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Shakespearean Hymn-Parody?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Peter J. Seng
Peter J. Seng*
Affiliation:
Connecticut College
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Extract

Near the end of the bacchanalian revels aboard Pompey's galley in Antony and Cleopatra (II.vii), Shakespeare introduces the only song in his play. As Enobarbus places Antony, Pompey, and Caesar hand in hand—presumably to dance as well as to join in the refrain—a boy comes forward to sing:

      Come, thou monarch of the vine,
      Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!
      In thy fats our cares be drown'd,
      With thy grapes our hairs be crown'd.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance News , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , Spring 1965 , pp. 4 - 6
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1965

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References

1 Shakespeare's Use of Song (Oxford), p. 127

2 Music in Shakespearean Tragedy (London and New York, 1963), pp. 86 f. Cf. Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, ed. Guido M. Dreves and Clemens Blume, 55 vols. (Leipzig, 1886-1922), reprinted 1961 by Johnson Reprint Corp., New York and London, L (1907), 193. There is no evidence that any of these songs are parodies of the Veni creator.

3 Wilson's ‘God Lyeus ever young’ in the same book would work equally well, though both of Wilson's tunes are really too long for Shakespeare's single stanza. But if Shakespeare's song is a parody, why not the old hymn tune of Veni creator for it? Probably because it does not fit well. Cf. the hymn tune in English & Scottish Psalm & Hymn Tunes c. 1543-1677, ed. Maurice Frost (Oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 248 f.

4 There are numerous ‘Veni’ hymns in the 55 vols, of Dreves, and the indexes to songs and ballads of Shakespeare's time reveal a host of secular lyrics beginning ‘Come.’ There are seven in Professor Sternfeld's own ‘Index of Lyrics,’ pp. 301 f.

5 For example, Bottom's song in MSND, Parson Evans' in MWW, Pandarus' in T&C, and Autolycus' pedlar's songs in WT.

6 Dreves, LIV, 234 f. Cf. also the Latin parody in a hymn to St. Katherine, IX, 199.

7 The 1962 reprint of the Liber usualis, pp. 880 f.; The Collected Vocal Works of William Byrd, ed. E. H. Fellowes, VII (1938), 53-65; Tudor Church Music, ed. P. C. Buck et ah, VII (1927), 311-317; and MusicaBritannica, VIII (1953), ed. Manfred F. Bukofzer, 88 f., 92-94.

8 ‘The Function of the Songs in Shakespeare's Plays,’ Shakespeare Studies by Members of the Department of English of the University of Wisconsin (Madison, 1916), pp. 84 f.