¹ A List of All the Songs and Passages in Shakespeare, which have been set to Music, by J. Greenhill, W. A. Harrison, and F. J. Furnivall (London: The New Shakespeare Society, 1884), gives the date of the earliest musical setting for this song as 1750.

² Bodleian MS. Don. c. 57, f. 78.

³ George A. Thewlis, “Some Notes on a Bodleian Manuscript,” Music and Letters, xxii, no. 1 (January, 1941), 32–35. Thewlis gives a brief description of the condition and appearance of the MS, speculates upon the date when it was copied, the identity of the composer of this song, and dwells at some length upon the nature of the musician who might be able to supply the missing harmony. Further reference to the content of this article is in n. 5.

⁴ E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare, ii, 338, quotes Simon Forman's description of a performance of Cymbeline which took place shortly before Forman's death, 12 September, 1611. There was a court performance 1 January 1633/4, recorded in The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Edited by J. Q. Adams (1917), p. 53.

⁵ I am indebted to Miss E. G. Parker of Oxford for a list of the composers to whom other songs in the same collection were ascribed. In addition to those mentioned above there were: John Jenkins, William Caesar, William Lawes, Stephen Mace, John Hilton, William Webb, and Robert Ramsey. Thewlis, op. cit., suggests that inasmuch as John Wilson and Robert Johnson set other Shakespearian lyrics to music, one or the other of the two may have provided the accompaniment to “Harke Harke ye Larke.” Thewlis believed that the manuscript was copied between 1648 and 1650. Whatever the date of copying, many of the songs were composed before the death of Robert Johnson in 1633. Johnson's Tempest music was composed perhaps as early as 1613. See E. J. Dent, “Shakespeare and Music,” A Companion to Shakespeare Studies (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1934), p. 159.

⁶ Dent, op. cit., 159, “It has been suggested that many of Shakespeare's songs were written to tunes already in existence, although those tunes may not be known to us now; but it is difficult to see how convincing proof of this theory can be established even if its plausibility be admitted.”

⁷ Ernest Brennecke, Jr., “Shakespeare's Collaboration with Morley,” PM LA, liv, no. 1 (March, 1939), 139. See text and notes.

⁸ Concerning the nature of this music see the works listed in the bibliography prepared by M. C. Boyd, Elizabethan Music and Musical Criticism (1940).

⁹ Cymbeline, ii, iii, 19. Unless otherwise noted line references are from The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Edited by George Lyman Kittredge (Ginn & Co., 1936).

¹⁰ Cymbeline, ii, iii, 34. Richmond Noble, Shakespeare's Use of Song (Oxford Univ. Press, 1923), pp. 133, 134, 135. Although Noble had not seen this score, he thought it possible that the singer was a eunuch or a male alto singing high falsetto.

¹¹ E. W. Naylor, Shakespeare and Music (London, 1896), p. 100, refers to the musicians “who seem … to be professional players.” Noble, op. cit., p. 131, refers to this song as “sung in a ‘consort’ by a trained musician specially brought on to the stage for that sole purpose.” On the other hand, H. Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare, Second Series, (1930), p. 266 n., speculates that the song “might well have been sung by the actor of Arviragus.” If (as Guiderius stated) his own and his brother's voices had “got the mannish crack,” it would have been unlikely that the latter would have attempted that high A.

¹² The high ethereal quality of the lark's song and flight required that songs about larks should be written for high voices. As Thomas Morley stated in his Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1608), p. 178, “you must have a care that when your matter signifieth ascending, high heaven, & such like, you make your musick ascend…. For as it will be thought a great absurditie to talke of heaven & point downward to the earth.” Also, see n. 17. Henry Lawes' song The Lark, which is found in several manuscript collections and was printed with revisions after Lawes' death in The Treasury of Musick (1669), was for a treble of nearly the same range. The literary significance of lark music has been treated at some length by A. H. Moncur-Sime, Shakespeare, His Music and Song, Ch. ix, and by G. Wilson Knight, The Shakespearian Tempest (1932), Appendix A, p. 300 f.

