Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama Part 11

Whilst thee the sh.o.r.es, and sounding Seas Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurld, Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world,

or on the Cornish coast,

Where the great vision of the guarded Mount Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold.

But enough!

Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more, For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar, So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled Ore, Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.

On this note the elegy ends, and there follow eight lines in which the poet glances at his own pastoral self that has been singing, and realizes that the world will go on even though Lycidas be no more, and that there are other calls in life than that of piping on an oaten reed. These lines correspond to the plain stanzaic frames in which Spenser set his lyrics in the _Shepherd's Calender_:

Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th' Okes and rills, While the still morn went out with Sandals gray, He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills, With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay: And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills, And now was dropt into the Western bay; At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew: To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.

The poem, in common with the whole cla.s.s of allegorical pastorals, is undoubtedly open to the charge of artificiality, since, in truth, the pastoral garb can never ill.u.s.trate, but only distort and obscure subjects drawn from other orders of civilization. Yet none but a great master could, to produce a desired effect, have utilized every a.s.sociation which tradition afforded with the consummate skill observable in Milton's poem.

He has been blamed for the introduction of St. Peter, on the ground of incongruity; but he has tradition on his side. St. Peter, as we have already seen, figures, under the name of Pamphilus, in the eclogues of Petrarch, and his introduction by Milton is in nicest keeping with the spirit of the kind. The whole poem, and indeed a great deal more, must stand or fall with the Pilot of the Galilean Lake, for to censure his introduction here is to condemn the whole pastoral tradition of three centuries, a judgement which may or may not be just, but which is not a criticism on Milton's poem. So again with the flowers that are to be strewn on the laureate hea.r.s.e. Three kinds of berries and eleven kinds of flowers are mentioned, and it has been pointed out with painful accuracy that nine of the latter would have been over, and none of the former ripe on August 11, when King was drowned; while all the flowers, with the exception of the amaranth, if it were of the true breed, would have been dead and rotten in November, when the poem was presumably written. It would be foolish to quarrel with Milton on this point, since where all is imaginary such licence is as natural as the strictest botany; yet it must not be forgotten that it is just this disseverance from actuality that has made the eclogue the type of all that is frigid and artificial in literature. The dissatisfaction felt by many with _Lycidas_ was voiced by Dr. Johnson, when he wrote: 'It is not to be considered the effusion of real pa.s.sion, for pa.s.sion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions.... Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief[134].' This is so absolutely true, with regard to the present poem at all events, that it would appear hardly worth saying were it not that there have always been found persons to maintain the contrary. There is no reason whatever to suppose that Milton felt any keen personal grief at the death of Edward King. There is nothing spontaneous, nothing, one might almost say, genuine in the lament. This is indeed strictly irrelevant to the question of its artistic merit, but it must nevertheless be admitted that there is thus much justice in the censure, that the poem purports to be the expression of an intimate sorrow, of the reality of which the reader is never wholly convinced. In so far as it lacks this 'soul-compelling power,' it may be said, not unfairly, to fail of its own artistic purpose.

One further question, however, inevitably presents itself when we have to consider such a work as _Lycidas_, a work, that is, in which art has attained the highest perfection in one particular kind. Although the objections urged against the individual poem may be shown to miss their mark as criticisms on that poem, may they not have force as criticisms on the cla.s.s? The allegorical pastoral, though in one sense, as I have said, created by Vergil, was yet, in another, a plant of slow growth, and represents a tradition gradually evolved to meet the needs of a long line of poets. Petrarch, Mantuan, Marot, Spenser were more than mere imitators of Vergil or of one another; they wrote in a particular form because it answered to particular requirements, and they fas.h.i.+oned it in the using.

