Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama Part 12

Son cuer ne doit estre de glace, Bien que elle ait de Neige le sein.

Thus Lodge added to the original story the figures of the usurper, Rosalynde, Alinda (Celia), and the shepherds Monta.n.u.s (Silvius), Coridon (Corin) and Phoebe, while to Shakespeare we owe Amiens, Jacques, Touchstone, Audre, and a few minor characters; whence it appears that Lodge's contribution forms the mainstay of the plot as familiar to modern readers. Moreover, in spite of the stiltedness of the style where the author yet remembers to be euphuistic, in spite of the long 'orations,'

'pa.s.sions,' 'meditations' and the like, each carefully labelled and giving to the whole the air of a series of rhetorical exercises, in spite of the mediocre quality of most of the verses, if we except its one perfect gem, the romance yet retains not a little of its silvan and idyllic sweetness.

Before leaving the school of Lyly, which included a number of more or less famous writers, I may take the opportunity of mentioning two authors usually reckoned among them. One, John d.i.c.kenson, left two works of a pastoral nature. His short romance ent.i.tled _Arisbas_ appeared in 1594, and may have supplied Daniel with a hint for the kidnapping of Silvia in _Hymen's Triumph_. Another yet shorter work, ent.i.tled the _Shepherd's Complaint_, which is undated, but was probably printed in the same year, is remarkable for being composed more than half in verse, largely hexameters. In it the author falls asleep and is transported in his dreams to Arcady, where he listens to the lament of a shepherd for the love of Amaryllis. The cruel nymph is, however, soon punished, for, challenging Diana in beauty, she falls a victim to the shafts of the angry G.o.ddess, and is buried with full bucolic honours, whereupon the author awakes. The other writer is William Warner, well known from his _Albion's England_, published in 1586, who left a work ent.i.tled _Pan his Syrinx_, which appeared in 1584; but in this pastoralism does not penetrate beyond the t.i.tle-page.

Of the books which everybody knows and n.o.body reads, _The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia_ is perhaps the most famous[142]. Yet though an account of the romance may be found in the pages of every literary textbook, the history of how the work came to be printed has never been fully cleared up[143]. The _Arcadia_, as it remained at Sidney's death, was fragmentary. Two books and a portion of a third were all that had undergone revision, and possibly represented the portion which Sidney compiled while living with his sister at Wilton, after his retirement from court in 1581--the portion for the most part actually written in his sister's presence. Even of this trustworthy ma.n.u.scripts were rare, most of those that circulated being copies of the unrevised text. Sidney died on October 17, 1586, and even before the end of the year we find his friend Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, writing to Sidney's father-in-law, Sir Francis Walsingham, to the effect that the bookseller, William Ponsonby, had informed him that some one was about to print the _Arcadia_, and that if they were acting without authority a notification of the fact should be lodged with the archbishop. Greville proceeds to say that he had sent to Walsingham's daughter, that is, Lady Sidney, the corrected ma.n.u.script of the work 'don 4 or 5 years sinse, which he left in trust with me; wherof there is no more copies, and fitter to be reprinted then the first, which is so common[144].' A complaint was evidently lodged, and the publication stayed, and we may a.s.sume that Ponsonby was rewarded for his notification by being entrusted with the publication of the revised ma.n.u.script mentioned by Greville, for it was from his house that issued the quarto edition of 1590. Evidence that it was Greville who was responsible for the publication of the _Arcadia_ is found in the dedication of Thomas Wilson's ma.n.u.script translation from the _Diana_, where, addressing Greville, the translater speaks of Sir Philip's _Arcadia_, 'w^{ch} by yo^{r} n.o.ble vertue the world so hapily enjoyes.' In this edition, containing the first two and a half books only, the division into chapters and the arrangement of the incidental verse were the work of the 'over-seer of the print.' The text, however, was not considered satisfactory, and when the romance was reprinted in 1593 the division into chapters was discarded, certain alterations were made in the arrangement of the verse, and there was added another portion of the third book, together with a fourth and fifth, compiled by the Countess of Pembroke from the loose sheets sent her from time to time by her brother. This edition has been commonly regarded as the first published with due authority, and the term 'surrept.i.tious' has been quite unjustly applied to the original quarto. The charge, indeed, receives colour from the preface, signed H. S., to the second edition; but, whoever H. S. may have been, there is nothing to make one suppose that he was speaking with authority.

