on English soil.  In spite of the occasional reminiscences of Theocritus and the Arcadian erudition concerning the ‘Lovers Scriptures,’ the nature of the characters is largely English.  The names are not those of pastoral tradition, but rather of the popular romance, Aeglamour, Lionel, Clarion, Mellifleur, Amie, or more homely, yet without Spenser’s rusticity, Alken; while the one name of learned origin is a coining of Jonson’s own, Earine, the spirit of the spring.  The silvan element, which had been variously present since Tasso styled his play favola boschereccia, was used by Jonson to admirable purpose in the introduction of Robin Hood and his crew.  A new departure was made in the conjoining of the rustic and burlesque elements with the supernatural, in the persons of the witch Maudlin, her familiar Puck-hairy, her son the rude swineherd Lorel, and her daughter Douce the proud.  In every case Jonson appropriated and adapted an already familiar element, but he did so in a manner to fashion out of the thumbed conventions of a hackneyed tradition something fresh and original and new.

Unfortunately the play is but half finished, or, at any rate, but half is at present extant.  The fragment, as we have it, was first published, some years after the author’s death, in the second volume of the folio of 1640, and the questions as to whether it was ever finished and to what date the composition should be assigned are too intricate to be entered upon here.  Suffice it to say that no conclusive arguments exist for supposing that more of the play ever existed than what we now possess, nor that what exists was written very long before the author’s death.  It is conceivable that the play may contain embedded in it fragments of earlier pastoral work, but the attempt to identify it with the lost May Lord has little to recommend it.[284] Seeing that the play is far from being as generally familiar as its poetic merit deserves, I may be allowed to give a more or less detailed analysis of it in this place.[285]

After a prologue in which Jonson gives his views on pastoral with characteristic self-confidence, the Sad Shepherd, Aeglamour, appears, lamenting in a brief monologue the loss of his love Earine, who is supposed to have been drowned in the Trent.

    Here she was wont to goe! and here! and here! 
    Just where those Daisies, Pincks, and Violets grow: 
    The world may find the Spring by following her;
    For other print her aerie steps neere left. (I. i.)

He retires at the approach of Marian and the huntsmen, who are about to fetch of the king’s venison for the feast at which Robin Hood is to entertain the shepherds of the vale of Belvoir.  When they have left the stage Aeglamour comes forward and resumes his lament in a strain of melancholic madness.  He is again interrupted by the approach of Robin Hood, who enters at the head of the assembled shepherds and country maidens.  Robin welcomes his guests, and