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EVELOPING from the church service, elaborated at festivals into little plays acted by priest and chorister, and from the games and mummings of the folk, it was inevitable that the British drama should abound in song. This lyrical tradition is an unbroken one, from the tenth century trope, Quem quæritis, to the songs of Shakespeare, of Dryden, and of Sheridan; even in our own day there are certain playwrights who have enhanced their works by following this old custom.

Though both dramatist and audience desired singing on the pageant or in the hall, from the first the texts of the songs were often slighted by the early scribes and copyists. Frequently they did not deem it worth while to write them down and merely indicated them by "Cantat" or "Intrant cantantes"; yet enough have been saved to indicate that the early playwrights realized many of the dramatic possibilities of singing. The third song in this book, the lullaby sung by the terrorstricken mothers of Bethlehem, is more affecting than dialogue or soliloquy. Furthermore, the priests or clerks who composed the guild plays understood that a lyric may disclose a character as plainly as the conventional speech of self-revelation; Noah's wife is placed by her drinking song. The later writers of interludes made Lusty Juventus, Youngman, Idleness, and other heroes-and heroines-unfold their plans, their motives, their very natures by singing. As a method of procedure, the early writers soon discovered they could win the attention of an audience by beginning or ending a scene, an act, or the play itself, with a song. They found they could introduce a character or take him off the stage effectively by making him sing; while at times, to arouse the expectation of the audience, an actor, before he entered, would be heard singing. To avoid monotony, they varied the songs and used solos, part songs for two, three and four voices, and choruses in which all the actors might join, possibly the audience as well. Other effects were gained by having two groups of singers on the stage reply to each other-the antiphonal singing of the church-or by hav

ing certain singers on the stage answered by others off stage; we have even a solo sung in the presence of the audience and its chorus sung "without." Of the music for these early songs very little remains; a few of the airs have been preserved in manuscripts; some of the popular melodies to which the words were set have survived in later music books or dance collections, such tunes as "Sellengers Round" or "Heart's Ease." So fond were the early dramatists of employing song that they frequently included several in one short interlude or play. There are seven in the brief Tom Tyler, acted about 1560, seven also in Phillips's Grissell, printed about 1566, and eight in The Trial of Treasure, printed in 1567. These songs were of all kinds songs of lovers, of rogues, of soldiers and sailors, drinking songs, serenades, slumber songs, songs of Nature, of joy or mourning, moral songs, didactic songs, "contention" songs a type Shakespeare used in Love's Labour's Lost-and songs that explain some dramatic situation. Thus early in the history of the British drama certain types of song and a certain technique in their use became firmly established in the minds of both playwright and audience.

These types of song and the conventional methods of employing them were accepted by the great Elizabethans, who added new types and new methods of their own devising. As the pages of this book will show, the reign of Elizabeth and of James I was the golden age of song in the drama. Then it was that music and sweet poesy agreed. Inspired song writers collaborated with composers who were unrivaled even by the musicians of France or of Italy. At no other time has the British drama contained so many songs of such grace and beauty; at no other period has singing been used more effectively in plays.

The stage directions of Elizabethan plays call for scores of lyrics that have disappeared forever. Robert Greene has scattered throughout his prose works many tender and charming songs; he had the lyric gift and he would naturally employ it to enhance the artistic effect of his plays, yet they offer nothing for this volume. In his James IV, iv, 1. 1598, is the stage direction "Enter certain huntsmen (if you please, singing), but we shall never know their hunting catch. From Peele's plays we have gathered some delightful songs, but many others will 1 All these points are illustrated by songs in this book.

never be found. In his The Famous Chronicle of King Edward I, 1593, there are allusions to these lost lyrics:

Friar:

Wench, to pass away the time in glee,
Guenthian set thee down by me,

And let our lips and voices meet,

In a merry country song.

Guenthian: Friar, I am at beck and bay,

And at thy commandment to sing and say,
And other sport among.

The Friar and Guenthian sing.

This "merry country song" is gone; lost also is another one the friar sings, sitting alone, the song he "learned long ago," that is "short and sweet but somewhat bold" and which he likes so well:

"Once let me sing it and I ask no more."

Missing from this same play is the lullaby Joan sings at the queen's command; and the part song the "novice and his company" perform at the queen's tent to the accompaniment of fiddles. And this example, taken from an early Elizabethan play, is unfortunately typical of many other dramas written at this time. In The Maid's Metamorphosis, i, 1602, three choruses are called for in rapid succession, yet not one of them appears in the text. In Marston's Antonio's Revenge, 1602, the stage directions call for six songs, and in his Antonio and Mellida, Part I, 1602, for seven songs, yet we have not a single line from these thirteen lyrics.2

Three instances of the disappearance of songs from plays are especially interesting. In the quarto editions of Lyly's plays published between 1584 and 1601 there are many stage directions calling for songs, yet none appear in the text. In 1632 Blount brought out in a collected edition six of these plays and we find in them for the first time twenty-one songs. Here are lyrics, some of them of great beauty, recovered merely because Lyly's plays were reissued; without Blount's edition we might never have known them. For a second instance, Thomas

1 Seven important songs are missing from this play.

2 It will be remembered that a song called for by a stage direction is missing from Act iv of Julius Cæsar; another, from Act v of Pericles, Prince of Tyre; and two from the witch scenes in Macbeth, Acts iii and iv.

Heywood saw through the press his Rape of Lucrece, 1608, and advertised on its title-page that this edition contained all the songs; yet he omitted from it one lyric and in all probability it was his finest one, "Pack, clouds, away, and welcome, day." The third instance is yet more interesting. The second folio of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher appeared in 1679 with a preface signed by the publishers, Martyn, Herringman and Mariot. In it they explain that their new edition is as "correct as might be," and that they can present a text much better than that of the first folio, 1647, because "we were very opportunely informed of a copy which an ingenious and worthy gentleman had taken the pains (or rather the pleasure) to read over; wherein he had all along corrected certain faults (some very gross) which had crept in by the frequent imprinting of them. His corrections were the more to be valued, because he had an intimacy with both our authors, and had been a spectator of most of them when they were acted in their life time. This therefore we resolved to purchase at any rate; and accordingly with no small cost obtained it. From the same hand also we received several prologues and epilogues, with the songs appertaining to each play, which were not in the former edition, but are now inserted in their proper places." As an additional incentive to buy this volume, on its title-page was inserted the line "Published by the Author's Original Copies, the Songs to each Play being added." As a matter of fact, this friend of the dramatists, this admirer of their works, saved but ten songs for us, all belonging to plays that had appeared without them in the 1647 folio, so in this case songs are restored to their text after an interval of thirty-two years.2 Unfortunately he by no means added the "songs to each play." Eight lines after the lyric "Welcome sweet liberty," which he restored to The Chances, there is the stage direction "Sing again"; this song he could not give, nor the one that is called

1 See notes, pp. 266, 289.

2 These songs are: "Dearest, do not you delay me" and "Let the bells ring" from The Spanish Curate; "He ran at me first" from The Beggar's Bush; "Merciless love," "Welcome sweet liberty," and "Come away" from The Chances; "Weep no more" and "Court ladies laugh" from The Queen of Corinth; "Sit soldiers" from The Knight of Malta; "A health for all this day" from The Woman's Prize. No one of these ten songs appeared in Beaumont's Poems, 1640 and 1653, though these volumes contained nearly two score songs from the plays.