But there are pa.s.sages in which these memorable lines appear as so much rich embroidery superimposed upon the baser fabric of the verse, not woven of the woof. They are in their nature more easily detached, and often form the best known and most often quoted pa.s.sages of the work. Take the first speech of the Lady, concerning which something has already been said. Here we find the lines:
They left me then, when the gray-hooded Eev"n Like a sad Votarist in Palmer"s weed Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus wain;
or again:
A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into my memory Of calling shapes, and beckning shadows dire, And airy tongues, that syllable mens names On Sands, and Sh.o.a.rs, and desert Wildernesses;
or yet again:
Was I deceiv"d, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
We have the song:
Sweet Echo, sweetest Nymph that liv"st unseen Within thy airy sh.e.l.l By slow Meander"s margent green, And in the violet imbroider"d vale Where the love-lorn Nightingale Nightly to thee her sad Song mourneth well.
Such lines would justly render famous any pa.s.sage in any poem in which they occurred. Nevertheless, remove them, which can be done without material injury to the sequence of the thought, and see whether in its warp and web the speech can for a moment stand comparison with that of Comus, to which it stands in direct and dramatic contraposition.
But this drawback is only incidental; through nine-tenths of the piece, perhaps, there is little or no moral preoccupation to disturb us. And here, though no doubt the poetic beauty reaches a climax in the song to Sabrina--a song for pure music certainly unsurpa.s.sed and probably unequalled by anything else that Milton ever wrote--there are others, such as "By the rushy-fringed bank," as well as less distinctively lyrical pa.s.sages, which come within measurable distance even of its perfection.
And yet, with certain noticeable exceptions, there are few pa.s.sages in which comparison with Milton"s later works will not reveal technical immaturity. This is no less true of the decasyllabic verse, when compared with the full sonority of _Lycidas_, than of the shorter measures. Take, for example, the invocation of Sabrina which follows the song previously quoted--the speech beginning:
Listen and appear to us In name of great Ocea.n.u.s.
In spite of its very great beauty there is observable at the same time a certain monotony of cadence, and an occasional want of success in the attempts to relieve it, which place the pa.s.sage distinctly below Milton"s best. And yet it seems almost ungenerous to place Milton even below himself, particularly when in the very speech we are criticizing we are brought face to face with two such flawless lines as those on "fair Ligea"s golden comb",
Wherwith she sits on diamond rocks Sleeking her soft alluring locks--
lines which antic.i.p.ate and rival the perfection of rhythmic modulation in _L"Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_[358].
III
There remains to inquire what influence of pastoral tradition is traceable in the wider field of the romantic drama, whether in individual scenes and characters, or more vaguely in general tone and sentiment; and, finally, to consider for a moment the critical expression given by writers of various dates to the sentimental philosophy of life which went under the name of pastoralism in fashionable circles.
The number of plays in which definite pastoral elements can be traced is surprisingly small, even when every allowance has been made for the fact that we have already included in our examination several pieces which come but doubtfully within the fold. The spirit of the romantic drama, instinct with st.u.r.dy life, had little in common with the artificial and unreal sentiment of a tradition which had almost ceased to pretend to a basis in the emotions of natural humanity. The result was, as might be expected, that when the drama introduced characters of a nominally pastoral type, they were either direct transcripts from actual life, deliberately ignoring conventional tradition, or else specifie borrowings from that tradition, introduced with full consciousness of its fashionable unreality, and using that unreality for a definite dramatic purpose. Thus, although the basis of pastoralism is found in non-traditional garb, and though pastoralism itself is found as the subject of dramatic treatment, yet, so far as the introduction of individual scenes and characters is concerned, it is seldom possible to say that pastoral has influenced the romantic drama in any sensible degree.
