Rosalynde | Page 3

prose pastoral romance, that kind of prose romance which professes to delineate the scenery, sentiments, and incidents of shepherd life,[1] is, like most other literary forms, Greek in origin. It goes back at least to the "Daphnis and Chloe" of Longus, the Byzantine romancer of the fifth century A.D. Longus represents the romantic spirit in expiring classicism, the longing of a highly artificial society for primitive simplicity, and the endeavor to create a corresponding ideal. Indeed the pastoral has always been a product of a highly artificial age. Naturally, therefore, it has always been written by men of the city rather than by men of the country. It is distinctly an urban product. That it was so accounts in part for the idealized view of life that it presents. Speaking of the pastoral, Doctor Johnson says in his ponderous way:[2]
Our inclination to stillness and tranquillity is seldom much lessened by long knowledge of the busy and tumultuary part of the world. In childhood we turn our thoughts to the country, as to the region of pleasure; we recur to it in old age as a port of rest, and perhaps with that secondary and adventitious gladness, which every man feels on reviewing those places, or recollecting those occurrences, that?contributed to his youthful enjoyments, and bring him back to the prime of life, when the world was gay with the bloom of novelty, when mirth wantoned at his side, and hope?sparkled before him.
[Footnote 1: Dr. Johnson defines a pastoral as "the representation of an action or passion by its effects upon a country life." See _The Rambler_, Nos. 36 and 37.]
[Footnote 2: The Rambler, No. 36. See also Steele's essays on the pastoral in The Guardian, Nos. 22, 23, 28, 30, 32. No. 22 is particularly interesting, because in it Steele assigns three causes for the popularity of the pastoral form,--man's love of ease, his love of simplicity, and his love of the country. Pope's remarks on the pastoral, which may be found in The Guardian, No. 40, are also worth referring to in this connection.]
Probably Doctor Johnson was entirely right about the perennial charm of the pastoral and in his theory that its charm is potent in the direct ratio to the square of the distance that separates the writer and reader from rural life itself. It is not strange, therefore, that in the newly awakened interest in the classics that characterized the Renaissance, when literature was so largely a product of city culture, the revival of the pastoral should have been one of the first manifestations of the earlier Renaissance humanism.
Spanish Influence. Even when all due credit has been given to the charm of the pastoral romance, it still remains doubtful whether the influence of the Greek and Latin classics alone is sufficient to explain its vogue in the Elizabethan age. Their influence, though undoubtedly great, was scarcely sufficient to account for the naturalization in England of so exotic a form as the pastoral. Indeed the pastoral never was thoroughly naturalized, remaining to the end somewhat alien to its English surroundings. Shepherds with their oaten pipes were never quite at home in the English climate, which is ill suited to life in the open, to loose tunics, and bare limbs.[1] It is doubtful whether the pastoral would have become popular in England without the stimulus furnished by contemporary European literature. Most influential of these contemporary influences was the "Diana Enamorada," published about 1558, a Spanish pastoral romance written by Jorge de Montemayor, a Portuguese by birth, a Spaniard by adoption. Although the English translation of the "Diana" did not appear until 1598[2] it was well known to Sidney, who translated parts of it, and imitated it in his "Arcadia" (1590), and to Greene, whose "Menaphon," also an imitation of the "Diana," had appeared in 1589, the year before "Rosalynde." Though it is entirely possible that Lodge may have imitated Greene, it is probable that he, like Greene, had read the "Diana," for it is certain that he knew Spanish,[3] as well as French and Italian, and the "Diana" was already, it is said,[4] the most popular book in Europe.
[Footnote 1: Steele, speaking of the pastoral (The Guardian, No. 30), says, "The difference of the climate is also to be considered, for what is proper in Arcadia, or even in Italy, might be quite absurd in a colder country."]
[Footnote 2: Though not published till 1598, Bartholomew Young's translation of the "Diana" was made in 1583.]
[Footnote 3: In the epistle To the Gentlemen Readers, prefixed to "A Margarite of America," he tells us that he read the original of that story "in the Library of the Jesuits in Sanctum ... in the Spanish tongue."]
[Footnote 4: Jusserand, "The English Novel in the Time of?Shakespeare," p. 236.]
Style: Euphuistic. Nor was Lodge more original