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 Music on the Shakespearian stage, 
 
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MUSIC ON THE 
 SHAKESPEARIAN STAGE 
 
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 ILonlron: FETTER LANE, E.C. 
 
 C. F. CLAY, Manager 
 
 SEiiniutjf. too, PRINCES STREET 
 
 JStrlin: A. ASHER AND CO. 
 
 tLeipjis: F. A. BROCKHAUS 
 
 iJtiB lotft: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 ISombaa Bn* ffialcutts: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
An Elizabethan consort playing music for a masque at 
 Sir Henry Unton's marriage, c. 1596 
 
MUSIC ON THE 
 SHAKESPEARIAN STAGE 
 
 BY 
 
 G. H. COWLING 
 
 Cambridge : 
 at the University Press 
 
"For as poetrie and piping are cosen germaines, 
 so piping and playing are of great affinitye, and all 
 three chaigned in linkes of abuse." 
 
 Stephen Gosson. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 WHEN my friend Professor Vaughan asked me if 
 I had thought over any subject for a dissertation, 
 I felt depressed. For I remembered the melancholy 
 compilation that is expected from a student who sets out 
 to take a degree in English Literature. 
 
 Whilst pondering over possible subjects, a music-teacher 
 of my youth, the late Wallis Vincent, A.R.C.O. (one whom 
 I admired greatly not only for his musicianship, which was 
 considerable, but also for his delight in humorous poetry, 
 his ready wit, and his genial kindness), lent me his manu- 
 script of a popular lecture on " Shakespeare and Music." 
 I was struck by the amount of fun he had got out of it, 
 and foresaw that to make a deeper study of the subject 
 would be to tread an interesting path. I made up my 
 mind not to work the ground already appropriated by 
 Mr E. W. Naylor and re-worked by Mr L. C. Elson, 
 but to go further afield and describe the share taken by 
 musicians in an Elizabethan play. 
 
 I drew up a scheme, was lucky enough to have it 
 accepted, and proceeded to collect materials to make it 
 into a dissertation. The result is the following little book. 
 It does not assume to be more than a sketch, which at 
 some future time I hope to enlarge. I should have liked 
 to read and ransack every play of the period for material, 
 but alas, 1 had not time enough for this. 
 
Vi Preface 
 
 Then why publish? I publish in order to report 
 progress ; but also because I think students of Shake- 
 speare and musical historians will find in this essay much 
 that is of interest, and something that is new. 
 
 Tht greatest regret I have is that Wallis Vincent 
 should not read these pages. He saw the first draft of 
 the MS. and used some of its material for his last lecture 
 on " Shakespeare and Music." It was his appreciation that 
 first led me to seek a publisher. To him I owe the 
 greatest thanks, and to his dear memory I offer this 
 acknowledgement. 
 
 In addition I thank Professor Moorman whose lectures 
 on Shakespeare sealed my interest in the subject. My 
 thanks are also due to Herbert Thompson, Esq., who 
 readily furnished me with a preliminary bibliography; 
 to Rev. W. H. Frere, who gave me a full account of 
 "jubili"; to Rev. A. Hastings Kelk, who confirmed my 
 suspicions about the source of Bale's canticles; to the 
 readers of the Cambridge University Press, who pointed 
 out, in addition to minor details, the great share which 
 music had in the production of Italian drama of the 
 period; and above all to Professor Vaughan, who, in 
 addition to a sympathetic interest in the work, has been 
 good enough to read the proofs. 
 
 One more note must be added. Since page 23 was 
 written, M. Albert Feuillerat has shown {Shakespeare 
 Jahrbuch, XLVIII. p. 81) that Blackfriars Theatre was 
 founded as early as 1578 by Richard Farrant,the musician. 
 
 G. H. C. 
 
 Leeds, 1912. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. Music in pre-Shakespearian drama 
 
 II. An Elizabethan Stage and its music 
 
 III. Musical instruments and their uses 
 
 IV. Incidental music .... 
 
 V. Musicians, Singers and Songs 
 VI. Elizabethan music, and its share in the drama 
 
 VII. Some literary allusions to music in Elizabethan plays 
 
 Bibliography 
 
 Appendix 
 
 Index . . ... 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 7 
 
 22 
 42 
 
 65 
 74 
 89 
 
 99 
 no 
 112 
 
 "S 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Sir Henry Union's Masque .... Frontispiece 
 
 PLATE To face page 
 
 I. The Fortune Theatre 22 
 
 II. The Globe Theatre 24 
 
 III. The Masquing House at Whitehall .... 26 
 
 IV. Drums and Trumpets 44 
 
 V. Wind Instruments 54 
 
 VI. Stringed Instruments 58 
 
 VII. A Lute tablature 60 
 
 VWl. 'Do^AbxiA's Lachrimae . . . Between pages 6?> and (tc) 
 
 IX. An Elizabethan Song 86 
 
 X. A " Broken Consort" 92 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The following Essay is the outcome of curiosity — 
 curiosity to know with what sort of stage-music and musical 
 effect the Elizabethan dramatists produced their plays. It 
 is an endeavour to do with the musical stage-directions 
 what has already been done with those relating to other 
 matters, namely, to collect them, and to force them to show 
 their own conclusions. It endeavours to show what kinds 
 of music were used during a play, and when and how the 
 music wa^ performed. Shakespeare's plays in First Folio 
 and Quartos are the chief source of illustration, and other 
 plays have been used as mines only that the ore extracted 
 might illustrate the setting of a Shakespearian play. It 
 concludes by attempting to estimate critically the artistic 
 worth of music to the stage. 
 
 It may be objected that all this is purely antiquarian in 
 its aim ; but even if it were, it must not be assumed that all 
 antiquarian research is of the dry-as-dust sort. It is highly 
 important to obtain a clear idea of the conditions under 
 which Elizabethan plays were produced, both for the light 
 it throws upon the action of certain scenes, and also in 
 order to clear away the old and false notions about the 
 simplicity of the Elizabethan stage. 
 
 It has been assumed — the wish perhaps being father to 
 the thought — that the drama of Shakespeare's ag'e was 
 
2 Introduction 
 
 a purely literary production. The decadence of poetic 
 drama in our times has been attributed to a diseased 
 craving for spectacle, scenic effect, and incidental music ; 
 and the perverse deduction has been drawn that the rise of 
 drama in the Elizabethan age was owing to the fact that 
 poetry was the only thing that mattered. " When Burbadge 
 played, the stage was bare," sang Mr Austin Dobson, and 
 more scholarly writers than he have failed to credit the 
 importance of costumes, scenery, and music. Elizabethan 
 drama has been called " a pure appeal to the ear." This is 
 a quite inaccurate notion. It was also an appeal to the 
 eye. The fact that moveable properties, and costumes 
 other than Tudor were in use is shown by Henslowe's 
 inventory of the goods, " aparell," and " properties for my 
 Lord Admeralles men " at his playhouse The Rose^. An 
 approach towards scenery is to be seen in the fact that the 
 traverse was sometimes painted ^ And the appeal to the 
 ear was not made by poetry alone. There is a chain of 
 evidence ranging from Gorboduc in 1562 and Gammer 
 Gur ton's Needle in 1566 to Prynne's Histriomastix in 1633 
 showing that music was a regular and important ingredient 
 in the drama of Shakespeare's age. Thus Elizabethan 
 drama was a sensuous appeal, not only to the ear with 
 poetry and music, but to the eye with dress, properties, 
 and painted scenes. Or, " to difference ourselves nearer," 
 as Sir Thomas Browne would say, whilst the imagery of 
 verse cast a glamour over the imaginative effect of the 
 drama on the intellect and the emotions, there were music 
 and colour for the senses. 
 
 ^ Supplement to Henslowis Diary, ed. by J. P. Collier, Shakespeare 
 Society (1845). 
 
 * "Wife. Now sweet lamb, what story is that painted on the cloth? The 
 confutation of St Paul ? " Knight of the Burning Pestle, Act II. Sc. 8. 
 
Introduction 3 
 
 The chief evidence to prove an extensive use of music 
 is the mass of stage-directions in the texts of old plays. 
 And the fact that musical stage-directions are not ideal, 
 but were actually carried out, is substantiated by plenty of 
 external evidence. For instance, Prynne has this syllogism 
 in Histriomastix (Act V. Sc. 10) : 
 
 " That which is alwaies accompanied with effeminate 
 lust-provoking Musicke is doubtlesse inexpedient and un- 
 lawfull unto Christians. But stage-plays are alwayes 
 accompanied with such Musicke. Therefore they are 
 doubtlesse inexpedient and unlawfull unto Christians." 
 And his minor premise, says he, is " more then evident. . . 
 our Playhouses resounding alwayes with such voluptuous 
 Melody." 
 
 Orazio Busino, who accompanied a Venetian embassy 
 to the court of Elizabeth in 161 8, visited The Duchess of 
 Malfi at the Fortune theatre. " Some little amusement," 
 he wrote in a letter, "may be derived... from the various 
 interludes of instrumental music, and dancing, and 
 singing^" 
 
 Further evidence is to be found in Henslowe's Diary, 
 and especially in his inventory of the chattels of the Lord 
 Admiral's Company, whom he employed at The Rose 
 theatre during the year 1598^- When he took stock on 
 March loth and 13th of that year, he found the company 
 in possession of three trumpets, one drum, one treble-viol, 
 
 1 Quarterly Review, Vol. Cil. pp. 416, and 423, note. One of the musical 
 directions in the play is for a dance of madmen, "with music answerable 
 thereto." (Act IV. Sc. 2.) 
 
 2 As to the precise date of the tenure of The Rose theatre by the Lord 
 Admiral's Company, authorities differ. Mr F. G. Fleay in A Chronicle History 
 of the London Stage (1890), p. 14S, gives the period as January 1598 to 
 October 1600. Mr W. W. Greg, in Henslow^s Diary (1904), Part II. p. 187, 
 says the Admiral's men were at The Rose from nth October 1597 until 
 loth July 1600. 
 
 I — 2 
 
4 Introduction 
 
 one bass-viol, one pandore, one cithern, one sackbut, 
 three "tymbrells," and a chime of bells*. From time to 
 time the company added more instruments to its stock. 
 Henslowe's Diary contains the following entries : 
 
 {a) " Lent unto Thomas Dowton, the lo of Novmbr 1598, to bye 
 a sackebute of Marke Antoney for xxxxs." ^-£'iT) '"' 
 
 Was this sackbut bought as a property for a play called 
 " Mark Antony " or from another company playing a play 
 with that name ? It is difficult to say. The sackbut may 
 have been bought as a property for a pre-Shakespearian 
 Julius Caesar''. 
 
 (b) "Lent unto Richard Jonnes the 22 of Desembr 1598 to bye 
 a basse viall and other enstrements for the companey xxxxs." 
 
 (c) " Lent unto the company, the 6 of Febreary 1 599 for to by a 
 drome when to go into the country xjs vjd." 
 
 The company was going on tour, and needed drums and 
 trumpets to herald its approach. Hence also the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 {d) " Receaved of Mr Henshlowe this 7th of February 1599, the 
 some of xxijs to buy 2 trumpettes xxijs. Robt. Shaa." 
 
 {e) "Lent unto Thomas Downton the 13 of July 1599, to bye 
 enstrumentes for the Company, the some of xxxs." 
 
 Thus the players at The Rose theatre were in possession 
 of enough musical instruments for a small band, and it 
 is unlikely that all these instruments were simply stage- 
 properties. 
 
 ' From an inventory found by Malone amongst some loose papers of 
 Henslowe's at Dulwich, but now lost. It is published by Collier in his 
 Henslowis Diary, Shakespeare Society (1845). Its authenticity is accepted by 
 Mr Fleay, Chronicle History of the London Stage (1890), p. 115. 
 
 ' Mr Greg thinks " Mark Antony " is the name of a character in a play, but 
 also suggests that it may be the name of an Italian dealer in musical instru- 
 ments. See Henslawis Diary, ed. W. W. Greg, Vol. 11. p. 199, note 158 (d). 
 
Introduction 5 
 
 And further proof is offered by the few theatre-plots 
 that have come down to our day. The plot or " Piatt " of 
 a play was a large sheet affixed on the walls or doors of 
 the tiring-room. It contained a list of cues for all the 
 players, and in a side column was a running list of stage- 
 directions. For example, the Plott of the Firste Part of 
 Tamar Cam has the marginal note " sound sennet " when 
 certain nobles are directed to enter, " sound flourish " when 
 they leave the stage, and such directions as "sound," 
 "alarum," "thunder," "wind home," &c.^ The Piatt of 
 The Deade Man's Fortune has the marginal direction 
 " musique " between every act, but not at the beginning 
 and end of the play I The Plat of The Battell of Alcazar 
 has the note "sound sennet" when a dumb-show enters, 
 and has also directions for sounding trumpets during the 
 play'. In addition to these external references to music in 
 the playhouses, there are many references to theatrical 
 musicians in contemporary tracts and pamphlets which 
 will be noticed in a separate chapter*. 
 
 From the internal evidence of the texts of plays it is 
 plain that by its threefold use, in songs, in entertainments 
 between the acts, and as an accompaniment to increase the 
 emotional effect of verse, music played a great part in 
 Elizabethan drama. The English had given music a share 
 in their Mystery Plays. It held its own quite naturally in 
 the Interlude and early Comedy, and was strong enough to 
 force itself upon Elizabethan attempts to revive the classical , 
 drama, and thence into English Tragedy. Imitating their 
 Italian masters, English musicians were beginning to break 
 away from polyphonic music. The rules of counterpoint 
 
 ' Malone's Prolegomena, Vol. III. Supplement. - Ibid. 
 
 3 Sankside Shakespeare, Vol. XX. Introduction. 
 * See Section vi. 
 
6 Introduction 
 
 were well understood, and were freely broken when neces- 
 sary. The unaccompanied motets and madrigals of the 
 latter half of the sixteenth century are so musicianly that 
 the age has been called "the golden age of English music"; 
 but with the introduction in the last decade of the century 
 of solo-songs (or "Ayres") accompanied by consorts of 
 instruments, composers began to write definite melodies 
 based on progressions of chords. In other words, the art 
 of harmony came into being. At the same time composers 
 began to forsake the old church-modes and to confine 
 themselves to the major and minor modes. 
 
 In this decade the Italians were making their earliest 
 attempts at Opera — a movement which did not spread to 
 England until fifty years later — but the same craving for 
 a mixed art compounded of poetry and music led to the 
 gorgeous masques of Ben Jonson and his collaborators, 
 and to popular song-plays like Nash's Will Summer's Last 
 Will and Testament. Just as popular love of rough-and- 
 tumble fun insisted on the retention of clowns and fools in 
 Elizabethan drama, so love of music insisted that songs 
 should be retained. Both were a heritage of Mystery and 
 Interlude, but whilst the growing culture of the age did 
 away with the fool, it raised the song to an artistic level, 
 and made it a feature' in almost every play. The lyrics of 
 Shakespearian drama form one of its sweetest charms, and 
 their surpassing beauty is due to the fact that they are the 
 result of the strivings of generations of song-writers to 
 surpass what had gone before. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 MUSIC IN PRE-SHAKESPEARIAN DRAMA 
 
 Music in Mysteries — Latin canticles — English songs — John Hey- 
 wood's influence — Songs in Interludes — Ralph Roister Doister — 
 Influence of Italian drama — Dumb-shows — ^John Lyly — Court 
 performances. 
 
 English dramatic music took its beginnings from the 
 antiphons and canticles of the medieval catholic church. 
 The Mystery Plays — short dramas in popular verse dealing 
 with scriptural incidents and legends of the saints — played 
 by craft-gilds on certain festival days during the fifteenth 
 and sixteenth centuries, drew quite naturally from the music 
 of the church. Musicians played at times during their 
 performance, and the plays contain antiphons, canticles, 
 and a few lyrics — the earliest specimens of the English 
 dramatic song^ 
 
 It is impossible to give here a full list of references to 
 music in the Mystery Plays ; but we can get some notion 
 of the share which music took by comparing the first play. 
 The Creation, in existing series of gild-plays. 
 
 In the York play'', a chorus of angels sings the canticles 
 Te Deum laudamus, and Sanctus. 
 
 ' Our mystery plays were paralleled in Italy by Sacre Rappresentazioni, from 
 which Italian Oratorio took its rise. How did it happen that the golden age 
 of English music produced no sacred musical drama ? 
 
 ^ York Mystery Plays, ed. Miss Toulmin Smith (1885), pp. 1, 3. 
 
8 Music in Pre-Shakespearian Drama 
 
 In the Chester play, The Creation and Fall, minstrels 
 play whilst God puts Adam and Eve in Paradise. After 
 they have eaten the fruit, this direction is found, "Then 
 Adam and Eve shall cover ther members with leaves, 
 hyddinge themselves under they treeyes ; then God shall 
 speake, and mynstrelles playinge\" This attempt to add 
 mystery to God's words by the use of music shows that 
 the producers were well aware of the value of music for 
 enhancing emotional effect. 
 
 In the Norwich play'', The Creadon of Eve, &c., there is 
 a direction that music shall be played when Adam and Eve 
 are driven out of Paradise. Adam and Eve then sing an 
 English lyric : 
 
 "Wythe dolorous sorowe, we may wayle and wepe 
 Both nyght and daye in sory sythys full depe," &c. 
 
 But by far the greater number of songs in the Mysteries 
 are church canticles, which would be sung to their accus- 
 tomed melodies, and known to the church-goers who heard 
 them therein sung. The introduction of songs in English 
 was a further step away from holy church, and a first step 
 towards the songs of Shakespeare. 
 
 In the Coventry Creation^, as in the York play, a choir 
 of angels sings a part of Te Deum laudamus, in this case 
 the lines from " Tibi omnes angeli " to " Sanctus, Dominus 
 Deus Sabaoth." 
 
 The Towneley play of The Creation, &c., has twelve 
 leaves missing*, so that it is impossible to say whether 
 musicians were employed. This series has but few stage- 
 directions, yet it would be rash to draw thence the conclusion 
 
 1 Chester Plays, Shakespeare Society (1843), pp. 23, 30. This particular 
 play was done appropriately enough by the Drapers. 
 
 * Non-Cycle Mystery Plays, Early English Text Society (1909), p. 10. 
 ' Coventry Mysteries, Shakespeare Society (1841), p. 20. 
 
 * Towneley Plays, Early English Text Society (1897), p. 9. 
 
Music in Pre-Skakespearian Drama 9 
 
 that the Towneley plays were performed without music. 
 For example, the second Shepherds' Play ends with the 
 Yorkshire shepherds bringing toys for the holy child to 
 Bethlehem. Their last words are— 
 
 "First Shepherd. What grace we have fun. 
 Second Shepherd. Come forth, now are we won. 
 Third Shepherd. To sing are we bun. 
 Let take on loft." 
 
 — And it is likely that they finished their show with a 
 carol, for in a corresponding Coventry Nativity^ pl'iy the 
 shepherds sing a delightful carol : 
 
 "As I outrode this enderes night, 
 Of three jolly shepherds I saw a sight. 
 And all about their fold a star shone bright ; 
 They sang Terli, Terlow; 
 So merrily the shepherds their pipes can blow." 
 
 And another charming carol is to be found towards the 
 end of the same play which deals with The Slaughter of 
 the Innocents. The mothers sing a lullaby to their children 
 lamenting Herod's decree, with the burden — 
 
 " Lully, lulla, thou tiny little child ; 
 By, by, luUay, lullay, thou little tiny child ; 
 By, by, lully lullay." 
 
 It is impossible to overestimate the importance of these 
 folksongs. They paved the way, as we have said, for the 
 lyric of later drama, but even greater was their influence 
 on music. The church canticles such as Ave Maria'', Veni 
 Creator Spiritus', Gloria*, Salvum me fac, Domine' (Psalm 
 
 1 The Coventry Nativity Play (from the text of Robert Croo, 1534) 
 "Everyman" with other Interludes. Everyman's Library. 
 
 2 In York, " The Annunciation." 
 
 » In York, " The Baptism of Jesus." 
 
 ' In Towneley, " Shepherds' Plays," and in Coventry, " Nativity Play." 
 
 " In Chester, » The Deluge." 
 
lo Music in Pre-Shakespearian Drama 
 
 Ixix), Exultet coelum laudibus', Stella coeli extirpavit'', 
 and Te Deum laudamus, which were sung in certain 
 Mysteries, were adorned with long jubili or " runs." Thus 
 in the Latin songs from the York Mysteries, " mea," in one 
 place, is sung on a run of twenty-one notes, and " surge " 
 to nineteen'. As long as these dramatic songs were in 
 Latin, the fact that jubili obscured the sense did not 
 matter. For though perhaps the language was not under- 
 stood, yet the meaning was, because the canticles were 
 well known to all who attended church. But with the 
 introduction of English words these over-elaborations 
 had to go. Henceforth melodies must be rhythmic, and 
 suited to the words. Their runs and gracenotes were not 
 allowed to interfere with the meaning of the song. The 
 rise of harmony in the last half of the sixteenth century 
 finally killed jubili. Composers then decorated and elabo- 
 rated their music with harmony rather than by adorning 
 the melody, and aimed at expressing the meaning of 
 the song in music. Thomas Morley's Plaine and Easie 
 Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) gives instruction 
 " how to dispose your musicke according to the nature of 
 the words which you are therein to expresse." " If you 
 have a grave matter, apply a grave kinde of musicke to it ; 
 if a merry subject, you must make your musicke also 
 merrie." He tells how to "signifie hardnesse" by using 
 whole-notes, and " a lamentable passion '' with half-notes ; 
 the goal being to have " as it were an harmonica! consent 
 betwixt the matter and the musick." 
 
 The direct successors of Mysteries were the longer and 
 
 ^ In Coventry, "The Barrenness of Anna." 
 ' In Coventry, " The Adoration of the Shepherds." 
 
 ° Five songs from the York Mysteries. Ashburnham MS. 137, leaf 238. 
 Supplement to Miss Toulmin Smith's York Mystery Plays. 
 
Music in Pre-Shakespearian Drama 1 1 
 
 more elaborate scriptural plays which held popular favour 
 until the end of the sixteenth century. Greene and Lodge's 
 play, A Looking Glass for London and England (isg4), and 
 Peele's David andBethsabe (ca. 1 599) were perhaps the last. 
 Earlier scriptural plays show the transition clearly in the 
 nature of their songs. John Bale (149S — 1563), protestant 
 Bishop, of Ossory, was the author of A Brefe Comedy of 
 fohan Baptyste and A Tragedy of God's Promises (1538). 
 The latter treats in seven acts of the woeful afflictions of 
 seven characters taken from the Bible. Each of the seven 
 sings to express his faith in God's promises. The songs 
 chosen are the Advent antiphons of the pre-reformation 
 English liturgy, — O Sapientia, O Adonai, O Radix Jesse, 
 O Clavis David, O Oriens splendor, O Rex Gentium, and 
 O Emmanuel — sung not in due order, but distributed with 
 fitting regard for the seven tragic heroes. Thus, Noah, on 
 seeing the rainbow, sings O Oriens splendor. John the 
 Baptist, laid in prison, sings O Clavis David. The stage- 
 directions indicate that a "chorus" of instrumentalists 
 accompanied the singers, but the organ seems to have 
 taken their place at Kilkenny on August 20th, 1553, when 
 " the yonge men in the forenone played a tragedy of God's 
 Promises in the Old Lawe, at the Market Crosse, with 
 Organs plainge and songes very aptely^" 
 
 These antiphons are a link connecting with the Latin 
 canticles of the Mysteries. But the English song persisted. 
 In The History of facob and Esau (IS57)^ along with 
 English canticles, there is a humorous folksong with the 
 burden, 
 
 "For young doth it prick, that will be a thorn." 
 
 1 "The Vocacyon of Johan Bale," quoted by E. F. Rimbault in his Intro- 
 duction to Bonduca (1842), p. 6. 
 
 ^ Dodsley-Hazlitt collection. (A Select collection of Old English Plays, 
 pub. Reeves and Turner, London, 1874), Vol. II. p. 234. 
 
12 Music in Pre-Skakespearian Drama 
 
 But whilst popular lyrics hardly held their ground in 
 scriptural plays, they were swept along the high road 
 towards perfection owing to the invention of a new type of 
 play by a court musician named John Heywood. In his 
 early youth (ca. 1515) Heywood left Oxford to join the 
 court of Henry VI H as a singer. There he spent his life 
 as musician and playwright until, on the accession of 
 Elizabeth, being too devout a Catholic to remain, he went 
 abroad. When Heywood began his career, the plays in 
 fashion at court were the so-called Moralities, — allegorical 
 and didactic plays dealing not with real persons but with 
 symbolical and abstract characters. Persons such as Truth, 
 Justice, Peace, Mercy, Mankind, the seven Deadly Sins, 
 Vice, and the like, carried on scholastic disputations and 
 fought exemplary battles in which virtue always won, and 
 vice was driven into Hell. They were played on elaborate 
 stages ; but from the nature of the plays, singing was rare, 
 though it is not impossible that minstrels played during 
 their performance'. 
 
 The advance which Heywood made was that his 
 persons stand for a class such as the Pedlar, or the Priest, 
 instead of abstractions like Truth, Youth, Mercy and the 
 rest. Although his Interludes lack plot, and are simply 
 discussions like the Morality plays, yet the chord of human 
 interest struck by him made the introduction of songs 
 possible. The fact too that he was by profession a 
 musician, and one of a large band of musician-retainers at 
 court, doubtless had its influence on the association of 
 music with his kind of early drama. It is on record that 
 in 1521, £t) was paid " To John Haywoode synger wages V 
 
 1 It is worth noting that La Rappresentazione deP Anima e del Corpo 
 (Rome, 1600) was a Morality play set to music. 
 
 ^ "The Kynges boke of payments," quoted by Collier, Annals, 1. p. 77. 
 
Music in Pre-Shakespearian Drama 13 
 
 In 1526 he had risen to be "player of the virginals" and 
 received £6. 13J. 4//. quarterly ^ In 1538, for some reason, 
 his quarterly salary had fallen to £2. \os. od?, but Edward VI 
 raised his fee to ;£'so a year", and Mary continued it at the 
 same rate*. 
 
 To Heywood also belongs the credit of leading up to 
 a song with fitting dialogue. For example, his Interlude of 
 the Four Ps deals with the chance meeting of a Pardoner, 
 a Palmer, a 'Pothecary and a Pedlar, who strive to tell the 
 wildest lying tale. When all are met, the 'Pothecary 
 enquires if the Pedlar can sing — 
 
 '■'■Pothecary. I pray you tell me, can you sing? 
 Pedlar. Sir, I have some sight in singing. 
 
 Pothecary. But is your breast anything sweet'?" 
 
 Then they sing, but, as is the case with most early plays, 
 the words of the song are not given. They may have sung 
 a part-song, or a madrigal, for the Madrigalists began their ' 
 art in England before 1530. In that year Wynkyn de 
 Worde printed the first English song-book entitled, XX 
 Songes ; IX of IIII partes and XI of thre partes, although 
 the best English madrigals were not written until just after 
 1600, by Wilbye, Gibbons, and their fellows. 
 
