ON SEEING AN ELIZABETHAN PLAY with THE KNIGHT OF THE BURN ING PESTLE EXJIBKG UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA^ JOHN HENRY NASH LIBRARY <> SAN FRANCISCO <$> PRESENTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ROBERT GORDON SPROUL, PRESIDENT. * BY > MR.ANDMRS.MILTON S.RAY" CECILY, VIRGINIA ANDROSALYN RAY AND THE RAY OIL BURNER COMPANY SAN FRANCISCO NEW YORK THE TRVE H1STORIE of the, KNYGHT OF THJE BvRNiNG PESTLE fvll ofMirtKe &,DeligKt GENT. AND Firft pleaed.fc.bout iKeYear lable Accovnt of YOUNG GALLANT SHOVLD BEHAVE APbAY-HousE reprinted from Vhe C vJJs Horn e-J3 oo by T. DECKAR. Printed lor P^ulElderAnd M Franc* 'f co. 1903 The Tomoye Press San Francisco, Cal. CONTENTS ON SEEING AN ELIZABETHAN PLAY - 5 The Theatre - - 7 The Knight of the Burning Pestle - 1 5 The Songs and Music - 21 SONGS --- ...37 Jolly Red Nose - 38 Walsingham - "39 Tell Me, Dearest ... - 40 Go from my Window - 41 Dirge 42 Fortune my Foe - ~ 43 Hey, ho 44 THE GULL'S HORN-BOOK : Reprint of Chapter VI, on How a Gallant should behave himself in a Play-house ----- 47 ILLUSTRATIONS : Francis Beaumont - Frontis The Bankside, showing Swan Theatre (from an old print) - - 17 Interior of Swan Theatre, from Sketch of De Witt, 1596 46 ON SEEING AN ELIZABETHAN PLAY. NY drama of Shakspere's is at once two quite dif- ferent things: the record of a play once performed on an Elizabethan stage, and a piece of dramatic (usually also poetic) lit- erature. This twofold character requires a twofold standard of ap- preciation. It is no doubt just that the ordinary reader should look at a Shaksperean play primarily as a permanent piece of liter- ature, whose value is in no way dependent upon the conditions of its original presenta- tion. On the other hand, in order really to understand it as a drama one must consider it as written to be spoken and aded rather On Seeing an Elizabethan Play than read ; and in order to understand its connection with the Elizabethan age, one must view it as produced in the Elizabethan theatre. This means that, once in a while at least, we should put aside our conception of these dramas as existing on the printed page; and more, put aside our conception of them as presented with all the pomp and circumstance of a modern theatre, staged and costumed by Sir Henry Irving or Mr. Beerbohm Tree; trying to see in place of all this the compara- tively barren and primitive stage of Eliza- bethan days, with its boy acftors, its garish daylight, its intruding spectators, its simple but merry music, its magnificence wholly centered in the words of its plays. It is the objeCt of this little book, and of the presen- tation of the early play with which it is associated, to help the modern reader to this mental vision of the Elizabethan theatre. The Knight of the Burning Pestle The Theatre. JlHE Elizabethan theatres were located outside the limits of the city corpor- ation of London, being viewed with some suspi- cion as places of question- able repute like the gar- dens for bear-baiting, bull-baiting and the like ; and sports of this kind sometimes shared the same building with the plays. The early playhouses, such as the Theatre and the Curtain, were "in the fields " beyond the city limits; the later and more notable ones, such as the Globe and the Swan, were on the Bankside, across the Thames, and patrons came to the plays very largely in boats and barges. Dekker, in the chapter of the Gull's Horn-book reprinted in this book, describes the proper condud of a young gentleman in hiring his boatman for a trip across to a play. The playhouse was a high structure, usu- ally circular or more properly speaking octagonal in shape, with the central portion On Seeing an Elizabethan Play open to the sky. Outside one saw only the few high windows, and the roof of the stage building lifting itself up from the center, with a flag flying over it when a play was on the boards. Inside there was a great central space or pit, open to the sky and without seats, where stood the "groundlings" who paid only the admittance fee sometifnes as low as twopence or perhaps even a penny. Those who could afford better places, six- penny or twelve-penny "rooms/' were seated in the orchestra or circular gallery running around the pit and just above the level of the stage; still others in the covered balconies above it. In case of rain these spectators, as well as the players, had some shelter; the groundlings could only "let it rain." Such general fa<5ts as these have been gradually collected from scattered allusions in the dramas of the age of Shakspere, for no one in those days had the forethought to sit down and write out for us a connected description of a contemporary theatre. But in 1596 or thereabouts a Dutch scholar, named Johannes deWitt, visited London and made a rough drawing of the interior of the Swan Theatre, the finest of that day. A copy of this sketch was found in Utrecht by 8 The Knight of the Burning Pestle Dr. Karl Gaedertz, some fifteen years ago, and gave the modern world its first real glimpse into the interior of an Elizabethan theatre. Meantime, a number of pidtures of the theatres from the outside have been preserved in sketches of the Bankside region in the period. We are fortunately able to reproduce here the views of both the exterior and the interior of the Swan. This play- house (really sumptuous for its day) was still in use in 1610, and although there is some probability that The Knight of the Burning Pestle was first produced in the neighboring theatre of Whitefriars, we have no reason to suppose that its original surroundings were markedly different from those indicated