Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama Part 31

Occasionally we meet with topical allusions, for instance the thrust at Taylor put into the mouth of the rude Cancrone:

Farewell ye rockes and seas, I thinke yee'l shew it That Sicelie affords a water-Poet. (II. vi.)

The stealing of the Hesperian apples, and the penalty entailed, appear to be imitated from the breaking of Pan's tree in Browne's _Britannia's Pastorals_, as does also the devotion and rescue of Perindus[324]. The orc probably owes its origin, directly or indirectly, to Ariosto, and the influence of the _Metamorphoses_ is likewise, as so often, present. The following is perhaps a rather favourable specimen of the verse, but many short pa.s.sages and phrases of merit might be quoted:

The Oxe now feeles no yoke, all labour sleepes, The soule unbent, this as her play-time keepes, And sports it selfe in fancies winding streames, Bathing his thoughts in thousand winged dreames ...

Only love waking rests and sleepe despises, Sets later then the sunne, and sooner rises.

With him the day as night, the night as day, All care, no rest, all worke, no holy-day.

How different from love is lovers guise!

He never opes, they never shut their eyes. (III. vi.)

Ten years at least, and probably more, intervened before the next pastoral that has survived appeared on the stage. This is a somewhat wild production, of small merit, though of some historical interest, ent.i.tled _The Careless Shepherdess._ It was printed many years after its original production, namely in 1656, and then purported to be written by 'T. G. Mr.

of Arts,' who was identified with Thomas Goffe by Kirkman; nor has this ascription ever been challenged. Goffe was resident till 1620 at Oxford, where his cla.s.sical tragedies were performed, after which he held the living of East Clandon in Surrey till his death in July, 1629. It is probably to these later years that his attempt at pastoral belongs, but the actual date of composition must rest upon conjecture. It was, we are informed on the t.i.tle-page, performed before their majesties (at Whitehall, the prologue adds), and also publicly at Salisbury Court, the playhouse in the Strand, opened in 1629. Consequently the 'praeludium,'

the scene of which is laid in the new theatre, must belong to the last months of the author's life[325]. The question of the date is interesting princ.i.p.ally on account of certain lines which bear a somewhat striking resemblance to those which stand at the opening of Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_:

This was her wonted place, on these green banks She sate her down, when first I heard her play Unto her lisning sheep; nor can she be Far from the spring she's left behinde. That Rose I saw not yesterday, nor did that Pinke Then court my eye; She must be here, or else That gracefull Marygold wo'd shure have clos'd Its beauty in her withered leaves, and that Violet too wo'd hang its velvet head To mourn the absence of her eyes[326]. (V. vii.)

The general poetic merit of the piece is, except for these lines, slight, while the songs and lyrical pa.s.sages, which are rather freely interspersed, are almost all wooden and unmusical. Such interest as the play possesses is dependent on the plot. We have the conventional four characters: Arismena, the careless shepherdess, her lover Philaritus, and Castarina, whose affections lean towards the last, though she does not object to hold out some hope to her lover Lariscus. Philaritus is the son of Cleobulus, who is described as 'a gentleman of Arcadia,' and opposes his son's marriage with the daughter of a mere shepherd to the point of disowning him, whereupon the lover dons the pastoral garb, and so continues his suit to his unresponsive mistress. Castarina meanwhile informs her lover that she will show no favour to any suitor until the return of her banished father, Paromet. Both swains are of course in despair at the cruelty of their loves, but the behaviour of the nymphs is throughout marked by a certain sanity of feeling, which contrasts with the exaggerated devotions, and yet more exaggerated iciness, of their Italian predecessors. Philaritus, in the hope of rousing Arismena to jealousy, feigns love to Castarina, who readily meets his advances. He is so far successful that he awakes his mistress to the fact that she really loves him, but she determines to play the same trick upon him by feigning in her turn to love Lariscus. This has the immediate effect of making Philaritus challenge his supposed rival, who, having witnessed his pretended advances to Castarina, eagerly responds. Their meeting is, however, interrupted, in the one tolerably good scene in the play, by the appearance of the two shepherdesses, who threaten to slay one another unless their lovers desist. Arismena's coldness, it may be mentioned, has been shaken by Philaritus having rescued her from the pursuit of a satyr, and the two maidens now consent to make return for the long suit of their lovers.

