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Pastoral Influence in the English Drama

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Homer Smith
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Extract

At first thought the word “pastoral” scarcely seems to require definition, yet, as a matter of fact, the word has been used in several different senses. Usually it has been employed to designate a distinct species of literature, but the more careful critics refer to it as a mode of literary expression. The latter view is undoubtedly more accurate, for the pastoral treatment may be applied to almost any form of literature,—lyric, drama or romance. Still it is convenient to speak of the pastoral as a species of literature, and this use of the term is not misleading if we understand it to refer to the literature which is written in the pastoral mode, and which is altogether free from, or only slightly affected by, other influences. The real difficulty is to state definitely the essential nature of the pastoral, its characteristics, and the motives which prompted men to produce it. Here again the critics disagree. Some seem to regard pastoral literature as a sincere expression of man's delight in rural simplicity and content; others as an artificial and insincere portrayal of imaginary rural life. Perhaps it is impossible to arrive at a satisfactory definition of the pastoral; certainly a narrow view of the subject based on modern prejudice is utterly inadequate.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , 1897 , pp. 355 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1897

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References

page 356 note 1 Cf. Fontenelle. Poésies Pastorales, avec un traité sur la Nature de l'Eclogue. Walsh. Preface to Dryden's translation of Virgil's Eclogues. The Guardian. Nos. 22, 23, 28, 30, 32.

page 357 note 1 Vergil, in his Bucolica, Ecloga, vii, speaks of Corydon and Thyrsis as “Arcades ambo.” Sannazaro and Sidney also laid the scene of their romances in Arcadia.

page 358 note 1 English Men of Letters Series: Spenser, pp. 40, 41.

page 358 note 2 In modern times the pastoral influence occasionally asserts itself, as is proved by the following sonnet written some years since by an English clergyman:

“When Daphnis comes adown the purple steep
From out the rolling mists that wrap the dawn,
Leaving aloft his crag-encradled sheep,
Leaving the snares that vex the dappled fawn,
He gives the signal for the flight of sleep,
And hurls a windy blast from hunter's horn
At rose-hung lattices, whence maidens peep
To glimpse the young glad herald of the morn.
Then haply one will rise and bid him take
A brimming draught of new-drawn milk a-foam;
But fleet his feet and fain; he will not break
His patient fast at any place but home,
Where his fond mother waits him with a cake
And lucent honey dripping from the comb.”

The Poems of Edward Cracroft Lefroy. N. Y., 1897.

page 359 note 1 Tennyson's Maud. Tennyson, however, is not consistent, but often prefers the imaginative to the scientific view, as in the following passage from The Princess:

“Till the sun
Grew broader toward his death, and fell, and all
The rosy heights came out above the lawns.”

page 360 note 1 Guardian, No. 22.

page 361 note 1 The Stage is more beholding to Love, then the Life of Man. For, as to the Stage, Love is ever the matter of Comedies, and now and then of Tragedies. But in Life, it doth much mischiefe: sometimes like a Syren; sometimes like a Fury.

Bacon's Essays, x, “Of Love.”

page 364 note 1 In this connection it is interesting to note different judgments in regard to the characters in Dickens's novels—how real they seem to some, how preposterous to others.

page 365 note 1 To give only a few examples:—the incident of curing a bee's sting with a kiss appears in the romances of Tatius and Durfée, and in the pastoral dramas of Tasso and Rutter; Fletcher borrows the trial of chastity from Tatius, who in turn copied Heliodorus; Guarini borrows from Longus the device of hunting with dogs a person disguised in a wolf's skin.

page 366 note 1 This section of the essay, being foreign to the main line of investigation, has been gleaned from the usual authorities.

page 367 note 1 F. Salfi, Littérature Italien, p. 114.

page 368 note 1 Ward, History of the English Drama, i, 581.

page 368 note 2 This translation was made by Abraham Fraunce, who tried to construct an English poem by combining a translation of Tasso's Aminta (as far as v, 2) with a translation of Thomas Watson's Amyntas. The first complete translation was made by Henry Reynolds in 1628. See Scott, Elizabethan Translations from the Italian. Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. xi, No. 4, pp. 404, 405, 438.

page 369 note 1 Nannucci, Literatura Italiana, p. 120.

page 371 note 1 Many references attest the admiration felt by English writers for Guarini's drama. As late as the time of Isaac Walton we find Guarini cited to prove that dignity is not necessarily absent from a playwright. See Walton's Life of Sir Henry Wotton, p. 84. London, 1864.

