Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama Part 32

Yes, you have made a vow, I know, which is, Whilst you are young, you will have all the youth To follow you with lies and flatteries.

Fool, they'll deceive you; when this colour fades, Which will not always last, and you go crooked, As if you sought your beauty, lost i' th' ground, Then they will laugh at you! (II. v.)

With which he goes off to attend to the shearing of his sheep, one of those wholly unnecessary operations which the less skilful pastoralists make it a virtue to thrust upon our attention. The scene between Nerina, Daphnis, and Dorinda, a sort of three-cornered love-suit, may possibly have suggested to Cowley the best scene in the play which next claims our attention.

Cowley's _Love's Riddle_, published in 1638, but written two or three years earlier, is the work of a boy of sixteen, and though it serves amply to prove the precocity of its author, it does not therefore follow that it is itself possessed of any conspicuous merit. To find in it pa.s.sages of genuine observation and love of nature, as one of Cowley's critics professes to do, is unpardonably partial; to grumble with another at not finding them is futile; even with a third to see in the piece 'a boy's conception of Sicilian life' is, to say the least, unnecessary. Cowley had, indeed, a great deal too much of 'the precocious humour of the world-wise boy' to put forward his play as anything of the kind; he was perfectly aware that it was an absolutely unreal fantasy, based entirely on convention and imitation, the sole merit of which was the more or less clever manner in which borrowing, reminiscence, and tradition were interwoven and combined. The plot is a mixture of the pastoral and courtly, or at least aristocratic, types, not uninfluenced by the rustic or comic, which, like the chivalric, is no doubt of Sidneian origin.

Calidora, the daughter of n.o.ble parents in Sicily, retires among the shepherd folk disguised in man's apparel, in order, as we only learn at the end of the play, to escape from the violence of Aphron, one of her suitors. Her other suitor, Philistus, as well as her brother Florellus and Philistus' sister Clariana, all set off in search of her, while Aphron, finding her fled from his pursuit, wanders aimlessly about, having lost his reason. Thus the courtly characters are all brought in contact with the country swains, among whom Palaemon courts the disdainful Hylace, daughter of the crabbed Melarnus and the old hag Truga. Other pastoral characters are old Aegon and his supposed daughter Bellula, and Alupis, who fills at once the roles of the 'merry' shepherd and the 'wise.' On Callidora's appearance in boy's attire among the shepherd folk Hylace and Bellula alike fall in love with her, while in his search for his sister Florellus falls in love with Bellula. This gives occasion for a scene of some merit between Callidora, Bellula, and Florellus, in which, after vainly disputing of their loves, they form a sort of triple alliance under the name of Love's Riddle. A similar scene could obviously be worked with Callidora, Hylace, and Palaemon, and it is perhaps to Cowley's credit that he has avoided the obvious parallelism. Meanwhile Clariana has met the mad Aphron without recognizing him, and taking pity on his state brings him home to cure him, an attempt in which she is successful. He rewards her by transferring to her his somewhat questionable attentions. Also Alupis, working on Truga, has tricked her into seeking the marriage of Hylace and Palaemon; a plan, however, which is upset by Hylace and Melarnus.

Florellus in the meantime becomes impatient at finding a rival in Bellula's love, and seeks a duel with Callidora. She apparently fails to recognize her brother, and is forced to fight. They are separated by Philistus and Bellula. The two girls faint, and are carried by their lovers into the house where Clariana is nursing Aphron. Callidora's ident.i.ty is discovered, and her parents arrive upon the scene. Bellula is found to be, not, as was supposed, Aegon's daughter, but sister to Aphron, stolen by pirates in childhood. Aegon makes Palaemon his heir, thereby removing Melarnus' objection to his suit to Hylace, while the latter and Bellula, discovering the hopelessness of their love for Callidora, consent to reward their respective lovers. Aphron, cured and forgiven, is accepted by Clariana, and thus, all bars removed, the happiness of the four pairs is secured.

