Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama Part 16

The question of the influence of the _Aminta_ on later works and on European thought generally opens up large and difficult issues. It is one of those works which we are not justified in treating from the purely literary point of view. If we wish to see it in its relation to contemporary society, and to estimate its influence upon subsequent literature, we cannot afford to neglect its ethical bearings. This inquiry must necessarily lead us beyond the sphere of literary criticism proper, but it is a task which one who has undertaken to give an account of pastoral literature has no right to s.h.i.+rk.

The central motive of the piece is the struggle between the feverish pa.s.sion of Aminta and the virginal coldness of Silvia. Of this motive and of the manner in which it is treated it is not altogether easy to speak, and this less from any inherent element in the subject or from the difficulty of accurately apprehending the peculiarities of sentiment proper to former ages, than from the readiness of all ages alike to accept in such matters the counterfeit coin of conventional protestation for the sterling reticence of natural delicacy. No doubt this tendency has been aided by the fact that the secrets of a girl's heart, whatever may be their true dramatic value, form an unsuitable and ineffective subject for declamation. The difficulties must not, however, be allowed to weigh against the importance of coming to a clear understanding as to the true nature of this _non so che_ of false sentiment, of which it would hardly be too much to affirm that it made the fortune of the pastoral in aristocratic Italy on the one hand, and proved its ruin in middle-cla.s.s London on the other.

To Ta.s.so is due that a.s.sumption of extravagant and conventional _pudor_ which forms one of the most abiding features of the pastoral drama. To censure an exaggeration of the charm of modesty on the threshold of the _seicento_, or to object a strained sense of chast.i.ty against the author of the golden-age chorus, may indeed seem strange; but, as with Fletcher at a later date, the very extravagance of the paradox may supply us with the key to its solution.

The falsity of Ta.s.so's position is evinced partly in the main action of the drama, partly in the commentary supplied by the minor personages. The character of Aminta himself is unimportant in this respect; when we have described him as effeminate, sickly, and over-refined, we have said all that is necessary in view of the position he occupies with regard to Silvia. She, we are given to understand, is the type of the 'careless'

shepherdess, the unspotted nymph of Diana[177], rejoicing in the chase alone, and importuned by the love of Aminta, which she neither reciprocates nor understands, and of the genuineness of which she shows herself, indeed, not a little sceptical. If, however, she is as careless as she appears, her conversion is certainly most sudden. The picture, moreover, drawn by Dafne of Silvia coquetting with her shadow in the pool, though possibly coloured by malice, supplies a sufficient hint of the true state of the girl's fancy. She is in truth such a Chloe of innocence as might spring up in the rank soil of a petty Italian court infected with post-Tridentine morality. Were she indeed careless of Aminta's devotion we could easily sympathize with her when she brushes aside Dafne's importunity with the words:

Faccia Aminta di se e de' suoi amori Quel ch' a lui piace; a me nulla ne cale. (I. i.)

It is altogether different with her att.i.tude of arrogant pudicity when she announces:

Odio il suo amore Ch' odia la mia onestate; (Ib.)

and again:

In questa guisa gradirei ciascuno Insidiator di mia virginitate, Che tu dimandi amante, ed io nemico. (Ib.)

Silvia here conjoins the unwholesome medieval ideal of virginity with the corrupt spectre of renaissance 'honour'--

quel vano Nome senza soggetto, Quell' idolo d' errori, idol d' inganno[178], (_Coro_ I.)

as Ta.s.so himself styled it--that conventional mask so bitterly contrasted with the natural goodness of the age of gold[179].

The general conception of love and its attendant emotions that permeates the work and vitiates so many of its descendants appears yet more glaringly characterized in some of the minor personages. On these it is not my intention to dwell. Of Dafne and Tirsi, that is, be it remembered, Ta.s.so's self, I have spoken, however briefly, yet at sufficient length already. Suffice it to add here that Dafne's suggestion, that modesty is commonly but a veil for l.u.s.t, is nothing more than the cynical expression of the att.i.tude adopted throughout the play. Love is no ideal and idealizing emotion, but a mere gratification of the senses--a _luxuria_ scarcely distinguishable from _gula_. Ignorance can alone explain an att.i.tude of indifference towards its pleasures. The girl who does not care to embrace opportunity is no better than a child--'Fanciulla tanto sciocca, quanto bella,' as Dafne says. So, again, there is nothing enn.o.bling in the devotion of the hero, nothing elevating in his fidelity.

All the mysticism, all the ideality, of the early days of the renaissance have long since disappeared, and chivalrous feeling, that last lingering glory of the middle age, is dead.

