Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/418

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. v. MAY 5,

dictionary. In the other an afflicted lady, whom we may identify with Gismonda, is preparing to kill herself, because her lover, Guichardo, has been done to death by a cruel parent, no doubt Tancred.

Now Farrant was Master of the Children of the Chapel at Windsor, and as such he was accustomed (as were some other masters of choristers) to prepare plays to be pre- sented before the Queen (generally about Christmastide or Shrovetide) every year. There are numerous entries to be found in the 'Acts of the Privy Council ' of payments for the performance of these plays to different masters of choristers, such as Sebastian Westcott, Master of the Children of St. Paul's ; John Taylor, of Westminster ; Hunnis, of the Chapel Royal ; and others. The payments to Farrant are for plays presented at different dates between Feb- ruary, 1560/7, and March, 1579/80. He died, it should be said, on 30 Nov., 1580.

There is nothing to be learnt from the

of these Farrant plays, but a few particulars may be gleaned from Cunningham's 'Accounts of the Revels at Court.' On New Year's Day, 1571/2, for instance, the Windsor Children presented 'Ajax and Ulisses'; on Twelfth Day, 1573/4, it was ' Quintus Fabius'; on Twelfth Day, 1576/7, it was ' Mutius Scsevola.' There was also a play presented in January, 1574/5 (perhaps on Twelfth Day), of which the name is not given, but to which the following entry in the accounts relates :
 * Acts of the Privy Council' about the names

"xj Januarij for a perwigg of Heare for King Xerxces syster in ffarrantes playe ; iiij s . viijV

I had formed some vague hope that this might possibly prove to have been our tragedy, but I do not see how Xerxes's sister can have found her way into a play dealing with the period of Cyrus the Great. So we must content ourselves with the conjecture that ours is one of the unnamed plays per- formed at Court by the Windsor Children under the direction of Richard Farrant, at some date between February, 1567, and March, 1580.

As to the Guichardo song, one must suppose that it came out of a play of ' Tancred and Gismonda ' ; but I have not come upon ajy traces of such a play, except- ing, of course, that printed in Dodsley's

do. If, as I suppose, this song is by Farrant, it also may be an extract from one of the unnamed plays presented by the Windsor Children.
 * Old Plays,' with which this has nothing to

Here, then, we probably have fragments of

two plays of a type of which at least one specimen has been preserved entire, namely, "The excellent comedie of two the moste faithfullest Freendes Damon and Pithias. Newly imprinted as the same was shewed before the Queenes Majestie by the children

of her Grace's chappel Made by Maister

Edwards, then beynge maister of the children, 1571" (see Halliwell's 'Diet, of Old Plays'), which had been entered in the Registers of the Stationers' Company (Arber's transcripts) in 1567-8 as "a boke intituled 'ye tragecall comodye of Damonde and Pethyas,'" and was printed again in 1582.

Now, if we turn to our annotated Shake- speares, such, for instance, as the Clarendon Press edition of ' M.N.D.,' we find that

"Dr. Farmer observed to Malone that in the lines spoken by Pyramus, 'Approach, ye furies fell/ &c., and in those of Thisbe's speech, O sisters three, Come, come to me, With hands as pale as milk,

Shakespeare intended to ridicule a passage in Damon and Pythias,' by Richard Edwards, 1582 : Ye furies, all at once

On me your torments trie

Gripe me, you greedy griefs,

And present pangues of death, You sisters three, with cruel handes With speed come stop my breath 1"

This passage from Pythias's lament for Damon, it should be pointed out, was sung, not spoken. The lament begins :

Here Pithias sings and the regals play. Awake, ye woful wights,

That long have wept in woe : Resign to me your plaints and tears. My hapless hap to show,

and so on.

Later in the play there is another passage in equally absurd style, a lament for Pythias, sung (not spoken) by Eubulus and a chorus of Muses ; but as the play is printed in Hazlitt's ' Dodsley,' it is not necessary to quote any more of it.

That Shakespeare knew Edwards's play I think is almost certain ; but why did he consider it worth while to ridicule a man who had been dead close upon thirty years ? Here, I think, our Farrant songs will help us to give a probable answer. It was not Edwards and his particular play that Shakespeare was ridiculing, but a whole class of plays, namely, those produced at Court on various occasions, and especially those presented by the children of the different chapels : a class of plays which would have been well remembered by his audience, if, as is generally thought, 'M.N.D.' was first performed at Court on