famous Spanish romance, Amadis de Gaule,1 takes count of what is, in Greene, in Sabie, and in Shakespeare, the central incident on which the whole plot of the story hinges-the oracular message sent from the temple of Apollo or Themis. A moment's consideration will show how vital is the part which the oracle plays in The Winter's Tale: not only does it establish Hermione's innocence and convert Leontes from a jealous tyrant into a humble suppliant for forgiveness, but it also governs the whole issue of the play. In the fifth act Leontes' counsellors endeavour to persuade him to marry again, in order that the kingdom may not be left without an heir; but Paulina has only to remind the king of the oracular message in order to secure his full obedience to the commands of Apollo:

For has not the divine Apollo said,

Is 't not the tenor of his oracle,

That King Leontes shall not have an heir

Till his lost child be found.2

By what means, then, did Greene hit upon this idea of the [The Greek oracle? The intervention of the oracular message in the romances.] affairs of men is, of course, a classical motive. It occupies an important place in Greek epic and drama, and from the first beginnings of Greek romance down to its final decline in the Byzantine period it plays a conspicuous part. We meet with it already in the brief erotic legends which Parthenios, the grammarian of Nicaea, compiled in the reign of Tiberius under the title Περὶ ἐρωτικῶν παθημάτων, and which mark the first faint beginnings of the Greek prose romance.3 In the lost romance, The Wonders beyond Thule, written by Antonius Diogenes in the first century of the Christian era, of which there has been preserved an abridgement by Photius, an oracular message is communicated to the two heroes at a certain point in the story, bidding them journey beyond Thule and promising them a safe return after encountering many hardships. Subsequently, the oracle motive is introduced with telling effect into the Ephesiaca, or the Loves of Anthia and 1"An Introduction to The Winter's Tale," Cambridge (Mass.), 1907.

2 v. i. 37-40.

3 See the Didot edition of the Erotici Scriptores, p. 22 (Parthenii Erotica, cap. xxxv., Περὶ Εὐλιμένης).

See Rohde, Der griechische Roman, second edition, p. 286.

Abrocomas of Xenophon of Ephesus, the Theagenes and
Chariclea of Heliodorus and the Clitophon and Leucippe of
Achilles Tatius. From these early masters the motive is
handed down to the romance-writers of the Byzantine period,
Eustathius and Theodorus Prodromus, who drew their inspira-
tion from Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, and carried on the
tradition of the Greek romance to the close of the twelfth
century. The oracle introduced into the works of these
writers is usually that of the Pythian Apollo at Delphi, but in
the Ephesiaca of Xenophon it is that of the Egyptian god
Apis. The effect produced by the oracular message is that
of giving a new impetus to the story, and, at the same time,
of investing it with a certain element of religious awe; but
nowhere does it play so important a part as in Pandosto and
The Winter's Tale.

With the Revival of Learning, and the translation of cer-
tain of the Greek romances into the languages of Western
Europe, the oracle motive entered upon a new lease of life.
We meet with it in the eleventh and twelfth books of the
famous Amadis de Gaule, where the story is of the adventures of
Agesilan of Colchos. The fortunes of the hero closely re-
semble those of the heroes of Greek romances in prose and
verse, and the introduction of the oracle of the god Tervagant
is associated with an episode which vividly recalls the classical
myth of Perseus and Andromeda. With the composition of
Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia (circ. 1580) the oracle enters
English literature. In this work, as in Pandosto and The
Winter's Tale, it plays an all-important part in the develop-
ment of the story. The departure of Basilius with his wife
and daughters from the Arcadian Court to the forests is the
direct result of an oracular message delivered to him in the
temple of Apollo at Delphi, and every step in the development
of the plot is a fulfilment of that message. Finally, it is but
a short step from Sidney to Greene, and the influence of the
Arcadia is manifest in more than one of the latter's prose
romances. The oracle-motive, apart from Pandosto, also plays
a part in Menaphon, which appeared in the year 1589, and it is
obvious that in introducing it into both these romances Greene's
aim was to give to his prose fiction a certain classical atmos-
phere.

Moreover, the resemblance which Greene's Pandosto bears
to the Greek romances extends far beyond the employment
of the Delphic oracle as an integral element in the story.
Greene seems, indeed, to owe not a little to two more or less
distinct types of Greek romance. The pastoral element in his
work, which is handled with such infinite charm by Shake-
speare, offers some striking points of resemblance to the
famous Daphnis and Chloe of Longus. The discovery of

Fawnia by the shepherd Porrus is closely analogous to the
discovery of the infant Daphnis by the shepherd Lamon, and
of Chloe by the shepherd Dryas; in either case, too, orna-
ments and sumptuous articles of dress are found upon the
persons of the children and eventually lead to the discovery of
their true rank and parentage. In his account of the pastoral
wooing of Fawnia by Dorastus, Greene had many exemplars
of more recent date at his command; yet even here it is
possible that Daphnis and Chloe, the true fountain-head of
pastoral romance, directed the progress of his story, and sug-
gested the rhetorical tropes with which it is adorned. The
diction of Pandosto is, of course, euphuistic, but it must not
be forgotten that much of the rhetoric and sophistry of
euphuism find their prototype in the Greek romances.