There has been a tendency to exaggerate the merits of this plot. Cowley shows, indeed, some skill in the ravelling and in the handling of individual scenes, but in the unravelling he is far from happy, and there is often an utter lack of motive about his characters. Where the whole construction, indeed, depends upon no inner necessity, the various threads, as soon as their interweaving ceases to be necessary to the plot, fall apart of themselves, without any _denoument_, strictly speaking, at all. Thus Cowley's play has the characteristic faults of immature work, absence of rational characterization, and want of logical construction.

The verse, though well sustained, is on a singularly tedious level of mediocrity, while the lyrics introduced are all alike considerably below the general level. There are seldom more than a few lines together which possess any distinguis.h.i.+ng merit, such as an indulgent editor has found in Bellula's exclamation when she first falls in love with Callidora:

How red his cheekes are! so our garden apples Looke on that side where the hot Sun salutes them; (I. ii.)

or in the lines with which Callidora prepares to meet death from her brother's sword:

As sick men doe their beds, so have I yet Injoy'd my selfe, with little rest, much trouble: I have beene made the Ball of Love and Fortune, And am almost worne out with often playing; And therefore I would entertaine my death As some good friend whose comming I expected. (V. iii.)

Mr. Gosse once expressed the opinion that Cowley's play is 'a distinct following without imitation of _The Jealous Lovers_ of Thomas Randolph.'

Exactly what was meant by this phrase it is difficult to tell, but if it was intended to imply any resemblance between the two pieces its application is confined to the character of a woman to whom age has not taught continence, and an incidental hit at the jargon of astrologers.[334] That Cowley had read _The Jealous Lovers_, published in 1633, is by no means unlikely, for he was certainly acquainted with the yet unpublished _Amyntas_. This he may perhaps have seen when it was performed at Whitehall, and he imitated several pa.s.sages of it in his own Westminster play. The most important point of connexion is the madness of Aphron, which is modelled with some closeness on that of Amyntas. Actual verbal reminiscences are not common, but there can, I think, be little doubt that the schoolboy has been imitating the half-grotesque, half-poetic fantasies of the university wit, though he has wholly failed to achieve his pathos. Again, the speech of Florellus at the opening of Act III recalls the return both of Corymbus and of Claius in _Amyntas_, while Cowley is much more likely to have been influenced to lay the scene of his play in Sicily by Randolph's example than by his reading of Theocritus, whose influence, if it exists, is of the slightest. Emulation, rather than imitation, was Cowley's att.i.tude towards his predecessor, and his means are not always happy. Thus, though the humours of Truga may have been suggested by the character of Dipsa in the _Jealous Lovers_, she is probably introduced into Cowley's play as the counterpart of Dorylas in _Amyntas_. Randolph trod on thin ice in some of the speeches of the liquorish wag, whose 'years are yet uncapable of love,' but censure will not stick to the witty knave. On the other hand, Cowley's portrait of incontinent age in Truga fails wholly of being comic, and appears all the loathlier for the fact that the author himself was still a mere schoolboy--though this is, indeed, his best excuse. Other parallels could be pointed out, but it would be superfluous; convention and petty theft are the warp and woof of the piece. The satire, which has met with some praise, is, of course, staled by a hundred poets of the pastoral vein. The position of Callidora, loved in her disguise by the two girls, recalls that of many pastoral heroines before and since Daniel's Silvia, particularly perhaps of the courtly Rosalind loved by the Arcadian Phoebe.

The chivalric admixture is, as usual, traceable to Sidney, and the duel finds of course an obvious parallel in _Twelfth Night_. The discovery of Bellula's ident.i.ty recalls more particularly, perhaps, that of Chloe's in Longus' romance, or may possibly indicate an acquaintance with Bonarelli's _Filli di Sciro_, which might also be traced in the attribution to centaurs of the character long identified with satyrs in pastoral tradition.

It is a coincidence, but one significant of the nature of the pastoral tradition, if such it can be called, that had sprung up on the English stage, that the next play to claim our notice is again the work of a schoolboy. _Love in its Extasy_, described on the t.i.tle-page as 'a kind of Royall Pastorall,' was written, at the age of seventeen, by a student of Eton College, whom it has been customary to identify with one William Peaps.[335] The date of composition is said in the stationer's preface to have preceded by many years that of publication, 1649, we may perhaps regard the piece as more or less contemporary with Cowley's juvenile effort. There is, it is true, one pa.s.sage,[336] treating of tyrants and revolutions, which is such as a moderate supporter of 'divine right' might have been expected to pen in the later days of the civil war; the publisher's words, however, are unequivocal, and can hardly refer to a period after 1642.

