The earliest instance of this connexion of which we have notice is one of interest in English history.  It is none other than the masquerade in which Henry appeared disguised as a shepherd at Wolsey’s feast, which, according to Shakespeare, was the occasion of his first meeting with Anne Boleyn.  The disguising is attested by the authority of Cavendish and Hall, but it is clear that the pastoral element was confined to the garb, there being no indication of anything of the nature of a literary presentation.

The first literary specimen of the kind does not appear till near the middle of Elizabeth’s reign, and even then there is barely an excuse for classing it as pastoral.  The composition in question is the slight entertainment, to which the name of The Lady of May has been given by modern critics, composed by Sidney for presentation before Elizabeth during her visit to Leicester at Wanstead, in May, 1578.  It appears to have been his earliest work.  Though not itself a masque in the strict sense of the word in which we have learnt to use it, the piece contains the undeveloped germs of most of the later characteristics of the kind.  The Queen in her walks through the grounds came to a spot where the May-Lady was being courted by a shepherd and a ‘foster,’ hotly contending for the prize.  The strife was stayed, and, the deserts of either party being duly set forth, the Lady referred the choice to the Queen, who decided in favour of the pastoral suitor.  A song and music ended the show.  A strongly rustic element is sustained by the Lady’s mother and the old shepherd Dorcas, while a touch of broad burlesque is introduced in the character of the pedagogue Rombus, who speaks in a style really little more extravagant than that of Sidney’s own Arcadia.  As in the romance, at the end of which the piece was first printed in 1598, the occasional songs are of small merit.

The spring-like freshness that characterizes so much of Peele’s best work breathes deliciously through the polite convention of the Descensus Astraeae, the ’Pageant, borne before M. William Web, Lord Maior of the Citie of London on the day he tooke his oath; beeing the 29. of October. 1591.’  The conceit is graceful in itself, and significant of the sentiment of contemporary London.  Astraea, bearing her sheep-hook as a sort of pastoral sceptre, typified the Queen, and passed on in her triumphal car with the words: 

    Feed on, my flock, among the gladsome green,
      Where heavenly nectar flows above the banks;
    Such pastures are not common to be seen: 
      Pay to immortal Jove immortal thanks,
    For what is good fro heaven’s high throne doth fall;
    And heaven’s great architect be praised for all[339].

In her praise the graces, the virtues, and a champion utter appropriate speeches, whilst Superstition, a friar, and Ignorance, a priest, together with other malcontents, shrink back abashed before her onward march.