the Elizabethan time. Even Chaucer says of his miller: "A baggepipe coude wel he blowe and soune." The Canterbury pilgrims are mentioned in the same poem as performing their journey to the tones of the same instrument. Cornet and serpent have already been described in the preceding chapter. The former is called for in some of the stage directions of Shakespeare, to which we shall devote an especial page. Instruments, continued Sonnets CHAPTER III. The Virginals - A Musical Error - The Musical Mistakes of Great Authors Queen Eliza beth and Her Virginal Playing - The Lute - Difficulty of Tuning Presents of Lute Strings — The Organ. ONE of the most used musical instruments of the Elizabethan epoch was the virginals, a tiny and primitive piano on which the strings were plucked by little pieces of quill, set in "jacks." The tone of the vir ginals was faint and more like a mandolin than any other instrument. Shading was impossible upon it; the player produced a constant, and rather irritating, pizzicato, which must have been a deadly foe to anything like expression. Yet the instrument was very popular. Every barber's shop of that time had its lute or its virginals (for the instrument was always spoken of in the plural) for the customers to play upon while awaiting their turn to be shaved." As late as 1666, Pepys, speaking of the great fire in London, says: "River full of lighters and boats taking in goods, and good goods swimming in the water, and only I observed that hardly 'In this connection it may be added that the striped pole which indicates the American barber's shop is derived from the bleeding arm in a white bandage which the old English barber-surgeons displayed at their doors. one lighter or boat in three, that had the goods of a house in, but there was a Pair of Virginalls in it.” It is singular that Shakespeare only alludes to this instrument once in his plays, although here the metaphor is a fine one. It occurs in "Winter's Tale" (Act i. Sc. 2), when the jealous Leontes watches his queen, Hermione, with Polixenes, and sees her take the Bohemian's hand, while he angrily mutters, "Still virginalling upon his palm." The action of the virginal player was not very different from that of the pianist, as will readily be seen from the accompanying print of the title-page of the first collection of virginal music. Perhaps the lack of allusions to the instrument in Shakespeare may be explained by a peculiar error that occurs in one of his sonnets, and which may show that he had not a very perfect knowledge of the instrument. It is a poem written to the "dark lady," the 128th sonnet, and here, for once, the writer speaks at some length of the musical instru ment: I "How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st, Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds ' Possibly Mrs. Fytton, who was Lord Pembroke's mistress. The Earl of Pembroke was William Herbert ("W. H."), who succeeded to the title in 1601. PARTHENIA THE or MAYDENHEAD of the first musicke that By thee famous Masters Wiliam Byrd D. Sobon Bull & Orlando Chéoris. Are to be sculd by Lond_print: for M Dor Evans. Cum feriuilegio. Tome paint in leathery |