returns the affections of Lysander, but the meeting of the lovers is interrupted by the jealous Francisco and a gang who wound Lysander and carry off Gloriana.  She escapes from her captors, but only after she has lost her reason, and wanders about until she meets with Cliton, who has turned hermit and who now undertakes her cure.  Throughout the play we find comic interludes by Scrub, a page or attendant in search of his master, who also has some farcical business with the Lustful Shepherd, who after being disappointed of Cloe disguises himself as a satyr, apparently deeming that role suited to his taste.  In the end all the characters are brought together.  Francisco, found contrite, is forgiven by Lysander and Gloriana; Cliton and Florida love once more; so do Daphnes and Cloe, appropriately enough.  Scrub announces the death of the usurping duke, ’who banished good old Leon;’ Francisco and Lysander reveal themselves as princes who left the court to win his daughter’s love, when he was driven from his land, and so—­love crowns the end.

Through this medley it is not hard to see the various debts the author has incurred towards his predecessors.  The verse, in rimed couplets, whether deca- or octo-syllabic, ultimately depends on Fletcher; of the comic prose scenes I have already spoken in dealing with Goffe’s Careless Shepherdess, a play the influence of which may perhaps be specifically traced in the satyr-disguise, the gang who carry off Gloriana, her unexplained escape, and the songs of the ‘Destinies’ and a ’Heavenly Messenger,’ who in their inconsequence recall the ‘Bonus Genius’ of Goffe’s play.  Scrub may owe his origin to the same source, though he is rather more like the page in the Maid’s Metamorphosis.  The usurping duke recalls As You Like It; the princes seeking their love-fortunes among the shepherd folk suggest the Arcadia; while the influence of the Faithful Shepherdess is not only traceable in the character of the Lustful Shepherd, but also in certain specific parallels, as where the wounded Lysander, seeing his love carried off, exclaims: 

Stay, stay! let me but breathe my last
Upon her lips, and I’ll forgive what’s past; (p. 24)

a reminiscence of the lines spoken by Alexis in a similar situation: 

                 Oh, yet forbear
    To take her from me! give me leave to die
    By her! (Faithful Shepherdess, III. i. 165[347].)

The general level of the verse is not high, but we now and again light on some pleasing lines such as the following: 

My dearest love, fair as the eastern morn
As it breaks o’er the plains when summer’s born,
Hanging bright liquid pearls on every tree,
New life and hope imparting, as to me
Thy presence brings delight, so fresh and rare
As May’s first breath, dispensing such sweet air
The Phoenix does expire in; sit, while I play
The cunning thief, and steal thy heart away,
And thou shalt stand as judge to censure me. (p. 18.)