United States or Ukraine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Do. Oh, oh, oh! Ri. The musick at a convocation of Catts upon a witches upsetting is the spheres to this Catterwalling. I will thrust my head into the pillow, as Dametas did in a bush when the beare was a comeing, and then I shanot heare her. Do. Oh, this is a kind of Purgatory for sins of the flesh.
Angelbert was called Homer, from his partiality to that poet; Riculphus, archbishop of Mentz, chose the name of Damétas, from an eclogue of Virgil: another member took that of Candidus; Eginhard, the Emperor's biographer, was called Calliopus, from the Muse Calliope; Alcuin received, from his country, the name of Albinus; the archbishop Theodulfe was called Pindar; the abbot Adelard was called Augustine; Charlemagne, as the man of God's own heart, was called David.
In the next Melibeus relates how Dametas, having as we now learn killed himself for love, appeared to him amid hell-fire. Eclogue V contains the pitiful tale of Faustus who courted Claudia through the agency of Valerius. Claudia unfortunately fell in love with the messenger, and finding him faithful to his master slew herself.
One daughter, Philoclea, lives with her father Basilius, and the other, Pamela, is confided to the care of Dametas, a country fellow, in the service of Basilius, who lives close by with his wife. Pyrocles, prince of Macedon, and Musidorus, prince of Thessaly, are wrecked on the coast of Arcadia, where they soon become enamored of the two daughters of Basilius.
Here they live in company with the 'most arrant dotish clowne' Dametas, his wife Miso and daughter Mopsa, rustic characters which supply a coarsely farcical element in the plot, certainly no less out of place and inharmonious in the play than in the romance.
There are also the cousins Pyrocles and Musidorus, son and nephew respectively to Euarchus, king of Thessaly, who have arrived in quest of the princesses' loves, and have obtained positions near the objects of their affection, the one disguised as an Amazon under the name of Zelmane, the other seeking service under Dametas and assuming the name of Dorus.
Pyrocles gives rendezvous both to Basilius and Gynecia in a dark and lonely cave, Dametas is sent to dig for hidden treasure, Miso to seek her maligned husband in the house of one of her female neighbours, and Mopsa to await the coming of Apollo in the wishing-tree. Musidorus and Pamela make for the coast, while Pyrocles goes to fetch his mistress Philoclea.
A brief summary of contents will give some idea of the nature of these poems. The first recounts the pains of love; in the second Dametas rails on the blind boy and ends his song by dying. The third treats of the vices of the city, not the least of them being religious persecution.
The courtly characters are represented from the point of view of a prurient-minded bourgeoisie; the rustic figures are equally gross in their vulgarity; while the traitor Dametas, who serves as a link between the two classes, is an upstart parasite, described with a satiric touch not unworthy of Webster as 'a little hillock made great with others' ruines. But if we are content to forget the source of the play, we may take a rather more charitable view.
A third element in the "Arcadia" is the comic, and with this, as might be expected from the rather crude ideas of humor prevalent in the sixteenth century, Sidney met with indifferent success. The wit depends on the ugliness, the perversity, and the clownish character of Dametas, his wife, and their daughter Mopsa.
Word Of The Day