The Pope-Philips controversy, and particularly the place in it of Gay's Shepherd's Week (1714), has been studied from many points of view by George Sherburn, William H. Irving, Hoyt Trowbridge, and J. E. Congleton. Sherburn has, in his felicitous manner, guided us through the convolutions of conflicting personalities and animosities both political and literary which effected the quarrel. Irving has suggested that the connection of The Shepherd's Week with the quarrel existed only in Pope's fertile imagination, since Gay's poem primarily burlesqued Virgil, not Philips; and Trowbridge, in answer to Irving, has demonstrated that Gay was quite aware of Philips' Pastorals in writing his own. Finally, Congleton has discussed the whole controversy against a background of neoclassical and rationalistic French and English critical theory of pastoral poetry. None has indicated, however, that Thomas D'Urfey's reputation for the writing of songs and ballads influenced both the quarrel and The Shepherd's Week.