeed have
had any number of lifeless 'Sacrifices' and 'Unhappy Ones,' but Italy
would have added no new kind to the forms of dramatic art. Had it not been
for the _Aminta_, the pastoral drama must almost necessarily have been
stillborn, for Guarini was too much of a pedant to do more than to imitate
and enlarge, while other writers belong to the decline.
The _Aminta_, while possessing a delicate dramatic structure of its own,
yet retains not a little of the simplicity of the _ecloga
rappresentativa_. Indeed, it is worth noting, alike on account of this
quality in the poem itself as also of its literary ancestry, that, in a
letter written within a year of its original production, Tiburio Almerici
speaks of it by the old name of eclogue[169]. Referring to its
representation at Urbino, he writes: 'Il terzo spettacolo, che si e
goduto questo carnovale, e stato un' egloga del Tasso, che fu recitata
questo giovedi passato da alcuni gioveni d' Urbino nella sala, che fu
fatta per la venuta delia Principessa.' The princess in question was none
other than Lucrezia d' Este, who had lately become the wife of Tasso's
former companion Francesco Maria della Rovere, now Duke of Urbino, and who
with her sister Leonora, the heroine of the Tasso legend, had, it will be
remembered, stood sponsor to Beccari's play nearly twenty years before.
The representation at Urbino to which Almerici alludes was not of course
the first. Written in the winter of 1572-3 during the absence of Duke
Alfonso, the piece was acted after his return from Rome in the summer of
the latter year. Ferrara, as we have seen, had become and was long
destined to remain the special home of the pastoral drama in Italy. Here
on July 31, in the palace of Belvedere, built on an island in the Po, the
court of the Estensi assembled to witness the production of Tasso's
play[170]. The staging, both on this and on subsequent occasions, was no
doubt answerable to the nature of the piece, and added the splendour of
the masque to the classic grace of the fable. Almerici remarks on the
special attractions for spectators and auditors alike of what he calls 'la
novita del coro fra ciascuno atto,' by which he clearly meant the
spectacular interludes known as _intermedi_, the verses for which are
commonly printed at the end of the play[171]. But the representation which
struck the imagination of contemporaries was that before the Grand Duke
Ferdinand at Florence. This took place in 1590[172]. Guarini's play had in
its turn won renown far beyond the frontiers of Italy, while the author
of the _Aminta_, a yet attractive but impossible madman, was destined for
the few remaining years of his life to drag his tale of woes and but too
often his rags from one Italian court to another, ere he sank at last
exhausted where S. Onofrio overlooks St. Peter's dome.
The structure of the play is not free from a good deal of stiffness and
artificiality, which it bequeathed to its successors. It borrowed from the
classical drama a chorus, on the whole less Greek than Latin, the use of
confidants, and the introduction of messengers and descriptive passages.
These last, it may be noted, are deliberately and wantonly classical, not
merely necessitated by the exigencies of the action, difficult of
representation as in the attempted suicide of Aminta, impossible as in the
rescue of Silvia from the satyr, but resorted to in order to veil the
dramatic weakness of the author's imagination, as is plain from the
description of the final meeting of the lovers. Yet it may be freely
admitted that to this device, the substitution namely of narrative for
action, we owe most of the finest poetic passages of the play: the
description of the youthful loves of Aminta and Silvia and the former's
ruse to win a kiss, the picture of Silvia bound to the tree by the pool,
Tirsi's account of the court, the description of Silvia at the spring--one
of the most elaborate in the piece--the account of her escape from the
wolves, last but not least that description of Silvia finding the
unconscious Aminta, so full of subtle and effeminate seduction, prophetic
of a later age of morals and of taste:
Ma come Silvia il riconobbe, e vide
Le belle guance tenere d' Aminta
Iscolorite in si leggiadri modi,
Che viola non e che impallidisca
Si dolcemente, e lui languir si fatto,
Che parea gia negli ultimi sospiri
Esalar l'alma; in guisa di Baccante
Gridando, e percotendosi il bel petto,
Lascio cadersi in sul giacente corpo,
E giunse viso a viso, e bocca a bocca. (V. i.)
So too the chorus, though awkward enough from a dramatic point of view
and in so far as it fulfils any dramatic purpose, offers a sufficient
justification for its existence in the magnificent ode on 'honour,' that
rapturous song of the golden age of love, the poetic supremacy of which
has never been questioned, whatever may have been thought of its ethical
significance. To that aspect we shall return later. At present it will be
well to give some more or less detailed account of the action of the piece
itself.
The shepherd Aminta loves Silvia, formerly as a child his playmate and
companion, now a huntress devoted to the service of Diana, proud in her
virginity and unfettered state. The play opens in a sufficiently
conventional manner, but wrought with sparkling verse, with two companion
scenes. In the first of these Silvia brushes aside the importunities of
her confidant Dafne who seeks to allure her to the blandishments of love
with sententious natural examples and modern instances.
Cangia, cangia consiglio,
Pazzerella che sei,
Che il pentirsi dassezzo nulla giova;
such is the burden of her song, or yet again, recalling the golden days of
love she too of yore had wasted:
Il mondo invecchia
E invecchiando intristisce.
Words of profound melancholy these, uttered in the days of the burnt-out
fires of the renaissance. But all this moves not Silvia, nymph of the
woods and of the chase, and, if she is indeed as fancy-free as she would
have us believe, her lover may even console himself with the reflection
that
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing will make her--
The devil take her!
She has, after all, every right to the position. The next scene introduces
Aminta and his friend Tirsi, to whom he reveals the object and the history
of his love. Translated into bald prose, his confession has no very great
interest, but it opens with one of those exquisitely pencilled sketches
that lie scattered throughout the play.
All' ombra d' un bel faggio Silvia e Filli
Sedean un giorno, ed io con loro insieme;
Quando un' ape ingegnosa, che cogliendo
Sen giva il mel per que' prati fioriti,
Alle guance di Fillide volando,
Alle guance vermiglie come rosa,
Le morse e le rimorse avidamente;
Ch' alla similitudine ingannata
Forse un fior le credette.
Silvia heals the hurt by whispering over it a charm; and the whole
description is instinct with that delicate, soft sentiment of Tasso's
which almost, though never quite, sinks into sentimentality. Aminta feigns
to have been stung on the lip, and begs Silvia to heal the hurt.
La semplicetta Silvia,
Pietosa del mio male,
S' offri di dar aita
Alla finta ferita, ahi lasso! e fece
Piu cupa e piu mortale
La mia piaga verace,
Quando le labbra sue
Giunse alle labbra mie.
It is easy to argue that this is childish, that it mattered no whit though
they kissed from now to doomsday. But only the reader who cannot feel its
beauty is safe from the enervating narcotic of Tasso's style.
The first scene of the second act introduces a new character, the satyr,
type of brute nature in the artificially polished Arcadia of courtly
shepherds. He inherits no savoury character from his literary
predecessors, and he is content to play to the role. His monologue may be
passed over; it and still more the next scene serve to measure the cynical
indelicacy of feeling which was tolerated in the Italian courts. It is a
quality wholly different from the mere coarseness exhibited in the English
drama under Elizabeth and James, but it is one which will astonish no one
who has looked on the dramatic reflection of Italian society in the scenes
of the _Mandragola_. The satyr is succeeded on the stage by the confidants
Dafne and Tirsi in consultation as to the means of bringing about an
understanding between Aminta and Silvia. The scene is characterized by
those caustic reflections on women which serve to balance the extravagant
iciness of the 'careless' nymphs and became a commonplace of the pastoral
drama.
Or, non sai tu com' e fatta la donna?
Fugge, e fuggendo vuol ch' altri la giunga;
Niega, e negando vuol ch' altri si toglia;
Pugna, e pugnando vuol ch' altri la vinca.
Listening to the deliberations of these two, it cannot but strike us that
in spite of their polished speech the straightforward London stage would
have hesitated but little to bestow on them the names they deserve, and
which it were yet scarce honest to have here set down. We pass on, and,
whatever may be said regarding the moral atmosphere of the rest of the
play, we shall not again have to make complaint of the corruption of
manners assumed in the situation. In the following scene Tirsi undertakes
the difficult task of inducing Aminta to intrude upon Silvia, where she is
said to be alone at the spring preparing for the chase. It is only by
hinting that Silvia has secretly instructed Dafne to arrange the tryst
that he in the end succeeds in persuading the bashful lover to risk the
displeasure of his mistress.
At the opening of Act III Tirsi enters lamenting in bitter terms the
cruelty of Silvia. Interrogated by the chorus, he relates how, as he and
Aminta approached the spring where Silvia was bathing, they heard a cry
and, hastening to the spot, found the nymph bound hand and foot to a tree,
and confronting her the satyr. At their approach the monster fled, and
Aminta released the nymph, who _ignuda come nacque_ at once took flight,
leaving her lover in despair. In the meanwhile Aminta has sought to kill
himself with his own spear, but has been prevented by Dafne, and the two
now enter. At this moment too comes Nerina, one of the 'messengers' of the
piece, with the news that Silvia has been slain while pursuing a wolf in
the forest. Thereupon Aminta, with a last reproach to Dafne for having
prevented him from putting an end to his miserable life before being the
recipient of such direful news, rushes off the scene at a pace to mock
pursuit. In the next act, however, Silvia reappears and narrates her
escape. Here we arrive at the dramatic climax of the play. Dafne expresses
her fear that the false report of Silvia's death may indeed prove the
death of Aminta. The nymph at first shows herself incredulous, but on
learning that he had already once sought death on her account she wavers
and owns to pity if not to love--
Oh potess' io
Con l' amor mio comprar la vita sua,
Anzi pur con la mia la vita sua,
S' egli e pur morto!