We are, indeed, justified in regarding what I may term the degeneration of s.e.xual feeling in the _Aminta_ as to a great extent the negation of chivalrous love, for, even apart from the allegorizing mysticism of Dante, that love contained its enn.o.bling elements. And yet, strangely enough, not a little of the convention at least of chivalrous love survives in the debased Arcadian love of the sentimental pastoral. Both alike are primarily of an animal nature, and this in a sense other than that in which physical love may be said to form an element in all natural relation between man and woman. Again, in both we find the rational machinery by which love shall be rewarded. The lover serves his apprentices.h.i.+p, either with deeds of arms or with sighs and sonnets, and the credit of the mistress is light who refuses to reward him for his service. The System a.s.sumes neither choice, nor pa.s.sion, nor pleasure on her part. Her act is regarded in the cold light of a calculated payment, undisguised by any joy of pa.s.sionate surrender. But whereas in the outgrowth of feudalism, in the chivalry of the middle ages, this system formed the great incentive to martial daring, whereas when idealized in Beatrice it became almost undistinguishable from the ferveurs of religion, we find it with Ta.s.so sinking into a weak and mawkish sensuality. More than any other sentimentalist Ta.s.so justified his t.i.tle by 'fiddling harmonics on the strings of sensualism,' and it may be added that the ear is constantly catching the fundamental note.

The foregoing remarks appeared necessary in order to understand the subsequent history of the dramatic pastoral as well as the conditions under which it took form and being, but they have led us far beyond the limits of literary criticism proper. The next characteristic of the play to be considered is one which, while possessing an important ethical bearing, is also closely connected with the aesthetic composition. I refer to the peculiar, not sensual but sensuous, nature of the beauty. The effect produced by the descriptions, by the suggestions, by the general tone, by the subtle modulations of the verse in adaptation to its theme, is less one of literary and intellectual than of direct emotional perception, producing the immediate physical impression of an actual presence. The beauty has a subtle enervating charm, languid and voluptuous, at the same time as clear and limpid in tone. The effect produced is one and whole, that of a perfect work of art, and the same impression remains with us afterwards. Smooth limbs, soft and white, that s.h.i.+ne through the waters of the spring and amid the jewelled spray, or half revealed among the thickets of l.u.s.trous green, a slant ray of sunlight athwart the loosened gold of the hair--the vision floats before us as if conjured up by the strains of music rather than by actual words.

This kins.h.i.+p with another art did not escape so acute a critic as Symonds as a characteristic of Ta.s.so's style. But the kins.h.i.+p on another side with the art of painting is equally close; a thousand pictures rise before us as we follow the perfect melody of the irregular lyric measures. The white veil fluttering and the swift feet flas.h.i.+ng amid the brambles and the trailing creepers of the wood, bright crimson staining the spotless purity of the flying skirts as the huntress bursts through the clinging tangles that seek to hold her as if jealous of a human love, the l.u.s.ty strength of the bronzed and hairy satyr in contrast with the tender limbs of the captive nymph, the dark cliff, and the still mirror of the lake reflecting the rosebuds pressed artfully against the girl's soft neck as she crouches by its brink,

Backed by the forest, circled by the flowers, Bathed in the suns.h.i.+ne of the golden hours,

the armed huntress, the grey-coated wolves, and the white-robed chorus--here are a series of pictures of seductive beauty for the brush of a painter to realize upon the walls of some palace of pleasure.

The _Aminta_ attained a wide popularity even before the appearance of the first edition from the Aldine house at Venice early in 1581--the epistle is dated 1580. The printer of the Ferrarese edition of the same year remarks: 'Tosto che la Fama ... mi rapport, che in Venetia si stampava l'

Aminta, ... cos subito pensai, che quella sola Impressione dovesse essere ben poca per sodisfattione di tanti virtuosi, che sono desiderosi di vederla alla luce.' A critical edition was prepared at Paris in the middle of the following century by Egidio Menagio of the Accademia della Crusca, and dedicated to Maria della Vergna, better known, under her married name of Madame de la Fayette, as the author of the _Princesse de Cleves_[180].

In 1693 the play was attacked by Bartolomeo Ceva Grimaldi, Duke of Telese, in an address read before the Accademia degli Uniti at Naples[181]. He was answered before the same society by Frances...o...b..lda.s.sare Paglia, and in 1700 appeared Giusto Fontanini's elaborate defence[182]. To each chapter of this work is prefixed a pa.s.sage from Grimaldi's address, which is then laboriously refuted. The Duke's attack is puerile cavil, and in spite of the reputed ability of its author the defence must be admitted to be much on the same level.

