Beaumont & Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess

Beaumont & Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess, The Works of Beaumont & Fletcher, Volume II, Ed. The Rev. Alexander Dyce, London, Edward Moxon, Dover Street, 1843.

This pastoral was wholly from the pen of Fletcher. (2)

Clorin: And here will I, in honour of thy love,
Dwell by thy grave, forgetting all those joys
That former times made precious to mine eyes;
Only remembering what my youth did gain
In the dark, hidden virtuous use of herbs:
That will I practise, and as freely give
All my endeavours as I gain’d them free.

(TFS, 1.1.pg 24; use of herbs: “Almost all the damsels of romance are described as being skilful in the use of herbs, and frequently even in the occupations of surgery, &c. [but Clorin is not a damsel of romance]. Warton observes, that Sabrina, in Milton’s Comus, possesses the same skillful as Clorin. See his note, ad v. 844.” Weber)


Clorin: Here be berries for a queen,
Some be red, some be green;
These are of that luscious meat,
The great god Pan himself doth eat:

(TFS, 1.1.26)


Clorin: Yet I have heard (my mother told it me,
And now I do believe it,) if I keep
My virgin-flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,
No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend,
Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves [27]
Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion
Draw me to wander after idle fires;
Or voices calling me in dead of night,
To make me follow, and so tole me on,
Through mire and standing pools, to find my ruin:
Else why should this rough thing, who never knew
Manners nor smooth humanity, whose heats
Are rougher than himself and more mis-shapen,
Thus mildly kneel to me? …

(TFS, 1.1.28)


Priest of Pan: From the high rebellious heat
Of the grapes, and strength of meat,
From the wanton quick desires
They do kindle by their fires
I do wash you with this water;

(TFS, 1.2.29)


Perigot: I take it as my best good; and desire,
For stronger confirmation of our love,
To meet this happy night in that fiar grove,
Where all true shepherds have rewarded been
For their long service: say, sweet, shall it hold?
Amoret: Dear friend, you must not blame me, if I make
A doubt of what the silent night may do,
Coupled with this day’s heat, to move your blood:
Maids must be fearful. Sure you have not been
Wash’d white enough, for yet I see a stain
Stick in your liver: go and purge again.
Perigot: Oh, do not wrong my honest simple truth!
Myself and my affectations are as pure
As those chaste flames that burn before the shrine
Of the great Dian: only my intent
To draw you thither was to plight our troths,
With interchange of mutual chaste embraces,
And ceremonious trying of our souls.

(TFS, 1.2.31)


Perigot: Let me deserve the hot polluted name
Of a wild woodman, or affect some dame
Whose often prostitution hath begot
More foul diseases than e’er yet the hot
Sun bred th[o]rough his burnings, whist the Dog
Pursues the raging Lion, throwing fog [32]
And deadly vapour from his angry breath,
Filling the lower world with plague and death!

(TFS, 1.2.33)


Amaret: If I were old, or had agreed with art
To give another nature to my cheeks,
Or were I common mistress to the love
Of every swain, or could I with such ease
Call back my love as many a wanton doth,
Thou mightst refuse me, shepherd; but to thee
I am only fix’d and set; let it not be
A sport, thou gentle shepherd, to abuse
The love of silly maid.

(TFS, 1.2.34)


Amaret: … There is a shepherd dwells
Down by the moor, whose life hath ever shewn
More sullen discontent than Saturn’s brow
When he sits frowning on the births of men;

(TFS, 1.2.34)


Thenot: …’tis she, and only she,
Can make me happy, or give me misery.
Cloe: Good shepherd, may a stranger crave to know
To whom this dear observance you do owe?
Thenot: You may, and by her virtue learn to square
And level out your life; …

(TFS, 1.3.39)


Cloe: …and but sit
Down on this rushy bank, whilst I go pull
Fresh blossoms from the boughs, or quickly cull [40]
The choicest delicates from yonder mead,
To make thee chains or chaplets, or to spread
Under our fainting bodies, when delight
Shall lock up all our senses. …

(TFS, 1.3.40-41)


Thenot: Thou blessed star, I thank thee for thy light,
Thou by whose power the darkness of sad night
Is banish’d from the earth, in whose dull place
Thy chaster beams play on the heavy face
Of all the world, …

(TFS, 2.2.48)


Thenot: And yet there’s something else I would desire,
If you would hear me, but withal deny.
Oh, Pan, what an uncertain destiny
Hangs over all my hopes! I will retire;
For, if I longer stay, this double fire
Will lick my life up.

(TFS, 2.3.52)


Sullen Shepherd: …All to me in sight
Are equal; be they fair, or black, or brown,
Virgin, or careless wanton, I can crown
My appetite with any; swear as oft,
And weep, as any; melt my words as soft
Into a maiden’s ears, and tell how long
My heart has been her servant, and how strong
My passions are; call her unkind and cruel;
Offer her all I have to gain the jewel
Maidens so highly prize; then loathe, and fly:

(TFS, 2.3.53)


Alexis: … See, mine arms are full
Of entertainment, ready for to pull
That golden fruit which too, too long hath hung
Tempting the greedy eye. …

(TFS, 2.3.57)


Daphnis: …I am mute
Henceforth to all discourses but shall be
Suiting to your sweet thoughts and modesty.