Hereupon Ergasto enters with the news that Aminta has thrown himself from
a cliff, and Silvia, now completely overcome, goes off with the intention
of dying on the body of her dead lover.
The shortness, as well as the dramatic weakness, of the fifth act is
conspicuous even in proportion to the modest limits of the whole. It runs
to less than one hundred and fifty lines, and merely relates how Aminta's
fall was broken, how Silvia's love awoke, and all ended happily. The most
significant passage, that namely which describes Aminta being called back
to life in Silvia's arms, has been already quoted. He revives unharmed,
and the lovers,
Alike in age, in generous birth alike
And mutual desires,
gather in love the fruits which they have sown in weeping.
It is worth while quoting the final chorus in witness of the spirit of
half bantering humour in which the whole was conceived even by the serious
Tasso, a spirit we unfortunately too often seek in vain among his
followers.
Non so se il molto amaro
Che provato ha costui servendo, amando,
Piangendo e disperando,
Raddolcito esser puote pienamente
D' alcun dolce presente:
Ma, se piu caro viene
E piu si gusta dopo 'l male il bene,
Io non ti chieggio, Amore,
Questa beatitudine maggiore:
Bea pur gli altri in tal guisa;
Me la mia ninfa accoglia
Dopo brevi preghiere e servir breve:
E siano i condimenti
Delle nostre dolcezze
Non si gravi tormenti,
Ma soavi disdegni,
E soavi ripulse,
Risse e guerre a cui segua,
Reintegrando i cori, o pace o tregua.
It is with these words that the author leaves his graceful fantasy; and
such, we have perhaps the right to assume, was the spirit in which the
whole was composed. Were any one to object to our seeking to analyse the
quality of the piece, arguing that to do so were to break a butterfly upon
the wheel, much might reasonably be said in support of his view.
Nevertheless, when a work of art, however delicate and slender, has
received the homage of generations, and influenced cultivated taste for
centuries, and in widely different countries, we have a right to inquire
whereon its supremacy is based, and what the nature of its influence has
been.
With the sources from which Tasso drew the various elements of his plot we
need have little to do. The child-love of Silvia and Aminta is of the
stuff of _Daphnis and Chloe_; the ruse by which the kiss is obtained is
borrowed from Achilles Tatius; the compliment to the court of the Estensi
is after the manner of Vergil, or of Castiglione, or of Ariosto, or of any
other of the allegorical eclogists of whom Vergil was the first; the germ
of the golden-age chorus is to be found in the elegies of Tibullus (II.
iii); the character of the satyr belongs to tradition; the rent veil of
Silvia reminds us of that of Ovid's Thisbe (_Met._ IV. 55). The language
too is reminiscent. The finest lines in the play--
Amiam: che 'l sol si muore, e poi rinasce;
A noi sua breve luce
S' asconde, e 'l sonno eterna notte adduce--(_Coro_ I.)
belong to Catullus:
Viuamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus;...
soles occidere et redire possunt;
nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda. (_Carm._ V.)
The words in which Amore describes himself in the prologue--
non mica un dio
Selvaggio, o della plebe degli dei,
Ma tra' grandi celesti il piu possente--
recall Ovid's lines:
nec de plebe deo, sed qui caelestia magna
sceptra manu teneo. (_Met._ I. 595.)
Again, the line:
Dove la costa face di se grembo;
which occurs alike in the play (V. i.) and in the _Purgatorio_ (VII. 68),
supplies evidence, as do similar borrowings in the _Gerusalemme_, of
Tasso's study of Dante.
The prologue introduces Amore in pastoral disguise, escaped from the care
of his mother, who would confine his activity to the Courts, and intent on
loosing his shafts among the nymphs and shepherds of Arcadia. In the form
of this prologue, which became the model for subsequent pastoral writers
in Italy[173], and in the heavenly descent of the principal characters, we
may see the influence of the mythological play; while the substance both
of the prologue and of the epilogue, or _Amore fuggitivo_, in which Venus
comes to seek her runaway among the ladies and gallants of the court, is
of course borrowed from the famous first idyl of Moschus. Again the
topical element is not absent, though it is less prominent than some of
the earlier work might lead us to expect. In the poet Tirsi--
allor ch' ardendo
Forsennato egli erro per le foreste
Si, ch' insieme movea pietate e riso
Nelle vezzose ninfe e ne' pastori;
Ne gia cose scrivea digne di riso,
Sebben cose facea digne di riso--(I. i.)
we may, of course, see the poet himself. In Batto too, mentioned together
with Tirsi, it is not unreasonable to recognize Battisto Guarini, whom at
that time Tasso might still regard as his friend. Again, it is usual to
identify Elpino with Giovanbattista Pigna, secretary of state at the
Estense court, and one with whom, though no friend of the poet's, it was
yet to his advantage to stand well. The flattery bestowed is not a little
fulsome:
Or non rammenti
Cio che l' altrieri Elpino raccontava,
Il saggio Elpino a la bella Licori,
Licori che in Elpin puote cogli occhi
Quel ch' ei potere in lei dovria col canto,
Se 'l dovere in amor si ritrovasse;
E 'l raccontava udendo Batto e Tirsi,
Gran maestri d' amore; e 'l raccontava
Nell' antro dell' Aurora, ove sull' uscio
E scritto: _Lungi, ah lungi ite, profani_?
Diceva egli, e diceva che gliel disse
Quel grande che canto l' armi e gli amori,
Ch' a lui lascio la fistola morendo;
Che laggiu nello 'nferno e un nero speco,
La dove esala un fumo pien di puzza
Dalle tristi fornaci d' Acheronte;
E che quivi punite eternamente
In tormenti di tenebre e di pianto
Son le femmine ingrate e sconoscenti. (I. i.)
He who sang of arms and love is of course Ariosto--
Le donne, i cavalier, l' arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, l' audaci imprese io canto--
from whom Tasso borrows the above description of the reward awaiting
ungrateful women, as also the fiction of the tell-tale walls and chairs in
Mopso's account of the court (I. ii). And this Elpino, whose pipe
elsewhere
correr fa di puro latte i fiumi
E stillar melle dalle dure scorze, (III. i.)
later becomes the Alete of the _Gerusalemme_,
Gran fabbro di calunnie adorne in modi
Novi che sono accuse e paion lodi. (II. 58.)
His flattery had not shielded the unhappy poet against the ill-will of
the minister[174].
Again, the picture drawn by Tirsi of the ideal court (I. ii.) is a glowing
compliment to that of the Estensi and to Duke Alfonso himself. It is
contrasted with the usual pastoral denunciation of court and city put into
the mouth of the pretended augur Mopso. In this character it has been
customary to see Sperone Speroni, who later accused Tasso of plagiarizing
him in the _Gerusalemme_, and was the first to apply the ominous word
'madman' to the unfortunate poet. To Speroni's play _Canace_ Tasso may
have been indebted for the free measures with which he diversified his
blank verse, as likewise for the line:
Pianti, sospiri e dimandar mercede;[175]
though it must not be supposed that there is any resemblance in style
between the _Aminta_ and Speroni's revolting and frigid declamation of
butchery and lust. Nor did the debt pass unnoticed. In 1585 Guarini, who
had long since parted with the sinking ship of the younger poet's
friendship, was ready to flatter Speroni with the declaration 'che tanto
di leggiadria e sempre paruto a me, che abbia nell' Aminta suo conseguito
Torquato Tasso, quant' egli fu imitatore della Canace[176].'
Lastly, in the hopeless suit of Aminta to Silvia, criticism has not failed
to see a reference to the supposed relation between Tasso and Leonora d'
Este. That Tasso, who in his overwrought imagination no doubt harboured a
sentimental regard for the princess, was conscious of the parallel is in
some degree probable; that he should have identified his creation with
himself is, in view of the solution of the dramatic situation, utterly
impossible. Indeed, it would perhaps not be extravagant to suppose that
his care to identify himself with Aminta's confidant may have been an
unusual but not untimely piece of caution on his part, to prevent poisoned
gossip connecting him too closely with his hero.
The question of the influence of the _Aminta_ on later works and on
European thought generally opens up large and difficult issues. It is one
of those works which we are not justified in treating from the purely
literary point of view. If we wish to see it in its relation to
contemporary society, and to estimate its influence upon subsequent
literature, we cannot afford to neglect its ethical bearings. This inquiry
must necessarily lead us beyond the sphere of literary criticism proper,
but it is a task which one who has undertaken to give an account of
pastoral literature has no right to shirk.
