Then thou shalt seem,
Like a wench of fifteen,
Although you be threescore and ten years old."
That this song enjoyed extensive popularity in the latter half of the seventeenth century, is evinced by the number of printed copies. It is found in Playford's Select Ayres and Dialogues, 1659; in Dr. Wilson's Cheerfull Ayres and Ballads, 1660; in Playford's Catch that Catch Can, 1667; and in many subsequent collections of a similar kind. But in none of these works is the name of the writer of the words given; and all the copies are deficient of the third and fourth stanzas. The point of the satire conveyed in these stanzas was lost after the reign of James I., which may account for their omission.
"Shakspeare's rime," being associated with Wilson's music, is of some importance towards settling the point of authorship. In 1846 I printed a little pamphlet with the following title:
"Who was Jack Wilson, the Singer of Shakspeare's Stage? An Attempt to prove the Identity of this Person with John Wilson, Doctor of Musick, in the University of Oxford, A.D. 1644."
It would be out of place here to dwell upon this publication, suffice it to say, that all the information I have since collected, tends to confirm the hypothesis advanced. One extract from this brochure will show the connexion that existed between Shakspeare and Wilson:
"Wilson was the composer of four other Shakspearian lyrics, a fact unknown to Mr. Collier, when he wrote the article in the Shakspeare Papers: 'Where the bee sucks,' 'Full fathom five,' 'Lawn as white as driven snow,' and 'From the fair Lavinian shore.' They are all printed in the author's Cheerfull Ayres or Ballads, Oxford, 1660. We have now evidence from this work, that Wilson was the original composer of the music to one of Shakspeare's plays. He says in his preface, 'some of these ayres were originally composed by those whose names are affixed to them, but are here placed as being new set by the author of the rest. The two songs, 'Where the bee sucks,' and 'Full fathom five,' have appended to them the name of 'R. Johnson,' who, upon this evidence, we may undoubtedly conclude was the original composer of the music in the play of the Tempest. The song 'Lawn as white as driven snow,' from the Winter's Tale, has the name of 'John Wilson' attached to it, from which it is equally certain that he was its original composer. In my own mind, the circumstances connected with the Shakspearian lyrics in this book are almost conclusive as to the identity of John Wilson the composer with John Wilson the singer. Unless the composer had been intimately acquainted with the theatre of Shakspeare's day, it is not likely that he would have remembered, so long after, the name of one of its composers. Nor is it likely, being so well acquainted with the original composers of the Shakspearian drama, and so anxious as he appears to have been to do justice to their memory, that he would have omitted informing us, who was the original composer of the song in the Winter's Tale, had it been any other than himself. The Winter's Tale was not produced before 1610 or 1611, at which period Wilson was sixteen or seventeen years old, an age quite ripe enough for the production of the song in question."
A reviewer of my little publication in the Athenæum (Nov. 8, 1846) makes the following remark:
"Let us observe, in conclusion, that Dr. Rimbault is better read in Jack Wilson than Ben Jonson, or we should never have seen Mr. Shakspeare's 'Rime' at the 'Mitre,' in Fleet Street, seriously referred to as a genuine composition. It is a mere clumsy adaptation, from Ben's interesting epigram 'Inviting a Friend to Supper.'"