IV

The attention which we have bestowed upon the _Aminta_ will allow us to pa.s.s more rapidly than would otherwise have been possible over its successor and rival, the _Pastor fido_. This is due to the fact that the moral and artistic environment of the two pieces is much the same, and further, that it is this environment which to a great extent determined, not only the individual character of the poems, but likewise the nature of their subsequent influence.

Recent research has had the effect of dispelling not a few of the traditional ideas respecting Guarini's play. Among them is the fable that it took twenty years to write, which would carry back its inception to days before the composition of the _Aminta_. It is now recognized that nine years is the utmost that can be a.s.signed, letters being extant which fix the genesis of the play in 1581, or at the earliest in 1580 a year or so previous to Guarini's departure from Ferrara[183]. Again, it has been usual to a.s.sume that the play was performed as early as 1585, whereas there is in truth no evidence of any representation previous to the appearance of the first edition dated 1590[184]. The early fortunes of the play are indeed typical of the ill-success that dogged the author throughout life. Though untouched by the tragic misfortunes which lend interest to Ta.s.so's career, his lot was at times a hard one and we may excuse him if, at the last, he was no less embittered than his younger rival. He was not cursed, it is true, with Ta.s.so's incurable idealism; but, if in consequence he exposed himself less to the buffets of disillusionment, he likewise lacked its sustaining and enn.o.bling power.

Ta.s.so used the pastoral machinery to idealize the court; Guarini accepted the pastoral convention of the superiority of the 'natural' life of the country, and used it as a means of pouring out his bitterness of soul. The _Aminta_, it should be remembered, was written during a few weeks, months at most, at a time when Ta.s.so was comparatively fortunate and happy; the _Pastor fido_ was the ten years' labour of a retired and disappointed courtier, whose later days were further embittered by domestic misfortunes. In the same way as it was characteristic of Ta.s.so's rosy view that no law should be allowed to curb the purity of natural love in his dream of the ideal age, so it was characteristic of the spirit of his imitator to seek the ideal in the prudent love that strives towards no distant star beyond the bounds of law. And the fact that Guarini saw fit seriously to oppose a scholastic's moral figment to the poet's age of gold may serve as a sufficient measure of the soul of the pedant.

When Battista Guarini[185] entered the service of the Duke of Ferrara in 1567 he was already married and had attained the age of thirty, being seven years older than Ta.s.so. His duties at court were political, and he was employed on several missions of a diplomatic character. There was no reason whatever, beyond his own perverse ambition, why he should have come into rivalry with Ta.s.so, yet he did so both as a writer of verses and as a hanger-on of court beauties. It is impossible to acquit him of bad taste in the manner in which he and some at least of his fellow courtiers treated the unfortunate poet, and there was certainly bad blood between the two soon after the production of the _Aminta_, owing, probably, to the ungenerous remarks pa.s.sed by Guarini upon the author's indebtedness to previous writers. After Ta.s.so's confinement to S. Anna in 1579, Guarini became court poet, and the luckless prisoner was condemned to see his own poems entrusted to the editorial care of his rival.

Guarini, however, was not satisfied with the court of Ferrara. His estate was reduced by the expenses entailed by his missions as amba.s.sador, for which, like Machiavelli, he appears never to have received adequate supplies, and by the continuous litigation in which he involved himself.

His political imagination, too, had been fired during a stay at Turin with the possibilities inherent for Italy in the house of Savoy--an enthusiasm which possibly did not tend to smooth his relations with his own master.

In 1582 he left Ferrara and the service of Alfonso and retired to his ancestral estates of S. Bellino. Here he devoted himself to the composition of the play he had lately taken in hand, which, in spite of spasmodic returns to political life not only at the court of the Estensi but also at Turin and Florence, forms thenceforward with its many vicissitudes the central interest of his biography. He survived till 1612, dying at the age of seventy-four.

To do justice to the _Pastor fido_ it would be best to give the story in the form of a continuous narrative rather than an a.n.a.lysis of the actual scenes, since the author's constructive power lay almost wholly in the invention of an intricate plot and his weakness in the scenic rendering of it. His dramatic methods, however, so far elaborated from the simplicity of Ta.s.so's, had a vast influence over subsequent work, and it is highly important to obtain a clear idea of their nature. We shall, therefore, be condemned to follow Guarini, part-way at least, through the stiff artificiality of his interminable scenes.

