CHAPTER XIV

THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME— II
N the last lecture I discussed the general cultivation of music in Shak- spere's time, and Shakspere's own spe- cial fondness for the art. In the course of the discussion we arrived at a. point where we found it surprinng that Shakspere should have had such an exalted idea of the power of music in view of the fact that he lived a century before that development of the orchestra was accomplished which vre r^ard as the only adequate form of music. Thus in considering the music which Shakspere did not- hear, we were led to think of the kind of music which Shakspere did hear, and that is the subject of my lecture to-day.
I have more than once had occasion in different con- nections to mention the term "discant.". In Shakspere's time that great species of musical form which bore this name may be said to have reached its climax. It had been a long time in doing so, however; for, in order to understand clearly the kind of music which for so many years, nay, for so many centuries, ministered to the souls of our elders in this world, we must go back a thousand
lAiAGINES AD VIWM EXPRESSAE ItEX AEDICVLA SANCTI ANDREAE ] 1 PROPZ, BEATI GREGORJl MAGNI ECCLESIAM.t f NECNON EX VITA EIVSDEM BEATI GREGORJl I [ A lOANNE DIACONO UB.IV. CAP, LXXXIILET LXXXIV J| CONSCRIPTA.
MAOHVS, SILVIA 8.CREGORII MATER.
Pope Gregory the Greai, with his Father and Mother Fivm an eld engrm'ing
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 29
years beyond Shakspere. In the latter part of the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great collected and published a number of melodies which had long been employed in the church service, including, it is said, several melodies of his own composition. This collection was called his antiphonarium. Great store was set by it, insomuch that it was kept fastened by a chain to the altar of St. Peter's, in order that it might be convenient for reference and for future additions to, or alterations in, the melodies which it contained. Now these melodies, thus brought definitely together by St. Gregory, played a part of paramount im- portance in music for a thousand years on, and more. You have all heard of what is called the " Gregorian chant." This is a term applied to the tunes contained in the antiphonarium of Gregory's. Observe that only a part of these tunes were composed by Gregory. A large number of them were already in existence, and had been from time immemorial. Let me call your attention to this circumstance here, which has most important bearing on the matter of the present lecture. Nowadays, when we think of a musical composer, we regard him as one who originates melodieSy one who gives fresh tunes to the world. You will find, as I proceed in the development of my subject, that one great and cardinal distinction of modern music as opposed to the music of Shakspere's time is that the composers of that period did not address themselves to the invention of new tunes so much as to the contrapuntal treatment of old tunes. A number of in- genious devices, which I shall presently explain, were invented by which an old tune could be redacted into a wonderful variety of musical eflFects, while still preserving at least the outline of its individuality.
It would be an inquiry of deep fascination, even to many who have no special interest in music, to trace the
30 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
origin of these melodies, known now as the Gregorian chants, which for so many ages formed the stock in trade of all musical invention in Europe. For almost the very first step in the inquiry leads us back from the sort of music which Shakspere was accustomed to hear to the sort of music which our Lord Jesus Christ was accustomed to hear. Permit me in a dozen words to point out at least the path which this inquiry would follow. I have said that Pope Gregory found a number of tunes in ex- istence which he noted and fixed for succeeding ages. Two hundred years before Gregory's time, an event some- what similar occurred in the history of music, which I, for one, can never recall to myself without emotion. In the end of the fourth century. Bishop Ambrose of Milan, together with his people, suflFered great affliction under the relentless persecutions of the Aryan empress Justina. It is a naive and touching witness to that ideal of the con- nection between music and the needs of our every-day life which all fervent musicians should cherish and exalt, that the good Bishop Ambrose, for the explicit purpose of consolation in the midst of these afflictions, called in the aid of music. Expressly for the solace of his sufiFering people, he ordained that psalms and hymns should be sung antiphonally in the churches, and he organised many musical details to this end, perfecting the scale by a Greek tetrachord which he selected, and finally giving rise to what was known as the Ambrosian chant. I often please myself with reflecting upon an artless little inconsistency which I find in the confessions of St. Augustine,^ and which bears a quite unconscious witness to the pleasure which he found in this old Ambrosian chant. He would seem — in a certain morbidness of feeling which very well
