III
After translation the next process in logical sequence is direct imitation. Although it is true that the influence of Tasso and Guarini may be traced either directly or indirectly in the great majority of the English pastorals composed during the first half of the seventeenth century, there are nevertheless two plays only in which that influence can be regarded as completely paramount, and to which the term 'imitation' can be with full justification applied. These are the two pastorals by Samuel Daniel, historian and court-laureate, namely the Queen's Arcadia, 'A Pastorall Trage-comedie presented to her Majestie and her Ladies, by the Universitie of Oxford in Christs Church, in August last. 1605[249],' and Hymen's Triumph, which formed part of the Queen's 'magnificent intertainement of the Kings most excellent Majestie' on the occasion of the marriage in 1614 of Robert Ker, Earl of Roxburgh, and Mistress Jean Drummond, sister of the Earl of Perth[250].
The earlier of these pieces displays alike the greater dependence on Italian models and the less intrinsic merit, whether from a poetic or dramatic point of view. It is, indeed, in its apparent carelessness of the most elementary necessities of dramatic construction, distinctly retrograde as compared with these models themselves. In the first scene we are introduced to two old Arcadians who hold long discourse concerning the degeneracy of the age. The simple manners of earlier times are forsaken, constant quarrels occur, faith is no longer untarnished nor modesty secure. In the hope of probing to the root of the evil the two determine to hide close at hand and so overhear the conversations of the younger swains and shepherdesses. The fact is that Arcadia has recently been invaded by a gang of rascally adventurers from Corinth and elsewhere: Techne, 'a subtle wench,' who under pretence of introducing the latest fashions of the towns corrupts the nymphs; Colax, whose courtier-airs find an easy prey in the hearts of the country-wenches; Alcon, a quacksalver, who introduces tobacco to ruin the constitutions of the shepherds; Lincus, 'a petty-fogger,' who breeds litigation among the simple folk; and lastly Pistophanax, who seeks to undermine the worship of Pan. Colax has, it appears, already abused the love of Daphne, and won that of Dorinda from her swain Mirtillus; Techne has sown jealousy between the lovers Palaemon and Silvia; while Lincus has set Montanus and Acrysius by the ears over the possession of a bit of land. Ail the plotting is overheard by the two concealed shepherds, who when the crisis is reached come forward, call together the Arcadians, expose the machinations of the evil-doers, and procure their banishment from the country. Such an automatic solution is obviously incompatible with the smallest dramatic interest in the plot; it is not a dénoûment at all, properly speaking, but a severing of the skein after Alexander's manner, and it is impossible to feel any emotion at the tragic complications when all the while the sword lies ready for the operation.
The main amorous action centres round Cloris, beloved of Amyntas and Carinus, the latter of whom is in his turn loved by Amarillis. Carinus' hopes are founded on the fact that, in imitation of Tasso's Aminta, he has rescued Cloris from the hands of a satyr, while Amyntas bases his upon certain signs of favour shown him. Colax, however, also falls in love with the nymph, and induces Techne to give her tryst in a cave, where he may then have an opportunity of finding her alone. Techne, hereupon, in the hope of winning Amyntas' affection for herself if she can make him think Cloris unworthy, directs him to the spot where she has promised to meet the unsuspecting maiden. This is obviously borrowed from the Pastor fido; indeed, Techne is none other than Corisca under a new name, and it was no doubt she who suggested to Daniel the introduction of the other agents of civilization. Amyntas, on seeing Cloris emerge from the cave in company with Colax, at once concludes her guilt, and in spite of all Techne's efforts to restrain him rushes off with the intention of putting an end to his life. Techne, perceiving the ill-success of her plot, tells Cloris of Amyntas' resolve. We here return to the imitation of Tasso: Cloris, like that poet's Silvia, begins by pretending incredulity and indifference, but being at length convinced agrees to accompany Techne in search of the desperate swain. Daniel has produced what is little better than a parody of the scene in his model. Not content with placing in the girl's mouth the preposterous excuse:
If it be done my help will come too late,
And I may stay, and save that labour here, (IV. iv.[251])
he has spun out the dialogue, already over-long in the original, to an altogether inordinate and ludicrous extent. When the pair at last come upon the unhappy lover they find him lying insensible, a horn of poison by him. The necessary sequel is reported by Mirtillus:
For we perceiv'd how Love and Modestie
With sev'rall Ensignes, strove within her cheekes
Which should be Lord that day, and charged hard
Upon each other, with their fresh supplies
Of different colours, that still came, and went,
And much disturb'd her, but at length dissolv'd
Into affection, downe she casts her selfe
Upon his senselesse body, where she saw
The mercy she had brought was come too late:
And to him calls: 'O deare Amyntas, speake,
Look on me, sweete Amyntas, it is I
That calles thee, I it is, that holds thee here,
Within those armes thou haste esteem'd so deare.' (V. ii.)