While, however, they are yet in the first transport of joy, a troop of satyrs appear, and carry off the girls by force, leaving the lovers to a despair rendered all the more bitter for Philaritus by the announcement that his father relents of his anger, and is willing to countenance his marriage with Arismena. After a vain search for traces of their loves the swains return home, where they are met by the same satyrs, still guarding their captives. They offer to run at them, when the two leaders discover themselves as the fathers respectively of Philaritus and Arismena. No satisfactory account of their motive for this outrage is offered, for while they are disputing of the matter the other satyrs, supposed to be their servants in disguise, suddenly disappear with the girls.

Consternation follows, and great preparations are made for pursuit.

Arismena and Castarina, however, apparently escape from their captors, for we next find them sleeping quietly in an arbour. Again a satyr enters, and carries off Arismena, whom Castarina on waking follows to the dwelling of the satyrs, where she finds her friend being courted by her captor.

Meanwhile the rash pursuers have fallen into the hands of the pursued, and are brought in bound. Matters appear desperate, and the nymphs are actually brought on the stage apparently dead and lying in their coffins.

They soon, however, show themselves to be alive, and the chief satyr reveals himself as the banished Paromet, who has been endeavouring to induce Arismena to marry him, in the hope thereby to get his sentence of banishment revoked. This, it appears, has already been done, and all now ends happily.

In this chaotic medley it will be observed that the plot is twice ravelled and loosed before the final solution. In the frequent _enlevements_ by the satyrs, as in the manner in which these deceive their employer, the story distantly recalls Ingegneri's _Danza di Venere_. One feature of importance is the comic character Graculus, who is well fooled by the pretended satyrs, and has an amusing though coa.r.s.e part in prose. He seems to owe his origin to the broad humours of the vulgar stage, though he may be in a measure imitated from the roguish pages of Lyly, and so be the forerunner of Randolph's Dorylas. The tradition of the comic scenes, usually written in prose, was in process of crystallization, and from the _Maid's Metamorphosis_ we can trace it onwards through the present piece, and such slighter compositions as the _Converted Robber_ and Tatham's _Love Crowns the End_, to Randolph and even later writers. In the present case it was no innovation, nor is there any reason to suppose that it was unpopular with the audience.[327] What was an innovation was the 'gentleman of Arcadia,' a character for which the Spanish romance was without doubt responsible. In the Italian pastoral proper the shepherds are themselves the aristocracy of Arcadia, the introduction of such social hierarchy as is implied in the phrase being a point of chivalric and courtly tradition.

Cleobulus, however, as well as his son Philaritus, is in fact purely Arcadian in character. Among other personae we find Apollo and the Sibyls, introduced for the sake of an oracle; Silvia, who more or less fills the office of priestess of Pan, and leads the shepherds to his shrine in a sort of masque; and a very superfluous 'Bonus Genius' of Castarina. This mythological element, however, though suggested, is not, any more than the courtly, put to the fore. I quote Silvia's song as the best example of the lyrical verse of the play:

Come Shepherds come, impale your brows With Garlands of the choicest flowers The time allows.

Come Nymphs deckt in your dangling hair, And unto Sylvia's shady Bowers With hast repair: Where you shall see chast Turtles play, And Nightingales make lasting May, As if old Time his youthfull minde, To one delightful season had confin'd. (II. i.)

There is one thing that can be said in favour of the pastoral written by Ralph Knevet for the Society of Florists at Norwich, namely, that while adhering mainly to tradition, it is not indebted to any individual works.

Of the author of _Rhodon and Iris_, as the play was called, little is known beyond the dates of his birth and death, 1600 and 1671, and the bare facts that he was at one time connected in the capacity of tutor or chaplain with the family of Sir William Paston of Oxmead, and after the restoration held the living of Lyng in Norfolk. The play appears to have been performed at the Florists' feast on May 3, 1631, and was printed the same year. The object the author had in view was the characterization of certain flowers in the persons of nymphs and shepherds; other characters are allegorical personifications, while Flora herself plays the part of the pastoral G.o.d from the machine. The weakness of the plot, as in so many cases, lies in the existence of two main threads of interest, whose connexion is wholly fortuitous, and neither of which is clearly subordinated to the other. In the present case no attempt is made to interweave the chivalric motive, in which Rhodon stands as champion of the oppressed Violetta, with the pastoral motive of his love for Iris. It is, moreover, hardly possible to credit the play with a plot at all, since one thread is cut short by a _dea ex machina_ of the most mechanical sort, while in the other there is never any complication at all. The following is the outline of the action. The proud shepherd Martagan has encroached on and wasted the lands of Violetta, the sister of Rhodon, to whom she appeals for protection. The latter determines to demand reparation of Martagan, and, in case of his refusal, to offer battle on his sister's behalf. In the meantime, warned, as we are told, by the stars, he has abandoned his love Eglantine, and incontinently fallen in love with Iris.

