Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama Part 33

Summoned by one clad in sheep-skins, the Queen was to be led to where the shepherds of Cotswold were engaged in choosing a king and queen of the feast by the simple divination of a bean and a pea concealed in a cake.

After a while spying her Majesty, the whole company should have joined in a welcome. The rest of the show is in no wise pastoral. The very marked Euphuism of the prose portions, combined with some lyrical merit, makes the composition worth notice, and has led to its ascription to the pen of Lyly himself. It was, of course, composed and presented for her Majesty's delectation at a time when Lyly's plays were the delight of the court; but however grateful we may feel to Mr. Bond for having made this and other similar pieces accessible in his edition of the poet, we need not necessarily accept his view of the authors.h.i.+p.[340]

To the end of the sixteenth century belong undoubtedly many of the pieces printed for the first time in 1637 in Thomas Heywood's volume of _Dialogues and Dramas_.[341] The only one of these that can really be styled pastoral is a slight composition ent.i.tled _Amphrissa, or the Forsaken Shepherdess_. Two shepherdesses, Pelopaea and Alope, meet and fall to discoursing of love and inconstancy, and cite incidentally the unhappy case of Amphrissa, who at that moment appears in person and joins in the conversation. The nymphs undertake her cure, and give her much wise counsel while they crown her with willow. Then there appears upon the scene the huntress queen of Arcadia herself, attended by her nymphs, virgin Diana, before whom the country maidens bow in awe. She graciously raises them, and the slight piece ends with dance and song.

In this drama or dialogue or masque, or whatever it may be most appropriately called, we see all plot disappear, and the interest concentrate itself in the dialogue, which, for all that it is written in blank verse of some rhythmical merit, reveals a strong inclination towards Euphuism. Thus we read of men how

like as the Chamelions change themselves Into all perfect colours saving white; So they can to all humors frame their speech, Save only to prove honest;

or else how

light minds are catcht with little things, And Phancie smels to Fennell.

Nor are other and more marked traces of Lyly's influence wanting: witness the following pa.s.sage, which is a mere metrical paraphrase of a speech in the _Gallathea_ already quoted (p. 227):

You have an heate, on which a coldnesse waits, A paine that is endur'd with pleasantnesse, And makes those sweets you eat have bitter taste: It puts eies in your thoughts, eares in your heart: 'Twas by desire first bred, by delight nurst, And hath of late been wean'd by jelousie.

Certain speeches of a sententious nature, on the other hand, remind us rather of Daniel and the sonneteers:

To wish the best, to thinke upon the worst, And all contingents brooke with patience, Is a most soveraigne medicine.

All these characteristics point to an early date, and Mr. Fleay, who regards the piece as forming part of the _Five Plays in One_, acted at the Rose in April, 1597, may very likely be right. Of the other pieces printed in the same volume, a few only show any trace of pastoral blending with the general mythological colouring. Perhaps the most that can be said is that the nymphs are already familiar to us from the pastoral tradition, and must have been scarcely less so to a contemporary audience, fresh from the work of Peele and Lyly. In _Jupiter and Io_, which perhaps made part of the same performance as _Amphrissa_, Mercury disguises himself as a shepherd, in order to cut off the head of Argus. This he did to such good purpose that record of the trunkless member remains unto this day in the inventories of the Lord Admiral's company. Another of these pieces, the character of which can be easily imagined from its t.i.tle, _Apollo and Daphne_, ends with a song, which may owe something to the traditions of the mythological pastoral:

Howsoe're the Minutes go, Run the heures or swift or slow: Seem the Months or short or long, Pa.s.se the seasons right or wrong: All we sing that Phoebus follow, _Semel in anno ridet Apollo_.

Early fall the Spring or not, Prove the Summer cold or hot: Autumne be it faire or foule, Let the Winter smile or skowle: Still we sing, that Phoebus follow, _Semel in anno ridet Apollo_.

