SOURCE: “Harmony and Pastoral in the Old Arcadia,” in ELH, Vol. 35, No. 3, September 1968, pp. 309-28.

[In the following essay, Dipple examines Philip Sidney's use of pastoral setting and conventions in the Old Arcadia, and argues that Sidney ironically exploits pastoral connotations to dramatize the fall from harmony to disharmony and to illustrate the ultimate impracticability of the idealized pastoral world.]

I

Arcadia amonge all the Provinces of Grece was ever had in singuler reputation, partly for the sweetnes of the Aire and other naturall benefittes: But, principally, for the moderate & well tempered myndes of the people, who, (fynding howe true a Contentation ys gotten by following the Course of Nature, And howe the shyning Title of glory somuche affected by other Nacions, dothe in deede help litle to the happines of lyfe) were the onely people, which as by theire Justice and providence, gave neyther Cause nor hope to theyre Neighboures to annoy them, so were they not stirred with false prayse, to truble others quyett. Thincking yt a smalle Rewarde for the wasting of theire owne lyves in ravening, that theire posterity shoulde longe after saye, they had done so: Eeven the Muses seemed to approove theire goode determinacion, by chosing that Contrie as theire cheefest reparing place, and by bestowing theire perfections so largely there, that the very Shepeardes them selves had theire fancyes opened to so highe Conceiptes (as the most learned of other nations have been long tyme since content) bothe to borrow theyre names, and imitate their Conning.¹

Thus in the first words of the Old Arcadia Sidney establishes his literary arch-image,² advertises his locus and controls his reader's reaction. It appears that the work will be another Renaissance pastoral set in utopian Arcadia and sustained in prose romances by such former models as Sannazaro's L'Arcadia or Montemayor's Diana. Because of the romance's generic precedents, the reader should expect either the extreme of pastoral melancholy archetypally imaged in Sannazaro's laments, or that of omnipotent joy found in the heart of the pastoral through the ministering of Montemayor's Felicia. It is with some surprise, therefore, that one finds both politico-personal morality and high comedy³ rapidly ensuing, and the whole romance constituting a kind of literary mélange entirely foreign to its real or imagined models.⁴

Few problems have yet been confronted in Sidney criticism, but fewest of all in studies of the Old Arcadia, with its puzzling constitution in spite of a simplistic Terentian five-act structure. The work's often typological overtones, its use of oracular pronouncements, and its final deus-ex-machina denouement through a phony resurrection have all served to confuse rather than aid commentary. Greater than any of these stumbling-blocks, however, and the central issue on those rare occasions when the work is discussed at all, is the question of genre—is it an epic, a pastoral, a play, or merely a charming and “toyfull” recitation which must amuse beyond the ordinary expectation? Because pastoral is, as Professor Hamilton has pointed out, “cool” right now,⁵ it is in this area that the work can be most easily victimized—and indeed Sidney's introductory framework would encourage us to do so. By choosing the infinitely weary spiritual landscape of Arcadia, he would lead us down the primrose path to an idyllic pleasaunce or pastoral center where the Freudian imagination is released and where highly stylized peril touches destruction but is, of course, miraculously removed. It is not all wrong to read the work lightly and frivolously as Lanham does, or even to give it a ponderous historical framework as Davis assigns to this aspect of the New Arcadia, but both of these approaches⁶ dodge the peculiar achievement of the pastoral element of the romance.

The easiest way to begin talking about this Arcadia is to establish its essential polarities as Sidney presents them. In the first place, Arcadia is a much chronicled and sung literary landscape which can be spontaneously represented to the reader who has, of course, seen it all before and often; but it is simultaneously an historical and geographical location. The Renaissance mind would instantly, and probably with some surprise, recognize Sidney's eclectic, ironic copying of Polybius who talks thus of his native land in his History:

And for that the people of Arcadia haue a certaine fame and renowne of good men, not onely for their easie kinde of life, and their good dispositions, and great honesty towards all the world, but also for the honour and reuerence they beare vnto the Gods. … It is certaine that Musique, (I meane true Musique) is profitable to all the world, and necessary for the Arcadians. … Neither had the ancient Arcadians Musique in so great honour in their Common-wealth, as they not onely caused Children to learne it, but also young men vnto the age of thirty yeares, who otherwise were rude and vnciuil … all their life is adicted to this kinde of singing, not so much for the pleasure they take to heare the Musique, as to excite them to sing together. … Which things (in my opinion) were wisely inuented by their Ancestors, Not for lasciuiousnesse or delights, but for that they see the continuell toile of the people in manuring the land, with a rudenesse and brutishnesse of life, and moreouer with an austeere kinde of liuing, which proceedes from the coldnesse and roughnesse of the Ayre, to the which of necessity we growe like.⁷

The differences between Sidney and Polybius illustrate the differences between history and literature, between the limits of the historian and the vast freedom of the right poet which Sidney worked out in the Defence.⁸

The Arcadia of Sidney's ancient historical source does not have the characteristics of a sympathetic locus amoenus: it is not “had in singuler reputation … for the sweetnes of the Aire and other naturall benefittes,” but is a harsh rural land where the air is cold and rough. In this desolate place, music is essential not as an image of the harmony and peace of the landscape but as an antidote to the base uncivility with which the inhabitants would naturally be afflicted through their environment. Thus the historical view would convey a certain objective realism whereas the literary would lead to an opposite interpretation. Generally, pastoral writers—and here Sannazaro may serve as a generic example—eschewed reality⁹ and concentrated on embroidering the utopian literary tradition, and the patina of Sidney's description would suggest that he is following the custom, as in a sense he is. The peace and political stability of the land, the harmonic, well-tempered stability of the Arcadians, the endowment of the Muses and the natural beauty all combine to present a prototype of the perfectly imaged pastoral land. In the prose beginning of the First Eclogues, also, this same pastoral purity can be found, and again the echo of Polybius' classic description is there:

The maner of the Arcadian Shepeardes was when they mett, together, to pass theyre tyme eyther in suche Musick, as theyre Rurall education woulde afforde them, or in exercyse of theyre body, and tryinge of Masteryes: But, of all other thinges they did especially delighte in Eglogues, wherein, they woulde, some tyme contend for a pryze of well singing, sometymes lament the unhappy pursuite of theyre afflictions, some tymes ageane under hidden formes, utter suche matter, as otherwyse were not fitt for theyre Delivery. Neyther ys yt to bee marveyled, that they did so muche excell other Natyons in that quality, since from theire Chyldehood, they were brought up unto yt. … But the peace wherein they did so notably florish (and specially the sweete enjoyng of theyre peace to so pleasant uses) drew dyvers straungers aswell of greate, as meane bowses.

(F, 52)

As in the first passage of the romance, this description adds literary overtones to Polybius' data, for here we are presented with a formula for potential allegory “under hidden formes.” One side of Sidney's achievement, then, is the presentation of a pastoral milieu, but the telling factor in his modification lies in the ironic subsurface of realism which the Polybian echoes implant in the mind. Under the harmonic tendency of the ancient Arcadians lay the harsh reality of life lived in a very unpleasant place, and as Sidney develops his romance, he will show how, under the harmonic surface of utopia, lies a world of broken laws and moral errors.

Because of this layered structure of meaning, we can very early clear the Old Arcadia from any imputation that it is generically in the mainstream of pastoral. As a genre, the pastoral demands a one-dimensional spiritual landscape where allegory may be possible but where realism is not. In this respect, the genre is entirely literary or artificial, and although Sidney begins ironically more or less in this mode, his immediate introduction of Basilius and the whole narrative sequence of the first few pages belie real pastoral intention. There is, in fact, a kind of split between landscape and narrative, for the Arcadian setting prepares us for an idyllic although perhaps melancholy or even bitter tale of shepherds, whereas the narrative instantly presents us with outright, unmasked royalty—the duke Basilius, “a Prince of sufficient skill, to governe so quyett a Contrie,” and his oracle.

The polarities consist in the extremes of pastoral setting as opposed to political narrative romance or dramatic sequence, the one illuminating the other, but the accomplishment is maintained at a double level. Because his work is generically multileveled, Sidney is able to scrutinize the viability of pastoral with an eye to both political and comic reality. Arcadia, as both a literary landscape and a real place where adventure is laced with moral meaning and judgments, is no longer a prototypical ideal. Instead of the containment of standard pastoral, this particular mode allows a vision of the impracticability of Arcadia; it takes the myth of a harmonic paradise common to Greek and Christian thought and places it within the norms of action typical of real, post-lapsarian men. The result is a moral exemplum illustrating the ultimate inadequacy of the romance heroes, Pyrocles and Musidorus, who lose themselves in this puzzling world.

In Sidney's work, pastoral perfection is achieved only through the progression of the Eclogues which conclude the first four books, particularly in the third set with the harmony illustrated by the marriage of Kala and Lalus.¹⁰ The reason for this is clear: the unpretentious Arcadian shepherds combined with their greathouse visitors, Klaius, Strephon and especially Philisides, satisfy the personal characteristics of either rustic simplicity or elaborate literary masking demanded by the pastoral genre. These shepherds and quasi-shepherds are generally limited to the eclogues (although the valiant Philisides may join Musidorus in aiding the ladies and Cleophila during the Phagonian uprising at the end of Book II): they are, in other words, contained by their genre, within which they are able to project the image of virtuous and happy marriage. In their ideal world which can be touched from without by melancholy (as, for example, in Philisides' laments or the universal sorrow at Basilius' death), there is an unblemished, unlapsed quality that separates it from the real world of action and responsibility which is presented in the main body of the Old Arcadia.

While the pastoral setting itself is being examined, its connotations lend a major ideological force to the romance narrative. According to literary expectations, Arcadia is the land of peace and harmony which Sidney describes in the two passages quoted above. The harmonic value of the milieu is of central importance, for this locus gives us all the possibilities of world harmony in one arch-image. The three harmonies of Boethius—musica mundana, musica humana and musica instrumentalis¹¹—are co-present in the political peace and justice of the nation, the well-tempered minds of the Arcadians, and their constant practice of instrumental and vocal music. The gods of Arcadia also contribute to the total image: Apollo, the oracular god of the lute and the metaphor for divine harmony,¹² is the god of the royal Arcadians, and Pan, the rustic god with his syrinx, is the god of Dametas and the simple shepherds. Arcadia and harmony, then, are absolute equivalents, and what seems at first to be mere pastoral is translated into a divine neo-platonic idea. Harmony, which commands every level of creation, from the spheres to the nation, to the individual, to the man-made musical instrument, is the major term the Renaissance understood to represent the state of balance and divine perfection: this is the state in which man was created and which he has been re-seeking since his first sin. More significantly for the present argument, this is the starting-point for Sidney's first version of Arcadian romance.

