Aut. This is a merry ballad; but a very pretty one.
Mop. Let's have some merry ones.
Aut. Why, this is a passing merry one; and goes to the tune of, Two maids wooing a man: there's scarce a maid westward, but she sings it; 'tis in request, I can tell you."[584:A]
The request, in fact, for these popular pieces of poetry was then infinitely greater than has since obtained in more modern times; not a murder, or an execution, not a battle or a tempest, not a wonderful event or a laughable adventure, could occur, but what was immediately thrown into the form of a ballad, and the muse supplied what humble prose now details to us among the miscellaneous articles of a news-paper; a statement which is fully confirmed by the observation of another character in this very play, who tells us that "such a deal of wonder is broken out within this hour, that ballad-makers cannot be able to express it."[584:B]
In the Second Part of King Henry the Fourth Falstaff enters a room, in the Boar's Head Tavern, singing the first two lines of a ballad which Dr. Percy has reprinted under the title of Sir Lancelot Du
Lake.[585:A] This, which is merely a metrical version of three chapters from the first part of Morte Arthur, is quoted imperfectly by the knight, owing to the interruptions attending his situation; the opening lines of the ballad are,
"When Arthur first in court began,
And was approved king,"
which Falstaff mutilates and alters, by omitting the last word of the first line, and converting approved into worthy[585:B]; the version and quotation, it may be remarked, are strong proofs of the popularity of the romance.
To the admirably drawn character of Silence in this play, we are indebted for several valuable fragments of popular poesy. This curious personage, who, when sober, has not a word to say, is no sooner exhilarated by the circling glass, than he chaunts forth an abundance of unconnected stanzas from the minstrelsy of his times. Having nothing original in his ideas, no fund of his own on which to draw, he marks his festivity by the vociferous repetition of scraps of catches, songs, and glees. We may, therefore, conceive the poet to have appropriated to this simple justice in his cups, the most generally known and, of course, the favourite, convivial songs of the age. They are of such a character, indeed, as to warrant the belief, that there was not a hall in Shakspeare's days but what had echoed to these jovial strains; a conclusion which almost imperatively calls for the admission of a few, as specimens of the vocal hilarity of our ancestors, when warmed, according to Shallow's confession, by "too much sack at supper."[585:C]