to obscure the real action in the earlier part of
the fragment. But since Lord Fitzwater’s
daughter is doomed by an unkind tradition to remain
Maid Marian still, no fortunate solution of the imbroglio
can do more than restore the harmony which had been
before, and the plot would therefore be open to the
precise objection from the dramatic point of view
which we found in the case of the Faithful Shepherdess.
Moreover, the complication is completely solved by
the end of the second act, and it was obviously introduced
for no other purpose than to bring about a general
crusade against the wise woman and her confederate
powers, which should be the means of restoring Earine
to her Sad Shepherd. Thus the story of these
lovers alone can supply the materials for the main,
or indeed for any real plot at all; and the fact that,
as Mr. Homer Smith informs us, out of some thousand
lines less than half are devoted to strictly pastoral
interests, is but evidence of the felicity of construction,
by which Jonson, while keeping the pastoral plot as
the mainspring of the piece, nevertheless avoided the
tediousness almost inseparable from pastoral action
and atmosphere, and threw the burden of stage business
upon the more congenial personages of Maid Marian,
Robin Hood and his merry men, the Witch of Paplewich,
and Robin Goodfellow. It remains for us to consider
the fundamental question which arises in connexion
with Mr. Swinburne’s criticism. Are the
various threads of which Jonson wove his plot in themselves
incompatible and incongruous? Is it correct to
describe the parts played by the more rustic characters
as a grotesque antimasque to the action of the polished
shepherds? Or is Dr. Ward right in considering
the combination a happy one, and the characters harmonious?
Now any one who wishes to defend Mr. Swinburne’s
view must do so on one of two ground: either he
must maintain the general proposition that various
degrees of idealization are essentially incompatible
within the limits of a single artistic composition,
or else he must hold that the contrast between the
two sets of characters in the actual play is itself
of a grossness to offend the sense of literary propriety
in an audience. If any one is prepared without
qualification to maintain the former of these two propositions,
he is welcome to do so, and he will be perfectly entitled
to condemn Jonson’s pastoral on the strength
of it; but I doubt whether this was the intention
of the critic himself. Although as a general rule
the English drama found its romance rather in what
it imagined to be realism than in conscious idealization,
yet the contrast between the imaginative and refined
creations of the fancy and the often coarse and gross
transcripts from common life are too frequent even
to require specific mention, and many shades even
of imaginative painting, many degrees of idealism,
may frequently be met with in the course of a single
play. What of Rosalind, Phoebe, and Audrey in