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Updated: June 28, 2025
The wild-wood minister thus describes his charge in the octosyllabic couplets which constitute such a characteristic of the play: Perigot's musing when he meets Amoret and supposes her to be the transformed Amarillis is well conceived; he greets her:
The last act, with its obligation to wind up such loose threads of action as have been spun in the course of the play, is perhaps somewhat lacking in passages of particular beauty, but it yields us Amarillis' prayer as she flies from the Sullen Shepherd, and the final speech of the satyr.
Thus the imitation of the irregular measures of Guarini was a confession of the translator's inability adequately to handle the dramatic verse of his own tongue. As a specimen we may take the rendering of Amarillis' speech already quoted from the 'Dymocke' version:
We turn in vain to the contest of kisses among the Megarean maidens, to the game of blind man's buff, to Amarillis' secret confession of love, and to her trembling appeal when confronted by a death of shame, for any evidence of poetie feeling.
Corisca, wanton and cynical, plays, like Amarillis, the part of mischief-maker and deceiver, and, so far from seeking, like her successfully eludes the embraces of the shepherd-satyr. On the other hand, a clear difference between Fletcher's work and that of the Italians may be seen in the respective use made of supernatural agencies. From these the southern drama is comparatively free.
The falsity of his whole position appears in the unconvincing conventionality of the patterns of chastity themselves, and in the unreality of the characters which serve them as foils Cloe being utterly preposterous except as a study in pathlogy, and Amarillis essentially a tragic figure who can only be tolerated on condition of her real character being carefully veiled.
In the first act we find Laurinda unable or unwilling to decide between her rival lovers, and her endeavours to play them off one against the other afford some of the most amusing scenes of the piece. Learning from Thestylis of Amarillis' love for Damon, she determines on a trick whereby she hopes to make her choice without appearing to slight either of her suitors.
Furthermore, he argues that since Amarillis was the victim the goddess aimed at, her blood might without sin be shed even in the holy vale, while Damon is of the priestly stock to which that office justly pertained. Thus Claius and Damon are alike spoken free, and Sicily is relieved of the goddess' curse.
So, again, the character of Amarillis finds its counterpart in that of Alexis, whose love for Cloe is at least human; while Daphnis, who meets Cloe's desperate advances with a shy innocence, is in effect, whatever he may have been in intention, hardly other than a comic character.
It is a rustic element in the interludes, satiric and farcical, supplied by a country clown, some shepherds, and 'a shee Swaine, Amarillis. In his Ages the pastoral element shrinks to an occasional dance and song. Thus in the Golden Age the satyrs and nymphs sing a song in honour of Diana, which introduces the disguised Jupiter in his courtship of Calisto.
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