A certain number of plays, presumably of a more or less pastoral nature, have perished. Thus no trace remains of the _Lusus Pastorales_ licensed to Richard Jones in 1565, the nature of which can be only vaguely conjectured. The early date of the entry renders it important, and it is much to be regretted that the work should have perished, since it might have thrown very interesting light upon the condition of pastoralism in England previous to the appearance of the _Shepherd"s Calender_. Most probably, however, the piece, whatever it may have been, was composed in Latin. We also have to lament the non-survival of a _Phillida and Corin_, which, we learn from the Revels" accounts, was acted by the Queen"s men before the court, at Greenwich, on St. Stephen"s day, 1584. This again would be an interesting piece to possess, since the t.i.tle suggests a purely pastoral composition contemporary with Peele"s mythological play.
On February 28, 1592, Lord Strange"s men performed a piece at the Rose, the t.i.tle of which is given by Henslowe as "clorys & orgasto," presumably _Chloris and Ergasto_. It was an old play, probably dating from some years earlier. Whether "a pastorall plesant Commedie of Robin Hood and little John," entered to Edward White in the Stationers" Register, on May 14, 1594, could have justified its t.i.tle may be questioned, but it is curious as suggesting an antic.i.p.ation of Jonson"s experiment. Again, on July 17, 1599, George Chapman received of Philip Henslowe forty shillings, in earnest of a "Pastorall ending in a Tragydye," which, however, was apparently never finished. Possibly our loss is not great, for Chapman"s talents hardly lay in this line; but a tragical ending to a play of the pure pastoral type would have been something of a novelty, and the early date would also have lent it some interest. Yet another play known to us solely from Henslowe"s accounts is the _Arcadian Virgin_, on which Chettle and Haughton were at work for the Admiral"s men in December, 1599, and for which they received sums amounting in all to fifteen shillings. The t.i.tle suggests that the play may have been founded on the story of Atalanta, but it was probably not completed. Ben Jonson"s _May Lord_, which we know only through the notes left by Drummond of his conversations, was almost certainly not dramatic, though critics have always accepted it as such; but the same authority records that Jonson at the time of his visit to Hawthornden was contemplating a fisher-play, the scene to be laid on the sh.o.r.es of Loch Lomond. There is no evidence that the scheme ever reached a more mature stage. Finally, I may mention a play ent.i.tled _Alba_, a Latin pastoral, which incurred the royal displeasure when performed before James and his consort in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1605. The historian of the visit, quoted by Nichols, says that "It was a pastoral, much like one which I have seen in King"s College, Cambridge, but acted far worse." The allusion is presumably to the Latin translation of the _Pastor fido_. The cause of offence was the appearance of "five or six men almost naked," who no doubt represented satyrs.
To what extent these plays were of a pastoral character must, of course, be matter of conjecture. They may have been pastoral plays of a more or less regular type, they may have been mythological dramas, or they may have been distinguished from the ordinary run of romantic compositions by a few incidental traits of pastoralism only. Not a few pieces of the latter description have been preserved, pieces in which definite traces of pastoral are to be found, but which cannot as a whole be included in the kind.
We have already had occasion to note the very slight pastoral influence which exists in the short masques or dialogues of Thomas Heywood, in spite of the opportunity afforded by their mythological character. The same may be noticed in the plays in which he drew his subject from cla.s.sical legend. _Love"s Mistress_ is the appropriate and attractive t.i.tle of a dramatization of the last-born fancy of the mythopoeic spirit of Greece, Apuleius" tale of Cupid and Psyche. The early editions add to the t.i.tle the further designation of "The Queen"s Masque." The work is indeed a composite piece, a masque grown into a play through the accretion of foreign matter, and was probably in its original state a far simpler composition than it now appears. The writing is in a dainty vein, and had the piece been completed in a manner consonant with the simple and idyllic grace of the earlier scenes, it would have been no such unequal companion to Peele"s _Arraignment of Paris_. What the play contains of pastoral belongs to one of the accretions. It is a rustic element in the interludes, satiric and farcical, supplied by a country clown, some shepherds, and "a shee Swaine," Amarillis. In his _Ages_ the pastoral element shrinks to an occasional dance and song. Thus in the _Golden Age_ the satyrs and nymphs sing a song in honour of Diana, which introduces the disguised Jupiter in his courtship of Calisto. In the _Silver Age_, again, the rape of Proserpine by Pluto is preluded by a song of "a company of Swaines, and country Wenches" in honour of Ceres.
