Part 35 (1/2)

But there are pa.s.sages in which these memorable lines appear as so much rich embroidery superimposed upon the baser fabric of the verse, not woven of the woof. They are in their nature more easily detached, and often form the best known and most often quoted pa.s.sages of the work. Take the first speech of the Lady, concerning which something has already been said. Here we find the lines:

They left me then, when the gray-hooded Eev'n Like a sad Votarist in Palmer's weed Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus wain;

or again:

A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into my memory Of calling shapes, and beckning shadows dire, And airy tongues, that syllable mens names On Sands, and Sh.o.a.rs, and desert Wildernesses;

or yet again:

Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

We have the song:

Sweet Echo, sweetest Nymph that liv'st unseen Within thy airy sh.e.l.l By slow Meander's margent green, And in the violet imbroider'd vale Where the love-lorn Nightingale Nightly to thee her sad Song mourneth well.

Such lines would justly render famous any pa.s.sage in any poem in which they occurred. Nevertheless, remove them, which can be done without material injury to the sequence of the thought, and see whether in its warp and web the speech can for a moment stand comparison with that of Comus, to which it stands in direct and dramatic contraposition.

But this drawback is only incidental; through nine-tenths of the piece, perhaps, there is little or no moral preoccupation to disturb us. And here, though no doubt the poetic beauty reaches a climax in the song to Sabrina--a song for pure music certainly unsurpa.s.sed and probably unequalled by anything else that Milton ever wrote--there are others, such as 'By the rushy-fringed bank,' as well as less distinctively lyrical pa.s.sages, which come within measurable distance even of its perfection.

And yet, with certain noticeable exceptions, there are few pa.s.sages in which comparison with Milton's later works will not reveal technical immaturity. This is no less true of the decasyllabic verse, when compared with the full sonority of _Lycidas_, than of the shorter measures. Take, for example, the invocation of Sabrina which follows the song previously quoted--the speech beginning:

Listen and appear to us In name of great Ocea.n.u.s.

In spite of its very great beauty there is observable at the same time a certain monotony of cadence, and an occasional want of success in the attempts to relieve it, which place the pa.s.sage distinctly below Milton's best. And yet it seems almost ungenerous to place Milton even below himself, particularly when in the very speech we are criticizing we are brought face to face with two such flawless lines as those on 'fair Ligea's golden comb',

Wherwith she sits on diamond rocks Sleeking her soft alluring locks--

lines which antic.i.p.ate and rival the perfection of rhythmic modulation in _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_[358].

III

There remains to inquire what influence of pastoral tradition is traceable in the wider field of the romantic drama, whether in individual scenes and characters, or more vaguely in general tone and sentiment; and, finally, to consider for a moment the critical expression given by writers of various dates to the sentimental philosophy of life which went under the name of pastoralism in fas.h.i.+onable circles.

The number of plays in which definite pastoral elements can be traced is surprisingly small, even when every allowance has been made for the fact that we have already included in our examination several pieces which come but doubtfully within the fold. The spirit of the romantic drama, instinct with st.u.r.dy life, had little in common with the artificial and unreal sentiment of a tradition which had almost ceased to pretend to a basis in the emotions of natural humanity. The result was, as might be expected, that when the drama introduced characters of a nominally pastoral type, they were either direct transcripts from actual life, deliberately ignoring conventional tradition, or else specifie borrowings from that tradition, introduced with full consciousness of its fas.h.i.+onable unreality, and using that unreality for a definite dramatic purpose. Thus, although the basis of pastoralism is found in non-traditional garb, and though pastoralism itself is found as the subject of dramatic treatment, yet, so far as the introduction of individual scenes and characters is concerned, it is seldom possible to say that pastoral has influenced the romantic drama in any sensible degree.

A certain number of plays, presumably of a more or less pastoral nature, have perished. Thus no trace remains of the _Lusus Pastorales_ licensed to Richard Jones in 1565, the nature of which can be only vaguely conjectured. The early date of the entry renders it important, and it is much to be regretted that the work should have perished, since it might have thrown very interesting light upon the condition of pastoralism in England previous to the appearance of the _Shepherd's Calender_. Most probably, however, the piece, whatever it may have been, was composed in Latin. We also have to lament the non-survival of a _Phillida and Corin_, which, we learn from the Revels' accounts, was acted by the Queen's men before the court, at Greenwich, on St. Stephen's day, 1584. This again would be an interesting piece to possess, since the t.i.tle suggests a purely pastoral composition contemporary with Peele's mythological play.