The forsaken nymph seeks the aid of a witch, Poneria (Wickedness), who with her a.s.sociate Agnostus (Ignorance) is supporting the pretensions of Martagan. Poneria supplies Eglantine with a poison under pretence of a love-philtre, with instructions to administer it to Rhodon disguised as his love Iris, which she succeeds in doing. Meanwhile Martagan has refused to come to terms, and either side prepares for war. Violetta and Iris send Rhodon charms and salves for wounds by the hand of their servant Panace (All-heal), who happily arrives just as he has drunk the poison, and is in time to cure him. Rhodon now prepares for battle under the belief that Iris has sought his death, but being a.s.sured of her faith, he vows a double vengeance on his foes, to whose deceit he next attributes the attempt. The forces are about to join battle when, in response to the prayers of the nymphs, Flora appears and bids the warriors hold. Martagan she commands to refrain from the usurped territory, and charges his followers to keep the peace and abide by her award. Poneria and Agnostus she banishes from the land, and Eglantine for seeking unlawful means to her love is condemned to ten years' penance in a 'vestal Temple.' Thus Rhodon is free to celebrate his nuptials with Iris, though the matter is only referred to in the epilogue.

The plot, it will be seen, is anything but that of a pure pastoral. The large chivalric or at least martial element belongs less to the courtly and Spanish type than to that of works like _Menaphon_, or even _Daphnis and Chloe_. There is also a comic motive between Clematis and her fellow servant Gladiolus, which turns on the wardrobe and cosmetics of Eglantine and Poneria, and belongs to the tradition of court and city. The allegorical characters find their nearest parallel in those of the _Queen's Arcadia_.[328]

This amateurish effort is composed for the most part in a strangely unmetrical attempt at blank verse. It differs from the doggerel of the _Fairy Pastoral_ in making no apparent attempt at scansion at all, and so at least escapes the crabbedness of Percy's language. It is not easy to see how the author came to write in this curious compromise between verse and prose, since it is more or less freely interspersed with pa.s.sages both in blank verse and in couplets, which, while exhibiting no conspicuous poetical qualities, are both metrical and pleasing enough. Take, for example, the lines from Eglantine's lament:

Since that the G.o.ds will not my woe redresse, Since men are altogether pittilesse, Ye silent ghosts unto my plaints give eare; Give ear, I say, ye ghosts, if ghosts can heare, And listen to my plaints that doe excell The dol'rous tune of ravish'd Philomel.

Now let Ixions wheele stand still a while, Let Danaus daughters now surcease their toyle, Let Sisyphus rest on his restlesse stone, Let not the Apples flye from Plotas sonne, And let the full gorg'd Vultur cease to teare The growing liver of the ravisher; Let these behold my sorrows and confesse Their paines doe farre come short of my distresse. (II. iii.)

Or take Clematis' prayer for her mistress Eglantine:

Thou gentle G.o.ddesse of the woods and mountains, That in the woods and mountains art ador'd, The Maiden patronesse of chaste desires, Who art for chast.i.ty renouned most, Tresgrand Diana, who hast power to cure The rankling wounds of Cupids golden arrowes, Thy precious balsome deigne thou to apply Unto the heart of wofull Eglantine. (I. iii.)

Or yet again, in lighter mood, Acanthus' boast:

When Sol shall make the Easterne Seas his bed, When Wolves and Sheepe shall be together fed,...

When Venus shal turn Chast, and Bacchus become sober, When fruit in April's ripe, that blossom'd in October,...

When Art shal be esteem'd, and golden pelfe laid down, When Fame shal tel all truth, and Fortune cease to frown, To Cupids yoke then I my necke will bow; Till then, I will not feare loves fatall blow. (I. ii.)