Nevertheless it may be urged with undoubted force, that the requirements were not primarily of an artistic nature, being ever governed by some alien purpose, and that consequently the form which evolved itself in answer to those requirements and to fulfil that purpose, was not by nature calculated to yield the highest artistic results. And thus, though any attempt to question the perfection of the art which Milton brought to the composition of his elegy must needs be foredoomed to failure, the question of the propriety of the form as an artistic medium remains open; and in so far as critical opinion tends to give an unfavourable answer, in so far does the form of pastoral inst.i.tuted by Vergil and handed down without break from the fourteenth century to Milton's own time stand condemned in its most perfect flower.

Few things could be less like _Lycidas_ than the work which next claims our attention. Unique of its kind, and, in spite of its shortcomings, possessed of no small poetic interest, William Browne's _Britannia's Pastorals_ may be regarded at pleasure either as a pastoral epic or as a versified romance. It resembles the prose romances in being by nature discursive, episodic and inconsequent, and like not a few it remained unfinished. Little would be gained by giving any detailed a.n.a.lysis of the plot developed through the leisurely amplitude of its 10,000 lines, while any attempt to deal, however slightly, with the sources and literary a.n.a.logues of the work would lead us far beyond the scope of the present chapter[135]. With regard to the latter, it must suffice to note that among the works to which incidents can be directly traced are Ta.s.so's _Gerusalemme_, Montemayor's _Diana_, and Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_, while a more general indebtedness may in particular be observed to Chaucer, _Piers Plowman_, and the _Faery Queen_. The plot involves two more or less connected threads of action, the one dealing with the adventures of the swains and shepherdesses, the other concerned with the progress of Thetis and her court. This latter recalls the poetic geography of Drayton's _Polyolbion_. The princ.i.p.al episodes in the former are the loves of Celandine and Marina, and the allegorical story of Fida and Aletheia, each of which leads to numerous ramifications. Indeed, so far as the pastoral action is concerned, the whole is one string of barely connected episodes.

Celandine loves the shepherdess Marina, who is readily brought to return his affection. To the love thus easily won he soon becomes indifferent, and Marina in despair seeks to end her sorrows in a stream. Saved by the G.o.d of the fountain, she is carried off to Mona, and there imprisoned in a cave by the monster Limos (hunger). With her loss, Celandine's love revives, and in his search for her he is led to visit the faery realm, where he finds Spenser lying asleep. The poem ends abruptly in the midst of his adventures. The story of Fida centres round the slaughter of her pet hind by the monster Riot. From the mangled remains of the animal rises the beautiful form of Aletheia (truth). The new-transformed nymph is the daughter of Chronos (time), born, Pallas-like, without a mother. The narrative of her rejection by the world gives occasion for some biting satire on the ill-living of the religious orders, the vanity of the court, and the dishonesty of the crafts. Meanwhile Riot, who from this point ceases to be an embodiment of cruelty, and comes to typify fallen humanity--the _Humanum Genus_ of the moralities--pa.s.sing successively by Remembrance, Remorse, and Repentance, is purged of his foul shape, and appears as the shepherd Amyntas, finally to be united in marriage with Aletheia. With these adventures is interwoven the progress of Thetis, who comes to view her dominions. From the Euxine and the h.e.l.lespont her train sweeps on by Adriatic and Atlantic sh.o.r.es, past lands which call up the names of a long line of poets--Vergil, Ovid, Ariosto, Petrarch, Ta.s.so, Du Bartas, Marot, Ronsard--till ultimately she arrives off the coast of Devon--the Devon of Browne and Drake. Here the shepherds a.s.semble to do her honour, from Colin Clout down to Browne's immediate circle, Brooke, Davies, and Wither, and here the poet entertains her with the tale of Walla and Tavy, which forms a charming incidental piece. The nymph Walla loved the river-G.o.d Tavy, and while gathering flowers to weave a garland for him was surprised by a satyr, who pursued her into a wood. She sought refuge in a cave, where, being overtaken by her pursuer, she prayed to Diana, and in the last resort to Ina, by whom she was transformed into a spring, which, after drowning the venturesome satyr, ran on to join its waters with those of her beloved Tavy. Thus Browne wove the common names of his familiar home into a romance of pastoral invention. The metamorphosis of Arethusa pursued by Alpheus, of Ambra by Ombrone, of the nymphs by the satyrs of the _Salices_, or as frescoed on the temple of Pales in the _Arcadia_, the loves of Mulla and Mollana in Spenser, and the mythological impersonations of the _Polyolbion_, find, as it were, a meeting-place in Browne's lay of Walla.