^ Lib. X, xxxiii, 50, cited in Maguter Cboralis by F. Ztvier Haberl,
F. Pustet» 1877.
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 31
belongs to his time, and which probably all of us can par- allel in our youthful religious experiences — to have been a little afraid that he had no right to be moved too deeply by the purely sensuous fall of musical tones on the ear, but that he ought to be moved by those holy words of scripture which were sung ; and so he says : " When I remember the tears I shed at the psalmody of the church in the beginning of my recovered faith, and how at this time I am moved not with the singing, but with the things sung, when they are sung with a clear voice and suit- able modulation^ I acknowledge the great use of this insti- tution." Of course, if he were moved only with "the things sung," it would make no difference whether they were sung " with a clear voice and suitable modulation " or not ; and in this naive proviso the good [saint's ear very cunningly sets up its claim to be a sweet and holy adviser of the soul. But this by the way. Here we find in the fourth century still a stock of tunes constituting the body of music ; and it was this stock which our Greg- ory afterwards fixed and increased.
The next step backwards takes us from the fourth cen- tury to the second. In the year no Pliny the Younger wrote a letter to Trajan, in which he describes the Chris- tians " meeting on a certain day before daylight and sing- ing by turns a hymn to Christ as to a God."
And the next step in this inquiry takes us to Christ himself On that climacteric evening when He and his disciples sat at their last supper, after He had blessed the bread and given it to them as his body, and the wine as his blood, and had declared: " But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's king- dom," it would seem that the emotions of the moment had risen to that point where words do not bring comfort ; and
32 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
so I find the might of music working in the next verse (of Matthew xxvi. 30), which records: " And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives." If we knew the tune of that hymn !
Here, you observe, as far back as the beginning of our era, we find the world in possession of a stock of tunes. There can be little doubt that the melodies which the disciples sang with Christ in person were handed down and formed the body of those collections which Bishop Ambrose — and after him Pope Gregory — brought toge- ther ; and it is possible enough that the hymn which Christ and his Apostles sang was sung yesterday in some church of Baltimore; for we have tunes in our psalmody — not to speak of the Gregorian tunes still surviving as plain chant in the Catholic churches — which have come down from quite immemorial times, and the path of church music, as I have shown, leads directly back to this hymn which was sung on the evening of the Last Supper. It leads, in truth, much farther back than that : the Greek melodies which must have formed the body of the apostolic hymns carry us to times long before the Christian era — to old pagan Greek times, to old Hebrew times, nay, to old Egyptian times.
But to go farther in that direction is not within the scope of this present lecture. I have given this brief sketch of the tunes by which the Christians always testified (as Tertullian hath it — Apology y chapter xxx) "in singing their prayers . • • that they did not worship as men with- out hope,'* in order to call your attention to the corpus of melody which presented itself when the composers of Shak- spere's time began their work. This corpus consisted mainly of the Gregorian chants, with such additions and improvements as had been here and there struck out by the labours of isolated genius.
Now the general method of treating these fundamental
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 33
bases of music — or tunes — in Shakspere's time was that which was called discant. Perhaps as good a definition of discant as any occurs in Richard Edwards's notable old play of Damon and Pythias^ the first tragedy lightened with comedy which we have, daring from 1564, the year of Shakspere's birth. Here it is said that the Collier sings a buffing base," while two of his fellows. Jack and Will, quiddell upon it." You will get a more vivid idea of discant in general from a single example than from hours of description. If, therefore, we analyse in the briefest way a composirion of this sort, you will immediately per- ceive the fundamental idea upon which all the varieties of discant were based.
