At a later date we find Shirley in his Love Tricks introducing two sisters who leave their home and, taking the disguise of shepherd and shepherdess, dwell among the country folk in the fields and pastures, whither they are followed by their lovers.  There are passages which reveal a genuine pastoral tone, such as Shirley could readily adopt when it suited his purpose, and it is not only in the measure that the tradition reveals itself in such lines as: 

    A shepherd is a king whose throne
    Is a mossy mountain, on
    Whose top we sit, our crook in hand,
    Like a sceptre of command,
    Our subjects, sheep grazing below,
    Wanton, frisking to and fro. (IV. ii.)

Again, in the Grateful Servant we have a show of ’Satyres pursuing Nymphes; they dance together.  Exeunt Satyres; three Nymphes seem to intreat [Lodowick] to goe with them,’ accompanied by a song of Silvanus.

Yet slighter traces of pastoral are to be occasionally found in other plays of the period.  Thus in Brome’s Love-Sick Court the swains and nymphs are led in the dance by characters who have sought and found a cure for love among the country folk.  In John Jones’ Adrasta, the scene of which is laid at Florence, several of the characters disguise themselves in pastoral attire, and there is one definitely pastoral scene in which they appear in the midst of real shepherds and shepherdesses.  The play was printed in 1635, and it is noticeable as containing, in the pastoral scene, satire on the Puritans resembling that introduced by Jonson in the Sad Shepherd.  So again, similar disguisings, though of a less pronouncedly pastoral character, occur in the anonymous Knave in Grain, in which the scene is Venice.  Satyrs and nymphs, clowns and maids, join in a song in Nashe’s curious allegorical show entitled Summer’s Last Will and Testament; nymphs and satyrs appear in the interludes of Dekker’s Old Fortunatus; Silvanus, with nymphs and satyrs, perform a sort of interlude with song in the anonymous Wily Beguiled; and, lastly, we have the morris danced by the countrymen and wenches who accompany the jailor’s daughter in the Two Noble Kinsmen.

* * * * *

The wider influence of tone and spirit is, in the nature of the case, far more difficult to determine.  It is possible that some court-plays may show the influence of the artificial arrangement of characters and the conventional play of motives characteristic of the pastoral drama.  But it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to analyse with certainty such structural peculiarities as these, still more so to assign them with confidence to their proper origin.  Many characteristics which one might at first sight put down to the influence of the pastoral drama are, in reality, far more likely to be due to that of the comic stage of Italy in general.  But while it would be rash to assert that the pastoral plays in