On February 28, 1592, Lord Strange's men performed a piece at the Rose, the t.i.tle of which is given by Henslowe as 'clorys & orgasto,' presumably _Chloris and Ergasto_. It was an old play, probably dating from some years earlier. Whether 'a pastorall plesant Commedie of Robin Hood and little John,' entered to Edward White in the Stationers' Register, on May 14, 1594, could have justified its t.i.tle may be questioned, but it is curious as suggesting an antic.i.p.ation of Jonson's experiment. Again, on July 17, 1599, George Chapman received of Philip Henslowe forty s.h.i.+llings, in earnest of a 'Pastorall ending in a Tragydye,' which, however, was apparently never finished. Possibly our loss is not great, for Chapman's talents hardly lay in this line; but a tragical ending to a play of the pure pastoral type would have been something of a novelty, and the early date would also have lent it some interest. Yet another play known to us solely from Henslowe's accounts is the _Arcadian Virgin_, on which Chettle and Haughton were at work for the Admiral's men in December, 1599, and for which they received sums amounting in all to fifteen s.h.i.+llings. The t.i.tle suggests that the play may have been founded on the story of Atalanta, but it was probably not completed. Ben Jonson's _May Lord_, which we know only through the notes left by Drummond of his conversations, was almost certainly not dramatic, though critics have always accepted it as such; but the same authority records that Jonson at the time of his visit to Hawthornden was contemplating a fisher-play, the scene to be laid on the sh.o.r.es of Loch Lomond. There is no evidence that the scheme ever reached a more mature stage. Finally, I may mention a play ent.i.tled _Alba_, a Latin pastoral, which incurred the royal displeasure when performed before James and his consort in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1605. The historian of the visit, quoted by Nichols, says that 'It was a pastoral, much like one which I have seen in King's College, Cambridge, but acted far worse.' The allusion is presumably to the Latin translation of the _Pastor fido_. The cause of offence was the appearance of 'five or six men almost naked,' who no doubt represented satyrs.

To what extent these plays were of a pastoral character must, of course, be matter of conjecture. They may have been pastoral plays of a more or less regular type, they may have been mythological dramas, or they may have been distinguished from the ordinary run of romantic compositions by a few incidental traits of pastoralism only. Not a few pieces of the latter description have been preserved, pieces in which definite traces of pastoral are to be found, but which cannot as a whole be included in the kind.

We have already had occasion to note the very slight pastoral influence which exists in the short masques or dialogues of Thomas Heywood, in spite of the opportunity afforded by their mythological character. The same may be noticed in the plays in which he drew his subject from cla.s.sical legend. _Love's Mistress_ is the appropriate and attractive t.i.tle of a dramatization of the last-born fancy of the mythopoeic spirit of Greece, Apuleius' tale of Cupid and Psyche. The early editions add to the t.i.tle the further designation of 'The Queen's Masque.' The work is indeed a composite piece, a masque grown into a play through the accretion of foreign matter, and was probably in its original state a far simpler composition than it now appears. The writing is in a dainty vein, and had the piece been completed in a manner consonant with the simple and idyllic grace of the earlier scenes, it would have been no such unequal companion to Peele's _Arraignment of Paris_. What the play contains of pastoral belongs to one of the accretions. It is a rustic element in the interludes, satiric and farcical, supplied by a country clown, some shepherds, and 'a shee Swaine,' Amarillis. In his _Ages_ the pastoral element shrinks to an occasional dance and song. Thus in the _Golden Age_ the satyrs and nymphs sing a song in honour of Diana, which introduces the disguised Jupiter in his courts.h.i.+p of Calisto. In the _Silver Age_, again, the rape of Proserpine by Pluto is preluded by a song of 'a company of Swaines, and country Wenches' in honour of Ceres.

An unkind and quite worthless tradition, based on a ma.n.u.script note in an old copy, has connected Peele's name with the lengthy and tedious drama of _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_. It was admitted into the canon of Peele's works by Dyce, and though Mr. Bullen differed from his predecessor as to the justness of the ascription, he retained it in his edition. We find in it a coa.r.s.e, dialect-speaking rustic, named Corin, who at one point succours Clyomon, and with whom Neronis, daughter of the King and Queen of the Strange Marshes, seeks service in the disguise of a boy. Apart from his name and the profession of shepherd he is a mere countryman, with nothing to connect him with pastoral tradition, though the princess'

action finds, of course, abundant parallels therein. The _Old Wives'

Tale_, printed as 'by G. P.,' and of which there is no reason to question Peele's authors.h.i.+p, connects itself with pastoral chiefly through the already mentioned parallel which it affords to _Comus_. It also antic.i.p.ates, in a song of harvesters, the introduction of the 'sunburnt sicklemen' of the _Tempest_ masque.

At a later date we find s.h.i.+rley in his _Love Tricks_ introducing two sisters who leave their home and, taking the disguise of shepherd and shepherdess, dwell among the country folk in the fields and pastures, whither they are followed by their lovers. There are pa.s.sages which reveal a genuine pastoral tone, such as s.h.i.+rley could readily adopt when it suited his purpose, and it is not only in the measure that the tradition reveals itself in such lines as:

A shepherd is a king whose throne Is a mossy mountain, on Whose top we sit, our crook in hand, Like a sceptre of command, Our subjects, sheep grazing below, Wanton, frisking to and fro. (IV. ii.)