[143] Into purely bibliographical questions, such as the history of the Edinburgh edition of 1599, it is of course impossible to enter here.

[144] Letter in the State Papers.  See Introduction to Sommer’s facsimile of the first edition, 1891.

[145] Conversations with Drummond, X. Shakespeare Society, 1842, p. 10.

[146] K. Brunhuber, to whose work on the Arcadia (Sir Philip Sidneys Arcadia und ihre Nachlaeufer, 1903) I am in a measure indebted, failing to find many specific borrowings, is inclined to make light of Montemayor’s influence.  There can, however, be little question that, in general style and conception, Sidney, while influenced by the Greek romance, yet belonged essentially to the Spanish school.

[147] Analyses of the Arcadia will be fouud in all works upon the novel from Dunlop to J. J. Jusserand and W. Raleigh.  Perhaps the fullest, which is also provided with copious extracts, is that in the Retrospective Review, 1820, ii. p. 1.

[148] An allegorical interpretation certainly found favour among the critics of the time, and was advanced by Puttenham in his Art of English Poesy (1589), even before the publication of the romance.  See also Thomas Wilson’s allusion on the title-page of his translation from the Diana, given above (p. 141, note).

[149] A critical edition remains, however, a desideratum.

[150] See Jusserand’s English Novel in the time of Shakespeare, 1890, p. 274.

[151] The later fashionable pastoral of French origin, with the Astree as its type and chief representative, does not concern us, or at most concerns us so indirectly as not to warrant our lingering over it here.

[152] I should at once say that the view of the development of the pastoral drama adopted above is not endorsed by all scholars.  To have set forth at length the considerations upon which it is based would have swollen beyond all bounds an introductory section of my work.  Since, however, the question is one of considerable interest, I have added what I believe to be a fairly full and impartial discussion in the form of an appendix.

[153] ‘Orfeo cantando giugne all’ Inferno’ is one of the stage directions.

[154] For an elaborate example (1547) of this kind of stage, on which various localities were simultaneously represented, see Petit de Julleville, Histoire de la langue et de la litterature francaise, ii. pp. 416-7.

[155] Concerning the play see the account given by Symonds, together with his admirable translation in Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, ii. p. 345, also an elaborate essay, ’L’Orfeo del Poliziano alla corte di Mantova,’ by Isidoro del Lungo, in the Nuova antologia for August, 1881, and A. D’Ancona, Origini del teatro italiano, ii. pp. 2 and 106.  The standard edition of Poliziano’s Italian works, that by Carducci, is unfortunately not in the British Museum.