To many critics it has seemed that the pastoral element in Shakespeare's plays has small significance because he nowhere introduces, with seriousness, the conventions of the genre. Pastoral drama in England is represented, according to this view, by the Arraignment of Paris or The Faithful Shepherdess, but not by As You Like It or The Winter's Tale.1 Such an exclusion, however, is surely illogical. To say that because Autolycus is unlike Corin and Daphnis, therefore The Winter's Tale has little or no relation to pastoral literature is no more reasonable than to say that because in the Henry V trilogy we are more interested in Falstaff or Fluellen or Justice Shallow than in the strictly historical material, therefore these plays do not belong to the chronicle history group. Shakespeare extended and enlarged the scope of comedy, history, and tragedy, yet the classification of the First Folio is convenient and not inaccurate. In As You Like It, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale he dealt with material drawn from pastoral romance in such a way as to deepen and enrich certain characteristics of this genre; he did not write pastorals of the conventional Renaissance type, yet the pastoral element in his plays is both considerable and important.

In the present study I shall discuss two topics: first, the relation of Shakespeare's pastorals to a well-defined type of plot-structure which, originating in Daphnis and Chloe and modified by certain Italian and Spanish elements, found its first complete English expression in Sidney's Arcadia, and, second, Shakespeare's development from a criticism of the absurdities of pastoralism coupled with a somewhat conventional use of the country vs. town motif to a much deeper interpretation of one of the most interesting phases of Renaissance thought.

1 As examples of many expressions of such views compare Smith, "Pastoral Influence on the English Drama," in Publications of the Modern Language Association, 1897, pp. 378-381: "In The Winter's Tale the pastoral element borrowed from Greene's Pandosto is so completely subordinated that we can hardly say it exists at all. Who would speak of Perdita as an Arcadian?" He makes a similar remark concerning As You Like It. Schelling (English Literature During the Lifetime of Shakespeare, p. 386) says that As You Like It is no true pastoral, since the genius of its author "could not be bound within the conventions of a form of literature so exotic and conventional"; and of The Winter's Tale (pp. 389-390) he says that the outdoor scenes "are pastoral only in the sense that they deal with shepherds and their life." Greg (Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama, p. 411) says: "It is characteristic of the shepherd scenes of that play (sc. Winter's Tale), written in the full maturity of Shakespeare's genius, that, in spite of their origin they owe nothing of their treatment to pastoral tradition, nothing to convention, nothing to aught save life as it mirrored itself in the magic glass of the poet's inspiration;" and his comment (pp. 412-413) on As You Like It mainly consists of generalizations about the beauty of "the faint perfume of the polished Utopia of the courtly makers."

I. THE INFLUENCE OF SIDNEY AND SPENSER

Daphnis and Chloe supplied the chief elements in the plot of a type of pastoral which was used, with some modifications, by Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare. The romance is too well-known to need detailed exposition; the main points may be summarized as follows:

Two foundlings are brought up by rustics whom they regard as their parents; their childhood is described in detail, and the manner in which they became lovers; the purity and sweetness of this love idyl are emphasized; character contrast is supplied by means of a rude lover, the rival of the hero, who is also a coward; disguised as a wolf, he attacks the girl, who is rescued by the hero. Later, wicked men attempt without success to kidnap the boy, the rival being slain in the encounter, and the incident is repeated in the captivity of the heroine by outlaws. At length the lovers are reunited; wealthy parents come and recognize them, and they are happily married.

This is the story, in brief, of the only true Greek pastoral which influenced English literature; other Greek romancers, such as Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, stressed the wanderings of the lovers and introduced various other elements which are without significance in the present study. The Italian and Spanish pastoral romances, such as the Ameto, the Arcadia, and the Diana, have little relation to this. plot; they introduce various love idyls and go back to the Virgilian eclogues. But with them the element of allegory is introduced; there is the further important influence of style, particularly the interweaving of prose and verse; and in the introduction of the author, often as a disappointed lover who is living for the time among shepherds, a noteworthy addition to the dramatis personae was made.

From these various sources, all well known in the England of Sidney's time, a composite plot was formed, the essentials of which are as follows:

1. A child of unknown parentage, usually a girl, is brought up by shepherds. As a variant, the heroine may merely be living in seclusion among shepherds.