The central motive of the piece is the struggle between the feverish
passion of Aminta and the virginal coldness of Silvia. Of this motive and
of the manner in which it is treated it is not altogether easy to speak,
and this less from any inherent element in the subject or from the
difficulty of accurately apprehending the peculiarities of sentiment
proper to former ages, than from the readiness of all ages alike to accept
in such matters the counterfeit coin of conventional protestation for the
sterling reticence of natural delicacy. No doubt this tendency has been
aided by the fact that the secrets of a girl's heart, whatever may be
their true dramatic value, form an unsuitable and ineffective subject for
declamation. The difficulties must not, however, be allowed to weigh
against the importance of coming to a clear understanding as to the true
nature of this _non so che_ of false sentiment, of which it would hardly
be too much to affirm that it made the fortune of the pastoral in
aristocratic Italy on the one hand, and proved its ruin in middle-class
London on the other.
To Tasso is due that assumption of extravagant and conventional _pudor_
which forms one of the most abiding features of the pastoral drama. To
censure an exaggeration of the charm of modesty on the threshold of the
_seicento_, or to object a strained sense of chastity against the author
of the golden-age chorus, may indeed seem strange; but, as with Fletcher
at a later date, the very extravagance of the paradox may supply us with
the key to its solution.
The falsity of Tasso's position is evinced partly in the main action of
the drama, partly in the commentary supplied by the minor personages. The
character of Aminta himself is unimportant in this respect; when we have
described him as effeminate, sickly, and over-refined, we have said all
that is necessary in view of the position he occupies with regard to
Silvia. She, we are given to understand, is the type of the 'careless'
shepherdess, the unspotted nymph of Diana[177], rejoicing in the chase
alone, and importuned by the love of Aminta, which she neither
reciprocates nor understands, and of the genuineness of which she shows
herself, indeed, not a little sceptical. If, however, she is as careless
as she appears, her conversion is certainly most sudden. The picture,
moreover, drawn by Dafne of Silvia coquetting with her shadow in the pool,
though possibly coloured by malice, supplies a sufficient hint of the
true state of the girl's fancy. She is in truth such a Chloe of innocence
as might spring up in the rank soil of a petty Italian court infected with
post-Tridentine morality. Were she indeed careless of Aminta's devotion we
could easily sympathize with her when she brushes aside Dafne's
importunity with the words:
Faccia Aminta di se e de' suoi amori
Quel ch' a lui piace; a me nulla ne cale. (I. i.)
It is altogether different with her attitude of arrogant pudicity when she
announces:
Odio il suo amore
Ch' odia la mia onestate; (Ib.)
and again:
In questa guisa gradirei ciascuno
Insidiator di mia virginitate,
Che tu dimandi amante, ed io nemico. (Ib.)
Silvia here conjoins the unwholesome medieval ideal of virginity with the
corrupt spectre of renaissance 'honour'--
quel vano
Nome senza soggetto,
Quell' idolo d' errori, idol d' inganno[178], (_Coro_ I.)
as Tasso himself styled it--that conventional mask so bitterly contrasted
with the natural goodness of the age of gold[179].
The general conception of love and its attendant emotions that permeates
the work and vitiates so many of its descendants appears yet more
glaringly characterized in some of the minor personages. On these it is
not my intention to dwell. Of Dafne and Tirsi, that is, be it remembered,
Tasso's self, I have spoken, however briefly, yet at sufficient length
already. Suffice it to add here that Dafne's suggestion, that modesty is
commonly but a veil for lust, is nothing more than the cynical expression
of the attitude adopted throughout the play. Love is no ideal and
idealizing emotion, but a mere gratification of the senses--a _luxuria_
scarcely distinguishable from _gula_. Ignorance can alone explain an
attitude of indifference towards its pleasures. The girl who does not care
to embrace opportunity is no better than a child--'Fanciulla tanto
sciocca, quanto bella,' as Dafne says. So, again, there is nothing
ennobling in the devotion of the hero, nothing elevating in his fidelity.
All the mysticism, all the ideality, of the early days of the renaissance
have long since disappeared, and chivalrous feeling, that last lingering
glory of the middle age, is dead.
We are, indeed, justified in regarding what I may term the degeneration of
sexual feeling in the _Aminta_ as to a great extent the negation of
chivalrous love, for, even apart from the allegorizing mysticism of Dante,
that love contained its ennobling elements. And yet, strangely enough, not
a little of the convention at least of chivalrous love survives in the
debased Arcadian love of the sentimental pastoral. Both alike are
primarily of an animal nature, and this in a sense other than that in
which physical love may be said to form an element in all natural relation
between man and woman. Again, in both we find the rational machinery by
which love shall be rewarded. The lover serves his apprenticeship, either
with deeds of arms or with sighs and sonnets, and the credit of the
mistress is light who refuses to reward him for his service. The System
assumes neither choice, nor passion, nor pleasure on her part. Her act is
regarded in the cold light of a calculated payment, undisguised by any joy
of passionate surrender. But whereas in the outgrowth of feudalism, in the
chivalry of the middle ages, this system formed the great incentive to
martial daring, whereas when idealized in Beatrice it became almost
undistinguishable from the ferveurs of religion, we find it with Tasso
sinking into a weak and mawkish sensuality. More than any other
sentimentalist Tasso justified his title by 'fiddling harmonics on the
strings of sensualism,' and it may be added that the ear is constantly
catching the fundamental note.
The foregoing remarks appeared necessary in order to understand the
subsequent history of the dramatic pastoral as well as the conditions
under which it took form and being, but they have led us far beyond the
limits of literary criticism proper. The next characteristic of the play
to be considered is one which, while possessing an important ethical
bearing, is also closely connected with the aesthetic composition. I refer
to the peculiar, not sensual but sensuous, nature of the beauty. The
effect produced by the descriptions, by the suggestions, by the general
tone, by the subtle modulations of the verse in adaptation to its theme,
is less one of literary and intellectual than of direct emotional
perception, producing the immediate physical impression of an actual
presence. The beauty has a subtle enervating charm, languid and
voluptuous, at the same time as clear and limpid in tone. The effect
produced is one and whole, that of a perfect work of art, and the same
impression remains with us afterwards. Smooth limbs, soft and white, that
shine through the waters of the spring and amid the jewelled spray, or
half revealed among the thickets of lustrous green, a slant ray of
sunlight athwart the loosened gold of the hair--the vision floats before
us as if conjured up by the strains of music rather than by actual words.
This kinship with another art did not escape so acute a critic as Symonds
as a characteristic of Tasso's style. But the kinship on another side with
the art of painting is equally close; a thousand pictures rise before us
as we follow the perfect melody of the irregular lyric measures. The white
veil fluttering and the swift feet flashing amid the brambles and the
trailing creepers of the wood, bright crimson staining the spotless purity
of the flying skirts as the huntress bursts through the clinging tangles
that seek to hold her as if jealous of a human love, the lusty strength of
the bronzed and hairy satyr in contrast with the tender limbs of the
captive nymph, the dark cliff, and the still mirror of the lake reflecting
the rosebuds pressed artfully against the girl's soft neck as she crouches
by its brink,
Backed by the forest, circled by the flowers,
Bathed in the sunshine of the golden hours,
the armed huntress, the grey-coated wolves, and the white-robed
chorus--here are a series of pictures of seductive beauty for the brush of
a painter to realize upon the walls of some palace of pleasure.
The _Aminta_ attained a wide popularity even before the appearance of the
first edition from the Aldine house at Venice early in 1581--the epistle
is dated 1580. The printer of the Ferrarese edition of the same year
remarks: 'Tosto che la Fama ... mi rapporto, che in Venetia si stampava l'
Aminta, ... cosi subito pensai, che quella sola Impressione dovesse essere
ben poca per sodisfattione di tanti virtuosi, che sono desiderosi di
vederla alla luce.' A critical edition was prepared at Paris in the middle
of the following century by Egidio Menagio of the Accademia della Crusca,
and dedicated to Maria della Vergna, better known, under her married name
of Madame de la Fayette, as the author of the _Princesse de Cleves_[180].
In 1693 the play was attacked by Bartolomeo Ceva Grimaldi, Duke of Telese,
in an address read before the Accademia degli Uniti at Naples[181]. He was
answered before the same society by Francesco Baldassare Paglia, and in
1700 appeared Giusto Fontanini's elaborate defence[182]. To each chapter
of this work is prefixed a passage from Grimaldi's address, which is then
laboriously refuted. The Duke's attack is puerile cavil, and in spite of
the reputed ability of its author the defence must be admitted to be much
on the same level.
IV
The attention which we have bestowed upon the _Aminta_ will allow us to
pass more rapidly than would otherwise have been possible over its
successor and rival, the _Pastor fido_. This is due to the fact that the
moral and artistic environment of the two pieces is much the same, and
further, that it is this environment which to a great extent determined,
not only the individual character of the poems, but likewise the nature of
their subsequent influence.
