| Pastoral poetry was used between 1575 and 1625 to communicate matters of divinity. This period was one of intense controversy over the form England's religion should take: Roman Catholicism, Protestantism reformed along Calvinist lines, or some compromise position. I examine connections between ecclesiastical controversies and representations of three stock characters-shepherds, hermits, and the beloved--that recur in English pastoral. Shepherds often correspond to members of the clergy, usually the reformist clergy; hermits tend to represent Catholic priests or powers; the beloved often works as the church, either the inconstant lover, the false church, or the faithful ally, the true church. These characters offer authors the opportunity to comment upon reformation politics.;Drawing on a broad range of pastorals to establish the characteristics of the genre, I focus on Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calendar (1579) in the first chapter in order to discuss some of the generic conventions that English pastoralists inherited. Corrupt and reforming shepherds were an understood convention stemming from Renaissance readings of the eclogues of Virgil, Francisco Petrarch and Baptista Mantuan, a convention employed by Alexander Barclay, Giles Fletcher, and Edmund Spenser.;In subsequent chapters, I use Philip Sidney's Old Arcadia (1577-1580?) and two of its off-shoots: the anonymous play Mucedorus (1590?) and Mary Wroth's Urania (1621). In The Old Arcadia, Sidney constructs his shepherds so they parallel kinds of pastors mentioned in presbyterian tracts such as the Admonition to Parliament (1572). At a time when Elizabeth had banned preaching exchanges valued by presbyterians, Sidney structures his eclogues so that they show the worth of such debates. Mucedorus tells the story of a prince disguised first as a shepherd and then as a hermit. The hermit embodies Jesuits described in anti-Jesuit invective, but the play justifies his Jesuitical behavior. In the Urania, Wroth reveals how difficult it is to recognize the "true" church, or beloved, and to maintain faithfulness to it. With genre choice, character construction, and plot development, Wroth writes her romance along lines consistent with a Calvinist position and suggests a solution that bridges James I's and more militant Calvinist policies. |