Amyntas' subsequent recovery is reported in the same strain. The reader will remember the lines in which Tasso described a similar scene. And yet, in spite of the identity of the situations and even of the close similarity of the language, the tone and atmosphere of the two passages are essentially different; for if Daniel's treatment of the scene, which is typical of a good deal of his work, has the power to call a tear to the eye of sensibility, his sentiment, divested as it is of the Italian's subtle sensuousness, appears perfectly innocuous and at times not a little ridiculous.
Cloris and Amyntas are now safe enough, and Carinus has the despised but faithful Amarillis to console him. The other pairs of lovers need not detain us further than to note that their adventures are equally borrowed from Tasso and Guarini. Silvia relates how, wounded by her 'cruelty,' Palaemon sought to imitate Aminta by throwing himself from a cliff, but was prevented by her timely relenting. Amarillis fondles Carinus's dog, and is roughly upbraided by its master in the same manner as her prototype Dorinda in the Pastor fido.
Amid much that is commonplace in the verse occur not a few graceful passages, while Daniel is at times rather happy in the introduction of certain sententious utterances in keeping with the conventionality of the pastoral form. Thus a caustic swain remarks of a girl's gift:
Poore withred favours, they might teach thee know,
That shee esteemes thee, and thy love as light
As those dead flowers, shee wore but for a show,
The day before, and cast away at night;
and to a lover:
When such as you, poore, credulous, devout,
And humble soules, make all things miracles
Your faith conceives, and vainely doe convert
All shadowes to the figure of your hopes. (I. ii.)
Colax is a subtle connoisseur in love:
Some thing there is peculiar and alone
To every beauty that doth give an edge
To our desires, and more we still conceive
In that we have not, then in that we have.
And I have heard abroad where best experience
And wit is learnd, that all the fairest choyce
Of woemen in the world serve but to make
One perfect beauty, whereof each brings part. (I. iii.)
The historical importance of the Queen's Arcadia, as the first play to exhibit on the English stage the direct and unequivocal influence of the Italian pastoral drama, is evident to the critic in retrospect, and it is not impossible that it may have lent some extraneous interest to the performance even in the eyes of contemporaries; but the zest of the play for a court audience in the early years of the reign of James I was very possibly the satirical element. The shadowy fiction of Arcadia and its age of gold quickly vanished when the actual or fancied evils of the day were exposed to the lash. The abuse of the practice of taking tobacco flattered the prejudices of the king; the quack and the dishonest lawyer were stock butts of contemporary satire; Colax and Techne, the he and she coney-catchers, have maintained their fascination for all ages. Pistophanax, the disseminator of false doctrine, who had actually presumed to reason with the priests concerning the mysteries of Pan, was perhaps the favourite object of contemporary invective. The term 'atheist' covered a multitude of sins. This character appears in the final scene only, and even there he is a mute but for one speech. He is indeed treated in a somewhat different manner from the other subjects of satire in the play. Thus the discovery that he is wearing a mask to hide the natural ugliness of his features passes altogether the bounds of dramatic satire, and carries us back to the allegorical manner of the middle ages. Apart from these figures, who bear upon them the form and pressure of the time, and who are, it must be remembered, the main-spring of the action, there is little of note to fix the attention in this first fruit of the Arcadian spirit in the English drama.