Recent research has had the effect of dispelling not a few of the
traditional ideas respecting Guarini's play. Among them is the fable that
it took twenty years to write, which would carry back its inception to
days before the composition of the _Aminta_. It is now recognized that
nine years is the utmost that can be assigned, letters being extant which
fix the genesis of the play in 1581, or at the earliest in 1580 a year or
so previous to Guarini's departure from Ferrara[183]. Again, it has been
usual to assume that the play was performed as early as 1585, whereas
there is in truth no evidence of any representation previous to the
appearance of the first edition dated 1590[184]. The early fortunes of the
play are indeed typical of the ill-success that dogged the author
throughout life. Though untouched by the tragic misfortunes which lend
interest to Tasso's career, his lot was at times a hard one and we may
excuse him if, at the last, he was no less embittered than his younger
rival. He was not cursed, it is true, with Tasso's incurable idealism;
but, if in consequence he exposed himself less to the buffets of
disillusionment, he likewise lacked its sustaining and ennobling power.
Tasso used the pastoral machinery to idealize the court; Guarini accepted
the pastoral convention of the superiority of the 'natural' life of the
country, and used it as a means of pouring out his bitterness of soul. The
_Aminta_, it should be remembered, was written during a few weeks, months
at most, at a time when Tasso was comparatively fortunate and happy; the
_Pastor fido_ was the ten years' labour of a retired and disappointed
courtier, whose later days were further embittered by domestic
misfortunes. In the same way as it was characteristic of Tasso's rosy view
that no law should be allowed to curb the purity of natural love in his
dream of the ideal age, so it was characteristic of the spirit of his
imitator to seek the ideal in the prudent love that strives towards no
distant star beyond the bounds of law. And the fact that Guarini saw fit
seriously to oppose a scholastic's moral figment to the poet's age of gold
may serve as a sufficient measure of the soul of the pedant.
When Battista Guarini[185] entered the service of the Duke of Ferrara in
1567 he was already married and had attained the age of thirty, being
seven years older than Tasso. His duties at court were political, and he
was employed on several missions of a diplomatic character. There was no
reason whatever, beyond his own perverse ambition, why he should have come
into rivalry with Tasso, yet he did so both as a writer of verses and as a
hanger-on of court beauties. It is impossible to acquit him of bad taste
in the manner in which he and some at least of his fellow courtiers
treated the unfortunate poet, and there was certainly bad blood between
the two soon after the production of the _Aminta_, owing, probably, to the
ungenerous remarks passed by Guarini upon the author's indebtedness to
previous writers. After Tasso's confinement to S. Anna in 1579, Guarini
became court poet, and the luckless prisoner was condemned to see his own
poems entrusted to the editorial care of his rival.
Guarini, however, was not satisfied with the court of Ferrara. His estate
was reduced by the expenses entailed by his missions as ambassador, for
which, like Machiavelli, he appears never to have received adequate
supplies, and by the continuous litigation in which he involved himself.
His political imagination, too, had been fired during a stay at Turin with
the possibilities inherent for Italy in the house of Savoy--an enthusiasm
which possibly did not tend to smooth his relations with his own master.
In 1582 he left Ferrara and the service of Alfonso and retired to his
ancestral estates of S. Bellino. Here he devoted himself to the
composition of the play he had lately taken in hand, which, in spite of
spasmodic returns to political life not only at the court of the Estensi
but also at Turin and Florence, forms thenceforward with its many
vicissitudes the central interest of his biography. He survived till 1612,
dying at the age of seventy-four.
To do justice to the _Pastor fido_ it would be best to give the story in
the form of a continuous narrative rather than an analysis of the actual
scenes, since the author's constructive power lay almost wholly in the
invention of an intricate plot and his weakness in the scenic rendering of
it. His dramatic methods, however, so far elaborated from the simplicity
of Tasso's, had a vast influence over subsequent work, and it is highly
important to obtain a clear idea of their nature. We shall, therefore, be
condemned to follow Guarini, part-way at least, through the stiff
artificiality of his interminable scenes.
A complicated story which is narrated at length in the course of the play
explains the peculiar laws of Arcadia on which the plot hinges[186]. These
comprise an edict of Diana to the effect that any nymph found guilty of a
breach of faith shall suffer death at the altar unless some one offers to
die in her place; likewise a custom whereby a nymph between fifteen and
twenty years of age is annually sacrificed to the goddess. When besought
to release the land from this tribute Diana through her oracle replies:
Non avra prima fin quel che v' offende,
Che duo semi del ciel congiunga amore;
E di donna infedel l' antico errore
L' alta pieta d' un pastor fido ammende.
The only two in Arcadia who fulfil the conditions of the oracle are
Silvio, the son of the high priest Montano, and Amarilli, daughter of
Titiro, who have in their veins the blood of Hercules and Pan. These two
have consequently been betrothed and, being now arrived at marriageable
age, their final union is imminent.
At this point the play opens. Silvio cares for nothing but the chase,
regardless alike of his destined bride and of the love borne him by the
nymph Dorinda; Amarilli is seemingly heart-whole, but secretly loves her
suitor Mirtillo, a stranger in Arcadia, whom, however, she persists in
treating with coldness in view of the penalty involved by a breach of
faith. Mirtillo in his turn is loved by Corisca, a wanton nymph who has
learned the arts of the city, and who is pursued both by Coridone, to whom
she is formally engaged, but whom she neglects, and by a satyr. Almost
every character is provided with a confidant: Silvio has Linco; Mirtillo,
Ergasto; Dorinda, Lupino; Carino[187], the supposed father of Mirtillo,
has Uranio; Montano and Titiro act as confidants to one another. The only
case arguing any dramatic feeling is that in which Amarilli makes a
confidant of her rival Corisca; while Corisca and the satyr alone among
the more important characters are left to address the audience directly.
Even the confidants sometimes need confidants in their turn, these being
supplied by a conveniently ubiquitous chorus.
In the first scene of Act I, after the prologue, in which Alfeo rises to
pay compliments to Carlo Emanuele and his bride, we are introduced to
Silvio and Linco, who are about to start in pursuit of a savage boar which
has been devastating the country. Linco taxes his companion with his
neglect of the softer joys of love, to which Silvio replies with
long-drawn praise of the free life of the woods. The scene is parallel to
the first of the _Aminta_, and the author has sought here and elsewhere to
point the contrast. Thus where Tasso wrote:
Cangia, cangia consiglio,
Pazzerella che sei;
Che il pentirsi dassezzo nulla giova;
Guarini has:
Lascia, lascia le selve,
Folle garzon, lascia le fere, ed ama.
In the next scene, again modelled on the corresponding one in Tasso's
play, we find Ergasto comforting Mirtillo in his despair at Amarilli's
'cruelty.' Mirtillo has but recently arrived in Arcadia, and is ignorant
of its history and customs, which Ergasto explains at length. The third
scene is devoted to a long monologue by Corisca; the fourth to a
conversation between Montano and Titiro, who discuss the oracles
concerning the approaching marriage and recount portentous dreams. A
monologue by the satyr relating his ill-usage at the hands of Corisca,
followed by a chorus, ends the first act. The next scene contains the
history of Mirtillo's passion as narrated to his confidant. Ergasto has
enlisted the services of Corisca, and the whole paraphernalia of love lead
in the next act to an interview between Mirtillo and Amarilli. The
author's dramatic method whereby he presents us with alternate scenes from
the various threads of the plot will by now be evident to the reader, and
the remainder may for clearness' sake be thrown into narrative form.
Corisca, well knowing that it is impossible for Amarilli to show favour to
Mirtillo, and hoping to ingratiate herself with him, prevails upon the
nymph to grant her lover a hearing, provided the interview be secret and
short. During a game of blind man's buff the players suddenly retire,
leaving Mirtillo and Amarilli alone. The interview of course comes to
nothing, but as soon as Mirtillo has left her Amarilli relieves her
feelings in a monologue confessing her love, which is overheard by
Corisca[188]. Charged with her weakness, she confesses her dislike of the
marriage with Silvio. Hereupon Corisca conceives a plan for ridding
herself at once of her rival in Mirtillo's affections and of her own
affianced lover. She leads Amarilli to suppose that Silvio is faithless
to his betrothal vow. If Amarilli can prove Silvio guilty she will
herself be free, and she agrees to hide in a recess in a cave where
Corisca alleges that Silvio has an assignation. Next Corisca makes an
appointment to meet her lover Coridone in the same cave, intending that he
and Amarilli shall be surprised together. Finally, in order to obtain a
witness, she accuses Amarilli to Mirtillo of being faithless, and bids him
watch the mouth of the cave in which she alleges the nymph has an
assignation with Coridone. This ingenious plan would have succeeded to
perfection but for Mirtillo's precipitancy, for, seeing Amarilli enter the
cave, he at once concludes her guilt and follows her forthwith to wreak
revenge. At that moment the satyr appears and, misunderstanding some words
of Mirtillo's, proceeds to bar the entrance to the cave with a huge rock,
thinking he is imprisoning Mirtillo and Corisca. He then goes off to
inform the priests of the pollution committed so near their temple. These
enter the cave and apprehend the lovers. Amarilli is at once condemned to
death, but Mirtillo thereupon offers himself in her place and, being
accepted by the priests, is kept as a sacrifice, Amarilli being at the
same time closely guarded lest she should lay violent hands upon herself.