 Heywood's kind of Interlude did not altogether shut 
 out plays of an ethical and controversial nature, but thence- 
 forward songs were common in both Morality and Interlude, 
 and they were given even to personifications. For example, 
 in Lusty Juventus^ (ca. 1550) Hypocrisy and Abhominable 
 
 ^ "A Booke of Wages, 17 Hen. VIII," quoted by Collier, Annals, I. p. 96. 
 
 ^ Collier, Annals, i. p. 1 19. 
 
 5 Burney, History of Music, Vol. in. p. 5. * Collier, Annals, I. p. 165. 
 
 " Dodsley-Hazlitt collection, Vol. I. p. 353. " Breast " means chest-voice. 
 Cf. Twelfth Night (Act 11. Sc. 3), where Aguecheek exclaims, " By my troth, 
 the fool hath an excellent breast." 
 
 » Dodsley-Hazlitt collection. Vol. 11. p. 88. 
 
14 Music in Pre-Shakespearian Drama 
 
 Living sing a merry song with a burden " Report me to you." 
 In The Interlude of the Four Elements^ (1S19) musicians 
 sing and dance before Sensual Appetite. An interesting 
 direction " if ye list ye may bring in a disguising " occurs 
 in the introduction. If a "disguising" or masque were 
 brought in, instrumentalists must have been needed to 
 play for the songs and dances. The direction also shows 
 that Shakespeare's introduction of masques into his later 
 plays was no new thing". An Interlude of Wealth and 
 Health^ (1557) begins with Wealth and Health singing 
 together " a ballat of two parts," and later in the play 
 Liberty " entereth with a song." Impatient Poverty'^ (1560) 
 has the stage-direction " Here Misrule singeth without 
 coming in." It was common in late Elizabethan drama 
 to direct that a song be sung "Within," and herein it 
 is manifest that the custom had a precedent in elder 
 drama. 
 
 About half way through the sixteenth century an eifort 
 was made to wean drama from its didactic setting. Moral 
 and scriptural characters were put into the background, 
 and the play turned on a dramatic situation. Religious 
 songs were put aside, and songs of a humorous kind called 
 for. The Morality-Tragedy Appius and Virginia'^ (.? 1563) 
 contains comic songs sung by a row of persons, of whom 
 each sings one verse. Early comedies, like Tom Tyler and 
 
 1 Dodsley-Hazlitt collection, Vol. I. pp. 5, 46. 
 
 ' Of the instances referred to, only one, namely the masque in The 
 Tempest, is a masque in the strict sense of the word. But the supernatural 
 visions in Pericles, Cymbeline, and Henry VIII have manifestly elements in 
 common with the masque. 
 
 3 Lost Tudor Plays, ed. J. S. Farmer for the Early English Drama Society 
 (1907), p. 275. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 332. 
 
 ' Dodsley-Hazlitt collection, Vol. iv. 
 
Music in Pre-Shakespearian Drama 15 
 
 his Wife^ (ca. 1560), and The Nice Wanton (1560)", usually 
 have several humorous songs; the former contains seven. 
 
 Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister^ (ca. 1550), 
 though entitled an Interlude, is really the first extant 
 English comedy. It contains no hint of allegorical figures. 
 Its characters are not much more convincingly sketched 
 than Heywood's, but they are skilfully put in a comic 
 situation and the knot is unravelled in real comedy fashion. 
 The plot hinges on Dame Custance's wooing by the vain- 
 glorious Ralph, and the final triumph of her affianced 
 Garvin Goodluck. It contains several comic songs, intro- 
 duced in Heywood's manner by fitting dialogue, as for 
 example the song in Act I. Sc. 3 sung by Dame Custance's 
 maidens. The song " Whoso to marry a minion wife " in 
 Act I. Sc. 4 is introduced thus — 
 
 "-ff. Roister. Go to it, sirs, lustily. 
 M. Mumble. Pipe up a merry note. 
 
 Let me hear it played, I will foot it for a groat." 
 
 This proves that the accompaniment was played by musi- 
 cians^ and moreover that the time was a dance measure — 
 a great advance on the plain-song carols and canticles of 
 the Mysteries. At the beginning of Act 11 Ralph's servant 
 soliloquises that "with every woman" his master is "in 
 some love's pang," and that he serenades them with sonnets 
 and ballads of his own making, accompanied by lute, 
 recorder, and gittern. 
 
 In Act III. Sc. 3 Ralph is dying of unrequited love. 
 His parasite Merrygreeke intones what the stage-direction 
 
 1 Anonymous Plays, 2nd Series, ed. J. S. Farmer for the Early English 
 Drama Society (1906). 
 
 2 Dodsley-Hazlitt collection, Vol. II. * Ibid. Vol. in. 
 
 * Actors similarly address musicians in Gammer Gurion's Needle, end of 
 Act 11 ; Ralph Roister Doister, end of Act in. Sc. 3 ; and in The Knight of 
 the Burning Pestle. 
 
1 6 Music in Pre-Shakespearian Drama 
 
 calls "The Psalmody" — a lament for Ralph in which he 
 calls on Ralph's servants to begin "some part of his 
 funerals." Five servants then sing a round in imitation of 
 the chiming of bells. Under the influence of this doleful 
 music Ralph recovers and calls for musicians. When 
 Merrygreeke brings them he says, " Come sirs, let us sing 
 to win my dear love Custance." Then he sings, " I mun be 
 married a Sunday." The play ends with antiphons sung 
 by the principal characters equivalent in intention to our 
 custom of playing or singing " God save the King " at the 
 end of an entertainment. 
 
 Gammer Gurton's Needle^, a comedy similar in that it 
 deals with village life, but coarser in tone, shows a cor- 
 responding use of music. _ At the end of Act I occurs the 
 famous old song, " I cannot eat but little meat," and the fact 
 that music was played between the acts is indicated at the 
 end of Act II, where Diccon says to the musicians — 
 
 " In the meantime, fellows, pipe up your fiddles : I say take them 
 And let your friends hear such mirth as ye can make them." 
 
 Both the foregoing plays were produced by scholars. Ralph 
 Roister Doister is supposed to have been played at Eton, 
 and Gammer Gurton's Needle was played at Christ's College, 
 Cambridge, in 1 566. And the more elaborate use of music 
 in these comedies, and in the Interludes played in the 
 houses of princes and noblemen, than in the popular 
 Mysteries, points to a more cultured audience with ready 
 access to capable musicians. 
 
 In the decade of the sixties, the influence of Italian 
 Renaissance drama began to manifest itself in England, 
 particularly in the plays produced by the benchers of the 
 Inns of Court. "Generally speaking," says M. Romain 
 
 1 Dodsley-Hazlitt collection, Vol. in. 
 
Music in Pre-Shakespearian Drama 17 
 
 Rolland^, "no drama whether classic or neo-classic was 
 played in Italy in the XVIth century without music,"... 
 " The text was spoken, but there were many songs, and 
 dumb-shows were considerably developed." The typical 
 Renaissance English comedy The Supposes (1566), by 
 George Gascoigne, contains no songs^ but the manuscript 
 of The Bugbears (ca. 1 565) contains four songs, the music 
 for two of which still e^jists'. 
 
 English writers of Renaissance tragedy copied an 
 Italian form of art which came into being ca. 1500 — the 
 intermedio or pantomime with music. InUrmedi were^ 
 staged both as a distinct kind of drama and as entr'actes 
 in tragedy and comedy*- Under their influence our 
 Renaissance dramatists introduced a "dumb-show" ac- 
 companied by music at the beginnings of each act in 
 order to illustrate the plot. Sometimes the persons in 
 this musical pantomime were allegorical, sometimes they 
 were drawn from the dramatis personae. The effect of 
 these spectacles on the audience must have been to whet 
 curiosity, something like a charade. „i 
 
 As a typical example, this is the "Order of the 
 Dumb-show before the First Act" of Gorboduc^, written 
 by Norton and Sackville, and produced by gentlemen 
 of the Inner Temple at Whitehall on January 1 8, 1 562. — 
 " First, the music of violins began to play, during which 
 
 ^ MusUitns d'Autrefris (L'opira avant tapird), by M. Romain RoUand, 
 publ. Hachette (1912), p. 39. 
 
 ^ Its original, Gli Suppositi of Ariosto, was played at the Vatican in 
 March 15 18 with entr'actes played by fifes, cornmuses, comets, viols, lutes and 
 o^an. See Musiciens cV Autrefois, p. 37. 
 
 ' Early Plays from the Italian, ed. Bond, p. 154. 
 
 * See article by O. G. Sbnneck in Musical Antiquary, Oct. 191 1. 
 
 " Roister Doister and Gorbaduc, ed. W. D. Cooper. Shakespeaie 
 Society, 1847. 
 
 C. 2 
 
1 8 Music in Pre-Shakespearian Drama 
 
 came in upon the stage six wild men, clothed in leaves. 
 Of whom the first bare on his neck a faggot of small sticks, 
 which they all, both severally and together, assayed with all 
 their strength to break, but it could not be broken by 
 them." The "order" continues that they tore the sticks 
 apart and then easily broke them. The moral of this 
 dumb-show is that disunion makes weakness — a moral 
 exemplified in this play, wherein King Gorboduc divides 
 his kingdom betwixt his two sons, by the manifold woes 
 that ensue. In Gorboduc, cornets played for the dumb- 
 show before Act II ; flutes (then considered a mournful 
 instrument) accompanied the dumb-show before Act III, for 
 it contained a murder ; hautboys played for the fourth; and 
 drums and flutes for the fifth dumb-show, which betokens 
 wars and tumults. " First, the drums and flutes began to 
 sound, during which there came forth upon the stage 
 a company of harquebussiers, and of armed men, all in 
 order of battle. These, after their pieces discharged, and 
 that the armed men had three times marched about the 
 stage, departed, and then the drums and flutes did cease." 
 
 Tancred and Gismunda^ (iS68 — 1572), another Inner 
 Temple play, contains similar dumb-shows. Its plot is 
 based on the novel in the Decamerone which treats of the 
 tragic love of Princess Sigismunda for the squire Guiscard. 
 Before the third act "the hautboys sounded a lofty almain" 
 whilst Guiscard and Gismunda danced. Before the fourth 
 act was a dumb-show of the king spying on the lovers' 
 embracements, accompanied by " a consort of sweet musick." 
 A dead-march was played before the fifth act to prepare 
 the audience for the tragic ending. This Renaissance 
 tragedy also contained a song. Gismunda and her maidens 
 sang at the end of the second scene. " Cantant " says the 
 
 ^ Dodsley-Hazlitt collection, Vol. vil. 
 
Music in Pre-Shakespearian Drama 19 
 
 stage-direction of the transcriber, but "Quae mihi cantio 
 nondum occurrit." 
 
 In Gascoigne's Jocasta> (1566) there are similar dumb- 
 shows accompanied by music of viols, cytherns, pandores, 
 flutes, cornets, trumpets, drums, fifes, and still-pipes ; and 
 the same feature is to be found in The Misfortunes of 
 Arthur^, a play produced in 1588 for the delectation of 
 Queen Elizabeth by various members of Gray's Inn. It 
 was such a dumb-show that Shakespeare introduced into 
 Hamlet^ and his intent was no doubt to make the play 
 within the play seem archaic to his audience ; for when 
 English tragedy made a fresh beginning from the early 
 chronicle-plays dealing with stories of English kings, dumb- 
 shows were discarded. 
 
 Yet another sort of play produced for court amusement 
 were the comedies of John Lyly(i554? — 1606), a university 
 scholar, who, to use the words of Gabriel Harvey, " hath 
 not played the Vicemaster of Poules and the Foolemaster 
 of the Theater for naught." They are plays of five acts, 
 with a classical or mythological fable written in prose 
 tinged with the fashionable Euphuism of the day. The 
 influence of the Interlude is there in the shape of 'symbolic 
 characters and allegorical meaning. Lyly was probably 
 assistant master of the choir-boys of St Paul's, and his 
 comedies were acted before the Queen by them or by the 
 Children of the Chapel Royal. In his plays are technical 
 references to singing and musical instruments which go to 
 prove that Lyly had an intimate knowledge of music'. 
 Songs are introduced, usually at the end of scenes; but, 
 
 1 Gascoigne's Works. Cambridge University Press, 1907, Vol. I. p. 246. 
 
 2 Dodsley-Hazlitt collection, Vol. IV. 
 
 ' Cf. Campaspe, Act iv. 3, 10 ; Endimion, Act HI. 4, i ; Midas, Prologue, 
 Act III. 1, 85 and Act IV. i ; Mother Bombie, Act v. 3. 
 
20 Music in Pre-Shakespearian Drama 
 
 with the exception of two songs in The Woman in the 
 Moone, the songs that appear in copies of the Folio edition 
 of 1632 are probably not by Lyly^ Like Heywood, he 
 often leads up to the introduction of a song by suitable 
 dialogue. He gives no musical directions in his plays, but 
 as they were played on the same kind of stage as the court 
 Interludes and the entertainments provided by the Inns of 
 Court, it is likely that viols, lutes of various kinds, flutes, 
 and virginals accompanied the songs. 
 
 The establishment of the Children of the Chapel Royal 
 (ca. 1 561) consisted of eight viols, three drums, two flutes, 
 three virginals, seven " musition straungers " of whom four 
 were "Brethren Venetions " — probably the Bassano brothers 
 — and eight players of Interludes". The entrance of the 
 Queen was probably heralded at these court entertainments 
 by flourishes of drums and trumpets. AU the Tudor 
 monarchs kept a large band of trumpet and sackbut 
 players. Henry VIII had fifteen trumpeters and ten 
 sackbutists". In 1571 Elizabeth maintained eighteen 
 trumpeters and six sackbut players*. She delighted in the 
 sound of drums and trumpets. Every day the signal for 
 dinner w^s given by twelve trumpets and a pair of drums 
 who " made the hall ring for half an hour together"." 
 
 The lists of Queen Elizabeth's household musicians 
 have been published recently. The numbers vary slightly 
 owing to deaths and the engagement of new musicians. 
 In the year cited by Mr Barclay Squire", the musicians 
 and players consisted of seventeen trumpeters, six sackbuts, 
 
 ^ See article by W. W. Greg, Modern Language Review, Vol. i. 
 " Collier, Annals, Vol. I. p. 178. 
 
 3 Ibid. pp. 94, 95. 4 Ibid. pp. 201, 202. 
 
 5 Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, 1859, Vol. I. p. 245, note. 
 • Mtisical Antiquary, beginning Oct. 1909. Mr Barclay Squire's list of 
 wages is in the number for January, 1910. 
 
Music in Pre-Shakespearian Drama 21 
 
 three drumsleds {i.e. drummers), two players on the flute, 
 two lutanists, one rebeck, eight viols, two harpers, two 
 players on the virginals, two makers of instruments, eight 
 singers, six singing children, nine minstrels, eight Interlude 
 players, and seven " musician strangers " including the four 
 Venetian brethren mentioned above. There seems to have 
 been a reduction in the number of household musicians 
 towards the end of the reign. The eighteen trumpeters 
 were retained, but the sackbuts were reduced to two. The 
 names of the trumpeters are always English, but for the 
 other instruments of music Italian names are prevalent. 
 
 With this huge band of musicians at Elizabeth's courtl 
 — the centre of the fashionable and best society of the age 
 in England — it is not surprising that music became popular 
 in the theatre. Italian influence guided its use in the court 
 entertainments, and the court entertainments in their turn 
 influenced the private theatres. With an aristocracy fond 
 of music, and accustomed to play and listen to music and 
 song, music in the theatre was almost as inevitable in 
 England as in Italy. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 AN ELIZABETHAN STAGE AND ITS MUSIC 
 
 Erection of theatres — Public and private theatres — The Elizabethan 
 stage — Position of musicians — Music-rooms — Music on the 
 platform — Armies — Processions — Masquers — Music "Within" — 
 Music on the balcony — " Infernal music." 
 
 Up to the year 1576 all the divers kinds of English 
 drama were acted on improvised stages. The Mysteries 
 were played on pageants erected by the craft-gilds, the 
 Scripture-plays on temporary platforms erected in inn-yards 
 and public squares, the Moralities and Interludes in the 
 halls of nobles, and the pseudo-classical Tragedies in the 
 halls of the Inns of Court, and at the Palace of Whitehall. 
 They were all occasional productions performed on the day 
 of some festival or merry-making, and under such con- 
 ditions, a highly finished performance was hardly possible. 
 But in that year the first public theatres were built — The 
 Theatre and The Curtain in Shoreditch — soon after to be 
 followed by The Rose on Bankside, and the Newington 
 Butts Theatre. Their popularity was immediate, and by 
 the turn of the century, half a score theatres were built, 
 including The Globe and The Swan in the liberty of the 
 Clink on Bankside, and The Fortune in Cripplegate. 
 
 Their musical importance lies in the fact that with the 
 establishment of a standard stage, a standard use of stage- 
 music came into being. Of course there were variations in the 
 
Plate I 
 
 The Fortune Theatre 
 
An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 2j, 
 
 construction of each theatre, and it is most likely that every 
 theatre had its own arrangement of musical details ; but 
 the stage-directions of dramas played at these theatres are 
 sufficiently uniform to allow one to get a general notion of 
 the share which music took in a dramatic show during the 
 age of Shakespeare. Thus, a song was almost a sine qua 
 non, and was far more regular in its presence than a fool 
 or a clown. There is evidence to show that jigs and 
 dances were performed during the intervals between the 
 acts. And some musical directions, such for example as 
 " a flourish of trumpets " at the entrance of a noble person, 
 or the introduction of drums and colours in the van of a 
 stage-army, occur with clockwork regularity. 
 
 In 1 596^ on the site of Playhouse Yard behind the Times 
 newspaper office, Blackfriars Theatre was opened. It was 
 called a " private " theatre, the epithet implying that in con- 
 struction it was like the private theatres of Whitehall or the 
 Inns of Court. The public theatres were built something 
 like a travelling circus, that is to say they consisted of 
 a ring or arena surrounded by grandstands, save at one 
 side where the stage jutted out into the ring. The stage 
 and grandstands were sheltered by a thatched roof, 
 but the ring was open to the sky. Unlike the public 
 theatres, Blackfriars and its rival theatre Whitefriars 
 were halls containing a stage where performances took 
 place by candle-light. The fact that these "private" 
 theatres were leased to the Children of the Chapel Royal, 
 and the Children of the Revels, accounts for the elaborate 
 music in the plays performed there, and doubtless the 
 managers of the "aery of children" saw to it that the 
 excellence of their music was an attraction big enough to 
 outweigh their deficiencies as matured actors. 
 1 1596 Albright, 1597 Fleay, 1596 Collier. 
 
24 An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 
 
 Turning now to discuss the construction of Elizabethan 
 and Jacobean stages, it is necessary to point out that they 
 projected much further into the. auditorium than do modern 
 stages. On our stage, action is seen as in a box with a 
 missing side. Their stage was a pageant, and their acting 
 could be viewed as well from the sides as from the front of 
 the stage. Rising from the midst of this platform were 
 two beams which supported a sounding-board or " heavens," 
 under which on occasion a hoist was let down for the 
 entrance of supernatural personae. Under the " heavens," 
 behind the two beams was an inner chamber, closed when 
 required by a curtain or "traverse," and roofed by the 
 players' tiring-house which opened upon a balcony. At 
 the sides of the stage were doors. A door opened upon 
 the balcony, and there was a way passing through the 
 traverse and the inner chamber to the back of the stage. 
 
 Thus there were three parts of the stage where action 
 could be carried on — the platform, the inner chamber, and 
 the balcony. In many plays action did take place in all 
 three parts of the stage. For instance in Romeo and Juliet, 
 Juliet's balcony would be the balcony before the tiring- 
 house, and the inner chamber would be the tomb of the 
 Capulets^ The position of the musicians is a matter of con- 
 jecture, but the evidence seems to show that in early public 
 theatres where there was scarcely any music save drums 
 and trumpets, no space for musicians was provided. Later 
 (?ca. i6cx3 — 1605) one "room" or box was reserved for 
 them at the side of the stage in all theatres, probably 
 above one of the side doors. 
 
 To take the evidence in due order. Marston's Mal- 
 content was taken by the company of actors called His 
 
 ' An article by William Archer entitled "The Fortune Theatre 1600" in 
 Shakespeare Jahrbiuh XLiv ; also The Shakesperian Stage, by Victor Albright. 
 
Plalc // 
 
 The Globe Theatre 
 
 {As rccojistritcicd at EarPs Court, 1912) 
 
An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 25 
 
 Majesty's Servants from the Children of the Chapel Royal 
 who were acting at Blackfriars — a private theatre, where 
 elaborate music was played — as a counterstroke for their 
 theft of The Spanish Tragedy. The Malcontent was played 
 at The Globe in 1604 with an induction by Webster' In 
 this induction, Sly (an actor) is made to ask — 
 
 "What are your additions?" 
 and Burbadge answers — 
 
 " Sooth, not greatly needful ; only as your salad to your great feast, 
 to entertain a little more time, and to abridge the not received custom 
 of music in our theatre 2." 
 
 Here is proof that music was not in regular use at The 
 Globe in 1604, though there must have been trumpets and 
 drums to play the flourishes and alarums needed for the 
 historical plays that were staged there. 
 
 A similar state of things probably might have been 
 found at The Swan, a neighbouring theatre on Bankside. 
 A sketch of this theatre, made by John De Witt who 
 visited London in 1596, exists in the Royal Library at 
 Berlin. It shows a theatre-interior like the type we have 
 described, save that there is no inner chamber under the 
 balcony', which means probably nothing more than that 
 Elizabethan theatres were not built on a uniform model. 
 In De Witt's sketch, the seats at the immediate left-hand 
 side of the stage are designated "orchestra," but it is 
 a moot point whether or not they were occupied by 
 musicians. Cotgrave's Dictionary (161 1) defines "Or- 
 chestre"as"The senators' or noblemen's places in a theatre 
 
 ' F. G. Fleay, Chronicle of the English Drama, Vol. Ii. p. 78. 
 
 * The last clause is very difficult to interpret, but it seems to indicate that 
 the " additions " to the dialogue were intended to take the place of the music 
 at Blackfriars. 
 
 » A picture of the Red Bull theatre, in the frontispiece to Kirkman's 
 Drolls (1672), shows the traverse clearly. A reproduction is to be seen in 
 the Mermaid edition of Thomas Haywood's plays. 
 
26 An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 
 
 between the stage and the common seats. Also the stage 
 itself^" And it seems highly probable that De Witt's 
 orchestra was simply the stage-box of that time, for which 
 the highest fee for admission was paid*. But some time 
 between 1596 and 161 2, a music-room came into existence 
 at The Swan theatre. Middleton's Chaste Maid in Cheap- 
 side played there in 16 12' has the stage-direction "A sad 
 song in the Music Room." De Witt's sketch also shows 
 a trumpeter standing at a window above "the heavens" 
 and blowing his instrument whilst the play is in progress 
 on the stage. This is surely an inaccuracy. It is unlikely 
 that flourishes on the entrance of noble personae were 
 played from the topmost story, because of the difficulty of 
 giving the cue to the trumpeter. He must have stood 
 near one of the doors leading on to the platform. Is it 
 possible that the sketch is merely the recollection of a visit 
 made to The Swan playhouse, and that the author depicted 
 both the trumpet prelude and the play in progress ? 
 
 But if it be true that the early Bankside playhouses 
 had no .special place reserved for the music, it was not true 
 of all theatres. Certainly the private theatres possessed 
 " music-rooms." A plan of the King's Masquing House at 
 Whitehall made by Inigo Jones exists in the British 
 Museum, which shows the " music-house " at the side of the 
 staged Malone similarly records: "The band, which, I 
 believe did not consist of more than eight or ten performers, 
 sat (as I have been told by a very ancient stage-veteran, 
 who had his information from Bowman, the contemporary 
 of Betterton) in an upper balcony over what is now called 
 
 ^ Quoted by Malone, ProUgBmena, Vol. in. p. 114, note i. 
 
 ' See article by W. J. Lawrence, Shakespeare Jahrbuch XLlv. p. 46. 
 
 * Fleay, Chronicle of the English Drama, Vol. 11. p. 96. 
 
 * Lansdowne MSS.No. 11 71, Inigo Jone^ Plans for Masques at Whitehall, 
 Fo. 10. 
 
Plate III 
 
 ^ cL 
 
 pasage beyond y* back cloth 
 
 3 
 s: - 
 
 p e 
 
 Inigo Jones' Plan of the Masquing House at Whitehall 
 
An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 27 
 
 the stage-box \" Marston's Sophonisba, done at Blackfriars 
 in 1606, has the direction "A short song to soft music 
 above" which implies an upper room of some kind. 
 
 In the case of a theatre which had no special music- 
 room, the tiring-house behind the balcony seems to have 
 been used. The " not received custom of music " at The 
 Globe seems to have been relaxed in 1604 for the produc- 
 tion of the Marston-Webster Malcontent in favour of a 
 band of wind-instruments. The play begins with this 
 direction: "The vilest out-of-tune music being heard, enter 
 Bilioso and Prepasso," followed by this dialogue : 
 
 '■'■ Pieiro: Where breathes that music? 
 Bilioso : The discord rather than the music is heard from the mal- 
 content Malevole's chamber." 
 
 Malevole appears "above," on the balcony, which implies 
 that the band were playing in the tiring-room ; but in the 
 same play they also played within the inner chamber, for 
 in Act II. Sc. 3 the direction " Music within " occurs, and 
 this dialogue : 
 
 "Bianca: Hark! Music! 
 Maquerelle : Peace ! 'tis i' the duchess' bed-chamber." 
 
 A song is sung within the chamber, and then Ferneze 
 rushes through the traverse on to the stage and is murdered. 
 "Confirmatory evidence is found in the third act of The 
 Late Lancashire Witches (1634), as acted at The Globe. 
 Quite unconscious of their offence, the bewitched musicians 
 have been plaguing the wedding guests with unearthly 
 discords*. Each, in fact, has been playing a different tune. 
 They are asked to try again. ' I, and let's see your faces,' 
 says Doughty, ' that you play fairely with us ' ; and then 
 follows the direction, ' Musitians shew themselves above^"' 
 
 1 Malone, Prolegomena, Vol. III. p. in, 1821 edn. 
 
 s W. J. Lawrence's article " Music in the Elizabethan Theatre,'' 
 Shakespeare Jakrbuch XLiv. p. 47. 
 
28 An Elizabethan Stttge and its Music 
 
 At Wliitefriars, where Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight 
 of the Burning Pestle was played (ca. i6io)S the music-room 
 was at the side of the stage. At the end of Act Ii the 
 Citizen and his wife are left alone on the stage. He has 
 given the players money to bring in " the waits of South- 
 wark " and they are expecting to hear the reedy music of 
 hautboys. Instead of that they hear viols. 
 
 " Wife : The fiddlers go again, husband. 
 Citizen : Ay, Nell ; but this is scurvy music. I gave the whoreson 
 gallows money, and I think he has not got me the waits 
 of Southwark : if I hear em not anon, I'll twinge him by 
 the ears." 
 
 From this it is clear that they could hear but not see the 
 musicians, which would indicate that the band was aloft in 
 a side box ; for had they been in the centre of the stage, 
 either in the inner chamber or on the balcony, the Citizen 
 and his. Nell could have seen them. 
 