in these drawings. The stage built for the present rendering of the Knight is an attempt to reproduce as accurately as possible the conditions of the Elizabethan playhouse. It shows the stage structure up to the very eaves of the roof, which must be conceived of as sloping away into the open sky. The stage itself is ap- proximately square, and extends into the pit so that the groundlings can look over the sides of it as well as the front. The rear portion is covered by a rpof supported at On Seeing an Elizabethan Play the front by two carved pillars ; so that the whole stage is in a sense divided into two parts, and these may be separated by a cur- tain when the scene requires it. There are rushes on the floor, and arras hangings at either 'side, which on occasion may supple- ment the two doors ordinarily used for all entrances and exits. Behind this arras, it will be remembered, Polonius was killed by Hamlet; and in the present play Jasper's ghost appears from the same hiding. Over the stage doors is the balcony where Juliet was doubtless wooed by night, and where now Merrythought will appear to sing his famous song, "Go from my window." On this balcony, too, when it is not required for adion, players at leisure, or restless young gentlemen from the audience, may lounge and get a view of - the stage from the rear. Normally, the background of the stage represents the exterior of a house ; but by dropping a tapestry hanging over the balcony it is easily changed to an interior scene, and the doors are then to be conceived of as leading outward rather than inward. Back of these doors is the " tiring-house " and property-room, but this of course is hidden from the ordinary spectator. IO The Knight of the Burning Pestle The scenery is slight enough, judged by modern standards. The name of the play hangs overhead, that no one may mistake it; and when convenient the place is also indicated by a sign. The diredions which have come down to us with one old play ( of 1 603 ) go so far as to say that if any of the properties "will not serve the turne by reason of condirse of the People on the Stage, Then you may omitt the sayd Prop- erties which be outward and supplye their Places with their' Nuncupations onely in Text Letters." Yet on the other hand some theatrical managers must have exhibited no little enterprise in presenting interesting "properties/' and the court plays under the diredion of the Master of the Revels were often brilliantly staged. The accounts of Philip Henslowe, the most notable of the managers, include such properties as these : " i rocke, i cage, i tombe," "ii stepells and i chyme of belles," "i baye tree," "ii mose banckes, and snake," "i chayne of dragons," "i great horse with his leages," "i black dogge." And in the Induction to Jonson's Cynthia s Revels one of the boys exclaims: "The boy takes me for a piece of perspective or some silk curtain, come to hang the stage here ! " 1 1 On Seeing an Elizabethan Play We may assume, then, that not all the play- house stages looked as bare as that of the Swan in de Witt's drawing. Yet the num- erous changes of scene in a single aft of an Elizabethan play are sufficient to show that there could be no elaborate scene-shifting, and it is certain that scenes of battle and the like were represented only in a symbolical fashion. Shakspere, in the famous Prologue to Henry V., laments the limitations of his theatre : "Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France ? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt ? O pardon ! since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million ; And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work. . . Piece out our. imperfections with your thoughts ; Into a thousand parts divide one man, And make imaginary puissance ; Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth ; For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings." It is a fair question, indeed, whether the want of adequate scenery and properties was not more of a blessing than otherwise. The imagination was trained to its highest reaches when there was little realism for the eye; 12 The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Mr. Collier goes so far as to say that " the introduction of scenery gives the date to the comrhencement of the decline of our dramatic poetry/' At the very edge of the stage we have a glimpse of one of the "lords' rooms," or twelve-penny boxes, where the aristocrats disport themselves in what Dekker calls u the suburbs of the stage." But the young gal- lants of the period, not content with that, occupy the stage itself. For an extra six- pence they are admitted through the tiring- house, and the boys will then rent them stools for sitting in full view of the audience. Here the grocer and his wife, in the present play, soon join them, although they had originally intended to be content among the groundlings. The literature of the age of Shakspere is full of allusions to these young gallants on the stage, who seem often to have engrossed hardly less attention than the play- ers. But the classic account of them, and of their conduft, is found in Dekker's Gull's Horn-book y published probably within a year of the first presentation of The Knight of the Burning Pestle; the chapter dealing with the playhouse is reproduced in full below. Over the adtors' tiring-house, and above On Seeing an Elizabethan Play and beyond the roof of the stage, is the ele- vated lodge or tower which can also be seen from outside the theatre. Here some of the drop-scenes appear to have been kept; from here, in one play of 1592, Venus was per- haps "let down from the