Thanks probably to the combination in its pages of the popular chivalric tradition with the fashionable Italian pastoral, and also to certain graces of style which it possesses, the Diana held the field until the picaresque romance developed into a recognized genre, and exercised a very considerable influence on pastoral writers even beyond the frontiers of Spain.  Googe imitated passages from it in his eclogues; Sidney translated some of its songs, and took it as the model of his own romance; Shakespeare borrowed from it the plot of the Two Gentlemen of Verona.  In the land of its birth its popularity was shown by the number of continuations and imitations to which it gave rise.  Irresponsible publishers swelled the bulk of their editions with matter purloined from less popular authors.  The year 1564 saw the appearance of two second parts.  One in eight books, by the physician Alonzo Perez, only got so far as disposing of Delio, and appears to exaggerate all the faults of the original in compensation for the lack of its merits.  The other, from the pen of Gaspar Gil Polo, is in five books, and narrates, in a style scarcely inferior to its model, the faithlessness and death of Delio, and Sireno’s marriage with Diana.  Both alike promise continuations which never appeared.  A third part was, however, published so late as 1627, as the work of Jeronimo de Texeda, but it is nothing more than a rifacimento of Gil Polo’s continuation, altered apparently with a view to its forming a sequel to Perez’ work.  Furthermore, in 1599 there appeared a religions parody by Fra Bartolome Ponce, and there are said to be no less than six French, two English, and two German translations, not to mention a Latin one of Gil Polo’s portion at least.

Besides continuations, there are extant nearly a score of imitations of varying interest and merit.  In 1584 appeared the Galatea of Cervantes, imitated from Ribeiro and Montemayor; which in its turn is supposed to have suggested the Arcadia, written a few years later at the instigation of the Duke of Alva by Lope de Vega, and published in 1598.  Each is more or less autobiographic or else historical in outline:  ’many of its shepherds and shepherdesses are such in dress alone,’ Cervantes confesses of his romance, while Lope announces that ’the Arcadia is a true history.’  Lastly may be mentioned the Portuguese Primavera of Francisco Rodrigues de Lobo, which appeared in three long parts between 1601 and 1614, and is pronounced by Ticknor to be ’among the best full-length pastoral romances extant.’