During James I’s reign pastoral shows of a sort no doubt became frequent.  While in some cases which remain to be noticed they reached the elaboration of small plays, in others they probably remained simple affairs enough.  We get an interesting glimpse of the conditions of production in a note of John Aubrey’s.[345] ‘In tempore Jacobi,’ he writes, ’one Mr. George Ferraby was parson of Bishops Cannings in Wilts:  an excellent musitian, and no ill poet.  When queen Anne came to Bathe, her way lay to traverse the famous Wensdyke, which runnes through his parish.  He made severall of his neighbours, good musitians, to play with him in consort, and to sing.  Against her majestie’s comeing, he made a pleasant pastorall, and gave her an entertaynment with his fellow songsters in shepherds’ weeds and bagpipes, he himself like an old bard.  After that wind musique was over, they sang their pastorall eglogues.’  This was in 1613; Ferraby or Ferebe later became chaplain to the king.

The more elaborate pieces were usually written for performance at schools or colleges.  Such a piece is Tatham’s Love Crowns the End, composed for the scholars of Bingham in Nottinghamshire in 1633, and printed in his Fancy’s Theatre in 1640.  Small literary interest attaches to the play, which is equally slight and ill constructed, but is perhaps not unrepresentative of its class.  In spite of its very modest dimensions it possesses a full romantic-pastoral plot, with the resuit that it is at times almost unintelligible, owing to the want of space in which to develop in an adequate and dramatic manner the motives and situations.  The bewildering rapidity with which character succeeds character upon the stage must have made the representation almost impossible to follow, while the reading of the piece is not a little complicated by the confusion in which the stage directions remain in the only modern edition.[346] Some notion of the complexity of the plot may be gathered from the following account.  Cliton, having in a fit of jealousy sought to kill his love Florida, is found wandering in the woods by Alexis, who receives his confession and shows him the way to repentance.  Florida, moreover, has been found and healed by the wise shepherdess Claudia, and is living in retirement.  Meanwhile Cloe (a name which it appears from the rimes that the author pronounced Cloi) is saved by Lysander from the pursuit of a Lustful Shepherd, in consequence of which she transfers to him the affection she previously bore to her lover Daphnes.  Next Leon and his daughter Gloriana appear, together with the swain Francisco, to whom against her will the maiden is apparently betrothed.  They all go off to view the games in which Lysander, whose heart is also fixed on Gloriana, proves victor.  His refusal to entertain the affection of Cloe drives her to a state of distraction, in which the nymphs of the woods take pity on her and bring her to Claudia to be cured.  Gloriana in the meantime