Thus it is neither to the mellow autumn of his art, when he had cast aside as unworthy all the trivialities of convention, nor yet to the storm and stress of adolescence, the immaturity of pettiness and exaggeration, that we must look if we would discover Shakespeare’s attitude towards pastoral tradition. As You Like It belongs to his middle period.  It will be remembered, from what has been said on an earlier page, that in this play Shakespeare substantially followed the story of Rosalind as narrated by Lodge, to whom we owe the introduction of a pastoral element into the old tale of Gamelyn.  The pastoral characters of the play may be roughly analysed as follows.  Celia and Rosalind, the latter disguised as a youth, are courtly characters; Phebe and Silvius represent the polished Arcadians of pastoral tradition; while Audrey and William combine the character of farcical rustics with the inimitable humanity which distinguishes Shakespeare’s creations.  It is noteworthy that this last pair is the dramatist’s own addition to the cast.  Thus we have all the various types—­all the degrees or variations of idealization—­brought side by side and co-existent in the fairyland of the poet’s fancy.  The details of the play are too well known for there to be any call to outrage the delicate interweaving of character and incident by translating the perfect scenes into clumsy prose.  Nor would such analysis throw any light upon Shakespeare’s attitude towards pastoral.  That must be sought elsewhere.  We may seek it in the fanciful mingling of ideals and idealizations—­of courtly masking, of the conventional naturalism of polished dreamers, and of a rusticity more genuine at once and more sympathetic than that of Lorenzo, all of which act by their very natures as touchstones to one another.  We may seek it in the uncertainty and hovering between belief and scepticism, earnest and play, reality and imagination—­such as can only exist in art, or in life when life approaches to the condition of an art—­which we find in the scenes where Orlando courts his mistress in the person of the youth who is but his mistress in disguise.  We may seek it lastly in the manner in which the firm structure of the piece is fashioned of the non-pastoral elements; in the happiness of the art by which the pastoral incidents and business appear but as so much fair and graceful ornament upon this structure, bringing with them a smack of the free, rude, countryside, or a faint perfume of the polished Utopia of courtly makers.  It is here that we may trace Shakespeare’s appreciation of pastoral, as a delicate colouring, an old-world fragrance, a flower from wild hedgerows or cultured garden, a thing of grace and beauty, to be gathered, enjoyed, and forgotten, unsuited in its evanescent charm to be the serious business of art or life.

On this note, the realization at once of the delicate loveliness and of the unsubstantiality of the pastoral ideal, we may close our survey of its growth and blossoming in our dramatic literature, and before finally turning from the tradition which fascinated so many generations of European artists, pause for one moment to inquire of the critical expression it has received at the hands of more philosophical writers.