Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama Part 24

Lastly, we have the satyr's farewell to Clorin:

Thou divinest, fairest, brightest, Thou most powerful maid and whitest, Thou most virtuous and most blessed, Eyes of stars, and golden-tressed Like Apollo; tell me, sweetest, What new service now is meetest For the satyr? Shall I stray In the middle air, and stay The sailing rack, or nimbly take Hold by the moon, and gently make Suit to the pale queen of night For a beam to give thee light?

Shall I dive into the sea And bring thee coral, making way Through the rising waves that fall In snowy fleeces? Dearest, shall I catch thee wanton fawns, or flies Whose woven wings the summer dyes Of many colours? get thee fruit, Or steal from heaven old Orpheus' lute?

All these I'll venture for, and more, To do her service all these woods adore.

So I take my leave and pray All the comforts of the day, Such as Phoebus' heat doth send On the earth, may still befriend Thee and this arbour!

_Clorin._ And to thee, All thy master's love be free! (V. v. 238 and 268.)

Such then is Fletcher's play. It is in the main original so far as its own individuality is concerned, and apart from the general tradition which it follows. Its direct debt to Guarini is confined to the t.i.tle and certain traits in the characters of Cloe and Amarillis. Further indebtedness has, it is true, been found to Spenser, but some hint of the transformation of Amarillis, a few names and an occasional reminiscence, make up the sum total of specific obligations. Endowed with a poetic gift which far surpa.s.sed the imitative facility of Guarini and approached the consummate art of Ta.s.so himself, Fletcher attempted to rival the Arcadian drama of the Italians. Not content, as Daniel had been, merely to reproduce upon accepted models, he realized that some fundamental innovation was necessary. But while he adopted and justified the greater licence and range of effect allowed upon the English stage, thereby altering the form from pseudo-cla.s.sical to wholly romantic, he failed in any way to touch or vitalize the inner spirit of the kind, trusting merely to lively action and lyrical jewellery to hold the attention of his audience. He failed, and it was not till some years after his death that the play, having been stamped with the approbation of the court, won a tardy recognition from the general public; and even when, after the restoration, Pepys records a successful revival in 1663, he adds that it was 'much thronged after for the scene's sake[273].'

II

Randolph's play, ent.i.tled 'Amyntas, or the Impossible Dowry,' belongs no doubt to the few years that intervened between the author's exchanging the academic quiet of Cambridge and the courts of Trinity, of which college he was a fellow, for the life and bustle of theatre and tavern in London about 1632, and his premature death which took place in March, 1635, before he had completed his thirtieth year. It is tempting to imagine that the revival of Fletcher's play on Twelfth Night, 1633-4, may possibly have occasioned Randolph's attempt, in which case the play must belong to the very last year of his life; but though there is nothing to make this supposition improbable, pastoral representations were far too general at that date for it to be necessary to look for any specific suggestion. The play first appeared in print in the collected edition of the author's poems edited by his brother in 1638.

Like Fletcher's play, the _Amyntas_ is a conscious attempt at so altering the accepted type of the Arcadian pastoral as to fit it for representation on the popular stage, for though acted, as the t.i.tle-page informs us, before their Majesties at Whitehall, it was probably also performed and intended by the author for performance on the public boards[274]. Yet the two experiments differ widely. Fletcher, as we have seen, while completing the romanticizing of the pastoral by employing the machinery and conventions of the English instead of the cla.s.sical stage, nevertheless introduced into his play none of the diversity and breadth of interest commonly found in the romantic drama proper, and indeed the _Faithful Shepherdess_ lacks almost entirely even that elaboration and firmness of plot which we find in the _Pastor fido_. Randolph, on the other hand, chose a plot closely resembling Guarini's in structure, and even retained much of the scenic arrangement of the Italian theatre. But in the complexity of action and multiplicity of incident, in the comedy of certain scenes and the substratum of pure farce in others, he introduced elements of the popular drama of a nature powerfully to affect the essence of his production. Where Fletcher subst.i.tuted for a theoretic cla.s.sicism an academic romanticism, Randolph insisted on treating the venerable proprieties of the pastoral according to the traditions of English melodrama.