An unkind and quite worthless tradition, based on a ma.n.u.script note in an old copy, has connected Peele"s name with the lengthy and tedious drama of _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes_. It was admitted into the canon of Peele"s works by Dyce, and though Mr. Bullen differed from his predecessor as to the justness of the ascription, he retained it in his edition. We find in it a coa.r.s.e, dialect-speaking rustic, named Corin, who at one point succours Clyomon, and with whom Neronis, daughter of the King and Queen of the Strange Marshes, seeks service in the disguise of a boy. Apart from his name and the profession of shepherd he is a mere countryman, with nothing to connect him with pastoral tradition, though the princess"
action finds, of course, abundant parallels therein. The _Old Wives"
Tale_, printed as "by G. P.," and of which there is no reason to question Peele"s authorship, connects itself with pastoral chiefly through the already mentioned parallel which it affords to _Comus_. It also antic.i.p.ates, in a song of harvesters, the introduction of the "sunburnt sicklemen" of the _Tempest_ masque.
At a later date we find Shirley in his _Love Tricks_ introducing two sisters who leave their home and, taking the disguise of shepherd and shepherdess, dwell among the country folk in the fields and pastures, whither they are followed by their lovers. There are pa.s.sages which reveal a genuine pastoral tone, such as Shirley could readily adopt when it suited his purpose, and it is not only in the measure that the tradition reveals itself in such lines as:
A shepherd is a king whose throne Is a mossy mountain, on Whose top we sit, our crook in hand, Like a sceptre of command, Our subjects, sheep grazing below, Wanton, frisking to and fro. (IV. ii.)
Again, in the _Grateful Servant_ we have a show of "Satyres pursuing Nymphes; they dance together. Exeunt Satyres; three Nymphes seem to intreat [Lodowick] to goe with them," accompanied by a song of Silva.n.u.s.
Yet slighter traces of pastoral are to be occasionally found in other plays of the period. Thus in Brome"s _Love-Sick Court_ the swains and nymphs are led in the dance by characters who have sought and found a cure for love among the country folk. In John Jones" _Adrasta_, the scene of which is laid at Florence, several of the characters disguise themselves in pastoral attire, and there is one definitely pastoral scene in which they appear in the midst of real shepherds and shepherdesses. The play was printed in 1635, and it is noticeable as containing, in the pastoral scene, satire on the Puritans resembling that introduced by Jonson in the _Sad Shepherd_. So again, similar disguisings, though of a less p.r.o.nouncedly pastoral character, occur in the anonymous _Knave in Grain_, in which the scene is Venice. Satyrs and nymphs, clowns and maids, join in a song in Nashe"s curious allegorical show ent.i.tled _Summer"s Last Will and Testament_; nymphs and satyrs appear in the interludes of Dekker"s _Old Fortunatus_; Silva.n.u.s, with nymphs and satyrs, perform a sort of interlude with song in the anonymous _Wily Beguiled_; and, lastly, we have the morris danced by the countrymen and wenches who accompany the jailor"s daughter in the _Two n.o.ble Kinsmen_.
The wider influence of tone and spirit is, in the nature of the case, far more difficult to determine. It is possible that some court-plays may show the influence of the artificial arrangement of characters and the conventional play of motives characteristic of the pastoral drama. But it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to a.n.a.lyse with certainty such structural peculiarities as these, still more so to a.s.sign them with confidence to their proper origin. Many characteristics which one might at first sight put down to the influence of the pastoral drama are, in reality, far more likely to be due to that of the comic stage of Italy in general. But while it would be rash to a.s.sert that the pastoral plays in this country exercised any wide influence over the regular drama, there can be no question such an influence was exercised to a very appreciable degree by pastoral poetry in general. I am not thinking of the romances at this moment, for as we have already seen it was the non-pastoral elements in the pastoral novel that exerted such influence as can be traced over the drama, but rather of the pastoral ideal and the pastoral mode in general, as expressed either in the lyric, the eclogue, or the drama. In this the drama shared an influence which was also exercised on other departments of literature. Numerous songs might be quoted from the scenes of the Elizabethan dramatists in support of this contention; while, on the other hand, we also find dramatic and descriptive pa.s.sages the idyllic quality of which may not unreasonably be referred to a pastoral source.