The three parts of _Britannia's Pastorals_ did not appear together. Book I was published during the winter of 1613-14, Book II in 1616, each containing five songs; while the fragment of Book III, containing two songs only, remained in ma.n.u.script till 1853, when it was discovered in the Cathedral Library at Salisbury, and printed for the Percy Society[136].

The narrative, as may have been inferred from what has already been said, is sufficiently fantastic. In the introduction of allegorical characters Browne was probably influenced by Spenser, and in a lesser degree by the masque literature of his day and by the study of Langland. Since the work is unfinished, we may in charity suppose that had Browne completed his design the whole would have presented a somewhat less incongruous appearance; there is, however, a marked tendency towards the acc.u.mulation of unexplained incidents, which may most plausibly be referred to the influence of the Spanish romances, especially of the _Diana_, which was already accessible in Yong's translation, and one incident of which Browne did undoubtedly borrow.

In style and poetic merit Browne's work is most astonis.h.i.+ngly unequal, though the general level of _Britannia's Pastorals_ is distinctly higher than that of the _Shepherd's Pipe_. The author pa.s.ses at times abruptly from careful and loving realism to the most stilted conventionality, and from pa.s.sages of impa.s.sioned eloquence to others grotesquely ba.n.a.l. In some of his peculiarities, as in the perpetuai use of elaborate similes and in the indulgence in inflated paraphrases, he antic.i.p.ates some of the worst faults of style cultivated by writers of the next century. There are portions of the poem where the narrative is literally carried on through a succession of highly wrought comparisons, each paragraph beginning with an 'As' followed by a correlative 'So' half a page further on. No such series of pictures, however fairly wrought--and Browne's too often end in bathos--can possibly convey the impression of continuons action. It is the same with periphrasis. Used with discretion it may be one of the subtlest ornaments of style, and even when fulfilling no particular purpose is capable of imparting a luxuriant and somewhat rococo richness to the verse. The effect, however, is frequently one of unrelieved frigidity, as in the lines:

And now Hyperion from his glitt'ring throne Sev'n times his quick'ning rays had bravely shown Unto the other world, since Walla last Had on her Tavy's head the garland plac'd; And this day, as of right, she wends abroad To ease the meadows of their willing load.

(II. iii. 855.)

At times it was Browne's moral preoccupation that curbed his muse, as in his description of the golden age where, for the sensuous glow of Ta.s.so and for Carew's pagan paradise, he subst.i.tutes the insipid convention of a philosophical age of innocence[137]. In his genuine mood as a loving observer of country life he is a very different poet. His feeling is delicate in tone and his observation keen; he was familiar with every tree that grew in the woods, every fish that swam in the waters of his beloved Devon; he entered tenderly into the homely life of the farm--

By this had chanticleer, the village clock, Bidden the goodwife for her maids to knock, And the swart ploughman for his breakfast stay'd, That he might till those lands were fallow laid; The hills and vailles here and there resound With the re-echoes of the deep-mouth'd hound; Each shepherd's daughter, with her cleanly peal,[138]

Was come afield to milk the morning's meal.

(I. iv. 483.)

When, however, naturalism of this kind is introduced into pastoral it is already on the high road toward ceasing to be pastoral at all. Nor are touches of higher poetic imagination wanting, as when Time is described as

a l.u.s.ty aged swain, That cuts the green tufts off th' enamell'd plain, And with his scythe hath many a summer shorn The plough'd-lands lab'ring with a crop of corn.