For this purpose I have selected a piece which will illustrate at once the church music and the secular music of the period — to wit, the Cuckoo Song. I have before alluded to this beautiful composition ; it is of interest as the first English verse which we find with the music accom- panying. It was discovered, as you remember, written on the cover of what appears to have been a monk's common- place-book, preserved in the Harleian Library. You will doubtless be struck with the slow progress of music in those days when you find me selecting a piece which dates — as the Cuckoo Song does — from about a.d. 1240, to illus- trate the kind of music prevalent in Shakspere's time, i.e., four hundred years afterwards. It was, in truth, also with a view to bringing out this fact that I chose the Cuckoo Song; and from this point of view you will observe, by the way, that an astonishing phenomenon is the develop- ment which has taken place in music within the last two hundred years.
Let us consider, then, what was equivalent to the " buffing base " of the Collier, and see how Jack and Will could " quiddell upon it."
At the bottom of the original leaf on which the
34 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
Cuckoo Song is written you will notice a strain marked Pes. This peSy from the Latin word peSy meaning a footy was the burden, or, here, buffing base, upon which the rest of the piece stood as upon zpeSy or foot.^ It consists of these notes, which I will put all in the treble clef for easier comprehension :
M^LUU.
t
t±
Sum - er is y com -en in
Now when the Collier commenced to buff this base. Jack, we will say, begins to quiddle upon it with this melody :
r ? gjHJ i^^
Sam - er is y. . com - en in. . Lhad - e sing cue - en
Those of you who have studied harmony will easily see that these two melodies would go together without discord. But presently Will comes in with an additional complexity in the way of quiddling. When Jack has reached the fifth bar of his melody, Will begins to sing the first bar of it, and continues then to the end, singing the same mel- ody with Jack, but always just four bars behind, the mel- ody being so composed that if it were divided into groups of four bars each, counting from the beginning, any one of these groups may be sung at the same time with any other of the groups without discord. Here, now, are three voices going. If there were other singers besides the Col- lier and Jack and Will they too could enter. In the first place the peSy or burden, here is so constructed that the first four bars of it may be sung at the same time with the last four. Therefore if, by the time the first four bars have been sung, a fourth singer — we will say Tom — takes up
^ Chaucer: The Pardonere sang, and the Sompnoure ** Bar to him a stiff burdoun.**
^
^^^^
it;
•-^
t T_
c
5
♦-T
lomV
2:;=^
T^
ft '"' ^' ''l l ■' =t
3-^
.^«n
rtliil4tn«m cfttf amWtiPQiloctn )tioW'na JAcr
OKnHWjgmg' cttoufe awfyaitputimcm ni frti^
Facsimile of the ** Cuckoo Song " frvm the original MS, in the British Museum
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 35
the burden and begins to sing the first bar of it as the other one enters upon the fifth, both continuing thereafter to sing straight on, repeating the pes y or burden, over and over until the end is reached, we will have four voices going harmo- niously. But, again, if, when the upper voice. Jack, has reached his ninth bar and Will his fifth bar, still another singer — we will say Dick — commences the first bar of the same melody with Jack and Will, and then sings straight on, it will harmonise ; and again, if a sixth singer — whom we must call Harry — commences the same melody at the end of the next four bars — that is, when Jack is beginning his thirteenth bar — and sings on, we will have six voices going in a true six-part song. This is, in point of fact, the plan of the Cuckoo Song ; it was written for six voices. The whole melody is as follows :
^
^
: gf|J J J g
Sam • er is y.. cum • en in.. Lhud - e sing cue
cu
fr-J'j J^u :j \
t
-f4-;4^
Grow-eth sed and blow - eth med and spring-th th' and - e na
-I-
Sing cue
t^-s"
3
r ^ ^ ;
J r ^ JM
cu
iszzj
J n ^^'ir f-^-
^
1^
^^
32
^^
f i ■*
1 - 'J J' I
iszzj
s
f ^-f^
1^
^^
32
Here you have a general illustration of contrapuntal treatment. This particular method was called " canon in the unison with a burden "; and you can easily see how many varieties there might be, giving rise to the motett.