In this respect, too, the pattern of the first few pages of the work provides a model for its construction. In the opening sequences, the prose moves from composition of place to narrative event, and in the process changes from the unity of a perfect world to the fragmentation of that unity. Basilius changes from an adequate ruler to one who abdicates his responsibility and thus threatens the just equanimity of the state, as his vice-regent Philanax immediately sees.¹³ The implication is that the unified ideal, when held outside of time in a kind of stasis, is broken at the moment when sequential time and actual human action begin, when man's “infected will”¹⁴ swings into operation. As the story progresses, this pattern is everywhere apparent. The Arcadian state descends from its peace to disharmony and civil war during the Phagonian uprising in Book II, the landscape itself is disrupted with the entrance of the marauding lion and bear at the end of Book I, and the harmonic virtue and self-containment of the leading active characters—Basilius, Gynecia, Pyrocles and Musidorus—is broken by sexual incontinence which reaches its climax at the end of Book III. As this design develops, Sidney even introduces Urania, Muse of Astronomy,¹⁵ the chief of the Muses whose voice subsumes that of all her sisters, thinly disguised as a beautiful shepherdess who had once elevated the minds of Klaius and Strephon who loved her, but who has fled the land, just as all other harmonic perfections leave their fragmented, strife-torn seats.

Most of the ambient energia of the Old Arcadia is concentrated on this process of fragmentation, and consequently the fall from perfection to destruction or, to be more exact metaphorically, from harmony to disharmony, receives its impetus from an exploitation of the connotations of the work's pastoral basis.

II

As in the case of all ideal landscapes, Sidney's projection of Arcadia has its primitive fascination and can enrapture even active, worldly heroes like Pyrocles and Musidorus. After Pyrocles has fallen in love early in Book I with a picture of Basilius' daughter Philoclea which he has seen in Kerxenes' gallery in Mantinea, the Arcadian capital, he rationalizes his lapse from the pursuit of active and virtuous adventures to the unenchanted Musidorus. His is the vocabulary of dangerous intoxication imaged by “the Cupp of poyson” metaphor which will begin Book II and reach its climax at the moment of Basilius' collapse at the mouth of the cave, Gynecia's golden cup in his hands.

Doo yow not see how every thinge Conspires together to make this place a heavenly Dwelling? Doo yow not see the grasse, howe in Coloure they excell the Emeraudes every one stryving to passe his fellowe, and yet they are all kept in an equall heighte? And see yow not the rest of all these beutyfull flowers, eche of whiche woulde requyer a mans witt to knowe, and his lyfe to express? Doo not these stately trees seeme to meynteyne theyre florisshing olde age with the onely happynes of theyre seate beeyng clothed with a Continuall springe, bycause no beauty here shoulde ever fade? Dothe not the Ayer breath health whiche the Byrdes, … do dayly solempnize with the sweet consent of theyre voyces? Ys not every Eccho here a perfect Musick? and these fresh and delightfull brookes, how slowly they slyde away, as, lothe to leave the Company of so many thinges united in perfection, and with how sweete a Murmer they lament theyre forc[ed] departure: Certeynly, certeynly Cossyn yt must needes bee, that some Goddess this Dezert belonges unto, …

(F, 12-13)¹⁶

But Musidorus is, after all, Duke of Thessalia, where the vale of Tempe with its traditional associations as the locus amoenus¹⁷ spreads its enchantment, and his rather stunned answer indicates the interchangeability of Arcadia and Tempe: “I merveyle at the excessive prayses yow give to this Dezart, … even Tempe in my Thessalia, where yow and I to my greate happynes were brought up together ys nothing inferior unto yt.” (F, 14) Although as classical loci their associations are identical, this particular Arcadia is altered and intensified by the reality of human personality which the princes first apprehend in idealized form. The picture of Philoclea has a transforming and elevating power over her land as she is read as a neo-platonic embodiment of beauty for Pyrocles. Musidorus, temporarily free, will encounter his moment of enrapturement later, when he is caught by the virtue of Pamela who stubbornly but wisely protests the political and moral folly of her father. In the Arcadian retreat, she silently wears the dual pastoral-theological impresa of “a perfect white Lambe tyed at a stake, with a greate nomber of Chaynes, as yt yf had been feared leste the silly Creature shoulde do some greate harme,” (F, 33) and her charm for the more ruminative Musidorus is largely dependent on her neo-platonic imaging of virtue rather than on the simpler sensuous beauty which characterizes her sister Philoclea. Musidorus too, through his elevated love for her, quickly submits to the specific power of this Arcadia: “Arcadia, Arcadia was the place prepared to bee stage of his endles overthrowe. Arcadia was, (alas well might I say yt ys) the Charmed Circle where all his spirites shoulde for ever bee enchaunted.” (F, 100) The morally hardy prince is enveloped by the peculiar metaphysics of the place, and his intoxication, like Pyrocles', is complete.

