roof, there is no adamant so hard, but the blood of a goat will
make soft, no fort so well defended, but strong battery will entry,
nor any heart so pliant to restless labours, but enchantments of
love will overcome.

Melicertus addresses Samela, whom he finds feeding her flocks, in the
following terms:

Mistress of all eyes that glance but at the excellence of your
perfection, sovereign of all such as Venus hath allowed for lovers,
Oenone's over-match, Arcadia's comet, Beauty's second comfort,
all hail! Seeing you sit like Juno when she first watched her white
heifer on the Lincen downs, as bright as silver Phoebe mounted on
the high top of the ruddy element, I was, by a strange attractive
force, drawn, as the adamant draws this iron, or the jet the straw,
to visit your sweet self in the shade, and afford you such company
as a poor swain may yield without offense; which, if you shall
vouch to deign of, I shall be as glad of such accepted service, as
Paris was first of his best beloved paramour.

Another of Samela's lovers, despairing of success, "became sick for
anger, and spent whole ecologues in anguish."

Greene's story of "Pandosto," of "Dorastus and Fawnia," which attained
a great popularity, and went through at least fourteen editions, is
well known as the foundation of Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale."
Shakespeare has followed Greene in the material points of the story,
even so far as to make Bohemia a maritime country. But the genius of
the dramatist is manifest in the miraculous and happy ending which he
substitutes for the unlawful love and inconsistent suicide of Pandosto
in the work of Greene. Shakespeare borrowed from the text, as well as
from the plot of the novelist. The lines,

The gods themselves,
Humbling their deities to love, have taken
The shapes of beasts upon them: Jupiter
Became a bull, and bellowed: the green Neptune
A ram, and bleated; and the fire robed god,
Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,
As I seem now,

are evidently a reproduction of the soliloquy of Dorastus:

And yet Dorastus, shame not at thy shepheard's weede: The heavenly
Godes have sometime earthly thoughts: Neptune became a ram, Jupiter
a bull, Apollo a shepheard; they Gods, and yet in love; and thou a
man appointed to love.[63]

The story of "Philomela," "penned to approve women's chastity,