36 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
the fugue, the round, and others which it would be too technical to specify here. There were also methods of vary- ing the melody itself; one of these was called " prolation," where the notes were extended to twice or more times their original length ; another method, the opposite of prolation, was "division," where each note, instead of being length- ened, was divided into two or more parts, this being the method indicated in the quotation from i Henry IV^ given in my last lecture, which speaks of a tune
Sung by a fair queen in a summer's bower, With ravishing division, to her lute.
If these discants and variations were extempore — that is, if the Collier should sit down and buff his turn, and Will and Jack should strike in with extemporised parts to harmonise with it — it was called " extempore discant "; if there were written parts, it was called " pricksong " — that is, song pricked or dotted with points on the paper. This description of discant carries us to the original of the word counterpoint : the melody being dotted down in points on the paper, when one part ran along counter with the other, as in the quiddling of Jack and Will and the Col- lier, the points or notes would of course be counter, and the system of part-music thus began to be called counter- point. The method of discant is vividly implied in two terms which were much in use at this time, and which survive to this day in certain connections. The melody, or tune, which was usually put in the tenor as the basis of one of these quiddling compositions, was simple, and came to be called " plain song " or " plain chant," in opposition to the complex contrapuntal parts moving along with it; and this general name shows the connection between the Gregorian melodies and the subjects of such compositions,
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 37
the term now used in the Catholic Church for the Gre- gorian service and melodies being " plain chant." The simple melody is also still called in contrapuntal science cantus firmus or canto fer mo ^ — i.e., the firm song, — in dis- tinction from the changing counterpoint built upon it.
Of the rage among musicians in the sixteenth century- after this part-music, and of the extent to which it was cul- tivated, — particularly in church compositions, — it is diffi- cult to give you an adequate idea. Perhaps a story which is told of Dr. John Bull, a celebrated English musician of this period, will sufficiently illustrate it. It was said that Dr. Bull, after having attained great eminence in counterpoint, went travelling on the Continent to see if he could learn something new in the art. In this course, without revealing his name, he engaged himself as a pupil to the organist of St. Omer's. One day this musician took his supposed pupil into a room connected with the cathe- dral and showed him a composition written in forty parts, boasting that he had exhausted the resources of counter- point, and that the man did not live who could add another part to the piece. The pretended pupil asked for pens, ink and music-paper, and requested to be left alone in the room for an hour or two. After a while he called in the musician and showed him his piece with not only one new part, but forty new parts, added. The musician at first would not believe it ; but upon trying them over several times, and finding them correct beyond doubt, suddenly exclaimed, " You must be either the devil or Dr. Bull," and — the narration quaintly adds — he thereupon fell at the doctor's feet and " adored him." Of course a piece with eighty different parts is absurdly impossible, and I have related this story simply to show the wild excesses of counterpoint in the sixteenth century.
These excesses, indeed, did not fail to meet with ob-
38 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
jection at that time. In the Protestation of the Clargie of the Lower House, presented to Henry VIII in 1536, seventy-eight Fautes and Abuses of Religion are enume- rated, one of which is that " Synging and saying of mass, matins or even song is but ravyng, howlyng, whistelyng, murmuryng, conjuryng and jogelyng, and the playing on the organys a foolish vanitie." Later, in Elizabeth's reign, many were greatly scandalised at what they called " figurate and operose " music. Loud outcries were made against " curious singing," as they stigmatised it, and the " tossing the psalms from side to side." You can easily see that in this system of counterpoint run mad the words must suffer ; in fact, the words of the discant become a mere " pretence for singing," as Dr. Burney has ingeni- ously called them.^ Of course this music was not easy to sing, and in earlier times, when the method of notation was not so clear as nowadays, singers must have had great difficulty to puzzle it out from the manuscript. I have found an old poem, dating probably as far back as the fourteenth century, which gives a ludicrously doleful ac- count of the woes of a musical pupil.
Uncomly in cloystre, in coure ful of care,
I loke as a burdeyne, and listne till my lare ;
The song of the Ce sol fa does me syken sare,
And sitte statiand on a song a moneeth or mare. . . .
I herle at the notes, and heve hem al of herre :
Alle that me heres, weres that I erre ;
Of efianz and elami, ne could I never are;
I fayle fast in the fa, it files al my fare.