A complicated story which is narrated at length in the course of the play explains the peculiar laws of Arcadia on which the plot hinges[186]. These comprise an edict of Diana to the effect that any nymph found guilty of a breach of faith shall suffer death at the altar unless some one offers to die in her place; likewise a custom whereby a nymph between fifteen and twenty years of age is annually sacrificed to the G.o.ddess. When besought to release the land from this tribute Diana through her oracle replies:

Non avra prima fin quel che v' offende, Che duo semi del ciel congiunga amore; E di donna infedel l' antico errore L' alta pieta d' un pastor fido ammende.

The only two in Arcadia who fulfil the conditions of the oracle are Silvio, the son of the high priest Montano, and Amarilli, daughter of t.i.tiro, who have in their veins the blood of Hercules and Pan. These two have consequently been betrothed and, being now arrived at marriageable age, their final union is imminent.

At this point the play opens. Silvio cares for nothing but the chase, regardless alike of his destined bride and of the love borne him by the nymph Dorinda; Amarilli is seemingly heart-whole, but secretly loves her suitor Mirtillo, a stranger in Arcadia, whom, however, she persists in treating with coldness in view of the penalty involved by a breach of faith. Mirtillo in his turn is loved by Corisca, a wanton nymph who has learned the arts of the city, and who is pursued both by Coridone, to whom she is formally engaged, but whom she neglects, and by a satyr. Almost every character is provided with a confidant: Silvio has Linco; Mirtillo, Ergasto; Dorinda, Lupino; Carino[187], the supposed father of Mirtillo, has Uranio; Montano and t.i.tiro act as confidants to one another. The only case arguing any dramatic feeling is that in which Amarilli makes a confidant of her rival Corisca; while Corisca and the satyr alone among the more important characters are left to address the audience directly.

Even the confidants sometimes need confidants in their turn, these being supplied by a conveniently ubiquitous chorus.

In the first scene of Act I, after the prologue, in which Alfeo rises to pay compliments to Carlo Emanuele and his bride, we are introduced to Silvio and Linco, who are about to start in pursuit of a savage boar which has been devastating the country. Linco taxes his companion with his neglect of the softer joys of love, to which Silvio replies with long-drawn praise of the free life of the woods. The scene is parallel to the first of the _Aminta_, and the author has sought here and elsewhere to point the contrast. Thus where Ta.s.so wrote:

Cangia, cangia consiglio, Pazzerella che sei; Che il pentirsi da.s.sezzo nulla giova;

Guarini has:

Lascia, lascia le selve, Folle garzon, lascia le fere, ed ama.

In the next scene, again modelled on the corresponding one in Ta.s.so's play, we find Ergasto comforting Mirtillo in his despair at Amarilli's 'cruelty.' Mirtillo has but recently arrived in Arcadia, and is ignorant of its history and customs, which Ergasto explains at length. The third scene is devoted to a long monologue by Corisca; the fourth to a conversation between Montano and t.i.tiro, who discuss the oracles concerning the approaching marriage and recount portentous dreams. A monologue by the satyr relating his ill-usage at the hands of Corisca, followed by a chorus, ends the first act. The next scene contains the history of Mirtillo's pa.s.sion as narrated to his confidant. Ergasto has enlisted the services of Corisca, and the whole paraphernalia of love lead in the next act to an interview between Mirtillo and Amarilli. The author's dramatic method whereby he presents us with alternate scenes from the various threads of the plot will by now be evident to the reader, and the remainder may for clearness' sake be thrown into narrative form.

Corisca, well knowing that it is impossible for Amarilli to show favour to Mirtillo, and hoping to ingratiate herself with him, prevails upon the nymph to grant her lover a hearing, provided the interview be secret and short. During a game of blind man's buff the players suddenly retire, leaving Mirtillo and Amarilli alone. The interview of course comes to nothing, but as soon as Mirtillo has left her Amarilli relieves her feelings in a monologue confessing her love, which is overheard by Corisca[188]. Charged with her weakness, she confesses her dislike of the marriage with Silvio. Hereupon Corisca conceives a plan for ridding herself at once of her rival in Mirtillo's affections and of her own affianced lover. She leads Amarilli to suppose that Silvio is faithless to his betrothal vow. If Amarilli can prove Silvio guilty she will herself be free, and she agrees to hide in a recess in a cave where Corisca alleges that Silvio has an a.s.signation. Next Corisca makes an appointment to meet her lover Coridone in the same cave, intending that he and Amarilli shall be surprised together. Finally, in order to obtain a witness, she accuses Amarilli to Mirtillo of being faithless, and bids him watch the mouth of the cave in which she alleges the nymph has an a.s.signation with Coridone. This ingenious plan would have succeeded to perfection but for Mirtillo's precipitancy, for, seeing Amarilli enter the cave, he at once concludes her guilt and follows her forthwith to wreak revenge. At that moment the satyr appears and, misunderstanding some words of Mirtillo's, proceeds to bar the entrance to the cave with a huge rock, thinking he is imprisoning Mirtillo and Corisca. He then goes off to inform the priests of the pollution committed so near their temple. These enter the cave and apprehend the lovers. Amarilli is at once condemned to death, but Mirtillo thereupon offers himself in her place and, being accepted by the priests, is kept as a sacrifice, Amarilli being at the same time closely guarded lest she should lay violent hands upon herself.