top of the stage"; and in the door or window of this lodge appears the trumpeter who announces the time for the play to begin. It is three o'clock of the afternoon. The pit is already full of spectators, talking and cracking nuts together, wondering it may be why the sign over the stage reads "The London Merchant" when the playbills all about town announced "The Knight of the Burn- ing Pestle." Boatloads of later comers are hurrying over the Thames, and they can not only hear the trumpet from the tower but perhaps see the flag hanging from it. When it has sounded twice you may see the young gallants and their pages coming on the stage, lighting their tobacco and settling themselves to show their cloaks to the best advantage, while the aristocrats in the boxes do the same. There is a murmur of expectation; then a third blast from the tower ; and the Prologue boy, in cloak and wreath, comes on to introduce the play. The Knight of the Burning Pestle The Knight of the Burning Pestle. HIS comedy is either the joint work of Beaumont and Fletcher,under whose names it was published, or (more probably) the work of Beaumont alone; and it dates from the period when these two young dramatists were entering upon their career as the successors of Shakspere on the popular London stage. Indeed, it may have been first produced in the same year with Shaks- pere's Tempest, that is, about 1610. Again we hear of it in 1635, as " a & e d by Her Majesty's Servants at the Private House in Drury Lane"; and yet again thirty years later, in the gay days of the Restoration, with a leading part taken by Nell Gwynn, the fav- orite of Charles II. The first edition of the play was printed in 1613, and a copy of this quarto can be seen in the Public Library of Boston. In the stru&ure of the comedy the most striking feature is that it opens with an In- On Seeing an Elizabethan Play duftion, or introduction, presenting a scene in the theatre immediately preceding the opening of the play. This was a familiar device on the Elizabethan stage, when the dramatist wished to include some comment on his play. Thus Jonson, in Every Man out of bis Humour , introduces three gentle- men critics in an Indudtion, who discuss the play before the last sounding of the trumpet; and in Cynthia s Revels he introduces some of the boy-a&ors, who reveal the plot. In a sense, then, the Induction provides a play within a play, though in a different manner from that of Hamlet or Cyrano de Bergerac. In The Knight of the Burning Pestle the use of the Induction is quite unique in the per- iod. Here the spectators who comment on the play are not critics representing the plans or opinions of the author, but vulgar citizens of London, representing the misplaced and unintelligent appreciation which must often have tried the soul of the playwright. They not only discuss the progress of the play in delightfully nai've burlesque, but insist on the altering of the plot in the interest of their part of the audience. The cleverness with which this device is carried out makes The Knight of the Burning Pestle if we ex- 16 td C/3 o 1 H On Seeing an Elizabethan Play cept the "Pyramus and Thisbe" scenes of the Midsummer Night's Dream the king of the English burlesque drama (Bucking- ham's Rehearsal, Fielding's Tom Thumb, Sheridan's Critic, and Canning's Rovers per- haps contending for next place). Not-only does its Induction bring out with unusual clearness the stage conditions of the period, but its comic effefts are unusually clear and effective without annotation for a modern audience.* In three centuries the salt of its wit has not lost its savor. The strufture of the dramk is clear but complex. The players are about to present a romantic comedy called " The London Merchant," giving the story of the trials and triumphs of an apprentice in love with his master's daughter. But a grocer in the audi- ence suspe6ts from the title that the play is to satirize the London citizens, and insists that it shall be altered to the "honor and glory of all grocers." His wife joins him, and proposes that their apprentice Ralph shall take the part of the grocer-hero. Ralph is therefore interposed as an aftor, and the name of the play is changed to "The Knight of the Burning Pestle." The original plot is carried on as far as practicable, but an inter- 18 The Knight of the Burning Pestle woven plot is extemporized by the players, in which Ralph appears as a kind of Don Quixote or benevolent knight-errant, his for- tunes crossing with those of the persons in the romance of the London merchant. So the two sorts of scenes move on inconsist- ently but not irreconcilably, interrupted by occasional demands from the grocer and his wife that the apprentice-ador shall play a more conspicuous part. The introduction of a May-day scene of the period, which though wholly irrelevant we should be sorry to miss, we owe entirely to their inter- vention. But such is the skill of the dram- atist that this intervening burlesque element is not allowed to affed: the interest of the story of the lovers, which rises rapidly to a climax in the "coffin scene" of the last a6t. Beaumont not only pokes fun at his London audience, but also at his fellow dramatists who had catered to its desire for the sensational. Thus a number of passages in the play are dire<5t allusions to Heywood's Four Prentices of London, a favorite of just this period in which some London appren- tices were glorified in impossible adventures. .The satire even glances upon the master and glory of the romantic drama, for Ralph's 19 On Seeing an Elizabethan Play recitation in the Induction, given to show his ability