Taking birth among the upland meadows of Sicily, the pastoral tradition first assumed its conventional garb in imperial Rome, and this it preserved among learned writers after its revival in the dawn of the Italian renaissance.  With Arcadia for its local habitation it underwent a rebirth in the opening years of the sixteenth century in Sannazzaro’s romance, and again towards the close in the drama of Tasso.  It became chivalric in Spain and courtly in France, and finally reached this country in three main streams, the eclogue borrowed by Spenser from Marot, the romance suggested to Sidney by Montemayor, and the drama imitated by Daniel from Tasso and Guarini.  Once here, it blended variously with other influences and with native tradition to produce a body of dramatic work, which, ill-defined, spasmodic and occasional, nevertheless reveals on inspection a certain character of its own, and one moreover not precisely to be paralleled from the literary annals of any other European nation.

The indications of a native pastoral impulse, manifesting itself in the burlesque of the religions drama and the romance of the popular ballads, we have already considered.  The connexion which it is possible to trace between this undefined impulse and the later pastoral tradition is in no wise literary; in so far as it exists at all and is one of temperament alone, a bent of national character.  In tracing the rise of the form in Italy upon the one hand, and in England upon the other, we are struck by certain curious contrasts and also by certain curious parallelisms.  The closest analogy to the ballad themes to be discovered in the literature of Italy is in certain of the songs of Sacchetti and his contemporaries, but it would be unwise to insist on the resemblance.  The more suggestive parallel of the novelle has to be ruled out on the score of form, and is further differentiated by the notable lack in them of romantic spirit.  Again, in the sacre rappresentazioni, the burlesque interpolations from actual life, which with us aided the genesis of the interlude, and through it of the romantic comedy, are as a rule so conspicuously absent that the rustic farce with which one nativity play opens can only be regarded as a direct and conscious imitation from the French.  It is, on the other hand, a remarkable fact, and one which, in the absence of any evidence of direct imitation,[205] must be taken to indicate a real parallelism in the evolution of the tradition in the two countries, that in England as in Italy the way was paved for pastoral by the appearance of mythological plays, introducing incidentally pastoral scenes and characters, and anticipating to some extent at any rate the peculiar atmosphere of the Arcadian drama.

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