_Love in its Extasy_ itself cannot, without some straining of the term, be called a pastoral, though there are certain links serving to connect it with pastoral tradition. The only excuse, beyond that afforded by the t.i.tle-page, for including it in the present category is that several of the characters, finding it for various reasons inconvenient to appear in their own shapes, take upon themselves a pastoral disguise; but there is no hint of any pastoral background to the action, not even the atmosphere of a rural academy as in Montagu's play. The whole piece, however, is in the style of the Hispano-French romance, in which pastoral or pseudo-pastoral plays so large a part. To enter into the plot in detail is for our present purpose unnecessary. It is apparently original, and, considered as a romance, would do no small credit to its youthful author.

An exiled king and his lady-love a.s.sume the sheep-hook, as do also two princes and the mistress of one of them, the mistress of the other appearing in the disguise of a boy. Disguisings, potions, feigned deaths, and recognitions, or rather revelations of ident.i.ty, form the staple elements of the plot. The play is long, the stage crowded, the plot intricate and elaborated with a superabundance of incident; but it must be admitted that the attention is held and the interest sustained, even to a wearisome degree, throughout; that the characters are individualized, and the action clear. These are no small merits, as any one whose fortune it has been to wade through any considerable portion of the minor drama will be ready to acknowledge; while the defects of the piece are those commonly incident to immature work. The most conspicuous are the want of one prominent interest, and the lack of definite climax; at least four equally important threads are kept running through the play, and the dramatic tension is at an almost constant pitch throughout. These characteristics are those of the narrative romance and of the novel of adventure respectively, and are fatal to the success of the dramatic form.

The verse is in a way peculiar. It is intended as blank verse, and it is true that the licences taken do not exceed those commonly allowed by the practice of dramatists such as Fletcher, but here they are wholly unregulated by any natural feeling for metre or rhythm, and the resuit can hardly be called pleasing. On the other hand, there are a few happy lines, as where a lover bids his penitent mistress

Go, Knock at Repentance gate, one tear of thine Will easily compell an entrance. (V. ii.)

There are also some pa.s.sages of forcible vigour, not always subject to dramatic propriety. Nevertheless, the qualities of life and brightness displayed are sufficient to induce a belief that had the author begun writing at a moment more propitious than the eve of the civil war, and pursued his career on the practical London stage, our drama might have been the richer by, say, a second s.h.i.+rley, an addition which those who know that writer best will probably rate most highly. In any case the composition must, I think, be held to surpa.s.s in genuine qualities Cowley's flashy precocity.

This will be the most convenient place to mention an anonymous and undated play ent.i.tled _Love's Victory_, extracts from a ma.n.u.script of which were printed in 1853.[337] The style of the piece is not much guide as to the date, but the play does not appear to be early, in spite of the somewhat archaic spelling. It is in rime; mostly decasyllabic couplets, but with free intermixture of alternative rime and frequent lyrical pa.s.sages. It is of course difficult to gather much of the plot from the printed extracts, but so far as it is possible to judge the play appears to have been a pure pastoral, with Venus and Cupid introduced in the _finale_, while the situations and characters are those habitual to pastorals, including the quite superfluous protesting of a not very prepossessing chast.i.ty. The only more original trait is the scene in which the nymphs meet and relate their love adventures, a rather awkward device for carrying on the involution of the plot. There is a certain ease in the verse, but on the whole the poetic merit is small.[338]

We have now pa.s.sed in review all the regular pastoral plays lying within our scope. There remain a number of shorter compositions of a similar or at least a.n.a.logous nature, as well as a good many masques and other pieces in which the pastoral element is more or less dominant. These it will for our present purpose be convenient to consider in connexion with each other, and without troubling ourselves too much concerning such nice differences of form as may be found to exist among them.

Chapter VII.

