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Two Latin Play Songs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Extract

Musical settings of lyrics from Latin plays written by Englishmen during the Caroline period are extremely rare. Only two such songs survive: ‘Dulcis somne’ from William Johnson's university play Valetudinarium, and ‘Astrorum iubar’ from Joseph Simons's school play Zeno sive Ambitio Infelix. Unusually, both songs are known only from copies bound into the play-texts themselves rather than from exclusively musical sources. This article sets out to evaluate both the songs themselves and their dramatic functions.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1988

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References

Notes

1 For two earlier examples of musical settings contained within play-texts, see Andrew J. Sabol, ‘A Three-Man Song in Fulwell's “Like Will to Like” at the Folger', Renaissance News, 10 (1957), 139–42, and idem., ‘Two Songs with Accompaniment for an Elizabethan Choirboy Play', Studies in the Renaissance, 5 (1958), 153.Google Scholar

2 Alfred Bennett Harbage, Annals of English Drama, 975–1700, rev. Samuel Schoenbaum (London, 1964).Google Scholar

3 William Prynne, Histriomastix. The Players Scourge, or, Actors Tragaedie (London, 1633; facsimile New York & London, 1974), 491. In all English and Latin quotations, contractions have been tacitly expanded and modern letters substituted ('i’ for ‘j', ‘v’ for ‘u', etc.).Google Scholar

5 George Charles Moore Smith, College Plays Performed in the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1923), 10. For further background see also [anon.], ‘The Latin Plays Acted Before the University of Cambridge', The Retrospective Review, 12/1 (1825), 1–42.Google Scholar

6 The Queens’ College stage house is described in D.F. McKenzie, ‘A Cambridge Playhouse of 1638', Renaissance Drama, new series, 3 (1970), 263–72. The date of performance of Valetudinarium is given in EMM. Information on the cast, all of them members of Queens’ College, is given in Smith, College Plays, 88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Johnson was ordained priest in 1640 and later became archdeacon of Huntingdon and prebend of St Paul's, 1666–7. See Searle, WilliamGeorge, The History of the Queens’ College of St Margaret and St Bernard in the University of Cambridge. Part II. 1560–1662, Cambridge Antiquarian Society Octavo Publications, 13 (Cambridge, 1871), 516; John and J.A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses. Part I. From the Earliest Times to 1751 (Cambridge, 1922–7), II, 483; Smith, College Plays, 93; Gerald Eades Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage (Oxford, 1941–68), IV, 600.Google Scholar

8 Harbage, Annals of English Drama, has been used as the authority for information on extant texts of Valetudinarium and Zeno.Google Scholar

9 Songs that induce sleep and aim to calm and alleviate strong emotions or illness also occur in other Caroline plays, for example The Inconstant Lady (II, iv) and The Siege, or Love's Convert (III, v).Google Scholar

10 William John Lawrence, ‘Music and Song in the Elizabethan Theatre', The Elizabethan Playhouse and Other Studies, 1 (Stratford-upon-Avon, 1912), 82. The 1648 edition of Paria, another Caroline Latin comedy performed at Cambridge, contains the lyrics of inter-act songs.Google Scholar

11 Edward Bliss Reed, ed., Songs from the British Drama (New Haven & London, 1925), 346–7; Thomas Middleton, Hengist, King of Kent, or the Mayor of Queensborough, ed. R.C. Bald (New York & London, 1938), xxxiii; William R. Bowden, The English Dramatic Lyric, 1603–1642. A Study in Stuart Dramatic Technique (New Haven & London, 1951), 90–1.Google Scholar

12 Reed, ed., Songs from the British Drama, 347.Google Scholar

13 Andrew J. Sabol, ‘Recent Studies in Music and English Renaissance Drama', Shakespearean Research and Opportunities, 4(1968–9), 13.Google Scholar

14 Smith, College Plays, 88.Google Scholar

15 Ian Spink, ‘English Cavalier Songs, 1620–60', Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 86 (1959–60), 69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 For quotation from the Peterhouse and Trinity records, see Monson, Craig, Voices and Viols in England, 1600–1650. The Sources and the Music (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1982), 127. The Queens’ College bursarial accounts are quoted in George Charles Moore Smith, ed., ‘The Academic Drama at Cambridge: Extracts from College Records', Malone Society Collections, 2/2 (n.p., 1923), 192–3.Google Scholar

17 Smith, College Plays, 32 and 1–2.Google Scholar

18 Peter Aston, ‘George Jeffreys', The Musical Times, 110 (1969), 772 and 774; idem., ‘Tradition and Experiment in the Devotional Music of George Jeffreys', Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 99 (1972–3), 105–8; Peter Le Huray, ‘George Jeffreys', The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1980), IX, 583–6.Google Scholar

19 James Lukens McConaughy, The School Drama Including Palsgrave's Introduction to Acolastus (New York, 1913), 71, 73. For further references to the Jesuits’ employment of the educational value of drama, see L.-V. Gofflot, Le Théatre au Collège du Moyen Age à Nos Jours (Paris, 1907), 92–3; T.H. Vail Motter, The School Drama in England (London, New York & Toronto, 1929), 228; G.P. Sandham, ‘An English Jesuit Dramatist. Fr Joseph Simeon, 1593–1671', The Month, 24 (1960), 308; Hubert Chadwick, St Omers to Stonyhurst. A History of Two Centuries (London, 1962), 133–4.Google Scholar

