SOURCE: Alsop, J. D. “The Dramatis Personae in Barnabe Googe's Critique of the Marian Persecution.” Notes and Queries 28, no. 6 (December 1981): 512-16.

In the following essay, Alsop argues that the shepherds in Googe's third eclogue, a broad critique of religious problems of the day, were modeled on real-life Englishmen, the identity of whom cannot fully be established.

Barnabe Googe's third eclogue, published in 1563 in Eglogs, Epytaphes, and Sonettes, was a mixed critique of social and religious problems in Marian England set in the form of a pastoral dialogue between two shepherds, Menalcas and Coridon.¹ The latter, when asked for news from the town, began with a complaint against urban life (ll. 25-32) which quickly developed into a survey first of the disorders in the social system produced by base upstarts who lacked breeding and virtue (ll. 33-53), and second of the oppression suffered by Protestants (ll. 54-86). The last...