in "a huffing part/' is substantially taken from a ranting speech of Hotspur's, in the First Part of Shakspere's Henry IV* We may be said, then, to have in The Knight of the Burning Pestle three plays in one: a typical Elizabethan romance of ad- venture in London middle-class life, a bur- lesque of the exaggerated romance popular in the period, and a satire on the limited capacity and the unreasonable demands of the theatre-going public. The Knight of the Burning Pestle The Songs and Music. WHETHER from the standpoint of a mere au- ditor or that of an anti- quarian, the songs in The Knight of the Burning Pestle constitute one of the most attractive ele- ments in the play. Those of Merrythought alone, as Professor Ward observes, form a veritable " Bacchana- lian anthology/' By no means all the songs are original, possibly none of them; and the wide range of their character and sources illustrates interestingly the place of Eliza- bethan stage-songs in general. It was a time overflowing with lyrical spontaneity, and the production of songs both words and music was at a level which England has not seen before or since. As Chappell says in his Old English Popular Music: "Tinkers sang catches ; milkmaids sang ballads ; carters whistled ; each trade, and even the beggars, had their special songs; the base-viol hung in the drawing- 21 On Seeing an Elizabethan Play room for the amusement of waiting visitors ; and the lute, cittern, and virginals, for the amusement of waiting customers, were the necessary furniture of the barber's shop. They had music at dinner; music at supper; music at weddings ; music at funerals ; music at night; music at dawn; music at work; and music at play." Naturally the best of the popular songs would be in demand for use on the stage, and would be revised and adapted to various forms. The question of authorship was very frequently neglefted, and the result is that we find the same songs in different forms attributed to different writers, often with no possibility of clearing up the fafts. Shakspere seems to have written for the particular occasion most of the songs in his plays, and to have made them as we should have expected the best of their' kind, but others were no doubt inserted by him or his company as the taste of the audi- ence or the repertoire of the player might suggest. Thus the song of "willow" which Desdemona sings in Act IV of Othello, "The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree," was doubtless older than the play, and has 22 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle come down in various forms. The music for it has been found in a manuscript of about 1600. It is very likely that Autoly- cus's song in the Winter s Tale (Ad IV, Scene 3 ), "Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way," was also already familiar; some additional stanzas of it are found in a seventeenth-cen- tury song-book. The well-known song of the clown at the close of Twelfth Night , with the burden "hey, ho, the wind and the rain/' is held by some critics to have been a "jig" song introduced by the clown for the benefit of the groundlings in the theatre, while others see in it genuine Shaksperean humor and philpsophy. But the treasures of song in these dramas, such as " It was a lover and his lass," " Under the greenwood tree/' " Blow, blow, thou winter wind/' and "Come unto these yellow sands," are with- out doubt the work of the master himself, though many of them speedily became popu- lar ditties when once made known. In the present play the character of Mer- rythought of itself suggests that his songs are not new ones; he remembers scraps of all that he has heard sung, and they come 2 3 On Seeing an Elizabethan Play tumbling out in the midst of his conversa- tion, the words adapting themselves some- times most admirably to the immediate situ- ation. In some cases these are mere frag- ments, evidently of popular ballads, and we know nothing of their context; in other cases he repeats well-known songs of the' day. In Act II, Scene 8, he sings a bit of the old ballad of Fair Margaret and Sweet William, found in Percy's Reliques of An- cient Poetry and other ballad collections : " When it was grown to dark midnight, And all were fast asleep, In came Margaret's grimly ghost, And stood at William's feet." In like manner the fragment in the same scene, " He set her on a milk-white steed, And himself upon a grey ; He never turned his face again, But he bore her quite away ;" is from the ballad of the Douglas Tragedy. A little later Merrythought sings a bit from the old Legend of Sir Guy : " Was never man for lady's sake Tormented as I poor Sir Guy, For Lucy's sake, that lady bright, As ever men beheld with eye ; " 24 The Knight of the Burning Pestle sung with a merry burden of "down, down, de deny down." In the last Act (V, Sc. 3 ) appears still another ballad, Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard: *< And some they whistled, and some they sung, And some did loudly say, Ever as the Lord Barnet's horn blew, Away, Musgrave, away ! ' ' These ballads are all easily identified, but there are other fragments which Merry- thought could perhaps have completed but of which even the tireless energy of the late Professor Child could find nothing more (for his monumental ballad collection) than are preserved in this play. Such are the verses in A<5t II, Scene 8 : " She cares not for her daddy, nor She cares not for her mammy, For she is, she is, she is, she is My lord of Lowgave's lassy;" and those in the closing scene : " With that came out his paramour; She was as white as the lily flower : Hey, troul, troly, loly! With