Page:Shakespeare and Music.djvu/192

178 Shakespeare is 'hoeboy,' which is very like the modern German Hoboe.

Sennet. This is a rare direction, and is found only nine times in eight plays, as against sixty-eight 'Flourishes' and fifty-one 'Trumpets.' The notes of a sennet are unknown. Three times it marks the entrance or exit of a Parliament, three times is used in a Royal or quasi-royal procession, and the remaining cases are royal, or near it.

In the 1st Folio of Hen. V., the word is spelt senet, but in later ones, Sonet, as if the former were a misprint. In Marlowe's Faustus (published 1604), Act iii. sc. i., we find sound a sonnet [enter Pope, Cardinal, etc.]. Also the French Cavalry of 1636 used trumpet calls named Sonneries. These seem to point to a derivation of the word from sonare, and thus the spelling ought to be sonnet, not sennet.

But other forms are found—Synnet, Signet, Signate, which may be proper derivatives of signum, and thus make this trumpet call 'a signal,' instead of 'a sounding'; or (which is as likely) may be corruptions, perhaps of the somewhat featureless form 'Synnet,' caused by a misunderstanding of the original misspelling 'senet.'