After some punning, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and the Clown sing together a catch.
Enter Maria.
'Maria.—What a caterwauling do you keep here? If my lady have not called up her steward, Malvolio, and bid him turn you out of doors, never trust me.'
In 'Hamlet,' Act III., Scene 2, strolling actors are introduced, and with them musicians playing on hautboys and recorders. In the representations of the English comedians in the Ottoneum, at Cassel, anno 1606, the instrumentalists always struck up after each act.[62] No doubt they played, besides their English tunes, also the most popular ones of Germany, which would ensure them a more favourable reception. Travelling musicians who perform in public, almost invariably find it to their advantage thus to meet the taste of their audience. And it appears, likewise, very probable that the English Instrumentalists, on their return home, entertained their audience in England with the popular tunes, and perhaps some more elaborate pieces, with which they had become acquainted on the Continent, and which to the English public would possess the charm of novelty.
However this may be, the position of the Instrumentalists at home, after they had discontinued their continental tour, was by no means enviable, to judge from 'The Actors' Remonstrance, or Complaint for the silencing of their profession and banishment from their severall Play-houses, London, 1643,' in which the dejected actors remark: "Our Musicke that was held so delectable and precious, that they scorned to come to a Taverne under twentie shillings salary for two houres, now wander with their instruments under their cloaks, I meane such as haue any, into all houses of good fellowship, saluting every roome where there is company with, Will you haue any musike Gentlemen?"[63]
The English comedians in Germany generally performed in the German language. This must have been funny,—perhaps not the least so in pathetic passages, solemn admonitions, or in reflecting monologues, where even the slightest foreign pronunciation is apt to transform the sublime into the ridiculous. Here brevity must have been often desirable, and the falling in of the band may have afforded relief. Thus, the English Instrumentalists, although they have exercised no influence upon the cultivation of the art of music, are certainly interesting, inasmuch as they have assisted in the earliest representations of the dramas of Shakespeare.