that came out her own dear knight ; He was as true as ever did fight : Hey, troul, troly, loly!" 25 On Seeing an Elizabethan Play Besides the old ballads, Merrythought well knew the more sophisticated songs of the day. In Ad II, Scene 8, he sings a scrap of the song of Three Merry Men, which Sir Toby alludes to, in very similar mood, in the famous bacchanalian scene in Twelfth Night. In the closing scene, again, he uses a bit from one of Morley's song- books (published 1600): " Sing we, and chant it, Whilst love doth grant it." In other cases we know nothing of the song save what appears in this play. Thus in Ad: II, Scene 5, Merrythought sings a character- istic ditty which has every appearance of being a scrap of a popular song of the day: " If you will sing, and dance, and laugh, And hollow, and laugh again, And then cry, 'there, boys, there!' why, then, One, two, three, and four, We shall be merry within this hour." The same is true of the fragments like "You are no love for me, Margaret/' "You shall go no more a-maying," and "Thou wast a bonny boy/' In Ad II, Scene 8, Merrythought sings 26 The Knight of the Burning Pestle a song which may perhaps be original to this play: " 'Tis mirth that fills the veins with blood, More than wine, or sleep, or food; Let each man keep his heart at ease, No man dies of that disease. He that would his body keep From diseases, must not weep. But whoever laughs and sings, Never he his body brings Into fevers, gouts, or rheums, Or lingeringly his lungs consumes ; But contented lives for aye; The more he laughs the more he may." It is possible that this is a part of the same song as that with which the play closes, "Better Music ne'er was Known "; at any rate it can be sung to the same tune. The most interesting of the songs of Merry- thought and his friends will be found below in connection with the music reproduced from that used in this presentation. There is yet one song introduced in the last scene, of a different character from any of the others. This is the moral ballad be- ginning "It was a lady's daughter," which the boy Michael has learned and sings in behalf of his mother, when Merrythought exads a song from her before he will open 27 On Seeing an Elizabethan Play the door. The text of the play gives only the first line, but the whole ballad has been preserved, and is said to have been sung to the tune "O man in desperation/' Obvi- ously Michael had not studied in his father's school of singing. The first stanza of the song is this: ff It was a lady's daughter, Of Paris properly, Her mother her commanded To mass that she should hie : O pardon me, dear mother, Her daughter dear did say, Unto that filthy idol I never can obey." We have seen that the music of the age of Shakspere was as abundant as the lyrics, though not quite so much to our taste. Fortunately a considerable amount of it has been preserved to our time. A good deal of this is in manuscripts prepared for players on the lute and virginals, and a good deal in published volumes. Thus in 1 609 appeared Ravenscroft's "Pammelia. Musick's Mis- cellanie or Mixed Varietie of Pleasant Roun- delay es, and Delightful Catches, of 3, 4, 5, 6> 7> 8, 9, 10 Parts in one," followed in the next year by his " Deuteromelia, or the 28 The Knight of the Burning Pestle Second Part of Musick's Melodic." In 1610 also appeared W. Corkine's First Book of Ayres for the lute. The Knight of the Burning Pestle, therefore, was written at a time when the interest in song and music was at its height, and, we may add, when the quality of English lyrical music was also not far from its best. There is no space here for the discussion of the characteristics of this music, which it is hoped may be not unfairly represented in that reproduced from the songs in the present play. The preva- lence of the minor keys will strike the atten- tion of the most casual observer; one might almost say that the relative prominence of the major and minor scales, as compared with our own time, was reversed. But this does not prevent a haunting gaiety which causes many of the songs to linger in the ear with friendly persistence. Modern students of this early music are chiefly indebted to the great collection of Chappell, Old English Popular Music , 1859, re-edited by Mr. Ellis Wooldridge in 1893. Here the best of the Elizabethan songs are reproduced for us, and nearly all the music used in this presentation of The Knight of the Burning Pestle is found in this collection. The 29 On Seeing an Elizabethan Play majority of the songs of the age of Shaks- pere have come down to us in one part only, or with harmony not adapted to modern in- struments; but Mr. Wooldridge has sup- plied accompaniments, in such cases, "in which both the restrictions observed and the allowances taken are according to the prac- tice of English musicians of the latter half of the sixteenth century/' So far as is possi- ble, then, under the changed conditions, we may have the satisfaction of hearing again the very music which charmed the audiences at the Swan and the Globe. Instrumental music also played some part in the presentation of Elizabethan dramas, and in The Knight of the Burning Pestle there is considerable testimony to its use. The orchestra was no doubt often a slight affair, but in a play of 1606 we have directions calling for "cornets and organs'* after one aCt, "organs, viols, and voices" after an- other, and "a -base lute and a treble viol" after a third. Sometimes the music between the ads is indicated by the rubric: "Here they knockt up the Consort." In the pres-^ ent play we hear only of fiddlers, though the grocer expresses a