The quarto of 1590 having been duly licensed on August 23, 1588, the rights of the work were in Ponsonby's hands, and to him the publication of the revised edition had to be entrusted. In 1598 a third edition, to which other remains of the author were for the first time added, was also published by Ponsonby. There still remained, however, a lacuna in Book III, which was not remedied till 1621, when a supplement was added from the pen of Sir William Alexander. In the edition of 1627 a sixth book was appended, the work of one Richard Beling, whose initials alone, however, appear. The early editors seem to have a.s.sumed that the unfinished state of the work, or rather the unrevised state of the later portions, was due to the author's early death, but most of it must have been written between the years 1581 and 1583, and it may well be questioned whether in any case Sidney would have bestowed any further attention upon it. Jonson, indeed, has preserved the tradition that it had been Sir Philip's intention 'to have transform'd all his Arcadia to the stories of King Arthure[145],'

though how the transformation was to be accomplished he forbore to hint; but the more familiar tradition of Sidney's having expressed on his death-bed a desire that the romance should be destroyed a.s.sorts better with what else we know of his regard for his 'idle worke.'

For the name of his romance Sidney was no doubt indebted to Sannazzaro, whom he twice mentions as an authority in his _Defence of Poesy_, but there in all probability his direct obligation ends, since even the _rime sdrucciole_, which he occasionally affected, may with equal probability be referred to the influence of the _Diana_. It was, undoubtedly, Montemayor's romance which served as a model for, or rather suggested the character of, Sidney's work[146]. Thus the chivalric element, unknown to Sannazzaro, is with Sidney even more prominent than with Montemayor and his followers. It is, however, true that, like Greene's, his heroes are rather of a cla.s.sical than a medieval stamp, and he also chose to lay the scene of the action in Greece rather than in his native land, as was the habit of Spanish writers. The source upon which Sidney chiefly drew for incidents was the once famous _Amadis of Gaul_, but a diligent reading of the other French and Spanish romances of chivalry would probably lengthen the list of recorded creditors. Heliodorus supplies several episodes, and an acquaintance at least can be traced with both Achilles Tatius and Chariton.

The intricate plot, with its innumerable digressions, episodes, and interruptions, need not here be followed in detail, especially as we shall have ample opportunity of becoming familiar with its general features when we come to discuss the plays founded upon it. Here it will be sufficient to note one or two points. In the first place the romance contains no really pastoral characters, the personae being all either shepherds in their disguise only, or else, like Greene's Doron and Carmela, burlesque characters of the rustic tradition. Secondly, it may be observed that the amorous confusion is even greater than in _Menaphon_, Pyrocles disguising himself as an Amazon in order to enjoy the company of his beloved Philoclea, which leads to her father Basilius falling in love with him in his disguise, and endeavouring to use his daughter to forward his suit, while her mother Gynecia likewise falls in love with him, having detected his disguise, and becomes jealous of her daughter, who on her part innocently accepts her lover as bosom companion[147].

In general the _Arcadia_ is no more than it purports to be, the 'many fancies' of Sidney's fertile imagination poured forth in courtly guise for the entertainment of his sister, though his own more serious thoughts occasionally find expression in its pages, and he even introduces himself under the imperfect anagram of Philisides, and shadows forth his friendship with the French humanist Languet. More than this it would be rash to a.s.sert, and Greville did his friend an equivocal service when he sought to find a deep philosophy underlying the rather formal characters of the romance[148]. These characters, as we have seen, are for the most part essentially courtly; the pastoral guise is a mere veil shielding them from the crude uncompromising light of actuality, with its prejudice in favour of the probable; while the few rustic personages merely supply a not very successful comic antimasque.

