Page:Shakespeare and Music.djvu/58

44 or turn up the corners of the next few pages of his music, hght the gas, or find his place in another book.

By an easy transition we pass to the following:—

Pericles $1⁄1, 81$. Pericles addresses the daughter of King Antiochus.

Pericles compares the lawful love of a wife with the performance of a good viol player, the proper characteristics of which would be, 'in tune,' and 'in time.' The comparison in l. 84 is of this girl's lawless passion with the 'disorder'd' playing of a bad violist, who has got 'out,' as we say; who is playing 'before his time,' thus entirely spoiling the music, which becomes a dance for devils rather than angels.

The viol was decidedly the most important stringed instrument played with a bow that was in use in Elizabethan times. There were three different sizes.

The reader will get a sufficiently accurate idea,