Enter Malvolio.
Mal. My masters, are you mad? or what are you? Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night? Do ye make an alehouse of my lady's house, that ye squeak out your cozier's catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, or time in you?
Sir To. We did keep time, sir, in our catches. Sneck up!
L. 103-114, another song, "Farewell, dear heart" [[Appendix]].
It is perhaps necessary to explain the nature of a Catch, or Round, more clearly. The two names were interchangeable in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was not till quite modern times that 'Catch' implied a necessary quibble in the words, deliberately arranged by the writer. First, a Catch or Round of the best type of Elizabethan times consisted of one melody, generally perfectly continuous. Secondly, the said melody was always divisible into a certain number of equal sections, varying from three to six, or even eight; and as many sections as there were, so many voices were necessary. Thirdly, each of these equal sections was deliberately arranged so as to make Harmony with every other.
Here are the words of a Round of the 17th century, which is divisible into three equal sections, and therefore is sung by three voices.
1. 'Cuckoo! Hark! how he sings to us.
2. Good news the cuckoo brings to us;
3. Spring is here, says the cuckoo.'
Now, the way for three persons, A, B, and C, to sing this Catch or Round, is as follows:—
A begins [see above, line 69, 'Begin, fool'] line 1, and immediately proceeds to line 2; at this very instant, B in his turn begins line 1, and acts similarly. When A has reached the first syllable in line 3, and B is at 'Good' in line 2, it is time for C also to begin at line 1. As soon as A has finished line 3, he begins again; and so on with the others—'round' and 'round' till they are tired of 'catching' each other up.
Thus when they are all three fairly set going, their one melody produces three part harmony, and the catchers have drawn 'three souls out of one weaver.'