Like the _Pastor fido_[275], Randolph's _Amyntas_ is weighted with a preliminary history. Philaebus, the son of the archiflamen Pilumnus, was betrothed to the shepherdess Lalage, who, however, was captivated by the greater wealth of the shepherd Claius, upon whom she bestowed her hand.

Moved by his son's grief, Pilumnus entreated Ceres' revenge on the faithless nymph, and Lalage died in giving birth to the twins Amyntas and Amarillis. This but added to Philaebus' despair, so that he died upon her tomb, and the bereft father having once more sought the aid of the G.o.ddess, the oracle p.r.o.nounced the curse:

Sicilian swaines, ill luck shall long betide To every bridegroome, and to every bride: No sacrifice, no vow shall still mine Ire, Till Claius blood both quench and kindle fire.

The wise shall misconceive me, and the wit Scornd and neglected shall my meaning hit. (I. v.)

Upon this Claius fled, leaving his children in the care of his sister Thestylis. Although Philaebus was dead, two younger children remained to Pilumnus, Damon and Urania. In the course of years it fortuned that Urania and Amyntas fell in love, and though misliking of the match, Pilumnus went so far as to consult the oracle concerning his daughter's dowry. With the uncalled-for perversity characteristic of oracles the 'ompha[276]'

replied:

That which thou hast not, mayst not, canst not have Amyntas, is the Dowry that I crave: Rest hopelesse in thy love, or else divine To give Urania this, and she is thine.

Pondering whereon Amyntas lost his wits. In the meanwhile Amarillis had conceived an unhappy pa.s.sion for Damon, who in his turn sought the love of the nymph Laurinda, having for rival Alexis.

This is the situation at the opening of the action. In the first act we find Laurinda unable or unwilling to decide between her rival lovers, and her endeavours to play them off one against the other afford some of the most amusing scenes of the piece. Learning from Thestylis of Amarillis'

love for Damon, she determines on a trick whereby she hopes to make her choice without appearing to slight either of her suitors. She bids them abide by the award of the first nymph they meet at the temple in the morning, and so arranges matters that that nymph shall be Amarillis, whose love for Damon she supposes will move her to appoint Alexis for herself.

In the meanwhile the banished Claius has returned, in order, having heard of Amyntas' madness, to apply such cures as he has learnt in the course of his wanderings. He is successful in his attempt, and without revealing his ident.i.ty departs, having first privately obtained from Urania the promise that she will vow virginity to Ceres, lest Amyntas by puzzling afresh over the oracle should again lose his reason. The nymphs now appear at the temple, and the foremost, who is veiled, is appealed to by Damon and Alexis to give her decision. She reveals herself as Amarillis, and Damon, fearing that she will decide against him, refuses to be bound by the award of so partial an arbiter. Alexis thereupon goes off to fetch Laurinda, who shall force him to abide by his oath, while Damon in a fit of rage seeks to prevent Amarillis' verdict by slaying her. He wounds her with his spear and leaves her for dead. She recovers consciousness, however, when he has fled, and with her blood writes a letter to Laurinda bequeathing to her all interest in Damon. At this point Claius returns upon the scene, and finding her wounded applies remedies. Damon too is led back by an evil conscience, and Pilumnus likewise appears. Claius, in his anxiety to make Amarillis reveal her a.s.sa.s.sin, betrays his own ident.i.ty, to the joy of his old enemy Pilumnus. Alexis now returns with Laurinda, and upon hearing the letter which Amarillis had written, Damon confesses his crime and declares that henceforth his love is for none but her. His life, however, is forfeit through his having shed blood in the holy vale, and he is led off in company with Claius to die at the altar of Ceres. In the fifth act we find all prepared for the double sacrifice, when Amyntas enters, and bidding Pilumnus stay his hand, claims to expound the oracle. Claius'

blood, he argues, has been already shed in Amarillis, and has quenched the fire of Damon's love for Laurinda, rekindling it again to Amarillis' self.