Yet there ben other notes, sol and ut and la,
And that froward file, that men clepis fa ;
1 For instance, in one of Tavcmcr's pare also the words of John Mil- canons the nos (of nostram) occu- ton's song, pies 16^ bars in slow time; com-
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 39
Often he does me liken ille, and werkes me ful wa. Might I him never hitten in ton for to ta. . . . Quan iike note til other lepes, and makes him a-sawt, That we calls a moyson in ge solventz en hawt; II hayl were thu boren — gif thu make defawt, Thanne sais oure mayster, " que was ren ne vawt."
Insomuch as these songs were much sung by children in the great churches in Elizabeth's reign, one trembles to think of the drilling which the poor little wretches must have had to undergo.
The following doleful complaint (Bright MS., Trans- actions of the Shakspere Society for i8^f8) is most ex- pressive :
Of all the creatures, lesse or moe, We lytle poore boyes abyde much woe.
We have a cursyd master, I tell you all for trew j So cruell as he is was never Turk or Jue. He is the most unhappiest man that ever ye knewe. For to poor syllye boyes he workyth much woe. . . .
He'plokth us by the nose, he plucth us by the hawes. He plucth us by the eares wyth his most unhapye pawes. And all for this pevysh pryk song, not worth to strawes. That we poore sylye boyes abyde much woe ! 1 . . .
There is, indeed, a circumstance connected herewith which makes one tremble still more, and quite reconciles one to the nineteenth century, with all its faults, I mean the custom in Elizabeth's time of actually impressing children and carrying them off from their homes for ser- vice in the cathedral choirs. A royal writ signed by
^ See also the interesting song Long have I been a singing man^ in the same volume of the Shakspere Society's transactions.
40 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
Elizabeth is preserved which runs thus : " Wee therefore by the tenour of these presents will and require that ye permit and suffer, . . our said servants Thos. Gyles and his deputie or deputies to take up in any cathedral or colle- giate churches and in every other place ... of this our realm of England and Wales suche child or children as he or they shall finde and like of, and the same child ... for the use and service aforesaid with them ... to bring awaye without anye your lette, contradictions, staye, or interruption to the contrarie " ; and another section of this dreadful instrument charges every one to help these officers in performing their unnatural duty.
It would be peculiarly appropriate to the present lec- ture if I could enlarge upon the circumstance that it was about the middle of the period we are now discussing that many matters of church music settled themselves which form nowadays an intimate part of our life. In 1550 Marbeck published the Book of Common Prater NoieSy which was a notation of the Episcopal Church service in form substantially as we now know it. At this time too began those translations of the Psalms which, in better form, we are accustomed to sing. Following the lead of Clement Marot in France, Sternhold and Hop- kins versified the Psalms ; they were then set to tunes, and in the year 1577 began to be published with the Book of Common Prayer. You are doubtless all familiar with the droning dismalness of these verses of Sternhold and Hopkins. Perhaps you are not so familiar with a versification of the Acts of the Apostles which was begun about this same time by Dr. Christopher Tye, who was one of the great musicians of Elizabeth's time.
Here are two stanzas from Dr. Tye's version of the fourteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, where, luckily, he stopped :
i^.:, .' '■.-:.r .J':-4
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE^S TIME 41
It chanced in Iconium, As they ofttimes dyd use, Together they into dyd cum The sinagoge of Jues,
Where they dyd preche and onely scke
God's grace then to atcheve,
That they so spake to Jue and Greke
That many dyd beleve,
That many dyd beleve.
The music to which Dr. Tye set these verses was not unlike them to a modern ear. In fact, to the contempo- rary ear his compositions do not seem always to have been agreeable ; for I find it related of him that some- times when he was exploiting his counterpoint on the organ in the chapel of Queen Elizabeth he played pieces which contained — as old Anthony a- Wood says — " much music but little delight to the ear," and when thereupon the Queen sent " the verger to tell him that he played out of tune, he sent word that her ears were out of tune."
