The crwth is followed by the rebec, which most of us know better from Milton’s lines—
“When the merry bells ring round
And the jocund rebecks sound”—
than in any more practical manner. It had a certain resemblance to the lute in its pear-shaped outline and its convex or rounded sound-box, but differs from that instrument in being played with a bow.
Mr Galpin quotes very appropriately the name of one of the country actors in A Midsummer Night’s Dream—Hugh Rebeck—as suggesting that an everyday audience was familiar with it.
Viols.—The only surviving instrument of this class is the double bass, which is “still frequently made with the flat back and sloping shoulders of its departed predecessors.” The bass viol was also known as the Viola da Gamba, and this was Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s instrument, who was said to play on the “Viol de Gamboys.” These instruments—bass and treble—had six strings, and were provided with frets like the guitar. Their tone is described as “soft and slightly reedy or nasal, but very penetrating.” It seems that the smaller viols disappeared in England towards the end of the seventeenth century, but the type of viol corresponding to the violoncello “held its own for nearly another hundred years,” when it at last yielded to the more modern instrument.
Under the heading “Concerning the Viol and Musick in general,” Mace writes (p. 231):—
“It may be thought, I am so great a Lover of It [the Lute], that I make Light Esteem of any other Instrument, besides; which Truly I do not; but Love the Viol in a very High Degree; yea, close unto the Lute. . . .
“I cannot understand, how Arts and Sciences should be subject unto any such Phantastical, Giddy, or Inconsiderate Toyish Conceits, as ever to be said to be in Fashion, or out of Fashion.
“I remember there was a Fashion, not many