Moreover, had not the oracle warned them that the recognized guardians of wisdom would fail to interpret truly, and that such a scorned wit as that of the 'mad Amyntas' would discover the meaning? Furthermore, he argues that since Amarillis was the victim the G.o.ddess aimed at, her blood might without sin be shed even in the holy vale, while Damon is of the priestly stock to which that office justly pertained. Thus Claius and Damon are alike spoken free, and Sicily is relieved of the G.o.ddess' curse. While the general rejoicing is at its height, Urania is brought in to take her vestal vows at the altar. In spite of her lover's remonstrance she kneels before the shrine and addresses her prayer to the G.o.ddess. At length the appeased deity deigns to answer, and in a gracious echo reveals the solution of the enigma of the dowry--a husband.

This plot is a mingling of comedy in the scenes of Laurinda's 'wavering'[277] and the 'humours' of Amyntas' madness, and of tragi-comedy in the catastrophe. But besides this there is what may best be described as an antiplot of pure farce, in which the main character is the roguish page Dorylas, who in the guise of Oberon robs Jocastus' orchard, tricks Thestylis into marrying the foolish augur, and gulls everybody all round.

The humour of this portion of the piece may be occasionally a trifle broad and at the same time childish, but there is nevertheless no denying the genuineness of the quality, while the verse is as a rule sparkling, and the dialogue both racy and pointed, occasionally displaying qualities hardly to be described as other than brilliant.

This comic subplot obviously owes nothing to Guarini, but is introduced in accordance with the usage of the English popular drama, and is grafted somewhat boldly on to the conventional stock. Dorylas is one of the most inimitable and successful of the descendants of Lyly's pages; while the characters of Mopsus and Jocastus, although the former no doubt owes his conception to a hint in the _Aminta_, belong essentially to the English romantic farce. The scenes in which the page appears as Oberon surrounded by his court recall the introduction of the 'mortal fairies' of the _Merry Wives,_ and that in which Amyntas' 'deluded fancy' takes the augur for a hound of Actaeon's breed may owe something to a pa.s.sage in _King Lear_.

But even apart from the elements of farce and comedy there are important aspects in which the _Amyntas_ severs itself from the stricter tradition of the Italian pastoral. Randolph, while adopting the machinery and much of the scenic environment of Guarini's play, made certain not unimportant alterations in the dramatic construction, tending towards greater variety and complicity. In the _Pastor fido_ the four main characters, though they ultimately resolve themselves into two pairs, are throughout interdependent, and their story forms but a single plot. That the play should have needed a double solution, the events that bring two couples together having no connexion with one another, was a dramatic blunder but imperfectly concealed by the fact that Silvio and Dorinda are purely secondary, the whole interest being concentrated on the fortunes of Mirtillo and Amarilli. In Randolph's play, on the other hand, there are no less than six important characters. These are divided into two groups, each with an independent plot, one of which contains a telling though somewhat conventional pe??p?te?a, while the other, though possessing originality and pathos, is lacking in dramatic possibilities. Thus each supplies the elements wanting in the other, and if woven together harmoniously, should have been capable of forming the basis of a well-constructed play. The first of these groups consists of Laurinda, Alexis, Damon, and Amarillis, the last two being really the dramatically important ones, though their fortunes are connected throughout. It is Laurinda's choice of Alexis that leads to the union of Damon and Amarillis, and it is not till Damon has unconsciously fulfilled the oracle and been freed by its interpretation, that the loves of Laurinda and Alexis can hope for a happy event. Thus Randolph has at least not fallen into the error by which Guarini introduced a double catastrophe into a single plot, though he has not altogether avoided a somewhat similar danger. This is due to the other group above mentioned, consisting of Amyntas and Urania, who, so far as the plot is concerned, are absolutely independent of the other characters. Their own story is essentially undramatic, although it possesses qualities which would make it effective in narrative; and it is, moreover, wholly unaffected by the solution of the other plot. This is obviously a weak place in the construction of the play, but the author has shown great resource in meeting the difficulty.