Here also, in the interior of the romance and in the middle of the Arcadian land, Sidney uses a system of polarities to illuminate the choices and actions of the princes. The princesses represent an ideal good to their petrarchan lovers, an ideal which could reach its expected zenith of achievement by a pair of virtuous marriages. The princes go into disguises, Pyrocles as an Amazon and Musidorus as a shepherd, in order to pursue this end, but there is an equally strong negative force operating against them—the force represented by Basilius' irresponsibility, his lechery, and his absurd, chaotic tomfoolery. Above all, the heroes are invented to live lofty lives—lofty in active achievement (see their pre-Arcadian experiences as recounted by Histor in the Eclogues), lofty in petrarchan love activity (see their elegant participation in the Eclogues), and lofty in their pursuit of neo-platonic philosophy.¹⁸ They are, in short, heroes of an absolutely literary nature, answering the highest demands of the epic romances, the sonnet sequences, and the Florentine neo-platonic dialogues. They enter an absolutely literary landscape, the pastoral, which in its conventional usage can satisfy all the elaborate artifice of these high Renaissance modes. But here, in keeping with the design of the Old Arcadia, their literary perfection is fragmented by the onslaught of psychological realism, illustrated in the character of Basilius and expanded into low comic action through the personality of the shepherd Dametas. This landscape, as Sidney's method illustrated in the beginning of the romance and as it continues to affirm, is one in which literary idealism co-exists with unadorned, quasi-historical realism; the result of this ironic co-existence is explosive, magnificent comedy interlaced with a heavy didacticism which demands that we recognize the seriousness of the romance as well as its gamesomeness.

Instead of achieving the heroic stature they are made for and had once illustrated in their pre-Arcadian lives, the princes are now continually degraded, they stoop to lust and, at the height of their performance in Book V, can only quarrel before Evarchus with frustration and hysterical magnanimity about which of the two more deserves to die in order to save his friend. For heroes so purely framed at their inception, this is indeed a tawdry list of accomplishments. Arcadia in its enchantment has played an unforeseeable trick of inversion, a trick which extends inward in the work itself to the whole, harmonic constitution of character in the young princes and outward toward the reader whose expectations of Arcadian romances are more conventional and stereotyped, and built on less ambivalent definitions and nuances. Just as it was Basilius' fatal error in the narrative to assume his right to know the riddles of the future in spite of a stern reminder that “there ys no thinge so certeyne as oure Continuall uncerteinty” (F, 2), so it would be the reader's preconceived error to suppose that because a tale is set in Arcadia, it would automatically follow the standard, foreseeable progress of all pastoral romances. This seems to me to be the seat of the misreadings and underestimation which have been the lot of the Old Arcadia whenever critical attention has been turned to it, and it is certainly the most valid reason for refusing to pull out the scholarly machinery of analogue, operated most recently by Walter Davis' schematizing in his book on the 1593 New Arcadia.¹⁹

III

Because the meaning of Arcadia is expanded by the duality which realism allows it, the reading of the Old Arcadia involves a constant process of discovery. The broad, inclusive system of symbolism which the word Arcadia calls to it and which Sidney so subtly exploits gives us the real guide to the mythic resonances of this new place invented by Sidney from the ashes of the conventional pastoral world.

I have already touched on the evoking of images of harmony in the opening of both the main narrative and the Eclogues. According to Sidney's description of Arcadia as well as Polybius' account of that ancient geographical location, harmony is the starting point for any consideration of the land. This condition extends also to the standard literary tradition where singing shepherds, Apollo with his lute, and Pan with his syrinx dominate the pastoral. The real difference between the convention and the present romance is the difference between the static absoluteness of the literary ideal (the changes most poets make are in detail and tone, not in basic interpretation²⁰), and the shifting, confusing narrative stream which progressively inverts whatever might seem at first to be firm, conventional or clearly delineated.

At the static moment of the opening of the romance, Arcadia is the perfect pastoral place—harmonic, peaceful, temperate, governed by a sufficiently competent duke. Immediately, however, we are spun from that moment directly into the narrative sequence, the story of Basilius' faulty oracle-seeking and his retirement from his responsibility and the vita activa, his retreat to the desert lodges, and his symbolic association with the Dametas family, true shepherds who are treated with a degraded comic scorn. Instantly the literary ideal is snapped, for Dametas is not a graceful shepherd or a product of the creative imagination, but a real buffoon. In a world where real issues are not decked by the high mimetic style, Basilius' retreat is seen in its real aspect as a descent from his high romance position to an allegorical identification with Dametas, and all the escapist pastoral glory of his choice of a country landscape is dissolved in this unyielding picture of the realistic results of his folly.

Similarly the two princes are allowed a static literary moment in Kerxenes' garden in Mantinea (it is significant for this theory of stasis that in the New Arcadia Kerxenes' name is changed to Kalender), a moment that outlines the almost mystical nature of the Arcadian landscape as a sympathetic image for Philoclea. As in the case of Basilius, this stasis is banished by action and the necessities of the narrative, for the two princes move into disguises which occasion their degradation, as Pyrocles is lowered from man to woman, Musidorus from prince to shepherd. As soon as they have acquiesced to circumstantial demands, they are caught by the inexorable flow of events that has its origin in Basilius' first action of consulting the oracle, and the downward moral direction of the subsequent narrative line pulls them into positions of increasing helplessness. From their original static base of epic heroism and neo-platonic idealism, they are degraded through the dynamic realism of Arcadia to plotting, frustrated young princes whose lives are demanded by a just judge.

