The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time/Volume 1/Reign of Elizabeth/O Mistress mine!

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For other versions of this work, see O Mistress Mine.
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Whoop! Do Me No Harm, Good Man
The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time, Volume 1, Reign of Elizabeth (1855)
edited by William Chappell and George Alexander Macfarren
O Mistress mine!
Heart's-ease
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O Mistress mine!

This tune is contained in both the editions of Morley’s Consort Lessons, 1599 and 1611. It is also in Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book, arranged by Byrd.

As it is to be found in print in 1599, it proves either that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was written in or before that year, or that, in accordance with the then prevailing custom, O Mistress mine was an old song, introduced into the play.

Mr. Payne Collier has proved Twelfth Night to have been an established favorite in February, 1602 (Annals of the Stage, i. 327), but we have no evidence of so early a date as 1599.

In act ii., sc. 3., the Clown asks, “Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?”

Sir Toby. “A love-song, a love-song.”

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“What is love?—’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
 What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet-and-twenty,
 Youth’s a stuff will not endure.”

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