Masques and General Influence

I

The history of the English masque offers a very interesting study in what may be called literary morphology. Under the influence of the stage the early disguisings and spectacular dances developed into a semi-dramatic kind, intermediate between the literary drama and mere scenic displays, and recognized as possessing a definite nature and proper limitations of its own. To this highly individualized form of art the term masque may often with convenience and propriety be restricted, but all such rigid and exclusive definitions have this disadvantage, that they tend to make lines of division appear clearer and more logically convincing than they in fact usually are, and further that they tempt us to neglect the often numerous and closely allied specimens which cannot be brought to accommodate themselves to the abstract type. Those writers who deny that _Comus_ is a masque are entirely justified from their point of view; it is a question of cla.s.sification, and the cla.s.sification which it is convenient to adopt may vary according to the nature of the investigation in hand. It must not, therefore, be thought that I place myself in antagonism to critics such as Dr. Brotanek for example, if I give to the term masque its widest possible signification as including not only the regular and highly developed compositions of the Jonsonian type, but also mere pageants on the one hand, and what may be called miniature plays on the other; all dramatic or semi-dramatic pieces, in short, which it is undesirable or inconvenient to treat along with the regular productions. Approaching the question as we do, not from the point of view of the evolution of a particular literary form, but from that of a persistent ideal and quasi-philosophical tradition, which manifests itself in all manner of forms and fas.h.i.+ons, we have a perfect right to adopt whatever cla.s.sification suits our purpose best, provided always that we have a clear notion what it is we are discussing. I propose, therefore, to treat in chronological order all those pieces which, owing to their less fully developed dramatic form, were omitted from the previous chapter. Something no doubt has been sacrificed by thus separating the regular dramas from the slighter and more occasional compositions, for in the earlier times especially these latter serve to fill considerable gaps in the sequence, and must have had a powerful influence in fas.h.i.+oning that pastoral tradition to which the pieces we have already considered belong.

The connexion of the pastoral with the masque began very early, and may well have been more constant than we should be tempted to suppose from the isolated examples that remain. The union was a natural one, for the pastoral, whether in its Arcadian or chivalric guise, was well suited to supply the framework for graceful poetry and elaborate dances alike, while the rustic and burlesque elements were equally capable of furnis.h.i.+ng matter for the antimasque, when the form had reached that stage of structural elaboration. The allusive and allegorical features which had long been traditional in the pastoral likewise suited the topical and occasional nature of the masque. The connexion, however, with the stricter forms at least, was never very close, the tendency on the part of the pastoral to confine itself to a mere external formalism being even more noticeable here than in the case of the regular drama.

The earliest instance of this connexion of which we have notice is one of interest in English history. It is none other than the masquerade in which Henry appeared disguised as a shepherd at Wolsey's feast, which, according to Shakespeare, was the occasion of his first meeting with Anne Boleyn.

The disguising is attested by the authority of Cavendish and Hall, but it is clear that the pastoral element was confined to the garb, there being no indication of anything of the nature of a literary presentation.

The first literary specimen of the kind does not appear till near the middle of Elizabeth's reign, and even then there is barely an excuse for cla.s.sing it as pastoral. The composition in question is the slight entertainment, to which the name of _The Lady of May_ has been given by modern critics, composed by Sidney for presentation before Elizabeth during her visit to Leicester at Wanstead, in May, 1578. It appears to have been his earliest work. Though not itself a masque in the strict sense of the word in which we have learnt to use it, the piece contains the undeveloped germs of most of the later characteristics of the kind.

The Queen in her walks through the grounds came to a spot where the May-Lady was being courted by a shepherd and a 'foster,' hotly contending for the prize. The strife was stayed, and, the deserts of either party being duly set forth, the Lady referred the choice to the Queen, who decided in favour of the pastoral suitor. A song and music ended the show.

A strongly rustic element is sustained by the Lady's mother and the old shepherd Dorcas, while a touch of broad burlesque is introduced in the character of the pedagogue Rombus, who speaks in a style really little more extravagant than that of Sidney's own _Arcadia_. As in the romance, at the end of which the piece was first printed in 1598, the occasional songs are of small merit.

