Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama Part 48

[316] _Metamorphoses_, ix. 667, &c. Ward is moved to characterize the plot as a theme of 'Ovidian lubricity.' I question whether any such censure is merited. That the theme is one which would have become intolerably suggestive in the hands of the Sienese Intronati, for instance, may be admitted, but the author has treated the story with complete _navete_.

The obscene pa.s.sages referred to later on (p. 345) occur in the comic action, and are in no way connected with the point in question. Ward further informs us that the play is 'throughout in rime,' notwithstanding the fact that something approaching a quarter of the whole is in prose.

[317] I must repeat that I see no advantage to be gained from the method adopted by Homer Smith, who tries to extract and separate the strictly pastoral elements from the medley. A play is not a child's puzzle that can be taken to pieces and labelled, nor even a chemical compound to be a.n.a.lysed into its component parts. What is of interest is to note the various influences which have affected and modified the growth of the literary organism.

[318] Though the author may very likely have known Spenser's description of the house of Morpheus _(Faery Queen_, I. i. 348, &c.), he certainly drew his own account straight from Ovid (_Metam._ xi. 592, &c.), to which, of course, Spenser was also indebted. I am rather inclined to think the author drew his material from Golding's translation (xi. 687, &c.). With the second pa.s.sage quoted, cf. _Faery Queen_, II. xii. 636, &c.

[319] 'Trip and go' was a proverbial expression, and is found, with its obvious rime 'to and fro,' in several old dance-songs.

[320] The only composition I can recall which at all antic.i.p.ates the peculiar effect of this lyric is Thestylis' song in the _Arraignment of Paris_ (III. ii.), to which, in the old edition, is appended the quaint note, 'The grace of this song is in the Shepherds' echo to her verse.'

[321] Fleay gives the date 1601, following Halliwell, but Haslewood has 1603.

[322] According to Fleay, it 'was intended to be presented to James I on 13th Mar. 1614.' This date must be a slip, since it was not till 1615 that the king was at Cambridge. It is, moreover, correctly given in his _History of the Stage_. The preparations also appear to have been for the eleventh, not the thirteenth. Fleay further mentions a performance at King's before Charles I, but gives no authority.

[323] An exception must be made of Ward, whose remarks are almost excessively laudatory, though his treatment of the piece is necessarily slight.

[324] The incidents occur, however, in Book II of Browne's work (Songs 4 and 5), which was not printed till 1616. Either, therefore, Fletcher had seen Browne's poem in ma.n.u.script, or else the play, as originally performed, differed from the printed version. I think it unlikely that the borrowing should have been the other way.

[325] Fleay confuses the two performances, and, by placing Goffe's death in 1627, is forced to suppose that the 'praeludium' was added by another hand. It may be noticed that, if this introduction is by Goffe, Salisbury Court was probably opened in the spring, a point otherwise unsettled.

[326] The resemblance with the _Sad Shepherd_, I. i, is almost too close to be fortuitous. It is, on the other hand, not easily accounted for. The whole pa.s.sage quoted above is somewhat markedly superior to the general level of the verse in the play, not merely the two or three lines in which a distinct resemblance to Jonson can be traced. Is it possible that both Goffe and Jonson were following, the one slavishly, the other with more imagination, one common original, now unknown? Or can it be that Goffe is here reproducing a pa.s.sage from an early unpublished work of Jonson's own, a pa.s.sage which Jonson later refashioned into the singularly perfect speech of Aeglamour?

[327] Homer Smith, in making these a.s.sertions, overlooks historical evidence. It is, however, only fair to Goffe to say that other critics apparently take a very much more favourable view of the merits of the piece than I am able to do.

[328] Hardly in those of the prologue to _Hymen's Triumph_, as suggested by Homer Smith.

[329] W. C. Hazlitt (_Manual of Plays_, p. 25) records: 'Bellessa, the Shepherd's Queen: The scene, Galicia. An unpublished and incomplete drama in prose and verse. Fol.' In the absence of further evidence I conclude that this is an imperfect MS. of Montagu's piece.