(I. iv. 307.)

The love of his country is, however, the altar at which Browne's poetic genius takes fire:

Hail, thou my native soil! thou blessed plot, Whose equal all the world affordeth not!

Show me who can so many crystal rills, Such sweet-cloth'd valleys or aspiring hills,....

And if the earth can show the like again, Yet will she fail in her sea-ruling men.

Time never can produce men to o'ertake The fames of Grenville, Davies, Gilbert, Drake, Or worthy Hawkins, or of thousands more That by their power made the Devonian sh.o.r.e Mock the proud Tagus, for whose richest spoil The boasting Spaniard left the Indian soil Bankrupt of store, knowing it would quit cost By winning this, though all the rest were lost.

(II. iii. 601.)

It is after all in such a pa.s.sage as this that we see the true William Browne, with all his high-handedness and worthy enthusiasm, the poet who not only loves his country with a lover's pa.s.sion and cannot tolerate that any should be compared to her in fairness of feature, in stateliness of stature, or in virtue of mind; but who, first perhaps among English poets, has that more local patriotism, narrower and more intimate, for his own home, for its moors, its streams, its a.s.sociations, all the actual or imagined surroundings of his beloved Tavistock, and carries in his heart for ever the cry of the wild west--

Devon, O Devon, in wind and rain!

VII

Approaching the romance, as we do, from the point of view rather of the development of the pastoral ideal than of the history of prose narrative or of the novel, we may spare ourselves any detailed consideration of the famous work of John Lyly. Although in the novel which has made 'Euphuism'

a word and a bye-word in the language he supplied the literary medium for the work of subsequent pastoral writers such as Greene and Lodge, his own compositions in this kind are confined entirely to the drama.

The translations in this department are for the most part negligible.

There is, however, one notable exception, namely, the rendering by Bartholomew Yong or Young of Montemayor's _Diana_, together with the continuations of Ferez and Gil Polo. Completed as early as May, 1583, the work remained in ma.n.u.script until 1598, when it was published in the form of a handsome folio. Although, as we have already had occasion to notice, the verse portions were not for the most part of a nature to add l.u.s.tre to an anthology such as _England's Helicon_, the whole forms a not unworthy Tudor translation. We learn from Yong's preface that portions of the romance had already been Englished by Edward Paston, a descendant of the famous Norfolk letter-writers, who had family relations with Spain and possessed an intimate knowledge of the language. Of this work nothing further is known. Some two years, however, before Yong's version issued from the press, the first book of Montemayor's portion was again translated by Thomas Wilson, and of this a ma.n.u.script yet survives[139].

Pa.s.sing mention may also be made of Angel Day's translation of _Daphnis and Chloe_ containing the original insertion of the _Shepherd's Holiday_ with the praises of Elizabeth in verse, and of Robert Tofte's _Honours Academy_ (1610), distantly following Ollenix du Mont-Sacre's _Bergerie de Juliette_, but which, as also John Pyper's version of d'Urfe's _Astree_ (1620), have received sufficient notice in being recorded in connexion with their originals.

Earlier in date of publication and belonging to an elder tradition than the _Arcadia_, though later in date of composition, and it may be at times betraying a familiarity with Sidney's ma.n.u.script, the romances of the Bohemian Robert Greene, and the buccaneer-physician Thomas Lodge, are naturally the first to claim our attention.