Yet the author of the above pa.s.sages--for there is no reason to suppose a second hand, and the play was published under his own direction--chose to write the main portion of his poem in a measure of this sort:

Oh impotent desires, allay the sad consort Of a sublime Fortune, whose most ambitious flames Disdaine to burne in simple Cottages, Loathing a hard unpolish'd bed; But Coveting to s.h.i.+ne beneath a Canopy Of rich Sydonian purple, all imbroider'd With purest gold, and orientall Pearles. (I. iii.)

Why he should have so chosen I cannot presume to say; whether from haste and carelessness, or from a deliberate intention of writing a sort of measured prose; but it was certainly from no inability to be metrical. The occasional lyrics, moreover, are not without merit; the following lines, sung by Eglantine, are perhaps the most pleasing in the play:

Upon the blacke Rocke of despaire My youthfull joyes are perish'd quite; My hopes are vanish'd into ayre, My day is turn'd to gloomy night; For since my Rhodon deare is gone, Hope, light, nor comfort, have I none.

A Cell where griefe the Landlord is Shall be my palace of delight, Where I will wooe with votes and sighes Sweet death to end my sorrowes quite; Since I have lost my Rhodon deare, Deaths fleshlesse armes why should I feare? (I. iii.)

To treat of Walter Montagu's _Shepherds' Paradise_ at a length at all commensurate with its own were to set a premium on dull prolixity; there are, however, in spite of its restricted merits, a few points which give it a claim upon our attention. A brief a.n.a.lysis will suffice. The King of Castile negotiates a marriage between his son and the princess of Navarre.

The former, however, is in love with a lady of the court named Fidamira, who repulses his advances in favour of Agenor, a friend of the prince's.

The prince therefore resolves to leave the court and seek the Shepherds'

Paradise, a sequestered vale inhabited by a select and courtly company, and induces Agenor to accompany him on his expedition. In their absence the king himself makes love to Fidamira, who, however, escapes, and likewise makes her way to the Shepherds' Paradise in disguise. Meanwhile, Belesa, the princess of Navarre, misliking of the proposed match with a man she has never seen, has withdrawn from her father's court to the same pastoral retreat, where she has at once been elected queen of the courtly company. On the arrival of the prince and his friend they both fall in love with her, but the prince's suit is seconded by the disguised Fidamira, and soon takes a favourable turn. At this point the King of Castile arrives in pursuit, together with an old councillor, who proceeds to reveal the relations.h.i.+p of the various characters. Fidamira and Belesa, it appears, are sisters, and Agenor their brother. The marriage of the prince and Belesa is of course solemnized; the king renews his suit to Fidamira, but she prefers to remain in Paradise, where she is chosen perpetual queen[329].

The plot, it will be observed, belongs entirely to the school of the Hispano-French romance, and the style, intricate, involved, and conceited, in which this prose pastoral is written betrays the same origin. Moreover, as Euphuism, objectionable enough in the romance, becomes ten times more intolerable on the stage, so too with the language of the pastoral-amorous tale of courtly chivalry. There are, however, incidental pa.s.sages of verse which in their own rather intricate and ergotic style are of greater merit than the prose, though that is not saying much. The close dependence of the piece upon the chivalric tradition serves to differentiate it from the majority of those we have to consider; while certain external circ.u.mstances have combined to give it a fortuitous reputation.

One of Montagu's pa.s.sports to fame is an allusion in Suckling's _Session of the Poets_, from which it is evident that the style of the play attracted notice of an uncomplimentary character even among the writer's contemporaries:

Wat Montagu now stood forth to his trial, And did not so much as suspect a denial; But witty Apollo asked him first of all, If he understood his own pastoral!

The _Shepherds' Paradise_ is, however, best remembered on account of circ.u.mstances attending its performance. It was acted, as we learn from a letter of John Chamberlain's, on January 8, 1632-3, by the queen and her ladies, who filled male and female parts alike. Almost simultaneously appeared Prynne's famous attack on all things connected with the stage, in which was one particularly scurrilous pa.s.sage concerning women who appeared on the boards. As this, of course, was not the practice of the public stage, it was evident that the author must have had some specific instance in mind, and though it is not certain whether there was any personal intention in the allusion, the cap was made to fit, and for the supposed insult to the queen Prynne lost his ears.

It is presumably at this point that Randolph's _Amyntas_ should appear in a chronological survey of English pastoralism.

