Page:Shakespeare's Songs.djvu/13



As I am often asked where the popular song "Should he upbraid," set to music by Sir Henry Bishop, is to be found in Shakespeare, I may be pardoned for adding this note to say that it is not one of Shakespeare's songs. What Bishop did was to take the following lines from a speech of Petruchio in the first scene of Act 11. of "The Taming of the Shrew":

Say that she rail: why then I'll tell her plain

She sings as sweetly as a nightingale:

Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear

As morning roses newly wash'd with dew:

Say she be mute, and will not speak a word;

Then I'll commend her volubility."

He played fast and loose with this passage, turning blank verse into rime and changing the sex of the speaker.

The companion song "Bid me discourse" Bishop drew from "Venus and Adonis":—

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,

Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green,

Or, like a nymph, with long dishevell'd hair,

Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen.'"

A. H. B.