 The private theatre where the Children of Paul's played 
 (ca. 1600) possessed two music-rooms. The Second Part 
 of Antonio and Mellida^ (Act V. Sc. 2) has this direction : 
 " While the measure is dancing, Andrugio's ghost is placed 
 betwixt the music-houses," and later in the same scene : 
 " The curtains being drawn, exit Andrugio " ; but it is not 
 clear whether the music-rooms were situated on the level 
 of the stage, or on the level of the balcony. The use of 
 music-rooms lasted into Restoration Drama. Killigrew's 
 Parson's Wedding (1664) has references to personae being 
 " above in the musick room," and to fiddlers playing in the 
 tiring-room*. Pepys also records a visit to the Red Bull 
 
 '■ F. G. Fleay, Chronicle of the English Drama, Vol. I. p. 182. 
 2 See title-page of the play. "Antonios Reuenge. The second part. As 
 it hath beene sundry times acted, by the children of Paules," &c. 1602. 
 ' Cited by W. J. Lawrence, Shakespeare /ahrbuch XLiv. p. 49. 
 
An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 29 
 
 playhouse on March 23rd 1661, when there was "so much 
 disorder, among others, in the musique room, the boy that 
 was to sing a song not singing it right, his master fell about' 
 his eares and beat him so that it put the whole house in an 
 uproare." Musicians were first brought in front of the stage 
 to the place we know as "orchestra" by-Davenant, when 
 he produced Dryden's version of Shakespeare's Tempes( in 
 1667'. 
 
 To sum up. It seems likely that the first public theatres 
 had no special places reserved for musicians. The drummers 
 and trumpeters they employed moved about from stage to 
 balcony and turret as they were required. Later theatres 
 were built with a music-room at the side to [ house the 
 musicians that were needed to play for dances and songs ; 
 and then, when music had become an absolutely necessary 
 attraction, the older theatres (including those on Bankside) 
 fell into line, and housed their musicians in the tiring-house 
 behind the balcony. Probably the Paul's boys' theatre 
 was exceptional, and ,the regular use was to build one box 
 called the music-room at the side of the balcony. _j 
 
 But it must not be supposed that the musicians re- 
 mained in their pen like a modern orchestra. On the 
 contrary, every part of the stage used by players was also 
 used by the musicians. They were even sent down to the 
 cellarage like Hamlet's father's ghost to conjure super- 
 natural effects from beneath the platform. Let us turn to 
 examine how the different parts of the stage were used by 
 Elizabethan playwrights for musical effect. 
 
 First, the platform. When an army came on the stage, 
 it was accompanied by "drum and colours," or in other 
 words, by a drummer and an ensign. The following 
 
 1 Collier, Annals of the Stage, Vol. ni. p. 448. Also Malone, Prolegomena, 
 Vol. III. p. ri4, note i, ed. i%i\. 
 
30 An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 
 
 directions taken chiefly from historical plays staged be- 
 tween 1590 and 1600 give good evidence of this. 
 
 Titus A ndronicus begins, " Flourish. Enter the Tribunes and Senators 
 aloft. And then enter Saturninus and his followers at one 
 door, and Bassianus and his followers at the other, with 
 Drum and Colours.'' 
 
 This interesting stage-direction describes the stage of a 
 public theatre so clearly that it scarcely needs comment. 
 After a flourish of trumpets, the Tribunes and Senators 
 came out of the tiring-room and lined the balcony over- 
 looking the platform ; and whilst the army of Bassianus, 
 provided with a drummer beating a rhythmic march, filed 
 out of one of the side doors to take up its position on the 
 platform, the followers of Saturninus entered in procession 
 from the other. Probably only one drum was used. 
 
 Peelers David and Bethsabe. " Enter Joab, Abisai, Urias, and others, 
 
 with Drum and Ensign." 
 TAe True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York begins, " Enter Richard 
 
 Duke of York," &c. " with Drum and Soldiers." 
 Ibid. " Enter the Earl of Warwick, Montague, with drum, ancient, 
 
 and soldiers." 
 Shakespeare's i Henry VI. "Enter Talbot, Bedford, and Burgundy, 
 
 with scaling ladders : their drums beating a Dead 
 
 March." 
 
 This is for the scene of the night attack on' Orleans, by 
 
 which Talbot wins the city. 
 
 •2 Henry VI. "Drum. Enter Cade... with infinite numbers." 
 
 Ibid. " Enter Yorke, and his army of Irish, with Drum and Colours.'' 
 
 3 Henry VI. " Enter Oxford, with Drum and Colours." 
 
 "Enter Mountague, with Drum and Colours." 
 "Enter Somerset, with Drum and Colours." 
 " Enter Clarence, with Drum and Colours." 
 
 Here it seems as if no fewer than four drummers were on 
 the stage together, though it is quite likely that, after 
 
An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 31 
 
 leading in one army, the drummer went back to the door 
 and led in the next. 
 
 Richard II. " Enter with Drum and Colours, Bullingbrooke, Yorke," 
 
 &c. 
 King Lear (Act IV. Sc. 3). " Enter with Drum and Colours, Cordelia, 
 
 Gentlemen, and soldiers." 
 
 And in the same play, the four armies which appear on 
 the stage in Act V are similarly provided. 
 
 In 3 Henry VI there are several directions for the 
 entrance of stage-armies prefixed by the order " March," 
 e.g. 
 
 "A March. Enter Edward, Richard, and their power." 
 
 " March. Enter Warwick, Marquess Mountacute, and their army.'' 
 
 "March. Enter Edward, Warwick, &c. and soldiers." 
 
 From one of these stage-directions, viz. 
 
 " March. Enter Mountgomerie, with drum and soldiers," 
 
 and the context, it is plain that these marches were played 
 upon drums only. In Act IV. Sc. 7, Montgomery is repre- 
 sented as arriving with his vassals to help Edward IV. 
 Edward is in doubt concerning the advisability of taking 
 so bold a step as to claim the crown. He thanks Mont- 
 gomery, but adds that he only claims his dukedom. Mont- 
 gomery replies — 
 
 "Then fare you well, for I will hence again, 
 I came to serve a king, and not a duke: 
 Drummer strike up, and let us march away." 
 
 This direction then follows : 
 
 "The drum begins to march." 
 
 Edward stays him, and consents to be proclaimed king. 
 
 The drum was the traditional military instrument of 
 music in England. The national march played upon it, 
 " so famous in all honourable Atchievements and glorious 
 
32 An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 
 
 Warres of this our Kingedome in foraigne parts," was 
 recorded in a warrant issued by Charles I, ca. 1632^ 
 Hence its appearance on the stage in historical plays was 
 designed to give verisimilitude. Other stage-directions 
 where a march is clearly indicated are to be found in the 
 following plays : 
 
 I Tamburlaine (Act 11. Sc. 2). Meander gives the order to his 
 drummers, " Strike up the drum and march courageously ! " 
 and his army moves off, " drums sounding." 
 
 Edward II I (Act ill. Sc. 3). " Drums. Enter King Edward, marching ; 
 Derby, &c. and forces, and Gobin de Grey." 
 
 Drums appear to have come upon the stage sometimes 
 for duels. In 2 Henry VI, where Peter fights the Ar- 
 mourer, a drummer precedes each' as they enter to fight 
 (Act II. Sc. 3). 
 
 Directions for the entrance of Drums and Trumpets on 
 the stage are not so common. They seem to have been used 
 exceptionally for important persons in the historical plays of 
 Shakespeare's first period . The following are worthy of note : 
 
 Greene's Orlando Furioso. " Enter the Twelve Peers of France, with 
 
 Drum and Trumpets." 
 Shakespeare's 3 Henry VI. " Flourish. Enter the King, the Queen, 
 
 Clifford, Northumberland and Young Prince, with Drum 
 
 and Trumpets." 
 
 This occurs in the scene at York (Act II. Sc. 2), and it is 
 worth recording that the earlier quarto The True Tragedy 
 of Richard, Duke of York has " with drum and soldiers " 
 for the similar direction. Shakespeare dignified Henry VI 
 with trumpets, and he does the like for Warwick in the 
 scene where King Edward is degraded : 
 
 "The Drum playing, and Trumpet sounding. Enter Warwick, 
 Somerset, and the rest, bringing the King out ia his gown,, sitting 
 in a chair." (3 Henry VI, Act.iv. Sc. 3.) 
 
 ^ Hawkins' History of Music, p. 229. 
 
An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 33 
 
 There is one instance of an army moving off the stage led 
 by the sound of drums and trumpets. The last line but one 
 of Tke First Part of the Contention, &c. and 2 Henry VI : 
 
 "Sound Drum and Trumpets, and to London all," 
 implies that the army of the victors at St Albans left the 
 platform headed by martial music, though there is no 
 stage-direction in the texts to prove this. 
 
 It was Marlowe who popularised trumpets in battle 
 scenes and " the stately tent of war." His fellow "rhyming 
 mother-wits'' used alarums {i.e. drum-rolls) to show that 
 a battle was in progress. Marlowe bettered their instruction 
 and directed trumpets to sound "within" for Tamburlaine's 
 battles with Mycetes and Bajazeth. Other playwrights 
 had been content with drums and ensigns for the entrance 
 of their armies. Marlowe added trumpets. For instance: 
 
 2 Tamburlaine (Act I. Sc. i). " Enter Sigismund," &c. "with drums 
 
 and trumpets." 
 Ibid. (Act I. Sc. 3). "Enter Tamburlaine," &c. "with drums and 
 
 trumpets." 
 
 "Enter Theridamas," Sec. "with drums and 
 
 trumpets." 
 
 And it may be that, when this innovation was adopted by 
 Greene and Shakespeare^ he again strove to outdo them. In 
 Edward II, he headed his armies with drums and fifes, e.g. 
 
 "Enter Kjng Edward," &c. "and soldiers with drums and fifes." 
 (Act III. Sc. 2.) 
 
 This added pomp and circumstance of war seems to have 
 maintained itself on the Jacobean stage, for in Lady Alimony 
 (1633?) an army marches over the platform "with trumpets, 
 fifes, drums, and colours" (Act III. Sc. 2); but the fifes are 
 omitted when the army makes a victorious reappearance 
 in Act V. Sc. I'. 
 
 ' See above, references to Orlando Furioso, and 3 Henry VI. 
 ^ Dodsley-Hazlitt collection, Vol. xiv. 
 
 c. 3 
 
34 An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 
 
 Peaceful processions were accompanied by peaceful 
 music. In Field's A Woman is a Weathercock (ca. 1612), 
 Mistress Worldly's wedding procession is headed by waits 
 playing^ who " walk gravely afore all softly on." It was 
 a custom in grand houses for processions to the banqueting 
 table to be preceded by waits {i.e. hautboys). In The 
 Witches of Lancashire^, musicians enter and play before 
 a train of dish-bearers to a banquet. 
 
 Music played also whilst funeral processions entered or 
 crossed the platform, but instances are so rare that no rule 
 can be deduced. The following directions for funeral 
 processions all indicate different kinds of music : 
 
 2 Tamburlaine (Act ill. Sc. 2). "Enter Tamburlaine " &c. "four 
 Attendants bearing the hearse of Zenocrate, and the 
 drums sounding a doleful march." 
 
 The direction adds " the town burning," which means that, 
 with Marlowe's usual prodigality, red fire was burned. 
 
 Titus Andronicus (Act i. Sc. i). " Sound drums and trumpets. And 
 then enter two of Titus' sons ; after them, two men 
 bearing a Coffin covered with black, then two other sons. 
 After them, Titus Andronicus, and then Tamora the 
 Queen of the Goths, and her two sons," &c. 
 
 This is for the scene where Titus buries his sons. Trumpets 
 were flourished and sounded when they laid the coffins in 
 the tomb. Probably the inner chamber represented the 
 tomb. 
 
 Marston, who carefully indicated his musical directions, 
 added further variety to funeral processions. "The still- 
 flutes sound a mournful senet " for a funeral procession in 
 the First Part of Antonio and Mellida (Act V. Sc. i), and 
 "Organ and Recorders play to a single voice" in Sophonisba 
 
 1 The stage-direction has "W.P." which must stand for "Waits playing." 
 See Dodsley-Hazlitt collection, Vol. XI. p. 34, note. 
 
 ^ Cited by V. Albright, The Shakesperian Stage, p. 70. 
 
An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 35 
 
 (Act V. Sc. 4), where Massinissa presents the dead body of 
 Sophonisba to Scipio. The two latter more ambitious 
 musical directions refer to the music of a private theatre. 
 Probably the usual custom in the public theatres was to 
 play dead-marches on drums alone, as in the instance from 
 Tamburlaine given above. The dead-marches indicated at 
 the end of the tragedies Hamlet, King Lear, and Coriolanus 
 would be played on the drums alone. 
 
 On the platform also in Shakespeare's plays, masquers 
 were often accompanied by musicians. Thus in Lov^s 
 Labout's Lost (Act V. Sc. 2) " Black Moores with musicke " 
 lead in the disguising arranged by the King of Navarre 
 and his friends for the entertainment of the French Princess. 
 In Mtick Ado (Act 11) " Maskers with a drum " attend the 
 revels of Leonato's guests. In an entertainment at the 
 house of Timon of Athens, a masque of ladies dressed as 
 Amazons, playing lutes, enters and dances, with Timon's 
 guests (Act I. Sc. 2). Sometimes, though not always, 
 musicians came on the platform to play accompaniments 
 to serenades. Cassio enters " with Musitians " to serenade 
 Othello (Act III. Sc. i). Cloten has made an appointment 
 with a band of musicians when he arrives to serenade 
 Imogen {Cymbeline, Act II. Sc. 3). They arrive after him, 
 and come out on the stage to him to play the accompani- 
 ment for " Hark ! Hark ! the lark." 
 
 To turn now to examine directions for music off the 
 stage. A frequent musical stage-direction in Elizabethan 
 drama is " Music Within." It seems to denote that unseen 
 musicians played at the side of the platform in the music- 
 room ; or, in playhouses which had no music-room, in its 
 equivalent, the tiring-house on the balcony. The following 
 are examples from early plays. By taking later plays 
 into account a huge list might be compiled. 
 
 3—2 
 
36 An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 
 
 Greene's James IV begins, " Music playing within. Enter Aster 
 
 Oberon, King of Fairies," &c. 
 Selimus. Bajazet retires to the inner chamber. His nobles " stand 
 
 aside while the curtains are drawn." Then he speaks. 
 
 " Eunuchs, play me some music while I sleep," and the 
 
 direction " Music within " follows. 
 Lusfs Dominion begins, " Enter Zarack, Balthasar, two Moors taking 
 
 tobacco ; Music sounding within." 
 Lodge and Greene's A Looking Glass for London and England. 
 
 Remilia retires into the inner chamber. "They draw 
 
 the curtains, and music plays.'' 
 
 It is not clear from this direction whether the musicians 
 were in the music-room, or within the traverse on the level 
 of the stage. Probably the musicians were in the music- 
 room. It is difficult to believe that they played within the 
 inner-chamber in semi-darkness unless they played without 
 written music or used artificial light. But in Marston's 
 Sophonisba (Act IV. Sc. i), a direction occurs: 
 
 "A treble viol, a base lute, &c., play softly within the canopy'," 
 
 which implies that musicians were sent into the "cave" 
 sometimes. 
 
 Songs were often indicated to be sung "within." There 
 is a humorous instance in Albumazar (1614) by John Tom- 
 kins. A cheat tries to sell an old gull a magic ear-trumpet 
 He has placed musicians " within." They play, and then a 
 song is sung. The cheat tells the old man that really the 
 music is being performed at the royal court. Naturally the 
 old man is eager to buy this wonderful " autocousticon,'' 
 and pays out ten crowns as earnest money ; but the cheat 
 avoids detection by telling him that ''As yet, the epiglottis 
 is unperfect " (Act I. Sc. 3). Further instances of songs 
 
 1 Marston appears to have been fond of the combination treble viol and 
 lute. It is directed again before Act v. The effect would be rather like 
 violin and harp. 
 
An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 37 
 
 " within " are to be found in Marston's Malcontent (Act II. 
 Sc. 3), and in Middleton's Chaste Maid in Chedpside, where, 
 for the funeral scene (Act v. Sc. 4), " a sad song in the 
 music-room" is directed. 
 
 Horns were winded "within" to suggest a hunting 
 scene off the stage, e.g. Thierry and Theodoret (Act II. Sc. 2), 
 also Two Noble Kinsmen (Act III. Sc. 6) and King Lear 
 (Act I. Sc. 4). 
 
 Trumpets were sometimes directed to be played "within" 
 when the arrival of a person was indicated. For example : 
 
 Selimus. "Sound within. A messenger enters." 
 Edward III (Act il. Sc. 2). "Trumpet within" followed by "Enter 
 King Edward." 
 
 Drums were very often indicated to be played "within" 
 in histc^cal plays. They suggest a distant battle, or the 
 arrival of an army, e.g. 
 
 Selimus. "Alarum within. Enter Bajazet," &c. " and the Janissaries, 
 at one door; Selimus," &c. "and their soldiers at an- 
 other." 
 
 First Part of the Contention. "Alarmes within...like as it were 
 a fight at sea." 
 
 Edward III (Act in. Sc. i). "Drum within" followed by "Enter 
 King of Bohemia and forces," &c. 
 
 A common direction in martial plays is "drum afar 
 off." It is likely that for this drummers played their 
 drums just within the stage-doors. They would most 
 likely stand there because they were often needed to go on 
 the platform with armies. The following directions from 
 Fletcher's Bonduca substantiate this. 
 
 Bonduca. " Drum softly within, then enter Soldiers with drum and 
 
 colours." (Act II. Sc. i.) 
 Idid. "Drums within at one place afar off." 
 
 " Drums in another place afar off." (Act iii. Sc. 3.) 
 
38 An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 
 
 The former implies that the drummer played his drum 
 softly within one of the stage-doors, and then entered with 
 the soldiers. The latter seems to indicate that the positions 
 of the Roman and British armies were suggested by drums 
 played behind alternate sides of the platform. 
 
 The following directions are taken from Shakespeare : 
 
 3 Henry VI {Act I. Sc. 2). "A march afar off." Edward says at once 
 "I hear their drums." 
 
 Richard III (Act v. Sc. 3). " Drum afar off." 
 
 Hamlet (Act v. Sc. 2). " March afar off and shout within." Horatio 
 says "Why does the drum come hither," and straightway 
 Fortinbras enters "with Drum, Colours, and Attendants." 
 
 Coriolanus {kmi I. Sc. 4). "Drums afar off." 
 
 In the last stage-direction, the drums were supposed to 
 be within Corioli rousing the Volscians, and they beat 
 during the Roman attack. The whole back-stage repre- 
 sented Corioli. The balcony was " the walls " upon which 
 the Volscians came to parley with the Romans. A side- 
 door represented "the gates." Through it the Volscians 
 made a sortie and drove back the Romans. Through it 
 again Marcius drives them back and is shut in with them. 
 
 The meaning of all the foregoing directions containing 
 mention of armies with drums, colours, fifes, and trumpets, 
 is of course that contemporary armies were provided with 
 colours or ensigns, and marched to the thump and rattle of 
 drums. It would appear that fifes date from Elizabethan 
 days their period of employment in the English army\ 
 They are supposed to have been adopted in the French 
 
 ' Rev. F. W. Galpin, in his Old English Instruments of Mtisic, cites an old 
 sketch (Brit. Mus. Aug. A iii) showing an English army ca. 1540 taking the 
 field. Each squadron is headed by a drum and a fife. He gives the size of a 
 military drum which hsis survived from the reign of Queen Elizabeth as two 
 feet in depth and two feet in diameter. 
 
An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 39 
 
 army from the Swiss after the battle of Marignano (1515), 
 and to have passed from France into the English army. 
 
 Above the platform, in front of the players' tiring-house, 
 the balcony was used as a part of the scene in many an 
 old play ; and some playwrights, but especially Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, were fond of arranging for songs on the 
 balcony. The following instances are not exhaustive: 
 
 Knight of the Burning Pestle. In Act III. Sc. 5, the bal- 
 cony represents Merrythought's house. Mrs Merrythought 
 returns home and finds "music within." Her husband 
 has invited fiddlers into the house. He comes out on the 
 balcony and sings a laughing song and ballad snatches. 
 Then he calls for more wine and "light music": 
 
 "Play me a light lavolta. Come, be frolic." 
 Monsieur Thomas. Mary and her maid appear "abovfe." 
 The maid sings : 
 
 "Come up to my window, love." (Act in. Sc. 3.) 
 
 The Captain. In Act II. Sc. 2, Frederick and Fabritic," 
 
 standing on the platform which represents a street, hear 
 
 a " Lute within '' : 
 
 "Fabritio. Whence is this music? 
 Frederick. From my sister's chamber." 
 
 As they listen to the music, Frank and Clora appear above 
 on the balcony (which represents a house-window) and 
 sing. They look beneath, and Frank exclaims : 
 
 "Clora! come hither! who are these below there?" 
 
 From this, it is clear that, for this scene, the musicians sang 
 from the balcony, and the lute accompanied them from 
 within the tiring-house. 
 
 In historical plays, the balcony, as we have seen in the 
 example quoted from Coriolanus, often represented city 
 
40 An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 
 
 walls. Trumpeters were sent up to the balcony to act as 
 heralds, as the following directions show : 
 
 Peele's Edward I. " Then make the proclamation upon the walls. 
 
 Sound Trumpets." 
 Shakespeare's King John. " Trumpet sounds. Enter a citizen upon 
 
 the walls." 
 
 Marlowe's fondness for the brazen din of trumpets has 
 already been alluded to. Another peculiar use remains to 
 be mentioned. Besides the directions for battles in i Tam- 
 burlaine, namely, "Trumpets within sound to the battle" 
 (Act II. Sc. 4), and "They sound to the battle within," which 
 occurs twice in Act III. Sc. 3, where other dramatists would 
 have employed drum-alarums, he used " trumpets within " 
 for coronation scenes. The trumpeters must have been at 
 the back of the stage. Examples are : 
 
 I Tamburlaim (Act I. Sc. l). "Trumpet within," whereupon the 
 Persian lords enter and crown Cosroe. Then trumpeters 
 come out on the platform and are directed to " Sound up 
 the trumpets." 
 
 Edward II. "Trumpets within" is directed as Edward III comes on 
 the platform to be crowned. The trumpeters then came 
 out on the platform, for the direction "Trumpets" is 
 given.. 
 
 Was Marlowe's object to add splendour to his scenes by 
 the contrast of the sound of trumpets muted by being 
 played in a small wooden chamber " within," and their loud 
 clangour when played under the sounding-board in face of 
 the audience ? 
 
 Robert Greene perhaps imitated this effect in his 
 Alphonsus, King of Arragon. In Act il, Belinus crowns 
 Alphonsus to the sound of " Trumpets and drums sounded 
 within " ; but for the crowning of Laelius, King of Naples, 
 by Alphonsus, in Act III, trumpets and drums are sounded 
 on the platform. 
 
An Elizabethan Stage and its Music 41 
 
 There remains yet another curious musical direction to 
 record. Plutarch in his life of Antony records an omen 
 that happened on the eve of Antony's overthrow, — ^the 
 sound of music was heard and the cries of Bacchantes. To 
 get this supernatural effect, Shakespeare introduced musi- 
 cians underneath the stage in Antony and Cleopatra (Act IV. 
 Sc. 3). The direction reads "Music of the Hoboyes is 
 under the stage." Antony's soldiers are filled with fore- 
 boding and believe that his familiar spirit is forsaking him. 
 Shakespeare was not original in sending musicians beneath 
 the stage ; for two years before, Marston in his Sophonisba 
 (1606), played at Blackfriars, had done the same thing. In 
 that play he makes the direction " Infernal music plays 
 softly " whilst Syphax consults the witch Erictho (Act IV. 
 Sc. i). Surely Marston had seen Hamlet and remem- 
 bered the subterraneous " Swear ! " (Act I. Sc. 5). 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND THEIR USES 
 
 Drums — Bells — Trumpets — Sennet — Tucket — Cannon shots — 
 " Alarum "— H orns — Cornets — Hautboys — Recorders^-Tabor and 
 Pipe — Viols and Lutes — Lute strings^Organs — StiU-pipes — Or- 
 chestral music. 
 
 Before we attempt to describe the part music took in 
 an Elizabethan play, it is necessary to say something 
 about the musical instruments. They may be classified as 
 follows : 
 
 Percussion. Drums, Timbrels, and Bells. 
 
 Brass instruments. Sackbuts, Trumpets, and Horns. 
 
 Wood instruments. Cornets, Hautboys, Recorders, and 
 Fifes. 
 
 Viols. Treble-viols, Viols da gamba, Bass-viols. 
 
 Lutes. Treble-lutes, Citterns, Bandores, Bass-lutes. 
 
 Drums were of two kinds. The big drum or tabourine' " 
 was used for playing military marches and national marches 
 (such as that indicated by the direction "Danish march" 
 in Hamlet, where the court enters to see the play), or 
 funeral marches'" (like that at the close of King Lear, 
 
 ^ Shakespeare never calls drums "tabourines" in his stage-directions; but 
 twice in the text of his plays drums are alluded to in poetic diction as tabourines, 
 and are called upon together with trumpets to sound for an exit in state. E.g. 
 Troilus and Cressida (Act iv. Sc. 5, near the end}, and Antony and Cleopatra 
 (Act IV. Sc. 8, end). 
 
 ' In The Spanish Tragedy, a dead-march was played by trumpets (see 
 Act IV. Sc. 4). 
 
Musical Instruments and their Uses 43 
 
 "Exeunt with a dead march"). Small drums called 
 timbrels were hoops of wood covered with parchment only 
 on one side. They were probably used in masquers' pro- 
 cessions and in plays dealing with the East. They were 
 employed at The Rose theatre, but there are no stage- 
 directions indicating their use\ 
 
 It was on the drum or tabourine that the drummers 
 played their "alarums," that is to say drum-rolls to indicate 
 that a battle was being fought, and also " retreats." They 
 were employed on the stage, and also behind the scenes if 
 it was desired to imitate a distant battle. Directions for 
 alarums are so numerous in historical plays that it is not 
 necessary to give instances. They can be found by dozens 
 in Shakespeare's Histories, even in the First Folio; and 
 later editors have inserted them in great profusion. 
 
 The " alarum " was properly the military signal to battle. 
 For example in Henry V (Act II), at the siege of Harfleur 
 before King Henry's famous oration — 
 
 " Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more ; 
 Or close the wall up with our English dead :" 
 
 the stage-direction runs : " Alarum. Scaling ladders at 
 Harflew," "Alarums and Excursions" meant skirmishes of 
 opposing forces rallied by drums. Drums were used to 
 rally as well as to sound to the attack, and " alarums " is 
 used indiscriminately for attacking and rallying signals. 
 For example, in Edward III the direction occurs (Act III. 
 Sc. 4) : " Alarums, as of a battle joined. Enter a many 
 Frenchmen, flying ; Prince, and English, pursuing ; ^ and 
 exeunt '' — so that evidently the drums beat not only before, 
 but during the fight. 
 
 1 Cf. Henslowe's inventory at TTu Rose including one drum and three 
 timbrels. There is just a possibility that these " timbrels " were kettledrums 
 used for sounding alarums. If so, timbrel was confused with the French timbale. 
 