[330] The designs for the scene, by Inigo Jones, are preserved in the British Museum, MS. Lansd. 1,171, fols. 15-16. Fols. 5-6 of the same MS.

contain the ground-plans 'for a pasterall in the hall at whitthall w'ch was ackted by the ffrench on St Thomas day the 23th of decemb'r 1635,'

which may refer to the same piece.

[331] It may, however, be founded on some French romance.

[332] The play will be found in Hazlitt's 'Dodsley,' vol. xii, whence I quote. Hazlitt suggests that 'the episode of Sylvia and Thyrsis' may have had its foundation in certain intrigues traceable in Digby's memoirs, and Fleay would see in the characters of Stella and Mirtillus a hint of Dorset's _liaison_ with Lady Venetia. I suppose that it has been thought necessary to find allusions to actual persons, chiefly because the author explicitly denies their existence. Homer Smith describes the play as a pure Arcadian drama. 'The court element,' he writes, 'is so completely overshadowed by the pastoral' as to justify the cla.s.sification, in spite, apparently, of the fact that the heroine never appears on the stage in pastoral guise at all, and that in the greater part of the last three acts the scene is laid at court.

[333] See above, p. 246, for Fanshawe's version of the pa.s.sage in question.

[334] Were it not for these points of similarity, I should have supposed Gosse to have been misled by the pastoral-sounding t.i.tle of Randolph's Plautine comedy into confusing it with the _Amyntas_. The criticism is from an article in the _Cornhill_ for December, 1876. Homer Smith cites it.

[335] The surname rests on Kirkman's authority, the addition of the Christian name is apparently due to Chetwood, and is therefore to be accepted with caution. I have been unable to trace any one of the name.

[336] II. ii, sig. C 1^v of the old edition.

[337] Halliwell, _Description of MSS. in the Public Library, Plymouth, to which are added Some Fragments of Early Literature hitherto unpublished_.

MS. CII is a copy of the original ma.n.u.script in the possession of Sir E.

Dering. A ma.n.u.script of the play was in Quaritch's Catalogue for November, 1899; I have been unable to trace it.

[338] I may take the opportanity of mentioning in a note one or two Latin plays. In Emmanuel College (to the courtesy of whose librarian, Mr. E. S.

Shuckburgh, I am much indebted) is preserved the ma.n.u.script of a play ent.i.tled _Parthenia_, which was no doubt acted at Cambridge, but concerning which no record apparently survives. The introduction of 'Pan Arcadiae deus' and of a character 'Cacius Latro' show that the piece was influenced both by the mythological drama and the romance of adventure.

The most interesting point about the play is that the chief male characters bear the names of Philissides and Amyntas, which will be recognized as the pastoral t.i.tles of Sidney and Watson respectively.

Since, however, the handwriting appears to be after 1600, and there is no correspondeuce in the female parts, it is more than doubtful whether any allusion was intended. Another Cambridge piece is the _Silva.n.u.s_, a MS. of which is in the Bodleian (Douce 234). It was performed on January 13, 1596, and may possibly have been written by one Anthony Rollinson--the name is erased.

[339] Bullen's _Peele_, i.p. 363.

[340] The only recorded copy of the original is in the British Museum, but is imperfect, having the t.i.tle-page in facsimile from some other copy at present unknown. A reprint from another copy, possibly of a different edition, is found in Nichols' _Progresses of Elisabeth_, from which a modernized reprint was prepared by the Lee Priory Press in 1815. Finally, it appears in Mr. Bond's edition of Lyly, i. p. 471, whence I quote.

[341] See the excellent edition by W. Bang, _Materialien zur Kunde des alteren englischen Dramas_, vol. iii, 1903.

[342] All necessary apparatns for the study of this literary curiosity will be fonnd in Miss M. L. Lee's edition, 1893. The original is a MS. in the Bodleian.

[343] See A. H. Thorndike, _Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspeare_, 1901, p. 32. In _Mucedorus_ (I. i. 51) we find mention of a shepherd's disguise used 'in Lord Julio's masque.' The pa.s.sage occurs in the additional scenes of 1610, and there are numerous masques of the period that might claim to be that referred to. Fleay conjectures '_The Shepherds' Mask_ of James I.'s time,' and elsewhere identifies this t.i.tle, which he gets from Halliwell's _Dictionary_, with Jonson's masque, _Pan's Anniversary, or the Shepherds' Holiday_. This, however, was produced at earliest in 1623, and can hardly therefore have been alluded to in 1610.

