Chapter III: Italian Pastoral Drama (2)

Listening to the deliberations of these two, it cannot but strike us that in spite of their polished speech the straightforward London stage would have hesitated but little to bestow on them the names they deserve, and which it were yet scarce honest to have here set down. We pass on, and, whatever may be said regarding the moral atmosphere of the rest of the play, we shall not again have to make complaint of the corruption of manners assumed in the situation. In the following scene Tirsi undertakes the difficult task of inducing Aminta to intrude upon Silvia, where she is said to be alone at the spring preparing for the chase. It is only by hinting that Silvia has secretly instructed Dafne to arrange the tryst that he in the end succeeds in persuading the bashful lover to risk the displeasure of his mistress.

At the opening of Act III Tirsi enters lamenting in bitter terms the cruelty of Silvia. Interrogated by the chorus, he relates how, as he and Aminta approached the spring where Silvia was bathing, they heard a cry and, hastening to the spot, found the nymph bound hand and foot to a tree, and confronting her the satyr. At their approach the monster fled, and Aminta released the nymph, who _ignuda come nacque_ at once took flight, leaving her lover in despair. In the meanwhile Aminta has sought to kill himself with his own spear, but has been prevented by Dafne, and the two now enter. At this moment too comes Nerina, one of the 'messengers' of the piece, with the news that Silvia has been slain while pursuing a wolf in the forest. Thereupon Aminta, with a last reproach to Dafne for having prevented him from putting an end to his miserable life before being the recipient of such direful news, rushes off the scene at a pace to mock pursuit. In the next act, however, Silvia reappears and narrates her escape. Here we arrive at the dramatic climax of the play. Dafne expresses her fear that the false report of Silvia's death may indeed prove the death of Aminta. The nymph at first shows herself incredulous, but on learning that he had already once sought death on her account she wavers and owns to pity if not to love--

Oh potess' io
Con l' amor mio comprar la vita sua,
Anzi pur con la mia la vita sua,
S' egli è pur morto!

Hereupon Ergasto enters with the news that Aminta has thrown himself from a cliff, and Silvia, now completely overcome, goes off with the intention of dying on the body of her dead lover.

The shortness, as well as the dramatic weakness, of the fifth act is conspicuous even in proportion to the modest limits of the whole. It runs to less than one hundred and fifty lines, and merely relates how Aminta's fall was broken, how Silvia's love awoke, and all ended happily. The most significant passage, that namely which describes Aminta being called back to life in Silvia's arms, has been already quoted. He revives unharmed, and the lovers,

Alike in age, in generous birth alike
And mutual desires,

gather in love the fruits which they have sown in weeping.

It is worth while quoting the final chorus in witness of the spirit of half bantering humour in which the whole was conceived even by the serious Tasso, a spirit we unfortunately too often seek in vain among his followers.

Non so se il molto amaro
Che provato ha costui servendo, amando,
Piangendo e disperando,
Raddolcito esser puote pienamente
D' alcun dolce presente:
Ma, se più caro viene
E più si gusta dopo 'l male il bene,
Io non ti chieggio, Amore,
Questa beatitudine maggiore:
Bea pur gli altri in tal guisa;
Me la mia ninfa accoglia
Dopo brevi preghiere e servir breve:
E siano i condimenti
Delle nostre dolcezze
Non sì gravi tormenti,
Ma soavi disdegni,
E soavi ripulse,
Risse e guerre a cui segua,
Reintegrando i cori, o pace o tregua.

It is with these words that the author leaves his graceful fantasy; and such, we have perhaps the right to assume, was the spirit in which the whole was composed. Were any one to object to our seeking to analyse the quality of the piece, arguing that to do so were to break a butterfly upon the wheel, much might reasonably be said in support of his view. Nevertheless, when a work of art, however delicate and slender, has received the homage of generations, and influenced cultivated taste for centuries, and in widely different countries, we have a right to inquire whereon its supremacy is based, and what the nature of its influence has been.

With the sources from which Tasso drew the various elements of his plot we need have little to do. The child-love of Silvia and Aminta is of the stuff of _Daphnis and Chloe_; the ruse by which the kiss is obtained is borrowed from Achilles Tatius; the compliment to the court of the Estensi is after the manner of Vergil, or of Castiglione, or of Ariosto, or of any other of the allegorical eclogists of whom Vergil was the first; the germ of the golden-age chorus is to be found in the elegies of Tibullus (II. iii); the character of the satyr belongs to tradition; the rent veil of Silvia reminds us of that of Ovid's Thisbe (_Met._ IV. 55). The language too is reminiscent. The finest lines in the play--

Amiam: che 'l sol si muore, e poi rinasce;
A noi sua breve luce
S' asconde, e 'l sonno eterna notte adduce--(_Coro_ I.)

belong to Catullus:

Viuamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus;...
soles occidere et redire possunt;
nobis cum semel occidit breuis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda. (_Carm._ V.)

