Pastoral

Thepastoralgenre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target audience is typically an urban one. A pastoral is a work of this genre. A piece of music in the genre is usually referred to as a pastorale. The genre is also known asbucolic,from the Greek βουκολικόν, from βουκόλος, meaning a cowherd.

Quotes

• Et in Arcadia ego.
• Even in Arcadia, there am I [i.e. Death]
  • Origin unknown; adopted byPoussinandIl Guercino

• Polonius:The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.
  • William Shakespeare,Hamlet,act 2, sc. 2

• In time of yore when shepherds dwelt
  Upon the mountain rocks,
  And simple people never felt
  The pain of lovers’ mocks;
  But little birds would carry tales
  ’Twixt Susan and her sweeting,
  And all the dainty nightingales
  Did sing at lovers’ meeting:
  Then might you see what looks did pass
  Where shepherds did assemble,
  And where the life of true love was
  When hearts could not dissemble.
  Thenyeaandnaywas thought an oath
  That was not to be doubted,
  And when it came tofaithandtroth
  We were not to be flouted.
  Then did they talk of curds and cream,
  Of butter, cheese and milk;
  There was no speech of sunny beam
  Nor of the golden silk.
  Then for a gift a row of pins,
  A purse, a pair of knives,
  Was all the way that love begins;
  And so the shepherd wives.
  But now we have so much ado,
  And are so sore aggrievèd,
  That when we go about to woo
  We cannot be believèd;
  Such choice of jewels, rings and chains,
  That may but favour move,
  And such intolerable pains
  Ere one can hit on love;
  That if I still shall bide this life
  ’Twixt love and deadly hate,
  I will go learn the country life
  Or leave the lover’s state.
  • Nicholas Breton,"Olden Love-making" or "Antique Courtship" (wr. before 1568)
  • W. S. Braithwaite,A Book of Elizabethan Verse(1906) prefaces this poem with the following comment: “There can be no harm in quoting here one little poem, a description of love-making in the happy days of pastoral simplicity, when girls did not look for costly presents (rings, chains, etc.) from their lovers, but were content with a row of pins or an empty purse,—the days when truth was on every shepherd’s tongue and maids had not learned to dissemble. Whether there was ever such a time, since our first parents were driven out of Paradise, we need not stop to enquire. The old poets loved to talk about it.”

• O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
  Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
  With forest branches and the trodden weed;
  Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
  As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
  • John Keats,"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (wr. 1819; pub. 1820)