desire for shawms. " Lachrymae," the tune desired by the 3 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle grocer's wife at the end of the second ad, was by the Elizabethan composer Dowland, and is found in the virginal book of Queen Elizabeth herself. Another favorite of the period was "Green Sleeves/' the tune to which Falstaff said it might thunder when the sky rained potatoes. It is one of those reproduced by the players between the ads of the present performance of The Knight of the Burning Pestle. It remains only to add a few notes on the songs of which the music is reproduced in the following pages. The song with which Merrythought first appears, in Act I, Scene 4 ("Nose, nose, jolly red nose"), was a merry refrain which may have been used with various songs. In the Deuteromelia of 1609, among the "Songs to three voices/' it appears as the conclusion to this ditty: " Of all the Birds that ever I see, The Owle is the fayrest in her degree: For all the day long she sits in a tree, And when the night comes away flies she." The fragment from the ballad of Walsing- ham, sung by Merrythought in Ad II, Scene 8, is of no little interest. There were 3 1 On Seeing an Elizabethan Play various versions of the ballad, as commonly, and it is found in the old Pepsyian collection and in Percy's Rcliques of Ancient Poetry. "The tune/' says Chappell, "is frequently mentioned by writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and from several of these references we find that it was common- ly taught to singing birds/' It was pub- lished at least as early as 1596, in Barley's New Book of ^TabliturC) and is also found in various manuscript music-books prepared for the lute or virginals. The closing measures are of some particular interest to musicians, owing to the "sudden appearance of the major third in a minor scale." Says Mr. Wooldridge: "The penultimate bar of the melody is not written otherwise than as I have given it in any old version that I have seen," The song of Jasper and Luce in the wood (Ad: III, Scene i ) is perhaps the prettiest lyric in the play, and we have no reason to doubt its originality. Beaumont and Fletcher (or Fletcher alone) used it again in a later comedy, The Captain, with an addi- tional but inferior stanza. The tune to which it was sung is not known; it is here set to the music of a song called " What if a The Knight of the Burning Pestle Day?" published as early as 1603, and long a favorite. Of the songs of Merrythought there is no doubt that "Go from my window" (Ad: III, Scene 5) bears the palm. It is a par- ticular satisfaction to be able to reproduce the tune to which this was undoubtedly sung in 1610. The song was a popular one of : the time, and appears in various versiori*^ in other plays; for example, in Fletcher's Earner Tamed and Middleton's Blurt Master Con- stable. Whether the second stanza ("Be- gone, my juggy, my puggy") was origi- nally a part of the same ditty is uncertain; it reappears in Heywood's Rape of Lu- crece y in the form "Begone, my Willie, my Billie." The melody was published in Barley's New Book of Tabtiture^ 1596, and Robinson's Scboole of Mustek, 1603, and is also found in various music manu- scripts. The dirge sung by Luce over her lover's coffin (Ad IV, Scene 4) may be an original lyric, although certain parts of it were con- ventional elements of such songs of lamen- tation. Compare, for example, Merry- thought's scrap of a funeral ballad in Ad II, Scene 8 : 33 On Seeing an Elizabethan Play " Give him flowers enow, palmer, give him flowers enow : Give him red, and white, and blue, green and yellow.'* There is no indication of the original music for the present dirge ; that adapted for this presentation is from a funeral ballad called "Essex's Last Good-night/' found in some Elizabethan manuscript music and harmon- ized "by Mr. Wooldridge. The tune was evidently a favorite in the period of our play. The song of Venturewell, required of him by Merrythought before granting him admis- sion (in Ad V, Scene 3), is of no little interest. In the text of the play only the title, " Fortune, my Foe/' is given ; the words were too familiar to require printing. The song was a lugubrious one, but evi- dently very popular. In the Merry Pfives of Windsor (Aft III, Scene 3) Falstaff al- ludes to it, saying, " I see what thou wert, if Fortune thy foe were not," and it figures in many other plays of the period. Other songs, too, were sung to the same tune, all of them of the melancholy order. Hence the point of making this the only ditty which Venturewell can produce after the defeat of his plans, in marked contrast to the gay 34 The Knight of the Burning Pestle songs of Merrythought The tune was published in Corkine's Instruction Book for the Lute y 1610. The closing song of the play, in which Merrythought leads most of the other char- acters, on the happy conclusion of the plot, is perhaps original ; at any rate it admirably sums up the philosophy of the singer. No music has come down in conne&ion with it ; in this presentation it is sung to a tune called " Row Well, Ye Mariners," published with- out the words in Robinson's Schoole of Mu- sick, 1603, and harmonized by Mr. Wool- dridge. May the genial optimism of both song and singer descend upon all who share in this attempt to revive some merry scenes of the olden time ! R. M. A. 35 Jolly Red Nose 73 -*np ^ -- Nose Nose Nose ar\& wJio rf .> Cinnamon and ginger nu\m<& and -"- ~> > ** ^ W^s W tttf/ gate me th&t ^//y rec/ //we Walsingham As you came from Wzlfingham . / i ^-j J 5j ^i ( H ^ ^ T r^ t<> 9 From mat noly I nd Tl'frc met vou ^| _^l / ^ .