This tendency of the drama to absorb pastoral elements rather from the lyric and the idyll than from regular plays in that kind is significant.
It is the acknowledgement of an important fact, which pastoralism failed to recognize; namely, that as the expression of the pastoral idea gained in complexity of artistic structure it lost in vitality. The pastoral drama, born late in time, was the outcome of very especial circ.u.mstances, emphatically the child of its age, and little calculated to serve the artistic requirements of any other. Once the creative impulse that gave it life was withdrawn the falsity of the kind as a form of art became manifest; and though it lingered on for many years its life was but that of a fashionable toy, with little or no hold over the vital literature of its day. The popularity of the pastoral eclogue or idyll was of far longer duration. Though the form was more or less definitely conditioned, it had less of the structural rigidity of the drama, it brought its subject less into contact with the hard limitations of reality, and, which may also have been important, brought it less into comparison with other subject-matter employing the same or a closely a.n.a.logous form. Thus it was better able to adapt itself to the tastes and requirements of various ages, and found favour in such vastly different societies as those for which Theocritus, Mantuan, Spenser, and Pope produced their works in this kind. Even here, however, the simple sensuous ideal was too much hampered by the ungenuine paraphernalia which the conventions of these various societies had gathered round it to take rank among the permanent and inevitable forms of literary art. This was granted to the lyric alone. It was through the lyric that the pastoral ideal and pastoral colouring most deeply penetrated and influenced existing forms; for the lyric, the freest and most unconditioned of all poetical kinds, the least tied to the circ.u.mstances and limitations of the actual world, was particularly fitted to extract the fragrance from the pastoral ideal without raising any unseasonable questions as to its rational or actual possibility.
It was a lover and his la.s.s That o"er the green cornfield did pa.s.s--
this is the essential; and we ask no more if we are wise. The very essence, be it remembered, of the pastoral ideal is no more than "love _in vacuo_." And this the lyric alone can give us.
But there is one play which more than any other ill.u.s.trates the nature of the influence exerted by pastoral tradition over the romantic drama and the relation subsisting between the two. This is _As You Like It_; for if in one sense Shakespeare was but following Lodge in the traditional blending of pastoral elements with those of court and chivalry, in another sense he has in this play revealed his opinion of, and pa.s.sed judgement upon, the whole pastoral ideal. This must necessarily happen whenever a great creative artist adopts, for reasons of his own, and takes into his work any merely outward and formal convention. It was rarely that in his plays Shakespeare showed any inclination to connect himself even remotely with pastoral tradition. The _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ traces its origin, indeed, to the _Diana_ of Montemayor; but all vestige of pastoral colouring has vanished, and Shakespeare may even have been himself ignorant of the parentage of the story he treated. A more apparent element of pastoral found its way many years later into the _Winters Tale_; but it is characteristic of the shepherd scenes of that play, written in the full maturity of Shakespeare"s genius, that, in spite of their origin in Greene"s romance of _Pandosto_, they owe nothing of their treatment to pastoral tradition, nothing to convention, nothing to aught save life as it mirrored itself in the magic gla.s.s of the poet"s imagination. They represent solely the idealization of Shakespeare"s own observation, and in spite of the marvellous and subtle glamour of golden sunlight that overspreads the whole, we may yet recognize in them the consummation towards which many sketches of natural man and woman, as he found them in the English fields and lanes, seem in a less certain and conscious manner to be striving in plays of an earlier date. It was characteristic of Shakespeare, as it has been of other great artists, to introduce into his early writings incidental sketches which serve as studies for further work of a later period. In much the same manner the varied, but at times uncertain, melody of the early love comedies seems to aspire towards the full sonority and magic of lyric feeling and utterance in _Romeo and Juliet_.