To the popularity of the _Arcadia_ it is hardly necessary to advert. It has been repeatedly printed, added to, imitated, abbreviated, modernized, popularized; four editions appeared during the last decade of the sixteenth century, nine between the beginning of the seventeenth and the outbreak of the civil wars[149]. It was first published at a moment when the public was beginning to tire of Euphuism, and when the heroic death of the author had recently set a seal upon the brilliance of his fame.

Looking back in after years, writers who, like Drayton, had lived through the movement from its very birth, could speak of Sidney as of the author who

did first reduce Our tongue from Lyly's writing then in use,

and could praise his style as a model of pure English. In spite of the generous, if misguided, efforts of occasional critics, posterity has not seen fit to endorse this view. While finding in Sidney's style the same historical importance as in Lyly's, we cannot but recognize that in itself Arcadianism was little if at all better than Euphuism. It is just as formal, just as much a trick, just as stilted and unpliable, just as painful an ill.u.s.tration of the fact that a figure of rhetoric may be an occasional ornament, but cannot by any degree of ingenuity be made to serve as a basis of composition. In the same way as Euphuism is founded upon a balance of the sentence obtained by ant.i.thetical clauses, and the use of intricate alliteration, together with the abuse of simile and metaphor drawn from what has been aptly termed Lyly's 'un-natural history'; so Sidney's style in the _Arcadia_ is based on a balance usually obtained by a repet.i.tion of the same word or a jingle of similar ones, together with the abuse of periphrasis, and, it may be added, of the pathetic fallacy. These last have been dangers in all periods of stylistic experiment; the former, figures duly noted as ornaments by contemporary rhetoricians, Sidney no doubt borrowed from Spain. There in one famous example they were shortly to excite the enthusiasm of the knight of La Mancha--'The reason of the unreason which is done to my reason in such manner enfeebles my reason that with reason I lament your beauty'--a sentence which one is sometimes tempted to imagine Sidney must have set before him as a model. Thus it would appear that, for their essential elements, Euphuism and Arcadianism, though distinct, alike sought their models, direct or indirect, in the Spanish literature of the day. Almost any pa.s.sage, chosen at random, will ill.u.s.trate Sidney's style. Observe the balance of clauses in the following sentence from Kalander's speech, which inclines perhaps towards Euphuism:

I am no herald to enquire of mens pedegrees, it sufficeth me if I know their vertues, which, if this young mans face be not a false witnes, doe better apparrell his minde, then you have done his body. (1590, fol.

8v.)

Or again, as an instance of the jingle of words, take the following from the steward's narration:

I thinke you thinke, that these perfections meeting, could not choose but find one another, and delight in that they found, for likenes of manners is likely in reason to drawe liking with affection; mens actions doo not alwaies crosse with reason: to be short, it did so in deed. (ib.

fol. 20.)

Of Sidney's power of description the stock example is his account of the Arcadian landscape (fol. 7), and it is perhaps the best and at the same time the most characteristic that could be found; the author's peculiar tricks are at once obvious. There are 'the humble valleis, whose base estate semed comforted with refreshing of silver rivers,' and the 'thickets, which being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so to by the chereful deposition of many wel-tuned birds'; there are the pastures where 'the prety lambs with bleting oratory craved the dams comfort,' where sat the young shepherdess knitting, whose 'voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voices musick,' a country where the scattered houses made 'a shew, as it were, of an accompanable solitarines, and of a civil wildnes,' where lastly--_si sic omnia_!--was the 'shepheards boy piping, as though he should never be old.' It must not be supposed that these are occasional embroideries; they are the very cloth of which the whole pastoral habit is made. The above examples all occur within a few pages, and might even have been gathered from a yet smaller plot. It is, however, on the prose, such as it is, that the reputation of the _Arcadia_ rests; a good deal of occasional verse is introduced, but it has often been subject of remark how wholly unworthy of its author most of it is.