44 Musical Instruments and their Uses 
 
 Bells appear to have been introduced by Marlowe. In 
 his Jew of Malta (1588) he directs " Bells within " (Act IV. 
 Sc. i), and makes Barabas say : " How sweet the bells ring 
 now the nuns are dead." Doubtless bells were used for 
 the directions: "The clock strikes eleven," "the clock 
 strikes the half hour," " the clock strikes twelve " in Doctor 
 Faustus (Act V. Sc. 4). After midnight has struck, devils 
 enter and bear Faustus off to hell\ Other theatres adopted 
 bells. In Macbeth, a bell is the signal for Duncan's assas- 
 sination (Act II. Sc. i) : 
 
 ^^ Macbeth. Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready, 
 She strike upon the bell." 
 
 It is the bell again that rouses the castle when the deed is 
 accomplished. One imagines that Shakespeare would 
 have bells for the wedding in Much Ado, and for the 
 graveyard scene in Hamlet, though there are no directions 
 in the texts. Henslowe's inventory shows that he had 
 bells at The Rose playhouse. 
 
 A sackbut, notwithstanding its biblical name, was 
 simply the deep-toned brass instrument now known as the 
 trombone. Sackbuts were used sometimes for the con- 
 ventional three blasts before the entrance of the "prologue," 
 but from the few references to them it seems as if they 
 were not in common use in theatres. They were, however, 
 part of the household music at the royal court. 
 
 Trumpets were of two shapes, a long open tuba shaped 
 like our coach-horns, or a bent military bugle larger than 
 our modern bugles. Neither kind was fitted with keys. 
 That was a later invention. Hence, unlike sackbuts, which 
 
 ^ There is an imitation of this scene in the Induction to The Merry 
 Devil of Edmonton. " The chime goes, in which time Fabell is oft seen to 
 stare about him, and hold up his hands." When the bell ceases, Coreb, 
 Fabell's familiar spirit, enters to carry him off to hell. 
 
PhL- IV 
 
 
 
 M,/ 
 
 Drums and Trumpets 
 
 I and 2. Trumfets .5. /J;'«(/« 
 
 Taboiirine 
 
Musical Instruments and their Uses 45 
 
 could play a complete chromatic scale, trumpets could 
 only play the notes we are accustomed to hear in fanfares 
 and bugle calls. The series in the scale of C would be 
 
 zz: 
 
 There is such an abundance of directions for flourishes 
 and sounding of trumpets that it is impossible to begin to 
 quote. Over fifty may be found in the First Folio edition 
 of Shakespeare's plays alone. Let it suffice to say that all 
 the courtly and warlike etiquette of trumpets was carried 
 out in the public theatres. Trumpets were "flourished" 
 for the entry of kings, generals, tribunes, and players ; or 
 for their exits. Sometimes also they were flourished before 
 the Prologue and after the Epilogue^ They were "sounded" 
 for greetings, proclamations, processions, betrothals, re- 
 conciliations, coronations, parleys, challenges and tourna- 
 ments''. The usual stage-directions are "Flourish," "Trum- 
 pets," " Sound," and they all indicate short fanfares on the 
 open notes, such as trumpeters still play on ceremonial 
 occasions. 
 
 Two less obvious directions are found. A Sennet 
 appears to have been a prelude played upon trumpets. It 
 was more elaborate and lasted longer than a "flourish." 
 The word is usually derived from Lat. sonare. Probably 
 it is a doublet of " sonnet " from Ital. sonetto. A sennet is 
 
 1 E.g. The Two Noble Kinsmen (Q. 1634), as played at Blackfriars " with 
 great applause." 
 
 ' Professor R. H. Case has pointed out to me that trumpets were also 
 sounded during ceremonial drinking. He instances the line " Hake battery to 
 our ears with the loud music," Antony and Cleopatra (Act II. Sc. 7) ; also 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's Scornful Lady (Act I. Sc. 1, beginning) ; Davenant's 
 Albmine (Act 11); Shadwell's Miser (Act in. Sc. 1, and Act IV. Sc. i); 
 HamUt (Act l. Sc. t, 1. 125, Act i. Sc. 4, Act v. Sc. i). 
 
46 Musical Instruments and their Uses 
 
 always directed for the entrance (or exit) in state of a most 
 important personage. For instance : 
 
 First part of Jeronimo begins, " Sound a Signet. Enter the King of 
 
 Spain, Duke of Castile," &c. 
 Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI. "Sound a sennet" occurs where the king 
 
 enters parliament (Act I. Sc. 3). 
 Henry VHI. "Trumpets, Sennet, and Comets," are indicated during 
 
 the procession to the Consistory (Act 11. Sc. 4). 
 
 Probably this direction means a sennet played by both 
 trumpets and comets. 
 
 King Lear. A sennet sounds in the first scene, where Lear enters 
 
 with his court to divide the kingdom. 
 Fletcher's Valentinian. "A synnet, with trumpets" is directed (Act V. 
 
 Sc. 8), where the emperor enters his presQpce-chamber. 
 Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (Q. 1604). " Sound a Sonnet. Enter the 
 
 Pope and the Cardinal of Lorrain to the banquet, with 
 
 friars attending." 
 
 For the same scene, Q. 161 6 has: 
 
 " A Sennet whilst the banquet is brought in ; and then enter Faustus 
 and Mephistophilis in their own shape." 
 
 Ibid. (Q. 1616). "A Sennet. Enter Charles, the German Emperor," 
 &c. 
 
 This scene offers proof that a sennet was played on 
 trumpets. The Emperor desires to see Alexander the 
 Great. Faust offers to gratify the Emperor. He orders 
 his familiar — 
 
 " Mephistophilis, away ! 
 And with a solemn noise of trumpet^ sound 
 Present before this royal Emperor, 
 Great Alexander and his beauteous paramour." 
 
 Then comes the following direction — 
 
 " Sennet. Enter at one door the Emperor Alexander, at the other 
 Darius; they meet, Darius is thrown down, Alexander kills him; 
 takes off his crown and offering to go out, his paramour meets him, he 
 embraceth her, and sets Darius' crown upon her head; and coming 
 
Musical Instruments and their Uses 47 
 
 back, both salute the Emperor, who, leaving his state, ofTers to 
 embrace them, which, Faustus seeing, suddenly stays him. Then 
 trumpets cease, and music sounds." 
 
 It is clear from the latter direction that trumpets played 
 sennets, and also that the sound of trumpets was not 
 designated music. Another fact revealed by this evidence 
 is that a sennet was not a fanfare but a short piece of 
 music. It lasted long enough for a stage-procession 
 to file in, for a banquet to be laid, or for the tourna- 
 ment between Alexander and Darius to take place. The 
 procession to the Consistory court in Henry VIII would 
 require about two minutes, and the scene from Doctor 
 Faustus where Alexander appears, two minutes at least. 
 
 An instance of a sennet directed for an exit occurs in 
 Henry V at the end of the last scene, in which the king is 
 betrothed to Katharine of France. The direction reads 
 " Senet. Exeunt," and denotes simply a postlude whilst 
 the French and English courts filed off the stage. It has 
 nothing to do with the betrothal. The actual betrothal 
 was signalised by a "flourish." Similarly in Coriolanus 
 (Act II), where the Roman hero is given his name of 
 honour, Coriolanus, the naming is signalised by a "flourish," 
 but the signal for the entrance of Cominius, Titus Lartius, 
 and Coriolanus is " sennet." 
 
 Sennet music has disappeared entirely. It was played 
 from memory by musicians who transmitted it to their 
 apprentices as part of their mystery. At the private theatres, 
 sennets were played upon cornets. A sennet on the cornets 
 was often played during a dumb-show. 
 
 That the other direction. Tucket, was a trumpet fanfare 
 can be shown from King Lear. Twice the direction 
 "Tucket within" is found. After the first, Gloucester 
 says "Hark! the Duke's trumpets" {K. Lear, Act II. 
 
48 Musical Instruments and their Uses 
 
 Sc. i). After the second, Cornwall asks "What trumpet's 
 that?" {Ibid. Act 11. Sc. 2). Similarly in the tourna- 
 ment scene in Richard II, Quarto i has the direc- 
 tion "The trumpets sound. Enter Duke of Hereford 
 appellant in armour"; but the First Folio reads "Tucket. 
 Enter Hereford and Harold." Tuckets announce the arri- 
 val of heralds and messengers, and of courtly persons 
 less exalted in rank than those distinguished with sennets. 
 A curious use occurs in Timon of Athens. " Sound 
 Tucket" is directed (Act I. Sc. 2) when the masque of 
 ladies dressed as Amazons enters Timon's banquet'. 
 
 Trumpets and drums together were used for occasions 
 of great pomp, such as Warwick's deposition of King 
 Edward in 3 Henry VI, and the coronation of Laelius, 
 King of Naples, in Greene's Alphonsus, King of Arragon. 
 They sound when Cominius names Coriolanus for the first 
 time (Act I. Sc. 8) ; and, a rather curious use, they play for 
 the coming of Titus Andronicus to the tomb of his ancestors 
 to bury his dead sons and to sacrifice the eldest son of 
 Tamora, Queen of the Goths (Act I. Sc. 2). A curious 
 direction is to be found in Richard III (Act IV. Sc. 4). 
 "K. Richard marching with Drummes and Trumpets'"" 
 is intercepted by his mother and Queen Elizabeth, As 
 they begin to curse him for his villainies he calls out — 
 
 " A flourish trumpets, strike alarum drums : 
 Let not the Heavens hear these tell-tale women 
 Rail on the Lord's anointed. Strike, I say." 
 
 — and the din of drums and trumpets drowns their re- 
 proaches. 
 
 * Francis Markham's Five Decades of Epistles of Warre (London, 1622) 
 mentions "tucquet" as the cavalry signal to march (Decade 3, Epistle i). 
 Cited in article " Military Sounds and Signals," Grove's Dictionary of Music, 
 Vol. III. 
 
 ^ Quarto 1597. 
 
Musical Instruments and their Uses 49 
 
 A similar direction is indicated in Edward III (Act v. 
 Sc. i), where the six burghers of Calais enter in their shirts 
 and with halters about their necks to surrender the town. 
 They appeal to Edward III for mercy, and he replies : 
 
 " Contemptuous villains ! call ye now for truce? 
 Mine ears are stopp'd against your bootless cries. 
 Sound drums [Alarum]" — 
 
 and the noise of drums drowns their appeal. They persist 
 in their endeavour to make peace, and owing to the 
 intercession of Queen Philippa their efforts meet with 
 success. 
 
 It is likely that this incident was an imitation of the 
 above scene in Richard III. Edward III followed this 
 play on the stage. There is no mention of the entreaties 
 of the burghers being drowned by the noise of drums in 
 either Froissart or Holinshed, so that probably the incident 
 was introduced by the dramatist owing to the success of 
 the similar scene in Richard III. 
 
 Another quaint musical effect was the combination of 
 trumpet blasts and cannon shots. For instance, " Sound 
 trumpets and a peal of ordnance" {First Part of Jeronimd). 
 "Trumpets sound, and chambers are discharged within" 
 {Battle of Alcazar, Act III. Sc. 4). "Trumpets sound, 
 and a shot goes off" when the king drinks wassail in 
 Hamlet (Act v) during the fencing match. A mischance 
 in carrying out this stage-direction during a performance 
 of All is True, or Henry VIII, caused the destruction 
 of the first Globe theatre on June 29th, 161 3. "King 
 Henry, making a mask at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, 
 and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some 
 of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was 
 stopped did light on the thatch, where, being thought at 
 first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to 
 
 c. 4 
 
50 Musical Instruments and their Uses 
 
 the show, it kindled inwardly and ran round like a train, 
 consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the 
 very grounds^" 
 
 It remains to point out some exceptional uses of 
 trumpets. We have said that marches were played by 
 drums alone. This was the custom of the time. Never- 
 theless The Spanish Tragedy concludes with the direction, 
 " The trumpets sound a dead march " (Act IV. Sc. 4). We 
 have also said that " alarums " were played on big drums 
 called tabourines. This is true as a general rule, but there 
 are one or two exceptions in the text of Shakespeare's 
 plays. All occur in tournament scenes where trumpets 
 sound to the attack". In one in 2 Henry VI, before the 
 fight of Peter with the Armourer, York says (Act II. Sc. 3): 
 
 " Sound, trumpets, alarum to the combatants.'' 
 No stage-direction follows. Modern composite texts of 
 Shakespeare have a stage-direction "Alarum" at this 
 point, but it is an interpolation. It does not occur in 
 the First Folio. 
 
 Another instance is to be found in Troilus and Cressida 
 (Act IV. Sc. S). A direction "Alarum" occurs, then Hector 
 and Ajax fight, and shortly after " Trumpets cease " occurs. 
 " Alarum " here seems definitely to be associated with the 
 sound of trumpets. Yet another instance occurs in King 
 Lear (Act V. Sc. 3). At the beginning of the duel between 
 Edgar and the Bastard, the latter ends his flyting with the 
 words "Trumpets speak!"; and immediately the direction 
 " Alarums " occurs, and the duel begins. 
 
 1 Reliq. Wotton., edit. 1672, p. 415. Cited Collier, Annals, Vol. Iii. 
 pp. 298, 299. 
 
 " On a miserere seat in Worcester Cathedral is a carving of a tournament 
 between two knights. At the right side of the picture a page is blowing a 
 clarion. On the left, a laughing serving-man is playing an alarum on the 
 kettledrums. See Rev. F. W. Galpin's Old English Instruments of Music, PI. 49. 
 
Musical Instruments and their Uses 51 
 
 It is to this use of trumpets in tournaments that 
 Warwick refers when challenging Clifford in the fifth act 
 of 2 Henry VI — 
 
 "Now when the angry trumpet sounds alarum, 
 And dead men's cries do fill the empty air, 
 Clifford I say, come forth and fight with me"; 
 
 or, as the First Part of the Contention, &c., has it, 
 
 "Now whilst the angry Trumpets sound alarmes.'' 
 
 These instances give the word " alarum " a wider signi- 
 ficance than it usually gets. The fact that trumpets sound 
 alarums for duels and tournaments shows that as its 
 derivation implies (Italian all' arme) the word meant a 
 signal to battle, but although on the stage this was oftenest 
 given by drums, drums were not the essential feature. 
 
 Horns were required in some Elizabethan plays, and 
 the kind used seems to have been a conical brass tube so 
 bent that it could almost encircle a man's neck. It could 
 produce the same notes as the trumpets In Shakespeare's 
 time, horns were not used in combination with other 
 instruments. They were simply hunting instruments. On 
 them were played "peals" corresponding to the "flourishes" 
 of trumpets, and a punctilious etiquette fixed the correct 
 set of notes for each operation of the chase. It was 
 
 * Modem orchestral horns, which are a development of this instrument, 
 produce a softer tone than trumpets partly because their mouthpiece is 
 funnel-shaped \(, whereas trumpets have a cup-shaped mouthpiece \( 
 Rev. F. W. Galpin says : " The recognised distinction between the Horn 
 and the Trumpet is found in the shape of the tube. Instruments of the 
 Trumpet type have for the greater part of their length a tube of cylindrica 
 
 bore opening outwards towards the end into a broader bell The Horn type 
 
 includes those instruments in which the tube tapers gradually from mouthpiece 
 to bell, and it is represented by the Bugle, Hunting horns (great and small) 
 and the two classes of Cornets ancient and modern." Old English Instruments 
 of Music, p. 182. 
 
 4—2 
 
52 Musical Instruments and their Uses 
 
 considered a manly accomplishment to play the hunting 
 
 horn. 
 
 "The horn, the horn, the lusty horn 
 Is not a thing to laugh to scorn." 
 
 Every gentleman who kept hounds could wind it, so that 
 when Talbot "winds his horn" to call his men into the 
 Countess of Auvergne's castle (i Henry VI, Act H. Sc. 3), 
 it was not at all an unnatural pre-arranged signal. 
 
 Hunting "peals" were introduced for the hunting scenes 
 in Titus Andronicus (Act II), Tke Two Noble Kinsmen 
 (Act III. Scs. 5 and 6), Thierry and Theodoret (Act li. Sc. 2), 
 and in Thomas Heywood's play A Woman Killed with 
 Kindness (Act I. Sc. 3). They awakened Lysander and 
 Demetrius from their sleep in the wood (Midsummer 
 Nights Dream, Act iv), and they were used in King Lear 
 (Act I. Sc. 4) to indicate that Lear is returning from the 
 chase. In Nash's Will Summer^s Last Will and Testament^ 
 the direction " Enter Orion like a hunter, with a horn about 
 his neck " occurs, and we must not forget that it was with 
 a post-horn that Truewit roused old Morose in Jonson's 
 Silent Woman (Act II. Sc. i). 
 
 The cornet was a kind of horn made of a hollowed 
 tusk, or of wood covered with leather, with a mouthpiece 
 like the cup of a trumpet. It was bored with six holes in 
 front, covered by the fingers, and one hole on the reverse 
 side, covered by a thumb. Its compass was a chromatic 
 scale of slightly over two octaves. The cornet has fallen 
 into complete disuse. It was quite distinct from the 
 modern cornets Cornets were played in sets of three, with 
 a sackbut for the bass. The treble cornet had a compass 
 
 ' Dodsley Hazlitt collection, Vol. viii. 
 
 2 An excellent account is to be found in Rev. F. W. Galpin's Old English 
 Instruments of Music. See also article "Zincke" in Grove's Dictionary of 
 Music. 
 
Musical Instruments and their Uses 53 
 
 of about two octaves from middle D, the alto was tuned 
 a fifth, and the tenor cornet an octave lower. The tenor 
 cornet was bent in shape something like the letter S. The 
 comet was fingered like a hautboy, but it produced a reedy 
 trumpet-like_ tone. The cornet stop on the organ was 
 originally a copy of it. 
 
 Cornets were used in the private theatres where the 
 noisy din of brazen trumpets would have been unbearable. 
 There they fulfilled all the uses of trumpets at public 
 theatres, as the following typical directions will show : 
 
 Marston's i Antonio and Mellida\ "The comets sound a battle 
 
 within." 
 Ibid. " The comets sound a flourish '' — for a greeting. 
 Ibid. "The comets sound a senet" — for an entry (Act I. Sc. l). 
 Ibid. "The cornets sound a senet, and the Duke goes out in state" 
 
 (Act II. Sc. i). 
 
 Marston's 2 Antonio and Mellida. Act 11 is preceded by a dumb- 
 show. The direction begins "The comets sound a 
 senet," and ends "Cornets cease, and he speaks." 
 
 The Two Noble Kinsmen"^. "Comets, trumpets, sound as to a 
 charge " — for the Tournament '' within '' (Act v. Sc. 3). 
 
 Ibid. " Comets in sundry places " — to indicate " people a Maying " 
 (Act III. Sc. i). 
 
 As the comets formed a complete band, they played 
 between the acts at Blackfriars. Marston has frequent 
 mention of them in his plays. His usual direction is " The 
 cornets sound for the Act." Sometimes the organ accom- 
 panied them. At the end of the first act of Sophonisba 
 " cornets and organs " played " loud full music for the Act." 
 They also accompanied voices, either singly, as in TAe 
 Malcontent (Act V. Sc. 3), "Cornets: the song to the cornets, 
 which playing the mask enters"; or with the organ, as in 
 
 ' " Played by the Children of Paules," ca. 1602, see title-page of the play, 
 2 " Presented at the Blackfriers by the Kings Maiesties servants." 
 
54 Musical Instruments and their Uses 
 
 Sophonisba (Act I. Sc. 2), "Chorus, with comets, organs 
 and voices." And they played dance music, as in The 
 Malcontent, where "The cornets sound the measure" 
 (Act V. Sc. 3). A curious use is before the prologue to 
 Sophonisba. Overtures were not played in Elizabethan 
 theatres, but here the cornets played a march as a sort 
 of prelude as the prologue speaker and his attendants 
 enter and retire. The direction reads "Cornets sounding 
 a march, enter the Prologue," and again at the end of 
 his speech " Cornets sound a march." 
 
 Cornets were not in regular use at public theatres, but 
 cornet players were engaged there for certain plays. For 
 example, cornets were used in the scene of the trial of 
 Queen Katherine in Henry VIII (Act I. Sc. 2). In Corio- 
 lanus, cornets are used to distinguish Tullus Aufidius and 
 his Volscians from the Romans (cf. Act I. Sc. 10 with the 
 previous scenes); for the Romans have drums and trumpets 
 in the field, though they are given cornets in the senate 
 (Act III. Sc. i). Cornets were employed in The Merchant 
 of Venice for the casket scenes. They play " flourishes " 
 for the entrance and exit of all the suitors (Act II) except 
 Bassanio, who being the favoured wooer is given the best 
 music the house can provide (Act III. Sc. 2). 
 
 Hautboys, the original of modern orchestral oboes, 
 were conical wooden tubes with six holes in front for the 
 fingers and a thumb-hole behind. The sound was produced 
 by the vibrations of a double reed. Their popular names 
 were "shawms" and "waits." The former shows their 
 kinship to the reedy pipe of the Arcadian shepherd 
 (O. Fr. chalemel; L. calamus). The latter indicates that they 
 were a favourite instrument of the watchmen. A treble 
 hautboy was practically the same thing as a musette or 
 shepherd's pipe, and yet its case, said Sir John Falstaff, 
 
Plate r 
 
 ^ I 
 
Musical Instruments and their Uses ^5 
 
 was a "mansion" for Justice Shallow. Hautboys were 
 played in " consorts," usually of four different sizes, and the 
 players as well as the instruments were called "waits." 
 The tenor hautboy developed into the cor-anglais, and the 
 bass of the consort of hautboys is now the bassoon. 
 
 Consorts of hautboys were the music prescribed by eti- 
 quette for banquets. An old engraving in the chateau at 
 Fontainebleau entitled " Le festin du roy " shows hautboys 
 big and little playing for a court entertainment. This was 
 their chief employment in Elizabethan theatres. For the 
 banquet scene in Tke Maid's Tragedy (Act IV. Sc. 2) 
 " Hautboys play within." At Timon of Athens' first ban- 
 quet " Hoboyes playing loud music " are directed ; and 
 when the guests fall to dancing, it is to " a lofty strain or 
 two to the Hoboyes." " Hoboyes and torches " conduct 
 Duncan to Dunsinane {Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 6), and later 
 (Sc. 7) the hautboys play as the servants carry in the dishes 
 for supper. Hautboys, again, play for Wolsey's entertain- 
 ment {Henry VIII, Act I. Sc. 4). 
 
 One special use of hautboys deserves to be mentioned. 
 When Coriolanus and his Volscians depart from Rome 
 {Coriolanus, Act V. Sc. 4) the Romans express their joy 
 with music. 
 
 "The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes. 
 Tabors, and cymbals, and the shouting Romans 
 Make the sun dance." 
 
 To get the loudest musical effect the theatre could provide, 
 the stage-direction provides : 
 
 "Trumpets, Hoboyes, Drums beate, altogether." 
 The tone of hautboys was shrill and reedy. They 
 never accompanied voices in the theatre. Bacon observes 
 in Sylva Sylvarum (1627): "the voice and pipes, alone, 
 agree not so well " (Cent. ill. Par. 278). 
 
56 Musical Instruments and their Uses 
 
 The recorder was a vertical flute with a whistle mouth- 
 piece. It had usually seven finger-holes, and one hole for 
 the thumb at the back. It was commonly played in sets of 
 four or six, and a consort played music in three parts — 
 treble, tenor, and bass. The recorder was not fingered like 
 the flageolet. The latter had only four finger-holes in front, 
 and two thumb-holes behind \ 
 
 The tone of a recorder was sweet and flute-like. As 
 Bacon remarks in his Sylva Sylvarum : " the Recorder and' 
 Stringed Musick agree well " (Cent. III. Par. 278). Its soft 
 mournful tone often accompanied a consort of strings, 
 when it commonly played the alto part. Recorders were 
 not in common use in the theatres, though they seem 
 to have been used occasionally at Blackfriars theatre to 
 provide solemn music. In The Two Noble Kinsmen, where 
 Emilia offers incense to Diana (Act V. Sc. i), "Still music 
 of records" is prescribed. In Marston's Sophonisba," orgaxi 
 and recorders play to a single voice," where Massinissa 
 presents Sophonisba's dead body to Scipio (Act V. Sc. 4). 
 In Fletcher's Bonduca (Act III. Sc. i), the British queen 
 leaves the druids' temple, " recorders playing''." Recorders 
 were also in use occasionally at the court performances. 
 Nash's court comedy Will Summer's Last Will and Testa- 
 ment {) 1592) has the direction" Enter Solstitium... brought 
 in by a number of Shepherds, playing upon recorders." 
 
 Flutes were not in use in the heyday of Elizabethan 
 drama. They are mentioned amongst the instruments 
 which played for the dumb-shows in the early tragedies 
 Gorboduc and Jocasta, but afterwards they appear to have 
 
 ' An exhaustive description of the recorder and literary references thereto 
 is. to be found in Six Lectures on the Recorder by Christopher Welch, M.A. 
 Oxon. 191 1. 
 
 2 Milton imagines the army of Hell in Paradise Lost, Book I, marching 
 to the "Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders." 
 
Musical Instruments and their Uses 57 
 
 fallen into disuse. A small-sized flute, called a fife, was : 
 used by masquers and soldiers. In The Merchant of Venice, 
 Shakespeare makes Shylock say to Jessica : 
 
 "What! are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica: 
 Lock up my doors ; and when you hear the drum 
 And the vile squeaking of the wry-neck'd fife, 
 Clamber not you up to the casements then." 
 
 (Act II. Sc. 5.) 
 
 The fife is called " wry-neck'd " because as the player puts 
 his lips to the blow-hole his face is half turned to the left. 
 
 The fif(^and drum together were military instruments. 
 They are brought on the stage in Marlowe's Edward II, 
 and in Lady Alimony, but never became popular. Shake- 
 speare only once prescribed drum and fife. In Timon of 
 Athens (Act IV. Sc. 3) — the scene where Timon finds gold 
 in the wood and gives it away to Phrynia and Timandra, 
 the mistresses of Alcibiades — Timon hears a " March 
 afarre off," that is to say, within one of the side doors, 
 and then Alcibiades enters "with drum and fife in war- 
 like manner, and Phrynia and Timandra." It is difficult 
 to account for this solitary direction. The date of Timon 
 of Athens, 1607 or 1608, precludes any imitation of Mar- 
 lowe's Edward II. No fifes are indicated in the other 
 plays. Even in Coriolanus (Act V. Sc. 4), where fifes are 
 indicated in the text along with trumpets, sackbuts, psal- 
 teries, tabors, and cymbals, only trumpets, hautboys, and 
 drums were played according to the stage-direction. 
 
 In I Henry IV (Act III. Sc. 3), Prince Hal is preparing 
 to set out on the expedition against Hotspur. Falstaff 
 meets him " playing on his truncheon like a fife," and asks : 
 " Must we all march ?" Needless to say, he is poking fun 
 at the military music of the day. There is also a reference 
 to the fife in the text of Much Ado About Nothing (Act il. 
 
58 Musical Instruments and their Uses 
 
 Sc. 3). Benedick, speaking of Claudio in love, says : 
 " I have known when there was no music with him 
 but the drum and the fife, and now had he rather hear 
 the tabor and pipe" — meaning that whereas he used 
 to delight in martial music, now he likes jigs and 
 merriment. 
 
