Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama Part 5

I shall not deny our payne and servitude, I knowe that plowmen for the most part be rude, Nowe shall I tell thee high matters true and olde, Which curteous Candidus unto me once tolde, Nought shall I forge nor of no leasing bable, This is true history and no surmised fable.

It is in justice due to Barclay to say that the fact of his composing this eclogue in the vernacular should possibly be counted to him as an original step. The step had, indeed, been taken in Italy before he was born, but of this he may, in spite of his travels, have been ignorant. Such credit as attaches to the innovation should be allowed him.

A somewhat more independent writer is Barnabe Googe--writer, indeed, as original, may be, as the lesser Latin pastoralists of the renaissance. The fact of his altering the conventional forms to fit the mood of a st.u.r.dy protestantism, of a protestantism still bitter from the Marian persecutions, is scarcely to be regarded so much as evidence of his invention as of the stability of literary tradition under the varying forms imposed by external circ.u.mstances. The collection of his poems, 'imprinted at London' in 1563,[89] includes eight eclogues written in fourteeners, the majority of which may fairly be said to represent Mantuan adjusted to the conditions of contemporary life in reformation England.

Others show the influence of the author's visit to Spain in 1561-3. The best that can be said for the verse and style is that they pursue their 'middle flight' on the whole modestly, and that the diction is at times not without a touch of simple dignity. There are, moreover, moments of genuine feeling when the author recalls the fires of Smithfield, and of generous if nave appreciation when he speaks of his predecessors in English song. A brief summary of contents will give some idea of the nature of these poems. The first recounts the pains of love; in the second Dametas rails on the blind boy and ends his song by dying. The third treats of the vices of the city, not the least of them being religious persecution. In the next Melibeus relates how Dametas, having as we now learn killed himself for love, appeared to him amid h.e.l.l-fire. Eclogue V contains the pitiful tale of Faustus who courted Claudia through the agency of Valerius. Claudia unfortunately fell in love with the messenger, and finding him faithful to his master slew herself. This is imitated, in part closely, from the tale of the shepherdess Felismena in the second book of Montemayor's _Diana_, the identical story upon which Shakespeare is supposed ultimately to have founded his _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, though it is difficult at first sight to trace much resemblance between the play and Googe's poem. In the sixth eclogue Faustus--the Don Felix of the Spanish and the Proteus of Shakespeare--himself appears, for no better reason it would seem than to give his interlocutor an opportunity of enlarging on the delights of country life and introducing the remarks on fowling borrowed from Sannazzaro by way of Garcilaso's second eclogue. The next is a discussion somewhat after the manner of the _Nut-Brown Maid_, again paraphrased from the _Diana_ (Book I); while the eighth, lastly, is a homily on the superiority of Christianity over Roman polytheism, in which under obsolete forms the author no doubt intended an allusion to contemporary controversies. Thus it will be seen that Googe follows Latin and Spanish traditions almost exclusively: the only point in which it is possible to see any native inspiration is in his partiality for some sort of narrative ballad motive as the subject of his poems.

So far the literary quality to be registered has not been high among those owing allegiance to the regular pastoral tradition. The next step to be taken is a long one. The pastoral writings of Spenser not only themselves belong to a very different order of work, but likewise brings us face to face with literary problems of a most complex and interesting kind.

II

In the _Shepherd's Calender_ we have the one pastoral composition in English literature which can boast first-rate historical importance. There are not a few later productions in the kind which may be reasonably held to surpa.s.s it in poetic merit, but all alike sink into insignificance by the side of Spenser's eclogues when the influence they exercised on the history of English verse is taken into account. The present is not of course the place to discuss this wider influence of Spenser's work: it is with its relation to pastoral tradition and its influence upon subsequent pastoral work that we are immediately concerned. This is an aspect of the _Shepherd's Calender_ to which literary historians have naturally devoted less attention. These two reasons--namely, the intrinsic importance of the work and the neglect of its pastoral bearing--must excuse a somewhat lengthy treatment of a theme that may possibly be regarded as already sufficiently familiar.

The _Shepherd's Calender_[90], which first appeared in 1579, was published without author's name, but with an envoy signed 'Immerito.' It was dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, and contained a commentary by one E. K., who also signed an epistle to Master Gabriel Harvey, fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. 'Immerito' was a name used by Spenser in his familiar correspondence with Harvey, and can in any case have presented no mystery to his Cambridge friends. Among these must clearly be reckoned the commentator E. K., who may be identified with one Edward Kirke with all but absolute certainty.[91] Within certain well defined limits we may also accept E. K. as a competent exponent of his friend's work, and his ident.i.ty, together with that of Rosalind and Menalcas, being matters of but indirect literary interest, may be left to Spenser's editors and biographers to fight over. It will be sufficient to add in this place that however 'literary' may have been Spenser's attachment to Rosalind there is no reason to suppose that she was not a real person, while however little response his advances may have met with there _is_ reason to suppose that his sorrow at their rejection was not wholly conventional.

Spenser's design in turning his attention to the pastoral form would not seem hard to apprehend. Less readily may we suppose that any deep philosophical impulse directed his mind towards certain modes of expression, than that in an age of catholic experiment he turned from the penning of impossible iambic trimeters, 'minding,' as E. K. directly informs us, 'to furnish our tongue with this kind, wherein it faulteth.'

He was qualified for the task by a wide knowledge of previous pastoral writers from Theocritus and Bion down to Marot, and deliberately ranged himself in line with the previous poets of the regular pastoral tradition. Yet we find side by side in his work two distinct and apparently antagonistic though equally conscious tendencies; the one towards authority, leading him to borrow motives freely and even to resort to direct paraphrase; the other towards individuality, nationality, freedom, informing his general scheme and regulating the language of his imaginary swains. It is this double nature of his pastoral work that justifies us as regarding him, in spite of his alleged orthodoxy, as in reality the first of a series of English writers who combined the traditions of regular pastoral with the wayward graces of native inspiration. It is true that in Spenser the natural pastoral impulse has lost the spontaneity of the earlier examples, and has pa.s.sed into the realm of conscious and deliberate art; but it is none the less there, modifying the conventional form. The individual debts owed by Spenser to earlier writers have been collected with admirable learning and industry by scholars such as Kluge and Reissert[92], but the investigation of his originality presents at once a more interesting and more important field of inquiry. So, indeed, Spenser himself appears to have thought, for the only direct acknowledgement he makes in the work is to Chaucer, although, as a writer to whom the humours of criticism are ever present has remarked, 'it might almost seem that Spenser borrowed from Chaucer nothing but his sly way of acknowledging indebtedness chiefly where it was not due.'

The chief point of originality in the _Calender_ is the attempt at linking the separate eclogues into a connected series. We have already seen how with Googe the same characters recur in a sort of shadowy story; but what was in his case vague and almost unintentional becomes with Spenser a central artistic motive of the piece. The eclogues are arranged with no small skill and care on somewhat of an architectural design, or perhaps we should rather say with somewhat of the symmetry of a geometrical pattern.

This will best be seen in a brief a.n.a.lysis of the several eclogues, 'proportionable,' as the t.i.tle is careful to inform us, 'to the twelve monethes.'

In the 'January,' a monologue, Spenser, under the disguise of Colin Clout, laments the ill-success of his love for Rosalind, who meets his advances with scorn. He also alludes to his friends.h.i.+p with Harvey, who is introduced throughout under the name of Hobbinol. The 'February' is a disputation between youth and age in the persons of Cuddie and Thenot. It introduces the fable of the oak and the briar, in which, since he ascribes it to t.i.tyrus, a name he transferred from Vergil to Chaucer, Spenser presumably imagined he was imitating that poet, though it is really no more in the style of Chaucer than is the roughly accentual measure in which the eclogue is composed. For the 'March' Spenser recasts in English surroundings Bion's fantasy of the fight with Cupid, without however achieving any conspicuous success. In the April eclogue Hobbinol recites to the admiring Thenot Colin's lay

Of fayre Eliza, Queene of shepheardes all, Which once he made as by a spring he laye, And tuned it unto the Waters fall.