Of the 'Pastoral of Florimene,' presented at the queen's command before the king at Whitehall, on December 21, 1635, we possess the plot only, and it is even doubtful in what language the piece was composed[330]. The songs in the introduction and the _intermedi_ were undoubtedly in French, and the prologue by Fame in English; the rest is uncertain, but the French forms of the names, and the fact that it was represented by 'les filles francaises de la Reine' point in the same direction. The plot, which belongs entirely to the court-pastoral type of the French romances, only influenced in the _denoument_ by mythological tradition, appears to be original in the same degree as most other pastoral inventions, that is, to exhibit fresh variations on stock situations.[331] The relation of the characters is involved, and not easily made out from the printed account of the piece, but the outline of the plot is as follows. The shepherdess Florimene is loved by the Delian shepherd Anfrize, who has long been her servant, and the Arcadian stranger Filene, who in order to gain access to the object of his devotion has disguised himself in female attire, and pa.s.ses under the name of Dorine. In this disguise he is courted by Florimene's brother, Aristee. Filene, however, was loved in Arcadia by the nymph Licoris, who has followed him disguised in shepherd's weeds.

Aristee, in order to sound the mind of his love, the supposed Dorine (i.e.

Filene), disguises himself in his sister Florimene's dress, and in this garb receives to his astonishment the declaration of Filene's love.

Aristee immediately leaves him, and turns his affections towards the faithful Lucinde, who has long pined for his love. She, however, has now fallen in love with Lycoris in her male attire, and rejects the advances of the penitent Aristee, continuing to do so even after she has discovered her mistake. Lycoris, hearing of the disguise of Filene, seeks Florimene at the moment when she is most incensed on discovering the deception, and begs her good offices with Filene, which are readily promised. Florimene accordingly rejects Filene when he presents himself, but he refuses to show any favour to Lycoris until she shall have obtained his pardon from Florimene. The latter is really in love with Filene all the time, and when Lycoris comes to plead his cause, she readily grants her audience. Filene now enters, and is about to pa.s.s his vows to Florimene when they are interrupted by Anfrize, who in a fit of jealousy offers to kill Filene.

This attempt Florimene prevents with her sheep-hook, and declares that they must all seek the award of Diana, by whose decision she promises to abide. The G.o.ddess then appears. Lucinde she decrees shall restore her love to Aristee; Lycoris, she informs the company, is own sister to Filene, whose love she must therefore renounce. She then bids Anfrize and Filene plead their cause, which they do, and she declares in favour of the latter's suit, commanding at the same time that the unsuccessful Anfrize shall wed the forlorn Lycoris. Thus all are happy, so far as having their love affairs arranged by a third party can be supposed to make them.

Florimene, who had retired, perhaps to don her bridal robes, now returns to complete the _tableau_. 'Here the Heavens open, and there appeare many deities, who in their songs expresse their agreements to these marriages'--which was, no doubt, thought very satisfactory by the spectators.

The _Shepherds' Holiday_ is the most typical, as it is on the whole the most successful, of those pastorals which exhibit the blending of the Arcadian and courtly elements. It was printed in 1635, and the t.i.tle-page informs us that it was 'Written by J. R.,' initials which there is satisfactory evidence for regarding as those of Joseph Rutter, the translater of Corneille's _Cid_, who appears to have been in some way attached to the households both of Sir Kenelm Digby and the Earl of Dorset. The play was acted before Charles and his queen at Whitehall. The following a.n.a.lysis will sufficiently express its nature.

At the opening of the play we find Thirsis grieving for the loss of Silvia, a strange shepherdess who appeared amongst the pastoral inhabitants of Arcadia some while previously, and has recently vanished, carried off, as her lover supposes, by a satyr. Leaving him to his lament, the play introduces us to the huntress Nerina, courted by the rich shepherd Daphnis, whose suit is favoured by her father, and the poor swain Hylas. Daphnis is in his turn loved by the nymph Dorinda. In a scene between Hylas and Nerina she upbraids him with having once stolen a kiss of her, and dismisses him in seeming anger; immediately he is gone, however, delivering herself of a soliloquy in which she confesses her love for him, which her father's commands forbid her to reveal. Daphnis, finding her cold to his suit, seeks the help of Alcon, who supplies him with a magic gla.s.s, in which whoso looks shall not choose but love the giver. In reality it is poisoned, and upon his giving it to Nerina she faints, and in appearance dies, after obtaining as her last request her father's favour to her love for Hylas. The scene now s.h.i.+fts to court.