page 372 note 1 This seems on the whole the best basis of classification; for the pastoral was a foreign influence of peculiar nature, and almost all attempts to combine it with other influences violate artistic unity. Other elements, however, combine without incongruous effects, as the court and camp in All's Well That Ends Well.

page 373 note 1 The Arraignment of Paris, A Pastorall. Presented before the Queen's Maiestie by the Children of her Chappell. Imprinted at London …., 1584.

page 373 note 2 The Maydes Metamorphosis. As it hath been sundrie times acted by the children of Powles. London …., 1600.

page 375 note 1 For a discussion of the authorship and date, see Baker, Endimion Introduction.

page 376 note 1 Silvio, though called a ranger, has no kinship with English foresters, but is a true Arcadian. This is sufficiently clear from his speech in the first act:—

“Diana, with her bowe and arrows keene,
Did often use the chase in Forrests greene,
And so, alas, the good Athenian knight,
And swifte Acteon herein tooke delight,
And Atalanta, the Arcadian dame,
Conceived such wondrous pleasure in the game
That with her traine of Nymphs attending on,
She came to hunt the Bore of Calydon.”
Old English Plays. Ed. Bullen, i, p. 113.

page 377 note 1 The characters of Tyterus and Melebeus in Gallathea may possibly be termed pastoral. The pastoral scenes are in Love's Metamorphosis: I, 1, 2; III, 1; IV, 1.

page 377 note 2 “At our exercises, souldiers call for tragedies, their object is bloud; courtiers for comedies, their object is love; countrimen for pastorals, sheep-heards are their saints,”—prologue to Midas. This observation is curious in two respects. The date of Midas is 1588-9, and up to this time no English drama containing pastoral characters had appeared except Peele's Arraignment of Paris. Must we conclude that pastoral dramas existed then which have been lost? Secondly, countrymen are not fond of pastorals, either in the form of romance or drama, for pastorals are the delight of city-dwellers. Probably the truth of the matter is that Lyly thoughtlessly inserted this allusion to fill out the antithesis.

page 377 note 3 We have only a glimpse of this forest life in Munday's Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington, and the sequel, The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington.

page 378 note 1 In no other play of Shakespeare's does any considerable pastoral element enter. Part of two scenes of The Midsummer Night's Dream (I, 1, and II, 2) are unmistakably pastoral. In The Winter's Tale, however, the pastoral element borrowed from Greene's Pandosto is so completely subordinated that we can hardly say it exists at all. Who would ever speak of Perdita as an Arcadian? In all probability Shakespeare realized how little dramatic power existed in the pastoral theme, and was too wise to risk the experiment of writing a true pastoral drama.

page 378 note 2 Mr. Fleay identifies The Sad Shepherd with The May Lord, which must have been written before 1619, for Jonson mentioned it to Drummond when he visited him in that year. Whether this identification be substantiated or not, internal evidence seems to point to about this period for the date of composition. The Sad Shepherd was first printed in the folio of 1641.

page 378 note 3 “There is no evidence in As You Like It, which is to me at all conclusive that Shakespeare drew any the smallest inspiration from The Tale of Gamelyn.” H. H. Furness, Appendix to As You Like It, Variorum Ed.

Lodge, on the other hand, undoubtedly read the Tale of Gamelyn.

“I rede that we to wode goon md ar that we be found,
Better is us ther loos md than in town y-bounde.”
ll. 605-6.
“Our maister is i-crowned . of outlawes kyng.”
1. 660.
[Tidings came to the master outlaw]
“That he shoulde come horn . his pees was i-mad.”
1. 689.
“Tho was Gamelyne anon . without tarrying,
Maad maister outlawe . and crowned here kyng.”
1. 694.

See also Tale of Gamelyn: Introduction by W. W. Skeat.

page 381 note 1 By the most liberal allowance the pastoral scenes and episodes in As You Like It include only the following:—The conversation between Corin and Silvius, and the purchase of the sheep-farm by Rosalind and Celia, II, 4; Orlando's soliloquy and his sonnets, III, 2; Corin's speeches, III, 4; the dialogues between Silvius and Phoebe, III, 5; between Orlando and Rosalind, IV, 1; between Silvius and Rosalind, and between Oliver and Celia, IV, 3; the whole of V, 2; and finally the conversation of Rosalind, Orlando and the Duke, and of the second brother and the Duke, V, 4.

page 382 note 1 “As You Like It is the most ideal of any of this author's plays. It is a pastoral drama in which the interest arises more out of the sentiments and characters than out of the actions or situations.”—Hazlitt.

