Book Review
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Ian McCormick
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The Shepherds Paradise. By Walter Montagu. The Malone Society Reprints 159
(1997). pp. xxx+116. Oxford University Press. ISBN 019 7290353. Roger
Holdsworth.
“If he understood his own Pastoral” Suckling wondered, “for
If he could do it, ’twould plainly appear
He understood more than any man there,
And did merit the Bayes above all the rest,
But the Mounsier was modest, and silence confest.
Suckling’s mockery was echoed later by Stephen Orgel who judged the play
‘tedious’ and found its message ‘obscure’. The play proved difficult to
understand as ‘a result no so much of Montagu’s prose as of poor acoustics,
inexperienced acting, and the Queen’s French accent’ (xiv). Lucius Cary
noted “myne eares could not catch halfe the words” (xiv). Critics lavished
praise on Henrietta Maria’s performance, especially the solo song from Act
V which may also have been circulated in manuscript.
The pastoral was costly, and had apparently lasted seven or eight hours;
the temporary masquing house cost £341.16s.11d; there were rumoured to be
other promised payments of £2500 from King and Queen to Montagu. The play
was entered in the Stationer’s Company Register on 27 September 1658 by
Thomas Dring, and published by him in an octavo edition the following
year. The Malone edition uses the two Folger and three British Library
manuscripts and is an impressive work of textual scholarship.
Despite the poor performance history the modern scholar should note Lucius
Cary, Viscount Falkland’s comments on reading the manuscript:
“it is not twice or thrise reading this peece, that will sufficiently
satisfie a well advised reader...” (xiv)
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Please cross-post to c17 scholars.
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Swift Bibliography
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bacon/241/jswift.html
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