Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 648 pages of information about Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama.

Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 648 pages of information about Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama.

Page 112, note 2.—­There is an error here. The Passionate Pilgrim version of ‘As it fell upon a day’ does not contain the couplet found in England’s Helicon.  I was misled by its being supplied from the latter by the Cambridge editors.  Another poem of the same description appears in Francis Sabie’s Pan’s Pipe. (See Sidney Lee’s introduction to the Oxford Press facsimile of the Passionate Pilgrim, p. 31.)

Page 204.—­It is perhaps hardly surprising to find Tasso’s ‘S’ ei piace, ei lice’ quoted by English writers as summing up the cynical philosophy of those whom they not unaptly styled ‘politicians.’  In Marston’s tragedy on the story of Sophonisba, for instance, the villain Syphax concludes a ‘Machiavellian’ speech with the words: 

    For we hold firm, that ’s lawful which doth please.
                    (Wonder of Women, IV. i. 191.)

Appendix I

On the Origin and Development of the Italian Pastoral Drama

The chapter in the history of Italian literature which shall deal with the evolution of the Arcadian drama still remains to be written.  The treatment of it in Symonds’ Renaissance is decidedly inadequate, and even as far as it goes not altogether satisfactory.  The explanation of this is, that the most important works fall outside his period; the Aminta and the Pastor fido are admirably treated in the volumes dealing with the counter-reformation, but these are of the nature of an appendix, and formed no part of his original plan.  Tiraboschi’s account is also meagre.  A long discussion of the subject will be found in the fifth volume of J. L. Klein’s Geschichte des Dramas (Leipzig, 1867), but the bewildering irrelevancy of much of the matter introduced by that eccentric writer seriously impairs the critical value of his work.  An excellent sketch of the early history as far as Beccari, with full references, is given in Vittorio Rossi’s valuable monograph, Battista Guarini ed il Pastor Fido (Torino, 1886), pt. ii. ch. i.  This has the immense advantage of conciseness, and of a clear and scholarly style.  An important review of Rossi’s book, concerning itself particularly with the chapter in question, appeared in the Literaturblatt fuer germanische und romanische Philologie for 1891 (col. 376), from the pen of A. L. Stiefel, who incidentally announced that he was himself engaged on a comprehensive history of the pastoral drama.  Of this work I have been unable to obtain any further information.  Next an elaborate essay by the veteran Giosue Carducci, largely combatting Rossi’s conclusions as to the literary evolution of the form, and bringing forward a good deal of fresh evidence, appeared in the Nuova Antologia for September, 1894, and was reprinted with additions and corrections as the second of three papers in the author’s pamphlet Su l’Aminta di T. Tasso (Firenze, 1896).  To this Rossi rejoined, effectively as it seems to me, in the Giornale storico della letteratura italiana (1898, xxxi. p. 108).  The treatment in W. Creizenach’s Geschichte des neueren Dramas (Halle, 1901, ii. p. 359) is unfortunately not yet complete.

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Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.