This completes my reading of John Lyly's plays and with it's pared down style, which does not sacrifice the wit of the playwright it was for me the most enjoyable to read. It is a difficult play to date as there are no records of a performance during Lyly's most productive years in writing for the theatre (1584 - 1592). His concerns were to write amusing and provocative drama for a sophisticated court audience. His use of allegory is open to interpretation and he seems to have been careful never to let it get in the way of providing an entertainment.

The play is set in Arcadia. Three foresters are in love with three completely unkind nymphs of the God Ceres, who embody three unpleasant traits: indifference, inconstancy, and pride. The foresters pray that Cupid will punish the nymphs by metamorphosing them to the natural objects that they most resemble; a rock, a bird, and a rose. However the foresters cannot live without the Nymphs and beg Cupid to change them back, however the three nymphs are even more determined not to have the foresters as husbands. It is only with the intervention of Ceres herself they reluctantly accept the men who are by now under no allusions about the difficulties of marriage. At the same time Erisicthon, a wealthy farmer, cuts down a tree sacred to Ceres which houses the nymph Fidelia who is killed, Ceres in revenge sends famine to gnaw at his vitals and Erisicthon is forced to sell his daughter Protea to pay for more food. Protea seeks the help of the sea God Neptune in saving her lover Petulius from the grip of a siren, she is successful and they appear before Ceres and beg her to call off famine from torturing Erisicthon.

It is all neatly worked through by Lyly in his delightful prose style, happy endings but not happy ever after endings, with only Lyly's description of famine to mar the lightness of the mood:

"Shee lyeth gasping, and swalloweth nothing but air, her face pale, and so leane, as easily thou maiest through the very skin as in a glass thy shadow; her hair long, black and shaggie, her eyes sunk so far in her head that she lloketh out the nape of her neck, her lips white and rough, her teeth hollow and red with rustiness; her skin so thin, that thou maiest as lively make an anatomie of her body as she were cut up with chiurgions (surgeons), her maw like a drie bladder; her heart swollen big with wind; and all her bowels like snakes working in her bodie."

The three nymphs enjoy flouting love, they stir up the amorous foresters, but they want to remain chaste, for their part the foresters question their need for love and are content to admit that they cannot fight against the desires of their blood. Lyly is intent on providing a commentary on the parallels of spotless virginity, chastity and constancy in love. Cupid seems to have the most power amongst the gods with his idea that love conquers all, even though he is derided because of his blindness and his nakedness. There is so much to read into Lyly's prose that the play can be read on a number of levels; the simple working out of a complicated plot, the parallels between the two strands of storytelling and an admiration as to how Lyly brings them together, an interesting rhetoric on the need for love, and an allegorical overlay that does not intrude but gives plenty of food for thought. I would like to think that this short play was the last that Lyly wrote because for me it encapsulates all that made his plays so vital and so different from the plays that were performed before the general public in the grand open air theatres. As a piece of drama it lacks dramatic appeal, but the delightful conversations that always point to a much deeper level of ideas do bear out a careful reading. If you want to get a flavour of the master of providing entertainment to Elizabeth's courtiers then this delightful fluff will do the job.
4 stars. ( )