Pa.s.sing on to the seventeenth century, the first piece that demands attention is the St. John's Twelfth Night entertainment, _Narcissus_, performed at Oxford in 1602. If its pastoral quality is somewhat evanescent, there is another point of view from which the piece has a good deal of interest. It is, namely, a burlesque production of the nature of the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, and flavoured with something of the comic rusticity of Greene's Carmela eclogue in _Menaphon_. It is needless here to summarize the plot of the 'merriment' which the ingenious author, no doubt a student of St. John's, evolved from Ovid's account in the third book of the _Metamorphoses_, and which runs to the respectable length of some eight hundred lines.[342] I may be allowed, however, to note that echo verses, suggested by Ovid, are introduced and handled with more than usual ingenuity; and further to quote two characteristic pa.s.sages. In one of these the nymphs Florida and Clois court the affections of the loveless hero.

_Florida._ s.h.i.+ne thou on mee, sweet plannet, bee soe good As with thy fiery beames to warme my bloud ...

_Narcissus._ To speak the truth, faire maid, if you will have us, O Oedipus I am not, I am Davus.

_Clois._ Good Master Davis, bee not so discourteous As not to heare a maidens plaint for vertuous.

_Nar._ Speake on a G.o.ds name, so love bee not the theame.

_Flo._ O, whiter then a dish of clowted creame, Speake not of love? How can I overskippe To speake of love to such a cherrye lippe?

_Nar._ It would beseeme a maidens slender vast.i.tye Never to speake of any thinge but chast.i.tye.

_Flo._ As true as Helen was to Menela So true to thee will be thy Florida.

_Clo._ As was to trusty Pyramus truest Thisbee So true to you will ever thy sweete Clois bee.

_Flo._ O doe not stay a moment nor a minute, Love is a puddle, I am ore shooes in it.

_Clo._ Doe not delay us halfe a minutes mountenance That ar in love, in love with thy sweet countenance.

_Nar._ Then take my dole although I deale my alms ill, Narcissus cannot love with any damzell; Although, for most part, men to love encline all, I will not, I, this is your answere finall.

We are here, it is true, as far as ever from the delicate rusticity of Lorenzo de' Medici, and not particularly near to the humour of the Athenian rustics, but for burlesque it is pa.s.sably amusing. The _Midsummer Night's Dream_ had appeared possibly a decade earlier, and the audience in the college hall at Oxford can hardly but have been reminded of Wall and Moons.h.i.+ne as they listened to the speech by one who enters carrying 'a buckett and boughes and gra.s.se.'

A well there was withouten mudd, Of silver hue, with waters cleare, Whome neither sheep that chawe the cudd, Shepheards nor goates came ever neare; Whome, truth to say, nor beast nor bird, Nor windfalls yet from trees had stirrde.

[_He strawes the gra.s.se about the buckett._ And round about it there was gra.s.se, As learned lines of poets showe, Which next by water nourisht was; [_Sprinkle water._ Neere to it too a wood did growe, _[Sets down the bowes._ To keep the place, as well I wott, With too much sunne from being hott.

And thus least you should have mistooke it, The truth of all I to you tell: Suppose you the well had a buckett, And so the buckett stands for the well; And 'tis, least you should counte mee for a sot O, A very pretty figure cald _pars pro toto_.

The first strict masque of a pastoral character that we meet with is that of Juno and Iris, with the dance of nymphs and the 'sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary,' introduced by Shakespeare into the _Tempest_; but this must not be taken as altogether typical of the independent productions of the time. The masques introduced into plays were necessarily, for the most part, of a slighter and less elaborate character than those performed at court, or for the entertainment of persons of rank. This is more particularly the case with the serions portions of the masques, since the actors, who were engaged for the performance of the antimasques in court revels, frequently transferred their parts bodily on to the public boards.

Thus, in the entertainment in the _Winters Tale_, in which shepherds also appear, the main feature was a dance of satyrs, which was no doubt borrowed from Jonson's _Masque of Oberon_.[343] The _Tempest_ masque, however, is of the simpler type, without antimasque. At Juno's command Iris summons Ceres, and the G.o.ddesses together bestow their blessing on the young lovers. Then at Iris' call come the naiads and the reapers for the dance. The date of the play may be taken as late in 1610, or early the next year, a time at which the popularity of the masque was reaching its height.