¹³ E. H. Fellows, English Madrigal Composers (1921), Ch. vii, p. 71, “The soprano parts were never written above A.” Fellowes discusses vocal range, falsetto singing, and the Elizabethan use of pitch. W. Robertson Davies, Shakespeare's Boy Actors (London, 1939), pp. 35–37, discusses the preservation of the boy actors' treble voices, by means of careful training until the actors were sometimes sixteen or even seventeen years old.

¹⁴ Fellowes, op. cit., p. 306. “The regularity of the barring varied considerably; sometimes it adhered fairly closely to the time-signatures, but at others it followed the less regular rhythms of the music or of the verbal phrases, and occasionally barlines were entirely absent for a prolonged period.”

¹⁵ As pointed out in n. 14, during the early part of the century methods of barring were very irregular; toward the middle of the century more regular methods began to be employed. This is illustrated in the works of Henry Lawes, whose early songs reveal irregular barring, and whose later compositions might be regarded as among the first to have modern notation. The present author has treated this subject in Henry Lawes, Musician and Friend of Poets (1941). For examples of the two types of notation see pages 43 and 194.

¹⁶ An identical first measure appears at the beginning of Henry Lawes' song, The Lark, as it was copied into Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 11608. See n. 12.

¹⁷ Op. cit., p. 166. “… you must understand that those songs which are made for the high key be made for more life, the other in the low key with more gravitie and staidnesse, so that if you sing them in contrarie keyes, they will lose their grace and will be wretched as it were out of their nature.”

¹⁸ Granville-Barker, op. cit., p. 267.

¹⁹ Noble, op. cit., p. 132.

²⁰ Noted by many authors but treated at some length in Knight, op. cit., pp. 234–235 and throughout the entire volume. One of Knight's themes is the way in which Shakespeare interthreaded music throughout the plays.

²¹ Knight, op. cit., pp. 236, 238.

²² Several authors have likened Cloten to Hedon in Cynthia's Revels (n, i), who numbered among his graces keeping a barber, a monkey, and who loved “to haue a fencer, a pedant, and a musician seene in his lodgings a mornings,”²³ [Omitted.]

²⁴ Noble, op. cit., pp. 41, 132, 133. John Robert Moore, “The Function of the Songs in Shakespeare's Plays,” Shakespeare Studies (University of Wisconsin Publications, 1916), gives an excellent discussion of Shakespeare's use of song. On p. 90 Moore treats of Cloten's rough language; p. 98, Moore deals with song as useful in foreshadowing what is to come and gives several examples, but does not mention Cymbeline in this connection.

²⁵ King's Music, An Anthology by Gerald Hayes With an Essay by Sir H. Walford Davies (Oxford Univ. Press, 1937), p. 7. “The most striking element in their [that is, the composers'] spiritual approach … is that sense of immediacy in which their compositions had birth. We find no hint of an anxiety for the opinions of posterity or of cherished preservation of output to be used again and again: … each fresh occasion postulated fresh creation…. The carelessness with which the composers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries treated their works is almost incomprehensible to us today: … They composed directly into their instruments….” Again, The Mask of Comus, Edited by E. H. Visiak and H. J. Foss (The Nonesuch Press, 1937), p. xvi. Speaking of the reluctance of composers to write down the score, “These pieces would have been of a casual nature, and if written down at all, would have been regarded as not worth preserving in autograph or print.”

²⁶ Noble, op. cit., p. 23. “Originally the songs of the Elizabethan dramatists were set to ‘airs’ … built upon the national songs and ballads, … the musician first improvised the tune for the voice and only secondly composed the instrumental accompaniment, the simplicity of which may be inferred from the fact that the accompanists were characters on the stage. Accordingly when Shakespeare wrote a song he probably had some folk air in view and he did not contemplate any elaborate treatment. The songs of Amiens, Feste, and Autolycus all seem to anticipate being set to modified folk tunes….”

