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Shadwell and Locke's Psyche: the French Connection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1979
Extract
Upon the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 Matthew Locke received three places in the king's Musick: private composer to the King in the place of John Coprario, composer in the wind music in place of Alfonso Ferrabosco (ii), and a new place as composer for the band of violins. He was also made organist to the Queen at her chapel (probably because of his Catholic religion), and he composed the music for the elaborate celebrations marking the return of the King to London. Locke was then thirty-eight years old, and in his spare time he moonlighted as composer for the Duke of York's Theatre Company organized by Sir William Davenant.
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- Copyright © 1981 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors
References
NOTES
1 Charles Bumey, A General History of Music (London, 1789), iv, 187 (Dover reprint, ii, 645).Google Scholar
2 Edward J. Dent, Foundations of English Opera (London, 1928), 127.Google Scholar
3 John P. Cutts, ‘Jacobean Masque and Stage Music’, Music & Letters, xxxv (1954), 188 As Cutts points out, Locke's music in Add. 10444 should not have been bound in with the earlier masque music but rather with the rest of his collection in Add. 10445, where it properly belongs.Google Scholar
4 I say that both ballets were connected with the Shadwell–Locke Psyche because Shadwell borrowed the idea of the Dance of Statues in Act 4 from Les amants magnifiques, the other ballet in Add. 10445.Google Scholar
5 My findings in this matter are corroborated by Professor Herbert Schneider of Johannes Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz, whose thematic catalogue of the works of Lully is now in the press.Google Scholar
6 William van Lennep (ed.), The London Stage, 1660–1800, i (Carbondale, 1965), 180Google Scholar
7 Ibid., 202.Google Scholar
8 Ibid., 213–14.Google Scholar
9 James Vernon, Letters Addressed from London to Sir Joseph Williamson, ed. by William D. Christie, Camden Society Publications, new series, viii (Westminster, 1874), i, 180.Google Scholar
10 Anon., A Comparison Between the Two Stages (London, 1702). Ed. by Staring B. Wells, Princeton Studies in English (London, 1942), xxvi, 29.Google Scholar
11 See, for example, the account by Eleanore Boswell of his role in the Grand Ballet of 1671 and in Calisto in 1675: The Restoration Stage (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), pp. 138 and 196.Google Scholar
12 Further to this see note 16.Google Scholar
13 John Wilson (ed.), Roger North on Music (London, 1959), 306.Google Scholar
14 John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus (London, 1708), 35–6.Google Scholar
15 Henry Cart de Lafontaine (ed.), The King's Musick (London, 1909), 271. L.C., vol. 774, p. 3.Google Scholar
16 Until 1922 a date of either 1673 or 1674 was generally accepted, but Allardyce Nicoll, in the Times Literary Supplement, 21 September 1922, published a list from the Lord Chamberlain's accounts with the following entry: ‘27 Feb 1675 - Psyche - first acting - £30’. While some have accepted this as the first performance, others think it refers to the ‘first acting’ that season. The L.C. records are far too sketchy to furnish conclusive proof of seventeenth-century theatre chronology.Google Scholar
17 For a detailed account of Calisto see Boswell, op. cit., 178ff.Google Scholar
18 Further to this see Locke's reaction in his Preface quoted on pp. 53–4.Google Scholar
19 Thomas Shadwell, Psyche: A Tragedy Acted at The Duke's Theatre (London, 1675), Preface. Modern edition by Montague Summers, The Complete Works of Thomas Shadwell, ii, 279.Google Scholar
20 Ibid., 280.Google Scholar