In the adventures of the two lovers after their escape in
the boat, the model of Greene, and still more that of Sabie in
The Fisherman's Tale, would seem to be, not the pastoral
romance of still life as fashioned by Longus, but the more
popular romance of adventure by land and sea of which the
Theagenes and Chariclea of Heliodorus and the Clitophon and
Leucippe of Achilles Tatius are the most conspicuous examples.
The shipwreck and separation of the lovers in The Fisherman's
Tale, the attempt made by Dryano to rob Flora of her honour
during her lover's absence, the hair-breadth escapes from violent
death, the discovery of Flora's identity, and the final reunion
of the lovers, are precisely the elements in which the Greek
masters of the romance of adventure delighted. Doubtless,
many of these incidents also find a place in the medieval
romances of chivalry, but the total absence of all that pertains
to the spirit and panoply of chivalry in Pandosto and The
Fisherman's Tale separates these works from the main body

The Greek atmosphere of The Winter's Tale.]

of chivalric romance and brings them near to the earlier Greek models.

In his employment of the motives of Greek romance Greene had undoubtedly direct recourse to those romances themselves. There is, however, no need to suppose that he read them in the original. Daphnis and Chloe had been translated into French by Bishop Amyot in 1559, and Amyot's version had been turned into English by Angell Daye in 1587; the great French scholar had also translated the Theagenes and Chariclea of Heliodorus as early as 1547, and an English version of this romance, the work of Thomas Underdowne, had been licensed for publication in 1569. A second edition of this work appeared in 1587, and it is possible that it was the publication in the same year of English versions of both Theagenes and Chariclea and Daphnis and Chloe that led the versatile Greene to essay a form of romance which should incorporate some of the most noticeable features of the Greek pastoral romance on the one hand, and of the romance of adventure on the other.

In

We arrive at last at The Winter's Tale, and our first task is to determine the relation in which it stands to Pandosto. the preceding pages I have tried to show how close is the affinity of Greene's work to certain Greek romances, and the question which we have now to ask is whether Shakespeare was himself conscious of that affinity and took pains to reproduce something of a Greek atmosphere in his handling of the story The play is, of course, notorious for its anachronisms. If there is reference in it to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, so also is there to "that rare Italian master, Julio Romano," to the emperor of Russia, and to puritans that sing songs to hornpipes. Yet such was the tolerance of the Renascence world toward incongruities of this sort that only pedants were at all disconcerted by them. One may discover equally flagrant anachronisms in the masterpieces of the great Italian painters and in the whole range of Elizabethan literature. Shakespeare himself was throughout his life regardless of such matters, and never more so than in that final period of dramatic activity to which The Winter's Tale belongs. At the same time he took pains to set the action of his dramas in an appropriate atmosphere, above all, an appropriate religious

atmosphere. By innumerable subtle touches he makes us realise the primitive paganism of the age of King Lear; the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies of classical Rome are summoned to give colour to the words and deeds of Brutus and Cassius; medieval Catholicism invests the "misadventured piteous overthrows "of Romeo and Juliet as with a garment, and a moment's consideration will show that Shakespeare has gathered about the action of The Winter's Tale something of the religious atmosphere of classical Greece. No Christian sentiment is permitted to fall from the lips of any of the characters in the stress of the conflict to which they are subjected. It is Jove and the "good goddess Nature" that Paulina invokes in order that Hermione's child may be saved from the yellow taint of jealousy, and the trust of the wronged queen is ever in the "divine Apollo." Perdita at the shepherds' feast makes poetic allusion to Jupiter, bright Phoebus, lady Fortune, Proserpina, Juno's eyes, Cytherea's breath and Dis's waggon, in a way that would seem grossly unnatural in a simple shepherdess, were we not to understand that she is a shepherdess brought up at a time when these deities were the objects of daily worship. Again, in the last act, when Leontes welcomes Florizel and Perdita to his court, his exclamation is

The blessed gods

Purge all infection from our air whilst you

Do climate here!

and the first words which Hermione utters, as she descends from her pedestal, is a pagan prayer to the gods for her longlost daughter's welfare :—

You gods, look down,

And from your sacred vials pour your graces
Upon my daughter's head.

That Shakespeare recognised the essentially Greek character of the story which he was dramatising is also apparent from the pains which he took to give Greek names to most of the characters which he added or re-named. Leontes, Antigonus, Cleomenes, Archidamus and Mopsa are all Greek names, and are taken from Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia; while Autolycus is the AuтóλUKós-the very wolf-of Greek legend,