With the exception of _Menaphon_, Greene's romances offer little that is important in pastoral, apart from the more notable works which they inspired. And even _Menaphon_, in so far as the general conception is concerned, can hardly be said necessarily to involve the existence of any antecedent pastoral tradition. Greene's novel is, indeed, far from being purely pastoral; no more than in Sidney's, to use Professor Herford's happy phrase, are we allowed to forget that Arcadia bordered on Sparta. In this it undoubtedly resembles the Spanish romances, but the resemblance does not appear to go much further; it is on the whole warlike without being chivalric, the tone Greek, or what Greene considered such, rather than medieval--indeed it might be argued that in its martial incidents it rather recalls _Daphnis and Chloe_ than the _Diana_. There is certainly nothing chivalric about King Democles, who, when some ten score shepherds are besieging a castle, sends to the 'General of his Forces,' and not only has ten thousand men brought secretly and by night at three days'

notice--in itself a notable piece of strategy--but when they arrive on the scene places furthermore the whole force in ambus.h.!.+ No wonder that when the soldiers are let loose out of their necessarily cramped quarters, they kill many of the shepherds, and putting the rest to flight remain masters of the situation.

The plot might perhaps be considered improbable as well as intricate for anything but a pastoral or chivalric romance: judged by the standards prevailing in these species it is neither. Democles, king of Arcadia, has a daughter Sephistia, who contrary to his wishes has contracted a secret marriage with Maximus. When the birth of a son leads to discovery, Democles has them placed in an oarless boat and so cast adrift. A storm arising they are not unnaturally wrecked, and ultimately husband and wife are cast upon different points of the Arcadian coast(!), where, either supposing the other to have perished, they adopt the pastoral life, a.s.suming the names respectively of Melicertus and Samela. The young mother has with her child Pleusidippus, but while still in early boyhood he is carried off by pirates and presented as a gift to the King of Thessaly. In the meantime Menaphon, 'the king's shepherd of Arcadia,' has fallen in love with Samela, but while accepting his hospitality she meets her husband in his shepherd's guise, and without recognizing one another husband and wife again fall in love. Years pa.s.s on and Pleusidippus, who has risen to fame at court, hears of the beauty of the shepherdess of Arcadia, and must needs go to test the truth of the report himself. He does so, and promptly falls in love with his own mother. Nor is this all, for Democles equally hears of Samela's fame, and disguising himself as a shepherd falls in love with his own daughter. He endeavours to command Samela's affection by revealing to her his own ident.i.ty, but Pleusidippus is beforehand with more drastic measures, and with the help of a few a.s.sociates carries Samela off to a neighbouring castle, to which Democles and the shepherds, headed by Melicertus, proceed to lay siege. A duel between father and son is unceremoniously interrupted by the inroad of Democles' soldiery. Upon this the ident.i.ty of Samela is revealed by a convenient prophetess, and all ends happily.

In the relation of verse and prose Greene's work differs from that of Sannazzaro and Sidney, the former being of considerably greater merit than the latter. The style adopted exhibits a very marked Euphuism, and the whole form of narrative is characterized by that fondness for petty conceit which not seldom gives an air of puerility to the lighter Elizabethan prose. Puerile in a sense it had every right to be, for modern prose narration was then in its very infancy in this country. No artistic form destined to contribute to the main current of literature is born perfect into the world; the early efforts appear not only tentative, uncouth, at times rugged, but often childish and futile, unworthy the consideration of serions men. The substance of the _Gesta Romanorum_ and the style of the _Novellino_ appear so, considered in relation to the _Decameron_; the mystery plays are an obvious instance, not to be explained by any general immaturity of medieval ideas. Traces of the tendency may even be noticed where revival or acclimatization, rather than original invention, is the aim; we find it in the _Shepherd's Calender_, nor was it absent in the days of the romantic revival, either from the German _Lenores_ or the English _Otrantos_. And so it is with the novelists of the Elizabethan age. Renouncing the traditions of the older romance, which was adult and perfect a hundred years before in Malory, but had now fallen into a second childhood, and determined on the creation of a new and genuine form of literary expression, they paid the price of originality in the vein of childishness that runs through their writings.

