Celia. I consent, so as Montanus, when in the midst of his sweete delight, shall find some bitter overthwarts, impute it to his folly, in that he suffered me to be a Rose, that hath prickles with her pleasantnes, as hee is like to have with my love shrewdnes....

Niobe. I yeelded first in mind though it bee my course last to speake:  but if Silvestris find me not ever at home, let him curse himselfe that gave me wings to flie abroad, whose feathers if his jealousie shall breake, my policie shall imp.[221] (V. iv.)

This plot, at once elementary and violent, is combined with the fantastic story of Erisichthon, ‘a churlish husband-man,’ who in the nymphs’ despite cuts down the sacred tree of Ceres, into which the chaste Fidelia had been transformed.  For this offence the goddess dooms him to the plague of hunger.  The ghastly description of this monster, who may be compared with Browne’s Limos, was probably suggested by some similar descriptions in the Faery Queen (I. iv. and III. xii).  Erisichthon is put to all manner of shifts to satisfy the hunger with which he is ever consumed, and is at last forced to sell his daughter Protea to a merchant, in order to keep himself alive.  Protea, it appears, was at one time the paramour of Neptune, who now in answer to her prayer comes to her aid in such a way that, when about to embark on the vessel of her purchaser, she justifies her name by changing into the likeness of an old fisherman.  The deluded merchant, after seeking her awhile, is obliged to set sail and depart without his ware.  She returns home to find her lover Petulius being tempted by a ‘syren,’ who is evidently a mermaid with looking-glass and comb and scaly tail, disporting herself by the shore—­the scene being laid, by the way, on the coast of Arcadia.  Protea at once changes her disguise to the ghost of Ulysses, and is in time to warn her lover of his danger.  Finally, at Cupid’s intercession her father is relieved of his affliction by the now appeased goddess.  This plot is even more crudely distinct from the principal action of the play than is usual with Lyly[222].

It will be noticed that in the play we have just been considering the nymphs are no longer treated with the same respect as was the case in Gallathea; we have, in fact, advanced some way towards the satirical conception and representation of womankind which gives the tone to the Woman in the Moon.  It would almost seem as though his experience of the inconstancy of the royal sunshine had made Lyly a less enthusiastic devotee of womanhood in general and of virginity in particular, and that with an unadvised frankness which may well account for his disappointments at court, he failed to conceal his feelings.  The play is likewise distinguished from the other dramatic works of its author by being composed almost entirely in blank verse.  Certain lines of the prologue—­

    Remember all is but a Poets dreame,
    The first he had in Phoebus holy bowre,
    But not the last, unlesse the first displease—­