20 William McCabe, ‘The Play-List of the English College of St Omers 1592–1762', Revue de Littérature Comparée, 17 (1937), 356.Google Scholar

21 For information on drama at St Omers, see McCabe, ‘The Play-List', 355–75; idem., ‘Notes on the St Omers College Theatre', Philological Quarterly, 17 (1938), 225–39; Chadwick, St Omers to Stonyhurst, 125–40.Google Scholar

22 Henry Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (London, 1875–83), I, 272–3; VI, 278; VII/1, 463–4; Leslie Stephen and Sydney Lee, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1885–1901), LII, 257–8; McCabe, ‘The Play-List', 357; Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, V, 1172; Sandham, ‘An English Jesuit Dramatist', 309; Suzanne Gossett, ‘Drama in the English College, Rome, 1591–1660', English Literary Renaissance, 3 (1973), 65.Google Scholar

23 For information on where Zeno was first performed, see Smith, College Plays, 96, and McCabe, ‘The Play-List', 364. The date of the first performance is given on f.37v of London, British Library, MS Add. 9354 ('Registrum Audomarensis Anglorum Gymnasii').Google Scholar

24 Gossett, ‘Drama in the English College', 64; on the elaborate revival of Zeno at the English College at Rome in 1634, see ibid., 72 and 79–83.Google Scholar

25 William McCabe. ‘Music and Dance on a Seventeenth-Century College Stage”, The Musical Quarterly, 24 (1938), 317–18.Google Scholar

26 The manuscript texts of Zeno are divided into Protasis (Actus I in the British Library MS), Epitasis, Catastasis and Catastrophe; the printed editions are in five acts.Google Scholar

27 William McCabe, ‘The Imperial Tragedy', Philological Quarterly, 15 (1936), 311–14.Google Scholar

28 On the stage convention of first reciting, then singing lyrics, see Lawrence, WilliamJohn, ‘The Wedding of Poetry and Song', Those Nut-Cracking Elizabethans. Studies of the Early Theatre and Drama (London, 1935).Google Scholar

29 Another Caroline play, Fuimus Troes, quotes the lyrics of the songs at the ends of the acts; some of these comment on the action in the manner of a Chorus.Google Scholar

30 For example, in Scene ii of the Catastasis.Google Scholar

31 The characteristics of a prompt copy are described in Ronald Brunlees McKerrow, ‘The Elizabethan Printer and Dramatic Manuscripts', The Library, 4th series, 12 (1931), 270–2. See also Sir Walter Wilson Greg, Dramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses (Oxford, 1931), Commentary, 204.Google Scholar

32 See Bowden, The English Dramatic Lyric (cited in note 11 above), 90.Google Scholar

33 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Mus.B. 1 is incomplete in a similar way; ‘most of the songs are given in the treble and unfigured bass arrangement common to song collections of the time, but in [this] manuscript space has been left for the insertion of the lute tablature': Vincent Duckies, ‘The “Curious” Art of John Wilson (1595–1674): An Introduction to his Songs and Lute Music', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 7 (1954), 96. It is interesting to compare the accompaniment for ‘Astrorum iubar’ with the sketchy keyboard parts for two Jacobean songs in the John Bull MS (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS Mu 782); neither provides ‘a musical accompaniment as it stands, being more of an indication of the harmony and the way it is to be developed than a fully written-out setting': John Harley, ‘Two Jacobean Songs', Early Music, 6 (1978), 385–6.Google Scholar

34 In The Imperial Tragedy, the English adaptation of Zeno, the word ‘lute’ is adopted.Google Scholar

35 On the use of the lyra viol in song accompaniment, see Cyr, Mary, ‘Song Accompaniments for Lyra Viol and Lute', Journal of the Lute Society of America, 4 (1971), 43–9, and Peter Walls, ‘Lyra Viol Song', Chelys, 5 (1973–4), 68–75.Google Scholar

36 Biographical information on this man is to be found in Foley, Records (see note 22 above), VII/2, 713; Wilfrid Kelly, ed., Liber Ruber Venerabilis Collegii Anglorum de Urbe. I. Annates Collegii. Pars Prima. Nomina Alumnorum. I. A.D. 1579–1630, Catholic Record Society, 37 (London, 1940), 208; Anthony Kenny, ed., The Responsa Scholarum of the English College Rome. Part Two. 1622–1685, Catholic Record Society, 55 (n.p., 1963), 383; Godfrey Anstruther, The Seminary Priests; A Dictionary of the Secular Clergy of England and Wales, 1558–1850 (Great Wakering, 1969–77), II, 278; Geoffrey Holt, St. Omers and Bruges Colleges, 1593–1773. A Biographical Dictionary, Catholic Record Society, 69 (n.p., 1979), 230.Google Scholar