The weakness of the autobiography is that it can write only of events within the knowledge of the supposed speaker, and that consequently the presentation of all but one of the characters of the book is an external presentation.

To lay down at starting that the essential quality of pastoral is the realistic or at least recognizably 'natural' presentation of actual shepherd life would be to rule out of court nine tenths of the work that comes traditionally under that head.

In the construction of a complicated plot, apart from the dramatic presentation thereof, he achieved a success not to be paralleled by any previous work in Italy, for the difference in the titles of the Aminta and the Pastor fido, the one styled favola and the other tragi-commedia, indicates a real distinction; and Guarini's proud claim to have invented a new dramatic kind was not wholly unfounded.