SOURCE: “The Three Masterpieces,” in Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama, A. H. Bullen, 1906, pp. 264-316.

In the following excerpt, Greg examines what he judges the two greatest English dramatic pastoral romances, John Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess and Ben Jonson's Sad Shepherd. He notes Fletcher's greater indebtedness to Italian pastoral dramas than to English courtly-chivalric pieces and finds Jonson's work—the first truly English pastoral—to be a fine achievement despite its several weaknesses. Greg compares these two pieces to Thomas Randolph's Amyntas, a work that, despite its “inferior” merit, shares with the other dramas certain characteristics of form.

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Among English pastorals there are two plays, and two only, that can be said to stand in the front rank of the romantic drama as a whole. The first of these is, of course, Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess. In the case of the second the statement would perhaps be more correctly...