No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Strange Fortunes of Two Excellent Princes and The Arbor of amorous Denises
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
Nicholas Breton, the self-avowed author of The Strange Fortunes and the attributed author of The Arbor, has received little tribute for his lyrical poetry, and until very recently only one instance of his having inspired a musician to set his poetry had been pointed out, namely ‘Phillida and Corydon’ from The Honorable Entertainmentgiuen to the Queene Majestie in Progresse, at Eluetham in Hampshire, by the Right Honorable the Earle of Hertford, 1591. It is the purpose of this brief article to bring to the notice of scholars the existence of settings of two other lyrics ascribed to Breton, settings which are fully worth recording for their musical value while affording the only other known texts of Breton lyrics with certain slight variants.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1962
References
1 Noah Greenberg, Cf., ed., An Elizabethan Song Book (New York, 1956), pp. xx–xxii Google Scholar, where a full collation is given between Breton's ‘Fairein a morne’ (Englands Helicon, 1600) and the text of the song ‘Faire in a morne’ included in Morley's The First Book of Ayres, 1600. The song ‘Phillida and Corydon’ is described in the first volume of Nichol's Progresses of Queen Elizabeth as'The Plowman's Song', which would seem to be incorrect since there is no allusion to a plowman in the Entertainment. The third volume has a more likely designation: ‘The three mens song, sung the third morning under her maiesties Gallerie window', the three men being ‘Excellent Musitians who being disguised in ancient Countrey attire, did greete hir with a pleasant song of Coridon and Phillida made in three partes of purpose'. The poem was printed in Englands Helicon, 1600, sigs. D3-D3V. Michael East's setting occurs in his Madrigales To 3. 4. and 5. parts: apt for Viols and voices, 1604, ii-iii. A late setting by John Wilson was printed in his Cheerfull Ayres, 1659-1660, pp. 58-59, and it is this setting which occurs in Bodleian Library MS. Mus. b. I, fol. 135; MS. Don. c. 57 139 (141), fol. 77; and in Edinburgh University Library MS. Dc.1.69, fol. 63V.
2 The Strange Fortvnes of Two Excellent Princes Fantiro and Perillo, 1600. Copy Bodleian Wood 321 (i). STC 3702.
3 Sigs. GV-G2. I am grateful to the curators of the Huntington Library for a microfilm of this rare book and for permission to edit.
4 Fellowes, E. H., ed., The English School of Lutenist Song Writers, 2nd series (London, 1923), III, 21.Google Scholar
5 Fellowes's transcript alters the length of notes to fill out the bars; I have preferred to keep the exact length of the note as indicated by Dartlet, but have added equivalent rests to fill out the measure. A thoroughly scholarly edition of Bartlct's work is needed; Fellowes hurried over it and did not concern himself with the part settings.
6 Cf. John P. Cutts, ‘Two Jacobean Theatre Songs', Music & Letters, October 1952, xxxra, 4, 333-334, for further details about this manuscript.
7 Copy Huntington Library 14115. STC 3631.
8 John P. Cutts, Cf., ‘Early Seventeenth-Century Lyrics at St. Michael's College Tenbury Wells’, Music & Letters, July 1956, XXXVII, 3, 221–233 CrossRefGoogle Scholar where the manuscript is described and where this particular lyric is printed in all good faith as ‘unpublished’. I am pleased to be able to identify the lyric now and to make a correction to the first line of my transcript, emending ‘Leaue into life’ to ‘Leaue me o life'. The MS runs the ‘o’ into ‘me* and the script is difficult.