dress of Earine, who, it now appears, was not drowned, but is imprisoned by the witch in a hollow tree, and destined by her as her son Lorel’s mistress.  The swineherd now enters with the object of wooing the imprisoned damsel, whom he releases from the tree, Maudlin and Douce retiring the while to watch his success, which is small.  Baffled, he again shuts the girl up in her natural cell, and his mother, coming forward, rates him soundly for his clownish ways, reading him a lecture for his guidance in his intercourse with women, in which she seems little concerned by the presence of her daughter.  This latter, so far as it is possible to judge from the few speeches assigned to her in the fragment, appears to be of a more agreeable nature than one might, under the circumstances, have expected.  Jonson sought, it would appear, to invest her with a certain pathos, presenting a character of natural good feeling, but in which no moral instinct has ever been awakened; and it is by no means improbable that he may have intended to dissociate her from her surroundings in order to balance the numbers of his nymphs and swains.[286] After Lorel has left them, Maudlin shows Douce the magic girdle, by virtue of which she effects her transformations, and by which she may always be recognized through her disguises.  In the next scene we find Amie suffering from the effect of Karol’s kiss.  She is ill at ease, she knows not why, and the innocent description of her love-pain possesses, in spite of its quaint artificiality, something of the naivete of Daphnis and Chloe.

    How often, when the Sun, heavens brightest birth,
    Hath with his burning fervour cleft the earth,
    Under a spreading Elme, or Oake, hard by
    A coole cleare fountaine, could I sleeping lie,
    Safe from the heate? but now, no shadie tree,
    Nor purling brook, can my refreshing bee? 
    Oft when the medowes were growne rough with frost,
    The rivers ice-bound, and their currents lost,
    My thick warme fleece, I wore, was my defence,
    Or large good fires, I made, drave winter thence. 
    But now, my whole flocks fells, nor this thick grove,
    Enflam’d to ashes, can my cold remove;
    It is a cold and heat, that doth out-goe
    All sense of Winters, and of Summers so. (II. iv.)

To the shepherdesses enters Robin, who upbraids Marian for her late conduct towards him and his guests.  She of course protests ignorance of the whole affair, bids Scathlock fetch again the venison, and remains unconvinced of Robin’s being in earnest, till Maudlin herself comes to thank her for the gift.  Marian endeavours to treat with the witch, and begs her to return the venison sent through some mistake, but Maudlin declares that she has already departed it among her poor neighbours.  At this moment, however, Scathlock returns with the deer on his shoulders, to the discomfiture of the witch, who curses the feast, and after tormenting poor Amie, who between sleeping and waking betrays the origin of her disease, departs in an evil humour.  The scene is noteworthy for its delicate comedy and pathos.