The work moves instantaneously from literary stasis to the dynamic flux of realistic examination, from the timeless world of pastoral to the world of hopelessly flawed character and action. The movement has a partial illustration in the fall in Basilius' personal status and in the princes' progressively weakening heroic image, but its ultimate symbolic measure is in the complex, extensive use of images of disharmony as contrasted to the harmony of that first instant in Arcadia and in the lives of the young heroes of the romance. The anagogical overtones are almost oppressively obvious: the fall of all men through one man's (the paternal Basilius') sin, and the fall from a static, timeless, ideal world to a sequential, temporal one where action is necessary but fruitless, where the high intentions of the “erected wit” are stopped by the “infected will,” and where neo-platonic virtue stoops to rather low-grade lust. The archetypal resurrection of Basilius can, unfortunately, add much sterility to this kind of reading, but that issue is better skimmed over and the instrumental imagery actually employed given a just examination.

So overwhelming is the use of metaphors of disharmony as a literary vehicle in this partially anti-pastoral work that no major advancement in the plot or meaning is made without calling it into play. As Pyrocles-Cleophila attempts to insinuate himself into the royal Arcadian group, for example, he is discovered by the base Dametas as he sits singing his song of self-separation, “Transformde in shewe, but more transformde in mynde.” The shepherd's reaction is splendidly comic and symbolic of the larger metaphoric structure of the romance:

… yt awakened the Shepearde Dametas, who at that tyme had layde his sleepy back uppon a sunnye banck, not farr thence, gaping as farr, as his Jawes woulde suffer him. But beeyng trubled oute of his sleepe (the best thinge his lyfe coulde bringe forthe) his dull sences coulde not convey the pleasure of the excellent Musick to his rude mynde, but that hee fell into a notable rage: In so muche, that, taking a hedging bill lay by him, hee guyded him self by the voyce, till hee came to the place, where hee sawe Cleophila sitting and wringing her handes, and with some fewe wordes to her self breathing oute to her self part of the vehemency of that passion which shee had not fully declared in her songe. But, no more were his eyes taken with her beauty then his eares with her musick, but beginning to sweare by the pantaple of Pallas, Venus wastecoate & suche other Oathes as his rusticall bravery coulde imagyn, leaning his handes uppon his bill and his Chinne uppon his handes, hee fell to mutter such Cursinges and Raylinges ageanst her, as a man mighte well see hee had passed through the discipline of an Alehowse.

(F, 26)

Leo Spitzer has noted the qualities of sin and fragmentation that belong to the disharmonious man, the man who, like Shylock, has no music in him and cannot understand the organizing celestial harmony of the universe.²¹ Dametas, in his inability to recognize either musical harmony or human beauty, is this man and symbolizes the true nature of Sidney's Arcadia. Contrasted to him, Basilius reacts to the harmony of Cleophila's beauty culpably but much differently: his is a sexual perversion of her harmonic potentiality:

But, Basilius, who began to feele the sparckles of those flames, which shortly after burned all other thoughtes oute of his harte, felt suche a musick, as hee thoughte, in her voyce, and such an eye pleasing in her face, that hee thoughte his retyring into this solitary place was well employed, yf yt had bene onely to have mett with such a guest.

(F, 32)

Not only in the romance's large framework, but also in such reader-conditioning particulars, disharmony is essential in forming the sense of wholeness which has too often led the modern mind to underestimate the excellent simplicity of the work.

In accordance with the Old Arcadia's five-act structure, there are four climactic moments, one at the end of each of the first four books, and before the resolving harmonies of a happy ending. Each one is a repetition, in its own thematic terms, of the primary fall from harmony to disharmony so strikingly shown in the dualities of the opening pages. Through the bold use of this technique of constant thematic repetition, Sidney ensures that we read correctly, and the morality of realistic vision is displayed through the medium of art.

Because Book I must of necessity concentrate so heavily on the establishment of landscape as literary idea, its climactic disharmonious image must have to do with an act of disruption of this landscape. Early in the narrative, however, the intended concept of Arcadia has been clarified, so here Sidney narrows his scope from the archetypal pastoral country to a small pleasaunce or arbor which is both a locus amoenus and an Arcadian hortus conclusus. In this pleasaunce the shepherds join with their aristocratic betters for the first pastoral games:

It was in deede a place of greate delighte, for throughe the middest of yt there ranne a sweete brooke, whiche did bothe holde the eye open with her beutyfull streames, and close the eye with the sweete purling noyse yt made upon the pible stones yt rann over. The Meadow yt self yeelding so liberally all sortes of flowers, that yt seemed to norish a Contention betuixt the Coloure and the smell, whether in his kynde were the more delightfull: Rounde aboute the Meadowe (as yf yt had beene to enclose a Theater) grewe all suche sorte of Trees, as eyther excellency of fruite, statelynes of grouthe, continuall greenes, or Poeticall fancyes have made at any tyme famous. In moste parte of which Trees, there had bene framed by Arte, suche plesant Arboures, that yt became a gallery a lofte from one Tree to the other, allmoste rounde aboute, whiche beelowe yeelded a perfect shadowe, in those whott Contryes counted a greate pleasure.

(F, 42)

Eventually this will become the place where the eclogues and games of the shepherds take place, but before this literary pastoral activity, the disruption of its harmonic appearance must be put into terms of both action and symbol.