If, however, Greene was content in the main to adopt the style of the new novel, he, as indeed Lyly too, could at times s.n.a.t.c.h a straightforward thought or a vigorous phrase from current speech or controversial literature, and invest it with all the greater effectiveness by contrasting it with its surroundings. Here, as an example of euphuistic composition, is Democles' address to the champions about to engage in single combat:

Worthy mirrors of resolved magnanimitie, whose thoughts are above your fortunes, and your valour more than your revenewes, know that b.i.t.c.hes that puppie in hast bring forth blind whelpes; that there is no herbe sooner sprung up than the Spattarmia nor sooner fadeth; the fruits too soone ripe are quickly rotten; that deedes done in hast are repented at leisure: then, brave men in so weightie a cause,... deferre it some three daies, and then in solemn manner end the combat[140].

With this we may contrast the closing sentence of the work:

And lest there should be left any thing imperfect in this pastorall accident, Doron smudged himselfe up, and jumped a marriage with his old friend Carmela.

This is, of course, intentionally cast in a homely style in contrast to the courtliness of the main plot; but Greene, as some of his later works attest, knew the value of strong racy English no less than his friend Nashe, who, in the preface he prefixed to this very work, pushed colloquialism and idiom to the verge of affectation and beyond.

The incidental verse, on the other hand, though very unequal, is of decidedly higher merit. Sephistia's famous song should alone suffice to save any book from oblivion, while there are other verses which are not unworthy of a place beside it. I may instance the opening of the 'roundelay' sung by Menaphon, the only character strictly belonging to pastoral tradition, with its picture of approaching night:

When tender ewes brought home with evening Sunne Wend to their foldes, And to their holdes The shepheards trudge when light of day is done.

Such as it was, _Menaphon_ appealed in no small degree to the taste of the moment. We know how great was Greene's reputation as an author, how publishers were ready to outbid one another for the very dregs of his wit.

Thomas Brabine was but voicing the general opinion when, in some verses prefixed to _Menaphon_, he wrote, condescending to an inevitable pun, but also to a less excusable mixed metaphor:

Be thou still Greene, whiles others glorie waine.

Of his other romances it is sufficient in this place to mention that _Pandosto_, which contains the pastoral loves of Dorastus and Fawnia, and supplied Shakespeare with the outlines of the _Winter's Tale_, appeared the year before _Menaphon_, while the year after saw his _Never Too Late_, which is likewise of a generally pastoral character, but does not appear to have suggested or influenced any subsequent work.

The remarks that have been made concerning Greene apply in a large measure also to his fellow euphuist Thomas Lodge. His earliest romance, _Forbonius and Prisceria_, published in 1584, is partly pastoral in plot, a faithful lover being driven by the opposition of his lady's father into a.s.suming the pastoral habit; but it is chiefly the connexion of his _Rosalynde_ of 1590 with Shakespeare's _As You Like It_ that gives him a claim upon our attention. _Rosalynde_ is not only on this account the best-known, but is also intrinsically the most interesting of his romances. The story is too familiar to need detailing. Its origin, as is also well known, is the _Tale of Gamelyn_, the story which Chaucer intended putting into the mouth either of the cook, or more probably of the yeoman, and the hero of which apparently belongs to the Robin Hood cycle. The interest centres round the three sons of Sir John of Bordeaux, who retains his name with Lodge and is Shakespeare's Sir Roland de Bois, and whose youngest son, Lodge's Rosader and Shakespeare's Orlando, is named Gamelyn, and the outlaw king, Lodge's king of France and Shakespeare's Duke senior[141]. The entire pastoral element, as well as the courtly scenes of the earlier portion of the novel, are Lodge's own invention. His shepherds, whether genuine, as Coridon and Phoebe, or a.s.sumed, as Rosalynde and Rosader, are all alike Italian Arcadians, equally polished and poetical. Monta.n.u.s, a shepherd corresponding to Shakespeare's Silvius, is a dainty rimester, and is not only well posted in the loves of Polyphemus and Galatea, but can rail on blind boy Cupid in good French, and on his mistress too--