Much of the psalmody of the Protestant churches was also brought into form and collected at this time. Marot in France had partly versified the Psalms; this version was completed by Theodore Beza, and Calvin caused it to be set to easy tunes and published with the Genevan catechism, for the purpose of being sung in the churches. Many of these " easy tunes " are still found in the hymn-books of the present day, under one and an- other name. They are sometimes noble melodies, and we should associate with them the names of some com- posers who either wrote them or rescued them from oblivion, particularly Claude Gondimel, Louis Bourgeois, Guillaume Franc, and Claude Lejeune. It must be said, however, that the psalm-tunes which were sung in Shak-
42 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
spere's time were not always strictly orthodox in their origin, as indeed some of the masses written abroad were said to be founded upon tunes which were very " secu- lar." Many good souls were scandalised at hearing sacred words set to melodies which appeared originally in con- nection with very profane verses. In fact, I should judge this had become a common joke on the Puritans, from a remark made by the Clown in Shakspere's JVinier*s Tale. You will remember I cited a part of the Clown's speech in Act IV, Scene II of this play in my last lecture for another purpose — to prove that the four-and-twenty sheep-shearers were all able to sing in part-songs. The Clown says the four-and-twenty sheep-shearers are " three- man song-men all, and very good ones; but they are most of them means and bases ; but one puritan among theniy and he sings psalms to hornpipes,^*
Perhaps the sturdy Puritans were only carrying out the doctrine attributed to Luther, who was in favour of impressing these secular melodies into the church service upon the principle that he saw no reason why the devil should have all the good tunes.
I find, however, another allusion in Shakspere that brings vividly before us a noble old psalm-tune of his time which is very familiar to all our modern ears. In Merry fVives of Windsor ^ Act II, Scene I, where Mistress Page is discussing Jack FalstafFs letter with her sparkling gossip Mrs. Ford, the latter lady says : " I would have sworn his disposition would have gone to the truth of his words ; but they do no more adhere and keep place together than the Hundredth Psalm to the tune of Green SleevesJ* The tune of this Hundredth Psalm was that majestic melody which we all now associate with the Doxology, " Praise God from Whom all Blessings Flow," and it would seem, from Mistress Ford's use of it, to have been as
TheoJorc Bc/J
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 43
strongly placed in the popular esteem in the sixteenth century as in the nineteenth. I find it associated with the name of Claude Lejeune in the early collections, but only as arranger, not as author.
I must not leave the subject of the religious music of this time without at least mentioning the names of Thomas Tallis, Orlando Gibbons, and William Bird, who, along with Dr. John Bull and Christopher Tye, cultivated the art with great learning and devotion during this period.
In coming now to speak of the secular music of Shakspere's time, we find the madrigal, the catch, and the ballad standing out as the most prominent vocal forms of it, and I must hasten to illustrate these.
To begin with the madrigal, nothing seems more diflficult than to settle the etymology of the name. One writer has derived it from the Italian mandra^ a sheep- fold, because it was usually set to words of a pastoral nature; but this flouts all principles of etymology and seems absurd. Another, with as little reason, has derived it from the name of a town in Portugal. The original madrigal seems to have been a song of the same nature with the villanella, or country-song; it was usually built upon a proverb or common saying. And this sug- gests to my mind the most natural derivation of the word, — from madre^ Spanish for mother, — upon the idea of the madrigal being at first a mother-song, or nursery- song, just as you will presently see the songs of our own Mother Goose appearing as the words of popular catches in Shakspere's time. Whatever be the derivation of the word, the madrigal was the most popular form of serious secular music in Shakspere's time, and somehow it seems to me as if the genius of our Elizabethan musical com- posers ran this way with a special leaning ; for of all the compositions of that time the madrigals seem more inter-
44 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
esting to a modern ear than any others I have seen. The structure of the madrigal was peculiar. After what was said of the Cuckoo Song, — which is a canon in the uni- son, with the addition of a pes, or burden, — you will easily understand from a slight illustration how the mad- rigal differed from it. Here are the opening phrases of a beautiftil madrigal by Thomas Weelkes, dating from 1597. It was written to that quaint-measured poem attributed to Shakspere, in the Passionate Pilgrim, which you will all remember from the first lines :
My flocks feed not, My ewes breed not. My rams speed not.