 Tabor and pipe were a tiny drum, and a small flageolet 
 with three holes. Although the pipe only had three holes, 
 quite an extensive scale could be played on it by a skilful 
 performer. The comedians Tarleton and Kempe were 
 expert players. They commonly gave an entertainment 
 on the stage wherein they tapped the drum with one hand, 
 played the pipe with the other, danced jigs with their feet, 
 and kept up a busy fire of jests and witticism. Tabor and 
 pipe were used for accompanying morris-dances at rural 
 merry-makings. Hence DuU's anxiety in Love's Labour's 
 Lost (Act V. Sc. i) to play them for the Nine Worthies. 
 Such a stage use is to be found /in Dekker's Shoemaket^s 
 Holiday. Simon Eyre the shoemaker is made sheriff of 
 London, and his apprentices come with pipe and tabor to 
 the Lord Mayor's dinner to entertain the guests with their 
 morris-dances (Act III. Sc. 5). Shakespeare introduces 
 tabor and pipe on the stage in The Tempest (Act III. Sc. 2), 
 where Ariel appears with these " instruments of torture" to 
 torment Stephano and Caliban. 
 
 The stringed instruments in use in Elizabethan theatres 
 were viols and lutes. The essential difference between 
 them was that viols were played with a bow, like instruments 
 of the violin type, whereas lutes were played by plucking 
 the strings with the right hand like modern guitars. Viols 
 were the same shape as our orchestral double-bass. They 
 had usually six strings tuned in thirds and fourths, and 
 their finger-boards were marked with frets to show the 
 
Plafe VI 
 
 T. Viol 
 
 4. ]^iol da gaiiiha 
 
 String-ed Instruments 
 
 2 . C2 ih e7'ii j^ . Lute 
 
 5. Lufc witJi addilional //arp-strijios 
 
Mtisical Instruments and their Uses 59 
 
 left hand where to stop the required notes\ Three sizes 
 were in common use, the treble viol slightly bigger than 
 our violins, the tenor viol bigger than a viola, and the 
 bass viol or viol da gamba, which was played like a 'cello 
 between the knees. Their tone was reedy and penetrating, 
 but not as loud as that of instruments of the violin type. 
 The compass was slightly over two octaves. The lowest 
 open string on the treble viol was the D an octave below 
 middle D, the tenor was a fifth, and the gamba an octave 
 lower. Thus their complete range was about that of the 
 human voice. 
 
 Lutes were of various shapes and sizes. The treble 
 lute in common use was shaped like a large mandoline,. 
 The number of sets of strings on lutes varied, but the 
 commonest number was six, of which the five lower were 
 attached in pairs, making eleven in all. The single strings 
 or "chanterelle," played the melody, and the doubled 
 strings the accompaniment. Instruments of the guitar 
 type called a cithern and pandore (or bandore)'' played the' 
 alto and tenor parts respectively. They lacked chanterelles 
 and only played a chordal accompaniment. The bass lute 
 (chittarone or archlute) was a large instrument of the lute 
 type, with additional open strings on a second head, so- 
 that it was really a combination of harp and lute. It is 
 impossible to speak definitely of either shape or the number 
 
 1 The frets on viols and lutes were strings of catgut tied round the finger 
 board. On the pandore and cithern, which were strung with wire, frets were 
 of metal or ivory inlaid. See Rev. F. W. Galpin's Old English Instruments of 
 Music, p. 47. A violist or lutanist was supposed to be sufficiently expert to 
 put a new fret on his instrument if the old fret broke loose. Hence Hamlet's 
 " Though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me." 
 
 ^ The cithern was shaped like a flat-backed mandoline, with four pairs, 
 of wire strings. It was played with a plectrum. The pandore was flat-backed^ 
 rather like a guitar, and was strung usually with six pairs of strings. 
 
6o Musical Instruments and their Uses 
 
 of strings on Elizabethan lutes. New strings were added, 
 involving new methods of fingering, to accommodate lutes 
 to greater demands put upon them by musical deve- 
 lopment, until finally they were strung with twenty-four 
 strings. Their finger-boards were fretted like viols. Lute 
 players did not read music from staves like other 
 musicians, but had a peculiar notation of their own called 
 a " tablature V 
 
 In the theatres, viols and lutes were used chiefly to 
 accompany songs. There were not quartets of both sorts. 
 The common practice was to have a "broken consort" 
 consisting of a treble and a bass viol, with lute, cithern, 
 and pandore^ This is confirmed by the evidence of 
 contemporary music-books such as Morley's First Booke 
 ^f Consort Lessons (1599) and Leighton's Tears, or 
 Lamentations of a Sorrowful Soul (1614). The usual 
 stage-directions for the use of viols and lutes are 
 " miisic " or " soft music," but directions for the entrance 
 of singers and masquers with stringed instruments are 
 <\\x\te common. 
 
 There is such a mass of directions in which viols and 
 lutes would take part that it is impossible to furnish a 
 catalogue. They would, however, accompany most songs, 
 and many dances. The fiddles "go finely," says the 
 Citizen's wife in the interval after Act I of The Knight 
 x)f the Burning Pestle, and in this gap a boy comes on and 
 dances a jig. Probably they played whilst Bassanio made 
 
 ' In a tablature, a stave of six lines represented the strings. Letters of the 
 ^phabet written thereon represented the frets to be pressed, and musical notes 
 to express duration were placed above and below the stave. 
 
 ' A whole consort was a band composed of instruments of one kind, such 
 as a "nest" of comets, a "chest" of viols, or a "set" of recorders. A broken 
 ■consort was a small orchestra made up of instruments of various kinds. It 
 might include voices. 
 
Plate VII 
 
Musical Instruments and their Uses 6 1 
 
 his choice (Merchant of Venice, Act III. Sc. 2). It was the 
 melody of viols for sure that made a " dying close '' when 
 Orsino bade them "play on" {Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. i). 
 It was viols and lutes in the hands of " Sneak's noise " 
 that provided entertainment for Falstafif and Mistress Doll 
 Tearsheet (2 Henry IV, Act II. Sc. 4). And we may 
 assume that when music was played between the acts of 
 a play, the " consort " or band of stringed instruments did 
 most of the work. 
 
 The viol da gamba, corresponding to our violoncello, 
 was a fashionable instrument for men^, and was often hung 
 up as a property when the stage represented an interior. 
 In stage-directions it is commonly called simply " the viol." 
 In Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour, done at The 
 Globe (1599), Fastidious "takes down the viol and plays" 
 (Act III. Sc. 3). In the same author's Poetaster, produced 
 at Blackfriars (1601), Crispinus takes down the viol and 
 accompanies his own song (Act IV. Sc. i). It was such a 
 viol probably that Cerimon bade his servant play to waken 
 Thaisa from her trance iPericles, Act ill. Sc. 2). So that 
 evidently several players could play the viol da gamba well 
 enough to play in public^. 
 
 Lutes were very popular in Elizabethan England. 
 Lute-strings were often given as presents, and according 
 to Greene and Lodge in their Looking Glass for London 
 and England {it,g4) they were forced by usurers on their 
 unfortunate victims. In that play, Thrasybulus, who 
 
 1 Aguecheek in Twelfth Night "plays o' the viol de gamboys and speaks 
 three or four languages word for word without book." 
 
 2 Cf. also Marston's i Antonio and Mellida (Act in. Sc. 2). Balurdo 
 enters "with a bass viol" and sings. Also in Middleton's Roaring Girl 
 (Act IV. Sc. 1), the heroine dressed as a man picks up the viol and ac- 
 companies her song. 
 
62 Musical Instruments and their Uses 
 
 borrowed £ip, had to take only ;^io in money and the 
 rest in lute-strings, which he could only sell for five 
 pounds*. Had such an experience happened to one of 
 them? One wonders... 
 
 Some of the songs in the plays were accompanied by 
 lutanists alone. For example in Dekker's Honest Whore, 
 Bellafront is "discovered sitting with a lute," and sings 
 (Act III. Sc. 3). Marston's Dutch Courtesan (1605) contains 
 the directions " Enter Franceschina with her lute." " She 
 sings to her lute" (Act I. Sc. 2). Nor must we forget 
 the part the lute plays in The Taming of the Shrew. 
 Hortensio disguises as " a schoolmaster well seen in music " 
 in order to woo the gentle Bianca. Before he can ap- 
 proach to teach her the gamut of love, she keeps him 
 employed for half an hour in tuning his lute ; and her 
 sister breaks the lute over his head for saying " she mistook 
 her frets" (Act 11. Sc. i). Owing to their double strings 
 lutes were difficult to keep in tune. This was an excuse 
 for Bianca, and it may have served for the Shrew. 
 
 Organs were used in the private theatres, following the 
 custom of the court theatre, where an organ had been in 
 use ever since the days of Moralities and Interludes^ 
 Marston indicated that an organ and other instruments 
 played between the acts of his Sophonisba, at Bla^kfriars. 
 In Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, played by the 
 "Children of Poules" (1608), a piece of dialogue is in- 
 troduced simply to show off the organ. Sir Bounteous 
 Progress, a philistine, proud of the amount he has spent 
 
 * Cf. also Will Summer's statement in Nash's Will Summer's Last Will 
 ■and Testament: "I know... another that ran into debt, in the space of four or 
 five year, above fourteen thousand pound in lute-strings and grey paper." 
 
 * In 1516, Henry VIII paid "To one Sigemonde Skeyf, an Almayn, for 
 an instrument called a Regalle, £^^" ("The Kynges boke of payments" in 
 the Chapter House, Westminster, quoted by Collier, Annals, Vol. I. p. 76). 
 
Musical Instruments and their Uses 63 
 
 on his ornate instrument, is depicted showing a visitor 
 round his country house. 
 
 " Sir B. Your Lordship ne'er heard my organs ? 
 Follyvjit. Heard of 'em, Sir Bounteous, but never heard 'em. 
 Sir B. They're but double-gilt my lord ; some hundred and fifty 
 
 pound will fit your lordship with such another pair." 
 
 Then he calls for music, and " The Organs play " (Act II. 
 Sc. i). At Blackfriars theatre, to judge from directions in 
 plays acted there, the organ together with recorders or 
 even cornets accompanied songs, and along with comets 
 often played in the interval between acts. Organs were 
 not used in the public theatres. 
 
 Still-pipes are mentioned in the stage-directions of 
 some plays which were performed at private theatres. 
 They played for dumb-shows occasionally in the old 
 Inns of Court plays. " A sweet noise of still pipes " was 
 heard before the second act of Wilmot's Tancred and 
 Gismunda (1568). In Gascoigne's /o^^ajto (1566), during 
 the dumb-show before the fifth act, "the still pipes sounded 
 a very mournful melodye, in which time there came upon 
 the stage a woman clothed in a white garment." Mr Galpin 
 thinks still-pipes were a kind of crooked shawm called 
 krumhorns or cromornes, the tone of which is preserved 
 in the organ stop called Cremona^. Another explanation 
 is that they were recorders. The " noise " or harmony of 
 a consort of shawms could scarcely be described as sweet, 
 whereas the word sweet aptly describes the tone of re- 
 corders. Also in Marston's plays i Antonio and Mellida 
 (Act V. Sc. i), 2 Antonio and Mellida (Act IV. Sc. i), "still- 
 flutes " are indicated. In the former play they " sound a 
 mournful senet " for a funeral procession. If these were 
 the same instrument, still-pipes were almost certainly 
 
 1 Old English Instruments of Music, p. 164. 
 
64 Musical Instruments and their Uses 
 
 recorders. A shawm could not truly be called a flute, 
 whereas a recorder might be. Also the sweet and sad 
 notes of recorders would provide fitting music for a funeral 
 cort^ge^. 
 
 It is necessary to guard against the notion that the 
 numerous instruments used in the Elizabethan theatres 
 formed an orchestra. Orchestral music in the modern 
 meaning of the term was quite unknown. The nearest 
 approach thereto was the combination of viols, citherns 
 and pandores, with recorders and flutes. This was called 
 " broken musick or consort musick." Cornets and hautboys 
 were too harsh in tone to agree with stringed music, and 
 separate bands consisting wholly of instruments of either 
 sort were the rule. Trumpets also, although sometimes 
 combined with drums or cornets, or even hautboys, were 
 usually played alone. 
 
 Thus whilst there was no attempt to obtain a mass of 
 orchestral sound, there was a real striving for musical 
 " colour," and all sorts of small combinations of instruments 
 are indicated. Dramatists varied the character of the music 
 between every act, as may be seen in plays where the 
 directions for music between the acts have survived". 
 
 ^ Mr Welch points out {Six Lectures on the Recorder, p. 131, note 2) that 
 Henry VII and Henry VIII employed still-minstrels. 
 
 ^ Cf. Gorboduc, before Act i. violins, 11. cornets, III. flutes, IV. hautboys, 
 V. flutes and drums ; or Tancred and Gismunda, before Act II. still-pipes, 
 
 III. hautboys, iv. a consort (viols and lutes) ; or Sophonisba, after Act I. 
 comets and organ, 11. recorders and organ, in. organ, viols, and voices, 
 
 IV. treble viol and bass lute ; or Jocasta, before Act I. viols, cithern, and 
 bandurion, II. flutes. III. cornets, iv. trumpets, drums and fifes, and "a greate 
 peale of ordinaunce was shot of," v. still-pipes. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 INCIDENTAL MUSIC 
 
 Overtures — Trumpet blasts— Songs — Entr'actes — Dances— Calling for 
 tunes — Dancing after the play— Supernatural Music — Mr Pepys 
 and the recorder — Melodrama. 
 
 Although music was introduced with the utmost 
 freedom into the action of Elizabethan plays, there were 
 certain conventional uses observed corresponding to the 
 part a modern theatre orchestra fulfils in playing an over- 
 ture, entr'actes, and accompanying songs, or in playing 
 music to increase the emotional tension of a scene. Indeed 
 our use of the orchestra in pure drama is a debt we owe tO; 
 the men who made English drama. Our English custom! 
 of associating music with drama must have been handed 
 down from the time of Shakespeare. It cannot be a loan 
 from opera ; for since the days of Davenant and Purcell, 
 opera in England has always been a forced and outlandish 
 kind of drama, never fixed in popular support, but flourish- 
 ing when the fashionable world lent its approval, and dying 
 when it turned its fickle face another way. 
 
 In the age of Shakespeare, no overture was played 
 before the curtain rose. There was no curtain to rise. 
 The custom was to play three blasts on the trumpet or 
 sackbut from the topmost story before the speaker of the 
 prologue entered to speak his lines. It was no new thing 
 
 c. 5 
 
66 Incidental Music 
 
 to blow trumpets at the beginning of a meeting. It was 
 common at tournaments and at fairs. The church had 
 done the like on certain feast-days. In some places 
 musicians were sent up the church-tower to play before 
 the celebration of festival masses. The custom still lingers 
 in a few old-world towns. In parts of Germany, a quartet 
 of brass instruments plays chorales at Christmas before 
 the service. The May-morning singing on the tower of 
 Magdalen College at Oxford is a similar relic. A " cheer- 
 ful noise of trumpets " was sounded before the overture in 
 seventeenth century Venetian opera'. Wagner copied the 
 custom in introducing fanfares of trumpets outside his 
 theatre at Bayreuth before the performance. 
 
 There is no lack of evidence for this custom, as may 
 be seen by the following allusions. Greene's Alphonsus, 
 King of Arragon (1599) begins with the note "After you 
 have sounded thrice, let Venus be let down from the top 
 of the stage^." Ben Jonson was fond of introducing his 
 characters on the stage in a humorous "induction," and 
 in the course of the dialogue he indicated where the 
 trumpet-blasts were to be sounded. Such inductions 
 written for Every Man out of his Humour (1599) at The 
 Globe, and for Cynthia's Revels (1601) at Blackfriars, prove 
 that the custom of sounding thrice was followed at both 
 public and private theatres. Dekker alludes to it in his 
 Guls Horn-Booke (1609). "Present not yourselfe on the 
 stage (especially at a new play) untill the quaking prologue 
 hath (by rubbing) got culor into his cheekes, and is ready 
 
 ' See La Verith mascherata [Riemann-Festsckrift, Leipzig, 1909) cited in 
 article "The Baroque Opera" by E. J. Dent in The Musical Antiquary, 
 January, 1910. 
 
 * Venus would descend upon a hoist lowered from beneath the "heavens," 
 t.e. a sounding-board which projected over the balcony. 
 
Incidental Music 67 
 
 to give the trumpets their cue that hee's upon point to 
 enter " (Chap. Vl). 
 
 Probably the custom lingered until the theatres were 
 closed in 1642. There are references to it in the inductions 
 to Heywood's Four Prentices of London (1615) and to Lady 
 Alimony (ca. 1633). From the latter, and from Jonson's 
 inductions, it is clear that the three fanfares were not 
 played consecutively, but that an interval of a few minutes 
 was made between each. 
 
 If there were songs in a play, and usually there were, 
 the consort of viols and lutes in the music-room played the 
 accompaniment. Sometimes, as in the case of Shake- 
 speare's serenades, musicians came out on the platform to 
 play the accompaniment. Sometimes the singer himself 
 played a viol da gamba or lute, accompanied most likely 
 by other musicians in the music-room ; but directions for 
 this are found almost entirely in plays performed at the 
 private theatres, and the inference is that as these plays 
 were performed by choir-boys, who presumably had some 
 knowledge of music, such scenes were arranged to show 
 off the little actors' attainments. 
 
 In the " act-time," or break between the acts of a play, 
 musicians usually played. Sometimes there was pure 
 music, sometimes a dance or a song. Sometimes no 
 break was made between the acts, especially if the next 
 act simply carried on the tale, and it was not wished to 
 indicate a time-interval. Music between the acts dates 
 from the beginnings of English drama. Gammer Gurton's 
 Needle (1566) has references in the dialogue showing that 
 music was played between Acts II and III. The custom 
 crept into early attempts at tragedy in the shape of musical 
 accompaniments played to dumb-shows. Gorboduc, Jocasta, 
 Tancred and Gismunda, and The Misfortunes of Arthur 
 
 5—2 
 
68 Incidental Music 
 
 all have directions for musical dumb-shows. From early 
 comedy and tragedy, entr'acte music passed into regular use 
 on the public and private stage. Very few plays contain 
 directions for music between the acts, but the testimony 
 of Prynne and of contemporary playgoers indicates that 
 dance-music was customary between the acts. 
 
 Directions for music between the acts occur in The 
 Blind Beggar of Bednall Green played at The Rose play- 
 house in i6ooS also in Marston's Sophonisba (1606) 
 played at Blackfriars. His Parasitaster, which was also 
 done at Blackfriars, in the same year, has directions 
 for a short dumb-show before Act V, " whilst the Act 
 is a-playing." There are no stage-directions for music 
 between the acts in The Knight of the Burning Pestle 
 (ca. 1610), but the epilogues to each of the first three 
 acts containing the comments of the Citizen and his Wife 
 show that the musicians played, and after Acts I and III 
 a boy enters and dances. Actual dances between the acts, 
 as well as dance-music, appear to have been common. 
 An early play, The Two Italian Gentlemen, by Anthony 
 Munday, specifies the dances, namely, "a pleasant galliard," 
 " a solemn dump," and " a pleasant allemalgnel" Greene's 
 James IV (1598) has the direction " Enter a round, or some 
 dance at pleasure " at the end of the fourth act. Sometimes 
 songs were introduced between the acts. A chorus accom- 
 panied by organ and viols sang after Act III in Sophonisba, 
 but references to songs between the acts are very rare. 
 
 There is evidence that patrons of the drama used to 
 cry out between the acts for tunes they fancied. A delight- 
 ful bit of satire in The Knight of the Burning Pestle arises 
 out of this. At the end of Act li " the fidlers go again," 
 
 ' See article by W. J. Lawrence in Shakespeare Jahrbuch XLiv. 
 ' Cited by J. P. Collier, Annals, Vol. in. p. 448. 
 
tmrri'iMf i-EpSg 
 
 ^ ^lU ii flUB^Pfff i^ g 
 
 £ 
 
 E iTmf Tinn5@ppgq?| i 
 
 pUBJAlOQ-OJ 
 
 DMbwy^ vmu^jvj 
 
 snouTn^ 
 
 Dowland's Lachrimae arranged for four voices, 
 
Plate VIII 
 
 T I" I ^ -rlMj ■ I I 11 1 * I 1 I I— ^ 
 
 ^^ip^ 
 
 pU«.[MOQ'0J 
 
 K 
 
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 E 
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 JOUSX 
 
 ar 
 
 at, 
 
 IE 
 
 I, 
 
 PfT 
 
 3C. 
 
 IE 
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 m. 
 
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 ji 
 
 Aftln 
 
 Lachrima Antiqux. 
 
 4 
 
 ic 
 
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 f 
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 1*1 
 
 <i 
 
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 f 
 
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 4 
 
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 lo.Dowland 
 
 accompanied by viol da gamba and lute 
 
Incidental Music 69 
 
 and the Citizen calls "You musicians, play Baloo" (the 
 name of a tune). "No, good George," entreats his wife, 
 " let's ha' Lachrymae." " Why, this is it, cony," he replies. 
 Lachrimae is a "pavane," that is to say a slow dance in 
 common time, by the John Dowland referred to in The 
 Passionate Pilgrim (Sonnet VIII). To us it seems a 
 dreary, dirge-like tune, but it was tremendously popular 
 amongst the Elizabethans'- It is to be found twice, 
 adorned with all manner of contrapuntal divisions, in the 
 Fitzwilliam Virginal-Book, also in Morley's First Booke 
 of Consort Lessons (i 599), and in Dowland's Second Booke 
 of Songs or Ay res (1600). 
 
 Further evidence that the audience called for tunes is 
 to be found in Sir Bulstrode Whitelock's Memorials. He 
 composed a dance-tune called Wkitelock's Coranto, which 
 was often played at Blackfriars by the band " who were 
 then esteemed the best of common musitians in London." 
 The tune was very popular and was "often called for^" 
 When music was played between the acts, it would consist 
 of either " ayres," that is, songs arranged for stringed in- 
 struments, or of popular dance-tunes such as galliards, 
 pavanes, jigs, dumps, almains, corantos, and the like. 
 Every tune had its proper name just as the tunes have 
 in a modern hymn-book — indeed the names which have 
 clung to old psalm-tunes are simply a survival — and 
 the audience shouted these names — " Baloo," " Lachrimae," 
 and the like — when they wanted a change of tune'. 
 
 1 It is referred to in the following plays : Jonson's masque Time Vindicated; 
 Massinger's Maid of Honour (Act i. Sc. i); Picture (Act v. Sc. 3); and 
 Middleton's No Wit like a Woman's (Act I. Sc. i). Lachrimae has been 
 recently reprinted in Breitkopf and Hartal's Euterpe, No. 7. 
 
 ' Bxaaey'sffistoty of Music, Vol. in. p. 376. 
 
 ' There is an interesting scene in Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed 
 with Kindness (Act I. Sc. 2), where the servants of Master Frankfoid are 
 
yo Incidental Music 
 
 If dancing was fairly common between the acts, it was 
 still commoner at the end of a play. There were, of course, 
 the jigs and jests of pipe and tabor players like Tarleton 
 and Kempe, but also at the end of some plays the actors 
 finished with a dance. Much Ado About Nothing ends 
 with Benedick's exhortation, "Strike up, pipers," and the 
 direction " Dance." In As You Like It, the Duke's couplet, 
 almost at the end of the play : 
 
 " Play, music ! and you brides and bridegrooms all. 
 With measure heap'd in joy, to the measures fall," 
 
 indicates that a contra-dance was performed before the 
 epilogue. Even after tragedies they danced. Thomas 
 Platter, a visitor from Germany in 1599, tells in a letter to 
 his friends in Basel how he went to a Bankside theatre in 
 the afternoon and saw Julius Caesar acted by about fifteen 
 players. At the end of the play four men danced, two 
 being dressed as women ^ 
 
 Another use of music that must be recorded was to 
 produce or to enhance a supernatural effect. When super- 
 natural beings descended from " the heavens " in the hoist, 
 it was usual for music to be played. For example, amongst 
 the additions to Doctor Faustus in the quarto of 1 616 there 
 is a scene where a good and a bad angel come to visit 
 Faustus before his awful end. The good angel ascends to 
 heaven in the machine, and as the hoist descends, music is 
 directed to play — probably to hide any noise made by the 
 machinery. Pepys records another instance in his diary 
 for 27th February, 1668. On that date he saw Massinger's 
 
 having "a crash" in the courtyard. They resolve to dance, and debate 
 whether the tune shall be "Rogero," "John come kiss me now," "The 
 Cushion Dance," " The Hunting of the Fox," or " The Hay." Finally, they 
 call on the music to strike up " Sellenger's Round." 
 ^ Anglia, Vol. XXII. p. 458. 
 
Incidental Music 71 
 
 Virgin Martyr, a poorish play but finely acted. " But that 
 which did please me beyond anything in the whole world, 
 was the wind-musique when the angel comes down." It 
 made him feel, he tells us, as he used to feel when he was 
 in love with his wife, and he thereon resolved " to practise 
 wind-musique" and to make his wife do the like\ This 
 supernatural effect was obtained by the music of recorders, 
 for on the 8th April we find Mr Pepys going to buy a 
 recorder: "which I do intend to learn to play on, the 
 sound of it being, of all sounds in the world, most pleasing 
 to me." 
 
 If a supernatural " vision " occurred in a play, such as 
 the visions in Pericles, Cymbeline, or Henry VIII, the stage- 
 directions indicate solemn music. Also where Shakespeare 
 introduces mythological figures he directs music, doubtless 
 to increase the supernatural effect. " Soft music" is directed 
 for the entrance of Iris and Ceres in The Tempest (Act IV. 
 Sc. i). "Still music" ushers Hymen on the stage in As 
 You Like It (Act V. Sc. 4). Music in the shape of songs is 
 associated with minor supernatural beings. Shakespeare's 
 fairies, whether real as in A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, 
 or pretended as in The Merry Wives, sing songs. The 
 witches in Middleton's Witch, and the river-god in 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, proclaim 
 their supernatural character in their songs. 
 
 But the most interesting, and, to musicians, perhaps the 
 most important experiment is the use of music to increase 
 the pathos of a scene. The opening scene of Twelfth 
 Night is perhaps not a case in point, because it may be 
 objected that the music is introduced to delineate the 
 Duke's character; but a clear instance is to be found in 
 
 ^ Cf. the beginning of Jonson's masque The Golden Age Restored (1615), 
 " Loud music : Pallas in her chariot descending, to a softer music." 
 
72 Incidental Music 
 
 the scene in The Merchant of Venice where Bassanio 
 chooses his casket. There Portia calls for music which 
 continues whilst Bassanio soliloquises on the crisis before 
 him. Marlowe, whose fondness for the sensuous appeal of 
 music we have already seen, introduces music to enhance 
 the pathos of Zenocrate's death (2 Tamburlaine, Act II. 
 Sc. 4). Physicians are preparing bootless medicines, and 
 Tamburlaine and his sons surround the bed. Zenocrate 
 calls for music, and Tamburlaine bursts into a tempest 
 of sorrow and passion as she dies. 
 