In every way superior to its predecessor is the second venture in the kind made by Daniel after an interval of nearly a decade. Instead of being a patchwork of motives and situations borrowed from the Italian, and pieced together with more or less ingenuity, Hymen's Triumph is as a whole an original composition. The play is preceded by a prologue in which Daniel departs from his models in employing the dialogue form, the speakers being Hymen, Avarice, Envy, and Jealousy[252]. In the opening scene we find Thirsis lamenting the loss of his love Silvia, who is supposed to have been devoured by wild beasts while wandering alone upon the shore--we are once again on the sea-board of Arcadia--her rent veil and a lock of her hair being all that remains to her disconsolate lover. Their vows had been in secret owing to the match proposed by Silvia's father between her and Alexis, the son of a wealthy neighbour[253]. In reality she has been seized by pirates[254] and carried off to Alexandria, where she has lived as a slave in boy's attire for some two years. Recently an opportunity for escape having presented itself, she has returned, still disguised, to her native country, where she has entered the service of the shepherdess Cloris, waiting till the approaching marriage of Alexis with another nymph shall have made impossible the renewal of her father's former schemes. Complications now arise, for it appears that Cloris has fallen in love with Thirsis, but fears ill success in her suit, supposing him in his turn to be pining for the love of Amarillis. She employs the supposed boy to move her suit to Thirsis, and Silvia goes on her errand to court her lover for her mistress, fearing to find him already faithless to his love for her[255]. On her mission she is waylaid by the nymph Phillis, who has fallen in love with her in her male attire, careless of the love borne her by the honest but rude forester Montanus. The varying fortune of Silvia's suit on behalf of Cloris, Thirsis' faith to the memory of Silvia, Montanus' jealousy, and Phillis' shame when she finds her proffered love rejected by the boy for whom she has sacrificed her modesty, are presented in a series of scenes and discourses which do not materially advance the business in hand. Towards the end of the fourth act, however, we approach the climax, and matters begin to move. Alexis' marriage being now imminent, Silvia thinks she can venture at least to give her lover some spark of hope by narrating her story under fictitious names. This she does, making use of the transparent anagrams Isulia and Sirthis[256]. As Silvia ends her tale Montanus rushes in, determined to be revenged for the favour shown by his mistress to the supposed youth. He stabs Silvia, and carries off the garland she is wearing, believing it to be one woven by the hand of Phillis. This naturally leads to the discovery of Silvia's sex and identity, and supposing her dead, Thirsis falls in a swoon at her side. The last act is, as usual, little more than an epilogue, in which we are entertained with a long account of the recovery of the faithful lovers, thanks to the care of the wise Lamia, an elaborate passage again modelled on Tasso, but again falling far short of the poetical beauty of the original.
Taken as a whole, and partly through being unencumbered with the satyric machinery of the Queen's Arcadia, Hymen's Triumph is a distinctly lighter and more pleasing composition. At least so it appears by comparison, for Daniel everywhere takes himself and his subject with a distressing seriousness wholly unsuited to the style; we look in vain for a gleam of humour such as that which in the final chorus of the Aminta casts a reflex light over the whole play[257]. Again an advance may be observed, not only in the conduct of the plot, which moves artistically on an altogether different level, and even succeeds in arousing some dramatic interest, but likewise in the verse, which has a freer movement, and is on the whole less marred by the over-emphatic repetition of words and phrases in consecutive lines, a particularly irritating trick of the author's pastoral style, or by the monotonous cadence and painful padding of the blank verse. Daniel was emphatically one of those poets, neither few nor inconsiderable, the natural nervelessness of whose poetic diction imperatively demands the bracing restraint of rime. It is noteworthy that this applies to his verse alone; such a work as the famous Defence of Rime serves to place him once for all among the greatest masters of 'the other harmony of prose.'
Hymen's Triumph contains many more passages of notable merit than its predecessor. There is, indeed, one passage in the Queen's Arcadia which will bear comparison with anything Daniel ever wrote, but it stands in somewhat striking contrast with its surroundings. This is the opening of the speech in which Melibaeus addresses the assembled Arcadians, and well deserves quotation.
You gentle Shepheards and Inhabitors
Of these remote and solitary parts
Of Mountaynous Arcadia, shut up here
Within these Rockes, these unfrequented Clifts,
The walles and bulwarkes of our libertie,
From out the noyse of tumult, and the throng
Of sweating toyle, ratling concurrencie,
And have continued still the same and one
In all successions from antiquitie;
Whil'st all the states on earth besides have made
A thousand revolutions, and have rowl'd
From change to change, and never yet found rest,
Nor ever bettered their estates by change;
You I invoke this day in generall,
To doe a worke that now concernes us all,
Lest that we leave not to posteritie,
Th' Arcadia that we found continued thus
By our fore-fathers care who left it us. (V. iii.)
Such passages are more frequent in Hymen's Triumph. Take the description of the early love of Thirsis and Silvia, instinct with a delicacy and freshness that even Tasso might have envied[258]:
Then would we kisse, then sigh, then looke, and thus
In that first garden of our simplenesse
We spent our child-hood; but when yeeres began
To reape the fruite of knowledge, ah, how then
Would she with graver looks, with sweet stern brow,
Check my presumption and my forwardnes;
Yet still would give me flowers, stil would me shew
What she would have me, yet not have me, know. (I. i.)
Thirsis, who is the typical 'constant lover' of pastoral convention, and does
Hold it to be a most heroicke thing
To act one man, and do that part exact,
thus addresses his friend Palaemon in defence of love:
Ah, know that when you mention love, you name
A sacred mistery, a Deity,
Not understood of creatures built of mudde,
But of the purest and refined clay
Whereto th' eternall fires their spirits convey.
And for a woman, which you prize so low,
Like men that doe forget whence they are men,
Know her to be th' especiall creature, made
By the Creator as the complement
Of this great Architect[259] the world, to hold
The same together, which would otherwise
Fall all asunder; and is natures chiefe
Vicegerent upon earth, supplies her state.