“Less fascinating than Shakespeare's other comedies. The dramatist has presented us with a pastoral comedy, the characters of which, instead of belonging to an ideal past age, are true copies of what nature would produce under similar conditions.”—Halliwell.

“Phoebe is quite an Arcadian coquette; she is a piece of pastoral poetry; Audrey is only rustic. A very amusing effect is produced by the contrast between the frank and free bearing of the two princesses in disguise and the scornful airs of the real shepherdess.”—Mrs. Jameson.

“For vigorous natures, temporarily out of tune, the poet offers a wholesome medicine throughout this airy romantic life, which, however, is not to be regarded as the sentimental ideal of a normal condition which has been overwhelmed and lost in society. What the shepherds and shepherdesses in conventional pastoral poetry really are (without intending to appear so), namely, fugitives from a false social condition enjoying for a while a sort of masquerade and picnic freedom—in place of such, Shakespeare gives us honest and true his romantic dwellers in the forest of Ardenne. And this is the very reason why he catches the genuine tone of this careless, free, natural existence, which, in the case of the ideal shepherds of the Spanish, French or Italian writers, is cabined and confined by merely another form of artificial intercourse…. The genius of the British poet rises above the conventional forms of the South which it had borrowed, and many of the scenes of this comedy are transformed into a diverting parody of the sentimentalism of pastoral poetry.”—F. Kreyssig, Vorlesungen, etc., Vol. iii, p. 243, Berlin, 1862.

“Such a life as Rosalind led in the Forest …. is to the German mind well-nigh incomprehensible, and refuge is taken, by some of the most eminent Germans, in explanations of the ‘Pastoral Drama’ with its ‘sentimental unrealities‘and contrasts,’ etc.”—H. H. Furness, The Variorum Shakespeare, As You Like It, p. viii.

page 384 note 1 The nearest approach to such portrayal is Allan's Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, but even here realism enters so largely that the term pastoral drama is somewhat inappropriate.

page 385 note 1 Drummond of Hawthorndon voices this opinion in his Conversations, p. 224: “Jonson (in his play) bringeth in clowns making mirth and foolish sports, contrary to all pastorals.

page 385 note 2 In Daniel's pastoral play, Hymen's Triumph, “Ah” and “O” are used so frequently as to become a mannerism well deserving of censure. See ll. 167-171, 386, 401, 402, 410, 414, 639, 674, 718, 749, 1109, 1124, 1214, 1322, 1419, 1428, 1518-9, 1535, 1645, 1654, 1703, 1734.

page 386 note 1 Swinburne: A Study of Ben Jonson, p. 87-88.

Mr. Ward in his History of the English Drama takes a different view of this drama. Though he grants the absurdity of introducing the Lowland Scotch dialect in Sherwood Forest, and admits that passages here and there have too great classical colouring, yet he claims that Jonson on the whole has “with singular freshness caught the spirit of the greenwood.” Moreover, the Arcadian shepherds introduced, seem to him beings of a definite age and country, and the combination of these with Robin Hood seems “a lucky combination difficult to be repeated.” Ward, History of the English Drama, I, p. 586.

page 386 note 2 Argalus and Parthenia. As it hath been acted at the court before their Maiesties and at the Private-House in Drury Lane. By their Maiesties Servants. The Author, Henry Glapthorne, … 1639. Mr. Fleay thinks that the play was first acted in 1638. Chron. of the Eng. Drama., II, p. 245.

page 387 note 1 The Thracian Wonder…. By John Webster, … 1661…. Mr. Fleay considers this to be the same play as War Without Slows and Love Without Suit. By Thomas Heywood, 1598. The identification seems probable. See Chron. Eng. Drama, I, p. 287.

page 387 note 2 Love's Labyrinth or The Royal Shepherdesse. A Tragi-Comedie. By Tho. Forde, … 1660.