In the meantime Silvio has been successful in his hunting of the boar,
whose head he brings home in triumph. There follows an echo-scene, one of
those toys which, as old as the Greek Anthology, and cultivated in Latin
by Tebaldeo, and in Italian by Poliziano, owed, not indeed their
introduction, but certainly their great popularity in pastoral, to
Guarini. His example is fairly successful. The echo predicts that the end
of Silvio's 'carelessness' is at hand, when he shall himself break his bow
and follow her who now follows him. The prophecy is quick of fulfilment.
With a jest he turns to go, when his eye falls on a grey object crouching
among the bushes. He supposes it to be a wolf, and looses an arrow at it.
It proves, however, to be Dorinda, who has throughout followed his chase
disguised in the rough wolf-skin coat of a herdsman, and who is now led
fainting on to the scene by Lupino. Silvio is overcome with remorse, and,
careless alike of his troth to Amarilli and of the fate of Arcadia,
declares that thenceforth he will love none but Dorinda, and will die
with her should his arrow prove fatal. They leave the stage for good--to
get healed and married.
To return to the main plot. At sundown Mirtillo is led out to die, and the
sacrifice is about to be performed when his supposed father, an Arcadian
by birth, though he has long lived at Elis, and has just arrived in search
of his foster child, interposes. Explanations ensue, and it gradually
appears that Mirtillo is the eldest son of Montano, washed away in his
cradle by the floods of the Alpheus twenty years before. Thus in the love
between him and Amarilli, and in his voluntary sacrifice of himself in her
place, the oracle is fulfilled, and Arcadia freed from its maiden tribute.
This seems obvious enough, though it takes the inspiration of a blind
prophet to drive it into the heads of the assembled Arcadians. A final
difficulty remains--the broken troth. But it so happens that Mirtillo was
originally named Silvio, so that to 'Silvio' no faith is broken. A
casuistical reason indeed; but good enough for the purpose. No attempt is
made to clear Amarilli of the compromising evidence on which she had been
condemned, but the pair have the favour of the gods, and the chorus makes
no difficulty of chanting the virtue of the bride.
Such is Guarini's play; a plot constructed with consummate ingenuity, but
presented with an almost entire lack of dramatic feeling. Almost the whole
of the action takes place off the stage. Silvio and Dorinda leave the
scene apparently for a tragic catastrophe; their subsequent union is only
reported; so is the surprisal of Mirtillo and Amarilli, the scene in which
the former offers himself as a sacrifice in her place, and their meeting
after the cloud of death has passed. The solitary scene revealing any real
dramatic power is that between Amarilli and the priest Nicandro, in which
the girl maintains her innocence. Her terror when confronted with death is
drawn with some delicacy and pathos, though we sadly miss those poignant
touches that the English playwrights seem always to have had at command on
similar occasions. Her fear of death, however, stands in powerful dramatic
contrast with the sudden courage she displays when her lover seeks to die
in her place. Guarini was perfectly aware of the value of this contrast,
for he placed the following lines in the mouth of the _messo_ who reports
the scene:
Or odi maraviglia.
Quella che fu pur dianzi
Si dalla tema del morire oppressa,
Fatta allor di repente
A le parole di Mirtillo invitta,
Con intrepido cor cosi rispose:
'Pensi dunque, Mirtillo,
Di dar col tuo morire
Vita a chi di te vive?
O miracolo ingiusto! Su, ministri;
Su, che si tarda? omai
Menatemi agli altari.' (V. ii.)
And yet this dramatic contrast has been wantonly thrown away by the
substitution of narrative for representation, less for the sake of a blind
adherence to classical convention, as on account of the author's inability
honestly to face a powerful situation. The same dramatic incapacity shows
itself in his use of borrowings. It will be sufficient to mention the
sententious words from Ovid (_Amores_, I. viii. 43) placed in the mouth of
the chorus:
Dunque non si dira donna pudica
Se non quella che mai
Non fu sollecitata; (IV. in.)
in order to compare them with the use made of the same by Webster when he
made Vittoria at her trial exclaim:
Casta est quam nemo rogavit!--
a comparison which at once reveals the gulf fixed between the clairvoyant
dramatist and the mere pedantic scholar.
And yet the subsequent history of pastoral reminds us that it is quite
possible to underestimate Guarini's merits as a playwright. In the
construction of a complicated plot, apart from the dramatic presentation
thereof, he achieved a success not to be paralleled by any previous work
in Italy, for the difference in the titles of the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor
fido_, the one styled _favola_ and the other _tragi-commedia_, indicates a
real distinction; and Guarini's proud claim to have invented a new
dramatic kind was not wholly unfounded[189]. It was this that caused
Symonds to speak of his play as 'sculptured in pure forms of classic
grace,' while describing the _Aminta_ as 'perfumed and delicate like
flowers of spring.' And lastly, it was this more elaborately dramatic
quality that was responsible for the far greater influence exercised by
Guarini than by Tasso, both on the subsequent drama of Italy and still
more on the fortunes of the pastoral in England.
Moreover, in Amarilli, Guarini created one really dramatic character and
devoted to it one really dramatic scene. His heroine is probably the best
character to be found in the whole of the pastoral drama, and this simply
because there is a reason for her coldness towards the lover, upon her
love to whom the plot depends. Unless love is to be mutual the motive
force of the drama fails, and consequently, when nymphs insist on parading
their inhuman superiority to the dictates of natural affection, they are
simply refusing to fulfil their dramatic _raison d'etre_. With Amarilli it
is otherwise. She has the right to say:
Ama l' onesta mia, s' amante sei; (III. iii.)
and there is a pathos in the words which the author may not have himself
fully understood; whereas the similar expression of Tasso's Silvia quoted
on a previous page is insufferable in its smug self-conceit.
Of this quality of extravagant virginity noticed as a characteristic of
Tasso's play there is on the whole less in the _Pastor fido_. It is also
freer from the tone of cynical corruption and from improper suggestion.
These merits are, however, more than counterbalanced in the ethical scale
by the elaboration of the spirit of sentimental sensualism, which becomes
as it were an enveloping atmosphere, and lends an enervating seduction to
the piece. This spirit, already present in the _Aminta_, reappeared in an
emphasized form in the _Pastor fido_, and attained its height in the
following century in Marino's epic of _Adone_. We find it infusing the
scene of Mirtillo's first meeting with Amarilli, which may be said to set
the tone of the rest of the poem. Happening to see the nymph at the
Olympian games, Mirtillo at once fell in love and contrived to introduce
himself in female attire into the company of maidens to which she
belonged. Here, the proposal being made to hold a kissing match among
themselves, Amarilli was unanimously chosen judge, and, the contest over,
she awarded the prize to the disguised youth. The incident owes its
origin, as Guarini's notes point out, to the twelfth Idyl of Theocritus,
and the suggestion of the kissing match is aptly put into the mouth of a
girl from Megara, where an annual contest of kisses among the Greek youths
was actually held. Guarini, however, most probably borrowed the episode
from the fifth canto of Tasso's _Rinaldo_.
The sentimental seductiveness of this and other scenes did not escape
sharp comment in some quarters within a few years of the publication of
the play. In 1605 Cardinal Bellarmino, meeting Guarini at Rome, told him
plainly that he had done as much harm to morals by his _Pastor fido_ as by
their heresies Luther and Calvin had done to religion. Later Janus Nicius
Erythraeus, that is Giovanni Vittorio Rossi, in his _Pinacoteca_, compared
the play to a rock-infested sea full of seductive sirens, in which no
small number of girls and wives were said to have made shipwreck. It is at
first sight ratifier a severe indictment to bring against Guarini's play,
especially when we remember that a work of art is more often an index than
a cause of social corruption. After what has been said, however, of the
nature of the sentiment both in the _Pastor fido_ and the _Aminta_, the
charge can hardly be dismissed as altogether unfounded. It is only fair to
add that very different views have been held with regard to the moral
aspect of the play, the theory of its essential healthiness finding an
eloquent advocate in Ugo Angelo Canello[190].
Little as it became him, Guarini chose to adopt the attitude of a
guardian of morals, and Bellarmino's words clearly possessed a special
sting. This pose was in truth but a part of the general attitude he
assumed towards the author of the _Aminta_. His superficial propriety
authorized him, in his own eyes, to utter a formal censure upon the
amorous dream of the ideal poet. He paid the price of his unwarranted
conceit. Those passages in which he was at most pains to contrast his
ethical philosophy with Tasso's imaginative Utopia are those in which he
most clearly betrayed his own insufferable pedantry; while critics even in
his own day saw through the unexceptionable morality of his frigid
declamations and ruthlessly exposed the sentimental corruption that lay
beneath. When we compare his parody in the fourth chorus of the _Pastor
fido_ with Tasso's great ode; his sententious 'Piaccia se lice' with
Tasso's 'S' ei piace, ei lice'; his utterly banal
Speriam: che 'l sol cadente anco rinasce;
E 'l ciel, quando men luce,
L' aspettato seren spesso n' adduce,
with Tasso's superb, even though borrowed, paganism:
Amiam: che 'l sol si muore, e poi rinasce;
A noi sua breve luce
S' asconde, e 'l sonno eterna notte adduce--
when we make this comparison we have the spiritual measure of the man. A
similar comparison will give us his measure as a poet. Take the graceful
but over-elaborated picture:
Quell' augellin che canta
Si dolcemente, e lascivetto vola
Or dall' abete al faggio,
Ed or dal faggio al mirto,
S' avesse umano spirto
Direbbe: 'Ardo d' amore, ardo d' amore!'