And doe you hold it weakenesse then to love,
And love so excellent a miracle
As is a worthy woman? (III. iv.)
The sententious passages, the occurrence of which we previously noted in the Queen's Arcadia, likewise appear. Thus of dreams:
Alas, Medorus, dreames are vapours, which,
Ingendred with day thoughts, fall in the night,
And vanish with the morning;[260] (III. ii.)
and of thoughts:
They are the smallest peeces of the minde
That passe this narrow organ of the voyce;
The great remaine behinde in that vast orbe
Of th' apprehension, and are never borne. (III. iv.)
At times these utterances even possess a dramatic value, as where, bending over the seemingly lifeless form of his beloved Silvia, Thirsis exclaims:
And sure the gods but onely sent thee thus
To fetch me, and to take me hence with thee. (IV. v.)
The two plays we have been considering are after all very much what we should expect from their author. A poet of considerable taste, of great sweetness and some real feeling, but deficient in passion, in power of conception and strength of execution, writing for the court in the recognized rôle of court-laureate, and unexposed to the bracing influence of a really critical audience--such is Samuel Daniel as seen in his experiments in the pastoral drama. We learn from his commendatory sonnet on the 'Dymocke' Pastor fido that he had known Guarini personally in Italy, an accident which supplies an interesting link between the dramas of the two countries, and might suggest a specific incentive to the composition of his pastorals, were any such needed. So far, however, from that being the case, the only wonder is that the adventure was not made at an earlier date, a problem the most promising explanation of which may perhaps be sought in the rather conservative taste of the officiai court circle, which tended to lag behind in the general advance during the closing years of Elizabeth's reign. With the accession of James new life as well as a new spirit entered the court, and is quickly found reflected in the literary fashions in vogue. It was in 1605 that Jonson wrote in Volpone:
Here's Pastor Fido ...
... All our English writers,
I meane such, as are happy in th' Italian,
Will deigne to steale out of this author, mainely;
Almost as much, as from Montagnie:
He has so moderne, and facile a veine,
Fitting the time, and catching the court-eare. (1616, III. iv.)
On the whole, perhaps, Daniel's merits as a pastoral writer have been exaggerated. His dependence on Italian models, particularly in his earlier play, is close, both as regards incidents and style; while he usually lacks their felicity. His claims as an original dramatist will not stand examination in view of the concealed shepherds in the Queen's Arcadia, of his careful avoidance of scenes of strong dramatic emotion--a point in which he of course followed his models, while lacking their mastery of narrative as compensation--and of his failure to do justice to such scenes when forced upon him.[261] If the atmosphere of certain scenes is purer than is the case with his models, it is in large measure due to his failure to master the style; if his conception of virtue is more wholesome, his picture of it is at times marred by exaggeration, while his sentiment for innocence is of a watery kind, and occasionally a little tawdry. His pathos, as is the case with all weak writers, constantly trembles on the verge of bathos, while his lack of humour betrays him into penning passages of elaborate fatuity. His style is formal and often stilted, his verse often monotonous and at times heavy.[262] On the other hand Daniel possesses qualities of no vulgar kind, though some, it is true, may be said to be rather the qualités de ses défauts. The verse is at least smooth; it is courtly and scholarly, and sometimes graceful; the language is pure and refined, and habitually simple. The sentiment, if at times finicking, is always that of a gentleman and a courtier. Moreover, in reckoning his qualifications as a dramatist, we must not forget to credit him with the plot of Hymen's Triumph, which is on the whole original, and is happily conceived, firmly constructed, and executed with considerable ability.
With Daniel begins and ends in English literature the dominant influence of the Italian pastoral drama. No doubt the imitation of Tasso and Guarini is an important element in the subsequent history of pastoralism in this country, and to trace and define that influence will be not the least important task of the ensuing chapters. No doubt it supplied the incentive that induced a man like Fletcher to bid for a hopeless success in such a play as the Faithful Shepherdess, and placed a heavy debt to the account of Thomas Randolph when he composed his Amyntas. But in these cases, as in others, wherever the author availed himself of the tradition imported from the Ferrarese court, he approached it as it were from without, seeking to rival, to acclimatize, rather than to reproduce. Nowhere else do we find the tone and atmosphere, the structure, situations, and characters imitated with that fidelity, or attempt at fidelity, which makes Daniel's plays almost indistinguishable, except for language, from much of the work of the later Italians.[263] To minimize with many critics Daniel's dependence on his models, or to emphasize with some that of Fletcher, is, it seems to me, wholly to misapprehend the positions they occupy in the history of literature, and to obscure the actual development of the pastoral ideal in this country.