page 391 note 1 The following plays and poems have been classed by various writers as pastoral dramas:—The Faery Pastorall, or Forrest of Elves, by W. P., Esquier. This play exhibits no trace of pastoral influence. It is made up of fairy and forest elements, and the humor is supplied by a pedagogue and his blundering boys. Omphale, or The Inconstant Shepheardesse, by R. Braith waite, 1623. There is no play bearing this title. Braithwaite's production is a short pastoral poem. La Pastorelle de Florimène, acted before Prince Charles and the Prince Palantine, by the French maids of the Queen at Whitehall, 1635. A pastoral play undoubtedly, but hardly belonging to English Literature. Amphrisa, the forsaken Shepheardesse, by Th. Heywood, 1637. This is a dramatic poem or masque, and therefore does not come within the scope of our discussion. In The Cyprian Academy, a pastoral romance by Robert Baron (1647), occurs on p. 16 a short pastoral play in three acts, entitled, Gripus and Hegio, or The Passionate Lovers. This piece is more of the nature of a masque than a regular drama. Love in its Extasie, or The Large Prerogative, 1649. This play reflects throughout the court atmosphere. The Shepherds’ Holiday, by Sir William Denny, 1651. This is a pastoral eclogue, not a drama. Thyrsis, by John Oldmixon, 1697. This is a short play of one act, printed with four other dramatic pieces in a curious volume entitled, The Novelty, Every act a play, being a Short Pastoral, Comedy, Masque, Tragedy and Farce after the Italian manner.

page 393 note 1 See Daniel's sonnet prefixed to Dimock's translation of Il Pastor Fido, 1602.

page 394 note 1 The references throughout are to Daniel's Queen's Arcadia. Ed. Grosart, 1885.

page 397 note 1 See ii, 3 and 4.

page 397 note 2 On the analogy of the titles in Tottel's Miscellany one might call the first selection “The Forsaken Nymph recites her love, and rails at her Lover.”

page 398 note 1 See p. 363.

page 399 note 1 These types occur so frequently in the pastoral dramas that for uniformity and convenience I shall term the first the heart-free shepherdess, and the second the forward shepherdess.

page 400 note 1 Fleay, Chronicle of the English Drama, i, 94.

page 400 note 2 A few passages are slightly flavored with satire. See ii, 1, and ii, 2, ll. 649-656. The references are to Daniel's Hymen's Triumph. Ed. Grosart, 1885.

page 400 note 3 Cf. synopsis of prologue to Tasso's Aminta, on p. 368.

page 400 note 4 The foresters of II, 1, are true Arcadians, especially Montanus, who belongs to the type of the surly shepherd.

page 403 note 1 The passage, lines 1475-1641, is one of the most beautiful in the play, but is too long for quotation.

page 405 note 1 Pepys’Diary, 1663.

page 405 note 2 Chronicle of the Eng. Drama, i, 178.

page 405 note 3 See page 393.

page 408 note 1 Thenot may represent the general sentiment that desire ceases when it attains what it seeks. But this interpretation is probably too cynical for the general spirit of the play.

page 410 note 1 The title-page reads, “The Careless Shepherdess. A Tragi-Comedy. Acted before the King and Queen, and at Salisbury Court, with great applause. Written by T. G. Mr. of Arts. Pastorem Tittere pingues Pascere oportet oves, deductum ducere Carmen, London …. 1656.”

page 410 note 2 The exact date of composition is uncertain. While a fellow at Oxford (1615 to 1623) Goffe was writing plays of an entirely different sort—tragedies on Greek models. Still he may have written this play during that period. It is more probable, however, that he wrote it afterwards between the years 1623, when he left Oxford, and 1629, when his death occurred. The dates of production can be more accurately ascertained. The play was acted before the King and Queen at Whitehall. This must have been some time between the years 1625 and 1629, for Goffe himself wrote the prologue to their Majesties. The first performance at Salisbury Court Theatre was certainly in 1629, for in that year the theatre was opened, and a new prologue written by Goffe (whose death occurred July 27, 1629). Mr. Fleay (History of the English Stage) finds a record of another performance at Salisbury Court in 1632. The printed copy (1656) contains an argument for the play, which was probably written by the editor, while the Praeludium and the two Prologues were undoubtedly written by Goffe. This seems to the writer the correct interpretation of the evidence. Mr. Fleay (Chronicle of the Eng. Drama, i, 247) has confused the performance at Whitehall with that at Salisbury Court; he is also in error as to the date of Goffe's death, which was certainly in 1629, as is attested by the registry of burials at East Clandon, Surrey.

page 412 note 1 See page 393.

page 418 note 1 E. g., the duel, IV, 7, and the scene between the satyr and Graculus, IV, 5.

page 419 note 1 The title-page reads: Amyntas, or The Impossible Dowry. A pastoral acted before the King and Queen at Whitehall. Written by Thomas Randolph. “Pastorem, Tityre, pingues Poscere oportet oves, diductum dicere Carmen.” Oxford …. 1638.

