Page:Shakespeare and Music.djvu/194

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SHAKESPEARE AND MUSIC

wood covered with leather, which helped to play the loud bass in oratorios, within the last fifty years. This Serpent was a true Cornet in every respect. It may now commonly be seen in Exhibitions, Museums, and curiosity shops, for it has been entirely superseded by the Bass Tuba and the Euphonium.

In the text the word Cornet does not occur.

Tucket. Rare, only seven times in six different plays. This is one of the several trumpet calls we have noticed. It seems to have been a French term, toquet, or doquet, and this is defined by Littré, as quatrième partie de trompette d'une fanfare de cavalerie—that is, the name 'toquet' was applied to the fourth trumpet in a cavalry fanfare. Mr Aldis Wright, in his Clarendon Press Edition of Hen. V., gives Markham, quoted by Grose in 'Military Antiquities,' which explains 'Tucket' as a trumpet signal, which, 'being heard simply of itself without addition, commands nothing but marching after the leader.' Certainly in Shakespeare it seems to be used as a personal trumpet call—e.g., Merchant 5/1, 121, Lorenzo says to Portia, 'Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet—' i.e., the 'tucket sounded' which is indicated in the stage direction.