Silvia, who it appears is none other than the daughter of King Euarchus, recounts how she had fled owing to the unwelcome suit of Cleander, the son of the old councillor Eubulus, and on account of her love of the shepherd Thirsis, whom she had seen and heard at the annual show which the country folk were wont to perform at court. After a while, however, Cleander had discovered her retreat and forced her to return. The shepherds are now again about to present their rustic pageant, and she takes the opportunity of sending a private message, seeking an interview with Thirsis. Meanwhile Eubulus has explained to his son Cleander how Silvia is really his own daughter, and consequently Cleander's sister. An oracle had led the king to believe that if a son were born to him harm would ensue, and therefore commanded that in that case the child should be destroyed. A son was born, but Eubulus subst.i.tuted his own daughter, whom he feigned dead, and carried away the king's son with a necklace round his neck, intending to commit him to the care of some shepherds, but being surprised by robbers fled leaving the child to its fate. Returning now to the shepherds, the play shows us Daphnis and Alcon seeking the tomb of Nerina with a restorative. The gla.s.s, it seems, was intentionally poisoned by Alcon, who adopted this elaborate device for placing the nymph in the power of her lover should she continue obdurate. They restore her, and finding her still unmoved by his suit Daphnis threatens her with violence. Her cries, however, attract the swains, who arrive with Hylas at their head. Daphnis, overcome with shame at the exposure of his villany, is glad to find a friend in the despised Dorinda, while Nerina rewards her faithful Hylas in accordance with her father's promise. Meanwhile at court Silvia and Thirsis have been surprised in their secret interview, and both doomed to die by the anger of the king. The necklace on Thirsis' neck, however, leads to the discovery of his ident.i.ty as the king's son, and all ends happily.[332]

In point of dramatic construction the first three acts leave little to be desired; as is so often the case, the weakness of the plot appears in the unravelling. The double solution of the two threads, neither of which is properly subordinated, and which are wholly independent, is a serious blot on the dramatic merit of the play. The courtly element, moreover, is but clumsily grafted on to the pastoral stock. Throughout the debts to predecessors, whether of language or incident, are fairly obvious. The verse in which the play is written is adequate and well sustained, and if its dependence on Daniel is evident, no less so is the advance in flexibility and expression which the language, as handled by the lesser poets, has made in the course of the twenty years or so that separate the _Shepherds' Holiday_ from _Hymen's Triumph_. Rutter's verse also displays a certain nervousness of its own which is wanting in the model, though it preserves the intermixture of blank verse with irregular rimes which Daniel affected. These peculiarities may be ill.u.s.trated in a pa.s.sage which opens with a reminiscence of Spenser:

All as the shepherd is, such be his flocks, So pine and languish they, as in despair He pines and languishes; their fleecy locks Let hang disorder'd, as their master's hair, Since she is gone that deck'd both him and them.

And now what beauty can there be to live, When she is lost that did all beauty give? (I. i.)

Again the opening situation recalls that of _Hymen's Triumph_, a resemblance rendered all the more striking by the retention of the actual names, Silvia and Thirsis. In like manner the name and character of Dorinda are taken from the _Pastor fido_. From the _Aminta_, of course, comes Nerina's description of how her lover stole a kiss, though little of the sensuous charm of the original survives; from the _Pastor fido_ her confession of love as soon as she finds herself alone. The opening lines of this speech are, indeed, a direct translation:

Alas! my Hylas, my beloved soul, Durst she whom thou hast call'd cruel Nerina But speak her thoughts, thou wouldst not think her so; To thee she is not cruel, but to herself.[333] (II. iii.)

But these borrowings are by no means unskilful, so far at least as the construction is concerned. The discovery by Cleander that Silvia is his own sister, and the instant effect of the discovery in destroying his love, are of course commonplaces of the minor pastoral drama of Italy, and also occur in some of the plays we have been examining in this chapter.

Verbal reminiscences of the _Aminta_ also are scattered through the play, for instance, the lines in which Nerina protests her hatred of all who seek to win her from her state of unfettered virginity, protestations particularly fatuous, seeing that she is in love with Hylas throughout.

Her father not unreasonably retorts: