upon the love-chain of Beccari. Shepherd Sfortunato loves the Shepherdess Dafne, Dafne loves the Shepherd Jacinto, Jacinto the Shepherdess Flamminia, and Flamminia Silvio, who loves naught but the chase. One and all they are smitten by a contagion of lamentations voiced in endless versi sciolti. So insufferable do they become that they are alike unendurable. A little pastoral printed in Sienna in 1571, Niccolo Campani's Commedia rusticale, has vanished altogether except for records. Two Tasso's "Aminta," 1573. Tasso's years later the most most distinguished pastoral of the century was to atone for any possible loss of minor plays. Aminta, a revelation of his own life, was acted in 1573. In 1567 Tasso was in Ferrara at the presentation of Lo Sfortunato, and there received the inspiration to write a dramatic pastoral. The play, aside from the power of the poet, shows more than average dramatic ability. The setting is excellent, far superior to that of the Pastor Fido, and the language simple and poetic. Like Virgil, Tasso had been a careful student of Theocritus, from whom he borrowed both the idea of the flight of love and the rewards offered by Venus, also the comparison of love with a bee. Traces likewise of Moschus and Virgil and Ovid are present. The story of the bee and Sylvia (act i. sc. 2) he took from the Greek romance of Clitophon and Leucippe. This charming pastoral is a record not only of Tasso's reading and abilities as a poet, but also of a few events in his personal life, even at this early age beginning to darken with troubles. Thyrsis is, of course, Tasso himself, Bathus is Battista Guarini, Elpino is Il Pigno, and Mopsus, Speron Speroni, a critic whom Tasso had excellent reason to fear. The plot is delightfully simple: Amyntas, in love with Sylvia, who does not love him, wins her by rescuing her from the attacks of a Satyr. For a while Sylvia remains obdurate. She is chased by a wolf, and, fleeing, is caught in the branches of a tree. Her friends find part of a bloody veil on the tree, and give her up for dead. In his grief Amyntas swoons, and later seeks unsuccessfully to take his life; then, at last, Sylvia recognizes her love for him, and the two lovers are made happy. The love element, because of the beauty of picture and word, is charming. The picture of the childhood companionship of Amyntas and Sylvia, and the picture of Sylvia looking at herself in the pool, are lovely in detail. It is not too much to say that the Aminta is the classic Italian pastoral, just as in our own language the Faithful Shepherdess, the Sad Shepherd, and Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd exceed in beauty and appropriateness any other English pastorals. Other plays, all less significant than the Aminta, went to swell the dramatic chorus of the last half of the sixteenth century: Pasqualigo's Gl'Intricati (1581), Castelletti's Amarilli (1582), Ongaro's Alceo (1582), and Angelo Ingegneri's La Danza di Venere, a pretty thing modelled after the Aminta. In La Danza occurs a delicate touch of symbolism, when Pazzorello's understanding comes with the sight of Amarilli asleep, a theme which Garrick was to use in the eighteenth century long after the pastoral had lost its youth and beauty. More significant than these was a play written by Tasso's contemporary and fellow courtier, Il Pastor Fido by Battista Guarini, a play Guarini's less poetic and more philosophical than "Pastor the Aminta. Guarini had the good Fido," 1585. fortune of realizing that he was not a poet par excellence, and perhaps in defence or assistance packed his thoughts the more closely and weightily. To speak in the words of Fanshawe, this was a dernier effort made by a man who was grown grey in scholarship, an attempt to muster for the last time all the forces for his wit and "withall to insinuate and bring into that Awful Presence (his Princely Master) in their Masking Clothes . . . such Principles of Vertue and Knowledge, Moral, Political and Theological." One may say of this play what Lope de Vega said of his own metaphysical romance Arcadia, that although there are shepherds in it, it does not contain much that is pastoral. The story is important, as it has been more 1 Fanshawe's Translation of the Pastor Fido, Introduction. widely used than the Aminta in the making of other pastorals. Arcadia is ravaged by unfavouring deities; there is a prophecy that the land and its people will be once more at peace when two children of divine extraction are united. Silvio, the son of Montano, and Amarillis, the daughter of Titiro, are the children destined to be married. But Silvio does not love Amarillis, nor Amarillis Silvio; matters are further complicated by the fact that the Faithful Shepherd loves Amarillis, and that Dorinda, a shepherdess, is in hot pursuit of Silvio, much as Venus pursued the unwilling Adonis. Corisca, an intriguing nymph, and the prototype of Fletcher's Cloe, is in love with Mirtillo, and plans to defeat his passion for Amarillis. Due to Corisca's machinations, the Faithful Shepherd and Amarillis are apprehended together, and the shepherdess condemned to death for breaking her vows to Silvio. Mirtillo promptly offers his life for that of his love, and is to be executed in her stead, an outcome Corisca had not foreseen. At this time Carino (Guarini himself) appears and discloses the fact that Mirtillo is not his lad but the boy of Montano. In the mean time, Silvio, by an accidental missile, has slightly wounded Dorinda, with whom he immediately falls in love. A priest appears to declare that Mirtillo and Amarillis are the two children of divine origin to be united, and everybody, except the false Corisca, lives happily ever afterwards. Il Pastor Fido, and several of the plays which have been mentioned, contained musical choruses or musical features of some kind, but the first pronounced musical pastoral drama "La Dafne," was La Dafne (1594), by Ottavio Rinuccini. 1594. Rinuccini's The particular precedence which this play takes over those with musical features that have already been mentioned is due to Rinuccini's having struck out the idea of musical recitative which he had had applied to Dafne by Jacopo Peri and Caccini. The pastoral elements of the Opera, however, are not strong. The dramatis persona, or Interlocutori, as they were more properly called in the original, are Ovidio, Venere, Amore, Apollo, Dafne, Nunzio, and a chorus of nymphs and shepherds. It is interesting to notice that both the first pastoral drama and the first pastoral opera dealt with Greek mythological themes. After the last half of the sixteenth century pastoral plays of particular importance are not plentiful. Many were written, but it is Pastoral necessary to mention only three: Bona- plays in relli's Filli di Sciro (1607), Michel Angelo's England. La Tanzia (1611), and Maria Medici Borbona's Il Rapimento di Cefalo (1615). By the close of the sixteenth century Italian pastoral plays reached the height of their perfection, and Italy's influence was spreading in turn throughout Spain, France, and England. Fifteen years previous to the beginning of the seventeenth century many plays with pastoral |