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Dametas' Song in Sidney's Arcadia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
The ‘gentle’ Dametas, on seeing the Bear, thrust himself into a bush as far as he could go and, on Dorus' pushing him and bidding him be of good courage, thought Doras was the Bear and was with difficulty persuaded that the Bear was indeed dead. Then, like ‘a man of Revengefull spirite, hee gave the deade body many a wounde, swearing by muche yt was pitty, suche Beastes shoulde bee suffered in a Comon Welthe’. Finally, with immoderate joy ‘as before with feare (for his harte was framed never to bee withoute a passyon) hee went by his fayre charge, daunsing, pyping, and singing, till they all come to the presence of the carefull Company’, so near ‘as hee might bee hearde of the Duke’.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1958
References
1 Feuillerat, A., ed., The Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1926), iv, 48—The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia/Being the original version. Google Scholar
2 Ibid., p. 46.
3 ‘A satyre once did run away for dread’. Ward, John, The First Set of English Madrigals, 1613, vii Google Scholar; ‘All my sense thy sweetness gained’, Jones, Robert, The Muses Gardin, 1610, xvii Google Scholar; ‘Goe my flockes goe gett you hence’, Dowland, Robert, Musicall Banquet, 1610, iv and Ch. Ch. MS. 439, f. 9Google Scholar; ‘Have I caught my heavenlye Jewell’, BM.Add.MS.15117, f. 19 (see the present writer's article ‘Falstaff's “heavenlye Jewel”. Incidental music for The Merry Wives of Windsor’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 1958 … ) ;‘In a grove most rich of shade’, Dowland, Robert, Musicall Banquet, 1610, vii Google Scholar; ‘Lock up, fair lids,the treasures of my heart’, Peerson, Martin, Private Musicke, 1620, xiii Google Scholar, and Vautor, Thomas, The First Set, 1619, viii–ix Google Scholar; ‘My Lute wth in thy selfe thy turnes enclose’, BM. Loan MS.35, f. iv; ‘My trewe loue hath my hart and I haue his', BM.Add.MS.15117,f. 18v, and Ward, John, The First Set, 1613, i–ii Google Scholar; ‘O dear life, when shall it be’, Dowland, Robert, Musicall Banquet, 1610, v Google Scholar, and Byrd, William, Songs of sundrie natures, 1589, xxxiii Google Scholar; ‘O my thoughts, my thoughts, surcease’, Ward, John, The First Set, 1613, viii Google Scholar; ‘O sweet woodes, ye delight of sollitarines’, BM. Loan MS.35, f. 9v (only the first two lines are the same), and Dowland, John, Ayres, 1600, x Google Scholar; ‘Only joy now here you are’, Youll, Henry, Canzonets To Three Voyces, 1608, vi Google Scholar; ‘The nightingale, so soon as April bringeth’, Bateson, Thomas, The first set of English Madrigales, 1604, iii Google Scholar; ‘Were I a king I might command content’, Mundy, John, Songs and Psalmes, 1594, xxxvi (ascribed tothe Earl of Oxford).Google Scholar Bruce Pattison in ‘Sir Philip Sidney and Music’, Music & Letters, January 1934, xv, 75-81, remarks:‘in the Arcadia we find that whenever a song is sung by one of the characters—and nearly all the verse is supposed to be sung, for the Elizabethans did not look upon a lyric as complete until it had music as well as words—we are told what instrument is supposed to accompany the song’. Pattison does not comment on the actual music extant or believed to be extant.
4 Cf. Stephen Gosson's The Schoole of Abuse, 1579, as quoted in Chambers, E. K., The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1923), iv, 204 Google Scholar—‘The twoe prose bookes at the Belsauage’—I owe this reference to Miss Barbara Cooper at The Shakespeare Institute. Cf. also Herford, and Simpson, eds., Benjonson, 11 vols. (Oxford, 1923-52), ix, 439Google Scholar for indication of the great popularity of the‘common-helping Arcadia’.
5 Cf. Feil, John P., ‘Dramatic References from the Scudamore Papers’, Shakespeare Survey, 1958, xi, 107–116 Google Scholar, and H. R. Trevor-Roper, ‘Five Letters of Sir Thomas Bodley’, The Bodleian Library Record, 1941-49, II, 134-139, the first letter being dated from Fulham, Sept. 20 [1605].
6 STC 20759. I am indebted to the Huntington Library for a complete microfilm of this book and for permission to reproduce any item.
7 Cf. G. Bantock, H. Anderton, eds., The Melvitt Book of Roundels (The Roxburghe Club, 1916), p. 139, lxviii (really 65) and p. xxiii:‘It calls for no special remark except that this humorist reminds one of the man who described his friend as “a free, open, generous sort o’ chap wot likes to treat hisself to a pint o’ ale”’—which is a pretty good indication of how misunderstood this song is outside its context. The MS itself is reported by Greenberg, N., An Elizabethan Song Book (New York, 1956), p. xxiii Google Scholar as being somewhere in Australia. I should be grateful for detailed information regarding its whereabouts.