2. A lover is introduced, who may be a foundling, or, more commonly, a man of high birth who falls in love with the heroine and for her sake adopts the dress and the life of a shepherd or a forester.

3. This love story is complicated by the rivalry of a blundering shepherd, usually characterized as a coward, his function being to supply comedy and to serve as a foil for the hero.

4. Melodramatic elements are supplied by the attack of a lion or a bear, and this affords the hero another opportunity to prove his prowess.

5. A captivity episode is usually introduced; the heroine is stolen by pirates or outlaws; the hero goes to her rescue.

6. At length it develops that the girl is of high birth, and she marries the hero.

7. From Italian and Spanish sources comes an extra character, not vitally connected with the plot, often the author of the romance; usually this man is afflicted with melancholy and is living among shepherds because of his woes.

Sidney's Arcadia is often referred to as a pastoral; in reality it is a heroic "poem," according to the standards of Sidney and his circle, in which a pastoral episode is introduced. The action opens, in the midst of the story, with this pastoral, but that the pastoral is not the chief element in the story is evidenced not only by the space given in books I and II to the epic history of Pyrocles and Musidorus but by the fact that throughout book III, the most important of the entire work, the pastoral completely disappears.2 The plot of this pastoral portion of Arcadia follows closely the type outlined above:

1. A king, or, in the first version, a duke, lives with his daughters in pastoral seclusion.

2. Two princes come to the place; in order to get access to the maidens one disguises himself as a shepherd, the other as an Amazon.

3. A blundering shepherd, guardian of one of the girls, supplies comic interest; his cowardice is especially dwelt on.

4. Melodramatic incidents are supplied by the advent of a lion and a bear; the heroes save the maidens.

5. Two illustrations of the captivity motif are given: there is an incursion of the rabble by which the lives of the heroines are greatly endangered; the attempt, however, is foiled by the heroes. Later, by a ruse, the girls are abducted and are kept in captivity for a long time; the Amazon is also captured, but the shepherd goes to the aid of his lady. Here the pastoral disappears and a long series of chivalric adventures takes its place.

6. At length the heroines are released and marriages follow.

7. A melancholy shepherd named Philisides (Sidney), who has no part in the main action, is living in this pastoral seclusion because of an unhappy love affair (Stella).

The variations in this plot are not significant. There is a quartet of lovers, and the complications are, of course, increased thereby. The boorish shepherd is the guardian, not a suitor. The foundling motif is absent; the heroines are ladies of high rank. But the disguise of the lover as a shepherd; the character contrast supplied by Dametas; the incidents of the wild beasts, the rabble, and the captivity; the melancholy shepherd who is not connected directly with the action,—

2 Except for the fact that the Captivity motif is pastoral; this motif is used, however, merely at the introduction. I have discussed the construction of this romance at some length in "Sidney's Arcadia as an Example of Elizabethan Allegory,” in Anniversary Papers by Colleagues and Pupils of George Lyman Kittredge, pp. 327-337.

3 The numbers used in my analysis correspond to the incidents in the typical plot.

all these are based directly upon the special type of pastoral plot outlined above.4

We have now to consider two important but apparently overlooked illustrations of the influence of this part of the Arcadia. The first is the Pastorella-Calidore episode in Faerie Queene VI; the second is supplied by As You Like It. The Pastorella-Calidore story is important not only because it is closely parallel to some of Shakespeare's pastorals in plot and in its interpretation of pastoralism, but also because there are indications that it had direct influence on Shakespeare. In view of its importance, I give the plot of this episode in some detail; the numbers prefixed to the sections indicate the relations existing between Spenser and the typical plot already outlined, but I have not altered the sequence of events:5

1. Calidore, in pursuit of the Blatant Beast, comes upon a group of shepherds. Among them is a damsel wearing a crown of flowers and clad in home-made greens that her own hand had dyed; she sits on a hillock, and all around are country lads and lasses. Calidore is fascinated by her beauty, and in the evening gladly goes home with her and the old shepherd who is reputed to be her father. Spenser here explains that this shepherd is not really her father, but had found her in open fields, "as old stories tell."

2. After supper, Calidore and the old shepherd discourse on the charms of pastoral life; love for the fair Pastorella so inflames the knight that he seeks permission to remain. Thus Calidore, forgetting his quest, becomes a shepherd, and passes a long time in this idyllic existence.