Compare with this the spontaneous sketch of Tasso:
Odi quell' usignuolo
Che va di ramo in ramo
Cantando: 'Io amo, io amo!'[191]
Or again, with the irresistible slyness of the final chorus of the
_Aminta_ already quoted compare the sententious lines with which Guarini
closed his play:
O fortunata coppia,
Che pianto ha seminato, e riso accoglie!
Con quante amare doglie
Hai raddolciti tu gli affetti tuoi!
Quinci imparate voi,
O ciechi e troppo teneri mortali,
I sinceri diletti, e i veri mali.
Non e sana ogni gioia,
Ne mal cio che v' annoia.
Quello e vero gioire,
Che nasce da virtu dopo il soffrire.
It is impossible not to come to the conclusion that we are listening in
the one case to a genuine poet of no common order, in the other to a
poetaster of considerable learning and great ingenuity, who elected to don
the outward habit of a somewhat hypocritical morality. The effect of the
contrast is further heightened when we remember that Guarini never for a
moment doubted that he had far surpassed the work of his predecessor.
Guarini's comment on the _Aminta_ in his letter to Speroni has been
already quoted: it does little credit to the writer. Manso, the companion
and biographer of Tasso, records that, the poet being asked by some
friends what he thought of the _Pastor fido_, a copy of which had lately
found its way to him at Naples:
Et egli, 'Mi piace sopramodo, ma confesso di non saper la cagione perche
mi piaccia.' Onde io rispondendogli, 'Vi piacera per avventura,'
soggiunsi, 'quel che vi riconoscete del vostro.' Et egli replico, 'Ne
puo piacere il vedere il suo in man d' altri.'[192]
Guarini would hardly have acknowledged his indebtedness to Tasso in the
way of art, but he drew on all sources for the incidents of his plot, and,
since he appears to have valued a reputation for scholarship above one for
originality, he recorded a fair proportion of his borrowings in his notes.
* * * * *
The _Pastor fido_ was the talk of the Italian Courts even before it was
completed. Early in 1584 the heir to the duchy of Mantua, Vincenzo
Gonzaga, to whose intercession Tasso later owed his liberty, entreated
Guarini to let him have his already famous pastoral for the occasion of
his marriage with Eleonora de' Medici. The poet, however, found it
impossible to complete the work in time, and sent the _Idropica_ instead.
In the autumn a projected representation of the now completed play came to
naught. The following year Guarini presented his play to the Duke of
Savoy, and received a gold chain as an acknowledgement. The occasion was
the entry into Turin of Carlo Emanuele and his bride, Catharine of
Austria, the marriage having taken place at Saragossa some time
previously. The dedication is recorded on the title-page of the first
edition in words that have not unnaturally been held to imply that the
play was performed on that occasion.[193] It is clear, however, from
contemporary documents that this is an error, and, though preparations
were made in view of a performance at the following carnival, these too
were abandoned. After this we find mention of preparations made at a
variety of places, but they never came to anything, and there is reason to
believe that some at least were abandoned owing to the opposition of
Alfonso d' Este, who never forgave a courtier who transferred his
allegiance to another prince. In 1591 Vincenzo Gonzaga, now duke, summoned
Guarini to Mantua, and matters advanced as far as a _prova generale_ or
dress rehearsal. The project, however, had once more to be abandoned owing
to the death of Cardinal Gianvincenzo Gonzaga at Rome. We possess the
scheme for the four _intermezzi_ designed for this occasion, representing
the _Musica della Terra, del Mare, dell' Aria_, and _Celeste_. They were
scenic and musical only, without words. About this time too, that is after
the appearance of the first edition dated 1590, we have notes of
preparations for several private performances, the ultimate fate of which
is uncertain. The first representation of which there is definite
evidence, though even here details are lacking, took place at Crema in
Lombardy in 1596, at the cost of Lodovico Zurla[194]. After this
performances become frequent, and in 1598, after the death of Alfonso, the
play was finally produced in state before Vincenzo Gonzaga at Mantua. On
all these occasions we may suppose that other prologues were substituted
for that addressed to _gran Caterina_ and _magnanimo Carlo_[195].
In the meanwhile Guarini, fearing piracy, had turned his attention to the
publication of his play. He first resolved to submit it to the criticism
of Lionardo Salviati and Scipione Gonzaga, the latter of whom had been a
member of the unlucky committee for the revision of the _Gerusalemme_.
Unfortunately little or nothing is known as to the criticisms and
recommendations of these two men. The work finally appeared, as we learn
from a letter of the author, at Venice in December, 1589. It is a handsome
quarto from the press of Giovanbattista Bonfadino, and is dated the
following year[196]. In 1602 a luxurious edition, said on the title-page
to be the twentieth, was issued at Venice by Giovanbattista Ciotti. This
represents Guarini's final revision of the text, and contains, besides a
portrait and engravings, elaborate notes by the author, and an essay on
tragi-comedy[197].
The _Pastor fido_ was the object of a violent attack while as yet it
circulated in manuscript only. As early as 1587 a certain Giasone de Nores
or Denores, a Cypriot noble who held the chair of moral philosophy at the
university of Padua, published a pamphlet on the relations existing
between different forms of literature and the philosophy of government, in
which, while refraining from any specific allusions, he denounced
tragi-comedies and pastorals as 'monstrous and disproportionate
compositions ... contrary to the principles of moral and civil
philosophy.' Guarini argued that, as his play was the only one deserving
to be called a tragi-comedy and was at the same time a pastoral, the
reference was palpable. He proceeded therefore to compose a counterblast
which he named _Il Verato_ (1588) after a well-known comic actor of the
time, who, it may be remarked, had had the management of Argenti's
_Sfortunato_ in 1567. In this pamphlet Guarini traversed the professor's
propositions with a good deal of scholastic ergotism: 'As in compounds the
hot accords with the cold, its mortal enemy, as the dry humour with the
moist, so the elements of tragedy and comedy, though separately
antagonistic, yet when united in a third form,' _et cetera et cetera_. De
Nores replied in an _Apologia_ (1590), disclaiming all personal allusion,
and the poet finally answered back in a _Verato secondo_, first published
in 1593, after his antagonist's death, restating his arguments and
seasoning them with a good deal of unmannerly abuse. These two treatises
of Guarini's were reprinted with alterations as the _Compendio della
poesia tragicommica_, in the 1602 edition of the play, and together with
the notes to the same edition form Guarini's own share of the
controversy[198]. But in 1600, before these had appeared, a Paduan,
Faustino Summo, published a set attack on and dissection of the play;
while a certain Giovan Pietro Malacreta of Vicenza illustrated the
attitude of the age with regard to literature by putting forward a series
of critical _dubbi_, that is, doubts as to the 'authority' of the form
employed. Both works are distinguished by a spirit of puerile cavil, which
would of itself almost suffice to reconcile us to the worst faults of the
poet. Thus Malacreta is not even content to let the author choose his own
title, arguing that Mirtillo was faithful not in his quality of shepherd
but of lover[199]. He goes on to complain of the tangle of laws and
oracles which Guarini invents in order to motive the action of his play;
and here, though taken individually his objections may be hypercritical,
he has laid his finger on a very real weakness of the author's ingenious
plot. It is, moreover, a weakness common to almost the whole tribe of the
Arcadian, or rather Utopian, pastorals. Apologists soon appeared, and had
little difficulty in disposing of most of the adverse criticisms. A
specific _Risposta_ to Malacreta appeared at Padua in 1600 from the pen of
Paolo Beni. Defences by Giovanni Savio and Orlando Pescetti were printed
at Venice and Verona respectively in 1601, while one at least, written by
Gauges de Gozze of Pesaro, under the pseudonym of Fileno di Isauro,
circulated in manuscript. These writings, however, are marked either by
futile endeavours to reconcile the _Pastor fido_ with the supposed
teaching of Aristotle and Horace, or else by such extravagant laudation as
that of Pescetti, who doubted not that had Aristotle known Guarini's play,
it would have been to him the model of a new kind to rank with the epic of
Homer and the tragedy of Sophocles[200]. Finally, Summo returned to the
charge with a rejoinder to Pescetti and Beni printed at Vicenza in
1601[201]. But all this writing and counter-writing in no way affected the
popularity of the _Pastor fido_ and its successors. Moreover, the critical
position of the combatants on both sides was essentially false. It would
be an easy task to fill a volume with strictures on the play touching its
sentimental tone, its affected manners, its stiff development, its
undramatic construction, the weak drawing of character, the lack of motive
force to move the complex machinery, and many other points--strictures
that should be unanswerable. But those who wish to understand the
influence exercised by the play over subsequent literature in Europe will
find their time better spent in analysing those qualities, whether
emotional or artistic, which won for it the enthusiastic worship of the
civilized world.
