Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama

Far, far from here...
The sunshine in the happy glens is fair,
And by the sea, and in the brakes
The grass is cool, the sea-side air
Buoyant and fresh.

Matthew Arnold.

Pastoral Poetry & Pastoral Drama

A Literary Inquiry, with Special
Reference to the Pre-Restoration
Stage in England.

By Walter W. Greg, M.A.

MCMVI.

Oxford: Horace Hart
Printer to the University

Preface

Some ten years ago, it may be, Mr. St. Loe Strachey suggested that Ishould write an article on 'English Pastoral Drama' for a magazine ofwhich he was then editor. The article was in the course of time written,and in the further course of time appeared. I learnt two things fromwriting it: first, that to understand the English pastoral drama it wasnecessary to have some more or less extensive knowledge of the history ofEuropean pastoralism in general; secondly, that there was no critical workfrom which such knowledge could be obtained. I set about the revision andexpansion of my crude and superficial essay, proposing to prefix to itsuch an account of pastoral literature generally as should make thespecial form it assumed on the English stage appear in its true light asthe reasonable and rational outcome of artistic and historical conditions.Unfortunately perhaps, but at least inevitably, this preliminary inquirygrew to ever greater and more alarming proportions as I proceeded, till atlast it swelled to something over half of the whole work. Part of thisbulk was claimed by foreign pastoral poetry, the origins of the kind; partby English pastoral poetry, and the introduction of the fashion into thiscountry; part by the pastoral drama of Italy, the immediate parent of thatof England. The original title proved too narrow to cover the subject withwhich I dealt. Hence the rather vague and perhaps ambitions title of thepresent volume. I make no pretence of offering the reader a generalhistory of pastoral literature, nor even of pastoral drama. The realsubject of my work remains the pastoral drama in Elizabethanliterature--understanding that term in the wide sense in which, quitereasonably, we have learnt to use it--and even though I may have beensometimes carried away by the interest of the immediate subject ofinvestigation, I have done my best to keep the main object of my inquiryat all times in view. The downward limit of my work is a little vague. Theold stage traditions, upon which all the dramatic production of the timewas at least in some measure, and in different cases more or lessconsciously, based, were killed by the act of 1642: the new traditions,created or imported by a company of gentlemen who had come under theinfluence of the French genius during the eleven years of their exile,first announced themselves authoritatively in 1660. During the interveningeighteen years a number of works were produced, some of which continuedthe earlier traditions, while some anticipated the later. My treatment hasbeen eclectic. Where a work appeared to me to belong to or to illustratethe older school I have incl

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