3. Pastorella has many lovers, chief among them Coridon, who is in every way unworthy of her. The rivalry between Calidore and this shepherd is stressed, especially in such a way as to bring out the superiority of Calidore in courtesy and prowess.

4. On one occasion a tiger attacks Pastorella. Coridon acts the part of a coward, but Calidore slays the beast with his sheep-hook. By this means he wins the love of the maiden.

5. After a long period of happiness, brigands capture Pastorella and Coridon in Calidore's absence. The captain of the thieves loves the shepherdess but she foils him. In the meantime Calidore is searching far and wide. In an attack upon

* The long story of the Captivity is very similar to the last book of Amadis. In that romance Oriana is captured by Amadis and is taken to his castle, with other ladies. Her father raises a great force and lays siege to the castle. In both Arcadia and Amadis this mustering of forces by the leaders on both sides is stressed and is too characteristic to escape notice; the high chivalry with which the preparations for the battle, and the battle itself, are conducted, contributes to the similarity in atmosphere, while the central situation, a lady held in captivity by her lover while her father attempts her rescue, is precisely the same. In Sidney's romance, Amphialus, son of the wicked Cecropia, is himself a man very similar to Amadis; his love for Philoclea is not returned, but though Oriana stays voluntarily and Philoclea is detained against her will, the debt of Sidney to the most famous chivalric romance of his time is unquestionable. The Captivity in Amadis, like the corresponding portion of Arcadia, is the culmination of the romance; but in Amadis it is chivalric throughout, while in Arcadia it develops from the pastoral, and the lover who had been disguised as a shepherd joins the father in the attempt.

at rescue.

5 The passage in the Faerie Queene begins with the ninth canto.

the brigands by some merchants who have come to buy slaves, Coridon escapes, the old shepherd is killed, and Pastorella is left for dead. Coridon finds Calidore, but is afraid to go back to the place where, he says, Pastorella was slain. He is forced to do so, however, and to the great joy of the knight he finds his lady and rescues her from the thieves.

6. Calidore restores the flocks to Coridon and takes Pastorella to the castle of Belgard where he leaves her with Sir Bellamore and his lady while he takes up once more his quest of the Beast. It soon appears that Pastorella is the long lost daughter of Bellamore and Claribell. The story is left incomplete by Spenser, since the remainder of the book, the last part of the Faerie Queene completed by Spenser, is taken up with the account of Calidore's quest; there is no doubt whatever that Spenser intended later to have Calidore return and claim Pastorella as his bride.

7. A shepherd named Colin (Spenser) has no part in the main action; Pastorella is fond of his music, and on one occasion Calidore comes upon him piping merrily to a bevy of maidens, who however disappear on the approach of a mortal. That this plot corresponds very closely to the type is instantly apparent. There are variations, of course, but they do not affect the conclusion that Daphnis and Chloe, Arcadia, and the story of Pastorella are closely related. In the Greek pastoral both hero and heroine are ignorant of their parentage, while in Arcadia a king adopts pastoral life in order to keep his daughters from marrying, so that although the hero becomes a shepherd it is in order to deceive the father, not the girl; in the Faerie Queene the girl is a foundling but the lover is a knight like Musidorus. These variants are due to the fact that in both Arcadia and Faerie Queene the pastoral is an episode in a chivalric romance. Again, Spenser's version of the captivity, while similar in many respects to that of Longus, apparently owes something to the story of Isabella in Ariosto, and differs decidedly from the chivalric story of the third book of Sidney's romance, in which the pastoral is dropped. But the three pastorals have exactly the same incidents and the same situations, told in the same order: the story of love between a hero and a heroine who though of high station are living as shepherds; the clown who serves as foil and rival; the rescue of the girl from a wild beast; the captivity; the final recognition. Spenser and Sidney further agree in the important detail of the extra shepherd, taken from Italian and Spanish romances which do not follow the plot structure here considered.

Warton, Observations, p. 155, conjectures that the story of Pastorella's captivity is from Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, canto xii and following. Isabella's story, however, is not a pastoral, and is wholly different from that of Spenser's heroine, save in the detail that both are held captive by robbers and are freed by a knight. Orlando, who rescues Isabel, is not her lover. Even if Spenser had in mind Isabella's story, therefore, this is not the source of the Pastorella story as a whole.