Numerous translations bear witness to its popularity far beyond the shores
of Italy. The earliest of these was into French, and appeared in 1595; it
was followed by several others. The Spanish versions have already been
mentioned, and the English will occupy our attention shortly. Besides
these there are versions, often more than one, in German, Greek, Swedish,
Dutch, and Polish. There are likewise versions in the Bergamasc and
Neapolitan dialects, while the manuscript of a Latin translation is
preserved in the University Library at Cambridge.
V
There were obvious advantages in treating the two masterpieces of pastoral
drama in Italy in close connexion with one another. It must not, however,
be supposed that they stood alone in the field of pastoral composition.
Both between the years 1573 when the _Aminta_ was composed and 1590 when
the _Pastor fido_ was printed, and also after the latter year, the stream
of plays continued unchecked, though, apart from a general tendency
towards greater regularity of dramatic construction, they do not form any
organic link in the chain of artistic development. Few deserve more than
passing notice. In the earlier ones, at least, we still find a tendency to
introduce extraneous elements. Thus _Gl' Intricati_, printed in 1581, and
acted a few years before at Zara, the work of Count Alvise, or, it would
appear, more correctly Luigi, Pasqualigo, contains a farcical and magical
part combined with some rather coarse jesting between two rogues, one
Spanish and one Bolognese, who speak in their respective dialects. Another
play in which a comic element appears is Bartolommeo Rossi's _Fiammella_
(1584), which has the further peculiarity of introducing allegorical
characters into the prologue, and mythological into the play. Another
piece belonging to this period is the _Pentimento amoroso_ by Luigi Groto,
which was printed as early as 1575. It is a wild tale of murder and
intrigue, judgement and outrageous self-sacrifice, composed in
_sdrucciolo_ verse and speeches of monstrous length. Another piece,
Gabriele Zinano's _Caride_, surreptitiously printed in 1582, and included
in an authorized publication in 1590, has the peculiarity of placing the
prologue in the mouth of Vergil. Lastly, I may mention Angelo Ingegneri's
_Danza di Venere_, acted at Parma in 1583, and printed the following year.
It contains the incident of a mad shepherd's regaining his wits through
gazing on the beauty of a sleeping nymph, thus borrowing the motive of
Boccaccio's tale of Cymon and Iphigenia. Its chief interest for us,
however, lies in the episode of the hero employing a gang of satyrs to
carry off his beloved during a solemn dance in honour of Venus. This looks
like a reminiscence of Giraldi Cintio's _Egle_, and through it of the old
satyric drama[202].
These plays all belong to the period between the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor
fido_. Tasso's and Guarini's masterpieces mark the point of furthest
development attained by the pastoral drama in Italy, or indeed in Europe.
With them the vitality which rendered evolution possible was spent, though
the power of reproduction remained unimpaired for close on a century.
Signor Rossi, in the monograph of which I have already made such free use,
mentions a number of plays, whose dependence on the _Pastor fido_ is
evident from their titles, though Guarini's influence is, of course, far
more widely spread than such eclectic treatment reveals. The most curious,
perhaps, is a play, _I figliuoli di Aminta e Silvia e di Mirtillo ed
Amarilli_, by Ercole Pelliciari, dealing with the fortunes of the children
of the heroes and heroines of Tasso and Guarini. We are on the way to a
genealogical cycle of Arcadian drama, similar to the cycles of romance
that centred round Roland and Launcelot. It would be a work of
supererogation to demonstrate in detail the influence exercised by Tasso
and Guarini over their Italian followers, and a task of forbidding
proportions to give the bare titles of the plays that witnessed to that
influence. Serassi reports that in 1614 Clementi Bartoli of Urbino
possessed no less than eighty pastoral plays; while by 1700, the year of
Fontanini's work on the _Aminta_, Giannantonio Moraldi is said to hsve
brought together in Rome a collection of over two hundred.[203] Every
device was resorted to that could lend novelty to the scenes; in Carlo
Noci's _Cintia_ (1594) the heroine returns home disguised as a boy to find
her lover courting another nymph; in Francesco Contarini's _Finta
Fiammetta_ (1610), on the other hand, the plot turns on the courtship of
Delfide by her lover Celindo in girl's attire; while in Orazio Serono's
_Fida Armilla_ (1610) we have the annual human sacrifice to a monstrous
serpent--all of which later became familiar themes in pastoral drama and
romance. Two plays only call for closer attention, and this rather on
account of a certain reputation they have gained than of any intrinsic
merit. One of these, Antonio Ongaro's _Alceo_, which was printed in 1582
and is therefore earlier than the _Pastor fido_, has been happily
nicknamed _Aminta bagnato_. It is a piscatorial adaptation of Tasso's
play, which it follows almost scene for scene. The satyr becomes a triton
with as little change of character as the nymphs and shepherds undergo in
their metamorphosis to fisher girls and boys. Alceo shows less
resourcefulness than his prototype in that he twice tries to commit
suicide by throwing himself into the sea. The last act is spun out to
three scenes in accordance with the demand for greater regularity of
dramatic construction, but gains nothing but tedium thereby. The other
play to be considered connects itself in plot rather with the _Pastor
fido_. It is the _Filli di Sciro_, the work of Guidubaldo Bonarelli della
Rovere. The poet's father enjoyed the protection of the Duke Guidubaldo II
of Urbino, but in after days he removed to the court of the Estensi at
Ferrara. It was here that the play appeared in 1607, though it is
dedicated to Francesco Maria della Rovere, who had by that time succeeded
his father in the duchy of Urbino. The plot of the play is highly
intricate, and shows a tendency towards the introduction of an adventurous
element; it turns upon the tribute of youths and maidens exacted from the
island of Scyros by the king of Thrace. The figure of the satyr is
replaced by a centaur who carries off one of the nymphs. Her cries attract
two youths who succeed in driving off the monster, but are severely
wounded in the encounter. The nymph, Celia, thereupon falls in love with
both her rescuers at once, and it is only when one of them proves to be
her long-lost brother that she is able to make up her mind between
them[204]. This brother had been carried off as a child by the Thracians
together with his betrothed Filli, and having escaped was lately returned
to his native land. From a dramatic point of view the _denoument_ is even
more preposterous than usual. The principal characters leave the stage at
the end of the fourth act, under sentence of death, and do not reappear,
the whole of the last act being occupied with narratives of their
subsequent fortunes. A point which is possibly worth notice is the
introduction of that affected talk on the technicalities of sheepcraft
which adds so greatly to the already intolerable artificiality of the
later pastoral drama, but which is happily absent from the work of Tasso
and Guarini.
* * * * *
We have now reached the end of our survey of the Italian pastoral drama.
In spite of the space it has been necessary to devote to the subject, it
must be borne in mind that we have treated it from one point of view only.
Besides the interest which it possesses in connexion with the development
of pastoral tradition, it also plays a very important part in the history
of dramatic art, not in Italy alone, but over the whole of Europe. On this
aspect of the subject we have hardly so much as touched. Nor is this all.
If it is true, as is commonly assumed, that the opera had its birth in the
_Orfeo_ of Angelo Poliziano, it is not less true that it found its cradle
in the Arcadian drama. A few isolated pieces may still be able to charm us
by their poetic beauty. In dealing with the rest it must never be
forgotten that without the costly scenery and elaborate musical setting
that lent body and soul to them in their day, we have what is little
better than the dry bones of these _ephemeridae_ of courtly art.
Chapter IV.
Dramatic Origins of the English Pastoral Drama
I
Having at length arrived at what must be regarded as the main subject of
this work, it will be my task in the remaining chapters to follow the
growth of the pastoral drama in England down to the middle of the
seventeenth century, and in so doing to gather up and weave into a
connected web the loose threads of my discourse.
Taking birth among the upland meadows of Sicily, the pastoral tradition
first assumed its conventional garb in imperial Rome, and this it
preserved among learned writers after its revival in the dawn of the
Italian renaissance. With Arcadia for its local habitation it underwent a
rebirth in the opening years of the sixteenth century in Sannazzaro's
romance, and again towards the close in the drama of Tasso. It became
chivalric in Spain and courtly in France, and finally reached this country
in three main streams, the eclogue borrowed by Spenser from Marot, the
romance suggested to Sidney by Montemayor, and the drama imitated by
Daniel from Tasso and Guarini. Once here, it blended variously with other
influences and with native tradition to produce a body of dramatic work,
which, ill-defined, spasmodic and occasional, nevertheless reveals on
inspection a certain character of its own, and one moreover not precisely
to be paralleled from the literary annals of any other European nation.
