SOURCE: Lindenbaum, Peter. “Shakespeare's Golden Worlds.” In Changing Landscapes: Anti-Pastoral Sentiment in the English Renaissance, pp. 91-135. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986.

In the following essay, Lindenbaum traces the development of Shakespeare's anti-pastoral sentiment in his works. Beginning with The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the critic notes that the forest in this early play is sentimentalized, a place of idleness (otium) where none of society's rules apply or must be obeyed. By contrast, he argues, the pastoral realms of his later plays, including As You Like It, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, are not that different from the ordinary world in that they all endorse the idea that one must accept personal responsibility and actively engage in life.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona provides good evidence that anti-pastoralists are made and not born, that an anti-pastoral stance arises from continued thinking on the literary use and meaning...