All is amisse. Love is dying. Faith's defying. Heart's denying.
Causer of this.
Where, you observe, we have not a canon in the uni- son, as in the Cuckoo Song, — that is, one voice singing exactly the same notes as the other, at definite intervals of rest, — but a partial canon of a different sort; the second voice, you see, sings the same melody with the first two bars, but in a different key, and then passes off into a new phrase of its own, making a kind of echo, or report, of the first voice ; again the third voice comes in
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 45
here with the same melody of the first two bars of the first voice, only this time neither in unison nor in a dif- ferent key, but in the octave below — thus making a different kind of echo, or report, from the other two voices. And so it runs on throughout the madrigal, a little phrase cunningly reappearing in some new form from each voice here and there, like birds answering each other in a wood. In fact, Samuel Daniel, in a song in one of his plays which I quoted to you in another lecture, has beautifully applied the word "report" — which was a technical term to denote this answering and echoing of voices in a mad- rigal — to the pipings of birds in a wood :
One bird reports unto another In the fall of silver showers.
The first English madrigals appear to have been written by the William Bird whom I mentioned just now. For- eign madrigals, set to Italian words, had appeared before, and it seemed to be doubted for a time whether English words would go to madrigals ; but this doubt was soon solved by the appearance of successful madrigals written to English translations of Italian poems, and then to original English poems. They now began to multiply very rapidly. Perhaps the most notable collection of them was a volume of madrigals, all in honour of Queen Elizabeth, published at London in 1601, with the title of The Triumphs of Oriana. Under the pseudonym of Ori- ana, which is the name of the heroine in the famous old romance of Amadis de Gauly Elizabeth was celebrated in a thousand devices of melodious flattery. Indeed, the book is said to have been a happy thought of some one about the Queen, who caused it to be gotten up to divert her mind after the sorrowful death of Essex. It will serve to
46 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
place before your eyes at one view the most noted writers of madrigals in Shakspere's time if I write the names of the composers who contributed to The Triumphs of Oriana. These were Michael Este, Daniel Norcom, Mundy, Gib- bons, Bennet, Hilton, Marston, Carleton, Holmes, Nich- olson, Tomkins, Cavendish, Cobbold, Morley, Farmer, Wilbye, Hunt, Weelkes, Milton, Kirbye, Jones, Lisley, and Johnson. Of these composers Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye are particularly celebrated as madrigal- makers.^
No one can speak of the word madrigal without think- ing of the exquisite use which Marlowe has made of it in his world-famous song. Come live with me and be my love. In the play I just now quoted, this song is comically men- tioned by Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson, where he comes with Simple, looking for " Master Caius," in the first scene of the third act. " Pless my soul ! '* cries the Welshman, " how full of cholers I am, and trembling of mind ! " and then, to calm himself, he sings a verse of Marlowe's song :
By shallow rivers to whose falls Melodious birds make madrigals, etc.
Of the lighter kinds of secular music, the catch was the most popular, and we find many allusions to it in Shak- spere's plays. I briefly explained in my last lecture that in the catch proper there was some trick or catch in the words, as in that famous one of Calcott's where the first voice sings " Ah, how Sophia," and the next catches this with the phrase " A house afire " ; which in the rapid pro-
1 It is, by the way, a minute con- Fidessa, beginning with
tribution to the little we know So soone as peeping Lucifer, Aurora*s stane,
of Bartholomew Griffin that the appear in one of these collections, last six lines of his sonnet to set to music by John Farmer.