The words in which Amore describes himself in the prologue--

non mica un dio
Selvaggio, o della plebe degli dei,
Ma tra' grandi celesti il più possente--

recall Ovid's lines:

nec de plebe deo, sed qui caelestia magna
sceptra manu teneo. (_Met._ I. 595.)

Again, the line:

Dove la costa face di sè grembo;

which occurs alike in the play (V. i.) and in the _Purgatorio_ (VII. 68), supplies evidence, as do similar borrowings in the _Gerusalemme_, of Tasso's study of Dante.

The prologue introduces Amore in pastoral disguise, escaped from the care of his mother, who would confine his activity to the Courts, and intent on loosing his shafts among the nymphs and shepherds of Arcadia. In the form of this prologue, which became the model for subsequent pastoral writers in Italy[173], and in the heavenly descent of the principal characters, we may see the influence of the mythological play; while the substance both of the prologue and of the epilogue, or _Amore fuggitivo_, in which Venus comes to seek her runaway among the ladies and gallants of the court, is of course borrowed from the famous first idyl of Moschus. Again the topical element is not absent, though it is less prominent than some of the earlier work might lead us to expect. In the poet Tirsi--

allor ch' ardendo
Forsennato egli errò per le foreste
Sì, ch' insieme movea pietate e riso
Nelle vezzose ninfe e ne' pastori;
Nè già cose scrivea digne di riso,
Sebben cose facea digne di riso--(I. i.)

we may, of course, see the poet himself. In Batto too, mentioned together with Tirsi, it is not unreasonable to recognize Battisto Guarini, whom at that time Tasso might still regard as his friend. Again, it is usual to identify Elpino with Giovanbattista Pigna, secretary of state at the Estense court, and one with whom, though no friend of the poet's, it was yet to his advantage to stand well. The flattery bestowed is not a little fulsome:

Or non rammenti
Ciò che l' altrieri Elpino raccontava,
Il saggio Elpino a la bella Licori,
Licori che in Elpin puote cogli occhi
Quel ch' ei potere in lei dovria col canto,
Se 'l dovere in amor si ritrovasse;
E 'l raccontava udendo Batto e Tirsi,
Gran maestri d' amore; e 'l raccontava
Nell' antro dell' Aurora, ove sull' uscio
È scritto: _Lungi, ah lungi ite, profani_?
Diceva egli, e diceva che gliel disse
Quel grande che cantò l' armi e gli amori,
Ch' a lui lasciò la fistola morendo;
Che laggiù nello 'nferno è un nero speco,
Là dove esala un fumo pien di puzza
Dalle tristi fornaci d' Acheronte;
E che quivi punite eternamente
In tormenti di tenebre e di pianto
Son le femmine ingrate e sconoscenti. (I. i.)

He who sang of arms and love is of course Ariosto--

Le donne, i cavalier, l' arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, l' audaci imprese io canto--

from whom Tasso borrows the above description of the reward awaiting ungrateful women, as also the fiction of the tell-tale walls and chairs in Mopso's account of the court (I. ii). And this Elpino, whose pipe elsewhere

correr fa di puro latte i fiumi
E stillar melle dalle dure scorze, (III. i.)

later becomes the Alete of the _Gerusalemme_,

Gran fabbro di calunnie adorne in modi
Novi che sono accuse e paion lodi. (II. 58.)

His flattery had not shielded the unhappy poet against the ill-will of the minister[174].

Again, the picture drawn by Tirsi of the ideal court (I. ii.) is a glowing compliment to that of the Estensi and to Duke Alfonso himself. It is contrasted with the usual pastoral denunciation of court and city put into the mouth of the pretended augur Mopso. In this character it has been customary to see Sperone Speroni, who later accused Tasso of plagiarizing him in the _Gerusalemme_, and was the first to apply the ominous word 'madman' to the unfortunate poet. To Speroni's play _Canace_ Tasso may have been indebted for the free measures with which he diversified his blank verse, as likewise for the line:

Pianti, sospiri e dimandar mercede;[175]

though it must not be supposed that there is any resemblance in style between the _Aminta_ and Speroni's revolting and frigid declamation of butchery and lust. Nor did the debt pass unnoticed. In 1585 Guarini, who had long since parted with the sinking ship of the younger poet's friendship, was ready to flatter Speroni with the declaration 'che tanto di leggiadria è sempre paruto a me, che abbia nell' Aminta suo conseguito Torquato Tasso, quant' egli fù imitatore della Canace[176].'

