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Nicholas Breton and Two Songs by Dowland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Edward Doughtie
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Extract

In the process of editing the poems from the songbooks of the lutenist and composer, John Dowland, I have found that Nicholas Breton is the author of at least one of these poems and may have written another. Both songs were printed in A Pilgrimes Solace (1612). ‘From silent night’ (No. 10) is dedicated ‘To my louing Country-man Mr. John Forster the younger, Merchant of Dublin in Ireland.’ ‘Thou mighty God’ is a single poem divided into three parts (Nos. 14-16). Both are among Dowland's finest songs, remarkable for their emotional intensity and melodic and harmonic boldness. E. H. Fellowes, editor of English Madrigal Verse, lists no author for either poem.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance News , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Spring 1964 , pp. 1 - 3
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1964

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References

1 Oxford, 1929 (second ed.), pp. 617-618. Both songs have been recorded: the first by Alfred Deller for Vanguard, the second by Russell Oberlin for Experiences Anonymes.

2 No. 18 in Dowland. See, e.g., British Museum MS Harl. 6947, ff. 230r-231v; Harvard MS Eng. 757, ff. 175-176. See also Bond, R. W., ed., The Complete Works of John Lyly (Oxford, 1902), III, 445–447.Google Scholar

3 Copy in the Harry Elkins Widener Collection at Harvard. Orlando Gibbons also set stanza 5 of this poem. It is No. 2 of his First Set of Madrigals, printed in the same year as A Pilgrimes Solace, 1612.

4 Corser, Thomas, Collectanea Anglo-Poetica (Manchester, 1867, for the Chetham Society), Part III, 42.Google Scholar

5 Collier, John Payne, ed., Illustrations of Old English Literature (London, 1866), 1, No. 6, pp. i–ii.Google Scholar Collier reprints the 1602 edition.

6 The Works in Verse and Prose of Nicholas Breton (Blackburn, Lanes., 1879) I, Ixxiii.

7 Robertson, Jean, ed., Poems by Nicholas Breton (Liverpool, 1952), xcii–xcviii.Google Scholar

8 British Museum MS Sloane 1779, f. 208v. The poem appears without ascription in MS Egerton 2403 (ff. 38r-48r), which also contains a poem called ‘The Sad Complaint of Mary Queen of Scotts, who was beheaded in England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.’

9 Bodleian MS Tanner 76, ff. 114r-116v.

10 See, for instance, Neale, J. E., Queen Elizabeth I (Garden City, N. Y., 1957), p. 390.Google Scholar

11 SirWotton, Henry, A Parallel betweene Robert late Earle of Essex, and George late Duke of Buckingham (London, 1641), sig. A3r.Google Scholar