Given the widespread popularity of the work, the influence exercised by the story on English letters is hardly a matter for wonder. Of its general influence on the drama it will be my business to speak later; at present we may note that while yet in ma.n.u.script it probably supplied Lodge with certain hints for his _Rosalynde_, and so indirectly influenced _As You Like It_. One of the best-known episodes, again, that of Argalus and Parthenia, was versified by Quarles in 1632, and, adorned with a series of cuts, went through a large number of editions before the end of the century, besides being dramatized by Glapthorne. The incident of Pyrocles heading the Zelots has been thought to have suggested the scene in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ in which Valentine consents to lead the robber band, while to Sidney Shakespeare was likewise indebted, not only for the cowards' fight in _Twelfth Night_, but in the 'story of the Paphlagonian unkinde king,' for the original of the Gloster episode in _King Lear_. A certain prayer out of the later portion of the romance was, as is well known, a favourite with Charles I in the days of his misfortune, but the controversial use made of the fact by Milton it is happily possible to pa.s.s over in silence.

Finally, it is worth mentioning as ill.u.s.trating the vogue of Sidney's romance, that it not only had the very singular honour of being translated into French in the first half of the seventeenth century, but that two translations actually appeared, the rivalry between which gave rise to a literary controversy of some asperity[150].

Thus we take leave of the pastoral novel or romance, a kind which never attained to the weighty tradition of the eclogue, or the grace of the lyric, nor was subjected to the rigorous artistic form of the drama[151].

It remained throughout nerveless and diffuse, and, in spite of much incidental beauty, was habitually wanting in interest, except in so far as it renounced its pastoral nature. As Professor Raleigh has put it: 'To devise a set of artificial conditions that shall leave the author to work out the sentimental inter-relations of his characters undisturbed by the intrusion of probability or accident is the problem; love _in vacuo_ is the beginning and end of the pastoral romance proper.' A similar attempt is noticeable in the drama, but the conditions soon came to be recognized as impossible for artistic use. The operation of human affection under utterly imaginary and impossible conditions is not a matter of human interest; the resuit was a purely fict.i.tious amatory code, as absurd as it was unhealthy, and, when sustained by no extrinsic interest of allegory or the like, the kind soon disappeared. As it is, in the pastoral novel, it is only when the enchanted circle is broken by the rough and tumble of vulgar earthly existence that on the featureless surface of the waters something of the light and shade of true romance replaces the steady pitiless glare ot a philosophical or sentimental ideal.

Chapter III.

Italian Pastoral Drama

I

We have now pa.s.sed in review the main cla.s.ses of non-dramatic pastoral both abroad and in this country. Such preliminary survey was necessary in order to obtain an idea of the history and nature of pastoral composition in general. It was further rendered imperative by more particular considerations which will appear in the course of the present chapter, for we shall find that the pastoral drama comes into being, not through the infusion of the Arcadian ideal into pre-existing dramatic forms, but through the actual evolution of a new dramatic form from the pre-existing non-dramatic pastoral.

It is time to retrace our steps and to pick up the thread which we dropped in a former chapter, the development, namely, of the vernacular eclogue in Italy. If in so doing we are forced to enter at greater length upon the discussion of individual works, we shall find ample excuse, not only in their intrinsic merit, but likewise in their more direct bearing upon what is after all the main subject of this volume. The pastoral drama of Italy is the immediate progenitor of that of England. Further, it might be pleaded that special interest attaches to the Arcadian pastoral as the only dramatic form of conspicuous vitality for which Italy is the crediter of European letters.

