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Updated: June 9, 2025
'That Guarini, in his Pastor Fido, keept not decorum, in making Shepherds speek as well as himself could.... That Sidney did not keep a decorum in making everyone speak as well as himself. The critical foundation of these censures in an a priori definition of pastoral is obvious, and they are more interesting for their authorship than for their intrinsic merit.
He found the lady upon whom so much depended, at the Schifanoia. Madama Lionella d'Este, wife of the Count Guarino Guarini, was a fresh-coloured, lusty young woman of three and twenty, not at all in love with her husband, but very much in love with love. The Captain of Lances had said truly when he shrugged her off as no beauty.
We learn from his commendatory sonnet on the 'Dymocke' Pastor fido that he had known Guarini personally in Italy, an accident which supplies an interesting link between the dramas of the two countries, and might suggest a specific incentive to the composition of his pastorals, were any such needed.
In this pamphlet Guarini traversed the professor's propositions with a good deal of scholastic ergotism: 'As in compounds the hot accords with the cold, its mortal enemy, as the dry humour with the moist, so the elements of tragedy and comedy, though separately antagonistic, yet when united in a third form, et cetera et cetera.
The Count Guarino wanted him at the Palazzo Guarini; the Countess insisted that he should remain in bond at the Schifanoia; the august couple wrangled publicly over his little body. "What, Madam," cried the Count, "is it not enough that you absent yourself from my house? Must you keep my friends out of it also?" "He was accredited to me, my lord," said the lady, "to me, therefore, he shall come."
The metaphoric 'infancy' of which Guarini speaks is the pre-dramatic period of pastoral growth.
It is only fair to add that very different views have been held with regard to the moral aspect of the play, the theory of its essential healthiness finding an eloquent advocate in Ugo Angelo Canello . Little as it became him, Guarini chose to adopt the attitude of a guardian of morals, and Bellarmino's words clearly possessed a special sting.
But happen you see my master, happen he wear his brocade of white and gold it is all peacocks' eyes, my seraphic heart, in gold and blue upon snowy white happen again he look, 'Come' at you why, off you trot as a hound to the platter, and I speed you thither with open heart. Thus walks his world, Guarino Guarini, my noble master."
In 1591 Vincenzo Gonzaga, now duke, summoned Guarini to Mantua, and matters advanced as far as a prova generale or dress rehearsal. The project, however, had once more to be abandoned owing to the death of Cardinal Gianvincenzo Gonzaga at Rome. We possess the scheme for the four intermezzi designed for this occasion, representing the Musica della Terra, del Mare, dell' Aria, and Celeste.
When I once transport myself to this sphere I have no longer any care for them, and if I could I would not exact of them an allegiance which has no concern with them. For this reason I have always vastly enjoyed the artificialities of pastoral poetry; and in Venice I read with a pleasure few serious poems have given me the "Pastor Fido" of Guarini.
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