Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness,
Making such difference 'twixt wake and sleep,
As is the difference betwixt day and night,
The hour before the heavenly-harness'd team
Begins his golden progress in the east.

Mortimer. With all my heart I'll sit, and hear her sing; By that time will our book, I think, be drawn.

Glendower. Do so:

And those musicians, that shall play to you,
Hang in the air a thousand leagues from hence;
Yet straight they shall be here: sit, and attend.

[Glendower speaks some Welsh words, and then the music plays.

Hotspur. Now I perceive, the devil understands Welsh ; And 'tis no marvel, he's so humourous.

By'r lady, he's a good musician.

Lady Percy. Then should you be nothing out musical: for you are altogether governed by humours. Lie still, ye thief, and hear the lady sing in Welsh.

Hotspur. I had rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in

Irish.

Lady Percy. Wouldst thou have thy head broken?
Hotspur. No.

Lady Percy. Then be still."

The notes of music are often spoken of by Shakepeare in a technical manner. The American reader must bear in mind that the English nomenclature is derived from the medieval system which was used before the division of music into measure; thus the semibreve (meaning half of a short note) is the whole note, the minim (meaning the smallest note,

which it was, in the old monastic manuscripts) is the half-note, the crotchet is the quarter, the quaver the eighth. We have seen Don Pedro, in " Much Ado About Nothing," sneer at the "crotchets" of Balthazar, Mercutio allude to Tybalt's counting a minim while fencing (in "Romeo and Juliet)", and in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" we find Falstaff saying of Bardolph,

"His thefts were too open; his filching was like an unskilful singer, he kept not time,

whereupon Nym responds:

"The good humour is to steal at a minim's rest.”

The Folio gives this as a a "minute's rest," but there is not much doubt that "minim" was intended.

To give all the quotations concerning tune and time, in which our poet has made some pun, play of words, or musical jest, would be to write a small concordance. Suffice it to say that in each case, not above mentioned, the meaning is obvious, and the words used in their modern sense.

CHAPTER VII.

The Dances of Shakespeare

Many Dances Sung- The Dump Other Dances. - England Fond of Lively Dances. The Morrisdance. Masques - These Preceded Operas in England.

THE English were a dancing people, in the Elizabethan times, far more so than at present, yet there was a great difference between them and the nations of continental Europe in Terpsichorean matters.

Most of the old dances had their origin in Spain, where the Moors introduced the Arabic love of pantomime combined with music, and gave rise to a music that was graphic and well contrasted. The majority of the stately dances came from this source. While the aristocracy of Europe, with a partial exception of the English, gave their adhesion to the slow dances, the people took up only those that were jovial and rapid. The jig, for example, was to be found among the peasantry from Spain to Ireland, while pavanes and sarabandes were much more restricted in their use.

It may be necessary to state at the threshold of this subject that many of the so-called "dances" of the European courts were rather processionals than

anything else, and some of the aristocratic dances (as, for example, the passacaglia) were merely a series of posturings to musical accompaniment. The dances of the peasantry, on the other hand, were almost always "round dances," and were of so violent a description that they were sometimes prohibited except on certain specified days or seasons. Often these more common dances were given by couples, as in the waltz, polka, mazurka, etc., of to-day, but frequently they were danced by several participants taking each other's hands and swinging around in a large circle. These "Reigen" have descended to the children, in present days, and are of the most remote antiquity. The dance of the Hebrews around the golden calf, the dance of the ancient Egyptians around the bull-god Apis, the dances of the old sun-worshippers, sometimes around a human sacrifice, all belong to this family.

Naturally enough, we find the most ancient dances in England to be those which the peasantry enjoyed. We have already seen one of these old dances in "Sellinger's Round." (See Chapter III.)

the

Among the oldest dances in England we find one that is frequently alluded to by Shakespeare, morris-dance. Antiquaries unite in the belief that this was one of the Spanish dances that arose during the Moorish possession in the middle ages. Its name is derived from "Morisco," a Moor, and it is not