The history of the rise of the pastoral drama in Italy is a complicated subject, and one not altogether free from obscurity. Many forces were at work determining the development of the form, and these it is difficult so to present as at once to leave a clear impression and yet not to allow any one element to usurp an importance it does not in reality possess. Any account which gives a specious appearance of simplicity to the case should be mistrusted. That I have been altogether successful in my treatment I can hardly hope, but at least the method followed has not been hastily adopted. I propose to consider, first of all and apart from the rest, the early mythological drama, which while exercising a marked influence over the spirit of the later pastoral can in no way be regarded as its origin. Next, I shall trace the evolution of the pastoral drama proper from its germ in the non-dramatic eclogue, by way of the _ecloghe rappresentative_, and treat incidentally the allied rustic shows, which form a cla.s.s apart from the main line of development. Lastly, I shall have to say a few words concerning the early pastoral plays by Beccari and others before turning to the masterpieces of Ta.s.so and Guarini, the consideration of which will occupy the chief part of this chapter[152].

The cla.s.s of productions known as mythological plays, which powerfully influenced the character of the pastoral drama, sprang from the union of cla.s.sical tradition with the machinery of native religious representations, in Poliziano's _Favola d' Orfeo_. This was the first non-religious play in the vernacular, and its dependence on the earlier religious drama is striking. Indeed, the blending of medieval and cla.s.sical forms and conventions may be traced throughout the early secular drama of Italy. Boiardo's _Timone_, a play written at some unknown date previous to 1494, preserves, in spite of its cla.s.sical models, much of the allegorical character of the morality, and was undoubtedly acted on a stage comprising two levels, the upper representing heaven in which Jove sat enthroned on the seat of Adonai. The same scenic arrangement may well have been used in the _Orfeo_, the lower stage representing Hades[153]; while Niccol da Correggio's _Cefalo_ was evidently acted on a polyscenic stage, the actors pa.s.sing in view of the audience from one part to another[154]. At a yet earlier period Italian writers in the learned tongue had taken as the subjects of their plays stories from cla.s.sical legend and myth, and among these we find not only recognized tragedy themes such as the rape of Polyxena dramatized by Lionardo Bruni, but tales such as that of Progne put on the stage by Gregorio Corrado, both of which preceded by many years the work of Politian and Correggio.

The earliest secular play in Italian is, then, nothing but a _sacra rappresentazione_ on a pagan theme, a fact which was probably clearly recognized when, in the early editions from 1494 onwards, the piece was described as the 'festa di Orpheo[155].' It was written in 1471, when Poliziano was about seventeen, and we learn from the author's epistle prefixed to the printed edition that it was composed in the short s.p.a.ce of two days for representation before Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga at Mantua.

From the same epistle we learn that the author desired, or at least a.s.sumed the att.i.tude of desiring, that his composition should share the fate of the ill-fashioned Lacedaemonian children; 'Cognoscendo questa mia figliuola essere di qualita da fare piu tosto al suo padre vergogna che onore; e piu tosto atta a dargli malinconia che allegrezza.' The _favola_ as originally put forth continued to be reprinted without alteration, till 1776, when Ireneo Aff published the _Orphei Tragoedia_ from a collation of two ma.n.u.scripts. This differs in various respects from the printed version, among others in being divided, short as it is, into five acts, headed respectively 'Pastorale,' 'Ninfale,' 'Eroico,' 'Negromantico,' and 'Bacca.n.a.le.' It is now known to represent a revision of the piece made, probably by Antonio Tebaldeo, for representation at Ferrara, and in it much of the popular and topical element has been eliminated. The action of the piece is based in a general manner upon the story given by Ovid in the tenth book of the _Metamorphoses_.

The performance begins with a prologue by Mercury which is nothing but a short argument of the whole plot. 'Mercurio annunzia la festa' is the superscription in the original, evidently suggested by the appearance of 'un messo di Dio' with which the religious _rappresentazioni_ usually open. At the end of this prologue a shepherd appears and finishes the second octave with the couplet:

State attenti, brigata; buono augurio; Poi che di cielo in terra vien Mercurio.

In the Ferrarese revision these stanzas appear as 'Argomento' without mention of Mercury, while for the above lines are subst.i.tuted the astonishing doggerel:

Or stia ciascuno a tutti gli atti intento, Che cinque sono; e questo e l' argomento.