First, by placing the interpretation of the oracle in the mouth of Amyntas, who must yet himself remain hopeless amid the general rejoicing, he has produced a figure of considerable dramatic effect, and so kept the attention of the audience braced, and stayed the relaxing effect of the anti-climax. Secondly, he has amused the spectators with some excellent fooling until, while Io and Paean are yet resounding, it is possible to crown the whole by the solution of the second oracle, and send the hero and his love to join the others in the festive throng. The imperfection of plot is there, but the author has been skilful in concealing it, and it may well be that his success would appear all the greater were his play to be put to the real test of dramatic composition by being actually placed on the boards.

But there is yet another point in which the _Amyntas_ differs not only from its Italian model but from its English predecessors likewise. This is a certain genially humorous conception of the whole, quite apart from and beyond the mere introduction of comedy and farce, which we have never found so marked before, and which has indeed been painfully absent from the pastoral since Ta.s.so penned the final chorus of the _Aminta_. This humorous tone is never harshly forced upon the attention, and consists, in a measure, merely in the fact of the comic business constantly elbowing the serious action, and thus saving the latter from the danger of becoming stilted and pretentions--a fault not less commonly and quite as justly charged against pastoral literature as that of artificiality. A leaven of humour is the great safeguard against an author taking either himself or his creations too seriously. Randolph's _Amyntas_, it is true, renounces the high ideality of its predecessors, of the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor fido_, of _Hymen's Triumph_ and the _Faithful Shepherdess_; but it makes up for it by human sanity of feeling and expression, by good humour and by wit. It is, moreover, genuinely diverting. Here at least we find no endeavour to attain to the importance and solemnity of a cla.s.sical tragedy as with Guarini, nor a striving after an utterly unreal, unsympathetic and impossible ideal as with Fletcher. It is, moreover, noticeable and eminently to the credit of the author that the comic scenes, even when somewhat extravagant alike in tone and proportion, seldom clash unpleasantly with the more serious pa.s.sages, nor derogate from the interest and dignity of the whole.

The play has generally met with a far from deserved neglect, owing in part no doubt to the singular failure on the part of most critics to apprehend correctly the nature and conditions of pastoral poetry.[278] Mr. W. C.

Hazlitt, who edited Randolph's works in 1875, does not so much as mention the play in the perfunctory introduction, in which he chiefly follows the extravagant, pedantic, and utterly worthless article in the sixth volume of the _Retrospective Review_.[279] The merits of the piece have been somewhat more fully recognized by Dr. Ward and Mr. Homer Smith, but the treatment accorded the play by the former is necessarily scanty, while that of the latter is inaccurate. Throughout a tendency is manifest to find fault with the artificiality of the piece, and to blame the author for not representing the true 'simplicity' of pastoral life. That the pastoral tradition was a wholly impossible, not to say an absurd one, bearing no true relation to nature at all, may be admitted; and it may be lamented by such as love to shed bitter tears because the sandy sh.o.r.e is not a well-swept parquet, or because anything you please is not something else to which it bears not the smallest resemblance. It may or may not be unfortunate that Randolph should have elected to write _more pastorali_, but to censure the individual work because it is not of a type to which its author never had the remotest intention of making it conform, and to which except for something like a miracle it was impossible that it should even approach, is the acme of critical fatuity. Judged in accordance with the intention of the author the _Amyntas_ is no inconsiderable achievement for a young writer, and compared with other works belonging to the same tradition it occupies a highly respectable place. With Ta.s.so's _Aminta_ and Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_ it cannot, in point of poetic merit, for one moment compare, falling as far below them in this as it surpa.s.ses them in complexity and general suitability of dramatic construction. A fairer comparison may be made between it and the _Pastor fido_ in Italian or _Hymen's Triumph_ in English, and here again, though certainly with regard to the former and probably with regard to the latter it stands second as poetry, as a play it is decidedly better suited than either for representation on the stage--at least on a stage with the traditions and conventions which prevailed in this country in the author's day.