Thus it is neither to the mellow autumn of his art, when he had cast aside as unworthy all the trivialities of convention, nor yet to the storm and stress of adolescence, the immaturity of pettiness and exaggeration, that we must look if we would discover Shakespeare"s att.i.tude towards pastoral tradition. _As You Like It_ belongs to his middle period. It will be remembered, from what has been said on an earlier page, that in this play Shakespeare substantially followed the story of Rosalind as narrated by Lodge, to whom we owe the introduction of a pastoral element into the old tale of Gamelyn. The pastoral characters of the play may be roughly a.n.a.lysed as follows. Celia and Rosalind, the latter disguised as a youth, are courtly characters; Phebe and Silvius represent the polished Arcadians of pastoral tradition; while Audrey and William combine the character of farcical rustics with the inimitable humanity which distinguishes Shakespeare"s creations. It is noteworthy that this last pair is the dramatist"s own addition to the cast. Thus we have all the various types--all the degrees or variations of idealization--brought side by side and co-existent in the fairyland of the poet"s fancy. The details of the play are too well known for there to be any call to outrage the delicate interweaving of character and incident by translating the perfect scenes into clumsy prose. Nor would such a.n.a.lysis throw any light upon Shakespeare"s att.i.tude towards pastoral. That must be sought elsewhere. We may seek it in the fanciful mingling of ideals and idealizations--of courtly masking, of the conventional naturalism of polished dreamers, and of a rusticity more genuine at once and more sympathetic than that of Lorenzo, all of which act by their very natures as touchstones to one another. We may seek it in the uncertainty and hovering between belief and scepticism, earnest and play, reality and imagination--such as can only exist in art, or in life when life approaches to the condition of an art--which we find in the scenes where Orlando courts his mistress in the person of the youth who is but his mistress in disguise. We may seek it lastly in the manner in which the firm structure of the piece is fashioned of the non-pastoral elements; in the happiness of the art by which the pastoral incidents and business appear but as so much fair and graceful ornament upon this structure, bringing with them a smack of the free, rude, countryside, or a faint perfume of the polished Utopia of courtly makers. It is here that we may trace Shakespeare"s appreciation of pastoral, as a delicate colouring, an old-world fragrance, a flower from wild hedgerows or cultured garden, a thing of grace and beauty, to be gathered, enjoyed, and forgotten, unsuited in its evanescent charm to be the serious business of art or life.
On this note, the realization at once of the delicate loveliness and of the unsubstantiality of the pastoral ideal, we may close our survey of its growth and blossoming in our dramatic literature, and before finally turning from the tradition which fascinated so many generations of European artists, pause for one moment to inquire of the critical expression it has received at the hands of more philosophical writers.
We have already seen how in the early days of modern pastoral composition Boccaccio, summing up the previous history of the kind, found in allegory and topical allusion its _raison d"etre_. We have seen how in our own tongue Drayton expressed a similar view, and how Fletcher adopted in theory at least a more naturalistic position. This antagonism which runs through the whole of pastoral theory is really dependent upon two questions which have not always been clearly distinguished. There is, namely, the question of the allegorical or topical interpretation of the poems, and there is the question of the rusticity or at least simplicity of the form and language. It is possible to advocate the introduction of Boccaccio"s "nonnulli sensus" and yet demand that, whatever the esoteric interpretation of which the poem may be capable, the outward expression shall be appropriate to the apparent condition of the speakers; while on the other hand it is possible to confine the meaning to the evident and unsophisticated sense of the poem, while allowing such a degree of idealization in the language and sentiments of the characters as to differentiate them widely from the actual rustics of real life. The former of these positions is that a.s.sumed by Spenser in the _Shepherd"s Calender_, however much he may have failed in logical consistency; the second is that which, in spite of much incidental matter of a topical nature, underlies Ta.s.so"s masterpiece in the kind. It is with the second of the above questions that critics have in the main been concerned. They have, namely, as a rule, tacitly though not explicitly recognized the fact that a poem whose value depends exclusively upon an esoteric interpretation has no meaning whatever as a work of art, while if artistic value can be a.s.signed to the primary meaning of the work, it is a matter of indifference aesthetically whether there be an esoteric interpretation or not.