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 47
nunciation of that time would sound much like " Ah, how Sophia." The round, however, is often confounded with the catch ; musically they do not differ, both the round and the catch being varieties of the canon in the unison illustrated by the upper parts of the Cuckoo Song. You are all probably familiar with the round ; when I was a boy we used to sing a very familiar one which began, ** Scotland's burning, Scotland's burning, fire, fire, fire, fire, cast on water, cast on water," etc. It is interesting to find among the rounds and catches of Shakspere's time some early forms of the nursery-rimes which appear in our Mother Goose. For example, in Act IV, Scene I, of Taming of the ShreWy where Grumio has been sent ahead to Petruchio's country house to make a fire before he and his bride arrive, presently Petruchio's other servant, Cur- tis, comes in, and, the fire being built, calls out to Grumio, ** There's fire ready ; and therefore, good Grumio, the news."
" Why," says Grumio, " Jack^ boy ! ho ! boy ! and as much news as thou wilt." This Jacky boy ! ho ! boy ! is unintelligible until you know that these are the first words of a popular catch in Shakspere's time which ran as follows :
Jack, boy, ho, boy, — news ! The cat is in the well. Let us ring now for her knell. Ding, ding, dong, bell.
In which you recognise the rime of Mother Goose
which runs :
Ding, dong, bell ;
The cat's in the well ;
Who put her in ?
Little Johnny Green.
Who pulled her out ?
Little Johnny Stout.
48 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
It IS rather a curious coincidence that when I had written thus far in my lecture the other day I happened to turn to this scene between Grumio and Curtis in Taming of the Shrew for another purpose, when I came upon an allusion I had never before observed, to the very round which I had just mentioned as being commonly sung in my boy- hood, the " Scotland's burning, fire, fire, cast on water," etc. A few lines before Grumio flouts Curtis with his Jacky boy ! ho ! boy ! Grumio, half frozen by the cold, is alone, trying to get a fire which he has to see started before his master Petruchio arrives with the bride. As he is shouting forth his complaints of the cold, Curtis, his fel- low-servant, enters with the exclamation, " Who is that calls so coldly ? "
Gru. A piece of ice : if thou doubt it, thou mayst slide from my shoulder to my heel with no greater a run but my head and my neck. A fire, good Curtis.
CurU Is my master and his wife coming, Grumio ?
Gru. O, ay, Curtis, ay: and therefore fire, fire; cast on no water.
Thxsfireyfire; cast on no watery is evidently a phrase out of the round, Scotland's burning.
Two notable collections of catches of this period were called, one Pammelia ^ — which is Greek for All the Melo- dies — and another Deuteromeliay or Second Melodies^ being a sort of second part to Pammelia. The words to these catches consist of all manner of sense and nonsense. For
1 Pammelia (Pan-melia) : ** Mu- acceptable. London : printed by
sick's Miscellanie, or mixed vari- William Barley for R. B. and H.
eties of pleasant Roundelays and W., and are to be sold at the Spread
delightful Catches of 3, 4, 5, 6, y. Eagle at the great north door of St.
89 9, 10 parts in one. None so Paul's, 1609. To the well-disposed
ordinary as musical, none so musi- to read, and to the merry-disposed
cal as not to all very pleasing and to sing."
THE MUSIC OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 49
instance^ one — and a rather ghastly one which I doubt not ladies will place in the category of nonsense — was in the nature of an epitaph and expressed the following atro- cious sentiments :
Here lies a woman, who can deny it :
She died in peace the' she lived unquiet ;
Her husband prays, if o'er her grave you walk,
You would tread soft, — for if she wake, she'll talk.
Another, which contained some good sonorous vowels for roaring, was this :
Nose, nose, nose, nose. Who gave thee that jolly red nose ? Sinamont and ginger, nutmegs and cloves. And that gave me my jolly red nose.
Which recalls that famous song, in the nature of a catch, sung by lago in Othello^ Act III, Scene III :
Then let me the canakin clink, clink ; And let me the canakin clink :
A soldier's a man ;
And life's but a span ; Why then let a soldier drink.^
Another catch, or round, which might go well enough with this was to these words :
O metaphysical Tobacco ! Fetched as far as from Morocco :
Thy searching fume
Exhales the rheum, O metaphysical Tobacco !
We find the name of "John Cooke" appearing in
so SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
more than one round ; as, for example, in this one from the Deuteromelia collection :