She  calls  her  Pandora,  and  dowers  her  with  exceeding
beauty.  The  stars  in  jealousy  shower  vices  on  her
head.  Saturn  gives  her  churlishness ;  Jupiter  adds
pride  ;  Mars  turns  her  to  a  vixen.  Under  the  rule  of
Sol,  she  marries  Stesias,  a  shepherd  of  that  land.  In
the  ascendency  of  Venus,  she  turns  wanton.  Mercury
fills  her  with  cunning  and  falsehood.  Cynthia  makes
her,  like  herself,  '  new-fangled,  fickle,  slothful,  foolish,
mad.'  Stesias  watches  all  these  phases  of  her  nature
with  horror,  and  prays  to  be  delivered  from  the  tor-
ment of  such  a  wife.  Pandora  at  length  is  relegated
to  the  moon,  and  ordered  to  rule  that  inconstant  lu-
minary, while  Cynthia  haunts  the  woods  or  dwells
with  Pluto  on  the  throne  of  Hecate.  It  seems  singular
that  Lyly  should  have  made  his  d^but  at  Court  with
this  satire  upon  women  and  on  Cynthia  herself.^

'  Were  it  not  for  the  reason  given  above,  I  should  be  inclined  to
reject  The  Woman  in  the  Moon.  If  it  was  Lyly's  first  work,  it  must  have
been  written  before  1 584  (the  date  of  Canipasp^s  publication).  This  was
very  early  in  the  development  of  dramatic  blank  verse.  The  title,  again,
might  pass  for  a  parody  of  his  Endimion  or  The  Man  in  the  Moon  ;
while  the  satire  of  the  piece  parodies  his  style  of  compliment  to  Elizabeth.
The  title-page  of  1597  adds,  'as  it  was  presented  before  her  Highness.'
Yet  Edward  Blount,  in  his  edition  of  Lyly's  Six  Court  Comedies  (1632),
neither  included  nor  mentioned  it.  Love's  Metamorphosis  he  also
excluded  ;  but  in  the  first  edition  of  this  play  (1601)  it  is  not  mentioned
as  having  been  performed  before  the  Queen.
M  M  2


532  SHAKSPERE'S  PREDECESSORS.
X.
