do

de-fie their slave-rye: He is but a foole that

goes

to schole, All we

de light in brave-erye.

This entire scene was possibly a sort of entr'acte such as is explained in Chapter XIII. Will Kempe (alluded to in the chapter on dances) was the original Peter, and this badinage was probably intended to display him at his best. It is by no means certain that the exact text was adhered to, for Will Kempe would add all possible "gags" and interpolations.

There are many other points of explanation necessary to the above scene. "Heart's-ease" was a favourite tune of the time, the melody of which we append. "My heart is full of woe" was the burden, or refrain, of another song of the day, "The Two Lovers." A dump was a melancholy movement

The first stanza ran:

"Complaine, my Lute, complain on him, that stayes so long away: He promised to be here ere this, but still unkind doth stay;

(see chapter on dances), and a merry dump would have been as paradoxical as a frolicsome hymn. The poem, "When Griping Grief" (which was probably sung as well as declaimed in this scene), and its musical setting, is the work of Richard Edwards, Master of the Children of the Royal Chapel, in Queen Elizabeth's reign. We give the poem in full, and also its music. The satire of the scene is not directed against the music, but rather against those "intention-finders" who seek for more in a poetic line than the writer ever dreamed of. Some Shakespearian commentators might learn a lesson from this scene, if they chose to study it in this light. The original poem runs:

"Where gripinge grefes the hart would wounde,
And dolefulle dumps the mynde oppresse,

There musicke with her silver sound

With spede is wont to send redresse:
Of troubled mynds, in every sore,
Swete musicke hath a salve in store.

"In joye yt maks our mirthe abounde,
In woe yt cheres our hevy sprites;
Be-strawghted heads relyef hath founde,
By musickes pleasaunt swete delightes:
Our senses all, what shall I say more?
Are subjecte unto musicks lore.

But now the proverbe true I finde, once out of sight, then out of

mind.

Hey ho! My heart is full of woe."

The Gods by musicke have theire prayse;
The lyfe, the soul therein doth joye;
For, as the Romayne poet sayes,

In seas, whom pyrats would destroy,
A dolphin saved from death most sharpe
Arion playing on his harpe.

"O heavenly gyft, that rules the mynd,

Even as the sterne dothe rule the shippe!

O musicke, whom the Gods assinde

To comforte manne, whom cares would nippe ! Since thow both man and beste doest move, What beste ys he, wyll the disprove?"

A SONG TO THE LUTE IN MUSICKE.

RICHARD EDWARDES.

Where grip-inge grefes the hart would wounde,

In Peter's condescending reply to James Soundpost, we find another Shakespearian fling at the vocalist. Even in the Elizabethan epoch, although the education of the singer was more rigid than it is nowadays, there were often found persons endowed by nature with a beautiful voice (or a high one), whose education never extended any higher than their throat. It is against such ignorant ones that the shaft seems to be aimed; Peter takes it as a matter of course that

the singer is duller than the other musicians. taking this direct view of the meaning of the remark, we are obliged to differ from the ingenious solution offered by Richard Grant White (Houghton, Mifflin & Company's edition), which is that the phrase "You are the singer"-shows that Shakespeare understood the violin; that the soundpost stands under the highest string of the instrument; that the E string of the violin was called the Cantore, that is, the "Singer!" After all this explanation, one is tempted to ask,"What of it?" Never was a little jest pursued so far afield. Even to-day there exist plenty of singers who could stand as "terrible examples" of Shakespeare's meaning.

It may be recalled, in connection with the status of the Shakespearian musicians, that Prince Hal broke Falstaff's head for comparing his father to "a singing-man of Windsor" (Second Part, "Henry IV.," Act ii. Sc. 1).

Regarding the low degree of the itinerant musician, Naylor ("Shakespeare and Music," p. 96) quotes the following passage from Brandt's "Ship of Fools," the famous satirical poem written in 1494, which (since the English paraphrase was written several years later) shows the estimation in which musicians. were held at the beginning of the sixteenth century : "The Furies fearful, sprong of the floudes of hell, Bereft these vagabonds in their mindes so