page 420 note 1 IV, 8.

page 420 note 2 IV, 9.

page 423 note 1 The Shepherds Holy-day. A pastorall tragi-Comoedie. Acted before their Majesties at Whitehall by the Queen's Servants. With an elegy on the death of the most Noble Lady, the Lady Venetia Digby. London …. 1635.

page 423 note 2 See Fleay, Chronicle of the Eng. Drama, ii, 173.

page 424 note 1 The “court” element in Rutter's play is so completely overshadowed by the pastoral that the drama is classed with the strictly pastoral plays rather than with the plays combining court and pastoral elements, such as Love's Labyrinth.

page 427 note 1 Note Rutter's elegy on the same lady published with the play.

page 428 note 1 Rhodon and Iris. A pastorall, as it was presented at the Florists Feast in Norwich, May 3, 1631. Urbis Et Orbis gloria Flora. London, 1631. Then follows the dedication signed Ra. Knevet.

page 434 note 1 III, 1, and V, 3.

page 435 note 1 The reader does not learn of this plot until II, 1.

page 438 note 1 The title-page reads:—The Shepherds Paradise. A Comedy. Privately acted before the Late King Charles by the Queens Majesty and Ladies of Honour. Written by W. Mountague, Esq., London …. 1659. A few copies bear the date 1629, evidently a printer's error for 1659. Note the words, “the Late King Charles” in title, and the editor's letter, “These papers have long slept, and are now rais'd to put on immortality.” This statement could not have been made in the year 1629.

page 438 note 2 The earliest reference to this play is found in a letter from Mr. Pory to Sir Thomas Puckering, dated 20th Sept., 1632: “That which the Queen's Majesty, some of her ladies, and all her maids of honour, are now practising upon, is a pastoral penned by Mr. Walter Montague, wherein her Majesty is pleased to act a part, as well for her recreation as for the exercise of her English.” The exact date of first presentation is given in another letter by Mr. Pory, dated 3 Jan., 1633: “On Wednesday next (i. e., Jan. 8) the Queen's pastoral is to be acted in the lower court of Denmark House.” (Both letters appear in Court and Times of Charles I., Vol. II, London, 1848.) During these months of preparation and rehearsal (Sept., 1632-Jan., 1633) William Prynne was at work writing his famous Histrio-Mastix (printed 1633), and consequently his words in regard to the acting of women gave serious offense to the Queen and her Ladies of Honour. The obnoxious words were, “St. Paul prohibits women to speak publicly in the church, and dares any Christian woman be so more than whorishly impudent, as to act, to speak publicly on a stage, perchance in man's apparel and cut hair.” It is not to be wondered at that Prynne lost his ears.

page 438 note 3 The Shepherds’ Paradise contains about 6,300 lines. Hamlet, Shakespeare's longest play, has only 3,933 lines. Since Montague wrote in prose, it is a fair estimate to say that The Shepherds’ Paradise contains twice as many words as Hamlet.

page 439 note 1 See page 12 in Ed. 1659.

page 441 note 1 See IV, 1.

page 442 note 1 II, 3.

page 442 note 2 II, 5.

page 442 note 3 See V, 2.

page 443 note 1 Love's Riddle. A Pastorall Comoedie. Written at the time of his being Kings Scoller in Westminster Schoole, by A. Cowley. London …. 1638. Cowley left Westminster School in 1636. The play was written probably in 1635.

page 443 note 2 Cornhill Magazine for Dec., 1876.

page 443 note 3 A few passages show the influence of Theocritus and Virgil, e. g., the description of the beechen cup, II, 1; cf. Theocritus, Idyl, I; Virgil, Ecl., III.

page 444 note 1 Cf. The Jealous Lovers, V, 2, with Love's Riddle, III, 1.

page 445 note 1 II, 1 (ll. 1-95).

page 445 note 2 IV, 1 (ll. 188-368).

page 448 note 1 Astraea, or True Loves Myrrour. A Pastoral composed by Leonard Willan, Gent …. London, 1651. There is also an edition of 1650 which I have not been able to examine.

page 452 note 1 The Enchanted Lovers. A Pastoral. By Sir William Lower, Knight…. Hage, 1658. Part of this edition was bound up in London, with a new title-page, bearing the date 1661.

page 458 note 1 Other examples occur in III, 1, and IV, 5.