Halliwell took his t.i.tle from the British Museum MS. Addit. 10,444, in which appears the music for a number of 'masques,' or dances taken from masques, and in which this particular _Shepherds' Masque_ (fol. 34^{v}) is dated 1635.

[344] The date here a.s.signed presents obvions difficultes. It would naturally mean that it was performed after March 24, 1625; but as James died after about a fortnight's serious illness on March 27, this can hardly be accepted. Nichols placed the performance conjecturally in August, 1624, for reasons which I am inclined to regard as satisfactory.

Fleay p.r.o.nounces in favour of June 19, 1623, with a confidence not altogether calculated to inspire the like feeling in others.

[345] _Lives_, Oxford, 1898, i. p. 251.

[346] 'The Dramatic Works of John Tatham,' 1879. In Maidment and Logan's _Dramatists of the Restoration_.

[347] Another parallel may be found in Shirley's _Maid's Revenge_, IV. iv, where the wounded Antonio exclaims:

Where art, Berinthia? let me breathe my last Upon thy lip; make haste, lest I die else.

The situation, however, is different. Shirley's play was licensed in 1626.

[348] In a small quarto volume, cla.s.sed as Addit. MS. 14,047. The piece has. .h.i.therto been ascribed to George Wilde, on the authority of Halliwell.

There appears to be no reason for this ascription, beyond the fact that the same volume also contains two pieces by Wilde. His name, however, does not occur in connexion with the present play, and the volume, which is in a variety of hands, certainly includes work not by him. Wilde was scholar and fellow of St. John's, chaplain to Laud, and Bishop of Londonderry after the restoration. His plays consist of the two comedies in this volume, viz. the Latin _Euphormus, sive Cupido Adultus_, acted on Feb. 5, 1634/5, and the _Hospital of Lovers_, acted before the king and queen on Aug. 29, 1636, both at St. John's. He is also said to have written another Latin play, called _Hermophus_, though nothing is known of it beyond the record of its being acted. It was most probably the same as _Euphormus_, the t.i.tles being anagrams of each other.

[349] The _Dic. Nat. Biog_. gives the date as 1635.

[350] The stage directions for these entries are interesting: (l) 'Enter An Antique [i.e. antimasque] of Sheapheards'; (2) 'enter the Masque'; (3) 'the masque enters and dances, and after wardes exit.' The terms 'masque'

and 'antimasque' appear to have been used technically for the dances of the masque proper, and of its burlesque counterpart. In this sense the words occur repeatedly in the British Museum Addit. MS. 10,444, which contains the music only. In the present case the masquers appear to have been distinct from the characters of the play.

[351] R. Brotanek, _Die englischen Maskenspiele_, 1902, p. 201. See also the edition by R. Brotanek and W. Bang, _Materialien zur Kunde des alteren Englischen Dramas,_ vol. ii, 1903; and further in the _Modern Language Quarterly_ for April, 1904, vii. p. 17.

[352] The first issue was printed 'for the use of the Author,' without date, but was received by Thomason on Sept. 1, 1656, which would appear to dispose of the fiction that c.o.x died in 1648.

[353] This letter was prefixed to the masque in the collected edition of the Poems (1645), but was written to the author without view to publication.

[354] Fifty-eight lines in decasyllabic couplets--not eighty-three lines of blank verse, as for some inexplicable reason Ma.s.son a.s.serts (i. p.

150).

[355] Specific references will be found scattered through Ma.s.son's notes.

To supplement his work I may refer to some interesting remarks on _Comus_ as a masque, and a useful comparison with Peele's play, by M. W. Samson, of Indiana University, in the introduction to his edition of Milton's Minor Poems, New York, 1901. Here, as elsewhere in the case of Milton's Works, I follow H. C. Beeching's admirable text, Oxford, 1900.

[356] Not wishing to pursue this point further, I may be allowed to refer to certain candid and judicious remaries in Saintsbury's _Elizabethan Literature_, p. 387.