Upon the blacke Rocke of despaire
      My youthfull joyes are perish’d quite;
    My hopes are vanish’d into ayre,
      My day is turn’d to gloomy night;
    For since my Rhodon deare is gone,
      Hope, light, nor comfort, have I none. 
    A Cell where griefe the Landlord is
      Shall be my palace of delight,
    Where I will wooe with votes and sighes
      Sweet death to end my sorrowes quite;
    Since I have lost my Rhodon deare,
      Deaths fleshlesse armes why should I feare? (I. iii.)

To treat of Walter Montagu’s Shepherds’ Paradise at a length at all commensurate with its own were to set a premium on dull prolixity; there are, however, in spite of its restricted merits, a few points which give it a claim upon our attention.  A brief analysis will suffice.  The King of Castile negotiates a marriage between his son and the princess of Navarre.  The former, however, is in love with a lady of the court named Fidamira, who repulses his advances in favour of Agenor, a friend of the prince’s.  The prince therefore resolves to leave the court and seek the Shepherds’ Paradise, a sequestered vale inhabited by a select and courtly company, and induces Agenor to accompany him on his expedition.  In their absence the king himself makes love to Fidamira, who, however, escapes, and likewise makes her way to the Shepherds’ Paradise in disguise.  Meanwhile, Belesa, the princess of Navarre, misliking of the proposed match with a man she has never seen, has withdrawn from her father’s court to the same pastoral retreat, where she has at once been elected queen of the courtly company.  On the arrival of the prince and his friend they both fall in love with her, but the prince’s suit is seconded by the disguised Fidamira, and soon takes a favourable turn.  At this point the King of Castile arrives in pursuit, together with an old councillor, who proceeds to reveal the relationship of the various characters.  Fidamira and Belesa, it appears, are sisters, and Agenor their brother.  The marriage of the prince and Belesa is of course solemnized; the king renews his suit to Fidamira, but she prefers to remain in Paradise, where she is chosen perpetual queen[329].

The plot, it will be observed, belongs entirely to the school of the Hispano-French romance, and the style, intricate, involved, and conceited, in which this prose pastoral is written betrays the same origin.  Moreover, as Euphuism, objectionable enough in the romance, becomes ten times more intolerable on the stage, so too with the language of the pastoral-amorous tale of courtly chivalry.  There are, however, incidental passages of verse which in their own rather intricate and ergotic style are of greater merit than the prose, though that is not saying much.  The close dependence of the piece upon the chivalric tradition serves to differentiate it from the majority of those we have to consider; while certain external circumstances have combined to give it a fortuitous reputation.