(TFS, 2.3.58)


Sullen Shepherd: Snakes that cast your coats for new,
Chameleons that alter hue,
Hares that yearly sexes change,

(TFS, 3.1.61)


Amoret: Methinks it is not night; I have no fear,
Walking this wood, of lion or of bear,
…
Methinks there are no goblins, and men’s talk,
That in these woods the nimble fairies walk,
Are fables: such a strong heart I have got,
Because I come to meet with Perigot.—

(TFS, 3.1.63)


Satyr: …Here must I stay,
To see what mortals lose their way,
And by a false fire, seeming bright,
Train them in and leave them right.
Then must I watch if any be
Forcing of a chastity;
If I find it, then in haste
Give my wreathed horn a blast,
And the fairies all will run,
Wildly dancing by the moon,
And will pinch him to the bone,
Till his lustful thoughts be gone.

(TFS, 3.1.66)


Perigot: Here boldly spread thy hands, no venom’d weed
Dares blister them; no slimy snail dare creep
Over thy face when thou art fast asleep;
Here never durst the babbling cuckoo spit;

(TFS, 3.1.69; “The last editors [of 1778] unnecessarily alter the word to sit. The frothy matter very commoly seen on the leaves of plants, is still called the gowk’s (or cuckow’s) spittle in Scotland; and in Herrick’s Oberon’s Feast, ‘He tastes a little/ Of what we call the cuckow’s spittle.’ Weber”)


The God of the River: My fishes shoot into the banks;
There’s not one that stays and feeds,
All have hid them in the weeds.

(TFS, 3.1.73)


Amoret: Who hath restor’d my sense, given me new breath,
And brought me back out of the arms of death?
God of the River: I have heal’d thy wounds.
Amoret: Aye, me!
God of the River: Fear not him that succour’d thee.
I am this fountain’s god: below,
My waters to a river grow,
And ‘twixt two banks with osiers set,
That only prosper in the wet,
Through the meadows do they glide,
Wheeling still on every side, [74]
Sometimes winding round about,
To find the evenest channel out.
And if thou wilt go with me,
Leaving mortal company,
In the cool streams shalt thou lie,
Free from farm as well as I:
I will give thee for thy food
No fish that useth in the mud;
But trout and pike, that love to swim
Where the gravel from the brim
Through the pure streams may be seen;
Orient pearl fit for a queen,
Will I give, thy love to win,
And a shell to keep them in;
Not a fish in all my brook
That shall disobey thy look,
But, when thou wilt, come sliding by,
And from thy white hand take a fly:
And, to make thee understand
How I can my waves command,
They shall bubble, whilst I sing,
Sweeter than the silver string. [Sings.

Do not fear to put thy feet
Naked in the river sweet;
Think not leech, or newt, or toad,
Will bite thy foot, when thou hast trod;
Nor let the water rising high,
As thou wad’st in, make thee cry
And sob; but ever live with me,
And a wave shall not trouble thee.

Amoret: Immortal power, that rul;st this holy flood,
I know myself unworthy to be woo’d
By thee, a god; …

(TFS, 3.1.74-5)


Cloe: Come, bring him in; I will attend his sore.—
When you are well, take heed you lust no more.

(TFS, 4.2.85)


Amoret: Where, which is Perigot?
Amarilis: Sits there below, lamenting much, God wot,

(TFS, 4.4.88)


Perigot: Thou art all these, and more than nature meant
When she created all; frown, joys, content;
Extreme fire for an hour, and presently
Colder than sleepy poison, or the sea
Upon whose face sits a continual frost;
Your actions ever driven to the most,
Then down again as low, that none can find
The rise or falling of a woman’s mind.

(TFS, 4.4.91)


Amoret: Dearer than swallows love the early morn,
Or dogs of chase the sound of merry horn;

(TFS, 4.4.92)


Satyr: Now the birds begin to rouse,
And the squirrel from the boughs
Leaps, to get him nuts and fruit;

(TFS, 4.5.94)


Satyr: From this glass I throw a drop
Of crystal water on the top
Of every grass, on flowers a pair:

(TFS, 5.2.102)


Alexis: Is not that Cloe? ‘Tis my love, ‘tis she!
Cloe, fair Cloe!
Cloe: My Alexis!

(TFS, 5.3.104)


Amarilis: By all the garlands that have crown’d that head,
By thy chaste office, …
… let me not
Fall from my former state, to gain the blot
That never shall be purg’d!

(TFS, 5.3.108)


Sullen Shepherd: I fear the pointed brambles have unlac’d
Thy golden buskins. …

(TFS, 5.3.108)


Alexis: I have forgot all vain desires,
All looser thoughts, ill-temper’d fires:
True love I find a pleasant fume,
Whose moderate heat can ne’er consume.
Cloe: And I a new fire feel in me,
Whose chaste flame is not quench’d to be.

(TFS, 5.5.111)


Priest: …to try
The truth of late report was given to me,—

(TFS, 5.5.113)


Priest: Those shepherds that have met with foul mischance

(TFS, 5.5.113)


Cloe: …take a pair
[The Satyr fumes the ground, &c.
Of censers fill’d with frankincense and myrrh
Together with cold camphire: quickly stir
Thee, gentle Satyr, for the place begins
To sweat and labour with th’ abhorred sins
Of those offenders: let them not come nigh,
For full of itching flame and leprosy
Their very souls are, …

(TFS, 5.5.114)


Satyr: Shall I dive into the sea,
And bring thee coral, making way
Through the rising waves that fall
In snowy fleeces? Dearest, shall
I catch thee wanton fawns, or flies
Whose woven wings the summer dyes
Of many colours? Get thee fruit,
Or steal from heaven…

(TFS, 5.5.120)


Satyr: Holy virgin, I will dance
Round about these woods as quick
As the breaking light, and prick
Down the lawns and down the vales
Faster than the windmill-sails.

(TFS, 5.5.121)