This lay is in an intricate lyrical stanza which Spenser shows considerable skill in handling. The following lines, for instance, already show the musical modulation characteristic of much of his best work:

See, where she sits upon the gra.s.sie greene, (O seemely sight!) Yclad in Scarlot, like a mayden Queene, And ermines white: Upon her head a Cremosin coronet, With Damaske roses and Daffadillies set: Bay leaves betweene, And primroses greene, Embellish the sweete Violet.

In the 'May' we return to the four-beat accentual measure, this time applied to a discussion by the herdsmen Palinode and Piers of the lawfulness of Sunday sports and the corruption of the clergy. Here we have a common theme treated from an individual point of view. The eclogue is interesting as showing that the author, whose opinions are placed in the mouth of the precise Piers; belonged to what Ben Jonson later styled 'the sourer sort of shepherds.' A fable is again introduced which is of a p.r.o.nounced Aesopic cast. In the 'June' we return to the love-motive of Rosalind, which, though alluded to in the April eclogue, has played no prominent part since January. It is a dialogue between Colin and Hobbinol, in which the former recounts his final defeat and the winning of Rosalind by Menalcas. This eclogue contains Spenser's chief tribute to Chaucer:

The G.o.d of shepheards, t.i.tyrus, is dead, Who taught me homely, as I can, to make; He, whilst he lived, was the soveraigne head Of shepheards all that bene with love ytake: Well couth he wayle his Woes, and lightly slake The flames which love within his heart had bredd, And tell us mery tales to keepe us wake The while our sheepe about us safely fedde.

The July eclogue again leads us into the realm of ecclesiastical politics.

It is a disputation between upland and lowland shepherds, the descendant therefore of Mantuan and Barclay, though the use of 'high places' as typifying prelatical pride appears to be original. The confusion of things Christian and things pagan, of cla.s.sical mythology with homely English scenery, nowhere reaches a more extravagant pitch than here. Morrell, the advocate of the old religion, defends the hills with the ingeniously wrong-headed argument:

And wonned not the great G.o.d Pan Upon mount Olivet, Feeding the blessed flocke of Dan, Which dyd himselfe beget?

or else, gazing over the Kentish downs, he announces that

Here han the holy Faunes recourse, And Sylvanes haunten rathe; Here has the salt Medway his source, Wherein the Nymphes doe bathe.

In the 'August' Spenser again handles a familiar theme with more or less attempt at novelty. Willie and Peregot meeting on the green lay wagers in orthodox fas.h.i.+on, and, appointing Cuddie judge, begin their singing match. The 'roundel' that follows, a song inserted in the midst of decasyllabic stanzas, is composed of alternate lines sung by the two compet.i.tors. The verse is of the homeliest; indeed it is only a rollicking indifference to its own inanity that saves it from sheer puerility and gives it a careless and as it were impromptu charm of its own. Even in an age of experiment it must have needed some self-confidence to write the dialect of the _Calender_; it must have required nothing less than a.s.surance to put forth such verses as the following:

It fell upon a holy eve, Hey, ho, hollidaye!

When holy fathers wont to shrieve; Now gynneth this roundelay.

Sitting upon a hill so hye, Hey, ho, the high hyll!

The while my flocke did feede thereby; The while the shepheard selfe did spill.

I saw the bouncing Bellibone, Hey, ho, Bonibell!

Tripping over the dale alone, She can trippe it very well.

Many a reader of the anonymous quarto of 1579 must have joined in Cuddie's exclamation:

Sicker, sike a roundel never heard I none!

Sidney, we know, was not altogether pleased with the homeliness of the verses dedicated to him; and there must have been not a few among Spenser's academic friends to feel a certain incongruity between the polished tradition of the Theocritean singing match and the present poem.

Moreover, as if to force the incongruity upon the notice of the least sensitive of his readers, Spenser followed up the ballad with a poem which is not only practically free from obsolete or dialectal phrasing, but which is composed in the wearisomely pedantic _sestina_ form. This song is attributed to Colin, whose love for Rosalind is again mentioned.

Pa.s.sing to the 'September' we find an eclogue of the 'wise shepherd' type.

