The year 1564 saw the appearance of two second
parts. One in eight books, by the physician Alonzo Perez, only got so far
as disposing of Delio, and appears to exaggerate all the faults of the
original in compensation for the lack of its merits. The other, from the
pen of Gaspar Gil Polo, is in five books, and narrates, in a style
scarcely inferior to its model, the faithlessness and death of Delio, and
Sireno's marriage with Diana. Both alike promise continuations which never
appeared. A third part was, however, published so late as 1627, as the
work of Jeronimo de Texeda, but it is nothing more than a _rifacimento_
of Gil Polo's continuation, altered apparently with a view to its forming
a sequel to Perez' work. Furthermore, in 1599 there appeared a religions
parody by Fra Bartolome Ponce, and there are said to be no less than six
French, two English, and two German translations, not to mention a Latin
one of Gil Polo's portion at least.
Besides continuations, there are extant nearly a score of imitations of
varying interest and merit. In 1584 appeared the _Galatea_ of Cervantes,
imitated from Ribeiro and Montemayor; which in its turn is supposed to
have suggested the _Arcadia_, written a few years later at the instigation
of the Duke of Alva by Lope de Vega, and published in 1598. Each is more
or less autobiographic or else historical in outline: 'many of its
shepherds and shepherdesses are such in dress alone,' Cervantes confesses
of his romance, while Lope announces that 'the _Arcadia_ is a true
history.
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