The song is most plaintive, and has a very striking feature in the shape of a real independent accompaniment, which keeps up a continual figure of three descending notes, like the bells of a village church. Hawkins gives the poem, with certain variations, and two extra verses at the beginning, the first commencing—
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'Defiléd is my name full sore, Through cruel spite and false report.' |
and he says the verses are thought to have been written by Anne Boleyn. Hawkins also gives music (in four parts) to the first two verses, by Robt. Johnson, a contemporary of Shakespeare's. The music of the song in Chappell is much older than that; indeed, it is very possibly of Hen. VIII.'s time.
V
Dances and Dancing
The history of Dances is the history of the transition from pure vocal music to pure instrumental music. In the Dances of the 16th century, we have the germs of the modern 'Sonata' Form; and in the association of certain of them we have the first attempt at a sequence of different 'movements,' which finally resulted in the Sonata itself.
The Elizabethan Dances, especially the Pavan, shew us this development just at the point where instrumental music was dividing itself from vocal.
All the ancient dances were originally sung. In Grove's Dictionary, Vol. ii. p. 676, there is given the music of a Pavan, in four vocal parts, with the words sung [copied from Arbeau's Orchésographie, 1588]. Morley (Practical Music, 1597) mentions Ballete, as being 'songs which being sung to a dittie may likewise be danced.' Again, he speaks of 'a kind of songs ... called Justinianas ... all written in the Bergamasca language.' See Mids. Nt. Dream V, ii, 30, where Bottom is not so very inaccurate after all in asking Duke Theseus to 'hear a Bergomask dance between two of our company.' The same author also gives 'Passamesos with a dittie [i.e., sung],' and distinguishes between these aforesaid and 'those kinds which they make without ditties.' [Passamesos are Passing-measures—or Passamezzo—Pavans, see Twelfth Nt. V, i, 200.]