Every one has gathered to this place except Basilius, “when, sodenly, there came oute of the wood, a monsterus Lyon, with a shee Beare, of litle less fercenes, whiche having been hunted in forrestes farre of had by chaunce come to this place, where suche Beastes had never before bene seene.” The fact that the animals (obviously to be glossed as images of human bestiality) are foreign to the landscape indicates that the symbology of the circumstance is a vehicle for the larger metaphor of the work. They plunge into a pleasaunce arranged for the practice of vocal and instrumental harmony, and their immediate prey is the Basilian daughters, Philoclea and Pamela, neo-platonic Beauty and Virtue, who can still be saved by Pyrocles and Musidorus, disguised and degraded though they already are. Throughout the romance, the two sisters maintain their symbolically functional connotations and are ultimately analogous to the Urania of the Fourth Eclogues. The destruction of Beauty and Virtue would embody the absolute failure of the neo-platonic world in which the princes would choose to live, and the whole incident, as the shepherds flee their harmonic, formerly secure garden, prefigures the ideology present in the flight of Urania²² as well as the very real danger of the future bestiality of Pyrocles and Musidorus, which is followed by the imprisonment of the symbolic sisters. Finally, through the lion and bear episode, the reader can witness the failure of the pleasaunce, the disruption of harmony, and the present bestial hearts of Gynecia and Basilius.

Book II removes the theme of disharmony from landscape to nation, from literary idyll to the harmonic idea of just government. The Phagonian uprising has long been recognized as a bit of political Elizabethiana,²³ but it is equally necessary to regard its adherence to the larger thematic pattern of the romance. In the moral harmony which ought to exist in the state and microcosmically in its ruler, justice is the major of the four necessary virtues (Justice, prudence, fortitude, temperance)²⁴—the justice which maintains the contentment of the people. By withdrawing himself and his justice, Basilius had paved the way for ensuing disharmony. The Phagonians had begun lawfully enough with a celebration of Basilius' birthday, but as the wine progressively upset their rationality, they were overcome with a passionate, enraged sense of Basilius' failure toward them. As the harmony of reasonable control in them is drowned, they apprehend more clearly and more indignantly where Basilius has erred, with the result that civil war erupts and Basilius himself, who ought to be the just, harmony-producing head of state, is almost killed.

As the confused tumult of their drunken attack is heard in the enclosed area of the pastoral lodges, vocal and instrumental music is again interrupted. Philisides and Dorus are indulging themselves in a witty competitive eclogue of the traditionally sorrowful-joyous, lover-shepherd type,²⁵ when they are interrupted and called to do battle to defend the princesses and Basilius. The interruption of their music which, as they sing, almost lulls the reader back to the pastoral norms which the romance has rejected, combined with the civil contention which echoes the failure of the great moral harmony of justice, completes our sense of how far this fictional Arcadia is distanced from a peaceful pastoral place.

Book III is the book of the cave, that reverberating symbol so admirably documented in its Ovidian connotations by Walter Davis.²⁶ The Old Arcadia has moved from exteriors of landscape and nation to the interiors intrinsic to them. The subject matter of the third book deals with libidinous sex in its most indecent (and hence, comic) form—Gynecia's embarrassing, clutching demands that her appetite for Pyrocles be satisfied, and Basilius' eighty-year-old horniness. But much more significant than either of these is the process of fall in the initially harmonic mind of Pyrocles. As Davis suggested in his article, “Actaeon in Arcadia,” Pyrocles is forced to recognize the cave as a dark symbol of his own mind, and to understand that the sexual sufferings of Gynecia perfectly and horrifyingly reflect his own:

O Venus, sayde Cleophila, who ys this, so well acquaynted with mee, that can make so lyvely a Purtraiture of my myseryes? yt ys surely, the Spirite appoynted to have Care of mee, which dothe now in this darcke place beare parte with the Complayntes of his unhappy Charge: For yf yt bee so, that the Heavens have at all times mesure of theyre wrathfull harmes, surely so many have come to my blissles lott, that the rest of the worlde have too smalle a proportion, to make so waylefull a Lamentatyon. But, (saide shee), what soever thow bee, I will seeks the oute, for thy Musick well assures mee wee are at least hande fellowe Prentyzes to one ungracyous Master …

(F, 171)

He can only gasp at the appalling demands and propositions Gynecia then inflicts on him, and try to free himself, to escape through his witty plan of tricking the Arcadian duke and duchess into sleeping with each other in the cave, while he is left at liberty to flee to the chaste Philoclea's arms. His actions indicate that he believes he can also free himself from his just enunciated identification with both Gynecia's lust and the archimagistic connotations of the cave: the scene of his primary recognition is, in other words, not accepted as a place of ultimate self-revelation.

As he pauses at Philoclea's chamber door, he automatically takes up the harmonic metaphor as the necessary way of regarding this neo-platonic heroine. His pure, idealized response to her voice “whiche hee thought yf the Philosophers sayde true of the heavenly spheared harmony, was by her not onely represented but farr surmounted” (F, 218) is, within the same sentence, contradicted by the incipient sexual degradation of his concept of her beauty. His eyes are “overfilled,” his sensuous desire replaces the lofty, neo-platonic, harmonic tone with which he had begun. Her smock is loose and disarranged, and it is quite clear that he is watching her “lefte thighe downe to the foote” with the help of a “Riche Lampe” much more than he is contemplating the divine harmony of her voice. Indeed, he doesn't even notice at first that her voice is complaining against him for his faithlessness, and Sidney is very direct in his description of the real sexual intention which preoccupies him:

That quyte forgetting hym self, and thincking therein all redy hee was in the best degree of felicity, I thincke hee woulde have lost much of his tyme and with too muche love omitted greate fruite of his Love, had not Philocleas pityfull accusing of hym, forced hym to bringe his spirites ageane to a newe Byas.