Every writer, I think, who comes within the limits of pastoral as usually understood, has found a certain idealization and a certain refinement necessary in bringing rustic swains into the domain of art. That any such process is inherently necessary to produce an artistic result there is no reason whatever to suppose; it may even be rationally questioned whether it is necessary to ensure the result falling within the recognizable field of pastoral; but neither of these considerations affects the historical fact. It is commonly admitted that among pastoral writers Theocritus adhered most closely to nature; yet no one has been found to describe him as a realist, whether in method or intention. But though this process of idealization is practically universal, few poets have confessed to it.
Only occasionally an author, writing according to the demands of his age or of his individual taste, has been alive to what appeared to be a contradiction between his creations and what he mistook for the fundamental conditions of the kind in which he created. This was the case with Ta.s.so, and he sought to reconcile the two by making Amore in the prologue declare:
Spirer n.o.bil sensi a" rozzi petti, Raddolcir nelle lor lingue il suono, Perche, ovunque i" mi sia, io sono Amore, Ne" pastori non men, che negli eroi; E la disagguaglianza de" soggetti, Come a me piace, agguaglio.
This served, of course, no other purpose than to salve the author"s artistic conscience, since it is perfectly evident that the polished civility of his characters belongs to them by nature, and is not in any way an external importation. The remark, however, is interesting in respect of the philosophy of love as a civilizing power, which we have seen constantly recurring from the days of Boccaccio onward. Ben Jonson expressed himself sharply on this subject, with respect to Guarini and Sidney, in his conversations with Drummond. "That Guarini, in his Pastor Fido, keept not decorum, in making Shepherds speek as well as himself could.... That Sidney did not keep a decorum in making everyone speak as well as himself."[359] The critical foundation of these censures in an _a priori_ definition of pastoral is obvious, and they are more interesting for their authorship than for their intrinsic merit. It would be curious to know how Jonson defended such a character as his Sad Shepherd--but his views had time to alter.
It is to the critics of the late years of the seventeenth century and early ones of the eighteenth that we owe the attempt to formulate a theory of pastoral composition. The attempt has not for us any great importance.
All the work we have been considering had appeared, and the vast majority of it had pa.s.sed into oblivion, before the French critics first engaged upon the task. Nor has the attempt much intrinsic interest. The theories of individual writers such as those already mentioned are of value, as showing the critical mood in which they themselves created; but these, and still more the theories of pure critics, are of no importance, either in the field of abstract critical theory or of historical inquiry.
Fontenelle, offended at the odour of Theocritus" hines, Rapin, with his Jesuitical prudicity and ethico-literary theories of propriety, are not the kind of thinkers to advance critical and historical science. Yet it was to their school that the far greater English critics of the early eighteenth century belonged. Their work consists for the most part of various combinations of _a priori_ definition and arbitrary rules, based on the notion of propriety. Thus Pope in the _Discourse on Pastoral_, prefixed to his eclogues in 1717, writes: "A pastoral is an imitation of the action of a shepherd, or one considered under that character.... If we would copy nature, it may be useful to take this idea along with us, that pastoral is an image of what they call the golden age. So that we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceived then to have been, when the best of men followed the employment." Shallow formalism this; but what else was to be expected from Alexander Pope at the age of sixteen? His contemporaries, however, and successors down to Johnson, took his solemn vacuity in all seriousness.
Steele, writing in the _Guardian_ in 1713 (Nos. 22, &c.), follows much the same lines. He speaks of "Innocence, Simplicity, and whatever else has been laid down as distinguishing Marks of Pastoral." Again, the reader is informed that "Whoever can bear these"--namely, certain _concetti_ from Ta.s.so and Guarini--"may be a.s.sured he hath no Taste for Pastoral." We find the same pedantic and ignorant objections to Sannazzaro"s piscatorials as were later advanced by Johnson: "who can pardon him," loftily queries the censor, "for his Arbitrary Change of the sweet Manners and pleasing objects of the Country, for what in their own Nature are uncomfortable and dreadful?" An afternoon"s idling along the cliffs of Sorento or the sh.o.r.e of Posilipo will supply a sufficient answer to such ignorant conceit as this. Lastly, in the same familiar strain, but with all the pompous weight of undisputed dictatorship, we find Dr. Johnson a generation later laying down in the _Rambler_ that a pastoral is "a Poem in which any action or Pa.s.sion is represented by its Effects upon a Country Life.... In Pastoral, as in other Writings, Chast.i.ty of sentiment ought doubtless to be observed, and Purity of Manners to be represented; not because the Poet is confined to the Images of the golden Age"--this is a rap at Pope--"but because, having the subject in his own Choice, he ought always to consult the Interest of Virtue." The one fixed idea which runs throughout these criticisms is that pastoral in its nature somehow is, or should be, other than what it is in fact[360].