It is composed in the rough accentual metre, and opens with a couplet which roused the ire of Dr. Johnson:

Diggon Davie! I bidde her G.o.d day; Or Diggon her is, or I missaye.

Diggon is a shepherd, who, in hope of gain, drove his flock into a far country, and coming home the poorer, relates to Hobbinol the evil ways of foreign shepherds among whom,

playnely to speake of shepheards most what, Badde is the best.

The 'October' eclogue belongs to the stanzaic group, and consists of a dialogue on the subject of poetry between the shepherds Piers and Cuddie.

It is one of the most imaginative of the series, and in it Spenser has refas.h.i.+oned time-honoured themes with more conspicuous taste than elsewhere. The old complaint for the neglect of poetry acquires new life through the dramatic contrast of the two characters in which opposite sides of the poetic temperament are revealed. In Cuddie we have a poet for whom the prize is more than the praise[93], whose inspiration is cramped because of the indifference of a worldly court and society. Things were not always so--

But ah! Mecaenas is yclad in claye, And great Augustus long ygoe is dead, And all the worthies liggen wrapt in leade, That matter made for Poets on to play.

And in the same strain he laments over what might have been his song:

Thou kenst not, Percie, howe the ryme should rage, O! if my temples were distaind with wine, And girt with girlonds of wild Yvie twine, How I could reare the Muse on stately stage, And teache her tread aloft in buskin fine, With queint Bellona in her equipage!

Reading these words to-day they may well seem to us the charter of the new age of England's song; and the effect is rendered all the more striking by the rhythm of the last line with its prophecy of Marlowe and mighty music to come. Piers, on the other hand, though with less poetic rage, is a truer idealist, and approaches the high things of poetry more reverentially than his Bacchic comrade. When Cuddie, acknowledging his own unworthiness, adds:

For Colin fittes such famous flight to scanne; He, were he not with love so ill bedight, Would mount as high, and sing as soote as Swanne;

Piers breaks out in words fitting the poet of the _Hymnes_:

Ah, fon! for love doth teach him climbe so hie, And lyftes him up out of the loathsome myre.

And throughout this high discourse the homely names of Piers and Cuddie seem somehow more appropriate, or at least touch us more nearly, than Mantuan's Sylva.n.u.s and Candidus, as if, in spite of all Spenser owes to foreign models, he were yet conscious of a latent power of simple native inspiration, capable, when once fully awakened, of standing up naked and unshamed in the presence of Italy and Greece. One might well question whether there is not more of the true spirit of prophecy in this poem of Spenser's than ever went to the composition of Vergil's _Pollio_.

The 'November,' like the 'April,' consists for the most part of a lay composed in an elaborate stanza--there a panegyric, here an elegy. This time it is sung by Colin himself, and we again find reference to the Rosalind motive. The subject of the threnody is a nymph of the name of Dido, whose ident.i.ty can only be vaguely conjectured. The chief point of external form in which Spenser has departed from his model, namely Marot's dirge for Loyse de Savoye, and from other pastoral elegies, is in the use of a different form of verse in the actual lament from that in which the setting of the poem is composed. Otherwise he has followed tradition none the less closely for having infused the conventional form with a poetry of his own. The change by which the lament pa.s.ses into the song of rejoicing is traditional--and though borrowed by Spenser from Marot, is as old as Vergil. Both Browne and Milton later made use of the same device. Spenser writes:

Why wayle we then? why weary we the G.o.ds with playnts, As if some evill were to her betight?

She raignes a G.o.ddesse now emong the saintes, That whilome was the saynt of shepheards light, And is enstalled nowe in heavens hight.

I see thee, blessed soule, I see Walke in Elisian fieldes so free.

O happy herse!

Might I once come to thee, (O that I might!) O joyfull verse!

Although some critics, looking too exclusively to the poetic merit of the _Calender_ as the cause of its importance, have perhaps overestimated the beauty of this and the April lyrics, the skill with which the intricate stanzas are handled must be apparent to any careful reader. As the _Calender_ in poetry generally, so even more decidedly in their own department, do these songs mark a distinct advance in formal evolution.

Just as they were themselves foreshadowed in the recurrent melody of Wyatt's farewell to his lute--