It would be rash to assert that the _Arcadia_, not published until 1590, though circulated widely in manuscript during the preceding decade, had any influence on the pastorals of Greene and Lodge, who boasted their adherence to the linguistic fashions set in 1579 by Lyly’s _Euphues_. It is enough to observe that these and the _Arcadia_ have many close resemblances which are proofs of a common ancestry. Robert Greene’s _Pandosto_ (1588), the original of Shakespeare’s _Winter’s Tale_, his _Menaphon_ (1589), and _Philomela_ (1592); and Lodge’s _Rosalynde: Euphues’ golden legacie_ (1590), whence _As you like it_ was derived, have the Arcadian scenes and the atmosphere of fairy-land, combined with the same strain of chivalrous adventure, and the same complicated love-plots as Sidney’s romance. I venture to quote from Professor Courthope’s History of English Poetry a passage emphasising the strong feminine interest which was such a prominent feature in Lyly, Lodge, and Greene, as well as in Sidney. “But after all, the element in the _Arcadia_ which produced the greatest effect upon contemporary taste, on account of the dramatic tendencies of the age, was the one which Sidney derived from his study of Montemayor. Perhaps the most noticeable feature in the story is the complete elimination of the magical and supernatural machinery which formed so important a part of the older romances. {xxii} In imitation of Montemayor, Sidney now concentrated the main interest of his narrative in the complications of the love-plots. The consequence of this device was to bring the exhibition of female character into greater prominence. In the old chivalric poetry and fiction no more than three types of women are represented, the insipid idol of male worship who shows ‘mercy’ and ‘pity’ to her lover, according to the regulation pattern of the Cours d’Amour; the fickle mistress, like Cressida, who is inconstant to one lover, and so violates the code of chivalry; and the unfaithful wife of the class of Guinevere and Iseult. The _Arcadia_, on the other hand, is full of feminine heroines, martyrs, and monsters, each of whom plays her own distinct part in the development of the action. There is the ideal maiden, Pamela or Philoclea, type of lofty virtue, forerunner of the Clarissas and Belindas of Richardson; the vicious Queen Cecropia recalling the Phaedras and Sthenobaeas of Greek legend; Gynecia, the passion-stricken wife of a respectable elderly husband, a favourite figure in the modern French novel; the clownish Mopsa, the original, perhaps, of Shakespeare’s Audrey; and, above all, the representative of adventurous, unhappy, self-sacrificing love in its various aspects, Helen, Queen of Corinth, Parthenia, and Zelmane, predecessors of Shakespeare’s Viola, Helena, and Imogen.”