Florida. Shine thou on mee, sweet plannet, bee soe good
    As with thy fiery beames to warme my bloud ...

    Narcissus. To speak the truth, faire maid, if you will have us,
    O Oedipus I am not, I am Davus.

    Clois. Good Master Davis, bee not so discourteous
    As not to heare a maidens plaint for vertuous.

    Nar. Speake on a Gods name, so love bee not the theame.

    Flo. O, whiter then a dish of clowted creame,
    Speake not of love?  How can I overskippe
    To speake of love to such a cherrye lippe?

    Nar. It would beseeme a maidens slender vastitye
    Never to speake of any thinge but chastitye.

    Flo. As true as Helen was to Menela
    So true to thee will be thy Florida.

    Clo. As was to trusty Pyramus truest Thisbee
    So true to you will ever thy sweete Clois bee.

    Flo. O doe not stay a moment nor a minute,
    Love is a puddle, I am ore shooes in it.

    Clo. Doe not delay us halfe a minutes mountenance
    That ar in love, in love with thy sweet countenance.

Nar. Then take my dole although I deale my alms ill, Narcissus cannot love with any damzell; Although, for most part, men to love encline all, I will not, I, this is your answere finall.

We are here, it is true, as far as ever from the delicate rusticity of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and not particularly near to the humour of the Athenian rustics, but for burlesque it is passably amusing.  The Midsummer Night’s Dream had appeared possibly a decade earlier, and the audience in the college hall at Oxford can hardly but have been reminded of Wall and Moonshine as they listened to the speech by one who enters carrying ’a buckett and boughes and grasse.’

A well there was withouten mudd,
Of silver hue, with waters cleare,
Whome neither sheep that chawe the cudd,
Shepheards nor goates came ever neare;
Whome, truth to say, nor beast nor bird,
Nor windfalls yet from trees had stirrde.
[He strawes the grasse about the buckett.
And round about it there was grasse,
As learned lines of poets showe,
Which next by water nourisht was;            [Sprinkle water.
Neere to it too a wood did growe,       [Sets down the bowes.
To keep the place, as well I wott,
With too much sunne from being hott. 
And thus least you should have mistooke it,
The truth of all I to you tell: 
Suppose you the well had a buckett,
And so the buckett stands for the well;
And ’tis, least you should counte mee for a sot O,
A very pretty figure cald pars pro toto.

The first strict masque of a pastoral character that we meet with is that of Juno and Iris, with the dance of nymphs and the ’sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary,’ introduced by Shakespeare into the Tempest; but this must not be taken as altogether typical of