²⁷ John Donne's Complete Poetry and Selected Prose, Edited by John Hayward (The Nonesuch Press, 1929), p. 442. A letter to Sir Henry Wotton? c. 1600?

²⁸ Chambers, op. cit., i, 485–487, points out the theories advanced by various critics. Since the publication of Chambers' work, Hazelton Spencer, The Art and Life of William Shakespeare (New York, 1940), p. 316 f., refers to Cymbeline as the poorest of Shakespeare's plays, and suggests that the author was half asleep when he wrote it. E. E. Stoll, Shakespeare and Other Masters (Harvard Univ. Press, 1940), Ch. i, points to “Anticipation” (which would I think include many aspects of the presentation of the aubade in Cymbeline) as one of Shakespeare's greatest qualities as a craftsman.

²⁹ When one considers what Shakespeare knew in advance when he planned Act II, Scene iii, it is amazing what he did with the materials at his disposal. From the text it appears that he knew he needed music at this point in the play, and that the musician who could be obtained to perform the solo had a voice of high range.

³⁰ Summed up by Chambers, op. cit., pp. 485–487.

³¹ I have used in preparing this study the Columbia University copies of the first and second folios. The Columbia First Folio is xxx of Lee's Census; the Second is described by R. M. Smith, Variant Issues of Shakespeare's Second Folio and Milton's First Published English Poem (Lehigh Univ. Publications, ii, no. 3, March, 1928), p. 18. Textual comment in this study pertains to the first folio unless otherwise noted. For a brief evaluation of folio texts see A. W. Pollard, “Shakespeare's Text,” A Companion to Shakespeare Studies (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1934), p. 263 f.

³² See n. 6. Also, Noble, op. cit., p. 29. “It is my belief that Shakespeare wrote the songs with some melody in view,” etc.

³³ Noble, op. cit., p. 18. Noble was comparing the elaborate folio version of this song with the simple songs of the other plays: “It was for people of such simple tastes that Shakespeare designed his work, and song he calculated would make easier the comprehension of his purpose. No doubt occasionally, as in Hark, hark, the lark (Cymbeline), Shakespeare in his songs appealed to the more educated in his audience….”

³⁴ Variorum, p. 127, n. 22, “Heauens gate] According to Walker these two words are pronounced as one, with the accent on the first syllable.” Rolfe calls attention to Milton's use of Heaven Gate in P.L., v, 198.

³⁵ E. J. Dent, op. cit., p. 147, “repetition is a characteristic feature of musical form and can produce an intensification of emotional effect.”

³⁶ Noble, op. cit., pp. 28, 29, believed with Simpson and Pollard that light stops or no stops had peculiar significance and should be carefully observed. In songs light stops indicated a swifter singing tempo. As it is doubtful if any of these editors contemplated the existence of a song with no stops, the theories may not apply to “Harke Harke y Larke.' The tempo thus relatively indicated would seem much too fast for singing.

³⁷ Charles C. Fries, “Shakespearian Punctuation,” Studies in Shakespeare, Milton and Donne (Macmillan, 1925), p. 67 f., discusses the editorial policies of various Shakespearian editors regarding punctuation. Pauses for singing have apparently not been given as much consideration as pauses for elocutionary effect. See also, Walter J. Ong, S.J., “Historical Backgrounds of Elizabethan and Jacobean Punctuation Theory,” PMLA, lix, no. 2 (June, 1944), 349.

³⁸ Evelyn H. Schoel, “New Light on Seventeenth Century Pronunciation from the English School of Lutenist Song Writers,” PMLA, lix, no. 2 (June, 1944), 398, and f. discusses the practices of the lutenists in regard to elision, aphaeresis, syncope, etc., as they appear in E. H. Fellowes' editions.

³⁹ Noble, op. cit., p. 137. Many editors have followed Hanmer in dividing these lines though they have not adopted bin for is which was the original purpose of the division.