(F, 218)

As he argues with her and soothes her, he also climbs into her bed, and feasts his eyes on her naked body. The tenor of his sensual vision is handled in high style by Sidney who reverts to a lengthy song imputed to the shepherd Philisides (Sidney himself?), “What Toungue can her perfections tell?” (F, 223-226) The song is very long indeed, one stanza concentrated in Petrarchan style on the adoration of every part of her face and body—and there are many parts. Pyrocles, his mind preoccupied with other things, does not himself take up the task of poetic rhetoric and sing the verses himself: the ironic wit of Sidney's point of view can only be conveyed by his own words:

But doo not thincke (Fayre Ladyes) his thoughtes had suche Leysure as to ronne over so longe a Ditty: The onely generall fancy of yt came into his mynde fixed uppon the sence of the sweet Subject. Where using the benefitt of the Tyme, and fortifying hym self, with the Confessing her late faulte, (to make her nowe the sooner yeelde to penance) turning the passed greeffes and unkyndenes, to the excess of all kynde Joyes (as passyon ys apte to slyde into all Contrary) beginning nowe to envy Argus thowsand eyes Brierius hundred handes, feighting ageanst a Weyke resistance which did stryve to bee overcome; Hee gives mee occasyon to leave hym in so happy a plight …

(F, 226-227)

Sidney's wit lends kindness to Pyrocles' fall into sensuality and consummation, but the fall in itself is significant in its distance from the neo-platonic purity of spirit with which he had entered this landscape. His friend, Musidorus, will not follow him into incontinence until he tries to rape the sleeping Pamela in Book IV, but the point of the cave sequences and their result are the fall from ideological harmony to sexual disharmony in the mind of the young heroes.

Probably the greatest disharmonic event in the Old Arcadia is the quasi-death of Basilius in Book IV, and all of its ensuing ramifications. Gynecia is forced to see the real horror of her lust and jealousy, the princes must prepare themselves for the subjection to trial and possible death, the state grows increasingly chaotic and disorderly in spite of Philanax's major attempts to maintain national equilibrium. In this book the disharmonic elements of all of the other books are gathered together, and even the lowly shepherds, the creatures of the literary pastoral, are impelled into the major text (see Agelastus' dirge, “Synce wayling ys a budd of Causefull Sorrowe,” F, 265-6) and reflect in their songs in the Fourth Ecologues the final disharmony of the world of Arcadia.²⁷

To this shambles of a country comes Evarchus, who will restore justice and moral equilibrium by his judgments against all the major players in this peculiar drama. It is at this point that the work could easily lose its realism and non-idealistic awareness, but the justice of Evarchus would have to be overwhelmed with mercy past either expectation or endurance, and the assumption would have to be that Arcadia is returned to the harmonic vision of peace and stasis which the opening paragraph had indicated. Since Sidney's task seems to have involved a realistic examination of the viability of a harmonic, pastoral idyll for men of action, such a conclusion is out of the question. Instead of that, we do in fact have a powerful statement of justice, but it is destructive of all of the people who have played the Arcadian game of either escape or sexual liberty. The only possibility of maintaining realism is the one Sidney employs. The judgments of Evarchus are reversed magically, by the magic potion of Gynecia: Basilius comes to consciousness once again, and the world goes on—not in the sense of the literary stasis of a simple, happy ending, but through the indication of sequence and infinite continuation through time and action, from one generation to another, that the last paragraph of the work indicates:

But the solempnityes of the Marriages with the Arcadian pastoralles, full of many Comicall adventures happening to those Rurall Lovers, the straunge story of the fayre Queene Artaxia of Persia and Erona of Lydia, with the Prince Plangus wonderfull Chaunces whome the later had sent to Pyrocles, and the extreme affection Amasis kinge of Egipt bare unto the former: The Sheperdish Loves of Menalcas with Kalodulus Daughter, and the pore hopes of Philisides in the pursuite of his affections, the strange Countenance of Claius and Strephons desyre, Lastly the Sonne of Pyrocles²⁸ and Melidura the fayre Daughter of Pamela by Musidorus: who even at theyre byrthe entred into admirable Fortunes may awake some other Spirite to exercyse his Penn in that, wherewith myne ys allredy dulled.

(F, 389)

Part of this is doubtless the creative literary hysteria that makes a novelist so reluctant to leave the characters he has spawned, and much of it is an indication that Sidney will write more or again, but it in no way hinders—it helps rather—the total reading of the first created Arcadian vision which would destroy the false delicacy of literary modes and substitute the kind of viability real action calls for in the time-oriented world of external responsibility that Sidney must have longed for as he rusticated at Wilton.

Notes

1. Old Arcadia, p. 1. All quotations from the text, unless otherwise indicated, are from Volume IV of the 1962 reprint of The Prose Works of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Albert Feuillerat, 4 vols. (Cambridge, first printed 1912). Although there is evidently a new edition in progress under the editorship of Mrs. Jean Robertson Bromley, we can, at present, only sigh the lack of a more readable text. In the other extant manuscripts I have looked at, both spelling and punctuation are infinitely better and lend much to the coherence of the narrative which, in its printed state, often looks appallingly illiterate. Generally I must quote Feuillerat, who claimed that he used the Clifford ms. because it was well preserved and the secretarial hand careful and legible. Perhaps so, but secretarial neatness is less important than literary accuracy. When things looked particularly ludicrous, I corrected punctuation according to the sense, but this is all.

2. The term is from the vocabulary set up by Thomas Greene, The Descent From Heaven (New Haven, 1963).

3. The Old Arcadia's only recent critic, Richard A. Lanham, The Old Arcadia (New Haven, 1965), views the work as a comic drama.

