Rosalynde | Page 5

to be remembered is its having furnished a hint to Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, however, it had, to use Johnson's phrase, "enough wit to keep it sweet," even without Shakespeare's play "to preserve it from putrefaction." Lodge really had a pretty story to tell, and he tells it, if not with gusto, at least with grace and with some degree of skill. Exquisitely graceful are some of the narrative passages, where the very words seem to possess a clear and pellucid quality like the water of the spring that Rosalynde and Aliena found in Arden, "so crystalline and clear, that it seemed Diana and her Dryades and Hamadryades had that spring, as the secret of all their bathings."[1] Such, for instance, is the account of the night and morning succeeding the first meeting of Rosalynde and Rosader in the Forest of Arden.[2] Graceful, too, are the descriptions of the landscapes in Arden, such as that of the "fair valley" where Rosalynde and Aliena found Montanus and Corydon "seeing their sheep feed, playing on their pipes many pleasant tunes, and from music and melody falling into much amorous chat." So charmingly graceful are these descriptions that, together with Shakespeare, Lodge has made the Forest of Arden almost as much the accepted home of the pastoral as Sicily and Arcadia[3] had been hitherto.
[Footnote 1: P. 31.]
[Footnote 2: Pp. 58 and 60.]
[Footnote 3: Theocritus (283-263 B.C.) localized his "Idyls" in Sicily; Vergil (70-19 B.C.), his "Eclogues" in Arcadia.]
Lodge's Skill as a Story-teller. To say that Lodge is a skillful as well as a graceful story-teller is, of course, to make an indefensible assertion. In the sixteenth century English fiction was still in its infancy, and English prose was still undeveloped. Yet we do find in Lodge certain qualities of style that show clearly an advance over the formlessness of some of the stories that had preceded. Though the sentence and paragraph structure is loose and amorphous, the transitions from one subject to another are almost invariably well made, or at least are clearly marked. Phrases such as, "But leaving him so desirous of the journey, to Torismond"[1]; "Leaving her to her new entertained fancies, again to Rosader"[2]; "where we leave them, and return again to Torismond"[3]; show clearly a growing regard for the value of clear arrangement, to which the earlier romancers had been indifferent. In the avoidance of digressions, too, Lodge's style is an improvement upon that of his predecessors, and even upon that of most of his contemporaries.[4] The story moves along, if not rapidly, at least continuously from start to finish. There is a gratifying lack of such preposterous complications and tortuous windings as we meet with in the plot of Greene's "Menaphon," for example, where it sometimes seems doubtful whether the characters ever will emerge from so mazy a labyrinth of plot, and where the reader is bewildered by the almost complete lack of unity in the story.
[Footnote 1: P. 12.]
[Footnote 2: P. 17.]
[Footnote 3: P. 50. See, also, pp. 19, 41, 51, 59, 73, 97, 104.]
[Footnote 4: On page 72 Lodge accuses himself of digressing; but the four lines in which he here anticipates the conclusion of the story seem not to warrant the charge.]
The Lyrical Interludes. Lodge's spirit is essentially poetical. One feels that his way of looking at things is that of a true poet; of one, that is, who sees beneath the shows of things. Lodge saw as clearly as Shakespeare did that only love can untie the knot that selfishness has tied. And not only is Lodge a poet in his outlook on life, but also in the narrower sense of the word, for he is one of the sweetest singers of all that band of choristers that filled the spacious times of great Elizabeth with sounds that echo still. The voices of some were more resonant or more impassioned; few, if any, were sweeter. Such a song as Rosalynde's Madrigal, beginning,
Love in my bosom, like a bee?Doth suck his sweet:
is as fluent, as graceful, and as mellifluous as anything that appeared in that marvelously productive time. Lodge's poetic interludes impress one not only by their easy grace and sweetness, but by their melody as well. They possess that truly lyric quality that Burns's songs exhibit to such a marked degree. They seem to sing themselves. It is almost impossible to read aloud the best of them, such as,
Like to the clear in highest sphere?Where all imperial glory shines,?Of selfsame color is her hair,?Whether unfolded or in twines:?Heigh ho, fair Rosalynde!
without setting them unconsciously to a kind of tune, so essentially musical are the lines. In their wonderful harmony these lyrics remind one of Burns, but in the radiant and ethereal quality of their phrasing they inevitably recall Shelley. Furthermore, these songs