Although the mythological element is everywhere prominent, the pastoral is comparatively of rare occurrence in the regular masque literature of the seventeenth century. This, considering the adaptability and natural suitability of the form, is rather surprising. Probably the masque as it evolved itself at the court of James needed a subject possessing a traditional story, or at least fixed and known conditions of a kind which the pastoral was unable to supply. Be this as it may, on one occasion only did Jonson make extended use of the kind, namely, in the masque which in the folio of 1640 appears with the heading 'Pans Anniversarie; or, The Shepherds Holy-day. The Scene Arcadia. As it was presented at Court before King James. 1625. The Inventors, Inigo Jones, Ben. Johnson[344].' Even here, however, we learn little concerning the condition of pastoralism in general, from the highly specialized form employed to a specific purpose.

As in all the regular masques of the Jonsonian type the characters and situations exist solely for the opportunities they afford for dance and song. Shepherds and nymphs const.i.tute the personae of the masque proper, while those of the antimasque are supplied by a band of Bocotian clowns, who come to challenge the Arcadians to the dance. Some of the songs are very graceful, suggesting at times reminiscences of Spenser, at others parallels to Ben's own _Sad Shepherd_, but the piece does not possess either sufficient importance or interest to justify our lingering over it.

Outside this piece the nearest approach to pastoral characters to be found in Jonson's masques are, perhaps, the satyr and Queen Mab in the fairy entertainment at Althorp in 1603, Silenus and the satyrs in _Oberon_ in 1611, and Zephyrus, Spring, and the Fountains and Rivers in _Chloridia_ in 1631.

During James I's reign pastoral shows of a sort no doubt became frequent.

While in some cases which remain to be noticed they reached the elaboration of small plays, in others they probably remained simple affairs enough. We get an interesting glimpse of the conditions of production in a note of John Aubrey's.[345] 'In tempore Jacobi,' he writes, 'one Mr. George Ferraby was parson of Bishops Cannings in Wilts: an excellent musitian, and no ill poet. When queen Anne came to Bathe, her way lay to traverse the famous Wensd.y.k.e, which runnes through his parish.

He made severall of his neighbours, good musitians, to play with him in consort, and to sing. Against her majestie's comeing, he made a pleasant pastorall, and gave her an entertaynment with his fellow songsters in shepherds' weeds and bagpipes, he himself like an old bard. After that wind musique was over, they sang their pastorall eglogues.' This was in 1613; Ferraby or Ferebe later became chaplain to the king.

The more elaborate pieces were usually written for performance at schools or colleges. Such a piece is Tatham's _Love Crowns the End_, composed for the scholars of Bingham in Nottinghams.h.i.+re in 1633, and printed in his _Fancy's Theatre_ in 1640. Small literary interest attaches to the play, which is equally slight and ill constructed, but is perhaps not unrepresentative of its cla.s.s. In spite of its very modest dimensions it possesses a full romantic-pastoral plot, with the resuit that it is at times almost unintelligible, owing to the want of s.p.a.ce in which to develop in an adequate and dramatic manner the motives and situations. The bewildering rapidity with which character succeeds character upon the stage must have made the representation almost impossible to follow, while the reading of the piece is not a little complicated by the confusion in which the stage directions remain in the only modern edition.[346] Some notion of the complexity of the plot may be gathered from the following account. c.l.i.ton, having in a fit of jealousy sought to kill his love Florida, is found wandering in the woods by Alexis, who receives his confession and shows him the way to repentance. Florida, moreover, has been found and healed by the wise shepherdess Claudia, and is living in retirement. Meanwhile Cloe (a name which it appears from the rimes that the author p.r.o.nounced Cloi) is saved by Lysander from the pursuit of a l.u.s.tful Shepherd, in consequence of which she transfers to him the affection she previously bore to her lover Daphnes. Next Leon and his daughter Gloriana appear, together with the swain Francisco, to whom against her will the maiden is apparently betrothed. They all go off to view the games in which Lysander, whose heart is also fixed on Gloriana, proves victor. His refusal to entertain the affection of Cloe drives her to a state of distraction, in which the nymphs of the woods take pity on her and bring her to Claudia to be cured. Gloriana in the meantime returns the affections of Lysander, but the meeting of the lovers is interrupted by the jealous Francisco and a gang who wound Lysander and carry off Gloriana. She escapes from her captors, but only after she has lost her reason, and wanders about until she meets with c.l.i.ton, who has turned hermit and who now undertakes her cure. Throughout the play we find comic interludes by Scrub, a page or attendant in search of his master, who also has some farcical business with the l.u.s.tful Shepherd, who after being disappointed of Cloe disguises himself as a satyr, apparently deeming that role suited to his taste. In the end all the characters are brought together. Francisco, found contrite, is forgiven by Lysander and Gloriana; c.l.i.ton and Florida love once more; so do Daphnes and Cloe, appropriately enough. Scrub announces the death of the usurping duke, 'who banished good old Leon;' Francisco and Lysander reveal themselves as princes who left the court to win his daughter's love, when he was driven from his land, and so--love crowns the end.