4. Tradition has claimed Sannazaro's Arcadia and Montemayor's Diana as models for the Old Arcadia. John F. Danby in his essay in Poets on Fortune's Hill (London, 1952), suggests the late Shakespearian romances as kindred plays.

5. A. C. Hamilton, “Spenser's Pastoral,” ELH, XXXIII (1966), p. 518.

6. Lanham, The Old Arcadia. Walter R. Davis, A Map of Arcadia (New Haven, 1965).

7. The History of Polybivs the Megalopolitan (London, 1634), Book IV, pp. 185-6.

8. In Feuillerat, Vol. III, p. 8, Sidney says: “so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely raunging within the Zodiack of his owne wit.” On page 10 he describes the power of the right poet thus: “For these third be they which most properly do imitate to teach & delight: and to imitate, borrow nothing of what is, hath bin, or shall be, but range onely reined with learned discretion, into the divine consideration of what may be and should be.”

9. The entire landscape in Sannazaro lends the needed atmosphere and mood, but has no place. See the excellent discussion of this literary habit passim in David Kalstone, Sidney's Poetry: Contexts and Interpretations (Cambridge, Mass., 1965).

10. For an explanatory discussion of this, see my monograph, “The ‘Fore Conceit’ of Sidney's Eclogues,” Literary Monographs, I (1967), pp. 33-38.

11. The three musics are explained at length in the De Musica of Boethius. See Anitii Manlii Severini Boethi … Opera (Basiliae, 1546), Lib. I, Cap. II of De Musica, p. 1065. Both Leo Spitzer, Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony (Baltimore, 1963) and John Hollander, The Untuning of the Sky (Princeton, 1961), briefly cite Boethius as the expositor of the three harmonies.

12. Spitzer, p. 8.

13. See Philanax's response to Basilius' announcement (F, 4-6), especially p. 4: “These thirty yeares past have yow so governed this Realme, that, neither youre Subjectes have wanted Justice in yow, nor yow obedience in them, and youre Neighboures have founde yow so hurtlesly stronge, that they thought yt better to rest in youre frendship then make nowe tryall of youre enmity: Yf this then have proceeded oute of the good Constitution of your State, and oute of a wyse providence generally to prevent all those thinges, which mighte encomber your happynes, why shoulde yow now seeke newe Courses, since youre owne example comfortes yow to continew on?”

14. This term and its opposite, the “erected wit” are taken from the Defence (F, III, p. 9).

15. In the Fourth Eclogues, pp. 307 ff. See also my monograph, pp. 40-47.

16. Notice the imagery of perfection and music intrinsic to Pyrocles' verbalization. The emerald-like grass grows to an even height, the birds sing in “sweete consent,” the echo is “a perfect Musick,” no beauty fades. What Pyrocles sees is a harmonious world of pastoral stasis, and he sees it because he has first seen a picture of Philoclea who has aroused his neo-platonic instinct for harmonic perfection. Spitzer, p. 61, points out that the tradition is petrarchan: “With Petrarch it is the divine lady who has become the shrine of supernatural harmony; this theory (ancient, troubadour, etc.) required the eyes to be the seat of love. …”

17. Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask, Bollingen Series XXXVI (New York, 1952), p. 198.

18. Lanham, pp. 245-256, gives a lengthy reproduction of the argumentative speeches of the two princes and briefly mentions their neo-platonic bias. One wonders if one needs to be told, or to have the speeches quoted at such breath-taking, page-filling length.

19. Davis, A Map of Arcadia. This is not meant to be as bitchy a statement as it sounds. Davis is talking about the landscape of the New Arcadia, and there Arcadia is quite a different place.

20. The stability of tone is generally accepted by theorizers of the pastoral genre, from Snell's essay on Virgil to Davis' book on the New Arcadia. See the following for affirmation: W. W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1906), passim; Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind, trans. T. G. Rosenmeyer (Oxford, 1948), pp. 281-310; Renato Poggioli, “The Oaten Flute,” HLB, XXX (1957), 147-184.

21. Spitzer, pp. 65-66 and 99-102.

22. See footnote 15, above. Also, Lily Bess Campbell, “The Christian Muse,” HLB, VIII (1935), 29-70 and John M. Steadman, “‘Meaning’ and ‘Name’: Some Renaissance Interpretations of Urania,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, LXIV (1963), 209-232.

23. Edwin A. Greenlaw, “Sidney's Arcadia as an Example of Elizabethan Allegory,” in Anniversary Papers by Colleagues and Pupils of George Lyman Kittredge (Boston, 1913), 327-338, and W. D. Briggs, “Political Ideas in Sidney's Arcadia,” SP, XXVIII (1931), 137-161.

24. Spitzer, pp. 64-66. See also Les Six Livres de la Republique de I. Bodin Angeuin (Paris, second edition, 1577), Book VI, Chapt. VI, p. 796.

25. See Feuillerat, pp. 118-119. These are songs which, by virtue of their witty inverting of each other, belong properly in the purer pastoral of the Eclogues.

26. Walter R. Davis, “Actaeon in Arcadia,” SEL, II (1962), 95-110.

27. See again my monograph, pp. 38-40.

28. The Phillips manuscript in the British Museum changes the wording here, thus enlarging the plan for the future generation. It reads: “Lastly, the son of Pyrocles, named Pirophilus, and Melidura …”