 Another typical instance is to be found in Marston's 
 2 Antonio and Mellida (Act I. Sc. 2). As Pandulpho be- 
 wails the death of his son in a speech, which though stoical 
 in tone is charged with deep feeling, " music sounds softly " 
 as he begins, and it swells to " loud music " as his emotion 
 increases. Several examples are to be seen in Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, notably the one in Thierry and Theodoret 
 (Act III. Sc. 2). In this there is dramatic irony. Just 
 before he is murdered, Thierry calls for soft music to 
 " drown all sadness." Similarly in The Revenger's Tragedy 
 (Act III. Sc. 4), Vendice wreaks the death of his mistress 
 on the Duke. The Duke dies from the kiss of her poisoned 
 skull to the sounds of music from a banquet " within." 
 
 A blend of melodrama and supernatural music is used by 
 Shakespeare (assuming the scene which we shall quote from 
 Pericles to be his) in two of his plays. The idea underlying 
 both scenes is the power of music to restore the dead to 
 life. Readers of The Winter's Tale will remember how (in 
 Act V. Sc. 3) Hermione is presented as a statue to Leontes 
 by her friend Paulina, and how she is brought to life by 
 music : 
 
 ''Paulina. Music, awake her; strike! 
 
 'Tis time; descend, be stone no more; approach!" 
 
Incidental Music 73 
 
 and Hermione descends from the pedestal into the arms of 
 her penitent husband. In Pericles (Act III. Sc. 2) Thaisa 
 is awakened from her trance in the house of Cerimon, at 
 Ephesus, by music : 
 
 ^^ Cerimon. The rough and woeful music that we have, 
 Cause it to sound, beseech you. 
 The music there! I pray you give her air. 
 Gentlemen, this queen will live." 
 
 According to modern notions, both scenes are weak ; and 
 one wonders what the author's motive really was. Did the 
 music betoken a miraculous event, or was it used simply to 
 enhance the emotion of the scene .■' 
 
 These instances, which are not exhaustive, show that 
 this dramatic use of music occurs in plays done at both ' 
 public and private theatres. It is not a feature that 
 deserves praise. Drama should be stark enough to stand 
 alone, without the help of musical stimulants. But the 
 pathetic use of music is not merely another inartistic feature 
 of the decadence of romantic drama. It is deep rooted. 
 It goes beyond early plays like The Merchant of Venice 
 and Tamburlaine back to the Mysteries. In the Chester 
 cycle, in the scene in the Drapers' play, where terror strikes 
 the hearts of Adam and Eve when they hear the reproving 
 voice of God, the minstrels played solemn music. And it 
 has endured to our own age. What is a melodrama but a 
 play where we expect to hear bombast and sentimentality 
 accompanied by fitting music .' 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 MUSICIANS, SINGERS, AND SONGS 
 
 Strolling fiddlers — Alluded to by Dekker, Gosson, and Northbrooke — 
 Knight's statement — The Golden Age of English Music — Va- 
 grancy Laws — Theatrical musicians — The musical "aristocracy" 
 — Actors as musicians. 
 
 The men who provided this music in the theatres were 
 a despised and outlawed caste, recruited from the ranks of 
 stroUing musicians. They were despised by the church, 
 hated by Puritans, and mocked at even by a writer of 
 plays like Dekker. Without visible means of support, 
 wandering from tavern to tavern and town to town, with 
 many ready to listen and few willing to pay, forced to tout 
 for a hearing and beg for a pittance, is it a marvel that they 
 were called thriftless and impudent? "As familiar as a 
 fiddler" seems to have been a proverbial saying^, and 
 Dekker confirms it in his Guls Horn-Booke (1609) in the 
 chapter describing " How a Gallant should behave himself 
 in a Taverne " (Chap. Vll). " If you desire not to be 
 haunted with Fidlers, who by the statute have as much 
 libertie as Roagues to travell into any place, having the 
 pasport of the house about them", bring then no women 
 along with you." It was this impudence and brazenness 
 that drew on their heads the wrath of beneficed clergymen. 
 
 ' Wild Goose Chase, Act II. Sc. 2. 
 
 ' This refers to an Act of 39 Elizabeth which allowed minstrels and players 
 to stroll if they obtained a nobleman's Patent under "hand and seal of arms." 
 
Musicians, Singers, and Songs 75 
 
 " London is so full of unprofitable pipers and fidlers 
 that a man can no sooner enter a tavern than two or 
 three cast of them hang at his heels," says Stephen Gosson 
 in his Short Apologie (1587). John Earle tells the same 
 story about a stage-trumpeter. There is " no man so much 
 puft up. His face is as brazen as his trumpet, and, which 
 is worse, as a fidler's, from whom he differeth only in this, 
 that his impudence is dearer^." 
 
 There is little sting in these charges. They are the 
 petty malice of men, fortunate enough to sell their gifts for 
 a secure position in the commonwealth, against others who 
 were compelled by the age to peddle their art for a beggar's 
 dole. 
 
 But a more serious charge is brought against them by 
 John Northbrooke, who, although a Puritan, was a lover of 
 music. He defended it because it moves our senses with 
 its sweetness and yet delights the reason "by the arti- 
 ficiousness " of its harmony and form. This man must have 
 known also something of the time and aptitude required 
 for learning the art of music, and yet he says "of minstrells 
 that goe and range abroarde, and thrust themselves into 
 every mannes presence" that they were insufferable "bi- 
 cause they are loyterers and ydle fellowes; ...and, to saye 
 truth, they are but defacers of musicke'." Idle doubtless 
 they were; in the sense that all musicians and actors are 
 idle, having easy-going and perhaps frolicsome intervals 
 between the times when they concentrate their minds upon 
 their mystery and give a public exhibition of their art. 
 But why not ? An executive artist cannot work with the 
 same concentration as a tradesman or a field-worker. For 
 one reason his brain cannot stand the strain, and for 
 
 1 Micro-cosmography, No. 38. 
 
 ' Treatise against Dicing (ca.. li^^). 
 
76 Musicians, Singers, and Songs 
 
 another he cannot have a perpetual audience. As for 
 the charge that they were only " defacers of musicke," let 
 us set over against it Knight's statement that the best 
 musicians of the Kingdom were to be found in London, 
 "and equall to any in Europe for their skill... in singing or 
 for playing upon any kinde of musicall instruments^" 
 
 It was an age of music. Catches were sung by gentles 
 as well as by weavers and tinkers. Lute, cithern, or 
 virginals were in every barber's shop for the diversion 
 of customers. They had music for dinner, after supper, 
 for joy and for mourning, in the church and in the play- 
 house. Thomas Morley may be using the biased argument 
 of a music-teacher when he tells us that a gentleman was 
 counted but a boor if he could not play the lute, or sing a 
 part in a madrigal" ; but there is no getting over the craggy 
 fact that over eighty collections of Madrigals, Ayres, and 
 Songs were printed and published between 1587 and 1630, 
 in addition to which vast collections of early music still 
 remain in manuscript^ Such a public was not likely to 
 listen to mere defacers of music. 
 
 There may have been a few Crowderos with their 
 " squeaking engines " left to make " souse to chitterlings," 
 but the harshness of the laws against vagrancy must have 
 thinned their tale. Under the Act of 14 Eliz. c. 5 (1572) 
 minstrels and players were to be dealt with as rogues and 
 vagabonds unless they owned a licence signed by two 
 magistrates. In 1597 it was granted to noblemen to 
 employ companies of players, including musicians, under 
 a patent (39 Eliz. c. 4). This was repealed by James I 
 
 ^ "The Third Universitie of England." Appendix to Stew's Annals, 
 Quarto edn. 161 5. 
 
 " Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597). 
 
 ' Henry Davey, History of English Music, pp. 171 — 4. 
 
Musicians, Singers, and Songs ']'] 
 
 in 1603, and henceforth strolling players, musicians, and 
 their fellows were liable to be seized as common vagrants^ 
 The common way of evading the law was for the theatrical 
 companies to purchase warrants of protection from the 
 Revels Office. The King's Company paid £\ for such 
 a licence to play at Blackfriars in 1627. A similar 
 warrant for twenty persons "all imployed by the Kings 
 Maties Servants " as " musitions " and attendants at Black- 
 friars was granted in 1624^ 
 
 The wandering musicians who went from tavern to 
 tavern in small bands were, as we have seen, unloved of 
 the respectable. They were known as " waits " when they 
 played wind-instruments, and a "noise" if they played 
 stringed viols and lutes. Some of them, it may be, were 
 descendants of the minstrels and ballad singers of a 
 previous age. Others were the product of the new rage 
 for music. To them, as to the strolling players of Inter- 
 ludes, the founding of a permanent stage in London must 
 have come as a godsend. We imagine the best of them 
 being absorbed, along with perhaps a few Italians or 
 "Venetions," into the permanent staff of the theatres. 
 The theatres would also provide engagements for addi- 
 tional waits in certain plays. As for the rest, the devil in 
 the shape of the vagrancy laws would take the hindmost in 
 the rush for upland counties where the acts were not put 
 in force. 
 
 As a class, theatrical musicians were no better and no 
 worse than other bohemians of the age. Doubtless some, 
 as far as their means would allow, were as dissolute as 
 Greene and Marlowe. Others, like the Henry Walker 
 from whom Shakespeare bought his house at Blackfriars 
 
 ^ Collier, Annals of the Stage, Vol. I. p. 203, and note; also p. 360. 
 ' Malone, Prolegomena, Vol. III. p. 112, notes 6 and 7. 
 
78 Musicians, Singers, and Songs 
 
 in i6i2S became good citizens and men of property. At 
 least it was an economic advantage to exchange the tip of 
 the tavern or brothel for a fixed salary in the theatres. 
 And it must have been an artistic delight, to say the least, 
 to forsake the bawdy songs of the streets' for the lyrics of 
 the stage. There is a reference to the scanty earnings of 
 strolling fiddlers in Greene's Orlando Furioso (1594): 
 
 " Orgalio. I can tell thee where thou mayst earn two or three shillings 
 this morning. 
 Fiddler. Tush, thou wot cozen me, thou : but an thou canst tell me 
 where I may earn a groat, I'll give thee sixpence for 
 thy pains." 
 
 This implies that a groat was good pay for a morning's 
 work. 
 
 And so they exchanged the ragged cloak of a wandering 
 minstrel for the licence and badge of a player, and no 
 doubt they played better music, and played it better than 
 ever they did in their lives before. But their followers in 
 the next generation were driven back to the old haunts of 
 the trade by the closing of the theatres in 1642. From the 
 tavern they had originally come, and back to the tavern 
 they went. " Our music, that was held so delectable and 
 precious that they scorned to come to a tavern under 
 twenty shillings salary for two hours," says the author of 
 The Actors' Remonstrance (1643), "now wander with their 
 instruments under their cloaks (I mean such as have any) 
 into all houses of good fellowship, saluting every room where 
 is company with: ' Will you have any music, gentlemen'.? ' " 
 And the end of the story as far as it interests our period is 
 Cromwell's re-enactment of the law declaring to be " rogues, 
 
 1 Gaa.'ppe&'s Popular Music of the Olden Time, edn. 1859, p. 252. 
 * See Earle's Micro-cosmography, No. 63. 
 ' Cited by Collier, Annals, Vol. in. p. 450. 
 
Musicians, Singers, and Songs 79 
 
 vagabonds, and sturdy beggars " any fiddlers or minstrels 
 taken whilst making music in "any inn, ale-house, or 
 tavern,... or desiring, or intreating any to hear them play, 
 or make music, in any of the places aforesaid V 
 
 It must not be supposed that all the musicians of 
 Shakespeare's age were in this plight. The best musicians, 
 men such as Dr Bull, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, 
 Thomas Morley, Richard Johnson, John Dowland, and 
 their fellows, were in regular employment as church or- 
 ganists, gentlemen of the Chapel Royal, or lutanists or 
 virginal players at court or in noblemen's houses. They 
 were well educated for the most part, and highly esteemed 
 for their musical talents. They mingled with their patrons 
 with as much freedom as did poets. These were the men 
 who composed music for the song-books, and arranged the 
 popular dances and songs of the day for small orchestras or 
 "consorts" to play. And these men composed music for 
 the songs in the dramas. Many of the songs are still in 
 existence in the song-books of Byrd, Dowland, and Morley, 
 and in manuscript". 
 
 Probably this aristocracy of music considered itself far 
 above the vulgar in rank and breeding, and never stooped 
 to take an actual part in theatrical performances. Beyond 
 the appearance of Henry Lawes as Attendant Spirit in 
 the private performance of Comus in Ludlow Castle on 
 Michaelmas night, 1634, no record exists of a composer 
 taking part in a play; unless by a coincidence, the Dr 
 
 ^ Cited by Percy in his Essay on the Ancient Minstrels in England, 
 Note EE^z. 
 
 2 The existing songs from Shakespeare's plays have been republished by 
 Sir Frederick Bridge — Songs from Shakespeare, published by Novello. Bridge 
 has also published Henry Lawes' songs written for Milton's Comus, along with 
 some typical dance-music, in The Masque of Comus, with an Introduction by 
 W. Barclay Squire, published by Novello. 
 
8o Musicians, Singers, and Songs 
 
 John Wilson, whose song, " Take, O take those lips away," 
 appears in his Cheerful Ayres or Ballads (1659), happens 
 to be the singing-boy Jacke Wilson whose name is found 
 in the Folio of 1623 as the actor who took the part of 
 Balthasar in Much Ado About Nothing. 
 
 But if there was a line of demarcation between theatrical 
 musicians and the aristocrats of the tribe, there was none in 
 the theatre between musicians and players — that is to say, 
 between musicians and the players paid by the shareholders, 
 like themselves — for the players who held shares in the 
 theatre formed another aristocracy. Musicians took minor 
 parts on the stage as walkers-on in armies, masques, 
 serenades and the like^ And probably players who only 
 acted small parts lent their help to the music. We learn 
 from the induction to Jonson's Every Man out of his 
 Humour that the prologue was delivered by a sackbut- 
 player". There are references in the plays to singing-boys 
 playing their own accompaniments. The player Phillips, 
 in his will (1605), left his bass viol to Gilburne, his late 
 apprentice, and his cithern, pandore, and lute to Sands, 
 who was then his apprentice', which implies that Phillips 
 and his apprentices helped the " consort " at times with viol 
 and lute. In Hey wood's A Woman Killed with Kindness, 
 the boy who took the part of Mistress Frankford played a 
 solo upon his lute in the last act. And in Middleton's 
 Roaring Girl, the boy who acted as Moll, the heroine, 
 played the viol da gamba and accompanied, or perhaps 
 helped the consort to accompany, his song (Act IV. Sc. i). 
 
 ^ Cf. also this direction in Greene's Alphonsus, King of Arragim 
 (Induction), "Enter Melpomene, Clio, Erato, with their sisters, playing all 
 upon sundry instruments," &c. These were players upon viols and lutes as 
 the context shows. 
 
 ^ " I mar'le whose wit it was to put a prologue in yond sackbut's mouth." 
 
 ' Malone, Prolegomena, Vol. III. p. 471, 1821 edn. 
 
Musicians, Singers, and Songs 8i 
 
 So that several of the players' boys were musicians as well 
 as players. 
 
 With that we leave them. As a class they were no 
 better and no worse than the rest of their fellows who 
 manned the wooden O's of Bankside and the suburbs. As 
 musicians, they managed to satisfy audiences who knew 
 what music was, and it is only reasonable to suppose that 
 regular employment in the thfeatre would give them greater 
 skill to play the complicated rhythms of their music than 
 touting for a hearing round the taverns. 
 
 The number of musicians employed in any given 
 theatre is another matter that cannot be definitely decided. 
 Malone's tradition tells us there were eight or ten'. Black- 
 friars theatre employed twenty men in 1624 as musicians 
 and attendants, of whom we may reckon a dozen at most 
 to have been musicians. But how are we to reconcile this 
 few with the numbers of music-makers indicated in the 
 stage-directions of some plays .' If we suppose all of them 
 to have been employed at once, the number could not well 
 be less than say two viols, viol da gamba, bass viol, two or 
 three instruments of the lute type, three cornets, three 
 hautboys, three recorders, sackbut, and organ — a total of 
 eighteen musicians for a private theatre ; or, omitting 
 organ, cornets, and recorders, and substituting drums and 
 trumpets, a like number for a public theatre''. We must 
 assume either that some musicians played several instru- 
 ments, or that for certain plays additional musicians were 
 engaged. Or possibly both these courses were followed. We 
 
 ' Malone, Prolegomena, Vol. III. p. 11 1, 1821 edn. 
 
 ^ The usual number of musicians in the Jonson-Ferrabosco-Giles-Inigo 
 Jones masques at Whitehall seems to have been eight, viz. five lutes and three 
 comets. See Neptun^s Triumph, but " a rare and full music of twelve lutes " 
 is mentioned in The Masque of Hymen. Also there are directions for additional 
 harps, and drums and fifes in other masques. 
 
 c. 6 
 
82 Musicians, Singers, and Songs 
 
 have seen that the actors Phillips and Sands played three 
 types of lute — lute, cithern, and pandore. And considering 
 how similar in fingering were all the wood-wind instru- 
 ments — cornets, hautboys, and recorders — it may be that 
 some of the waits played them all. Remembering that 
 variety in orchestration and not mass of tone was their 
 custom, we may assume that in the private theatres eight 
 or ten musicians could have played all the music required. 
 
 Further light on the subject is thrown by a survey 
 of Henslowe's instruments at The Rose on Bankside. 
 Henslowe's inventory of the properties of the Lord Ad- 
 miral's Company was made on loth March, 1598'. He 
 found it in possession of three trumpets, one drum, one 
 treble viol, one bass viol, one pandore, one cithern, a chime 
 of bells, a sackbut and three " timbrells." The last may 
 have been the kettledrums used for " alarums " (Fr. timbale). 
 In addition to these another sackbut was bought, as his 
 diary shows, on loth November, 1598, and on the 22nd 
 December in the same year "a base viall and other en- 
 strements" were added. Reading between the lines, 1598 
 seems to have been about the time when music became an 
 indispensable ingredient of drama in England. There are 
 further entries relating to the purchase of a drum and two 
 trumpets on the 6th and 7th February, 1 599, but as they 
 were destined to be used by the company on a spring tour^ 
 they do not concern us. 
 
 Now what were these instruments for 1 Were they the 
 actual instruments used by the theatre musicians, or were 
 they merely properties? They fall naturally into two 
 
 1 Supplement to Henslowe's Diary. Shakespeare Society, 1845. 
 
 * Cf. Parolle's slander of Dumain: "Faith, sir, has led the drum before 
 the English tragedians " (All's Well &c. Act iv. Sc. 3). Also, trumpets are 
 indicated to signal the approach of players in Hamlet and The Taming of the 
 Shrew. 
 
Musicians, Singers, and Songs 83 
 
 classes. Obviously the sackbuts, trumpets and drums were 
 not properties. They were the actual instruments used 
 for the three blasts before the prologue, and for martial 
 flourishes and alarums. The treble viol, cithern, pandora, 
 and bass viol may possibly have been used simply as pro- 
 perties to hang on the walls when the stage represented an 
 interior, but it is much more likely that they were used by 
 the musicians. It may be objected that these instruments 
 were Henslowe's, and that musicians like to play on their 
 own. Well, it is not impossible that Philip Henslowe had 
 them in pawn ; but the simplest solution is that the musi- 
 cians in regular employment at The Rose theatre left their 
 instruments there over night. The stringed instruments 
 form a complete quartet, and were the " consort " used for 
 accompanying songs, and sometimes for playing between 
 acts. These dozen instruments represent the music re- 
 quired in the public theatres, played by about half a dozen 
 professional musicians, and assisted by a few musical players 
 and their boys when necessary. That being granted, the 
 "not received custom of music" at The Globe, mentioned 
 in the induction to the Marston-Webster Malcontent, did 
 not mean that Burbadge's company forwent music (as, 
 indeed, the play itself shows) ; but it meant that they were 
 without the cornets, hautboys, recorders, and organ of 
 Blackfriars where the Malcontent came from. And per- 
 haps the induction was written to take the place of music 
 performed at Blackfriars before the play. 
 
 To sum up. It is difficult from the slender evidence 
 before us to decide how many musicians were employed 
 at a given theatre. Plays varied much in their musical 
 demands ; but we must suppose that small bands of regular 
 musicians, some of whom played more than one kind 
 of stringed and wood-wind instrument, were sometimes 
 
 6—2 
 
84 Musicians, Singers, and Songs 
 
 augmented by additional musicians. For the private 
 theatres we may take Malone's tale of eight or ten as 
 correct. The public theatres employed a smaller number 
 on their staff, and engaged hautboy and cornet players 
 when necessary. 
 
 A theatre company usually included one or more singers 
 in its troupe. Both men and boys sang songs on the stage. 
 The reigns of Elizabeth and James I stretched over an age 
 of song. Singing was a fashionable accomplishment, and of 
 the making of songs and the music thereto there was no 
 end. Hence the popularity of songs in the drama. Shake- 
 speare knew his audience well, and it cannot be a coincidence 
 that the two plays whose titles imply that he was giving it 
 what it wanted contain the most songs. As You Like It 
 and Twelfth Night, or What You Will contain no fewer 
 than six songs each. Certain rdles were created simply 
 for singing men. Merrythought^ and Stremon" could only 
 have been acted by singers, and*so also Balthasar' and 
 Amiens* are simply an excuse for introducing a song. 
 Pandarus", too, must have been taken by a musician, for 
 he accompanied his song " Love, love, nothing but love " 
 on his lute. The extremity of song-introduction is to be 
 seen in the part of Valerius in The Rape of Lucrece (1608), 
 to whom Heywood gives seventeen songs. Parts like Feste 
 and Autolycus must have been taken by singers. Real 
 clowns like Slender, Sir Toby and Aguecheek, Stephano, 
 and the Fool in King Lear merely babble snatches of 
 ballads and catches. 
 
 ^ In Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle. 
 
 ^ In Beaumont and Fletcher's Mad Lmer. 
 
 3 In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. 
 
 * In Shakespeare's As You Like It. 
 
 ° In Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. 
 
Musicians, Singers, and Songs 85 
 
 Many of the best songs were sung by boys. Amongst 
 Shakespeare's songs, Ariel's songs in The Tempest, and the 
 fairy songs in A Midsummer Nights Dream, also " Take, 
 O take those lips away" and Desdemona's Willow song 
 were certainly sung by boys ; so were the duets " It was 
 a lover and his lass " (sung by pages m. As You Like It) 
 and the Dirge in Cymbeline. We have no means of judging 
 whether serenades were sung by boys or by men. Most 
 likely they were sung by lutanists who played their own 
 accompaniments. 
 
 The songs of Elizabethan times may be roughly divided 
 into (i) songs for voices alone, (2) songs accompanied by 
 instruments. The former fall into two classes. Madrigals 
 and Canzonets; or Catches, Rounds and Three-men's (or 
 Freemen's) songs. Madrigals and Canzonets were of 
 Italian origin, and have been described as " a few jingling 
 rhymes set to elaborate music." The poems consist of 
 single verses full of glossy diction about " spightfuU dainty 
 nimphs," "tormenting Love," and the "sharp and bitter 
 anguish" of languishing lovers. They were set to music 
 for voices in counterpoint, and were in fact simply a frame- 
 work on which elaborate part-writing was stretched. The 
 words were quite subordinate to the music. Madrigals 
 took the place which chamber music now fills, but as they 
 never became popular on the stage they do not concern us 
 here. As poems, they are dainty little sweetmeats, but they 
 soon cloy. As music, they are full of grateful vocal part- 
 writing, and show a strong sense of rhythm, " snap," and 
 syncopation. Catches, on the other hand, were in use on 
 the stage. They are to be found in Shakespeare's plays, 
 and in Beaumont and Fletcher. Dekker introduced Three- 
 men's songs in his Shoemaker's Holiday. They were popular 
 songs requiring merely a loud and persevering voice. It 
 
86 Musicians, Singers, and Songs 
 
 required a musician to bear a part in a madrigal, but any 
 fool could join in a catch. They were canons for four, or 
 in the case of three-men's songs for three, voices. The 
 well-known "Three blind mice" is a good example. On 
 the stage, as in real life, they were used in the merry- 
 makings of jovial but not over-cultured good fellows. 
 
 The songs with musical accompaniment fall again into 
 two classes — Airs and Ballets, or Songs. Airs were part- 
 songs like madrigals, but differed in that they were accom- 
 panied by a consort of instruments. The words are written 
 in stanzas. The musical time is usually simple and slow, 
 and the music not without contrapuntal devices, but the 
 intention was to make every part sing the same syllable at 
 the same time in strict diatonic harmony. For example, 
 the old psalm-tunes are " airs." Ballets were similar har- 
 monic part-songs set to a dance measure. Songs were, of 
 course, melodies for a single voice set to a harmonic ac- 
 companiment played by instruments. They were stanzaic, 
 and usually the melody was repeated for each verse. This 
 is always the case with folk-songs such as " O Mistress 
 mine,'' "The rain it raineth every day," Ophelia's song, 
 and Desdemona's song. Some of the songs written and 
 composed for drama follow this rule; for example, Thomas 
 Morley's setting of Shakespeare's " It was a lover and his 
 lass." But many consist of only one stanza, e.g. Ariel's 
 songs " Where the bee sucks " and " Full fathom five," set 
 by R. Johnson ; and some, like the Forester's song in As 
 You Like It, and " You spotted snakes " in A Midsummer 
 Nights Dream, have a "burthen" or chorus at the end of 
 the stanza, being in fact half song, half " air." 
 
 Songs and airs were closely allied. The accompaniment 
 being harmonic, the melody part of an air could always be 
 sung solo. Byrd wrote his Psalms, sonets, and songs of 
 
Plate IX 
 
Musicians, Singers, and Songs 87 
 
 sadness and pietie (1587) originally as songs, and then 
 arranged them in parts. As he tells us in his preface, 
 "beeing originally made for Instruments to expresse the 
 harmony, and one voyce to pronounce the dittie, (they) 
 are now framed in all parts for voyces to sing the same." 
 John Dowland entitles his First booke of songes or ayres 
 (1597) "of fowre partes with tableture for the lute: so 
 made that all the partes together, or either of them 
 severally may be song to the lute, orpherian, or viol de 
 gambo " ; and Robert Jones' First booke of songes and 
 ayres (i6(X)) bears the same legend. 
 
 It was songs and airs, with instrumental accompaniment, 
 not unaccompanied madrigals, that were introduced into the 
 drama. Tradition called for them. Had there not been 
 songs in the drama since its beginnings in England .' And 
 popular taste demanded songs with a harmonic instru- 
 mental accompaniment rather than contrapuntal and 
 italianate madrigals. Madrigals were always caviare to the 
 general. This was fortunate for the art of poetry. What 
 little sense the madrigal-poems had was almost destroyed 
 by the crossing and interweaving of the part-writing. It 
 was possible at times for each part to be singing different 
 words, so fond were the Italians of vain repetitions. It was 
 delight in counterpoint, not in poetry, that called them into 
 being. But songs and airs were a tribute to the art of 
 poesy. The melody aimed at bringing out the sense of the 
 poem. The harmonic accompaniment built on a figured 
 bass never obscured the words. If you were a composer 
 you tried, says Thomas Morley (iS97), "to dispose your 
 musicke according to the nature of the words which you 
 are therein to expresse." The words of the poem were 
 all-important, and its melody simple and rhythmic, so that 
 every word could be heard. Elizabethan songs were the 
 
88 Musicians, Singers, and Songs 
 
 product of a partnership between poet and musician. For 
 their books of songs and airs, musicians sought the work of 
 the best lyrists ; and for dramatic songs, poets engaged the 
 services of the best musicians. There was a direct incentive 
 for poets to give their best songs to the drama. Hence 
 the melodious lyrics of Dekker, Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 Hence also Ben Jonson's studied strains, and the wild 
 wood-notes of Shakespeare. 
 
