¹ The best brief account of the golden age and the Renaissance is Harry Levin, “The Golden Age and the Renaissance,” in Literary Views: Critical and Historical Essays, ed. Carroll Camden, publ. for William Marsh Rice Univ. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 1–14. Also valuable to a study of the golden age are the following: A. 0. Lovejoy and G. Boas, A Documentary History of Primitivism and Related Ideas (Baltimore, Md., 1935), i, 291–303 especially; E. Lipsker, Der Mylhos vom goldenen Zeitalter in den Schàferdichtungen Italiens, Spaniens und Frankreichs zur Zeit der Renaissance (Inaugural Dissertation) (Berlin, 1933); P. Meissner, “Das Goldene Zeitalter in der Englischen Renaissance,” Anglia, lix (1935), 351–367; A. Bartlett Giamatti, The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic (Princeton, 1966), pp. 14–33 especially; Elizabeth Armstrong, Ronsard and the Age of Gold (Cambridge, Eng., 1968), possibly the most thorough study of the subject.

² Citations from Virgil both in the original and in translation are to Virgil: The Pastoral Poems, ed. and trans. E. V. Rieu (Baltimore, 1954). “Free-roaming ivy, foxgloves in every dell, and smiling acanthus mingled with Egyptian lilies—these, little one, are the first modest gifts that earth, unprompted by the hoe, will lavish on you. The goats, un-shepherded, will make for home with udders full of milk, and the ox will not be frightened of the lion, for all his might. Your very cradle will adorn itself with blossoms to caress you. The snake will come to grief, and poison lurk no more in the weed. Perfumes of Assyria will breathe from every hedge” (p. 53).

³ “He will foregather with the gods; he will see the great men of the past consorting with them, and be himself observed by these, guiding a world to which his father's virtues have brought peace” (p. 53).

⁴ “And it is in your consulship, yours, Pollio, that this glorious Age will dawn and the Procession of the great Months begin. Under your leadership all traces that remain of our iniquity will be effaced and, as they vanish, free the world from its long night of horror” (p. 53).

⁵ Citations from Ovid both in the original and in translation are to Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge, Mass., 1921). “The earth herself, without compulsion, untouched by hoe or plowshare, of herself gave all things needful. And men, content with food which came with no one's seeking, gathered the arbute fruit, strawberries from the mountainsides, cornel-cherries, berries hanging thick upon the prickly bramble, and acorns fallen from the spreading tree of Jove” (p. 9).

⁶ “Golden was that first age, which, with no one to compel, without a law, of its own will, kept faith and did the right. There was no fear of punishment, no threatening words were to be read on brazen tablets; no suppliant throng gazed fearfully upon its judge's face; but without judges lived secure” (p. 9).

⁷ The association of the golden age with free love is not, of course, a Renaissance innovation. According to E. Graf, “Ad aureae aetatis fabulam symbola,” Leipziger Studien zur classichen Philologie, viii (1885), 15–18, 52–54, the association can be found as early as Empedocles.

⁸ Opère Volgari, a cura di Alfredo Mauro (Bari, 1961). “The happy lovers and the tender maidens went from meadow to meadow renewing in their minds the fire and bow of the son of Venus.

There was no jealousy, but pleasuring themselves they trod their sweet dances to the sound of the cither, and in the manner of doves [ever] exchanging kisses'.“ (Arcadia and Piscatorial Eclogues, trans. Ralph Nash, Detroit, Mich., 1966, p. 68.)

⁹ Aminta, a cura di Pia Piccoli Addoli (Milano, 1955). “Then [in the golden age], among the flowers and waters, little cupids without bows and torches led gentle dances. Shepherds and nymphs sat mixing caresses and whispers with their words, and tightly clinging kisses with their whispers. The little virgin uncovered her fresh naked roses, which now she keeps hidden behind a veil, and the unripe apples of her breast. And often in a river or in a lake the lover might be seen playing with his beloved.” [My translation.]

¹⁰ Opere di Baltista Guarini, a cura di Luigi Fassò (Torino, 1962). “Then [in the golden age], among the meadows and waters, the games and dances were torches of [i.e., lit] lawful love. Shepherds and nymphs had their heart in their words. To them Hymen gave joys and kisses sweeter and more lasting. Only one enjoyed the naked living roses of love. The furtive lover found them always hidden with harsh ill will, whether in cave, forest, or lake. And ‘married’ and ‘beloved’ were a single name.” [My translation.]

¹¹ El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijofc de la Mancha, ed. de Francisco Rodriguez Marin (Madrid, 1064), i, 252. “Then, the heart's thoughts of love were decorated simply and unaffectedly in the same way and manner that it conceived them, without an artificial roundaboutness of words to enhance their value. Nor had fraud, deceit, or malice mixed with truth and plainness.” [My translation.]

¹² More specifically, of classical and neo-classical golden-age pastoral. The golden age of such moralist and humanist pastoralists as Mantuan and Googe. and the golden age of Spenser's Piers (in “May”) and Morrell (in “July”), is obviously a different thing altogether. For Piers and Morrell the golden age was an age of austere Christian duty, when shepherds had no inheritance but Pan anrl the butter, milk, honey, whey, and fleece he provided. The soft living of the classical golden age becomes in the humanist golden age the seed of its corruption and downfall.

¹³ Citations from Spenser are to The Works of Edmund Spenser, The Minor Poems, ed. C. G. Osgood and H. G. Lotspeich, vu, Pt. 1 (Baltimore, 1943).

¹⁴ The Shepheardes Calendar, ed. C. H. Herford (London, 1895), p. 117 (notes).

¹⁵ The relation of music and dance to order is, of course, an ancient commonplace, though especially prominent in the Renaissance, as E. M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (London, 1943), pp. 94–99, has shown in his chapter on “The Cosmic Dance.” Tillyard's example, Sir John Davies' Orchestra, also ends with Elizabeth presiding over a dance.

¹⁶ Cf. Marot, “Eclogue iv,” I. 47: “Ja le Laurier te prepare couronne.”

¹⁷ “Milton in Rustication,” SP, xix (1922), 129.

¹⁸ Citations from Milton are to John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York, 1957).

¹⁹ Citations from Marvell are to The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. H. M. Margoliouth (Oxford, 1927).

²⁰ “Begin, then, little boy, to greet your mother with a smile: the ten long months have left her sick at heart. Begin, little boy: no one who has not given his mother a smile has even been thought worthy of his table by a god, or by a goddess of her bed” (Rieu, p. 57).