In the meantime Silvio has been successful in his hunting of the boar, whose head he brings home in triumph. There follows an echo-scene, one of those toys which, as old as the Greek Anthology, and cultivated in Latin by Tebaldeo, and in Italian by Poliziano, owed, not indeed their introduction, but certainly their great popularity in pastoral, to Guarini. His example is fairly successful. The echo predicts that the end of Silvio's 'carelessness' is at hand, when he shall himself break his bow and follow her who now follows him. The prophecy is quick of fulfilment.

With a jest he turns to go, when his eye falls on a grey object crouching among the bushes. He supposes it to be a wolf, and looses an arrow at it.

It proves, however, to be Dorinda, who has throughout followed his chase disguised in the rough wolf-skin coat of a herdsman, and who is now led fainting on to the scene by Lupino. Silvio is overcome with remorse, and, careless alike of his troth to Amarilli and of the fate of Arcadia, declares that thenceforth he will love none but Dorinda, and will die with her should his arrow prove fatal. They leave the stage for good--to get healed and married.

To return to the main plot. At sundown Mirtillo is led out to die, and the sacrifice is about to be performed when his supposed father, an Arcadian by birth, though he has long lived at Elis, and has just arrived in search of his foster child, interposes. Explanations ensue, and it gradually appears that Mirtillo is the eldest son of Montano, washed away in his cradle by the floods of the Alpheus twenty years before. Thus in the love between him and Amarilli, and in his voluntary sacrifice of himself in her place, the oracle is fulfilled, and Arcadia freed from its maiden tribute.

This seems obvious enough, though it takes the inspiration of a blind prophet to drive it into the heads of the a.s.sembled Arcadians. A final difficulty remains--the broken troth. But it so happens that Mirtillo was originally named Silvio, so that to 'Silvio' no faith is broken. A casuistical reason indeed; but good enough for the purpose. No attempt is made to clear Amarilli of the compromising evidence on which she had been condemned, but the pair have the favour of the G.o.ds, and the chorus makes no difficulty of chanting the virtue of the bride.

Such is Guarini's play; a plot constructed with consummate ingenuity, but presented with an almost entire lack of dramatic feeling. Almost the whole of the action takes place off the stage. Silvio and Dorinda leave the scene apparently for a tragic catastrophe; their subsequent union is only reported; so is the surprisal of Mirtillo and Amarilli, the scene in which the former offers himself as a sacrifice in her place, and their meeting after the cloud of death has pa.s.sed. The solitary scene revealing any real dramatic power is that between Amarilli and the priest Nicandro, in which the girl maintains her innocence. Her terror when confronted with death is drawn with some delicacy and pathos, though we sadly miss those poignant touches that the English playwrights seem always to have had at command on similar occasions. Her fear of death, however, stands in powerful dramatic contrast with the sudden courage she displays when her lover seeks to die in her place. Guarini was perfectly aware of the value of this contrast, for he placed the following lines in the mouth of the _messo_ who reports the scene:

Or odi maraviglia.

Quella che fu pur dianzi S dalla tema del morire oppressa, Fatta allor di repente A le parole di Mirtillo invitta, Con intrepido cor cos rispose: 'Pensi dunque, Mirtillo, Di dar col tuo morire Vita a chi di te vive?

O miracolo ingiusto! Su, ministri; Su, che si tarda? omai Menatemi agli altari.' (V. ii.)

And yet this dramatic contrast has been wantonly thrown away by the subst.i.tution of narrative for representation, less for the sake of a blind adherence to cla.s.sical convention, as on account of the author's inability honestly to face a powerful situation. The same dramatic incapacity shows itself in his use of borrowings. It will be sufficient to mention the sententious words from Ovid (_Amores_, I. viii. 43) placed in the mouth of the chorus:

Dunque non si dira donna pudica Se non quella che mai Non fu sollecitata; (IV. in.)

in order to compare them with the use made of the same by Webster when he made Vittoria at her trial exclaim:

Casta est quam nemo rogavit!--