no wise affects the question of dramatic propriety.  Certain incongruities must then be admitted, but they lie rather in casual passages than in any necessary portion of the play; while in so far as they appear in the presentation of any character, the contrast seems to lie rather between Aeglamour and the rest of the shepherds than between these and the less polished huntsmen.  It should furthermore be remembered—­though the remark is perhaps strictly beside, or rather beyond, the point—­that where the incongruous elements are not fundamental, it is always possible that they might have been removed had the play undergone revision.

Subject to these reservations it appears to me that the characters and general tone of Jonson’s pastoral are perfectly harmonious and congruent.  The shepherds are far removed from the types of Arcadian convention, and may more properly be regarded as idealizations from the actual country lads and lasses of merry England.  Their names are borrowed from popular romance, which, if somewhat French in its tone, was certainly in no way antagonistic to the legends of Sherwood nor to the agency of witchcraft and fairy lore[289].  Even Alken, in spite of his didactic bent, is as far as possible from being the conventional ‘wise shepherd,’ and certainly no Arcadian ever displayed such knowledge as he of the noble art, while his lecture on the blast of hag-hunting, though savouring somewhat of burlesque, contains perhaps the most thoroughly charming and romantic lines that ever flowed from the pen of the great exponent of classical tradition.  That the characters owe nothing to Arcadian tradition is not contended, nor do I know that it would be desirable that they should not, since that tradition forms at least a convenient, if not an altogether necessary, precedent for such pastoral idealization; but even if it is going rather far to say that they ‘belong to a definite age and country,’ they have yet sufficient individuality and community of human nature to be wholly fitting companions for the gallant Robin and his fair lady.  Jonson, it would appear, consciously adopted the pastoral method, if hardly the pastoral mood, of Theocritus, in contradistinction to that of the courtly poets in Italy.  It will be noticed that he has not forborne to introduce references to sheepcraft, but the fact that these enter more or less naturally into the discourse, and are not, as in Fletcher’s pastoral, introduced in the vain hope of giving local colour to wholly uncolourable characters, saves them from having the same stilted effect, and is at the same time evidence of the greater reality of Jonson’s personae.  It is also noteworthy that Jonson has even ventured upon allegorical matter in one passage at least, but has succeeded in doing so in a manner in no wise incongruous with the nature of actual rustics, though the collocation of Robin Hood and the rise of Puritanism must be admitted to be historically something of an anachronism.