Here the traditional story of Cephalus and Procris, as founded on the
rather inferior version in the seventh book of the _Metamorphoses_, ends.
There remains, however, a fifth act, in which Diana appears, raises
Procri, and restores her to her husband.
The play, composed for the most part in octaves with choruses in _terza
rima_, is, from the dramatic point of view, open to obvious and fatal
objections. The preposterous _dea ex machina_ of the last act; the
inconsequence of motive and inconsistency of character, partly, it is
true, inherent in the original story, but by no means made less obvious by
the dramatist; the insufficiency of the action to fill the necessary
space, and the inability of the author to make the most of his materials,
are all alike patent. On the other hand, we have already noticed a certain
theatrical ability displayed in the writing of the first act, and we may
further attribute the alteration by which Procri is represented as jealous
of Cefalo's original lover, Aurora, instead of the wholly imaginary Aura,
as in Ovid, to a desire for dramatic unity of motive.
The extent to which either the _Orfeo_ or _Cefalo_ can be regarded as
pastoral will now be clear, and it must be confessed that they do not
carry us very far. The two fifteenth-century plays constitute a distinct
species which has attained to a high degree of differentiation if not of
dramatic evolution, and critics who would see in them the origin of the
later pastoral drama have to explain the strange phenomenon of the species
lying dormant for nearly three-quarters of a century, and then suddenly
developing into an equally individualized but very dissimilar form[164].
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