The spring-like freshness that characterizes so much of Peele's best work breathes deliciously through the polite convention of the _Descensus Astraeae_, the 'Pageant, borne before M. William Web, Lord Maior of the Citie of London on the day he tooke his oath; beeing the 29. of October.

1591.' The conceit is graceful in itself, and significant of the sentiment of contemporary London. Astraea, bearing her sheep-hook as a sort of pastoral sceptre, typified the Queen, and pa.s.sed on in her triumphal car with the words:

Feed on, my flock, among the gladsome green, Where heavenly nectar flows above the banks; Such pastures are not common to be seen: Pay to immortal Jove immortal thanks, For what is good fro heaven's high throne doth fall; And heaven's great architect be praised for all[339].

In her praise the graces, the virtues, and a champion utter appropriate speeches, whilst Superst.i.tion, a friar, and Ignorance, a priest, together with other malcontents, shrink back abashed before her onward march.

The following year appeared the anonymous 'Speeches delivered to her Majestie this last progresse, at the Right Honorable the Lady Russels, at Bissam, the Right Honorable the Lorde Chandos, at Sudley, at the Right Honorable the Lord Norris, at Ricorte.' This piece being very characteristic of a certain sort of courtly shows, and itself possessing rather greater intrinsic interest than is to be found in most of the compositions we shall have to examine, may lay claim to a somewhat more detailed discussion. As the Queen approached through the woods towards Bisham, cornets were heard to sound, and presently there appeared a wild man who began his speech thus:

I followed this sounde, as enchanted; neither knowing the reason why, nor how to bee ridde of it: unusuall to these Woods, and, I feare, to our G.o.ds prodigious. Sylva.n.u.s whom I honour, is runne into a Cave: Pan, whom I envye, courting of the Shepheardesse. Envie I thee Pan? No, pitty thee; an eie-sore to chast Nymphes, yet still importunate. Honour thee Sylva.n.u.s? No, contemne thee; fearefull of Musicke in the Woods, yet counted the G.o.d of the Woods.

He then proceeds to welcome the royal visitor. Further on 'At the middle of the Hill sate Pan, and two Virgins keeping sheepe, and sowing in their Samplers.' Pan courts the shepherdesses, who mock him, and finally all join in welcome of the Queen. 'At the bottome of the hill,' we read further, 'entring into the hous, Ceres with her Nymphes in an harvest Cart, meete her Majesty, having a Crowne of wheat-ears with a Jewell.'

Ceres sings:

Swel Ceres now, for other G.o.ds are shrinking; Pomona pineth, Fruitlesse her tree; Fair Phoebus s.h.i.+neth Onely on mee.

Conceit doth make me smile whilst I am thinking,...

All other G.o.ds of power bereven, Ceres only Queene of heaven.

With Robes and flowers let me be dressed; Cynthia that s.h.i.+neth Is not so cleare, Cynthia declineth When I appeere, Yet in this Ile shee raignes as blessed, ...

And in my eares still fonde Fame whispers, Cynthia shalbe Ceres Mistres.

She then proceeds to welcome the Queen as 'Greater then Ceres.' At Sudely Castle her Majesty was received by an old shepherd with a long speech; whereafter we read: 'Sunday, Apollo running after Daphne,' a show accompanied by a speech from another shepherd, at the end whereof, the metamorphosis safely accomplished, 'her Majesty sawe Apollo with the tree, having on one side one that sung, on the other one that plaide.'

Sing you, plaie you, but sing and play my truth, This tree my Lute, these sighes my notes of ruth: The Lawrell leafe for ever shall bee greene, And chastety shalbe Apolloes Queene.

If G.o.ds maye dye, here shall my tombe be plaste, And this engraven, 'Fonde Phoebus, Daphne chaste.'

'The song ended, the tree rived, and Daphne issued out, Apollo ranne after, with these words:'

Faire Daphne staye, too chaste because too faire, Yet fairer in mine eies, because so chaste, And yet because so chaste, must I despaire?

And to despaire, I yeelded have at last.

'Daphne running to her Majestie uttered this:'

I stay, for whether should chastety fly for succour, but to the Queene of chastety, &c.

a speech which can without loss be left to the imagination of the reader.

The third day's show was prevented by bad weather: it was designed thus.