ID*- S.V.MAY 26, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
401
LONDON, SATLEDAY, MAY IV, 1006.
CONTENTS. -No. 126.
NOTES :-Tbe Death Songs of Pyramus and Tbisbe, 401 May Song Fleetwood of Crawley, 403 Fleetwood of Penwortham, 405 Gray's 'Poems,' 17ti8 Halley Arms- No. 1, Lombard Street Indexes, Calendars, &c., 406 Doncaster Weather- Rime Father Paul Sarpi and the Circulation of the Blood, 407.
QUERIES : " Pit "=Cockpit " Pit-counter" " Plane " =Sycamore Tarot Cards, 407 Black Box and the Mayor of Bodmin Christopher Martin and the Defence of St. John's, Newfoundland Heraldic Authors of Quota- tions Wanted "Gula A ugnsti "Karl's Kldest Son and Supporters' The Battered Tar,' 403-Xavier de Maistre's Allusions Capt. Onley, R.N.- Canbury House. Middlesex West's Picture of Wolfe's Death Dover-Winchester Road Blandina " Pearl": its Etymon ' Iliads of the Iliad' Ralph, Lord Hopton Barnes Pikle Ward Family "Hearts of Oak," 409 John Hook, of Norwich J. Ram- pini, 410.
REPLIES : Churchwardens' Accounts, 410 Saint with Five Stars, 411 "Place," 412 -Ballad by Heber : W. Crane Watches and Clocks with Words instead of Figures- May Morning at Magdalen : its Music- Collop Monday, &c., 413 Vowels on Monument "Brown Bess " as applied to a Musket -Travelling in England " Dog's Nose." 414 Provincial Booksellers Ariel Cheyne Walk : China Walk, 415-Goethe Irish BOjg Butter Axholme Priory Hamsgate Christmas Procession, 416 Kipling Obscurities
Holy Britons Sixteen Bishops consecrated at One Time Samuel Williams Abbey or Priory Hawtrey. 417
Dover Pier Ropes used at Executions Bookseller's Motto Macaulay's "New Zealander," 418.
NOTES ON BOOKS :-Phillimore's Translation of Pro- pertius Hazlitt's 'View of the English Stage' ' Lon- ginus on the Sublime ' Homeland Handbooks ' The Vicar of Wakefield Edinburgh Review ' Routledge's "New Universal Library" 'Folk-lore' ' L' Inter- no ediaire.'
Obituary : Mr. James Peacock.
Notices to Correspondents.
THE DEATH SONGS OF PYRAMUS AND
THISBE. (See ante, p. 341.)
SHAKESPEARE has hit off very happily some of the most ludicrous features of these old- fashioned tragical comedies, though it must be admitted that the passages which have been quoted from Farrant's songs and Edwards's play are almost beyond the reach of parody. First of all we may note how he has burlesqued the persistent habit* of heroes and heroines (or friends on their behalf) of bursting into song at the crisis of their fate; for I take it for granted that both Pyramus and Thisbe are intended to sing their death songs. When it is recognized
- I think that Shakespeare has already had a
laugh at this habit when he makes Bottom say (speaking of the ballad to be called ' Bottom's Dream'), "I will sing it in the latter end of a play before the duke: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death." The last sentence I should interpret as if it ran, " perad- venture to make her [the heroine's] death the more gracious, I shall sing it" at that catastrophe.
that this was the practice in the old plays,*
the change of metre in * Pyramus and Thisbe'
seems plainly to indicate that these passages
should be sung. Besides Bottom (Pyramus)
is a character "with a song" (Act III. i.),
and attention has already been directed to
the fact that "he is a very paramour for a
sweet voice."
Turning next to details, we must note how Shakespeare ridiculed the conventional invocations to Death and the Fates ; the reiterated asseverations "I die, I die, &c ; and the stereotyped phrases and words which recur so often in old plays of this kind as to become ridiculous such words, for instance, as *' imbrue" ; or in particular the word "dole," which distressed heroes and heroines much affected, either as a noun or in the adjective "doleful." And the use of this word inPyramus's death song is noteworthy, for it is a word which Shakespeare very seldom uses seriously in his plays ;t it seems, indeed, to have had burlesque associations to his mind, as when it is put into Pistol's mouth, or used in reference to Autolycus's ballads. And I venture to suggest that when Shakespeare makes Bottom explain that u a lover is more condoling,' 1 he is laughing at the tragi-comical use of this hackneyed old word.
There is one point of which I believe no satisfactory explanation has been offered, which inclines me to think that Shakespeare had the chorister actors particularly in his mind. That is Flute's speech in Act IV. ii. :
"0 sweet Bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a day during his life ; he could not have 'scaped sixpence a day : an the duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I'll be hanged ; he would have deserved it : sixpence a day in Pyramus or nothing."
Here it is evident that some allusion is intended which the audience would have recognized. The usual explanation seems to be that we must suppose that some actor had been pensioned for his abilities on the stage;!
- Examples will readily occur to the mind besides
the two or three mentioned. For instance, in 'Cambyses' the Queen is led out to murder singing a psalm :
Yet with a joyful heart to God
A psalm 1 mean to sing, Forgiving all, and the King,
Of each kind of thing. [Sing and exeunt. t Only twice, if we except a passage in one of the Gower prologues in ' Pericles : : once in 1 K. John,' and once in 'Hamlet.' Did Shake- speare possibly in these instances inherit the word from the old plays on which his were founded ?
% The case of Thomas Preston, author of ' Cam- byses,' which is always quoted in illustration of
