SOURCE: Introduction to English Pastoral Poetry: From the Beginnings to Marvell, edited by Frank Kermode, George Harrap and Company, 1952, pp. 11-44.

In the following excerpt, Kermode looks at the scope of the pastoral form, especially as it was used by English Renaissance poets; outlines its history and its critical and philosophical background; and discusses the general theory of Imitation as it relates to the pastoral.

Jove, Jove! this shepherd's passion Is much upon my fashion. 

As You Like It, II, iv, 56-57.

Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd? 

Ibid., III, i, 21.

Pastoral is one of the ‘kinds’ of poetry, like Epic, Tragedy, and Satire. We still know what these ‘kinds’ are, though we probably attach less importance to them than earlier readers did. To an Elizabethan critic they were natural; men had discovered, not devised, them. A poet who wrote in some novel form not recognized as a...