In this antagonism between Fletcher’s own sympathies and the ideal he set before him seems to me to lie the key to the enigma of his play.  Only one other rational solution is possible, namely that he intended the whole as an elaborate satire on all ideas of chastity whatever.  It is hardly surprising, under the circumstances, that one of the most persistent false notes in the piece is that indelicacy of self-conscious virtue which we have before observed in the case of Tasso.  If on the other hand we have to pronounce Fletcher free of any taint of seductive sentiment, we must nevertheless charge him with a considerable increase in that cynicism with regard to womankind in general which had by now become characteristic of the pastoral drama.  We have already noticed it in the case of Tasso’s ’Or, non sai tu com’ e fatta la donna?’ and of the words in which Corisca describes her changes of lovers, to say nothing of its appearance at the close of the Orfeo.  In English poetry we find Daniel writing: 

Light are their waving vailes, light their attires,
Light are their heads, and lighter their desires;
(Queen’s Arcadia, II. iii.)

while with Fletcher the charge becomes yet more bitter.  Thenot, contemplating the constancy of Clorin, is amazed

that such virtue can
Be resident in lesser than a man, (II. ii. 83,)

or that any should be found capable of mastering the suggestions of caprice

And that great god of women, appetite. (ib. 146.)

Amarillis, courting Perigot, asks in scorn: 

Still think’st thou such a thing as chastity
Is amongst women? (III. i. 297.)

The Sullen Shepherd declares of the wounded Amoret: 

         Thou wert not meant,
    Sure, for a woman, thou art so innocent; (ib. 358.)

and sums up his opinion of the sex in the words: 

Women love only opportunity
And not the man. (ib. 127.)

So Fletcher wrote, and in the same mood the arch-cynic of a later age exclaimed: 

    ev’ry Woman is at heart a Rake!

But it is high time to inquire how it is, supposing the objections we have been considering to be justly chargeable against the Faithful Shepherdess, that it should ever have come to be regarded as a classic of the language, that it should be by far the most widely known of its author’s works, and that we should find ourselves turning to it again and again with ever-fresh delight.  The reader has doubtless already answered the question.  Fletcher brought to the composition of his play a gift of easy lyric versification, a command of varied rhythm, and a felicity of phrase, allusion, recollection, and echo, such as have seldom been surpassed.  The wealth of pure poetry overflowing in every scene is of power to make us readily forget the host of objections which serious criticism must raise, and revel with mere delight in the verbal melody.  The play is literally crowded with incidental sketches of exquisite beauty which suggest comparison with the more set descriptions of Tasso, and flash past on the speed of the verse as the flowers of the roadside and glimpses of the distant landscape through breaks in the hedge flash for an instant on the gaze of the rider[269].