‘What Song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzling Questions are not beyond all conjecture.’ Across three centuries, this comment by Sir Thomas Browne (ed. Keynes 1964, 1:165) offers a measure of comfort to students of the music of Greek antiquity. The measure is necessarily a modest one: in fixing upon the term ‘conjecture’, he chose better than he knew.

Collections of Portuguese baroque villancicos and romances, besides those in Munich (Bavarian State Library, Ccs. 139–47), Spain and the New World, survive at Évora (Biblioteca Pública, Ccs. and at Coimbra (Biblioteca Geral da Universidade). The last of these is the most important in terms of sheer size. Like most of the manuscript music in the library, it belonged to the Convento de Santa Cruz at Coimbra, mother house of the Augustinian order and one of the most important centres of Portuguese music during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There is still no complete catalogue available of this music, although one has been in preparation for some years.

The last complete issue of this register appeared some six years ago in volume 11 of the Research Chronicle. A new issue, taking into account projects subsequently begun, completed or abandoned, is overdue. As the previous compiler stated, the purpose of the register is to ‘assist scholars, in this and other countries, by indicating work carried out in a particular field: it is in no way intended to inhibit others from entering the same field’. The last point is reinforced by the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, work has been effectively abandoned on almost half of the projects described in the last issue of the register as ‘in progress’.

During the Civil War and Commonwealth periods in England (1642–60), public dramatic performances were, with some exceptions, officially prohibited. Rollins (1921; 1923) has shown at length, however, that a good deal of clandestine and semi-public performance of drama and related arts did in fact take place over these years. One anthology which brings together short dramatic pieces that were allegedly acted surreptitiously during the period is Kirkman's collection of ‘drolls’, The Wits, published after the Restoration (part 1, 1662–72; part 2, 1673).