We must now turn to the pastoral plays, _Gallathea_, _The Woman in the Moon_, and _Love's Metamorphosis_, which we may consider together since their stories, uninspired by any allegorical purpose beyond general compliments to the Queen, do not require any detailed consideration. And yet it should be pointed out that this distinction between Lyly's allegorical and pastoral plays is more apparent than real. There are shepherds in _Midas_, the Queen appears under the mythological title of Ceres in _Love's Metamorphosis_. Such overlapping however is only to be expected, and the division is at least very convenient for purposes of classification. Lyly's pastoral plays form, as it were, a link between the drama and the masque; indeed, when we consider that all the Elizabethan dramatists were students of Lyly, it is possible that comedy and masque may have been evolved from the Lylian mythological play by a process of differentiation. It may be that our author increased the pastoral element as the arcadian fashion came into vogue, but this argument does not hold of _Gallathea_, while we are uncertain as to the date of _Love's Metamorphosis_. None of these plays are worth considering in detail, but each has its own particular point of interest. In _Gallathea_ this is the introduction of girls in boys' clothes. As far as I know, Lyly is the first to use the convenient dramatic device of disguise. How effective a trick it was, is proved by the manner in which later dramatists, and in particular Shakespeare, adopted it. Its full significance cannot be appreciated by us to-day, for the whole point of it was that the actors, who appeared as girls dressed up as boys, were, as the audience knew, really boys themselves; a fact which doubtless increased the funniness of the situation. _The Woman in the Moon_ gives us a man disguised in his wife's clothes, which is a variation of the same trick. But the importance of _The Woman_ lies in its poetical form. Most Elizabethan scholars have decided that this play was Lyly's first dramatic effort, on the authority of the Prologue, which bids the audience "Remember all is but a poet's dream, The first he had in Phoebus' holy bower, But not the last, unless the first displease."