The pastoral tradition: spring and sex

Botticelli's Primavera or Allegory of Spring, 1482

At last!

After a long cold winter, it seems as if spring in England has gathered all its energies and, beckoned by sunshine and warmth, exploded into activity. The birds are busy with nests and mating, the bees are humming over forget-me-nots in the country and massed bluebells at Kew and it feels good to be alive.

Within 24 hours a nearby cherry tree has been transformed from essentially twiggy with only one brave blossom, to a mass of frothy pink. The silver birches have burst from bud to leaf. What was bare has become verdant at an astonishing pace.

Shakespeare captures this transition from bleakness to vibrancy in The Winter’s Tale, when the rouge Autolycus bursts onto stage with a song:

When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.

The lark, that tirra-lirra chants,
With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay,
Are summer songs for me and my aunts,
While we lie tumbling in the hay. (Act 4 sc 3)

Awakened passion

The two verses quoted here also allude to the other association of spring’s new life – that of awakened sexual passion. When hot blooded desire takes over, ‘tumbling’ is natural next step. Whilst Shakespeare’s noble characters, such as Perdita and Florizel in The Winter’s Tale, or Orlando and Rosalind in As You Like It, might allude to their romantic love, it was essential that they remained chaste. It was the rustics like Mopsa and Dorcas, or Touchstone and Audrey who were allowed to be more overtly carnal, as the song sung for the latter couple indicates:

It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o'er the green corn-field did pass
     In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
     When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding:
     Sweet lovers love the spring.

Between the acres of the rye,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino
These pretty country folks would lie,
     In the spring time..

This carol they began that hour,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
How that a life was but a flower,
     In the spring time..

And therefore take the present time,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino;
For love is crowned with the prime,
     In the spring time.. (Act 5 sc 3)

Essentially, the song’s message is that nature teaches lovers to ‘seize the day’ in consummating their passion!

A warning note

But Shakespeare’s message is never quite as simplistic as that. In both The Winter’s Tale and As You Like It the nuptials of those who have waited and tested their love, such as Perdita and Rosalind are genuinely joyous. However, the hasty coupling of Touchstone and Audrey is judged ominously by the god of marriage to be as ‘sure together / As the winter to foul weather’, whilst melancholic Jaques gives their relationship ‘two months’ and predicts that it will end in ‘wrangling’ (Act 5 sc 4).

Safer perhaps just to contemplate the blossom…