Thereupon (beginning Act I of the revision) enters Mopso, an old shepherd, meeting Aristeo, a youthful one, with his herdsman Tirsi. Mopso asks whether his white calf has been seen, and Aristeo, who fancies he has heard a lowing from beyond the hill, sends his boy to see. In the meanwhile he detains Mopso with an account of his love for a nymph he met the day before, and sings a _canzona_:

Ch' i' so che la mia ninfa il canto agogna[156].

It runs on the familiar themes of love: 'Di doman non c' e certezza.'

Digli, zampogna mia, come via fugge Con gli anni insieme la bellezza snella; E digli come il tempo ne distrugge, Ne l' eta persa mai si rinovella; Digli che sappi usar sua forma bella, Che sempre mai non son rose e viole...

Udite, selve, mie dolci parole, Poi che la ninfa mia udir non vole.

The boy Tirsi now returns, having with much trouble driven the strayed calf back to the herd, and narrates how he saw an unknown nymph of wondrous beauty gathering flowers about the hill. Aristeo recognizes from this description the object of his love, and, leaving Mopso and Tirsi to shake their heads over his midsummer madness, goes off to find her.

So far we might be reading one of the _ecloghe rappresentative_ which we shall have to consider shortly, but of which the earliest known examples cannot well be less than ten or twelve years later than Poliziano's play.

With the exception, indeed, of one or two in Boccaccio's _Ameto_, it is doubtful whether any vernacular eclogues had appeared at the time. The character of Tirsi belongs to rustic tradition, and must be an experiment contemporary with, if not prior to, Lorenzo's _Nencia_. The portion before the _canzone_ is in _terza rima_; that after it, like the prologue, in octaves.

The original proceeds without break to the song of Aristeo as he pursues the flying Euridice (Act II in the revision):

Poi che 'l pregar non vale, E tu via ti dilegui, El convien ch' io ti segui.

Porgimi, Amor, porgimi or le tue ale.

While Aristeo is following Euridice, Orfeo enters upon the scene with a Latin ode in Sapphic metre in honour of Cardinal Gonzaga. A note informs us that this was originally sung by 'Messer Braccio Ugolino, attore di detta persona d' Orfeo.' In place of this ode the revised text contains a long 'Coro delle Driadi,' with two speeches in _terza rima_ by the choragus, announcing and lamenting the death of Euridice, who as she fled from Aristeo has been stung in the foot by a serpent. After this the news of her death is reported to Orfeo--by a shepherd in the original, by a dryad in the revised version. That the subst.i.tution of the chorus for the Sapphic ode is an improvement from the poetic point of view will hardly be denied, yet this improvement has been attained at the cost of some dramatic sacrifice. In the original Orfeo is introduced naturally enough in his character of supreme poet and musician to do honour to the occasion, and it is only after he has been on the stage some time that the news of Euridice's death is brought. In the revision he is merely introduced for the purpose of being informed of his wife's death--he has hardly been so much as mentioned before. He thus loses the slight opportunity previously afforded him of presenting a dramatic individuality apart from the very essence of his tragedy.

The announcement to Orfeo of Euridice's death begins the third act of the revised text, which is amplified at this point by the introduction of a satyr Mnesillo, who acts as chorus to Orfeo's lament. The character of a friendly satyr is interesting in view of the role commonly a.s.signed to his species in pastoral.

After this we have in the original the direction 'Orfeo cantando giugne all' Inferno,' while in the revision there is again a new act, the fourth.

Symonds pointed out that the merits of the piece are less dramatic than lyrical, and that fortunately the central scene was one in which the situation was capable of lyrical expression. The pleading of Orfeo before the gates of Hades and at the throne of Pluto forms the lyrical kernel of the play, and gives it its poetic value. The bard appears before the iron-bound portals of the nether world, and the pains of h.e.l.l surcease.

'Who is he?' asks Pluto--