_Aut._ _My clown_ (who wants but something to be a
reasonable man) grew so in love with the wenches' _song_,
that he would not stir his pettitoes, _till he had both tune
and words_.
The tabor and pipe, in the servant's first speech, were common popular
instruments. The tabor, of course, was a small drum, which was used as
accompaniment to the pipe, a small whistle with three holes, but with
a compass of 18 notes. (See Frontispiece.) In its curiously
disproportionate compass, it may be compared to the modern 'Picco'
pipe of the music shops. Mersennus (middle of 17th century) mentions
an Englishman, John Price, who was an accomplished player. It is
played on by Ariel, see a subsequent quotation from _The Tempest_ III,
ii, 126 and 152. Also _Much Ado_ II, iii, 13; and the tabor alone, in
_Twelfth Night_ III, i.
The Bagpipe[17] was very similar to the instruments of that name which
still exist. At the present moment there are four kinds in
use--Highland Scotch, Lowland Scotch, Northumbrian, and Irish. The
last has bellows instead of a 'bag,' but in other ways they are very
much alike. They all have 'drones,' which sound a particular note or
notes continually, while the tune is played on the 'chanter.'
Shakespeare himself tells us of another variety--viz., the
Lincolnshire bagpipe, in _Hen. 4. A._ I, ii, 76, where Falstaff
compares his low spirits to the melancholy 'drone of a Lincolnshire
bagpipe.'[18]
[Footnote 17: The Bagpipe appears on a coin of Nero. Also there is a
figure of an _angel_ playing it, in a crosier given by William of
Wykeham to New Coll., Oxon., in 1403.]
[Footnote 18: What is a 'woollen bagpipe'? See _Merchant_ IV, i, 55.]
The servant's second speech refers to the character of the words of
the popular ballads, which were too often coarse and even indecent.
'Love-songs' are quite a large class, frequently referred to. For
instance, _Two Gent._ II, i, 15.
_Val._ Why, how know you that I am in love?
_Speed._ Marry by these special marks.
First, you have learn'd ...
_To relish a love song_, like a robin-redbreast;
_Rom._ II, iv, 15.
_Mercutio._ 'Alas, poor Romeo! he is already dead;
... run thorough the ear _with a love-song_.'
besides the passage from _Twelfth Nt._ II, iii, quoted further on,
where Feste offers Sir Toby and Sir Andrew their choice between 'a
love-song, or a song of good life.'
The 'delicate burdens,' 'dildos and fadings,' 'jump her and thump
her,' are to be found in examples of the period. A Round of Matt.
White, 'The Courtier scorns the country clowns' (date about 1600) has
for its third and last line 'With a fading, fading, fading, fading,'
etc. 'Whoop, do me no harm' has already been spoken of.
In l. 214 of the _Winter's Tale_ passage, Perdita again takes
precaution against Autolycus using 'scurrilous words.'
From l. 285 to l. 327, the passage refers to a very interesting
department of 16th century singing--viz., the habit of performing
songs in three vocal parts. The singers were called Threeman-songmen,
and the songs themselves 'Threeman songs,' or 'Freemen's Songs.'
[_Freemen_ is simply a corruption of _Threemen_. Mr Aldis Wright tells
me it is analogous to _Thills_ or _Fills_, for the shafts of a waggon.
Rimbault, in the preface to 'Rounds, Canons, and Catches,' is highly
indignant with Ritson's 'inconceivably strange notion' that Freemen is
only a form of Threemen. Rimbault's reason was that 'Deuteromelia'
(1609) does contain Freemen's Songs in _four_ parts. Mr Aldis Wright
also gives me the expression '_six_-men's song,' from Percy's
Reliques, also these definitions, which will all go to settle the
matter: Florio, Italian Dictionary, 1611; _Strambotti_, country
gigges, rounds, catches, virelaies or _threemen's songs_; _Cantarini_,
such as sing _threemen's songs_; _Berlingozzo_.... Also a drunken or
_threemen's song_.
Cotgrave, French Dict. 1611; Virelay. m. A virelay, round, _free_mans
song].
Giraldus Cambrensis says that singing in parts was indigenous to the
parts beyond the Humber, and on the borders of Yorkshire. Threeman
singing may still be heard (not as an exotic), in Wales and the West
of England. This last is referred to in the above passage, 'There's
scarce a maid westward but she sings it'--viz., the song in three
parts.
Shakespeare is strictly historical in making a pedlar, and two country
lasses, capable of 'bearing a part' in a composition of this sort.
The company of 'men of hair,' calling themselves 'Saltiers,' may
derive their name from the dance, 'Saltarello.' Gallimaufry is
'Galimathias,' a muddle, or hotch potch. (See _Merry Wives_ II, i,
115).
The threemansong men are more particularly described in _Winter's
Tale_ IV, ii, 41.
_Clown._ She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the
_shearers; three-man song-men all, and very good ones_, but
they are _most of them means and bases_; but _one Puritan_
amongst them, and he _sings psalms to hornpipes_.
These musical harvesters square closely with the account given in the
Introduction, of music amongst the lower classes. Here were 24 good
glee singers, with the single defect that their tenors were very weak,
'most of them means [altos] and basses.' The Puritan was most
accommodating, and his singing the words of psalms to the tune of the
hornpipe would tend to shew that the Old Adam was not all put away as
yet. His compromise with his conscience reminds one of the old stories
(all too true) of church singers in the 15th and 16th centuries, who
would sing the by no means respectable words of popular comic ditties
to the solemn strains of the mass 'l'homme armé,' or whatever
well-known melody the music happened to be constructed on.
An example of a threemansong will be found in the Appendix, 'We be
soldiers three.'
Shakespeare also alludes to _sacred_ part-music. Falstaff, by his own
account, was a notable singer of Anthems, in which holy service he had
lost his voice; he was familiar with members of the celebrated choir
of St George's Chapel at Windsor; and was not above practising the
metrical Psalmody in his sadder moments.
_H. 4. B._ I, ii, 182.
_Chief Justice._ Is not your _voice broken_, your wind
short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part
about you blasted with antiquity, and will you yet call
yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!
_Falstaff._ My lord.... For my _voice_, I have _lost it
with_ hollaing, and _singing of anthems_.
_H. 4. B._ II, i, 88.
_Hostess._ Thou didst swear to me ... upon Wednesday in
Wheeson week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his
father to a _singing-man of Windsor_.
_Hen. 4. A._ II, iv, 137. Falstaff laments the degeneracy of the
times.
_Fal._ There live not three good men unhanged in England,
and one of them is fat, and grows old; God help the while! a
bad world, I say. _I would I were a weaver; I could sing
psalms or anything._
This last sentence connects curiously with Sir John Oldcastle, the
leader of the Lollards, who were noted for their psalm singing, which
indeed gave them the name. These Flemish Protestants, who had fled
from the persecutions in their own country, were mostly _woollen_
manufacturers, and were distinguished for their love of Psalmody,
throughout the western counties, where they settled. Hence the
allusion to 'weavers' and 'Psalms.' But according to the Epilogue of
_Hen. 4. B._, 'Oldcastle died a martyr, and _this is not the man_.'