This is a view which very rightly meets with small mercy at the hands of the modern historical school of criticism. A last fragment of the h.o.a.ry fallacy may be traced in Dr. Sommer"s remark: "Die Theorie des Hirtengedichtes ist kurz in folgenden Worten ausgedruckt: schlichte und ungekunstelte Darstellung des Hirtenlebens und wahre Naturschilderung." It cannot be too emphatically laid down that there is and can be no such thing as a "theory" of pastoral, or, indeed, of any other artistic form dependent, like it, upon what are merely accidental conditions.[361] As I started by pointing out at the beginning of this work, pastoral is not capable of definition by reference to any essential quality; whence it follows that any theory of pastoral is not a theory of pastoral as it exists, but as the critic imagines that it ought to exist. "Everything is what it is, and not another thing," and pastoral is what the writers of pastoral have made it.
It may be convenient before closing this chapter to summarize briefly the results of our inquiry into the history of pastoral tradition on the pre-restoration stage in England, without the elaboration of detail and the many necessary though minor distinctions unavoidable in the foregoing account. We saw, in the first place, that the idea of a literature dealing with the humours and romance of farm and sheepcot was not wholly alien to national English literature; but, on the contrary, that the shepherd plays of the religions cycles, the popular ballads, and a few of the Scots poets of the time of Henryson, all alike furnish verse which may be regarded as the index of the readiness of the popular mind to receive the introduction of a formal pastoral tradition. Next, preceding, as in Italy, the introduction or evolution of a regular pastoral drama, we find a series of mythological plays embodying incidentally elements of pastoral, written for the amus.e.m.e.nt of court circles, and founded on the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. In these the nature of the pastoral scenes appear to be conditioned, in so far as they are independent of their cla.s.sical source, partly by the already existing eclogue, and partly perhaps by the native impulse mentioned above[362]. All this antic.i.p.ates the rise of the pastoral drama proper. The foreign pastoral tradition reached England through three main channels. The earliest of these, the eclogue, was imitated by Spenser from Marot, who, while depending somewhat more closely, perhaps, than was usual upon the ancients, and adding to his work a certain original flavour, yet belonged essentially to the tradition of the allegorical pastoral which took its fashion from the works of Petrarch and Mantuan. The second, and for the English drama vastly the more important channel, was the pastoral-chivalric romance borrowed by Sidney from Montemayor, the great exponent of the Spanish school, which was, however, based upon the Italian work of Sannazzaro. The third was the Arcadian drama of the Ferrarese court, which was imitated, chiefly from Guarini, by Samuel Daniel. Thus, of the three forms, verse, prose, and drama, adopted by England from Italy, the first came by way of France, the second by way of Spain, while the third alone was taken direct[363]. These three blended with the pre-existing mythological play, and with the traditions of the romantic drama generally, to produce the pastoral drama of the English stage. The influence ot the eclogue was on the whole slight, but to it we may reasonably ascribe a share of the topical and allusive elements, when these do not appear a.s.signable either to the Arcadian drama or to masque literature generally.[364] The influence of the mythological drama, again, is not of the first importance, and is also very restricted in its occurrence; the _Maid"s Metamorphosis_ is the most striking example. The three main influences at work in fashioning the pastoral drama upon the English stage were, therefore, the Arcadian drama of Italy, the Sidneian romance borrowed from Spain, and the native tradition of the romantic drama.