The indications of a native pastoral impulse, manifesting itself in the
burlesque of the religions drama and the romance of the popular ballads,
we have already considered. The connexion which it is possible to trace
between this undefined impulse and the later pastoral tradition is in no
wise literary; in so far as it exists at all and is one of temperament
alone, a bent of national character. In tracing the rise of the form in
Italy upon the one hand, and in England upon the other, we are struck by
certain curious contrasts and also by certain curious parallelisms. The
closest analogy to the ballad themes to be discovered in the literature of
Italy is in certain of the songs of Sacchetti and his contemporaries, but
it would be unwise to insist on the resemblance. The more suggestive
parallel of the _novelle_ has to be ruled out on the score of form, and is
further differentiated by the notable lack in them of romantic spirit.
Again, in the _sacre rappresentazioni_, the burlesque interpolations from
actual life, which with us aided the genesis of the interlude, and through
it of the romantic comedy, are as a rule so conspicuously absent that the
rustic farce with which one nativity play opens can only be regarded as a
direct and conscious imitation from the French. It is, on the other hand,
a remarkable fact, and one which, in the absence of any evidence of direct
imitation,[205] must be taken to indicate a real parallelism in the
evolution of the tradition in the two countries, that in England as in
Italy the way was paved for pastoral by the appearance of mythological
plays, introducing incidentally pastoral scenes and characters, and
anticipating to some extent at any rate the peculiar atmosphere of the
Arcadian drama.
* * * * *
The earliest of these English mythological plays, alike in date of
production and of publication, was George Peele's _Arraignment of Paris_,
'A Pastorall. Presented before the Queenes Majestie, by the children of
her Chappell,' no doubt in 1581, and printed three years later.[206] It
partakes of the nature of the masque in that the whole composition centres
round a compliment to the Queen, Eliza or Zabeta--a name which, as Dr.
Ward notes, Peele probably borrowed along with one or two other hints from
Gascoigne's Kenilworth entertainment of 1575. The title sufficiently
expresses its mythological character, and the precise value of the term
'pastoral' on the title-page is difficult to determine. The characters are
for the most part either mythological or rustic; the only truly pastoral
ones being Paris and Oenone, whose parts, however, in so far as they are
pastoral, are also of the slightest. It is of course impossible to say
exactly to what extent the fame of the Italian pastoral drama may have
penetrated to England--the _Aminta_ was first printed the year of the
production of Peele's play, and waited a decade before the first English
translation and the first English edition appeared[207]--but no influence
of Tasso's masterpiece can be detected in the _Arraignment_; still less is
it possible to trace any acquaintance with Poliziano's work.
After a prologue, in which Ate foretells in staid and measured but not
unpleasing blank verse the fall of Troy, the silvan deities, Pan, Faunus,
Silvanus, Pomona, Flora, enter to welcome the three goddesses who are on
their way to visit 'Ida hills,' and who after a while enter, led by Rhanis
and accompanied by the Muses, whose processional chant heralds their
approach. They are greeted by Pan, who sings:
The God of Shepherds, and his mates,
With country cheer salutes your states,
Fair, wise, and worthy as you be,
And thank the gracions ladies three
For honour done to Ida.
When these have retired from the stage there follows a charming idyllic
scene between the lovers Paris and Oenone, which contains the delightful
old song, one of the lyric pearls of the Elizabethan drama:
_Oenone._ Fair and fair, and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be;
The fairest shepherd on our green,
A love for any lady.
_Paris._ Fair and fair, and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be;
Thy love is fair for thee alone,
And for no other lady.
_Oenone._ My love is fair, my love is gay,
As fresh as bin the flowers in May,
And of my love my roundelay,
My merry, merry, merry roundelay,
Concludes with Cupid's curse--
They that do change old love for new,
Pray gods they change for worse!
_Both._ They that do change old love for new,
Pray gods they change for worse!
The second act presents us the three goddesses who have come to Ida on a
party of pleasure with no very definite object in view, and are now
engaged in exercising their tongues at one another's expense. The scene
consists of a cross-fire of feminine amenities, not of the most delicate,
it is true, and therefore not here to be reproduced, yet of a keenness of
temper and a ringing mastery in the rimed verse little less than brilliant
in themselves, and little less than a portent at the date of their
appearance. Then a storm arises, during which, the goddesses having sought
refuge in Diana's bower, Ate rolls the fatal ball upon the stage. On the
return of the three the inscription _Detur pulcherrimae_ breeds fresh
strife, until they agree to submit the case for judgement to the next man
they meet. Paris arriving upon the scene at this point is at once called
upon to decide the rival claims of the contending goddesses. First Juno
promises wealth and empery, and presents a tree hung as with fruit with
crowns and diadems, all which shall be the meed of the partial judge.
Pallas next seeks to allure the swain with the pomp and circumstance of
war, and conjures up a show in which nine knights, no doubt the nine
worthies, tread a 'warlike almain.' Last Venus speaks:
Come, shepherd, come, sweet shepherd, look on me,
These bene too hot alarums these for thee:
But if thou wilt give me the golden ball,
Cupid my boy shall ha't to play withal,
That whenso'er this apple he shall see,
The God of Love himself shall think on thee,
And bid thee look and choose, and he will wound
Whereso thy fancy's object shall be found.
Whereupon 'Helen entereth in her bravery' attended by four Cupids, and
singing an Italian song which has, however, little merit. As at a later
day Faustus, so now Paris bows before the sovereignty of her beauty, and
then wanders off through Ida glades in the company of the victorious queen
of love, leaving her outraged rivals to plot a common revenge. Act III
introduces the slight rustic element. Hobbinol, Diggon, and Thenot enter
to Colin, who is lamenting the cruelty of his love Thestylis. The names
are obviously borrowed from the _Shepherd's Calender_, but while Colin is
still the type of the hopeless lover, there is no necessity to suspect any
personal identification. The _Arraignment_ was probably produced less than
two years after the publication of Spenser's eclogues, and Peele, who was
an Oxford man, may even have been ignorant of their authorship[208]. Still
more unnecessary are certain other identifications between characters in
the play and persons at court which have been propounded. Such
identifications, at any rate, have no importance for our present task,
which is to ascertain in what measure and in what manner Peele's work
paved the way for the advent of the Italian pastoral; and we note, with
regard to the present scene, that the more polished and more homely
elements alike--both Colin on the one hand, and Diggon, Hobbinol, and the
rest on the other--are inspired by Spenser's work, and by his alone.
Meanwhile Oenone enters, lamenting her desertion by Paris. There is
delicate pathos in the reminiscence of her former song which haunts the
outpouring of her grief--
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].
It will be noticed that in the play we have just been considering the
nymphs are no longer treated with the same respect as was the case in
_Gallathea_; we have, in fact, advanced some way towards the satirical
conception and representation of womankind which gives the tone to the
_Woman in the Moon_. It would almost seem as though his experience of the
inconstancy of the royal sunshine had made Lyly a less enthusiastic
devotee of womanhood in general and of virginity in particular, and that
with an unadvised frankness which may well account for his disappointments
at court, he failed to conceal his feelings. The play is likewise
distinguished from the other dramatic works of its author by being
composed almost entirely in blank verse. Certain lines of the prologue--
Remember all is but a Poets dreame,
The first he had in Phoebus holy bowre,
But not the last, unlesse the first displease--
have not unnaturally been taken to mean that the piece was the first
venture of the author; but on investigation this will be seen to be
impossible, since the constant reminiscence of Marlowe in the construction
of the verse points to 1588 or at earliest to 1587 as the date. Mr.
Fleay's suggestion of 1589-90 may be accepted as the earliest likely
date[223]. To my mind it would need external proof of an unusually cogent
description to render plausible the theory that the year, say, of the
_Shepherd's Calender_ saw the appearance of such lines as:
What lack I now but an imperiall throne[224],
And Ariadnaes star-lyght Diadem? (II. i.)
or:
O Stesias, what a heavenly love hast thou!
A love as chaste as is Apolloes tree,
As modest as a vestall Virgins eye,
And yet as bright as Glow wormes in the night,
With which the morning decks her lovers hayre; (IV. i.)
or yet again:
When will the sun go downe? flye Phoebus flye!
O, that thy steeds were wingd with my swift thoughts:
Now shouldst thou fall in Thetis azure armes[225],
And now would I fall in Pandoraes lap. (IV. i.)
Nor are these isolated passages; from the opening lines of the prologue to
the final speech of Nature the verse has the appearance of being the work
of a graceful if not very strong hand writing in imitation of Marlowe's
early style. We must, therefore, it seems to me, take the words of the
prologue as signifying not that the play was the first work of the author,
but that it was his earliest adventure in verse.
The plan of the work is as follows. The shepherds of Utopia come to dame
Nature and beg her to make a woman for them. She consents and fashions
Pandora, whom she dowers with the virtues of the several Planets. These,
however, are offended at not being consulted in the matter, and determine
to use their influence to the bane of the newly created woman. Under the
reign of Saturn she turns sullen; when Jupiter is in the ascendant he
falls in love with her, but she has grown proud and scorns him; under Mars
she becomes a vixen; under Sol she in her turn falls in love, and turns
wanton under Venus; she learns |