 Solo songs in the published music books have a 
 tablature for lutes to play from, and a bass for the viol da 
 gamba. From this bass the skilled musicians of the period 
 could extemporise an accompaniment on the virginals or 
 organ, or fill in the harmony with viols. Airs or " consort 
 songs " usually have an accompaniment scored for S. treble 
 viol and lute, A. flute and cithern, T. pandore, B. viol da 
 gamba '- 
 
 The music played in theatres between acts consisted 
 probably of selections of popular dances^. Airs arranged 
 for the consort may have been played also, but dance- 
 music was the natural thing because dances were often 
 performed in the " act times." Also the tunes mentioned 
 as having been called for — Baloo, Lachrimae, and White- 
 lock's Coranto — are all dance strains. The music played 
 for alarums, sennets, tuckets, flourishes and the like has 
 perished entirely. Probably it was traditional amongst the 
 theatre musicians — a part of their mystery ; and this would 
 account for its not being transcribed. 
 
 '^ See Plate vii. Dowland's Lachrimae, p. 68. 
 
 ^ Specimens may be seen in Sir Frederick Bridge's Masqtte of Comus, 
 1908, Novello. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 ELIZABETHAN MUSIC AND ITS SHARE IN 
 THE ETRAMA 
 
 Elizabethan music — Its characteristics — Its popularity — Why and how 
 introduced into drama— Dramatic value of music — Its emotional 
 effect— Dramatic songs — Music and Romanticism. 
 
 If the Elizabethan age was like " a nest of singing birds," 
 and " the golden age of English music " as the critics tell 
 us, how is it that the best songs are not heard at our 
 concerts ? The answer is that the songs as music, however 
 beautiful they may be as poems, have been left far behind 
 by later developments in harmony. The poems are still 
 read with lively enthusiasm, and the madrigals are a living 
 joy to some glee-societies ; but the songs, the airs and the 
 dances are forgotten ; save by a few cultured musical 
 antiquaries, who, after valuing Elizabethan music for its 
 historical importance, have learned to appreciate its beauties. 
 
 Owing to their diatonic nature, Elizabethan airs sound 
 like snatches of old psalm-tunes. They are all quaint, 
 many of them are pleasing and even powerful- in their 
 emotional appeal, but, to ears accustomed only to modern 
 music, they are uttered in a dead language which sounds 
 often harsh and crude. The seventh note of the scale 
 is frequently left unsharpened, which conveys to modern 
 ears the effect of a change of key. This is owing to 
 the fact that their scales were hexachords. Another 
 peculiarity was that Elizabethan ears could tolerate a 
 "false relation." Leaps in the melody from a given 
 note to its imperfect octave {e^. JfF to tfF) are sometimes 
 
90 Elizabethan Music: its share in the Drama 
 
 made, even in vocal music. Consecutive fifths are to be 
 found ; and in the same key, both major and minor thirds 
 are often written in different common-chords on the 
 same note. Yet in spite of its crudeness, their harmony 
 fashioned some wonderful songs. Some of Dowland's, 
 Morley's and Johnson's deserve to live for their sweetness, 
 and as monuments of musical beauty worked in very 
 simple harmonies. As an example of a simple melody 
 depicting exactly the mood of the words, Wilson's setting 
 of " Take, O take those lips away " is perfect. Their dance- 
 music does not wear as well as their songs. Most of it 
 consists simply of eight-bar strains strung together to 
 make a short dance. It is pompous or jolly, or doleful 
 according to its nature, but there are crudities of harmonic 
 progression that jar. 
 
 Their virginal music is full of art. It was the age of 
 counterpoint, and all the tricks of the art were employed 
 in arranging popular melodies for two hands. A common 
 custom was to take a well-known tune — a psalm-tune or 
 a popular dance suited them equally well — and to write 
 variations upon it, each in a different species of counterpoint. 
 " Fancy " is the name they gave to another musical form in 
 which the melody is given out fugato and elaborated with 
 imitation's and sequences. Another favourite form was the 
 "prelude" — a study depending for its construction upon 
 a series of chords elaborated with scales and arpeggios and 
 ornamented with sequences. But virginal music was for 
 the closet, not for the theatre. 
 
 To judge Elizabethan music aright, we must look at it 
 in perspective. Modern music was then a new-born art. 
 The shackles of the church modes were not completely 
 cast off. Composers differed from all other artists in that 
 they had to make their medium as well as their handiwork. 
 
Elizabethan Music: its share in the Drama 91 
 
 The painter or the writer had at least knowledge of colour 
 or syntax at his fingers' ends, but the musicians actually 
 had to make their art of harmony as they went along. All 
 their gropings after pleasant progressions and new effects 
 are to be seen in their music, and if Elizabethan music 
 displeases modern ears it is because it represents a transi- 
 tion from Gregorian modes to major and minor scales, 
 from counterpoint to the freedom and daring of harmony. 
 
 It is a curious fact and one worthy of note that there is 
 no attempt in Elizabethan drama to satirise or even to 
 poke mild fun at a musician. Spaniards and Dutchmen, 
 Pedants and Poetasters, Beggars and Constables, Justices 
 and Rogues, come in their turn under the lash, but not 
 musicians. They were the priests of a new art, the inter- 
 preters of a divine harmony whose perfection was only to 
 be heard by dwellers in the heavenly spheres. Shake- 
 speare's Balthasar is affected, but so is Osric. The Shrew 
 breaks her lute across Hortensio's head, but she also attacks 
 Petruchio. Balthasar and Hortensio are not made a laughing- 
 stock because of their profession like Shallow and Dogberry, 
 or Don Armado and his fellow scrap-stealer Holofernes. It 
 is their manhood that is impugned, not their musicianship. 
 
 And this gives us the key to the seventeenth century 
 attitude to music. It was "sweet music," "the divine 
 ravisher of sense," "divine sounds," and a whole host of 
 epithets that link it with the uplifted trumpets and im- 
 mortal harps of the seraphim. They idealised it. Earthly 
 music was but the faint echo of the sphery chime 
 "Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims," 
 
 or 
 
 "That undisturbed song of pure content 
 Aye sung before the sapphire-colour'd throne." 
 
 Thence came it that the dramatists satirised the starvelings 
 
92 Elizabethan Music: its share in the Drama 
 
 who could not appreciate it, the Citizen who preferred the 
 waits of Southwark to the skilled musicians of Blackfriars, 
 and his wife who cpuld not distinguish Lachrimae from 
 Baloo ; or again, Bottom's " reasonable good ear in music " 
 that demanded "the tongs and the bones." 
 
 Music was popular in the drama because it was -popular 
 everywhere. From puritan weavers singing the Hundredth 
 Psalm in parts from Este's Psalmody, and the tavern- 
 chanters with their catches, to the cultured singers of airs 
 and madrigals, all ranks delighted in song. A gentleman's 
 education was incomplete unless he could sing prick-song^ 
 or compose an extempore discant to a melody''', or at least 
 fiddle a bass on the viol. Musical instruments there were 
 in plenty. If there were trumpets at court, and hautboys 
 at feastings, there were lutes in the barbers' shops for all 
 the world to strum upon. Almost every house of nobleman 
 and burgher alike had its virginals. Pepys in his diary of 
 the Great Fire of London (1666) observed that as the 
 citizens fled the fire by water " hardly one lighter or boat 
 in three, that had the goods of a house in, but there was 
 a pair of virginals in it." This was written sixty years 
 after our period, but it must have been true in part for 
 Shakespeare's day. 
 
 Given this musical public, one can see why music 
 became firmly associated with the stage. They wanted to 
 hear the best songs. So quite naturally the theatres fell in 
 with popular taste and provided songs for their patrons. 
 Elizabethan dramatists wrote lyrics as free and as polished 
 as the best lyrists of the age, for were they not poets? 
 The playwright, that rule-of-thumb carpenter of French 
 extraction, who builds you- an introduction, a tangle, and 
 
 ' That is, a printed part in an air or madrigal. 
 
 ^ Cf. Morley's Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597). 
 
riah' X 
 
 A "Broken Consort" (German, end of i6th Century) 
 
Elizabethan Music: its share in the Drama 93 
 
 a denottemeni into a prose " drama " of three acts, was still 
 in the future. 
 
 Shakespeare's audiences went to the theatre to hear 
 music. They demanded it. They expected it. They 
 were critical of it. If a play was displeasing to the 
 gilded youth of the age, they not only mewed at the 
 "passionate speeches" but they found fault with the 
 music and whistled at the songs'. 
 
 There were no " rules " for the introduction of songs, 
 and little attempt at art in their introduction. There 
 are sublime exceptions, of course. Ophelia's ballad and 
 Desdemona's song are intensely dramatic. But at first 
 sight it seems as if one song were as good as another, so 
 long as it were good. Most of the songs in Beaumont and 
 Fletcher are simply sops flung to popular taste. The 
 serenades and singing-boys (such as the pages in As You 
 Like It, or Balthasar in Much Add) of Shakespeare are 
 simply an excuse for introducing a song ; so is the singing- 
 boy in Jonson's Silent Woman. Yet a further inspection 
 shows some sense of fitness. Folk-songs, or skilful imita- 
 tions, and ballad snatches are often put in the mouths of 
 comic characters. Fairies have their own characteristic 
 songs, and so have witches. And the finest lyrics of the 
 dramatists, those which best express their characteristic 
 powers — short, melodious, spontaneous, polished songs, full 
 of imagery and point — were set to music by contemporary 
 composers and were usually sung by singing-boys. If 
 catches were introduced, they were sung by representatives 
 of the lower orders — apprentices, soldiers, beggars and the 
 like. 
 
 Usually a play had at least one song. That was the 
 musical piece de resistance, but, as we have shown, there 
 ' Dekker's Guls Hom-Booke (Ch. 6). 
 
94 Elizabethan Music: its share in the Drama 
 
 was often music between acts. Again music entered into 
 the scene realistically. It came on with an army. The 
 shrill cry of the trumpet and rattle of drums made six 
 supers appear a mighty host. It came on with masquers 
 or serenaders. Their stage-dances and songs were a copy 
 of the music of real life. 
 
 Music was added also to increase the emotional tension 
 of a scene. The tragic songs of Ophelia and Desdemona 
 are the supreme examples. But they are very rare. 
 Usually the effect of introducing music with an intent to 
 increase the emotional force of the scene is not dramatic, 
 but melodramatic. Bassanio choosing a casket to the sound 
 of music, Zenocrate's death accompanied by a pathetic 
 strain from the music-room, what are these but attempts to 
 gild the pure gold of poetry with superfluous tinsel ? More 
 to be commended is the introduction of music to delineate 
 character. The music in Twelfth Night tells us much 
 concerning the character of Count Orsino. The music 
 which Brutus hears on the night when Caesar's ghost 
 appears to him is another feature which distinguishes the 
 conspirator Brutus from Cassius the traitor. Jacques' song 
 with its burden " ducdame," and Hamlet's scene with the 
 recorders, both enable us to know them better. 
 
 But though music on the stage was realistic in that it 
 was a copy of music in real life, in effect it was highly 
 romantic. However rigid in form, however constrained in 
 harmony it may be, music is always romantic. Its beauty 
 of melody, its discords resolving on concords, its rhythm, 
 its form, the characteristic tones of the different kinds of 
 instruments, all make a wonderful emotional effect. It 
 can excite or sadden our feelings more than the spoken 
 word. Hence music was welcomed on the stage as a 
 rival to poetry in beauty and emotional force. 
 
Elizabethan Music: its share in the Drama 95 
 
 Shakespeare and his fellows said in effect : " Music is 
 an additional beauty, therefore let us include it in our 
 drama." Their lyrics wedded to music moved men to 
 mirth or sadness in a more poignant way than words alone 
 could do. And this brings us face to face with two 
 questions that challenge us and must be wrestled with 
 before we pass on. Was their use of music an artistic 
 success } Did Elizabethan drama gain, or lose, by the 
 addition of songs .' 
 
 Of music between the acts, whether dance measures or 
 song-tunes, we shall say nothing. If actors must rest and 
 properties must be changed, there can be no harm in 
 beguiling the interval with music suitable to the play. 
 Dancing between acts seems at first less defensible. We 
 at once think of eighteenth century play-bills of Hamlet, 
 Prince of Denmark in which Mr So and So " will dance 
 a hornpipe between Acts three and four." But Shake- 
 speare's age was not as unutterably tasteless as that. They 
 had many characteristic dances — stately pavanes and 
 almains, the gay jig and the lively brawl, and the tearful 
 dump to express sorrow; and they used taste and discretion 
 in introducing them. Dancing after a tragedy again is 
 quite easy to defend. The Greeks had their satyric drama 
 at the close of a trilogy. The neo-classicists allowed a 
 farce. They who wish the theatre to be a moral force will 
 naturally object to anything which blots out the sense of 
 tragic purification. They object to any distraction after 
 a tragedy. But to ordinary sane people who regard the 
 theatre as an intellectual recreation, a dance at the end 
 is simply as the fifth act of Th£ Merchant of Venice, and 
 is to be defended on that ground — namely, that it comes 
 as a relief after the tenseness of tragic emotions. 
 
 What is to be said about their alarums, flourishes. 
 
96 Elizabethan Music: its share in the Drama 
 
 sennets and tuckets? The answer can only be that they 
 are a blot upon drama. This is not the objection of a 
 lover of classic simplicity and restraint. The most bigoted 
 romanticist must admit that to drag drums and trumpets 
 on the stage on every possible occasion was simply an 
 appeal to the groundlings who were " capable of nothing 
 but noise." It was to turn the theatre into a circus. 
 Trumpet flourishes might have been dignified if they had 
 been used rarely, and only for scenes of great splendour, 
 but they were made too cheap. No one will be prepared 
 to defend stage battles of five supers and a drum. The 
 only thing that can be said in favour of " alarums " is that 
 if such sorry spectacles had to be introduced in face of the 
 audience, alarums helped the impression of warlike con- 
 fusion and clash of arms. But this stage-direction was 
 another concession to popular taste. 
 
 Incidental music was not always an artistic success. 
 One cannot cavil at the custom of introducing supernatural 
 beings with music. Employed here, music lifted the action 
 out of the every-day world. Something is necessary to 
 indicate that the marvellous is happening. Flames must 
 bum blue, or we may miss the fact that our visitbr is 
 a spectre; and where the dramatists introduced mytho- 
 logical persons, music was a pleasant and an artistic 
 convention. But when they used music to intensify the 
 emotion of a scene in which men and women were taking 
 part, the result is not often happy. Shakespeare's use of 
 music to delineate Orsino's character in Twelfth Night is 
 good, but Marlowe's death of Zenocrate with slow music is 
 sentimental and trashy. 
 
 To turn next to songs, the most important use of music 
 on the stage. We owe surely a great debt to music for 
 calling into being a number of lyrics by the elder dramatists 
 
Elizabethan Music: its share in the Drama 97 
 
 that have enriched English literature for all time. If their 
 drama had been bound in the shackles of neo-classical 
 " rules " there would have been no music and we should 
 have had no aongs. We can forgive their banal alarums 
 and "soundings," which we have not to endure, for the 
 delight of their lyrics. But if we can imagine ourselves 
 dramatic critics in the Elizabethan age forced to visit 
 every new play — and who would not give ten years of 
 his life if such a revisitation could be? — what could we 
 say about their songs.' We should be forced to admit' 
 that but few of them assist the unity of action, and that ' 
 there is simply no excuse for the introduction of many 
 of them. For example, Beaumont and Fletcher's Rule a 
 Wife and have a Wife has a song introduced into Act III. 
 Sc. I, without the least dramatic significance. Altea says 
 " Let me have a song.'' The stage-direction reads " Song 
 by the boy," but otherwise he does not appear in the play, 
 and there is actually no direction for his exit. 
 
 Songs introduced like this, without any reference to the 
 action of a play, but merely in deference to popular liking, 
 cannot be defended even by the most romantic romanticists. 
 And there are many such, especially in Beaumont and 
 Fletcher's plays. Serenades and masques are nearly as"^ 
 undramatic, but at least the song is introduced in a suitable 
 setting. Some of them also, like Cloten's serenade, or the 
 masque of Madmen in Webster's Duchess of Malfi,, do con- 
 tribute to the unity of action. These have dramatic meaning, 
 but it must be confessed that, as often as not, serenades and 
 masques were merely an excuse for introducing the song, j 
 
 The only legitimate reasons for introducing a song, to 
 one who wishes a play to be a drama and not a pageant, I 
 are to create an atmosphere, as for instance the songs in 
 Arden, in As You Like It; or to delineate character, ^.^. 
 
 c. 7 
 
98 Elizabethan Music: its share in the Drama 
 
 Feste, Ariel, Autolycus, Amiens ; or to create an emotional 
 effect in tragedy, e.g. Ophelia's and Desdemona's songs, or 
 to take an example from Beaumont and Fletcher, Aspatia's 
 fine song in The Maid's Tragedy. The few songs that 
 occur in romantic tragedies are almost without exception 
 skilfully introduced and tremendous in their emotional 
 effect. It was in comedy that they gave way to popular 
 prejudice, and damaged their dramas as works of artistic 
 unity by the meaningless introduction of songs. 
 
 In conclusion, let us sum up the value of music to the 
 drama of Shakespeare's age. Undoubtedly the wedding 
 of music to drama is a loss if the ideal drama is to be a 
 poem with a skilful plot which rushes to an inevitable end. 
 If the neo-classic ideal be right, music has no place in 
 drama. It enters into unfair competition with poetry for 
 the verdict of our emotions. It calls a halt in the middle 
 of the dramatic coil, it tends to diffuseness, and often 
 breaks the unity of action. But the drama of Shakespeare 
 and his fellows admitted no neo-classical restraints. It 
 demanded complete freedom and strove continually for 
 new levers to move emotion. 
 
 Music was emotional in its effect, therefore it was 
 welcomed. It brought colour and variety into the drama. 
 The very orchestration, the combinations of instruments 
 indicated in stage-directions, show love of beautiful and 
 bizarre effects. It gave also realism to the action because 
 it was always a copy of the way music was employed in 
 common life. Granted our English romantic drama, music 
 fitted naturally and inevitably into it, and can we forget its 
 influence on lyric poetry? For its influence on the songs 
 of the dramatists alone it has won the right to receive 
 greater recognition than has hitherto been granted to its 
 share in the production of an Elizabethan play. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SOME LITERARY ALLUSIONS TO MUSIC IN 
 ELIZABETHAN PLAYS 
 
 Musical imagery — Jonson's musical realism — Beaumont and Fletcher's 
 use of music — Shakespeare's realism — His praise of music — His 
 technical knowledge — Music in character delineation. 
 
 There are many allusions to instruments of music in 
 our elder poets, and an interesting list might be compiled 
 showing the uses of the various sorts. But not until the 
 Elizabethan age did music provide materials for poetic 
 imagery. The medieval poets in mentioning music piled 
 instrument on instrument. Thus in The Squyr of Lowe 
 Degre — 
 
 "There was myrth and melody 
 With harpe, getron, and sautry, 
 With rote, ribible and clokarde, 
 With- pypes, organs and bumbarde,... 
 With fydle, recorde and dowcemere, 
 With trumpette and with claryon clere.'' 
 
 And so in Piers Plowman, the poet is not content with 
 saying he cannot play music, he must emphasise the fact 
 by cataloguing the accomplishments of a wandering min- 
 strel : 
 
 "Ich can not tabre, ne trompe, ne telle faire gestes, 
 Ne fithelyn at festes, ne harpen, 
 Japen, ne jagelyn, ne gentillische pipe, 
 Nother sailen, ne sautrien, ne singe with the giteme." , 
 
 7—2 
 
lOO Some Literary Allusions to Music 
 
 We can easily imagine how one of our early poets 
 would have interpreted the following thought from Mar- 
 lowe's Tamburlaine (Act II. Sc. 4): 
 
 "The cherubins and holy seraphins 
 That sing and play before the king of kings 
 
 ; Use all their voices and their instruments 
 To entertain divine Zenocrate." 
 
 Stringed instruments provided many Elizabethans with 
 a simile. In David and Betksabe, Peele compares Absa- 
 lon's hair with the " golden wires of David's ivory lute " — 
 which instantly brings to mind Shakespeare's simile of 
 Love in Love's Labour's Lost : 
 
 " as sweet and musical 
 As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair." 
 
 It would be idle to make a list. Their allusions are 
 sometimes commonplace — 
 
 "Sound forth Bellona's silver-tuned strings" 
 
 {Mucedorus), 
 or sometimes striking — 
 
 " I'll bear me in some strain of melancholy, 
 And string myself with heavy-sounding wire, 
 Like such an instrument that speaks merry things sadly" 
 
 {Revenger's Tragedy), 
 
 but rarely beautiful. Shakespeare's superiority as a dra- 
 matic poet is plainly shown in his musical similes. He 
 sings, his fellows simply jingle. How charged with the 
 music of poetry is this passage from i Henry I VI — 
 
 "thy tongue 
 Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn'd, 
 Sung by a fair queen in a summer's bower, 
 With ravishing division, to her lute." 
 
 A new admiration for the power of music over men's 
 emotions comes into literature in Shakespeare's age — the 
 
m Elizabethan Plays loi 
 
 power which Dryden depicted in his Ode for St Cecilia's 
 Day,"\!a& spirit of that sweet sound" which Shelley panted 
 for. Shakespeare felt it constantly, as his allusions and 
 stage-directions indicate ; and Marston, whose plays contain 
 many interesting experiments in the stage use of 'music, 
 puts this admiration into the mouth of Syphax in Sophon- 
 isba : 
 
 " Hark ! Hark ! now softer melody strikes mute 
 Disquiet nature. O thou power of sound, 
 How thou dost melt me ! " 
 
 It may be interesting and profitable to compare the 
 attitude of three great Elizabethan dramatists towards 
 music by contrasting their allusions in the text of their 
 plays. 
 
 Ben Jonson is fond of mentioning music and musicians 
 in a jocular way. Morose, for instance, is the victim of 
 musical practical jokers in Jonson's Silent Woman. Cleri- 
 mont schemes to bring music, Morose's pet abomination, 
 to his wedding. No need to invite them, he thinks, " the 
 smell of the venison going through the street will invite 
 one noise' of fidlers or other" — a skit at the native 
 " German bands " of the period. At the mock-wedding, 
 Cutbeard excuses the gruff voice of the parson who is to 
 unite Morose and Epiccene in wedlock, by telling Morose 
 that he has been " sitting up late and singing catches with 
 clothworkers " — an allusion to the Calvinist exiles from 
 France and Flanders who earned their living by weaving. 
 
 ' Noise meant harmony, as in the Authorised Version of Psalm c, 
 "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord," or Milton's At a Solemn Music, 
 "That we... may rightly answer that melodious noise"; but it was also a cant 
 word for small bands of musicians who played from tavern to tavern. In 
 2 Henry IV, Act iv. Sc. 4, the first drawer bids his mate "See if thou canst 
 find out Sneak's noise." 
 
I02 Some Literary Allusioits to Music 
 
 After the wedding, Morose curses Cutbeard for marrying 
 him to a shrew. " I have married his cittern," he wails, 
 "that's common to all men." This is an allusion to the 
 citherns kept in barbers' shops for customers to wile away 
 the time until their turn came*. Barbers also practised 
 as tooth-pullers, so Truewit suggests ironically that since 
 Morose is set up as a barber by marrying a cithern, he 
 should draw his own teeth and "add them to the lute- 
 string"; or in other words string them in a chain on a 
 lute-string to hang up as a trade-sign. In the same play 
 also, Clerimont brings a beai-ward with his trumpeters to 
 the wedding festivities of Morose. The bearward bids 
 the trumpeters play whilst the guests drink : " Sound, 
 Tritons of the Thames ! " After the fourth blast, Morose, 
 who is stung to frenzy by the slightest noise, rushes out 
 of the house with a long sword, and drives the " music " 
 away. 
 
 Another musical joke occurs in his Poetaster (Act II), 
 where Jonson ridicules the vanity of singers. Hermogenes, 
 when asked to sing, refuses. His friends however continue 
 to press him to sing, and, after protesting that he cannot 
 sing, he reluctantly consents. After he has sung once, 
 the next difficulty is to stop him. He is so pleased with 
 himself that he desires nothing better than to go on with 
 his singing; but they refuse to listen to more, and excuse 
 themselves by saying they will hear his wonderful voice 
 later. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's use of stage-music is peculiar. 
 They have no musical imagery in their verses worth 
 quoting, and they do not delight in reproducing the musical 
 
 ' In Every Man in his Humour, Wellbred compares a "gull" to "a 
 barber's virginals, for every man may play upon him." See also Lyly's 
 Midas, Act ill. Sc. -i. 
 
in EHzabethan Plays 103 
 
 life of their times save in one respect — the regular associa- 
 tion of music with wantonness. " Wine and wenches you 
 shall have once again, and fiddlers," says, not Dr Martin 
 Luther, but the Friar in The Bloody Brother (Act IV. Sc. 2). 
 Musicians are "toys to prick up wenches withal V It 
 would be too sordid to go through all the passages dealing 
 with music in this sense', but it is evident that music was 
 sometimes used basely in the Elizabethan age. 
 
 Stephen Gosson accuses broken-down musicians of 
 keeping immoral houses : " If any part of musicke have 
 suffered shipwrecke and arrived by fortune at their finger 
 endes, with shewe of gentility they take up faire houses, 
 receive lusty lasses at a price for boordes, and pipe from 
 morning till evening for wood and coale. If their houses 
 bee searched, some instrument of musicke is laide in sighte 
 to dazell the eyes of every officer; all that are lodged in 
 the house (are said to) come thither as pupilles to be 
 well schoolde'." Rowland's Doctor Merrie-Man (1609) 
 deals also with a " profest courtezan," who remarks : 
 
 " I have my daintie Musicke playes 
 When I would take my rest*." 
 
 But let us get out of the mire. Beaumont and Fletcher 
 are often wilfully and intentionally sordid, but we forget it 
 in the beauty of their verse. " He was so great a man that 
 I had forgotten he had such a defect" must always be 
 posterity's attitude to a great artist. 
 
 We turn with a sense of relief to Shakespeare. Like 
 
 1 Thierry and Theodoret, Acf i. Sc. i. 
 
 s See Valentinian (Act ll. Sc. 6) ; Elder Brother (Act III. Sc. j); Knight 
 of the Burning Pestle (Act m. Sc. 4) ; A King and No King (Act v. Sc. 2). 
 