[365] But we have seen that the most important examples of dramatic pastoral in this country, though to some extent conditioned like the rest by the above-mentioned influences, were the outcome of direct and conscious experiment. In part, at least, the earliest, and by far the most simple, was the work of Samuel Daniel himself, which aimed at nothing beyond the mere transference of the Italian tradition unaltered on to the English stage. A different aim underlay the attempts alike of Fletcher and Randolph; the combination, namely, of the traditions of the Arcadian and romantic dramas. This common end they sought, however, by very diverse means. Fletcher, while adopting the machinery and methods of the popular drama, left the ideal and imaginary content practically untouched, and even chose a plot which in its structure resembled those familiar in the romantic drama even less than did Guarini"s own. Randolph, on the other hand, while preserving much of the cla.s.sical mechanism as he found it in Guarini, altered the whole tone and character of the piece to correspond to the greater complexity of interest, more genial humour, and more genuine romanticism of the English stage. Lastly, we found Jonson cutting himself almost entirely adrift from the tradition of Italian Arcadianism, and seeking to create an essentially national pastoral by the combination of shepherd lads and girls, trans.m.u.ted from actuality by a natural process of refinement akin to that of Theocritus, with the magic and fairy lore of popular fancy, and with the characters of Robin and Marian and all the essentially English tradition of Sherwood. These three chief experiments in the production of an English pastoral drama which should rival that of Italy stand, together with Daniel"s two plays, apart from the general run of pieces of the kind.
It is also worth notice that they are all alike unaffected by the Sidneian romance. The remaining plays which form the great bulk of the contribution made by English drama to pastoral, and among which we must look for such dramatic pastoral tradition as existed, are almost all characterized by a more or less prevalent court atmosphere, disguisings and adventures in shepherd"s garb forming the mainstay of the plot, while the genuine pastoral elements supply little beyond the background of the action.
Into the post-restoration pastorals it is no part of my present scheme to enter. They flourished for a while under the wing of the fashionable romance of France, but were almost more than their predecessors the things of artificial convention, having their form and being in a world whose only pre-occupations were the pangs and transports of sensibility. They occupy by right a small corner in the _Carte du Tendre_. Nor do I propose to do more than allude in pa.s.sing to Allan Ramsay"s _Gentle Shepherd_. In spite of the almost unvarying praise which has been lavished upon this "Scots pastoral," and even though the characters may have some points of humanity in common with actual Lothian rustics, the whole composition of the piece can scarcely be p.r.o.nounced less artificial than that of the Arcadian drama itself, and the play has undoubtedly shared in the exaggerated esteem which has fallen to the lot of dialectal literature generally. The tradition lingered on throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century. Goethe in his youth, while under the French influence, composed the _Laune des Verliebten_, and in his later days at Weimar the _Fischerin_, a piscatorial adapted for representation on an open-air stage, in which the interest was purely spectacular. As a general rule, however, pastoral inanity seldom strayed beyond the limits of the opera.
That the pastoral should flourish by the side of the romantic drama was not to be expected. It was impossible in England, as it was impossible in Spain. In either case it might now and again achieve a mild success at court, or under some exceptional conditions of representation; it never held the popular stage. No literature based on the accidents of a special form of civilization, or upon a set of artificially imagined conditions, can ever hope to outlive the civilization or the fashion that gave it birth. "Love _in vacuo_" failed to arouse the interest of general mankind.
Every literature of course wears the livery of its age, but where the body beneath is instinct with human life it can change its dress and pa.s.s unchanged itself from one order of things to another; where the livery is all, the form cannot a second time be galvanized into life. Pastoral, relying for its distinctive features upon the accidents rather than the essentials of life, failed to justify its pretentions as a serious and independent form of art. The trivial toy of a courtly coterie, it attempted to arrogate to itself the position of a philosophy, and in so doing exposed itself to the ridicule of succeeding ages. Men with a stern purpose in life turned wearily from the sickly amours of romantic poets who dreamed that human happiness found its place in the economy of the world. They left it to a rout of melodious idlers to imagine unto themselves a state in which serious importance should attach to the gracious things of sentiment and the loves of youth and maiden.