court recall the introduction of the ‘mortal fairies’ of the Merry Wives, and that in which Amyntas’ ‘deluded fancy’ takes the augur for a hound of Actaeon’s breed may owe something to a passage in King Lear.  But even apart from the elements of farce and comedy there are important aspects in which the Amyntas severs itself from the stricter tradition of the Italian pastoral.  Randolph, while adopting the machinery and much of the scenic environment of Guarini’s play, made certain not unimportant alterations in the dramatic construction, tending towards greater variety and complicity.  In the Pastor fido the four main characters, though they ultimately resolve themselves into two pairs, are throughout interdependent, and their story forms but a single plot.  That the play should have needed a double solution, the events that bring two couples together having no connexion with one another, was a dramatic blunder but imperfectly concealed by the fact that Silvio and Dorinda are purely secondary, the whole interest being concentrated on the fortunes of Mirtillo and Amarilli.  In Randolph’s play, on the other hand, there are no less than six important characters.  These are divided into two groups, each with an independent plot, one of which contains a telling though somewhat conventional [Greek:  peripe/teia], while the other, though possessing originality and pathos, is lacking in dramatic possibilities.  Thus each supplies the elements wanting in the other, and if woven together harmoniously, should have been capable of forming the basis of a well-constructed play.  The first of these groups consists of Laurinda, Alexis, Damon, and Amarillis, the last two being really the dramatically important ones, though their fortunes are connected throughout.  It is Laurinda’s choice of Alexis that leads to the union of Damon and Amarillis, and it is not till Damon has unconsciously fulfilled the oracle and been freed by its interpretation, that the loves of Laurinda and Alexis can hope for a happy event.  Thus Randolph has at least not fallen into the error by which Guarini introduced a double catastrophe into a single plot, though he has not altogether avoided a somewhat similar danger.  This is due to the other group above mentioned, consisting of Amyntas and Urania, who, so far as the plot is concerned, are absolutely independent of the other characters.  Their own story is essentially undramatic, although it possesses qualities which would make it effective in narrative; and it is, moreover, wholly unaffected by the solution of the other plot.  This is obviously a weak place in the construction of the play, but the author has shown great resource in meeting the difficulty.  First, by placing the interpretation of the oracle in the mouth of Amyntas, who must yet himself remain hopeless amid the general rejoicing, he has produced a figure of considerable dramatic effect, and so kept the attention of the audience braced, and stayed the relaxing effect of the anti-climax.