Some Versions of Pastoral

So by the end of "act one" of The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (v1.0), two beautiful, slashy, teenaged princes have fallen in love with the two daughters of the duke of Arcadia. To get closer to the girls, one has disguised himself as an Amazon princess (doing it so well the narration uses female pronouns for her) and the other as a shepherd in the duke's service. The duke has fallen in love with the supposed Amazon visitor; his wife has penetrated the Amazon's disguise and fallen for the man beneath it; and one daughter, who isn't as perceptive as her mother, is starting to seriously worry about her sexuality. Their other daughter, meanwhile, is concerned about her growing partiality for a man well beneath her station. Also on stage are the second prince's shepherd boss, who reads like a clown from As You Like Much Ado About a Twelfth Night's Dream, his shrewish wife, his daughter in need of a Touchstone, and a chorus of refugees from a musical comedy singing shepherds.

It's totally begging to be adapted as a manga.*

That or versified.


* Assuming the adaptor can resist making the daughters initially fall for the wrong princes, just to make it, yanno, complicated.

---L.