^: / ~^- not witn y 7r rue ove _ By the wav^ aj you caroe > Tell Me, Dearest ^..^flU^M^V J Tell me dtareft wfut Is Low ? L Tis y r c w Vf>'v from above Tis an arrow Tis & fire ' ir-y i '" ^^ p ^ Tis a boy they CA!! De/ue ,- Tis A stifle r rf ir T O irr r i ^> T '\ Tt > ^^ tile j^ T^c oor h e arl$ oj men tlat prow, . r M ' f ' p i*l ^ ^ ^ J 1^11 mr more aj-e women ttu * / &^ 1o*e change *nd so do you 7 -Are they Uir *nd n^xrf kind * X. )k when men turn with fh wind 7 Are fhey froward ? L. 5 y r ioward Thc&r UiAt love to love Anew. Go from my Window m Go from my window . love, go ^J -^ * * A c =2I Go from flie window, my d e ar. The wind and fna riin wjll drive you m again . You cannot fc>e lodged liere Be gone myivggy mypvggy. 'Begone my love my dear? The wether is warm. Twill do thee no harm: Th^ cansi nol be )od ^ I '^(^ t- ' jfr t* P_J p ^ p Better mu/ic ncer WAS known TTvun a f D k TO ^ ^> . 1^ ."> p' 1 ^ is glad to vtter it againe by retailing. Sithence then the place is so free in enter- tainment, allowing a stoole as well to the Farmers sonne as to your Templer : that your Stinkard has the selfe-same libertie to be there in his Tobacco-Fumes, which your sweet Courtier hath : and that your Car-man and Tinker claime as strong a voice in their suffrage, and sit to giue iudgement on the plaies life and death, as well as the prowdest Momus among the tribe of Critick: It is fit hee, whom the most tailors bils do make roome for, when he comes, should not be basely (like a vyoll) casd vp in a corner. Whether therefore the gatherers of the publique or priuate Playhouse stand to re- ceiue the afternoones rent, let our Gallant (hauing paid it) presently aduance himselfe vp to the Throne of the Stage, I meane not into the Lords roome (which is now but the Stages Suburbs): No, those boxes, by the iniquity of custome, conspiracy of wait- ing-women The G v / s H o r n e - B o o k e ing-women and Gentlemen-Ushers, that there sweat together, and the couetousnes of Sharers, are contemptibly thrust into the reare, and much new Satten is there dambd, by being smothred to death in darknesse. But on the very Rushes where the Com- medy is to daunce, yea, and vnder the state of Cambises himselfe must our fethered Estridge y like a piece of ordnance, be planted valiantly (because impudently) beating downe the mewes and hisses of the opposed ras- cality. For do but cast vp a reckoning, what large cummings-in are pursd vp by sitting on the Stage. First a conspicuous Eminence is gotten ; by which meanes, the best and most essenciall parts of a Gallant (good cloathes, a proportionable legge, white hand, the Persian lock, and a tollerable beard ) are per- fectly reuealed. By sitting on the stage, you have a signd patent to engrosse the whole commodity of Censure; may lawfully presume to be a Girder ; and stand at the helme to steere the passage of scenes; yet no man shall once offer to hinder you from obtaining the title of an insolent, ouer-weening Coxcombe. By [Si] The G v I s Horne-Booke By sitting on the stage, you may (with- out travelling for it) at the very next doore aske whose play it is : and, by that g)uest of Inquiry, the law warrants you to auoid much mistaking: if you know not * author, you may raile against him: and peraduenture so behaue your selfe, that you may enforce the Author -to know you. . . . By sitting on the stage, you may (with small cost) purchase the deere acquaintance of the boyes: haue a good stoole for six- pence: at any time know what particular part any of the infants present: get your match lighted, examine the play-suits lace, and perhaps win wagers vpon laying tis copper, &c. And to conclude, whether you be a foole or a Justice of peace, a Cuckold, or a Capten, a Lord-Maiors sonne, or a dawcocke, a knaue, or an vnder-Sherife ; of what stamp soeuer you be, currant, or counterfet, the Stage, like time, will bring you to most perfect light and lay you open : neither are you to be hunted from thence, though the Scarcrows in the yard hoot at you, hisse at you, spit at you, yea, throw durt euen in your teeth: tis most Gentlemanlike patience to endure all this, and to laugh at The G v I s H o r n e - B o o k e at the silly Animals: but 'if the Rabble, with a full throat, crie, away with the foole, you were worse than a madman to tarry by it : for the Gentleman, and the foole should neuer sit on the Stage together. Mary, let this obseruation go hand in hand with the rest : or rather, like a country-seru- ing-man, some fiue yards before them. Present not your selfe on the Stage (espe- cially at a new play ) vntill the quaking pro- logue hath (by rubbing) got culor into his cheekes, and is ready to giue the trumpets their Cue, that hees vpon point to enter: for then it is time, as though you were one of the properties, or that you dropt out of * Hangings, to creepe from behind the Arras, with your Tripos or three-footed stoole in one hand, and a teston mounted betweene a forefinger and a thumbe in the other: for if you should bestow your person vpon the vulgar, when the belly of the house is but halfe full, your apparell is quite eaten vp, the fashion lost, and the proportion of your body in more danger to be deuoured then if it were serued vp in the Counter amongst the Powltry: auoid that as you would the Bastome. It shall crowne you with rich commendation [53] The Gvls Home - Booke commendation, to laugh alowd in the mid- dest of the most serious and saddest scene of the terriblest Tragedy: and to let that clapper (your tongue) be tost so high, that all the house may ring of it: your Lords vse it; your Knights are Apes to the Lords, and do so too: your Inne-a-court-man is Zany to