 3 School of Abuse, Shakespeare Society, 1841, p. 26. 
 
 * Cited in Stubbes' Anatomy of Abuses, New Shakspere Society, Vol. I. 
 p. 280, 
 
I04 Some Literary Allusions to Music 
 
 Jonson, he alludes playfully to the musical life of the day. 
 Aguecheek '' plays o' the viol de gamboys." Falstaff lost 
 his voice in his youth " hallelujahing and singing of 
 anthems" (2 Henry IV, Act I. Sc. 2), hence his desire to 
 sing like a Calvinist ^migri, " I would I were a weaver, I 
 could sing psalms or anything" (i Henry IV, Act II. Sc. 4). 
 Like Beaumont and Fletcher also, Shakespeare knew the 
 seamy side of musical life. "See if thou canst find out 
 Sneak's noise ; Mistress Tearsheet would fain hear some 
 music," says the Drawer in 2 Henry IV (Act IV. Sc. 4). 
 Cleopatra calls for music, the " moody food of us that trade 
 in love" {^Antony and Cleopatra, Act II. Sc. 5) ; and there is 
 surely a reference to this use of music in the Friar's warnir^ 
 to Mariana in Measure for Measure (Act IV. Sc. i): 
 
 "music oft hath such a charm 
 To make bad good, and good provoke to harm." 
 
 But Shakespeare's outlook on music was pure. He 
 valued it highly. For him, music was a synonym for 
 sweetness. A brook makes "sweet music with the ena- 
 mell'd stones." Love is "as sweet and musical as bright 
 Apollo's lute." Ophelia sucked " the honey " of Hamlet's 
 "music vows." And Shakespeare believed that sweet 
 music is a refining and civilising force "ordained to re- 
 fresh the mind of man after his studies or his usual 
 pain'." There is — 
 
 " nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage, 
 But music for the time doth change his nature. 
 The man that hath no music in himself, 
 Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds. 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. 
 The motions of his spirit are dull as night. 
 And his affections dark as Erebus." 
 
 {Merchant of Venice, Act v.) 
 
 ' Taming of the Shrew (Act iii. Sc. i). 
 
in Elizabethan Plays 105 
 
 Hence Polonius' desire that Laertes should "ply his 
 Shakespeare believed with Plato in the Music of 
 the Spheres. There are many references thereto in his 
 plays'; and the most magnificent — the hackneyed quotation 
 from Tke Merchant of Venice (Act v) — surpasses the 
 common conception of the eight spheres humming in 
 solemn diapason. 
 
 " Look how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold : ' 
 
 There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins. 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
 But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it." 
 
 For Lorenzo, safe with Jessica in the garden of Belmont 
 under the kind light of the southern stars, every star in the 
 firmament joins in a chorus to be heard only by immortal 
 souls. 
 
 There are several instances in the plays where music 
 was introduced as a medicine. Shakespeare believed the 
 words he put into Prospero's mouth, namely that a "solemn 
 air" is "the best comforter to an unsettled fancy." In 
 2 Henry fV {Act IV. Sc. 2, Folio i), where the king swoons 
 in the Jerusalem chamber, Warwick calls for " music in the 
 other room " to soothe the dying king. Three other ex- 
 amples occur in doubtful plays. In Pericles (Act III. Sc. 2) 
 Thaisa is awakened from her trance by music, and in the 
 last act Marina sings to ease the troubled mind of Pericles, 
 
 1 Hamlet {Act II. Sc. i). 
 
 ^ Cf. Antony and Cleopatra (Act v. Sc. 2), Pericles (Act v. Sc. i), 
 Twelfth Night (Act III. Sc. i), As You Like It (Act II. Sc. 7). A good 
 account of the Music of the Spheres is to be found in an article by Mr E. W. 
 Naylor entided "Music and Shakespeare" in the Musical Antiquary, 
 April, 1910. 
 
 7— S 
 
io6 Some Literary Allusions to Music 
 
 Again in Henry VIII (Act III. Sc. i), Queen Katherine 
 
 calls for one of her maidens to disperse her troubles with 
 
 a song. The boy who took the r61e of the maiden sang 
 
 the song " Orpheus with his lute " to an accompaniment on 
 
 his own lute : 
 
 " In sweet music is such art 
 Killing care and grief of heart." 
 
 There are rather similar references to the charm of 
 music in The Tempest (Act V. Sc. i), where Prospero 
 releases Alonso and his court from the magic spell, and 
 chases away with music " the ignorant fumes that mantle 
 their clearer reason." And in The Winters Tale, the statue 
 of Hermione is brought to life by the power of music 
 (Act V. Sc. 3). 
 
 This idealisation of sweet music was accompanied by 
 much technical knowledge. Shakespeare knew that viols 
 and lutes were "fretted'." He knew that lutes were hard 
 to keep in tune^ He knew that easing the pegs of a viol 
 or lute upset the relations of the strings and introduced 
 discord' He knew the fingering of a recorder^. He had 
 some knowledge of the gamuts and in King Lear (Act I. 
 Sc. 2) gives a most violent discord, the notes Fa, Sol, La, 
 Mi, for Edmund to utter as a musical pun on the theme 
 " discord." Perhaps the old rime was familiar to him : 
 
 " Mi contra Fa 
 Diabolus est in musica." 
 
 But in Sonnet 128, Shakespeare makes a curious slip. He 
 
 calls the keys of a virginal "jacks," whereas the jacks were 
 
 * "Though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me" (Hamlet, 
 Act III. Sc. i). 
 
 "^ Taming of the Shrew (Act in. Sc. i). 
 
 ' " O ! you are well tuned now, but I'll set down the pegs that make this 
 music" (Othello, Act II. Sc. i). 
 
 * Hamlet (Act in. Sc. a). 
 
 ° Taming of the Shrew (Act in. Sc. i). 
 
in Elizabethan Plays 107 
 
 quite distinct from the keys. Lyly recognised this in Midas 
 (Act III. Sc. 2), where he speaks of " the Jackes above " and 
 " the keyes beneath." Jacks were wooden slides, that held 
 the spikes of quill which struck the strings of the virginals. 
 In the mechanism they correspond to the hammers of a 
 pianoforte. 
 
 That Shakespeare had a remarkable faculty for obser- 
 vation is well seen in his numerous allusions to music in 
 the shape of puns and quibbles on musical terms, but they 
 are of interest now chiefly to the musical antiquary. Most 
 of them are explained in Mr E. W. Naylor's interesting 
 book called Shakespeare and Music. 
 
 In his knowledge of music to delineate character, 
 Shakespeare is wonderfully true. It is impossible to draw 
 hard and fast rules about lovers of music. Sometimes 
 most unlikely persons are devotees, but, as a rule, men of 
 action are not musical. Musical natures need leisure, and 
 like poets, shrink from ^the stern and saddening reality of 
 life into the refuge of an ideal world of beauty. Hence 
 Shakespeare makes his soldiers scorn music. Hotspur 
 would rather hear his brach howl than hear Lady Mortimer 
 sing\ Benedick marvels that " sheep's-guts should hale 
 souls out of men's bodies'." Mercutio scorns to be classed 
 as a minstreP, and it will be remembered that Mrs Quickly 
 says Prince Hal broke Falstaff's head for likening the 
 King " to a singing man of Windsor^" But Shakespeare 
 imagined also that men who really disliked music were 
 treacherous. 
 
 "The man that hath no music in himself, 
 Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." 
 
 1 I Henry IV (Act in. Sc. 2). ^ Miich Ado (Act 11. Sc. 3). 
 
 ' Romeo and Juliet (Act in. Sc. i). * 2 Henry /K(Act 11. Sc. i). 
 
io8 Some Literary Allusions to Music 
 
 Hence Caesar mistrusts Cassius because "he hears no 
 music'." Shakespeare deliberately pictures Brutus, the 
 other conspirator, as fond of music. Was it because he 
 loved him ? 
 
 Turning to Shakespeare's heroines we find that gentle 
 natures are usually described as being fond of music. 
 Lady Mortimer and Lady Percy sing". Bianca, as befits 
 such a dutiful girl, is musical. 
 
 "She taketh most delight 
 In music, instruments, and poetry.'' 
 
 [Taming of the Shrew, Act I. So. i.) 
 
 Juliet and Jessica are sympathetic to music. Hero, Silvia, 
 and Imogen can be wooed with a serenade, whereas mas- 
 culine types like Beatrice and Julia have no liking for 
 music. Desdemona "sings, plays and dances well'," and 
 like Ophelia, sings her swan-song in an intensely tragic 
 scene. 
 
 Only one complete music-lover is drawn by Shake- 
 speare. That is Count Orsino in Twelfth Night. His 
 musical taste is the product of his sentimental nature. He 
 recalls a strain with such sweet harmonies that its " dying 
 fall" cloys with a single repetition (Act I. Sc. i). He 
 delights in funereal songs (Act II. Sc. 4). In his feminine 
 softness and sentimentalism, Shakespeare condemns the 
 folly of utter devotion to music. Shakespeare valued 
 music as one of the civilising influences of life, but he 
 observed that the musician's humour is " fantastical." His 
 ideal was a many-sided man, not a precious stone with 
 a single facet. 
 
 It would seem that Shakespeare was not an instru- 
 mentalist (unless perhaps he had some slight skill on the 
 
 ^Julius Caesar (Act I. Sc. 2). 2 , ffe„fy /K(Act III. Sc. i). 
 
 3 Othello (Act III. Sc. 3). 
 
in Elizabethan Plays 109 
 
 recorder), but his acquaintance with the gamut, his know- 
 ledge of the names of notes, rests, bars, and such techni- 
 cal terms as division, discant, pricksong, frets, &c., argue 
 that he had more than a poet's acquaintance with the art of 
 song. So that it is probable that he bore a part in many 
 a madrigal, and his triumph as a song-writer may be due in 
 part to his feeling for musical rhythm, and his knowledge 
 of singing. His musical and dramatic gifts went hand in 
 hand. It is worth noting that all his songs are appropriate 
 to the dramatic action. Even songs like " It was a lover " 
 in .^j You Like It, and Feste's Come away, death, though 
 intended to delight the groundlings, are in sympathy with 
 principal characters in the play. 
 
 At the same time, Shakespeare felt that the theatre 
 existed for drama and not for music. Where, in the person 
 of Hamlet, he speaks as a critic of acting, he condemns the 
 groundlings because they are "for the most part... capable 
 of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise." Dumb- 
 shows were pantomime accompanied by music. Noise is 
 a common Elizabethan synonym for music, though in this 
 passage it may stand for rant. It would not be a wild 
 conclusion to believe that Shakespeare, in this passage, was 
 attacking the popular craving for music in drama. At the 
 time when it was written his company was feeling the 
 severe competition of the musical boys of Blackfriars. 
 
 Shakespeare is the supreme type of a truly cultured 
 poet, free from pedantry, but blessed with such power of 
 observation that all the arts of life are an open book to 
 him, and with such poetic gifts that the things seen be- 
 come materials for building up characters and plots. The 
 golden age of English drama was "the golden age of 
 English music," and in Shakespeare that music receives 
 its highest tribute of appreciation. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Books concerning the Elizabethan Stage 
 
 Victor Albright. The Shakesperian Stage. 
 
 William Archer. Article in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Vol. XLiv. 
 
 W. W. Greg. Henslowe's Diary. 1904. 
 
 Harold Child. The Elizabethan Theatre {Cambridge History oj 
 
 English Literature, Vol. VI. ch. x). 
 J. Payne CoUier. Annals of the Stage. 3rd edn. 1831. 
 Malone. Prolegomena to Shakespeare. Ed. Boswell. 1821. 
 
 Books concerning Music and the Stage 
 
 E. W. Naylor. Shakespeare and Music. 
 
 E. W. Naylor. Article "Music and Shakespeare" in The Musical 
 
 Antiquary, April 1910. 
 L. C. Elson. Shakespeare in Music. 
 
 J. W. Lawrence. Article in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Vol. XLiv. 
 Anon. Article " Early Elizabethan Stage Music " in The Musical 
 
 Antiquary, October 1909. 
 
 Books concerning Elizabethan Music 
 
 Thos. Morley. A Plaine and Easie Introduction &c. (1597). 
 
 Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum (1627). 
 
 Burney's History of Music. 
 
 Hawkins' History of Music. 
 
 Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time. 
 
 Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time. 2nd edn. Ed. H. E. 
 
 Wooldridge. 
 E. F. Rimbault. Preface to Purcell's Bonduca. 
 E. F. Rimbault. Preface to Parthenia. 
 E. F. Rimbault. Musical Illustrations of Percy's Reliques. 
 Oxford History of Music, Vol. 11. 
 
Bibliography 1 1 1 
 
 Henry Davey. History of English Music. 
 
 E. Walker. History of Music in England. 
 
 Wilhelm Bolk. Die Gedriickten Englischen Liederbiicher bis 1600. 
 
 Francis W. Galpin. Old English Instruments of Music. 
 
 Christopher Welch. Six Lectures on the Recorder. 
 
 Reprints of Elizabethan Music 
 
 Musical Antiquarian Society's Publications, 1841, 1842, including: 
 
 Wilbye. First set of Madrigals. 
 
 Weelkes. First set of Madrigals. 
 
 Bateson. First set of Madrigals. 
 
 Bennett Madrigals for Four Voices. 
 
 Dowland. First set of Songs. 1S97- 
 
 Gibbons. Madrigals and Motets for Five Voices. 161 2. 
 
 Gibbons. Fantasies in Three Parts. 
 
 Morley. First set of Ballets. 
 
 Parthenia. Edited by E. F. Rimbault. 
 And the following more recent publications : 
 Fitswilliam Virginal Book. Ed. by Maitland and Squire. Pub. 
 
 Breitkopf. 1899. 
 Songs from Shakespeare. Ed. by Sir J. F. Bridge. Pub. Novello. 
 The Masque of Comus. Ed. by Sir J. F. Bridge. Pub. Novello. 1908. 
 Euterpe. Ed. by C. Kennedy Scott. Pub. Breitkopf. 
 The Triumph of Oriana. Pub. Novello. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 1. Frontispiece. A photograph, by Mr Emery Walker, of part 
 of a picture in the National Portrait Gallery representing scenes from 
 the life of Sir Henry Unton. The plate shows an Elizabethan consort 
 playing music at his wedding-feast. A procession of masquers is filing 
 past the musicians, who are seated around a table with their music 
 before them. The instruments played by the consort, beginning at 
 the left, are viol, flute, lute, cithern, viol da gamba, and probably 
 pandore. The violist rests his instrument against the chest, and not, 
 as do modern fiddlers, under the chin. The gambist is depicted in an 
 impossible attitude, holding his bow by the point. Here, evidently, 
 the painter was at fault. At the top of the stair, on the right, stands 
 a drummer ; and on the left, a quartet of singers are shown. The 
 period is the last decade of the sixteenth century. 
 
 2. Plate I, p. 22 (from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, nth 
 Edition), is borrowed from an article in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Vol. 
 XLIV, entitled " The Fortune Theatre," by Mr William Archer. The 
 plate- represents a reconstruction of the first Fortune Theatre, in 
 Golding Lane, by Mr W. H. Godfrey, from the original specification 
 furnished to one Peter Streete, a builder, on January 8th, 1600, by 
 Philip Henslowe and Edward Alleyne. The indenture is quoted by 
 J. P. Collier in his Annals of the Stage (3rd edn. 1831), Vol. III. 
 p. 304. The theatre was eighty feet square outside, and fifty- 
 five feet square within. It was built of timber and plaster in the 
 Elizabethan style, on a foundation of piles and concrete. The galleries 
 were twelve and a half feet from front to rear, and were built in three 
 tiers, the lowest being twelve feet high, the middle eleven, and the 
 topmost nine feet high ; and were floored and benched with wood. 
 " Rooms " or boxes were provided, and like the staircases, they were 
 plastered and ceiled. The stage was forty-three feet wide, leaving a 
 space of six feet on each side between the platform (which jutted out 
 twenty-seven and a half feet into the yard) and the lowest gallery. 
 In front of the platform was a fence of oak pales. The pillars 
 supporting the " heavens " were square pilasters surmounted by carved 
 
Appendix 113 
 
 satyrs. The tiring-house was fitted with glazed windows. The 
 " heavens," staircases, and galleries were thatched with tiles, and the 
 first was provided with a leaden gutter to carry away the rain. The 
 old Fortune Theatre was destroyed by fire in December, 1621. 
 
 3. Plate II, p. 24. A photograph (supplied by Messrs W. H. 
 Smith & Son) of the so-called Globe Theatre "built upon the lines 
 of" the above specification at Earl's Court in 191 2. 
 
 4. Plate III, p. 26. This is a half-size drawing of a plan of the 
 Masquing House at Whitehall by Inigo Jones (Lansdowne MSS. 1171, 
 Fo. 10) in the British Museum. No scale is given. The airtist's name 
 is signed on Fo. 9. The stage with its back-cloth and " wings " appears 
 to be very like a modem stage, with the exception that steps lead down 
 from the middle of the front to an orchestra or arena in the midst of 
 the auditorium, where doubtless the dancing was performed. Between 
 this dancing-floor and the stage, on the left side, the " musick house " 
 is indicated. Its floor appears to have risen tier above tier like the 
 auditorium, an arrangement quite suitable for musicians who are 
 playing from music placed upon music-stands, witness the modern 
 arrangement of an orchestra at any hall where orchestral concerts are 
 given. There is nothing in the plan to indicate what the box at the 
 right side of the stage was used for. The box in the centre of the 
 auditorium was probably the royal box. 
 
 A writer in The Quarterly Review, Vol. cn. p. 423, describes the 
 old banqueting-hall at Whitehall, built in 1606, as having been sur- 
 rounded by two tiers of boxes, the lower supported by Tuscan, the 
 upper by Ionic pillars. Opposite the stage was the box for the king 
 and royal family. 
 
 Probably the seating arrangements for masques varied. Other 
 plans in Lansdowne MSS. 1171 show more boxes than does Fo. 10. 
 
 5. Plate IV, p. 44. A photograph of drums and trumpets in the 
 Donaldson Museum at the Royal College of Music, London. They are 
 described by the curator as (i) Trumpet (German), eighteenth century. 
 (3) Trumpet (English), dating from the reign of George III. (3) Drum 
 (Italian), seventeenth century. (4) Drum (French), eighteenth century. 
 A drum in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, 
 identical with the latter, is there described as a "Tabourin de 
 Provence." Although this plate does not represent Elizabethan 
 instruments (which indeed are exceedingly rare), the instruments 
 shown are probably very similar to the drums and trumpets used on 
 the Elizabethan stage. For permission to photograph these instruments 
 
114 Appendix 
 
 and those shown in Plates V and VI, the author is indebted to the 
 kindness of Sir George Donaldson. 
 
 6. Plate V, p. 54. A photograph of wind instruments in the 
 Donaldson Museum, (i) Cornet of ivory (described by the curator as 
 French, sixteenth century). (2) No. 162, Musette (French), eighteenth 
 century. A survival of the hautboy type. The only difference between 
 musette and hautboy or shawm is that the latter had a broader bell- 
 
 (3) No. 87, Flute d. bee (French), sixteenth century. The instrument 
 was called "Recorder" in England (ca. 1400 — 1700) and was afterwards 
 known as the English Flute, or " Flageolet " — not to be confused with 
 the French flageolet, which had four holes in front and two behind. 
 
 (4) Horn of copper (described by the curator as German, seventeenth 
 century). 
 
 7. Plate VI, p. 58. A photograph of stringed instruments in the 
 Donaldson Museum. They are labelled: (i) No. 91, 1%/ (French), 
 seventeenth century. (2) No. 7, Cither (German), eighteenth century. 
 This is the same instrument as the Elizabethan Cittern or Cithern. 
 The carved head is worthy of note. (3) Lute (no date). (4) No. 3, 
 Viol da Gamba (English) by Barak Norman (1692). (5) No. 9, 
 Archlute (Italian), sixteenth century. 
 
 8. Plate VII, p. 60. Specimen of a lute tablature from A New 
 Booke of Tablature (1596) in the British Museum. Mr W. Barclay 
 Squire gave much kindly help in pointing out this, and the subjects of 
 the two following plates, as suitable for reproduction. 
 
 9. Plate VIII, p. 68. A double page from Dowland's Za(;,4rma^ 
 (Brit. Mus. K 2 i 16), representing the tune arranged as an "Air." The 
 song-book was placed in the middle of a rectangular table. At each 
 side sat two singers, and the lutanist and the player on the viol da 
 gamba occupied seats at each end of the table. The lutanist played 
 from the tablature, the gambist from the bass part. 
 
 10. Plate IX, p. 86. One of Thomas Campion's songs with a 
 tablature for a lute accompaniment. This photograph illustrates such 
 solo songs as were accompanied on the stage by the singer himself 
 e.g. " Love, Love, nothing but Love" in Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 1 1. Plate X, p. 92. A photograph of a manuscript illustrating a 
 "broken consort" (Brit. Mus. Egerton MSS. 1554, Fo. 2), described as 
 "German, end of sixteenth century." The instruments played by 
 members of the consort, beginning at the left, are sackbut, cornet, viol, 
 lute, viol da gamba or bass, and organ. Two singers are depicted on 
 the left of the picture, and the organ blower is to be seen on the right. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Actors 20, 80 
 
 Act-time 67 
 
 Airs 6, 76, 86, 87, 89 
 
 Alarums 37, 43, 50, S'. 9*5 
 
 Antonio and Mellida 28, 34, 53, 
 
 61 note, 63, 72 
 Archlute 59 
 Armies 29, 38 
 
 Bacon, Francis, Syhja Sylvarum 55, 
 
 Balcony 24, 39, 40 
 
 Bale, John, God's Promises u 
 
 Beaomont and Fletcher's plays 28, 
 
 37. 39. 52, 56. 71. 72. 93. 97 
 — use of music 102, 103 
 Bells 44 
 
 Benedick (Much Ado) 58, 70, 107 
 Blackfriars Theatre 23, 25, 53, 56, 
 
 63. 83 
 Bugbears, The 17 
 Busino, Orazio 3 
 
 Cannon shots 49 
 
 Canticles 9, 10 
 
 Catches 85 
 
 Chanterelle 59 
 
 Child actors 19, 23 
 
 Cithern 59 and note 
 
 Ctmus 79 
 
 Consort 60 note, 64 
 
 Coriolanus 38, SS> 57 
 
 Comets 52, S3, 54 
 
 Court performances 19, 20 
 
 Dances 69, 70, 88, 95 
 
 Dekker, Thos., Guls Hom-Booke 66, 
 
 74. 93 
 De Wit, John 25 
 Doctor Faustus 44, 46 
 Drums 30, 32, 37, 38, 42 
 — and Trumpets 32, 33. 48, 96 
 Ihichess of Malfi 3, 97 
 Dumb-shows 17, 109 
 
 Earle, John 75 
 Early drama 14, 15, 22 
 Edward III 37, 43, 49 
 Entr'actes 67, 68, 69, 88 
 
 Falstaff 54, 104, 107 
 Fiddlers 75 
 Fifes 33, 38 
 Flutes 56 
 Fortune Theatre 3 
 Frets 59 note, 106 
 Funeral processions 34 
 
 Gammer Gurton's Needle 16, 67 
 Globe Theatre 25, 27, 49, 83 
 Gorboduc 17, 18, 56, 64 note 
 Gosson, Stephen 75, 103 
 Greene's plays 11, 32, 36, 40, 61, 66, 
 
 68, 78 
 Guls Hom-Booke 66, 74, 93 
 
 Hamlet 19, 35, 38, 41, 94 
 Hautboys 34, 41, 54, 55 
 Henslowe's Diary 4 
 
 — Inventory 3, 82 
 Heywood, John 12 
 Histriomastix 3 
 Horns 37, 51 
 
 Inner Chamber 24, 27, 36 
 Interludes 12, 14 
 Intermedi 17, 67 
 Italian influence 6, 16 
 
 Jocasta 19, 56, 63, 64 note 
 Jonson's plays 52, 61, 66, 80 
 
 — musical humour loi, 102 
 Jubili 10 
 
 Knight of the Burning Pestle 28, 39, 
 60, 68 
 
 LcKhrimae 69, 88 
 
 Lutes 58, 59, 60, 67, 106 
 
ii6 
 
 Index 
 
 Lute-strings 6i 
 Lyly, John 19 
 
 Madrigals 6, 13, 76, 85 
 Malcontent, The 25, 27, 53, 54, 83 
 Marches 31, 42 
 Marlowe's plays 33, 34, 40, 44, 57, 
 
 70, 72 
 
 Marston's plays 34, 53, 62, 63, 68, 
 
 Masques 35 
 
 Melodrama 72, 94 
 
 Middleton's plays 26, 61 note, 62, 
 
 71, 80 
 
 Morley, Thos., Plaine and Easte 
 
 Introduction lO, 76, 87 
 Musical criticism 5, 6, 89, 90, 94, 98 
 — similes 100 
 Musicians 20, 24, 74, 77, 78, 79, 
 
 81, 83 
 Music-rooms 24, 29, 35 
 Mystery plays 7, 8, 9, 73 
 
 Noise toi note, 109 
 Northbrooke, John 75 
 
 Orchestra 25, 29, 64, 65 
 Ordnance, A peal of 49 
 Organ 62 
 Overtures 65 
 
 Pandore 59 and note 
 Paul's Boys 19, 28 
 Pepys' Diary 29, 71, 92 
 Pipe and Tabor 58 
 Platform 24, 29, 34 
 Platts 5 
 Players 80 
 Polyphonic music 5 
 Prynne's Histriomastix 3 
 
 Queen Elizabeth's household music 
 20 
 
 Ralph Roister Bolster 15 
 Recorders 56, 106 
 Red Bull Theatre 25 note, 28 
 Renaissance drama 16, 17 
 
 Rose Theatre 3, 4, 43 note, 83 
 
 Sackbuts 44 
 
 Selimus 36, 37 
 
 Sennet 45, 47, 96 
 
 Shakespeare and music 104, 105, 
 
 106, 107, 108 
 Shakespeare's plays 30, 31, 32, 34, 
 
 35. 38. 4'. 46. 52. 55. 57. 58. 61, 
 
 70, 71, 72, 84, 93, 94 
 Singers 67, 84 
 Singing boys 19 
 Songs 13, 36, 67, 79 note, 85, 86,. 
 
 87. 90. 93. 97 
 Sophontsba 27, 34, 36, 41, 53, 54, 56, 
 
 62, 64 note, 68, loi 
 Spanish Tragedy, The 25, 50 
 Stage, Elizabethan 23, 24 
 Still-pipes 63 
 Supernatural music 71 
 Swan Theatre 25, 26 
 Sylva Sylvarum 55, 56 
 
 Tablature 60 and note, 88 
 
 Tabor and Pipe 58 
 
 Tabourines 42 
 
 Tamburlaine 33, 34, 40 
 
 Tancred and Gismunda 18, 63, 64 
 
 note 
 Taverns 78 
 Theatres 22, 23, 25 
 Timbrels 4, 43 note 
 Tiring-house 24, 27 
 Tournaments go, 51 
 Trumpets 26, 33, 37, 40, 44, 49, 65 
 — and Drums 32, 33, 48, 96 
 Tucket 47, 96 
 
 Vagrancy Laws 76 
 Viols 28, 58, 59, 60, 67 
 Virginals 2O1 90 
 
 Waits 28, 34 
 
 Whitefriars Theatre 28 
 
 Whitehall 26 
 
 WUl Summer's Last Will 52, 56, 
 
 62 note 
 "Within" 35, 36, 40, 49 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS