ABSTRACT
In his influential essay on Elizabethan progresses, "'Eliza, Queene of shepheardes", and the Pastoral of Power', the New Historicist critic, Louis Montrose, states that the Renaissance pastoral form (which included the progress entertainments), was a 'symbolic mediation of social relationships ... [which] are, intrinsically, relationships of power'. 1 He regards this cultural exchange as a very knowing one, claiming that the 'repertoire of pastoral form ... was exploited and elaborated by Elizabethan poets and politicians, by sycophants and ideologues, by the Queen herself (153). While he acknowledges the possibility of tensions between different groups within Elizabethan society, Montrose perceives the celebratory presence of the common people in this pastoral territory, outlining the ideological constitution of this pastoral landscape:
in a context in which the commons were actually present ... pageants . . . might fortifY loyalty toward the crown among those whose relationship to the landlords ... was one of endemic suspicion or resentment .... Thus the pastoral pageants ... might affirm a benign relationship of mutual interest between the Queen and the lowly, between the Queen and the great, and among them all (179).