Lastly, in the hopeless suit of Aminta to Silvia, criticism has not failed to see a reference to the supposed relation between Tasso and Leonora d' Este. That Tasso, who in his overwrought imagination no doubt harboured a sentimental regard for the princess, was conscious of the parallel is in some degree probable; that he should have identified his creation with himself is, in view of the solution of the dramatic situation, utterly impossible. Indeed, it would perhaps not be extravagant to suppose that his care to identify himself with Aminta's confidant may have been an unusual but not untimely piece of caution on his part, to prevent poisoned gossip connecting him too closely with his hero.

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 shirk.

The central motive of the piece is the struggle between the feverish passion 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-class London on the other.

To Tasso is due that assumption 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 chastity 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 Tasso'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 sè e de' suoi amori
Quel ch' a lui piace; a me nulla ne cale. (I. i.)

It is altogether different with her attitude 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 Tasso 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, Tasso'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 lust, is nothing more than the cynical expression of the attitude 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 attitude 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 ennobling 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 sexual 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 ennobling 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 apprenticeship, 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 assumes neither choice, nor passion, nor pleasure on her part. Her act is regarded in the cold light of a calculated payment, undisguised by any joy of passionate 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 Tasso sinking into a weak and mawkish sensuality. More than any other sentimentalist Tasso justified his title 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 shine through the waters of the spring and amid the jewelled spray, or half revealed among the thickets of lustrous 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 kinship with another art did not escape so acute a critic as Symonds as a characteristic of Tasso's style. But the kinship 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 flashing 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 lusty 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 sunshine 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 rapportò, che in Venetia si stampava l' Aminta, ... così 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 Clèves_[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 Francesco Baldassare Paglia, and in 1700 appeared Giusto Fontanini's elaborate defence[182]. To each chapter of this work is prefixed a passage 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 pass 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 assigned, 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 assume 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 Tasso'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 Tasso's incurable idealism; but, if in consequence he exposed himself less to the buffets of disillusionment, he likewise lacked its sustaining and ennobling power. Tasso 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 Tasso 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 Tasso'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 Tasso. 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 Tasso, 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 passed by Guarini upon the author's indebtedness to previous writers. After Tasso'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 ambassador, 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 analysis 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 Tasso'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 goddess. When besought to release the land from this tribute Diana through her oracle replies:

Non avrà prima fin quel che v' offende,
Che duo semi del ciel congiunga amore;
E di donna infedel l' antico errore
L' alta pietà 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 Titiro, 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 Titiro 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 Tasso wrote:

Cangia, cangia consiglio,
Pazzerella che sei;
Che il pentirsi dassezzo 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 Tasso'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 Titiro, 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 passion 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 assignation. 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 assignation 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 assembled 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 gods, 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 passed. 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
Sì dalla tema del morire oppressa,
Fatta allor di repente
A le parole di Mirtillo invitta,
Con intrepido cor così 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 substitution of narrative for representation, less for the sake of a blind adherence to classical 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 dirà 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!--

a comparison which at once reveals the gulf fixed between the clairvoyant dramatist and the mere pedantic scholar.

And yet the subsequent history of pastoral reminds us that it is quite possible to underestimate Guarini's merits as a playwright. In the construction of a complicated plot, apart from the dramatic presentation thereof, he achieved a success not to be paralleled by any previous work in Italy, for the difference in the titles of the _Aminta_ and the _Pastor fido_, the one styled _favola_ and the other _tragi-commedia_, indicates a real distinction; and Guarini's proud claim to have invented a new dramatic kind was not wholly unfounded[189]. It was this that caused Symonds to speak of his play as 'sculptured in pure forms of classic grace,' while describing the _Aminta_ as 'perfumed and delicate like flowers of spring.' And lastly, it was this more elaborately dramatic quality that was responsible for the far greater influence exercised by Guarini than by Tasso, both on the subsequent drama of Italy and still more on the fortunes of the pastoral in England.

