The Masque of Hymen in As You Like It

The Masque of Hymen in As You Like It Marilyn L. Williamson The masque of Hymen at the end of As You Like It has troubled critics. 1 Although J. R. Brown and G. K. Hunter have recently defended the masque as a symbol of order,2 rather than a tardy insertion to suit an occasion, it remains to meet the objection that the masque is artistically unrelated to the rest of the play. What, we may ask, is an allegorical figure doing in a play with such vital in­ dividuals as Rosalind or such down-to-earth people as Corin and Audrey? My answer is that by ending his play with the masque Shakespeare was making full use of the appropriate artistic devices afforded him by the pastoral mode to fulfill themes that are among the most significant the pastoral offers. It is to fish for a critical red herring, I believe, to say with Barber3 that after Shakespeare has established the pastoral securely, he turns to love as his central concern. Perhaps we have been led astray by Shakespeare’s desentimentalizing parody of the pastoral into thinking that he really did not see significance in the tradition, but a glance at pastoral plays or at any collection of eclogues written in classical or renaissance times, reveals that romantic love is the predominant theme of most pastorals.4 And because the dramas deal with love stories, it is not uncommon that they conclude with allusions or even formal evocations to Hymen, the god of marriage. Tasso’s Aminta (1573) is possibly the most important pastoral drama of the time. It deals with the love of the shepherd Aminta for the disdainful Silvia, and the implication of the play throughout is that gratification of human desire is good and that frustration of it brings evil into man’s life. Though the play does not end with a wedding as such, it looks forward to one. Thus Elpinus, an old shep­ herd, says he is Proud with my influence to assist a pair, Whom Heaven hath marked with its peculiar care; To crown, with Hymen’s blessings, love and truth; To make a good old man resume his youth; Make his heart feel, while he the rite surveys, The strong pulsation of its better days; To draw its finest language from the soul, And down his cheeks bid sacred sluices roll, Which conscious Jove will view from his abode, O f such a nature pleased to be the God.5 248 Marilyn L. Williamson 249 The faithfulness of Guarini’s faithful shepherd is neither to his sheep nor to his God, but to the fair but cruel Amarillis. The truth of his love is rewarded by heaven in curing the miseries visited on Arcadia, but the basic relationships emphasized in plot and subplot are romantic. Thus the play closes with a wedding and a choral song that is relevant to our topic: Holy Hymen hear our pray’r And our Song. The Earth hath not A more loving Pair: Both of them divinely got: Pull holy Hymen, pull the destin’d knot.6 If the pastoral commonly deals with love stories, it just as often combines allegorical and human figures, as the practice of Shake­ speare’s contemporaries shows us. Peele’s masque-like Arraignment of Paris inevitably contains both because of its subject. Lyly’s Gallathea, Love’s Metamorphosis, and Woman in the Moon also have both kinds of characters, as do the later works of Daniel, Queen’s Arcadia and Hymen’s Triumph. It does not seem too much to claim, then, that by introducing an allegorical figure into a human setting Shakespeare was simply making full use of the resources available to him in the conventions of the pastoral drama. And As You Like It remains a fundamentally pastoral play from beginning to end. It is critical cold comfort, however, only to justify an artistic effect on the basis of the conventions of a tradition. The important question is what Shake­ speare did with the conventional resources of the pastoral drama. The answer is that he exploits them to develop traditional themes with a greater profundity than his...