One of Montagu’s passports to fame is an allusion in Suckling’s Session of the Poets, from which it is evident that the style of the play attracted notice of an uncomplimentary character even among the writer’s contemporaries: 

    Wat Montagu now stood forth to his trial,
    And did not so much as suspect a denial;
    But witty Apollo asked him first of all,
    If he understood his own pastoral!

The Shepherds’ Paradise is, however, best remembered on account of circumstances attending its performance.  It was acted, as we learn from a letter of John Chamberlain’s, on January 8, 1632-3, by the queen and her ladies, who filled male and female parts alike.  Almost simultaneously appeared Prynne’s famous attack on all things connected with the stage, in which was one particularly scurrilous passage concerning women who appeared on the boards.  As this, of course, was not the practice of the public stage, it was evident that the author must have had some specific instance in mind, and though it is not certain whether there was any personal intention in the allusion, the cap was made to fit, and for the supposed insult to the queen Prynne lost his ears.

It is presumably at this point that Randolph’s Amyntas should appear in a chronological survey of English pastoralism.

Of the ‘Pastoral of Florimene,’ presented at the queen’s command before the king at Whitehall, on December 21, 1635, we possess the plot only, and it is even doubtful in what language the piece was composed[330].  The songs in the introduction and the intermedi were undoubtedly in French, and the prologue by Fame in English; the rest is uncertain, but the French forms of the names, and the fact that it was represented by ’les filles francaises de la Reine’ point in the same direction.  The plot, which belongs entirely to the court-pastoral type of the French romances, only influenced in the denoument by mythological tradition, appears to be original in the same degree as most other pastoral inventions, that is, to exhibit fresh variations on stock situations.[331] The relation of the characters is involved, and not easily made out from the printed account of the piece, but the outline of the plot is as follows.  The shepherdess Florimene is loved by the Delian shepherd Anfrize, who has long been her servant, and the Arcadian stranger Filene, who in order to gain access to the object of his devotion has disguised himself in female attire, and passes under the name of Dorine.  In this disguise he is courted by Florimene’s brother, Aristee.  Filene, however, was loved in Arcadia by the nymph Licoris, who has followed him disguised in shepherd’s weeds.  Aristee, in order to sound the mind of his love, the supposed Dorine (i.e.  Filene), disguises himself in his sister Florimene’s dress, and in this garb receives to his astonishment the declaration of Filene’s love.  Aristee immediately leaves