Moreover, in Amarilli, Guarini created one really dramatic character and devoted to it one really dramatic scene. His heroine is probably the best character to be found in the whole of the pastoral drama, and this simply because there is a reason for her coldness towards the lover, upon her love to whom the plot depends. Unless love is to be mutual the motive force of the drama fails, and consequently, when nymphs insist on parading their inhuman superiority to the dictates of natural affection, they are simply refusing to fulfil their dramatic _raison d'être_. With Amarilli it is otherwise. She has the right to say:

Ama l' onestà mia, s' amante sei; (III. iii.)

and there is a pathos in the words which the author may not have himself fully understood; whereas the similar expression of Tasso's Silvia quoted on a previous page is insufferable in its smug self-conceit.

Of this quality of extravagant virginity noticed as a characteristic of Tasso's play there is on the whole less in the _Pastor fido_. It is also freer from the tone of cynical corruption and from improper suggestion. These merits are, however, more than counterbalanced in the ethical scale by the elaboration of the spirit of sentimental sensualism, which becomes as it were an enveloping atmosphere, and lends an enervating seduction to the piece. This spirit, already present in the _Aminta_, reappeared in an emphasized form in the _Pastor fido_, and attained its height in the following century in Marino's epic of _Adone_. We find it infusing the scene of Mirtillo's first meeting with Amarilli, which may be said to set the tone of the rest of the poem. Happening to see the nymph at the Olympian games, Mirtillo at once fell in love and contrived to introduce himself in female attire into the company of maidens to which she belonged. Here, the proposal being made to hold a kissing match among themselves, Amarilli was unanimously chosen judge, and, the contest over, she awarded the prize to the disguised youth. The incident owes its origin, as Guarini's notes point out, to the twelfth Idyl of Theocritus, and the suggestion of the kissing match is aptly put into the mouth of a girl from Megara, where an annual contest of kisses among the Greek youths was actually held. Guarini, however, most probably borrowed the episode from the fifth canto of Tasso's _Rinaldo_.

The sentimental seductiveness of this and other scenes did not escape sharp comment in some quarters within a few years of the publication of the play. In 1605 Cardinal Bellarmino, meeting Guarini at Rome, told him plainly that he had done as much harm to morals by his _Pastor fido_ as by their heresies Luther and Calvin had done to religion. Later Janus Nicius Erythraeus, that is Giovanni Vittorio Rossi, in his _Pinacoteca_, compared the play to a rock-infested sea full of seductive sirens, in which no small number of girls and wives were said to have made shipwreck. It is at first sight ratifier a severe indictment to bring against Guarini's play, especially when we remember that a work of art is more often an index than a cause of social corruption. After what has been said, however, of the nature of the sentiment both in the _Pastor fido_ and the _Aminta_, the charge can hardly be dismissed as altogether unfounded. It is only fair to add that very different views have been held with regard to the moral aspect of the play, the theory of its essential healthiness finding an eloquent advocate in Ugo Angelo Canello[190].

Little as it became him, Guarini chose to adopt the attitude of a guardian of morals, and Bellarmino's words clearly possessed a special sting. This pose was in truth but a part of the general attitude he assumed towards the author of the _Aminta_. His superficial propriety authorized him, in his own eyes, to utter a formal censure upon the amorous dream of the ideal poet. He paid the price of his unwarranted conceit. Those passages in which he was at most pains to contrast his ethical philosophy with Tasso's imaginative Utopia are those in which he most clearly betrayed his own insufferable pedantry; while critics even in his own day saw through the unexceptionable morality of his frigid declamations and ruthlessly exposed the sentimental corruption that lay beneath. When we compare his parody in the fourth chorus of the _Pastor fido_ with Tasso's great ode; his sententious 'Piaccia se lice' with Tasso's 'S' ei piace, ei lice'; his utterly banal

Speriam: che 'l sol cadente anco rinasce;
E 'l ciel, quando men luce,
L' aspettato seren spesso n' adduce,

with Tasso's superb, even though borrowed, paganism:

Amiam: che 'l sol si muore, e poi rinasce;
A noi sua breve luce
S' asconde, e 'l sonno eterna notte adduce--

when we make this comparison we have the spiritual measure of the man. A similar comparison will give us his measure as a poet. Take the graceful but over-elaborated picture:

Quell' augellin che canta
Sì dolcemente, e lascivetto vola
Or dall' abete al faggio,
Ed or dal faggio al mirto,
S' avesse umano spirto
Direbbe: 'Ardo d' amore, ardo d' amore!'