the Knights, and (mary very scuruily) comes likewise limping after it: bee thou a beagle to them all, and neuer lin snuffing, till you haue scented them : for by talking and laughing (like a Plough-man in a Mor- ris) you heap Pelion vpon Ossa y glory vpon glory: As first, all the eyes in the galleries will leaue walking after the Players, and onely follow you: the simplest dolt in the house snatches vp your name, and when he meetes you in the streetes, or that you fall into hi^ han4s in the middle of a Watch, his word shall be taken for you: heele cry Hees sucb a gallant^ and you passe. Secondly, you publish your temperance to. the world, in that you seeme not to resort thither to taste vaine pleasures with a hungrie appe- tite: but onely as a Gentleman to spend a foolish houre or two, because you can doe nothing else : Thirdly, you mightily disrelish the [54] The G v I s H o r n e - B o o k e the Audience, and disgrace the Author: marry, you take vp (though it be at the worst hand) a strong opinion of your owne iudgement, and inforce the Poet to take pity of your weakenesse, and, by some dedicated sonnet, to bring you into a better paradice, onely to stop your mouth. If you can (either for loue or money) prouide your selfe a lodging by the water- side: for, aboue the conuenience it brings to shun Shoulder-clapping, it addes a kind of state vnto you, to be carried from thence to the staires of your Play-house : hate a Sculler (remember that) worse then to be acquaint- ed with one o' th' Scullery. No, your Oares are your onely Sea-crabs, boord them, and take heed you neuer go twice together with one paire: often shifting is a great credit to Gentlemen; and that diuiding of your fare wil make the poore watersnaks be ready to pul you in peeces to enioy your custome : No matter whether vpon landing, you haue money or no : you may swim in twentie of their boates ouer the riuer upon Ticket: mary, when siluer comes in, remem- ber to pay trebble their fare, and it will make your Flounder-catchers to send more thankes after Css] The Gv/s Horne - Booke after you, when you doe not draw, then when you doe; for they know, It will be their owne another daie. Before the Play begins, fall to cardes : you may win or loose ( as Fencers doe in a prize ) and beate one another by confederacie, yet share the money when you meete at supper: notwithstanding, to gul the Ragga-muffins that stand aloofe gaping at you, throw the cards (hauing first torne foure or fiue of them) round about the Stage, iust vpon the third sound, as though you had lost : it skils not if the foure knaues ly on their backs, and outface the Audience : theres none such fooles as dare take exceptions at them, be- cause, ere the play go off, better knaues than they will fall into the company. Now sir, if the writer be a fellow that hath either epigrammd you, or hath had a flirt at your mistris, or hath brought either your feather, or your red beard, or your little legs &c. on the stage, you shall disgrace him worse then by tossing him in a blancket, or giuing him the bastinado in a Tauerne, if, in the middle of his play (bee it Pastoral or Comedy, Morall or Tragedie) you rise with a screwd and discontented face from your stoole [56] The G v I s Horne-Booke stoole to be gone : no matter whether the Scenes be good or no ; the better they are the worse do you distast them : and, beeing on your feet, sneake not away like a coward, but salute all your gentle acquaintance, that are spred either on the rushes, or on stooles about you, and draw what troope you can from the stage after you : the Mimicks are beholden to you, for allowing them elbow roome : their Poet cries, perhaps, a pox go with you, but care not for that, theres no musick without frets. Mary, if either the company, or indisposi- tion of the weather binde you to sit it out, my counsell is then that you turne plain Ape, take vp a rush, and tickle the earnest eares of your fellow gallants, to make other fooles fall a laughing : mewe at passionate speeches, blare at merrie, finde fault with the musicke, whew at the childrens Adlion, whistle at the songs: and aboue all, curse the sharers, that whereas the same day you had bestowed forty shillings on an embrodered Felt and Feather, (scotch-fashion) for your mistres in the Court, within two, houres after, you encounter with the very same block on the stage, when the- haberdasher swore to you the [57] The G v / s H o r n e - B o o k e the impression was extant but that morn- ing. To conclude, hoard vp the finest play- scraps you can get, vpon which your leane wit may most sauourly feede, for want of other stuffe, when the Arcadian and Euphu- ized gentlewomen haue their tongues sharp- ened to set vpon you : that qualitie ( next to your shittlecocke ) is the onely furniture to a Courtier thats but a new beginner, and is but in his A B C of complement. The next places that are fild, after the Play-houses bee emptied, are ( or ought to be ) Tauernes : into a Tauerne then let vs next march, where the braines of one Hogshead must be beaten out to make vp another. [S8] Tbt Knight of the Burning Pestle is produced by the English Club of the Leland Stanford Junior University, under the direction of the following committee : HOMER PRICE EARLE, Chairman RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN LEE EMERSON BASSETT ROY OVERMAN HADLEY HENRY ROLAND JOHNSON RUTH LAIRD KTMBALL SAMUEL SWAYZE SEWARD, JR. CHARLES WILBUR THOMAS, JR. In the preparation of this book of the play the com- mittee has had the valuable assistance of MR. JOHN KESTER BONNELL MRS. ROGER M. ROBERTS Miss K. E. TRAPHOGEN Miss ANNE SCOTT MR. ERNEST TURNER