It is then in the matter of the poetical quality of the verse that Randolph's play appears to least advantage. Living in a polished and cultured literary circle at Cambridge, and enjoying after his remove to London the congenial fellows.h.i.+p of the tribe of Ben, he naturally attained the ease and skill necessary to maintain a respectable level of composition, but he was sparing of the higher flights. He seldom strikes the attention by those purple patches which make many of his contemporaries so quotable, yet, while by no means monotonously correct, it is equally seldom that he sinks much below his general level. The dialogue is on the whole natural and easy, and at the same time crisp and pointed. A few of the more distinctively poetic and imaginative pa.s.sages may be quoted, in order to give some idea of the style. Laurinda thus appoints a choice to her brace of lovers:

I have protested never to disclose Which 'tis that best I love: But the first Nymph, As soone as t.i.tan guilds the Easterne hills, And chirping birds, the Saints-bell of the day, Ring in our eares a warning to devotion-- That lucky damsell what so e're she be [That first shall meet you from the temple gate][280]

Shall be the G.o.ddesse to appoint my love, To say, 'Laurinda this shall be your choice': And both shall sweare to stand to her award! (III. i.)

Another pa.s.sage of deliberate poetic elaboration is the monologue of Claius on once again treading his native soil:

I see the smoake steame from the Cottage tops, The fearfull huswife rakes the embers up, All hush to bed. Sure, no man will disturbe mee.

O blessed vally! I the wretched Claius Salute thy happy soyle, I that have liv'd Pelted with angry curses in a place As horrid as my griefes, the Lylibaean mountaines, These sixteene frozen winters; there have I Beene with rude out-lawes, living by such sinnes As runne o' th' score with justice 'gainst my prayers and wishes: And when I would have tumbled down a rock, Some secret powre restrain'd me. (III. ii.)

By far the greater part of the play is in blank verse, but in a few pa.s.sages, particularly in certain dialogues tending to stichomythia, the verse is pointed, so to speak, with rime. The following is a graceful example in a somewhat conceited vein; the transition, moreover, from blank to rimed measure has an appearance of natural ease. The rivals are awaiting the arbitrement of their love:

_Alexis._ How early, Damon, Doe lovers rise!...

_Damon._ No Larkes so soon, Alexis.

_Al._ He that of us shall have Laurinda, Damon, Will not be up so soone: ha! would you Damon?

_Da._ Alexis, no; but if I misse Laurinda, My sleepe shall be eternall.

_Al._ I much wonder the Sunne so soone can rise!

_Da._ Did he lay his head in faire Laurinda's lap, We should have but short daies.

_Al._ No summer, Damon.

_Da._ Thetis[281] to her is browne.

_Al._ And he doth rise From her to gaze on faire Laurinda's eyes....

_Da._ I heare no noise of any yet that move.

_Al._ Devotion's not so early up as love.

_Da._ See how Aurora blushes! we suppose Where t.i.thon lay to night.

_Al._ That modest rose He grafted there.

_Da._ O heaven, 'tis all I seeke, To make that colour in Laurinda's cheeke. (IV. iv.)

A more tragic note is struck in the speech in which Claius retorts on Pilumnus after his discovery:

I, glut your hate, Pilumnus; let your soule That has so long thirsted to drinke my blood, Swill till my veines are empty;... I have stood Long like a fatall oake, at which great Jove Levels his thunder; all my boughes long since Blasted and wither'd; now the trunke falls too.

Heaven end thy wrath in mee! (IV. viii.)