Through this medley it is not hard to see the various debts the author has incurred towards his predecessors. The verse, in rimed couplets, whether deca- or octo-syllabic, ultimately depends on Fletcher; of the comic prose scenes I have already spoken in dealing with Goffe's _Careless Shepherdess_, a play the influence of which may perhaps be specifically traced in the satyr-disguise, the gang who carry off Gloriana, her unexplained escape, and the songs of the 'Destinies' and a 'Heavenly Messenger,' who in their inconsequence recall the 'Bonus Genius' of Goffe's play. Scrub may owe his origin to the same source, though he is rather more like the page in the _Maid's Metamorphosis_. The usurping duke recalls _As You Like It_; the princes seeking their love-fortunes among the shepherd folk suggest the _Arcadia_; while the influence of the _Faithful Shepherdess_ is not only traceable in the character of the l.u.s.tful Shepherd, but also in certain specific parallels, as where the wounded Lysander, seeing his love carried off, exclaims:

Stay, stay! let me but breathe my last Upon her lips, and I'll forgive what's past; (p. 24)

a reminiscence of the lines spoken by Alexis in a similar situation:

Oh, yet forbear To take her from me! give me leave to die By her! (_Faithful Shepherdess_, III. i. 165[347].)

The general level of the verse is not high, but we now and again light on some pleasing lines such as the following:

My dearest love, fair as the eastern morn As it breaks o'er the plains when summer's born, Hanging bright liquid pearls on every tree, New life and hope imparting, as to me Thy presence brings delight, so fresh and rare As May's first breath, dispensing such sweet air The Phoenix does expire in; sit, while I play The cunning thief, and steal thy heart away, And thou shalt stand as judge to censure me. (p. 18.)

So again there is some grace in a song which catches perhaps a distant echo of Peele's gem:

_Gloriana._ Sit, while I do gather flowers And depopulate the bowers.

Here's a kiss will come to thee!

_Lysander._ Give me one, I'll give thee three!

_Both._ Thus in harmless sport we may Pa.s.s the idle hours away.

_Gloriana._ Hark! hark, how fine The birds do chime!

And pretty Philomel Her moan doth tell. (p. 22.)

Another of these miniature pastorals is preserved in a British Museum ma.n.u.script, where it bears the t.i.tle of _The Converted Robber_.[348] No author's name appears, but a plausible conjecture may be advanced. The scene of the piece, namely, is Stonehenge, and it is evident that the occasion on which it was first performed had some connexion with Salisbury, for there is obviously a topical allusion in the final words:

Lett us that do noe envy beare um Wish all felicity to Sarum.

Now in 1636,[349] according to Anthony a Wood, there was acted at St.

John's College, Oxford, a play by John Speed, ent.i.tled _Stonehenge_, the occasion being the return of Dr. Richard Baylie after his installation as Dean of Salisbury. We can hardly be far wrong in identifying the two pieces. The only difficulty is that in the ma.n.u.script the play is dated 1637. This, however, may either be a mere slip of the scribe, or may possibly imply that the piece was produced in 1636-7, the scribe adopting the popular and modern, whereas Wood always adhered to the old or legal reckoning.