Compare with this the spontaneous sketch of Tasso:

Odi quell' usignuolo
Che va di ramo in ramo
Cantando: 'Io amo, io amo!'[191]

Or again, with the irresistible slyness of the final chorus of the _Aminta_ already quoted compare the sententious lines with which Guarini closed his play:

O fortunata coppia,
Che pianto ha seminato, e riso accoglie!
Con quante amare doglie
Hai raddolciti tu gli affetti tuoi!
Quinci imparate voi,
O ciechi e troppo teneri mortali,
I sinceri diletti, e i veri mali.
Non è sana ogni gioia,
Nè mal ciò che v' annoia.
Quello è vero gioire,
Che nasce da virtù dopo il soffrire.

It is impossible not to come to the conclusion that we are listening in the one case to a genuine poet of no common order, in the other to a poetaster of considerable learning and great ingenuity, who elected to don the outward habit of a somewhat hypocritical morality. The effect of the contrast is further heightened when we remember that Guarini never for a moment doubted that he had far surpassed the work of his predecessor.

Guarini's comment on the _Aminta_ in his letter to Speroni has been already quoted: it does little credit to the writer. Manso, the companion and biographer of Tasso, records that, the poet being asked by some friends what he thought of the _Pastor fido_, a copy of which had lately found its way to him at Naples:

Et egli, 'Mi piace sopramodo, ma confesso di non saper la cagione perchè
mi piaccia.' Onde io rispondendogli, 'Vi piacerà per avventura,'
soggiunsi, 'quel che vi riconoscete del vostro.' Et egli replicò, 'Ne
può piacere il vedere il suo in man d' altri.'[192]

Guarini would hardly have acknowledged his indebtedness to Tasso in the way of art, but he drew on all sources for the incidents of his plot, and, since he appears to have valued a reputation for scholarship above one for originality, he recorded a fair proportion of his borrowings in his notes.

* * * * *

The _Pastor fido_ was the talk of the Italian Courts even before it was completed. Early in 1584 the heir to the duchy of Mantua, Vincenzo Gonzaga, to whose intercession Tasso later owed his liberty, entreated Guarini to let him have his already famous pastoral for the occasion of his marriage with Eleonora de' Medici. The poet, however, found it impossible to complete the work in time, and sent the _Idropica_ instead. In the autumn a projected representation of the now completed play came to naught. The following year Guarini presented his play to the Duke of Savoy, and received a gold chain as an acknowledgement. The occasion was the entry into Turin of Carlo Emanuele and his bride, Catharine of Austria, the marriage having taken place at Saragossa some time previously. The dedication is recorded on the title-page of the first edition in words that have not unnaturally been held to imply that the play was performed on that occasion.[193] It is clear, however, from contemporary documents that this is an error, and, though preparations were made in view of a performance at the following carnival, these too were abandoned. After this we find mention of preparations made at a variety of places, but they never came to anything, and there is reason to believe that some at least were abandoned owing to the opposition of Alfonso d' Este, who never forgave a courtier who transferred his allegiance to another prince. In 1591 Vincenzo Gonzaga, now duke, summoned Guarini to Mantua, and matters advanced as far as a _prova generale_ or dress rehearsal. The project, however, had once more to be abandoned owing to the death of Cardinal Gianvincenzo Gonzaga at Rome. We possess the scheme for the four _intermezzi_ designed for this occasion, representing the _Musica della Terra, del Mare, dell' Aria_, and _Celeste_. They were scenic and musical only, without words. About this time too, that is after the appearance of the first edition dated 1590, we have notes of preparations for several private performances, the ultimate fate of which is uncertain. The first representation of which there is definite evidence, though even here details are lacking, took place at Crema in Lombardy in 1596, at the cost of Lodovico Zurla[194]. After this performances become frequent, and in 1598, after the death of Alfonso, the play was finally produced in state before Vincenzo Gonzaga at Mantua. On all these occasions we may suppose that other prologues were substituted for that addressed to _gran Caterina_ and _magnanimo Carlo_[195].

In the meanwhile Guarini, fearing piracy, had turned his attention to the publication of his play. He first resolved to submit it to the criticism of Lionardo Salviati and Scipione Gonzaga, the latter of whom had been a member of the unlucky committee for the revision of the _Gerusalemme_. Unfortunately little or nothing is known as to the criticisms and recommendations of these two men. The work finally appeared, as we learn from a letter of the author, at Venice in December, 1589. It is a handsome quarto from the press of Giovanbattista Bonfadino, and is dated the following year[196]. In 1602 a luxurious edition, said on the title-page to be the twentieth, was issued at Venice by Giovanbattista Ciotti. This represents Guarini's final revision of the text, and contains, besides a portrait and engravings, elaborate notes by the author, and an essay on tragi-comedy[197].